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P Ros E wo R K S
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OR ŻA 46 +
J O H N M I L T O N ;
WITH AN INTRODUCTORY REVIEW,
HY
R O B E R T F L E T C H E R.
LONDON :
H E N R Y G. B.O HN, Y O R K S T RE ET,
C O V E N T G A R D E N.
MDCCCLXVI.
John CHILDS AND son, PRINTERs.
I N T R O D U C T O R Y R. E. V. I E W.
THE name of Milton is his monument. It is venerable, national, and sacred; and yet,
with whatever glory invested, it is inscribed, and not unworthily, upon this volume.
To her great poet England has done justice. His renown equals his transcendent
merits. His name is a synonyme for vastness of attainment, sublimity of conception,
and splendour of expression. A people profess to be his readers. His poetry is in all
hands. It is in truth a fountain of living waters in the very heart of civilization. Its
tendency is even more magnificent than its composition. Combining all that is lovely in -
religion, with all that in reason is grand and beautiful, it creates, while it gratifies, and at Y
the same time purifies, those tastes and powers that refine and exalt humanity. It is almost
of itself, not less by the invigorating nature of its moral than of its intellectual qualities,
sufficient to perpetuate the stability of an empire. Constituting a most glorious portion
of our best inheritance, his poetical writings are, emphatically, national works; and as
such, long may they be revered and esteemed amongst us! “They are of power,” to use
his own words, “to inbreed and cherish in a great people the seeds of virtue and public
civility.” They will be lost, only with our language:—the tide of his song will cease to
flow, only with that of time. Having won, he wears, the brightest laurels; and by the ac-
clamations of ages, rather than the testimony of individuals, his seat is with Homer and
Shakespeare on the poetic mount. To apply again his own language to his own achieve-
ments, he has sung his “elaborate song;”—he has performed the covenant of his youth,
“to offer at high strains in new and lofty measures;”—his devout prayer to that Eternal
Spirit, “who can enrich with all utterance and knowledge, and sends out his seraphim
with the hallowed fire of his altar to touch and purify the lips of whom he pleases,” has
been heard and answered
“Oh what great men hast thou not produced, England my country " might we ex-
claim with one of the first of modern poets and philosophers, when contemplating these and
similar works. And a thorough Englishman this great poet was Prelates, and tithes,
and kings, were not the burthen of his song, and therefore the poetry can be praised even
by those whose souls are wrapped up in these things. While he soared away “in the
high reason of his fancies,” and meddled not with the practical affairs of life, his enemies
can be complimentary, and undertake to bow him into immortality. They would ſain
suppress all other monuments of this Englishman :-it remains for us to appreciate them.
Let us never think of John Milton as a poet merely, however in that capacity he may have
adorned our language, and benefited, by ennobling, his species. He was a citizen also,
with whom patriotism was as heroical a passion, prompting him to do his country service,
as was that “inward prompting” of poesy, by which he did his country honour. He was
alive to all that was due from man to man in all the relations of life. He was invested
A 2
ii INTRODUCTORY REVIEW.
with a power to mould the mind of a nation, and to lead the people into “the glorious ways
of truth, and prosperous virtue.” The poet has long eclipsed the man;–he has been
imprisoned even in the temple of the muses ; and the very splendour of the bard seems
to be our title to pass “an act of oblivion” on the share he bore in the events and discus-
sions of the momentous times in which he lived. Ought not rather his wide renown, in
this capacity, to lead us to the contemplation and study of the whole of his character and
his works Sworn by a father, who knew what persecution was, at the first altar to
freedom erected in this land; he, a student of the finest temperament, bent on grasping
all sciences and professing mone, and burning with intense ambition for distinction—for-
sook his harp, “ and the quiet and still air of delightful studies;” and devoted the energies
of earliest and maturest manhood, to be aiding in the grandest crisis of the first of human
causes: and he became the most conspicuous literary actor in the dreadful yet glorious
drama of the Great Rebellion. He beheld tyranny and intolerance trampling upon the
most sacred prerogatives of God and man, and he was compelled by the nobility of his
nature, by the obligations of virtue, by the loud summons of beleagured truth, in short, by
his patriotism as well as his piety, to lay down the lyre, whose earliest tones are yet so
fascinating; to “doff his garland and singing robes,” and to adventure within the circle
of peril and glory ; and, buckling on the controversial panoply, he threw it off, only when
the various works of this volume, surpassed by none in any sort of eloquence, became the
record and trophy of his achievements, and the worthy forerunners of those poems, which
a whole people “will not willingly let die.”
The summit of ſame is occupied by the poet, but the base of the vast elevation may
justly be said to rest on these Prose Works; and we invite his admirers to descend from
the former, and survey the region that lies round about the latter, a less explored, but not
less magnificent, domain.
The recovery of a good book is a sure and certain resurrection. The envious deluge of
oblivion cannot long settle over such works as these. The rainbow springs up, and we see
it on the tempestuous aspect of these times, a sign of the storm, and a signal of peace!
We are not now employed on ruins. John Milton's works have been long buried, but
they are not consumed;—long neglected, but they are not injured. Many of them certainly
have to do with the interests of time, but all of them are impregnatéd with thoughts which,
springing from the depths, shall partake of the immortality of the spirit, and outlive the
world in which they were uttered. Though temporal they are not temporary.) There is a
breadth and grandeur of aim in them, which embraces the well-being of man both here and
hereafter, and renders them interminably precious. “Books,” says their author, “are
not absolutely dead things,”—“ they contain a progeny of life in them to be as active as
that soul whose progeny they are,”—“the precious life-blood of a master-spirit embalmed
and treasured up to a life beyond life.”—“They preserve, as in a vial, the purest efficacy and
extraction of that living intellect that bred them.” It is astonishing that these books should
not in our time have been appreciated by the people, and it is greatly to be regretted, not
merely for the sake of their author, but for the general interests of truth, and the cultivation
of learning, eloquence, and taste amongst us, that they should be so little read. Had they
been lost,-had his enemies succeeded in their diabolical project of mutilating, or of annihi-
lating the chief of them,-had other priests than those “in the neighbourhood of Leeds,” met
in other places, over sacerdotal beer, to “sacrifice them to the flames,” how we should have
lamented over our irreparable loss! Having his poems, we should have learned that they
sprung up out of the ashes of controversy;-we should then “imitate the careful search that
Isis made for the mangled body of Osiris " We should have remembered the era in which
he lived, and we should have felt our loss as deeply as we sympathized with his party,
* See Richard Baron's note, in this edition, to his preface to the Iconoclastes.
INTRODUCTORY REVIEW. iii
who with such strong hands and dauntless hearts, wrought out for us our political salva-
tion. Possessing them, we might have said, that we should have known more of one of the
greatest of men, and have been admitted into the presence-chamber of his every-day soul.—
We should have had his opinions on the cardinal points of human and divine controversy,
and have heard him, who in immortal accents dictated the “Paradise Lost,” debate, and
reason, and argue, as an orator, and a politician Believing, with Coleridge, that poetry
is the blossom and fragrancy of all human knowledge, human thoughts, human passions,
emotions, language,_and that no man was ever yet a great poet, without being at the
same time a profound philosopher—we should certainly, reasoning from verse to prose, a
priori, have said, that such a mind as Milton's so sober and yet so fiery, so full and yet so
strong, so replete with wisdom and so stored with learning, with such a mastery in the
execution of all its movements, must, if roused and excited, and roused and excited it would
undoubtedly be by any theme or cause in which the rights of man or the honour of God were
concerned, have been equally splendid in any undertaking; and that even in the very different
forms of prose and verse, or controversy and poetry, his efforts would be distinguished by
the identical attributes of power and beauty;-that the image and superscription upon each
would be the same;—that with very little variation where it was possible, (for no one un-
derstood decorum better than Milton,) the very same terms in which a critic of his poetry
would speak of that, especially of his didactic poetry, would be applicable to his prose;
that probably the mannerism of the one would mark the other, and that there would be
so striking a resemblance and analogy between them, that you might safely assert that the
author of the one must be the author of the other. : We should learn from one of his ex-
quisite sonnets, that the utter loss of sight followed, and that he knew that it would follow,
his exertions in composing a “Defence of the People of England” against Salmasius.
“overply'd
In Liberty's defence, my noble task,
Of which all Europe rings from side to side.”
How anxious should we have been to have examined and pored over that production, which
the world had obtained from the magnanimous poet at such a price If such had been our
anticipations and regrets, what would be our rapture, to have rescued a fragment from
the grasp of time, and have unrolled it?
That were indeed a bursting forth
Of genius from the dust!
In the teeth of these imaginary regrets, the fact is indisputable, that these works of John
Milton (and in this respect they share the same fate with those of Jeremy Taylor and
others of the same age, and of equal merit) are by the vast majority of his countrymen
comparatively neglected—that tens of thousands of readers, and diligent ones too, in
modern novelties, have never heard of Milton as aught else than as one of the powers of
song. How is it that the world will do justice, (nominally at least) to the minstrel, and
not to the man,—thrill with his poetry, and neglect his prose 3 Is it sheer ignorance, or is it
neglect? If the latter, there is not an equal instance of unworthy neglect on record. It is
ultimately traceable to the elevated character of the writings themselves. John Milton
was a teacher, and this world does not like to be taught. His “fit audience,” in the world,
will always be “few.” The world's taste is but the handmaid and servant of a sterner
and stronger power, whose empire lies in the passions of the depraved heart; which, while
unrenewed, never can and never will cease to treat both the highest poetry and the
divinest philosophy with mingled hatred and contempt. The world will still slay the pro-
phet, and then piously build his sepulchre. Whether they who profess to be the patrons
iv INTRODUCTORY REVIEW.
of Christian literature, have joined the world in this good work, is another and a wider
Question.
It may not be amiss to advert to some accidental circumstances which may account for,
though they cannot justify, the very general indifference with which these and similar works
have been treated. We shall not allude to the ponderous and expensive form in which
they have hitherto appeared: an impediment however of no mean importance.
Now that the prejudices against the regicides, under which opprobrious term are included
all who bore part against King Charles I. in what is yet termed the “Great Rebellion,”
are wearing away, they need not be classed among the obstacles referred to. The prin-
ciples of civil and religious liberty, which Milton and his compatriots contended for, have
become part and parcel of the law of the land. The people feel, that the British Constitu-
tion, by the Revolution of 1688, is based upon the fragment of the Rebellion, and that the
doctrines of the one are settled by the other. Tyranny, absolute—Challes the 1st–
tyranny, whether civil or ecclesiastical, is impossible. A few shadows and semblances of
it may remain—but spectres are out of date—
the sun is on the orient wave,
Each fettered ghost slips to his several gravel
We have the happiness to live under a limited monarchy, with republican institutions—a
mild aristocracy, a temperate but powerful democracy. But to whom are we indebted for
these blessings 2 Extremes meet. When men are secure they are ungrateful; and when
they enjoy those rights for which their ancestors fought, they forget the peril and toil of
the achievement. We must also remember that multitudes in this country are too busy
with the present, to bestow much attention on the past or future, whether near or less re-
mote. This is the case with many, too many, who are not destitute of liberal curiosity, or
incapable of relishing the pleasures of taste, and cherishing the liveliest emotions of
gratitude to their benefactors. They cannot, while under the perpetual pressure of the in-
exorable daily duties or pleasures of life, be either affected or attracted by any thing else.--
These are causes which have been, and will always be, in action, and unless jealously
watched, will dwarf us into a nation of pigmy “toutos cosmites.”
We shall find too, in the literary injustice with which these works have been treated, and
in the influence which the parties chargeable with it, have exercised over the public mind,
another extrinsic cause of the neglect that has been poured upon them. The critics of
Milton have hitherto confined, with one or two exceptions, their labours to his poetry, a
quarry which they have not yet exhausted. And as they seldom have entered very deeply
into the art itself, employing, as it must, in its evolution the language of real life, or prose,
many, instead of being led by the one down to the other, are apt to conclude, that sur-
passing excellence in the higher department of literature is incompatible with success in
the lower; overlooking or forgetting the well-known fact, that the best writers in prose
have ever been the poets; that energy of thought or common sense is a characteristic of all
genius; and that universality is the prerogative of the highest. Milton's moral and intel-
lectual character has, for a long while, been tacitly placed under the guardianship of his
most bitter antagonists. It unfortunately happens that the most popular of his biographers
is his most malignant traducer. Dr. Johnson's treatment of Milton is, in every possible
point of view, bad;
“ Unmanly, ignominious, infamous !”
The poetry is beyond the reach, though within the scope, of his “mighty malice;” and his
meagre and contemptuous references in the life of their author, to his Prose Works, are as
discreditable to his taste and insight as a philosopher, as his creed is disgraceful to him as
INTROL) UCTORY REVIEW. W
an English politician. With an eye for no beauty, an ear for no music, a heart for no
ecstasies, a soul in no unison with the sympathies of humanity, Dr. Johnson was fity
doomed to be the giant drudge of the Della Cruscan school; a thunderer, and yet his own
Cyclops, whose task it was to forge the bolts of destruction, and whose glory to hurl them.
Who that (and what numbers!) have formed their estimate of these Prose Works from his
account of them, would have any idea of their real merits? If his report be fair and true,
well might we exclaim with Manoah in the Samson Agonistes,
Oh! miserable changel Is this the man,
That invincible Samson, far renowned,
The dread of Israel's foes, who with a strength
Equivalent to angels walked their streets,
None offering fight; who, single combatant,
Duell'd their armies, ranked in proud array,
Himself an army : now unequal match
To save himself against a coward armed
At one spear's length !
Johnson's life of Milton is a most disingenuous production. It is the trail of a serpent
over all Milton's works. Nothing escaped the fang of detraction. Nothing in purity of
manners and magnanimity of conduct, nothing in the sanctity of the bard, in the noble
works, and yet nobler life, of the man, could shield his immeasurable superior from cowardly
and almost savage malignity. He has treated his very ashes with indignity. He made
himself merry with the mighty dead. He trampled, upon his memory and his grave.
And who can deny that the traducer knew full well, that the heart of his countryman,
then mouldering in the dust of death, had ever beaten high with the sublimest emotions
of love to his country and to his God, and that the then powerless hand of our mightiest
minstrel, could not be convicted of having ever penned a line which did not equally
attest the purity of his motives and the splendour of his genius. But Johnson's misrepre-
sentations and calumnies, and that heartless faction of which he was certainly an eminent
representative, have had their day: and inconceivably injurious though they have been
to the honour of John Milton, sure we are that the time is fast approaching, yea now is,
when the man as well as the poet shall be redeemed from obloquy—not by any in-
terpretation of his opinions however honest, or estimate of his character however cor-
rect, nor even by the panegyric of his admirers however eloquent (and some of sur-
passing merit have lately been pronounced); but the great achievement shall be won
by himself, and by himself alone. With his own strong axe shall he hew down, not
merely his adversaries, but their errors. Let him but be heard. The charges against
him are in all hands; here, in this one volume, is to be found their triumphant, but
neglected, refutation. -
It is not generally known, that in the Dictionary Dr. Johnson takes a few examples
of meanings of words from two only of these Prose Works, (the Tract on Education
and the Areopagitica,) both of which do not occupy many pages of this edition, while
the rest, teeming with illustrations equally interesting and appropriate, are not, we believe,
once appealed to. In the Inaugural Discourse delivered by Henry Brougham, Esq. on
being installed Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow, is it not remarkable, that, when
upon the very topic of eloquence, and that the eloquence of the English masters, and when
urgently advising his young auditory to meditate on their beauties, there is not the slightest
allusion to John Milton by name. “Addison,” says Brougham, (this cannot be an end-
meration of all the favourites?) “may have been pure and elegant; Dryden airy and
nervous; Taylor witty and fanciful (!!); Hooker weighty and various;” but the young
disciple hears not once mentioned the name of John Milton, whose writings are most
©
Y' l INTRODUCTORY REVIEW.
deeply imbued with the spirit of that literature, to promote the study of which was the main
object of this very discourse. Milton's profound acquaintance with the Greek authors, was
equalled only by his enthusiastic admiration of them. The following testimony, taken
from the first letter to Leonard Philara, the Athenian, might surely have given additional
weight to the authority of the Lord Rector. “To the writings of those illustrious men
which your city has produced, in the perusal of which I have been occupied from my
youth, it is with pleasure I confess that I am indebted for all my proficiency in literature.”
This is literary injustice. We cannot but regret that the illustrious individual we refer
to, who has given an impulse to the mind of his age, favoured not his numerous disciples,
and more numerous admirers, with a criticism upon the “Areopagitica” of the greatest
“schoolmaster” the world ever produced
Certain parties in the state, who cannot endure any appeal to the criteria of experience, have
set up a cry, “The wisdom of our ancestors." The formidable phrase holds principally in
politics, (and in this point of view it is a dangerous one,) but like a parasitical weed it has
begun to clasp round the literature of our forefathers, and should be rooted up. We are
firm believers in the capabilities of moderns, and credit not the notion of necessary de-
generacy ; yet we must profess, that we hold in profoundest veneration that aggregate of
communities which we call the past. The spirit of the vaunting cry we have referred to,
would throw the world back into chaos. As far as individual minds are concerned, it would
extinguish the divinest intellects that were ever enshrined in the form of man. Being the
offspring of our fathers, we come into their stead. Why not avail ourselves of our advan-
tages Why not profit by our noblest inheritance 2 If we must suffer from the folly, why
not make use of the wisdom, of our ancestors 2 Englishmen, above all nations, may exclaim,
“What have we, that we have not received 2* What a treasure of moral and political
wealth is there not laid up for us in the archives of the past! Even novelty itself is the
effect of antiquity. We come into mo new world ! We are cast into the ancient mould of
things' Man springs from man, and age from age; therefore all the past bears upon the
present, and we cannot understand thoroughly that which is, or is to be, without also know-
ing that which has been. Knowledge leans upon experience, and experience leans upon
the past! But it is not our intention to renew the foolish fight which obtained last cen-
tury, between the ancients and the moderns. There is another party in the state who are
perhaps the parents of the noxious phrase we have referred to, and should have been first
noticed. These take it for granted, that the wisdom of our ancestors is that which is most
like their own ; and no wonder that they have brought it into contempt. Such admirers of
the wisdom of our ancestors, may not meet with it here. True wisdom knows nothing of
the terms ancient or modern, and her spheres are not so inharmoniously adjusted as to pro-
duce confusion, or come into collision. But within her magic circles of the past, rise up
the awful spirits, “whose words are oracles for mankind, whose love embraces all countries,
and whose voice sounds through all ages"
The literary character of the times may also be unfavourable to our undertaking.—This is
an age of tracts, not of folios—fruitful in flowers, rather than in the forest-trees of literature,
which perhaps it is the tendency of civilization to root up or to fell. The mind of the
country is to be irrigated, some say regenerated, by a sort of periodical garden-engines.
For this purpose the fountains of the great deep are “broken up,” but not into ; yet when
we remember that there is now read a vast deal more than ever, we cannot despair of an
attempt to popularize in this “multum in parvo” shape, the Prose Works of our great poet.
Their intrinsic merits, their former celebrity, their author's fame, the daily agitation all along
since their publication, of the very pr’nciples which he advocated, and which thousands
yet deny, should have swept away the curse of the dust from these volumes long since, and,
in “such a nation as this, not slow and dull, but of a quick, ingenious, and piercing spirit,”
INTRODUCTORY REVIEW. vii
should, in spite of popular ingratitude or fickleness, or the fire of the common hangman, or
the cavils and scandals or cobwebs of party criticism, have opened their immortal pages,
and caused them to be known and read of all men, who are capable of relishing works of
art, or of comprehending or realizing truths, for the forgetfulness or rejection of any one of
which, “whole nations sometimes fare the worse.” -
Principles, whether political or religious, are always important. As far as the former are
concerned, we doubt not that our undertaking will be as successful as it is opportune. The
spirit of the age is favourable to the truths which John Milton taught. The tracts on
Ecclesiastical Policy possess as much interest now as when they were first published. This
“schoolmaster” is abroad: and a whole people shall rejoice in his instructions, as they
once took refuge in his defence. An oracular and prophetical voice, long silenced, is again
heard, warming his enemies, and guiding and encouraging his friends and followers, never
more to be abashed
The life and character of John Milton are well known, and the great political events of
his time, have of late received satisfactory and abundant illustration. Omitting, therefore,
biographical and historical details, it shall be our object to present the reader with a brief
and simple account of the contents of this volume. We shall observe in our examination
the order of chronology. All the works, with the exception of the letters, and a few
others, are controversial, and relate equally and entirely to civil and religious liberty. They
<------------> *.*-*-*** -- --------
embrace a period of about nineteen years, the most eventful in our history. It will be
interesting, to take up here that account of himself which an ungenerous adversary had
wrung from him, and to prefix to our review such parts of it, as may throw the light of
his own opinion on his own performances.
In “The Second Defence of the People of England,” translated from the Latin by
Robert Fellows, A. M. Oxon. he is led in self-defence to “rescue his life from that species
of obscurity, which is the associate of unprincipled depravity.”
“This it will be necessary for me to do on more accounts than one : first, that so many
good and learned men among the neighbouring nations, who read my works, may not be
induced by this fellow's calumnies, to alter the favourable opinion which they have formed
of me; but may be persuaded that I am not one who ever disgraced beauty of sentiment
by deformity of conduct, or the maxims of a freeman by the actions of a slave; and that the
whole tenour of my life has, by the grace of God, hitherto been unsullied by any enormity
or crime. Next, that those illustrious worthies, who are the objects of my praise, may know
that nothing could afflict me with more shame than to have any vices of mine diminish the
force or lessen the value of my panegyric upon them ; and lastly, that the people of Eng-
land, whom fate, or duty, or their own virtues, have incited me to defend, may be convinced
from the purity and integrity of my life, that my defence, if it do not redound to their
honour, can never be considered as their disgrace. I will now mention who and whence I
am. I was born at London, of an honest family; my father was distinguished by the
undeviating integrity of his life; my mother by the esteem in which she was held, and the
alms which she bestowed. My father destined me from a child to the pursuits of literature;
and my appetite for knowledge was so voracious, that from twelve years of age I hardly
ever left my studies, or went to bed before midnight. This primarily led to my loss of
sight. My eyes were naturally weak, and I was subject to frequent headaches; which,
however, could not chill the ardour of my curiosity, or retard the progress of my improve-
ment. My father had me daily instructed in the grammar school, and by other masters at
home. He then, after I had acquired a proficiency in various languages, and had made a
considerable progress in philosophy, sent me to the University of Cambridge. Here I
passed seven years in the usual course of instruction and study, with the approbation of
the good, and without any stain upon my character, till I took the degree of master of arts.
* ----------------.. * ---- :- ----
- - ºr--" -- *** **- *** -----------
viii INTRODUCTORY REVIEW.
After this I did not, as this miscreant feigns, run away into Italy, but of my own accord
retired to my father's house, whither I was accompanied by the regrets of most of the
fellows of the college, who shewed me no common marks of friendship and esteem. On
my father's estate, where he had determined to pass the remainder of his days, I enjoyed
an interval of uninterrupted leisure, which I devoted entirely to the perusal of the Greek and
Latin classics; though I occasionally visited the metropolis, either for the sake of purchas-
ing books, or of learning something new in mathematics or in music, in which I, at that
time, found a source of pleasure and amusement. In this manner I spent five years, till
my mother's death, I then became anxious to visit foreign parts, and particularly Italy.
My father gave me his permission, and I left home with one servant. On my departure,
the celebrated Henry Wootton, who had long been King James's ambassador at Venice,
gave me a signal proof of his regard, in an elegant letter which he wrote, breathing not
only the warmest friendship, but containing some maxims of conduct which I found very
useful in my travels. The noble Thomas Scudamore, King Charles's ambassador, to whom
I carried letters of recommendation, received me most courteously at Paris. His lordship
gave me a card of introduction to the learned Hugo Grotius, at that time ambassador from
the Queen of Sweden to the French court; whose acquaintance I anxiously desired, and to
whose house I was accompanied by some of his lordship's friends. A few days after, when
I set out for Italy, he gave me letters to the English merchants on my route, that they
might shew me any civilities in their power. Taking ship at Nice, I arrived at Genoa, and
afterwards visited Leghorn, Pisa, and Florence. In the latter city, which I have always
more particularly esteemed for the elegance of its dialect, its genius, and its taste, I stopped
about two months; when I contracted an intimacy with many persons of rank and learn-
ing; and was a constant attendant at their literary parties; a practice which prevails there,
and tends so much to the diffusion of knowledge and the preservation of friendship. No
time will ever abolish the agreeable recollections which I cherish of Jacob Gaddi, Carolo
Dati, Frescobaldo, Cultellero, Bonomatthai, Clementillo, Francisco, and many others.
From Florence I went to Siena, thence to Rome, where, after I had spent about two months
in viewing the antiquities of that renowned city, where I experienced the most friendly
attentions from Lucas Holstein, and other learned and ingenious men, I continued my route
to Naples. There I was introduced by a certain recluse, with whom I had travelled from
Rome, to John Baptista Manso, Marquis of Villa, a nobleman of distinguished rank and
authority, to whom Torquato Tasso, the illustrious poet, inscribed his book on friendship.
During my stay, he gave me singular proofs of his regard; he himself conducted me round
the city and to the palace of the viceroy; and more than once paid me a visit at my lodg-
ings. On my departure he gravely apologized for not having shewn me more civility, which
he said he had been restrained from doing, because I had spoken with so little reserve on
matters of religion. When I was preparing to pass over into Sicily and Greece, the melan-
choly intelligence which I received, of the civil commotions in England, made me alter my
purpose; for I thought it base to be travelling for amusement abroad, while my fellow
citizens were fighting for liberty at home. While I was on my way back to Rome, some
merchants informed me that the English jesuits had formed a plot against me if I returned
to Rome, because I had spoken too freely on religion; for it was a rule which I laid down
to myself in those places, never to be the first to begin any conversation on religion; but if
any questions were put to me concerning my faith, to declare it without any reserve or fear.
I nevertheless returned to Rome. I took no steps to conceal either my person or my
character; and for about the space of two months, I again openly defended, as I had done
before, the reformed religion in the very metropolis of popery. By the favour of God, I got
safe back to Florence, where I was received with as much affection as if I had returned to
my native country. There I stopped as many months as I had done before, except that I
INTRODUCTORY REVIEW. IX
made an excursion for a few days to Lucca ; and crossing the Apennines, passed through
Bologna and Ferrara to Venice. After I had spent a month in surveying the curiosities of
this city, and had put on board a ship the books which I had collected in Italy, I proceed-
ed through Verona and Milan, and along the Leman lake to Geneva. The mention of this
city brings to my recollection the slandering More, and makes me again call the Deity to
witness, that in all those places, in which vice meets with so little discouragement, and is
practised with so little shame, I never once deviated from the paths of integrity and virtue,
and perpetually reflected that, though my conduct might escape the notice of men, it could
not elude the inspection of God. At Geneva I held daily conferences with John Deodati,
the learned Professor of Theology. Then pursuing my former route through France, I
returned to my native country, after an absence of one year and about three months; at
the time when Charles, having broken the peace, was renewing what is called the episcopal
war with the Scots; in which the royalists being routed in the first encounter, and the
English being universally and justly disaffected, the necessity of his affairs at last obliged
him to convene a parliament. As soon as I was able, I hired a spacious house in the city
for myself and my books; where I again with rapture renewed my literary pursuits, and
where I calmly awaited the issue of the contest, which I trusted to the wise conduct of
Providence, and to the courage of the people. The vigour of the parliament had begun to
humble the pride of the bishops. As long as the liberty of speech was no longer subject to
controul, all mouths began to be opened against the bishops; some complained of the vices
of the individuals, others of those of the order. They said that it was unjust that they alone
should differ from the model of other reformed churches; that the government of the
church should be according to the pattern of other churches, and particularly the word of
God. This awakened all my attention and my zeal—I saw that a way was opening for
the establishment of real liberty; that the foundation was laying for the deliverance of
man from the yoke of slavery and superstition ; that the principles of religion, which were
the first objects of our care, would exert a salutary influence on the manners and constitu-
tion of the republic ; and as I had from my youth studied the distinctions between religious
and civil rights, I perceived that if I ever wished to be of use, I ought at least not to be
wanting to my country, to the church, and to so many of my fellow Christians, in a crisis
of so much danger; I therefore determined to relinquish the other pursuits in which I was
engaged, and to transfer the whole force of my talents and my industry to this one impor-
tant object. I accordingly wrote two books to a friend concerning the reformation of the
church of lºngland.” The noble sacrifice was made—the bard became a patriot.
In the year 1641 appeared his first controversial production, the precise object of which
is sufficiently set forth in the title—“Of Reformation in England, and the Causes that
hitherto have hindered it, written to a Friend.” Our author, it will be remembered, had
already attacked prelacy, in his Lycidas; and his hatred of their yoke had not abated in the
course of the four years which elapsed between that poem and this work. We shall touch
with a light hand the topics of these two books,—which are hardly surpassed in interest
and excellence by any of their successors. The exordium of the first of these, full of
“deep and retired thoughts,” sternly, and even ruggedly, but devoutly expressed, charac-
terizing, with some abrupt intermixtures of style, but with great power, the origin and
increase of ecclesiastical pravity, concludes with a passage which is in itself an achieve-
ment, and perhaps equal to any that ever fell from his pen, describing the outbreak of
the Reformation.
“But to dwell no longer in characterizing the depravities of the church, and how they
sprung, and how they took increase; when I recall to mind at last, after so many dark ages,
wherein the huge overshadowing train of error had almost swept all the stars out of the
firmament of the church; how the bright and blissful Reformation (by divine power) strook
X INTRODUCTORY REVIEW.
through the black and settled might of ignorance and antichristian tyranny, methinks a
sovereign and reviving joy must needs rush into the bosom of him that reads or hears; and
the sweet odour of the returning gospel imbathe his soul with the fragrancy of heaven.
Then was the sacred Bible sought out of the dusty corners where profane falsehood and
neglect had thrown it, the schools opened, divine and human learning raked out of the
embers of forgotten tongues, the princes and cities trooping apace to the new-erected ban-
ner of salvation ; the martyrs, with the unresistible might of weakness, shaking the powers
of darkness, and scorning the fiery rage of the old red dragon.”
Proceeding then to the question, he enumerates the hinderances to reformation “in our
forefathers' days, among ourselves,” in English protestants, not in Providence, not in
papistical machinations,—which had been in operation since the glorious event of the Re-
formation. These impediments he reduces to two, -our retaining of ceremonies, and con-
fining the power of ordination to diocesan bishops, exclusively of church members. “Our
ceremonies are senseless in themselves, and serve for nothing but either to facilitate our
return to popery, or to hide the defects of better knowledge, and to set off the pomp of
prelacy.” Mingled with this dry deduction from our history, of the causes that “hindered
the forwarding of true discipline "—(in which he runs over the times of Henry VIII., his
character, and the conduct of the bishops, with the six “bloody articles,” or as Selden calls
them, the six-stringed whip, -the times of Edward VI., his infancy, the tumults that arose
on repealing the six articles, the intrigues of the bishops, and the Northumberland plot,
the commission to frame ecclesiastical constitutions,—the times of Elizabeth, when
Edward VI.'s constitutions were established,—showing the unwieldiness of these times,
and the impossibility of effecting “exact reformation at one push”)—the reader will meet
with such declamation against the whole body and function of prelacy, as would be
infallibly successful if pronounced before any modern auditory.
The hinderers of reformation in his own times are “ distinguished ” into three sorts:–
1. Antiquitarians (not Antiquarians, he says, whose labours are useful and laudable). 2.
Libertines. 3. Politicians. Under the first head, the Antiquitarians will find established
the difference between our bishops and those of purer times, in their election by the hands
of the whole church for 400 years after Christ, and that in dignity they were only equal to
their co-presbyters. Whether antiquity favours modern episcopacy or not, it is shown,
1. That the best times were spreadingly infected; 2. That the best men of those times
were foully tainted ; and 3. That the best writings of those men were dangerously adulte-
rated. This threefold corruption is proved at large, and most successfully. It seems that
even so early as 1641, when in his 33rd year, he was not merely a puritan, but a dissenter
from the principle of our establishment; for in anticipating an objection on the ground of
drawing the proof of his propositions from the practice of ages before Constantine's time, and
the alliance between the temporal and spiritual power, he says, “I am not of opinion to
think the church a vine in this respect, because, as they take it, she cannot subsist without
clasping about the elm of worldly strength and felicity, as if the heavenly city could not
support itself without the props and buttresses of secular authority.” His object, however,
was reformation, not subversion, and therefore he did not carry this principle out. The
character and conduct of Constantine are examined, and Dante, Petrarch, and Ariosto, are
quoted, to show, that it may be concluded for a received opinion, even among men profess-
ing the Romish church, “that Constantine marred the church.” The last topic in which
he deals with the antiquitarian at his own weapon, respects the estimation which the an-
cients of the purer times had of antiquity; and he demonstrates with great learning, that they
acknowledge the all-sufficiency of the Scriptures, and refer all decision of controversy, whether
in doctrine or discipline, to them. Paragraphs of amazing energy and incomparable beauty
will be found under this head, and we may well exclaim with the writer, “Now, sir, for the
92
INTRODUCTORY REVIEW. xi
love of holy reformation, what can be said more against these importunate clients of anti-
quity, than she herself, their patroness, hath said " He exposes the drift of those who call
for antiquity:-" they fear the plain field of the Scriptures; the chase is too hot; they seek
the dark, the bushy, the tangled forest; they would imbosk : they feel themselves strook in
the transparent streams of divine truth; they would plunge, and tumble, and think to lie
hid in the foul weeds and muddy waters, where no plummet can reach the bottom. But
let them beat themselves like whales, and spend their oil till they be dragged ashore :
though wherefore should the ministers give them so much line for shifts and delays 2 where-
fore should they not urge only the gospel, and hold it ever in their faces like a mirror of
diamond, till it dazzle and pierce their misty eyeballs maintaining it the honour of its
absolute sufficiency and supremacy inviolable.”
The Libertines, the second class of hinderers, as they would object to all discipline,—“the
dear and tender discipline of a father, the sociable and loving reproof of a brother, the
bosom admonition of a friend,”—he leaves them with the merry friar in Chaucer, and refers
the political discourse of episcopacy to a second book, which we will proceed to examine.
It is throughout one strain of wisdom and eloquence. In it we shall find set forth the evils
which compel subjects to chastise rulers. The springs of a series of past and approaching
disasters to church and king, and people, are laid bare. The wisdom of the sage and the
poet is upon him. If ever the noble language of Cowper, his warmest admirer, were appli-
cable to humanity, it is to our author.—
A terrible sagacity informs
The poet's heart.
The introductory remarks upon the art of governing and ruling nations, and its general
perversion in Christian commonwealths, will well repay the attention of our countrymen
at the present time; and the principles throughout this book, by which he tries the third
and last hinderers of reformation, namely, the Politicians, who assert that it stands not with
“reasons of state,” are not affected by the lapse of centuries, and though intended for the
right reverend fathers in God, the bishops, will apply as well now as heretofore, both to
them, and to every thing else that requires reform. “ Alas, sir! a commonwealth ought to
be but as one huge Christian personage, one mighty growth and stature of an honest man,
as big and compact in virtue as in body; for look what the grounds and causes are of single
happiness to one man, the same ye shall find them to a whole state, as Aristotle, both in
his Ethics and Politics, from the principles of reason, lays down : by consequence, there-
fore, that which is good and agreeable to monarchy, will appear soonest to be so, by being
good and agreeable to the true welfare of every Christian ; and that which can be justly
proved hurtful and offensive to every true Christian, will be evinced to be alike hurtful to
monarchy: for God forbid that we should separate and distinguish the end and good of a
monarch from the end and good of the monarchy, or of that, from Christianity. How then
this third and last sort that hinder reformation, will justify that it stands not with reason
of state, I much muse; for certain I am, the Bible is shut against them, as certain that
neither Plato nor Aristotle is for their turns.”
The schools of Loyola, with his Jesuits, are then summoned into the field; and out of
them, the “Politicians” allege, 1. That the church-government must be conformable to the
civil polity; next, That no form of church-government is agreeable to monarchy, but that
of bishops. The first objection is annihilated in a single paragraph, which it would be well
for the peace of the country, for our statesmen, who have ever so much at heart the honour
of the church, to take note of. The second falls to pieces naturally, the first being confuted.
Yet “to give them, “ says our author,” play, front and rear, it shall be my task to prove, that
episcopacy, with that authority which it challenges in England, is not only not agreeable,
si INTRODUCTORY REVIEW.
but tending to the destruction of monarchy.” He accordingly deduces the history of it
down from its original, and amply shows what Prynne calls “the antipathie of the English
lordly prelacie, both to regal monarchy and civil unity.” The title of one of poor Prynne's
works, published in the same year as this of Milton's, runs out into an indictment.—In
addition to what we have above, he entitles his work, “An historical collection of several
execrable treasons, conspiracies, rebellions, seditions, state-schisms, contumacies, anti-
monarchical practices, and oppressions, of our English, British, French, Scottish, and Irish
lordly, prelates, against our kingdoms, laws, liberties; and of the several warres, and civil
dissensions, occasioned by them in or against our realm, in former and latter ages. Together
with the judgment of our own ancient writers, and most judicious authors, touching the
pretended divine jurisdiction, the calling, lordliness, temporalities, wealth, secular employ-
ments, trayterous practices, unprofitablenesse, and mischievousnesse of lordly prelates, both
to king, state, church ; with an answer to the chief objections made for the divinity or
continuance of their lordly function.” The cry of “no bishop, no king,” which we still
hear, was a “fetch " from the Jesuits. “They feeling the axe of God's reformation, hew-
ing at the old and hollow trunk of papacy, and finding the Spaniard their surest friend and
safest refuge, to soothe him up in his dream of a fifth monarchy, and withal to uphold the
decrepid papalty, have invented this superpolitic aphorism, as one terms it, one pope and
one king.” It is plain, that this worthy motto “no bishop, no king,” “ is of the same
batch, and infanted out of the same fears.”—“But” (the following passage does not dis-
cover a republican leaning) “what greater de')asement can there be to royal dignity, whose
towering and stedfast height rests upon the unmoveable foundations of justice and heroic
virtue, than to chain it in a dependance of subsisting or ruining, to the painted battlements
and gaudy rottenness of prelaty, which want but one puff of the king's to blow them down
like a pasteboard house built of court-cards " After the gentle digression, which he calls a
tale, (and it is one of the “curiosities of literature,”) he returns to this important subject, and
argues it out in terrible earnest. The throne of a king being established, as Solomon says, in
justice, he maintains that “the fall of prelacy, whose actions are so far distant from justice,
cannot shake the least fringe that borders the royal canopy’—and three reasons are adduced
from the many secondary and accessory causes, that support monarchy, and all other states,“to
wit, the love of the subject, the multitude and valour of the people, and store of treasure,” to
show that the standing of this order is dangerous to regal safety. The whole nation, as the
innumerable and grievous complaints of everyshire cried out, was a willing witness under each
of these heads, and our author thunders into the ears of prelates and king, what all the people
were panting to have uttered. Each topic becomes a formidable redoubt of argument and
declamation, and each paragraph is worthy of attention. Every page, as we approach the close
of the work, thickens with interest, and is crowded with all the burning rays of the most im-
passioned oratory. The apostrophe to England is at once affecting and sublime. He runs
over the remainder of his task with such extreme rapidity, sentence after sentence, pealing
like thunder, smiting like lightning, driving like a whirlwind, against the proud tops of the
lordly hierarchy, that we must fain give up the task we had undertaken into the hands of
the reader. The reference to the drift of the “bishop's war” (as one of their own order
called it) with Scotland, is tremendous, “to make a national war of a surplice-brabble, a
tippet-scuffle, and engage the untainted honour of English knighthood, to unfurl the stream-
ing red-cross, or to rear the horrid standard of those fatal guly dragons, for so unworthy a
purpose as to force upon their fellow-subjects that which themselves are weary of the skeleton
of a mass book.”—And the exhortation to England and Scotland to pursue their begun contest
for liberty together, is an admonitory conclusion worthy of this magnificent page. On the
high and holy ground of discipline he calls for immediate reformation, and after placing this
point in a variety of lights, and surrounding it with a vast assemblage of argument, and
INTRODUCTORY REVIEW. xii
answering the objections of the bit by bit reformers of those days, the piece closes in a
peroration in the form of a prayer, piously laying the sad condition of England before the
greatest of beings, than which there is not a more sublime patriotic ode in any language.
We insert the prayer, not merely to save the trouble of reference, but to excite the curiosity
of those who are unacquainted with these works, when it is not gratified by drawing at once,
as in this instance, upon our author. We om.t the anathema, with which the petition con-
cludes, it is a curse which Walter Scott could have extended to three volumes.
“Thou, therefore, that sittest in light and glory unapproachable, Parent of angels and
men next, thee I implore, omnipotent King, Redeemer of that lost remnant whose
nature thou didst assume, ineffable and everlasting Love' and thou, the third subsistence
of divine infinitude, illumining Spirit, the joy and solace of created things' one Triper-
sonal Godhead | look upon this thy poor and almost spent and expiring church, leave her
not thus a prey to these importunate wolves, that wait and think long till they devour thy
tender flock; these wild boars that have broken into thy vineyard, and left the print of their
polluting hoofs on the souls of thy servants. O let them not bring about their damned
designs, that stand now at the entrance of the bottomless pit, expecting the watchword to
open and let out those dreadful locusts and scorpions, to reinvolve us in that pitchy cloud
of infernal darkness, where we shall never more see the sun of thy truth again, never hope
for the cheerful dawn, never more hear the bird of morning sing. Be moved with pity at
the afflicted state of this our shaken monarchy, that now lies labouring under her throes,
and struggling against the grudges of more dreadful calamities.
“O thou, that, after the impetuous rage of five bloody inundations, and the succeeding sword
of intestine war, soaking the land in her own gore, didst pity the sad and ceaseless revolu-
tion of our swift and thick-coming sorrows; when we were quite breathless, of thy free
grace didst motion peace, and terms of covenant with us; and having first well-nigh freed
us from antichristian thraldom, didst build up this Britannic empire to a glorious and
enviable height, with all her daughter-islands about her; stay us in this felicity, let not the
obstinacy of our half-obedience and will-worship bring forth that viper of sedition, that for
these fourscore years has been breeding to eat through the entrails of our peace; but let her
cast her abortive spawn without the danger of this travailing and throbbing kingdom : that
we may still remember in our solemn thanksgivings, how for us, the northern Ocean even to
the frozen Thule was scattered with the proud shipwrecks of the Spanish armada, and the
very maw of hell ransacked, and made to give up her concealed destruction, ere she could
vent it in that horrible and damned blast.
“O how much more glorious will those former deliverances appear, when we shall know
them not only to have saved us from greatest miseries past, but have reserved us for greatest
happiness to come! Hitherto thou hast but freed us, and that not fully, from the unjust and
tyrannous claim of thy foes; now unite us entirely, and appropriate us to thyself, tie us ever-
lastingly in willing homage to the prerogative of thy eternal throne.
“And now we know, O thou our most certain hope and defence, that thine enemies have
been consulting all the sorceries of the great whore, and have joined their plots with that
sad intelligencing tyrant that mischiefs the world with his mines of Ophir, and lies thirsting
to revenge his naval ruins that have larded our seas : but let them all take counsel together,
and let it come to nought; let them decree, and do thou cancel it; let them gather them-
selves, and be scattered; let them embattle themselves, and be broken; let them embattle,
and be broken, for thou art with us. -
“Then amidst the hymns and hallelujahs of saints, some one may perhaps be heard offer-
ing at high strains in new and lofty measures, to sing and celebrate thy divine mercies and
marvellous judgments in this land throughout all ages; whereby this great and warlike
nation, instructed and inured to the fervent and continual practice of truth and righteousness,
xiv INTRODUCTORY REVIEW.
and casting far from her the rags of her old vices, may press on hard to that high and
happy emulation to be found the soberest, wisest, and most Christian people at that day,
when thou, the eternal and shortly-expected King, shall open the clouds to judge the seve-
ral kingdoms of this world, and distributing national honours and rewards to religious and
just commonwealths, shalt put an end to all earthly tyrannies, proclaiming thy universal and
mild monarchy through heaven and earth ; where they, undoubtedly, that by their labours,
counsels, and prayers, have been earnest for the common good of religion and their coun-
try, shall receive above the inferior orders of the blessed, the regal addition of principalities,
legions, and thromes into their glorious titles, and in supereminence of beatific vision, pro
gressing the dateless and irrevoluble circle of etermity, shall clasp inseparable hands with
joy and bliss, in overmeasure for ever.”
To this and other attacks from puritan pens, bishop Hall, and, about the same time,
archbishop Usher, replied; the former in “An humble Remonstrance to the high court of
Parliament,” and the latter in the “Apostolical Institution of Episcopacy.” Milton's
answers to these very learned and able works were produced in the same year.
To continue our extracts from the Second Defence :-‘‘Afterwards,” (that is, after the first
pamphlet,) “when two bishops of superior distinction vindicated their privileges against some
principal ministers, I thought that on those topics, to the consideration of which I was led
solely by my love of truth, and my reverence for Christianity, I should not probably write
worse than those, who were contending only for their own emoluments and usurpations. I
therefore answered the one in two books, of which the first is inscribed, Concerning
Prelatical Episcopacy, and the other Concerning the Mode of Ecclesiastical Government;
and I replied to the other in some Animadversions, and soon after in an Apology.”
It is not too much to say that Milton was a match for the learned Usher at his own
weapons, and his superior in other respects. The first of the replies, so far from justifying
Dr. Johnson's snarl, is a model in style, of simplicity and moderation, and in argument, of
logic and sound learning. The archbishop's forte lay in his erudition, and here he was one
of the strongest men of his time; but his discomfiture is complete, when his adversary
carries the controversy before a higher tribunal than that of antiquity. The insufficiency,
inconveniency, and impiety of quoting the fathers and excluding the apostles, the
method adopted by the episcopalians (as formerly by the papists) to establish any parts of
Christianity,+ is plainly, strongly, and fully shown. “Whatsoever,” says our author, “either
time or the heedless hand of blind chance, has drawn down to this present in her huge
drag-net, whether fish or sea-weed, shells or shrubs, unpicked and unchosen, those are the
fathers.” And so he chides the good prelate for divulging useless treatises, stuffed with
the specious names of Ignatius and Polycarpus, with fragments of old martyrologies, to
distract and stagger the multitude of credulous readers. The piece is highly worthy of
perusal, as an exposure of the claims of tradition. It is a complete dispersion of antiquity's
“ cloud, or rather petty fog, of witnesses.”
The other performance, entitled “The Reason of Church-Government urged against
Prelaty,” and principally intended against the same archbishop's account of the original of
episcopacy, is in every point of view a valuable and powerful production. It is comprised
in two Books. In the Preface, (frequently the most interesting portion of his works,) after
stating the importance of the subject of church-government, and after referring to the ques-
tion, or rather uproar, concerning it, he expresses a hope that England will belong neither to
see-patriarchal, nor to see-prelatical, but to that ministerial order of presbyters and deacons,
which the apostles instituted. There are seven chapters in this Book, of which we shall give
the titles, merely premising that there is more in each than meets the eye; but they are so
compactly and logically arranged, that any attempt to present the reader with an outline of
them, without injuring their cumulative force, would be impossible. In chap. I. it is main-
INTRODUCTORY REVIEW. - XV
tained, That church government is prescribed in the gospel, and that to say otherwise is
unsound. In ch. II. That church government is set down in Holy Scripture, and that to
say otherwise is untrue. In ch. III. That it is dangerous and unworthy of the gospel to
hold that church government is to be pattermed by the law, as bishop Andrews and the
primate of Armagh maintain. In ch. IV. That it is impossible to make the priesthood of
Aaron a pattern whereon to ground episcopacy. In ch. V. we have a reply to the argu-
ments of bishop Andrews and the primate. In ch. VI. That prelaty was not set up for
prevention of schism, as is pretended; or if it were, it performs not what it was first set
up for, but quite the contrary. In ch. VII. That those many sects and schisms by some
supposed to be among us, and that the rebellion in Ireland, ought not to be a hinderance,
but a hastening, of reformation. In proof of our assertion, that there is more in each chap-
ter than the title would appear to warrant us to expect, take these few sentences from the
first section, on the importance of “discipline.” “What need I instance He that hath
read with judgment, of nations and commonwealths, of cities and camps, of peace and war,
sea and land, will readily agree that the flourishing and decaying of all civil societies, all
the moments and turnings of human occasions, are moved to and fro as upon the axle of
discipline. So that whatsoever power or sway in mortal things weaker men have attributed
to fortune, I durst with more confidence (the honour of Divine Providence ever saved)
ascribe either to the vigour or the slackness of discipline. Nor is there any sociable per-
fection in this life, civil or sacred, that can be above discipline; but she is that which with
her musical cords preserves and holds all the parts thereof together. And certainly disci-
pline is not only the removal of disorder; but if any visible shape can be given to divine
things, the very visible shape and image of virtue, whereby she is not only seen in the
regular gestures and motions of her heavenly paces as she walks, but also makes the har-
mony of her voice audible to mortal ears. Yea, the angels themselves, in whom no disorder
is feared, as the apostle that saw them in his rapture describes, are distinguished and
quaternioned into their celestial princedoms and satrapies, according as God himself has
writ his imperial decrees through the great provinces of heaven. The state also of the
blessed in paradise, though never so perfect, is not therefore left without discipline, whose
golden surveying reed marks out and measures every quarter and circuit of New Jerusalem.
Yet is it not to be conceived, that those eternal effluences of sanctity and love in the glori-
fied saints should by this means be confined and cloyed with repetition of that which is
prescribed, but that our happiness may orb itself into a thousand vagancies of glory and
delight, and with a kind of eccentrical equation be, as it were, an invariable planet of joy
and felicity; how much less can we believe that God would leave his frail and feeble, though
not less beloved church here below, to the perpetual stumble of conjecture and disturbance
in this our dark voyage, without the card and compass of discipline !”
There are numerous passages, rising like this, naturally, out of the subject, not thrown in
for the sake of ornament, in each of these seven chapters of the 1st Book, every whit equal
to this, and of every sort and variety of eloquence. Milton's flights into the regions of imagery
are never taken either for the sake of display, or to escape from the pressure of an argument.
He is never in the air when he should be on the ground. He resorts to the wings of rhe-
toric, from the firm summit of a vast pile of argumentation, and though for awhile he may
be lost in the solar blaze, he soon comes down with “fell swoop ” to his quarry. The
2nd Book consists of a preface, three chapters, and a conclusion. Awe-stricken yet are we
in perusing the preface to this 2nd Book. More or less than man he must be who can
read it without emotion. It is throughout magnificent, a glimpse into the heart and soul
of Milton. He opens his bosom—he discourses with his conscience in our presence. He
discloses his convictions of duty, and discovers his confidence of rectitude. He divulges
his lofty hopes, springing out of his pation, and his piety. Here we have that remarkable
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xvi INTRODUCTORY REVIEW.
\
“covenant with the knowing reader,” to attempt ere long some poetical work, which his
countrymen would not “let die.” The noble promise is a pledge for the greatest perform-
ance. His aspirations amount to positive faith: Paradise Lost is seen at the end of the
radiant vista. This exordium is too long to extract entire : any fragmentary anticipation
of it would spoil the whole. The electrical shock which follows invariably the voice of true
eloquence, and proves incontestably its power and presence, admonishes us to point, in this
instance, the reader's attention to the exordium at once, and in silence. It is “a sevenfold
chorus of hallelujahs and harping symphonies.”
In the 1st chapter of the 2nd book, the author maintains that prelaty opposes the reason
and end of the gospel in three ways, and first in her outward form. “Who is there that
measures wisdom by simplicity, strength by suffering, dignity by lowliness? Who is there
that counts it first to be last, something to be nothing, and reckons himself of great command
in that he is a servant? Yet God, when he meant to subdue the world and hell at once, part
of that to salvation, and this wholly to perdition, made choice of no other weapons or auxili-
aries than these, whether to save or to destroy. It had been a small mastery for him to
have drawn out his legions into array, and flanked them with his thunder; therefore he sent
foolishmess to confute wisdom, weakness to bind strength, despisedness to vanquish pride.”
In the 2nd chapter it is maintained, that the ceremonious doctrine of prelaty opposeth
the reason and end of the gospel. -
In the 3rd chapter, the thesis is, That prelatical jurisdiction opposeth the reason and end
of the gospel and state; The political reasons against this obnoxious form of church-
government will probably be most interesting to the majority of his readers. There is an
evident leaning to independency in all of the preceding works.
Bishop Hall, or his son, or nephew, more witty than wise, having published “a Defence
of the Humble Remonstrance,” Milton's next work was “Animadversions” upon it. The
preface apologizes for that harshness of style which he felt justified in adopting. This he
does to satisfy tender consciences, who might shrink from the employment of such a weapon
as satire in such a cause. The point is enlarged upon in the preface to the next work. In
“uncasing the grand imposture,” he copes with his adversary, sentence by sentence, and
thus vindicates truth by taking the sophist short “at the first bound.” It is one of the
pleasantest of the theological tracts; nor is it, although a tragi-comic dialogue between un-
equal competitors, less subtle or profound than any of its predecessors. We may refer to the
answer to the Remonstrant's assertion in the 4th section, as one of the most splendid passages
ever penned. The topic itself was a hackneyed one, even in those days, but they who are
acquainted with these writings, know full well, that however unpromising a subject may
appear to be, it is best to see what is made of it, lest by overlooking it we miss some of the
finest things in the language. We give the conclusion of the beautiful prayer, or rather prayer-
ode, with which the section closes. “Come therefore, O thou that hast the seven stars in
thy right hand, appoint thy chosen priests according to their orders and courses of old, to
minister before thee, and duly to press and pour out the consecrated oil into thy holy and
ever-burning lamps. Thou hast sent out the spirit of prayer upon thy servants over all the
land to this effect, and stirred up their vows as the sound of many waters about thy throne.
Every one can say, that now certainly thou hast visited this land, and hast not forgotten the
utmost corners of the earth, in a time when men had thought that thou wast gone up from
us to the farthest end of the heavens, and hadst left to do marvellously among the sons of
these last ages. O perfect and accomplish thy glorious act! for men may leave their works
unfinished, but thou art a God, thy nature is perfection: shouldst thou bring us thus far on
from Egypt to destroy us in this wilderness, though we deserve ; yet thy great name would
suffer in the rejoicing of thine enemies, and the deluded hope of all thy servants. When
thou hast settled peace in the church, and righteous judgument in thy kingdom, then shall
INTRODUCTORY REVIEW. xvii
all thy saints address their voices of joy and triumph to thee, standing on the shore of that
Red sea into which our enemies had almost driven us. And he that now for haste snatches
up a plain ungarnished present as a thank-offering to thee, which could not be deferred, in
regard of thy so many late deliverances wrought for us one upon another, may then perhaps
take up a harp, and sing thee an elaborate song to generations. In that day it shall no
more be said as in scorn, this or that was never held so till this present age, when men
have better learnt that the times and seasons pass along under thy feet, to go and come at
thy bidding; and as thou didst dignify our fathers' days with many revelations above all the
foregoing ages, since thou tookest the flesh; so thou canst vouchsafe unto us (though un-
worthy) as large a portion of thy Spirit as thou pleasest: for who shall prejudice thy all-
governing will seeing the power of thy grace is not passed away with the primitive times,
as fond and faithless men imagine, but thy kingdom is now at hand, and thou standing at
the door. Come forth out of thy royal chambers, O Prince of all the kings of the earth !
put on the visible robes of thy imperial majesty, take up that unlimited sceptre which thy
Almighty Father hath bequeathed thee; for now the voice of thy bride calls thee, and all
creatures sigh to be renewed.”
The next section, containing the law case, is perhaps next also in excellence. The ser-
mons are always better than the texts; and when it is recollected that this is the third work
on the same subject in one year, its perusal may well excite our wonder.
Next year his last work on the puritan side of the controversy came out, “An Apology
for Smectymnuus,” in reply to bishop Hall or his son’s “ Modest Confutation against a
scandalous and seditious Libel.” The bishop's personalities may have quickened as they
certainly sharpened the movements of his pen, and hastened this publication, in which he
justifies at large the style and manner of his prior work; and after making his reader merry
at the expense of his modest opponent's title, proceeds to vindicate his own character, and
furnish us with an eloquent and interesting account of himself, his education, studies, and
pursuits. We refer those who, though on our author's side, dislike his “honest way of
writing,” to the first section in this tract for a most interesting digression on style. He
well knew what he was about when he poured his overwhelming sarcasms on his assailants.
It was as much out of his power to alter or soften the style in which he wrote, and for
which he has been insolently abused, as to “dissolve the ground work of nature, which
God created in him.” A regard to truth, the relief of his “burden,” the full reflection of his
very soul, whatever might be the state of its emotions on his friends or his foes, rendered it
impossible for him to divest himself of it. We will quote a passage from the section we
refer to.
“In times of opposition, when either against new heresies arising, or old corruptions to
be reformed, this cool umpassioned mildness of positive wisdom is not enough to damp and
astonish the proud resistance of carmal and false doctors, then (that I may have leave to soar
awhile as the poets use) Zeal, whose substance is ethereal, arming in complete diamond,
ascends his fiery chariot drawn with two blazing meteors, figured like beasts, but of a
higher breed than any the zodiac yields, resembling two of those four which Ezekiel and
St. John saw ; the one visaged like a lion, to express power, high authority, and indigna-
tion ; the other of countenance like a man, to cast derision and scorn upon perverse and
fraudulent seducers: with these the invincible warrior, Zeal, shaking loosely the slack
reins, drives over the heads of scarlet prelates, and such as are insolent to maintain traditions,
bruising their stiff necks under his flaming wheels.”
The most splendid part of the performance, is the eulogy on the Long Parliament; but
he is always instructive, and most so when he leaves his merryman of the text, and strikes
out into incidental or collateral topics. He is very severe upon the clergy, not only because
their principles were in his opinion dangerous, and their practice disgraceful, but his usage
b 2
xviii INTRODUCTORY REVIEW.
at their hands was barbarous.-What can be more so than this serious saying of old or
young Hall,—“You that love Christ, and know this miscreant wretch, stone him to death,
lest you smart for his impunity.” This is the language of a bishop, or of his son, but is it
that of a Christian Milton's spirit was a perfect contrast to Hall’s. “In his whole life
he never spake against a man even that his skin should be grazed.” Hall's murderous
advice is certainly of a piece with that pious prayer which is recorded in his Memoranda
of his own Life, concerning the subtle and wily atheist, that had so grievously perplexed
and gravelled him at Sir Robert Drury's, till he prayed the Lord to remove him, and his
prayers were heard; for shortly after the atheist went to London, and there perished of the
plague in great misery. But what can be expected from a man who in one of his epistles
dares to assert that “separation from the church of England is worse than whoredom or
drunkenness 2'" The formularies of the church as by law established, are examined in the
11th section, and severely exposed. Being taxed by his adversary with a want of ac-
quaintance with the councils and fathers of the church, we have in the 12th section a re-
markable account of his reading in, and of his opinion of, them, which concludes by
advising his readers not to be deceived “by men that would overawe your ears with big
names and huge tomes, that contradict and repeal one another, because they can cram a
margin with citations. Do but winnow their chaff from their wheat, ye shall see their great
heap shrink and wax thin past belief.” We have a remarkable testimony to the character
of the nonconformists. “We hear not of any, which are called nonconformists, that have
been accused of scandalous living; but are known to be pious, or at least sober, men.”
After answering a few more impertinent points, his adversary having said that he had met
with “such a volley of expressions, as he would never desire to have them better clothed.”
—-‘‘ For me, readers,” says the ingenuous apologist, “I cannot say that I am utterly un-
trained in those rules which best rhetoricians have given, or unacquainted with those ex-
amples which the prime authors of eloquence have written in any learned tongue; yet true
cloquence I find to be mone, but the serious and hearty love of truth: and that whose mind
soever is fully possessed with a fervent desire to know good things, and with the dearest
charity to infuse the knowledge of them into others, when such a man would speak, his
words (by what I can express) like so many nimble and airy servitors trip about him at
command, and in well-ordered files, as he would wish, fall aptly in their own places.” The
remainder of this discourse is devoted to the further castigation of his adversary, recom-
mends the total removal of prelaty, the due distribution of church property, and predicts
that when their coffers are cmptied their voices will be dumb. This is the last time he
drew his pen for the presbyterians,—or rather, not so much for presbyterianism, as for
liberty; and in her behalf we shall soon find that he had to wage war against his former
allies, whose recreant steps led them at last to fight against her under the prelatical
banner. The bishops fell, and Milton went on, and took no more notice of them, except
in conjunction with the puritan apostates, whose perilous battle he fought, and whose
victory was soon abused.
He thus refers to these works in his narrative, “On this occasion it was supposed that
I brought a timely succour to the ministers, who were hardly a match for the eloquence of
their opponents; and from that time I was actively employed in refuting any answers that
appeared. When the bishops could no longer resist the multitude of their assailants, I had
leisure to turn my thoughts to other subjects; to the promotion of real and substantial liberty;
which is rather to be sought from within than from without; and whose existence depends
not so much on the terror of the sword, as on sobriety of conduct, and integrity of life.
When therefore I perceived that there were three species of liberty, which are essential to the
happiness of social life; religious, domestic, and civil; and as I had already written con-
cerning the first, and the magistrates were strenuously active concerning the third, I de-
INTRODUCTORY REVIEW. xix
termined to turn my attention to the second, or the domestic species. As this seemed to
involve three material questions, the condition of the conjugal tie, the education of children,
and the free publication of thought, I made them objects of distinct consideration.”
We now come to his Four Treatises on the subject of Marriage and Divorce. The cir-
cumstances of his marriage are well known. Its imprudence is astonishing, but it is less
so to find that his wife's wanton outrage should have been the occasion of these extraordi-
nary productions. It is true they originated in his own misfortune, yet in such times there
must have been numbers in the same predicament with himself; and his honest pleadings
on behalf of domestic liberty, were perhaps as seasonable, as they are, whatever we may
think of his principles, undoubtedly eloquent; and their effect was far from inconsiderable.
He evidently regarded them as not the least of his labours on behalf of liberty.
“I explained my sentiments, not only on the solemnization of the marriage, but the
dissolution, if circumstances rendered it necessary; and I drew my arguments from the
divine law, which Christ did not abolish, or publish another more grievous than that of
Moses. I stated my own opinions, and those of others, concerning the exclusive exception
of fornication, which our illustrious Selden has since, in his Hebrew Wife, more copiously
discussed : for he in vain makes a vaunt of liberty in the senate or in the forum who
languishes under the vilest servitude to an inferior at home. On this subject therefore I
published some books, which were more particularly necessary at that time, when man and
wife were often the most inveterate foes, when the man often staid to take care of his chil-
dren at home, while the mother of the family was seen in the camp of the enemy, threaten-
ing death and destruction to her husband.”
This was his case, -his wife's friends were royalists, and she deserted him only one
month after marriage, on the plea of revisiting them. He determined to repudiate her, and
to justify his resolution, published in the year 1644 his “Doctrine and Discipline of
Divorce, restored to the good of both sexes,” and dedicated it to the parliament and the
Assembly of Divines, in order that, as they were busy about the general reformation of the
kingdom, they might also take this matter into consideration. “If the wisdom, the justice,
the purity of God, be to be cleansed from the foulest imputations, which are not to be
avoided, if charity be not to be degraded, and trodden down under a civil ordinance, if
matrimony be not to be advanced like that exalted perdition, ‘above all that is called
God,' or goodness, nay, against them both, then I dare affirm, there will be found in the
contents of this book that which may concern us all.” He declares his object to be to
prove, first, That other reasons of divorce besides adultery were, by the law of Moses, and
are yet to be, allowed by the christian magistrate, as a piece of justice, and that the words
of Christ are not hereby contraried: next, That to prohibit absolutely any divorce what-
ever, except those which Moses excepted, is against the reason of law. The grand position
is this: That indisposition, unfitness, or contrariety of mind, arising from a cause in nature,
unchangeable, hindering, and ever likely to hinder, the main benefits of conjugal society,
which are solace and peace; is a greater reason of divorce than adultery, or natural
frigidity, provided there be a mutual consent for separation. He makes out a strong primá
facie case; but in so mice and difficult an argument, conducted so learnedly, by so splendid
a casuist, and in the due and orderly method of division and subdivision so punctiliously
observed in his time, analysis would be both ridiculous and useless. It will be read,
were it merely for the sake of quickening and sharpening the mind by its prodigious
subtlety and acuteness, as an intellectual exercise; but it will be found much easier to
deny his conclusions than to refute his arguments. Never was a greater mass of learning
brought to bear upon a point, a mere point, of dispute. The context of the Scriptures, the
letter and the spirit, and the scope of every passage touching the topic in hand, the laws
of the first Christian emperors, the opinions of reformers, are adduced, for the purpose of
XX - INTRODUCTORY REVIEW.
demonstrating that by the laws of God, and by the inferences drawn from them by the most
enlightened men, the power of divorce ought not to be rigidly restricted to those causes
which render the nuptial state unfruitful, or taint it with a spurious offspring. Regarding
mutual support and comfort as the principal objects of this union, he contends that what-
ever defrauds it of these ends, vitiates the contract, and must necessarily justify the dissolu-
tion. “What therefore God hath joined, let no man put asunder.”—“But here the Chris-
tian prudence lies, to consider what God hath joined. Shall we say that God hath joined
error, fraud, unfitness, wrath, contention, perpetual loneliness, perpetual discord ' What-
ever lust, or wine, or witchery, threat or enticement, avarice or ambition, have joined to-
gether, faithful with unfaithful, Christian with anti-christian, hate with hate, or hate with
love, shall we say this is God's joining *
This book kindled the fury of the presbyterians; and the bigots, unmindful of his services
in the common cause, attempted to fix the most serious charges on his character, and bring
him under the censure of parliament. He was actually summoned before the house of
lords, but was honourably dismissed. This was not the way to put John Milton down. The
parliament preachers rated at him, and his opponents grew more clamorous. He therefore
published the “Tetrachordon, or Exposition of the four chief places in Scripture which
treat of Nullities in Marriage,” and dedicated it to parliament; confirming by explanation of
Scripture, by testimony of ancient fathers, of civil law in the primitive church, of famousest
protestant divines, and lastly, by an intended act of the parliament and church of England
in the last year of Edward IV. the doctrines of his former book.
The clamour with which this and the preceding work were received by his quondam
associates, led to the following sonnets.
A book was writ of late call'd Tetrachordon,
And woven close, both matter, form, and style;
The subject new : it walked the town awhile,
Numb'ring good intellects; now seldom por'd on.
Cries the stall reader, Bless us! what a word on
A title page is this! and some in file
Stand spelling false, while one might walk to Mile-
End Green. Why is it harder, sirs, than Gordon,
Colkitto, or Macdonnel, or Galasp 2
Those rugged names to our like mouths grow sleek,
That would have made Quintilian stare and gasp ;
Thy age, like our's, O soul of Sir John Cheek,
Hated not learning worse than toad or asp,
When thou taught'st Cambridge, and King Edward, Creek.
I did but prompt the age to quit their clogs,
By the known rules of ancient liberty;
When straight a barbarous noise environs me,
Of owls, and cuckoos, asses, apes, and dogs :
As when those hinds that were transformed to frogs
Rail'd at Latona's twin-born progeny,
Which after held the sun and moon in fee.
But this is got by casting pearls to hogs,
That bawl for freedom in their senseless mood,
And still revolt when truth would set them free.
Licence they mean, when they cry liberty;
For who loves that must first be wise and good :
But from that mark how far they rove we see,
For all this waste of wealth, and loss of blood.
The next piece he published on this subject was “The Judgment of the famous Martin
Bucer touching Divorce.” Bucer exactly agrees with Milton, though the latter had not seen
his book till after the publication of his own. Paulus Fagius, Peter Martyr, Erasmus, and
INTRODUCTORY REVIEW. xxi
Grotius, are shown to have adopted the same opinion. Perhaps Bucer's doctrines respect-
ing this question, may have been not a little influenced in writing to Edward VI. by the
conduct of that monarch's father. In the postscript to this pamphlet, the author quits for
ever the camp of the presbyterian party,
“whom mutual league,
United thoughts and councils, equal hope
And hazard in the glorious enterprise,
Joined with him once!”
His fourth and last work relating to divorce, was his “Colasterion,” a reply to a nameless
answer to his first work on this doctrine, “wherein the trivial author of that answer is dis-
covered, the licenser conferred with, and the opinion, which they traduce, defended.” The
dull but malicious adversary was taken under the special patronage of Caryl, the licenser,
author of the Commentary on Job, for which he is sharply rebuked here, and perhaps more
than once referred to in the Areopagitica. In a letter to Leo of Aizema, dated West-
minster, Feb. 5, 1654, Milton alludes to this controversy, and, as elsewhere, regrets that he
did not publish in Latin.
These treatises are equal to any which he ever wrote, Every page is strewed with
felicities, and the mens divinior shines out with a lustre unsurpassed by himself on hap-
pier, though not more interesting, themes. “There are many things,” saith Sir Thomas
Brown, “wherein the liberty of an honest reason may play and expatiate with security, and
far without the circle of an heresie.”
“I then discussed the principles of education in a summary manner, but sufficiently
copious for those who attend seriously to the subject; than which nothing can be more
necessary to principle the minds of men in virtue, the only genuine source of political and
individual liberty, the only true safeguard of states, the bulwark of their prosperity and
renown.”
His tractate “ on Education ” was published in 1644, the year when he entered into
the heart-rending controversy concerning divorce, and it was dedicated to the remarkable
individual at whose request it was written. Notwithstanding the sneers of Johnson, and
other ushers and schoolmasters, at this noble scheme, we do hope that the country will, at
no distant period, realize it. The plan is not for private individuals to attempt to carry into
effect; but an enlightened government, with the vast collegiate resources of England at its
disposal, might, without injuring existing establishments, place an academical institute on
this ideal platform in every county. We may derive pleasure and instruction, from looking
at this beautiful and benevolent production, as the history of the great author's own mind,
as well as a chart for the guidance of others, and in this point of view it throws light on
his character, and enlarges our estimate of his attainments.
Y. In November, 1644, he published the most beautiful of his treatises, the “Areopa-
gitica; a Speech for the Liberty of unlicensed Printing—to the Parliament of England.”
It is well known that the art of printing, soon after its introduction into England, was
regulated by the king's proclamations, prohibitions, charters of privilege, and of licence,
and finally by the decrees of the star chamber; which limited the number of printers, and
of presses, and prohibited new publications unless previously approved by proper licensers.
On the demolition of this odious jurisdiction by the ever-to-be-remembered long parliament,
this system had been suspended. The presbyterian party, however, determined to revive
the “imprimatur” of the star chamber, and it was against one of the orders made for this
purpose, that Milton directed this famous argument, modelled after the classical examples
of the Greek rhetors. It is thoroughly Grecian—the motto is taken from his favourite
Euripides, and happily translated by himself. Having been frequently reprinted separately
xxii INTRODUCTORY REVIEW.
in England, and through the French of Mirabeau’s tract, “Sur la liberté de la Presse
imité de l’Anglais, de Milton,” obtained a modern continental celebrity, it is compara-
tively a popular pamphlet. James Thomson, author of “The Seasons,” published an
8vo edition of it in 1738, when the freedom of the press was considered in danger; and in
this poet’s “Liberty,” “the art of printing” is celebrated with elaborate praise. The
separate edition of this transcendent pamphlet under the auspicious editorship of Holt
White, Esq., is the most correct and valuable which has yet appeared. John Milton was
the first man who asserted the liberty of unlicensed printing. The subject called forth all
his powers, and he appears to have written every word under the impression, that every
word would be weighed and read, not only by the statesmen whom he addressed, but by
those of succeeding ages. Its importance, and the most illustrious tribunal before which
he pleaded, never daunted him, but while he approached the august assemblage with the
mien and countenance of a freeman, his discourse is at once rhetorical and deliberative,
blending the fire of the orator with the wisdom of the sage. The “quid decet” is most
admirably observed. He was pleading before no rabble—the greatest geniuses for government
which the world ever saw, were the arbiters of his eloquence:—men who had been trium-
phant in battle, and were mighty in council. The vehemence, the disdain, the terrible
wrath of controversy, disappear, and in their stead we have such an exquisite union and
interpenetration of the sublime and the pathetic, of the passionate and the rationative, of
persuasion and argument, of subdued ecstasy and sober energy, of religion, and philosophy,
and policy, all involved in a copious stream of such a wonderful language, as never before,
and certainly never since, poured from the lips of ancient or of modern oratory. With the
exception of the historical digressions, it is perhaps faultless, and they will be excused, when
it is remembered that he stood alone,—and, as Bacon said of Luther, he was obliged in his
solitude to make a party of antiquity against his own time.
In the outset of the Areopagitica, he expresses the “joy and gratulation which it brings
to all who wish to promote their country's liberty,” to approach them—he tells them that
“when complaints are fully heard, deeply considered, and speedily reformed, then is the
utmost bound of civil liberty attained,”—that in permitting him to address them, it was
evident that they are “in good part arrived to this complete point,” and attributes praise
to God, and next to “their faithful guidance and undaunted wisdom,”—he craves leave to
refer to his eulogium on their first acts as a proof that he estimates their merits, and that
the present occasion demonstrates his fidelity, as the former did “his loyalest affection and
his hope.”—PIe appears before them to tell them “that it would fare better with truth, with
learning, and the commonwealth, if one of their published orders were called in,”—that it
would prove that they are more pleased with “public advice” than other statists with “pub-
lic flattery,”—“ that men will then see the difference between the magnanimity of a trien-
nial parliament, and that jealous haughtiness of prelates and cabin councillors, that usurped
of late, whereas they shall observe them in the midst of their victories and successes, more
quietly brooking written exceptions against a voted order, than other courts,” “the least
signified dislike of any sudden proclamation.” He is thus imboldened “to presume upon
the meek demeanour of their civil and gentle greatness,”—and by the consideration that in
ancient days men who professed the study of wisdom and eloquence, though private, were
heard gladly, “if they had ought in public to admonish the state,” he would be “thought
not so inferior to any of those who had this privilege, as the parliament was superior to the
most of them who received their counsel;”—“ and how far you excel them, be assured, lords
and commons, there can no greater testimony appear than when your prudent spirit ac-
knowledges and obeys the voice of reason from what quarter soever it be heard speaking;
and renders ye as willing to repeal any act of your own setting forth, as any set forth by
your predecessors.” But analysis is impossible. The topics which he urges embrace the
2
INTRODUCTORY REVIEW. xxiii
whole controversy, and are exhausted. The collateral excursions from the main positions
of his argument are, as usual, profoundly instructive, and incomparably beautiful. Tole-
* of all Quous ls the grand centre.19 whichall b2. Jings.gº.illustration. and of. $XJ20
sition point, and in which they all.
langnigusly...meet. The bare question of licensing is
apparently a dry one—but his digressions embrace a most comprehensive circuit. The
Areopagitica is a fine illustration of that wonderful aggressive vigour, by which the author's
possession of the most inconsiderable position becomes a key to the most splendid con-
quest—the pass of triumph—the punctum saliens, whence,
in mighty quadrate join'd
Of union irresistible, move on
In silence his bright legions.
It is John Milton's masterpiece.
This was his last work under the division of civil liberty, and he thus writes of it:
“Lastly, I wrote my Areopagitica, on the model of a set speech, in order to relieve the
press from the restraints with which it was encumbered; that the power of determining
what was true, and what was false, what ought to be published, and what to be suppressed,
might no longer be intrusted to a few illiterate and illiberal individuals, who refused their
sanction to any work which contained views or sentiments at all above the level of the
vulgar superstition.” l
It was not till the year 1694, that the press was properly free. The office of licenser
was abolished during the usurpation of Cromwell.
“On the last species, or civil liberty I said nothing; because I saw that sufficient atten-
tion was paid to it by the magistrates; nor did I write any thing on the prerogative of the
crown, till the king, voted an enemy by the parliament, and vanquished in the field, was
summoned before the tribunal which condemned him to lose his head. But when at
length some presbyterian ministers, who had formerly been the most bitter enemies of
Charles, became jealous of the growth of the independents, and of their ascendency in the
parliament, most tumultuously clamoured against the sentence, and did all in their power
to prevent the execution, though they were not angry, so much on account of the act itself,
as because it was not the act of their party; and when they dared to affirm, that the doctrine
of the protestants, and of all the reformed churches, was abhorrent to such an atrocious
proceeding against kings, I thought that it became me to oppose such a glaring falsehood,
and accordingly, without any immediate or personal application to Charles, I shewed, in
an abstract consideration of the question, what might lawfully be done against tyrants; and
in support of what I advanced, produced the opinions of the most celebrated divines; while
I vehemently inveighed against the egregious ignorance or effrontery of men, who professed
better things, and from whom better things might have been expected.”
This first purely political work of Milton's made its appearance some few weeks after
the execution of Charles; and was written, as he further informs us, “rather to reconcile
the minds of men to the event, than to discuss the legitimacy of that particular sentence,
which concerned the magistracy, and which was already executed.”
Charles's criminality is admitted on all hands, and the only questions relate either to the
expediency of the sentence, or the competency of the tribunal which pronounced it. What-
ever may be thought of the former question, (and we are of opinion, that the step they took
in carrying, against public opinion, even that just sentence, which described the king as
“ a tyrant, a traitor, a murderer, and a public enemy,” into execution, was eventually as
fatal to themselves as the royal rebel,) we must remember that the deed was done, and
could not be undone, and that therefore the real question was the last one, and this work of
Milton's is confined to it. Guilt being proved against the first person in the state, who is

xxiv INTRODUCTORY REVIEW.
to punish it? This is an abstract question, but upon its determination depends our
opinion of the regicide. The following is Milton's proposition, “That it is lawful, and
hath been held so through all ages, for any who have the power, to call to account a tyrant,
or wicked king, and after due conviction, to depose and put him to death; if the ordinary
magistrate have neglected, or denied to do it.”—We think that it is successfully maintained.
“If such a one there be, by whose commission whole massacres have been committed on
his faithful subjects, his provinces offered to pawn or alienation, as the hire of those whom
he had solicited to come in and destroy whole cities and countries; be he king, or tyrant,
or emperor, the sword of justice is above him; in whose hand soever is found sufficient
power to avenge the effusion, and so great a deluge of innocent blood. For if all human
power to execute, not accidentally but intendedly, the wrath of God upon evil-doers without
exception, be of God; then that power, whether ordinary, or if that fail, extraordinary, so
executing that intent of God, is lawful, and not to be resisted.” In proof, we have “set
down, from first beginning, the original of kings; how and wherefore exalted to that dignity
above their brethren ; and from thence shall prove, that turning to tyranny they may be as
lawfully deposed and punished, as they were at first elected: this I shall do by authorities
and reasons, not learnt in corners among schisms and heresies, as our doubling divines are
ready to calumniate, but fetched out of the midst of choicest and most authentic learning,
and no prohibited authors; nor many heathem, but mosaical, Christian, orthodoxal, and,
which must needs be more convincing to our adversaries, presbyterial.” Bishop Horsley,
having, as we shall see, brought a serious charge against Milton, which the appendix to this
work rebuts, we point particular attention to the authorities which Milton has there produced.
Milton's next work was “Observations upon the Articles of Peace with the Irish Rebels,
on the Letter of Ormond to Colonel Jones, and the Representation of the Scots Presbytery
at Belfast.”
It is well known that Charles's league with the papists precipitated his ruin. The Irish
rebels were (even in their horrid massacre of the protestants) called “the Queen's army.”
Thirteen days after these Articles of Peace were concluded by his representative in Ireland,
the king lost his head. Ireland was now the theatre of the royalist party, and with its
rabble of papists, and the little presbytery of Belfast, and the remnant of its cavaliers, pre-
sented as motley a spectacle of selfish union for selfish ends as was ever seen. The inde-
pendent army, and the genius of Cromwell, however, kept them in awe. The lively lieutenant
of the martyr, after all his loving “Articles of Agreement” with the murderers of protest-
ants, and the novel friendship that had sprung up between him and the presbyterians,
called in bribery to effect what force could not do, and accordingly wrote to Colonel Jones,
as Whitelocke says, promising him great rewards to come to his obedience to the king.
Ormond's letter is a very sprightly production, and though it had no effect on the veteran
to whom he sent it, Milton seems to have been not a little nettled with it. Jones's
reply is very characteristic of his party, and of the times. The articles first come under
examination, and are soon despatched. Then this letter of Ormond's is spoiled of some of
its sprightliness, and of all its haughtiness; and lastly, our author comes “to deal with
another sort of adversaries, in show far different, in substance somewhat the same.” His
remonstrance with the presbyterians is very powerful, and the style of the whole pamphlet
is lucid and masculine, and remarkable for great terseness and compression.
“Such were the fruits of my private studies, which I gratuitously presented to the church
and to the state; and for which I was recompensed by nothing but impunity; though the
actions themselves procured me peace of conscience and the approbation of the good; while
I exercised that freedom of discussion which I loved. Others without labour or desert got
possession of honours and emoluments, but no one never knew me, either soliciting any thing
myself, or through the medium of my friends; ever beheld me in a supplicating posture, at
INTRODUCTORY REVIEW. XXV
the doors of the senate or the levees of the great. I usually kept myself secluded at home,
where my own property, part of which had been withheld during the civil commotions, and
part of which had been absorbed in the oppressive contributions which I had to sustain,
afforded me a scanty subsistence. When I was released from these engagements, and
thought that I was about to enjoy an interval of uninterrupted ease, I turned my thoughts
to a History of my Country, from the earliest times to the present period.”
Of this great undertaking, only six Books, four now, and two afterwards, were completed.
They were published in 1670. The four first, referred to in the preceding extract, con-
duct the narrative to the union of the heptarchy under Edgar, and the remaining two,
written subsequently to the Second Defence, bring it down to the battle of Hastings.
In the 1st Book, taking it for granted, that of British affairs, from the first peopling of the
island, till the coming of Julius Caesar, nothing certain either of tradition, history, or ancient
fame, hath hitherto been left us, “Nevertheless, seeing that ofttimes relations heretofore ac-
counted fabulous have been after found to contain in them many footsteps and reliques of
something true, as what we read in poets of the flood, and giants little believed, till un-
doubted witnesses taught us, that all was not feigned ; I have therefore determined to be-
stow the telling over even of these reputed tales; be it for nothing else but in favour of our
English poets and rhetoricians, who by their art will know how to use them judiciously.”
And our author is as good as his word; he ransacks Geoffrey Monmouth and his assertors,
and thus concludes, “By this time, like one who had set out in his way by night, and
travelled through a region of smooth or idle dreams, our history now arrives on the con-
fines, where daylight and truth meet us with a clear dawn, representing to our view, though
at a far distance, true colours and shapes.” “We can hardly miss from one hand or other,
to be sufficiently informed as of things past so long ago.” The curious reader will compare
this Book with the “Chronicles of Briton Kings” in Spencer's Faery Queene, (book ii.
cant. x.) The versions in both are equally close. Milton was particularly fond of British
fable. It is well known that he intended to make Prince Arthur the hero of his epic. It
yet remains for modern minstrel “to recount in solemn cantos the deeds of knighthood
founded by our victorious kings.” Spencer’s “continued allegory or darke conceit,” leaves
the field still open. Blackmore promised what he could not, and Dryden what he would
not, perform—and where even Southey has ſailed, who can succeed? The circumstance
of Milton's entering so minutely into these tales and fables, shows the extent of his plan,
and makes us the more regret that he never completed it.
In the 2nd Book the history is thus continued. “I am now to write of what befel the
Britons from fifty and three years before the birth of our Saviour, when first the Romans
came in, till the decay and ceasing of that empire; a story of much truth, and for the first
hundred years, and somewhat more, collected without much labour.” Here he rises into a
fine strain of generalization; and then, nothing daunted with the task, he culls our annals
from various sources, and the book concludes with the fate of the Western empire. The
arrogant Warburton gives the close of this book, “Henceforth we are to steer,” &c. as an
instance of the surprising grandeur of sentiment and expression into which he sometimes
maturally, and without effort, rises. The beginnings and endings of all the books are
beautifully written, collecting the rays of the past, and dispersing them, like a tropical sun-
set, over the future.
The exordium of the 3rd Book will take the reader by surprise, nor will we anticipate the
splendid digression which he will meet with, beyond all comparison the most instructive
and masterly in the whole range of English history.
The 4th Book is occupied with the transactions of this heptarchy up to its union under
Egbert, and after a long and sufficiently minute recital of all their dissensions, he adorns
the tale by pointing a solemn warning to his own times.
xxvi INTRODUCTORY REVIEW.
The 5th Book contains the history of civil affairs, and of ecclesiastical, so far as they are
directly connected with them, including the Danish irruptions, from the Union to the death
of Edgar, and with him of the Saxon glory. The proem and peroration of this book, were
intended for the factions of his day, and should be read together.
The history of the decline and ruin of the Saxons, with the Conquest, complete this frag-
ment, the whole of which seems to have been written in the solemn light of the concluding
paragraph. His letter to Lord Henry de Bras, dated Westminster, July 15, 1657, informs
us that Sallust was his favourite author and model in historical composition.
We here resume his own narrative: “I had already finished four books, (of the history,)
when after the subversion of the monarchy, and the establishment of a republic, I was sur-
prised by an invitation from the council of state, who desired my services in the office for
foreign affairs. A book appeared soon after, which was ascribed to the king, and contained
the most invidious charges against the parliament. I was ordered to answer it; and op-
posed the Iconoclast to the Icon.”
His reply was published by authority, in the year 1619. It does not appear from the
orders of the council, (for extracts from which the public are indebted to Mr. Todd,) that
Milton was ordered to prepare the answer to this extraordinary work of the king's. There
is no entry of it, as there would have been had it been a state-task, and he paid for it. He
was probably invited to answer it, upon his own terms and at his leisure. The wisdom of
the new government was shown in their selection of such a servant; and his reply to the
Icon is the most brilliant of his political writings in the mother tongue; and, at the crisis,
must have produced a salutary reaction on the public mind. It was reprinted in 1650, and
published in French by Du Gard in 1652. The hangman had the honour of burning it
on the Restoration, and indeed if suffering constituted martyrdom, this work has as good a
claim to the title as he who suffered under similar hands and obtained it. An answer, or
what purported so to be, appeared in 1651, called cuctou akNaotos, the Image Unbroken; and
another came out as late as 1692, entitled Vindicae Carolinae; both miserable performances,
compared with that “song of songs,” which it is said the accomplished monarch and his
syren queen indited. The popularity of the Icon Basilike was certainly unexampled. It
was the banner-cry of all who were opposed to the existing government. Forty-seven
editions were circulated in England alone; and 48,500 copies are said to have been sold.
We shall not enter into the vexed question, Who wrote Icon Basilike It has been, and is,
a regular controversy, and involves its hundred volumes. The question is set at rest, by the
total absence of any allusion to it, by Clarendon, in his History of the Rebellion. The
silence of such a devotee, acquainted as he must have been with every particular relating
to the work, presents an insurmountable obstacle to the imperial claim. Suspicions were
entertained at the time that it was not the king's book. It has been since proved, almost
beyond a possibility of doubt, that its author was Dr. Gauden, Bishop of Exeter. We
shall not enter into the evidence, but merely refer our readers to Laing's History of
Scotland, or Symmons's admirable Life of Milton, for information and satisfaction. Milton
intimated his suspicions of its authenticity, but it was evidently his policy, in the absence
of all but internal evidence to corroborate his suspicions, to treat it as no forgery; he does
not therefore uncase this grand imposture. Be the “great unknown " whom he might,
the gauntlet is here taken up as if it were the king's ; every allegation is examined,
the reply and justification of the parliament and army are complete, and the ghostly visitant
gibbers back again to the grave. Pressing closely on his antagonist, and tracing him step
by step, the Iconoclast either exposes the fallacy of his reasonings, or the falsehood of
his assertions, or the hollowness of his professions, or the convenient speciousness of his
devotion. In argument and in style, compressed and energetic, perspicuous and meat, it
discovers a quickness, which never misses an advantage, and a keenness of remark, which
INTRODUCTORY REVIEW. xxvii
carries an irresistible edge. The martyr stands before us, exposed in all the deformity of
his duplicity and despotism, smitten, blasted, and withered in the pitiless encounter: and
yet there is not a single paragraph of unseemly exultation, of wanton mockery or insult,
over the fall of the monarch, throughout the secretary's vindication of the patriots. The
tone of the mournful and majestic Preface is always preserved. As so much history the
Iconoclast is invaluable. The royal road to a fatal block is pointed out; and the lesson is
not more awful than plain The following extracts are specimens of that satire, sportive,
and yet grave withal, which wrings its victim in every page.
The monarch says, “They know my chiefest arms left me were prayers and tears.”
“O sacred reverence of God! respect and shame of men whither were ye fled when
these hypocrisies were uttered 2 Was the kingdom then at all that cost of blood to re-
move from him none but prayers and tears What were those thousands of blaspheming
cavaliers about him, whose mouths let fly oaths and curses by the volley Were those the
prayers ? and those carouses, drank to the confusion of all things good or holy,–did those
minister the tears? Were they prayers and tears, which were listed at York, mustered at
Heworth Moor, and laid siege to Hull for the guard of his person 2 Were prayers and
tears at so high a rate in Holland, that nothing could purchase them but the crown jewels
Yet they in Holland (such word was sent us) sold them for guns, carabines, mortar-pieces,
cannons, and other deadly instruments of war; which, when they came to York, were all,
no doubt by the merit of some great saint, suddenly transformed into prayers and tears; and
being divided into regiments and brigades, were the only arms that mischieved us in all
those battles and encounters. These were his chief arms, whatever we must call them ;
and yet such arms as they who fought for the commonwealth have, by the help of better
prayers, vanquished and brought to nothing.”
In chapter XI. the king says, “But the “incommunicable jewel of his conscience’ he will
not give, “but reserve to himself.’ It seems that his conscience was none of the crown
jewels; for those were in Holland, not incommunicable, to buy arms against his subjects.
Being therefore but a private jewel, he could not have done a greater pleasure to the king-
dom than by reserving it to himself. But he, contrary to what is here professed, would
have his conscience not an incommunicable, but a universal conscience, the whole king-
dom's conscience. Thus what he seems to fear lest we should ravish from him, is our chief
complaint that he obtruded upon us; we never forced him to part with his conscience, but
it was he that would have forced us to part with ours.”
The eventful year of 1649 had not yet closed when Claude de Saumaise, latine Clau-
dius Salmasius, the most celebrated scholar of the age, published his “Defensio Regia
pro Carolo Primo ad Carolum Secundum,” or a Royal Defence of Charles the 1st to Charles
the 2nd. This insolent attack on the English government and people, produced at a
critical juncture of affairs, by a man of unrivalled eminence in letters, and at the especial
solicitation of the illustrious exile to whom it is dedicated, must have attracted attention,
both at home and abroad, and required refutation. The achievements of a handful of heroes
in England had roused the fears of despotism; and a willing ear was probably lent by the
continental potentates to the present invocation of their interference on behalf of the then
Pretender. The council of state thought it desirable to issue a reply to this libellous and
dangerous manifesto, and their determination is recorded in the following laconic order of
the 8 Jan. 1649-50 : “That Mr. Milton do prepare something in answer to the Book of
Salmasius, and when he hath done itt, bring itt to the council.”
Milton was present at the discussion which led to this characteristic direction, and
although warmed that the loss of sight would be one certain consequence of obeying it, he
magnanimously undertook, and in spite of constant interruptions arising from increasing ill
health, nobly performed his honourable task. “I would not,” says he in the Second De-
xxviii INTRODUCTORY REVIEW.
fence, “ have listened to the voice even of Esculapius himself from the shrine of Epidauris,
in preference to the suggestions of the heavenly monitor within my breast; my resolution
[to undertake the reply to the defence of the royal cause] was unshaken, though the alterna-
tive was either the loss of my sight, or the desertion of my duty; and I called to mind those
two destinies, which the oracle of Delphi announced to the son of Thetis.
Two fates may lead me to the realms of night;
If staying here, around Troy's walls I fight,
To my dear home no more must I return ;
But lasting glory will adorn my urn.
But if I withdraw from the martial strife,
Short is my fame, but long will be my life.—Il. IX.
I considered that many had purchased a less good by a greater evil, the meed of glory by
the loss of life; but that I might procure great good by a little suffering; that though I am
blind, I might still discharge the most honourable duties, the performance of which, as it is
something more durable than glory, ought to be an object of superior admiration and
esteem; I resolved, therefore, to make the short interval of sight, which was left me to
enjoy, as beneficial as possible to the public interest.”—Early in the year 1651, out came
“something in answer to the Book of Salmasius”—the immo: tal Defence of the People of
England—the most costly-won and brilliant achievement in the amnals of controversy.
It is allowed by all, that the triumph of Milton was decisive, and the humiliation of his
adversary complete. Salmasius, like another Milo, but without his strength, attempted to
rive the British oak, and his presumption was rewarded by a fate equally miserable and ridicu-
lous. Great was the advantage, which, in all encounters, Milton had over his enemies, in
the consistency of his moral and political character. “I again invoke the Almighty to
witness, that I never, at any time, wrote any thing which I did not think agreeable to truth,
to justice, and to piety. Nor was I ever prompted to such exertions by the influence of
ambition, by the lust of lucre or of praise; it was only by the conviction of duty and the
feeling of patriotism, a disinterested passion for the extension of civil and religious
liberty.” Salmasius was a mercenary parasite. He had formerly written with the great-
est acrimony against the bishops of England: the “Royal Defence" is their unqualified
and servile eulogy. Such was the effect of a hundred jacobins on this honorary professor
in a protestant republic, that they spirited him up to offer, in this work, the grossest insult
to his feeders and patrons, who were obliged to prohibit its sale within their dominions.
Milton, it should be remembered, implored the Dutch to take off this prohibition. His
infinite conceit of himself turned upon his real or imaginary ascendency in scholarship,
and it so happened that here where he was most sensitive, he was most vulnerable. The
blunders and barbarisms in the style, the contradictions and sophisms in the argument, of
the Royal Defence, laid its author open to the most galling exposure ; and where he should
have been, and in points in which the world considered him, impregnable, he was often de-
fenceless. His very authorities generally of themselves make against his cause, or if they do
not, his own comments imitate their fugleman, and turn deserters. The laughter of Europe
was excited when they saw a renowned, irrefragable, and most arrogant doctor, beaten, at his
’ own weapons, by the island-champion of a “crew of fanatics.” The giant dealer in words,
when grappled with as a grammarian, is rolled over and over in the very dust on which
alone, like Antaeus with Hercules, could he for one moment cope with his antagonist: and
he is satisfactorily despatched only after the manner of his classical prototype. It must not
be imagined that this contest was merely a duel of words; or that the defender of our poli-
tical faith, while necessarily keeping in view the character of Salmasius, lost sight of his
principles. Pains have been taken to convey the impression that this controversy involved
INTRODUCTORY REVIEW. XXIX
no principle. Butler, the witty and the starved-to-death author of Hudibras, thus alludes
to it.
Some polemicks use to draw their swords,
Against the language only and the words.
As he who fought at barriers with Salmasius,
Engaged with nothing but his style and phrases.
Waved to assert the murder of a prince,
The author of false Latin to convince;
But laid the merits of the cause aside,
By those that understood them to be tried;
And counted breaking Priscian's head a thing
More capital than to behead a king;
For which he has been praised by all the learned,
Of knaves concerned, and pedants unconcerned
Funny—but untrue. Sovereign was the contempt which John Milton entertained for the
“ mere trappings,” both of pedantry and royalty.
Salmasius was in fact little more than an ingenious emendator of broken sentences and
worm-eaten words, and he probably sinned as much against his nature in assuming the
character of a politician, as against his conscience in eulogizing bishops, and justifying a
despot. He was one of those “grammarians.” Sir Thomas Browne refers to, who “toure
and plume themselves over a single line in Horace, and shew more pride in the construc-
tion of one ode, than the author in the composure of the whole booke.” Of “divine philo-
sophy.” Salmasius possessed not the tithe of a particle. Of the world of men, with its
highest and most complicated concerns, he was as ignorant as the monk that spent his life
in illuminating a letter. The power to strike out of the mass of particulars great princi-
ples, to hew from the rock the corner-stones of truth, and polish and complete the living
edifice,—to stamp on the precious metal of original genius the signet that shall be sterling
for ever, was utterly withheld from his soul, and we shall look in vain through his book
for any thing higher than its author. His production died into lumber an age ago—and his
name, as a politician, is a dreadless symbol for de jure divino simplicity, even among the
followers of Macchiavelli. In the first chapter of the Defence of the People of England,
towards the end, his adversary thus speaks of him. -
“Dare you affect the reputation of a learned man I confess you are pretty well versed
in phrase books, and lexicons, and glossaries; insomuch that you have spent your time in
nothing else. But you do not make appear that you have read any good authors with so
much judgment as to have benefited by them. Other copies, and various lections, and words
omitted, and corruptions of texts, and the like, these you are full of; but no footstep of any
solid learning appears in all you have writ. Or do you think yourself a wise man, that quar-
rel and contend about the meanest trifles that may be *
Dr. Johnson acknowledges that Salmasius had “not much considered the rights of
governments,” (those of subjects, surely, the Doctor meant,) and yet endeavours to ridicule
Milton for treating his antagonist, personally, rather as a verbiloquist and a pedant, than as
a politician. A mere glance, however, at the fundamental doctrines asserted by Milton,
will show the real scope and indestructible value of his work. Therein is maintained in
opposition to Salmasius, who had asserted the irresponsibility of kings to their subjects,
that all civil power emanates from the people; that the magistrates, as well as the people,
should be, and are, alike subject to the laws, and the sanction of history, with her exam-
ples from all the most celebrated commonwealths, is produced; that the regal office itself is
merely a trust committed to the king by the people on certain conditions, express or im-
plied, that he is therefore accountable to them for that trust, and if he betray it, is liable
to be cashiered, or even punished capitally, should such be the will of the community;
hence that Charles the 1st, being guilty of misgovernment, and breach of trust, was lawfully
XIXX INTRODUCTORY REVIEW.
and justly put to death. These positions he illustrates and confirms by an appeal to the
Jewish and Christian Scriptures, to the most eminent writers, poets, historians, and law-
givers of antiquity, to the laws of nature and nations, and lastly to our own municipal laws.
Milton thus kept his eye on the cause, and not merely was the royal advocate silenced, but
the claims of legitimacy quashed for ever.
The performance of Salmasius is its own antidote. An elaborate defence of despotism
in the abstract, it is that of Charles the 1st in particular; and the entire argument proceeds
upon the assumption that that unfortunate monarch had actually been what de jure divino
it is there contended he had a right to be—A TYRANT. The advocate of Charles being
thus the advocate of pure tyranny, his bulky production, instead of being, as it imports, a
defence of the oppressor, and a lasting monument to his honour, becomes a pillar of infamy
—at once the trophy and the beacon of the people's cause.
The work of our illustrious countryman is so strictly and critically a reply to the “Royal
Defence,” reviewing and refuting, kata Toča, sentence by sentence, every important assertion
or principle advanced by the adversary, that neither outline nor extract, synthesis nor
analysis, can convey an idea of the depth of its philosophic spirit, the splendour of its eru-
dition, or the varied beauties of its vigorous logic and sober rhetoric. No translation (yet
the one subjoined is, in many points, excellent) can adequately reflect the immortal original.
The delicious mannerism of Milton evaporates in transfusion. Walsingham has hit the
sense, but to hit off the style is, we fear, impossible. In extracting the perfume, the lustre
of the flower, often more charming than its precious fragrance, is gone. After all, in the
best translation there must be the real difference between similarity and identity, and the
formal, between the same warrior in a Roman panoply and a saxon gear. Milton is yet
unexcelled in English, and few will question his pre-eminence in Latin composition. The
language of Cicero is upon his tongue, and, “winged with red lightning and impetuous
rage,” never did the great Roman orator wicld its thunders more easily or more effectively.
We almost as deeply regret that Milton did not give to his countrymen a version “in the
mother tongue” (which was his prime favourite) of that which he presented to Europe in the
Latin, as we admire his unbounded mastery over the universal language. This regret
extends as well to all his most important subsequent writings. The Viscount St. Albans
conceived that the Latin volume of his Essays, “being in the universal language, might
last as long as books last,”—there is no danger of the Latin surviving the English,_but
who does not wish that Milton had taken a hint from Bacon in this particular—it would
have tended, inconceivably, to raise and perpetuate his political fame, and thus he would
have postponed yet further the fate of both tongues.
The continent “rang” with the praise of the work, and we doubt not that it will again
ring with it. Little known prior to this great effort except at home, where he was disliked
and feared by two most numerous factions, Milton's triumph was most felt and confessed
abroad, where Salmasius had long held supreme sway, and Europe was the scene of its
celebration. Congratulations poured in upon him from all quarters. Learned foreigners
by letter complimented, most of the ambassadors visited or felicitated him. The French
government assisted its sale, by ordering it to be burnt, both at Paris and Thoulouse, by the
common hangman. His own most exquisite account of his contest with the advocate of
legitimacy will be found in the Second Defence. He seems to have been always anxions
to obtain and to preserve the good opinion of foreign scholars. When he was called upon
to enter upon the last-mentioned work, and defend again, before the same tribunal, the very
defenders of the great cause of which he was the champion, he can hardly refrain in his
relation from assuming “a more lofty and swelling tone than the simplicity of an exordium
may seem to justify; and much,” continues he, “as I may be surpassed in the powers of
eloquence, and copiousness of diction, by the illustrious orators of antiquity; yet the sub-
INTRODUCTORY REVIEW. XXXI
ject of which I treat was never surpassed in any age, in dignity or in interest. It has
excited such general and such ardent expectation, that I imagine myself not in the forum
or on the rostra, surrounded only by the people of Athens or of Rome; but about to address
in this, as I did in my former Defence, the whole collective body of people, cities, states,
and councils of the wise and eminent, through the wide expanse of anxious and listening
IEurope.” Jam videor mihi, ingressus iter, transmarinos tractus et porrectas late regiones,
sublimis perlustrare; vultus innumeros atque ignotos, animi sensus mecum conjunctissimos.
Hinc Germanorum virile et infestum servituti robur, inde Francorum vividi dignique
nomine liberales impetus, hinc Hispanorum consulta virtus, Italorum inde sedata suique
compos magnanimitas ob oculos versatur. Quicquid uspiam liberorum pectorum, quicquid
ingenui, quicquid magnanimi aut prudens latet aut se palám profitetur, alii tacite favere,
alii aperté suffragari, accurrere alii et plausu accipere, alii tandem vero victi, dedititios se
tradere. Videor jam mihi, tantis circumseptus copiis, ab Herculeis usque columnis ad
extremos Liberi patris terminos, libertatem diu pulsam atque exulem, longo intervallo
domum ubique gentium reducere: et, quod Triptolemus olim fertur, sed longe nobiliorem
Cereali illa frugem ex civitate mea gentibus importare; restitutum nempe civilem liberumque
vitae cultum, per urbes, per regna, perque nationes disseminare.—“I seem to survey, as from
a towering height, the far extended tracts of sea and land, and innumerable crowds of specta-
tors, betraying in their looks the liveliest interest, and sensations the most congenial with my
own. Here I behold the stout and manly prowess of the German, disdaining servitude; there
the generous and lively impetuosity of the French ; on this side the calm and stately valour
of the Spaniard; on that the composed and wary magnanimity of the Italian. Of all the
lovers of liberty and virtue, the magnanimous and the wise, in whatever quarter they may
be found, some secretly favour, others openly approve; some greet me with congratulations
and applause ; others, who had long been proof against conviction, at last yield themselves
captive to the force of truth. Surrounded by congregated multitudes, I now imagine, that,
from the columns of Hercules to the Indian ocean, I behold the nations of the earth
recovering that liberty which they so long had lost; and that the people of this island
are transporting to other countries a plant of more beneficial qualities, and more noble
growth, than that which Triptolemus is reported to have carried from region to region; that
they are disseminating the blessings of civilization and freedom among cities, kingdoms,
and nations. Nor shall I approach unknown, nor perhaps unloved, if it be told that I am the
same person, who engaged in single combat that fierce advocate of despotism, till then
reputed invincible in the opinion of many, and in his own conceit, who insolently chal-
lenged us and our armies to the combat; but whom, while I repelled his virulence, I
silenced with his own weapons; and over whom, if I may trust to the opinion of impartial
judges, I gained a complete and glorious victory.”
Toland, and succeeding biographers, have asserted that Milton was rewarded by the
council with a present of £1000. The Second Defence, published three years after the first,
denies that its author was ever the richer by one half-penny for these and similar works,
and the council book shews that the gratitude of his task-masters, to their shame be it
recorded, expended itself in commendation.
“ 1651. June 18. Ordered, that thanks be given to Mr. Milton on the behalf of the
commonwealth, for his good services done in writing an answer to the booke of Salmasius,
Written against the proceedings of the commonwealth of England.” But all this, says Mr.
Todd, in his account of the life and writings of Milton, is crossed over, and nearly three
lines following are obliterated, in which, Mr. Lemon says, a grant of money was made to
Milton. After the cancelled passage, the regular entry thus follows: “The councill taking
motice of the many good services performed by Mr. John Milton, their secretary for foreign
Languages, to this state and commonwealth, particularlie for his Booke in vindication of the
C -
xxxii INTRODUCTORY REVIEW
Parliament and People of England against the calumnies and invectives of Salmasius, have
thought fit to declare their resentment and good acceptance of the same; and that the
thanks of the councill be returned to Mr. Mylton, and their sense represented in that
behalf.”
The Defence of the People of England does not contain any abstract principle which
was not acted upon in the Revolution of 1688, and is not now formally embodied in the
British Constitution, and approved of by the vast majority of those who enjoy its protec-
tion. The Earl of Bridgewater, who had performed the part of the first brother in the
Masque of Comus, is said to have written on the title-page of the Defensio, “Liber ignè,
author furcă, dignissimi.” So thought the friends of liberty in France, and would doubtless
have carried the latter part of the sentence as they did the former into execution. It may
be unhesitatingly asserted that there is no governmental or political maxim or opinion
therein delivered or maintained to which a good king would not willingly subscribe. “If
I write,” says Milton in the Second Defence, “against tyrants, what is that to kings, whom
I am far from associating with tyrants As much as an honest man differs from a rogue,
so much I contend that a king differs from a tyrant. Whence it is clear that a tyrant is so
far from being a king, that he is always in direct opposition to a king. And he who
peruses the records of history, will find that more kings have been subverted by tyrants,
than by subjects. He, therefore, that would authorize the destruction of tyrants, does not
authorize the destruction of kings, but of the most inveterate enemies of kings.”
Far distant be the day when an English king shall require the assistance of another
Salmasius !
The superabundant malice of Bishop Horsley, and the industry of Mr. Todd, have only
been able to make a joint nibble at the Defensio. These luminaries of the church of Eng-
land, differing in magnitude not density, have endeavoured to throw the shade of a foul
slander over the Miltonic orb in this controversy. As Mr. Todd adds nothing of weight to
the Bishop's paragraph, we shall content ourselves with the episcopal charge. “When
Salmasius” (says Bishop Horsley in the Appendix to his Sermon before the House of
Jords, Jan. 30, 1793, p. 38) “upbraided the Cromwell faction with the tenets of the Brown-
ists, the chosen advocate of that execrable faction (Milton) replied, that if they were
Drownists, Luther, Calvin, Bucer, Zuinglius, and all the most celebrated theologians of the
orthodox, must be included in the same reproach. A grosser falsehood as far as Luther,
Calvin, and many others, are concerned, never fell from the unprincipled pen of a party
writer. However sedition might be a part of the puritanick creed, the general faith of the
Reformers rejects the infamous alliance.”
A serious charge is here brought, but is it attempted to be sustained The independents
were a religious sect, and so named from the form of their church-government. With this
form it is evident that their theological doctrines had no necessary connexion—nor were
their political tenets necessarily either of the royal or rebel faction. How, therefore, the
Bishop can, after Salmasius, class sedition as a part of the creed of a sect, which, as such,
disclaims the alliance between the church and state—how a religious community, as such,
can adopt so destructive a principle into their very articles of faith, will ever remain an
incomprehensible marvel. As independents they could not profess the principle of sedition,
nor could the religious reformers as such—therefore from the charge of sedition (which is
a political offence) they are both equally clear. If in what the independents did believe,
the reformers, as far as it was possible, believed also, the inference must be that the charge
brought against the commonwealthsmen (of sedition) includes the reformers. The ultimate
principle on which the reformers rested their opposition to the pope of Rome, was that
which justified the independents (and other sectaries) in their religious opposition to the
English pope, or the head of the English church; so that inasmuch as there can be re-
INTRODUCTORY REVIEW. xxxiii
ligious sedition, the sectaries might (if they chose) shelter themselves under the example
of the greatest protestant reformers. The independents could not as such act in political
opposition to the king of England;—herein they acted as Englishmen upon the common
ground of liberty, on which alone the protestant reformers as against their popish rulers
could be justified, and on which alone the members of the church of England could be
justified in expelling Pope James the 2nd from the English throne.
Now for the fact—as to what was really the opinion of the reformers on the right of subjects
to rebel against tyrants. The Bishop we have seen denies that the reformers acknowledged
this right. What says Milton “We have put to death neither a good, nor a just, nor a
merciful, nor a devout, nor a godly, nor a peaceable king, as you style him ; but an enemy
that has been so to us almost ten years to an end ; nor one that was a father, but a de-
stroyer of his country. You confess that such things have been practised; for yourself
have not the impudence to deny it: but not by protestants upon a protestant king. But
there being so few protestant kings, it is no great wonder, if it never happened that one of
them has been put to death. But that it is lawful to depose a tyrant, and punish him ac-
cording to his deserts; nay, that this is the opinion of many protestant divines, and of such
as have been most instrumental in the late reformation, do you deny it if you dare.” This
is in the 1st chapter—the concluding paragraph of the 5th of the Defensio is the passage
on which the Bishop animadverts. In the 1st chapter the opinion is reiterated.
“You confess that “some protestants whom you do not name, have asserted it lawful to
depose a tyrant;' but though you do not think fit to name them, I will, because you say
‘they are far worse than the Jesuits themselves;’ they are no other than Luther, and
Zuinglius, and Calvin, and Bucer, and Pareus, and many others.”
Again in the 3rd chapter towards the end: “But would you know the reason why he (Sal-
masius) dares not come so low as to the present times : Why he does as it were hide him-
self, and disappear, when he comes towards our own times The reason is, because he
knows full well, that as many eminent divines as there are of the reformed churches, so
many adversaries he would have to encounter. Let him take up the cudgels if he thinks
fit; he will quickly find himself run down with innumerable authorities, out of Luther,
Zuinglius, Calvin, Bucer, Martyr, Pareus, and the rest. I could oppose you with testimo-
nies out of divines, that have flourished even in Leyden.”
Reformation whether opposed to reigning government or to a reigning superstition is
equally liable to the charge of “sedition.” Milton at the end of this chapter says, “I cannot
but smile at this man's preposterous whimsies; in ecclesiastics he is Helvidius, Thraseas,
a perfect tyrannicide. In politics no man more a lackey and slave to tyrants than he. If
his doctrine hold, not we only that have deposed our king, but the protestants in general,
who against the minds of their princes have rejected the pope, are all rebels alike.”
These passages assert that it was the opinion of protestant divines, that tyrants whether
in civil or ecclesiastical affairs might be resisted. Milton refers to them as undeniably
favourable to the proceedings of the commonwealth. Not merely does he assert this coin-
cidence of the opinion of the reformers with the conduct of his party in these and other
places, in the Defensio, and also in the Second Defence, but it will be remembered that
in the appendix to “the Tenure of Kings and Magistrates,” quotations from Luther, Zu-
inglius, Calvin, Bucer, Pareus, Gilby, Christopher Goodman, are expressly given to this
effect. Safely therefore may we set off against the Bishop's the Appendix of John Milton.
Civil and religious liberty are in fact convertible terms—there is neither where there is
not both.
Salmasius threw a handful of dust on his conqueror before he died. He terminated his
days at the Spa in Germany, in 1652, shortly after he had finished a most virulent reply to
Milton, which however was not published until the year of the Restoration, when it was
C 2
xxxiv INTRODUCTORY REVIEW.
produced with a dedication to Charles the 2nd, and entitled, “Claudii Salmasii ad Joannem
Miltonum Responsio, opus posthumum; Dijon, Sept. 1660.” Answer of Claudius Salma-
sius to John Milton ; a posthumous work, &c. The learned Dr. Birch says, that the
virulence which it displays is unexampled. He treats his antagonist as an ordinary school-
master ; “ qui ludimagister in Scholā triviali Londimensi fuit;” and charges him with
divorcing his wife after a year's marriage, for reasons best known to himself, and defend-
ing the lawfulness of divorce for any causes whatsoever. He styles him, impura bellua,
quae nihil hominis sibi reliqui fecit praeter lippiantes oculos. He charges him with some
false quantities in his juvenile Latin poems; and throughout the whole book gives him the
title of Bellua, fanaticus latro, homunculus, lippulus, caeculus, homo perditissimus, nebulo,
impurus, scelestus audax et nefarius alastor, infandus impostor, &c. &c. And declares that
he would have him tortured with burning pitch or scalding oil till he expired : “pro
casteris autem suis factis dictisque dignum dicam videri, qui pice ardenti, vel oleo fervente,
perfundaris, usque dum animam effles nocentem et carnifici jam pridem debitam.” So much
for the “great.” Salmasius.
The First Defence is the last of Milton's writings—the last work which he wrote with
his own hand. Before the end of the year in which he completed it, he was quite blind.
All his future works therefore, whether prose or verse, must have been dictated. This is
pure eloquence, and true bardic rapture, the utterance—the hallowed fire, for which “to
touch and purify his lips,” he so devoutly prayed. The visitation of blindness must have
been to a mind like his, so admirably framed to enjoy the wonders and beauties of the
visible universe, a severe and afflictive dispensation—a hard sentence of exclusion from
the palace of the magnificent creation. But his spirit had already conversed with the
domain of materialisms; the light, though faded from his eyes, was yet “pleasant” to his
soul; and the capacious vision of memory was perhaps more splendid than the actual reve-
lation of visual sense. He had taken a spiritual possession of suns and systems, and
turned them all into thoughts. Time itself became to him a part of the past, and the pre-
sent was to him the portion of a privileged eternity. He was thus brought into perpetual
contact or rather converse with the invisible. One veil of flesh was removed. His com-
plete external dependence upon the kindnesses and sympathies of his fellow-creatures,
must have taught him the lesson we have all to learn, of total dependence and reliance upon
the Creator. Faith, now a necessary portion of his animal life, became more intensely
identified with his spiritual nature. His mind was not benighted, nor even darkened. The
lustre of these heavens and the luxuriance of this earth he was not destined to see any more
—but he knew that the time of his departure was at hand—and that his eyes should soon
be opened, in “supereminence of beatific vision,” upon the “new heavens, and the new
earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness l’’ * -
Adversity, says Lord Bacon, does best discover virtue. Milton bore his affliction with
exemplary patience and ſortitude. His episcopalian enemies boasted that they saw in it
a retribution for the transgressions of his pen. In the Second Defence, written three years
after this calamity had befallen him, he explains, in a passage already quoted, the motives
by which he was governed in the measures which he took, and under the losses which he
sustained—and thus replies to such miserable antagonists:
“Let then the calumniators of the divine goodness cease to revile, or to make me the
object of their superstitious imagination. Let them consider that my situation, such as it
is, is neither an object of my shame or my regret; that my resolutions are too firm to be
shaken, that I am not depressed by any sense of the divine displeasure; that on the other
hand, in the most momentous periods, I have had full experience of the divine favour and
protection, and that, in the solace and the strength, which have been infused into me from
above, I have been enabled to do the will of God; that I may oftener think on what he
INTRODUCTORY REVIEW. XXXV
has bestowed, than on what he has withheld; that in short I am unwilling to exchange my
consciousness of rectitude with that of any other person ; and that I feel the recollection a
treasured store of tranquillity and delight. But if the choice were necessary, I would, Sir,
prefer my blindness to yours: yours is a cloud spread over the mind, which darkens both the
light of reason and of conscience; mine keeps from my view only the coloured surfaces of
things, while it leaves me at liberty to contemplate the beauty and stability of virtue and of
truth. How many things are there besides, which I would not willingly see; how many which
I must see against my will; and how few which I feel any anxiety to see! There is, as the
apostle has remarked, a way to strength through weakness. Let me then be the most feeble
creature alive, as long as that feebleness serves to invigorate the energies of my rational and
immortal spirit; as long as in that obscurity, in which I am enveloped, the light of the divine
presence more clearly shines: then, in proportion as I am weak, I shall be invincibly strong;
and in proportion as I am blind, I shall more clearly see. O! that I may thus be perfected
by feebleness, and irradiated by obscurity! And indeed,” (let these few sentences sink deep
in our minds, and then we shall form a proper estimate of his posthumous detractors,) “ in
my blindness, I enjoy in no inconsiderable degree the favour of the Deity; who regards me
with more tenderness and compassion in proportion as I am able to behold nothing but
himself. Alas! for him who insults me, who maligns and merits public execration | For
the divine law not only shields me from injury; but almost renders me too sacred to attack;
not indeed so much from the privation of my sight, as from the overshadowing of those
heavenly wings, which seem to have occasioned this obscurity; and which, when occa-
sioned, he is wont to illuminate with an interior light, more precious and more pure. To
this I ascribe the more tender assiduities of my friends, their soothing attentions, their kind
visits, their reverential observances; among whom there are some with whom I may inter-
change the Pyladean and Thesean dialogue of inseparable friends. This extraordinary
kindness which I experience, cannot be any fortuitous combination ; and friends, such as
mine, do not suppose that all the virtues of a man are contained in his eyes. Nor do the
persons of principal distinction in the commonwealth, suffer me to be bereaved of comfort,
when they see me bereaved of sight, amid the exertions which I made, the zeal which I
shewed, and the dangers which I ran for the liberty which I love. But, soberly reflecting
on the casualties of human life, they shew me favour and indulgence as to a soldier who
has served his time; and kindly concede to me an exemption from care and toil. They
do not strip me of the badges of honour which I have once worn ; they do not deprive me
of the places of public trust to which I have been appointed; they do not abridge my
salary or emoluments; which, though I may not do so much to deserve as I did formerly,
they are too considerate and too kind to take away; and in short they honour me as much,
as the Athenians did those, whom they determined to support at the public expense in the
Prytaneum. Thus, while both God and man unite in solacing me under the weight of my
affliction, let no one lament my loss of sight in so honourable a cause. And let me not
indulge in unavailing grief; or want the courage either to despise the revilers of my blind-
ness, or the forbearance easily to pardon the offence.” What say the revilers, not of his
blindness, but of his memory, to this magnanimous effusion ?
Time was yet his tabernacle—he yet a sojourner—and though he meither shunned nor
courted publicity, he continued diligently to discharge all the common duties of life.
Well might Wordsworth sing: -
X Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea,
Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free:
So didst thou travel on life's common way,
In cheerful godliness; and yet thy heart
The lowliest duties on herself did lay.
xxxvi INTRODUCTORY REVIEW.
Yet a while longer his harp was left in the hands of the guardian Muse. The strings
were now occasionally, and never more harmoniously, touched by him. These sonnets
show that his right hand had lost none of its cunning, and may be introduced here.
ON HIS BLINDNESS
When I consider how my light is spent
Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,
And that one talent which is death to hide,
Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest he, returning, chide ;
Doth God exact day-labour, light denied ?
1 fondly ask: but Patience, to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, God doth not need
Either man's work, or his own gifts; who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best; his state
Is kingly; thousands at his bidding speed,
And post o'er land and ocean without rest;
They also serve who only stand and wait.
TO CYRIAC SKINNER.
Cyriac, this three-years-day these eyes, tho' clear,
To outward view, of blemish or of spot,
Bereft of light, their seeing have forgot,
Nor to their idle orbs doth sight appear
Of sun, or moon, or star, throughout the year,
Or man or woman. Yet I argue not
Against Heaven's hand or will, nor bate a jot
Of heart or hope; but still bear up and steer
Right onward. What supports me, dost thou ask?
The conscience, friend, to have lost them overplied
ln Liberty's defence, my noble task,
Of which all Europe rings from side to side.
This thought might lead me thro' the world's vain mask
Content, tho' blind, had I no better guide.
The first reply to the Defensio Populi appeared in 1651, and was ascribed to Bishop
Bramhall, and by some to Jane, an obscure lawyer of Gray's Inn. Mr. Todd has made the
important discovery that its real author was one John Rowland. The anonymous pam-
phlet was entitled, “Apologia pro Rege et Populo Anglicano, contra Johannis Polyprag-
matici (alias Miltoni Anglo) Defensionem destructivam regis et populi.” Philips, Milton's
nephew, answered this barbarous production, in a piece which appeared in 1652, under
the title of “Johannis Philippi Angli Responsio ad Apologiam anonymi cujusdam Tene-
brionis pro Rege et Populo Anglicano infantissimam :” An Answer to a most puerile
Apology for the King and People of England, by some anonymous Lurker, by John
Philips, an Englishman. Milton was reserving himself for the rumoured retort of Sal-
masius. His nephew, when he undertook this reply to a work so far beneath his own no-
tice, had not attained his majority; and as, from internal evidence, there can be little
doubt that it was written under his superintendence, it has been always classed among his
Prose Works. Its style, energy, latinity, withering sarcasm, are worthy of its real parent-
age. It bears the name, but the Philippic was beyond the unassisted powers of the minor.
With little that is new in argument, (for what could Rowland do after Salmasius ) we have
the same arguments often newly, powerfully, and even splendidly stated. In personal
abuse it surpasses all his other pieces—and directed as it is entirely against an imaginary
foe, it is far more ingenious than excusable. The work replied to is excessively offensive
INTRODUCTORY REVIEW. xxxvii
in this particular. The Preface to the Responsio states the motives which might have
induced Milton to shun, and Philips to undertake, an answer to so contemptible an adver-
sary.
“Such being the character of the man, (the anonymous Lurker,) he was by Milton him
self deservedly neglected and despised: since it was thought by all, unbecoming the dig-
nity and choice eloquence of that polished and learned author, to stoop to clear away the
ordure, (aderuenda sterquilinia,) to refute the furious gabbling of a miscreamt of such un-
curbed insolence, and egregious folly (rabidamgue loquacitatem tam effraenis atque stulti
blateronis refutandam). Lest, however, this empty blusterer should vaunt himself among
his own runaways, and imagine that he has written something great, or even that is worth
a scanty dinner; led also by devotion to my country, and by the love of liberty so lately
revived amongst us; bound likewise by many obligations to the man whom he persecutes,
and who will ever be held in reverence by me—I could not refrain, though unsolicited,
from undertaking to repress the petulance of this senseless fellow. And as the Roman re-
cruits of old were accustomed first to exercise themselves with swords and spears against
a wooden man, so I, laying aside the rudiments of a wit as yet scarcely bearded, have the
confidence that it may be no difficult matter to sharpen my style against this block: for
with an adversary so insipid and ordinary, any one, at the least with a small portion of
ability, and a scantling only of erudition, may safely engage without premeditation.”
(Burnett's Translation.)
After this, what becomes of a late remark, “ that the nameless opponent was exhibited
as a man of the most distinguished talents.” How dull soever, or how beaten soever, may
be both the adversary or the tract of argument, the wit vouchsafed by Milton to his nephew
in this pamphlet, is never weary, and the stores of his learning appear inexhaustible. The
triumph is never more decisive than when battle is given on the field of former victory.
Milton took no notice of Sir Robert Filmer's “Animadversions” on the First Defence;
and Hobbes's “Leviathan,” the hugest metaphysical monster ever chased through the
waters of controversy, he left to perish unscathed in the maelstroom of public abhorrence.
These, and scores of other works, were doomed to be dealt with by other hands. But in
the same year, 1652, in which they were published, an Answer to the Defence appeared,
which, as it abounded in the most atrocious calumnies, and the most unfeeling insolence,
the ‘Howav k\eos, was compelled to reassert his country's honour, and to maintain his own.
The ignoble libeller, a real compound of the monkey and tiger, was a Frenchman of the
name of Du Moulin. His ribald work was written in Latin, printed at the Hague, and
entitled, “Regii Sanguinis Clamor ad Coelum adversus Particidas Anglicanos:” The Cry
of the Royal Blood to Heaven against the English Parricides. This piece of service was
ultimately rewarded with a prebendal stall at Canterbury. Such was the scandalous and
scurrilous tendency of this work, that its author was afraid to publish it in this country.
For this purpose, therefore, he sent it to Salmasius, and this omnivorous pedagogue having
gorged its nauseous flattery of himself, (the author even wrote him a grand thanksgiving
ode, entitled, “Magno Salmasio pro Defensione Regia Ode Eucharistica,”) placed the MS.
in the hands of his protegé, one Morus or More, a migratory Scotchman, then settled in
France, and a celebrated protestant preacher of the day, to conduct through the press.
More entered heartily into the honourable task, wrote the dedication to the exiled Charles,
under the name of Adrian Ulac, (Latine, Vlaccus,) the printer, and became so mixed up
With the work, as to be generally considered as its author. He was the victim of the con-
spiracy against our countrymen—and for a very brief reputation, (of which he certainly
made the most while it lasted,) his life was embittered, and his memory covered with infamy.
A considerable period elapsed between the aggression and the castigation. The friends of
Salmasius reported that he was busy at the anvil of fabrication, and Milton was determined
xxxviii INTRODUCTORY REVIEW.
to reserve himself for the more potent adversary. The death of the greater champion, how-
ever, making the work which More had published of somewhat more importance, Milton
was compelled to engage with the inferior author, and in 1654 he produced, in reply, his
famous Second Defence—“Defensio Secunda pro Populo Anglicano, contra infamem
Libellum anonymum, cui litulus, Regii Clamor, &c.” The Second Defence of the People
of England against the anonymous Libel, entitled, &c. The translation by Robert Fellowes,
A. M. Oxon, is a successful performance—though it is not sufficiently close and idiomatic
to entitle it to the character of a perfect one. The phraseology is perhaps just as over
sonorous, as Walsingham's in the First Defence is flippant and skippish. We certainly
want a new version of both. To exaggerate the merits of the original would be impossible.
Considering the contemptible character of the opponent's work, the exhaustion of the
general subject, and the melancholy catastrophe which had befallen our author, we might
almost have augured its inferiority to the reply to Salmasius. It is more sober, but not
one jot less powerful, than the First Defence. It is certainly much more entertaining. Its
prodigious vehemence is tempered with consummate elegance ; and abounding equally in
wise and noble sentiments, simply and energetically expressed, it not unfrequently reminds
the reader of the Philippics of the mighty Athenian. Being, with all its successors, the
production of a blind man, it may be judged of by the rules of the oratorical art, of which
its author was so passionately fond, and his successful cultivation of which, in all its branches,
is demonstrated by this, as well as by each of his other works. It was in personal defence
against unmerited calumnies, more than in mere political altercation, that the orators of
antiquity most successfully distinguished themselves. Milton had now not merely his
beloved country for a client, with all the warriors and statesmen who had redeemed her
from bondage, but he himself was charged with immoralities and heinous crimes, before
the tribunal of the civilized world. The cause of liberty, and the character of her chosen
advocate, rise triumphantly from the encounter, and vengeance recoils upon the enemies of
the one, and the adversary of the other, with all the majesty which insulted justice
could inflict in all the weight of overwhelming eloquence. There is a terrible moral
in all this exposure of sacerdotal depravity in More: and, doubtless, many a heart has
beaten, and many a face has blushed, under the influence of various emotions, while that
indignant page has been read, in which Milton has tracked this clerical debauchee
through the paths and into the haunts of depravity; and then thrown the glare of retri-
butive daylight into their recesses. The justifiable personalities of this, and of the next
works, have all the coherence of personification about them. More becomes a formal
dramatic character—the type and representative of a species always numerous in religio-
political establishments. The Morus of 1654 is the exact portraiture of one half of those
who have been, and in this nineteenth century are, candidates for office in a church which
shall be nameless, a corporeal spirituality under which the land and religion yet groan ;
—and the mitred successors of the lowly apostles who are so busily occupied within its
hallowed enclosure, not being invested with the power of discerning spirits, can never
prevent such men from obtaining their holy orders for admission into that spiritual and
temporal vineyard. While the eye of the bishop cannot detect hypocrisy, the palm of his
hand possesses the touch of indelibility, and the wand of discipline is broken against the
silver crozier.
The character of our defender was unassailable and unsullied. His heart was as pure as
his intellect, and harmoniously did all their powers and passions unite to make up the perfect
homogeneousness of this exalted specimen of humanity. All his works illustrate this won-
derful permeability, so to speak, of his whole nature—this fine but thorough articulation of
his mental and moral energies—this sublime and perpetual reciprocity and sympathy
between all the stores and functions of his soul. The kingdom of his spirit was not divided
INTRODUCTORY REVIEW. xxxix
against itself, and with the strictest internal independence, the league of all the provinces,
for resistance or conquest, was unbroken, federal, and complete.
The Second Defence has furnished life-writers with more materials than all his other
works put together; and it has been well gleaned. We have availed ourselves of it, as far
as we could, for explanatory, not biographical, purposes; and we would urge all who are not
acquainted with it as a whole, and those who may have imbibed prejudices against the author
or his party, to peruse, and pause, and ponder over it as the most ingenuous and interesting
of memorials, furnished by one of the greatest and best of men;–the rock and the quarry,
-at once furnishing the materials to form, and the munition to protect, the edifice of his beau-
tiful character. We pass by the exordium, wherein he recounts in the most impassioned
style and with fervent gratitude, his own and the labours of others on behalf of liberty, and
in which with prophetic exultation he throws her sacred fires into the heart of the benighted
continent; we pass by the eulogium on the Queen of Sweden, in the lustre of which her
crown becomes a bauble; we pass by the not less magnanimous than magnificent panegy-
rick upon Cromwell, in which with consummate art the glowing recital of his achievements
is made subservient to the most noble and solemn advice, and the glory of the past gathered
up in suspense until the revelation of the future; we pass by the concluding appeal to
his countrymen, which the hearts of the illustrious Protector, and his Ironsides, must have
felt, had they been harder than the mail which covered them : we pass by these topics, and
others which complete the crown, and constitute the political charm, of the work :-for
Milton himself is before us! and invective and eulogy, the revolutionary storm and the
portentous calm, warriors and their prowess, priests and their craft, vanish with the whole
motley drama: the man—the patriot—the bard—the Christian—Milton is before us!
The Second Defence will ever be considered as the most satisfactory refutation of those
calumnies and reproaches, which have been so industriously heaped upon its writer, and the
men with whom he acted. No one who knows any thing of the character of Milton, would
presume to accuse him of profligacy of principle, either in serving the council, or Cromwell.
They with whom he condescended to co-operate, did their utmost to place the government
on a safe, liberal, and lasting basis; and though the issue of their endeavours was unfortu-
nate, few, now-a-days, will question their abilities in the council and in the field, in peace
and in war; or their sincere devotion to the glory and welfare of their country.
The influence of the Second Defence upon public opinion was wonderful. Morus denied
the authorship, and published his “ Fides Publica;” to which Milton replied in Jhat most
tremendous of all castigations—“Authoris pro se Defensio contra Alexandrum Morum,
Ecclesiasten :” The Author's Defence of himself against Alexander More, Ecclesiastic.
It is almost a merciless retaliation on poor More; and perhaps the severest, acutest, wittiest
specimen of retort or reply on record. Milton's detestation of vice is only equal to the
dreadless majesty with which he exposes it. The Latin language, with all its mechanical
stubbornness, is perfectly ductile to his will—it melts to his touch, and moulds itself into a
fiery essence to do his bidding, and express, like an “airy servitor,” the least or the greatest
emotions. He was an incomparable reviewer. Nothing escapes him—and he avoids no-
thing;-he always rushes into the midst of the combat, and he comes out of the hottest melée
unscathed, and even unbreathed. More was compelled to another struggle; his answer was
again briefly refuted by Milton in a piece entitled, “Authoris ad Alexandri Mori Supplemen-
tum Responsio:” The Author's Answer to the Supplement of Alexander More: and so
ended the controversy; and like the last of every thing, its end is affecting. These poli-
tical writings, so distinguished by every grace and glory of rhetorick, carried the celebrity of
their author's name and cause to the very bounds of classic Europe. The fights are over—
the victories won—one adversary after another silenced—the Salmasian controversy con-
cluded: that volcano, with its noisy craters, is extinct—the lava is as cold as the Arctic
xl INTRODUCTORY REVIEW.
snows—and we have seen a mighty genius acting upon the sky-ward eruption, like the law
of gravitation ; and the higher the burning fragments of rage and vituperation may
have been thrown, the more hideous falls on the earth-born head that ruin of which we have
witnessed the recoil.
The death of Cromwell took place on the 3rd of September, 1659; on that day, it is ob-
servable, he was born ; on that day he fought the three great battles of Marston-Moor,
Worcester, and Dunbar; and on that day he died, in the peaceable possession of the sove-
reign power. The uncorruptible patriotism of Milton led him to retain office under this
usurper—the greatest man that ever sat on an English throne. Hope that he would be able
to reconstruct the commonwealth, fear that in case of his desertion the hateful dynasty
would be restored, and a desire to maintain the honour of his country abroad, may have
been the considerations which led our author, with all his republican predilections, to render
the Protector his assistance and support. Grievously, however, must he have been disap-
pointed; not more perhaps by some things which Cromwell did, than by what he left
undone;—but the conduct of the four factions hardly left him any leisure from curbing their
insolence, and defeating their machinations. Milton was not the only distinguished servant
of Cromwell–Hale served him as chief justice; Howe and Owen officiated as his chap-
lains; and Blake refused not to wield the truncheon of the navy under him.
Milton's two next works are valuable additions to our ample stores of what may be termed
the literature of ecclesiastical liberty. Devoted to the consideration of two opposite evils,
by which the church has always been afflicted or corrupted, two potent words, FoRCE and
HIRE, comprise the scope of both of these sound and able pamphlets. The first treatise
relates to the exercise of force against conscience; the last to the equally dangerous exer-
cise of political power or patronage in favour of any religious system. By the former, “A
Treatise of Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes; shewing, that it is not lawful for any
Power on Earth to compel in Matters of Religion;” and by the latter, “Considerations
touching the likeliest Means to remove Hirelings out of the Church; wherein is also discoursed
of Tythes, Church-fees, and Church-revenues; and whether any Maintenance of Ministers
can be settled by Law ;” we may consider the great political principle of absolute non-
interference by the magistrate for or against Christianity (except on grounds of purely civil
emergency, or expediency, or necessity) to be triumphantly settled and fundamentally estab-
lished. They were both published, with an interval of a few months, in the year 1659.
One was addressed to the parliament convened by Richard Cromwell; the other, the doctrines
of which yet remain to be realized, was inscribed to the Long Parliament: both the pieces,
though their author retained his Latin secretaryship, were private and unofficial. “I write
not otherwise appointed or induced than by an inward persuasion of Christian duty, which I
may usefully discharge to the common Lord and Master of us all.” This was an important
declaration. Milton was an avowed, and, on the subject of church-government, a thorough,
independent. He was then addressing the presbyterians, who were as averse to toleration
as ever were the episcopalians. The only real quarrel which these men had with Cromwell
was, that he would not establish them; that he would not lend them his mighty arm to put
down all other sectaries, and set up their Scotch inquisition, enforce their synodical censures,
and place them in paramount possession of all the benefices and emoluments of the English,
Scotch, and Irish hierarchies. This party, with the royalists, and the army, were now on
the eve of making good the great usurper's prophecy, that, after his death, they would bring
all things into confusion. The independents were not strong enough to cut through this “ill-
united and unwieldy brigade;” and the mere multitude were incapable of estimating the
dangers of a restoration, or the blessings of a commonwealth. Our politic author determined
to avail himself of the last moments of expiring liberty, which he had “used these eighteen
years on all occasions to assert the just rights and freedoms both of church and state :” and
INTRODUCTORY REVIEW. xli
in the pamphlets before us, he strikes a two-handed blow at that system of “force” and
“hire,” of intolerance and patronage, in matters of religion, out of which have arisen nearly
all the convulsions of modern Europe. Both the works are written with beautiful simpli-
city and earnestness. The divine right and the political expediency of tithes are examined
and refuted at great length, and with amazing learning and ingenuity. The pith and marrow
of the argument, the strength and nerve of the language, will be found to contain all that is
necessary, and all that might have been expected. Let it be remembered that he inter-
rupted his four great works—his Poem, his History, his Latin Thesaurus, and his Theologi-
cal Treatise—to write these two manuals. We particularly invite the immediate attention
of our countrymen to the last of the two tracts. “In matters of religion,” says our author,
“he is learnedest who is plainest. The brevity I use, not exceeding a small manual, will
not therefore I suppose be thought the less considerable, unless with them perhaps who think
that great books only can determine great matters.” Truth must triumph. We enjoy tole-
ration, as it is insultingly styled; but we are yet to witness the utter subversion of intole-
rance, by the severance of the church from the state. Richard Cromwell soon abdicated
his brief authority. For near two years after Cromwell's death, the government of Eng-
land underwent various shapes, and every month almost produced a new scheme. The
current of popular opinion ran strongly towards monarchy. The protestations of Monk,
indeed, and the existence of the Long Parliament, in which there were few royalists and
near fifty or sixty republicans, might support the faint hopes of the commonwealth-men.
But Milton, as we find from his “Letter to a Friend concerning the Ruptures of the Common-
wealth,” dated Oct. 20, 1659, expresses his indignation at the outrages of the army, and his
gloomy apprehensions for the future. Soon after, he addressed a letter to General Monk,
entitled, “The present Means and brief Delineation of a free Commonwealth.” Both these
letters are very short, and hardly occupy two pages of this edition. A few months after-
wards, he addressed General Monk again, in a more masterly production, “The ready and
easy Way to establish a free Commonwealth, and the Excellence thereof, compared with
the Inconveniences and Dangers of readmitting Kingship in this Nation.” The motto to this
performance, hinting probably at the advice which he had publicly given to the Protector,
“ et noS
Consilium Syllae dedimus, demus populo nunc,”
is as happy as his present counsel was opportune. With many evident inconsistencies,
which will be easily excused, when we consider his own and the peril of his party, there is
much to commend and more to admire. It is full of splendid writing and powerful anti-
monarchical appeal. It was replied to both sportively and seriously, but not answered.
The last of Milton's controversial productions was, “Brief Notes upon a late Sermon,
titled, The Fear of God and the King; preached, and since published, by Matthew Griffith,
D. D. and Chaplain to the late King. Wherein many notorious wrestings of Scripture, and
other Falsities, are observed.” On the very eve of the Restoration he avows his republican-
ism. The insolent L’Estrange wrote a reply, entitled, “No Blind Guides.”
A volume might be devoted to the critical examination of his letters, both private and
official, on account both of their political and literary excellence. They are all written in
Latin. There are thirty-one private ones—forty-three are written in the name of the par-
liament—seventy-eight in the name of the Protector Oliver—eleven in the name of the
Protector Richard—and in the name of the “Parliament Restored,” two only were written.
The private letters will very much interest the reader. Those to his Athenian friend
are noble and affecting, and in a biographical point of view, exceedingly valuable. It
is to be regretted that so few epistles of so extensive a correspondent should have been
handed down to posterity. It is probable that most of his correspondents were foreigners.
The official letters are much more numerous. Milton was an universal genius, and it would
xlii INTRODUCTORY REVIEW.
be difficult to predicate his failure in any undertaking in which learning or sagacity, wis-
dom or common sense, could insure success. It is a maxim in the mouth of the many,
degrading to all who are above the level of mediocrity, and therefore reiterated by those
whom the decree of nature has placed below it, that, with the ordinary or extraordinary
business of life, the man of science or genius, the philosopher or scholar, cannot meddle
without making himself as ridiculous, as his interference must be prejudicial to the interests
intrusted to him. This radical blunder has been acted upon in all ages; nor need we
wonder at the remark of a certain chancellor to his son : “See, with what little wit the
world is governed l’” Not so thought Oliver Cromwell. His selection of servants in all the
departments of government, was very honourable to himself, and the mainspring of his suc-
cess in war and peace, in foreign and domestic policy. Had Milton left nothing else in
prose but these letters, we should have considered them as proofs of his great capacity for
business. No mechanical drudge could have written them, With all his ardour of tem-
perament he had an amazing share of “sound round-about common sense"—warmed by
pervading genius into a nobler power. We need not point out the historical value of these
exquisite models of negociation and composition. The foreign policy of the commonwealth
cannot be well understood without an acquaintance with them.
The juvenile Latin productions of Milton may be mentioned here—to recommend them
merely, for to examine them minutely would be impossible. They are remarkable for
felicity and correctness; for masculine energy, and ripeness of thought, and occasional
splendour of expression; and as they show by what laborious industry and indefatigable
perseverance our countryman realized the utmost excellence which these writings pro-
mised, they should be pointed out to the attention of every youth. In fact, selections from
his Latin works, for the use of the higher schools, should immediately be made : they would
not interfere with the more ancient classics, which they rival, but would necessarily stimu-
late to their imitation; and, mingled with a few judicious extracts from his English prose,
to be translated into Latin or Greek, or to be used as exercises in recitation, the effect upon
youths of a proper age, under a teacher worthy of being intrusted with some such plan,
would be incredibly beneficial.
Milton's Latin Grammar, (1661,) and his Logic, (1672,) prove his deep interest in all
that related to education. The former has been superseded, but the latter (with the inte-
resting life prefixed to it) will always be regarded as a sound and useful system for dis-
covering truth.
We conclude our task. No political actor ever performed a more distinguished part on
a more elevated stage, than John Milton ; nor, assuredly, did one ever retire from it so
suddenly. Another and far different part of the great drama came on. A Stuart monarch
was seated on the throne, and we hear no more of our politician. He was spared by Provi-
dence, not by royal clemency. What a change from the blaze of public life to the refuge
of obscurity It was an outward change only—made certainly more distressing by public
ingratitude and private neglect, by the helplessness of blindness and poverty, and the
increasing miseries of “crude old age.” But, supported by celestial manna, and invigorated
by the illumining Spirit, “the joy and solace of created things,” his intellectual strength was
more than equal to his day. “The troubled sea of noises and hoarse disputes,” on which
he had been embarked, and on which he had been wrecked, was now exchanged for the
final haven of “a calm and pleasing solitariness, fed with cheerful and confident thoughts;”
—and soon he sent forth his immortal poems—the “Paradise Lost”—and “Paradise Re-
gained " It is sufficient to mention them His beautiful “Treatise of True Religion,
Heresy, Schism, Toleration, and the best means that may be used to prevent the growth
of Popery,” had not been long published, when he died, in the year 1674, and in the six
and sixtieth of his age.
INTRODUCTORY REVIEW. xliii
We have only glanced at the contents of this volume. Of itself it is more than sufficient
to enable us to form a correct estimate of the literary, political, and religious character of
John Milton. Taken in connexion with his poetical works, it will be impossible to produce
an author entitled to superior veneration and renown. Equally resplendent in the annals of
liberty and of song, the name of the author of these writings is a sufficient guarantee
for their interest to the scholar, their value to the politician, and their utility to every
patriotic Christian. They are now cast into a proper shape for circulation, and wherever
carried, they will administer not less to the delight and profit, than to the intellectual and
moral wants and necessities, of the age. In them will be found nothing dangerous or
anarchical—dishonourable or polluting. The monarch will not here find any thing to de-
rogate from his just authority. His nobles will here learn true inagnanimity—his people
be built up in love to their country and to himself, and in “willing homage to the preroga-
tive of the Eternal Throne.” The man of taste will be refreshed—the protestant will rejoice
in the paramount allegiance of the poet to the great principles of the Reformation. The least
will find that he may be useful—the greatest, that he may be worthless ;-the most ignorant
will here find an “eye-brightening electuary of knowledge and foresight”—the most
learned, that his superior condescended to be most plain. These are the authorized works
of a man, who never quailed before a tyrant, or bowed before a mob ; but, after exerting
the greatest abilities in the greatest of causes, in fortitude, and meekness, and patience
possessed his spirit, and became, in adversity and prosperity, an exemplar for a nation of
“heroes, of sages, and of worthies.” -
England is invested with supremacy in literature. She is not indebted for her imperial
precedency to many of her sons. Great as is the number of her gigantic minds, two men
she has reared and ripened, Milton and Shakspeare, whose achievements alone have raised
her to a towering pre-eminence among the nations. Neither the ancients nor the moderns
can match these Englishmen. Make the selection from any age, from the bright eras of
the past, from the Greek or Roman constellations, to the later luminaries, and theirs will be
found to be the brightest names that old Time wears in his gorgeous belt... To them an
Englishman points, and by them settles the supremacy of his country. Without them we
might claim equality with other kingdoms; with them we are entitled to superiority. When
you think of England, you think of Shakspeare—you think of Milton—they are England.
Other nations have heroes, and philosophers, and critics, and scholars, and divines, equal to
our own, but they have not Shakspeare and Milton –we have, and surpass them. Nature
gave them to England, and no reverse of fortune can rob us of them. Their works are
landmarks, pillars of truth, on these the high places of the earth—and they will be identified
with our soil, when our institutions may have been swept from it, and when our political
supremacy may have passed away. But, with their works in our hands, and with our Bible,
read, and believed, and revered, and upheld, in cottage and in palace, we need not fear the
loss of our heritage—the luxury that enfeebles—the vice that enslaves—the wealth that
corrupts—the anarchy that overwhelms:—intelligence and piety, wisdom, and religion, and
power, will be cherished and perpetuated for generations;–and with those who love these
º and bear the ark of British freedom, we leave, for their guidance and delight, this
OOIK.
C O N T E N T S.
PAGE
INTRODUCTORY REvi Rw . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Of Reformation touching Church I)iscipline in England, and the
causes that hitherto have hindered it : in two Books, written to a
Friend º º * º & tº º º - e g © º º º
Of Prelatical Fpiscopacy, and whether it may be deduced from the
Apostolical Times, by virtue of those Testimonies which are alleged
to that purpose in some late Treatises; one whereof goes under the
Name of James Archbishop of Armagh . .
he Reason of Church Government urged against Prelaty. In two
Books . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Animadversions upon the Remonstrant's Defence against Smectym-
Fºllus º - - • • e e º º º º & tº º e e g º e • - - o
An Apology for Smectymnuus . . . .
y Of Education; to Master Samuel Hartlib . . . . . . . . . .
ARForaditica; a Speech for the Liberty of unlicensed Printing, to
the Parliament of England . . . . . . .
*The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce restored to the good of both
Sexes, from the Bondage of Canon Law, and other Mistakes, to the
true Meaning of Scripture in the Law and Gospel compared, &c.
The Judgment of Martin Bucer concerning Divorce: written to I’d-
ward the Sixth, in his second Book of the Kingdom of Christ, &c. .
TFTRAcHoſtnon : Expositions upon the four chief Places in Scripture
which treat of Marriage, or Nullities in Marriage, &c. . . . . .
Coi,AstERIoN : A Reply to a nameless Answer against the Doctrine
and Discipline of Divorce: wherein the trivial Author of that An-
swer is discovered, the Licenser conferred with, and the Opinion,
which they traduce, defended .
he Tenure of Kings and Magistrates; proving, that it is lawful, and
hath been held so through all Ages, for any, who have the Power,
to call to account a Tyrant, or wicked King, and, after due Convic-
tion, to depose, and put him to Death, if the ordinary Magistrate
have neglected, or denied to do it, &c. . . . . . . . . . . .
Observations on the Articles of Peace between James Farl of Or-
mond, for King Charles the First, on the one hand, and the Irish
Rebels and Papists on the other hand: and on a Letter sent by
Ormond to Colonel Jones, Governor of Dublin : and a Representa-
tion of the Scots Presbytery at Belfast in Ireland. To which the
said Articles, Letter, with Colonel Jones's Answer to it, and Repre-
sentation, &c., are prefixed . . . . . . . . . . . e tº
S. El Ko Noclast Es: in answer to a Book, entitled, Eikon Basilike, the
Portraiture of his sacred Majesty in his Solitudes and Suſſerings. .
A DEFENCE of the People of England, in answer to Salmasius's De-
fence of the King . . . . . . . . . . . .
A Treatise of Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes: showing, that it is
not lawful for any Power on Earth to compel in Matters of Re-
ligion • * * * * e º a 3 tº e * * * * * e e e
Considerations touching the likeliest Means to remove Hirelings out
of the Church, &c. e º º & - e t * e e - º º e e º º tº
A Letter to a Friend, concerning the Ruptures of the Commonwealth.
The present Means and brief Delineation of a free Commonwealth,
easy to be put in practice, and without delay. In a Letter to
General Monk . . . . . . . . . • s • * * * * * *
..×The ready and easy Way to establish a free Commonwealth, and the
Excellence thereoſ, compared with the Inconveniences and Dangers
of readmitting Kingship in this Nation . . . .
Brief Notes upon a late Sermon, titled, “The Fear of God and the
King,” preached, and since published, by Matthew Griffith, D. D.
and Chaplain to the late King, wherein many motorious Wrestings of
Scripture, and other Falsities, are observed . . . . . . . . .
Accedence commenced Grammar: supplied with suſficient Rules for
i
22
2S
75
98
103
120
}
59
175
220
2%
272
338
4ll
423
441
442
453
PAGE
the Use of such as, younger or elder, are desirous, without more
Trouble than needs, to attain the Latin Tongue; the elder sort es-
pecially with little Teaching, and their own Industry e s tº º
The IIistory of Britain, that Part especially now called England;
from the first traditional Beginning, continued to the Norman Con-
quest. Collected out of the ancientest and best Authors thereof.
Published from a Copy corrected by the Author himself . . . .
Of true Religion, Heresy, Schism, Toleration, and what best Means
may be used against the Growth of Popery, Printed in the year
1673 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
A brief History of Moscovia, and of other less known Countries lying
Eastward of Russia, as far as Cathay, gathered from the writings
of several Eye-witnesses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
A Declaration, or Letters Patents for the Election of John the Third,
King of Poland, elected on the 22nd of May, Anno Dom. 1674, con-
taining the Reasons of this Election, the great Virtues and Merits of
the said serenc lºlect, his eminent Services in War, especially in
his last great Victory against the Turks and Tartars; whereof many
Particulars are here related, mot published before . . . . . .
Letters of State to most of the Sovereign Princes and Republics of
Europe, during the Administration of the Commonwealth, and the
Protectors Oliver and Richard Cromwell . . . . . . . . .
Letters written in the Name of the Parliament . . . . . . .
Letters written in the Name of Oliver the Protector . . . . . .
Letters written in the Name of Richard the Protector . . . . . .
A Manifesto of the Lord Protector, against the Spaniards . . . . .
475
562
56S
583
587
. ibid.
603
634
639
Johannis Miltoni Opera omnia Latina . . . . . . . . . . . 647
Defensio pro Populo Anglicano, contra Claudii Anonymi, alias Sal-
masii Defensionem regiam . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
649
Defensio Secunda pro Populo Anglicano contra infamem Libellum
anonymum cui titulus, “Regii Sanguinis Clamor ad Coelum, adver-
sus Parricidas Anglicanos " tº e º 'º º
Authoris pro se Defensio contra Alexandrum Morum Ecclesiastem,
Libelli famosi, cui titulus, “Regii Sanguinis Clamor ad Coelum ad-
versus Parricidas Anglicanos,” Authorem recte dictum . . . . . 733
º ſº ſº º ſº * e º &
Authoris ad Alexandri Mori Supplementum Responsio . . . . . . 755
Joannis Philippi Angli Responsio ad Apologiam amonymi cujusdam
Tenebrionis pro Rege & Populo Anglicano infantissimam . . . .
Literac Senatus Anglicani mbmime ac jussu conscriptae . . . . . .
Literac Oliverii Protectoris nomine scriptoe . . . . . . . . . .
Literae Richardi Protectoris nomine scriptae . . . . . . . . . .
Literae Parlamenti Restituti nomine scriptae. . . . . . . . . . 821
Scriptum Dom. Protectoris Reipublicae Angliae, Scotiae, Hiberniae, &c.
ex consensu atque sententiá Concilii sui Editum : in quo hujus Rei-
publicte Causa contra Hispanos justa esse demonstratur . . . . 823
Autoris Lºpistolarum Familiarum Liber unus: Quibus accesserunt
ejusdem jam olim in Collegio Adolescentis Prolusiones quiedam
Oratoriae ë. & e - º & tº © º ſº ſº tº * & º © © & * º 830
Prolusiones quaedam Oratoriae . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 843
Artis Logicae plenior Institutio ad Petri Rami Methodum concinnata,
adjecta est Praxis Analytica & Petri Rami Vita, Libris duobus . . 859
. 915
916
Praxis Logica analytica ex Doumamo . . . . . . . . . . .
Petri Rami Vita © & © © e e w & ſº e e o º © s e º e
The Second 1)efence of the People of England, against an anonymous
Libel, entitled, “The royal Blood crying to Heaven for Vengeance
on the English Parricides " . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Familiar Epistles 0 e º e º 'º e º e º e e º e º e º a
General Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
919
950
THE
PROSE WORKS OF JOHN MILTON.
OF
REFORMATION IN ENGLAND,
AN D
THE CAUSES THAT HITHERTO HAVE HINDERED IT.
IN TWO BOOKS.
W R ITT EN TO A FRIEN D.
[first PUBLISHED 1641.]
f
ºf SIR,
/. those deep and retired thoughts, which, with
every man christianly instructed, ought to be most fre-
quent of God, and of his miraculous ways and works
amongst men, and of our religion and works, to be
performed to him; after the story of our Saviour Christ,
suffering to the lowest bent of weakness in the flesh,
and presently triumphing to the highest pitch of glory
in the spirit, which drew up his body also; till we in
both be united to him in the revelation of his kingdom,
I do not know of any thing more worthy to take up
the whole passion of pity on the one side, and joy on
the other, than to consider first the foul and sudden
corruption, and then, after many a tedious age, the
long deferred, but much more wonderful and happy
reformation of the church in these latter days, ºf Sad it
is to think how that doctrine of the gospel, planted by
teachers divinely inspired, and by them winnowed and
sifted from the chaff of overdated ceremonies, and re-
fined to such a spiritual height and temper of purity,
and knowledge of the Creator, that the body, with all
the circumstances of time and place, were purified by
the affections of the regenerate soul, and nothing left
impure but sin; faith needing not the weak and fal-
lible office of the senses, to be either the ushers or in-
terpreters of heavenly mysteries, save where our Lord
himself in his sacraments ordained; that such a doc-
trine should, through the grossness and blindness of
her professors, and the fraud of deceivable traditions,
drag so downwards, as to backslide into the Jewish
|
another way into the new-vomited paganism of sen-
sual idolatry, attributing purity or impurity to things
indifferent, that they might bring the inward acts of
the spirit to the outward and customary eye-service
of the body, as if they could make God earthly and
fleshly, because they could not make themselves hea-
venly and spiritual; they began to draw down all the
divine intercourse betwixt God and the soul, yea, the
very shape of God himself, into an exterior and bodily
form, urgently pretending a necessity and obligenment
of joining the body in a formal reverence, and worship
circumscribed; they hallowed it, they fumed it, they
sprinkled it, they bedecked it, not in robes of pure in-
nocency, but of pure linen, with other deformed and
fantastic dresses, in palls and mitres, gold, and gew-
gaws fetched from Aaron's old wardrobe, or the flamins
vestry: then was the priest set to con his motions and
lis postures, his liturgies and his lurries, till the soul
by this means of overbodying herself, given up justly
to fleshly delights, bated her wing apace downward:
and finding the ease she had from her visible and sen-
suous colleague the body, in performance of religious
duties, her pinions now broken, and flagging, shifted
off from herself the labour of high soaring any more,
forgot her heavenly flight, and left the dull and droil-
ing carcase to plod on in the old road, and drudging
trade of outward conformity. And here out of question
from her perverse conceiting of God and holy things,
she had fallen to believe no God at all, had not custom
beggary of old cast rudiments, and stumble forward | and the worm of conscience nipped her incredulity:
2 OF REFORMATION IN ENGLAND.
hence to all the duties of evangelical grace, instead of
the adoptive and cheerful boldness which our new al-
liance with God requires, came servile and thrallike
fear: for in very deed, the superstitious man by his
good will is an atheist; but being scared from thence
by the pangs and gripes of a boiling conscience, all in
a pudder shuffles up to himself such a God and such a
worship as is most agreeable to remedy his fear; which
fear of his, as also is his hope, fixed only upon the
flesh, renders likewise the whole faculty of his appre-
hension carnal; and all the inward acts of worship,
issuing from the native strength of the soul, run out
lavishly to the upper skin, and there harden into a
crust of formality. Hence men came to scan the Scrip-
tures by the letter, and in the covenant of our redemp-
tion, magnified the external signs more than the quick-
ening power of the Spirit; and yet looking on them
through their own guiltiness with a servile fear, and
finding as little comfort, or rather terrour from them
again, they knew not how to hide their slavish approach
to God’s behests, by them not understood, nor worthily
received, but by cloaking their servile crouching to all
religious presentments, sometimes lawful, sometimes
idolatrous, under the name of humility, and terming the
piebald frippery and ostentation of ceremonies, decency.
* Then was baptism, changed into a kind of exorcism
and water, sanctified by Christ's institute, thought lit-
tle enough to wash off the original spot, without the
scratch or cross impression of a priest's forefinger: and
that feast of free grace and adoption to which Christ
invited his disciples to sit as brethren, and coheirs of
the happy covenant, which at that table was to be
sealed to them, even that feast of love and heavenly-
admitted fellowship, the seal of filial grace, became the
subject of horror, and glouting adoration, pageanted
about like a dreadful idol; which sometimes deceives
well-meaning men, and beguiles them of their reward,
by their voluntary humility; which indeed is fleshly
pride, preferring a foolish sacrifice, and the rudiments
of the world, as Saint Paul to the Colossians explain-
eth, before a savoury obedience to Christ's example.
Such was Peter's unseasonable humility, as then his
knowledge was small, when Christ came to wash his
feet; who at an impertinent time would needs strain
courtesy with his master, and falling troublesomely
upon the lowly, all-wise, and unexaminable intention
of Christ, in what he went with resolution to do, so
provoked by his interruption the meck Lord, that he
threatened to exclude him from his heavenly portion,
unless he could be content to be less arrogant and stiff-
necked in his humility.
2. But to dwell no longer in characterizing the depra-
vities of the church, and how they sprung, and how
they took increase; when I recall to mind at last, after
so many dark ages, wherein the huge overshadowing
train of error had almost swept all the stars out of the
firmament of the church ; how the bright and blissful
reformation (by divine power) struck through the black
and settled night of ignorance and antichristian ty-
ranny, methinks a sovereign and reviving joy must
needs rush into the bosom of him that reads or hears;
and the sweet odour of the returning gospel imbathe
his soul with the fragrancy of heaven. Then was the
sacred Bible sought out of the dusty corners where
profane falsehood and neglect had thrown it, the schools
opened, divine and human learning raked out of the
embers of forgotten tongues, the princes and cities
trooping apace to the new-erected banner of salvation;
the martyrs, with the unresistible might of weakness,
shaking the powers of darkness, and scorning the fiery
rage of the old red dragon. -
£The pleasing pursuit of these thoughts hath ofttimes
led me into a serious question and debatement with
myself, how it should come to pass that England (hav-
ing had this grace and honour from God, to be the first
that should set up a standard for the recovery of lost
truth, and blow the first evangelic trumpet to the
nations, holding up, as from a hill, the new lamp of
saving light to all christendom) should now be last,
and most unsettled in the enjoyment of that peace,
whereof she taught the way to others; although indeed
our Wickliffe's preaching, at which all the succeeding
reformers more effectually lighted their tapers, was to
his countrymen but a short blaze, soon damped and
stifled by the pope and prelates for six or seven kings'
reigns; yet methinks the precedency which God gave
this island, to be first restorer of buried truth, should
have been followed with more happy success, and
sooner attained perfection; in which as yet we are
amongst the last : for, albeit in purity of doctrine we
agree with our brethren; yet in discipline, which is
the execution and applying of doctrine home, and lay-
ing the salve to the very orifice of the wound, yea,
tenting and searching to the core, without which pulpit
preaching is but shooting at rovers; in this we are no
better than a schism from all the reformation, and a
sore scandal to them : for while we hold ordination to
belong only to bishops, as our prelates do, we must of
necessity hold also their ministers to be no ministers,
and shortly after their church to be no church. Not to
speak of those senseless ceremonies which we only re-
tain, as a dangerous earnest of sliding back to Rome,
and serving merely, either as a mist to cover nakedness
where true grace is extinguished, or as an interlude to
set out the pomp of prelatism. Certainly it would be
worth the while therefore, and the pains, to inquire
more particularly, what, and how many the chief causes
have been, that have still hindered our uniform consent
to the rest of the churches abroad, at this time especially
when the kingdom is in a good propensity thereto, and
all men in prayers, in hopes, or in disputes, either for
or against it.
# Yet I will not insist on that which may seem to be
the cause on God's part; as his judgment on our sins,
the trial of his own, the unmasking of hypocrites: nor
shall I stay to speak of the continual eagerness and
extreme diligence of the pope and papists to stop the
furtherance of reformation, which know they have no
hold or hope of England their lost darling, longer than
the government of bishops bolsters them out; and
therefore plot all they can to uphold them, as may be
scen by the book of Santa Clara, the popish priest, in
OF REFORMATION IN ENGIAND.
3
defence of bishops, which came out piping hot much
about the time that one of our own prelates, out of an
ominous fear, had writ on the same argument; as if
they had joined their forces, like good confederates, to
support one falling Babel.
& But I shall chiefly endeavour to declare those causes
that hinder the forwarding of true discipline, which
are among ourselves. Orderly proceeding will divide
our inquiry into our forefathers' days, and into our
times. Henry VIII was the first that rent this king-
dom from the pope's subjection totally; but his quarrel
being more about supremacy, than other faultiness in
religion that he regarded, it is no marvel if he stuck
where he did. The next default was in the bishops,
who though they had renounced the pope, they still
hugged the popedom, and shared the authority among
themselves, by their six bloody articles, persecuting the
protestants no slacker than the pope would have done.
And doubtless, whenever the pope shall fall, if his ruin
be not like the sudden downcome of a tower, the bishops,
when they see him tottering, will leave him, and fall
to scrambling, catch who may, he a patriarchdom, and
another what comes next hand; as the French cardinal
of late and the see of Canterbury hath plainly affected.
In Edward the Sixth's days, why a complete reform-
ation was not effected, to any considerate man may
appear. First, he no sooner entered into his kingdom,
but into a war with Scotland; from whence the pro-
tector returning with victory, had but newly put his
hand to repeal the six articles, and throw the images
out of churches, but rebellions on all sides, stirred up
by obdurate papists, and other tumults, with a plain
war in Norfolk, holding tack against two of the king's
generals, made them of force content themselves with
what they had already done. Hereupon followed
ambitious contentions among the peers, which ceased
not but with the protector's death, who was the most
zealous in this point: and then Northumberland was
he that could do most in England, who little minding
religion, (as his apostasy well showed at his death,) bent
all his wit how to bring the right of the crown into his
own line. And for the bishops, they were so far from
any such worthy attempts, as that they suffered them-
selves to be the common stales, to countenance with
their prostituted gravities every politic fetch that was
then on foot, as oft as the potent statists pleased to
employ them. Never do we read that they made use
of their authority and high place of access, to bring
the jarring nobility to christian peace, or to withstand
their disloyal projects: but if a toleration for mass
were to be begged of the king for his sister Mary, lest
Charles the Fifth should be angry; who but the grave
prelates, Cranmer and Ridley, must be sent to extort
it from the young king P But out of the mouth of that
godly and royal child, Christ himself returned such an
awful repulse to those halting and timeserving prelates,
that after much bold importunity, they went their way
not without shame and tears,
§ Nor was this the first time that they discovered to
be followers of this world; for when the protector's
brother, Lord Sudley, the admiral, through private
malice and malengine was to lose his life, no man
could be found fitter than bishop Latimer (like another
Dr. Shaw) to divulge in his sermon the forged accusa-
tions laid to his charge, thereby to defame him with
the people, who else it was thought would take ill the
innocent man's death, unless the reverend bishop could
warrant them there was no foul play. What could be
more impious than to debar the children of the king
from their right to the crown To comply with the
ambitious usurpation of a traitor, and to make void the
last will of Henry VIII, to which the breakers had
sworn observance 2 Yet bishop Cranmer, one of the
executors, and the other bishops, none refusing, (lest
they should resist the duke of Northumberland,) could
find in their consciences to set their hands to the dis-
enabling and defeating not only of Princess Mary the
papist, but of Elizabeth the protestant, and (by the
bishops' judgment) the lawful issue of King Henry,
ºf Who then can think (though these prelates had
sought a further reformation) that the least wry face of
a politician would not have hushed them 2 But it will
be said, these men were martyrs: what then 2 though
every true Christian will be a martyr when he is called
to it, not presently does it follow, that every one suf-
fering for religion is, without exception. Saint Paul
writes, that “a man may give his body to be burnt,
(meaning for religion,) and yet not have charity :” he
is not therefore above all possibility of erring, because
he burns for some points of truth.
j^Witness the * Arians and Pelagians, which were slain
by the heathen for Christ's sake, yet we take both these
for no true friends of Christ. If the martyrs (saith
Cyprian in his 30th epistle) decree one thing, and the
gospel another, either the martyrs must lose their crown
by not observing the gospel for which they are mar-
tyrs, or the majesty of the gospel must be broken and
lie flat, if it can be overtopped by the novelty of any
other decree.
yAnd here withal I invoke the Immortal Deity, re-
vealer and judge of secrets, that wherever I have in
this book plainly and roundly (though worthily and
truly) laid open the faults and blennishes of fathers,
martyrs, or christian emperors, or have otherwise in-
veighed against errour and superstition with vehement
expressions; I have done it neither out of malice, nor
list to speak evil, nor any vain glory, but of mere ne-
cessity to vindicate the spotless truth from an igno-
minious bondage, whose native worth is now become
of such a low esteem, that she is like to find small
credit with us for what she can say, unless she can
bring a ticket from Cranmer, Latimer, and Ridley; or
prove herself a retainer to Constantine, and wear his
badge. More tolerable it were for the church of God,
that all these names were utterly abolished like the
brazen serpent, than that men's fond opinion should
thus idolize them, and the heavenly truth be thus cap-
tivated.
• º e - * -
It appears from this and other passages, that the author in his younger
years was orthodox, as it is called : but he afterwards altered his senti.
B
ments; as is plain from his tract on “True Religion, Heresy, Schism,
and Toleration,” which was the last work he published.
4 OF RFFORMATION IN ENGLAND.
... Now to proceed, whatsoever the bishops were, it
'seems they themselves were unsatisfied in matters of
religion as they then stood, by that commission granted
to eight bishops, eight other divines, eight civilians,
cight common lawyers, to frame ecclesiastical constitu-
tions; which no wonder if it came to nothing, for (as
Hayward relates) both their professions and their ends
were different. Lastly, we all know by example, that
exact reformation is not perſected at the first push, and
those unwieldy times of Edward VI may hold some
plea by this excuse. Now let any reasonable man
judge whether that king's reign be a ſit time from
whence to pattern out the constitution of a church dis-
cipline, much less that it should yield occasion from
whence to foster and establish the continuance of im-
perfection, with the commendatory subscriptions of
confessors and martyrs, to entitle and engage a glorious
name to a gross corruption. It was not episcopacy
that wrought in them the heavenly fortitude of martyr-
dom, as little is it that martyrdom can make good
episcopacy; but it was episcopacy that led the good
and holy men, through the temptation of the enemy,
and the snare of this present world, to many blame-
worthy and opprobrious actions. And it is still epis-
copacy that before all our eyes worsens and slugs the
most learned and seeming religious of our ministers,
who no sooner advanced to it, but like a seething pot
set to cool, sensibly exhale and reak out the greatest
part of that zeal, and those gifts which were formerly
in them, settling in a skinny congealment of case and
sloth at the top : and if they keep their learning by
some potent sway of nature, it is a rare chance; but
their devotion most commonly comes to that queazy
temper of lukewarmness, that gives a vomit to God
himself.
ºr But what do we suffer misshapen and enormous pre-
ſatism, as we do, thus to blanch and varnish her de-
formities with the fair colours, as before of martyrdom,
so now of episcopacy P. They are not bishops, God and
all good men know they are not, that have filled this
land with late confusion and violence; but a tyrannical
crew and corporation of impostors, that have blinded
and abused the world so long under that name. He
that, enabled with gifts from God, and the lawful and
primitive choice of the church assembled in convenient
number, faithfully from that time forward feeds his
parochial flock, has his coequal and compresbyterial
power to ordain ministers and deacons by public prayer,
and vote of Christ's congregation in like sort as he
himself was ordained, and is a true apostolic bishop.
But when he steps up into the chair of pontifical pride,
and changes a moderate and exemplary house for a
misgoverned and haughty palace, spiritual dignity for
carnal precedence, and secular high office and employ-
ment for the high negotiations of his heavenly embas-
sage : then he degrades, then he unbishops himself;
he that makes him bishop, makes him no bishop. No
marvel therefore if St. Martin complained to Sulpitius
Severus, that since he was bishop he felt inwardly a
sensible decay of those virtues and graces that God
had given him in great measure before; although the
same Sulpitius write that he was nothing tainted or
altered in his habit, diet, or personal demeanour from
that simple plainness to which he first betook himself.
It was not therefore that thing alone which God took
displeasure at in the bishops of those times, but rather
an universal rottenness and gangrene in the whole
function.
h From hence then I pass to Queen Elizabeth, the next
protestant prince, in whose days why religion attained
not a perfect reducement in the beginning of her reign,
I suppose the hindering causes will be found to be
common with some formerly alleged for King Edward
VI; the greenness of the times, the weak estate which
Queen Mary left the realm in, the great places and
offices executed by papists, the judges, the lawyers,
the justices of peace for the most part popish, the
bishops firm to Rome; from whence was to be expected
the furious flashing of excommunications, and absolv-
ing the people from their obedience. Next, her private
counsellors, whoever they were, persuaded her (as
Camden writes) that the altering of ccclesiastical policy
would move sedition. Then was the liturgy given to
a number of moderate divines, and Sir Thomas Smith
a statesman, to be purged and physicked : and surely
they were moderate divines indeed, neither hot nor
cold ; and Grindal the best of them, afterwards arch-
bishop of Canterbury, lost favour in the court, and I
think was discharged the government of his see, for
favouring the ministers, though Camden seem willing
to find another cause: therefore about her second year,
in a parliament, of men and minds some scarce well
grounded, others belching the sour crudities of yester-
day's popery, those constitutions of Edward VI, which
as you heard before no way satisfied the men that made
them, are now established for best, and not to be mend-
ed. From that time followed nothing but imprison-
ments, troubles, disgraces on all those that found fault
with the decrees of the convocation, and straight were
they branded with the name of puritans. As for the
queen herself, she was made believe that by putting
down bishops her prerogative would be infringed, of
which shall be spoken anon as the course of method
brings it in : and why the prelates laboured it should
be so thought, ask not them, but ask their bellies.
They had found a good tabernacle, they sate under a
spreading vine, their lot was fallen in a fair inherit-
ance. And these perhaps were the chief impeachments
of a more sound rectifying the church in the queen's
time.
*From this period I count to begin our times, which
because they concern us more nearly, and our own
eyes and ears can give us the ampler scope to judge,
will require a more exact search; and to effect this the
speedier, I shall distinguish such as I esteem to be the
hinderers of reformation into three sorts, Antiquitarians
(for so I had rather call them than antiquaries, whose
labours are useful and laudable). 2. Libertines. 3. Po-
liticians.
º, To the votarists of antiquity I shall think to have
fully answered, if I shall be able to prove out of anti-
quity, First, that if they will conform our bishops to
OF REFORMATION IN ENGLAND. 5
the purer times, they must mew their feathers, and
their pounces, and make but curtailed bishops of them ;
and we know they hate to be docked and clipped, as
much as to be put down outright. Secondly, that those
purer times were corrupt, and their books corrupted
soon aſter. Thirdly, that the best of those that then
wrote disclaim that any man should repose on them,
and send all to the Scriptures.
ſ'ſ First therefore, if those that overaffect antiquity
will follow the square thereof, their bishops must be
elected by the hands of the whole church. The an-
cientest of the extant fathers, Ignatius, writing to the
Philadelphians, saith, “that it belongs to them as to
the church of God to choose a bishop.” Let no man
cavil, but take the church of God as meaning the whole
consistence of orders and members, as St. Paul's epis-
tles express, and this likewise being read over : besides
this, it is there to be marked, that those Philadelphians
are exhorted to choose a bishop of Antioch. Whence
it seems by the way that there was not that wary limi-
tation of diocese in those times, which is confirmed
even by a fast friend of episcopacy, Camden, who can-
not but love bishops as well as old coins, and his much
lamented monasteries, for antiquity’s sake. He writes
in his description of Scotland, “That over all the world
bishops had no certain diocese till pope Dionysius about
the year 268 did cut them out; and that the bishops of
Scotland executed their function in what place soever
they came indifferently, and without distinction, till
King Malcolm the Third, about the year 1070.” Whence
may be guessed what their function was: was it to go
about circled with a band of rooking officials, with
cloakbags full of citations, and processes to be served
by a corporality of griffonlike promoters and apparitors?
Did he go about to pitch down his court, as an empiric
does his bank, to inveigle in all the money of the coun-
try? No, certainly, it would not have been permitted him
to exercise any such function indifferently wherever he
came. And verily some such matter it was as want of
a fat diocese that kept our Britain bishops so poor in
the primitive times, that being called to the council of
Ariminum in the year 359, they had not where withal
to defray the charges of their journey, but were fed
and lodged upon the emperor's cost; which must needs
be no accidental but usual poverty in them: for the
author, Sulpitius Severus, in his 2d book of Church-
History, praises them, and avouches it praiseworthy in
a bishop to be so poor as to have nothing of his own.
But to return to the ancient election of bishops, that it
could not lawfully be without the consent of the people
is so express in Cyprian, and so often to be met with,
that to cite each place at large, were to translate a
good part of the volume; therefore touching the chief
passages, I refer the rest to whom so list peruse the
author himself: in the 24th epistle, “If a bishop,”
saith he, “be once made and allowed by the testimony
and judgment of his colleagues and the people, no
other can be made.” In the 55th, “When a bishop is
made by the suffrage of all the people in peace.” In
the 68th mark but what he says; “The people chiefly
hath power either of choosing worthy ones, or reſ.using
unworthy:” this he there proves by authorities out of
the Old and New Testament, and with solid reasons:
these were his antiquities.
7This voice of the people, to be had cver in episcopal
elections, was so well known before Cyprian's time,
even to those that were without the church, that the
emperor Alexander Severus desired to have his gover-
nors of provinces chosen in the same manner, as Lam-
pridius can tell; so little thought it he offensive to
monarchy. And if single authorities persuade not,
hearken what the whole general council of Nicaea, the
first and famousest of all the rest, determines, writing
a synodical epistle to the African churches, to warn
them of Arianism; it exhorts them to choose orthodox
bishops in the place of the dead, so they be worthy,
and the people choose them ; whereby they seem to
make the people's assent so necessary, that merit, with-
out their free choice, were not sufficient to make a
bishop. What would ye say now, grave fathers, if you
should wake and see unworthy bishops, or rather no
bishops, but Egyptian taskmasters of ceremonies thrust
purposely upon the groaning church, to the affliction
and vexation of God's people It was not of old that
a conspiracy of bishops could frustrate and ſob off the
right of the people; for we may read how St. Martin,
soon after Constantine, was made bishop of Turin in
France, by the people's consent from all places there-
about, maugre all the opposition that the bishops could
make. Thus went matters of the church almost 400
years after Christ, and very probably far lower: for
Nicephorus Phocas the Greek emperor, whose reign
fell near the 1000 year of our Lord, having done many
things tyrannically, is said by Cedrenus to have done
nothing more grievous and displeasing to the people,
than to have enacted that no bishop should be chosen
without his will; so long did this right remain to the
people in the midst of other palpable corruptions. Now
for episcopal dignity, what it was, see out of Ignatius,
who in his epistle to those of Trallis, conſesseth, “That
the presbyters are his fellow-counsellors and fellow-
benchers.” And Cyprian in many places, as in the 6th,
41st, 52d epistles, speaking of presbyters, calls them
his compresbyters, as if he deemed himself no other,
whenas by the same place it appears he was a bishop;
he calls them brethren, but that will be thought his
meekness : yea, but the presbyters and deacons writing
to him think they do him honour enough, when they
phrase him no higher than brother Cyprian, and dear
Cyprian in the 26th epistle. For their authority it is
evident not to have been single, but depending on the
counsel of the presbyters as from Ignatius was erewhile
alleged; and the same Cyprian acknowledges as much
in the 6th epistle, and adds thereto, that he had deter-
mined, from his entrance into the office of bishop, to do
nothing without the consent of his people, and so in
the 31st epistle, for it were tedious to course through all
his writings, which are so full of the like assertions,
insomuch that even in the womb and centre of apos-
tasy, Rome itself, there yet remains a glimpse of this
truth ; for the pope himself, as a learned English
writer notes well, performeth all ecclesiastical jurisdic-
OF REFORMATION IN ENGLAND.

tion as in consistory among his cardinals, which were
originally but the parish priests of Rome. Thus then
did the spirit of unity and meckness inspire and ani-
mate every joint and sinew of the mystical body; but
now the gravest and worthiest minister, a true bishop
of his fold, shall be reviled and ruffled by an insulting
and only canon-wise prelate, as if he were some slight
paltry companion; and the people of God, redeemed
and washed with Christ's blood, and dignified with so
many glorious titles of saints and sons in the gospel,
are now no better reputed than impure ethnics and lay
dogs; stones, and pillars, and crucifixes, have now the
honour and the alms due to Christ's living members;
the table of communion, now become a table of separa-
tion, stands like an exalted platform upon the brow of
the quire, fortified with bulwark and barricado, to keep
off the profane touch of the laics, whilst the obscene
and surfeited priest scruples not to paw and mammoc
the sacramental bread, as familiarly as his tavern bis-
cuit. And thus the people, vilified and rejected by
them, give over the earnest study of virtue and godli-
ness, as a thing of greater purity than they need, and
the search of divine knowledge as a mystery too high
for their capacities, and only for churchmen to meddle
with ; which is what the prelates desire, that when
they have brought us back to popish blindness, we
might commit to their dispose the whole managing of
our salvation, for they think it was never fair world
with them since that time. But he that will mould a
modern bishop into a primitive, must yield him to be
elected by the popular voice, undiocesed, unrevenued,
unlorded, and leave him nothing but brotherly equality,
matchless temperance, frequent fasting, incessant prayer
and preaching, continual watchings and labours in his
ministry; which what a rich booty it would be, what
a plump endowment to the many-benefice-gaping-
mouth of a prelate, what a relish it would give to his
canary-sucking and swan-eating palate, let old bishop
Mountain judge for me.
# How little therefore those ancient times make for
modern bishops, hath been plainly discoursed; but let
them make for them as much as they will, yet why we
ought not to stand to their arbitrement, shall now ap-
pear by a threefold corruption which will be found
upon them. 1. The best times were spreadingly in-
fected. 2. The best men of those times foully tainted.
3. The best writings of those men dangerously adul-
terated. These positions are to be made good out of
those times witnessing of themselves. First, Ignatius
in his early days testifies to the churches of Asia, that
even then heresies were sprung up, and rise every where,
as Eusebius relates in his 3d book, 35th chap, after
the Greek number. And Hegesippus, a grave church
writer of prime antiquity, affirms in the same book of
Eusebius, c. 32: “That while the apostles were on
earth, the depravers of doctrine did but lurk; but they
once gone, with open forehead they durst preach down
the truth with falsities.” Yea, those that are reckoned
for orthodox, began to make sad and shameful rents in
the church about the trivial celebration of feasts, not
agreeing when to keep Easter-day; which controversy
grew so hot, that Victor the bishop of Rome excom-
municated all the churches of Asia for no other cause,
and was worthily thereof reproved by Irenaeus. For
can any sound theologer think, that these great fathers
understood what was gospel, or what was excommuni-
cation ? Doubtless that which led the good men into
fraud and errour was, that they attended more to the
near tradition of what they heard the apostles some-
times did, than to what they had left written, not con-
sidering that many things which they did were by the
apostles themselves professed to be done only for the
present, and of mere indulgence to some scrupulous
converts of the circumcision, but what they writ was
of firm decree to all future ages. Look but a century
lower in the 1st cap. of Eusebius 8th book. What a
universal tetter of impurity had envenomed every part,
order, and degree of the church, to omit the lay herd,
which will be little regarded, “those that seem to be
our pastors,” saith he, “overturning the law of God's
worship, burnt in contentions one towards another, and
increasing in hatred and bitterness, outrageously sought
to uphold lordship, and command as it were a tyranny.”
Stay but a little, magnanimous bishops, suppress your
aspiring thoughts, for there is nothing wanting but
Constantine to reign, and then tyranny herself shall
give up all her citadels into your hands, and count ye
thenceſorward her trustiest agents. Such were these
that must be called the ancientest and most virgin
times between Christ and Constantine. Nor was this
general contagion in their actions, and not in their
writings: who is ignorant of the ſoul errours, the ridi-
culous wresting of Scripture, the heresies, the vanities
thick sown through the volumes of Justin Martyr,
Clemens, Origen, Tertullian, and others of eldest time 2
Who would think him fit to write an apology for
christian faith to the Roman senate, that would tell
them “how of the angels,” which he must needs mean
those in Genesis called, the sons of God, “mixing with
women were begotten the devils,” as good Justin Mar-
tyr in his Apology told them 2 But more indignation
would it move to any Christian that shall read Tertul-
lian, terming St. Paul a novice, and raw in grace, for
reproving St. Peter at Antioch, worthy to be blamed if
we believe the epistle to the Galatians: perhaps from
this hint the blasphemous Jesuits presumed in Italy to
give their judgment of St. Paul, as of a hotheaded per-
son, as Sandys in his relations tells us.
3& Now besides all this, who knows not how many
superstitious works are ingraffed into the legitimate
writings of the fathers? And of those books that pass
for authentic, who knows what hath been tampered
withal, what hath been razed out, what hath been in-
serted P Besides the late legerdemain of the papists,
that which Sulpitius writes concerning Origen's books,
gives us cause vehemently to suspect, there hath been
packing of old. In the third chap. of his 1st Dialogue
we may read what wrangling the bishops and monks
had about the reading or not reading of Origen; some
objecting that he was corrupted by heretics, others an-
swering that all such books had been so dealt with.
How then shall I trust these times to lead me, that
OF REFORMATION IN ENGLAND. 7
testify so ill of leading themselves? Certainly of their
defects their own witness may be best received, but of
the rectitude and sincerity of their life and doctrine, to
judge rightly, we must judge by that which was to be
their rule.
24 But it will be objected, that this was an unsettled
state of the church, wanting the temporal magistrate
to suppress the licence of false brethren, and the ex-
travagancy of still new opinions; a time not imitable
for church government, where the temporal and spirit-
ual power did not close in one belief, as under Con-
stantine. I am not of opinion to think the church a
vine in this respect, because, as they take it, she cannot
subsist without clasping about the elm of worldly
strength and felicity, as if the heavenly city could not
support itself without the props and buttresses of secu-
lar authority. They extol Constantine because he
extolled them; as our homebred monks in their his-
tories blanch the kings their benefactors, and brand
, those that went about to be their correctors. If he had
curbed the growing pride, avarice, and luxury of the
clergy, then every page of his story should have swell-
ed with his faults, and that which Zozimus the heathen
writes of him should have come in to boot: we should
have heard then in every declamation how he slew his
nephew Commodus, a worthy man, his noble and eld-
est son Crispus, his wife Fausta, besides numbers of
his friends; then his cruel exactions, his unsoundness
in religion, favouring the Arians that had been con-
demned in a council, of which himself sat as it were
president; his hard measure and banishment of the
faithful and invincible Athanasius; his living unbap-
tized almost to his dying day; these blurs are too ap-
parent in his life. But since he must needs be the
loadstar of reformation, as some men clatter, it will be
good to see further his knowledge of religion what it
was, and by that we may likewise guess at the sin-
cerity of his times in those that were not heretical, it
being likely that he would converse with the famous-
est prelates (for so he had made them) that were to be
found for learning.
**Of his Arianism we heard, and for the rest a pretty
scantling of his knowledge may be taken by his de-
ferring to be baptized so many years, a thing not
usual, and repugnant to the tenour of Scripture; Philip
knowing nothing that should hinder the eunuch to
be baptized after profession of his belief. Next, by
the excessive devotion, that I may not say superstition,
both of him and his mother Helena, to find out the
cross on which Christ suffered, that had long lain
under the rubbish of old ruins; (a thing which the dis-
ciples and kindred of our Saviour might with more
ease have done, if they had thought it a pious duty;)
some of the nails whereof he put into his helmet, to
bear off blows in battle, others he fastened among the
studs of his bridle, to fulfil (as he thought, or his court
bishops persuaded him) the prophecy of Zechariah ;
“And it shall be that which is in the bridle shall be
holy to the Lord.” Part of the cross, in which he
thought such virtue to reside, as would prove a kind of
Palladium to save the city wherever it remained, he
caused to be laid up in a pillar of porphyry by his
statue. How he or his teachers could trifle thus with
half an eye open upon St. Paul's principles, I know
not how to imagine.
* @How should then the dim taper of this emperor's
age, that had such need of snuffing, extend any beam
to our times, where with we might hope to be better
lighted, than by those luminaries that God hath set up
to shine to us far nearer hand. And what reformation
he wrought for his own time, it will not be amiss to
consider; he appointed certain times for fasts and feasts,
built stately churches, gave large immunities to the
clergy, great riches and promotions to bishops, gave
and ministered occasion to bring in a deluge of cere-
monies, thereby either to draw in the heathen by a
resemblance of their rites, or to set a gloss upon the
simplicity and plainness of Christianity; which, to the
gorgeous solemnities of paganism, and the sense of the
world's children, seemed but a homely and yeomanly
religion; for the beauty of inward sanctity was not
within their prospect.
*So that in this manner the prelates, both then and ever
since, coming from a mean and plebeian life on a sudden
to be lords of stately palaces, rich furniture, delicious
fare, and princely attendance, thought the plain and
homespun verity of Christ's gospel unfit any longer to
hold theirlordships’ acquaintance, unless the poor thread-
bare matron were put into better clothes: her chaste and
modest wail, surrounded with celestial beams, they over-
laid with wanton tresses, and in a staring tire bespeckled
her with all the gaudy allurements of a whore.
.#Thus flourished the church with Constantine's wealth,
and thereafter were the effects that followed; his son
Constantius proved a flat Arian, and his nephew Julian
an apostate, and there his race ended : the church that
before by insensible degrees well:ed and impaired, now
with large steps went down hill decaying: at this time
Antichrist began first to put forth his horn, and that
saying was common, that former times had wooden
chalices and golden priests; but they, golden chalices
and wooden priests. “Formerly,” saith Sulpitius,
“martyrdom by glorious death was sought more gree-
dily than now bishoprics by vile ambition are hunted
after,” speaking of these times: and in another place,
“ they gape after possessions, they tend lands and liv-
ings, they cower over their gold, they buy and sell :
and if there be any that neither possess nor traffic, that
which is worse, they set still, and expect gifts, and pros-
titute every endowment of grace, every holy thing, to
sale.” And in the end of his history thus he concludes:
“All things went to wrack by the faction, wilfulness,
and avarice of the bishops; and by this means God's
people, and every good man, was had in scorn and de-
rision;” which St. Martin found truly to be said by
his friend Sulpitius; for, being held in admiration of
all men, he had only the bishops his enemies, found
God less favourable to him after he was bishop than
before, and for his last sixteen years would come at no
bishop's meeting. Thus you see, sir, what Constan-
tine's doings in the church brought forth, either in his
own or in his son's reign.
8
OF REFORMATION IN ENGLAND.
s
,-, *,
sº
Me,
$º *
£Now, lest it should be thought that something else
might ail this author thus to hamper the bishops of
those days, I will bring you the opinion of three the
famousest men for wit and learning that Italy at this
day glories of, whereby it may be concluded for a re-
ceived opinion, even among men professing the Romish
faith, that Constantine marred all in the church.
Dante, in his 19th Canto of Inferno, hath thus, as I
will render it you in English blank verse :
Ah Constantine ! of how much ill was cause
Not thy conversion, but those rich domains
That the first wealthy pope receiv'd of thee!
º So, in his 20th Canto of Paradise, he makes the
like complaint, and Petrarch seconds him in the same
mind in his 108th sonnet, which is wiped out by the
inquisitor in some editions; speaking of the Roman
Antichrist as merely bred up by Constantine.
Founded in chaste and humble poverty,
'Gainst them that rais’d thee dost thou lift thy horn,
Impudent whore, where hast thou plac'd thy hope
In thy adulterers, or thy ill-got wealth?
Another Constantine comes not in haste.
g Ariosto of Ferrara, after both these in time, but
equal in fame, following the scope of his poem in a
difficult knot how to restore Orlando his chief hero to
his lost senses, brings Astolſo the English knight up
into the moon, where St. John, as he feigns, met him.
Cant. 34.
And to be short, at last his guide him brings
Into a goodly valley, where he sees
A mighty mass of things strangely confus'd,
Things that on earth were lost, or were abus’d.
f And amongst these so abused things, listen what he
met withal, under the conduct of the Evangelist.
Then past he to a flowery mountain green,
Which once smelt sweet, now stinks as odiously :
This was that gift (if you the truth will have)
g” That Constantime to good Sylvestro gave.
“And this was a truth well known in England before
this poet was born, as our Chaucer's Ploughman shall
tell you by and by upon another occasion. By all these
circumstances laid together, I do not see how it can be
disputed what good this emperor Constantine wrought
to the church, but rather whether ever any, though
perhaps not wittingly, set open a door to more mis-
chief in christendom. There is just cause therefore,
that when the prelates cry out, Let the church be re-
formed according to Constantine, it should sound to a
judicious ear no otherwise, than if they should say,
Make us rich, make us lofty, make us lawless; for if
any under him were not so, thanks to those ancient re-
mains of integrity, which were not yet quite worn out,
and not to his government.
Thus finally it appears, that those purer times were
not such as they are cried up, and not to be followed
without suspicion, doubt, and danger. The last point
wherein the antiquary is to be dealt with at his own
weapon, is, to make it manifest that the ancientest and
best of the fathers have disclaimed all sufficiency in
themselves that men should rely on, and sent all
comers to the Scriptures, as allsuſficient: that this is
true, will not be unduly gathered, by shewing what
esteem they had of antiquity themselves, and what va-
lidity they thought in it to prove doctrine or discipline.
I must of necessity begin from the second rank of
fathers, because till then antiquity could have no plea.
Cyprian in his 63d Epistle: “If any,” saith he, “of
our ancestors, either ignorantly or out of simplicity,
hath not observed that which the Lord taught us by
example,” speaking of the Lord's supper, “his simpli-
city God may pardon of his mercy; but we cannot
be excused for following him, being instructed by the
Lord.” And have not we the same instructions; and
will not this holy man, with all the whole consistory
of saints and martyrs that lived of old, rise up and
stop our mouths in judgment, when we shall go about to
father our errours and opinions upon their authority 2
In the 73d Epist, he adds, “In vain do they oppose
custom to us, if they be overcome by reason; as if cus-
tom were greater than truth, or that in spiritual things
that were not to be followed, which is revealed for the
better by the Holy Ghost.” In the 74th, “Neither
ought custom to hinder that truth should not prevail;
for custom without truth is but agedness of errour.”
Next Lactantius, he that was preferred to have the
bringing up of Constantine's children, in his second
book of Institutions, chap. 7 and 8, disputes against the
vain trust in antiquity, as being the chiefest argument
of the Heathen against the Christians: “They do not
consider,” saith he, “what religion is, but they are
confident it is true, because the ancients delivered it;
they count it a trespass to examine it.” And in the
eighth : “Not because they went before us in time,
therefore in wisdom; which being given alike to all
ages, cannot be prepossessed by the ancients: where-
fore, seeing that to seek the truth is inbred to all, they
bereave themselves of wisdom, the gift of God, who
without judgment follow the ancients, and are led by
others like brute beasts.” St. Austin writes to Fortu-
natian, that “he counts it lawful, in the books of
whomsoever, to reject that which he finds otherwise
than true; and so he would have others deal by him.”
He neither accounted, as it seems, those fathers that
went before, nor himself, nor others of his rank, for
men of more than ordinary spirit, that might equally
deceive, and be deceived : and ofttimes setting our ser-
vile humours aside, yea, God so ordering we may find
truth with one man, as soon as in a council, as Cyprian
agrees, 71st Epist. “Many things,” saith he, “are bet-
ter revealed to single persons.” At Nicae, in the first
and best-reputed council of all the world, there had
gone out a canon to divorce married priests, had not
one old man, Paphnutius, stood up and reasoned
against it.
Now remains it to shew clearly that the fathers refer
all decision of controversy to the scriptures, as allsuf.
ficient to direct, to resolve, and to determine. Igna-
tius, taking his last leave of the Asian churches, as he
went to martyrdom, exhorted them to adhere close to
the written doctrine of the apostles, necessarily written

OF REFORMATION IN ENGLAND. 9
for posterity: so far was he from unwritten traditions,
as may be read in the 36th chap. of Eusebius, 3d b. In
the 74th Epist. of Cyprian against Stefan, bishop of
Rome, imposing upon him a tradition; “Whence,”
quoth he, “is this tradition 2 Is it fetched from the
authority of Christ in the gospel, or of the apostles in
their epistles 2 for God testifies that those things are
to be done which are written.” And then thus, “What
obstinacy, what presumption is this, to prefer human
tradition before divine ordinance º’ And in the same
epist. “if we shall return to the head, and beginning of
divine tradition, (which we all know he means the
Bible,) human errour ceases; and the reason of heavenly
mysteries unfolded, whatsoever was obscure becomes
clear.” And in the 14th distinct. of the same epist.
directly against our modern fantasies of a still visible
church, he teaches, “that succession of truth may fail;
to renew which, we must have recourse to the foun-
tains ;” using this excellent similitude, “if a channel,
or conduit-pipe which brought in water plentifully be-
fore, suddenly fail, do we not go to the fountain to
know the cause, whether the spring affords no more, or
whether the vein be stopped, or turned aside in the
midcourse? Thus ought we to do, keeping God's pre-
cepts, that if in aught the truth shall be changed, we
may repair to the gospel and to the apostles, that thence
may arise the reason of our doings, from whence our
order and beginning arose.” In the 75th he inveighs
bitterly against pope Stephanus, “for that he could
boast his succession from Peter, and yet foist in tra-
ditions that were not apostolical.” And in his book of
the unity of the church, he compares those that, neg-
lecting God's word, follow the doctrines of men, to
Corah, Dathan, and Abiram. The very first page of
Athanasius against the gentiles, avers the scriptures to
be sufficient of themselves for the declaration of truth;
and that if his friend Macarius read other religious
writers, it was but pi\oká\oc come un vertuoso, (as the
Italians say,) as a lover of elegance: and in his second
tome, the 39th page, after he hath reckoned up the
canonical books, “in these only,” saith he, “is the
doctrine of godliness taught; let no man add to these,
or take from these.” And in his Synopsis, having again
set down all the writers of the Old and New Testament,
“these,” saith he, “be the anchors and props of our
faith.” Besides these, millions of other books have
been written by great and wise men according to rule,
and agreement with these, of which I will not now
speak, as being of infinite number, and mere depend-
ance on the canonical books. Basil, in his 2d tome,
writing of true faith, tells his auditors, he is bound to
teach them that which he hath learned out of the
Bible ; and in the same treatise he saith, “that seeing
the commandments of the Lord are faithful, and sure
for ever, it is a plain falling from the faith, and a high
pride, either to make void any thing therein, or to in-
troduce anything not there to be found:” and he gives
the reason, “for Christ saith, My sheep hear my voice,
they will not follow another, but fly from him, because
they know not his voice.” But not to be endless in
quotations, it may chance to be objected, that there be
many opinions in the fathers which have no ground in
Scripture; so much the less, may I say, should we ſol-
low them, for their own words shall condemn them,
and acquit us that lean not on them ; otherwise these
their words will acquit them, and condemn us. But it
will be replied, the Scriptures are difficult to be und r-
stood, and therefore require the explanation of the
fathers. It is true, there be some books, and especially
some places in those books, that remain clouded; yet
ever that which is most necessary to be known is most
easy; and that which is most difficult, so far expounds
itself ever, as to tell us how little it imports our saving
knowledge. Hence, to infer a general obscurity over
all the text, is a mere suggestion of the devil to dis-
suade men from reading it, and casts an aspersion of
dishonour both upon the mercy, truth, and wisdom of
God. We count: it no gentleness or fair dealing in a
man of power amongst us, to require strict and punc-
tual obedience, and yet give out all his commands
ambiguous and obscure, we should think he had a plot
upon us; certainly such commands were no commands,
but snares. The very essence of truth is plainness and
brightness, the darkness and crookedness is our own.
The wisdom of God created understanding, fit and
proportionable to truth, the object and end of it, as the
eye to the thing visible. If our understanding have a
film of ignorance over it, or be blear with gazing on
other false glisterings, what is that to truth 2 If we
will but purge with sovereign eyesalve that intellectual
ray which God hath planted in us, then we would be-
lieve the Scriptures protesting their own plainness and
perspicuity, calling to them to be instructed, not only
the wise and learned, but the simple, the poor, the
babes, foretelling an extraordinary effusion of God’s
Spirit upon every age and sex, attributing to all men,
and requiring from them the ability of searching, try-
ing, examining all things, and by the spirit discerning
that which is good; and as the Scriptures themselves
pronounce their own plainness, so do the fathers testify
of them.
I will not run into a paroxysm of citations again in
this point, only instance Athanasius in his foremen-
tioned first page: “The knowledge of truth,” saith he,
“wants no human lore, as being evident in itself, and
by the preaching of Christ now opens brighter than the
sun.” If these doctors, who had scarce half the light
that we enjoy, who all, except two or three, were ig-
norant of the Hebrew tongue, and many of the Greek,
blundering upon the dangerous and suspectful transla-
tions of the apostate Aquila, the heretical Theodotian,
the judaized Symmachus, the erroneous Origen; if
these could yet find the Bible so easy, why should we
doubt, that have all the helps of learning, and faithful
industry, that man in this life can look for, and the
assistance of God as near now to us as ever ? But let
the Scriptures be hard; are they more hard, more crab-
bed, more abstruse than the fathers 2 He that cannot
understand the sober, plain, and unaffected style of the
Scriptures, will be ten times more puzzled with the
knotty Africanisms, the pampered metaphors, the intri.
cate and involved sentences of the fathers, besides the
10
OF REFORMATION IN ENGLAND.
fantastic and declamatory flashes, the cross-jingling
periods which cannot but disturb, and come thwart a
settled devotion, worse than the din of bells and rattles.
Now, sir, for the love of holy Reformation, what can
be said more against these importunate clients of anti-
quity than she herself their patroness hath said P Whe-
ther, think ye, would she approve still to doat upon
immeasurable, innumerable, and therefore unnecessary
and unmerciful volumes, choosing rather to err with
the specious name of the fathers, or to take a sound
truth at the hand of a plain upright man, that all his
days have been diligently reading the holy Scriptures,
and thereto imploring God's grace, while the admirers
of antiquity have been beating their brains about their
ambones, their dyptichs, and meniaias Now, he that
cannot tell of stations and indictions, nor has wasted
his precious hours in the endless conferring of councils
and conclaves that demolish one another, (although I
know many of those that pretend to be great rabbies
in these studies, have scarce saluted them from the
strings, and the titlepage; or to give them more, have
been but the ferrets and mousehunts of an index :) yet
what pastor or minister, how learned, religious, or dis-
crete soever, does not now bring both his cheeks full
blown with oecumenical and synodical, shall be counted
a lank, shallow, insufficient man, yea a dunce, and not
worthy to speak about reformation of church disci-
pline. But I trust they for whom God hath reserved
the honour of reforming this church, will easily perceive
their adversaries’ drift in thus calling for antiquity:
they fear the plain field of the Scriptures; the chase is
too hot; they seek the dark, the bushy, the tangled
forest, they would imbosk : they feel themselves strook
in the transparent streams of divine truth; they would
plunge, and tumble, and think to lie hid in the foul
weeds and muddy waters, where no plummet can reach
the bottom. But let them beat themselves like whales,
and spend their oil till they be dragged ashore: though
wherefore should the ministers give them so much line
for shifts and delays? wherefore should they not urge
only the gospel, and hold it ever in their faces like a
mirror of diamond, till it dazzle and pierce their misty
eyeballs maintaining it the honour of its absolute
sufficiency and supremacy inviolable: for if the Scrip-
ture be for reformation, and antiquity to boot, it is but
an advantage to the dozen, it is no winning cast: and
though antiquity be against it, while the Scriptures be
for it, the cause is as good as ought to be wished, anti-
quity itself sitting judge.
But to draw to an end; the second sort of those that
may be justly numbered among the hinderers of re-
formation, are libertines; these suggest that the disci-
pline sought would be intolerable: for one bishop now
in a diocese, we should then have a pope in every pa-
rish. It will not be requisite to answer these men, but
only to discover them ; for reason they have none, but
lust and licentiousness, and therefore answer can have
none. It is not any discipline that they could live
under, it is the corruption and remissness of discipline
that they seek. Episcopacy duly executed, yea, the
Turkish and Jewish rigour against whoring and drink-
ing ; the dear and tender discipline of a father, the
sociable and loving reproof of a brother, the bosom
admonition of a friend, is a presbytery, and a consistory
to them. It is only the merry friar in Chaucer can
disple * them.
Full sweetly heard he confession,
And pleasant was his absolution,
He was an easy man to give penance.
And so I leave them; and refer the political discourse
of episcopacy to a second book.
OF
RE FORMATION
IN ENGLAND.
THE SECOND BOOK.
SIR,
! It is a work good and prudent to be able to guide one
man; of larger extended virtue to order well one house:
but to govern a nation piously and justly, which only
is to say happily, is for a spirit of the greatest size, and
divinest mettle. And certainly of no less a mind, nor
of less excellence in another way, were they who by
writing laid the solid and true foundations of this
science, which being of greatest importance to the life
* A contraction of disciple.
of man, yet there is no art that hath been more cankered
in her principles, more soiled, and slubbered with apho-
risming pedantry, than the art of policy; and that
most, where a man would think should least be, in
christian commonwealths. They teach not, that to
govern well, is to train up a nation in true wisdom and
virtue, and that which springs from thence, magnani-
mity, (take heed of that,) and that which is our begin-
OF REFORMATION IN ENGLAND. | 1
ning, regeneration, and happiest end, likeness to God,
which in one word we call godliness; and that this is
the true flourishing of a land, other things follow as
the shadow does the substance; to teach thus were
mere pulpitry to them. This is the masterpiece of a
modern politician, how to qualify and mould the suf-
ferance and subjection of the people to the length of
that foot that is to tread on their necks; how rapine
may serve itself with the fair and honourable pretences
of public good; how the puny law may be brought
under the wardship and control of lust and will : in
which attempt if they fall short, then must a superficial
colour of reputation by all means, direct or indirect, be
gotten to wash over the unsightly bruise of honour.
To make men governable in this manner, their precepts
mainly tend to break a national spirit and courage, by
countenancing open riot, luxury, and ignorance, till
having thus disfigured and made men beneath men, as
Juno in the fable of Io, they deliver up the poor trans-
formed heifer of the commonwealth to be stung and
vexed with the breese and goad of oppression, under
the custody of some Argus with a hundred eyes of
jealousy. To be plainer, sir, how to sodder, how to
stop a leak, how to keep up the floating carcase of a
crazy and diseased monarchy or state, betwixt wind
and water, swimming still upon her own dead lees, that
now is the deep design of a politician. Alas, sir! a
commonwealth ought to be but as one huge christian
personage, one mighty growth and stature of an honest
man, as big and compact in virtue as in body; for look
what the grounds and causes are of single happiness
to one man, the same ye shall find them to a whole
state, as Aristotle, both in his Ethics and Politics, from
the principles of reason lays down : by consequence,
therefore, that which is good and agreeable to mo-
marchy, will appear soonest to be so, by being good
and agreeable to the true welfare of every Christian ;
and'that which can be justly proved hurtful and offen-
sive to every true Christian, will be evinced to be alike
hurtful to monarchy: for God forbid that we should
separate and distinguish the end and good of a monarch,
from the end and good of the monarchy, or of that, from
Christianity. How then this third and last sort that
hinder reformation, will justify that it stands not with
reason of state, I much muse; for certain I am, the
Bible is shut against them, as certain that neither Plato
nor Aristotle is for their turns. What they can bring
us now from the schools of Loyola with his Jesuits, or
their Malvezzi, that can cut Tacitus into slivers and
steaks, we shall presently hear. They allege, 1. That
the church government must be conformable to the civil
polity; next, that no form of church-government is
agreeable to monarchy, but that of bishops. Must
church-government that is appointed in the gospel, and
has chief respect to the soul, be conformable and pliant
to civil, that is arbitrary, and chiefly conversant about
the visible and external part of man? This is the very
maxim that moulded the calves of Bethel and of Dan;
this was the quintessence of Jeroboam's policy, he
made religion conform to his politic interests; and this
was the sin that watched over the Israelites till their
final captivity. If this state principle come from the
prelates, as they affect to be counted statists, let them
look back to Eleutherius bishop of Rome, and see what
he thought of the policy of England ; being required
by Lucius, the first christian king of this island, to
give his counsel for the founding of religious laws,
little thought he of this sage caution, but bids him be-
take himself to the Old and New Testament, and re-
ceive direction from them how to administer both church
and commonwealth; that he was God's vicar, and there-
fore to rule by God's laws; that the edicts of Caesar
we may at all times disallow, but the statutes of God
for no reason we may reject. Now certain, if church-
government be taught in the gospel, as the bishops
dare not deny, we may well conclude of what late
standing this position is, newly calculated for the alti-
tude of bishop-elevation, and lettuce for their lips. But
by what example can they shew, that the form of
church-discipline must be minted and modelled out to
secular pretences 2 The ancient republic of the Jews
is evident to have run through all the changes of civil
estate, if we survey the story from the giving of the
law to the Herods; yet did one manner of priestly go-
vernment serve without inconvenience to all these tem-
poral mutations; it served the mild aristocracy of elec-
tive dukes, and heads of tribes joined with them ; the
dictatorship of the judges, the easy or hardhanded mo-
narchies, the domestic or foreign tyrannies: lastly, the
Roman senate from without, the Jewish senate at home,
with the Galilean tetrarch ; yet the Levites had some
right to deal' in civil affairs: but seeing the evan-
gelical precept forbids churchmen to intermeddle with
worldly employments, what interweavings or inter-
workings can knit the minister and the magistrate in
their several functions, to the regard of any precise
correspondency * Seeing that the churchman’s office is
only to teach men the christian faith, to exhort all, to
encourage the good, to admonish the bad, privately the
less offender, publicly the scandalous and stubborn ; to
censure and separate, from the communion of Christ's
flock, the contagious and incorrigible, to receive with
joy and fatherly compassion the penitent: all this must
be done, and more than this is beyond any church-
authority. What is all this either here or there, to the
temporal regiment of weal public, whether it be popu-
lar, princely, or monarchical ? Where doth it entrench
upon the temporal governor 2 where does it come in
his walk 2 where doth it make inroad upon his juris-
diction f Indeed if the minister's part be rightly dis-
charged, it renders him the people more conscionable,
quiet, and easy to be governed; if otherwise, his life
and doctrine will declare him. If, therefore, the con-
stitution of the church be already set down by divine
prescript, as all sides confess, then can she not be a
handmaid to wait on civil commodities and respects;
and if the nature and limits of church-discipline be
such, as are either helpful to all political estates indif.
ferently, or have no particular relation to any, then is
there no necessity, nor indeed possibility, of linking
the one with the other in a special conformation.
§ Now for their second conclusion, “That no form of
12
OF REFORMATION IN ENGLAND.
church-government is agreeable to monarchy, but that
of bishops,” although it fall to pieces of itself by that
which hath been said; yet to give them play, front
and rear, it shall be my task to prove that episcopacy,
with that authority which it challenges in England, is
not only not agreeable, but tending to the destruction
of monarchy. While the primitive pastors of the church
of God laboured faithfully in their ministry, tending
only their sheep, and not seeking, but avoiding all
worldly matters as clogs, and indeed derogations and
debasements to their high calling; little needed the
princes and potentates of the earth, which way soever
the gospel was spread, to study ways out to make a
coherence between the church's polity and theirs: there-
fore, when Pilate heard once our Saviour Christ pro-
fessing that “ his kingdom was not of this world,” he
thought the man could not stand much in Caesar's
light, nor much endamage the Roman' empire; for if
the life of Christ be hid to this world, much more is his
sceptre unoperative, but in spiritual things. And thus
lived, for two or three ages, the successors of the apos-
tles. But when, through Constantine's lavish super-
stition, they forsook their first love, and set themselves
up two gods instead, Mammon and their Belly; then
taking advantage of the spiritual power which they
had on men's consciences, they began to cast a long-
ing eye to get the body also, and bodily things into
their command: upon which their carnal desires, the
spirit daily quenching and dying in them, knew no
way to keep themselves up from falling to nothing,
but by bolstering and supporting their inward rotten-
mess by a carnal and outward strength. For a while they
rather privily sought opportunity, than hastily disclosed
their project; but when Constantine was dead, and
three or four emperors more, their drift became noto-
rious and offensive to the whole world ; for while The-
odosius the younger reigned, thus writes Socrates the
historian, in his 7th book, chap. 11. “Now began an
ill name to stick upon the bishops of Rome and Alex-
andria, who beyond their priestly bounds now long ago
had stepped into principality: ” and this was scarce
eighty years since their raising from the meanest
worldly condition. Of courtesy now let any man tell
me, if they draw to themselves a temporal strength and
power out of Caesar's dominion, is not Caesar's empire
thereby diminished P But this was a stolen bit, hitherto
he was but a caterpillar secretly gnawing at monarchy;
the next time you shall see him a wolf, a lion, liſting
his paw against his raiser, as Petrarch expressed it,
and finally an open enemy and subverter of the Greek
empire. Philippicus and Leo, with divers other
emperors after them, not without the advice of their
patriarchs, and at length of a whole eastern council
of three hundred and thirty-eight bishops, threw
the images out of churches as being decreed idola-
tl'OuS.
3 Upon this goodly occasion, the bishop of Rome not
only seizes the city, and all the territory about, into his
own hands, and makes himself lord thereof, which till
then was governed by a Greek magistrate, but absolves
all Italy of their tribute and obedience due to the em-
peror, because he obeyed God’s commandment in
abolishing idolatry.
# Mark, sir, here, how the pope came by St. Peter's
patrimony, as he feigns it; not the donation of Con-
stantine, but idolatry and rebellion got it him. Ye
need but read Sigonius, one of his own sect, to know
the story at large. And now to shroud himself against
a storm from the Greek continent, and provide a cham-
pion to bear him out in these practices, he takes upon
him by papal sentence to unthrone Chilpericus the
rightful king of France, and gives the kingdom to
Pepin, for no other cause, but that he seemed to him
the more active man. If he were a friend herein to
monarchy, I know not; but to the monarch I need not
ask what he was.
J; H aving thus made Pepin his last friend, he calls him
into Italy against Aistulphus the Lombard, that warred
upon him for his late usurpation of Rome, as belonging
to Ravenna which he had newly won. Pepin, not un-
obedient to the pope's call, passing into Italy, frees
him out of danger, and wins for him the whole ex-
archate of Ravenna; which though it had been almost
immediately before the hereditary possession of that
monarchy, which was his chief patron and benefactor,
yet he takes and keeps it to himself as lawful prize,
and given to St. Peter. What a dangerous fallacy is
this, when a spiritual man may snatch to himself any
temporal dignity or dominion, under pretence of re-
ceiving it for the church's use 2 Thus he claims Na-
ples, Sicily, England, and what not? To be short,
under show of his zeal against the errours of the Greek
church, he never ceased baiting and goring the suc-
cessors of his best lord Constantine, what by his
barking curses and excommunications, what by his
hindering the western princes from aiding them against
the Sarazens and Turks, unless when they humoured
him ; so that it may be truly affirmed, he was the sub-
version and fall of that monarchy, which was the hoist-
ing of him. This, besides Petrarch, whom I have
cited, our Chaucer also hath observed, and gives from
hence a caution to England, to beware of her bishops
in time, for that their ends and aims are no more
friendly to monarchy, than the pope's.
(, This he begins in the Ploughman speaking, Part ii.
Stanz. 28.
The emperor yafe the pope sometime
So high lordship him about,
That at last the silly kime,
The proud pope put him out;
So of this realm is no doubt,
But lords beware and them defend ;
For mow these folks be wonders stout,
The king and lords now this amend.
7 And in the next Stanza, which begins the third part
of the tale, he argues that they ought not to be lords.
Moses law forbode it tho
That priests should no lordship welde,
Christ's gospel biddeth also
That they should no lordships held.
Ne Christ’s apostles were never so bold
No such lordships to hem embrace,
But smeren her sheep and keep her fold.
OF REFORMATION IN ENGLAND. 13
And so forward. Whether the bishops of England
have deserved thus to be feared by men so wise as our
Chaucer is esteemed; and how agreeable to our mo-
narchy and monarchs their demeanour has been, he
that is but meanly read in our chronicles needs not be
instructed. Have they not been as the Canaanites, and
Philistines, to this kingdom P what treasons, what re-
volts to the pope P what rebellions, and those the
basest and most pretenceless, have they not been chief
in P What could monarchy think, when Becket durst
challenge the custody of Rochester-castle, and the
Tower of London, as appertaining to his signory To
omit his other insolencies and affronts to regal majesty,
until the lashes inflicted on the anointed body of the
king, washed off the holy unction with his blood
drawn by the polluted hands of bishops, abbots, and
monks.
Ş. What good upholders of royalty were the bishops,
when by their rebellious opposition against King John,
Normandy was lost, he himself deposed, and this king-
dom made over to the pope P When the bishop of Win-
chester durst tell the nobles, the pillars of the realm,
that there were no peers in England, as in France, but
that the king might do what he pleased. What could
tyranny say more? It would be pretty now if I should
insist upon the rendering up of Tournay by Woolsey’s
treason, the excommunications, cursings, and inter-
dicts upon the whole land; for haply I shall be cut off
short by a reply, that these were the faults of men and
their popish errours, not of episcopacy, that hath now
renounced the pope, and is a protestant. Yes, sure; as
wise and famous men have suspected and feared the
protestant episcopacy in England, as those that have
feared the papal.
9 You know, sir, what was the judgment of Padre Paolo,
the great Venetian antagonist of the pope, for it is ex-
tant in the hands of many men, whereby he declares his
fear, that when the hierarchy of England shall light
into the hands of busy and audacious men, or shall
meet with princes tractable to the prelacy, then much
mischief is like to ensue. And can it be nearer hand,
than when bishops shall openly affirm that, no bishop
no king * A trim paradox, and that ye may know
where they have been a begging for it, I will fetch you
the twin brother to it out of the Jesuits’ cell ; they feel-
ing the axe of God's reformation, hewing at the old
and hollow trunk of papacy, and finding the Spaniard
their surest friend, and safest refuge, to sooth him up
in his dream of a fifth monarchy, and withal to uphold
the decrepit papalty, have invented this superpolitic
aphorism, as one terms it, one pope and one king.
ſ ÖSurely there is not any prince in christendom, who,
hearing this rare sophistry, can choose but smile; and
if we be not blind at home, we may as well perceive
that this worthy motto, no bishop no king, is of the
same batch, and infanted out of the same fears, a mere
ague-cake coagulated of a certain fever they have,
presaging their time to be but short: and now like
those that are sinking, they catch round of that which
is likeliest to hold them up ; and would persuade regal
power, that if they dive, he must after. But what
greater debasement can there be to royal dignity,
whose towering and stedfast height rests upon the un-
movable foundations of justice, and heroic virtue, than
to chain it in a dependance of subsisting, or ruining,
to the painted battlements and gaudy rottenness of
prelatry, which want but one puff of the king's to blow
them down like a pasteboard house built of court-
cards P Sir, the little ado which methinks I find in
untacking these pleasant sophisms, puts me into the
mood to tell you a tale ere I proceed further; and Me-
menius Agrippa speed us.
jupon a time the body summoned all the members
to meet in the guild for the common good (as AEsop's
chronicles aver many stranger accidents): the head by
right takes the first seat, and next to it a huge and
monstrous wen little less than the head itself, growing
to it by a narrower excrescency. The members,
amazed, began to ask one another what he was that
took place next their chief ? none could resolve.
Whereat the wen, though unwieldy, with much ado
gets up, and bespeaks the assembly to this purpose :
that as in place he was second to the head, so by due
of merit; that he was to it an ornament, and strength,
and of special near relation; and that if the head should
fail, none were fitter than himself to step into his place:
therefore he thought it for the honour of the body, that
such dignities and rich endowments should be decreed
him, as did adorn, and set out the noblest members.
To this was answered, that it should be consulted.
Then was a wise and learned philosopher sent for, that
knew all the charters, laws, and tenures of the body.
On him it is imposed by all, as chief committee to ex-
amine, and discuss the claim and petition of right put
in by the wen; who soon perceiving the matter, and
wondering at the boldness of such a swoln tumor, Wilt
thou (quoth he) that art but a bottle of vicious and
hardened excrements, contend with the lawful and free-
born members, whose certain number is set by ancient
and unrepealable statute 2 head thou art none, though
thou receive this huge substance from it: what office
bearest thou? what good canst thou shew by thee done
to the commonweal P The wen not easily dashed, re-
plies, that his office was his glory; for so oft as the
soul would retire out of the head from over the steam-
ing vapours of the lower parts to divine contemplation,
with him she found the purest and quietest retreat, as
being most remote from soil and disturbance. Lourdan,
quoth the philosopher, thy folly is as great as thy filth:
know that all the faculties of the soul are confined of
old to their several vessels and ventricles, from which
they cannot part without dissolution of the whole body;
and that thou containest no good thing in thee, but a
heap of hard and loathsome uncleanness, and art to the
head a foul disfigurement and burden, when I have
cut thee off, and opened thee, as by the help of these
implements I will do, all men shall see.
But to return whence was digressed: seeing that
the throne of a king, as the wise king Solomon often
remembers us, “is established in justice,” which is the
universal justice that Aristotle so much praises, con-
taining in it all other virtues, it may assure us that the
14
OF REFORMATION IN ENGLAND.
fall of prelacy, whose actions are so far distant from
justice, cannot shake the least fringe that borders the
royal canopy; but that their standing doth continually
oppose and lay battery to regal safety, shall by that
which follows easily appear. Amongst many second-
ary and accessary causes that support monarchy, these
are not of least reckoning, though common to all other
states; the love of the subjects, the multitude and
valour of the people, and store of treasure. In all
these things hath the kingdom been of late sore weak-
ened, and chiefly by the prelates. First, let any man
consider, that if any prince shall suffer under him a
commission of authority to be exercised, till all the land
groan and cry out, as against a whip of scorpions,
whether this be not likely to lessen, and keel the affec-
tions of the subject. Next, what numbers of faithful
and freeborn Englishmen, and good Christians, have
been constrained to forsake their dearest home, their
friends and kindred, whom nothing but the wide ocean,
and the savage deserts of America, could hide and
shelter from the fury of the bishops ? O sir, if we could
but see the shape of our dear mother England, as poets
are wont to give a personal form to what they please,
how would she appear, think ye, but in a mourning
weed, with ashes upon her head, and tears abundantly
flowing from her eyes, to behold so many of her chil-
dren exposed at once, and thrust from things of dearest
necessity, because their conscience could not assent to
things which the bishops thought indifferent P What
more binding than conscience P What more free than
indifferency P. Cruel then must that indifferency needs
be, that shall violate the strict necessity of conscience;
merciless and inhuman that free choice and liberty that
shall break asunder the bonds of religion | Let the
astrologer be dismayed at the portentous blaze of
comets, and impressions in the air, as foretelling troubles
and changes to states: I shall believe there cannot be
a more ill-boding sign to a nation (God turn the omen
from us!) than when the inhabitants, to avoid insuffer-
able grievances at home, are enforced by heaps to for-
sake their native country. Now, whereas the only
remedy and amends against the depopulation and thin-
ness of a land within, is the borrowed strength of firm
alliance from without, these priestly policies of theirs
having thus exhausted our domestic forces, have gone
the way also to leave us as maked of our firmest and
faithfullest neighbours abroad, by disparaging and
alienating from us all protestant princes and common-
wealths; who are not ignorant that our prelates, and
as many as they can infect, account them no better
than a sort of sacrilegious and puritanical rebels, pre-
ferring the Spaniard our deadly enemy before them,
and set all orthodox writers at nought in comparison
of the Jesuits, who are indeed the only corrupters of
youth and good learning: and I have heard many
wise and learned men in Italy say as much. It can-
not be that the strongest knot of confederacy should
uot daily slacken, when religion, which is the chiefen-
gagement of our league, shall be turned to their re-
proach. . Hence it is that the prosperous and prudent
states of the United Provinces, (whom we ought to
love, if not for themselves, yet for our own good work
in them, they having been in a manner planted and
erected by us, and having been since to us the faithful
watchmen and discoverers of many a popish and Aus-
trian complotted treason, and with us the partners of
many a bloody and victorious battle,) whom the simi-
litude of manners and language, the commodity of
traffick, which founded the old Burgundian league be-
twixt us, but chiefly religion, should bind to us im-
mortally; even'such friends as these, out of some
principles instilled into us by the prelates, have been
often dismissed with distasteful answers, and some-
times unfriendly actions: nor is it to be considered to
the breach of confederate nations, whose mutual interests
is of such high consequence, though their merchants
bicker in the East Indies; neither is it safe, or wary,
or indeed christianly, that the French king, of a differ-
ent faith, should afford our nearest allies as good pro-
tection as we. Sir, I persuade myself, if our zeal to
true religion, and the brotherly usage of our truest
friends, were as notorious to the world, as our pre-
latical schism, and captivity to rochet apophthegms,
we had ere this seen our old conquerors, and afterwards
liegemen the Normans, together with the Britains our
proper colony, and all the Gascoins that are the right-
ful dowry of our ancient kings, come with cap and
knee, desiring the shadow of the English sceptre to
defend them from the hot persecutions and taxes of the
French. But when they come hither, and see a tym-
pany of Spaniolized bishops swaggering in the fore-
top of the state, and meddling to turn and dandle the
royal ball with unskilful and pedantic palms, no mar-
vel though they think it as unsafe to commit religion
and liberty to their arbitrating as to a synagogue of
Jesuits.
3 But what do I stand reckoning upon advantages
and gains lost by the misrule and turbulency of the
prelates ? What do I pick up so thriftily their scatter-
ings and diminishings of the meaner subject, whilst
they by their seditious practices have endangered to
lose the king one third of his main stock P What have
they not done to banish him from his own native
country P But to speak of this as it ought, would ask
a volume by itself.
|#Thus as they have unpeopled the kingdom by ex-
pulsion of so many thousands, as they have endeavour-
ed to lay the skirts of it bare by disheartening and dis-
honouring our loyallest confederates abroad, so have
they hamstrung the valour of the subject by seek-
ing to effeminate us all at home. Well knows every
wise nation, that their liberty consists in manly and
honest labours, in sobriety and rigorous honour to the
marriage-bed, which in both sexes should be bred up
from chaste hopes to loyal enjoyments; and when the
people slacken, and fall to looseness and riot, then do
they as much as if they laid down their necks for some
wild tyrant to get up and ride. Thus learnt Cyrus to
tame the Lydians, whom by arms he could not whilst
they kept themselves from luxury; with one easy pro-
clamation to set up stews, dancing, feasting, and
dicing, he made them soon his slaves. I know not
OF REFORMATION IN ENGLAND.
15
what drift the prelates had, whose brokers they were
to prepare, and supple us either for a foreign invasion or
domestic oppression : but this I am sure, they took the
ready way to despoil us both of manhood and grace at
once, and that in the shamefullest and ungodliest man-
ner, upon that day which God's law, and even our own
reason hath consecrated, that we might have one day
at least of seven set apart wherein to examine and in-
crease our knowledge of God, to meditate and com-
mune of our faith, our hope, our eternal city in heaven,
and to quicken withal the study and exercise of charity;
at such a time that men should be plucked from their
soberest and saddest thoughts, and by bishops, the pre-
tended fathers of the church, instigated, by public
edict, and with earnest endeavour pushed forward to
gaming, jigging, wassailing, and mixed dancing, is a
horror to think! Thus did the reprobate hireling priest
Balaam seek to subdue the Israelites to Moab, if not
by force, then by this devilish policy, to draw them
from the sanctuary of God to the luxurious and ribald
feasts of Baal-peor. Thus have they trespassed not
only against the monarchy of England, but of heaven
also, as others, I doubt not, can prosecute against them.
A: I proceed within my own bounds to shew you next
what good agents they are about the revenues and
riches of the kingdom, which declare of what moment
they are to monarchy, or what avail. Two leeches
they have that still suck, and suck the kingdom, their
ceremonies and their courts. If any man will contend
that ceremonies be lawful under the gospel, he may be
answered other where. This doubtless, that they ought
to be many and overcostly, no true protestant will
affirm. Now I appeal to all wise men, what an ex-
cessive waste of treasure hath been within these few
years in this land, not in the expedient, but in the
idolatrous erection of temples beautified exquisitely to
outvie the papists, the costly and dear-bought scandals
and snares of images, pictures, rich copes, gorgeous
altar-cloths: and by the courses they took, and the
opinions they held, it was not likely any stay would be,
or any end of their madness, where a pious pretext is
so ready at hand to cover their insatiate desires. What
can we suppose this will come to 2 What other mate-
rials than these have built up the spiritual Babel to the
height of her abominations Believe it, sir, right truly
it may be said, that Antichrist is Mammon's son.
The sour leaven of human traditions, mixed in one
putrefied mass with the poisomous dregs of hypo-
crisy in the hearts of prelates, that lie basking in
the sunny warmth of wealth and promotion, is the
serpent's egg that will hatch an Antichrist whereso-
ever, and engender the same monster as big, or little,
as the lump is which breeds him. If the splendour of
gold and silver begin to lord it once again in the
church of England, we shall see Antichrist shortly
wallow here, though his chief kennel be at Rome. If
they had one thought upon God's glory, and the ad-
vancement of Christian faith, they would be a means
that with these expenses, thus profusely thrown away
in trash, rather churches and schools might be built,
where they cry out for want, and more added where
too few are ; a moderate maintenance distributed to
every painful minister, that now scarce sustains his
family with bread, while the prelates revel like Bel-
shazzar with their full carouses in goblets, and vessels
of gold snatched from God's temple; which (I hope)
the worthy men of our land will consider. Now then
for their courts. What a mass of money is drawn from
the veins into the ulcers of the kingdom this way;
their extortions, their open corruptions, the multitude
of hungry and ravenous harpies that swarm about their
offices, declare sufficiently. And what though all this
go not over sea 2 It were better it did : better a penu-
rious kingdom, than where excessive wealth flows into
the graceless and injurious hands of common sponges,
to the impoverishing of good and loyal men, and that
by such execrable, such irreligious courses.
. . If the sacred and dreadful works of holy discipline,
censure, penance, excommunication, and absolution,
where no prophane thing ought to have access, nothing
to be assistant but sage and christianly admonition,
brotherly love, flaming charity and zeal; and then
according to the effects, paternal sorrow, or paternal
joy, mild severity, melting compassion: if such divine
ministeries as these, wherein the angel of the church
represents the person of Christ Jesus, must lie prostitute
to sordid fees, and not pass to and fro between our Sa-
viour, that of free grace redeemed us, and the submis-
sive penitent, without the truckage of perishing' coin,
and the butcherly execution of tormentors, rooks, and
rakeshames sold to lucre ; then have the Babylonish
merchants of souls just excuse. Hitherto, sir, you have
heard how the prelates have weakened and withdrawn
the external accomplishments of kingly prosperity, the
love of the people, their multitude, their valour, their
wealth; mining and sapping the outworks and redoubts
of monarchy. Now hear how they strike at the very
heart and vitals.
!"We know that monarchy is made up of two parts, the
liberty of the subject, and the supremacy of the king.
I begin at the root. See what gentle and benign ſa-
thers they have been to our liberty! Their trade being,
by the same alchymy that the pope uses, to extract
heaps of gold and silver out of the drossy bullion of the
people's sins; and justly fearing that the quicksighted
protestant eye, cleared in great part from the mist of
superstition, may at one time or other look with a good
judgment into these their deceitful pedleries; to gain
as many associates of guiltiness as they can, and to
infect the temporal magistrate with the like lawless,
though not sacrilegious extortion, see awhile what they
do ; they engage themselves to preach, and persuade
an assertion for truth the most false, and to this mo-
narchy the most pernicious and destructive that could
be chosen. What more baneful to monarchy than a
popular commotion, for the dissolution of monarchy
slides aptest into a democracy; and what stirs the Eng-
lishmen, as our wisest writers have observed, sooner to
rebellion, than violent and heavy hands upon their goods
and purses 2 Yet these devout prelates, spight of our
great charter, and the souls of our progenitors that
wrested their liberties out of the Norman gripe with
16
OF REFORMATION IN ENGLAND.
their dearest blood and highest prowess, for these many
years have not ceased in their pulpits wrenching and
spraining the text, to set at naught and trample under
foot all the most sacred and lifeblood laws, statutes, and
acts of parliament, that are the holy covenant of union
and marriage between the king and his realm, by pro-
scribing and confiscating from us all the right we have
to our own bodies, goods, and liberties. What is this but
to blow a trumpet, and proclaim a firecross to an heredi-
tary and perpetual civil war? Thus much against the
subjects’ liberty hath been assaulted by them. Now
how they have spared supremacy, or are likely here-
aſter to submit to it, remains lastly to be considered.
*The emulation that under the old law was in the
king towards the priest, is now so come about in the
gospel, that all the danger is to be feared from the
priest to the king. Whilst the priest's office in the law
was set out with an exterior lustre of pomp and glory,
kings were ambitious to be priests; now priests, not
perceiving the heavenly brightness and inward splen-
dour of their more glorious evangelic ministry, with as
great ambition affect to be kings, as in all their courses
is easy to be observed. Their eyes ever eminent upon
worldly matters, their desires ever thirsting after worldly
employments, instead of diligent and ſervent study in
the Bible, they covet to be expert in canons and decre-
tals, which may enable them to judge and interpose in
temporal causes, however pretended ecclesiasical. Do
they not hoard up pelf, seek to be potent in secular
strength, in state affairs, in lands, lordships, and de-
mains, to sway and carry all before them in high courts
and privy councils, to bring into their grasp the high
and principal offices of the kingdom P Have they not
been told of late to check the common law, to slight
and brave the indiminishable majesty of our highest
court, the lawgiving and sacred parliament? Do they
not plainly labour to exempt churchmen from the ma-
gistrate 2 Yea, so presumptuously as to question and
menace officers that represent the king's person for using
their authority against drunken priests * The cause of
protecting murderous clergymen was the first heart-
burning that swelled up the audacious Becket to the
pestilent and odious vexation of Henry the Second.
Nay more, have not some of their devoted scholars be-
gun, I need not say to nibble, but openly to argue
against the king's supremacy 2 Is not the chief of them
accused out of his own book, and his late canons, to
affect a certain unquestionable patriarchate, indepen-
dent, and unsubordinate to the crown P From whence
having first brought us to a servile state of religion
and manhood, and having predisposed his conditions
with the pope, that lays claim to this land, or some
Pepin of his own creating, it were all as likely for him
to aspire to the monarchy annong us, as that the pope
could find means so on the sudden both to bereave the
emperor of the Roman territory with the favour of
Italy, and by an unexpected friend out of Trance,
while he was in danger to lose his new got purchase,
beyond hope to leap into the ſair exarchate of Ravenna.
13 A good while the pope subtly acted the lamb, writ-
# .
ing to the emperor, “my lord Tiberius, my lord Mau-
ritius;” but no sooner did this his lord pluck at the
images and idols, but he threw off his sheep's clothing,
and started up a wolf, laying his paws upon the em-
peror's right, as forfeited to Peter. Why may not we
as well, having been forewarned at home by our re-
nowned Chaucer, and from abroad by the great and
learned Padre Paolo, from the like beginnings, as we
sce they are, fear the like events P Certainly a wise
and provident king ought to suspect a hierarchy in his
realm, being ever attended, as it is, with two such
greedy purveyors, ambition and usurpation; I say, he
ought to suspect a hierarchy to be as dangerous and
derogatory from his crown as a tetrarchy or a heptar-
chy. Yet now that the prelates had almost attained to
what their insolent and unbridled minds had hurried
them; to thrust the laity under the despotical rule of
the monarch, that they themselves might confine the
monarch to a kind of pupillage under their hierarchy,
observe but how their own principles combat one an-
other, and supplant each one his fellow.
**Having fitted us only for peace, and that a servile
peace, by lessening our numbers, draining our estates,
enfeebling our bodies, cowing our free spirits by those
ways as you have heard, their impotent actions cannot
sustain themselves the least moment, unless they would
rouse us up to a war fit for Cain to be the leader of;
an abhorred, a cursed, a fraternal war. England and
Scotland, dearest brothers both in nature and in Christ,
must be set to wade in one another's blood ; and Ire-
land, our free denizen, upon the back of us both, as
occasion should serve : a piece of service that the pope
and all his factors have been compassing to do ever
since the reformation.
But ever blessed be he, and ever glorified, that from
his high watchtower in the heavens, discerning the
crooked ways of perverse and cruel men, hath hitherto
maimed and infatuated all their damnable inventions,
and deluded their great wizards with a delusion fit for
fools and children: had God been so minded, he could
have sent a spirit of mutiny amongst us, as he did be-
tween Abimelech and the Sechemites, to have made our
funerals, and slain heaps more in number than the
miserable surviving remnant; but he, when we least
deserved, scnt out a gentle gale and message of peace
from the wings of those his cherubims that fan his
mercy seat. Nor shall the wisdom, the moderation,
the christian piety, the constancy of our nobility and
commons of England, be ever forgotten, whose calm
and temperate connivance could sit still and smile out
the stormy bluster of men more audacious and pre-
cipitant than of solid and deep reach, until their own
fury had run itself out of breath, assailing by rash and
heady approaches the impregnable situation of our
liberty and safety, that laughed such weak enginery to
scorn, such poor driſts to make a national war of a sur-
plice brabble, a tippet scuffle, and engage the untainted
honour of English' knighthood to unfurl the streaming
red cross, or to rear the horrid standard of those fatal
guly dragons, for so unworthy a purpose, as to force
upon their fellow-subjects that which themselves are
weary of, the skeleton of a mass-book. Nor must the
OF REFORMATION IN ENGLAND.
17

3
patience, the ſortitude, the firm obedience of the nobles
and people of Scotland, striving against manifold pro-
vocations; nor must their sincere and moderate pro-
ceedings hitherto be unremembered, to the shameful
conviction of all their detractors.
a Go on both hand in hand, O nations, never to be dis-
united; be the praise and the heroic song of all pos-
terity; merit this, but seek only virtue, not to extend
your limits; (for what needs to win a fading triumph-
ant laurel out of the tears of wretched men f) but to
settle the pure worship of God in his church, and jus-
tice in the state: then shall the hardest difficulties
smooth out themselves before ye; envy shall sink to
hell, craft and malice be confounded, whether it be
homebred mischief or outlandish cunning : yea, other
nations will then covet to serve ye, for lordship and
victory are but the pages of justice and virtue. Com-
mit securely to true wisdom the vanquishing and un-
casing of craft and subtlety, which are but her two
runagates: join your invincible nught to do worthy
and godlike deeds; and then he that seeks to break
your union, a cleaving curse be his inheritance to all
generations. 4-
* Sir, you have now at length this question for the
time, and as my memory would best serve me in such
a copious and vast theme, fully handled, and you your-
self may judge whether prelacy be the only church-
government agreeable to monarchy. Seeing therefore
the perilous and confused state into which we are fallen,
and that to the certain knowledge of all men, through
the irreligious pride and hateful tyranny of prelates,
(as the innumerable and grievous complaints of every
shire cry out,) if we will now resolve to settle affairs
either according to pure religion or sound policy, we
must first of all begin roundly to cashier and cut away
from the public body the noisome and diseased tumour
of prelacy, and come from schism to unity with our
neighbour reformed sister-churches, which with the
blessing of peace and pure doctrine have now long time
flourished; and doubtless with all hearty joy and gra-
tulation will meet and welcome our Christian union
with them, as they have been all this while grieved at
our strangeness, and little better than separation from
them. And for the discipline propounded, seeing that
it hath been inevitably proved that the natural and
fundamental causes of political happiness in all govern-
ments are the same, and that this church-discipline is
taught in the word of God, and, as we see, agrees ac-
cording to wish with all such states as have received
it; we may infallibly assure ourselves that it will as
well agree with monarchy, though all the tribe of
Aphorismers and Politicasters would persuade us there
be secret and mysterious reasons against it. For upon
the settling hereof mark what nourishing and cordial
restorements to the state will follow, the ministers of
the gospel attending only to the work of salvation,
every one within his limited charge ; besides the diſ-
fusive blessings of God upon all our actions, the king
shall sit without an old disturber, a daily incroacher
and intruder; shall rid his kingdom of a strong seques-
tered and collateral power; a confronting mitre, whose
potent wealth and wakeful ambition he had just cause
to hold in jealousy; not to repeat the other present
cvils which only their removal will remove, and be-
cause'things simply pure are inconsistent in the mass
of nature, nor are the elements or humours in a man's
body exactly homogeneal; and hence the best-founded
commonwealths and least barbarous have aimed at a
certain mixture and temperament, partaking the several
virtues of each other state, that each part drawing to
itself may keep up a steady and even uprightness in
COIſ, II] OI1.
2) There is no civil government that hath been known,
no not the Spartan, not the Roman, though both for
this respect so much praised by the wise Polybius,
more divinely and harmoniously tuned, more equally
balanced as it were by the hand and scale of justice,
than is the commonwealth of England; where, under
a free and untutored monarch, the noblest, worthiest,
and most prudent men, with full approbation and suf-
frage of the people, have in their power the supreme
and final determination of highest affairs. Now if con-
formity of church-discipline to the civil be so desired,
there can be nothing more parallel, more uniform, than
when under the sovereign prince, Christ's vicegerent,
using the sceptre of David, according to God's law, the
godliest, the wisest, the learnedest ministers in their
several charges have the instructing and disciplining
of God's people, by whose full and free election they
are consecrated to that holy and equal aristocracy.
And why should not the piety and conscience of Eng-
lishmen, as members of the church, be trusted in the
election of pastors to functions that nothing concern a
monarch, as well as their worldly wisdoms are privileged
as members of the state in suffraging their knights and
burgesses to matters that concern him nearly 2 And if
in weighing these several offices, their difference in
time and quality be cast in, I know they will not turn
the beam of equal judgment the moiety of a scruple.
We therefore having already a kind of apostolical and
ancient church election in our state, what a perverse-
ness would it be in us of all others to retain forcibly a
kind of imperious and stately election in our church
And what a blindness to think that what is already
evangelical, as it were by a happy chance in our po-
lity, should be repugnant to that which is the same by
divine command in the ministry ! Thus then we see
that our ecclesiastical and political choices may con-
sent and sort as well together without any rupture in
the state, as Christians and freeholders. But as for
honour, that ought indeed to be different and distinct,
as either office looks a several way; the minister whose
calling and end is spiritual, ought to be honoured as a
father and physician to the soul, (if he be found to be
so,) with a sonlike and disciplelike reverence, which is
indeed the dearest and most affectionate honour, most
to be desired by a wise man, and such as will easily
command a free and plentiful provision of outward
necessaries, without his further care of this world.
j-The magistrate, whose charge is to see to our per-
sons and estates, is to be honoured with a more elabo-
rate and personal courtship, with large salaries and
18
OF REFORMATION IN ENGLAND.
stipends, that he himself may abound in those things
whereof his legal justice and watchful care gives us
the quiet enjoyment. And this distinction of honour
will bring forth a seemly and graceful uniformity over
all the kingdom. - -
...Then shall the nobles possess all the dignities and
offices of temporal honour to themselves, sole lords
without the improper mixture of scholastic and pusilla-
nimous upstarts; the parliament shall void her upper
house of the same annoyances; the common and civil
laws shall be both set free, the former from the con-
trol, the other from the mere vassalage and copyhold
of the clergy.
* "And whereas temporal laws rather punish men when
they have transgressed, than form them to be such as
should transgress seldomest, we may conceive great
hopes, through the showers of divine benediction water-
ing the unmolested and watchful pains of the ministry,
that the whole inheritance of God will grow up so
straight and blameless, that the civil magistrate may
with far less toil and difficulty, and far more ease and
delight, steer the tall and goodly vessel of the common-
wealth through all the gusts and tides of the world's
mutability.
37 Here I might have ended, but that some objections,
which I have heard commonly flying about, press me
to the endeavour of an answer. We must not run, they
say, into sudden extremes. This is a fallacious rule,
unless understood only of the actions of virtue about
things indifferent: for if it be found that those two ex-
tremes be vice and virtue, falsehood and truth, the
greater extremity of virtue and superlative truth we run
into, the more virtuous and the more wise we become;
and he that, flying from degenerate and traditional
corruption, fears to shoot himself too far into the meet-
ing embraces of a divinely warranted reformation, had
better not have run at all. And for the suddenness, it
cannot be feared. Who should oppose it? The papists?
they dare not. The prostestants otherwise affected 2
they were mad. There is nothing will be removed but
what to them is professedly indifferent. The long
affection which the people lave borne to it, what for
itself, what for the odiousness of prelates, is evident:
from the first year of Queen Elizabeth it hath still been
more and more propounded, desired, and beseeched,
yea sometimes favourably forwarded by the parliaments
themselves. Yet if it were sudden and swift, provided
still it be from worse to better, certainly we ought to
hie us from evil like a torrent, and rid ourselves of
corrupt discipline, as we would shake fire out of our
bosoms.
ºf Speedy and vehement were the reformations of all
the good kings of Judah, though the people had been
muzzled in idolatry ever so long before; they feared not
the bugbear danger, nor the lion in the way that the
sluggish and timorous politician thinks he sees; no
more did our brethren of the reformed churches abroad,
they ventured (God being their guide) out of rigid
popcry, into that which we in mockery call precise
puritanism, and yet we see no inconvenience beſel
them.
39Let us not dally with God when he offers us a full
blessing, to take as much of it as we think will serve
our ends, and turn him back the rest upon his hands,
lest in his anger he snatch all from us again. Next,
they allege the antiquity of episcopacy through all
ages. What it was in the apostles' time, that question-
less it must be still; and therein I trust the ministers
will be able to satisfy the parliament. But if episco-
pacy be taken for prelacy, all the ages they can de-
duce it through, will make it no more venerable than
papacy.
^ Most certain it is (as all our stories bear witness)
that ever since their coming to the see of Canterbury
for near twelve hundred years, to speak of them in
general, they have been in England to our souls a sad
and doleful succession of illiterate and blind guides;
to our purses and goods a wasteful band of robbers, a
perpetual havock and rapine; to our state a continual
hydra of mischief and molestation, the forge of discord
and rebellion : this is the trophy of their antiquity, and
boasted succession through so many ages. And for
those prelate-martyrs they glory of, they are to be
judged what they were by the gospel, and not the
gospel to be tried by them.
* And it is to be noted, that if they were for bishop-
Tics and ceremonies, it was in their prosperity and ful-
ness of bread; but in their persecution, which purified
them, and near their death, which was their garland,
they plainly disliked and condemned the ceremonies,
and threw away those episcopal ornaments wherein
they were installed as foolish and detestable; for so
the words of Ridley at his degradement, and his letter
to Hooper, expressly show. Neither doth the author
of our church-history spare to record sadly the fall (for
so he terms it) and infirmities of these martyrs, though
we would deify them. And why should their martyr-
dom more countenance corrupt doctrine or discipline,
than their subscriptions justify their treason to the
royal blood of this realm, by diverting and entailing
the right of the crown from the true heirs, to the houses
of Northumberland and Suffolk 2 which had it took
effect, this present king had in all likelihood never sat
on this throne, and the happy union of this island had
been frustrated. -
* . Lastly, whereas they add that some the learnedest
of the reformed abroad admire our episcopacy; it had
been more for the strength of the argument to tell us,
that some of the wisest statesmen admire it, for thereby
we might guess them weary of the present discipline,
as offensive to their state, which is the bug we fear :
but being they are churchmen, we may rather suspect
them for some prelatizing spirits that admire our
bishoprics, not episcopacy.
* The next objection vanishes of itself, propounding a
doubt, whether a greater inconvenience would not
grow from the corruption of any other discipline than
from that of episcopacy. This seems an unseasonable
foresight, and out of order, to defer and put off the
most needful constitution of one right discipline, while
we stand balancing the discommodities of two corrupt
ones. First constitute that which is right, and of itself
OF REFORMATION IN ENGLAND. 19
it will discover and rectiſy that which swerves, and
easily remedy the pretended fear of having a pope in
every parish, unless we call the zealous and meek cen-
sure of the church a popedom, which whoso does, let
him advise how he can reject the pas'orly rod and
sheephook of Christ, and those cords of love, and not
fear to fall under the iron sceptre of his anger, that
will dash him to pieces like a potsherd.
99 at another doubt of theirs 1 wonder, whether this
discipline which we desire be such as can be put in
practice within this kingdom ; they say it cannot stand
with the common law nor with the king's safety, the
government of episcopacy is now so weaved into the
common law. In God's name let it weave out again;
let not human quillets keep back divine authority. It
is not the common law, nor the civil, but piety and
justice that are our foundresses; they stoop not, neither
change colour for aristocracy, democracy, or monarchy,
nor yet at all interrupt their just courses; but far above
the taking notice of these inferior niceties, with perfect
sympathy, wherever they meet, kiss each other. Lastly,
they are fearful that the discipline which will succeed
cannot stand with the king's safety. Wherefore ? it
is but episcopacy reduced to what it should be were
it not that the tyranny of prelates under the name of
bishops had made our ears tender and startling, we
might call every good minister a bishop, as every
bishop, yea the apostles themselves, are called minis-
ters, and the angels ministering spirits, and the
ministers again angels. But wherein is this pro-
pounded government so shrewd P Because the govern-
ment of assemblies will succeed. Did not the apostles
govern the church by assemblies 2 How should it else
be catholic P. How should it have communion P. We
count it sacrilege to take from the rich prelates their
lands and revenues, which is sacrilege in them to keep,
using them as they do; and can we think it safe to de-
fraud the living church of God of that right which
God has given her in assemblies 2 O but the conse-
quence' assemblies draw to them the supremacy of
ecclesiastical jurisdiction. No surely, they draw no
supremacy, but that authority which Christ, and St.
Paul in his name, confers upon them. The king may
still retain the same supremacy in the assemblies, as in
the parliament; here he can do nothing alone against
the common law, and there neither alone, nor with
consent, against the Scriptures. But is this all 2 No,
this ecclesiastical supremacy draws to it the power to
excommunicate kings; and then follows the worst that
can be imagined. Do they hope to avoid this, by
keeping prelates that have so often done it? Not to
exemplify the malapert insolence of our own bishops
in this kind towards our kings, I shall turn back to the
primitive and pure times, which the objectors would
have the rule of reformation to us.
3% Not an assembly, but one bishop alone, Saint Am-
brose of Milan, held Theodosius the most christian em-
peror under excommunication above eight months
together, drove him from the church in the presence of
his nobles ; which the good emperor bore with heroic
humility, and never ceased by prayers and tears, till
C
he was absolved; for which coming to the bishop with
supplication into the salutatory, some outporch of the
church, he was charged by him with tyrannical madness
against God, for coming into holy ground. At last,
upon conditions absolved, and after great humiliation
approaching to the altar to offer, (as those thrice pure
times then thought meet,) he had scarce withdrawn his
hand, and stood awhile, when a bold archdeacon comes
in the bishop's name, and chaces him from within the
rails, telling him peremptorily, that the place wherein
he stood was for none but the priests to enter, or to
touch; and this is another piece of pure primitive
divinity Think ye, then, our bishops will forego the
power of excommunication on whomsoever? No cer-
tainly, unless to compass sinister ends, and then revoke
when they see their time. And yet this most mild,
though withal dreadful and inviolable prerogative of
Christ's diadem, excommunication, serves for nothing
with them, but to prog and pander for fees, or to display
their pride, and sharpen their revenge, debarring men
the protection of the law; and I remember not whether
in some cases it bereave not men all right to their
worldly goods and inheritances, besides the denial of
christian burial. But in the evangelical and reform-
cd use of this sacred censure, no such prostitution,
no such iscariotical drifts are to be doubted, as that
spiritual doom and sentence should invade worldly
possession, which is the rightful lot and portion even
of the wickedest men, as frankly bestowed upon
them by the all-dispensing bounty as rain and sun-
shine. No, no, it seeks not to bereave or destroy the
body; it seeks to save the soul by humbling the body,
not by imprisonment, or pecuniary mulct, much less
by stripes or bonds, or disinheritance, but by fatherly
admonishment and christian rebuke, to cast it into
godly sorrow, whose end is joy, and ingenuous bash-
fulness to sin: if that cannot be wrought, then as a
tender mother takes her child and holds it over the
pit with scaring words, that it may learn to fear where
danger is; so doth excommunication as dear:y and
as freely, without money, use her' wholesome and
saving terrours: she is instant, she beseeches, by all
the dear and sweet promises of salvation she entices
and woos ; by all the threatenings and thunders of the
law, and rejected gospel, she charges, and adjures: this
is all her armory, her munition, her artillery; then she
awaits with long-sufferance, and yet ardent zeal. In
brief, there is no act in all the errand of God's ministers
to mankind, wherein passes more loverlike contesta-
tion between Christ and the soul of a regenerate man
lapsing, than before, and in, and after the sentence of
excommunication. As for the fogging proctorage of
money, with such an eye as struck Gehazi with leprosy,
and Simon Magus with a curse; so does she look, and
so threaten her fiery whip against that banking den of
thieves that dare thus baffle, and buy and sell the aw-
ful and majestic wrinkles of her brow. He that is
rightly and apostolically sped with her invisible arrow,
if he can be at peace in his soul, and not smell within
him the brimstone of hell, may have fair leave to tell
all his bags over undininished of the least farthing, may
20
OF REFORMATION IN ENG LAND.
eat his dainties, drink his wine, use his delights, enjoy
his lands and liberties, not the least skin raised, not the
least hair misplaced, for all that excommunication has
done : much more may a king enjoy his rights and
prerogatives undeflowered, untouched, and be as abso-
lute and complete a king, as all his royalties and reve-
nues can make him. And therefore little did Theodosius
fear a plot upon his empire, whom he stood excommu-
nicate by Saint Ambrose, though it were done either
with much haughty pride, or ignorant zeal. But let
us rather look upon the reformed churches beyond the
seas, the Grizons, the Swisses, the Hollanders, the
French, that have a supremacy to live under as well as
we; where do the churches in all these places strive for
supremacy P. Where do they clash and justle suprema-
cies with the civil magistrate 2 In France, a more severe
monarchy than ours, the protestants under this church-
government, carry the name of the best subjects the
king has ; and yet presbytery, if it must be so called,
does there all that it desires to do : how easy were it,
if there be such great suspicion, to give no more scope
to it in England Butlet us not, for fear of a scarecrow,
or else through hatred to be reformed, stand hankering
and politizing, when God with spread hands testifies
to us, and points us out the way to our peace. “S
‘’’. Let us not be so overcredulous, unless God hath
blinded us, as to trust our dear souls into the hands of
men that beg so devoutly for the pride and gluttony of
their own backs and bellies, that sue and solicit so
eagerly, not for the saving of souls, the consideration
of which can have here no place at all, but for their
bishoprics, deaneries, prebends, and canonries: how
can these men not be corrupt, whose very cause is the
bribe of their own pleading, whose mouths cannot open
without the strong breath and loud stench of avarice,
simony, and sacrilege, embezzling the treasury of the
church on painted and gilded walls of temples, wherein
God hath testified to have no delight, warming their
palace kitchens, and from thence their unctuous and
epicurean paunches, with the alms of the blind, the
lame, the impotent, the aged, the orphan, the widow f
for with these the treasury of Christ ought to be, here
must be his jewels bestowed, his rich cabinet must be
emptied here ; as the constant martyr Saint Lawrence
taught the Roman praetor. Sir, would you know what
the remonstrance of these men would have, what their
petition implies 2 They intreat us that we would not
be weary of those insupportable grievances that our
shoulders have hitherto cracked under; they beseech
us that we would think them fit to be our justices of
peace, our lords, our highest officers of state, though
they come furnished with no more experience than they
learnt between the cook and the manciple, or more
profoundly at the college audit, or the regent house, or
to come to their deepest insight, at their patron's table;
they would request us to endure still the rustling of their
silken cassocs, and that we would burst'our midriffs,
rather than laugh to see them under sail in all their
lawn and sarcenet, their shrouds and tackle, with a
geometrical rhomboides upon their heads: they would
bear us in hand that we must of duty still appear before
them once a year in Jerusalem, like good circumcised
males and females, to be taxed by the poll, to be sconced
our headmoney, our twopences, in their chandlerly shop-
book of Easter. They pray us that it would please us
to let them still hale us, and worry us with their bandogs
and pursuivants; and that it would please the parlia-
ment that they may yet have the whipping, fleecing,
and flaying of us in their diabolical courts, to tear the
flesh from our bones, and into our wide wounds instead
of balm, to pour in the oil of tartar, vitriol, and mercury:
surely a right reasonable, innocent, and soft-hearted
petition. O the relenting bowels of the fathers' Can
this be granted them, unless God have smitten us with
frenzy from above, and with a dazzling giddiness at
noonday Should not those men rather be heard that
come to plead against their own preferments, their
worldly advantages, their own abundance; for honour
and obedience to God’s word, the conversion of souls,
the christian peace of the land, and union of the re-
formed catholic church, the unappropriating and unmo-
nopolizing the rewards of learning and industry, from
the greasy clutch of ignorance and high feeding P. We
have tried already, and miserably felt what ambition,
worldly glory, and immoderate wealth, can do ; what
the boisterous and contradictional hand of a temporal,
earthly, and corporeal spirituality can avail to the edi-
fying of Christ's holy church; were it such a desperate
hazard to put to the venture the universal votes of
Christ's congregation, and fellowly and friendly yoke
of a teaching and laborious ministry, the pastorlike and
apostolic imitation of meek and unlordly discipline, the
gentle and benevolent mediocrity of church-mainte-
nance, without the ignoble hucksterage of piddling
tithes P. Were it such an incurable mischief to make a
little trial, what all this would do to the flourishing
and growing up of Christ's mystical body ? as rather
to use every poor shift, and if that serve not, to threaten
uproar and combustion, and shake the brand of civil
discord P
% ŠO, sir, I do now feel myself inwrapped on the sudden
into those mazes and labyrinths of dreadful and hideous
thoughts, that which way to get out, or which way to
end, I know not, unless I turn mine eyes, and with your
help liſt up my hands to that eternal and propitious
Throne, where nothing is readier than grace and refuge
to the distresses of mortal suppliants: and it were a
shame to leave these serious thoughts less piously than
the heathen were wont to conclude their graver dis-
COUl I’SCS,
§§Thou, therefore, that sittest in light and glory unap-
proachable, Parent of angels and men next, thee I
implore, omnipotent King, Redeemer of that lost rem-
nant whose nature thou didst assume, ineffable and
everlasting Love' and thou, the third subsistence of
divine infinitude, illumining Spirit, the joy and solace
of created things' one Tripersonal godhead look upon
this thy poor and almost spent and expiring church,
leave her not thus a prey to these importunate wolves,
that wait and think long till they devour thy tender
flock; these wild boars that have broke into thy vine-
yard, and left the print of 'their polluting hoofs on the
OF REFORMATION IN ENGLAND.
21
souls of thy servants. O let them not bring about their
damned designs, that stand now at the entrance of the
bottomless pit, expecting the watch word to open and
let out those dreadful locusts and scorpions, to reinvolve
us in that pitchy cloud of infernal darkness, where we
shall never more see the sun of thy truth again, never hope
for the cheerful dawn, never more hear the bird of morn-
ing sing. Be moved with pity at the afflicted state of
this our shaken monarchy, that now lies labouring under
her throes, and struggling against the grudges of more
dreaded calamities.
400 thou, that, after the impetuous rage of five bloody
inundations, and the succeeding sword of intestine war,
soaking the land in her own gore, didst pity the sad
and ceaseless revolution of our swift and thick-coming
sorrows; when we were quite breathless, of thy free
grace didst motion peace, and terms of covenant with
us; and having first wellnigh freed us from antichristian
thraldom, didst build up this Britannic empire to a glo-
rious and enviable height, with all her daughter-islands
about her; stay us in this felicity, let not the obstimacy
of our half-obedience and will-worship bring forth that'
viper of sedition, that for these fourscore years hath been
breeding to eat through the entrails of our peace; but
let her cast her abortive spawn without the danger of
this travailing and throbbing kingdom : that we may
still remember in our solemn thanksgivings, how for
us, the northern ocean even to the frozen Thule was
scattered with the proud shipwrecks of the Spanish
armada, and the very maw of hell ransacked, and made
to give up her concealed destruction, ere she could vent
it in that horrible and damned blast.
O how much more glorious will those former deliver-
ances appear, when we shall know them not only to
have saved us from greatest miseries past, but to have
reserved us for greatest happiness to come ! Hitherto
thou hast but freed us, and that not fully, from the un-
just and tyrannous claim of thy foes; now unite us en-
tirely, and appropriate us to thyself, tie us everlastingly
in willing homage to the prerogative of thy eternal
throne. -
'l And now we know, O thou our most certain hope and
defence, that thine enemies have been consulting all the
sorceries of the great whore, and have joined their plots
with that sad intelligencing tyrant that mischiefs the |
world with his mines of Ophir, and lies thirsting to re-
venge his naval ruins that have larded our seas: but let
them all take counsel together, and let it come to nought;
let them decree, and do thou cancel it; let them gather
themselves, and be scattered; let them embattle them-
sclves, and be broken; let them embattle, and be broken,
for thou art with us.
Z/s'Then, amidst the hymns and hallelujahs of saints,
some one may perhaps be heard offering at high strains
in new and loſty measures, to sing and celebrate thy
divine mercies and marvellous judgments in this land
throughout all ages; whereby this great and warlike
nation, instructed and inured to the fervent and contin-
ual practice of truth and righteousness, and casting far
from her the rags of her old vices, may press on hard
to that high and happy emulation to be found the sober
est, wisest, and most christian people at that day, when
thou, the eternal and shortly-expected King, shalt'open
the clouds to judge the several kingdoms of the world,
and distributing national honours and rewards to reli-
gious and just commonwealths, shalt put an end to all
earthly tyrannies, proclaiming thy universal and mild
monarchy through heaven and earth ; where they un-
doubtedly, that by their labours, counsels, and prayers,
have been earnest for the common good of religion and
their country, shall receive above the inferiour orders
of the blessed, the regal addition of principalities,
legions, and thrones into their glorious titles, and in
supereminence of beatific vision, progressing the date-
less and irrevoluble circle of etermity, shall clasp inse-
parable hands with joy and bliss, in overmeasure for
eV (el".
* But they contrary, that by the impairing and dimi-
nution of the true faith, the distresses and servitude of
their country, aspire to high dignity, rule, and promotion
here, after a shameful end in this life, (which God
grant them,) shall be thrown down eternally into the
darkest and deepest gulf of hell, where, under the
despiteful control, the trample and spurn of all the
other damned, that in the anguish of their torture, shall
have no other ease than to exercise a raving and bestial
tyranny over them as their slaves and negroes, they
shall remain in that plight for ever, the basest, the
lowermost, the most dejected, most underfoot, and
downtrodden vassals of perdition.
() F
P RE LAT I C A L E PIS CO PA CY,
AND WHETHER IT MAY BE DEDUCED FROM THE APOSTOLICAL TIMES, BY VIRTUE OF THOSE TESTIMONIES
WHICH ARE ALLEGED TO THAT PURPOSE IN SOME LATE TREATISES; ONE WHIEREOF GOES UNDER THE NAME
OF JAMES ARCHBISHOP OF AIRMAGH.
[F1 RST PUBLIsuko 1641.]
Episcopacy, as it is taken for an order in the church
above a presbyter, or, as we commonly name him, the
minister of a congregation, is either of divine constitu-
tion or of human. If only of human, we have the
same human privilege that all men have ever had since
Adam, being born free, and in the mistress island of
all the British, to retain this episcopacy, or to remove
it, consulting with our own occasions and conveniences,
and for the prevention of our own dangers and dis-
quiets, in what best manner we can devise, without
running at a loss, as we must needs in those stale and
useless records of either uncertain or unsound an-
tiquity; which, if we hold fast to the grounds of the
reformed church, can neither skill of us, nor we of it,
so oft as it would lead us to the broken reed of tradi-
tion. If it be of divine constitution, to satisſy us fully
in that, the Scripture only is able, it being the only
book left us of divine authority, not in any thing more
divine than in the allsufficiency it hath to furnish us,
as with all other spiritual knowledge, so with this in
particular, setting out to us a perfect man of God, ac-
complished to all the good works of his charge: through
all which book can be nowhere, either by plain text or
solid reasoning, found any difference between a bishop
and a presbyter, save that they be two names to sig-
nify the same order. Notwithstanding this clearness,
and that by all evidence of argument, Timothy and
Titus (whom our prelates claim to imitate only in the
controlling part of their office) had rather the vicege-
rency of an apostleship committed to them, than the
ordinary charge of a bishopric, as being men of an ex-
traordinary calling; yet to verify that which St. Paul
foretold of succeeding times, when men began to have
itching ears, then not contented with the plentiful and
wholesome ſountains of the gospel, they began after
their own lusts to heap to themselves teachers, and as
if the divine Scripture wanted a supplement, and were
to be eked out, they cannot think any doubt resolved,
and any doctrine confirmed, unless they run to that in-
digested heap and fry of authors which they call an-
tiquity. Whatsoever time, or the heedless hand of
blind chance, hath drawn down from of old to this pre-
sent, in her huge drag-net, whether fish or sea-weed,
shells or shrubs, unpicked, unchosen, those are the
fathers. Seeing, therefore, some men, deeply conver-
sant in books, have had so little care of late to give the
world a better account of their reading, than by divulg-
ing necdless tractates stuffed with specious names of
Ignatius and Polycarpus; with fragments of old mar-
tyrologies and legends, to distract and stagger the
multitude of credulous readers, and mislead them from
their strong guards and places of safety, under the
tuition of holy writ; it came into my thoughts to per-
suade myself, setting all distances and nice respects
aside, that I could do religion and my country no
better service for the time, than doing my utmost en-
deavour to recall the people of God from this vain
foraging after straw, and to reduce them to their firm
stations under the standard of the gospel; by making
appear to them, first the insufficiency, next the incon-
veniency, and lastly the impiety of these gay testimo-
mics, that their great doctors would bring them to
dote on. And in perſorming this, I shall not strive
to be more exact in method, than as their citations
lead me.
First, therefore, concerning Ignatius shall be treated
fully, when the author shall come to insist upon some
places in his epistles. Next, to prove a succession of
twenty-seven bishops from Timothy, he cites one Le-
ontius bishop of Magnesia, out of the 11th act of the
Chalcedonian council : this is but an obscure and sin-
gle witness, and for his faithful dealing who shall com-
mend him to us, with this his catalogue of bishops ?
What know we further of him, but that he might be as
factious and false a bishop as Leontius of Antioch, that
was a hundred years his predecessor P For neither the
OF PRELATICAL EPISCOPACY.
23
praise of his wisdom, or his virtue, hath left him me-
morable to posterity, but only this doubtful relation,
which we must take at his word : and how shall this
testimony receive credit from his word, whose very
name had scarce been thought on but for this bare tes-
timony P But they will say, he was a member of the
council, and that may deserve to gain him credit with
us. I will not stand to argue, as yet with ſair allow-
ance I might, that we may as justly suspect there were
some bad and slippery men in that council, as we know
there are wont to be in our convocations: nor shall I
need to plead at this time, that nothing hath been more
attempted, nor with more subtlety brought about, both
anciently by other heretics, and modernly by papists,
than to falsify the editions of the councils, of which we
have none, but from our adversaries’ hands, whence
canons, acts, and whole spurious councils are thrust
upon us; and hard it would be to prove in all, which
are legitimate, against the lawful rejection of an urgent
and free disputer. But this I purpose not to take ad-
vantage of; for what avails it to wrangle about the
corrupt editions of councils, whenas we know that many
years ere this time, which was almost five hundred
years after Christ, the councils themselves were ſoully
corrupted with ungodly prelatism, and so far plunged
into worldly ambition, as that it stood them upon long
ere this to uphold their now well tasted hierarchy by
what fair pretext soever they could, in like manner as
they had now learned to defend many other gross cor-
ruptions by as ancient, and supposed authentic tradition
as episcopacy And what hope can we have of this
whole council to warrant us a matter, four hundred
years at least above their time, concerning the distinc-
tion of bishop and presbyter, whenas we find them such
blind judges of things before their eyes, in their decrees
of precedency between bishop and bishop, acknowledg-
ing Rome for the apostolic throne, and Peter, in that
see, for the rock, the basis, and the foundation of the
catholic church and faith, contrary to the interpretation
of more ancient fathers 2 And therefore from a mistaken
text did they give to Leo, as Peter's successor, a kind
of preeminence above the whole council, as Euagrius
expresses; (for now the pope was come to that height,
as to arrogate to himself by his vicars incompetible
honours;) and yet having thus yielded to Rome, the
universal primacy for spiritual reasons, as they thought,
they conclude their sitting with a carnal and ambitious
decree, to give the second place of dignity to Constan-
tinople from reason of state, because it was New Rome;
and by like consequence doubtless of earthly privileges
annexed to each other city, was the bishop thereof to
take his place.
I may say again therefore, what hope can we have
of such a council, as, beginning in the spirit, ended
thus in the flesh P Much rather should we attend to
what Eusebius, the ancientest writer extant of church-
history, notwithstanding all the helps he had above
these, confesses in the 4th chapter of his third book,
That it was no easy matter to tell who were those that
were left bishops of the churches by the apostles, more
than by what a man might gather from the Acts of the
Apostles, and the Epistles of St. Paul, in which number
he reckons Timothy for bishop of Ephesus. So as may
plainly appear, that this tradition of bishoping Timothy
over Ephesus was but taken for granted out of that
place in St. Paul, which was only an intreating him to
tarry at Ephesus, to do something left him in charge.
Now, if Eusebius, a famous writer, thought it so diffi-
cult to tell who were appointed bishops by the apostles,
much more may we think it difficult to Leontius, an
obscure bishop, speaking beyond his own diocess: and
certainly much more hard was it for either of them to
determine what kind of bishops these were, if they had
so little means to know who they were ; and much less
reason have we to stand to their definitive sentence,
seeing they have been so rash to raise up such lofty
bishops and bishoprics out of places in Scripture merely
misunderstood. Thus while we leave the Bible to gad
after the traditions of the ancients, we hear the ancients
themselves confessing, that what knowledge they had
in this point was such as they had gathered from the
Bible.
Since therefore antiquity itself hath turned over the
controversy to that sovereign book which we had fondly
straggled from, we shall do better not to detain this
venerable apparition of Leontius any longer, but dis-
miss him with his list of seven and twenty, to sleep
unmolested in his former obscurity.
Now for the word Trposer&c, it is more likely that
Timothy never knew the word in that sense : it was
the vanity of those next succeeding times not to con-
tent themselves with the simplicity of scripture-phrase,
but must make a new lexicon to name themselves by ;
one will be called irposed)g, or antistes, a word of pre-
cedence; another would be termed a gnostic, as Cle-
mens; a third sacerdos, or priest, and talks of altars;
which was a plain sign that their doctrine began to
change, for which they must change their expressions.
But that place of Justin Martyr serves rather to con-
vince the author, than to make for him, where the name
Trposedc Töv Čičexpóv, the president or pastor of the
brethren, (for to what end is he their president, but to
teach them 8) cannot be limited to signify a prelatical
bishop, but rather communicates that Greek appella-
tion to every ordinary presbyter: for there he tells
what the Christians had wont to do in their several
congregations, to read and expound, to pray and ad-
minister, all which he says the Trposed), or antistes,
did. Are these the offices only of a bishop, or shall
we think that every congregation where these things
were done, which he attributes to this antistes, had a
bishop present among them 2 Unless they had as
many antistites as presbyters, which this place rather
seems to imply ; and so we may infer even from their
own alleged authority, “that antistes was nothing else
but presbyter.”
As for that nameless treatise of Timothy's martyrdom,
only cited by Photius that lived almost nine hundred
years after Christ, it handsomely follows in that author
the martyrdom of the seven sleepers, that slept (I tell
you but what mine author says) three hundred and
seventy and two years; for so long they had been shut
24
OF PRELATICAL EPISCOPACY.
up in a cave without meat, and were found living.
This story of Timothy's Ephesian bishopric, as it ſol-
lows in order, so may it for truth, if it only subsist upon
its own authority, as it doth; for Photius only saith he
read it, he does not aver it. That other legendary
piece found among the lives of the saints, and sent us
from the shop of the Jesuits at Louvain, does but bear
the name of Polycrates; how truly, who can tell ?
and shall have some more weight with us, when Poly-
crates can persuade us of that which he affirms in the
same place of Eusebius's fifth book, that St. John was
a priest, and wore the golden breastplate: and why
should he convince us more with his traditions of
Timothy's episcopacy, than he could convince Victor
bishop of Rome with his traditions concerning the feast
of Easter, who, not regarding his irrefragable instances
of examples taken from Philip and his daughters that
were prophetesses, or from Polycarpus, no nor from
St. John himself, excommunicated both him, and all
the Asian churches, for celebrating their Easter judai-
cally He may therefore go back to the seven bishops
his kinsmen, and make his moan to them, that we
esteem his traditional ware as lightly as Victor did.
Those of Theodoret, Felix, and John of Antioch, are
authorities of later times, and therefore not to be re-
ceived for their antiquity's sake to give in evidence
concerning an allegation, wherein writers, so much
their elders, we see so easily miscarry. What if they
had told us that Peter, who, as they say, left Ignatius
bishop of Antioch, went afterwards to Rome, and was
bishop there, as this Ignatius, and Irenaeus, and all
antiquity with one mouth deliver ? there be never-
theless a number of learned and wise protestants, who
have written, and will maintain, that Peter's being
at Rome as bishop cannot stand with concordance of
Scripture.
Now come the epistles of Ignatius to shew us, first,
that Onesimus was bishop of Ephesus; next, to assert
the difference of bishop and presbyter: wherein I
wonder that men, teachers of the protestant religion,
make no more difficulty of imposing upon our belief a
supposititious offspring of some dozen epistles, whereof
five are rejected as spurious, containing in them here-
sies and trifles; which cannot agree in chronology
with Ignatius, entitling him archbishop of Antioch
Theopolis, which name of Theopolis that city had not
till Justinian's time, long after, as Cedrenus mentions;
which argues both the barbarous time, and the un-
skilful fraud of him that foisted this epistle upon
Ignatius. In the epistle to those of Tarsus, he con-
demns them for ministers of Satan, that say, “ Christ
is God above all.” To the Philippians, them that
kept their Easter as the Asian churches, as Polycarpus
did, and them that fasted upon any Saturday or Sunday,
except one, he counts as those that had slain the Lord.
To those of Antioch, he salutes the subdeacons, chan-
ters, porters, and exorcists, as if these had been orders
of the church in his time: those other epistles less
questioned, are yet so interlarded with corruptions, as
may justly endue us with a wholesome suspicion of the
rest. As to the Trallians, he writes, that “a bishop
hath power over all beyond all government and au-
thority whatsoever.” Surely then no pope can desire
more than Ignatius attributes to every bishop; but
what will become then of the archbishops and primates,
if every bishop in Ignatius's judgment be as supreme
as a pope P To the Ephesians, near the very place
from whence they fetch their proof for episcopacy,
there stands a line that casts an ill hue upon all the
epistle; “Let no man err,” saith he, “unless a man
be within the rays or enclosure of the altar, he is de-
prived of the bread of life.” I say not but this may be
stretched to a figurative construction; but yet it has
an ill look, especially being followed beneath with the
mention of I know not what sacrifices. In the other
epistle to Smyrna, wherein is written that “they should
follow their bishop as Christ did his Father, and the
presbytery as the apostles;” not to speak of the in-
sulse, and ill laid comparison, this cited place lies upon
the very brim of a noted corruption, which, had they
that quote this passage ventured to let us read, all men
would have readily seen what grain the testimony had
been of, where it is said, “that it is not lawful without
a bishop to baptize, nor to offer, nor to do sacrifice.”
What can our church make of these phrases but scan-
dalous 2 And but a little further he plainly falls to
contradict the spirit of God in Solomon, judged by the
words themselves; “My son,” saith he, “honour God
and the king ; but I say, honour God, and the bishop
as high-priest, bearing the image of God according to
his ruling, and of Christ according to his priesting,
and after him honour the king.” Excellent Ignatius!
can ye blame the prelates for making much of this
epistle P Certainly if this epistle can serve you to set
a bishop above a presbyter, it may serve you next to
set him above a king. These, and other like places in
abundance through all those short epistles, must either
be adulterate, or else Ignatius was not Ignatius, nor a
martyr, but most adulterate, and corrupt himself. In
the midst, therefore, of so many forgeries, where shall
we fix to dare say this is Ignatius P. As for his style,
who knows it, so disfigured and interrupted as it is 2
except they think that where they meet with any thing
sound, and orthodoxal, there they find Ignatius. And
then they believe him not for his own authority, but
for a truth’s sake, which they derive from elsewhere :
to what end then should they cite him as authentic for
episcopacy, when they cannot know what is authentic
in him, but by the judgment which they brought with
them, and not by any judgment which they might
safely learn from him 2 How can they bring satisfac-
tion from such an author, to whose very essence the
reader must be fain to contribute his own understand-
ing P Had God ever intended that we should have
sought any part of useful instruction from Ignatius,
doubtless he would not have so ill provided for our
knowledge, as to send him to our hands in this broken
and disjointed plight; and if he intended no such
thing, we do injuriously in thinking to taste better the
pure evangelic manna, by seasoning our mouths with
the tainted scraps and fragments of an unknown table;
and searching among the verminous and polluted rags
OF PRELATICAL EPISCOPACY. 25
dropped overworn from the toiling shoulders of time,
with these deformedly to quilt and interlace the entire,
the spotless, and undecaying robe of truth, the daughter
not of time, but of Heaven, only bred up here below in
christian hearts, between two grave and holy nurses,
the doctrine and discipline of the gospel.
Next follows Irenaeus bishop of Lyons, who is cited
to affirm, that Polycarpus “was made bishop of Smyrna
by the apostles;” and this, it may seem, none could
better tell than he who had both seen and heard Poly-
carpus: but when did he hear him f Himself confesses
to Florinus, when he was a boy. Whether that age in
Irenaeus may not be liable to many mistakings; and
whether a boy may be trusted to take an exact account
of the manner of a church constitution, and upon what
terms, and within what limits, and with what kind of
commission Polycarpus received his charge, let a man
consider, ere he be credulous. It will not be denied
that he might have seen Polycarpus in his youth, a
man of great eminence in the church, to whom the
other presbyters might give way for his virtue, wisdom,
and the reverence of his age ; and so did Anicetus,
bishop of Rome, even in his own city, give him a kind
of priority in administering the sacrament, as may be
read in Eusebius: but that we should hence conclude
a distinct and superior order from the young observa-
tion of Irenaeus, nothing yet alleged can warrant us;
unless we shall believe such as would face us down,
that Calvin and, after him, Beza were bishops of Ge-
neva, because that in the unsettled state of the church,
while things were not fully composed, their worth and
learning cast a greater share of business upon them,
and directed men's eyes principally towards them :
and yet these men were the dissolvers of episcopacy.
We see the same necessity in state affairs; Brutus,
that expelled the kings out of Rome, was for the time
forced to be as it were a king himself, till matters were
set in order, as in a free commonwealth. He that had
seen Pericles lead the Athenians which way he listed,
haply would have said he had been their prince; and
yet he was but a powerful and eloquent man in a de-
mocracy, and had no more at any time than a tempo-
rary and elective sway, which was in the will of the
people when to abrogate. And it is most likely that in
the church, they which came after these apostolic men,
being less in merit, but bigger in ambition, strove to
invade those privileges by intrusion and plea of right,
which Polycarpus, and others like him possessed, from
the voluntary surrender of men subdued by the excel-
lency-of their heavenly gifts; which because their suc-
cessors had not, and so could neither have that autho-
rity, it was their policy to divulge that the eminence
which Polycarpus and his equals enjoyed, was by right
of constitution, not by free will of condescending. And
yet thus far Irenaeus makes against them, as in that
very place to call Polycarpus an apostolical presbyter.
But what fidelity his relations had in general, we can-
not sooner learn than by Eusebius, who, near the end
of his third book, speaking of Papias, a very ancient
writer, one that had heard St. John, and was known to
many that had seen and been acquainted with others
of the apostles, but being of a shallow wit, and not
understanding those traditions which he received, filled
his writings with many new doctrines, and fabulous
conceits: he tells us there, that “ divers ecclesiastical
men, and Irenaeus among the rest, while they looked at
his antiquity, became infected with his errours.” Now,
if Irenaeus was so rash as to take unexamined opinions
from an author of so small capacity, when he was a
man, we should be more rash ourselves to rely upon
those observations which he made when he was a boy.
And this may be a sufficient reason to us why we need
no longer muse at the spreading of many idle traditions
so soon after the apostles, while such as this Papias
had the throwing them about, and the inconsiderate
zeal of the next age, that heeded more the person than
the doctrine, had the gathering them up. Wherever a
man, who had been any way conversant with the apos-
tles, was to be found, thither flew all the inquisitive
ears, although the exercise of right instructing was
changed into the curiosity of impertinent fabling :
where the mind was to be edified with solid doctrine,
there the fancy was soothed with solemn stories: with
less ſervency was studied what St. Paul or St. John
had written, than was listened to one that could say,
Here he taught, here he stood, this was his stature;
and thus he went habited; and, O happy this house
that harboured him, and that cold stone whereon he
rested, this village wherein he wrought such a miracle,
and that pavement bedeved with the warm effusion of
his last blood, that sprouted up into eternal roses to
crown his martyrdom. Thus, while all their thoughts
were poured out upon circumstances, and the gazing
after such men as had sat at table with the apostles,
(many of which Christ hath professed, yea, though
they had cast out devils in his name, he will not know
at the last day,) by this means they lost their time, and
truanted in the fundamental grounds of saving know-
ledge, as was seen shortly by their writings. Lastly,
for Irenaeus, we have cause to think him less judicious
in his reports from hand to hand of what the apostles
did, when we find him so negligent in keeping the
faith which they wrote, as to say in his third book
against heresies, that “the obedience of Mary was the
cause of salvation to herself and all mankind;” and
in his fifth book, that “as Eve was seduced to fly
God, so the virgin Mary was persuaded to obey God,
that the virgin Mary might be made the advocate of
the virgin Eve.” Thus if Irenaeus, for his nearness to
the apostles, must be the patron of episcopacy to us,
it is no marvel though he be the patron of idolatry to
the papist, for the same cause. To the epistle of those
brethren of Smyrna, that write the martyrdom of Poly-
carpus, and style him an apostolical and prophetical
doctor, and bishop of the church of Smyrna, I could
be content to give some credit for the great honour and
affection which I see those brethren bear him; and not
undeservedly, if it be true, which they there say, that
he was a prophet, and had a voice from heaven to com-
fort him at his death, which they could hear, but the
rest could not for the noise and tumult that was in the
place; and besides, if his body were so precious to the
26
OF PRELATICAL EPISCOPACY.
Christians, that he was never wont to pull off his shoes
for one or other that still strove to have the office,
that they might come in to touch his feet; yet a light
scruple or two I would gladly be resolved in : if
Polycarpus (who, as they say, was a prophet that
never failed in what he foretold) had declared to his
friends, that he knew, by vision, he should die no other
death than burning, how it came to pass that the fire,
when it came to proof, would not do his work, but
starting off like a full sail from the mast, did but reflect
a golden light upon his unviolated limbs, exhaling
such a sweet odour, as iſ all the incense of Arabia had
been burning ; insomuch that when the billmen saw
that the fire was overawed, and could not do the deed,
one of them steps to him and stabs him with a sword,
at which wound such abundance of blood gushed forth
as quenched the fire. By all this relation it appears
not how the fire was guilty of his death, and then how
can his prophecy be fulfilled 2 Next, how the standers-
by could be so soon weary of such a glorious sight, and
such a fragrant smell, as to hasten the executioner to
put out the fire with the martyr's blood; unless perhaps
they thought, as in all perfumes, that the smoak would
be more odorous than the flame: yet these good bre-
thren say he was bishop of Smyrna. No man ques-
tions it, if bishop and presbyter were anciently all one,
and how does it appear by any thing in this testimony
that they were not? If among his other high titles of
prophetical, apostolical, and most admired of those
times, he be also styled bishop of the church of Smyrna
in a kind of speech, which the rhetoricans call kar’
êox) v, for his excellence sake, as being the most fa-
mous of all the Smyrnian presbyters; it cannot be
proved neither from this nor that other place of Ire-
maeus, that he was therefore in distinct and monarchical
order above the other presbyters; it is more probable,
that if the whole presbytery had been as renowned as
he, they would have termed every one of them severally
bishop of Smyrna. Hence it is, that we read some-
times of two bishops in one place; and had all the
presbyters there been of like worth, we might perhaps
have read of twenty.
Tertullian accosts us next, (for Polycrates hath had
his answer,) whose testimony, state but the question
right, is of no more force to deduce episcopacy, than
the two former. He says that the church of Smyrna
had Polycarpus placed there by John, and the church
of Rome, Clement ordained by Peter; and so the rest
of the churches did shew what bishops they had receiv-
ed by the appointment of the apostles. None of this
will be contradicted, for we have it out of the Scripture
that bishops or presbyters, which were the same, were
left by the apostles in every church, and they might
perhaps give some special charge to Clement, or Poly-
carpus, or Linus, and put some special trust in them for
the experience they had of their faith and constancy;
it remains yet to be evinced out of this and the like
places, which will never be, that the word bishop is
otherwise taken, than in the language of St. Paul and
The Acts, for an order above presbyters. We grant
them bishops, we grant them worthy men, we grant
them placed in several churches by the apostles; we
grant that Irenaeus and Tertullian affirm this; but that
they were placed in a superior order above the presby-
tery, shew from all these words why we should grant.
It is not enough to say the apostle left this man bishop
in Rome, and that other in Ephesus, but to shew when
they altered their own decree set down by St. Paul,
and made all the presbyters underlings to one bishop.
But suppose Tertullian had made an imparity where
none was originally, should he move us, that goes about
to prove an imparity between God the Father, and
God the Son, as these words import in his book against
Praxeas P “The Father is the whole substance, but the
Son a derivation, and portion of the whole, as he him-
self professes, because the Father is greater than me.”
Believe him now for a faithful relater of tradition,
whom you see such an unfaithful expounder of the
Scripture: besides, in his time, all allowable tradition
was now lost. For this same author, whom you bring
to testify the ordination of Clement to the bishopric of
Rome by Peter, testifies also, in the beginning of his
treatise concerning chastity, that the bishop of Rome
did then use to send forth his edicts by the name of
Pontifex Maximus, and Episcopus Episcoporum, chief
priest, and bishop of bishops: for shame then do not
urge that authority to keep up a bishop, that will ne-'
cessarily engage you to set up a pope. As little can
your advantage be from Hegesippus, an historian of
the same time, not extant, but cited by Eusebius: his
words are, that “in every city all things so stood in
his time as the law, and the prophets, and our Lord did
preach.” If they stood so, then stood not bishops
above presbyters; for what our Lord and his disciples
taught, God be thanked, we have no need to go
learn of him: and you may as well hope to persuade
us out of the same author, that James the brother of
our Lord was a Nazarite, and that to him only it was
lawful to enter into the holy of holies; that his food
was not upon any thing that had life, fish or flesh;
that he used no woollen garments, but only linen, and
so as he trifles on.
If therefore the tradition of the church were now
grown so ridiculous, and disconsenting from the doc-
trine of the apostles, even in those points which were
of least moment to men's particular ends, how well
may we be assured it was much more degenerated in
point of episcopacy and precedency, things which
could afford such plausible pretences, such commo-
dious traverses for ambition and avarice to lurk behind
As for those Britain bishops which you cite, take
heed what you do ; for our Britain bishops, less ancient
than these, were remarkable for mothing more than
their poverty, as Sulpitius Severus and Beda can re-
member you of examples good store.
Lastly, (for the fabulous Metaphrastes is not worth
an answer,) that authority of Clemens Alexandrinus is
not to be found in all his works; and wherever it be
extant, it is in controversy, whether it be Clement's or
no; or if it were, it says only that St. John in some
places constituted bishops: questionless he did, but
where does Clemens say he sct them above presbyters?
OF PRELATICAL EPISCOPACY. 27
No man will gainsay the constitution of bishops: but
the raising them to a superior and distinct order above
presbyters, seeing the gospel makes them one and the
same thing, a thousand such allegations as these will
not give prelatical episcopacy one chapel of ease above
a parish church. And thus much for this cloud I can-
not say rather than petty fog of witnesses, with which
episcopal men would cast a mist before us, to deduce
their exalted episcopacy from apostolic times. Now,
although, as all men well know, it be the wonted shift
of errour, and fond opinion, when they find themselves
outlawed by the Bible, and forsaken of sound reason,
to betake them with all speed to their old startinghole
of tradition, and that wild and overgrown covert of an-
tiquity, thinking to farm there at large room, and find
good stabling, yet thus much their own deified an-
tiquity betrays them to inform us, that tradition hath
had very seldom or never the gift of persuasion; as
that which church-histories report of those east and
western paschalists, formerly spoken of, will declare.
Who would have thought that Polycarpus on the one
side could have erred in what he saw St. John do, or
Anicetus bishop of Rome on the other side, in what he
or some of his friends might pretend to have seen St.
Peter or St. Paul do ; and yet neither of these could
persuade either when to keep Easter P The like frivol-
ous contention troubled the primitive English churches,
while Colmanus and Wilfride on either side deducing
their opinions, the one from the undeniable example of
Saint John, and the learned bishop Anatolius, and
lastly the miraculous Columba, the other from Saint
Peter and the Nicene council; could gain no ground
each of other, till King Oswy, perceiving no likelihood
of ending the controversy that way, was ſain to decide
it himself, good king, with that small knowledge where-
with those times had furnished him. So when those
pious Greek emperors began, as Cedrenus relates, to
put down monks, and abolish images, the old idolaters,
finding themselves blasted, and driven back by the
prevailing light of the Scripture, sent out their sturdy
monks called the Abramites, to allege for images the
ancient fathers Dionysius, and this our objected Ire-
naeus: nay, they were so highflown in their antiquity,
that they undertook to bring the apostles, and Luke
the evangelist, yea Christ himself, from certain records
that were then current, to patronize their idolatry: yet
for all this the worthy emperor Theophilus, even in
those dark times, chose rather to nourish himself and
his people with the sincere milk of the gospel, than to
drink from the mixed confluence of so many corrupt
and poisonous waters, as tradition would have persuad-
ed him to, by most ancient seeming authorities. In
like manner all the reformed churches abroad, unthron-
ing episcopacy, doubtless were not ignorant of these
testimonies alleged to draw it in a line from the apos-
tles' days: for surely the author will not think he hath
brought us now any new authorities or considerations
into the world, which the reformers in other places
were not advised of: and yet we see, the intercession
of all these apostolic fathers could not prevail with
them to alter their resolved decree of reducing into
order their usurping and over-provendered episcopants;
and God hath blessed their work this hundred years
with a prosperous and stedfast, and still happy success.
And this may serve to prove the insufficiency of these
present episcopal testimonies, not only in themselves
but in the account of those ever that have been the fol-
lowers of truth. It will next behove us to consider the
inconvenience we fall into, by using ourselves to be
guided by these kind of testimonies. He that thinks
it the part of a well-learned man to have read diligently
the ancient stories of the church, and to be no stranger
in the volumes of the fathers, shall have all judicious
men consenting with him ; not hereby to control, and
new ſangle the Scripture, God forbid! but to mark how
corruption and apostasy crept in by degrees, and to
gather up wherever we find the remaining sparks of
original truth, wherewith to stop the mouths of our ad-
versaries, and to bridle them with their own curb, who
willingly pass by that which is orthodoxal in them,
and studiously cull out that which is commentitious, and
best for their turns, not weighing the fathers in the bal-
ance of Scripture, but Scripture in the balance of the
fathers. If we, therefore, making first the gospel our
rule and oracle, shall take the good which we light on
in the fathers, and set it to oppose the evil which other
mon scek from them, in this way of skirmish we shall
easily master all superstition and false doctrine; but
if we turn this our discreet and wary usage of them
into a blind devotion towards them, and whatsoever we
find written by them ; we both forsake our own grounds
and reasons which led us at first to part from Rome,
that is, to hold the Scriptures against all antiquity; we
remove our cause into our adversaries’ own court, and
take up there those cast principles, which will soon
cause us to soder up with them again; inasmuch as
believing antiquity for itself in any one point, we bring
an engagement upon ourselves of assenting to all that
it charges upon us. For suppose we should now, neg-
lecting that which is clear in Scripture, that a bishop
and presbyter is all one both in name and office, and
that what was done by Timothy and Titus, executing
an extraordinary place, as fellow-labourers with the
apostles, and of a universal charge in planting chris-
tianity through divers regions, cannot be drawn into
particular and daily example; suppose that neglecting
this clearness of the text, we should, by the uncertain
and corrupted writings of succeeding times, determine
that bishop and presbyter are different, because we dare
not deny what Ignatius, or rather the Perkin Warbeck
of Ignatius, says; then must we be constrained to take
upon ourselves a thousand superstitions and falsities,
which the papists will prove us down in, from as good
authorities, and as ancient as these that set a bishop
above a presbyter. And the plain truth is, that when
any of our men, of those that are wedded to antiquity,
come to dispute with a papist, and leaving the Scrip-
tures put themselves without appeal to the sentence of
synods and councils, using in the cause of Sion the
hired soldiery of revolted Israel; where they give the
Romanists one buff, they receive two counterbuffs.
Were it therefore but in this regard, every true bishop
28
Book I.
THE REASON OF CHURCH-GOVERNMENT
should be afraid to conquer in his cause by such autho-
rities as these, which if we admit for the authority's
sake, we open a broad passage for a multitude of doc-
trines, that have no ground in Scripture, to break in
upon us. -
Lastly, I do not know, it being undeniable that there
are but two ecclesiastical orders, bishops and deacons,
mentioned in the gospel, how it can be less than im-
biety to make a demur at that, which is there so per-
spicuous, confronting and paralleling the sacred verity
of St. Paul with the offals and sweepings of antiquity,
that met as accidentally and absurdly, as Epicurus's
atoms, to patch up a Leucippean Ignatius, inclining
rather to make this phantasm an expounder, or indeed
self should unsay it, and not only the angel of Smyrna,
but an angel from heaven, should bear us down that
there be three, Saint Paul has doomed him twice, “Let
him be accursed;” for Christ hath pronounced that no
tittle of his word shall ſall to the ground; and if one
jot be alterable, it is as possible that all should perish:
and this shall be our righteousness, our ample warrant,
and strong assurance, both now and at the last day,
never to be ashamed of, against all the heaped names
of angels and martyrs, councils and fathers, urged upon
us, if we have given ourselves up to be taught by the
pure and living precept of God's word only; which,
without more additions, may with a forbidding of them,
hath within itself the promise of eternal life, the end
of all our wearisome labours, and all our sustaining
hopes. But if any shall strive to set up his ephod and
teraphim of antiquity against the brightness and per-
fection of the gospel; let him fear lest he and his Baal
be turned into Bosheth. And thus much may suffice
to shew, that the pretended episcopacy cannot be de-
duced from the apostolical times.
a depraver of St. Paul, than St. Paul an examiner, and
discoverer of this impostorship; nor caring how slightly
they put off the verdict of holy text unsalved, that says
plainly there be but two orders, so they maintain the
reputation of their imaginary doctor that proclaims
three. Certainly if Christ's apostle have set down but
two, then according to his own words, though he him-
THE
REASON OF CHURCH-GOVERNMENT
URGED AGAINS D PRELATY.
IN TWO BOOKS.
[FIRST PUBLISHRD 1641.]
THE PRE FA C E.
IN the publishing of human laws, which for the most part aim not beyond the good of civil society, to set them
barely forth to the people without reason or preface, like a physical prescript, or only with threatenings, as it
were a lordly command, in the judgment of Plato was thought to be done neither generously nor wisely. His
advice was, seeing that persuasion certainly is a more winning and more manlike way to keep men in obedience
than fear, that to such laws as were of principal moment, there should be used as an induction some well-tempered
discourse, shewing how good, how gainful, how happy it must needs be to live-according to honesty and justice;
which being uttered with those native colours and graces of speech, as true eloquence, the daughter of virtue,
can best bestow upon her mother's praises, would so incite, and in a manner charm, the multitude into the love
of that which is really good, as to embrace it ever after, not of custom and awe, which most men do, but of
choice and purpose, with true and constant delight. But this practice we may learn from a better and more
ancient authority than any heathen writer hath to give us; and indeed being a point of so high wisdom and
worth, how could it be but we should find it in that book, within whose sacred context all wisdom is unfolded ?
Moses, therefore, the only lawgiver that we can believe to have been visibly taught of God, knowing how vain
it was to write laws to men whose hearts were not first seasoned with the knowledge of God and of his works,
began from the book of Genesis, as a prologue to his laws; which Josephus right well hath noted: that the nation
Book I. URGED AGAINST PRELATY. 29
&
of the Jews, reading therein the universal goodness of God to all creatures in the creation, and his peculiar
favour to them in his election of Abraham their ancestor from whom they could derive so many blessings upon
themselves, might be moved to obey sincerely, by knowing so good a reason of their obedience. If then, in the
administration of civil justice, and under the obscurity of ceremonial rites, such care was had by the wisest of
the heathen, and by Moses among the Jews, to instruct them at least in a general reason of that government to
which their subjection was required; how much more ought the members of the church, under the gospel, seek
to inform their understanding in the reason of that government, which the church claims to have over them
Especially for that church hath in her immediate cure those inner parts and affections of the mind, where the
seat of reason is having power to examine our spiritual knowledge, and to demand from us, in God's behalf, a
service entirely reasonable. But because about the manner and order of this government, whether it ought to
be presbyterial or prelatical, such endless question, or rather uproar, is arisen in this land, as may be justly termed
what the fever is to the physicians, the eternal reproach of our divines, whilst other profound clerks of late,
greatly, as they conceive, to the advancement of prelaty, are so earnestly meting out the Lydian proconsular
Asia, to make good the prime metropolis of Ephesus, as if some of our prelates in all haste meant to change their
soil, and become neighbours to the English bishop of Chalcedon; and whilst good Breerwood as busily bestirs
himself in our vulgar tongue, to divide precisely the three patriarchates of Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch ; and
whether to any of these England doth belong :/I shall in the mean while not cease to hope, through the mercy
and grace of Christ, the head and husband of his church, that England shortly is to belong, neither to see pa-
triarchal nor see prelatical, but to the faithful feeding and disciplining of that ministerial order, which the blessed
apostles constituted throughout the churches; and this I shall assay to prove, can be no other than presbyters and
deacons. And if any man incline to think I undertake a task too difficult for my years, I trust through the su-
preme enlightening assistance far otherwise; for my years, be they few or many, what imports it? So they bring
reason, let that be looked on ; and for the task, from hence that the question in hand is so needful to be known
at this time, chiefly by every meaner capacity, and contains in it the explication of many admirable and heavenly
privileges reached out to us by the gospel, I conclude the task must be easy: God having to this end ordained
his gospel to be the revelation of his power and wisdom in Christ Jesus. And this is one depth of his wisdom,
that he could so plainly reveal so great a measure of it to the gross distorted apprehension of decayed mankind.
Let others, therefore, dread and shun the Scriptures for their darkness; I shall wish I may deserve to be reckon-
ed among those who admire and dwell upon them for their clearness. And this seems to be the cause why in
those places of holy writ, wherein is treated of church-government, the reasons thereof are not formally and
professedly set down, because to him that heeds attentively the drift and scope of christian profession,
they easily imply themselves; which thing further to explain, having now prefaced enough, I shall no
longer defer.
CHAP. I.
That church-government is prescribed in the gospel, and that to say otherwise is unsound.
The first and greatest reason of church-government we all civil societies, all the moments and turnings of hu-
may securely, with the assent of many on the adverse
part, affirm to be, because we find it so ordained and
set out to us by the appointment of God in the Scrip- |
türes;-but whether this be presbyterial, or prelatical, it
cannot be brought to the scanning, until I have said
what is meet to some who do not think it for the ease
of their inconsequent opinions, to grant that church-
discipline is platformed in the Bible, but that it is left
to the discretion of men. To this conceit of theirs I
answer, that it is both unsound and untrue; for there
is not that thing in the world of more grave and ur-
gent importance throughout the whole life of man, than
is discipline. What need I instance P He that hath
read with judgment, of nations and commonwealths,
of cities and camps, of peace and war, sea and land,
will readily agree that the flourishing and decaying of
man occasions, are moved to and fro as upon the axle
of discipline. So that whatsoever power or sway in
mortal things weaker men have attributed to for-
tune, I durst with more confidence (the honour of
Divine Providence ever saved) ascribe either to the
vigour or the slackness of discipline. Nor is there any
sociable perfection in this liſe, civil or sacred, that can
be above discipline; but she is that which with her
musical cords preserves and holds all the parts thereof
together. Hence in those perfect armies of Cyrus in
Xenophon, and Scipio in the Roman stories, the excel-
lence of military skill was esteemed, not by the not
needing, but by the readiest submitting to the edicts
of their commander. And certainly discipline is not
only the removal of disorder; but if any visible shape
can be given to divine things, the very visible shape
30 THE REASON OF CHIURCH-GOVERNMENT Book I.
and image of virtue, whereby she is not only seen in
the regular gestures and motions of her heavenly paces
as she walks, but also makes the harmony of her voice
audible to mortal ears. Yea, the angels themselves, in
whom no disorder is feared, as the apostle that saw them
in his rapture describes, are distinguished and quater-
mioned into the celestial princedoms and satrapies, ac-
cording as God himself has writ his imperial decrees
through the great provinces of heaven. The state also
of the blessed in paradise, though never so perſect, is
not therefore left without discipline, whose golden sur-
veying reed marks out and measures every quarter and
circuit of New Jerusalem. Yet is it not to be conceived,
that those eternal effluences of sanctity and love in the
glorified saints should by this means be confined and
cloyed with repetition of that which is prescribed, but
that our happiness may orb itself into a thousand va-
gancies of glory and delight, and with a kind of eccen-
trical equation be, as it were, an invariable planet of joy
and felicity; how much less can we believe that God
would leave his frail and feeble, thou 3 h not less belov-
ed church here below, to the perpetual stumble of con-
jecture and disturbance in this our dark voyage, without
the card and compass of discipline ! ||which is so hard
to be of man's making, that we may see even in the
guidance of a civil state to worldly happiness, it is not
for every learned, or every wise man, though many of
them consult in common, to invent or frame a disci-
pline : but if it be at all the work of man, it must be of
such a one as is a true knower of himself, and in whom
contemplation and practice, wit, prudence, fortitude,
and eloquence, must be rarely met, both to comprehend
the hidden causes of things, and span in his thoughts
all the various effects, that passion or complexion can
work in man's nature ; and hereto must his hand be at
defiance with gain, and his heart in all virtues heroic;
so ſar is it from the ken of these wretched projectors of
ours, that bescrawl their pamphlets every day with new
forms of government for our church. And therefore all
the ancient lawgivers were either truly inspired, as
Moses, or were such men as with authority enough
might give it out to be so, as Minos, Lycurgus, Numa,
because they wisely forcthought that men would never
quietly submit to such a discipline as had not more of
God's hand in it than man's. To come within the
narrowness of household government, observation will
shew us many deep counsellors of state and judges to
demean themselves incorruptly in the settled course of
affairs, and many worthy preachers upright in their
lives, powerful in their audience: but look upon either
of these men where they are left to their own disci-
plining at home, and you shall soon perceive, for all
their single knowledge and uprightness, how deficient
they are in the regulating of their own family; not
only in what may concern the virtuous and decent
composure of their minds in their several places, but
that which is of a lower and easier performance, the
right possessing of the outward vessel, their body, in
health or sickness, rest or labour, diet or abstinence,
whereby to render it more pliant to the soul, and useful
to the commonwealth : which if men were but as good
*
to discipline themselves, as some are to tutor their
horses and hawks, it could not be so gross in most
households. If then it appear so hard, and so little
known how to govern a house well, which is thought
of so easily discharge, and for every man's undertak-
ing ; what skill of man, what wisdom, what parts can
be sufficient to give laws and ordinances to the elect
household of God? / If we could imagine that he had
left it at random without his provident and gracious
ordering, who is he so arrogant, so presumptuous, that
durst dispose and guide the living ark of the Holy
Ghost, though he should find it wandering in the field
of Bethshemesh, without the conscious warrant of some
high calling 2 But no profane insolence can parallel
that which our prelates dare avouch, to drive out-
rageously, and shatter the holy ark of the church, not
borne upon their shoulders with pains and labour in
the word, but drawn with rude oxen their officials, and
their own brute inventions. Let them make shows of
reforming while they will, so long as the church is
mounted upon the prelatical cart, and not as it ought,
between the hands of the ministers, it will but shake
and totter; and he that sets to his hand, though with
a good intent to hinder the shogging of it, in this un-
lawſul waggonry wherein it rides, let him beware it be
not fatal to him as it was to Uzza, Certainly if God
be the father of his family the church, wherein could
he express that name more, than in training it up
under his own allwise and dear economy, not turning
it loose to the havoc of strangers and wolves, that
would ask no better plea than this, to do in the church
of Christ whatever humour, faction, policy, or licen-
tious will would prompt them to 2 | Again, if Christ be
the Church's husband, expecting her to be presented
before him a pure unspotted virgin; in what could he
shew his tender love to her more, than in prescribing
his own ways, which he best knew would be to the
improvement of her health and beauty, with much
greater care doubtless, than the Persian king could
appoint for his queen Esther those maiden dietings
and set prescriptions of baths and odours, which may
render her at last more amiable to his eye 2 I'or of
any age or sex, most unfitly may a virgin be left to an
uncertain and arbitrary education. Yea, though she
be well instructed, yet is she still under a more strait
tuition, especially if betrothed. In like manner the
church bearing the same resemblance, it were not
reason to think she should be left destitute of that care,
which is as necessary and proper to her as instructionſ
For public preaching indeed is the gift of the Spirit,
working as best seems to his secret will; but discipline
is the practic work of preaching directed and applied,
as is most requisite, to particular duty; without which
it were all one to the benefit of souls, as it would be to
the cure of bodies, if all the physicians in London
should get into the several pulpits of the city, and
assembling all the diseased in every parish, should
begin a learned lecture of pleurisies, palsies, lethargies,
to which perhaps none there present were inclined;
and so, without so much as feeling one pulse, or giving
the least order to any skilful apothecary, should dis-
Book I.
31
URGED AGAINST PRELATY.
miss them from time to time, some groaning, some
» with this only charge, to
look well to themselves, and do as they hear. Of
what excellence and necessity then church-discipline
is, how beyond the faculty of man to frame, and how
dangerous to be left to man's invention, who would
be every foot turning it to sinister cnds; how pro-
perly also it is the work of God as father, and of
Christ as husband, of the church, we have by thus
much heard.
languishing, some expiring,
CIHAP. II.
That church-government is set down in Holy Scripture,
and that to say otherwise is untrue.
As therefore it is unsound to say, that God hath not
appointed any set government in his church, so it is
untrue. Of the time of the law there can be no doubt;
for to let pass the first institution of priests and Levites,
which is too clear to be insisted upon, when the temple
came to be built, which in plain judgment could breed
no essential change, either in religion, or in the priestly
government; yet God, to shew how little he could en-
dure that men should be tampering and contriving in
his worship, though in things of less regard, gave to
David for Solomon, not only a pattern and model of the
temple, but a direction for the courses of the priests and
Levites, and for all the work of their service. At the
return from the captivity, things were only restored
after the ordinance of Moses and David ; or if the least
alteration be to be found, they had with them inspired
men, prophets; and it were not sober to say they did
aught of moment without divine intimation. In the pro-
phecy of Ezekiel, from the 40th chapter onward, after
the destruction of the temple, God, by his prophet,
seeking to wean the hearts of the Jews from their old
law, to expect a new and more perfect reformation
under Christ, sets out before their eyes the stately
fabric and constitution of his church, with all the ec-
clesiastical functions appertaining: indeed the descrip-
tion is as sorted best to the apprehension of those times,
typical and shadowy, but in such manner as never yet
came to pass, nor ever must literally, unless we mean
to annihilate the gospel. But so exquisite and lively
the description is in pourtraying the new state of the
church, and especially in those points where govern-
ment seems to be most active, that both Jews and Gen-
tiles might have good cause to be assured, that God,
whenever he meant to reform his church, never intended
to leave the government thereof, delineated here in such
curious architecture, to be patched afterwards, and
varnished over with the devices and embellishings of
man's imagination. Did God take such delight in
measuring out the pillars, arches, and doors of a mate-
rial temple * Was he so punctual and circumspect in
lavers, altars, and sacrifices soon after to be abrogated,
lest any of these should have been made contrary to
his mind 2 Is not a far more perfect work, more agree-
able to his perſections in the most perfect state of the
church militant, the new alliance of God to man P
Should not he rather now by his own prescribed disci-
pline have cast his line and level upon the soul of man
which is his rational ten ple, and, by the divine
square and compass thereof, form and regenerate in us
the lovely shapes of virtues and graces, the sooner to
edify and accomplish that immortal stature of Christ's
body, which is his church, in all her glorious linea-
ments and proportions?!And that this indeed God hath
done for us in the gospel we shall see with open eyes,
not under a veil. /w. may pass over the history of the
Acts and other places, turning only to those epistles of
St. Paul to Timothy and Titus; where the spiritual
eye may discern more goodly and gracefully erected,
than all the magnificence of temple or tabernacle, such
a heavenly structure of evangelical discipline, so diſfu-
sive of knowledge and charity to the prosperous in
crease and growth of the church, that it cannot be
wondered if that elegant and artful symmetry of the
promised new temple in Ezekiel, and all those sump-
tuous things under the law, were made to signify the
inward beauty and splendour of the christian church
thus governed. And whether this be commanded, let
it now be judged. St. Paul after his preface to the first
of Timothy, which he concludes in the 17th verse with
Amen, enters upon the subject of this epistle, which is
to establish the church-government, with a command:
“This charge I commit to thee, son Timothy : ac-
cording to the prophecies which went before on thee,
that thou by them mightest war a good warfare.”
Which is plain enough thus expounded : This charge
I commit to thee, wherein I now go about to instruct
thee how thou shalt set up church-discipline, that thou
mightest war a good warfare, bearing thyself con-
stantly and faithfully in the ministry, which, in the
first to the Corinthians, is also called a warfare; and
so after a kind of parenthesis concerning Hymenteus,
he returns to his command, though under the mild
word of exhorting, chap. ii. ver. 1, “I exhort there-
fore ;” as if he had interrupted his former command by
the occasional mention of Hymenaeus. More bencath
in the 14th verse of the third chapter, when he had de-
livered the duties of bishops or presbyters, and deacons,
not once naming any other order in the church, he thus
adds; “These things write I unto thee, hoping to
come unto thee shortly; (such necessity it seems there
was ;) but if I tarry long, that thou mayest know how
thou oughtest to behave thyself in the house of God.”
From this place it may be justly asked, whether Timothy
by this here written, might know what was to be known
concerning the orders of church governors or no 2 If he
might, then, in such a clear text as this, may we know
too without furtherjangle; if he might not, then did St.
Paul write insufficiently, and moreover said not true, for
he saith here he might know ; and I persuade myself he
did know ere this was written, but that the apostle had
more regard to the instruction of us, than to the inform-
ing of him. In the fifth chapter, after some other church-
precep's concerning discipline, mark what a dreadful
N
i
32
Book I.
'I HE REASON OF CHURCH-GOVERNMENT
2–
command follows, ver, 21 : “I charge thee before God
and the Lord Jesus Christ, and the elect angels, that
thou observe these things.” And as if all were not
yet sure enough, he closes up the epistle with an adjur-
ing charge thus; “I give thee charge in the sight of
God, who quickeneth all things, and before Christ Je-
sus, that thou keep this commandment:” that is, the
whole commandment concerning discipline, being the
main purpose of the epistle ; although Hooker would
fain have this denouncement referred to the particular
precept going before, because the word commandment
is in the singular number, not remembering that even
in the first chapter of this epistle, the word command-
ment is used in a plural sense, ver. 5: “Now the
end of the commandment is charity;” and what more
frequent than in like manner to say the law of Moses?
So that either to restrain the significance too much, or
too much to enlarge it, would make the adjuration
either not so weighty or not so pertinent. And thus
we find here that the rules of church-discipline are not
only commanded, but hedged about with such a ter-
rible impalement of commands, as he that will break
through wilfully to violate the least of them, must
hazard the wounding of his conscience even unto death!
Yet all this notwithstanding, we shall find them broken
well nigh all by the fair pretenders even of the next
ages. No less to the contempt of him whom they
feign to be the arch founder of prelaty, St. Peter, who,
by what he writes in the fifth chapter of his first epis-
tle, should seem to be far another man than tradition
reports him : there he commits to the presbyters only
full authority, both of feeding the flock and episcopat-
ing ; and commands that obedience’ be given to them
as to the mighty hand of God, which is his mighty
ordinance. (Yet all this was as nothing to repel the
venturous boldness of innovation that ensued, changing
the decrees of God that are immutable, as if they had
been breathed by man). Nevertheless when Christ, by
those visions of St. John, foreshews the reformation of
his church, he bids him take his reed, and mete it out
again after the first pattern, for he prescribes no other.
“Arise, said the angel, and measure the temple of God,
and the altar, and them that worship therein.” What
is there in the world can measure men but discipline 2
Our word ruling imports no less. Doctrine indeed is
the measure, or at least the reason of the measure, it is
true; but unless the measure be applied to that which
it is to measure, how can it actually do its proper
work P Whether therefore discipline be all one with
doctrine, or the particular application thereof to this or
that person, we all agree that doctrine must be such
only as is commanded ; or whether it be something
really differing from doctrine, yet was it only of God's
appointment, as being the most adequate measure of
the church and her children, which is here the office of
a great evangelist, and the recd given him from hea-
ven. But that part of the temple which is not thus
measured, so far is it from being in God's tuition or de-
light, that in the following verse he rejects it; how-
ever in shew and visibility it may seem a part of his
church, yet inasmuch as it lies thus unmeasured, he
leaves it to be trampled by the Gentiles; that is to be
polluted with idolatrous and gentilish rites and cere-
monies. And that the principal reformation here fore-
told is alread y come to pass, as well in discipline as in
doctrine, the state of our neigſDOur churches afford us
to behold. Thus, through all the periods and changes
of the church, it hath been proved, that God hath still
reserved to himself the right of enacting church-go-
Vernment.
CHAP. III.
That it is dangerous and unworthy the gospel, to hold
that church-government is to be patterned by the
law, as bishop Andrews and the primate of Armagh
muaintain.
WE may return now from this interposing difficulty
thus removed, to affirm, that since church-government
is so strictly commanded in God’s word, the first and
greatest reason why we should submit thereto is, be-
cause God hath so commanded. But whether of these
two, prelaty or presbytery, can prove itself to be sup-
ported by this first and greatest reason, must be the
next dispute: wherein this position is to be first laid
down, as granted ; that I may not follow a chase rather
than an argument, that one of these two, and none
other, is of God's ordaining ; and if it be, that ordi-
nance must be evident in the gospel. | For the imper-
fect and obscure institution of the law, which the
apostles themselves doubt not ofttimes to vilify, cannot
give rules to the complete and glorious ministration of
the gospel, which looks on the law as on a child, not
as on a tutor. And that the prelates have no sure
foundation in the gospel, their own guiltiness doth ma-
nifest; they would not else run questing up as high as
Adam to fetch their original, as it is said one of them
lately did in public. To which assertion, had I heard
it, because I see they are so insatiable of antiquity, I
should have gladly assented, and confessed them yet
more ancient: for Lucifer, before Adam, was the first
prelate angel; and both he, as is commonly thought,
and our forefather Adam, as we all know, for aspir-
ing above their orders, were miserably degraded.
But others, better advised, are content to receive
their beginning from Aaron and his sons, among
whom bishop Andrews of late years, and in these
times the primate of Armagh, for their learning are
reputed the best able to say what may be said in this
opinion. The primate, in his discourse about the ori-
ginal of episcopacy newly revised, begins thus: “The
ground of episcopacy is fetched partly from the pattern
prescribed by God in the Old Testament, and partly
from the imitation thereof brought in by the apostles.”
Herein I must entreat to be excused of the desire I
have to be satisfied, how for example the ground of
episcopacy is fetched partly from the example of the
Old Testament, by whom next, and by whose autho-
33
essential offices of the priests, the elements and rudi-
ments of the world, both weak and beggarly. Now to
breed, and bring up the children of the promise, the heirs
of liberty and grace, under such a kind of government
as is professed to be but an imitation of that ministry,
which engendered to bondage the sons of Agar; how
can this be but a foul injury and derogation, if not a
cancelling of that birthright and immunity, which
Christ hath purchased for us with his blood?] For the
ministration of the law, consisting of carnal things,
drew to it such a ministry as consisted of carnal re-
spects, dignity, precedence, and the like. And such a
ministry established in the gospel, as is founded upon
the points and terms of superiority, and nests itself in
worldly honours, will draw to it, and we see it doth,
such a religion as runs back again to the old pomp and
glory of the flesh : for doubtless there is a certain at-
traction and magnetic force betwixt the religion and
the ministerial form thereof. If the religion be pure;
spiritual, simple, and lowly, as the gospel most truly
is, such must the face of the ministry be. And in like;
manner, if the form of the ministry be grounded in the
worldly degrees of authority, honour, temporal juris;
diction, we see with our eyes it will turn the inward
power and purity of the gospel into the outward car;
nality of the law; evaporating and exhaling the inter;
nal worship into empty conformities, and gay shews
And what remains then, but that we should run into
as dangerous and deadly apostasy as our lamentalid
neighbours the papists; who, by this very snare and
pitfall of imitating the ceremonial law, fell into that
irrecoverable superstition, as must needs make void the
covenant of salvation to them that persist in this blind-
ness?
-
\
Book I,
Hy! Secondly, how the church-government under the
gospel can be rightly called an imitation of that in the
Old Testament; for that the gospel is the end and ful-
filling of the law, our liberty also from the bondage of
the law, I plainly read. How then the ripe age of the
gospel should be put to school again, and learn to go-
vern herself from the infancy of the law, the stronger
to imitate the weaker, the freeman to follow the cap-
tive, the learned to be lessoned by the rude, will be a
hard undertaking to evince from any of those prin-
ciples, which either art or inspiration hath written. If
any thing done by the apostles may be drawn howso-
ever to a likeness of something mosaical, if it cannot
be proved that it was done of purpose in imitation, as
having the right thereof grounded in nature, and not
in ceremony or type, it will little avail the matter. The
whole judaic law is either political, (and to take pat-
term by that, no christian nation ever thought itself
obliged in conscience,) or moral, which contains in it
the observation of whatsoever is substantially and per-
petually true and good, either in religion or course of
life. That which is thus moral, besides what we fetch
from those unwritten laws and ideas which nature hath
engraven in us, the gospel, as stands with her dignity
most, lectures to her from her own authentic handwrit-
ing and command, not copies out from the borrowed
manuscript of a subservient scroll, by way of imitating:
as well might she be said in her sacrament of water, to
imitate the baptism of John. What though she retain
excommunication used in the synagogue, retain the
morality of the sabbath? She does not therefore imi-
tate the law her underling, but perfect her. All that
was morally delivered from the law to the gospel, in
the office of the priests and Levites, was, that there
should be a ministry set apart to teach and discipline
the church; both which duties the apostles Thºught good |
o commit to the presbyters. And if any distinction of
honour were to be made among them, they directed it
should be to those not that only rule well, but espe-
cially to those that labour in the word and doctrine.
By which we are told that laborious teaching is the
most honourable prelaty that one minister can bave
above another in the gospel; if therefore the supe-
riority of bishopship be grounded on the priesthood as
a part of the moral law, it cannot be said to be an imi-
tation; for it were ridiculous that morality should imi-
te morality, which ever was the same thing. This
very word of patterning or imitating, excludes episco-
pacy from the solid and grave ethical law, and betrays
it to be a mere child of ceremony, or likelier some mis-
begotten thing, that having plucked the gay feathers
łof her obsolete bravery, to hide her own deformed bar-
renness, now vaunts and glories in her stolen plumes.
In the mean while, what danger there is against the
very life of the gospel, to make in any thing the typical
law her pattern, and how impossible in that which
touches the priestly government, I shall use such light
as I have received, to lay open. It cannot be unknown
by what expressions the holy apostle St. Paul spares
not to explain to us the nature and condition of the law,
calling those ordinances, which were the chief and
TJRGED AGAINST PRELATY.
That it is impossible to make the priesthood of Aaron
a pattern whereon to ground episcopacy.
CHAP, IV,
THAT which was promised next is, to declare the im-
possibility of grounding evangelic government in the
imitation of the Jewish priesthood; which will be done
by considering both the quality of the persons, and the
office itself. Aaron and his sons were the princes of
their tribe, before they were sanctified to the priesthood:
that personal eminence,—which they held above the
other Levites, they received not only from their office,
but partly brought it into their office; and so from that
time forward the priests were not chosen out of the
whole number of the Levites, as our bishops, but were
born inheritors of the dignity. Therefore, unless we
shall choose our prelates only out of the nobility, and
let them run in a blood, there can be mo possible imita-
tign of lording over their brethren in regard of their
persons altogether unlike. As for the office, which was
a representation of Christ's own person more imme-
diately in the high-priest, and of his whole priestly



34. THE REASON OF CHURCH-GOVERNMENT
office in all the other, to the performance of which the
Levites were but servitors and deacons, it was neces-
sary there should be a distinction of dignity between
two functions of so great odds." But there being no
such difference among our ministers, unless it be in
reſerence to the deacons, it is impossible to found a
prelaty upon the imitation of this priesthood : for
wherein, or in what work, is the office of a prelate
excellent above that of a pastor? In ordination, you
will say; but flatly against Scripture: for there we
know Timothy received ordination by the hands of the
Presbytery, notwithstanding all the vain delusions that
are used to evade that testimony, and maintain an un-
warrantable usurpation. But wherefore should ordi-
nation be a cause of setting up a superior degree in
the church? Is not that whereby Christ became our
Saviour a higher and greater work, than that whereby
he did ordain messengers to preach and publish him
our Saviour* Every minister sustains the person of
Christ in his highest work of communicating to us the
mysteries of our salvation, and hath the power of
binding and absolving; how should he need a higher
dignity, to 'represent or execute that which is an in-
feriour work in Christ P Why should the performance
of ordination, which is a lower office, exalt a prelate,
and not the seldom discharge of a higher and more
noble office, which is preaching and administering,
much rather depress him P Verily, neither the nature
nor the example of ordination doth any way require
an imparity between the ordainer and the ordained;
for what more natural than every like to produce his
like, man to beget man, firé to propagate fire? And
in examples of highest opinion the ordainer is inferiour
to the ordained; for the pope is not made by the pre-
cedent pope, but by cardinals, who ordáin and conse-
crate to a higher and greater office than their own.
CHAP. V.
To the arguments of bishop Andrews and the Primate.
IT follows here to attend to certain objections in a
little treatise lately printed among others of like sort
at Oxford, and in the title said to be out of the rude
draughts of bishop Andrews; and surely they be rude
draughts indeed, insomuch that it is marvel to think
what his ſiends meant, to let come abroad such shal-
low reasonings with the mame of a man so much
bruited for learning. In the twelfth and twenty-third
pages he seems most notoriously inconstant to himself;
for in the former place he tells us he forbears to take
any argument of prelaty from Aaron, as being the type
of Christ. In the latter he can forbear no longer, but
repents him of his rash gratuity, affirming, that to say,
Christ being come in the flesh, his figure in the high
priest ceaseth, is the shift of an anabaptist; and stiffly
argues, that Christ being as well king as priest, was
as well fore-resembled by the kings then, as by the
high priest; so that if his coming take away the one
type, it must also the other. Marvellous piece of
divinity! and well worth that the land should pay six
thousand pounds a year for in a bishopric; although
I read of no sophister among the Greeks that was so
dear, neither Hippias nor Protagoras, nor any whom
the Socratic school famously refuted without hire.
Here we have the type of the king sewed to the tippet
of the bishop, subtlely to cast a jealousy upon the
Crown, as if the right of kings, like Meleager in the
Metamorphosis, were no longer-lived than the fire-
brand of prelaty. But more likely the prelates fearing
(for their own guilty carriage protests they do fear)
that their fair days cannot long hold, practise by pos-
sessing the king with this most false doctrine, to en-
gage his power for them, as in his own quarrel, that
when they fall they may fall in a general ruin; just as
cruel Tiberius would wish : r -
“When I die let the earth be rolled in flames.”
But where, O bishop, doth the purpose of the lº)
set forth Christ to us as a king? That which never
was intended in the law canºnever be abolished as part
thereof. When the law was made, there was no king:
if before the law, or under the law, God by a special
type in any king would foresignify the future kingdom
of Christ, which is not yet visibly come; what was .
that to the law? The whole ceremonial law (and types
can be in no law else) comprehends mothing but the
propitiatory office of Christ's priesthood, which being
in substance accomplished, both law and priesthood
ſades away of itself, and passes into air like a transitory
vision, and the right of kings neither stands by any
type nor falls. We acknowledge that the civil ma .
gistrate wears an authority of God’s giving, and ought
to be obeyed as his vicegerent. But to make a king a
type, we say is an abusive and unskilful speech, and
of a moral solidity makes it seem a ceremonial shadow:
therefore your typical chain of king and priest must
unlink. But is not the type of priest taken away by
Christ's coming 2 No, saith this famous protestant
bishop of Winchester, it is not; and he that saith it is,
is an anabaptist. What think ye, readers, do ye not
understand him? What can be gathered hence, but
that the prelate would still sacrifice Conceive him,
readers, he would missificate.
were in a fair forwardness; and by such arguments as
these they were setting up the molten calf of their mass
again, and of their great hierarch the pope. For if the
type of priest be not taken away, then neither of the
high priest, it were a strange beheading; and high
priest more than one there cannot be, and that one can
be no less than a pope. And this doubtless was the
bent of his career, though never so covertly. Yea, but
there was something else in the high priest, besides the
figure, as is plain by St. Paul's acknowledging him.
It is true, that in the 17th of Deut, whence this au-
thority arises to the priest in matters too hard for the
secular judges, as must needs be many in the occasions
of those times, involved with ceremonial niceties, no
wonder though it be commanded to inquire at the
Book I,
Their altars, indeed,
Book I.
35
URGED AGAINST PRELATY
mouth of the priests, who besides the magistrates their
colleagues, had the oracle of urin to consult with.
And whether the high priest Ananias had not en-
croached beyond the limits of his priestly authority, or
whether he used it rightly, was no time then for St.
Paul to contest about. But if this instance be able to
assert any right of jurisdiction to the clergy, it must
impart it in common to all ministers, since it were a
great folly to seek for counsel in a hard intricate scru-
ple from a dunce prelate, when there might be found
a speedier solution from a grave and learned minister,
whom God hath giſted with the judgment of urin),
more amply ofttimes than all the prelates together;
and now in the gospel hath granted the privilege of
this oraculous ephod alike to all his ministers. The
reason therefore of imparity in the pricsts, being now,
as is aforesaid, really annulled both in their person
and in their representative office, what right of juris-
diction soever can be from this place levitically be-
queathed, must descend upon the ministers of the gospel
equally, as it finds them in all other points equal. Well,
then, he is finally content to let Aaron go ; Eleazar
will serve his turn, as being a superior of superiors, and
yet no type of Christ in Aaron's lifetime. O thou that
wouldest wind into any figment, or phantasm, to save
thy mite! yet all this will not ſadge, though it be cun-
ningly interpolished by some second hand with crooks
and emendations: hear then, the type of Christ in
some one particular, as of entering yearly into the holy
of holies, and such like, rested upon the high priest
only as more immediately personating our Saviour: but
to resemble his whole satisfactory office, all the line-
age of Aaron was no more than sufficient. And all or
any of the priests, considered separately without rela-
tion to the highest, are but as a lifeless trunk, and sig-
mify nothing. And this shews the excellence of
Christ's sacrifice, who at once and in one person ful-
filled that which many hundreds of priests many times
repeating had enough to foreshew. What other im-
parity there was among themselves, we may safely
suppose it depended on the dignity of their birth and
family, together with the circumstances of a carnal
service, which might afford many priorities. And this
I take to be the sum of what the bishop hath laid to-
gether to make plea for prelaty by imitation of the law :
though indeed, if it may stand, it will infer popedom
all as well. Many other courses he tries, enforcing
himself with much ostentation of endless genealogies,
as if he were the man that St. Paul forewarns us of in
Timothy, but so unvigorously, that I do not fear his
winning of many to his cause, but such as doting upon
great names are either over-weak, or over-sudden of
faith. I shall not refuse, therefore, to learn so much
prudence as I find in the Roman soldier that attended
the cross, not to stand breaking of legs, when the
breath is quite out of the body, but pass to that which
follows. | The primate of Armagh at the beginning of
his tractate seeks to avail himself of that place in
the sixty-sixth of Isaiah, “I will take of them for
priests and Levites, saith the Lord,” to uphold hereby
such a form of superiority among the ministers of the
- D
gospel, succeeding those in the law, as the Lord’s-day
did the sabbath. y But certain iſ this method may be
admitted of interpreting those prophetical passages
concerning christian times and a punctual correspond-
ence, it may with equal probability be urged upon us,
that we are bound to observe some monthly solemnity
answerable to the new moons, as well as the Lord's-
day which we keep in lieu of the sabbath : for in the
23rd verse the prophet joins them in the same manner
together, as before he did the priests and Levites, thus:
“And it shall come to pass that from one new moon to
another, and from one sabbath to another, shall all
flesh come to worship before me, saith the Lord.” Un-
doubtedly, with as good consequence may it be alleged
from hence, that we are to solemnize some religious
monthly meeting different from the sabbath, as from
the other any distinct formality of ecclesiastical orders
may be inferred. This rather will appear to be the
lawful and unconstrained sense of the text, that God,
in taking of them for priests and Levites, will not es-
teem them unworthy, though Gentiles, to undergo any
function in the church, but will make of them a full
and perfect ministry, as was that of the priests and Le-
vites in their kind. And bishop Andrews himself, to
end the controversy, sends us a candid exposition of
this quoted verse from the 24th page of his said book,
plainly deciding that God, by those legal names there
of priests and Levites, means our presbyters and dea-
cons; for which either ingenuous confession, or slip of
his pen, we give him thanks, and withal to him that
brought these treatises into one volume, who, setting
the contradictions of two learned men so near together,
did not foresee. What other deducements or analogies
are cited out of St. Paul, to prove a likeness between
the ministers of the Old and New Testament, having
tried their sinews, I judge they may pass without harm-
doing to our cause. We may remember, then, that
prelaty neither hath nor can have foundation in the
law, nor yet in the gospel; which assertion, as being
for the plainness thereof a matter of eyesight rather
than of disquisition, I voluntarily omit; not forgetting,
to specify this note again, that the earnest desire which
the prelates have to build their hierarchy upon the
sandy bottom of the law, gives us to see abundantly
the little assurance, which they find to rear up their
high roofs by the authority of the gospel, repulsed as
it were from the writings of the apostles, and driven to
take sanctuary among the Jews. Hence that open,
confession of the primate before mentioned: “Episco-
* Zw * \
pacy is fetched partly from the pattern of the Old Tes-
tament, and partly from the New as an imitation of the .
Old ;” though nothing can be more rotten in divinity
than such a position as this, and is all one as to say,
episcopacy is partly of divine institution, and partly of
man's own carving. For who gave the authority to
fetch more from the pattern of the law, than what the
apostles had already fetched, if they fetched any thing
at all, as hath been proved they did not P So was Jero-
boam's episcopacy partly from the pattern of the law,
and partly from the pattern of his own carnality; a
party-coloured and a party-membered episcopacy; and
\
36
Book I.
THE REASON OF CHURCH GOVERNMENT
:
what can this be else than a monstrous Others there-
fore among the prelates, perhaps not so well able to
brook, or rather to justify, this foul relapsing to the old
law, have condescended at last to a plain confessing,
that both the names and offices of bishops and presby-
ters at first were the same, and in the Scriptures nowhere
distinguished. This grants the remonstrant in the fifth
section of his defence, and in the preface to his last
short answer. But what need respect be had whether
he grant or grant it not, when as through all antiquity,
and even in the loftiest times of prelaty, we find it grant-
ed 2 Jerome, the learnedest of the fathers, hides not his
opinion, that custom only, which the proverb calls a
tyrant, was the maker of prelaty; before his audacious
workmanship the churches were ruled in common by
the presbyters: and such a certain truth this was es-
teemed, that it became a decree among the papal canons
compiled by Gratian. Anselm also of Canterbury, who,
to uphold the points of his prelatism, made himself a
traitor to his country, yet, commenting the epistles to
Titus and the Philippians, acknowledges, from the
clearness of the text, what Jerome and the church ru-
bric hath before acknowledged. He little dreamed then
that the weeding-hook of reformation would after two
ages pluck up his glorious poppy from insulting over
the good corn. Though since some of our British pre-
lates, seeing themselves pressed to produce Scrip-
ture, try all their cunning, if the New Testament
will not help them, to frame of their own heads, as it
were with wax, a kind of mimic bishop limned out to
the life of a dead priesthood: or else they would strain
us out a certain figurative prelate, by wringing the
collective allegory of those seven angels into seven
| single rochets. Howsoever, since it thus appears that
custom was the creator of prelaty, being less ancient
than the government of presbyters, it is an extreme
folly to give them the hearing that tell us of bishops
through so many ages: and if against their tedious
muster of citations, sees, and successions, it be replied
that wagers and church-antiquities, such as are repug-
nant to the plain dictate of Scripture, are both alike
the arguments of fools, they have their answer. We
rather are to cite all those ages to an arraignment be-
fore the word of God, wherefore, and what pretending,
how presuming they durst alter that divine institution
of presbyters, which the apostles, who were no various
and inconstant men, surely had set up in the churches;
and why they choose to live by custom and catalogue,
ſ or, as St. Paul saith, by sight and visibility, rather than
by faith 2 But, first, I conclude, from their own mouths,
that God's command in Scripture, which doubtless
ought to be the first and greatest reason of church-go-
vernment, is wanting to prelaty. And certainly we
have plented us warrant in the doctrine of Christ, to
determine that the want of this reason is of itself suffi-
cient to confute all other pretences, that may be brought
in favour of it.
CHAP. VI.
That prelaty was not set up for prevention of schism,
as is pretended ; or if it were, that it performs not
what it was first set up for, but quite the contrary.
Yet because it hath the outside of a specious reason,
and specious things we know are aptest to work with
human lightness and frailty, even against the solidest
truth that sounds not plausibly, let us think it worth
the examining for the love of infirmer Christians, of
what importance this their second reason may be. Tra-
dition they say hath taught them, that, for the preven-
tion of growing schism, the bishop was heaved above
the presbyter. And must tradition then ever thus to
the world's end be the perpetual cankerworm to eat out
God’s commandments 2 Are his decrees so inconsiderate
and so fickle, that when the statutes of Solon or Lycur-
gus shall prove durably good to many ages, his, in
forty years, shall be found defective, ill-contrived, and
for needful causes to be altered P Our Saviour and his
apostles did not only foresee, but foretell and forewarn
us to look for schism. Is it a thing to be imagined of
God's wisdom, or at least of apostolic prudence, to set up
such a government in the tenderness of the church, as
should incline, or not be more able than any others to
oppose itself to schism It was well known what a
bold lurker schism was, even in the household of
Christ, between his own disciples and those of John
the Baptist about fasting; and early in the Acts of the
Apostles the noise of schism had almost drowned the
proclaiming of the gospel; yet we read not in Scrip-
ture, that any thought was had of making prelates, no
not in those places where dissension was most rife. If
prelaty had been then esteemed a remedy against
schism, where was it more needful than in that great
variance among the Corinthians, which St. Paul so
laboured to reconcile P and whose eye could have found
the fittest remedy sooner than his 2 And what could
have made the remedy more available, than to have
used it speedily P And lastly, what could have been
more necessary, than to have written it for our instruc-
tion * Yet we see he neither commended it to us, nor
used it himself. For the same division remaining there,
or else bursting forth again more than twenty years
after St. Paul's death, we find in Clement's epistle, of
venerable authority, written to the yet factious Corin-
thians, that they were still governed by presbyters.
And the same of other churches out of Hermas, and
divers other the scholars of the apostles, by the late
industry of the learned Salmasius appears. Neither
yet did this worthy Clement, St. Paul's disciple, though
writing to them to lay aside schism, in the least word
advise them to change the presbyterian government,
into prelaty. And therefore if God afterward gave or
permitted this insurrection of episcopacy, it is to be
feared he did it in his wrath, as he gave the Israelites
a king. With so good a will doth he use to alter his
own chosen government once established. For mark
whether this rare device of man's brain, thus preferred
-\
Book I.
37
URGED AGAINST PRELATY.
before the ordinance of God, had better success than
fleshly wisdom, not counselling with God, is wont to
have. So far was it from removing schism, that if
schism parted the congregations before, now it rent and
mangled, now it raged. Heresy begat heresy with a
certain monstrous haste of pregnancy in her birth, at
once born and bringing forth. Contentions, before
brotherly, were now hostile. Men went to choose their
bishop as they went to a pitched field, and the day of
his election was like the sacking of a city, sometimes
ended with the blood of thousands. Nor this among
heretics only, but men of the same belief, yea confess-
ors; and that with such odious ambition, that Euse-
bius, in his eighth book, testifies he abhorred to write.
And the reason is not obscure, for the poor dignity, or
rather burden, of a parochial presbyter could not en-
gage any great party, nor that to any deadly feud :
but prelaty was a power of that extent and sway, that
if her election were popular, it was seldom not the
cause of some faction or broil in the church. But
if her dignity came by favour of some prince, she
was from that time his creature, and obnoxious to com-
ply with his ends in state, were they right or wrong.
So that, instead of finding prelaty an impeacher of
schism or faction, the more I search, the more I grow
into all persuasion to think rather that faction and she,
as with a spousal ring, are wedded together, never to
be divorced. But here let every one behold the just
and dreadful judgment of God meeting with the auda-
cious pride of man, that durst offer to mend the ordi-
nances of heaven. God, out of the strife of men, brought
forth by his apostles to the church that beneficent and
ever-distributing office of deacons, the stewards and
ministers of holy alms: man, out of the pretended care
of peace and unity, being caught in the snare of his
impious boldness to correct the will of Christ, brought
forth to himself upon the church that irreconcilable
schism of perdition and apostasy, the Roman antichrist;
for that the exaltation of the pope arose out of the
reason of prelaty, it cannot be denied. And as I noted
before, that the pattern of the high priest pleaded for
in the gospel, (for take away the head priest, the rest
are but a carcase,) sets up with better reason a pope
than an archbishop ; for if prelaty must still rise and
rise till it come to a primate, why should it stay there 2
when as the catholic government is not to follow the
division of kingdoms, the temple best representing the
universal church, and the high priest the universal head:
so I observe here, that if to quiet schism there must be
one head of prelaty in a land, or monarchy, rising from
"a provincial to a national primacy, there may, upon
better grounds of repressing schism, be set up one
catholic head over the catholic church. For the peace
and good of the church is not terminated in the schism-
less estate of one or two kingdoms, but should be pro-
vided for by the joint consultation of all reformed
christendom ; that all controversy may end in the final
pronounce or canon of one archprimate or protestant
pope. Although by this means, for aught I see, all
the diameters of schism may as well meet and be knit
up in the centre of one grand falsehood. Now let all
impartial men arbitrate what goodly inference these
two main reasons of the prelates have, that by a natu-
ral league of consequence make more for the pope than
for themselves; yea, to say more home, are the very
womb for a new subantichrist to breed in, if it be not
rather the old force and power of the same man of sin
counterfeiting protestant. It was not the prevention
of schism, but it was schism itself, and the hateful thirst
of-ording in the church, that first bestowed a being
upon prelaty; this was the true cause, but the pretence
j is still the same. The prelates, as they would have it
thought, are the only mauls of schism. Forsooth if
they be put down, a deluge of innumerable sects will
follow ; we shall be all Brownists, Familists, Anabap-
tists. For the word Puritan seems to be quashed, and
all that heretofore were counted such, are now Brown-
ists. And thus do they raise an evil report upon the
expected reforming grace that God hath bid us hope
for ; like those faithless spies, whose carcases shall
perish in the wilderness of their own confused igno-
rance, and never taste the good of reformation. Do they
keep away schism Iſ to bring a numb and chill
stupidity of soul, an unactive blindness of mind, upon
the people by their leaden doctrine, or no doctrine at
all; if to persecute all knowing and zealous Christians
by the violence of their courts, be to keep away schism,
they keep schism away indeed : and by this kind of
discipline all Italy and Spain is as purely and politicly
kept from schism as England hath been by them.
With as good a plea might the dead-palsy boast to a
man, It is I that free you from stitches and pains, and
the troublesome feeling of cold and heat, of wounds
and strokes; if I were gone, all these would molest you.
The winter might as well vaunt itself against the
spring, I destroy all noisome and rank weeds, I keep
down all pestilent vapours; yes, and all wholesome
herbs, and all fresh dews, by your violent and hide-
bound frost: but when the gentle west winds shall open
the fruitful bosom of the earth, thus overgirded by your
imprisonment, then the flowers put forth and spring,
and then the sun shall scatter the mists, and the ma-
muring hand of the tiller shall root up all that burdens
the soil without thank to your bondage. But far
worse than any frozen captivity is the bondage of pre-
lates; for that other, if it keep down any thing which
is good within the earth, so doth it likewise that which
is ill; but these let out freely the ill, and keep down
the good, or else keep down the lesser ill, and let out
the greatest. Be ashamed at last to tell the parliament,
ye curb schismatics, whenas they know ye cherish and
side with papists, and are now as it were one party
with them, and it is said they help to petition for ye.
Can we believe that your government strains in good
earnest at the petty gnats of schism, whenas we see it
makes nothing to swallow the camel heresy of Rome,
but that indeed your throats are of the right pharisaical
strain * where are those schismatics, with whom the
prelates hold such hot skirmish P shew us your acts,
those glorious annals which your courts of loathed me
mory lately deceased have left us? Those schismatics
I doubt me will be found the most of them such as


38
Book I.
THE REASON OF CHURCH-GOVERNMENT
whose only schism was to have spoken the truth
against your high abominations and cruelties in the
church; this is the schism ye hate most, the removal
of your criminous hierarchy. A politic government of
yours, and of a pleasant conceit, set up to remove
those as a pretended schism, that would remove you
as a palpable heresy in government. If the schism
would pardon ye that, she might go jagged in as many
|
cuts and slashes as she pleased for you. As for the
rending of the church, we have many reasons to think
it is not that which ye labour to prevent, so much as
the rending of your pontifical sleeves : that schism
would be the sorest schism to you ; that would be
Brownism and Anabaptism indeed. If we go down,
say you. (as if Adrian's wall were broken,) a flood of sects
will rush in. What sects P What are their opinions 2
Give us the inventory: it will appear both by your
former prosecutions and your present instances, that
they are only such to speak of, as are offended with
your lawless government, your ceremonies, your
liturgy, an extract of the mass-book translated. But
that they should be contemmers of public prayer,
and churches used without superstition, I trust God
will manifest it ere long to be as false a slander, as
your former slanders against the Scots. Noise it till
ye be hoarse, that a rabble of sects will come in ; it will
be answered ye, no rabble, sir priest, but an unanimous
multitude of good protestants will then join to the
church, which now, because of you, stand separated.
This will be the dreadful consequence of your removal.
As for those terrible names of sectaries and schismaties,
which ye have got together, we know your manner of
fight, when the quiver of your arguments, which is
ever thin, and weakly stored, after the first brunt is
quite empty, your course is to betake ye to your other
quiver of slander, wherein lies your best archery.
And whom you could not move by sophistical arguing,
them you think to confute by scandalous misnaming;
thereby inciting the blinder sort of people to mislike
and deride sound doctrine and good christianity, under
two or three vile and hateful terms. But if we could
easily endure and dissolve your doughtiest reasons in
argument, we shall more easily bear the worst of your
unreasonableness in calumny and false report: espe-
cially being foretold by Christ, that if he our master
were by your predecessors called Samaritan and Beel-
zebub, we must not think it strange if his best disci-
ples in the reformation, as at first by those of your tribe
they were called Lollards and Hussites, so now by you
be termed Puritans and Brownists. But my hope is,
that the people of England will not suffer themselves
to be juggled thus out of their faith and religion by a
mist of names cast before their eyes, but will search
wisely by the Scriptures, and look quite through this
fraudulent aspersion of a disgraceful name into the
things themselves: knowing that the primitive Chris-
tians in their times were accounted such as are now
called Familists and Adamites, or worse. And many
on the prelatic side, Hike the church of Sardis, have a
name to live, and yet are dead; to be protestants, and
are indeed papists in most of their principles. Thus
persuaded, this your old fallacy we shall soon unmask,
and quickly apprehend how you prevent schism, and
who are your schismatics. But what if ye prevent
and hinder all good means of preventing schism 2
That way which the apostles used, was to call a coun-
cil : from which, by any thing that can be learned
from the fifteenth of the Acts, no faithful Christian was
debarred, to whom knowledge and piety might give
entrance. Of such a council as this every parochial
consistory is a right homogeneous and constituting
part, being in itself, as it were, a little synod, and
towards a general assembly moving upon her own basis
in an even and firm progression, as those smaller squares
in battle unite in one great cube, the main phalanx, an
emblem of truth and steadfastness. Whereas, on the
other side, prelaty ascending by a gradual monarchy
from bishop to archbishop, from thence to primate, and
from thence, for there can be no reason yielded neither
in nature nor in religion, wherefore, iſ it have lawfully
mounted thus high, it should not be a lordly ascendant
in the horoscope of the church, from primate to patri-
arch, and so to pope : I say, prelaty thus ascending in |
a continual pyramid upon pretence to perfect the
church's unity, if notwithstanding it be found most;
meedful, yea the utmost help to darn up the rents of
schism by calling a council, what does it but teach us
that prelaty is of no force to effect this work, which she
boasts to be her masterpiece; and that her pyramid
aspires and sharpens to ambition, not to perfection or
unity 2 This we know, that as often as any great
schism disparts the church, and synods be proclaimed,
the presbyters have as great right there, and as free .
vote of old, as the bishops, which the canon law con-
ceals not. So that prelaty, if she will seek to close up
divisions in the church, must be forced to dissolve and
unmake her own pyramidal figure, which she affirms
to be of such uniting power, whenas indeed it is the
most dividing and schismatical form that geometricians
know of, and must be fain to inglobe or incube herself
among the presbyters; which she hating to do, sends
her haughty prelates from all parts with their forked
mitres, the badge of schism, or the stamp of his cloven
foot whom they serve I think, who, according to their
hierarchies acuminating still higher and higher in a
cone of prelaty, instead of healing up the gashes of
the church, as it happens in such pointed bodies meet-
ing, fall to gore one another with their sharp spires
for upper place and precedence, till the council itself
proves the greatest schism of all. And thus they are
so far from hindering dissension, that they have made
unprofitable, and even moisome, the chiefest remedy
we have to keep christendom at one, which is by coun-
cils: and these, if we rightly consider apostolic exam-
ple, are nothing else but general presbyteries. This
seemed so far from the apostles to think much of, as if
hereby their dignity were impaired, that, as we may
gather by those epistles of Peter and John, which are
likely to be latest written, when the church grew to a
settling, like those heroic patricians of Rome (if we
|
i
may use such comparison) hastening to lay down their
dictatorship, they rejoiced to call themselves, and to be
Book I.
39
URGED AGAINST PRELATY.
.
s
as fellow-elders among their brethren ; knowing that
their high office was but as the scaffolding of the
church yet unbuilt, and would be but a troublesome
disſigurement, so soon as the building was finished.
But the lofty minds of an age or two after, such was
their small discerning, thought it a poor indignity,
that the high-reared government of the church should
so on a sudden, as it seemed to them, squat into a pres-
bytery. Next, or rather, before councils, the timeliest
prevention of schism is to preach the gospel abundantly
and powerfully throughout all the land, to instruct the
youth religiously, to endeavour how the Scriptures
may be easiest understood by all men; to all which
the proceedings of these men have been on set purpose
contrary. But how, O prelates, should you remove
schism f and how should you not remove and oppose
all the means of removing schism 2 when prelaty is a
schism itself from the most reformed and most flourish-
ing of our neighbour churches abroad, and a sad sub-
ject of discord and offence to the whole nation at home.
The remedy which you allege, is the very disease we
groan under; and never can be to us a remedy but by
removing itself. Your predecessors were believed to
assume this pre-eminence above their brethren, only
that they might appease dissension. Now God and
the church call upon you, for the same reason, to lay
it down, as being to thousands of good men offensive,
burdensome, intolerable. Surrender that pledge, which,
unless you foully usurped it, the church gave you, and
now claims it again, for the reason she first lent it.
Discharge the trust committed to you, prevent schism;
and that ye can never do, but by discharging your-
selves. That government which ye hold, we confess,
prevents much, hinders much, removes much ; but
what? the schisms and grievances of the church 2 no,
but all the peace and unity, all the welfare not of the
church alone, but of the whole kingdom. And if it be
still permitted ye to hold, will cause the most sad, I
know not whether separation be enough to say, but
such a wide gulf of distraction in this land, as will
never close her dismal gap until ye be forced, (for of
yourselves you will never do as that Roman, Curtius,
nobly did,) for the church's peace and your country's, to
leap into the midst, and be no more seen. By this we
shall know whether yours be that ancient prelaty, which
you say was first constituted for the reducement of
quiet and unanimity into the church, for then you will
not delay to prefer that above your own preferment. If
otherwise, we must be confident that your prelaty is no-
thing else but your ambition, an insolent preferring of
yourselves above your brethren; and all your learned
scraping in antiquity, even to disturb the bones of old
Aaron and his sons in their graves, is but to maintain
and set upon our necks a stately and severe dignity,
which you called sacred, and is nothing in very deed but
a grave and reverend gluttony, a sanctimonious avarice;
in comparison of which, all the duties and dearnesses
which ye owe to God or to his church, to law, cus-
tom, or nature, ye have resolved to set at nought. I
could put you in mind what counsel Clement, a fellow-
labourer with the apostles, gave to the presbyters of
Corinth, whom the people, though unjustly, sought to
remove. “Who among you,” saith he, “is noble-
minded, who is pitiful, who is charitable 2 let him say
thus, If for me this sedition, this enmity, these differ-
ences be, I willingly depart, I go my ways; only let
the flock of Christ be at peace with the presbyters that
are set over it. He that shall do this,” saith he, “shall
get him great honour in the Lord, and all places will
receive him.” This was Clement's counsel to good
and holy men, that they should depart rather from their
just office, than by their stay to ravel out the seamless
garment of concord in the church. But I have better
counsel to give the prelates, and far more acceptable
to their ears; this advice in my opinion is fitter for
them : cling fast to your pontifical sees, bate not, quit
yourselves like barons, stand to the utmost for your
haughty courts and votes in parliament. Still tell us,
that you prevent schism, though schism and combus-
tion be the very issue of your bodies, your first-born ;
and set your country a bleeding in a prelatical mutiny,
to fight for your pomp, and that ill-favoured weed of
temporal honour, that sits dishonourably upon your
laic shoulders; that ye may be ſat and fleshy, swoln
with high thoughts and big with mischievous designs,
when God comes to visit upon you all this fourscore
years' vexation of his church under your Egyptian
tyranny. For certainly of all those blessed souls which
you have persecuted, and those miserable ones which
you have lost, the just vengeance does not sleep.
CHAP. VII.
That those many sects and schisms by some supposed to
be among ws, and that rebellion in Ireland, ought
not to be a hinderance, but a hastening of reform-
ation.
As for those many sects and divisions rumoured abroad
to be amongst us, it is not hard to perceive, that they
are partly the mere fictions and false alarms of the pre-
lates, thereby to cast amazements and panic terrours
into the hearts of weaker Christians, that they should
not venture to change the present deformity of the
church, for fear of I know not what worse incon-
veniencies. With the same objected fears and sus-
picions, we know that subtle prelate Gardner sought
to divert the reformation. It may suffice us to be
taught by St. Paul, that there must be sects for the
manifesting of those that are sound-hearted. These are
but winds and flaws to try the floating vessel of our
faith, whether it be stanch and sail well, whether our
ballast be just, our anchorage and cable strong. By
this is seen who lives by faith and certain knowledge,
and who by credulity and the prevailing opinion of the
age; whose virtue is of an unchangeable grain, and
whose of a slight wash. If God come to try our con-
stancy, we ought not to shrink or stand the less firmly
for that, but pass on with more steadfast resolution to
.
40
Book II.
THE REASON OF CHURCH-GOVERNMENT
establish the truth, though it were through a lane of
sects and heresies on each side. Other things men do
to the glory of God: but sects and errours, it seems,
God suffers to be for the glory of good men, that the
world may know and reverence their true fortitude and
undaunted constancy in the truth. Let us not there-
fore make these things an incumbrance, or an excuse
of our delay in reforming, which God sends us as an
incitement to proceed with more honour and alacrity:
for if there were no opposition, where were the trial of
an unfeigned goodness and magnanimity à Virtue that
wavers is not virtue, but vice revolted from itself, and
after a while returning. [The actions of just and pious
men do not darken in their middle course; but Solomon
tells us, they are as the shining light, that shineth more
and more unto the perfect day. But if we shall suffer
the tritling doubts and jealousies of future sects to
overcloud the fair beginnings of purposed reformation,
let us rather fear that another proverb of the same wise
man be not upbraided to us, that “the way of the
wicked is as darkness, they stumble at they know not
what.” If sects and schisms be turbulent in the unset-
tled estate of a church, while it lies under the amending
hand, it best beseems our christian courage to think
they are but as the throes and pangs that go before the
birth of reformation, and that the work itself is now in
doing. For if we look but on the nature of elemental
and mixed things, we know they cannot suffer any
change of one kind or quality into another, without the
struggle of contrarieties. And in things artificial,
seldom any elegance is wrought without a superfluous
waste and refuse in the transaction. No marble statue
can be politely carved, no fair edifice built, without
almost as much rubbish and sweeping. Insomuch that
even in the spiritual conflict of St. Paul's conversion,
there fell scales from his eyes, that were not perceived
before. No wonder then in the reforming of a church,
which is never brought to effect without the fierce en-
counter of truth and falsehood together, if, as it were,
the splinters and shards of so violent a jousting, there
fall from between the shock many fond errours and
famatic opinions, which, when truth has the upper
hand, and the reformation shall be perfected, will easily
be rid out of the way, or kept so low, as that they shall
be only the exercise of our knowledge, not the distur-
bance or interruption of our faith. As for that which
Barclay, in his “Image of Minds,” writes concerning
the horrible and barbarous conceits of Englishmen in
their religion, I deem it spoken like what he was, a
fugitive papist traducing the island whence he sprung.
It may be more judiciously gathered from hence, that
the Englishman of many other nations is least atheisti-
cal, and bears a natural disposition of much reverence
and awe towards the Deity; but in his weakness and
want of better instruction, which among us too fre-
quently is neglected, especially by the meaner sort,
turning the bent of his own wits, with a scrupulous
and ceaseless care, what he might do to inform himself
aright of God and his worship, he may fall not unlikely
sometimes, as any other landman, into an uncouth
opinion. And verily if we look at his native toward-
liness in the roughcast without breeding, some nation
or other may haply be better composed to a natural
civility and right judgment than he. But if he get
the benefit once of a wise and well rectified nurture,
which must first come in general from the godly vigi-
lance of the church, I suppose that wherever mention
is made of countries, manners, or men, the English
people, among the first that shall be praised, may de-
serve to be accounted a right pious, right honest, and
right hardy nation. But thus while some stand dally-
ing and deferring to reform for fear of that which
should mainly lasten them forward, lest schism and
errour should increase, we may now thank ourselves
and our delays, if instead of schism a bloody and in-
human rebellion be strook in between our slow movings.
Indeed against violent and powerful opposition there
can be no just blame of a lingering dispatch. But this
I urge against those that discourse it for a maxim, as
if the swift opportunities of establishing or reforming
religion were to attend upon the phlegm of state-busi-
ness. In state many things at first are crude and hard
to digest, which only time and deliberation can supple
and concoct. But in religion, wherein is no immatu-
rity, nothing out of season, it goes far otherwise. The .
door of grace turns upon smooth hinges, wide opening to
send out, but soon shutting to recall the precious offers of
mercy to a nation: which, unless watchfulness and zeal,
two quicksighted and ready-handed virgins, be there in
our behalf to receive, we lose: and still the oftener we
lose, the straiter the door opens, and the less is offered.
This is all we get by demurring in God’s service. It
is not rebellion that ought to be the hinderance of re-
formation, but it is the want of this which is the cause
of that. The prelates which boast themselves the only
bridlers of schism, God knows have been so cold and
backward both there and with us to repress heresy
and idolatry, that either, through their carelessness,
or their craft, all this mischief is befallen. What
can the Irish subjects do less in God’s just displeasure
against us, than revenge upon English bodies the
little care that our prelates have had of their souls f Nor
hath their negligence been new in that island, but ever
notorious in Queen Elizabeth's days, as Camden their
known friend forbears not to complain. Yet so little
are they touched with remorse of these their cruelties,
(for these cruelties are theirs, the bloody revenge of
those souls which they have famished,) that whenas
against our brethren the Scots, who, by their upright
and loyal deeds, have now brought themselves an
honourable name to posterity, whatsoever malice by
slander could invent, rage in hostility attempt, they
greedily attempted; toward these murderous Irish, the
enemies of God and mankind, a cursed offspring of
their own connivance, no man takes notice but that
they seem to be very calmly and indifferently affected.
Where then should we begin to extinguish a rebellion,
that hath its cause from the misgovernment, of the
church P where, but at the church's reformation, and
the removal of that government, which pursues and
wars with all good Christians under the name of schis-
matics, but maintains and fosters all papists and ido-
Book I.
4 |
|URGED AGAINST PRELATY.
laters as tolerable Christians? And if the sacred Bible
may be our light, we are neither without example, nor
the witness of God himself, that the corrupted state of .
the church is both the cause of tumult and civil wars,
àTidſ That to stint them, the peace of the church must
first be settled. “Now, for a long season,” saith Aza-
riah to King Asa, “Israel hath been without the true
God, and without a teaching priest, and without law :
and in those times there was no peace to him that went
out, nor to him that came in, but great vexations were
upon all the inhabitants of the countries. And nation
was destroyed of nation, and city of city, for God did
vex them with all adversity. Be ye strong therefore,”
saith he to the reformers of that age, “and let not your
hands be weak, for your work shall be rewarded.” And
in those prophets that lived in the times of reformation
aſter the captivity, often doth God stir up the people
to consider, that while establishment of church-matters
was neglected, and put off, there “was no peace to
him that went out or came in ; for I,” saith God,
“ had set all men every one against his neighbour.”
But from the very day forward that they went seriously
and effectually about the welfare of the church, he tells
them, that they themselves might perceive the sudden
change of things into a prosperous and peaceful con-
dition. But it will here be said, that the reformation
with their falling tears, perhaps with the distilling of
their bloody wounds, if they have not quite by this
time cast off, and almost cursed the vain hope of our
foundered ships and aids, can best judge how speedy
we are to their relief. But let their succours be hasted,
as all need and reason is; and let not therefore the re-
formation, which is the chiefest cause of success and
victory, be still procrastinated. They of the captivity
in their greatest extremities could find both counsel
and hands enough at once to build, and to expect the
enemy's assault. And we, for our parts, a populous
and mighty nation, must needs be fallen into a strange
plight either of effeminacy or confusion, if Ireland, that
was once the conquest of one single earl with his pri-
vate forces, and the small assistance of a petty Kernish
prince, should now take up all the wisdom and prowess
of this potent monarchy, to quell a barbarous crew of
rebels, whom, if we take but the right course to sub-
due, that is, beginning at the reformation of our church,
their own horrid murders and rapes will so fight against
them, that the very sutlers and horse-boys of the camp
will be able to rout and chase them, without the stain-
ing of any noble sword. To proceed by other method
in this enterprise, be our captains and commanders
never so expert, will be as great an errour in the art
of war, as any novice in soldiership ever committed.
And thus I leave it as a declared truth, that neither the
is a long work, and the miseries of Ireland are urgent
* - e ſ
fear of sects, no nor rebellion, can be a fit plea to stay i
of a speedy redress. They be indeed ; and how speedy
we are, the poor afflicted remnant of our martyred
countrymen that sit there on the seashore, counting
the hours of our delay with their sighs, and the minutes
reformation, but rather to push it forward with all pos- \
sible diligence and speed. ~&
THE SECOND BOOK.
How happy were it for this frail, and as it may be
called mortal life of man, since all earthly things which
have the name of good and convenient in our daily
use, are withal so cumbersome and full of trouble, if
knowledge, yet which is the best and lightsomest pos-
session of the mind, were, as the common saying is, no
burden; and that what it wanted of being a load to any
part of the body, it did not with a heavy advantage
overlay upon the spirit! For not to speak of that know-
ledge that rests in the contemplation of natural causes
and dimensions, which must needs be a lower wisdom,
as the object is low, certain it is, that he who hath ob-
tained in more than the scantiest measure to know any
thing distinctly of God, and of his true worship, and
what is infallibly good and happy in the state of man's
life, what in itself evil and miserable, though vulgarly
not so esteemed; he that hath obtained to know this, the
only high valuable wisdom indeed, remembering also
that God, even to a strictness, requires the improvement
of these his entrusted gifts, cannot but sustain a sorer
burden of mind, and more pressing, than any support-
able toil or weight which the body can labour under,
how and in what manner he shall dispose and employ
those sums of knowledge and illumination, which God
hath sent him into this world to trade with. And that
which aggravates the burden more, is, that, having re-
ceived amongst his allotted parcels, certain precious
truths, of such an orient lustre as no diamond can
equal; which nevertheless he has in charge to put off
at any cheap rate, yea, for nothing to them that will;
the great merchants of this world, fearing that this
course would soon discover and disgrace the false glit-
ter of their deceitful wares, wherewith they abuse the
people, like poor Indians with beads and glasses, prac-.
tise by all means how they may suppress the vending
of such rarities, and at such a cheapness as would undo
them, and turn their trash upon their hands. There-
fore by gratifying the corrupt desires of men in fleshly
doctrines, they stir them up to persecute with hatred .
and contempt all those, that seek to bear themselves
uprightly in this their spiritual factory: which they
foreseeing, though they cannot but testify of truth, and
42
Book II.
THE REASON OF CHURCH-GOVERNMENT
the excellency of that heavenly traffick which they
bring, against what opposition or danger soever, yet
needs must it sit heavily upon their spirits, that, being
in God's prime intention, and their own, selected he-
ralds of peace, and dispensers of treasure inestimable,
without price to them that have no peace, they find in
the discharge of their commission, that they are made
the greatest variance and offence, a very sword and fire
both in house and city over the whole earth. This is
that which the sad prophet Jeremiah laments: “Wo
is me, my mother, that thou hast born me, a man of
strife and contention " And although divine inspira-
tion must certainly have been sweet to those ancient
prophets, yet the irksomeness of that truth which they
brought was so unpleasant unto them, that everywhere
they call it a burden. Yea, that mysterious book of
revelation, which the great evangelist was bid to eat,
as it had been some eyebrightening electuary of know-
ledge and foresight, though it were sweet in his mouth,
and in the learning, it was bitter in his belly, bitter in
the denouncing. Nor was this hid from the wise poet
Sophocles, who in that place of his tragedy, where
Tiresias is called to resolve king CEdipus in a matter
which he knew would be grievous, brings him in be-
moaning his lot, that he knew more than other men.
For surely to every good and peaceable man, it must in
nature needs be a hateful thing to be the displeaser
and molester of thousands; much better would it like
him doubtless to be the messenger of gladness and
contentment, which is his chief intended business to
all mankind, but that they resist and oppose their own
true happiness. But when God commands to take the
trumpet, and blow a dolorous or jarring blast, it lies
not in man's will what he shall say, or what he
shall conceal. If he shall think to be silent as Jere-
miah did, because of the reproach and derision he met
with daily, “and all his familiar friends watched for
his halting,” to be revenged on him for speaking the
truth, he would be forced to confess as he confessed ;
“his word was in my heart as a burning fire shut up
in my bones; I was weary with ſorbearing and could not
stay.” l Which might teach these times not suddenly
to condemn all things that are sharply spoken or vehe-
mently written as proceeding out of stomach, virulence,
and ill nature; but to consider rather, that if the pre-
lates have leave to say the worst that can be said, or do
the worst that can be done, while they strive to keep
to themselves, to their great pleasure and commodity,
those things which they ought to render up, no man
can be justly offended with him that shall endeavour
to impart and bestow, without any gain to himself,
those sharp and saving words which would be a terrour
and a torment in him to keep back. For me, I have
determined to lay up as the best treasure and solace of
a good old age, if God vouchsafe it me, the honest
liberty of free speech from my youth, where I shall
think it available in so dear a concernment as the
church's good. For if I be, either by disposition or
what other cause, too inquisitive, or suspicious of my-
self and mine own doings, who can help it? But this
I foresee, that should the church be brought under
made thee.
heavy oppression, and God have given me ability the
while to reason against that man that should be the au-
thor of so foul a deed; or should she, by blessing from
above on the industry and courage of faithful men,
change this her distracted estate into better days, with-
out the least furtherance or contribution of those few
talents, which God at that present had lent me; I fore-
see what stories I should hear within myself, all my
life after, of discourage and reproach. Timorous and
ungrateful, the church of God is now again at the foot
of her insulting enemies, and thou bewailest; what
matters it for thee, or thy bewailing 2 When time was,
thou couldst not find a syllable of all that thou hast read,
or studied, to utter in her behalf. Yet ease and leisure
was given thee for thy retired thoughts, out of the
sweat of other men. Thou hast the diligence, the
| arts, the language of a man, if a vain subject were to
be adorned or beautified ; but when the cause of God
and his church was to be pleaded, for which purpose
that tongue was given thee which thou hast, God lis-
tened if he could hearthy voice among his zealous ser-
vants, but thou wert dumb as a beast; from hencefor-
ward be that which thine own brutish silence hath
Or else I should have heard on the other
ear; slothful, and ever to be set light by, the church
hath now overcome her late distresses after the un-
wearied labours of many her true servants that stood up
in her defence; thou also wouldst take upon thee to
share amongst them of their joy : but wherefore thou ?
Where canst thou shew any word or deed of thine
which might have hastened her peace P Whatever thou
dost now talk, or write, or look, is the alms of other
men's active prudence and zeal. Dare not now to say
or do any thing better than thy former sloth and in-
fancy; or if thou darest, thou dost impudently to
make a thrifty purchase of boldness to thyself, out
of the painful merits of other men; what before was
thy sin is now thy duty, to be abject and worthless.
These, and such like lessons as these, I know would have
been my matins duly, and my even-song. But now by
this little diligence, mark what a privilege I have gain-
ed with good men and saints, to claim my right of la-
menting the tribulations of the church, if she should
suffer, when others, that have ventured nothing for her
sake, have not the honour to be admitted mourners. But
if she liſt up her drooping head and prosper, among
those that have something more than wished her wel-
fare, I have my charter and freehold of rejoicing to me
and my heirs. Concerning therefore this wayward
subject against prelaty, the touching whereof is so dis-
tasteſul and disquietous to a number of men, as by
what hath been said I may deserve of charitable readers
to be credited, that neither envy nor gall hath entered
me upon this controversy, but the enforcement of con-
science only, and a preventive fear lest the omitting of
this duty should be against me, when I would store up
to myself the good provision of peaceful hours: so, lest
it should be still imputed to me, as I have found it
hath been, that some self-pleasing humour of vain-glory
hath incited me to contest with men of high estimation,
now while green years are upon my head; from this
--~~~~~~~~ 1--, --~~~~------~~~~" ~ *---......... ;
Book II.
43
URGED AGAINST PRELATY.
needless surmisal I shall hope to dissuade the intel-
ligent and equal auditor, if I can but say successfully
that which in this exigent behoves me; although I
would be heard only, if it might be, by the elegant and
learned reader, to whom principally for a while I shall
beg leave I may address myself. To him it will be no
new thing, though I tell him that if I hunted after
praise, by the ostentation of wit and learning, I should
not write thus out of mine own season when I have
neither yet completed to my mind the full circle of my
private studies, although I complain not of any insuffi-
ciency to the matter in hand ; or were I ready to my
wishes, it were a folly to commit any thing elaborately
composed to the careless and interrupted listening of
these tumultuous times. Next, if I were wise only to
'my own ends, I would certainly take such a subject as
of itself might catch applause, whereas this hath all the
: disadvantages on the contrary, and such a subject as
the publishing whereof might be delayed at pleasure,
| and time enough to pencil it over with all the curious
touches of art, even to the perfection of a faultless pic-
ture; whenas in this argument the not deferring is of
great moment to the good speeding, that if solidity
have leisure to do her office, art cannot have much.
Lastly, I should not choose this manner of writing,
wherein knowing myself inferiour to myself, led by
the genial power of nature to another task, I have the
use, as I may account, but of my left hand. And though
I shall be foolish in saying more to this purpose, yet,
since it will be such a folly, as wisest men go about to
commit, having only confessed and so committed, I
may trust with more reason, because with more folly,
to have courteous pardon. For although a poet, soar-
ing in the high reason of his fancies, with his garland
and singing robes about him, might, without apology,
speak more of himself than I mean to do; yet for me
sitting here below in the cool element of prose, a mor-
tal thing among many readers of no empyreal conceit,
to venture and divulge unusual things of myself, I
shall petition to the gentler sort, it may not be envy
to me. I must say therefore, that after I had for my
first years, by the ceaseless diligence and care of my
father, (whom God recompense !) been exercised to the
tongues, and some sciences, as my age would suffer,
by Sundry masters and teachers both at home and at
the schools, it was found, that whether ought was im-
posed me by them that had the overlooking, or betaken
to of mine own choice in English, or other tongue,
prosing or versing, but chiefly this latter, the style, by
certain vital signs it had, was likely to live.
much latelier in the private academies of Italy, whither
I was favoured to resort, perceiving that some trifles
which I had in memory, composed at under twenty or
thereabout, (for the manner is, that every one must
give some proof of his wit and reading there,) met with
acceptance above what was looked for ; and other
things, which I had shifted in scarcity of books and
conveniences to patch up amongst them, were received
with written encomiums, which the Italian is not for-
ward to bestow on men of this side the Alps; I began
thus far to assent both to them and divers of my friends
But
here at home, and not less to an inward prompting which
now grew daily upon me, that by labour and intense
study, (which I take to be my portion in this life,) joined
with the strong propensity of nature, I might perhaps
leave something so written to after-times, as they should
not willingly let it die. These thoughts at once pos-
sessed me, and these other; that if I were certain to
write as men buy leases, for three lives and downward,
there ought no regard be sooner had than to God's
glory, by the honour and instruction of my country.
For which cause, and not only for that I knew it would
be hard to arrive at the second rank among the Latins,
I applied myself to that resolution, which Ariosto fol-
lowed against the persuasions of Bembo, to fix all the
industry and art I could unite to the adorning of my
native tongue; not to make verbal curiosities the end,'
(that were a toilsome vanity,) but to be an interpreter
and relater of the best and sagest things, among mine \
own citizens throughout this island in the mother dia-
lect. That what the greatest and choicest wits of
Athens, Rome, or modern Italy, a.d those Hebrews of
old did for their counſry, I, in my proportion, with this
over and above, of being a Christian, might do for
mine; not caring to be once named abroad, though
perhaps I could attain to that, but content with these
British islands as my world; whose fortune hath hither-
to been, that if the Athenians, as some say, made their
small deeds great and renowned by their eloquent
writers, England hath had her noble achievements
made small by the unskilful handling of monks and
mechanics.
Time serves not now, and perhaps I might seem too
profuse to give any certain account of what the mind
at home, in the spacious circuits of her musing, hath
liberty to propose to herself, though of highest hope
and hardest attempting; whether that epic form whereof
the two poems of Homer, and those other two of Virgil
and Tasso, are a diffuse, and the book of Job a brief
model : or whether the rules of Aristotle herein are
strictly to be kept, or nature to be followed, which in
them that know art, and use judgment, is no transgres-
sion, but an enriching of art: and lastly, what king or
knight, before the conquest, might be chosen in whom
to lay the pattern of a christian hero. And as Tasso
gave to a prince of Italy his choice whether he would
command him to write of Godfrey's expedition against
the Infidels, or Belisarius against the Goths, or Charle-
main against the Lombards; if to the instinct of nature
and the emboldening of art aught may be trusted, and
that there be nothing adverse in our climate, or the
fate of this age, it haply would be no rashmess, from
an equal diligence and inclination, to present the like
offer in our own ancient stories; or whether those
dramatic constitutions, wherein Sophocles and Eurip-
ides reign, shall be found more doctrinal and exemplary
to a nation. The Scripture also affords us a divine
pastoral drama in the Song of Solomon, consisting of
two persons, and a double chorus, as Origen rightly
judges. And the Apocalypse of St. John is the majes-
tic image of a high and stately tragedy, shutting up
and intermingling her solemn scenes and acts with a
44 THE REASON OF CHURCH-GOVERNMENT - Book II.
y
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t
:
4
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sevenfold chorus of hallelujahs and harping sympho-
nies: and this my opinion the grave authority of Pareus,
commenting that book, is sufficient to confirm. Or if
occasion shall lead, to imitate those magnific odes and
hymns, wherein Pindarus and Callimachus are in most
things worthy, some others in their frame judicious, in
their matter most an end faulty. But those frequent
songs throughout the law and prophets beyond all these,
not in their divine argument alone, but in the very
critical art of composition, may be easily made appear
over all the kinds of lyric poesy to be incomparable.
These abilities, wheresoever they be found, are the in-
spired gift of God rarely bestowed, but yet to some
(though most abuse) in every nation: and are of power,
beside the office of a pulpit, to imbreed and cherish in
a great people the seeds of virtue and public civility,
to allay the perturbations of the mind, and set the af-
ſections in right tune; to celebrate in glorious and
lofty hymns the throne and equipage of God's almigh-
tiness, and what he works, and what he suffers to be
wrought with high providence in his church ; to sing
victorious agonies of martyrs and saints, the deeds and
triumphs of just and pious nations, doing valiantly
through faith against the enemies of Christ; to deplore
the general relapses of kingdoms and states from justice
and God’s true worship. Lastly, whatsoever in religion
is holy and sublime, in virtue amiable or grave, what-
soever hath passion or admiration in all the changes
of that which is called fortune from without, or the
wily subtleties and refluxes of man's thoughts from
within ; all these things with a solid and treatable
smoothness to paint out and describe. Teaching over
the whole book of sanctity and virtue, through all the
instances of example, with such delight to those espe-
cially of soft and delicious temper, who will not so
much as look upon truth herself, unless they see her
elegantly dressed; that whereas the paths of honesty
and good life appear now rugged and difficult, though
they be indeed easy and pleasant, they will then appear
to all men both easy and pleasant, though they were
rugged and difficult indeed. And what a benefit this
would be to our youth and gentry, may be soon guessed
by what we know of the corruption and bane, which
they suck in daily from the writings and interludes of
libidinous and ignorant poetasters, who having scarce
ever heard of that which is the main consistence of a
true poem, the choice of such persons as they ought to
introduce, and what is moral and decent to each one ;
do for the most part lay up vicious principles in sweet
pills to be swallowed down, and make the taste of vir-
tuous documents harsh and sour. But because the
spirit of man cannot demean itself lively in this body,
without some recreating intermission of labour and
serious things, it were happy for the commonwealth, if
our magistrates, as in those famous governments of old,
would take into their care, not only the deciding of our
contentious law cases and brawls, but the managing of
our publick sports and festival pastimes; that they
might be, not such as were authorized a while since,
the provocations of drunkenness and lust, but such as
may inure and harden our bodies by martial exercises
to all warlike skill and performance; and may civilize,
adorn, and make discreet our minds by the learned and
affable meeting of frequent academies, and the procure-
ment of wise and artful recitations, sweetened with
eloquent and graceful inticements to the love and prac-
tice of justice, temperance, and fortitude, instructing
and bettering the nation at all opportunities, that the
call of wisdom and virtue may be heard every where,
as Solomon saith ; “She crieth without, she uttereth
her voice in the streets, in the top of high places, in
the chief concourse, and in the openings of the gates.”
Whether this may not be, not only in pulpits, but aſter
another persuasive method, at set and solemn panegu-
ries, in theatres, porches, or what other place or way,
may win most upon the people to receive at once both
recreation and instruction ; let them in authority con-
sult. The thing which I had to say, and those inten-
tions which have lived within me ever since I could
conceive myself any thing worth to my country, I
return to crave excuse that urgent reason hath plucked
from me, by an abortive and foredated discovery. And
the accomplishment of them lies not but in a power
above man's to promise; but that none hath by more
studious ways endeavoured, and with more unwearied
spirit that none shall, that I dare almost aver of myself,
as far as life and free leisure will extend ; and that the
land had once enfranchised herself from this imperti-
nent yoke of prelaty, under whose inquisitorious and
tyrannical duncery, no free and splendid wit can flou-
rish. Neither do I think it shame to covenant with
any knowing reader, that for some few years yet I may
go on trust with him toward the payment of what I
am now indebted, as being a work not to be raised
from the heat of youth, or the vapours of wine; like
that which flows at waste from the pen of some
vulgar amourist, or the trencher fury of a rhyming
parasite; nor to be obtained by the invocation of
dame memory and her siren daughters, but by de-
vout prayer to that eternal Spirit, who can enrich
with all utterance and knowledge, and sends out his
scraphim, with the hallowed fire of his altar, to touch
and purify the lips of whom he pleases: to this must
be added industrious and select reading, steady ob-
servation, insight into all seemly and generous arts and
affairs; till which in some measure be compassed, at
mine own peril and cost, I refuse not to sustain this
expectation from as many as are not loth to hazard so
much credulity upon the best pledges that I can give
them. Although it nothing content me to have dis-
closed thus much before-hand, but that I trust hereby
to make it manifest with what small willingness I en-
dure to interrupt the pursuit of no less hopes than these,
and leave a calm and pleasing solitariness, fed with
cheerful and confident thoughts, to embark in a troubled
sea of noises and hoarse disputes, put from beholding
the bright countenance of truth in the quiet and still
air of delightful studies, to come into the dim reflection
of hollow antiquities sold by the seeming bulk, and
there be ſain to club quotations with men whose learn-
ing and belief lies in marginal stuffings, who, when
--------~~~~ *-
they have, like good sumpters, laid ye down their
Book II.
45
|URGED AGAINST PRELATY.
swearing.
horse-loads of citations and fathers at your door, with
a rhapsody of who and who were bishops here or there,
ye may take off their packsaddles, their day's work is
done, and episcopacy, as they think, stoutly vindicated.
Let any gentle apprehension, that can distinguish
learned pains from unlearned drudgery, imagine what
pleasure or profoundness can be in this, or what honour
to deal against such adversaries. But were it the
meanest under-service, if God by his secretary con-
science enjoin it, it were sad for me if I should draw
back; for me especially, now when all men offer their
aid to help, ease, and lighten the difficult labours of
the church, to whose service, by the intentions of my
parents and friends, I was destined of a child, and in
mine own resolutions: till coming to some maturity of
years, and perceiving what tyranny had invaded the
church, that he who would take orders must subscribe
slave, and take an oath withal, which, unless he took
with a conscience that would retch, he must either
straight perjure, or split his faith ; I thought it better
to preſer a blameless silence before the sacred office of
speaking, bought and begun with servitude and for-
Howsoever thus church-outed by the pre-
lates, hence may appear the right I have to meddle
in these matters, as before the necessity and constraint
appeared. -
CHAP. I.
That prelaty opposeth the reason and end of the gospel
three ways ; and first, in her outward form.
AFTER this digression, it would remain that I should
single out some other reason, which might undertake
for prelaty to be a fit and lawful church-government;
but finding none of like validity with these that have
already sped according to their fortune, I shall add one
reason why it is not to be thought a church-government
at all, but a church-tyranny, and is at hostile terms
with the end and reason of Christ's evangelic ministry.
Albeit I must confess to be half in doubt whether I
should bring it forth or mo, it being so contrary to the
eye of the world, and the world so potent in most
men's hearts, that I shall endanger either not to be
regarded, or not to be understood; for who is there
almost that measures wisdom by simplicity, strength
by suffering, dignity by lowliness? | Who is there that
counts it first to be last, something to be nothing, and
reckons himself of great command in that he is a ser-
vant P Yet God, when he meant to subdue the world
and hell at once, part of that to salvation, and this
wholly to perdition, made choice of no other weapons
or auxiliaries than these, whether to save or to destroy.
It had been a small mastery for him to have drawn
out his legions into array, and flanked them with his
thunder; therefore he sent foolishness to confute wis-
dom, weakness to bind strength, despisedness to van-
quish pride: and this is the great mystery of the gospel
made good in Christ himself, who, as he testifies, came
not to be ministered to, but to minister; and must be
fulfilled in all his ministers till his second coming.
To go against these principles St. Paul so feared, that
if he should but affect the wisdom of words in his
preaching, he thought it would be laid to his charge,
that he had made the cross of Christ to be of none
effect. Whether, then, prelaty do not make of none
effect the cross of Christ, by the principles it hath so
contrary to these, nullifying the power and end of the
gospel, it shall not want due proof, if it want not due
belief. Neither shall I stand to trifle with one that
would tell me of quiddities and formalities, whether
prelaty or prelateity, in abstract notion be this or that;
it suffices me that I find it in his skin, so I find it in-
separable, or not oftener otherwise than a phoenix hath
been seen; although I persuade me, that whatever
faultiness was but superficial to prelaty at the begin-
ning, is now, by the just judgment of God, long since
branded and in worn into the very essence thereof.
First, therefore, if to do the work of the gospel, Christ
our Lord took upon him the form of a servant; how
can his servant in this ministry take upon him the
form of a lord P I know Bilson hath deciphered us all
the gallantries of signore and monsignore, and mon-
sieur, as circumstantially as any punctualist of Castile,
Naples, or Fountain-Bleau, could have done : but this
must not so compliment us out of our right minds, as
to be to learn that the form of a servant was a mean,
laborious, and vulgar life, aptest to teach ; which form
Christ thought fittest, that he might bring about his
will according to his own principles, choosing the
meaner things of this world, that he might put under
the high. Now, whether the pompous garb, the lordly
life, the wealth, the haughty distance of prelaty, be
those meaner things of the world, whereby God in
them would manage the mystery of his gospel, be
it the verdict of common sense. For Christ saith in
St. John, “The servant is not greater than his lord,
nor he that is sent, greater than he that sent him ;”
and adds, “If ye know these things, happy are ye if
ye do them.” Then let the prelates well advise, if
they neither know, nor do these things, or if they
know, and yet do them not, wherein their happiness
consists. And thus is the gospel frustrated by the
lordly form of prelaty.
CHAP. II.
That the ceremonious doctrine of prelaty opposeth the
reason and end of the gospel.
THAT which next declares the heavenly power, and
reveals the deep mystery of the gospel, is the pure sim-
plicity of doctrine, accounted the foolishness of this
world, yet crossing and confounding the pride and
wisdom of the flesh. And wherein consists this fleshly
wisdom and pride P In being altogether ignorant of
46
Book II.
THE REASON OF CHURCH-GOVERNMENT
;
God and his worship 2 No surely, for men are naturally
ashamed of that. Where then P. It consists in a bold
presumption of ordering the worship and service of
God after man's own will in traditions and ceremonies.
Now if the pride and wisdom of the flesh were to be
defeated and confounded, no doubt but in that very
point wherein it was proudest, and thought itself wisest,
that so the victory of the gospel might be the more il-
lustrious. But our prelates, instead of expressing the
spiritual power of their ministry, by warring against
this chief bulwark and strong hold of the flesh, have
entered into fast league with the principal enemy
against whom they were sent, and turned the strength
of fleshly pride and wisdom against the pure simplicity
of saving truth. (First, mistrusting to find the authority
of their order in the immediate institution of Christ, or
his apostles, by the clear evidence of Scripture, they
fly to the carnal supportment of tradition; when we
appeal to the Bible, they to the unwieldy volumes of
tradition: and do not shame to reject the ordinance of
him that is eternal, for the perverse iniquity of sixteen
hundred years; choosing rather to think truth itself a
liar, than that sixteen ages should be taxed with an
errour; not considering the general apostasy that was
foretold, and the church's flight into the wilderness.
Nor is this enough ; instead of shewing the reason of
their lowly condition from divine example and com-
mand, they seek to prove their high pre-eminence from
human consent and authority. But let them chant
while they will of prerogatives, we shall tell them of
Scripture ; of custom, we of Scripture; of acts and
statutes, still of Scripture; till the quick and piercing
word enter to the dividing of their souls, and the
mighty weakness of the gospel throw down the weak
mightiness of man's reasoning. W. for their de-
meanour within the church, how have they disfigured
and defaced that more than angelic brightness, the un-
clouded serenity of christian religion, with the dark
overcasting of superstitious copes and flaminical ves-
tures, wearing on their backs, and I abhor to think,
perhaps in some worse place, the inexpressible image
of God the Father 2 Tell me, ye priests, wherefore this
gold, wherefore these robes and surplices over the gos-
pel 2 Is our religion guilty of the first trespass, and
hath need of clothing to cover her nakedness P What
does this else but cast an ignominy upon the perſection
of Christ's ministry, by seeking to adorn it with that
which was the poor remedy of our shame P Believe it,
wondrous doctors, all corporeal resemblances of inward
holiness and beauty are now past; he that will clothe
the gospel now, intimates plainly that the gospel is
naked, uncomely, that I may not say reproachful. Do
not, ye church-maskers, while Christ is clothing upon
our barrenness with his righteous garment to make us
acceptable in his Father's sight; do not, as ye do,
cover and hide his righteous verity with the polluted
clothing of your ceremonies, to make it seem more de-
cent in your own eyes. “How beautiful,” saith Isaiah,
“are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings, that
publisheth salvation " Are the fect so beautiful, and is
the very bringing of these tidings so decent of itself?
What new decency can then be added to this by your
spinstry P Ye think by these gaudy glisterings to stir
up the devotion of the rude multitude; ye think so,
because ye forsake the heavenly teaching of St. Paul
for the hellish sophistry of papism. If the multitude
be rude, the lips of the preacher must give knowledge,
and not ceremonies. And although some Christians
be new-born babes comparatively to some that are
stronger, yet in respect of ceremony, which is but a ru-
diment of the law, the weakest Christian hath thrown
off the robes of his minority, and is a perfect man, as
to legal rites. What children's food there is in the
gospel, we know to be no other than the “sincerity of
the word, that they may grow thereby.” But is here
the utmost of your outbraving the service of God? No.
Ye have been bold, mot to set your threshold by his
threshold, or your post by his posts; but your sacra-
ment, your sign, call it what you will, by his sacrament,
baptizing the christian infant with a solemn sprinkle,
and unbaptizing for your own part with a profane and
impious forefinger; as if when ye had laid the purifying
element upon his forehead, ye meant to cancel and
cross it out again with a character not of God's bidding.
O but the innocence of these ceremonies | Q rather the
sottish absurdity of this excuse, What could be more
iniocent than the washing of a cup, a glass, or hands,
before meat, and that under the law, when so many
washings were commanded, and by long tradition ?
yet our Saviour detested their customs, though never
so seeming harmless, and charges them severely, that
they had transgressed the commandments of God by
their traditions, and worshipped him in vain. How
much more then must these, and much grosser ceremo-
nies now in force, delude the end of Christ's coming in
the flesh against the flesh, and stifle the sincerity of
our new covenant, which hath bound us to forsake all
carnal pride and wisdom, especially in matters of re-
ligion 2 Thus we see again how prelaty, ſailing in
opposition to the main end and power of the gospel,
doth not join in that mysterious work of Christ, by
lowliness to conſound height, by simplicity of doc-
trine the wisdom of the world, but contrariwise hath
made itself high in the world and the flesh, to van-
quish things by the world accounted low, and made
itself wise in tradition and fleshly ceremony, to con-
found the purity of doctrine which is the wisdom
of God.
CHAP. III.
That prelatical jurisdiction opposeth the reason and
end of the gospel and of state.
THE third and last consideration remains, whether
the prelates in their function do work according to the
gospell practising to subdue the mighty things of this
world by things weak, which St. Paul hath set forth to
be the power and excellence of the gospel; or whether
Book II.
47
URGED AGAINST PRELATY.
in more likelihood they band themselves with the pre-
valent things of this world, to overrun the weak things
which Christ hath made choice to work by: and this
will soonest be discerned by the course of their juris-
diction. /But here again I find my thoughts almost in
suspense betwixt yea and no, and am nigh turning
mine eye which way I may best retire, and not proceed
in this subject, blaming the ardency of my mind that
fixed me too attentively to come thus far. For truth,
I know not how, hath this unhappiness fatal to her,
ere she can come to the trial and inspection of the un-
derstanding ; being to pass through many little wards
and limits of the several affections and desires, she can-
not shift it, but must put on such colours and attire, as
those pathetic handmaids of the soul please to lead her
in to their queen: and if she find so much favour with
them, they let her pass in her own likeness; if not,
they bring her into the presence habited and coloured
like a notorious falsehood, And contrary, when any
falsehood comes that way, if they like the errand she
brings, they are so artful to counterfeit the very shape
and visage of truth, that the understanding not being
able to discern the fucus which these inchantresses
with such cunning have laid upon the feature some-
times of truth, sometimes of falsehood interchangeably,
sentences for the most part one for the other at the first
blush, according to the subtle imposture of these sen-
sual mistresses, that keep the ports and passages bc-
tween her and the object. So that were it not for leav-
ing imperfect that which is already said, I should go
near to relinquish that which is to follow. And be-
cause I see that most men, as it happens in this world,
either weakly or falsely principled, what through ig-
norance, and what through custom of licence, both in
discourse and writing, by what hath been of late writ-
ten in vulgar, have not seemed to attain the decision
of this point: I shall likewise assay those wily arbi-
tresses who in most men have, as was heard, the sole
ushering of truth and falsehood between the sense and
the soul, with what loyalty they will use me in con-
voying this truth to my understanding ; the rather for
that by as much acquaintance as I can obtain with
them, I do not find them engaged either one way or
other'ſ Concerning therefore ecclesiastical jurisdiction,
I find still more controversy, who should administer it,
than diligent inquiry made to learn what it is: for had
the pains been taken to search out that, it had been
long ago enrolled to be nothing else but a pure tyran-
, nical forgery of the prelates ; and that jurisdictive
power in the church there ought to be none at all. It
cannot be conceived that what men now call jurisdic-
tion in the church, should be other thing than a chris-
tian censorship; and therefore it is most commonly and
truly named ecclesiastical censure. Now if the Ro-
man censor, a civil function, to that severe assize of
surveying and controlling the privatest and slyest man-
ners of all men and all degrees, had no jurisdiction, no
courts of plea or inditement, no punitive force annexed;
whether it were that to this manner of correction the
intanglement of suits was improper, or that the notice
of those upright inquisitors extended to such the most
covert and spirituous vices as would slip easily between
the wider and more material grasp of the law; or that
it stood more with the majesty of that office to have no
other sergeants or maces about thern but those invisible
ones of terrour and shame; or, lastly, were it their fear,
lest the greatness of this authority and honour, armed
with jurisdiction, might step with ease into a tyranny :
in all these respects, with much more reason undoubt-
edly ought the censure of the church be quite divested
and disentailed of all jurisdiction whatsoever. For if
the course of judicature to a political censorship seem
either too tedious, or too contentious, much more may
it to the discipline of the church, whose definitive de-
crees are to be speedy, but the execution of rigour slow,
contrary to what in legal proceedings is most usual ;
and by how much the less contentious it is, by so much
will it be the more christian. And if the censor, in his
moral episcopacy, being to judge most in matters not
answerable by writ or action, could not use an instru-
ment so gross and bodily as jurisdiction is, how can
the minister of the gospel manage the corpulent and
secular trial of bill and process in things merely spiri-
tual? Or could that Roman office, without this juridical
sword or saw, strike such a reverence of itself into the
most undaunted hearts, as with one single dash of ig-
nominy to put all the senate and knighthood of Rome
into a tremble? Surely much rather might the heavenly
ministry of the evangel bind herself about with ſar
more piercing beams of majesty and awe, by wanting
the beggarly help of halings and amercements in the
use of her powerful keys. For when the church with-
out temporal support is able to do her great works upon
the unforced obedience of men, it argues a divinity
about her. But when she thinks to credit and better
her spiritual efficacy, and to win herself respect and
dread by strutting in the false vizard of worldly autho-
rity, it is evident that God is not there, but that her
apostolic virtue is departed from her, and hath left her
key-cold; which she perceiving as in a decayed nature,
seeks to the outward fomentations and chaſings of
worldly help, and external flourishes, to fetch, iſ it be
possible, some motion into her extreme parts, or to
hatch a counterfeit life with the craſty and artificial
heat of jurisdiction. But it is observable, that so long .
as the church, in true imitation of Christ, can be con-
tent to ride upon an ass, carrying herself and her go-
vernment along in a mean and simple guise, she may
be, as he is, a lion of the tribe of Judah; and in her
humility all men with loud hosannas will confess her
greatness. But when despising the mighty operation
of the Spirit by the weak things of this world, she thinks
to make herself bigger and more considerable, by using
the way of civil force and jurisdiction, as she sits upon
this lion she changes into an ass, and instead of ho-
sannas every man pelts her with stones and dirt.
Lastly, if the wisdom of the Romans feared to commit
jurisdiction to an office of so high esteem and dread
as was the censor's, we may see what a solecism in
the art of policy it hath been, all this while through
christendom to give jurisdiction to ecclesiastical cen-
sure. For that strength, joined with religion, abused
48
Book II.
THE REASON OF CHURCH-GOVERNMENT
and pretended to ambitious ends, must of necessity
breed the heaviest and most quelling tyranny not only
upon the necks, but even to the souls of men : which
if christian Rome had been so cautelous to prevent in
her church, as pagan Rome was in her state, we had
not had such a lamentable experience thereof as now
we have from thence upon all christendom. For
although I said before that the church coveting to ride
upon the lionly form of jurisdiction, makes a trans-
formation of herself into an ass, and becomes despica-
ble, that is, to those whom God hath enlightened with
true knowledge; but where they remain yet in the
reliques of superstition, this is the extremity of their
bondage and blindness, that while they think they do
obeisance to the lordly vision of a lion, they do it to an
ass, that through the just judgment of God is permitted
to play the dragon among them because of their wilful
stupidity. And let England here well rub her eyes,
lest by leaving jurisdiction and church-censure to the
same persons, now that God hath been so long medi-
cining her eyesight, she do not with her over-politic
fetches mar all, and bring herself back again to wor-
ship this ass bestriding a lion. Having hitherto ex-
plained, that to ecclesiastical censure no jurisdictive
power can be added, without a childish and dangerous
oversight in policy, and a pernicious contradiction in
evangelical discipline, as anon more fully ; it will be
next to declare wherein the true reason and force of
church-censure consists, which by then it shall be laid
open to the root; so little is it that I fear lest any
crookedness, any wrinkle or spot should be found in
presbyterian government, that if Bodin the famous
French writer, though a papist, yet affirms that the
commonwealth which maintains this discipline will
certainly flourish in virtue and picty; I dare assure
myself, that every true protestant will admire the
integrity, the uprightness, the divine and gracious
purposes thereof, and even for the reason of it so co-
herent with the doctrine of the gospel, beside the evi-
dence of command in Scripture, will confess it to be
the only true church-government; and that contrary
to the whole cnd and mystery of Christ's coming in
the flesh, a false appearance of the same is exercised
by prelaty. But because some count it rigorous, and
that hereby men shall be liable to a double punish-
ment, I will begin somewhat higher, and speak of
punishment; which, as it is an evil, I esteem to be of
two sorts, or rather two de-rees only, a reprobate con-
science in this life, and hell in the other world.
Whatever else men call punishment or censure, is not
properly an evil, so it be not an illegal violence, but a
saving medicine ordained of God both for the public
and private good of man ; who consisting of two parts,
the inward and the outward, was by the eternal Pro-
vidence left under two sorts of cure, the church and
the magistrate. The magistrate hath only to deal
with the outward part, I mean not of the body alone,
but of the mind in all her outward acts, which in
Scripture is called the outward man. So that it would
be helpful to us if we might borrow such authority as
the rhetoricians by patent may give us, with a kind of
promethean skill to shape and fashion this outward
man into the similitude of a body, and set him visible
before us; imagining the inner man only as the soul.
Thus then the civil magistrate looking only upon the
outward man, (I say as a magistrate, for what he doth
further, he doth it as a member of the church,) if he
find in his complexion, skin, or outward temperature
the signs and marks, or in his doings the effects of in-
justice, rapine, lust, cruelty, or the like, sometimes he
shuts up as in frenetick or infectious diseases; or con-
fines within doors, as in every sickly estate. Somc-
times he shaves by penalty or mulct, or else to cool and
take down those luxuriant humours which wealth and
excess have caused to abound. Otherwhiles he sears,
he cauterizes, he scarifies, lets blood; and finally, for
utmost remedy cuts off. The patients, which most an
end are brought into his hospital, are such as are far
gone, and beside themselves, (unless they be falsely
accused.) so that force is necessary to tame and quiet
them in their unruly ſits, before they can be made
capable of a more humane cure. His general end is
the outward peace and welfare of the commonwealth,
and civil happiness in this life. His particular end in
every man is, by the infliction of pain, damage, and
disgrace, that the senses and common perceivance
might carry this message to the soul within, that it is
neither easeful, profitable, nor praiseworthy in this life
to do evil. Which must needs tend to the good of
man, whether he be to live or die; and be undoubtedly
the first means to a natural man, especially an offender,
which might open his eyes to a higher consideration of
good and evil, as it is taught in religion. This is seen
in the often penitence of those that suffer, who, had
they escaped, had gone on sinning to an immeasurable
heap, which is one of the extremest punishments.
And this is all that the civil magistrate, as so being,
confers to the healing of man's mind, working only by
terrifying plasters upon the rind and orifice of the sore;
and by all outward appliances, as the logicians say, a
posteriori, at the effect, and not from the cause; not
once touching the inward bed of corruption, and that
hectic disposition to evil, the source of all vice and ob-
liquity against the rule of law. Which how insufficient
it is to cure the soul of man, we cannot better guess
than by the art of bodily physic. Therefore God, to
the intent of further healing man's depraved mind, to
this power of the magistrate, which contents itself with
the restraint of evil-doing in the external man, added
that which we call censure, to purge it and remove it
clean out of the inmost soul. In the beginning this
authority seems to have been placed, as all both civil and
religious rites once were, only in each father of a
family; afterwards among the heathen, in the wise
men and philosophers of the age ; but so as it was a
thing voluntary, and no set government. More dis-
tinctly among the Jews, as being God’s peculiar peo-
ple, where the priests, Levites, prophets, and at last the
scribes and Pharisees, took charge of instructing and
overseeing the lives of the people. But in the gospel,
which is the straightest and the dearest covenant can
be made between God and man, we being now his
Book II.
49
URGED AGAINST PRELATY.
adopted sons, and nothing fitter ſor us to think on than
to be like him, united to him, and, as he pleases to
express it, to have fellowship with him; it is all neces-
sity that we should expect this blessed efficacy of
healing our inward man to be ministered to us in a
more familiar and effectual method than ever before.
God being now no more a judge after the sentence of
the law, nor, as it were, a schoolmaster of perishable
rites, but a most indulgent father, governing his church
as a ſamily of sons in their discreet age: and therefore,
in the sweetest and mildest manner of paternal disci-
pline, he hath committed his other office of preserving
in healthful constitution the inner man, which may be
termed the spirit of the soul, to his spiritual deputy the
minister of each congregation ; who being best ac-
quainted with his own flock, hath best reason to know
all the secretest diseases likely to be there. And look
by how much the internal man is more excellent and
noble than the external, by so much is his cure more
exactly, and more thoroughly, and more particularly
to be performed. For which cause the Holy Ghost by
the apostles joined to the minister, as assistant in this
great office, sometimes a certain number of grave and
faithful brethren, (for neither doth the physician do all
in restoring his patient, he prescribes, another prepares
the medicine, some tend, some watch, some visit,) much
more may a minister partly not see all, partly err as
a man : besides, that nothing can be more for the mu-
tual honour and love of the people to their pastor, and
his to them, than when in select numbers and courses
they are seen partaking and doing reverence to the
holy duties of discipline by their serviceable and
solemn presence, and receiving honour again from
their employment, not now any more to be separated
in the church by veils and partitions as laics and un-
clean, but admitted to wait upon the tabernacle as the
rightful clergy of Christ, a chosen generation, a royal
priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifice in that meet
place, to which God and the congregation shall call
and assign them. And this all Christians ought to
know, that the title of clergy St. Peter gave to all
God’s people, till pope Higinus and the succeeding
prelates took it from them, appropriating that name to
themselves and their priests only ; and condemning the
rest of God's inheritance to an injurious and alienate
condition of laity, they separated from them by local
partitions in churches, through their gross ignorance
and pride imitating the old temple, and excluding the
members of Christ from the property of being members,
the bearing of orderly and fit offices in the ecclesiasti-
cal body; as if they had meant to sew up that Jewish
veil, which Christ by his death on the cross rent in
sunder. Although these usurpers could not so pre-
sently overmaster the liberties and lawſul titles of God's
freeborn church ; but that Origen, being yet a layman,
expounded the Scriptures publicly, and was therein
defended by Alexander of Jerusalem, and Theoctistus
of Caesarea, producing in his behalf divers examples,
that the privilege of teaching was anciently permitted
to many worthy laymen ; and Cyprian in his epistles
professes he will do nothing without the advice and
assent of his assistant laics. Neither did the first
Nicene council, as great and learned as it was, think it
any robbery to receive in, and require the help and
presence of many learned lay-brethren, as they were
then called. Many other authorities to confirm this
assertion, both out of Scripture and the writings of next
antiquity, Golartius hath collected in his notes upon
Cyprian; whereby it will be evident, that the laity,
not only by apostolic permission, but by consent of
many of the ancientest prelates, did participate in
church-offices as much as is desired any lay-elder
should now do. Sometimes also not the elders alone,
but the whole body of the church is interested in the
work of discipline, as oft as public satisfaction is given
by those that have given public scandal. Not to speak
now of her right in elections. But another reason
there is in it, which though religion did not commend
to us, yet moral and civil prudence could not but ex-
tol.
or to call it better, the reverence of our elders, our bre-
thren, and friends, was the greatest incitement to vir-
It was thought of old in philosophy, that shame,
tuous deeds, and the greatest dissuasion from unworthy
attempts that might be. Hence we may read in the
Iliad, where Hector being wished to retire from the
battle, many of his forces being routed, makes answer,
that he durst not for shame, lest the Trojan knights
and dames should think he did ignobly. And certain
it is, that whereas terrour is thought such a great
stickler in a commonwealth, honourable shame is a far
greater, and has more reason: for where shame is, there
is fear; but where fear is, there is not presently shame.
And if anything may be done to inbreed in us this ge-
merous and christianly reverence one of another, the
very nurse and guardian of piety and virtue, it cannot .
sooner be than by such a discipline in the church, as
may use us to have in awe the assemblies of the faith-
ful, and to count it a thing most grievous, next to the
grieving of God's Spirit, to offend those whom he hath
put in authority, as a healing superintendence over our
lives and behaviours, both to our own happiness, and
that we may not give offence to good men, who, with-
out amends by us made, dare not, against God’s com-
And
this will be accompanied with a religious dread of be-
ing outcast from the company of saints, and from the
fatherly protection of God in his church, to consort
with the devil and his angels. But there is yet a more
ingenuous and noble degree of honest shame, or, call it,
if you will, an esteem, whereby men bear an inward
mand, hold communion with us in holy things.
reverence toward their own persons, And if the love
of God, as a ſire sent from heaven to be ever kept alive
upon the altars of our hearts, be the first principle of all
godly and virtuous actions in men, this pious and just
honouring of ourselves is the second, and may be
thought as the radical moisture and ſountain-head,
whence every landable and worthy enterprise issues
forth. And although I have given it the name of a
liquid thing, yet it is not incontinent to bound itself, as
humid things are, but hath in it a most restraining and
powerful abstinence to start back, and glob itself upward
from the mixture of any ungenerous and unbeseeming
50
Book II
THE REASON OF CHURCH-GOVERNMENT
motion, or any soil wherewith it may peril to stain it-
self. Something I confess it is to be ashamed of evil-
loing in the presence of any ; and to reverence the
opinion and the countenance of a good man rather than
a bad, fearing most in his sight to offend, goes so far
as almost to be virtuous; yet this is but still the fear
of infamy, and many such, when they find themselves
alone, saving their reputation, will compound with
other scruples, and come to a close treaty with their
dearer vices in secret. But he that holds himself in
reverence and due esteem, both for the dignity of God’s
image upon him, and for the price of his redemption,
which he thinks is visibly marked upon his forehead,
accounts himself both a fit person to do the noblest and
godliest deeds, and much better worth than to deject
and defile, with such a debasement, and such a pollu-
tion as sin is, himself so highly ransomed and ennobled
to a new friendship and filial relation with God. Nor
can he fear so much the offence and reproach of others,
as he dreads and would blush at the reflection of his
own severe and modest eye upon himself, if it should
see him doing or imagining that which is sinful, though
in the deepest secrecy. How shall a man know to do
himself this right, how to perform his honourable duty
of estimation and respect towards his own soul and
body ? which way will lead him best to this hill-top of
sanctity and goodness, above which there is no higher
ascent but to the love of God, which from this self-pious
regard cannot be asunder * No better way doubtless,
than to let him duly understand, that as he is called
by the high calling of God, to be holy and pure, so is
he by the same appointment ordained, and by the
church’s call admitted, to such offices of discipline in
the church, to which his own spiritual gifts, by the
example of apostolic institution, have authorized him.
For we have learned that the scornful term of laic, the
consecrating of temples, carpets, and table-cloths, the
railing in of a repugnant and contradictive mount
Sinai in the gospel, as if the touch of a lay-christian,
who is nevertheless God's living temple, could prophane
dead judaisms, the exclusion of Christ's people from
the offices of holy discipline through the pride of a
usurping clergy, causes the rest to have an unworthy
and abject opinion of themselves, to approach to holy
duties with a slavish fear, and to unholy doings with
a familiar boldness. For seeing such a wide and ter-
rible distance between religious things and themselves,
and that in respect of a wooden table, and the perimeter
of holy ground about it, a flaggon pot, and a linen
corporal, the priest esteems their layships unhallowed
and unclean, they fear religion with such a fear as
loves not, and think the purity of the gospel too pure
for them, and that any uncleanness is more suitable to
their unconsecrated estate. But when every good
Christian, thoroughly acquainted with all those glo-
rious privileges of sanctification and adoption, which
render him more sacred than any dedicated al-
tar or element, shall be restored to his right in the
church, and not excluded from such place of spiritual
government, as his christian abilities, and his approved
good life in the eye and testimony of the church shall
prefer him to, this and mothing sooner will open his
eyes to a wise and true valuation of himself, (which is
so requisite and high a point of Christianity,) and will
stir him up to walk worthy the honourable and grave
employment wherewith God and the church hath dig-
nified him; not fearing lest he should meet with some
outward holy thing in religion, which his lay-touch or
presence might profane ; but lest something unholy
from within his own heart should dishonour and profane
in himself that priestly unction and clergy-right whereto
Christ hath entitled him. Then would the congrega-
tion of the Lord soon recover the true likeness and
visage of what she is indeed, a holy generation, a royal
priesthood, a saintly communion, the household and
city of God. And this I hold to be another considera-
ble reason why the functions of church-government
|
ought to be free and open to any christian man, though
never so laic, if his capacity, his faith, and prudent
demeanour, commend him. And this the apostles'
warrant us to do. But the prelates object, that this
will bring prophaneness into the church : to whom
may be replied, that mone have brought that in more
than their own irreligious courses, nor more driven
holiness out of living into lifeless things. For whereas
God, who hath cleansed every beast and creeping worm,
would not suffer St. Peter to call them common or un-
clean, the prelate bishops, in their printed orders hung
up in churches, have proclaimed the best of creatures,
mankind, so unpurified and contagious, that for him
to lay his hat or his garment upon the chancel-table,
they have defined it no less heinous, in express words,
than to prophane the table of the Lord. And thus
have they by their Canaanitish doctrine, (for that
which was to the Jew but Jewish, is to the Christian
no better than Canaanitish,) thus have they made com-
mon and unclean, thus have they made prophane that
nature, which God hath not only cleansed, but Christ
also hath assumed. And now that the equity and just
reason is so perspicuous, why in ecclesiastic censure
the assistance should be added of such as whom not
the vile odour of gain and fees, (forbid it, God, and blow
it with a whirlwind out of our land ') but charity,
neighbourhood, and duty to church-government hath
called together, where could a wise man wish a more
equal, gratuitous, and meek examination of any offence,
that he might happen to commit against Christianity,
than here P Would he prefer those proud simoniacal
courts 2 Thus therefore the minister assisted attends his
heavenly and spiritual cure : where we shall see him
both in the course of his proceeding, and first in the
excellency of his end, from the magistrate far different,
and not more different than excelling. His end is to
recover all that is of man, both soul and body, to an
everlasting health ; and yet as for worldly happiness,
which is the proper sphere wherein the magistrate
cannot but confine his motion without a hideous ex-
orbitancy ſtom law, so little aims the minister, as his
intended scope, to procure the much prosperity of
this life, that ofttimes he may have cause to wish
much of it away, as a diet puffing up the soul
with a slimy fleshiness, and weakening her prin-
ſº
f
Book II.
5 !
URGED AGAINST PRELATY.
cipal organic parts. Two heads of evil he has to
cope with, ignorance and malice. Against the former
he provides the daily manna of incorruptible doctrine,
not at those set meals only in public, but as oft as he
shall know that each infirmity or constitution requires
Against the latter with all the branches thereof, not
meddling with that restraining and styptic surgery,
which the law uses, not indeed against the malady, but
against the eruptions, and outermost effects thereof;
he on the contrary, beginning at the prime causes and
roots of the disease, sends in those two divine ingre-
dients of most cleansing power to the soul, admonition
and reproof; besides which two there is no drug or
antidote that can reach to purge the mind, and without
which all other experiments are but vain, unless by
accident. And he that will not let these pass into him,
though he be the greatest king, as Plato affirms, must
be thought to remain impure within, and unknowing
of those things wherein his pureness and his knowledge
should most appear. As soon therefore as it may be
discerned that the christian patient, by feeding other-
where on meats not allowable, but of evil juice, hath
disordered his diet, and spread an ill humour through
his veins, inimediately disposing to a sickness; the
minister, as being much nearer both in eye and duty
than the magistrate, speeds him betimes to overtake
that diffused malignance with some gentle potion of
admonishment; or if aught be obstructed, puts in his
opening and discussive confections. This not succeed-
ing after once or twice, or oftener, in the presence of
two or three his faithful brethren appointed thereto, he
advises him to be more careful of his dearest health,
and what it is that he so rashly hath let down into the
divine vessel of his soul, God's temple. If this obtain
not, he then, with the counsel of more assistants, who
are informed of what diligence hath been already used,
with more speedy remedies lays nearer siege to the
entrenched causes of his distemper, not sparing such
fervent and well aimed reproofs as may best give him
to see the dangerous estate wherein he is. To this also
his brethren and friends intreat, exhort, adjure; and
all these endeavours, as there is hope left, are more or
less repeated. But if neither the regard of himself, nor
the reverence of his elders and friends prevail with him
to leave his vicious appetite; then as the time urges,
such engines of terrour God hath given into the hand
of his minister, as to search the tenderest angles of the
heart: one while he shakes his stubbornness with rack-
ing convulsions nigh despair, otherwhiles with deadly
corrosives he gripes the very roots of his faulty liver to
bring him to life through the entry of death. Hereto
the whole church beseech him, beg of him, deplore
him, pray for him. After all this performed with what
patience and attendance is possible, and no relenting
on his part, having done the utmost of their cure, in
the name of God and of the church they dissolve their
fellowship with him, and holding forth the dreadful
sponge of excommunion, pronounce him wiped out of
the list of God's inheritance, and in the custody of
Satan till he repent. Which horrid sentence, though
it touch neither life nor limb, nor any worldly posses-
E
sion, yet has it such a penetrating force, that swifter
than any chymical sulphur, or that lightning which
harms not the skin, and rifles the entrails, it scorches
the inmost soul. Yet even this terrible denouncement
is left to the church for no other cause but to be as a
rough and vehement cleansing medicine, where the
malady is obdurate, a mortifying to life, a kind of
saving by undoing. And it may be truly said, that as
the mercies of wicked men are cruelties, so the cruel-
ties of the church are mercies. For if repentance sent
from Heaven meet this lost wanderer, and draw him
out of that steep journey wherein he was hasting to-
wards destruction, to come and reconcile to the church,
if he bring with him his bill of health, and that he is
now clear of infection, and of no danger to the other
sheep; then with incredible expressions of joy all his
brethren receive him, and set before him those perfumed
banquets of christian consolation; with precious oint-
ments bathing and fomenting the old, and now to be
forgotten stripes, which terrour and shame had inflict-
ed; and thus with heavenly solaces they cheer up his
humble remorse, till he regain his first health and
felicity. This is the approved way, which the gospel
prescribes, these are the “spiritual weapons of holy
censure, and ministerial warfare, not carnal, but mighty
through God to the pulling down of strong holds, cast-
ing down imaginations, and every high thing that ex-
alteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bring-
ing into captivity every thought to the obedience of
Christ.” What could be done more for the healing
and reclaiming that divine particle of God's breathing,
the soul, and what could be done less 2 he that would
hide his faults from such a wholesome curing as this,
and count it a twofold punishment, as some do, is like
a man, that having foul diseases about him, perishes
for shame, and the fear he has of a rigorous incision to
come upon his flesh. We shall be able by this time
to discern whether prelatical jurisdiction be contrary to
the gospel or no. First, therefore, the government of
the gospel being economical and paternal, that is, of
such a family where there be no servants, but all sons
in obedience, not in servility, as cannot be denied by
him that lives but within the sound of Scripture; how
can the prelates justify to have turned the fatherly
orders of Christ's household, the blessed meekness of
his lowly roof, those ever-open and inviting doors of
his dwelling house, which delight to be frequented with
only filial accesses; how can they justify to have turned
these domestic privileges into the bar of a proud ju-
dicial court, where fees and clamours keep shop and
drive a trade, where bribery and corruption solicits,
paltering the free and moneyless power of discipline
with a carnal satisfaction by the purse 2 Contrition,
humiliation, confession, the very sighs of a repentant
spirit, are there sold by the penny. That undeflowered
and unblemishable simplicity of the gospel, not she
herself, for that could never be, but a false-whited, a
lawny resemblance of her, like that airborn Helena in
the ſables, made by the sorcery of prelates, instead of
calling her disciples from the receipt of custom, is now
turned publican herself; and gives up her body to a
52
Book II.
THE REASON OF CHURCH-GOVERNMENT
mercenary whoredom under those formicated arches,
which she calls God's house, and in the sight of those
her altars, which she hath set up to be adored, makes
merchandise of the bodies and souls of men. Rejecting
purgatory for no other reason, as it seems, than because
her greediness cannot defer, but had rather use the ut-
most extortion of redeemed penances in this life. But
because these matters could not be thus carried without
a begged and borrowed force from worldly authority,
therefore prelaty, slighting the deliberate and chosen
council of Christ in his spiritual government, whose
glory is in the weakness of fleshly things, to tread upon
the crest of the world's pride and violence by the power
of spiritual ordinances, hath on the contrary made these
her friends and champions, which are Christ's enemies
in this his high design, smothering and extinguishing
the spiritual force of his bodily weakness in the dis-
cipline of his church with the boisterous and carnal
tyranny of an undue, unlawful, and ungospel-like ju-
risdiction. And thus prelaty, both in her fleshly sup-
portments, in her carnal doctrine of ceremony and tra-
dition, in her violent and secular power, going quite
counter to the prime end of Christ's coming in the flesh,
that is, to reveal his truth, his glory, and his might, in
a clean contrary manner than prelaty seeks to do,
thwarting and defeating the great mystery of God; I
do not conclude that prelaty is antichristian, for what ||
need I ? the things themselves conclude it. Yet if
such like practices, and not many worse than these of
our prelates, in that great darkness of the Roman
church, have not exempted both her and her present
members from being judged to be antichristian in all
orthodoxal esteem; I cannot think but that it is the
absolute voice of truth and all her children to pro-
nounce this prelaty, and these her dark deeds in the
midst of this great light wherein we live, to be more
antichristian than antichrist himself.
THE CONCLUSION.
The misehief that prelaty does in the state.
I Add one thing more to those great ones that are so
fond of prelaty: this is certain, that the gospel being
the hidden might of Christ, as hath been heard, that
ever a victorious power joined with it, like him in the
Revelation that went forth on the white horse with his
bow and his crown conquering and to conquer. If we
let the angel of the gospel ride on his own way, he
does his proper business, conquering the high thoughts,
and the proud reasonings of the flesh, and brings them
under to give obedience to Christ with the salvation of
many souls. But if ye turn him out of his road, and
in a manner force him to express his irresistible power
by a doctrine of carnal might, as prelaty is, he will
use that fleshly strength, which ye put into his hands,
to subdue your spirits by a servile and blind supersti-
tion; and that again shall hold such dominion over your
captive minds, as returning with an insatiate greedi-
mess and force upon your worldly wealth and power,
wherewith to deck and magnify herself, and her false
worships, he shall spoil and havoc your estates, disturb
your case, diminish your honour, enthral your liberty
under the swelling mood of a proud clergy, who will
not serve or feed your souls with spiritual food; look
not for it, they have not wherewithal, or if they had, it
is not in their purpose. But when they have glutted
their ungrateful bodies, at least, if it be possible that
those open sepulchres should ever be glutted, and when
they have stuffed their idolish temples with the waste-
ful pillage of your estates, will they yet have any com-
passion upon you, and that poor pittance which they
have left you ; will they be but so good to you as that
ravisher was to his sister, when he had used her at his
pleasure; will they but only hate ye, and so turn ye
loose 2 No, they will not, lords and commons, they will
not favour ye so much. What will they do then, in the
name of God and saints, what will these manhaters yet
with more despite and mischief do? I will tell ye, or
at least remember ye, (for most of ye know it already,)
that they may want nothing to make them true mer-
chants of Babylon, as they have done to your souls,
they will sell your bodies, your wives, your children,
your liberties, your parliaments, all these things; and
if there be ought else dearer than these, they will sell
at an outcry in their pulpits to the arbitrary and illegal
dispose of any one that may hereafter be called a king,
whose mind shall serve him to listen to their bargain.
And by their corrupt and servile doctrines boring our
ears to an everlasting slavery, as they have done hither-
to, so will they yet do their best to repeal and erase
every line and clause of both our great charters. Nor
is this only what they will do, but what they hold as
the main reason and mystery of their advancement that
they must do; be the prince never so just and equal to
his subjects, yet such are their malicious and depraved
eyes, that they so look on him, and so understand him,
as if he required no other gratitude or piece of service
from them than this. And indeed they stand so oppor-
tunely for the disturbing or the destroying of a state,
being a knot of creatures, whose dignities, means, and
preferments have no foundation in the gospel, as they
themselves acknowledge, but only in the prince's fa-
vour, and to continue so long to them, as by pleasing
him they shall deserve: whence it must needs be they
should bend all their intentions and services to no other
ends but to his, that if it should happen that a tyrant
(God turn such a scourge from us to our enemies)
should come to grasp the sceptre, here were his spear-
men and his lances, here were his firelocks ready, he
should need no other pretorian band nor pensionary
than these, if they could once with their perfidious
preachments awe the people. For although the pre-
lates in time of popery were sometimes friendly enough
to Magna Charta, it was because they stood upon their
own bottom, without their main dependance on the
R" yal nod: but now being well acquainted that the
protestant religion, if she will reform herself rightly
y the Scriptures, must undress them of all their gilded
l


Book II.
53
|URGED AGAINST PRELATY.
vanities, and reduce them as they were at first, to
the lowly and equal order of presbyters, they know it.
concerns them nearly to study the times more than the .
text, and to lift up their eyes to the hills of the court,
from whence only comes their help; but if their pride
grow weary of this crouching and observance, as ere
long it would, and that yet their minds climb still to a
higher ascent of worldly honour, this only refuge can
remain to them, that they must of necessity contrive to
bring themselves and us back again to the pope's su-
premacy; and this we see they had by fair degrees of
late been doing. These be the two fair supporters be-
tween which the strength of prelaty is borne up, either.
of inducing tyranny, or of reducing popery. Hence
"also we may judge that prelaty is mere falsehood. For
the property of truth is, where she is publicly taught
to unyoke and set free the minds and spirits of a nation
first from the thraldom of sin and superstition, after
which all honest and legal freedom of civil life cannot
be long absent; but prelaty, whom the tyrant custom
begot, a natural tyrant in religion, and in state the
agent and minister of tyranny, seems to have had this
fatal gift in her nativity, like another Midas, that what-
soever she should touch or come near either in ecclesial'
or political government, it should turn, not to gold,
though she for her part could wish it, but to the dross
and scum of slavery, breeding and settling both in the
bodies and the souls of all such as do not in time, with
the sovereign treacle of sound doctrine, provide to for-
tify their hearts against her hierarchy. The service of
God who is truth, her liturgy confesses to be perfect
freedom; but her works and her opinions declare, that
the service of prelaty is perfect slavery, and by conse-
quence perfect falsehood. Which makes me wonder
much that many of the gentry, studious men as I hear,
should engage themselves to write and speak publicly
in her defence; but that I believe their honest and in-
genuous natures coming to the universities to store
themselves with good and solid learning, and there un-
fortunately fed with nothing else but the scragged and
thorny lectures of monkish and miserable sophistry,
were sent home again with such a scholastical bur in
their throats, as hath stopped and hindered all true and
generous philosophy from entering, cracked their voices
for ever with metaphysical gargarisms, and hath made
them admire a sort of formal outside men prelatically
addicted, whose unchastened and unwrought minds
were never yet initiated or subdued under the true lore
of religion or moral virtue, which two are the best and
greatest points of learning; but either slightly trained
up in a kind of hypocritical and hackney course of
literature to get their living by, and dazzle the ignor-
ant, or else fondly over-studied in useless controversies,
except those which they use with all the specious and
delusive subtlety they are able, to defend their prelati-
cal Sparta; having a gospel and church-government
set before their eyes, as a fair field wherein they might
exercise the greatest virtues and the greatest deeds of
christian authority, in mean fortunes and little furni-
ture of this world; (which even the sage heathen
writers, and those old Fabritii and Curii well knew to
be a manner of working, than which nothing could
liken a mortal man more to God, who delights most to
work from within himself, and not by the heavy lug-
gage of corporeal instruments;) they understand it not,
and think no such matter, but admire and dote upon
worldly riches and honours, with an easy and intem-
perate life, to the bane of Christianity : yea, they and
their seminaries shame not to profess, to petition, and
never leave pealing our ears, that unless we fat them like
boars, and cram them as they list with wealth, with dean-
eries and pluralities, with baronies and stately prefer-
ments, all learning and religion will go underfoot. Which
is such a shameless, such a bestial plea, and of that odious
impudence in churchmen, who should be to us a pattern
of temperance and frugal mediocrity, who should teach
us to contemn this world and the gaudy things thereof,
according to the promise which they themselves require
from us in baptism, that should the Scripture stand by
and be mute, there is not that sect of philosophers among
the heathen so dissolute, no not Epicurus, nor Aristippus
with all his Cyrenaic rout, but would shut his school-
doors against such greasy sophisters; not any college
of mountebanks, but would think scorn to discover in
themselves with such a brazen forehead the outrageous
desire of filthy lucre. Which the prelates make so
little conscience of, that they are ready to fight, and
if it lay in their power, to massacre all good Christians
under the names of horrible schismatics, for only find-
ing fault with their temporal dignities, their uncon-
scionable wealth and revenues, their cruel authority
over their brethren that labour in the word, while they
snore in their luxurious excess : openly proclaiming
themselves now in the sight of all men, to be those
which for awhile they sought to cover under sheep's
clothing, ravenous and savage wolves, threatening in-
roads and bloody incursions upon the flock of Christ,
which they took upon them to feed, but now claim to
devour as their prey. More like that huge dragon of
Egypt, breathing out waste and desolation to the land,
unless he were daily fattened with virgin's blood.
Him our old patron St. George, by his matchless valour
slew, as the prelate of the garter that reads his collect
can tell. And if our princes and knights will imitate
the fame of that old champion, as by their order of
knighthood solemnly taken they vow, far be it that
they should uphold and side with this English dragon;
but rather to do as indeed their oaths bind them, they
should make it their knightly adventure to pursue and
vanquish this mighty sail-winged monster, that menaces
to swallow up the land, unless her bottomless gorge may
be satisfied with the blood of the king's daughter the
church; and may, as she was wont, fill her dark and
infamous den with the bones of the saints. Nor will
any one have reason to think this as too incredible or too
tragical to be spoken of prelaty, if he consider well
from what a mass of slime and mud the slothful, the
covetous, and ambitious hopes of church-promotions and
fat bishoprics, she is bred up and nuzzled in, like a
great Python, from her youth, to prove the general poi-
son both of doctrine and good discipline in the land.
For certainly such hopes and such principles of earth
54
Book II.
THE REASON OF CHURCH-GOVERNMENT, &c.
powerful beams of God’s word.
as these wherein she welters from a young one, are
the immediate generation both of a slavish and tyran-
mous life to follow, and a pestiferous contagion to the
whole kingdom, till like that fen-born serpent she be
shot to death with the darts of the sun, the pure and
And this may serve
to describe to us in part, what prelaty hath been, and
what, if she stand, she is like to be towards the whole
body of people in England. Now that it may appear
how she is not such a kind of evil, as hath any good or
use in it, which many evils have, but a distilled quint-
essence, a pure elixir of mischief, pestilent alike to all;
I shall shew briefly, ere I conclude, that the prelates,
as they are to the subjects a calamity, so are they the
greatest underminers and betrayers of the monarch, to
whom they seem to be most favourable. I cannot bet-
ter liken the state and person of a king than to that
mighty Nazarite Samson; who being disciplined from
his birth in the precepts and the practice of temperance
and sobriety, without the strong drink of injurious and
excessive desires, grows up to a noble strength and
perſection with those his illustrious and sunny locks,
the laws, waving and curling about his godlike shoul-
ders. And while he keeps them about him undiminished
and unshorn, he may with the jawbone of an ass, that
is, with the word of his meanest officer, suppress and
put to confusion thousands of those that rise against
his just power. But laying down his head among the
strumpet flatteries of prelates, while he sleeps and thinks
no harm, they wickedly shaving off all those bright
and weighty tresses of his laws, and just prerogatives,
which were his ornament and strength, deliver him
over to indirect and violent counsels, which, as those
Philistines, put out the fair and far-sighted eyes of his
natural discerning, and make him grind in the prison-
house of their sinister ends and practices upon him : till
he, knowing this prelatical rasor to have bereft him of
his wonted might, nourish again his puissant hair, the
golden beams of law and right: and they sternly shook,
thunder with ruin upon the heads of those his evil
counsellors, but not without great affliction to himself.
This is the sum of their loyal service to kings; yet
these are the men that still cry, The king, the king, the
Lord's anointed. We grant it, and wonder how they
came to light upon any thing so true; and wonder
more, if kings be the Lord's anointed, how they dare
thus oil over and besmear so holy an unction with the
corrupt and putrid ointment of their base flatteries;
which, while they smooth the skin, strike inward and
envenom the lifeblood. What ſidelity kings can ex-
pect from prelates, both examples past, and our present
experience of their doings at this day, whereon is
grounded all that hath been said, may suffice to inform
us. And if they be such clippers of regal power, and
shavers of the laws, how they stand affected to the law-
giving parliament, yourselves, worthy peers and com-
mons, can best testify; the current of whose glorious
and immortal actions hath been only opposed by the
obscure and permicious designs of the prelates, until
their insolence broke out to such a bold affront, as hath
justly immured their haughty looks within strong walls.
Nor have they done any thing of late with more dili-
gence, than to hinder or break the happy assembling
of parliaments, however needful to repair the shattered
and disjointed frame of the commonwealth; or if they
cannot do this, to cross, to disenable, and traduce all
parliamentary proceedings. And this, if nothing else,
plainly accuses them to be no lawful members of the
house, if they thus perpetually mutiny against their
own body. And though they pretend, like Solomon's.
harlot, that they have right thereto, by the same judg-
ment that Solomon gave, it cannot belong to them,
whenas it is not only their assent, but their endeavour
continually to divide parliaments in twain; and not
only by dividing, but by all other means to abolish and
destroy the free use of them to all posterity. For the
which, and for all their former misdeeds, whereof this
book and many volumes more cannot contain the
moiety, I shall move ye, lords, in the behalf I dare say
of many thousand good Christians, to let your justice
and speedy sentence pass against this great maleſactor
prelaty. And yet in the midst of rigour I would be-
seech ye to think of mercy; and such a mercy, (I fear
I shall overshoot with a desire to save this falling pre
laty,) such a mercy (if I may venture to say it) as may
exceed that which for only ten righteous persons would
have saved Sodom. Not that I dare advise ye to con-
tend with God, whether he or you shall be more mer-
ciful, but in your wise esteems to balance the offences
of those peccant cities with these enormous riots of un
godly misrule, that prelaty hath wrought both in the
church of Christ, and in the state of this kingdom.
And if ye think ye may with a pious presumption strive
to go beyond God in mercy, I shall not be one now
that would dissuade ye. Though God for less than ten
just persons would not spare Sodom, yet if you can
find, after due search, but only one good thing in pre-
laty, either to religion or civil government, to king or
parliament, to prince or people, to law, liberty, wealth,
or learning, spare her, let her live, let her spread among
ye, till with her shadow all your dignities and honours,
and all the glory of the land be darkened and obscured.
But on the contrary, if she be found to be malignant,
hostile, destructive to all these, as nothing can be surer,
then let your severe and impartial doom imitate the
divine vengeance; rain down your punishing force
upon this godless and oppressing government, and bring
such a dead sea of subversion upon her, that she may
never in this land rise more to afflict the holy reformed
church, and the elect people of God.
A NIM A D V E R S I O N S
U PON
THE REMONSTRANT'S DEFENCE AGAINST SMECTYMNUUS.
[F1RST PUBLISHED 1641.]
THE PREFACE.
Although it be a certain truth, that they who undertake a religious cause need not care to be men-pleasers;
yet because the satisfaction of tender and mild consciences is far different from that which is called men-pleasing;
to satisfy such, I shall address myself in few words to give notice beforehand of something in this book, which
to some men perhaps may seem offensive, that when I have rendered a lawful reason of what is done, I may
trust to have saved the labour of defending or excusing hereafter. We all know that in private or personal in-
juries, yea in public sufferings for the cause of Christ, his rule and example teaches us to be so far from a readi-
ness to speak evil, as not to answer the reviler in his language, though never so much provoked : yet in the
detecting and convincing of any notorious enemy to truth and his country's peace, especially that is conceited
to have a voluble and smart fluence of tongue, and in the vain confidence of that, and out of a more tenacious
cling to worldly respects, stands up for all the rest to justify a long usurpation and convicted pseudepiscopy of
prelates, with all their ceremonies, liturgies, and tyrannies, which God and man are now ready to explode and
hiss out of the land; I suppose, and more than suppose, it will be nothing disagreeing from christian meekness
to handle such a one in a rougher accent, and to send home his haughtiness well bespurted with his own holy-
water. Nor to do thus are we unautoritied either from the moral precept of Solomon, to answer him thereafter
that prides him in his folly; nor from the example of Christ, and all his followers in all ages, who, in the refut-
ing of those that resisted sound doctrine, and by subtile dissimulations corrupted the minds of men, have wrought
up their zealous souls into such vehemencies, as nothing could be more killingly spoken : for who can be a
greater enemy to mankind, who a more dangerous deceiver, than he who, defending a traditional corruption,
uses no common arts, but with a wily stratagem of yielding to the time a greater part of his cause, seeming to
forego all that man's invention hath done therein, and driven from much of his hold in Scripture; yet leaving it
hanging by a twined thread, not from divine command, but from apostolical prudence or assent; as if he had
the surety of some rolling trench, creeps up by this mean to his relinquished fortress of divine authority again,
and still hovering between the confines of that which he dares not be openly, and that which he will not be
sincerely, trains on the easy Christian insensibly within the close ambushment of worst errours, and with a sly
shuffle of counterfeit principles, chopping and changing till he have gleaned all the good ones out of their
minds, leaves them at last, after a slight resemblance of sweeping and garnishing, under the seven-ſold possession
of a desperate stupidity ? And therefore they that love the souls of men, which is the dearest love, and stirs
up the noblest jealousy, when they meet with such collusion, cannot be blamed though they be transported
with the zeal of truth to a well-heated fervency; especially, seeing they which thus offend against the souls
of their brethren, do it with delight to their great gain, ease, and advancement in this world; but they that seek
to discover and oppose their false trade of deceiving, do it not without a sad and unwilling anger, not without
many hazards; but without all private and personal spleen, and without any thought of earthly reward, when-
as this very course they take stops their hopes of ascending above a lowly and unenviable pitch in this life.
And although in the serious uncasing of a grand imposture, (for to deal plainly with you, readers, prelaty is no
better) there be mixed here and there such a grim laughter, as may appear at the same time in an austere visage,
it cannot be taxed of levity or insolence: for even this vein of laughing (as I could produce out of grave authors)
hath ofttimes a strong and sinewy force in teaching and confuting; nor can there be a more proper object of
indignation and scorn together, than a false prophet taken in the greatest, dearest, and most dangerous cheat,
the cheat of souls: in the disclosing whereof, if it be harmful to be angry, and withal to cast a lowering smile,
when the properest object calls for both, it will be long enough ere any be able to say, why those two most ra-
tional faculties of human intellect, anger and laughter, were first seated in the breast of man. Thus much,
56*
ANIMADVERSIONS UPON THE
readers, in favour of the softer spirited Christian, for other exceptioners there was no thought taken. Only if it be
asked, why this close and succinct manner of coping with the adversary was rather chosen, this was the reason
chiefly, that the ingenuous reader, without further amusing himself in the labyrinth of controversial antiquity,
may come to the speediest way to see the truth vindicated, and sophistry taken short at the first false bound.
Next, that the Remonstrant himself, as oft as he pleases to be frolic, and brave it with others, may find no gain
of money, and may learn not to insult in so bad a cause. But now he begins.
SECT. I.
ReMonstraNT. My single remonstrance is encoun-
tered with a plural adversary.
Answer. Did not your single remonstrance bring
along with it a hot scent of your more than singular
affection to spiritual pluralities, your singleness would
be less suspected with all good Christians than it is.
Remonst. Their names, persons, qualities, numbers,
I care not to know.
Answ. Their names are known to the all-knowing
Power above ; and in the mean while, doubtless, they
reck not whether you or your nomenclator know them
Or not.
Remonst. But could they say my name is Legion,
for we are many
Answ. Wherefore should ye begin with the devil's
name, descanting upon the number of your opponents?
Wherefore that conceit of Legion with a by-wipe P Was
it because you would have men take notice how you
esteem them, whom through all your book so bounti-
fully you call your brethren P. We had not thought that
Legion could have furnished the Remonstrant with so
many brethren.
Remonst. My cause, ye gods, would bid me meet
them undismayed, &c.
Answ. Ere a foot further we must be content to
hear a preambling boast of your valour, what a St.
Dunstan you are to encounter Legions, either infernal
or human.
Remonst. My cause, ye gods.
Answ. What gods 2 Unless your belly, or the god of
this world be he Shew us any one point of your re-
monstrance that does not more concern superiority,
pride, ease, and the belly, than the truth and glory of
God, or the salvation of souls.
Remonst. My cause, ye gods, would bid me meet
them undismayed, and to say with holy David, “though
a host, &c.”
Answ. Do not think to persuade us of your undaunt-
ed courage, by misapplying to yourself the words of
holy David; we know you fear, and are in an agony
at this present, lest you should lose that superfluity of
riches and honour, which your party usurp. And who-
soever covets, and so earnestly labours to keep such an
incumbering surcharge of earthly things, cannot but
have an earthquake still in his bones. You are not
armed, Remonstrant, nor any of your band ; you are
not dieted, nor your loins girt for spiritual valour,
and christian warfare, the luggage is too great that
follows your camp; your hearts are there, you march
heavily : how shall we think you have not carnal fear,
while we see you so subject to carnal desires?
Remonst. I do gladly fly to the bar.
Answ. To the bar with him then. Gladly you say.
We believe you as gladly as your whole faction wished
and longed for the assembling of this parliament, as
gladly as your beneficiaries the priests came up to an-
swer the complaints and outcries of all the shires.
Remonst. The Areopagi ! who were those 2 Truly,
my masters, I had thought this had been the name of
the place, not of the men.
Answ. A soar-eagle would not stoop at a fly ; but
sure some pedagogue stood at your elbow, and made it
itch with this parlous criticism; they urged you with
a decree of the sage and severe judges of Athens, and
you cite them to appear for certain paragogical con-
tempts, before a capacious pedanty of hot-livered
grammarians. Mistake not the matter, courteous Re-
monstrant, they were not making Latin: if in dealing
with an outlandish name, they thought it best not to
screw the English mouth to a harsh foreign termina-
tion, so they kept the radical word, they did no more
than the elegantest authors among the Greeks, Ro-
mans, and at this day the Italians, in scorn of such a
servility use to do. Remember how they mangle our
British names abroad; what trespass were it, if we in
requital should as much neglect theirs? And our learn-
ed Chaucer did not stick to do so, writing Semyramis
for Semiramis, Amphiorax for Amphiaraus, K. Sejes
for K. Ceyx the husband of Alcyone, with many other
names strangely metamorphosed from the true orthog-
raphy, if he had made any account of that in these
kind of words.
Remonst. Lest the world should think the press
had of late forgot to speak any language other than
libellous, this honest paper hath broken through the
throng.
Answ. Mince the matter while you will, it shewed
but green practice in the laws of discreet rhetoric to
blurt upon the ears of a judicious parliament with such
a presumptuous and overweening proem: but you do
well to be the ſewer of your own mess.
Remonst. That which you miscall the preface, was
a too just complaint of the shameful number of libels.
Answ. How long is it that you and the prelatical
REMONSTRANT'S DEFENCE, &c.
57
troop have been in such distaste with libels f Ask your
Lysimachus Nicanor what deſaming invectives have
lately flown abroad against the subjects of Scotland,
and our poor expulsed brethren of New England, the
prelates rather applauding than shewing any dislike :
and this hath been ever so, insomuch that Sir Francis
Bacon in one of his discourses complains of the bishops'
uneven hand over these pamphlets, confining those
against bishops to darkness, but licensing those against
puritans to be uttered openly, though with the greater
mischief of leading into contempt the exercise of re-
ligion in the persons of sundry preachers, and dis-
gracing the higher matter in the meaner person.
Remonst. A point no less essential to that proposed
rell, OnStrance.
Answ. We know where the shoe wrings you, you
fret and are galled at the quick; and O what a death
it is to the prelates to be thus unvisarded, thus uncased,
to have the periwigs plucked off that cover your bald-
ness, your inside nakedness thrown open to public view!
The Romans had a time once every year, when their
slaves might freely speak their minds; it were hard if
the freeborn people of England, with whom the voice
of truth for these many years, even against the proverb,
hath not been heard but in corners, after all your
monkish prohibitions, and expurgatorious indexes, your
gags and snaffles, your proud Imprimaturs not to be
obtained without the shallow surview, but not shallow
hand of some mercenary, narrow-souled, and illiterate
chaplain; when liberty of speaking, than which nothing
is more sweet to man, was girded and strait-laced
almost to a broken-winded phthisic, if now at a good
time, our time of parliament, the very jubilee and re-
surrection of the state, if now the concealed, the ag-
grieved, and long persecuted truth, could not be suffered
to speak; and though she burst out with some efficacy
of words, could not be excused after such an injurious
strangle of silence, nor avoid the censure of libelling,
it were hard, it were something pinching in a kingdom
of free spirits. Some princes, and great statists, have
thought it a prime piece of necessary policy, to thrust
themselves under disguise into a popular throng, to
stand the night long under eaves of houses, and low
windows, that they might hear every where the utter-
ances of private breasts, and amongst them find out the
precious gem of truth, as amongst the numberless peb-
bles of the shore; whereby they might be the abler to
discover, and avoid, that deceitful and close-couched
evil of flattery that ever attends them, and misleads
them, and might skilfully know how to apply the
several redresses to each malady of state, without trust-
ing the disloyal information of parasites and sycophants:
whereas now this permission of free writing, were there
no good else in it, yet at some times thus licensed, is
such an unripping, such an anatomy of the shyest and
tenderest particular truths, as makes not only the whole
nation in many points the wiser, but also presents and
carries home to princes, men most remote from vulgar
concourse, such a full insight of every lurking evil, or
restrained good among the commons, as that they shall
not need hereafter, in old cloaks and false beards, to
stand to the courtesy of a night-walking cudgeller for
eaves-dropping, nor to accept quietly as a perfume, the
overhead emptying of some salt lotion. Who could be
angry, therefore, but those that are guilty, with these
free-spoken and plain-hearted men, that are the eyes of
their country, and the prospective-glasses of their
prince P But these are the nettlers, these are the blab-
bing books that tell, though not half your fellows’ feats.
You love toothless satires; let me inform you, a tooth-
less satire is as improper as a toothed sleek-stone, and
as bullish.
Remonst. I beseech you, brethren, spend your logic
upon your own works. -
Answ. The peremptory analysis that you call it, I
believe will be so hardy as once more to unpin your
spruce fastidious oratory, to rumple her laces, her friz-
zles, and her bobbins, though she wince and fling never
so peevishly.
Remonst. Those verbal exceptions are but light froth,
and will sink alone.
Answ. O rare subtlety, beyond all that Cardan ever
dreamed of' when, I beseech you, will light things
sink 2 when will light froth sink alone 2 Here in your
phrase, the same day that heavy plummets will swim
alone. Trust this man, readers, if you please, whose
divinity would reconcile England with Rome, and his
philosophy make friends nature with the chaos, sine
pondere habentia pondus.
Remonst. That scum may be worth taking off which
follows.
Answ. Spare your ladle, sir, it will be as the bishop's
foot in the broth; the scum will be found upon your
OW In remonStrance.
Remonst. I shall desire all indifferent eyes to judge,
whether these men do not endeavour to cast unjust envy
upon me.
Answ. Agreed.
Remonst. I had said that the civil polity, as in gene-
ral notion, hath sometimes varied, and that the civil
came from arbitrary imposers; these gracious interpret-
ers would needs draw my words to the present and
particular government of our monarchy.
Answ. And deservedly have they done so; take up
your logic else and see: civil polity, say you, hath
sometimes varied, and came from arbitrary imposers;
what proposition is this Bishop Downam in his dia-
lectics will tell you it is a general axiom, though the
universal particle be not expressed, and you yourself
in your defence so explain in these words as in general
notion. Hence is justly inferred, he that says civil
polity is arbitrary, says that the civil polity of England
is arbitrary. The inference is undemiable, a thesi ad
hypothesin, or from the general to the particular, an
evincing argument in logic.
Remonst. Brethren, whiles ye desire to seem godly,
learn to be less malicious.
Answ. Remonstrant, till you have better learnt your
principles of logic, take not upon you to be a doctor to
others.
Remonst. God bless all good men from such charity.
Answ. I never found that logical maxims were un-
58
ANIMADVERSIONS UPON THE
charitable before; yet should a jury of logicians pass
upon you, you would never be saved by the book.
Remonst. And our sacred monarchy from such
friends.
Answ. Add, as the prelates.
Remonst. If episcopacy have yoked monarchy, it is
the insolence of the persons, not the fault of the calling.
Answ. It was the fault of the persons, and of no
calling: we do not count prelaty a calling.
Remonst. The testimony of a pope (whom these men
honour highly).
Answ. That slanderous insertion was doubtless a
pang of your incredible charity, the want whereof you
lay so often to their charge; a kind token of your fa-
vour lapped up in a parenthesis, a piece of the clergy
benevolence laid by to maintain the episcopal broil,
whether the 1000 horse or no, time will discover: for
certainly had those cavaliers come on to play their
parts, such a ticket as this of highly honouring the pope,
from the hand of a prelate, might have been of special
use and safety to them that had cared for such a ransom.
Remonst. And what says Antichrist?
Answ. Ask your brethren the prelates, that hold in-
telligence with him, ask not us. But is the pope Anti-
christ now * Good news! take heed you be not shent
for this; for it is verily thought, that had this bill been
put in against him in your last convocation, he would
have been cleared by most voices.
Remonst. Any thing serves against episcopacy.
Answ. See the frowardness of this man, he would
persuade us, that the succession and divine right of
bishopdom hath been unquestionable through all ages;
yet when they bring against him kings, they were irre-
ligious; popes, they are antichrist. By what era of
computation, through what fairy land, would the man
deduce this perpetual beadroll of uncontradicted epis-
copacy P. The pope may as well boast his ungainsaid
authority to them that will believe, that all his contra-
dicters were either irreligious or heretical.
Remonst. If the bishops, saith the pope, be declared
to be of divine right, they would be exempted from
regal power; and if there might be this danger in those
kingdoms, why is this enviously upbraided to those of
ours ? who do gladly profess, &c.
Answ. Because your dissevered principles were but
like the mangled pieces of a gashed serpent, that now
begun to close, and grow together popish again. What-
soever you now gladly profess out of fear, we know
what your drifts were when you thought yourselves
SCCUI re.
Remonst. It is a ſoul slander to charge the name of
episcopacy with a faction, for the fact imputed to some
few.
Answ. The more foul your faction that hath brought
a harmless name into obloquy, and the fact may justly
be imputed to all of ye that ought to have withstood it,
and did not.
Remonst. Fie, brethren' are ye the presbyters of the
church of England, and dare challenge episcopacy of
faction ?
Answ. Yes, as oft as episcopacy dares be factious.
Remonst. Had you spoken such a word in the time
of holy Cyprian, what had become of you ?
Answ. They had neither been haled into your Ge.
henna at Lambeth, nor strapadoed with an oath ex
officio by your bowmen of the arches: and as for Cy-
prian's time the cause was far unlike, he indeed suc-
ceeded into an episcopacy that began then to prelatize;
but his personal excellence like an antidote overcame
the malignity of that breeding corruption, which was
then a disease that lay hid for a while under shew of a
full and healthy constitution, as those hydropic hu-
mours not discernible at first from a fair and juicy
fleshiness of body, or that unwonted ruddy colour,
which seems graceful to a cheek otherwise pale; and
yet arises from evil causes, either of some inward ob-
struction or inflammation, and might deceive the first
physicians till they had learned the sequel, which Cy-
prian's days did not bring forth ; and the prelatism of
episcopacy, which began then to burgeon and spread,
had as yet, especially in famous men, a fair, though a
false imitation of flourishing.
Remonst. Neither is the wrong less to make appli-
cation of that which was most justly charged upon the
practices and combinations of libelling separatists,
whom. I deservedly censured, &c.
Answ. To conclude this section, our Remonstrant we
see is resolved to make good that which was formerly
said of his book, that it was neither humble nor a re-
monstrance, and this his defence is of the same com-
plexion. When he is constrained to mention the noto-
rious violence of his clergy attempted on the church of
Scotland, he slightly terms it a fact imputed to some
few ; but when he speaks of that which the parliament
vouchsafes to name the city petition, “which I,” saith
he, (as if the state had made him public censor,) “deserv-
edly censured.” And how P As before for a tumultuary
and underhand way of procured subscriptions, so now
in his defence more bitterly, as the practices and com-
binations of libelling separatists, and the miszealous
advocates thereof, justly to be branded for incendiaries.
Whether this be for the honour of our chief city to be
noted with such an infamy for a petition, which not
without some of the magistrates, and great numbers of
sober and considerable men, was orderly and meekly
presented, although our great clerks think that these
men, because they have a trade, (as Christ himself and
St. Paul had,) cannot therefore attain to some good
measure of knowledge, and to a reason of their actions,
as well as they that spend their youth in loitering, bez-
zling, and harlotting, their studies in unprofitable ques-
tions and barbarous sophistry, their middle age in am-
bition and idleness, their old age in avarice, dotage,
and diseases. And whether this reflect not with a con-
tumely upon the parliament itself, which thought this
petition worthy, not only of receiving, but of voting to
a commitment, after it had been advocated, and moved
for by some honourable and learned gentleman of the
house, to be called a combination of libelling separa-
tists, and the advocates thereof to be branded for in-
cendiaries; whether this appeach not the judgment and
approbation of the parliament I leave to equal arbiters.
REMONSTRANT'S DEFENCE, &c.
59
SECT. II.
ReMonst. Aſter the overflowing of your gall, you
descend to liturgy and episcopacy.
Answ. The overflow being past, you cannot now in
your own judgment impute any bitterness to their fol-
ing discourses.
Remonst. Dr. Hall, whom you name I dare say for
honour's sake.
Answ. You are a merry man, sir, and dare say
much.
Remonst. And why should not I speak of martyrs,
as the authors and users of this holy liturgy P
Answ. As the authors the translators, you might
perhaps have said: for Edward the sixth, as Hayward
hath written in his story, will tell you upon the word
of a king, that the order of the service, and the use
thereof in the English tongue, is no other than the old
service was, and the same words in English which
were in Latin, except a few things onlitted, so fond,
that it had been a shame to have heard them in
English; these are his words: whereby we are left
uncertain who the author was, but certain that part of
the work was esteemed so absurd by the translators
thereof, as was to be ashamed of in English. O but
the martyrs were the refiners of it, for that only is left
you to say. Admit they were, they could not refine a
scorpion into a fish, though they had drawn it, and
rinced it with never so cleanly cookery, which made
them fall at variance among themselves about the use
either of it, or the ceremonies belonging to it.
Remonst. Slight you them as you please, we bless
God for such patrons of our good cause.
Answ. O Benedicite Qui color ater erat, nunc est
contrarius atro. Are not these they which one of your
bishops in print scornfully terms the Foxian confes-
sors P Are not these they whose acts and monuments
are not only so contemptible, but so hateful to the pre-
lates, that their story was almost come to be a pro-
hibited book, which for these two or three editions
hath crept into the world by stealth, and at times of
advantage, not without the open regret and vexation
of the bishops, as many honest men that had to do in
setting forth the book will justify 2 And now at a dead
lift for your liturgies you bless God for them: out upon
such hypocrisy
Remonst. As if we were bound to make good every
word that falls from the mouth of every bishop.
Answ. Your faction then belike is a subtile Janus,
and hath two faces: your bolder face to set forward
any innovations or scandals in the church, your cau-
tious and wary face to disavow them if they succeed
not, that so the fault may not light upon the function,
lest it should spoil the whole plot by giving it an
irrecoverable wound. Wherefore else did you not
long ago, as a good bishop should have done, disclaim
and protest against them P Wherefore have you sat
still, and complied and hood-winked, till the general
complaints of the land have squeezed you to a wretched,
cold, and hollow-hearted confession of some prelatical
riots both in this and other places of your book P Nay,
what if you still defend them as follows:
Remonst. If a bishop have said that our liturgy
hath been so wisely and charitably framed, as that the
devotion of it yieldeth no cause of offence to a very
pope's ear.
Answ. O new and never heard of supererogative
height of wisdom and charity in our liturgy! Is the
wisdom of God or the charitable framing of God's
word otherwise inoffensive to the pope's ear, than as
he may turn it to the working of his mysterious iniquity?
A little pulley would have stretched your wise and
charitable frame it may be three inches further, that
the devotion of it might have yielded no cause of
offence to the very devil's ear, and that had been the
same wisdom and charity surmounting to the highest
degree. For Antichrist we know is but the devil's
vicar, and therefore please him with your liturgy, and
you please his master.
Remonst. Would you think it requisite, that we
should chide and quarrel when we speak to the God of
peace 2
Answ. Fie, no sir, but forecast our prayers so, that
Satan and his instruments may take as little excep-
tion against them as may be, lest they should chide
and quarrel with us.
Remonst. It is no little advantage to our cause and
piety, that our liturgy is taught to speak several lan-
guages for use and example.
Answ. The language of Ashdod is one of them, and
that makes so many Englishmen have such a smatter-
ing of their Philistian mother. And indeed our liturgy
hath run up and down the world like an English gal-
loping nun proffering herself, but we hear of none yet
that bids money for her.
Remonst. As for that sharp censure of learned Mr.
Calvin, it might well have been forborn by him in
aliena republica.
Answ. Thus this untheological remonstrant would
divide the individual catholic church into several re-
publics: know, therefore, that every worthy pastor of
the church of Christ hath universal right to admonish
over all the world within the church; nor can that care
be aliened from him by any distance or distinction of
nation, so long as in Christ all nations and languages
are as one household.
Remonst. Neither would you think it could become
any of our greatest divines, to meddle with his charge.
Answ. It hath ill become them indeed to meddle so
maliciously, as many of thenſ have done, though that
patient and christian city hath borne hitherto all their
profane scoffs with silence.
Remonst. Our liturgy passed the judgment of no
less reverend heads than his own.
Answ. It bribed their judgments with worldly en-
gagements, and so passed it. -
Remonst. As for that unparalleled discourse con-
cerning the antiquity of liturgies, I cannot help your
wonder, but shall justify mine own assertion.
Answ. Your justification is but a miserable shifting
off those testimonies of the ancientest fathers alleged
60
ANIMADVERSIONS UPON THE
against you, and the authority of some synodal canons,
which are now arrant to us. We profess to decide our
controversies only by the Scriptures; but yet to re-
press your vain-glory, there will be voluntarily be-
stowed upon you a sufficient conviction of your novelties
out of succeeding antiquity.
Remonst. I cannot see how you will avoid your
own contradiction, for I demand, is this order of pray-
ing and administration set or no 2 If it be not set, how
is it an order P And if it be a set order both for matter
and form
Answ. Remove that form, lest you tumble over it,
while you make such haste to clap a contradiction upon
others.
Remonst. If the forms were merely arbitrary, to
what use was the prescription of an order P
Answ. Nothing will cure this man's understanding
but some familiar and kitchen physic, which, with
pardon, must for plainness sake be administered to
him. Call hither your cook. The order of breakfast,
dinner, and supper, answer me, is it set or no P Set.
Is a man therefore bound in the morning to poached
eggs and vinegar, or at noon to brawn or beef, or
at night to fresh salmon, and French kickshose 2 May
he not make his meals in order, though he be not
bound to this or that viand 2 Doubtless the neat-finger-
ed artist will answer yes, and help us out of this great
controversy without more trouble. Can we not under-
stand an order in church-assemblies of praying, read-
ing, expounding, and administering, unless our prayers
be still the same crambe of words 2
Remonst. What a poor exception is this, that litur-
gies were composed by some particular men P
Answ. It is a greater presumption in any particular
men, to arrogate to themselves, that which God univer-
sally gives to all his ministers. A minister that cannot
be trusted to pray in his own words without being
chewed to, and fescued to a formal injunction of his
rote lesson, should as little be trusted to preach, besides
the vain babble of praying over the same things im-
mediately again; for there is a large difference in the
repetition of some pathetical ejaculation raised out of
the sudden earnestness and vigour of the inflamed soul,
(such as was that of Christ in the garden,) from the
continual rehearsal of our daily orisons; which if a
man shall kneel down in a morning, and say over, and
presently in another part of the room kneel down again,
and in other words ask but still for the same things as
it were out of one inventory, I cannot see how he will
escape that heathenish battology of multiplying words,
which Christ himself, that has the putting up of our
prayers, told us would not be acceptable in heaven.
Well may men of eminent gifts set forth as many
forms and helps to prayer as they please; but to im-
pose them on ministers lawfully called, and sufficiently
tried, as all ought to be ere they be admitted, is a su-
percilious tyranny, impropriating the Spirit of God to
themselves.
Remonst. Do we abridge this liberty by ordaining a
public form.
Answ. Your bishops have set as fair to do it as they
durst for that old pharasaical fear that still dogs them,
the fear of the people; though you will say you are
none of those, still you would seem not to have joined
with the worst, and yet keep aloof off from that which
is best. I would you would either mingle, or part:
most true it is what Savanarola complains, that while
he endeavoured to reform the church, his greatest ene-
mies were still these lukewarm ones.
Remonst. And if the Lord's prayer be an ordinary
and stinted form, why not others 2
Answ. Because there be no other Lords, that can
stint with like authority.
Remonst. If Justin Martyr said, that the instructor
of the people prayed (as they falsely term it) “accord-
ing to his ability.”
Answ. "Oom Šávapuc &vriff will be so rendered to the
world's end by those that are not to learn Greek of the
Remonstrant, and so Langus renders it to his face, if
he could see ; and this ancient father mentions no an-
tiphonies or responsories of the people here, but the
only plain acclamation of Amen.
Remonst. The instructor of the people prayed accord-
ing to his ability, it is true, so do ours: and yet we
have a liturgy, and so had they.
Answ. A quick come-off. The ancients used pikes
and targets, and therefore guns and great ordnance,
because we use both.
Remonst. Neither is this liberty of pouring out our-
selves in our prayers ever the more impeached by a
public form.
Answ. Yes, the time is taken up with a tedious num-
ber of liturgical tautologies, and impertinencies.
Remonst. The words of the council are full and af-
firmative.
Answ. Set the grave councils up upon their shelves
again, and string them hard, lest their various and
jangling opinions put their leaves into a flutter. I shall
not intend this hot season to bid you the base through
the wide and dusty champaign of the councils, but
shall take counsel of that which counselled them, rea-
son: and although I know there is an obsolete repre-
hension now at your tongue's end, yet I shall be bold to
say, that reason is the gift of God in one man as well
as in a thousand : by that which we have tasted already
of their cisterns, we may find that reason was the only
thing, and not any divine command that moved them
to enjoin set forms of liturgy. First, lest any thing in
general might be missaid in their public prayers
through ignorance, or want of care, contrary to the
faith: and next, lest the Arians, and Pelagians in par-
ticular, should infect the people by their hymns, and
forms of prayer. By the leave of these ancient fathers,
this was no solid prevention of spreading heresy, to
debar the ministers of God the use of their noblest
talent, prayer in the congregation; unless they had
forbid the use of sermons, and lectures too, but such as
were ready made to their hands, as our homilies: or
else he that was heretically disposed, had as fair an
opportunity of infecting in his discourse as in his prayer
or hymn. As insufficiently, and to say truth, as im-
prudently, did they provide by their contrived liturgies,
REMONSTRANT'S DEFENCE, &c.
61
lest any thing should be erroneously prayed through
ignorance, or want of care in the ministers. For iſ
they were careless and ignorant in their prayers, cer-
tainly they would be more careless in their preaching,
and yet more careless in watching over their flock; and
what prescription could reach to bound them both in
these ? What if reason, now illustrated by the word
of God, shall be able to produce a better prevention
than these councils have left us against heresy, ignor-
ance, or want of care in the ministry, that such wisdom
and diligence be used in the education of those that
would be ministers, and such strict and serious exami-
nation to be undergone, ere their admission, as St. Paul
to Timothy sets down at large, and then they need not
carry such an unworthy suspicion over the preachers
of God's word, as to tutor their unsoundness with the
*Abcie of a liturgy, or to diet their ignorance, and want
of care, with the limited draught of a matin, and even-
song drench. All this may suffice after all their labour-
some scrutiny of the councils.
Remonst. Our Saviour was pleased to make use in
the celebration of his last and heavenly banquet both
of the fashions and words which were usual in the
Jewish feasts.
Answ. What he pleased to make use of, does not
justify what you please to force.
Remonst. The set forms of prayer at the Mincha.
Answ. We will not buy your rabbinical fumes; we
have one that calls us to buy of him pure gold tried in
the fire.
Remonst. In the Samaritan chronicle.
Answ. As little do we esteem your Samaritan trum-
pery, of which people Christ himself testifies, Ye wor-
ship ye know not what.
Remonst. They had their several songs.
Answ. And so have we our several psalms for several
occasions, without gramercy to your liturgy.
Remonst. Those forms which we have under the
names of Saint James, &c., though they have some in-
sertions which are plainly spurious, yet the substance
of them cannot be taxed for other than holy and
ancient.
Answ. Setting aside the odd coinage of your phrase,
which no mint-master of language would allow for
sterling, that a thing should be taxed for no other than
holy and ancient, let it be supposed the substance of
them may savour of something holy or ancient, this is
but the matter; the form, and the end of the thing, may
yet render it either superstitious, fruitless, or impious,
and so worthy to be rejected. The garments of a
strumpet are often the same, materially, that clothe a
chaste matron, and yet ignominious for her to wear:
the substance of the tempter's words to our Saviour were
holy, but his drift nothing less. -
Remonst. In what sense we hold the Roman a true
church, is so cleared that the iron is too hot for their
fingers.
Answ. Have a care it be not the iron to sear your
OW in COINSClell Ce.
Remonst. You need not doubt but that the alteration
* i. e. A, b, c.
of the liturgy will be considered by wiser heads than
your own.
Answ. We doubt it not, because we know your head
looks to be one.
Remonst. Our liturgy symbolizeth not with popish
mass, neither as mass nor as popish.
Answ. A pretty slipskin conveyance to sift mass into
no mass, and popish into not popish ; yet saving this
passing fine sophistical boulting hutch, so long as she
symbolizes in form, and pranks herself in the weeds of
popish mass, it may be justly feared she provokes the
jealousy of God, no otherwise than a wife affecting
whorish attire kindles a disturbance in the eye of her
discerning husband.
Remonst. If I find gold in the channel, shall I throw
it away because it was ill laid?
Answ. You have forgot that gold hath been anathe-
matized for the idolatrous use; and to eat the good
creatures of God once offered to idols, is in St. Paul's
account to have fellowship with devils, and to partake
of the devil's table. And thus you throttle yourself
with your own similies.
Remonst. If the devils confessed the Son of God,
shall I disclaim that truth P
Answ. You sifted not so clean before, but you shuffle
as foully now ; as if there were the like necessity of
confessing Christ, and using the liturgy: we do not
disclaim that truth, because we never believed it for
their testimony; but we may well reject a liturgy which
had no being that we can know of, but from the cor-
ruptest times: if therefore the devil should be given
never so much to prayer, I should not therefore cease
from that duty, because I learned it not from him; but
if he would commend to me a new Pater-noster, though
never so seemingly holy, he should excuse me the form
which was his ; but the matter, which was none of his,
he could not give me, nor I be said to take it from him.
It is not the goodness of matter therefore which is not,
nor can be owed to the liturgy, that will bear it out, if
the form, which is the essence of it, be fantastic and
superstitious, the end sinister, and the imposition
violent.
Remonst. Had it been composed into this frame on
purpose to bring papists to our churches.
Answ. To bring them to our churches P alas, what
was that P unless they had been first fitted by repent-
ance, and right instruction. You will say, the word
was there preached, which is the means of conversion;
you should have given so much honour then to the word
preached, as to have left it to God's working without
the interloping of a liturgy baited for them to bite at.
Remonst. The project had been charitable and gra-
ClOllS.
Answ. It was pharisaical, and vain-glorious, a greedy
desire to win proselytes by conforming to them unlaw-
fully; like the desire of Tamar, who, to raise up seed
to her husband, sate in the common road drest like a
courtezan, and he that came to her committed incest
with her. This was that which made the old Christians
paganize, while by their scandalous and base conform-
62
ANIMADVERSIONS UPON THE
ing to heathemism they did no more, when they had
done their utmost, but bring some pagans to chris-
tianize; for true Christians they neither were them-
selves, nor could make other such in this fashion.
Remonst. If there be found aught in liturgy that
may endanger a scandal, it is under careful hands to
remove it.
Answ. Such careful hands as have shewn themselves
sooner bent to remove and expel the men from the
scandals, than the scandals from the men, and to lose
a soul rather than a syllable or a surplice.
Remo.st. It is idolized they say in England, they
mean at Amsterdam.
Answ. Be it idolized therefore where it will, it is
only idolatrized in England.
Remonst. Multitudes of people they say distaste it;
more shame for those that have so mistaught them.
Answ. More shame for those that regard not the
troubling God's church with things by themselves con-
fessed to be indifferent, since true charity is afflicted,
and burns at the offence of every little one. As for the
christian multitude which you affirm to be so mistaught,
it is evident enough, though you would declaim never
so long to the contrary, that God hath now taught
them to detest your liturgy and prelacy; God who
hath promised to teach all his children, and to deliver
them out of your hands that hunt and worry their souls:
hence is it that a man shall commonly find more sa-
voury knowledge in one layman, than in a dozen of
cathedral prelates; as we read in our Saviour's time
that the common people had a reverend esteem of him,
and held him a great prophet, whilst the gowned rab-
bies, the incomparable and invincible doctors, were of
opinion that he was a friend of Beelzebub.
Remonst. If the multitude distaste wholesome doc-
trine, shall we, to humour them, abandon it?
Answ. Yet again! as if there were like necessity of
saving doctrine, and arbitrary, if not unlawful, or in-
convenient liturgy: who would have thought a man
could have thwacked together so many incongruous
similitudes, had it not been to defend the motley inco-
herence of a patched missal P
Remonst. Why did not other churches conform to
us 2 I may boldly say ours was, and is, the more noble
church.
Answ. O Laodicean, how vainly and how carnally
dost thou boast of nobleness and precedency! more
lordly you have made our church indeed, but not more
noble.
Remonst. The second quaere is so weak, that I won-
der it could fall from the pens of wise men.
Answ. You are but a bad fencer, for you never make
a proffer against another man's weakness; but you
leave your own side always open : mark what follows.
Remonst. Brethren, can ye think that our reformers
had any other intentions than all the other founders of
liturgies, the least part of whose care was the help of
S-> 9 -
the minister's weakness?
Answ. Do you not perceive the noose you have
brought yourself into, whilst you were so brief to taunt
other men with weakness P Is it clean out of your mind
what you cited from among the councils; that the
principal scope of those liturgy-founders was to prevent
either the malice or the weakness of the ministers;
their malice, of infusing heresy in their forms of prayer;
their weakness, lest something might be composed by
them through ignorance or want of care contrary to
the faith ? Is it not now rather to be wondered, that
such a weakness could fall from the pen of such a wise
remonstrant man P
Remonst. Their main drift was the help of the
people's devotion, that they knowing before the matter
that should be sued for,
Answ. A solicitous care, as if the people could be
ignorant of the matter to be prayed for; seeing the
heads of public prayer are either ever constant, or very
frequently the same.
Remonst. And the words wherewith it should be
clothed, might be the more prepared, and be so much
the more intent and less distracted.
Answ. As for the words, it is more to be feared lest
the same continually should make them careless or
sleepy, than that variety on the same known subject
should distract; variety (as both music and rhetoric
teacheth us) erects and rouses an auditory, like the
masterful running over many chords and divisions;
whereas if men should ever be thumbing the drone of
one plain song, it would be a dull opiate to the most
wakeful attention.
Remonst. Tell me, is this liturgy good or evil?
Answ. It is evil; repair the acheloian horn of your
dilemma how you can, against the next push.
Remonst. If it be evil, it is unlawful to be used.
Answ. We grant you, and we find you have not
your salve about you.
Remonst. Were the imposition amiss, what is that
to the people *
Answ. Not a little, because they bear an equal part
with the priest in many places, and have their cues and
verses as well as he.
Remonst. The ears and hearts of our people look for
a settled liturgy.
Answ. You deceive yourself in their ears and hearts,
they look for no such matter.
Remonst. The like answer serves for homilies, surely
they were enjoined to all, &c.
Answ. Let it serve for them that will be ignorant,
we know that Hayward their own creature writes, that
for, defect of preachers, homilies were appointed to be
read in churches, while Edward VI. reigned.
Remonst. Away then with the book, whilst it may
be supplied with a more profitable nonsense.
Answ. Away with it rather, because it will be hardly
supplied with a more unprofitable nonsense, than is in
some passages of it to be seen.
REMONSTRANT'S DEFENCE, &c.
63
SECT. III.
ReMonst. Thus their cavils concerning liturgy are
vanished.
Answ. You wanted but hey pass, to have made
your transition like a mystical man of Sturbridge.
But for all your sleight of hand, our just exceptions
against liturgy are not vanished, they stare you still in
the face.
Remonst. Certainly had I done so, I had been
no less worthy to be spitten upon for my saucy un-
charitableness, than they are now for their uncharitable
falsehood.
Answ. We see you are in a choler, therefore till you
cool awhile we turn us to the ingenuous reader. See
how this Remonstrant would invest himself condition-
ally with all the rheum of the town, that he might
have sufficient to bespaul his brethren. They are ac-
cused by him of uncharitable falsehood, whereas their
only crime hath been, that they have too credulously
thought him, if not an over-logical, yet a well-meaning
man; but now we find him either grossly deficient in
his principles of logic, or else purposely bent to delude
the parliament with equivocal sophistry, scattering
among his periods ambiguous words, whose interpreta-
tion he will afterwards dispense according to his plea-
sure, laying before us universal propositions, and then
thinks when he will to pinion them with a limitation :
for say, Remonstrant,
Remonst. Episcopal government is cried down abroad
by either weak or factious persons.
Answ. Choose you whether you will have this pro-
position proved to you to be ridiculous or sophistical;
for one of the two it must be. Step again to bishop
Downam your patron, and let him gently catechise
you in the grounds of logic; he will shew you that this
axiom, “episcopal government is cried down abroad
by either weak or factious persons,” is as much as to
say, they that cry down episcopacy abroad, are either
weak or factious persons. He will tell you that
this axiom contains a distribution, and that all such
axioms are general ; and lastly, that the distribution in
which any part is wanting, or abundant, is faulty, and
fallacious. If therefore distributing by the adjuncts
of faction and weakness, the persons that decry epis-
copacy, and you made your distribution imperfect for
the nonce, you cannot but be guilty of fraud intended
toward the honourable court to whom you wrote. If
you had rather vindicate your honesty, and suffer in
your want of art, you cannot condemn them of uncha-
ritable falsehood, that attributed to you more skill than
you had, thinking you had been able to have made a
distribution, as it ought to be, general and full; and so
any man would take it, the rather as being accom-
panied with that large word, (abroad,) and so take
again either your manifest leasing, or manifest ig-
ll Ol'all C62.
Remonst. Now come these brotherly slanderers.
Answ. Go on, dissembling Joab, as still your use is,
call brother and smite; call brother and smite, till it be
said of you, as the like was of Herod, a man had better
be your hog than your brother.
IRemonst. Which never came within the verge of
my thoughts.
Answ. Take a metaphor or two more as good, the
precinct, or the diocese of your thoughts.
Remonst. Brethren, if you have any remainders of
modesty or truth, cry God mercy.
Answ. Remonstrant, if you have no groundwork of
logic, or plain dealing in you, learn both as fast as you
Call.
Remonst. Of the same strain is their witty descant
of my confoundedness.
Answ. Speak no more of it, it was a fatal word that
God put into your mouth when you began to speak for
episcopacy, as boding confusion to it.
Remonst. I am still, and shall ever be thus self-con-
founded, as confidently to say, that he is no peaceable
and right-affected son of the church of England, that
doth not wish well to liturgy and episcopacy.
Answ. If this be not that saucy uncharitableness,
with which, in the foregoing page, you voluntarily
invested yourself, with thought to have shifted it off,
let the parliament judge, who now themselves are de-
liberating whether liturgy and episcopacy be to be well
wished to, or no.
Remonst. This they say they cannot but rank
amongst my notorious—speak out, masters; I would
not have that word stick in your teeth or in your
throat.
Answ. Take your spectacles, sir, it sticks in the pa-
per, and was a pectoral roule we prepared for you to
swallow down to your heart.
Remonst. Wanton wits must have leave to play with
their own stern.
Answ. A meditation of yours doubtless observed at
Lambeth from one of the archiepiscopal kittens.
Remonst. As for that form of episcopal government,
surely could those look with my eyes, they would see
cause to be ashamed of this their injurious misconceit.
Answ. We must call the barber for this wise sen-
tence; one Mr. Ley the other day wrote a treatise of
the sabbath, and his preface puts the wisdom of Ba-
laam’s ass upon one of our bishops, bold man for his
labour; but we shall have more respect to our Remon-
strant, and liken him to the ass’s master, though the
story say he was not so quick-sighted as his beast. Is
not this Balaam the son of Beor, the man whose eyes
are open, that said to the parliament, Surely, could those
look with my eyes F Boast not of your eyes, it is fear-
ed you have Balaam’s disease, a pearl in your eye,
Mammon's prestriction.
Remonst. Alas, we could tell you of China, Japan,
Peru, Brazil, New England, Virginia, and a thousand
others, that never had any bishops to this day.
Answ. O do not foil your cause thus, and trouble
Ortelius; we can help you, and tell you where they have
been ever since Constantime's time at least, in a place
called Mundus alter et idem, in the spacious and rich
countries of Crapulia, Pamphagonia, Yuronia, and in
the dukedom of Orgilia, and Variana, and their metro-
64 ANIMADVERSIONS UPON THE
polis of Ucalegonium. It was an oversight that none
of your prime antiquaries could think of these ve-
nerable monuments to deduce episcopacy by ; knowing
that Mercurius Britannicus had them forthcoming.
SECT. IV.
ReMonst. Hitherto they have flourished, now I hope
they will strike.
Answ. His former transition was in the fair about
the jugglers, now he is at the pageants among the
whifflers.
Remonst. As if arguments were almanacks.
Answ. You will find some such as will prognosticate
your date, and tell you that, after your long summer
solstice, the Equator calls for you, to reduce you to the
ancient and equal house of Libra.
Remonst. Truly, brethren, you have not well taken
the height of the pole.
Answ. No marvel, there be many more that do not
take well the height of your pole; but will take better
the declination of your altitude.
Remonst. He that said I am the way, said that the
old way was the good way.
Answ. He bids ask of the old paths, or for the old
ways, where or which is the good way; which implics
that all old ways are not good, but that the good way
is to be searched with diligence among the old ways,
which is a thing that we do in the oldest records
we have, the gospel. And if others may chance to
spend more time with you in canvassing later anti-
quity, I suppose it is not for that they ground them-
selves thereon ; but that they endeavour by shewing
the corruptions, incertainties, and disagreements of
those volumes, and the easiness of erring, or overslip-
ping in such a boundless and vast search, if they may
not convince those that are so strongly persuaded
thereof; yet to free ingenuous minds from an over-
awful esteem of those more ancient than trusty fathers,
whom custom and fond opinion, weak principles, and
the neglect of sounder and superiour knowledge hath
exalted so high as to have gained them a blind reve-
rence; whose books in bigness and number so endless
and immeasurable, I cannot think that either God or
nature, either divine or human wisdom, did ever mean
should be a rule or reliance to us in the decision of any
weighty and positive doctrine: for certainly every rule
and instrument of necessary knowledge that God hath
given us, ought to be so in proportion, as may be
wielded and managed by the life of man, without
penning him up from the duties of human society;
and such a rule and instrument of knowledge perfectly
is the holy Bible. But he that shall bind himself to
make antiquity his rule, if he read but part, besides
the difficulty of choice, his rule is deficient, and utterly
unsatisfying ; for there may be other writers of another
mind, which he hath not seen; and if he undertake
all, the length of man's life cannot extend to give him
a full and requisite knowledge of what was done in
antiquity. Why do we therefore stand worshipping
and admiring this unactive and lifeless Colossus, that,
like a carved giant terribly menacing to children and
weaklings, lifts up his club, but strikes not, and is
subject to the muting of every sparrow 2 If you let
him rest upon his basis, he may perhaps delight the
eyes of some with his huge and mountainous bulk,
and the quaint workmanship of his massy limbs; but
if ye go about to take him in pieces, ye mar him ; and
if you think, like pigmies, to turn and wind him whole
as he is, besides your vain toil and sweat, he may
chance to fall upon your own heads. Go, therefore,
and use all your art, apply your sledges, your levers,
and your iron crows, to heave and hale your mighty
Polypheme of antiquity to the delusion of novices and
unexperienced Christians. We shall adhere close to
the Scriptures of God, which he hath left us as the just
and adequate measure of truth, fitted and proportioned
to the diligent study, memory, and use of every faithful
man, whose every part consenting, and making up the
harmonious symmetry of complete instruction, is able
to set out to us a perfect man of God, or bishop
thoroughly furnished to all the good works of his
charge: and with this weapon, without stepping a foot
further, we shall not doubt to batter and throw down
your Nebuchadnezzar's image, and crumble it like the
chaff of the summer threshing-floors, as well the gold
of those apostolic successors that you boast of, as your
Constantinian silver, together with the iron, the brass,
and the clay of those muddy and strawy ages that
follow.
Remonst. Let the boldest forehead of them all deny
that episcopacy hath continued thus long in our island,
or that any till this age contradicted it.
Answ. That bold forehead you have cleanly put
upon yourself, it is you who deny that any till this age
contradicted it; no forehead of ours dares do so much:
you have rowed yourself fairly between the Scylla and
Charybdis, either of impudence or nonsense, and now
betake you to whither you please.
Remonst. As for that supply of accessory strength,
which I not beg.
Answ. Your whole remonstrance does nothing else
but beg it, and your fellow-prelates do as good as
whine to the parliament for their fleshpots of Egypt,
making sad orations at the funeral of your dear pre-
lacy, like that doughty centurion Afranius in Lucian;
who, to imitate the noble Pericles in his epitaphian
speech, stepping up after the battle to bewail the
slain Severianus, falls into a pitiful condolement, to
think of those costly suppers and drinking banquets,
which he must now taste of no more; and by then
he had done, lacked but little to lament the dear-loved
memory and calamitous loss of his capon and white
broth.
Remonst. But raise and evince from the light of
nature, and the rules of just policy, for the continu-
ance of those things which long use and many laws
have firmly established as necessary and beneficial.
Answ. Open your eyes to the light of grace, a better
REMONSTRANT'S DEFENCE, &c.
65
guide than nature. Look upon the mean condition of
Christ and his apostles, without that accessory strength
you take such pains to raise from the light of nature
and policy: take divine counsel, “Labour not for the
things that perish:” you would be the salt of the earth;
if that savour be not found in you, do not think much
that the time is now come to throw you out, and tread
you under-foot. Hark how St. Paul, writing to Timo-
thy, informs a true bishop; “Bishops (saith he) must
not be greedy of filthy lucre; and having food and
raiment, let us be therewith content: but they (saith
he, meaning, more especially in that place, bishops)
that will be rich, fall into temptation and a snare, and
into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men
in destruction and perdition: for the love of money is
the root of all evil, which while some coveted after,
they have erred from the faith.” How can we there-
fore expect sound doctrine, and the solution of this our
controversy from any covetous and honour-hunting
bishop, that shall plead so stiffly for these things, while
St. Paul thus exhorts every bishop; “But thou, O man
of God, flee these things P’ As for the just policy, that
long use and custom, and those many laws which you
say have conferred these benefits upon you ; it hath
been nothing else but the superstitious devotion of
princes and great men that knew no better, or the base
importunity of begging friars, haunting and harassing
the deathbeds of men departing this life, in a blind
and wretched condition of hope to merit heaven for
the building of churches, cloisters, and convents. The
most of your vaunted possessions, and those proud en-
dowments that ye as sinfully waste, what are they but
the black revenues of purgatory, the price of abused
and murdered souls, the damned simony of Trentals,
and indulgences to mortal sin P. How can ye choose
but inherit the curse that goes along with such a patri-
mony ? Alas! if there be any releasement, any mitiga-
tion, or more tolerable being for the souls of our mis-
guided ancestors; could we imagine there might be
any recovery to some degree of ease left for as many of
them as are lost, there cannot be a better way than to
take the misbestowed wealth which they were cheated
of, from these our prelates, who are the true successors
of those that popped them into the other world with
this conceit of meriting by their goods, which was their
final undoing; and to bestow their beneficent gifts
upon places and means of christian education, and the
faithful labourers in God's harvest, that may incessantly
warn the posterity of Dives, lest they come where their
miserable forefather was sent by the cozenage and
misleading of avaricious and worldly prelates.
Remonst. It will stand long enough against the bat-
tery of their paper pellets. -
Answ. That must be tried without a square cap in
the council; and if pellets will not do, your own canons
shall be turned against you.
Remonst. They cannot name any man in this nation,
that ever contradicted episcopacy, till this present age.
Answ. What an overworn and bedridden argument is
this the last refuge ever of old falsehood, and there-
fore a good sign, I trust, that your castle cannot hold
out long. This was the plea of judaism and idolatry
against Christ and his apostles, of papacy against re-
formation ; and perhaps to the frailty of flesh and blood
in a man destitute of better enlightening may for some
while be pardonable: for what has fleshly apprehension
other to subsist by than succession, custom, and visi-
bility; which only hold, if in his weakness and blind-
ness he be loth to lose, who can blame P But in a pro-
testant nation, that should have thrown off these tattered
rudiments long ago, after the many strivings of God’s
Spirit, and our fourscore years' vexation of him in this
our wilderness since reformation began, to urge these
rotten principles, and twit us with the present age,
which is to us an age of ages wherein God is mani-
festly come down among us, to do some remarkable
good to our church or state; is, as if a man should tax
the renovating and reingendering Spirit of God with
innovation, and that new creature for an upstart novelty;
yea, the new Jerusalem, which, without your admired
link of succession, descends from heaven, could not
escape some such like censure. If you require a fur-
ther answer, it will not misbecome a Christian to be
either more magnanimous or more devout than Scipio
was ; who, instead of other answer to the frivolous
accusations of Petilius the tribune, “This day, Romans,
(saith he,) I fought with Hannibal prosperously; let us
all go and thank the gods, that gave us so great a vic-
tory:” in like manner will we now say, not caring
otherwise to answer this unprotestantlike objection; In
this age, Britons, God hath reformed his church aſter
many hundred years of popish corruption; in this age
he hath freed us from the intolerable yoke of prelates
and papal discipline; in this age he hath renewed our
protestation against all those yet remaining dregs of
superstition. Let us all go, every true protested Briton,
throughout the three kingdoms, and render thanks to
God the Father of light, and Fountain of heavenly grace,
and to his Son Christ our Lord, leaving this Remon-
strant and his adherents to their own designs; and let
us recount even here without delay, the patience and
long-suffering that God hath used towards our blind-
ness and hardness time after time. For he being
equally near to his whole creation of mankind, and of
free power to turn his beneficent and fatherly regard
to what region or kingdom he pleases, hath yet ever
had this island under the special indulgent eye of his
providence; and pitying us the first of all other
nations, after he had decreed to purify and renew his
church that lay wallowing in idolatrous pollutions,
sent first to us a healing messenger to touch softly
our sores, and carry a gentle hand over our wounds:
he knocked once and twice, and came again, opening
our drowsy eyelids leisurely by that glimmering
light, which Wickliff and his followers dispersed;
and still taking off by degrees the inveterate scales
from our nigh perished sight, purged also our deaf ears,
and prepared them to attend his second warning trum-
pet in our grandsires’ days. How else could they have
been able to have received the sudden assault of his
reforming Spirit, warring against human principles,
and carnal sense, the pride of flesh, that still cried up
(36
ANIMADVERSIONS UPON THE
*
antiquity, custom, canons, councils, and laws; and cried
down the truth for novelty, schism, profaneness, and
sacrilege P whenas we that have lived so long in abun-
dant light, besides the sunny reflection of all the neigh-
bouring churches, have yet our hearts rivetted with
those old opinions, and so obstructed and benumbed
with the same fleshly reasonings, which in our fore-
fathers soon melted and gave way, against the morn-
ing beam of reformation. If God had left undone this
whole work, so contrary to flesh and blood, till these
times; how should we have yielded to his heavenly
call, had we been taken, as they were, in the starkness
of our ignorance; that yet, after all these spiritual pre-
paratives and purgations, have our earthly apprehen-
sions so clammed and furred with the old leaven P O
if we freeze at noon after their early thaw, let us fear
lest the sun for ever hide himself, and turn his orient
steps from our ingrateful horizon, justly condemned to
be eternally benighted. Which dreadful judgment, O
thou the ever-legotten Light and perfect image of the
Father! intercede, may never come upon us, as we trust
thou hast; for thou hast opened our difficult and sad
times, and given us an unexpected breathing after our
long oppressions: thou hast done justice upon those
that tyrannized over us, while some men wavered and
admired a vain shadow of wisdom in a tongue nothing
slow to utter guile, though thou hast taught us to ad-
mire only that which is good, and to count that only
praiseworthy, which is grounded upon thy divine pre-
cepts. Thou hast discovered the plots, and frustrated
the hopes, of all the wicked in the land, and put to
shame the persecutors of thy church: thou hast made
our false prophets to be found a lie in the sight of all
the people, and chased them with sudden confusion and
amazement before the redoubled brightness of thy de-
scending cloud, that now covers thy tabernacle. Who
is there that cannot trace thee now in thy beamy walk
through the midst of thy sanctuary, amidst those golden
candles'icks, which have long suffered a dimness
amongst us through the violence of those that had
seized them, and were more taken with the mention of
their gold than of their starry light; teaching the doc-
trine of Balaam, to cast a stumbling-block before thy
servants, commanding them to eat things sacrificed to
idols, and forcing them to fornication ? Come, there-
fore, O thou that hast the seven stars in thy right hand,
appoint thy chosen priests according to their orders
and courses of old, to minister before thee, and duly to
press and pour out the consecrated oil into thy holy
and ever-burning lamps. Thou hast sent out the spirit
of prayer upon thy servants over all the land to this
effect, and stirred up their vows as the sound of many
waters about thy throne. Every one can say, that now
certainly thou hast visited this land, and hast not for-
gotten the utmost corners of the earth, in a time when
men had thought that thou wast gone up from us to
the farthest end of the heavens, and hadst left to do
marvellously among the sons of these last ages. Oper-
fect and accomplish thy glorious acts' for men may
leave their works unfinished, but thou art a God, thy
na'ure is perfection: shouldst thou bring us thus far
onward from Egypt to destroy us in this wilderness,
though we deserve; yet thy great name would suffer
in the rejoicing of thine enemies, and the deluded hope
of all thy servants. When thou hast settled peace in
the church, and righteous judgment in the kingdom,
then shall all thy saints address their voices of joy and
triumph to thee, standing on the shore of that Red sea
into which our enemies had almost driven us. And he
that now for haste snatches up a plain ungarnished pre-
sent as a thank-offering to thee, which could not be
deferred in regard of thy so many late deliverances
wrought for us one upon another, may then perhaps
take up a harp, and sing thee an elaborate song to ge-
nerations. In that day it shall no more be said as in
scorn, this or that was never held so till this present
age, when men have better learnt that the times and
seasons pass along under thy feet to go and come at
thy bidding: and as thou didst dignify our fathers’
days with many revelations above all the foregoing
ages, since thou tookest the flesh; so thou canst vouch-
safe to us (though unworthy) as large a portion of thy
Spirit as thou pleasest: for who shall prejudice thy all-
governing will P seeing the power of thy grace is not
passed away with the primitive times, as fond and
faithless men imagine, but thy kingdom is now at hand,
and thou standing at the door. Come forth out of thy
royal chambers, O Prince of all the kings of the earth !
put on the visible robes of thy imperial majesty, take
up that unlimited sceptre which thy almighty Father
hath bequeathed thee; for now the voice of thy bride
calls thee, and all creatures sigh to be renewed.
SECT. V.
REMONST. Neglect not the gift which was given thee
by prophecy, and by laying on the hands of presbytery.
Answ. The English translation expresses the article,
(the,) and renders it the presbytery, which you do in-
jury to omit. -
Remonst. Which I wonder ye can so press, when
Calvin himself takes it of the office, and not of the men.
Answ. You think then you are fairly quit of this
proof, because Calvin interprets it for you, as if we
could be put off with Calvin’s name, unless we be con-
vinced with Calvin's reason the word trpeggvréptov is
a collective noun, signifying a certain number of men
in one order, as the word privy-council with us; and
so Beza interprets, that knew Calvin’s mind doubtless,
with whom he lived. If any amongst us should say
the privy-council ordained it, and thereby constrain us
to understand one man's authority, should we not laugh
at him And therefore when you have used all your
cramping-irons to the text, and done your utmost to
crani, a presbytery into the skin of one person, it will
be but a piece of frugal nonsense. But if your mean-
ing be with a violent hyperbaton to transpose the text,
as if the words lay thus in order, “neglect not the gift
of presbytery :” this were a construction like a harque-
REMONSTRANT'S DEFENCE, &c. 67
buss shot over a file of words twelve deep, without
authority to bid them stoop; or to make the word gift,
like the river Mole in Surry, to run under the bottom
of a long line, and so start up to govern the word pres-
bytery, as in immediate syntaxis; a device ridiculous
enough to make good that old wife's tale of a certain
queen of England that sunk at Charing-cross, and rose
up at Queenhithe. No marvel though the prelates be
a troublesome generation, and, which way soever they
turn them, put all things into a foul discomposure, when
to maintain their domineering, they seek thus to rout
and disarray the wise and well-couched order of Saint
Paul's own words, using either a certain textual riot to
chop off the hands of the word presbytery, or else a like
kind of simony to clap the word gift between them.
Besides, if the verse must be read according to this
transposition, um dutºst ré #v ool xaptoparoc ré Trosoftw-
rspie, it would be improper to call ordination xáptopa,
whenas it is rather only xeipiaopia, an outward testimony
cf. approbation; unless they will make it a sacrament,
as the papists do : but surely the prelates would have
Saint Paul's words ramp one over another, as they use
to climb into their livings and bishoprics.
Remonst. Neither need we give any other satisfac-
tion to the point, than from Saint Paul himself, 2 Tim-
othy i. 6, “Stir up the gift of God which is in thee by
the imposition of my hands;” mine, and not others.
Answ. Ye are too quick; this last place is to be un-
derstood by the former ; as the law of method, which
bears chief sway in the art of teaching, requires, that
clearest and plainest expressions be set foremost, to the
end they may enlighten any following obscurity; and
wherefore we should not attribute a right method to the
teachableness of Scripture, there can be no reason given:
to which method, if we shall now go contrary, besides
the breaking of a logical rule, which the Remonstrant
hitherto we see hath made little account of, we shall
also put a manifest violence and impropriety upon a
known word against his common signification, in
binding a collective to a singular person. But if we
shall, as logic (or indeed reason) instructs us, expound
the latter place by the former cited, and understand
“ by the imposition of my hands,” that is, of mine
chiefly as an apostle, with the joint authority and as-
sistance of the presbytery, there is nothing more ordi-
nary or kindly in speech, than such a phrase as expresses
only the chief in any action, and understands the rest.
So that the imposition of Saint Paul's hands, without
more expression in this place, cannot exclude the joint
act of the presbytery affirmed by the former text.
Remonst. In the mean while see, brethren, how you
have with Simon fished all night, and caught nothing.
Answ. If we fishing with Simon the apostle can
catch nothing, see what you can catch with Simon
Magus; for all his hooks and fishing implements he
bequeathed among you.
SECT. XIII.
REMONST. We do again profess, that if our bishops
challenge any other power than was delegated to and
required of Timothy and Titus, we shall yield them
usurpers.
Answ. Ye cannot compare an ordinary bishop with
Timothy, who was an extraordinary man, foretold and
promised to the church by many prophecies, and his
name joined as collateral with Saint Paul, in most of
his apostolic epistles, even where he writes to the
bishops of other churches, as those in Philippi. Nor can
you prove out of the Scripture that Timothy was bishop
of any particular place; for that wherein it is said in
the third verse of the first epistle, “As I besought thee
to abide still at Ephesus,” will be such a gloss to prove
the constitution of a bishop by, as would not only be
not so good as a Bourdeaux gloss, but scarce be re-
ceived to varnish a vizard of Modona. All that can
be gathered out of holy writ concerning Timothy is, ...
that he was either an apostle, or an apostle's extraordi-
nary vice-gerent, not confined to the charge of any
place. The like may be said of Titus, (as those words
import in the 5th verse,) that he was for that cause left
in Crete, that he might supply or proceed to set in
order that which St. Paul in apostolic manner had
begun, for which he had his particular commission, as
those words sound “as I had appointed thee.” So that
what he did in Crete, cannot so much be thought the
exercise of an ordinary function, as the direction of an
inspired mouth. No less may be gathered from the
2 Cor. viii. 23.
Remonst. You descend to the angels of the seven
Asian churches; your shift is, that the word angel is
here taken collectively, not individually.
Answ. That the word is collective, appears plainly,
Revel. ii.
First, Because the text itself expounds it so; for
having spoken all the while as to the angel, the seventh
verse concludes, that this was spoken to the churches.
Now if the Spirit conclude collectively, and kept the
same tenor all the way, for we see not where he par-
ticularizes; then certainly he must begin collectively,
else the construction can be neither grammatical nor
logical.
Secondly, If the word angel be individual, then are
the faults attributed to him individual : but they are
such as for which God threatens to remove the candle-
stick out of its place, which is as much as to take away
from that church the light of his truth; and we cannot
think he will do so for one bishop's fault. Therefore
those faults must be understood collective, and by con-
sequence the subject of them collective.
Thirdly, An individual cannot branch itself into sub-
individuals; but this word angel doth in the tenth verse.
“Fear none of those things which thou shalt suffer;
behold the devil shall cast some of you into prison.”
And the like from other places of this and the following
chapter may be observed. Therefore it is no individual
word, but a collective.
68
ANIMADVERSIONS UPON THE
Fourthly, In the 24th verse this word Angel is made
capable of a pronoun plural, which could not be, unless
it were a collective. As for the supposed manuscript
of Tecla, and two or three other copies that have ex-
punged the copulative, we cannot prefer them before
the more received reading, and we hope you will not,
against the translation of your mother the church of
England, that passed the revise of your chiefest pre-
lates: besides this, you will lay an unjust censure upon
the much-praised bishop of Thyatira, and reckon him
among those that had the doctrine of Jezebel, when
the text says, he only suffered her. Whereas, if you
will but let in a charitable conjunction, as we know
your so much called for charity will not deny, then you
plainly acquit the bishop, if you comprehend him in
the name of angel, otherwise you leave his case very
doubtful.
Remonst. “Thou sufferest thy wiſe Jezebel :” was
she wife to the whole company, or to one bishop alone?
Answ. Not to the whole company doubtless, for that
had been worse than to have been the Levite's wife in
Gibeah : but here among all those that constantly read
it otherwise, whom you trample upon, your good mother
of England is down again in the throng, who with the
rest reads it, “that woman Jezebel :’ but suppose it
were wife, a man might as well interpret that word
figuratively, as her name Jezebel no man doubts to be
a borrowed name.
Remonst. Yet what makes this for a diocesan bishop?
Much every way.
Answ. No more than a special endorsement could
make to puff up the foreman of a jury. If we deny
you more precedence, than as the senior of any society,
or deny you this priority to be longer than annual ;
prove you the contrary from hence, if you can. That
you think to do from the title of eminence, Angel: alas,
your wings are too short. It is not ordination nor
jurisdiction that is angelical, but the heavenly message
of the gospel, which is the office of all ministers alike;
in which sense John the Baptist is called an Angel,
which in Greek signifies a messenger, as oft as it is
meant by a man, and might be so rendered here with-
out treason to the hierarchy; but that the whole book
soars to a prophetic pitch in types and allegories. See-
ing then the reason of this borrowed name is merely to
signify the preaching of the gospel, and that this preach-
ing equally appertains to the whole ministry; hence
may be drawn a fifth argument, that if the reason of
this borrowed name Angel be equally collective and
communicative to the whole preaching ministry of the
place, then must the name be collectively and commu-
nicatively taken ; but the reason, that is to say, the
office, of preaching and watching over the flock, is
equally collective and communicative : therefore the
borrowed name itself is to be understood as equally
collective and communicative to the whole preaching
ministry of the place. And if you will contend still
for a superiority in one person, you must ground it bet-
ter than from this metaphor, which you may now de-
plore as the axehead that fell into the water, and say,
“Alas, master, for it was borrowed;” unless you have,
as good a faculty to make iron swim, as you had to
make light froth sink.
Remonst. What is, if this be not, ordination and
jurisdiction ?
Answ. Indeed in the constitution and founding of a
church, that some men inspired from God should have
an extraordinary calling to appoint, to order, and dis-
pose, must needs be. So Moses, though himself no
priest, sanctified and ordained Aaron and his sons; but
when all needful things be set, and regulated by the
writings of the apostles, whether it be not a mere folly
to keep up a superior degree in the church only for
ordination and jurisdiction, it will be no hurt to debate
awhile. The apostles were the builders, and, as it
were, the architects of the christian church; wherein
consisted their excellence above ordinary ministers ?
A prelate would say in commanding, in controlling, in
appointing, in calling to them, and sending from about
them, to all countries, their bishops and archbishops as
their deputies, with a kind of legantine power. No,
no, vain prelates, this was but as the scaffolding of a
new edifice, which for the time must board and over-
look the highest battlements; but if the structure once
finished, any passenger should fall in love with them,
and pray that they might still stand, as being a singular
grace and strengthening to the house, who would
otherwise think, but that the man was presently to be
laid hold on, and sent to his friends and kindred P. The
eminence of the apostles consisted in their powerful
preaching, their unwearied labouring in the word, their
unquenchable charity, which, above all earthly respects,
like a working flame, had spun up to such a height of
pure desire, as might be thought next to that love
which dwells in God to save souls; which, while they
did, they were contented to be the offscouring of the
world, and to expose themselves willingly to all afflic-
tions, perfecting thereby their hope through patience
to a joy unspeakable. As for ordination, what is it,
but the laying on of hands, an outward sign or symbol
of admission It creates nothing, it confers nothing ;
it is the inward calling of God that makes a minister,
and his own painful study and diligence that manures
and improves his ministerial gifts. In the primitive
times, many, before ever they had received ordination
from the apostles, had done the church noble service,
as Apollos and others. It is but an orderly form of re-
ceiving a man already fitted, and committing to him a
particular charge ; the employment of preaching is as
holy, and far more excellent; the care also and judg-
ment to be used in the winning of souls, which is
thought to be sufficient in every worthy minister, is an
ability above that which is required in ordination: for
many may be able to judge who is ſit to be made a
minister, that would not be found fit to be made minis-
ters themselves; as it will not be denied that he may
be the competent judge of a neat picture, or elegant
poem, that cannot limn the like. Why therefore we
should constitute a superior order in the church to per-
form an office which is not only every minister's func-
tion, but inſerior also to that which he has a confessed
right to; and why this superiority should remain thus
REMONSTRANT'S DEFENCE, &c.
69
usurped, some wise Epimenides tell us.
jurisdiction, this dear saint of the prelates, it will be
best to consider, first, what it is : that sovereign Lord,
who in the discharge of his holy anointment from God
the Father, which made him supreme bishop of our
souls, was so humble as to say, “Who made me a
judge, or a divider over ye * hath taught us that a
churchman's jurisdiction is no more but to watch over
his flock in season, and out of season, to deal by sweet
and efficacious instructions, gentle admonitions, and
sometimes rounder reproofs: against negligence or
obstinacy, will be required a rousing volley of pas-
torly threatenings; against a persisting stubbornness,
or the fear of a reprobate sense, a timely separation
from the flock by that interdictive sentence, lest his
conversation unprohibited, or unbranded, might breathe
a pestilential murrain into the other sheep. In
sum, his jurisdiction is to see the thriving and pros-
pering of that which he hath planted : what other
work the prelates have found for chancellors and suf-
fragans, delegates and officials, with all the hell-pes-
tering rabble of summers and apparitors, is but an in-
vasion upon the temporal magistrate, and affected by
them as men that are not ashamed of the ensign and
banner of antichrist. But true evangelical jurisdiction
or discipline is no more, as was said, than for a minis-
ter to see to the thriving and prospering of that which
he hath planted. And which is the worthiest work of
these two, to plant as every minister's office is equally
with the bishops, or to tend that which is planted,
which the blind and undiscerning prelates call juris-
diction, and would appropriate to themselves as a busi-
ness of higher dignity ? Have patience therefore a
little, and hear a law case. A certain man of large
possessions had a fair garden, and kept therein an ho-
nest and laborious servant, whose skill and profession
was to set or sow all wholesome herbs, and delightful
flowers, according to every season, and whatever else
was to be done in a well-husbanded nursery of plants
and fruits. Now, when the time was come that he
should cut his hedges, prune his trees, look to his ten-
der slips, and pluck up the weeds that hindered their
growth, he gets him up by break of day, and makes
account to do what was needful in his garden; and
who would think that any other should know better
than he how the day’s work was to be spent P Yet for
all this there comes another strange gardener that
never knew the soil, never handled a dibble or spade to
set the least potherb that grew there, much less had
endured an hour's sweat or chilness, and yet challenges
as his right the binding or unbinding of every flower,
the clipping of every bush, the weeding and worming
of every bed, both in that and all other gardens there-
about. The honest gardener, that ever since the day-
peep, till now the sun was grown somewhat rank, had
wrought painfully about his banks and seedplots, at his
commanding voice turns suddenly about with some
wonder; and although he could have well beteemed
to have thanked him of the ease he proffered, yet loving
his own handywork, modestly refused him, telliºg him
withal, that, for his part, if he had thought much of his
Now for
own pains, he could for once have committed the work
to one of his fellow-labourers, for as much as it is well
known to be a matter of less skill and less labour to
keep a garden handsome, than it is to plant it, or con-
trive it, and that he had already performed himself. No,
said the stranger, this is neither for you nor your fellows
to meddle with, but for me only that am for this pur-
pose in dignity far above you ; and the provision which
the lord of the soil allows me in this office is, and that
with good reason, tenfold your wages. The gardemer
smiled and shook his head; but what was determined,
I cannot tell you till the end of this parliament.
Remonst. If in time you shall see woodcn chalices,
and wooden priests, thank yourselves.
Answ. It had been happy for this land, if your priests
had been but only wooden ; all England knows they
have been to this island not wood, but wormwood, that
have infected the third part of our waters, like that
apostate star in the Revelation, that many souls have
died of their bitterness; and if you mean by wooden,
illiterate or contemptible, there was no want of that
sort among you; and their number increasing daily,
as their laziness, their tavern-hunting, their neglect of
all sound literature, and their liking of doltish and
monastical schoolmen daily increased. What, should
I tell you how the universities, that men look should
be fountains of learning and knowledge, have been
poisoned and choaked under your governance 2 And if
to be wooden be to be base, where could there be found
among all the reformed churches, nay in the church of
Rome itself, a baser brood of flattering and time-serv-
ing priests? according as God pronounces by Isaiah,
the prophet that teacheth lies, he is the tail. As for your
young scholars, that petition for bishoprics and dean-
cries to encourage them in their studies, and that many
gentlemen else will not put their sons to learning; away
with such young mercenary striplings, and their simo-
niacal fathers; God has no need of such, they have no
part or lot in his vineyard: they may as well sue for
nunneries, that they may have some convenient stow-
age for their withered daughters, because they cannot
give them portions answerable to the pride and vanity
they have bred them in. This is the root of all our
mischief, that which they allege for the encouragement
of their studies should be cut away forewith as the very
bait of pride and ambition, the very garbage that draws
together all the fowls of prey and ravin in the land to
come and gorge upon the church. How can it be but
ever unhappy to the church of England, while she shall
think to entice men to the pure service of God by the
same means that were used to tempt our Saviour to
the service of the devil, by laying before him honour
and preferment? Fit professors indeed are they like to
be, to teach others that godliness with content is great
gain, whenas their godliness of teaching had not been
but for worldly gain. The heathen philosophers thought
that virtue was for its own sake inestimable, and the
greatest gain of a teacher to make a soul virtuous; so
Xenophon writes to Socrates, who never bargained
with any for teaching them ; he feared not lest those
who had received so high a benefit from him, would
7()
ANIMAD VERSIONS UPON THE
not of their own free will return him all possible
thanks. Was moral virtue so lovely, and so alluring,
and heathen men so enamoured of her, as to teach
and study her with greatest neglect and contempt of
worldly profit and advancement P And is Christian
piety so homely and so unpleasant, and Christian
men so cloyed with her, as that none will study and
teach her, but for lucre and preferment P O stale-
grown piety O gospel rated as cheap as thy Master,
at thirty pence, and not worth the study, unless thou
canst buy those that will sell thee! O race of Ca-
permaitans, senseless of divine doctrine, and capable
only of loaves and belly-cheer! But they will grant,
perhaps, piety may thrive, but learning will decay: I
would fain ask these men at whose hands they seek
inferiour things, as wealth, honour, their dainty fare,
their lofty houses 2 No doubt but they will soon an-
swer, that all these things they seek at God's hands.
: Do they think then that all these meaner and super-
fluous things come from God, and the divine gift of
learning from the den of Plutus, or the cave of Mam-
mon P Certainly never any clear spirit nursed up from
brighter influences, with a soul enlarged to the dimen-
sions of spacious art and high knowledge, ever entered
there but with scorn, and thought it ever foul disdain
to make pelf or ambition the reward of his studies; it
being the greatest honour, the greatest fruit and pro-
ficiency of learned studies to despise these things. Not
liberal science, but illiberal must that needs be, that
mounts in contemplation merely for money. And what
would it avail us to have a hireling clergy, though
never so learned P For such can have neither true wis-
dom nor grace; and then in vain do men trust in learn-
ing, where these be wanting. If in less noble and
almost mechanic arts, according to the definitions of
those authors, he is not esteemed to deserve the name
of a complete architect, an excellent painter, or the
like, that bears not a generous mind above the peasantly
regard of wages and hire; much more must we think
him a most imperfect and incomplete divine, who is
so far from being a contemner of filthy lucre, that his
whole divinity is moulded and bred up in the beggarly
and brutish hopes of a fat prebendary, deanery, or
bishopric; which poor and low-pitched desires, if they
do but mix with those other heavenly intentions that
draw a man to this study, it is justly expected that they
should bring forth a baseborn issue of divinity, like that
of those imperfect and putrid creatures that receive a
crawling life from two most unlike procreants, the sun
and mud. And in matters of religion, there is not any
thing more intolerable than a learned fool, or a learned
hypocrite; the one is ever cooped up at his empty
speculations, a sot, an ideot for any use that mankind
can make of him, or else sowing the world with nice
and idle questions, and with much toil and difficulty
wading to his auditors up to the eyebrows in deep shal-
lows that wet not the instep : a plain unlearned man
that lives well by that light which he has, is better and
wiser, and edifies others more towards a godly and happy
life than he. The other is still using his sophisticated
arts, and bending all his studies how to make his in-
satiate avarice and ambition seem pious and orthodoxal,
by painting his lewd and deceitful principles with a
smooth and glossy varnish in a doctrinal way, to bring
about his wickedest purposes. Instead of the great
harm therefore that these men fear upon the dissolving
of prelates, what an ease and happiness will it be to
us, when tempting rewards are taken away, that the
cunningest and most dangerous mercenaries will cease
of themselves to frequent the fold, whom otherwise
scarce all the prayers of the faithful could have kept
back from devouring the flock' But a true pastor of
Christ's sending hath this especial mark, that for great-
est labours and greatest merits in the church, he re-
quires either nothing, if he could so subsist, or a very
common and reasonable supply of human necessaries:
we cannot therefore do better than to leave this care of
ours to God, he can easily send labourers into his har-
vest, that shall not cry, Give, give, but be contented
with a moderate and beseeming allowance; nor will
he suffer true learning to be wanting, where true grace
and our obedience to him abounds: for if he give us
to know him aright, and to practise this our knowledge
in right established discipline, how much more will he
replenish us with all abilities in tongues and arts, that
may conduce to his glory and our good He can stir
up rich fathers to bestow exquisite education upon their
children, and so dedicate them to the service of the
gospel; he can make the sons of nobles his ministers,
and princes to be his Nazarites; for certainly there is
no employment more honourable, more worthy to take
up a great spirit, more requiring a generous and free
nurture, than to be the messenger and herald of hea-
venly truth from God to man, and, by the faithful work
of holy doctrine, to procreate a number of faithful men,
making a kind of creation like to God's, by infusing
his spirit and likeness into them, to their salvation, as
God did into him ; arising to what climate soever he
turn him, like that Sun of righteousness that sent him,
with healing in his wings, and new light to break in
upon the chill and gloomy hearts of his hearers, raising
out of darksome barrenness a delicious and fragrant
spring of saving knowledge, and good works. Can a
man, thus employed, find himself discontented, or dis-
honoured for want of admittance to have a pragmatical
voice at sessions and jail deliveries? Or because he
may not as a judge sit out the wrangling noise of li-
tigious courts to shrive the purses of unconfessing and
unmortified sinners, and not their souls, or be dis-
couraged though men call him not lord, whenas the
due performance of his office would gain him, even from
lords and princes, the voluntary title of father P Would
he tug for a barony to sit and vote in parliament, know-
ing that no man can take from him the gift of wisdom
and sound doctrine, which leaves him free, though not
to be a member, yet a teacher and persuader of the par-
liament 2 And in all wise apprehensions the persuasive
power in man to win others to goodness by instruction
is greater, and more divine, than the compulsive power
to restrain men from being evil by terrour of the law;
and therefore Christ left Moses to be the lawgiver, but
himself came down amongst us to be a teacher, with
REMONSTRANT'S DEFENCE, &c. 71
which office his heavenly wisdom was so well pleased,
as that he was angry with those that would have put a
piece of temporal judicature into his hands, disclaim-
ing that he had any commission from above for such
matterS.
Such a high calling therefore as this, sends not for
those drossy spirits that need the lure and whistle of
earthly preferment, like those animals that fetch and
carry for a morsel; no. She can find such as therefore
study her precepts, because she teaches to despise pre-
ferment. And let not those wretched fathers think they
shall impoverish the church of willing and able supply,
though they keep back their sordid sperm, begotten in
the lustiness of their avarice, and turn them to their
malting kilns; rather let them take heed what lessons
they instil into that lump of flesh which they are the
cause of; lest, thinking to offer him as a present to
God, they dish him out for the devil. Let the novice
learn first to renounce the world, and so give himself
to God, and not therefore give himself to God, that he
may close the better with the world, like that false
shepherd Palinode in the eclogue of May, under whom
the poet lively personates our prelates, whose whole life
is a recantation of their pastoral vow, and whose pro-
fession to forsake the world, as they use the matter,
bogs them deeper into the world. Those our admired
Spenser inveighs against, not without some presage of
these reforming times:
The time was once and may again return,
(For oft may happen that hath been beform,)
When shepherds had none inheritance,
Ne of land nor fee in sufferance,
But what might arise of the bare sheep,
(Were it more or less,) which they did keep.
Well ywis was it with shepherds tho,
Nought having, nought feared they to forego :
For Pan himself was their inheritance,
And little them served for their maintenance:
The shepherds God so well them guided,
That of nought they were unprovided.
Butter enough, honey, milk and whey,
And their flock fleeces them to array.
But tract of time, and long prosperity
(That nurse of vice, this of insolency)
Lulled the shepherds in such security,
That not content with loyal obeysance,
Some gan to gape for greedy governance,
And match themselves with mighty potentates,
Lovers of lordships, and troublers of states.
Tho gan shepherds swains to looke aloft,
And leave to live hard, and learne to lig soft.
Tho under colour of shepherds some while
There crept in wolves full of fraud and guile,
That often devoured their own sheep,
And often the shepherd that did them keep.
This was the first source of shepherds sorrow,
That now mill be quit with bale, nor borrow.
By all this we may conjecture, how little we need
fear that the ungilding of our prelates will prove the
woodening of our priests. In the mean while let no
man carry in his head either such narrow or such evil
eyes, as not to look upon the churches of Belgia and
Helvetia, and that envied city Geneva: where in the
christian world doth learning more flourish than in
these places * Not among your beloved Jesuits, nor
their favourers, though you take all the prelates into
the number, and instance in what kind of learning you
please. And how in England all noble sciences attend-
ing upon the train of christian doctrine may flourish
more than ever; and how the able professors of every
art may with ample stipends be honestly provided ;
and finally, how there may be better care had that
their hearers may benefit by them, and all this without
the prelates; the courses are so many and so easy, that
I shall pass them over.
Remonst. It is God that makes the bishop, the king
that gives the bishopric ; what can you say to this 2
Answ. What you shall not long stay for : we say it
is God that makes a bishop, and the devil that makes
him take a prelatical bishopric ; as for the king's gift,
regal bounty may be excusable in giving, where the
bishop's covetousness is damnable in taking.
Remonst. Many eminent divines of the churches
abroad have earnestly wished themselves in our condi-
tion.
Answ. I cannot blame them, they were not only
eminent but supereminent divines, and for stomach
much like to Pompey the Great, that could endure no
equal.
Remonst. The Babylonian note sounds well in your
ears, “Down with it, down with it, even to the ground.”
Answ. You mistake the matter, it was the Edomitish
note ; but change it, and if you be an angel, cry with
the angel, “It is fallen, it is fallen.”
Remonst. But the God of heaven will, we hope,
vindicate his own ordinance so long perpetuated to his
church.
Answ. Go rather to your god of this world, and see
if he can vindicate your lordships, your temporal and
spiritual tyrannies, and all your pelf; for the God of
heaven is already come down to vindicate his ordinance
from your so long perpetuated usurpation.
Remonst. If yet you can blush.
Answ. This is a more Edomitish conceit than the
former, and must be silenced with a counter quip of the
same country. So often and so unsavourily has it been
repeated, that the reader may well cry, Down with it,
down with it, for shame. A man would think you had
eaten over-liberally of Esau’s red porridge, and from
thence dream continually of blushing ; or perhaps, to
heighten your fancy in writing, are wont to sit in your
doctor's scarlet, which through your eyes infecting your
pregnant imaginative with a red suffusion, begets a
continual thought of blushing; that you thus persecute
ingenuous men over all your book, with this one over-
tired rubrical conceit still of blushing: but if you have
no mercy upon them, yet spare yourself, lest you bejade
the good galloway, your own opiniatre wit, and make
the very conceit itself blush with spurgalling.
Remonst. The scandals of our inferiour ministers I
desired to have had less public.
Answ. And what your superiour archbishop or bi-
shops! O forbid to have it told in Gath say you. O
dauber! and therefore remove not impieties from Israel.
Constantine might have done more justly to have pu-
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nished those clergical faults which he could not conceal,
than to leave them unpunished, that they might remain
concealed: better had it been for him, that the heathen
had heard the fame of his justice, than of his wilful
connivance and partiality; and so the name of God
and his truth had been less blasphemed among his
enemies, and the clergy amended, which daily, by this
impunity, grew worse and worse. But, O to publish
in the streets of Ascalon sure some colony of puritans
have taken Ascalon from the Turk lately, that the Re-
monstrant is so afraid of Ascalon. The papists we
know condole you, and neither Constantinople nor
your neighbours of Morocco trouble you. What other
Ascalon can you allude to ?
Remonst. What a death it is to think of the sport
and advantage these watchful enemies, these opposite
spectators, will be sure to make of our sin and shame!
Answ. This is but to fling and struggle under the
inevitable net of God, that now begins to environ you
round.
Remonst. No one clergy in the whole christian world
yields so many eminent scholars, learned preachers,
grave, holy, and accomplished divines, as this church
of England doth at this day.
Answ. Ha, ha, ha!
Remonst. And long, and ever may it thus flourish.
Answ. O pestilent imprecation flourish as it does
at this day in the prelates ?
Remonst. But O forbid to have it told in Gath !
Answ. Forbid him rather, sacred parliament, to vio-
late the sense of Scripture, and turn that which is
spoken of the afflictions of the church under her pagan
enemies, to a pargetted concealment of those prelatical
crying sins: for from these is prophaneness gone forth
into all the land; they have hid their eyes from the
sabbaths of the Lord ; they have fed themselves, and
not their flocks; with force and cruelty have they ruled
over God's people: they have fed his sheep (contrary
to that which St. Peter writes) not of a ready mind,
but for filthy lucre ; not as examples to the flock, but
as being lords over God's heritage: and yet this dauber
would daub still with his untempered mortar. But
hearken what God says by the prophet Ezekiel, “Say
unto them that daub this wall with untempered mor-
tar, that it shall fall; there shall be an overflowing
shower, and ye, O great hailstones, shall ſall, and a
stormy wind shall rend it, and I will say unto you, the
wall is no more, neither they that daubed it.”
Remonst. Whether of us shall give a better account
of our charity to the God of peace, I appeal.
Answ. Your charity is much to your fellow-offenders,
but nothing to the numberless souls that have been
lost by their false feeding: use not therefore so sillily
the name of charity, as most commonly you do, and
the peaceful attribute of God to a preposterous end.
Remonst. In the next section, like illbred sons, you
spit in the face of your mother the church of England.
Answ. What should we do or say to this Remon-
strant, that by his idle and shallow reasonings, seems
to have been conversant in no divinity, but that which
is colourable to uphold bishoprics: we acknowledge,
and believe, the catholic reformed church; and if any
man be disposed to use a trope or figure, as St. Paul
did in calling her the common mother of us all, let him
do as his own rhetoric shall persuade him. If therefore
we must needs have a mother, and if the catholic church
only be, and must be she, let all genealogy tell us, if it
can, what we must call the church of England, unless
we shall make every English protestant a kind of
poetical Bacchus, to have two mothers : but mark,
readers, the crafty scope of these prelates; they en-
deavour to impress deeply into weak and superstitious
fancies, the awful notion of a mother, that hereby they
might cheat them into a blind and implicit obedience
to whatsoever they shall decree or think fit. And if
we come to ask a reason of aught from our dear mother,
she is invisible, under the lock and key of the prelates
her spiritual adulterers; they only are the internun-
cios, or the go-betweens, of this trim devised mummery:
whatsoever they say, she says must be a deadly sin of
disobedience not to believe. So that we, who by God's
special grace have shaken off the servitude of a great
male tyrant, our pretended father the pope, should now,
if we be not betimes aware of these wily teachers, sink
under the slavery of a female notion, the cloudy con-
ception of a demy-island mother; and, while we think
to be obedient sons, should make ourselves rather the
bastards, or the centaurs of their spiritual fornications.
Remonst. Take heed of the ravens of the valley.
Answ. The ravens we are to take heed of are your-
selves, that would peck out the eyes of all knowing
Christians.
Remonst. Sit you merry, brethren.
Answ. So we shall when the furies of prelatical con-
sciences will not give them leave to do so.
Queries. Whether they would not jeopard their ears
rather, &c.
Answ. A punishment that awaits the merits of your
bold accomplices, for the lopping and stigmatizing of
so many freeborn Christians.
Remonst. Whether the professed slovenliness in
God's service, &c.
Answ. We have heard of Aaron and his linen amice,
but those days are past; and for your priest under the
gospel, that thinks himself the purer or the cleanlier
in his office for his new-washed surplice, we esteem him
for sanctity little better than Apollonius Thyanaeus in
his white frock, or the priest of Isis in his lawn sleeves;
and they may all for holiness lie together in the suds.
Remonst. Whether it were not most lawful and just
to punish your presumption and disobedience.
Answ. The punishing of that which you call our
presumption and disobedience, lies not now within the
execution of your fangs; the merciful God above, and
our just parliament, will deliver us from your Ephesian
beasts, your cruel Nimrods, with whom we shall be
ever fearless to encounter.
Remonst. God give you wisdom to see the truth, and
grace to follow it.
Answ. I wish the like to all those that resist not the
Holy Ghost; for of such God commands Jeremiah,
saying, “Pray not thou for them, neither liſt up cry or
REMONSTRANT'S DEFENCE, &c.
7 3
prayer for them, neither make intercession to me, for
I will not hear thee;” and of such St. John saith,
“He that bids them God speed, is partaker of their evil
deeds.”
TO THE POSTSCRIPT.
ReMonst. A goodly pasquin borrowed for a great
part out of Sion's plea, or the breviate consisting of a
rhapsody of histories.
Answ. How wittily you tell us what your wonted
course is upon the like occasion: the collection was
taken, be it known to you, from as authentic authors
in this kind, as any in a bishop's library; and the col-
lector of it says moreover, that if the like occasion
come again, he shall less need the help of breviates, or
historical rhapsodies, than your reverence to eke out
your sermonings shall need repair to postils or polian-
theas.
Remonst. They were bishops, you say; true, but
they were popish bishops,
Answ. Since you would bind us to your jurisdiction
by their canon law, since you would enforce upon us
the old riffraff of Sarum, and other monastical reliques;
since you live upon their unjust purchases, allege their
authorities, boast of their succession, walk in their
steps, their pride, their titles, their covetousness, their
persecuting of God's people; since you disclaim their
actions, and build their sepulchres, it is most just that
all their faults should be imputed to you, and their ini-
quities visited upon you.
Remonst. Could you see no colleges, no hospitals
built P s
Answ. At that primero of piety, the pope and car-
dinals are the better gamesters, and will cog a die into
heaven before you.
Remonst. No churches re-edified ?
Answ. Yes, more churches than souls.
Remonst. No learned volumes writ?
Answ. So did the miscreant bishop of Spalato write
learned volumes against the pope, and run to Rome
when he had done : ye write them in your closets, and
unwrite them in your courts; hot volumists and cold
bishops; a swashbuckler against the pope, and a dor-
mouse against the devil, while the whole diocese be
sown with tares, and none to resist the enemy, but
such as let him in at the postern ; a rare superintend-
ent at Rome, and a cipher at home. Hypocrites the
gospel faithfully preached to the poor, the desolate
parishes visited and duly fed, loiterers thrown out,
wolves driven from the fold, had been a better confuta-
tion of the pope and mass, than whole hecatontomes
of controversies; and all this careering with spear in
rest, and thundering upon the steel cap of Baronius or
Bellarmine.
Remonst. No seduced persons reclaimed P
Answ. More reclaimed persons seduced.
Remonst. No hospitality kept *
Answ. Bacchanalias good store in every bishop's ſa-
mily, and good gleeking.
Remonst. No great offenders punished ”
Answ. The trophies of your high commission are
renowned.
Remonst. No good offices done for the public?
Answ. Yes, the good office of reducing monarchy to
tyranny, of breaking pacifications, and calumniating
the people to the king.
Remonst. No care of the peace of the church 3
Answ. No, nor of the land; witness the two armies
in the North, that now lie plundered and overrun by a
liturgy.
Remonst. No diligence in preaching f
Answ. Scarce any preaching at all.
Remonst. No holiness in living *
Answ. No.
Remonst. Truly, brethren, I can say no more, but
that the fault is in your eyes.
Answ. If you can say no more than this, you were
a proper Remonstrant to stand up for the whole tribeſ
Remonst. Wipe them and look better.
Answ. Wipe your fat corpulencies out of our light.
Remonst. Yea, I beseech God to open them rather
that they may see good.
Answ. If you mean good prelates, let be your prayer.
Ask not impossibilities.
Remonst. As for that proverb, “the bishop's foot hath
been in it,” it were more fit for a Scurra in Trivio, or
some ribald upon an alebench.
Answ. The fitter for them then of whom it was
meant.
Remonst. I doubt not but they will say, the bishop's
foot hath been in your book, for I am sure it is quite
spoiled by this just confutation ; for your proverb,
Sapitollam.
Answ. Spoiled, quoth ye 2 Indeed it is so spoiled, as
a good song is spoiled by a lewd singer; or as the say-
ing is, “God sends meat, but the cooks work their
wills:” in that sense we grant your bishop's foot may
have spoiled it, and made it “Sapere ollam,” if not
“Sapere aulam ;” which is the same in old Latin, and
perhaps in plain English. For certain your confuta-
tion hath achieved nothing against it, and left nothing
upon it but a foul taste of your skillet foot, and a more
perfect and distinguishable odour of your socks, than
of your mightcap. And how the bishop should confute
a book with his foot, unless his brains were dropped
into his great toe, I cannot meet with any man that
can resolve me ; only they tell me that certainly such
a confutation must needs be gouty. So much for the
bishop's foot.
Remonst. You tell us of Bonner's broth; it is the
fashion in some countries to send in their keal in the
last service, and this it seems is the manner among our
Smectymnuans.
Answ. Your latter service at the high altar you
mean: but soft, sir, the feast was but begun, the broth
was your own, you have been inviting the land to it
this fourscore years; and so long we have been your
74
ANIMADVERSIONS, &c.
slaves to serve it up for you, much against our wills:
we know you have the beef to it, ready in your
kitchens, we are sure it was almost sod before this par-
liament begun; what direction you have given since
to your cooks, to set it by in the pantry till some fitter
time, we know not, and therefore your dear jest is
lost; this broth was but your first service: Alas, sir,
why do you delude your guests? Why do not those
goodly flanks and briskets march up in your stately
chargers P Doubtless if need be, the pope that owes
you for mollifying the matter so well with him, and
making him a true church, will furnish you with all
the fat oxen of Italy.
Remonst. Learned and worthy Doctor Moulin shall
tell them.
Answ. Moulin says in his book of the calling of
pastors, that because bishops were the reformers of the
English church, therefore they were left remaining :
this argument is but of small force to keep you in your
cathedrals. For first it may be denied that bishops
were our first reformers, for Wickliff was before them,
and his egregious labours are not to be neglected: be-
sides, our bishops were in this work but the disciples
of priests, and began the reformation before they were
bishops. But what though Luther and other monks
were the reformers of other places 2 Does it follow
therefore that monks ought to continue 2 No, though
Luther had taught so. And lastly, Moulin's argument
directly makes against you; for if there be nothing in
it but this, bishops were leſt remaining because they
were reformers of the church, by as good a consequence
therefore they are now to be removed, because they
have been the most certain deformers and ruiners of
the church. Thus you see how little it avails you to
take sanctuary among those churches which in the
general scope of your actions formerly you have dis-
regarded and despised; however, your fair words would
now smooth it over otherwise.
Remonst. Our bishops, some whereof being crowned
with martyrdom, subscribed the gospel with their
blood.
Answ. You boast much of martyrs to uphold your
episcopacy; but if you would call to mind what Euse-
bius in his fifth book recites from Apollinarius of
Hierapolis, you should then hear it esteemed no other
than an old heretical argument, to prove a position
true, because some that held it were martyrs; this was
that which gave boldness to the Marcionists and Cata-
phryges to avouch their impious heresies for pious
doctrine, because they could reckon many martyrs of
their sect; and when they were confuted in other
points, this was ever their last and stoutest plea.
Remonst. In the mean time I beseech the God of
heaven to humble you.
Answ. We shall beseech the same God to give you a
more profitable and pertinent humiliation than yet you
know, and a less mistaken charitableness, with that
peace which you have hitherto so perversely misaffected.
AN
A P O L O G Y F O R S M E C T Y M N U U S.
[FIRST PUBLISHED 1642.]
IF, readers, to that same great difficulty of well-doing
what we certainly know, were not added in most men
as great a carelessness of knowing what they and
others ought to do, we had been long ere this, no doubt
but all of us, much farther on our way to some degree
of peace and happiness in this kingdom. But since
our sinful neglect of practising that which we know to
be undoubtedly true and good, hath brought forth
among us, through God's just anger, so great a diffi-
culty now to know that which otherwise might be soon
learnt, and hath divided us by a controversy of great
importance indeed, but of no hard solution, which is
the more our punishment; I resolved (of what small
moment soever I might be thought) to stand on that
side where I saw both the plain authority of Scripture
leading, and the reason of justice and equity persuad-
ing; with this opinion, which esteems it more unlike a
Christian to be a cold neuter in the cause of the church,
than the law of Solon made it punishable after a sedi-
tion in the state. And because I observe that fear and
dull disposition, lukewarmness and sloth, are not sel-
domer wont to cloak themselves under the affected
name of moderation, than true and lively zeal is cus-
tomably disparaged with the term of indiscretion,
bitterness, and choler; I could not to my thinking
honour a good cause more from the heart, than by de-
fending it earnestly, as oft as I could judge it to behove
me, notwithstanding any false name that could be in-
vented to wrong or under-value an honest meaning.
Wherein although I have not doubted to single forth
more than once such of them as were thought the
chief and most nominated opposers on the other side,
whom no man else undertook; if I have done well
either to be confident of the truth, whose force is best
seen against the ablest resistance, or to be jealous and
tender of the hurt that might be done among the
weaker by the intrapping authority of great names
titled to false opinions; or that it be lawful to attribute
somewhat to gifts of God's imparting, which I boast
not, but thankfully acknowledge, and fear also lest at
my certain account they be reckoned to me rather many
than few ; or if lastly it be but justice not to defraud
of due esteem the wearisome labours and studious
watchings, wherein I have spent and tired out almost
a whole youth, I shall not distrust to be acquitted of
presumption : knowing, that if heretofore all ages have
received with favour and good acceptance the early in-
dustry of him that hath been hopeful, it were but hard
measure now, if the freedom of any timely spirit should
be oppressed merely by the big and blunted fame of
his elder adversary; and that his sufficiency must be
now sentenced, not by pondering the reason he shews,
but by calculating the years he brings. However, as
my purpose is not, nor hath been formerly, to look
on my adversary abroad, through the deceiving
glass of other men's great opinion of him, but at
home, where I may find him in the proper light of
his own worth; so now against the rancour of an
evil tongue, from which I never thought so absurdly,
as that I of all men should be exempt, I must be
forced to proceed from the unfeigned and diligent
inquiry of my own conscience at home, (for better
way I know not, readers,) to give a more true ac-
count of myself abroad than this modest confuter, as
he calls himself, hath given of me. Albeit, that in
doing this I shall be sensible of two things which to
me will be nothing pleasant; the one is, that not un-
likely I shall be thought too much a party in mine own
cause, and therein to see least: the other, that I shall
be put unwillingly to molest the public view with the
vindication of a private name; as if it were worth the
while that the people should care whether such a one
were thus, or thus. Yet those I entreat who have
found the leisure to read that name, however of small
repute, unworthily defamed, would be so good and
so patient as to hear the same person not unneedfully
defended. I will not deny but that the best apology
against false accusers is silence and sufferance, and
honest deeds set against dishonest words. And that I
could at this time most easily and securely, with the
least loss of reputation, use no other defence, I need
not despair to win belief; whether I consider both the
76 AN APOLOGY FOR SMECTYMNUUS.
foolish contriving and ridiculous aiming of these his
slanderous bolts, shot so wide of any suspicion to be
fastened on me, that I have oft with inward content-
ment perceived my friends congratulating themselves
in my innocence, and my enemies ashamed of their
partner's folly: or whether I look at these present
times, wherein most men, now scarce permitted the
liberty to think over their own concernments, have re-
moved the seat of their thoughts more outward to the ex-
pectation of public events : or whether the examples
of men, either noble or religious, who have sat down
lately with a meek silence and sufferance under many
libellous endorsements, may be a rule to others, I
might well appease myself to put up any reproaches in
such an honourable society of fellow-sufferers, using no
other defence. And were it that slander would be con-
tent to make an end where it first fixes, and not seek
to cast out the like infamy upon each thing that hath
but any relation to the person traduced, I should have
pleaded against this confuter by no other advocates
than those which I first commended, silence and suf-
ferance, and speaking deeds against faltering words.
But when I discerned his intent was not so much to
smite at me, as through me to render odious the truth
which I had written, and to stain with ignominy that
evangelic doctrine which opposes the tradition of pre-
laty; I conceived myself to be now not as mine own
person, but as a member incorporate into that truth
whereof I was persuaded, and whereof I had declared
openly to be a partaker. Whereupon I thought it my
duty, if not to myself, yet to the religious cause I had
in hand, not to leave on my garment the least spot or
blemish in good name, so long as God should give me
to say that which might wipe it off. Lest those dis-
graces, which I ought to suffer, if it so befall me, for
my religion, through my default religion be made
liable to suffer for me. And, whether it might not
something reflect upon those reverent men, whose
friend I may be thought in writing the Animadver-
sions, was not my last care to consider; if I should
rest under these reproaches, having the same common
adversary with them, it might be counted small credit
for their cause to have found such an assistant, as this
babbler hath devised me. What other thing in his
book there is of dispute or question, in answering
thereto I doubt not to be justified; except there be
who will condemn me to have wasted time in throwing
down that which could not keep itself up. As for
others, who notwithstanding what I can allege have
yet decreed to misinterpret the intents of my reply, I
suppose they would have found as many causes to have
misconceived the reasons of my silence.
To begin therefore an apology for those animadver-
sions, which I writ against the Remonstrant in defence
of Smectymnuus; since the preface, which was pur-
posely set before them, is not thought apologetical
enough, it will be best to acquaint ye, readers, before
other things, what the meaning was to write them in
that manner which I did. For I do not look to be
asked wherefore I writ the book, it being no difficulty
to answer, that I did it to those ends, which the best
men propose to themselves when they write: but
wherefore in that manner, neglecting the main bulk of
all that specious antiquity, which might stun children,
and not men, I chose rather to observe some kind of
military advantages to await him at his foragings, at
his waterings, and whenever he felt himself secure, to
solace his vein in derision of his more serious oppo-
nents. And here let me have pardon, readers, if the
remembrance of that which he hath licensed himself to
utter contemptuously of those reverend men, provoke
me to do that over again, which some expect I should
excuse as too freely done; since I have two provoca-
tions, his latest insulting in his short answer, and their
final patience. I had no fear, but that the authors of
Smectymnuus, to all the shew of solidity, which the
Remonstrant could bring, were prepared both with
skill and purpose to return a sufficing answer, and
were able enough to lay the dust and pudder in anti-
quity, which he and his, out of stratagem, are wont to
raise; but when I saw his weak arguments headed
with sharp taunts, and that his design was, if he could
not refute them, yet at least with quips and snapping
adages to vapour them out, which they, bent only upon
the business, were minded to let pass; by how much I
saw them taking little thought for their own injuries,
I must confess I took it as my part the less to endure
that my respected friends, through their own unneces-
sary patience, should thus lie at the mercy of a coy
flirting style; to be girded with frumps and curtal
gibes, by one who makes sentences by the statute, as
if all above three inches long were confiscate. To me
it seemed an indignity, that whom his whole wisdom
could not move from their place, them his impetuous
folly should presume to ride over. And if I were more
warm than was meet in any passage of that book,
which yet I do not yield, I might use therein the
patronage of no worse an author than Gre sory Nyssen,
who mentioning his sharpness against Eunomius in
the defence of his brother Basil, holds himself irre-
provable in that “it was not for himself, but in the
cause of his brother; and in such cases,” saith he,
“perhaps it is worthier pardon to be angry than to be
cooler.” And whereas this confuter taxes the whole
discourse of levity, I shall shew ye, readers, where-
soever it shall be objected in particular, that I have an-
swered with as little lightness as the Remonstrant hath
given example. I have not been so light as the palm
of a bishop, which is the lightest thing in the world
when he brings out his book of ordination for then,
contrary to that which is wont in releasing out of .
prison, any one that will pay his fees is laid hands on.
Another reason, it would not be amiss though the
Remonstrant were told, wherefore he was in that un-
usual manner beleaguered; and this was it, to pluck
out of the heads of his admirers the conceit that all who
are not prelatical, are gross-headed, thick-witted, illi-
terate, shallow. Can nothing then but episcopacy teach
men to speak good English, to pick and order a set of
words judiciously Must we learn from canons and
quaint sermonings, interlined with barbarous Latin, to
AN APOLOGY FOR SMECTYMNUUS.
77
illumine a period, to wreath an enthymema with mas-
terous dexterity 2 I rather incline, as I have heard it
observed, that a Jesuit's Italian when he writes, is ever
naught, though he be born and bred a Florentine, so
to think, that from like causes we may go near to ob-
serve the same in the style of a prelate. For doubtless
that indeed according to art is most eloquent, which
turns and approaches nearest to nature from whence it
came ; and they express nature best, who in their lives
least wander from her safe leading, which may be called
regenerate reason. So that how he should be truly
eloquent who is not withal a good man, I see not.
Nevertheless, as oft as is to be dealt with men who
pride themselves in their supposed art, to leave them
inexcusable wherein they will not be bettered ; there
be of those that esteem prelaty a figment, who yet can
pipe if they can dance, nor will be unfurnished to shew,
that what the prelates admire and have not, others have
and admire not. The knowledge whereof, and not of
that only, but of what the Scripture teacheth us how
we ought to withstand the perverters of the gospel,
were those other motives, which gave the Animadver-
sions no leave to remit a continual vehemence through-
out the book. For as in teaching doubtless the spirit
of meekness is most powerful, so are the meek only fit
persons to be taught: as for the proud, the obstinate,
and false doctors of men's devices, be taught they will
not, but discovered and laid open they must be. For
how can they admit of teaching, who have the condem-
nation of God already upon them for refusing divine
instruction ? That is, to be filled with their own de-
vices, as in the Proverbs we may read: therefore we
may safely imitate the method that God uses; “with
the froward to be froward, and to throw scorn upon the
scorner,” whom, if any thing, nothing else will heal.
And if the “righteous shall laugh at the destruction
of the ungodly,” they may also laugh at the pertinacious
and incurable obstinacy, and at the same time be moved
with detestation of their seducing malice, who employ
all their wits to defend a prelaty usurped, and to de-
prave that just government, which pride and ambition,
partly by fine fetches and pretences, partly by force,
hath shouldered out of the church. And against such
kind of deceivers openly and earnestly to protest, lest
any one should be inquisitive wherefore this or that man
is forwarder than others, let him know that this office
goes not by age or youth, but to whomsoever God shall
give apparently the will, the spirit, and the utterance.
Ye have heard the reasons for which I thought not
myself exempted from associating with good men in
their labours towards the church's welfare; to which,
if any one brought opposition, I brought my best re-
sistance. If in requital of this, and for that I have not
been negligent toward the reputation of my friends, I
have gained a name bestuck, or as I may say, bedecked
with the reproaches and reviles of this modest confuter;
it shall be to me neither strange nor unwelcome, as that
which could not come in a better time.
Having rendered an account what induced me to
write those animadversions in that manner as I writ
them, I come now to see what the confutation hath to
say against them; but so as the conſuter shall hear first
what I have to say against his confutation. And be-
se he pretends to be a great conjector at other men
by their writings, I will not fail to give ye, readers, a
present taste of him from his title, hung out like a toll-
ing sign post to call passengers, not simply a confuta-
tion, but “a modest confutation,” with a laudatory of
itself obtruded in the very first word. Whereas a
modest title should only inform the buyer what the book
contains without further insinuation ; this officious epi-
thet so hastily assuming the modesty which others are
to judge of by reading, not the author to anticipate to
himself by forestalling, is a strong presumption, that
his modesty, set there to sale in the frontispiece, is not
much addicted to blush. A surer sign of his lost shame
he could not have given, than seeking thus unseason-
ably to prepossess men of his modesty. And seeing he
hath neither kept his word in the sequel, nor omitted
any kind of boldness in slandering, it is manifest his
purpose was only to rub the forehead of his title with
this word modest, that he might not want colour to be
the more impudent throughout his whole confutation.
Next, what can equally savour of injustice and plain
arrogance, as to prejudice and forecondemn his adver-
sary in the title for “slanderous and scurrilous,” and
as the Remonstrant's fashion is, for frivolous, tedious,
and false, not staying till the reader can hear him
proved so in the following discourse? Which is one
cause of a suspicion that in setting forth this pamphlet
the Remonstrant was not unconsulted with : thus his
first address was “an humble remonstrance by a dutiful
son of the church,” almost as if he had said, her white-
boy. His next was, “a defence” (a wonder how it
escaped some praising adjunct) “ against the frivolous
and false exceptions against Smectymnuus,” sitting in
the chair of his title-page upon his poor cast adversaries
both as a judge and party, and that before the jury of
readers can be impannelled. His last was “a short
answer to a tedious vindication;” so little can he suffer
a man to measure either with his eye or judgment,
what is short or what tedious, without his preoccupying
direction : and from hence is begotten this “modest
confutation against a slanderous and scurrilous libel.”
I conceive, readers, much may be guessed at the man
and his book, what depth there is, by the framing of
his title; which being in this Remonstrant so rash and
unadvised as ye see, I conceit him to be near akin to
him who set forth a passion sermon with a formal dedi-
catory in great letters to our Saviour. Although I
know that all we do ought to begin and end in his
praise and glory, yet to inscribe him in a void place
with flourishes, as a man in compliment uses to trick
up the name of some esquire, gentleman, or lord para-
mount at common law, to be his book-patron, with the
appendant form of a ceremonious presentment, will
ever appear among the judicious to be but an insulse
and frigid affectation. As no less was that before his
book against the Brownists, to write a letter to a Pro-
sopopoeia, a certain rhetorized woman whom he calls
mother, and complains of some that laid whoredom to
her charge; and certainly had he folded his epistle
78
AN APOLOGY FOR SMECTYMNUUS.
with a superscription to be delivered to that female
figure by any post or carrier, who were not a ubiquitary,
it had been a most miraculous greeting. We find the
primitive doctors, as oft as they writ to churches,
speaking to them as to a number of faithful brethren
and sons, and not to make a cloudy transmigration of
sexes in such a familiar way of writing as an epistle
ought to be, leaving the tract of common address, to
run up, and tread the air in metaphorical compellations,
and many fond utterances better let alone. But I step
again to this emblazoner of his titlepage, (whether it
be the same man or no, I leave it in the midst,) and
here I find him pronouncing without reprieve, those
animadversions to be a slanderous and scurrilous libel.
To which I, readers, that they are neither slanderous,
nor scurrilous, will answer in what place of his book
he shall be found with reason, and not ink only, in his
mouth. Nor can it be a libel more than his own,
which is both nameless and full of slanders; and if in
this that it freely speaks of things amiss in religion,
but established by act of state, I see not how Wickliff
and Luther, with all the first martyrs and reformers,
could avoid the imputation of libelling. I never
thought the human frailty of erring in cases of religion,
infamy to a state, no more than to a council: it had
therefore been neither civil nor christianly, to derogate
the honour of the state for that cause, especially when
I saw the parliament itself piously and magnani-
mously bent to supply and reform the defects and
oversights of their forefathers, which to the godly and
repentant ages of the Jews were often matter of humble
confessing and bewailing, not of confident asserting
and maintaining. Of the state therefore I found good
reason to speak all honourable things, and to join in
petition with good men that petitioned : but against
the prelates, who were the only seducers and misleaders
of the state to constitute the government of the church
not rightly, methought I had not vehemence enough.
And thus, readers, by the example which he hath set
me, I have given ye two or three notes of him out of
his titlepage; by which his firstlings fear not to guess
boldly at his whole lump, for that guess will not fail
ye; and although I tell him keen truth, yet he may
bear with me, since I am like to chase him into some
good knowledge, and others, I trust, shall not mispend
their leisure. For this my aim is, if I am forced to be
unpleasing to him whose fault it is, I shall not forget
at the same time to be useful in something to the
stander-by.
As therefore he began in the title, so in the next leaf
he makes it his first business to tamper with his reader
by sycophanting and misnaming the work of his adver-
sary. He calls it “a mime thrust forth upon the stage,
to make up the breaches of those solemn scenes between
the prelates and the Smectymnuans.” Wherein while
he is so over-greedy to fix a name of ill sound upon
another, note how stupid he is to expose himself or his
own friends to the same ignominy; likening those
grave controversies to a piece of stagery, or scenework,
where his own Remonstrant, whether in buskin or sock,
must of all right be counted the chief player, be it
boasting Thraso, or Davus that troubles all things, or
one who can shift into any shape, I meddle not; let
him explicate who hath resembled the whole argument
to a comedy, for “ tragical,” he says, “were too omin-
ous.” Nor yet doth he tell us what a mime is, whereof
we have no pattern from ancient writers, except some
fragments, which contain many acute and wise sen-
tences. And this we know in Laertius, that the mimes
of Sophron were of such reckoning with Plato, as to
take them mightly to read on, and after make them
his pillow. Scaliger describes a mime to be a poem
intimating any action to stir up laughter. But this
being neither poem, nor yet ridiculous, how is it but
abusively taxed to be a mime f For if every book, which
may by chance excite to laugh here and there, must be
termed thus, then may the dialogues of Plato, who for
those his writings hath obtained the surname of divine,
be esteemed as they are by that detractor in Athenaeus,
no better than mimes. Because there is scarce one of
them, especially wherein some notable sophister lies
sweating and turmoiling under the inevitable and
merciless dilemmas of Socrates, but that he who reads,
were it Saturn himself, would be often robbed of more
than a smile. And whereas he tells us, that “scurrilous
Mime was a personated grim lowering fool,” his foolish
language unwittingly writes fool upon his own friend,
for he who was there personated was only the Remon-
strant; the author is ever distinguished from the person
he introduces. But in an ill hour hath this unfortunate
rashness stumbled upon the mention of miming, that
he might at length cease, which he hath not yet since
he stepped in, to gall and hurt him whom he would
aid. Could he not beware, could he not bethink him,
was he so uncircumspect as not to foresee, that no
sooner would that word mime be set eye on in the
paper, but it would bring to mind that wretched pil-
grimage over Minshew’s dictionary called “ Mundus
alter et idem,” the idlest and the paltriest mime that ever
mounted upon bank P Let him ask “the author of
those toothless satires,” who was the maker, or rather
the anticreator of that universal foolery, who he was,
who like that other principal of the Manichees the
arch evil one, when he had looked upon all that he
had made and mapped out, could say no other but
contrary to the divine mouth, that it was all very
foolish. That grave and noble invention, which the
greatest and sublimest wits in sundry ages, Plato in
Critias, and our two famous countrymen, the one in
his “Utopia,” the other in his “New Atlantis,” chose,
I may not say as a field, but as a mighty continent,
wherein to display the largeness of their spirits, by
teaching this our world better and exacter things
than were yet known or used : this petty prevari-
cator of America, the zany of Columbus, (for so he
must be till his world's end,) having rambled over
the huge topography of his own vain thoughts, no
marvel if he brought us home nothing but a mere tan-
kard drollery, a venereous parjetory for stews. Cer-
tainly, he that could endure with a sober pen to sit and
devise laws for drunkards to carouse by, I doubt me
whether the very soberness of such a one, like an un-
AN APOLOGY FOR SMECTYMNUUS. 79
liquored Silenus, were not stark drunk. Let him go
now and brand another man injuriously with the name
of Mime, being himself the loosest and most extrava-
gant Mime that hath been heard of, whom no less than
almost half the world could serve for stage-room to play
the Mime in. And let him advise again with sir Francis
Bacon, whom he cites to confute others, what it is “to
turn the sins of christendom into a mimical mockery,
to rip up the saddest vices with a laughing counte-
mance,” especially where neither reproof nor better
teaching is adjoined. Nor is my meaning, readers, to
shift off a blame from myself, by charging the like
upon my accuser, but shall only desire, that sentence
may be respited, till I can come to some instance
whereto I may give answer.
Thus having spent his first onset, not in confuting,
but in a reasonless deſaming of the book, the method
of his malice hurries him to attempt the like against
the author; not by proofs and testimonies, but “having
no certain notice of me,” as he professes, “further than
what he gathers from the animadversions,” blunders at
me for the rest, and flings out stray crimes at a ven-
ture, which he could never, though he be a serpent,
suck from any thing that I have written, but ſrom his
own stuffed magazine, and hoard of slanderous inven-
tions, over and above that which he converted to venom
in the drawing. To me, readers, it happens as a sin-
gular contentment; and let it be to good men no light
satisfaction, that the slanderer here confesses, he has
“no further notice of me than his own conjecture.”
Although it had been honest to have inquired, before
he uttered such infamous words, and I am credibly in-
formed he did inquire; but finding small comfort from
the intelligence which he received, whereon to ground
the falsities which he had provided, thought it his
likeliest course under a pretended ignorance to let
drive at random, lest he should lose his odd ends, which
from some penurious book of characters he had been
culling out and would fain apply. Not caring to bur-
den me with those vices, whereof, among whom my
conversation hath been, I have been ever least sus-
pected ; perhaps not without some subtlety to cast me
into envy, by bringing on me a necessity to enter into
mine own praises. In which argument I know every
wise man is more unwillingly drawn to speak, than the
most repining ear can be averse to hear. Nevertheless,
since I dare not wish to pass this life unpersecuted of
slanderous tongues, for God hath told us that to be ge-
nerally praised is woeful, I shall rely on his promise
to free the innocent from causeless aspersions: whereof
nothing sooner can assure me, than if I shall feel him
now assisting me in the just vindication of myself,
which yet I could defer, it being more meet, that to
those other matters of public debatement in this book
I should give attendance first, but that I fear it would
but harm the truth for me to reason in her behalf, so
long as I should suffer my honest estimation to lie un-
purged from these insolent suspicions. And if I shall
be large, or unwonted in justifying myself to those who
know me not, for else it would be needless, let them
consider that a short slander will oft-times reach fur-
ther than a long apology; and that he who will do
justly to all men, must begin from knowing how, if it so
happen, to be not unjust to himself. I must be thought,
if this libeller (for now he shews himself to be so) can find
belief, after an inordinate and riotous youth spent at
the university, to have been at length “ vomited out
thence.” For which commodious lie, that he may be
encouraged in the trade another time, I thank him ;
for it hath given me an apt occasion to acknowledge
publicly with all grateful mind, that more than ordi-
nary favour and respect, which I found above any of
my equals at the hands of those courteous and learned
men, the fellows of that college wherein I spent some
years: who at my parting, after I had taken two de-
grees, as the manner is, signified many ways, how
much better it would content them that I would stay ;
as by many letters full of kindness and loving respect,
both before that time, and long after, I was assured of
their singular good affection towards me. Which being
likewise propense to all such as were for their studious
and civil life worthy of esteem, I could not wrong their
judgments, and upright intentions, so much as to think
I had that regard from them for other cause, than that
I might be still encouraged to proceed in the honest
and laudable courses, of which they apprehended I had
given good proof. And to those ingenuous and friendly
men, who were ever the countenancers of virtuous and
hopeful wits, I wish the best and happiest things, that
friends in absence wish one to another. As for the com-
mon approbation or dislike of that place, as now it is,
that I should esteem or disesteem myself, or any other
the more for that ; too simple and too credulous is the
confuter, if he think to obtain with me, or any right
discerner. Of small practice were that physician, who
could not judge by what both she or her sister hath
of long time vomited, that the worser stuff she strongly
keeps in her stomach, but the better she is ever keck-
ing at, and is queasy. She vomits now out of sickness;
but ere it will be well with her, she must vomit by
strong physic. In the mean time that suburb sink, as
this rude scavenger calls it, and more than scurrilously
taunts it with the plague, having a worse plague in his
middle entrail, that suburb wherein I dwell shall be
in my account a more honourable place than his uni-
versity. Which as in the time of her better health,
and mine own younger judgment, I never greatly ad-
mired, so now much less. But he follows me to the
city, still usurping and forging beyond his book notice,
which only he affirms to have had ; “and where my
morning haunts are, he wisses not.” It is wonder,
that being so rare an alchymist of slander, he could
not extract that, as well as the university vomit,
and the suburb sink which his art could distil so cun-
ningly ; but because his limbec fails him, to give
him and envy the more vexation, I will tell him.
Those morning haunts are where they should be,
at home; not sleeping, or concocting the surfeits
of an irregular feast, but up and stirring, in winter
often ere the sound of any bell awake men to labour,
or to devotion ; in summer as oſt with the bird that
first rouses, or not much tardier, to read good au-
80
AN APOLOGY FOR SMECTYMNUUS.
thors, or cause them to be read, till the attention be
weary, or memory have its full fraught: then with use-
ful and generous labours preserving the body's health
and hardiness to render lightsome, clear, and not lump-
ish obedience to the mind, to the cause of religion, and
our country’s liberty, when it shall require firm hearts
in sound bodies to stand and cover their stations, rather
than to see the ruin of our protestation, and the inforce-
ment of a slavish life. These are the morning prac-
tices: proceed now to the afternoon; “in playhouses,”
he says, “and the bordelloes.” Your intelligence,
unfaithful spy of Canaan He gives in his evidence,
that “there he hath traced me.” Take him at his
word, readers, but let him bring good sureties ere ye
dismiss him, that while he pretended to dog others, he
did not turn in for his own pleasure : for so much in
effect he concludes against himself, not contented to be
caught in every other gin, but he must be such a
movice, as to be still hampered in his own hemp. In
the animadversions, saith he, I find the mention of old
cloaks, false beards, nightwalkers, and salt lotion;
therefore the animadverter haunts playhouses and bor-
delloes; for if he did not, how could he speak of such
gear 2 Now that he may know what it is to be a child,
and yet to meddle with edged tools, I turn his antistro-
phon upon his own head; the confuter knows that these
things are the furniture of playhouses and bordelloes,
therefore by the same reason “the confuter himself
hath been traced in those places.” Was it such a dis-
solute speech, telling of some politicians who were
wont to eavesdrop in disguises, to say they were often
liable to a nightwalking cudgeller, or the emptying of
a urinal P What if I had writ as your friend the author
of the aforesaid mime, “ Mundus alter et idem,” to
have been ravished like some young Cephalus or Hy-
las, by a troop of camping housewifes in Viraginea, and
that he was there forced to swear himself an uxorious
varlet; then after a long servitude to have come into
Aphrodisia that pleasant country, that gave such a
sweet smell to his nostrils among the shameless cour-
tezans of Desvergonia P Surely he would have then
concluded me as constant at the bordello, as the galley-
slave at his oar. But since there is such necessity to
the hearsay of a tire, a periwig, or a wizard, that plays
must have been seen, what difficulty was there in that?
when in the colleges so many of the young divines,
and those in next aptitude to divinity, have been seen
so often upon the stage, writhing and unboning their
clergy limbs to all the antic and dishonest gestures of
Trinculoes, buffoons, and bawds; prostituting the shame
of that ministry, which either they had, or were nigh
having, to the eyes of courtiers and court ladies, with
their grooms and mademoiselles. There while they
acted and overacted, among other young scholars, I
was a spectator; they thought themselves gallant men,
and I thought them fools; they made sport, and I
laughed; they mispronounced, and I misliked; and to
make up the atticism, they were out, and I hissed.
Judge now whether so many good text-men were not
sufficient to instruct me of false beards and wizards,
without more expositors; and how can this confuter
take the face to object to me the seeing of that, which
his reverend prelates allow, and incite their young dis-
ciples to act? I'or if it be unlawful to sit and behold a
mercenary comedian personating that which is leas
unseemly for a hireling to do, how much more blame
ful is it to endure the sight of as vile things acted by
persons either entered, or presently to enter into the
ministry; and how much more foul and ignominious
for them to be the actors
But because as well by this upbraiding to me the
bordelloes, as by other suspicious glancings in his book,
he would seem privily to point me out to his readers,
as one whose custom of life were not honest, but licen-
tious; I shall intreat to be born with, though I digress;
and in a way not often trod, acquaint ye with the sum
of my thoughts in this matter, through the course of
my years and studies. Although I am not ignorant
how hazardous it will be to do this under the nose of
the envious, as it were in skirmish to change the com-
pact order, and instead of outward actions, to bring
inmost thoughts into front. And I must tell ye, read-
ers, that by this sort of men I have been already bitten
at ; yet shall they not for me know how slightly they
are esteemed, unless they have so much learning as to
read what in Greek are pokaAta is, which, together with
envy, is the common disease of those who censure books
that are not for their reading. With me it fares now,
as with him whose outward garment hath been injured
and illbedighted ; for having no other shift, what help
but to turn the inside outwards, especially if the lining
be of the same, or, as it is sometimes, much better P So
if my name and outward demeanour be not evident
enough to defend me, I must make trial, if the discovery
of my inmost thoughts can : wherein of two purposes
both honest, and both sincere, the one perhaps I shall
not miss; although I fail to gain belief with others, of
being such as my perpetual thoughts shall here disclose
me, I may yet not fail of success in persuading some
to be such really themselves, as they cannot believe
me to be more than what I fain. I had my time,
readers, as others have, who have good learning be-
stowed upon them, to be sent to those places, where
the opinion was, it might be soonest attained ; and as
the manner is, was not unstudied in those authors
which are most commended ; whereof some were
grave orators and historians, whose matter methought
I loved indeed, but as my age then was, so I under-
stood them ; others were the smooth elegiac poets,
whereof the schools are not scarce, whom both for the
pleasing sound of their numerous writing, which in
imitation I found most easy, and most agreeable to
nature's part in me, and for their matter, which what
it is, there be few who know not, I was so allured to
read, that no recreation came to me better welcome:
for that it was then those years with me which are ex-
cused, though they be least severe, I may be saved the
labour to remember ye. Whence having observed them
to account it the chief glory of their wit, in that they
were ablest to judge, to praise, and by that could
esteem themselves worthiest to love those high perfec-
tions, which under one or other name they took to
AN APOLOGY FOR SMECTYMNU U.S.
81
celebrate; I thought with myself by every instinct
and presage of nature, which is not wont to be false,
that what emboldened them to this task, might with
such diligence as they used embolden me; and that
what judgment, wit, or elegance was my share, would
herein best appear, and best value itself, by how much
more wisely, and with more love of virtue I should
choose (let rude ears be absent) the object of not unlike
praises: for albeit these thoughts to some will seem
virtuous and commendable, to others only pardonable,
to a third sort perhaps idle; yet the mentioning of
them now will end in serious. Nor blame it, readers,
in those years to propose to themselves such a reward,
as the noblest dispositions above other things in this
life have sometimes preferred: whereof not to be sen-
sible when good and fair in one person meet, argues
both a gross and shallow judgment, and withal an un-
gentle, and swainish breast: for by the firm settling
of these persuasions, I became, to my best memory, so
much a proficient, that if I found those authors any
where speaking unworthy things of themselves, or
unchaste of those names which before they had ex-
tolled; this effect it wrought with me, from that
time forward their art I still applauded, but the men
I deplored; and above them all, preferred the two
famous renowners of Beatrice and Laura, who never
write but honour of them to whom they devote their
verse, displaying subline and pure thoughts, without
transgression. And long it was not after, when I was
confirmed in this opinion, that he who would not be
frustrate of his hope to write well hereafter in laudable
things, ought himself to be a true poem; that is, a
composition and pattern of the best and honourablest
things; not presuming to sing high praises of heroic
men, or famous cities, unless he have in himself the
experience and the practice of all that which is praise-
worthy. These reasonings, together with a certain
niceness of nature, an honest haughtiness, and self-
esteem either of what I was, or what I might be,
(which let envy call pride,) and lastly that modesty,
whereof though not in the titlepage, yet here I may
be excused to make some beseeming profession; all
these uniting the supply of their natural aid together,
kept me still above those low descents of mind, beneath
which he must deject and plunge himself, that can
agree to salable and unlawful prostitutions. Next,
(for hear me out now, readers,) that I may tell ye
whither my younger feet wandered; I betook me
among those lofty fables and romances, which recount
in solemn cantoes the deeds of knighthood founded by
our victorious kings, and from hence had in renown
over all christendom. There I read it in the oath of
every knight, that he should defend to the expense of
his best blood, or of his life, if it so befel him, the
honour and chastity of virgin or matron; from whence
even then I learned what a noble virtue chastity sure
must be, to the defence of which so many worthies, by
such a dear adventure of themselves, had sworn; and
if I found in the story afterward, any of them, by word
or deed, breaking that oath, I judged it the same fault
of the poet, as that which is attributed to Homer, to
have written indecent things of the gods: only this
my mind gave me, that every free and gentle spirit,
without that oath, ought to be born a knight, nor
needed to expect the gilt spur, or the laying of a
sword upon his shoulder to stir him up both by his
counsel and his arms, to secure and protect the weak-
ness of any attempted chastity. So that even these
books, which to many others have been the fuel of
wantonness and loose living, I cannot think how,
unless by divine indulgence, proved to me so many
incitements, as you have heard, to the love and stead-
fast observation of that virtue which abhors the society
of bordelloes. Thus from the laureat fraternity of
poets, riper years and the ceaseless round of study and
reading led me to the shady spaces of philosophy; but
chiefly to the divine volumes of Plato, and his equal
Xenophon: where, if I should tell ye what I learnt of
chastity and love, I mean that which is truly so, whose
charming cup is only virtue, which she bears in her
hand to those who are worthy; (the rest are cheated
with a thick intoxicating potion, which a certain
sorceress, the abuser of love's name, carries about ;)
and how the first and chiefest office of love begins and
ends in the soul, producing those happy twins of her
divine generation, knowledge and virtue: with such
abstracted sublimities as these, it might be worth
your listening, readers, as I may one day hope to have
ye in a still time, when there shall be no chiding ;
not in these noises, the adversary, as ye know, bark-
ing at the door, or searching for me at the bordelloes,
where it may be he has lost himself, and raps up
without pity the sage and rheumatic old prelatess,
with all her young Corinthian laity, to inquire for
such a one. Last of all, not in time, but as perfec-
tion is last, that care was ever had of me, with my
earliest capacity, not to be negligently trained in the
precepts of christian religion: this that I have hitherto
related, hath been to shew, that though christianity
had been but slightly taught me, yet a certain re-
servedness of natural disposition, and moral discipline,
learnt out of the noblest philosophy, was enough to
keep me in disdain of far less incontinences than this
of the bordello. But having had the doctrine of Holy
Scripture, unfolding those chaste and high mysteries,
with timeliest care infused, that “the body is for the
Lord, and the Lord for the body;” thus also I argued
to myself, that if unchastity in a woman, whom St.
Paul terms the glory of man, be such a scandal and
dishonour, then certainly in a man, who is both the
image and glory of God, it must, though commonly
not so thought, be much more deflowering and disho-
nourable; in that he sins both against his own body,
which is the perfecter sex, and his own glory, which
is in the woman; and that which is worst, against
the image and glory of God, which is in himself Nor
did I slumber over that place, expressing such high
rewards of ever accompanying the Lamb, with those
celestial songs to others inapprehensible, but not to
those who were not defiled with women, which doubt-
less means fornication; for marriage must not be call-
ed a defilement. Thus large I have purposely been,
82
AN APOLOGY FOR SMECTYMNUUS.
that if I have been justly taxed with this crime, it may
come upon me, after all this my confession, with a ten-
fold shame : but if I have hitherto deserved no such
opprobrious word, or suspicion, I may hereby en-
gage myself now openly to the faithful observation of
what I have professed. I go on to shew you the un-
bridled impudence of this loose railer, who, having
once begun his race, regards not how far he flies out
beyond all truth and shame; who from the single no-
tice of the Animadversions, as he protests, will under-
take to tell ye the very clothes I wear, though he
be much mistaken in my wardrobe: and like a son of
Belial, without the hire of Jezebel, charges me “ of
blaspheming God and the king,” as ordinarily as he
imagines “me to drink sack and swear,” merely be-
cause this was a shred in his commonplace book, and
seemed to come off roundly, as if he were some em-
piric of false accusations, to try his poisons upon me,
whether they would work or no. Whom what should
I endeavour to refute more, whenas that book, which
is his only testimony, returns the lie upon him; not
giving him the least hint of the author to be either a
swearer or a sack drinker. And for the readers, if they
can believe me, principally for those reasons which I
have alleged, to be of life and purpose neither dishonest
nor unchaste, they will be easily induced to think me
sober both of wine and of word; but if I have been
already successless in persuading them, all that I can
further say, will be but vain; and it will be better
thrift to save two tedious labours, mine of excusing,
and theirs of needless hearing.
Proceeding further, I am met with a whole ging of
words and phrases not mine, for he hath maimed them,
and, like a sly depraver, mangled them in this his
wicked limbo, worse than the ghost of Deiphobus ap-
peared to his friend AEneas. Here I scarce know them,
and he that would, let him repair to the place in that
book where I set them : for certainly this tormentor of
semicolons is as good at dismembering and slitting
sentences, as his grave fathers the prelates have been
at stigmatizing and slitting noses. By such handicraft
as this what might he not traduce P Only that odour,
which being his own must needs offend his sense of
smelling, since he will needs bestow his foot among us,
and not allow us to think he wears a sock, I shall en-
deavour it may be offenceless to other men's ears. The
Remonstrant having to do with grave and reverend
men his adversaries, thought it became him to tell them
in scorn, that “the bishop's foot had been in their
book and confuted it;” which when I saw him arro-
gate, to have done that with his heels that surpassed
the best consideration of his head, to spurn a confuta-
tion among respected men, I questioned not the law-
fulness of moving his jollity to bethink him, what odour
a sock would have in such painful business. And this
may have chanced to touch him more nearly than I
was aware, for indeed a bishop's foot that hath all his
toes maugre the gout, and a linen sock over it, is the
aptest emblem of the prelate himself; who being a
A.
pluralist, may under one surplice, which is also linen,
hide four benefices, besides the metropolitan toe, and
sends a fouler stench to heaven, than that which this
young queasiness retches at. And this is the immediate
reason here why our enraged confuter, that he may be
as perfect a hypocrite as Caiaphas, ere he be a high-
priest, cries out, “Horrid blasphemy" and, like a re-
creant Jew, calls for stones. I beseech ye, friends, ere
the brickbats fly, resolve me and yourselves, is it blas-
phemy, or any whit disagreeing from christian meek-
ness, whenas Christ himself, speaking of unsavoury
traditions, scruples not to name the dunghill and the
jakes, for me to answer a slovenly wincer of a confu-
tation, that if he would needs put his foot to such a
sweaty service, the odour of his sock was like to be
neither musk nor benjamin? Thus did that foolish monk
in a barbarous declamation accuse Petrarch of blas-
phemy for dispraising the French wines. But this which
follows is plain bedlam stuff, this is the demoniac le-
gion indeed, which the Remonstrant feared had been
against him, and now he may see is for him. “You
that love Christ,” saith he, “and know this miscreant
wretch, stone him to death, lest you smart for his im-
punity.” What thinks the Remonstrant? does he like
that such words as these should come out of his shop,
out of his Trojan horse 2 To give the watch-word like
a Guisian of Paris to a mutiny or massacre; to pro-
claim a croisade against his fellow-christian now in this
troublous and divided time of the kingdom P If he do,
I shall say that to be the Remonstrant, is no better than
to be a Jesuit; and that if he and his accomplices
could do as the rebels have done in Ireland to the pro-
testants, they would do in England the same to them
that would no prelates. For a more seditious and but-
cherly speech no cell of Loyola could have belched
against one who in all his writing spake not, that any
man's skin should be raised. And yet this cursing
Shimei, a hurler of stones, as well as a railer, wants
not the face instantly to make as though he “despaired
of victory, unless a modest defence would get it him.”
Did I err at all, readers, to foretelye, when first I met
with his title, that the epithet of modest there was a
certain red portending sign, that he meant ere long to
be most tempestuously bold and shameless P Neverthe-
less, “he dares not say but there may be hid in his
nature as much venomous atheism and profanation, as
he thinks hath broke out at his adversary’s lips; but
he hath not the sore running upon him,” as he would
intimate I have. Now trust me not, readers, if I be
not already weary of pluming and footing this sea-gull,
so open he lies to strokes, and never offers at another,
but brings home the dorre upon himself. For if the
sore be running upon me, in all judgment I have
escaped the disease; but he who hath as much hid in
him, as he hath voluntarily confessed, and cannot ex-
pel it, because he is dull, (for venomous atheism were
no treasure to be kept within him else,) let him take
the part he hath chosen, which must needs follow, to
swell and burst with his own inward venom.
AN APOLOGY FOR SMECTYMNUUS.
83
SECT, I.
BUT mark, readers, there is a kind of justice observed
among them that do evil, but this man loves injustice
in the very order of his malice. For having all this
while abused the good name of his adversary with all
manner of licence in revenge of his Remonstrant, if
they be not both one person, or as I am told, father and
son, yet after all this he calls for satisfaction, whenas
he himself hath already taken the utmost farthing.
“Violence hath been done,” says he, “to the person of
a holy and religious prelate.” To which, something
in effect to what St. Paul answered of Ananias, I an-
swer, “I wist not, brethren, that he was a holy and
religious prelate;” for evil is written of those who
would be prelates. And finding him thus in disguise
without his superscription or phylactery either of holy
or prelate, it were no sin to serve him as Longchamp
bishop of Ely was served in his disguise at Dover: he
hath begun the measure nameless, and when he pleases
we may all appear as we are. And let him be them
what he will, he shall be to me so as I find him prin-
cipled. For neither must prelate or archprelate hope
to exempt himself from being reckoned as one of the
vulgar, which is for him only to hope whom true wis-
dom and the contempt of vulgar opinions exempts, it
being taught us in the Psalms, that he who is in honour
and understandeth not, is as the beasts that perish.
And now first “the manner of handling that cause,”
which I undertook, he thinks is suspicious, as if the
wisest and the best words were not ever to some or
other suspicious. But where is the offence, the dis-
agreement from christian meekness, or the precept of
Solomon in answering folly P. When the Remonstrant
talks of froth and scum, I tell him there is none, and
bid him spare his ladle ; when he brings in the mess
with keal, beef, and brewess, what stomach in England
could forbear to call for flanks and briskets P Capon
and white broth having been likely sometimes in the
same room with Christ and his apostles, why does it
trouble him, that it should be now in the same leaf,
especially where the discourse is not continued, but
interrupt P And let him tell me, is he wont to say
grace, doth he not then name holiest names over the
steam of costliest superfluities 2 Does he judge it fool-
ish or dishonest, to write that among religious things,
which, when he talks of religious things, he can de-
voutly chew P Is he afraid to name Christ where those
things are written in the same leaf, whom he fears not
to name while the same things are in his mouth º Doth
not Christ himself teach the highest things by the
similitude of old bottles and patched clothes P Doth he
not illustrate best things by things most evil? his
own coming to be as a thief in the night, and the right-
eous man's wisdom to that of an unjust steward P. He
might therefore have done better to have kept in his
canting beggars, and heathen altar, to sacrifice his
threadbare criticism of Bomolochus to an unseasonable
goddess fit for him called Importunity, and have re-
G
served his Greek derivation till he lecture to his fresh
men, for here his itching pedantry is but flouted.
But to the end that nothing may be onlitted, which
may farther satisfy any conscionable man, who, not-
withstanding what I could explain before the Animad-
versions, remains yet unsatisfied concerning that way
of writing which I there defended, but this confuter,
whom it pinches, utterly disapproves; I shall assay
once again, and perhaps with more success. If there-
fore the question were in oratory, whether a vehement
vein throwing out indignation or scorn upon an object
that merits it, were among the aptest ideas of speech
to be allowed, it were my work, and that an easy one,
to make it clear both by the rules of best rhetoricians,
and the famousest examples of the Greek and Roman
orations. But since the religion of it is disputed, and
not the art, I shall make use only of such reasons and
authorities, as religion cannot except against. lt will
be harder to gainsay, than for me to evince, that in the
teaching of men diversely tempered, different ways are
to be tried. The Baptist, we know, was a strict man,
remarkable for austerity and set order of life. Our
Saviour, who had all gifts in him, was Lord to express
his indoctrinating power in what sort him best seem-
ed; sometimes by a mild and familiar converse; some-
times with plain and impartial home-speaking, regard-
less of those whom the auditors might think he should
have had in more respect; otherwhile, with bitter
and ireful rebukes, if not teaching, yet leaving ex-
cuseless those his wilful impugners. What was all
in him, was divided among many others the teachers
of his church ; some to be severe and éver of a sad
gravity, that they may win such, and check sometimes
those who be of nature over-confident and jocund ;
others were sent more cheerful, free, and still as it were
at large, in the midst of an untrespassing honesty; that
they who are so tempered, may have by whom they
might be drawn to salvation, and they who are too
scrupulous, and dejected of spirit, might be often
strengthened with wise consolations and revivings: no
man being forced wholly to dissolve that groundwork of
nature which God created in him, the sanguine to empty
out all his sociable liveliness, the choleric to expel quite
the unsinning predominance of his anger; but that
each radical humour and passion, wrought upon and
corrected as it ought, might be made the proper mould
and foundation of every man’s peculiar gifts and vir-
tues. Some also were indued with a staid moderation
and soundness of argument, to teach and convince the
rational and soberminded; yet not therefore that to be
thought the only expedient course of teaching, for in
times of opposition, when either against new heresies
arising, or old corruptions to be reformed, this cool un-
passionate mildness of positive wisdom is not enough
to damp and astonish the proud resistance of carnal and
false doctors, then (that I may have leave to soar awhile
as the poets use) Zeal, whose substance is ethereal,
arming in complete diamond, ascends his fiery chariot
drawn with two blazing meteors, figured like beasts,
but of a higher breed than any the zodiac yields, re-
sembling two of those four which Ezekiel and St. John
84
AN APOLOGY FOR SMECTYMNUUS.
saw; the one visaged like a lion, to express power, high
authority, and indignation; the other of countenance
like a man, to cast derision and scorn upon perverse
and fraudulent seducers : these the invincible
warrior, Zeal, shaking loosely the slack reins, drives
over the heads of scarlet prelates, and such as are in-
solent to maintain traditions, bruising their stiff mecks
under his flaming wheels. Thus did the true prophets
of old combat with the false; thus Christ himself, the
fountain of meekness, found acrimony enough to be
still galling and vexing the prelatical pharisees. But
ye will say, these had immediate warrant from God to
be thus bitter; and I say, so much the plainer is it
proved, that there may be a sanctified bitterness against
the enemies of truth. Yet that ye may not think in-
spiration only the warrant thereof, but that it is as any
other virtue, of moral and general observation, the ex-
ample of Luther may stand for all, whom God made
choice of before others to be of highest eminence and
power in reforming the church; who, not of revelation,
but of judgment, writ so vehemently against the chief
defenders of old untruths in the Romish church, that
his own friends and favourers were many times offended
with the fierceness of his spirit; yet he being cited
before Charles the Fifth to answer for his books, and
having divided them into three sorts, whereof one was
with
of those which he had sharply written, refused, though
upon deliberation given him, to retract or unsay any
word therein, as we may read in Sleidan. Yea, he de-
ſends his eagerness, as being “ of an ardent spirit, and
one who could not write a dull style:” and affirmed,
“he thought it God's will, to have the inventions of
men thus laid open, seeing that matters quietly handled
were quickly forgot.” And herewithal how useful and
available God hath made his tart rhetoric in the church's
cause, he often found by his own experience. For when
he betook himself to lenity and moderation, as they
call it, he reaped nothing but contempt both from Ca-
jetan and Brasmus, from Cocleus, from Ecchius, and
others; insomuch that blaming his friends, who had so
counselled him, he resolved never to run into the like
errour: if at other times he seem to excuse his vehe-
mence, as more than what was meet, I have not ex-
amined through his works, to know how far he gave
way to his own ſervent mind; it shall suffice me to
look to mine own. And this I shall easily aver, though
it may seem a hard saying, that the Spirit of God, who
is purity itself, when he would reprove any fault se-
verely, or but relate things done or said with indigna-
tion by others, abstains not from some words not civil
at other times to be spoken. Omitting that place in
Numbers at the killing of Zimri and Cosbi; done by
Phineas in the height of zeal, related, as the rabbins
expound, not without an obscene word; we may find
in Deuteronomy and three of the prophets, where God,
denouncing bitterly the punishments of idolaters, tells
them in a term immodest to be uttered in cool blood,
that their wives shall be defiled openly. But these,
they will say, were honest words in that age when they
were spoken. Which is more than any rabbin can prove;
and certainly had God been so minded, he could have
picked such words as should never have come into abuse.
What will they say to this P David going against Na-
bal, in the very same breath when he had just before
named the name of God, he vows not “to leave any
alive of Nabal's house that pisseth against the wall.”
But this was unadvisedly spoken, you will answer, and
set down to aggravate his inſirmity. Turn then to the
first of Kings, where God himself uses the phrase, “I
will cut off from Jeroboam him that pisseth against the
wall.” Which had it been an unseemly speech in the
heat of an earnest expression, then we must conclude
that Jonathan or Onkelos the targumists were of cleaner
language than he that made the tongue; for they ren-
der it as briefly, “I will cut off all who are at years of
discretion,” that is to say, so much discretion as to hide
nakedness. Whereas God, who is the author both of
purity and eloquence, chose this phrase as fittest in
that vehement character wherein he spake. Otherwise
that plain word might have easily been forborn ; which
the masoreths and rabbinical scholiasts, not well at-
tending, have often used to blur the margent with Keri
instead of Ketiv, and gave us this insulse rule out of
their Talmud, “That all words which in the law are
written obscenely, must be changed to more civil
words: ” fools, who would teach men to read more de-
cently than God thought good to write. And thus I
take it to be manifest, that indignation against men
and their actions notoriously bad hath leave and autho-
rity ofttimes to utter such words and phrases, as in
common talk were not so mannerly to use. That ye
may know, not only as the historian speaks, “ that all
those things for which men plough, build, or sail, obey
virtue,” but that all words, and whatsoever may be
spoken, shall at some time in an unwonted manner
wait upon her purposes.
Now that the conſutant may also know as he desires,
what force of teaching there is sometimes in laughter;
I shall return him in short, that laughter being one
way of answering “a fool according to his folly,”
teaches two sorts of persons, first, the fool himself “not
to be wise in his own conceit,” as Solomon affirms;
which is certainly a great document to make an unwise
man know himself. Next, it teacheth the hearers, in
as much as scorn is one of those punishments, which
belong to men carmally wise, which is oft in Scripture
declared; for when such are punished, “the simple are
thereby made wise,” iſ Solomon's rule be true. And I
would ask, to what end Eliah mocked the false pro-
phets? was it to shew his wit, or to fulfil his humour?
Doubtless we cannot imagine that great servant of God
had any other end, in all which he there did, but to
teach and instruct the poor misled people. And we
may frequently read, that many of the martyrs in the
midst of their troubles were not sparing to deride and
scoff their superstitious persecutors. Now may the
confutant advise again with Sir Francis Bacon, whether
Eliah and the martyrs did well to turn religion into a
comedy or satire; “to rip up the wounds of idolatry
and superstition with a laughing countenance:” so that
for pious gravity the author here is matched and over-
matched, and for wit and morality in one that follows:
AN APOLOGY E OR SMECTYMNU U.S.
85
“ ——— laughing to teach the truth
What hinders ? as some teachers give to boys
Junkets and knacks that they may learn apace.”
Thus Flaccus in his first satire, and his tenth :
“ ——— Jesting decides great things
Stronglier and better oſt than earnest can.”
I could urge the same out of Cicero and Seneca, but
he may content him with this. And henceforward, if
he can learn, may know as well what are the bounds
and objects of laughter and vchenient reproof, as he
hath known hitherto how to deserve them both. But
lest some may haply think, or thus expostulate with
me after this debatement, who made you the busy
almoner to deal about this dole of laughter and repre-
hension, which no man thanks your bounty for P To
the urbanity of that man I should answer much after
this sort: that I, friend objecter, having read of hea-
then philosophers, some to have taught, that whosoever
would but use his ear to listen, might hear the voice of
his guiding genius ever before him, calling, and as it
were pointing to that way which is his part to follow ;
others, as the stoics, to account reason, which they call
the Hegemonicon, to be the common Mercury conduct-
ing without errour those that give themselves obediently
to be led accordingly : having read this, I could not
esteem so poorly of the faith which I profess, that God
had left nothing to those who had forsaken all other
doctrines for his, to be an inward witness and warrant
of what they have to do, as that they should need to
measure themselves by other men's measures, how to
give scope or limit to their proper actions; for that
were to make us the most at a stand, the most uncertain
and accidental wanderers in our doings, of all religions
in the world. So that the question ere while moved,
who is he that spends thus the benevolence of laughter
and reproof so liberally upon such men as the prelates,
may return with a more just demand, who he is not of
place and knowledge never so mean, under whose con-
tempt and jerk these men are not deservedly fallen P
Neither can religion receive any wound by disgrace
thrown upon the prelates, since religion and they surely
were never in such amity. They rather are the men
who have wounded religion, and their stripes must
heal her. I might also tell them, what Electra in
Sophocles, a wise virgin, answered her wicked mother,
who thought herself too violently reproved by her the
daughter:
'Tis you that say it, not I : you do the deeds,
And your ungodly deeds find me the words.
If therefore the Remonstrant complain of libels, it
is because he feels them to be right aimed. For I ask
again, as before in the Animadversions, how long is it
since he hath disrelished libels 2 We never heard the
least mutter of his voice against them while they flew
abroad without control or check, defaming the Scots
and Puritans. And yet he can remember of none but
Lysimachus Nicanor, and “ that he misliked and cen-
sured.” No more but of one can the Remonstrant re-
member 2 What if I put him in mind of one more ?
What if of one more whereof the Remonstrant in many
likelihoods may be thought the author? Did he never
see a pamphlet intitled after his own fashion, “A Sur-
vey of that foolish, seditious, scandalous, prophane
Libel, the Protestation protested P’’ The child doth not
more expressly refigure the visage of his father, than
that book resembles the style of the Remonstrant, in
those idioms of speech, wherein he seems most to de-
light: and in the seventeenth page three lines together
are taken out of the Remonstrance word for word, not
as a citation, but as an author borrows from himself.
Whoever it be, he may as justly be said to have libel-
led, as he against whom he writes: there ye shall find
another man than is here made shew of, there he bites
as fast as this whines. “Vinegar in the ink” is there
“ the antidote of vipers.” Laughing in a religious
controversy is there “a thrifty physic to expel his
melancholy.” In the mean time the testimony of Sir
Francis Bacon was not misalleged, complaining that
libels on the bishops’ part were uttered openly; and if
he hoped the prelates had no intelligence with the
libellers, he delivers it but as his favourable opinion.
But had he contradicted himself, how could I assoil
him here, more than a little before, where I know not
how, by entangling himself, he leaves an aspersion
upon Job, which by any else I never heard laid to his
charge? For having affirmed that “there is no greater
confusion than the confounding of jest and earnest,”
presently he brings the example of Job, “glancing at
conceits of mirth, when he sat among the people with
the gravity of a judge upon him.” If jest and earnest
be such a confusion, them were the people much wiser
than Job, for “he smiled, and they believed him not.”
To defend libels, which is that whereof I am next
accused, was far from my purpose. I had not so little
share in good name, as to give another that advantage
against myself. The sum of what I said was, that a
more free permission of writing at some times might
be profitable, in such a question especially wherein the
magistrates are not fully resolved ; and both sides
have equal liberty to write, as now they have. Not as
when the prelates bore sway, in whose time the books
of some men were confuted, when they who should
have answered were in close prison, denied the use of
pen or paper. And the divine right of episcopacy was
then valiantly asserted, when he who would have
been respondent must have bethought himself withal
how he could refute the Clink or the Gatehouse. If
now therefore they be pursued with bad words, who
persecuted others with bad deeds, it is a way to lessen
tumult rather than to increase it; whenas anger thus
freely vented spends itself ere it break out into action,
though Machiavel, whom he cites, or any other Ma-
chiavelian priest, think the contrary.
SECT. III.
Now, readers, I bring ye to his third section; wherein
very cautiously and no more than needs, lest I should
take him for some chaplain at hand, some squire of the
86 AN APOLOGY FOR SMECTYMNUUS.
body to his prelate, one that serves not at the altar
only, but at the court cupboard, he will bestow on us
a pretty model of himself; and sobs me out of half a
dozen phthisical mottoes wherever he had them, hop-
ping short in the measure of convulsion-fits; in which
labour the agony of his wit having escaped narrowly,
instead of well-sized periods, he greets us with a quan-
tity of thumb-ring posies. “He has a fortune there-
fore good, because he is content with it.” This is a
piece of sapience not worth the brain of a fruit trencher;
as if content were the measure of what is good or bad
in the gift of fortune. For by this rule a bad man may
have a good fortune, because he may be ofttimes con-
tent with it for many reasons which have no affinity
with virtue, as love of ease, want of spirit to use more,
and the like. “And therefore content,” he says, “be-
cause it neither goes before, nor comes behind his
merit.” Belike then if his fortune should go before
his merit, he would not be content, but resign, if we
believe him, which I do the less, because he implies,
that if it came behind his merit, he would be content
as little. Whereas if a wise man’s content should de-
pend upon such a therefore, because his fortune came
not behind his merit, how many wise men could have
content in this world P In his next pithy symbol I
dare not board him, for he passes all the seven wise
masters of Greece, attributing to himself that which on
my life Solomon durst not: “to have affections so
equally tempered, that they neither too hastily adhere
to the truth before it be fully examined, nor too lazily
afterward.” Which, unless he only were exempted
out of the corrupt mass of Adam, born without sin
original, and living without actual, is impossible.
Had Solomon, (for it behoves me to instance in the
wisest, dealing with such a transcendant sage as this,)
had Solomon affections so equally tempered, as “not
adhering too lazily to the truth,” when God warned
him of his halting in idolatry P do we read that he re-
pented hastily? did not his affections lead him hastily
from an examined truth, how much more would they
lead him slowly to it? Yet this man, beyond a stoic
apathy, ſees truth as in a rapture, and cleaves to it;
not as through the dim glass of his affections, which, in
this frail mansion of flesh, are ever unequally tempered,
pushing forward to errour, and keeping back from truth
ofttimes the best of men. But how far this boaster is
from knowing himself, let his preface speak. Some-
thing I thought it was that made him so quicksighted
to gather such strange things out of the Animadver-
sions, whereof the least conception could not be drawn
from thence, of “suburb-sinks,” sometimes “out of wit
and clothes,” sometimes “in new serge, drinking sack,
and swearing;” now I know it was this equal temper
of his affections, that gave him to see clearer than any
ſennel-rubbed serpent. Lastly, he has resolved “ that
neither person nor cause shall improper him.” I may
mistake his meaning, for the word ye hear is “impro-
per.” But whether if not a person, yet a good parson-
age or impropriation bought out for him, would not
“improper” him, because there may be a quirk in the
word, I leave it for a canonist to resolve.
SECT. IV.
AND thus ends this section, or rather dissection, of
himself, short ye will say both in breadth and extent,
as in our own praises it ought to be, unless wherein a
good mame hath been wrongfully attainted. Right;
but if ye look at what he ascribes to himself, “that
temper of his affections,” which cannot any where be
but in Paradise, all the judicious panegyrics in any
language extant are not half so prolix. And that well
appears in his next removal. For what with putting
his fancy to the tiptoe in this description of himself,
and what with adventuring presently to stand upon
his own legs without the crutches of his margin, which
is the sluice most commonly that feeds the drought of
his text, he comes so lazily on in a simile, with his
“armfull of weeds,” and demeans himself in the dull
expression so like a dough-kneaded thing, that he has
not spirit enough leſt him so far to look to his syntax,
as to avoid nonsense. For it must be understood there
that the stranger, and not he who brings the bundle,
would be deceived in censuring the field, which this
hipshot grammarian cannot set into right frame of con-
struction, neither here in the similitude, nor in the fol-
lowing reddition thereof; which being to this purpose,
that “the faults of the best picked out, and presented:
in gross, seem monstrous, this,” saith he, “you have
done, in pinning on his sleeve the faults of others;” as
if to pick out his own faults, and to pin the faults of
others upon him, were to do the same thing. To an-
swer therefore how I have culled out the evil actions
of the Remonstrant from his virtues, I am acquitted by
the dexterity and conveyance of his nonsense, losing
that for which he brought his parable. But what of
other men's faults I have pinned upon his sleeve, let
him shew. For whether he were the man who termed
the martyrs Foxian confessors, it matters not; he that
shall step up before others to defend a church-govern-
ment, which wants almost no circumstance, but only a
name, to be a plain popedom, a government which
changes the fatherly and ever-teaching discipline of
Christ into that lordly aud uninstructing jurisdiction,
which properly makes the pope Antichrist, makes him-
self an accessory to all the evil committed by those, who
are armed to do mischief by that undue government;
which they, by their wicked deeds, do, with a kind of
passive and unwitting obedience to God, destroy; but
he, by plausible words and traditions against the Scrip-
ture, obstinately seeks to maintain. They, by their
own wickedness ruining their own unjust authority,
make room for good to succeed; but he, by a shew of
good upholding the evil which in them undoes itself,
hinders the good which they by accident let in. Their
manifest crimes serve to bring forth an ensuing good,
and hasten a remedy against themselves; and his seem-
ing good tends to reinforce their self-punishing crimes
and his own, by doing his best to delay all redress.
Shall not all the mischief which other men do be laid
to his charge, if they do it by that unchurch-like power
which he defends 2 Christ saith, “he that is not with
AN APOLOGY FOR SMECTYMNUUS.
87
me, is against me; and he that gathers not with me,
scatters.” In what degree of enmity to Christ shall we
place that man then, who so is with him, as that it
makes more against him ; and so gathers with him,
that it scatters more from him 2 Shall it avail that man
to say he honours the martyrs’ memory, and treads in
their steps ? No; the pharisees confessed as much of
the holy prophets. I.et him, and such as he, when they
are in their best actions, even at their prayers, look to
hear that which the pharisees heard from John the
Baptist when they least expected, when they rather
looked for praise from him; “generation of vipers,
who hath warned ye to flee from the wrath to come P”
Now that ye have started back from the purity of Scrip-
ture, which is the only rule of reformation, to the old
vomit of your traditions; now that ye have either
troubled or leavened the people of God, and the doc-
trine of the gospel, with scandalous ceremonies and
mass-borrowed liturgies, do ye turn the use of that
truth which ye profess, to countenance that falsehood
which ye gain by P. We also reverence the martyrs, but
rely only upon the Scriptures. And why we ought not to
rely upon the martyrs, I shall be content with such
reasons as my confuter himself affords me; who is, I
must needs say for him, in that point as officious an
adversary as I would wish to any man. For, “first,”
saith he, “there may be a martyr in a wrong cause,
and as courageous in suffering as the best; sometimes
in a good cause with a forward ambition displeasing to
God. Other whiles they that story of them out of blind
zeal or malice, may write many things of them untruly.”
If this be so, as ye hear his own confession, with what
safety can the Remonstrant rely upon the martyrs as
“patrons of his cause,” whenas any of those who are
alleged for the approvers of our liturgy or prelaty,
might have been, though not in a wrong cause, mar-
tyrs P. Yet whether not vainly ambitious of that honour,
or whether not misreported or misunderstood in those
their opinions, God only knows. The testimony of
what we believe in religion must be such as the con-
science may rest on to be infallible and incorruptible,
which is only the word of God.
SECT. V.
His fifth section finds itself aggrieved that the Re-
monstrant should be taxed with the illegal proceeding
of the high commission, and oath ex officio: and first,
“whether they were illegal or no, it is more than he
knows.” See this malevolent fox' that tyranny which
the whole kingdom cried out against as stung with
adders and scorpions, that tyranny which the parlia-
ment, in compassion of the church and commonwealth,
hath dissolved and fetched up by the roots, for which
it hath received the public thanks and blessings of
thousands; this obscure thorn-eater of malice and de-
traction as well as of quodlibets and sophisms, knows
not whether it were illegal or not. Evil, evil would
be your reward, ye worthies of the parliament, if this
sophister and his accomplices had the censuring or the
sounding forth of your labours. And that the Remon-
strant cannot wash his hands of all the cruelties exer-
cised by the prelates, is past doubting. They scourged
the confessors of the gospel, and he held the scourgers'
garments. They executed their rage; and he, if he
did nothing else, defended the government with the
oath that did it, and the ceremonies which were the
cause of it; does he think to be counted guiltless *
SECT. VI.
IN the following section I must foretel ye, readers,
the doings will be rough and dangerous, the baiting of
a satire. And if the work seem more trivial or boister-
ous than for this discourse, let the Remonstrant thank
the folly of this conſuter, who could not let a private
word pass, but he must make all this blaze of it. I
had said, that because the Remonstrant was so much
offended with those who were tart against the prelates,
sure he loved toothless satires, which I took were as
improper as a toothed sleekstone. This champion from
behind the arras cries out, that those toothless satires
were of the Remonstrant’s making ; and arms himself
here tooth and nail, and horn to boot, to supply the
want of teeth, or rather of gums in the satires. And
for an onset tells me, that the simile of a sleekstone
“shews I can be as bold with a prelate as familiar
with a laundress.” But does it not argue rather the
lascivious promptness of his own fancy, who, from the
harmless mention of a sleekstone, could neigh out the
remembrance of his old conversation among the vira-
For me, if he move me, I shall claim
his own oath, the oath ex officio against any priest or
prelate in the kingdom, to have ever as much hated
such pranks as the best and chastest of them all. That
exception which I made against toothless satires, the
confuter hopes I had from the satirist, but is far de-
ceived : neither have I ever read the hobbling distich
which he means. For this good hap I had from a
careful education, to be inured and seasoned betimes
with the best and elegantest authors of the learned
tongues, and thereto brought an ear that could measure
a just cadence, and scan without articulating : rather
nice and humorous in what was tolerable, than patient
to read every drawling versifier. Whence lighting
upon this title of “toothless satires,” I will not conceal
ye what I thought, readers, that sure this must be some
sucking satire, who might have done better to have
used his coral, and made an end of breeding, ere he
took upon him to wield a satire's whip. But when I
heard him talk of “scowering the rusty swords of elvish
knights,” do not blame me, if I changed my thought,
and concluded him some desperate cutler. But why
“ his scornful muse could never abide with tragic shoes
her ancles for to hide,” the pace of the verse told me
that her mawkin knuckles were never shapen to that
ginian trollops ?
88 AN APOLOGY FOR SMECTYMNUUS.
royal buskin. And turning by chance to the sixth
satire of his second book, I was confirmed ; where hav-
ing begun loſtily “in Heaven's universal alphabet,”
he falls down to that wretched poorness and frigidity,
as to talk of “Bridge street in Heaven, and the Ostler
of Heaven,” and there wanting other matter to catch
him a heat, (for certain he was in the frozen zone
miserably benummed,) with thoughts lower than any
beadle betakes him to whip the signposts of Cambridge
alehouses, the ordinary subject of freshmen's tales, and
in a strain as pitiful. Which for him who would be
counted the first English satire, to abase himself to, who
might have learned better among the Latin and Italian
satirists, and in our own tongue from the “Vision and
Creed of Pierce Plowman,” besides others before him,
manifested a presumptuous undertaking with weak and
unexamined shoulders. For a satire as it was born out
of a tragedy, so ought to resemble his parentage, to
strike high, and adventure dangerously at the most
eminent vices among the greatest persons, and not to
creep into every blind tap-house, that fears a constable
more than a satire. But that such a poem should be
toothless, I still affirm it to be a bull, taking away the
essence of that which it calls itself. For if it bite nei-
ther the persons nor the vices, how is it a satire 2 And
if it bite either, how is it toothless P So that toothless
satires are as much as if he had said toothless teeth.
What we should do therefore with this learned com-
ment upon teeth and horns, which hath brought this
confutant into his pedantic kingdom of Cornucopia, to
reward him for glossing upon horns even to the Hebrew
root, I know not; unless we should commend him to
be lecturer in East-cheap upon St. Luke's day, when
they send their tribute to that famous haven by Dept-
ford. But we are not like to escape him so. For now
the worm of criticism works in him, he will tell us the
derivation of “German rutters, of meat, and of ink,”
which doubtless, rightly applied with some gall in it,
may prove good to heal this tetter of pedagogism that
bespreads him, with such a tenesmus of originating,
that if he be an Arminian, and deny original sin, all the
etymologies of his book shall witness, that his brain is
not meanly tainted with that infection.
SECT. VII.
His seventh section labours to cavil out the flaws
which were found in the Remonstrant's logic; who
having laid down for a general proposition, that “civil
polity is variable and arbitrary,” from whence was in-
ferred logically upon him, that he had concluded the
polity of England to be arbitrary, for general includes
particular; here his defendant is not ashamed to con-
fess, that the Remonstrant's proposition was sophistical
by a fallacy called ad plures interrogationes: which
sounds to me somewhat strange, that a Remonstrant
of that pretended sincerity should bring deceitful and
double-dealing propositions to the parliament. The
truth is, he had let slip a shrewd passage ere he was
aware, not thinking the conclusion would turn upon
him with such a terrible edge, and not knowing how
to wind out of the briars, he, or his substitute, seems
more willing to lay the integrity of his logic to pawn,
and grant a fallacy in his own major, where none is,
than to be forced to uphold the inference. For that
distinction of possible, and lawful, is ridiculous to be
sought for in that proposition ; no man doubting that
it is possible to change the form of civil polity; and
that it is held lawful by that major, the word “arbi-
trary” implies. Nor will this help him, to deny that
it is arbitrary “at any time, or by any undertakers,”
(which are the limitations invented by him since,) for
when it stands as he will have it now by his second
edition, “civil polity is variable, but not at any time,
or by any undertakers,” it will result upon him, belike
then at some time, and by some undertakers it may.
And so he goes on mincing the matter, till he meets
with something in Sir Francis Bacon; then he takes
heart again, and holds his major at large. But by and
by, as soon as the shadow of Sir Francis hath left him,
he falls off again warping, and warping, till he come
to contradict himself in diameter; and denies flatly that
it is “either variable or arbitrary, being once settled.”
Which third shift is no less a piece of laughter: for,
before the polity was settled, how could it be variable,
whenas it was no polity at all, but either an anarchy or
a tyranny ? That limitation therefore, of after-settling,
is a mere tautology. So that, in fine, his former asser-
tion is now recanted, and “civil polity is neither vari-
able nor arbitrary.”
SECT, VIII.
WHATEveR else may persuade me, that this confuta-
tion was not made without some assistance or advice
of the Remonstrant, yet in this eighth section that his
hand was not greatly intermixed, I can easily believe.
for it begins with this surmise, that “not having to
accuse the Remonstrant to the king, I do it to the par-
liament;” which conceit of the man clearly shoves the
king out of the parliament, and makes two bodies of
one. Whereas the Remonstrant, in the epistle to his
last “Short Answer,” gives his supposal, “that they
cannot be severed in the rights of their several concern-
ments.” Mark, readers, if they cannot be severed in
what is several, (which casts a bull's eye to go yoke
with the toothless satires,) how should they be severed
in their common concernments, the welfare of the land,
by due accusation of such as are the common griev-
ances, among which I took the Remonstrant to be one?
And therefore if I accused him to the parliament, it
was the same as to accuse him to the king. Next he
casts it into the dish of I know not whom, “that they
flatter some of the house, and libel others whose con-
sciences made them vote contrary to some proceedings.”
Those some proceedings can be understood of nothing
AN APOLOGY FOR SMECTYMNUUS.
89
else but the deputy's execution. And can this private
concoctor of malecontent, at the very instant when he
pretends to extol the parliament, afford thus to blur
over, rather than to mention, that public triumph of
their justice and constancy, so high, so glorious, so
reviving to the fainted commonwealth, with such a
suspicious and murmuring expression as to call it
some proceedings 2 And yet immediately he falls to
glossing, as if he were the only man that rejoiced at
these times. But I shall discover to ye, readers, that
this his praising of them is as full of nonsense and
scholastic foºpery, as his meaning he himself discovers
to be full of close malignity. His first encomium is,
“that the sun looks not upon a braver, nobler convoca-
tion than is that of king, pecrs, and commons.” One
thing I beg of ye, readers, as ye bear any zeal to
learning, to elegance, and that which is called decorum
in the writing of praise, especially on such a noble ar-
gument, ye would not be offended, though I rate this
cloistered lubber according to his deserts. Where didst
thou learn to be so aguish, so pusillanimous, thou losel
bachelor of art, as against all custom and use of speech
to term the high and sovereign court of parliament, a
convocation P Was this the flower of all the synonimas
and voluminous papers, whose best folios are predes-
timed to no better end than to make winding-sheets in
lent for pilchers? Couldst thou presume thus with one
word's speaking to clap as it were under hatches the
king with all his peers and gentry into square caps
and monkish hoods 2 How well dost thou now appear
to be a chip of the old block, that could find “Bridge
street and alehouses in heaven P’’ Why didst thou not,
to be his perfect imitator, liken the king to the vice-
chancellor, and the lords, to the doctors P. Neither is
this an indignity only but a reproach, to call that in-
violable residence of justice and liberty, by such an
odious name as now a “convocation” is become, which
would be nothing injured, though it were styled the
house of bondage, whereout so many cruel tasks, so
many unjust burdens have been laden upon the bruised
consciences of so many Christians throughout the land.
But which of those worthy deeds, whereof we and our
posterity must confess this parliament to have dome so
many and so noble, which of those memorable acts
comes first into his praises 8 None of all, not one.
What will he then praise them for 2 Not for any thing
doing, but for deferring to do, for deferring to chastise
his lewd and insolent compriests: not that they have
deferred all, but that he hopes they will remit what is
yet behind. For the rest of his oratory that follows,
so just is it in the language of stall epistle nonsense,
that if he who made it can understand it, I deny not
but that he may deserve for his pains a cast doublet.
When a man would look he should vent something of
his own, as ever in a set speech the manner is with
him that knows any thing, he, lest we should not take
notice enough of his barren stupidity, declares it by
alphabet, and refers us to odd remnants in his topics.
Nor yet content with the wonted room of his margin,
but he must cut out large docks and crecks into his text,
to unlade the foolish frigate of his unseasonable autho-
rities, not there with to praise the parliament, but to
tell them what he would have them do. What else
there is, he jumbles together in such a lost construction,
as no man, either lettered or unlettered, will be able to
piece up. I shall spare to transcribe him, but if I do
him wrong let me be so dealt with.
Now although it be a digression from the ensuing
matter, yet because it shall not be said I am apter to
blame others than to make trial myself, and that I may
after this harsh discord touch upon a smoother string
a while to entertain myself and him that list, with some
more pleasing fit, and not the least to testify the gra-
titude which I owe to those public benefactors of their
country, for the share I enjoy in the common peace
and good by their incessant labours; I shall be so
troublesome to this declaimer for once, as to shew him
what he might have better said in their praise; wherein
I must mention only some few things of many, for
more than that to a digression may not be granted.
Although certainly their actions are worthy not thus to
be spoken of by the way, yet if hereafter it befall me
to attempt something more answerable to their great
merits, I perceive how hopeless it will be to reach the
height of their praises at the accomplishment of that
expectation that waits upon their noble deeds, the un-
finishing whereof already surpasses what others before
them have left enacted with their utmost performance
through many ages. And to the end we may be confi-
dent that what they do, proceeds neither from uncertain
opinion, nor sudden counsels, but from mature wisdom,
deliberate virtue, and dear affection to the public good;
I shall begin at that which made them likeliest in the
eyes of good men to effect those things for the recovery
of decayed religion and the commonwealth, which they
who were best minded had long wished for, but few,
as the times then were desperate, had the courage to
hope for. First, therefore, the most of them being
either of ancient and high nobility, or at least of known
and well reputed ancestry, which is a great advantage
towards virtue one way, but in respect of wealth, ease,
and flattery, which accompany a mice and tender edu-
cation, is as much a hinderance another way: the good
which lay before them they took, in imitating the
worthiest of their progenitors; and the evil which as-
saulted their younger years by the temptation of riches,
high birth, and that usual bringing up, perhaps too
favourable and too remiss, through the strength of an
inbred goodness, and with the help of divine grace,
that had marked them out for no mean purposes, they
nobly overcame. Yet had they a greater danger to
cope with ; for being trained up in the knowledge of
learning, and sent to those places which were intended
to be the seed plots of piety and the liberal arts, but
were become the nurseries of superstition and empty
speculation, as they were prosperous against those
vices which grow upon youth out of idleness and
superfluity, so were they happy in working off the
harms of their abused studies and labours; correct-
ing by the clearness of their own judgment the
errours of their misinstruction, and were, as David
was, wiser than their teachers, And although their
90
AN APOLOGY FOR SMECTYMNUUS.
lot fell into such times, and to be bred in such
places, where if they chanced to be taught any thing
good, or of their own accord had learnt it, they might
see that presently untaught them by the custom and ill
example of their elders; so far in all probability was
their youth from being misled by the single power of
example, as their riper years were known to be un-
moved with the baits of preferment, and undaunted for
any discouragement and terrour which appeared often
to those that loved religion and their native liberty;
which two things God hath inseparably knit to ether,
and hath disclosed to us, that they who seek to corrupt
our religion, are the same that would enthral our civil
liberty. Thus in the midst of all disadvantages and
disrespects, (some also at last not without imprisonment
and open disgraces in the cause of their country,) hav-
ing given proof of themselves to be better made and
framed by nature to the love and practice of virtue,
than others under the holiest precepts and best exam-
ples have been headstrong and prone to vice; and
having in all the trials of a firm ingraſted honesty not
oftener buckled in the conflict than given every oppo-
sition the foil ; this moreover was added by favour
from heaven, as an ornament and happiness to their
virtue, that it should be neither obscure in the opinion
of men, nor eclipsed for want of matter equal to illus-
trate itself; God and man consenting in joint approba-
tion to choose them out as worthiest above others to be
both the great reformers of the church, and the restorers
of the commonwealth. Nor did they deceive that ex-
pectation which with the eyes and desires of their
country was fixed upon them ; for no sooner did the
force of so much united excellence meet in one globe
of brightness and efficacy, but encountering the daz-
zled resistance of tyranny, they gave not over, though
their enemies were strong and subtle, till they had laid
her groveling upon the fatal block; with one stroke
winning again our lost liberties and charters, which
our forefathers after so many battles could scarce main-
tain. And meeting next, as I may so resemble, with
the second life of tyranny (for she was grown an am-
biguous monster, and to be slain in two shapes) guard-
ed with superstition, which hath no small power to
captivate the minds of men otherwise most wise, they
neither were taken with her mitred hypocrisy, nor
terrified with the push of her bestial horns, but break-
ing them, immediately forced her to unbend the pon-
tifical brow, and recoil; which repulse only given to
the prelates (that we may imagine how happy their
removal would be) was the producement of such glo-
rious effects and consequences in the church, that if I
should compare them with those exploits of highest
fame in poems and panegyrics of old, I am certain it
would but diminish and impair their worth, who are
now my argument; for those ancient worthies deliver-
ed men from such tyrants as were content to inforce
only an outward obedience, letting the mind be as free
as it could ; but these have freed us from a doctrine of
tyranny, that offered violence and corruption even to
the inward persuasion. They set at liberty nations and
cities of men good and bad mixed together; but these
opening the prisons and dungeons, called out of dark-
ness and bonds the elect martyrs and witnesses of their
Redeemer. They restored the body to ease and wealth;
but these, the oppressed conscience to that freedom
which is the chief prerogative of the gospel; taking
off those cruel burdens imposed not by necessity, as
other tyrants are wont for the safeguard of their lives,
but laid upon our necks by the strange wilfulness and
wantonness of a needless and jolly persecutor called
Indifference. Lastly, some of those ancient deliverers
have had immortal praises for preserving their citizens
from a famine of corn. But these, by this only repulse
of an unholy heirarchy, almost in a moment replenish-
ed with saving knowledge their country nigh famished
for want of that which should feed their souls. All
this being done while two armies in the field stood
gazing on, the one in reverence of such nobleness
quietly gave back and dislodged ; the other, spite of
the unruliness, and doubted fidelity in some regiments,
was either persuaded or compelled to disband and re-
tire home. With such a majesty had their wisdom be-
girt itself, that whereas others had levied war to subdue
a nation that sought for peace, they sitting here in
peace, could so many miles extend the force of their
single words, as to overawe the dissolute stoutness of
an armed power secretly stirred up and almost hired
against them. And having by a solemn protestation
vowed themselves and the kingdom anew to God and
his service, and by a prudent foresight above what their
fathers thought on, prevented the dissolution and frus-
trating of their designs by an untimely breaking up ;
notwithstanding all the treasonous plots against them,
all the rumours either of rebellion or invasion, they
have not been yet brought to change their constant re-
solution, ever to think fearlessly of their own safeties,
and hopefully of the commonwealth : which hath
gained them such an admiration from all good men,
that mow they hear it as their ordinary surname, to be
saluted the fathers of their country, and sit as gods
among daily petitions and public thanks flowing in
upon them. Which doth so little yet exalt them in
their own thoughts, that, with all gentle affability and
courteous acceptance, they both receive and return that
tribute of thanks which is tendered them ; testifying
their zeal and desire to spend themselves as it were
piece-meal upon the grievances and wrongs of their
distressed nation ; insomuch that the meanest artizans
and labourers, at other times also women, and often the
younger sort of servants assembling with their com-
plaints, and that sometimes in a less humble guise than
for petitioners, have gone with confidence, that neither
their meanness would be rejected, nor their simplicity
contemned; nor yet their urgency distasted either by
the dignity, wisdom, or moderation of that supreme
senate; nor did they depart unsatisfied. And indeed,
if we consider the general concourse of suppliants, the
free and ready admittance, the willing and speedy re-
dress in what is possible, it will not seem much other-
wise, than as if some divine commission from heaven
were descended to take into hearing and commiseration
the long remediless afflictions of this kingdom; were
AN APOLOGY FOR SMECTYMNUUS. 91
it not that none more than themselves labour to remove
and divert such thoughts, lest men should place too
much confidence in their persons, still referring us and
our prayers to him that can grant all, and appointing
the monthly return of public fasts and supplications.
Therefore the more they seek to humble themselves, the
more does God, by manifest signs and testimonies,
visibly honour their proceedings; and sets them as the
mediators of this his covenant, which he offers us to
renew. Wicked men daily conspire their hurt, and it
comes to nothing; rebellion rages in our Irish province,
but, with miraculous and lossless victories offew against
many, is daily discomfited and broken; if we neglect
not this early pledge of God's inclining towards us, by
the slackness of our needful aids. And whereas at other
times we count it ample honour when God vouchsafes
to make man the instrument and subordinate worker
of his gracious will, such acceptation have their prayers
found with him, that to them he hath been pleased to
make himself the agent, and immediate performer of
their desires; dissolving their difficulties when they
are thought inexplicable, cutting out ways for them
where no passage could be seen; as who is there so
regardless of divine Providence, that from late occur-
rences will not confess? If therefore it be so high a
grace when men are preferred to be but the inferior
officers of good things from God, what is it when God
himself condescends, and works with his own hands to
fulfil the requests of men 2 Which I leave with them as
the greatest praise that can belong to human nature:
not that we should think they are at the end of their
glorious progress, but that they will go on to follow his
Almighty leading, who seems to have thus covenanted
with them; that if the will and the endeavour shall be
theirs, the performance and the perfecting shall be his.
Whence only it is that I have not feared, though many
wise men have miscarried in praising great designs
before the utmost event, because I see who is their as-
sistant, who is their confederate, who hath engaged his
omnipotent arm to support and crown with success their
faith, their fortitude, their just and magnanimous ac-
tions, till he have brought to pass all that expected good
which, his servants trust, is in his thoughts to bring upon
this land in the full and perfect reformation of his church.
Thus far I have digressed, readers, from my former
subject; but into such a path, as I doubt not ye will
agree with me, to be much fairer and more delightful
than the roadway I was in. And how to break off sud-
denly into those jarring notes which this confuter hath
set me, I must be wary, unless I can provide against
offending the ear, as some musicians are wont skilfully
to fall out of one key into another, without breach of har-
mony. By good luck therefore his ninth section is spent
in mournful elegy, certain passionate soliloquies, and two
whole pages of interrogatories that praise the Remon-
strant even to the sonneting of “his fresh cheek, quick
eyes, round tongue, agil hand, and nimble invention.”
In his tenth section he will needs erect figures, and
tell fortunes; “I am no bishop,” he says, “I was never
born to it.” Let me tell therefore this wizard, since he
calculates so right, that he may know there be in the
world, and I among those, who nothing admire his
idol a bishopric ; and hold that it wants so much to
be a blessing, as that I rather deem it the merest, the
falsest, the most unfortunate gift of fortune. And were
the punishment and misery of being a prelate bishop
terminated only in the person, and did not extend to
the affliction of the whole diocese, if I would wish
any thing in the bitterness of soul to mine enemy, I
would wish him the biggest and fattest bishopric. But
he proceeds; and the familiar belike informs him, that
“a rich widow, or a lecture, or both, would content
me: ” whereby I perceive him to be more ignorant in
his art of divining than any gipsy. For this I cannot
omit without ingratitude to that Providence above,
who hath ever bred me up in plenty, although my life
hath not been unexpensive in learning, and voyaging
about; so long as it shall please him to lend me what
he hath hitherto thought good, which is enough to
scrve me in all honest and liberal occasions, and some-
thing over besides, I were unthankful to that highest
bounty, if I should make myself so poor, as to solicit
needily any such kind of rich hopes as this fortune-
teller dreams of And that he may further learn how
his astrology is wide all the houses of heaven in spell-
ing marriages, I care not if I tell him thus much pro-
ſessedly, though it be the losing of my rich hopes, as
he calls them, that I think with them who, both in pru-
dence and elegance of spirit, would choose a virgin of
mean fortunes honestly bred, before the wealthiest
widow. The fiend therefore, that told our Chaldean
the contrary, was a lying fiend. His next venom he
utters against a prayer, which he found in the Animad-
versions, angry it seems to find any prayers but in the
service book; he dislikes it, and I therefore like it
the better. “It was theatrical,” he says; and yet it
consisted most of Scripture language; it had no rubric
to be sung in an antic cope upon the stage of a high
altar. “It was bigmouthed,” he says; no marvel, if
it were framed as the voice of three kingdoms; neither
was it a prayer so much as a hymn in prose, frequent
both in the prophets, and in human authors; therefore
the style was greater than for an ordinary prayer. “It
was an astonishing prayer.” I thank him for that con-
fession, so it was intended to astound and to astonish
the guilty prelates; and this confuter confesses, that
with him it wrought that effect. But in that which
follows, he does not play the soothsayer, but the dia-
bolic slanderer of prayers. “It was made,” he says,
“not so much to please God, or to benefit the weal
public,” (how dares the viper judge" that?) “but to
intimate,” saith he, “ your good abilities to her that is
your rich hopes, your Maronilla.” How hard is it
when a man meets with a fool, to keep his tongue from
folly . That were miserable indeed to be a courtier of
Maronilla, and withal of such a hapless invention, as
that no way should be left me to present my meaning
but to make myself a canting probationer of orisons.
The Remonstrant, when he was as young as I, could
“Teach each hollow grove to sound his love,
Wearying echo with one changeless word.”
Toothless Satires.
92
AN APOLOGY FOR SMECTYMNUUS.
And so he well might, and all his auditory besides
with his “teach each.”
“Whether so me list my lovely thoughts to sing,
Come dance ye nimble dryads by my side,
Whiles I report my fortunes or my loves.”
Toothless Satires.
Delicious! he had that whole bevy at command
whether in morrice or at maypole; whilst I by this
figure-caster must be imagined in such distress as to
sue to Maronilla, and yet left so impoverished of what
to say, as to turn my liturgy into my lady's psalter.
Believe it, graduate, I am not altogether so rustic, and
nothing so irreligious, but as far distant from a lec-
turer, as the merest laic, for any consecrating hand of
a prelate that shall ever touch me. Yet I shall not
decline the more for that, to speak my opinion in the
controversy next moved, “whether the people may be
allowed for competent judges of a minister's ability.”
For how else can be fulfilled that which God hath pro-
mised, to pour out such abundance of knowledge upon
all sorts of men in the times of the gospel P How should
the people examine the doctrine which is taught them,
as Christ and his apostles continually bid them do P
How should they “discern and beware of false pro-
phets, and try every spirit,” if they must be thought
unfit to judge of the minister's abilities 2 The apostles
ever laboured to persuade the christian flock, that they
“were called in Christ to all perfectness of spiritual
knowledge, and full assurance of understanding in the
mystery of God.” But the non-resident and plurality-
gaping prelates, the gulfs and whirlpools of benefices,
but the dry pits of all sound doctrine, that they may
the better preach what they list to their sheep, are still
possessing them that they are sheep indeed, without
judgment, without understanding, “the very beasts of
mount Sinai,” as this confuter calls them; which words
of theirs may serve to condemn them out of their own
mouths, and to shew the gross contrarieties that are in
their opinions: for while none think the people so void
of knowledge as the prelates think them, none are so
backward and malignant as they to bestow knowledge
upon them; both by suppressing the frequency of ser-
mons, and the printed explanations of the English
Bible. No marvel if the people turn beasts, when their
teachers themselves, as Isaiah calls them, “are dumb
and greedy dogs, that can never have enough, ignor
ant, blind, and cannot understand; who while they
all look their own way, every one for his gain from his
º quarter,” how many parts of the land are fed with
windy ceremoniés instead of sincere milk; and while
one prelate enjoys the nourishment and right of twenty
ministers, how many waste places are left as dark as
“Galilee of the Gentiles, sitting in the region and sha-
dow of death,” without preaching minister, without
light. So little care they of beasts to make them men,
that by their sorcerous doctrine of formalities, they take
the way to transform them out of christian men into
judaizing beasts. Had they but taught the land, or
suffered it to be taught, as Christ would it should have
been in all plentecus dispensation of the word, then the
poor mechanic might have so accustomed his ear to
good teaching, as to have discerned between faithful
teachers and false. But now, with a most inhuman
cruelty, they who have put out the people's eyes, re-
proach them of their blindness; just as the Pharisees
their true fathers were wont, who could not endure
that the people should be thought competent judges of
Christ's doctrine, although we know they judged far
better than those great rabbies: yet “this people,” said
they, “that knows not the law is accursed.” We need
not the authority of Pliny brought to tell us, the people
cannot judge of a minister: yet that hurts not. For
as none can judge of a painter, or statuary, but he who
is an artist, that is, either in the practice or theory,
which is often separated from the practice, and judges
learnedly without it; so none can judge of a christian
teacher, but he who hath either the practice, or the know-
ledge of christian religion, though not so artfully
digested in him. And who almost of the meanest
Christians hath not heard the Scriptures often read from
his childhood, besides so many sermons and lectures
more in number than any student hath heard in philo-
sophy, whereby he may easily attain to know when he
is wisely taught, and when weakly £ whereof three
ways I remember are set down in Scripture; the one
is to read often that best of books written to this pur-
pose, that not the wise only, but the simple and ignor-
ant, may learn by them; the other way to know of a
minister is, by the life he leads, whereof the meanest
understanding may be apprehensive. The last way to
judge aright in this point is, when he who judges, lives
a christian life himself. Which of these three will the
conſuter affirm to exceed the capacity of a plain ar-
tizan P And what reason then is there left, wherefore
he should be denied his voice in the election of his
minister, as not thought a competent discerner P It is
but arrogance therefore, and the pride of a metaphy-
sical fume, to think that “the mutinous rabble’” (for so
he calls the christian congregation) “would be so mis-
taken in a clerk of the university,” that were to be their
minister. I doubt me those clerks, that think so, are
more mistaken in themselves; and what with truanting
and debauchery, what with false grounds and the
weakness of natural faculties in many of them, (it be-
ing a maxim in some men to send the simplest of their
sons thither,) perhaps there would be found among them
as many unsolid and corrupted judgments both in doc-
trine and life, as in any other two corporations of like
bigness. This is undoubted, that if any carpenter, Smith,
or weaver, were such a bungler in his trade, as the
greater number of them are in their profession, he would
starve for any custom. And should he exercise his ma-
nufacture as little as they do their talents, he would ſor-
get his art; and should he mistake his tools as they do
theirs, he would mar all the work he took in hand.
How few among them that know to write, or speak in
a pure style; much less to distinguish the ideas, and
various kinds of style; in Latin barbarous, and oft not
without solecisms, declaiming in rugged and miscel-
laneous gear blown together by the four winds, and in
their choice preferring the gay rankness of Apuleius,
Arnobius, or any modern fustianist, before the native
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93
Iatinisms of Cicero. In the Greek tongue most of
them unlettered, or “unentered to any sound proficiency
in those attic masters of moral wisdom and eloquence.”
In the Hebrew text, which is so necessary to be under-
stood, except it be some few of them, their lips are
utterly uncircumcised. No less are they out of the
way in philosophy, pestering their heads with the
sapless dotages of old Paris and Salamanca. And that
which is the main point, in their sermons affecting the
comments and postils of friars and Jesuits, but scorning
and slighting the reformed writers; insomuch that the
better sort among them will confess it a rare matter to
hear a true edifying sermon in either of their great
churches; and that such as are most hummed and ap-
plauded there, would scarcely be suffered the second
hearing in a grave congregation of pious Christians.
Is there cause why these men should overwean, and be
so queasy of the rude multitude, lest their deep worth
should be undervalued for want of fit umpires 2 No,
my matriculated confutant, there will not want in any
congregation of this island, that hath not been alto-
gether famished or wholly perverted with prelatish
leaven; there will not want divers plain and solid
men, that have learned by the experience of a good
conscience, what it is to be well taught, who will soon
look through and through both the loſty nakedness of
your latinizing barbarian, and the finical goosery of
your meat sermon actor. And so I leave you and your
fellow “stars,” as you term them, “ of either horizon,”
meaning I suppose either hemisphere, unless you will
be ridiculous in your astronomy: for the rational hori-
zon in heaven is but one, and the sensible horizons in
earth are innumerable; so that your allusion was as
erroneous as your stars. But that you did well to
prognosticate them all at lowest in the horizon; that is,
either seeming bigger than they are through the mist
and vapour which they raise, or else sinking and wasted
to the snuff in their western socket.
SECT. XI.
His eleventh section intends I know not what, unless
to clog us with the residue of his phlegmatic sloth,
discussing with a heavy pulse the “expedience of set
forms;” which no question but to some, and for some
time may be permitted, and perhaps there may be
usefully set forth by the church a common directory of
public prayer, especially in the administration of the
Sacraments. But that it should therefore be enforced
where both minister and people profess to have no
need, but to be scandalized by it, that, I hope, every
sensible Christian will deny: and the reasons of such
denial the conſuter himself, as his bounty still is to his
adversary, will give us out of his affirmation. First
saith he, “God in his providence hath chosen some to
teach others, and pray for others, as ministers and
Pastors.” Whence I gather, that however the faculty
of others may be, yet that they whom God hath set
apart to his ministry, are by him endued with an ability
of prayer; because their office is to pray for others,
and not to be the lip-working deacons of other men's
appointed words. Nor is it easily credible, that he who
can preach well, should be unable to pray well; whenas
it is indeed the same ability to speak affirmatively, or
doctrinally, and only by changing the mood, to speak
prayingly. In vain therefore do they pretend to want
utterance in prayer, who can find utterance to preach.
And if prayer be the gift of the Spirit, why do they
admit those to the ministry, who want a main gift of
their function, and prescribe gifted men to use that
which is the remedy of another man's want; setting
them their tasks to read, whom the Spirit of God stands
ready to assist in his ordinance with the giſt of free
conceptions P What if it be granted to the infirmity
of some ministers (though such seem rather to be half
ministers) to help themselves with a set form, shall it
therefore be urged upon the plenteous graces of others?
And let it be granted to some people while they are
babes, in christian giſts, were it not better to take it
away soon after, as we do loitering books and inter-
lineary translations from children; to stir up and exer-
cise that portion of the Spirit which is in them, and
not impose it upon congregations who not only deny
to need it, but as a thing troublesome and offensive,
refuse it 2 Another reason which he brings for liturgy,
is “the preserving of order, unity, and piety;” and
the same shall be my reason against liturgy. For I,
readers, shall always be of this opinion, that obedience
to the spirit of God, rather than to the fair seeming
pretences of men, is the best and most dutiful order
that a Christian can observe. If the Spirit of God
manifest the gift of prayer in his minister, what more
seemly order in the congregation, than to go along
with that man in our devoutest affections P For him
to abridge himself by reading, and to forestall himself
in those petitions, which he must either onlit, or vainly
repeat, when he comes into the pulpit under a shew
of order, is the greatest disorder. Nor is unity less
broken, especially by our liturgy, though this author
would almost bring the communion of saints to a com-
munion of liturgical words. For what other reformed
church holds communion with us by our liturgy, and
does not rather dislike it? And among ourselves, who
knows it not to have been a perpetual cause of disunion?
Lastly, it hinders piety rather than sets it forward,
being more apt to weaken the spiritual faculties, if the
people be not weaned from it in due time; as the daily
pouring in of hot waters quenches the natural heat.
For not only the body and the mind, but also the im-
provement of God's Spirit, is quickened by using.
Whereas they who will ever adhere to liturgy, bring
themselves in the end to such a pass by overmuch
leaning, as to lose even the legs of their devotion.
These inconveniencies and dangers follow the compel-
ling of set forms: but that the toleration of the English
liturgy now in use is more dangerous than the com-
pelling of any other, which the reformed churches use,
these reasons following may evince. To contend that
it is fantastical, if not senseless in some places, were a
94
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copious argument, especially in the Responsories.
For such alternations as are there used must be by
several persons; but the minister and the people can-
not so sever their interests, as to sustain several per-
sons; he being the only mouth of the whole body
which he presents. And if the people pray, he being
silent, or they ask any one thing, and he another, it
either changes the property, making the priest the
people, and the people the priest, by turns, or else
makes two persons and two bodies representative where
there should be but one. Which, if it be nought else,
must needs be a strange quaintness in ordinary prayer.
The like, or worse, may be said of the litany, wherein
neither priest nor people speak any intire sense of
themselves throughout the whole, I know not what to
name it; only by the timely contribution of their parted
stakes, closing up as it were the schism of a sliced
prayer, they pray not in vain, for by this means they
keep life between them in a piece of gasping sense,
and keep down the sauciness of a continual rebounding
nonsense. And hence it is, that as it hath been far
from the imitation of any warranted prayer, so we all
know it hath been obvious to be the pattern of many a
jig. And he who hath but read in good books of de-
votion and no more, cannot be so ei her of ear or judg-
ment unpractised to distinguish what is grave, patheti-
cal, devout, and what not, but will presently perceive
this liturgy all over in conception lean and dry, of
affections empty and unmoving, of passion, or any
height whereto the soul might soar upon the wings of
zeal, destitute and barren; besides errours, tautologies,
impertinencies, as those thanks in the woman's church-
ing for her delivery from sunburning and moonblasting,
as if she had been travailing not in her bed, but in the
deserts of Arabia. So that while some men cease not
to admire the incomparable frame of our liturgy, I
cannot but admire as fast what they think is become
of judgment and taste in other men, that they can hope
to be heard without laughter. And if this were all,
perhaps it were a compliable matter. But when we
remember this our liturgy where we found it, whence
we had it, and yet where we left it, still serving to all
the abominations of the antichristian temple, it may be
wondered now we can demur whether it should be done
away or no, and not rather fear we have highly offended
in using it so long. It hath indeed been pretended to
be more ancient than the mass, but so little proved, that
whereas other corrupt liturgies have had withal such a
seeming antiquity, as that their publishers have ven-
tured to ascribe them with their worst corruptions either
to St. Peter, St. James, St. Mark, or at least to Chry-
sostom or Basil, ours hath been never able to find either
age or author allowable, on whom to father those things
therein which are least offensive, except the two creeds,
for Te Deum has a snatch in it of Limbus Patrum : as
if Christ had not “opened the kingdom of heaven”
before he had “overcome the sharpness of death.” So
that having received it from the papal church as an
original creature, for aught can be shewn to the con-
trary, formed and fashioned by workmasters ill to be
trusted, we may be assured that if God loathe the best
of an idolater's prayer, much more the conceited ſangle
of his prayer. This confuter himself confesses that a
community of the same set form in prayers, is that
which “makes church and church truly one;” we then
using a liturgy far more like to the mass book than to
any protestant set form, by his own words must have
more communion with the Romish church, than with
any of the reformed. How can we then not partake
with them the curse and vengeance of their superstition,
to whom we come so near in the same set form and
dress of our devotion ? Do we think to sift the matter
finer than we are sure God in his jealousy will, who
detested both the gold and the spoil of idolatrous cities,
and forbid the eating of things offered to idols P Are
we stronger than he, to brook that which his heart can-
not brook? It is not surely because we think that
prayers are no where to be had but at Rome 2 That
were a foul scorn and indignity cast upon all the re-
formed churches, and our own : if we imagine that all
the godly ministers of England are not able to new-
mould a better and more pious liturgy than this which
was conceived and infanted by an idolatrous mother,
how basely were that to esteem of God's Spirit, and all
the holy blessings and privileges of a true church above
a false! Hark ye, prelates, is this your glorious mother
of England, who, whenas Christ hath taught her to
pray, thinks it not enough unless she add thereto the
teaching of Antichrist? How can we believe ye would
refuse to take the stipend of Rome, when ye shame not
to live upon the almsbasket of her prayers Will ye
persuade us, that ye can curse Rome from your hearts,
when none but Rome must teach ye to pray ? Abra-
ham disdained to take so much as a thread or a shoe-
latchet from the king of Sodom, though no foe of his,
but a wicked king; and shall we receive our prayers
at the bounty of our more wicked enemies, whose gifts
are no gifts, but the instruments of our bane P Alas!
that the Spirit of God should blow as an uncertain
wind, should so mistake his inspiring, so misbestow his
gifts promised only to the elect, that the idolatrous
should find words acceptable to present God with, and
abound to their neighbours, while the true professors
of the gospel can find nothing of their own worth the
constituting, wherewith to worship God in public |
Consider if this be to magnify the church of England,
and not rather to display her nakedness to all the world.
Like therefore as the retaining of this Romish liturgy
is a provocation to God, and a dishonour to our church,
so is it by those ceremonies, those purifyings and offer-
ings at the altar, a pollution and disturbance to the
gospel itself; and a kind of driving us with the foolish
Galatians to another gospel. For that which the
apostles taught hath freed us in religion from the ordi-
nances of men, and commands that “ burdens be not
laid” upon the redeemed of Christ; though the form-
alist will say, What, no decency in God's worship 2
Certainly, readers, the worship of God singly in itself,
the very act of prayer and thanksgiving, with those
free and unimposed expressions which from a sincere
heart unbidden come into the outward gesture, is the
greatest decency that can be imagined. Which to
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95
dress up and garnish with a devised bravery abolished
in the law, and disclaimed by the gospel, adds nothing
but a deformed ugliness; and hath ever afforded a
colourable pretence to bring in all those traditions
and carnalities that are so killing to the power and
virtue of the gospel. What was that which made the
Jews, figured under the names of Aholah and Aholibah,
go a whoring after all the heathen's inventions, but
that they saw a religion gorgeously attired and de-
sirable to the eye * What was all that the false doc-
tors of the primitive church and ever since have
done, but “to make a fair shew in the flesh,” as St.
Paul's words are 2 If we have indeed given a bill
of divorce to popery and superstition, why do we not
say as to a divorced wife, Those things which are yours
take them all with you, and they shall sweep after
you? Why were not we thus wise at our parting from
Rome? Ah ! like a craſty adulteress she forgot not all
her smooth looks and enticing words at her parting ;
yet keep these letters, these tokens, and these few orna-
ments; I am not all so greedy of what is mine, let
them preserve with you the memory of what I am 2
No, but of what I was, once fair and lovely in your
eyes. Thus did those tender-hearted reformers dotingly
suffer themselves to be overcome with harlot's language.
And she like a witch, but with a contrary policy, did
not take something of theirs, that she still might have
power to bewitch them, but for the same intent left
something of her own behind her. And that her
whorish cunning should prevail to work upon us her
deceitful ends, though it be sad to speak, yet such is
our blindness, that we deserve. For we are deep in
dotage. We cry out sacrilege and misdevotion against
those who in zeal have demolished the dens and cages
of her unclean wallowings. We stand for a popish
liturgy as for the ark of our covenant. And so little
does it appear our prayers are from the heart, that mul-
titudes of us declare, they know not how to pray but
by rote. Yet they can learnedly invent a prayer of
their own to the parliament, that they may still ig-
norantly read the prayers of other men to God. They
object, that if we must forsake all that is Rome's, we
must bid adieu to our creed ; and I had thought our
creed had been of the Apostles, for so it bears title.
But if it be hers, let her take it. We can want no creed,
so long as we want not the Scriptures. We magnify
those who, in reforming our church, have inconsider-
ately and blameſully permitted the old leaven to re-
main and sour our whole lump. But they were martyrs;
true, and he that looks well into the book of God's pro-
vidence, if he read there that God for this their negli-
gence and halting brought all that following persecu-
tion upon this church, and on themselves, perhaps will
be found at the last day not to have read amiss.
SECT. XII.
BUT now, readers, we have the port within sight;
his last section, which is no deep one, remains only to
be forded, and then the wished shore. And here first
it pleases him much, that he had descried me, as he
conceives, to be unread in the councils. Concern-
ing which matter it will not be unnecessary to shape
him this answer; that some years I had spent in the
stories of those Greek and Roman exploits, wherein I
found many things both nobly done, and worthily
spoken ; when coming in the method of time to that
age wherein the church had obtained a christian em-
peror, I so prepared myself, as being now to read ex-
amples of wisdom and goodness among those who were
foremost in the church, not elsewhere to be paralleled;
but, to the amazement of what I expected, I found it
all quite contrary; excepting in some very few, nothing
but ambition, corruption, contention, combustion; in-
somuch that I could not but love the historian Socrates,
who, in the proem to his fifth book professes, “he was
fain to intermix affairs of state, for that it would be
else an extreme annoyance to hear in a continued dis-
course the endless brabbles and counter-plottings of the
bishops.” Finding, therefore, the most of their actions
in single to be weak, and yet turbulent; full of strife,
and yet flat of spirit; and the sum of their best coun-
cils there collected, to be most commonly in questions
either trivial and vain, or else of short and easy deci-
sion, without that great bustle which they made; I
concluded that if their single ambition and ignorance
was such, then certainly united in a council it would
be much more; and if the compendious recital of what
they there did was so tedious and unprofitable, then
surely to set out the whole extent of their tattle in a
dozen volumes would be a loss of time irrecoverable.
Besides that which I had read of St. Martin, who for his
last sixteen years could never be persuaded to be at any
council of the bishops. And Gregory Nazianzen betook
him to the same resolution, affirming to Procopius,
“ that of any council or meeting of bishops he never
saw good end; nor any remedy thereby of evil in the
church, but rather an increase. For,” saith he, “their
contentions and desire of lording no tongue is able to
express.” I have not therefore, I confess, read more
of the councils save here and there; I should be sorry
to have been such a prodigal of my time: but that
which is better, I can assure this confuter, I have read
into them all. And if I want any thing yet, I shall
reply something toward that which in the defence of
Muraena was answered by Cicero to Sulpitius the
lawyer. If ye provoke me (for at no hand else will I
undertake such a frivolous labour) I will in three
months be an expert councilist. For, be not deceived,
readers, by men that would overawe your ears with
big names and huge tomes that contradict and repeal
one another, because they can cram a margin with
citations. Do but winnow their chaff from their wheat,
ye shall see their great heap shrink and wax thin past
belief. From hence he passes to inquire wherefore I
should blame the vices of the prelates only, seeing the
inferiour clergy is known to be as faulty. To which
let him hear in brief; that those priests whose vices
have been notorious, are all prelatical, which argues
both the impiety of that opinion, and the wicked re-
missness of that government. We hear not of any
96 AN APOLOGY FOR SMECTYMNUUS.
which are called nonconformists, that have been ac-
cused of scandalous living; but are known to be pious
or at least sober men. Which is a great good argu-
ment that they are in the truth and prelates in the
errour. He would be resolved next, “What the corrup-
tions of the universities concern the prelates ?” And to
that let him take this, that the Remonstrant having
spoken as if learning wonld decay with the removal of
prelates, I shewed him that while books were extant and
in print, learning could not readily be at a worse pass in
the universities than it was now under their government.
Then he seeks to justify the pernicious sermons of the
clergy, as if they upheld sovereignty; whenas all
christian sovereignty is by law, and to no other end
but to the maintenance of the common good. But their
doctrine was plainly the dissolution of law, which only
sets up sovereignty, and the erecting of an arbitrary
sway according to private will, to which they would
enjoin a slavish obedience without law; which is the
known definition of a tyrant, and a tyrannised people.
A little beneath he denies that great riches in the church
are the baits of pride and ambition; of which errour to
undeceive him, I shall allege a reputed divine author-
ity, as ancient as Constantine, which his love to an-
tiquity must not except against; and to add the more
weight, he shall learn it rather in the words of our old
poet Gower than in mine, that he may see it is no new
opinion, but a truth delivered of old by a voice from
heaven, and ratified by long experience.
“This Constantine which heal hath found,
** Within Rome anon let found
“Two churches which he did make
“ For Peter and for Paul’s sake:
“Of whom he had a vision,
“And yafe thereto possession
“Of lordship and of world's good;
“But how so that his will was good
“Toward the pope and his franchise,
“Yet hath it proved otherwise
“To see the working of the deed :
“For in cronick thus I read,
“Anon as he hath made the yeft,
“A voice was heard on high the left,
“Of which all Rome was adrad,
“And said, this day venim is shad
“In holy Church, of temporall
“That meddleth with the spiritual;
“And how it stant in that degree,
“Yet may a man the sooth see.
“God amend it whan he will,
“I can thereto none other skill.”
But there were beasts of prey, saith he, before wealth
was bestowed on the church. What, though, because
the vultures had then but small pickings, shall we
therefore go and fling them a full gorge ' If they for
lucre use to creep into the church undiscernibly, the
more wisdom will it be so to provide that no revenue
there may exceed the golden mean ; for so, good pas-
tors will be content, as having need of no more, and
knowing withal the precept and example of Christ and
his apostles, and also will be less tempted to ambition.
The bad will have but small matter whereon to set their
mischief awork; and the worst and subtlest heads will
not come at all, when they shall see the crop nothing
answerable to their capacious greediness; for small
temptations allure but dribbling offenders; but a great
purchase will call such as both are most able of them-
selves, and will be most enabled hereby to compass
dangerous projects. But, saith he, “a widow’s house
will tempt as well as a bishop's palace.” Acutely
spoken because neither we nor the prelates can abolish
widows’ houses, which are but an occasion taken of evil
without the church, therefore we shall set up within
the church a lottery of such prizes as are the direct in-
viting causes of avarice and ambition, both unnecessary
and harmful to be proposed, and most easy, most con-
venient, and needful to be removed. “Yea but they
are in a wise dispenser's hand.” Let them be in whose
hand they will, they are most apt to blind, to puff up,
and pervert, the most seeming good. And how they
have been kept from vultures, whatever the dispenser's
care hath been, we have learned by our miseries. But
this which comes next in view, I know not what good
vein or humour took him when he let drop into his
paper; I that was ere while the ignorant, the loiterer,
on the sudden by his permission am now granted “to
know something.” And that “such a volley of ex-
pressions” he hath met withal, “as he would never
desire to have them better clothed.” For me, readers,
although I cannot say that I am utterly untrained in
those rules which best rhetoricians have given, or un-
acquainted with those examples which the prime au-
thors of eloquence have written in any learned tongue;
yet true eloquence I find to be none, but the serious
and hearty love of truth: and that whose mind soever
is fully possessed with a fervent desire to know good
things, and with the dearest charity to infuse the know-
ledge of them into others, when such a man would
speak, his words (by what I can express) like so many
nimble and airy servitors trip about him at command,
and in well-ordered files, as he would wish, fall aptly
into their own places. But now to the remainder of
our discourse. Christ refused great riches and large
honours at the devil's hand. But why, saith he, “as
they were tendered by him from whom it was a sin to
receive them.” Timely remembered: why is it not
therefore as much a sin to receive a liturgy of the
masses’ giving, were it for nothing else but for the giver?
“But he could make no use of such a high estate,”
quoth the confuter; opportunely. For why then should
the servant take upon him to use those things which
his master had unfitted himself to use, that he might
teach his ministers to follow his steps in the same
ministry P But “they were offered him to a bad end.”
So they prove to the prelates, who, after their prefer-
ment, most usually change the teaching labour of the
word, into the unteaching ease of lordship over con-
sciences and purses. But he proceeds, “God enticed the
Israelites with the promise of Canaan;” did not the
prelates bring as slavish minds with them, as the
Jews brought out of Egypt? they had left out that
instance. Besides that it was then the time, whenas
the best of them, as St. Paul saith, “was shut up unto
the faith under the law their schoolmaster,” who was
AN APOLOGY FOR SMECTYMNUUS.
97
forced to entice them as children with childish entice-
ments. But the gospel is our man.hood, and the
ministry should be the manhood of the gospel, not to
look after, much less so basely to plead for earthly re-
wards. “But God incited the wisest man Solomon
with these means.” Ah, conſuter of thyself, this ex-
ample bath undone thee; Solomon asked an under-
standing heart, which the prelates have little care to
ask. He asked no riches, which is their chief care;
therefore was the prayer of Solomon pleasing to God;
he gave him wisdom at his request, and riches without
asking, as now he gives the prelates riches at their
seeking, and no wisdom because of their perverse ask-
ing. But he gives not over yet, “Moses had an eye
to the reward.” To what reward, thou man that lookest
with Balaam’s eyes? To what reward had the faith of
Moses an eye 2 He that had forsaken all the greatness
of Egypt, and chose a troublesome journey in his old
age through the wilderness, and yet arrived not at his
journey's end. His faithful eyes were fixed upon that
incorruptible reward, promised to Abraham and his
seed in the Messiah; he sought a heavenly reward,
which could make him happy, and never hurt him,
and to such a reward every good man may have a re-
spect; but the prelates are eager of such rewards as
cannot make them happy, but can only make them
worse. Jacob, a prince born, vowed that if God would
“but give him bread to eat and raiment to put on, then
the Lord should be his God.” But the prelates of
mean birth, and ofttimes of lowest, making shew as if
they were called to the spiritual and humble ministry
of the gospel, yet murmur, and think it a hard service,
unless, contrary to the tenour of their profession, they
may eat the bread and wear the honours of princes:
so much more covetous and base they are than Simon
Magus, for he proffered a reward to be admitted to that
work, which they will not be meanly hired to. But,
saith he, “Are not the clergy members of Christ, why
should not each member thrive alike?” Carnal textman!
as if worldly thriving were one of the privileges we
have by being in Christ, and were not a providence
ofttimes extended more liberally to the Infidel than to
the Christian. Therefore must the ministers of Christ
not be over rich or great in the world, because their
calling is spiritual, not secular; because they have a
special warfare, which is not to be entangled with many
impediments; because their master Christ gave them
this precept, and set them this example, told them this
was the mystery of his coming, by mean things and
persons to subdue mighty ones: and lastly, because a
middle estate is most proper to the office of teaching,
whereas higher dignity teaches far less, and blinds
the teacher. Nay, saith the confuter, fetching his last
endeavour, “the prelates will be very loth to let go
their baronies, and votes in parliament,” and calls it
“God’s cause,” with an insufferable impudence. “Not
that they love the honours and the means,” good men
and generous ! " but that they would not have their
country made guilty of such a sacrilege and injus-
tice " A sy, patriot for his own corrupt ends.
That which 'e imputes as sacrilege to his country, is
the only way left them to purge that abominable sacri-
lege out of the land, which none but the prelates are
guilty of; who for the discharge of one single duty,
receive and keep that which might be enough to satisfy
the labours of many painful ministers better deserving
than themselves; who possess huge benefices for lazy
performances, great promotions only for the execution
of a cruel disgospelling jurisdiction; who ingross many
pluralities under a nonresident and slubbering dispatch
of souls; who let hundreds of parishes famish in one
diocese, while they the prelates are mute, and yet enjoy
that wealth that would furnish all those dark places
with able supply: and yet they eat, and yet they live
at the rate of earls, and yet hoard up; they who chase
away all the faithful shepherds of the flock, and bring
in a dearth of spiritual food, robbing thereby the church
of her dearest treasure, and sending herds of souls
starveling to hell, while they feast and riot upon the
labours of hireling curates, consuming and purloining
even that which by their foundation is allowed, and left
to the poor, and to reparations of the church. These
are they who have bound the land with the sin of sa-
crilege, from which mortal engagement we shall never
be free, till we have totally removed with one labour,
as one individual thing, prelaty and sacrilege. And
herein will the king be a true defender of the faith,
not by paring or lessening, but by distributing in due
proportion the maintenance of the church, that all parts
of the land may equally partake the plentiful and dili-
gent preaching of the faith, the scandal of ceremonies
thrown out that delude and circumvent the faith ; and
the usurpation of prelates laid level, who are in words
the fathers, but in their deeds, the oppugners of the
faith. This is that which will best confirm him in that
glorious title. Thus ye have heard, readers, how many
shifts and wiles the prelates have invented to save their
ill-got booty. And if it be true, as in Scripture it is
foretold, that pride and covetousness are the sure marks
of those false prophets which are to come; then boldly
conclude these to be as great seducers as any of the
latter times. For between this and the judgment day
do not look for any arch deceivers, who in spite of re-
formation will use more craft, or less shame to defend
their love of the world and their ambition, than these
prelates have done. And if ye think that soundness of
reason, or what force of argument soever, will bring
them to an ingenuous silence, ye think that which will
never be. But if ye take that course which Erasmus
was wont to say Luther took against the pope and
monks; if ye denounce war against their mitres and
their bellies, ye shall soon discern that turban of pride,
which they wear upon their heads, to be no helmet of
salvation, but the mere metal and hornwork of papal
jurisdiction ; and that they have also this giſt, like a
certain kind of some that are possessed, to have their
voice in their bellies, which, being well drained and
taken down, their great oracle, which is only there,
will soon be dumb ; and the divine right of episcopacy,
forthwith expiring, will put us no more to trouble with
tedious antiquities and disputes.
OF EDUCATION.
TO MASTER SAMUEL HARTLIB.
MASTER HARTLIB,
l I AM long since persuaded, that to say or do aught
worth memory and imitation, no purpose or respect
should sooner move us than simply the love of God,
and of mankind. Nevertheless to write now the re-
forming of education, though it be one of the greatest
and noblest designs that can be thought on, and for
the want whereof this nation perishes; I had not yet
at this time been induced, but by your earnest entreat-
ies and serious conjurements; as having my mind for
the present half diverted in the pursuance of some other
assertions, the knowledge and the use of which cannot
but be a great furtherance both to the enlargement of
truth, and honest living with much more peace. Nor
should the laws of any private friendship have prevailed
with me to divide thus, or transpose my former thoughts,
but that I see those aims, those actions, which have
won you with me the esteem of a person sent hither
by some good providence from a far country to be the
occasion and incitement of great good to this island.
And, as I hear, you have obtained the same repute
with men of most approved wisdom, and some of the
highest authority among us; not to mention the learned
correspondence which you hold in foreign parts, and
the extraordinary pains and diligence, which you have
used in this matter both here and beyond the seas;
either by the definite will of God so ruling, or the pe.
culiar sway of nature, which also is God's working.
Neither can I think that so reputed and so valued as
you are, you would to the forfeit of your own discern-
ing ability, impose upon me an unfit and overponderous
argument; but that the satisfaction, which you profess
to have received from those incidental discourses which
we have wandered into, hath pressed and almost con-
strained you into a persuasion, that what you require
from me in this point, I neither ought nor can in con-
science defer beyond this time both of so much need
at once, and so much opportunity to try what God hath
determined. I will not resist therefore whatever it is,
either of divine or human obligenment, that you lay
upon me; but will forth with set down in writing, as
you request me, that voluntary idea, which hath long
in silence presented itself to me, of a better education,
in extent and comprehension far more large, and yet
of time far shorter, and of attainment far more certain,
than hath been yet in practice. Brief I shall endeavour
to be; for that which I have to say, assuredly this nation
hath extreme need should be dome sooner than spoken.
To tell you therefore what I have benefited herein
among old renowned authors, I shall spare ; and to
search what many modern Januas and Didactics, more
than ever I shall read, have projected, my inclination
leads me not. But if you can accept of these few ob-
servations which have flowered off, and are as it were
the burnishing of many studious and contemplative
years altogether spent in the search of religious and
civil knowledge, and such as pleased you so well in
the relating, I here give you them to dispose of.
YThe end then of learning is to repair the ruins of oºr
first parents by regaining to know God aright, and
out of that knowledge to love him, to imitate him, to
be like him, as we may the nearest by possessing our
souls of true virtue, which being united to the heavenly
grace of faith, makes up the highest perfection. But
because our understanding cannot in this body found
itself but on sensible things, nor arrive so clearly to the
knowledge of God and things invisible, as by orderly
conning over the visible and inferior creature, the same
method is necessarily to be followed in all discreet
teaching. And seeing every nation affords not expe-
rience and tradition enough for all kind of learning,
therefore we are chiefly taught the languages of those
people who have at any time been most industrious
after wisdom; so that language is but the instrument
conveying to us things useful to be known. And
though a linguist should pride himself to have all the
tongues that Babel cleft the world into, yet if he have
not studied the solid things in them as well as the
words and lexicons, he were nothing so much to be
esteemed a learned man, as any yeoman or tradesman
competently wise in his mother dialect only. Hence
appear the many mistakes which have made learning
generally so unpleasing and so unsuccessful; first, we do
amiss to spend seven or eight years merely in scraping
together so much miserable Latin and Greek, as might
be learned otherwise easily and deli
year.
ºfully in one
And that which casts our profióiency therein

OF EDUCATION.
99
so much behind, is our time lost partly in too oft idle
vacancies given both to schools and universities;
partly in a preposterous exaction, forcing the empty
wits of children to compose themes, verses, and ora-
tions, which are the acts of ripest judgment, and the
final work of a head filled by long reading and observ-
ing, with elegant maxims and copious invention.
These are not matters to be wrung from poor striplings,
like blood out of the nose, or the plucking of untimely
fruit; besides the ill habit which they get of wretched
barbarizing against the Latin and Greek idiom, with
their untutored Anglicisms, odious to be read, yet not
to be avoided without a well-continued and judicious
conversing among pure authors digested, which they
scarce taste: whereas, if after some preparatory grounds
of speech by their certain forms got into memory, they
were led to the praxis thereof in some chosen short
book lessoned thoroughly to them, they might then
forthwith proceed to learn the substance of good things,
and arts in due order, which would bring the whole
language quickly into their power. This I take to be
the most rational and most profitable way of learning
languages, and whereby we may best hope to give ac-
count to God of our youth spent herein. And for the
usual method of teaching arts, I deem it to be an old
errour of universities, not yet well recovered from the
scholastic grossness of barbarous ages, that instead of
beginning with arts most easy, (and those be such as
are most obvious to the sense) they present their young
unmatriculated novices at first coming with the most
intellective abstractions of logic and metaphysics; so
that they having but newly left those grammatic flats
and shallows where they stuck unreasonably to learn a
few words with lamentable construction, and now on
the sudden transported under another climate to be
tossed and turmoiled with their unballasted wits in
fathomless and unquiet deeps of controversy, do for the
most part grow into hatred and contempt of learning,
mocked and deluded all this while with ragged notions
and babblements, while they expected worthy and de-
lightful knowledge; till poverty or youthful years call
them importunately their several ways, and hasten
them with the sway of friends either to an ambitious
and mercenary, or ignorantly zealous divinity; some
allured to the trade of law, grounding their purposes
not on the prudent and heavenly contemplation of jus-
tice and equity, which was never taught them, but on
the promising and pleasing thoughts of litigious terms,
fat contentions, and flowing fees; others betake them
to state affairs, with souls so unprincipled in virtue
and true generous breeding, that flattery and court-
shifts and tyrannous aphorisms appear to them the
highest points of wisdom; instilling their barren hearts
with a conscientious slavery; if, as I rather think, it be
not feigned. Others, lastly, of a more delicious and
airy spirit, retire themselves (knowing no better) to the
enjoyments of ease and luxury, living out their days
in feast and jollity ; which indeed is the wisest and
the safest course of all these, unless they were with
more integrity undertaken. “And these are the errours,
* Thus it is in the first edition
H
and these are the fruits of mispending our prime youth
at the schools and universities as we do, either in
learning mere words, or such things chiefly as were
better unlearned.
I shall detain you now no longer in the demonstra-
tion of what we should not do, but straight conduct you
to a hill-side, where I will point you out the right path
of a virtuous and noble cducation; laborious indeed at
the first ascent, but else so smooth, so green, so full of
goodly prospect, and melodious sounds on every side,
that the harp of Orpheus was not more charming. I
doubt not but ye shall have more ado to drive our dull-
est and laziest youth, our stocks and stubs, from the in-
finite desire of such a happy nurture, than we have now
to hale and drag our choicest and hopefullest wits to
that asinine feast of sow thistles and brambles, which
is commonly set before them as all the food and enter-
tainment of their tenderest and most docible age. I call
therefore a complete and generous education, that
which fits a man to perform justly, skilfully, and mag-
nanimously all the offices, both private and public, of
peace and war. And how all this may be done between
twelve and one and twenty, less time than is now be-
stowed in pure trifling at grammar and sophistry, is to
be thus ordered.
First, to find out a spacious house and ground about
t fit for an academy, and big enough to lodge a hun-
dred and fifty persons, whereof twenty or thereabout
may be attendants, all under the government of one,
who shall be thought of desert sufficient, and ability
either to do all, or wisely to direct and oversee it done.
This place should be at once both school and university,
not needing a remove to any other house of scholarship,
except it be some peculiar college of law, or physic,
where they mean to be practitioners; but as for those
general studies which take up all our time from Lilly
to commencing, as they term it, master of art, it should
be absolute. Aſter this pattern, as many edifices
may be converted to this use as shall be needful in
every city throughout this land, which would tend
much to the increase of learning and civility every
where. This number, less or more thus collected, to
the convenience of a foot company, or interchangeably
two troops of cavalry, should divide their day's work
into three parts as it lies orderly; their studies, their
exercise, and their diet.
§ For their studies; first, they should begin with the
chief and necessary rules of some good grammar, either
that now used, or any better; and while this is doing,
their speech is to be fashioned to a distinct and clear
pronunciation, as near as may be to the Italian, espe-
cially in the vowels. For we Englishmen being far
northerly, do not open our mouths in the cold air wide
enough to grace a southern tongue; but are observed
by all other nations to speak exceeding close and in-
ward; so that to smatter Latin with an English mouth,
is as ill a hearing as law French. Next, to make them
expert in the usefullest points of grammar; and withal
to season them and win them early to the love of virtue
and true labour, ere any flattering seducement or vain
100
OF EDUCATION.
principle seize them wandering, some easy and delight-
ful book of education would be read to them; whereof
the Greeks have store, as Cebes, Plutarch, and other
Socratic discourses. But in Latin we have none of
classic authority extant, except the two or three first
books of Quintilian, and some select pieces elsewhere.
But here the main skill and groundwork will be, to
temper them such lectures and explanations upon every
opportunity, as may lead and draw them in willing
obedience, enflamed with the study of learning, and
the admiration of virtue; stirred up with high hopes
of living to be brave men, and worthy patriots, dear to
God, and famous to all ages. That they may despise
and scorn all their childish and illtaught qualities, to
delight in manly and liberal exercises; which he who
hath the art and proper eloquence to catch them with,
what with mild and effectual persuasions, and what
with the intimation of some fear, if need be, but chiefly
by his own example, might in a short space gain them
to an incredible diligence and courage; infusing into
their young breasts such an ingenuous and noble ar-
dour, as would not fail to make many of them renowned
and matchless men. At the same time, some other hour
of the day, might be taught them the rules of arithme-
tic, and soon after the elements of geometry, even play.
ing, as the old manner was. After evening repast, till
bedtime, their thoughts would be best taken up in the
easy grounds of religion, and the story of Scripture.
The next step would be to the authors of agriculture,
Cato, Varro, and Columella, for the matter is most easy;
and if the language be difficult, so much the better, it
is not a difficulty above their years. And here will be
an occasion of inciting, and enabling them hereafter to
improve the tillage of their country, to recover the bad
soil, and to remedy the waste that is made of good ;
for this was one of Hercules's praises. Ere half these
authors be read (which will soon be with plying hard
and daily) they cannot choose but be masters of any
ordinary prose. So that it will be then seasonable for
them to learn in any modern author the use of the
globes, and all the maps; first with the old names, and
then with the new ; or they might be then capable to
read any compendious method of natural philosophy.
And at the same time might be entering into the Greek
tongue, after the same manner as was before prescribed
in the Latin; whereby the difficulties of grammar being
soon overcome, all the historical physiology of Aris-
totle and Theophrastus are open before them, and, as I
may say, under contribution. The like access will be
to Vitruvius, to Seneca's natural questions, to Mela,
Celsus, Pliny, or Solinus. And having thus passed the
principles of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and
geography, with a general compact of physics, they
may descend in mathematics to the instrumental sci-
ence of trigonometry, and from thence to fortification,
architecture, enginery, or navigation. And in natural
philosophy they may proceed leisurely from the history
of meteors, minerals, plants, and living creatures, as
far as anatomy. Then also in course might be read to
them out of some not tedious writer the institution of
physic; that they may know the tempers, the humours,
• * * * * * * * * * * *
ºp y tº e G
© & © e º
• * * * , , , e. "
© & e G * @
the seasons, and how to manage a crudity; which he
who can wisely and timely do, is not only a great phy-
sician to himself and to his friends, but also may at
some time or other save an army by this frugal and
expenseless means only; and not let the healthy and
stout bodies of young men rot away under him for want
of this discipline; which is a great pity, and no less a
shame to the commander. To set forward all these
proceedings in nature, and mathematics, what hinders
but that they may procure, as oft as shall be needſul, the
helpful experiences of hunters, fowlers, fishermen, shep-
herds, gardeners, apothecaries; and in the other sci-
ences, architects, engineers, mariners, anatomists; who
doubtless would be ready, some for reward, and sonie
to favour such a hopeful seminary. And this will give
them such a real tincture of natural knowledge, as they
shall never forget, but daily augment with delight.
Then also those poets which are now counted most
hard, will be both facil and pleasant, Orpheus, Hesiod,
Theocritus, Aratus, Nicander, Oppian, Dionysius, and
in Latin, Lucretius, Manilius, and the rural part of
Virgil. -
Gºy this time, years, and good general precepts, will
have furnished them more distinctly with that act of
reason which in ethics is called Proairesis; that they
may with some judgment contemplate upon moral
good and evil. Then will be required a special rein-
forcement of constant and sound indoctrinating to set
them right and firm, instructing them more amply in
the knowledge of virtue and the hatred of vice; while
their young and pliant affections are led through all
the moral works of Plato, Xenophon, Cicero, Plutarch,
Laertius, and those Locrian remnants; but still to be
reduced in their nightward studies where with they
close the day’s work, under the determinate sentence
of David or Solomon, or the evangels and apostolic
Scriptures. Being perfect in the knowledge of per-
sonal duty, they may then begin the study of oecono-
mics. And either now or before this, they may have
easily learned at any odd hour the Italian tongue.
And soon aſter, but with wariness and good antidote,
it would be wholesome enough to let them taste some
choice comedies, Greek, Latin, or Italian; those trage-
dies also, that treat of household matters, as Trachinia’,
Alcestis, and the like. The next removal must be to
the study of politics; to know the beginning, end, and
reasons of political societies; that they may not in a
dangerous fit of the commonwealth be such poor,
shaken, uncertain reeds, of such a tottering conscience,
as many of our great counsellors have lately shewn
themselves, but stedfast pillars of the state. After this,
they are to dive into the grounds of law, and legal
justice; delivered first and with best warrant by Moses;
and as far as human prudence can be trusted, in those
extolled remains of Grecian lawgivers, Lycurgus, So-
lon, Zaleucus, Charondas, and thence to all the Roman
edicts and tables with their Justinian ; and so down to
the Saxon and common laws of England, and the
statutes. Sundays also and every evening may be now
understandingly spent in the highest matters of theo-
logy, and church-history ancient and modern ; and ere
OF EDUCATION. IOI
this time the Hebrew tongue at a set our might have
been gained, that the Scriptures may be now read in
their own original; whereto it would be no in possi-
bility to add the Chaldee, and the Syrian dialect.
When all these employments are well conquered, then
will the choice historics, heroic poems, and attic trage-
dies of stateliest and most regal argument, with all the
famous political orations, offer themselves; which if
they were not only read, but some of them got by
memory, and solemnly pronounced with right accent
and grace, as might be taught, would endue them
even with the spirit and vigour of Demosthenes or
Cicero, Euripides, or Sophocles. And now lastly will
be the time, to read them with those organic arts,
which enable men to discourse and write perspicuously,
elegantly, and according to the fitted style of lofty,
mean, or lowly. Logic, therefore, so much as is useful,
is to be referred to this due place with all her well-
couched heads and topics, until it be time to open her
contracted palm into a graceful and ornate rhetoric
taught out of the rule of Plato, Aristotle, Phalereus,
Cicero, Hermogenes, Longinus. To which poetry
would be made subsequent, or indeed rather precedent,
as being less subtile and fine, but more simple, sensu-
ous, and passionate. I mean not here the prosody of
a verse, which they could not but have hit on before
among the rudiments of grammar; but that sublime
art which in Aristotle's poetics, in Horace, and the
Italian commentaries of Castlevctro, Tasso, Mazzoni,
and others, teaches what the laws are of a true epic
poem, what of a dramatic, what of a lyric, what deco-
rum is, which is the grand masterpiece to observe.
This would make them soon perceive what despicable
creatures our common rhimers and play-writers be ;
and shew them what religious, what glorious and
magnificent use might be made of poetry, both in
divine and human things. From hence, and not till
now, will be the right season of forming them to be
able writers and composers in every excellent matter,
when they shall be thus fraught with an universal
insight into things. Or whether they be to speak in
parliament or council, honour and attention would be
waiting on their lips. There would then also appear
in pulpits other visages, other gestures, and stuff
otherwise wrought than what we now sit under, oft-
times to as great a trial of our patience as any other
that they preach to us. These are the studies wherein
our noble and our gentle youth ought to bestow their
time in a disciplinary way from twelve to one and
twenty; unless they rely more upon their ancestors
dead than upon themselves living. In which me-
thodical course it is so supposed they must proceed by
the steady pace of learning onward, as at convenient
times, for memory's sake, to retire back into the middle
ward, and sometimes into the rear of what they have
been taught, until they have confirmed and solidly
united the whole body of their perfected knowledge,
like the last embattelling of a Roman legion. Now
will be worth the seeing, what exercises and recreations
may best agree, and become these studies.
THEIR EXERCISE.
"I Tur course of study hitherto briefly described is,
what I can guess by reading, likest to those ancient
and famous schools of Pythagoras, Plato, Isocrates,
Aristotle, and such others, out of which were bred such
a number of renowned philosophers, orators, historians,
poets, and princes all over Greece, Italy, and Asia,
besides the flourishing studies of Cyrene and Alexan-
dria. But herein it shall exceed them, and supply a
defect as great as that which Plato noted in the com-
monwealth of Sparta; whereas that city trained up
their youth most for war, and these in their academies
and Lycaeum all for the gown, this institution of
breeding which I here delineate shall be equally good
both for peace and war. Therefore about an hour and
a half ere they eat at noon should be allowed them for
exercise, and due rest afterwards; but the time for this
may be enlarged at pleasure, according as their rising
in the morning shall be early. The exercise which I
commend first, is the exact use of their weapon, to
guard, and to strike safely with edge or point; this
will keep them healthy, nimble, strong, and well in
breath, is also the likeliest means to make them grow
large and tall, and to inspire them with a gallant and
fearless courage, which being tempered with season-
able lectures and precepts to them of true fortitude
and patience, will turn into a native and heroic valour,
and make them hate the cowardice of doing wrong.
They must be also practised in all the locks and gripes
of wrestling, wherein Englishmen were wont to excel,
as need may often be in fight to tug, to grapple, and
to close. And this perhaps will be enough, wherein to
prove and heat their single strength. The interim of
unsweating themselves regularly, and convenient rest
before meat, may both with profit and delight be taken
up in recreating and composing their travailed spirits
with the solemn and divine harmonies of music heard
or learned; either whilst the skilful organist plies his
grave and fancied descant in lofty fugues, or the whole
symphony with artful and unimaginable touches adorn
and grace the well studied chords of some choice com-
poser; sometimes the lute or soft organ stop waiting on
elegant voices, either to religious, martial, or civil dit-
ties; which, if wise men and prophets be not extremely
out, have a great power over dispositions and manners,
to smooth and make them gentle from rustic harshness
and distempered passions. The like also would not be
unexpedient after meat, to assist and cherish nature in
her first concoction, and send their minds back to
study in good tune and satisfaction. Where having
followed it close under vigilant eyes, till about two
hours before supper, they are by a sudden alarum or
watchword, to be called out to their military motions,
under sky or covert, according to the season, as was the
Roman wont; first on foot, them as their age permits,
on horseback, to all the art of cavalry; that having in
sport, but with much exactness and daily muster, served
out the rudiments of their soldiership, in all the skill of
embattling, marching, encamping, ſortifying, besieg-
102
OF EDUCATION. *
ing, and battering, with all the helps of ancient and mo-
dern stratagems, tactics, and warlike maxims, they may
as it were out of a long war come forth renowned and
perfect commanders in the service of their country.
They would not then, if they were trusted with fair and
hopeful armies, suffer them for want of just and wise
discipline to shed away from about them like sick fea-
thers, though they be never so oft supplied ; they would
not suffer their empty and unrecruitable colonels of
twenty men in a company, to quaff out, or convey
into secret hoards, the wages of a delusive list, and a
miserable remnant; yet in the mean while to be over-
mastered with a score or two of drunkards, the only
soldiery left about them, or else to comply with all
rapines and violences. No certainly, if they knew
aught of that knowledge that belongs to good men or
good governors, they would not suffer these things.
But to return to our own institute ; besides these con-
stant exercises at home, there is another opportunity of
gaining experience to be won from pleasure itself abroad;
in those vernal seasons of the year when the air is calm
and pleasant, it were an injury and sullenness against
nature, not to go out and see her riches, and partake in
her rejoicing with heaven and earth. I should not
therefore be a persuader to them of studying much
then, after two or three years that they have well laid
their grounds, but to ride out in companies with prudent
and staid guides to all the quarters of the land; learn-
ing and observing all places of strength, all commo-
dities of building and of soil, for towns and tillage,
harbours and ports for trade. Sometimes taking sea as
far as to our navy, to learn there also what they can in
the practical knowledge of sailing and of sea-fight.
These ways would try all their peculiar gifts of nature,
and if there were any secret excellence among them
would fetch it out, and give it fair opportunities to ad-
vance itself by, which could not but mightily redound
to the good of this nation, and bring into fashion again
those old admired virtues and excellencies with far
more advantage, now in this purity of christian know-
ledge. Nor shall we then need the monsieurs of Paris
to take our hopeful youth into their slight and prodigal
custodies, and send them over back again transformed
into mimics, apes, and kickshows. But if they desire
to see other countries at three or four and twenty years
of age, not to learn principles, but to enlarge expe-
rience, and make wise observation, they will by that
time be such as shall deserve the regard and honour of
all men where they pass, and the society and friend-
ship of those in all places who are best and most emi-
ment. And perhaps, then other nations will be glad
to visit us for their breeding, or else to imitate us in
their own country.
Now lastly for their diet there cannot be much to say,
save only that it would be best in the same house; for
much time else would be lost abroad, and many ill
habits got; and that it should be plain, healthful, and
moderate, I suppose is out of controversy. Thus Mr.
Hartlib, you have a general view in writing, as your
desire was, of that, which at several times I had dis-
coursed with you concerning the best and noblest way
of education; not beginning as some have done from
the cradle, which yet might be worth many considera-
tions, if brevity had not been my scope; many other
circumstances also I could have mentioned, but this to
such as have the worth in them to make trial, for light
and direction may be enough. Only I believe that
this is not a bow for every man to shoot in, that counts
himself a teacher; but will require sinews almost
equal to those which Homer gave Ulysses; yet I am
withal persuaded that it may prove much more easy
in the assay, than it now seems at distance, and much
more illustrious ; howbeit, not more difficult than I
imagine, and that imagination presents me with no-
thing but very happy, and very possible according to
best wishes; if God have so decreed, and this age have
spirit and capacity enough to apprehend.
* A R E O P A G IT I C A :
A SPEECH FOR THE LIBERTY OF UNLICENSED PRINTING,
TO THE PARLIAMENT OF ENGLAND.
Tošx&v6epov 3’ &keſvo, #1 tº 6e Net tróNet
r * º 2.
Xprisów tº flot)\eup' six piégov ºpépétv, exov.
Kai raû0', 6 xoff{ov, Napºrpès éat', 6 puj, the Nov,
zºº, tº tarov sºv to attepov tróAé
Euripid. Hicetid.
This is true Liberty, when freeborn men,
Having to advise the public, may speak free,
Which he who can, and will, deserves high praise;
Who neither can, nor will, may hold his peace;
What can be juster in a state than this?
Euripid. Hicetid.
, THEy, who to states and governors of the common-
wealth direct their speech, high court of parliament
or wanting such access in a private condition, write
that which they foresee may advance the public good;
I suppose them, as at the beginning of no mean en-
deavour, not a little altered and moved inwardly in
their minds; some with doubt of what will be the suc-
cess, others with fear of what will be the censure; some
with hope, others with confidence of what they have to
speak.' And me perhaps each of these dispositions, as
the subject was whereon I entered, may have at
other times variously affected; and likely might in
these foremost expressions now also disclose which of
them swayed most, but that the very attempt of this
address thus made, and the thought of whom it hath
recourse to, hath got the power within me to a passion,
far more welcome than incidental to a preface." Which
though I stay not to confess ere any ask, I shall be
blameless, if it be no other, than the joy and gratula-
tion which it brings to all who wish and promote their
country's liberty; whereof this whole discourse pro-
posed will be a certain testimony, if not a trophy. "For
this is not the liberty which we can hope, that no
grievance ever should arise in the commonwealth, that
let no man in this world expect; but when complaints
are freely-heard, deeply considered, and speedily re-
formed, then is the utmost bound of civil liberty ob-
N tained that wise men look for.'ſ To which if I now
manifest, by the very sound of this which I shall utter,
that we are already in good part arrived, and yet from
such a steep disadvantage of tyranny and superstition
grounded into our principles, as was beyond the man-
hood of a Roman recovery, it will be attributed first.
as is most due, to the strong assistance of God, our de-
liverer; next to your faithful guidance and undaunted
wisdom, lords and commons of England' Neither is it
in God's esteem, the diminution of his glory, when ho-
nourable things are spoken of good men, and worthy
magistrates; which if I now first should begin to do
after so fair a progress of your laudable deeds, and such
a long obligement upon the whole realm to your inde-
fatigable virtues, I might be justly reckoned among
the tardiest and the unwillingest of them that praise
ye. "Nevertheless there being three principal things,
without which all praising is but courtship and flattery;
first, when that only is praised which is solidly worth
praise; next, when greatest likelihoods are brought,
that such things are truly and really in those persons,
to whom they are ascribed; the other, when he who
praises, by shewing that such his actual persuasion is
of whom he writes, can demonstrate that he: flatters not;
the former two of these I have heretofore endeavoured,
rescuing the employment from him who went about to
impair your merits with a trivial and malignant enco-
mium; the latter as belonging chiefly to mine own
acquittal, that whom I so extolled I did not flatter,
hath been reserved opportunely to this occasion. 'For
he who freely magnifies what hath been nobly done,
and fears not to declare as freely what might be done
better, gives ye the best covenant of his fidelity; and
that his loyalest affection and his hope waits on your
proceedings. His highest praising is not flattery, and
his plainest advice is a kind of praising; for though
I should affirm and hold by argument, that it
104
A SPEECH FOR THE LIBERTY
would fare better with truth, with learning, and the
commonwealth, if one of your published orders, which
I should name, were called in ; yet at the same
time it could not but much redound to the lustre
of your mild and equal government, whenas pri-
vate persons are hereby animated to think ye better
pleased with public advice, than other statists have
been delighted heretofore with public flattery. | And
men will then see what difference there is between the
unless the same be first approved and licensed by such,
or at least one of such, as shall be thereto appointed.”"
For that part which preserves justly every man's copy
to himself, or provides for the poor, I touch not; only
wish they be not made pretences to abuse and persecute
honest and painful men, who offend not in either of
these particulars." But that other clause of licensing
books, which we thought had died with his brother
quadragesimal and matrimonial when the prelates ex-
1 pired, I shall now attend with such a homily, as shall
lay before ye;(irst the inventors of it, to be those whom
ye will be loth to own; (dext, what is to be thought in
general of reading, whatever sort the books be; and’”
*hat this order avails nothing to the suppressing of
magnanimity of a triennial parliament, and that jealous
haughtiness of prelates and cabin counsellors that
usurped of late, whenas they shall observe ye in the
midst of your victories and successes more gently brook-
ing written exceptions against a voted order, than other
courts, which had produced nothing worth memory but
the weak ostentation of wealth, would have endured
the least signified dislike at any sudden proclamation.
'If I should thus far presume upon the meek demeanour
of your civil and gentle greatness, lords and commons!
as what your published order hath directly said, that
to gainsay, I might defend myself with ease, if any
should accuse me of being new or insolent, did they
but know how much better I find ye esteem it to imi-
tate the old and elegant humanity of Greece, than the
barbaric pride of a Hunnish and Norwegian stateliness.
And out of those ages, to whose polite wisdom and let-
ters we owe that we are not yet Goths and Jutlanders,
I could name him who from his private house wrote
that discourse to the parliament of Athens, that per-
suades them to change the form of democraty which
was then established. Such honour was done in those
days to men who professed the study of wisdom and
eloquence, not only in their own country, but in other
lands, that cities and signiories heard them gladly, and
with great respect, if they had aught in public to ad-
monish the state. Thus did Dion Prusaeus, a stranger
and a private orator, counsel the Rhodians against a
former edict; and I abound with other like examples,
which to set here would be superfluous. But if from
the industry of a life wholly dedicated to studious
labours, and those natural endowments haply not the
worst for two and fifty degrees of northern latitude, so
much must be derogated, as to count me not equal to
any of those who had this privilege, I would obtain to
be thought not so inferior, as yourselves are superior
to the most of them who received their counsel; and
how far you excel them, be assured, lords and com-
mons ! there can no greater testimony appear, than
when your prudent spirit acknowledges and obeys the
voice of reason, from what quarter soever it be heard
speaking; and renders ye as willing to repeal any act
, of your own setting forth, as any set forth by your pre-
decessors. - *
V § If ye be thus resolved, as it were injury to think ye
were not, I know not what should withhold me from
presenting ye with a fit instance wherein to shew both
that love of truth which ye eminently profess, and that
uprightness of your judgment which is not wont to be
partial to yourselves; by judging over again that order
which ye have ordained “to regulate printing; that no
book, pamphlet, or paper, shall be henceforth printed,
scandalous, seditious, and libello
mainly intended to be suppresseº Last, that it will
be primely to the discouragement of all learning, and
the stop of truth, not only by disexercising and blunt
ing our abilities, in what we know already, but by
hindering and cropping the discovery that might be
.gt further made, both in religious and civil wisdom.
deny not, but that it is of greatest concernment in
he church and commonwealth, to have a vigilant eye
how books, demean themselves as well as men; and
thereafter to confine, imprison, and do sharpest justice
on them as malefactors; for looks are not absolutely
dead things, but do contain a progeny of life in them
to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they
are ; nay, they do preserve as in a vial the purest effi-
cacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred
them. I know they are as lively, and as vigorously
productive, as those fabulous dragon's teeth; and being
sown up and down, may chance to spring up armed
men. 'And yet on the other hand, unless wariness be
used, as good almost kill a man as kill a good book :
who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God's
image; but he who destroys a good book, kills reason
itself, kills the image of God, as it were in the eye.
Many a man lives a burden to the earth; but a good!
e º e ſte tº e ſº
book is the precious lifeblood of a master spirit, im-
balmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyondt
life. It is true, no age can restore a life, whereof per-
haps there is no great loss; and revolutions of ages do
not oft recover the loss of a rejected truth, for the want
of which whole nations fare the worse. We should be
wary therefore what persecution we raise against the
living labours of public men, how we spill that seasoned
life of man, preserved and stored up in books; since
we see a kind of homicide may be thus committed,
sometimes a martyrdom; and if it extend to the whole
impression, a kind of massacre, whereof the execution
ends not in the slaying of an elemental life, but strikes
at the aethereal and fifth essence, the breath of reason
itself; slays an immortality rather than a life. (Butlest
I should be condemned of introducing licence, while I
oppose licensing, I refuse not the pains to be so much
historical, as will serve to shew what hath been done
by ancient and famous commonwealths, against this
disorder, till the very time that this project of licensing
crept out of the inquisition, was catched up by our pre-
lates, and hath caught some of our presbyters. )
...books, which were :
l
a'
A.

OF UNLICENSED PRINTING.
105
* In Aſhens, where books and wits were ever busier
than in any other part of Greece, I find but only two
sorts of writings which the magistrate cared to take
notice of; those either blasphemous and atheistical, or
libellous. Thus the books of Protagoras were by the
judges of Areopagus commanded to be burnt, and him-
self banished the territory for a discourse, begun with
his confessing not to know, “whether there were gods,
or whether not.” And against deſaming, it was agreed
that none should be traduced by name, as was the man-
ner of Vetus Comoedia, whereby we may guess how
they censured libelling; and this course was quick
enough, as Cicero writes, to quell both the desperate
wits of other atheists, and the open way of deſaming,
as the event shewed. Of other sects and opinions,
though tending to voluptuousness, and the denying of
divine Providence, they took no heed. Therefore we
do not read that either Epicurus, or that libertine school
of Cyrene, or what the Cynic impudence uttered, was
ever questioned by the laws. Neither is it recorded,
that the writings of those old comedians were suppress-
ed, though the acting of them were forbid; and that
Plato commemded the ‘reading of Aristophanes, the
loosest of them all, to his royal scholar Dionysius, is
commonly known, and may be excused, if holy Chry-
sostom, as is reported, nightly studied so much the
same author, and had the art to cleanse a scurrilous
vehemence into the style of a rousing sermon. That
other leading city of Greece, Lacedaemon, considering
that Lycurgus their lawgiver was so addicted to ele-
gant learning, as to have been the first that brought
out of Ionia the scattered works of Homer, and sent
the poet Thales from Crete to prepare and mollify the
Spartan surliness with his smooth songs and odes, the
better to plant among them law and civility; it is to
be wondered how museless and unbookish they were,
minding nought but the feats of war. There needed
no licensing of books among them, for they disliked all
but their own laconic apophthegms,'and took a slight
occasion to chase Archilocus out of their city, perhaps
for composing in a higher strain than their own soldiery,
ballads, and roundels, could reach to ; or if it were for
his broad verses, they were not therein so cautious, but
they were as dissolute in their promiscuous conversing;
whence Euripides affirms in Andromache, that their
women were all unchaste. This much may give us
light after what sort of books were prohibited among
the Greeks. ' The Romans also for many ages trained
up only to a military roughness, resembling most the
I acedæmonian guise, knew of learning little but what
their twelve tables and the pontific college with their
augurs and flamins taught them in religion and law;
so unacquainted with other learning, that when Car-
neades and Critolaus, with the stoic Diogenes, coming
embassadors to Rome, took thereby occasion to give
the city a taste of their philosophy, they were suspected
for seducers by no less a man than Cato the censor,
who moved it in the senate to dismiss them. speedily,
and to banish all such Attic babblers out of Italy. But
Scipio and others of the noblest senators withstood him
and his old Sabin austerity; honoured and admired the
men; and the censor himself at last, in his old age, fell
to the study of that whereof before he was so scrupulous.
And yet at the same time, Naevius and Plautus, the
first Latin comedians, had filled the city with all the
borrowed scenes of Menander and Philemon. Then
began to be considered there also what was to be done
to libellous books and authors; for Naevius was quickly
cast into prison for his unbridled pen, and released by
the tribunes upon his recantation ; we read also that
libels were burnt, and the makers punished, by Augus-
tus. The like severity, no doubt, was used, if aught
were impiously written against their esteemed goſ's.
Except in these two points, how the world went in
books, the magistrate kept no reckoning. And there-
fore Lucretius, without impeachment, versifies his Epi-
curism to Memmius, and had the honour to be set forth
the second time by Cicero, so great a father of the
commonwealth; although himself disputes against that
opinion in his own writings. Nor was the satirical
sharpness or naked plainness of Lucilius, or Catullus,
or Flaccus, by any order prohibited.' And for matters
of state, the story of Titus Livius, though it extolled
that part which Pompey held, was not therefore sup-
pressed by Octavius Caesar, of the other faction. But
that Naso was by him banished in his old age, for the
wanton poems of his youth, was but a mere covert of
state over some secret cause ; and besides, the books
were neither banished nor called in. From hence we
shall meet with little else but tyranny in the Roman
empire, that we may not marvel, if not so often bad as
good books were silenced. (I shall therefore deem to
have been large enough, in producing what among the
ancients was punishable to write, save only which, all
other arguments were free to treat on. )
By this time the emperors were become Christi
whose discipline in this point I do not find to have been
more severe than what was formerly in practice. The
books of those whom they took to be grand heretics
were examined, refuted, and condemned in the general
councils; and not till then were prohibited, or burnt,
by authority of the emperor. As for the writings of
heathen authors, unless they were plain invectives
against Christianity, as those of Porphyrius and Pro-
clus, they met with no interdict that can be cited, till
about the year 400, in a Carthaginian council, wherein
bishops themselves were forbid to read the books of
gentiles, but heresies they might read; while others
long before them on the contrary scrupled more the
books of heretics, than of gentiles. And that the pri-
mitive councils and bishops were wont only to declare
what books were not commendable, passing no further,
but leaving it to each one's conscience to read or to lay
by, till after the year 800, is observed already by Padre
Paolo the great unmasker of the Trentine council.
After which time the popes of Rome, engrossing what
they pleased of political rule into their own hands, ex-
tended their dominion over men's eyes, as they had
before over their judgments, burning and prohibiting
to be read what they fancied not; yet sparing in their
censures, and the books not many which they so dealt
with 3 till Martin the fifth, by his bull, not only pro-


106
A SPEECH FOR THE LIBERTY
hibited, but was the first that excommunicated the
reading of heretical books; for about that time Wick-
liffe and Husse growing terrible, were they who first
drove the papal court to a stricter policy of prohibiting.
Which course Leo the tenth and his successors follow-
ed, until the council of Trent and the Spanish inquisi-
_tion engendering together brought forth or perfected
those catalogues and expurging indexes, that rake
through the entrails of many an old good author, with
a violation worse than any could be offered to his tomb.
Nor did they stay in matters heretical, but any subject
that was not to their palate, they either condemned in
a prohibition, or had it straight into the new Purgatory
of an index. To fill up the measure of encroachment,
sº their last invention was to ordain that no book, pam-
>phlet, or paper, should be printed (as if. tº had
bequeathed them the keys-of-the-press alsº as well as
of Paradise) unless it were approved and licensed under
the hands of two or three gluttonous friars. For example:
Let the chancellor Cini be pleased to see if in this
present work be contained aught that may with-
stand the printing;
Vincent Rabbata, vicar of Florence.
I have seen this present work, and find nothing
athwart the catholic faith and good manners;
in witness whereof I have given, &c.
Nicolo Cini, chancellor of Florence.
Attending the precedent relation, it is allowed that
this present work of Davanzati may be printed,
Vincent Rabatta, &c.
It may be printed, July 15.
Friar Simon Mompei d’Amelia, chancellor of the
holy office in Florence.
Sure they have a conceit, if he of the bottomless pit
had not long since broke prison, that this quadruple
exorcism would bar him down. I fear their next de-
sign will be to get into their custody the licensing of
that which they say Claudius intended,” but went not
through with. Vouchsafe to see another of their forms,
the Roman stamp ;
Imprimatur, If it seem good to the reverend master
of the holy palace, Belcastro, vicegerent.
Imprimatur,
Friar Nicholo Rodolphi, master of the holy palace.
Sometimes five imprimaturs are seen together dia-
logue wise in the piatza of one titlepage, compliment-
ing and ducking each to other with their shaven reve-
rences, whether the author, who stands by in perplexity
at the foot of his epistle, shall to the press or to the
spunge. These are the pretty responsories, these are
the dear antiphonies, that so bewitched of late our pre-
* Quo veniam daret flatum crepitumque ventris in convivio emittendi.
ueton. in Claudio.
lates and their chaplains, with the goodly echo they
made; and besotted us to the gay imitation of a lordly
imprimatur, one from Lambeth-house, another from the
west end of Paul's ; so apishly romanizing, that the
word of command still was set down in Latin; as if the
learned grammatical pen that wrote it would cast no
ink without Latin ; or perhaps, as they thought, be-
cause no vulgar tongue was worthy to express the pure
conceit of an imprimatur; but rather, as I hope, for that
our English, the language of men ever famous and
foremost in the achievements of liberty, will not easily
find servile letters enow to spell such a dictatory pre-
sumption Englished. And thus ye have the inventors })
and the original of book licensing ripped up and drawn
as lineally as any ...tº have it not, that can
be heard of, from any ancient state, or polity, or church,
nor by any statute left us by our ancestors elder or
later; nor from the modern custom of any reformed city
or church abroad; but from the most antichristian
council, and the most tyrannous inquisition, that ever
* Till then books were ever as freely admitted
into the "world as any other birth; the issue of the brain
was no more stifled than the issue of the womb ; no
envious Juno sat crosslegged over the nativity of any
man's intellectual offspring ; but iſ it proved a monster,
who denies but that it was justly burnt, or sunk into
the sea 2 But that a book, in worse condition than a
peccant soul, should be to stand before a jury ere it be
born to the world, and undergo yet in darkness the
judgment of Radamanth and his colleagues, ere it can
pass the ferry backward into light, was never heard
before, till that mysterious iniquity, provoked and
troubled at the first entrance of reformation, sought out
new Limboes and new Hells wherein they might in-
clude our books also within the number of their damned.
And this was the rare morsel so officiously snatched up,
and so illſavouredly imitated by our inquisiturient
bishops, and the attendant minorites their chaplains.
That ye like not now these most certain authors of this
licensing order, and that all sinister intention was far
distant from your thoughts, when ye were importuned
the passing it, all men who know the integrity of your
actions, and how ye honour truth, will clear ye readily.
But some will say, what though the in
ball. Timºtorºl º
.0].S. YA
That may be good.) It may so;
yet if that ſhing be no such deep invention, but obvious
and easy for any man to light on, and yet best and
wisest commonwealths through all ages and occasions
have forborn to use it, and falsest seducers and oppres-
sors of men were the first who took it up, and to no
other purpose but to obstruct and hinder the first ap-
proach of reformation; I am of those who believe, it
will be a harder alchymy than Lullius ever knew, to
sublimate any good use out of such an invention. Yet
this only is what I request to gain from this reason,
that it may be held a dangerous and suspicious fruit,
as certainly it deserves, for the tree that bore it, until I
can dissect one by one the properties it has. (But I a
have first to finish, as was propounded, what is to be |









OF UNLICENSED PRINTING.
107
Q-
thought in general of reading books, whatever sort they
be, and whether be more the benefit or the harm that
thence proceeds. ) -
gº, Not to insist upon the examples of Moses, Daniel,
and Paul, who were skilful in all the learning of the
Egyptians, Chaldeans, and Greeks, which could not
probably be without reading their books of all sorts, in
Paul especially, who thought it no defilement to insert
into holy Scripture thºutences of three Greek poets,
and one of them a tºgedian ; the question was not-
withstanding sometimes Neontroverted among the pri-
mitive doctors, but with great odds on that side which
affirmed it both lawful and profitable, as was then
evidently perceived, when Julian the Apostate, and
subtlest enciny to our faith, made a decree forbidding
Christians the study of heathen learning ; for said he,
they wound us with our own weapons, and with our
own arts and sciences they overcome us. And indeed
the Christians were put so to their shifts by this crafty
means, and so much in danger to decline into all igno-
rance, that the two Appollinarii were fain, as a man
may say, to coin all the seven liberal sciences out of
the Bible, reducing it into divers forms of orations,
poems, dialogues, even to the calculating of a new
christian grammar. But, saith the historian Socrates,
the providence of God provided better than the industry
of Apollinarius and his son, by taking away that illite-
rate law with the life of him who devised it. So great
an injury they then held it to be deprived of Hellenic
learning; and thought it a persecution more under-
mining, and secretly decaying the church, than t
open cruelty of Decius or Dioclesian. And perhaps it
was the same politic drift that the devil whipped St.
Jerom in a lenten dream, for reading Cicero; or else it
was a phantasm, bred by the fever which had then
seized him. For had an angel been his discipliner,
unless it were for dwelling too much on Ciceronianisms,
and had chastised the reading, not the vanity, it had
been plainly partial ; first to correct him for grave
Cicero, and not for scurril Plautus, whom he confesses
to have been reading not long before; next to correct
him only, and let so many more ancient fathers wax
old in those pleasant and florid studies without the
lash of such a tutoring apparition; insomuch that Basil
teaches how some good use may be made of Margites,
a sportful poem, not now extant, writ by Homer; and
why not then of Morgante, an Italian romance much
to the same purpose P But if it be agreed we shall be
tried by visions, there is a vision recorded by Eusebius,
far ancienter than this tale of Jerom, to the nun Eusto-
chium, and besides, has nothing of a fever in it. Dio-
nysius Alexandrinus was, about the year 240, a person
of great name in the church, for piety and learning,
who had wont to avail himself much against heretics,
by being conversant in their books; until a certain
presbyter laid it scrupulously to his conscience, how
he durst venture himself among those defiling volumes.
The worthy man, loth to give offence, fell into a new
debate with himself, what was to be thought; when
suddenly a vision sent from God (it is his own epistle
that so aversit) confirmed him in these words: “Read
any books whatever come to thy hands, for thou art
sufficient both to judge aright, and to examine each
matter.” To this revelation he assented the sooner, as
he confesses, because it was answerable to that of the
apostle to the Thessalonians; “Prove all things, hold
fast that which is good.” "And he might have added
another remarkable saying of the same author: “To
the pure, all things are pure;” not only meats and
drinks, but all kind of knowledge, whether of good or
evil; the knowledge cannot defile, nor consequently
the books, if the will and conscience be not defiled.)
For books are as meats and viands are ; some of good,
some of evil substance; and yet God in that unapocry-
phal vision said without exception, “ Rise, Peter, kill
and eat;” leaving the choice to each man's discretion.
Wholesome meats to a vitiated stomach differ little or
nothing from unwholesome ; and best books to a
naughſy mind are not unapplicable to occasions of
evil. (Bad meats will scarce breed good nourishment
in the healthiest concoction 3 but herein the difference
is of bad books, that they to a discreet and judicious
reader serve in many respects to discover, to confute,
to forewarn, and to illustrate. Whereof what better
witness can ye expect I should produce, than one of
your own now sitting in parliament, the chief of learned
men reputed in this land, Mr. Selden ; whose volume
of natural and national laws proves, not only by great
authorities brought together, but by exquisite reasons
and theorems almost mathematically demonstrative,
that all opinions, yea errours, known, read, and col-
s| lated, are of main service and assistance toward the
speedy attainment of what is truest. I conceive there-
fore, that when God did enlarge the universal diet of
man's body, (saving ever the rules of temperance,) he
then also, as before, left arbitrary the dieting and re-
pasting of our minds; as wherein every mature man
might have to exercise his own leading capacity. How
great a virtue is temperance, how much of moment
through the whole life of man! Yet God commits the
managing so great a trust without particular law or
prescription, wholly to the demeanour of every grown
man. And therefore when he himself tabled the Jews
from heaven, that omer, which was every man's daily
portion of manna, is computed to have been more than
might have well sufficed the heartiest feeder thrice as
many meals. For those actions which enter into a man,
rather than issue out of him, and therefore defile not,
God uses not to captivate under a perpetual childhood
of prescription ºut trusts him with the gift of reason
to be his own &hoose; there were but little work left
for preaching, if law and compulsion should grow so
fast upon those things which heretofore were governed
only by exhortation. Solomon informs us, that much
reading is a weariness to the flesh; but neither he, nor
other inspired author, tells us that such or such reading
is unlawful ſº certainly had God thought good to
limit us hereih, it had been much more expedient to
have told us what was unlawful, than what was
wearisome. As for the burning of those Ephesian
books by St. Paul's converts; it is replied, the books
were magic, the Syriac so renders them. It was a
108
A SPEECH FOR THE LIBERTY
private act, a voluntary act, and leaves us to a volun-
tary imitation: the men in remorse burnt those books
which were their own; the magistrate by this exami-
ple is not appointed ; these men practised the books,
another might perhaps have read them in some sort
usefully. Good and evil we know in the field of this
world grow up together almost inseparably; and the
knowledge of good is so involved and interwoven with
the knowledge of evil, and in so many cunning resem-
blances hardly to be discerned, that those confused
seeds which were imposed upon Psyche as an incessant
labour to cull out, and sort asunder, were not more
intermixed. It was from out the rind of one apple
tasted, that the knowledge of good and evil, as two
twins cleaving together, leaped forth into the world.
And perhaps this is that doom which Adam fell into of
knowing good and evil, that is to say, of knowing good
by evil. As therefore the state of man now is; what
wisdom can there be to choose, what continence to for-
bear, without the knowledge of evil (He that can ap-
prehend and consider vice with all her baits and seem-
ing pleasures, and yet abstain, and yet distinguish, and
yet prefer that which is truly better, he is the true
warfaring Christian.) I cannot praise a fugitive and
cloistered virtue unexercised, and unbreathed, that
never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out
of the race, where that immortal garland is to be run
for, not without dust and heat. Assuredly we bring
not innocence into the world, we bring impurity much
rather; that which purifies us is trial, and trial is by
what is contrary. That virtue therefore which is but a
youngling in the contemplation of evil, and knows not
the utmost that vice promises to her followers, and re-
jects it, is but a blank virtue, not a pure; her white-
incss is but an excremental whiteness; which was the
reason why our sage and serious poet Spenser, (whom
I dare be known to think a better teacher than Scotus
or Aquinas,) describing true temperance under the
person of Guion, brings him in with his palmer through
the cave of Mammon, and the bower of earthly bliss,
that he neight see and know, and yet abstain. Since
tual Chetiv. For these causes we all know the Bible
itself put by the papist into the first rank of prohibited
books. The ancientest fathers must be next removed,
as Clement of Alexandria, and that Eusebian book of
evangelic preparation, transmitting our ears through
a hoard of heathenish obscenities to receive the gospel.
Who finds not that Irenaeus, Epiphanius, Jerom, and
others discover more heresies than they well confute,
and that oft for heresy which is the truer opinion 2 Nor
boots it to say for these, and all the heathem writers of
greatest infection if it must be thought so, with whom
is bound up the life of human learning, that they writ
in an unknown tongue, so long as we are sure those
languages are known as well to the worst of men, who
are both most able, and most diligent to instil the
poison they suck, first into the courts of princes, ac-
quainting them with the choicest delights, and criti-
cisms of sin. As perhaps did that Petronius, whom
Nero called his arbiter, the master of his revels; and
that notorious ribald of Arezzo, dreaded and yet dear
to the Italian courtiers. I name not him for posterity's
sake, whom Henry the Eighth named in merriment
his vicar of hell. By which compendious way all the
contagion that foreign books can infuse will find a
passage to the people far easier and shorter than an
Indian voyage, though it could be sailed either by
the north of Cataio eastward, or of Canada westward,
while our Spanish licensing gags the English press
never so severely. But on the other side, that infec-
tion which is from books of controversy in religion, is
more doubtful and dangerous to the learned, than to
the ignorant; and yet those books must be permitted
untouched by the licenser. It will be hard to instance
where any ignorant man hath been ever seduced by
any papistical book in English, unless it were com-
mended and expounded to him by some of that clergy;
and indeed all such tractates, whether false or true, are
as the prophecy of Isaiah was to the eunuch, not to be
“understood without a guide.” But of our priests and
doctors how many have been corrupted by studying the
comments of Jesuits and Sorbonists, and how fast they
could transfuse that corruption into the people, our ex-
^ / therefore the knowledge and survey of vice is in this
\ f world so necessary to the constituting of human virtue,
'- | and the scanning of errour to the confirmation of truth,
º, how can we more safely, and with less danger, scout
perience is both late and sad. It is not forgot, since
the acute and distinct Arminius was perverted merely
\
into the regions of sin and falsity, than by reading all
manner of tractates, and hearing all manner of reason?
...And this is the benefit which may be had of books pro-
@º read. But of the harm that may result
~ hence, three kinds are usually reckoned. First, is
feared the infection that may spread; but then, all hu-
man learning and controversy in religious points must
remove out of the world, yea, the Bible itself; for that
ofttimes relates blasphemy not micely, it describes the
carnal sense of wicked men not unelegantly, it brings
in holiest men passionately murmuring against pro-
vidence through all the arguments of Epicurus; in
other great disputes it answers dubiously and darkly
to the common reader; and ask a Talmudist what ails
the modesty of his marginal Keri, that Moses and all
the prophets cannot persuade him to pronounce the tex-
by the perusing of a nameless discourse written at
Delft, which at first he took in hand to confute. Seeing
therefore that those books, and those in great abun-
dance which are likeliest to taint both life and doctrine,
cannot be suppressed without the fall of learning, and
of all ability in disputation, and that these books of
either sort are most and soonest catching to the learned,
from whom to the common people whatever is heretical
or dissolute may quickly be conveyed,) and that evil
manners are as perfectly learnt without books a thousand
other ways which cannot be stopped, and evil doctrine
not with books can propagate, except a teacher guide,
which he might also do without writing, and so beyond
prohibiting; I am not unable to unfold, how this caute-
lous enterprise of licensing can be exempted from the
number of vain and impossible attempts. And he who
were pleasantly disposed, could not well avoid to liken
OF UNLICENSED PRINTING.
109
it to the exploit of that gallant man, who thought to
pound up the crows by shutting his park gate.
another inconvenience, if learned men be the first re-
ceivers out of books, and dispreaders both of vice and
errour, how shall the licensers themselves be confided
in, unless we can conſer upon them, or they assume to
themselves above all others in the land, the grace of
infallibility and uncorruptedness P And again, if it be
true, that a wise man, like a good refiner, can gather
gold out of the drossiest volume, and that a fool will
be a fool with the best book, yea, or without book;
there is no reason that we should deprive a wise man
of any advantage to his wisdom, while we seek to re-
strain from a fool that which being restrained will be
no hinderance to his folly. For if there should be so
much exactness always used to keep that from him
which is unfit for his reading, we should in the judg-
ment of Aristotle not only, but of Solomon, and of our
Saviour, not vouchsafe him good precepts, and by con-
sequence not willingly admit him to good books; as
being certain that a wise man will make better use of
an idle pamphlet, than a fool will do of sacred Scripture.
It is next alleged, we must not expose ourselves to
temptations without necessity, and next to that, not
gmploy our time in vain ſhings.) To both these objec-
tions one answer will serve, out of the grounds already
laid, that to all men such books are not temptations,
nor vanities; but useful drugs and materials wherewith
to tel, per and compose effective and strong medicines,
which man's life cannot want. The rest, as children
and childish men, who have not the art to qualify and
prepare these working minerals, well may be exhorted
to forbear, but hindered forcibly they cannot be, by
all the licensing that sainted inquisition could ever yet
contrive; 'which is what I promised to deliver next :
that this 9rder of licensing.Sºduces.ngthing...to the
end for which it was framed; and hathalmost prevented
ine by being clear already while thus much hath been
explaining. See the ingenuity of truth, who, when
she gets a free and willing hand, opens herself faster
than the pace of method and discourse can overtake
her." It was the task which I began with, to shew that
no nation, or well instituted state, if they valued books
at all, did ever use this way of licensing; and it might
be answered, that this is a piece of prudence lately
discovered. To which I return, that as it was a thing
slight and obvious to think on, so if it had been difficult
to find out, there wanted not among them long since,
who suggested such a course; which they not follow-
ing, leave us a pattern of their judgment that it was
ſºft-dºggſ knowing, but the not approving, which
was the cause of their not using it. Plato, a man of
high authority indeed, but least of all for his Common-
wealth, in the book of his laws, which no city ever yet
received, fed his fancy with making many edicts to his
airy burgomasters, which they who otherwise admire
him. wish had been rather buried and excused in the
genial cups of an academic night sitting. By which
laws he seems to tolerate no kind of learning, but by
analterable decree, consisting most of practical tradi-
tions, to the attainment whereof a library of smaller
Besides
bulk than his own dialogues would be abundant. And
there also enacts, that no poet should so much as read
to any private man what he had written, until the
judges and law keepers had seen it, and allowed it;
but that Plato meant this law peculiarly to that com-
monwealth which he had imagined, and to no other,
is evident. Why was he not else a lawgiver to him-
self, but a transgressor, and to be expelled by his own
magistrates, both for the wanton epigrams and dia-
logues which he made, and his perpetual reading of
Sophron, Mimus, and Aristophanes, books of grossest
infamy ; and also for commending the latter of them,
though he were the malicious libeller of his chief friends,
to be read by the tyrant Dionysius, who had little need
of such trash to spend his time on 2 But that he knew
this licensing of poems had reference and dependance
to many other provisoes there set down in his fancied
republic, which in this world could have no place;
and so neither he himself, nor any magistrate or city
ever imitated that course, which taken apart from those
other collateral injunctions must needs be vain and
fruitless. For if they fell upon one kind of strictness,
unless their care were equal to regulate all other things
of like aptness to corrupt the mind, that single endea-
vour they knew would be but a fond labour; to shut
and fortify one gate against corruption, and be neces-
sitated to leave others round about wide open. If we
think to regulate printing, thereby to rectify manners,
we must regulate all recreations and pastimes, all that
is delightful to man. No music must be heard, no song
be set or sung, but what is grave and doric. There must
be licensing dancers, that no gesture, motion, or de-
portment be taught our youth, but what by their allow-
ance shall be thought honest; for such Plato was
provided of. It will ask more than the work of twenty
licensers to examine all the lutes, the violins, and the
guitars in every house; they must not be suffered to
prattle as they do, but must be licensed what they
may say. And who shall silence all the airs and mad-
rigals that whisper softness in chambers? The windows
also, and the balconies must be thought on ; there are
shrewd books, with dangerous frontispieces, set to sale;
who shall prohibit them, shall twenty licensers 2 The
villages also must have their visitors to inquire what
lectures the bagpipe and the rebec reads, even to the
ballatry and the gamut of every municipal fidler; for
these are the countryman's Arcadias, and his Moute
Mayors. Next, what more national corruption, for
which England hears ill abroad, than household glut-
tony; who shall be the rectors of our daily rioting P
And what shall be done to inhibit the multitudes, that
frequent those houses where drunkenness is sold and
harboured Our garments also should be referred to
the licensing of some more sober workmasters, to see
them cut into a less wanton garb. Who shall regulate
all the mixed conversation of our youth, male and fe-
male together, as is the fashion of this country P Who
shall still appoint what shall be discoursed, what pre-
sumed, and no further P Lastly, who shall forbid and
separate all idle resort, all evil company 2 These things
will be, and must be; but how they shall be least

110 . .
A SPEECH ITOR THE LIBERTY
hurtful, how least enticing, herein consists the grave
and governing wisdom of a state. To sequester out
of the world into Atlantic and Eutopian politics, which
never can be drawn into use, will not mend our con-
dition ; but to ordain wisely as in this world of evil,
in the midst whereof God hath placed us unavoidably.
Nor is it Plato's licensing of books will do this,
which necessarily pulls along with it so many other
kinds of licensing, as will make us all both ridiculous
and weary, and yet frustrate ; but those unwritten, or
at least unconstraining laws of virtuous education, re-
ligious and civil nurture, which Plato there mentions,
as the bonds and ligaments of the commonwealth, the
pillars and the sustainers of every written statute; these
they be, which will bear chief sway in such matters as
these, when all licensing will be easily eluded. Im-
punity and remissness for certain are the bane of a
commonwealth; but here the great art lies, to discern
in what the law is to bid restraint and punishment, and
in what things persuasion only is to work. If every
action which is good or evil in man at ripe years were
to be under pittance, prescription, and compulsion,
what were virtue but a name, what praise could be then
due to well doing, what gramercy to be sober, just, or
continent * Many there be that complain of divine
Providence for suffering Adam to transgress. Foolish
tongues' when God gave him reason, he gave him
freedom to choose, for reason is but choosing; he had
been else a mere artificial Adam, such an Adam as he
is in the motions. We ourselves esteem not of that
obedience, or love, or gift, which is of force; God
therefore left him free, set before him a provoking ob-
ject, ever almost in his eyes; herein consisted his merit,
herein the right of his reward, the praise of his absti-
mence. Wherefore did he create passions within us,
pleasures round about us, but that these rightly tem-
pered are the very ingredients of virtue? They are not
skilful considerers of human things, who imagine to
remove sin, by removing the matter of sin; for, besides
that it is a huge heap increasing under the very act of
diminishing, though some part of it may for a time be
withdrawn from some persons, it cannot from all, in
such a universal thing as books are ; and when this is
done, yet the sin remains entire. Though ye take
from a covetous man all his treasure, he has yet one
jewel left, ye cannot bereave him of his covetousness.
Banish all objects of lust, shut up all youth into the
severest discipline that can be exercised in any hermit-
age, ye cannot make them chaste, that came not thither
so: such great care and wisdom is required to the right
managing of this point. Suppose we could expel sin
by this means; look how much we thus expel of sin,
so much we expel of virtue: for the matter of them
both is the same : remove that, and ye remove them
both alike. This justifies the high providence of God,
who, though he commands us temperance, justice, con-
tinence, yet pours out before us even to a profuseness
all desirable things, and gives us minds that can wan-
der beyond all limit and satiety. Why should we then
affect a rigour contrary to the manner of God and of
nature, by abridging or scanting those means, which
books, freely permitted, are both to the trial of virtue,
and the exercise of truth It would be better done, to
learn that the law must needs be frivolous, which goes
to restrain things, uncertainly and yet equally working
to good and to evil. And were I the chooser, a dram
of well doing should be preferred before many times as
much the forcible hinderance of evil doing. For God
sure esteems the growth and completing of one virtuous
person, more than the restraint of ten vicious. ' And
albeit, whatever thing we hear or see, sitting, walking,
travelling, or conversing, may be fitly called our book,
and is of the same effect that writings are; yet grant
the thing to be prohibited were only books, it appears
that this order hitherto is far insufficient to the end
which it intends. Do we not see, not once or oftener,
but weekly, that continued court-libel against the par-
liament and city, printed, as the wet sheets can witness,
and dispersed among us for all that licensing can do *
Yet this is the prime service a man would think wherein
this order should give proof of itself. If it were exe-
cuted, you will say. But certain, if execution be remiss
or blindfold now, and in this particular, what will it
be hereafter, and in other books 2 If then the order
shall not be vain and frustrate, behold a new labour,
lords and commons, ye must repeal and proscribe all
scandalous and unlicensed books already printed and
divulged; after ye have drawn them up into a list, that
all may know which are condemned, and which not ;
and ordain that no foreign books be delivered out of
custody, till they have been read over. This office will
require the whole time of not a few overseers, and those
no vulgar men. There be also books which are partly
useful and excellent, partly culpable and pernicious;
this work will ask as many more officials, to make ex-
purgations and expunctions, that the commonwealth of
learning be not damnified. In fine, when the multitude
of books increase upon their hands, ye must be ſain to
catalogue all those printers who are found frequently
offending, and forbid the importation of their whole
suspected typography. In a word, that this your order
may be exact, and not deficient, ye must reform it per-
fectly according to the model of Trent and Sevil, which
I know ye abhor to do. Yet though ye should conde-
scend to this, which God, forbid, the order still would
be but fruitless and defective to that end whereto ye
meant it. If to prevent sects and schisms, who is so
unread or uncatechised in story, that hath not heard of
many sects refusing books as a hinderance, and pre-
serving their doctrine unmixed for many ages, only by
unwritten traditions The christian faith, (for that
was once a schism') is not unknown to have spread all
over Asia, ere any gospel or epistle was seen in writing.
If the amendment of manners be aimed at, look into
Italy and Spain, whether those places be one scruple
the better, the homester, the wiser, the chaster, since
all the inquisitional rigour that hath been executed
upon books.
Another reason, whereby to make it plain that this
order will miss the end it seeks, consider by the quality
which ought to be in every license. It cannot be de-
nied, but that he who is made judge to sit upon the
OF UNLICENSED PRINTING.
I 1 |
birth or death of books, whether they may be waſted
into this world or not, had need to be a man above the
common measure, both studious, learned, and judicious;
there may be else no mean mistakes in the censure of
what is passable or mot; which is also no mean injury.
If he be of such worth as behoves him, there cannot be
a more tedious and unpleasing journeywork, a greater
loss of time levied upon his head, than to be made the
perpetual reader of unchosen books and pamphlets, oft-
times huge volumes. There is no book that is accept-
able, unless at certain seasons; but to be enjoined the
reading of that at all times, and in a hand scarce legi-
ble, whereof three pages would not down at any time
in the fairest print, is an imposition which I cannot be-
lieve how he that values time, and his own studies, or
is but of a sensible nostril, should be able to endure.
In this one thing I crave leave of the present licensers
to be pardoned for so thinking; who doubtless took
this office up, looking on it through their obedience to
the parliament, whose command perhaps made all
things seem easy and unlaborious to them; but that
this short trial hath wearied them out already, their
own expressions and excuses to them, who make so
many journeys to solicit their licence, are testimony
enough. Seeing therefore those, who now possess the
employment, by all evident signs wish themselves well
rid of it, and that no man of worth, none that is not a
plain unthriſt of his own hours, is ever likely to suc-
ceed them, except he mean to put himself to the salary
of a press corrector, we may easily foresee what kind
of licensers we are to expect hereafter, either ignorant,
imperious, and remiss, or basely pecuniary. This is
what I had to shew, wherein this order cannot con-
luce to that end, whereof it bears the intention.
}I lastly proceed from the no good it can do, to the
hanifest hurt it causes, in being first the greatest dis-
couragement and affront that can be offered to learn-
ing, and to learned men.) It was the complaint and
lamentation of prelates, upon every least breath of a
motion to remove pluralities, and distribute more equally
church revenues, that them all learning would be for
ever dashed and discouraged. But as for that opinion,
I never found cause to think, that the tenth part of
learning stood or fell with the clergy: nor could I ever
but hold it for a sordid and unworthy speech of any
churchman, who had a competency left him. If there-
fore ye be loth to dishearten utterly and discontent, not
the mercenary crew of false pretenders to learning, but
the free and ingenuous sort of such as evidently were
born to study and love learning for itself, not for lucre,
or any other end, but the service of God and of truth,
and perhaps that lasting fame and perpetuity of praise,
which God and good men have consented shall be the
reward of those, whose published labours advance the
good of mankind: then know, that so far to distrust
the judgment and the honesty of one who hath but a
common repute in learning, and never yet offended, as
not to count him fit to print his mind without a tutor
and examiner, lest he should drop a schism, or some-
thing of corruption, is the greatest displeasure and in-
dignity to a free and knowing spirit, that can be put
O-
the-Drivilege and diguity of learning.
upon him. What advantage is it to be a man, over it
is to be a boy at school, if we have only escaped the
ſerula, to come under the fescue of an Imprimatur ! If
serious and claborate writings, as if they were no more
than the theme of a grammar-lad under his pedagogue,
must not be uttered without the cursory eyes of a tem-
porizing and extemporizing licenser? He who is not
trusted with his own actions, his drift not being known
to be evil, and standing to the hazard of law and
penalty, has no great argument to think himself re-
puted in the commonwealth wherein he was born for
other than a fool or a foreigner. When a man writes
to the world, he summons up all his reason and deli-
beration to assist him; he searches, meditates, is indus-
trious, and likely consults and confers with his judi-
cious friends; after all which done, he takes himself to
be informed in what he writes, as well as any that writ
before him ; if in this the most consummate act of his
fidelity and ripeness, no years, no industry, no former
proof of his abilities can bring him to that state of ma-
turity, as not to be still mistrusted and suspected,
unless he carry all his considerate diligence, all his
midnight watchings, and expense of Palladian oil, to
the hasty view of an unleisured licenser, perhaps much
his younger, perhaps far his inferior in judgment, per-
haps one who never knew the labour of book writing;
and if he be not repulsed, or slighted, must appear in
print like a puny with his guardian, and his censor's
hand on the back of his title to be his bail and surety,
that he is no ideot or seducer; it caulo, bellula dis-
h e • . * alºr-to-
*And what if the
author shall—he-ane—so copious of fancy-as-tallaze.
Ugany things well W9Ith the adding, come into his mind.
after licensing, while the book is yet under the press,
which not seldom happens to the best and diligentest
writers; and that perhaps a dozen times in one book.
The printer dares not go beyond his licensed copy; so
often then must the author trudge to his leave-giver,
that those his new insertions may be viewed ; and
many a jaunt will be made, ere that licenser, for it
must be the same man, can either be found, or found
at leisure; meanwhile either the press must stand
still, which is no small damage, or the author lose his
accuratest thoughts, and send the book forth worse
than he had made it, which to a diligent writer is the
greatest melancholy and vexation that can befal. And
how can a man teach with authority, which is the life
of teaching; how can he be a doctor in his book as
he ought to be, or else had better be silent, whenas
all he teaches, all he delivers, is but under the tuition,
under the correction of his patriarchal licenser, to
blot or alter what precisely accords not with the hide-
bound humour which he calls his judgment 2 When
every acute reader upon the first sight of a pedantic
licence, will be ready with these like words to ding
the book a coit's distance from him, I hate a pupil
teacher, I endure not an instructor that comes to me
under the wardship of an overseeing fist. I know no-
thing of the licenser, but that I have his own hand
here for his arrogance; who shall warrant me his





| 12
A SPEECH FOR THE LIBERTY

judgment? The state, sir, replies the stationer: but has
a quick return, the state shall be my governors, but not
my critics; they may be mistaken in the choice of a
licenser, as easily as this licenser may be mistaken in an
author. This is some common stuff; and he might add
from Sir Francis Bacon, that “such authorized books
are but the language of the times.” For though a
licenser should happen to be judicious more than ordi-
nary, which will be a great jeopardy of the next suc-
cession, yet his very office and his commission enjoins
him to let pass nothing but what is vulgarly received
already. Nay, which is more lamentable, if the work
of any deceased author, though never so famous in his
lifetime, and even to this day, comes to their hands
for licence to be printed, or reprinted, if there be found
in his book one sentence of a venturous edge, uttered
in the height of zeal, (and who knows whether it might
not be the dictate of a divine spirit 8) yet not suiting with
every low decrepit humour of their own, though it were
Knox himself, the reformer of a kingdom, that spake
it, they will not pardon him their dash; the sense of
that great man shall to all posterity be lost, for the
fearfulness, or the presumptuous rashness of a per-
functory licenser. And to what an author this violence
hath been lately done, and in what book of greatest
consequence to be faithfully published, I could now
instance, but shall forbear till a more convenient sea-
son. Yet if these things be not resented seriously and
timely by them who have the remedy in their power,
but that such iron-moulds as these shall have authority
to gnaw out the choicest periods of exquisitest books,
and to commit such a treacherous fraud against the
orphan remainders of worthiest men after death, the
more sorrow will belong to that hapless race of men,
whose misfortune it is to have understanding. Hence-
forth let no man care to learn, or care to be more
than worldly wise; for certainly in higher matters
to be ignorant and slothful, to be a common stedfast
dunce, will be the only pleasant life, and only in
request.
And as it is a particular disesteem of every knowing
person alive, and most injurious to the written labours
and monuments of the dead, so to me it seems an un-
dervaluing and vilifying of the whole nation. I cannot
set so light by all the invention, the art, the wit, the
grave and solid judgment which is in England, as
that it can be comprehended in any twenty capacities
how good soever; much less that it should not pass
except their superintendence be over it, except it be
sifted and strained with their strainers, that it should
be uncurrent without their manual stamp. Truth and
understanding are not such wares as to be monopolized
and traded in by tickets, and statutes, and standards.
We must not think to make a staple commodity of all
the knowledge in the land, to mark and license it like
our broad cloth and our woolpacks. What is it but a
servitude like that imposed by the Philistincs, not to
be allowed the sharpening of our own axes and coul-
ters, but we must repair from all quarters to twenty
licensing forges P Had any one written and divulged
erroneous things and scandalous to honest life, mis-
using and forfeiting the esteem had of his reason
among men, if after conviction this only censure were
adjudged him, that he should never henceforth write,
but what were first examined by an appointed officer,
whose hand should be annexed to pass his credit
for him, that now he might be safely read ; it could
not be apprehended less than a disgraceful punishment.
Whence to include the whole nation, and those that
never yet thus offended, under such a diffident and sus-
pectful prohibition, may plainly be understood what a
disparagement it is. So much the more whenas debtors
and delinquents may walk abroad without a keeper,
but unoffensive books must not stir forth without a visible
jailor in their title. Nor is it to the common people less
than a reproach ; for if we be so jealous over them, as
that we dare not trust them with an English pamphlet,
what do we but censure them for a giddy, vicious, and
ungrounded people; in such a sick and weak state of
faith and discretion, as to be able to take nothing down
but through the pipe of a licenser P That this is care
or love of them, we cannot pretend, whenas in those
popish places, where the laity are most hated and de-
spised, the same strictness is used over them. Wisdom
we cannot call it, because it stops but one breach
of licence, nor that neither: whenas those corruptions,
which it seeks to prevent, break in faster at other doors,
which cannot be shut. -
And in conclusion it reflects to the disrepute of our
ministers also, of whose labours we should hope better,
and of their proficiency which their flock reaps by them,
than that after all this light of the gospel which is, and
is to be, and all this continual preaching, they should
be still frequented with such an unprincipled, unedified,
and laic rabble, as that the whiff of every new pam-
phlet should stagger them out of their catechism and
christian walking. This may have much reason to
discourage the ministers, when such a low conceit is
had of all their exhortations, and the benefiting
of their hearers, as that they are not thought fit
to be turned loose to three sheets of paper without a
licenser; that all the sermons, all the lectures preach-
ed, printed, vended in such numbers, and such volumes,
as have now well-nigh made all other books unsale-
able, should not be armour enough against one single
Enchiridion, without the castle of St. Angelo of an
Imprimatur.
º lest some should persuade ye, lords and com-
mons, that these arguments of learned men's discou-
ragement at this your order are mere flourishes, and
not real, I could recount what I have seen and heard
in other countries, where this kind of inquisition tyran-
nizes; when I have sat among their learned men, (for
that honour I had,) and been counted happy to be born
in such a place of philosophic freedom, as they sup-
posed England was, while themselves did nothing but
bemoan the servile condition into which learning
amongst them was brought; that this was it which
had damped the glory of Italian wits; that nothing
had been there written now these many years but
flattery and fustian. There it was that I found and
visited the famous Galileo grown old, a prisoner to the
OF UNLICENSED PRINTING.
| 13
inquisition, for thinking in astronomy otherwise than
the franciscan and dominican licenscrs thought. And
though I knew that England then was groaning loudest
under the prelatical yoke, nevertheless I took it as a
pledge of future happiness, that other nations were so
persuaded of her liberty.” Yet was it beyond my hope,
that those worthies were then breathing in her air,
who should be her leaders to such a deliverance, as
shall never be forgotten by any revolution of time that
this world hath to finish. When that was once begun,
it was as little in my fear, that what words of com-
plaint I heard among learned men of other parts uttered
against the inquisition, the same I should hear by as
learned men at home uttered in time of parliament
against an order of licensing ; and that so generally,
that when I had disclosed myself a companion of their
discontent, I might say, if without envy, that he whom
an honest quaestorship had endeared to the Sicilians,
was not more by them importuned against Verres, than
the favourable opinion which I had among many who
honour ye, and are known and respected by ye, loaded
me with entreaties and persuasions, that I would not
despair to lay together that which just reason should
bring into my mind, toward the removal of an unde-
served thraldom upon learning. That this is not there-
fore the disburdening of a particular fancy, but the
common grievance of all those who had prepared their
minds and studies above the vulgar pitch to advance
truth in others, and from others to entertain it, thus
much may satisfy. And in their name I shall for
neither friend nor foe conceal what the general mur-
mur is; that if it come to inquisitioning again, and
licensing, and that we are so timorous of ourselves,
and suspicious of all men, as to fear each book, and
the shaking of every leaf, before we know what the
contents are; if some who but of late were little better
than silenced from preaching, shall come now to silence
us from reading, except what they please, it cannot be
guessed what is intended by some but a second tyranny
over learning : and will soon put it out of controversy,
that bishops and presbyters are the same to us both
name and thing. (That those evils of prelaty which
before from five ºr six and twenty sees were distri-
butively charged upon the whole people, will now
light wholly upon learning, is not obscure to us)
whenas now the pastor of a small unlearned parish, on
the sudden shall be exalted archbishop over a large
diocese of books, and yet not remove, but keep his
other cure too, a mystical pluralist. He who but of
late cried down the sole ordination of every novice
bachelor of art, and denied sole jurisdiction over the
simplest parishioner, shall now at home in his private
chair assume both these over worthiest and excellentest
books, and ablest authors that write them. This is
not, ye covenants and protestations that we have made
this is not to put down prelaty; this is but to chop an
episcopacy; this is but to translate the palace metro-
politan from one kind of dominion into another; this
is but an old canonical slightof commuting our penance.
To startle thus betimes at a mere unlicensed pamphlet,
will, after a while, be afraid of every conventicle, and
a while after will make a conventicle of every chris-
tian meeting. But I am certain, that a state goveru, d
by the rules of justice and fortitude, or a church built
and founded upon the rock of faith and true know-
ledge, cannot be so pusillanimous. While things are
yet not constituted in religion, that freedom of writing
should be restrained by a discipline imitated from the
prelates, and learned by them from the inquisition to
shut us up all again into the breast of a licenser, must
needs give cause of doubt and discouragement to all
learned and religious men: who cannot but discern
the fineness of this politic drift, and who are the con-
trivers; that while bishops were to be baited down,
then all presses might be open ; it was the people's
birthright and privilege in time of parliament, it was
the breaking forth of light. But now the bishops
abrogated and voided out of the church, as if our re-
formation sought no more, but to make room for others
into their seats under another name; the episcopal arts
begin to bud again; the cruise of truth must run uo
more oil; liberty of printing must be enthralled again
under a prelatical commission of twenty; the privilege
of the people nullified; and which is worse, the free-
dom of learning must groan again, and to her old
fetters: all this the parliament yet sitting. Although
their own late arguments and defences against the
prelates might remember them, that this obstructing
violence meets for the most part with an event utterly
opposite to the end which it drives at: instead of sup-
pressing sects and schisms, it raises them and invests
them with a reputation: “the punishing of wits en-
hances their authority,” saith the Wiscount St. Albans;
“ and a forbidding writing is thought to be a certain
spark of truth, that flies up in the faces of them who
seek to tread it out.” This order therefore may prove
a nursing mother to sects, but I shall easily shew how
it will be a stepdame to truth: and first by disenabling
us to the maintenance of what is known already.
Well knows he who uses to consider, that our nº.
and knowledge thrives by exercise, as well as our limbs
and complexion. Truth is compared in Scripture to a
streaming fountain; if her waters flow not in a per-
betual progression, they sicken into a muddy pool of
conformity and tradition. A man may be a heretic in
the truth; and if he believe things only because his
pastor says so, or the assembly so determines, without
knowing other reason, though his belief be true, yet
the very truth he holds becomes his heresy. There is
not any burden, that some would gladlier post off to
another, than the charge and care of their religion.
There be, who knows not that there be of protestants
and professors, who live and die in as errant and im-
plicit faith, as any lay papist of Loretto. A wealthy
man, addicted to his pleasure and to his profits, finds
religion to be a traffic so entangled, and of so many
Piddling accounts, that of all mysteries he cannot skill
to keep a stock going upon that trade, what should
he do? Fain he would have the name to be religious,
ſain he would bear up with his neighbours in that. *
What does he therefore, but resolves to give over toil-
ing, and to find himself out some factor, to whose care
114
A SPEECH FOR THE LIBERTY
and credit he may commit the whole managing of his
religious affairs; some divine of note and estimation
that must be. To him he adheres, resigns the whole
warehouse of his religion, with all the locks and keys,
into his custody; and indeed makes the very person of
that man his religion; esteems his associating with him
a sufficient evidence and commendatory of his own
piety. So that a man may say his religion is now no
more within himself, but is become a dividual movable,
and goes and comes near him, according as that good
man frequents the house. He entertains him, gives
him gifts, feasts him, lodges him ; his religion comes
home at night, prays, is liberally supped, and sump-
tuously laid to sleep ; rises, is saluted, and after the
malmsey, or some well-spiced bruage, and better break-
fasted, than he whose morning appetite would have
gladly fed on green figs between Bethany and Jeru-
salem, his religion walks abroad at eight, and leaves
his kind entertainer in the shop trading all day without
• his religion.
Another sort there be, who when they hear that all
things shalſ be ordered, all things regulated and set-
tled; nothing written but what passes through the
customhouse of certain publicans that have the ton-
maging and poundaging of all freespoken truth; will
straight give themselves up into your hands, make them
and cut them out what religion ye please ;) there be
delights, there be recreations and jolly pastimes, that
will fetch the day about from sun to sun, and rock the
tedious year as in a delightful dream. What need they
torture their heads with that which others have taken
so strictly, and so unalterably into their own purvey-
ing P These are the fruits, which a dull ease and cessa-
tion of our knowledge will bring forth among the
people. How goodly, and how to be wished were such
an obedient unanimity as this ' What a fine conform-
ity would it starch us all into ! Doubtless a staunch
and solid piece of framework, as any January could
freeze together.
Nor much better will be the consequence eyen among
the clergy them. *it is no new thing never heard
of before, for a parochial minister, who has his reward,
and is at his Hercules pillars in a warm benefice, to be
easily inclinable, if he have nothing else that may rouse
up his studies, to finish his circuit in an English Con-
cordance and a topic folio, the gatherings and savings
of a sober graduateship, a Harmony and a Catena,
treading the constant round of certain common doc-
trinal heads, attended with their uses, motives, marks
and means; out of which, as out of an alphabet or sol
fa, by forming and transforming, joining and disjoining
variously, a little bookcraft, and two hours’ meditation,
might furnish him unspeakably to the performance of
more than a weekly charge of sermoning : not to
reckon up the infinite helps of interliniaries, breviaries,
synopses, and other loitering gear. But as for the
multitude of sermons ready printed and piled up, on
every text that is not difficult, our London trading St.
Thomas in his vestry, and add to boot St. Martin and
St. Hugh, have not within their hallowed limits more
vendible ware of all sorts ready made: so that penury
#
he never need fear of pulpit provision, having where
so plenteously to refresh his magazine. But if his
rear and flanks be not impaled, iſ his back door be not
secured by the rigid licenser, but that a bold book may
now and then issue forth, and give the assault to some
of his old collections in their trenches, it will concern
him then to keep waking, to stand in watch, to set good
guards and sentinels about his received opinions, to
walk the round and counter-round with his ſellow in-
spectors, fearing lest any of his flock be seduced, who
also then would be better instructed, better exercised
and disciplined. And God send that the fear of this
diligence, which must then be used, do not make us
affect the laziness of a licensing church !
For if we be sure we are in the right, and do not
hold the truth guiltily, which becomes not, if we our-
selves condemn not our own weak and frivolous teach-
ing, and the people for an untaught and irreligious
gadding rout; what can be more fair, than when a
man judicious, learned, and of a conscience, for aught
we know as good as theirs that taught us what we
know, shall not privily from house to house, which is
more dangerous, but openly by writing, publish to the
world what his opinion is, what his reasons, and where-
fore that which is now thought cannot be sound 2
Christ urged it as wherewith to justify himself that he
preached in public; yet writing is more public than
preaching; and more easy to refutation if need be,
there being so many whose business and profession
merely it is to be the champions of truth; which iſ they
neglect, what can be imputed but their sloth or unability?
...sº º * * •
§ Thus much we are hindered and disinured by this
§course of licensing toward the true knowledge of what
ye seem to know. For how much it hurts and hinders
the licensers themselves in the calling of their ministry,
more than any secular employment, if they will dis-
charge that office as they ought, so that of necessity
they must neglect either the one duty or the other; I
insist not, because it is a particular, but leave it to their
own conscience, how they will decide it there.
There is yet behind of what I purposed to lay open,
the incredible loss and detriment that this plot of licens-
ing puts us to, more than if some enemy at sea should
stop up all our havens, and ports, and creeks; it hin-
º º º *
ders and retards the importation of our richest merchan-
* **- * mºss- resºr-º-º-º-º:5**str Nºsfe &
dise. Tay. It was first establisheſ TTTTT in
*Sºrrºw-ca -- & º - - -
practice by anti-christian malice and mystery on set
purpose to extinguish, if it were possible, the light of
reformation, and to settle falsehood; little differing from
that policy wherewith the Turk upholds his Alcoran,
by the prohibiting of wº denied, but
gladly confessed, we are to send our thanks and vows
to Heaven, louder than most of nations, for that great'
measure of truth which we enjoy, especially in those
main points between us and the pope, with his appur-).
tenances the prelates: but he who thinks we are to
pitch our tent here, and have attained the utmost pros-
pect of reformation, that the mortal glass wherein we
contemplate can shew us, till we come to beatific vision;
that man by this very opinion declares, that he is yet
far short of truth.




OF UNLICENSED PRINTING.
| [5
Truth indeed came once into the world with her di-
vine master, and was a perfect shape most glorious to
look on : but when he ascended, and his apostles after
him were laid asleep, then straight arose a wicked race
of deceivers, who, as that story goes of the Egyptian
Typhon with his conspirators, how they dealt with the
good Osiris, took the virgin Truth, hewed her lovely
form into a thousand picces, and scattered them to the
four winds. From that time ever since, the sad friends
of Truth, such as durst appear, imitating the careful
search that Isis made for the mangled body of Osiris,
went up and down gathering up limb by limb still as
they could find them. We have not yet found them
all, lords and commons, nor ever shall do, till her
master's second coming; he shall bring together every
joint and member, and shall mould them into an im-
mortal feature of loveliness and perfection. 'Suffer not
these licensing prohibitions to stand at every place of
opportunity forbidding and disturbing them that con-
tinue seeking, that continue to do our obsequies to the
torn body of our martyred saint. "We boast our light;
but if we look not wisely on the sun itself, it smites us
into darkness. Who can discern those planets that
are oft combust, and those stars of brightest magnitude,
that rise and set with the sun, until the opposite mo-
tion of their orbs bring them to such a place in the fir-
mament, where they may be seen evening or morning 2
The light which we have gained, was given us, not to
be ever staring on, but by it to discover onward things
more remote from our knowledge. It is not the un-
frocking of a priest, the unmitring of a bishop, and the
removing him from off the presbyterian shoulders, that
will make us a happy nation; no, if other things as
great in the church, and in the rule of life both
occonomical and political, be not looked into and re-
formed, we have looked so long upon the blaze that
Zuinglius and Calvin have beaconed up to us, that we
are stark blind, l There be who perpetually complain
of schisms and sects, and make it such a calamity that
any man dissents from their maxims. It is their own
pride and ignorance which causes the disturbing,
who neither will hear with meekness, nor can con-
vince, yet all must be suppressed which is not found
in their Syntagma. They are the troublers, they are
the dividers of unity, who neglect and permit not
others to unite those dissevered pieces, which are yet
wanting to the body of truth. To be still searching
what we know not, by what we know, still closing
up truth to truth as we find it, (for all her body is ho-
mogeneal, and proportional,) this is the golden rule
in theology as well as in arithmetic, and makes up
the best harmony in a church; not the forced and out-
ward union, of cold, and neutral, and inwardly divided
minds. -
Lords and commons of England consider what na-
tion it is whereof ye are, and whereof ye are the go-
yernors: a nation not slow and dull, but of a quick,
ingenious, and piercing spirit; acute to invent, subtile
and sinewy to discourse, not beneath the reach of any
Point the highest that human capacity can soar to.
r * tº *
Therefore the studies of learning in her deepest sciences
have been so ancient, and so eminent among us, that
writers of good antiquity and able judgment have been
persuaded, that even the school of Pythagoras, and
the Persian wisdom, took beginning from the old phi-
losophy of this island. And that wise and civil Ro-
man, Julius Agricola, who governed once here for
Caesar, preferred the natural wits of Britain, before
the laboured studies of the French. Nor is it for no-
thing that the grave and frugal Transilvanian sends
out yearly from as far as the mountainous borders of
Russia, and beyond the Hercynian wilderness, not
their youth, but their staid men, to learn our language
and our theologic arts. |Yet that which is above all
this, the favour and the love of Heaven, we have
great argument to think in a peculiar manner pro-
pitious and propending towards us. Why else was
this nation chosen before any other, that out of her, as
out of Sion, should be proclaimed and sounded forth
the first tidings and trumpet of reformation to all Eu-
rope P And had it not been the obstinate perverseness
of our prelates against the divine and admirable spirit
of Wickliff, to suppress him as a schismatic and inno-
vator, perhaps neither the Bohemian Husse and Jerom,
no nor the name of Luther or of Calvin, had been ever
known : the glory of reforming all our neighbours
had been completely ours. But now, as our obdurate
clergy have with violence demeaned the matter, we
are become hitherto the latest and the backwardest
scholars, of whom God offered to have made us the
teachers. | Now once again by all concurrence of
signs, and by the general instinct of holy and devout
men, as they daily and solemnly express their thoughts,
God is decrecing to begin some new and great pe-
riod in his church, even to the reforming of reforma-
tion itself; what does he then but reveal himself to
his servants, and as his manner is, first to his English-
men P I say as his manner is, first to us, though
we mark not the method of his counsels, and are
unworthy. I Behold now this vast city : a city of
refuge, the mansion-house of liberty, encompassed and
surrounded with his protection; the shop of war hath
not there more anvils and hammers waking, to fashion
out the plates and instruments of armed justice in de-
fence of beleagured truth, than there be pens and heads
there, sitting by their studious lamps, musing, search-
ing, revolving new notions and ideas wherewith to
present, as with their homage and their fealty, the ap-
proaching reformation : others as fast reading, trying
all things, assenting to the force of reason and com-
vincement. What could a man require more from a
nation so pliant and so prone to seek after knowledge 2
What wants there to such a towardly and pregnant soil,
but wise and faithful labourers, to make a knowing
people, a nation of prophets, of sages, and of worthies?
We reckon more than five months yet to harvest; there
need not be five weeks, had we but eyes to liſt up, the
fields are white already. [Where there is much desire
to learn, there of necessity will be much arguing, much
writing, many opinions; for opinion in good men is
but knowledge in the making. ). Under these fantastic
terrours of sect and schism, we wrong the earnest and


I
*
116
zealous thirst after knowledge and understanding,
which God bath stirred up in this city.) What some
lament of, we rather should rejoice at, should rather
praise this pious forwardness among men, to reassume
the ill-deputed care of their religion into their own
hands again. A little generous prudence, a little for-
bearance of one another, and some grain of charity
might win all these diligencies to join and unite into
one general and brotherly search after truth; could we
but ſorego this prelatical tradition of crowding free
consciences and christian liberties into canons and pre-
cepts of men. I doubt not, if some great and worthy
stranger should come among us, wise to discern the
mould and temper of a people, and how to govern it,
observing the high hopes and aims, the diligent alacrity
of our extended thoughts and reasonings in the pur-
suance of truth and freedom, but that he would cry out
as Pyrrhus did, admiring the Roman docility and
courage; if such were my Epirots, I would not despair
the greatest design that could be attempted to make a
church or kingdom happy. Yet these are the men
cried out against for schismatics and sectaries, as if,
while the temple of the Lord was building, some cut-
ting, some squaring the marble, others hewing the
cedars, there should be a sort of irrational men, who
could not consider there must be many schisms and
many dissections made in the quarry and in the timber,
ere the house of God can be built. And when every
stone is laid artfully together, it cannot be united into
a continuity, it can but be contiguous in this world :
neither can every piece of the building be of one form;
may rather the perſection consists in this, that out of
many moderate varieties and brotherly dissimilitudes
that are not vastly disproportional, arises the goodly
and the graceful symmetry that commends the whole
pile and structure. Let us therefore be more consider-
ate builders, more wise in spi.itual architecture, when
great reformation is expected. For now the time seems
come, wherein Moses the great prophet may sit in
heaven rejoicing to see that memorable and glorious
wish of his ſulfilled, when not only our seventy elders,
but all the Lord's people, are become prophets. No
marvel then though some men, and some good men
too perhaps, but young in goodness, as Joshua then
was, envy them. They fret, and out of their own
weakness are in agony, lest these divisions and subdi-
visions will undo us. The adversary again applauds,
and waits the hour ; when they have branched them-
selves out, saith he, small enough into partics and par-
titions, then will be our time. Too! ! he sees not the
firm root, out of which we all grow, though into
branches; nor will beware until he see our small di-
vided maniples cutting through aftevery angle of his
ill-united and unwieldy .k. that we arc to
hope better of all these supposed sects and schisms, and
that we shall not need that solicitude, honest perhaps,
though overtimorous, of them that vex in this behalf,
but shall laugh in the end at those malicious applaud-
ers of our differences, I have these reasons to persuade
Illé. . .
Čºwhen a city shall be as it were besieged and
A SPEECH TOR THE LIBERTY -
blocked about, her navigable river inſested, inroads and
incursions round, defiance and battle oſt rumoured to
be marching up, even to her walls and suburb trenches;
that then the people, or the greater part, more than at
other times, wholly taken up with the study of highest
and most important matters to be reformed, should be
disputing, reasoning, reading, inventing, discoursing,
even to a rarity and admiration, things not before dis-
coursed or written of, argues first a singular good will,
contentedness, and confidence in your prudent foresight,
and safe government, lords and commons; and from
thence derives itself to a gallant bravery and well
grounded contempt of their enemics, as if there were
no simall number of as great spirits among us, as his
was who, when Rome was high besieged by Hannibal,
being in the city, bought that piece of ground at no
cheap rate, whereon Hannibal himself encamped his
own regiment. Next, it is a lively and cheerful pro-
sage of our happy success and victory. For as in a
body when the blood is fresh, the spirits pure and vigor-
ous, not only to vital, but to rational facultics, and
those in the acutest and the pertest operations of wit
and subtlety, it argues in what good plight and consti-
tu’ion the body is; so when the cheerfulness of the
people is so sprightly up, as that it has not only where-
with to guard well its own freedom and safety, but to
spare, and to bestow upon the solidest and sublimest
points of controversy and new invention, it betokens
us not degenerated, nor drooping to a fatal decay, by
casting off the old and wrinkled skin of corruption to
outlive these pangs, and wax young again, entering
the glorious ways of truth and prosperous virtue, des-
tined to become great and honourable in these latter
ages. Methinks I see in my mind a noble and puissant |
nation rousing herself like a strong man after sleep,'
and shaking her invincible locks: methinks I see her
as an eagle muing her mighty youth, and kindling her
undazzled eyes at the full midday beam; purging and }
unscaling her long abused sight at the fountain itself
of heavenly radiance; while the whole noise of timor-
ous and flocking birds, with those also that love the
twilight, flutter about, amazed at what she means, and
in their envious gabble would prognosticate a year of
sects and schisms.
What should ye do then, should ye suppress all this
flowery crop of knowledge and new light sprung up
and yet springing daily in this city ºf Should ye set an
oligarchy of twenty engrossers over it, to bring a fa-
mine upon our minds again, when we shall know
nothing but what is measured to us by their bushel P
Believe it, lords and commons! they who counsel ye
to such a suppressing, do º id-ye-suppress-
yourselyes-and I will soon shew how. If it be de-
sired to know the immediate cause of all this frce writ-
ing and free speaking, there cannot be assigned a truer
than your own mild, and free, and humane government;
it is the liberty, lords and commons, which your own
valorous and happy counsels have purchased us; li-
berty which is the nurse of all great wits: this is that
which hath rarified and enlightened our spirits like the
influence of heaven; this is that which hath enfran-
OF UNLICENSED PRINTING.
117
chised, enlarged, and liſted up our apprehensions de-
grees abºve themselves. Ye cannot make us now less
capalºſé, less knowing, less eagerly pursuing of the
tº uth, unless ye first make yourselves, that made us
'so, less the lovers, less the founders of our true li-
- berty. We can grow ignorant again, brutish, formal,
and slavish, as ye found us; but you ther must first
become that which ye cannot be, oppressive, arbitrary,
and tyrannous, as they were from whom ye have freed
us. That our hearts are now more capacious, our
thoughts more erected to the search and expectation of
greatest and exactest things, is the issue of your own
virtue propagated in us; ye cannot suppress that, un-
less ye reinforce an abrogated and merciless law, that
fathers may dispatch at will their own children. And
who shall then stick closest to ye and excite others?
Not he who takes up arms for coat and conduct, and
his four nobles of Danegelt. Although I dispraise not
the defence of just immunities, yet love my peace
better, if that were all. Give me the liberty to know,
to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience,
above all liberties.
6 What would be best advised then, if it be found so
hurtful and so unequal to suppress opinions for the new-
ness or the unsuitableness to a customary acceptance,
will not be my task to say; I shall only repeat what I
have learned from one of your own honourable num-
ber, a right noble and pious lord, who had he not sa-
crificed his life and fortunes to the church and com-
monwealth, we had not now missed and bewailed a
worthy and undoubted patron of this argument. , Ye
know him, I am sure; yet I for honour's sake, and
may it be eternal to him, shall name him, the Lord
Brook. He writing of episcopacy, and by the way
treating of sects and schisms, leſt ye his vote, or rather
now the last words of his dying charge, which I know
will ever be of dear and honoured regard with ye, so
full of meekness and breathing charity, that next to .
his last testament, who bequeathed love and peace to
his disciples, I cannot call to mind where I have read
or heard words more mild and peaceful. He there ex-
horts us ear with patience and humilit QW.
“Yeſ they be miscalled, that desire to live purely, in
such a use of God's 9rdinances, as the besignidance of
their gonscience gives them, and to tolerate them.
though in some disconformity to ausselves, The book
itself will tell us more at large, being published to the
world, and dedicated to the parliament by him, who
both for his life and for his death deserves, that what
advice he left be not laid by without perusal.
And now the time in special is, by privilege to write
and speak what may help to the further discussing of
matters in agitation. The temple of Janus with his
two controversal faces might now not unsignificantly
be set open. And though all the winds of doctrine
were let loose to play upon the earth, so truth be in the
field, we do injuriously by licensing and prohibiting to
misdoubt her strength. Let her and falsehood grapple;
who ever knew truth put to the worse, in a free and
open encounter P Her confuting is the best and surest
suppressing. He who hears what praying there is for
light and clear knowledge to be sent down among us,
would think of other matters to be constituted beyond
the discipline of Geneva, framed and fabricked already
to our hands. Yet when the new light which we beg
for shines in upon us, there be who envy and oppose,
if it come not first in at their casements. What a col-
lusion is this, whenas we are exhorted by the wise man
to use diligence, “to seek for wisdom as for hidden
treasures” early and late, that another order shall en-
join us, to know nothing but by statute 2 When a man
hath been labouring the hardest labour in the deep
mines of knowledge, hath furnished out his findings in
all their equipage, drawn forth his reasons as it were a
battle ranged, scattered and defeated all objections in
his way, calls out his adversary into the plain, offers
him the advantage of wind and sun, if he please, only
that he may try the matter by dint of argument; for
his opponents then to sculk, to lay ambushments, to
keep a narrow bridge of licensing where the challenger
should pass, though it be valour enough in soldiership,
is but weakness and cowardice in the wars of truth.
Tor who knows not that truth is strong, next to the
Almighty; she needs no policies, nor stratagems, nor
licensings to make her victorious, those are the shifts
and the defences that errour uses against her power:
give her but room, and do not bind her when she sleeps,
for then she speaks not true, as the old Proteus did,
who spake oracles only when he was caught and bound,
but then rather she turns herself into all shapes, ex-
cept her own, and perhaps tunes her voice according to
the time, as Micaiah did before Ahab, until she be ad-
jured into her own likeness. Yet is it not impossible
that she may have more shapes than one What else
is all that rank of things indifferent, wherein truth
may be on this side, or on the other, without being un-
like herself? What but a vain shadow else is the abo-
lition of “those ordinances, that hand-writing nailed
to the cross f" What great purchase is this christian
liberty which Paul so often boasts off His doctrine is,
that he who eats or eats not, regards a day or regards
it not, may do either to the Lord. How many other
things might be tolerated in peace, and left to con-
science, had we but charity, and were it not the chief
strong hold of our hypocrisy to be ever judging one
another? I fear yet this iron yoke of outward con-
formity hath left a slavish print upon our necks; the
ghost of a linen decency yet haunts us. We stumble,
and are impatient at the least dividing of one visible
congregation from another, though it be not in fun-
damentals; and through our forwardness to suppress,
and our backwardness to recover, any enthralled piece
of truth out of the gripe of custom, we care not to
keep truth separated from truth, which is the fiercest
rent and disunion of all. We do not see that while
we still affect by all means a rigid external formality,
we may as soon fall again into a gross conforming
stupidity, a stark and dead congealment of “wood
and hay and stubble’” forced and frozen together,
which is more to the sudden degenerating of a church
than many subdichotomies of petty schisms. Not
that I can think well of every light separation ; or

A->
l 18
A SPEECH FOR THE LIBERTY
that all in a church is to be expected “gold and silver
and precious stones:” it is not possible for man to
sever the wheat from the tares, the good fish from the
other fry; that must be the angels' ministry at the end
of mortal things. Yet if all cannot be of one mind, as
who looks they should be this doubtless is more
wholesome, more prudent, and more christian, that
many be tolerated rather than all compelled. I mean
not tolerated popery, and open superstition, which as it
extirpates all religions and civil supremacies, so itself
should be extirpate, provided first that all charitable
and compassionate means be used to win and regain
the weak and the misled : that also which is impious
or evil absolutely either against faith or manners, no
law can possibly permit, that intends not to unlaw
itself; but those neighbouring differences, or rather
indifferences, are what I speak of, whether in some
point of doctrine or of discipline, which though they
may be many, yet need not interrupt the unity of spi-
rit, if we could but find among us the bond of peace.
In the mean while, if any one would write, and bring
his helpful hand to the slow moving reformation which
we labour under, if truth have spoken to him before
others, or but seemed at least to speak, who hath so
bejesuited us, that we should trouble that man with
asking licence to do so worthy a deed ; and not con-
sider this, that if it come to prohibiting, there is not
aught more likely to be prohibited than $ºuth itself:
whose first appearance to our eyes, bleared and dimmed
with prejudice and custom, is more unsightly and un-
plausible than many errours; even as the person is of
many a great man slight and contemptible to see to.
- e tº &
7\nd what do they tell us vainly of ugy opinions, when
this very opinion of theirs, that uone must be heard
but whom they like, is the worst and newest opinion
of all others; and is the chief cause why sects and
schisms do so much abound, and true knowledge is
kept at distance from us; besides yet a greater danger
which is in it. For when God shakes a kingdom, with
strong and healthful commotions, to a general reform-
g, it is not untrue that many sectaries and false
teachers are then busiest in seducing. But yet more
true it is, that God then raises to his own work men of
rare abilities, and more than common industry, not
only to look back and revise what hath been taught
heretofore, but to gain further, and to go on some new
enlightened steps in the discovery of truth. For such
is the order of God’s enlightening his church, to dis-
pense and deal out by degrees his beam, so as our
earthly eyes may best sustain it. Neither is God ap-
pointed and confined, where and out of what place
these his chosen shall be first heard to speak; for he
sees not as man sces, chooses not as man chooses, lest
we should devote ourselves again to set places and
assemblies, and outward callings of men; planting
our faith one while in the old convocation house, and
another while in the chapel at Westminster; when all
inor
the faith and religion that shall be there canonized, is
not sufficient without plain convincement, and the
charity of patient instruction, to supple the least bruise
of conscience, to edify the meanest Christian, who de-
sires to walk in the spirit, and not in the letter of human
trust, for all the number of voices that can be there
made ; no, though Harry the seventh himself there,
with all his liege tombs about him, should lend them
voices from the dead to swell their number. And if
the men be erroneous who appear to be the leading
schismatics, what withholds us but our sloth, our selſ-
will, and distrust in the right cause, that we do not
give them gentle meetings and gentle dismissions,
that we debate not and examine the matter thoroughly
with liberal and frequent audience; if not for their
sakes yet for our own 2 Seeing no man who hath tasted
learning, but will confess the many ways of profiting
by those who, not contented with stale receipts, are
able to manage and set forth new positions to the world.
And were they but as the dust and cinders of our feet,
so long as in that notion they may yet serve to polish
and brighten the armory of truth, even for that respect
they were not utterly to be cast away. But if they be
of those whom God hath fitted for the special use of
these times with eminent and ample gifts, and those
perhaps neither among the priests, nor among the
Pharisees, and we in the haste of a precipitant zeal
shall make no distinction, but resolve to stop their
mouths, because we fear they come with new and
dangerous opinions, as we commonly forejudge them
ere we understand them; no less than woe to us, while,
thinking gospel, we are found the
lºgºsº
iere have been not a few since the beginning of
this pârliament, both of the presbytery and others, who
by their unlicensed books to the contempt of an im-
primatur first broke that triple ice clung about our
hearts, and taught the people to see day: I hope that
none of those were the persuaders to renew upon us
this bondage, which they themselves have wrought so
much good by contemming. But if neither the check
that Moses gave to young Joshua, nor the counter-
mand which our Saviour gave to young John, who
was so ready to prohibit those whom he thought un-
licensed, be not enough to admonish our elders how
unacceptable to God their testy mood of prohibiting
is ; if neither their own remembrance what evil hath
abounded in the church by this lett of licensing, and
what good they themselves have begun by transgress-
ing it, be not enough, but that they will persuade and
execute the most Dominican part of the inquisition
over us, and are already with one foot in the stirrup so
active at suppressing, it would be no unequal distribu-
tion in the first place to suppress the suppressors them-
elves; whom the change of their condition hath puffed
up, more than their late experience of harder times
hath made wise.
And as for regulating the press, let no man think to
have the honour of advising ye better than yourselves
have done in that order published next before this,
“That no book be printed, unless the printer's and the
author's name, or at least the printer's, be registered.”)
Those which otherwise come forth, if they be found
mischievous and libellous, the fire and the executioner
will be the timeliest and the most effectual remedy,


OF UNLICENSED PRINTING.
J 19
• that man's prevention can use. "For this authentic
Spanish policy of licensing books, if I have said aught,
will prove the most unlicensed book itself within a
short while ; and was the immediate image of a star-
chamber decree to that purpose made in those very
times when that court did the rest of those her pious
works, for which she is now fallen from the stars with
Lucifer. Whereby ye may guess what kind of state
prudence, what love of the people, what care of religion
or good manners there was at the contriving, although
with singular hypocrisy it pretended to bind books to
their good behaviour. ' And how it got the upper hand
of your precedent order so well constituted before, if
we may believe those men whose profession gives
them cause to inquire most, it may be doubted there
was in it the fraud of some old patentees and monopo-
lizers in the trade of bookselling; who under pretence
of the poor in their company not to be defrauded, and
the just retaining of each man his several copy, (which
God forbid should be gainsaid,) brought divers glossing
\ colours to the house, which were indeed but colours,
and serving to no end except it be to exercise a su-
periority over their neighbours; men who do not there-
fore labour in an honest profession, to which learning
is indebted, that they should be made other men's
vassals. Another end is thought was aimed at by some
of them in procuring by petition this order, that having
power in their hands malignant books might the
easier escape abroad, as the event shews.' But of these
sophisms and elenchs of merchandize I skill not :
This I know, that errours in a good government
and in a bad are equally almost incident; for what
magistrate may not be misinformed, and much the
sooner, if liberty of printing be reduced into the power
of a few But to redress willingly and speedily what

bath been erred, and in highest authority to es-
teem a plain advertisement more than others have
done a sumptuous bride, is a virtue (honoured lords
and commons) answerable to your highest actions,
and whereaf none gau-participate.bg.gººglºsiºnſ
- £ºf: wº. sº-ºr-z-Zºr-
W1SeSt men.
******-
w -*
...” ~-, t
r
RESTORED TO THE Good of Both sExEs,
*----
. . . .
** -
t
AND DISCIPLINE
*** --
D Ivo R C E
FROM THE BONDAGE of CANoN Law, AND OTHER MISTAKES,
** ---
TO THE TRUE MEANING OF scRIPTURE IN THE LAW AND GOSPFL COMPARED.
WHEREIN ALSO ARE SET Dow N THE BAD CONSEQUENCEs of ABolish ING, or conDEMINING
AS SIN, THAT WHICH THE LAW OF GOD ALLOWs, AND CHRIST ABOLISHED NOT.
NOW THE SECOND TIME REVISED, AND MUCH AUGMENTED, IN Two Books: TO THE PARLIAMENT
OF ENGLAND, WITH
THE ASSEMBLY.
MATTh, xiii, 52.
!--
“Every scribe instructed in the kingdom of heaven is like the master of a house, which bringeth out of
his treasury things new and old.”
| Prov. xviii. 13. “He that answereth a matter before he heareth it, it is folly and shame unto him "
[F1RST PUBLISHED 1643, 1644.]
TO THE PARLIAMENT OF ENGLAND, WITH THE ASSEMBLY.
If it were seriously asked, (and it would be no untimely
question,) renowned parliament, select assembly' who
of all teachers and masters, that have ever taught, hath
drawn the most disciples after him, both in religion
and in manners f it might be not untruly answered,
Custom. Though virtue be commended for the most
persuasive in her theory, and conscience in the plain
demonstration of the spirit finds most evincing ; yet
whether it be the secret of divine will, or the original
blindness we are born in, so it happens for the most
part, that custom still is silently received for the best
instructor. Except it be, because her method is so glib
and easy, in some manner like to that vision of Ezekiel
rolling up her sudden book of implicit knowledge, for
him that will to take and swallow down at pleasure;
which proving but of bad nourishment in the concoction,
as it was heedless in the devouring, puffs up unhealthily
a certain big face of pretended learning, mistaken
among credulous men for the wholesome habit of
soundness and good constitution, but is indeed no
other than that swoln visage of counterfeit know-
ledge and literature, which not only in private mars
our education, but also in public is the common climber
into every chair, where either religion is preached, or
law reported : filling each estate of life and profession
with abject and servile principles, depressing the high
and heaven-born spirit of man, far beneath the condition
wherein either God created him, or sin hath sunk him,
To pursue the allegory, custom being but a mere face,
as echo is a mere voice, rests not in her unaccomplish-
ment, until by secret inclination she accorporate herself
with errour, who being a blind and serpentine body
without a head, willingly accepts what he wants, and
supplies what her incompleteness went seeking. Hence
it is, t at errour supports custom, custom countenances
errour: and these two between them would persecute
and chase away all truth and solid wisdom out of hu-
man life, were it not that God, rather than man, once
in many ages calls together the prudent and religious
counsels of men, deputed to repress the incroachments,
and to work off the inveterate blots and obscurities
wrought upon our minds by the subtle insinuating of
errour and custom ; who, with the numerous and vul-
gar train of their followers, make it their chief design
to envy and cry down the industry of free reasoning
under the terms of humour and innovation; as if the
womb of teeming truth were to be closed up, if she
presume to bring forth aught that sorts not with their
unchewed notions and suppositions. Against which
notorious injury and abuse of man's free soul, to testify
and oppose the utmost that study and true labour can
attain, heretofore the incitement of men reputed grave
hath led me among others; and now the du y and the
right of an instructed Christian calls me through the
chance of good or evil report, to be the sole advocate
of a discountenanced truth: a high enterprise, lords
and commons! a high enterprise and a hard, and such
as every seventh son of a seventh son does not venture
on. Nor have I amidst the clamour of so much envy
and impertinence whither to appeal, but to the con-
course of so much piety and wisdom here assembled.
Bringing in my hands an ancient and most necessary,
THE DOCTRINE AND DISCIPLINE OF DIVORCE.
121
most charitable, and yet most injured statute of Moses;
not repealed ever by him who only had the authority,
but thrown aside with much inconsiderate neglect,
under the rubbish of canonical ignorance ; as once the
whole law was by some such like conveyance in Jo-
siah's time. And he who shall endeavour the amend-
ment of any old neglected grievance in church or state,
or in the daily course of life, if he be gifted with abilities
of mind, that may raise him to so high an undertaking,
I grant he hath already much whereof not to repent
him; yet let me aread him, not to be the foreman of
any misjudged opinion, unless his resolutions be firmly
seated in a square and constant mind, not conscious to
itself of any deserved blame, and regardless of un-
grounded suspicions. For this let him be sure, he shall
be boarded presently by the ruder sort, but not by dis-
creet and well-nurtured men, with a thousand idle
descants and surmises. Who when they cannot con-
fute the least joint or sinew of any passage in the book;
yet God forbid that truth should be truth, because they
have a boisterous conceit of some pretences in the writer.
But were they not more busy and inquisitive than the
apostle commends, they would hear him at least, “re-
joicing so the truth be preached, whether of envy or
other pretence whatsoever:” for truth is as impossible
to be soiled by any outward touch, as the sunbeam ;
though this ill hap wait on her nativity, that she never
comes into the world, but like a bastard, to the ignominy
of him that brought her forth ; till time, the midwife
rather than the mother of truth, have washed and salted
the infant, declared her legitimate, and churched the
father of his young Minerva, from the needless causes
of his purgation. Yourselves can best witness this,
worthy patriots' and better will, no doubt, hereafter :
for who among ye of the foremost that have travailed
in her behalf to the good of church or state, hath not
been often traduced to be the agent of his own by-ends,
under pretext of reformation 2 So much the more I
shall not be unjust to hope, that however inſamy or
envy may work in other men to do her fretful will
against this discourse, yet that the experience of your
own uprightness misinterpreted will put ye in mind, to
give it free audience and generous construction. What
though the brood of Belial the draff of men, to whom
no liberty is pleasing, but unbridled and vagabond
lust without pale or partition, will laugh broad per-
haps, to see so great a strength of Scripture mustering
up in favour, as they suppose, of their debaucheries;
they will know better when they shall hence learn,
that honest liberty is the greatest foe to dishonest licence.
And what though others, out of a waterish and queasy
conscience, because ever crazy and never yet sound,
will rail and fancy to themselves that injury and licence
is the best of this book P Did not the distemper of their
own stomachs affect them with a dizzy megrim, they
would soon tie up their tongues, and discern themselves
like that Assyrian blasphemer, all this while reproach-
ing not man, but the Almighty, the Holy One of Israel,
whom they do not deny to have belawgiven his own
sacred people with this very allowance, which they
now call injury and licence, and dare cry shame on,
and will do yet a while, till they get a little cordial
sobriety to settle their qualming zeal. But this ques-
tion concerns not us perhaps: indeed man's disposition,
though prone to search after vain curiosities, yet when
points of difficulty are to be discussed, appertaining to
the removal of unreasonable wrong and burden from
the perplexed life of our brother, it is incredible how
cold, how dull, and far from all fellow-feeling we are,
without the spur of self-concernment. Yet if the wis-
dom, the justice, the purity of God be to be cleared
from foulest imputations, which are not yet a , olued; if
charity be not to be degraded and trodden down under
a civil ordinance; if matrimony be not to be advanced
like that exalted perdition written of to the Thessalo-
nians, “above all that is called God,” or goodness, nay
against them both ; then I dare affirm, there will be
found in the contents of this book that which may con-
cern us all. You it concerns chiefly, worthies in par-
liament' on whom, as on our deliverers, all our griev-
ances and cares, by the merit of your eminence and
fortitude, are devolved. Me it concerns next, having
with much labour and faithful diligence first found
ont, or at least with a fearless and communicative can-
dour first published to the manifest good of christendom,
that which, calling to witness every thing mortal and
immortal, I believe unfeignedly to be true. Let not
other men think their conscience bound to search con-
tinually after truth, to pray for enlightening from
above, to publish what they think they have so obtain-
ed, and debar me from conceiving myself tied by the
same duties. Ye have now, doubtless, by the favour
and appointment of God, ye have now in your hands a
great and populous nation to reform ; from what cor-
ruption, what blindness in religion, ye know well; in
what a degenerate and fallen spirit from the apprehen-
sion of native liberty, and true manliness, I am sure ye
find; with what unbounded licence rushing to whore-
doms and adulteries, needs not long inquiry: insomuch
that the fears, which men have of too strict a discipline,
perhaps exceed the hopes, that can be in others, of ever
introducing it with any great success. What if I
should tell ye now of dispensations and indulgences,
to give a little the reins, to let them play and nibble
with the bait a while; a people as hard of heart as that
Egyptian colony that went to Canaan. This is the
common doctrine that adulterous and injurious divorces
were not connived only, but with eye open allowed of
old for hardness of heart. But that opinion, I trust,
by then this following argument hath been well read,
will be left for one of the mysteries of an indulgent
Antichrist, to farm out incest by, and those his other
tributary pollutions. What middle way can be taken
then, may some interrupt, if we must neither turn to
the right, nor to the left, and that the people hate to
be reformed 2 Mark then, judges and lawgivers, and
ye whose office it is to be our teachers, for I will utter
now a doctrine, if ever any other, though neglected or
not understood, yet of great and powerful importance
to the governing of mankind. He who wisely would
restrain the reasonable soul of man within due bounds,
must first himself know perfectly, how far the territory
122
THE DOCTRINE AND DISCIPLINE OF DIVORCE.
and dominion extends of just and honest liberty. As
little must he offer to bind that which God hath loosened,
as to loosen that which he hath bound. The ignorance
and mistake of this high point hath heaped up one huge
half of all the misery that hath been since Adam. In
the gospel we shall read a supercilious crew of masters,
whose holiness, or rather whose evil eye, grieving that
God should be so facil to man, was to set straiter limits
to obedience, than God hath set, to enslave the dignity
of man, to put a garrison upon his neck of empty and
over-dignified precepts: and we shall read our Saviour
never more grieved and troubled, than to meet with such
a peevish madness among men against their own free-
dom. How can we expect him to be less offended
with us, when much of the same folly shall be found
yet remaining where it least ought, to the perishing of
thousands 2 The greatest burden in the world is super-
stition, not only of ceremonies in the church, but of ima-
ginary and scarecrow sins at home. What greater
weakening, what more subtle stratagem against our
christian warfare, when besides the gross body of real
transgressions to encounter, we shall be terrified by a
vain and shadowy menacing of faults that are note?
When things indifferent shall be set to overfront us
under the banners of sin, what wonder if we be routed,
and by this art of our adversary, fall into the subjec-
tion of worst and deadliest offences P. The superstition of
the papist is, “touch not, taste not,” when God bids
both ; and ours is, “part not, separate not,” when God
and charity both permits and commands. “Let all
your things be done with charity,” saith St. Paul ; and
his master saith, “She is the ſulfilling of the law.” Yet
now a civil, an indifferent, a sometime dissuaded law
of marriage, must be forced upon us to fulfil, not only
without charity but against her. No place in heaven
or earth, except hell, where charity may not enter:
yet marriage, the ordinance of our solace and content-
ment, the remedy of our loneliness, will not admit now
either of charity or mercy, to come in and mediate, or
pacify the fierceness of this gentle ordinance, the un-
remedied loneliness of this remedy. Advise ye well,
supreme senate, if charity be thus excluded and ex-
pulsed, how ye will defend the untainted honour of
your own actions and proceedings. He who marries,
intends as little to conspire his own ruin, as he that
swears allegiance : and as a whole people is in propor-
tion to an ill government, so is one man to an ill mar-
riage. If they, against any authority, covenant, or
statute, may by the sovereign edict of charity, save not
only their lives but honest liberties from unworthy
bondage, as well may he against any private covenant,
which he never entered to his mischief, redeem himself
from unsupportable disturbances to honest peace, and
just contentment: And much the rather, for that to re-
sist the highest magistrate though tyrannizing, God
never gave us express allowance, only he gave us rea-
son, charity, nature, and good example to bear us out;
but in this economical misfortune thus to demean our-
selves, besides the warrant of those four great directors,
which doth as justly belong hither, we have an express
law of God, and such a law, as whereof our Saviour
with a solemn threat forbid the abrogating. For no
effect of tyranny can sit more heavy on the common-
wealth, than this household unhappiness on the family.
And farewell all hope of true reformation in the state,
while such an evil as this lies undiscerned or unre-
garded in the house : on the redress whereof depends
not only the spiritful and orderly life of our own grown
men, but the willing and careful education of our
children. Let this therefore be now examined, this
tenure and freehold of mankind, this native and do-
mestic charter given us by a greater lord than that
Saxon king the confessor. Let the statutes of God be
turned over, be scanned anew, and considered not al-
together by the narrow intellectuals of quotationists
and common places, but (as was the ancient right of
councils) by men of what liberal profession soever, of
eminent spirit and breeding, joined with a diffuse and
various knowledge of divine and human things; able
to balance and define good and evil, right and wrong,
throughout every state of life; able to shew us the
ways of the Lord straight and faithful as they are, not
full of cranks and contradictions, and pitfalling dis-
penses, but with divine insight and benignity measured
out to the proportion of each mind and spirit, each
temper and disposition created so different each from
other, and yet by the skill of wise conducting, all to
become uniform in virtue. To expedite these knots,
were worthy a learned and memorable synod; while
our enemies expect to see the expectation of the church
tired out with dependencies and independencies, how
they will compound, and in what calends. Doubt
not, worthy senators' to vindicate the sacred honour
and judgment of Moses your predecessor, from the
shallow commenting of scholastics and canonists.
Doubt not after him to reach out your steady hands to
the misinformed and wearied life of man ; to restore
this his lost heritage, into the household state ; where-
with be sure that peace and love, the best subsistence
of a christian family, will return home from whence
they are now banished; places of prostitution will be
less haunted, the neighbour's bed less attempted, the
yoke of prudent and manly discipline will be generally
submitted to; sober and well ordered living will soon
spring up in the commonwealth. Ye have an author
great beyond exception, Moses; and one yet greater,
he who hedged in from abolishing every smallest jot
and tittle of precious equity contained in that law,
with a more accurate and lasting Masoreth, than either
the synagogue of Ezra or the Galilaean school at
Tiberias hath left us. Whatever else ye can enact,
will scarce concern a third part of the British name:
but the benefit and good of this your magnanimous ex-
ample, will easily spread far beyond the banks of
Tweed and the Norman isles. It would not be the
first or second time, since our ancient druids, by whom
this island was the cathedral of philosophy to France,
left off their pagan rites, that England hath had this
honour vouchsafed from heaven, to give out reforma-
tion to the world. Who was it but our English Con-
stantine that baptized the Roman empire 2 Who but
the Northumbrian Willibrode, and Winifride of Devon,
THE DOCTRINE AND DISCIPLINE OF DIVORCE.
123
with their followers, were the first apostles of Germany
Who but Alcuin and Wickliff our countrymen opened
the eyes of Europe, the one in arts, the other in reli-
gion ? Let not England forget her precedence of teach-
ing nations how to live.
Know, worthies; and exercise the privilege of your
honoured country. A greater title I here bring ye,
than is either in the power or in the policy of Rome to
give her monarchs; this glorious act will style ye the
defenders of charity. Nor is this yet the highest in-
scription that will adorn so religious and so holy a de-
fence as this: behold here the pure and sacred law of
God, and his yet purer and more sacred name, offering
themselves to you, first of all christian reformers to be
acquitted from the long-suffered ungodly attribute of
patronizing adultery. Defer not to wipe off instantly
these imputative blurs and stains cast by rude fancies
upon the throne and beauty itself of inviolable holi-
ness: lest some other people more devout and wise than
we bereave us this offered immortal glory, our wonted
prerogative, of being the first asserters in every great
vindication. For me, as far as my part leads me, I
have already my greatest gain, assurance and inward
satisfaction to have done in this nothing unworthy of
an honest life, and studies well employed. With what
event, among the wise and right understanding hand-
ful of men, I am secure. But how among the drove of
custom and prejudiced this will be relished by such
whose capacity, since their youth run ahead into the
easy creek of a system or a medulla, sails there at will
under the blown physiognomy of their unlaboured ru-
diments; for them, what their taste will be, I have
also surety sufficient, from the entire league that hath
ever been between formal ignorance and grave ob-
stinacy. Yet when I remember the little that our Sa-
viour could prevail about this doctrine of charity against
the crabbed textuists of his time, I make no wonder,
but rest confident, that whoso prefers either matrimony
or other ordinance before the good of man and the
plain exigence of charity, let him profess papist, or
protestant, or what he will, he is no better than a Pha-
risee, and understands not the gospel: whom as a mis-
interpreter of Christ I openly protest against ; and
provoke him to the trial of this truth before all the
world: and let him bethink him withal how he will
sodder up the shifting flaws of his ungirt permis-
sions, his venial and unvenial dispenses, where with the
law of God pardoning and unpardoming hath been
shamefully branded for want of heed in glossing, to
have eluded and baffled out all faith and chastity from
the marriage-bcd of that holy seed, with politic and
judicial adulteries. I seek not to seduce the simple and
illiterate; my errand is to find out the choicest and
the learnedest, who have this high giſt of wisdom to
answer solidly, or to be convinced. I crave it from the
picty, the learning, and the prudence which is housed
in this place. It might perhaps more fitly have been
written in another tongue: and I had done so, but that
the esteem I have of my country's judgment, and the
love I bear to my native language to serve it first with
what I endeavour, made me speak it thus, ere I assay
the verdict of outlandish readers. And perhaps also
here I might have ended nameless, but that the address
of these lines chiefly to the parliament of England
might have seemed ingrateful not to acknowledge by
whose religious care, unwearied watchfulness, coura-
geous and heroic resolutions, I enjoy the peace and
studious leisure to remain,
The Honourer and Attendant of their noble Worth
and Virtues,
Joh N MILTON.
THE DOCTRINE AND DISCIPLINE
OF
DIW ORCE:
RESTORED TO THE GOOD OF BOTH SEXES.
F-
BOOK I.
ſ THE PREFACE.
That man is the occasion of his own miseries in most of those evils which he imputes to God's inflicting. The
absurdity of our canonists in their decrees about divorce. The christian imperial laws framed with more
equity. The opinion of Hugo Grotius and Paulus Fagius : And the purpose in general of this discourse. |
MANY men, whether it be their fate or fond opinion, easily persuade themselves, if God would but be pleased
a while to withdraw his just punishments from us, and to restrain what power either the devil or an y earthly
enemy hath to work us wo, that then man's nature would find immediate rest and releasement from all evils.
But verily they who think so, if they be such as have a mind large enough to take into their thoughts a general
124 THE DOCTRINE AND DISCIPLINE OF DIWORCE.
survey of human things, would soon prove themselves in that opinion far deceived. For though it were granted
us by divine indulgence to be exempt from all that can be harmful to us from without, yet the perverseness of
our folly is so bent, that we should never lin hammering out of our own hearts, as it were out of a flint, the
seeds and sparkles of new misery to ourselves, till all were in a blaze again. And no marvel if out of our own
hearts, for they are evil; but even out of those things which God meant us, either for a principal good, or a
pure contentment, we are still hatching and contriving upon ourselves matter of continual sorrow and per-
plexity. What greater good to man than that revealed rule, whereby God vouchsafes to shew us how he would
be worshipped P And yet that not rightly understood became the cause, that once a famous man in Israel could
not but oblige his conscience to be the sacrificer; or if not, the gaoler of his innocent and only daughter: and
was the cause ofttimes that armies of valiant men have given up their throats to a heathenish enemy on the sab-
bath day; fondly thinking their defensive resistance to be as then a work unlawful. What thing more instituted
to the solace and delight of man than marriage 2 And yet the misinterpreting of some scripture, directed mainly
against the abusers of the law for divorce given by Moses, hath changed the blessing of matrimony not seldom
into a familiar and coinhabiting mischief; at least into a drooping and disconsolate household captivity, with-
out refuge or redemption. So ungoverned and so wild a race doth superstition run us, from one extreme of
abused liberty into the other of unmerciful restraint. For although God in the first ordaining of marriage
taught us to what end he did it, in words expressly implying the apt and cheerful conversation of man with
woman, to comfort and refresh him against the evil of solitary life, not mentioning the purpose of generation
till afterwards, as being but a secondary end in dignity, though not in necessity: yet now, if any two be but
once handed in the church, and have tasted in any sort the nuptial bed, let them find themselves never so mis-
taken in their dispositions through any errour, concealment, or misadventure, that through their different
tempers, thoughts, and constitutions, they can neither be to one another a remedy against loneliness, nor live
in any union or contentment all their days; yet they shall, so they be but found suitably weaponed to
the least possibility of sensual enjoyment, be made, spight of antipathy, to fadge together, and combine
as they may to their unspeakable wearisomeness, and despair of all sociable delight in the ordinance which
God established to that very end. What a calamity is this, and as the wise man, if he were alive,
would sigh out in his own phrase, what a “sore evil is this under the sun ſ” All which we can re-
fer justly to no other author than the canon law and her adherents, not consulting with charity, the in-
terpreter and guide of our faith, but resting in the mere element of the text; doubtless by the policy of
the devil to make that gracious ordinance become unsupportable, that what with men not daring to ven-
ture upon wedlock, and what with men wearied out of it, all inordinate licence might abound. It was for
many ages that marriage lay in disgrace with most of the ancient doctors, as a work of the flesh, almost a
defilement, wholly denied to priests, and the second time dissuaded to all, as he that reads Tertullian or
Jerom may see at large. Afterwards it was thought so sacramental, that no adultery or desertion could dis-
--~.
solve it; and this is the sense of our canon courts in England to this day, but in no other reformed church
else: yet there remains in them also a burden on it as heavy as the other two were disgraceful or super-
stitious, and of as much iniquity, crossing a law not only written by Moses, but charactered in us by nature,
of more antiquity and deeper ground than marriage itself; which law is to force nothing against the fault-
less proprieties of nature, yet that this may be colourably done, our Saviour's words touching divorce are as
it were congealed into a stony rigour, inconsistent both with his doctrine and his office; and that which he
preached only to the conscience is by canonical tyranny snatched into the compulsive censure of a judicial
court; where laws are imposed even against the venerable and secret power of nature's impression, to love,
whatever cause be found to loath : which is a heinous barbarism both against the honour of marriage, the
dignity of man and his soul, the goodness of Christianity, and all the human respects of civility. Notwithstand-
ing that some the wisest and gravest among the christian emperors, who had about them, to consult with, those
of the fathers then living, who for their learning and holiness of life are still with us in great renown, have
made their statutes and edicts concerning this debate ’far more easy and relenting in many necessary cases,
wherein the canon is inflexible. And Hugo Grotius, a man of these times, one of the best learned, seems not
obscurely to adhere in his persuasion to the equity of those imperial decrees, in his notes upon the Evangelists;
much allaying the outward roughness of the text, which hath for the most part been too immoderately expounded;
and excites the diligence of others to inquire further into this question, as containing many points that have not
yet been explained.TVWhich ever likely to remain intricate and hopeless upon the suppositions commonly stuck
to, the authority of Paulus Fagius, one so learned and so eminent in England once, if it might persuade, would
straight acquaint us with a solution of these differences no less prudent than compendious. He, in his com-
ment on the Pentateuch, doubted not to maintain that divorces might be as lawfully permitted by the magis-
trate to Christians, as they were to the Jews. But because he is but brief, and these things of great consequence
not to be kept obscure, I shall conceive it nothing above my duty, either for the difficulty or the censure that
may pass thereon, to communicate such thoughts as I also have had, and do offer them now in this general
labour of reformation to the candid view both of church and magistrate : especially because I see it the hope of
good men, that those irregular and unspiritual courts have spun their utmost date in this land, and some better
course must now be constituted. This therefore shall be the task and period of this discourse to prove, first,
THE DOCTRINE AND DISCIPLINE OF DIVORCE. 125
that other reasons of divorce, besides adultery, were by the law of Moses, and are yet to be allowed by the
christian magistrate as a piece of justice, and that the words of Christ are not hereby contraried. Next, that to
prohibit absolutely any divorce whatsoever, except those which Moses excepted, is against the reason of law,
as in due place I shall shew out of Fagius with many additions.) He therefore who by adventuring, shall be
so happy as with successſto light the way of such an expedient liberty and truth as this, shall restore the much-
wronged and over-sorrowed state of matrimony, not only to those merciful and life-giving remedies of Moses,
but as much as may be, to that serene and blissful condition it was in at the beginning, and shall deserve of all
apprehensive men, (considering the troubles and distempers, which, for want of this insight have been so oft in
kingdoms, in states, and families,) shall deserve to be reckoned among the public benefactors of civil and human
life, above the inventors of wine and oil; for this is a far dearer, far nobler, and more desirable cherishing to
man's life, unworthily exposed to sadness and mistake, which he shall vindicate. Not that licence, and levity,
and unconsented breach of faith should herein be countenanced, but that some conscionable and tender pity
might be had of those who have unwarily, in a thing they never practised before, made themselves the bondmen
of a luckless and helpless matrimony. In which argument, he whose courage can serve him to give the first
onset, must look for two several oppositions; the one from those who having sworn themselves to long custom,
and the letter of the text, will not out of the road; the other from those whose gross and vulgar apprehensions
conceit but low of matrimonial purposes, and in the work of male and female think they have all. Neverthe-
less, it shall be here sought by due ways to be made appear, that those words of God in the institution, promis-
ing a meet help against loneliness, and those words of Christ, “ that his yoke is easy, and his burden light,”
were not spoken in vain : for if the knot of marriage may in no case be dissolved but for adultery, all the bur-
dens and services of the law are not so intolerable. This only is desired of them who are minded to judge
hardly of thus maintaining, that they would be still, and hear all out, nor think it equal to answer deliberate
reason with sudden heat and noise; remembering this, that many truths now of reverend esteem and credit,
had their birth and beginning once from singular and private thoughts, while the most of men were otherwise
possessed; and had the fate at first to be generally exploded and exclaimed on by many violent opposers: yet
I may err perhaps in soothing myself, that this present truth revived will deserve on all hands to be not sinis-
terly received, in that it undertakes the cure of an inveterate disease crept into the best part of human society;
and to do this with no smarting corrosive, but with a smooth and pleasing lesson, which received hath the virtue
to soften and dispel rooted and knotty sorrows, and without enchantment, if that be feared, or spell used, hath
regard at once both to serious pity and upright honesty; that tends to the redeeming and restoring of none but
such as are the object of compassion, having in an ill hour hampered themselves, to the utter dispatch of all
their most beloved comforts and repose for this life's term. But if we shall obstinately dislike this new overture
of unexpected ease and recovery, what remains but to deplore the frowardness of our hopeless condition, which
neither can endure the estate we are in, nor admit of remedy either sharp or sweet. Sharp we ourselves dis-
taste; and sweet, under whose hands we are, is scrupled and suspected as too luscious. In such a posture Christ
found the Jews, who were neither won with the austerity of John the Baptist, and thought it too much licence
to follow freely the charming pipe of him who sounded and proclaimed liberty and relief to all distresses: yet
truth in some age or other will find her witness, and shall be justified at last by her own children.
-----".
CHAP. I.
The position proved by the law of Moses. That law expounded and asserted to a moral and charitable use,
first by Paulus Fagius, mert with other additions.
To remove therefore, if it be possible, this great and
e e hindering, and ever likely to hinder, the main benefits
sad oppression, which through the strictness of a literal
of conjugal society, which are solace and peace; is a
interpreting hath invaded and disturbed the dearest
and most peaceable estate of household society, to the
overburdening, if not the overwhelming of many Chris-
tians better worth than to be so deserted of the church's
considerate care, this position shall be laid down, first
proving, then answering what may be objected either
from Scripture or light of reason.
“That indisposition, unfitness, or contrariety of
mind, arising from a cause in nature unchangeable,
greater reason of divorce than natural frigidity, espe-
cially if there be no children, and that there be mutual
consent.”
This I gather from the law in Deut. xxiv. 1. “When
a man hath taken a wife and married her, and it come
to pass that she find no favour in his eyes, because he
hath found some uncleanness in her, let him write her
a bill of divorcement, and give it in her hand, and
send her out of his house,” &c. This law, if the words
126
THE DOCTRINE AND DISCIPLINE OF DIVORCE.
of Christ may be admitted into our belief, shall never
while the world stands, for him be abrogated. First
therefore I here set down what learned Fagius hath
observed on this law; “the law of God,” saith he,
“ permitted divorce for the help of human weakness.
I'or every one that of necessity separates, cannot live
single. That Christ denied divorce to his own, hinders
not; for what is that to the unregenerate, who hath
not attained such perfection P Let not the remedy be
despised, which was given to weakness. And when
Christ saith, who marries the divorced commits adultery,
it is to be understood if he had any plot in the divorce.”
The rest I reserve until it be disputed, how the magis-
trate is to do herein. From hence we may plainly dis-
cern a twofold consideration in this law : first, the end
of the lawgiver, and the proper act of the law, to com-
mand or to allow something just and honest, or indif.
ferent. Secondly, his sufferance from some accidental
result of evil by this allowance, which the law cannot
remedy. For if this law have no other end or act but
only the allowance of sin, though never to so good in-
tention, that law is no law, but sin muffled in the robe
of law, or law disguised in the loose garment of sin.
Both which are too foul hypotheses, to save the phae-
momenon of our Saviour's answer to the Pharisees about
this matter. And I trust anon by the help of an infal-
lible guide, to perfect such Prutenic tables, as shall
mend the astronomy of our wide expositors.
The cause of divorce mentioned in the law is trans-
lated “ some uncleanness,” but in the Hebrew it sounds
“nakedness of aught, or any real nakedness:” which
by all the learned interpreters is referred to the mind
as well as to the body. And what greater nakedness
or unfitness of mind than that which hinders ever the
solace and peaceful society of the married couple; and
what hinders that more than the unfitness and defec-
tiveness of an unconjugal mind * The cause therefore
of divorce expressed in the position cannot but agree
with that described in the best and equallest sense of
Moses's law. Which, being a matter of pure charity,
is plainly moral, and more now in force than ever;
therefore surely lawful. For if under the law such
was God's gracious indulgence, as not to suffer the
ordinance of his goodness and favour through any errour
to be seared and stigmatized upon his servants to their
misery and thraldom ; much less will he suffer it now
under the covenant of grace, by abrogating his former
grant of remedy and relief. But the first institution
will be objected to have ordained marriage inseparable.
To that a little patience until this first part have amply
discoursed the grave and pious reasons of this divorcive
law; and then I doubt not but with one gentle stroking
to wipe away ten thousand tears out of the life of man.
Yet thus much I shall now insist on, that whatever the
institution were, it could not be so enormous, nor so
rebellious against both nature and reason, as to exalt
itself above the end and person for whom it was insti-
tuted.
CHAP. II.
The first reason of this law grounded on the prime rea-
son of matrimony. That no covenant whatsoever
obliges against the main end both of itself, and of the
parties covenanting.
For all sense and equity reclaims, that any law or
covenant, how solemn or strait soever, either between
God and man, or man and man, though of God’s join-
ing, should bind against a prime and principal scope
of its own institution, and of both or either party cove-
manting: neither can it be of force to engage a blame-
less creature to his own perpetual sorrow, mistaken for
his expected solace, without suffering charity to step in
and do a confessed good work of parting those, whom
nothing holds together but this of God’s joining, falsely
supposed against the express end of his own ordinance.
And what his chief end was of creating woman to be
joined with man, his own instituting words declare,
and are infallible to inform us what is marriage, and
what is no marriage; unless we can think them set
there to no purpose: “it is not good,” saith he, “that
man should be alone, I will make him a help meet for
him.” From which words, so plain, less cannot be
concluded, nor is by any learned interpreter, than that
in God's intention a meet and happy conversation is
the chiefest and the noblest end of marriage: for we
find here no expression so necessarily implying carnal
knowledge, as this prevention of loneliness to the mind
and spirit of man. To this, Fagius, Calvin, Pareus,
Rivetus, as willingly and largely assent as can be
wished. And indeed it is a greater blessing from God,
more worthy so excellent a creature as man is, and a
higher end to honour and sanctify the league of mar-
riage, whenas the solace and satisfaction of the mind
is regarded and provided for before the sensitive pleas-
ing of the body. And with all generous persons mar-
ried thus it is, that where the mind and person pleases
aptly, there some unaccomplishment of the body’s de-
light may be better borne with, than when the mind
hangs off in an unclosing disproportion, though the
body be as it ought; for there all corporal delight will
soon become unsavoury and contemptible. And the
solitariness of man, which God had namely and prin-
cipally ordered to prevent by marriage, hath no remedy,
but lies under a worse condition than the loneliest sin-
gle life: for in single life the absence and remoteness
of a helper might inure him to expect his own comforts
out of himself, or to seek with hope; but here the con-
tinual sight of his deluded thoughts, without cure,
must needs be to him, if especially his complexion in-
cline him to melancholy, a daily trouble and pain of
loss, in some degree like that which reprobates feel.
Lest therefore so noble a creature as man should be
shut up incurably under a worse evil by an easy mis-
take in that ordinance which God gave him to remedy
a less evil, reaping to himself sorrow while he went to
rid away solitariness, it cannot avoid to be concluded,
that if the woman be naturally so of disposition, as will
THE DocTRINE AND DISCIPLINE OF Divorce.
127
not help to remove, but help to increase that same God-
forbidden loneliness, which will in time draw on with
it a general discomfort and dejection of mind, not be-
seeming either christian profession or moral conversa-
tion, unprofitable and dangerous to the commonwealth,
when the household estate, out of which must ſourish
forth the vigour and spirit of all public enterprises, is
so illcontented and procured at home, and cannot be
supported; such a marriage can be no marriage, whereto
the most honest end is wanting: and the aggrieved
person shall do more manly, to be extraordinary and
singular in claiming the due right whereof he is frus-
trated, than to piece up his lost contentment by visiting
the stews, or stepping to his neighbour's bed; which
is the common shift in this misfortune: or else by suf-
fering his useful life to waste away, and be lost under
- e º
a secret affliction of an unconscionable size to human
strength. Against all which evils the mercy of this
Mosaic law was graciously exhibited.
CHAP. III.
The ignorance and iniquity of canon law, providing for
the right of the body in marriage, but nothing for the
wrongs and grievances of the mind. An objection,
that the mind should be better looked to before con-
tract, answered.
How vain therefore is it, and how preposterous in
the canon law, to have made such careful provision
against the impediment of carnal performance, and to
have had no care about the unconversing inability of
mind so defective to the purest and most sacred end of
matrimony; and that the vessel of voluptuous enjoy-
ment must be made good to him that has taken it upon
trust, without any caution; whenas the mind, from
whence must flow the acts of peace and love, a far
more precious mixture than the quintescence of an ex-
crement, though it be found never so deficient and
unable to perform the best duty of marriage in a cheer-
ful and agreeable conversation, shall be thought good
enough, however flat and melancholious it be, and
must serve, though to the eternal disturbance and lan-
guishing of him that complains! Yet wisdom and
charity, weighing God's own institution, would think
that the pining of a sad spirit wedded to loneliness
should deserve to be freed, as well as the impatience of
a sensual desire so providently relieved. It is read to
us in the liturgy, that “we must not marry to satisfy
the fleshly appetite, like brute beasts, that have no
understanding;” but the canon so runs, as if it dreamed
of no other matter than such an appetite to be satis-
fied ; for if it happen that nature hath stopped or ex-
tinguished the veins of sensuality, that marriage is
annulled. But though all the faculties of the under-
standing and conversing part after trial appear to be so
ill and so aversely met through nature's unalterable
working, as that neither peace, nor any sociable con-
tentment can follow, it is as nothing; the contract
shall stand as firm as ever, betide what will. What is
this but secretly to instruct us, that however many grave
reasons are pretended to the married life, yet that no-
thing indeed is thought worth regard therein, but the
prescribed satisfaction of an irrational heat P Which
cannot be but ignominious to the state of marriage,
dishonourable to the undervalued soul of man, and
even to christian doctrine itself: while it seems more
moved at the disappointing of an impetuous nerve, than
at the ingenuous grievance of a mind unreasonably
yoked; and to place more of marriage in the channel
of concupiscence, than in the pure influence of peace
and love, whereof the soul's lawful contentment is the
only fountain.
But some are ready to object, that the disposition
ought seriously to be considered before. But let then
know again, that for all the wariness can be used, it
may yet befall a discreet man to be mistaken in his
choice, and we have plenty of examples. The soberest
and best governed men are least practised in these
affairs; and who knows not that the bashful muteness
of a virgin may ofttimes hide all the unliveliness and
natural sloth which is really unfit for conversation;
nor is there that freedom of access granted or presumed,
as may suffice to a perfect discerning till too late; and
where any indisposition is suspected, what more usual
than the persuasion of friends, that acquaintance, as it
increases, will amend all 2 And lastly, it is not strange
though many, who have spent their youth chastely, are
in some things not so quick-sighted, while they haste
too eagerly to light the nuptial torch; nor is it there-
fore that for a modest errour a man should forfeit so
great a happiness, and no charitable means to release
him : since they who have lived most loosely, by reason
of their bold accustoming, prove most successful in
their matches, because their wild affections unsettling
at will, have been as so many divorces to teach them
experience. Whenas the sober man honouring the
appearance of modesty, and hoping well of every
social virtue under that veil, may easily chance to meet,
if not with a body impenetrable, yet often with a mind
to all other due conversation inaccessible, and to all
the more estimable and superior purposes of matri-
mony useless and almost lifeless: and what a solace,
what a fit help such a consort would be through the
whole life of a man, is less pain to conjecture than to
have experience.
CHAP. IV.
The second reason of this law, because without it, mar-
riage as it happens oft is not a remedy of that which
it promises, as any rational creature would expect.
That marriage, if we patterm from the beginning, as
our Saviour bids, was not properly the remedy of lust,
but the fulfilling of conjugal love and helpfulness.
AND that we may further see what a violent cruel
thing it is to force the continuing of those together,
128
THE DOCTRINE AND DISCIPLINE OF DIWORCE.
whom God and nature in the gentlest end of marriage
never joined ; divers evils and extremities, that follow
upon such a compulsion, shall here be set in view. Of
evils, the first and greatest is, that hereby a most ab-
surd and rash imputation is fixed upon God and his
holy laws, of conniving and dispensing with open and
common adultery among his chosen people; a thing
which the rankest politician would think it shame and
disworship that his laws should countenance: how and
in what manner that comes to pass I shall reserve till
the course of method brings on the unfolding of many
scriptures. Next, the law and gospel are hereby made
liable to more than one contradiction, which I refer
also thither. Lastly, the supreme dictate of charity is
hereby many ways neglected and violated; which I
shall forth with address to prove. First, we know St.
Paul saith, It is better to marry than to burn. Mar-
riage therefore was given as a remedy of that trouble;
but what might this burning mean? Certainly not
the mere motion of carnal lust, not the mere goad of a
sensitive desire: God does not principally take care
for such cattle. What is it then but that desire which
God put into Adam in Paradise, before he knew the
sin of incontinence; that desire which God saw it was
not good that man should be left alone to burn in, the
desire and longing to put off an unkindly solitariness
by uniting another body, but not without a fit soul to
his, in the cheerful society of wedlock P Which if it
were so needful before the fall, when man was much
more perfect in himself, how much more is it needful
now against all the sorrows and casualties of this life,
to have an intimate and speaking help, a ready and
reviving associate in marriage P. Whereof who misses,
by chancing on a mute and spiritless mate, remains
more alone than before, and in a burning less to be
contained than that which is fleshly, and more to be
considered; as being more deeply rooted even in the
faultless innocence of nature. As for that other burn-
ing, which is but as it were the venom of a lusty and
over-abounding concoction, strict life and labour, with
the abatement of a full diet, may keep that low and
obedient enough : but this pure and more inbred desire
of joining to itself in conjugal fellowship a fit con-
versing soul (which desire is properly called love)
“is stronger than death,” as the spouse of Christ
thought; “many waters cannot quench it, neither can
the floods drown it.” This is that rational burning
that marriage is to remedy, not to be allayed with fast-
ing, nor with any penance to be subdued: which how
can he assuage who by mishap hath met the most un-
meet and unsuitable mind 2 Who hath the power to
struggle with an intelligible flame, not in Paradise to
be resisted, become now more ardent by being failed
of what in reason it looked for; and even then most
unquenched, when the importunity of a provender
burning is well enough appeased; and yet the soul
hath obtained nothing of what it justly desires. Cer-
tainly such a one forbidden to divorce, is in effect for-
bidden to marry, and compelled to greater difficulties
than in a single life: for if there be not a more hu-
mane burning which marriage must satisfy, or else
may be dissolved, than that of copulation, marriage
cannot be honourable for the meet reducing and termi-
nating lust between two; seeing many beasts in vo-
luntary and chosen couples live together as unadulte-
rously, and are as truly married in that respect. But
all ingenuous men will see that the dignity and bless-
ing of marriage is placed rather in the mutual enjoy-
ment of that which the wanting soul needfully seeks,
than of that which the plentecus body would joyfully
give away. Hence it is that Plato in his festival dis-
course brings in Socrates relating what he feigned to
have learned from the prophetess Diotima, how Love
was the son of Penury, begot of Plenty in the garden
of Jupiter. Which divinely sorts with that which in
effect Moses tells us, that Love was the son of Loneli-
ness, begot in Paradise by that sociable and helpful
"aptitude which God implanted between man and wo-
man toward each other. The same also is that burn-
ing mentioned by St. Paul, whereof marriage ought
to be the remedy: the flesh hath other mutual and easy
curbs which are in the power of any temperate man.
When therefore this original and sinless penury or
loneliness of the soul cannot lay itself down by the
side of such a meet and acceptable union as God or-
dained in marriage, at least in some proportion, it can-
not conceive and bring forth love, but remains utterly
unmarried under a former wedlock, and still burns in
the proper meaning of St. Paul. Then enters Hate,
not that hate that sins, but that which only is natural
dissatisfaction, and the turning aside from a mistaken
object: if that mistake have done injury, it fails not to
dismiss with recompense; for to retain still, and not be
able to love, is to heap up more injury. Thence this
wise and pious law of dismission now defended, took
beginning: he therefore who lacking of his due in the
most native and humane end of marriage, thinks it
better to part than to live sadly and injuriously to that
cheerful covenant, (for not to be beloved, and yet re-
tained, is the greatest injury to a gentle spirit) he I
say, who therefore seeks to part, is one who highly
honours the married life and would not stain it: and
the reasons which now move him to divorce, are equal
to the best of those that could first warrant him to
marry; for, as was plainly shewn, both the hate which
now diverts him, and the loneliness which leads him
still powerfully to seek a fit help, hath not the least
grain of a sin in it, if he be worthy to understand him-
self.
CHAP. V.
The third reason of this law, because without it, he
who has happened where he finds nothing but remedi-
less offences and discontents, is in more and greater
temptations than ever before.
THIRDLY, Yet it is next to be feared, if he must be
still bound without reason by a deaf rigour, that when
THE DOCTRINE AND DISCIPLINE OF DIVORCE.
129
he perceives the just expectance of his mind defeated,
he will begin even against law to cast about where he
may find his satisfaction more complete, unless he be a
thing heroically virtuous; and that are not the com-
mon lump of men, for whom chiefly the laws ought to
be made ; though not to their sins, yet to their unsin-
ning weaknesses, it being above their strength to en-
dure the lonely estate, which while they shunned they
are fallen into. And yet there follows upon this a
worse temptation : for if he be such as hath spent his
youth unblamably, and laid up his chiefest earthly
comforts in the enjoyments of a contented marriage,
nor did neglect that furtherance which was to be ob-
tained therein by constant prayers; when he shall find
himself bound fast to an uncomplying discord of na-
ture, or, as it oft happens, to an image of earth and
phlegm, with whom he looked to be the copartner of a
sweet and gladsome society, and sees withal that his
bondage is now inevitable; though he be almost the
strongest Christian, he will be ready to despair in vir-
tue, and mutiny against Divine Providence: and this
doubtless is the reason of those lapses, and that me-
lancholy despair, which we see in many wedded per-
sons, though they understand it not, or pretend other
causes, because they know no remedy; and is of ex-
treme danger: therefore when human frailty sur-
charged is at such a loss, charity ought to venture
much, and use bold physic, lest an overtossed faith en-
danger to shipwreck.
CHAP. VI.
The fourth reason of this law, that God regards love
and peace in the family, more than a compulsive per-
formance of marriage, which is more broke by a
grievous continuance, than by a needful divorce.
FourTHLY, Marriage is a covenant, the very being
whereof consists not in a forced cohabitation, and coun-
terfeit performance of duties, but in unfeigned love and
peace: and of matrimonial love, no doubt but that was
chiefly meant, which by the ancient sages was thus
parabled; that Love, if he be not twin born, yet hath
a brother wondrous like him, called Anteros; whom
while he seeks all about, his chance is to meet with
many false and feigning desires, that wander singly
up and down in his likeness: by them in their bor-
rowed garb, Love, though not wholly blind, as poets
wrong him, yet having but one eye, as being born an
archer aiming, and that eye not the quickest in this dark
region here below, which is not Love's proper sphere,
partly out of the simplicity and credulity which is na-
tive to him, often deceived, embraces and consorts him
with these obvious and suborned striplings, as if they
were his mother's own sons; ſor so he thinks them,
while they subtilly keep themselves most on his blind
side. But after a while, as his manner is, when soar-
ing up into the high tower of his Apogeum, above the
shadow of the earth, he darts out the direct rays of his
then most picreing eyesight upon the impostures and
trim disguises that were used with him, and discerns
that this is not his genuine brother as he imagined ; he
has no longer the power to hold fellowship with such
a personated mate : for straight his arrows lose their
golden heads, and shed their purple feathers, his silken
braids untwine, and slip their knots, and that original
and fiery virtue given him by fate all on a sudden goes
out, and leaves him undeified and despoiled of all his
force; till finding Anteros at last, he kindles and re-
pairs the almost faded ammunition of his deity by the
reflection of a coequal and homogeneal fire. Thus
mine author sung it to me: and by the leave of those
who would be counted the only grave ones, this is no
mere amatorious novel (though to be wise and skilful
in these matters, men heretofore of greatest name in
virtue have esteemed it one of the highest arcs, that
human contemplation circling upwards can make from
the globy sea whereon she stands): but this is a deep
and serious verity, shewing us that love in marriage
cannot live nor subsist unless it be mutual ; and where
love cannot be, there can be left of wedlock nothing
but the empty husk of an outside matrimony, as unde-
lightful and unpleasing to God as any other kind of
hypocrisy. So far is his command from tying men to
the observance of duties which there is no help for,
but they must be dissembled. If Solomon’s advice be
not over-frolic, “live joyfully,” saith he, “with the wife
whom thou lovest, all thy days, for that is thy portion.”
How then, where we find it impossible to rejoice or to
love, can we obey this precept 2 How miserably do
we defraud ourselves of that comfortable portion, which
God gives us, by striving vainly to glue an errour to-
gether, which God and nature will not join, adding
but more vexation and violence to that blissful society
by our importunate superstition, that will not hearken
to St. Paul, 1 Cor. vii. who, speaking of marriage and
divorce, determines plain enough in general, that God
therein “hath called us to peace, and not to bondage.”
Yea, God himself commands in his law more than once,
and by his prophet Malachi, as Calvin and the best
translations read, that “he who hates, let him divorce,”
that is, he who cannot love. Hence it is that the rab-
bins, and Maimonides, famous among the rest, in a
book of his set forth by Buxtorfius, tells us, that “ di-
vorce was permitted by Moses to preserve peace in
marriage, and quiet in the family.” Surely the Jews
had their saving peace about them as well as we, yet
care was taken that this wholesome provision for
household peace should also be allowed them : and
must this be denied to Christians? O perverseness
that the law should be made more provident of peace-
making than the gospel ! that the gospel should be
put to beg a most necessary help of mercy from the
law, but must not have it; and that to grind in the
mill of an undelighted and servile copulation, must be
the only forced work of a christian marriage, ofttimes
with such a yokeſellow, from whom both love and
peace, both nature and religion mourns to be sepa-
rated. I cannot therefore be so diffident, as not se-
130
THE DOCTRINE AND DISCIPLINE OF DIvorce.
curely to conclude, that he who can receive nothing of
the most important helps in marriage, being thereby
disinabled to return that duty which is his, with a clear
and hearty countenance, and thus continues to grieve
whom he would not, and is no less grieved ; that man
ought even for love's sake and peace to move divorce
upon good and liberal conditions to the divorced.
And it is a less breach of wedlock to part with wise and
quiet consent betimes, than still to foil and profane
that mystery of joy and union with a polluting sadness
and perpetual distemper : for it is not the outward con-
tinuing of marriage that keeps whole that covenant,
but whatsoever does most according to peace and love,
whether in marriage or in divorce, he it is that breaks
marriage least; it being so often written, that “Love
only is the fulfilling of every commandment.”
CHAP. VII.
The fifth reason, that nothing more hinders and dis-
turbs the whole life of a Christian, than a matrimony
found to be incurably unfit, and doth the same in
effect that an idolatrous match.
FIFTHLY, As those priests of old were not to be long
in sorrow, or if they were, they could not rightly exe-
cute their function; so every true Christian in a higher
order of priesthood, is a person dedicate to joy and
peace, offering himself a lively sacrifice of praise and
thanksgiving, and there is no christian duty that is not
to be scasoned and set off with checrishness; which in
a thousand outward and intermitting crosses may yet
be done well, as in this vale of tears: but in such a bo-
som affliction as this, crushing the very foundation of
his in most nature, when he shall be forced to love
against a possibility, and to use a dissimulation against
his soul in the perpetual and ceaseless duties of a hus-
band; doubtless his whole duty of serving God must
needs be blurred and tainted with a sad unprepared-
mess and dejection of spirit wherein God has no delight.
Who sees not therefore how much more Christianity
it would be to break by divorce, that which is more
broken by undue and forcible keeping, rather than “to
cover the altar of the Lord with continual tears, so that
he regardeth not the offering any more,” rather than
that the whole worship of a christian man's life should
languish and ſade away beneath the weight of an im-
measurable grief and discouragement P And because
some think the children of a second matrimony suc-
ceeding a divorce would not be a holy seed, it hindered
not the Jews from being so; and why should we not
think them more holy than the offspring of a former
ill-twisted wedlock, begotten only out of a bestial ne-
cessity, without any true love or contentment, or joy
to their parents P So that in some sense we may call
them the “children of wrath” and anguish, which will
as little conduce to their sanctifying, as if they had
been bastards: for nothing more than disturbance of
mind suspends us from approaching to God; such a
disturbance especially, as both assaults our faith and
trust in God's providence, and ends, if there be not a
miracle of virtue on either side, not only in bitterness
and wrath, the canker of devotion, but in a desperate
and vicious carelessness, when he sees himself, without
fault of his, trained by a deceitful bait into a snare of
misery, betrayed by an alluring ordinance, and then
made the thrall of heaviness and discomfort by an un-
divorcing law of God, as he erroneously thinks, but of
man's iniquity, as the truth is: for that God prefers the
free and cheerful worship of a Christian, before the
grievance and exacted observance of an unhappy mar-
riage, besides that the general maxims of religion as-
sure us, will be more manifest by drawing a parallel
argument from the ground of divorcing an idolatress,
which was, lest he should alienate his heart from the
true worship of God : and what difference is there
whether she pervert him to superstition by her enticing
sorcery, or disenable him in the whole service of God
through the disturbance of her unhelpful and unfit
society; and so drive him at last, through murmuring
and despair, to thoughts of atheism f Neither doth it
lessen the cause of separating, in that the one willingly
allures him from the faith, the other perhaps unwill-
ingly drives him; for in the account of God it comes
all to one, that the wife loses him a servant: and there-
fore by all the united force of the Decalogue she ought
to be disbanded, unless we must set marriage above
God and charity, which is the doctrine of devils, no
less than forbidding to marry.
CHAP. VIII.
That an idolatrous heretic ought to be divorced, after
a convenient space giren to hope of conversion. That
place of 1 Cor. vii. restored from a twofold errone-
ous exposition ; and that the common expositors
flatly contradict the moral law.
AND here by the way, to illustrate the whole ques-
tion of divorce, ere this treatise end, I shall not be loth
to spend a few lines in hope to give a full resolve of
that which is yet so much controverted; whether an
idolatrous heretic ought to be divorced. To the resolv-
ing whereof we must first know, that the Jews were
commanded to divorce an unbelieving Gentile for two
causes: First, because all other nations, especially the
Canaanites, were to them unclean. Secondly, to avoid
seducement. That other nations were to the Jews im-
pure, even to the separating of marriage, will appear
out of Exod. xxxiv. 16, Deut. vii. 3, 6, compared with
Ezra ix. 2, also chap. x. 10, 11, Neh. xiii. 30. This
was the ground of that doubt raised among the Corin-
thians by some of the circumcision; whether an unbe-
liever were not still to be counted an unclean thing, so
as that they ought to divorce from such a person. This
doubt of theirs St. Paul removes by an evangelical
reason, having respect to that vision of St. Peter, where-
in the distinction of clean and unclean being abolished,
THE DOCTRINE AND DISCIPLINE OF DIWORCE.
131
all living creatures were sanctified to a pure and chris-
tian use, and mankind especially, now invited by a
general call to the covenant of grace. Therefore saith
St. Paul, “The unbelieving wiſe is sanctified by the
husband; ” that is, made pure and lawful to his use,
so that he need not put her away for fear lest her un-
belief should defile him; but that if he found her love
still towards him, he might rather hope to win her.
The second reason of that divorce was to avoid seduce-
ment, as is proved by comparing those two places of
the law to that which Ezra and Nehemiah did by di-
vine warrant in compelling the Jews to forego their
wives. And this reason is moral and perpetual in the
rule of christian faith without evasion ; therefore saith
the apostle, 2 Cor. vi. “Misyoke not together with
infidels,” which is interpreted of marriage in the first
place. And although the former legal pollution be now
done off, yet there is a spiritual contagion in idolatry
as much to be shunned; and though seducement were
not to be feared, yet where there is no hope of convert-
ing, there always ought to be a certain religious aver-
sation and abhorring, which can no way sort with
marriage: Therefore saith St. Paul, “What fellowship
hath righteousness with unrighteousness P What com-
munion hath light with darkness P What concord hath
Christ with Belial P What part bath he that believeth
with an infidel P” And in the next verse but one
he moralizes, and makes us liable to that command of
Isaiah; “Wherefore come out from among them, and
be separate, saith the Lord ; touch not the unclean
thing, and I will receive ye.” And this command thus
gospelized to us, hath the same force with that where-
on Ezra grounded the pious necessity of divorcing.
Neither had he other commission for what he did,
than such a general command in Deut. as this, may
not so direct ; for he is bid there not to marry, but
not bid to divorce, and yet we see with what a zeal
and confidence he was the author of a general divorce
between the faithful and the unfaithful seed. The
gospel is more plainly on his side, according to three
of the evangelists, than the words of the law ; for
where the case of divorce is handled with such seve-
rity, as was fittest to aggravate the fault of unbounded
licence; yet still in the same chapter, when it comes
into question afterwards, whether any civil respect, or
natural relation which is dearest, may be our plea to
divide, or hinder or but delay our duty to religion, we
hear it determined that father, and mother, and wife
also, is not only to be hated, but forsaken, if we mean
to inherit the great reward there promised. Nor will
it suffice to be put off by saying we must forsake them
only by not consenting or not complying with them,
for that were to be done, and roundly too, though being
of the same faith, they should but seek out of a fleshly
tenderness to weaken our christian fortitude with
worldly persuasions, or but to unsettle our constancy
with timorous and softening suggestions; as we may
read with what a vehemence Job, the patientest of
men, rejected the desperate counsels of his wife; and
Moses, the meekest, being thoroughly offended with
the prophane speeches of Zippora, sent her back to her
-- K
father. But if they shall perpetually, at our elbow,
seduce us from the true worship of God, or defile and
daily scandalize our conscience by their hopeless con-
tinuance in misbelief; then even in the due progress
of reason, and that ever equal proportion which justice
proceeds by, it cannot be imagined that his cited place
commands less than a total and final separation from
such an adherent; at least that no force should be used
to keep them together; while we remember that God
commanded Abraham to send away his irreligious wife
and her son for the offences which they gave in a pious
family. And it may be guessed that David for the like
cause disposed of Michal in such a sort, as little differed
from a dismission. Therefore against reiterated scan-
dals and seducements, which never cease, much more
can no other remedy or retirement be ſound but abso-
lute departure. For what kind of matrimony can that
remain to be, what one duty between such can be per-
formed as it should be from the heart, when their
thoughts and spirits fly asunder as far as heaven and
hell; especially if the time that hope should send forth
her expected blossoms, be past in vain It will easily
be true, that a father or a brother may be hated zeal-
ously, and loved civilly or naturally; for those duties
may be performed at distance, and do admit of any
long absence : but how the peace and perpetual coha-
bitation of marriage can be kept, how that benevolent
and intimate communion of body can be held, with one
that must be hated with a most operative hatred, must
be forsaken and yet continually dwelt with and accom-
panied ; he who can distinguish, hath the gift of an
affection very oddly divided and contrived : while
others both just and wise, and Solomon among the rest,
if they may not hate and forsake as Moses enjoins,
and the gospel imports, will find it impossible not to
love otherwise than will sort with the love of God,
whose jealousy brooks no corrival. And whether is
more likely, that Christ bidding to forsake wife for
religion, meant it by divorce as Moses meant it, whose
law, grounded on moral reason, was both his office and
his essence to maintain; or that he should bring a new
morality into religion, not only new, but contrary to
an unchangeable command, and dangerously derogat-
ing from our love and worship of God P As if when
Moses had bid divorce absolutely, and Christ had said,
hate and forsake, and his apostle had said, no commu-
nication with Christ and Belial; yet that Christ after
all this could be understood to say, divorce not, no not
for religion, seduce, or seduce not. What mighty and
invisible remora is this in matrimony, able to demur
and to contemn all the divorcive engines in heaven or
earth ! both which may now pass away, if this be true,
for more than many jots or tittles, a whole moral law
is abolished. But if we dare believe it is not, then in
the method of religion, and to save the honour and
dignity of our faith, we are to retreat and gather up
ourselves from the observance of an inferior and civil
ordinance, to the strict maintaining of a general and
religious command, which is written, “Thou shalt
make no covenant with them,” Deut. vii, 2, 3 : and
that covenant which cannot be lawfully made, we have
132
THE DOCTRINE AND DISCIPLINE OF DIWORCE.
directions and examples lawfully to dissolve. Also
2 Chron. ii. 19, “Shouldest thou love them that hate
the Lord * No, doubtless; for there is a certain scale
of duties, there is a certain hierarchy of upper and
lower commands, which for want of studying in right
order, all the world is in confusion.
Upon these principles I answer, that a right believer
ought to divorce an idolatrous heretic, unless upon
better hopes: however, that it is in the believer's choice
to divorce or not.
The former part will be manifest thus first, that an
apostate idolater, whether husband or wife seducing,
was to die by the decree of God, Deut. xiii. 6, 9; that
marriage therefore God himself disjoins : for others
born idolaters, the moral reason of their dangerous
keeping, and the incommunicable antagony that is be-
tween Christ and Belial, will be sufficient to enforce
the commandment of those two inspired reformers Ezra
and Nchemiah, to put an idolater away as well under
the gospel.
The latter part, that although there be no seducement
feared, yet if there be no hope given, the divorce is
lawful, will appear by this; that idolatrous marriage
is still hateful to God, therefore still it may be divorced
by the pattern of that warrant that Ezra had, and by
the same everlasting reason : neither can any man
give an account wherefore, if those whom God joins
no man can separate, it should not follow, that whom
he joins not, but hates to join, those men ought to
separate. But saith the lawyer, “That which ought
not to have been done, once done, avails.” I answer,
“this is but a crotchet of the law, but that brought
against it is plaim Scripture.” As for what Christ spake
concerning divorce, it is confessed by all knowing men,
he meant only between them of the same faith. But
what shall we say then to St. Paul, who seems to bid
us not divorce an inſidel willing to stay We may
safely say thus, that wrong collections have been
hitherto made out of those words by modern divines.
His drift, as was heard before, is plain; not to com-
mand our stay in marriage with an infidel, that had
been a flat renouncing of the religious and moral law;
but to inform the Coriuthians, that the body of an un-
believer was not defiling, if his desire to live in chris-
tian wedlock shewed any likelihood that his heart was
opening to the faith; and therefore advises to forbear
departure so long till nothing have been neglected to
set forward a conversion: this I say he advises, and
that with certain cautions, not commands, if we can
take up so much credit for him, as to get him believed
upon his own word: for what is this else but his coun-
sel in a thing indifferent, “to the rest speak I, not the
Lord?” for though it be true, that the Lord never spake
it, yet from St. Paul's mouth we should have took it as
a command, had not himself forewarned us, and dis-
claimed; which notwithstanding if we shall still avouch
to be a command, he palpably denying it, this is not
to expound St. Paul, but to outface him. Neither doth
it follow, that the apostle may interpose his judgment
in a case of christian liberty, without the guilt of add-
ing to God's word. How do we know marriage or
single life to be of choice, but by such like words as
these, “I speak this by permission, not of command-
ment; I have no command of the Lord, yet I give my
judgment.” Why shall not the like words have leave
to signify a freedom in this our present question,
though Beza deny P Neither is the Scripture hereby
less inspired, because St. Paul confesses to have written
therein what he had not of command : for we grant
that the Spirit of God led him thus to express himself
to christian prudence, in a matter which God thought
best to leave uncommanded. Beza therefore must be
warily read, when he taxes St. Austin of blasphemy,
for holding that St. Paul spake here as of a thing in-
different. But if it must be a command, I shall yet the
more evince it to be a command that we should herein
be left free; and that out of the Greek word used in
the 12th ver., which instructs us plainly, there must be
a joint assent and good liking on both sides: he that
will not deprave the text must thus render it; “If a
brother have an unbelieving wife, and she join in con-
sent to dwell with him,” (which cannot utter less to us
than a mutual agreement,) let him not put her away
from the more surmise of judaical uncleanness : and
the reason follows, for the body of an infidel is not
polluted, neither to benevolence, nor to procreation.
Morcover, this note of mutual complacency forbids all
offer of seducement, which to a person of zeal cannot
be attempted without great offence: if therefore seduce-
ment be feared, this place hinders not divorce. An-
other caution was put in this supposed command, of
not bringing the believer into ‘bondage’ hereby, which
doubtless might prove extreme, if christian liberty and
conscience were left to the humour of a pagan staying
at pleasure to play with, and to vex and wound with a
thousand scandals and burdens, above strength to bear.
If therefore the conceived hope of gaining a soul come
to nothing, then charity commands that the believer
be not wearied out with endless waiting under many
grievances sore to his spirit; but that respect be had
rather to the present suffering of a true Christian, than
the uncertain winning of an obdurate heretic. The
counsel we have from St. Paul to hope, cannot counter-
mand the moral and evangelic charge we have from
God to fear seducement, to separate from the misbe-
liever, the unclean, the obdurate. The apostle wisheth
us to hope; but does not send us a wool-gathering
after vain hope; he saith, “How knowest thou, O man,
whether thou shalt save thy wife 2'' that is, till he try
all due means, and set some reasonable time to himself,
after which he may give over washing an Ethiop, if
he will hear the advice of the gospel; “Cast not pearls
before swine,” saith Christ himself. “I.et him be to
thee as a heathem. Shake the dust off thy feet.” If
this be not enough, “hate and forsake” what relation
soever. And this also that follows must appertain to
the precept, “Let every man wherein he is called,
therein abide with God,” v. 24, that is, so walking in
his inferior calling of marriage, as not by dangerous
subjection to that ordinance, to hinder and disturb the
higher calling of his Christianity. Iast, and never
too oft remembered, whether this be a command, or
THE DOCTRINE AND DISCIPLINE OF DIVORCE.
133
an advice, we must look that it be so understood as
not to contradict the least point of moral religion that
God hath formerly commanded; otherwise what do
we but set the moral law and the gospel at civil war
together ? and who then shall be able to serve these
two masters ?
CHAP. IX.
That adultery is not the greatest breach of matrimony:
that there may be other violations as great.
Now whether idolatry or adultery be the greatest
violation of marriage, if any demand let him thus con-
sider; that among christian writers touching matri-
mony, there be three chief ends thereof agreed on :
godly society, next civil, and thirdly, that of the mar-
riage-bed. Of these the first in name to be the highest
and most excellent, no baptized man can deny, nor
that idolatry smites directly against this prime end;
nor that such as the violated end is, such is the viola-
tion: but he who affirms adultery to be the highest
breach, affirms the bed to be the highest of marriage,
which is in truth a gross and boorish opinion, how
common soever: as far from the countenance of Scrip-
ture, as from the light of all clean philosophy or civil
nature. And out of the question the cheerful help that
may be in marriage toward sanctity of life, is the
purest, and so the noblest end of that contract: but if
the particular of each person be considered, then of
those three ends which God appointed, that to him is
greatest which is most necessary; and marriage is then
most broken to him when he utterly wants the fruition
of that which he most sought therein, whether it were
religious, civil, or corporal society. Of which wants to
do him right by divorce only for the last and meanest
is a perverse injury, and the pretended reason of it as
frigid as frigidity itself, which the code and canon are
only sensible of Thus much of this controversy. I
now return to the former argument. And having shewn
that disproportion, contrariety, or numbness of mind
may justly be divorced, by proving already the prohi-
bition thereof opposes the express end of God's institu-
tion, suffers not marriage to satisfy that intellectual and
innocent desire which God himself kindled in man to
be the bond of wedlock, but only to remedy a sublunary
and bestial burning, which frugal diet, without mar-
riage, would easily chasten. Next, that it drives many
to transgress the conjugal bed, while the soul wanders
after that satisfaction which it had hope to find at home,
but hath missed; or else it sits repining, even to athe-
ism, finding itself hardly dealt with, but misdeeming
the cause to be in God's law, which is in man's unright-
eous ignorance. I have shewn also how it unties the
inward knot of marriage, which is peace and love, (if
that can be untied which was never knit,) while it aims
to keep fast the outward formality: how it lets perish the
christian man, to compel impossibly the married man.
* The first edition has supernatural.
CHAP. X.
The sixth reason of this law ; that to prohibit divorce
sought for matural cases, is against nature.
THE sixth place declares this prohibition to be as
respectless of human nature, as it is of religion, and
therefore is not of God. He teaches, that an unlawful
marriage may be lawfully divorced ; and that those
who have thoroughly discerned each other's disposition,
which ofttimes cannot be till after matrimony, shall
then find a powerful reluctance and recoil of nature on
either side, blasting all the content of their mutual
society, that such persons are not lawfully married, (to
use the apostle's words,) “Say I these things as a man
or saith not the law also the same * For it is written,
Deut. xxii. Thou shalt not sow thy vineyard with dif-
ferent seeds, lest thou defile both. Thou shalt not
plough with an ox and an ass together;” and the like.
I follow the pattern of St. Paul's reasoning ; “Doth
God care for asses and oxen,” how ill they yoke toge-
ther, “ or is it not said altogether for our sakes P for our
sakes no doubt this is written.” Yea the apostle him-
self, in the forecited 2 Cor. vi. 14. alludes from that
place of Deut. to forbid misyoking marriage, as by the
Greek word is evident; though he instance but in one
example of mismatching with an infidel, yet next to
that, what can be a fouler incongruity, a greater vio-
lence to the reverend secret of nature, than to force a
mixture of minds that cannot unite, and to sow the
sorrow of man's nativity with seed of two incoherent
and incombining dispositions 2 which act being kindly
and voluntary, as it ought, the apostle in the language
he wrote called eunoia, and the Latins, benevolence,
intimating the original thereof to be in the understand-
ing, and the will; if not, surely there is nothing which
might more properly be called a malevolence rather;
and is the most injurious and unnatural tribute that
can be extorted from a person endued with reason, to
be made pay out the best substance of his body, and of
his soul too, as some think, when either for just and
powerful causes he cannot like, or from unequal causes
finds not recompense. And that there is a hidden effi-
cacy of love and hatred in man as well as in other
kinds, not moral but natural, which though not always
in the choice, yet in the success of marriage will ever
be most predominant; besides daily experience, the
author of Ecclesiasticus, whose wisdom hath set him
next the Bible, acknowledges, xiii. 16, “A man, saith
he, will cleave to his like.” But what might be the
cause, whether each one's allotted Genius or proper
star, or whether the supernal * influence of schemes and
angular aspects, or this elemental crasis here below;
whether all these jointly or singly meeting friendly, or
unfriendly in either party, I dare not, with the men I
am like to clash, appear so much a philosopher as to
conjecture. The ancient proverb in Homer less ab-
struse, entitles this work of leading each like person
to his like, peculiarly to God himself: which is plain
enough also by his naming of a meet or like help in
the first espousal instituted; and that every woman is
134
THE DOCTRINE AND DISCIPLINE OF DIVORCE.
meet for every man, none so absurd as to affirm. See-
ing then there is a twofold seniinary, or stock in mature,
from whence are derived the issues of love and hatred,
distinctly flowing through the whole mass of created
thinºs, and that God’s doing ever is to bring the due
likenesses and harmonies of his works together, except
when out of two contraries met to their own destruc-
tion, he moulds a third existence; and that it is errour,
or some evil angel which either blindly or maliciously
hath drawn together, in two persons ill embarked in
wedlock, the sleeping discords and enmities of nature,
lulled on purpose with some false bait, that they may
wake to agony and strife, later than prevention could
have wished, if from the bent of just and honest inten-
tions beginning what was begun and so continuing, all
that is equal, all that is fair and possible hath been
tried, and no accommodation likely to succeed; what
folly is it still to stand combating and battering against
invincible causes and effects, with evil upon evil, till
either the best of our days be lingered out, or ended
with some speeding sorrow ! The wise Ecclesiasticus
advises rather, xxxvii. 27, “My son, prove thy soul in
thy life, see what is evil for it, and give not that unto
it.” Reason he had to say so; for if the moisomeness
or disfigurement of body can soon destroy the sympathy
of mind to wedlock duties, much more will the annoy-
ance and trouble of mind infuse itself into all the facul-
ties and acts of the body, to render them invalid, un-
kindly, and even unholy against the fundamental law
book of nature, which Moses never thwarts, but rever-
ences: therefore he commands us to force nothing
against sympathy or natural order, no not upon the
most abject creatures; to shew that such an indignity
cannot be offered to man without an impious crime.
And certainly those divine meditating words of finding
out a meet and like help to man, have in them a con-
sideration of more than the indefinite likeness of
womanhood; nor are they to be made waste paper on,
for the dulness of canon divinity: no, nor those other
allegoric precepts of beneficence fetched out of the
closet of nature, to teach us goodness and compassion
in not compelling together unmatchable societies; or
if they meet through mischance, by all consequence to
disjoin them, as God and nature signifies, and lectures
to us not only by those recited decrees, but even by the
first and last of all his visible works; when by his di-
vorcing command the world first rose out of chaos, nor
can be renewed again out of confusion, but by the
separating of unmeet consorts.
CHAP. XI.
The seventh reason, that sometimes continuance in mar-
riage may be evidently the shortening or endanger-
ing of life to either party; both law and divinity
concluding, that life is to be preferred before mar-
riage, the intended solace of life.
SEventh LY, The canon law and divines consent,
that if either party be found contriving against ano-
ther's life, they may be severed by divorce: for a sin
against the life of marriage is greater than a sin against
the bed; the one destroys, the other but defiles. The
same may be said touching those persons who being of
a pensive nature and course of life, have summed up
all their solace in that free and lightsome conversation
which God and man intends in marriage; whereof
when they see themselves deprived by meeting an un-
sociable consort, they ofttimes resent one another's
mistake so deeply, that long it is not ere grief end one
of them. When therefore this danger is foreseen, that
the life is in peril by living together, what matter is it
whether helpless grief or wilful practice be the cause 2
This is certain, that the preservation of life is more
worth than the compulsory keeping of marriage; and
it is no less than cruelty to force a man to remain in
that state as the solace of his life, which he and his
friends know will be either the undoing or the dis-
heartening of his life. And what is life without the
vigour and spiritual exercise of life? How can it be
useful either to private or public employment? Shall it
therefore be quite dejected, though never so valuable,
and left to moulder away in heaviness, for the super-
stitious and impossible performance of an ill-driven
bargain * Nothing more inviolable than vows made to
God; yet we read in Numbers, that if a wife had
made such a vow, the mere will and authority of her
husband might break it : how much more then may he
break the error of his own bonds with an unfit and
mistaken wife, to the saving of his welfare, his life,
yea his faith and virtue, from the hazard of overstrong
temptations P For if man be lord of the sabbath, to the
curing of a fever, can he be less than lord of marriage
in such important causes as these ?
CHAP. XII.
The eighth reason, It is probable, or rather certain,
that every one who happens to marry, hath not the
calling ; and therefore upon unfitness found and
considered, force ought not to be used.
EIGHTHLY, It is most sure that some even of those
who are not plainly defective in body, yet are desti-
tute of all other marriageable gifts, and consequently
have not the calling to marry, unless nothing be re-
quisite thereto but a mere instrumental body; which
to affirm, is to that unanimous covenant a reproach:
yet it is as sure that many such, not of their own de-
sire, but by the persuasion of friends, or not knowing
themselves, do often enter into wedlock; where find-
ing the difference at length between the duties of a
married life, and the gifts of a single life, what unfit-
ness of mind, what wearisomeness, scruples, and doubts,
to an incredible offence and displeasure, are like to fol-
low between, may be soon imagined ; whom thus to
shut up, and immure, and shut up together, the one
with a mischosen mate, the other in a mistaken call-
ing, is not a course that christian wisdom and tender-
THE DOCTRINE AND DISCIPLINE OF DIWORCE.
135
ness ought to use. As for the custom that some parents
and guardians have of forcing marriages, it will be
better to say nothing of such a savage inhumanity,
but only thus; that the law which gives not all free-
dom of divorce to any creature endued with reason so
assassinated, is next in cruelty.
CHAP. XIII.
The ninth reason ; because marriage is not a mere
carnal coition, but a human society: where that cam-
not reasonably be had, there can be no true matri-
mony. Marriage compared with all other cove-
mants and vows warrantably broken for the good of
man. Marriage the Papists’ sacrament, and unfit
marriage the Protestants' idol.
NINTHLY, I suppose it will be allowed us that mar-
riage is a human society, and that all human society
must proceed from the mind rather than the body, else
it would be but a kind of animal or beastish meeting :
if the mind therefore cannot have that due company
by marriage that it may reasonably and humanly de-
sire, that marriage can be no human society, but a cer-
tain formality; or gilding over of little better than a
brutish congress, and so in very wisdom and pureness
to be dissolved.
But marriage is more than human, “the covenant
of God,” Prov. ii. 17, therefore man cannot dissolve it.
I answer, if it be more than human, so much the more
it argues the chief society thereof to be in the soul ra-
ther than in the body, and the greatest breach thereof
to be unfitness of mind rather than defect of body: for
the body can have least affinity in a covenant more
than human, so that the reason of dissolving holds good
the rather. Again, I answer, that the sabbath is a
higher institution, a command of the first table, for the
breach whereof God hath far more and oftener testified
his anger than for divorces, which from Moses to Ma-
lachi he never took displeasure at, nor then neither if
we mark the text; and yet as oft as the good of man is
concerned, he not only permits, but commands to break
the sabbath. What covenant more contracted with
God and less in man's power, than the vow which hath
once passed his lips ? yet if it be found rash, if offen-
sive, if unfruitful either to God's glory or the good of
man, our doctrine forces not error and unwillingness
irksomely to keep it, but counsels wisdom and better
thoughts boldly to break it; therefore to enjoin the in-
dissoluble keeping of a marriage found unfit against
the good of man both soul and body, as hath been evi-
denced, is to make an idol of marriage, to advance it
above the worship of God and the good of man, to make
it a transcendent command, above both the second and
first table; which is a most prodigious doctrine.
Next, whereas they cite out of the Proverbs, that it
is the covenant of God, and therefore more than hu-
man, that consequence is manifestly false: for so the
covenant which Zedekiah made with the infidel king
of Babel, is called the Covenant of God, Ezek. xvii.
19, which would be strange to hear counted more than
a human covenant. So every covenant between man
and man, bound by oath, may be called the covenant
of God, because God therein is attested. So of mar-
riage he is the author and the witness; yet hence will
not follow any divine astriction more than what is sub-
ordinate to the glory of God, and the main good of
either party: for as the glory of God and their es-
teemed fitness one for the other, was the motive which
led them both at first to think without other revelation
that God had joined them together; so when it shall
be found by their apparent unfitness, that their con-
tinuing to be man and wife is against the glory of God
and their mutual happiness, it may assure them that
God never joined them ; who hath revealed his gra-
cious will not to set the ordinance above the man for
whom it was ordained; not to canonize marriage either
as a tyranness or a goddess over the enfranchised life
and soul of man; for wherein can God delight,
wherein be worshipped, wherein be glorified by the
forcible continuing of an improper and ill-yoking cou-
ple 2 He that loved not to see the disparity of several
cattle at the plough, cannot be pleased with vast un-
meetness in marriage. Where can be the peace and
love which must invite God to such a house 2 May
it not be feared that the not divorcing of such a help-
less disagreement will be the divorcing of God finally
from such a place But it is a trial of our patience,
say they : I grant it; but which of Job’s afflictions
were sent him with that law, that he might not use
means to remove any of them if he could P And what
if it subvert our patience and our faith too f Who
shall answer for the perishing of all those souls, perish-
ing by stubborn expositions of particular and in ſerior
precepts against the general and supreme rule of cha-
rity They dare not affirm that marriage is either a
sacrament or a mystery, though all those sacred things
give place to man; and yet they invest it with such
an awful sanctity, and give it such adamantine chains
to bind with, as if it were to be worshipped like some
Indian deity, when it can confer no blessing upon us,
but works more and more to our misery. To such
teachers the saying of St. Peter at the council of Jeru-
salem will do well to be applied : “Why tempt ye
God to put a yoke upon the necks of" Christian men,
which neither the Jews, God's ancient people, “nor
we are able to bear;” and nothing but unwary ex-
pounding hath brought upon us?
CHAP. XIV.
Considerations concerning Familism, Antinomamism ;
and why it may be thought that such opinions may
proceed from the undue restraint of some just liberty,
than which no greater cause to contemn discipline,
To these considerations this also may be added as no
improbable conjecture, seeing that sort of men who
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THE DOCTRINE AND DISCIPLINE OF DIVORCE.
follow Anabaptism, Familism, Antinomianism, and
other fanatic dreams, (if we understand them not amiss,)
be such most commonly as are by nature addicted to
religion, of life also not debauched, and that their opi-
nions having full swing, do end in satisfaction of the
flesh; it may be come with reason into the thoughts of
a wise man, whether all this proceed not partly, if not
chiefly, from the restraint of some lawful liberty, which
ought to be given men, and is denied them As by
physic we learn in menstruous bodies, where nature's
current hath been stopped, that the suffocation and up-
ward forcing of some lower part affects the head and
inward sense with dotage and idle ſancies. And on
the other hand, whether the rest of vulgar men not so
religiously professing, do not give themselves much
the more to whoredom and adulteries, loving the cor-
rupt and venial discipline of clergy-courts, but hating
to hear of perfect reformation; whenas they foresee
that then fornication shall be austerely censured, adul-
tery punished, and marriage, the appointed refuge of
nature, though it hap to be never so incongruous and
displeasing, must yet of force be worn out, when it can
be to no other purpose but of strife and hatred, a thing
odious to God 2 This may be worth the study of skil-
ful men in theology, and the reason of things. And
lastly, to examine whether some undue and ill ground-
ed strictness upon the blameless nature of man, be not
the cause in those places where already reformation is,
that the discipline of the church, so often, and so una-
voidably broken, is brought into contempt and deri-
sion ? And if it be thus, let those who are still bent to
hold this obstinate literality, so prepare themselves, as
to share in the account for all these transgressions,
when it shall be demanded at the last day, by one
who will scan and sift things with more than a literal
wisdom of equity: for if these reasons be duly pon-
dered, and that the gospel is more jealous of laying on
excessive burdens than ever the law was, lest the soul
of a Christian, which is inestimable, should be over-
tempted and cast away; considering also that many
properties of nature, which the power of regeneration
itself never alters, may cause dislike of conversing,
even between the most sanctified; which continually
grating in harsh tune together, may breed some jar
and discord, and that end in rancour and strife, a thing
so opposite both to marriage and to Christianity, it
would perhaps be less scandal to divorce a natural dis-
parity, than to link violently together an unchristian
dissension, committing two insnared souls inevitably to
kindle one another, not with the fire of love, but with a
hatred irreconcileable; who, were they dissevered,
would be straight friends in any other relation. But
if an alphabetical servility must be still urged, it may
so fall out, that the true church may unwittingly use
as much cruelty in forbidding to divorce, as the church
of Antichrist doth wilfully in forbidding to marry.
B O O K II.
CHAP. I.
The ordinance of sabbath and marriage compared. Hyperbole no unfrequent figure in the gospel. Excess
cured by contrary excess.
abuse thereof.
HITHERTo the position undertaken has been declared,
and proved by a law of God, that law proved to be
moral, and unabolishable, for many reasons equal,
honest, charitable, just, annexed thereto. It follows
now, that those places of Scripture, which have a seem-
ing to revoke the prudence of Moses, or rather that
merciful decree of God, be forthwith explained and re-
conciled. For what are all these reasonings worth,
will some reply, whenas the words of Christ are plainly
against all divorce, “except in case of fornication *
to whom he whose mind were to answer no more but
this, “except also in case of charity,” might safely ap-
peal to the more plain words of Christ in defence of so
excepting. “Thou shalt do no manner of work,”
saith the commandment of the sabbath. Yes, saith
Christ, works of charity. And shall we be more se-
were in paraphrasing the considerate and tender gos-
pel, than he was in expounding the rigid and peremp-
Christ neither did nor could abrogate the law of divorce, but only reprieve the
tory law P What was ever in all appearance less
made for man, and more for God alone, than the sab-
bath f yet when the good of man comes into the scales,
we hear that voice of infinite goodness and benignity,
that “ sabbath was made for man, and not man for
sabbath.” What thing ever was more made for man
alone, and less for God, than marriage 2 And shall we
load it with a cruel and senseless bondage utterly
against both the good of man, and the glory of God P
Let whoso will now listen, I want neither pall nor
mitre, I stay neither for ordination nor induction; but
in the firm faith of a knowing Christian, which is the
best and truest endowment of the keys, I pronounce,
the man, who shall bind so cruelly a good and gracious
ordinance of God, hath not in that the spirit of Christ.
Yet that every text of Scripture seeming opposite may
be attended with a due exposition, this other part en-
sues, and makes account to find no slender arguments
THE DOCTRINE AND DJSCIPLINE OF DIVORCE. 1:37
for this assertion, out of those very scriptures, which
are commonly urged against it.
First therefore let us remember, as a thing not to be
denied, that all places of Scripture, wherein just reason
of doubt arises from the letter, are to be expounded by
considering upon what occasion every thing is set
down, and by comparing other texts. The occasion,
which induced our Saviour to speak of divorce, was
either to convince the extravagance of the Pharisees in
that point, or to give a sharp and vehement answer to
a tempting question. And in such cases, that we are
not to repose all upon the literal terms of so many words,
many instances will teach us: wherein we may plainly
discover how Christ meant not to be taken word for
word, but like a wise physician, administering one ex-
cess against another, to reduce us to a permiss; where
they were too remiss, he saw it needful to seem most
severe: in one place he censures an unchaste look to
be adultery already committed; another time he passes
over actual adultery with less reproof than for an un-
chaste look; not so heavily condemning secret weak-
ness, as open malice: so here he may be justly thought
to have given this rigid sentence against divorce, not
to cut off all remedy from a good man, who finds him-
self consuming away in a disconsolate and uninjoined
matrimony, but to lay a bridle upon the bold abuses of
those overweening rabbies; which he could not more
effectually do, than by a countersway of restraint curb-
ing their wild exorbitance almost in the other extreme;
as when we bow things the contrary way, to make
them come to their natural straightness. And that this
was the only intention of Christ is most evident, if we
attend but to his own words and protestation made in
the same sermon, not many verses before he treats of
divorcing, that he came not to abrogate from the law
“one jot or tittle,” and denounces against them that
shall so teach. *
But St. Luke, the verse immediately foregoing that
of divorce, inserts the same caveat, as if the latter could
not be understood without the former; and as a witness
to produce against this our wilful mistake of abrogat-
ing, which must needs confirm us, that whatever else
in the political law of more special relation to the Jews
might cease to us; yet that of those precepts concern-
ing divorce, not one of them was repealed by the doc-
trine of Christ, unless we have vowed not to believe
his own cautious and immediate profession; for if these
our Saviour's words inveigh against all divorce, and
condemn it as adultery, except it be for adultery, and
be not rather understood against the abuse of those
divorces permitted in the law, then is that law of
Moses, Deut. xxiv. 1, not only repealed and wholly
annulled against the promise of Christ, and his known
profession not to meddle in matters judicial; but that
which is more strange, the very substance and purpose
of that law is contradicted, and convinced both of in-
justice and impurity, as having authorized and main-
tained legal adultery by statute. Moses also cannot
scape to be guilty of unequal and unwise decrees
punishing one act of secret adultery by death, and per-
mitting a whole life of open adultery by law. And
albeit lawyers write, that some political edicts, though
not approved, are yet allowed to the scum of the people,
and the necessity of the times; these cxcuses have but
a weak pulse: for first, we read, not that the scoundrel
people, but the choicest, the wisest, the holiest of that
nation have frequently used these laws, or such as
these, in the best and holiest times. Secondly, be it
yielded, that in matters not very bad or impure, a
human lawgiver may slacken something of that which
is exactly good, to the disposition of the people and
the times: but if the perfect, the pure, the righteous
law of God, (for so are all his statutes and his judg-
ments,) be found to have allowed smoothly, without
any certain reprehension, that which Christ afterward
declares to be adultery, how can we free this law from
the horrible indictment of being both impure, unjust,
and fallacious f
CHAP. II.
How divorce was permitted for hardness of heart, can-
not be understood by the common earposition. That
the law cannot permit, much less enact a permission
of sin.
Neit HER will it serve to say this was permitted for
the hardness of their hearts, in that sense as it is usually
explained: for the law were then but a corrupt and
erroneous schoolmaster, teaching us to dash against a
vital maxim of religion, by doing foul evil in hope of
some certain good.
This only text is not to be matched again through-
out the whole Scripture, whereby God in his perfect
law should seem to have granted to the hard hearts of
his holy people, under his own hand, a civil immunity
and free charter to live and die in a long successive
adultery, under a covenant of works, till the Messiah,
and then that indulgent permission to be strictly de-
nied by a covenant of grace; besides, the incoherence
of such a doctrine cannot, must not be thus interpreted,
to the raising of a paradox never known till then, only
hanging by the twined thread of one doubtful scrip-
ture, against so many other rules and leading principles
of religion, of justice, and purity of life. For what
could be granted more either to the fear, or to the lust
of any tyrant or politician, than this authority of Moses
thus expounded; which opens him a way at will to
dam up justice, and not only to admit of any Romish
or Austrian dispenses, but to enact a statute of that
which he dares not seem to approve, even to legitimate
vice, to make sin itself, the ever alien and vassal sin, a
free citizen of the commonwealth, pretending only
these or these plausible reasons 2 And well he might,
all the while that Moses shall be alleged to have done
as much without shewing any reason at all. Yet this
could not enter into the heart of David, Psal. xciv. 20,
how any such authority, as endeavours to “fashion
wickedness by a law,” should derive itself from God.
138
THE DOCTRINE AND DISCIPLINE OF DIWORCE.
And Isaiah says, “Wo upon them that decree unrigh-
teous decrees,” chap. x. 1. Now which of these two
is the better lawgiver, and which deserves most a wo,
he that gives out an edict singly unjust, or he that con-
firms to generations a fixed and unmolested impunity
of that which is not only held to be unjust, but also
unclean, and both in a high degree; not only as they
themselves affirm, an injurious expulsion of one wife,
but also an unclean freedom by more than a patent to
wed another adulterously How can we therefore with
safety thus dangerously confine the free simplicity of
our Saviour's meaning to that which merely amounts
from so many letters, whenas it can consist neither
with its former and cautionary words, nor with other
more pure and holy principles, nor finally with a scope
of charity, commanding by his express commission in
a higher strain P But all rather of necessity must be
understood as only against the abuse of that wise
and ingenuous liberty, which Moses gave, and to
terrify a roving conscience from sinning under that
pretext.
CHAP. III.
That to allow sin by law, is against the nature of law,
the end of the lawgiver, and the good of the people.
Impossible therefore in the law of God. That it
makes God the author of sin more than any thing ob-
jected by the Jesuits or Arminians against predesti-
7tation.
But let us yet further examine upon what considera-
tion a law of licence could be thus given to a holy peo-
ple for their hardness of heart. I suppose all will
answer, that for some good end or other. But here the
contrary shall be proved. First, that many ill effects,
but no good end of such a sufferance can be shewn;
next, that a thing unlawful can, for no good end what-
ever, be either done or allowed by a positive law. If
there were any good end aimed at, that end was then
good either to the law or to the lawgiver licensing; or as
to the person licensed. That it could not be the end
of the law, whether moral or judicial, to license a sin,
I prove easily out of Rom. v. 20, “The law entered,
that the offence might abound,’ that is, that sin might
be made abundantly manifest to be heinous and dis-
pleasing to God, that so his offered grace might be
the more esteemed. Now if the law, instead of aggra-
vating and terrifying sin, shall give out licence, it foils
itself and turns recreant from its own end : it forestalls
the pure grace of Christ, which is through righteous-
ness, with impure indulgences, which are through sin.
And instead of discovering sin, for “by the law is the
knowledge thereof,” saith St. Paul; and that by certain
and true light for men to walk in safety, it holds out
false and dazzling fires to stumble men; or, like those
miserable flies, to run into with delight and be burnt:
for how many souls might easily think that to be law-
ful which the law and magistrate allowed them
Again, we read, 1 Tim. i. 5, “The end of the com-
mandment is charity out of a pure heart, and of a good
conscience, and of faith unfeigned.” But never could
that be charity, to allow a people what they could not
use with a pure heart, but with conscience and faith
both deceived, or else despised. The more particular
end of the judicial law is set forth to us clearly, Rom.
xiii. That God hath given to that “law a sword not in
vain, but to be a terrour to evil works, a revenge to
execute wrath upon him that doth evil.” If this terri-
ble commission should but forbear to punish wicked-
ness, were it other to be accounted than partial and
unjust? but if it begin to write indulgence to vulgar
uncleanness, can it do more to corrupt and shame the
end of its own being 2 Lastly, if the law allow sin, it
enters into a kind of covenant with sin; and if it do,
there is not a greater sinner in the world than the law
itself. The law, to use an allegory something differ-
ent from that in Philo-Judaeus concerning Amalek,
though haply more significant, the law is the Israelite,
and hath this absolute charge given it, Deut. xxv.
“To blot out the memory of sin, the Amalekite, from un-
der heaven, not to forget it.” Again, the law is the
Israelite, and hath this express repeated command, “to
make no covenant with sin, the Canaanite,” but to ex-
pel him lest he prove a smare. And to say truth, it
were too rigid and reasonless to proclaim such an en-
mity between man and man, were it not the type of a
greater enmity between law and sin. I speak even
now, as if sin were condemned in a perpetual villanage
never to be free by law, never to be manumitted : but
sure sin can have no tenure by law at all, but is rather
an eternal outlaw, and in hostility with law past all
atonement: both diagonal contraries, as much allowing
one another, as day and might together in one hemi-
sphere. Or if it be possible, that sin with his darkness
may come to composition, it cannot be without a foul
eclipse and twilight to the law, whose brightness ought
to surpass the noon. Thus we see how this unclean
permittance defeats the sacred and glorious end both
of the moral and judicial law.
As little good can the lawgiver propose to equity by
such a lavish remissness as this : if to remedy hardness
of heart, Parteus and other divines confess it more in-
creases by this liberty, than is lessened: and how is it
probable, that their hearts were more hard in this, that
it should be yielded to, than in any other crime P Their
hearts were set upon usury, and are to this day, no
nation more; yet that which was the endamaging
only of their estates was narrowly forbid; this which
is thought the extreme injury and dishonour of their
wives and daughters, with the defilement also of them-
selves, is bounteously allowed. Their hearts were as
hard under their best kings to offer in high places,
though to the true God: yet that, but a small thing, it
strictly forewarned ; this, accounted a high offence
against one of the greatest moral duties, is calmly per-
mitted and established. How can it be evaded, but
that the heavy censure of Christ should fall worse upon
THE DOCTRINE AND DISCIPLINE OF DIVORCE.
139
this lawgiver of theirs, than upon all the scribes and
Pharisees P For they did but omit judgment and mercy
to trifle in mint and cummin, yet all according to law;
but this their lawgiver, altogether as punctual in such
niceties, goés marching on to adulteries, through the
violence of divorce hy law against law. If it were such
a cursed act of Pilate a subordinate judge to Caesar,
overswayed by those hard hearts, with much ado to
suffer one transgression of law but once, what is it then
with less ado to publish a law of transgression for many
ages * Did God for this come down and cover the
mount of Sinai with his glory, uttering in thunder those
his sacred ordinances out of the bottomless treasures of
his wisdom and infinite pureness, to patch up an ulcer-
ous and rotten commonwealth with strict and stern in-
junctions, to wash the skin and garments for every
unclean touch; and such easy permission given to pol-
lute the soul with adulteries by public authority, with-
out disgrace or question 2 No, it had been better that
man had never known law or matrimony, than that
such foul iniquity should be fastened upon the Holy
One of Israel, the Judge of all the earth; and such a
piece of folly as Belzebub would not commit, to divide
against himself, and prevent his own ends: or if he, to
compass more certain mischief, might yield perhaps to
feign some good deed, yet that God should enact a
licence of certain evil for uncertain good against his
own glory and pureness, is abominable to conceive.
And as it is destructive to the end of law, and blasphe-
mous to the honour of the lawgiver licensing, so is it
as pernicious to the person licensed. If a private friend
admonish not, the Scripture saith, “he hates his bro-
ther, and lets him perish;” but if he soothe him and
allow his faults, the Proverbs teach us “he spreads a
net for his neighbour's feet, and worketh ruin.” If the
magistrate or prince forget to administer due justice,
and restrain not sin, Eli himself could say, “it made
the Lord's people to transgress.” But if he countenance
them against law by his own example, what havoc it
makes both in religion and virtue among the people
may be guessed, by the anger it brought upon Hoph-
ni and Phineas not to be appeased “with sacrifice nor
offering for ever.” If the law be silent to declare sin,
the people must needs generally go astray, for the
apostle himself saith, “he had not known lust but by
the law :” and surely such a nation seems not to be
under the illuminating guidance of God’s law, but
under the horrible doom rather of such as despise the
gospel; “he that is filthy, let him be filthy still.” But
where the law itself gives a warrant for sin, I know
not what condition of misery to imagine miserable
enough for such a people, unless that portion of the
wicked, or rather of the damned, on whom God threat-
ens, in Psal. xi. “to rain snares;” but that questionless
cannot be by any law, which the apostle saith is “a
ministry ordained of God for our good,” and not so
many ways and in so high a degree to our destruction,
as we have now been graduating. And this is all the
good can come to the person licensed in his hardness
of heart.
I am next to mention that, which because it is a
ground in divinity, Rom. iii. will save the labour of
demonstrating, unless her given axioms be more doubt-
ed than in other hearts, (although it be no less firm in
precepts of philosophy,) that a thing unlawful can for
no good whatsoever be done, much less allowed by a
positive law. And this is the matter why interpreters
upon that passage in Hosea will not consent it to be a
true story, that the prophet took a harlot to wife: be-
cause God, being a pure spirit, could not command a
thing repugnant to his own nature, no not for so good
an end as to exhibit more to the life a wholesome and
perhaps a converting parable to many an Israelite.
Yet that he commanded the allowance of adulterous
and injurious divorces for hardness of heart, a reason
obscure and in a wrong sense, they can very favour-
ably persuade themselves; so tenacious is the leaven
of an old conceit. But they shift it; he permitted only.
Yet silence in the law is consent, and consent is acces-
sory: why then is not the law being silent, or not ac-
tive against a crime, accessory to its own conviction,
itself judging 2 For though we should grant, that it
approves not, yet it wills: and the lawyers' maxim is,
that “the will compelled is yet the will.” And though
Aristotle in his ethics calls this “mixed action,” yet he
concludes it to be voluntary and inexcusable, if it be
evil. How justly then might human law and philo-
sophy rise up against the righteousness of Moses, if
this be true which our vulgar divinity fathers upon
him, yea upon God himself, not silently, and only
negatively to permit, but in his law to divulge a writ-
ten and general privilege to commit and persist in
unlawful divorces with a high hand, with security
and no ill fame f for this is more than permitting
and contriving, this is maintaining : this is warrant-
ing, this is protecting, yea this is doing evil, and such
an evil as that reprobate lawgiver did, whose lasting
infamy is engraven upon him like a surname, “he
who made Israel to sin.” This is the lowest pitch
contrary to God that public fraud and injustice can
descend.
If it be affirmed, that God, as being Lord, may do
what he will, ye we must know, that God hath not two
wills, but one will, much less two contrary. If he once
willed adultery should be sinful, and to be punished
with death, all his omnipotence will not allow him, to
will the allowance that his holiest people might as it
were by his own antinomy, or counterstatute, live un-
reproved in the same fact as he himself esteemed it,
according to our common explainers. The hidden ways
of his providence we adore and search not, but the law
is his revealed will, his complete, his evident and cer-
tain will: herein he appears to us as it were in human
shape, enters into covenant with us, swears to keep it,
binds himself like a just lawgiver to his own prescrip-
tions, gives himself to be understood by men, judges
and is judged, measures and is commensurate to right
reason; cannot require less of us in one cantle of his
law than in another, his legal justice cannot be so fickle
and so variable, sometimes like a devouring fire, and
by and by connivent in the embers, or, if I may so say,
oscitant and supine. The vigour of his law could no
140
THE DOCTRINE AND DISCIPLINE OF DIVORCE.
more remit, than the hallowed fire upon his altar could
be let go out. The lamps that burned before him might
need snuffing, but the light of his law never. Of this
also more beneath, in discussing a solution of Rivetus.
The Jesuits, and that sect among us which is named
of Arminius, are wont to charge us of making God the
author of sin, in two degrees especially, not to speak
of his permission: 1. because we hold, that he hath
decreed some to damnation, and consequently to sin,
say they ; next, because those means, which are of
saving knowledge to others, he makes to them an oc-
casion of greater sin. Yet considering the perfection
wherein man was created, and might have stood, no
degree necessitating his freewill, but subsequent,
though not in time, yet in order to causes, which were
in his own power; they might methinks be persuaded
to absolve both God and us. Whenas the doctrine of
Plato and Chrysippus, with their followers, the Aca-
demics and the Stoics, who knew not what a consum-
mate and most adorned Pandora was bestowed upon
Adam, to be the nurse and guide of his arbitrary hap-
piness and perseverance, I mean his native innocence
and perfection, which might have kept him from being
our true Epimetheus; and though they taught of vir-
tue and vice to be both the gift of divine destiny, they
could yet give reasons not invalid, to justify the coun-
cils of God and fate from the insulsity of mortal
tongues: that man's own freewill self-corrupted, is the
adequate and sufficient cause of his disobedience be-
sides fate; as Homer also wanted not to express, both
in his Iliad and Odyssee. And Manilius the poet,
although in his fourth book he tells of some “created
both to sin and punishment;” yet without murmuring,
and with an industrious cheerfulness, he acquits the
Deity. They were not ignorant in their heathem lore,
that it is most godlike to punish those who of his crea-
tures became his enemies with the greatest punish-
ment; and they could attain also to think, that the
greatest, when God himself throws a man furthest from
him ; which then they held he did, when he blinded,
hardened, and stirred up his offenders, to finish and
pile up their desperate work since they had undertaken
it. To banish for ever into a local hell, whether in
the air or in the centre, or in that uttermost and bot-
tomless gulf of chaos, deeper from holy bliss than the
world's diameter multiplied; they thought not a pu-
nishing so proper and proportionate for God to inflict,
as to punish sin with sin. Thus were the common
sort of Gentiles wont to think, without any wry
thoughts cast upon divine governance. And therefore
Cicero, not in his Tusculan or Campanian retirements
among the learned wits of that age, but even in the
senate to a mixed auditory, (though he were sparing
otherwise to broach his philosophy among statists and
lawyers,) yet as to this point, both in his oration against
Piso, and in that which is about the answers of the
soothsayers against Clodius, he declares it publicly as
no paradox to common ears, that God cannot punish
man more, nor make him more miserable, than still by
making him more sinful. Thus we see how in this
controversy the justice of God stood upright even
among heathen disputers. But if any one be truly,
and not pretendedly zealous for God's honour, here I
call him forth before men and angels, to use his best
and most advised skill, lest God more unavoidably than
ever yet, and in the guiltiest manner, be made the au-
thor of sin : if he shall not only deliver over and incite
his enemies by rebuke to sin as a punishment, but
shall by patent under his own broad seal allow his
friends whom he would sanctify and save, whom he
would unite to himself and not disjoin, whom he would
correct by wholesome chastening, and not pumish as
he doth the damned by lewd sinning; if he shall allow
these in his law, the perfect rule of his own purest will,
and our most edified conscience, the perpetrating of an
odious and manifold sin without the least contesting.
It is wondered how there can be in God a secret and
revealed will; and yet what wonder, if there be in man
two answerable causes. But here there must be two
revealed wills grappling in a fraternal war with one
another without any reasonable cause apprehended.
This cannot be less, than to ingraft sin into the sub-
stance of the law, which law is to provoke sin by cross-
ing and forbidding, not by complying with it. Nay
this is, which I tremble in uttering, to incarnate sin
into the unpunishing and well-pleased will of God.
To avoid these dreadful consequences, that tread upon
the heels of those allowances to sin, will be a task of
far more difficulty, than to appease those minds, which
perhaps out of a vigilant and wary conscience except
against predestination. Thus finally we may con-
clude, that a law wholly giving licence cannot upon
any good consideration be given to a holy people, for
hardness of heart in the vulgar sense.
CHAP. IV.
That if divorce be no command, no more is marriage.
That divorce could be no dispensation, if it were sin-
ful. The solution of Rivetus, that God dispensed by
some unknown way, ought not to satisfy a christian
mind.
OTHERs think to evade the matter by not granting
any law of divorce, but only a dispensation, which is
contrary to the words of Christ, who himself calls it a
‘Law,’ Mark x. 5: or if we speak of a command in
the strictest definition, then marriage itself is no more
a command than divorce, but only a free permission to
him who cannot contain. But as to dispensation, I
affirm the same as before of the law, that it can never
be given to the allowance of sin : God cannot give it,
neither in respect of himself, nor in respect of man;
not in respect of himself, being a most pure essence,
the just avenger of sin; neither can he make that
cease to be a sin, which is in itself unjust and impure,
as all divorces they say were, which were not for adul-
tery. Not in respect of man, for then it must be either
to his good, or to his evil. Not to his good; for how
THE DOCTRINE AND DISCIPLINE OF DIVORCE.
141
can that be imagined any good to a sinner, whom no-
thing but rebuke and due correction can save, to hear
the determinate oracle of divine law louder than any
reproof dispensing and providing for the inpunity and
convenience of sin; to make that doubtful, or rather
lawful, which the end of the law was to make most
evidently hateful ? Nor to the evil of man can a dis-
pense be given; for if “the law were ordained unto
life,” Rom. vii. 10, how can the same God publish dis-
penses against that law, which must needs be unto
death f Absurd and monstrous would that dispense be,
if any judge or law should give it a man to cut his own
throat, or to damn himself. Dispense therefore pre-
supposes full pardon, or else it is not a dispense, but a
most baneful and bloody snare. And why should God
enter covenant with a people to be holy, as “the com-
mand is holy, and just, and good,” Rom. vii. 12, and
yet suffer an impure and treacherous dispense, to mis-
lead and betray them under the vizard of law to a le-
gitimate practice of uncleanness? God is no covenant-
breaker; he cannot do this.
Rivetus, a diligent and learned writer, having well
weighed what hath been written by those founders of
dispense, and finding the small agreement among
them, would fain work Irimself aloof these rocks and
quicksands, and thinks it best to conclude, that God
certainly did dispense, but by some way to us unknown,
and so to leave it. But to this I oppose, that a Chris-
tian by no means ought to rest himself in such an ig-
norance; whereby so many absurdities will straight
reflect both against the purity, justice, and wisdom of
God, the end also both of law and gospel, and the com-
parison of them both together. God indeed in some
ways of his providence is high and secret, past finding
out: but in the delivery and execution of his law,
especially in the managing of a duty so daily and so
familiar as this is whereof we reason, hath plain enough
revealed himself, and requires the observance thereof
not otherwise, than to the law of nature and equity
imprinted in us seems correspondent. And he hath
taught us to love and extol his laws, not only as they
are his, but as they are just and good to every wise and
sober understanding. Therefore Abraham, even to the
face of God himself, seemed to doubt of divine justice,
if it should swerve from the irradiation wherewith it
had enlightened the mind of man, and bound itself to
observe its own rule; “wilt thou destroy the righteous
with the wicked P that be far from thee; shall not the
judge of the earth do right?” Thereby declaring, that
God hath created a righteousness in right itself, against
which he cannot do. So David, Psalm crix. “ the tes-
timonies which thou hast commanded are righteous
and very faithful; thy word is very pure, therefore thy
servant loveth it.” Not only then for the author's sake,
but for its own purity. “He is faithful,” saith St. Paul,
“he cannot deny himself;” that is, cannot deny his own
promises, cannot but be true to his own rules. He often
pleads with men the uprightness of his ways by their
own principles. How should we imitate him else, to
“be perfect as he is perfect P* If at pleasure he can
dispense with golden poetic ages of such pleasing
licence, as in the fabled reign of old Saturn, and this
perhaps before the law might have some covert; but
under such an undispensing covenant as Moses made
with them, and not to tell us why and wherefore, in-
dulgence cannot give quiet to the breast of an intelli-
gent man f We must be resolved how the law can be
pure and perspicuous, and yet throw a polluted skirt
over these Eleusinian mysteries, that no man can utter
what they mean: worse in this than the worst obsceni-
ties of heathen superstition; for their filthiness was
hid, but the mystic reason thereof known to their sages.
But this Jewish imputed filthiness was daily and open,
but the reason of it is not known to our divines. We
know of no design the gospel can have to impose new
righteousness upon works, but to remit the old by faith
without works, if we mean justifying works: we know
no mystery our Saviour could have to lay new bonds
upon marriage in the covenant of grace which himself
had loosened to the severity of law. So that Rivetus
may pardon us, if we cannot be contented with his
nonsolution, to remain in such a peck of uncertainties
and doubts, so dangerous and ghastly to the funda-
mentals of our faith.
CHAP. V.
What a Dispensation is.
THERE fore to get some better satisfaction, we must
proceed to inquire as diligently as we can what a dis-
pensation is, which I find to be either properly so call-
ed, or improperly. Improperly so called, is rather a
particular and exceptive law, absolving and disobliging
from a more general command for some just and rea-
sonable cause. As Numb. ix. they who were unclean,
or in a journey, had leave to keep the passover in the
second month, but otherwise ever in the first. As for
that in Leviticus of marrying the brother's wife, it was
a penal statute rather than a dispense; and commands
nothing injurious or in itself unclean, only prefers a
special reason of charity before an institutive decency,
and perhaps is meant for lifetime only, as is expressed
beneath in the prohibition of taking two sisters. What
other edict of Moses, carrying but the semblance of a
law in any other kind, may bear the name of a dis-
pense, I have not readily to instance. But a dispensa-
tion most properly is some particular accident rarely
happening, and therefore not specified in the law, but
left to the decision of charity, even under the bondage
of Jewish rites, much more under the liberty of the
gospel. Thus did “David enter into the house of God
and did eat the shewbread, he and his followers, which
was’ ceremonially “unlawful.” Of such dispenses as
these it was that Verdune the French divine so gravely
disputed in the council of Trent against friar Adrian,
who held that the pope might dispense with anything.
“It is a fond persuasion,” saith Verdune, “that dispens-
ing is a favour; nay, it is as good distributive justice
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THE DOCTRINE AND DISCIPLINE OF DIVORCE.
as what is most, and the priest sins if he gives it not,
for it is nothing else but a right interpretation of law.”
Thus far that I can learn touching this matter whole-
somely decreed. But that God, who is the giver of
every good and perfect gift, Jam. i. should give out a
rule and directory to sin by, should enact a dispensation
as longlived as a law, whereby to live in privileged
adultery for hardness of heart, (and this obdurate dis-
ease cannot be conceived how it was the more amended
by this unclean remedy,) is the most deadly and scor.
pionlike gift, that the enemy of mankind could have
given to any miserable sinner, and is rather such a
dispense as that was, which the serpent gave to our first
parents. God gave quails in his wrath, and kings in
his wrath, yet neither of these things evil in them-
selves: but that he whose eyes cannot behold impurity,
should in the book of his holy covenant, his most un-
passionate law, give licence and statute for uncontrol-
led adultery, although it go for the received opinion, I
shall ever dissuade my soul from such a creed, such an
indulgence as the shop of Antichrist never forged a
baser.
CIHAP. VI.
That the Jew had no more right to this supposed dis-
pense than the Christian hath, and rather not so
much.
BUT if we must needs dispense, let us for a while so
far dispense with truth, as to grant that sin may be
dispensed; yet there will be copious reason found to
prove, that the Jew had no more right to such a sup-
posed indulgence than the Christian ; whether we look
at the clear knowledge wherein he lived, or the strict
performance of works whereto he was bound, Besides
visions and prophecies, they had the law of God,
which in the Psalms and Proverbs is chiefly praised
for sureness and certainty, both easy and perfect to the
enlightening of the simple. How could it be so ob-
scure then, or they so sottishly blind in this plain,
moral, and household duty P They had the same pre-
cepts about marriage; Christ added nothing to their
clearness, for that had argued them imperfect ; he
opens not the law, but removes the pharisaic mists
raised between the law and the people's eyes: the
only sentence which he adds, “What God hath joined
let no man put asunder,” is as obscure as any clause
fetched out of Genesis, and hath increased a yet unde-
cided controversy of clandestine marriages. If we
examine over all his sayings, we shall find him not so
much interpreting the law with his words, as referring
his own words to be interpreted by the law, and oftener
obscures his mind in short, and vehement, and com-
pact sentences, to blind and puzzle them the more,
who would not understand the law. The Jews there-
fore were as little to be dispensed with for lack of
moral knowledge as we.
Next, none I think will deny, but that they were as
much bound to perform the law as any Christian.
That severe and rigorous knife not sparing the tender
foreskin of any male infant, to carve upon his flesh the
mark of that strict and pure covenant whereinto he en-
tered, might give us to understand enough against the
fancy of dispensing. St. Paul testifies, that every
“circumcised man is a debtor to the whole law,” Gal.
v. or else “circumcision is in vain,” Rom. ii. 25. How
vain then, and how preposterous must it needs be to
exact a circumcision of the flesh from an infant into an
outward sign of purity, and to dispense an uncircum-
cision in the soul of a grown man to an inward and
real impurity How vain again was that law, to im-
pose tedious expiations for every slight sin of igno-
rance and errour, and to privilege without penance or
disturbance an odious crime whether of ignorance or
obstimacy How unjust also inflicting death and
extirpation for the mark of circumstantial pureness
omitted, and proclaiming all honest and liberal in-
demnity to the act of a substantial impureness com-
mitted, making void the covenant that was made
against it! Thus if we consider the tenour of the
law, to be circumcised and to perform all, not pardon-
ing so much as the scapes of errour and ignorance, and
compare this with the condition of the gospel, “believe
and be baptized,” I suppose it cannot be long ere we
grant, that the Jew was bound as strictly to the per-
formance of every duty, as was possible ; and therefore
could not be dispensed with more than the Christian,
perhaps not so much.
CHA P. VII.
That the Gospel is apter to dispense than the Law.
Paraeus answered.
If then the law will afford no reason, why the Jew
should be more gently dealt with than the Christian,
then surely the gospel can afford as little, why the
Christian should be less gently dealt with than the
Jew. The gospel indeed exhorts to highest perfec-
tion, but bears with weakest infirmity more than the
law. Hence those indulgences, “all cannot receive
this saying, every man hath his proper gift,” with ex-
press charges not “to lay on yokes, which our fathers
could not bear.” The nature of man still is as weak,
and yet as hard; and that weakness and hardness as
unfit and as unteachable to be harshly used as ever.
Ay but, saith Paraeus, there is a greater portion of spi-
rit poured upon the gospel, which requires from us per-
fecter obedience. I answer, this does not prove, that
the law might give allowance to sin more than the
gospel; and if it were no sin, we know it were the
work of the spirit to “mortify our corrupt desires and
evil concupiscence;” but not to root up our natural aſ-
fections and disaffections, moving to and fro even in
wisest men upon just and necessary reasons, which
THE DOCTRINE AND DISCIPLINE OF DIVORCE.
I43
were the true ground of that Mosaic dispense, and is
the utmost extent of our pleading. What is more or
less perſect we dispute not, but what is sin or no sin.
And in that I still affirm the law required as perfect
obedience as the gospel : besides that the prime end of
the gospel is not so much to exact our obedience, as to
reveal grace, and the satisfaction of our disobedience.
What is now exacted from us, it is the accusing law
that does it, even yet under the gospel; but cannot be
more extreme to us now than to the Jews of old ; for
the law ever was of works, and the gospel ever was of
grace.
Either then the law by harmless and needful dis-
penses, which the gospel is now made to deny, must
have anticipated and exceeded the grace of the gos-
pel, or else must be found to have given politic and su-
perficial graces without real pardon, saying in general,
“do this and live,” and yet deceiving and damning
underhaud with unsound and hollow permissions;
which is utterly abhorring from the end of all law, as
hath been shewed. But if those indulgences were safe
and sinless, out of tenderness and compassion, as in-
deed they were, and yet shall be abrogated by the gos-
pel; then the law, whose end is by rigour to magnify
grace, shall itself give grace, and pluck a fair plume
from the gospel; instead of hastening us thither, al-
luring us from it. And whereas the terrour of the law
was a servant to amplify and illustrate the mildness of
grace; now the unmildness of evangelic grace shall
turn servant to declare the grace and mildness of the
rigorous law. The law was harsh to extol the grace
of the gospel, and now the gospel by a new affected
strictness of her own shall extenuate the grace which
herself offers. For by exacting a duty which the law
dispensed, if we perform it, then is grace diminished,
by how much performance advance, unless the apostle
argue wrong : if we perform it not, and perish for not
performing, then are the conditions of grace harder than
those of rigour. If through faith and repentance we
perish not, yet grace still remains the less, by requiring
that which rigour did not require, or at least not so
strictly. Thus much therefore to Paraeus; that if the
gospel require perfecter obedience than the law as a
duty, it exalts the law and debases itself, which is
dishonourable to the work of our redemption. Sec-
ing therefore that all the causes of any allowance, that
the Jews might have, remain as well to the Christians;
this is a certain rule, that so long as the causes remain,
the allowance ought. And having thus at length in-
quired the truth concerning law and dispense, their
ends, their uses, their limits, and in what manner both
Jew and Christian stand liable to the one or capable of
the other; we may safely conclude, that to affirm the
giving of any law or law-like dispense to sin for hard-
ness of heart, is a doctrine of that extravagance from
the sage principles of piety, that whoso considers tho-
roughly cannot but admire how this hath been digest-
ed all this while.
CIIAP. VIII.
The true sense how Moses suffered divorce for hard-
mess of heart.
What may we do then to salve this seeming incon-
sistence 2 I must not dissemble, that I am confident it
can be done no other way than this :
Moses, Deut. xxiv. 1, established a grave and pru-
dent law, full of moral equity, full of due consideration
towards nature, that cannot be resisted, a law consent-
ing with the wisest men and civilest nations; that
when a man hath married a wife, if it come to pass,
that he cannot love her by reasqn of some displeasing
natural quality or unfitness in her, let him write her a
bill of divorce. The intent of which law undoubtedly
was this, that if any good and peaceable man should
discover some helpless disagreement or dislike either of
mind or body, whereby he could not cheerfully perform
the duty of a husband without the perpetual dissem-
bling of offence and disturbance to his spirit; rather
than to live uncomfortably and unhappily both to him-
self and to his wife; rather than to continue undertak-
ing a duty, which he could not possibly discharge, he
might dismiss her whom he could not tolerably and so
not conscionably retain. And this law the Spirit of
God by the mouth of Solomon, Prov. xxx. 21, 23, tes-
tifies to be a good and a necessary law, by granting it
that “a hated woman,” (for so the Hebrew word signi-
fies, rather than “odious,” though it come all to one,)
that “a hated woman, when she is married, is a thing
that the earth cannot bear.” What follows then, but
that the charitable law must remedy what nature can-
not undergo 2 Now that many licentious and hard-
hearted men took hold of this law to cloke their bad
purposes, is nothing strange to believe. And these
were they, not for whom Moses made the law, (God
forbid!) but whose hardness of heart taking ill-ad-
vantage by this law he held it better to suffer as by
accident, where it could not be detected, rather than
good men should lose their just and lawful privilege of
remedy; Christ therefore having to answer these
tempting Pharisces, according as his custom was, not
meaning to inform their proud ignorance what Moses
did in the true intent of the law, which they had ill
cited, suppressing the true cause for which Moses gave
it, and extending it to every slight matter, tells them
their own, what Moses was forced to suffer by their
abuse of his law. Which is yet more plain, if we
mark that our Saviour, in Matt. v. cites not the law of
Moses, but the pharisaical tradition falsely grounded
upon that law. And in those other places, chap. xix
and Mark x. the Pharisees cite the law, but conceal the
wise and humane reason there expressed; which our
Saviour corrects not in them, whose pride deserved not
his instruction, only returns them what is proper to
them: “Moses for the hardness of your heart suffered
you,” that is, such as you, “to put away your wives;
and to you he wrote this precept for that cause,” which
(“to you’’) must be read with an impression, and un-
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THE DOCTRINE AND DISCIPLINE OF DIVORCE.
derstood limitedly of such as covered ill purposes under
that law; for it was seasonable, that they should hear
their own unbounded licence rebuked, but not season-
able for them to hear a good man's requisite liberty
explained. But us he hath taught better, if we have
ears to hear. He himself acknowledged it to be a law,
Mark x. and being a law of God, it must have an un-
doubted “end of charity, which may be used with a
pure heart, a good conscience, and faith unfeigned,” as
was heard: it cannot allow sin, but is purposely to resist
sin, as by the same chapter to Timothy appears. There
we learn also, “that the law is good, if a man use it
law fully.” Out of doubt then there must be a certain
good in this law, which Moses willingly allowed,
and there might be an unlawful use made thereof by
hypocrites; and that was it which was unwillingly
suffered, foreseeing it in general, but not able to dis-
cern it in particulars. Christ therefore mentions not
here what Moses and the law intended; for good men
might know that by many other rules; and the scorn-
ful Pharisees were not fit to be told, until they could
employ that knowledge they had less abusively. Only
he acquaints them with what Moses by them was put
to suffer.
CHAP. IX.
The Words of the institution how to be understood ;
and of our Saviour's Answer to his Disciples.
AND to entertain a little their overweening arrogance
as best befitted, and to amaze them yet further, because
they thought it no hard matter to fulfil the law, he
draws them up to that unseparable institution, which
God ordained in the beginning before the fall, when
man and woman were both perfect, and could have no
cause to separate: just as in the same chapter he stands
not to contend with the arrogant young man, who
boasted his observance of the whole law, whether he
had indeed kept it or not, but screws him up higher to
a task of that perfection, which no man is bound to
imitate. And in like manner, that pattern of the first
institution he set before the opinionative Pharisees, to
dazzle them, and not to bind us. For this is a solid
rule, that every command, given with a reason, binds
our obedience no otherwise than that reason holds.
Of this sort was that command in Eden; “therefore
shall a man cleave to his wife, and they shall be one
flesh ;” which we see is no absolute command, but
with an inference “therefore:” the reason then must be
first considered, that our obedience be not misobedience.
The first is, for it is not single, because the wife is to
the husband, “flesh of his flesh,” as in the verse going
before. But this reason cannot be sufficient of itself:
for why then should he for his wife leave his father
and mother, with whom he is far more “flesh of flesh,
and bone of bone,” as being made of their substance P
and besides, it can be b it a sorry and ignoble society
of life, whose inseparable injunction depends merely
upon flesh and bones. Therefore we must look higher,
since Christ himself recalls us to the beginning, and
we shall find, that the primitive reason of never divorc-
ing was that sacred and not vain promise of God to
remedy man's loneliness by “making him a meet help
for him,” though not now in perfection, as at first;
yet still in proportion as things now are. And this is
repeated, verse 20, when all other creatures were fitly
associated and brought to Adam, as if the Divine Power
had been in some care and deep thought, because “there
was not yet found any help meet for man.” And can
we so slightly depress the all-wise purpose of a delibe-
rating God, as if his consultation had produced no
other good for man, but to join him with an accidental
companion of propagation, which his sudden word had
already made for every beast? may a far less good to man
it will be found, if she must at all adventures be fast-
ened upon him individually. And therefore even plain
sense and equity, and, which is above them both, the
all-interpreting voice of charity herself cries aloud,
that this primitive reason, this consulted promise of
God, “to make a meet help,” is the only cause that
gives authority to this command of not divorcing, to
be a command. And it might be further added, that
if the true definition of a wife were asked at good
earnest, this clause of being “a meet help” would shew
itself so necessary and so essential, in that demonstra-
tive argument, that it might be logically concluded:
therefore she who naturally and perpetually is no “meet
help,” can be no wife; which clearly takes away the
difficulty of dismissing such a one. If this be not
thought enough, I answer yet further, that marriage,
unless it mean a fit and tolerable marriage, is not inse-
parable neither by nature nor institution. Not by na-
ture, for then Mosaic divorces had been against nature,
if separable and inseparable be contraries, as who doubts
they be and what is against mature is against law,
if soundest philosophy abuse us not: by this reckoning
Moses should be most unmosaic, that is, most illegal,
not to say most unnatural. Nor is it inseparable by
the first institution ; for then no second institution of
the same law for so many causes could dissolve it; it
being most unworthy a human, (as Plato's judgment
is in the fourth book of his laws,) much more a divine
lawgiver, to write two several decrees upon the same
thing. But what would Plato have deemed, if one of
these were good, and the other evil to be done? Lastly,
suppose it to be inseparable by institution, yet in com-
petition with higher things, as religion and charity in
mainest matters, and when the chief end is frustrate
for which it was ordained, as hath been shewn ; if still
it must remain inseparable, it holds a strange and law-
less propriety from all other works of God under heaven.
From these many considerations, we may safely gather,
that so much of the first institution as our Saviour men-
tions, for he mentions not all, was but to quell and put
to nonplus the tempting Pharisees, and to lay open
their ignorance and shallow understanding of the Scrip-
tures. For, saith he, “ have ye not read that he which
made them at the beginning, made them male and fe-
male, and said, for this cause shall a man cleave to his
THE DOCTRINE AND DISCIPLINE OF DIVORCE.
145
wiſe P” which these blind usurpers of Moses's chair
could not gainsay: as if this single respect of male
and female were sufficient against a thousand inconve-
niences and mischiefs, to clog a rational creature to his
endless sorrow unrelinquishably, under the guileful
superscription of his intended solace and comfort. What
if they had thus answered 2 Master, if thou mean to
make wedlock as inseparable as it was from the begin-
ning, let it be made also a fit society, as God meant it,
which we shall soon understand it ought to be, if thou
recite the whole reason of the law. Doubtless our
Saviour had applauded their just answer. For then
they had expounded his command of Paradise, even
as Moses himself expounds it by the laws of divorce,
that is, with due and wise regard to the premises and
reasons of the first command ; according to which,
without unclean and temporizing permissions, he in-
structs us in this imperfect state what we may lawfully
do about divorce.
But if it be thought, that the disciples, offended at
the rigour of Christ's answer, could yet obtain no miti-
gation of the former sentence pronounced to the Pha-
risees, it may be fully answered, that our Saviour con-
tinues the same reply to his disciples, as men leavened
with the same customary licence which the Pharisees
maintained, and displeased at the removing of a tra-
ditional abuse, whereto they had so long not unwill-
ingly been used : it was no time then to contend with
their slow and prejudicial belief, in a thing wherein an
ordinary measure of light in Scripture, with some at-
tention, might afterwards inform them well enough.
And yet ere Christ had finished this argument, they
might have picked out of his own concluding words an
answer more to their minds, and in effect the same with
that which hath been all this while intreating audience:
“All men,” saith he, “cannot receive this saying, save
they to whom it is given; he that is able to receive it,
let him receive it.” What saying is this which is left
to a man's choice to receive, or not receive P what but
the married life P Was our Saviour so mild and so fa-
vourable to the weakness of a single man, and is he
turned on the sudden so rigorous and inexorable, to
the distresses and extremities of an ill-wedded man P
Did he so graciously give leave to change the better
single life for the worse married life? Did he open so
to us this hazardous and accidental door of marriage,
to shut upon us like the gate of death, without retract-
ing or returning, without permitting to change the
worst, most insupportable, most unchristian mischance
of marriage, for all the mischiefs and sorrows that can
ensue, being an ordinance which was especially given
as a cordial and exhilarating cup of solace, the better
to bear our other crosses and afflictions f Questionless
this was a hard-heartedness of divorcing, worse than
that in the Jews, which they say extorted the allow-
ance from Moses, and is utterly dissonant from all the
doctrine of our Saviour. After these considerations
therefore, to take a law out of Paradise given in time
of original perfection, and to take it barely without
those just and equal inferences and reasons which
mainly establish it, nor so much as admitting those
needful and safe allowances, wherewith Moses himself
interprets it to the fallen condition of man; argues no-
thing in us but rashness and contempt of those means
that God left us in his pure and chaste law, without
which it will not be possible for us to perform the strict
imposition of this command : or if we strive beyond
our strength, we shall strive to obey it otherwise than
God commands it. And lamented experience daily
teaches the bitter and vain fruits of this our presump-
tion, forcing men in a thing wherein we are not able
to judge either of their strength or their sufferance.
Whom neither one voice nor other by natural addic-
tion, but only marriage ruins, which doubtless is not
the fault of that ordinance, for God gave it as a bless-
ing, nor always of man's mischoosing, it being an er-
rour above wisdom to prevent, as examples of wisest
men so mistaken manifest: it is the fault therefore of a
perverse opinion, that will have it continued in despite
of nature and reason, when indeed it was never so
truly joined. All those expositors upon the fifth Mat-
thew confess the law of Moses to be the law of the
Lord, wherein no addition or diminution hath place;
yet coming to the point of divorce, as if they feared
not to be called least in the kingdom of heaven, any
slight evasion will content them, to reconcile those
contradictions, which they make between Christ and
Moses, between Christ and Christ.
CHAP. X.
The vain shift of those who make the law of divorce to
be only the premises of a succeeding law.
SoME will have it no law, but the granted premises
of another law following, contrary to the words of
Christ, Mark x. 5, and all other translations of gravest
authority, who render it in form of a law, agreeably to
Mal. ii. 16, as it is most anciently and modernly ex-
pounded. Besides, the bill of divorce, and the par-
ticular occasion therein mentioned, declares it to be
orderly and legal. And what avails this to make the
matter more righteous, if such an adulterous condition
shall be mentioned to build a law upon without either
punishment or so much as forbidding 2 They pretend
it is implicitly reproved in these words, Deut. xxiv. 4,
“aſter she is defiled; ” but who sees not that this defile-
ment is only in respect of returning to her former hus-
band after an intermixed marriage 2 else why was not
the defiling condition first forbidden, which would have
saved the labour of this after-law Nor is it seemly or
piously attributed to the justice of God and his known
hatred of sin, that such a heinous fault as this through
all the law should be only wiped with an implicit
and oblique touch, (which yet is falsely supposed,)
and that his peculiar people should be let wallow in
adulterous marriages almost two thousand years, for
want of a direct law to prohibit them : it is rather to
be confidently assumed, that this was granted to appa-
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THE DOCTRINE AND DISCIPLINE OF DIVORCE.
rent necessities, as being of unquestionable right and
reason in the law of nature, in that it still passes with-
out inhibition, even when the greatest cause is given
to us to expect it should be directly forbidden.
CIHAP. XI.
The other shift of saying divorce was permitted by law,
but not approved. More of the institution.
But it was not approved. So much the worse that
it was allowed ; as if sin had over-mastered the word
of God, to conform her steady and straight rule to sin’s
crookedness, which is impossible. Besides, what need-
ed a positive grant of that which was not approved P. It
restrained no liberty to him that could but use a little
fraud; it had been better silenced, unless it were ap-
proved in some case or other. But still it was not ap-
proved. Miserable excusers! he who doth evil, that
good may come thereby, approves not what he doth ;
and yet the grand rule forbids him, and counts his
damnation just if he do it. The sorceress Medea did
not approve her own evil doings, yet looked not to be
excused for that: and it is the constant opinion of Plato
in Protagoras, and other of his dialogues, agreeing
with that proverbial sentence among the Greeks, that
“no man is wicked willingly.” Which also the Peri-
patetics do rather distinguish than deny. What great
thank then if any man, reputed wise and constant, will
neither do, nor permit others under his charge to do,
that which he approves not, especially in matter of sinº
but for a judge, but for a magistrate the shepherd of
his people, to surrender up his approbation against law,
and his own judgment, to the obstimacy of his herd;
what more unjudgelike, unmagistratelike, and in war
more uncommanderlike º Twice in a short time it was
the undoing of the Roman state, first when Pompey,
next when Marcus Brutus, had not magnanimity
enough but to make so poor a resignation of what they
approved, to what the boisterous tribunes and soldiers
bawled for. Twice it was the saving of two of the
greatest commonwealths in the world, of Athens by
Themistocles at the seafight of Salamis, of Rome by
Fabius Maximus in the Punic war; for that these two
matchless generals had the fortitude at home against
the rashness and the clamours of their own captains
and confederates, to withstand the doing or permitting
of what they could not approve in their duty of their
great command. Thus far of civil prudence. But
when we speak of sin, let us look again upon the old
reverend Eli; who in his heavy punishment found no
difference between the doing and permitting of what
he did not approve. If hardness of heart in the people
may be an excuse, why then is Pilate branded through
all memory P. He approved not what he did, he openly
protested, he washed his hands, and laboured not a lit-
tle ere he would yield to the hard hearts of a whole
people, both princes and plebians, importuning and
tumulting even to the fear of a revolt. Yet is there
any will undertake his cause 2 If therefore Pilate for
suffering but one act of cruelty against law, though
with much unwillingness testified, at the violent de-
mand of a whole nation, shall stand so black upon re-
cord to all posterity; alas for Moses' what shall we
say for him, while we are taught to believe he suffered
not one act only both of cruelty and uncleanliness in
one divorce, but made it a plain and lasting law against
law, whereby ten thousand acts accounted both cruel
and unclean might be daily committed, and this with-
out the least suit or petition of the people, that we can
read of? t
And can we conceive without vile thoughts, that the
majesty and holiness of God could endure so many
ages to gratify a stubborn people in the practice of a
foul polluting sin P and could he expect they should
abstain, he not signifying his mind in a plain command,
at such time especially when he was framing their laws
and them to all possible perfection ? But they were to
look back to the first institution; nay rather why was
not that individual institution brought out of Paradise,
as was that of the sabbath, and repeated in the body
of the law, that men might have understood it to be a
command 2 For that any sentence that bears the re-
semblance of a precept, set there so out of place in an-
other world, at such a distance from the whole law,
and not once mentioned there, should be an obliging
command to us, is very disputable; and perhaps it
might be denied to be a command without further dis-
pute: however, it commands not absolutely, as hath
been cleared, but only with reference to that precedent
promise of God, which is the very ground of his insti-
tution: if that appear not in some tolerable sort, how
can we affirm such a matrimony to be the same which
God instituted 8 in such an accident it will best be-
hoove our soberness to follow rather what moral Sinai
prescribes equal to our strength, than fondly to think
within our strength all that lost Paradise relates.
CHAP. XII.
The third shift of them who esteem it a mere judicial
law. Proved again to be a law of moral equity.
ANot HER while it shall suffice them, that it was not
a moral but a judicial law, and so was abrogated : may
rather not abrogated because judicial ; which law the
ministry of Christ came not to deal with. And who
put it in man's power to exempt, where Christ speaks
in general of not abrogating “the least jot or tittle,”
and in special not that of divorce, because it follows
among those laws which he promised expressly not to
abrogate, but to vindicate from abusive traditions °
which is most evidently to be seen in the 16th of Luke,
where this caution of not abrogating is inserted imme-
diately, and not otherwise than purposely, when no
other point of the law is touched but that of divorce.
THE DOCTRINE AND DISCIPLINE OF DIVORCE.
I 47
And if we mark the 31st verse of Matt. v. he there cites
not the law of Moses, but the licentious gloss which
traduced the law ; that therefore which he cited, that
he abrogated, and not only abrogated, but disallowed
and flatly condemncd ; which could not be the law of
Moses, for that had been foully to the rebuke of his
great servant. To abrogate a law made with God's
allowance, had been to tell us only that such a law
was now to cease : but to refute it with an ignominious
note of civilizing adultery, casts the reproof, which
was meant only to the Pharisees, even upon him that
made the law. But yet if that be judicial, which be-
longs to a civil court, this law is less judicial than nine
of the ten commandments: for antiquaries affirm, that
divorces proceeded among the Jews without knowledge
of the magistrate, only with hands and seals under the
testimony of some rabbies to be then present. Per-
kins, in a “Treatise of Conscience,” grants, that what
in the judicial law is of common equity binds also the
Christian ; and how to judge of this, prescribes two
ways: if wise nations have enacted the like decree ;
or if it maintain the good of a family, church, or com-
monwealth. This therefore is a pure moral oeconomi-
cal law, too hastily imputed of tolerating sin; being
rather so clear in nature and reason, that it was left to
a man's own arbitrement to be determined between
God and his own conscience ; not only among the
Jews, but in every wise nation : the restraint whereof,
who is not too thick-sighted, may see how hurtful and
distractive it is to the house, the church, and common-
wealth. And that power which Christ never took
from the master of a family, but rectified only to a right
and wary use at home; that power the undiscerning
canonist hath improperly usurped in his court-leet,
and bescribbled with a thousand trifling impertinences,
which yet have filled the life of man with serious
trouble and calamity. Yet grant it were of old a ju-
dicial law, it need not be the less moral for that, being
conversant as it is about virtue or vice. And our Sa-
viour disputes not here the judicature, for that was not
his office, but the morality of divorce, whether it be
adultery or no ; if therefore he touch the law of Moses
at all, he touches the moral part thereof, which is ab-
surd to imagine, that the covenant of grace should
reform the exact and perfect law of works, eternal and
immutable; or if he touch not the law at all, then is
not the allowance thereof disallowed to us.
CHAP. XIII.
The ridiculous opinion, that divorce was permitted
jrom the custom in Egypt. That Moses gave not
this law unwillingly. Perkins confesses this law
was not abrogated.
OTHERs are so ridiculous as to allege, that this li-
cence of divorcing was given them because they were
so accustomed in Egypt. As if an ill custom were to
L
be kept to all posterity; for the dispensation is both
universal and of time unlimited, and so indeed no dis-
pensation at all : for the overdated dispensation of a
thing unlawful, serves for nothing but to increase hard-
ness of heart, and makes men but wax more incorrigi-
ble; which were a great reproach to be said of any
law or allowance that God should give us. In these
opinions it would be more religion to advise well, lest
we make ourselves juster than God, by censuring
rashly that for sin, which his unspotted law without
rebuke allows, and his people without being conscious
of displeasing him have used : and if we can think so
of Moses, as that the Jewish ol stimacy could compel
him to write such impure permissions against the word
of God and his own judgment; doubtless it was his
part to have protested publicly what straits he was
driven to, and to have declared his conscience, when
he gave any law against his mind: for the law is the
touchstone of sin and of conscience, and must not be
intermixed with corrupt indulgences; for then it loses
the greatest praise it has of being certain, and infalli-
ble, not leading into errour as the Jews were led by
this connivance of Moses, if it were a connivance.
But still they fly back to the primitive institution, and
would have us re-enter Paradise against the sword that
guards it. Whom I again thus reply to, that the place
in Genesis contains the description of a fit and perfect
marriage, with an interdict of ever divorcing such a
union : but where nature is discovered to have never
joined indeed, but vehemently seeks to part, it cannot
be there conceived that God forbids it; nay, he com-
mands it both in the law and in the prophet Malachi,
which is to be our rule. And Perkins upon this chap-
ter of Matthew deals plainly, that our Saviour here
conſutes not Moses's law, but the false glosses that de-
praved the law; which being true, Perkins must needs
grant, that something then is left to that law which
Christ found no fault with ; and what can that lie but
the conscionable use of such liberty, as the plain words
import? so that by his own inference, Christ did not
absolutely intend to restrain all divorces to the only
cause of adultery. This therefore is the true scope of
our Saviour's will, that he who looks upon the law
concerning divorce, should also look back upon the
institution, that he may endeavour what is perfectest:
and he that looks upon the institution shall not refuse
as sinful and unlawful those allowances, which God
affords him in his following law, lest he make himself
purer than his Maker, and presuming above strength,
slip into temptations irrecoverably. For this is won-
derful, that in all those decrees concerning marriage,
God should never once mention the prime institution
to dissuade them from divorcing, and that he should
forbid smaller sins as opposite to the hardness of their
hearts, and let this adulterous matter of divorce pass
ever unreproved.
This is also to be marvelled, that seeing Christ did
not condemn whatever it was that Moses suffered, and
that thereupon the christian magistrate permits usury
and open stews, and here with us adultery to be so
slightly punished, which was punished by death to
148
THE DOCTRINE AND DISCIPLINE OF DIVORCE.
these hard-hearted Jews; why we should strain thus
at the matter of divorce, which may stand so much
with charity to permit, and make no scruple to allow
usury esteemed to be so much against charity P But
this it is to embroil ourselves against the righteous and
all-wise judgments and statutes of God; which are
not variable and contrarious as we would make them,
one while permitting, and another while forbidding, but
are most constant and most harmonious each to other.
For how can the uncorrupt and majestic law of God,
bearing in her hand the wages of life and death, har-
bour such a repugnance within herself, as to require an
unexempted and impartial obedience to all her decrees,
either from us or from our Mediator, and yet debase
herself to faulter so many ages with circumcised adul-
teries by unclean and slubbering permissions?
CHAP. XIV.
That Beza's opinion of regulating sin by apostolic law
cannot be found.
YET Beza's opinion is, that a politic law (but what
politic law I know not, unless one of Machiavel's)
may regulate sin; may bear indeed, I grant, with im-
perfection for a time, as those canons of the apostles
did in ceremonial things: but as for sin, the essence of
it cannot consist with rule; and if the law fail to regu-
late sin, and not to take it utterly away, it necessarily
confirms and establishes sin. To make a regularity of
sin by law, either the law must straighten sin into no
sin, or sin must crook the law into no law. The judi-
cial law can serve to no other end than to be the pro-
tector and champion of religion and honest civility, as
is set down plainly, Rom. xiii. and is but the arm of
moral law, which can no more be separate from justice,
than justice from virtue. Their office also, in a dif-
ferent manner, steers the same course; the one teaches
what is good by precept, the other unteaches what is
bad by punishment. But if we give way to politic
dispensations of lewd uncleanness, the first good con-
sequence of such a relax will be the justifying of papal
stews, joined with a toleration of epidemic whoredom.
Justice must revolt from the end of her authority, and
become the patron of that whereof she was created the
punisher. The example of usury, which is commonly
alleged, makes against the allegation which it brings, as
I touched before. Besides that usury, so much as is per-
mitted by the magistrate, and demanded with common
equity, is neither against the word of God, nor the rule
of charity; as hath been often discussed by men of
eminent learning and judgment. There must be there-
fore some other example found out to shew us wherein
civil policy may with warrant from God settle wicked-
ness by law, and make that lawful which is lawless.
Although I doubt not but, upon deeper consideration,
that which is true in physic will be found as true in
policy, that as of bad pulses those that beat most in
order, are much worse than those that keep the most
inordinate circuit; so of popular vices those that may
be committed legally will be more pernicious, than
those that are left to their own course at peril, not under
a stinted privilege to sin orderly and regularly, which
is an implicit contradiction, but under due and fearless
execution of punishment.
The political law, since it cannot regulate vice, is to
restrain it by using all means to root it out. But if it
suffer the weed to grow up to any pleasurable or con-
tented height upon what pretext soever, it fastens the
root, it prunes and dresses vice, as if it were a good
plant. Let no man doubt therefore to affirm, that it is
not so hurtful or dishonourable to a commonwealth,
nor so much to the hardening of hearts, when those
worse faults pretended to be feared are committed, by
who so dares under strict and executed penalty, as
when those less faults tolerated for fear of greater
harden their faces, not their hearts only, under the pro-
tection of public authority. For what less indignity
were this, than as if justice herself, the queen of virtues,
(descending from her sceptred royalty,) instead of con-
quering, should compound and treat with sin, her eternal
adversary and rebel, upon ignoble terms ” or as if the
judicial law were like that untrusty steward in the
gospel, and instead of calling in the debts of his moral
master, should give out subtile and sly acquittances to
keep himself from begging? or let us person him like
some wretched itinerary judge, who to gratify his de-
linquents before him, would let them basely break his
head, lest they should pull him from the bench, and
throw him over the bar. Unless we had rather think
both moral and judicial, full of malice and deadly
purpose, conspired to let the debtor Israelite, the seed
of Abraham, run on upon a bankrupt score, flattered
with insufficient and ensnaring discharges, that so he
might be haled to a more cruel forfeit for all the in-
dulgent arrears which those judicial acquittances had
engaged him in. No, no, this cannot be, that the law
whose integrity and faithfulness is next to God, should
be either the shameless broker of our impunities, or the
intended instrument of our destruction. The method
of holy correction, such as became the commonwealth
of Israel, is not to bribe sin with sin, to capitulate and
hire out one crime with another; but with more noble
and graceſul severity than Popilius the Roman legate
used with Antiochus, to limit and level out the direct
way from vice to virtue, with straightest and exactest
lines on either side, not winding or indenting so much
as to the right hand of fair pretences. Violence indeed
and insurrection may force the law to suffer what it
cannot mend; but to write a decree in allowance of sin,
as soon can the hand of justice rot off. Let this be
ever concluded as a truth that will outlive the faith of
those that seek to bear it down. *
THE DOCTRINE AND DISCIPLINE OF DIVORCE.
149
CIHAIP. XV.
That divorce was not given for wives only, as Beza
and Paracus write. More of the institution.
LASTLY, if divorce were granted, as Beza and others
say, not for men, but to release afflicted wives; cer-
tainly, it is not only a dispensation, but a most merciful
law ; and why it should not yet be in force, being
wholly as needful, I know not what can be in cause
but senseless cruelty. But yet to say, divorce was
granted for relief of wives rather than of husbands, is
but weakly conjectured, and is manifestly the extreme
shift of a huddled exposition. Whenas it could not
be found how hardness of heart should be lessencil by
liberty of divorce, a fancy was devised to hide the flaw,
by commenting that divorce was permitted only for the
help of wives. Palpably uxorious ! who can be ignor-
ant, that woman was created for man, and not man for
woman, and that a husband may be injured as insuffer-
ably in marriage as a wife P What an injury is it after
wedlock not to be beloved ! what to be slighted ! what
to be contended with in point of house-rule who shall
be the head; not for any parity of wisdom, for that
were something reasonable, but out of a female pride
“I suffer not,” saith St. Paul, “the woman to usurp au-
thority over the man.” If the apostle could not suffer
it, into what mould is he mortified that can P Solomon
saith, “that a bad wife is to her husband as rottenness
to his bones, a continual dropping. Better dwell in
the corner of a house-top, or in the wilderness,” than
with such a one. “Whoso hideth her, hideth the wind,
and one of the four mischiefs which the earth cannot
bear.” If the Spirit of God wrote such aggravations as
these, and (as may be guessed by these similitudes)
counsels the man rather to divorce than to live with
such a colleague ; and yet on the other side expresses
nothing of the wife's suffering with a bad husband: is
it not most likely that God in his law had more pity
towards man thus wedlocked, than towards the woman
that was created for another P The same Spirit relates
to us the course, which the Medes and Persians took
by occasion of Vashti, whose mere denial to come at
her husband's sending, lost her the being queen any
longer, and set up a wholesome law, “that every man
should bear rule in his own house.” And the divine
relater shews us not the least sign of disliking what
was done; how should he, if Moses long before was
nothing less mindful of the honour and pre-eminence
due to man º' So that to say divorce was granted for
woman rather than man, was but fondly invented.
Esteeming therefore to have asserted thus an injured
law of Moses, from the unwarranted and guilty name
of a dispensation, to be again a most equal and requisite
law, we have the word of Christ himself, that he came
not to alter the least tittle of it; and signifies no small
displeasure against him that shall teach to do so. On
which relying, I shall not unuch waver to affirm, that
those words, which are made to intimate as if they for-
bad all divorce, but for adultery, (though Moses have
constituted otherwise,) those words taken circumscriptly,
without regard to any precedent law of Moscs, or at-
testation of Christ himself, or without care to preserve
those his fundamental and superior laws of nature and
charity, to which all other ordinances give up their
seal, are as much against plain equity and the increy
of religion, as those words of “Take, eat, this is my
body,” elementally understood, are against nature and
SC11S62.
And surely the restoring of this degraded law hath
well recompensed the diligence was used by enlight-
ening us further to find out wherefore Christ took off
the Pharisees from alleging the law, and referred them
to the first institution; not condemning, altering, or
abolishing this precept of divorce, which is plainly
moral, for that were against his truth, his promise, and
his prophetic office; but knowing how ſallaciously they
had cited and concealed the particular and natural
reason of the law, that they might justify any froward
reason of their own, he lets go that sophistry uncon-
vinced; for that had been to teach them else, which his
purpose was not. And since they had taken a liberty
which the law gave not, he amuses and repels their
tempting pride with a perſection of Paradise, which
the law required not; not thereby to oblige our per-
formance to that whereto the law never enjoined the
fallen estate of man : for if the first institution must
make wedlock, whatever happen, inseparable to us, it
must make it also as perfect, as meetly helpful, and as
comfortable as God promised it should be, at least in
some degree; otherwise it is not equal or proportion-
able to the strength of man, that he should be reduced
into such indissoluble bonds to his assured misery, if
all the other conditions of that covenant be manifestly
altered.
CHAP. XVI.
How to be understood, that they must be one flesh; and
how that those whom God hath joined, man should
not sunder.
Next he saith, “they must be one flesh ;” which
when all conjecturing is done, will be found to import
no more but to make legitimate and good the carnal
act, which else might seem to have something of pol-
lution in it; and infers thus much over, that the fit
union of their souls be such as may even incorporate
them to love and amity : but that can never be where
no correspondence is of the mind; nay, instead of be-
ing one flesh, they will be rather two carcasses chained
unnaturally together; or, as it may happen, a living
soul bound to a dead corpse; a punishment too like
that inflicted by the tyrant Mezentius, so little worthy
to be received as that remedy of loneliness, which God
meant us. Since we know it is not the joining of an-
other body will remove loneliness, but the uniting of
another compliable mind; and that it is no blessing
I50
but a torment, nay a base and brutish condition to be
one flesh, unless where mature can in some measure fix
a unity of disposition. The meaning therefore of these
words, “ For this cause shall a man leave his father
and his mother, and shall cleave to his wife,” was first
to shew us the dear affection which maturally grows in
every not unnatural marriage, even to the leaving of
parents, or other familiarity whatsoever. Next, it
justifies a man in so doing, that nothing is done undu-
tifully to father or mother.' But he that should be here
sternly commanded to cleave to his error, a disposition
which to his he finds will never cement, a quotidian of
sorrow and discontent in his house; let us be excused
to pause a little, and bethink us every way round ere
we lay such a flat solecism upon the gracious, and
certainly not inexorable, not ruthless and flinty ordi-
nance of marriage. For if the meaning of these words
must be thus blocked up within their own letters from
all cquity and fair deduction, they will serve then well
indeed their turn, who affirm divorce to have been
granted only for wives; whenas we sce no word of
this text binds women, but men only, what it binds.
No marvel then if Salomith (sister to Herod) sent a
writ of case to Costobarus her husband, which (as Jo-
sephus there attests) was lawful only to men. No
marvel though Placidia, the sister of Honorius, threat-
ened the like to earl Constantius for a trivial cause, as
Photius relates from Olympiodorus. No marvel any
thing, if letters must be turned into palisadoes, to stake
out all requisite sense from entering to their due en-
largement.
Lastly, Christ himself tells who should not be put
asunder, namely, those whom God hath joined. A
plain solution of this great controversy, if men would
but use their cycs, for when is it that God may be said
to join P when the partics and their friends consent 2
No surely, for that may concur to lewdest ends. Or is
it when church rites are finished P. Neither; for the effi-
cacy of those depends upon the presupposed fitness of
either party. Perhaps after carnal knowledge: least
of all; for that may join persons whom neither law nor
nature dares join. It is left, that only then when the
minds are fitly disposed and enabled to maintain a
checrſul conversation, to the solace and love of each
other, according as God intended and promised in the
very first foundation of matrimony, “I will make
him a help-meet for him;” for surely what God in-
tended and promised, that only can be thought to be his
joining, and not the contrary. So likewise the apostle
witnesseth, 1 Cor. vii. 15, that in marriage “God hath
called us to peace.” And doubtless in what respect he
hath called us to marriage, in that also he hath joined
us. The rest, whom either disproportion or deadness
of spirit, or something distasteful and averse in the im-
mutable bent of nature renders conjugal, error may
have joined, but God never joined against the meaning
of his own ordinance. And if he joined them not, then
is there no power above their own consent to hinder
them from unjoining, when they cannot reap the so-
berest ends of being together in any tolerable sort.
Neither can it be said properly that such twain were
THE DOCTRINE AND DISCIPLINE OF DIWORCE.
ever divorced, but only parted from each other, as two
persons unconjunctive are unmarriable together. But
iſ, whom God hath made a fit help, frowardness or
private injuries hath made unfit, that being the secret
of marriage, God can better judge than man, neither
is man indeed fit or able to decide this matter: how-
ever it be, undoubtedly a peaceful divorce is a less
evil, and less in scandal than hateful, hard-hearted, and
destructive continuance of marriage in the judgment of
Moses and of Christ, that justifies him in choosing the
less evil; which if it were an honest and civil pru-
dence in the law, what is there in the gospel forbid.
ding such a kind of legal wisdom, though we should
admit the common expositors?
CHAP. XVII.
The sentence of Christ concerning divorce how to be
expounded. What Grotius hath observed. Other
additions.
HAVING thus unfolded those ambiguous reasons,
wherewith Christ (as his wout was) gave to the Phari-
sees that came to sound him, such an answer as they de-
served, it will not be uneasy to explain the sentence it-
self that now follows; “Whosoever shall put away his
wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry an-
other, committeth adultery.” First therefore I will set
down what is observed by Grotius upon this point, a
man of general learning. Next, I produce what mine
own thoughts gave me before I had seen his annotations.
Origen, saith he, notes that Christ named adultery
rather as one example of other like cases, than as one
only exception; and that is frequent not only in human
but in divine laws, to express one kind of fact, whereby
other causes of like nature may have the like plea, as
Exod. xxi. 18, 19, 20, 26; Deut. xix. 5. And from the
maxims of civil law he shews, that even in sharpest
penal laws the same reason hath the same right; and
in gentler laws, that from like causes to like the law
interprets rightly. But it may be objected, saith he,
that nothing destroys the end of wedlock so much as
adultcry. To which he answers, that marriage was not
ordained only for copulation, but for mutual help and
comfort of life: and if we mark diligently the nature
of our Saviour's commands, we shall find that both
their beginning and their cnd consists in charity;
whose will is, that we should so be good to others, as
that we be not cruel to ourselves: and hence it appears
why Mark, and Luke, and St. Paul to the Corinthians,
mentioning this precept of Christ, add no exception,
because exceptions that arise from natural equity are
included silently under general terms: it would be
considered therefore, whether the same equity may not
have place in other cases less frequent. Thus far bo.
From hence is what I add: First, that this saying of
Christ, as it is usually expounded, can be no law at all,
that a man for no cause should scparate but for adul-
THE DOCTRINE AND DISCIPLINE OF DIVORCE.
I 5.1
tery, except it be a supernatural law, not binding us as
we now are ; had it been the law of nature, either the
Jews, or some other wise and civil nation, would have
pressed it: or let it be so, yet that law, Dcut. xxiv. 1,
whereby a man hath leave to part, whenas for just and
natural cause discovered he cannot live, is a law an-
cienter and deeper engraven in blameless nature than
the other: therefore the inspired lawgiver Moses took
care, that this should be specified and allowed; the
other he let vanish in silence, not once repeated in the
volume of his law, even as the reason of it vanished
with Paradise. Secondly, this can be no new com-
mand, for the gospel enjoins no new morality, save
only the infinite enlargemei, t of charity, which in this
respect is called the new commandment by St. John,
as being the accomplishment of every command.
Thirdly, it is no command of perfection further than it
partakes of charity, which is “the bond of perfection.”
Those commands therefore, which compel us to self-
cruelty above our strength, so hardly will help forward
to perſection, that they hinder and set backward in all
the common rudiments of Christianity, as was proved.
It being thus clear, that the words of Christ can be no
kind of command as they are vulgarly taken, we shall
now see in what sense they may be a command, and
that an excellent one, the same with that of Moses,
and no other. Moses had granted, that only for a na-
tural annoyance, defect, or dislike, whether in body or
mind, (for so the Hebrew word plainly notes,) which a
man could not force himself to live with, he might
give a bill of divorce, thereby forbidding any other
cause, wherein amendment or reconciliation might
have place. This law the Pharisees depraving extended
to any slight contentious cause whatsoever. Christ
therefore seeing where they halted, urges the negative
part of the law, which is necessarily understood, (for
the determinate permission of Moses binds them from
further licence,) and checking their supercilious drift,
declares that no accidental, temporary, or reconcilable
offence (except fornication) can justify a divorce. He
touches not here those natural and perpetual hinder-
ances of society, whether in body or mind, which are
not to be removed; for such as they are aptest to cause
an unchangeable offence, so are they not capable of
reconcilement, because not of amendment, they do not
break indeed, but they annihilate the bands of marriage
more than adultery. For that fault committed argues
not always a hatred either natural or incidental against
whom it is committed; neither does it infer a disability
of all future helpfulness, or loyalty, or loving agree-
ment, being once past and pardoned, where it can be
pardoned: but that which naturally distastes, and “finds
no favour in the eyes” of matrimony, can never be
concealed, never appeased, neverintermitted, but proves
a perpetual nullity of love and contentment, a solitude
and dead vacation of all acceptable conversing. Moses
therefore permits divorce, but in cases only that have
no hands to join, and more need of separating than
adultery. Christ forbids it, but in matters only that
may accord, and those less than fornication. Thus is
Moses's law here plainly confirmed, and those causes
which he permitted not a jot gainsaid. And that this
is the true meaning of this place, I prove by no less an
author than St. Paul himself, I Cor. vii. 10, l l ; upon
which text interpreters agree, that the apostle only
repeats the precept of Christ: where while he speaks
of the “wiſe’s reconcilement to her husband,” he puts
it out of controversy, that our Saviour meant chiefly
matters of strife and reconcilement; of which sort he
would not that any difference should be the occasion
of divorce, except fornication. And that we may learn
better how to value a grave and prudent law of Moses,
and how unadvisedly we smatter with our lips, when
we talk of Christ's abolishing any judicial law of his
great Father, except in some circumstances which are
judaical rather than judicial, and need no abolishing,
but cease of themselves; I say again, that this recited
law of Moses contains a cause of divorce greater be-
yond compare than that for adultery : and whoso can-
not so conceive it, errs and wrongs exceedingly a law
of deep wisdom for want of well fathoming. For let
him mark, no man urges the just divorcing of adul-
tery as it is a sin, but as it is an injury to marriage;
and though it be but once committed, and that with-
out malice, whether through importunity or opportu-
, nity, the gospel does not therefore dissuade him who
would therefore divorce ; but that natural hatred
whenever it arises, is a greater evil in marriage than
the accident of adultery, a greater defrauding, a
greater in ustice, and yet not blamable, he who un-
derstands not after all this representing, I doubt his
will like a hard spleen draws ſaster than his understand-
ing can well sanguify : nor did that man ever know
or feel what it is to love truly, nor ever yet compre-
hend in his thoughts what the true intent of marriage
is. And this also will be somewhat above his reach,
but yet no less a truth for lack of his perspective, that
as no man apprehends what vice is so well as he who
is truly virtuous, no man knows hell like him who con-
verses most in heaven ; so there is none that can esti-
mate the evil and the affliction of a matural hatred in
matrimony, unless he have a soul gentle enough and
spacious enough to contemplate what is true love.
And the reason why men so disesteem this wise judg-
ing law of God, and count hate, or “the not finding of
favour,” as it is there termed, a humourous, a dishonest,
and slight cause of divorce, is because themselves ap-
prehend so little of what true concord means: for if
they did, they would be juster in their balancing be-
tween natural hatred and casual adultery; this being
but a transient injury, and soon amended, I mean as
to the party against whom the trespass is : but that
other being an unspeakable and unremitting sorrow
and offence, whereof no amends can be made, no cure,
no ceasing but by divorce, which like a divine touch
in one moment heals all, and (like the word of God) in
one instant hushes outrageous tempests into a sudden
stilluess and peaceful calm. Yet all this so great a
good of God's own enlarging to us is, by the hard reins
of them that fit us, wholly diverted and embezzled from
us. Maligners of mankind But who hath taught
you to mangle thus, and make more gashes in the
152
THE DOCTRINE AND DISCIPLINE OF DIVORCE.
miseries of a blameless creature, with the leaden dag-
gers of your literal decrees, to whose ease you cannot
add the tithe of one small atom, but by letting alone
your unhelpful surgery. As for such as think wander-
ing concupiscence to be here newly and more precisely
forbidden than it was before ; if the apostle can con-
vince them, we know that we are to “know lust by
the law,” and not by any new discovery of the gospel.
The law of Moses kuew what it permitted, and the
gospel knew what it forbid; he that under a peevish
conceit of debarring concupiscence, shall go about to
make a novice of Moses, (not to say a worse thing, for
reverence sake,) and such a one of God himself, as is a
horrour to think, to bind our Saviour in the default of
a downright promise-breaking ; and to bind the dis-
unions of complaining nature in chains together, and
curb them with a canon bit; it is he that commits
all the whoredom and adultery which himself adjudges,
besides the former guilt so manifold that lies upon
him. And if none of these considerations, with all
their weight and gravity, can avail to the dispossessing
him of his precious literalism, let some one or other en-
treat him but to read on in the same 19th of Matth.
till he comes to that place that says, “Some make them-
selves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake.”.
And if then he please to make use of Origen's knife,
he may do well to be his own carver.
CHAP. XVII.
Whether the words of our Saviour be rightly ex-
pounded only of actual fornication to be the cause
of divorce. The opinion of Grotius, with other
7°06'SO?! S.
But because we know that Christ never gave a ju-
dicial law, and that the word fornication is variously
significant in Scripture, it will be much right done to
our Saviour's words, to consider diligently whether it
be meant here, that nothing but actual fornication
proved by witness can warrant a divorce; for so our
canon law judges. Nevertheless, as I find that Gro-
tius on this place hath observed the christian emperors,
Theodosius the IInd and Justinian, men of high wis-
dom and reputed piety, decreed it to be a divorcive
formication, if the wife attempted either against the
knowledge, or obstimately against the will of her hus-
band, such things as gave open suspicion of adulteriz-
ing, as the wilful haunting of feasts, and invitations
with men not of near kindred, the lying forth of her
house, without probable cause, the frequenting of
theatres against her husband's mind, her endeavour to
prevent or destroy conception. Hence that of Jerom,
“ where fornication is suspected, the wife may lawfully
be divorced :” not that every motion of a jealous mind
should be regarded, but that it should not be exacted
to prove all things by the visibility of law witnessing,
or else to hoodwink the mind ; for the law is not able
to judge of these things but by the rule of equity, and
by permitting a wise man to walk the middle way of
prudent circumspection, neither wretchedly jealous,
nor stupidly and tamely patient. To this purpose hath
Grotius in his notes. He shews also, that fornication
is taken in Scripture for such a continual headstrong
behaviour, as tends to plain contempt of the husband,
and proves it out of Judges xix. 2, where the Levite's
wife is said to have played the whore against him ;
which Josephus and the Septuagint, with the Chaldean,
interpret only of stubbornness and rebellion against her
husband: and to this I add, that Kimchi, and the
two other rabbies who gloss the text, are in the same
opinion. Ben Gersom reasons, that had it been
whoredom, a Jew and a Levite would have disdained
to fetch her again. And this I shall contribute, that
had it been whoredom, she would have chosen any
other place to run to than to her father's house, it being
so infamous for a Hebrew woman to play the harlot,
and so opprobrious to the parents. Fornication then
in this place of the Judges is understood for stubborn
disobedience against the husband, and not for adul-
tery. A sin of that sudden activity, as to be already
committed when no more is done, but only looked un-
chastely: which yet I should be loth to judge worthy
a divorce, though in our Saviour's language it be called
adultery. Nevertheless when palpable and frequent
signs are given, the law of God, Numb. v. so far gave
way to the jealousy of a man, as that the woman, set
before the sanctuary with her head uncovered, was ad-
jured by the priest to swear whether she were false or
no, and constrained to drink that “bitter water,” with
an undoubted “curse of rottenness and tympany” to
follow, unless she were innocent. And the jealous
man had not been guiltless before God, as seems by
the last verse, if having such a suspicion in his head,
he should neglect his trial; which if to this day it be
not to be used, or be thought as uncertain of effect as
our antiquated law of Ordalium, yet all equity will
judge, that many adulterous demeanours, which are of
lewd suspicion and example, may be held sufficient to
incur a divorce, though the act itself hath not been
proved. And seeing the generosity of our nation is so,
as to account no reproach more abominable than to be
nicknamed the husband of an adulteress; that our law
should not be as ample as the law of God, to vindicate
a man from that ignoble sufferance, is our barbarous
unskilfulness, not considering that the law should be
exasperated according to our estimation of the injury.
And if it must be suffered till the act be visibly proved,
Solomon himself, whose judgment will be granted to
surpass the acuteness of any canonist, confesses, Prov.
xxx. 19, 20, that for the act of adultery it is as difficult
to be found as the “track of an eagle in the air, or the
way of a ship in the sea; ” so that a man may be put
to unmanly indignities ere it be found out. This there-
fore may be enough to inform us, that divorcive adul-
tery is not limited by our Saviour to the utmost act,
and that to be attested always by eyewitness, but may
be extended also to divers obvious actions, which either
plainly lead to adultery, or give such presumption
THE DOCTRINE AND DISCIPLINE OF DIVORCE.
153
whereby sensible men may suspect the deed to be al-
ready done. And this the rather may be thought, in
that our Saviour chose to use the word Fornication,
which word is found to signify other matrimonial
transgressions of main breach to that covenant besides
actual adultery. I'or that sin needed not the riddance
of divorce, but of death by the law, which was active
even till then by the example of the woman taken in
adultery; or if the law had been dormant, our Saviour
was more likely to have told them of their neglect,
than to have let a capital crime silently scape into a
divorce : or if it be said, his business was not to tell
them what was criminal in the civil courts, but what
was sinful at the bar of conscience, how dare they then,
having no other ground than these our Saviour's word's,
draw that into the trial of law, which both by Moses
and our Saviour was left to the jurisdiction of con-
science P But we take from our Saviour, say they, only
that it was adultery, and our law of itself applies the
punishment. But by their leave that so argue, the
great Lawgiver of all the world, who knew best what
was adultery, both to the Jew and to the Gentile, ap-
pointed no such applying, and never likes when mortal
men will be vainly presuming to outstrip his justice.
CHAP. XIX.
Christ's mammer of teaching. St. Paul adds to this
matter of divorce without command, to shew the mat-
ter to be of equity, not of rigour. That the bondage
of a Christian may be as much, and his peace as little,
in some other marriages besides idolatrous. If those
arguments therefore be good in that one case, why not
in those other " Therefore the apostle himself adds,
$v toig towotºroug.
Thus at length we see both by this and other places,
that there is scarce any one saying in the gospel but
must be read with limitations and distinctions to be
rightly understood; for Christ gives no full comments
or continued discourses, but (as Demetrius the rhetori-
cian phrases it) speaks oft in monosyllables, like a
master scattering the heavenly grain of his doctrine
like pearls here and there, which requires a skilful
and laborious gatherer, who must compare the words
he finds with other precepts, with the end of every
ordinance, and with the general analogy of evangelic
doctrine: otherwise many particular sayings would be
but strange repugnant riddles, and the church would
offend in granting divorce for frigidity, which is not
here excepted with adultery, but by them added. And
this was it undoubtedly, which gave reason to St. Paul
of his own authority, as he professes, and without
command from the Lord, to enlarge the seeming con-
struction of those places in the gospel, by adding a
case wherein a person deserted (which is something
less than divorced) may lawfully marry again. And
having declared his opinion in one case, he leaves a
further liberty for christian prudence to determine in
cases of like importance, using words so plain as not
to be shifted off, “that a brother or a sister is not under
bondage in such cases; ” adding also, that “God hath
called us to peace” in marriage.
Now if it be plain, that a Christian may be brought
into unworthy bondage, and his religious peace not
only interrupted now and then, but perpetually and
finally hindered in wedlock, by misyoking with a di-
versity of niture as well as of religion, the reasons of
St. Paul cannot be made special to that one case of
inſidelity, but are of equal moment to a divorce,
wherever Christian liberty and peace are without fault
equally obstructed : that the ordinance which God gave
to our comfort may not be pinned upon us to our un-
deserved thraldom, to be cooped up, as it were in
mockery of wedlock, to a perpetual betrothed loneli-
ness and discontent, if nothing worse ensue. There
being nought else of marriage left between such, but a
displeasing and forced remedy against the sting of a
brute desire: which fleshly accuffstoming without the
soul's union and commixture of intellectual delight, as
it is rather a soiling than a fulfilling of marriage rites,
so is it enough to abase the mettle of a generous spirit,
and sinks him to a low and vulgar pitch of endeavour
in all his actions; or, (which is worse,) leaves him in
a despairing plight of abject and hardened thoughts:
which condition rather than a good man should fall
into, a man useful in the service of God and mankind,
Christ himself hath taught us to dispense with the
most sacred ordinance of his worship, even for a bodily
healing to dispense with that holy and speculative rest
of sabbath, much more then with the erroneous ob-
servance of an ill-knotted marriage, for the sustaining
of an overcharged faith and perseverance.
CHAP. XX.
The meaning of St. Paul, that “charity believeth all
things.” What is to be said to the licence which is
vainly feared will grow hereby. What to those who
never have done prescribing patience in this case.
The papist most severe against divorce, yet most easy
to all licence. Of all the miseries in marriage God is
to be cleared, and the faults to be laid on man’s un-
just laws.
AND though bad causes would take licence by this
pretext, if that cannot be remedied, upon their con-
science be it who shall so do. This was that hardness
of heart, and abuse of a good law, which Moses was
content to suffer, rather than good men should not have
it at all to use needfully. And he who to run after one
lost sheep left ninety-nine of his own flock at random
in the wilderness, would little perplex his thoughts for
the obduring of nine hundred and ninety such as will
daily take worse liberties, whether they have permis-
sion or not. To conclude, as without charity God hath
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THE DOCTRINE AND DISCIPLINE OF DIVORCE.
given no commandment to men, so without it neither
can men rightly believe any commandment given.
For every act of true faith, as well that whereby we
believe the law, as that whereby we endeavour the law,
is wrought in us by charity, according to that in the
divine hymn of St. Paul, I Cor. xiii. “Charity be-
lieveth all things;” not as if she were so credulous,
which is the exposition hitherto current, for that were
a trivial praise, but to teach us that charity is the high
governess of our belief, and that we cannot safely
assent to any precept written in the Bible, but as cha-
rity commends it to us. Which agrees with that of
the same apostle to the Eph. iv. 14, 15 ; where he tells
us, that the way to get a sure undoubted knowledge of
things, is to hold that for truth which accords most
with charity. Whose unerring guidance and conduct
having followed as a loadstar, with all diligence and
fidelity, in this question ; I trust (through the help of
that illuminating spirit which hath favoured me) to
have done no every day's work, in asserting, after
many the words of Christ, with other scriptures of
great concernment, from burdensome and remorseless
obscurity, tangled with manifold repugnances, to their
native lustre and consent between each other; hereby
also dissolving tedious and Gordian difficulties, which
have hitherto molested the church of God, and are now
decided not with the sword of Alexander, but with the
immaculate hands of charity, to the unspeakable good
of christendom. And let the extreme literalist sit
down now, and revolve whether this in all necessity
be not the due result of our Saviour's words, or if he
persist to be otherwise opinioned, let him well advise,
lest thinking to gripe fast the gospel, he be found in-
stead with the canon law in his fist: whose boisterous
edicts tyrannizing the blessed ordinance of marriage
into the quality of a most unnatural and unchristianly
yoke, hath given the flesh this advantage to hate it,
and turn aside, ofttimes unwillingly, to all dissolute
uncleanness, even till punishment itself is weary of
and overcome by the incredible frequency of trading
lust and uncontrolled adulteries. Yet men whose creed
is custom, I doubt not will be still endeavouring to
hide the sloth of their own timorous capacities with
this pretext, that for all this it is better to endure with
patience and silence this affliction which God hath
sent. And I agree it is true, if this be exhorted and
not enjoined ; but withal it will be wisely done to be
as sure as may be, that what man's iniquity hath laid
on be not imputed to God's sending, lest under the
colour of an affected patience we detain ourselves at
the gulf's mouth of many hideous temptations, not to
be withstood without proper gifts, which (as Perkins
well notes) God gives not ordinarily, no not to most
earnest prayers. Therefore we pray, “Lead us not
into temptation;” a vain prayer, if, having led our-
selves thither, we love to stay in that perilous con-
dition. God sends remedies as well as evils, under
which he who lics and groans, that may law fully ac-
quit himself, is accessory to his own ruin; nor will it
excuse him though he suffer through a sluggish fear-
fulness to search thoroughly what is lawful, for fear
y
of disquieting the secure falsity of an old opinion.
Who doubts not but that it may be piously said, to him
who would dismiss his frigidity, Bear your trial, take
it as if God would have you live this life of conti-
mence * if he exhort this, I hear him as an angel,
though he speak without warrant; but if he would
compel me, I know him for Satan. To him who di-
vorces an adulteress, piety might say, pardon her; you
may shew much mercy, you may win a soul : yet the
law both of God and man leaves it freely to him : for
God loves not to plough out the heart of our en-
deavours with overhard and sad tasks. God delights
not to make a drudge of virtue, whose actions must be
all elective and unconstrained. Porced virtue is as a
bolt overshot, it goes neither forward nor backward,
and does no good as it stands. Seeing therefore that
neither Scripture nor reason hath laid this unjust auste-
rity upon divorce, we may resolve that nothing else
hath wrought it but that letter-bound servility of the
canon doctors, supposing marriage to be a sacrament,
and out of the art they have to lay unnecessary bur-
dens upon all men, to make a fair shew in the fleshly
observance of matrimony, though peace and love with
all other conjugal respects fare never so ill. And in-
deed the papists, who are the strictest forbidders of di-
vorce, are the easiest libertines to admit of grossest
uncleanness; as if they had a design by making wed-
lock a supportless yoke, to violate it most, under colour
of preserving it most inviolable; and withal delighting
(as their mystery is) to make men the day labourers of
their own afflictions, as if there were such a scarcity of
miseries from abroad, that we should be made to melt
our choicest home blessings, and coin them into crosses,
for want whereby to hold commerce with patience. If
any therefore who shall hap to read this discourse, hath
been through misadventure ill engaged in th’s cou-
tracted evil here complained of, and finds the fits and
workings of a high impatience frequently upon him;
of all those wild words which men in misery think to
ease themselves by uttering, let him not open his lips
against the providence of Heaven, or tax the ways of
God and his divine truth : for they are equal, easy, and
not burdensome : nor do they ever cross the just and
reasonable desires of men, nor involve this our portion
of mortal life into a necessity of sadness and malecon-
tent, by laws commanding over the unreducible anti-
pathies of nature, sooner or later found, but allow us to
remedy and shake off those evils into which human
errour hath led us through the midst of our best inten-
tions, and to support our incident extremities by that
authentic precept of sovereign charity, whose grand
commission is to do and to dispose over all the ordinances
of God to man, that love and truth may advance each
other to everlasting. While we, literally superstitious,
through customary faintness of heart, not venturing to
pierce with our free thoughts into the full latitude of
nature and religion, abandon ourselves to serve under
the tyranny of usurped opinions; suffering those ordi-
nances which were allotted to our solace and reviving,
to trample over us, and hale us into a multitude of sor-
rows, which God never meant us. And where he sets
THE DOCTRINE AND DISCIPLINE OF DIVORCE.
155
us in a fair allowance of way, with honest liberty and
prudence to our guard, we never leave subtilizing and
casuisting till we have straitened and pared that liberal
path into a razor's edge to walk on ; between a preci-
pice of unnecessary mischief on either side, and start-
ing at every false alarm, we do not know which way
to set a foot forward with manly confidence and chris-
tian resolution, through the confused ringing in our
ears of panic scruples and anmazements.
CHAP. XXI.
That the matter of divorce is not to be tried by law,
but by conscience, as many other sins are. The ma-
gistrate can only see that the condition of the divorce
the just and equal. The opinion of Fagius, and the
reasons of this assertion.
ANOTHER act of papal encroachment it was, to pluck
the power and arbitrement of divorce from the master
of the family, into whose hands God and the law of
all nations had put it, and Christ so left it, preaching
only to the conscience, and not authorizing a judicial
court to toss about and divulge the unaccountable and
secret reason of disaffection between man and wife, as
a thing most improperly answerable to any such kind
of trial. But the popes of Rome, perceiving the great
revenue and high authority it would give them even
over princes, to have the judging and deciding of such
a main consequence in the life of man as was divorce;
wrought so upon the superstition of those ages, as to
divest them of that right, which God from the begin-
ning had entrusted to the husband: by which means
they subjected that ancient and naturally domestic
prerogative to an external and unbefitting judicature.
I'or although differences in divorce about dowries, join-
tures, and the like, besides the punishing of adultery,
ought not to pass without referring, if need be, to the
magistrate; yet that the absolute and final hindering
of divorce cannot belong to any civil or earthly power,
against the will and consent of both parties, or of the
husband alone, some reasons will be here urged as
shall not need to decline the touch. But first I shall
recite what hath been already yielded by others in fa-
vour of this opinion. Grotius and many more agree,
that notwithstanding what Christ spake therein to the
Conscience, the magistrate is not thereby enjoined
aught against the preservation of civil peace, of equity,
and of convenience. And among these Fagius is most
remarkable, and gives the same liberty of pronouncing
divorce to the christian magistrate as the Mosaic had.
“For whatever,” saith he, “Christ spake to the rege-
nerate, the judge hath to deal with the vulgar: if
therefore any through hardness of heart will not be a
tolerable wiſe to her husband, it will be lawful as well
now as of old to pass the bill of divorce, not by private
but by public authority Nor doth man separate them
then, but God by his law of divorce given by Moses.
What can hinder the magistrate from so doing, to
whose government all outward things are subject, to
separate and remove from perpetual vexation, and no
small danger, those bodies whose minds are already
separate; it being his office to procure peaceable and
convenient living in the commonwealth; and being
as certain also, that they so necessarily separated
cannot all receive a single life?” And this I observe,
that our divines do generally condemn separation of
bed and board, without the liberty of second choice:
if that therefore in some cases be most purely neces-
sary, (as who so blockish to deny £) then is this also
as needful. Thus far by others is already well
stepped, to inform us that divorce is not a matter of
law, but of charity: if there remain a furlong yet to
end the question, these following reasons may serve to
gain it with any apprehension not too unlearned or
too wayward. First, because ofttimes the causes of
seeking divorce reside so deeply in the radical and in-
nocent affections of nature, as is not within the diocese
of law to tamper with. Other relations may aptly
enough be held together by a civil and virtuous love :
but the duties of man and wife are such as are chiefly
conversant in that love which is most ancient and
merely natural, whose two prime statutes are to join
itself to that which is good, and acceptable, and friendly;
and to turn aside and depart from what is disagreeable,
displeasing, and unlike : of the two this latter is the
strongest, and most equal to be regarded; for although
a man may often be unjust in seeking that which he
loves, yet he can never be unjust or blamable in retiring
from his endless trouble and distaste, when as his tar-
rying can redound to no true content on either side.
Hate is of all things the mightiest divider, may is divi-
sion itself. To couple hatred therefore, though wedlock
try all her golden links, and borrow to her aid all the
iron manacles and fetters of law, it does but seek to
twist a rope of sand, which was a task they say that
posed the devil: and that sluggish fiend in hell, Ocnus,
whom the poems tell of, brought his idle cordage to as
good effect, which never served to bind with, but to
feed the ass that stood at his elbow. And that the re-
strictive law against divorce attains as little to bind
any thing truly in a disjointed marriage, or to keep it
bound, but serves only to feed the ignorance and de-
finitive impertinence of a doltish canon, were no absurd
allusion. To hinder therefore those deep and serious
regresses of nature in a reasonable soul, parting from
that mistaken help, which he justly seeks in a person
created for him, recollecting himself from an unmeet
help which was never meant, and to detain him by
compulsion in such an unpredestined misery as this, is
in diameter against both nature and institution : but to
interpose a jurisdictive power over the inward and
irremediable disposition of man, to command love and
sympathy, to forbid dislike against the guiltless instinct
of nature, is not within the province of any law to
reach; and were indeed an uncommodious rudeness,
not a just power: for that law may bandy with nature,
and traverse her sage motions, was an errour in Calli-
cles the rhetorician, whom Socrates from high principles
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THE DOCTRINE AND DISCIPLINE OF DIVORCE.
confutes in Plato's Gorgias. If therefore divorce may
be so natural, and that law and nature are not to go
contrary; then to forbid divorce compulsively, is not
only against nature, but against law.
Next, it must be remembered, that all law is for
some good, that may be frequently attained without
the admixture of a worse inconvenience; and therefore
many gross faults, as ingratitude and the like, which
are too far within the soul to be cured by constraint of
law, are left only to be wrought on by conscience and
persuasion. Which made Aristotle, in the 10th of his
Ethics to Nicomachus, aim at a kind of division of law
into private or persuasive, and public or compulsive.
Hence it is, that the law forbidding divorce never at-
tains to any good end of such prohibition, but rather
multiplies evil. For if nature's resistless sway in love
or hate be once compelled, it grows careless of itself,
vicious, useless to friends, unserviceable and spiritless
to the commonwealth. Which Moses rightly foresaw,
and all wise lawgivers that ever knew man, what kind
of creature he was. The parliament also and clergy
of England were not ignorant of this, when they con-
sented that Harry the VIII might put away his queen
Anne of Cleve, whom he could not like after he had
been wedded half a year; unless it were that, contrary
to the proverb, they made a necessity of that which
might have been a virtue in them to do: for even the
freedom and eminence of man's creation gives him to
be a law in this matter to himself, being the head of
the other sex which was made for him : whom there-
fore though he ought mot to injure, yet neither should
he be forced to retain in society to his own overthrow,
nor to hear any judge therein above himself. It being
also an unseemly affront to the sequestered and veiled
modesty of that sex, to have her unpleasingness and
other concealments bandied up and down, and aggra-
wated in open court by those hired masters of tongue-
fence. Such uncomely exigencies it beſel no less a
majesty than Henry the VIII to be reduced to, who,
finding just reason in his conscience to forego his bro-
ther's wife, after many indignities of being deluded,
and made a boy of by those his two cardinal judges,
was constrained at last, for want of other proof, that
she had been carnally known by prince Arthur, even
to uncover the nakedness of that virtuous lady, and to
recite openly the obscene evidence of his brother's
chamberlain. Yet it pleased God to make him see all
the tyranny of Rome, by discovering this which they
exercised over divorce, and to make him the beginner
of a reformation to this whole kingdom, by first assert-
ing into his familiary power the right of just divorce.
It is true, an adulteress cannot be shamed enough by
any public proceeding; but the woman whose honour
is not appeached is less injured by a silent dismission,
being otherwise not illiberally dealt with, than to en-
dure a clamouring debate of utterless things, in a busi-
mess of that civil secrecy and difficult discerning, as not
to be overmuch questioned by nearest friends. Which
drew that answer from the greatest and worthiest
Roman of his time, Paulus Eumilius, being demanded
why he would put away his wife for no visible reason?
“This shoe,” said he, and held it out on his ſoot, “ is
a meat shoe, a new shoe, and yet none of you know
where it wrings me;” much less by the unfamiliar
cognizance of a feed gamester can such a private diſ-
ference be examined, neither ought it.
Again, if law aim at the firm establishment and pre-
servation of matrimonial faith, we know that cannot
thrive under violent means, but is the more violated.
It is not when two unfortunately met are by the canon
forced to draw in that yoke an unmerciful day's work
of sorrow till death unharness them, that then the law
keeps marriage most un violated and unbroken ; but
when the law takes order, that marriage be accountant
and responsible to perform that society, whether it be
religious, civil, or corporal, which may be conscionably
required and claimed therein, or else to be dissolved if
it cannot be undergone. This is to make marriage
most indissoluble, by making it a just and equal deal-
er, a performer of those due helps, which instituted the
covenant; being otherwise a most unjust contract, and
no more to be maintained under tuition of law, than
the vilest fraud, or cheat, or theft, that may be com-
mitted. But because this is such a secret kind of fraud
or theft, as cannot be discerned by law but only by the
plaintiff himself; therefore to divorce was never count-
ed a political or civil offence, neither to Jew nor Gen-
tile, nor by any judicial intendment of Christ, further
than could be discerned to transgress the allowance of
Moses, which was of necessity so large, that it doth
all one as if it sent back the matter undeterminable at
law, and intractable by rough dealing, to have in-
structions and admonitions bestowed about it by them
whose spiritual office is to adjure and to denounce, and
so left to the conscience. The law can only appoint
the just and equal conditions of divorce, and is to look
how it is an injury to the divorced, which in truth it
can be none, as a mere separation; for if she consent,
wherein has the law to right her? or consent not, then
is it either just, and so deserved; or if unjust, such in
all likelihood was the divorcer: and to part from an
unjust man is a happiness, and no injury to be lament-
ed. But suppose it to be an injury, the law is not able
to amend it, unless she think it other than a miserable
redress, to return back from whence she was expelled,
or but entreated to be gone, or else to live apart still
married without marriage, a married widow. Last, if
it be to chasten the divorcer, what law punishes a deed
which is not moral but natural, a deed which cannot
certainly be found to be an injury; or how can it be
punished by prohibiting the divorce, but that the inno-
cent must equally partake both in the shame and in
the smart 2 So that which way soever we look, the law
can to no rational purpose forbid divorce, it can only
take care that the conditions of divorce be not inju-
rious. Thus then we see the trial of law, how imper-
timent it is to this question of divorce, how helpless
next, and then how hurtful. -
THE DOCTRINE AND DISCIPLINE OF DIVORCE.
157
CHAP. XXII.
The last reason why divorce is not to be restrained by
law, it being against the law of nature and of nations.
The larger proof whereof referred to Mr. Selden's
book, “De Jure Naturali et Gentium.” An ob-
jection of Paraus answered. How it ought to be or-
dered by the church. That this will not breed any
worse inconvenience, nor so bad as is now suffered.
THERefore the last reason, why it should not be, is
the example we have, not only from the noblest and
wisest commonwealths, guided by the clearest light of
human knowledge, but also from the divine testimo-
nies of God himself, lawgiving in person to a sancti-
fied people. That all this is true, whoso desires to
know at large with least pains, and expects not here
overlong rehearsals of that which is by others already
so judiciously gathered; let him hasten to be acquaint-
ed with that noble volume written by our learned Sel-
den, “Of the Law of Nature and of Nations,” a work
more useful and more worthy to be perused by whoso-
ever studies to be a great man in wisdom, equity, and
justice, than all those “decretals and sumless sums,”
which the pontifical clerks have doted on, ever since
that unfortunate mother famously sinned thrice, and
died impenitent of her bringing into the world those
two misbegotten infants, and for ever infants, Lombard
and Gratian, him the compiler of canon iniquity, the
other the Tubalcain of scholastic sophistry, whose over-
spreading barbarism hath not only infused their own
bastardy upon the fruitfullest part of human learning,
not only dissipated and dejected the clear light of na-
ture in us, and of nations, but hath tainted also the
fountains of divine doctrine, and rendered the pure and
solid law of God unbeneficial to us by their calumnious
dunceries. Yet this law, which their unskilfulness
hath made liable to all ignominy, the purity and wis-
dom of this law shall be the buckler of our dispute.
Liberty of divorce we claim not, we think not but from
this law; the dignity, the faith, the authority thereof
is now grown among Christians, O astonishment 1 a
labour of no mean difficulty and envy to defend. That
it should not be counted a faultering dispense, a flat-
tering permission of sin, the bill of adultery, a snare,
is the expense of all this apology. And all that we
solicit is, that it may be suffered to stand in the place
where God set it, amidst the firmament of his holy
laws, to shine, as it was wont, upon the weaknesses
and errors of men, perishing else in the sincerity of
their honest purposes: for certain there is no memory
of whoredoms and adulteries left among us now, when
this warranted freedom of God's own giving is made
dangerous and discarded for a scroll of licence. It
must be your suffrages and votes, O Englishmen, that
this exploded decree of God and Moses may scape and
come off fair, without the censure of a shameful abro-
gating : which, if yonder sun ride sure, and means not
to break word with us to-morrow, was never yet abro-
gated by our Saviour. Give sentence if you please,
that the frivolous canon may reverse the infallible judg-
ment of Moses and his great director. Or if it be the
reformed writers, whose doctrine persuades this rather.
their reasons I dare affirm are all silenced, unless it be
only this. Paraeus on the Corinthians would prove,
that hardness of heart in divorce is no more now to be
permitted, but to be amerced with fine and imprison-
ment. I am not willing to discover the forgettings of
reverend men, yet here I must: what article or clause
of the whole new covenant can Paraeus bring, to exas-
perate the judicial law upon any infirmity under the
gospel 2 I say infirmity, for if it were the high hand of
sin, the law as little would have endured it as the
gospel; it would not stretch to the dividing of an in-
heritance; it refused to condemn adultery, not that
these things should not be done at law, but to shew that
the gospel hath not the least influence upon judicial
courts, much less to make them sharper and more heavy,
least of all to arraign before a temporal judge that
which the law without summons acquitted. “But,”
saith he, “the law was the time of youth, under vio-
lent affections; the gospel in us is mature age, and
ought to subdue affections.” True, and so ought the
law too, if they be found inordinate, and not merely
natural and blameless. Next I distinguish, that the
time of the law is compared to youth and pupilage in
respect of the ceremonial part, which led the Jews as
children through corporal and garish rudiments, until
the fulness of time should reveal to them the higher
lessons of faith and redemption. This is not meant of
the moral part, therein it soberly concerned them not
to be babies, but to be men in good earnest: the sad
and awful majesty of that law was not to be jested
with : to bring a bearded nomage with lascivious dis-
pensations before that throne, had been a lewd affront,
as it is now a gross mistake. But what discipline is
this, Paraeus, to tourish violent affections in youth, by
cockering and wanton indulgencies, and to chastise
them in mature age with a boyish rod of correction ?
How much more coherent is it to Scripture, that the
law as a strict schoolmaster should have punished every
trespass without indulgence so baneful to youth, and
that the gospel should now correct that by admonition
and reproof only, in free and mature age, which was
punished with stripes in the childhood and bondage of
the law What therefore it allowed then so fairly, much
less is to be whipped now, especially in penal courts:
and if it ought now to trouble the conscience, why did
that angry accuser and condemner law reprieve it? So
them, neither from Moses nor from Christ hath the ma-
gistrate any authority to proceed against it. But what,
shall then the disposal of that power return again to
the master of a family Wherefore not, since God there
put it, and the presumptuous canon thence bereſt it?
This only must be provided, that the ancient manner
be observed in the presence of the minister and other
grave selected elders, who after they shall have ad-
monished and pressed upon him the words of our Sa-
viour, and he shall have protested in the faith of the
eternal gospel, and the hope he has of happy resurrec-
tion, that otherwise than thus he cannot do, and thinks
158
THE DOCTRINE AND DISCIPLINE OF DIVORCE.
himself and this his case not contained in that prohi-
bition of divorce which Christ pronounced, the matter
not being of malice, but of nature, and so not capable
of reconciling; to constrain him further were to un-
christian him, to unman him, to throw the mountain of
Sinai upon him, with the weight of the whole law to
boot, flat against the liberty and essence of the gospel;
and yet nothing available either to the sanctity of mar-
riage, the good of husband, wife, or children, nothing
profitable either to church or commonwealth, but hurt-
ful and pernicious in all these respects. But ubis will
bring in confusion : yet these cautious mistrusters
might consider, that what they thus object lights not
upon this book, but upon that which I engage against
them, the book of God and Moses, with all the wisdom
and providence which had forecast the worst of conſu-
sion that could succeed, and yet thought fit of such a
permission. But let them be of good cheer, it wrought
so little disorder among the Jews, that from Moses till
after the captivity, not one of the prophets thought it
worth the rebuking; for that of Malachi well looked
into will appear to be not against divorcing, but rather
against keeping strange concubines, to the vexation of
their Hebrew wives. If therefore we Christians may
be thought as good and tractable as the Jews were,
(and certainly the probibitors of divorce presume us to
be better,) then less confusion is to be feared for this
among us than was among them. If we be worse, or
but as bad, which lamentable examples confirm we are,
then have we more, or at least as much, need of this
permitted law, as they to whom God therefore gave it
(as they say) under a harsher covenant. Let not there-
fore the frailty of man go on thus inventing needless
troubles to itself, to groãn under the false imagination
of a strictness never imposed from above; enjoining
that for duty, which is an impossible and vain super-
erogating. “Be not righteous overmuch,” is the coun-
sel of Ecclesiastes ; “why shouldst thou destroy thy-
self?” Let us not be thus overcurious to strain at
atoms, and yet to stop every vent and cranny of per-
missive liberty, lest nature wanting those needful pores
and breathing-places, which God hath not debarred
our weakness, either suddenly break out into some wide
rupture of open vice and frantic heresy, or else inwardly
fester with repining and blasphemous thoughts, under
an unreasonable and fruitless rigour of unwarranted
law. Against which evils nothing can more beseem
the religion of the church, or the wisdom of the state,
than to consider timely and provide. And in so doing
let them not doubt but they shall vindicate the misre-
puted honour of God and his great lawgiver, by suffer-
ing him to give his own laws according to the condition
of man's nature best known to him, without the un-
sufferable imputation of dispensing legally with many
ages of ratified adultery. They shall recover the mis-
attended words of Christ to the sincerity of their true
sense from manifold contradictions, and shall open them
with the key of charity. Many helpless Christians
they shall arise from the depth of sadness and distress,
utterly unfitted as they are to serve God or man: many
they shall reclaim from obscure and giddy sects, many
regain from dissolute and brutish licence, many from
desperate hardness, if ever that were justly pleaded.
They shall set free many daughters of Israel not want-
ing much of her sad plight whom “Satan had bound
eighteen years.” Man they shall restore to his just dig-
nity and prerogative in nature, preferring the soul's
free peace before the promiscuous draining of a carnal
rage. Marriage, from a perilous hazard and snare,
they shall reduce to be a more certain haven and re-
tirement of happy society; when they shall judge ac-
cording to God and Moses, (and how not then accord-
ing to Christ,) when they shall judge it more wisdom
and goodness to break that covenant seemingly, and
keep it really, than by compulsion of law to keep it
seemingly, and by compulsion of blameless nature to
break it really, at least if it were ever truly joined.
The vigour of discipline they may then turn with bet-
ter success upon the prostitute looseness of the times,
when men, finding in themselves the infirmities of for-
mer ages, shall not be constrained above the gift of
God in them to unprofitable and impossible observ-
ances, never required from the civilest, the wisest, the
holiest nations, whose other excellencies in moral vir-
tue they never yet could equal. Last of all, to those
whose mind is still to maintain textual restrictions,
whereof the bare sound cannot consist sometimes with
humanity, much less with charity; I would ever answer,
by putting them in remembrance of a command above
all commands, which they seem to have forgot, and
who spake it : in comparison whereof, this which they
so exalt is but a petty and subordinate precept. “Let
them go” therefore with whom I am loth to couple
them, yet they will needs run into the same blindness
with the Pharisees; “let them go therefore,” and con-
sider well what this lesson means, “I will have mercy
and not sacrifice;” for on that “saying all the law and
prophets depend,” much more the gospel, whose end
and excellence is mercy and peace. Or if they cannot
learn that, how will they hear this P which yet I shall
not doubt to leave with them as a conclusion, That
God the Son hath put all other things under his own
feet, but his commandments he hath left all under the
fect of charity.
THE
JUDGMENT OF MARTIN BUCER, CONCERNING DIVORCE:
wn ITTEN TO EDw ARD THE SIXTH, IN His second Book of THE KINGDOM OF CHRIST ; AND NOW ENGLISHED.
WHEREIN A LATE
Book, RESTORING The “DoctriNE AND DISCIPLINE OF Divorce,” is Here confirmed AND JUSTIFIED BY THE AUTHORITY OF .
MARTIN BUCER.
TO THE PARLIAMENT OF ENGLAND.
John iii. 10. “Art thou a teacher of Israel, and knowest not these things”
PUBLISHED BY AUTHORITY.
TESTIMONIES OF THE HIGH APPROBATION WHICH LEARNED
MEN HAVE GIVEN OF MARTIN BUCER.
Simon Grinaeus, 1533.
AMong all the Germans, I give the palm to Bucer, for
excellence in the Scriptures. Melancthon in human
learning is wonderous fluent; but greater knowledge
in the Scripture I attribute to Bucer, and speak it un-
feignedly.
John Calvim, 1539.
Martin Bucer, a most faithful doctor of the church
of Christ, besides his rare learning, and copious know-
ledge of many things, besides his clearness of wit,
much reading, and other many and various virtues,
wherein he is almost by none now living excelled,
hath few equals, and excels most; hath this praise pe-
culiar to himself, that none in this age hath used ex-
acter diligence in the exposition of Scripture.
And a little beneath.
Bucer is more large than to be read by overbusied
men, and too high to be easily understood by unatten-
tive men, and of a low capacity.
Sir John Cheek, Tutor to King Edward VI. 1551.
We have lost our master, than whom the world
scarce held a greater, whether we consider his know-
ledge of true religion, or his integrity and innocence
of life, or his incessant study of holy things, or his
matchless labour of promoting piety, or his authority
and amplitude of teaching, or whatever else was
praise-worthy and glorious in him. Script. Anglican.
pag. 864.
John Sturmius of Strasburgh.
No man can be ignorant what a great and constant
opinion and estimation of Bucer there is in Italy,
France, and England. Whence the saying of Quin-
tilian hath oſt come to my mind, that he hath well
profited in eloquence whom Cicero pleases. The same
say I of Bucer, that he hath made no small progress in
divinity, whom Bucer pleases; for in his volumes,
which he wrote very many, there is the plain impres-
sion to be discerned of many great virtues, of diligence,
of charity, of truth, of acuteness, of judgment, of learn-
ing. Wherein he hath a certain proper kind of writing,
whereby he doth not only teach the reader, but affects
him with the sweetness of his sentences, and with the
manner of his arguing, which is so teaching, and so
logical, that it may be perceived how learnedly he se-
parates probable reasons from necessary, how forcibly
he confirms what he has to prove, how subtilely he
refutes, not with sharpness but with truth.
Theodore Beza, on the Portraiture of M. Bucer.
This is that countenance of Bucer, the mirror of
mildness tempered with gravity; to whom the city of
Strasburgh owes the reformation of her church. Whose
singular learning, and eminent zeal, joined with ex-
cellent wisdom, both his learned books, and public dis-
putations in the general diets of the empire, shall
witness to all ages. Him the German persecution
drove into England; where honourably entertained by
Edward the VIth, he was for two years chief professor
of divinity in Cambridge, with greatest frequency and
applause of all learned and pious men until his death,
1551. Bezae Icones.
Mr. Fow's Book of Martyrs, Vol. iii. p. 763.
Bucer, what by writing, but chiefly by reading
and preaching openly, wherein, being painful in the
word of God, he never spared himself, nor regarded
health, brought all men into such an admiration of
him, that neither his friends could sufficiently praise
him, nor his enemies in any point find fault with
160
THE JUDGMENT OF MARTIN BUCER,
his singular life and sincere doctrine. A most cer-
tain token whereof may be his sumptuous burial at
Cambridge, solemnized with so great an assistance of
all the university, that it was not possible to devise
more to the setting out and amplifying of the same.
Dr. Pern, the Popish Vice-chancellor of Cambridge,
his adversary.
J/
Cardinal Pool, about the fourth year of Queen Mary,
intending to reduce the university of Cambridge to
popery again, thought no way so effectual, as to cause
the bones of Martin Bucer and Paulus Fagius, which
had been four years in the grave, to be taken up and
burnt openly with their books, as knowing that those
two worthy men had been of greatest moment to the
reformation of that place from popery, and had left
such powerful seeds of their doctrine behind them, as
would never die, unless the men themselves were
digged up, and openly condemned for heretics by the
university itself. This was put in execution, and Doc-
tor Pern, vice-chancellor, appointed to preach against
Bucer: who, among other things, laid to his charge
the opinions which he held of the marriage of priests,
of divorcement, and of usury. But immediately after
his sermon, or somewhat before, as the Book of Mar-
tyrs for a truth relates, vol. iii. p. 770, the said Doctor
Pern smiting himself on the breast, and in manner
weeping, wished with all his heart, that God would
grant his soul might then presently depart, and remain
with Bucer's; for he knew his life was such, that if
any man's soul were worthy of heaven, he thought
Bucer's in special to be most worthy. Histor. de Com-
bust. Buceri et Fagii.
Acworth, the University-orator.
Soon after that Queen Elizabeth came to the crown,
this condemnation of Bucer and Fagius by the cardi-
nal and his doctors was solemnly repealed by the umi-
versity; and the memory of those two famous men ce-
lebrated in an oration by Acworth, the University-ora-
tor, which is yet extant in the Book of Martyrs, vol.
iii. p. 773, and in Latin, Scripta Anglican. p. 936.
Nicholas Carre, a learned man; Walter Haddon,
master of the requests to Queen Elizabeth; Matthew
Parker, afterwards primate of England; with other
eminent men, in their funeral orations and sermons,
express abundantly how great a man Martin Bucer
was ; what an incredible loss England sustained in his
death; and that with him died the hope of a perfect
reformation for that age. Ibid. •
Jacobus Verheiden of Grave, in his elogies of famous
divines.
Though the name of Martin Luther be famous, yet
thou, Martin Bucer, for piety, learning, labour, care,
vigilance, and writing, art not to be held inferiour to
Luther. Bucer was a singular instrument of God, so
was Luther. By the death of this most learned and
most faithful man, the church of Christ sustained a
heavy loss, as Calvin witnesseth ; and they who are
studious of Calvin are not ignorant how much he as-
cribes to Bucer; for thus he writes in a letter to Wire-
tus: “What a manifold loss befel the church of God
in the death of Bucer, as oſt as I call to mind, I feel
my heart almost rent asunder.”
Peter Martyr Epist. to Conradus Hubertus.
He is dead, who hath overcome in many battles of
the Lord. God lent us for a time this our father, and
our teacher, never enough praised. Death hath di-
vided me from a most unanimous friend, one truly ac-
cording to mine own heart. My mind is overpressed
with grief, insomuch that I have not power to write
more. I bid thee in Christ farewell, and wish thou
mayst be able to bear the loss of Bucer better than I
can bear it.
Testimonies given by learned men to Paulus Faſſius,
who held the same opinion with Martin Bucer con-
cerning div re.
Paulus Fagius, born in the Palatinate, became most
skilful in the Hebrew tongue. Being called to the
ministry at Isna, he published many ancient and pro-
fitable Hebrew books, being aided in the expenses by
a senator of that city, as Origen sometime was by a
certain rich man called Ambrosius. At length invited
to Strasburgh, he there famously discharged the office
of a teacher; until the same persecution drove him
and Bucer into England, where he was preferred to a
professor's place in Cambridge, and soon after died.
Bezae Icones.
Melchior Adamus writes his life among the famous
German divines.
Sleidan and Huanus mention him with honour in
their history : and Verheiden in his elogies.
TO THE PARLIAMENT.
THE Book which, among other great and high
points of reformation, contains as a principal part
thereof, this treatise here presented, supreme court of
parliament was, by the famous author Martin Bucer,
dedicated to Edward the VI: whose incomparable
youth doubtless had brought forth to the church of
England such a glorious manhood, had his life
reached it, as would have left in the affairs of religion
nothing without an excellent pattern for us now to fol-
low. But since the secret purpose of divine appoint-
ment hath reserved no less perhaps than the just half
of such a sacred work to be accomplished in this age,
and principally, as we trust, by your successful wis-
dom and authority, religious lords and commons !
what wonder if I seek no other, to whose exactest
judgment and review I may commend these last and
worthiest labours of this renowned teacher; whom
living all the pious mobility of those reforming times,
your truest and best-imitated ancestors, reverenced and
admired. Nor was he wanting to a recompence as great
as was himself; when both at many times before, and
especially among his last sighs and prayers, testifying
his dear a ſld fathcrly affection to the church and realm
CONCERNING DIVORCE.
| 6 ||
of England, he sincerely wished in the hearing of
many devout men, “that what he had in his last book
written to King Edward concerning discipline might
have place in this kingdom. His hope was then,
that no calamity, no confusion, or deformity would
happen to the commonwealth ; but otherwise he
feared, lest in the midst of all this ardency to
know God, yet by the neglect of discipline, our
good endeavours would not succeed.” These remark-
able words of so godly and so eminent a man at his
death, as they are related by a sufficient and well-
known witness, who heard them, and inserted by Thu-
amus into his grave and serious history; so ought they
to be chiefly considered by that nation, for whose sake
they were uttered, and more especially by that general
council, which represents the body of that nation. If
therefore the book, or this part thereof, for necessary
causes, be now revived and recommended to the use of
this undisciplined age; it hence appears, that these
reasons have not erred in the choice of a fit patronage
for a discourse of such importance. But why the
whole tractate is not here brought entire, but this mat-
ter of divorcement selected in particular, to prevent the
full speed of some misinterpreter, I hasten to disclose.
First, it will be soon manifest to them who know what
wise men should know, that the constitution and re-
formation of a commonwealth, if Ezra and Nehemiah
did not misreform, is, like a building, to begin orderly
from the foundation thereof, which is marriage and the
family, to set right first whatever is amiss therein. How
can there else grow up a race of warrantable men, while
the house and home that breeds them is troubled and
disquieted under a bondage not of God's constraining,
with a natureless constraint, (if his most righteous judg-
ments may be our rule,) but laid upon us imperiously
in the worst and weakest ages of knowledge, by a ca-
nomical tyranny of stupid and malicious monks P who
having rashly vowed themselves to a single life, which
they could not undergo, invented new fetters to throw
on matrimony, that the world thereby waxing more
dissolute, they also in a general looseness might sin
with more favour. Next, there being yet among many
such a strange iniquity and perverseness against all
necessary divorce, while they will needs expound the
words of our Saviour, not duly by comparing other
places, as they must do in the resolving of a hundred
other scriptures, but by persisting deafly in the abrupt
and papistical way of a literal apprehension against
the direct analogy of sense, reason, law, and gospel;
it therefore may well seem more than time, to apply
the sound and holy persuasions of this apostolic man to
that part in us, which is not yet fully dispossessed of
an errour as absurd, as most that we deplore in our
blindest adversaries; and to let his authority and un-
answerable reasons be vulgarly known, that either his
name, or the force of his doctrine, may work a whole-
some effect. Lastly, I find it clear to be the author's
intention, that this point of divorcement should be held
and recoived as a most necessary and prime part of
discipline in every Christian government. And there-
* Nicol. Car, 'de obitu Buceri.
fore having reduced his model of reformation to fourteen
heads, he bestows almost as much time about this one
point of divorce, as about all the rest; which also was
the judgment of his heirs and learned friends in Ger-
many, best acquainted with his meaning ; who first
published this his book by Oporinus at Basil, (a city
for learning and constancy in the true faith honourable
among the first,) added a special note in the title, “that
there the reader should find the doctrine of divorce
handled so solidly, and so fully, as scarce the like in
any writer of that age :” and with this particular com-
mendation they doubted not to dedicate the book, as a
most profitable and exquisite discourse, to Christian
the IIId, a worthy and pious king of Denmark, as the
author himself had done before to our Edward the
VIth. Yet did not Bucer in that volume only declare
what his constant opinion was herein, but also in his
comment upon Matthew, written at Strasburgh divers
years before, he treats distinctly and copiously the
same argument in three several places; touches it also
upon the 7th to the Romans, and promises the same
solution more largely upon the first to the Corinthians,
omitting no occasion to weed out this last and deepest
mischief of the canon law, sown into the opinions of
modern men, against the laws and practice both of
God’s chosen people, and the best primitive times.
Wherein his faithfulness and powerful evidence pre-
vailed so far with all the church of Strasburgh, that
they published this doctrine of divorce as an article of
their confession, after they had taught so eight and
twenty years, through all those times, when that city
flourished, and excelled most, both in religion, learn-
ing, and government, under those first restorers of
the gospel there, Zelius, Hedio, Capito, Fagius, and
those who incomparably then governed the common-
wealth, Farrerus and Sturmius. If therefore God in
the former age found out a servant, and by whom he
had converted and reformed many a city, by him
thought good to restore the most needful doctrine of
divorce from rigorous and harmful mistakes on the
right hand; it can be no strange thing, if in this age
he stir up by whatsoever means whom it pleases him,
to take in hand and maintain the same assertion.
Certainly if it be in man's discerning to sever provi-
dence from chance, I could allege many instances,
wherein there would appear cause to esteem of me no
other than a passive instrument under some power and
counsel higher and better than can be human, working
to a general good in the whole course of this matter.
For that I owe no light, or leading received from any
man in the discovery of this truth, what time I first
undertook it in “the Doctrine and Discipline of Di-
vorce,” and had only the infallible grounds of Scripture
to be my guide ; he who tries the inmost heart, and
saw with what severe industry and examination of
myself I set down every period, will be my witness,
When I had almost finished the first edition, I chanced
to read in the notes of Hugo Grotius upon the 5th of
Matthew, whom I straight understood inclining to
reasonable terms in this controversy ; and something
162
THE JUDGMENT OF MARTIN BUCER,
he whispered rather than disputed about the law of
charity, and the true end of wedlock, Glad therefore
of such an able assistant, however at much distance, I
resolved at length to put off into this wild and calum-
nious world. For God, it seems, intended to prove me,
whether I durst alone take up a rightful cause against
a world of disesteem, and found I durst. My name I
did not publish, as not willing it should sway the reader
either for me or against me. But when I was told that
the style, which what it ails to be so soon distinguish-
able I cannot tell, was known by most men, and that
some of the clergy began to inveigh and exclaim on
what I was credibly informed they had not read ; I
took it then for my proper season, both to shew them a
name that could easily contemn such an indiscreet kind
of censure, and to reinforce the question with a more
accurate diligence : that if any of them would be so
good as to leave railing, and to let us hear so much of
his learning and christian wisdom, as will be strictly
demanded of him in his answering to this problem, care
was had he should not spend his preparations against
a nameless pamphlet. By this time I had learned that
Paulus Fagius, one of the chief divines in Germany,
sent for by Frederic the Palatine, to reform his domin-
ion, and after that invited hither in King Edward's
days, to be a professor of divinity in Cambridge, was
of the same opinion touching divorce, which these men
so lavishly traduced in me. What I found, I inserted
where fittest place was, thinking sure they would re-
spect so grave an author, at least to the moderating of
their odious inferences. And having now perfected a
second edition, I referred the judging thereof to your
high and impartial sentence, honoured lords and com-
mons! For I was conſident, if any thing generous, any
thing noble, and above the multitude, were left yet in
the spirit of England ; it could be no where sooner
found, and no where sooner understood, than in that
heuse of justice and true liberty, where ye sit in coun-
cil. Nor doth the event hitherto, for some reasons
which I shall not here deliver, ſail me of what I con-
ceived so highly. Nevertheless, being far otherwise
dealt with by some, of whose profession and supposed
knowledge I had better hope, and esteemed the deviser
of a new and permicious paradox; I felt no difference
within me from that peace and firmness of mind, which
is of nearest kin to patience and contentment: both for
that I knew I had divulged a truth linked inseparably
with the most fundamental rules of Christianity, to
stand or fall together, and was not uninformed, that
divers learned and judicious men testified their daily
approbation of the book. Yet at length it hath pleased
God, who had already given me satisfaction in myself,
to afford me now a means whereby I may be fully
justified also in the eyes of men. When the book had
been now the second time set forth well-nigh three
months, as I best remember, I then first came to hear
that Martin Bucer had written much concerning di-
vorce: whom, earnestly turning over, I soon perceived,
but not without amazement, in the same opinion, con-
firmed with the same reasons which in that published
book, without the help or imitation of any precedent
writer, I had laboured out, and laid together. Not but
that there is some difference in the handling, in the
order, and the number of arguments, but still agreeing
in the same conclusion. So as I may justly gratulate
mine own mind with due acknowledgment of assist-
ance from above, which led me, not as a learner, but
as a collateral teacher, to a sympathy of judgment
with no less a man than Martin Buccr. And he, if
our things here below arrive him where he is, does not
repent him to see that point of knowledge, which he
first and with an unchecked freedom preached to those
more knowing times of England, now found so neces-
sary, though what he admonished were lost out of our
memory; yet that God doth now again create the same
doctrine in another unwritten table, and raises it up
immediately out of his pure oracle to the convincement
of a perverse age, eager in the reformation of names
and ceremonies, but in realities as traditional and as
ignorant as their forefathers. I would ask now the
foremost of my profound accusers, whether they dare
affirm that to be licentious, new, and dangerous, which
Martin Bucer so often and so urgently avouched to be
most lawful, most necessary, and most christian, with-
out the least blemish to his good name, among all the
worthy men of that age, and since, who testify so highly
of him? If they dare, they must then set up an arrogance
of their own against all those churches and saints who
honoured him without this exception: if they dare not,
how can they now make that licentious doctrine in an-
other, which was never blamed or confuted in Bucer,
or in Fagius P. The truth is, there will be due to them
for this their unadvised rashness the best donative that
can be given them; I mean, a round reproof; now
that where they thought to be most magisterial, they
have displayed their own want, both of reading, and
of judgment. First, to be so unacquainted in the
writings of Bucer, which are so obvious and so useful
in their own faculty; next, to be so caught in a preju-
dicating weakness, as to condemn that for lewd, which
(whether they knew or not) these elect servants of
Christ commended for lawful; and for new, that which
was taught by these almost the first and greatest au-
thors of reformation, who were never taxed for so
teaching ; and dedicated without scruple to a royal
pair of the first reforming kings in christendom, and
confessed in the public confession of a most orthodoxical
church and state in Germany. This is also another
fault which I must tell them; that they have stood
now almost this whole year clamouring afar off, while
the book hath been twice printed, twice brought up,
and never once vouchsafed a friendly conference with
the author, who would be glad and thankful to be
shown an errour, either by private dispute, or public
answer, and could retract, as well as wise men before
him; might also be worth the gaining, as one who
heretofore hath dome good service to the church by
their own confession. Or if he be obstinate, their con-
futation would have rendered him without excuse, and
reclaimed others of no mean parts, who incline to his
opinion. But now their work is more than doubled;
and how they will hold up their heads against the
CONCERNING DIVORCE.
163
sudden aspect of these two great and reverend saints,
whom they have defamed, how they will make good
the censuring of that, for a novelty of licence, which
Bucer constantly taught to be a pure and holy law of
Christ's kingdom, let them advise. I’or against these
my adversaries, who, before the examining of a pro-
pounded truth in a fit time of reformation, have had the
conscience to oppose naught else but their blind re-
proaches and surmises, that a single innocence might
:lot be oppressed and overborn by a crew of mouths,
for the restoring of a law and doctrine falsely and un-
learnedly reputed new and scandalous; God, that I
may ever magnify and record this his goodness, hath
unexpectedly raised up as it were from the dead more
than one famous light of the first reformation, to bear
witness with me, and to do me honour in that very
thing, wherein these men thought to have blotted me;
and hath given them the proof of a capacity, which they
despised, running equal, and authentic with some of
their chiefest masters unthought of, and in a point of
sagest moment. However, if we know at all when to
ascribe the occurrences of this life to the work of a
special Providence, as nothing is more usual in the
talk of good men, what can be more like to a special
Providence of God, than in the first reformation of
England, that this question of divorce, as a main thing
to be restored to just freedom, was written, and seri-
ously commended to Edward the VIth, by a man called
from another country to be the instructor of our na-
tion; and now in this present renewing of the church
and commonwealth, which we pray may be more
lasting, that the same question should be again treated
and presented to this parliament, by one enabled to
use the same reasons without the least sight or know-
ledge of what was done before ? It were no trespass,
lords and commons ! though something of less note
were attributed to the ordering of a heavenly power;
this question therefore of such prime concernment both
to christian and civil welfare, in such an extraordinary
manner, not recovered, but plainly twice born to these
latter ages, as from a divine hand I tender to your ac-
ceptance, and most considerate thoughts. Think not
that God raised up in vain a man of greatest authority
in the church, to tell a trivial and licentious tale in the
ears of that good prince, and to bequeath it as his last
will and testament, may rather as the testament and
royal law of Christ, to this nation; or that it should of
itself, after so many years, as it were in a new field
where it was never sown, grow up again as a vicious
plant in the mind of another, who had spoke homestest
things to the nation; though he knew not that what his
youth then reasoned without a pattern had been heard
already, and well allowed from the gravity and worth
of Martin Bucer: till meeting with the envy of men
ignorant in their own undertaken calling, God directed
him to the forgotten writings of this faithful evange-
list, to be his defence and warrant against the gross
imputation of broaching licence. Ye are now in the
glorious way to high virtue, and matchless deeds, trust-
ed with a most inestimable trust, the asserting of our
just liberties. Ye have a nation that expects now, and
M
from mighty sufferings aspires to be the example of all
christendom to a perfectest reforming. Dare to be as
great, as ample, and as eminent in the fair progress of
your noble designs, as the full and goodly stature of
truth and excellence itself; as unlimited by petty pre-
cedents and copies, as your unquestionable calling from
Heaven gives ye power to be. What are all our public
immunities and privileges worth, and how shall it be
judged, that we fight for them with minds worthy to
enjoy them, if we suffer ourselves in the mean while
not to understand the most important freedom, that
God and nature hath given us in the family; which
no wise nation ever wanted, till the popery and super-
stition of some former ages attempted to remove and
alter divine and most prudent laws for human and
most imprudent canons : whereby good men in the
best portion of their lives, and in that ordinance of God
which entitles them from the beginning to most just
and requisite contentments, are compelled to civil in-
dignities, which by the law of Moses bad men were not
compelled to ? Be not bound about, and straitened in
the spacious wisdom of your free spirits, by the scanty
and unadequate and inconsistent principles of such as
condemn others for adhering to traditions, and are them-
selves the prostrate worshippers of custom ; and of
such a tradition as they can deduce from no antiquity,
but from the rudest and thickest barbarism of anti-
christian times. But why do I anticipate the more ac-
ceptable and prevailing voice of learned Bucer himself,
the pastor of nations 2 And O that I could set him liv-
ing before ye in that doctrinal chair, where once the
learnedest of England thought it no disparagement to
sit at his feet! He would be such a pilot, and such a
father to ye, as ye would soon find the difference of his
hand and skill upon the helm of reformation. Nor do
I forget that faithful associate of his labours, Paulus
Fagius; for these their great names and merits, how
precious soever, God hath now joined with me neces-
sarily, in the good or evil report of this doctrine, which
I leave with you. It was written to a religious king
of this land; written earnestly as a main matter where-
in this kingdom needed a reform, if it purposed to be
the kingdom of Christ: written by him, who if any,
since the days of Luther, merits to be counted the apos-
tle of the church : whose unwearied pains and watch-
ing for our sakes, as they spent him quickly here among
us, so did they, during the shortness of his life, incre-
dibly promote the gospel throughout this realm. The
authority, the learning, the godliness of this man con-
sulted with, is able to outbalance all that the lightness
of a vulgar opposition can bring to counterpoise. I
leave him also as my complete surety and testimonial,
if truth be not the best witness to itself, that what I
formerly presented to your reading on this subject,
was good, and just, and honest, not licentious. Not
that I have now more confidence by the addition of
these great authors to my party: for what I wrote
was not my opinion, but my knowledge; even then
when I could trace no footstep in the way I went :
nor that I think to win upon your apprehensions with
numbers and with mames, rather than with reasons;
164
THE JUDGMENT OF MARTIN BUCER,
yet certainly the worst of my detractors will not except
against so good a bail of my integrity and judgment,
as now appears for me. They must else put in the
fame of Bucer and of Fagius, as my accomplices and
confederates, into the same indictment; they must dig
up the good name of these prime worthies, (if their
names could be ever buried,) they must dig them up
and brand them as the papists did their bodies; and
those their pure unblamable spirits, which live not
only in heaven, but in their writings, they must attaint
with new attaintures, which no protestant ever before
aspersed them with. Or if perhaps we may obtain to
get our appeachment new drawn a writ of errour, not
of libertimism, that those two principal readers of refor-
mation may not now come to be sued in a bill of
licence, to the scandal of our chureh; the brief result
will be, that for the errour, if their own works be not
thought sufficient to defend them, their lives yet, who
will be ready, in a fair and christianly discussive way,
to debate and sift this matter to the utmost ounce of
learning and religion, in him that shall lay it as an
errour, either upon Martin Bucer, or any other of his
opinion. If this be not enough to qualify my tra-
ducers, and that they think it more for the wisdom of their
virulence, not to recant the injuries they have bespoke
me, I shall not, for much more disturbance than they
can bring me, intermit the prosecution of those
thoughts, which may render me best serviceable, either
to this age, or, if it so happen, to posterity; following
the fair path, which your illustrious exploits, ho-
noured lords and commons ! against the breast of
tyranny have opened; and depending so on your
happy successes in the hopes that I have conceived
either of myself, or of the nation, as must needs
conclude me one who most affectionately wishes and
awaits the prosperous issue of your noble and valorous
counsels.
John MILTON.
THE
JUDGMENT OF MARTIN BUCER, TOUCHING D.IVORCE:
TAKEN out of THE second Book ENTITLED, “of the KINGDOM OF CHRIST,” written BY MARTIN BUCeR to EDwARD THE
SIXTH, KING OF ENGLAND.
CHAP. XV.
The seventh law of the sanctifying and ordering of
marriage. That the ordering of marriage belongs
to the civil power. That the popes have evaded by
fraud and force the ordering of marriage.
Besides these things, Christ our king, and his
churches, require from your sacred majesty, that you
would take upon you the just care of marriages. For
it is unspeakable how many good consciences are
hereby entangled, afflicted, and in danger, because
there are no just laws, no speedy way constituted ac-
cording to God’s word, touching this holy society and
fountain of mankind. For seeing matrimony is a civil
thing, men, that they may rightly contract, inviolably
keep, and not without extreme necessity dissolve mar-
riage, are not only to be taught by the doctrine and
discipline of the church, but also are to be acquitted,
aided, and compelled by laws and judicature of the
commonwealth. Which thing pious emperors acknow-
ledging, and therein framing themselves to the law of
nations, gave laws both of contracting and preserving,
and also where an unhappy need required, of divorcing
marriages. As may be seen in the code of Justinian,
+
the 5th book, from the beginning through twenty-four
titles. And in the authentic of Justinian the 22d, and
some others.
But the Antichrists of Rome, to get the imperial
power into their own hands, first by fraudulent persua-
sion, afterwards by force, drew to themselves the whole
authority of determining and judging as well in matri-
monial causes, as in most other matters. Therefore it
hath been long believed, that the care and government
thereof doth not belong to the civil magistrate. Yet
where the gospel of Christ is received, the laws of An-
tichrist should be rejected. If therefore kings and go-
vernors take not this care, by the power of law and
justice, to provide that marriages be piously contracted,
religiously kept, and lawfully dissolved, if need require,
who sees not what confusion and trouble is brought
upon this holy society; and what a rack is prepared,
even for many of the best consciences, while they have
no certain laws to follow, no justice to implore, if any
intolerable thing happen? And how much it concerns
the honour and safety of the commonwealth, that mar-
riages, according to the will of Christ, be made, main-
tained, and not without just cause dissolved, who
understands not P For unless that first and holiest
society of man and woman be purely constituted, that
CONCERNING DIVORCE.
|65
household discipline may be upheld by them according
to God's law, how can we expect a race of good men P
Let your majesty therefore know, that this is your
duty, and in the first place, to reassume to yourself the
just ordering of matrimony, and by firm laws to
establish and defend the religion of this first and divine
society among men, as all wise lawgivers of old, and
christian emperors, have carefully done.
The two next chapters, because they chiefly treat
about the degrees of consanguinity and affinity, I omit;
only setting down a passage or two concerning the ju-
dicial laws of Moses, how fit they be for Christians to
imitate rather than any other.
CHAP. XVII, towards the end.
I confess that we, being free in Christ, are not
bound to the civil laws of Moses in every circumstance ;
yet seeing no laws can be more honest, just, and whole-
some, than those which God himself gave, who is eter-
nal wisdom and goodness, I see not why Christians, in
things which no less appertain to them, ought not to
follow the laws of God, rather than of any men. We
are not to use circumcision, sacrifice, and those bodily
washings prescribed to the Jews; yet by these things
we may rightly learn, with what purity and devotion
both baptism and the Lord's supper should be ad-
ministered and received. How much more is it our duty
to observe diligently what the Lord hath commanded,
and taught by the examples of his people concerning
marriage, whereof we have the use no less than they !
And because this same worthy author hath another
passage to this purpose, in his comment upon Matthew,
chap. v. 19, I here insert it from p. 46.
Since we have need of civil laws, and the power of
punishing, it will be wisest not to contemn those
given by Moses; but seriously rather to consider
what the meaning of God was in them, what he chiefly
required, and how much it might be to the good of
every nation, if they would borrow thence their man-
ner of governing the commonwealth; yet freely all
things and with the Spirit of Christ. For what Solon,
or Plato, or Aristotle, what lawyers or Caesars could
make better laws than God 8 And it is no light argu-
ment, that many magistrates at this day do not enough
acknowledge the kingdom of Christ, though they
would seem most christian, in that they govern their
states by laws so diverse from those of Moses.
The 18th chapter I only mention as determining a
thing not here in question, that marriage without con-
sent of parents ought not to be held good; yet with
this qualification fit to be known.
That if parents admit not the honest desires of their
children, but shall persist to abuse the power they have
over them; they are to be mollified by admonitions,
entreaties, and persuasions, first of their friends and
kindred, next of the church-elders. Whom if still the
hard parents refuse to hear, then ought the magistrate
to interpose his power: lest any by the evil mind of
their parents be detained from marriage longer than is
meet, or forced to an unworthy match : in which case
the Roman laws also provided. C. de Nupt. l. 1 1,
13, 26.
CHAP. XIX.
Whether it may be permitted to revoke the promise of
marriage.
HERE ariseth another question concerning contracts,
when they ought to be unchangeable f for religious
emperors decreed, that the contract was not indissolu-
ble, until the spouse were brought home, and the so-
lemnities performed. They thought it a thing un-
worthy of divine and human equity, and the due con-
sideration of man's infirmity in deliberating and de-
termining, when space is given to renounce other con-
tracts of much less moment, which are not yet con-
firmed before the magistrate, to deny that to the most
weighty contract of marriage, which requires the great-
est care and consultation. Yet lest such a covenant
should be broken for no just cause, and to the injury
of that person to whom marriage was promised, they
decreed a fine, that he who denied marriage to whom
he had promised, and for some cause not approved by
the judges, should pay the double of that pledge which
was given at making sure, or as much as the judge
should pronounce might satisfy the damage, or the
hinderance of either party. It being most certain,
that ofttimes after contract just and honest causes of
departing from promise come to be known and found
out, it cannot be other than the duty of pious princes,
to give men the same liberty of unpromising in these
cases, as pious emperors granted: especially where
there is only a promise, and not carnal knowledge.
And as there is no true marriage between them, who
agree not in true consent of mind; so it will be the
part of godly magistrates, to procure that no matri-
mony be among their subjects, but what is knit with
love and consent. And though your majesty be not
bound to the imperial laws, yet it is the duty of a
christian king, to embrace and follow whatever he
knows to be any where piously and justly constituted,
and to be honest, just, and well-pleasing to his people.
But why in God’s law and the examples of his saints
nothing hereof is read, no marvel; seeing his ancient
people had power, yea a precept, that whoso could not
bend his mind to the true love of his wife, should give
her a bill of divorce, and send her from him, though
after carnal knowledge and long dwelling together.
This is enough to authorize a godly prince in that in-
dulgence which he gives to the changing of a con-
tract; both because it is certainly the invention of
Antichrist, that the promise of marriage de praesenti,
as they call it, should be indissoluble, and because it
should be a prince's care, that matrimony be so joined,
as God ordained; which is, that every one should love
his wife with such a love as Adam expressed to Eve:
so as we may hope, that they who marry may become
one flesh, and one also in the Lord.
CHAP. XX.
Concerns only the celebration of marriage.
166
THE JUDGMENT OF MARTIN BUCER,
CHAP. XXI.
The means of preserving marriage holy and pure.
Now since there ought not to be less care, that mar-
riage be religiously kept, than that it be piously and
deliberately contracted, it will be meet, that to every
church be ordained certain grave and godly men, who
may have this care upon them, to observe whether the
husband bear himself wisely toward the wife, loving,
and inciting her to all piety, and the other duties of
this life; and whether the wife be subject to her hus-
band, and study to be truly a meet help to him, as first
to all godliness, so to every other use of life. And if
they shall find each to other failing of their duty, or
the one long absent from the other without just and
urgent cause, or giving suspicion of irreligious and
impure life, or of living in manifest wickedness, let it
be admonished them in time. And if their authority
be contemned, let the names of such contemmers be
brought to the magistrate, who may use punishment
to compel such violators of marriage to their duty, that
they may abstain from all probable suspicion of trans-
gressing; and if they admit of suspected company, the
magistrate is to forbid them; whom they not therein
obeying, are to be punished as adulterers, according to
the law of Justinian, Authent. 117. For if holy wed-
lock, the fountain and seminary of good subjects, be
not vigilantly preserved from all blots and disturbances,
what can be hoped, as I said before, of the springing
up of good men, and a right reformation of the com-
monwealth 2 We know it is not enough for Christians
to abstain from foul deeds, but from the appearance
and suspicion thereof.
CHAP. XXII.
Of lawful divorce, what the ancient churches have
thought.
Now we shall speak about that dissolving of matri-
mony, which may be approved in the sight of God, if
any grievous necessity require. In which thing the
Roman antichrists have knit many a pernicious entan-
glement to distressed consciences: for that they might
here also exalt themselves above God, as if they would
be wiser and chaster than God himself is; for no cause,
honest or necessary, will they permit a final divorce:
in the mean while, whoredoms and adulteries, and worse
things than these, not only tolerating in themselves
and others, but cherishing and throwing men headlong
into these evils. For although they also disjoin mar-
ried persons from board and bed, that is, from all con-
jugal society and communion, and this not only for
adultery, but for ill usage, and matrimonial duties de-
nied; yet they forbid those thus parted, to join in wed-
lock with others: but, as I said before, any dishonest
associating they permit. And they pronounce the
bond of marriage to remain between those whom they
have thus separated. As if the bond of marriage, God
so teaching and pronouncing, were not such a league
as binds the married couple to all society of life, and
communion in divine and human things; and so asso-
ciated keeps them. Something indeed out of the later
fathers they may pretend for this their tyranny, especi-
ally out of Austria and some others, who were much
taken with a preposterous admiration of single life;
yet though these fathers, from the words of Christ not
rightly understood, taught that it was unlawful to
marry again, while the former wife lived, whatever
cause there had been either of desertion or divorce; yet
if we mark the custom of the church, and the common
judgment which both in their times and afterward pre-
vailed, we shall perceive, that neither these fathers did
ever cast out of the church any one for marrying after
a divorce, approved by the imperial laws.
Nor only the first christian emperors, but the latter
also, even to Justinian and after him, did grant for
certain causes approved by judges, to make a true di-
vorce; which made and confirmed by law, it might be
lawful to marry again; which if it could not have been
done without displeasing Christ and his church, surely
it would not have been granted by christian emperors,
nor had the fathers then winked at those doings in the
emperors. Hence ye may see that Jerome also, though
zealous of single life more than enough, and such a
condemner of second marriage, though after the death
of either party, yet, forced by plain equity, defended
Fabiola, a noble matron of Rome, who, having refused
her husband for just causes, was married to another.
For that the sending of a divorce to her husband was
not blameworthy, he affirms because the man was hei-
nously vicious; and that if an adulterer's wife may be
discarded, an adulterous husband is not to be kept.
But that she married again, while yet her husband was
alive; he defends in that the apostle hath said, “It is
better to marry than to burn;” and that young widows
should marry, for such was Fabiola, and could not re-
main in widowhood.
But some one will object, that Jerome there adds,
“Neither did she know the vigour of the gospel, wherein
all cause of marrying is debarred from women, while
their husbands live; and again, while she avoided
many wounds of Satan, she received one ere she was
aware.” But let the equal reader mind also what went
before; “Because,” saith he, soon after the beginning,
“there is a rock and storm of slanderers opposed before
her, I will not praise her converted, unless I first ab-
solve her guilty.” For why does he call them slander-
ers, who accused Fabiola of marrying again, if he did
not judge it a matter of christian equity and charity, to
pass by and pardon that fact, though in his own opinion
he held it a fault P And what can this mean, “I will
not praise her, unless I first absolve her f" For how
could he absolve her, but by proving that Fabiola, nei-
ther in rejecting her vicious husband, nor in marrying
another, had committed such a sin, as could be justly
condemned P Nay, he proves both by evident reason,
and clear testimonies of Scripture, that she avoided sin.
This is also hence understood, that Jerome by the
vigour of the gospel, meant that height and perfection
of our Saviour's precept, which might be remitted to
those that burn; for he adds, “But if she be accused
in that she remained not unmarried. I shall confess the
CONCERNING DIVORCE.
167
fault, so I may relate the necessity.” If then he ac-
knowledged a necessity, as he did, because she was
young, and could not live in widowhood, certainly he
could not impute her second marriage to her much
blame : but when he excuses her out of the word of
God, does he not openly declare his thoughts, that the
second marriage of Fabiola was permitted her by the
Holy Ghost himself, for the necessity which he suffered,
and to shun the danger of fornication, though she went
somewhat aside from the vigour of the gospel But if
any urge, that Fabiola did public penance for her
second marriage, which was not imposed but for great
faults; it is answered, she was not enjoined to this
penance, but did it of her own accord, “and not till
after her second husband's death.” As in the time of
Cyprian, we read that many were wont to do voluntary
penance for small faults, which were not liable to ex-
COmmunication.
CHAP. XXIII.
That marriage was granted by the ancient fathers,
even after the vow of single life.
I omit his testimonies out of Cyprian, Gellasius, Epi-
phanius, contented only to relate what he thence
collects to the present purpose.
SoME will say perhaps, wherefore all this concerning
marriage after vow of single life, whenas the question
was of marriage after divorce P For this reason, that
they whom it so much moves, because some of the
fathers thought marriage after any kind of divorce to
be condemned of our Saviour, may see that this con-
clusion follows not. The fathers thought all marriage
after divorce to be forbidden of our Saviour, therefore
they thought such marriage was not to be tolerated in
a Christian. For the same fathers judged it forbidden
to marry after vow ; yet such marriages they neither
dissolved nor excommunicated : for these words of our
Saviour, and of the Holy Ghost, stood in their way;
“All cannot receive this saying, but they to whom it is
given. Every one hath his proper gift from God, one
after this manner, another after that. It is better to
marry than to burn. I will that younger widows
marry;” and the like.
So there are many canons and laws extant, whereby
priests, if they married, were removed from their office,
yet is it not read that their marriage was dissolved, as
the papists now-a-days do, or that they were excommu-
nicated, may expressly they might communicate as lay-
men. If the consideration of human infirmity, and
those testimonies of divine scripture which grant mar-
riage to every one that wants it, persuaded those fathers
to bear themselves so humanely toward them who had
married with breach of vow to God, as they believed,
and with divorce of that marriage wherein they were
in a manner joined to God; who doubts, but that the
same fathers held the like humanity was to be afforded
to those, who after divorce and faith broken with men,
as they thought, entered into a second marriage P For
among such are also found no less weak, and no less
burning. -
CHAP. XXIV.
Who of the ancient fathers have granted marriage
after divorce.
This is clear both by what hath been said, and by
that which Origen relates of certain bishops in his
time, Homil. 7, in Matt. “I know some,” saith he,
“which are over churches, who without Scripture have
permitted the wife to marry while her former husband
lived. And did this against Scripture, which saith, the
wife is bound to her husband so long as he lives; and
she shall be called an adulteress, if her husband living,
she take another man; yet did they not permit this
without cause, perhaps for the infirmity of such as had
not continence, they permitted evil to avoid worse.”
Ye see Origen and the doctors of his age, not without
all cause, permitted women after divorce to marry,
though their former husbands were living ; yet writes
that they permitted against Scripture. But what cause
could they have to do so, unless they thought our Sa-
viour in his precepts of divorce had so forbidden, as
willing to remit such perfection to his weaker ones,
cast into danger of worse faults 2
The same thought Leo, bishop of Rome, Ep. 85, to
the African bishops of Mauritania Caesariensis, wherein
complaining of a certain priest, who divorcing his wife,
or being divorced by her, as other copies have it, had
married another, neither dissolves the matrimony, nor
excommunicates him, only unpriests him. The fathers
therefore, as we see, did not simply and wholly con-
demn marriage after divorce.
But as for me, this remitting of our Saviour's pre-
cepts, which these ancients allow to the infirm in marry-
ing aſter vow and divorce, I can in no ways admit;
for whatsoever plainly consents not with the command-
ment, cannot, I am certain, be permitted, or suffered in
any Christian : for heaven and earth shall pass away,
but not a tittle from the commandments of God among
them who expect life eternal. Let us therefore con-
sider, and weigh the words of our Lord concerning
marriage and divorce, which he pronounced both by
himself, and by his apostle, and let us compare them
with other oracles of God; for whatsoever is contrary
to these, I shall not persuade the least tolerating
thereof. But if it can be taught to agree with the
word of God, yea to be commanded, that most men
may have permission given them to divorce and marry
again, I must prefer the authority of God's word be-
fore the opinion of fathers and doctors, as they them-
selves teach.
CHAP. XXV.
The words of our Lord, and of the Holy Ghost, by the
Apostle Paul concerning divorce, are explained. The
1st Aviom, that Christ could not condemn of adu'tery,
that which he once commanded.
BUT the words of our Lord, and of the Holy Ghost,
out of which Austin and some others of the fathers
think it concluded, that our Saviour forbids marriage
168
THE JUDGMENT OF MARTIN BUCER,
after any divorce, are these; Matt. v. 31, 32, “It hath
been said,” &c.; and Matt. xix. 7, “They say unto him,
why did Moses then command,” &c.; and Mark X, and
Luke xvi. Rom. vii. 1, 2, 3, 1 Cor. vii. 10, 11. Hence
therefore they conclude, that all marriage after divorce
is called adultery; which to commit, being no ways to
be tolerated in any Christian, they think it follows, that
second marriage is in no case to be permitted either to
the divorcer, or to the divorced.
But that it may be more fully and plainly perceived
what force is in this kind of reasoning, it will be the
best course, to lay down certain grounds whereof no
Christian can doubt the truth. First, it is a wickedness
to suspect, that our Saviour branded that for adultery,
which himself, in his own law which he came to fulfil,
and not to dissolve, did not only permit, but also com-
mand; for by him, the only mediator, was the whole
law of God given. But that by this law of God mar-
riage was permitted after any divorce, is certain by
Deut. xxiv. 1.
CHAP. XXVI.
That God in his law did not only grant, but also com-
mand divorce to certain mem.
DEUT. xxiv. 1, “When a man hath taken a wife,”
&c. But in Mal. ii. 15, 16, is read the Lord's com-
mand to put her away whom a man hates, in these
words: “Take heed to your spirit, and let none deal
injuriously against the wife of his youth. If he hate,
let him put away, saith the Lord God of Israel. And
he shall hide thy violence with his garment,” that mar-
ries her divorced by thee, “ saith the Lord of hosts;
but take heed to your spirit, and do no injury.” By
these testimonies of the divine law, we see, that the
Lord did not only permit, but also expressly and ear-
nestly commanded his people, by whom he would that
all holiness and faith of marriage covenant should be
observed, that he, who could not induce his mind to
love his wife with a true conjugal love, might dismiss
her, that she might marry to another.
CHAP. XXVII.
That what the Lord permitted and commanded to
his ancient people concerning divorce belongs also to
Christians.
Now what the Lord permitted to his first-born peo-
ple, that certainly he could not forbid to his own among
the Gentiles, whom he made coheirs, and into one body
with his people; nor could he ever permit, much less
command, aught that was not good for them, at least
so used as he commanded. For being God, he is not
changed as man. Which thing who seriously con-
siders, how can he imagine, that God would make
that wicked to them that believe, and serve him under
grace, which he granted and commanded to them that
served him under the law P. Whenas the same causes
require the same permission. And who that knows
but human matters, and loves the truth, will deny that
many marriages hang as ill together now, as ever they
* Matthew v. 34.
did among the Jews P So that such marriages are liker
to torments than true marriages. As therefore the
Lord doth always succour and help the oppressed, so
he would ever have it provided for injured husbands
and wives, that under pretence of the marriage bond,
they be not sold to perpetual vexations, instead of the
loving and comfortable marriage duties. And lastly,
as God doth always detest hypocrisy and fraud, so nei.
ther doth he approve that among his people, that
should be counted marriage, wherein none of those
duties remain, whereby the league of wedlock is
chiefly preserved. What inconsiderate neglect then of
God’s law is this, that I may not call it worse, to hold
that Christ our Lord would not grant the same reme-
dies both of divorce and second marriage to the weak,
or to the evil, if they will needs have it so, but espe-
cially to the innocent and wronged; whenas the same
urgent causes remain as before, when the discipline of
the church and magistrate hath tried what may be tried?
CHAP. XXVIII.
That our Lord Christ intended not to make new laws
of marriage and divorce, or of any civil matters.
Aariom 2.
It is agreed by all who determine of the kingdom
and offices of Christ by the Holy Scriptures, as all
godly men ought to do, that our Saviour upon earth
took not on him either to give new laws in civil affairs,
or to change the old. But it is certain, that matri-
mony and divorce are civil things. Which the chris-
tian emperors knowing, gave conjugal laws, and re-
served the administration of them to their own courts;
which no true ancient bishop ever condemned.
Our Saviour came to preach repentance and remis-
sion: seeing therefore those, who put away their wives
without any just cause, were not touched with con-
science of the sin, through misunderstanding of the
law, he recalled them to a right interpretation, and
taught, that the woman in the beginning was so joined
to the man, that there should be a perpetual union
both in body and spirit: where this is not, the matri-
mony is already broke, before there be yet any divorce
made, or second marriage. -
CHAP. XXIX.
That it is wicked to strain the words of Christ beyond
their purpose.
This is his third Axiom, whereof there needs no ex-
plication here.
CHAP. XXX.
That all places of Scripture about the same thing are
to be joined, and compared, to avoid contradictions.
Ariom 4.
This he demonstrates at large out of sundry places in
the gospel, and principally by that precept against
swearing,” which, compared with many places of the
law and prophets, is a flat contradiction of them all,
CONCERNING DIVORCE.
169
if we follow superstitiousl., the letter. Then having
repeated briefly his four axioms, he thus proceeds.
THESE things thus preadmonished, let us inquire
what the undoubted meaning is of our Saviour's words,
and inquire according to the rule which is observed by
all learned and good men in their expositions; that
praying first to God, who is the only opener of our
hearts, we may first with fear and reverence consider
well the words of our Saviour touching this question.
Next, that we may compare them with all other places
of Scripture treating of this matter, to see how they con-
sent with our Saviour's words, and those of his apostle.
CHAP. XXXI.
This chapter disputes against Austin and the pa-
pists, who deny second marriage even to them who di-
vorce in case of adultery; which because it is not con-
troverted among true protestants, but that the inno-
cent person is easily allowed to marry, I spare the
translating.
CHAP. XXXII.
That a manifest adulteress ought to be divorced, and
cannot lawfully be retained in marriage by any true
Christian.
THIs though he prove sufficiently, yet I let pass,
because this question was not handled in the Doctrine
and Discipline of Divorce; to which book I bring so
much of this treatise as runs parallel.
CHAP. XXXIII.
That adultery is to be punished with death.
THIS chapter also I omit for the reason last alleged.
CHAP. XXXIV.
That it is lawful for a wife to leave an adulterer, and
to marry another husband.
THIS is generally granted, and therefore excuses me
the writing out.
CHAP. XXXV.
Places in the writings of the apostle Paul, touching
divorce, explained.
LET us consider the answers of the Lord given by
the apostle severally. Concerning the first, which is
Rom. vii. 1, “Know ye not, brethren, for I speak to
them that know the law, &c. Ver. 2, The woman is
bound by the law to her husband so long as he liveth.”
Here it is certain, that the Holy Ghost had no purpose
to determine aught of marriage, or divorce, but only to
bring an example from the common and ordinary law
of wedlock, to shew, that as no covenant holds either
party being dead, so now that we are not bound to the
law, but to Christ our Lord, seeing that through him
we are dead to sin, and to the law; and so joined to
Christ, that we may bring forth fruit in him from a
willing godliness, and not by the compulsion of law,
whereby our sins are more excited, and become more
violent. What therefore the Holy Spirit here speaks of
matrimony cannot be extended beyond the general
rule.
Besides it is manifest, that the apostle did allege the
law of wedlock, as it was delivered to the Jews; for,
saith he, “I speak to them that know the law.” They
knew no law of God, but that by Moses, which plainly
grants divorce for several reasons. It cannot therefore
be said, that the apostle cited this general example out
of the law, to abolish the several exceptions of that law,
which God himself granted by giving authority to
divorce.
Next, when the apostle brings an example out of
God’s law concerning man and wife, it must be neces-
sary, that we understand such for man and wife, as are
so indeed according to the same law of God; that is,
who are so disposed, as that they are both willing and
able to perform the necessary duties of marriage; not
those who, under a false title of marriage, keep them-
selves mutually bound to injuries and disgraces; for
such twain are nothing less than lawful man and wife.
The like answer is to be given to all other places
both of the gospel and the apostle, that whatever ex-
ception may be proved out of God's law, be not ex-
cluded from those places. For the Spirit of God doth
not condemn things formerly granted and allowed,
where there is like cause and reason. Hence Am-
brose, upon that place, I Cor. vii. 15, “A brother or a
sister is not under bondage in such cases,” thus ex-
pounds; “The reverence of marriage is not due to
him who abhors the author of marriage; nor is that
marriage ratified, which is without devotion to God:
he sins not therefore, who is put away for God's
cause, though he join himself to another. For the
dishonour of thre Creator dissolves the right of matri-
mony to him who is deserted, that he be not accused,
though marrying to another. The faith of wedlock is
not to be kept with him who departs, that he might
not hear the God of Christians to be the author of wed-
lock. For if Ezra caused the misbelieving wives and
husbands to be divorced, that God might be appeased,
and not offended, though they took others of their own
faith, how much more shall it be free, if the misbe-
liever depart, to marry one of our own religion. For
this is not to be counted matrimony, which is against
the law of God.”
Two things are here to be observed toward the fol-
lowing discourse, which truth itself and the force of
God’s word hath drawn from this holy man. For
those words are very large, “ Matrimony is not rati-
fied, without devotion to God.” And “the dishonour
of the Creator dissolves the right of matrimony.” For
devotion is far off, and dishonour is done to God by all
who persist in any wickedness and heinous crime.
CHAP. XXXVI.
That although it seem in the Gospel, as if our Saviour
granted divorce only for adultery, yet in very deed
he granted it for other causes also.
Now is to be dealt with this question, whether it
be lawful to divorce and marry again for other causes
170
THE JUDGMENT OF MARTIN BUCER,
besides adultery, since our Saviour expressed that only *
To this question, if we retain our principles already
laid, and must acknowledge it to be a cursed blas-
phemy, if we say that the words of God do contradict
one another, of necessity we must confess, that our
Lord did grant divorce, and marriage after that, for
other causes besides adultery, notwithstanding what
he said in Matthew. For first, they who consider but
only that place, 1 Cor. vii. which treats of believers
and misbelievers matched together, must of force con-
fess, That our Lord granted just divorce and second
marriage in the cause of desertion, which is other than
the cause of fornication. And if there be one other
cause found lawful, then is it most true, that divorce
was granted not only for fornication.
Next, it cannot be doubted, as I shewed before, by
them to whom it is given to know God and his judg-
ments out of his own word, but that, what means of
peace and safety God ever granted and ordained to his
elected people, the same he grants and ordains to men
of all ages, who have equally need of the same reme-
dies. And who, that is but a knowing man, dares say
there be not husbands and wives now to be found in
such a hardness of heart, that they will not perform
either conjugal affection, or any requisite duty thereof,
though it be most deserved at their hands 2
Neither can any one defer to confess, but that God,
whose property it is to judge the cause of them that
suffer injury, hath provided for innocent and honest
persons wedded, how they might free themselves by
lawful means of divorce, from the bondage and iniquity
of those who are falsely termed their husbands or their
wives. This is clear out of Deut. xxiv. 1; Malachi ii.;
Matt. xix. 1 ; 1 Cor. vii.; and out of those principles,
which the Scripture every where teaches, that God
changes not his mind, dissents not from himself, is no
accepter of persons; but allows the same remedies to
all men oppressed with the same necessities and infirm-
ities; yea, requires that we should use them. This he
will easily perceive, who considers these things in the
Spirit of the Lord.
Lastly, it is most certain, that the Lord hath com-
manded us to obey the civil laws, every one of his own
commonwealth, if they be not against the laws of God.
CHAP. XXXVII.
For what causes divorce is permitted by the civil law
ea, l. Consensu Codic. de Repudiis.
It is also manifest, that the law of Theodosius and
Valentinian, which begins “Consensu,” &c. touching
divorce, and many other decrees of pious emperors
agreeing herewith, are not contrary to the word of
God; and therefore may be recalled into use by any
christian prince or commonwealth; nay, ought to be
with due respect had to every nation: for whatsoever
is equal and just, that in every thing is to be sought
and used by Christians. Hence it is plain, that divorce
is granted by divine approbation, both to husbands and
to wives, if either party can convict the other of these
following offences before the magistrate.
If the husband can prove the wife to be an adulteress,
a witch, a murderess; to have bought or sold to slavery
any one ſreeborn, to have violated sepulchres, commit-
ted sacrilege, favoured thieves and robbers, desirous of
feasting with strangers, the husband not knowing, or
not willing ; if she lodge forth without a just and pro-
bable cause, or frequent theatres and sights, he forbid-
ding ; if she be privy with those that plot against the
state, or if she deal falsely, or offer blows. And if the
wife can prove her husband guilty of any those fore-
named crimes, and frequent the company of lewd
women in her sight; or if he beat her, she had the like
liberty to quit herself; with this difference, that the
man after divorce might forth with marry again; the
woman not till a year after, lest she might chance to
have conceived.
CHAP. XXXVIII.
An exposition of those places wherein God declares the
nature of holy wedlock.
Now to the end it may be seen, that this agrees with
the divine law, the first institution of marriage is to be
considered, and those texts in which God established
the joining of male and female, and described the
duties of them both. When God had determined to
make woman, and give her as a wife to man, he spake
thus, Gen. ii. 18, “It is not good for man to be alone,
I will make him a help meet for him. And Adam said,”
but in the Spirit of God, v. 23, 24, “This is now bone
of my bone, and flesh of my flesh: Therefore shall a
man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave to
his wife, and they shall be one flesh.”
To this first institution did Christ recall his own ;
when answering the Pharisees, he condemned the
licence of unlawful divorce. He taught therefore by
his example, that we, according to this first institution,
and what God hath spoken thereof, ought to determine
what kind of covenant marriage is, how to be kept, and
how far; and lastly, for what causes to be dissolved.
To which decrees of God these also are to be joined,
which the Holy Ghost hath taught by his apostle, that
neither the husband nor the wife “hath power of their
own body, but mutually each of either’s.” That “the
husband shall love the wife as his own body, yea as
Christ loves his church; and that the wife ought to be
subject to her husband, as the church is to Christ.”
By these things the nature of holy wedlock is cer-
tainly known; whereof if only one be wanting in both
or either party, and that either by obstinate malevo-
lence, or too deep inbred weakness of mind, or lastly,
through incurable impotence of body, it cannot then
be said, that the covenant of matrimony holds good
between such ; if we mean that covenant, which God
instituted and called marriage, and that whereof only
it must be understood that our Saviour said, “Those
whom God hath joined, let no man separate.”
And hence is concluded, that matrimony requires
continual cohabitation and living together, unless the
calling of God be otherwise evident; which union if
the parties themselves disjoin either by mutual consent,
CONCERNING D.IVORCE.
171
or one against the other's will depart, the marriage is
then broken. Wherein the papists, as in other things,
oppose themselves against God; while they separate
for many causes from bed and board, and yet will have
the bond of matrimony remain, as if this covenant
could be other than the conjunction and communion
not only of bed and board, but of all other loving and
helpful duties. This we may see in these words; “I
will make him a help meet for him ; bone of his bone,
and flesh of his flesh : for this cause shall he leave
father and mother, and cleave to his wife, and they
twain shall be one flesh.” By which words who dis-
cerns not, that God requires of them both so to live to-
gether, and to be united not only in body but in mind
also, with such an affection as mone may be dearer and
more ardent among all the relations of mankind, nor
of more efficacy to the mutual offices of love and loy-
alty? They must communicate and consent in all things
both divine and human, which have any moment to well
and happy living. The wife must honour and obey
her husband, as the church honours and obeys Christ
her head. The husband must love and cherish his
wife, as Christ his church. Thus they must be to each
other, if they will be true man and wife in the sight of
God, whom certainly the churches ought to follow in
their judgment. Now the proper and ultimate end of
marriage is not copulation, or children, for then there
was not true matrimony between Joseph and Mary the
mother of Christ, nor between many holy persons more;
but the full and proper and main end of marriage is
the communicating of all duties, both divine and hu-
man, each to other with utmost benevolence and affec-
tion.
CHAP. XXXIX.
The properties of a true and christian marriage more
distinctly repeated.
By which definition we may know, that God esteems
and reckons upon these four necessary properties to be
in every true marriage. 1. That they should live to-
gether, unless the calling of God require otherwise for
a time. 2. That they should love one another to the
height of dearness, and that in the Lord, and in the
communion of true religion. 3. That the husband bear
himself as the head and preserver of his wife, instruct-
ing her to all godliness and integrity of life; that the
wife also be to her husband a help, according to her place,
especially furthering him in the true worship of God,
and next in all the occasions of civil life. And 4. That
they defraud not each other of conjugal benevolence,
as the apostle commands, 1 Cor. vii. Hence it follows,
according to the sentence of God, which all Christians
ought to be ruled by, that between those who, either
through obstinacy, or helpless inability, cannot or will
not perform these repeated duties, between those there
can be no true matrimony, nor ought they to be counted
man and wife.
CHAP. XI,.
Whether those crimes recited chap. xxxvii. out of the
civil law, dissolve matrimony in God's account.
Now if a husband or wife be found guilty of any of
those crimes, which by the law “consensu” are made
causes of divorce, it is manifest, that such a man can-
not be the head and preserver of his wife, nor such a
woman be a meet help to her husband, as the divine
law in true wedlock requires; for these faults are pu-
nished either by death, or deportation, or extreme in-
famy, which are directly opposite to the covenant of
marriage. If they deserve death, as adultery and the
like, doubtless God would not that any should live in
wedlock with them whom he would not have to live at
all. Or if it be not death, but the incurring of noto-
rious infamy, certain it is neither just, nor expedient,
nor meet, that an honest man should be coupled with
an infamous woman, nor an honest matron with an in-
famous man. The wise Roman princes had so great
a regard to the equal honour of either wedded person,
that they counted those marriages of no force, which
were made between the one of good repute, and the
other of evil note. How much more will all honest
regard of christian expedience and comeliness beseem
and concern those who are set free and dignified in
Christ, than it could the Roman senate, or their sons,
for whom that law was provided ?
And this all godly men will soon apprehend, that
he who ought to be the head and preserver not only of
his wife, but also of his children and family, as Christ
is of his church, had need be one of honest name : so
likewise the wife, which is to be the meet help of an
honest and good man, the mother of an honest offspring
and family, the glory of the man, even as the man is
the glory of Christ, should not be tainted with igno-
miny; as neither of them can avoid to be, having been
justly appeached of those forenamed crimes; and there-
º
fore cannot be worthy to hold their place in a christian
family: yea, they themselves turn out themselves and
dissolve that holy covenant. And they who are true
brethren and sisters in the Lord are no more in bondage
to such violators of marriage.
But here the patrons of wickedness and dissolvers of
christian discipline will object, that it is the part of
man and wife to bear one another's cross, whether in
calamity or infamy, that they may gain each other, if
not to a good name, yet to repentance and amendment.
But they who thus object, seek the impunity of wick-
edness, and the favour of wicked men, not the duties
of true charity; which prefers public honesty before
private interest, and had rather the remedies of whole-
some punishment appointed by God should be in use,
than that by remissness the licence of evil doing should
increase. For if they who, by committing such of.
fences, have made void the holy knot of marriage, be
capable of repentance, they will be sooner moved when
due punishment is executed on them, than when it is
remitted.
We must ever beware, lest, in contriving what will
172
THE JUDGMENT OF MARTIN BUCER,
be best for the soul's health of delinquents, we make
ourselves wiser and discreeter than God. He that re-
ligiously weighs his oracles concerning marriage, can-
not doubt that they, who have committed the foresaid
transgressions, have lost the right of matrimony, and
are unworthy to hold their dignity in an honest and
christian family.
But if any husband or wife see such signs of repent-
ance in their transgressor, as that they doubt not to re-
gain them by continuing with them, and partaking of
their miseries and attaintures, they may be left to their
own hopes, and their own mind; saving ever the right
of church and commonwealth, that it receive no scandal
by the neglect of due severity, and their children no
harm by this invitation to licence, and want of good
education.
From all these considerations, if they be thought on,
as in the presence of God, and out of his word, any
one may perceive, who desires to determine of these
things by the Scripture, that those causes of lawful
divorce, which the most religious emperors Theodosius
and Valentinian set forth in the forecited place, are ac-
cording to the law of God, and the prime institution of
marriage; and were still more and more straitened, as
the church and state of the empire still more and more
corrupted and degenerated. Therefore pious princes
and commonwealths both may and ought establish
them again, if they have a mind to restore the honour,
sanctity, and religion of holy wedlock to their people,
and disentangle many consciences from a miserable
and perilous condition, to a chaste and honest life.
To those recited causes wherefore a wife might send
a divorce to her husband, Justinian added four more,
Constit. 117; and four more, for which a man might
put away his wife. Three other causes were added in
the Code “de repudiis, l. Jubemus.” All which causes
are so clearly contrary to the first intent of marriage,
that they plainly dissolve it. I set them not down,
being easy to be found in the body of the civil law.
It was permitted also by christian emperors, that
they who would divorce by mutual consent, might with-
out impediment. Or if there were any difficulty at
all in it, the law expresses the reason, that it was
only in favour of the children; so that if there were
none, the law of those godly emperors made no other
difficulty of a divorce by consent. Or if any were
minded without consent of the other to divorce, and
without those causes which have been named, the
christian emperors laid no other punishment upon them,
than that the husband wrongfully divorcing his wife
should give back her dowry, and the use of that which
was called “Donatio propter nuptias;” or if there were
no dowry nor no donation, that he should then give
her the fourth part of his goods. The like penalty
was inflicted on the wife departing without just cause.
But that they who were once married should be com-
pelled to remain so ever against their wills, was not
exacted. Wherein those pious princes followed the
law of God in Deut. xxiv. 1, and his express charge
by the prophet Malachi, to dismiss from him the wife
whom he hates. For God never meant in marriage to
give to man a perpetual torment instead of a meet
help. Neither can God approve, that to the violation
of this holy league (which is violated as soon as true
affection ceases and is lost) should be added murder,
which is already committed by either of them who re-
solvedly hates the other, as I shewed out of 1 John iii.
15, “Whoso hateth his brother, is a murderer.”
CHAP. XLI.
Whether the husband or wife deserted may marry
to another.
THE wife's desertion of her husband the christian
emperors plainly decreed to be a just cause of divorce,
whenas they granted him the right thereof, if she had
but lain out one night against his will without probable
cause. But of the man deserting his wife they did not
so determine: yet if we look into the word of God, we
shall find, that he who though but for a year without
just cause forsakes his wife, and neither provides for
her maintenance, nor signifies his purpose of returning,
and good will towards her, whenas he may, hath for-
feited his right in her so forsaken. For the Spirit of
God speaks plainly, that both man and wife have such
power over one another's person, as that they cannot
deprive each other of living together, but by consent,
and for a time.
Hither may be added, that the Holy Spirit grants
desertion to be a cause of divorce, in those answers
given to the Corinthians concerning a brother or sister
deserted by a misbeliever. “If he depart, let him de-
part, a brother or a sister is not under bondage in such
cases.” In which words, who sees not that the Holy
Ghost openly pronounced, that the party without
cause deserted is not bound for another's wilful de-
sertion, to abstain from marriage, if he have need
thereoff
But some will say, that this is spoken of a misbe-
liever departing. But I beseech ye, doth not he reject
the faith of Christ in his deeds, who rashly breaks the
holy covenant of wedlock instituted by God? And
besides this, the Holy Spirit does not make the misbe-
lieving of him who departs, but the departing of him
who disbelieves, to be the just cause of freedom to
the brother or sister.
Since therefore it will be agreed among Christians,
that they who depart from wedlock without just cause,
do not only deny the faith of matrimony, but of Christ
also, whatever they profess with their mouths; it is but
reason to conclude, that the party deserted is not bound
in case of causeless desertion, but that he may lawfully
seek another consort, if it be needful to him, toward a
pure and blameless conversation.
CHAP. XLII.
The impotence of body, leprosy, madness, &c. are just
causes of divorce.
Of this, because it was not disputed in the Doctrine
and Discipline of Divorce, him that would know fur-
ther, I commend to the Latin original.
CONCERNING D.IVORCE.
173
CHAP. XLIII.
That to grant divorce for ull the causes which have been
hitherto brought, disagrees not from the words of
Christ, naming only the cause of adultery.
Now we must see how these things can stand with
the words of our Saviour, who seems directly to forbid
all divorce except it be for adultery. To the under-
standing whereof, we must ever remember this : That
in the words of our Saviour there can be no contrariety:
That his words and answers are not to be stretched be-
yond the question proposed: That our Saviour did not
there purpose to treat of all the causes for which it
might be lawful to divorce and marry again; for then
that in the Corinthians of marrying again without
guilt of adultery could not be added. That it is not
good for that man to be alone, who hath not the spe-
cial gift from above. That it is good for every such one
to be married, that he may shun fornication.
With regard to these principles, let us see what our
Lord answered to the tempting Pharisees about divorce,
and second marriage, and how far his answer doth
extend.
First, no man who is not very contentious will deny,
that the Pharisees asked our Lord whether it were
lawful to put away such a wife, as was truly, and ac-
cording to God's law, to be counted a wife; that is,
such a one as would dwell with her husband, and both
would and could perform the necessary duties of wed-
lock tolerably. But she who will not dwell with her
husband is not put away by him, but goes of herself:
and she who denies to be a meet help, or to be so hath
made herself unfit by open misdemeanours, or through
incurable impotencies cannot be able, is not by the law
of God to be esteemed a wife; as hath been shewn
both from the first institution, and other places of Scrip-
ture. Neither certainly would the Pharisees propound
a question concerning such an unconjugal wife; for
their depravation of the law had brought them to that
pass, as to think a man had right to put away his wife
for any cause, though never so slight. Since therefore
it is manifest, that Christ answered the Pharisees con-
cerning a fit and meet wife according to the law of
God, whom he forbid to divorce for any cause but for-
nication; who sees not that it is a wickedness so to
wrest and extend that answer of his, as if it forbad to
divorce her who hath already forsaken, or hath lost the
place and dignity of a wife, by deserved infamy, or
hath undertaken to be that which she hath not natural
ability to be 2
This truth is so powerful, that it hath moved the pa.
pists to grant their kind of divorce for other causes be-
sides adultery, as for ill usage, and the not perſorming
of conjugal duty; and to separate from bed and board
for these causes, which is as much divorce as they grant
for adultery.
But some perhaps will object, that though it be
yielded that our Lord granted divorce not only for
adultery, yet it is not certain, that he permitted mar-
riage after divorce, unless for that only cause. I an-
swer, first, that the sentence of divorce and second
marriage is one and the same. So that when the right
of divorce is evinced to belong not only to the cause of
fornication, the power of second marriage is also proved
to be not limited to that cause only ; and that most
evidently whenas the Holy Ghost, I Cor. vii. so frees
the deserted party from bondage, as that he may not
only send a just divorce in case of desertion, but may
seek another marriage.
Lastly, seeing God will not that any should live
in danger of fornication and utter ruin for the default
of another, and hath commanded the husband to send
away with a hill of divorce her whom he could not
love; it is impossible that the charge of adultery should
belong to him who for lawful causes divorces and mar-
ries, or to her who marries after she hath been unjustly
rejected, or to him who receives her without all fraud
to the former wedlock. For this were a horrid blas-
phemy against God, so to interpret his words, as to
make him dissent from himself; for who sees not a flat
contradiction in this, to enthral blameless men and
women to miseries and injuries, under a false and sooth-
ing title of marriage, and yet to declare by his apos-
tle, that a brother or sister is not under bondage in such
cases? No less do these two things conflict with them-
selves, to enforce the innocent and faultless to endure
the pain and misery of another's perverseness, or else
to live in unavoidable temptation; and to affirm else-
where that he lays on no man the burden of another
man's sin, nor doth constrain any man to the endan-
gering of his soul.
CHAP. XLIV.
That to those also who are justly divorced, second mar-
riage ought to be permitted.
THIS although it be well proved, yet because it con-
cerns only the offender, I leave him to search out his
own charter himself in the author.
CHAP. XLV.
That some persons are so ordained to marriage, as that
they cannot obtain the gift of continence, no not by
earnest prayer; and that therein every one is to be
left to his own judgment and conscience, and not to
have a burden laid upon him by any other.
CHAP. XLVI.
The words of the apostle concerning the praise of sun-
gle life unfolded.
THESE two chapters not so immediately debating
the right of divorce, I choose rather not to insert.
CHAP. XI,VII.
The conclusion of this treatise.
THESE things, most renowned king, I have brought
together, both to explain for what causes the unhappy
but sometimes most necessary help of divorce ought to
be granted according to God's word, by princes and
174
THE JUDGMENT OF MARTIN BUCER CONCERNING D.I WORCE.
rulers; as also to explain how the words of Christ do
consent with such a grant. I have been large indeed
both in handling those oracles of God, and in laying
down those certain principles, which he who will know
what the mind of God is in this matter, must ever think
on and remember. But if we consider what mist and
obscurity hath been poured out by Antichrist upon this
question, and how deep this pernicious contempt of
wedlock, and admiration of single life, even in those
who are not called thereto, hath sunk into many men's
persuasions ; I fear lest all that hath been said be
hardly enough to persuade such, that they would cease
at length to make themselves wiser and holier than
God himself, in being so severe to grant lawful mar-
riage, and so easy to commive at ali, not only whoredoms
but deflowerings and adulteries: whenas, among the
people of God, no whoredom was to be tolerated.
Our Lord Jesus Christ, who came to destroy the
works of Satan, sent down his Spirit upon all Chris-
tians, and principally upon christian governors both in
church and commonwealth, (for of the clear judgment
of your royal majesty I nothing doubt, revolving the
Scripture so often as ye do,) that they may acknowledge
how much they provoke the anger of God against us,
whenas all kind of unchastity is tolerated, for:ications
and adulteries winked at ; but holy and honourable
wedlock is oft withheld by the mere persuasion of Anti-
christ, from such as without this remedy cannot pre-
serve themselves from damnation | For none who hath
but a spark of honesty will deny, that princes and states
ought to use diligence toward the maintaining of pure
and honest life among all men, without which all jus-
tice, all fear of God, and true religion decays.
And who knows not, that chastity and pureness of
life can never be restored, or continued in the common-
wealth, unless it be first established in private houses,
from whence the whole breed of men is to come forth 2
To effect this, no wise man can doubt, that it is neces-
sary for princes and magistrates first with severity to
punish whoredom and adultery; next to see that mar-
riages be lawfully contracted, and in the Lord ; then
that they be faithfully kept; and lastly, when that un-
happiness urges, that they be lawfully dissolved, and
other marriage granted, according as the law of God,
and of nature, and the constitutions of pious princes
have decreed; as I have shewn both by evident autho-
rities of Scripture, together with the writings of the
ancient fathers, and other testimonies. Only the Lord
grant that we may learn to prefer his ever just and
saving word, before the comments of Antichrist, too
deeply rooted in many, and the false and blasphemous
exposition of our Saviour's words. Amen.
A POSTSCRIPT.
Thus far Martin Bucer: whom, where I might
without injury to either part of the cause, I deny not
to have epitomized ; in the rest observing a well-war-
ranted rule, not to give an inventory of so many words,
but to weigh their force. I could have added that elo-
quent and right christian discourse, written by Erasmus
on this argument, not disagreeing in effect from Bucer.
But this, I hope, will be enough to excuse me with the
mere Englishman, to be no forger of new and loose
opinions. Others may read him in his own phrase on
the first to the Corinthians, and ease me who never
could delight in long citations, much less in whole tra-
ductions; whether it be natural disposition or educa-
tion in me, or that my mother bore me a speaker of
what God made mine own, and not a translator. There
be others also whom I could reckon up, of no mean
account in the church, (and Peter Martyr among the
first,) who are more than half our own in this contro-
versy. But this is a providence not to be slighted,
that as Bucer wrote this tractate of divorce in England
and for England, so Erasmus professes he begun here
among us the same subject, especially out of compas-
sion, for the need he saw this nation had of some cha-
ritable redress herein; and seriously exhorts others to
use their best industry in the clearing of this point,
wherein custom hath a greater sway than verity. That
therefore which came into the mind of these two ad-
mired strangers to do for England, and in a touch of
highest prudence, which they took to be not yet re-
covered from monastic superstition, if I a native am
found to have done for mine own country, altogether
suitably and conformably to their so large and clear
understanding, yet without the least help of theirs; I
suppose that henceſorward among conscionable and
judicious persons it will no more be thought to my
discredit, or at all to this nation's dishonour. And if
these their books the one shall be printed often with
best allowance in most religious cities, the other with
express authority of Leo the Tenth, a pope, shall, for
the propagating of truth, be published and republished,
though against the received opinion of that church,
and mine containing but the same thing, shall in a
time of reformation, a time of free speaking, free writ-
ing, not find a permission to the press; I refer me to
wisest men, whether truth be suffered to be truth, or
liberty to be liberty, now among us, and be not again
in danger of new ſetters and captivity after all our
hopes and labours lost; and whether learning be not
(which our enemies too prophetically feared) in the
way to be trodden down again by ignorance. Whereof
while time is, out of the faith owing to God and my
country, I bid this kingdom beware; and doubt not
but God who hath dignified this parliament already to
so many glorious degrees, will also give them (which
is a singular blessing) to inform themselves rightly in
the midst of an unprincipled age, and to prevent this
working mystery of ignorance and ecclesiastical thral-
dom, which under new shapes and disguises begins
afresh to grow upon us.
T E T R A C H O R D O N :
EXPOSITIONS
UPON THE FOUR CHIEF PASSAGES OF SCRIPTURE WHICH TREAT
OF MARRIAGE, OR NULLITIES IN MARRIAGE.
ON
GEN. i. 27, 28, compared AND EXPLAINED BY GEN. ii. 18, 23, 24. DEUT. xxiv. 1, 2, MATT. v. 31, 32, witH
MATT. xix. FROM ver. 3 TO 11.
1 CoR. vii. FROM v ER. 10 TO 16.
whipREIN THE DOCTRINE AND DISCIPLINE OF DIVORCE, AS WAS LATELY PUBLISHED, IS CONFIRMED BY EXPLA NATION OF SCRIP-
TURE, BY TESTIMONY of ANCIENT FAthers, OF CIVIL LAWS IN THE PRIMITIVE CHURCH, of FAMOUSEST REFORMED DIVINES ;
AND LASTLY, BY AN INTENDED ACT OF THE PARLIAMENT AND
CHURCH OF ENGLAND IN THE LAST YEAR OF EDWARD THE SIXTH
* * a *
——-- XKaloio i kaiva trpoo peptov orogºt
Aoſets &xpeſos, kot goºds trequkévat.
Töv 3° at 3okočvraveiðévat tº trotki Aov,
Kpota'arav vouca 96 is $v tróAés, Avrrpès pavā.
Euripid. Medea.
TO THE PARLIAMENT,
THAT which I knew to be the part of a good magis-
trate, aiming at true liberty through the right infor-
mation of religious and civil life, and that which I saw,
and was partaker of, your vows and solemn covenants,
parliament of England your actions also manifestly
tending to exalt the truth, and to depress the tyranny
of errour and ill custom, with more constancy and
prowess than ever yet any, since that parliament which
put the first sceptre of this kingdom into his hand
whom God and extraordinary virtue made their mon-
arch; were the causes that moved me, one else not
placing much in the eminence of a dedication, to pre-
sent your high notice with a discourse, conscious to it-
self of nothing more than of diligence, and firm
affection to the public good. And that ye took it so
as wise and impartial men, obtaining so great power
and dignity, are wont to accept, in matters both doubt-
ful and important, what they think offered them well
meant, and from a rational ability, I had no less than
to persuade me. And on that persuasion am returned,
as to a famous and free port, myself also bound by
more than a maritime law, to expose as freely what
fraughtage I conceive to bring of no trifles. For al-
though it be generally known, how and by whom ye
have been instigated to a hard censure of that former
book, entitled, “The Doctrine and Discipline of Di-
vorce,” an opinion held by some of the best among re-
formed writers without scandal or confutement, though
now thought new and dangerous by some of our severe
Gnostics, whose little reading, and less meditating,
holds ever with hardest obstinacy that which it took
up with easiest credulity; I do not find yet that aught,
for the furious incitements which have been used, hath
issued by your appointment, that might give the least
interruption or disrepute either to the author, or to the
book. Which he who will be better advised than to
call your neglect or connivance at a thing imagined
so perilous, can attribute it to nothing more justly,
than to the deep and quiet stream of your direct and
calm deliberations, that gave not way either to the
fervent rashness or the immaterial gravity of those
who ceased not to exasperate without cause. For
which uprightness and incorrupt refusal of what ye
were incensed to, lords and commons ! (though it were
done to justice, not to me, and was a peculiar demon-
stration how far your ways are different from the rash
vulgar,) besides those allegiances of oath and duty,
which are my public debt to your public labours, I
have yet a store of gratitude laid up, which cannot be
exhausted; and such thanks perhaps they may live to
be, as shall more than whisper to the next ages. Yet
that the author may be known to ground himself upon
his own innocence, and the merit of his cause, not up-
on the favour of a diversion, or a delay to any just cen-
sure, but wishes rather he might see those his detractors
at any fair meeting, as learned debatements are privi-
leged with a due freedom under equal moderators; I
shall here briefly single one of them, (because he bath
obliged me to it,) who I persuade me having scarce read
the book, nor knowing him who writ it, or at least
176
EXPOSITIONS ON THE FOUR CHIEF PLACES IN SCRIPTURE,
feigning the latter, hath not forborn to scandalize him,
unconferred with, unadmonished, undealt with by any
pastorly or brotherly convincement, in the most open
and invective manner, and at the most bitter opportu-
nity that drift or set design could have invented.
And this, when as the canon law, though commonly
most favouring the boldness of their priests, punishes
the naming or traducing of any person in the pulpit,
was by him made no scruple. If I shall therefore take
licence by the right of nature, and that liberty wherein
I was born, to defend myself publicly against a print-
ed calumny, and do willingly appeal to those judges
to whom I am accused, it can be no immoderate or
unallowable course of seeking so just and needful re-
parations. Which I had done long since, had not those
employments, which are now visible, deferred me.
It was preached before ye, lords and commons! in
August last upon a special day of humiliation, that
“there was a wicked book abroad,” and ye were taxed
of sin that it was yet “uncensured, the book deserving
to be burnt;” and “impudence” also was charged
upon the author, who durst “set his name to it, and
dedicate it to yourselves! First, lords and commons!
I pray to that God, before whom ye then were pros-
trate, so to forgive ye those omissions and trespasses,
which ye desire most should find forgiveness, as I shall
soon shew to the world how easily ye absolve your-
selves of that which this man calls your sin, and is
indeed your wisdom, and your nobleness, whereof to
this day ye have done well not to repent. He terms
it “a wicked book,” and why but “for allowing other
causes of divorce, than Christ and his apostles men-
tion P’’ and with the same censure condemns of wicked-
ness not only Martin Bucer, that elect instrument of
reformation, highly honoured, and had in reverence by
Edward the Sixth, and his whole parliament, whom
also I had published in English by a good providence,
about a week before this calumnious digression was
preached; so that if he knew not Bucer then, as he
ought to have known, he might at least have known
him some months after, ere the sermon came in print;
wherein notwithstanding he persists in his former sen-
tence, and condemns again of wickedness, either igno-
rantly or wilfully, not only Martin Bucer, and all the
choicest and holiest of our reformers, but the whole
parliament and church of England in those best and
purest times of Edward the Sixth. All which I shall
prove with good evidence, at the end of these explana-
tions. And then let it be judged and seriously considered
with what hope the affairs of our religion are committed
to one among others, who hath now only left him which
of the twain he will choose, whether this shall be his pal-
pable ignorance, or the same wickedness of his ownbook,
which he so lavishly imputes to the writings of other
men: and whether this of his, that thus peremptorily de-
fames and attaints of wickedness unspotted churches,
unblemished parliaments, and the most eminent re-
storers of christian doctrine, deserve not to be burnt first.
And if his heat had burst out only against the opinion,
his wonted passion had no doubt been silently borne
with wonted patience. But since, against the charity of
that solemn place and meeting, it served him further
to inveigh opprobriously against the person, branding
him with no less than impudence, only for setting his
name to what he had written; I must be excused not
to be so wanting to the defence of an honest name, or
to the reputation of those good men who afford me their
society, but to be sensible of such a foul endeavoured
disgrace : not knowing aught either in mine own de-
serts, or the laws of this land, why I should be sub-
ject, in such a notorious and illegal manner, to the in-
temperances of this man's preaching choler. And in-
deed to be so prompt and ready in the midst of his hum-
bleness, to toss reproaches of this bulk and size, argues
as if they were the weapons of his exercise, I am sure
not of his ministry, or of that day's work. Certainly
to subscribe my name at what I was to own, was what
the state had ordered and requires. And he who lists
not to be malicious, would call it ingenuity, clear com-
science, willingness to avouch what might be ques-
tioned, or to be better instructed. And if God were so
displeased with those, Isa. lviii. who “ on the solemn
fast were wont to smite with the fist of wickedness,” it
could be no sign of his own humiliation accepted,
which disposed him to smite so keenly with a reviling
tongue. But if only to have writ my name must be
counted “impudence,” how doth this but justify an-
other, who might affirm with as good warrant, that the
late discourse of “Scripture and Reason,” which is
certain to be chiefly his own draught, was published
without a name, out of base fear, and the sly avoidance
of what might follow to his detriment, if the party at
court should hap to reach him 2 And I, to have set my
name, where he accuses me to have set it, am so far
from recanting, that I offer my hand also if need be,
to make good the same opinion which I there main-
tain, by inevitable consequences drawn parallel from
his own principal arguments in that of “Scripture and
Reason:” which I shall pardon him if he can deny,
without shaking his own composition to pieces. The
“impudence” therefore, since he weighed so little what
a gross revile that was to give his equal, I send him
back again for a phylactery to stitch upon his arro-
gance, that censures not only before conviction, so bit-
terly without so much as one reason given, but cen-
sures the congregation of his governors to their faces,
for not being so hasty as himself to censure.
And whereas my other crime is, that I addressed the
dedication of what I had studied to the parliament;
how could I better declare the loyalty which I owe to
that supreme and majestic tribunal, and the opinion
which I have of the high entrusted judgment, and per-
sonal worth assembled in that place P With the same
affections therefore, and the same addicted fidelity, par-
liament of England ' I here again have brought to
your perusal on the same argument these following
expositions of Scripture. The former book, as pleased
some to think, who were thought judicious, had of
reason in it to a sufficiency; what they required was,
that the Scriptures there alleged might be discussed
more fully. To their desires thus much further hath
been laboured in the Scriptures. Another sort also,
WHICH TREAT OF NULLITIES IN MARRIAGE.
177
who wanted more authorities and citations, have not
been here unthought of. If all this attain not to satisfy
them, as I am confident that none of those our great
controversies at this day hath had a more demonstrative
explaining, I must confess to admire what it is : for
doubtless it is not reason now-a-days that satisfies or
suborns the common credence of men, to yield so
easily, and grow so vehement in matters much more
disputable, and far less conducing to the daily good
and peace of life. Some whose necessary shifts have
long enured them to cloak the defects of their unstudied
years, and hatred now to learn, under the appearance
of a grave solidity, (which estimation they have gained
among weak perceivers,) find the ease of slighting
what they cannot refute, and are determined, as I
hear, to hold it not worth the answering. In which
number I must be forced to reckon that doctor,
who in a late equivocating treatise plausibly set afloat
against the Dippers, diving the while himself with a
more deep prelatical malignance against the present
state and church-government, mentions with ignominy
“the Tractate of Divorce;” yet answers nothing, but
instead thereof (for which I do not commend his mar-
shalling) sets Moses also among the crew of his Ana-
baptists; as one who to a holy nation, the common-
wealth of Israel, gave laws “breaking the bonds of
marriage to inordinate lust.” These are no mean
surges of blasphemy, not only dipping Moses the di-
vine lawgiver, but dashing with a high hand against
the justice and purity of God himself: as these ensu-
ing scriptures plainly and freely handled shall verify,
to the launching of that old apostemated errour. Him
therefore I leave now to his repentance.
Others, which is their courtesy, confess that wit and
parts may do much to make that seem true which is
not; as was objected to Socrates by them who could
not resist his efficacy, that he ever made the worst
cause seem the better; and thus thinking themselves
discharged of the difficulty, love not to wade further
into the fear of a convincement. These will be their
excuses to decline the full examining of this serious
point. So much the more I press it and repeat it,
lords and commons ! that ye beware while time is, ere
this grand secret, and only art of ignorance affecting
tyranny, grow powerful, and rule among us. For if
sound argument and reason shall be thus put off, either
by an undervaluing silence, or the masterly censure of
a railing word or two in the pulpit, or by rejecting the
force of truth, as the mere cunning of eloquence and
sophistry; what can be the end of this, but that all
good learning and knowledge will suddenly decay 2
Ignorance, and illiterate presumption, which is yet
but our disease, will turn at length into our very con-
stitution, and prove the hectic evil of this age : worse
to be feared, if it get once to reign over us, than any
fifth monarchy. If this shall be the course, that what
was wont to be a chief commendation, and the ground
of other men's confidence in an author, his diligence,
his learning, his elocution, whether by right or by ill
meaning granted him, shall be turned now to a disad-
vantage and suspicion against him, that what he writes,
though unconfuted, must therefore be mistrusted, there-
fore not received for the industry, the exactness, the la-
bour in it, confessed to be more than ordinary ; as if
wisdom had now forsaken the thirsty and laborious in-
quirer, to dwell against her nature with the arrogant
and shallow babbler; to what purpose all those pains
and that continual searching required of us by Solo-
mon to the attainment of understanding P Why are
men bred up with such care and expense to a life of
perpetual studies P Why do yourselves with such en-
deavour seek to wipe off the imputation of intending
to discourage the progress and advance of learning 2
He therefore, whose heart can bear him to the high
pitch of your noble enterprises, may easily assure him-
self, that the prudence and far-judging circumspect-
ness of so grave a magistracy sitting in parliament,
who have before them the prepared and purposed act
of their most religious predecessors to imitate in this
question, cannot reject the clearness of these reasons,
and these allegations both here and formerly offered
them ; nor can overlook the necessity of ordaining
more wholesomely and more humanely in the casual-
ties of divorce, than our laws have yet established, if
the most urgent and excessive grievances happening
in domestic life be worth the laying to heart; which,
unless charity be far from us, cannot be neglected.
And that these things, both in the right constitution,
and in the right reformation of a commonwealth, call
for speediest redress, and ought to be the first con-
sidered, enough was urged in what was prefaced to
that monument of Bucer, which I brought to your re-
membrance, and the other time before. Henceforth,
except new cause be given, I shall say less and less.
For if the law make not timely provision, let the law,
as reason is, bear the censure of those consequences,
which her own default now more evidently produces.
And if men want manliness to expostulate the right of
their due ransom, and to second their own occasions,
they may sit hereafter and bemoan themselves to have
neglected through faintness the only remedy of their
sufferings, which a seasonable and well-grounded
speaking might have purchased them. And perhaps
in time to come, others will know how to esteem what
is not every day put into their hands, when they have
marked events, and better weighed how hurtful and
unwise it is, to hide a secret and pernicious rupture un-
der the ill counsel of a bashful silence. But who
would distrust aught, or not be ample in his hopes of
your wise and christian determinations P who have the
prudence to consider, and should have the goodness,
like gods, as ye are called, to find out readily, and by
just law to administer those redresses, which have of
old, not without God ordaining, been granted to the
adversities of mankind, ere they who needed were put
to ask. Certainly, if any other have enlarged his
thoughts to expect from this government, so justly un-
dertaken, and by frequent assistances from Heaven so
apparently upheld, glorious changes and renovations
both in church and state, he among the foremost might
be named, who prays that the fate of England may
tarry for no other deliverers. JOHN MILTON.
T E T R A C H O R D O N :
EXPOSITIONS
UPON THE FOUR CHIEF PLACES IN sCRIPTURE WHICH TREAT OF MARRIAGE, OR
NULLITIES IN MARRIAG E.
GENESIS i. 27.
So God created man in his own image, in the image of
God created he him; male and female created he
them,
28. And God blessed them, and God said unto them,
Be fruitful, &c.
GEN. ii. 18.
And the Lord God said, It is not good that man should
be alone, I will make him a help meet for him.
23. And Adam said, This is now bone of my bone, and
flesh of my flesh; she shall be called woman, be-
cause she was taken out of a man.
24. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mo-
ther, and shall cleave unto his wife, and they shall
be one flesh.
GEN. i. 27.
“So God created man in his own image.”] To be
informed aright in the whole history of marriage, that
we may know for certain, not by a forced yoke, but
by an impartial definition, what marriage is, and what
is not marriage : it will undoubtedly be safest, fairest,
and most with our obedience, to inquire, as our Saviour's
direction is, how it was in the beginning. And that
we begin so high as man created after God’s own
image, there want not earnest causes. For nothing
now-a-days is more degenerately forgotten, than the
true dignity of man, almost in every respect, but espe-
cially in this prime institution of matrimony, wherein
his native pre-eminence ought most to shine. Although
if we consider that just and natural privileges men
neither can rightly seek, nor dare fully claim, unless
they be allied to inward goodness and stedfast know-
ledge, and that the want of this quells them to a ser-
vile sense of their own conscious unworthiness; it may
save the wondering why in this age many are so op-
posite both to human and to christian liberty, either
while they understand not, or envy others that do;
contenting, or rather priding themselves in a specious
humility and strictness bred out of low ignorance, that
never yet conceived the freedom of the gospel; and is
therefore by the apostle to the Colossians ranked with
no better company than will worship and the mere
shew of wisdom. And how injurious herein they are,
if not to themselves, yet to their neighbours, and not
to them only, but to the all-wise and bounteous grace
offered us in our redemption, will orderly appear.
“In the image of God created he him.”] It is enough
determined, that this image of God, wherein man was
created, is meant wisdom, purity, justice, and rule over
all creatures. All which, being lost in Adam, was re-
covered with gain by the merits of Christ. For albeit
our first parent had lordship over sea, and land, and
air, yet there was a law without him, as a guard set
over him. But Christ having cancelled the hand-
writing of ordinances which was against us, Col. ii.
14, and interpreted the fulfilling of all through charity,
hath in that respect set us over law, in the free custody
of his love, and left us victorious under the guidance
of his living spirit, not under the dead letter; to follow
that which most edifies, most aids and furthers a reli-
gious life, makes us holiest and likest to his immortal
image, not that which makes us most conformable and
captive to civil and subordinate precepts: whereof the
strictest observance may ofttimes prove the destruction
not only of many innocent persons and families, but of
whole nations. Although indeed no ordinance human
or from heaven can bind against the good of man; so
that to keep them strictly against that end, is all one
with to break them. Men of most renowned virtue )
have sometimes by transgressing most truly kept the
law; and wisest magistrates have permitted and dis-,
pensed it; while they looked not peevishly at the letter,
but with a greater spirit at the good of mankind, if
always not written in the characters of law, yet engraven
in the heart of man by a divine impression.
thens could see, as the well-read in story can recount of
Solon and Epaminondas, whom Cicero in his first book
This hea-
EXPOSITIONS ON THE FOUR CHIEF PLACES IN SCRIPTURE, &c. 179
of “ Invention ” nobly defends. “All law,” saith he,
“we ought to refer to the common good, and interpret
by that, not by the scroll of letters. No man observes
law for law's sake, but for the good of them for whom
it was made.” The rest might serve well to lecture
these times, deluded through Helly doctrines into a de-
vout slavery. The Scripture also affords David in the
shewbread, Hezekiah in the passover, sound and safe
transgressors of the literal command, which also dis-
pensed not seldom with itself; and taught us on what
just occasions to do so; until our Saviour, for whom
that great and godlike work was reserved, redeemed
us to a state above prescriptions, by dissolving the
whole law into charity. And have we not the soul to
understand this, and must we against this glory of
God's transcendent love towards us be still the servants
of a literal indictment 2
“Created he him.”] It might be doubted why he
saith, “In the image of God created he him,” not
them, as well as “male and female” them ; especially
since that image might be common to them both, but
male and female could not, however the Jews fable
and please themselves with the accidental concurrence
of Plato's wit, as if man at first had been created her-
maphrodite: but then it must have been male and fe-
male created he him. So had the image of God been
equally common to them both, it had no doubt been
said, in the image of God created he them. But St.
Paul ends the controversy, by explaining, that the
woman is not primarily and immediately the image of
God, but in reference to the man, “The head of the
woman,” saith he, 1 Cor. xi. “ is the man;” “ he the
image and glory of God, she the glory of the man;” he
not for her, but she for him. Therefore his precept is,
* Wives, be subject to your husbands as is fit in the
Lord,” Col. iii. 18; “in every thing,” Eph. v. 24.
Nevertheless man is not to hold her as a servant, but
receives her into a part of that empire, which God pro-
claims him to, though not equally, yet largely, as his
own image and glory : for it is no small glory to him,
that a creature so like him should be made subject to
him. Not but that particular exceptions may have
place, if she exceed her husband in prudence and dex-
terity, and he contentedly yield : for then a superior
and more natural law comes in, that the wiser should
govern the less wise, whether male or female. But
that which far more easily and obediently follows from
this verse is, that, seeing woman was purposely made
for man, and he her head, it cannot stand before the
breath of this divine utterance, that man the portraiture
of God, joining to himself for his intended good and
solace an inferior sex, should so become her thrall,
whose wilfulness or inability to be a wife frustrates the
occasional end of her creation; but that he may acquit
himself to freedom by his natural birthright, and that
indelible character of priority, which God crowned him
with. If it be urged, that sin hath lost him this, the
answer is not ſar to seek, that from her the sin first
proceeded, which keeps her justly in the same propor-
tion still beneath. She is not to gain by being first in
the transgression, that man should further lose to her,
N
because already he hath lost by her means. Oſt it
happens, that in this matter he is without fault; so that
his punishment herein is causeless: and God hath the
praise in our speeches of him, to sort his punishment in
the same kind with the offence. Suppose he erred; it
is not the intent of God or man, to hunt an errour so
to the death with a revenge beyond all measure and
proportion. But if we argue thus, this affliction is be-
fallen him for his sin, therefore he must bear it, without
seeking the only remedy: first, it will be false, that all
affliction comes for sin, as in the case of Job, and of the
man born blind, John ix. 3, was evident: next, by that
reason, all miseries coming for sin, we must let them
all lie upon us like the vermin of an Indian Catharist,
which his fond religion forbids him to molest. Were
it a particular punishment inflicted through the anger
of God upon a person, or upon a land, no law hinders
us in that regard, no law but bids us remove it if we can;
much more if it be a dangerous temptation withal;
much more yet, if it be certainly a temptation, and not
certainly a punishment, though a pain. As for what
they say we must bear with patience; to bear with
patience, and to seek effectual remedies, implies no con-
tradiction. It may no less be for our disobedience,
our unfaithfulness, and other sius against God, that
wives become adulterous to the bed; and questionless
we ought to take the affliction as patiently as christian
prudence would wish : yet hereby is not lost the right
of divorcing for adultery. No, you say, because our
Saviour excepted that only. But why, if he were so
bent to punish our sins, and try our patience in binding
on us a disastrous marriage, why did he except adul-
tery P Certainly to have been bound from divorce in
that case also had been as plentiful a punishment to
our sins, and not too little work for the patientest.
Nay, perhaps they will say it was too great a suffer-
ance; and with as slight a reason, for no wise man but
would sooner pardon the act of adultery once and again
committed by a person worth pity and forgiveness, than
to lead a wearisome life of unloving and unquiet con-
versation with one who neither affects nor is affected,
much less with one who exercises all bitterness, and
would commit adultery too, but for envy lest the per-
secuted condition should thereby get the benefit of his
freedom. It is plain therefore, that God enjoins not
this supposed strictness of not divorcing either to punish
us, or to try our patience.
Moreover, if man be the image of God, which con-
sists in holiness, and woman ought in the same respect
to be the image and companion of man, in such wise
to be loved as the church is beloved of Christ; and if,
as God is the head of Christ, and Christ the head of
man, so man is the head of woman; I cannot see by
this golden dependance of headship and subjection,
but that piety and religion is the main tie of christian
matrimony: so as if there be found between the pair a
motorious disparity either of wickedness or heresy, the
husband by all manner of right is disengaged from a
creature, not made and inflicted on him to the vexation
of his righteousness: the wife also, as her subjection is
terminated in the Lord, being herself the redeemed of
180
EXPOSITIONS ON THE FOUR CHIEF PLACES IN SCRIPTURE,
Christ, is not still bound to be the vassal of him, who
is the bondslave of Satan : she being now neither the
image nor the glory of such a person, nor made for him,
nor left in bondage to him ; but hath recourse to the
wing of charity, and protection of the church, unless
there be a hope on either side : yet such a hope must
be meant, as may be a rational hope, and not an end-
less servitude. Of which hereafter.
But usually it is objected, that if it be thus, then
there can be no true marriage between misbelievers and
irreligious persons. I might answer, let them see to
that who are such ; the church hath no commission to
judge those without, I Cor. v. But this they will say
perhaps, is but penuriously to resolve a doubt. I an-
swer therefore, that where they are both irreligious, the
marriage may be yet true enough to them in a civil
relation. For there are left some remains of God's
image in man, as he is merely man; which reason God
gives against the shedding of man's blood, Gen. ix. as
being made in God’s image, without expressing whether
he were a good man or a bad, to exempt the slayer
from punishment. So that in those marriages where
the parties are alike void of religion, the wife owes a
civil homage and subjection, the husband owes a civil
loyalty. But where the yoke is misyoked, heretic
with faithful, godly with ungodly, to the grievance
and manifest endangering of a brother or sister, reasons
of a higher strain than matrimonial bear sway; unless
the gospel, instead of freeing us, debase itself to make
us bond-men, and suffer evil to control good.
“ Male and female created he them.”] This con-
tains another end of matching man and woman, being
the right and lawfulness of the marriage-bed; though
much inferior to the former end of her being his image
and help in religious society. And who of weakest
insight may not see, that this creating of them male
and female cannot in any order of reason, or Christian-
ity, be of such moment against the better and higher
purposes of their creation, as to enthral husband or wife
to duties or to sufferings, unworthy and unbeseeming
the image of God in them 2 Now whenas not only
men, but good men, do stand upon their right, their
estimation, their dignity, in all other actions and de-
portments, with warrant enough and good conscience,
as having the image of God in them, it will not be dif-
ficult to determine what is unworthy and unseemly for
a man to do or suffer in wedlock: and the like propor-
tionally may be found for woman, if we love not to
stand disputing below the principles of humanity. He
that said, “Male and female created he them,” imme-
diately before that said also in the same verse, “in the
image of God created he him,” and redoubled it, that
our thoughts might not be so full of dregs as to urge
this poor consideration of male and female, without
remembering the nobleness of that former repetition;
lest when God sends a wise eye to examine our trivial
glosses, they be found extremely to creep upon the
ground ; especially since they confess, that what here
concerns marriage is but a brief touch, only preparative
to the institution which follows more expressly in the
next chapter; and that Christ so took it, as desiring to
be briefest with them who came to tempt him, account
shall be given in due place.
Ver. 28. “And God blessed them, and God said
unto them, Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish
the earth,” &c.
This declares another end of matrimony, the propa-
gation of mankind; and is again repeated to Noah and
his sons. Many things might be noted on this place
not ordinary, nor unworth the noting; but I undertook
not a general comment. Hence therefore we see the
desire of children is honest and pious; if we be not less
zealous in our Christianity than Plato was in his hea-
thenism; who in the sixth of his laws, counts offspring
therefore desirable, that we may leave in our stead sons
of our sons, continual servants of God: a religious and
prudent desire, if people knew as well what were re-
quired to breeding as to begetting ; which desire per-
haps was a cause, why the Jews hardly could endure
a barren wedlock: and Philo, in his book of special
laws, esteems him only worth pardon, that sends not
barrenness away. Carvilius, the first recorded in Rome
to have sought divorce, had it granted him for the bar-
renness of his wife, upon his oath that he married to
the end he might have children ; as Dionysius and
Gellius are authors. But to dismiss a wife only for
barrenness, is hard : and yet in some the desire of chil-
dren is so great, and so just, yea sometimes so necessary,
that to condemn such a one to a childless age, the fault
apparently not being in him, might seem perhaps more
strict than needed. Sometimes inheritances, crowns,
and dignities are so interested and annexed in their
common peace and good to such or such lineal descent,
that it may prove of great moment both in the affairs
of men and of religion, to consider thoroughly what
might be done herein, notwithstanding the wayward-
ness of our school doctors.
GEN. II. 18.
“And the Lord said, It is not good that man should
be alone; I will make him a help meet for him.”
Ver. 23. “And Adam said,” &c. Ver. 24. “Therefore
shall a man leave,” &c.
THIs second chapter is granted to be a commentary
on the first, and these verses granted to be an exposi-
tion of that former verse, “ Male and female created
he them :” and yet when this male and female is by
the explicit words of God himself here declared to be
not meant other than a fit help, and meet society; some,
who would engross to themselves the whole trade of
interpreting, will not suffer the clear text of God to do
the office of explaining itself.
“And the Lord God said, It is not good.”] A man
would think, that the consideration of who spake should
raise up the intention of our minds to inquire better,
and obey the purpose of so great a speaker: for as we
order the business of marriage, that which he here
speaks is all made vain; and in the decision of matri-
mony, or not matrimony, nothing at all regarded. Our
presumption hath utterly changed the state and con-
WHICH TREAT OF NULLITIES IN MARRIAGE.
181
dition of this ordinance: God ordained it in love and
helpfulness to be indissoluble, and we in outward act
and formality to be a forced bondage; so that being
subject to a thousand errours in the best men, if it prove
a blessing to any, it is of mere accident, as man's law
hath handled it, and not of institution.
“It is not good for man to be alone.”] Hitherto all
things, that have been named, were approved of God
to be very good : loneliness is the first thing, which
God’s eye name not good: whether it be a thing, or
the want of something, I labour not; let it be their
tendance, who have the art to be industriously idle.
And here “alone " is meant alone without woman;
otherwise Adam had the company of God himself, and
angels to converse with ; all creatures to delight him
seriously, or to make him sport. God could have created
him out of the same mould a thousand friends and bro-
ther Adams to have been his consorts; yet for all this,
till Eve was given him, God reckoned him to be alone.
“It is not good.”] God here presents himself like
to a man deliberating; both to shew us that the matter
is of high consequence, and that he intended to found
it according to natural reason, not impulsive command;
but that the duty should arise from the reason of it, not
the reason be swallowed up in a reasonless duty.
“Not good,” was as much to Adam before his fall, as
not pleasing, not expedient; but since the coming of
sin into the world, to him who hath not received the
continence, it is not only not expedient to be alone, but
plainly sinful. And therefore he who wilfully abstains
from marriage, not being supernaturally gifted, and he
who by making the yoke of marriage unjust and in-
tolerable, causes men to abhor it, are both in a diabo-
lical sin, equal to that of Antichrist, who forbids to
marry. For what difference at all whether he abstain
men from marrying, or restrain them in a marriage
happening totally discommodious, distasteful, dishonest,
and pernicious to him, without the appearance of his
fault 2 For God does not here precisely say, I make a
female to this male, as he did be ore; but expounding
himself here on purpose, he saith, because it is not good
for man to be alone, I make him therefore a meet help.
God supplies the privation of not good, with the per-
fect gift of a real and positive good : it is man's per-
verse cooking, who hath turned this bounty of God
into a scorpion, either by weak and shallow construc-
tions, or by proud arrogance and cruelty to them who
neither in their purposes nor in their actions have of.
fended against the due honour of wedlock.
Now whereas the apostle's speaking in the spirit,
1 Cor. vii. pronounces quite contrary to this word of
God, “It is good for a man not to touch a woman,”
and God cannot contradict himself; it instructs us, that
his commands and words, especially such as bear the
manifest title of some good to man, are not to be so
strictly wrung, as to command without regard to the
most natural and miserable necessities of mankind.
Therefore the apostle adds a limitation in the 26th
verse of that chapter, for the present necessity it is
good; which he gives us doubtless as a pattern how to
reconcile other places by the general rule of charity.
“For man to be alone.”] Some would have the
sense hereof to be in respect of procreation only ; and
Austin contests that manly friendship in all other re-
gard had been a more becoming solace for Adam, than
to spend so many secret years in an empty world with
one woman. But our writers deservedly reject this
crabbed opinion; and defend that there is a peculiar
comfort in the married state beside the genial bed,
which no other society affords. No mortal nature can
endure either in the actions of religion, or study of
wisdom, without sometime slackening the cords of in-
tense thought and labour: which lest we should think
faulty, God himself conceals us not his own recreations
before the world was built; “I was,” saith the eternal
wisdom, “ daily his delight, playing always before
him.” And to him indeed wisdom is as a high tower
of pleasure, but to us a steep hill, and we toiling ever
about the bottom: he executes with ease the exploits
of his omnipotence, as easy as with us it is to will: but
no worthy enterprise can be done by us without con-
tinual plodding and wearisomeness to our faint and
sensitive abilities. We cannot therefore always be con-
templative, or pragmatical abroad, but have need of
some delightful intermissions, wherein the enlarged
soul may leave off a while her severe schooling; and,
like a glad youth in wandering vacancy, may keep
her holidays to joy and harmless pastime: which as she
cannot well do without company, so in no company
so well as where the different sex in most resembling
unlikeness, and most unlike resemblance, cannot but
please best, and be pleased in the aptitude of that va-
riety. Whereof lest we should be too timorous, in the
awe that our flat sages would form us and dress us,
wisest Solomon among his gravest Proverbs counte-
nances a kind of ravishment and erring fondness in the
entertainment of wedded leisures; and in the Song of
Songs, which is generally believed, even in the jolliest
expressions, to figure the spousals of the church with
Christ, sings of a thousand raptures between those two
lovely ones far on the hither side of carnal enjoyment.
By these instances, and more which might be brought,
we may imagine how indulgently God provided against
man's loneliness; that he approved it not, as by him-
self declared not good; that he approved the remedy
thereof, as of his own ordaining, consequently good :
and as he ordained it, so doubtless proportionably to
our fallen estate he gives it; else were his ordinance
at least in vain, and we for all his gifts still empty
handed. Nay, such an unbounteous giver we should
make him, as in the ſables Jupiter was to Ixion, giv-
ing him a cloud instead of Juno, giving him a non-
strous issue by her, the breed of Centaurs, a neglected
and unloved race, the fruits of a delusive marriage;
and lastly, giving him her with a damnation to that
wheel in hell, from a life thrown into the midst of
temptations and disorders. But God is no deceitful
giver, to bestow that on us for a remedy of loneli-
ness, which if it bring not a sociable mind as well
as a conjunctive body, leaves us no less alone than
before; and if it bring a mind perpetually averse and
disagreeable, betrays us to a worse condition than
182
EXPOSITIONS ON THE FOUR CHIEF PLACES IN SCRIPTURE,
the most deserted loneliness. God cannot in the jus-
tice of his own promise and institution so unexpect-
edly mock us, by forcing that upon us as the re-
medy of solitude, which wraps us in a misery worse
than any wilderness, as the Spirit of God himself
judges, Prov. xix. especially knowing that the best
and wisest men amidst the sincere and most cordial de-
signs of their heart, do daily err in choosing. We may
conclude therefore, seeing orthodoxal expositors con-
fess to our hands, that by loneliness is not only meant
the want of copulation, and that man is not less alone
by turning in a body to him, unless there be within it
a mind answerable; that it is a work more worthy the
care and consultation of God to provide for the wor-
thiest part of man, which is his mind, and not unna-
turally to set it beneath the formalities and respects of
the body, to make it a servant of its own vassal : I say,
we may conclude that such a marriage, wherein the
mind is so disgraced and vilified below the body’s in-
terest, and can have no just or tolerable contentment,
is not of God's institution, and therefore no marriage.
Nay, in concluding this, I say we conclude no more
than what the common expositors themselves give us,
both in that which I have recited, and much more
hereafter. But the truth is, they give us in such a
manner, as they who leave their own mature po-
sitions like the eggs of an ostrich in the dust; I
do but lay them in the sun; their own pregnancies
hatch the truth; and I am taxed of novelties and strange
producements, while they, like that inconsiderate bird,
know not that these are their own natural breed.
“I will make him a help meet for him.”] Here the
heavenly institutor, as if he laboured not to be mis-
taken by the supercilious hypocrisy of those that love
to master their brethren, and to make us sure that he
gave us not now a servile yoke, but an amiable knot,
contents not himself to say, I will make him a wife;
but resolving to give us first the meaning before the
name of a wiſe, saith graciously, “I will make him a
help meet for him.” And here again, as before, I do
not require more full and fair deductions than the whole
consent of our divines usually raise from this text, that
in matrimony there must be first a mutual help to
piety, next to civil fellowship of love and amity, then
to generation, so to household affairs, lastly the remedy
of incontinence. And commonly they reckon them in
such order, as leaves generation and incontinence to
be last considered. This I amaze meat, that though
all the superior and nobler ends both of marriage
and of the married persons be absolutely frustrate,
the matrimony stirs not, loses no hold, remains as
rooted as the centre : but if the body bring but in a
complaint of frigidity, by that cold application only
this adamantine Alp of wedlock has leave to dis-
solve; which else all the machinations of religious or
civil reason at the suit of a distressed mind, either for
divine worship or human conversation violated, cannot
unfasten. What courts of concupiscence are these,
wherein fleshly appetite is heard before right reason,
lust before love or devotion 2 They may be pious
Christians together, they may be loving and friendly,
they may be helpful to each other in the family, but
they cannot couple; that shall divorce them, though
either party would not. They can neither serve God
together, nor one be at peace with the other, nor be
good in the family one to other, but live as they were
dead, or live as they were deadly enemies in a cage to-
gether; it is all one, they can couple, they shall not
divorce till death, not though this sentence be their
death. What is this besides tyranny, but to turn na-
ture upside down, to make both religion and the mind
of man wait upon the slavish errands of the body, and
not the body to follow either the sanctity or the sove-
r, ignty of the mind, unspeakably wronged, and with
all equity complaining P what is this but to abuse the
sacred and mysterious bed of marriage to be the com-
pulsive stye of an ingrateful and malignant lust, stirred
up only from a carnal acrimony, without either love or
peace, or regard to any other thing holy or human P
This I admire, how possibly it should inhabit thus long
in the sense of so many disputing theologians, unless
it be the lowest lees of a canonical infection liver-
grown to their sides; which perhaps will never uncling,
without the strong abstersive of some heroic magistrate,
whose mind, equal to his high office, dares lead him
both to know and to do without their frivolous case-
putting. For certain he shall have God and this in-
stitution plainly on his side. And if it be true both in
divinity and law, that consent alone, though copula-
tion never follow, makes a marriage; how can they
dissolve it for the want of that which made it not, and
not dissolve it for that not continuing which made it
and should preserve it in love and reason, and differ-
ence it from a brute conjugality ?
“Meet for him.”] The original here is more expres-
sive than other languages word for word can render it;
but all agree effectual conformity of disposition and
affection to be hereby signified; which God as it were,
not satisfied with the naming of a help, goes on de-
scribing another self, a second self, a very self itself.
Yet now there is nothing in the life of man, through
our misconstruction, made more uncertain, more ha-
zardous and full of chance, than this divine blessing
with such favourable significance here conferred upon .
us; which if we do but err in our choice, the most un-
blameable errour that can be, err but one minute, one
moment after those mighty syllables pronounced,
which take upon them to join heaven and hell toge-
ther unpardonably till death pardon : this divine bless-
ing that looked but now with such a humane smile
upon us, and spoke such gentle reason, straight van-
ishes like a fair sky, and brings on such a scene of
cloud and tempest, as turns all to shipwreck without
haven or shore, but to a ransomless captivity. And
then they tell us it is our sin: but let them be told
again, that sin through the mercy of God hath not
made such waste upon us, as to make utterly void to our
use any temporal benefit, much less any so much avail-
ing to a peaceful and sanctified life, merely for a most
incident errour, which no wariness can certainly shun.
And wherefore serves our happy redemption, and the
liberty we have in Christ, but to deliver us from cala-
WHICH TREAT OF NULLITIES IN MARRIAGE.
183
mitous yokes, not to be lived under without the en-
dangerment of our souls, and to restore us in some
competent measure to a right in every good thing both
of this life, and the other 2 Thus we see how treatably
and distinctly God hath here taught us what the prime
ends of marriage are ; mutual solace and help. That
we are now, upon the most irreprehensible mistake in
choosing, defeated and defrauded of all this original
benignity, was begun first through the snare of anti-
christian canons long since obtruded upon the church
of Rome, and not yet scoured off by reformation, out of
a lingering vain-glory that abides among us to make
fair shews in formal ordinances, and to enjoin conti-
mence and bearing of crosses in such a garb as no scrip-
ture binds us, under the thickest arrows of temptation,
where we need not stand. Now we shall see with what
acknowledgment and assent Adam received this new
associate which God brought him.
Ver. 23. “And Adam said, This is now bone of my
bones, and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called
woman, because she was taken out of man.”
That there was a nearer alliance between Adam and
Eve, than could be ever after between man and wife,
is visible to any. For no other woman was ever
moulded out of her husband's rib, but of mere strangers
for the most part they come to have that consanguini-
ty, which they have by wedlock. And if we look
nearly upon the matter, though marriage be most
agreeable to holiness, to purity, and justice, yet is it
not a natural, but a civil and ordained relation. For
if it were in nature, no law or crime could disannul it,
to make a wife, or husband, otherwise than still a wife
or husband, but only death; as nothing but that can
make a father no father, or a son no son. But divorce
for adultery or desertion, as all our churches agree but
England, not only separates, but nullifies, and extin-
guishes the relation itself of matrimony, so that they
are no more man and wife; otherwise the innocent
party could not marry elsewhere, without the guilt of
adultery. Next, were it merely natural, why was it
here ordained more than the rest of moral law to man
in his original rectitude, in whose breast all that was
natural or moral was engraven without external con-
stitutions and edicts : Adam therefore in these words
does not establish an indissoluble bond of marriage in
the carnal ligaments of flesh and bones; for if he did,
it would belong only to himself in the literal sense,
every one of us being nearer in flesh of flesh, and bone
of bones, to our parents than to a wife; they therefore
were not to be left for her in that respect. But Adam,
who had the wisdom given him to know all creatures,
and to name them according to their properties, no
doubt but had the gift to discern perfectly that which
concerned him much more; and to apprehend at first
sight the true fitness of that consort which God pro-
vided him. And therefore spake in reference to those
words which God pronounced before ; as if he had
said, This is she by whose meet help and society Ishall no
Timore be alone; this is she who was made my image, even
as I the image of God; not so much in body, as in unity of
mind and heart. And he might as easily know what
were the words of God, as he knew so readily what
had been done with his rib, while he slept so soundly.
He might well know, if God took a rib out of his in-
side to form of it a double good to him, he would far
sooner disjoin it from his outside, to prevent a treble
mischief to him; and far sooner cut it quite off from
all relation for his undoubted ease, than nail it into his
body again, to stick for ever there a thorn in his heart.
Whenas nature teaches us to divide any limb from the
body to the saving of its fellows, though it be the
maiming and deformity of the whole ; how much more
is it ler doctrine to sever by incision, not a true limb
so much, though that be lawful, but an adherent, a
sore, the gangrene of a limb, to the recovery of a whole
man' But if in these words we shall make Adam to
erect a new establishment of marriage in the mere
flesh, which God so lately had instituted, and founded
in the sweet and mild familiarity of love and solace,
and mutual fitness; what do we but use the mouth of
our general parent, the first time it opens, to an arro-
gant opposition and correcting of God’s wiser ordi-
nance 2 These words therefore cannot import any
thing new in marriage, but either that which belongs
to Adam only, or to us in reference only to the insti-
tuting words of God, which made a meet help against
loneliness. Adam spake like Adam the words of flesh
and bones, the shell and rind of matrimony; but God
spake like God, of love, and solace, and meet help, the
soul both of Adam's words and of matrimony.
Ver. 24. “Therefore shall a man leave his father
and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife;
and they shall be one flesh.”
This verse, as our common herd expounds it, is the
great knot-tier, which hath undone by tying, and by
tangling, millions of guiltless consciences: this is that
grisly porter, who having drawn men and wisest men
by subtle allurement within the train of an unhappy
matrimony, claps the dungeon-gate upon them, as ir-
recoverable as the grave. But if we view him well,
and hear him with not too hasty and prejudicant cars,
we shall find no such terror in him. For first, it is not
here said absolutely without all reason he shall cleave
to his wife, be it to his weal or to his destruction as it
happens, but he shall do this upon the premises and
considerations of that meet help and society before
mentioned. “Therefore he shall cleave to his wife,”
no otherwise a wife than a fit help. He is not bid to
leave the dear cohabitation of his father, mother, bro-
thers, and sisters, to link himself inseparably with the
mere carcass of a marriage, perhaps an enemy. This
joining particle “Therefore” is in all equity, may in
all necessity of construction, to comprehend first and
most principally what God spake concerning the in-
ward essence of marriage in his institution, that we
may learn how far to attend what Adam spake of the
outward materials thereof in his approbation. For if
we shall bind these words of Adam only to a corporal
meaning, and that the force of this injunction upon all
us his sons, to live individually with any woman which
184
EXPOSITIONS ON THE FOUR CHIEF PLACES IN SCRIPTURE,
hath befallen us in the most mistaken wedlock, shall
consist not in those moral and relative causes of Eve's
creation, but in the mere anatomy of a rib, and that
Adam's insight concerning wedlock reached no fur-
ther, we shall make him as very an idiot as the So-
cinians make him; which would not be reverently
done of us. Let us be content to allow our great fore-
father so much wisdom, as to take the instituting words
of God along with him into this sentence, which if they
be well minded, will assure us that flesh and ribs are
but of a weak and dead efficacy to keep marriage united
where there is no other fitness. The rib of marriage,
to all since Adam, is a relation much rather than a
bone; the nerves and sinews thereoſ are love and meet
help, they knit not every couple that marries, and
where they knit they seldom break; but where they
break, which for the most part is where they were
never truly joined, to such at the same instant both
flesh and rib cease to be in common : so that here they
argue nothing to the continuance of a false or violated
marriage, but must be led back again to receive their
meaning from those institutive words of God, which
give them all the life and vigour they have.
“Therefore shall a man leave his father,” &c.]
What to a man's thinking more plain by this appoint-
ment, that the fatherly power should give place to con-
jugal prerogative P Yet it is generally held by re-
formed writers against the papist, that though in per-
sons at discretion the marriage in itself be never so fit,
though it be fully accomplished with benediction,
board, and bed, yet the father not consenting, his main
will without dispute shall dissolve all. And this they
affirm only from collective reason, not any direct law;
for that in Exod. xxii. 17, which is most particular,
speaks that a father may refuse to marry his daughter
to one who hath defloured her, not that he may take
her away from one who hath soberly married her.
Yet because the general honour due to parents is great,
they hold he may, and perhaps hold not amiss. But
again, when the question is of harsh and rugged pa-
rents, who defer to bestow their children seasonably,
they agree jointly, that the church or magistrate may
bestow them, though without the father's consent: and
for this they have no express authority in Scripture.
So that they may see by their own handling of this
very place, that it is not the stubborn letter must go-
vern us, but the divine and softening breath of charity,
which turns and winds the dictate of every positive
command, and shapes it to the good of mankind.
Shall the outward accessory of a father's will wanting
rend the fittest and most affectionate marriage in twain,
after all nuptial consummations; and shall not the want
of love, and the privation of all civil and religious con-
cord, which is the inward essence of wedlock, do as
much to part those who were never truly wedded ?
Shall a father have this power to vindicate his own
wilful honour and authority to the utter breach of a
most dearly united marriage, and shall not a man in
his own power have the permission to free his soul, his
life, and all his comfort of life from the disaster of a no-
marriage *
Shall fatherhood, which is but man, for his
own pleasure dissolve matrimony; and shall not ma-
trimony, which is God's ordinance, for its own honour
and better conservation dissolve itself, when it is wrong
and not fitted to any of the chief ends which it owes us?
“And they shall be one flesh.”] These words also
infer, that there ought to be an individuality in mar-
riage; but without all question presuppose the joining
Not a rule yet that we have met with, so uni-
versal in this whole institution, but hath admitted limi-
tations and conditions according to human necessity.
The very foundation of matrimony, though God laid it
deliberately, “that it is not good for man to be alone,”
holds not always, if the apostle can secure us. Soon
after we are bid leave father and mother, and cleave to
a wife, but must understand the father's consent withal,
else not. “Cleave to a wife,” but let her be a wife, let
her be a meet help, a solace, not a nothing, not an ad-
versary, not a desertrice: can any law or command be
so unreasonable, as to make men cleave to calamity, to
ruin, to perdition * In like manner here “they shall
be one flesh;” but let the causes hold, and be made
really good which only have the possibility to make
them one flesh. We know that flesh can neither join
nor keep together two bodies of itself; what is it then
must make them one flesh, but likeness, but fitness of
mind and disposition, which may breed the spirit of
concord and union between them P If that be not in
the nature of either, and that there has been a remedi-
less mistake, as vain we go about to compel them into
one flesh, as if we undertook to weave a garment of
dry sand. It were more easy to compel the vegetable
and nutritive power of nature to assimilations and mix-
tures, which are not alterable each by other; or force
the concoctive stomach to turn that into flesh, which is
so totally unlike that substance, as not to be wrought
on. For as the unity of mind is nearer and greater
than the union of bodies, so doubtless is the dissimili-
tude greater and more dividual, as that which makes
between bodies all difference and distinction. Espe-
cially whenas besides the singular and substantial diſ-
ferences of every soul, there is an intimate quality of
good or evil, through the whole progeny of Adam,
which like a radical heat, or mortal chillness, joins
them, or disjoins them irresistibly. In whom there-
fore either the will or the faculty, is found to have never
joined, or now not to continue so, it is not to say, they
shall be one flesh, for they cannot be one flesh. God
commands not impossibilities; and all the ecclesiasti-
cal glue, that liturgy or laymen can compound, is not
able to sodder up two such incongruous natures into
the one flesh of a true beseeming marriage. Why did
Moses then set down their uniting into one flesh *
And I again ask, why the gospel so oft repeats the eat-
ing of our Saviour's flesh; the drinking of his blood P
“That we are one body with him, the members of
his body, flesh of his flesh, and bone of his bone,”
Ephes. v. Yet lest we should be Capermaitans, as we
are told there, that the flesh profiteth nothing; so we
are told here, if we be not as deaf as adders, that this
union of the flesh proceeds from the union of a fit help
and solace. We know, that there was never a more
Cà ll SCS.
WHICH TREAT OF NULLITIES IN MARRIAGE.
185
spiritual mystery than this gospel taught us under the
terms of body and flesh; yet nothing less intended
than that we should stick there. What a stupidness
then is it, that in marriage, which is the nearest resem-
blance of our union with Christ, we should deject our-
selves to such a sluggish and underfoot philosophy, as
to esteem the validity of marriage merely by the flesh,
though never so broken and disjointed from love and
peace, which only can give a human qualification to
that act of the flesh, and distinguish it from bes-
tial The text therefore uses this phrase, that “they
shall be one flesh,” to justify and make legitimate
the rites of marriage-bed ; which was not unneed-
ful, if for all this warrant they were suspected of
pollution by some sects of philosophy, and religions
of old, and latelier among the papists, and other he-
retics elder than they. Some think there is a high
mystery in those words, from that which Paul saith
of them, Ephes. v. “This is a great mystery, but I
speak of Christ and the church ; and thence they
would conclude marriage to be inseparable. For me,
I dispute not now whether matriniony be a mystery
or no; if it be of Christ and his church, certainly it is
not meant of every ungodly and miswedded marriage,
but then only mysterious, when it is a holy, happy,
and peaceful match. But when a saint is joined
with a reprobate, or both alike wicked with wicked,
fool with fool, a he-drunkard with a she ; when the bed
hath been nothing else for twenty years or more, but
an old haunt of lust and malice mixed together, no
love, no goodness, no loyalty, but counterplotting, and
secret wishing one another's dissolution; this is to me
the greatest mystery in the world, if such a marriage
as this can be the mystery of aught, unless it be the
mystery of iniquity: according to that which Paraeus
cites out of Chrysostom, that a bad wife is a help for
the devil, and the like may be said of a bad husband.
Since therefore none but a fit and pious matrimony can
signify the union of Christ and his church, there can-
not hence be any hinderance of divorce to that wedlock
wherein there can be no good mystery. Rather it might
to a christian conscience be matter of finding itself so
much less satisfied than before, in the continuance of
an unhappy yoke, wherein there can be no representa-
tion either of Christ, or of his church.
Thus having inquired the institution how it was in
the beginning, both from the 1 chap. of Gen. where it
was only mentioned in part, and from the second, where
it was plainly and evidently instituted; and having
attended each clause and word necessary with a dili-
gence not drowsy, we shall now fix with some advan-
tage, and by a short view backward gather up the
ground we have gone, and sum up the strength we
have, into one argumentative head, with that organic
force that logic proffers us. All arts acknowledge, that
then only we know certainly, when we can define; for
definition is that which refines the pure essence of things
from the circumstance. If therefore we can attain in
this our controversy to define exactly what marriage is,
we shall soon learn when there is a nullity thereof, and
when a divorce.
The part therefore of this chaptor, which hath been
here treated, doth orderly and readily resolve itself into
a definition of marriage, and a consectary from thence.
To the definition these words chiefly contribute; “It is
not good,” &c. “I will make,” &c. Where the con-
sectary begins this connection, “Therefore” informs
us, “Therefore shall a man,” &c. Definition is decreed
by logicians to consist only of causes constituting the
essence of a thing. What is not therefore among the
causes constituting marriage, must not stay in the de-
finition. Those causes are concluded to be matter, and,
as the artist calls it, Form. But inasmuch as the same
thing may be a cause more ways than one, and that in
relations and institutions which have no corporal sub-
sistence, but only a respective being, the Form, by
which the thing is what it is, is oft so slender and un-
distinguishable, that it would soon confuse, were it not
sustained by the efficient and final causes, which con-
cur to make up the form, invalid otherwise of itself, it
will be needful to take in all the four causes into the
definition. First therefore the material cause of matri-
mony is man and woman ; the author and efficient,
God and their consent; the internal Form and soul of
this relation, is conjugal love arising from a mutual fit-
ness to the final causes of wedlock, help and society in
religious, civil, and domestic conversation, which in-
cludes as an inferior end the fulfilling of natural desire,
and specifical increase; these are the final causes both
moving the Efficient, and perfecting the Form. And
although copulation be considered among the ends of
marriage, yet the act thereof in a right esteem can no
longer be matrimonial, than it is an effect of conjugal
love. When love finds itself utterly unmatched, and
justly vanishes, may rather cannot but vanish, the fleshly
act indeed may continue, but not holy, not pure, not
beseeming the sacred bond of marriage; being at best
but an animal excretion, but more truly worse and
more ignoble than that mute kindliness among the
herds and flocks: in that proceeding as it ought from
intellective principles, it participates of nothing rational,
but that which the field and the fold equals. For in
human actions the soul is the agent, the body in a
manner passive. If then the body do out of sensitive
force, what the soul complies not with, how can man,
and not rather something beneath man, be thought the
doer P
But to proceed in the pursuit of an accurate defini-
tion, it will avail us something, and whet our thoughts,
to examine what fabric hereof others have already
reared. Paraeus on Gen. defines marriage to be “an
indissoluble conjunction of one man and one woman to
an individual and intimate conversation, and mutual
benevolence,” &c. Wherein is to be marked his placing
of intimate conversation before bodily benevolence; for
bodily is meant, though indeed “benevolence” rather
sounds will than body. Why then shall divorce be
granted for want of bodily performance, and not for
want of fitness to intimate conversation, whenas cor-
poral benevolence cannot in any human fashion be
without this 2 Thus his definition places the ends of
marriage in one order, and esteems them in another.
186
EXPOSITIONS ON THE FOUR CHIEF PLACES IN SCRIPTURE,
His tautology also of indissoluble and individual is not
to be imitated; especially since neither indissoluble
nor individual hath aught to do in the exact definition,
being but a consectary flowing from thence, as appears
by plain Scripture, “Therefore shall a man leave,” &c.
For marriage is not true marriage by being individual,
but therefore individual, if it be true marriage. No
argument but causes enter the definition: a consectary
is but the effect of those causes. Besides, that marriage
is indissoluble, is not catholicly true; we know it dis-
soluble for adultery and for desertion by the verdict of
all reformed churches. Dr. Ames defines it “an indi-
vidual conjunction of one man and one woman, to
communion of body and mutual society of life:” but
this perverts the order of God, who in the institution
places meet help and society of life before communion
of body. And vulgar estimation undervalues beyond
comparison all society of life and communion of mind
beneath the communion of body; granting no divorce,
but to the want, or miscommunicating of that. Hemin-
gius, an approved author, Melancthon's scholar, and
who, next to Bucer and Erasmus, writes of divorce
most like a divine, thus comprises, “Marriage is a
conjunction of one man and one woman lawfully con-
senting, into one flesh, for mutual help's sake, ordained
of God.” And in his explanation stands punctually
upon the conditions of consent, that it be not in any
main matter deluded, as being the life of wedlock, and
no true marriage without a true consent. “Into one
flesh” he expounds into one mind, as well as one body,
and makes it the formal cause: herein only missing,
while he puts the effect into his definition instead of
the cause which the text affords him. For “one flesh”
is not the formal essence of wedlock, but one end, or
one effect of “a meet help :” the end ofttimes being
the effect and fruit of the form, as logic teaches: else
many ared and holy matrimonies, and more eminently
that of Joseph and Mary, would be no true marriage.
And that Maxim generally received, would be false,
that “ consent alone, though copulation never follow,
makes the marriage.” Therefore to consent lawſully
into one flesh, is not the formal cause of matrimony,
but only one of the effects. The civil lawyers, and first
Justinian or Tribonian defines matrimony a “conjunc-
tion of man and woman containing individual accus-
tom of life.” Wherein first, individual is not so bad as
indissoluble put in by others : and although much
cavil might be made in the distinguishing between in-
divisible and individual, yet the one taken for possible,
the other for actual, neither the one nor the other can
belong to the essence of marriage; especially when a
civilian defines, by which law marriage is actually
divorced for many causes, and with good leave, by
mutual consent. Therefore where “conjunction” is said,
they who comment the Institutes agree, that conjunc-
tion of mind is by the law meant, not necessarily con-
junction of body. That law then had good reason
attending to its own definition, that divorce should be
granted for the breaking of that conjunction which it
holds necessary, sooner than for the want of that con-
junction which it holds not necessary. And whereas
Tuningus a famous lawyer, excuses individual as the
purpose of marriage, not always the success, it suffices
not. Purpose is not able to constitute the essence of a
thing. Nature herself, the universal mother, intends
nothing but her own perſection and preservation; yet
is not the more indissoluble for that. The Pandects
out of Modestinus, though not define, yet well describe
marriage “the conjunction of male and female, the
society of all life, the communion of divine and human
right:” which Bucer also imitates on the fifth to the
Ephesians. But it seems rather to comprehend the
several ends of marriage than to contain the more con-
stituting cause that makes it what it is.
That I therefore among others (for who sings not
Hylas P) may give as well as take matter to be judged
on, it will be looked I should produce another defini-
tion than these which have not stood the trial. Thus
then I suppose that marriage by the natural and plain
order of God’s institution in the text may be more de-
monstratively and essentially defined. “Marriage is
a divine institution, joining man and woman in a love
fitly disposed to the helps and comforts of domestic
life.” “A divine institution.” This contains the prime
efficient cause of marriage: as for consent of parents
and guardians, it seems rather a concurrence than a
cause ; for as many that marry are in their own power
as not; and where they are not their own, yet are they
not subjected beyond reason. Now though efficient
causes are not requisite in a definition, yet divine in-
stitution hath such influence upon the Form, and is so
a conserving cause of it, that without it the Form is
not sufficient to distinguish matrimony from other con-
junctions of male and female, which are not to be
counted marriage. “Joining man and woman in a
love,” &c. This brings in the parties’ consent; until
which be, the marriage hath no true being. When I
say “consent,” I mean not errour, for errour is not
properly consent: and why should not consent be here
understood with equity and good to either part, as in
all other friendly covenants, and not be strained and
cruelly urged to the mischief and destruction of both 2
Neither do I mean that singular act of consent which
made the contract, for that may remain, and yet the
marriage not true nor lawful; and that may cease, and
yet the marriage both true and lawful, to their sin that
break it. So that either as no efficient at all, or but a
transitory, it comes not into the definition. That con-
sent I mean, which is a love fitly disposed to mutual
help and comfort of life: this is that happy Form of
Marriage naturally arising from the very heart of di-
vine institution in the text, in all the former definitions
either obscurely, and under mistaken terms expressed,
or not at all. This gives marriage all her due, all her
benefits, all her being, all her distinct and proper being.
This makes a marriage not a bondage, a blessing not
curse, a gift of God not a snare. Unless there be a
love, and that love born of fitness, how can it last 3
unless it last, how can the best and sweetest purposes
of marriage be attained P And they not attained, which
are the chief ends, and with a lawful love constitute
the formal cause itself of marriage, how can the essence
WHICII TREAT OF NULLITIES IN MARRIAGE.
187
thereof subsist? How can it be indeed what it goes for?
Conclude therefore by all the power of reason, that
where this essence of marriage is not, there can be no
true marriage; and the parties, either one of them or
both, are free, and without fault, rather by a nullity
than by a divorce, may betake them to a second choice,
if their present condition be not tolerable to them. If
any shall ask, why “domestic” in the definition f I
answer, that because both in the Scriptures, and in the
gravest poets and philosophers, I find the properties
and excellencies of a wife set out only from domestic
virtues; if they extend further, it diffuses them into
the notion of some more common duty than matrimo-
nial.
Thus far of the definition; the consectary which
flows from thence, altogether depends thereon, is ma-
nifestly brought in by this connexive particle “there-
fore;” and branches itself into a double consequence;
First, individual society, “therefore shall a man leave
father and mother:” Secondly, conjugal benevolence,
“and they shall be one flesh.” Which, as was shewn,
is not without cause here mentioned, to prevent and to
abolish the suspect of pollution in that natural and un-
defiled act. These consequences therefore cannot either
in religion, law, or reason, be bound, and posted upon
mankind to his sorrow and misery, but receive what
force they have from the meetness of help and solace,
which is the formal cause and end of that definition
that sustains them. And although it be not for the
majesty of Scripture, to humble herself in artificial the-
orems, and definitions, and corollaries, like a professor
in the schools, but looks to be analysed, and interpreted
by the logical industry of her disciples and followers,
and to be reduced by them, as oft as need is, into those
sciential rules, which are the implements of instruc-
tion; yet Moses, as if foreseeing the miserable work
that man's ignorance and pusillanimity would make in
this matrimonious business, and endeavouring his ut-
most to prevent it, condescends in this place to such a
methodical and school.like way of defining and conse-
quencing, as in no place of the whole law more.
Thus we have seen, and, if we be not contentious,
may know what was marriage in the beginning, to
which in the gospel we are referred ; and what from
hence to judge of nullity, or divorce. Here I esteem
the work done; in this field the controversy decided ;
but because other places of Scripture secn to look
aversely upon this our decision, (although indeed they
keep all harmony with it,) and because it is a better
work to reconcile the seeming diversities of Scripture,
than the real dissensions of nearest friends; I shall
assay in the three following discourses to perform that
office. -
Deut. xxiv. 1, 2.
1. “When a man hath taken a wife, and married her,
and it come to pass that she find no favour in his
eyes, because he hath found some uncleanness in
her, then let him write her a bill of divorcement,
and give it in her hand, and send her out of his
house.
2. And when she is departed out of his house, she may
go and be another man's wife.”
That which is the only discommodity of speaking in
a clear matter, the abundance of argument that presses
to be uttered, and the suspense of judgment what to
choose, and how in the multitude of reason to be not
tedious, is the greatest difficulty which I expect here
to meet with. Yet much hath been said formerly
concerning this law in “the Doctrine of Divorce.”
Whereof I shall repeat no more than what is necessary.
Two things are here doubted : First, and that but of
late, whether this be a law or no; next, what this
reason of “uncleanness” might mean, for which the
law is granted. That it is a plain law no man ever
questioned, till Vatablus within these hundred years
professed Hebrew at Paris, a man of no religion, as
Beza deciphers him. Yet some there be who follow
him, not only against the current of all antiquity both
Jewish and Christian, but the evidence of Scripture
also, Malachi ii. 16, “Let him who hateth put away,
saith the Lord God of Israel.” Although this place
also hath been tampered with, as if it were to be thus
rendered, “The Lord God saith, that he hateth putting
away.” But this new interpretation rests only in the
authority of Junius: for neither Calvin, nor Vatablus
himself, nor any other known divine so interpreted
before. And they of best note who have translated the
Scripture since, and Diodati for one, follow not his
reading. And perhaps they might reject it, if for no-
thing else, for these two reasons: first, it introduces in
a new manner the person of God speaking less majestic
than he is ever wont : when God speaks by his prophet,
he ever speaks in the first person, thereby signifying
his majesty and omnipresence. He would have said,
I hate putting away, saith the Lord; and not sent word
by Malachi in a sudden fallen style, “The Lord God
saith, that he hateth putting away :” that were a phrase
to shrink the glorious omnipresence of God speaking,
into a kind of circumscriptive absence. And were as
if a herald, in the achievement of a king, should com-
mit the indecorum to set his helmet sideways and close,
not full-faced and open in the posture of direction and
command. We cannot think therefore that this last
prophet would thus in a new fashion absent the person
of God from his own words, as if he came not along
with them. For it would also be wide from the proper
scope of this place; he that reads attentively will soon
perceive, that God blames not here the Jews for putting
away their wives, but for keeping strange concubines,
to the “profaning of Juda's holiness,” and the vexation
of their Hebrew wives, v. 11, and 14, “Judah hath
married the daughter of a strange god :” and exhorts
them rather to put their wives away whom they hate,
as the law permitted, than to keep them under such
affronts. And it is received, that this prophet lived in
those times of Ezra and Nehemiah, (nay by some is
thought to be Ezra himself) when the people were
forced by these two worthies to put their strange wives
away. So that what the story of those times, and the
plain context of the cleventh verse, from whence this
188
EXPOSITIONS ON THE FOUR CHIEF PLACES IN SCRIPTURE,
rebuke begins, can give us to conjecture of the obscure
and curt Ebraisms that follow ; this prophet does not
forbid putting away, but forbids keeping, and com-
mands putting away according to God's law, which
is the plainest interpreter both of what God will,
and what he can best suffer. Thus much evinces,
that God there commanded divorce by Malachi; and
this confirms, that he commands it also here by
Moses.
I may the less doubt to mention by the way an au-
thor, though counted apocryphal, yet of no small ac-
count for piety and wisdom, the author of Ecclesiasti-
cus. Which book, begun by the grandfather of that
Jesus, who is called the son of Sirach, might have been
written in part, not much after the time when Mala-
chi lived; if we compute by the reign of Ptolemaeus
Euergetes. It professes to explain the law and the
prophets; and yet exhorts us to divorce for incurable
causes, and to cut off from the flesh those whom it there
describes, Ecclesiastic. xxv. 26. Which doubtless
that wise and ancient writer would never have advised,
had either Malachi so lately forbidden it, or the law by
a full precept not left it lawful. But I urge not this
for want of better proof; our Saviour himself allows
divorce to be a command, Mark x. 3, 5. Neither do
they weaken this assertion, who say it was only a suf-
ferance, as shall be proved at large in that place of
Mark. But suppose it were not a written law, they
never can deny it was a custom, and so effect nothing.
For the same reasons that induce them why it should
not be a law, will straiten them as hard why it should
be allowed a custom. All custom is either evil, or not
evil; if it be evil, this is the very end of lawgiving, to
abolish evil customs by wholesome laws; unless we
imagine Moses weaker than every negligent and start-
ling politician. If it be, as they make this of divorce
to be, a custom against nature, against justice, against
charity, how, upon this most impure custom tolerated,
could the God of pureness erect a mice and precise law,
that the wife married after divorce could not return to
her former husband, as being defiled P What was all
this following niceness worth, built upon the lewd
foundation of a wicked thing allowed P. In few words
then, this custom of divorce either was allowable, or
not allowable; if not allowable, how could it be al-
lowed P if it were allowable, all who understand law
will consent, that a tolerated custom hath the force of
a law, and is indeed no other but an unwritten law, as
Justinian calls it, and is as prevalent as any written
statute. So that their shift of turning this law into a
custom wheels about, and gives the onset upon their
own flanks; not disproving, but concluding it to be
the more firm law, because it was without controversy
a granted custom; as clear in the reason of common
life, as those given rules whereon Euclides builds his
propositions. -
Thus being every way a law of God, who can with-
out blasphemy doubt it to be a just and pure law f
Moses continually disavows the giving them any sta-
tute, or judgment, but what he learnt of God; of whom
also in his song he saith, Deut. xxxii. “He is the rock,
his work is perfect, all his ways are judgment, a God
of truth and without iniquity, just and right is he.”
And David testifies, the judgments of the Lord “are
trüe and righteous altogether.” Not partly right and
partly wrong, much less wrong altogether, as divines
of now-a-days dare censure them. Moses again, of
that people to whom he gave this law, saith, Deut. xiv.
“Ye are the children of the Lord your God, the Lord
hath chosen thee to be a peculiar people to himself
above all the nations upon the earth, that thou shouldst
keep all his commandments, and be high in praise, in
name, and in honour, holy to the Lord "chap. xxvi.
And in the fourth, “Behold I have taught you statutes
and judgments, even as the Lord my God commanded
me, keep therefore and do them. For this is your wis-
dom and your understanding in the sight of nations
that shall hear all these statutes, and say, surely this
great nation is a wise and understanding people. For
what nation is there so great, who hath God so nigh to
them P and what nation that hath statutes and judg-
ments so righteous as all this law which I set before
you this day P" Thus whether we look at the purity
and justice of God himself, the jealousy of his honour
among other nations, the holiness and moral perfection
which he intended by his law to teach this people, we
cannot possibly think how he could endure to let them
slug and grow inveterately wicked, under base allow-
ances, and whole adulterous lives by dispensation.
They might not eat, they might not touch an unclean
thing; to what hypocrisy then were they trained up, if
by prescription of the same law, they might be unjust,
they might be adulterous for term of life? forbid to soil
their garments with a coy imaginary pollution, but not
forbid, but countenanced and animated by law, to soil
their souls with deepest defilements. What more un-
like to God, what more like that God should hate, than
that his law should be so curious to wash vessels and
vestures, and so careless to leave unwashed, unregard-
ed, so foul a scab of Egypt in their souls P What would
we more ? The statutes of the Lord are all pure and
just: and if all, then this of divorce.
“Because he hath found some uncleanness in her.”]
That we may not esteem this law to be a mere autho-
rizing of licence, as the Pharisees took it, Moses adds the
reason, for “some uncleanness found.” Some heretofore
have been so ignorant, as to have thought, that this un-
cleanness means adultery. But Erasmus, who, for having
writ an excellent treatise of divorce, was wrote against
by some burly standard divine, perhaps of Cullen, or of
Lovain, who calls himself Phimostomus, shews learn-
edly out of the fathers, with other testimonies and
reasons, that uncleanness is not here so understood;
defends his former work, though new to that age, and
perhaps counted licentious, and fears not to engage all
his ſame on the argument. Afterward, when exposi-
tors began to understand the Hebrew text, which they
had not done of many ages before, they translated word
for word not “uncleanness,” but “the nakedness of
any thing;” and considering that nakedness is usually
referred in Scripture to the mind as well as to the body,
they constantly expound it any defect, annoyance, or
WHICH TREAT OF NULLITIES IN MARRIAGE.
189
ill quality in nature, which to be joined with, makes
life tedious, and such company worse than solitude.
So that here will be no cause to vary from the general
consent of exposition, which gives us freely that God
permitted divorce, for whatever was unalterably dis-
tasteful, whether in body or mind. But with this ad-
monishment, that if the Roman law, especially in con-
tracts and dowries, left many things to equity with
these cautions, “ex fide bona, quod aequius melius erit,
ut inter bonos bene agitur;” we will not grudge to
think, that God intended not licence here to every hu-
mour, but to such remediless grievances as might move
a good and honest and faithful man then to divorce,
when it can no more be peace or comfort to either of
them continuing thus joined. And although it could
not be avoided, but that men of hard hearts would abuse
this liberty, yet doubtless it was intended, as all other
privileges in law are, to good men principally, to bad
only by accident. So that the sin was not in the per-
mission, nor simply in the action of divorce, (for then
the permitting also had been sin,) but only in the abuse.
But that this law should, as it were, be wrung from
God and Moses, only to serve the hardheartedness, and
the lust of injurious men, how remote it is from all
sense, and law, and honesty, and therefore surely from
the meaning of Christ, shall abundantly be manifest
in due order.
Now although Moses needed not to add other reason
of this law than that one there expressed, yet to these
ages wherein canons, and Scotisms, and Lombard laws,
have dulled, and almost obliterated the lively sculpture
of ancient reason and humanity; it will be requisite to
heap reason upon reason, and all little enough to vin-
dicate the whiteness and the innocence of this divine
law, from the calumny it finds at this day, of being a
door to licence and confusion. Whenas indeed there is
not a judicial point in all Moses, consisting of more
true equity, high wisdom, and godlike pity than this
law ; not derogating, but preserving the honour and
peace of marriage, and exactly agreeing with the sense
and mind of that institution in Genesis.
For, first, if marriage be but an ordained relation, as
it seems not more, it cannot take place above the prime
dictates of nature: and if it be of natural right, yet it
must yield to that which is more natural, and before it
by eldership and precedence in nature. Now it is not
natural, that Hugh marries Beatrice, or Thomas Re-
becca, being only a civil contract, and full of many
chances; but that these men seek them meet helps,
that only is natural; and that they espouse them such,
that only is marriage. But if they find them neither
fit helps nor tolerable society, what thing more natural,
more original, and first in nature, than to depart from
that which is irksome, grievous, actively hateful, and
injurious even to hostility, especially in a conjugal re-
spect, wherein antipathies are invincible, and where
the forced abiding of the one can be no true good, no
real comfort to the other P For if he find no content-
ment from the other, how can he return it from himself?
or no acceptance, how can he mutually accept P What
more equal, more pious, than to untie a civil knot for a
natural enmity held by violence from parting, to dis-
solve an accidental conjunction of this or that man and
woman, for the most natural and most necessary dis-
agreement of meet from unmeet, guilty from guiltless,
contrary from contrary 2 It being certain, that the
mystical and blessed unity of marriage can be no way
more unhallowed and profaned, than by the forcible
uniting of such disunions and separations. Which if
we see ofttimes they cannot join or piece up a common
friendship, or to a willing conversation in the same
house, how should they possibly agree to the most fa-
miliar and united amity of wedlock 2 Abraham and
Lot, though dear friends and brethren in a strange
country, chose rather to part asunder, than to infect
their friendship with the strife of their servants: Paul
and Barnabas, joined together by the Holy Ghost to a
spiritual work, thought it better to separate, when once
they grew at variance. If these great saints, joined
by nature, friendship, religion, high providence, and
revelation, could not so govern a casual difference, a
sudden passion, but must in wisdom divide from the
outward duties of a friendship, or a colleagueship in
the same family, or in the same journey, lest it should
grow to a worse division; can any thing be more ab-
surd and barbarous, than that they whom only errour,
casualty, art, or plot, hath joined, should be compelled,
not against a sudden passion, but against the perma-
nent and radical discords of nature, to the most inti-
mate and incorporating duties of love and embrace-
ment, therein only rational and human, as they are free
and voluntary; being else an abject and servile yoke,
scarce not brutish P and that there is in man such a
peculiar sway of liking or disliking in the affairs of
matrimony, is evidently seen before marriage among
those who can be friendly, can respect each other, yet
to marry each other would not for any persuasion. If
then this unfitness and disparity be not till after mar-
riage discovered, through many causes, and colours,
and concealments, that may overshadow ; undoubtedly
it will produce the same effects, and perhaps with more
vehemence, that such a mistaken pair would give the
world to be unmarried again. And their condition
Solomon to the plain justification of divorce expresses,
Prov. xxx. 21, 23, where he tells us of his own accord,
that a “hated, or a hateful woman, when she is mar-
ried, is a thing for which the earth is disquieted, and
cannot bear it:” thus giving divine testimony to this
divine law, which bids us nothing more than is the
first and most innocent lesson of nature, to turn away
peaceably from what afflicts, and hazards our destruc-
tion; especially when our staying can do no good, and
is exposed to all evil.
Secondly, It is unjust that any ordinance, ordained
to the good and comfort of man, where that end is
missing, without his fault, should be forced upon him
to an unsufferable misery and discomfort, if not comi-
monly ruin. All ordinances are established in their
end ; the end of law is the virtue, is the righteousness
of law : and therefore him we count an ill expounder,
who urges law against the intention thereof. The
general end of every ordinance, of every severest, every
190
EXPOSITIONS ON THE FOUR CHIEF PLACES IN SCRIPTURE,
divinest, even of Sabbath, is the good of man; yea his
temporal good not excluded. But marriage is one of
the benignest ordinances of God to man, whereof both
the general and particular end is the peace and con-
tentment of man's mind, as the institution declares.
Contentment of body they grant, which if it be de-
frauded, the plea of frigidity shall divorce: but here
lies the fathomless absurdity, that granting this for
bodily defect, they will not grant it for any defect of
the mind, any violation of religious or civil society.
Whenas, if the argument of Christ be firm against the
ruler of the synagogue, Luke xiii. “Thou hypocrite,
doth not each of you on the Sabbath-day loosen his ox
or his ass from the stall, and lead him to watering, and
should not I unbind a daughter of Abraham from this
bond of Satan * it stands as good here; ye have re-
gard in marriage to the grievance of body, should you
not regard more the grievances of the mind, seeing the
soul as much excels the body, as the outward man ex-
cels the ass, and more ? for that animal is yet a living
creature, perfect in itself; but the body without the
soul is a mere senseless trunk. No ordinance there-
fore, given particularly to the good both spiritual and
temporal of man, can be urged upon him to his mis-
chief; and if they yield this to the unworthier part,
the body, whereabout are they in their principles, that
they yield it not to the more worthy, the mind of a
good man *
Thirdly, As no ordinance, so no covenant, no not
between God and man, much less between man and
man, being, as all are, intended to the good of both
parties, can hold to the deluding or making miserable
of them both. For equity is understood in every cove-
nant, even between enemies, though the terms be not
expressed. If equity therefore made it, extremity may
dissolve it. But marriage, they used to say, is the
covenant of God. Undoubted : and so if any covenant
frequently called in Scripture, wherein God is called
to witness: the covenant of friendship between David
and Jonathan is called the covenant of the Lord, 1 Sam.
xx. The covenant of Zedekiah with the king of Ba-
bel, a covenant to be doubted whether lawful or no,
yet, in respect of God invoked thereto, is called “the
oath, and the covenant of God,” Ezek. xvii. Marriage
also is called “the covenant of God,” Prov. ii. 17.
Why, but as before, because God is the witness thereof,
Mal. ii. 14. So that this denomination adds nothing
to the covenant of marriage, above any other civil and
solemn contract: nor is it more indissoluble for this
reason than any other against the end of its own ordi-
nation ; nor is any vow or oath to God exacted with
such a rigour, where superstition reigns not. For look
how much divine the covenant is, so much the more
equal, so much the more to be expected that every
article thereof should be fairly made good; no false
dealing or unperforming should be thrust upon men
without redress, if the covenant be so divine. But
faith, they say, must be kept in covenant, though to
our damage. I answer, that only holds true, where the
other side performs; which ſailing, he is no longer
bound. Again, this is true, when the keeping of faith
can be of any use or benefit to the other. But in mar-
riage, a league of love and willingness, if faith be not
willingly kept, it scarce is worth the keeping; nor can
be any delight to a gencrous mind, with whom it is
forcibly kept ; and the question still supposes the one
brought to an impossibility of keeping it as he ought,
by the other's default; and to keep it formally, not only
with a thousand shifts and dissimulations, but with open
anguish, perpetual sadness and disturbance, no willing-
ness, no cheerfulness, no contentment; cannot be any
good to a mind not basely poor and shallow, with
whom the contract of love is so kept. A covenant
therefore brought to that pass, is on the unfaulty side
without injury dissolved.
Fourthly, The law is not to neglect men under
greatest sufferances, but to see covenants of greatest
moment faithfullest performed. And what injury com-
parable to that sustained in a frustrate and false-deal-
ing marriage, to lose, for another's fault against him,
the best portion of his temporal comforts, and of his
spiritual too, as it may fall out £ It was the law, that
for man's good and quiet reduced things to propriety,
which were at first in common ; how much more law-
like were it to assist nature in disappropriating that
evil, which by continuing proper becomes destructive 8
But he might have bewared. So he might in any
other covenant, wherein the law does not constrain
errour to so dear a forfeit. And yet in these matters
wherein the wisest are apt to err, all the wariness that
can be ofttimes nothing avails. But the law can com-
pel the offending party to be more duteous. Yes, if all
these kind of offences were fit in public to be complained
of, or being compelled were any satisfaction to a mate
not sottish, or malicious. And these injuries work so
vehemently, that if the law remedy them not, by sepa-
rating the cause when no way else will pacify, the
person not relieved betakes him either to such disorderly
courses, or to such a dull dejection, as renders him
either infamous, or useless to the service of God and his
country. Which the law ought to prevent as a thing
pernicious to the commonwealth; and what better pre-
vention than this which Moses used P
Fifthly, The law is to tender the liberty and the hu-
man dignity of them that live under the law, whether
it be the man's right above the woman, or the woman's
just appeal against wrong and servitude. But the du-
ties of marriage contain in them a duty of benevolence,
which to do by compulsion against the soul, where
there can be neither peace, nor joy, nor love, but an
enthralment to one who either cannot or will not be
mutual in the godliest and the civilest ends of that
society, is the ignoblest and the lowest slavery that a
human shape can be put to. This law therefore justly
and piously provides against such an unmianly task of
bondage as this. The civil law, though it favoured
the setting free of a slave, yet, if he proved ungrateful
to his patron, reduced him to a servile condition. If
that law did well to reduce from liberty to bondage
for an ingratitude not the greatest, much more became
it the law of God, to enact the restorement of a fee-
born man ſtom an unpurposed and unworthy bondage
WHICH TREAT OF NULLITIES IN MARRIAGE.
191
to a rightful liberty, for the most unnatural fraud and
ingratitude that can be committed against him. And
if that civilian emperor, in his title of “Donations,”
permit the giver to recall his gift from him who proves
unthankful towards him ; yea, though he had sub-
scribed and signed in the deed of his gift not to recall
it, though for this very cause of ingratitude; with much
more equity doth Moses permit here the giver to recall
no petty gift, but the gift of himself, from one who
most injuriously and deceitfully uses him against the
main ends and conditions of his giving himself, ex-
pressed in God's institution. -
Sixthly, Although there be nothing in the plain
words of this law, that seems to regard the afflictions
of a wife, how great soever; yet expositors determine,
and doubtless determine rightly, that God was not un-
compassionate of them also in the framing of this law.
For should the rescript of Antoninus in the civil law
give release to servants flying for refuge to the empe-
ror's statue, by giving leave to change their cruel
masters; and should God, who in his law also is good
to injured servants, by granting them their freedom
in divers cases, not consider the wrongs and miseries
of a wife, which is no servant? Though herein the
countersense of our divines to me, I must confess,
seems admirable; who teach that God gave this as a
merciful law, not for man whom he here names, and
to whom by name he gives this power; but for the
wife, whom he names not, and to whom by name he
gives no power at all. For certainly if man be liable
to injuries in marriage, as well as woman, and man
be the worthier person, it were a preposterous law to
respect only the less worthy; her whom God made
for marriage, and not him at all for whom marriage
was made. -
Seventhly, The law of marriage gives place to the
power of parents: for we hold, that consent of parents
not had may break the wedlock, though else accom-
plished. It gives place to masterly power, for the
master might take away from a Hebrew servant the
wife which he gave him, Exod. xxi. If it be an-
swered, that the marriage of servants is no matrimony;
it is replied, that this in the ancient Roman law is
true, not in the Mosaic. If it be added, she was a stran-
ger, not a Hebrew, therefore easily divorced; it will be
answered, that strangers not being Canaanites, and
they also being converts, might be lawfully married,
as Rahab was. And her conversion is here supposed;
for a Hebrew master could not lawſully give a heathen
wife to a Hebrew servant. However, the divorcing of
an Israelitish woman was as easy by the law, as the
divorcing of a stranger, and almost in the same words
permitted, Deut. xxiv. and Deut. xxi. Lastly, it gives
place to the right of war, for a captive woman lawfully
married, and afterwards not beloved, might be dis-
missed, only without ransom, Deut. xxi. If marriage
be dissolved by so many exterior powers, not superior,
as we think, why may not the power of marriage itself,
for its own peace and honour, dissolve itself, where the
persons wedded be free persons? Why may not a
greater and more matural power complaining dissolve
marriage 2 For the ends, why matrimony was or-
dained, are certainly and by all logic above the ordi-
nance itself; why may not that dissolve marriage,
without which that institution hath no force at all P
For the prime ends of marriage are the whole strength
and validity thereof, without which matrimony is like
an idol, nothing in the world. But those former al-
lowances were all for hardness of heart. Be that
granted, until we come where to understand it better;
if the law suffer thus far the obstimacy of a bad man, is
it not more righteous here, to do willingly what is but
equal, to remove in season the extremities of a good
man P
Eighthly, If a man had deflowered a virgin, or
brought an ill name on his wife, that she came not a
virgin to him, he was amerced in certain shekels of
silver, and bound never to divorce her all his days,
Deut. xxii. which shews that the law gave no liberty
to divorce, where the injury was palpable; and that
the absolute forbidding to divorce was in part the
punishment of a deflowerer, and a defamer. Yet not
so but that the wife questionless might depart when
she pleased. Otherwise this course had not so much
righted her, as delivered her up to more spite and
cruel usage. This law therefore doth justly distin-
guish the privilege of an honest and blameless man in
the matter of divorce, from the punishment of a noto-
rious offender.
Ninthly, Suppose it should be imputed to a man,
that he was too rash in his choice, and why he took not
better heed, let him now smart, and bear his folly as
he may ; although the law of God, that terrible law,
do not thus upbraid the infirmities and unwilling mis-
takes of man in his integrity: but suppose these and
the like proud aggravations of some stern hypocrite,
more merciless in his mercies, than any literal law in
the rigour of severity, must be patiently heard; yet all
law, and God's law especially, grants every where to
errour easy remitments, even where the utmost penalty
exacted were no undoing. With great reason there-
fore and mercy doth it here not torment an errour, if it
be so, with the endurance of a whole life lost to all
household comfort and society, a punishment of too
vast and huge dimension for an errour, and the more
unreasonable for that the like objection may be op-
posed against the plea of divorcing for adultery: he
might have looked better before to her breeding under
religious parents: why did he not more diligently in-
quire into her manners, into what company she kept 2
every glance of her eye, every step of her gait, would
have prophesied adultery, if the quick scent of these
discerners had been took along ; they had the divina-
tion to have foretold you all this, as they have now the
divinity to punish an errour inhumanly. As good rea-
son to be content, and forced to be content with your
adulteress, if these objectors might be the judges of
human frailty. But God, more mild and good to man,
than man to his brother, in all this liberty given to
divorcement, mentions not a word of our past errours
and mistakes, if any were; which these men objecting
from their own inventions, prosecute with all violence
102
EXPOSITIONS ON THE FOUR CHIEF PLACES IN SCRIPTURE,
and iniquity. For if the one be to look so narrowly
what he takes, at the peril of ever keeping, why should
not the other be made as wary what is promised, by
the peril of losing 2 for without those promises the
treaty of marriage had not proceeded. Why should
his own errour bind him, rather than the other's fraud
acquit him P Let the buyer beware, saith the old law-
beaten termer. Belike then there is no more honesty,
nor ingenuity in the bargain of a wedlock, than in the
buying of a colt : we must it seems drive it on as craft-
ily with those whose affinity we seek, as if they were a
pack of salemen and complotters. But the deceiver de-
ceives himself in the unprosperous marriage, and there-
in is sufficiently punished. I answer, that the most of
those who deceive are such as either understand not,
or value not the true purposes of marriage; they have
the prey they seek, not the punishment: yet say it
prove to them some cross, it is not equal that errour
and fraud should be linked in the same degree of for-
feiture, but rather that errour should be acquitted, and
fraud bereaved his morsel, if the mistake were not on
both sides; for then on both sides the acquitment would
be reasonable, if the bondage be intolerable ; which
this law graciously determines, not unmindful of the
wife, as was granted willingly to the common exposi-
tors, though beyond the letter of this law, yet not be-
yond the spirit of charity.
Tenthly, Marriage is a solemn thing, some say a
holy, the resemblance of Christ and his church : and
so indeed it is where the persons are truly religious;
and we know all sacred things, not performed sin-
cerely as they ought, are no way acceptable to God in
their outward formality. And that wherein it differs
from personal duties, if they be not truly done, the
fault is in ourselves; but marriage to be a true and
pious marriage is not in the single power of any per-
son; the essence whereof, as of all other covenants, is
in relation to another, the making and maintaining
causes thereof are all mutual, and must be a commu-
nion of spiritual and temporal comforts. If then either
of them cannot, or obstinately will not, be answerable
in these duties, so as that the other can have no peace-
ful living, or endure the want of what he justly seeks,
and sees no hope, then straight from that dwelling,
love, which is the soul of wedlock, takes his flight,
leaving only some cold performances of civil and com-
mon respects; but the true bond of marriage, if there
were ever any there, is already burst like a rotten thread.
Then follows dissimulation, suspicion, false colours,
false pretences, and worse than these, disturbance, an-
noyance, vexation, sorrow, temptation even in the
faultless person, weary of himself, and of all actions
public or domestic ; then comes disorder, neglect,
hatred, and perpetual strife; all these the enemies of
holiness and Christianity, and every one persisted in, a
remediless violation of matrimony. Therefore God,
who hates all feigning and formality, where there
should be all faith and sincereness, and abhors the in-
evitable discord, where there should be greater concord;
when through another's default faith and concord can-
not be, counts it neither just to punish the innocent
with the transgressor, nor holy, nor honourable for the
sanctity of marriage, that should be the union of peace
and love, to be made the commitment and close fight
of enmity and hate. And therefore doth in this law
what best agrees with his goodness, loosening a sacred
thing to peace and charity, rather than binding it to
hatred and contention; loosening only the outward and
formal tie of that which is already inwardly and really
broken, or else was really never joined.
Eleventhly, One of the chief matrimonial ends is
said to seek a holy seed; but where an unfit marriage
administers continual cause of hatred and distemper,
there, as was heard before, cannot choose but much
unholiness abide. Nothing more unhallows a man,
more unprepares him to the service of God in any duty,
than a habit of wrath and perturbation, arising from
the importunity of troublous causes never absent. And
where the household stands in this plight, what love
can there be to the unfortunate issue, what care of
their breeding, which is of main conducement to their
being holy P God therefore, knowing how unhappy it
would be for children to be born in such a family, gives
this law as a prevention, that, being an unhappy pair,
they should not add to be unhappy parents, or else as
a remedy that if there be children, while they are few-
est, they may follow either parent, as shall be agreed,
or judged, from the house of hatred and discord to a
place of more holy and peaceable education.
Twelfthly, All law is available to some good end,
but the final prohibition of divorce avails to no good
end, causing only the endless aggravation of evil, and
therefore this permission of divorce was given to the
Jews by the wisdom and fatherly providence of God;
who knew that law cannot command love, without
which matrimony hath no true being, no good, no
solace, nothing of God's instituting, nothing but so
sordid and so low, as to be disdained of any generous
person. Law cannot enable natural inability either of
body, or mind, which gives the grievance; it cannot
make equal those inequalities, it cannot make fit those
unfitnesses; and where there is malice more than de-
fect of nature, it cannot hinder ten thousand injuries,
and bitter actions of despight, too subtle and too unap-
parent for law to deal with. And while it seeks to
remedy more outward wrongs, it exposes the injured
person to other more inward and more cutting. All
these evils unavoidably will redound upon the children,
if any be, and upon the whole family. It degenerates
and disorders the best spirits, leaves them to unsettled
imaginations, and degraded hopes, careless of them-
selves, their households, and their friends, unactive to all
public service, dead to the commonwealth ; wherein
they are by one mishap, and no willing trespass of
theirs, outlawed from all the benefits and comforts of
married life and posterity. It confers as little to the
honour and inviolable keeping of matrimony, but sooner
stirs up temptations and occasions to secret adulteries
and unchaste roving. But it maintains public honesty.
Public folly rather; who shall judge of public honesty 2
The law of God and of ancientest Christians, and all
civil nations; or the illegitimate law of monks and
WHICH TREAT OF NULLITIES IN MARRIAGE.
193
canonists, the most malevolent, most unexperienced,
most incompetent judges of matrimony P
These reasons, and many more that might be alleged,
afford us plainly to perceive both what good cause this
law had to do for good men in mischances, and what
necessity it had to suffer accidentally the hardhearted-
ness of bad men, which it could not certainly discover,
or discovering could not subdue, no nor endeavour to
restrain without multiplying sorrow to them, for whom
all was endeavoured. The guiltless therefore were not
deprived their needful redresses, and the hard hearts of
others, unchastisable in those judicial courts, were so
remitted there, as bound over to the higher session of
conscience.
Notwithstanding all this, there is a loud exception
against this law of God, nor can the holy Author save
his law from this exception, that it opens a door to all
licence and confusion. But this is the rudest, I was
almost saying the most graceless objection, and with
the least reverence to God and Moses, that could be
devised: this is to cite God before man's tribunal, to
arrogate a wisdom and holiness above him. Did not
God then foresee what event of licence or confusion
could follow P Did not he know how to ponder these
abuses with more prevailing respects, in the most even
balance of his justice and pureness, till these correctors
came up to shew him better? The law is, if it stir up
sin any way, to stir it up by forbidding, as one con-
trary excites another, Rom. vii.; but if it once come to
provoke sin, by granting licence to sin, according to
laws that have no other honest end, but only to permit
the fulfilling of obstinate lust, how is God not made
the contradicter of himself? No man denies, that best
things may be abused; but it is a rule resulting from
many pregnant experiences, that what doth most harm
in the abusing, used rightly doth most good. And
such a good to take away from honest men, for being
abused by such as abuse all things, is the greatest
abuse of all. That the whole law is no further useful,
than as a man uses it lawfully, St. Paul teaches, 1 Tim.
i. And that christian liberty may be used for an oc-
casion to the flesh, the same apostle confesses, Gal. v.;
yet thinks not of removing it for that, but bids us rather
“stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ hath freed
us, and not be held again in the yoke of bondage.”
The very permission, which Christ gave to divorce for
adultery, may be foully abused, by any whose hard-
ness of heart can either feign adultery, or dares com-
mit, that he may divorce. And for this cause the pope,
and hitherto the church of England, forbid all divorce
from the bond of marriage, though for openest adultery.
If then it be righteous to hinder, for the fear of abuse,
that which God's law, notwithstanding that caution,
hath warranted to be done, doth not our righteousness
come short of Antichrist? or do we not rather herein
conform ourselves to his unrighteousness in this undue
and unwise fear * For God regards more to relieve by
this law the just complaints of good men, than to curb
the licence of wicked men, to the crushing withal, and
the overwhelming of his afflicted servants. He loves
more that his law should look with pity upon the diffi-
culties of his own, than with rigour upon the bound-
less riots of them who serve another master, and, hin-
dered here by strictness, will break another way to
worse enormities. If this law therefore have many
good reasons for which God gave it, and no intention
of giving scope to lewdness, but as abuse by accident
comes in with every good law, and every good thing;
it cannot be wisdom in us, while we can content us
with God’s wisdom, nor can be purity, if his purity
will suffice us, to except against this law, as if it fostered
licence. But if they affirm this law had no other end,
but to permit obdurate lust, because it would be ob-
durate, making the law of God intentionally to pro-
claim and enact sin lawful, as if the will of God were
become sinful, or sin stronger than his direct and law-
giving will; the men would be admonished to look
well to it, that while they are so eager to shut the door
against licence, they do not open a worse door to blas-
phemy. And yet they shall be here further shewn
their iniquity: what more foul common sin among us
than drunkenness? And who can be ignorant, that if
the importation of wine, and the use of all strong
drink, were forbid, it would both clean rid the possi-
bility of committing that odious vice, and men might
afterwards live happily and healthfully without the
use of those intoxicating liquors P. Yet who is there,
the severest of them all, that ever propounded to lose
his sack, his ale, toward the certain abolishing of so
great a sin who is there of them, the holiest, that less
loves his rich canary at meals, though it be fetched
from places that hazard the religion of them who fetch
it, and though it make his neighbour drunk out of the
same tun? While they forbid not therefore the use of
that liquid merchandise, which forbidden would ut-
terly renuove a most loathsome sin, and not impair either
the health or the refreshment of mankind, supplied
many other ways: why do they forbid a law of God,
the forbidding whereof brings into excessive bondage
ofttimes the best of men, and betters not the worse 2
He, to remove a national vice, will not pardon his cups,
nor think it concerns him to forbear the quaffing of that
outlandish grape, in his unnecessary fulness, though
other men abuse it never so much; nor is he so abste-
mious as to intercede with the magistrate, that all mat-
ter of drunkenness be banished the commonwealth;
and yet for the fear of a less inconvenience unpardon-
ably requires of his brethren, in their extreme necessity,
to debar themselves the use of God's permissive law,
though it might be their saving, and no man's endan-
gering the more. Thus this peremptory strictness we
may discern of what sort it is, how unequal, and how
unjust.
But it will breed confusion. What confusion it
would breed God himself took the care to prevent in
the fourth verse of this chapter, that the divorced, being
married to another, might not return to her former
husband. And Justinian's law counsels the same in
his title of “Nuptials.” And what confusion else can
there be in separation, to separate upon extreme
urgency the religious from the irreligious, the fit from
the unfit, the willing from the wilful, the abused from
I94
EXPO ITIONS ON THE FOUR CHIEF PLACES IN SCRIPTURE,
the abuser? Such a separation is quite contrary to con-
fusion. But to bind and mix together holy with
atheist, heavenly with hellish, fitness with unfitness,
light with darkness, antipathy with antipathy, the in-
jured with the injurer, and force them into the most
inward nearness of a detested union; this doubtless is
the most horrid, the most unnatural mixture, the great-
est confusion that can be confused.
Thus by this plain and Christian Talmud, vindi-
cating the law of God from irreverent and unwary ex-
positions, I trust, where it shall meet with intelligent
perusers, some stay at least in men's thoughts will be
obtained, to consider these many prudent and righteous
ends of this divorcing permission : that it may have,
for the great Author's sake, hereafter some competent
allowance to be counted a little purer than the preroga-
tive of a legal and public ribaldry, granted to that holy
seed. So that from hence we shall hope to find the
way still more open to the reconciling of those places,
which treat this matter in the gospel. And thither now
without interruption the course of method brings us.
MATT. v. 31, 32.
31. “It hath been said, Whosoever shall put away his
wife, let him give her a writing of divorcement.”
32. “But I say unto you, That whosoever shall put
away his wife,” &c.
MATT. xix. 3, 4, &c.
3. “And the Pharisees also came unto him, tempting
him,” &c.
“It hath been said.”] What hitherto hath been spoke
upon the law of God touching matrimony or divorce,
he who will deny to have been argued according to
reason and all equity of Scripture, I cannot ediſy how,
or by what rule of proportion, that man's virtue calcu-
lates, what his elements are, nor what his analytics.
Confidently to those who have read good books, and
to those whose reason is not an illiterate book to them-
selves, I appeal, whether they would not confess all
this to be the commentary of truth and justice, were it
not for these recited words of our Saviour. And if they
take not back that which they thus grant, nothing
sooner might persuade them that Christ here teaches
no new precept, and nothing sooner might direct them
to find his meaning than to compare and measure it by
the rules of nature and eternal righteousness, which no
written law extinguishes, and the gospel least of all.
For what can be more opposite and disparaging to the
covenant of love, of freedom, and of our manhood in
grace, than to be made the yoking pedagogue of new
severities, the scribe of syllables and rigid letters, not
only grievous to the best of men, but different and
strange from the light of reason in them, save only as
they are ſain to stretch and distort their apprehensions,
for fear of displeasing the verbal straitness of a text,
which our own servile fear gives us not the leisure to
understand aright? If the law of Christ shall be writ-
ten in our hearts, as was promised to the gospel, Jer.
xxxi. how can this in the vulgar and superficial sense
be a law of Christ, so far from being written in our
hearts, that it injures and disallows not only the free
dictates of nature and moral law, but of charity also
and religion in our hearts P Our Saviour’s doctrine is,
that the end and the fulfilling of every command is
charity; no faith without it, no truth without it, no
worship, no works pleasing to God but as they partake
of charity. He himself sets us an example, breaking
the solemnest and strictest ordinance of religious rest,
and justified the breaking, not to cure a dying man,
but such whose cure might without danger have been
deferred. And wherefore needs must the sick man's
bed be carried on that day by his appointment P And
why were the disciples, who could not forbear on that
day to pluck the corn, so industriously defended, but
to shew us, that, if he preferred the slightest occasions
of man's good before the observing of highest and
severest ordinances, he gave us much more easy leave
to break the intolerable yoke of a never well-joined
wedlock for the removing of our heaviest afflictions °
Therefore it is, that the most of evangelic precepts are
given us in proverbial forms, to drive us from the let-
ter, though we love ever to be sticking there. For no
other cause did Christ assure us that whatsoever things
we bind, or slacken on earth, are so in heaven, but to
signify that the christian arbitrement of charity is su-
preme decider of all controversy, and supreme resolver
of all Scripture, not as the pope determines for his own
tyranny, but as the church ought to determine for its
own true liberty. Hence Eusebius, not far from the
beginning of his history, compares the state of Chris-
tians to that of Noah and the patriarchs before the law.
And this indeed was the reason why apostolic tradition
in the ancient church was counted nigh equal to the
written word, though it carried them at length awry,
for want of considering that tradition was not left to
be imposed as law, but to be a pattern of that christian
prudence and liberty, which holy men by right assumed
of old; which truth was so evident, that it found en-
trance even into the council of Trent, when the point
of tradition came to be discussed. And Marimaro, a
learned Carmelite, for approaching too near the true
cause that gave esteem to tradition, that is to say, the
difference between the Old and New Testament, the
one punctually prescribing written law, the other
guiding by the inward spirit, was reprehended by Car-
dinal Pool as one that had spoken more worthy a
German Colloquy, than a general council. I omit
many instances, many proofs and arguments of this
kind, which alone would compile a just volume, and
shall content me here to have shewn briefly, that the
great and almost only commandment of the gospel is,
to command nothing against the good of man, and
much more no civil command against his civil good.
If we understand not this, we are but cracked cymbals,
we do but tinkle, we know nothing, we do nothing, all
the sweat of our toilsomest obedience will but mock
WHICH TREAT OF NULLITIES IN MARRIAGE.
195
us. And what we suffer superstitiously returns us no
thanks. Thus medicining our eyes, we need not doubt
to see more into the meaning of these our Saviour's
words, than many who have gone before us.
“It hath been said, whosoever shall put away his
wife.”] Our Saviour was by the doctors of his time
suspected of intending to dissolve the law. In this
chapter he wipes off this aspersion upon his accusers,
and shews, how they were the lawbreakers. In every
commonwealth, when it decays, corruption makes two
main steps; first, when men cease to do according to
the inward and uncompelled actions of virtue, caring
only to live by the outward constraint of law, and turn
the simplicity of real good into the craft of seeming so
by law. To this hypocritical honesty was Rome de-
clined in that age wherein Horace lived, and discovered
it to Quintius.
Whom do we count a good man, whom but he
Who keep the laws and statutes of the Senate?
Who judges in great suits and controversies?
Whose witness and opinion wins the cause ?
But his own house, and the whole neighbourhood
Sees his foul inside through his whited skin.
The next declining is, when law becomes now too
strait for the secular manners, and those too loose for
the cincture of law. This brings in ſalse and crooked
interpretations to eke out law, and invents the subtle
encroachment of obscure traditions hard to be disproved.
To both these descents the Pharisees themselves were
fallen. Our Saviour therefore shews them both where
they broke the law, in not marking the divine intent
thereof, but only the letter; and where they depraved
the letter also with sophistical expositions. This law
of divorce they had depraved both ways: first, by
teaching that to give a bill of divorce was all the duty
which that law required, whatever the cause were ;
next by running to divorce for any trivial, accidental
cause; whenas the law evidently stays in the grave
causes of natural and immutable dislike. “It hath
been said,” saith he, Christ doth not put any con-
tempt or disesteem upon the law of Moses, by citing it
so briefly; for in the same manner God himself cites a
law of greatest caution, Jer. iii. “They say if a man
put away his wife, shall he return to her again P” &c.
Nor doth he more abolish it than the law of swearing,
cited next with the same brevity, and more appearance
of contradicting : for divorce hath an exception left it;
but we are charged there, as absolutely as words can
charge us, “not to swear at all; ” yet who denies the
lawfulness of an oath, though here it be in no case per-
mitted P And what shall become of his solemn protes-
tation not to abolish one law, or one tittle of any law,
especially of those which he mentions in this chapter 2
And that he meant more particularly the not abolishing
of Mosaic divorce, is beyond all cavil manifest in Luke
xvi. 17, 18, where this clause against abrogating is in-
serted immediately before the sentence against divorce,
as if it were called thither on purpose to defend the
equity of this particular law against the foreseen rash-
* The first edition has judicial, but as that word may not be so univer.
sally understood in this place as judaical, (though the meaning of both
O
ness of common textuaries, who abolish laws, as the
rabble demolish images, in the zeal of their hammers
oft violating the sepulchres of good men ; like Pen-
theus in the tragedies, they see that for Thebes which
is not, and take that for superstition, as these men in
the heat of their annulling perceive not how they abo-
lish right, and equal and justice, under the appearance
of judicial. And yet are confessing all the while, that
these sayings of Christ stand not in contradiction to
the law of Moses, but to the false doctrine of the Pha-
risees raised from thence; that the law of God is per-
fect, not liable to additions or diminutions: and Paraeus
accuses the Jesuit Maldonatus of greatest falsity for
limiting the perfection of that law only to the rudeness
of the Jews. He adds, “That the law promiseth life
to the performers thereof, therefore needs not perfecter
precepts than such as bring to life; that if the correc-
tions of Christ stand opposite, not to the corruptions of
the Pharisees, but to the law itself of God, the heresy
of Manes would follow, one God of the Old Testament,
and another of the New. That Christ saith not here,
Except your righteousness exceed the righteousness of
Moses’ law, but of the scribes and Pharisees.” That
all this may be true: whither is common sense flown
asquint, if we can maintain that Christ forbid the Mo-
saic divorce utterly, and yet abolished not the law that
permits it? For if the conscience only were checked,
and the law not repealed, what means the fanatic bold-
ness of this age, that dares tutor Christ to be more
strict than he thought fit 2 Ye shall have the evasion,
it was a judicial law. What could infancy and slum-
ber have invented more childish P Judicial or not ju-
dicial, it was one of those laws expressly which he
forewarned us with protestation, that his mind was,
not to abrogate : and if we mark the steerage of his
words, what course they hold, we may perceive that
what he protested not to dissolve (that he might faith-
fully and not deceitfully remove a suspicion from him-
self) was principally concerning the judicial law; for
of that sort are all these here which he vindicates, ex-
cept the last. Of the ceremonial law he told them true,
that nothing of it should pass “until all were fulfilled.”
Of the moral law he knew the Pharisees did not sus-
pect he meant to nullify that : for so doing would
soon have undone his authority, and advanced theirs.
Of the judicial law therefore chiefly this apology was
meant: for how is that fulfilled longer than the com-
mon equity thereof remains in force P And how is this
our Saviour's defence of himself not made fallacious,
if the Pharisees’ chief fear be lest he should abolish the
judicial law, and he, to satisfy them, protests his good
intention to the moral law It is the general grant of
divines, that what in the judicial law is not merely
judaical,” but reaches to human equity in common,
was never in the thought of being abrogated. If our
Saviour took away aught of law, it was the burden-
some of it, not the ease of burden; it was the bondage,
not the liberty of any divine law, that he removed;
this he often professed to be the end of his coming.
be here the same,) we have therefore inserted the latter word in the text.
196
Expositions ON THE FOUR CHIEF PLACES IN scRIPTURE,
But what if the law of divorce be a moral law, as most
certainly it is fundamentally, and hath been so proved
in the reasons thereof.” For though the giving of a bill
may be judicial, yet the act of divorce is altogether
conversant in good and evil, and so absolutely moral.
So far as it is good, it never can be abolished, being
moral ; and so far as it is simply evil, it never could
be judicial, as hath been shewn at large “in the Doc-
trime of Divorce,” and will be reassumed anon. Whence
one of these two necessities follow, that either it was
never established, or never abolished. Thus much may
be enough to have said on this place. The following
verse will be better unfolded in the 19th chapter, where
it meets us again, after a large debatement on the
question between our Saviour and his adversaries.
MATT. xix. 3, 4, &c.
Ver, 3. “And the Pharisees came unto him, tempting
him, and saying unto him.”
“Tempting him.”] The manner of these men com-
ing to our Saviour, not to learn, but to tempt him, may
give us to expect, that their answer will be such as is
fittest for them; not so much a teaching, as an entang-
ling. No man, though never so willing or so well
enabled to instruct, but if he discern his willingness
and candour made use of to entrap him, will suddenly
draw in himself, and laying aside the facil vein of
perspicuity, will know his time to utter clouds and
riddles; if he be not less wise than that noted fish,
whenas he should be not unwiser than the serpent.
Our Saviour at no time expressed any great desire to
teach the obstinate and unteachable Pharisees ; but
when they came to tempt him, then least of all. As
now about the liberty of divorce, so another time about
the punishment of adultery, they came to sound him ;
and what satisfaction got they from his answer, either
to themselves, or to us, that might direct a law under
the gospel, new from that of Moses, unless we draw
his absolution of adultery into an edict P So about the
tribute, who is there can pick out a full solution, what
and when we must give to Caesar, by the answer which
he gave the Pharisees If we must give to Caesar that
which is Caesar's, and all be Caesar’s which hath his
image, we must either new stamp our coin, or we may
go new stamp our foreheads with the superscription of
slaves instead of freemen. Besides, it is a general
precept not only of Christ, but of all other sages, not
to instruct the unworthy and the conceited, who love
tradition more than truth, but to perplex and stumble
them purposely with contrived obscurities. No wonder
then if they, who would determine of divorce by this
place, have ever found it difficult and unsatisfying
through all the ages of the church, as Austin himself
and other great writers confess, Lastly, it is manifest
to be the principal scope of our Saviour, both here, and
in the fifth of Matthew, to convince the Pharisees of
what they being evil did licentiously, not to explain
what others being good and blameless men might be
permitted to do in case of extremity. Neither was it
seasonable to talk of honest and conscientious liberty
among them, who had abused legal and civil liberty to
uncivil licence. We do not say to a servant what we
say to a son ; nor was it expedient to preach freedom
to those who had transgressed in wantonness. When
we rebuke a prodigal, we admonish him of thrift, not
of magnificence, or bounty. And to school a proud
man, we labour to make him humble, not magnanimous.
So Christ, to retort these arrogant inquisitors their own,
took the course to lay their haughtiness under a sever-
ity which they deserved ; not to acquaint them, or to
make them judges either of the just man's right and
privilege, or of the afflicted man's necessity. And if
we may have leave to conjecture, there is a likelihood
offered us by Tertullian in his fourth against Marcion,
whereby it may seem very probable, that the Pharisees
had a private drift of malice against our Saviour's life
in proposing this question ; and our Saviour had a
peculiar aim in the rigour of his answer, both to let
them know the freedom of his spirit, and the sharpness
of his discerning. “This I must now shew,” saith
Tertullian, “whence our Lord deduced this sentence,
and which way he directed it, whereby it will more
fully appear, that he intended not to dissolve Moses.”
And thereupon tells us, that the vehemence of this
our Saviour's speech was chiefly darted against Herod
and Herodias. The story is out of Josephus; Herod
had been a long time married to the daughter of Aretas
king of Petra, till happening on his journey towards
Rome to be entertained at his brother Philip's house,
he cast his eye unlawfully and unguestlike upon Hero-
dias there, the wife of Philip, but daughter to Aristo-
bulus their common brother, and durst make words of
marrying her his niece from his brother's bed. She
assented, upon agreement he should expel his former
wife. All was accomplished, and by the Baptist re-
buked with the loss of his head. Though doubtless
that stayed not the various discourses of men upon the
fact, which while the Herodian flatterers, and not a few
perhaps among the Pharisees, endeavoured to defend
by wresting the law, it might be a means to bring the
question of divorce into a hot agitation among the
people, how far Moses gave allowance. The Pharisees
therefore knowing our Saviour to be a friend of John
the Baptist, and no doubt but having heard much of
his sermon on the mount, wherein he spake rigidly
against the licence of divorce, they put him this ques-
tion, both in hope to find him a contradictor of Moses,
and a condemner of Herod; so to insnare him within
compass of the same accusation which had ended his
friend; and our Saviour so orders his answer, as that
they might perceive Herod and his adulteress, only
not named: so lively it concerned them both what he
spake. No wonder then if the sentence of our Saviour
sounded stricter than his custom was ; which his con-
scious attempters doubtless apprehended sooner than
his other auditors. Thus much we gain from hence to
inform us, that what Christ intends to speak here of
divorce, will be rather the forbidding of what we may
not do herein passionately and abusively, as Herod and
Herodias did, than the discussing of what herein we
may do reasonably and necessarily.
WHICH TREAT OF NULLITIES IN MARRIAGE.
197
“Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife P”] It
might be rendered more exactly from the Greek, “to
loosen or to set free;” which though it seem to have a
milder signification than the two Hebrew words com-
monly used for divorce, yet interpreters have noted,
that the Greek also is read in the Septuagint for an act
which is not without constraint. As when Achish drove
from his presence David, counterfeiting madness, Psal.
xxxiv. the Greek word is the same with this here, to
put away. And Erasmus quotes Hilary rendering it
by an expression not so soft. Whence may be doubted,
whether the Pharisees did not state this question in the
strict right of the man, not tarrying for the wife's con-
sent. And if our Saviour answered directly according
to what was asked in the term of putting away, it will
be questionable, whether the rigour of his sentence did
not forbid only such putting away as is without mutual
consent, in a violent and harsh manner, or without any
reason but will, as the tetrarch did. Which might be
the cause that those christian emperors feared not in
their constitutions to dissolve marriage by mutual con-
sent; in that our Saviour seems here, as the case is
most likely, not to condemn all divorce, but all injury
and violence in divorce. But no injury can be done to
them, who seek it, as the Ethics of Aristotle sufficiently
prove. True it is, that an unjust thing may be done
to one though willing, and so may justly be forbidden :
but divorce being in itself no unjust or evil thing, but
only as it is joined with injury or lust; injury it can-
not be at law, if consent be, and Aristotle err not. And
lust it may as frequently not be, while charity hath the
judging of so many private grievances in a misfortuned
wedlock, which may pardonably seek a redemption.
But whether it be or not, the law cannot discern or
examine lust, so long as it walks from one lawful term
to another, from divorce to marriage, both in themselves
indifferent. For if the law cannot take hold to punish
many actions apparently covetous, ambitious, ingrate-
ful, proud, how can it forbid and punish that for lust,
which is but only surmised so, and can no more be
certainly proved in the divorcing now, than before in
the marrying? Whence if divorce be no unjust thing,
but through lust, a cause not discernible by law, as
law is wont to discern in other cases, and can be no
injury, where consent is ; there can be nothing in the
equity of law, why divorce by consent may not be
lawful : leaving secresies to conscience, the thing
which our Saviour here aims to rectify, not to revoke
the statutes of Moses. In the mean while the word
“to put away,” being in the Greek to loosen or dissolve,
utterly takes away that vain papistical distinction of
divorce from bed, and divorce from bond, evincing
plainly, that Christ and the Pharisees mean here that
divorce, which finally dissolves the bond, and frees
both parties to a second marriage.
“For every cause.”] This the Pharisees held, that
for every cause they might divorce, for every accidental
cause, any quarrel or difference that might happen.
So both Josephus and Philo, men who lived in the
same age, explain ; and the Syriac translator, whose
antiquity is thought parallel to the Evangelists them-
selves, reads it conformably, “upon any occasion or
pretence.” Divines also generally agree, that thus the
Pharisees meant. Cameron, a late writer, much ap-
plauded, commenting this place not undiligently,
affirms that the Greek preposition kará translated un-
usually (for) hath a force in it implying the suddenness
of those pharisaic divorces; and that their question
was to this effect, “whether for any cause, whatever it
chanced to be, straight as it rose, the divorce might be
lawful.” This he freely gives, whatever moved him,
and I as freely take, nor can deny his observation to
be acute and learned. If therefore we insist upon the
word of “putting away;” that it imports a constraint
without consent, as might be insisted, and may enjoy
what Cameron bestows on us, that “for every cause ’’
is to be understood, “according as any cause may
happen,” with a relation to the speediness of those di-
vorces, and that Herodian act cspecially, as is already
brought us; the sentence of our Saviour will appear
nothing so strict a prohibition as hath been long con-
ceived, forbidding only to divorce for casual and tem-
porary causes, that may be soon ended, or soon re-
medied; and likewise forbidding to divorce rashly,
and on the sudden heat, except it be for adultery. If
these qualifications may be admitted, as partly we offer
them, partly are offered them by some of their own
opinion, and that where nothing is repugnant why
they should not be admitted, nothing can wrest them
from us; the severe sentence of our Saviour will straight
umbend the seeming frown into that gentleness and com-
passion, which was so abundant in all his actions, his
office, and his doctrine, from all which otherwise it
stands off at no mean distance.
Ver. 4. “And he answered and said unto them, Have
ye not read, that he which made them at the be-
ginning, made them male and female P”
Ver. 5. “And said, For this cause shall a man leave
father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife,
and they twain shall be one flesh.”
Ver. 6. “Wherefore they are no more twain, but
one flesh. What therefore God hath joined toge-
ther, let not man put asunder.”
4, and 5. “Made them male and female; and said,
For this cause,” &c.] We see it here undeniably, that
the law which our Saviour cites to prove that divorce
was forbidden, is not an absolute and tyrannical com-
mand without reason, as now-a-days we make it little
better, but is grounded upon some rational cause not
difficult to be apprehended, being in a matter which
equally concerns the meanest and the plainest sort of
persons in a household life. Our next way them will
be to inquire if there be not more reasons than one;
and if there be, whether this be the best and chiefest.
That we shall find by turning to the first institution,
to which Christ refers our own reading : he himself,
having to deal with treacherous assailants, useth bre-
vity, and lighting on the first place in Genesis that
mentions any thing tending to marriage in the first
chapter, joins it immediately to the twenty-fourth verse
of the second chapter, omitting all the prime words
198
EXPOSITIONS ON THE FOUR CHIEF PLACES IN SCRIPTURE,
between which create the institution, and contain the
noblest and purest ends of matrimony; without which
attained, that conjunction hath nothing in it above
what is common to us with beasts. So likewise beneath
in this very chapter, to the young man, who came not
tempting him, but to learn of him, asking him which
commandments he should keep; he neither repeats the
first table, nor all the second, nor that in order which
he repeats. If here then being tempted, he desire to
be the shorter, and the darker in his conference, and
omit to cite that from the second of Genesis, which all
divines confess is a commentary to what he cites out of
the first, the “making them male and female;” what
are we to do, but to search the institution ourselves 2
And we shall find there his own authority, giving
other manner of reasons why such firm union is to be
in matrimony; without which reasons, their being
male and female can be no cause of joining them un-
separably: for if it be, then no adultery can sever.
Therefore the prohibition of divorce depends not upon
this reason here expressed to the Pharisees, but upon
the plainer and more eminent causes omitted here, and
referred to the institution ; which causes not being
found in a particular and casual matrimony, this sen-
sitive and materious cause alone can no more hinder a
divorce against those higher and more human reasons
urging it, than it can alone without them to warrant a
copulation, but leaves it arbitrary to those who in their
chance of marriage find not why divorce is forbid them,
but why it is permitted them; and find both here and
in Genesis, that the forbidding is not absolute, but ac-
cording to the reasons there taught us, not here. And
that our Saviour taught them no better, but uses the
most vulgar, most animal and corporal argument to
convince them, is first to shew us, that as through their
licentious divorces they made no more of marriage,
than as if to marry were no more than to be male and
female, so he goes no higher in his confutation; deem-
ing them unworthy to be talked with in a higher strain,
but to be tied in marriage by the mere material cause
thereof, since their own licence testified that nothing
matrimonial was in their thought, but to be male and
female. Next, it might be done to discover the brute
ignorance of these carnal doctors, who taking on them
to dispute of marriage and divorce, were put to silence
with such a slender opposition as this, and outed from
their hold with scarce one quarter of an argument.
That we may believe this, his entertainment of the
young man soon after may persuade us. Whom, though
he came to preach eternal life by faith only, he dis-
misses with a salvation taught him by works only.
On which place Paraeus notes, “That this man was
to be convinced by a false persuasion; and that Christ
is wont otherwise to answer hypocrites, otherwise those
that are docille.” Much rather then may we think,
that, in handling these tempters, he forgot not so to
frame his prudent ambiguities and concealments, as
was to the troubling of those peremptory disputants
most wholesome. When therefore we would know
what right there may be, in all accidents, to divorce,
we must repair thither where God professes to teach his
servants by the prime institution, and not where we
see him intending to dazzle sophisters: we must not
read, “he made them male and female,” and not un-
derstand he made them more intendedly “a meet help”
to remove the evil of being “alone.” We must take
both these together, and then we may infer completely,
as from the whole cause, why a man shall cleave to his
wife, and they twain shall be one flesh: but if the full
and chief cause why we may not divorce be wanting
here, this place may skirmish with the rabbies while it
will, but to the true Christian it prohibits nothing be-
yond the full reason of its own prohibiting, which is
best known by the institution.
Ver, 6. “Wherefore they are no more twain, but
one flesh.”] This is true in the general right of mar-
riage, but not in the chance-medley of every particular
match. For if they who were once undoubtedly one
flesh, yet become twain by adultery, then sure they
who were never one flesh rightly, never helps meet
for each other according to the plain prescript of God,
may with less ado than a volume be concluded still
twain. And so long as we account a magistrate no
magistrate, if there be but a flaw in his election, why
should we not much rather count a matrimony no ma-
trimony, if it cannot be in any reasonable manner
according to the words of God’s institution.
“What therefore God hath joined, let not man put
asunder.”] But here the christian prudence lies to con-
sider what God hath joined ; shall we say that God
hath joined errour, fraud, unfitness, wrath, contention,
perpetual loneliness, perpetual discord; whatever lust,
or wine, or witchery, threat or inticement, avarice or
ambition hath joined together, faithful and unfaithful,
Christian with antichristian, hate with hate, or hate
with love; shall we say this is God’s joining *
“Let not man put asunder.”] That is to say, what
God hath joined; for if it be, as how oft we see it may
be, not of God's joining, and his law tells us he joins
not unmatchable things, but hates to join them, as am
abominable confusion, then the divine law of Moses
puts them asunder, his own divine will in the institu-
tion puts them asunder, as oft as the reasons be not ex-
tant, for which only God ordained their joining. Man
only puts asunder when his inordinate desires, his pas-
sion, his violence, his injury makes the breach : not
when the utter want of that which lawfully was the
end of his joining, when wrongs and extremities and
unsupportable grievances compel him to disjoin : when
such as Herod and the Pharisees divorce beside law,
or against law, then only man separates, and to such
only this prohibition belongs. In a word, if it be un-
lawful for man to put asunder that which God hath
joined, let man take heed it be not detestable to join
that by compulsion which God hath put asunder.
Ver, 7. “They say unto him, Why did Moses then
command to give a writing of divorcement, and
to put her away f"
Ver. 8. “He saith unto them, Moses because of the
hardness of your hearts suffered you to put away
your wives; but from the beginning it was not so.”
WHICH TREAT OF NULLITIES IN MARRIAGE.
199
“Moses because of the hardness of your hearts suſ-
fered you.”] Hence the divinity now current argues,
that this judicial law of Moses is abolished. But sup-
pose it were so, though it hath been proved otherwise,
the firmness of such right to divorce, as here pleads is
fetched from the prime institution, does not stand or
fall with the judicial Jew, but is as moral as what is
moralest. Yet as I have shewn positively, that this
law cannot be abrogated, both by the words of our Sa-
viour pronouncing the contrary, and by that unabol-
ishable equity which it conveys to us; so I shall now
bring to view those appearances of strength, which
are levied from this text to maintain the most gross
and massy paradox that ever did violence to reason
and religion, bred only under the shadow of these
words, to all other piety or philosophy strange and in-
solent, that God by act of law drew out a line of adul-
tery almost two thousand years long; although to de-
tect the prodigy of this surmise, the former book set
forth on this argument hath already been copious. I
shall not repeat much, though I might borrow of mine
own; but shall endeavour to add something either yet
untouched, or not largely enough explained. First, it
shall be manifest, that the common exposition cannot
possibly consist with christian doctrine : next, a truer
meaning of this our Saviour's reply shall be left in the
room. The received exposition is, that God, though
not approving, did enact a law to permit adultery by
divorcement simply unlawful. And this conceit they
feed with fond supposals, that have not the least foot-
ing in Scripture: as that the Jews learned this custom
of divorce in Egypt, and therefore God would not un-
teach it them till Christ came, but let it stick as a no-
torious botch of deformity in the midst of his most per-
ſect and severe law. And yet he saith, Lev. xviii.
“After the doings of Egypt ye shall not do.” Another
while they invent a slander, (as what thing more bold
than teaching ignorance when he shifts to hide his na-
kedness?) that the Jews were naturally to their wives
the cruellest men in the world; would poison, brain,
and do I know not what, if they might not divorce.
Certain, if it were a fault heavily punished, to bring
an evil report upon the land which God gave, what is
it to raise a groundless calumny against the people
which God made choice off But that this bold inter-
pretament, how commonly soever sided with, cannot
stand a minute with any competent reverence to God,
or his law, or his people, nor with any other maxim of
religion, or good manners, might be proved through all
the heads and topics of argumentation; but I shall
willingly be as concise as possible. First the law,
not only the moral, but the judicial, given by Moses, is
just and pure; for such is God who gave it. “Hearken,
O Israel,” saith Moses, Deut. iv. “unto the statutes
and the judgments which I teach you, to do them, that
ye may live, &c. Ye shall not add unto the word which
I command you, neither shall ye diminish aught from
it, that ye may keep the commandments of the Lord
your God, which I command you.” And onward in
the chapter, “Behold, I have taught you statutes
and judgments, even as the Lord my God commanded
IYı Ge.
dom and your understanding.
God so nigh unto them, and what nation hath statutes
and judgments so righteous as all this law, which I set
before ye this day P” Is it imaginable there should be
Keep therefore and do them, for this is your wis-
For what nation hath
among these a law which God allowed not, a law giv-
ing permissions laxative to unmarry a wife, and marry
a lust, a law to suffer a kind of tribunal adultery P
Many other scriptures might be brought to assert the
purity of this judicial law, and many I have alleged
before; this law therefore is pure and just. But if it
permit, if it teach, if it defend that which is both unjust
and impure, as by the common doctrine it doth, what
think we ? The three general doctrines of Justinian's
law are, “To live in honesty, To hurt no man, To give
every one his due.” Shall the Roman civil law observe
these three things, as the only end of law, and shall a
statute be found in the civil law of God, enacted sim-
ply and totally against all these three precepts of na-
ture and morality ?
Secondly, The gifts of God are all perfect, and cer-
tainly the law is of all his other gifts one of the per-
fectest. But if it give that outwardly which it takes
away really, and give that seemingly, which, if a man
take it, wraps him into sin and damns him; what gift
of an enemy can be more dangerous and destroying
than this P
Thirdly, Moses every where commends his laws,
prefers them before all of other nations, and warrants
them to be the way of life and safety to all that walk
therein, Lev. xviii. But if they contain statutes which
God approves not, and train men unweeting to commit
injustice and adultery under the shelter of law ; if
those things be sin, and death sin's wages, what is this
law but the snare of death P
Fourthly, The statutes and judgments of the Lord,
which, without exception, are often told us to be such,
as doing we may live by them, are doubtless to be
counted the rule of knowledge and of conscience.
“For I had not known lust,” saith the apostle, “but
by the law.” But if the law come down from the state
of her incorruptible majesty to grant lust his boon,
palpably it darkens and conſounds both knowledge and
conscience; it goes against the common office of all
goodness and friendliness, which is at least to counsel
and admonish; it subverts the rules of all sober edu-
cation, and is itself a most negligent and debauching
tutor.
Fifthly, If the law permits a thing unlawful, it per-
mits that which elsewhere it hath forbid; so that here-
by it contradicts itself, and transgresses itself. But if
the law become a transgressor, it stands guilty to it-
self, and how then shall it save another ? It makes a
confederacy with sin, how then can it justly condemn
a sinner P And thus reducing itself to the state of nei-
ther saving nor condemning, it will not fail to expire
solemnly ridiculous.
Sixthly, The prophets in Scripture declare severely
against the decreeing of that which is unjust, Psal.
xciv. 20; Isaiah x. But it was done, they say, for
hardness of heart: to which objection the apostle's
200
EXPOSITIONS ON THE FOUR CHIEF PLACES IN SCRIPTURE,
rule, “not to do evil that good may come thereby,”
gives an invincible repulse; and here especially, where
it cannot be shown how any good came by doing this
evil, how rather more evil did not hereon abound; for
the giving way to hardness of heart hardens the more,
and adds more to the number. God to an evil and adul-
terous generation would not “grant a sign ;” much
less would he for their hardness of heart pollute his
law with adulterous permission. Yea, but to permit
evil, is not to do evil. Yes, it is in a most eminent
manner to do evil : where else are all our grave and
faithful sayings, that he whose office is to forbid and
forbids not, bids, exhorts, encourages P Why hath God
denounced his anger against parents, masters, friends,
magistrates, neglectful of forbidding what they ought,
if law, the common father, master, friend, and perpe-
tual magistrate, shall not only not forbid, but enact,
exhibit, and uphold with countenance and protection,
a deed every way dishonest, whatever the pretence be?
If it were of those inward vices, which the law cannot
by outward constraint remedy, but leaves to conscience
and persuasion, it had been guiltless in being silent:
but to write a decree of that which can be no way law-
ful, and might with ease be hindered, makes law by
the doom of law itself accessory in the highest degree.
Seventhly, It makes God the direct author of sin:
for although he be not made the author of what he
silently permits in his providence, yet in his law, the
image of his will, when in plain expression he consti-
tutes and ordains a fact utterly unlawful; what wants
he to authorize it, and what wants that to be the
author P
Eighthly, To establish by law a thing wholly unlaw-
ful and dishonest, is an affirmation was never heard of
before in any law, reason, philosophy, or religion, till
it was raised by inconsiderate glossists from the mis-
take of this text. And though the civilians have been
contented to chew this opinion, after the canon had
subdued them, yet they never could bring example or
authority, either from divine writ, or human learning,
or human practice in any nation, or well-formed re-
public, but only from the customary abuse of this text.
Usually they allege the epistle of Cicero to Atticus;
wherein Cato is blamed for giving sentence to the scum
of Romulus, as if he were in Plato's commonwealth.
Cato would have called some great one into judgment
for bribery; Cicero, as the time stood, advised against
it. Cato, not to endamage the public treasury, would
not grant to the Roman knights, that the Asian taxes
might be farmed them at a less rate. Cicero wished
it granted. Nothing in all this will be like the estab-
lishing of a law to sin: here are no laws made, here
only the execution of law is craved might be suspend-
ed: between which and our question is a broad differ-
ence. And what if human lawgivers have confessed
they could not frame their laws to that perfection which
they desired 2 We hear of no such confession from
Moses concerning the laws of God, but rather all praise
and high testimony of perſection given them. And
although man's nature cannot bear exactest laws, yet
still within the confines of good it may and must, so
long as less good is far enough from altogether evil.
As for what they instance of usury, let them first prove
usury to be wholly unlawful, as the laws allow it;
which learned men as numerous on the other side will
deny them. Or if it be altogether unlawful, why is it
tolerated more than divorce P He who said divorce not,
said also, “Lend, hoping for nothing again,” Luke vi.
35. But then they put in, that trade could not stand;
and so to serve the commodity of insatiable trading,
usury shall be permitted : but divorce, the only means
ofttimes to right the innocent and outrageously wrong-
ed, shall be utterly forbid. This is egregious doctrine,
and for which one day charity will much thank them.
Beza not finding how to solve this perplexity, and
Cameron since him, would secure us ; although the
latter confesses, that to “permit a wicked thing by
law, is a wickedness which God abhors; yet to limit
sin, and prescribe it a certain measure, is good.” First,
this evasion will not help here; for this law bounded
no man : he might put away whatever found not
ſavour in his eyes. And how could it forbid to di-
vorce, whom it could not forbid to dislike, or command
to love 2 If these be the limits of law to restrain sin,
who so lame a sinner, but may hop over them more
easily than over those Romulean circumscriptions, not
as Remus did with hard success, but with all indemnity?
Such a limiting as this were not worth the mischief
that accompanies it. This law therefore, not bounding
the supposed sin, by permitting enlarges it, gives it
enfranchisement. And never greater confusion, than
when law and sin move their landmarks, mix their
territories, and correspond, have intercourse, and traffic
together. When law contracts a kindred and hospital-
ity with transgression, becomes the godfather of sin,
and names it lawful; when sin revels and gossips
within the arsenal of law, plays and dandles the artil-
lery of justice that should be bent against her, this is a
fair limitation indeed. Besides, it is an absurdity to
say that law can measure sin, or moderate sin; sin is
not in a predicament to be measured and modified, but
is always an excess. The least sin that is exceeds the
measure of the largest law that can be good; and is as
boundless as that vacuity beyond the world. If once
it square to the measure of law, it ceases to be an ex-
cess, and consequently ceases to be a sin; or else law
conforming itself to the obliquity of sin, betrays itself
to be not straight, but crooked, and so immediately no
law. And the improper conceit of moderating sin by
law will appear, if we can imagine any lawgiver so
senseless as to decree, that so far a man may steal, and
thus far be drunk, that moderately he may couzen, and
moderately commit adultery. To the same extent it
would be as pithily absurd to publish, that a man may
moderately divorce, if to do that be entirely naught.
But to end this moot; the law of Moses is manifest to
fix no limit therein at all, or such at least as impeaches
the ſraudulent abuser no more than if it were not set;
only requires the dismissive writing without other cau-
tion, leaves that to the inner man, and the bar of con-
science. But it stopped other sins. This is as vain
as the rest, and dangerously uncertain : the contrary
WHICH TREAT OF NULLITIES IN MARRIAGE.
201
to be feared rather, that one sin, admitted courteously
by law, opened the gate to another. However, evil
must not be done for good. And it were a fall to be
lamented, and indignity unspeakable, if law should
become tributary to sin her slave, and forced to yield
up into his hands her awful minister, punishment;
should buy out our peace with sin for sin, paying as it
were her so many Philistian foreskins to the proud de-
mand of transgression. But suppose it any way pos-
sible to limit sin, to put a girdle about that Chaos, sup-
pose it also good; yet if to permit sin by law be an
abomination in the eyes of God, as Cameron acknow-
ledges, the evil of permitting will eat out the good of
limiting. I'or though sin be not limited, there can but
evil come out of evil; but if it be permitted and de-
creed lawful by divine law, of force then sin must pro-
ceed from the infinite good, which is a dreadful thought.
But if the restraining of sin by this permission being
good, as this author testifies, be more good than the
permission of more sin by the restraint of divorce, and
that God weighing both these like two ingots, in the
perfect scales of his justice and providence, found them
so, and others, coming without authority from God,
shall change this counterpoise, and judge it better to
let sin multiply by setting a judicial restraint upon di-
vorce which Christ never set; then to limit sin by this
permission, as God himself thought best to permit it, it
will behove them to consult betimes whether these their
balances be not false and abominable; and this their
limiting that which God loosened, and their loosening
the sins that he limited, which they confess was good
to do: and were it possible to do by law, doubtless it
would be most morally good ; and they so believing,
as we hear they do, and yet abolishing a law so good
and moral, the limiter of sin, what are they else but
contrary to themselves P For they can never bring us
to that time wherein it will not be good to limit sin,
and they can never limit it better than so as God pre-
scribed in his law.
Others conceive it a more defensible retirement to
say, this permission to divorce sinfully for hardness of
heart was a dispensation. But surely they either know
not, or attended not to what a dispensation means. A
dispensation is for no long time, is particular to some
persons, rather than general to a whole people; always
hath charity the end, is granted to necessities and in-
firmities, not to obstinate lust. This permission is
another creature, hath all those evils and absurdities
following the name of a dispensation, as when it was
named a law ; and is the very antarctic pole against
charity, nothing more adverse, ensnaring and ruining
those that trust in it, or use it; so lewd and criminous
as never durst enter into the head of any politician,
Jew, or proselyte, till they became the apt scholars of
this canonistic exposition. Aught in it, that can allude
in the least manner to charity, or goodness, belongs
with more full right to the Christian under grace and
liberty, than to the Jew under law and bondage. To
Jewish ignorance it could not be dispensed, without a
horrid imputation laid upon the law, to dispense foully,
instead of teaching fairly; like that dispensation that
first polluted Christendom with idolatry, permitting to
laymen images instead of books and preaching. Sloth
or malice in the law would they have this called ” But
what ignorance can be pretended for the Jews, who had
all the same precepts about marriage, that we know P
for Christ refers all to the institution. It was as rea-
sonable for them to know then as for us now, and con-
cerned them alike: for wherein hath the gospel altered
the nature of matrimony P All these considerations, or
many of them, have been further amplified in “the
Doctrine of Divorce.” And what Rivetus and Paraeus
have objected, or given over as past cure, hath been
there discussed. Whereby it may be plain enough to
men of eyes, that the vulgar exposition of a permit-
tance by law to an intire sin, whatever the colour may
be, is an opinion both ungodly, unpolitic, unvirtuous,
and void of all honesty and civil sense. It appertains
therefore to every zealous Christian, both for the honour
of God’s law, and the vindication of our Saviour's
words, that such an irreligious depravement no longer
may be soothed and flattered through custom, but with
all diligence and speed solidly refuted, and in the room
a better explanation given; which is now our next
endeavour.
“Moses suffered you to put away,” &c.] Not com-
manded you, says the common observer, and therefore
cared not how soon it were abolished, being but suffer-
ed; herein declaring his annotation to be slight, and
nothing law-prudent. For in this place “commanded ”
and “suffered ” are interchangeably used in the same
sense both by our Saviour and the Pharisees. Our Sa-
viour, who here saith, “Moses suffered you,” in the
10th of Mark saith, “Moses wrote you this command.”
And the Pharisees, who here say, “Moses commanded,”
and would mainly have it a command, in that place of
Mark say, “Moses suffered,” which had made against
them in their own mouths, if the word of “ suffering ”
had weakened the command. So that suffered and
commanded is here taken for the same thing on both
sides of the controversy: as Cameron also and others
on this place acknowledge. And lawyers know that
all the precepts of law are divided into obligatory and
permissive, containing either what we must do, or what
we may do; and of this latter sort are as many pre-
cepts as of the former, and all as lawful. Tutelage, an
ordainment than which nothing more just, being for
the defence of orphans, the Institutes of Justinian say
“is given and permitted by the civil law :” and “to
parents it is permitted to choose and appoint by will
the guardians of their children.” What more equal,
and yet the civil law calls this “permission.” So like-
wise to “manumise,” to adopt, to make a will, and to
be made an heir, is called “permission” by law. Mar-
riage itself, and this which is already granted, to divorce
for adultery, obliges no man, is but a permission by
law, is but suffered. By this we may see how weakly
it hath been thought, that all divorce is utterly unlaw-
ful, because the law is said to suffer it: whenas to
“suffer” is but the legal phrase denoting what by law
a man may do or not do.
“Because of the hardness of your hearts.”] Hence
202
EXPOSITIONS ON THE FOUR CHIEF PLACES IN SCRIPTURE,
they argue that therefore he allowed it not; and there-
fore it must be abolished. But the contrary to this
will sooner follow, that because he suffered it for a cause,
therefore in relation to that cause he allowed it. Next,
if he in his wisdom, and in the midst of his severity,
allowed it for hardness of heart, it can be nothing better
than arrogance and presumption to take stricter courses
against hardness of heart, than God ever set an exam-
ple; and that under the gospel, which warrants them
to do no judicial act of compulsion in this, matter, much
less to be more severe against hardness of extremity,
than God thought good to be against hardness of heart.
He suffered it, rather than worse inconveniences; these
men wiser, as they make themselves, will suffer the
worst and heinousest inconveniences to follow, rather
than they will suffer what God suffered. Although
they can know when they please, that Christ spake
only to the conscience, did not judge on the civil
bench, but always disavowed it. What can be more
contrary to the ways of God, than these their doings
If they be such enemies to hardness of heart, although
this groundless rigour proclaims it to be in themselves,
they may yet learn, or consider, that hardness of heart
hath a twofold acceptation in the gospel. One, when
it is in a good man taken for infirmity, and imper-
fection, which was in all the apostles, whose weakness
only, not utter want of belief, is called hardness of
heart, Mark xvi. Partly for this hardness of heart, the
imperfection and decay of man from original righteous-
ness, it was that God suffered not divorce only, but all
that which by civilians is termed the “secondary law
of nature and of nations.” He suffered his own people
to waste and spoil and slay by war, to lead captives, to
be some masters, some servants, some to be princes,
others to be subjects; he suffered propriety to divide
all things by several possession, trade, and commerce,
not without usury; in his commonwealth some to be
undeservedly rich, others to be undeservingly poor.
All which till hardness of heart came in was most un-
just; whenas prime nature made us all equal, made us
equal coheirs by common right and dominion over all
creatures. In the same manner, and ſor the same
cause, he suffered divorce as well as marriage, our im-
perfect and degenerate condition of necessity requiring
this law among the rest, as a remedy against intoler-
able wrong and servitude above the patience of man to
bear. Nor was it given only because our infirmity, or
if it must be so called, hardness of heart, could not en-
dure all things; but because the hardness of another's
heart might not inflict all things upon an innocent
person, whom far other ends brought into a league of
love, and not of bondage and indignity. If therefore
we abolish divorce as only suffered for hardness of
heart, we may as well abolish the whole law of nations,
as only suffered for the same cause; it being shewn us
by St. Paul, 1 Cor. vi. that the very seeking of a man's
right by law, and at the hands of a worldly magis-
trate, is not without the hardness of our hearts. “For
why do ye not rather take wrong,” saith he, “why
suffer ye not rather yourselves to be defrauded ?” If
nothing now must be suffered for hardness of heart, I
say the very prosecution of our right by way of civil
justice can no more be suffered among Christians, for
the hardness of heart wherewith most men pursue it.
And that would next remove all our judicial laws, and
this restraint of divorce also in the number ; which
would more than half end the controversy. But if it
be plain, that the whole juridical law and civil power
is only suffered under the gospel, for the hardness of
our hearts, then wherefore should not that which Moses
suffered, be suffered still by the same reason P
In a second signification, hardness of heart is taken
for a stubborn resolution to do evil. And that God
ever makes any law purposely to such, I deny ; for he
vouchsafes to enter covenant with them, but as they
fortune to be mixed with good men, and pass undisco-
vered ; much less that he should decree an unlawful
thing only to serve their licentiousness. But that God
“suffers” this reprobate hardness of heart I affirm, not
only in this law of divorce, but throughout all his best
and purest commandments. He commands all to wor-
ship in singleness of heart according to all his ordi-
nances; and yet suffers the wicked man to perform all
the rites of religion hypocritically, and in the hardness
of his heart. He gives us general statutes and privi-
leges in all civil matters, just and good of themselves,
yet suffers unworthiest men to use them, and by them
to prosecute their own right, or any colour of right,
though for the most part maliciously, covetously, rigor-
ously, revengefully. He allowed by law the discreet
father and husband to forbid, if he thought fit, the re-
ligious vows of his wife or daughter, Numb. xxx. ; and
in the same law suffered the hardheartedness of impious
and covetous fathers or husbands abusing this law, to
forbid their wives or daughters in their offerings and
devotions of greatest zeal. If then God suffer hardness
of heart equally in the best laws, as in this of divorce,
there can be no reason that for this cause this law
should be abolished. But other laws, they object, may
be well used, this never. How often shall I answer,
both from the institution of marriage, and from other
general rules in Scripture, that this law of divorce hath
many wise and charitable ends besides the being suf-
fered for hardness of heart, which is indeed no end,
but an accident happening through the whole law ;
which gives to good men right, and to bad men, who
abuse right under false pretences, gives only sufferance.
Now although Christ express no other reasons here,
but only what was suffered, it nothing follows that this
law had no other reason to be permitted but for hard-
ness of heart. The Scripture seldom or never in one
place sets down all the reasons of what it grants or
commands, especially when it talks to enemies and
tempters. St. Paul permitting marriage, 1 Cor. vii.
seems to permit even that also for hardness of heart
only, lest we should run into fornication: yet no intel-
ligent man thence concludes marriage allowed in the
gospel only to avoid an evil, because no other end is
there expressed. Thus Moses of necessity suffered
many to put away their wives for hardness of heart;
but enacted the law of divorce doubtless for other good
causes, not for this only sufferance. He permitted not
WHICH TREAT OF NULLITIES IN MARRIAGE. 203
divorce by law as an evil, for that was impossible to
divine law, but permitted by accident the evil of them
who divorced against the law's intention undiscover-
ably. This also may be thought not improbably, that
Christ, stirred up in his spirit against these tempting
Pharisees, answered them in a certain form of indig-
nation usual among good authors; whereby the ques-
tion or the truth is not directly answered, but something
which is fitter for them, who ask, to hear. So in the
ecclesiastical stories, one demanding how God employ-
ed himself before the world was made 2 had answer,
that he was making hell for curious questioners. Ano-
ther (and Libanus the sophist, as I remember) asking
in derision some Christian, What the carpenter, mean-
ing our Saviour, was doing, now that Julian so pre-
vailed P had it returned him, that the carpenter was
making a coffin for the apostate. So Christ being
demanded maliciously why Moses made the law of
divorce, answers them in a vehement scheme, not telling
them the cause why he made it, but what was fittest to
be told them, that “ for the hardness of their hearts”
he suffered them to abuse it. And albeit Mark say not
“he suffered” you, but, “to you he wrote this precept;”
Mark may be warrantably expounded by Matthew the
larger. And whether he suffered, or gave precept,
being all one as was heard, it changes not the trope of
indignation, fittest account for such askers. Next, for
the hardness of “ your hearts, to you he wrote this
precept,” infers not therefore for this cause only he
wrote it, as was paralleled by other Scriptures. Lastly,
it may be worth the observing, that Christ, speaking
to the Pharisees, does not say in general that for hard-
ness of heart he gave this precept, but “you he suffered,
and to you he gave this precept, for your hardness of
heart.” It cannot be easily thought, that Christ here
included all the children of Israel under the person of
these tempting Pharisees, but that he conceals where-
fore he gave the better sort of them this law, and ex-
presses by saying emphatically “To you” how he gave
it to the worser, such as the Pharisees best represented,
that is to say, for the hardness of your hearts: as indeed
to wicked men and hardened hearts he gives the whole
law and the gospel also, to harden them the more.
Thus many ways it may orthodoxally be understood
how God or Moses suffered such as the demanders
were, to divorce for hardness of heart. Whereas the
vulgar expositor, beset with contradictions and absur-
dities round, and resolving at any peril to make an ex-
position of it, (as there is nothing more violent and
boisterous than a reverend ignorance in fear to be con-
victed,) rushes brutely and impetuously against all the
principles both of nature, piety, and moral goodness;
and in the fury of his literal expounding overturns
them all.
“But from the beginning it was not so.”] Not
how from the beginning * Do they suppose that men
might not divorce at all, not necessarily, not delibe-
rately, except for adultery, but that some law, like ca-
non law, presently attached them, both before and after
the flood, till stricter Moses came, and with law brought
licence into the world 2 that were a fancy indeed to
smile at. Undoubtedly as to point of judicial law, di-
vorce was more permissive from the beginning before
Moses than under Moses. But from the beginning,
that is to say, by the institution in Paradise, it was not
intended that matrimony should dissolve for every tri-
vial cause, as you Pharisees accustom. But that it was
not thus suffered from the beginning ever since the
race of men corrupted, and laws were made, he who
will affirm must have found out other antiquities than
are yet known. Besides, we must consider now, what
can be so as from the beginning, not only what should
be so. In the beginning, had men continued perfect,
it had been just that all things should have remained
as they began to Adam and Eve. But after that the
sons of men grew violent and injurious, it altered the
lore of justice, and put the government of things into
a new frame. While man and woman were both per-
fect each to other, there needed no divorce ; but when
they both degenerated to imperfection, and ofttimes
grew to be an intolerable evil each to other, then law
more justly did permit the alienating of that evil
which estate made proper, than it did the appropriating
of that good which nature at first made common. For
if the absence of outward good be not so bad as the
presence of a close evil, and that propriety, whether by
covenant or possession, be but the attainment of some
outward good, it is more matural and righteous that
the law should sever us from an intimate evil, than ap-
propriate any outward good to us from the community
of nature. The gospel indeed tending ever to that
which is perfectest, aimed at the restorement of all
things as they were in the beginning ; and therefore
all things were in common to those primitive Christi-
ans in the Acts, which Ananias and Sapphira dearly
felt. That custom also continued more or less till the
time of Justin Martyr, as may be read in his second
Apology, which might be writ after that act of com-
munion perhaps some forty years above a hundred.
But who will be the man that shall introduce this kind
of commonwealth, as Christianity now goes 2 If then
marriage must be as in the beginning, the persons that
marry must be such as then were ; the institution must
make good, in some tolerable sort, what it promises to
either party. If not, it is but madness to drag this one
ordinance back to the beginning, and draw down all
other to the present necessity and condition, far from
the beginning, even to the tolerating of extortions and
oppressions. Christ only told us, that from the begin-
ning it was not so; that is to say, not so as the Phari-
sees manured the business; did not command us that
it should be forcibly so again in all points, as at the
beginning; or so at least in our intentions and desires,
but so in execution, as reason and present nature can
bear. Although we are not to seek, that the institution
itself from the first beginning was never but con-
ditional, as all covenants are: because thus and thus,
therefore so and so; if not thus, then not so. Then
moreover was perfectest to fulfil each law in itself; now
is perfectest in this estate of things, to ask of charity
how much law may be fulfilled : else the fulfilling oft-
times is the greatest breaking. If any therefore de-
204
EXPOSITIONS ON THE FOUR CHIEF PLACES IN SCRIPTURE,
mand, which is now most perfection, to ease an extre-
mity by divorce, or to enrage and fester it by the griev-
ous observance of a miserable wedlock, I am not desti-
tute to say, which is most perfection (although some,
who believe they think favourably of divorce, esteem it
only venial to infirmity). Him I hold more in the
way to perfection, who foregoes an unfit, ungodly, and
discordant wedlock, to live according to peace and
love, and God’s institution in a fitter choice, than he
who debars himself the happy experience of all godly,
which is peaceful, conversation in his family, to live a
contentious and unchristian life not to be avoided, in
temptations not to be lived in, only for the false keep-
ing of a most unreal nullity, a marriage that hath no
affinity with God's intention, a daring phantasm, a
mere toy of terrour awing weak senses, to the lament-
able superstition of ruining themselves; the remedy
whereof God in his law vouchsafes us. Which not to
dare use, he warranting, is not our perfection, is our in-
firmity, our little faith, our timorous and low conceit of
charity: and in them who force us, it is their masking
pride and vanity, to seem holier and more circumspect
than God. So far is it that we need impute to him in-
firmity, who thus divorces: since the rule of perfection
is not so much that which was done in the beginning,
as that which is now nearest to the rule of charity. This
is the greatest,the perſectest,the highest commandment.
Ver. 9. “And I say unto you, whoso shall put away
his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall
marry another, committeth adultery: and whoso
marrieth her which is put away, doth commit adul-
tery.”
“And I say unto you.”] That this restrictive de-
nouncement of Christ contradicts and refutes that per-
missive precept of Moses common expositors them-
selves disclaim : and that it does not traverse from the
closet of conscience to the courts of civil or canon law,
with any Christian rightly commenced, requires not
long evincing. If Christ then did not here check per-
missive Moses, nor did reduce matrimony to the begin-
ning more than all other things, as the reason of man's
condition could bear; we would know precisely what
it was which he did, and what the end was of his de-
claring thus austerely against divorce. For this is a
confessed oracle in law, that he who looks not at the
intention of a precept, the more superstitious he is of
the letter, the more he misinterprets. Was it to
shame Moses P that had been monstrous : or all those
purest ages of Israel, to whom the permission was
granted P that were as incredible. Or was it that he
who came to abrogate the burden of law, not the equi-
ty, should put this yoke upon a blameless person, to
league himself in chains with a begirting mischief, not
to separate till death P. He who taught us, that no man
puts a piece of new cloth upon an old garment, or new
wine into old bottles, that he should sew this patch of
strictness upon the old apparel of our frailty, to make
a rent more incurable, whenas in all other amendments
his doctrine still charges, that regard be had to the
garment, and to the vessel, what it can endure; this
were an irregular and single piece of rigour, not only
sounding disproportion to the whole gospel, but out-
stretching the most rigorous nerves of law and rigour
itself. No other end therefore can be left imaginable of
this excessive restraint, but to bridle those erroneous and
licentious postillers the Pharisees; not by telling them
what may be done in necessity, but what censure they
deserve who divorce abusively, which their tetrarch
had done. And as the offence was in one extreme, so
the rebuke, to bring more efficaciously to a rectitude
and mediocrity, stands not in the middle way of duty,
but in the other extreme. Which art of powerful re-
claiming, wisest men have also taught in their ethical
precepts and Gnomologies, resembling it, as when we
bend a crooked wand the contrary way; not that it
should stand so bent, but that the overbending might
reduce it to a straightness by its own reluctance. And
as the physician cures him who hath taken down poison,
not by the middling temper of nourishment, but by the
other extreme of antidote; so Christ administers here a
sharp and corrosive sentence against a foul and putrid
licence; not to eat into the flesh, but into the sore.
And knowing that our divines through all their com-
ments make no scruple, where they please, to soften
the high and vehement speeches of our Saviour, which
they call hyperboles: why in this one text should they
be such crabbed Masorites of the letter, as not to mol-
lify a transcendence of literal rigidity, which they con-
ſess to find often elsewhere in his manner of delivery,
but must make their exposition here such an obdurate
Cyclops, to have but one eye for this text, and that only
open to cruelty and enthralment, such as no divine or
human law before ever heard of 2 No, let the foppish
canonist, with his fardel of matrimonial cases, go and
be vendible where men be so unhappy as to cheapen
him : the words of Christ shall be asserted from such
elemental notaries, and resolved by the now only law-
giving mouth of charity; which may be done un-
doubtedly by understanding them as follows.
“Whosoever shall put away his wife.”] That is to
say, shall so put away as the propounders of this ques-
tion, the Pharisees, were wont to do, and covertly de-
fended Herod for so doing ; whom to rebuke, our
Saviour here mainly intends, and not to determine all
the cases of divorce, as appears by St. Paul. Whoso-
ever shall put away, either violently without mutual
consent for urgent reasons, or conspiringly by plot of
lust, or cunning malice, shall put away for any sud-
den mood, or contingency of disagreement, which is
not daily practice, but may blow soon over, and be re-
conciled, except it be fornication; whosoever shall put
away rashly, as his choler prompts him, without due
time of deliberating, and think his conscience discharg—
ed only by the bill of divorce given, and the outward
law satisfied; whosoever, lastly, shall put away his
wife, that is a wife indeed, and not in name only, such
a one who both can and is willing to be a meet help
toward the chief ends of marriage both civil and sanc-
tified, except fornication be the cause, that man, or that
pair, commit adultery. Not he who puts away by mu-
tual consent, with all the considerations and respects
WHICH TIREAT OF NULLITIES IN MARRIAG E.
205
of humanity and gentleness, without malicious or lust-
ful drift. Not he who after sober and cool experience,
and long debate within himself, puts away, whom
though he cannot love or suffer as a wife with that sin-
cere affection that marriage requires, yet loves at least
with that civility and goodness, as not to keep her
under a neglected and unwelcome residence, where
nothing can be hearty, and not being, it must needs be
both unjoyous, and injurious to any perceiving person
so detained, and more injurious than to be freely and
upon good terms dismissed. Nor doth he put away
adulterously who complains of causes rooted in immu-
table nature, utter unfitness, utter disconformity, not
conciliable, because not to be amended without a mira-
cle. Nor he who puts away an unquenchable vexation
from his bosom, and flies an evil, than which a greater
cannot befall human society. Nor he who puts away
with the full suffrage and applause of his conscience,
not relying on the written bill of law, but claiming by
faith and fulness of persuasion the rights and promises
of God's institution, of which he finds himself in a mis-
taken wedlock defrauded. Doubtless this man hath
bail enough to be no adulterer, giving divorce for these
Call SeS. -
“His wife.”] This word is not to be idle here, a
mere word without sense, much less a fallacious word
signifying contrary to what it pretends; but faithfully
signifies a wife, that is, a comfortable help and society,
as God instituted; does not signify deceitfully under
this name an intolerable adversary, not a helpless, un-
affectionate, and sullen mass, whose very company re-
presents the visible and exactest figure of loneliness it-
self. Such an associate he who puts away, divorces not
a wiſe, but disjoins a nullity which God never joined,
if she be neither willing, nor to her proper and requisite
duties sufficient, as the words of God institute her. And
this also is Bucer's explication of this place.
“Except it be for fornication,” or “saving for the
cause of fornication,” as Matt. v.] This declares what
kind of causes our Saviour meant; fornication being
no natural and perpetual cause, but only accidental
and temporary; therefore shews that head of causes
from whence it is excepted, to be meant of the same
sort. For exceptions are not logically deduced from a
diverse kind, as to say whoso puts away for any na-
tural cause except fornication, the exception would
want salt. And if they understand it, whoso for any
cause whatever, they cast themselves; granting di-
vorce for frigidity a natural cause of their own allow-
ing, though not here expressed, and for desertion with-
out infidelity, whenas he who marries, as they allow
him for desertion, deserts as well as is deserted, and
finally puts away for another cause besides adultery.
It will with all due reason therefore be thus better un-
derstood, whoso puts away for any accidental and tem-
porary causes, except one of them, which is fornication.
Thus this exception finds out the causes from whence
it is excepted, to be of the same kind, that is, casual,
not continual.
“Saving for the cause of fornication.”] The New
Testament, though it be said originally writ in Greek,
yet hath nothing near so many Atticisms as Hebraisms,
and Syriacisms, which was the majesty of God, not
filing the tongue of Scripture to a Gentilish idiom, but
in a princely manner offering to them as to Gentiles
and foreigners grace and mercy, though not in foreign
words, yet in a foreign style that might induce them
to the fountains; and though their calling were high
and happy, yet still to acknowledge God's ancient
people their betters, and that language the metropoli-
tan language. He therefore who thinks to scholiaze
upon the gospel, though Greek, according to his Greek
analogies, and hath not been auditor to the oriental
dialects, shall want in the heat of his analysis no ac-
commodation to stumble. In this place, as the 5th of
Matth. reads it, “Saving for the cause of fornication,”
the Greek, such as it is, sounds it, except for the “word,
report, speech, or proportion” of fornicatión. In which
regard, with other inducements, many ancient and
learned writers have understood this exception, as com-
prehending any fault equivalent and proportional to
fornication. But truth is, the evangelist here He-
braizes, taking “word or speech for cause or matter”
in the common Eastern phrase, meaning perhaps no
more than if he had said for fornication, as in this 19th
chapter. And yet the word is found in the 5th of Ex-
odus also signifying proportion; where the Israelites
are commanded to do their tasks, “the matter of each
day in his day.” A task we know is a proportion of work,
not doing the same thing absolutely every day, but so
much. Whereby it may be doubtful yet, whether here
be not excepted not only fornication itself, but other
causes equipollent, and proportional to fornication.
Which very word also to understand rightly, we must
of necessity have recourse again to the Hebrew. For
in the Greek and Latin sense by fornication is meant
the common prostitution of body for sale. So that they
who are so exact for the letter shall be dealt with by
the Lexicon, and the Etymologicon too if they please,
and must be bound to forbid divorce for adultery also,
until it come to open whoredom and trade, like that for
which Claudius divorced Messalina. Since therefore
they take not here the word fornication in the common
significance, for an open exercise in the stews, but
grant divorce for one single act of privatest adultery,
notwithstanding that the word speaks a public and no-
torious frequency of fact, not without price; we may
reason with as good leave, and as little straining to
the text, that our Saviour on set purpose chose this
word fornication, improperly applied to the lapse of
adultery, that we might not think ourselves bound
from all divorce, except when that fault hath been actu-
ally committed. For the language of Scripture signi-
fies by fornication (and others besides St. Austin so ex-
pounded it) not only the trespass of body, nor perhaps
that between married persons, unless in a degree or
quality as shameless as the bordello; but signifies also
any notable disobedience, or intractable carriage of the
wife to the husband, as Judg. xix. 2, whereof at large
in “the Doctrine of Divorce,” l. 2. c. 18. Secondly,
signifies the apparent alienation of mind not to idola-
try, (which may seem to answer the act of adultery,)
206
EXPOSITIONS ON THE FOUR CHIEF PLACES IN SCRIPTURE,
but far on this side, to any point of will-worship, though
to the true God; sometimes it notes the love of carthly
things, or worldly pleasures, though in a right believer,
sometimes the least suspicion of unwitting idolatry.
As Numb. xv. 39, wilful disobedience to any of the
least of God's commandments is called formication:
Psal. lxxiii. 26, 27. a distrust only in God, and with-
drawing from that nearness of zeal and confidence
which ought to be, is called fornication. We may be
sure it could not import thus much less than idolatry in
the borrowed metaphor between God and man, unless
it signified as much less than adultery in the ordinary
acceptation between man and wife. Add also, that
there was no need our Saviour should grant divorce for
adultery, it being death by law, and law then in force.
Which was the cause why Joseph sought to put away
his betrothed wife privately, lest he should make her
an example of capital punishment, as learnedest ex-
pounders affirm, Herod being a great zealot of the
Mosaic law, and the Pharisees great masters of the
text, as the woman taken in adultery doubtless had
cause to fear. Or if they can prove it was neglected,
which they cannot do, why did our Saviour shape his
answer to the corruption of that age, and not rather
tell them of their neglect? If they say he came not to
meddle with their judicatures, much less then was it in
his thought to make them new ones, or that divorce
should be judicially restrained in a stricter manner by
these his words, more than adultery judicially acquit-
ted by those his words to the adulteress. His sentence
doth no more by law forbid divorce here, than by law
it doth absolve adultery there. To them therefore, who
have drawn this yoke upon Christians from his words
thus wrested, nothing remains but the guilt of a pre-
sumption and perverseness, which will be hard for them
to answer. Thus much that the word fornication is to
be understood as the language of Christ understands it
for a constant alienation and disaffection of mind, or
for the continual practice of disobedience and crossness
from the duties of love and peace; that is, in sum, when
to be a tolerable wife is either naturally not in their
power, or obstinately not in their will: and this
opinion also is St. Austin's, lest it should hap to be
suspected of novelty. Yet grant the thing here meant
were only adultery, the reason of things will afford
more to our assertion, than did the reason of words.
For why is divorce unlawful but only for adultery P
because, say they, that crime only breaks the matri-
mony. But this, I reply, the institution itself gain-
says: for that which is most contrary to the words and
meaning of the institution, that most breaks the matri-
mony; but a perpetual unmeetness and unwillingness
to all the duties of help, of love, and tranquillity, is
most contrary to the words and meaning of the insti-
tution; that therefore much more breaks matrimony
than the act of adultery, though repeated. For this,
as it is not felt, nor troubles him who perceives it not,
so being perceived, may be soon repented, soon amend-
ed: soon, if it can be pardoned, may be redeemed with
the more ardent love and duty in her who hath the
pardon. But this natural unmeetness both cannot be
unknown long, and ever after cannot be amended, if it
be natural, and will not, if it be far gone obstimate. So
that wanting aught in the instant to be as great a breach
as adultery, it gains it in the perpetuity to be greater.
Next, adultery does not exclude her other fitness, her
other pleasingness; she may be otherwise both loving
and prevalent, as many adulteresses be; but in this
general unfitness or alienation she can be nothing to
him that can please. In adultery nothing is given from
the husband, which he misses, or enjoys the less, as it
may be subtly given; but this unfitness defrauds him
of the whole contentment which is sought in wedlock.
And what benefit to him, though nothing be given by
the stealth of adultery to another, if that which there
is to give, whether it be solace, or society, be not such
as may justly content him 2 and so not only deprives
him of what it should give him, but gives him sorrow
and affliction, which it did not owe him. Besides, is
adultery the greatest breach of matrimony in respect
of the offence to God, or of the injury to man? If in
the former, then other sins may offend God more, and
sooner cause him to disunite his servant from being one
flesh with such an offender. If in respect of the latter,
other injuries are demonstrated therein more heavy to
man's nature than the iterated act of adultery. God
therefore, in his wisdom, would not so dispose his re-
medies, as to provide them for the less injuries, and not
allow them for the greater. Thus is won both from the
word fornication, and the reason of adultery, that the
exception of divorce is not limited to that act, but en-
larged to the causes above specified.
“And whoso marrieth her which is put away, doth
commit adultery.”] By this clause alone, if by nothing
else, we may assure us that Christ intended not to de-
liver here the whole doctrine of divorce, but only to
condemn abuses. Otherwise to marry after desertion,
which the apostle, and the reformed churches at this
day, permit, is here forbid, as adultery. Be she never
so wrongfully deserted, or put away, as the law then
suffered, if thus forsaken and expulsed, she accept the
refuge and protection of any honester man who would
love her better, and give herself in marriage to him;
by what the letter guides us, it shall be present adul-
tery to them both. This is either harsh and cruel, or
all the churches, teaching as they do to the contrary,
are loose and remiss ; besides that the apostle himself
stands deeply fined in a contradiction against our Sa-
viour. What shall we make of this? what rather the
common interpreter can make of it, for they be his own
markets, let him now try; let him try which way he
can wind in his Vertumnian distinctions and evasions,
if his canonical gabardine of text and letter do not now
sit too close about him, and pinch his activity: which
if I err not, hath here hampered itself in a spring fit
for those who put their confidence in alphabets. Span-
heim, a writer of “Evangelic Doubts,” comes now and
confesses, that our Saviour's words are “to be limited
beyond the limitation there expressed, and excepted
beyond their own exception,” as not speaking of what
happened rarely, but what most commonly. Is it so
rare, Spanheim, to be deserted 2 or was it then so rare
WHICH TREAT OF NULLITIES IN MARRIAGE.
207
to put away injuriously, that a person so hatefully ex-
pelled, should to the heaping of more injury be turned
like an inſectious thing out of all marriage fruition
upon pain of adultery, as not considerable to the bre-
vity of this half sentence 2 Of what then speaks our
Saviour P “ of that collusion,” saith he, “which was
them most frequent among the Jews, of changing wives
and husbands through inconstancy and unchaste de-
sires.” Colluders yourselves, as violent to this law of
God by your unmerciful binding, as the Pharisees by
their unbounded loosening ! Have thousands of chris-
tian souls perished as to this life, and God knows what
hath betided their consciences, for want of this healing
explanation ; and is it now at last obscurely drawn
forth, only to cure a scratch, and leave the main wound
spouting P “Whosoever putteth away his wife, except
for fornication, committeth adultery.” That shall be
spoke of all ages, and all men, though never so justly
otherwise moved to divorce : in the very next breath,
“And whoso marrieth her which is put away commit-
teth adultery:” the men are new and miraculous, they
tell you now, “you are to limit it to that age, when it
was in fashion to chop matrimonies; and must be
meant of him who puts away with his wife's consent
through the lightness and lewdness of them both.”
But by what rule of logic, or indeed of reason, is our
commission to understand the antecedent one way and
the consequent another P for in that habitude this whole
verse may be considered: or at least to take the parts
of a copulate axiom, both absolutely affirmative, and
to say, the first is absolutely true, the other not, but
must be limited to a certain time and custom ; which
is no less than to say they are both false? For in this
compound axiom, be the parts never so many, if one
of them do but falter, and be not equally absolute and
general, the rest are all false. If therefore, that “he
who marries her which is put away commits adultery,”
be not generally true, neither is it generally true, that
“he commits adultery who puts away for other cause
than fornication.” And if the marrying her which is
put away must be understood limited, which they can-
not but yield it must, with the same limitation must
be understood the putting away. Thus doth the com-
mon exposition confound itself and justify this which
is here brought; that our Saviour, as well in the first
part of this sentence as in the second, prohibited only
such divorces as the Jews then made through malice
or through plotted licence, not those which are for
necessary and just causes; where charity and wisdom
disjoins, that which not God, but errour and disaster,
joined.
And there is yet to this our exposition, a stronger
siding friend, than any can be an adversary, unless St.
Paul be doubted, who repeating a command concern-
ing divorce, 1 Cor. vii. which is agreed by writers to
be the same with this of our Saviour, and appointing
that the “wiſe remain unmarried, or be reconciled to
her husband,” leaves it infallible, that our Saviour spake
chiefly against putting away for casual and choleric
disagreements, or any other cause which may with
human patience and wisdom be reconciled; not hereby
meaning to hale and dash together the irreconcileable
aversations of nature, nor to tie up a faultless person
like a parricide, as it were into one sack with an
enemy, to be his causeless tormentor and executioner
the length of a long life. Lastly, let this sentence of
Christ be understood how it will, yet that it was never
intended for a judicial law, to be enforced by the ma-
gistrate, besides that the office of our Saviour had no
such purpose in the gospel, this latter part of the sen-
tence may assure us, “And whoso marrieth her which
is put away, commits adultery.” Shall the exception
for adultery belong to this clause or not 2 If not, it
would be strange, that he who marries a woman really
divorced for adultery, as Christ permitted, should be-
come an adulterer by marrying one who is now no other
man's wife, himself being also free, who might by th’s
means reclaim her from common whoredom. And if
the exception must belong hither, then it follows that
he who marries an adulteress divorced commits no
adultery; which would soon discover to us what an
absurd and senseless piece of injustice this would be,
to make a civil statute of in penal courts: whereby the
adulteress put away may marry another safely; and
without a crime to him that marries her; but the inno-
cent and wrongfully divorced shall not marry again
without the guilt of adultery both to herself and to her
second husband. This saying of Christ therefore can-
not be made a temporal law, were it but for this
reason. Nor is it easy to say what coherence there is
at all in it from the letter, to any perfect sense not ob-
noxious to some absurdity, and seems much less agree-
able to whatever else of the gospel is left us written :
doubtless by our Saviour spoken in that fierceness and
abstruse intricacy, first to amuse his tempters, and ad-
monish in general the abusers of that Mosaic law; next,
to let Herod know a second knower of his unlawful
act, though the Baptist were beheaded; last, that his
disciples and all good men might learn to expound him
in this place, as in all other his precepts, not by the
written letter, but by that unerring paraphrase of chris-
tian love and charity, which is the sum of all commands,
and the perfection.
Ver. 10. “His disciples say unto him, If the case
of the man be so with his wife, it is not good to
marry.”
This verse I add, to leave no objection behind un-
answered: for some may think, if this our Saviour's
sentence be so fair, as not commanding aught that pa-
tience or nature cannot brook, why then did the disciples
murmur and say, “it is not good to marry P’’ I answer,
that the disciples had been longer bred up under the
pharisaean doctrine, than under that of Christ, and so
no marvel though they yet retained the infection of
loving old licentious customs; no marvel though they
thought it hard they might not for any offence, that
thoroughly angered them, divorce a wife, as well as
put away a servant, since it was but giving her a bill,
as they were taught. Secondly, it was no unwonted
thing with them not to understand our Saviour in mat-
ters far easier. So that be it granted their conceit of
208
Expositions oN THE FOUR CHIEF PLACES IN scRIPTURE,
this text was the same which is now commonly con-
ceived, according to the usual rate of their capacity
then, it will not hurt a better interpretation. But why
did not Christ, seeing their errour, inform them for
good cause, it was his professed method not to teach
them all things at all times, but each thing in due
place and season. Christ said, Luke xxii. that “he
who had no sword, should sell his garment and buy
one:” the disciples took it in a manifest wrong sense,
yet our Saviour did not there inform them better. He
told them, “it was easier for a camel to go through a
needle's eye,”
than a rich man in at heaven-gate.
They were “amazed exceedingly :” he explained him-
self to mean of those “who trust in riches,” Mark x.
“They were amazed then out of measure,” for so Mark
relates it; as if his explaining had increased their
amazement in such a plain case, and which concerned
so nearly their calling to be informed in. Good reason
therefore, if Christ at that time did not stand amplify-
ing, to the thick prejudice and tradition wherein they
were, this question of more difficulty, and less concern-
ment to any perhaps of them in particular. Yet did he
not omit to sow within them the seeds of a sufficient
determining, against the time that his promised Spirit
should bring all things to their memory. He had de-
clared in their hearing not long before, how distant he
was from abolishing the law itself of divorce; he had
referred them to the institution ; and after all this,
gives them a set answer, from which they might collect
what was clear enough, that “all men cannot receive
all sayings,” ver, 11. If such regard be had to each
man's receiving of marriage or single life, what can
arise, that the same christian regard should not be had
in most necessary divorce : All which instructed both
them and us, that it beseemed his disciples to learn the
deciding of this question, which hath nothing new in
it, first by the institution, then by the general grounds
of religion, not by a particular saying here and there,
tempered and levelled only to an incident occasion, the
riddance of a tempting assault. For what can this be
but weak and shallow apprehension, to forsake the
standard principles of institution, faith and charity;
then to be blank and various at every occurrence in
Scripture, and in a cold spasm of scruple, to rear pecu-
liar doctrines upon the place, that shall bid the gray
authority of most unchangeable and sovereign rules
to stand by and be contradicted 2 Thus to this evan-
gelic precept of famous difficulty, which for these many
ages weakly understood, and violently put in practice,
hath made a shambles rather than an ordinance of
matrimony, I am firm a truer exposition cannot be
given. If this or that argument here used please not
every one, there is no scarcity of arguments, any half
of them will suffice. Or should they all fail, as truth
itself can fail as soon, I should content me with the in-
stitution alone to wage this controversy, and not distrust
to evince. If any need it not, the happier; yet Chris-
tians ought to study earnestly what may be another's
need. But if, as mortal mischances are, some hap to
need it, let them be sure they abuse not, and give God
his thanks, who hath revived this remedy, not too late
for them, and scowered off an inveterate misexposition
from the gospel: a work not to perish by the vain
breath or doom of this age. Our next industry shall
be, under the same guidance, to try with what fidelity
that remaining passage in the Epistles touching this
matter hath been commented.
I Cor. vii. 10, &c.
10. “And unto the married I command,” &c.
11. “And let not the husband put away his wiſe.”
This intimates but what our Saviour taught before,
that divorce is not rashly to be made, but reconcilement
to be persuaded and endeavoured, as oft as the cause
can have to do with reconcilement, and is not under
the dominion of blameless nature; which may have
reason to depart, though seldomest and last from cha-
ritable love, yet sometimes from friendly, and familiar,
and something oftener from conjugal love, which re-
quires not only moral, but natural causes to the making
and maintaining; and may be warrantably excused to
retire from the deception of what it justly seeks, and
the ill requitals which unjustly it finds. For nature
hath her zodiac also, keeps her great annual circuit
over human things, as truly as the sun and planets in
the firmament; hath her anomalies, hath her obliquities
in ascensions and declimations, accesses and recesses,
as blamelessly as they in heaven. And sitting in her
planetary orb with two reins in each hand, one strait,
the other loose, tempers the course of minds as well as
bodies to several conjunctions and oppositions, friendly
or unfriendly aspects, consenting oftest with reason,
but never contrary. This in the effect no man of
meanest reach but daily sees; and though to every
one it appear not in the cause, yet to a clear capacity,
well nurtured with good reading and observation, it
cannot but be plain and visible. Other exposition
therefore than hath been given to former places, that
give light to these two summary verses, will not be
needful : save only that these precepts are meant to
those married who differ not in religion.
“But to the rest speak I, not the Lord : if any bro-
ther hath a wife that believeth not, and she be pleased
to dwell with him, let him not put her away.”
Now follows what is to be done, if the persons wed-
ded be of a different faith. The common belief is, that
a Christian is here commanded not to divorce, if the
infidel please to stay, though it be but to vex, or to de-
ride, or to seduce the Christian. This doctrine will be
the easy work of a refutation. The other opinion is,
that a Christian is here conditionally permitted to hold
wedlock with a misbeliever only, upon hopes limited
by christian prudence, which without much difficulty
shall be defended. That this here spoken by Paul,
not by the Lord, cannot be a command, these reasons
avouch. First, the law of Moses, Exod. xxxiv. 16,
Deut. vii. 3, 6, interpreted by Ezra and Nehemiah, two
infallible authors, commands to divorce an infidel not
for the fear only of a ceremonious defilement, but of
an irreligious seducement, feared both in respect of the
believer himself, and of his children in danger to be
WHICH TREAT OF NULLITIES IN MARRIAGE.
209
perverted by the misbelieving parent, Nehem. xiii. 24,
26. And Peter Martyr thought this a convincing rea-
son. If therefore the legal pollution vanishing have
abrogated the ceremony of this law, so that a Christian
may be permitted to retain an infidel without unclean-
ness, yet the moral reason of divorcing stands to eter-
nity, which neither apostle nor angel from heaven can
countermand. All that they reply to this is their human
warrant, that God will preserve us in our obedience to
this command against the danger of seducement. And
so undoubtedly he will, if we understand his commands
aright; if we turn not this evangelic permission into
a legal, and yet illegal, command ; if we turn not hope
into bondage, the charitable and free hope of gaining
another into the forced and servile temptation of losing
ourselves: but more of this beneath. Thus these words
of Paul by common doctrine made a command, are
made a contradiction to the moral law.
Secondly, Not the law only, but the gospel from the
law, and from itself, requires even in the same chap-
ter, where divorce between them of one religion is so
narrowly forbid, rather than our christian love should
come into danger of backsliding, to forsake all relations
how near soever, and the wife expressly, with promise
of a high reward, Matt. xix. And he who hates not
father or mother, wife or children, hindering his christ-
ian course, much more if they despise or assault it, can-
not be a disciple, Luke xiv. How can the apostle then
command us to love and continue in that matrimony,
which our Saviour bids us hate and forsake? They can
as soon teach our faculty of respiration to contract and
to dilate itself at once, to breathe and to fetch breath
in the same instant, as teach our minds how to do such
contrary acts as these towards the same object, and as
they must be done in the same moment. For either
the hatred of her religion, and her hatred to our religion,
will work powerfully against the love of her society,
or the love of that will by degrees flatter out all our
zealous hatred and forsaking, and soon ensnare us to
unchristianly compliances.
Thirdly, In marriage there ought not only to be a
civil love, but such a love as Christ loves his church ;
but where the religion is contrary without hope of con-
version, there can be no love, no faith, no peaceful so-
ciety, (they of the other opinion confess it,) may there
ought not to be, further than in expectation of gaining
a soul; when that ceases, we know God hath put an
enmity between the seed of the woman, and the seed
of the serpent. Neither should we “love them that hate
the Lord,” as the prophet told Jehoshaphat, 2 Chron.
xix. And this apostle himself in another place warns
us, that we “be not unequally yoked with infidels,” 2
Cor. vi. for that there can be no fellowship, no com-
munion, no concord between such. Outward commerce
and civil intercourse cannot perhaps be avoided ; but
true friendship and familiarity there can be none.
How vainly therefore, not to say how impiously, would
the most inward and dear alliance of marriage or con-
tinuance in marriage be commanded, where true friend-
ship is confessed impossible ! For, say they, we are
forbid here to marry with an infidel, not bid to divorce.
But to rob the words thus of their full sense, will not
be allowed them : it is not said, enter not into yoke,
but “be not unequally yoked ;” which plainly forbids
the thing in present act, as well as in purpose : and
his manifest conclusion is, not only that “we should
not touch,” but that having touched, “we should come
out from among them, and be separate;” with the pro-
mise of a blessing thereupon, that “ God will receive
us, will be our father, and we his sons and daughters,”
wer. 17, 18. Why we should stay with an infidel after
the expense of all our hopes can be but for a civil rela-
tion; but why we should depart from a seducer, setting
aside the misconstruction of this place, is from a religi-
ous necessity of departing. The worse cause therefore
of staying (if it be any cause at all, for civil govern-
ment forces it not) must not overtop the religious cause
of separating, executed with such an urgent zeal, and
such a prostrate humiliation, by Ezra and Nehemiah.
What God hates to join, certainly he cannot love should
continue joined; it being all one in matter of ill conse-
quence, to marry, or to continue married with an infidel,
save only so long as we wait willingly, and with a safe
hope. St. Paul therefore citing here a command of the
Lord Almighty, for so he terms it, that we should sepa-
rate, cannot have bound us with that which he calls
his own, whether command or counsel, that we should
not separate.
Which is the fourth reason, for he himself takes care
lest we should mistake him, “but to the rest speak I,
not the Lord.” If the Lord spake not, then man spake
it, and man hath no lordship to command the con-
science: yet modern interpreters will have it a com-
mand, maugre St. Paul himself; they will make him a
prophet like Caiaphas, to speak the word of the Lord,
not thinking, nay denying to think: though he disa-
vow to have received it from the LCrd, his word shall
not be taken; though an apostle, he shall be borne
down in his own epistle, by a race of expositors who
presume to know from whom he spake, better than he
himself. Paul deposes, that the Lord speaks not this;
they, that the Lord speaks it: can this be less than to
brave him with a full-faced contradiction * Certainly
to such a violence as this, for I cannot call it an ex-
pounding, what a man should answer I know not, un-
less that if it be their pleasure next to put a gag into
the apostle's mouth, they are already furnished with
a commodious audacity toward the attempt. Beza
would seem to shun the contradictory, by telling us
that the Lord spake it not in person, as he did the for-
mer precept. But how many other doctrines doth St.
Paul deliver, which the Lord spake not in person, and
yet never uses this preamble but in things indifferent
So long as we receive him for a messenger of God, for
him to stand sorting sentences, what the Lord spake in
person, and what he, not the Lord in person, would be
but a chill trifling, and his readers might catch an ague
the while. But if we shall supply the grammatical
ellipsis regularly, and as we must in the same tense,
all will be then clear, for we cannot supply it thus, to
the rest I speak, the Lord spake not ; but I speak, the
Lord speaks not. If then the Lord neither spake in
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EXPOSITIONS ON THE FOUR CHIEF PLACES IN SCRIPTURE,
person, nor speaks it now, the apostle testifying both,
it follows duly, that this can be no command. For-
sooth the fear is, lest this, not being a command, would
prove an evangelic counsel, and so make way for su-
pererogations. As if t e apostle could not speak his
mind in things indifferent, as he doth in four or five
several places of this chapter with the like preface of
not commanding, but that the doubted inconvenience
of supererogating must needs rush in. And how adds
it to the word of the Lord, (for this also they object,)
whenas the apostle by his christian prudence guides us
in the liberty which God hath left us to, without com-
mand P Could not the Spirit of God instruct us by him
what was free, as well as what was not? But what
need I more, when Cameron, an ingenuous writer, and
in high esteem, solidly confutes the surmise of a com-
mand here, and among other words hath these; that
“when Paul speaks as an apostle, he uses this form,”
The Lord saith, not I, ver. 10; “but as a private man
he saith, I speak, not the Lord.” And thus also all the
prime fathers, Austin, Jerom, and the rest, understood
this place.
Fifthly, The very stating of the question declares
this to be no command; “If any brother hath an un-
believing wife, and she be pleased to dwell with him,
let him not put her away.” For the Greek word ovved-
ôokei does not imply only her being pleased to stay, but
his being pleased to let her stay; it must be a consent
of them both. Nor can the force of this word be ren-
dered less, without either much negligence or iniquity
of him that otherwise translates it. And thus the Greek
church also and their synods understood it, who best
knew what their own language meant, as appears by
Matthaeus Monachus, an author set forth by Leuncla-
vius, and of antiquity perhaps not inferior to Balsa-
mon, who writes upon the canons of the apostles: this
author in his chap. “That marriage is not to be made
with heretics,” thus recites the second canon of the
6th synod : “As to the Corinthians, Paul determines;
If the believing wife choose to live with the unbeliev-
ing husband, or the believing husband with the unbe-
lieving wife. Mark,” saith he, “how the apostle here
condescends, iſ the believer please to dwell with the
unbeliever; so that if he please not, out of doubt the
marriage is dissolved. And I am persuaded it was so
in the beginning, and thus preached.” And thereupon
gives an example of one, who though not deserted, yet
by the decree of Theodotus the patriarch divorced an
unbelieving wife. What therefore depends in the plain
state of this question on the consent and well liking of
them both must not be a command. Lay next the lat-
ter end of the 11th verse to the 12th, (for wherefore else
is logic taught us?) in a discreet axiom, as it can be
no other by the phrase; “The Lord saith, Let not the
husband put away his wife : but I say, Let him not put
away a misbelieving wiſe.” This sounds as if by the
judgment of Paul a man might put away any wife but
the misbelieving ; or else the parts are not discrete, or
dissentany, for both conclude not putting away, and
consequently in such a form the proposition is ridicu-
lous. Of necessity therefore the former part of this
sentence must be conceived, as understood, and silently
granted, that although the Lord command to divorce
an infidel, yet I, not the Lord, command you. No, but
give my judgment, that for some evangelic reasons a
Christian may be permitted not to divorce her. Thus
while we reduce the brevity of St. Paul to a plainer
sense, by the needful supply of that which was granted
between him and the Corinthians, the very logic of his
speech extracts him confessing, that the Lord's com-
mand lay in a seeming contrariety to this his counsel :
and that he meant not to thrust out a command of the
Lord by a new one of his own, as one mail drives an-
other, but to release us from the rigour of it, by the
right of the gospel, so far forth as a charitable cause
leads us in the hope of winning another soul without
the peril of losing our own. For this is the glory of
the gospel, to teach us that “the end of the command-
ment is charity,” 1 Tim. i. not the drudging out a poor
and worthless duty forced from us by the tax and tale
of so many letters. This doctrine therefore can be no
command, but it must contradict the moral law, the
gospel, and the apostle himself, both elsewhere and
here also even in the act of speaking.
If then it be no command, it must remain to be a
permission, and that not absolute, for so it would be
still contrary to the law, but with such a caution as
breaks not the law, but as the manner of the gospel is,
fulfils it through charity. The law had two reasons,
the one was ceremonial, the pollution that all Gentiles
were to the Jews ; this the vision of Peter had abol-
ished, Acts x. and cleansed all creatures to the use of
a Christian. The Corinthians understood not this, but
feared lest dwelling in matrimony with an unbeliever,
they were defiled. The apostle discusses that scruple
with an evangelic reason, shewing them that although
God heretofore under the law, not intending the con-
version of the Gentiles, except some special ones, held
them as polluted things to the Jew, yet now purposing
to call them in, he hath purified them from that legal
uncleanness wherein they stood, to use and to be used
in a pure manner.
For saith he, “The unbelieving husband is sanctified
by the wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified by
the husband, else were your children unclean ; but
now they are holy.” That is, they are sanctified to
you, from that legal impurity which you so fear; and
are brought into a near capacity to be holy, if they be-
lieve, and to have free access to holy things. In the
mean time, as being God’s creatures, a Christian hath
power to use them according to their proper use; in as
much as now, “all things to the pure are become pure.”
In this legal respect therefore ye need not doubt to
continue in marriage with an unbeliever. Thus others
also expound this place, and Cameron especially.
This reason warrants us only what we may do without
fear of pollution, does not bind us that we must. But
the other reason of the law to divorce an infidel was
moral, the avoiding of enticement from the true faith.
This cannot shrink; but remains in as full force as
ever, to save the actual Christian from the snare of a
misbeliever. Yet if a Christian full of grace and spi-
WHICH TREAT OF NULLITIES IN MARRIAGE.
21 1
ritual gifts, finding the misbeliever not frowardly af-
fected, fears not a seducing, but hopes rather a gain-
ing, who sees not that this moral reason is not violated
by not divorcing, which the law commanded to do, but
better fulfilled by the excellence of the gospel working
through charity P For neither the faithful is seduced,
and the unfaithful is either saved, or with all discharge
of love and evangelic duty sought to be saved. But
contrariwise, if the infirm Christian shall be com-
manded here against his mind, against his hope, and
against his strength, to dwell with all the scandals,
the household persecutions, or alluring temptations of
an infidel, how is not the gospel by this made harsher
than the law, and more yoking 2 Therefore the apos-
tle, ere he deliver this other reason why we need not
in all haste put away an infidel, his mind misgiving
him, lest he should seem to be the imposer of a new
command, stays not for method, but with an abrupt
speed inserts the declaration of their liberty in this
matter.
“But if the unbelieving depart, let him depart; a
brother or a sister is not under bondage in such cases:
but God hath called us to peace.”
“But if the unbelieving depart.”] This cannot be
restrained to local departure only : for who knows not
that an offensive society is worse than a forsaking 2 If
his purpose of cohabitation be to endanger the life, or
the conscience, Beza himself is half persuaded, that
this may purchase to the faithful person the same free-
dom that a desertion may ; and so Gerard and others
whom he cites. If therefore he depart in affection ; if
he depart from giving hope of his conversion; if he
disturb, or scoff at religion, seduce or tempt; if he
rage, doubtless not the weak only, but the strong may
leave him: if not for fear, yet for the dignity's sake of
religion, which cannot be liable to all base affronts,
merely for the worshipping of a civil marriage. I
take therefore “departing ” to be as large as the nega-
tive of being well pleased: that is, if he be not pleased
for the present to live lovingly, quietly, inoffensively,
so as may give good hope; which appears well by that
which follows.
“A brother or a sister is not under bondage in such
cases.”] If St. Paul provide seriously against the bon-
dage of a Christian, it is not the only bondage to live
unmarried for a deserting infidel, but to endure his
presence intolerably, to bear indignities against his re-
ligion in words or deeds, to be wearied with seduce-
ments, to have idolatries and superstitions ever before
his eyes, to be tormented with impure and prophane
conversation; this must needs be bondage to a Chris.
tian: is this left all unprovided for, without remedy,
or freedom granted 2 Undoubtedly mo; for the apostle
leaves it further to be considered with prudence, what
bondage a brother or sister is not under, not only in
this case, but as he speaks himself plurally, “in such
cases.”
“But God hath called us to peace.”] To peace, not
to bondage, not to brabbles and contentions with him
who is not pleased to live peaceably, as marriage and
Christianity require. And where strife arises from a
p
cause hopeless to be allayed, what better way to peace
than by separating that which is ill joined : It is not
divorce that first breaks the peace of a family, as some
fondly comment on this place, but it is peace already
broken, which, when other cures fail, can only be re-
stored to the faultless person by a necessary divorce.
And St. Paul here warrants us to seek peace, rather
than to remain in bondage. If God hath called us to
peace, why should we not follow him 2 why should we
miserably stay in perpetual discord under a servitude
not required 2
“For what knowest thou, O wife, whether thou shalt
save thy husband,” &c.] St. Paul having thus cleared
himself, not to go about the mining of our christian
liberty, not to cast a snare upon us, which to do
he so much hated, returns now to the second reason of
that law, to put away an infidel for fear of seducement,
which he does not here contradict with a command now
to venture that; but if neither the infirmity of the Chris-
tian, nor the strength of the unbeliever, be feared, but
hopes appearing that he may be won, he judges it no
breaking of that law, though the believer be permitted
to forbear divorce, and can abide, without the peril of
seducement, to offer the charity of a salvation to wife
or husband, which is the fulfilling, not the transgress-
ing, of that law ; and well worth the undertaking with
much hazard and patience. For what knowest thou,
whether thou shalt save thy wife that is, till all means
convenient and possible with discretion and probabi-
lity, as human things are, have been used. For
Christ himself sends not our hope on pilgrimage to
the world's end; but sets it bounds, beyond which we
need not wait on a brother, much less on an infidel.
If after such a time we may count a professing Chris-
tian no better than a heathen, after less time perhaps
we may cease to hope of a heathen, that he will turn
Christian. Otherwise, to bind us harder than the
law, and tell us we are not under bondage, is mere
mockery. If, till the unbeliever please to part, we
may not stir from the house of our bondage, then
certain this our liberty is not grounded in the pur-
chase of Christ, but in the pleasure of a miscreant.
What knows the loyal husband, whether he may not
save the adulteress 2 he is not therefore bound to re-
ceive her. What knows the wife, but she may re-
claim her husband who hath deserted her ? Yet the
reformed churches do uot enjoin her to wait longer
than after the contempt of an ecclesiastical summons.
Beza himself here befriends us with a remarkable
speech, “What could be firmly constituted in human
matters, if under pretence of expecting grace from
above, it should be never lawful for us to seek our
right?” And yet in other cases not less reasonable to
obtain a most just and needful remedy by divorce, he
turns the innocent party to a task of prayers beyond
the multitude of beads and rosaries, to beg the gift of
chastity in recompense of an injurious marriage. But
the apostle is evident enough, “we are not under
bondage;” trusting that he writes to those who are
not ignorant what bondage is, to let supercilious de-
terminers cheat them of their freedom. God hath
212
EXPOSITIONS ON THE FOUR CHIEF PLACES IN SCRIPTURE,
called us to peace, and so doubtless hath leſt in our
hands how to obtain it seasonably : if it be not our own
choice to sit ever like novices wretchedly servile.
Thus much the apostle in this question between
Christian and pagan, to us now of little use; yet sup-
posing it written for our instruction, as it may be rightly
applied, I doubt not but that the difference between a
true believer and a heretic, or any one truly religious
either deserted or seeking divorce from any one grossly
erroneous or prophane, may be referred hither. Tor
St. Paul leaves us here the solution not of this case
only, which little concerns us, but of such like cases,
which may occur to us. For where the reasons directly
square, who can forbid why the verdict should not be
the same P But this the common writers allow us not.
And yet from this text, which in plain words give liberty
to none, unless deserted by an infidel, they collect the
same freedom, though the desertion be not for religion,
which, as I conceive, they need not do ; but may,
without straining, reduce it to the cause of fornication.
For first, they confess that desertion is seldom without
a just suspicion of adultery: next, it is a breach of
marriage in the same kind, and in some sort worse:
for adultery, though it give to another, yet it bereaves
not all ; but the deserter wholly denies all right, and
makes one flesh twain, which is counted the absolutest
breach of matrimony, and causes the other, as much as
in him lies, to commit sin, by being so left. Never-
theless, those reasons, which they bring of establishing
by this place the like liberty from any desertion, are
fair and solid : and if the thing be lawful, and can be
proved so, more ways than one, so much the safer.
Their arguments I shall here recite, and that they may
not come idle, shall use them to make good the like
freedom to divorce for other causes ; and that we are
no more under bondage to any heinous default against
the main ends of matrimony, than to a desertion: first
they allege that I to Tim. v. 8, “If any provide not
for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith,
and is worse than an infidel.” But a deserter, say they,
“can have no care of them who are most his own ;
thereſore the deserted party is not less to be righted
against such a one, than against an infidel.” With the
same evidence I argue, that man or wife, who hates in
wedlock, is perpetually unsociable, unpeaceful, or un-
duteous, either not being able, or not willing to perform
what the main ends of marriage demand in help and
solace, cannot be said to care for who should be dearest
in the house; therefore is worse than an infidel in both
regards, either in undertaking a duty which he cannot
perform, to the undeserved and unspeakable injury of
the other party so defrauded and betrayed, or not per-
forming what he hath undertaken, whenas he may or
might have, to the perjury of himself, more irreligious
than heathenism. The blameless person therefore hath
as good a plea to sue out his delivery from this bond-
age, as from the desertion of an infidel. Since most
writers cannot but grant that desertion is not only a
local absence, but an intolerable society; or if they
grant it not, the reasons of St. Paul grant it, with as
much leave as they grant to enlarge a particular free-
dom from paganism, into a general freedom from any
desertion. Secondly, they reason from the likeness of
either fact, “the same loss redounds to the deserted by
a Christian, as by an infidel, the same peril of tempta-
tion.” And I in like manner affirm, that if honest and
free persons may be allowed to know what is most to
their own loss, the same loss and discontent, but worse
disquiet, with continual misery and temptation, resides
in the company, or better called the persecution of an
unfit, or an unpeaceable consort, than by his desertion.
For then the deserted may enjoy himself at least. And
he who deserts is more favourable to the party whom
his presence afflicts, than that importunate thing, which
is and will be ever conversant before the eyes, a loyal
and individual vexation. As for those who still rudely
urge it no loss to marriage, no desertion, so long as the
flesh is present, and offers a benevolence that hates, or
is justly hated ; I am not of that vulgar and low per-
suasion, to think such forced embracements as these
worth the honour, or the humanity of marriage, but
far beneath the soul of a rational and freeborn man.
Thirdly, they say, “It is not the infidelity of the de-
serter, but the desertion of the infidel, from which the
apostle gives this freedom :” and I join, that the apos-
tle could as little require our subjection to an unfit and
injurious bondage present, as to an infidel absent. To
free us from that which is an evil by being distant, and
not from that which is an inmate, and in the bosom
evil, argues an improvident and careless deliverer.
And thus all occasions, which way soever they turn,
are mot unofficious to administer something which may
conduce to explain or to defend the assertion of this
book touching divorce. I complain of nothing, but
that it is indeed too copious to be the matter of a dis-
pute, or a defence, rather to be yielded, as in the best
ages, a thing of common reason, not of controversy.
What have I left to say ” I fear to be more elaborate in
such a perspicuity as this; lest I should seem not to
teach, but to upbraid the dulness of an age; not to
commune with reason in men, but to deplore the loss
of reason from among men : this only, and not the
want of more to say, is the limit of my discourse.
Who among the fathers have interpreted the words of
Christ concerning divorce, as is here interpreted;
and what the civil law of christian emperors in the
primitive church determined.
Although testimony be in logic an argument rightly
called “inartificial,” and doth not solidly fetch the truth
by multiplicity of authors, nor argue a thing false by
the few that hold so ; yet seeing most men from their
youth so accustom, as not to scan reason, nor clearly to
apprehend it, but to trust for that the names and num-
bers of such, as have got, and many times undeservedly,
the reputation among them to know much ; and be-
cause there is a vulgar also of teachers, who are as
blindly by whom they fancy led, as they lead the
people, it will not be amiss for them who had rather
list themselves under this weaker sort, and follow au-
thorities, to take notice that this opinion, which I bring,
hath been favoured, and by some of those affirmed,
WHICH TREAT OF NULLITIES IN MARRIAGE.
213
who in their time were able to carry what they taught,
had they urged it, through all christendom ; or to
have left it such a credit with all good men, as they
who could not boldly use the opinion, would have
feared to censure it. But since by his appointment on
whom the times and seasons wait, every point of doc-
trine is not fatal to be thoroughly siſted out in every
age; it will be enough for me to find, that the thoughts
of wisest heads heretofore, and hearts no less reverenced
for devotion, have tended this way, and contributed their
lot in some good measure towards this which hath been
here attained. Others of them, and modern especially,
have been as full in the assertion, though not so full
in the reason; so that either in this regard, or in the
former, I shall be manifest in a middle fortune to meet
the praise or dispraise of being something first.
But I defer not what I undertook to shew, that in
the church both primitive and reformed, the words of
Christ have been understood to grant divorce for other
causes than adultery; and that the word fornication in
marriage hath a larger sense than that commonly sup-
posed.
Justin Martyr in his first Apology, written within
fifty years after St. John died, relates a story which
Eusebius transcribes, that a certain matron of Rome,
the wife of a vicious husband, herself also formerly
vicious, but converted to the faith, and persuading the
same to her husband, at least the amendment of his
wicked life; upon his not yielding to her daily en-
treaties and persuasions in this behalf, procured by law
to be divorced from him. This was neither for adultery,
nor desertion, but as the relation says, “esteeming it
an ungodly thing to be the consort of bed with him,
who against the law of nature and of right sought out
voluptuous ways.” Suppose he endeavoured some un-
natural abuse, as the Greek admits that meaning, it
cannot yet be called adultery; it therefore could be
thought worthy of divorce no otherwise than as equi-
valent, or worse; and other vices will appear in other
respects as much divorcive. Next, it is said her friends
advised her to stay a while; and what reason gave
they not because they held unlawful what she pur-
posed, but because they thought she might longer yet
hope his repentance. She obeyed, till the man going
to Alexandria, and from thence reported to grow still
more impenitent, not for any adultery or desertion,
whereof neither can be gathered, but saith the Martyr,
and speaks it like one approving, “lest she should be
partaker of his unrighteous and ungodly deeds, remain-
ing in wedlock, the communion of bed and board with
such a person, she left him by a lawful divorce.” This
Cannot but give us the judgment of the church in
those pure and next to apostolic times. For how else
could the woman have been permitted, or here not re-
prehended ? and if a wife might then do this without
reproof, a husband certainly might no less, if not
II) Ol'e.
Tertullian in the same age, writing his fourth Book
against Marcion, witnesses “that Christ, by his an-
Swer to the Pharisees, protected the constitution of
Moses as his own, and directed the institution of the
Creator,” for I alter not his Carthaginian phrase; “he
excused rather than destroyed the constitution of Moses;
I say, he forbid conditionally, if any one therefore put
away, that he may marry another: so that if he pro-
hibited conditionally, then not wholly: and what he
forbad not wholly, he permitted otherwise, where the
cause ceases for which he prohibited :” that is, when a
man makes it not the cause of his putting away, merely
that he may marry again. “Christ teaches not con-
trary to Moses, the justice of divorce hath Christ the
asserter: he would not have marriage separate, nor
kept with ignominy, permitting then a divorce; ” and
guesses that this vehemence of our Saviour's sentence
was chiefly bent against Herod, as was cited before.
Which leaves it evident how Tertullian interpreted this
prohibition of our Saviour : for whereas the text is,
“Whosoever putteth away, and marrieth another,”
wherefore should Tertullian explain it, “Whosoever
putteth away that he may marry another,” but to sig-
nify his opinion, that our Saviour did not forbid di-
vorce from an unworthy yoke, but forbid the malice or
the lust of a needless change, and chiefly those plotted
divorces then in use 2
Origen in the next century testifies to have known
certain who had the government of churches in his
time, who permitted some to marry, while yet their
former husbands lived, and excuses the deed, as done
“not without cause, though without Scripture,” which
confirms that cause not to be adultery; for how then
was it against Scripture that they married again? And
a little beneath, for I cite his seventh homily on Mat-
thew, saith he, “to endure faults worse than adultery
and fornication, seems a thing unreasonable ; ” and
disputes therefore that Christ did not speak by “way
of precept, but as it were expounding.” By which and
the like speeches, Origen declares his mind, far from
thinking that our Saviour confined all the causes of
divorce to actual adultery.
Lactantius, of the age that succeeded, speaking of
this matter in the 6th of his “Institutions,” hath these
words: “But lest any think he may circumscribe di-
vine precepts, let this be added, that all misinterpret-
ing, and occasion of fraud or death may be removed,
he commits adultery who marries the divorced wife;
and besides the crime of adultery, divorces a wife that
he may marry another.” To divorce and marry another,
and to divorce that he may marry another, are two dif.
ferent things; and imply that Lactantius thought not
this place the forbidding of all necessary divorce, but
such only as proceeded from the wanton desire of a
future choice, not from the burden of a present affliction.
About this time the council of Eliberis in Spain de-
creed the husband excommunicate, “if he kept his wife
being an adulteress; but if he left her, he might after
ten years be received into communion, if he retained
her any while in his house after the adultery known.”
The council of Neocesaria, in the year 314, decreed,
That if the wife of any laic were convicted of adultery,
that man could not be admitted into the ministry: if
after ordination it were committed, he was to divorce
her; if not he could not hold his ministry. The coun-
214
EXPOSITIONS ON THE FOUR CHIEF PLACES IN SCRIPTURE,
cil of Nantes condemned in seven years' penance the
husband, that would reconcile with an adulteress. But
how proves this that other causes may divorce : It
proves thus: There can be but two causes why these
councils enjoined so strictly the divorcing of an adul-
teress, either as an offender against God, or against the
husband; in the latter respect they could not impose
on him to divorce; for every man is the master of his
own forgiveness; who shall hinder him to pardon the
injuries done against himself? It follows therefore,
that the divorce of an adulteress was commanded by
these three councils, as it was a sin against God ; and
by all consequence they could not but believe that
other sins as heinous might with equal justice be the
ground of a divorce.
Basil in his 73d rule, as Chamier numbers it, thus
determines; “That divorce ought not to be, unless for
adultery, or the hinderance to a godly life.” What doth
this but proclaim aloud more causes of divorce than
adultery, if by other sins besides this, in wife or hus-
band, the godliness of the better person may be certainly
hindercq and endangered 2
Epiphanius no less ancient, writing against heretics,
and therefore should himself be orthodoxal above others,
acquaints us in his second book, Tom. 1, not that his
private persuasion was, but that the whole church in
his time generally thought other causes of divorce law-
ful besides adultery, as comprehended under that
name: “If,” saith he, “a divorce happen for any cause,
either fornication or adultery, or any heinous fault, the
word of God blames not either the man or wife marry-
ing again, nor cuts them off from the congregation, or
from life, but bears with the infirmity; not that he
may keep both wives, but that leaving the former he
may be lawfully joined to the latter: the holy word,
and the holy church of God, commiserates this man,
especially if he be otherwise of good conversation, and
live according to God's law.” This place is clearer than
exposition, and needs no comment.
Ambrose, on the 16th of Luke, teaches “that all
wedlock is not God's joining t” and to the 19th of Prov.
“That a wife is prepared of the Lord,” as the old Latin
translates it, he answers, that the Septuagint renders
it, “a wife is fitted by the Lord, and tempered to a kind
of harmony; and where that harmony is, there God
joins; where it is not, there dissension reigns, which
is not from God, for God is love.” This he brings to
prove the marrying of Christian with Gentile to be no
marriage, and consequently divorced without sin: but
he who sees not this argument how plainly it serves to
divorce any untunable, or unatonable matrimony, sees
little. On the first to the Cor. vii. he grants a woman
may leave her husband not only for fornication, “but
for apostacy, and inverting nature, though not marry
again; but the man may;” here are causes of divorce
assigned other than adultery. And going on, he affirms,
“ that the cause of God is greater than the cause of
matrimony; that the reverence of wedlock is not due
to him who hates the author thereof; that no matri-
mony is firm without devotion to God; that dishonour
done to God acquits the other being deserted from the
bond of matrimony; that the faith of marriage is not
to be kept with such.” If these contorted sentences
be aught worth, it is not the desertion that breaks
what is broken, but the impiety; and who then may not
for that cause better divorce, than tarry to be deserted *
or these grave savings of St. Ambrose are but knacks.
Jerom on the 19th of Matthew explains, that for the
cause of fornication, or the “suspicion thereof, a man
may freely divorce.” What can breed that suspicion,
but sundry faults leading that way P By Jerom's con-
sent therefore divorce is free not only for actual adul-
tery, but for any cause that may incline a wise man to
the just suspicion thereof.
Austin also must be remembered among those who
hold, that this instance of fornication gives equal in-
ference to other faults equally hateful, for which to
divorce : and therefore in his books to Pollentius he
disputes, “that infidelity, as being a greater sin than
adultery, ought so much the rather cause a divorce.”
And on the sermon on the mount, under the name of
fornication, will have “idolatry, or any harmful super-
stition,” contained, which are not thought to disturb
matrimony so directly as some other obstinacies and
disaffections, more against the daily duties of that
covenant, and in the Eastern tongues not unfrequently
called fornication, as hath been shewn. “Hence is un-
derstood,” saith he, “that not only for bodily fornica-
tion, but for that which draws the mind from God's
law, and foully corrupts it, a man may without fault
put away his wife, and a wife her husband; because
the Lord excepts the cause of fornication, which formi-
cation we are constrained to interpret in a general
sense.” And in the first book of his “Retractations,”
chap. 16, he retracts not this his opinion, but com-
mends it to serious consideration; and explains that
he counted not there all sin to be fornication, but the
more detestable sort of sins. The cause of fornication
therefore is not in this discourse newly interpreted to
signify other faults infringing the duties of wedlock,
besides adultery.
Lastly, the council of Agatha in the year 506, Can.
25, decreed, that “if laymen who divorced without
some great fault, or giving no probable cause, therefore
divorced, that they might marry some unlawful person,
or some other man's, if before the provincial bishops
were made acquainted, or judgment passed, they pre-
sumed this, excommunication was the penalty.”
Whence it follows, that if the cause of divorce were
some great offence, or that they gave probable causes
for what they did, and did not therefore divorce, that
they might presume with some unlawful person, or
what was another man's, the censure of church in
those days did not touch them. -
Thus having alleged enough to shew, after what
manner the primitive church for above 500 years un-
derstood our Saviour's words touching divorce, I shall
now, with a labour less dispersed, and sooner dis-
patched, bring under view what the civil law of those
times constituted about this matter: I say the civil
law, which is the honour of every true civilian to stand
for, rather than to count that for law, which the ponti-
WHICH TREAT OF NULLITIES IN MARRIAGE.
215
fical canon had enthralled them to, and instead of in-
terpreting a generous and elegant law, made them the
drudges of a blockish Rubric.
Theodosius and Valentinian, pious emperors both,
ordained that, “as by consent lawful marriages were
made, so by consent, but not without the bill of di-
vorce, they might be dissolved; and to dissolve was
the more difficult, only in favour of the children.” We
see the wisdom and piety of that age, one of the purest
and learnedest since Christ, conceived no hinderance
in the words of our Saviour, but that a divorce, mutu-
ally consented, might be suffered by the law, especially
if there were no children, or if there were, careful pro-
vision was made. And further saith that law, (suppos-
ing there wanted the consent of either,) “We design
the causes of divorce by this most wholesome law ; for
as we forbid the dissolving of marriage without just
cause, so we desire that a husband or a wife distressed
by some adverse necessity, should be freed though by
an unhappy, yet a necessary relief.” What dram of
wisdom or religion (for charity is the truest religion)
could there be in that knowing age, which is not vir-
tually summed up in this most just law As for those
other christian emperors, from Constantine the first of
them, finding the Roman law in this point so answer-
able to the Mosaic, it might be the likeliest cause why
they altered nothing to restraint; but if aught, rather
to liberty, for the help and consideration of the weaker
sex, according as the gospel seems to make the wife
more equal to her husband in these conjugal respects,
than the law of Moses doth. Therefore “iſ a man
were absent from his wife four years, and in that space
not heard of, though gone to war in the service of the
empire,” she might divorce, and marry another, by the
edict of Constantine to Dalmatius, Cod. l. 5, tit. 17.
And this was an age of the church, both ancient and
cried up still for the most flourishing in knowledge
and pious government since the apostles. But to re-
turn to this law of Theodosius, with this observation
by the way, that still as the church corrupted, as the
clergy grew more ignorant, and yet more usurping on
the magistrate, who also now declined, so still divorce
grew more restrained; though certainly if better times
permitted the thing that worse times restrained, it
would not weakly argue that the permission was bet-
ter, and the restraint worse. This law therefore of
Theodosius, wiser in this than the most of his succes-
sors, though no wiser than God and Moses, reduced
the causes of divorce to a certain number, which by
the judicial law of God, and all recorded humanity,
were left before to the breast of each husband, provided
that the dismiss was not without reasonable conditions
to the wife. But this was a restraint not yet come to
extremes. For besides adultery, and that not only ac-
tual, but suspected by many signs there set down, any
fault equally punishable with adultery, or equally in-
famous, might be the cause of a divorce. Which in-
forms us how the wisest of those ages understood that
Place in the gospel, whereby not the pilfering of a be-
nevolence was considered as the main and only breach
of wedlock, as is now thought, but the breach of love -
and peace, a more holy union than that of the flesh;
and the dignity of an honest person was regarded not
to be held in bondage with one whose ignominy was
infectious. To this purpose was constituted Cod.
l. 5, tit. 17, and Authent. collat. 4, tit. i. Nowell. 22,
where Justinian added three causes more. In the l 17
Novell. most of the same causes are allowed, but the
liberty of divorcing by consent is repealed : but by
whom P by Justinian, not a wiser, not a more religious
emperor than either of the former, but noted by judi-
cious writers for his fickle head in making and unmak-
ing laws; and how Procopius, a good historian, and a
counsellor of state then living, deciphers him in his
other actions, I willingly omit. Nor was the church
then in better case, but had the corruption of a hundred
declining years swept on it, when the statute of “Con-
sent’’ was called in ; which, as I said, gives us every
way more reason to suspect this restraint, more than
that liberty : which therefore in the reign of Justin,
the succeeding emperor, was recalled, Novell. 140, and
established with a preface more wise and christianly
than for those times, declaring the necessity to restore
that Theodosian law, if no other means of reconcile-
ment could be found. And by whom this law was ab-
rogated, or how loſig after, I do not find; but that those
other causes remained in force as long as the Greek
empire subsisted, and were assented to by that church,
is to be read in the canons and edicts compared by
Photius the patriarch, with the avertiments of Balsa-
mon and Matthaeus Monachus thereon.
But long before those days, Leo, the son of Basilius
Macedo, reigning about the year 886, and for his ex-
cellent wisdom surnamed the “Philosopher,” consti-
tuted, “that in case of madness, the husband might
divorce after three years, the wife after five.” Constit.
Leon. 111, 112. This declares how he expounded our
Saviour, and derived his reasons from the institution,
which in his preface with great eloquence are set down;
whereof a passage or two may give some proof, though
better not divided from the rest. “There is not,” saith
he, “a thing more necessary to preserve mankind, than
the help given him from his own rib; both God and
nature so teaching us ; which doing so, it was requi-
site that the providence of law, or if any other care
be to the good of man, should teach and ordain those
things which are to the help and comfort of married
persons, and confirm the end of marriage purposed
in the beginning, not those things which afflict and
bring perpetual misery to them.” Then answers the
objection, that they are one flesh ; “If matrimony
had held so as God ordained it, he were wicked
that would dissolve it. But if we respect this in ma-
trimony, that it be contracted to the good of both,
how shall he, who for some great evil feared, persuades
not to marry though contracted, not persuade to un-
marry, if after marriage a calamity befall P Should we
bid beware lest any fall into an evil, and leave him
helpless who by human errour is fallen therein 2 This
were as if we should use remedies to prevent a disease,
but let the sick die without remedy.” The rest will be
worth reading in the author.
216
EXPOSITIONS ON THE FOUR CHIEF PLACES IN SCRIPTURE.
And thus we have the judgment first of primitive fa-
thers; next of the imperial law not disallowed by the
universal church in ages of her best authority; and
lastly, of the whole Greek church and civil state, in-
corporating their canons and edicts together, that di-
vorce was lawful for other causes equivalent to adultery,
contained under the word fornication. So that the ex-
position of our Saviour's sentence here alleged hath all
these ancient and great asserters; is therefore neither
new nor licentious, as some would persuade the com-
monalty; although it be nearer truth that nothing is
more new than those teachers themselves, and nothing
more licentious than some known to be, whose hypo-
crisy yet shames not to take offence at this doctrine
for licence; whenas indeed they fear it would remove
licence, and leave them but few companions.
That the pope's canon law, encroaching upon civil ma-
gistracy, abolished all divorce even for adultery.
What the reformed divines have recovered ; and that
the famousest of them have taught according to the
assertion of this book.
But in these western parts of the empire, it will ap-
pear almost unquestionable, that the cited law of Theo-
dosius and Valentinian stood in force until the blindest
and corruptest times of popcdom displaced it. For, that
the volumes of Justinian never came into Italy, or be-
yond Illyricum, is the opinion of good antiquaries.
And that only manuscript thereof found in Apulia, by
Lotharius the Saxon, and given to the states of Pisa,
for their aid at sea against the Normans of Sicily, was
received as a rarity not to be matclied. And although
the Goths, and after them the Lombards and Franks,
who overrun the most of Europe, except this island,
(unless we make our Saxons and Normans a limb of
them,) brought in their own customs, yet that they fol-
lowed the Roman laws in their contracts in marriages,
Agathias the historian is alleged. And other testimo-
nies relate, that Alaricus and Theodoric, their kings,
writ their statutes out of this Theodosian code, which
hath the recited law of divorce. Nevertheless, while
the monarchs of christendom were yet barbarous, and
but half-christian, the popes took this advantage of
their weak superstition, to raise a corpulent law out of
the canons and decretals of audacious priests; and pre-
sumed also to set this in the front: “That the consti-
tutions of princes are not above the constitutions of
clergy, but beneath them.” Using this very instance
of divorce, as the first prop of their tyranny; by a false
consequence drawn from a passage of Ambrose upon
Luke, where he saith, though “man’s law grant it,
yet God’s law prohibits it:” whence Gregory the pope,
writing to Theoctista, infers that ecclesiastical courts
cannot be dissolved by the magistrate. A fair conclu-
sion from a double errour. First, in saying that the
divine law prohibited divorce : (for what will he make
of Moses 2) next, supposing that it did, how will it
follow, that whatever Christ forbids in his evangelic
precepts, should be haled into a judicial constraint
against the pattern of a divine law Certainly the
gospel came not to enact such compulsions. In the
mean while we may note here, that the restraint of di-
vorce was one of the first fair seeming pleas which the
pope had, to step into secular authority, and with his
antichristian rigour to abolish the permissive law of
christian princes conforming to a sacred lawgiver.
Which if we consider, this papal and unjust restriction
of divorce need not be so dear to us, since the plau-
sible restraining of that was in a manner the first loos-
ening of Antichrist, and, as it were, the substance of
his eldest horn. Nor do we less remarkably owe the
first means of his fall here in England, to the contemn-
ing of that restraint by Henry the VIII, whose divorce
he opposed. Yet was not that rigour executed an-
ciently in spiritual courts, until Alexander the IIId,
who trod upon the neck of Frederic Barbarossa the em-
peror, and summoned our Henry IId into Normandy,
about the death of Becket. He it was, that the worthy
author may be known, who first actually repealed the
fhperial law of divorce, and decreed this tyrannous de-
cree, that matrimony for no cause should be dissolved,
though for many causes it might separate; as may be
seen Decret. Gregor. l. 4, tit. 19, and in other places
of the canonical tomes. The main good of which in-
vention, wherein it consists, who can tell ? but that it
hath one virtue incomparable, to fill all christendom
with whoredoms and adulteries, beyond the art of Ba-
laams, or of devils. Yet neither can these, though so
perverse, but acknowledge that the words of Christ,
under the name of fornication, allow putting away for
other causes than adultery, both from “bed and board,”
but not from the “bond;” their only reason is, be-
cause marriage they believe to be a “sacrament.” But
our divines, who would seem long since to have re-
nounced that reason, have so forgot themselves, as yet
to hold the absurdity, which but for that reason, unless
there be some mystery of Satan in it, perhaps the pa-
pist would not hold. It is true, we grant divorce for
actual and proved adultery, and not for less than many
tedious and unrepairable years of desertion, wherein a
man shall lose all his hope of posterity, which great
and holy men have bewailed, ere he can be righted;
and then perhaps on the confines of his old age, when
all is not worth the while. But grant this were sea-
sonably done; what are these two cases to many other,
which afflict the state of marriage as bad, and yet find
no redress P What hath the soul of man deserved, if it
be in the way of salvation, that it should be mortgaged
thus, and may not redeem itself according to conscience
out of the hands of such ignorant and slothful teachers
as these, who are neither able nor mindful to give due
tendance to that precious cure which they rashly un-
dertake; nor have in them the noble goodness, to con-
sider these distresses and accidents of man’s life, but
are bent rather to fill their mouths with tithe and ob-
lation 2 Yet if they can learn to follow, as well as they
can seek to be followed, I shall direct them to a fair
number of renowned men, worthy to be their leaders,
who will commend to them a doctrine in this point
wiser than their own ; and if they be not impatient,
it will be the same doctrine which this treatise hath
defended.
WHICH TREAT OF NULLITIES IN MARRIAGE.
217
Wickliff, that Englishman honoured of God to be
the first preacher of a general reformation to all Eu-
rope, was not in this thing better taught of God, than
to teach among his chiefest recover es of truth, “that
divorce is lawful to the Christian for many other causes
equal to adultery.” This book indeed, through the
poverty of our libraries, I am forced to cite from “Arni-
saeus of Halberstad on the Rite of Marriage,” who cites
it from Corasius of Toulouse, c. 4. Cent. Sect, and he
from Wickliff, 1.4. Dial. c. 21. So much the sorrier,
for that I never looked into an author cited by his ad-
versary upon this occasion, but found him more conduci-
ble to the question than his quotation rendered him.
Next, Luther, how great a servant of God! in his
book of “Conjugal Life” quoted by Gerard out of the
Dutch, allows divorce for the obstinate denial of con-
jugal duty; and “that a man may send away a proud
Vashti, and marry an Esther in her stead.” It seems,
if this example shall not be impertinent, that Luther
meant not only the refusal of benevolence, but a stub-
born denial of any main conjugal duty; or if he did
not, it will be evinced from what he allows. For out
of question, with men that are not barbarous, love, and
peace, and fitness, will be yielded as essential to mar-
riage, as corporal benevolence. “Though I give my
body to be burnt,” saith St. Paul, “and have not cha-
rity, it profits me nothing.” So though the body pros-
titute itself to whom the mind affords no other love or
peace, but constant malice and vexation, can this bodily
benevolence deserve to be called a marriage between
Christians and rational creatures f
Melancthon, the third great luminary of reformation,
in his book “ concerning Marriage,” grants divorce for
cruel usage, and danger of life, urging the authority
of that Theodosian law, which he esteems written with
the grave deliberation of godly men; “and that they
who reject this law, and think it disagreeing from the
gospel, understand not the difference of law and gos-
pel; that the magistrate ought not only to defend life,
but to succour the weak conscience; lest, broke with
grief and indignation, it relinquish prayer, and turn to
some unlawful thing.” What if this heavy plight of
despair arise from other discontents in wedlock, which
may go to the soul of a good man more than the dan-
ger of his life, or cruel using, which a man cannot be
liable to P suppose it be ingrateful usage, suppose it
be perpetual spite and disobedience, suppose a hatred;
shall not the magistrate free him from this disquiet
which interrupts his prayers, and disturbs the course of
his service to God and his country all as much, and
brings him such a misery, as that he more desires to
leave his life, than fears to lose it? Shall not this
equally concern the office of civil protection, and much
more the charity of a true church, to remedy?
Erasmus, who for learning was the wonder of his
age, both in his Notes on Matthew, and on the first to
the Corinthians, in a large and eloquent discourse, and
in his answer to Phimostomus, a papist, maintains (and
no protestant then living contradicted him) that the
words of Christ comprehend many other causes of di-
vorce under the name of fornication,
Bucer, (whom our famous Dr. Rainolds was wont to
prefer before Calvin,) in his comment on Matthew, and
in his second book “ of the Kingdom of Christ,” treats
of divorce at large, to the same effect as is written in
“ the Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce” lately pub-
lished, and the translation is extant: whom, lest I
should be thought to have wrested to mine own purpose,
take something more out of his 49th chapter, which I
then for brevity omitted. “It will be the duty of
pious princes, and all who govern church or common-
wealth, if any, whether husband or wife, shall affirm
their want of such, who either will or can tolerably
perform the necessary duties of married life, to grant
that they may seek them such, and marry them ; if
they make it appear that such they have not.” This
book he wrote here in England, where he lived the
greatest admired man; and this he dedicated to Ed-
ward the VIth.
Fagius, ranked among the famous divines of Ger-
many, whom Frederic, at that time the Palatine, sent
for to be the reformer of his dominion, and whom after-
wards England sought to, and obtained of him to come
and teach her, differs not in this opinion from Bucer, as
his notes on the Chaldee Paraphrast well testify.
The whole church of Strasburgh in her most flou–
rishing time, when Zellius, Hedio, Capito, and other
great divines, taught there, and those two renowned
magistrates, Farrerus and Sturmius, governed that com-
monwealth and academy to the admiration of all Ger-
many, hath thus in the 21st article: “We teach, that
if according to the word of God, yea, or against it, di-
vorces happen, to do according to God’s word, Deut.
xxiv. 1. Matt. xix. 1 Cor. vii. and the observation of
the primitive church, and the christian constitution of
pious Caesars.”
Peter Martyr seems in word our easy adversary, but
is indeed for us: toward which, though it be something
when he saith of this opinion, “that it is not wicked,
and can hardly be refuted,” this which follows is much
more; “I speak not here,” saith he, “ of natural im-
pediments, which may so happen, that the matrimony
can no longer hold:” but adding, that he often won-
dered “how the ancient and most christian emperors
established those laws of divorce, and neither Ambrose,
who had such influence upon the laws of Theodosius,
nor any of those holy fathers found fault, nor any of
the churches, why the magistrates of this day should
be so loth to constitute the same. Perhaps they fear
an inundation of divorces, which is not likely; when-
as we read not either among the Hebrews, Greeks, or
Romans, that they were much frequent where they
were most permitted. If they judge christian men
worse than Jews or pagans, they both injure that
name, and by this reason will be constrained to grant
divorces the rather; because it was permitted as a
remedy of evil, for who would remove the medicine,
while the disease is yet so rife?” This being read both
in “his Commonplaces,” and on the first to the Corinthi-
ans, with what we shall relate more of him yet ere the
end, sets him absolutely on this side. Not to insist that
in both these, and other places of his commentaries, he
218
EXPOSITIONS ON THE FOUR CHIEF PLACES IN SCRIPTURE,
grants divorce not only for desertion, but for the se-
ducement and scandalous demeanour of an heretical
COI)SOrt.
Musculus, a divine of no obscure fame, distinguishes
between the religious and the civil determination of
divorce; and leaving the civil wholly to the lawyers,
pronounces a conscionable divorce for impotence not
only natural, but accidental, if it be durable. His equity
it seems, can enlarge the words of Christ to one cause
more than adultery; why may not the reason of another
man as wise enlarge them to another cause 2
Gualter of Zuric, a well-known judicious commen-
tator, in his homilies on Matthew, allows divorce for
“ leprosy, or any other cause which renders unfit for
wedlock,” and calls this rather “a nullity of marriage
than a divorce.” And who, that is not himself a mere
body, can restrain all the unfitness of marriage only to
a corporeal defect 2
Hemingius, an author highly esteemed, and his works
printed at Geneva, writing of divorce, confesses that
learned men “vary in this question, some granting
three causes thereof, some five, others many more;”
he himself gives us six, “adultery, desertion, inability,
errour, evil usage, and impiety,” using argument “that
Christ under one special contains the whole kind, and
under the name and example of fornication, he includes
other causes equipollent.” This discourse he wrote at
the request of many who had the judging of these causes
in Denmark and Norway, who by all likelihood ſol-
lowed his advice.
Hunnius, a doctor of Wittenberg, well known both
in divinity and other arts, on the 19th of Matt. affirms,
“That the exception of fornication expressed by our
Saviour, excludes not other causes equalling adultery,
or destructive to the substantials of matrimony; but
was opposed to the custom of the Jews, who made di-
vorce for every light cause.”
Felix Bidenbachius, an eminent divine in the duchy
of Wirtemberg, affirms, “That the obstinate refusal of
conjugal due is a lawful cause of divorce;” and gives
an instance, “that the consistory of that state so judg-
ed.”
Gerard cites Harbardus, an author not unknown, and
Arnisæus cites Wigandus, both yielding divorce in case
of cruel usage; and another author, who testifies to
“have seen, in a dukedom of Germany, marriages dis-
jointed for some implacable enmities arising.”
Beza, one of the strictest against divorce, denies it
not “for danger of life from a heretic, or importunate
solicitation to do aught against religion :” and counts
it “all one whether the heretic desert, or would stay
upon intolerable conditions.” But this decision, well
examined, will be found of no solidity. For Beza would
be asked why, if God so strictly exact our stay in any
kind of wedlock, we had not better stay and hazard a
murdering for religion at the hand of a wife or husband
as he and others enjoin us to stay and venture it for
all other causes but that P and why a man's life is not
as well and warrantably saved by divorcing from an
orthodox murderer, as an heretical ? Again, if desertion
be confessed by him to consist not only in the forsak-
ing, but in the unsufferable conditions of staying, a
man may as well deduce the lawfulness of divorcing
from any intolerable conditions, (if his grant be good,
that we may divorce thereupon from a heretic,) as he
can deduce it lawful to divorce from any deserter, by
finding it lawful to divorce from a deserting infidel.
For this is plain, if St. Paul's permission to divorce an
infidel deserter infer it lawful for any malicious deser-
tion, then doth Beza's definition of a deserter transfer
itself with like facility from the cause of religion, to
the cause of malice, and proves it as good to divorce
from him who intolerably stays, as from him who pur-
posely departs; and leaves it as lawful to depart from
him who urgently requires a wicked thing, though
professing the same religion, as from him who urges a
heathenish or superstitious compliance in a different
ſaith. For if there be such necessity of our abiding,
we ought rather to abide the utmost for religion, than
for any other cause ; seeing both the cause of our stay
is pretended our religion to marriage, and the cause of
our suffering is supposed our constant marriage to re-
ligion. Beza therefore, by his own definition of a de-
serter, justifies a divorce from any wicked or intolerable
conditions rather in the same religion than in a different.
Aretius, a famous divine of Bern, approves many
causes of divorce in his “Problems,” and adds, “ that
the laws and consistories of Switzerland approve them
also.” As first, “adultery, and that not actual only,
but intentional ;” alleging Matthew v. “Whosoever
looketh to lust, hath committed adultery already in his
heart. Whereby,” saith he, “our Saviour shews, that
the breach of matrimony may be not only by outward
act, but by the heart and desire; when that hath once
possessed, it renders the conversation intolerable, and
commonly the fact follows.” Other causes to the num-
ber of nine or ten, consenting in most with the imperial
laws, may be read in the author himself, who avers
them “to be grave and weighty.” All these are men
of name in divinity; and to these, if need were, might
be added more. Nor have the civilians been all so
blinded by the canon, as not to avouch the justice of
those old permissions touching divorce.
Alciat of Milain, a man of extraordinary wisdom and
learning, in the sixth book of his “Parerga,” defends
those imperial laws, “not repugnant to the gospel,” as
the church then interpreted. “ For,” saith he, “the
ancients understood him separate by man, whom pas-
sions and corrupt affections divorced, not if the pro-
vincial bishops first heard the matter, and judged, as
the council of Agatha declares:” and on some part of
the Code he names Isidorus Hispalensis, the first com-
puter of canons, “to be in the same mind.” And in
the former place gives his opinion, “that divorce might
be more lawfully permitted than usury.”
Corasius, recorded by Helvicus among the famous
lawyers, hath been already cited of the same judgment.
Wesembechius, a much-named civilian, in his com-
ment on this law defends it, and affirms, “That our
Saviour excluded not other faults equal to adultery;
and that the word fornication signifies larger among
the Hebrews than with us, comprehending every fault,
WHICH TREAT OF NULLITIES IN MARRIAGE.
219
which alienates from him to whom obedience is due,
and that the primitive church interpreted so.”
Grotius, yet living, and of prime note among learned
men, retires plainly from the canon to the ancient ci-
vility, yea, to the Mosaic law, “as being most just and
undeceivable.” On the 5th of Matth. he saith, “That
Christ made no civil laws, but taught us how to use
law: that the law sent not a husband to the judge
about this matter of divorce, but left him to his own
conscience; that Christ therefore cannot be thought to
send him; that adultery may be judged by a vehe-
ment suspicion; that the exception of adultery seems
an example of other like offences;” proves it “from
the manner of speech, the maxims of law, the reason
of charity, and common equity.”
These authorities, without long search, I had to pro-
duce, all excellent men, some of them such as many
ages had brought forth none greater: almost the mean-
est of them might deserve to obtain credit in a singu-
larity; what might not then all of them joined in an
opinion so consonant to reason 2 For although some
speak of this cause, others of that, why divorce may
be, yet all agreeing in the necessary enlargement of
that textual straitness, leave the matter to equity, not
to literal bondage; and so the opinion closes. Nor
could I have wanted more testimonies, had the cause
needed a more solicitous inquiry. But herein the satis-
faction of others hath been studied, not the gaining of
more assurance to mine own persuasion: although au-
thorities contributing reason withal be a good confirm-
ation and a welcome. But God (I solemnly attest
him ') withheld from my knowledge the consenting
judgment of these men so late, until they could not be
my instructors, but only my unexpected witnesses to
partial men, that in this work I had not given the worst
experiment of an industry joined with integrity, and
the free utterance, though of an unpopular truth.
Which yet to the people of England may, if God so
please, prove a memorable informing; certainly a bene-
fit which was intended them long since by men of
highest repute for wisdom and piety, Bucer and Eras-
mus. Only this one authority more, whether in place
or out of place, I am not to omit; which if any can
think a small one, I must be patient, it is no smaller
than the whole assembled authority of England both
church and state; and in those times which are on re-
cord for the purest and sincerest that ever shone yet on
the reformation of this island, the time of Edward the
Sixth. That worthy prince, having utterly abolished
the canon law out of his dominions, as his father did
before him, appointed by full vote of parliament a com-
mittee of two and thirty chosen men, divines and law-
yers, of whom Cranmer the archbishop, Peter Martyr,
and Walter Haddon, (not without the assistance of Sir
John Cheeke the king's tutor, a man at that time
counted the learnedest of Englishmen, and for piety
not inferior,) were the chief, to frame anew some ec-
clesiastical laws, that might be instead of what was
abrogated. The work with great diligence was finish-
ed, and with as great approbation of that reforming
age was received; and had been doubtless, as the
learned preface thereof testifies, established by act of
parliament, had not the good king's death, so soon en-
suing, arrested the further growth of religion also, from
that season to this. Those laws, thus founded on the
memorable wisdom and piety of that religious parlia-
ment and synod, allow divorce and second marriage,
“not only for adultery or desertion, but for any capital
enmity or plot laid against the other's life, and like-
wise for evil and fierce usage:” may the twelfth chap-
ter of that title by plain consequence declares, “that
lesser contentions, if they be perpetual, may obtain di-
vorce :” which is all one really with the position by
me held in the former treatise published on this argu-
ment, herein only differing, that there the cause of
perpetual strife was put for example in the unchange-
able discord of some natures; but in these laws in-
tended us by the best of our ancestors, the effect of
continual strife is determined no unjust plea of divorce,
whether the cause be natural or wilful. Whereby the
wariness and deliberation, from which that discourse
proceeded, will appear, and that God hath aided us to
make no bad conclusion of this point; seeing the
opinion, which of late hath undergone ill censures
among the vulgar, hath now proved to have done no
violence to Scripture, unless all these famous authors
alleged have done the like; nor hath affirmed aught
more than what indeed the most nominated fathers of
the church, both ancient and modern, are unexpect-
edly found affirming; the laws of God’s peculiar peo-
ple, and of primitive christendom found to have prac-
tised, reformed churches and states to have imitated,
and especially the most pious church-times of this
kingdom to have framed and published, and, but for
sad hinderances in the sudden change of religion, had
enacted by the parliament. Henceforth let them, who
condemn the assertion of this book for new and licen-
tious, be sorry; lest, while they think to be of the
graver sort, and take on them to be teachers, they ex-
pose themselves rather to be pledged up and down by
men who intimately know them, to the discovery and
contempt of their ignorance and presumption.
C O L A S T E R I O N :
A REPLY TO A NAMELESS ANSWER AGAINST THE DOCTRINE AND DISCIPLINE
OF DIVORCE.
WHEREIN THE TRIVIAL AUTHOR OF THAT ANSWER IS DISCOVER ED, THE LICENser conferred with, AND THE OPINION,
WHICH THEY TRADUCE, DEFENDED,
Prov. xxvi, 5.
“Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own conceit.”
[F1RST PUBLIsIIED 1645.]
AFTER many rumours of confutations and convictions,
forthcoming against the Doctrine and Discipline of
Divorce, and now and then a by-blow from the pulpit,
feathered with a censure strict indeed, but how true,
more beholden to the authority of that devout place,
which it borrowed to be uttered in, than to any sound
reason which it could oracle; while I still hoped as for
a blessing to see some piece of diligence, or learned
discretion, come from them, it was my hap at length,
lighting on a certain parcel of queries, that seek and
find not, to find not seeking, at the tail of anabaptistical,
antinomian, heretical, atheistical epithets, a jolly slan-
der, called “ Divorce at Pleasure.” I stood awhile and
wondered, what we might do to a man's heart, or what
anatomy use, to find in it sincerity; for all our wonted
marks every day fail us, and where we thought it was,
we see it is not, for alter and change residence it can-
not sure. And yet I see no good of body or of mind
secure to a man for all his past labours, without per-
petual watchfulness and perseverance: whenas one
above others, who hath suffered much and long in the
defence of truth, shall after all this give her cause to
leave him so destitute and so vacant of her defence, as
to yield his mouth to be the common road of truth and
falsehood, and such falsehood as is joined with a rash
and heedless calumny of his neighbour. For what book
hath he ever met with, as his complaint is, “printed
in the city,” maintaining either in the title, or in the
whole pursuance, “ Divorce at Pleasure ?” It is true,
that to divorce upon extreme necessity, when through
the perverseness, or the apparent unfitness of either,
the continuance can be to both no good at all, but an
intolerable injury and temptation to the wronged and
the defrauded ; to divorce then, there is a book that
writes it lawful. And that this law is a pure and
wholesome national law, not to be withheld from good
men, because others likely enough may abuse it to their
pleasure, cannot be charged upon that book, but must
be entered a bold and impious accusation against God
himself; who did not for this abuse withhold it from
his own people. It will be just therefore, and best for
the reputation of him who in his Subitanes hath thus
censured, to recall his sentence. And if, out of the
abundance of his volumes, and the readiness of his
quill, and the vastness of his other employments, espe-
cially in the great audit for accounts, he can spare us
aught to the better understanding of this point, he shall
be thanked in public; and what hath offended in the
book shall willingly submit to his correction. Provided
he be sure not to come with those old and stale suppo-
sitions, unless he can take away clearly what that dis-
course hath urged against them, by one who will expect
other arguments to be persuaded the good health of a
sound answer, than the gout and dropsy of a big mar-
gin, littered and overlaid with crude and huddled quo-
tations. But as I still was waiting, when these light-
armed refuters would have done pelting at their three
lines uttered with a sage delivery of no reason, but an
impotent and worse than Bonnerlike censure, to burn
that which provokes them to a fair dispute; at length
a book was brought to my hands, intitled “An Answer
to the Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce.” Gladly I
received it, and very attentively composed myself to
read; hoping that now some good man had vouchsafed
the pains to instruct me better, than I could yet learn
out of all the volumes, which for this purpose I had
visited. Only this I marvelled, and other men have
since, whenas I, in a subject so new to this age, and so
hazardous to please, concealed not my name, why this
author, defending that part which is so creeded by the
people, would conceal his. But ere I could enter three
leaves into the pamphlet, (for I defer the peasantly
rudeness, which by the licenser's leave I met with after-
wards,) my satisfaction came in abundantly, that it
could be nothing why he durst not name himself, but
the guilt of his own wretchedness. For first, not to
A REPLY TO AN ANSWER AGAINST THE DOCTRINE, &c. 221
speak of his abrupt and bald beginning, his very first
page notoriously bewrays him an illiterate and arro-
gant presumer in that which he understands not, bear-
ing us in hand as if he knew both Greek and Hebrew,
and is not able to spell it; which had he been, it had
been either written as it ought, or scored upon the
printer. If it be excused as the carelessness of his
deputy, be it known, the learned author himself is in-
ventoried, and summoned up to the utmost value of his
livery-cloak. Whoever he be, though this to some may
seem a slight contest, I shall yet continue to think that
man full of other secret injustice, and deceitful pride,
who shall offer in public to assume the skill though it
be but of a tongue which he hath not, and would catch
his readers to believe of his ability, that which is not
in him. The licenser indeed, as his authority now
stands, may license much; but if these Greek orthogra-
phies were of his licensing, the boys at school might
reckon with him at his grammar. Nor did I find this
his want of the pretended languages alone, but accom-
panied with such a low and homespun expression of
his mother English all along, without joint or frame,
as made me, ere I knew further of him, often stop and
conclude, that this author could for certain be no other
than some mechanic. Nor was the style flat and rude,
and the matter grave and solid, for then there had been
pardon; but so shallow and so unwary was that also,
as gave sufficiently the character of a gross and slug-
gish, yet a contentious and overweening, pretender.
For first, it behoving him to shew, as he promises,
what divorce is, and what the true doctrine and disci-
pline thereof, and this being to do by such principles
and proofs as are received on both sides, he performs
neither of these; but shews it first from the judaical
practice, which he himself disallows, and next from
the practice of canon law, which the book he would
conſute utterly rejects, and all laws depending thereon;
which this puny clerk calls “the Laws of England,”
and yet pronounceth them by an ecclesiastical jud-e :
as if that were to be accounted the law of England
which dependeth on the popery of England; or if it
were, this parliament he might know hath now damned
that judicature. So that whether his meaning were to
inform his own party, or to confute his adversary, in-
stead of shewing us the true doctrine and discipline
of divorce, he shews us nothing but his own con-
temptible ignorance. For what is the Mosaic law to
his opinion 2 And what is the canon, now utterly an-
tiquated, either to that, or to mine P Ye see already
what a faithful definer we have him. From such a
wind-egg of definition as this, they who expect any of
his other arguments to be well hatched, let them enjoy
the virtue of their worthy champion. But one thing
more I observed, a singular note of his stupidity, and
that his trade is not to meddle with books, much less
with confutations; whenas the “Doctrine of Divorce”
had now a whole year been published the second time,
with many arguments added, and the former ones bet-
tered and confirmed, this idle pamphlet comes reeling
forth against the first edition only; as may appear to
any by the pages quoted: which put me in mind of
what by chance I had notice of to this purpose the last
summer, as nothing so serious but happens ofttimes to
be attended with a ridiculous accident : it was then
told me, that the “Doctrine of Divorce” was answered,
and the answer half printed against the first edition,
not by one, but by a pack of heads; of whom the chief,
by circumstance, was intimated to me, and since ratified
to be no other, if any can hold laughter, and I am sure
none will guess him lower, than an actual serving-man.
This creature, for the story must on, (and what though
he be the lowest person of an interlude, he may deserve
a canvassing,) transplanted himself, and to the im-
provement of his wages, and your better notice of his
capacity, turned solicitor. And having conversed much
with a stripling divine or two of those newly-fledged
probationers, that usually come scouting from the uni-
versity, and lie here no lame legers to pop into the Be-
thesda of some knight's chaplainship, where they bring
grace to his good cheer, but no peace or benediction
else to his house; these made the cham-party, he con-
tributed the law, and both joined in the divinity.
Which made me intend following the advice also of
friends, to lay aside the thought of mispending a reply
to the buz of such a drone's nest. But finding that it
lay, whatever was the matter, half a year after un-
finished in the press, and hearing for certain that a
divine of note, out of his good will to the opinion, had
taken it into his revise, and something had put out,
something put in, and stuck it here and there with a
clove of his own calligraphy, to keep it from tainting :
and further, when I saw the stuff, though very coarse
and threadbare, garnished and trimly faced with the
commendations of a licenser, I resolved, so soon as lei-
sure granted me the recreation, that my man of law
should not altogether lose his soliciting. Although Iim-
pute a share of the making to him whose name I find in
the approbation, who may take, as his mind serves him,
this reply. In the mean while it shall be seen, I refuse
no occasion, and avoid no adversary, either to maintain
what I have begun, or to give it up for better reason.
To begin then with the licenser and his censure.
For a licenser is not contented now to give his single
Imprimatur, but brings his chair into the title-leaf;
there sits and judges up, or judges down, what book he
pleases: if this be suffered, what worthless author, or
what cunning printer, will not be ambitious of such a
stale to put off the heaviest gear; which may in time
bring in round fees to the licenser, and wretched mis-
leading to the people? But to the matter: he “ap-
proves the publishing of this book, to preserve the
strength and honour of marriage against those sad
breaches and dangerous abuses of it.” Belike then the
wrongful suffering of all those sad breaches and abuses
in marriage to a remediless thraldom is the strength
and honour of marriage ; a boisterous and bestial
strength, a dishonourable honour, an infatuated doc-
trine, whose than the Salvo jure of tyrannizing, which
we all fight against. Next he saith, that “common
discontents make these breaches in unstaid minds, and
men given to change.” His words may be appre-
hended, as if they disallowed only to divorce for coin-
222
A REPLY TO AN ANSWER, AGAINST THE
mon discontents, in unstaid minds, having no cause,
but a desire of change, and then we agree. But if he
take all discontents on this side adultery, to be com-
mon, that is to say, not difficult to endure, and to aſ-
fect only unstaid minds, it might administer just cause
to think him the unfittest man that could be, to offer at
a comment upon Job; * as seeming by this to have no
more true sense of a good man in his afflictions, than
those Edomitish friends had, of whom Job complains,
and against whom God testifies his anger. Shall a
man of your own coat, who hath espoused his flock,
and represents Christ more in being the true husband
of his congregation, than an ordinary man doth in be-
ing the husband of his wife, (and yet this represent-
ment is thought a chief cause why marriage must be
inseparable,) shall this spiritual man ordinarily for the
increase of his maintenances or any slight cause, for-
sake that wedded cure of souls, that should be dearest
to him, and marry another and another P And shall
not a person wrongfully afflicted, and persecuted even
to extremity, forsake an unfit, injurious, and pestilent
mate, tied only by a civil and fleshly covenant? If
you be a man so much hating change, hate that other
change ; if yourself be not guilty, counsel your bre-
thren to hate it; and leave to be the supercilious judge
of other men's miseries and changes, that your own be
not judged. “The reasons of your licensed pam-
phlet,” you say, “are good ;” they must be better than
your own then ; I shall wonder else how such a trivial
fellow was accepted and commended, to be the con-
futer of so dangerous an opinion as ye give out mine.
Now therefore to your attorney, since no worthier an
adversary makes his appearance, nor this neither his
appearance, but lurking under the safety of his name-
less obscurity; such as ye turn him forth at the pos-
tern, I must accept him; and in a better temper than
Ajax do mean to scourge this ram for ye, till I meet
with his Ulysses.
He begins with law, and we have it of him as good
cheap as any huckster at law, newly set up, can possi-
bly afford, and as impertinent; but for that he hath re-
ceived his handsel. He presumes also to cite the civil
law, which I perceive, by his citing, never came within
his dormitory : yet what he cites, makes but against
himself.
His second thing therefore is to refute the adverse
position, and very methodically, three pages before he
sets it down; and sets his own in the place, “that dis-
agreement of mind or disposition, though shewing it-
self in much sharpness, is not by the law of God or
man a just cause of divorce.”
To this position I answer; That it lays no battery
against mine, no nor so much as faces it, but tacks
about, long ere it come near, like a harmless and re-
spectful confutement. For I confess that disagreement
of mind or disposition, though in much sharpness, is
not always a just cause of divorce; for much may be
endured. But what if the sharpness be much more
than his much P To that point it is our mishap we
have not here his grave decision. He that will contra-
* Mr. Cary 1,
dict the position which I alleged, must hold that no
disagreement of mind or disposition can divorce, though
shewn in most sharpness; otherwise he leaves a place
for equity to appoint limits, and so his following argu-
ments will either not prove his own position, or not
disprove mine.
His first argument, all but what hobbles to no pur-
pose, is this; “Where the Scripture commands a thing
to be done, it appoints when, how, and for what, as in
the case of death, or excommunication. But the Scrip-
ture directs not what measure of disagreement or con-
trariety may divorce : therefore the Scripture allows
not any divorce for disagreement.”—Answer. First,
I deny your major; the Scripture appoints many
things, and yet leaves the circumstance to man's dis-
cretion, particularly in your own examples: excom-
munication is not taught when and for what to be, but
left to the church. How could the licenser let pass this
childish ignorance, and call it “good 2" Next, in
matters of death, the laws of England, whereof you
have intruded to be an opiniastrous subadvocate, and
are bound to defend them, conceive it not enjoined in
Scripture, when or for what cause they shall put to
death, as in adultery, theft, and the like. Your minor
also is false, for the Scripture plainly sets down for what
measure of disagreement a man may divorce, Deut.
xxiv. 1. Learn better what that phrase means, “if she
find no favour in his eyes.”
Your second argument, without more tedious fum-
bling, is briefly thus: “If diversity in religion, which
breeds a greater dislike than any natural disagree-
ment, may not cause a divorce, then may not the lesser
disagreement: But diversity of religion may not;
Ergo.”
Answ. First, I deny in the major, that diversity of
religion breeds a greater dislike to marriage-duties than
natural disagreement. For between Israelite, or
Christian, and infidel, more often hath been seen too
much love: but between them who perpetually clash
in natural contrarieties, it is repugnant that there
should be ever any married love or concord. Next, I
deny your minor, that it is commanded not to divorce
in diversity of religion, if the infidel will stay: for that
place in St. Paul commands nothing, as that book at
large affirmed, though you overskipped it.
Secondly, If it do command, it is but with condition
that the infidel be content, and well-pleased to stay,
which cuts off the supposal of any great hatred or dis-
quiet between them, seeing the infidel had liberty to
depart at pleasure; and so this comparison avails no-
thing.
Your third argument is from Deut. xxii. “If a
man hate his wife, and raise an ill report, that he found
her no virgin;” if this were false, “he might not put
her away,” though hated never so much.
Ans. This was a malicious hatred, bent against her
life, or to send her out of doors without her portion.
Such a hater loses by due punishment that privilege,
Deut. xxiv. 1, to divorce for a natural dislike; which,
though it could not love conjugally, yet sent away
DOCTRINE AND DISCIPLINE OF DIVORCE.
223
civilly, and with just conditions. But doubtless the
wife in that former case had liberty to depart from her
false accuser, lest his hatred should prove mortal; else
that law peculiarly made to right the woman, had turn-
ed to her greatest mischief.
Your fourth argument is ; “One Christian ought to
bear the infirmities of another, but chiefly of his wife.”
Ans. I grant infirmities, but not outrages, not per-
petual defraudments of truest conjugal society, not in-
juries and vexations as importunate as fire. Yet to en-
dure very much, might do well an exhortation, but not
a compulsive law. For the Spirit of God himself, by
Solomon, declares that such a consort “the earth can-
not bear, and better dwell in a corner of the house-top,
or in the wilderness.” Burdens may be borne, but still
with consideration to the strength of an honest man
complaining. Charity indeed bids us forgive our ene-
mies, yet doth not force us to continue friendship and
familiarity with those friends who have been false or
unworthy towards us; but is contented in our peace
with them, at a fair distance. Charity commands not
the husband to receive again into his bosom the adul-
terous wife, but thinks it enough, if he dismiss her
with a beneficent and peaceful dismission. No more
doth charity command, nor can her rule compel, to re-
tain in nearest union of wedlock one whose other gross-
est faults, or disabilities to perform what was cove-
nanted, are the just causes of as much grievance and
dissension in a family, as the private act of adultery.
Let not therefore, under the name of fulfilling charity,
such an unmerciful and more than legal yoke be pad-
locked upon the neck of any Christian.
Your fifth argument: “If the husband ought to love
his wife, as Christ his church, then ought she not to be
put away for contrariety of mind.”
Answ. This similitude turns against him : for if the
husband must be as Christ to the wife, then must the
wife be as the church to her husband. If there be a
perpetual contrariety of mind in the church toward
Christ, Christ himself threatens to divorce such a
spouse, and hath often done it. If they urge, this was
no true church, I urge again that was no true wife.
His sixth argument is from Matth. v. 32, which he
expounds after the old fashion, and never takes notice
of what I brought against that exposition; let him
therefore seek his answer there. Yet can he not leave
this argument, but he must needs first shew us a curvet
of his madness, holding out an objection, and running
himself upon the point. “For,” saith he, “if Christ
except no cause but adultery, then all other causes, as
frigidity, incestuous marriage, &c. are no cause of di-
vorce;” and answers, “that the speech of Christ holds
universally, as he intended it; namely, to condemn
such divorce as was groundlessly practised among the
Jews, for every cause which they thought sufficient;
not checking the law of consanguinities or affinities,
or forbidding other cause which makes marriage void,
ipso facto.”
Answ. Look to it now, you be not found taking fees
on both sides; for if you once bring limitations to the
* First Edition.
universal words of Christ, another will do as much
with as good authority; and affirm, that neither did he
check the law, Deut. xxiv. 1, nor forbid the causes that
make marriage void actually; which if any thing in
the world doth, unfitness doth, and contrariety of mind;
yea, more than adultery, for that makes not the mar-
riage void, nor much more unfit, but for the time, if the
offended party forgive : but unfitness and contrariety
frustrates and nullifies for ever, unless it be a rare
chance, all the good and peace of wedded conversation;
and leaves nothing between them enjoyable, but a
prone and savage necessity, not worth the name of
marriage, unaccompanied with love. Thus much his
own objection hath done against himself.
Argument 7th. He insists, “that man and wife are
one flesh, therefore must not separate.” But must be
sent to look again upon the * 35th page of that book,
where he might read an answer, which he stirs not.
Yet can he not abstain, but he must do us another
pleasure ere he goes; although I call the common
pleas to witness, I have not hired his tongue, whatever
men may think by his arguing. For besides adultery,
he excepts other causes which dissolve the union of
being one flesh, either directly, or by consequence. If
only adultery be excepted by our Saviour, and he volun-
tarily can add other exceptions that dissolve that union,
both directly and by consequence; these words of Christ,
the main obstacle of divorce, are open to us by his own
invitation, to include whatever causes dissolve that
union of flesh, either directly or by consequence.
Which, till he name other causes more likely, I affirm
to be done soonest by unfitness and contrariety of
mind; for that induces hatred, which is the greatest
dissolver both of spiritual and corporal union, turning
the mind, and consequently the body, to other objects.
Thus our doughty adversary, either directly or by con-
sequence, yields us the question with his own mouth :
and the next thing he does, recants it again.
His 8th argument shivers in the uttering, and he
confesseth to be “not over-confident of it:” but of the
rest it may be sworn he is. St. Paul, 1 Cor. vii. saith,
that the “married have trouble in the flesh,” therefore
we must bear it, though never so intolerable.
I answer, if this be a true consequence, why are not
all troubles to be borne alike * Why are we suffered
to divorce adulteries, desertions, or frigidities? Who
knows not that trouble and affliction is the decree of
God upon every state of life? Follows it therefore,
that, though they grow excessive and insupportable,
we must not avoid them 2 If we may in all other
conditions, and not in marriage, the doom of our suf-
fering ties us not by the trouble, but by the bond of
marriage: and that must be proved inseparable from
other reasons, not from this place. And his own con-
fession declares the weakness of this argument, yet
his ungoverned arrogance could not be dissuaded from
venting it.
His 9th argument is, “that a husband must love his
wife as himself; therefore he may not divorce for any
disagreement, no more than he may separate his soul
224
WER, AGAINST THE
A REPLY TO AN ANS
from his body.” I answer: if he love his wife as him-
self, he must love her so far as he may preserve him to
her in a cheerful and comfortable manner, and not so
as to ruin himself by anguish and sorrow, without any
benefit to her. Next, if the husband must love his
wife as himself, she must be understood a wife in some
reasonable measure, willing and sufficient to perform
the chief duties of her covenant, else by the hold of this
argument it would be his great sin to divorce either
for adultery or desertion. The rest of this will run
circuit with the union of one flesh, which was an-
swered before. And that to divorce a relative and
metaphorical union of two bodies into one flesh can-
not be likened in all things to the dividing of that
natural union of soul and body into one person, is ap-
parent of itself.
His last argument he fetches “from the inconveni-
ence that would follow upon his freedom of divorce, to
the corrupting of men's minds, and the overturning of
all human society.”
But for me let God and Moses answer this blas-
phemer, who dares bring in such a foul indictment
against the divine law. Why did God permit this to
his people the Jews, but that the right and good,
which came directly thereby, was more in his esteem
than the wrong and evil, which came by accident?
And for those weak supposes of infants that would be
left in their mothers’ belly, (which must needs be good
news for chamber-maids, to hear a serving-man grown
so provident for great bellies,) and portions and join-
tures likely to incur embezzlement hereby, the ancient
civil law instructs us plentifully how to award, which
our profound opposite knew not, for it was not in his
tell Ull'es. -
His arguments are spun ; now follows the chaplain
with his antiquities, wiser if he had refrained, for his
very touching aught that is learned soils it, and lays
him still more and more open, a conspicuous gull.
There being both fathers and councils more ancient,
where with to have served his purpose better than with
what he cites, how may we do to know the subtle drift,
that moved him to begin first with the “twelfth council
of Toledo P’’ I would not undervalue the depth of his
notion; but perhaps he had heard that the men of To-
ledo had store of good blade-mettle, and were excellent
at cuttling; who can tell but it might be the reach of
his policy, that these able men of decision would do
best to have the prime stroke among his testimonies in
deciding this cause P But all this craft avails himself
not; for seeing they allow no cause of divorce by for-
nication, what do these keen doctors here, but cut him
over the sinews with their toledoes, for holding in the
precedent page other causes of divorce besides, both
directly and by consequence P As evil doth that Saxon
council, next quoted, bestead him. For if it allow di-
vorce precisely for no cause but fornication, it thwarts
his own exposition : and if it understand fornication
largely, it sides with whom he would confute. How-
ever, the authority of that synod can be but small, being
under Theodorus, the Canterbury bishop, a Grecian
monk of Tarsus, revolted from his own church to the
pope. What have we next P the civil law stuffed in
between two councils, as if the Code had been some
synod; for that he understood himself in this quotation,
is incredible; where the law, Cod. l. 3, tit. 38, leg. I 1,
speaks not of divorce, but against the dividing of pos-
sessions to divers heirs, whereby the married servants
of a great family were divided, perhaps into distant
countries and colonies; father from son, wife from
husband, sore against their will. Somewhat lower he
confesseth, that the civil law allows many reasons of
divorce, but the canon law decrees otherwise ; a fair
credit to his cause ! And I amaze me, though the fancy
of this dolt be as obtuse and sad as any mallet, how the
licenser could sleep out all this, and suffer him to up-
hold his opinion by canons and Gregorial decretals;
a law which not only his adversary, but the whole re-
formation of this church and state, hath branded and
rejected. As ignorantly, and too ignorantly to deceive
any reader but an unlearned, he talks of Justin Martyr's
Apology, not telling us which of the twain; for that
passage in the beginning of his first, which I have
cited elsewhere, plainly makes against him : so doth
Tertullian, cited next, and next Erasmus, the one
against Marcion, the other in his annotations on Mat-
thew, and to the Corinthians. And thus ye have the
list of his choice antiquities, as pleasantly chosen as ye
would wish from a man of his handy vocation, puffed
up with no luck at all above the stint of his capacity.
Now he comes to the position, which I set down
whole; and, like an able textman, slits it into four, that
he may the better come at it with his barber-surgery,
and his sleeves turned up. Wherein first, he denies
“that any disposition, unfitness, or contrariety of mind,
is unchangeable in nature, but that by the help of diet
and physic it may be altered.”
I mean not to dispute philosophy with this pork, who
never read any. But I appeal to all experience, though
there be many drugs to purge these redundant humours
and circulations, that commonly impair health, and are
not natural, whether any man can with the safety of
his life bring a healthy constitution into physic with
this design, to alter his natural temperament and
disposition of mind. How much more vain and ridi-
culous would it be, by altering and rooting up the
grounds of nature, which is most likely to produce
death or madness, to hope the reducing of a mind to
this or that fitness, or two disagreeing minds to a mu-
tual sympathy | Suppose they might, and that with
great danger of their lives and right senses, alter one
temperature, how can they know that the succeeding
disposition will not be as far from fitness and agree-
ment? They would perhaps change melancholy into
sanguine; but what if phlegm and choler in as great
a measure come instead, the unfitness will be still as
difficult and troublesome P But lastly, whether these
things be changeable or not, experience teaches us,
and our position supposes that they seldom do change
in any time commensurable to the necessities of man,
or convenient to the ends of marriage: and if the fault
be in the one, shall the other live all his days in bond-
age and misery for another's perverseness, or immedi-
DOCTRINE AND DISCIPLINE OF DIVORCE.
225
cable disaffection 2 To my friends, of which may fewest
be so unhappy, I have a remedy, as they know, more
wise and manly to prescribe: but for his friends and
followers, (of which many may deserve justly to feel
themselves the unhappiness which they consider not in
others,) I send them by his advice to sit upon the stool
and strain, till their cross dispositions and contrarieties
of mind shall change to a better correspondence, and
to a quicker apprehension of common sense, and their
own good.
His second reason is as heedless; “because that grace
may change the disposition, therefore no indisposition
may cause divorce.”
Answ. First, it will not be deniable that many per-
sons, gracious both, may yet happen to be very unfitly
married, to the great disturbance of either. Secondly,
What if one have grace, the other not, and will not
alter, as the Scriptures testify there be of those, in
whom we may expect a change, when “the blacka-
moor changes his colour, or the leopard his spots,”
Jer. xiii. 23. Shall the gracious therefore dwell in
torment all his life, for the ungracious * We see that
holiest precepts, than which there can no better physic
be administered to the mind of man, and set on with
powerful preaching, cannot work this cure, no not in
the family, not in the wife of him that preaches day
and night to her. What an unreasonable thing is it,
that men, and clergymen especially, should exact such
wonderous changes in another man's house, and are
seen to work so little in their own
To the second point of the position, that this unfit-
ness hinders the main ends and benefits of marriage;
he answers, “if I mean the unfitness of choler, or sul-
len disposition, that soft words, according to Solomon,
pacify wrath.”
But I reply, that the saying of Solomon is a proverb,
frequently true, not universally, as both the event shews,
and many other sentences written by the same author,
particularly of an evil woman, Prov. xxi. 9, 19, and in
other chapters, that she is better shunned than dwelt
with, and a desertis preferred before her society. What
need the Spirit of God put this choice into our heads,
if soft words could always take effect with her P How
frivolous is not only this disputer, but he that taught
him thus, and let him come abroad
To his second answer I return this, that although
there be not easily found such an antipathy, as to hate
one another like a toad or poison; yet that there is oft
such a dislike in both, or either, to conjugal love, as
hinders all the comfort of matrimony, scarce any can be
so simple as not to apprehend. And what can be that
favour, found or not found, in the eyes of the husband,
but a natural liking or disliking; whereof the law of
God, Deut. xxiv. bears witness, as of an ordinary ac-
cident, and determines wisely and divinely thereafter.
And this disaffection happening to be in the one, not
without the unspeakable discomfort of the other, must
he be left like a thing consecrated to calamity and de-
spair, without redemption ?
Against the third branch of the position, he denies
that “solace and peace, which is contrary to discord
and variance, is the main end of marriage.” What
then P. He will have it “the solace of male and female.”
Came this doctrine out of some school, or some sty?
Who but one forsaken of all sense and civil nature,
and chiefly of Christianity, will deny that peace, con-
trary to discord, is the calling and the general end of
every Christian, and of all his actions, and more espe-
cially of marriage, which is the dearest league of love,
and the dearest resemblance of that love which in
Christ is dearest to his church 2 How then can peace
and comfort, as it is contrary to discord, which God
hates to dwell with, not be the main end of marriage 2
Discord then we ought to fly, and to pursue peace, far
above the observance of a civil covenant already broken,
and the breaking daily iterated on the other side. And
what better testimony than the words of the institution
itself, to prove that a conversing solace, and peaceful
society, is the prime end of marriage, without which
no other help or office can be mutual, beseeming the
dignity of reasonable creatures, that such as they should
be coupled in the rites of nature by the mere compul-
sion of lust, without love or peace, worse than wild
beasts P Nor was it half so wisely spoken as some deem,
though Austin spake it, that if God had intended
other than copulation in marriage, he would for Adam
have created a friend, rather than a wife, to converse
with ; and our own writers blame him for this opinion;
for which and the like passages, concerning marriage,
he might be justly taxed with rusticity in these affairs.
For this cannot but be with ease conceived, that there
is one society of grave friendship, and another amiable
and attractive society of conjugal love, besides the
deed of procreation, which of itself soon cloys, and is
despised, unless it be cherished and reincited with a
pleasing conversation. Which if ignoble and swinish
minds cannot apprehend, shall such merit therefore be
the censures of more generous and virtuous spirits 2
Against the last point of the position, to prove that
contrariety of mind is not a greater cause of divorce
than corporal frigidity, he enters into such a tedious
and drawling tale “ of burning, and burning, and lust
and burning,” that the dull argument itself burns too
for want of stirring; and yet all this burning is not
able to expel the frigidity of his brain. So long there-
fore as that cause in the position shall be proved a
sufficient cause of divorce, rather than spend words
with this phlegmy clod of an antagonist, more than of
necessity and a little merriment, I will not now con-
tend whether it be a greater cause than frigidity or no.
His next attempt is upon the arguments which I
brought to prove the position. And for the first, not
finding it of that structure as to be scaled with his short
ladder, he retreats with a bravado, that it deserves no
answer. And I as much wonder what the whole book
deserved, to be thus troubled and solicited by such a
paltry solicitor. I would he had not cast the gracious
eye of his duncery upon the small deserts of a pam-
phlet, whose every line meddled with uncases him to
scorn and laughter.
That which he takes for the second argument, if he
look better, is no argument, but an induction to those
226
A REPLY TO AN ANSWER AGAINST THE
that follow. Then he stumbles that I should say, “the
gentlest ends of marriage,” confessing that he under-
stands it not. And I believe him heartily: for how
should he, a serving-man both by nature and by ſunc-
tion, an idiot by breeding, and a solicitor by pre-
sumption, ever come to know or feel within himself
what the meaning is of “gentle P” He blames it for
“a meat phrase,” for nothing angers him more than his
own proper contrary. Yet altogether without art sure
he is not; for who could have devised to give us more
briefly a better description of his own servility 2
But what will become now of the business I know
not; for the man is suddenly taken with a lunacy of
law, and speaks revelations out of the attorney’s aca-
demy only from a lying spirit: for he says, “that
where a thing is void ipso facto, there needs no legal
proceeding to make it void :” which is false, for mar-
riage is void by adultery or frigidity, yet not made
void without legal proceeding. Then asks my opinion
of John-a-Noaks and John-a-Stiles: and I answer him,
that I, for my part, think John Dory was a better man
than both of them ; for certainly they were the greatest
wranglers that ever lived, and have filled all our law-
books with the obtunding story of their suits and trials.
Aſter this he tells a miraculous piece of antiquity,
how “two Romans, Titus and Sempronius, made feoff-
ments,” at Rome sure, and levied fines by the common
law. But now his fit of law past, yet hardly come to
himself, he maintains, that if marriage be void, as be-
ing neither of God nor nature, “there needs no legal
proceeding to part it,” and I tell him that offends not
me: then, quoth he, “this is nothing to your book,
being the Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce.” But
that I deny him ; for all discipline is not legal, that is
to say, juridical, but some is personal, some economi-
cal, and some ecclesiastical.
Lastly, If I prove that contrary dispositions are
joined neither of God nor nature, and so the marriage
void, “he will give me the controversy.” I have
proved in that book to any wise man, and without
more ado the institution proves it.
Where I answer an objection usually made, that
“ the disposition ought to be known before marriage,”
and shew how difficult it is to choose a fit consort, and
how easy to mistake: the servitor would know “what
I mean by conversation,” declaring his capacity nothing
refined since his law-puddering, but still the same it
was in the pantry, and at the dresser. Shall I argue
of conversation with this hoyden, to go and practise at
his opportunities in the larder 2 To men of quality I
have said enough ; and experieńce confirms by daily
example, that wisest, soberest, justest men are some-
times miserably mistaken in their choice. Whom to
leave thus without remedy, tossed and tempested in a
most unquiet sea of afflictions and temptations, I say
is most unchristianly. - -
But he goes on to untruss my arguments, imagining
them his master's points. Only in the passage follow-
ing I cannot but admire the ripeness and the pregnance
of his native treachery, endeavouring to be more a fox
than his wit will suffer him. Whereas I briefly men-
tioned certain heads of discourse, which I referred to a
place more proper according to my method, to le treat.
ed there at full with all their reasons about them, this
brain-worm, against all the laws of dispute, will needs
deal with them here. And as a country hind, some-
times ambitious to shew his betters that he is not so
simple as you take him, and that he knows his advan-
tages, will teach us a new trick to confute by. And
would you think to what a pride he swells in the con-
templation of his rare stratagem, offering to carp at the
language of a book, which yet he confesses to be
generally commended ; while himself will be acknow-
ledged, by all that read him, the basest and the hungri-
est enditer, that could take the boldness to look abroad.
Observe now the arrogance of a groom, how it will
mount. I had written, that common adultery is a thing
which the rankest politician would think it shame and
disworship, that his law should countenance. First, it
offends him, that “rankest” should signify aught but
his own smell; who that knows English should not
understand me, when I say a rank serving-man, a rank
pettifogger, to mean a mere serving-man, a mere and
arrant pettiſogger, who lately was so hardy, as to lay
aside his buckram-wallet, and make himself a fool in
print, with confuting books which are above him P
Next, the word “politician” is not used to his maw,
and thereupon he plays the most notorious hobby-horse,
jesting and frisking in the luxury of his nonsense with
such poor fetches to cog a laughter ſtom us, that no antic
hobnail at a morris, but is more handsomely facetious
Concerning that place Deut. xxiv. 1, which he saith
to be “the main pillar of my opinion,” though I rely
more on the institution than on that: these two pillars
I do indeed confess are to me as those two in the porch
of the temple, Jachin and Boaz, which names import
establishment and strength; nor do I fear who can shake
them. The exposition of Deut. which I brought, is
the received exposition, both ancient and modern, by
all learned men, unless it be a monkish papist here and
there: and the gloss, which he and his obscure assist-
ant would persuade us to, is merely new and absurd,
presuming out of his utter ignorance in the Hebrew to
interpret those words of the text; first, in a mistaken
sense of uncleanness, against all approved writers.
Secondly, in a limited sense, whenas the original speaks
without limitation, “some uncleanness, or any :” and
it had been a wise law indeed to mean itself particular,
and not to express the case which this acute rabbi hath
all this while been hooking for; whereby they who are
most partial to him may guess that something is in this
doctrine which I allege, that forces the adversary to
such a new and strained exposition; wherein he does
nothing for above four pages, but founder himself to
and fro in his own objections; one while denying that
divorce was permitted, another while affirming that it
was permitted for the wife's sake, and after all, distrusts
himself. And for his surest retirement, betakes him to
those old suppositions, “that Christ abolished the
Mosaic law of divorce; that the Jews had not sufficient
knowledge in this point, through the darkness of the
dispensation of heavenly things; that under the plen-
DOCTRINE AND DISCIPLINE OF DIVORCE.
227
teous grace of the gospel we are tied by cruellest com-
pulsion to live in marriage till death with the wicked-
est, the worst, the most persecuting mate.” These
ignorant and doting surmises he might have read con-
futed at large, even in the first edition; but found it
safer to pass tº at part over in silence. So that they
who see not the sottishness of this his new and tedious
exposition, are worthy to love it dearly.
His explanation done, he charges me with a wicked
gloss, and almost blasphemy, for saying that Christ in
teaching meant not always to be taken word for word;
but like a wise physician, administering one excess
against another, to reduce us to a perfect mean. Cer-
tainly to teach us were no dishonest method : Christ
himself hath often used hyperboles in his teaching;
and gravest authors, both Aristotle in the second of his
“Ethics to Nichomachus,” and Seneca in his seventh
“ de Beneficiis,” advise us to stretch out the line of
precept ofttimes beyond measure, that while we tend
further, the mean might be the easier attained. And
whoever comments that 5th of Matthew, when he
comes to the turning of cheek after cheek to blows, and
the parting both with cloak and coat, if any please to
be the rifler, will be forced to recommend himself to
the same exposition, though this chattering lawmonger
be bold to call it wicked. Now note another precious
piece of him; Christ, saith he, “doth not say that an
unchaste look is adultery, but the lusting after her;” as
if the looking unchastely could be without lusting.
This gear is licensed for good reason; “Imprimatur.”
Next he would prove, that the speech of Christ is not
uttered in excess against the Pharisees, first, “ because
he speaks it to his disciples,” Matth. v. which is false,
for he spake it to the multitude, as by the first verse is
evident, among which in all likelihood were many
Pharisees, but out of doubt all of them pharisean disci-
ples, and bred up in their doctrine; from which ex-
tremes of errour and falsity Christ throughout his
whole sermon labours to reclaim the people. Second-
ly, saith he, “because Christ forbids not only putting
away, but marr, ing her who is put away.” Acutely,
as if the Pharisees might not have offended as much
in marrying the divorced, as in divorcing the married.
The precept may bind all, rightly understood; and yet
the vehement manner of giving it may be occasioned
only by the Pharisees.
Finally, he winds up his text with much doubt and
trepidation; for it may be his trenchers were not
scraped, and that which never yet afforded corn of sa-
vour to his noddle, the saltcellar was not rubbed: and
therefore in this haste easily granting, that his answers
fall ſoul upon each other, and praying, you would not
think he writes as a prophet, but as a man, he runs to
the black jack, fills his flagon, spreads the table, and
serves up dinner.
After waiting and voiding, he thinks to void my
second argument, and the contradictions that will ſol-
low both in the law and gospel, if the Mosaic law were
abrogated by our Saviour, and a compulsive prohibition
fixed instead : and sings his old song, “that the gos-
pel counts unlawful that which the law allowed,” in-
Q
stancing in circumcision, sacrifices, washings. But
what are these ceremonial things to the changing of a
moral point in household duty, equally belonging to
Jew and Gentile 2 Divorce was then right, now wrong ;
then permitted in the rigorous time of law, now forbid-
den by law, even to the most extremely afflicted, in
the favourable time of grace and freedom. But this is
not for an unbuttoned fellow to discuss in the garret at
his trestle, and dimension of candle by the snuff;
which brought forth his scullionly paraphrase on St.
Paul, whom he brings in discoursing such idle stuff to
the maids and widows, as his own servile in urbanity
forbears not to put into the apostle's mouth, “ of the
soul’s conversing:” and this he presumes to do, being
a bayard, who never had the soul to know what con-
versing means, but as his provender and the ſamiliarity
of the kitchen schooled his conceptions.
He passes to the third argument, like a boar in a
vineyard, doing nought else, but still as he goes champ-
ing and chewing over, what I could mean by this chi-
maera of a “fit conversing soul,” notions and words
never made for those chops; but like a generous wine,
only by overworking the settled mud of his fancy, to
make him drunk, and disgorge his vileness the more
openly. All persons of gentle breeding (I say
“gentle,” though this barrow grunt at the word) I
know will apprehend, and be satisfied in what I spake,
how unpleasing and discontenting the society of body
must needs be between those whose minds cannot be
sociable. But what should a man say more to a snout
in this pickle 2 What language can be low and degene-
rate enough 2
The fourth argument which I had was, that mar-
riage being a covenant, the very being whereof con-
sists in the performance of unfeigned love and peace;
if that were not tolerably performed, the covenant be-
came broke and revocable. Which how can any, in
whose mind the principles of right reason and justice
are not cancelled, deny P For how can a thing subsist,
when the true essence thereof is dissolved P. Yet this he
denies, and yet in such a manner as alters my assertion;
for he puts in, “though the main end be not attained
in full measure:” but my position is, if it be not tole-
rably attained, as throughout the whole discourse is
apparent.
Now for his reasons: “Heman found not that peace
and solace which is the main end of communion with
God, should he therefore break off that communion ?”
I answer, that if Heman found it not, the fault was
certainly his own; but in marriage it happens far
otherwise: sometimes the fault is plainly not his who
seeks divorce; sometimes it cannot be discerned whose
fault it is; and therefore cannot in reason or equity be
the matter of an absolute prohibition.
His other instance declares, what a right handicrafts-
man he is of petty cases, and how unfit to be aught else
at highest, but a hackney of the law. “I change
houses with a man ; it is supposed I do it for my own
ends; I attain them not in this house; I shall not
therefore go from my bargain.” How without fear
might the young Charinus in Andria now cry out,
228 A REPLY TO
AN ANSWER, AGAINST THE
“What likeness can be here to a marriage P” In this
bargain was no capitulation, but the yielding of pos-
session to one another, wherein each of them had his
several end apart. In marriage there is a solemn vow
of love and fidelity each to other: this bargain is fully
accomplished in the change; in marriage the covenant
still is in performing. If one of them perform nothing
tolerably, but instead of love, abound in disaffection,
disobedience, fraud, and hatred; what thing in the
nature of a covenant shall bind the other to such a
perdurable mischief? Keep to your problems of ten
groats, these matters are not for pragmatics and folk-
mooters to babble in.
Concerning the place of Paul, “that God hath called
us to peace,” I Cor. vii. and therefore, certainly, if
any where in this world, we have a right to claim it
reasonably in marriage; it is plain enough in the sense
which I gave, and confessed by Paraeus, and other or-
thodox divines, to be a good sense, and this answerer
doth not weaken it. The other place, that “he who
hateth, may put away,” which if I shew him, he pro-
mises to yield the whole controversy, is, besides Deut.
xxiv. 1, Deut. xxi. 14, and before this, Exod. xxi. 8.
Of Malachi I have spoken more in another place;
and say again, that the best interpreters, all the an-
cient, and most of the modern, translate it as I cite
it, and very few otherwise, whereof perhaps Junius is
the chief. -
Another thing troubles him, that marriage is called
“the mystery of joy.” Let it still trouble him ; for
what hath he to do either with joy or with mystery P
He thinks it frantic divinity to say, it is not the out-
ward continuance of marriage that keeps the covenant
of marriage whole; but whosoever doth most accord-
ing to peace and love, whether in marriage or divorce,
he breaks marriage least. If I shall spell it to him,
he breaks marriage least, is to say, he dishonours not
marriage; for least is taken in the Bible, and other
good authors, for, not at all. And a particular mar-
riage a man may break, if for a lawful cause, and yet
not break, that is, not violate, or dishonour the ordi-
nance of marriage. Hence those two questions that
follow are left ridiculous; and the maids at Aldgate,
whom he flouts, are likely to have more wit than the
serving-man at Addle-gate.
Whereas he taxes me of adding to the Scripture in
that I said love only is the fulfilling of every command-
ment, I cited no particular scripture, but spake a gene-
ral sense, which might be collected from many places.
For seeing love includes faith, what is there that can
fulfil every commandment but only love 2 and I
meant, as any intelligent reader might apprehend,
every positive and civil commandment, whereof Christ
hath taught us that man is the lord. It is not the for-
mal duty of worship, or the sitting still, that keeps the
holy rest of sabbath; but whosoever doth most accord-
ing to charity, whether he works or works not, he
breaks the holy rest of sabbath least. So marriage be-
ing a civil ordinance, made for man, not man for it;
he who doth that which most accords with charity, first
to himself, next to whom he next owes it, whether in
marriage or divorce, he breaks the ordinance of mar-
riage least. And what in religious prudence can be
charity to himself, and what to his wife, either in con-
tinuing or in dissolving the marriage-knot, hath been
already oft enough discoursed. So that what St. Paul
saith of circumcision, the same I stick not to say of a
civil ordinance, made to the good and comfort of man,
not to his ruin; marriage is nothing, and divorce is
nothing, “but faith which worketh by love.” And
this I trust none can mistake.
Against the fifth argument, that a Christian, in a
higher order of priesthood than that Levitical, is a
person dedicate to joy and peace; and therefore needs
not in subjection to a civil ordinance, made to no other
end but for his good, (when without his fault he finds it
impossible to be decently or tolerably observed,) to
plunge himself into immeasurable distractions and
temptations, above his strength; against this he proves
nothing, but gads into silly conjectures of what abuses
would follow, and with as good reason might declaim
against the best things that are,
Against the sixth argument, that to force the con-
tinuance of marriage between minds found utterly un-
fit and disproportional, is against nature, and seems
forbid under that allegorical precept of Moses, “not to
sow a field with divers seeds, lest both be defiled; not
to plough with an ox and an ass together,” which I de-
duced by the pattern of St. Paul's reasoning what was
meant by not muzzling the ox; he rambles over a long
narration, to tell us that “by the oxen are meant the
preachers:” which is not doubted. Then he demands,
“if this my reasoning be like St. Paul’s.” And I an-
swer him, yes. He replies, that sure St. Paul would
be ashamed to reason thus. And I tell him, no. He
grants that place which I alleged, 2 Cor. vi. of un-
equal yoking, may allude to that of Moses, but says, “I
cannot prove it makes to my purpose,” and shews not
first how he can disprove it. Weigh, gentlemen, and
consider, whether my affirmations, backed with reason,
may hold balance against the bare denials of this pon-
derous confuter, elected by his ghostly patrons to be
my copesmate.
Proceeding on to speak of mysterious things in na-
ture, I had occasion to fit the language thereafter; mat-
ters not, for the reading of this odious fool, who thus
ever, when he meets with aught above the cogitation
of his breeding, leaves the noisome stench of his rude
slot behind him, maligning that any thing should be
spoke or understood above his own genuine baseness;
and gives sentence that his confuting hath been em-
ployed about a frothy, immeritous, and undeserving
discourse. Who could have believed so much inso-
lence durst vent itself from out the hide of a varlet, as
thus to censure that which men of mature judgment
have applauded to be writ from good reason P But this
contents him not, he falls now to rave in his barbarous
abusiveness; and why £ a reason befitting such an ar-
tificer, because he saith the book is contrary to all hu-
man learning; whenas the world knows, that all both
human and divine learning, till the canon law, allowed
divorce by consent, and for many causes without con-
DOCTRINE AND DISCIPLINE OF DEVORCE.
229
sent. Next, he dooms it as contrary to truth; whenas
it hath been disputable among learned men, ever since
it was prohibited : and is by Peter Martyr thought an
opinion not impious, but hard to be refuted; and by
Erasmus deemed a doctrine so charitable and pious, as,
if it cannot be used, were to be wished it could; but is
by Martin Bucer, a man of dearest and most religious
memory in the church, taught and maintained to be
either most lawfully used, or most lawfully permitted.
And for this, for I affirm no more than Bucer, what
censure do you think, readers, he hath condemned the
book to 2 To a death no less impious than to be burnt
by the hangman. Mr. Licenser, (for I deal not now
with this caitiff, never worth my carnest, and now not
seasonable for my jest,) you are reputed a man discreet
enough, religious enough, honest enough, that is, to an
ordinary competence in all these. But now your turn
is, to hear what your own hand hath earned ye; that
when you suffered this nameless hangman to cast into
public such a despiteful contumely upon a name and
person deserving of the church and state equally to
yourself; and one who hath done more to the present
advancement of your own tribe, than you or many of
them have done for themselves; you forgot to be either
honest, religious, or discreet. Whatever the state might
do concerning it, supposed a matter to expect evil from,
I should not doubt to meet among them with wise, and
honourable, and knowing men; but as to this brute
libel, so much the more impudent and lawless for the
abused authority which it bears; I say again, that I
abominate the censure of rascals and their licensers.
With difficulty I return to what remains of this ig-
noble task, for the disdain I have to change a period
more with the filth and venom of this gourmand, swell-
ed into a confuter; yet for the satisfaction of others I
endure all this.
Against the seventh argument, that if the canon law
and divines allow divorce for conspiracy of death, they
may as well allow it to avoid the same consequence
from the likelihood of natural causes.
First, he denies that the canon so decrees.
I answer, that it decrees for danger of life, as much
as for adultery, Decret. Gregor, 1.4, tit. 19, and in other
places: and the best civilians, who cite the canon law,
so collect, as Schneidewin in Instit. tit. 10, p. 4, de
Divort. And indeed, who would have denied it, but
one of a reprobate ignorance in all he meddles with 2
Secondly, he saith the case alters; for there the of
fender, “who seeks the life, doth implicitly at least act
a divorce.”
And I answer, that here nature, though no offender,
doth the same. But if an offender, by acting a di-
vorce, shall release the offended, this is an ample grant
against himself. He saith, nature teaches to save life
from one who seeks it. And I say, she teaches no less
to save it from any other cause that endangers it. He
saith, that here they are both actors. Admit they were,
it would not be uncharitable to part them; yet some-
times they are not both actors, but the one of them
most lamentedly passive. So he concludes, we must
not take advantage of our own faults and corruptions
to release us from our duties. But shall we take no
advantage to save ourselves from the faults of another,
who hath annulled his right to our duty 2 No, says he,
“let them die of the sullens, and try who will pity
them.” Barbarian, the shame of all honest attorneys!
why do they not hoise him over the bar and blanket
him P
Against the eighth argument, that they who are des-
titute of all marriageable gifts, except a body not
plainly unfit, have not the calling to marry, and conse-
quently married and so found, may be divorced : this,
he saith, is nothing to the purpose, and not fit to be an-
swered. I leave it therefore to the judgment of his
ImaStel'S.
Against the ninth argument, that marriage is a hu-
man society, and so chiefly seated in agreement and
unity of mind: if therefore the mind cannot have that
due society by marriage, that it may reasonably and
humanly desire, it can be no human society, and so not
without reason divorcible: here he falsifies, and turns
what the position required of a reasonable agreement
in the main matters of society into an agreement in all
things, which makes the opinion not mine, and so he
leaves it.
At last, and in good hour, we are come to his fare-
well, which is to be a concluding taste of his jabber-
ment in law, the flashiest and the fustiest that ever cor-
rupted in such an unswilled hogshead.
Against my tenth argument, as he calls it, but as I
intended it, my other position, “That divorce is not a
thing determinable by a compulsive law, for that all
law is for some good that may be frequently attained
without the admixture of a worse inconvenience: but
the law forbidding divorce never attains to any good
end of such prohibition, but rather multiplies evil;
therefore the prohibition of divorce is no good law.”
Now for his attorney's prize: but first, like a right
cunning and sturdy logician, he denies my argument,
not mattering whether in the major or minor: and
saith, “there are many laws made for good, and yet
that good is not attained, through the defaults of the
party, but a greater inconvenience follows.”
But I reply, that this answer builds upon a shallow
foundation, and most unjustly supposes every one in
default, who seeks divorce from the most injurious
wedlock. The default therefore will be found in the
law itself; which is neither able to punish the offender,
but the innocent must withal suffer; nor can right the
innocent in what is chiefly sought, the obtainment of
love or quietness. His instances out of the common
law are all so quite beside the matter which he would
prove, as may be a warning to all clients how they
venture their business with such a cockbrained solicitor.
For being to shew some law of England, attaining to
no good end, and yet through no default of the party,
who is thereby debarred all remedy, he shews us only
how some do lose the benefit of good laws through
their own default. His first example saith, “it is a
just law that every one shall peaceably enjoy his estate
in lands or otherwise.” Does this law attain to no good
end ? The bar will blush at this most incogitant wood-
230
A REPLY TO AN ANSWER AGAINST THE DOCTRINE, &c.
cock. But see if a draught of Littleton will recover
him to his senses. “If this man, having fee simple in
his lands, yet will take a lease of his own lands from
another, this shall be an estopple to him in an assize
from the recovering of his own land.”
Mark now and register him How many are there
of ten thousand who have such a fee simple in their
sconce, as to take a lease of their own lands from an-
other? So that this inconvenience lights upon scarce
one in an age, and by his own default; and the law
of enjoying each man his own is good to all others.
But on the contrary, this prohibition of divorce is good
to none, and brings inconvenience to numbers, who lie
under intolerable grievances without their own default,
through the wickedness or folly of another; and all
this iniquity the law remedies not, but in a manner
maintains. His other cases are directly to the same
purpose, and might have been spared, but that he is a
tradesman of the law, and must be borne with at his
first setting up, to lay forth his best ware, which is
only gibberish.
I have now done that, which for many causes I
might have thought could not likely have been my for-
tune, to be put to this underwork of scouring and un-
rubbishing the low and sordid ignorance of such a
presumptuous lozel. Yet Hercules had the labour once
imposed upon him to carry dung out of the Augean
stable. At any hand I would be rid of him : for I had
rather, since the life of man is likened to a scene, that
all my entrances and exits might mix with such per-
sons only, whose worth erects them and their actions
to a grave and tragic deportment, and not to have to
do with clowns and vices. But if a man cannot peace-
ably walk into the world, but must be infested; some-
times at his face with dorrs and horseflies, sometimes
beneath with bawling whippets and shin barkers, and
these to be set on by plot and consultation with a junto
of clergymen and licensers, commended also and re-
joiced in by those whose partiality cannot yet forego
old papistical principles; have I not cause to be in
such a manner defensive, as may procure me freedom
to pass more unmolested hereafter by those encum-
brances, not so much regarded for themselves, as for
those who incite them P And what defence can pro-
perly be used in such a despicable encounter as this,
but either the slap or the spurn 2 If they can afford
me none but a ridiculous adversary, the blame belongs
not to me, though the whole dispute be strewed and
scattered with ridiculous. And if he have such an
ambition to know no better who are his mates, but
among those needy thoughts, which, though his two
faculties of serving-man and solicitor should compound
into one mongrel, would be but thin and meagre, if in
this penury of soul he can be possible to have the lusti.
ness to think of fame, let him but send me how he calls
himself, and I may chance not fail to indorse him on
the backside of posterity, not a golden, but a brazen
ass. Since my fate extorts from me a talent of sport,
which I had thought to hide in a napkin, he shall be
my Batrachomuomachia, my Bavius, my Calandrino,
the common adagy of ignorance and overweening:
nay, perhaps, as the provocation may be, I may be
driven to curl up this gliding prose into a rough sotadic,
that shall rhyme him into such a condition, as instead
of judging good books to be burnt by the executioner,
he shall be readier to be his own hangman, Thus
much to this nuisance.
But as for the subject itself, which I have writ and
now defend, according as the opposition bears; if any
man equal to the matter shall think it appertains him to
take in hand this controversy, either excepting against
aught written, or persuaded he can shew better how
this question, of such moment to be throughly known,
may receive a true determination, not leaning on the
old and rotten suggestions whereon it yet leans; if his
intents be sincere to the public, and shall carry him on
without bitterness to the opinion, or to the person dis-
senting ; let him not, I entreat him, guess by the
handling, which meritoriously hath been bestowed on
this object of contempt and laughter, that I account it
any displeasure done me to be contradicted in print:
but as it leads to the attainment of any thing more true,
shall esteem it a benefit; and shall know how to return
his civility and fair argument in such a sort, as he shall
confess that to do so is my choice, and to have done
thus was my chance -
T'PIE
TEN U R E OF KINGS AND MAGISTRATES :
PROVING
THAT IT IS LAWPUL, AND HATH Bren HELD SO THROUGH ALL AGES, for ANY, who HAve the Power, To CALL to Account
A TYRANT, OR WICKED KING, AND, AFTER DUE CON VICTION, TO DEPOSE, AND PUT HIM TO DEATH ; IF THE OR DINARY MAGIS-
TRATE HAVE NEGLECTED, OR DENIED TO Do IT.
A ND
THAT THEY, WHO OF LATE SO MUCH B LAME DEPOSING, ARE THE MEN THAT DID IT THEMSELVES.”
[FIRST PUBLISHED 1648-9.]
/ If men within themselves would be governed by
reason, and not generally give up their understanding
to a double tyranny, of custom from without, and blind
affections within; they would discern better what it is
to favour and uphold the tyrant of a nation. But be-
ing slaves within doors, no wonder that they strive so
much to have the public state conformably governed
to the inward vitious rule, by which they govern them-
selves. For indeed none can love freedom heartily,
~~
but good men: the rest love not freedom, but licence:
which never hath more scope, or more indulgence than
under tyrants. Hence is it, that tyrants are not oft
offended, nor stand much in doubt of bad men, as being
all naturally servile; but in whom virtue and true
worth most is eminent, them they fear in earnest, as by
right their masters; against them lies all their hatred
and suspicion. Consequently neither do bad men hate
tyrants, but have been always readiest, with the falsi-
fied names of Loyalty and Obedience, to colour over
their base compliances. And although sometimes for
shame, and when it comes to their own grievances, of
purse especially, they would seem good patriots, and
side with the better cause, yet when others for the de-
liverance of their country endued with fortitude and
heroic virtue, to fear nothing but the curse written
against those “that do the work of the Lord negli-
gently,”t would go on to remove, not only the calami-
ties and thraldoms of a people, but the roots and causes
whence they spring; straight these men, and sure
helpers at need, as if they hated only the miseries, but
not the mischiefs, after they have juggled and paltered
with the world, bandied and borne arms against their
king, divested him, disanointed him, nay, cursed him
all over in their pulpits, and their pamphlets, to the en-
gaging of sincere and real men beyond what is possi-
ble or honest to retreat from, not only turn revolters
lis
from those principles, which only could at first move
them, but lay the strain of disloyalty, and worse, on
those proceedings, which are the necessary conse-
quences of their own former actions; nor disliked by
themselves, were they managed to the entire advan-
tages of their own faction; not considering the while
that he, toward whom they boasted their new fidelity,
counted them accessory; and by those statutes and
laws, which they so impotently brandish against others,
would have doomed them to a traitor's death for what
they have done already. It is true, that most men are
apt enough to civil wars and commotions as a novelty,
and for a flash hot and active; but through sloth or in-
constancy, and weakness of spirit, either fainting ere
their own pretences, though never so just, be half at-
tained, or, through an inbred falsehood and wicked-
ness, betray ofttimes to destruction with themselves
men of noblest temper joined with them for causes,
whereof they in their rash undertakings were not capa-
ble. If God and a good cause give them victory, the
prosecution whereof for the most part inevitably draws
after it the alteration of laws, change of government,
downfall of princes with their families; then comes the
task to those worthies, which are the soul of that enter-
prise, to be sweat and laboured out amidst the throng
and noses of vulgar and irrational men. Some con-
testing for privileges, customs, forms, and that old en-
tanglement of iniquity, their gibberish laws, though the
badge of their ancient slavery. Others, who have been
fiercest against their prince, under the notion of a ty-
rant, and no mean incendiaries of the war against them,
when God, out of his providence and high disposal hath
delivered him into the hand of their brethren, on a sud-
den and in a new garb of allegiance, which their doings
have long since cancelled, they plead for him, pity him,
extol him, protest against those that talk of bringing
iº uSe, ... º: .. the ſºlº sentence; º .
... ." . . ."...º.º.º.
* This tract, which was first published in February 1648.9, after the
$xecution of king Charles, and is a defence of that action against the objec-
tions of the Presbyterians, was, in the year 1650, republished by the author
With considerable additions, all which, omitted in every former edition of
the author's works, are here carefully inserted in their proper places. The
the lº of this book.” The passages here restored are marked with
Single inverted commas. f Jer. xlviii. 1.
|
232
THE TENURE OF KINGS AND MAGISTRATES.
him to the trial of justice, which is the sword of God,
superior to all mortal things, in whose hand soever by
apparent signs his testified will is to put it. But certain-
ly, if we consider, who and what they are, on a sudden
grown so pitiful, we may conclude their pity can be no
true and christian commiseration, but either levity and
shallowness of mind, or else a carnal admiring of that
worldly pomp and greatness, from whence they see
him fallen; or rather, lastly, a dissembled and seditious
pity, feigned of industry to beget new discord. As for
mercy, if it be to a tyrant, under which name they
themselves have cited him so oft in the hearing of God,
of angels, and the holy church assembled, and there
charged him with the spilling of more innocent blood
by far, than ever Nero did, undoubtedly the mercy
which they pretend is the mercy of wicked men, and
“ their mercies,”* we read, “are cruelties;” hazarding
the welfare of a whole nation, to have saved one whom
they so oft have termed Agag, and vilifying the blood
of many Jonathans that have saved Israel; insisting
with much niceness on the unnecessariest clause of
their covenant wrested, wherein the fear of change and
the absurd contradiction of a flattering hostility had
hampered them, but not scrupling to give away for
compliments, to an implacable revenge, the heads of
many thousand Christians more.
* Another sort there is, who coming in the course of
these affairs, to have their share in great actions above
the form of law or custom, at least to give their voice
and approbation; begin to swerve and almost shiver
at the majesty and grandeur of some noble deed, as if
they were newly entered into a great sin; disputing
precedents, forms, and circumstances, when the com-
monwealth nigh perishes for want of deeds in substance,
done with just and faithful expedition. To these I wish
better instruction, and virtue equal to their calling ;
the former of which, that is to say instruction, I shall
endeavour, as my duty is, to bestow on them; and ex-
hort them not to startle from the just and pious resolu-
tion of adhering with all their strength and assistance
to the present parliament and army, in the glorious way
wherein justice and victory hath set them; the only
warrants through all ages, next under immediate reve-
lation, to exercise supreme power; in those proceed-
ings, which hitherto appear equal to what hath been
done in any age or nation heretofore justly or mag-
nanimously. Nor let them be discouraged or deterred
by any new apostate scarecrows, who, under shew of
giving counsel, send out their barking monitories and
mementoes, empty of aught else but the spleen of a
frustrated faction. For how can that pretended counsel
be either sound or faithful, when they that give it see
not, for madness and vexation of their ends lost, that
those statutes and scriptures, which both falsely and
scandalously they wrest against their friends and asso-
ciates, would by sentence of the common adversary fall
first and heaviest upon their own heads Neither let
mild and tender dispositions be foolishly softened from
their duty and perseverance with the unmasculine rhe-
toric of any puling priest or chaplain, sent as a friendly
* Prov, xii. 10.
letter of advice, for fashion's sake in private, and forth-
with published by the sender himself, that we may
know how much of friend there was in it, to cast an
odious envy upon them to whom it was pretended to
be sent in charity. Nor let any man be deluded by
either the ignorance, or the notorious hypocrisy and
self-repugnance, of our dancing divines, who have the
conscience and the boldness to come with scripture in
their mouths, glossed and fitted for their turns with a
double contradictory sense, transforming the sacred
verity of God to an idol with two faces, looking at once
two several ways; and with the same quotations to
charge others, which in the same case they made serve
to justify themselves. For while the hope to be made
classic and provincial lords led them on, while plural-
ities greased them thick and deep, to the shame and
scandal of religion, more than all the sects and heresies
they exclaim against; then to fight against the king's
person, and no less a party of his lords and commons,
or to put force upon both the houses, was good, was
lawful, was no resisting of superior powers; they only
were powers not to be resisted, who countenanced the
good, and punished the evil. But now that their cen-
sorious domineering is not suffered to be universal, truth
and conscience to be freed, tithes and pluralities to be
no more, though competent allowance provided, and
the warm experience of large gifts, and they so good
at taking them ; yet now to exclude and seize upon
impeached members, to bring delinquents without ex-
emption to a fair tribunal by the common national law
against murder, is now to be no less than Corah, Da-
than, and Abiram. He who but erewhile in the pulpits
was a cursed tyrant, an enemy to God and saints, laden
with all the innocent blood spilt in three kingdoms,
and so to be fought against; is now, though nothing
penitent or altered from his first principles, a lawful
magistrate, a sovereign lord, the Lord’s anointed, not to
be touched, though by themselves imprisoned. As if this
only were obedience, to preserve the mere useless bulk
of his person, and that only in prison, not in the field,
not to disobey his commands, deny him his dignity
and office, every where to resist his power, but where
they think it only surviving in their own faction.
~& But who in particular is a tyrant, cannot be deter-
mined in a general discourse, otherwise than by sup-
position; his particular charge, and the sufficient proof
of it, must determine that: which I leave to magistrates,
at least to the uprighter sort of them, and of the people,
though in number less by many, in whom faction least
hath prevailed above the law of nature and right rea-
son, to judge as they find cause, But this I dare own
as part of my faith, that if such a one there be, by
whose commission whole massacres have been com-
pawn or alienation, as the hire of those whom he had
solicited to come in and destroy whole cities and coun-
tries; be he king, or tyrant, or emperor, the sword of :
justice is above him; in whose hand soever is found
sufficient power to avenge the effusion, and so great a
deluge of innocent blood. For if all human power to
l
A.
THE TENURE OF KINGS AND MAGISTRATES.
233
*
execute, not accidentally but intendedly the wrath of
God upon evil-doers without exception, be of God ;
then that power, whether ordinary, or if that fail, ex-
traordinary, so executing that intent of God, is lawful,
and not to be resisted. But to unfold more at large
this whole question, though with all expedient brevity,
I shall here set down, from first beginning, the original
of kings; how and wherefore exalted to that dignity
above their brethren ; and from thence shall prove,
that turning to tyranny they may be as lawfully de-
posed and punished, as they were at first elected: this
I shall do by authorities and reasons, not learnt in
corners among schisms and heresies, as our doubling
divines are ready to calumniate, but fetched out of the
midst of choicest and most authentic learning, and no
prohibited authors; nor many heathen, but mosaical,
Christian, orthodoxal, and which must needs be more
convincing to our adversaries, presbyterial.
No man, who knows aught, can be so stupid to deny,
that all men naturally were born free, being the image
and resemblance of God himself, and were, by privi-
lege above all the creatures, born to command, and not
to obey: and that they lived so, till from the root of
Adam's transgression, falling among themselves to do
wrong and violence, and foreseeing that such courses
must needs tend to the destruction of them all, they
agreed by common league to bind each other from
mutual injury, and jointly to defend themselves against
any, that gave disturbance or opposition to such agree-
ment. Hence came cities, towns, and commonwealths.
And because no faith in all was found sufficiently bind-
ing, they saw it needful to ordain some authority, that
might restrain by force and punishment what was vio-
lated against peace and common right. This authority
and power of self-defence and preservation being origi-
nally and naturally in every one of them, and unitedly
in them all; for ease, for order, and lest each man
should be his own partial judge, they communicated
and derived either to one, whom for the eminence of
his wisdom and integrity they chose above the rest, or
to more than one, whom they thought of equal deserv-
ing: the first was called a king; the other, magistrates:
not to be their lords and masters, (though afterward
those names in some places were given voluntarily to
such as had been authors of inestimable good to the
people,) but to be their deputies and commissioners, to
execute, by virtue of their intrusted power, that justice,
which else every man by the bond of nature and of
covenant must have executed for himself, and for one
another. And to him that shall consider well, why
among free persons one man by civil right should bear
authority and jurisdiction over another; no other end
or reason can be imaginable. These for a while go-
verned well, and with much equity decided all things
at their own arbitrement; till the temptation of such a
power, left absolute in their hands, perverted them at
length to injustice and partiality. Then did they, who
now by trial had found the danger and inconveniences
of committing arbitrary power to any, invent laws
either framed or consented to by all; that should con-
fine and limit the authority of whom they chose to
govern them: that so man, of whose ſailing they had
proof, might no more rule over them, but law and rea:
son, abstracted as much as might be from personal
errours and frailties. “While, as the magistrate was
set above the people, so the law was set above the
magistrate.” When this would not serve, but that the
law was either not executed, or misapplied, they were
constrained from that time, the only remedy left
them, to put conditions and take oaths from all kings
and magistrates at their first instalment to do impar-
tial justice by law who upon those terms and no
other, received allegiance from the people, that is to
say, bond or covenant to obey them in execution of
those laws, which they the people had themselves
made or assented to. And this ofttimes with express
warning, that if the king or magistrate proved un-
faithful to his trust, the people would be disengaged.
They added also counsellors and parliaments, not to be
only at his beck, but with him or without him, at set
times, or at all times, when any danger threatened, to
have care of the public safety. Therefore saith Clau-
dius Sesell, a French statesman, “The parliament was
set as a bridle to the king ; ” which I instance rather,
“not because our English lawyers have not said the
same long before, but because that French monarchy
is granted by all to be a far more absolute one than
ours. That this and the rest of what hath hitherto
been spoken is most true, might be copiously made ap-
pear through all stories heathen and christian; even of
those nations, where kings and emperors have sought
means to abolish all ancient memory of the people's
right by their encroachments and usurpations. But I
spare long insertions, appealing to the German, French,
Italian, Arragonian, English, and not least the Scot-
tish histories: not forgetting this only by the way,
that William the Norman, though a conqueror, and
not unsworn at his coronation, was compelled, a second
time, to take oath at St. Albans, ere the people would
be brought to yield obedience.
§ It being thus manifest, that the power of kings and
magistrates is nothing else, but what is only deriva-
tive, transferred and committed to them in trust from
the people to the common good of them all, in whom
the power yet remains fundamentally, and cannot be
taken from them, without a violation of their natural
birthright; and seeing that from hence Aristotle, and
the best of political writers, have defined a king, “ him
who governs to the good and profit of his people, and
not for his own ends;” it follows from necessary
causes, that the titles of sovereign lord, natural lord,
and the like, are either arrogancies, or flatteries, not
admitted by emperors and kings of best note, and dis-
liked by the church both of Jews (Isa. xxvi. 13,) and
ancient Christians, as appears by Tertullian and others.
Although generally the people of Asia, and with them
the Jews also, especially since the time they chose a
king against the advice and counsel of God, are noted
by wise authors much inclinable to slavery.
f o º
Ǻ Secondly, that to say, as is usual, the king hath as
good right to his crown and dignity, as any man to his
inheritance, is to make the subject no better than the
234.
THE TENURE OF KINGS AND MAGISTRATES.
king's slave, his chattel, or his possession that may be
bought and sold : and doubtless, if hereditary title were
sufficiently inquired, the best foundation of it would be
found but either in courtesy or convenience. But sup-
pose it to be of right hereditary, what can be more
just and legal, if a subject for certain crimes be to for-
feit by law from himself and posterity all his inherit-
ance to the king, than that a king for crimes propor-
tional should forfeit all his title and inheritance to the
people 2 Unless the people must be thought created
all for him, he not for them, and they all in one body
inferior to him single; which were a kind of treason
against the dignity of mankind to affirm.
Thirdly, it follows, that, to say kings are accountable
to none but God, is the overturning of all law and go-
vernment. For if they may refuse to give account,
then all covenants made with them at coronation, all
oaths, are in vain, and mere mockeries; all laws which
they swear to keep, made to no purpose: for if the king
fear not God, (as how many of them do not ') we hold
then our lives and estates by the tenure of his mere
grace and mercy, as from a god, not a mortal magis-
trate; a position that none but court-parasites or men
besotted would maintain “Aristotle therefore, whom
we commonly allow for one of the best interpreters of
nature and morality, writes in the fourth of his Politics,
- chap. x. that “monarchy unaccountable, is the worst
sort of tyranny, and least of all to be endured by free-
born men.” And surely no christian prince, not drunk
with high mind, and prouder than those pagan Cae-
sars that deified themselves, would arrogate so unrea-
sonably above human condition, or derogate so basely
from a whole nation of men his brethren, as if for him
only subsisting, and to serve his glory, valuing them
in comparison of his own brute will and pleasure no
more than so many beasts, or vermin under his feet,
not to be reasoned with, but to be trod on ; among
whom there might be found so many thousand men
for wisdom, virtue, nobleness of mind, and all other re-
spects but the fortune of his dignity, far above him.
Yet some would persuade us that this absurd opinion was
King David's, because in the 51st Psalmi he cries out
to God, “Against thee only Jhave I sinned; ” as if Da-
vid had imagined, that to murder Uriah and adulterate
his wife had been no sin against his neighbour, whenas
that law of Moses was to the king expressly, Deut.
xvii. not to think so highly of himself above his bre-
thren. David therefore by those words could mean
no other, than either that the depth of his guiltiness
was known to God only, or to so few as had not the
will or power to question him, or that the sin against
God was greater beyond compare than against Uriah.
Whatever his meaning were, any wise man' will see,
that the pathetical words of a psalm can be no certain
decision to a point that hath abundantly more certain
rules to go by. How much more rationally spake the
heathen king Demophoön in a tragedy of Euripides,
than these interpreters would put upon King David
“I rule not my people by tyranny, as if they were bar-
barians, but am myself liable, if I do unjustly, to suf.
fer justly.” Not unlike was the speech of Trajan the
&
worthy emperor, to one whom he made general of hi
praetorian forces: “Take this drawn sword,” saith he
“to use for me, if I reign well; if not, to use agains
me.” Thus Dion relates. And not Trajan only, bu
Theodosius the younger, a christian emperor, and one
of the best, caused it to be enacted as a rule undeniable
and fit to be acknowledged by all kings and empe-
rors, that a prince is bound to the laws ; that on the
authority of law the authority of a prince depends, and
to the laws ought to submit. Which edict of his re-
mains yet unrepealed in the Code of Justinian, l. 1. tit.
24, as a sacred constitution to all the succeeding em-
perors. How then can any king in Europe maintain
and write himself accountable to mone but God, when
emperors in their own imperial statutes have written
and decreed themselves accountable to law º And in-
deed where such account is not feared, he that bids a
man reign over him above law, may bid as well a sa-
vage beast.
* It follows, lastly, that since the king or magistrate
holds his authority of the people, both originally and
naturally for their good in the first place, and not his
own; then may the people, as oſt as they shall judge
it for the best, either choose him or reject him, retain
him or depose him though no tyrant, merely by the
liberty and right of freeborn men to be governed as
seems to them best. This, though it cannot but stand
with plain reason, shall be made good also by Scripture,
Deut. xvii. 14, “When thou art come into the land,
which the Lord thy God giveth thee, and shalt say, I
will set a king over me, like as all the nations about
me.” These words confirm us that the right of choosing,
yea of changing their own government, is by the grant
of God himself in the people. And therefore when
they desired a king, though then under another form
of government, and though their changing displeased
him, yet he that was himself their king, and rejected
by them, would not be a hinderance to what they in-
tended, further than by persuasion, but that they might
do therein as they saw good, 1 Sam. viii. only he re-
served to himself the nomination of who should reign
over them. Neither did that exempt the king, as if he
were to God only accountable, though by his especial
command anointed. Therefore “ David first made a
covenant with the elders of Israel, and so was by them
anointed king,” 2 Sam. v. 3, 1 Chron. xi. And Jehoi-
ada the priest, making Jehoash king, made a covenant
between him and the people, 2 Kings xi. 17. There-
fore when Roboam, at his coming to the crown, rejected
those conditions, which the Israelites brought him, hear
what they answer him, “What portion have we in
David, or inheritance in the son of Jesse 2 See to thine
own house, David.” And for the like conditions not
performed, all Israel before that time deposed Samuel;
not for his own default, but for the misgovernment of
his sons. But some will say to both these examples,
it was evilly done. I answer, that not the latter, be-
cause it was expressly allowed them in the law, to set
up a king if they pleased; and God himself joined with
them in the work; though in some sort it was at that
time displeasing to him, in respect of old Samuel, who
TIIE TENURE OF KINGS AND MAGISTRATES. 2.3%)
had governed them uprightly. As Livy praises the
Romans, who took occasion from Tarquinius, a wicked
prince, to gain their liberty, which to have extorted,
saith he, from Numa, or any of the good kings before,
had not been seasonable. Nor was it in the former
example done unlawfully; for when Roboam had pre-
pared a huge army to reduce the Israelites, he was
forbidden by the prophet, 1 Kings xii. 24, “Thus saith
the Lord, ye shall not go up, nor fight against your
brethren, for this thing is from me.” He calls them
their brethren, not rebels, and forbids to be proceeded
against them, owning the thing himself, not by single
providence, but by approbation, and that not only of
the act, as in the former example, but of the fit season
also ; he had not otherwise forbid to molest them.
And those grave and wise counsellors, whom Rehoboam
first advised with, spake no such thing, as our old gray-
headed flatterers now are wont, stand upon your birth-
right, scorn to capitulate, you hold of God, not of them;
for they knew no such matter, unless conditionally,
but gave him politic counsel, as in a civil transaction.
Therefore kingdom and magistracy, whether supreme
or subordinate, is called “a human ordinance,” 1 Pet.
ii. 13, &c.; which we are there taught is the will of
God we should submit to, so far as for the punishment
of evil-doers, and the encouragement of them that do
well. “Submit,” saith he, “as free men.” “But to
any civil power unaccountable, unquestionable, and
not to be resisted, no not in wickedness, and violent
actions, how can we submit as free men º’ “There is
no power but of God,” saith Paul, Rom. xiii. as much
as to say, God put it into man's heart to find out that
way at first for common peace and preservation, ap-
proving the exercise thereof; else it contradicts Peter,
who calls the same authority an ordinance of man. It
must be also understood of lawful and just power, else
we read of great power in the affairs and kingdoms of
the world permitted to the devil: for saith he to Christ,
Luke iv. 6, all this power will I give thee, and the
glory of them, for it is delivered to me, and to whom-
soever I will, I give it: neither did he lie, or Christ
gainsay what he affirmed ; for in the thirteenth of the
Revelation, we read how the dragon gave to the beast
his power, his seat, and great authority: which beast
so authorized most expound to be the tyrannical powers
and kingdoms of the earth. Therefore Saint Paul in
the forecited chapter tells us, that such magistrates he
means, as are not a terrour to the good, but to the evil,
such as bear not the sword in vain, but to punish of.
fenders, and to encourage the good. If such only be
mentioned here as powers to be obeyed, and our sub-
mission to them only required, then doubtless those
powers, that do the contrary, are no powers ordained
of God; and by consequence no obligation laid upon
us to obey or not to resist them. And it may be well
observed, that both these apostles, whenever they give
this precept, express it in terms not concrete, but ab-
stract, as logicians are wont to speak; that is, they
mention the ordinance, the power, the authority, before
the persons that execute it; and what that power is,
lest we should be deceived, they describe exactly. So
that if the power be not such, or the person execute not
such power, neither the one nor the other is of God,
but of the devil, and by consequence to be resisted.
From this exposition Chrysostom also on the same place
dissents not; explaining that these words were not
written in behalf of a tyrant. And this is verified by
David, himself a king, and likeliest to be the author
of the Psalm xciv. 20, which saith, “Shall the throne
of iniquity have fellowship with thee P’ And it were
worth the knowing, since kings in these days, and
that by Scripture, boast the justness of their title,
by holding it immediately of God, yet cannot shew
the time when God ever set on the throne them
or their forefathers, but only when the people chose
them ; why by the same reason, since God ascribes as
oft to himself the casting down of princes from the
throne, it should not be thought as lawful, and as much
from God, when none are seen to do it but the people,
and that for just causes. For if it needs must be a sin
in them to depose, it may as likely be a sin to have
elected. And contrary, if the people's act in election
be pleaded by a king, as the act of God, and the most
just title to enthrone him, why may not the people's
act of rejection be as well pleaded by the people as the
act of God, and the most just reason to depose him P
So that we see the title and just right of reigning or
deposing in reference to God, is found in Scripture to
Jhe all one ; visible only in the people, and depending
merely upon justice and demerit. Thus far hath been
considered chiefly the power of kings and magistrates;
how it was and is originally the people's, and by them
conferred in trust only to be employed to the common
peace and benefit; with liberty therefore and right re-
maining in them, to reassume it to themselves, if by
kings or magistrates it be abused ; or to dispose of it
by any alteration, as they shall judge most conducing
to the public good.
ºf We may from hence with more ease and force of
argument determine what a tyrant is, and what the
people may do against him. A tyrant, whether by
wrong or by right coming to the crown, is he who, re-
garding neither law nor the common good, reigns only
for himself and his faction: thus St. Basil among
others defines him. And because his power is great,
his will boundless and exorbitant, the fulfilling whereof
is for the most part accompanied with innumerable
wrongs and oppressions of the people, murders, massa-
cres, rapes, adulteries, desolation, and subversion of
cities and whole provinces; look how great a good and
happiness a just king is, so great a mischief is a tyrant;
as he the public father of his country, so this the com-
mon enemy. Against whom what the people lawfully
may do, as against a common pest, and destroyer of
mankind, I suppose no man of clear judgment need
go further to be guided than by the very principles of
nature in him. But because it is the vulgar folly of
men to desert their own reason, and shutting their eyes,
to think they see best with other men's, I shall shew
by such examples as ought to have most weight with
us, what hath been done in this case heretofore. The
Greeks and Romans, as their prime authors witness,
236
THE TENURE OF KINGS AND MAGISTRATES.
held it not only lawful, but a glorious and heroic deed,
rewarded publicly with statues and garlands, to kill an
infamous tyrant at any time without trial: and but
reason, that he, who trod down all law, should not be
vouchsafed the benefit of law. Insomuch that Seneca
the tragedian brings in Hercules, the grand suppressor
of tyrants, thus speaking ;
Victima haud ulla amplior
Potest, magisque opima mactari Jovi
Quam rex iniquus
There can be slain
No sacrifice to God more acceptable
Than an unjust and wicked king
' But of these I name no more, lest it be objected they
were heathen ; and come to produce another sort of
men, that had the knowledge of true religion. Among
the Jews this custom of tyrant-killing was not unusual.
First Ehud, a man whom God had raised to deliver
Israel from Eglon king of Moab, who had conquered
and ruled over them eighteen years, being sent to him
as an ambassador with a present, slew him in his own
house. But he was a foreign prince, an enemy, and
Ehud besides had special warrant from God. To the
first I answer, it imports not whether foreign or nºtive:
for no prince so native but professes to hold by law;
which when he himself overturns, breaking all the
covenants and oaths that gave him title to his dignity,
and were the bond and alliance between him and his
people, what differs he from an outlandish king, or
from an enemy P For look how much right the king
of Spain hath to govern us at all, so much right hath
the king of England to govern us tyrannically. If
he, though not bound to us by any league, coming from
Spain in person to subdue us, or to destroy us, might
lawfully by the people of England either be slain in
fight, or put to death in captivity, what hath a native
king to plead, bound by so many covenants, benefits,
and honours, to the welfare of his people; why he
through the contempt of all laws and parliaments, the
only tie of our obedience to him, for his own will's
sake, and a boasted prerogative unaccountable, after
seven years warring and destroying of his best subjects,
overcome, and yielded prisoner, should think to scape
unquestionable, as a thing divine, in respect of whom
so many thousand Christians destroyed should lie un-
accounted for, polluting with their slaughtered carcasses
all the land over, and crying for vengeance against
|the living that should have righted them? Who knows
# not that there is a mutual bond of amity and brother-
|
|
hood between man and man over all the world, neither
is it the English sea that can sever us from that duty
and relation: a straiter bond yet there is between fel-
low-subjects, neighbours, and friends. But when any
of these do one to another so as hostility could do no
worse, what doth the law decree less against them,
than open enemies and invaders 2 or if the law be not
present or too weak, what doth it warraut us to less
than single defence or civil war? and ſtom that time
forward the law of civil defensive war differs nothing
from the law of foreign hostility. Nor is it distance of
place that makes enmity, but enmity that makes dis-
tance. He therefore that keeps peace with me, near
or remote, of whatsoever nation, is to me, as far as all
civil and human offices, an Englishman and a neigh-
bour: but if an Englishman, forgetting all laws, hu-
man, civil, and religious, offend against Hife and liberty,
to him offended, and to the law in his behalf, though
born in the same womb, he is no better than a Turk, a
Saracen, a heathen. This is gospel, and this was ever
law among equals; how much rather then in force
against any king whatever, who in respect of the peo-
ple is confessed inferior and not equal: to distinguish
therefore of a tyrant by outlandish, or domestic, is a
weak evasion. To the second, that he was an enemy;
I answer, what tyrant is not P yet Eglon by the Jews
had been acknowledged as their sovereign, they had
served him eighteen years, as long almost as we our
William the Conqueror, in all which he could not be so
unwise a statesman, but to have taken of them oaths
of fealty and allegiance; by which they made them-
selves his proper subjects, as their homage and present
sent by Ehud testified. To the third, that he had spe-
cial warrant to kill Eglon in that manner, it cannot be
granted, because not expressed ; it is plain, that he
was raised by God to be a deliverer, and went on just
principles, such as were then and ever held allowable
to deal so by a tyrant, that could no otherwise be dealt
with. Neither did Samuel, though a prophet, with his
own hand abstain from Agag ; a foreign enemy, no
doubt; but mark the reason, “As thy sword hath;
made women childless;” a cause that by the sentence
of law itself nullifies all relations. And as the law is,
between brother and brother, father and son, master
and servant, wherefore not between king, or rather ty-
rant, and people P And whereas Jehu had special com-
mand to slay Jehoram a successive and hereditary
tyrant, it seems not the less imitable for that ; for
where a thing grounded so much on natural reason
hath the addition of a command from God, what does
it but establish the lawfulness of such an act P Nor is
it likely that God, who had so many ways of punishing
the house of Ahab, would have sent a subject against
his prince, if the fact in itself, as done to a tyrant, had
been of bad example. And if David refused to lift his
hand against the Lord's anointed, the matter between
them was not tyranny, but private enmity, and David
as a private person had been his own revenger, not so
much the people's : but when any tyrant at this day
can shew himself to be the Lord's anointed, the only
mentioned reason why David withheld his hand, he
may then, but not till then, presume on the same pri-
vilege.
// We may pass therefore hence to christian times,
And first our Saviour himself, how much he favoured
tyrants, and how much intended they should be found
or honoured among Christians, declared his mind not
obscurely ; accounting their absolute authority no bet-
ter than Gentilism, yea though they flourished it over
with the splendid name of benefactors; charging those
that would be his disciples to usurp no such dominion;
THE TENURE OF KINGS AND MAGISTRATES.
237
but that they, who were to be of most authority among
them, should esteem themselves ministers and servants
to the public. Matt. xx. 25, “The princes of the Gen-
tiles exercise lordship over them ; and Mark x. 42,
“They that seem to rule,” saith he, either slighting or
accounting them no lawful rulers; “but ye shall not
be so, but the greatest among you shall be your ser-
vant.” And although he himself were the meekest,
and came on earth to be so, yet to a tyrant we hear him
not vouchsafe an humble word: but, “Tell that fox,”
Luke xiii. “So far we ought to be from thinking that
Christ and his gospel should be made a sanctuary for
tyrants from justice, to whom his law before never
gave such protection.” And wherefore did his mother
the virgin Mary give such praise to God in her pro-
phetic song, that he had now by the coming of Christ,
cut down dynastas, or proud monarchs, from the throne,
if the church, when God manifests his power in them
to do so, should rather choose all misery and vassalage
to serve them, and let them still sit on their potent
seats to be adored for doing mischief? Surely it is not
for nothing, that tyrants by a kind of natural instinct
both hate and fear none more than the true church and
\ºint of God, as the most dangerous enemies and sub-
verters of monarchy, though indeed of tyranny ; hath
not this been the perpetual cry of courtiers and court-
prelates? whereof no likelier cause can be alleged, but
that they well discerned the mind and principles of
most devout and zealous men, and indeed the very
discipline of church, tending to the dissolution of all
tyranny. No marvel then if since the faith of Christ
received, in purer or impurer times, to depose a king
and put him to death for tyranny, hath been accounted
so just and requisite, that neighbour kings have both
upheld and taken part with subjects in the action.
And Ludovicus Pius, himself an emperor, and son of
Charles the Great, being made judge (du Haillan is
my author) between Milegast king of the Vultzes and
his subjects who had deposed him, gave his verdict for
the subjects, and for him whom they had chosen in his
room. Note here, that the right of electing whom
they please is by the impartial testimony of an em-
peror in the people: for, said he, “A just prince ought
to be preferred before an unjust, and the end of govern-
ment before the prerogative.” And Constantinus Leo,
another emperor, in the Byzantine laws saith, “That
the end of a king is for the general good, which he not
performing, is but the counterfeit of a king.” And to
prove, that some of our own monarchs have acknow-
ledged, that their high office exempted them not from
punishment, they had the sword of St. Edward borne
before them by an officer, who was called earl of the
palace, even at the times of their highest pomp and
solemnities; to mind them, saith Matthew Paris, the
best of our historians, “that if they erred, the sword
had power to restrain them.” And what restraint the
sword comes to at length, having both edge and point,
if any sceptic will doubt, let him feel. It is also affirmed
from diligent search made in our ancient books of law,
that the peers and barons of England had a legal right
to judge the king: which was the cause most likely,
(for it could be no slight cause,) that they were called
his peers, or equals. This however may stand im-
movable, so long as man hath to deal with no better
than man; that if our law judge all men to the lowest
by their peers, it should in all equity ascend also, and
judge the highest. And so much I find both in our
own and foreign story, that dukes, earls, and mar-
quisses were at first not hereditary, not empty and
vain titles, but names of trust and office, and with the
office ceasing; as induces me to be of opinion, that
every worthy man in parliament, (for the word baron
imports no more,) might for the public good be
thought a fit peer and judge of the king ; without re-
gard had to petty caveats and circumstances, the chief
impediment in high affairs, and ever stood upon most by
circumstantial men. Whence doubtless our ancestors
who were not ignorant with what rights either nature
or ancient constitution had endowed them, when oaths
both at coronation and renewed in parliament would
not serve, thought it no way illegal, to depose and put
to death their tyrannous kings. Insomuch that the
parliament drew up a charge against Richard the Se-
cond, and the commons requested to have judgment
decreed against him, that the realm might not be en-
dangered. And Peter Martyr, a divine of foremost
rank, on the third of Judges approves their doings. Sir
Thomas Smith also, a protestant and a statesman, in
his Commonwealth of England, putting the question,
“whether it be lawful to rise against a tyrant;” an-
swers, “that the vulgar judge of it according to the
event, and the learned according to the purpose of
them that do it.” But far before those days Gildas,
the most ancient of all our historians, speaking of those
times wherein the Roman empire decaying quitted and
relinquished what right they had by conquest to this
island, and resigned it all into the people's hands, tes-
tifies that the people thus reinvested with their own
original right, about the year 446, both elected them
kings, whom they thought best, (the first christian Bri-
tish kings that ever reigned here since the Romans,)
and by the same right, when they apprehended cause,
usually deposed and put them to death. This is the
most fundamental and ancient tenure, that any king of
England can produce or pretend to ; in comparison of
which, all other titles and pleas are but of yesterday.
If any object, that Gildas condemns the Britons for so
doing, the answer is as ready ; that he condemns them.
no more for so doing, than he did before for choosing .
such; for saith he, “They anointed them kings, not
of God, but such as were more bloody than the rest.”
Next, he condemns them not at all for deposing o:
putting them to death, but for doing it overhastily,"
without trial or well examining the cause, and for
electing others worse in their room. Thus we have
here both domestic and most ancient examples, that the
people of Britain have deposed and put to death their
kings in those primitive christian times. And to couple
reason with example, if the church in all ages, primi-
tive, Romish, or protestant, held it ever no less their
duty than the power of their keys, though without ex-
press warrant of Scripture, to bring indifferently both
238
THE TENURE OF KINGS AND MAGISTRATES.
king and peasant under the utmost rigour of their
canons and censures ecclesiastical, even to the smiting
him with a final excommunion, if he persist impe-
nitent: what hinders, but that the temporal law both
may and ought, though without a special text or pre-
cedent, extend with like indifference the civil sword,
to the cutting off, without exemption, him that capitally
offends, seeing that justice and religion are from the
same God, and works of justice ofttimes more accept-
able 2 Yet because that some lately with the tongues
and arguments of malignant backsliders have written,
that the proceedings now in parliament against the
king are without precedent from any protestant state
or kingdom, the examples which follow shall be all
protestant, and chiefly presbyterian.
P. In the year 1546, the duke of Saxony, landgrave of
Hesse, and the whole protestant league, raised open
war against Charles the Fifth their emperor, sent him.
a defiance, renounced all faith and allegiance toward
him, and debated long in council, whether they should
give him so much as the title of Caesar. Sleidan. l. 17.
I,et all men judge what this wanted of deposing or of
killing, but the power to do it.
jº, In the year 1559, the Scots protestants claiming pro-
mise of their queen-regent for liberty of conscience,
she answering, that promises were not to be claimed
of princes beyond what was commodious for them to
grant, told her to her face in the parliament then at
Stirling, that if it were so, they renounced their obe-
dience; and soon after betook them to arms. Buchanan
Hist. l. 16. Certainly, when allegiance is renounced,
that very hour the king or queen is in effect deposed.’
| | | In the year 1564, John Knox, a most famous divine,
and the reformer of Scotland to the presbyterian disci-
pline, at a general assembly maintained openly in a
dispute against Lethington the secretary of state, that
subjects might and ought to execute God's judgments
upon their king; that the fact of Jehu and others
against their king, having the ground of God’s ordi-
nary command to put such and such offenders to death,
was not extraordinary, but to be imitated of all that
preferred the honour of God to the affection of flesh
and wicked princes; that kings, if they offend, have
no privilege to be exempted from the punishments of
law more than any other subject: so that if the king
be a murderer, adulterer, or idolater, he should suffer,
not as a king, but as an offender; and this position he
repeats again and again before them. Answerable was
the opinion of John Craig, another learned divine, and
that laws made by the tyranny of princes, or the neg-
ligence of people, their posterity might abrogate, and
reform all things according to the original institution
of commonwealths. And Knox, being commanded by
the nobility to write to Calvin and other learned men
for their judgments in that question, refused; alleging,
that both himself was fully resolved in conscience, and
had heard their judgments, and had the same opinion
under handwriting of many the most godly and most
learned that he knew in Europe; that if he should
move the question to them again, what should he do
but shew his own forgetfulness or inconstancy P All
this is far more largely in the ecclesiastic history of
Scotland, l. 4, with many other passages to this effect
all the book over, set out with diligence by Scots-
men of best repute among them at the beginning of
these troubles; as if they laboured to inform us what
we were to do, and what they intended upon the like
occasion.
| And to let the world know, that the whole church
and protestant state of Scotland in those purest times
of reformation were of the same belief, three years
after, they met in the field Mary their lawful and he-
reditary queen, took her prisoner, yielding before fight,
kept her in prison, and the same year deposed her.
Buchan. Hist, l. 18. -
''. And four years after that, the Scots, in justification
of their deposing Queen Mary, sent ambassadors to
Queen Elizabeth, and in a written declaration alleged,
that they had used towards her more lenity than she de-
served; that their ancestors had heretofore punished
their kings by death or banishment; that the Scots
were a free nation, made king whom they freely chose,
and with the same freedom unkinged him if they saw
cause, by right of ancient laws and ceremonies yet re-
maining, and old customs yet among the highland-
ers in choosing the head of their clans, or families; all
which, with many other arguments, bore witness, that
regal power was nothing else but a mutual covenant or
stipulation between king and people. Buch. Hist. l.
20. These were Scotsmen and presbyterians : but
what measure then have they lately offered, to think
such liberty less beseening us than themselves, pre-
suming to put him upon us for a master, whom their
law scarce allows to be their own equal P If now then
we hear them in another strain than heretofore in the
purest times of their church, we may be confident it is
the voice of faction speaking in them, not of truth and
reformation. “Which no less in England than in
Scotland, by the mouths of those faithful witnessès
commonly called puritans and nonconformists, spake
as clearly for the putting down, yea, the utmost punish-
ing, of kings, as in their several treatises may be read;
even from the first reign of Elizabeth to these times.
Insomuch that one of them, whose name was Gibson,
foretold King James, he should be rooted out, and con-
clude his race, if he persisted to uphold bishops. And
that very inscription, stamped upon the first coins at
his coronation, a naked sword in a hand with these
words, “Si mereor, in me,” “ Against me, if I deserve,”
not only manifested the judgment of that state, but
seemed also to presage the sentence of divine justice in
this event upon his son.
In the year 1581, the states of Holland, in a general
assembly at the Hague, abjured all obedience and sub-
jection to Philip king of Spain; and in a declaration
justify their so doing; for that by his tyrannous go-
vernment, against faith so many times given and bro-
ken, he had lost his right to all the Belgic provinces;
that therefore they deposed him, and declared it lawful
to choose another in his stead. Thuan. l. 74. From
that time to this, no state or kingdom in the world hath
equally prospered : but let them remember not to look
THE TENURE OF KINGS AND MAGISTRATES.
239
with an evil and prejudicial eye upon their neighbours
walking by the same rule.
| But what need these examples to presbyterians, I
mean to those who now of late would seem so much to
abhor deposing, whenas they to all christendon have
given the latest and the liveliest example of doing it
themselves? I question not the lawfulness of raising
war against a tyrant in defence of religion, or civil li-
berty; for no protestant church, from the first Walden-
ses of Lyons and Languedoc to this day, but have done
it round, and maintained it lawful. But this I doubt
not to affirm, that the presbyterians, who now so much
condemn deposing, were the men themselves that de-
posed the king, and cannot, with all their shifting and
relapsing, wash off the guiltiness from their own hands.
For they themselves, by these their late doings, have
made it guiltiness, and tur...ed their own warrantable
ºr “”
There is nothing, that so actually makes a king of
England, as rightful possession and supremacy in all
Causes both Civil and Ecclesiastical : and nothing that
so actually makes a subject of England, as those two
oaths of allegiance and supremacy observed without
equivocating, or any mental reservation. Out of doubt
then when the king shall command things already con-
stituted in church or state, obedience is the true essence
of a subject, either to do, if it be lawful, or if he hold
the thing unlawful, to submit to that penalty which
the law imposes, so long as he intends to remain a sub-
ject. Therefore when the people, or any part of them,
shall rise against the king and his authority, executing
the law in any thing established, civil or ecclesiastical,
I do not say it is rebellion, if the thing commanded
though established be unlawful, and that they sought
first all due means of redress (and no man is further
bound to law); but I say it is an absolute renouncing
both of supremacy and allegiance, which in one word
is an actual and total deposing of the king, and the set-
ting up of another supreme authority over them. And
whether the presbyterians have not done all this and
much more, they will not put me, I suppose, to reckon
up a seven years story fresh in the memory of all men.
Have they not utterly broke the oath of allegiance, re-
:-
jecting the king’s command and authority sent them
from any part of the kingdom, whether in things law-
ful or unlawful ? Have they not abjured the oath of
supremacy, by setting up the parliament without the
king, supreme to all their obedience; and though their
vow and covenant bound them in general to the par-
liament, yet sometimes adhering to the lesser part of
lords and commons that remained faithful, as they term
it, and even of them, one while to the commons with-
out the lords, another while to the lords without the
commons ° Have they not still declared their mean-
ing, whatever their oath were, to hold them only for
supreme, whom they found at any time most yielding
to what they petitioned P Both these oaths, which
were the straitest bond of an English subject in refer-
ence to the king, being thus broke and made void; it
follows undeniably, that the king from that time was
by them in fact absolutely deposed, and they no longer
in reality to be thought his subjects, notwithstanding
their fine clause in the covenant to preserve his person,
crown, and dignity, set there by some dodging casuist
with more craft than sincerity, to mitigate the matter
in case of ill success, and not taken, I suppose, by any
honest man, but as a condition subordinate to every
the least particle, that might more concern religion,
liberty, or the public peace.
To prove it yet more plainly, that they are the men
who have deposed the king, I thus argue. We know,
that king and subject are relatives, and relatives have
no longer being than in the relation; the relation be-
tween king and subject can be no other than regal au-
thority and subjection. Hence I infer past their de-
fending, that if the subject, who is one relative, take
away the relation, of force he takes away also the
other relative : but the presbyterians, who were one
relative, that is to say, subjects, have for this seven
years taken away the relation, that is to say, the
king's authority, and their subjection to it; therefore
the presbyterians for these seven years have removed
and extinguished the other relative, that is to say,
the king; or to speak more in brief, have deposed him;
not only by depriving him the execution of his autho-
rity, but by conferring it upon others. If then their
oaths of subjection broken, new supremacy obeyed, new
oaths and covenant taken, notwithstanding frivolous
evasions, have in plain terms unkinged the king, much
more then hath their seven years war, not deposed him
only, but outlawed him, and defied him as an alien, a
rebel to law, and enemy to the state. It must needs be
clear to any man not averse from reason, that hostility
and subjection are two direct and positive contraries,
and can no more in one subject stand toºether in re-
spect of the same king, than one person at the same
time can be in two remote places. Against whom
therefore the subject is in act of hostility, we may be
confident, that to him he is in no subjection : and in
whom hostility takes place of subjection, for they can
by no means consist together, to him the king can be
not only no king, but an enemy. So that from hence
we shall not need dispute, whether they have deposed
him, or what they have defaulted towards him as no
king, but shew manifestly how much they have done
toward the killing him. Have they not levied all these
wars against him, whether offensive or defensive, (for
defence in war equally offends, and most prudently be-
forehand,) and given commission to slay, where they
knew his person could not be exempt from danger ?
And if chance or flight had not saved him, how often
had they killed him, directing their artillery, without
blame or prohibition, to the very place where they saw
him stand P Have they not sequestered him, judged or
unjudged, and converted his revenue to other uses, de-
taining from him, as a grand delinquent, all means of
livelihood, so that for them long since he might have
perished, or have starved? Have they not hunted and
pursued him round about the kingdom with sword and
fire? Have they not formerly denied to treat with him,
and their now recanting ministers preached against him,
as a reprobate incurable, an enemy to God and his
- -, -e-…---rºr": '..e. r
240
THE TENURE OF KINGS AND MAGISTRATES.
church, marked for destruction, and therefore not to be
treated with P. Have they not besieged him, and to their
power forbid him water and fire, save what they shot
against him to the hazard of his life? Yet while they
thus assaulted and endangered it with hostile deeds,
they swore in words to defend it with his crown and
dignity; not in order, as it seems now, to a firm and
lasting peace, or to his repentance after all this blood;
but simply, without regard, without remorse or any
comparable value of all the miseries and calamities
suffered by the poor people, or to suffer hereafter,
through his obstimacy or impenitence. No understand-
ing man can be ignorant, that covenants are ever made
according to the present state of persons and of things;
and have ever the more general laws of nature and of
reason included in them, though not expressed. If I
make a voluntary covenant, as with a man to do him
good, and he prove afterward a monster to me, I should
conceive a disobligement. If I covenant, not to hurt
an enemy, in favour of him and forbearance, and hope
of his amendment, and he, after that, shall do me ten-
fold injury and mischief to what he had done when I
so covenanted, and still be plotting what may tend to
my destruction, I question not but that his after-actions
release me; nor know I covenant so sacred, that with-
holds me from demanding justice on him. Howbeit,
had not their distrust in a good cause, and the fast and
loose of our prevaricating divines, overswayed, it had
been doubtless better, not to have inserted in a covenant
unnecessary obligations, and words, not works of super-
erogating allegiance to their enemy; no way advan-
tageous to themselves, had the king prevailed, as to
their cost many would have felt; but full of snare and
distraction to our friends, useful only, as we now fin l,
to our adversaries, who under such a latitude and
shelter of ambiguous interpretation have ever since
been plotting and contriving new opportunities to
trouble all again. How much better had it been, and
more becoming an undaunted virtue, to have declared
openly and boldly whom and what power the people.
were to hold supreme, as on the like occasion protestants
have done before, and many conscientious men now in
these times have more than once besought the parlia-
ment to do, that they might go on upon a sure founda-
tion, and not with a riddling covenant in their mouths,
seeming to swear counter, almost in the same breath,
allegiance and no allegiance; which doubtless had
drawn off all the minds of sincere men from siding with
them, had they not discerned their actions far more
deposing him than their words upholding him; which
words, made now the subject of cavillous interpreta-
tions, stood ever in the covenant, by judgment of the
more discerning sort, an evidence of their fear, not of
their fidelity. What should I return to speak on, of
those attempts for which the king himself hath often
charged the presbyterians of seeking his life, whenas
in the due estimation of things they might without a
fallacy be said to have done the deed outright P Who
knows not, that the king is a name of dignity and
office, not of person 2 Who therefore kills a king, must,
kill him while he is a king. Then they certainly, who
by deposing him have long since taken from him the
life of a king, his office and his dignity, they in the
truest sense may be said to have killed the king : not
only by their deposing and waging war against him,
which, besides the danger to his personal life, set him
in the farthest opposite point from any vital function
of a king, but by their holding him in prison, vanquished
and yielded into their absolute and despotic power,
which brought him to the lowest degradement and in-
capacity of the regal name. I say not by whose
matchless valour next under God, lest the story of their
ingratitude thereupon carry me from the purpose in
hand, which is to convince them, that they, which I
repeat again, were the men who in the truest sense
killed the king, not only as is proved before, but by
depressing him their king far below the rank of a sub-
ject to the condition of a captive, without intention to re-
store him, as the chancellor of Scotland in a speech told
him plainly at Newcastle, unless he granted fully all
their demands, which they knew he never meant. Nor
did they treat, or think of treating, with him, till their
hatred to the army that delivered them, not their love
or duty to the king, joined them secretly with men
sentenced so oft for reprobates in their own mouths, by
whose subtle inspiring they grew mad upon a most
tardy and improper treaty. Whereas if the whole bent
of their actions had not been against the king himself,
but only against his evil counsellors, as they feigned,
and published, wherefore did they not restore him all
that while to the true life of a king, his office, crown,
and dignity, when he was in their power, and they
themselves his nearest counsellors P. The truth therefore
is, both that they would not, and that indeed they could
not without their own certain destruction, having re-
duced him to such a final pass, as was the very death
and burial of all in him that was regal, and from
whence never king of England yet revived, but by the
new reinforcement of his own party, which was a kind
of resurrection to him. Thus having quite extinguish-
ed all that could be in him of a king, and from a total
privation clad him over, like another specifical thing,
with forms and habitudes destructive to the former,
they left in his person, dead as to law and all the civil
right either of king or subject, the life only of a pri-
soner, a captive, and a malefactor: whom the equal
and impartial hand of justice finding, was no more to
spare than another ordinary man; not only made ob-
noxious to the doom of law by a charge more than
once drawn up against him, and his own confession to
the first article at Newport, but summoned and arraigned
in the sight of God and his people, cursed and devoted
to perdition worse than any Ahab, or Antiochus, with
exhortation to curse all those in the name of God, that
made not war against him, as bitterly as Meroz was
to be cursed, that went not out against a Canaanitish
king, almost in all the sermons, prayers, and fulmina-
tions, that have been uttered this seven years by those
cloven tongues of falsehood and dissension, who now,
to the stirring up of new discord, acquit him; and
against their own discipline, which they boast to be the
throne and sceptre of Christ, absolve him, unconfound
TILE TENURE OF KINGS AND MAGISTRATES
241
him, though unconverted, unrepentant, unsensible of
all their precious saints and martyrs, whose blood they
have so oft laid upon his head; and now again with a
new sovereign anointment can wash it all off, as if it
were as vile, and no more to be reckoned for than the
blood of so many dogs in a time of pestilence : giving
the most opprobrious lie to all the acted zeal, that for
these many years hath filled their bellies, and fed them
ſat upon the foolish people. Ministers of sedition, not
of the gospel, who, while they saw it manifestly tend
to civil war and bloodshed, never ceased exasperating
the people against him; and now, that they see it
likely to breed new commotion, cease not to incite
others against the people, that have saved them from
him, as if sedition were their only aim, whether against
him or for him. But God, as we have cause to trust,
will put other thoughts into the people, and turn them
from giving ear or heed to these mercenary noise-
makers, of whose fury and false prophecies we have
enough experience; and from the murmurs of new
discord will incline them, to hearken rather with erected
minds to the voice of our supreme magistracy, calling
us to liberty, and the flourishing deeds of a reformed
commonwealth; with this hope, that as God was here-
tofore angry with the Jews who rejected him and his
form of government to choose a king, so that he will
bless us, and be propitious to us, who reject a king to
make him only our leader, and supreme governor, in
the conformity as near as may be of his own ancient
government; if we have at least but so much worth in
us to entertain the sense of our future happiness, and
the courage to receive what God vouchsafes us: wherein
we have the honour to precede other nations, who are
now labouring to be our followers. For as to this
question in hand, what the people by their just right
may do in change of government, or of governor, we
see it cleared sufficiently; besides other ample author-
ity, even from the mouths of princes themselves. And
surely they that shall boast, as we do, to be a free na-
tion, and not have in themselves the power to remove
or to abolish any governor supreme, or subordinate,
with the government itself upon urgent causes, may
please their fancy with a ridiculous and painted free-
dom, fit to cozen babies; but are indeed under tyranny
and servitude; as wanting that power, which is the
root and source of all liberty, to dispose and ceconomize
in the land which God hath given them, as masters of
family in their own house and free inheritance. With-
out which natural and essential power of a free nation,
though bearing high their heads, they can in due esteem
be thought no better than slaves and vassals born, in
the tenure and occupation of another inheriting lord.
Whose government, though not illegal, or intolerable,
hangs over them as a lordly scourge, not as a free go-
vernment; and therefore to be abrogated. How much
more justly then may they fling off tyranny, or tyrants;
who being once deposed can be no more than private
men, as subject to the reach of justice and arraignment
as any other transgressors And certainly if men, not
to speak of heathen, both wise and religious, have done
iustice upon tyrants what way they could soonest, how
much more mild and humane then is it, to give them
fair and open trial; to teach lawless kings, and all who \,
so much adore them, that not mortal man, or his im-
perious will, but justice, is the only true sovereign and
supreme majesty upon earth Let men cease therefore,
out of faction and hypocrisy, to make outcries and hor-
rid things of things so just and honourable. ‘Though ,
perhaps till now, no protestant state or kingdom can
be alleged to have openly put to death their king,
which lately some have written, and imputed to their
great glory; much mistaking the matter. It is not,
neither ought to be, the glory of a protestant state, never
to have put their king to death; it is the glory of a
protestant king never to have deserved death.’ And if
the parliament and military council do what they do
without precedent, if it appear their duty, it argues the
more wisdom, virtue, and magnanimity, that they know
themselves able to be a precedent to others. Who per-
haps in future ages, if they prove not too degenerate,
will look up with honour, and aspire toward these ex-
emplary and matchless deeds of their ancestors, as to the
highest top of their civil glory and emulation. Which
heretofore, in the pursuance of fame and foreign domi-
nion, spent itself vaingloriously abroad; but henceforth
may learn a better fortitude, to dare execute highest
justice on them, that shall by force of arms endeavour the
oppressing and bereaving of religion and their liberty
at home : that no unbridled potentate or tyrant, but to
his sorrow, for the future may presume such high and
irresponsible licence over mankind, to havoc and turn
upside down whole kingdoms of men, as though they
were no more in respect of his perverse will than a na-
tion of pismires. As for the party called presbyterian,
of whom I believe very many to be good and faithful
Christians, though misled by some of turbulent spirit,
I wish them, earnestly and calmly, not to fall off from
their first principles, nor to affect rigour and superior-
ity over men not under them ; not to compel unforcible
things, in religion especially, which, if not voluntary,
becomes a sin; not to assist the clamour and malicious
drifts of men, whom they themselves have judged to be
the worst of men, the obdurate enemies of God and his
church : nor to dart against the actions of their bre-
thren, for want of other argument, those wrested laws
and scriptures thrown by prelates and malignants
against their own sides, which, though they hurt not
otherwise, yet taken up by them to the condemnation
of their own doings, give scandal to all men, and dis-
cover in themselves either extreme passion or apos-
tacy. Let them not oppose their best friends and asso-
ciates, who molest them not at all, infringe not the
least of their liberties, unless they call it their liberty
to bind other men's consciences, but are still seeking
to live at peace with them and brotherly accord. Let
them beware an old and perfect enemy, who, though
he hope by sowing discord to make them his instru-
ments, yet cannot forbear a minute the open threaten-
ing of his destined revenge upon them, when they
have served his purposes. Let them fear therefore, if
they be wise, rather what they have done already, than
what remains to do, and be warned in time they put no
|
\
242
THE TENURE OF KINGS AND MAGISTRATES. ††
conſidence in princes whom they have provoked, lest
they be added to the examples of those that miserably
have tasted the event. Stories can inform them how
Christiern the IId, king of Denmark, not much above
a hundred years past, driven out by his subjects, and
received again upon new oaths and conditions, broke
through them all to his most bloody revenge; slaying
his chief opposers, when he saw his time, both them
and their children, invited to a feast for that purpose.
How Maximilian dealt with those of Bruges, though
by mediation of the German princes reconciled to them
by solemn and public writings drawn and sealed.
How the massacre at Paris was the effect of that cre-
dulous peace, which the French protestants made with
Charles the IX, their king : and that the main visible
cause, which to this day hath saved the Netherlands
from utter ruin, was their final not believing the per-
fidious cruelty, which as a constant maxim of state
hath been used by the Spanish kings on their subjects
that have taken arms, and after trusted them ; as no
latter age but can testify, heretofore in Belgia itself,
and this very year in Naples. And to conclude with
one past exception, though far more ancient, David,
whose sanctified prudence might be alone sufficient,
not to warrant us only, but to instruct us, when once
he had taken arms, never after that trusted Saul, though
with tears and much relenting he twice promised not
to hurt him. These instances, few of many, might ad-
monish them, both English and Scotch, not to let their
own ends, and the driving on of a faction, betray them
blindly into the snare of those enemies, whose revenge
looks on them as the men who first begun, fomented,
and carried on beyond the cure of any sound or safe ac-
commodation, all the evil which hath since unavoid.
ably befallen them and their king.
I have something also to the divines, though brief
to what were needful ; not to be disturbers of the civil
affairs, being in hands better able and more belonging
to manage them ; but to study harder, and to attend the
office of good pastors, knowing that he, whose flock is
least among them, hath a dreadful charge, not per-
formed by mounting twice into the chair with a formal
preachment huddled up at the odd hours of a whole
lazy week, but by incessant pains and watching in sea-
son and out of season, from house to house, over the
souls of whom they have to feed. Which if they ever
well considered, how little leisure would they find, to
be the most pragmatical sidesmen of every popular tu-
mult and sedition 1 And all this while are to learn
what the true end and reason is of the gospel which
they teach; and what a world it differs from the cen-
sorious and supercilious lording over conscience. It
would be good also they lived so as might persuade
the people they hated covetousness, which, worse than
heresy, is idolatry; hated pluralities, and all kind of
simony; left rambling from benefice to benefice, like
ravenous wolves seeking where they may devour the
biggest. Of which if some, well and warmly seated
from the beginning, be not guilty, it were good they
held not conversation with such as are: let them be
sorry, that, being called to assemble about reforming
the church, they fell to progging and soliciting the
parliament, though they had renounced the name of
priests, for a new settling of their tithes and oblations;
and double-lined themselves with spiritual places of
commodity beyond the possible discharge of their duty.
Let them assemble in consistory with their elders and
deacons, according to ancient ecclesiastical rule, to the
preserving of church discipline, each in his several
charge, and not a pack of clergymen by themselves to
belly-cheer in their presumptuous Sion, or to promote
designs, abuse and gull the simple laity, and stir up
tumult, as the prelates did, for the maintenance of their
pride and avarice. These things if they observe, and
wait with patience, no doubt but all things will go well
without their importunities or exclamations: and the
printed letters, which they send subscribed with the
ostentation of great characters and little moment, would
be more considerable than now they are. But if they
be the ministers of mammon instead of Christ, and
scandalize his church with the filthy love of gain, as-
piring also to sit the closest and the heaviest of all ty-
rants upon the conscience, and fall motoriously into the
same sins, whereof so lately and so loud they accused
the prelates; as God rooted out those wicked ones im-
mediately before, so will he root out them their imita-
tors: and to vindicate his own glory and religion, will
uncover their hypocrisy to the open world; and visit
upon their own heads that “curse ye Meroz,” the very
motto of their pulpits, wherewith so frequently, not as
Meroz, but more like atheists, they have blasphemed
the vengeance of God, and traduced the zeal of his
people.
** And that they be not what they go for, true mi-
nisters of the protestant doctrine, taught by those
abroad, famous and religious men, who first reformed
the church, or by those no less zealous, who withstood
corruption and the bishops here at home, branded with
the name of puritans and nonconformists, we shall
abound with testimonies to make appear: that men
may yet more fully know the difference between pro-
testant divines, and these pulpit-firebrands.
“Luther. Lib. contra rusticos apud Sleidan. l. 5.
* Is est hodie rerum status, &c. “Such is the state
of things at this day, that men neither can, nor will,
nor indeed ought to endure longer the domination of
you princes.”
* Neque vero Caesarem, &c. “Neither is Caesar to
make war as head of christendom, protector of the
church, defender of the faith; these titles being false
and windy, and most kings being the greatest enemies
to religion.” Lib. de Bello contra Turcas, apud Sleid.
l. 14. What hinders then, but that we may depose or
punish them P
‘These also are recited by Cochlaeus in his Miscel-
lanies to be the words of Luther, or some other eminent
divine, then in Germany, when the protestants there
* All that follows, to the end of this tract, was lºſt out not only in the
edition printed 1733, in 2 vols. folio, but in that of Mr. Toland, who first
collected the author's works; how this omission arose, the reader will see
in a note at the beginning of this tract, page 231.
THE TENURE OF KINGS AND MAGISTRATES.
243
entered into solemn covenant at Smalcaldia. Ut ora
iis obturem, &c. “That I may stop their mouths, the
pope and emperor are not born, but elected, and may
also be deposed as hath been often done.” If Luther,
or whoever else, thought so, he could not stay there;
for the right of birth or succession can be no privilege
in nature, to let a tyrant sit irremovable over a nation
freeborn, without transforming that nation from the
mature and condition of men born free, into natural,
hereditary, and successive slaves. Therefore he saith
further; “To displace and throw down this exactor,
this Phalaris, this Nero, is a work pleasing to God;”
namely, for being such a one: which is a moral reason.
Shall then so slight a consideration as his hap to be
not elective simply, but by birth, which was a mere ac-
cident, overthrow that which is moral, and make un-
pleasing to God that which otherwise had so well
pleased him f Certainly not: for if the matter be rightly
argued, election, much rather than chance, binds a man
to content himself with what he suffers by his own bad
election. Though indeed neither the one nor other
binds any man, much less any people, to a necessary
sufferance of those wrongs and evils, which they have
ability and strength enough given them to remove.
‘Zwinglius, tom. 1, articul. 42.
“Quando vero perfidè, &c. “When kings reign
perfidiously, and against the rule of Christ, they may
according to the word of God be deposed.”
* Mihi ergo compertum non est, &c. “I know not
how it comes to pass, that kings reign by succession,
unless it be with consent of the whole people.” Ibid.
“Quum vero consensu, &c. “But when by suffrage
and consent of the whole people, or the better part of
them, a tyrant is deposed or put to death, God is the
chief leader in that action.” Ibid.
“Nunc cum tam tepidi Sumus, &c. “Now that we
are so lukewarm in upholding public justice, we endure
the vices of tyrants to reign now-a-days with impunity;
justly therefore by them we are trod underfoot, and
shall at length with them be punished. Yet ways are
not wanting by which tyrants may be removed, but
there wants public justice.” Ibid.
‘Cavete vobis 6 tyranni. “Beware, ye tyrants
for now the gospel of Jesus Christ, spreading far and
wide, will renew the lives of many to love innocence
and justice; which if ye also shall do, ye shall be hon-
oured. But if ye shall go on to rage and do violence,
ye shall be trampled on by all men.” Ibid.
“Romanum imperium imó quodgue, &c. “When
the Roman empire, or any other, shall begin to oppress
religion, and we negligently suffer it, we are as much
guilty of religion so violated, as the oppressors them-
selves.” Idem, Epist. ad Conrad. Somium.
“Calvin on Daniel, c. iv. v. 25.
“Hodie monarchae semper in suis titulis, &c. “Now-
a-days monarchs pretend always in their titles, to be
kings by the grace of God: but how many of them to
this end only pretend it, that they may reign without
control for to what purpose is the grace of God men-
R.
tioned in the title of kings, but that they may acknow-
ledge no superior P In the mean while God, whose
name they use to support themselves, they willingly
would tread under their feet. It is therefore a mere
cheat, when they boast to reign by the grace of God.”
‘Abdicant se terreni principes, &c. “Earthly
princes depose themselves, while they rise against
God, yea they are unworthy to be numbered among
men: rather it behoves us to spit upon their heads,
than to obey them.” On Dan. c. vi. v. 22.
‘ Bucer on Matth. c. v.
‘Si princeps superior, &c. “If a sovereign prince
endeavour by arms to defend transgressors, to subvert
those things which are taught in the word of God, they,
who are in authority under him, ought first to dissuade
him; if they prevail not, and that he now bears him-
self not as a prince but as an enemy, and seeks to vio-
late privileges and rights granted to inferior magistrates
or commonalties, it is the part of pious magistrates,
imploring first the assistance of God, rather to try all
ways and means, than to betray the flock of Christ to
such an enemy of God : for they also are to this end
ordained, that they may defend the people of God, and
maintain those things which are good and just. For
to have supreme power lessens not the evil committed
by that power, but makes it the less tolerable, by how
much the more generally hurtful. Then certainly the
less tolerable, the more unpardonably to be punished.”
“Of Peter Martyr we have spoke before.
* Paraeus in Rom. xiii.
‘Quorum est constituere magistratus, &c. “They
whose part is to set up magistrates, may restrain them
also from outrageous deeds, or pull them down; but
all magistrates are set up either by parliament or by
electors, or by other magistrates; they, therefore, who
exalted them may lawfully degrade and punish them.”
“Of the Scots divines I need not mention others than
the famousest among them, Knox, and his fellow-la-
bourers in the reformation of Scotland; whose large
treatise on this subject defend the same opinion. To
cite them sufficiently, were to insert their whole books,
written purposely on this argument. “Knox's Ap-
peal;” and to the reader; where he promises in a post-
script, that the book which he intended to set forth,
called, “The Second Blast of the Trumpet,” should
maintain more at large, that the same men most justly
may depose and punish him whom unadvisedly they
have elected, notwithstanding birth, succession, or any
oath of allegiance. Among our own divines, Cart-
wright and Fenner, two of the learnedest, may in rea-
son satisfy us what was held by the rest. Fenner in
his book of Theology maintaining, that they who have
power, that is to say, a parliament, may either by fair
means or by force depose a tyrant, whom he defines to
be him, that wilfully breaks all or the principal con-
ditions made between him and the commonwealth.
Fen. Sac. Theolog. c. 13. And Cartwright in a pre-
fixed epistle testifies his approbation of the whole book.
244
THE TENURE OF KINGS AND MAGISTRATES.
“Gilby de Obedientiá, p. 25 and 105.
“Kings have their authority of the people, who may
upon occasion reassume it to themselves.”
‘England's Complaint against the Canons.
“The people may kill wicked princes as monsters
and cruel beasts.”
‘Christopher Goodman of Obedience.
“When kings or rulers become blasphemers of God,
oppressors and murderers of their subjects, they ought
no more to be accounted kings or lawful magistrates,
but as private men to be examined, accused, and con-
demned and punished by the law of God, and being
convicted and punished by that law, it is not man's
but God's doing.” C. x. p. 139.
“By the civil laws, a fool or idiot born, and so
proved, shall lose the lands and inheritance whereto he
is born, because he is not able to use them aright: and
especially ought in no case be suffered to have the go-
vernment of a whole nation ; but there is no such evil
can come to the commonwealth by fools and idiots, as
doth by the rage and fury of ungodly rulers; such,
therefore, being without God, ought to have no author-
ity over God's people, who by his word requireth the
contrary.” C. xi. p. 143, 144.
“No person is exempt by any law of God from this
punishment: be he king, queen, or emperor, he must
ſ die the death ; for God hath not placed them above
| others, to transgress his laws as they list, but to be
} subject to them as well as others; and if they be sub-
ject to his laws, then to the punishment also, so much
the more as their example is more dangerous.” C. xiii.
p. 184.
“When magistrates cease to do their duty, the peo-
ple are as it were without magistrates, yea, worse, and
then God giveth the sword into the people's hand, and
he himself is become immediately their head.” P. 185.
“If princes do right, and keep promise with you,
then do you owe to them all humble obedience; if not,
ye are discharged, and your study ought to be in this
case how ye may depose and punish according to the
law such rebels against God, and oppressors of their
country.” P. 190.
* This Goodman was a minister of the English
church at Geneva, as Dudley Fenner was at Middle-
burgh, or some other place in that country. These
were the pastors of those saints and confessors, who,
flying from the bloody persecution of Queen Mary,
gathered up at length their scattered members into
many congregations; whereof some in upper, some in
lower Germany, part of them settled at Geneva; where
this author having preached on this subject to the great
liking of certain learned and godly men who heard him,
was by them sundry times and with much instance re-
quired to write more fully on that point. Who thereupon
took it in hand, and conferring with the best learned
in those parts, (among whom Calvin was them living
in the same city,) with their special approbation he
published this treatise, aiming principally, as is testi-
fied by Whittingham in the preface, that his brethren
of England, the protestants, might be persuaded in
the truth of that doctrine concerning obedience to ma-
Whittingham in Prefat.
‘These were the true protestant divines of England,
gistrates.
our fathers in the faith we hold; this was their sense,
who for so many years labouring under prelacy, through
all storms and persecutions kept religion from extin-
guishing ; and delivered it pure to us, till there arose
a covetous and ambitious generation of divines, (for di-
vines they call themselves () who, feigning on a sudden
to be new converts and proselytes from episcopacy, un-
der which they had long temporised, opened their mouths
at length, in shew against pluralities and prelacy, but
with intent to swallow them down both ; gorging them-
selves like harpies on those simonious places and pre-
ferments of their outed predecessors, as the quarry for
which they hunted, not to plurality only but to multi-
plicity; for possessing which they had accused them
their brethren, and aspiring under another title to the
same authority and usurpation over the consciences of
all men.
‘Of this faction, diverse reverend and learned divines
(as they are styled in the philactery of their own title-
page) pleading the lawfulness of defensive arms against
the king, in a treatise called “Scripture and Reason,”
seem in words to disclaim utterly the deposing of a
king ; but both the Scripture, and the reasons which
they use, draw consequences after them, which, without
their bidding, conclude it lawful. For if by Scripture,
and by that especially to the Romans, which they most
insist upon, kings, doing that which is contrary to
Saint Paul's definition of a magistrate, may be resisted,
they may altogether with as much force of consequence
be deposed or punished. And if by reason the unjust
authority of kings “ may be forfeited in part, and his
power be reassumed in part, either by the parliament
or people, for the case in hazard and the present neces-
sity,” as they affirm, p. 34, there can no scripture be
alleged, no imaginable reason given, that necessity
continuing, as it may always, and they in all prudence
and their duty may take upon them to foresee it, why
in such a case they may not finally amerce him with
the loss of his kingdom, of whose amendment they
have no hope. And if one wicked action persisted in
against religion, laws, and liberties, may warrant us to
thus much in part, why may not forty times as many
tyrannies, by him committed, warrant us to proceed on
restraining him, till the restraint become total 2 For
the ways of justice are exactest proportion; if for one
trespass of a king it require so much remedy or satis-
faction, then for twenty more as heinous crimes, it re-
quires of him twenty-fold; and so proportionably, till
it come to what is utmost among men. If in these
proceedings against their king they may not finish, by
the usual course of justice, what they have begun, they
could not lawfully begin at all. For this golden rule
of justice and morality, as well as of arithmetic, out of
three terms which they admit, will as certainly and
unavoidably bring out the fourth, as any problem that
ever Euclid or Apollonius made good by demonstration.
‘And if the parliament, being undeposable but by
THE TENURE OF KINGS AND MAGISTRATES.
245,
themselves, as is affirmed, p. 37, 38, might for his
whole life, if they saw cause, take all power, authority,
and the sword out of his hand, which in effect is to
unmagistrate him, why might they not, being then
themselves the sole magistrates in force, proceed to
punish him, who, being lawfully deprived of all things
that define a magistrate, can be now no magistrate to
be degraded lower, but an offender to be punished.
Lastly, whom they may deſy, and meet in battle, why
may they not as well prosecute by justice P For lawful
war is but the execution of justice against them who
refuse law. Among whom if it be lawful (as they
deny not, p. 19, 20,) to slay the king himself coming
in front at his own peril, wherefore may not justice do
that intendedly, which the chance of a deſensive war
might without blame have done casually, may pur-
posely, if there it find him among the rest? They ask,
p. 19, “By what rule of conscience or God, a state is
bound to sacrifice religion, laws, and liberties, rather
than a prince defending such as subvert them, should
come in hazard of his life.” And I ask by what con-
science, or divinity, or law, Or reason, a state is bound
to leave all these sacred concernments under a per-
petual hazard and extremity of danger, rather than cut
off a wicked prince, who sits plotting day and night to
subvert...them.… They tell us, that the law of nature
justifies any man to defend himself, even against the
king in person: let them shew us then, why the same
law may not justify much more a state or whole people,
to do justice upon him, against whom each private
man may lawfully defend himself; seeing all kind of
justice done is a defence to good men, as well as a
punishment to bad ; and justice done upon a tyrant is
no more but the necessary self-defence of a whole com-
monwealth. To war upon a king, that his instruments
may be brought to condigm punishment, and thereafter
to punish them the instruments, and not to spare only,
but to defend and honour him the author, is the strangest
piece of justice to be called christian, and the strangest
piece of reason to be called human, that by men of re-
werence and learning, as their style imports them, ever
yet was vented. They maintain in the third and fourth
section, that a judge or inferior magistrate is anointed
of God, is his minister, hath the sword in his hand, is
to be obeyed by St. Peter's rule, as well as the supreme,
and without difference any where expressed : and yet
will have us fight against the supreme till he remove
and punish the inferior magistrate (for such were great-
est delinquents); whenas by Scripture, and by reason,
there can no more authority be shewn to resist the one
than the other; and altogether as much, to punish or
depose the supreme himself, as to make war upon him,
till he punish or deliver up his inferior magistrates,
whom in the same terms we are commanded to obey,
and not to resist. Thus while they, in a cautious line
or two here and there stuffed in, are only verbal against
the pulling down or punishing of tyrants, all the Scrip-
ture and the reason, which they bring, is in every leaf
direct and rational, to infer it altogether as lawful, as
to resist them. And yet in all their sermons, as hath
by others been well noted, they went much further.
For divines, if we observe them, have their postures,
and their motions no less expertly, and with no less
variety, than they that practise ſeats in the Artillery-
ground. Sometimes they seem furiously to march on,
and presently march counter; by and by they stand,
and then retreat; or iſ need be can face about, or
wheel in a whole body, with that cunning and dex-
terity as is almost unperceivable; to wind themselves
by shifting ground into places of more advantage.
And providence only must be the drum, providence the
word of command, that calls them from above, but
always to some larger benefice, or acts them into such
or such figures and promotions. At their turns and
doublings no men readier, to the right, or to the left;
for it is their turns which they serve chiefly; herein only
singular, that with them there is no certain hand right
or left, but as their own commodity thinks best to call
it. But if there come a truth to be defended, which to
them and their interest of this world seems not so pro-
fitable, straight these nimble motionists can find no
even legs to stand upon ; and are no more of use to
reformation thoroughly performed, and not superfi-
cially, or to the advancement of truth, (which among
mortal men is always in her progress,) than if on a
sudden they were struck maim and crippled. Which
the better to conceal, or the more to countenance by a
general conformity to their own limping, they would
have Scripture, they would have reason also made to
halt with them for conspany; and would put us off
with impotent conclusions, lame and shorter than the
premises. In this posture they seem to stand with
great zeal and confidence on the wall of Sion; but like
Jebusites, not like Israelites, or Levites: blind also
as well as lame, they discern not David from Adoni-
bezec : but cry him up for the Lord's anointed, whose
thumbs and great toes not long before they had cut
off upon their pulpit cushions. Therefore he who is
our only king, the root of David, and whose kingdom
is eternal righteousness, with all those that war
under him, whose happiness and final hopes are laid
up in that only just and rightful kingdom, (which we
pray incessantly may come soon, and in so praying
wish hasty ruin and destruction to all tyrants,) even he
our immortal King, and all that love him, must of ne-
cessity have in abomination these blind and lame de-
fenders of Jerusalem; as the soul of David hated them,
and forbid them entrance into God's house, and his
But as to those before them, which I cited first
(and with an easy search, for many more might be
added) as they there stand, without more in number,
being the best and chief of protestant divines, we may
follow them for faithful guides, and without doubting
may receive them, as witnesses abundant of what we
here affirm concerning tyrants. And indeed I find it
generally the clear and positive determination of them
all, (not prelatical, or of this late faction subprelatical,)
who have written on this argument; that to do justice
on a lawless king, is to a private man unlawful; to an
inferior magistrate lawful : or if they were divided in
opinion, yet greater than these here alleged, or of more
authority in the church, there can be none produced
() W In.
246
THE TENURE OF KINGs AND MAGISTRATES.
If any one shall go about by bringing other testimonies
to disable these, or by bringing these against themselves
in other cited passages of their books, he will not only
fail to make good that false and impudent assertion of
those mutinous ministers, that the deposing and pu-
nishing of a king or tyrant “is against the constant
judgment of all protestant divines,” it being quite the
contrary; but will prove rather what perhaps he in-
tended not, that the judgment of divines, if it be so
various and inconstant to itself, is not considerable, or
to be esteemed at all. Ere which be yielded, as I hope
it never will, these ignorant assertors in their own art
will have proved themselves more and more, mot to be
protestant divines, whose constant judgment in this
point they have so audaciously belied, but rather to be
a pack of hungry church-wolves, who in the steps of
Simon Magus their father following the hot scent of
double livings and pluralities, advowsons, donatives,
inductions, and augmentations, though uncalled to the
flock of Christ, but by the mere suggestion of their
bellies, like those priests of Bel, whose pranks Daniel
found out; have got possession, or rather seized upon
the pulpit, as the strong hold and fortress of their sedi-
tion and rebellion against the civil magistrate. Whose
friendly and victorious hand having rescued them from
the bishops their insulting lords, fed them plenteously,
both in public and in private, raised them to be high
and rich of poor and base; only suffered not their
covetousness and fierce ambition (which as the pit that
sent out their fellow-locusts hath been ever bottomless
and boundless) to interpose in all things, and over all
persons, their impetuous ignorance and importunity.’
O B S E R V A T I O N S
ON
THE ARTICLES OF PEACE,
BETWEEN JAMES EARL OF ORMOND FOR KING CHARLES THE FIRST ON THE ONE HAND, AND THE IRISH REBELS AND PAPISTS ON
THE OTHER HAND :
AND ON A LETTER SENT BY ORMOND TO COLONEL JONES, GOVERNOR OF DUBLIN. AND A REPRESENTATION OF THE SCOTS PRESB Y-
- TERY AT BELFAST IN IRELAND,
To which the said Articles, Letter, with Colonel Jones's Answer to it, and Representation, &c. are prefixed.
[FIRST PUBLISHED 1648-9.]
A PROCLAMATION.
ORMOND,
WHEREAs articles of peace are made, concluded, ac-
corded, and agreed upon, by and between us, James
lord marquis of Ormond, lord lieutenant-general, and
general governor of his majesty's kingdom of Ireland,
by virtue of the authority wherewith we are intrusted,
for, and on the behalf of his most excellent majesty on
the one part, and the general assembly of the Roman
Catholics of the said kingdom, for, and on the behalf
of his majesty's Roman Catholic subjects of the same,
on the other part; a true copy of which articles of peace
are hereunto annexed: we the lord lieutenant do, by
this proclamation, in his majesty’s name publish the
same, and do in his majesty's name strictly charge and
command all his majesty's subjects, and all others in-
habiting or residing within his majesty's said kingdom
of Ireland, to take notice thereof, and to render due
obedience to the same in all the parts thereof.
And as his majesty hath been induced to this peace,
out of a deep sense of the miseries and calamities
brought upon this his kingdom and people, and out of
hope conceived by his majesty, that it may prevent the
further effusion of his subjects’ blood, redeem them out
of all the miseries and calamities, under which they now
suffer, restore them to all quietness and happiness under
his majesty's most gracious government, deliver the
kingdom in general from those slaughters, depredations,
rapines, and spoils, which always accompany a war,
encourage the subjects and others with comfort to be-
take themselves to trade, traffic, commerce, manufac-
ture, and all other things, which uninterrupted may in-
crease the wealth and strength of the kingdom, beget
in all his majesty's subjects of this kingdom a perfect
unity amongst themselves, after the too long continued
division amongst them : so his majesty assures himself,
that all his subjects of this his kingdom (duly consider-
ing the great and inestimable benefits which they may
find in this peace) will with all duty render due obedi-
ence thereunto. And we, in his majesty's name, do
hereby declare, That all persons, so rendering due
obedience to the said peace, shall be protected, cherished,
countenanced, and supported by his majesty, and his
royal authority, according to the true intent and mean-
ing of the said articles of peace.
GOD SAVE THE KING.
Given at our Castle at Kil-
kenny, Jan. 17, 164S.
Articles of peace, made, concluded, accorded, and
agreed upon, by and between his earcellency James
!ord marquis of Ormond, lord lieutenant-general,
and general of his majesty's kingdom of Ireland, for,
and on the behalf of his most excellent majesty, by
virtue of the authority wherewith the said lord lieu-
tenant is intrusted, on the one part : and the general
assembly of Roman Catholics of the said kingdom,
for and on the behalf of his majesty's Roman
Catholic subjects of the same, on the other part.
His majesty's Roman Catholic subjects, as thereunto
bound by allegiance, duty, and nature, do most humbly
and freely acknowledge and recognise their sovereign
lord king Charles, to be lawful and undoubted king of
this kingdom of Ireland, and other his highness' realms
and dominions: and his majesty's said Roman Catholic
subjects, apprehending with a deep sense the sad con-
dition whereunto his majesty is reduced, as a further
testiniony of their loyalty do declare, that they and
their posterity for ever, to the utmost of their power,
248
OBSERVATIONS ON THE ARTICLES OF PEACE
even to the expense of their blood and fortunes, will
maintain and uphold his majesty, his heirs and lawful
successors, their rights, prerogatives, government, and
authority, and thereunto freely and heartily will render
all due obedience.
Of which faithful and loyal recognition and declara-
tion, so seasonably made by the said Roman Catholics,
his majesty is graciously pleased to accept, and accord-
ingly to own them his loyal and dutiful subjects: and
is further graciously pleased, to extend unto them the
following graces and securities.
I. IMPRIM is, it is concluded, accorded, and agreed
upon, by and between the said lord lieutenant, for, and
on the behalf of his most excellent majesty, and the
said general assembly, for, and on the behalf of the
said Roman Catholic subjects ; and his majesty is
graciously pleased, That it shall be enacted by act to
be passed in the next parliament to be held in this
kingdom, that all and every the professors of the Ro-
man Catholic religion, within the said kingdom, shall
be free and exempt from all mulcts, penalties, restraints,
and inhibitions, that are or may be imposed upon them
by any law, statute, usage, or custom whatsoever, for,
or concerning the free exercise of the Roman Catholic
religion: and that it shall be likewise enacted, That
the said Roman Catholics, or any of them, shall not be
questioned or molested in their persons, goods, or estates,
for any matter or cause whatsoever, for, concerning, or
by reason of the free exercise of their religion, by vir-
tue of any power, authority, statute, law, or usage what-
soever : and that it shall be further enacted, That no
Roman Catholic in this kingdom shall be compelled
to exercise any religion, form of devotion, or divine
service, other than such as shall be agreeable to their
conscience ; and that they shall not be prejudiced or
molested in their persons, goods, or estates, for not ob-
serving, using, or, hearing the book of common prayer,
or any other form of devotion or divine service, by
virtue of any colour or statute made in the second year
of queen Elizabeth, or by virtue or colour of any other
law, declaration of law, statute, custom, or usage what-
soever, made or declared, or to be made or declared :
and that it shall be further enacted, that the professors
of the Roman Catholic religion, or any of them, be not
bound or obliged to take the oath, commonly called
the oath of Supremacy, expressed in the statute of 2
Elizabeth, c. 1, or in any other statute or statutes: and
that the said oath shall not be tendered unto them, and
that the refusal of the said oath shall not redound to
the prejudice of them, or any of them, they taking the
oath of allegiance in haec verba, viz. “I A. B. do here-
by acknowledge, profess, testify, and declare in my
conscience, before God and the world, that our sove-
reign lord king Charles is lawful and rightful king of
this realm, and of other his majesty's dominions and
countries; and I will bear faith and true allegiance to
his majesty, and his heirs and successors, and him and
them will defend to the uttermost of my power against
all conspiracies and attempts whatsoever, which shall
be made against his or their crown and dignity; and
do my best endeavour to disclose and make known to
his majesty, his heirs and successors, or to the lord de-
puty, or other his majesty's chief governor or governors
for the time being, all treason or traiterous conspira-
cies, which I shall know or hear to be intended against
his majesty, or any of them : and I do make this re-
cognition and acknowledgment, heartily, willingly,
and truly, upon the true faith of a Christian ; so help
me God,” &c. Nevertheless, the said lord lieutenant
doth not hereby intend, that any thing in these conces-
sions contained shall extend, or be construed to extend,
to the granting of churches, church-livings, or the ex-
ercise of jurisdiction, the authority of the said lord
lieutenant not extending so far; yet the said lord lieu-
tenant is authorized to give the said Roman Catholics
full assurance, as hereby the said lord lieutenant doth
give unto the said Roman Catholics full assurance,
that they or any of them shall not be molested in
the possession which they have at present of the
churches or church-livings, or of the exercise of their
respective jurisdictions, as they now exercise the same,
until such time as his majesty, upon a full considera-
tion of the desires of the said Roman Catholics in a
free parliament to be held in this kingdom, shall de-
clare his further pleasure.
II. Item, It is concluded, accorded, and agreed
upon, by and between the said parties, and his majesty
is further graciously pleased, that a free parliament
shall be held in this kingdom within six months after
the date of these articles of peace, or as soon after as
Thomas lord viscount Dillon of Costologh, lord presi-
dent of Connaght, Donnogh lord viscount Muskerry,
Francis lord baron of Athumry, Alexander Mac-Donnel
esquire, sir Lucas Dillon knight, sir Nicholas Plunket
knight, sir Richard Barnwall baronet, Jeffery Brown,
Domnogh O Callaghan, Tyrlah O Neile, Miles Reily,
and Gerrald Fennell, esquires, or the major part of
them, will desire the same, so that by possibility it may
be held; and that in the mean time, and until the ar-
ticles of these presents, agreed to be passed in parlia-
ment, be accordingly passed, the same shall be inviola-
bly observed as to the matters therein contained, as if
they were enacted in parliament: and that in case a
parliament be not called and held in this kingdom
within two years next after the date of these articles
of peace, then his majesty's lord lieutenant, or other
his majesty's chief governor or governors of this king-
dom for the time being, will, at the request of the said
Thomas lord viscount Dillon of Costologh, lord pre-
sident of Connaght, Donnogh lord viscount Muskerry,
Francis lord baron of Athunry, Alexander Mac-Donnel
esquire, sir Lucas Dillon knight, sir Nicholas Plunket
knight, sir Richard Barnwall baronet, Jeffery Brown,
Donnogh O Callaghan, Tyrlah O'Neile, Miles Reily,
and Gerrald Fennell, esquires, or the major part of
them, call a general assembly of the lords and com-
mons of this kingdom, to attend upon the said lord
lieutenant, or other his majesty's chief governor or go-
vernors of this kingdom for the time being, in such
convenient pla e, for the better settling of the affairs of
the kingdom. And it is further concluded, accorded,
and agreed upon, by and between the said parties, that
BETWEEN THE EARL OF ORMOND AND THE IRISH.
249
all matters, that by these articles are agreed upon to be
passed in parliament, shall be transmitted into Eng-
land, according to the usual form, to be passed in the
said prliament, and that the said acts so agreed upon,
and so to be passed, shall receive no disjunction or
alteration here in England ; provided that nothing
shall be concluded by both or either of the said houses
of parliament, which may bring prejudice to any of
his majesty's protestant party, or their adherents, or to
his majesty's Roman Catholic subjects, or their adhe-
rents, other than such things as upon this treaty are
concluded to be done, or such things as may be proper
for the committee of privileges of either or both houses
to take cognizance of, as in such cases heretofore hath
been accustomed; and other than such matters as his
majesty will be graciously pleased to declare his fur-
ther pleasure in, to be passed in parliament for the
satisfaction of his subjects; and other than such things
as shall be propounded to either or both houses by his
majesty's lord lieutenant or other chief governor or
governors of this kingdom for the time being, during
the said parliament, for the advancement of his majes-
ty's service, and the peace of the kingdom; which clause
is to admit no construction which may trench upon the
articles of peace or any of them; and that both houses
of parliament may consider what they shall think con-
venient touching the repeal or suspension of the statute,
commonly called Poyning's Act, intitled, An Act that
no parliament be holden in that land, until the Acts be
certified into England.
III. Item, It is further concluded, accorded, and
agreed upon, by and between the said parties, and his
majesty is graciously pleased, that all acts, ordinances,
and orders, made by both or either houses of par-
liament, to the blemish, dishonour, or prejudice of his
majesty's Roman Catholic subjects of this kingdom, or
any of them, since the 7th August 1641, shall be va-
cated; and that the same, and all exemplifications and
other acts which continue the memory of them, be
made void by act to be passed in the next parliament
to be held in this kingdom ; and that in the mean time
the said acts or ordinances, or any of them, shall be no
prejudice to the said Roman Catholics, or any of them.
IV. Item, It is also concluded, and agreed upon,
and his majesty is likewise graciously pleased, that all
indictments, attainders, outlawries in this kingdom,
and all the processes and other proceedings thereupon,
and all letters patents, grants, leases, customs, bonds,
recognizances, and all records, act or acts, office or
offices, inquisitions, and all other things depending
upon, or taken by reason of the said indictments, at-
tainders, or outlawries, since the 7th day of August,
1641, in prejudice of the said Catholics, their heirs, ex-
ecutors, administrators, or assigns, or any of them, or:
the widows of them, or any of them, shall be vacated
and made void in such sort as no memory shall remain
thereof, to the blemish, dishonour, or prejudice of the
said Catholics, their heirs, executors, administrators, or
assigns, or any of them ; or the widows of them, or any
of them, ; and that to be done when the said Thomas
lord viscount Dillon of Costologh, lord president of
Connaght, Donnogh lord viscount Muskerry, Francis
lord baron of Athunry, Alexander Mac-Donnel esquire,
sir Lucas Dillon knight, sir Nicholas Plunket knight,
sir Richard Barnwall baronet, Jeffery Brown, Donnogh
O Caliaghan, Tyrlah O Neal, Miles Reilie, and Ger-
rald Fennell, esquires, or the major part of them, shall
desire the same, so that by possibility it may be done :
and in the mean time, that no such indictments, attain-
ders, outlawries, processes, or any other proceedings
thereupon, or any letters patents, grants, leases, custo-
diums, bonds, recognizances, or any record or acts,
office or offices, inquisitions, or any other thing depend-
ing upon, or by reason of the said indictments, attain-
ders, or outlawries, shall in any sort prejudice the said
Roman Catholics, or any of them, but that they and
every of them shall be forthwith, upon perſection of
these articles, restored to their respective possessions
and hereditaments respectively; provided, that no man
shall be questioned, by reason hereof, for mesne rates
or wastes, saving wilful wastes committed after the first
day of May last past.
V. Item, It is likewise concluded, accorded, and
agreed; and his majesty is graciously pleased, that as
soon as possible may be, all impediments, which may
hinder the said Roman Catholics to sit or vote in the
next intended parliament, or to choose, or to be chosen,
knights and burgesses, to sit or vote there, shall be re-
moved, and that before the said parliament.
VI. Item, It is concluded, accorded, and agreed
upon, and his majesty is further graciously pleased,
that all debts shall remain as they were upon the
twenty-third of October, 1641. Notwithstanding any
disposition made or to be made, by virtue or colour of
any attainder, outlawry, fugacy, or other forfeiture;
and that no disposition or grant made, or to be made
of any such debts, by virtue of any attainder, outlawry,
fugacy, or other forfeiture, shall be of force; and this
to be passed as an act in the next parliament.
VII. Item, It is further concluded, accorded, and
agreed upon, and his majesty is graciously pleased, that
for the securing of the estates or reputed estates of the
lords, knights, gentlemen, and freeholders, or reputed
freeholders, as well of Connaght and county of Clare,
or country of Thomond, as of the counties of Limerick
and Tipperary, the same to be secured by act of par-
liament, according to the intent of the twenty-fifth
article of the graces granted in the fourth year of his
majesty's reign, the tenour whereof, for so much as
concerneth the same, doth ensue in these words, viz.
We are graciously pleased, that for the inhabitants of
Connaght and country of Thomond and county of
Clare, that their several estates shall be confirmed unto
them and their heirs against us, and our heirs and suc-
cessors, by act to be passed in the next parliament to
be holden in Ireland, to the end the same may never
hereafter be brought into any further question by us,
or our heirs and successors. In which act of parliament
so to be passed, you are to take care, that all tenures
in capite, and all rents and services as are now due,
which ought to be answered unto us out of the saic.
lands and premises, by any letters patent passed thereof
250
OBSERVATIONS ON THE ARTICLES OF PEACE
since the first year of king Henry VIII, or found by
any office taken from the said first year of king Henry
VIII, until the twenty-first of July 1645, whereby our
late dear father, or any his predecessors, actually re-
ceived any profit by wardship, liveries, primer-seisins,
mesne rates, ousterlemains, or fines of alienation with-
out license, be again reserved unto us, our heirs and
successors, and all the rest of the premises to be holden
of our castle of Athlone by knight's service, according
to our said late father's letters, notwithstanding any
tenures in capite found for us by office, since the
twenty-first of July 1615, and not appearing in any
such letters patent, or offices; within which rule his
majesty is likewise graciously pleased, that the said
lands in the counties of Limerick and Tipperary be
included, but to be held by such rents and tenures only,
as they were in the fourth year of his majesty's reign;
provided always, that the said lords, knights, gentle-
men, and freeholders of the said province of Connaght,
county of Clare, and country of Thomond, and counties
of Tipperary and Limerick, shall have and enjoy the
full benefit of such composition and agreement which
shall be made with his most excellent majesty, for the
court of wards, tenures, respites, and issues of homage,
any clause in this article to the contrary notwithstand-
ing. And as for the lands within the counties of Kil-
kenny and Wickloe, unto which his majesty was in-
titled by offices, taken or found in the time of the earl
of Strafford's government in this kingdom, his majesty
is further graciously pleased, that the state thereof shall
be considered in the next intended parliament, where
his majesty will assent unto that which shall be just
and honourable ; and that the like act of limitation of
his majesty's titles, for the security of the estates of his
subjects of this kingdom, be passed in the said parlia-
ment, as was enacted in the twenty-first year of his
late majesty king James his reign in England.
VIII. Item, It is further concluded, accorded, and
agreed upon, and his majesty is further graciously
pleased, that all incapacities imposed upon the natives
of this kingdom or any of them, as natives, by any act
of parliament, provisoes in patents or otherwise, be
taken away by act to be passed in the said parliament;
and that they may be enabled to erect one or more inns
of court in or near the city of Dublin or elsewhere, as
shall be thought fit by his majesty's lord lieutenant, or
other chief governor or governors of this kingdom for
the time being; and in case the said inns of court shall
be erected before the first day of the next parliament,
then the same shall be in such places as his majesty's
lord lieutenants or other chief governor or governors of
this kingdom for the time being, by and with the ad-
vice and consent of the said Thomas lord viscount
Dillon of Costologh, lord president of Connaght, Don-
nogh lord viscount Muskerry, Francis lord baron of
Athumry, Alexander Mac-Donnell esquire, sir Lucas
Dillon knight, sir Nicholas Plunket knight, sir Richard
Barnwall baronet, Jeffery Browne, Donnogh O Cal-
laghan, Tyrlah O'Neile, Miles Reily, Gerrald Fennell,
esquires, or any seven or more of them, shall think fit;
and that such students, natives of this kingdom, as shall
be therein, may take and receive the usual degrees ac-
customed in any inns of court, they taking the ensuing
oath, viz. “I A, B. do hereby acknowledge, profess,
testify, and declare in my conscience before God and
the world, that our sovereign lord king Charles is law-
ful and rightful king of this realm, and of other his
majesty's dominions and countries; and I will bear
faith and true allegiance to his majesty, and his heirs
and successors, and him and them will defend to the
utmost of my power against all conspiracies and at-
tempts whatsoever, which shall be made against his or
their crown and dignity; and do my best endeavour to
disclose and make known to his majesty, his heirs and
successors, or to the lord deputy, or other his majesty's
chief governor or governors for the time being, all
treason or traiterous conspiracies, which I shall know
or hear to be intended against his majesty or any of
them. And I do here make this recognition and ac-
knowledgment heartily, willingly, and truly, upon the
true faith of a Christian ; so help me God,” &c. And
his majesty is further graciously pleased, that his ma-
jesty's Roman Catholic subjects may erect and keep
free schools for education of youths in this kingdom,
any law or statute to the contrary notwithstanding ;
and that all the matters assented unto in this article be
passed as acts of parliament in the said next parlia-
ment.
IX. Item, It is further concluded, accorded, and
agreed upon, by and between the said parties, and his
majesty is graciously pleased, that places of command,
honour, profit, and trust, in his majesty's armies in this
kingdom, shall be, upon perfection of these articles,
actually and by particular instances conferred upon his
Roman Catholic subjects of this kingdom; and that
upon the distribution, conferring, and disposing of the
places of command, honour, profit, and trust, in his
majesty's armies in this kingdom, for the future no
difference shall be made between the said Roman
Catholics, and other his majesty's subjects; but that
such distribution shall be made with equal indifferency
according to their respective merits and abilities; and
that all his majesty's subjects of this kingdom, as well
Roman Catholics as others, may, for his majesty's ser-
vice and their own security, arm themselves the best
they may, wherein they shall have all fitting encou-
ragement. And it is further concluded, accorded, and
agreed upon, by and between the said parties, and his
majesty is further graciously pleased, that places of
command, honour, profit, and trust, in the civil go-
vernment in this kingdom, shall be, upon passing of
the bills in these articles mentioned in the next parlia-
ment, actually and by particular instances conferred
upon his majesty's Roman Catholic subjects of this
kingdom; and that in the distribution, conferring, and
disposal of the places of command, honour, profit, and
trust, in the civil government, for the future no differ-
ence shall be made between the said Roman Catholics,
and other his majesty's subjects, but that such distri-
bution shall be made with equal indifferency, according
to their respective merits and abilities; and that in the
distribution of ministerial offices or places, which now
BETWEEN THE EARL OF ORMOND AND THE IRISH.
251
are, or hereafter shall be void in this kingdom, equality
shall be used to the Roman Catholic natives of this
kingdom, as to other his majesty's subjects; and that
the command of forts, castles, garrison-towns, and
other places of importance, of this kingdom, shall be
conferred upon his majesty's Roman Catholic subjects
of this kingdom, upon perfection of these articles,
actually and by particular instances; and that in the
distribution, conferring, and disposal of the forts,
castles, garrison-towns, and other places of importance
in this kingdom, no difference shall be made between
his majesty's Roman Catholic subjects of this king-
dom, and other his majesty's subjects, but that such
distribution shall be made with equal indifferency, ac-
cording to their respective merits and abilities; and that
until full settlement in parliament, fifteen thousand foot
and two thousand and five hundred horse of the Roman
Catholics of this kingdom shall be of the standing army
of this kingdom; and that until full settlement in par-
liament as aforesaid, the said lord lieutenant, or other
chief governor or governors of this kingdom for the time
being, and the said Thomas lord viscount Dillon of
Costologh, lord president of Connaght, Donnogh lord
viscount Muskerry, Francis lord baron of Athumry,
Alexander Mac-Donnel esquire, sir Lucas Dillon
knight, sir Nicholas Plunket knight, sir Richard Barn-
wall baronet, Jeffery Browne, Domnogh O Callaghan,
Tyrlah O Neile, Miles Reily, and Gerrald Fennel,
esquires, or any seven or more of them, the said Thomas
lord viscount Dillon of Costologh, lord president of
Connaght, Donnogh lord viscount Muskerry, Francis
lord baron of Athunry, Alexander Mac-Donnel esquire,
sir Lucas Dillon kt. Sir Nicholas Plunket, kt. Sir
Richard Barnwall baronet, Jeffery Browne, Donnogh
O Callaghan, Tyrlah O Neile, Miles Reily, and Ger-
rald Fennell, esquires, shall diminish or add unto the
said number, as they shall see cause from time to time.
X. Item, It is further concluded, accorded, and
agreed upon, by and between the said parties, and his
majesty is further graciously pleased, that his majesty
will accept of the yearly rent, or annual sum of twelve
thousand pounds sterling, to be applotted with indiffer-
ency and equality, and consented to be paid to his ma-
jesty, his heirs and successors, in parliament, for and in
lieu of the court of wards in this kingdom, tenures in
capite, common knight's service, and all other tenures
within the cognizance of that court, and for and in
lieu of all wardships, primer-seisins, fines, ousterle-
mains, liveries, intrusions, alienations, mesne rates, re-
leases, and all other profits, within the cognizance of
the said court, or incident to the said tenures, or any
of them, or fines to accrue to his majesty by reason of
the said tenures or any of them, and for and in lieu of
respites and issues of homage and fines for the same.
And the said yearly rent being so applotted and con-
sented unto in parliament as aforesaid, then a bill is to
be agreed on in the said parliament, to be passed as
an act for the securing of the said yearly rent, or an-
nual sum of twelve thousand pounds, to be applotted as
aforesaid, and for the extinction and taking away of the
said court, and other matters aforesaid in this article
contained. And it is further agreed, that reasonable
compositions shall be accepted for wardships since the
twenty-third of October 1641, and already granted;
and that no wardships fallen and not granted, or that
shall fall, shall be passed until the success of this arti-
cle shall appear; and if his majesty be secured as
aforesaid, then all wardships fallen since the said
twenty-third of October, are to be included in the argu-
ment aforesaid, upon composition to be made with such
as have grants as aforesaid; which composition, to be
made with the grantees since the time aforesaid, is to
be left to indifferent persons, and the umpirage to the
said lord lieutenant.
XI. Item, It is further concluded, accorded, and
agreed upon, by and between the said parties, and his
majesty is further graciously pleased, that no noble-
man or peer of this realm, in parliament, shall be here-
after capable of more proxies than two, and that blank
proxies shall be hereafter totally disallowed; and that
if such noblemen or peers of this realm, as have no
estates in this kingdom, do not within five years, to
begin from the conclusion of these articles, purchase
in this kingdom as followeth, viz. a lord baron
200l. per annum, a lord viscount 400l. per annum,
and an earl 600l. per annum, a marquis 800l. per
annum, a duke 1000l. per annum, shall lose their
votes in parliament, until such time as they shall after-
wards acquire such estates respectively; and that none
be admitted in the house of commons, but such as shall
be estated and resident within this kingdom.
XII. Item, It is further concluded, accorded, and
agreed upon, by and between the said parties, and his
majesty is further graciously pleased, that as for and
concerning the independency of the parliament of Ire-
land on the parliament of England, his majesty will
leave both houses of parliament in this kingdom to
make such declaration therein as shall be agreeable to
the laws of the kingdom of Ireland.
XIII. Item, It is further concluded, and agreed
upon, by and between the said parties, and his majesty
is further graciously pleased, that the council-table
shall contain itself within its proper bounds, in handling
matters of state and weight fit for that place; amongst
which the patents of plantation, and the offices where-
upon those grants are founded, to be handled, as mat-
ters of state, and to be heard and determined by his
majesty's lord lieutenant, or other chief governor or
governors for the time being, and the council publicly
at the council-board, and not otherwise ; but titles be-
tween party and party, grown after these patents
granted, are to be left to the ordinary course of law;
and that the council-table do not hereafter intermeddle
with common business, that is within the cognizance
of the ordinary courts, nor with the altering of posses-
sions of lands, nor make, nor use, private orders, hear-
ings, or references concerning any such matter, nor
grant any injunction or order for stay of any suits in
any civil cause; and that parties grieved for or by rea-
son of any proceedings formerly had there may com-
mence their suits, and prosecute the same, in any of his
majesty's courts of justice or equity for remedy of their
252
OBSERVATIONS ON THE ARTICLES OF PEACE
pretended rights, without any restraint or interruption
from his majesty, or otherwise, by the chief governor
or governors and council of this kingdom ; and that
the proceedings in the respective precedency courts
shall be pursuant and according to his majesty's printed
book of instructions, and that they shall contain them-
selves within the limits prescribed by that book, when
the kingdom shall be restored to such a degree of quiet-
mess, as they be not necessarily enforced to exceed the
Så Ill C.
XIV. Item, It is further concluded, accorded, and
agreed upon, by and between the said parties, and his
majesty is further graciously pleased, that as for and
concerning one statute made in this kingdom, in the
eleventh year of the reign of queen Elizabeth, entitled,
An Act for staying of wool-flocks, tallow, and other
necessaries within this realm ; and another statute made
in the said kingdom, in the twelfth year of the reign of
the said queen, entitled, An Act
And one other statute made in the said kingdom, in
the 13th year of the reign of the said late queen, en-
titled, An exemplanation of the act made in a session
of this parliament for the staying of wool-flocks, tallow,
and other wares and commodities mentioned in the said
act, and certain articles added to the same act, all con-
cerning staple or native commodities of this kingdom,
shall be repealed, if it shall be so thought fit in the
parliament, (excepting for wool and wool-ſells,) and
that such indifferent persons as shall be agreed on by
the said lord lieutenant and the said Thomas lord vis-
count Dillon of Costologh, lord president of Connaght,
Domnogh lord viscount Muskerry, Francis lord baron
of Athumry, Alexander Mac-Donnel esquire, sir Lucas
Dillon knt. Sir Nicholas Plunket knt. Sir Richard
Barnwall baronet, Jeffery Browne, Domnogh O Calla-
ghan, Tyrlah O Neile, Miles Reily, and Gerrald Fen-
nell, esquires, or any seven or more of them, shall be
authorized by commission under the great seal, to mo-
derate and ascertain the rates of merchandize to be
exported or imported out of, or into this kingdom, as
they shall think fit.
XV. Item, It is concluded, accorded, and agreed, by
and between the said parties, and his majesty is gra-
ciously pleased, that all and every person and persons
within this kingdom, pretending to have suffered by
offices found of several countries, territories, lands,
and hereditaments in the province of Ulster, and other
provinces of this kingdom, in or since the first year of
king James his reign, or by attainders or forfeitures,
or by pretence and colour thereof, since the said first
year of king James, or by other acts depending on the
said offices, attainders, and forfeitures, may petition his
majesty in parliament for relief and redress; and if
after examination it shall appear to his majesty, the
said persons, or any of them, have been injured, then
his majesty will prescribe a course to repair the person
or persons so suffering, according to justice and honour.
XVI. Item, It is further concluded, accorded, and
agreed upon, by and between the said parties, and his
majesty is graciously pleased, that as to the particular
cases of Maurice lord viscount de Rupe and Fermoy,
Arthur lord viscount Iveagh, sir Edward Fitz-Ger-
rald of Cloanglish baronet, Charles Mac-Carty Reag,
Roger Moore, Anthony Mare, William Fitz-Gerrald,
Anthony Lince, John Lacy, Collo Mac-brien Mac-
Mahone, Daniel Castigmi, Edmond Fitz-Gerrald of
Ballimartir, Lucas Keating, Theobald Roch Fitz-
Miles, Thomas Fitz-Gerrald of the Valley, John
Bourke of Logmaske, Edmond Fitz-Gerrald of Balli-
mallo, James Fitz-William Gerrald of Glinane, and
Edward Sutton, they may petition his majesty in the
next parliament, whereupon his majesty will take such
consideration of them as shall be just and fit.
XVII. Item, It is likewise concluded, accorded, and
agreed upon, by and between the said parties, and his
majesty is graciously pleased, that the citizens, free-
men, burgesses, and former inhabitants of the city of
Cork, towns of Youghall and Downegarven, shall be
forth with, upon perfection of these articles, restored to
their respective possessions and estates in the said city
and towns respectively, where the same extends not to
the endangering of the said garrisons in the said city
and towns. In which case, so many of the said citi-
zens and inhabitants, as shall not be admitted to the
present poss ssion of their houses within the said city
and towns, shall be afforded a valuable annual rent for
the same, until settlement in parliament, at which time
they shall be restored to those their possessions. And
it is further agreed, and his majesty is graciously
pleased, that the said citizens, freemen, burgesses, and
inhabitants of the said city of Cork, and towns of
Youghall and Downegarven, respectively, s all be
enabled in convenient time before the next parliament
to be held in this kingdom, to choose and return bur-
gesses into the same parliament.
XVIII. Item, It is further concluded, accorded, and
agreed upon, by and between the said parties, and his
majesty is further graciously pleased, that an act of ob-
livion be passed in the next parliament, to extend to all
his majesty's subjects of this kingdom, and their adhe-
rents, of all treasons and offences, capital, criminal, and
personal, and other offences, of what nature, kind, or
quality soever, in such manner, as if such treasons or
offences had never been committed, perpetrated, or
done : that the said act do extend to the heirs, children,
kindred, executors, administrators, wives, widows, dow-
agers, or assigns of such of the said subjects and their
adherents, who died on, before, or since, the 23d of
October, 1641. That the said act do relate to the first
day of the next parliament; that the said act do extend
to all bodies politic and corporate, and their respective
successors, and unto all cities, boroughs, counties, ba-
ronies, hundreds, towns, villages, thitlings, and every
of them within this kingdom, for and concerning all
and every of the said offences, and any other offence or
offences in them, or any of them committed or done by
his majesty's said subjects, or their adherents, or any
of them, before, in, or since the 23d of October, 1641.
Provided this act shall not extend to be construed to
pardon any offence or offences, for which any person or
persons have been convicted or attainted on record at
BETWEEN THE EARL OF ORMOND AND THE IRISH.
253
any time before the 23d day of October, in the year of
our Lord 1641. That this act shall extend to piracies,
and all other offences committed upon the sea by his
majesty's said subjects, or their adherents, or any of
them; that in this act of oblivion, words of release, ac-
quittal, and discharge be inserted, that no person or
persons, bodies politic or corporate, counties, cities, bo-
roughs, baronies, hundreds, towns, villages, thitlings,
or any of them within this kingdom, included within
the said act, be troubled, impeached, sued, inquieted,
or molested, for or by reason of any offence, matter,
or thing whatsoever, comprised within the said act:
and the said act shall extend to all rents, goods, and
chattels taken, detained, or grown due to the subjects
of the one party from the other since the 23d of Octo-
ber, 1641, to the date of these articles of peace; and
also to all customs, rents, arrears of rents, to prizes, re-
cognizances, bonds, fines, forfeitures, penalties, and to
all other profits, perquisites, and dues which were due,
or did or should accrue to his majesty on, before, or
since the 23d of October, 1641, until the perfection of
these articles, and likewise to all mesne rates, fines of
what nature soever, recognizances, judgments, execu-
tions thereupon, and penalties whatsoever, and to all
other profits due to his majesty since the said 23d of
October and before, until the perſection of these arti-
cles, for, by reason, or which lay within the survey or
recognizance of the court of wards; and also to all re-
spites, issues of homage, and fines for the same: pro-
vided this shall not extend to discharge or remit any
of the king's debts or subsidies due before the said 23d
of October, 1641, which were then or before levied, or
taken by the sheriffs, commissioners, receivers, or col-
lectors, and not then or before accounted for, or since
disposed to the public use of the said Roman Ca-
tholic subjects, but that such persons may be brought
to account for the same after full settlement in par-
liament, and not before, unless by and with the ad-
vice and consent of the said Thomas lord viscount
Dillon of Costologh, lord president of Connaght,
Domnogh lord viscount Muskerry, Francis lord baron
of Athunry, Alexander Mac-Donnel esquire, sir Lu-
cas Dillon knt. Sir Nicholas Plunket knt. Sir Rich-
ard Barnwall baronet, Jeffery Browne, Domnogh O
Callaghan, Tyrlah O Neile, Miles Reily, and Ger-
rald Fennell, esquires, or any seven or more of them,
as the said lord lieutenant otherwise shall think fit;
provided, that such barbarous and inhuman crimes,
as shall be particularized and agreed upon by the
said lord lieutenant, and the said Thomas lord vis-
count Dillon of Costologh, lord president of Con-
naght, Donnogh lord viscount Muskerry, Francis
lord baron of Athumry, Alexander Mac-Donnel esquire,
sir Lucas Dillon knt. Sir Nicholas Plunket knt. Sir
Richard Barnwall baronet, Jeffery Browne, Donnogh
O Callaghan, Tyrlah O'Neile, Miles Reily, and Ger-
rald Fennell, esquires, or any seven or more of them, as
to the actors and procurers thereof, be left to be tried
and adjudged by such indifferent commissioners, as
shall be agreed upon by the said lord lieutenant, and
the said Thomas lord viscount Dillon of Costologh,
lord president of Connaght, Donnogh lord viscount
Muskerry, Francis lord baron of Athumry, Alexander
Mac-Donnel esquire, sir Lucas Dillon knt. Sir Nicho-
las Plunket knt. Sir Richard Barnwall baronet, Jef-
fery Browne, Donnogh O Callaghan, Tyrlah O Neile,
Miles Reily, and Gerrald Fennell, esquires, or any seven
or more of them; and that the power of the said com-
missioners shall continue only for two years next ensu-
ing the date of their commission, which commission is
to issue within six months after the date of these articles,
provided also, that the commissioners, to be agreed on
for the trial of the said particular crimes to be excepted,
shall hear, order, and determine all cases of trust,
where relief may or ought in equity to be afforded
against all manner of persons, according to the equity
and circumstances of every such cases; and his majes-
ty’s chief governor or governors, and other magistrates
for the time being, in all his majesty’s courts of justice,
and other his majesty’s officers of what condition or
quality soever, be bound and required to take notice of
and pursue the said act of oblivion, without pleading
or suit to be made for the same: and that no clerk or
other officers do make out or write out any manner of
writs, processes, summons, or other precept, for, con-
cerning, or by reason of any matter, cause, or thing
whatsoever, released, forgiven, discharged, or to be for-
given by the said act, under pain of twenty pounds
sterling, and that no sheriff or other officer do execute
any such writ, process, summons, or precept; and that
no record, writing, or memory, do remain of any offence
or offences, released or forgiven, or mentioned to be
forgiven by this act; and that all other clauses usually
inserted in acts of general pardon or oblivion, enlarging
his majesty's grace and mercy, not herein particular-
ized, be inserted and comprised in the said act, when
the bill shall be drawn up with the exceptions already
expressed, and none other. Provided always, that the
said act of oblivion shall not extend to any treason,
felony, or other offence or offences, which shall be com-
mitted or done from or after the date of these articles,
until the first day of the before-mentioned next parlia-
ment, to be held in this kingdom. Provided also, that
any act or acts, which shall be done by virtue, pretence,
or in pursuance of these articles of peace agreed upon,
or any act or acts which shall be done by virtue, colour,
or pretence of the power or authority used or exercised
by and amongst the confederate Roman Catholics after
the date of the said articles, and before the said publi-
cation, shall not be accounted, taken, construed, or to
be, treason, felony, or other offence to be excepted out
of the said act of oblivion ; provided likewise, that the
said act of oblivion shall not extend unto any person
or persons, that will not obey and submit unto the peace
concluded and agreed on by these articles; provided
further, that the said act of oblivion, or any thing in
this article contained, shall not hinder or interrupt the
said Thomas lord viscount Dillon of Costologh, lord
president of Connaght, Donnogh lord viscount Mus-
kerry, Francis lord baron of Athumry, Alexander Mac-
Donnel esquire, sir Lucas Dillon kt. Sir Nicholas
Plunket kt. Sir Richard Barnwall baronet, Jeffery
254
OBSERVATIONS ON THE ARTICLES OF PEACE
Browne, Donnogh O Callaghan, Tyrlah O Neile,
Miles Reily, and Gerrald Fennell, esqrs. or any seven
or more of them, to call to an account, and proceed
against the council and congregation, and the respective
supreme councils, commissioners general, appointed
hitherto from time to time by the confederate Catholics
to manage their affairs, or any other person or persons
accountable to an accompt for their respective receipts
and disbursements, since the beginning of their respec-
tive employments under the said confederate Catholics,
or to acquit or release any arrear of excises, customs,
or public taxes, to be accounted for since the 23d of
October, 1641, and not disposed of hitherto to the pub-
lic use, but that the parties therein concerned may be
called to an account for the same as aforesaid, by the
said Thomas lord viscount Dillon of Costologh, lord
president of Connaght, Donnogh lord viscount Mus-
kerry, Francis lord baron of Athumry, Alexander Mac-
Donnel esquire, sir Lucas Dillon kt. sir Nicholas
Plunket kt, sir Richard Barnwall baronet, Jeffery
Browne, Donnogh O Callaghan, Tyrlah O'Neile, Miles
Reily, and Gerrald Fennel, esqrs. or any seven or more
of them, the said act or any thing therein contained to
the contrary notwithstanding. -
XIX. Item, It is further concluded, accorded, and
agreed upon, by and between the said parties, and his
majesty is graciously pleased, that an act be passed in
the next parliament, prohibiting, that neither the lord
deputy or other chief governor or governors, lord chan-
cellor, lord high treasurer, vicetreasurer, chancellor, or
any of the barons of the exchequer, privy council, or
judges of the four courts, be farmers of his majesty's
customs within this kingdom.
XX. Item, It is likewise concluded, accorded, and
agreed, and his majesty is graciously pleased, that an
act of parliament pass in this kingdom against mono-
polies, such as was enacted in England 21 Jacobi Re-
gis, with a further clause of repealing of all grants of
monopolies in this kingdom ; and that commissioners
be agreed upon by the said lord lieutenant, and the
said Thomas lord viscount Dillon of Costologh, lord
president of Connaght, Donnogh lord viscount Mus-
kerry, Francis lord baron of Athumry, Alexander
Mac-Donnel esquire, sir Lucas Dillon knt. Sir Nicho-
las Plunket kt. Sir Richard Barnwall baronet, Jeffery
Browne, Donnogh O Callaghan, Tyrlah O Neile,
Miles Reily, and Gerrald Fennell, esquires, or any
seven or more of them, to set down the rates for the
custom and imposition to be laid on Aquavitae, Wine,
Oil, Yarn, and Tobacco.
XXI. Item, It is concluded, accorded, and agreed,
and his majesty is graciously pleased, that such per-
sons as shall be agreed on by the said lord lieutenant
and the said Thomas lord viscount Dillon of Cos-
tologh, lord president of Connaght, Domnogh lord
Viscount Muskerry, Francis lord Baron of Athumry,
Alexander Mac-Donnel esquire, sir Lucas Dillon knt.
sir Nicholas Plunket knight, sir Richard Barnwall
baronet, Jeffery Browne, Donnogh O Callaghan, Tyr-
lah O'Neile, Miles Reily, and Gerrald Fennell, esquires,
or any seven or more of them, shall be as soon as may
be authorized by commission under the great seal, to
regulate the court of castle-chamber, and such causes
as shall be brought into, and censured in the said
COurt.
XXII. Item, It is concluded, accorded, and agreed
upon, and his majesty is graciously pleased, that two
acts lately passed in this kingdom, one prohibiting the
plowing with horses by the tail, and the other pro-
hibiting the burning of oats in the straw, be repealed.
XXIII. Item, It is further concluded, accorded, and
agreed upon, by and between the said parties, and his
majesty is further graciously pleased, for as much as
upon application of agents from this kingdom unto his
majesty in the fourth year of his reign, and lately upon
humble suit made unto his majesty, by a committee of
both houses of the parliament of this kingdom, order
was given by his majesty for redress of several griev-
ances, and for so many of those as are not expressed in
the articles, whereof both houses in the next ensuing
parliament shall desire the benefit of his majesty's said
former directions for redress therein, that the same be
afforded them ; yet so as for prevention of inconve-
niencies to his majesty's service, that the warning men-
tioned in the 24th article of the graces in the fourth
year of his majesty's reign be so understood, that the
warning being left at the person's dwelling houses be
held sufficient warning; and as to the 22d article of the
said graces, the process hitherto used in the court of
wards do still continue, as hitherto it hath done in that,
and hath been used in other English courts; but the
court of wards being compounded for, so much of the
aforesaid answer as concerns warning and process
shall be omitted.
XXIV. Item, It is further concluded, accorded, and
agreed upon, by and between the said parties, and his
majesty is further graciously pleased, that maritime
causes may be determined in this kingdom, without
driving of merchants or others to appeal and seek jus-
tice elsewhere : and if it shall fall out, that there be
cause of an appeal, the party grieved is to appeal to
his majesty in the chancery of Ireland; and that sen-
tence thereupon to be given by the delegates, to be
definitive, and not be questioned upon any further ap-
peal, except it be in the parliament of this kingdom, if
the parliament shall then be sitting, otherwise not, this
to be by act of parliament; and until the said parlia-
ment, the admiralty and maritime causes shall be ordered
and settled by the said lord lieutenant, or other chief
governor or governors of this kingdom for the time be-
ing, by and with the advice and consent of the said
Thomas lord viscount Dillon of Costologh, lord pre-
sident of Connaght, Donnogh lord viscount Muskerry,
Francis lord baron of Athumry, Alexander Mac-Donnel
esquire, sir Lucas Dillon knight, sir Nicholas Plunket
knight, sir Richard Barnwall baronet, Jeffery Browne,
Domnogh O Callaghan, Tyrlah O Neile, Miles Reily,
and Gerrald Fennell, esquires, or any seven or more of
them.
XXV. Item, It is further concluded, accorded, and
agreed upon, by and between the said parties, and his
majesty is graciously pleased, that his majesty's sub-
BETWEEN THE EARL OF ORMOND AND THE IRISH.
255
jects of this kingdom be eased of all rents and increase
of rents lately raised on the commission or defective
titles in the earl of Strafford's government, this to be by
act of parliament; and that in the mean time the said
rents or increase of rents shall not be written for by
any process, or the payment thereof in any sort pro-
cured. -
XXVI. Item, It is further concluded, accorded, and
agreed upon, by and between the said parties, and his
majesty is further graciously pleased, that, by act to
be passed in the next parliament, all the arrears of in-
terest-money, which did accrue and grow due by way
of debt, mortgage, or otherwise, and yet not so satis-
fied since the 23d of October, 1641, until the perfection
of these articles, shall be fully forgiven and be released;
and that for and during the space of three years next
ensuing, no more shall be taken for use or interest of
money than five pounds per centum. And in cases of
equity arising through disability, occasioned by the
distempers of the times, the considerations of equity to
be like unto both parties: but as for mortgages con-
tracted between his majesty's Roman Catholic subjects
and others of that party, where entry hath been made
by the mortgagers against law, and the condition of
their mortgages, and detained wrongfully by them
without giving any satisfaction to the mortgagees, or
where any such mortgagers have made profit of the
lands mortgaged above country charges, yet answer
no rent, or other consideration to the mortgagees, the
parties grieved respectively to be left for relief to a
course of equity therein.
XXVII. Item, It is further concluded, accorded,
and agreed upon, and his majesty is further graciously
pleased, that, immediately upon perfection of these ar-
ticles, the said Thomas lord viscount Dillon of Costo-
logh, lord president of Connaght, Donnogh lord
viscount Muskerry, Francis lord baron of Athunry,
Alexander Mac-Donnel esquire, sir Lucas Dillon
knight, sir Nicholas Plunket knight, sir Richard
Barnwall baronet, Jeffery Browne, Donnogh O Calla-
ghan, Tyrlah O Neile, Miles Reily, and Gerrald Fen-
nell, esquires, shall be authorized by the said lord
lieutenant, to proceed in, hear, determine, and execute,
in and throughout this kingdom, the ensuing particu-
lars, and all the matters thereupon depending; and
that such authority, and other the authorities hereafter
mentioned, shall remain of force without revocation,
alteration, or diminution, until acts of parliament be
passed, according to the purport and intent of these
articles; and that in case of death, miscarriage, disabi-
lity to serve by reason of sickness or otherwise of any
the said Thomas lord viscount Dillon of Costologh,
lord president of Connaght, Donnogh lord viscount
Muskerry, Francis lord baron of Athunry, Alexander
Mac-Donnel esquire, sir Lucas Dillon knight, sir Ni-
cholas Plunket knight, sir Richard Barnwall baronet,
Jeffery Browne, Domnogh O Callaghan, Tyrlah O
Neile, Miles Reily, and Gerrald Fennell, esquires, and
his majesty's lord lieutenant, or other chief governor
or governors of this kingdom for the time being, shall
name and authorize another in the place of such as
shall be so dead or shall miscarry himself, or be so dis-
abled, and that the same shall be such person as shall
be allowed of by the said Thomas lord viscount Dillon
of Costologh, lord president of Connaght, Donnogh
lord viscount Muskerry, Francis lord baron of Athumry,
Alexander Mac-Donnelesquire, sir Lucas Dillon knight,
sir Nicholas Plunket knight, sir Richard Barnwall
baronet, Jeffery Browne, Donnogh O Callaghan, Tyr-
lah O'Neile, Miles Reily, and Gerrald Fennell, esquires,
or any seven or more of them then living. And that
the said Thomas lord viscount Dillon of Costologh,
lord president of Connaght, Domnogh lord viscount
Muskerry, Francis lord baron of Athumry, Alexander
Mac-Donnel esquire, sir Lucas Dillon knight, sir Ni-
cholas Plunket knight, sir Richard Barnwall baronet.
Jeffery Browne, Donnogh O Callaghan, Tyrlah O
Neile, Miles Reily, and Gerrald Fennell, esquires, or
any seven or more of them, shall have power to applot,
raise, and levy means with indifferency and equality
by way of excise or otherwise, upon all his majesty's
subjects within the said kingdom, their persons, estates,
and goods, towards the maintenance of such army or
armies as shall be thought fit to continue, and be in
pay for his majesty's service, the defence of the king-
dom, and other the necessary public charges thereof,
and towards the maintenance of the forts, castles, gar-
risons, and towns, until there shall be a settlement in
parliament of both or either party, other than such of
the said forts, garrisons, and castles, as from time to
time shall be thought fit, by his majesty's chief go-
vernor or governors of this kingdom for the time being,
by and with the advice and consent of the said Thomas
lord viscount Dillon of Costologh, lord president of
Connaght, Domnogh lord viscount Muskerry, Francis
lord baron of Athumry, Alexander Mac-Donnel esquire,
sir Lucas Dillon knight, sir Nicholas Plunket knight,
sir Richard Barnwall baronet, Jeffery Browne, Don-
nogh O Callaghan, Tyrlah O Neile, Miles Reily, and
Gerrald Fennell, esquires, or any seven or more of
them, not to be maintained at the charge of the public:
provided, that his majesty's lord lieutenant, or other
chief governor or governors of this kingdom for the
time being, be first made acquainted with such taxes,
levies, and excises as shall be made, and the manner
of levying thereof, and that he approve the same; and
to the end that such of the protestant party, as shall
submit to the peace, may in the several countries, where
any of their estates lie, have equality and indifferency
in the assessments and levies, that shall concern their
estates in the said several counties.
It is concluded, accorded, and agreed upon, and his
majesty is graciously pleased, that in the directions,
which shall issue to any such county, for the applotting,
sub-dividing, and levying of the said publicassessments,
some of the said protestant party shall be joined with
others of the Roman Catholic party to that purpose,
and for effecting that service; and the said Thomas
lord viscount Dillon of Costologh, lord president of
Connaght, Donnogh lord viscount Muskerry, Francis
lord baron of Athumry, Alexander Mac-Donnel esquire,
sir Lucas Dillon kt. Sir Nicholas Plunket kt. Sir Rich-
256
OBSERVATIONS ON THE ARTICLES OF PEACE
ard Barnwall baronet, Jeffery Browne, Donnogh O
Callaghan, Tyrlah O Neile, Miles Reily, and Gerrald
J'ennell, esquires, or any seven or more of them, shall
have power to levy the arrears of all excises and other
public taxes imposed by the confederate Roman Ca-
tholics, and yet unpaid, and to call receivers and other
accomptants of all former taxes and all public dues to
a just and strict account, either by themselves, or by
such as they or any seven or more of them shall name
or appoint; and that the said lord lieutenant, or any
other chief governor or governors of this kingdom for
the time being, shall from time to time issue commis-
sions to such person or persons as shall be named and
appointed by the said Thomas lord viscount Dillon of
Costologh, lord president of Connaght, Domnogh lord
viscount Muskerry, Francis lord baron of Athumry,
Alexander Mac-Donnel esquire, sir Lucas Dillon kt.
sir Nicholas Plunket kt, sir Richard Barnwall baronet,
Jeffery Browne, Domnogh O Callaghan, Tyrlah O
Neile, Miles Reily, and Gerrard Fennell, esquires, or
any seven or more of them, for letting, setting, and
improving the estates of all such person and persons,
as shall adhere to any party opposing his majesty's
authority, and not submitting to the peace; and that
the profits of such estates shall be converted by the
said lord lieutenant, or other chief governor or govern-
ors of this kingdom for the time being, to the main-
tenance of the king's army and other necessary
charges, nntil settlement by parliament; and that
the said Thomas lord viscount Dillon of Costologh,
lord president of Connaght, Donnogh lord viscount
Muskerry, Francis lord baron of Athumry, Alexander
Mac-Donnel esquire, sir Lucas Dillon kt. Sir Nicholas
Plunket kt. Sir Richard Barnwall baronet, Jeffery
Browne, Domnogh O Callaghan, Tyrlah O Neile,
Miles Reily, and Gerrald Fennell, esquires, or any
seven or more of them, shall have power to applot,
raise, and levy means, with indifferency and equality,
for the buying of arms and ammunition, and for
the entertaining of frigates in such proportion as shall
be thought fit by his majesty's lord lieutenant or other
chief governors of this kingdom for the time being, by
and with the advice and consent of the said Thomas
lord viscount Dillon of Costologh, lord president of
Connaght, Donnogh lord viscount Muskerry, Francis
lord baron of Athunry, Alexander Mac-Donnel esquire,
sir Lucas Dillon, kt. Sir Nicholas Plunket kt. sir
Richard Barnwall baronet, Jeffery Browne, Donnogh
O Callaghan, Tyrlah O Neile, Miles Reily, and Ger-
rald Fennell, esquires, or any seven or more of them ;
the said arms and ammunition to be laid up in such
magazines, and under the charge of such persons as
shall be agreed on by the said lord lieutenant, and the
said Thomas lord viscount Dillon of Costologh, lord
president of Connaght, Donnogh lord viscount Mus-
kerry, Francis lord baron of Athumry, Alexander Mac-
Donnel esquire, sir Lucas Dillon kt. Sir Nicholas
Plunket kt. Sir Richard Barnwall baronet, Jeffery
Browne, Domnogh O Callaghan, Tyrlah O Neile,
Miles Reily, and Gerrald Fennell, esquires, or any
seven or more of them, and to be disposed of, and the
said frigates to be employed for his majesty's service,
and the public use and benefit of this kingdom of Ire-
land ; and that the said Thomas lord viscount Dillon
of Costologh, lord president of Connaght, Donnogh
lord viscount Muskerry, Francis lord baron of Athumry,
&c. or any seven or more of them, shall have power to
applot, raise, and levy means, with indifferency and
equality, by way of excise or otherwise, in the several
cities, corporate towns, counties, and part of counties,
now within the quarters and only upon the estates of
the said confederate Roman Catholics, all such sum
and sums of money as shall appear to the said Thomas
lord viscount Dillon of Costologh, lord president of
Connaght, Donnogh lord viscount Muskerry, Francis
lord baron of Athumry, &c. or any seven or more of
them, to be really due, for and in the discharge of the
public engagements of the said confederate Catholics,
incurred and grown due before the conclusion of these
articles; and that the said Thomas lord viscount Dil-
lon of Costologh, lord president of Connaght, Don-
nogh lord viscount Muskerry, Francis lord baron of
Athumry, &c. or any seven or more of them, shall be
authorized to appoint receivers, collectors, and all other
officers, for such monies as shall be assessed, taxed, or
applotted, in pursuance of the authorities mentioned
in this article, and for the arrears of all former applot-
ments, taxes, and other public dues yet unpaid : and
that the said Thomas lord viscount Dillon of Costologh,
lord president of Connaght, Domnogh lord viscount
Muskerry, Francis lord baron of Athumry, &c. or any
seven or more of them, in case of refractories or delin-
quency, may distrain and imprison, and cause such de-
linquents to be distrained and imprisoned. And the
said Thomas lord viscount Dillon of Costologh, lord
president of Connaght, Donnogh lord viscount Mus-
kerry, Francis lord baron of Athumry, &c. or any seven
or more of them, make perfect books of all such monies
as shall be applotted, raised, or levied, out of which
books they are to make several and respective abstracts,
to be delivered under their hands, or the hands of any
seven or more of them, to the several and respective
collectors, which shall be appointed to levy and receive
the same. And that a duplicate of the said books,
under the hands of the said Thomas lord viscount Dil-
lon of Costologh, lord president of Connaght, Donnogh
lord viscount Muskerry, Francis lord baron of Athunry,
&c. or any seven or more of them, be delivered unto
his majesty's lord lieutenant, or other chief governor
or governors of this kingdom for the time being, where-
by a perfect account may be given ; and that the said
Thomas lord viscount Dillon of Costologh, lord presi-
dent of Connaght, Donnogh lord viscount Muskerry,
Francis lord baron of Athunry, &c. or any seven or
more of them, shall have power to call the council and
congregation, and the respective supreme councils, and
commissioners general, appointed hitherto from time to
time, by the said confederate Roman Catholics, to
manage their public affairs, and all other persons ac-
countable, to an account, for all their receipts and dis-
bursements since the beginning of their respective
employments under the confederate Roman Catholics.
BETWEEN THE EARL OF
257
ORMOND AND THE IRISH.
XXVIII. Item, It is concluded, accorded, and agreed,
by and between the said parties, and his majesty is
graciously pleased, that for the preservation of the peace
and tranquillity of the kingdom, the said lord lieuten-
ant, and the said Thomas lord viscount Dillon of Cos-
tologh, lord president of Connaght, Donnogh lord
viscount Muskerry, Francis lord baron of Athumry, &c.
or any seven or more of them, shall for the present
agree upon such persons, who are to be authorized by
commission under the great seal, to be commissioners of
the peace, oyer and terminer, assizes and gaol-delivery,
in and throughout the kingdom, to continue during
pleasure, with such power as justices of the peace, oyer
and terminer, assizes and gaol-delivery in former time
of peace have usually had, which is not to extend unto
any crime or offence committed before the first of May
last past, and to be qualified with power to hear and
determine all civil causes coming before them, not ex-
ceeding ten pounds: provided that they shall not in-
termeddle with titles of lands; provided likewise, the
authority of such commissioners shall not extend to
question any person or persons, for any shipping, cattle,
or goods, heretofore taken by either party from the
other, or other injuries done contrary to the articles of
cessation, concluded by and with the said Roman Ca-
tholic party in or since May last, but that the same
shall be determined by such indifferent persons, as the
lord lieutenant, by the advice and consent of the said
Thomas lord viscount Dillon of Costologh, lord presi-
dent of Connaght, Donnogh lord viscount Muskerry,
Francis lord baron of Athunry, &c. or any seven or
more of them, shall think fit, to the end that speedy
and equal justice may be done to all parties grieved ;
and the said commissioners are to make their estreats
as accustomed of peace, and shall take the ensuing
oath, viz. You shall swear, that as justice of the peace,
oyer and terminer, assizes and gaol-delivery in the
counties of A. B. in all articles of the commission to
you directed, you shall do equal right to the poor and
to the rich, after your cunning and wit and power,
and after the laws and customs of the realm, and in
pursuance of these articles: and you shall not be
of counsel of any quarrel hanging before you; and
the issues, fines, and amerciaments, which shall hap-
pen to be made, and all forfeitures which shall
happen before you, you shall cause to be entered
without any concealment or embezzling, and send
to the court of exchequer, or to such other place as
his majesty's lord lieutenant, or other chief governor
or governors of this kingdom, shall appoint, until there
may be access unto the said court of exchequer: you
shall not lett for gift or other cause, but well and truly
you shall do your office of justice of peace, oyer and
terminer, assizes and gaol-delivery in that behalf; and
that you take nothing for your office of justice of the
peace, oyer and terminer, assizes and gaol-delivery to
be done, but of the king, and fees accustomed; and you
shall not direct, or cause to be directed, any warrant
by you, to be made to the parties, but you shall direct
them to the sheriffs and bailiffs of the said counties re-
spectively, or other the king's officers or ministers, or
other indifferent persons to do execution thereof. So
inelp your God, &c.
And that as well in the said commission, as in all
other commissions, and authoritics to be issued in pur-
suance of the present articles, this clause shall be in-
serted, viz. That all officers, civil and martial, shall
be required to be aiding and assisting and obedient
unto the said commissioners, and other persons, to be
authorized as aforesaid in the execution of their re-
spective powers.
XXIX. Item, It is further concluded, accorded, and
agreed upon, by and between the said parties, and his
majesty is further graciously pleased, that his majesty's
Roman Catholic subjects do continue the possession of
such of his majesty's cities, garrisons, towns, forts, and
castles, which are within their now quarters, until set-
tlement by parliament, and to be commanded, ruled,
and governed in chief, upon occasion of necessity, (as
to the martial and military affairs,) by such as his ma-
jesty, or his chief governor or governors of this king-
dom for the time being, shall appoint; and the said
appointment to be by and with the advice and consent
of the said Thomas lord viscount Dillon of Costologh,
lord president of Connaght, Donnogh lord viscount
Muskerry, Francis lord baron of Athumry, &c. or any
seven or more of them ; and his majesty's chief go-
vernor or governors, is to issue commissions accord-
ingly to such persons as shall be so named and ap-
pointed as aforesaid, for the executing of such con-
mand, rule, or government, to continue until all the
particulars in these present articles, agreed on to pass
in parliament, shall be accordingly passed: only in
case of death or misbehaviour, such other person or
persons to be appointed for the said command, rule, or
government, to be named and appointed in the place
or places of him or them, who shall so die or misbehave
themselves, as the chief governor or governors for the
time being, by the advice and consent of the said Tho-
mas lord viscount Dillon of Costologh, lord president
of Connaght, Domnogh lord viscount Muskerry, Fran-
cis lord baron of Athunry, &c. or any seven or more
of them, shall think fit, and to be continued until a set-
tlement in parliament as aforesaid.
XXX. Item, It is further concluded, accorded, and
agreed upon, by and between the said parties, and his
majesty is further graciously pleased, that all customs
and tenths of prizes belonging to his majesty, which
from the perfection of these articles shall fall due within
this kingdom, shall be paid unto his majesty's receipt,
or until recourse may be had thereunto in the ordinary
legal way, unto such person or persons, and in such
place or places, and under such controls, as the lord
lieutenant shall appoint to be disposed of, in order to
the defence and safety of the kingdom, and the defray-
ing of other the necessary public charges thereof, for
the ease of the subjects in other their levies, charges,
and applotments. And that all and every person or
persons, who are at present entrusted and employed by
the said Roman Catholics, in the entries, receipts, col-
lections, or otherwise, concerning the said customs and
tenths of prizes, do continue their respective employ-
258
oBSERVATIONS ON THE ARTICLES OF PEACE
ments in the same, until full settlement in parliament,
accountable to his majesty's receipts, or until recourse
may be had thereunto; as the said lord lieutenant shall
appoint as aforesaid, other than to such, and so many
of them, as to the chief governor or governors for the
time being, by and with the advice and consent of the
said Thomas lord viscount Dillon of Costologh, lord
president of Connaght, Domnogh lord viscount Mus-
kerry, Francis lord baron of Athumry, &c. or any seven
or more of them, shall be thought fit to be altered; and
then, and in such case, or in case of death, fraud, or
misbehaviour, or other alteration of any such person or
persons, then such other person or persons to be em-
ployed therein, as shall be thought fit by the chief
governor or governors for the time being, by and with
the advice and consent of the said Thomas lord vis-
count Dillon of Costologh, lord president of Connaght,
Donnogh lord viscount Muskerry, Francis lord baron
of Athumry, &c. or any seven or more of them; and
when it shall appear, that any person or persons, who
shall be found faithful to his majesty, hath right to any
of the offices or places about the said customs, where-
unto he or they may not be admitted until settlement
in parliament as aforesaid, that a reasonable compensa-
tion shall be afforded to such person or persons for the
Sºl Ill C.
XXXI. Item, As for and concerning his majesty's
rents, payable at Easter next, and from thenceforth to
grow due, until a settlement in parliament, it is con-
cluded, accorded, and agreed upon, by and between the
said parties, and his majesty is graciously pleased, that
the said rents be not written for, or levied, until a full
settlement in parliament; and in due time upon appli-
cation to be made to the said lord lieutenant, or other
chief governor or governors of this kingdom, by the
said Thomas lord viscount Dillon of Costologh, lord
president of Connaght, Donnogh lord viscount Mus-
kerry, Francis lord baron of Athunry, &c. or any seven
or more of them, for remittal of those rents, the said
lord lieutenant, or any other chief governor or govern-
ors of this kingdom for the time being, shall intimate
their desires, and the reason thereof, to his majesty,
who, upon consideration of the present condition of this
kingdom, will declare his gracious pleasure therein, as
shall be just, and honourable, and satisfactory to the
reasonable desires of his subjects.
XXXII. Item, It is concluded, accorded, and agreed,
by and between the said parties, and his majesty is
graciously pleased, that the commissioners of oyer and
terminer and gaol-delivery to be named as aforesaid,
shall have power to hear and determine all murders,
manslaughters, rapes, stealths, burning of houses and
corn in rick or stack, robberies, burglaries, forcible en-
tries, detainers of possessions, and other offences com-
mitted or done, and to be committed and done since
the first day of May last past, until the first day of the
next parliament, these present articles, or any thing
therein contained to the contrary notwithstanding ;
provided, that the authority of the said commissioners
shall not extend to questic n any person or persons, for
doing or committing any act whatsoever, before the |
conclusion of this treaty, by virtue or colour of any
warrant or direction from those in public authority
among the confederate Roman Catholics, nor unto
any act, which shall be done after the perfecting and
concluding of these articles, by virtue or pretence of
any authority, which is now by these articles agreed
on ; provided also, that the said commission shall not
continue longer than the first day of the next par-
liament.
XXXIII. Item, It is concluded, accorded by and
between the said parties, and his majesty is further
graciously pleased, that, for the determining such diſ-
ferences, which may arise between his majesty's sub-
jects within this kingdom, and the prevention of incon-
venience and disquiet, which through want of due
remedy in several causes may happen, there shall be
judicatures established in this kingdom, and that the
persons to be authorized in them shall have power to do
all such things as shall be proper and necessary for
them to do; and the said lord lieutenant, by and with
the advice and consent of the said Thomas lord viscount
Dillon of Costologh, lord president of Connaght, Don-
nogh lord viscount Muskerry, Francis lord baron of
Athumry, &c. or any seven or more of them, shall name
the said persons so to be authorized, and to do all other
things incident unto and necessary for the settling of
the said intended judicatures.
XXXIV. Item, At the instance, humble suit, and
earnest desire of the general assembly of the confede-
rate Roman Catholics, it is concluded, accorded, and
agreed upon, that the Roman Catholic regular clergy
of this kingdom, behaving themselves conformable to
these articles of peace, shall not be molested in the
possessions which at present they have of, and in the
bodies, sites, and precincts of such abbeys and monas-
teries belonging to any Roman Catholic within the
said kingdom, until settlement by parliament; and that
the said clergy shall not be molested in the enjoying
such pensions as hitherto since the wars they enjoyed
for their respective livelihoods from the said Roman
Catholics : and the sites and precincts hereby in-
tended, are declared to be the body of the abbey, one
garden and orchard to each abbey, if any there be, and
what else is contained within the walls, meers, or an-
cient fences or ditch, that doth supply the wall thereof,
and no more.
XXXV. Item, It is concluded, accorded, and agreed,
by and between the said parties, that as to all other de-
mands of the said Roman Catholics, for or concerning
all or any the matters proposed by them, not granted
or assented unto in and by the aforesaid articles, the
said Roman Catholics be referred to his majesty's gra-
cious favour and further concessions. In witness
whereof the said lord lieutenant, for and on the behalf
of his most excellent majesty, to the one part of these
articles remaining with the said Roman Catholics, hath
put his hand and seal: and sir Richard Blake, knt. in
the chair of the general assembly of the said Roman
Catholics, by order, command, and unanimous consent
of the said Catholics in full assembly, to the other part
thereof remaining with the said lord lieutenant, hath
BETWEEN THE EARL OF ORMOND AND THE IRISLI.
259
put to his hand and the public seal hitherto used by
the said Roman Catholics, the 17th of January, 1648,
and in the 24th year of the reign of our sovereign lord
Charles, by the grace of God, king of Great Britain,
I'rance, and Ireland, &c
SIR,
I HAVE not thus long forborn to invite you, with those
under your command, to a submission to his majesty's
authority in me, and a conjunction with me, in the
ways of his service, out of any the least aversion I had
to you, or any of them, or out of any disesteem I had
to your power, to advance or impede the same ; but
out of my fear, whiles those, that have of late usurped
power over the subjects of England, held forth the least
colourable shadow of moderation in their intentions
towards the settlement of church or state, and that in
some tolerable way with relation to religion, the inte-
rest of the king and crown, the freedom of parliament,
the liberties of the subject, any addresses from me pro-
posing the withdrawing of that party from those thus
professing, from whom they have received some, and
expected further support, would have been but coldly
received, and any determination thereupon deferred, in
hope and expectation of the forementioned settlement;
or that you yourself, who certainly have not wanted a
foresight of the sad confusion now covering the face of
England, would have declared with me, the lord Inche-
queen, and the Protestant army in Munster, in pre-
vention thereof; yet my fear was, it would have been
as difficult for you, to have carried with you the main
body of the army under your command, (not so clear-
sighted as yourself.) as it would have been dangerous
to you, and those with you well-inclined, to have at-
tempted it without them ; but now that the mask of
hypocrisy, by which the independent army hath en-
snared and enslaved all estates and degrees of men, is
laid aside, now that, barefaced, they evidently appear
to be the subverters of true religion, and to be the pro-
tectors and inviters not only of all false ones, but of
irreligion and atheism, now that they have barbarously
and inhumanly laid violent, sacrilegious hands upon
and murdered God's anointed, and our king, not as
heretofore some parricides have done, to make room
for some usurper, but in a way plainly manifesting their
intentions to change the monarchy of England into
anarchy, unless their aim be first to constitute an elec-
tive kingdom; and Cromwell or some such John of
Leyden being elected, then by the same force, by which
they have thus far compassed their ends, to establish a
perfect Turkish tyranny; now that of the three estates
of king, lords, and commons, whereof in all ages par-
liaments have consisted, there remains only a small
number, and they the dregs and scum of the house of
commons, picked and awed by the army, a wicked
remnant, left for no other end, than yet further if it be
possible to delude the people with the name of a parlia-
ment: the king being murdered, the lords and the rest
of the commons being by unheard-of violence at several
times forced from the houses, and some imprisoned.
And now that there remains no other liberty in the sub-
S
ject but to profess blasphemous opinions, to revile and
tread under foot magistracy, to murder magistrates,
and oppress and undo all that are not like-minded with
them. Now I say, that I cannot doubt but that you
and all with you under your command will take this
opportunity to act and declare against so monstrous and
unparalleled a rebellion, and that you and they will
cheerfully acknowledge, and faithfully serve and obey
our gracious king Charles II. undoubted heir of his
father's crown and virtues; under whose right and
conduct we may by God’s assistance restore protestant
religion to purity, and therein settle it, parliaments to
their freedom, good laws to their force, and our fellow-
subjects to their just liberties; wherein how glorious
and blessed a thing it will be, to be so considerably in-
strumental, as you may now make yourself, I leave to
you now to consider. And though I conceive, there
are not any motives relating to some particular interest
to be mentioned after these so weighty considerations,
which are such as the world hath not been at any time
furnished with ; yet I hold it my part to assure you,
that as there is nothing you can reasonably propose for
the safety, satisfaction, or advantage of yourself, or of
any that shall adhere to you in what I desire, that I
shall not to the uttermost of my power provide for; so
there is nothing I would, nor shall more industriously
avoid, than those necessities arising from my duty to
God and man, that may by your rejecting this offer
force me to be a sad instrument of shedding English
blood, which in such case must on both sides happen.
If this overture find place with you, as I earnestly wish
it may, let me know with what possible speed you can,
and if you please by the bearer, in what way you desire
it shall be drawn on to a conclusion. For in that,
as well as in the substance, you shall find all ready
compliance from me, that desire to be
Your affectionate friend to serve you,
Carrick, March 9, 1648. ORMOND.
For Colonel Michael Jones,
Governor of Dublin.
My Lord,
YoUR lordship's of the ninth I received the twelfth
instant, and therein have I your lordship's invitation to
a conjunction with yourself (I suppose) as lord lieu-
tenant of Ireland, and with others now united with the
Irish, and with the Irish themselves also.
As I understand not how your lordship should be in-
vested with that power pretended, so am I very well
assured, that it is not in the power of any without the
parliament of England, to give and assure pardon to
those bloody rebels, as by the act to that end passed
may appear more fully. I am also well assured, that
the parliament of England would never assent to such
a peace, (such as is that of your lordship's with the
rebels,) wherein is little or no provision made either for
the protestants or the protestant religion. Nor can I
understand how the protestant religion should be settled
and restored to its purity by an army of papists, or the
protestant interests maintained by those very enemies,
260
OBSERVATIONS ON THE ARTICLES OF PEACE
by whom they have been spoiled and there slaughter-
ed; and very evident it is, that both the protestants
and protestant religion are, in that your lordship's
treaty, left as in the power of the rebels, to be by them
borne down and rooted out at pleasure.
As for that consideration by your lordship offered of
the present and late proceedings in England, I see not
how it may be a sufficient motive to me (or any other
in like trust for the parliament of England in the ser-
vice of the kingdom) to join with those rebels, upon
any the pretences in that your lordship's letter men-
tioned; for therein were there a manifest betraying
that trust reposed in me, in deserting the service and
work committed to me, in joining with those I shall
oppose, and in opposing whom I am obliged to serve.
Neither conceive I it any part of my work and care,
to take notice of any whatsoever proceedings of state,
foreign to my charge and trust here, especially they
being found hereunto apparently destructive.
Most certain it is, and former ages have approved it,
that the intermeddling of governors and parties in this
kingdom, with sidings and parties in England, have
been the very betraying of this kingdom to the Irish,
whiles the British forces here had been thereupon
called off, and the place therein laid open, and as it
were given up to the common enemy.
It is what your lordship might have observed in your
former treaty with the rebels, that, upon your lordship's
thereupon withdrawing, and sending hence into Eng-
land the most considerable part of the English army
then commanded by you; thereby was the remaining
British party not long after overpowered, and your
quarters by the Irish overrun to the gates of Dublin,
yourself also reduced to that low condition, as to be be-
sieged in this very city, (the metropolis and principal
citadel of the kingdom,) and that by those rebels,
who till then could never stand before you : and what
the end hath been of that party, also so sent by your
lordship into England, (although the flower and strength
of the English army here, both officers and soldiers,)
hath been very observable.
And how much the dangers are at present (more
than in former ages) of hazarding the English interest
in this kingdom, by sending any parties hence into
any other kingdom upon any pretences whatsoever, is
very apparent, as in the generality of the rebellion,
now more than formerly ; so considering your lord-
ship's present conclusions with and concessions to the
rebels, wherein they are allowed the continual posses-
sion of all the cities, forts, and places of strength, where-
of they stood possessed at the time of their treaty with
your lordship, and that they are to have a standing
force (if I well remember) of 15000 foot and 2500
horse, (all of their own party, officers and soldiers,) and
they (with the whole kingdom) to be regulated by a
major part of Irish trustees, chosen by the rebels them-
selves, as persons for their interests and ends, to be by
them confided in, without whom nothing is to be acted.
Therein I cannot but mind your lordship of what hath
been sometimes by yourself delivered, as your sense in
this particular; that the English interest in Ireland
must be preserved by the English, and not by Irish ;
and upon that ground (if I be not deceived) did your
lordship then capitulate with the parliament of Eng.
land, from which clear principle I am sorry to see your
lordship now receding.
As to that by your lordship menaced us here, of
blood and force, if dissenting from your lordship's ways
and designs, for my particular I shall (my lord) much
rather choose to suffer in so doing, (for therein shall I
do what is becoming, and answerable to my trust,) than
to purchase myself on the contrary the ignominious
brand of perfidy by any allurements of whatsoever ad-
vantages offered me.
But very confident I am of the same divine power,
which hath still followed me in this work, and will
still follow me ; and in that trust doubt nothing of thus
giving your lordship plainly this my resolution in that
particular. So I remain,
Your lordship's humble servant,
Dublin, March 14th, 1648. (Signed) MIC. JONES.
For the lord of Ormond these.
BY THE
LORD LIEUTENANT GENERAL OF IRELAND.
ORMOND,
WHEREAs our late sovereign lord king Charles of
happy memory hath been lately by a party of his re-
bellious subjects of England most traitorously, mali-
ciously, and inhumanly put to death and murdered;
and forasmuch as his majesty that now is, Charles by
the grace of God king of England, Scotland, France,
and Ireland, is son and heir of his said late majesty,
and therefore by the laws of the land, of force, and
practised in all ages, is to inherit. We therefore, in
discharge of the duty we owe unto God, our allegiance
and loyalty to our sovereign, holding it fit him so to
proclaim in and through this his majesty's kingdom,
do by this our present proclamation declare and mani-
fest to the world, That Charles II, son and heir of our
sovereign lord king Charles I, of happy memory, is,
by the grace of God, the undoubted king of England,
Scotland, France, and Ireland, defender of the faith, &c.
Given at Carrick, Feb. 26th, 1648.
GOD SAVE THE KING.
A NECESSARY REPRESENTATION
Of the present Evils and imminent Dangers to Religion,
Laws, and Liberties, arising from the late and pre-
sent practices of the sectarian party in England: to-
gether with an Exhortation to duties relating to the
covenant, unto all within our charge, and to all the
well-affected within this kingdom, by the Presbytery
at Belfast, February the 15th, 1649.
WHEN we seriously consider the great and many
duties, which we owe unto God and his people, over
BETWEEN THE EARL OF ORMOND AND THE IRISH.
261
whom he hath made us overseers, and for whom we
must give an account; and when we behold the laud-
able examples of the worthy ministers of the province
of London, and of the commissioners of the general
assembly of the church of Scotland, in their free and
faithful testimonies against the insolencies of the sec-
tarian party in England: considering also the depen-
dency of this kingdom upon the kingdom of England,
and remembering how against strong oppositions we
were assisted by the Lord the last year in the discharge
of the like duty, and how he punished the contempt of
our warning upon the despisers thereof: we find our-
selves as necessitated, so the more encouraged, to cast
in our mite in the treasury, lest our silence should in-
volve us in the guilt of un'aithfulness, and our people
in security and neglect of duties.
In this discharge of the trust put upon us by God,
we would not be looked upon as sowers of sedition, or
broachers of national and divisive motions; our record
is in heaven, that nothing is more hateful unto us, nor
less intended by us, and therefore we shall not fear the
malicious and wicked aspersions, which we know Satan
by his instruments is ready to cast, not only upon us,
but on all who sincerely endeavour the advancement of
reformation.
What of late have been, and now are, the insolent
and presumptuous practices of the sectaries in Eng-
land, is not unknown to the world: for, First, notwith-
standing their specious pretences for religion and liber-
ties, yet their late and present actings, being therewith
compared, do clearly evidence, that they love a rough
garment to deceive; since they have with a high hand
despised the oath, in breaking the covenant, which is
so strong a foundation to both, whilst they load it with
slighting reproaches, calling it a bundle of particular
and contrary interests, and a snare to the people ; and
likewise labour to establish by laws an universal tole-
ration of all religions, which is an innovation overturn-
ing of unity in religion, and so directly repugnant to
the word of God, the two first articles of our solemn
covenant, which is the greatest wickedness in them to
violate, since many of the chiefest of themselves have,
with their hands, testified to the most high God, sworn
and sealed it,
Moreover, their great disaffection to the settlement
of religion, and so their future breach of covenant, doth
more fully appear by their strong oppositions to Pres-
byterian government, (the hedge and bulwark of re-
ligion,) whilst they express their hatred to it more than
to the worst of errours, by excluding it under the name
of compulsion; when they embrace even Paganism
and Judaism in the arms of toleration. Not to speak
of their aspersions upon it, and the assertors thereof, as
antichristian and popish, though they have deeply
sworn, to maintain the same government in the first
article of the covenant, as it is established in the church
of Scotland, which they now so despitefully blaspheme.
Again, it is more than manifest, that they seek not
the vindication, but the extirpation of laws and liber-
ties, as appears by their seizing on the person of the
king, and at their pleasures removing him from place
to place, not only without the consent, but (if we mis-
take not) against a direct ordinance of parliament:
their violent surprising, imprisoning, and secluding
many of the most worthy members of the honourable
house of commons, directly against a declared privilege
of parliament, (an action certainly without parallel in
any age,) and their purposes of abolishing parliamentary
power for the future, and establishing of a represent-
ative (as they call it) instead thereof. Neither hath
their fury staid here, but without all rule or example,
being but private men, they have proceeded to the trial
of the king, against both interest and protestation of
the kingdom of Scotland, and the former public decla-
rations of both kingdoms, (besides the violent haste, re-
jecting the hearing of any defences,) with cruel hands
have put him to death; an act so horrible, as no history,
divine or human, hath laid a precedent of the like.
These and many other their detestable insolencies
may abundantly convince every unbiassed judgment,
that the present practice of the sectaries and their abet-
tors do directly overturn the laws and liberties of the
kingdoms, root out lawful and supreme magistracy,
(the just privileges whereof we have sworn to main-
tain,) and introduce a fearful confusion and lawless
anarchy.
The Spirit of God by Solomon tells us, Prov. xxx.
21, That a servant to reign, is one of the four things
for which the earth is disquieted, and which it cannot
bear: we wonder nothing, that the earth is disquieted
for these things; but we wonder greatly, if the earth
can bear them. And albeit the Lord so permit, that
folly be set in great dignity, and they which sit in low
place; “that servants ride upon horses, and princes
walk as servants upon the earth,” Eccles. X. ver. 6, 7,
yet the same wise man saith, Prov. xix, “Delight is
not seemly for a fool, much less for a servant to have
rule over princes.”
When we consider these things, we cannot but de-
clare and manifest our utter dislike and detestation of
such unwarrantable practices, directly subverting our
covenant, religion, laws, and liberties. And as watch-
men in Sion, warn all the lovers of truth and well-
affected to the covenant, carefully to avoid compliance
with, or not bearing witness against, horrid insolencies,
lest partaking with them in their sins, they also be
partakers of their plagues. Therefore in the spirit of
meekness, we earnestly intreat, and in the authority of
Jesus Christ (whose servants we are) charge and obtest
all, who resolve to adhere unto truth and the covenant,
diligently to observe, and conscientiously to perform,
these following duties.
First, That, according to our solemn covenant, every
one study more the power of godliness and personal
reformation of themselves and families; because, for
the great breach of this part of the covenant, God is
highly offended with these lands, and justly provoked
to permit men to be the instruments of our misery and
afflictions.
Secondly, That every one in their station and calling
earnestly contend for the faith, which was once de-
livered to the saints, Jude 3. And seek to have their
262
OBSERVATIONS ON THE ARTICLES OF PEACE.
hearts established with grace, that they be not unstable
and wavering, carried about with every wind of doc-
trine ; but that they receive the truth in love, avoiding
the company of such as withdraw from and vilify the
public ordinances; speak evil of church-government;
invent damnable errours, under the specious pretence
of a gospel-way and new light; and highly extol the
persons and courses of notorious sectaries, lest God give
them over to strong delusions (the plague of these
times) that they may believe lies, and be damned.
Thirdly, That they would not be drawn by counsel,
command, or example, to shake off the ancient and
fundamental government of these kingdoms by king
and parliament, which we are so deeply engaged to
preserve by our solemn covenant, as they would not be
found guilty of the great evil of these times, (condemn-
ed by the Holy Ghost,) the despising of dominion and
speaking evil of dignities.
Fourthly, That they do cordially endeavour the pre-
servation of the union amongst the well-affected in the
kingdoms, not being swayed by any national respect:
remembering that part of the covenant; “that we shall
not suffer ourselves directly nor indirectly, by what-
|
soever combination, persuasion, or terrour, to be divided
or withdrawn from this blessed union and conjunc-
tion.”
And Finally, Albeit there be more present hazard
from the power of sectaries, (as were from malignants
the last year) yet we are not ignorant of the evil pur-
poses of malignants, even at this time, in all the king-
doms, and particularly in this; and for this cause, we
exhort every one with equal watchfulness to keep
themselves free from associating with such, or from
swerving in their judgments to malignant principles;
and to avoid all such persons as have been from the
beginning known opposers of reformation, refusers of
the covenant, combining themselves with papists and
other notorious malignants, especially such who have
been chief promoters of the late engagement against
England, calumniators of the work of reformation, in
reputing the miseries of the present times unto the ad-
vancers thereof; and that their just hatred to sectaries
incline not their minds to favour malignants, or to
think, that, because of the power of sectaries, the cause
of God needs the more to fear the enmity, or to stand
in need of the help, of malignants.
O B S E R v AT I O N s
UPON THE ARTICLES OF PEACE
WITH THE IRISH REBELS, ON THE LETTER OF ORMOND TO COLONEL JONES, AND THE
REPRESENTATION OF THE PRESBYTERY AT BELFAST.
ALTHOUGH it be a maxim much agreeable to wis-
dom, that just deeds are the best answer to injurious
words; and actions of whatever sort, their own plain-
est interpreters; yet since our enemies can find the
leisure both ways to offend us, it will be requisite, we
should be found in neither of those ways neglectful of
our just defence: to let them know, that sincere and
upright intentions can certainly with as much ease de-
liver themselves into words as into deeds.
Having therefore seen of late those articles of peace
granted to the papist rebels of Ireland, as special graces
and favours from the late king, in reward, most likely,
of their work done, and in his name and authority con-
firmed and ratified by James earl of Ormond; together
with his letter to Colonel Jones, governor of Dublin,
full of contumely and dishonour, both to the parliament
and army : and on the other side, an insolent and se-
ditious representation from the Scots presbytery at
Belfast in the North of Ireland, no less dishonourable
to the state, and much about the same time brought
hither: there will be need ſul as to the same slanderous
aspersions but one and the same vindication against
them both. Nor can we sever them in our notice and
resentment, though one part entitled a presbytery, and
would be thought a protestant assembly, since their
own unexampled virulence hath wrapt them into the
same guilt, made them accomplices and assistants to
the abhorred Irish rebels, and with them at present to
advance the same interest: if we consider both their
calumnies, their hatred, and the pretended reasons of
their hatred to be the same ; the time also and the
place concurring, as that there lacks nothing but a few
formal words, which may be easily dissembled, to make
the perfectest conjunction; and between them to divide
that island.
As for these articles of peace made with those inhu-
man rebels and papists of Ireland by the late king, as
one of his last masterpieces, we may be confidently
persuaded, that no true-born Englishman can so much
as barely read them without indignation and disdain,
that those bloody rebels, and so proclaimed and judged
of by the king himself, after the merciless and babarous
massacre of so many thousand English, (who had used
their right and title to that country with such tender-
ness and moderation, and might otherwise have secured
themselves with ease against their treachery,) should
be now graced and rewarded with such freedoms and
enlargements, as none of their ancestors could ever
IBETWEEN THE EARL OF ORMOND AND THE IRISH.
263
merit by their best obedience, which at best was always
treacherous; to be enfranchised with full liberty equal
to their conquerors, whom the just revenge of ancient
piracies, cruel captivities, and the causeless infestation
of our coast, had warrantably called over, and the long
prescription of many hundred years; besides what
other titles are acknowledged by their own Irish par-
liament, had fixed and seated in that soil with as good
a right as the merest natives. -
These, therefore, by their own foregoing demerits
and provocations justly made our vassals, are by the
first article of this peace advanced to a condition of
freedom superior to what any English protestants durst
have demanded. For what else can be the meaning
to discharge them the common oath of supremacy, es-
pecially being papists, (for whom principally that oath
was intended,) but either to resign them the more into
their own power, or to set a mark of dishonour upon
the British loyalty; by trusting Irish rebels for one
single oath of allegiance, as much as all his subjects of
Britain for the double swearing both of allegiance and
supremacy P
The second article puts it into the hands of an Irish
parliament to repeal, or to suspend, if they think con-
venient, the act usually called Poyning's Act, which
was the main, and yet the civilest and most moderate,
acknowledgment imposed of their dependance on the
crown of England; whereby no parliament could be
summoned there, no bill be passed, but what was first
to be transmitted and allowed under the great seal of
England. The recalling of which act tends openly to
invest them with a law-giving power of their own, en-
ables them by degrees to throw of all subjection to this
realm, and renders them (who by their endless treasons
and revölts have deserved to hold no parliament at all,
but to be governed by edicts and garrisons) as absolute
and supreme in that assembly, as the people of Eng-
land in their own land. And the twelfth article grants
them in express words, that the Irish parliament shall
be no more dependent on the parliament of England,
than the Irish themselves shall declare agreeable to the
laws of Ireland.
The two and twentieth article, more ridiculous than
dangerous, coming especially from such a serious knot
of lords and politicians, obtains, that those acts prohibit-
ing to plow with horses by the tail, and burn oats in the
straw, be repealed; enough, if nothing else, to declare
in them a disposition not only sottish, but indocible,
and averse from all civility and amendment: and what
hopes they give for the future, who, rejecting the in-
genuity of all other nations to improve and wax more
civil by a civilizing conquest, though all these many
years better shewn and taught, prefer their own absurd
and savage customs before the most convincing evi-
dence of reason and demonstration: a testimony of
their true barbarism and obdurate wilfulness, to be ex-
pected no less in other matters of greatest moment.
Yet such as these, and thus affected, the ninth article
entrusts with the militia; a trust which the king swore
by God at Newmarket he would not commit to his par-
liament of England, no, not for an hour. And well de-
clares the confidence he had in Irish rebels, more than
in his loyalest subjects. He grants them moreover,
till the performance of all these articles, that fifteen
thousand foot and two thousand five hundred horse
shall remain a standing army of papists at the beck
and command of Dillon, Muskerry, and other arch-
rebels, with power also of adding to that number as
they shall see cause. And by other articles allows
them the constituting of magistrates and judges in all
causes, whom they think fit; and till a settlement to
their own minds, the possession of all those towns and
countries within their new quarters, being little less
than all the island, besides what their cruelty hath dis-
peopled and laid waste. And lastly, the whole manag-
ing both of peace and war is committed to papists,
and the chief leaders of that rebellion. .
Now let all men judge what this wants of utter
alienating and acquitting the whole province of Ire-
land from all true fealty and obedience to the com-
monwealth of England. Which act of any king
against the consent of his parliament, though no other
crime were laid against him, might of itself strongly
conduce to the disenthroning him of all. In France,
Henry the Third, demanding leave in greatest exigen-
cies to make sale of some crown-lands only, and that to
his subjects, was answered by the parliament then at
Blois, that a king in no case, though of extremest me-
cessity, might alienate the patrimony of his crown,
whereof he is but only usufructuary, as civilians term
it, the propriety remaining ever to the kingdom, not to
the king. And in our own nation, King John, for re-
signing, though unwillingly, his crown to the pope's
legate, with little more hazard to his kingdom than
the payment of one thousand marks, and the unsightli-
ness of such a ceremony, was deposed by his barons,
and Lewis, the French king's son, elected in his room.
And to have carried only the jewels, plate, and trea-
sure into Ireland, without consent of the nobility, was
one of those impeachments, that condemned Richard
the Second to lose his crown.
But how petty a crime this will seem to the alienat-
ing of a whole kingdom, which in these articles of peace
we see as good as done by the late king, not to friends
but to mortal enemies, to the accomplishment of his own
interests and ends, wholly separate from the people's
good, may without aggravation be easily conceived.
Nay, by the covenant itself, since that so cavillously is
urged against us, we are enjoined in the fourth article,
with all faithfulness to endeavour the bringing all
such to public trial and condign punishment, as shall
divide one kingdom from another. And what greater
dividing than by a pernicious and hostile peace, to
disalliege a whole feudary kingdom from the ancient
dominion of England 2 Exception we find there of no
person whatsoever; and if the king, who hath actually
done this, or any for him, claim a privilege above jus-
tice, it is again demanded by what express law either
of God or man, and why he whose office is to execute
law and justice upon all others, should set himself like
a demigod in lawless and unbounded anarchy; refus-
ing to be accountable for that authority over men ma-
264
OBSERVATIONS ON THE ARTICLES OF PEACE
turally his equals, which God himself without a reason
given is not wont to exercise over his creatures 2 And
if God, the nearer to be acquainted with mankind and
his frailties, and to become our priest, made himself a
man, and subject to the law, we gladly would be in-
structed, why any mortal man, for the good and wel-
fare of his brethren being made a king, should by a
clean contrary motion make himself a god, exalted
above law; the readiest way to become utterly unsen-
sible, both of his human condition, and his own duty.
And how securely, how smoothly, with how little
touch or sense of any commiseration, either princely or
so much as human, he hath sold away that justice so
oft demanded, and so oft by himself acknowledged to
be due, for the blood of more than two hundred thousand
of his subjects, that never hurt him, never disobeyed
him, assassinated and cut in pieces by those Irish bar-
barians, to give the first promoting, as is more than
thought, to his own tyrannical designs in England,
will appear by the eighteenth article of his peace;
wherein, without the least regard of justice to avenge
the dead, while he thirsts to be avenged upon the living,
to all the murders, massacres, treasons, piracics, from
the very fatal day, wherein that rebellion first broke
out, he grants an act of oblivion. If this can be justi-
fied, or not punished in whomsoever, while there is any
faith, any religion, any justice upon earth, there can
no reason be alleged, why all things are not left to con-
fusion. And thus much be observed in brief concern-
ing these articles of peace made by the late king with
his Irish rebels.
The letter of Ormond sent to Colonel Jones, gover-
nor of Dublin, attempting his fidelity, which the dis-
cretion and true worth of that gentleman hath so well
answered and repulsed, had passed here without men-
tion, but that the other part of it, not content to do the
errand of treason, roves into a long digression of evil
and reproachful language to the parliament and army
of England, which though not worth their notice, as
from a crew of rebels whose inhumanities are long
since become the horrour and execration of all that hear
them, yet in the pursuance of a good endeavour, to
give the world all due satisfaction of the present doings,
no opportunity shall be omitted.
He accuses first, “That we are the subverters of re-
ligion, the protectors and inviters not only of all false
ones, but of irreligion and atheism.” An accusation
that no man living could more unjustly use than our
accuser himself; and which, without a strange besot-
tedness, he could not expect but to be retorted upon
his own head.
which number he gives out to be one, know not a more
immediate and killing subverter of all true religion
than Antichrist, whom they generally believe to be the
pope and church of Rome; he therefore, who makes
peace with this grand enemy and persecutor of the true
church, he who joins with him, strengthens him, gives
him root to grow up and spread his poison, removing
all opposition against him, granting him schools, ab-
beys, and revenues, garrisons, towns, fortresses, as in
so many of those articles may be seen, he of all protes-
All men, who are true protestants, of
tants may be called most justly the subverter of true
religion, the protector and inviter of irreligion and
atheism, whether it be Ormond or his master. And if
it can be no way proved, that the parliament hath
countenanced popery or papists, but have every where
broken their temporal power, thrown down their pub-
lic superstitions, and confined them to the bare enjoy-
ment of that which is not in our reach, their con-
sciences; if they have encouraged all true ministers of
the gospel, that is to say, afforded them favour and pro-
tection in all places where they preached, and although
they think not money or stipend to be the best en-
couragement of a true pastor, yet therein also have not
been wanting nor intend to be, they doubt not then to
affirm themselves, not the subverters, but the main-
tainers and defenders, of true religion; which of itself
and by consequence is the surest and the strongest sub-
version, not only of all false ones, but of irreligion and
atheism. For “the weapons of that warfare,” as the
apostle testifies, who best knew, “are not carnal, but
mighty through God to the pulling down of strong
holds, and all reasonings, and every high thing exalt-
ed against the knowledge of God, surprising every
thought unto the obedience of Christ, and easily re-
venging all disobedience,” 2 Cor. x. What minister or
clergyman, that either understood his high calling, or
sought not to erect a secular and carnal tyranny over
spiritual things, would neglect this ample and sublime
power conferred upon him, and come a begging to the
weak hand of magistracy for that kind of aid which
the magistrate hath no commission to afford him, and
in the way he seeks it hath been always found helpless
and unprofitable. Neither is it unknown, or by wisest
men unobserved, that the church began then most ap-
parently to degenerate, and go to ruin, when she bor-
rowed of the civil power more than fair encouragement
and protection; more than which Christ himself and
his apostles never required. To say therefore, that we
protect and invite all false religious, with irreligion
also and atheism, because we lend not, or rather mis-
apply not, the temporal power to help out, though in
vain, the sloth, the spleen, the insufficiency of church-
men, in the execution of spiritual discipline over those
within their charge, or those without, is an imputation
that may be laid as well upon the best regulated states
and governments through the world : who have been
so prudent as never to employ the civil sword further
than the edge of it could reach, that is, to civil offences
only ; proving always against objects that were spi-
ritual a ridiculous weapon. Our protection therefore
to men in civil matters unoffensive we cannot deny;
their consciences we leave, as not within our cogni-
zance, to the proper cure of instruction, praying for them.
Nevertheless, if any be found among us declared athe-
ists, malicious enemies of God, and of Christ; the par-
liament, I think, professes not to tolerate such, but
with all befitting endeavours to suppress them. Other-
ways to protect none that in a larger way may be taxed
of irreligion and atheism, may perhaps be the ready
way to exclude none sooner out of protection, than
those themselves that most accuse it to be so general to
BETWEEN THE EARL OF ORMOND AND THE IRISH.
265.
others. Lastly, that we invite such as these, or en-
courage them, is a mere slander without proof.
He tells us next, that they have murdered the king.
And they deny not to have justly and undauntedly, as
became the parliament of England, for more blood-
shed and other heinous crimes than ever king of this
land was guilty of, after open trial, punished him with
death. A matter, which to men, whose serious con-
sideration thereof hath left no certain precept or exam-
ple undebated, is so far from giving offence, that we
implore and beseech the Divine Majesty so to uphold
and support their spirits with like fortitude and mag-
nanimity, that all their ensuing actions may correspond
and prove worthy that impartial and noble piece of
justice, wherein the hand of God appeared so evidently
on our side. We shall not then need to fear, what
all the rout and faction of men basely principled can
do against us.
The end of our proceedings, which he takes upon
him to have discovered, “the changing forsooth of
monarchy into anarchy,” sounds so like the smattering
of some raw politician, and the overworn objection of
every trivial talker, that we leave him in the number.
But seeing in that which follows he contains not him-
self, but, contrary to what a gentleman should know
of civility, proceeds to the contemptuous naming of a
person, whose valour and high merit many enemies
more noble than himself have both honoured and feared;
to assert his good name and reputation, of whose ser-
vice the commonwealth receives so ample satisfaction,
it is answered in his behalf, that Cromwell, whom he
couples with a name of scorn, hath done in few years
more eminent and remarkable deeds, whereon to found
nobility in his house, though it were wanting, and
perpetual renown to posterity, than Ormond and all
his ancestors put together can shew from any record
of their Irish exploits, the widest scene of their glory.
He passes on his groundless objectures, that the aim
of this parliament may be perhaps to set up first an
elective kingdom, and after that a perfect Turkish
tyranny. Of the former we suppose the late act against
monarchy will suffice to acquit them. Of the latter
certainly there needed no other pattern than that ty-
ranny, which was so long modelling by the late king
himself, with Strafford, and that archprelate of Canter-
bury, his chief instruments; whose designs God hath
dissipated. Neither is it any new project of the mon-
archs, and their courtiers in these days, though
Christians they would be thought, to endeavour the
introducing of a plain Turkish tyranny. Witness
that consultation had in the court of France under
Charles the IXth at Blois, wherein Poncet, a certain
court-projector, brought in secretly by the chancellor
Biragha, after many praises of the Ottoman govern-
ment, proposes means and ways at large, in presence of
the king, the queen regent, and Anjou the king's bro-
ther, how with best expedition and least noise the
Turkish tyranny might be set up in France. It ap-
pears therefore, that the design of bringing in that
tyranny, is a monarchical design, and not of those who
have dissolved monarchy.
As for parliaments by three estates, we know, that a
parliament signifies no more than the supreme and ge-
neral council of a nation, consisting of whomsoever
chosen and assembled for the public good; which was
ever practised, and in all sorts of government, before
the word parliament, or the formality, or the possibi-
lity of those three estates, or such a thing as a titular
monarchy, had either name or being in the world. The
original of all which we could produce to be far newer
than those “all ages” which he vaunts of, and by such
first invented and contrived, whose authority, though
it were Charles Martel, stands not so high in our re-
pute, either for himself, or the age he lived in, but that
with as good warrant we may recede from what he
ordained, as he ordain what before was not.
But whereas besides he is bold to allege, that of the
three estates there remains only a small number, and
they the “dregs and scum of the house of commons;”
this reproach, and in the mouth of an Irishman, con-
cerns not them only ; but redounds to apparent dis-
honour of the whole English nation. Doubtless there
must be thought a great scarcity in England of persons
honourable and deserving, or else of judgment, or so
much as honesty in the people, if those, whom they
esteem worthy to sit in parliament, be no better than
scum and dregs in the Irish dialect. But of such like .
stuff we meet not any where with more excrescence
than in his own lavish pen; which feeling itself loose
without the reins of discretion, rambles for the most
part beyond all soberness and civility. In which tor-
rent he goes on negociating and cheapening the loy-
alty of our faithful governor of Dublin, as if the known
and tried constancy of that valiant gentleman were to
be bought with court fumes.
He lays before him, that “there remains now no
other liberty in the subject, but to profess blasphemous
opinions, to revile and tread under foot magistracy, to
murder magistrates, to oppress and undo all that are
not like-minded with us.” Forgetting in the mean
while himself to be in the head of a mixed rabble, part
papists, part fugitives, and part savages, guilty in the
highest degree of all these crimes. What more blas-
phemous, not opinion, but whole religion, than popery,
plunged into idolatrous and ceremonial superstition, the
very death of all true religion; figured to us by the
Scripture itself in the shape of that beast, full of the
names of blasphemy, which we mention to him as to
one that would be counted protestant, and had his
breeding in the house of a bishop? And who are those
that have trod under foot magistracy, murdered magis-
trates, oppressed and undone all that sided uot with
them, but the Irish rebels, in that horrible conspiracy,
for which Ormond himself hath either been or seemed
to be their enemy, though now their ringleader And
let him ask the jesuits about him, whether it be not
their known doctrine and also practice, not by fair and
due process of justice to punish kings and magistrates,
which we disavow not, but to murder them in the basest
and most assassinous manner, if their church interest
so require. There will not need more words to this
windy railer, convicted openly of all those crimes,
266
OBSERVATIONS ON THE ARTICLES OF PEACE
which he so confidently, and yet falsely, charges upon
others.
We have now to deal, though in the same country,
with another sort of adversaries, in shew far different,
in substance much what the same. These write them-
selves the presbytery of Belfast, a place better known
by the name of a late barony, than by the fame of
these men’s doctrine or ecclesiastical deeds : whose
obscurity till now never came to our hearing. And
surely we should think this their representment far be-
neath considerable, who have neglected and passed
over the like unadvisedness of their fellows in other
places more near us, were it not to observe in some par-
ticulars the sympathy, good intelligence, and joint pace
which they go in the north of Ireland, with their co-
partning rebels in the south, driving on the same in-
terest to lose us that kingdom, that they may gain it
themselves, or at least share in the spoil: though the
other be open enemies, these pretended brethren.
The introduction of their manifesto out of doubt must
be zealous; “Their duty,” they say, “to God and his
people, over whom he hath made them overseers, and
for whom they must give account.” What mean these
men P Is the presbytery of Belfast, a small town in
Ulster, of so large extent, that their voices cannot serve
to teach duties in the congregation which they oversee,
without spreading and divulging to all parts, far be-
yond the diocess of Patrick or Columba, their written
representation, under the subtle pretence of feeding
their own flock Or do they think to oversee, or un-
dertake to give an account for, all to whom their paper
sends greeting P St. Paul to the elders of Ephesus
thinks it sufficient to give charge, “That they take
heed to themselves, and to the flock over which they
were made overseers,” beyond those bounds he enlarges
not their commission. And surely when we put down
bishops and put up presbyters, which the most of them
have made use of to enrich and exalt themselves, and
turn the first heel against their benefactors, we did not
think, that one classic fraternity, so obscure and so re-
mote, should involve us and all state-affairs within the
censure and jurisdiction of Belfast, upon pretence of
overseeing their own charge.
We very well know, that church-censures are limited
to church-matters, and these within the compass of their
own province, or to say more truly, of their own con-
gregation: that affairs of state are not for their meddling,
as we could urge even from their own invectives and
protestations against the bishops, wherein they tell
them with much fervency, that ministers of the gospel,
neither by that function, nor any other which they
ought accept, have the least warrant to be pragmatical
in the state.
And surely in vain were bishops for these and other
causes forbid to sit and vote in the house, if these men
out of the house, and without vote, shall claim and be
permitted more licence on their presbyterial stools, to
breed continual disturbance by interposing in the com-
monwealth. But seeing that now, since their heaving
out the prelates to heave in themselves, they devise new
ways to bring both ends together, which will never
vate men.”
meet; that is to say, their former doctrine with their
present doings, as “that they cannot else teach magis-
trates and subjects their duty, and that they have be-
sides a right themselves to speak as members of the
commonwealth :” let them know, that there is a wide
difference between the general exhortation to justice
and obedience, which in this point is the utmost of their
duty, and the state-disputes wherein they are now
grown such busy-bodies, to preach of titles, interests,
and alterations in government: more than our Saviour
himself, or any of his apostles, ever took upon them,
though the title both of Caesar and of Herod, and what
they did in matters of state, might have then admitted
controversy enough.
Next, for their civil capacities, we are sure, that
pulpits and church-assemblies, whether classical or
provincial, never were intended or allowed by wise
magistrates, no, nor by him that sent them, to advance
such purposes, but that as members of the common-
wealth they ought to mix with other commoners, and
in that temporal body to assume nothing above other
private persons, or otherwise than in a usual and legal
manner: not by distinct remonstrances and represent-
ments, as if they were a tribe and party by themselves,
which is the next immediate way to make the church
lift a horn against the state, and claim an absolute and
undepending jurisdiction, as from like advantage and
occasion (to the trouble of all christendom) the pope
hath for many ages done; and not only our bishops
were climbing after him, but our presbyters also, as
by late experiment we find. Of this representation
therefore we can esteem and judge no other than of a
slanderous and seditious libel, sent abroad by a sort of
incendiaries, to delude and make the better way under
the cunning and plausible name of a presbytery.
A second reason of their representing is, “that they
consider the dependance of that kingdom upon Eng-
land,” which is another shameless untruth that ever
they considered ; as their own actions will declare, by
conniving, and in their silence partaking, with those in
Ulster, whose obedience, by what we have yet heard,
stands dubious, and with an eye of conformity rather
to the north, than to that part where they owe their
subjection; and this in all likelihood by the inducement
and instigation of these representers: who are so far
from considering their dependance on England, as to
presume at every word to term proceedings of parlia-
ment, “the insolencies of a sectarian party, and of pri-
Despising dominion, and speaking evil
of dignities, which hypocritically they would seem to
dissuade others from ; and not fearing the due correc-
tion of their superiors, that may in fit season overtake
them. Whenas the least consideration of their depend-
ance on England, would have kept them better in their
duty.
The third reason which they use makes against them;
the remembrance how God punished the contempt of
their warning last year upon the breakers of covenant,
whenas the next year after they forget the warning of
that punishment hanging over their own heads for the
very same transgression, their manifest breach of cove-
BETWEEN THE EARL OF ORMOND AND THE IRISH.
267
mant by this seditious representation, accompanied with
the doubtful obedience of that province which repre-
sents it.
And thus we have their preface supported with three
reasons; two of them notorious falsities, and the third
against themselves; and two examples, “the province
of London, and the commissioners of the kirk-assembly.”
But certain, if canonical examples bind not, much less
do apocryphal.
Proceeding to avouch the trust put upon them by
God, which is plainly proved to be none of this nature,
“they would not be looked upon as sowers of sedition,
or authors of divisive motions; their record,” they say,
“is in heaven,” and their truth and honesty no man
knows where. For is not this a shameless hypocrisy,
and of mere wolves in sheep's clothing, to sow sedition
in the ears of all men, and to face us down to the very
act, that they are authors of no such matter 3 But let
the sequel both of their paper, and the obedience of the
place wherein they are, determine.
Nay, while we are yet writing these things, and
foretelling all men the rebellion, which was even then
designed in the close purpose of these unhallowed
priestlings, at the very time when with their lips they
disclaimed all sowing of sedition, news is brought, and
too true, that the Scottish inhabitants of that province
are actually revolted, and have not only besieged in
Londonderry those forces, which were to have fought
against Ormond and the Irish rebels; but have in a
manner declared with them, and begun open war
against the parliament; and all this by the incitement
and illusions of that unchristian synagogue at Belfast,
who yet dare charge the parliament, “that, notwith-
standing specious pretences, yet their actings do evi-
dence, that they love a rough garment to deceive.”
The deceit we own not, but the comparison, by what
at first sight may seem alluded, we accept: for that
hairy roughness assumed won Jacob the birthright
both temporal and cternal; and God we trust hath so
disposed the mouth of these Balaams, that, coming to
curse, they have stumbled into a kind of blessing, and
compared our actings to the faithful act of that patri-
arch.
But if they mean, as more probably their meaning
was, that “rough garment” spoken of Zach. xiii. 4,
we may then behold the pitiful store of learning and
theology, which these deceivers have thought sufficient
to uphold their credit with the people, who, though the
rancour that leavens them have somewhat quickened
the common drawling of their pulpit elocution, yet for
want of stock enough in scripture-phrase to serve the
necessary uses of their malice, they are become so libe-
ral, as to part freely with their own budge-gowns from
off their backs, and bestow them on the magistrate as
a rough garment to deceive; rather than not be fur-
mished with a reproach, though never so improper,
never so odious to be turned upon themselves. For
but with half an eye cast upon that text, any man will
soon discern that rough garment to be their own coat,
their own livery, the very badge and cognizance of
such false prophets as themselves, Who, when they
understand, or ever seriously mind, the beginning of
that 4th verse, may “be ashamed every one of his
lying vision,” and may justly fear that foregoing de-
nouncement to such “as speak lies in the name of the
Lord,” werse 3, lurking under the rough garment of
outward rigour and formality, whereby they cheat the
simple. So that “this rough garment to deceive” we
bring ye once again, grave sirs, into your own vestry;
or with Zachary shall not think much to fit it to your
own shoulders. To bestow aught in good earnest on
the magistrate, we know your classic priestship is too
gripple, for ye are always begging : and for this rough
gown to deceive, we are confident ye cannot spare it;
it is your Sunday’s gown, your every day gown, your
only gown, the gown of your faculty; your divining
gown; to take it from ye were sacrilege. Wear it
therefore, and possess it yourselves, most grave and
reverend Carmelites, that all men, both young and old,
as we hope they will shortly, may yet better know ye,
and distinguish ye by it; and give to your rough
gown, wherever they meet it, whether in pulpit, classis,
or provincial synod, the precedency and the pre-emi-
mence of deceiving.
They charge us next, that we have broken the cove-
nant, and loaden it with slighting reproaches. For
the reproaching, let them answer that are guilty,
whereof the state we are sure cannot be accused. For
the breaking, let us hear wherein. “In labouring,”
say they, “to establish by law a universal toleration
of all religions.” This touches not the state; for cer-
tainly were they so minded, they need not labour it,
but do it, having power in their hands; and we know
of no act as yet passed to that purpose. But suppose
it done, wherein is the covenant broke P The covenant
enjoins us to endeavour the extirpation first of popery
and prelacy, then of heresy, schism, and profaneness,
and whatsoever shall be found contrary to sound doc-
trine and the power of godliness. And this we cease
not to do by all effectual and proper means: but these
divines might know, that to extirpate all these things
can be no work of the civil sword, but of the spiritual,
which is the word of God.
No man well in his wits, endeavouring to root up
weeds out of his ground, instead of using the spade
will take a mallet or a beetle. Nor doth the covenant
any way engage us to extirpate, or to prosecute the
men, but the heresies and errours in them, which we
tell these divines, and the rest that understand not, be-
longs chiefly to their own function, in the diligent
preaching and insisting upon sound doctrine, in the
confuting, not the railing down, errours, encountering
both in public and private conference, and by the
power of truth, not of persecution, subduing those au-
thors of heretical opinions, and lastly in the spiritual
execution of church-discipline within their own con-
gregations. In all these ways we shall assist them,
favour them, and as far as appertains to us join with
them, and moreover not tolerate the free exercise of
any religion, which shall be found absolutely contrary
to sound doctrine or the power of godliness; for the
conscience, we must have patience till it be within our
268 OBSERVATIONS ON THE ARTICLES OF PEACE
verge. And thus doing, we shall believe to have kept
exactly all that is required from us by the covenant.
Whilst they by their seditious practices against us,
than which nothing for the present can add more assist-
ance or advantage to those bloody rebels and papists
in the south, will be found most pernicious covenant-
breakers themselves, and as deep in that guilt, as those
of their own nation the last year; the warning of
whose ill success, like men hardened for the same judg-
ment, they miserably pervert to an encouragement in
the same offence, if not a far worse: for now they have
joined interest with the Irish rebels, who have ever
fought against the covenant, whereas their countrymen
the year before made the covenant their plea. But as
it is a peculiar mercy of God to his people, while they
remain his, to preserve them from wicked considera-
tions; so it is a mark and punishment of hypocrites, to
be driven at length to mix their cause, and the interest
of their covenant, with God's enemies.
And whereas they affirm, that the tolerating of all
religions, in the manner that we tolerate them, is an
innovation; we must acquaint them, that we are able
to make it good, if need be, both by Scripture and the
primitive fathers, and the frequent assertion of whole
churches and protestant states in their remonstrances
and expostulations against the popish tyranny over
souls. And what force of argument do these doctors
bring to the contrary P But we have long observed to
what pass the bold ignorance and sloth of our clergy
tends no less now than in the bishops’ days, to make
their bare sayings and censures authentic with the peo-
ple, though destitute of any proof or argument. But
thanks be to God, they are discerned.
Their next impeachment is, “that we oppose the
presbyterial government, the hedge and bulwark of
religion.” Which all the land knows to be a most im-
pudent falsehood, having established it with all free-
dom, wherever it hath been desired. Nevertheless, as
we perceive it aspiring to be a compulsive power upon
all without exception in parochial, classical, and pro-
vincial hierarchics, or to require the fleshly arm of ma-
gistracy in the execution of a spiritual discipline, to
punish and amerce by any corporal infliction those
whose consciences cannot be edified by what authority
they are compelled, we hold it no more to be “the
hedge and bulwark of religion,” than the popish or
prelatical courts, or the Spanish Inquisition.
But we are told, “we cnbrace paganism and Juda-
ism in the arms of toleration.” A most audacious ca-
lumny And yet while we detest Judaism, we know
ourselves commanded by St. Paul, Rom. xi. to respect
the Jews, and by all means to endeavour their conver-
sion.
Neither was it ever sworn in the covenant, to main-
tain an universal presbytery in England, as they falsely
allege, but in Scotland against the common enemy, if
our aid were called for : being left free to reſorm our
own country according to the word of God, and the
example of best reformed churches; from which rule
we are not yet departed.
But here, utterly forgetting to be ministers of the
gospel, they presume to open their mouths, not “in the
spirit of meekness,” as like dissemblers they pretend,
but with as much devilish malice, impudence, and
falsehood, as any Irish rebel could have uttered, and
from a barbarous nook of Ireland brand us with the ex-
tirpation of laws and liberties; things which they seem
as little to understand, as aught that belong to good
letters or humanity.
“That we seized on the person of the king;” who
was surrendered into our hands an enemy and captive
by our own subordinate and paid army of Scots in
England. Next, “our imprisoning many members of
the house.” As if it were impossible they should de-
serve it, conspiring and bandying against the public
good; which to the other part appearing, and with the
power they had, not resisting had been a manifest de-
sertion of their trust and duty. No question but it is as
good and necessary to expel rotten members out of the
house, as to banish delinquents out of the land: and
the reason holds as well in forty as in five. And if
they be yet more, the more dangerous is their number.
They had no privilege to sit there, and vote home the
author, the impenitent author, of all our miseries, to
freedom, honour, and royalty, for a few fraudulent, if
not destructive, concessions. Which that they went
about to do, how much more clear it was to all men, so
much the more expedient and important to the com-
monwealth was their speedy seizure and exclusion ;
and no breach of any just privilege, but a breach of
their knotted faction. And here they cry out, “an ac-
tion without parallel in any age.” So heartily we
wish all men were unprejudiced in all our actions, as
these illiterate denouncers never paralleled so much of
any age as would contribute to the tithe of a century.
“That we abolish parliamentary power, and establish
a representative instead thereof.” Now we have the
height of them ; these profound instructors, in the midst
of their representation, would know the English of a
representative, and were perhaps of that classis, who
heretofore were as much staggered at triennial.
Their grand accusation is our justice done on the
king, which that they may prove to be “without rule
or example,” they venture all the credit they have in
divine and human history; and by the same desperate
boldness detect themselves to be egregious liars and
impostors, seeking to abuse the multitude with a shew
of that gravity and learning, which never was their
portion. Had their knowledge been equal to the
knowledge of any stupid monk or abbot, they would
have known at least, though ignorant of all things
else, the life and acts of him, who first instituted their
order: but these blockish presbyters of Clandeboy
know not that John Knox, who was the first founder of
presbytery in Scotland, taught professedly the doctrine
of deposing and of killing kings. And thus while they
deny that any such rule can be ſound, the rule is found
in their own country, given them by their own first
presbyterian institutor; and they themselves, like irre-
gular friars walking contrary to the rule of their own
foundation, deserve for so gross an ignorance and trans-
gression to be disciplined upon their own stools. Or
BETWEEN THE EARL OF
ORMOND AND THE IRISH. 269
had their reading in history been any, which by this
we may be confident is none at all, or their malice not
heightened to a blind rage, they never would so rashly
have thrown the dice to a palpable discovery of their
ignorance and want of shame. But wherefore spend
we two such precious things as time and reason upon
priests, the most prodigal misspenders of time, and the
scarcest owners of reasons It is sufficient we have
published our defences, given reasons, given examples
of our justice done; books also have been written to
the same purpose for men to look on that will; that
no nation under heaven but in one age or other hath
done the like. The difference only is, which rather
seems to us matter of glory, that they for the most part
have without form of law done the deed by a kind of
martial justice, we by the deliberate and well-weighed
sentence of a legal judicature.
But they tell us, “it was against the interest and
protestation of the kingdom of Scotland.” And did
exceeding well to join those two together: here by in-
forming us what credit or regard need be given in
England to a Scots protestation, ushered in by a Scots
interest: certainly no more than we see is given in
Scotland to an English declaration, declaring the in-
terest of England. If then our interest move not them,
why should theirs move us? If they say, we are not all
England; we reply, they are not all Scotland; nay,
were the last year so inconsiderable a part of Scotland,
as were beholden to this which they now term the sec-
tarian army, to defend and rescue them at the charges
of England, from a stronger party of their own coun-
trymen, in whose esteem they were no better than sec-
tarians themselves. But they add, “it was against the
former declarations of both kingdoms,” to seize, or
proceed against the king. We are certain, that no
such declarations of both kingdoms, as derive not their
full force from the sense and meaning of the covenant,
can be produced.
And if they plead against the covenant, “to pre-
serve and defend his person:” we ask them briefly,
whether they take the covenant to be absolute or con-
ditional 2 If absolute, then suppose the king to have
committed all prodigious crimes and impieties against
God, or nature, or whole nations, he must nevertheless
be sacred from all violent touch. Which absurd opinion,
how it can live in any man's reason, either natural or
rectified, we much marvel : since God declared his
anger as impetuous for the saving of King Benhadad,
though surrendering himself at mercy, as for the kill-
ing of Naboth. If it be conditional, in the preservation
and defence of religion, and the people's liberty, then
certainly to take away his life, being dangerous, and
pernicious to both these, was no more a breach of the
covenant, than for the same reason at Edinburgh to
behead Gordon the marquis of Huntley. By the same
covenant we made vow to assist and defend all these,
that should enter with us into this league; not abso-
lutely, but in the maintenance and pursuing thereof.
If therefore no man else was ever so mad, as to claim
from hence an impunity from all justice, why should
any for the king, whose life, by other articles of the
same covenant, was forfeit? Nay if common sense had
not led us to such a clear interpretation, the Scots com-
missioners themselves might boast to have been our
first teachers: who, when they drew to the malignance
which brought forth that perfidious last year's irruption
against all the bands of covenant or Christian neigh-
bourhood, making their hollow plea the defence of his
majesty's person, they were constrained by their own
guiltiness, to leave out that following morsel that
would have choked them, “the preservation and de-
fence of true religion and our liberties.” And question-
less in the preservation of these we are bound as well,
both by the covenant, and before the covenant, to pre-
serve and defend the person of any private man, as the
person and authority of any inferior magistrate: so
that this article, objected with such vehemence against
us, contains not an exception of the king's person, and
authority, to do by privilege what wickedness he list,
and be defended as some fancy, but an express testi-
fication of our loyalty; and the plain words without
wresting will bear as much, that we had no thoughts.
against his person, or just power, provided they might
consist with the preservation and defence of true reli-
gion and our liberties. But to these how hazardous
his life was, will be needless to repeat so often. It may
suffice, that, while he was in custody, where we ex-
pected his repentance, his remorse at last, and com-
passion of all the innocent blood shed already, and
hereafter likely to be shed, for his mere wilfulness, he
made no other use of our continual forbearance, our
humblest petitions and obtestations at his feet, but to
sit contriving and fomenting new plots against us,
and, as his own phrase was, “ playing his own game”
upon the miseries of his people: of which we desire no
other view at present than these articles of peace with
the rebels, and the rare game likely to ensue from such
a cast of his cards. And then let men reflect a little
upon the slanders and reviles of these wretched priests,
and judge what modesty, what truth, what conscience,
what any thing fit for ministers, or we might say rea-
sonable men, can harbour in them. For what they be-
gan in shamelessness and malice, they conclude in
frenzy : throwing out a sudden rhapsody of proverbs
quite from the purpose; and with as much comeliness
as when Saul prophesied. For casting off, as he did
his garments, all modesty and meekness, wherewith
the language of ministers ought to be clothed, espe-
cially to their supreme magistrate, they talk at random
of “servants raging, servants riding, and wonder how
the earth can bear them.” Either these men imagine
themselves to be marvellously high set and exalted in
the chair of Belfast, to vouchsafe the parliament of
England no better style than servants, or else their
high notion, which we rather believe, falls as low as
court-parasitism ; supposing all men to be servants
but the king. And then all their pains taken to
seem so wise in proverbing serve but to conclude them
downright slaves: and the edge of their own proverb
falls reverse upon themselves. For as “delight is not
seemly for fools,” much less high words to come from
base minds. What they are for ministers, or how they
270
OBSERVATIONS ON THE ARTICLES OF PEACE, &c.
crept into the fold, whether at the window, or through
the wall, or who set them there so haughty in the pon-
tifical see of Belfast, we know not. But this we rather
have cause to wonder, if the earth can bear this insuf-
ferable insolency of upstarts; who, from a ground which
is not their own, dare send such defiance to the sove-
reign magistracy of England, by whose authority and
in whose right they inhabit there. By their actions
we might rather judge them to be a generation of
highland thieves and redshanks, who being neigh-
bourly admitted, not as the Saxons by merit of their
warfare against our enemies, but by the courtesy of
England, to hold possessions in our province, a country
better than their own, have, with worse faith than those
heathen, proved ingrateful and treacherous guests to
their best friends and entertainers. And let them take
heed, lest while their silence as to these matters might
have kept them blameless and secure under those pro-
ceedings which they so feared to partake in, that these
their treasonous attempts and practices have not in-
volved them in a far worse guilt of rebellion; and
(notwithstanding that fair dehortatory from joining
with malignants) in the appearance of a co-interest
and partaking with the Irish rebels: against whom,
though by themselves pronounced to be the enemies
of God, they go not out to battle, as they ought, but
rather by these their doings assist and become asso-
ciates'
'E I K O N O K M A X T HI X.
IN AN 8W I.R TO A BOOK HNTITLED,
'E I K Q N B A > I A I K H,
THE PORTRAITURE OF HIS MAJESTY IN HIS SOLITUDES AND SUFFERINGS.
BY JOHN MILTON.
PUBLISHED FROM THE AUTHOR'S SECOND EDITION, PRINTED IN 1650,
witH MANY RNLARGEMENTs,
B Y R. I C H A R D B A R O N.
SHEWING THE TRANSCENDENT EXCELLENCY OF MILTON'S PROSE WORKS.
. TO which 1S ADDKD,
AN ORIGINAL LETTER TO MILTON, NEVER BEFORE PUBLISHED.
——— Morpheus, on thy dewy wing
Such fair auspicious visions bring,
As sooth'd great MILTON's injur'd age,
When in prophetic dreams he saw
The tribes unborn with pious awe
Imbibe each virtue from his heavenly page.
DR. Akens IDE.
THE EDITOR'S PREFACE.
WHEN the last impression of Milton's prose works was committed to my care, I executed that trust with the
greatest fidelity. Not satisfied with printing from any copy at hand, as editors are generally wont, my affec-
tion and zeal for the author induced me to compare every sentence, line by line, with the original edition of
each treatise that I was able to obtain. Hence, errours innumerable of the former impression were corrected;
besides what improvements were added from the author's second edition of The Tenure of Kings and Magis-
trates, which Mr. Toland had either not seen, or had neglected to commit to the press.”
After I had endeavoured to do this justice to my favourite author, the last summer I discovered a second edi-
tion of his Eikonoklastes, with many large and curious additions, printed in the year 1650, which edition had
escaped the notice both of Mr. Toland and myself.
In communicating this discovery to a few friends, I found that this edition was not unknown to some others,
though from low and base motives secreted from the public. But I, who from my soul love liberty, and for that
reason openly and boldly assert its principles at all times, resolved that the public should no longer be withheld
from the possession of such a treasure.
I therefore now give a new impression of this work, with the additions and improvements made by the author;
and I deem it a singular felicity, to be the instrument of restoring to my country so many excellent lines long
lost,-and in danger of being for ever lost, — of a writer who is a lasting honour to our language and na-
tion; —and of a work, wherein the principles of tyranny are confuted and overthrown, and all the arts and
cunning of a great tyrant and his adherents detected and laid open.
The love of liberty is a public affection, of which those men must be altogether void, that can suppress or
smother any thing written in its defence, and tending to serve its glorious cause. What signify professions,
when the actions are opposite and contradictory P Could any high-churchman, any partizan of Charles I, have
acted a worse, or a different part, than some pretended friends of liberty have done in this instance? Many high-
* Mr. Toland first collected and published the author's prose works in 3 vols. folio, 1697, or 1698; for which all lovers of liberty owe grateful praise
º jº,'..."...hº...” seen the different copies, he printed from the first edition of some tracts, which the author had
In 1738 Milton's prose works, were again published, in 2 vols, folio; of which impression all. I shall say is, that, no person being employed to
inspect the press, the printer took the liberty to alter what he did not understand, and thereby defaced the author, and marred the beauty of many
passageS, -
27.2 THE EDITOR'S PREFACE.
church priests and doctors have laid out considerable sums to destroy the prose works of Milton, and have pur-
chased copies of his particular writings for the infernal pleasure of consuming them.* This practice, however
detestable, was yet consistent with principle. But no apology can be made for men that espouse a cause, and
at the same time conceal aught belonging to its support. Such men may tell us that they love liberty, but I
tell them that they love their bellies, their ease, their pleasures, their profits, in the first place. A man that will
not hazard all for liberty, is unworthy to be named among its votaries, unworthy to participate its blessings.
Many circumstances at present loudly call upon us to exert ourselves. Venality and corruption have well-
nigh extinguished all principles of liberty. The bad books also, that this age hath produced, have ruined our
youth. The novels and romances, which are eagerly purchased and read, emasculate the mind, and banish
every thing grave and manly. One remedy for these evils is, to revive the reading of our old writers, of which
we have good store, and the study whereof would fortify our youth against the l landishments of pleasure and
the arts of corruption.
Milton in particular ought to be read and studied by all our young gentlemen as an oracle. He was a great
and noble genius, perhaps the greatest that ever appeared among men; and his learning was equal to his ge-
nius. He had the highest sense of liberty, glorious thoughts, with a strong and nervous style. His works are
full of wisdom, a treasure of knowledge. In them the divine, the statesman, the historian, the philologist, may
be all instructed and entertained. It is to be lamented, that his divine writings are so little known. Very few
are acquainted with them, many have never heard of them. The same is true with respect to another great
writer contemporary with Milton, and an advocate for the same glorious cause ; I mean Algernon Sydney,
whose Discourses on Government are the most precious legacy to these nations.
All antiquity cannot shew two writers equal to these. They were both great masters of reason, both great
masters of expression. They had the strongest thoughts, and the boldest images, and are the best models
that can be followed. The style of Sydney is always clear and flowing, strong and masculine. The great
Milton has a style of his own, one fit to express the astonishing sublimity of his thoughts, the mighty vigour of
his spirit, and that copia of invention, that redundancy of imagination, which no writer before or since hath
equalled. In some places, it is confessed, that his periods are too long, which renders him intricate, if not alto-
gether unintelligible to vulgar readers; but these places are not many. In the book before us his style is for
the most part free and easy, and it abounds both in eloquence, and wit and argument. I am of opinion, that
the style of this work is the best and most perfect of all his prose writings. Other men have commended the
style of his History as matchless and incomparable, whose malice could not see or would not acknowledge the
excellency of his other works. It is no secret whence their aversion to Milton proceeds; and whence their
caution of naming him as any other writer than a poet. Milton combated superstition and tyranny of every
form, and in every degree. Against them he employed his mighty strength, and, like a battering ram, beat
down all before him. But notwithstanding these mean arts, either to hide or to disparage him, a little time
will make him better known; and the more he is known, the more he will be admired. His works are not like
the fugitive short-lived things of this age, few of which survive their authors: they are substantial, durable,
eternal writings; which will never die, never perish, whilst reason, truth, and liberty have a being in these nations.
Thus much I thought proper to say on occasion of this publication, wherein I have no resentment to gratify,
no private interest to serve: all my aim is to strengthen and support that good old cause, which in my youth I
embraced, and the principles whereof I will assert and maintain whilst I live.
The following letter to Milton, being very curious, and no where published perfect and entire, may be fitly
preserved in this place.
A Letter from Mr. Wall to John Milton, Esquire.
SIR,
I Received yours the day after you wrote, and do humbly thank you, that you are pleased to honour me with
your letters. I confess I have (even in my privacy in the country) oft had thoughts of you, and that with much
respect, for your friendliness to truth in your early years, and in bad times. But I was uncertain whether your
relation to the court, F (though I think a commonwealth was more friendly to you than a court) had not clouded
your former light, but your last book resolved that doubt. You complain of the non-proficiency of the nation,
and of its retrogade motion of late, in liberty and spiritual truths. It is much to be bewailed; but yet let us
pity human frailty. When those who made deep protestations of their zeal for our liberty both spiritual and
civil, and made the fairest offers to be assertors thereof, and whom we thereupon trusted ; when those, being
instated in power, shall betray the good thing committed to them, and lead us back to Egypt, and by that
force which we gave them to win us liberty hold us fast in chains; what can poor people do? You know who
they were, that watched our Saviour's sepulchre to keep him from rising.f
• This hath been practised with such zeal by many of that cursed tribe, that it, is a wonder there are any copies left., John Swale, a bookseller of
Jeeds in Yorkshire, an honest man, though of high-church, told me, that he could have ſhore money for burning Milton's l)efence of Liberty and the
People of England, than I would give for the purchase of it. ... Some priests in th: neighbourhood used to meet once a year, and after they were well
warned with strong beer, they sacrificed to the flames the author's Defensio, pro Populo Anglicano, as also this treatise against the EIKQN. I have it
in my power to produce more instances of the like Sacerdotal spirit, with which in some ſºlº publication I may entertain the world.
& -
# Milton was Latin ScCretary. f'Soldiers; this is a severe insinuation against a standing army.
THE EDITOR'S PREFACE. 273
Besides, whilst people are not frce, but straitened in accommodations for life, their spirits will be dejected and
servile: and conducing to that end, there should be an improving of our native commodities, as our manufac-
tures, our fishery, our ſens, forests, and commons, and our trade at sea, &c. which would give the body of the
nation a comfortable subsistence; and the breaking that cursed yoke of tithes would much help thereto.
Also another thing I cannot but mention, which is, that the Norman conquest and tyranny is continued upon
the nation without any thought of removing it; I mean the tenure of lands by copy hold, and holding for life
under a lord, or rather tyrant of a manor; whereby people care not to improve their land by cost upon it, not
knowing how soon themselves or theirs may be outed it; nor what the house is in which they live, for the same
reason: and they are far more enslaved to the lord of the manor, than the rest of the nation is to a king or
supreme magistrate.
We have waited for liberty, but it must be God’s work and not man's, who thinks it sweet to maintain his
pride and worldly interest to the gratifying of the flesh, whatever becomes of the precious liberty of mankind.
But let us not despond, but do our duty; and God will carry on that blessed work in despite of all opposites,
and to their ruin if they persist therein.
Sir, my humble request is, that you would proceed, and give us that other member of the distribution men-
tioned in your book; viz. that Hire doth greatly impede truth and liberty: it is like if you do, you shall find
opposers: but remember that saying, Beatius est pati quam frui: or, in the apostle's words, James v. II, We
count them happy that endure.
I have sometimes thought (concurring with your assertion of that storied voice that should speak from
heaven) when ecclesiastics were endowed with worldly preferments, hodie venenum infunditur in ecclesiam :
for to use the speech of Genesis iv. ult. according to the sense which it hath in the Hebrew, then began men to :
corrupt the worship of God. I shall tell you a supposal of mine, which is this: Mr. Dury has bestowed about
thirty years time in travel, conference, and writings, to reconcile Calvinists and Lutherans, and that with little
or no success. But the shortest way were, take away ecclesiastical dignities, honours, and preferments, on
both sides, and all would soon be hushed; the ecclesiastics would be quiet, and then the people would come
forth into truth and liberty. But I will not engage in this quarrel; yet I shall lay this engagement upon
myself to remain
Your faithful friend and servant,
Causham, May 26, 1659. John WAll.
From this letter the reader may see in what way wise and good men of that age employed themselves: in
studying to remove every grievance, to break every yoke. And it is matter of astonishment, that this age,
which boasts of greatest light and knowledge, should make no effort toward a reformation in things acknow-
ledged to be wrong; but both in religion and in civil government be barbarian
Below Blackheath, Richard B.A.Ron.
June 20, 1756, e
'E I K O N O K M A ≤ T H >.
Prov. xxviii. 15. As a roaring lion and a raging bear, so is a wicked ruler over the poor people.
16. The prince that wanteth understanding, is also a great oppressor; but he that hateth covetousness, shall prolong his days.
17. A man that doth violence to the blood of any person, shall fly to the pit, let mo man stay him.
SALLUST, CONJ Ult AT. CATILIN.
Regium imperium, quod initio, conservandae libertatis, atque augendae reipublicae causã fuerat, in superbian, dominationemaue se convertit.
Regibus boni, quam mali, suspectiones sumt, semperdue his aliena virtus formidolosa est.
Impunè quaelibet facere, id est regem esse. IDRM, BELL, JUGURTII.
PUBLISHED BY AUTHORITY,
THE PRE FA C E.
To descant on the misfortunes of a person fallen from
so high a dignity, who hath also paid his final debt
both to nature and his faults, is neither of itself a thing
commendable, nor the intention of this discourse.
Neither was it fond anibition, nor the vanity to get a
name, present or with posterity, by writing against a
king. I never was so thirsty after fame, nor so desti-
tute of other hopes and means, better and more certain
to attain it: for kings have gained glorious titles from
their favourers by writing against private men, as
Henry VIIIth did against Luther; but no man
ever gained much honour by writing against a king,
274
AN ANSWER TO ELICON BASILIKE.
as not usually meeting with that force of argument in
such courtly antagonists, which to convince might add
to his reputation. Kings most commonly, though
strong in legions, are but weak at arguments; as they
who ever have accustomed from the cradle to use their
will only as their right hand, their reason always as
their left. Whence unexpectedly constrained to that
kind of combat, they prove but weak and puny adver-
saries: nevertheless, for their sakes, who through
custom, simplicity, or want of better teaching, have no
more seriously considered kings, than in the gaudy
name of majesty, and admire them and their doings as
iſ they breathed not the same breath with other mortal
men, I shall make no scruple to take up (for it seems to
be the challenge both of him and all his party) to take up
this gauntlet, though a king's, in the behalf of liberty
and the commonwealth.
And further, since it appears manifestly the cunning
drift of a factious and defeated party, to make the same
advantage of his book, which they did before of his
regal name and authority, and intend it not so much
the defence of his former actions, as the promoting of
their own future designs; (making thereby the book
their own rather than the king's, as the benefit now
must be their own more than his ;) now the third time
to corrupt and disorder the minds of weaker men, by
new suggestions and narrations, either falsely or fal-
laciously representing the state of things to the dishon-
our of this present government, and the retarding of a
general peace, so needful to this afflicted nation, and
so high obtained ; I suppose it no injury to the dead,
but a good deed rather to the living, if by better inform-
ation given them, or, which is enough, by only remem-
bering them the truth of what they themselves know
to be here misaffirmed, they may be kept from entering
the third time unadvisedly into war and bloodshed :
for as to any moment of solidity in the book itself,
(save only that a king is said to be the author, a name,
than which there needs no more among the blockish
vulgar, to make it wise, and excellent, and admired,
may to set it next the Bible, though otherwise containing
little else but the common grounds of tyranny and popery,
dressed up the better to deceive, in a new protestant guise,
trimly garnished over,) or as to any need of answering,
in respect of staid and well-principled men, I take it
on me as a work assigned rather, than by me chosen
or affected : which was the cause both of beginning it so
late, and finishing it so leisurely in the midst of other
employments and diversions. And though well it
might have seemed in vain to write at all, considering
the envy and almost infinite prejudice likely to be stirred
up among the common sort, against whatever can be
written or gainsaid to the king's book, so advantageous
to a book it is only to be a king's; and though it be
an irksome labour, to write with industry and judicious
pains, that which, neither weighed nor well read, shall
be judged without industry or the pains of well-judg-
ing, by faction and the easy literature of custom and
opinion; it shall be ventured yet, and the truth not
smothered, but sent abroad, in the native confidence of
her single self, to earn, how slic can, her entertai; ment
in the world, and to find out her own readers: ſew per-
haps, but those few, of such value and substantial
worth, as truth and wisdom, not respecting numbers
and big names, have been ever wont in all ages to be
contented with. And if the late king had thought
sufficient those answers and defences made for him in
his lifetime, they who on the other side accused his evil
government, judging that on their behalf enough also
hath been replied, the heat of this controversy was in
all likelihood drawing to an end; and the further men-
tion of his deeds, not so much unfortunate as faulty,
had in tenderness to his late sufferings been willingly
forborn ; and perhaps for the present age might have
slept with him unrepeated, while his adversaries, calmed
and assuaged with the success of their cause, had been
the less unfavourable to his memory. But since he
himself, making new appeal to truth and the world,
hath left behind him this book, as the best advocate
and interpreter of his own actions, and that his friends
by publishing, dispersing, commending, and almost
adoring it, seem to place therein the chief strength and
nerves of their cause ; it would argue doubtless in the
other party great deficience and distrust of themselves,
not to meet the force of his reason in any field whatso-
ever, the force and equipage of whose arms they have
so often met victoriously: and he who at the bar stood
excepting against the form and manner of his judica-
ture, and complained that he was not heard; neither
he nor his friends shall have that cause now to find
fault, being met and debated with in this open and
monumental court of his erecting; and not only heard
uttering his whole mind at large, but answered : which
to do effectually, if it be necessary, that to his book
nothing the more respect be had for being his, they of
his own party can have no just reason to exclaim.
For it were too unreasonable that he, because dead,
should have the liberty in his book to speak all evil of
the parliament; and they because living, should be
expected to have less freedom, or any for them, to speak
home the plain truth of a full and pertinent reply. As
he, to acquit himself, hath not spared his adversaries to
load them with all sorts of blame and accusation, so to
him, as in his book alive, there will be used no more
courtship than he uses; but what is properly his own
guilt, not imputed any more to his evil counsellors, (a
ceremony used longer by the parliament than he him-
self desired,) shall be laid here without circumlocutions
at his own door. That they who from the first begin-
ning, or but now of late, by what unhappiness I know
not, are so much affatuated, not with his person only,
but with his palpable faults, and doat upon his deform-
ities, may havé none to blame but their own folly, if
they live and die in such a strooken blindness, as next
to that of Sodom hath not happened to any sort of men
more gross, or more misleading. Yet neither let his
enemies expect to find recorded here all that hath been
whispered in the court, or alleged openly, of the king's
bad actions; it being the proper scope of this work in
hand, not to rip up and relate the misdoings of his
whole life, but to answer only and refute the missay-
ings of his book.
AN ANSWER TO EIRON BASILIKE.
275
First, then, that some men (whether this were by him
intended, or by his friends) have by policy accomplished
after death that revenge upon their enemies, which in
life they were not able, hath been oft related. And
among other examples we find, that the last will of
Caesar being read to the people, and what bounteous
legacies he had bequeathed them, wrought more in
that vulgar audience to the avenging of his death, than
all the art he could ever use to win their favour in his
lifetime. And how much their intent, who published
these overlate apologies and meditations of the dead
king, drives to the same end of stirring up the people
to bring him that honour, that affection, and by con-
sequence that revenge to his dead corpse, which he
himself living could never gain to his person, it appears
both by the conceited portraiture before his book,
drawn out to the full measure of a masking scene, and
set there to catch fools and silly gazers; and by those
Latin words after the end, Vota dabunt quae bella ne-
garunt; intimating, that what he could not compass
by war, he should achieve by his meditations: for in
words which admit of various sense, the liberty is ours,
to choose that interpretation, which may best mind us
of what our restless enemies endeavour, and what we
are timely to prevent. And here may be well observed
the loose and negligent curiosity of those, who took
upon them to adorn the setting out of this book; for
though the picture set in front would martyr him and
saint him to befool the people, yet the Latin motto in
the end, which they understand not, leaves him, as it
were, a politic contriver to bring about that interest,
by fair and plausible words, which the force of arms
denied him. But quaint emblems and devices, begged
from the old pageantry of some twelfthnight's enter-
tainment at Whitehall, will do but ill to make a saint
or martyr: and if the people resolve to take him sainted
at the rate of such a canonizing, I shall suspect their
calendar more than the Gregorian. In one thing I
must commend his openness, who gave the title to this
book, Elktºv BagiNuki), that is to say, The King's Image;
and by the shrine he dresses out for him, certainly
would have the people come and worship him. For
which reason this answer also is entitled, Iconoclastes,
the famous surname of many Greek emperors, who in
their zeal to the command of God, after long tradition
of idolatry in the church, took courage and broke all
superstitious images to pieces. But the people, exor-
bitant and excessive in all their motions, are prone oft-
times not to a religious only, but to a civil kind of
idolatry, in idolizing their kings: though never more
mistaken in the object of their worship ; heretofore
being wont to repute for saints those faithful and cou-
rageous barons, who lost their lives in the field, making
glorious war against tyrants for the common liberty;
as Simon de Momfort, earl of Leicester, against Henry
the IIId; Thomas Plantagenet, earl of Lancaster,
against Edward the IId. But now, with a besotted
and degenerate baseness of spirit, except some few
who yet retain in them the old English fortitude and
love of freedom, and have testified it by their matchless
* The Presbyterians,
T
deeds, the rest, imbastardized from the ancient noble-
ness of their ancestors, are ready to fall flat and give
adoration to the image and memory of this man, who
hath offered at more cunning fetches to undermine our
liberties, and put tyranny into an art, than any British
king before him: which low dejection and debasement
of mind in the people, I must confess, I cannot will-
ingly ascribe to the natural disposition of an English-
man, but rather to two other causes; first, to the pre-
lates and their fellow-teachers, though of another name
and sect,” whose pulpit-stuff, both first and last, hath
been the doctrine and perpetual infusion of servility
and wretchedness to all their hearers, and whose lives
the type of worldliness and hypocrisy, without the least
true pattern of virtue, righteousness, or self-denial in
their whole practice. I attribute it next to the factious
inclination of most men divided from the public by
several ends and humours of their own. At first no
man less beloved, no man more generally condemned,
than was the king ; from the time that it became his
custom to break parliaments at home, and either wil-
fully or weakly to betray protestants abroad, to the
beginning of these combustions. All men inveighed
against him ; all men, except court-vassals, opposed
him and his tyrannical proceedings; the cry was uni-
versal; and this full parliament was at first unanimous
in their dislike and protestation against his evil govern-
ment. But when they, who sought themselves and
not the public, began to doubt, that all of them could
not by one and the same way attain to their ambitious
purposes, then was the king, or his name at least, as a
fit property first made use of his doings made the best
of, and by degrees justified; which begot him such a
party, as, after many wiles and strugglings with his
inward fears, emboldened him at length to set up his
standard against the parliament: whenas before that
time, all his adherents, consisting most of dissolute
swordsmen and suburb-roysters, hardly amounted to
the making up of one ragged regiment strong enough
to assault the unarmed house of commons. After
which attempt, seconded by a tedious and bloody war
on his subjects, wherein he hath so far exceeded those
his arbitrary violences in time of peace, they who be-
fore hated him for his high misgovernment, nay fought
against him with displayed banners in the field, now
applaud him and extol him for the wisest and most
religious prince that lived. By so strange a method
amongst the mad multitude is a sudden reputation won,
of wisdom by wilfulness and subtle shifts, of goodness
by multiplying evil, of piety by endeavouring to root
out true religion.
But it is evident that the chief of his adherents never
loved him, never honoured either him or his cause, but
as they took him to set a face upon their own malignant
designs, nor bemoan his loss at all, but the loss of their
own aspiring hopes: like those captive women, whom
the poet notes in his Iliad, to have bewailed the death
of Patroclus in outward show, but indeed their own
condition.
IIdrpox)\ov troopagu, opóv 3' airāv khös käsm.
Hom. Iliad, r.
276
AN ANSWER TO EIKON BASILIKE,
And it needs must be ridiculous to any judgment
unenthralled, that they, who in other matters express
so little fear either of God or man, should in this one
particular outstrip all precisianism with their scruples
and cases, and fill men's ears continually with the moise
of their conscientious loyalty and allegiance to the
king, rebels in the mean while to God in all their ac-
tions besides: much less that they, whose professed
loyalty and allegiance led them to direct arms against
the king’s person, and thought him nothing violated
by the sword of hostility drawn by them against him,
should now in earnest think him violated by the un-
sparing sword of justice, which undoubtedly so much
the less in vain she bears among men, by how much
greater and in highest place the offender. Else
justice, whether moral or political, were not justice, but
a false counterfeit of that impartial and godlike vir-
tue. The only grief is, that the head was not strook
off to the best advantage and commodity of them that
held it by the hair: * an ingrateful and perverse gene-
ration, who having first cricd to God to be delivered
from their king, now murmur against God that heard
their prayers, and cry as loud for their king against
those that delivered them. But as to the author of
these soliloquies, whether it were undoubtedly the late
king, as is vulgarly believed, or any secret coadjutor,
and some stick not to name him; it can add nothing,
nor shall take from the weight, if any be, of reason
which he brings. But allegations, not reasons, are
the main contents of this book, and need no more than
other contrary allegations to lay the question before all
men in an even balance; though it were supposed,
that the testimony of one man, in his own cause affirm-
ing, could be of any moment to bring in doubt the au-
thority of a parliament denying. But if these his
fairspoken words shall be here fairly confronted and
laid parallel to his own far differing deeds, manifest
and visible to the whole nation, then surely we may
look on them who notwithstanding shall persist to give
to bare words more credit than to open deeds, as men
whose judgment was not rationally evinced and per-
suaded, but fatally stupified and bewitched into such
a blind and obstinate belief: for whose cure it may be
doubted, not whether any charm, though never so
wisely murmured, but whether any prayer can be avail-
able. This however would be remembered and well
noted, that while the king, instead of that repentance
which was in reason and in conscience to be expected
from him, without which we could not lawfully read-
mit him, persists here to maintain and justify the most
apparent of his evil doings, and washes over with a
court-fucus the worst and foulest of his actions, disables
and uncreates the parliament itself, with all our laws
and native liberties that ask not his leave, dishonours
and attaints all protestant churches not prelatical, and
what they piously reformed, with the slander of rebel-
lion, sacrilege, and hypocrisy; they, who seemed of
late to stand up hottest for the covenant, can now sit
mute and much pleased to hear all these opprobrious
things uttered against their faith, their freedom, and
• The author adds in the first edition, which observation, though made
themselves in their own doings made traitors to boot:
the divines, also, their wizards, can be so brazen as to
cry Hosanna to this his book, which cries loudcr against
them for no disciples of Christ, but of 1scariot; and to
seem now convinced with these withered arguments
and reasons here, the same which in some other writ-
ings of that party, and in his own former declarations
and expresses, they have so often heretofore endea-
voured to confute and to explode; none appearing all
this while to windicate church or state from these ca-
lumnies and reproaches but a small handful of men,
whom they deſame and spit at with all the odious
names of schism and sectarism. I never knew that
time in England, when men of truest religion were
not counted sectaries: but wisdom now, valour, jus-
tice, constancy, prudence united and imbodied to defend
religion and our liberties, both by word and deed,
against tyranny, is counted schism and faction. Thus
in a graceless age things of highest praise and imitation
under a right name, to make them infamous and hateful
to the people, are miscalled. Certainly, if ignorance
and perverseness will needs be national and universal,
then they who adhere to wisdom and to truth, are not
therefore to be blamed, for being so few as to seem a
sect or faction. But in my opinion it goes not ill with
that people where these virtues grow so numerous and
well joined together, as to resist and make head against
the rage and torrent of that boisterous folly and super-
stition, that possesses and hurries on the vulgar sort.
This therefore we may conclude to be a high honour
done us from God, and a special mark of his favour,
whom he hath selected as the sole remainder, after all
these changes and commotions, to stand upright and
stedfast in his cause; dignified with the defence of
truth and public liberty; while others, who aspired to
be the top of zealots, and had almost brought religion
to a kind of trading monopoly, have not only by their
late silence and neutrality belied their profession, but
foundered themselves and their consciences, to comply
with enemies in that wicked cause and interest, which
they have too often cursed in others, to prosper now in
the same themselves.
I. Upon the king’s calling this last parliament.
THAT which the king lays down here as his first
foundation, and as it were the head stone of his whole
structure, that “ he called this last parliament, not
more by others' advice, and the necessity of his affairs,
than by his own choice and inclination ;” is to all
knowing men so apparently not true, that a more un-
lucky and inauspicious sentence, and more betokening
the downfal of his whole fabric, hardly could have
come into his mind. For who knows not, that the incli-
nation of a prince is best known either by those next
about him, and most in favour with him, or by the
current of his own actions? Those nearest to this king,
and most his favourites, were courtiers and prelates;
men whose chief study was to find out which way the
by a common enetity, unay for the truth of it hereaſter become a proverb.
* . AN ANSWER TO EIKON BASILIRE.
277
king inclined, and to imitate him exactly: how these
men stood affected to parliaments cannot be forgotten.
No man but may remember, it was their continual ex-
ercise to dispute and preach against them; and in their
common discourse nothing was more frequent, than
that “they hoped the king should now have no need of
parliaments any more.” And this was but the copy,
which his parasites had industriously taken from his
own words and actions, who never called a parliament
but to supply his necessities; and having supplied
those, as suddenly and ignominiously dissolved it, with-
out redressing any one grievance of the people: some-
times choosing rather to miss of his subsidies, or to
raise them by illegal courses, than that the people
should not still miss of their hopes to be relieved by
parliaments.
The first he broke off at his coming to the crown, for
no other cause than to protect the duke of Buckingham
against them who had accused him, besides other
heinous crimes, of no less than poisoning the deceased
king his father; concerning which matter the declara-
tion of No more addresses hath sufficiently informed
us. And still the latter breaking was with more affront
and indignity put upon the house and her worthiest
members, than the former. Insomuch that in the fifth
year of his reign, in a proclamation he seems offended
at the very rumour of a parliament divulged among
the people; as if he had taken it for a kind of slander,
that men should think him that way exorable, much
less inclined : and forbids it as a presumption, to pre-
scribe him any time for parliaments; that is to say,
either by persuasion or petition, or so much as the re-
porting of such a rumour: for other manner of pre-
scribing was at that time not suspected. By which
fierce edict, the people, forbidden to complain, as well
as forced to suffer, began from thenceforth to despair
of parliaments. Whereupon such illegal actions, and
especially to get vast sums of money, were put in prac-
tice by the king and his new officers, as monopolies,
compulsive knighthoods, coat, conduct, and ship-money,
the seizing not of one Naboth's vineyard, but of whole
inheritances, under the pretence of forest or crown-
lands; corruption and bribery compounded for, with
impunities granted for the future, as gave evident
proof, that the king never meant, nor could it stand
with the reason of his affairs, ever to recall parlia-
ments: having brought by these irregular courses the
people's interest and his own to so direct an opposition,
that he might foresee plainly, if nothing but a parlia-
ment could save the people, it must necessarily be his
undoing.
Till eight or nine years after, proceeding with a high
hand in these enormities, and having the second time
levied an injurious war against his native country
Scotland; and finding all those other shifts of raising
money, which bore out his first expedition, now to fail
him, not “of his own choice and inclination,” as any
child may see, but urged by strong necessities, and the
very pangs of state, which his own violent proceedings
had brought him to, he calls a parliament; first in Ire-
land, which only was to give him four subsidies and so
to expire; then in England, where his first demand was
but twelve subsidies to maintain a Scots war, con-
demned and abominated by the whole kingdom : pro-
mising their grievances should be considered after-
wards. Which when the parliament, who judged that
war itself one of their main grievances, made no haste
to grant, not enduring the delay of his impatient will,
or else fearing the conditions of their grant, he breaks
off the whole scssion, and dismisses them and their
grievances with scorn and frustration.
Much less therefore did he call this last parliament
by his own choice and inclination ; but having first
tried in vain all undue ways to procure money, his
army of their own accord being beaten in the north,
the lords petitioning, and the general voice of the peo-
ple almost hissing him and his ill acted regality off the
stage, compelled at length both by his wants and by
his fears, upon mere extremity he summoned this last
parliament. And how is it possible, that he should
willingly incline to parliaments, who never was per-
ceived to call them but for the greedy hope of a whole
national bribe, his subsidies; and never loved, never
fulfilled, never promoted the true end of parliaments,
the redress of grievances; but still put them off, and
prolonged them, whether gratified or not gratified ;
and was indeed the author of all those grievances? To
say therefore, that he called this parliament of his own
choice and inclination, argues how little truth we can
expect from the sequel of this book, which ventures in
the very first period to affront more than one nation
with an untruth so remarkable; and presumes a more
implicit faith in the people of England, than the pope
ever commanded from the Romish laity; or else a na-
tural sottishness fit to be abused and ridden : while in
the judgment of wise men, by laying the foundation of
his defence on the avouchment of that which is so
manifestly untrue, he hath given a worse soil to his
own cause, than when his whole forces were at any
time overthrown. They therefore, who think such
great service done to the king's affairs in publishing
this book, will find themselves in the end mistaken ; if
sense and right mind, or but any mediocrity of know-
ledge and remembrance, hath not quite forsaken men.
But to prove his inclination to parliaments, he affirms
here, “to have always thought the right way of them
most safe for his crown, and best pleasing to his peo-
ple.” What he thought, we know not, but that he ever
took the contrary way, we saw ; and from his own ac-
tions we felt long ago what he thought of parliaments
or of pleasing his people: a surer evidence than what
we hear now too late in words.
He alleges, that “the cause of forbearing to convene
parliaments was the sparks, which some men's distem-
pers there studied to kindle.” They were indeed not
tempered to his temper; for it neither was the law,
nor the rule, by which all other tempers were to be
tried; but they were esteemed and chosen for the fit-
test men, in their several counties, to allay and quench
those distempers, which his own inordinate doings
had inflamed. And if that were his refusing to con-
vene, till those men had been qualified to his temper,
278
AN ANSWER TO EIICON BASILIKE.
that is to say, his will, we may easily conjecture what
hope there was of parliaments, had not fear and his
insatiate poverty, in the midst of his excessive wealth,
constrained him.
“He hoped by his freedom and their moderation to
prevent misunderstandings.” And wherefore not by
their freedom and his moderation P But freedom he
thought too high a word for them, and moderation too
mean a word for himself: this was not the way to pre-
vent misunderstandings. He still “feared passion and
prejudice in other men;” not in himself: “and doubted
not by the weight of his” own “reason, to counterpoise
any faction;” it being so easy for him, and so frequent,
to call his obstimacy reason, and other men's reason,
faction. We in the mean while must believe that wis-
dom and all reason came to him by title with his crown;
passion, prejudice, and faction came to others by being
subjects.
“He was sorry to hear, with what popular heat
elections were carried in many places.” Sorry rather,
that court-letters and intimations prevailed no more,
to divert or to deter the people from their free election
of those men, whom they thought best affected to reli-
gion and their country’s liberty, both at that time in
danger to be lost. And such men they were, as by
the kingdom were sent to advise him, not sent to be
cavilled at, because elected, or to be entertained by
him with an undervalue and misprision of their temper,
judgment, or affection. In vain was a parliament
thought fittest by the known laws of our nation, to
advise and regulate unruly kings, if they, instead of
hearkening to advice, should be permitted to turn it off,
and refuse it by vilifying and traducing their advisers,
or by accusing of a popular heat those that lawfully
elected them.
“His own and his children's interest obliged him to
seek, and to preserve the love and welfare of his sub-
jects.” Who doubts it? But the same interest, com-
mon to all kings, was never yet available to make them
ali seek that, which was indeed best for themselves and
their posterity. All men by their own and their chil-
dren's interest are obliged to honesty and justice: but
how little that consideration works in private men, how
much less in kings, their deeds declare best.
“He intended to oblige both friends and enemies,
and to exceed their desires, did they but pretend to
any modest and sober sense;” mistaking the whole
business of a parliament; which met not to receive
from him obligations, but justice; nor he to expect
from them their modesty, but their grave advice, uttered
with freedom in the public cause. His talk of modesty
in their desires of the common welfare argues him not
much to have understood what he had to grant, who
misconceived so much the nature of what they had to
desire. And for “sober sense,” the expression was too
mean, and recoils with as much dishonour upon him-
sclf, to be a king where sober sense could possibly be
so wanting in a parliament.
“The odium and offences, which some men's rigour,
or remissness in church and state, had contracted upon
his government, he resolved to have expiated with
better laws and regulations.” And yet the worst of
misdemeanors committed by the worst of all his ſa-
vourites in the height of their dominion, whether acts
of rigour or remissness, he hath from time to time con-
tinued, owned, and taken upon himself by public de-
clarations, as often as the clergy, or any other of his
instruments, felt themselves overburdened with the
people's hatred. And who knows not the superstitious
rigour of his Sunday’s chapel, and the licentious remiss-
ness of his Sunday's theatre; accompanied with that
reverend statute for dominical jigs and maypoles, pub-
lished in his own name, and derived from the example
of his father James? Which testifies all that rigour in
superstition, all that remissness in religiou, to have
issued out originally from his own house, and from his
own authority. Much rather then may those general
miscarriages in state, his proper sphere, be imputed to
no other person chiefly than to himself. And which of
all those oppressive acts or impositions did he ever dis-
claim or disavow, till the fatal awe of this parliament
hung ominously over him 2 Yet here he smoothly seeks
to wipe off all the envy of his evil government upon
his substitutes and under-officers; and promises, though
much too late, what wonders he purposed to have done
in the reforming of religion : a work wherein all his
undertakings heretofore declared him to have had little
or no judgment: neither could his breeding, or his
course of life, acquaint him with a thing so spiritual.
Which may well assure us what kind of reformation
we could expect from him; either some politic form of
an imposed religion, or else perpetual vexation and
persecution to all those that complied not with such a
form. The like amendment he promises in state; not
a step further “ than his reason and conscience told
him was fit to be desired;” wishing “he had kept
within those bounds, and not suffered his own judg-
ment to have been overborme in some things,” of which
things one was the earl of Strafford's execution. And
what signifies all this, but that still his resolution was
the same, to set up an arbitrary government of his own,
and that all Britain was to be tied and chained to the
conscience, judgment, and reason of one man ; as if
those gifts had been only his peculiar and prerogative,
entailed upon him with his fortune to be a king *
Whenas doubtless no man so obstinate, or so much a
tyrant, but professes to be guided by that which he
calls his reason and his judgment, though never so cor-
rupted; and pretends also his conscience. In the mean
while, for any parliament or the whole nation to have
either reason, judgment, or conscience, by this rule was
altogether in vain, if it thwarted the king's will; which
was easy for him to call by any other plausible name.
He himself hath many times acknowledged, to have
no right over us but by law; and by the same law to
govern us; but law in a free nation hath been ever
public reason, the enacted reason of a parliament;
which he denying to enact, denies to govern us by that
which ought to be our law; interposing his own pri-
vate reason, which to us is no law. And thus we find
these fair and spacious promiscs, made upon the expe-
rience of many hard sufferings, and his most mortified
AN ANSWER TO EIKON BASILIKE
279
retirements, being thoroughly siſted to contain nothing
in them much different from his former practices, so
cross, and so reverse to all his parliaments, and both
the nations of this island. What fruits they could in
likelihood have produced in his restorement, is obvious
to any prudent foresight.
And this is the substance of his first section, till we
come to the devout of it, modelled into the form of a
private psalter. Which they who so much admire,
either for the matter or the manner, may as well admire
the archbishop's late breviary, and many other as good
manuals and handmaids of Devotion, the lip-work of
every prelatical liturgist, clapped together and quilted
out of Scripture phrase, with as much ease, and as little
need of Christian diligence or judgment, as belongs to
the compiling of any ordinary and saleable piece of
English divinity, that the shops value. But he who
from such a kind of psalmistry, or any other verbal de-
votion, without the pledge and earnest of suitable deeds,
can be persuaded of a zeal and true righteousness in the
person, hath much yet to learn; and knows not that the
deepest policy of a tyrant bath been ever to counterfeit
religious. And Aristotle in his Politics hath mentioned
that special craft among twelve other tyrannical so-
phisms. Neither want we examples: Andronicus Com-
menus the Byzantine emperor, though a most cruel
tyrant, is reported by Nicetas, to have been a constant
reader of Saint Paul's epistles; and by continual study
had so incorporated the phrase and style of that tran-
scendant apostle into all his familiar letters, that the
imitation seemed to vie with the original. Yet this
availed not to deceive the people of that empire, who,
notwithstanding his saint's vizard, tore him to pieces
for his tyranny. From stories of this nature both
ancient and modern which abound, the poets also, and
some English, have been in this point so mindful of
decorum, as to put mever more pious words in the
mouth of any person, than of a tyrant. I shall not in-
stance an abstruse author, wherein the king might b
less conversant, but one whom we well know was the
closet companion of these his solitudes, William Shaks-
peare; who introduces the person of Richard the third,
speaking in as high a strain of piety and mortification
as is uttered in any passage of this book, and some-
times to the same sense and purpose with some words
in this place; “I intended,” saith he, “not only to
oblige my friends, but my enemies.” The like saith
Richard, Act II. Scene 1.
“I do not know that Englishman alive,
With whom my soul is any jot at odds,
More than the infant that is born to night;
I thank my God for my humility.”
Other stuff of this sort may be read throughout the
whole tragedy, wherein the poet used not much licence
in departing from the truth of history, which delivers
him a deep dissembler, not of his affections only, but
of religion. +
In praying therefore, and in the outward work of
devotion, this king we see hath not at all exceeded the
* The second edition for woman, has fiction.
worst of kings before him. But herein the worst of
kings, professing Christianism, have by far exceeded
him. They, for aught we know, have still prayed
their own, or at least borrowed from fit authors. But
this king, not content with that which, although in a
thing holy, is no holy theft, to attribute to his own
making other men's whole prayers, hath as it were
unhallowed and unchristened the very duty of prayer
itself, by borrowing to a christian use prayers offered
to a heathen god. Who would have imagined so little
fear in him of the true all-seeing Deity, so little rever-
ence of the Holy Ghost, whose office is to dictate and
present our christian prayers, so little care of truth in
his last words, or honour to himself, or to his friends,
or sense of his afflictions, or of that sad hour which was
upon him, as immediately before his death to pop into
the hand of that grave bishop who attended him, for a
special relique of his saintly exercises, a prayer stolen
word for word from the mouth of a heathen woman *
praying to a heathen god; and that in no serious book, *
but the vain amatorious poem of Sir Philip Sidney's
Arcadia; a book in that kind full of worth and wit,
but among religious thoughts and duties not worthy to
be named; nor to be read at any time without good
caution, much less in time of trouble and affliction to
be a Christian's prayer-book 2 They who are yet in-
credulous of what I tell them for a truth, that this phi-
lippic prayer is no part of the king's goods, may satisſy
their own eyes at leisure, in the 3d book of Sir Philip's
Arcadia, p. 248, comparing Pamela's prayer with the
first prayer of his majesty, delivered to Dr. Juxton
immediately before his death, and entitled a Prayer in
time of Captivity, printed in all the best editions of his
book. And since there be a crew of lurking railers,
who in their libels, and their fits of railing up and
down, as I hear from others, take it so currishly, that I
should dare to tell abroad the secrets of their AEgyptian
Apis ; to gratify their gall in some measure yet more,
which to them will be a kind of alms, (for it is the
weekly vomit of their gall which to most of them is the
sole means of their feeding,) that they may not starve
for me, I shall gorge them once more with this digres-
sion somewhat larger than before: nothing troubled
or offended at the working upward of their sale-venom
thereupon, though it happen to asperse me; being, it
seems, their best livelihood, and the only use or good
digestion that their sick and perishing minds can make
of truth charitably told them. However, to the benefit
of others much more worth the gaining, I shall proceed
in my assertion; that if only but to taste wittingly of
meat or drink offered to an idol, be in the doctrine of
St. Paul judged a pollution, much more must be his
sin, who takes a prayer so dedicated into his mouth,
and offers it to God. Yet hardly it can be thought
upon (though how sad a thing!) without some kind of
laughter at the manner and solemn transaction of so
gross a cosenage, that he, who had trampled over us
so stately and so tragically, should leave the world at
last so ridiculously in his exit, as to bequeath among
his deifying friends that stood about him such a pre-
280 AN ANSWER TO
EIKON BASILIKE.
cious piece of mockery to be published by them, as
must needs cover both his and their heads with shame,
if they have any left. Certainly they that will may
now see at length how much they were deceived in
him, and were ever like to be hereafter, who cared not,
so near the minute of his death, to deceive his best and
dearest friends with the trumpery of such a prayer, not
more secretly than shamefully purloined ; yet given
them as the royal issue of his own proper zeal. And
sure it was the hand of God to let them fall, and be
taken in such a foolish trap, as hath exposed them to
all derision ; if for nothing clse, to throw contempt and
disgrace in the sight of all men, upon this his idolized
book, and the whole rosary of his prayers; thereby
testifying how little he accepted them from those, who
thought no better of the living God than of a buzzard
idol, fit to be so served and worshipped in reversion,
with the polluted orts and refuse of Arcadias and ro-
mances, without being able to discern the affront rather
than the worship of such an ethnic prayer. But leav-
ing what might justly be offensive to God, it was a
trespass also more than usual against human right,
which commands, that every author should have the
property of his own work reserved to him after death,
as well as living. Many princes have been rigorous
in laying taxes on their subjects by the head, but of
any king heretofore that made a levy upon their wit,
and seized it as his own legitimate, I have not whom
beside to instance. True it is, I looked rather to have
found him gleaning out of books written purposely to
help-devotion. And if in likelihood he have borrowed
much more out of prayerbooks than out of pastorals,
then are these painted feathers, that set him off so gay
among the people, to be thought few or none of them
his own. But if from his divines he have borrowed
nothing, nothing out of all the magazine, and the
rheum of their mellifluous prayers and meditations, let
them who now mourn for him as for Tamuz, them who
howl in their pulpits, and by their howling declare
themselves right wolves, remember and consider in the
midst of their hideous faces, when they do only not cut
their flesh for him like those rueful priests whom Elijah
mocked ; that he who was once their Ahab, now their
Josiah, though feigning outwardly to reverence church-
men, yet here hath so extremely set at naught both
them and their praying faculty, that being at a loss
himself what to pray in captivity, he consulted neither
with the liturgy, nor with the directory, but neglecting
the huge fardell of all their honeycomb devotions, went
directly where he doubted not to find better praying
to his mind with Pamela, in the Countess's Arcadia.
What greater argument of disgrace and ignominy
could have been thrown with cunning upon the whole
clergy, than that the king, among all his priestery, and
all those numberless volumes of their theological dis-
tillations, not meeting with one man or book of that
coat that could befriend him with a prayer in captivity,
was forced to rob Sir Philip and his captive shepherd-
ess of their heathen orisons, to supply in any fashion
his miserable indigence, not of bread, but of a single
prayer to God 2 I say therefore not of bread, for that
want may befal a good man, and yet not make him
totally miserable : but he who wants a prayer to be-
seech God in his necessity, it is inexpressible how poor
he is ; far poorer within himself than all his enemies
can make him. And the unfitness, the indecency of
that pitiful supply which he sought, expresses yet fur-
ther the deepness of his poverty.
Thus much be said in general to his prayers, and in
special to that Arcadian prayer used in his captivity;
enough to undeceive us what esteem we are to set upon
the rest.
For he certainly, whose mind could serve him to seek
a christian prayer out of a pagan legend, and assume
it for his own, might gather up the rest God knows
from whence; one perhaps out of the French Astraea,
another out of the Spanish Diana; Amadis and Palmerín
could hardly scape him. Such a person we may be
sure had it not in him to make a prayer of his own, or
at least would excuse himself the pains and cost of his
invention so long as such sweet rhapsodies of heathenism
and knight-errantry could yield him prayers. How
dishonourable then, and how unworthy of a christian
king, were these ignoble shifts to seem holy, and to
get a saintship among the ignorant and wretched peo-
ple; to draw them by this deception, worse than all
his former injuries, to go a whoring after him And
how unhappy, how forsook of grace, and unbeloved of
God that people, who resolve to know no more of piety
or of goodness, than to account him their chief saint
and martyr, whose bankrupt devotion came not honestly
by his very prayers; but having sharked them from
the mouth of a heathen worshipper, (detestable to teach
him prayers () sold them to those that stood and hon-
oured him next to the Messiah, as his own heavenly
compositions in adversity, for hopes no less vain and
presumptuous (and death at that time so imminent
upon him) than by these goodly relics to be held a saint
and martyr in opinion with the cheated people !
And thus far in the whole chapter we have seen and
considered, and it cannot but be clear to all men, how,
and for what ends, what eoncernments and necessities,
the late king was no way induced, but every way con-
strained, to call this last parliament; yet here in his
first prayer he trembles not to avouch as in the ears of
God, “That he did it with an upright intention to his
glory, and his people's good :” of which dreadful attes-
tation, how sincerely meant, God, to whom it was
avowed, can only judge; and he hath judged already,
and hath written his impartial sentence in characters
legible to all christendom; and besides hath taught us,
that there be some, whom he hath given over to delu-
sion, whose very mind and conscience is defiled ; of
whom St. Paul to Titus makes mention.
II. Upon the Earl of Strafford's Death.
This next chapter is a penitent confession of the
king, and the strangest, if it be well weighed, that ever
was auricular. For he repents here of giving his con-
AN ANSWER TO EIKON BASILIKE
281
sent, though most unwillingly, to the most seasonable
and solemn piece of justice, that had been done of
many years in the land : but his sole conscience thought
the contrary. And thus was the welfare, the safety,
and within a little, the unanimous demand of three
populous nations, to have attended still on the singular-
ity of one man's opinionated conscience; if men had
always been so tame and spiritless, and had not unex-
pectedly found the grace to understand, that, if his
conscience were so narrow and peculiar to itself, it was
not fit his authority should be so ample and universal
over others: for certainly a private conscience sorts
not with a public calling, but declares that person rather
meant by nature for a private fortune. And this also
we may take for truth, that he, whose conscience thinks
it sin to put to death a capital offender, will as oft
think it meritorious to kill a righteous person. But
let us hear what the sin was, that lay so sore upon
him, and, as one of his prayers given to Dr. Juxton
testifies, to the very day of his death; it was his sign-
ing the bill of Strafford's execution ; a man whom all
men looked upon as one of the boldest and most impe-
tuous instruments that the king had, to advance any
violent or illegal design. He had ruled Ireland, and
some parts of England, in an arbitrary manner; had
endeavoured to subvert fundamental laws, to subvert
parliaments, and to incense the king against them ;
he had also endeavoured to make hostility between
England and Scotland : he had counselled the king,
to call over that Irish army of papists, which he had
cunningly raised, to reduce England, as appeared by
good testimony then present at the consultation : for
which, and many other crimes alleged and proved
against him in twenty-eight articles, he was condemned
of high treason by the parliament. The commons by
far the greater number cast him : the lords, after they
had been satisfied in a full discourse by the king's so-
licitor, and the opinions of many judges delivered in
their house, agreed likewise to the sentence of treason.
The people universally cried out for justice. None
were his friends but courtiers and clergymen, the worst
at that time, and most corrupted sort of men; and court
ladies, not the best of women; who, when they grow
to that insolence as to appear active in state-affairs,
are the certain sign of a dissolute, degenerate, and
pusillanimous commonwealth. Last of all the king,
or rather first, for these were but his apes, was not sa-
tisfied in conscience to condemn him of high treason;
and declared to both houses, “that no fears or respects
whatsoever should make him alter that resolution found-
ed upon his conscience:” either then his resolution was
indeed not founded upon his conscience, or his con-
science received better information, or else both his
conscience and this his strong resolution strook sail,
notwithstanding these glorious words, to his stronger
fear; for within a few days after, when the judges at
a privy council and four of his elected bishops had
picked the thorn out of his conscience, he was at length
persuaded to sign the bill for Strafford's execution.
And yet perhaps, that it wrung his conscience to con-
demn the earl of high treason is not unlikely; not be-
cause he thought him guiltless of highest treason, had
half those crimes been committed against his own pri-
vate interest or person, as appeared plainly by his
charge against the six members; but because he knew
himself a principal in what the earl was but his acces-
sory, and thought nothing treason against the common-
wealth, but against himself only.
Had he really scrupled to sentence that for treason,
which he thought not treasonable, why did he seem re-
solved by the judges and the bishops? and if by them
resolved, how comes the scruple here again ' It was
not then, as he now pretends, “the importunities of
some, and the ſcar of many,” which made him sign,
but the satisfaction given him by those judges and
ghostly fathers of his own choosing. Which of him
shall we believe P for he seems not one, but double ;
either here we must not believe him professing that his
satisfaction was but seemingly received and out of fear,
or else we may as well believe that the scruple was no
real scruple, as we can believe him here against him-
self before, that the satisfaction then received was no
real satisfaction. Of such a variable and fleeting con-
science what hold can be taken P But that indeed it
was a facil conscience, and could dissemble satisfaction
when it pleased, his own ensuing actions declared;
being soon after found to have the chief hand in a most
detested conspiracy against the parliament and king-
dom, as by letters and examinations of Perey, Goring,
and other conspirators came to light; that his intention
was to rescue the earl of Strafford, by seizing on the
Tower of London; to bring up the English army Out
of the North, joined with eight thousand Irish papists
raised by Straflord, and a French army to be landed at
Portsmouth, against the parliament and their friends.
For which purpose the king, though requested by both
houses to disband those Irish papists, refused to do it,
and kept them still in arms to his own purposes. No
marvel then, if, being as deeply criminous as the earl
conscience to adjudge to death
those misdeeds, whereof himself had been the chief au-
thor: no marvel though instead of blaming and detest-
ing his ambition, his evil counsel, his violence, and
oppression of the people, he fall to praise his great abi-
lities; and with scholastic flourishes beneath the de-
cency of a king, compares him to the sun, which in all
figurative use and significance bears allusion to a king,
not to a subject: no marvel though he knit contradic-
tions as close as words can lie together, “not approving
in his judgment,” and yet approving in his subsequent
reason all that Strafford did, as “driven by the neces-
sity of times, and the temper of that people;” for this
excuses all his misdemeanors. Lastly, no marvel that
he goes on building many fair and pious conclusions
upon false and wicked premises, which deceive the
common reader, not well discerning the antipathy of
such connexioms: but this is the marvel, and may be the
himself, it stung his
astonishment, of all that have a conscience, how he
durst in the sight of God (and with the same words of
contrition wherewith David repents the murdering of
Uriah) repent his lawful compliance to that just act of
not saving him, whom he ought to have delivered up
282
AN ANSWER TO EIKON BASILIKE.
to speedy punishment; though himself the guiltier of
the two. If the deed were so sinful, to have put to
death so great a malefactor, it would have taken much
doubtless from the heaviness of his sin, to have told
God in his confession, how he laboured, what dark plots
he had contrived, into what a league entered, and with
what conspirators, against his parliament and kingdoms,
to have rescued from the claim of justice so notable and
so dear an instrument of tyranny ; which would have
been a story, no doubt, as pleasing in the ears of Hea-
ven, as all these equivocal repentances. For it was
fear, and nothing else, which made him feign before
both the scruple and the satisfaction of his conscience,
that is to say, of his mind : his first fear pretended con-
science, that he might be borne with to refuse signing;
his latter fear, being more urgent, made him find a
conscience both to sign, and to be satisfied. As for re-
pentance, it came not on him till a long time after ;
when he saw “he could have suffered nothing more,
though he had denied that bill.” For how could he un-
derstandingly repent of letting that be treason, which
the parliament and whole nation so judged 2 This was
that which repented him, to have given up to just
punishment so stout a champiou of his designs, who
might have been so useful to him in his following civil
broils. It was a worldly repentance, not a conscien-
tious; or else it was a strange tyranny, which his con-
science had got over him, to vex him like an evil spirit
for doing one act of justice, and by that means to “for-
tify his resolution” from ever doing so any more. That
mind must needs be irrecoverably depraved, which,
either by chance or importunity, tasting but once of one
just deed, spatters at it, and abhors the relish ever after.
To the scribes and Pharisees wo was denounced by our
Saviour, for straining at a gnat and swallowing a
camel, though a gnat were to be strained at : but to a
conscience with whom one good deed is so hard to pass
down as to endanger almost a choking, and bad deeds
without number, though as big and bulky as the ruin
of three kingdoms, go down currently without strain-
ing, certainly a far greater wo appertains. If his con-
science were come to that unnatural dyscrasy, as to
digest poison and to keck at wholesome food, it was
not for the parliament, or any of his kingdoms, to feed
with him any longer. Which to conceal he would
persuade us, that the parliament also in their conscience
escaped not “some touches of remorse” for putting
Strafford to death, in forbidding it by an after-act to be
a precedent for the future. But, in a fairer construc-
tion, that act implied rather a desire in them to pacify
the king's mind, whom they perceived by this means
quite alienated: in the mean while not imagining that
this after-act should be retorted on them to tie up jus-
tice for the time to come upon like occasion, whether
this were made a precedent or not, no more than the
want of such a precedent, if it had been wanting, had
been available to hinder this.
But how likely is it, that this after-act argued in the
parliament their least repenting for the death of Straf-
ford, when it argued so little in the king himself: who,
notwithstanding this aſter-act, which had his own hand
and concurrence, if not his own instigation, within the
same year accused of high treason no less than six
members at once for the same pretended crimes, which
his conscience would not yield to think treasonable in
the earl : so that this his subtle argument to fasten a
repenting, and by that means a guiltiness of Strafford's
death upon the parliament, concludes upon his own
head; and shews us plainly, that either nothing in his
judgment was treason against the commonwealth, but
only against the king's person; (a tyrannical principle!)
or that his conscience was a perverse and prevaricating
conscience, to scruple that the commonwealth should
punish for treasonous in one eminent offender that
which he himself sought so vehemently to have pun-
ished in six guiltless persons. If this were “that
touch of conscience, which he bore with greater re-
gret” than for any sin committed in his life, whether
it were that proditory aid sent to Rochel and religion
abroad, or that prodigality of shedding blood at home,
to a million of his subjects' lives not valued in com-
parison to one Strafford; we may consider yet at last,
what true sense and feeling could be in that con-
science, and what fitness to be the master conscience
of three kingdoms. -
But the reason why he labours, that we should take
notice of so much “tenderness and regret in his soul
for having any hand in Strafford's death,” is worth the
marking ere we conclude: “he hoped it would be some
evidence before God and man to all posterity, that he
was far from bearing that vast load and guilt of blood”
laid upon him by others: which hath the likeness of a
subtle dissimulation; bewailing the blood of one man,
his commodious instrument, put to death most justly,
though by him unwillingly, that we might think him
too tender to shed willingly the blood of those thou-
sands whom he counted rebels. And thus by dipping
voluntarily his finger's end, yet with shew of great re-
morse, in the blood of Strafford, whereof all men clear
him, he thinks to scape that sea of innocent blood,
wherein his own guilt inevitably hath plunged him
all over. And we may well perceive to what easy
satisfactions and purgations he had inured his secret
conscience, who thought by such weak policies and
ostentations as these to gain belief and absolution from
understanding men.
III. Upon his going to the House of Commons.
CoNcERNING his unexcusable and hostile march from
the court to the house of commons, there needs not
much be said ; for he confesses it to be an act, which
most men, whom he calls “his enemies,” cried shame
upon, “indifferent men grew jealous of and fearful,
and many of his friends resented, as a motion arising
rather from passion than reason:” he himself, in one of
his answers to both houses, made profession to be con-
vinced, that it was a plain breach of their privilege;
yet here, like a rotten building newly trimmed over,
he represents it speciously and fraudulently, to impose
upon the simple reader; and seeks by smooth and sup-
AN ANSWER TO EIKON BASI I, IKE.
283
ple words not here only, but through his whole book,
to make some beneficial use or other even of his worst
miscarriages.
“These men,” saith he, meaning his friends, “knew
not the just motives and pregnant grounds with which
I thought myself furnished;” to wit, against the five
members, whom he came to drag out of the house.
His best friends indeed knew not, nor could ever know,
his motives to such a riotous act; and had he himself
known any just grounds, he was not ignorant how
much it might have tended to his justifying, had he
named them in this place, and not concealed them.
But suppose them real, suppose them known, what
was this to that violation and dishonour put upon the
whole house, whose very door forcibly kept open, and
all the passages near it, he beset with swords and
pistols cocked and menaced in the hands of about three
hundred swaggerers and ruffians, who but expected,
may audibly called for, the word of onset to begin a
slaughter? -
“He had discovered, as he thought, unlawful cor-
respondences, which they had used, and engagements
to embroil his kingdoms;” and remembers not his own
unlawful correspondences and conspiracies with the
Irish army of papists, with the French to land at Ports-
mouth, and his tampering both with the English and
Scots army to come up against the parliament: the
least of which attempts, by whomsoever, was no less
than manifest treason against the commonwealth.
If to demand justice on the five members were his
plea, for that which they with more reason might have
demanded justice upon him, (I use his own argument.)
there needed not so rough assistance. If he had “re-
solved to bear that repulse with patience,” which his
queen by her words to him at his return little thought
he would have done, wherefore did he provide against
it with such an armed and unusual force P but his heart
served him not to undergo the hazard that such a
desperate scuffle would have brought him to. But
wherefore did he go at all, it behoving him to know
there were two statutes, that declared he ought first to
have acquainted the parliament, who were the accusers,
which he refused to do, though still professing to go-
vern by law, and still justifying his attempts against
law 8 And when he saw it was not permitted him to
attaint them but by a fair trial, as was offered him
from time to time, for want of just matter which yet
never came to light, he let the business fall of his own
accord; and all those pregnancies and just motives
came to just nothing.
“He had no temptation of displeasure or revenge
against those men:” none but what he thirsted to
execute upon them, for the constant opposition which
they made against his tyrannous proceedings, and the
love and reputation which they therefore had among
the people; but most immediately, for that they were
supposed the chief, by whose activity those twelve
protesting bishops were but a week before committed
to the Tower.
“He missed but little to have produced writings
under some men's own hands.” But yet he missed,
though their chambers, trunks, and studics were sealed
up and searched; yet not found guilty. “Providence
would not have it so.” Good Providence that curbs
the raging of proud monarchs, as well as of mad mul-
titudes. “Yet he wanted not such probabilitics” (for
his pregnant is come now to probable) “as were suſ-
ficient to raise jealousies in any king's heart:” and
thus his pregnant motives are at last proved nothing
but a tympany, or a Queen Mary’s cushion; for in any
king’s heart, as kings go now, what shadowy conceit
or groundless toy will not create a jealousy 2
“That he had designed to insult the house of com-
mons,” taking God to witness, he utterly denies; yet
in his answer to the city, maintains that “any course
of violence had been very justifiable.” And we may
then guess how far it was from his design : however,
it discovered in him an excessive eagerness to be aven-
ged on them that crossed him ; and that to have his
will, he stood not to do things never so much below
him. What a becoming sight it was, to see the king
of England one while in the house of commons, and by
and by in the Guildhall among the liveries and manu-
facturers, prosecuting so greedily the track of five or
six fled subjects; himself not the solicitor only, but the
pursuivant and the apparitor of his own partial cause !
And although in his answers to the parliament, he hath
confessed, first that his manner of prosecution was ille-
gal, next “that as he once conceived he had ground
enough to accuse them, so at length that he found as good
cause to desert any prosecution of them ;” yet here he
seems to reverse all, and against promise takes up his
old deserted accusation, that he might have something
to excuse himself, instead of giving due reparation,
which he always refused to give them whom he had so
dishonoured.
“That I went,” saith he of his going to his house of
commons, “attended with some gentlemen ;” gentle-
men indeed ! the ragged infantry of stews and bro-
thels; the spawn and shipwreck of taverns and dicing-
houses: and then he pleads, “it was no unwonted
thing for the majesty and safety of a king to be so at-
tended, especially in discontented times.” An illustri-
ous majesty no doubt, so attended ! a becoming safety
for the king of England, placed in the fidelity of such
guards and champions ! happy times, when braves and
hacksters, the only contented members of his govern-
ment, were thought the fittest and the faithfullest to
defend his person against the discontents of a parlia-
ment and all good men Were those the chosen ones
to “preserve reverence to him,” while he entered “un-
assured,” and full of suspicions, into his great and
faithful counsel ? Let God then and the world judge,
whether the cause were not in his own guilty and un-
warrantable doings: the house of commons, upon seve-
ral examinations of this business, declared it sufficiently
proved, that the coming of those soldiers, papists and
others, with the king, was to take away some of their
members, and in case of opposition or denial, to have
fallen upon the house in a hostile manner. This the
king here denies; adding a fearful imprecation against
his own life, “if he purposed any violence or oppres-
284
AN ANSWER TO EIKON BASILIKE.
sion against the innocent, then,” saith he, “let the ene-
my prosecute my soul, and tread my life to the ground,
and lay my honour in the dust.” What need then more
disputing He appealed to God’s tribunal, and behold !
God hath judged and done to him in the sight of all
men according to the verdict of his own mouth : to be
a warning to all kings hereafter how they use presump-
tuously the words and protestations of David, without
the spirit and conscience of David. And the king's
admirers may here see their madness, to mistake this
book for a monument of his worth and wisdom, whenas
indeed it is his doomsday-book; not like that of Wij-
liam the Norman his predecessor, but the record and
memorial of his condemnation; and discovers whatever
hath befallen him, to have been hastened on from di-
vine justice by the rash and inconsiderate appeal of his
own lips. But what evasions, what pretences, though
never so unjust and empty, will he refuse in matters
more unknown, and more involved in the mists and
intricacies of state, who, rather than not justify himself
in a thing so generally odious, can flatter his integrity
with such frivolous excuses against the manifest dis-
sent of all men, whether enemies, neuters, or friends 2
But God and his judgments have not been mocked;
and good men may well perceive what a distance there
was ever like to be between him and his parliament, and
perhaps between him and all amendment, who for one
good deed, though but consented to, asks God forgive-
ness; and from his worst deeds done, takes occasion
to insist upon his righteousness!
IV. Upon the Insolency of the Tumults.
WE have here, I must confess, a meat and well-
couched invective against tumults, expressing a true
fear of them in the author; but yet so handsomely
composed, and withal so feelingly, that, to make a
royal comparison, I believe Rehoboam the son of Solo-
mon could not have composed it better. Yet Rehoboam
had more cause to inveigh against them ; for they had
stoned his tribute-gatherer, and perhaps had as little
spared his own person, had he not with all speed
betaken him to his chariot. But this king hath stood
the worst of them in his own house without danger,
when his coach and horses, in a panic fear, have been
to seek: which argues, that the tumults at Whitehall
were nothing so dangerous as those at Sechem.
But the matter here considerable, is not whether the
king or his household rhetorician have made a pithy
declamation against tumults; but first, whether these
were tumults or not; next, if they were, whether the
king himself did not cause them. Let us examine
therefore how things at that time stood. The king, as
before hath been proved, having both called this par-
liament unwillingly, and as unwillingly from time to
time condescended to their several acts, carrying on a
disjoint and private interest of his own, and not endur-
ing to be so crossed and overswayed, especially in the
executing of his chief and boldest instrument, the de-
puty of Ireland first tempts the English army, with no
less reward than the spoil of London, to come up and
destroy the parliament. That being discovered by
some of the officers, who, though bad enough, yet ab-
horred so foul a deed; the king, hardened in his pur-
pose, tempts them the second time at Burrowbridge,
promises to pawn his jewels for them, and that they
should be met and assisted (would they but march on)
with a gross body of horse under the earl of Newcastle.
He tempts them yet the third time, though after dis-
covery, and his own abjuration to have ever tempted
them, as is affirmed in the declaration of “No more ad-
dresses.” Neither this succeeding, he turns him next
to the Scotch army, and by his own credential letters
given to O Neal and Sir John Henderson, baits his
temptation with a richer reward; not only to have the
sacking of London, but four northern counties to be
made Scottish, with jewels of great value to be given
in pawn the while. But neither would the Scots, for
any promise of reward, be brought to such an execrable
and odious treachery : but with much honesty gave no-
tice of the king's design both to the parliament and
city of London. The parliament moreover had intelli-
gence, and the people could not but discern, that there
was a bitter and malignant party grown up now to
such a boldness, as to give out insolent and threaten-
ing speeches against the parliament itself. Besides
this, the rebellion in Ireland was now broke out; and
a conspiracy in Scotland had been made, while the
king was there, against some chief members of that
parliament; great numbers here of unknown and sus-
picious persons resorted to the city. The king, being
returned from Scotland, presently dismisses that guard,
which the parliament thought necessary in the midst
of so many dangers to have about them, and puts an-
other guard in their place, contrary to the privilege of
that high court, and by such a one commanded, as
made them no less doubtful of the guard itself. Which
they therefore, upon some ill effects thereof first found,
discharge ; deeming it more safe to sit free, though
without guard, in open danger, than enclosed with a
suspected safety. The people therefore, lest their wor-
thiest and most faithful patriots, who had exposed
themselves for the public, and whom they saw now
left naked, should want aid, or be deserted in the midst
of these dangers, came in multitudes, though unarmed,
to witness their fidelity and readiness in case of any
violence offered to the parliament. The king, both
envying to see the people's love thus devolved on an-
other object, and doubting lest it might utterly disable
him to do with parliaments as he was wont, sent a
message into the city forbidding such resorts. The
parliament also, both by what was discovered to them,
and what they saw in a malignant party, (some of
which had already drawn blood in a fray or two at the
court-gate, and even at their own gate in Westminster-
hall,) conceiving themselves to be still in danger where
they sate, sent a most reasonable and just petition to
the king, that a guard might be allowed them out of
the city, whereof the king's own chamberlain the earl
of Essex, might have command ; it being the right of
AN ANSWER TO EIKON BASILIKE.
285
inferior courts to make choice of their own guard.
This the king refused to do, and why he refused tº e
very next day made manifest: for on that day it was
that he sallied out from Whitehall, with those trusty
myrmidons, to block up or give assault to the house of
commons. He had, besides all this, begun to fortify
his court, and entertained armed men not a few ; who,
standing at his palace gate, reviled and with drawn
swords wounded many of the people, as they went by
unarmed, and in a peaceable manner, whereof some
died. The passing by of a multitude, though neither
to St. George's feast, nor to a tilting, certainly of itself
was no tumult; the expression of their loyalty and
steadfastness to the parliament, whose lives and safe-
ties by more than slight rumours they doubted to be in
danger, was no tumult. If it grew to be so, the cause
was in the king himself and his injurious retinue, who
both by hostile preparations in the court, and by actual
assailing of the people, gave them just cause to defend
themselves. -
Surely those unarmed and petitioning people needed
not have been so formidable to any, but to such whose
consciences misgave them how ill they had deserved
of the people; and first began to injure them, because
they justly feared it from them; and then ascribe that
to popular tumult, which was occasioned by their own
provoking.
And that the king was so emphatical and elaborate
on this theme against tumults, and expressed with
such a vehemence his hatred of them, will redound less
perhaps than he was aware to the commendation of his
government. For besides that in good governments
they happen seldomest, and rise not without cause, if
they prove extreme and permicious, they were never
counted so to monarchy, but to monarchical tyranny;
and extremes one with another are at most antipathy.
If then the king so extremely stood in fear of tumults,
the inference will endanger him to be the other ex-
treme. Thus far the occasion of this discourse against
tumults: now to the discourse itself, voluble enough, and
full of sentence, but that, for the most part, either spe-
cious rather than solid, or to his cause nothing pertinent.
“He never thought any thing more to presage the
mischiefs that ensued, than those tumults.” Then was
his foresight but short, and much mistaken. Those tu-
mults were but the mild effects of an evil and injurious
reign ; not signs of mischiefs to come, but seeking relief
for mischiefs past: those signs were to be read more
apparent in his rage and purposed revenge of those free
expostulations and clamours of the people against his
lawless government. “Not any thing,” saith he,
“ portends more God's displeasure against a nation,
than when he suffers the clamours of the vulgar to pass
all bounds of law and reverence to authority.” It por-
tends rather his displeasure against a tyrannous king,
whose proud throne he intends to overturn by that
contemptible vulgar; the sad cries and oppressions of
whom his loyalty regarded not. As for that suppli-
cating people, they did no hurt either to law or author-
ity, but stood for it rather in the parliament against
whom they feared would violate it.
fever.”
“That they invaded the honour and freedom of the
two houses,” is his own officious accusation, not
seconded by the parliament, who, had they seen cause,
were themselves best able to complain. And if they
“shook and menaced ” any, they were such as had
more relation to the court than to the commonwealth ;
enemies, not patrons of the people. But if their pe-
titioning unarmed were an invasion of both houses,
what was his entrance into the house of commons, be-
setting it with armed men In what condition then
was the honour and freedom of that house f
“They forebore not rude deportments, contemptuous
words and actions, to himself and his court.”
It was more wonder, having heard what treacherous
hostility he had designed against the city and his whole
kingdom, that they forebore to handle him as people
in their rage have handled tyrants heretofore for less
offences.
“They were not a short ague, but a fierce quotidian
He indeed may best say it, who most felt it;
for the shaking was within him, and it shook him by
his own description “worse than a storm, worse than
an earthquake;” Belshazzar's palsy. Had not worse
fears, terrours, and envies made within him that com-
motion, how could a multitude of his subjects, armed
with no other weapon than petitions, have shaken all
his joints with such a terrible ague 2 Yet that the par-
liament should entertain the least fear of bad intentions
from him or his party, he endures not; but would per-
suade us, that “men scare themselves and others with-
out cause:” for he thought fear would be to them a
kind of armour, and his design was, if it were possible,
to disarm all, especially of a wise fear and suspicion ;
for that he knew would find weapons.
He goes on therefore with vehemence, to repeat the
mischiefs done by these tumults. “They first petition-
ed, then protested; dictate next, and lastly overawe the
parliament. They removed obstructions, they purged
the houses, cast out rotten members.” If there were a
man of iron, such as Talus, by our poet Spencer, is
feigned to be, the page of justice, who with his iron
flail could do all this, and expeditiously, without those
deceitful forms and circumstances of law, worse than
ceremonies in religion; I say, God send it done, whe-
ther by one Talus, or by a thousand.
“But they subdued the men of conscience in par-
liament, backed and abetted all seditious and schis-
matical proposals against government ecclesiastical
and civil.”
Now we may perceive the root of his hatred, whence
it springs. It was not the king's grace or princely
goodness, but this iron flail, the people, that drove the
bishops out of their baronies, out of their cathedrals,
out of the lords' house, out of their copes and surplices,
and all those papistical innovations, threw down the
high-commission and star-chamber, gave us a triennial
parliament, and what we most desired; in revenge
whereof he now so bitterly inveighs against them;
these are those seditious and schismatical proposals
then by him condescended to as acts of grace, now of .
another name; which declares him, touching matters
28(3
AN ANSWER TO EIKON BASILIKE.
of church and state, to have been no other man in the
deepest of his solitude, than he was before at the high-
est of his sovereignty.
But this was not the worst of these tumults, they
played the hasty “midwives, and would not stay the
ripening, but went straight to ripping up, and forcibly
cut out abortive votes.”
They would not stay perhaps the Spanish demurring,
and putting off such wholesome acts and counsels, as
the politic cabinet at Whitehall had no mind to. But
all this is complained here as done to the parliament,
and yet we heard not the parliament at that time com-
plain of any violence from the people, but from him.
Wherefore intrudes he to plead the cause of parliament
against the people, while the parliament was pleading
their own cause against him ; and against him were
forced to seek refuge of the people It is plain then,
that those confluxes and resorts interrupted not the
parliament, nor by them were thought tumultuous, but
by him only and his court faction.
“But what good man had not rather want any thing
he most desired for the public good, than attain it by
such unlawful and irreligious means ?” As much as to
say, had not rather sit still, and let his country be ty-
rannized, than that the people, finding no other re-
medy, should stand up like men, and demand their
rights and liberties. This is the artificialest piece of
finesse to persuade men into slavery that the wit of
court could have invented. But hear how much better
the moral of this lesson would befit the teacher. What
good man had not rather want a boundless and arbi-
trary power, and those fine flowers of the crown, called
prerogatives, than for them to use force and perpetual
vexation to his faithful subjects, may to wade for them
through blood and civil war P So that this and the
whole bundle of those following sentences may be ap-
plied better to the convincement of his own violent
courses, than of those pretended tumults.
“Who were the chief demagogues to send for those
tumults, some alive are not ignorant.” Setting aside
the affrightment of this goblin word; for the king, by
his leave, cannot coin English, as he could money, to
be current, (and it is believed this wording was above
his known style and orthography, and accuses the
whole composure to be conscious of some other author,)
yet if the people were sent for, emboldened and directed
by those demagogues, who, saving his Greek, were
good patriots, and by his own confession “men of some
repute for parts and piety,” it helps well to assure us
there was both urgent cause, and the less danger of
their coming.
“Complaints were made, yet no redress could be
obtained.” The parliament also complained of what
danger they sate in from another party, and demanded
of him a guard, but it was not granted. What marvel
then if it cheared them to see some store of their friends,
and in the Roman, not the pettifogging sense, their
clients so near about them; a defence due by nature
both from whom it was offered, and to whom, as due
as to their parents; though the court stormed and
fretted to see such honour given to them, who were
then best fathers of the commonwealth. And both the
parliament and people complained, and demanded jus-
tice for those assaults, if not murders, done at his own
doors by that crew of rufflers; but he, instead of doing
justice on them, justified and abetted them in what
they did, as in his public answer to a petition from the
city may be read. Neither is it slightly to be passed
over, that in the very place where blood was first drawn
in this cause, at the beginning of all that followed,
there was his own blood shed by the executioner: ac-
cording to that sentence of divine justice, “in the place
where dogs licked the blood of Naboth, shall dogs lick
thy blood, even thine.”
From hence he takes occasion to excuse that impro-
vident and fatal errour of his absenting from the par-
liament. “When he found that no declaration of the
bishops could take place against those tumults.” Was
that worth his considering, that foolish and self-un-
doing declaration of twelve cipher bishops, who were
immediately appeached of treason for that audacious
declaring 2 The bishops peradventure were now and
then pulled by the rochets, and deserved another kind
of pulling; but what amounted this to “the fear of his
own person in the streets P” Did he not the very next
day after his irruption into the house of commons, than
which nothing had more exasperated the people, go in
his coach unguarded into the city ? Did he receive the
least affront, much less violence, in any of the streets,
but rather humble demeanors and supplications? Hence
may be gathered, that however in his own guiltiness
he might have justly feared, yet that he knew the
people so full of awe and reverence to his person, as to
dare commit himself single among the thickest of them,
at a time when he had most provoked them. Besides,
in Scotland they had handled the bishops in a more
robustious manner; Edinburgh had been full of tu-
mults, two armies from thence had entered England
against him : yet after all this he was not fearful, but
very forward to take so long a journey to Edinburgh;
which argues first, as did also his rendition afterward to
the Scots army, that to England he continued still, as he
was indeed, a stranger, and full of diffidence, to the
Scots only a native king, in his confidence; though not
in his dealing towards them. It shows us next beyond
doubting, that all this his fear of tumults was but a
mere colour and occasion taken of his resolved absence
from the parliament, for some end not difficult to be
guessed. And those instances wherein valour is not
to be questioned for not “scuffling with the sea, or an
undisciplined rabble,” are but subservient to carry on
the solemn jest of his fearing tumults; if they discover
not withal the true reason why he departed, only to
turn his slashing at the court-gate to slaughtering in
the field; his disorderly bickering to an orderly in-
vading; which was nothing else but a more orderly
disorder.
“Some suspected and affirmed, that he meditated a
war when he went first from Whitehall.” And they
were not the worst heads that did so, nor did any of his
former acts weaken him to that, as he alleges for him-
self; or if they had, they clear him only for the time of
AN ANSWER TO EIKON BASILIKE.
287
passing them, not for whatever thoughts might come
after into his mind. I'ormer actions of improvidence
or fear, not with him unusual, cannot absolve him of
all after-meditations.
He goes on protesting his “no intention to have
left Whitehall,” had these horrid tumults given him but
fair quarter; as if he himself, his wife, and children
had been in peril. But to this enough hath been an-
swered.
“Had this parliament, as it was in its first election,”
namely, with the lord and baron bishops, “ sate full
and free,” he doubts not but all had gone well. What
warrant this of his to us, whose not doubting was all
good men's greatest doubtf
“He was resolved to hear reason, and to consent so
far as he could comprehend.” A hopeful resolution:
what if his reason were found by oſt experience to
comprehend nothing beyond his own advantages; was
this a reason fit to be intrusted with the common good
of three nations f -
“But,” saith he, “as swine are to gardens, so are
tumults to parliaments.” This the parliament, had they
found it so, could best have told us. In the mean while,
who knows not that one great hog may do as much
mischief in a garden as many little swine *
“He was sometimes prone to think, that had he
called this last parliament to any other place in Eng-
land, the sad consequences might have been prevented.”
But change of air changes not the mind. Was not his
first parliament at Oxford dissolved after two subsidies
given him, and no justice received 2 Was not his last
in the same place, where they sate with as much free-
dom, as much quiet from tumults, as they could desire;
a parliament, both in his account and their own, con-
sisting of all his friends, that fled after him, and suf-
fered for him, and yet by him nicknamed, and cashiered
for a “mongrel parliament, that vexed his queen with
their base and mutinous motions,” as his cabinet-letter
tells us? Whereby the world may see plainly, that no
shifting of place, no sifting of members to his own
mind, no number, no paucity, no freedom from tumults,
could ever bring his arbitrary wilfulness, and tyran-
nical designs, to brook the least shape or similitude,
the least counterfeit of a parliament.
Finally, instead of praying for his people as a good
king should do, he prays to be delivered from them, as
“from wild beasts, inundations, and raging seas, that
had overborne all loyalty, modesty, laws, justice, and
religion,” God save the people from such intercessors!
V. Upon the Bill for triennial Parliaments, and for
settling this, &c.
THE bill for a triennial parliament was but the third
part of one good step toward that which in times past
was our annual right. The other bill for settling this
parliament was new indeed, but at that time very ne-
cessary; and in the king's own words no more than
what the world “was fully confirmed he might in jus-
tice, reason, honour, and conscience grant them; ” for
to that end he affirms to have done it.
But whereas he attributes the passing of them to his
own act of grace and willingness, (as his manner is to
make virtues of his necessities,) and giving to himself
all the praise, heaps ingratitude upon the parliament,
a little memory will set the clean contrary before us;
that for those beneficial acts we owe what we owe to
the parliament, but to his granting them neither praise
nor thanks. The first bill granted much less than two
former statutes yet in force by Edward the Third; that
a parliament should be called every year, or oftener, if
need were: nay, from a far ancienter law-book called
the “Mirror,” it is affirmed in a late treatise called
“Rights of the kingdom,” that parliaments by our
old laws ought twice a year to be at London. From
twice in one year to once in three years, it may be soon
cast up how great a loss we fell into of our ancient
liberty by that act, which in the ignorant and slavish
minds we then were, was thought a great purchase.
Wisest men perhaps were contented (for the present, at
least) by this act to have recovered parliaments, which
were then upon the brink of danger to be for ever lost.
And this is that which the king preaches here for a
special token of his princely favour, to have abridged
and overreached the people five parts in six of what
their due was, both by ancient statute and originally.
And thus the taking from us all but a triennial rem-
nant of that English freedom which our fathers left us
double, in a fair annuity enrolled, is set out, and sold
to us here for the gracious and over-liberal giving of a
new enfranchisement. How little, may we think, did
he ever give us, who in the bill of his pretended givings
writes down imprimis that benefit or privilege once in
three years given us, which by so giving he more than
twice every year illegally took from us; such givers
as give single to take away sixfold, be to our enemies!
for certainly this commonwealth, if the statutes of our
ancestors be worth aught, would have found it hard
and hazardous to thrive under the damage of such a
guileſul liberality. The other act was so necessary,
that nothing in the power of man more seemed to be
the stay and support of all things from that steep ruin
to which he had nigh brought them, than that act ob-
tained. He had by his ill stewardship, and, to say no
worse, the needless raising of two armies intended for
a civil war, beggared both himself and the public; and
besides had left us upon the score of his needy enemies
for what it cost them in their own defence against him.
To disengage him and the kingdom great sums were
to be borrowed, which would never have been lent, nor
could ever be repaid, had the king chanced to dissolve
this parliament as heretofore. The errours also of his
government had brought the kingdom to such ex-
tremes, as were incapable of all recovery without the
absolute continuance of a parliament. It had been
else in vain to go about the settling of so great distem-
pers, if he, who first caused the malady, might, when
he pleased, reject the remedy. Notwithstanding all
which, that he granted both these acts unwillingly,
* Written by Mr. Sadler, of which the best edition is that of 1649, in
quarto ; the edition of 1687 being curtailed. It is an excellent book.
288
AN ANSWER TO EIKON BASILIKE.
and as a mere passive instrument, was then visible
even to most of those men who now will see no-
thing.
At passing of the former act he himself concealed
not his unwillingness; and testifying a general dislike
of their actions, which they then proceeded in with
great approbation of the whole kingdom, he told them
with a masterly brow, that “by this act he had obliged
them above what they had deserved,” and gave a piece
of justice to the commonwealth six times short of his
predecessors, as if he had been giving some boon or
begged office to a sort of his desertless grooms.
That he passed the latter act against his will, no
man in reason can hold it questionable. For if the
February before he made so dainty, and were so loth
to bestow a parliament once in three years upon the
nation, because this had so opposed his courses, was it
likely that the May following he should bestow willingly
on this parliament an indissoluble sitting, when they
had offended him much more by cutting short and im-
peaching of high treason his chief favourites ? It was
his fear then, not his favour, which drew from him
that act, lest the parliament, incensed by his conspira-
cies against them about the same time discovered,
should with the people have resented too heinously
those his doings, if to the suspicion of their danger
from him he had also added the denial of this only
means to secure themselves.
From these acts therefore in which he glories, and
where with so oft he upbraids the parliament, he can-
not justly expect to reap aught but dishonour and
dispraise; as being both unwillingly granted, and the
one granting much less than was before allowed by
statute, the other being a testimony of his violent and
lawless custom, not only to break privileges, but whole
parliaments; from which enormity they were con-
strained to bind him first of all his predecessors; never
any before him having given like causes of distrust
and jealousy to his people. As for this parliament,
how far he was from being advised by them as he
ought, let his own words express.
He taxes them with “undoing what they found well
done : ” and yet knows they undid nothing in the
church but lord bishops, liturgies, ceremonies, high-
commission, judged worthy by all true protestants to
be thrown out of the church. They undid nothing in
the state but irregular and grinding courts, the main
grievances to be removed ; and if these were the things
which in his opinion they found well done, we may
again from hence be informed with what unwillingness
he removed them; and that those gracious acts, whereof
so frequently he makes mention, may be englished
more properly acts of fear and dissimulation against
Iris mind and conscience.
The bill preventing dissolution of this parliament he
calls “an unparalleled act, out of the extreme confi-
dence that his subjects would not make ill use of it.”
But was it not a greater confidence of the people, to put
into one man's hand so great a power, till he abused
it, as to summon and dissolve parliaments P He would
be thanked for trusting them, and ought to thank them
rather for trusting him : the trust issuing first from
them, not from him. -
And that it was a mere trust, and not his preroga-
tive, to call and dissolve parliaments at his pleasure;
and that parliaments were not to be dissolved, till all
petitions were heard, all grievances redressed, is not
only the assertion of this parliament, but of our ancient
law-books, which aver it to be an unwritten law of
common right, so engraven in the hearts of our ances-
tors, and by them so constantly enjoyed and claimed,
as that it needed not enrolling. And if the Scots in
their declaration could charge the king with breach of
their laws for breaking up that parliament without
their consent, while matters of greatest moment were
depending ; it were unreasonable to imagine, that the
wisdom of England should be so wanting to itself
through all ages, as not to provide by some known
law, written or unwritten, against the not calling, or
the arbitrary dissolving, of parliaments; or that they
who ordained their summoning twice a year, or as oft
as need required, did not tacitly enact also, that as ne-
cessity of affairs called them, so the same necessity
should keep them undissolved, till that were fully satis-
fied. Were it not for that, parliaments, and all the
fruit and benefit we receive by having them, would
turn soon to mere abusion. It appears then, that if
this bill of not dissolving were an unparalleled act, it
was a known and common right, which our ancestors
under other kings enjoyed as firmly, as if it had been
graven in marble; and that the infringement of this
king first brought it into a written act: who now
boasts that as a great favour done us, which his own
less fidelity than was in former kings constrained us
only of an old undoubted right to make a new written
act. But what needed written acts, whenas anciently
it was esteemed part of his crown oath, not to dissolve
parliaments till all grievances were considered 2 where-
upon the old “Modi of Parliament” calls it flat per-
jury, if he dissolve them before: as I find cited in a
book mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, to
which and other law-tractats I refer the more lawyerly
mooting of this point, which is neither my element, nor
my proper work here; since the book, which I have to
answer, pretends reason, not authorities and quotations:
and I hold reason to be the best arbitrator, and the law
of law itself.
It is true, that “good subjects think it not just, that
the king's condition should be worse by bettering
theirs.” But then the king must not be at such a dis-
tance from the people in judging what is better and
what worse; which might have been agreed, had he
known (for his own words condemn him) “as well
with moderation to use, as with earnestness to desire,
his own advantages.” -
“A continual parliament he thought would keep the
commonwealth in tune.” Judge, commonwealth, what
proofs he gave, that this boasted profession was ever in
his thought. :
“Some,” saith he, “gave out, that I repented me of
that sctiling act.” His own actions gave it out beyond
all supposition; for doubtless it repented him to have
AN ANSWER TO EIKON BASILIKE.
289
established that by law, which he went about so soon
after to abrogate by the sword.
He calls those acts, which he conſesses “tended to
their good, not more princely than friendly contribu-
tions.” As iſ to do his duty were of courtesy, and the
discharge of his trust a parcel of his liberality; so nigh
lost in his esteem was the birth-right of our liberties,
that to give them back again upon demand, stood at
the mercy of his contribution.
“He doubts not but the affections of his people will
compensate his sufferings for those acts of confidence:”
and imputes his sufferings to a contrary cause. Not
his confidence, but his distrust, was that which brought
him to those sufferings, from the time that he forsook
his parliament; and trusted them never the sooner for
what he tells “of their piety and religious strictness,”
but rather hated them as puritans, whom he always
sought to extirpate.
He would have it believed, that “to bind his hands
by these acts, argued a very short foresight of things,
and extreme fatuity of mind in him,” if he had meant
a war. If we should conclude so, that were not the
only argument: neither did it argue, that he meant
peace; knowing that what he granted for the present
out of fear, he might as soon repeal by force, watching
his time; and deprive them the fruit of those acts, if
his own designs, wherein he put his trust, took effect.
Yet he complains, “that the tumults threatened to
abuse all acts of grace, and turn them into wanton-
ness.” I would they had turned his wantonness into
the grace of not abusing Scripture. Was this becom-
ing such a saint as they would make him, to adulte-
rate those sacred words from the grace of God to the
acts of his own grace P Herod was eaten up of worms
for suffering others to compare his voice to the voice of
God; but the borrower of this phrase gives much more
cause of jealousy, that he likened his own acts of grace
to the acts of God's grace.
From prophaneness he scarce comes off with perfect
sense. “I was not then in a capacity to make war,”
therefore “I intended not.” “I was not in a capa-
city,” therefore “I could not have given my enemies
greater advantage, than by so unprincely inconstancy
to have scattered them by arms, whom but lately I had
settled by parliament.” What place could there be
for his inconstancy in that thing whereto he was in no
capacity P Otherwise his inconstancy was not so un-
wonted, or so mice, but that it would have easily found
pretences to scatter those in revenge, whom he settled
in fear.
“It had been a course full of sin, as well as of hazard
and dishonour.” True; but if those considerations
withheld him not from other actions of like nature,
how can we believe they were of strength sufficient, to
withhold him from this? And that they withheld him
not, the event soon taught us.
“His letting some men go up to the pinnacle of the
temple, was a temptation to them to cast him down
headlong.” In this simile we have himself compared
to Christ, the parliament to the devil, and his giving
them that act of settling, to his letting them go up to
the “pinnacle of the temple.” A tottering and giddy
act rather than a settling. This was goodly use made
of Scripture in his solitudes: but it was no pinnacle of
the temple, it was a pinnacle of Nebuchadnezzar's
palace, from whence he and monarchy fell headlong
together.
He would have others see that “all the kingdoms of
the world are not worth gaining by ways of sin which
hazard the soul;” and hath himself left nothing unha-
zarded to keep three. He concludes with sentences,
that, rightly scanned, make not so much for him as
against him, and confesses, that “the act of settling
was no sin of his will;” and we easily believe him, for
it hath been clearly proved a sin of his unwillingness.
With his orisons I meddle not, for he appeals to a
high audit This yet may be noted, that at his prayers
he had before him the sad presage of his ill success,
“as of a dark and dangerous storm, which never ad-
mitted his return to the port from whence he set out.”
Yet his prayer-book no sooner shut, but other hopes
flattered him; and their flattering was his destruction.
VI. Upon his Retirement from Westminster.
THE simile where with he begins I was about to have
found fault with, as in a garb somewhat more poetical
than for a statist: but meeting with many strains of
like dress in other of his essays, and hearing him re-
ported a more diligent reader of poets than of politi-
cians, I begun to think that the whole book might per-
haps be intended a piece of poetry. The words are
good, the fiction smooth and cleanly; there wanted
only rhyme, and that, they say, is bestowed upon it
lately. But to the argument.
“I staid at Whitehall, till I was driven away by
shame more than fear.” I retract not what I thought
of the fiction, yet here, I must confess, it lies too open.
In his messages and declarations, may in the whole
chapter next but one before this, he affirms, that “the
danger wherein his wife, his children, and his own
person” were by those tumults, was the main cause
that drove him from Whitehall, and appeals to God as
witness : he affirms here that it was “shame more than
fear.” And Digby, who knew his mind as well as any,
tells his new-listed guard, “that the principal cause of
his majesty's going thence was to save them from being
trod in the dirt.” From whence we may discern what
false and frivolous excuses are avowed for truth, either
in those declarations, or in this penitential book. Our
forefathers were of that courage and severity of zeal to
justice and their native liberty, against the proud con-
tempt and misrule of their kings, that when Richard
the Second departed but from a committee of lords,
who sate preparing matter for the parliament not yet
assembled, to the removal of his evil counsellors, they
first vanquished and put to flight Robert de Vere his
chief favourite; and then, coming up to London with
a huge army, required the king, then withdrawn for
fear, but no further off than the Tower, to come to
290
AN ANSWER TO EIKON BASILIKE.
Westminster, Which he refusing, they told him flatly,
that unless he came they would choose another. So
high a crime it was accounted then for kings to absent
themselves, not from a parliament, which none ever
durst, but from any meeting of his peers and counsel-
lors, which did but tend towards a parliament. Much
less would they have suffered, that a king, for such
trivial and various pretences, one while for fear of tu-
mults, another while “for shame to see them,” should
leave his regal station, and the whole kingdom bleed-
ing to death of those wounds, which his own unskilful
and perverse government had inflicted.
Shame then it was that drove him from the parlia-
ment, but the shame of what P Was it the shame of his
manifold errours and misdeeds, and to see how weakly
he had played the king 2 No; “but to see the bar-
barous rudeness of those tumults to demand any thing.”
We have started here another, and I believe the truest
cause of his deserting the parliament. The worst and
strangest of that “Any thing,” which the people then
demanded, was but the unlording of bishops, and ex-
pelling them the house, and the reducing of church-
discipline to a conformity with other protestant churches;
this was the barbarism of those tumults: and that he
might avoid the granting of those honest and pious
demands, as well demanded by the parliament as the
people, for this very cause more than for fear, by his
own confession here, he left the city ; and in a most
tempestuous season forsook the helm and steerage of
thé commonwealth. This was that terrible “Any
thing,” from which his Conscience and his Reason
chose to run, rather than not deny. To be importuned
the removing of evil counsellors, and other grievances
in church and state, was to him “an intolerable oppres-
sion.” If the people's demanding were so burdensome
to him, what was his denial and delay of justice to
them P
But as the demands of his people were to him a bur-
den and oppression, so was the advice of his parliament
csteemed a bondage; “Whose agreeing votes,” as he
affirms, “were not by any law or reason conclusive to
his judgment.” For the law, it ordains a parliament to
advise him in his great affairs; but if it ordain also,
that the single judgment of a king shall out-balance
all the wisdom of his parliament, it ordains that which
frustrates the end of its own ordaining. For where the
king's judgment may dissent, to the destruction, as it
may happen, both of himself and the kingdom, their
advice, and no further, is a most insufficient and frus-
traneous means to be provided by law in cases of so
high concernment. And where the main and principal
law of common preservation against tyranny is left so
fruitless and infirm, there it must needs follow, that all
lesser laws are to their several ends and purposes much
more weak and ineffectual. For that nation would de-
serve to be renowned and chronicled for folly and s'u-
pidity, that should by law provide force against private
and petty wrongs, advice only against tyranny and
public ruin. It being therefore most unlike a law, to
ordain a remedy so slender and unlawlike, to be the
* Second edition has it of all our safety or prevention.
utmost means of all public safety or prevention,” as
advice is, which may at any time be rejected by the
sole judgment of one man, the king, and so unlike the
law of England, which lawyers say is the quintessence
of reason and mature wisdom; we may conclude, that
the king's megative voice was never any law, but an
absurd and reasonless custom, begotten and grown up
either from the flattery of basest times, or the usurpa-
tion of immoderate princes. Thus much to the law of
it, by a better evidence than rolls and records, reason.
But is it possible he should pretend also to reason,
that the judgment of one man, not as a wise or good
man, but as a king, and ofttimes a wilful, proud, and
wicked king, should outweigh the prudence and all
the virtue of an elected parliament? What an abusive
thing were it then to summon parliaments, that by the
major part of voices greatest matters may be there de-
bated and resolved, whenas one single voice after that
shall dash all their resolutions f
He attempts to give a reason why it should, “Be-
cause the whole parliaments represent not him in any
kind.” But mark how little he advances; for if the
parliament, represent the whole kingdom, as is sure
enough they do, then doth the king represent only
himself; and if a king without his kingdom be in a
civil sense nothing, then without or against the repre-
sentative of his whole kingdom, he himself represents
nothing ; and by consequence his judgment and his
negative is as good as nothing: and though we should
allow him to be something, yet not equal f or compar-
able to the whole kingdom, and so neither to them who
represent it: much less that one syllable of his breath
put into the scales should be more ponderous than the
joint voice and efficacy of a whole parliament, assem-
bled by election, and endued with the plenipotence of
a free nation, to make laws, not to be denied laws; and
with no more but no, a sleeveless reason, in the most
pressing times of danger and disturbance to be sent
home frustrate and remediless.
Yet here he maintains, “to be no further bound to
agree with the votes of both houses, than he sees them
to agree with the will of God, with his just rights as a
king, and the general good of his people.” As to the
freedom of his agreeing or not agreeing, limited with
due bounds, no man reprehends it; this is the question
here, or the miracle rather, why his only not agreeing
should lay a negative bar and inhibition upon that
which is agreed to by a whole parliament, though
never so conducing to the public good or safety To
know the will of God better than his whole kingdom,
whence should he have it? Certainly court-breeding
and his perpetual conversation with flatterers was but
a bad school. To judge of his own rights could not
belong to him, who had no right by law in any court
to judge of so much as felony or treason, being held a
party in both these cases, much more in this; and his
rights however should give place to the general good,
for which end all his rights were given him. Lastly,
to suppose a clearer insight and discerning of the
general good, allotted to his own singular judgment,
# Second edition has equivalent.
AN ANSWER TO EIKON BASILIKE:
291.
than to the parliament and all the people, and from
that self-opinion of discerning, to deny them that good
which they, being all frcemen, seek earnestly and call
for, is an arrogance and iniquity beyond imagination
rude and unreasonable; they undoubtedly having most
authority to judge of the public good, who for that
purpose are chosen out and sent by the people to advise
him. And if it may be in him to see oſt “the major
part of them not in the right,” had it not been more
his modesty, to have doubted their seeing him more
often in the wrong f
He passes to another reason of his denials, “because
of some men's hydropic unsatiableness, and thirst of
asking, the more they drank, whom no fountain of re-
gal bounty was able to overcome.” A comparison
more properly bestowed on those that came to guzzle
in his wine-cellar, than on a freeborn people that came
to claim in parliament their rights and liberties, which
a king ought therefore to grant, because of right de-
manded; not to deny them for fear his bounty should
be exhausted, which in these demands (to continue the
same metaphor) was not so much as broached; it being
his duty, not his bounty, to grant these things. He
who thus refuses to give us law, in that refusal gives
us another law, which is his will, another name also,
and another condition ; of freemen to become his
vassals.
Putting off the courtier, he now puts on the philoso-
pher, and sententiously disputes to this effect, “That
reason ought to be used to men, force and terrour to
beasts; that he deserves to be a slave, who captivates
the rational sovereignty of his soul and liberty of his
will to compulsion; that he would not forfeit that free-
dom, which cannot be denied him as a king, because
it belongs to him as a man and a Christian, though to
preserve his kingdom; but rather die enjoying the
empire of his soul, than live in such a vassalage, as not
to use his reason and conscience, to like or dislike as a
king.” Which words, of themselves, as far as they
are sense, good and philosophical, yet in the mouth of
him, who, to engross this common liberty to himself,
would tread down all other men into the condition of
slaves and beasts, they quite lose their commendation.
He confesses a rational sovereignty of soul and free-
dom of will in every man, and yet with an implicit
repugnancy would have his reason the sovereign of
that sovereignty, and would captivate and make use-
less that natural freedom of will in all other men but
himself. But them that yield him this obedience he
so well rewards, as to pronounce them worthy to be
slaves. They who have lost all to be his subjects, may
stoop and take up the reward. What that freedom is,
which “cannot be denied him as a king, because it
belongs to him as a man and a christian,” I understand
not. If it be his negative voice, it concludes all men,
who have not such a negative as his against a whole
parliament, to be neither men nor Christians: and what
was he himself then, all this while that we denied it
him as a king * Will he say, that he enjoyed within
himself the less freedom for that P Might not he, both
as a man and as a christian, have reigned within him-
U
declared as a king to like or dislike.”
self in full sovereignty of soul, no man repining, but
that his outward and imperious will must invade the
civil liberties of a nation ? Did we therefore not per-
mit him to use his reason or his conscience, not permit-
ting him to bereave us the use of ours ? And might
not he have enjoyed both as a king, governing us as
freemen by what laws we ourselves would be govern-
ed It was not the inward use of his reason and of his
conscience, that would content him, but to use them
both as a law over all his subjects, “in whatever he
Which use of
reason, most reasonless and unconscionable, is the ut-
most that any tyrant ever pretended over his vassals.
In all wise nations the legislative power, and the
judicial exccution of that power, have been most com-
monly distinct, and in several hands; but yet the for-
mer supreme, the other subordinate. If then the king
be only set up to execute the law, which is indeed the
highest of his office, he ought no more to make or for-
bid the making of any law agreed upon in parliament,
than other inferior judges, who are his deputies.
Neither can he more reject a law offered him by the
commons, than he can new make a law, which they
reject. And yet the more to credit and uphold his
cause, he would seem to have philosophy on his side;
straining her wise dictates to unphilosophical purposes.
But when kings come so low, as to fawn upon philo-
sophy, which before they neither valued nor under-
stood, it is a sign that fails not, they are then put to
their last trump. And philosophy as well requites
them, by not suffering her golden sayings either to be-
come their lips, or to be used as masks and colours of
injurious and violent deeds. So that what they pre-
sume to borrow from her sage and virtuous rules, like
the riddle of Sphinx not understood, breaks the neck of
their own cause.
But now again to politics: “He cannot think the
Majesty of the crown of England to be bound by any
coronation oath in a blind and brutish form lity, to
consent to whatever its subjects in parliament shall re-
quire.” What tyrant could presume to say more, when
he meant to kick down all law, government, and bond
of oath 2 But why he so desires to absolve himself the
oath of his coronation would be worth the knowing. It
cannot but be yielded, that the oath, which binds him
to performance of his trust, ought in reason to contain
the sum of what his chief trust and office is. But if it
neither do enjoin, nor mention to him, as a part of his
duty, the making or the marring of any law, or scrap
of law, but requires only his assent to those laws which
the people have already chosen, or shall choose; (for so
both the Latin of that oath, and the old English; and
all reason admits, that the people should not lose under
a new king what freedom they had before ;) then that
negative voice so contended for, to deny the passing of
any law, which the commons choose, is both against
the oath of his coronation, and his kingly office. And
if the king may deny to pass what the parliament hath
chosen to be a law, then doth the king make himself
superior to his whole kingdom; which not only the
general maxims of policy gainsay, but even our own
292
AN ANSWER TO EIRON BASILIKE.
standing laws, as hath been cited to him in remon-
strances heretofore, that “the king hath two superiors,
the law, and his court of parliament.” But this he
counts to be a blind and brutish formality, whether it
be law, or oath, or his duty, and thinks to turn it off
with wholesome words and phrases, which he then first
learnt of the honest people, when they were so often
compelled to use them against those more truly blind
and brutish formalities thrust upon us by his own com-
mand, not in civil matters only, but in spiritual. And if
his oath to perform what the people require, when they
crown him, be in his esteem a brutish formality, then
doubtless those other oaths of allegiance and supremacy,
taken absolute on our part, may most justly appear to
us in all respects as brutish and as formal; and so by
his own sentence no more binding to us, than his oath
to him.
As for his instance, in case “he and the house of
peers attempted to enjoin the house of commons,” it
bears no equality; for he and the peers represent but
themselves, the commons are the whole kingdom.
Thus he concludes “his oath to be fully discharged
in governing by laws already made,” as being not
bound to pass any new, “if his reason bids him deny.”
And so may infinite mischiefs grow, and he with a
pernicious negative may deny us all things good, or
just, or safe, whereof our ancestors, in times much dif-
fering from ours, had either no foresight, or no occasion
to foresee; while our general good and safety shall
depend upon the private and overweening reason of
one obstimate man, who against all the kingdom, if he
list, will interpret both the law and his oath of corona-
tion by the tenour of his own will. Which he himself
confesses to be an arbitrary power, yet doubts not in
his argument to imply, as if he thought it more fit the
parliament should be subject to his will, than he to
their advice; a man neither by nature nor by nurture
wise. How is it possible, that he, in whom such
principles as these were so deep rooted, could ever,
though restored again, have reigned otherwise than
tyrannically P
He objects, “That force was but a slavish method
to dispel his errour.” But how often shall it be an-
swered him, that no force was used to dispel the errour
out of his head, but to drive it from off our necks? for
his errour was imperious, and would command all
other men to renounce their own reason and under-
standing, till they perished under the injunction of his
all ruling errour.
He alleges the uprightness of his intentions to ex-
cuse his possible failings, a position false both in law
and divinity: yea, contrary to his own better princi-
ples, who affirms in the twelfth chapter, that “the
goodness of a man's intention will not excuse the scan-
dal and contagion of his example.” His not knowing,
through the corruption of flattery and court-principles,
what he ought to have known, will not excuse his not
doing what he ought to have done; no more than the
small skill of him, who undertakes to be a pilot, will
excuse him to be misled by any wandering star mis-
taken for the pole. But let his intentions be never so
upright, what is that to us? what answer for the reason
and the national rights, which God hath given us, if
having parliaments, and laws, and the power of mak-
ing more to avoid mischief, we suffer one man's blind
intentions to lead us all with our eyes open to manifest
destruction P
And if arguments prevail not with such a one, force
is well used; not “to carry on the weakness of our
counsels, or to convince his errour,” as he surmises,
but to acquit and rescue our own reason, our own con-
sciences, from the force and prohibition laid by his
usurping errour upon our liberties and understandings.
“Never any thing pleased him more, than when his
judgment concurred with theirs.” That was to the ap-
plause of his own judgment, and would as well have
pleased any self-conceited man.
“Yea, in many things he chose rather to deny him-
self than them.” That is to say, in trifles. For “of
his own interests” and personal rights he conceives
himself “master.” To part with, if he please; not to
contest for, against the kingdom, which is greater than
he, whose rights are all subordinate to the kingdom's
good. And “in what concerns truth, justice, the right
of church, or his crown, no man shall gain his consent
against his mind.” What can be left then for a par-
liament, but to sit like images, while he still thus
either with incomparable arrogance assumes to himself
the best ability of judging for other men what is truth,
justice, goodness, what his own and the church's
right, or with unsufferable tyranny restrains all men
from the enjoyment of any good, which his judgment,
though erroneous, thinks not fit to grant them; not-
withstanding that the law and his coronal oath re-
quires his undeniable assent to what laws the parlia-
ment agree upon P
“He had rather wear a crown of thorns with our Sa-
viour.” Many would be all one with our Saviour,
whom our Saviour will not know. They who govern
ill those kingdoms which they had a right to, have to
our Saviour's crown of thorns no right at all. Thorns
they may find enow of their own gathering, and their
own twisting ; for thorns and snares, saith Solomon,
are in the way of the froward : but to wear them, as
our Saviour wore them, is not given to them, that suf-
ſer by their own demerits. Nor is a crown of gold his
due, who cannot first wear a crown of lead; not only
for the weight of that great office, but for the compli-
ance which it ought to have with them who are to
counsel him, which here he terms in scorn “An imbased
flexibleness to the various and oft contrary dictates of
any factions,” meaning his parliament; for the ques-
tion hath been all this while between them two. And
to his parliament, though a numerous and choice as-
sembly of whom the land thought wisest, he imputes,
rather than to himself, “want of reason, neglect of the
public, interest of parties, and particularity of private
will and passion;” but with what modesty or likelihood
of truth, it will be wearisome to repeat so often.
He concludes with a sentence fair in seeming, but
fallacious. For if the conscience be ill edified, the re-
solution may more beſit a foolish than a christian king,
‘e
AN ANSWER TO EIRON BASILIKE.
293
to prefer a self-willed conscience before a kingdom's
good; especially in the denial of that, which law and
his regal office by oath bids him grant to his parliament
and whole kingdom rightfully demanding. For we
may observe him throughout the discourse to assert his
negative power against the whole kingdom; now under
the specious plea of his conscience and his reason, but
heretofore in a louder note ; “Without us, or against
our consent, the votes of either or of both houses toge-
ther, must not, cannot, shall not.” Declar. May 4,
1642.
With these and the like deceivable doctrines he
leavens also his prayer.
VII. Upon the Queen's Departure.
To this argument we shall soon have said; for what
concerns it us to hear a husband divulge his household
privacies, extolling to others the virtues of his wife 2
an infirmity not seldom incident to those who have least
cause. But how good she was a wife, was to himself,
and be it left to his own fancy; how bad a subject, is
not much disputed. And being such, it need be made
no wonder, though she left a protestant kingdom with
as little honour as her mother left a popish.
That this “is the first example of any protestant sub-
jects, that have taken up arms against their king a
protestant,” can be to protestants no dishonour; when
it shall be heard, that he first levied war on them, and
to the interest of papists more than of protestants. He
might have given yet the precedence of making war
upon him to the subjects of his own nation, who had
twice opposed him in the open field long ere the Eng-
lish found it necessary to do the like. And how
groundless, how dissembled is that fear, lest she, who
for so many years had been averse from the religion of
her husband, and every year more and more, before
these disturbances broke out, should for them be now
the more alienated from that, to which we never heard
she was inclined P But if the fear of her delinquency,
and that justice which the protestants demanded on
her, was any cause of her alienating the more, to have
gained her by indirect means had been no advantage
to religion, much less then was the detriment to lose
her further off. It had been happy if his own actions
had not given cause of more scandal to the protestants,
than what they did against her could justly scandalize
any papist.
Them who accused her, well enough known to be
the parliament, he censures for “men yet to seek their
religion, whether doctrine, discipline, or good man-
ners;” the rest he soothes with the name of true Eng-
lish protestants, a mere schismatical name, yet he so
great an enemy of schism.
He ascribes “rudeness and barbarity, worse than
Indian,” to the English parliament; and “all virtue”
to his wife, in strains that come almost to sonnetting :
how fit to govern men, undervaluing and aspersing
the great council of his kingdom, in comparison of one
woman' Examples are not far to seek, how great mis-
chief and dishonour hath befallen nations under the
government of effeminate and uxorious magistrates;
who, being themselves governed and overswayed at
home under a feminine usurpation, cannot but be far
short of spirit and authority without doors, to govern a
whole nation.
“Her tarrying here he could not think safe among
them, who were shaking hands with allegiance, to lay
faster hold on religion;” and taxes them of a duty ra-
ther than a crime, it being just to obey God rather than
man, and impossible to serve two masters: I would
they had quite shaken off what they stood shaking
hands with ; the fault was in their courage, not in their
Cºl. UlS62.
In his prayer he prays, that the disloyalty of his pro-
testant subjects may not be a hinderance to her love of
the true religion; and never prays, that the dissolute-
ness of his court, the scandals of his clergy, the unsound-
mess of his own judgment, the lukewarmness of his
life, his letter of compliance to the pope, his permitting
agents at Rome, the pope's nuncio, and her jesuited
mother here, may not be found in the sight of God far
greater hinderances to her conversion.
But this had been a subtle prayer indeed, and well
prayed, though as duly as a Paternoster, if it could
have charmed us to sit still, and have religion and our
liberties one by one snatched from us, for fear lest rising
to defend ourselves we should fright the queen, a stiff
papist, from turning protestant! As if the way to make
his queen a protestant, had been to make his subjects
more than halfway papists.
He prays next, “that his constancy may be an anti-
dote against the poison of other men's example.” His
constancy in what? Not in religion, for it is openly
known, that her religion wrought more upon him, than
his religion upon her; and his open favouring of papists,
and his hatred of them called puritans, (the ministers
also that prayed in churches for her conversion, being
checked from court,) made most men suspect she had
quite perverted him. But what is it, that the blindness
of hypocrisy dares not do It dares pray, and thinks
to hide that from the eyes of God, which it cannot hide
from the open view of man.
VIII. Upon his Repulse at Hull, and the Fate of
the Hothams.
Hull, a town of great strength and opportunity both
to sea and land affairs, was at that time the magazine
of all those arms, which the king had bought with
money most illegally extorted from his subjects of
England, to use in a causeless and most unjust civil
war against his subjects of Scotland. The king in
high discontent and anger had left the parliament, and
was gone towards the north, the queen into Holland,
where she pawned and set to sale the crown jewels; (a
crime heretofore counted treasonable in kings;) and to
what intent these sums were raised, the parliament was
294
AN ANSWER TO EIKON BASILIKE.
not ignorant. His going northward in so high a chaſe
they doubted was to possess himself of that strength,
which the storehouse and situation of Hull might add
suddenly to his malignant party. Having first there-
fore in many petitions earnestly prayed him to dispose
and settle, with consent of both houses, the military
power in trusty hands, and he as oft refusing, they
were necessitated by the turbulence and danger of
those times, to put the kingdom by their own authority
into a posture of defence; and very timely sent Sir
John Hotham, a member of the house, and knight of
that county, to take Hull into his custody, and some
of the trained bands to his assistance. For besides the
general danger, they had, before the king’s going to
York, notice given them of his private commissions to
the earl of Newcastle, and to Colonel Legg, one of those
employed to bring the army up against the parliament;
who had already made some attempts, and the former
of them under a disguise, to surprise that place for the
king's party. And letters of the Lord Digby were in-
tercepted, wherein was wished, that the king would
declare himself, and retire to some safe place; other
information came from abroad, that Hull was the place
designed for some new enterprise. And accordingly
Digby himself not long after, with many other com-
manders, and much foreign ammunition, landed in those
parts. But these attempts not succeeding, and that
town being now in custody of the parliament, he sends
a message to them, that he had firmly resolved to go
in person into Ireland, to chastise those wicked rebels,
(for these and worse words he then gave them,) and
that towards this work he intended forth with to raise
by his commissions, in the counties near Westchester,
a guard for his own person, consisting of 2000 foot, and
200 horse, that should be armed from his magazine at
Hull. On the other side, the parliament, foreseeing
the king’s drift, about the same time send him a peti-
tion, that they might have leave for necessary causes
to remove the magazine of Hull to the Tower of Lon-
don, to which the king returns his denial; and soon
aſter going to Hull attended with about 400 horse, re-
quires the governor to deliver him up the town :
whereof the governor besought humbly to be excused,
till he could send notice to the parliament, who had
intrusted him ; whereat the king much incensed pro-
claims him traitor before the town walls, and gives im-
mediate order to stop all passages between him and
the parliament. Yet he himself dispatches post after
post to demand justice, as upon a traitor; using a
strange iniquity to require justice upon him, whom he
then waylaid, and debarred from his appearance. The
parliament no sooner understood what had passed, but
they declare, that Sir John Hotham had done no more
than was his duty, and was therefore no traitor.
This relation, being most true, proves that which is
affirmed here to be most false; seeing the parliament,
whom he accounts his “greatest enemies,” had “more
conſidence to abet and own” what Sir John Hotham
had done, than the king had confidence to let him an-
swer in his own behalf.
To speak of his patience, and in that solemn man-
&.
ner, he might better have ſorborne; “God knows,”
saith he, “it affected me more with sorrow for others,
than with anger for myself; nor did the affront trouble
This is read, I doubt not,
and believed : and as there is some use of every thing,
so is there of this book, were it but to show us, what a
miserable, credulous, deluded thing that creature is,
which is called the vulgar; who, notwithstanding what
they might know, will believe such vainglories as these.
Did not that choleric and vengeful act of proclaiming
him traitor before due process of law, having been con-
vinced so late before of his illegality with the five mem-
bers, declare his anger to be incensed f doth not his
own relation confess as much * and his second message
left him fuming three days after, and in plain words
testifies “his impatience of delay” till Hotham be se-
verely punished, for that which he there terms an in-
supportable affront.
Surely if his sorrow for Sir John Hotham's sin were
greater than his anger for the affront, it was an ex-
ceeding great sorrow indeed, and wonderous charitable.
But if it stirred him so vehemently to have Sir John
Hotham punished, and not at all, that we hear, to have
him repent, it had a strange operation to be called a
sorrow for his sin. He who would persuade us of his
sorrow for the sins of other men, as they are sins, not
as they are sinned against himself, must give us first
some testimony of a sorrow for his own sins, and next
for such sins of other men as cannot be supposed a di-
rect injury to himself. But such compunction in the
king no man hath yet observed; and till then his sor-
row for Sir John Hotham's sin will be called no other
than the resentment of his repulse; and his labour to
have the sinner only punished will be called by a right
name, his revenge.
And “the hand of that cloud, which cast all soon
after into darkness and disorder,” was his own hand.
For assembling the inhabitants of Yorkshire and other
counties, horse and foot, first under colour of a new
guard to his person, soon after, being supplied with
ammunition from Holland, bought with the crown
jewels, he begins an open war by laying siege to Hull:
which town was not his own, but the kingdom's; and
the arms there, public arms, bought with the public
money, or not his own. Yet had they been his own by
as good right as the private house and arms of any man
are his own; to use either of them in a way not private,
but suspicious to the commonwealth, no law permits.
But the king had no propriety at all either in Hull or in
the magazine: so that the following maxims, which he
cites “ of bold and disloyal undertakers,” may belong
more justly to whom he least meant them. After this
he again relapses into the praise of his patience at
Hull, and by his overtalking of it seems to doubt either
his own conscience or the hardness of other men's be-
lieſ. To me the more he praises it in himself, the
more he seems to suspect that in very deed it was
not in him; and that the lookers on so likewise
thought.
Thus much of what he suffered by Hotham, and with
what patience; now of what Hotham suffered, as he
me so much as their sin.”
l
AN ANSWER TO EIKON BASILIKE.
295
judges, for opposing him: “he could not but observe
how God not long after pleaded and avenged his cause.”
Most men are too apt, and commonly the worst of men,
so to interpret and expound the judgments of God,
and all other events of Providence or chance, as makes
most to the justifying of their own cause, though never
so evil; and attribute all to the particular favour of
God towards them. Thus when Saul heard that David
was in Keilah, “God,” saith he, “ hath delivered him
into my hands, for he is shut in.” But how far that
king was deceived in his thought that God was favour-
ing to his cause, that story unfolds; and how little
reason this king had to impute the death of Hotham
to God's avengement of his repulse at Hull, may easily
be seen. For while Hotham continued faithful to his
trust, no man more safe, more successful, more in re-
putation than he but from the time he first sought to
make his peace with the king, and to betray into his
hands that town, into which before he had denied him
entrance, nothing prospered with him. Certainly had
God purposed him such an end for his opposition to the
king, he would not have deſerred to punish him till
then, when of an enemy he was changed to be the
king's friend, nor have made his repentance and amend-
ment the occasion of his ruin. How much more likely
is it, since he fell into the act of disloyalty to his charge,
that the judgment of God concurred with the punish-
ment of man, and justly cut him off for revolting to
the king ! to give the world an example, that glorious
deeds done to ambitious ends find reward answerable,
not to their outward seeming, but to their inward am-
bition. In the mean while, what thanks he had from
the king for revolting to his cause, and what good opi-
nion for dying in his service, they who have ventured
like him, or intend, may here take notice.
He proceeds to declare, not only in general where-
fore God's judgment was upon Hotham, but under-
takes by fancies, and allusions, to give a criticism upon
every particular: “that his head was divided from his
body, because his heart was divided from the king;
two heads cut off in one family for affronting the head
of the commonwealth; the eldest son being infected
with the sin of his father, against the father of his
country.” These petty glosses and conceits on the high
and secret judgments of God, besides the boldness of
unwarrantable commenting, are so weak and shallow,
and so like the quibbles of a court sermon, that we may
safely reckon them either fetched from such a pattern,
or that the hand of some household priest foisted them
in ; lest the world should forget how much he was a
disciple of those cymbal doctors. But that argument,
by which the author would commend them to us, dis-
credits them the more : for if they be so “obvious to
every fancy,” the more likely to be erroneous, and to
misconceive the mind of those high secrecies, whereof
they presume to determine. For God judges not by
human fancy.
But however God judged Hotham, yet he had the
king's pity: but mark the reason how preposterous; so
far he had his pity, “as he thought he at first acted
more against the light of his conscience, than many
other men in the same cause.” Questionless they who
act against conscience, whether at the bar of human or
divine justice, are pitied least of all. These are the
common grounds and verdicts of nature, whereof when
he who hath the judging of a whole nation is found
destitute, under such a governor that nation must needs
be miserable. -
By the way he jerks at “some men's reforming to
models of religion, and that they think all is gold of
piety, that doth but glister with a show of zeal.” We
know his meaning, and apprehend how little hope there
could be of him from such language as this: but are
sure that the piety of his prelatic model glistered more
upon the posts and pillars, which their zeal and fer-
vency gilded over, than in the true works of spiritual
edification.
“He is sorry that Hotham felt the justice of others,
and fell not rather into the hands of his mercy.” But
to clear that, he should have shewn us what mercy he
had ever used to such as fell into his hands before, ra-
ther than what mercy he intended to such as never
could come to ask it. Whatever mercy one man might
have expected, it is too well known the whole nation
found none ; though they besought it often, and so
humbly; but had been swallowed up in blood and ruin,
to set his private will above the parliament, had not his
strength failed him. “Yet clemency he counts a debt,
which he ought to pay to those that crave it; since we
pay not any thing to God for his mercy but prayers
and praises.” By this reason we ought as freely to
pay all things to all men; for of all that we receive
from God, what do we pay for, more than prayers and
praises 2 we looked for the discharge of his office, the
payment of his duty to the kingdom, and are paid
court-payment with empty sentences that have the
sound of gravity, but the significance of nothing per-
tlinent.
Yet again after his mercy past and granted, he re-
turns back to give sentence upon Hotham; and whom
he tells us he would so fain have saved alive, him he
never leaves killing with a repeated condemnation,
though dead long since. It was ill that somebody
stood not near to whisper him, that a reiterating judge
is worse than a tormentor. “He pities him, he rejoices
not, he pities him” again; but still is sure to brand
him at the tail of his pity with some ignominious mark,
either of ambition or disloyalty. And with a kind of
censorious pity aggravates rather than lessens or con-
ceals the fault: to pity thus, is to triumph.
He assumes to foreknow, that “after-times will dis-
pute, whether Hotham were more infamous at Hull,
or at Tower-hill.” What knew he of after-times, who,
while he sits judging and censuring without end the
fate of that unhappy father and his son at Tower-hill,
knew not the like fate attended him before his own
palace gate; and as little knew whether after-times re-
serve not a greater infamy to the story of his own life
and reign f
He says but over again in his prayer what his
sermon hath preached ; how acceptably to those in
heaven we leave to be decided by that precept, which
296
AN ANSWER TO EIRON BASILIKE.
forbids “vain repetitions.” Sure enough it lies as heavy
as he can lay it upon the head of poor Hotham.
Needs he will fasten upon God a piece of revenge as
done for his sake; and take it for a favour, before he
know it was intended him: which in his closet had
been excusable, but in a written and published prayer
too presumptuous. Ecclesiastes hath a right name for
such kind of sacrifices.
Going on he prays thus, “Let not thy justice pre-
vent the objects and opportunities of my mercy.” To
folly, or to blasphemy, or to both, shall we impute
this? Shall the justice of God give place, and serve to
glorify the mercies of a man P All other men, who
know what they ask, desire of God, that their doings
may tend to his glory; but in this prayer God is re-
quired, that his justice would forbear to prevent, and as
good have said to intrench upon the glory of a man's
mercy. If God forbear his justice, it must be, sure, to
the magnifying of his own mercy: how then can any
mortal man, without presumption little less than im-
pious, take the boldness to ask that glory out of his
hand P It may be doubted now by them who under-
stand religion, whether the king were more unfortunate
in this his prayer, or Hotham in those his sufferings.
IX. Upon the listing and raising Armies, &c.
It were an endless work, to walk side by side with
the verbosity of this chapter; only to what already
hath not been spoken, convenient answer shall be
given. He begins again with tumults: all demonstra-
tion of the people's love and loyalty to the parliament
was tumult; their petitioning tumult; their defensive
armies were but listed tumults; and will take no no-
tice that those about him, those in a time of peace listed
into his own house, were the beginners of all these tu-
mults; abusing and assaulting not only such as came
peaceably to the parliament at London, but those that
came petitioning to the king himself at York. Neither
did they abstain from doing violence and outrage to
the messengers sent from parliament; he himself either
countenancing or conniving at them.
He supposes, that “his recess gave us confidence,
that he might be conquered.” Other men suppose both
that and all things else, who knew him neither by na-
ture warlike, nor experienced, nor fortunate; so far
was any man, that discerned aught, from esteeming him
unconquerable; yet such are readiest to embroil others.
“But he had a soul invincible.” What praise is
that ? The stomach of a child is ofttimes invincible to
all correction. The unteachable man hath a soul to
all reason and good advice invincible; and he who is
intractable, he whom nothing can persuade, may boast
himself invincible; whenas in some things to be over-
come, is more honest and laudable than to conquer.
He labours to have it thought, that “his fearing God
more than man” was the ground of his sufferings; but
be should have known, that a good principle not rightly
understood may prove as hurtful as a bad ; and his
fear of God may be as faulty as a blind zeal. He pre-
tended to fear God more than the parliament, who never
urged him to do otherwise; he should also have feared
God more than he did his courtiers, and the bishops,
who drew him, as they pleased, to things inconsistent
with the fear of God. Thus boasted Saul to have
“performed the commandment of God,” and stood in
it against Samuel ; but it was found at length, that he
had feared the people more than God, in saving those
ſat oxen for the worship of God, which were appointed
for destruction. Not much unlike, if not much worse,
was that fact of his, who, for fear to displease his
court and mongrel clergy, with the dissolutest of the
people, upheld in the church of God, while his power
lasted, those beasts of Amalec, the prelates, against the
advice of his parliament and the example of all reſor-
mation ; in this more inexcusable than Saul, that Saul
was at length convinced, he to the hour of death fixed
in his false persuasion; and soothes himself in the flat-
tering peace of an erroneous and obdurate conscience;
singing to his soul vain psalms of exultation, as if the
parliament had assailed his reason with the force of
arms, and not he on the contrary their reason with his
arms; which hath been proved already, and shall be
more hereafter.
He twits them with “his acts of grace;” proud, and
unselfknowing words in the mouth of any king, who
affects not to be a god, and such as ought to be as odi-
ous in the ears of a free nation. For if they were un-
just acts, why did he grant them as of grace? If just,
it was not of his grace, but of his duty and his oath to
grant them.
“A glorious king he would be, though by his suffer-
ings:” but that can never be to him, whose sufferings
are his own doings. He feigns “a hard choice” put
upon him, “either to kill his subjects, or be killed.”
Yet never was king less in danger of any violence
from his subjects, till he unsheathed his sword against
them ; nay long after that time, when he had spilt the
blood of thousands, they had still his person in a fool-
ish veneration.
He complains, “that civil war must be the fruits
of his seventeen years reigning with such a measure of
justice, peace, plenty, and religion, as all nations either
admired or envied.” For the justice we had, let the
council-table, star-chamber, high-commission speak the
praise of it; not forgetting the unprincely usage, and,
as far as might be, the abolishing of parliaments, the
displacing of honest judges, the sale of offices, bribery,
and exaction, not found out to be punished, but to be
shared in with impunity for the time to come. Who
can number the extortions, the oppressions, the public
robberies and rapines committed on the subject both by
sea and land under various pretences f their possessions
also taken from them, one while as forest-land, another
while as crown-land; nor were their goods exempted,
no not the bullion in the mint; piracy was become a
project owned and authorized against the subject.
For the peace we had, what peace was that which
drew out the English to a needless and dishonourable
voyage against the Spaniard at Cales? Or that which
AN ANSWER TO
297
EIFKON BASILIKE.
lent our shipping to a treacherous and antichristian
war against the poor protestants of Rochel our suppli-
ants P What peace was that which fell to rob the
French by sea, to the embarring of all our merchants
in that kingdom P which brought forth that unblest ex-
pedition to the Isle of Rhee, doubtful whether more
calamitous in the success or in the design, betraying all
the flower of our military youth and best commanders
to a shameful surprisal and execution. This was the
peace, we had, and the peace we gave, whether to
friends or to foes abroad. And if at home any peace
were intended us, what meant those Irish billetted sol-
diers in all parts of the kingdom, and the design of
German horse to subdue us in our peaceful houses 2
For our religion, where was there a more ignorant,
profane, and vitious clergy, learned in nothing but the
antiquity of their pride, their covetousness, and super-
stition f whose unsincere and leavenous doctrine, cor-
rupting the people, first taught them looseness, then
bondage; loosening them from all sound knowledge
and strictness of life, the more to fit them for the bond-
age of tyranny and superstition. So that what was
left us for other nations not to pity, rather than admire
or envy, all those seventeen years, no wise man could
see. For wealth and plenty in a land where justice
reigns not is no argument of a flourishing state, but of
a nearness rather to ruin or commotion.
These were not “some miscarriages” only of govern-
ment, “which might escape,” but a universal distem-
per, and reducement of law to arbitrary power; not
through the evil counsels of “some men,” but through
the constant course and practice of all that were in
highest favour : whose worst actions frequently avow-
ing he took upon himself; and what faults did not yet
seem in public to be originally his, such care he took
by professing, and proclaiming openly, as made them
all at length his own adopted sins. The persons also,
when he could no longer protect, he esteemed and fa-
voured to the end; but never, otherwise than by con-
straint, yielded any of them to due punishment; thereby
manifesting that what they did was by his own author-
ity and approbation.
Yet here he asks, “whose innocent blood he hath
shed, what widows’ or orphans' tears can witness against
him P' After the suspected poisoning of his father, not
inquired into, but smothered up, and him protected and
advanced to the very half of his kingdom, who was
accused in parliament to be author of the fact; (with
much more evidence than Duke Dudley, that false pro-
tector, is accused upon record to have poisoned Edward
the Sixth ;) after all his rage and persecution, after so
many years of cruel war on his people in three king-
doms Whence the author of “Truths manifest,” a
Scotsman, not unacquainted with affairs, positively
affirms, “that there hath been more christian blood
shed by the commission, approbation, and connivance
of King Charles, and his father James, in the latter end
of their reign, than in the ten Roman persecutions.”
Not to speak of those many whippings, pillories, and
other corporal inflictions, wherewith his reign also be-
fore this war was not unbloody ; some have died in
prison under cruel restraint, others in banishment,
whose lives were shortened through the rigour of that
persecution, wherewith so many years he infested the
true church. And those six members all men judged
to have escaped no less than capital danger, whom he
so greedily pursuing into the house of commons, had
not there the forbearance to conceal how much it trou-
bled him, “that the birds were flown.” If some vul-
ture in the mountains could have opened his beak in-
telligibly and spoke, what fitter words could he have
uttered at the loss of his prey 2 The tyrant Nero,
though not yet deserving that name, set his hand so
unwillingly to the execution of a condemned person,
as to wish “ he had not known letters.” Certainly for
a king himself to charge his subjects with high trea-
son, and so vehemently to prosecute them in his own
cause, as to do the office of a searcher, argued in him
no great aversation from shedding blood, were it but
to “satisfy his anger,” and that revenge was no un-
pleasing morsel to him, whereof he himself thought
not much to be so diligently his own caterer. But we
insist rather upon what was actual, than what was
probable.
He now falls to examine the causes of this war, as a
difficulty which he had long “studied ” to find out.
“It was not,” saith he, “my withdrawing from White-
hall; for no account in reason could be given of those
tumults, where an orderly guard was granted.” But
if it be a most certain truth, that the parliament could
never yet obtain of him any guard fit to be confided in,
then by his own confession some account of those pre-
tended tumults “may in reason be given;” and both
concerning them and the guards enough hath been said
already.
“Whom did he protect against the justice of parlia-
ment?” Whom did he not to his utmost power P En-
deavouring to have rescued Strafford from their justice,
though with the destruction of them and the city; to
that end expressly commanding the admittance of new
soldiers into the Tower, raised by Suckling and other
conspirators, under pretence for the Portugal; though
that ambassador, being sent to, utterly denied to know
of any such commission from his master. And yet
that listing continued : not to repeat his other plot of
bringing up the two armies. But what can be disputed
with such a king, in whose mouth and opinion the
parliament itself was never but a faction, and their
justice no justice, but “the dictates and overswaying
insolence of tumults and rabbles P’ and under that ex-
cuse avouches himself openly the general patron of
most notorious delinquents, and approves their flight
out of the land, whose crimes were such, as that the
justest and the fairest trial would have soonest con-
demned them to death. But did not Catiline plead in
like manner against the Roman senate, and the injust-
ice of their trial, and the justice of his flight ſrom
Rome f Caesar also, then hatching tyranny, injected
unhappy Troubles to this Day. Published in 12mo, 1645. A reply to this
* The title of the treatise here referred to, is, Truth its Manifest; or, a
short and true Relation of divers main Passages of ſhings (in sºme whereof
the Scots are particularly concerned) from the very first Beginning of these
was, published in quarto, 1640, entitled, Mlanifest Truths; or, an Inversion
of Truths Manifest.
298
AN ANSWER TO EIKON BASILIKE.
the same scrupulous demurs, to stop the sentence of
death in full and free senate decreed on Lentulus and
Cethegus, two of Catiline's accomplices, which were
renewed and urged for Strafford. He vouchsafes to
the reformation, by both kingdoms intended, no better
name than “innovation and ruin both in church and
state.” And what we would have learned so gladly of
him in other passages before, to know wherein, he tells
us now of his own accord. The expelling bishops out
of the house of peers, that was “ruin to the state;” the
“removing” them “root and branch,” this was “ruin
to the church.”
How happy could this nation be in such a governor,
who counted that their ruin, which they thought their
deliverance; the ruin both of church and state, which
was the recovery and the saving of them both 2
To the passing of those bills against bishops how is
it likely that the house of peers gave so hardly their
consent, which they gave so easily before to the at-
taching them of high treason, twelve at once, only for
protesting that the parliament could not act without
them * Surely if their rights and privileges were
thought so undoubted in that house, as is here main-
tained; then was that protestation, being meant and
intended in the name of their whole spiritual order, no
treason; and so that house itself will become liable to
a just construction either of injustice to appeach them
for so consenting, or of usurpation, representing none
but themselves, to expect that their voting or not voting
should obstruct the commons: who not for “five re-
pulses of the lords,” no not for fifty, were to desist from
what in the name of the whole kingdom they demand-
ed, so long as those lords were none of our lords. And
for the bill against root and branch, though it passed
not in both houses till many of the lords and some few
of the commons, either enticed away by the king, or
overawed by the sense of their own malignancy not
prevailing, deserted the parliament, and made a fair
riddance of themselves ; that was no warrant for them
who remained faithful, being far the greater number,
to lay aside that bill of root and branch, till the return
of their fugitives; a bill so necessary and so much de-
sired by themselves as well as by the people.
This was the partiality, this degrading of the bishops,
a thing so wholesome in the state, and so orthodoxal
in the church both ancient and reformed ; which the
king rather than assent to “will either hazard both his
own and the kingdom's ruin,” by our just defence
against his force of arms; or prostrate our consciences
in a blind obedience to himself, and those men, whose
superstition, zealous or unzealous, would enforce upon
us an antichristian tyranny in the church, neither pri-
mitive, apostolical, nor more anciently universal than
some other manifest corruptions.
But “he was bound, besides his judgment, by a most
strict and indispensable oath, to preserve the order and
the rights of the church.” If he mean that oath of his
coronation, and that the letter of that oath admit not to
be interpreted either by equity, reformation, or better
knowledge, then was the king bound by that oath, to
grant the clergy all those customs, franchises, and cano-
nical privileges granted to them by Edward the Con-
fessor: and so might one day, under pretence of that
oath and his conscience, have brought us all again to
popery : but had he so well remembered as he ought
the words to which he swore, he might have ſound
himself no otherwise obliged there, than “according to
the laws of God, and true profession of the gospel.”
For if those following words, “established in this king-
dom,” be set there to limit and lay prescription on the
laws of God and truth of the gospel by man's estab-
lishment, nothing can be more absurd or more injuri-
ous to religion. So that however the German em-
perors or other kings have levied all those wars on their
protestant subjects under the colour of a blind and
literal observance to an oath, yet this king had least
pretence of all; both sworn to the laws of God and
evangelic truth, and disclaiming, as we heard him be-
fore, “to be bound by any coronation oath, in a blind
and brutish formality.” Nor is it to be imagined, if
what shall be established come in question, but that the
parliament should oversway the king, and not he the
parliament. And by all law and reason that which
the parliament will not is no more established in this
kingdom, neither is the king bound by oath to uphold
it as a thing established. And that the king (who of
his princely grace, as he professes, hath so oft abolished
things that stood firm by law, as the star-chamber and
high-commission) ever thought himself bound by oath
to keep them up, because established; he who will be-
lieve, must at the same time condemn him of as many
perjuries, as he is well known to have abolished both
laws and jurisdictions that wanted no establishment. ,
“Had he gratified,” he thinks, “their antiepiscopal
faction with his consent, and sacrificed the church-
government and revenues to the fury of their covetous-
ness,” &c. an army had not been raised. Whereas it
was the fury of his own hatred to the professors of true
religion, which first incited him to prosecute them with
the sword of war, when whips, pillories, exiles, and im-
prisonments were not thought sufficient. To colour
which he cannot find where withal, but that stale pre.
tence of Charles the Vth, and other popish kings, that
the protestants had only an intent to lay hands upon
the church-revenues, a thing never in the thoughts of
this parliament, till exhausted by his endless war upon
them, their necessity seized on that for the common-
wealth, which the luxury of prelates had abused before
to a common mischief.
His consent to the unlording of bishops, (for to that
he himself consented, and at Canterbury the chief seat
of their pride, so God would have it!) “was from his
firm persuasion of their contentedness to suffer a pre-
sent diminution of their rights.” Can any man, read-
ing this, not discern the pure mockery of a royal
consent, to delude us only for “the present,” meaning,
it seems, when time should serve, to revoke all? By
this reckoning, his consents and his denials come all
to one pass: and we may hence perceive the small
wisdom and integrity of those votes, which voted his
concessions of the Isle of Wight for grounds of a last-
ing peace. This he alleges, this controversy about
AN ANSWER TO EIKON BASILIKE.
299
bishops, “to be the true state” of that difference be-
tween him and the parliament. For he held episco-
pacy “both very sacred and divine;” with this judg-
ment, and for this cause, he withdrew from the parlia-
ment, and confesses that some men knew “he was like
to bring again the same judgment which he carried
with him.” A fair and unexpected justification from
his own mouth afforded to the parliament, who, not-
withstanding what they knew of his obstinate mind,
omitted not to use all those means and that patience to
have gained him.
As for delinquents, “he allows them to be but the
necessary consequences of his and their withdrawing
and defending,” a pretty shift' to mince the name of
a delinquent into a necessary consequent : what is a
traitor, but the necessary consequence of his treason 2
What a rebel, but of his rebellion ? From his conceit
he would infer a pretext only in the parliament “to
fetch in delinquents,” as if there had indeed been no
such cause, but all the delinquency in London tu-
mults. Which is the overworn theme and stuffing of
all his discourses.
This he thrice repeats to be the true state and reason
of all that war and devastation in the land; and that
“of all the treaties and propositions” offered him, he
was resolved “never to grant the abolishing of episco-
pal, or the establishment of presbyterian, government.”
I would demand now of the Scots and covenanters, (for
so I call them, as misobservers of the covenant,) how
they will reconcile “the preservation of religion and
their liberties, and the bringing of delinquents to con-
dign punishment,” with the freedom, honour, and
safety of this avowed resolution here, that esteems al
the zeal of their prostituted covenant no better than
“a noise and shew of piety, a heat for reformation,
filling them with prejudice, and obstructing all equality
and clearness of judgment in them.” With these prin-
ciples who knows but that at length he might have
come to take the covenant, as others, whom they bro-
therly admit, have done before him 8 And then all, no
doubt, had gone well, and ended in a happy peace.
His prayer is most of it borrowed out of David; but
what if it be answered him as the Jews, who trusted in
Moses, were answered by our Saviour; “there is one
that accuseth you, even David, whom you misapply.”
He tells God, “that his enemies are many,” but tells
the people, when it serves his turn, they are but “a
faction of some few, prevailing over the major part of
both houses.”
“God knows he had no passion, design, or prepara-
tion, to embroil his kingdom in a civil war.” True;
for he thought his kingdom to be Issachar, a “strong
ass that would have couched down between two bur-
dens,” the one of prelatical superstition, the other of
civil tyranny: but what passion and design, what
close and open preparation he had made, to subdue us
to both these by terrour and preventive force, all the
nation knows.
“The confidence of some men had almost persuaded
him to suspect his own innocence.” As the words of
Saint Paul had almost persuaded Agrippa to be a Chris-
tian. But almost, in the works of repentance, is as
good as not at all.
“God,” saith he, “will find out bloody and deceit-
ful men, many of whom have not lived out half their
days.” It behoved him to have been more cautious
how he tempted God's finding out of blood and deceit,
till his own years had been further spent, or that he had
enjoyed longer the fruits of his own violent counsels.
But instead of wariness he adds another temptation,
charging God “ to know, that the chief design of this
war was either to destroy his person, or to force his
judgment.” And thus his prayer, from the evil prac-
tice of unjust accusing men to God, arises to the hide-
ous rashness of accusing God before men, to know that
for truth which all men know to be most false.
He prays, “that God would forgive the people, for
they know not what they do.” It is an easy matter to
say over what our Saviour said; but how he loved the
people other arguments than affected sayings must de-
monstrate. He who so oft hath presumed rashly to
appeal to the knowledge and testimony of God in things
so evidently untrue, may be doubted what belief or
esteem he had of his forgiveness, either to himself, or
those for whom he would * so feign that men should
hear he prayed.
X. Upon their seizing the magazines, forts, &c.
To put the matter soonest out of controversy who
was the first beginner of this civil war, since the begin-
ning of all war may be discerned not only by the first
act of hostility, but by the counsels and preparations
foregoing, it shall evidently appear, that the king was
still foremost in all these. No king had ever at his
first coming to the crown more love and acclamation
from a people; never any people found worse requital
of their loyalty and good affection: first, by his extra-
ordinary fear and mistrust, that their liberties and rights
were the impairing and diminishing of his regal power,
the true original of tyranny ; next, by his hatred to all
those who were esteemed religious; doubting that
their principles too much asserted liberty. This was
quickly seen by the vehemence, and the causes alleged
of his persecuting, the other by his frequent and oppro-
brious dissolution of parliaments; after he had de-
manded more money of them, and they to obtain their
rights had granted him, than would have bought the
Turk out of Morea, and set free all the Greeks. But
when he sought to extort from us, by way of tribute,
that which had been offered to him conditionally in
parliament, as by a free people, and that those extor-
tions were now consumed and wasted by the luxury
of his court, he began then (for still the more he did
wrong, the more he feared) before any tumult or insur-
rection of the people to take counsel how he might to-
tally subdue them to his own will. Then was the
design of German horse, while the duke reigned, and
* The second edition has so fain. To feign, is to dissemble ; but we use
the word feign for fond desire of a thing.
300
AN ANSWER TO EIKON BASILIKE.
which was worst of all, some thousands of the Irish
papists were in several parts billeted upon us, while a
parliament was then sitting. The pulpits resounded
with no other doctrine than that which gave all pro-
perty to the king, and passive obedience to the subject.
After which, innumerable forms and shapes of new ex-
actions and exactors overspread the land: nor was it
enough to be impoverished, unless we were disarmed.
Our trained bands, which are the trustiest and most
proper strength of a free nation not at war with itself,
had their arms in divers counties taken from them ;
other ammunition by design was ingrossed and kept in
the Tower, not to be bought without a licence, and at
a high rate.
Thus far and many other ways were his counsels
and preparations before-hand with us, either to a civil
war, if it should happen, or to subdue us without a
war, which is all one, until the raising of his two ar-
mies against the Scots, and the latter of them raised to
the most perfidious breaking of a solemn pacification:
the articles whereof though subscribed with his own
hand, he commanded soon after to be burned openly
by the hangman. What enemy durst have done him
that dishonour and affront, which he did therein to
himself P
After the beginning of this parliament, whom he saw
so resolute and unanimous to relieve the common-
wealth, and that the earl of Strafford was condemned
to die, other of his evil counsellors impeached and im-
prisoned; to shew there wanted not evil counsel within
himself sufficient to begin a war upon his subjects,
though no way by them provoked, he sends an agent
with letters to the king of Denmark, requiring aid
against the parliament: and that aid was coming,
when Divine Providence, to divert them, sent a sudden
torrent of Swedes into the bowels of Denmark. He
then endeavours to bring up both armies, first the Eng-
lish, with whom 8000 Irish papists, raised by Straf.
ford, and a French army were to join ; then the Scots
at Newcastle, whom he thought to have encouraged
by telling them what money and horse he was to have
from Denmark. I mention not the Irish conspiracy
till due place. These and many other were his coun-
sels toward a civil war. His preparations, after those
two armies were dismissed, could not suddenly be too
open : nevertheless there were 8000 Irish papists, which
lic refused to disband, though entreated by both houses,
first for reasons best known to himself, next under pre-
tence of lending them to the Spaniard; and so kept
them undisbanded till very near the month wherein
that rebellion broke forth. He was also raising forces
in London, pretendedly to serve the Portugal, but with
intent to seize the Tower; into which divers cannoneers
were by him sent with many fireworks and grenadoes;
and many great battering pieces were mounted against
the city. The court was fortified with ammunition, and
soldiers new listed, who followed the king from Lon-
don, and appeared at Kingston some hundreds of horse
in a warlike manner, with waggons of ammunition
after them; the queen in Holland was buying more ;
of which the parliament had certain knowledge, and
had not yet so much as demanded the militia to be set-
tled, till they knew both of her going over sea, and to
what intent. For she had packed up the crown jewels
to have been going long before, had not the parliament,
suspecting by the discoveries at Burrow-bridge what
was intended with the jewels, used means to stay her
journey till the winter, Hull and the magazine there
had been secretly attempted under the king's hand;
from whom (though in his declarations renouncing all
thought of war) notes were sent oversea for supply of
arms; which were no sooner come, but the inhabitants
of Yorkshire and other counties were called to arms,
and actual forces raised, while the parliament were yet
petitioning in peace, and had not one man listed.
As to the act of hostility, though not much material
in whom first it began, or by whose commissions dated
first, after such counsels and preparations discovered,
and so far advanced by the king, yet in that act also he
will be found to have had precedency, if not at London
by the assault of his armed court upon the naked people,
and his attempt upon the house of commons, yet cer-
tainly at Hull, first by his close practices on that town,
next by his siege. Thus whether counsels, preparations,
or acts of hostility be considered, it appears with evi-
dence enough, though much more might be said, that
the king is truly charged to be the first beginner of
these civil wars. To which may be added as a close,
that in the Isle of Wight he charged it upon himself
at the public treaty, and acquitted the parliament.
But as for the securing of Hull and the public stores
therein, and in other places, it was no “surprisal of
his strength;” the custody whereof by authority of
parliament was committed into hands most fit and most
responsible for such a trust. It were a folly beyond
ridiculous, to count ourselves a free nation, if the king,
not in parliament, but in his own person, and against
them, might appropriate to himself the strength of a
whole nation as his proper goods. What the laws of
the land are, a parliament should know best, having
both the life and death of laws in their lawgiving
power: and the law of England is, at best, but the
reason of parliament. The parliament therefore, taking
into their hands that whereof most properly they ought
to have the keeping, committed no surprisal. If they
prevented him, that argued not at all either “his inno-
cency or unpreparedness,” but their timely foresight
to use prevention.
But what needed that f “They knew his chiefest
arms left him were those only, which the ancient Christ-
ians were wont to use against their persecutors, prayers
and tears.” O sacred reverence of God respect and
shame of men whither were ye fled when these hy-
pocrisies were uttered P Was the kingdom them at all
that cost of blood to remove from him none but prayers
and tears 2 What were those thousands of blaspheming
cavaliers about him, whose mouths let fly oaths and
curses by the volley; were those the prayers 2 and
those carouses drunk to the confusion of all things good
or holy, did those minister the tears? Were they prayers
and tears that were listed at York, mustered on Heworth
moor, and laid siege to Hull for the guard of his per-
AN ANSWER TO EIKON BASILIKE.
30 I
son 2 Were prayers and tears at so high a rate in Hol-
land, that nothing could purchase them but the crown
jewels Yet they in Holland (such word was sent us)
sold them for guns, carabines, mortar-pieces, cannons,
and other deadly instruments of war; which, when they
came to York, were all, no doubt by the merit of some
great saint, suddenly transformed into prayers and
tears: and, being divided into regiments and brigades,
were the only arms that mischieved us in all those bat-
tles and encounters.
These were his chief arms, whatever we must call
them, and yet such arms as they who fought for the
commonwealth have by the help of better prayers van-
quished and brought to nothing.
He bewails his want of the militia, “not so much in
reference to his own protection, as the people's, whose
many and sore oppressions grieve him.” Never con-
sidering how ill for seventeen years together he had
protected them, and that these miseries of the people
are still his own handwork, having smitten them, like
a forked arrow, so sore into the kingdom's sides, as
not to be drawn out and cured without the incision of
more flesh.
He tells us, that “what he wants in the hand of
power,” he has in “the wings of faith and prayer.”
But they who made no reckoning of those wings, while
they had that power in their hands, may easily mistake
the wings of faith for the wings of presumption, and
so fall headlong.
We meet next with a comparison, how apt let them
judge who have travelled to Mecca, “ that the parlia-
ment have hung the majesty of kingship in an airy
imagination of regality, between the privileges of both
houses, like the tomb of Mahomet.” He knew not
that he was prophesying the death and burial of a
Turkish tyranny, that spurned down those laws which
gave it life and being, so long as it endured to be a
regulated monarchy.
He counts it an injury “not to have the sole power
in himself to help or hurt any;” and that the “militia,
which he holds to be his undoubted right, should be
disposed as the parliament thinks fit:” and yet confesses,
that, if he had it in his actual disposing, he would de-
fend those whom he calls “his good subjects, from those
men's violence and fraud, who would persuade the
world, that none but wolves are fit to be trusted with
the custody of the shepherd and his flock.” Surely, if
we may guess whom he means here, by knowing whom
he hath ever most opposed in this controversy, we may
then assure ourselves, that by violence and fraud he
means that which the parliament hath done in settling
the militia, and those the wolves into whose hands it
was by them intrusted: which draws a clear confession
from his own mouth, that if the parliament had left
him sole power of the militia, he would have used it to
the destruction of them and their friends.
As for sole power of the militia, which he claims as
a right no less undoubted than the crown, it hath been
oft enough told him, that he hath no more authority
over the sword, than over the law; over the law he
hath none, either to establish or to abrogate, to interpret
f
or to execute, but only by his courts and in his courts,
whereof the parliament is highest; no more therefore
hath he power of the militia, which is the sword, either
to use or to dispose, but with consent of parliament;
give him but that, and as good give him in a lump all
our laws and liberties. For if the power of the sword
were any where separate and undepending from the
power of the law, which is originally seated in the
highest court, then would that power of the sword be
soon master of the law : and being at one man's disposal
might, when he pleased, control the law; and in derision
of our Magna Charta, which were but weak resistance
against an armed tyrant, might absolutely enslave us.
And not to have in ourselves, though vaunting to be
freeborn, the power of our own freedom, and the public
safety, is a degree lower than not to have the property
of our own goods. For liberty of person, and the right
of self-preservation, is much nearer, much more natural,
and more worth to all men, than the propriety of their
goods and wealth. Yet such power as all this did the
king in open terms challenge to have over us, and
brought thousands to help him win it; so much more
good at fighting than at understanding, as to persuade
themselves, that they fought then for the subject's
liberty.
He is contented, because he knows no other remedy,
to resign this power “for his own time, but not for his
successors : ” so diligent and careful he is, that we
should be slaves, if not to him, yet to his posterity, and
fain would leave us the legacy of another war about
it. But the parliament have done well to remove that
question : whom, as his manner is to dignify with
some good name or other, he calls now a “many-
headed hydra of government, full of factious distrac-
tions, and not more eyes than mouths.” Yet surely
not more mouths, or not so wide, as the dissolute rab-
ble of all his courtiers had, both hees and shees, if there
were any males among them.
He would prove, that to govern by parliament hath
“a monstrosity rather than perfection;” and grounds
his argument upon two or three eminent absurdities:
first, by placing counsel in the senses; next, by turn-
ing the senses out of the head, and in lieu thereof plac-
ing power supreme above sense and reason : which be
now the greater monstrosities? Further to dispute what
kind of government is best would be a long debate; it
sufficeth that his reasons here for monarchy are found
weak and inconsiderable.
He bodes much “ horrour and bad influence after
his eclipse.” He speaks his wishes; but they who by
weighing prudently things past foresee things to come,
the best divination, may hope rather all good success
and happiness, by removing that darkness, which the
misty cloud of his prerogative made between us and a
peaceful reformation, which is our true sun-light, and
not he, though he would be taken for our sum itself.
And wherefore should we not hope to be governed
more happily without a king, whenas all our misery
and trouble hath been either by a king, or by our ne-
cessary vindication and defence against him f
He would be thought “inforced to perjury,” by hav-
302
AN ANSWER TO EIKON BASILIKE.
ing granted the militia, by which his oath bound him
to protect the people, 1.f he can be perjured in grant-
ing that, why doth he refuse for no other cause the
abolishing of episcopacy P But never was any oath so
blind as to swear him to protect delinquents against
justice, but to protect all the people in that order, and
by those hands which the parliament should advise
him to, and the protected conſide in ; not under the
show of protection to hold a violent and incommunica-
ble sword over us, as ready to be let fall upon our own
necks, as upon our enemies; nor to make our own
hands and weapons fight against our own liberties.
By his parting with the militia he takes to himself
much praise of his “assurance in God's protection;”
and to the parliament imputes the fear “ of not daring
to adventure the injustice of their actions upon any other
way of safety.” But wherefore came not this assur-
ance of God's protection to him till the militia was
wrung out of his hands? It should seem by his holding
it so fast, that his own actions and intentions had no
less of injustice in them, than what he charges upon
others, whom he terms Chaldeans, Sabeans, and the
devil himself. But Job used no such militia against
those enemies, nor such a magazine as was at Hull,
which this king so contended for, and made war upon
us, that he might have where withal to make war
against us. -
He concludes, that, “although they take all from
him, yet can they not obstruct his way to heaven.” It
was no handsome occasion, by feigning obstructions
where they are not, to tell us whither he was going :
he should have shut the door, and prayed in secret, not
here in the high street. Private prayers in public ask
something of whom they ask not, and that shall be
their reward.
XI. Upon the Nineteen Propositions, &c.
Of the nineteen propositions he names none in parti-
cular, neither shall the answer: But he insists upon
the old plea of “his conscience, honour, and reason;”
using the plausibility of large and indefinite words, to
defend himself at such a distance as may hinder the
eye of common judgment from all distinct view and
examination of his reasoning. “He would buy the
peace of his people at any rate, save only the parting
with his conscience and honour.” Yet shews not how
it can happen that the peace of a people, if otherwise
to be bought at any rate, should be inconsistent or at
variance with the conscience and honour of a king.
Till then, we may receive it for a better sentence, that
nothing should be more agreeable to the conscience
and honour of a king, than to preserve his subjects in
peace; especially from civil war.
And which of the propositions were “obtruded on
him with the point of the sword,” till he first with the
point of the sword thrust from him both the propositions
and the propounders He never reckons those violent
and merciless obtrusions, which for almost twenty
years he had been forcing upon tender consciences by
all sorts of persecution, till through the multitude of
them that were to suffer, it could no more be called a
persecution, but a plain war. From which when first
the Scots, then the English, were constrained to de-
fend themselves, this their just defence is that which
he calls here, “their making war upon his soul.”
He grudges that “so many things are required of
him, and nothing offered him in requital of those ſa-
vours which he had granted.” What could satiate the
desires of this man, who being king of England, and
master of almost two millions yearly what by hook or
crook, was still in want; and those acts of justice
which he was to do in duty, counts done as favours :
and such favours as were not done without the avari-
cious hope of other rewards besides supreme honour,
and the constant revenue of his place 2
“This honour,” he saith, “they did him, to put him
on the giving part.” And spake truer than he intend-
ed, it being merely for honour's sake that they did so ;
not that it belonged to him of right: for what can he
give to a parliament, who receives all he hath from the
people, and for the people's good 2 Yet now he brings
his own conditional rights to contest and be preferred
before the people's good; and yet unless it be in order
to their good, he hath no rights at all; reigning by
the laws of the land, not by his own; which laws are
in the hands of parliament to change or abrogate as
they shall see best for the commonwealth, even to the
taking away of kingship itself, when it grows too mas-
terful and burdensome. For every commonwealth is
in general defined, a society sufficient of itself, in all
things conducible to well-being and commodious life.
Any of which requisite things, if it cannot have with-
out the gift and favour of a single person, or without
leave of his private reason or his conscience, it cannot
be thought sufficient of itself, and by consequence no
commonwealth, nor free; but a multitude of vassals in
the possession and domain of one absolute lord, and
wholly obnoxious to his will. If the king have power
to give or deny any thing to his parliament, he must
do it cither as a person several from them, or as one
greater: neither of which will be allowed him : not to
be considered severally from them; for as the king of
England can do no wrong, so neither can he do right
but in his courts and by his courts; and what is legally
done in them, shall be deemed the king's assent, though
he as a several person shall judge or endeavour the
contrary; so that indeed without his courts, or against
them, he is no king. If therefore he obtrude upon us
any public mischief, or withhold from us any general
good, which is wrong in the highest degree, he must
do it as a tyrant, not as a king of England, by the
known maxims of our law. Neither can he, as one
greater, give aught to the parliament which is not in
their own power, but he must be greater also than the
kingdom which they represent: so that to honour him
with the giving part was a mere civility, and may be
well termed the courtesy of England, not the king's
due.
But the “incommunicable jewel of his conscience”
AN ANSWER TO EIRON BASILIKE,
303
he will not give, “but reserve to himself.” It seems
that his conscience was none of the crown jewels; for
those we know were in Holland, not incommunicable,
to buy arms against his subjects. Being therefore but
&l private jewel, he could not have done a greater plea-
sure to the kingdom, than by reserving it to himself.
But he, contrary to what is here professed, would have
his conscience not an incommunicable, but a universal
conscience, the whole kingdom's conscience. Thus
what he seems to fear lest we should ravish from him,
is our chief complaint that he obtruded upon us; we
never forced him to part with his conscience, but it was
he that would have forced us to part with ours.
Some things he taxes them to have offered him,
“which, while he had the mastery of his reason, he
would never consent to.” Very likely ; but had his
reason mastered him as it ought, and not been mastered
long ago by his sense and humour, (as the breeding of
most kings hath been ever sensual and most humoured,)
perhaps he would have made no difficulty. Meanwhile
at what a fine pass is the kingdom, that must depend
in greatest exigencies upon the fantasy of a king's
reason, be he wise or fool, who arrogantly shall answer
all the wisdom of the land, that what they offer seems
to him unreasonable !
He prefers his “love of truth” before his love of the
people. His love of truth would have led him to the
search of truth, and have taught him not to lean so
much upon his own understanding. He met at first
with doctrines of unaccountable prerogative ; in them
he rested, because they pleased him; they therefore
pleased him because they gave him all; and this he
calls his love of truth, and prefers it before the love of
his people's peace. -
Some things they proposed, “ which would have
wounded the inward peace of his conscience.” The
more our evil hap, that three kingdoms should be thus
pestered with one conscience; who chiefly scrupled to
grant us that, which the parliament advised him to, as
the chief means of our public welfare and reformation.
These scruples to many perhaps will seem pretended ;
to others, upon as good grounds, may seem real; and
that it was the just judgment of God, that he who was
so cruel and so remorseless to other men's consciences,
should have a conscience within him as cruel to him-
self; constraining him, as he constrained others, and
ensnaring him in such ways and counsels as were cer-
tain to be his destruction.
“Other things though he could approve, yet in
honour and policy he thought fit to deny, lest he should
seem to dare deny nothing.” By this means he will
be sure, what with reason, honour, policy, or punctilios,
to be found never unfurnished of a denial ; whether it
were his envy not to be overbounteous, or that the sub-
missness of our asking stirred up in him a certain plea-
sure of denying. Good princes have thought it their
chief happiness to be always granting; if good things,
for the things' sake; if things indifferent, for the
people's sake; while this man sits calculating variety
of excuses how he may grant least; as if his whole
strength and royalty were placed in a mere negative.
Of one proposition especially he laments him much,
that they would bind him “to a general and implicit
consent for whatever they desired.” Which though I
find not among the nineteen, yet undoubtedly the oath
of his coronation binds him to no less; neither is he at
all by his office to interpose against a parliament in the
making or not making of any law; but to take that for
just and good legally, which is there decreed, and to
see it executed accordingly. Nor was he set over us
to vie wisdom with his parliament, but to be guided
by them; any of whom possibly may as far excel him
in the gift of wisdom, as he them in place and dignity.
But much nearer is it to impossibility, that any king
alone should be wiser than all his council; sure enough
it was not he, though no king ever before him so much
contended to have it thought so. And if the parlia-
ment so thought not, but desired him to follow their
advice and deliberation in things of public concern-
ment, he accounts it the same proposition, as if Sam-
son had been moved “ to the putting out his eyes, that
the Philistines might abuse him.” And thus out of an
unwise or pretended fear, lest others should make a
scorn of him for yielding to his parliament, he regards
not to give cause of worse suspicion, that he made a
scorn of his regal oath.
But “to exclude him from all power of denial seems
’ in the parliament he means: what in
an arrogance;’
him then to deny against the parliament 2 None at all,
by what he argues: for “by petitioning, they confess
their inferiority, and that obliges them to rest, if not
satisfied, yet quieted with such an answer as the will
First,
petitioning, in better English, is no more than request-
and reason of ther superior thinks fit to give.”
ing or requiring; and men require not favours only, but
their due ; and that not only from superiors, but from
equals, and inferiors also. The noblest Romans, when
they stood for that which was a kind of regal honour,
the consulship, were wont in a submissive manner to go
about, and beg that highest dignity of the meanest ple-
beians, naming them man by man; which in their
tongue was called petitio consulatus. And the parlia-
ment of England petitioned the king, not because all
of them were inferior to him, but because he was infe-
rior to any one of them, which they did of civil custom,
and for fashion's sake, more than of duty; for by plain
law cited before, the parliament is his superior.
But what law in any trial or dispute enjoins a free-
man to rest quieted, though not satisfied with the will
and reason of his superior P It were a mad law that
would subject reason to superiority of place. And if
our highest consultations and purposed laws must be
terminated by the king's will, then is the will of one
man our law, and no subtlety of dispute can redeem
the parliament and nation from being slaves: neither
can any tyrant require more than that his will or rea-
son, though not satisfying, should yet be rested in, and
determine all things. We may conclude therefore, that
when the parliament petitioned the king, it was but
merely form, let it be as “foolish and absurd” as he
pleases. It cannot certainly be so absurd as what he
requires, that the parliament should confine their own
304
AN ANSWER TO EIKON BASILIKE.
and all the kingdom's reason to the will of one man,
because it was his hap to succeed his father. For
neither God nor the laws have subjected us to his will,
nor set his reason to be our sovereign above law, (which
must needs be, if he can strangle it in the birth,) but set
his person over us in the sovereign execution of such
laws as the parliament establish. The parliament
therefore, without any usurpation, hath had it always
in their power to limit and confine the exorbitancy of
kings, whether they call it their will, their reason, or
their conscience
But this above all was never expected, nor is to be
cndured, that a king, who is bound by law and oath to
follow the advice of his parliament, should be permitted
to except against them as “young statesmen,” and
proudly to suspend his following their advice, “until
his seven years experience had shewn him how well
they could govern themselves.” Doubtless the law
never supposed so great an arrogance could be in one
man; that he whose seventeen years unexperience had
almost ruined all, should sit another seven years school-
master to tutor those who were sent by the whole realm
to be his counsellors and teachers. And with what
modesty can he pretend to be a statesman himself, who
with his father's king-craft and his own, did never
that of his own accord, which was not directly opposite
to his professed interest both at home and abroad; dis-
contenting and alienating his subjects at home, weak-
ening and deserting his confederates abroad, and with
them the common cause of religion ; so that the whole
course of his reign, by an example of his own furnish-
ing, hath resembled Phaeton more than Phoebus, and
forced the parliament to drive like Jehu ; which omen
taken from his own mouth, God hath not diverted?
And he on the other side might have remembered,
that the parliament sit in that body, not as his subjects,
but as his superiors, called, not by him, but by the law ;
not only twice every year, but as oft as great affairs
require, to be his counsellors and dictators, though he
stomach it; nor to be dissolved at his pleasure, but
when all grievances be first removed, all petitions heard
and answered. This is not only reason, but the known
law of the land.
“When he heard that propositions would be sent
him,” he sat conjecturing what they would propound ;
and because they propounded what he expected not,
he takes that to be a warrant for his denying them.
But what did he expect ' He expected that the par-
liament would reinforce “some old laws.” But if those
laws were not a sufficient remedy to all grievances,
may were ſound to be grievances themselves, when did
we lose that other part of our freedom to establish new *
He thought “some injuries done by himself and others
to the commonwealth were to be repaired.” But how
could that be, while he the chief offender took upon
him to be sole judge both of the injury and the repara-
tion P “He staid till the advantages of his crown con-
sidered, might induce him to condescend to the people's
good.” When as the crown itself with all those ad-
vantages were therefore given him, that the people's
good should be first considered; not bargained for, and
bought by inches with the bribe of more offertures and
advantages to his crown. He looked “for moderate
desires of due reformation;” as if any such desires
could be immoderate. He looked for such a reforma-
tion “both in church and state, as might preserve” the
roots of every grievance and abuse in both still grow-
ing, (which he calls “the foundation and essentials,”)
and would have only the excrescences of evil pruned
away for the present, as was plotted before, that they
might grow fast enough between triennial parliaments,
to hinder them by work enough besides from ever
striking at the root. He alleges, “They should have
had regard to the laws in force, to the wisdom and
piety of former parliaments, to the ancient and uni-
versal practice of christian churches.” As if they who
come with full authority to redress public grievances,
which ofttimes are laws themselves, were to have their
hands bound by laws in force, or the supposition of
more piety and wisdom in their ancestors, or the prac-
tice of churches heretofore ; whose fathers, notwith-
standing all these pretences, made as vast alterations
to free themselves from ancient popery. For all anti-
quity that adds or varies from the Scripture, is no more
warranted to our safe imitation, than what was done
the age before at Trent. Nor was there need to have
despaired of what could be established in lieu of what
was to be annulled, having before his eyes the govern-
ment of so many churches beyond the seas; whose
pregnant and solid reasons wrought so with the par-
liament, as to desire a uniformity rather with all other
protestants, than to be a schism divided from them
under a conclave of thirty bishops, and a crew of irre-
ligious priests that gaped for the same preferment.
And whereas he blames those propositions for not
containing what they ought, what did they mention,
but to vindicate and restore the rights of parliament
invaded by cabin councils, the courts of justice ob-
structed, and the government of the church innovated
and corrupted * All these things he might easily have
observed in them, which he affirms he could not find ;
but found “those demanding” in parliament, who
were “looked upon before as factious in the state, and
schismatical in the church ; and demanding not only
toleration for themselves in their vanity, novelty, and
confusion, but also an extirpation of that government,
whose rights they had a mind to invade.” Was this
man ever likely to be advised, who with such a preju-
dice and disesteem sets himself against his chosen and
appointed counsellors likely ever to admit of reforma-
tion, who censures all the government of other protes-
tant churches, as bad as any papist could have cen-
sured them P And what king had ever his whole
kingdom in such contempt, so to wrong and dishonour
the free elections of his people, as to judge them, whom
the nation thought worthiest to sit with him in parlia-
ment, few else but such as were “punishable by the
laws 2" yet knowing that time was, when to be a pro-
testant, to be a Christian, was by law as punishable as
to be a traitor; and that our Saviour himself, coming
to reform his church, was accused of an intent to
invade Caesar's right, as good a right as the prelate
AN ANSWER TO EIKON BASILIRE
305
bishops ever had ; the one being got by force, the other
by spiritual usurpation; and both by ſorce upheld.
He admires and falls into an extasy, that the parlia-
ment should send him such a “horrid proposition,” as
the removal of episcopacy. But expect from him in
an extasy no other reasons of his admiration than the
dream and tautology of what he hath so often repeated,
law, antiquity, ancestors, prosperity, and the like,
which will be therefore not worth a second answer, but
may pass with his own comparison into the common
sewer of other popish arguments.
“Had the two houses sued out their livery from the
wardship of tumults,” he could sooner have believed
them. It concerned them first to sue out their livery
from the unjust wardship of his encroaching preroga-
tive. And had he also redeemed his overdated mino-
rity from a pupilage under bishops, he would much
less have mistrusted his parliament; and never would
have set so base a character upon them, as to count
them no better than the vassals of certain nameless
men, whom he charges to be such as “hunt after fac-
tion with their hounds the tumults.” And yet the
bishops could have told him, that Nimrod, the first that
hunted after faction, is reputed by ancient tradition the
first that founded monarchy; whence it appears, that
to hunt after faction is more properly the king’s game;
and those hounds, which he calls the vulgar, have been
often hallooed to from court, of whom the mongrel sort
have been enticed; the rest have not lost their scent,
but understood aright, that the parliament had that
part to act, which he had failed in; that trust to dis-
charge, which he had broken ; that estate and honour
to preserve, which was far beyond his, the estate and
honour of the commonwealth, which he had embezzled.
Yet so far doth self-opinion or false principles delude
and transport him, as to think “the concurrence of his
reason" to the votes of parliament, not only political,
but matural, “and as necessary to the begetting,” or
bringing forth of any one “complete act of public wis-
dom as the sun's influence is necessary to all mature's
productions.” So that the parliament, it seems, is but
a female, and without his procreative reason, the laws
which they can produce are but wind-eggs: wisdom, it
seems, to a king is natural, to a parliament not natu-
ral, but by conjunction with the king; yet he professes
to hold his kingly right by law; and if no law could
be made but by the great council of a nation, which we
now term a parliament, then certainly it was a parlia-
ment that first created kings; and not only made laws
before a king was in being, but those laws especially
whereby he holds his crown. He ought then to have
so thought of a parliament, if he count it not male, as
of his mother, which to civil being created both him and
the royalty he wore. And if it hath been anciently in-
terpreted the presaging sign of a future tyrant, but to
dream of copulation with his mother, what can it be
less than actual tyranny to affirm waking, that the
parliament, which is his mother, can neither conceive
or bring forth “any authoritative act” without his
masculine coition ? Nay, that his reason is as celestial
and life-giving to the parliament, as the sun's influ-
ence is to the earth : what other motions but these, or
such like, could swell up Caligula to think himself a
god 2
But to be rid of these mortifying propositions, he
leaves no tyrannical evasion unessayed; first, “that
they are not the joint and free desires of both houses,
or the major part; ” next, “that the choice of many
members was carried on by faction.” The former of
these is already discovered to be an old device put
first in practice by Charles the Fifth, since the refor-
mation : who when the protestants of Germany for
their own defence joined themselves in league, in his
declarations and remonstrances laid the ſault only
upon some few, (for it was dangerous to take notice of
too many enemies,) and accused them, that under co-
lour of religion they had a purpose to invade his and
the church's right; by which policy he deceived many
of the German cities, and kept them divided from that
league, until they saw themselves brought into a snare.
That other cavil against the people's choice puts us in
mind rather what the court was wont to do, and how
to tamper with elections: neither was there at that
time any faction more potent, or more likely to do
such a business, than they themselves who complain
Im.0St.
But “he must chew such morsels as propositions,
ere he let them down.” So let him; but if the king-
dom shall taste nothing but after his chewing, what
does he make of the kingdom but a great baby P
“The straitness of his conscience will not give him
leave to swallow down such camels of sacrilege and
injustice as others do.” This is the Pharisee up and
down, “I am not as other men are.” But what ca-
mels of injustice he could devour, all his three realms
were witness, which was the cause that they almost
perished for want of parliaments. And he that will be
unjust to man, will be sacrilegious to God; and to be-
reave a Christian conscious of liberty for no other rea-
son than the narrowness of his own conscience, is the
most unjust measure to man, and the worst sacrilege
to God. That other, which he calls sacrilege, of tak-
ing from the clergy that superfluous wealth, which
antiquity as old as Constantine, from the credit of a
divine vision, counted “poison in the church,” hath
been ever most opposed by men, whose righteousness
in other matters hath been least observed. He con-
cludes, as his manner is, with high commendation of
his own “unbiassed rectitude,” and believes nothing to
be in them that dissent from him, but faction, innova-
tion, and particular designs. Of these repetitions I
find no end, no not in his prayer; which being founded
upon deceitful principles, and a fond hope that God
will bless him in those errours, which he calls “ho-
nest,” finds a fit answer of St. James, “Ye ask and re-
ceive not, because ye ask amiss.” As for the truth and
sincerity, which he prays may be always found in those
his declarations to the people, the contrariety of his
own actions will bear eternal witness, how little care-
ful or solicitous he was, what he promised or what he
uttered there.
306
AN ANSWER TO EIKON BASILIKE.
XII. Upon the Rebellion in Ireland.
THE rebellion and horrid massacre of English pro-
testants in Ireland, to the number of 154,000 in the
province of Ulster only, by their own computation;
which added to the other three, makes up the total
sum of that slaughter in all likelihood four times as
great ; although so sudden and so violent, as at first to
amaze all men that were not accessary ; yet from
whom and from what counsels it first sprung, neither
was nor could be possibly so secret, as the contrivers
thereof, blinded with vain hope, or the despair that
other plots would succeed, supposed. For it cannot be
imaginable, that the Irish, guided by so many subtle
and Italian heads of the Romish party, should so far
have lost the use of reason, and indeed of common
sense, as not supported with other strength than their
own, to begin a war so desperate and irreconcilable
against both England and Scotland at once. All other
nations, from whom they could expect aid, were busied
to the utmost in their own most necessary concernments.
It remains then that either some authority, or some
great assistance promised them from England, was that
whercon they chiefly trusted. And as it is not difficult
to discern from what inducing cause this insurrection
first arose, so neither was it hard at first to have ap-
plicd some effectual remedy, though not prevention.
And yet prevention was not hopeless, when Strafford
either believed not, or did not care to believe, the seve-
ral warnings and discoveries thereof, which more than
once by papists and by friars themselves were brought
him ; besides what was brought by deposition, divers
months before that rebellion, to the archbishop of Can-
terbury and others of the king's council; as the decla-
ration of “no addresses” declares. But the assurance
which they had in private, that no remedy should be
applied, was, it seems, one of the chief reasons that
drew on their undertaking. And long it was before
that assurance ſailcd them ; until the bishops and po-
pish lords, who, while they sat and voted, still opposed
the sending aid to Ireland, were expelled the house.
Seeing then the main excitement and authority for
this rebellion must be needs derived from England, it
will be next inquired, who was the prime author. The
king here denounces a malediction temporal and eter-
mal, not simply to the author, but to the “malicious
author” of this bloodshed : and by that limitation may
exempt, not himself only, but perhaps the Irish rebels
themselves, who never will confess to God or man that
any blood was shed by them maliciously; but either
in the catholic cause, or common liberty, or some other
specious plea, which the conscience from grounds both
good and evil usually suggests to itself: thereby think-
ing to elude the direct force of that imputation, which
lics upon them.
Yet he acknowledges, “it ſell out as a most unhap-
py advantage of some men's malice against him " but
indeed of most men's just suspicion, by finding in it
no such wide departure or disagreement from the scope
of his former counsels and proceedings. And that he
himself was the author of that rebellion, he denies both
here and elsewhere, with many imprecations, but no
solid evidence: What on the other side against his
denial hath becn affirmed in three kingdoms, being
here briefly set in view, the reader may so judge as he
finds cause.
This is most certain, that the king was ever friendly to
the Irish papists, and in his third year, against the plain
advice of parliament, like a kind of pope, sold them
many indulgences for money; and upon all occasions
advancing the popish party, and negotiating underhand
by priests, who were made his agents, engaged the Irish
papists in a war against the Scots protestants. To that
end he furnished them, and had them trained in, arms,
and kept them up, either openly or underhand, the only
army in his three kingdoms, till the very burst of that
rebellion. The summer before that dismal October, a
committee of most active papists, all since in the head of
that rebellion, were in great favour at Whitehall; and
admitted to many private consultations with the king
and queen. And to make it evident that no mean mat-
ters were the subject of those conferences, at their request
he gave away his peculiar right to more than five Irish
counties, for the payment of an inconsiderable rent.
They departed not home till within two months before
the rebellion; and were either from the first breaking
out, or soon after, found to be the chief rebels them-
selves. But what should move the king besides his
own inclination to popery, and the prevalence of his
queen over him, to hold such frequent and close meet-
ings with a committee of Irish papists in his own house,
while the parliament of England sat unadvised with,
is declared by a Scots author, and of itself is clear
enough. The parliament at the beginning of that
summer, having put Strafford to death, imprisoned
others his chief favourites, and driven the rest to fly;
the king, who had in vain tempted both the Scots and
the English army to come up against the parliament
and city, finding no compliance answerable to his hope
from the protestant armies, betakes himself last to the
Irish ; who had in readiness an army of eight thousand
papists, which he had refused so often to disband, and
a committee here of the same religion. With them,
who thought the time now come, (which to bring about
they had been many years before not wishing only,
but with much industry complotting, to do some emi-
ment service for the church of Rome and their own per-
fidious natures, against a puritan parliament and the
hated English their masters,) he agrees and concludes,
that so soon as both armies in England were disbanded,
the Irish should appear in arms, master all the protest-
ants, and help the king against his parliament. And
we need not doubt, that those five counties were given
to the Irish for other reason than the four northern
counties had been a little before offered to the Scots.
The king, in August, takes a journey into Scotland;
and overtaking the Scots army then on their way home,
attempts the second time to pervert them, but without
success. No sooner come into Scotland, but he lays a
plot, so saith the Scots author, to remove out of the
way such of the nobility there as were most likely to
AN ANSWER TO EIKON BASILIKE.
307
withstand, or not to further his designs. This being
discovered, he sends from his side one Dillon, a papist
lord, soon after a chief rebel, with letters into Ireland;
and dispatches a commission under the great seal of
Scotland, at that time in his own custody, command-
ing that they should forth with, as had been formerly
agreed, cause all the Irish to rise in arms. Who no
sooner had received such command, but obeyed, and
began in massacre; for they knew no other way to
make sure the protestants, which was commanded them
expressly; and the way, it seems, leſt to their discre-
tion. He who hath a mind to read the commission
itself, and sound reason added why it was not likely to
be forged, besides the attestation of so many Irish them-
selves, may have recourse to a book, entitled, “The
Mystery of Iniquity.” Besides what the parliament
itself in the declaration of “no more addresses” hath
affirmed, that they have one copy of that commission
in their own hands, attested by the oaths of some that
were eye-witnesses, and had seen it under the seal:
others of the principal rebels have confessed, that this
commission was the summer before promised at London
to the Irish commissioners; to whom the king then
discovered in plain words his great desire to be re-
venged on the parliament of England.
After the rebellion broke out, which in words only
he detested, but underhand favoured and promoted by
all the offices of friendship, correspondence, and what
possible aid he could afford them, the particulars
whereof are too many to be inserted here; I suppose
no understanding man could longer doubt who was
“author or instigator” of that rebellion. If there be
who yet doubt, I refer them especially to that declara-
tion of July 1643, with that of “no addresses” 1647,
and another full volume of examinations to be set out
speedily concerning this matter. Against all which
testimonies, likelihoods, evidences, and apparent actions
of his own, being so abundant, his bare denial, though
with imprecation, can no way countervail; and least
of all in his own cause.
As for the commission granted them, he thinks to
evade that by retorting, that “some in England fight
against him, and yet pretend his authority.” But,
though a parliament by the known laws may affirm
justly to have the king's authority, inseparable from
that court, though divided from his person, it is not
credible that the Irish rebels, who so much tendered
his person above his authority, and were by him so well
received at Oxford, would be so far from all humanity,
as to slander him with a particular commission, signed
and sent them by his own hand.
And of his good affection to the rebels this chapter
itself is not without witness. He holds them less in
fault than the Scots, as from whom they might allege
to have fetched “ their imitation;” making no differ-
cnce between men that rose necessarily to defend
themselves, which no protestant doctrine ever dis-
allowed, against them who threatened war, and those
who began a voluntary and causeless rebellion, with
the massacre of so many thousands, who never meant
them harm.
He falls next to flashes, and a multitude of words, in
all which is contained no more than what might be the
plea of any guiltiest offender: He was not the author,
because “he hath the greatest share of loss and dis-
honour by what is committed.” Who is there that
offends God, or his neighbour, on whom the greatest
share of loss and dishonour lights not in the end ? But
in the act of doing evil, men use not to consider the
event of these evil doings; or if they do, have then no
power to curb the sway of their own wickedness: so
that the greatest share of loss and dishonour to happen
upon themselves, is no argument that they were not
guilty. This other is as weak, that “a king's interest,
above that of any other man, lies chiefly in the com-
mon welfare of his subjects;” therefore no king will
do aught against the common welfare. For by this
evasion any tyrant might as well purge himself from
the guilt of raising troubles or commotions among the
people, because undoubtedly his chief interest lies in
their sitting still.
I said but now, that even this chapter, if nothing
else, might suffice to discover his good affection to the
rebels, which in this that follows too notoriously ap-
pears; imputing this insurrection to “the preposterous
rigour, and unreasonable severity, the covetous zeal
and uncharitable fury, of some men;” (these “some
men,” by his continual paraphrase, are meant the par-
liament;) and, lastly, “to the fear of utter extirpation.”
If the whole Irishry of rebels had feed some advocate
to speak partially and sophistically in their defence,
he could have hardly dazzled better; yet nevertheless
would have proved himself no other than a plausible
deceiver. And, perhaps (may more than perhaps, for
it is affirmed and extant under good evidence, that)
those feigned terrours and jealousies were either by the
king himself, or the popish priests which were sent by
him, put into the head of that inquisitive people, on
set purpose to engage them. For who had power “to
oppress” them, or to relieve them being oppressed, but
the king, or his immediate deputy P This rather should
have made them rise against the king, than against
the parliament. Who threatened or ever thought of
their extirpation, till they themselves had begun it to
the English P As for “preposterous rigour, covetous
zeal, and uncharitable fury,” they had more reason to
suspect those evils first from his own commands, whom
they saw using daily no greater argument to prove the
truth of his religion than by enduring no other but his
own Prelatical; and, to force it upon others, made
episcopal, ceremonial, and common-prayer book wars.
But the papists understood him better than by the out-
side; and knew that those wars were their wars. Al-
though if the commonwealth should be afraid to sup-
press open idolatry, lest the papists thereupon should
grow desperate, this were to let them grow and become
our persecutors, while we neglected what we might
have done evangelically to be their reformers: or to
do as his father James did, who instead of taking heart
and putting confidence in God by such a deliverance
as from the powder-plot, though it went not off, yet
with the mere conceit of it, as some observe, was hit
X
308
AN ANSWER TO EIRON BASILIKE.
into such a hectic trembling * between protestant and
papist all his life after, that he never durst from that
time do otherwise than equivocate or collogue with the
pope and his adherents.
He would be thought to commiserate the sad effects
of that rebellion, and to lament that “the tears and
blood spilt there did not quench the sparks of our civil”
discord here. But who began these dissensions P and
what can be more openly known than those retardings
and delays, which by himself were continually devised,
to hinder and put back the relief of those distressed
protestants P which undoubtedly, had it not been then
put back, might have saved many streams of those
tears and that blood, whereof he seems here so sadly to
bewail the spilling. His manifold excuses, diversions,
and delays, are too well known to be recited here in
particular, and too many.
But “he offered to go himself in person upon that
expedition,” and reckons up many surmises why he
thinks they would not suffer him. But mentions not
that by his underdealing to debauch armies here at
home, and by his secret intercourse with the chief re-
bels, long ere that time every where known, he had
brought the parliament into so just a diffidence of him,
as that they durst not leave the public arms to his dis-
posal, much less an army to his conduct.
He concludes, “That next the sin of those who be-
gan that rebellion, theirs must needs be who hindered
the suppressing, or diverted the aids.” But judgment
rashly given, ofttimes involves the judge himself. He
finds fault with those “who threatened all extremity
to the rebels,” and pleads much that mercy should be
shewn them. It seems he found himself not so much
concerned as those who had lost fathers, brothers, wives,
and children by their cruelty; whom in justice to re-
taliate is not, as he supposes, “unevangelical ; ” so
long as magistracy and war are not laid down under
the gospel. If this his sermon of affected mercy were
not too pharisaical, how could he permit himself to
cause the slaughter of so many thousands here in Eng-
land for mere prerogatives, the toys and gewgaws of
his crown, for copes and surplices, the trinkets of his
priests; and not perceive his own zeal, while he taxes
others, to be most preposterous and unevangelical ?
Neither is there the same cause to destroy a whole city
for the ravishing of a sister, not done out of villainy,
and recompense offered by marriage ; nor the same
cause for those disciples to summon fire from heaven
upon the whole city where they were denied lodging ;
and for a nation by just war and execution to slay
whole families of them, who so barbarously had slain
whole families before. Did not all Israel do as much
against the Benjamites for one rape committed by a
few, and defended by the whole tribe 2 and did they
not the same to Jabesh-Gilead for not assisting them
in that revenge F I speak not this that such measure
should be meted rigorously to all the Irish, or as re-
membering that the parliament ever so decreed; but
to shew that this his homily hath more craft and affec-
tation in it, than of sound doctrine.
* The Second edition has shivering.
But it was happy that his going into Ireland was
not consented to ; for either he had certainly turned
his raised forces against the parliament itself, or not
gone at all; or had he gone, what work he would have
made there, his own following words declare.
“He would have punished some;” no question; for
some, perhaps, who were of least use, must of necessity
have been sacrificed to his reputation, and the conve-
nience of his affairs. Others he “would have disarm-
ed;” that is to say, in his own time: but “all of them
he would have protected from the fury of those that
would have drowned them, if they had refused to swim
down the popular stream.” These expressions are too
often met, and too well understood, for any man to
doubt his meaning. By the “fury of those,” he means
no other than the justice of parliament, to whom yet
he had committed the whole business. Those who
would have refused to swim down the popular stream,
our constant key tells us to be papists, prelates, and
their faction; these, by his own confession here, he
would have protected against his puritan parliament:
and by this who sees not that he and the Irish rebels
had but one aim, one and the same drift, and would
have forth with joined in one body against us?
He goes on still in his tenderness of the Irish rebels,
fearing lest “our zeal should be more greedy to kill
the bear for his skin, than for any harm he hath done.”
This either justifies the rebels to have done no harm at
all, or infers his opinion that the parliament is more
bloody and rapacious in the prosecution of their justice,
than those rebels were in the execution of their barba-
rous cruelty. Let men doubt now and dispute to whom
the king was a friend most—to his English parliament,
or to his Irish rebels.
With whom, that we may yet see further how much
he was their friend, after that the parliament had
brought them every where either to famine or a low
condition, he, to give them all the respite and advan-
tages they could desire, without advice of parliament,
to whom he himself had committed the managing of
that war, makes a cessation; in pretence to relieve the
protestants, “overborne there with numbers;” but, as
the event proved, to support the papists, by diverting
and drawing over the English army there, to his own
service here against the parliament. For that the pro-
testants were then on the winning hand, it must needs
be plain; who, notwithstanding the miss of those forces,
which at their landing here mastered without difficulty
great part of Wales and Cheshire, yet made a shift to
keep their own in Ireland. But the plot of this Irish
truce is in good part discovered in that declaration of
September 30, 1643. And if the protestants were but
handfuls there, as he calls them, why did he stop and
waylay, both by land and sea, to his utmost power,
those provisions and supplies which were sent by the
parliament? How were so many handfuls called over,
as for a while stood him in no small stead, and against
our main forces here in England P
Since therefore all the reasons that can be given of
this cessation appear so false and frivolous, it may be
AN ANSWER TO EIKON BASILIKE.
309
justly feared, that the design itself was most wicked
and pernicious. What remains then * He “appeals
to God,” and is cast; likening his punishment to Job's
trials, before he saw them to have Job's ending. But
how could charity herself believe there was at all in
him any religion, so much as but to fear there is a
God; whenas, by what is noted in the declaration of
“no more addresses,” he vowed solemnly to the par-
liament, with imprecations upon himself and his pos-
terity, if ever he consented to the abolishing of those
laws which were in force against papists; and, at the
same time, as appeared plainly by the very date of his
own letters to the queen and Ormond, consented to the
abolishing of all penal laws against them both in Ire-
land and England 2 If these were acts of a religious
prince, what memory of man, written or unwritten, can
tell us news of any prince that ever was irreligious *
He cannot stand “to make prolix apologies.” Then
surely those long pamphlets set out for declarations
and protestations in his name were none of his; and
how they should be his, indeed, being so repugnant to
the whole course of his actions, augments the difficulty.
But he usurps a common saying, “That it is kingly
to do well, and hear ill.” That may be sometimes true: |
but far more frequently to do ill and hear well; so great
is the multitude of flatterers, and them that deify the
name of king !
Yet, not content with these neighbours, we have him
still a perpetual preacher of his own virtues, and of
that especially, which who knows not to be patience
perforce 2
He “believes it will at last appear, that they who
first began to embroil his other kingdoms, are also
guilty of the blood of Ireland.” And we believe so
too; for now the cessation is become a peace by pub-
lished articles, and commission to bring them over
against England, first only ten thousand by the earl
of Glamorgan,” next all of them, if possible, under
Ormond, which was the last of all his transactions dome
as a public person. And no wonder; for he looked
upon the blood spilt, whether of subjects or of rebels,
with an indifferent eye, “as exhausted out of his own
veins;” without distinguishing, as he ought, which
was good blood and which corrupt; the not letting out
whereof, endangers the whole body.
And what the doctrine is, ye may perceive also by
the prayer, which, after a short ejaculation for the
“poor protestants,” prays at large for the lish rebels,
that God would not give them over, or “their children,
to the covetousness, cruelty, fierce and cursed anger”
of the parliament.
He finishes with a deliberate and solemn curse “upon
himself and his father's house.” Which how far God
hath already brought to pass, is to the end, that men,
by so eminent an example, should learn to tremble at
his judgments, and not play with imprecations.
* See this fully proved in Dr. Birch's Enquiry into the share which King
XIII. Upon the calling in of the Scots, and their
coming.
It must needs seem strange, where men accustom
themselves to ponder and contemplate things in their
first original and institution, that kings, who as all
other officers of the public, were at first chosen and
installed only by consent and suffrage of the people,
to govern them as freemen by laws of their own
making, and to be, in consideration of that dignity
and riches bestowed upon them, the entrusted servants
of the commonwealth, should, notwithstanding, grow
up to that dishonest encroachment, as to esteem them-
selves masters, both of that great trust which they
serve, and of the people that betrusted them; counting
what they ought to do, both in discharge of their pub-
lic duty, and for the great reward of honour and reve-
nue which they receive, as done all of mere grace and
favour; as if their power over us were by nature, and
from themselves, or that God had sold us into their
hands. Indeed, if the race of kings were eminently
the best of men, as the breed at Tutbury is of horses,
it would in reason then be their part only to com-
mand, ours always to obey. But kings by generation
no way excelling others, and most commonly not
being the wisest or the worthiest by far of whom they
claim to have the governing; that we should yield them
subjection to our own ruin, or hold of them the right
of our common safety, and our natural freedom by mere
gift, (as when the conduit pisses wine at coronations,)
from the superfluity of their royal grace and beneficence,
we may be sure was never the intent of God, whose
ways are just and equal ; never the intent of nature,
whose works are also regular; never of any people not
wholly barbarous, whom prudence, or no more but
human sense, would have better guided when they
first created kings, than so to nullify and tread to dirt
the rest of mankind, by exalting one person and his
lineage without other merit looked after, but the mere
contingency of a begetting, into an absolute and un-
accountable dominion over them and their posterity.
Yet this ignorant or wilful mistake of the whole matter
had taken so deep root in the imagination of this king,
that whether to the English or to the Scot, mentioning
what acts of his regal office (though God knows how
unwillingly) he had passed, he calls them, as in other
places, acts of grace and bounty; so here “special ob-
ligations, favours, to gratify active spirits, and the de-
sires of that party.” Words not only sounding pride
and lordly usurpation, but injustice, partiality, and
corruption. For to the Irish he so far condescended,
as first to tolerate in private, then to covenant openly
the tolerating of popery : so far to the Scot, as to re-
move bishops, establish presbytery, and the militia in
their own hands; “preferring, as some thought, the de-
sires of Scotland before his own interest and honour.”
But being once on this side Tweed, his reason, his con-
science, and his honour became so frightened with a
kind of false virginity, that to the English neither one
Charles I. had in the transactions of the earl of Glamorgan, 2d edit. 1756.
31()
AN ANSWER TO EIKON BASILIKE.
nor other of the same demands could be granted, where-
with the Scots were gratified; as if our air and climate
on a sudden had changed the property and the nature
both of conscience, honour, and reason, or that he found
none so fit as English to be the subjects of his arbitrary
power. Ireland was as Ephraim, the strength of his
head; Scotland as Judah, was his lawgiver; but over
England, as over Edom, he meant to cast his shoe :
and yet so many sober Englishmen, not sufficiently
awake to consider this, like men enchanted with the
Circaean cup of servitude, will not be held back
from running their own heads into the yoke of bond-
age.
The sum of his discourse is against “settling of re-
ligion by violent means;” which, whether it were the
Scots' design upon England, they are best able to clear
themselves. But this of all may seem strangest, that
the king, who, while it was permitted him, never did
thing more eagerly than to molest and persecute
the consciences of most religious men; he who had
made a war, and lost all, rather than not uphold a hier-
archy of persecuting bishops, should have the confidence
here to profess himself so much an enemy of those that
force the conscience. For was it not he, who upon the
English obtruded new ceremonies, upon the Scots a
new Liturgy, and with his sword went about to en-
grave * a bloody Rubric on their backs P Did he not
forbid and hinder all effectual search of truth; nay,
Pike a besieging enemy, stopped all her passages both
by word and writing P Yet here can talk of “fair and
equal disputations:” where, notwithstanding, if all
submit not to his judgment, as not being “rationally
convicted,” they must submit (and he conceals it not)
to his penalty, as counted obstinate. But what if he
himself, and those his learned churchmen, were the
convicted or the obstinate part long ago; should re-
formation suffer them to sit lording over the church in
their fat bishoprics and pluralities, like the great whore
that sitteth upon many waters, till they would vouch-
safe to be disputed out 2 Or should we sit disputing,
while they sat plotting and persecuting Those clergy-
men were not “to be driven into the fold like sheep,”
as his simile runs, but to be driven out of the fold like
wolves or thieves, where they sat fleecing those flocks
which they never fed.
He believes “that presbytery, though proved to be
the only institution of Jesus Christ, were not by the
sword to be set up without his consent;” which is con-
trary both to the doctrine and the known practice of
all protestant churches, if his sword threaten those who
of their own accord embrace it.
And although Christ and his apostles, being to civil
affairs but private men, contended not with magistrates;
yet when magistrates themselves, and especially par-
liaments, who have greatest right to dispose of the civil
sword, come to know religion, they ought in conscience
to defend all those who receive it willingly, against
the violence of any king or tyrant whatsoever. Neither
is it therefore true, “that Christianity is planted or
watered with christian blood;” for there is a large diſ-
* The second edition has score.
ference between forcing men by the sword to turn
presbyterians, and defending those who willingly are
so, from a furious inroad of bloody bishops, armed with
the militia of a king their pupil. And if “covetous-
mess and ambition be an argument that presbytery
hath not much of Christ,” it argues more strongly
against episcopacy; which, from the time of her first
mounting to an order above the presbyters, had no
other parents than covetousness and ambition. And
those sects, schisms, and heresies, which he speaks of,
“if they get but strength and numbers,” need no other
pattern than episcopacy and himself, to “set up their
ways by the like method of violence.” Nor is there
any thing that hath more marks of schism and secta-
rism than English episcopacy; whether we look at
apostolic times, or at reformed churches; for “the uni-
versal way of church-government before,” may as soon
lead us into gross errour, as their universally corrupted
doctrine. And government, by reason of ambition, was
likeliest to be corrupted much the sooner of the two.
However, nothing can be to us catholic or universal in
religion, but what the Scripture teaches; whatsoever
without Scripture pleads to be universal in the church,
in being universal is but the more schismatical. Much
less can particular laws and constitutions impart to the
church of England any power of consistory or tribunal
above other churches, to be the sole judge of what is
sect or schism, as with much rigour, and without Scrip-
ture, they took upon them. Yet these the king resolves
here to defend and maintain to his last, pretending,
after all those conferences offered, or had with him,
“not to see more rational and religious motives than
soldiers carry in their knapsacks.” With one thus re-
solved, it was but folly to stand disputing.
He imagines his “own judicious zeal to be most con-
cerned in his tuition of the church.” So thought Saul
when he presumed to offer sacrifice, for which he lost
his kingdom ; so thought Uzziah when he went into
the temple, but was thrust out with a leprosy for his
opinioned zeal, which he thought judicious. It is not
the part of a king, because he ought to defend the
church, therefore to set himself supreme head over the
church, or to meddle with ecclesial government, or to
defend the church, otherwise than the church would be
defended; for such defence is bondage: nor to defend
abuses, and stop all reformation, under the name of
“new moulds fancied and fashioned to private designs.”
The holy things of church are in the power of other
keys than were delivered to his keeping. Christian
liberty, purchased with the death of our Redeemer, and
established by the sending of his free spirit to inhabit
in us, is not now to depend upon the doubtful consent
of any earthly monarch; nor to be again fettered with
a presumptuous negative voice, tyrannical to the par-
liament, but much more tyrannical to the church of
God; which was compelled to implore the aid of par-
liament, to remove his force and heavy hands from off
our cousciences, who therefore complains now of that
most just defensive force, because only it removed his
violence and persecution. If this be a violation to his
AN ANSWER TO EJKON BASILIKE.
311
conscience, that it was hindered by the parliament from
violating the more tender consciences of so many thou-
sand good Christians, let the usurping conscience of
all tyrants be ever so violated
He wonders, fox wonder how we could so much
“distrust God's assistance,” as to call in the protestant
aid of our brethren in Scotland ; why then did he, if
his trust were in God and the justice of his cause, not
scruple to solicit and invite earnestly the assistance
both of papists and of Irish rebels 2 If the Scots were
by us at length sent home, they were not called to stay
here always; neither was it for the people's ease to
feed so many legions longer than their help was need-
ful.
“The government of their kirk we despised” not,
but their imposing of that government upon us; not
presbytery, but archpresbytery, classical, provincial,
and diocesan presbytery, claiming to itself a lordly
power and superintendency both over flocks and pas-
tors, over persons and congregations no way their own.
But these debates, in his judgment, would have been
ended better “by the best divines in christendom in a
full and free synod.” A most improbable way, and
such as never yet was used, at least with good success,
by any protestant kingdom or state since the reforma-
tion: every true church having wherewithal from
Heaven, and the assisting spirit of Christ implored, to
be complete and perfect within itself. And the whole
nation is not easily to be thought so raw, and so per-
petually a novice, after all this light, as to need the
help and direction of other nations, more than what
they write in public of their opinion, in a matter so fa-
miliar as church-government.
In fine, he accuses piety with the want of loyalty,
and religion with the breach of allegiance, as if God
and he were one master, whose commands were so
often contrary to the commands of God. He would
persuade the Scots, that their “chief interest consists in
their fidelity to the crown.” But true policy will teach
them, to find a safer interest in the common friendship
of England, than in the ruins of one ejected family.
º
XIV. Upon the Covenant.
Upon this theme his discourse is long, his matter
little but repetition, and therefore soon answered.
First, after an abusive and strange apprehension of
covenants, as if men “pawned their souls” to them
with whom they covenant, he digresses to plead for
bishops; first from the antiquity of their “possession
here, since the first plantation of Christianity in this
island;” next from “a universal prescription since the
apostles, till this last century.” But what avails the
most primitive antiquity against the plain sense of
Scripture ? which, if the last century have best fol-
lowed, it ought in our esteem to be the first. And yet
it hath been often proved by learned men, from the
writings and epistles of most ancient Christians, that
cpiscopacy crept not up into an order above the pres-
byters, till many years after that the apostles were
deceased.
He next “is unsatisfied with the covenant,” not only
for “some passages in it referring to himself,” as he
supposes, “with very dubious and dangerous limita-
tions,” but for binding men “by oath and covenant”
to the reformation of church-discipline. First, those
limitations were not more dangerous to him, than he to
our liberty and religion; next, that which was there
vowed, to cast out of the church an antichristian hier-
archy which God had not planted, but ambition and
corruption had brought in, and fostered to the church's
great damage and oppression, was no point of contro-
versy to be argued without end, but a thing of clear
moral necessity to be forthwith done. Neither was
the “covenant superfluous, though former engage-
ments, both religious and legal, bound us before ; ”
but was the practice of all churches heretofore intend-
ing reformation. All Israel, though bound enough
before by the law of Moses “to all necessary duties;”
yet with Asa their king entered into a new covenant
at the beginning of a reformation : and the Jews, after
captivity, without consent demanded of that king who
was their master, took solemn oath to walk in the com-
mandments of God. All protestant churches have
done the like, notwithstanding former engagements to
their several duties. And although his aim were to
sow variance between the protestation and the cove-
nant, to reconcile them is not difficult. The protesta-
tion was but one step, extending only to the doctrine
of the church of England, as it was distinct from church
discipline; the covenant went further, as it pleased
God to dispense his light and our encouragement by
degrees, and comprehended church-government: For-
mer with latter steps, in the progress of well-doing,
need not reconcilement. Nevertheless he breaks .
through to his conclusion, “that all honest and wise
men ever thought themselves sufficiently bound by
former ties of religion;” leaving Asa, Ezra, and the
whole church of God, in sundry ages, to shift for ho-
nesty and wisdom from some other than his testimony.
And although after-contracts absolve not till the former
be made void, yet he first having done that, our duty
returns back, which to him was neither moral nor
eternal, but conditional.
Willing to persuade himself that many “good men”
took the covenant, either unwarily or out of fear, he
seems to have bestowed some thoughts how these
“good men,” following his advice, may keep the cove-
nant and not keep it. The first evasion is, presuming
“that the chief end of covenanting in such men's in-
tentions was to preserve religion in purity, and the
kingdom's peace.” But the covenant will more truly
inform them, that purity of religion and the kingdom's
peace was not then in state to be preserved, but to be
restored; and therefore binds them not to a preserva-
tion of what was, but to a reformation of what was
evil, what was traditional, and dangerous, whether no-
velty or antiquity, in church or state. To do this,
clashes with “no former oath” lawfully sworn either
to God or the king, and rightly understood.
312
AN ANSWER TO El KON BASILIKE.
In general, he brands all “such confederations by
league and covenant, as the common road used in all
factious perturbations of state and church.” This kind
of language reflects, with the same ignominy, upon all
the protestant reformations that have been since Lu-
ther; and so indeed doth his whole book, replenished
throughout with hardly other words or arguments than
papists, and especially popish kings, have used hereto-
fore against their protestant subjects, whom he would
persuade to be “every man his own pope, and to absolve
himself of those ties,” by the suggestion of false or equi-
vocal interpretations too oft repeated to be now answered.
The parliament, he saith, “made their covenant, like
manna, agreeable to every man's palate.” This is an-
other of his glosses upon the covenant; he is content
to let it be manna, but his drift is that men should
loath it or at least expound it by their own “relish,”
and “latitude of sense;” wherein, lest any one of the
simpler sort should fail to be his craftsmaster, he fur-
nishes him with two or three laxative, he terms them
“general clauses, which may serve somewhat to re-
lieve them” against the covenant taken : intimating,
as if “what were lawful and according to the word of
God,” were no otherwise so, than as every man fancied
to himself. From such learned explications and re-
solutions as these upon the covenant, what marvel if
no royalist or malignant refuse to take it, as having
learnt from these princely instructions his many “sal-
vöes, cautions, and reservations,” how to be a cove-
nanter and anticovenanter, how at once to be a Scot,
and an Irish rebel.
He returns again to disallow of “that reformation
which the covenant” vows, “as being the partial ad-
vice of a few divines.” But matters of this moment,
as they were not to be decided there by those divines,
so neither are they to be determined here by essays and
curtal aphorisms, but by solid proofs of Scripture.
The rest of his discourse he spends, highly accusing
the parliament, “that the main reformation by ” them
“intended, was to rob the church,” and much applaud-
ing himself both for “his forwardness” to all due re-
formation, and his averseness from all such kind of sa-
crilege. All which, with his glorious title of the
“Church's Defender,” we leave him to make good by
“Pharaoh's divinity,” if he please, for to Joseph's piety
it will be a task unsuitable. As for “the parity and
poverty of ministers,” which he takes to be so sad of
“consequence,” the Scripture reckons them for two
special legacies left by our Saviour to his disciples;
under which two primitive nurses, for such they were
indeed, the church of God more truly flourished than
ever after, since the time that imparity and church re-
venue rushing in, corrupted and belepered all the clergy
with a worse infection than Gehazi's ; some one of
whose tribe, rather than a king, I should take to be
compiler of that unsalted and Simonical prayer an-
nexed : although the prayer itself strongly prays
against them. For never such holy things as he means
were given more to swine, nor the church's bread more
to dogs, than when it fed ambitious, irreligious, and
dumb prelates.
XV. Upon the many Jealousies, &c.
To wipe off jealousies and scandals, the best way
had been by clear actions, or till actions could be cleared,
by evident reasons; but mere words we are too well
acquainted with. Had “his honour and reputation
been dearer to him” than the lust of reigning, how
could the parliament of either nation have laid so often
at his door the breach of words, promises, acts, oaths,
and execrations, as they do avowedly in many of their
petitions and addresses to him Thither I remit the
reader. And who can believe that whole parliaments,
elected by the people from all parts of the land, should
meet in one mind and resolution not to advise him, but
to conspire against him, in a worse powder-plot than
Catesbie's, “to blow up,” as he terms it, “the people's
affection towards him, and batter down their loyalty
by the engines of foul aspersions:” Water-works ra-
ther than engines to batter with, yet those aspersions
were raised from the foulness of his own actions:
whereof to purge himself, he uses no other argument
than a general and so often iterated commendation of
himself; and thinks that court holy-water hath the
virtue of expiation, at least with the silly people; to
whom he familiarly imputes sin where none is, to
seem liberal of his forgiveness where none is asked or
needed.
What ways he hath taken toward the prosperity of
his people, which he would seem “so earnestly to de-
sire,” if we do but once call to mind, it will be enough
to teach us, looking on the smooth insinuations here,
that tyrants are not more flattered by their slaves, than
forced to flatter others whom they fear. *
For the people’s “tranquillity he would willingly be
the Jonah;” but lest he should be taken at his word,
pretends to foresee within ken two imaginary “winds”
never heard of in the compass, which threaten, if he
be cast overboard, “to increase the storm ;” but that
controversy divine lot hath ended.
“He had rather not rule, than that his people should
be ruined:” and yet, above these twenty years, hath
been ruining the people about the niceties of his rul-
ing. He is accurate “to put a difference between the
plague of malice and the ague of mistakes; the itch of
novelty, and the leprosy of disloyalty.” But had he
as well known how to distinguish between the vener-
able gray hairs of ancient religion and the old scurf
of superstition, between the wholesome heat of well
governing and the feverous rage of tyrannizing, his
judgment in state physic had been of more authority.
Much he prophesies, “that the credit of those men,
who have cast black scandals on him, shall ere long
be quite blasted by the same furnace of popular oblo-
quy, wherein they sought to cast his name and honour.”
I believe not that a Romish gilded portraiture gives
better oracle than a Babylonish golden image could
do, to tell us truly who heated that furnace of obloquy,
or who deserves to be thrown in, Nebuchadnezzar or
the three kingdoms. It “gave him great cause to
suspect his own innocence,” that he was opposed by
AN ANSWER TO EIKON BASILIKE.
313
“so many who professed singular piety.” But this
qualm was soon over, and he concluded rather to sus-
pect their religion than his own innocence, affirming
that “many with him were both learned and religious
above the ordinary size.” But if his great seal, with-
out the parliament, were not sufficient to create lords,
his parole must needs be far more unable to create
learned and religious men; and who shall authorize
his unlearned judgment to point them out?
He guesses that “many well-minded men were by
popular preachers urged to oppose him.” But the op-
position undoubtedly proceeded and continues from
heads far wiser, and spirits of a nobler strain ; those
priest-led Herodians, with their blind guides, are in
the ditch already; travelling, as they thought, to Sion,
but moored in the Isle of Wight.
He thanks God “for his constancy to the protestant
religion both abroad and at home.” Abroad, his letter
to the pope; at home, his innovations in the church,
will speak his constancy in religion what it was, with-
out further credit to this vain boast.
His “using the assistance of some papists,” as the
cause might be, could not hurt his religion; but, in the
settling of protestanism, their aid was both unseemly
and suspicious, and inferred that the greatest part of
protestants were against him and his obtruded settle-
ment.
But this is strange indeed, that he should appear
now teaching the parliament what no man, till this
was read, thought ever he had learned, “that difference
of persuasion in religious matters may fall out where
there is the sameness of allegiance and subjection.” If
he thought so from the beginning, wherefore was there
such compulsion used to the puritans of England, and
the whole realm of Scotland, about conforming to a
liturgy? Wherefore no bishop, no king 2 Wherefore
episcopacy more agreeable to monarchy, if different
persuasions in religion may agree in one duty and al-
legiance º Thus do court maxims, like court minions,
rise or fall as the king pleases.
Not to tax him for want of elegance as a courtier, in
writing Oglio for Olla the Spanish word, it might be
well affirmed, that there was a greater medley and dis-
proportioning of religions, to mix papists with protest-
ants in a religious cause, than to entertain all those
diversified sects, who yet were all protestants, one re-
ligion though many opinions.
Neither was it any “shame to protestants,” that he,
a declared papist, if his own letter to the pope, not yet
renounced, belie him not, found so few protestants of
his religion, as enforced him to call in both the counsel
and the aid of papists to help establish protestancy,
who were led on, not “by the sense of their allegi-
ance,” but by the hope of his apostacy to Rome, from
disputing to warring ; his own voluntary and first
appeal. -
His hearkening to evil counsellors, charged upon
him so often by the parliament, he puts off as “a de-
vice.of those men, who were so eager to give him better
counsel.” That “those men” were the parliament, and
that he ought to have used the counsel of none but
those, as a king, is already known. What their civility
laid upon evil counsellors, he himself most commonly
owned; but the event of those evil counsels, “the enor-
mities, the confusions, the miseries,” he transfers from
the guilt of his own civil broils to the just resistance
made by parliament; and imputes what miscarriages
of his they could not yet remove for his opposing, as
if they were some new misdemeanours of their bring-
ing in, and not the inveterate diseases of his own bad
government; which, with a disease as bad, he falls
again to magnify and commend: and may all those
who would be governed by his “retractions and con-
cessions,” rather than by laws of parliament, admire
his self-encomiums, and be flattered with that “crown
of patience,” to which he cunningly exhorted them,
that his monarchical foot might have the setting it upon
their heads !
That trust which the parliament faithfully discharged
in the asserting of our liberties, he calls “another arti-
fice to withdraw the people from him to their designs.”
What piece of justice could they have demanded for
the people, which the jealousy of a king might not
have miscalled a design to disparage his government,
and to ingratiate themselves? To be more just, reli-
gious, wise, or magnanimous than the common sort,
stirs up in a tyrant both fear and envy ; and straight
he cries out popularity, which, in his account, is little
less than treason. The sum is, they thought to limit
or take away the remora of his negative voice, which,
like to that little pest at sea, took upon it to arrest and
stop the commonwealth steering under full sail to a
reformation : they thought to share with him in the
militia, both or either of which he could not possibly hold
without consent of the people, and not be absolutely a
tyrant. He professes “to desire no other liberty than
what he envies not his subjects according to law;”
yet fought with might and main against his subjects,
to have a sole power over them in his hand, both
against and beyond law. As for the philosophical
liberty which in vain he talks of, we may conclude
him very ill trained up in those free notions, who to
civil liberty was so injurious.
He calls the conscience “God’s sovereignty;” why,
then, doth he contest with God about that supreme
title why did he lay restraints, and force enlarge-
ments, upon our consciences in things for which we
were to answer God only and the church P God bids
us “be subject for conscience sake;” that is, as to a
magistrate, and in the laws; not usurping over spi-
ritual things, as Lucifer beyond his sphere. And the
same precept bids him likewise, for conscience sake,
be subject to the parliament, both his natural and his
legal superiour. -
Finally, having laid the fault of these commotions
not upon his own misgovernment, but upon the “am-
bition of others, the necessity of some men's fortune,
and thirst after novelty,” he bodes himself “much
honour and reputation, that, like the sun, shall rise
and recover himself to such a splendour, as owls, bats,
and such fatal birds shall be unable to bear.” Poets,
indeed, used to vapour much after this manner. But
314
AN ANSWER TO EIKON BASILIKE.
to bad kings, who, without cause, expect future glory
from their actions, it happens, as to bad poets, who sit
and starve themselves with a delusive hope to win im-
mortality by their bad lines. For though men ought
not to “speak evil of dignities” which are just, yet
nothing hinders us to speak evil, as often as it is the
truth, of those who in their dignities do evil. Thus did
our Saviour himself, John the Baptist, and Stephen the
Martyr. And those black veils of his own misdeeds he
might be sure would ever keep “his face from shining,”
till he could “refute evil speaking with well doing,”
which grace he seems here to pray for; and his prayer
doubtless as it was prayed, so it was heard. But even
his prayer is so ambitious of prerogative, that it dares
ask away the prerogative of Christ himself, “To be-
come the headstone of the corner.”
XVI. Upon the Ordinance against the Common-Prayer
Book.
WHAT to think of liturgies, both the sense of Scrip-
ture, and apostolical practice, would have taught him
better, than his human reasonings and conjectures:
nevertheless, what weight they have, let us consider.
If it “ be no news to have all innovations ushered in
with the name of reformation,” sure it is less news to
have all reformation censured and opposed under the
name of innovation, by those who, being exalted in
high place above their merit, fear all change, though
of things never so ill or so unwisely settled. So hardly
can the dotage of those that dwell upon antiquity allow
present times any share of godliness or wisdom.
The removing of liturgy he traduces to be done only
as a “thing plausible to the people;” whose rejection
of it he likens, with small reverence, to the crucifying of
our Saviour; next, that it was done “to please those
men who gloried in their extemporary vein,” meaning
the ministers. For whom it will be best to answer,
as was answered for the man born blind, “They are
of age, let them speak for themselves;” not how they
came blind, but whether it were liturgy that held them
tongue-tied.
“For the matter contained in that book,” we need
no better witness than King Edward the Sixth, who to
the Cornish rebels confesses it was no other than the
old mass-book done into English, all but some few
words that were expunged. And by this argument,
which King Edward so promptly had to use against
that irreligious rabble, we may be assured it was the
carnal fear of those divines and politicians that modelled
the liturgy no farther off from the old mass, lest by too
great an alteration they should incense the people, and
be destitute of the same shifts to fly to, which they had
taught the young king.
“For the manner of using set forms, there is no
doubt but that, wholesome” matter and good desires
rightly conceived in the heart, wholesome words will
follow of themselves. Neither can any true Christian
find a reason why liturgy should be at all admitted, a
prescription not imposed or practised by those first
founders of the church, who alone had that authority:
without whose precept or example, how constantly the
priest puts on his gown and surplice, so constantly
doth his prayer put on a servile yoke of liturgy. This
is evident, that they “who use no set forms of prayer,”
have words from their affections; while others are to
seek affections fit and proportionable to a certain dose
of prepared words; which as they are not rigorously
forbid to any man's private infirmity, so to imprison
and confine by force, into a pinfold of set words, those
two most unimprisonable things, our prayers, and that
divine spirit of utterance that moves them, is a tyranny
that would have longer hands than those giants who
threatened bondage to heaven. What we may do in
the same form of words is not so much the question, as
whether liturgy may be forced as he forced it. It is
true that we “pray to the same God;” must we, there-
fore, always use the same words? Let us then use but
one word, because we pray to one God. “We profess
the same truths,” but the liturgy comprehends not all
truths: “we read the same Scriptures,” but never read
that all those sacred expressions, all benefit and use of
Scripture, as to public prayer, should be denied us, ex-
cept what was barrelled up in a common-prayer book
with many mixtures of their own, and, which is worse,
without salt. But suppose them savory words and un-
mixed, suppose them manna itself, yet, if they shall be
hoarded up and enjoined us, while God every morning
rains down new expressions into our hearts; instead of
being fit to use, they will be found, like reserved manna,
rather to breed worms and stink. “We have the same
duties upon us, and feel the same wants;” yet not al-
ways the same, nor at all times alike; but with variety
of circumstances, which ask variety of words: whereof
God hath given us plenty ; not to use so copiously
upon all other occasions, and so niggardly to him
alone in our devotions. As if Christians were now in
a worse famine of words fit for prayer, than was of
food at the siege of Jerusalem, when perhaps the priests
being to remove the shewbread, as was accustomed,
were compelled every sabbath day, for want of other
loaves, to bring again still the same. If the “Lord's
Prayer” had been the “warrant or the pattern of set
liturgies,” as is here affirmed, why was neither that
prayer, nor any other set form, ever after used, or so
much as mentioned by the apostles, much less com-
mended to our usef Why was their care wanting in a
thing so useful to the church 2 so full of danger and
contention to be left undone by them to other men's
penning, of whose authority we could not be so cer-
tain P Why was this forgotten by them, who declare
that they have revealed to us the whole counsel of
God P who, as he left our affections to be guided by
his sanctifying spirit, so did he likewise our words to
be put into us without our premeditation;* not only
those cautious words to be used before gentiles and ty-
* The promise of the Spirit's assistance, here alluded to, was extraordi-
nary, and belonged only to the first age; so that the author's argument is
in this part inconclusive.
AN ANSWER TO EIKON BASILIKE.
315
rants, but much more those filial words, of which we
have so frequent use in our access with freedom of
speech to the throne of grace. Which to lay aside for
other outward dictates of men, were to injure him and
his perfect gift, who is the spirit, and the giver of our
ability to pray; as if his ministration were incomplete,
and that to whom he gave affections, he did not also
afford utterance to make his gift of prayer a perfect
gift; to them especially, whose office in the church is
to pray publicly.
And although the gift were only naturul, yet volum-
tary prayers are less subject to formal and superficial
tempers than set forms: for in those, at least for words
and matter, he who prays must consult first with his
heart, which in likelihood may stir up his affections;
in these, having both words and matter ready made to
his lips, which is enough to make up the outward act
of prayer, his affections grow lazy, and come not up
easily at the call of words not their own; the prayer
also having less intercourse and sympathy with a heart
wherein it was not conceived, saves itself the labour of
so long a journey downward, and flying up in haste
on the specious wings of formality, if it fall not back
again headlong, instead of a prayer which was expected,
presents God with a set of stale and empty words.
No doubt but “ostentation and formality” may taint
the best duties; we are not therefore to leave duties for
no duties, and to turn prayer into a kind of lurry.
Cannot unpremeditated babblings be rebuked and re-
strained in whom we find they are, but the Spirit of
God must be forbidden in all men P But it is the cus-
tom of bad men and hypocrites, to take advantage at
the least abuse of good things, that under that covert
they may remove the goodness of those things, rather
than the abuse. And how unknowingly, how weakly
is the using of set forms attributed here to “constancy,”
as if it were constancy in the cuckoo to be always in
the same liturgy.
Much less can it be lawful that an Englished mass-
book, composed, for ought we know, by men neither
learned, nor godly, should justle out, or at any time de-
prive us the exercise of that heavenly gift, which God
by special promise pours out daily upon his church,
that is to say, the spirit of prayer. Whereof to help
those many infirmities, which he reckons up, “rude-
mess, impertinency, flatness,” and the like, we have a
remedy of God's finding out, which is not liturgy, but
his own free Spirit. Though we know not what to pray
as we ought, yet he with sighs unutterable by any
words, much less by a stinted liturgy, dwelling in us
makes intercession for us, according to the mind and
will of God, both in private and in the performance of
all ecclesiastical duties. For it is his promise also,
that where two or three gathered together in his
name shall agree to ask him any thing, it shall be
granted; for he is there in the midst of them. If then
ancient churches, to remedy the infirmities of prayer,
or rather the infections of Arian and Pelagian heresies,
neglecting that ordained and promised help of the
Spirit, betook them almost four hundred years after
Christ to liturgy, (their own invention,) we are not to
imitate them; nor to distrust God in the removal of
that truant help to our devotion, which by him never
was appointed. And what is said of liturgy, is said
also of directory, if it be imposed : although to forbid
the service-book there be much more reason, as being
of itself superstitious, offensive, and indeed, though
Englished, yet still the mass-book; and public places
ought to be provided of such as need not the help of
liturgies or directories continually, but are supported
with ministerial gifts answerable to their calling.
Lastly, that the common-prayer book was rejected
because it “prayed so oft for him,” he had no reason
to object: for what large and laborious prayers were
made for him in the pulpits, if he never heard, it is
doubtful they were never heard in heaven. We might
now have expected, that his own following prayer
should add much credit to set forms; but on the con-
trary we find the same imperfections in it, as in most
before, which he lays here upon extemporal. Nor doth
he ask of God to be directed whether liturgies be law-
ful, but presumes, and in a manner would persuade
him, that they be so; praying, “ that the church and
he may never want them.” What could be prayed
worse extempore ? unless he mean by wanting, that
they may never need them.
XVII. Of the differences in point of Church-Govern-
7ment.
THE government of church by bishops hath been so
fully proved from the Scriptures to be vicious and usurp-
ed, that whether out of piety or policy maintained, it
is not much material; for piety grounded upon errour
can no more justify King Charles, than it did Queen
Mary, in the sight of God or man. This however
must not be let pass without a serious observation; God
having so disposed the author in this chapter as to
confess and discover more of mystery and combination
between tyranny and false religion, than ſtom any
other hand would have been credible. Here we may
see the very dark roots of them both turned up, and
how they twine and interweave one another in the
earth, though above ground shooting up in two several
branches. We may have learnt both from sacred his-
tory and times of reformation, that the kings of this
world have both ever hated and instinctively feared
the church of God. Whether it be for that their doc-
trine seems much to favour two things to them so
dreadful, liberty and equality; or because they are the
children of that kingdom, which, as ancient prophecies
have foretold, shall in the end break to pieces and dis-
solve all their great power and dominion. And those
kings and potentates who have strove most to rid them-
selves of this fear, by cutting off or suppressing the
true church, have drawn upon themselves the occasion
of their own ruin, while they thought with most policy
to prevent it. Thus Pharaoh, when once he began to
fear and wax jealous of the Israelites, lest they should
multiply and fight against him, and that his fear stirred
316
AN ANSWER TO EIKON BASILIRE.
him up to afflict and keep them under, as the only re-
medy of what he feared, soon found that the evil which
before slept, came suddenly upon him, by the prepos-
terous way he took to prevent * it. Passing by ex-
amples between, and not shutting wilfully our eyes,
we may see the like story brought to pass in our own
land. This king, more than any before him, except
perhaps his father, from his first entrance to the crown,
harbouring in his mind a strange fear and suspicion of
men most religious, and their doctrine, which in his
own language he here acknowledges, terming it “the
seditious exorbitancy” of ministers' tongues, and doubt-
ing “lest they,” as he not christianly expresses it,
“should with the keys of heaven let out peace and
loyalty from the people's hearts;” though they never
preached or attempted aught that might justly raise in
him such thoughts, the could not rest, or think himself
secure, so long as they remained in any of his three
kingdoms unrooted out. But outwardly professing
the same religion with them, he could not presently
use violence as Pharaoh did, and that course had with
others before but ill succeeded. He chooses therefore
a more mystical way, a newer method of antichristian
fraud, to the church more dangerous; and like to Ba-
lak the son of Zippor, against a nation of prophets
thinks it best to hire other esteemed prophets, and to
undermine and wear out the true church by a false
ecclesiastical policy. To this drift he found the go-
vernment of bishops most serviceable; an order in the
church, as by men first corrupted, so mutually corrupt-
ing them who receive it, both in judgment and man-
ners. He, by conferring bishoprics and great livings
on whom he thought most pliant to his will, against
the known canons and universal practice of the ancient
church, whereby those elections were the people's right,
sought, as he confesses, to have “greatest influence
upon churchmen.” They on the other side finding
themselves in a high dignity, neither founded by Scrip-
ture, nor alkowed by reformation, nor supported by any
spiritual gift or grace of their own, knew it their best
course to have dependence only upon him : and
wrought his fancy by degrees to that degenerate and
unkingly persuasion of “No bishop, no king.” When
as on the contrary all prelates in their own subtle sense
are of another mind; according to that of Pius the
fourth remembered in the history of Trent,; that bishops
then grow to be most vigorous and potent, when princes
happen to be most weak and impotent. Thus when
both interest of tyranny and episcopacy were incorpo-
rate into each other, the king, whose principal safety
and establishment consisted in the righteous execution
of his civil power, and not in bishops and their wicked
counsels, fatally driven on, set himself to the extirpating
of those men whose doctrine and desire of church-dis-
cipline he so feaved would be the undoing of his mon-
archy. And because no temporal law could touch
the innocence of their lives, he begins with the perse-
cution of their consciences, laying scandals before
them; and makes that the argument to inflict his un-
• The second edition has to shun it.
f The second edition has apprehensions.
just penalties both on their bodies and estates. In this
war against the church, if he hath sped so, as other
haughty monarchs whom God heretofore hath harden-
ed to the like enterprise, we ought to look up with
praises and thanksgiving to the author of our deliver-
ance, to whom victory and power, majesty, honour, and
dominion belongs for ever. -
In the mean while, from his own words we may per-
ceive easily, that the special motives which he had to
endear and deprave his judgment to the favouring and
utmost defending of episcopacy, are such as here we
represent them : and how unwillingly, and with what
mental reservation, he condescended against his interest
to remove it out of the peers’ house, hath been shewn
already. The reasons, which he affirms wrought so
much upon his judgment, shall be so far answered as
they be urged.
Scripture he reports, but distinctly produces none;
and next the “constant practice of all christian churches,
till of late years tumult, faction, pride, and covetous-
mess, invented new models under the title of Christ's
government.” Could any papist have spoken more
scandalously against all reformation ? Well may the
parliament and best-affected people not now be troubled
at his calumnies and reproaches, since he binds them
in the same bundle with all other the reformed churches;
who also may now further see, besides their own bitter
experience, what a cordial and well-meaning helper
they had of him abroad, and how true to the protestant
Call SC. -
As for histories to prove bishops, the Bible, if we
mean not to run into errours, vanities, and uncertain-
ties, must be our only history. Which informs us that
the apostles were not properly bishops; next, that
bishops were not successors of apostles, in the function
of apostleship ; and that if they were apostles, they
could not be precisely bishops; if bishops, they could
not be apostles; this being universal, extraordinary,
and immediate from God; that being an ordinary, fixed,
and particular charge, the continual inspection over a
certain flock. And although an ignorance and devia-
tion of the ancient churches afterward, may with as
much reason and charity be supposed as sudden in
point of prelaty, as in other manifest corruptions, yet
that “no example since the first age for 1500 years
can be produced of any settled church, wherein were
many ministers and congregations, which had not some
bishops above them;” the ecclesiastical story, to which
he appeals for want of Scripture, proves clearly to be a
false and overconfident-assertion. Sozomenus, who
above twelve hundred years ago, in his seventh book,
relates from his own knowledge, that in the churches
of Cyprus and Arabia (places near to Jerusalem, and
with the first frequented by apostles) they had bishops
in every village; and what could those be more than
presbyters? The like he tells of other nations; and that
episcopal churches in those days did not condemn them.
I add, that many western churches, eminent for their
faith and good works, and settled above four hundred
1. The second edition has in the Trentine story.
AN ANSWER TO EIRON BASILIKE.
317
years ago in France, in Piemont and Bohemia, have
both taught and practised the same doctrine, and not
admitted of episcopacy among them. And if we may
believe what the papists themselves have written of
these churches, which they call Waldenses, I find it
in a book written almost four hundred years since, and
set forth in the Bohemian history, that those churches
in Piemont * have held the same doctrine and govern-
ment, since the time that Constantine with his mischiev-
ous donations poisoned Sylvester and the whole church.
Others affirm they have so continued there singe the
apostles; and Theodorus Belvederensis in his relation
of them confesseth, that those heresies, as he names
them, were from the first times of Christianity in that
place. For the rest I refer me to that famous testimony
of Jerome, who upon that very place which he cites
here, t the epistle to Titus, declares openly that bishop
and presbyter were one and the same thing, till by the
instigation of Satan, partialities grew up in the church,
and that bishops rather by custom than any ordainment
of Christ, were exalted above presbyters; whose inter-
pretation we trust shall be received before this intricate
stuff tattled here of Timothy and Titus, and I know
not whom their successors, far beyond court-element,
and as far beneath true edification. These are his
“fair grounds both from scripture-canons and ecclesi-
astical examples;” how undivine-like written, and how
like a worldly gospeller that understands nothing of these
matters, posterity no doubt will be able to judge; and
will but little regard what he calls apostolical, who in his
letter to the pope calls apostolical the Roman religion.
Nor let him think to plead, that therefore, “it was
not policy of state,” or obstimacy in him which upheld
episcopacy, because the injuries and losses which he
sustained by so doing were to him “more considerable
than episcopacy itself; ” for all this might Pharaoh
have had to say in his excuse of detaining the Israel-
ites, that his own and his kingdom's safety, so much
endangered by his denial, was to him more dear than
all their building labours could be worth to Egypt.
But whom God hardens, them also he blinds.
He endeavours to make good episcopacy not only
in “religion, but from the nature of all civil govern-
ment, where parity breeds confusion and faction.”
But of faction and confusion, to take no other than his
own testimony, where hath more been ever bred than
under the imparity of his own monarchical government?
of which to make at this time longer dispute, and from
civil constitutions and human conceits to debate and
question the convenience of divine ordinations, is neither
wisdom nor sobriety: and to confound Mosaic priest-
hood with evangelic presbytery against express institu-
tion, is as far from warrantable. As little to purpose
isit, that we should stand polling the reformed churches,
whether they equalize in number “ those of his three
kingdoms;” of whom so lately the far greater part,
what they have long desired to do, have now quite
thrown off episcopacy.
M. We have a very curious history of these churches, written by Samuel
#º, *Sq; who went commissioner extraordinary from O. Cromwell,
for relief of the protestants in the valleys of Pietmont. It was published
in folio, 1658,
Neither may we count it the language or religion of
a protestant, so to vilify the best reformed churches (for
none of them but Lutherans retain bishops) as to fear
more the scandalizing of papists, because more numer-
ous, than of our protestant brethren, because a handful.
It will not be worth the while to say what “schisma-
tics or heretics” have had no bishops : yet, lest he
should be taken for a great reader, he who prompted
him, if he were a doctor, might have remembered the
forementioned place in Sozomenus; which affirms, that
besides the Cyprians and Arabians, who were counted
orthodoxal, the Novations also, and Montanists in
Phrygia, had no other bishops than such as were in
every village : and what presbyter hath a narrower
diocese ? As for the Aérians we know of no heretical
opinion justly fathered upon them, but that they held
bishops and presbyters to be the same. Which he in
this place not obscurely seems to hold a heresy in all
the reformed churches; with whom why the church of
England desired conformity, he can find no reason,
with all his “charity, but the coming in of the Scots’
army;” such a high esteem he had of the Eng-
lish
He tempts the clergy to return back again to bishops,
from the fear of “tenuity and contempt,” and the as-
surance of better “thriving under the favour of princes;”
against which temptations if the clergy cannot arm
themselves with their own spiritual armour, they are
indeed as “poor a carcass” as he terms them.
Of secular honours and great revenues added to the
dignity of prelates, since the subject of that question is
now removed, we need not spend time: but this per-
haps will never be unseasonable to bear in mind out of
Chrysostom, that when ministers came to have lands,
houses, farms, coaches, horses, and the like lumber, then
religion brought forth riches in the church, and the
daughter devoured the mother.
But if his judgment in episcopacy may be judged by
the goodly choice he made of bishops, we need not
much amuse ourselves with the consideration of those
evils, which by his foretelling, will “necessarily follow”
their pulling down, until he prove that the apostles,
having no certain diocese or appointed place of resi-
dence, were properly “bishops over those presbyters
whom they ordained, or churches they planted :”
wherein ofttimes their labours were both joint and
promiscuous: or that the apostolic power must “neces-
sarily descend to bishops, the use and end” of either
function being so different. And how the church hath
flourished under episcopacy, let the multitude of their
ancient and gross errours testify, and the words of
some learnedest and most zealous bishops among them;
Nazianzen in a devout passion, wishing prelaty had
never been ; Bazil terming them the slaves of slaves;
Saint Martin, the enemies of saints, and confessing that
after he was made a bishop, he found much of that
grace decay in him which he had before.
Concerning his “Coronation oath,” what it was, and
+ The second edition has it thus, “who upon this very place which he
only roves at here.”
3.18
AN ANSWER TO EIRON BASILIKE.
how far it bound him, already hath been spoken. This
we may take for certain, that he was never sworn to
his own particular conscience and reason, but to our
conditions as a free people, which required him to give
us such laws as ourselves should * choose. This the
Scots could bring him to, and would not be baffled with
the pretence of a coronation-oath, after that episcopacy
had for many years been settled there. Which con-
cession of his to them, and not to us, he seeks here to
put off with evasions that are ridiculous. And to omit
no shifts, he alleges that the presbyterian manners gave
him no encouragement to like their modes of govern-
ment. If that were so, yet certainly those men are in
most likelihood nearer to amendment, who seek a
stricter church-discipline than that of episcopacy, under
which the most of them learned their manners. If es-
timation were to be made of God's law by their man-
ners, who, leaving Egypt, received it in the wilderness,
it could reap from such an inference as this nothing
but rejection and disesteem.
I'or the prayer where with he closes, it had been good
some safe liturgy, which he so commends, had rather
been in his way; it would perhaps in some measure
have performed the end for which they say liturgy was
first invented ; and have hindered him both here, and
at other times, from turning his notorious errours into
his prayers.
XVIII. Upon the Uxbridge Treaty, &c.
“If the way of treaties be looked upon” in general,
“as retiring” from bestial force to human reason, his
first aphorism here is in part deceived. For men may
treat like beasts as well as fight. If some fighting
were not manlike, then either fortitude were no virtue,
or no fortitude in fighting : And as politicians ofttimes
through dilatory purposes and emulations handle the
matter, there hath been no where found more bestial-
ity than in treating; which hath no more commenda-
tions in it, than from fighting to come to undermining,
from violence to craſt; and when they can no longer
do as lions, to do as foxes.
The sincerest end of treating after war once pro-
claimed is, either to part with more, or to demand less,
than was at first fought for, rather than to hazard more
lives, or worse mischiefs. What the parliament in that
point were willing to have done, when first aſter the
war begun, they petitioned him at Colebrook to vouch-
safe a treaty, is not unknown. For after he had taken
God to witness of his continual readiness to treat, or to
offer treaties to the avoiding of bloodshed, had named
Windsor the place of treaty, and passed his royal word
not to advance further, till commissioners by such a
time were speeded towards him; taking the advantage
of a thick mist, which fell that evening, weather that
soon invited him to a design no less treacherous and
obscure; he follows at the heels of those messengers
of peace with a train of covert war; and with a bloody
* The second edition has shall choose.
surprise ſalls on our secure forces, which lay quartering
at Brentford in the thoughts and expectation of a
treaty. And although in them who make a trade of
war, and against a natural enemy, such an onset might
in the rigour of martial: law have been excused, while
arms were not yet by agreement suspended; yet by a
king, who seemed so heartily to accept of treating with
his subjects, and professes here, “he never wanted
either desire or disposition to it, professes to have
greater confidence in his reason than in his sword, and
as a Qhristian to seek peace and ensue it,” such bloody
and deceitful advantages would have been forborne
one day at least, if not much longer; in whom there
had not been a thirst rather than a detestation of civil
war and blood, and a desire to subdue rather than to
treat.
In the midst of a second treaty not long after, sought
by the parliament, and after much ado obtained with
him at Oxford, what subtle and unpeaceable designs he
then had in chace, his own letters discovered : What
attempts of treacherous hostility successful and unsuc-
cessful he made against Bristol, Scarborough, and other
places, the proceedings of that treaty will soon put us
in mind; and how he was so far from granting more of
reason after so much of blood, that he denied then to
grant what before he had offered; making no other use
of treaties pretending peace, than to gain advantages
that might enable him to continue war: What marvel
then if “he thought it no diminution of himself,” as oft
as he saw his time, “to be importunate for treaties,”
when he sought them only as by the upshot appeared,
“to get opportunities?” And once to a most cruel pur-
pose, if we remember May 1643. And that messenger
of peace from Oxford, whose secret message and com-
mission, had it been effected, would have drowned the
innocence of our treating, in the blood of a designed
massacre. Nay, when treaties from the parliament
sought out him, no less than seven times, (oft enough
to testify the willingness of their obedience, and too
oft for the majesty of a parliament to court their sub-
jection,) he, in the confidence of his own strength, or
of our divisions, returned us nothing back but denials,
or delays, to their most necessary demands; and being
at lowest, kept up still and sustained his almost fa-
mished hopes with the hourly expectation of raising
up himself the higher, by the greater heap which he
sat promising himself of our sudden ruin through dis-
sension.
But he infers, as if the parliament would have com-
pelled him to part with something of “his honour as a
king.” What honour could he have, or call his,joined
not only with the offence or disturbance, but with the
bondage and destruction of three nations 2 whereof,
though he be careless and improvident, yet the parlia-
ment, by our laws and freedom, ought to judge, and
use prevention; our laws else were but cobweb laws.
And what were all his most rightful honours, but the
people's gift, and the investment of that lustre, ma-
jesty, and honour, which for the public good, and no
otherwise, redounds from a whole nation into one per-
+ The second edition has military.
AN ANSWER TO EIKON BASILIKE.
3.19
son P So far is any honour from being his to a com-
mon mischief and calamity. Yet still he talks on equal
terms with the grand representative of that people, for
whose sake he was a king ; as if the general welfare
and his subservient rights were of equal moment or
consideration. His aim indeed hath ever been to mag-
miſy and exalt his borrowed rights and prerogatives
above the parliament and kingdom, of whom he holds
them. But when a king sets himself to bandy against
the highest court and residence of all his regal power,
he then, in the single person of a man, fights against
his own majesty and kingship, and then indeed sets
the first hand to his own deposing.
“The treaty at Uxbridge,” he saith, “gave the fair-
est hopes of a happy composure;” fairest indeed, if his
instructions to bribe our commissioners with the pro-
mise of security, rewards, and places, were fair: what
other hopes it gave, no man can tell. There being but
three main heads whereon to be treated ; Ireland, epis-
copacy, and the militia; the first was anticipated and
forestalled by a peace at any rate to be hastened
with the Irish rebels, ere the treaty could begin, that
he might pretend his word and honour passed against
“ the specious and popular arguments” (he calls them
no better) which the parliament would urge upon him
for the continuance of that just war. Episcopacy he
bids the queen be confident he will never quit: which
informs us by what patronage it stood : and the sword
he resolves to clutch as fast, as if God with his own
hand had put it into his. This was the “moderation
which he brought;” this was “as far as reason, ho-
nour, conscience,” and the queen, who was his regent
in all these, “would give him leave.” Lastly, “for
composure,” instead of happy, how miserable it was
more likely to have been, wise men could then judge;
when the English, during treaty, were called rebels;
the Irish, good and catholic subjects; and the parlia-
ment beforehand, though for fashion's sake called a
parliament, yet by a jesuitical sleight not acknow-
ledged, though called so; but privately in the council
books enrolled no parliament: that if accommodation
had succeeded, upon what terms soever, such a devilish
fraud was prepared, that the king in his own esteem
had been absolved from all performance, as having
treated with rebels and no parliament; and they, on
the other side, instead of an expected happiness, had
been brought under the hatchet. Then no doubt “war
had ended,” that massacre and tyranny might begin.
These jealousies, however raised, let all men see whe-
ther they be diminished or allayed, by the letters of
his own cabinet opened. And yet the breach of this
treaty is laid all upon the parliament and their com-
missioners, with odious names of “pertinacy, hatred of
peace, faction, and covetousness,” nay, his own brat
“superstition” is laid to their charge; notwithstanding
his here professed resolution to continue both the order,
maintenance, and authority of prelates, as a truth of
God.
And who “were most to blame in the unsuccessful-
ness of that treaty,” his appeal is to God’s decision;
believing to be very excusable at that tribunal. But if
ever man gloried in an unflexible stiffness, he came not
behind any ; and that grand maxim, always to put
something into his treaties, which might give colour
to refuse all that was in other things granted, and to
make them signify nothing, was his own principal
maxim and particular instructions to his commission-
ers. Yet all, by his own verdict, must be construed
reason in the king, and depraved temper in the parlia-
mell t.
That the “highest tide of success,” with these princi-
ples and designs, “set him not above a treaty,” no
great wonder. And yet if that be spoken to his
praise, the parliament therein surpassed him ; who,
when he was their vanquished and their captive, his
forces utterly broken and disbanded, yet offered him
three several times no worse proposals or demands,
than when he stood fair to be their conqueror. But
that imprudent surmise that his lowest ebb could not
set him “below a fight,” was a presumption that ruined
him.
He presaged the future “unsuccessfulness of trea-
ties, by the unwillingness of some men to treat; ” and
could not see what was present, that their unwilling-
ness had good cause to proceed from the continual ex-
perience of his own obstinacy and breach of word.
His prayer therefore of forgiveness to the guilty of
“that treaty’s breaking,” he had good reason to say
heartily over, as including no man in that guilt sooner
than himself.
As for that protestation following in his prayer,
“how oft have I entreated for peace, but when I speak
thereof they make them ready to war ;” unless he
thought himself still in that perfidious mist between
Colebrook and Hounslow, and thought that mist could
hide him from the eye of Heaven as well as of man,
after such a bloody recompence given to our first offers
of peace, how could this in the sight of Heaven with-
out horrours of conscience be uttered P
XIX. Upon the various events of the War.
IT is no new or unwonted thing, for bad men to claim
as much part in God as his best servants; to usurp
and imitate their words, and appropriate to themselves
those properties, which belong only to the good and
righteous. This not only in Scripture is familiarly to
be found, but here also in this chapter of Apocrypha.
He tells us much, why “it pleased God” to send him
victory or loss, (although what in so doing was the in-
tent of God, he might be much mistaken as to his own
particular,) but we are yet to learn what real good use
he made thereof in his practice.
Those numbers, which he grew to “from small be-
gimmings,” were not such as out of love came to pro-
tect him, for none approved his actions as a king, ex-
cept courtiers and prelates, but were such as fled to be
protected by him from the fear of that reformation
which the pravity of their lives would not bear. Such
a snowball he might easily gather by rolling through
320
AN ANSWER TO EIKON BASILIKE.
those cold and dark provinces of ignorance and lewd-
ness, where on a sudden he became so numerous. He
imputes that to God’s “protection,” which, to them
who persist in a bad cause, is either his long-suffering
or his hardening ; and that to wholesome “chastise-
ment,” which were the gradual beginnings of a severe
punishment. For if neither God nor nature put civil
power in the hands of any whomsoever, but to a lawful
end, and commands our obedience to the authority of
law only, not to the tyrannical force of any person ;
and if the laws of our land have placed the sword in
no man's single hand, so much as to unsheath against
a foreign enemy, much less upon the native people;
but have placed it in that elective body of the parlia-
ment, to whom the making, repealing, judging, and
interpreting of law itself was also committed, as was
fittest, so long as we intended to be a free nation, and
not the slaves of one man's will; then was the king
himself disobedient and rebellious to that law by which
he reigned : and by authority of parliament to raise
arms against him in defence of law and liberty, we do
not only think, but believe and know, was justifiable
both “by the word of God, the laws of the land, and
all lawful oaths;” and they who sided with him, fought
against all these.
The same allegations, which he uses for himself and
his party, may as well fit any tyrant in the world: for
let the parliament be called a faction when the king
pleases, and that no law must be made or changed,
either civil or religious, because no law will content
all sides, then must be made or changed no law at all,
but what a tyrant, be he protestant or papist, thinks fit.
Which tyrannous assertion forced upon us by the
sword, he who fights against, and dies fighting, if his
other sins outweigh not, dies a martyr undoubtedly both
of the faith and of the commonwealth ; and I hold it
not as the opinion, but as the full belief and persuasion,
of far holier and wiser men than parasitic preachers:
who, without their dinner-doctrine, know that neither
king, law, civil oaths, or religion, was ever established
without the parliament: and their power is the same
to abrogate as to establish : neither is any thing to be
thought established, which that house declares to be
abolished. Where the parliament sits, there insepar-
ably sits the king, there the laws, there our oaths, and
whatsoever can be civil in religion. They who fought
for the parliament, in the truest sense, fought for all
these; who fought for the king divided from his par-
liament, fought for the shadow of a king against all
these ; and for things that were not, as if they were
established. It were a thing monstrously absurd and
contradictory, to give the parliament a legislative
power, and then to upbraid them for transgressing old
establishments.
But the king and his party having lost in this quar-
rel their heaven upon earth, begin to make great reck-
oning of eternal life, and at an easy rate in forma
pauperis canonize one another into heaven; he them
in his book, they him in the portraiture before his book:
* Iſcar what description an historian of that party gives of those on the
but as was said before, stage-work will not do it, much
less the “justness of their cause,” wherein most fre-
quently they died in a brutish fierceness, with oaths
and other damning words in their mouths; as if such
had been all “the only oaths” they fought for ; which
undoubtedly sent them full sail on another voyage than
to heaven. In the mean while they to whom God
gave victory, never brought to the king at Oxford the
state of their consciences, that he should presume with-
out confession, more than a pope presumes, to tell
abroad what “conflicts and accusations,” men whom
he never spoke with, have “in their own thoughts.”
We never read of any English king but one that was
a confessor, and his name was Edward; yet sure it
passed his skill to know thoughts, as this king takes
upon him. But they who will not stick to slander
men's inward consciences, which they can neither see
nor know, much less will care to slander outward ac-
tions, which they pretend to see, though with senses
never so vitiated.
To judge of “his condition conquered,” and the
manner of “dying” on that side, by the sober men
that chose it, would be his small advantage: it being
most notorious, that they who were hottest in his cause,
the most of them were men oftener drunk, than by their
good will sober, and very many of them so fought and
so died.*
And that the conscience of any man should grow
suspicious, or be now convicted by any pretensions in
the parliament, which are now proved false and unin-
tended, there can be no just cause. For neither did
they ever pretend to establish his throne without our
liberty and religion, nor religion without the word of
God, nor to judge of laws by their being established,
but to establish them by their being good and necessary.
He tells the world “he often prayed, that all on his
side might be as faithful to God and their own souls,
as to him.” But kings, above all other men, have in
their hands not to pray only, but to do. To make that
prayer effectual, he should have governed as well as
prayed. To pray and not to govern, is for a monk,
and not a king. Till then he might be well assured,
they were more faithful to their lust and rapine than
to him.
In the wonted predication of his own virtues he goes
on to tell us, that to “conquer he never desired, but
only to restore the laws and liberties of his people.”
It had been happy then he had known at last, that by
force to restore laws abrogated by the legislative par-
liament, is to conquer absolutely both them and law
itself. And for our liberties none ever oppressed them
more, both in peace and war; first like a master by his
arbitrary power, next as an enemy by hostile invasion.
And if his best friends feared him, and “he himself,
in the temptation of an absolute conquest,” it was
not only pious but friendly in the parliament, both
to fear him and resist him ; since their not yielding was
the only means to keep him out of that temptation,
wherein he doubted his own strength.
royal side : “Never had any good undertaking sº many unworthy attend-
ants, such horrid blasphemers and wicked wretches, as ours hath had ; I
quake to think, much more to speak, what mine ears have heard from some
of their lips; but to discover them is not my present business.
Symmon's Defence of ſing Charles I. p. 165,
AN ANSWER TO EIKON BASILIKE.
321
He takes himself to be “guilty in this war of no-
thing else, but of confirming the power of some men;”
Thus all along he signifies the parliament, whom to
have settled by an act he counts to be his only guilti-
ness. So well he knew, that to continue a parliament,
was to raise a war against himself; what were his ac-
tions then, and his government the while P For never
was it heard in all our story, that parliaments made
war on their kings, but on their tyrants; whose modesty
and gratitude was more wanting to the parliament,
than theirs to any of such kings.
What he yielded was his fear; what he denied was
his obstinacy. Had he yielded more, fear might per-
chance have saved him; had he granted less, his ob-
stimacy had perhaps the sooner delivered us.
“To review the occasions of this war,” will be to
them never too late, who would be warned by his ex-
ample from the like evils: but to wish only a happy
conclusion, will never expiate the fault of his unhappy
beginnings. It is true, on our side the sins of our lives
not seldom fought against us: but on their side, be-
sides those, the grand sin of their cause.
How can it be otherwise, when he desires here most
unreasonably, and indeed sacrilegiously, that we should
be subject to him, though not further, yet as far as all
of us may be subject to God; to whom this expression
leaves no precedency P. He who desires from men as
much obedience and subjection, as we may all pay to
God, desires not less than to be a God: a sacrilege far
worse than meddling with the bishops’ lands, as he
esteems it.
His prayer is a good prayer and a glorious; but glo-
rying is not good, if it know not that a little leaven
leavens the whole lump. It should have purged out
the leaven of untruth, in telling God that the blood of
his subjects by him shed, was in his just and necessary
defence. Yet this is remarkable; God hath here so
ordered his prayer, that as his own lips acquitted the
parliament, not long before his death, of all the blood
spilt in this war, so now his prayer unwittingly draws
it upon himself. For God imputes not to any man the
blood he spills in a just cause; and no man ever beg-
ged his not imputing of that, which he in his justice
could not impute: so that now, whether purposely or
unaware, he hath confessed both to God and man the
blood-guiltiness of all this war to lie upon his own
head.
XX. Upon the Reformation of the Times.
THIS chapter cannot punctually be answered with-
out more repetitions than now can be excusable : which
perhaps have already been more humoured than was
needful. As it presents us with nothing new, so with
his exceptions against reformation pitifully old, and
tattered with continual using ; not only in his book,
but in the words and writings of every papist and
popish king. On the scene he thrusts out first an an-
timasque of bugbears, novelty and perturbation; that
the ill looks and noise of those two may as long as
|
possible drive off all endeavours of a reformation.
Thus sought pope Adrian, by representing the like vain
terrours, to divert and dissipate the zeal of those re-
forming princes of the age before in Germany. And
if we credit Latimer's sermons, our papists here in
England pleaded the same dangers and inconveni-
encies against that which was reformed by Edward the
Sixth. Whereas if those fears had been available,
Christianity itself had never been received. Which
Christ foretold us would not be admitted, without the
censure of novelty, and many great commotions.
These therefore are not to deter us.
He grants reformation to be “a good work,” and
confesses “what the indulgence of times and corrup-
tion of manners might have depraved.” So did the
forementioned pope, and our grandsire papists in this
realm. Yet all of them agree in one song with this
here, that “they are sorry to see so little regard had to
laws established, and the religion settled.”
“Popular compliance, dissolution of all order and
government in the church, schisms, opinions, undecen-
cies, confusions, sacrilegious invasions, contempt of the
clergy and their liturgy, diminution of princes;” all
these complaints are to be read in the messages and
speeches almost of every legate from the pope to those
states and cities which began reformation. From
whence he either learned the same pretences, or had
them naturally in him from the same spirit. Neither
was there ever so sincere a reformation that hath
escaped these clamours.
He offered a “synod or convocation rightly chosen.”
So offered all those popish kings heretofore ; a course
the most unsatisfactory, as matters have been long car-
ried, and found by experience in the church liable to
the greatest fraud and packing; no solution, or redress
of evil, but an increase rather; detested therefore by
Nazianzen, and some other of the fathers. And let it
be produced, what good hath been done by synods from
the first times of reformation.
Not to justify what enormities the vulgar may com-
mit in the rudeness of their zeal, we need but only in-
stance how he bemoans “the pulling down of crosses”
and other superstitious monuments, as the effect “of a
pupular and deceitful reformation.” How little this
savours of a protestant, is too easily perceived.
What he charges in defect of “piety, charity, and
morality,” hath been also charged by papists upon the
best reformed churches; not as if they the accusers were
not tenfold more to be accused, but out of their malig-
nity to all endeavour of amendment; as we know who
accused to God the sincerity of Job; an accusation of
all others the most easy, when as there lives not any
mortal man so excellent, who in these things is not
always deficient. But the infirmities of the best men,
and the scandals of mixed hypocrites in all times of
reforming, whose bold intrusion covets to be ever seen
in things most sacred, as they are most specious, can
lay no just blemish upon the integrity of others, much
less upon the purpose of reformation itself. Neither
can the evil doings of some be the excuse of our de-
laying or deserting that duty to the church, which for
322
AN ANSWER TO EIKON BASILIKE.
no respect of times or carnal policies can be at any
time unseasonable.
He tells with great shew of piety what kind of per-
sons public reſormers ought to be, and what they ought
to do. It is strange that in above twenty years, the
church growing still worse and worse under him, he
could neither be as he bids others be, nor do as he
pretends here so well to know ; nay, which is worst of
all, after the greatest part of his reign spent in neither
knowing nor doing aught toward a reformation either
in church or state, should spend the residue in hinder-
ing those by a seven years war, whom it concerned,
with his consent or without it, to do their parts in that
great performance.
It is true, that the “method of reforming” may well
subsist without “perturbation of the state; ” but that
it falls out otherwise for the most part, is the plain text
of Scripture. And if by his own rule he had allowed
us to “fear God first,” and the king in due order, our
allegiance might have still followed our religion in a
fit subordination. But if Christ's kingdom be taken
for the true discipline of the church, and by “his king-
dom” be meant the violence he used against it, and to
uphold an antichristian hierarchy, then sure enough it
is, that Christ's kingdom could not be set up without
pulling down his ; and they were best Christians who
were least subject to him. “Christ's government,”
out of question meaning it prelatical, he thought would
confirm his : and this was that which overthrew it.
He professes “to own his kingdom from Christ, and
to desire to rule for his glory, and the church's good.”
The pope and the king of Spain profess every where
as much ; and both by his practice and all his reason-
ings, ali his enmity against the true church we see
hath been the same with theirs, since the time that in
his letter to the pope he assured them both of his full
compliance. “But evil beginnings never bring forth
good conclusions: ” they are his own words, and he
ratified them by his own ending. To the pope he en-
gaged himself to hazard life and estate for the Roman
religion, whether in compliment he did it, or in earnest;
and God, who stood nearer than he for complimenting
minded, writ down those words; that according to his
resolution, so it should come to pass. He prays against
“his hypocrisy and pharisaical washings,” a prayer to
him most pertinent, but chokes it straight with other
words, which pray him deeper into his old errours and
delusions.
XXI. Upon his Letters taken and divulged.
Tire king's letters taken at the battle of Naseby,
being of greatest importance to let the people see what
faith there was in all his promises and solemn protesta-
tions, were transmitted to public view by special order
of the parliament. They discovered his good affection
to papists and Irish rebels, the strict” intelligence he
held, the pernicious and dishonourable peace he made
* The second cdition has the old word straight.
with them, not solicited, but rather soliciting, which by
all invocations that were holy he had in public abjured.
They revealed his endeavours to bring in foreign forces,
Irish, French, Dutch, Lorrainers, and our old invaders
the Danes upon us, besides his subtleties and myste-
rious arts in treating; to sum up all, they shewed him
governed by a woman. All which, though suspected
vehemently before, and from good grounds believed,
yet by him and his adherents peremptorily denied, were
by the opening of that cabinet visible to all men under
his own hand.
The parliament therefore, to clear themselves of as-
persing him without cause, and that the people might
no longer be abused and cajoled, as they call it, by
falsities and court impudence, in matters of so high
concernment; to let them know on what terms their
duty stood, and the kingdom's peace, conceived it
most expedient and necessary, that those letters should
be made public. This the king affirms was by them
done without “honour and civility;” words, which if
they contain not in them, as in the language of a
courtier most commonly they do not, more of substance
and reality, than compliment, ceremony, court-fawning,
and dissembling, enter not I suppose further than the
ear into any wise man's consideration. Matters were
not then between the parliament, and a king their
enemy, in that state of trifling, as to observe those su-
perficial vanities. But if honour and civility mean,
as they did of old, discretion, honesty, prudence, and
plain truth, it will be then maintained against any sect
of those Cabalists, that the parliament, in doing what
they did with those letters, could suffer in their honour
and civility no diminution. The reasons are already
heard.
And that it is with none more familiar than with
kings, to transgress the bounds of all honour and civility,
there should not want examples good store, if brevity
would permit: in point of letters, this one shall suffice.
The duchess of Burgundy, and heir of duke Charles,
had promised to her subjects, that she intended no
otherwise to govern, than by advice of the three estates;
but to Lewis the French king had written letters, that
she had resolved to commit wholly the managing of
her affairs to four persons, whom she named. The
three estates, not doubting the sincerity of her princely
word, send ambassadors to Lewis, who then besieged
Arras belonging to the duke of Burgundy. The king,
taking hold of this occasion to set them at division
among themselves, questioned their credence: which
when they offered to produce with their instructions,
he not only shews them the private letter of their
duchess, but gives it them to carry home, wherewith to
affront her; which they did, she denying it stoutly; till
they, spreading it before her face in a full assembly,
convicted her of an open lie. Which, although Co-
mines the historian much blames, as a deed too harsh
and dishonourable in them who were subjects, and not
at war with their princess, yet to his master Lewis, who
first divulged those letters, to the open shaming of that
young governess, he imputes no incivility or dishonour
AN ANSWER TO
EIKON BASILIKE. 323
at all, although betraying a certain conſidence reposed
by that letter in his royal secrecy.
With much more reason then may letters not inter-
cepted only, but won in battle from an enemy, be made
public to the best advantages of them that win them,
to the discovery of such important truth or falsehood.
Was it not more dishonourable in himself to ſeign sus-
picions and jealousies, which we first found among
those letters, touching the chastity of his mother, thereby
to gain assistance from the king of Denmark, as in
vindication of his sister P The damsel of Burgundy
at sight of her own letter was soon blank, and more
ingenuous than to stand outfacing ; but this man,
whom nothing will convince, thinks by talking world
without end, to make good his integrity and fair deal-
ing, contradicted by his own hand and seal. They
who can pick nothing out of them but phrases, shall
be counted bees: they that discern further both there
and here, that constancy to his wife is set in place be-
fore laws and religion, are in his naturalities no better
than spiders.
He would work the people to a persuasion, that “if
he be miserable, they cannot be happy.” What should
hinder them 2 Were they all born twins of Hippo-
crates with him and his fortune, one birth, one burial P
It were a nation miserable indeed, not worth the name
of a nation, but a race of idiots, whose happiness and
welfare depended upon one man. The happiness of a
nation consists in true religion, piety, justice, prudence,
temperance, fortitude, and the contempt of avarice and
ambition. They in whomsoever these virtues dwell
eminently, need not kings to make them happy, but
are the architects of their own happiness; and whether
to themselves or others are not less than kings. But in
him which of these virtues were to be found, that might
extend to the making happy, or the well-governing of
so much as his own household, which was the most
licentious and ill-governed in the whole land P
But the opening of his letters was designed by the
parliament “to make all reconcillation desperate.”
Are the lives of so many good and faithful men, that
died for the freedom of their country, to be so slighted,
as to be forgotten in a stupid reconcilement without
justice done them P What he fears not by war and
slaughter, should we fear to make desperate by
opening his letters? Which fact he would parallel
with Cham’s revealing of his father's nakedness: when
he at that time could be no way esteemed the Father of
his Country, but the destroyer; nor had he ever before
merited that former title.
“He thanks God he cannot only bear this with pa-
tience, but with charity forgive the doers.” Is not
this meer mockery, to thank God for what he can do,
but will not? For is it patience to impute barbarism
and inhumanity to the opening of an enemy's letter,
or is it charity to clothe them with curses in his prayer,
whom he hath forgiven in his discourse 2 In which
prayer, to shew how readily he can return good for
evil to the parliament, and that if they take away his
coat he can let them have his cloak also ; for the
dismantling of his letters he wishes “they may be
y
covered with the cloak of confusion.” Which I sup-
pose they do resign with much willingness, both live-
ry, badge, and cognizance, to them who chose rather
to be the slaves and vassals of his will, than to stand
against him, as men by nature free ; born and created
with a better title to their freedom, than any king hath
to his crown.
XXII. Upon his going to the Scots.
THE king's coming in, whether to the Scots or
English, deserved no thanks: for necessity was his
counsellor; and that he hated them both alike, his ex-
pressions everywhere manifest. Some say his purpose
was to have come to London, till hearing how strictiy
it was proclaimed, that no man should conceal him, he
diverted his course. But that had been a frivolous ex-
cuse : and besides, he himself rehearsing the consulta-
tions had, before he took his journey, shews us clearly
that he was determined to adventure “upon their loy-
alty who first began his troubles.” And that the Scots
had notice of it before, hath been long since brought
to light. What prudence there could be in it, no man
can imagine; malice there might be, by raising new
jcalousies to divide friends. For besides his diffidence
of the English, it was no small dishonour that he put
upon them, when rather than yield himself to the par-
liament of England, he yielded to a hireling army of
Scots in England, paid for their service here, not in
Scotch coin, but in English silver; nay, who from the
first beginning of these troubles, what with brotherly
assistance, and what with monthly pay, have defended
their own liberty and consciences at our charge. How-
ever, it was a hazardous and rash journey taken, “to
resolve riddles in men's loyalty,” who had more reason
to mistrust the riddle of such a disguised yielding ;
and to put himself in their hands whose loyalty was a
riddle to him, was not the course to be resolved of it,
but to tempt it. What Providence denied to force, he
thought it might grant to fraud, which he styles Pru-
dence; but Providence was not cozened with disguises,
neither outward nor inward.
To have known “his greatest danger in his supposed
safety, and his greatest safety in his supposed danger,”
was to him a ſatal riddle never yet resolved; wherein
rather to have employed his main skill, had been much
more to his preservation.
Had he “known when the game was lost,” it might
have saved much contest; but the way to give over
fairly, was not to slip out of open war into a new dis-
guise. He lays down his arms, but not his wiles; nor
all his arms; for in obstimacy he comes no less armed
than ever cap a pé. And what were they but wiles,
continually to move for treaties, and yet to persist the
same man, and to fortify his mind before-hand, still
purposing to grant no more than what seemed good to
that violent and lawless triumvirate within him, under
the falsified names of his reason, honour, and consci-
ence, the old circulating dance of his shifts and evasions?
324
AN ANSWER TO EIKON BASILIKE.
The words of a king, as they are full of power, in
the authority and strength of law, so like Samson,
without the strength of that Nazarite's lock, they have
no more power in them than the words of another man.
He adores reason as Domitian did Minerva, and
calls her the “Divinest power,” thereby to intimate as
if at reasoning, as at his own weapon, no man were so
able as himself. Might we be so happy as to know
where these monuments of his reason may be seen ; for
in his actions and his writing they appear as thinly as
could be expected from the meanest parts, bred up in
the midst of so many ways extraordinary to know
something. He who reads his talk, would think he
had left Oxford not without mature deliberation: yet
his prayer confesses, that “he knew not what to do.”
Thus is verified that Psalm; “he poureth contempt
upon princes, and causeth them to wander in the wil-
derness where there is no way.” Psal. cvii.
XXIII. Upon the Scots delivering the king to the
English.
THAT the Scots in England should “sell their king,”
as he himself here affirms, and for a “price so much
above that,” which the covetousness of Judas was con-
tented with to sell our Saviour, is so foul an infamy
‘and dishonour cast upon them, as befits none to vindi-
cate but themselves. And it were but friendly counsel
to wish them beware the son, who comes among them
with a firm belief, that they sold his father. The rest
of this chapter he sacrifices to the echo of his con-
science, out-babling creeds and aves: glorying in his
resolute obstinacy, and as it were triumphing how
“evident it is now, not that evil counsellors,” but he
himself, hath been the author of all our troubles. Herein
only we shall disagree to the world’s end, while he,
who sought so manifestly to have annihilated all our
laws and liberties, hath the confidence to persuade
us, that he hath fought and suffered all this while in
their defence.
But he who neither by his own letters and commis-
sions under hand and seal, nor by his own actions held
as in a mirror before his face, will be convinced to see
his faults, can much less be won upon by any force of
words, neither he, nor any that take after him; who
in that respect are no more to be disputed with, than
they who deny principles. No question then but the
parliament did wisely in their decree at last, to make
no more addresses. For how unalterable his will was,
that would have been our lord, how utterly averse
from the parliament and reformation during his con-
finement, we may behold in this chapter. But to be
ever answering fruitless repetitions, I should become
liable to answer for the same myself. He borrows
David's psalms, as he charges the assembly of divines
in his twentieth discourse, “To have set forth old cate-
chisms and confessions of faith new dressed :” had he
borrowed David's heart, it had been much the holier
theft. For such kind of borrowing as this, if it be not
bettered by the borrower, among good authors is ac-
counted plagiary. However, this was more tolerable
than Pamela's prayer stolen out of Sir Philip.
XXIV. Upon the denying him the attendance of his
Chaplains.
A CHAPLAIN is a thing so diminutive and inconsider-
able, that how he should come here among matters of
so great concernment, to take such room up in the dis-
courses of a prince, if it be not wondered, is to be
smiled at. Certainly by me, so mean an argument
shall not be written ; but I shall huddle him, as he
does prayers. The Scripture owns no such order, no
such function in the church; and the church not own-
ing them, they are left, for aught I know, to such a
further examining as the sons of Sceva the Jew met
with. Bishops or presbyters we know, and deacons
we know, but what are chaplains 2 In state perhaps
they may be listed among the upper serving-men of
some great household, and be admitted to some such
place, as may style them the sewers, or the yeomen-
ushers of devotion, where the master is too resty or too
rich to say his own prayers, or to bless his own table.
Wherefore should the parliament then take such im-
plements of the court cupboard into their consideration?
They knew them to have been the main corrupters at
the king's elbow ; they knew the king to have been
always their most attentive scholar and imitator, and
of a child to have sucked from them and their closet-
work all his impotent principles of tyranny and super-
stition. While therefore they had any hope left of his
reclaiming, these sowers of malignant tares they kept
asunder from him, and sent to him such of the minis-
ters and other zealous persons, as they thought were
best able to instruct him, and to convert him. What
could religion herself have done more, to the saving of
a soul ? But when they found him past cure, and that
he to himself was grown the most evil counsellor of
all, they denied him not his chaplains, as many as
were fitting, and some of them attended him, or else
were at his call, to the very last. Yet here he makes
more lamentation for the want of his chaplains, than
superstitious Micah did to the Danites, who had taken
away his household priest: “Ye have taken away my
gods which I made, and the priest, and what have I
more ?” And perhaps the whole story of Micah might
square not unfitly to this argument: “Now know I,”
saith he, “that the Lord will do me good, seeing I
have a Levite to my priest.” Micah had as great a care
that his priest should be Mosaical, as the king had,
that his should be apostolical; yet both in an errour
touching their priests. Household and private orisons
were not to be officiated by priests; for neither did
public prayer appertain only to their office. Kings here-
tofore, David, Solomon, and Jehosaphat, who might not
touch the priesthood, yet might pray in public, yea in
the temple, while the priests themselves stood and
heard. What ailed this king then, that he could not
AN ANSWER TO
325
EIKON BASILIKE.
chew his own matins without the priest's Ore tenus P
Yet is it like he could not pray at home, who can here
publish a whole prayerbook of his own, and signifies
in some part of this chapter, almost as good a mind to
be a priest himself, as Micah had to let his son be
There was doubtless therefore some other matter in it,
which made him so desirous to have his chaplains
about him, who were not only the contrivers, but very
oft the instruments also of his designs.
The ministers which were sent him, no marvel he
endured not; for they preached repentance to him : the
others gave him easy confession, easy absolution, may
strengthened his hands, and hardened his heart, by
applauding him in his wilful ways. To them he was
an Ahab, to these a Constantine ; it must follow then,
that they to him were as unwelcome as Elijah was to
Ahab, these as dear and pleasing as Amaziah the priest
of Bethel was to Jeroboam. These had learned well
the lesson that would please; “Prophesy not against
Bethel, for it is the king's chapel, the king's court;”
and had taught the king to say of those ministers,
which the parliament had sent, “Amos hath conspired
against me, the land is not able to bear all his words.”
Returning to our first parallel, this king looked upon
his prelates, “as orphans under the sacrilegious eyes
of many rapacious reformers:” and there was as great
fear of sacrilege between Micah and his mother, till
with their holy treasure, about the loss whereof there
was such cursing, they made a graven and a molten
image, and got a priest of their own. To let go his
criticizing about the “sound of prayers, imperious,
rude, or passionate,” modes of his own devising, we
are in danger to fall again upon the flats and shallows
of liturgy. Which if I should repeat again, would
turn my answers into Responsories, and beget another
liturgy, having too much of one already.
This only I shall add, that if the heart, as he alleges,
cannot safely “join with another man's extemporal
sufficiency,” because we know not so exactly what they
mean to say ; then those public prayers made in the
temple by those forenamed kings, and by the apostles
in the congregation, and by the ancient Christians for
above three hundred years before liturgies came in,
were with the people made in vain.
After he hath acknowledged, that kings heretofore
prayed without chaplains, even publickly in the temple
itself, and that every “private believer is invested with
a royal priesthood;” yet like one that relished not
what he “tasted of the heavenly gift, and the good
word of God,” whose name he so confidently takes into
his mouth, he frames to himself impertinent and vain
reasons, why he should rather pray by the officiating
mouth of a closet chaplain. “Their prayers,” saith
he, “are more prevalent, they flow from minds more
enlightened, from affections less distracted.” Admit
this true, which is not, this might be something said
as to their prayers for him, but what avails it to their
praying with him 2 If his own mind “be encumbered
with secular affairs,” what helps it his particular prayer,
though the mind of his chaplain be not wandering,
either after new preferment, or his dinner P The fer-
vency of one man in prayer cannot supererogate for
the coldness of another; neither can his spiritual de-
fects in that duty be made out, in the acceptance of
God, by another man’s abilities. Let him endeavour
to have more light in himself, and not to walk by an-
other man's lamp, but to get oil into his own. Let him
cast from him, as in a christian warfare, that secular
encumbrance, which either distracts or overloads him ;
his load else will never be the less heavy, because an-
other man's is light. Thus these pious flourishes and
colours, examined thoroughly, are like the apples of
Asphaltis, appearing goodly to the sudden eye, but
look well upon them, or at least but touch them, and
they turn into cinders.
In his prayer he remembers what “voices of joy and
gladness” there were in his chapel, “God’s house,” in
his opinion, between the singing men and the organs;
and this was “unity of spirit in the bond of peace;”
the vanity, superstition, and misdevotion of which
place, was a scandal far and near : Wherein so many
things were sung and prayed in those songs, which
were not understood ; and yet he who makes a diffi-
culty how the people can join their hearts to extem-
poral prayers, though distinctly heard and understood,
makes no question how they should join their hearts
in unity to songs not understood.
I believe that God is no more moved with a prayer
elaborately penned, than men truly charitable are
moved with the penned speech of a beggar.
Finally, O ye ministers, ye pluralists, whose lips
preserve not knowledge, but the way ever open to your
bellies, read here what work he makes among your
wares, your gallipots, your balms and cordials, in print;
and not only your sweet sippets in widows’ houses, but
the huge gobbets wherewith he charges you to have
devoured houses and all ; the “houses of your bre-
thren, your king, and your God.” Cry him up for a
saint in your pulpits, while he cries you down for athe-
ists into hell.
XXV. Upon his penitential Meditations and Vows at
Holmby.
IT is not hard for any man, who hath a Bible in his
hands, to borrow good words and holy sayings in
abundance; but to make them his own, is a work of
grace, only from above. He borrows here many peni-
tential verses out of David's psalms. So did many
among those Israelites, who had revolted from the true
worship of God, “invent to themselves instruments of
music like David,” and probably psalms also like his;
and yet the prophet Amos complains heavily against
them. But to prove how short this is of true repent-
ance, I will recite the penitence of others, who have
repented in words not borrowed, but their own, and
yet by the doom of Scripture itself, are judged repro-
bates.
“Cain said unto the Lord, My iniquity is greater
than I can bear : behold thou hast driven me. this day
326
AN ANSWER TO EIKON BASILIKE.
from the face of the earth, and from thy face shall I
be hid.
“And when Esau heard the words of his father, he
cried with an exceeding bitter cry, and said, Bless me,
even me also, O my father; yet found no place of re-
pentance, though he sought it carefully with tears.
Heb. xii.
“And Pharaoh said to Moses, The Lord is righteous,
I and my people are wicked; I have sinned against
the Lord your God, and against you.
“And Balaam said, Let me die the death of the
righteous, and let my last end be like his.
“And Saul said to Samuel, I have sinned, for I have
transgressed the commandment of the Lord ; yet honour
me now, I pray thee, before the elders of my people.
“And when Ahab heard the words of Elijah, he rent
his clothes, and put sackcloth upon his flesh, and fasted,
and lay in sackcloth, and went softly.
“Jehoram also rent his clothes, and the people look-
ed, and behold he had sackcloth upon his flesh;” yet
in the very act of his humiliation he could say, “God
do so, and more also to me, iſ the head of Elisha shall.
stand on him this day.
“Therefore saith the Lord, They have not cried unto
me with their heart, when they howled upon their beds.
They return, but not to the Most High. Hosea vii.
“And Judas said, I have sinned, in that I have be-
trayed innocent blood. •
“And Simon Magus said, Pray ye to the Lord for
me, that none of these things come upon me.”
All these took the pains both to confess and to repent
in their own words, and many of them in their own
tears, not in David's. But transported" with the vain
ostentation of imitating David's language, not his life,
observe how he brings a curse upon himself and his
father's house (God so disposing it) by his usurped and
ill-imitated prayer, “Let thy anger I beseech thee be
against me and my father's house; as for these sheep,
what have they done?” For if David indeed sinned in
numbering the people, of which fault he in earnest
made that confession, and acquitted the whole people
from the guilt of that sin; then doth this king, using
the same words, bear witness against himself to be the
guilty person; and either in his soul and conscience
here acquits the parliament and the people, or else
abuses the words of David, and dissembles grossly to
the very face of God; which is apparent in the next
line; wherein he accuses even the church itself to God,
as if she were the church's enemy, for having overcome
his tyranny by the powerful and miraculous might of
God's manifest arm : For to other strength, in the midst
of our divisions and disorders, who can attribute our
victories 2 Thus had this miserable man no worse ene-
mies to solicit and mature his own destruction, from
the hastened sentence of divine justice, than the obdu-
rate curses which proceeded against himself out of his
own mouth.
Hitherto his meditations, now his vows; which, as
the vows of hypocrites use to be, are most commonly
absurd, and some wicked. Jacob vowed, that God
should be his God, if he granted him but what was ne-
cessary to perform that vow, life and subsistence; but
the obedience proffered here is nothing so cheap. He,
who took so heinously to be offered nineteen proposi-
tions from the parliament, capitulates here with God
almost in as many articles.
“If he will continue that light,” or rather that dark-
ness of the gospel, which is among his prelates, settle
their luxuries, and make them gorgeous bishops;
If he will “restore” the grievances and mischiefs of
those obsolete and popish laws, which the parliament
without his consent had abrogated, and will suffer jus-
tice to be executed according to his sense;
“If he will suppress the many schisms in church,”
to contradict himself in that which he hath foretold
must and shall come to pass, and will remove reforma-
tion as the greatest schism of all, and factions in state,
by which he means in every leaf the parliament;
If he will “restore him” to his negative voice and
the militia, as much as to say, to arbitrary power, which
he wrongfully avers to be the “right of his prede-
cessors;” -
“If he will turn the hearts of his people” to their
old cathedral and parochial service in the liturgy, and
their passive obedience to the king;
“If he will quench” the army, and withdraw our
forces from withstanding the piracy of Rupert, and the
plotted Irish invasion;
“If he will bless him with the freedom” of bishops
again in the house of peers, and of fugitive delinquents
in the house of commons, and deliver the honour of par-
liament into his hands, from the most natural and due
protection of the people, that entrusted them with the
dangerous enterprise of being faithful to their coun-
try against the rage and malice of his tyrannous oppo-
sition ;
“If he will keep him from that great offence” of
following the counsel of his parliament, and enacting
what they advise him to ; which in all reason, and by
the known law, and oath of his coronation, he ought to
do, and not to call that sacrilege, which necessity
through the continuance of his own civil war hath com-
pelled him to ; necessity, which made David eat the
shewbread, made Ezekiah take all the silver which
was found in God's house, and cut off the gold which
overlaid those doors and pillars, and gave it to Sena-
cherib ; necessity, which ofttimes made the primitive
church to sell her sacred utensils, even to the commu-
nion-chalice ;
“If he will restore him to a capacity of glorifying
him by doing” that both in church and state, which
must needs dishonour and pollute his name;
“If he will bring him again with peace, honour,
and safety, to his chief city,” without repenting, with-
out satisfying for the blood spilt, only for a few politic
concessions, which are as good as nothing ;
“If he will put again the sword into his hand, to
punish" those that have delivered us, and to protect
delinquents against the justice of parliament;
Then, if it be possible to reconcile contradictions, he
will praise him by displeasing him, and serve him by
disserving him.
AN ANSWER TO
EIKON BASILIKE. 327
“His glory,” in the gaudy copes and painted win-
dows, mitres, rochets, altars, and the chaunted service-
book, “shall be dearer to him,” than the establishing
his crown in righteousness, and the spiritual power of
religion.
“He will pardon those that have offended him in
particular,” but there shall want no subtle ways to be
even with them upon another score of their supposed
offences against the commonwealth ; whereby he may
at once affect the glory of a seeming justice, and de-
stroy them pleasantly, while he feigns to forgive them
as to his own particular, and outwardly bewails them.
These are the conditions of his treating with God, to
whom he bates nothing of what he stood upon with the
parliament: as if commissions of array could deal with
him also.
But of all these conditions, as it is now evident in our
eyes, God accepted none, but that final petition, which
he so oft, no doubt but by the secret judgment of God,
importunes against his own head; praying God, “That
his mercies might be so toward him, as his resolutions
of truth and peace were toward his people.” It follows
then, God having cut him off, without granting any of
these mercies, that his resolutions were as ſeigned, as
his vows were frustrate.
XXVI. Upon the Army's surprisal of the King at
Holmby.
To give account to royalists what was done with
their vanquished king, yielded up into our hands, is
not to be expected from them, whom God hath made
his conquerors. And for brethren to debate and rip up
their falling out in the ear of a common enemy, thereby
making him the judge, or at least the well-pleased au-
ditor of their disagreement, is neither wise nor comely.
To the king therefore, were he living, or to his party
yet remaining, as to this action, there belongs no an-
swer. Emulations, all men know, are incident among
military men, and are, if they exceed not, pardonable.
But some of the former army, eminent enough for their
own martial deeds, and prevalent in the house of com-
mons, touched with envy to be so far outdone by a
new model which they contemned, took advantage of
presbyterian and independent names, and the viru-
lence of some ministers, to raise disturbance. And
the war being then ended, thought slightly to have
discarded them who had faithfully done the work,
withofit their due pay, and the reward of their invinci-
ble valour. But they who had the sword yet in their
hands, disdaining to be made the first objects of in-
gratitude and oppression, after all that expense of their
blood for justice, and the common liberty, seized upon
the king their prisoner, whom nothing but their match-
less deeds had brought so low as to surrender up his
person : though he, to stir up new discord, chose rather
to give up himself a captive to his own countrymen,
who less had won him. This in likelihood might
have grown to some height of mischief, partly through
the strife which was kindling between our elder and
our younger warriors, but chiefly through the seditious
tongues of some false ministers, more zealous against
schisms, than against their own simony and plurali-
ties, or watchful of the common enemy, whose subtile
insinuations had got so far in among them, as with ail
diligence to blow the coals. But it pleased God, not
to embroil and put to confusion his whole people for
the perverseness of a few. The growth of our dissen-
sion was either prevented, or soon quieted : the enemy
soon deceived of his rejoicing, and the king especially
disappointed of not the meanest morsel that his hope
presented him, to ruin us by our division. And being
now so nigh the end, we may the better be at leisure to
stay a while, and hear him commenting upon his own
captivity. s’
He saith of his surprisal, that it was a “motion ec-
centric and irregular.” What then 2 his own allusion
from the celestial bodies puts us in mind, that irregular
motions may be necessary on earth sometimes, as well
as constantly in heaven. This is not always best,
which is most regular to written law. Great worthies
heretofore by disobeying law, ofttimes have saved
the commonwealth; and the law afterward by firm
decree hath approved that planetary motion, that un-
blamable exorbitancy in them.
He means no good to either independent or presby-
terian, and yet his parable, like that of Balaam, is
overruled to portend them good, far beside his inten-
tion. Those twins, that strove enclosed in the womb
of Rebecca, were the seed of Abraham ; the younger
undoubtedly gained the heavenly birthright; the el-
der, though supplanted in his simile, shall yet no ques-
tion find a better portion than Esau found, and far
above his uncircumcised prelates.
He censures, and in censuring seems to hope it will
be an ill omen, that they who build Jerusalem divided
their tongues and hands. But his hope failed him
with his example; for that there were divisions both
of tongues and hands at the building of Jerusalem, the
story would have certified him ; and yet the work
prospered; and if God will, so may this, notwithstand-
ing all the craft and malignant wiles of Sanballat and
Tobiah, adding what fuel they can to our dissensions;
or the indignity of his comparison, that likens us to
those seditious zealots, whose intestine fury brought
destruction to the last Jerusalem.
It being now no more in his hand to be revenged on
his opposers, he seeks to satiate his fancy with the
imagination of some revenge upon them from above;
and like one who in a drowth o! serves the sky, he sits
and watches when any thing will drop, that might so-
lace him with the likeness of a punishment from Hea-
ven upon us; which he straight expounds how he
pleases. No evil can befal the parliament or city, but
he positively interprets it a judgment upon them for
his sake : as iſ the very manuscript of God’s judg-
ments had been delivered to his custody and exposition.
But his reading declares it well to be a false copy
which he uses; dispensing often to his own bad deeds
and successes the testimony of divine favour, and to
328 AN ANSWER TO
EIRON BASILIKE.
the good deeds and successes of other men divine
wrath and vengeance. But to counterfeit the hand
of God, is the boldest of all forgery: And he who
without warrant, but his own fantastic surmise,
takes upon him perpetually to unfold the secret and
unsearchable mysteries of high providence, is likely
for the most part to mistake and slander them; and
approaches to the madness of those reprobate thoughts,
that would wrest the sword of justice out of God's
hand, and employ it more justly in their own conceit.
It was a small thing, to contend with the parliament
about the sole power of the militia, when we see him
doing little less than laying hands on the weapons of
God himself, which are his judgments, to wield and
manage them by the sway and bent of his own frail
cogitations. Therefore “they that by tumults first oc-
casioned the raising of armies” in his doom must needs
“be chastened by their own army for new tumults.”
First, note here his confession, that those tumults
were the first occasion of raising armies, and by con-
sequence that he himself raised them first, against those
supposed tumults. But who occasioned those tumults,
or who made them so, being at first nothing more than
the unarmed and peaceable concourse of people, hath
been discussed already. And that those pretended tu-
mults were chastised by their own army for new tu-
mults, is not proved by a game at tic-tac with words;
“tumults and armies, armies and tumults,” but seems
more like the method of a justice irrational than divine.
If the city were chastened by the army for new tu-
mults, the reason is by himself set down evident and
immediate, “their new tumults.” With what sense
can it be referred then to another far-fetched and ima-
ginary cause, that happened so many years before, and
in his supposition only as a cause 2 Manlius defended
the Capitol and the Romans from their enemies the
Gauls: Manlius for sedition afterward was by the Ro-
mans thrown headlong from the Capitol ; therefore
Manlius was punished by divine justice for defending
the Capitol, because in that place punished for sedi-
tion, and by those whom he defended. This is his logic
upon divine justice; and was the same before upon
the death of Sir John Hotham. And here again, “such
as were content to see him driven away by unsup-
pressed tumults, are now forced to fly to an army.”
Was this a judgment? Was it not a mercy rather, that
they had a noble and victorious army so near at hand
to fly to 2
From God's justice he comes down to man's justice.
Those few of both houses, who at first withdrew with
him for the vain pretence of tumults, were counted de-
serters; therefore those many must be also deserters,
who withdrew afterwards from real tumults: as if it
were the place that made a parliament, and not the
end and cause. Because it is denied that those were
tumults, from which the king made shew of being
driven, is it therefore of necessity implied, that there
could be never any tumults for the future ? If some
men fly in craft, may not other men have cause to fly
in earnest ? But mark the difference between their
flight and his; they soon returned in safety to their
places, he not till after many years, and then a captive
to receive his punishment. So that their flying, whe-
ther the cause be considered, or the event, or both,
neither justified him, nor condemned themselves.
But he will needs have vengeance to pursue and
overtake them ; though to bring it in, it cost him an
inconvenient and obnoxious comparison, “As the mice
and rats overtook a German bishop.” I would our
mice and rats had been as orthodoxal here, and had so
pursued all his bishops out of England; then vermin
had rid away vermin, which now hath lost the lives of
too many thousand honest men to do.
“He cannot but observe this divine justice, yet with
sorrow and pity.” But sorrow and pity in a weak and
overmastered enemy is looked upon no otherwise than
as the ashes of his revenge burnt out upon himself; or
as the damp of a cooled fury, when we say, it gives.
But in this manner to sit spelling and observing divine
justice upon every accident and slight disturbance, that
may happen humanly to the affairs of men, is but an-
other fragment of his broken revenge; and yet the
shrewdest and the cunningest obloquy, that can be
thrown upon their actions. Tor if he can persuade
men, that the parliament and their cause is pursued
with divine vengeance, he hath attained his end, to
make all men forsake them, and think the worst that
can be thought of them.
Nor is he only content to suborn divine justice in his
censure of what is past, but he assumes the person of
Christ himself, to prognosticate over us what he wishes
would come. So little is any thing or person sacred
from him, no not in heaven, which he will not use,
and put on, if it may serve him plausibly to wreak his
spleen, or ease his mind upon the parliament. Although,
if ever fatal blindness did both attend and punish wil-
fulness, if ever any enjoyed not comforts for neglecting
counsel belonging to their peace, it was in none more
conspicuously brought to pass than in himself: and his
predictions against the parliament and their adherents
have for the most part been verified upon his own head,
and upon his chief counsellors.
He concludes with high praises of the army. But
praises in an enemy are superfluous, or smell of craſt;
and the army shall not need his praises, nor the par-
liament fare worse for his accusing prayers that follow.
Wherein, as his charity can be no way comparable to
that of Christ, so neither can his assurance, that they
whom he seems to pray for, in doing what they did
against him, “knew not what they did.” It was but
arrogance therefore, and not charity, to lay such ignor-
ance to others in the sight of God, till he himself had
been infallible, like him whose peculiar words he over-
weeningly assumes.
XXVII. Entitled, To the Prince of Wales.
WHAT the king wrote to his son, as a father, con-
cerns not us; what he wrote to him as a king of Eng-
land, concerns not him; God and the parliament having
AN ANSWER TO EIKON BASILIKE.
329
now otherwise disposed of England. But because I
see it done with some artifice and labour, to possess the
people, that they might amend their present condition,
by his, or by his son's restorement, I shall shew point
by point, that although the king had been reinstalled
to his desire, or that his son admitted should observe
exactly all his father's precepts, yet that this would be
so far from conducing to our happiness, either as a re-
medy to the present distempers, or a prevention of the
like to come, that it would inevitably throw us back
again into all our past and fulfilled miseries; would
force us to fight over again all our tedious wars, and
put us to another fatal struggling for liberty and life,
more dubious than the former. In which, as our suc-
cess hath been no other than our cause ; so it will be
evident to all posterity, that his misfortunes were the
mere consequence of his perverse judgment.
First, he argues from the experience of those troubles,
which both he and his son have had, to the improvement
of their piety and patience; and by the way bears
witness in his own words, that the corrupt education
of his youth, which was but glanced at only in some
former passages of this answer, was a thing neither of
mean consideration, nor untruly charged upon him or
his son: himself confessing here, that “court-delights
are prone either to root up all true virtue and honour,
or to be contented only with some leaves and withering
formalities of them, without any real fruits tending to
the public good.” Which presents him still in his own
words another Rehoboam, softened by a far worse
court than Solomon's, and so corrupted by flatteries,
which he affirms to be unseparable, to the overturning
of all peace, and the loss of his own honour and king-
doms. That he came therefore thus bred up and nur-
tured to the throne far worse than Rehoboam, unless
he be of those who equalized his father to King Solomon,
we have here his own confession. And how voluptu-
ously, how idly reigning in the hands of other men, he
either tyrannized or trifled away those seventeen years
of peace, without care or thought, as if to be a king
had been nothing else in his apprehension, but to eat
and drink, and have his will, and take his pleasure;
though there be who can relate his domestic life to the
exactness of a diary, there shall be here no mention
made. This yet we might have then foreseen, that he
who spent his leisure so remissly and so corruptly to
his own pleasing, would one day or other be worse
busied and employed to our sorrow. And that he acted
in good earnest what Rehoboam did but threaten, to
make his little finger heavier than his father's loins,
and to whip us up with two-twisted scorpions, both
temporal and spiritual tyranny, all his kingdoms have
felt. What good use he made afterwards of his adver-
sity, both his impenitence and obstimacy to the end, (for
he was no Manasseh,) and the sequel of these his medi-
tated resolutions, abundantly express: retaining, com-
mending, teaching, to his son all those putrid and
pernicious documents both of state and of religion, in-
stilled by wicked doctors, and received by him as in a
vessel nothing better seasoned, which were the first
occasion both of his own and all our miseries.
And if
be, in the best maturity of his years and understanding,
made no better use to himself or others of his so long
and manifold afflictions, either looking up to God, or
looking down upon the reason of his own affairs;
there can be no probability, that his son, bred up, not
in the soft effeminacies of a court only, but in the rug-
ged and more boisterous licence of undisciplined camps
and garrisons, for years unable to reflect with judgment
upon his own condition, and thus ill instructed by his
father, should give his mind to walk by any other rules
than these, bequeathed him as on his father's death-bed,
and as the choicest of all that experience, which his
most serious observation and retirement in good or evil
days had taught him. David indeed, by suffering
without just cause, learned that meekness and that wis-
dom by adversity, which made him much the fitter man
to reign. But they who suffer as oppressors, tyrants,
violaters of law, and persecutors of reformation, with-
out appearance of repenting ; if they once get hold
again of that dignity and power, which they had lost,
are but whetted and enraged by what they suffered,
against those whom they look upon as them that caused
their sufferings.
How he hath been “subject to the sceptre of God's
word and spirit,” though acknowledged to be the best
government; and what his dispensation of civil power
hath been, with what justice, and what honour to the
public peace; it is but looking back upon the whole
catalogue of his deeds, and that will be sufficient to
remember us. “The cup of God's physic,” as he calls
it, what alteration it wrought in him to a firm health-
fulness from any surfeit, or excess whereof the people
generally thought him sick, if any man would go about
to prove, we have his own testimony following here,
that it wrought none at all.
First, he hath the same fixed opinion and esteem of
his old Ephesian goddess, called the Church of England,
as he had ever; and charges strictly his son after him
to persevere in that antipapal schism, (for it is not much
better,) as that which will be necessary both for his soul's
and the kingdom's peace. But if this can be any foun-
dation of the kingdom's peace, which was the first cause
of our distractions, let common sense be judge. It is a
rule and principle worthy to be known by Christians,
that no scripture, no nor so much as any ancient creed,
binds our faith, or our obedience to any church what-
soever, denominated by a particular name; far less, if
it be distinguished by a several government from that
which is indeed catholic. No man was ever bid be
subject to the church of Corinth, Rome, or Asia, but to
the church without addition, as it held faithful to the
rules of Scripture, and the government established in
all places by the apostles; which at first was uni-
versally the same in all churches and congregations;
not differing or distinguished by the diversity of coun-
tries, territories, or civil bounds. That church, that
from the name of a distinct place takes authority to set
up a distinct faith or government, is a schism and ſac-
tion, not a church. It were an injury to condemn the
papist of absurdity and contradiction, for adhering to
his catholic Romish religion, if we, for the pleasure of
330
AN ANSWER TO EIRCON BASILIICE.
a king and his politic considerations, shall adhere to a
catholic English.
But suppose the church of England were as it ought
to be, how is it to us the safer by being so named and
established, whenas that very name and establishment,
by this contriving, or approbation, served for nothing
else but to delude us and amuse us, while the church of
England insensibly was almost changed and translated
into the church of Rome. Which as every man knows
in general to be true, so the particular treaties and
transactions tending to that conclusion are at large
discovered in a book entitled the “English Pope.”
But when the people, discerning these abuses, began
to call for reformation, in order to which the parliament
demanded of the king to unestablish that prelatical
government, which without Scripture had usurped over
us; straight as Pharaoh accused of idleness the Israel-
ites that sought leave to go and sacrifice to God, he
lays faction to their charge. And that we may not
hope to have ever any thing reformed in the church
either by him or his son, he forewarns him, “that the
devil of rebellion doth most commonly turn himself
into an angel of reformation :” and says enough to
make him hate it, as the worst of evils, and the bane
of his crown : nay he counsels him to “let nothing
seem little or despicable to him, so as not speedily and
effectually to suppress errours and schisms.” Whereby
we may perceive plainly, that our consciences were
destined to the same servitude and persecution, if not
worse than before, whether under him, or if it should
so happen, under his son ; who count all protestant
churches erroneous and schismatical, which are not
episcopal. His next precept is concerning our civil
liberties; which by his sole voice and predominant
will must be circumscribed, and not permitted to ex-
tend a hand's breadth further than his interpretation of
the laws already settled. And although all human
laws are but the offspring of that frailty, that fallibility
and imperfection, which was in their authors, whereby
many laws in the change of ignorant and obscure ages,
may be found both scandalous, and full of grievance to
their posterity that made them, and no law is further
good than mutable upon just occasion ; yet if the re-
moving of an old law, or the making of a new, would
save the kingdom, we shall not have it, unless his arbi-
trary voice will so far slacken the stiff curb of his pre-
rogative, as to grant it us; who are as freeborn to make
our own laws, as our fathers were, who made these we
have. Where are then the English liberties, which we
boast to have been left us by our progenitors 2 To that
he answers, that “our liberties consist in the enjoy-
ment of the fruits of our industry, and the benefit of
those laws, to which we ourselves have consented.”
Tirst, for the enjoyment of those fruits, which our in-
dustry and labours have made our own upon our own,
what privilege is that above what the Turks, Jews,
and Moors enjoy under the Turkish monarchy P For
without that kind of justice, which is also in Algiers,
among thieves and pirates between themselves, no
kind of government, no society, just or unjust, could
stand; no combination or conspiracy could stick toge-
gether. Which he also acknowledges in these words:
“that if the crown upon his head be so heavy as to
oppress the whole body, the weakness of inferiour
members cannot return any thing of strength, honour,
or safety to the head; but that a necessary debilitation
must follow.” So that this liberty of this subject con-
cerns himself and the subsistence of his own regal
power in the first place, and before the consideration of
any right belonging to the subject. We expect there-
fore something more, that must distinguish free go-
vernment from slavish. But instead of that, this
king, though ever talking and protesting as smooth as
now, suffered it in his own hearing to be preached
and pleaded without control or check, by them whom
he most favoured and upheld, that the subject had
no property of his own goods, but that all was the
king's right.
Next, for the “benefit of those laws, to which we
ourselves have consented,” we never had it under him;
for not to speak of laws ill executed, when the parlia-
ment, and in them the people, have consented to divers
laws, and, according to our ancient rights, demanded
them, he took upon him to have a negative will, as the
transcendent and ultimate law above all our laws; and
to rule us forcibly by laws, to which we ourselves did
not consent, but complained of. Thus these two heads,
wherein the utmost of his allowance here will give our
liberties leave to consist, the one of them shall be so ſar
only made good to us, as may support his own interest
and crown from ruin or debilitation ; and so far Turkish
vassals enjoy as much liberty under Mahomet and the
Grand Signior: the other we neither yet have enjoyed
under him, nor were ever like to do under the tyranny
of a negative voice, which he claims above the unani-
mous consent and power of a whole nation, virtually in
the parliament.
In which negative voice to have been cast by the
doom of war, and put to death by those who vanquished
him in their own defence, he reckons to himself more
than a negative martyrdom. But martyrs bear witness
to the truth, not to themselves. If I bear witness of
myself, saith Christ, my witness is not true. He who
writes himself martyr by his own inscription, is like an
ill painter, who, by writing on a shapeless picture
which he hath drawn, is fain to tell passengers what
shape it is: which else no man could imagine: no
more than how a martyrdom can belong to him, who
therefore dies for his religion, because it is established.
Certainly if Agrippa had turned Christian, as he was
once turning, and had put to death scribes and Phari-
sees for observing the law of Moses, and refusing
Christianity, they had died a truer martyrdom. For
those laws were established by God and Moses, these
by no warrantable authors of religion, whose laws in
all other best reformed churches are rejected. And if
to die for an establishment of religion be martyrdom,
then Romish priests executed for that, which had so
many hundred years been established in this land, are
no worse martyrs than he. Lastly, if to die for the
testimony of his own conscience, be enough to make
him a martyr, what heretic dying for direct blasphemy,
AN ANSWER TO EIKON BASILIKE.
331
as some have done constantly, may not boast a martyr-
dom? As for the constitution or repeal of civil laws,
that power lying only in the parliament, which he by
the very law of his coronation was to grant them, not
to debar them, not to preserve a lesser law with the
contempt and violation of a greater; it will conclude
him not so much as in a civil and metaphorical sense
to have died a martyr of our laws, but a plain trans-
gressor of them. And should the parliament, endued
with legislative power, make our laws, and be after to
dispute them piece-meal with the reason, conscience,
humour, passion, fancy, folly, obstinacy, or other ends
of one man, whose sole word and will shall baffle and
unmake what all the wisdom of a parliament hath
been deliberately framing ; what a ridiculous and con-
temptible thing a parliament would soon be, and what
a base unworthy nation we, who boºst our freedom,
and send them with the manifest peril of their lives to
preserve it, they who are not marked by destiny for
slaves may apprehend In this servile condition to
have kept us still under hatches, he both resolves here
to the last, and so instructs his son.
As to those offered condescensions of a “charitable
connivance, or toleration,” if we consider what went
before, and what follows, they moulder into nothing.
For, what with not suffering ever so little to seem a
despicable schism, without effectual suppression, as he
warned him before, and what with no opposition of
law, government, or established religion to be permit-
ted, which is his following proviso, and wholly within
his own construction; what a miserable and suspected
toleration, under spies and haunting promooters, we
should enjoy, is apparent. Besides that it is so far be-
neath the honour of a parliament and free nation, to
beg and supplicate the godship of one frail man, for
the bare and simple toleration of what they all consent
to be both just, pious, and best pleasing to God, while
that which is erroneous, unjust, and mischievous in
the church or state, shall by him alone against them
all be kept up and established, and they censured the
while for a covetous, ambitious, and sacrilegious fac-
tion.
Another bait to allure the people is the charge he
lays upon his son to be tender of them. Which if we
should believe in part, because they are his herd, his
cattle, the stock upon his ground, as he accounts them,
whom to waste and destroy would undo himself, yet
the inducement, which he brings to move him, renders
the motion itself something suspicious. For if princes
need no palliations, as he tells his son, wherefore is it
that he himself hath so often used them 2 Princes, of
all other men, have not more change of raiment in
their wardrobes, than variety of shifts and palliations
in their solemn actings and pretences to the people.
To try next if he can ensnare the prime men of those
who have opposed him, whom, more truly than his
meaning was, he calls the “patrons and vindicators of
the people,” he gives out indemnity, and offers acts of
oblivion. But they who with a good conscience and
upright heart did their civil duties in the sight of God,
and in their several places, to resist tyranny and the
violence of superstition banded both against them, he
may be sure will never seek to be forgiven that, which
may be justly attributed to their immortal praise; nor
will assent ever to the guilty blotting out of those ac-
tions before men, by which their faith assures them
they chiefly stand approved, and are had in remem-
brance before the throne of God.
He exhorts his son “not to study revenge.” But
how far he, or at least they about him, intend to follow
that exhortation, was seen lately at the Hague, and
now lateliest at Madrid; where to execute in the basest
manner, though but the smallest part of that savage
and barbarous revenge, which they do nothing else but
study and contemplate, they cared not to let the world
know them for professed traitors and assassinators of
all law both divine and human, even of that last and
most extensive law kept inviolable to public persons
among all fair enemies in the midst of uttermost defiance
and hostility. How implacable therefore they would be,
after any terms of closure or admittance for the future,
or any like opportunity given them hereaſter, it will
be wisdom and our safety to believe rather, and prevent,
than to make trial. And it will concern the multitude,
though courted here, to take heed how they seek to
hide or colour their own fickleness and instability with
a bad repentance of their well-doing, and their fidelity
to the better cause ; to which at first so cheerfully and
conscientiously they joined themselves.
He returns again to extol the church of England,
and again requires his son by the joint authority of “a
father and a king, not to let his heart receive the least
check or disaffection against it.” And not without
cause, for by that means, “having sole influence upon
the clergy, and they upon the people, after long search
and many disputes,” he could not possibly find a more
compendious and politic way to uphold and settle ty-
ranny, than by subduing first the consciences of vulgar
men, with the insensible poison of their slavish doc-
trine: for then the body and besotted mind without
much reluctancy was likeliest to admit the yoke.
He commends also “parliaments held with freedom
and with honour.” But I would ask how that can be,
while he only must be the sole free person in that num-
ber; and would have the power with his unaccountable
denial, to dishonour them by rejecting all their coun-
sels, to confine their lawgiving power, which is the
foundation of our freedom, and to change at his plea-
sure the very name of a parliament into the name of a
faction.
The conclusion therefore must needs be quite con-
trary to what he concludes; that nothing can be more
unhappy, more dishonourable, more unsafe for all, than
when a wise, grave, and honourable parliament shall
have laboured, debated, argued, consulted, and, as he
himself speaks, “contributed” for the public good all
their counsels in common, to be then frustrated, disap-
pointed, denied and repulsed by the single whiff of a
negative, from the mouth of one wilful man ; nay, to
be blasted, to be struck as mute and motionless as a
parliament of tapestry in the hangings; or else after
all their pains and travel to be dissolved, and cast away
332
AN ANSWER TO EIKON BASILIKE.
like so many noughts in arithmetic, unless it be to
turn the O of their insignificance into a lamentation
with the people, who had so vainly sent them. For
this is not to “enact all things by public consent,” as
he would have us be persuaded, this is to enact nothing
but by the private consent and leave of one not nega-
tive tyrant; this is mischief without remedy, a stifling
and obstructing evil that hath no vent, no outlet, no
passage through : grant him this, and the parliament
hath no more freedom than if it sate in his moose, which
when he pleases to draw together with one twitch of
his negative, shall throttle a whole nation, to the wish
of Caligula, in one neck. This with the power of the
militia in his own hands over our bodies and estates,
and the prelates to enthral our consciences either by
fraud or force, is the sum of that happiness and liberty
we were to look for, whether in his own restitution, or
in these precepts given to his son. Which unavoidably
would have set us in the same state of misery, wherein
we were before; and have either compelled us to sub-
mit like bondslaves, or put us back to a second wan-
dering over that horrid wilderness of distraction and
civil slaughter, which, not without the strong and
miraculous hand of God assisting us, we have mea-
sured out, and survived. And who knows, if we make
so slight of this incomparable deliverance, which God
bath bestowed upon us, but that we shall, like those
foolish Israelites, who deposed God and Samuel to set
up a king, “cry out” one day, “because of our king,”
which we have been mad upon ; and then God, as he
foretold them, will no more deliver us.
There remains now but little more of his discourse,
whereof to take a short view will not be amiss. His
words make semblance as if he were magnanimously
exercising himself, and so teaching his son, “to want
as well as to wear a crown;” and would seem to account
it “not worth taking up or enjoying, upon sordid,
dishonourable, and irreligious terms;” and yet to his
very last did nothing more industriously, than strive to
take up and enjoy again his sequestered crown, upon
the most sordid, disloyal, dishonourable, and irreligious
terms, not of making peace only, but of joining and in-
corporating with the murderous Irish, formerly by him-
self declared against, for “wicked and detestable rebels,
odious to God and all good men.” And who but those
rebels now are the chief strength and confidence of his
son 2 While the presbyter Scot that woos and solicits
him, is neglected and put off, as if no terms were to
him sordid, irreligious, and dishonourable, but the Scot-
tish and presbyterian, never to be complied with, till
the fear of instant perishing starve him out at length to
some unsound and hypocritical agreement.
He bids his son “keep to the true principles of piety,
virtue, and honour, and he shall never want a king-
dom.” And I say, people of England 1 keep ye to
those principles, and ye shall never want a king. Nay,
after such a fair deliverance as this, with so much for-
titude and valour shewn against a tyrant, that people
that should seek a king, claiming what this man claims,
would shew themselves to be by nature slaves, and ar-
rant beasts; not fit for that liberty, which they cried
out and bellowed for, but fitter to be led back again
into their old servitude, like a sort of clamouring and
fighting brutes, broke loose from their copy-holds, that
know not how to use or possess the liberty which they
ſought for; but with the fair words and promises of an
old exasperated foe, are ready to be stroked and tamed
again, into the wonted and well-pleasing state of their
true Norman villanage, to them best agreeable.
The last sentence, whereon he seems to venture
the whole weight of all his former reasons and argu-
mentations, “That religion to their God, and loyalty
to their king, cannot be parted, without the sin and in-
felicity of a people,” is contrary to the plain teaching
of Christ, that “No man can serve two masters; but, if
he hold to the one, he must reject and forsake the
other.” If God, then, and earthly kings be for the
most part not several only, but opposite masters, it will
as oft happen, that they who will serve their king must
forsake their God; and they who will serve God must
forsake their king; which then will neither be their sin,
nor their infelicity; but their wisdom, their piety, and
their true happiness; as to be deluded by these unsound
and subtle ostentations here, would be their misery;
and in all likelihood much greater than what they
hitherto have undergone : if now again intoxicated
and moped with these royal, and therefore so delicious
because royal, rudiments of bondage, the cup of
deception, spiced and tempered to their bane, they
should deliver up themselves to these glozing words
and illusions of him, whose rage and utmost violence
they have sustained, and overcome so nobly.
XXVIII. Entitled Meditations upon Death.
IT might be well thought by him, who reads no fur-
ther than the title of this last essay, that it required no
answer. For all other human things are disputed, and
will be variously thought of to the world's end. But
this business of death is a plain case, and admits no
controversy: in that centre all opinions meet. Never-
theless, since out of those few mortifying hours, that
should have been intirest to themselves, and most at
peace from all passion and disquiet, he can afford spare
time to inveigh bitterly against that justice which was
done upon him; it will be needful to say something in
defence of those proceedings, though briefly, in regard
so much on this subject hath been written lately.
It happened once, as we find in Esdras and Jose-
phus, authors not less believed than any under sacred,
to be a great and solemn debate in the court of Darius,
what thing was to be counted strongest of all other.
He that could resolve this, in reward of his excellent
wisdom, should be clad in purple, drink in gold, sleep
on a bed of gold, and sit next Darius. None but they
doubtless who were reputed wise, had the question
propounded to them : who after some respite given
them by the king to consider, in full assembly of all
his lords and gravest counsellors, returned severally
what they thought. The first held, that wine was
AN ANSWER TO EIKON BASILIKE.
333
strongest, another that the king was strongest. But
Zorobabel prince of the captive Jews, and heir to the
crown of Judah, being one of them, proved women to
be stronger than the king, for that he himself had seen
a concubine take his crown from off his head to set it
upon her own ; and others besides him have likewise
seen the like feat done, and not in jest. Yet he proved
on, and it was so yielded by the king himself, and all
his sages, that neither wine, nor women, nor the king,
but truth of all other things was the strongest. For
me, though neither asked, nor in a nation that gives
such rewards to wisdom, I shall pronounce my sen-
tence somewhat different from Zorobabel; and shall
defend that either truth and justice are all one, (for
truth is but justice in our knowledge, and justice is but
truth in our practice; and he indeed so explains him-
self, in saying that with truth is no accepting of per-
sons, which is the property of justice,) or else if there
be any odds, that justice, though not stronger than
truth, yet by her office is to put forth and exhibit more
strength in the affairs of mankind. For truth is pro-
perly no more than contemplation; and her utmost ef-
ficiency is but teaching : but justice in her very es-
sence is all strength and activity; and hath a sword
put into her hand, to use against all violence and op-
pression on the earth. She it is most truly, who ac-
cepts no person, and exempts none from the severity of
her stroke. She never suffers injury to prevail, but
when falsehood first prevails over truth; and that also
is a kind of justice done on them who are so deluded.
Though wicked kings and tyrants counterfeit her
sword, as some did that buckler, fabled to fall from
heaven into the capitol, yet she communicates her
power to none but such as like herself are just, or at
least will do justice. For it were extreme partiality
and injustice, the flat denial and overthrow of herself,
to put her own authentic sword into the hand of an un-
just and wicked man, or so far to accept and exalt one
mortal person above his equals, that he alone shall
have the punishing of all other men transgressing,
and not receive like punishment from men, when he
himself shall be found the highest transgressor.
We may conclude therefore, that justice, above all
other things, is and ought to be the strongest : she is
the strength, the kingdom, the power, and majesty of
all ages. Truth herself would subscribe to this, though
Darius and all the monarchs of the world should deny.
And if by sentence thus written, it were my happiness
to set free the minds of Englishmen from longing to
return poorly under that captivity of kings, from which
the strength and supreme sword of justice hath de-
livered them, I shall have done a work not much infe-
riour to that of Zorobabel: who by well praising and
extolling the force of truth, in that contemplative
strength conquered Darius; and freed his country and
the people of God, from the captivity of Babylon.
Which I shall yet not despair to do, if they in this
land, whose minds are yet captive, be but as ingenu-
ous to acknowledge the strength and supremacy of
justice, as that heathen king was to confess the strength
of truth: or let them but, as he did, grant that, and
they will soon perceive, that truth resigns all her out-
ward strength to justice : justice therefore must needs
be strongest, both in her own, and in the strength of
truth. But if a king may do among men whatsoever
is his will and pleasure, and notwithstanding be unac-
countable to men, then contrary to his magnified wis-
dom of Zorobabel, neither truth nor justice, but the
king, is strongest of all other things, which that Persian
monarch himself, in the midst of all his pride and glory,
durst not assume.
Let us see therefore what this king hath to affirm,
why the sentence of justice, and the weight of that
sword, which she delivers into the hands of men, should
be more partial to him offending, than to all others of
human race. First, he pleads, that “no law of God or
man gives to subjects any power of judicature without
or against him.” Which assertion shall be proved in
every part to be most untrue. The first express law of
God given to mankind was that to Noah, as a law, in
general, to all the sons of men. And by that most an-
cient and universal law, “Whosoever sheddeth man’s
blood, by man shall his blood be shed;” we find here
no exception. If a king therefore do this, to a king,
and that by men also, the same shall be done. This
in the law of Moses, which came next, several times
is repeated, and in one place remarkably, Numb.
xxxv. “Ye shall take no satisfaction for the life of
a murderer, but he shall surely be put to death : the
land cannot be cleansed of the blood that is shed
therein, but by the blood of him that shed it.” This
is so spoken as that which concerned all Israel, not
one man alone, to see performed ; and if no satis-
faction were to be taken, then certainly no exception.
Nay the king, when they should set up any, was to
observe the whole law, and not only to see it done,
but to “do it ; that his heart might not be lifted up
above his brethren ;” to dream of vain and useless pre-
rogatives or exemptions, whereby the law itself must
needs be founded in unrighteousness.
And were that true, which is most false, that all kings
are the Lord's anointed, it were yet absurd to think
that the anointment of God should be, as it were, a
charm against law, and give them privilege, who punish
others, to sin themselves unpunishably. The high
priest was the Lord's anointed as well as any king, and
with the same consecrated oil : yet Solomon had put
to death Abiathar, had it not been for other respects
than that anointment. If God himself say to kings,
“touch not mine anointed,” meaning his chosen people,
as is evident in that psalm, yet no man will argue
thence, that he protects them from civil laws if they
offend; then certainly, though David as a private man,
and in his own cause, feared to lift his hand against
the Lord's anointed, much less can this forbid the law,
or disarm justice from having legal power against any
king. No other supreme magistrate, in what kind of
government soever, lays claim to any such enormous
privilege; wherefore then should any king, who is but
one kind of magistrate, and set over the people for no
other end than they 2
Next in order of time to the laws of Moses are those
J34
AN ANSWER TO EIKON BASILIKE.
of Christ, who declares professedly his judicature to be
spiritual, abstract from civil managements, and there-
fore leaves all nations to their own particular laws, and
way of government. Yet because the church hath a
kind of jurisdiction within her own bounds, and that
also, though in process of time much corrupted and
plainly turned into a corporal judicature, yet much
approved by this king; it will be firm enough and valid
against him, if subjects, by the laws of church also, be
“invested with a power of judicature” both without
and against their king, though pretending, and by
them acknowledged, “next and immediately under
Christ supreme head and governor.” Theodosius, one
of the best christian emperors, having made a slaughter
of the Thessalonians for sedition, but too cruelly, was
excommunicated to his face by St. Ambrose, who was
his subject; and excommunion is the utmost of eccle-
siastical judicature, a spiritual putting to death. But
this, ye will say, was only an example. Read then
the story; and it will appear, both that Ambrose
avouched it for the law of God, and Theodosius con-
fessed it of his own accord to be so; “and that the law
of God was not to be made void in him, for any rever-
ence to his imperial power.” From hence, not to be
tedious, I shall pass into our own land of Britain; and
shew that subjects here have exercised the utmost of
spiritual judicature, and more than spiritual, against
their kings, his predecessors. Vortiger, for committing
incest with his daughter, was by St. German, at that
time his subject, cursed and condemned in a British
counsel about the year 448; and thereupon soon after
was deposed. Mauricus, a king in Wales, for breach
of oath and the murder of Cynetus, was excommuni-
cated and cursed, with all his offspring, by Oudoceus
bishop of Llandaff in full synod, about the year 560;
and not restored, till he had repented. Morcant, an-
other king in Wales, having slain Frioc his uncle, was
fain to come in person, and receive judgment from the
same bishop and his clergy; who upon his penitence
acquitted him, for no other cause than lest the kingdom
should be destitute of a successor in the royal line.
These examples are of the primitive, British, and epis-
copal church; long ere they had any commerce or
communion with the church of Rome. What power
afterwards of deposing kings, and so consequently of
putting them to death, was assumed and practised by
the canon law, I omit, as a thing generally known.
Certainly, if whole councils of the Romish church have
in the midst of their dimness discerned so much of truth,
as to decree at Constance, and at Basil, and many of
them to avouch at Trent also, that a council is above
the pope, and may judge him, though by them not de-
nied to be the vicar of Christ; we in our clearer light
may be ashamed not to discern further, that a parlia-
ment is by all equity and right above a king, and may
judge him, whose reasons and pretensions to hold of
God only, as his immediate vicegerent, we know how
far fetched they are, and insufficient.
As for the laws of man, it would ask a volume to
repeat all that might be cited in this point against him
from all antiquity. In Greece, Orestes, the son of
Agamemnon, and by succession king of Argos, was in
that country judged and condemned to death for kill-
ing his mother: whence escaping, he was judged again,
though a stranger, before the great council of Areopa-
gus in Athens. And this memorable act of judicature
was the first, that brought the justice of that grave
senate into fame and high estimation over all Greece
for many ages after. And in the same city, tyrants
were to undergo legal sentence by the laws of Solon.
The kings of Sparta, though descended lineally from
Hercules, esteemed a god among them, were often
judged, and sometimes put to death, by the most just
and renowned laws of Lycurgus; who, though a king,
thought it most unequal to bind his subjects by any
law, to which he bound not himself. In Rome, the
laws made by Valerius Publicola, soon after the expel-
ling of Tarquin and his race, expelled without a writ-
ten law, the law being afterward written; and what
the senate decreed against Nero, that he should be
judged and punished according to the laws of their
ancestors, and what in like manner was decreed against
other emperors, is vulgarly known ; as it was known
to those heathen, and found just by nature ere any law
mentioned it. And that the christian civil law war-
rants like power of judicature to subjects against
tyrants, is written clearly by the best and famousest
civilians. For if it was decreed by Theodosius, and
stands yet firm in the code of Justinian, that the law
is above the emperor, then certainly the emperor being
under law, the law may judge him ; and if judge him,
may punish him, proving tyrannous: how else is the
law above him, or to what purpose 2 These are neces.
sary deductions; and thereafter hath been done in all
ages and kingdoms, oftener than to be here recited.
But what need we any further search after the law
of other lands, for that which is so fully and so plainly
set down lawful in our own P. Where ancient books tell
us, Bracton, Fleta, and others, that the king is under
law, and inferiour to his court of parliament; that al-
though his place “to do justice” be highest, yet that
he stands as liable “to receive justice” as the meanest
of his kingdom. Nay, Alfred the most worthy king,
and by some accounted first absolute monarch of the
Saxons here, so ordained; as is cited out of an ancient
law-book called “the Mirror;” in “rights of the king-
dom,” p. 31, where it is complained on, “as the sove-
reign abuse of all,” that “the king should be deemed
above the law, whereas he ought to be the subject to
it by his oath.” Of which oath anciently it was the
last clause, that the king “should be as liable, and
obedient to suffer right, as others of his people.” And
indeed it were but fond and senseless, that the king
should be accountable to every petty suit in lesser
courts, as we all know he was, and not be subject
to the judicature of parliament in the main matters of
our common safety or destruction; that he should be
answerable in the ordinary course of law for any wrong
done to a private person, and not answerable in court
of parliament for destroying the whole kingdom. By
all this, and much more that might be added, as in an
argument over-copious rather than barren, we see it
AN ANSWER TO EIKON BASILIKE.
335
manifest that all laws, both of God and man, are made
without exemption of any person whomsoever; and
that if kings presume to overtop the law by which
they reign for the public good, they are by law to be
reduced into order ; and that can no way be more
justly, than by those who exalt them to that high place.
For who should better understand their own laws, and
when they are transgrest, than they who are governed
by them, and whose consent first made them 2 And
who can have more right to take knowledge of things
done within a free nation, than they within them-
selves *
Those objected oaths of allegiance and supremacy
we swore, not to his person, but as it was invested
with his authority; and his authority was by the people
first given him conditionally, in law, and under law,
and under oath also for the kingdom's good, and not
otherwise; the oaths them were interchanged, and mu-
tual; stood and fell together; he swore fidelity to his
trust; (not as a deluding ceremony, but as a real con-
dition of their admitting him for king; and the con-
queror himself swore it oftener than at his crowning ;)
they swore homage and fealty to his person in that
trust. There was no reason why the kingdom should
be further bound by oaths to him, than he by his coro-
nation oath to us, which he bath every way broken :
and having broken, the ancient crown oath of Alfred
above mentioned conceals not his penalty.
As for the covenant, if that be meant, certainly no
discreet person can imagine it should bind us to him in
any stricter sense than those oaths formerly. The acts
of hostility, which we received from him, were no such
dear obligenments, that we should owe him more fealty
and defence for being our enemy, than we could
before when we took him only for a king. They
were accused by him and his party, to pretend liberty
and reformation, but to have no other end than to
make themselves great, and to destroy the king's per-
son and authority. For which reason they added that
third article, testifying to the world, that as they were
resolved to endeavour first a reformation in the church,
to extirpate prelacy, to preserve the rights of parlia-
ment, and the liberties of the kingdom, so they intend-
ed, so far as it might consist with the preservation and
defence of these, to preserve the king's person and au-
thority; but not otherwise. As far as this comes to,
they covenant and swear in the sixth article, to pre-
serve and defend the persons and authority of one an-
other, and all those that enter into that league; so that
this covenant gives no unlimitable exemption to the
king’s person, but gives to all as much defence and
preservation as to him, and to him as much as to their
own persons, and no more; that is to say, in order and
subordination to those main ends, for which we live
and are a nation of men joined in society either chris-
tian, or at least human. But if the covenant were
made absolute, to preserve and defend any one whom-
soever, without respect had, either to the true religion,
or those other superiour things to be defended and pre-
served however, it cannot then be doubted, but that the
covenant was rather a most foolish, hasty, and unlaw-
ful vow, than a deliberate and well-weighed covenant;
swearing us into labyrinths and repugnances, no way
to be solved or reconciled, and therefore no way to be
kept; as first offending against the law of God, to vow
the absolute preservation, defence, and maintaining of
one man, though in his sins and offences never so great
and heinous against God or his neighbour; and to ex-
cept a person from justice, whereas his law excepts
none. Secondly, it offends against the law of this na-
tion, wherein, as hath been proved, kings in receiving
justice, and undergoing due trial, are not differenced
from the meancst subject. Lastly, it contradicts and
offends against the covenant itself, which vows in the
fourth article to bring to open trial and condign punish-
ment all those that shall be found guilty of such crimes
and delinquencies, whereof the king, by his own letters
and other undeniable testimonies not brought to light
till afterward, was found and convicted to be chief
actor in what they thought him, at the time of taking
that covenant, to be overruled only by evil counsellors;
and those, or whomsoever they should discover to be
principal, they vowed to try, either by their own “su-
preme judicatories,” (for so even then they called them,)
“ or by others having power from them to that effect.”
So that to have brought the king to condign punish-
ment hath not broke the covenant, but it would have
broke the covenant to have saved him from those judi-
catories, which both nations declared in that covenant to
be supreme against any person whatsoever. And besides
all this, to swear in covenant the bringing of his evil
counsellors and accomplices to condign punishment, and
not only to leave unpunished and untouched the grand
offender, but to receive him back again from the accom-
plishment of so many violences and mischiefs, dipped
from head to foot, and stained over with the blood of
thousands that were his faithful subjects, forced to their
own defence against a civil war by him first raised
upon them; and to receive him thus, in this gory pickle,
to all his dignities and honours, covering the igno-
minious and horrid purple robe of innocent blood, that
sat so close about him, with the glorious purple of
royalty and supreme rule, the reward of highest excel-
lence and virtue here on earth; were not only to swear
and covenant the performance of an unjust vow, the
strangest and most impious to the face of God, but
were the most unwise and unprudential act as to civil
government. For so long as a king shall find by ex-
perience, that, do the worst he can, his subjects, over-
awed by the religion of their own covenant, will only
prosecute his evil instruments, not dare to touch his
person; and that whatever hath been on his part of.
fended or transgressed, he shall come off at last with
the same reverence to his person, and the same honour
as for well doing, he will not fail to find them work;
seeking far and near, and inviting to his court all the
concourse of evil counsellors, or agents, that may be
found: who, tempted with preferments and his promise
to uphold them, will hazard easily their own heads,
and the chance of ten to one but they shall prevail at
last, over men so quelled and fitted to be slaves by the
false conceit of a religious covenant. And they in that
336
AN ANSWER TO EIKON BASILIKE
superstition neither wholly yielding, nor to the utmost
resisting, at the upshot of all their foolish war and ex-
pense, will find to have done no more but fetched a
compass only of their miseries, ending at the same
point of slavery, and in the same distractions wherein
they first begun. But when kings themselves are
made as liable to punishment as their evil counsellors,
it will be both as dangerous from the king himself as
from his parliament, to those that evil counsel him:
and they, who else would be his readiest agents in evil,
will then not fear to dissuade or to disobey him, not
only in respect of themselves and their own lives, which
for his sake they would not seem to value, but in respect
of that danger which the king himself may incur, whom
they would seem to love and serve with greatest fidelity.
On all these grounds therefore of the covenant itself,
whether religious or political, it appears likeliest, that
both the English parliament and the Scotch commis-
sioners, thus interpreting the covenant, (as indeed at
that time they were the best and most authentical in-
terpreters joined together,) answered the king unani-
mously, in their letter dated January the 13th, 1645,
that till security and satisfaction first given to both
kingdoms for the blood spilled, for the Irish rebels
brought over, and for the war in Ireland by him fo-
mented, they could in mowise yield their consent to his
return. Here was satisfaction, full two years and up-
ward after the covenant taken, demanded of the king
by both nations in parliament for crimes at least capital,
where with they charged him. And what satisfaction
could be given for so much blood, but justice upon
him that spilled it? till which done, they neither took
themselves bound to grant him the exercise of his regal
office by any meaning of the covenant which they then
declared, (though other meanings have been since con-
trived,) nor so much regarded the safety of his person,
as to admit of his return among them from the midst
of those whom they declared to be his greatest enemies;
may from himself as from an actual enemy, not as from
a king, they demanded security. But if the covenant,
all this notwithstanding, swore otherwise to preserve
him that in the preservation of true religion and our
liberties, against which he fought, if not in arms, yet
in resolution, to his dying day, and now after death still
fights again in this his book, the covenant was better
broken, than he saved. And God hath testified by all
propitious and the most evident sign, whereby in these
latter times he is wont to testify what pleases him, that
such a solemn and for many ages unexampled act of
due punishment was no mockery of justice, but a most
grateful and well-pleasing sacrifice. Neither was it to
cover their perjury, as he accuses, but to uncover his
perjury to the oath of his coronation.
The rest of his discourse quite forgets the title; and
turns his meditations upon death into obloquy and bitter
vehemence against his “judges and accusers;” imitat-
ing therein, not our Saviour, but his grandmother Mary
queen of Scots, as also in the most of his other scruples,
exceptions, and evasions; and from whom he seems to
have learnt, as it were by heart, or else by kind, that
which is thought by his admirers to be the most vir-
tuous, most manly, most christian, and most martyr-
like, both of his words and speeches here, and of his
answers and behaviour at his trial.
“It is a sad fate,” he saith, “to have his enemies
both accusers, parties, and judges.” Sad indeed, but
no sufficient plea to acquit him from being so judged.
For what malefactor might not sometimes plead the
like * If his own crimes have made all men his ene-
mies, who else can judge him 2 They of the powder-
plot against his father might as well have pleaded the
same. Nay, at the resurrection it may as well be
pleaded, that the saints, who then shall judge the world,
are “both enemies, judges, parties, and accusers.”
So much he thinks to abound in his own defence,
that he undertakes an unmeasurable task, to bespeak
“the singular care and protection of God over all
kings,” as being the greatest patrons of law, justice,
order, and religion on earth. But what patrons they
be, God in the Scripture oft enough hath expressed;
and the earth itself hath too long groaned under the
burden of their injustice, disorder, and irreligion.
Therefore “to bind their kings in chains, and their no-
bles with links of iron,” is an honour belonging to his
saints; not to build Babel, (which was Nimrod's work,
the first king, and the beginning of his kingdom was
Babel,) but to destroy it, especially that spiritual Babel:
and first to overcome those European kings, which re-
ceive their power, not from God, but from the beast;
and are counted no better than his ten horns. “These
shall hate the great whore,” and yet “shall give
their kingdoms to the beast that carries her; they
shall commit fornication with her,” and yet “shall
burn her with fire,” and yet “shall lament the fall of
Babylon,” where they fornicated with her. Revela-
tions chap. xvii. and xviii.
Thus shall they be to and fro, doubtful and ambigu-
ous in all their doings, until at last, “joining their
armies with the beast,” whose power first raised them,
they shall perish with him by the “King of kings,”
against whom they have rebelled; and “the fowls
shall eat their flesh.” This is their doom written, Rev.
xix. and the utmost that we find concerning them in
these latter days; which we have much more cause to
believe, than his unwarranted revelation here, prophe-
sying what shall follow after his death, with the spirit
of enmity, not of St. John.
He would fain bring us out of conceit with the good
success, which God hath vouchsafed us. We measure
not our cause by our success, but our success by our
cause. Yet certainly in a good cause success is a good
confirmation; for God hath promised it to good men
almost in every leaf of Scripture. If it argue not for
us, we are sure it argues not against us; but as much
or more for us, than ill success argues for them ; for to
the wicked God hath denounced ill success in all they
take in hand.
He hopes much of those “softer tempers,” as he
calls them, and “less advantaged by his ruin, that their
consciences do already” gripe them. It is true, there
be a sort of moody, hotbrained, and always unedified
consciences; apt to cngage their leaders into great and
AN ANSWER TO EIKON BASILIKE.
337
dangerous affairs past retirement, and then upon a
sudden qualm and swimming of their conscience, to
betray them basely in the midst of what was chiefly
undertaken for their sakes.* Let such men never meet
with any faithful parliament to hazard for them; never
with any noble spirit to conduct and lead them out;
but let them live and die in servile condition and their
scrupulous queasiness, if no instruction will confirm
them . Others there be, in whose consciences the loss
of gain, and those advantages they hoped for, hath
sprung a sudden leak. These are they that cry out,
the covenant broken and to keep it better slide back
into neutrality, or join actually with incendiaries and
malignants. But God hath eminently begun to punish
those, first in Scotland, then in Ulster, who have pro-
voked him with the most hateful kind of mockery, to
break his covenant under pretence of strictest keeping
it; and hath subjected them to those malignants, with
whom they scrupled not to be associates. In God
therefore we shall not fear what their false fraternity
can do against us.
He seeks again with cunning words to turn our suc-
cess into our sin. But might call to mind, that the
Scripture speaks of those also, who “when God slew
them, then sought him;” yet did but “flatter him with
their mouth, and lyed to him with their tongues; for
their heart was not right with him.” And there was
one, who in the time of his affliction trespassed more
against God. This was that king Ahaz.
He glories much in the forgiveness of his enemies;
* A severe rebuke this to the Presbyterians.
so did his grandmother at her death. Wise men would
sooner have believed him, had he not so often told us
so. But he hopes to erect “the trophies of his charity
over us.” And trophies of charity no doubt will be as
glorious as trumpets before the alms of hypocrites; and
more especially the trophies of such an aspiring charity,
as offers in his prayer to share victory with God's com-
passion, which is over all his works. Such prayers as
these may haply catch the people, as was intended :
but how they please God is to be much doubted, though
prayed in secret, much less written to be divulged.
Which perhaps may gain him after death a short, con-
temptible, and soon fading reward; not what he aims
at, to stir the constancy and solid firmness of any wise
man, or to unsettle the conscience of any knowing
Christian, (if he could ever aim at a thing so hopeless,
and above the genius of his cleric elocution,) but to
catch the worthless approbation of an inconstant, irra-
tional, and image-doting rabble; that like a credulous
and hapless herd, begotten to servility, and enchanted
with these popular institutes of tyranny, subscribed
with a new device of the king's picture at his prayers,
hold out both their ears with such delight and ravish-
ment to be stigmatized and bored through, in witness
of their own voluntary and beloved baseness. The
rest, whom perhaps ignorance without malice, or some
errour, less than fatal, hath for the time misled, on this
side sorcery or obduration, may find the grace and good
guidance, to bethink themselves and recover.
DEFENCE OF THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND,
SA LM A SIU S S D EFE N C E O F T H E KIN G.”
[FIRST PublishED 1692.]
T H E PRE FA C E.
ALT Hough I fear, lest, if in defending the people of England, I should be as copious in words, and empty of
matter, as most men think Salmasius has been in his defence of the king, I might seem to deserve justly to be
accounted a verbose and silly defender; yet since no man thinks himself obliged to make so much haste,
though in the handling but of any ordinary subject, as not to premise some introduction at least, according as
the weight of the subject requires; if I take the same course in handling almost the greatest subject that ever
was (without being too tedious in it) I am in hopes of attaining two things, which indeed I earnestly desire :
the one, not to be at all wanting, as far as in me lies, to this most noble cause, and most worthy to be recorded
to all future ages: the other, that I may appear to have avoided myself that frivolousness of matter, and redun-
dancy of words, which I blame in my antagonist. For I am about to discourse of matters, neither inconsider-
able nor common, but how a most potent king, after he had trampled upon the laws of the nation, and given a
shock to its religion, and begun to rule at his own will and pleasure, was at last subdued in the field by his
own subjects, who had undergone a long slavery under him; how afterwards he was cast into prison, and when
he gave no ground, either by words or actions, to hope better things of him, he was finally by the supreme
council of the kingdom condemned to die, and beheaded before the very gates of the royal palace. I shall
likewise relate (which will much conduce to the easing men's minds of a great superstition) by what right,
especially according to our law, this judgment was given, and all these matters transacted; and shall easily
deſend my valiant and worthy countrymen (who have extremely well deserved of all subjects and nations in
the world) from the most wicked calumnies both of domestic and foreign railers, and especially from the re-
proaches of this most vain and empty sophister, who sets up for a captain and ringleader to all the rest. For
what king's majesty sitting upon an exalted throne, ever shone so brightly, as that of the people of England
then did, when shaking off that old superstition, which had prevailed a long time, they gave judgment upon
the king himself, or rather upon an enemy who had been their king, caught as it were in a net by his own
laws, (who alone of all mortals challenged to himself impunity by a divine right,) and scrupled not to inflict the
same punishment upon him, being guilty, which he would have inflicted upon any other? But why do I men-
tion these things as performed by the people, which almost open their voice themselves, and testify the presence
of God throughout 2 who, as often as it seems good to his infinite wisdom, uses to throw down proud and unruly
kings, exalting themselves above the condition of human nature, and utterly to extirpate them and all their
family. By his manifest impulse being set on work to recover our almost lost liberty, following him as our
guide, and adoring the impresses of his divine power manifested upon all occasions, we went on in no obscure,
but an illustrious passage, pointed out and made plaim to us by God himself. Which things, if I should so
much as hope by any diligence or ability of mine, such as it is, to discourse of as I ought to do, and to commit
theny so to writing, as that perhaps all nations and all ages may read them, it would be a very vain thing in
II]. C. (i. what style can be august and magnificent enough, what man has parts sufficient to undertake so great
a task? Since we find by experience, that in so many ages as are gone over the world, there has been but here
and there a man found, who has been able worthily to recount the actions of great heroes, and potent states;
can any man have so good an spinion of his own talents, as to think himself capable to reach these glorious and
wonderful works of Almighty God, by any language, by any style of his? Which enterprise, though some of
• This translation of the author's “Defensio pro Populo Anglicano.” Mr. Toland ascribes to Mr. Washington, a gentleman of the Temple.
A DEFENCE OF THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND &c. 339
the most eminent persons in our commonwealth have prevailed upon me by their authority to undertake, and
would have it be my business to vindicate with my pen against envy and calumny (which are proof against
arms) those glorious performances of theirs, (whose opinion of me I take as a very great honour, that they should
pitch upon me before others to be serviceable in this kind of those most valiant deliverers of my native country;
and true it is, that from my very youth, I have been bent extremely upon such sort of studies, as inclined me,
if not to do great things myself, at least to celebrate those that did,) yet as having no confidence in any such
advantages, I have recourse to the divine assistance; and invoke the great and holy God, the giver of all good
gifts, that I may as substantially, and as truly, discourse and refute the sauciness and lies of this foreign decla-
mator, as our noble generals piously and successfully by force of arms broke the king's pride, and his unruly
domineering, and afterwards put an end to both by inflicting a memorable punishment upon himself, and as
thoroughly as a single person did with ease but of late confute and confound the king himself rising as it were
from the grave, and recommending himself to the people in a book published after his death, with Irew artifices
and allurements of words and expressions. J Which antagonist of mine, though he be a foreigner, and, though
he deny it a thousand times over, but a poor grammarian; yet not contented with a salary due to him in that
capacity, chose to turn a pragmatical coxcomb, and not only to intrude in state-affairs, but into the affairs of a
foreign state (though he brings along with him neither modesty, nor understanding, nor any other qualification
requisite in so great an arbitrator, but sauciness, and a little grammar ºnly) Indeed if he had published here,
and in English, the same things as he has now wrote in Latin, such as it is, I think no man would have thought
it worth while to return an answer to them, but would partly despise them as common, and exploded over and
over already, and partly abhor them as sordid and tyrannical maxims, not to be endured even by the most ab-
ject of slaves: nay, men that have sided with the king, would have had these thoughts of his book. But since
he has swoln it to a considerable bulk, and dispersed it amongst foreigners, who are altogether ignorant of our
affairs and constitution; it is fit that they who mistake them, should be better informed ;(and that he, who is so
very forward to speak ill of others, should be treated in his own º If it be asked, why we did not then
attack him sooner, why we suffered him to triumph so long, and pride himself in our silence P For others I am
not to answer; for myself I can boldly say, that I had neither words nor arguments long to seek for the defence
of so good a cause, if I had enjoyed such a measure of health, as would have endured the fatigue of writing.
And being but weak in body, I am forced to write by piecemeal, and break off almost every hour, though the
subject be such as requires an unintermitted study and intenseness of miud. But though this bodily indisposi-
tion may be a hindrance to me in setting forth the just praises of my most worthy countrymen, who have been
the saviours of their native country, and whose exploits, worthy of immortality, are already famous all the world
over; yet I hope it will be no difficult matter for me to defend them from the insolence of this silly little scho-
lar, and from that saucy tongue of his, at least. Kºš. and laws would be in an ill case, if slavery should find
what to say for itself, and liberty be mute: and if tyrants should find men to plead for them, and they that can
master and vanquish tyrants, should not be able to find advocates. And it were a deplorable thing indeed, if
the reason mankind is endued withal, and which is the gift of God, should not furnish more arguments for
men's preservation, for their deliverance, and, as much as the nature of the thing will bear, for making
them equal to one another, than for their oppression, and for their utter ruin under the domineering power of
one single person. Let me therefore enter upon this noble cause with a cheerfulness, grounded upon this
assurance, that my adversary’s cause is maintained by nothing but fraud, fallacy, ignorance, and barbarity;
whereas mine has light, truth, reason, the practice and the learning of the best ages of the world, of its side, J
But now, having said enough for an introduction, since we have to do with critics; let us in the first place
consider the title of this choice piece: “Defensio Regia pro Car. Primo, ad Car. Secundum : a Royal Defence
(or the king's defence) for Charles the First, to Charles the Second.” You undertake a wonderful piece of
work, whoever you are; to plead the father's cause before his own son : a hundred to one but you carry it.
But I summon you, Salmasius, who heretofore sculked under a wrong name, and now go by no name at all, to
appear before another tribunal, and before other judges, where perhaps you may not hear those little applauses,
which you used to be so fond of in your school. But why this royal defence dedicated to the king's own son 2
We need not put him to the torture; he confesses why. “At the king's charge,” says he. O mercenary and
chargeable advocate 1 could you not afford to write a defence for Charles the father, whom you pretend to have
been the best of kings, to Charles the son, the most indigent of all kings, but it must be at the poor king's own
charge P But though you are a knave, you would not make yourself ridiculous, in calling it the king's defence; for
you having sold it, it is no longer yours, but the king's indeed : who bought it at the price of a hundred jacobusses,
a great sum for a poor king to disburse. I know very well what I say: and it is well enough known who brought
the gold, and the purse wrought with beads: we know who saw you reach out greedy fists, under pretence of
embracing the king's chaplain, who brought the present, but indeed to embrace the present itself, and by ac-
cepting it to exhaust almost all the king's treasury
ſº
*.
| But now the man comes himself, the door creaks; the actor comes upon the stages
In silence now, and with attention wait,
That ye may learn what th' Eunuch has "o prate,
Terent.
34() A DEFENCE OF THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND,
For whatever the matter is with him, he blusters more than ordinary./ “A horrible message had lately struck
Örſ ears, but our minds more, with a heinous wound concerning a paſticide committed in England in the per-
son of a king, by a wicked conspiracy of sacrilegious men.” Indeed that horrible message must either have
had a much longer sword than that which Peter drew, or those cars must have been of a wonderful length, that
it could wound at such a distance; for it could not so much as in the least offend any ears but those of an ass.
For what harm is it to you, that are foreigners? are any of you hurt by it, if we amongst ourselves put our own
enemies, our own traitors to death, be they commoners, noblemen, or kings P Do you, Salmasius, let alone what
does not concern you : for I have a horrible message to bring of you too; which I am mistaken if it strike not
a more heinous wound into the ears of all grammarians and critics, provided they have any learning and delicacy
in them, to wit, your crowding so many barbarous expressions together in one period in the person of (Aristar-
chus) a grammarian; and that so great a critic as you, hired at the king's charge to write a defence of the king
his father, should not only set so fulsome a preface before it, much like those lamentable dittics that used to be
sung at funerals, and which can move compassion in none but a coxcomb; but in the very first sentence should
provoke your readers to laughter with so many barbarisms all at once. “Persona regis,” you cry. Where do
you find any such Latin P or are you telling us some tale or other of a Perkin Warbec, who taking upon him
the person of a king, has, forsooth, committed some horrible particide in England P which expression, though
dropping carelessly from your pen, has more truth in it than you are aware of For a tyrant is but like a king
upon a stage, a man in a vizor, and acting the part of a king in a play; he is not really a king. But as for
these gallicisms, that are so frequent in your book, I won't lash you for them myself, for I am not at leisure;
but shall deliver you over to your fellow-grammarians, to be laughed to scorn and whipped by them. What
follows is much more heinous, that what was decreed by our supreme magistracy to be done to the king, should
be said by you to have been done “by a wicked conspiracy of sacrilegious persons.” Have you the impudence,
you rogue, to talk at this rate of the acts and decrees of the chief magistrates of a nation, that lately was a most
potent kingdom, and is now a more potent commonwealth * Whose proceedings no king ever took upon him by
word of mouth, or otherwise, to vilify and set at nought. The illustrious states of Holland therefore, the ge-
nuine offspring of those deliverers of their country, have deservedly by their edict condemned to utter darkness
this defence of tyrants, so pernicious to the liberty of all nations; the author of which every free state ought to
forbid their country, or to banish out of it; and that state particularly that feeds with a stipend so ungrateful
and so savage an enemy to their commonwealth, whose very fundamentals, and the causes of their becoming a
free state, this fellow endeavours to undermine as well as ours, and at one and the same time to subvert both ;
loading with calumnies the most worthy asserters of liberty there, under our names. Consider with yourselves,
ye most illustrious states of the United Netherlands, who it was that put this asserter of kingly power upon set-
ting pen to paper? who it was, that but lately began to play Rex in your country P what counsels were taken,
what endeavours used, and what disturbances ensued thereupon in Holland * and to what pass things might
have been brought by this time? How slavery and a new master were ready prepared for you; and how near
expiring that liberty of yours, asserted and vindicated by so many years war and toil, would have been ere
now, if it had not taken breath again by the timely death of a certain rash young gentleman. But our author
begins to strut again, and to ſeign wonderful tragedies; “whomsoever this dreadful news reached, (to wit, the
news of Salmasius's parricidial barbarisms,) all of a sudden, as if they had been struck with lightning, their
hair stood an end, and their tongues clove to the roof of their mouth.” Which let natural philosophers take
notice o', (for this secret in nature was never discovered before,) that lightning makes men's hair stand on end.]
(But who knows not that little effeminate minds are apt to be amazed at the news of any extraordinary great
action; and that then they shew themselves to be, what they really were before, no better than so many stocks P
“Some could not refrain from tears;” some little women at court, I suppose, or if there be any more effeminate
than they, of whose number Salmasius himself being one, is by a new metamorphosis become a fountain near
akin to his name, (Salmacis,) and with his counterfeit flood of tears prepared over night, endeavours to emascu-
late generous minds: I advise therefore, and wish them to have a care ;
Infamis me quem male fortibus undis
Salmacis enervet.—
Ne, si vir cum venerit, exeat indé
Semivir, et tactis subità mollescatin undis.
Abstain, as manhood you esteem,
From Salmacis' permicious stream :
If but one moment there you stay,
Too dear you'll for your bathing pay.-
Depart nor man nor woman, but a sight
Disgracing both, a loath’d hermaphrodite.
“They that had more courage” (which yet he expresses in miserable bald Latin, as if he could not so much
as speak of men of courage and magnanimity in proper words) “were set on fire with indignation to that de-
gree, that they could hardly contain themselves.” Those furious Hectors we value not of a rush. We have

IN ANSWER TO SALMASIUS'S DEFENCE OF THE KING. 34 I
been accustomed to rout such bullies in the field with a true sober courage; a courage becoming men that can
contain themselves, and are in their right wits) “There were none that did not curse the authors of so horrible
a villany.” But yet, you say, their tongues clove to the roof of their mouths; and if you mean this of our
fugitives only, I wish they had clove there to this day; for we know very well, that there is nothing more
common with them, than to have their mouths full of curses and imprecations, which indeed all good men
abominate, but withal despise. As for others, it is hardly credible, that when they hcard the news of our having
inflicted a capital punishment upon the king, there should any be ſound, especially in a free state, so naturally
adapted to slavery as either to speak ill of us, or so much as to censure what we had done. Nay, it is highly
probable, that all good men applauded us, and gave God thanks for so illustrious, so exalted a piece of justice;
and for a caution so very useful to other princes. In the mean time, as for those fierce, those steel-hearted men,
that, you say, take on for, and bewail so pitifully, the lamentable and wonderful death I know not who ; them
I say, together with their tinkling advocate, the dullest that ever appeared since the name of a king was born
and known in the world, we shall even let whine on, till they cry their eyes out. But in the mean time, what
schoolboy, what little insignificant monk, could not have made a more elegant speech for the king, and in bet-
ter Latin, than this royal advocate has done P But it would be folly in me to make such particular animadver-
sions upon his childishness and frenzies throughout his book, as I do here upon a few in the beginning of it;
which yet I would be willing enough to do, (for we hear that he is swelled with pride and congeit to the utmost
degree imaginable,) if the undigested and immethodical bulk of his book did not protect him. # was resolved
to take a course like the soldier in Terence, to save his bacon; and it was very cunning in him, to stuff his
book with so much puerility, and so many silly whimsies, that it might nauseate the smartest man in the
world to death to take notice of them all. J Only I thought it might not be amiss to give a specimen of
him in the preface; and to let the serious rºader have a taste of him at first, that he might guess by the first
dish that is served up, how noble an entertainment the rest are like to make; and that he may imagine with
himself what an infinite number of fooleries and impertinencies must needs be heaped up together in the body
of the book, when they stand so thick in the very entrance into it, where, of all other places, they ought to have
been shunned. His tittle-tattle that follows, and his sermons fit for nothing but to be worneaten, I can easily
pass by, as for any thing in them relating to us, we doubt not in the least, but that what has been written and
published by authority of parliament, will have far greater weight with all wise and sober men, than the ca-
lumnies and lies of one single impudent little fellow ; who being hired by our fugitives, their country's enc-
mies, has scraped together, and not scrupled to publish in print, whatever little story any one of them that
employed him put into his head. And that all men may plainly see how little conscience he makes of
setting down any thing right or wrong, good or bad, I desire no other witness than Salmasius himself.
In his book, entitled, “Apparatus contra Primatum Papae,” he says, “there are most weighty reasons why the
church ought to lay aside episcopacy, and return to the apostolical institution of presbyters: that a far greater
mischief has been introduced into the church by episcopacy, than the schisms themselves were, which were be-
fore apprehended : that the plague which episcopacy introduced, depressed the whole body of the church
under a miserable tyranny ; may, had put a yoke even upon the necks of kings and princes: that it would be
more beneficial to the church, if the whole hierarchy itself were extirpated, than if the pope only, who is the
head of it, were laid aside,' page 160. “That it would be very much for the good of the church, iſ episcopacy
were taken away, together with the papacy: that if episcopacy were once taken down, the papacy would fall
of itself, as being founded upon it,” page 171. He says, “he can shew very good reasons why episcopacy
ought to be put down in those kingdoms, that have renounced the pope's supremacy; but that he can see no
reason for retaining it there: that a reformation is not entire, that is defective in this point: that no reason can
be alleged, no probable cause assigned, why the supremacy of the pope being once disowned, episcopacy should
notwithstanding be retained, page 197.-Though he had wrote all this, and a great deal more to this effect,
but four years ago, he is now become so vain and so impudent withal, as to accuse the parliament of England,
‘ſor not only turning the bishops out of the house of lords, but for abolishing episcopacy itself.” Nay, he per-
suades us to receive episcopacy, and defends it by the very same reasons and arguments, which with a great
deal of earnestness he had confuted himself in that former book; to wit, “that bishops were necessary and
ought to have been retained, to prevent the springing up of a thousand pernicious sects and heresies.” Craft
turncoat! are you not ashamed to shift hands thus in things that are sacred, and (I had almost said) to betray
the church; whose most solemn institutions you seem to have asserted and vindicated with so much noise, that
when it should seem for your interest to change sides, you might undo and subvert all again with the more dis-
grace and infamy to yourself? It is notoriously known, that when both houses of parliament, being extremely
desirous to reform the church of England by the pattern of our reformed churches, had resolved to abolish
episcopacy, the king first interposed, and afterwards waged war against them chiefly for that very cause; which
proved fatal to him. Go now and boast of your having defended the king; who, that you might the better
defend him, do now openly betray and impugn the cause of the church, whose defence you yourself had for-
merly undertaken ; and whose severest censures ought to be inflicted upon you. As for the present form of our
government, since such a foreign insignificant professor as you, having laid aside your boxes and desks stuffel
with nothing but trifles, which you might have spent your time better in putting into order, will needs turn
342 A DEFENCE OF THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND,
busybody, and be troublesome in other men's matters, I shall return you this answer, or rather not to you, but
to them that are wiser than yourself, viz. That the form of it is such as our present distractions will admit of;
hot such as were to be wished, but such as the obstimate divisions, that are amongst us, will bear. What state
soever is pestered with factions, and defends itself by force of arms, is very just in having regard to those only
that are sound and untainted, and in overlooking or secluding the rest, be they of the nobility or the common
People; nay, though profiting by experience, they should refuse to be governed any longer either by a king or
a house of lords. But in railing at that supreme council, as you call it, and at the chairman there, you make
yourself very ridiculous; for that council is not the supreme council, as you dream it is, but appointed by authority
of parliament, for a certain time only; and consisting of forty persons, for the most part members of par-
liament, any one of whom may be president if the rest vote him into the chair. And there is nothing
more common, than for our parliaments to appoint committees of their own members; who, when so ap-
Dointed, have power to meet where they please, and hold a kind of a little parliament amongst themselves.
And the most weighty affairs are often referred to them, for expedition and secrecy; the care of the navy,
the army, the treasury; in short, all things whatsoever relating either to war or peace. Whether this be
called a council, or any thing else, the thing is ancient, though the name may be new ; and it is such an in-
stitution, as no government can be duly administered without it. As for our putting the king to death, and
changing the government, forbear your bawling, don't spit your venom, till, going along with you through
every chapter, I shew, whether you will or no, “by what law, by what right and justice,” all that was done.
But if you insist to know, “by what right, by what law;” by that law, I tell you, which God and nature have
enacted, viz. that whatever things are for the universal good of the whole state, are for that reason lawful and
just. So wise men of old used to answer such as you. You find fault with us for “repealing laws, that had ob-
tained for so many years;” but you do not tell us whether those laws were good or bad, nor, if you did, should
we heed what you said ; for you, busy puppy, what have you to do with our laws? I wish our magistrates
had repealed more than they have, both laws and lawyers; if they had, they would have consulted the interest
of the christian religion, and that of the people better than they have done. It frets you, that “ hobgoblins, sons
of the earth, scarce gentlemen at home, scarce known to their own countrymen, should presume to do such
things.” But you ought to have remembered, what not only the Scriptures, but Horace would have taught
you, viz.
—Valet ima Summis
Mutare, et insignem attenuat Deus,
Obscura promens, &c.
The power that did create, can change the scene
Of things; make mean of great, and great of mean ;
The brightest glory can eclipse with night;
And place the most obscure in dazzling light.
But take this into the bargain. Some of those who, you say, be scarce gentlemen, are not at all inferiour in
birth to any of your party. Others, whose ancestors were not noble, have taken a course to attain to true no-
bility by their own industry and virtue, and are not inferiour to men of the noblest descent. They had rather be
called “sons of the earth,” provided it be their own earth, (their own native country,) and act like men at home,
than, being destitute of house or land, to relieve the necessities of nature in a foreign country by selling of
smoke, as thou dost, an inconsiderable fellow and a jack-straw, and who dependest upon the good-will of thy
masters for a poor stipend; for whom it were better to dispense with thy labours, and return to thy own kindred
and countrymen, if thou hadst not this one piece of cunning, to babble out some silly prelections and fooleries at
so good a rate amongst foreigners. You find fault with our magistrates for admitting such “a common sewer
of all sorts of sects.” Why should they not? It belongs to the church to cast them out of the communion of
the faithful; not to, the magistrate to banish them the country, provided they do not offend against the civil
laws of the state. (@iºn at first united into civil societies, that they might live safely, and enjoy their liberty,
without being wronged or oppressed; and that they might live religiously, and accordin to the doctrine of
Christianity, they united themselves into churches. Civil societies have laws, and churches have a discipline pe-
culiar to themselves, and far differing from each other. And this has been the occasion of so many wars in
christendom ; to wit, because the civil magistrate and the church confounded their jurisdictions. Therefore we
do not admit of the popish sect, so as to tolerate papists at all; for we do not look upon that as a religion, but
rather as a hierarchical tyranny, under a cloak of religion, clothed with the spoils of the civil power, which it
i has usurped to itself, contrary to our Saviour's own doctrine) ) s for the independents, we never had any such
amongst us, as you describe; they that we call independents, are only such as hold, that no classis or synods
have a superiority over any particular church, and that therefore they ought all to be plucked up by the roots,
as branches, or rather as the very trunk, of hierarchy itself; which is your own opinion too. And from hence it
'as that the name of independents prevailed amongst the vulgar.) The rest of your preface is spent in endea-
vouring not only to stir up the hatred of all kings and monarchs against us, but to persuade them to make a
general war upon us. Mithridates of old, though in a different cause, endeavoured to stir up all princes to make
war upon the Romans, by laying to their charge almost just the same things that you do to ours : viz. that the

AN ANSWER TO SALMASIUS'S DEFENCE OF THE KING 343
Romans aimed at nothing but the subversion of all kingdoms, that they had no regard to any thing, whether sa-
cred or civil, that from their very first rise, they never enjoyed any thing but what they had acquired by force,
that they were robbers, and the greatest enemies in the world to monarchy. Thus Mithridates expressed him-
self in a letter to Arsaces, king of the Parthians. But how came you, whose business it is to make silly speeches
from your desk, to have the confidence to imagine, that by your persuasions to take up arms, and sounding an
alarm as it were, you should be able so much as to influence a king amongst boys at play; especially, with so
shrill a voice, and unsavoury breath, that I believe, if you were to have been the trumpeter, not so much as Ho-
mer's mice would have waged war against the frogs ’ So little do we fear, you slug you, any war or
danger from foreign princes through your silly rhetoric, who accusest us to them, just as if you were at
play, “that we toss kings' heads like balls; play at bowls with crowns; and regard sceptres no more than if they
were fools' staves with heads on :” but you in the mean time, you silly loggerhead, deserve to have your bones
well thrashed with a fool's staff, for thinking to stir up kings and princes to war by such childish arguments.
Then you cry aloud to all nations, who, I know full well, will never heed what you say. You call upon that
wretched and barbarous crew of Irish rebels too, to assert the king's party. Which one thing is sufficient evi-
dence how much you are both a fool and a knave, and how you outdo almost all mankind in villany, impu-
dence, and madness; who scruple not to implore the loyalty and aid of an execrable people devoted to the
slaughter, whom the king himself always abhorred, or so pretended, to have any thing to do with, by reason of
the guilt of so much innocent blood, which they had contracted. And that very perfidiousness and cruelty,
which he endeavoured as much as he could to conceal, and to clear himself from any suspicion of, you, the most
villanous of mortals, as fearing neither God nor man, voluntarily and openly take upon yourself. Go on then, under-
take the king's defence at the encouragement and by the assistance of the Irish. You take care, and so you might
well, lest any should imagine, that you were about to bereave Cicero or Demosthenes of the praise due to their
eloquence, by telling us beforehand, that “you conceive you ought not to speak like an orator.”
of a fool; you conceive you ought not to do what is not in your power to do : and who, that knows you never
so little, ever expects any thing like an orator from you? Who neither uses, nor is able to publish, any thing
that is elaborate, distinct, or has so much as sense in it; but like a second Crispin, or that little Grecian Tzetzes,
you do but write a great deal, take no pains to write well; nor could write any thing well, though you took
never so much pains. “This cause shall be argued (say you) in the hearing, and as it were before the tribunal,
of all mankind.” That is what we like so well, that we could now wish we had a discreet and intelligent ad-
versary, and not such a hairbrained blunderbuss as you, to deal with. You conclude very tragically, like Ajax
in his raving; “I will proclaim to heaven and earth the injustice, the villany, the perfidiousness and cruelty of
these men, and will deliver them over convicted to all posterity.” O flowers' that such a witless, senseless
bawler, one that was born but to spoil or transcribe good authors, should think himself able to write any thing
of his own, that will reach posterity, whom, together with his frivolous scribbles, the very next age will bury in
oblivion; unless this defence of the king perhaps may be beholden to the answer I give to it, for being looked
into now and then. And I would entreat the illustrious states of Holland, to take off their prohibition, and
suffer the book to be publicly sold. For when I have detected the vanity, ignorance, and falsehood, that it is
full of, the farther it spreads, the more effectually it will be suppressed. Now let us hear how he convicts us.
It is wisely said
DEFENCE OF THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND.
CHAP I.
I PERSUADE myself, Salmasius, that you being a vain
flashy man, are not a little proud of being the king of
Great Britain's defender, who himself was styled the
“Defender of the Faith.” For my part, I think you
deserve your titles both alike; for the king defended
the faith, and you have defended him, so, that betwixt
you, you have spoiled both your causes: which I shall
make appear throughout the whole ensuing discourse,
and particularly in this very chapter. You told us in
the 12th page of your preface, that “so good and so |
Just a cause ought not to be embellished with any flou-
rishes of rhetoric; that the king needed no other de-
fence, than by a bare narrative of his story:” and yet
in your first chapter, in which you had promised us
that bare narrative, you neither tell the story right,
nor do you abstain from making use of all the skill you
have in rhetoric to set it off. So that, if we must take
your own judgment, we must believe the king's cause
to be neither good nor just. But by the way, I would
advise you not to have so good an opinion of yourself
(for nobody else has so of you) as to imagine that you
are able to speak well upon any subject, who can
344
A DEFENCE OF THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND,
neither play the part of an orator, nor an historian, nor
express yourself in a style that would not be ridiculous
even in a lawyer; but like a mountebank’s juggler,
with big swelling words in your preface, you raised
our expectation, as if some mighty matter were to cm-
sue; in which your design was not so much to intro-
duce a true narrative of the king's story, as to make
your own empty intended flourishes go off the better.
For “being now about to give us an account of the
matter of fact, you find yourself encompassed and af.
frighted with so many monsters of novelty, that you
are at a loss what to say first, what next, and what last
of all.” I will tell you what the matter is with you.
In the first place, you find yourself affrighted and
astonished at your own monstrous lics, and then you
find that empty head of yours not encompassed, but car-
ried round, with so many trifles and fooleries, that you
not only now do not, but never did, know what was fit
to be spoken, and in what method. “Among the many
difficulties, that you find in expressing the heinousness
of so incredible a piece of impiety, this one offers itself,
you say, which is easily said, and must often be re-
peated; to wit, that the sun itself never beheld a more
outrageous action.” But by your good leave, Sir, the
sun has beheld many things, that blind Bernard never
saw. But we are content you should mention the sum
over and over. And it will be a piece of prudence in
you so to do. For though our wickedness does not re-
quire it, the coldness of the defence that you are mak-
ing does. “The original of kings, you say, is as
ancient as that of the sun.” May the gods and god-
desses, Damasippus, bless thee with an everlasting
solstice; that thou mayest always be warm, thou that
canst not stir a foot without the sun. Perhaps you
would avoid the imputation of being called a doctor
Umbraticus. But alas! you are in perfect darkness,
that make no difference betwixt a paternal power, and
a regal; and that when you had called kings fathers
of their country, could fancy that with that metaphor
you had persuaded us, that whatever is applicable to a
father, is so to a king. Alas! there is a great differ-
ence betwixt them. Our fathers begot us. Our king
made not us, but we him. Nature has given fathers
to us all, but we ourselves appointed our own king.
So that the people is not for the king, but the king for
them. “We bear with a father, though he be harsh
and severe ; ” and so we do with a king. But we do
not bear with a father, if he be a tyrant. If a father mur-
der his son, he himself must die for it; and why should
not a king be subject to the same law, which certainly
is a most just one º Especially considering that a ſa-
ther cannot by any possibility divest himself of that
relation, but a king may easily make himself neither
king nor father of his people. If this action of ours be
considered according to its quality, as you call it, I,
who am both an Englishman born, and was an eye-
witness of the transactions of these times, tell you, who
are both a foreigner and an utter stranger to our affairs;
that we have put to death neither a good, nor a just,
[nor a merciful, nor a devout, nor a godly, nor a peace-
*. * Salmasius was once an advocate, that is, a counsellor at law.
able king, as you style him; but an enemy, that has
been so to us almost ten years to an end ; nor one that
was a father, but a destroyer of his country. You con-
ſess, that such things have been practised; for your-
self have not the impudence to deny it: but not by
protestants upon a protestant king. As if he deserved
the name of a protestant, that, in a letter to the pope,
could give him the title of most holy father; that was
always more favourable to the papists than to those of
his own profession. And being such, he is not the first
of his own family, that has been put to death by pro-
testants. Was not his grandmother deposed and
banished, and at last beheaded by protestants P And
were not her own countrymen, that were protestants
too, well enough pleased with it? Nay, if I should say
they were parties to it, I should not lie. But there
being so few protestant kings, it is no great wonder,
if it never happened that one of them has been put to
death. But that it is lawful to depose a tyrant, and to
punish him according to his deserts; may, that this is
the opinion of very eminent divines, and of such as
have been most instrumental in the late reformation, do
you deny it if you dare. You confess, that many kings
have come to an unnatural death ; some by the sword,
some poisoned, some strangled, and some in a dun-
geon ; but for a king to be arraigned in a court of ju-
dicature, to be put to plead for his life, to have sentence
of death pronounced against him, and that sentence
executed ; this you think a more lamentable instance
than all the rest, and make it a prodigious piece of im-
piety. Tell me, thou superlative fool, whether it be
not more just, more agreeable to the Fuſes of humanity,
and the laws of all human societies, to bring a criminal,
be his offence what it will, before a court of justice, to
give him leave to speak for himself; and, if the law
condemn him, then to put him to death as he has de-
served, so as he may have time to repent or to recol-
lect himself; than presently, as soon as ever he is
taken, to butcher him without more ado? Do you think
there is a maleſactor in the world, that if he might
have his choice, would not choose to be thus dealt
withal P And if this sort of proceeding against a private
person be accounted the fairer of the two, why should
it not be counted so against a prince P Nay, why should
we not think, that himself liked it better P You would
have had him killed privately, and none to have seen
it, either that future ages might have lost the advan-
tage of so good an example; or that they that did this
glorious action, might seem to have avoided the light,
and to have acted contrary to law and justice. You
aggravate the matter by telling us, that it was not done
in an uproar, or brought about by any faction amongst
great men, or in the heat of a rebellion, either of the
people, or the soldiers: that there was no hatred, no
fear, no ambition, no blind precipitate rashness in the
case; but that it was long consulted on, and done with
deliberation. You did well in leaving off being an
* Advocate, and turn grammarian, who from the acci-
dents and circumstances of a thing, which in themselves
considered sway neither one way nor other, argue in
IN ANSWER TO SALMASIUS'S DEFENCE OF THE KING.
345
{
dispraise of it, before you have proved the thing itself
to be either good or bad. See how open you lie: if the
action you are discoursing of be commendable and praise-
worthy, they that did it deserve the greater honour, in
that they were prepossessed with no passions, but did
what they did for virtue's sake. If there were great
difficulty in the enterprise, they did well in not going
about it rashly, but upon advice and consideration.
Though for my own part, when I call to mind with
how unexpected an importunity and fervency of mind,
and with how unanimous a consent, the whole army,
and a great part of the people from almost every county
in the kingdom, cried out with one voice for justice
against the king, as being the sole author of all their
calamities: I cannot but think, that these things were
brought about by a divine impulse. Whatever the
matter was, whether we consider the magistrates, or
the body of the people, no men ever undertook with
more courage, and, which our adversaries themselves
confess, in a more sedate temper of mind, so brave an
action, an action that might have become those famous
heroes, of whom we read in former ages; an action,
by which they ennobled not only laws, and their exe-
cution, which seem for the future equally restored to
high and low against one another; but even justice,
and to have rendered it, after so signal a judgment,
more illustrious and greater than in its own self. We
are now come to an end of the 3d page of the first book,
and have not the bare narrative he promised us yet.
He complains that our principles are, that a king, whose
government is burdensome and odious, may lawfully
be deposed : and “by this doctrine,” says he, “if they
had had a king a thousand times better than they had,
they would not have spared his life.” Observe the
man's subtle way of arguing. For I would willingly
be informed what consequence there is in this, unless
he allows, that a king's government may be burden-
some and odious, who is a thousand times better than
our king was. So that now he has brought things to
this pass, to make the king that he defends a thousand
times worse than some whose government notwith-
standing is burdensome and odious, that is, it may be,
the most monstrous tyrant that ever reigned. I wish
ye joy, O ye kings, of so able a defender | Now the
narrative begins. “They put him to several sorts of
torments.” Give an instance. “They removed him
from prison to prison;” and so they might lawfully do;
for having been a tyrant, he became an open enemy,
and was taken in war. “Often changing his keepers.”
Lest they themselves should change. “Sometimes
they gave him hopes of liberty; nay, and sometimes
even of restoring him to his crown, upon articles of
agreement.” It seems then the taking away his life
was not done upon so much premeditation, as he talked
of before; and that we did not lay hold on all oppor-
tunities and means, that offered themselves, to renounce
our king. Those things that in the beginning of the
war we demanded of him, when he had almost brought
us under, which things if they were denied us, we
could enjoy no liberty, nor live in any safety; those
very things we petitioned him for when he was our
prisoner, in a humble, submissive way, not once, nor
twice, but thrice, and oftener, and were as often deni d.
When we had now lost all hopes of the king's comply-
ing with us, then was that noble order of parliament
made, that from that time forward, there should no
articles be sent to the king; so that we left off apply-
ing ourselves to him, not from the time that he began
to be a tyrant, but from the time that we found him
incurable. But afterward some parliament-men set
upon a new project, and meeting with a convenient
opportunity to put it in practice, pass a vote to send
further proposals once more to the king. Whose wick-
edness and folly nearest resembles that of the Roman
senate, who contrary to the opinion of M. Tullius, and
all honest men, voted to send embassadors to M. An-
tony; and the event had been the same, but that it
pleased God Almighty, in his providence, to order it
otherwise, and to assert our liberty, though he suffered
them to be enslaved: for though the king did not agree
to any thing that might conduce to a firm peace, and
settlement of things, more than he had before, they go
and vote themselves satisfied. Then the sounder part
of the house finding themselves and the commonwealth
betrayed, implore the aid of that valiant and always
faithful army to the commonwealth. Upon which oc-
easion I can observe only this, which yet I am loth to
utter; to wit, that our soldiers understood themselves
better than our senators, and that they saved the com-
monwealth by their arms, when the other by their
votes had almost ruined it. Then he relates a great
many things in a doleful, lamentable strain ; but he
does it so senselessly, that he seems rather to beg of
his readers, that they would be sorrowful, than to stir
It grieves him “to
think that the king should undergo a capital punish-
ment, after such a manner as no other king ever had
done.” Though he had often told us before, that there
never was a king that underwent a capital punishment
at all. Do you use to compare ways and manners, ye
coxcomb, when you have no things nor actions to
compare with one another “He suffered death,” says
he, “as a robber, as a murderer, as a parricide, as a
traitor, as a tyrant.” Is this defending the king 2 Or
is it not rather giving a more severe sentence against
him, than that that we gave 2 How came you so all
on a sudden to be of our mind P He complains “that
executioners in vizards [personati carnifices] cut off the
king's head.” What shall we do with this fellow *
He told us before, of “a murder committed on one in
the disguise of a king [in persona regis]:” now he
says, it was done in the disguise of an executioner. It
were to no purpose, to take particular notice of every
silly thing he says. He tells stories of “boxes on the
ear, and kicks, that,” he says, “were given the king
by common soldiers, and that it was four shillings
apiece to see his dead body.” These, and such like
stories, which partly are false, and partly impertinent,
betray the ignorance and childishness of our poor
scholar; but are far from making any reader ever a
whit the sadder. In good faith his son Charles had
done better to have hired some ballad-singer, to have
up any such passion in them.
346
A DEFENCE OF THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND,
bewailed his father's misfortunes, than this doleful,
shall I call him, or rather most ridiculous orator, who
is so dry and insipid, that there is not the least spirit
in any thing he says. Now the narrative is done, and
1t is hard to say what he does next, he runs on so sor-
didly and irregular. Now he is angry, then he won-
ders; he neither cares what he talks, nor how ; repeats
the same things ten times over, that could not but look
ill, though he had said them but once. And I persuade
myself, the extemporary rhymes of some antic juck-
pudding may deserve printing better; so far am I from
thinking aught he says worthy of a serious answer. I
pass by his styling the king a “protector of religion,”
who chose to make war upon the church, rather than
part with those church-tyrants, and enemies of all re-
ligion, the bishops; and how is it possible, that he
should “maintain religion in its purity,” that was
himself a slave to those impure traditions and ceremo-
nies of theirs P And for our “sectaries, whose sacrile-
gious meetings,” you say, “ have public allowance;”
instance in any of their principles, the profession of
which is not openly allowed of, and countenanced in
Holland. But in the mean time, there is not a more
sacrilegious wretch in nature than yourself, that always
took liberty to speak ill of all sorts of people. “They
could not wound the commonwealth more dangerously,
than by taking off its master.” Learn, ye abject,
homeborn slave; unless ye take away the master, ye
destroy the commonwealth. That that has a master,
is one man's property. The word master denotes a
private, not a public relation. “ They persecute most
unjustly those ministers, that abhorred this action of
theirs.” Lest you should not know what ministers he
means, I will tell you in a few words what manner of
men they were; they were those very men, that by
their writings and sermons justified taking up arms
against the king, and stirred the people up to it: that
daily cursed, as Deborah did Meroz, all such as would
not furnish the parliament either with arms, or men, or
money. That taught the people out of their pulpits,
that they were not about to fight against a king, but a
greater tyrant than either Saul or Ahab ever were ;
nay, more a Nero than Nero himself. As soon as the
bishops, and those clergymen whom they daily in-
weighed against, and branded with the odious names
of pluralists and nonresidents, were taken out of their
way, they presently jump, some into two, some into
three of their best benefices; being now warm them-
selves, they soon unworthily neglected their charge.
Their covetousness brake through all restraints of mo-
desty and religion, and themselves now labour under
the same infamy, that they had loaded their predeces-
sors with ; and because their covetousness is not yet
satisfied, and their ambition has accustomed them to
raise tumults, and be enemies to peace, they cannot
rest at quict yet, but preach up sedition against the
magistracy, as it is now established, as they had for-
merly done against the king. They now tell the
people, that he was cruelly murdered; upon whom
themselves having heaped all their curses, had devoted
him to destruction, whom they had delivered up as it
were to the parliament, to be despoiled of his royalty,
and pursued with a holy war. They now complain,
that the sectaries are not extirpated ; which is a most
absurd thing to expect the magistrates should be able
to do, who never yet were able, do what they could, to
extirpate avarice and ambition, those two most per-
nicious heresies, and more destructive to the church
than all the rest, out of the very order and tribe of the
ministers themselves. For the sects which they inveigh
against, I confess there are such amongst us, but they
are obscure, and make no noise in the world: the sects
that they are of, are public and notorious, and much
more dangerous to the church of God. Simon Magus
and Diotrephes were the ringleaders of them. Yet are
we so far from persecuting these men, though they are
pestilent enough, that though we know them to be ill-
affected to the government, and desirous of and endea-
vouring to work a change, we allow them but too much
liberty. You, that are both a Frenchman and a vaga-
bond, seem displeased that “the English, more fierce
and cruel than their own mastiffs,” as your barking
eloquence has it, “ have no regard to the lawful suc-
cessor and heir of the crown : take no care of the king's
youngest son, nor of the queen of Bohemia.” I will
make ye no answer ; you shall answer yourself.
“When the frame of a government is changed from a
monarchy to any other, the new modellers have no re-
gard to succession:” the application is easy; it is in
your book De primatu Papae. “The great change
throughout three kingdoms,” you say, “was brought
about by a small number of men in one of them.” If
this were true, that small number of men would have
deserved to have dominion over the rest; valiant men
over fainthearted cowards. “These are they that pre-
sumptuously took upon them to change,” antiquum
regni regimen, in alium qui à pluribus tyrannis tene-
atur. It is well for them that you cannot find fault
with them, without committing a barbarous solecism ;
you shame all grammarians. “The English will never
be able to wash out this stain.” Nay, you, though a
blot and a stain to all learned men, were never yet able
to stain the renown and everlasting glory of the Eng-
lish nation, that with so great a resolution, as we
hardly find the like recorded in any history, having
struggled with, and overcome, not only their enemies
in the field, but the superstitious persuasions of the
common people, have purchased to themselves in
general amongst all posterity the name of deliverers :
the body of the people having undertook and perform-
ed an enterprise, which in other nations is thought to
proceed only from a magnanimity that is peculiar to
heroes. What “the protestants and primitive Chris-
tians” have done, or would do upon such an occasion,
I will tell ye hereafter, when we come to debate the
merits of the cause : in discoursing it before, I should
be guilty of your fault, who outdo the most imperti-
ment talkers in nature. You wonder how we shall be
able to answer the Jesuits. Meddle with your own
matters, you runagate, and be ashamed of your ac-
tions, since the church is ashamed of you; who, though
but of late you set yourself so fiercely and with so
IN ANSWER TO SALMASIUS'S DEFENCE OF THE KING.
347
called a grammarian.
much ostentation against the pope's supremacy and
episcopal government, are now become yourself a very
creature of the bishops. You confess, that “some pro-
testants, whom you do not name, have asserted it law-
ful to depose a tyrant:” but though you do not think
fit to name them, I will, because you say “they are far
worse than the very Jesuits themselves;” they are no
other than Luther, and Zuinglius, and Calvin, and
Bucer, and Pareus, and many others. “But then,”
you say, “they refer it to the judgment of learned and
wise men, who shall be accounted a tyrant. But what
for men were these ? Were they wise men, were they
men of learning 2 Were they anywise remarkable,
either for virtue or nobility P” You may well allow a
people, that has felt the heavy yoke of slavery to be
wise, and learned, and noble enough, to know what is
fit to be done to the tyrant that has oppressed them;
though they neither consult with foreigners nor gram-
marians. Buit that this man was a tyraºt, not only the
parliaments of England and Scotland have declared by
their actions and express words; but almost all the
people of both nations assented to it, till such time as
by the tricks and artifices of the bishops they were
divided into two factions: and what if it has pleased
God to choose such men, to execute his vengeance
upon the greatest potentates on earth, as he chose to be
made partakers of the benefit of the gospel P “ Not
many wise, not many learned, not many powerful, not
many noble : that by those that are not, he might bring
to nought those that are; and that no flesh might glory
in his sight.” And who are you, that babble to the
contrary 2 dare you affect the reputation of a learned
man? I confess you are pretty well versed in phrase-
books, and lexicons, and glossaries; insomuch that you
seem to have spent your time in nothing else. But you
do not make appear, that you have read any good au-
thors with so much judgment as to have benefited by
them. Other copies, and various lections, and words
omitted, and corruptions of texts, and the like, these
you are full of; but no footstep of any solid learning
appears in all you have writ" or do ye think yourself
a wise man, that quarrel and contend about the meanest
trifles that may be 2 That being altogether ignorant
in astronomy and physic, yet are always railing at the
professors of both, whom all men credit in what things
belong to their own sciences, that would be ready to
curse them to the pit of hell, that should offer to de-
prive you of the vain glory of having corrected or sup-
plied the least word or letter in any copy you have
criticised upon. And yet you are mad to hear yourself
In certain trifling discourses of
yours, you call Dr. Hammond knave in plain terms,
who was one of this king's chaplains, and one that he
valued above all the rest, for no other reason but be-
cause he had called you a grammarian. And I do not
question, but you would have been as ready to have
thrown the same reproach upon the king himself, if
you had heard that he had approved his chaplain's
judgment of you. Take notice now, how much I (who
am but one of those many English, that you have the
impudence to call madmen, and unlearned, and ignoble,
and wicked) slight and despise you, (for that the Eng-
lish nation in general should take any notice in public
of such a worm as you are, would be an infinite under-
valuing of themselves,) who, though one should turn
you topsy turvy, and inside out, are but a grammarian :
nay, as if you had made a foolisher wish than Midas
did, whatever you meddle with, except when you make
solecisins, is grammar still. Whosoever therefore he
be, though from among the dregs of that common pco-
ple that you are so keen upon, (for as for those men of
eminency amongst us, whose great actions evidenced
to all men their nobility, and virtue, and conduct, I
will not disgrace them so much, as to compare you to
them, or them to you,) but whosoever, I say, among
the dregs of that common people, has but sucked in
this principle, that he was not born for his prince, but
for God and his country; he deserves the reputation
of a learned, and an honest, and a wise man more,
and is of greater use in the world, than yourself. For
such a one is learned without letters; you have letters,
but no learning, that understand so many languages,
turn over so many volumes, and yet are but asleep
when all is done. &
CHAP. II.
The argument that Salmasius, toward the conclusion
of his first chapter, urged as irrefragable, to wit, that
it was really so, because all men unanimously agreed
in it; that very argument, than which, as he applied
it, there is nothing more false, I, that am now about to
discourse of the right of kings, may turn upon himself
with a great deal of truth. For, whereas he defines “a
king” (if that may be said to be defined which he
makes infinite) “to be a person in whom the supreme
power of the kingdom resides, who is answerable to
God alone, who may do whatsoever pleases him, who
is bound by no law :” I will undertake to demonstrate,
not by mine, but by his own reasons and authorities,
that there never was a nation or people of any account
(for to ransack all the uncivilized parts of the world
were to no purpose) that ever allowed this to be their
king's right, or put such exorbitant power into his
hand, as “that he should not be bound by any law,
that he might do what he would, that he should judge
all, but be judged of none.” Nor can I persuade my-
self, that there ever was any one person besides Sal-
masius of so slavish a spirit, as to assert the outrageous
enormities of tyrants to be the rights of kings. Those
amongst us that were the greatest royalists, always ab-
horred this sordid opinion : and Salmasius himself, as
appears by some other writings of his before he was
bribed, was quite of another mind. Insomuch, that
what he here gives out, does not look like the dictates
of a free subject under a free government, much less in
so famous a commonwealth as that of Holland, and the
most eminent university there: but seems to have been
penned by some despicable slave, that lay rotting in a




348
A DEFENCE OF THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND,
prison, or a dungeon. If whatever a king has a mind
to do, the right of kings will bear him out in, (which
was a lesson that the bloody tyrant Antoninus Cara-
calla, though his step-mother Julia preached it to him,
and endeavoured to inure him to the practice of it, by
making him commit incest with herself, yet could
hardly suck in,) then there neither is, nor ever was,
that king, that deserved the name of a tyrant. They
may safely violate all the laws of God and man : their
very being kings keeps them innocent. What crime
was ever any of them guilty off They did but make
use of their own right upon their own vassals. No king
can commit such horrible cruelties and outrages, as will
not be within this right of kings. So that there is no
pretence left for any complaints or expostulations with
any of them. And dare you assert, that “this right of
kings,” as you call it, “is grounded upon the law of
nations, or rather upon that of nature,” you brute
beast P for you deserve not the name of a man, that are
so cruel and unjust towards all those of your own kind;
that endeavour, as much as in you lies, so to bear down
and vilify the whole race of mankind, that were made
after the image of God, as to assert and maintain, that
those cruel and unmerciful taskmasters, that through
the superstitious whimsies, or sloth, or treachery of
some persons, get into the chair, are provided and ap-
pointed by nature herself, that mild and gentle mother
of us all, to be the governors of those nations they en-
slave. By which pestilent doctrine of yours, having
rendered them more fierce and untractable, you not
only enable them to make havoc of, and trample under
foot, their miserable subjects; but endeavour to arm
them for that very purpose with the law of nature, the
right of kings, and the very constitutions of govern-
ment, than which nothing can be more impious or ridi-
culous. By my consent, as Dionysius formerly of a
tyrant became a schoolmaster, so you of a grammarian
should become a tyrant; not that you may have that
regal license of doing other people harm, but a fair
opportunity of perishing miserably yourself: that, as
Tiberius complained, when he had confined himself to
the island Capreae, you may be reduced into such a
condition, as to be sensible that you perish daily. Dut
let us look a little more narrowly into this right of
kings that you talk of. “This was the sense of the
eastern, and of the western part of the world.” I shall
not answer you with what Aristotle and Cicero (who
are both as credible authors as any we have) tell us,
viz. That the people of Asia easily submit to slavery,
but the Syrians and the Jews are even born to it from
the womb. I confess there are but few, and those men
of great wisdom and courage, that are either desirous
of liberty, or capable of using it. The greatest part of
the world choose to live under masters; but yet they
would have them just ones. As for such as are unjust
and tyrannical, neither was God ever so much an enemy
to mankind, as to enjoin a necessity of submitting to
them; nor was there ever any people so destitute of all
sense, and sunk into such a depth of despair, as to im-
pose so cruel a law upon themselves and their posterity.
First, you produce “the words of King Solomon in his
Ecclesiastes.” And we are as willing to appeal to the
Scripture as you. As for Solomon's authority, we will
consider that hereafter, when perhaps we shall be better
able to understand it. First, let us hear God himself
speak, Deut. xvii. 14. “When thou art come into the
land, which the Lord thy God giveth thee, and shalt
say, I will set a king over me, like as the nations that
are round about me.” Which passage I could wish all
men would seriously consider: for hence it appears by
the testimony of God himselſ; first, that all nations are
at liberty to erect what form of government they will
amongst themselves, and to change it when and into
what they will. This God affirms in express terms
concerning the Hebrew nation ; and it does not appear
but that other nations are, as to this respect, in the same
condition. Another remark that this place yields us,
is, that a commonwealth is a more perfect form of go-
vernment than a monarchy, and more suitable to the
condition of mankind, and in the opinion of God him-
self better for his own people; for himself appointed it,
and could hardly be prevailed withal a great while
after, and at their own importunate desire, to let them
change it into a monarchy. But to make it appear,
that he gave them their choice to be governed by a
single person, or by more, so they were justly governed,
in case they should in time to come resolve upon a
king, he prescribes laws for this king of theirs to ob-
serve, whereby he was forbidden to multiply to him-
self horses and wives, or to heap up riches: whence
he might easily infer, that no power was put into his
hands over others, but according to law, since even
those actions of his life, which related only to himself,
were under a law. He was commanded therefore to
transcribe with his own hand all the precepts of the
law, and having writ them out, to observe and keep
them, that his mind might not be liſted up above his
brethren. It is evident from hence, that as well the
prince as the people was bound by the law of Moses.
To this purpose Josephus writes, a proper and able
interpreter of the laws of his own country, who was
admirably well versed in the Jewish policy, and
infinitely preferable to a thousand obscure ignorant
rabbins : he has it thus in the fourth book of his
Antiquitics, 'Aptºokparia uév oëv kpártsov, &c. “An Aris-
tocratty is the best form of government; wherefore
do not you endeavour to settle any other; it is
enough for you, that God presides over ye, but if
you will have a king, let him guide himself by the law
of God, rather than by his own wisdom ; and lay a
restraint upon him, if he offer at more power than the
state of your affairs will allow of.” Thus he expresses
himself upon this place in Deuteronomy. Another
Jewish author, Philo Judaeus, who was Josephus's
contemporary, a very studious man in the law of Moses,
upon which he wrote a large commentary: when in
his book concerning the creation of the king, he inter-
prets this chapter of Deuteronomy, he sets a king loose
from the law no otherwise than as an enemy may be
said to be so: “They,” says he, “that to the prejudice
and destruction of the people acquire great power to
themselves, deserve not the name of kings, but that of
IN ANSWER TO SALMASIUS'S DEFENCE OF THE KING.
349
enemies: for their actions are the same with those of
an irreconcilable enemy. Nay, they, that under a pre-
tence of government are injurious, are worse than open
enemies. We may ſence ourselves against the latter;
but the malice of the former is so much the more pesti-
lent, because it is not always easy to be discovered.”
But when it is discovered, why should they not be dealt
with as enemies 2 The same author in his second book,
Allegoriar. Legis, “A king,” says he, “ and a tyrant,
are contraries.” And a little aſter, “A king ought not
only to command, but also to obey.” All this is very
true, you will say, a king ought to observe the laws, as
well as any other man. But what if he will not, what
law is there to punish him 2 I answer, the same law
that there is to punish other men; for I find no excep-
tions. There is no express law to punish the priests,
or any other inferiour magistrates, who all of them, if
this opinion of the exemption of kings from the penal-
ties of the law would hold, might, by the same reason,
claim impunity, what guilt soever they contract, be-
cause there is no positive law for their punishment;
and yet I suppose none of them ever challenged such
a prerogative, nor would it ever be allowed them, iſ
they should. Hitherto we have learned from the very
text of God's own law, that a king ought to obey the
laws, and not lift himself up above his brethren. Let
us now consider whether Solomon preached up any
other doctrine, chap. viii. ver. 2. “I counsel thee to
keep the king's commandment, and that in regard of
the oath of God. Be not hasty to go out of his sight;
stand not in an evil thing; for he doth whatsoever
pleaseth him. Where the word of a king is, there is
power; and who may say unto him, what dost thou?”
It is well enough known, that here the preacher directs
not his precepts to the Sanhedrim, or to a parliament,
but to private persons; and such he commands to
“keep the king's commandment, and that in regard of
the oath of God.” B,t as they swear allegiance to
kings, do not kings likewise swear to obey and main-
tain the laws of God, and those of their own country P
So the Reubenites and Gadites promise obedience to
Joshua, Josh. i. 17. “According as we hearkened unto
book, “What was there extraordinary,” say you, “ in
Saul or David P” And so say I, what was there in
Samuel extraordinary P. He was a prophet, you will
say; so are they that now follow his example; for they
act according to the will of God, either his revealed or
his sacred will, which yourself grant in your 50th page.
The preacher therefore in this place prudently advises
private persons not to contend with princes; for it is
even dangerous to contend with any man, that is either
rich or powerful. But what then f must therefore the
nobility of a nation, and all the inſeriour magistrates,
and the whole body of the people, not dare to mutter
when a king raves and acts like a inadman 2 Must they
not oppose a foolish, wicked, and outrageous tyrant,
that perhaps seeks the destruction of all good men 2
Must they not endeavour to prevent his turning all
divine and human things upside down & Must they
suffer him to massacre his people, burn their cities,
and commit such outrages upon them daily ; and
finally, to have perfect liberty to do what he lists with-
out control P
O de Cappadocis eques catastris |
Thou slavish knight of Cappadocia!
Whom all free people, if you can have the conſidence
hereafter to set your foot within a free country, ought
to cast out from amongst them, and send to some re-
mote parts of the world, as a prodigy of dire portent;
or to condemn to some perpetual drudgery, as one de-
voted to slavery, solemnly obliging themselves, if they
ever let you go, to undergo a worse slavery under some
cruel, silly tyrant : no man living can either devise
himself, or borrow from any other, expressions so full
of cruelty and contempt, as may not justly be applied
to you. But go on. “When the Israelites asked a
king of God, they said, they would set up a king that
should have the same rule and dominion over them,
that the kings of their neighbour countries exercised
over their subjects. But the kings of the East we know
had an unlimited power,” as Virgil testifies,
& &
Regem non sic AFgyptus et ingens
“ I-ydia, mec populi Parthorum, et Medus Hydaspes
“Observant.”
“No Eastern nation ever did adore /
“The majesty of sovereign princes more.”
Ty
Moses in all things, so will we hearken unto thee;
only the Lord thy God be with thee, as he was with
Moses.” Here is an express condition. Hear the
preacher else, ch. ix. ver. 17. “The words of wise men
are heard in quiet, more than the cry of him that ruleth
among fools.” The next caution that Solomon gives
us, is, “Be not hasty to go out of his sight; stand not
in an evil thing; for he doth whatsoever pleaseth him.”
That is, he does what he will to malefactors, whom the
law authorizes him to punish, and against whom he
may proceed with mercy or severity, as he sees occasion.
Here is nothing like tyranny; nothing that a good
man needs be afraid of. “Where the word of a king
is, there is power; and who may say to him, What dost
thou ?” And yet we read of one, that not only said to
a king, “What dost thou?” but told him, “Thou hast
done foolishly.” But Samuel, you may say, was an
extraordinary person. I answer you with your own
words, which follow in the ſorty-ninth page of your
First, what is that to us, what sort of kings the
Israelites desired P Especially since God was angry
with them, not only for desiring such a king as other
nations had, and not such a king as his own law de-
scribes, but barely for desiring a king at all 2 Nor is
it credible, that they should desire an unjust king, and
one that should be out of the reach of all laws, who
could not bear the government of Samuel's sons, though
under the power of laws; but ſrom their covetousness
sought refuge in a king. And lastly, the verse that
you quote out of Virgil does not prove, that the kings
of the East had an absolute unlimited power; for those
bees, that he there speaks of, and who reverence their
kings, he says, more than the Egyptians or Medes do
theirs, by the authority of the same poet:
—“ Magnis agitant sub legibus aevum.”
“Live under certain fundamental laws.”
350
A DEFENCE OF THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND,
They do not live under a king then, that is tied to no
law. But now I will let you see how little reason you
have to think I bear you an ill-will. Most people
think you a knave; but I will make it appear, that
you have only put on a knave's vizor for the present.
In your introduction to your discourse of the pope's
supremacy, you say, that some divines in the council
of Trent made use of the government, that is said to
be amongst bees, to prove the pope's supremacy. This
fancy you borrow from them, and urge it here with the
same malice that they did there. Now that very same
answer that you gave them, whilst you were an honest
man, now that you are become a knave, you shall give
yourself, and pull off with your own hand that vizor
you have now put on : “The bees,” say you, “are a
state, and so natural philosophers call them ; they have
a king, but a harmless one; he is a leader, or captain,
rather than a king; he never beats, nor pulls, nor kills
his subject bees.” No wonder they are so observant
of him then : but in good faith, you had but ill luck
to meddle with these bees; for though they are bees of
Trent, they shew you to be a drone. Aristotle, a most
exact writer of politics, affirms that the Asiatic monar-
chy, which yet himself calls barbarous, was according
to law, Politic. 3. And whereas he reckons up five se-
veral sorts of monarchies, four of those five he makes
governments according to laws, and with the con-
sent of the people; and yet he calls them tyrannical
forms of government, because they lodge so much
power in one man's hand. But the kingdom of the
Lacedemonians, he says, is most properly a kingdom,
because there all power is not in the king. The fifth
sort of monarchy, which he calls trapſ3ao (Asia, that is,
where the king is all in all ; and to which he refers
that that you call the right of kings, which is a liberty
to do what they list ; he neither tells us when nor
where any such form of government ever obtained.
Nor seenis he to have mentioned it for any other pur-
pose, than to shew how unjust, absurd, and tyrannical
a government it is. You say, that when Samuel would
deter the people from choosing a king, he propounded
to them this right of kings. But whence had Samuel
it? Had he it from the written law of God? That can-
not be. We have observed already, that the Scriptures
afford us a quite other scheme of sovereignty. Had
Samuel it then immediately from God himself by reve-
lation ? That is not likely neither; for God dislikes it,
discommends it, finds fault with it: so that Samuel
does not expound to the people any right of kings ap-
pointed by God; but a corrupt and depraved manner
of governing, taken up by the pride and ambition of
princes. He tells not the people what their kings
ought to do, but what they would do. He told them
the manner of their king, as before he told us the man-
ner of the priests, the sons of Eli; for he uses the same
word in both places (which you in the thirty-third page
of your book, by a Hebrew solecism too, call nºwp).
That manner of theirs was wicked, and odious, and
tyrannical : it was no right, but great wrong. The
fathers have commented upon this place too: I will
instance in one, that may stand for a great many; and
that is Sulpitius Severus, a contemporary and intimate
friend of St. Jerome, and, in St. Augustin's opinion, a
man of great wisdom and learning. He tells us in his
sacred history, that Samuel in that place acquaints the
people with the imperious rule of kings, and how they
used to lord it over their subjects. Certainly it cannot
be the right of kings to domineer and be imperious.
But according to Sallust, that lawful power and
authority that kings were entrusted with, for the pre-
servation of the public liberty, and the good of the
commonwealth, quickly degenerated into pride and
tyranny: and this is the sense of all orthodox divines,
and of all lawyers, upon that place of Samuel. And
you might have learned from Sichardus, that most of
the rabbins too were of the same mind; at least, not
any one of them ever asserted, that the absolute in-
herent right of kings is there discoursed of. Your-
self in your fifth chapter, page 106, complain, that
“not only Clemens Alexandrinus, but all other ex-
positors mistake themselves upon this text:” and
you, I will warrant ye, are the only man that have
had the good luck to hit the mark. Now, what a piece
of folly and impudence is this in you to maintain, in
opposition to all orthodox expositors, that those very
actions, which God so much condemns, are the right of
kings, and to pretend law for them | Though yourself
confess, that that right is very often exercised in com-
mitting outrages, being injurious, contumelious, and
the like. Was any man ever to that degree sui juris,
so much his own master, as that he might lawfully
prey upon mankind, bear down all that stood in his
way, and turn all things upside down P Did the Ro-
mans ever maintain, as you say they did, that any man
might do these things suo jure, by virtue of some in-
herent right in himself? Sallust indeed makes C.
Memmius, a tribune of the people, in an invective
speech of his against the pride of the nobility, and
their escaping unpunished, howsoever they misbehaved
themselves, to use these words, viz. “To do whatever
one has a mind to, without fear of punishment, is to be
a king.” This saying you catched hold of, thinking it
would make for your purpose; but consider it a little
better, and you will find yourself deceived. Does he
in that place assert the right of kings P or does he not
blame the common people, and chide them for their
sloth, in suffering their mobility to lord it over them, as
if they were out of the reach of all law, and in submit-
ting again to that kingly tyranny, which, together
with their kings themselves, their ancestors had law-
fully and justly rejected and banished from amongst
them * If you had consulted Tully, you would have
understood both Sallust and Samuel better. In his
oration pro C. Rabirio, “There is none of us ignorant,”
says he, “of the manner of kings. These are their
lordly dictates: mind what I say, and do accordingly.”
Many passages to this purpose he quotes out of poets,
and calls them not the right, but the custom or manner
of kings; and he says, we ought to read and consider
them, not only for curiosity sake, but that we may
learn to beware of them, and avoid them. You per-
ceive how miserably you are come off with Sallust,
IN ANSWER TO SALMASIUS
33 1
'S DEFENCE OF THE KING.
who though he be as much an enemy to tyranny as
any other author whatsoever, you thought would have
patronized this tyrannical right that you are establish-
ing. Take my word for it, the right of kings seems to
be tottering, and even to further its own ruin, by rely-
ing upon such weak props for its support; and by en-
deavouring to maintain itself by such examples and
authorities, as would hasten its downfal, if it were fur-
ther off than it is. “The extremity of right or law,”
you say, “is the height of injury, Summum jus summa
injuria; this saying is verified most properly in kings,
who, when they go to the utmost of their right, fall into
those courses, in which Samuel makes the rights of
kings to consist.” And it is a miserable right, which,
when you have said all you can for, you can no other-
wise defend, than by confessing, that it is the greatest
injury that may be. The extremity of right or law is
said to be, when a man ties himself up to niceties,
dwells upon letters and syllables, and in the mean
time neglects the intent and equity of the law; or
when a written law is cunningly and maliciously in-
terpreted; this Cicero makes to have been the rise of
that common saying. But since it is certain that all
right flows from the fountain of justice, so that nothing
can possibly be any man's right that is not just, it is a
most wicked thing in you to affirm, that for a king to
be unjust, rapacious, tyrannical, and as ill as the worst
of them ever was, is according to the right of kings;
and to tell us that a holy prophet would have persuaded
the people to such a senseless thing. For whether
written or unwritten, whether extreme or remiss, what
right can any man have to be injurious * Which, lest
you should confess to be true of other men, but not of
kings, I have one man's authority to object to you,
who, I think, was a king likewise, and professes that
that right of kings, that you speak of, is odious both to
God and himself: it is in the 94th psalm, “Shall the
throne of iniquity have fellowship with thee, that fra-
meth mischief by a law 2° Be not therefore so inju-
rious to God, as to ascribe this doctrine to him, viz. that
all manner of wicked and flagitious actions are but the
right of kings; since himself tells us, that he abhors
all fellowship with wicked princes for this very reason,
because, under pretence of sovereignty, they create
misery and vexation to their subjects. Neither bring
up a false accusation against a prophet of God; for by
making him to teach us in this place what the right of
kings is, you do not produce the right Samuel, but
such another empty shadow as was raised by the witch
of Endor. Though for my own part, I verily believe that
that infernal Samuel would not have been so great a
liar, but that he would have confessed, that what you
call the right of kings, is tyranny. We read indeed
of impieties countenanced by law, Jus datum sceleri:
you yourself confess, that they are bad kings that have
made use of this boundless licence of theirs to do every
thing. Now, this right that you have introduced for
the destruction of mankind, not proceeding from God,
as I have proved it does not, must needs come from the
devil; and that it does really so, will appear more
clearly hereafter.
“By virtue of this liberty, say you,
princes may if they will.” And for this, you pretend
to have Cicero's authority. I am always willing to
mention your authorities, for it generally happens, that
the very authors you quote them out of, give you an
answer themselves. Hear clºse what Cicero says in his
4th Philippic, “What cause of war can be more just
an warrantable than to avoid slavery P For though a
people may have the good fortune to live under a
gentle master, yet those are in a miserable condition,
whose prince may tyrannize over them if he will.”
May, that is, can ; has power enough so to do. If he
meant it of his right, he would contradict himself, and
make that an unjust cause of war, which himself had
affirmed with the same breath to be a most just one.
It is not therefore the right of all kings that you de-
scribe, but the injuriousness, and force, and violence
of some. Then you tell us what private men may
do. “A private man,” say you, “may lie, may be un-
grateful :” and so may kings, but what then 2 May
they therefore plunder, murder, ravish, without control?
It is equally prejudicial and destructive to the com-
monwealth, whether it be their own prince, or a robber,
or a foreign enemy, that spoils, massacres, and enslaves
them. And questionless, being both alike enemies of
human society, the one, as well as the other, may law-
fully be opposed and punished; and their own prince
the rather, because he, though raised to that dignity
by the honours that his people have conferred upon him,
and being bound by his oath to defend the public
safety, betrays it notwithstanding all. At last you
grant, that “Moses prescribes laws, according to which
the king that the people of Israel should choose, ought
to govern, though different from this right that Samuel
proposes;” which words contain a double contradiction
to what you have said before. For whereas you had
affirmed, that a king was bound by no law, here you
confess he is. And you set up two contrary rights, one
described by Moses, and another by Samuel, which is
absurd. “But,” says the prophet, “you shall be ser-
vants to your king.” Though I should grant that the
Israelites were really so, it would not presently follow,
that it was the right of their kings to have them so;
but that by the usurpation and injustice of most of
them, they were reduced to that condition. For the
prophet had foretold them, that that importunate peti-
tion of theirs would bring a punishment from God
upon them ; not because it would be their king's right
so to harass them, but because they themselves had
deserved it should be so. If kings are out of the reach
of the law, so as that they may do what they list, they
are more absolute than any masters, and their subjects
in a more despicable condition than the worst of slaves.
The law of God provided some redress from them,
though of another nation, if their masters were cruel
and unreasonable towards them. And eam we imagine,
that the whole body of the people of a free nation,
though oppressed and tyrannized over, and preyed
upon, should be left remediless? That they had no law
to protect them, no sanctuary to betake themselves to 2
Can we think, that they were delivered from the bond-
age they were under to the Egyptian kings, to be re-
352
A DEFENCE OF THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND,
duced into a worse to one of their own brethren P All
which being neither agreeable to the law of God, nor
to common sense, nothing can be more evident, than
that the prophet declares to the people he manner, and
not the right, of kings; nor the manner of all kings,
but of most. Then you come to the rabbins, and quote
two of them, but you have as bad luck with them here,
as you had before. For it is plain, that that other chapter
that rabbi Joses speaks of, and which contains, he says,
the right of kings, is that in Deuteronomy, and not
in Samuel. For rabbi Judas says very truly, and against
you, that that discourse of Samuel's was intended only
to frighten the people. It is a most pernicious doc-
trine, to maintain that to be any one's right, which in
itself is flat injustice, unless you have a mind to speak
by contraries. And that Samuel intended to affrighten
them, appears by the 18th vers , “And ye shall cry out
in that day, because of your king, which ye shall have
chosen you, and I will not hear you in that day, saith
the Lord.” That was to be their punishment for their
obstimacy in persisting to desire a king, against the
mind and will of God; and yet they are not forbidden
here either to pray against him, or to endeavour to rid
themselves of him. For if they might lawfully pray
to God against him, without doubt they might use all
lawful means for their own deliverance. For what
man living, when he finds himself in any calamity,
betakes himself to God, so as to neglect his own duty,
in order to a redress, and rely upon his lazy prayers
only 2 But be it how it will, what is all this to the right
of kings, or of the English people 2 who neither asked
a king against the will of God, nor had one appointed
us by God, but by the right that all nations have to
appoint their own governors, appointed a king over us
by laws of our own, neither in obedience to, nor against,
any command of God P And this being the case, for
aught I see, we have done well in deposing our king,
and are to be commended for it, since the Israelites
sinned in asking one. And this the event has made
appear; for we, when we had a king, prayed to God
against him, and he heard us, and delivered us: but
the Jews (who not being under a kingly government,
desired a king) he suffered to live in slavery under
one, till, at last, after their return from the Babylonish
captivity, they betook themselves to their former go-
vernment again. Then you come to give us a display
of your talmudical learning ; but you have as ill suc-
cess. with that as you have had with all the rest. For,
whilst you are endeavouring to prove that kings are
not liable to any temporal judicature, you quote an au-
thority out of the treatise of the Sanhedrim, “that the
king neither is judged of others, nor does himself judge
any.” Which is against the people's own petition in
Samuel; for they desired a king that might judge
them. You labour in vain to salve this, by telling us,
that it is to be understood of those kings that reigned
after the Babylonish captivity. For then, what say
ye to Maimonides P. He makes this difference betwixt
the kings of Israel and those of Juda; that the kings
of the posterity of David judge, and are judged ; but
the kings of Israel do neither. You contradict and
quarrel with yourself or your rabbins, and still do my
work for me. This, say you, is not to be understood
of the kings of Israel in their first institution; for in
the 17th verse it is said, “you shall be his servants;”
that is, he shall use you to it, not that he shall have
any right to make you so. Or if you understand it of
their king's right, it is but a judgment of God upon
them for asking a king; the effects of which they were
sensible of under most of their kings, though not per-
haps under all. But you need no antagonists, you are
such a perpetual adversary to yourself. For you tell
us now a story, as if you were arguing on my side,
how that first Aristobulus, and after him Jannaeus sur-
named Alexander, did not receive that kingly right that
they pretended to, from the Sanhedrim, that great trea-
sury and oracle of the laws of that nation, but usurped
it by degrees against the will of the senate. For whose
sake, you say, that childish fable of the principal men
of that assembly being struck dead by the angel Ga-
briel was first invented. And thus you confess, that
this magnificent prerogative, upon which you seem
mainly to rely, viz. “that kings are not to be judged
by any upon earth, was grounded upon this worse than
an old wife's tale, that is, upon a rabbinical fable.” But
that the Hebrew kings were liable to be called in
question for their actions, and to be punished with
stripes, if they were found faulty, Sichardus shews at
large out of the writings of the rabbins, to which author
you are indebted for all that you employ of that sort of
learning, and yet you have the impudence to be thwart-
ing with him. Nay, we read in Scripture, that Saul
thought himself bound by a decree of his own making;
and in obedience thereunto, that he cast lots with his
son Jonathan which of them two should die. Uzzias
likewise, when he was thrust out of the temple by the
priests as a leper, submitted as every private person in
such a case ought to do, and ceased to be a king. Sup-
pose he should have refused to go out of the temple,
and lay down the government, and live alone, and had
resolved to assert that kingly right of not being sub-
ject to any law, do you think the priests, and the people
of the Jews, would have suffered the temple to be de-
filed, the laws violated, and live themselves in danger
of the infection It seems there are laws against a
leprous king, but none against a tyrant. Can any
man possibly be so mad and foolish as to fancy, that
the laws should so far provide for the people's health,
as though some noisome distemper should seize upon
the king himself, yet to prevent the infection's reaching
them, and make no provision for the security of their
lives and estates, and the very being of the whole state,
against the tyranny of a cruel, unjust prince, which is
incomparably the greater mischief of the two P “But,”
say you, “there can be no precedent shewn of any one
king that has been arraigned in a court of justice,
and condemned to die.” Sichardus answers that well
enough. It is all one, says he, as if one should argue
on this manner: The emperor of Germany never was
summoned to appear before one of the prince electors;
therefore, if the prince elector Palatine should impeach
the emperor, he were not bound to plead to it; though
IN ANSWER TO SALMASIUS'S DEFENCE OF THE KING.
353
it appears by the golden bull, that Charles the fourth
subjected himself and his successors to that cognizance
and jurisdiction. But no wonder if kings were in-
dulged in their ambition, and their exorbitances passed
by, when the times were so corrupt and depraved, that
even private men, if they had either money or interest,
might escape the law, though guilty of crimes of never
so high a nature. That divvirtù0vvov, that you speak
of, that is to be wholly independent upon any other,
and accountable to none upon earth, which you say is
p culiar to the majesty of sovereign princes, Aristotle
in the 4th book of his l’ol. Ch. 10, calls a most tyran-
nical form of government, and not in the least to be
endured by a free people. And that kings are not
liable to be questioned for their actions, you prove by
the testimony of a very worthy author, that barbarous
tyrant Mark Antony; one of those that subverted the
commonwealth of Rome: and yet he himself, when he
undertook an expedition against the Parthians, sum-
moned Herod before him, to answer to a charge of
murder, and would have punished him, but that Herod
bribed him. So that Antony's asserting this preroga-
tive royal, and your defence of King Charles, come both
out of one and the same spring. “And it is very
reasonable,” say you, “that it should be so; for kings
derive their authority from God alone.” What kings
are those, I pray, that do so 2 For I deny, that there
ever were any such kings in the world, that derived
their authority from God alone. Saul, the first king of
Israel, had never reigned, but that the people desired
a king, even against the will of God; and though he
was proclaimed king once at Mizpah, yet after that he
lived a private life, and looked to his father's cattle,
till he was created so the second time by the people at
Gilgal. And what think ye of David 2 Though he
had been anointed once by God, was he not anointed
a second time in Hebron by the tribe of Judah, and
after that by all the people of Israel, and that after a
mutual covenant betwixt him and them P 2 Sam. v.
1 Chron. xi. Now, a covenant lays an obligation upon
kings, and restrains them within bounds. Solomon, you
say, “succeeded him in the throne of the Lord, and
was acceptable to all men:” 1 Chron. xxix. So that
it is something to be well-pleasing in the eyes of the
people. Jehoiadah the priest made Joash king, but
first he made him and the people enter into a covenant
to one another, 2 Kings xi. I confess that these kings,
and all that reigned of David's posterity, were ap-
pointed to the kingdom both by God and the people;
but of all other kings, of what country soever, I affirm,
that they are made so by the people only : nor can you
make it appear, that they are appointed by God, any
otherwise than as all other things, great and small,
are said to be appointed by him, because nothing comes
to pass without his providence. So that I allow the
throne of David was in a peculiar manner called “the
throne of the Lord :” whereas the thrones of other
princes are no otherwise God's, than all other things
in the world are his; which if you would, you might
have learnt out of the same chapter, ver, 11, 12.
“Thine, O Lord, is the greatness, &c. for all that is in
the heaven and in the earth is thine. Both riches and
honour come of thee, and thou reignest over all.” And
this is so often repeated, not to puff up kings, but to
put them in mind, though they think themselves gods,
that yet there is a God above them, to whom they owe
whatever they are and have. And thus we easily un-
derstand what the poets, and the Essenes among the
Jews, mean, when they tell us, that it is by God that
kings reign, and that they are of Jupiter; for so all of
us are of God, we are all his offspring. So that this
universal right of Almighty God's, and the interest
that he has in princes, and their thrones, and all that
belongs to them, does not at all derogate from the
people's right; but that notwithstanding all this, all
other kings, not particularly and by name appointed
by God, owe their sovereignty to the people only, and
consequently are accountable to them for the manage-
ment of it. The truth of which doctrine, though the
common people are apt to flatter their kings, yet they
themselves acknowledge, whether good ones, as Sarpe-
don in Homer is described to have been ; or bad ones,
as those tyrants in the lyrick poet:
TAaúks, rim Óñ vät Terup, fluto 6a, ua)\tsa, &c.
Glaucus, in Lycia we’re ador'd like gods:
What makes 'twixt us and others so great odds?
He resolves the question himself: “ Because, says
he, we excel others in heroical virtues: Let us fight
manfully then, says he, lest our countrymen tax us
with sloth and cowardice.” In which words he inti-
mates to us, both that kings derive their grandeur from
the people, and that for their conduct and behaviour in
war they are accountable to them. Bad kings in-
deed, though to cast some terrour into people's minds,
and beget a reverence of themselves, they declare to the
world, that God only is the author of kingly government;
in their hearts and minds they reverence no other deity
but that of fortune, according to that passage in Horace
Te Dacus asper, te proſugi Scythae,
Regumque matres barbarorum, e.
Purpurei metuunt tyranni.
Injurioso me pede proruas
Stantem colum, nam, neu populus frequens
Ad arma cessantes, ad arma
Concitet, imperiumque frangat.
“All barb’rous people, and their princes too,
“All purple tyrants honour you;
“The very wand'ring Scythians do.
“Support the pillar of the Roman state,
“Lest all men be involv’d in one man’s fate.
“Continue us in wealth and peace;
“Let wars and tumults ever cease.”
So that if it is by God that kings now-a-days reign,
it is by God too that the people assert their own liberty;
since all things are of him, and by him. I am sure
the Scripture bears witness to both; that by him kings
reign, and that by him they are cast down from their
thrones. And yet experience teaches us, that both
these things are brought about by the people, oftener
than by God. Be this right of kings, therefore, what
it will, the right of the people is as much from God as
351
A DEFENCE OF THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND,
it. And whenever any people, without some visible
designation of God himself, appoint a king over them,
they have the same right to put him down, that they
had to set him up at first. And certainly it is a more
godlike action to depose a tyraut tº an to set up one :
and there appears much more of God in the people,
when they depose an unjust prince, than in a king that
Nay, the people have a
warrant from God to judge wicked princes; for God
has conferred this very honour upon those that are
dear to him, that celebrating the praises of Christ their
oppresses an innocent people.
own king, “they shall bind in chains the kings of the
nations, (under which appellation all tyrants under the
gospel are included,) and execute the judgments written
upon them that challenge to themselves an exemption
from all written laws,” Psalm czlix. So that there is
but little reason left for that wicked and foolish opinion,
that kings, who commonly are the worst of men, should
be so high in God’s account, as that he should have
put the world under them, to be at their beck, and be
governed according to their humour; and that for
their sakes alone he should have reduced all mankind,
whom he made after his own image, into the same
condition with brutes. After all this, rather than say
nothing, you produce M. Aurelius as a countenancer
of tyranny; but you had better have let him alone. I
cannot say whether he ever affirmed, that princes are
accountable only before God's tribunal. But Xiphiline
indeed, out of whom you quote those words of M. Au-
relius, mentions a certain government, which he calls
an Autarchy, of which he makes God the only judge:
tripi divraoxiac Ó esúc uévog kpivstv čvvarat. But that this
word Autarchy and Monarchy are synonymous, I can-
not easily persuade myself to believe. And the more
I read what goes before, the less I find myself inclinable
to think so. And certainly whoever considers the
context, will not easily apprehend what coherence this
sentence has with it, and must needs wonder how it
comes so abruptly into the text; especially since Mar-
cus Aurelius, that mirror of princes, carried himself
towards the people, as Capitolinus tells us, just as if
Rome had been a commonwealth still. And we all
know, that when it was so, the supreme power was in
the people. The same emperor honoured the memory
of Thraseas, and Helvidius, and Cato, and Dio, and
Brutus; who all were tyrant-slayers, or affected the
reputation of being thought so. In the first book that
he writes of his own life, he says, that he proposed to
himself a form of government, under which all men
might equally enjoy the benefit of the law, and right
and justice be equally administered to all. And in his
fourth book he says, the law is master, and not he.
He acknowledged the right of the senate and the people,
and their interest in all things: we are so far, says he,
from having any thing of our own, that we live in your
houses. These things Xiphiline relates of him. So
little did he arrogate aught to himself by virtue of his
sovereign right. When he died, he recommended his
son to the Romans, for his successor, if they should
think he deserved it. So far was he from pretending
to a commission from Heaven to exercise that absolute
and imaginary right of sovereignty, that Autarchy,
that you tell us of “All the Latin and Greek books
are full of authorities of this nature.” But we have
heard none of them yet. “So are the Jewish au-
thors.” And yet, you say, “the Jews in many things
allowed but too little to their princes.” Nay, you will
find that both the Greeks and, the Latins allowed
much less to tyrants. And how little the Jews allow-
ed them would appear, if that book that Samuel
“ wrote of the manner of the kingdom” were extant;
which book, the Hebrew doctors tell us, their kings
tore in pieces and burnt, that they might be more at
liberty to tyrannize over the people without control or
fear of punishment. Now look about ye again, and
catch hold of somewhat or other. In the last place,
you come to wrest David's words in the 17th Psalm,
“let my sentence come forth from thy presence.”
Therefore, says Barnachmoni, “God only can judge
the king.” And yet it is most likely, that David pen-
ned this psalm when he was persecuted by Saul, at
which time, though himself were anointed, he did not
decline being judged even by Jonathan : “Notwith-
standing, if there be iniquity in me, slay me thyself.”
1 Sam. xx. At least, in this psalm he does no more
than what any person in the world would do upon the
like occasion; being falsely accused by men, he ap-
peals to the judgment of God himself, “let thine
eyes look upon the thing that is right; thou hast
proved and visited mine heart,” &c. What relation
has this to a temporal judicature ? Certainly they do
no good office to the right of kings, that thus discover
the weakness of its foundation. Then you come with
that threadbare argument, which of all others is most
in vogue with our courtiers, “Against thee, thee only
have I sinned,” Psalm li. 6. As if David in the midst
of his repentance, when overwhelmed with sorrow,
and almost drowned in tears, he was humbly imploring
God’s mercy, had any thoughts of this kingly right of
his when his heart was so low, that he thought he de-
served not the right of a slave. And can we think,
that he despised all the people of God, his own bre-
thren, to that degree, as to believe that he might mur-
der them, plunder them, and commit adultery with
their wives, and yet not sin against them all this while?
So holy a man could never be guilty of such insuffer-
able pride, nor have so little knowledge either of him-
self, or of his duty to his neighbour. So without doubt
when he says, “against thee only,” he meant, against
thee chiefly have 1 sinned, &c. But whatever he
means, the words of a psalm are too full of poetry, and
this psalm too full of passion, to afford us any exact
definitions of right and justice; nor is it proper to
argue any thing of that nature from them. “But
David was never questioned for this, nor made to plead
for his life before the Sanhedrim.” What then P. How
should they know, that any such thing had been, which
was done so privately, that perhaps for some years
after not above one or two were privy to it, as such
secrets there are in most courts 2 Sam. xii. “Thou
hast done this thing in secret.” Besides, what if the
senate should neglect to punish private persons? Would
IN ANSWER TO SALMASIUS'S DEFENCE OF THE KING.
355
any infer, that therefore they ought not to be punished
at all P But the reason why David was not proceeded
against as a maleſactor, is not much in the dark : he
had condemned himself in the 5th verse, “The man that
hath done this thing shall surely die.” To which the
prophet presently replics, “Thou art the man.” So
that in the prophet's judgment, as well as his own, he
was worthy of death ; but God, by his sovereign right
over all things, and of his great mercy to David, ab-
solves him from the guilt of his sin, and the sentence
of death which he had pronounced against himself;
verse 13th, “The Lord hath put away thy sin, thou
shalt not die.” The next thing you do is to rail at
some bloody advocate or other, and you take a deal of
pains to refute the conclusion of his discourse. Let him
look to that; I will endeavour to be as short as I cam
in what I have undertaken to perform. But some
things I must not pass by without taking notice of; as
first and foremost your motorious contradictions; for in
the 30th page you say, “The Israelites do not depre-
cate an unjust, rapacious, tyrannical king, one as bad
as the worst of kings are.” And yet, page 42, you are
very smart upon your advocate, for maintaining that
the Israelites asked for a tyrant: “Would they have
leaped out of the fryingpan into the fire,” say you,
“and groan under the cruelty of the worst of tyrants,
rather than live under bad judges, especially being
used to such a form of government?” First, you said
the Hebrews would rather live under tyrants and
judges, here you say they would rather live under
judges than tyrants; and that “they desired nothing
less than a tyrant.” So that your advocate may
answer you out of your own book. For according
to your principles it is every king's right to be a ty-
rant. What you say next is very true, “the supreme
power was then in the people, which appears by their
own rejecting their judges, and making choice of a
kingly government.” Remember this, when I shall.
have occasion to make use of it. You say, that God
gave the children of Israel a king as a thing good
and profitable for them, and deny that he gave them
one in his anger, as a punishment for their sin. But
that will receive an easy answer; for to what purpose
should they cry to God because of the king that they
had chosen, if it were not because a kingly government
is an evil thing ; not in itself, but because it most
commonly does, as Samuel forewarns the people that
theirs would, degenerate into pride and tyranny ? If
you are not yet satisfied, hark what you say yourself;
acknowledge your own hand, and blush ; it is in your
“Apparatus ad Primatum : God gave them a king in
his anger,” say you, “being offended at their sin in
rejecting him from ruling over them ; and so the chris-
tian church, as a punishment for its forsaking the pure
worship of God, has been subjected to the more than
kingly government of one mortal head.” So that if
your own comparison holds, either God gave the chil-
dren of Israel a king as an evil thing, and as a punish-
ment, or he has set up the pope for the good of the
church. Was there ever any thing more light and mad
than this man is 2 Who would trust him in the smallest
matters, that in things of so great concern says and un-
says without any consideration in the world 2 You
tell us in your twenty-ninth page, “that by the consti-
tution of all nations, kings are bound by no law.” That
“this had been the judgment both of the eastern and
western part of the world.” And yet, page 43, you
say, “That all the kings of the east ruled kard vôpov,
according to law, nay, that the very kings of Egypt
in all matters whatsoever, whether great or small, were
tied to laws.” Though in the beginning of this chap-
ter you had undertook to demonstrate, That “kings are
bound by no laws, that they give laws to others, but
have none prescribed to themselves.” For my part I
have no reason to be angry with you, for either you
are mad, or of our side. You do not defend the king's
cause, but argue against him, and play the fool with
him: or if you are in earnest, that epigram of Catullus,
Tantò pessimus omnium poeta,
Quanto tu optimus omnium patronus.
The worst of poets, I myself declare,
By how much you the best of patrons are.
That epigram, I say, may be turned, and very properly
applied to you; for there never was so good a poet as
you are a bad patron. Unless that stupidity, that you
complain your advocate is “immersed over head and
ears in,” has blinded the eyes of your own understand-
ing too, I will make you now sensible that you are
become a very brute yourself. For now you come and
confess, that “the kings of all nations have laws pre-
scribed to them.” But then you say again, “They are
not so under the power of them, as to be liable to cen-
sure or punishment of death, if they break them.”
Which yet you have proved neither from Scripture, nor
from any good author. Observe then in short; to pre-
scribe municipal laws to such as are not bound by them,
is silly and ridiculous: and to punish all others, but
leave some one man at liberty to commit all sort of
impieties without fear of punishment, is most unjust;
the law being general, and not making any exception;
neither of which can be supposed to hold place in the
constitutions of any wise lawmaker, much less in those
of God's own making. But that all may perceive how
unable you are to prove out of the writings of the Jews,
what you undertook in this chapter to make appear by
them, you confess of your own accord, That “there
are some rabbins, who affirm that their forefathers ought
not to have had any other king than God himself; and
that he set other kings over them for their punishment.”
And of those men's opinion I declare myself to be. It
is not fitting or decent, that any man should be a king,
that does not far excel all his subjects. But where
men are equals, as in all governments very many are,
they ought to have an equal interest in the govern-
ment, and hold it by turns. But that all men should
be slaves to one that is their equal, or (as it happens
most commonly) far inferiour to them, and very often
a fool, who can so much as entertain such a thought
without indignation ? Nor does “it make for the ho-
mour of a kingly government, that our Saviour was of
2 A
356
the posterity of some kings,” more than it does for the
commendation of the worst of kings, that he was the
offspring of some of them too. “The Messias is a king.”
We acknowledge him so to be, and rejoice that he is
so; and pray that his kingdom may come, for he is
worthy: nor is there any other equal, or next to him.
And yet a kingly government being put into the hands
of unworthy and undeserving persons, as most com-
monly it is, may well be thought to have done more
harm than good to mankind. Nor does it follow for all
this that all kings, as such, are tyrants. But suppose
it did, as for argument-sake I will allow it does, lest
you should think I am too hard with ye; make you
the best use of it you can. “Then, say you, God him-
self may properly be said to be the king of tyrants, may,
himself, the worst of all tyrants.” If the first of these
conclusions does not follow, another docs, which may
be drawn from most parts of your book, viz. That you
perpetually contradict, not only the Scriptures, but
your own self. For in the very last foregoing period
you had affirmed, that “God was the king of all things,
having himself created them.” Now he created tyrants
and devils, and consequently, by your own reason, is
the king of such. The second of these conclusions we
detest, and wish that blasphenous mouth of yours were
stopped up, with which you affirm God to be the worst
of tyrants, if he be, as you often say he is, the king
and lord of such, Nor do you much advantage your
cause by tell ng us, that “Moses was a king, and had
the absolute and supremie power of a king.” For we
could be content that any other were so, that could
“reſer our matters to God, as Moses did, and consult
with him about our affairs,” Exod. xviii. 19. Bu
neither did Moses, notwithstanding his great famili-
arity with God, ever assume a liberty of doing what he
would himself. What says be of himself; “the people
come unto me to inquire of God.” They came not then
to receive Moses's own dictates and commands. Then
says Jethro, ver, 19. “Be thou for the people to God-
ward, that thou mayst bring their causcs unto God.”
And Moscs himself says, Deut. iv. 5. “I have taught
you statutes and judgments, even as the Lord my God
commanded me.” Hence it is that he is said to have
been “faithful in all the house of God.” Numb. xii. 7.
So that the Lord Jehovah himself was the people's
king, and Moses no ot er than as it were an interpre-
ter or a messenger betwixt him and them. Nor can
you, without impiety and sacrilege, transfer this abso-
Iute supreme power and authority, from God to a man,
(not having any warrant from the word of God so to
do,) which Moses used only as a deputy or substitute to
God; under whose cyc, and in whose presence, him-
self and the people always were. But now, for an ag-
gravation of your wickedness, though here you make
Moses to have cxercised an absolute and unlimited
power in your “ Apparat. ad Primat.” page 230, you
sty, that “he, together with the seventy clers, ruled
the people, and that himself was the chief of the people,
but not their master.” If Moses therefore were a king,
as certainly he was, and the best of kings, and had a
supreme and legal power, as you say he had, and yet
t
A DEFENCE OF THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND,
neither was the people's master nor governed them
alone; then, according to you, kings, though indued
with the supreme power, are not by virtue of that so-
vereign and kingly riglit of theirs lords over the people,
nor ought to govern them alone; much less according
to their own will and pleasure. After all this, you have
the impudence to ſeign a command from God to that
people, “to set up a king over them, as soon as they
should be possessed of the Holy Land,” Deut. xvii.
For you craftily leave out the former words, “and shalt
say, I will set a king over me,” &c. And now call to
mind what you said before, page 42, and what I said
I should have occasion to make use of, viz. “That the
power was then in the people, and that they were cm-
tirely free.” What follows, argues you cither mad or
irreligious; take whether you list: “God,” say you,
“having so long before appointed a kingly govern-
ment, as best and most proper for that people; what
shall we say to Samuel's opposing it, and God's own
acting, as if himself were against it? How do these
things agree ?” He finds himself caught; and observe
now with how great malice against the prophet, and
impiety against God, he endeavours to disentangle
himself. “We must consider,” says he, “that Samuel's
own sons then judged the people, and the people re-
jected them because of their corruption; now Samuel was
loth his sons should be laid aside, and God, to gratify
the prophet, intimated to him, as if himselſ were not
very well pleased with it.” Speak out, ye wretch,
and never mince the matter : you mean, God dealt
deceitfully with. Samuel, and he with the people. It
is not your advocate, but yourself, that are “frantic
and distracted ;” who cast off all reverence to God
Almighty, so you may but seem to honour the king.
Would Samuel prefer the interest of his sons, and
their ambition, and their covetousness, before the
general good of all the pcoplc, when they asked a
thing that would be good and profitable for them P
Can we think, that he would impose upon them by
cunning and subtilty, and make them believe things
that were not? Or if we should suppose all this true of
Samuel, would God himself countenance and gratify
him in it; would he dissemble with the people P. So
that either that was not the right of kings, which Sam-
uel taught the people; or else that right, by the testi-
mony both of God and the prophet, was an evil thing,
was burdensome, injurious, unprofitable, and charge-
able to the commonwealth: or lastly, (which must not
be admitted,) God and the prophet deceived the people.
God frequently protests, that he was extremely dis-
pleased with them for asking a king. W. 7th, “They
have not rejected thee, but they have rejected me, that
I should not reign over them.” As if it were a kind
of idolatry to ask a king that would even suffer him-
selſ to be adored, and assume almost divine honour to
himself. And certainly, they that subject themselves
to a worldly master, and set him above all laws, come
but a little short of choosing a strange god : and a
strange one it commonly is; brutish, and void of all
sense and reason. So lst of Sam, chap. 10th, v. 19th,
“And ye have this day rejected your God, who himself
IN ANSWER TO SALMASIUS'S DEFENCE of THE KING.
357
saved you out of all your adversities and your tribula-
tion, and ye have said unto him, Nay, but set a king
over us;” &c. and chap. 12th, v. 12th, “Ye said unto
me, Nay, but a king shall reign over us; when the Lord
your God was your king:" and v. the 17th, “See that
your wickedness is great, that ye have done in the
sight of the Lord, in asking you a king.” And Hosea
speaks contemptibly of the king, chap. xiii. v. 10, 11,
“I will be thy king; where is any other that may save
in all thy cities, and thy judges of whom thou saidst,
Give me a king, and princes I gave thee a king in
mine anger, and took him away in my wrath.”
And Gideon, that warlike judge, that was greater than
a king; “I will not rule over you,” says he, “neither
shall my son rule over you; the Lord shall rule over
you,” Judges, chap. viii. Intimating thereby, that it
is not fit for a man, but for God only, to exercise do-
minion over men. And hence Josephus in his book
against Appion, an Egyptian grammarian, and a foul-
mouthed fellow, like you, calls the commonwealth of
the Hebrews a Theocracy, because the principality was
in God only. In Isaiah, chap. xxvi. v. 13, the people
in their repentance, complain that it had been mischiev-
ous to them, “that other lords besides God himself,
had had dominion over them.” All which places prove
clearly, that God gave the Israelites a king in his
anger; but now who can forbear laughing at the use
you make of Abimelech's story Of whom it is said,
when he was killed, partly by a woman that hurled a
piece of millstone upon him, and partly by his own
armour-bearer, that “ God rendered the wickedness of
Abimelech.” “This history,” say you, “proves strongly,
that God only is the judge and avenger of kings.”
Yea, if this argument hold, he is the only judge and
punisher of tyrants, villanous rascals, and bastards.
Whoever can get into the saddle, whether by right or
by wrong, has thereby obtained a sovereign kingly
right over the people, is out of all danger of punish-
ment, all inferiour magistrates must lay down their
arms at his feet, the people must not dare to mutter.
But what if some great notorious robber had perished
in war, as Abimelech did, would any man infer from
thence, that God only is the judge and punisher of
highwaymen 2 Or what if Abimelech had been con-
demned by the law, and died by an executioner's hand,
would not God then have rendered his wickedness 2
You never read, that the judges of the children of
Israel were ever proceeded against according to law :
and yet you confess, that “where the government is
an aristocracy, the prince, if there be any, may and
ought to be called in question, iſ he break the laws.”
This in your 47th page. And why may not a tyrant
as well be proceeded against in a kingly government?
why, because God rendered the wickedness of Abime-
lech. So did the woman, and so did his own armour-
bearer; over both which he pretended to a right of
sovereignty. And what iſ the magistrates had rendered
his wickedness P Do not they bear the sword for that
very purpose, for the punishment of malefactors 2
Having done with his powerful argument from the
history of Abimelech's death, he betakes himself, as
his custom is, to slanders and calumnies; nothing but
dirt and filth comes from him ; but for those things
that he promised to make appear, he hath not proved
any one of them, either from the Scriptures or from the
writings of the rabbins. He alleges no reason why
kings should be above all laws, and they only of all
mortal men exempt from punishment, if they deserve
it. He falls foul upon those very authors and author-
ities that he makes use of, and by his own discourse
demonstrates the truth of the opinion that he argues
against. And perceiving, that he is like to do but little
good with his arguments, he endeavours to bring an
odium upon us, by loading us with slanderous accusa-
tions, as having put to death the most virtuous innocent
prince that ever reigned. “Was King Solomon, says
he, better than King Charles the First P I confess some
have ventured to con: pare his father King James with
Solomon; nay, to make King James the better gentle-
man of the two. Solomon was David's son, David had
been Saul's musician ; but King James was the son of
the earl of Darnley, who, as Buchanan tells us, because
David the musician got into the queen's bed-chamber
at an unseasonable time, killed him a little after ; for
he could not get to him then, because he had bolted
the door on the inside. So that King James being the
son of an earl, was the better gentleman ; and was
frequently called a second Solomon, though it is not
very certain, that himself was not the son of David
the musician too. But how could it ever come into
your head, to make a comparison between King
Charles and Solomon f For that very King Charles
whom you praise thus to the sky, that very man's
obstimacy, and covetousness, and cruelty, his hard
usage of all good and honest men, the wars that
he raised, the spoilings, and plunderings, and confla-
grations, that he occasioned, and the death of innu-
merable of his subjects, that he was the cause of, does
his son Charles, at this very time, whilst I am a-writing,
confess and bewail on the stool of repentance in
Scotland, and renounces there that kingly right that
you assert. But since you delight in parallels, let us
compare King Charles and King Solomon together a
little : “Solomon began his reign with the death of
his brother,” who justly deserved it; King Charles be-
gan his with his father's funeral, I do not say with his
murder: and yet all the marks and tokens of poison
that may be appeared in his dead body; but that sus-
picion lighted upon the duke of Buckingham only,
whom the king notwithstanding cleared to the parlia-
ment, though he had killed the king and his father;
and not only so, but he dissolved the parliament, lest
the matter should be inquired into. “Solomon op-
pressed the people with heavy taxes;” but he spent
that money upon the temple
other public buildings: King Charles spent his in ex-
travagances. Solomon was enticed to idolatry by
many wives: this man by one. Solomon, though he
were seduced himself, we read not that he seduced
others; but King Charles seduced and enticed others,
not only by large and ample rewards to corrupt the
church, but by his edicts and ecclesiastical constitutions
of God, and in raising
358
A DEFENCE OF THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND,
he compelled them to set up. altars, which all pro-
testants abhor, and to bow down to crucifixes painted
over them on the wall. “But yet for all this, Solo-
mon was not condemned to die.” Nor does it follow
because he was not, that therefore he ought not to have
been. Perhaps there were many circumstances, that
made it then not expedient. But not long after, the
people both by words and actions made appear what
they took to be their right, when ten tribes of twelve
revolted from his son; and if he had not saved himself
by flight, it is very likely they would have stoned him,
notwithstanding his threats and big swelling words.
CHAP. III.
HAVING proved sufficiently, that the kings of the
Jews were subject to the same laws that the people
were ; that there are no exceptions made in their fa-
vour in Scripture; that it is a most false assertion
grounded upon no reason, nor warranted by any au-
thority, to say, that kings may do what they list with
impunity; that God has exempted them from all hu-
man jurisdiction, and reserved them to his own tribu-
nal only ; let us now consider, whether the gospel
preach up any such doctrine, and enjoin that blind obe-
dience, which the law was so far from doing, that it
commanded the contrary; let us consider, whether or
no the gospel, that heavenly promulgation, as it were,
of christian liberty, reduce us to a condition of slavery
to kings and tyrants, from whose imperious rule even
the old law, that mistress of slavery, discharged the
people of God, when it obtained. Your first argument
you take from the person of Christ himself. But, alas !
who does not know, that he put himself into the con-
dition, not of a private person only, but even of a ser-
vant, that we might be made free ? Nor is this to be
understood of some internal spiritual liberty only; how
inconsistent else would that song of his mother's be
with the design of his coming into the world, “He
hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their
heart, he hath put down the mighty from their seat,
and hath exalted the humble and meek l’” How ill
suited to their occasion would these expressions be, if
the coming of Christ rather established and strength-
ened a tyrannical government, and made a blind sub-
jection the duty of all Christians! He himself having
been born, and lived, and died under a tyrannical go-
vernment, has thereby purchased liberty for us. As he
gives us his grace to submit patiently to a condition of
slavery, if there be a necessity of it; so if by any ho-
nest ways and means we can rid ourselves, and obtain
our liberty, he is so far from restraining us, that he en-
courages us so to do.
only of an evangelical, but also of a civil liberty, says
thus, 1 Cor. vii. 21. “Art thou called, being a ser-
vant? care not for it; but if thou mayst be made free,
use it rather; you are bought with a price, be not ye
servants of men.” So that you are very impertinent in
Hence it is that St. Paul not.
endeavouring to argue us into slavery by the example
of our Saviour; who, by submitting to such a condition
himself, has confirmed even our civil liberties. He took
upon him indeed in our stead the form of a servant, but
he always retained his purpose of being a deliverer;
and thence it was, that he taught us a quite other no-
tion of the right of kings, than this that you endeavour
to make good. You, I say, that preach up not king-
ship, but tyranny, and that in a commonwealth ; by
enjoining not only a necessary, but a religious, subjec-
tion to whatever tyrant gets into the chair, whether he
come to it by succession or by conquest, or chance, or
any how. And now I will turn your own weapons
against you ; and oppose you, as I use to do, with
your own authorities. When the collectors of the tri-
bute money came to Christ for tribute in Galilee, he
asked Peter, Matt. xvii. “Of whom the kings of the
earth took custom or tribute, of their own children, or
of strangers?” Peter saith unto him, “Of strangers.”
Jesus saith unto him, “Then are the children free; not-
withstanding, lest we should offend them, &c. give unto
them for thee and for me.” Expositors differ upon
this place, whom this tribute was paid to ; some say it
was paid to the priests, for the use of the sanctuary;
others, that it was paid to the emperor. I am of
opinion, that it was the revenue of the sanctuary, but
paid to Herod, who perverted the institution of it, and
took it to himself. Josephus mentions divers sorts of tri-
bute, which he and his sons exacted, all which Agrippa
afterwards remitted. And this very tribute, though
small in itself, yet being accompanied with many more,
was a heavy burden. The Jews, even the poorest of
them, in the time of their commonwealth, paid a poll;
so that it was some considerable oppression that our Sa-
viour spoke of: and from hence he took occasion to tax
Herod’s injustice (under whose government, and within
whose jurisdiction he then was) in that, whereas the
kings of the earth, who affect usually the title of ſathers
of their country, do not use to oppress their own chil-
dren, that is, their own natural-born subjects, with
heavy and unreasonable exactions, but lay such burdens
upon strangers and conquered enemies; he, quite con-
trary, oppressed not strangers, but his own people. But
let what will be here meant by children, either natural-
born subjects, or the children of God, and those of the
elect only, or Christians in general, as St. Augustine
understands the place; this is certain, that if Peter was
a child, and therefore free, then by consequence we are
so too, by our Saviour's own testimony, either as En-
glishmen, or as Christians, and that it therefore is not the
right of kings to exact heavy tributes from their own
countrymen, and those freeborn subjects. Christ him-
self professes, that he paid not this tribute as a thing
that was due, but that he might not bring trouble upon
himself by offending those that demanded it. The
work that he came into this world to do, was quite of
another nature. But if our Saviour deny, that it is
the right of kings to burden their freeborn subjects
with grievous exactions; he would certainly much less
allow it to be their right to spoil, massacre, and torture
their own countrymen, and those Christians too. He
IN ANSWER TO SALMASIUS’S DEFENCE OF THE KING.
359
discoursed after such a manner of the right of kings,
that those to whom he spoke suspected his principles
as laying too great a restraint upon sovereignty, and
not allowing the licence that tyrants assume to them-
selves to be the rights of kings. It was not for no-
thing, that the Pharisees put such questions to him,
tempting him; and that at the same time they told him,
that he regarded not the person of any man : nor was
it for nothing, that he was angry when such questions
were proposed to him, Matt. xxii. If one should en-
deavour to ensnare you with little questions, and catch
at your answers, to ground an accusation against you
upon your own principles concerning the right of kings,
and all this under a monarchy, would you be angry
with him 2 You would have but very little reason. It
is evident, that our Saviour's principles concerning go-
vernment were not agreeable to the humour of princes.
His answer too implies as much ; by which he rather
turned them away, than instructed them. He asked
for the tribute-money. “Whose image and superscrip-
tion is it º’’ says he. They tell him it was Caesar's.
“Give then to Caesar,” says he, “the things that are
Caesar's ; and to God, the things that are God’s.” And
how comes it to pass, that the people should not have
given to them the things that are theirs? “Render to
all men their dues,” says St. Paul, Rom. xiii. So that
Caesar must not engross all to himself. Our liberty is
not Caesar's; it is a blessing we have received from
God himself; it is what we are born to; to lay this
down at Caesar's feet, which we derive not from him,
which we are not beholden to him for, were an unwor-
thy action, and a degrading of our very nature. If
one should consider attentively the countenance of a
man, and not inquire after whose image so noble a
creature were framed ; would not any one that heard
him presently make answer, That he was made after
the image of God himself? Being therefore peculiarly
God's own, and consequently things that are to be
given to him, we are entirely free by nature, and can-
not without the greatest sacrilege imaginable be re-
duced into a condition of slavery to any man, especially
to a wicked, unjust, cruel tyrant. Our Saviour does not
take upon him to determine what things are God's and
what Caesar's; he leaves that as he found it. If the
piece of money, which they shewed him, was the same
that was paid to God, as in Vespasian's time it was;
then our Saviour is so far from having put an end to
the controversy, that he has but entangled it, and made
it more perplexed than it was before: for it is impos-
sible the same thing should be given both to God and to
Caesar. But, you say, he intimates to them what
things were Caesar's ; to wit, that piece of money, be-
cause it bore the emperor's stamp : and what of all that P
How does this advantage your cause P You get not
the emperor, or yourself, a penny by this conclusion.
Either Christ allowed nothing at all to be Caesar's,
but that piece of money that he then had in his
hand, and thereby asserted the people's interest in
every thing else; or else, if (as you would have us
understand him) he affirms all money that has the
emperor's stamp upon it, to be the emperor's own,
he contradicts himself, and indeed gives the magis-
trate a property in every man's estate, whenas he
himself paid his tribute-money with a protestation, that
it was more than what either Peter or he were bound
to do. The ground you rely on is very weak; for
money bears the prince's image, not as a token of its
being his, but of its being good metal, and that none
may presume to counterfeit it. If the writing princes’
names or setting their stamps upon a thing, vest the
property of it in them, it were a good ready way for
them to invade all property. Or rather, if whatever
subjects have been absolutely at their prince's disposal,
which is your assertion, that piece of money was not
Caesar's because his image was stamped on it, but be-
cause of right it belonged to him before it was coined.
So that nothing can be more manifest, than that our
Saviour in this place never intended to teach us our
duty to magistrates, (he would have spoken more plain-
ly if he had,) but to reprehend the malice and wicked-
ness of the hypocritical Pharisees. When they told
him that Herod laid wait to kill him ; did he return an
humble, submissive answer? “Go, tell that fox,” says
he, &c. intimating, that kings have no other right to
destroy their subjects, than foxes have to devour the
things they prey upon. Say you, “he suffered death
under a tyrant.” How could he possibly under any other?
But from hence you conclude, that he asserted it to
be the right of kings to commit murder and act injus-
tice. You would make an excellent moralist. But
our Saviour, though he became a servant, not to make
us so but that we might be free; yet carried he him-
self so with relation to the magistracy, as not to as-
cribe any more to them than their due. Now, let us
come at last to inquire what his doctrine was upon
this subject. The sons of Zebedee were ambitious of
honour and power in the kingdom of Christ, which
they persuaded themselves he would shortly set up
in the world ; he reproves them so, as withal to let
all Christians know what form of civil government
he desires they should settle amongst themselves.
“Ye know,” says he, “ that the princes of the Gen-
tiles exercise dominion over them ; and they that
are great exercise authority upon them; but it shall
not be so among you; but whosoever will be great
among you, let him be your minister; and whosoever
will be chief among you, let him be your servant.”
Unless you had been distracted, you could never have
imagined, that this place makes for you : and yet you
urge it, and think it furnishes you with an argument
to prove, that our kings are absolute lords and masters
over us and ours. May it be our fortune to have to do
with such enemies in war, as will fall blindfold and
naked into our camp instead of their own: as you con-
stantly do, who allege that for yourself, that of all
things in the world makes most against you. The Is-
raelites asked God for a king, such a king as other
nations round about them had. God dissuaded them
by many arguments, whereof our Saviour here gives
us an epitome; “You know that the princes of the
Gentiles exercise dominion over them.” But yet, be-
cause the Israelites persisted in their desire of a king,
360
A DEFENCE OF THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND,
God gave them one, though in his wrath. Our Sa-
viour, lest Christians should desire a king, such a one
at least as might rule, as he says the princes of the
Gentiles did, prevents them with an injunction to the
contrary ; “but it shall not be so among you.” What
can be said plainer than this 2 That stately, imperious
sway and dominion, that kings use to exercise, shall
not be amongst you ; what specious titles soever they
may assume to themselves, as that of benefactors, or
the like. “But he that will be great amongst you,”
(and who is greater than the prince P) “let him be your
servant.” So that the lawyer, whoever he be, that you
are so smart upon, was not so much out of the way,
but had our Saviour's own authority to back him, when
he said, that Christian princes were indeed no other
than the people's servants; it is very certain that all
good magistrates are so. Insomuch that Christians
either must have no king at all, or if they have, that
king must be the people's servant. Absolute lordship
and Christianity are inconsistent. Moses himself, by
whose ministry that servile oeconomy of the old law
was instituted, did not exercise an arbitrary, haughty
power and authority, but bore the burden of the people,
and carried them in his bosom, as a nursing father does
a sucking child, Numb. xi. and what is that of a nurs-
ing father but a ministerial employment? Plato would
not have the magistrates called lords, but servants and
helpers of the people; nor the people servants, but
maintainers of their magistrates, because they give
meat, drink, and wages to their kings themselves.
Aristotle calls the magistrates, keepers and ministers of
the laws. Plato, ministers and servants. The apostle
calls them ministers of God ; but they are ministers
and servants of the people, and of the laws, nevertheless
for all that ; the laws and the magistrates were both
created for the good of the people: and yet this is it,
that you call “the opinion of the ſanatic mastiffs in
England.” I should not have thought the people of
England were mastiff dogs, if such a mongrel cur as
thou art did not bark at them so currishly. The mas-
ter, iſ it shall please ye, of St. Lupus,” complains it
seems, that the mastiffs are mad (ſamatics). Germanus
heretofore, whose colleague that Lupus of Triers was,
deposed our incestuous king Vortigern by his own au-
thority. And therefore St. Lupus despises thee, the
master not of a Holy Wolf, but of some hunger-starved
thieving little wolf or other, as being more contempt-
ible than that master of vipers, of whom Martial makes
mention, who hast by relation a barking she-wolf at
home too, that domineers over thee most wretchedly :
at whose instigations, as I am informed, thou hast
wrote this stuff. And therefore it is the less wonder,
that thou shouldst endeavour to obtrude an absolute
regal government upon others, who hast been accus-
tomed to bear a female rule so servilely at home thy-
selſ. Be therefore, in the name of God, the master of
a wolf, lest a she-wolf be thy mistress; be a wolf thy-
selſ, be a monster made up of a man and a wolf; what-
ever thou art, the English mastiffs will but make a
laughing-stock of thee. But I am not now at leisure
* Lupus in Latin signifies a wolf.
to hunt for wolves, and will put an end therefore to
this digression. You that but a while ago wrote a
book against all manner of superiority in the church,
now call St. Peter the prince of the apostles. How
inconstant you are in your principles' But what says
Peter P “Submit yourselves to every ordinance of
man, for the Lord's sake, whether it be to the king as
supreme, or to governours, as unto them that are sent
by him for the punishment of evil-doers, and the praise
of them that do well: for so is the will of God,” &c.
This epistle Peter wrote, not only to private persons,
but those strangers scattered and dispersed through
Asia; who, in those places where they sojourned, had
no other right, than what the laws of hospitality en-
titled them to. Do you think such men's case to be the
same with that of natives, freeborn subjects, nobility,
senates, assemblies of estates, parliaments? may, is not
the case far different of private persons, though in their
own country; and senators, or magistrates, without
whom kings themselves cannot possibly subsist? But
let us suppose, that St. Peter had directed his epistle
to the natural-born subjects, and those not private per-
sons neither; suppose he had writ to the senate of
Rome; what then P No law that is grounded upon a
reason, expressly set down in the law itself, obligeth
further than the reason of it extends. “Be subject,”
says he, intoraynre: that is, according to the genuine
sense and import of the word, “be subordinate, or
legally subject.” For the law, Aristotle says, is order.
“Submit for the Lord's sake.” Why so P Because a
king is an officer “appointed by God for the punish-
ment of evil-doers, and the praise of them that do
well; for so is the will of God:” to wit, that we
should submit and yield obedience to such as are here
described. There is not a word spoken of any other.
You see the ground of this precept, and how well it is
laid. The apostle adds in the 16th verse, as free ;
therefore not as slaves. What now P if princes per-
vert the design of magistracy, and use the power
that is put into their hands to the ruin and destruction
of good men, and the praise and encouragement of
evil-doers; must we all be condemned to perpetual
slavery, not private persons only, but our nobility,
all our inferiour magistrates, our very parliament
itself? Is not temporal government called a human
ordinance? How comes it to pass then, that man-
kind should have power to appoint and constitute what
may be good and profitable for one another; and want
power to restrain or suppress things that are universally
mischievous and destructive 2 That prince, you say,
to whom St. Peter enjoins subjection, was Nero the
tyrant: and from thence you inſer, that it is our duty
to submit and yield obedience to such. But it is not
certain, that this epistle was writ in Nero's reign : it is
as likely to have been writ in Claudius's time. And
they that are commanded to submit, were private per-
sons and strangers; they were no consuls, no magis-
trates: it was not the Roman senate, that St. Peter
directed his epistle to. Now let us hear what use you
make of St. Paul, (for you take a freedom with the
IN ANSWER TO SALMASIUS'S DEFENCE OF THE KING. 33 l
apostles, I find, that you will not allow us to take with
princes; you make St. Pe'er the chief of them to-day,
and to-morrow put another in his place). St. Paul in
his 13th chap. to the Romans, has these words: “Let
every soul be subject unto the higher powers, for there
is no power but of God; the powers that be, are or-
dained of God.” I confess he writes this to the Ro-
mans, not to strangers dispersed, as Peter did ; but,
however, he writes to private persons, and those of the
meaner rank; and yet he gives us a true and clear ac-
count of the reason, the original, and the design of
government; and shews us the true and proper ground
of our obedience, that it is far from imposing a neces-
sity upon us of being slaves. “Let every soul, says
he, that is, let every man, submit.” Chrysostom tells
us, “that St. Paul's design in this discourse, was to
make it appear, that our Saviour did not go about to
introduce principles inconsistent with the civil govern-
ment, but such as strengthened it, and settled it upon
the surest foundations.” He never intended then by
setting Nero or any other tyrant out of the reach of all
laws, to enslave mankind under his lust and cruelty.
“He intended too, (says the same author,) to dissuade
from unnecessary and causeless wars.” But he does
not condemn a war taken up against a tyrant, a bosom
enemy of his own country, and consequently the most
dangerous that may be. “It was commonly said in
those days, that the doctrine of the apostles was sedi-
tious, themselves persons that endeavoured to shake
the settled laws and government of the world; that
this was what they aimed at in all they said and did.”
The apostle in this chapter stops the mouths of such
gainsayers: so that the apostles did not write in de-
fence of tyrants as you do ; but they asserted such
things as made them suspected to be enemies to the
government they lived under, things that stood in need
of being explained and interpreted, and having an-
other sense put upon them than was generally received.
St. Chrysostom has now taught us what the apostle's
design was in this discourse; let us now examine his
words: “Let every soul be subject to the higher
powers.” He tells us not what those higher powers
are, nor who they are ; for he never intended to over-
throw all governments, and the several constitutions of
nations, and subject all to some one man's will. Every
good emperor acknowledged, that the laws of the em-
pire, and the authority of the senate, was above him-
self; and the same principle and notion of government
has obtained all along in civilized nations. Pindar, as
he is cited by Herodotus, calls the law irávrov Bagºta,
king over all. Orpheus in his hymns calls it the king
both of gods and men: and he gives the reason why
it is so; because, says he, it is that that sits at the helm
of all human affairs. Plato in his book de Legibus,
calls it to xparoiv iv tº tróNet: that that ought to have
the greatest sway in the commonwealth. In his epis-
tles he commends that form of government, in which
the law is made lord and master, and no scope given
to any man to tyrannize over the laws. Aristotle is of
the same opinion in his Politicks; and so is Cicero in
his book de Legibus, that the laws ought to govern the
*-ºs--------~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
magistrates, as they do the people. The law therefore
having always been accounted the highest power on
earth, by the judgment of the most learned and wise
men that ever were, and by the constitutions of the
best-ordered states; and it being very certain, that the
doctrine of the gospel is neither contrary to reason, nor
the law of nations, that man is truly and properly sub-
ject to the higher powers, who obeys the law and the
magistrates, so far as they govern according to law.
So that St. Paul does not only command the people,
but princes themselves, to be in subjection ; who are
not above the laws, but bound by them, “ for there is
no power but of God :” that is, no form, no lawful con-
stitution of any government. The most ancient laws
that are known to us were formerly ascribed to God as
their author. For the law, says Cicero in his Philip-
pics, is no other than a rule of well-grounded reason,
derived from God himself, enjoining whatever is just º
and right, and ſorbidding the contrary. So that the
institution of magistracy is Jure Divino, and the end
of it is, that mankind might live under certain laws,
and be governed by them. But what particular form
of government each nation would live under, and what
persons should be intrusted with the magistracy, with-
out doubt, was left to the choice of each nation. Hence
St. Peter calls kings and deputies, human ordinances.
And Hosea, in the 8th chapter of his prophecy, “they
have set up kings, but not by me ; they have made
princes, and I knew it not.” For in the commonwealth
of the Hebrews, where, upon matters of great and
weighty importance, they could have access to God
himself, and consult with him, they could not choose
a king themselves by law, but were to refer the mat-
ter to him. Other nations have received no such
command. Sometimes the very form of government,
if it be amiss, or at least those persons that have the
power in their hands, are not of God, but of men, or
of the devil, Luke iv. “All this power will I give
unto thee, for it is delivered unto me, and I give
it to whom I will.” Hence the devil is called the
prince of this world; and in the 12th of the Revela-
tions, the dragon gave to the beast his power, and his
throne, and great authority. So that we must not un-
derstand St. Paul, as if he spoke of all sorts of magis-
trates in general, but of lawful magistrates; and so they
are described in what follows. We must also under-
stand him of the powers themselves; not of those men,
always, in whose hands they are lodged. St. Chrysos-
tom speaks very well and clearly upon this occasion.
“What?” says he, “is every prince then appointed by
God to be so 2 I say no such thing,” says he. “ St.
Paul speaks not of the person of the magistrate, but of
the magistracy itself. He does not say, there is no
prince but who is of God. He says there is no power
but of God.” Thus far St. Chrysostom; for what
powers are, are ordained of God: so that Paul speaks
only of a lawful magistracy. For what is evil and
amiss cannot be said to be ordained, because it is dis-
orderly; order and disorder cannot consist together in
the same subject. The apostle says, “the powers that
be;” and you interpret his words as if he had said,
362
A DEFENCE OF THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND,
{
|
to the succession.
“the powers that now be ;” that you may prove, that
the Romans ought in conscience to obey Nero, who
you take for granted was then emperor. I am very
well content you should read the words so, and draw
that conclusion from them. The consequence will be,
that Englishmen ought to yield obedience to the pre-
sent government, as it is now established according to
a new model; because you must needs acknowledge,
that it is the present government, and ordained of God,
as much at least as Nero's was. And lest you should
object, that Nero came to the empire by a lawful suc-
cession, it is apparent from the Roman history, that
both he and Tiberius got into the chair by the tricks
and artifices of their mothers, and had no right at all
So that you are inconsistent with
yourself, and retract from your own principles, in af-
firming that the Romans owed subjection to the govern-
ment that them was ; and yet denying that Englishmen
owe subjection to the government that now is. But it
is no wonder, to hear you contradict yourself. There
are no two things in the world more directly opposite
and contrary to one another, than you are to yourself.
But what will become of you, poor wretch P You
have quite undone the young king with your witticisms,
and ruined his fortunes utterly; for according to your
own doctrine you must needs confess, that this present
government in England is ordained of God, and that
all Englishmen are bound in conscience to submit to
it. Take motice, all ye critics and textuaries; do
not you presume to meddle with this text. Thus
Salmasius corrects that passage in the epistle to the
Romans: he has made a discovery, that the words
ought not to be read, “the powers that are ; but, the
powers that now are :” and all this to prove, that all
men owed subjection and obedience to Nero the tyrant,
whom he supposed to have been then emperor. This
Epistle, which you say was writ in Nero's time, was
writ in his predecessor's time, who was an honest well-
meaning man; and this learned men evince by unde-
niable arguments. But besides, the five first years of
Nero's reign were without exception. So that this
threadbare argument, which so many men have at their
tongues’ end, and have been deceived by, to wit, that
tyrants are to be obeyed, because St. Paul enjoins a
subjection to Nero, is evident to have been but a cun-
ning invention of some ignorant parson. He that re-
sists the powers, to wit, a law ul power, resists the
ordinance of God. Kings themselves come under
the penalty of this law, when they resist the senate,
and act contrary to the laws. But do they resist the
ordinance of God, that resist an unlawful power, or a
person that goes about to overthrow and destroy a law-
ful one * No man living in his right wits can maintain
such an assertion. The words immediately after make
it as clear as the sun, that the apostle speaks only of a
lawful power; for he gives us in them a definition of
magistrates, and thereby explains to us who are the
persons thus authorized, and upon what account we
are to yield obedience, lest we should be apt to mistake
and ground extravagant notions upon his discourse.
“The magistrates,” says he, “are not a terrour to good
works, but to evil: Wilt thou then not be afraid of the
power P Do that which is good and thou shalt have
praise of the same : for he is the minister of God to
thee for good. He beareth not the sword in vain; for
he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath
upon him that doth evil.” What honest man would
not willingly submit to such a magistracy as is here
described ' And that not only to avoid wrath, and for
fear of punishment, but for conscience sake. Without
magistrates, and some form or other of civil govern-
ment, no commonwealth, no human society, can subsist
there were no living in the world. But whatever
power enables a man, or whatsoever magistrate takes
upon him, to act contrary to what St. Paul makes the
duty of those that are in authority; neither is that
power nor that magistrate ordained of God. And con-
sequently to such a magistracy no subjection is comi-
manded, nor is any due, nor are the people forbidden
to resist such authority; for in so doing they do not
resist the power, nor the magistracy, as they are here
excellently well described ; but they resist a robber, a
tyrant, an enemy; who if he may notwithstanding in
some sense be called a magistrate, upon this account
only, because he has power in his hands, which per-
haps God may have invested him with for our punish-
ment; by the same reason the devil may be called a
magistrate. This is most certain, that there can be
but one true definition of one and the same thing. So
that if St. Paul in this place define what a magistrate
is, which he certainly does, and that accurately well;
he cannot possibly define a tyrant, the most contrary
thing imaginable, in the same words. Hence I infer,
that he commands us to submit to such magistrates
only as he himself defines and describes, and not to
tyrants, which are quite other things. “For this cause
you pay tribute also:” he gives a reason together with
a command. Hence St. Chrysostom ; “why do we
pay tribute to princes? Do we not,” adds he, “there-
by reward them for the care they take of our safety 2
We should not have paid them any tribute, if we had
not been convinced, that it was good for us to live
under a government.” So that I must here repeat
what I have said already, that since subjection is not
absolutely enjoined, but on a particular reason, that
reason must be the rule of our subjection : where that
reason holds, we are rebels if we submit not ; where it
holds not, we are cowards and slaves if we do. “But,”
say you, “the English are far from being freemen;
for they are wicked and flagitious.” I will not
reckon up here the vices of the French, though they
live under a kingly government; neither will I excuse
my own countrymen too far: but this I may safely say,
whatever vices they have, they have learnt them under
a kingly government; as the Israelites learnt a great
deal of wickedness in Egypt. And as they, when
they were brought into the wilderness, and lived
under the immediate government of God himself, could
hardly reform, just so it is with us. But there are good
hopes of many amongst us; that I may not here cele-
brate those men who are eminent for their piety and
virtue and love of the truth; of which sort I persuade
IN ANSWER TO SALMASIUS'S DEFENCE OF THE KING.
363
myself we have as great a number, as where you think
there are most such. “But they have laid a heavy
yoke upon the English nation:” what if they have,
upon those of them that endeavoured to lay a heavy
yoke upon all the rest? upon those that have deserved
to be put under the hatches As for the rest, I question
not but they are very well content to be at the expense
of maintaining their own liberty, the public treasury
being exhausted by the civil wars. Now he betakes
himself to the fabulous rabbins again : he asserts frc-
quently, that kings are bound by no laws; and yet
he proves, that according to the sense of the rabbins,
“a king may be guilty of treason, by suffering an in-
vasion upon the rights of his crown.” So kings are
bound by laws, and they are not bound by them; they
may be criminals, and yet they may not be so. This
man contradicts himself so perpetually, that contradic-
tion and he seem to be of kin to one another. You
say that God himself put many kingdoms under the
yoke of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon. I confess
he did so for a time, Jer. xxvii. 7, but do you make
appear, if you can, that he put the English nation into
a condition of slavery to Charles Stuart for a minute.
I confess he suffered them to be enslaved by him for
some time; but I never yet heard, that himself ap-
pointed it so to be. Or if you will have it so, that God
shall be said to put a nation under slavery, when a ty-
rant prevails; why may he not as well be said to de-
liver them from his tyranny, when the people prevail
and get the upper hand 2 Shall his tyranny be said to
be of God, and not our liberty 2 There is no evil in the
city, that the Lord hath not done, Amos iii. So that
famine, pestilence, sedition, war, all of them are of
God; and is it therefore unlawful for a people afflicted
with any of these plagues, to endeavour to get rid of
them * Certainly they would do their utmost, though
they know them to be sent by God, unless himself mira-
culously from heaven should command the contrary:
and why may they not by the same reason rid them-
selves of a tyrant, if they are stronger than he Why
should we suppose his weakness to be appointed by
God for the ruin and destruction of the commonwealth,
rather than the power and strength of all the people for
the good of the state? Far be it from all commonwealths,
from all societies of freeborn men, to maintain not only
such pernicious, but such stupid and senseless, prin-
ciples; principles that subvert all civil society, that to
gratify a few tyrants, level all mankind with brutes;
and by setting princes out of the reach of human laws,
give them an equal power over both. I pass by those
foolish dilemmas that you now make, which that you
might take occasion to propose, you feign some or other
to assert, that the “superlative power of princes is de-
rived from the people;” though for my own part I do
not at all doubt, but that all the power that any magis-
trates have is so. Hence Cicero, in his Orat. pro Fiac-
co, “Our wise and holy ancestors,” says he, “appointed
those things to obtain for laws, that the people enact-
ed.” And hence it is, that Lucius Crassus, an excellent
Roman orator, and at that time president of the senate,
when in a controversy betwixt them and the common
people, he asserted their rights, “I beseech you, says
he, suffer not us to live in subjection to any, but your-
selves, to the entire body of whom we can and ought
to submit.” For though the Roman senate governed
the people, the people themselves had appointed them
to be their governors, and had put that power into their
hands. We read the term of Majesty more frequently
applied to the people of Rome, than to their kings.
Tully in Orat. pro Flancio, “it is the condition of all
free people, (says he,) and especially of this people, the
lord of all nations, by their votes to give or take away,
to or from any, as themselves see cause. It is the duty
of the magistrates patiently to submit to what the body
of the people enact. Those that are not ambitious of
honour, have the less obligation upon them to court
the people: those that affect preferment, must not be
weary of entreating them.” Should I scruple to call a
king the servant of his people, when I hear the Ro-
man senate, that reigned over so many kings, profess
themselves to be but the people's servants You will
object perhaps, and say, that all this is very true in a
popular state; but the case was altered aſterwards,
when the regal law transferred all the people's right
unto Augustus and his successors. But what think you
then of Tiberius, whom yourself confess to have been a
very great tyrant, as he certainly was P Suetonius says
of him, that when he was once called Lord or Master,
though after the enacting of that Lex Regia, he de-
sired the person that gave him that appellation, to for-
bear abusing him. How does this sound in your ears?
a tyrant thinks one of his subjects abuses him in call-
ing him Lord. The same emperor in one of his speeches
to the senate, “I have said,” says he, “frequently, here-
tofore, and now I say it again, that a good prince, whom
you have invested with so great a power as I am intrust-
ed with, ought to serve the senate and the body of the
people, and sometimes even particular persons; nor do I
repent of having said so : I confess that you have been
good, and just, and indulgent masters to me, and that
you are yet so.” You may say, that he dissembled in
all this, as he was a great proficient in the art of hypo-
crisy; but that is all one. No man endeavours to
appear otherwise than he ought to be. Hence Tacitus
tells us, that it was the custom in Rome for the empe-
rors in the Circus, to worship the people; and that both
Nero and other emperors practised it. Claudian in his
panegyric upon Honorius mentions the same custom.
By which sort of adoration what could possibly be
meant, but that the emperors of Rome, even after the
enacting of the Lex Regia, confessed the whole body
of the people to be their superiours ? . But I find, as I
suspected at first, and so I told ye, that you have spent
more time and pains in turning over glossaries, and
criticising upon texts, and propagating such-like labo-
rious trifles, than in reading sound authors so as to im-
prove your knowledge by them. For had you been
never so little versed in the writings of learned men in
former ages, you would not have accounted an opinion
new, and the product of some enthusiastic heads, which
has been asserted and maintained by the greatest phi-
losophers, and most famous politicians in the world.
364
A DEFENCE OF THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND,
You endeavour to expose one Martin, who you tell us
was a tailor, and one William a tanner; but if they
are such as you describe them, I think they and you
may very well go together; though they themselves
would be able to instruct you, and unfold those myste-
rious riddles that you propose: as, “Whether or no they
that in a monarchy would have the king but a servant
to the commonwealth, will say the same thing of the
whole body of the people in a popular state P And
whether all the people serve in a democracy, or only
some part or other serve the rest P’’ And when they
have been an OEdipus to you, by my consent you shall
be a sphinx to them in good earnest, and throw your-
self headlong from some precipice or other, and break
your neck; for else I am afraid you will never have
done with your riddles and fooleries. You ask, “Whe-
ther or no, when St. Paul names kings, he meant the
people?” I confess St. Paul commands us to pray for
kings, but he had commanded us to pray for the people
before, ver. 1. But there are some for all that, both
among kings and common people, that we are forbid-
den to pray for; and if a man may not so much as be
prayed for, may he not be punished 2 What should
hinder P But, “when Paul wrote this epistle, he that
reigned was the most profligate person in the world.”
That is false. For Ludovicus Capellus makes it evi-
dent, that this epistle likewise was writ in Claudius's
time. When St. Paul has occasion to speak of Nero,
he calls him not a king, but a lion ; that is, a wild, sa-
vage beast, from whose jaws he is glad he was de-
livered, 2 Tim. iv. So that it is for kings, not for
beasts, that we are to pray, that under them we may
live a quiet and peaceable life, in all godliness and ho-
nesty. Kings and their interest are not the things here
intended to be advanced and secured; it is the public
peace, godliness, and honesty, whose establishment we
are commanded to endeavour after, and to pray for.
But is there any people in the world, that would not
choose rather to live an honest and careful life, though
never free from war and troubles, in the defence of them-
selves and their families, whether against tyrants or
enemies, (for I make no difference,) than under the
power of a tyrant or an enemy, to spin out a life
equally troublesome, accompanied with slavery and ig-
nominy 2 That the latter is the more desirable of the
two, I will prove by a testimony of your own; not be-
cause I think your authority worth quoting, but that
all men may observe how double-tongued you are, and
how mercenary your pen is. “Who would not rather,”
say you, “bear with those dissensions, that through
the emulation of great men often happen in an aristo-
cratical government, than live under the tyrannical
government of one, where nothing but certain misery
and ruin is to be looked for 2 The people of Rome
preferred their commonwealth, though never so much
shattered with civil broils, before the intolerable yoke
of their emperors. When a people, to avoid sedition,
submits to a monarchy, and finds by experience, that
this is the worst evil of the two, they often desire to re-
turn to their former government again.” These are
your own words, and more you have to this purpose in
that discourse concerning bishops, which under a
feigned name you wrote against Petavius the Jesuit;
though yourself are more a Jesuit than he, nay worse
than any of that crew. We have already heard the
sense of the Scripture upon this subject; and it has been
worth our while to take some pains to find it out. But
perhaps it will not be so to inquire into the judgment
of the fathers, and to ransack their volumes: for if they
assert any thing, which is not warranted by the word of
God, we may safely reject their authority, be it never
so great; and particularly that expression that you al-
lege out of Irenaeus, “that God in his providence orders
it so, that such kings reign as are suitable to and pro-
per for the people they are to govern, all circumstances
considered.” That expression, I say, is directly contrary
to Scripture. For though God himself declared openly,
that it was better for his own people to be governed by
judges, than by kings, yet he left it to them to change
that form of government for a worse, if they would
themselves. And we read frequently, that when the
body of the people has been good, they have had a
wicked king, and contrariwise that a good king has
sometimes reigned, when the people have been wicked.
So that wise and prudent men are to consider and see
what is profitable and fit for the people in general; for
it is very certain, that the same form of government is
not equally convenient for all nations, nor for the same .
nation at all times; but sometimes one, sometimes an-
other may be more proper, according as the industry
and valour of the people may increase or decay. But .
if you deprive the people of this liberty of setting up
what government they like best among themselves, you
take that from them, in which the life of all civil liberty
consists. Then you tell us of Justin Martyr, of his
humble and submissive behaviour to the Antonines,
those best of emperors; as if any body would not do
the like to princes of such moderation as they were.
“How much worse Christians are we in these days,
than those were ! They were content to live under a
prince of another religion.” Alas! they were private
persons, and infinitely inferior to the contrary party in
strength and number. “But now papists will not
endure a protestant prince, nor protestants one that is
popish.” You do well and discreetly in showing your-
self to be neither papist nor protestant. And you are
very liberal in your concessions; for now you confess,
that all sorts of Christians agree in that very thing,
that you alone take upon you with so much impudence
and wickedness, to cry down and oppose. And how
unlike those fathers that you commend, do you shew
yourself: they wrote apologies for the Christians to
heathen princes; you in defence of a wicked popish
king, against Christians and protestants. Then you
entertain us with a number of impertinent quotations
out of Athenagoras and Tertullian: things that we
have already heard out of the writings of the apostles,
much more clearly and intelligibly exprest. But Ter-
tullian was quite of a different opinion from yours, of a
king's being a lord and master over his subjects: which
you either knew not, or wickedly dissembled. For he,
though he were a Christian, and directed his discourse
i
IN ANSWER TO SALMASIUS'S DEFENCE OF THE KING. 365
to a heathen emperor, had the conſidence to tell him,
that an emperor ought not to be called Lord. “Augus-
tus himself, says he, that formed this empire, refused
that appellation; it is a title proper to God only. Not
but that the title of Lord and Master may in some sense
be ascribed to the emperor: but there is a peculiar
sense of that word, which is proper to God only; and
in that sense, I will not ascribe it to the emperor. I
am the emperor's freeman. God alone is my Lord and
Master.” And the same author, in the same discourse;
“how inconsistent,” says he, “are those two appella-
tions, Father of his country, and Lord and Master!”
And now I wish you much joy of Tertullian's autho-
rity, whom it had been a great deal better you had let
alone. But Tertullian calls them parricides that slew
Domitian. And he does well, for so they were, his
wife and servants conspired against him. And they
set one Parthenius and Stephanus, who were accused
for concealing part of the public treasure, to make him
away. If the senate and the people of Rome had pro-
ceeded against him according to the custom of their
ancestors; had given judgment of death against him,
as they did once against Nero; and had made search
for him to put him to death ; do ye think Tertullian
would have called them parricides.” If he had, he
would have deserved to be hanged, as you do. I give
the same answer to your quotation out of Origen, that
I have given already to what you have cited out
of Irenaeus. Athanasius indeed says, that kings are
not accountable before human tribunals. But I won-
der who told Athanasius this! I do not hear, that he
produces any authority from Scripture, to confirm this
assertion. And I will rather believe kings and emper-
ors themselves, who deny that they themselves have
any such privilege, than I will Athanasius. Then you
quote Ambrosius, who after he had been a proconsul,
and after that became a catechumen, at last got into a
bishopric : but for his authority, I say, that his inter-
pretation of those words of David, “against thee only
I have sinned,” is both ignorant and adulatory. He
was willing all others should be enthralled to the em-
peror, that he might enthral the emperor to himself.
We all know with what a papal pride and arrogancy
he treated Theodosius the emperor, how he took upon
him to declare him guilty of that massacre at Thessa-
lonica, and to forbid him coming into the church; how
miserably raw in divinity, and unacquainted with the
doctrine of the gospel, he shewed himself upon that
occasion; when the emperor fell down at his feet, he
commanded him to get him out of the porch. At last,
when he was received again into the communion of
the church, and had offered, because he continued
standing near to the altar, the magisterial prelate com-
manded him out of the rails: “O Emperor,” says he,
“these inner places are for the priests only, it is not
lawful for others to come within them " Does this
sound like the behaviour of a minister of the gospel, or
like that of a Jewish high-priest P And yet this man,
such as we hear he was, would have the emperor ride
other people, that himself might ride him, which is a
common trick of almost all ecclesiastics. With words to
this purpose, he put back the emperor as inſerior to
himself; “You rule over men,” saith he, “that are
partakers of the same nature, and fellow-servants with
yourself: for there is only one Lord and King over all,
to wit, the Creator of all.” This is very pretty! This
piece of truth, which the craft and flattery of clergy-
men has all along endeavoured to suppress and obscure,
was then brought to light by the furious passion, or
to speak more mildly, by the ignorant indiscreet zeal,
of one of them. After you have displayed Ambrose's
ignorance, you shew your own, or rather, vent a heresy
in affirming point blank, That “under the Old Testa-
ment, there was no such thing as ſorgiveness of sins
upon the account of Christ's sufferings, since David
confessed his transgression, saying, Against thee only
have I sinned,” Psal. lviii. It is the orthodox tenet,
that there never was any remission of sins, but by the
blood of the Lamb that was slain from the beginning
of the world. I know not whose disciple you are, that
set up for a broacher of new heresies: but certain I
am, that that great divine's disciple, whom you are so
angry with, did not mistake himself, when he said,
that any one of David's subjects might have said,
“Against thee only have I sinned,” as properly, and
with as much right, as David himself. Then you
quote St. Austin, and produce a company of Hipponen-
sian divines. What you allege out of St. Austin makes
not at all against us. We confess that as the prophet
Daniel has it, it is God that changeth times, sets up
one kingdom, and pulls down another; we only desire
to have it allowed us, that he makes use of men as his
instruments. If God alone gave a kingdom to King
Charles, God alone has taken it from him again, and
given it to the parliament, and to the people. If there-
fore our allegiance was due to King Charles, because
God had given him a kingdom ; for the same reason it
is now due to the present magistracy. For yourself
confess, that God has given our magistrates such power
as he uses to give to wicked princes, for the punish-
ment of the nation. And the consequence of this will
be, that according to your own opinion, our present
magistrates being raised and appointed by God, cannot
lawfully be deposed by any, but God himself. Thus
you overthrow the opinion you pretend to maintain,
which is a thing very frequent with you; your apology
for the king carries its death's wound in it. You
have attained to such a prodigious degree of mad-
ness and stupidity, as to prove it unlawful upon any
account whatsoever, to liſt up one's finger against
magistrates, and with the very next breath to affirm,
that it is the duty of their subjects to rise up in re-
bellion against them. You tell us, that St. Jerom calls
Ishmael, that slew Gedaliah, a parricide or traitor:
and it is very true, that he was so : for Gedaliah was
deputy governor of Judaea, a good man, and slain by
Ishmael without any cause. The same author in his
comment upon the book of Ecclesiastes, says, that
Solomon's command to keep the king's commandment,
is the same with St. Paul's doctrine upon the same
subject; and deserves commendation for having made
a more moderate construction of that text, than most
366 A DEFENCE OF THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND,
of his contemporaries. You say, you will forbear in- testimonies of the fathers that flourished in the four
quiring into the sentiments of learned men that lived first centuries; whose writings only are evangelical,
since St. Austin's time; but to shew that you had and according to the truth of the christian religion.”
rather dispense with a lie, than not quote any author | This man is past all shame! how many things did they
that you think makes for you, in the very next period preach, how many things have they published, which
but one you produce the authorities of Isidore, Gregory, Christ and his apostles never taught ! How many
and Otho, Spanish and Dutch authors, that lived in things are there in their writings, in which all protest-
the most barbarous and ignorant ages of all; whose ant divines differ from them | But what is that opinion
authorities, if you knew how much we despise, you that you have confirmed by their authorities? “Why,"
would not have told a lie to have quoted them. But that evil princes are appointed by God.” Allow that,
would you know the reason why he dares not come so | as all other pernicious and destructive things are...!
low as to the present times 2 why he does as it were | What then P why, “that therefore they have no judge
hide himself, and disappear, when he comes towards but God alone, that they are above all human laws;
our own times 2 The reason is, because he knows full that there is no law, written or unwritten, no law of
well, that as many eminent divines as there are of the nature, nor of God, to call them to account before their
reformed churches, so many adversaries he would have own subjects.” But how comes that to pass 2 Certain
to encounter. Let him take up the cudgels, if he I am that there is no law against it: no penal law ex-
thinks fit; he will quickly find himself run down with cepts kings. And all reason and justice requires, that
innumerable authorities out of Luther, Zuinglius, Cal- those that offend, should be punished according to
vin, Bucer, Martyr, Paraeus, and the rest. I could their deserts, without respect of persons. Nor have
oppose you with testimonies out of divines, that have | you hitherto produced any one law, either written or
flourished even in Leyden. Though that famous uni- unwritten, of God or of mature, by which this is forbid-
versity and renowned commonwealth, which has been den. What stands in the way then P Why may not
as it were a sanctuary for liberty, those fountains and kings be proceeded against 2 Why, “because they
streams of all polite learning, have not yet been able are appointed by God, be they never so bad.” I do
to wash away that slavish rust that sticks to you, and not know whether I had best call you a knave, or a
infuse a little humanity into you. Finding yourself fool, or ignorant, unlearned barbarian. You shew
destitute of any assistance or help from orthodox pro- yourself a vile wretch, by propagating a doctrine so
testant divines, you have the impudence to betake | destructive and permicious; and you are a fool for
yourself to the Sorbonists, whose college you know is backing it with such silly arguments. God says in
devoted to the Romish religion, and consequently but | Isa. liv. “I have created the slayer to destroy.” Then
of very weak authority amongst protestants. We are by your reason a murderer is above the laws. Turn
willing to deliver so wicked an assertor of tyranny as this topsyturvy, and consider it as long as you will,
you, to be drowned in the Sorbonne, as being ashamed you will find the consequence to be the same with your
to own so despicable a slave as you shew yourself to own. For the pope is appointed by God, just as ty-
be, by maintaining that the whole body of a nation is rants are, and set up for the punishment of the church,
not equal in power to the most slothful degenerate which I have already demonstrated out of your own
prince that may be. You labour in vain to lay that | writings. “And yet,” say you, Wal. Mes, pag. 412,
upon the pope, which all free nations, and all orthodox “because he has raised his primacy to an insufferable
divines, own and assert. But the pope and his clergy, height of power, so as that he has made it neither bet-
when they were in a low condition, and but of small ter nor worse than plain downright tyranny, both he
account in the world, were the first authors of this per- and his bishops may be put down more lawfully, than
nicious absurd doctrine of yours; and when by preach- they were at first set up.” You tell us, that the pope
ing such doctrine they had gotten power into their and the bishops (though God in his wrath appointed
own hands, they became the worst of tyrants them- them) may yet lawfully be rooted out of the church,
selves. Yet they engaged all princes to them by the because they are tyrants; and yet you deny that it is
closest tie imaginable, persuading the world, that was lawful to depose a tyrant in the commonwealth, and
now besotted with their superstition, that it was un- that for no other reason, than because God appointed
lawful to depose princes, though never so bad, unless him, though he did it in his anger. What ridiculous
the pope dispensed with their allegiance to them, by stuff is this for whereas the pope cannot hurt a man's
absolving them from their oaths. But you avoid or- conscience against his own will, for in the consciences
thodox writers, and endeavour to burden the truth with of men it is that his kingdom consists, yet you are for
prejudice and calumny, by making the pope the first deposing him as a grievous tyrant, in whose own power
assertor of what is a known and common received it is not to be a tyrant; and yet you maintain, that a
opinion amongst them; which if you did not do it tyrant properly and truly so called, a tyrant that has
cunningly, you would make yourself appear to be all our lives and estates within his reach, without whose
neither papist nor protestant, but a kind of mongrel assistance the pope himseIf could not exercise his ty-
Idumean Herodian. For as they of old adored one | ranny in the church, ought for conscience sake to be
most inhuman bloody tyrant for the Messias, so you | born withal and submitted to. These assertions com-
would have the world fall down and worship all. You pared with one another betray your childishness to that
boast, that “you have confirmed your opinion by the degree, that no man can read your books, but must of
IN ANSWER TO SALMASIUS'S DEFENCE OF THE KING.
367
necessity take notice of your ignorance, rashness, and
incogitancy. But you allege another reason, “human
affairs would be turned upside down.” They would
so, and be changed for the better. Human affairs would
certainly be in a deplorable condition, if being once
troubled and disordered, there was a necessity of their
| continuing always so. I say, they would be changed
for the better, for the king's power would revert to the
people, from whom it was first derived, and conferred
upon one of themselves; and the power would be trans-
ferred from him that abused it, to them that were pre-
judiced and injured by the abuse of it; than which
nothing can be more just, for there could not well be
an umpire in such a case; who would stand to the
judgment of a foreigner P all mankind would equally
be subject to the laws; there would be no gods of flesh
and blood ; which kind of deities whoever goes about
to set up in the world, they are equally injurious to
church and commonwealth. Now I must turn your
own weapons upon you again. You say, “there can
be no greater heresy than this, to set up one man in
Christ's seat. These two are infallible marks of Anti-
christ, inſallibility in spirituals, and omnipotence in tem-
porals.” Apparat. ad Prim. page 171. Do you pretend
that kings are infallible 2 If you do not, why do you
make them omnipotent P And how comes it to pass,
that an unlimited power in one man should be accounted
less destructive to temporal things, than it is to eccle-
siastical ? Or do you think, that God takes no care at
all of civil affairs If he takes none himself, I am sure
he does not forbid us to take care which way they go.
If he does take any care about them, certainly he would
have the same reformation made in the commonwealth,
| that he would have made iu the church, especially it
being obvious to every man's experience, that infalli-
bility and omnipotency being arrogated to one man,
are equally mischievous in both. God has not so mo-
& delled the government of the world as to make it the
duty of any civil community to submit to the cruelties
of tyrants, and yet to leave the church at liberty to free
themselves from slavery and tyranny; nay, rather quite
contrary, he has put no arms into the church's hand
but those of patience and innocence, prayer and eccle-
siastical discipline; but in the commonwealth, all the
magistracy are by him entrusted with the preservation
and execution of the laws, with the power of punishing
and revenging; he has put the sword into their hands.
I cannot but smile at this man's preposterous whimsies;
in ecclesiastics he is Helvidius, Thraseas, a perfect ty-
rannicide. In politics no man more a lackey and slave
to tyrants than be. If his doctrine hold, not we only
that have deposed our king, but the protestants in gene-
ral, who against the minds of their princes have rejected
the pope, are all rebels alike. But I have confounded
him long enough with his own arguments. Such is
the nature of the beast, lest his adversary should be
unprovided, he himself furnishes him with weapons.
.
Never did any man give his antagonist greater advan-
tages against himself than he does. They that he has
to do withal, will be sooner weary of pursuing him,
than he of flying. -
CHAP. XV.
PERHAps you think, Salmasius, that you have done
enough to ingratiate yourself with princes; that you
have deserved well of them : but if they consider their
own interest, and take their measures according to
what it really is, not according to the false gloss that
your flatterers have put upon it, there never was any
man in the world that deserved so ill of them as you,
none more destructive and pernicious to them and their
interest in the whole world than yourself. For by ex-
alting the power of kings above all human laws, you
tell all mankind that are subject to such a government,
that they are no better than slaves, and make them
but the more desirous of liberty by discovering to them
their errour, and putting that into their heads, that they
never so much as dreamt of before, to wit, that they
are slaves to their princes. And without doubt such a
sort of government will be more irksome and unsuffer-
able, by how much the more you persuade the world,
that it is not by the allowance and submission of na-
tions, that kings have obtained this exorbitant power;
but that is absolutely essential to such a form of govern-
ment, and of the nature of the thing itself. So that
whether you make the world of your mind or no, your
doctrine must needs be mischievous and destructive,
and such as cannot but be abhorred of all princes.
For if you should work men into a persuasion, that the
right of kings is without all bounds, they would no
longer be subject to a kingly government; if you miss
of your aim, yet you make men weary of kings, by
telling them that they assume such a power to them-
selves, as of right belonging to them. But if princes
will allow of those principles that I assert; if they will
suffer themselves and their own power to be circum-
scribed by laws, instead of an uncertain, weak, and
violent government, full of cares and fears, they will
reign peaceably, quietly, and securely. If they slight
this counsel of mine, though wholesome in itself, be-
cause of the meanness of the author, they shall know
that it is not my counsel only, but what was anciently
advised by one of the wisest of kings. For Lycurgus
king of Lacedemon, when he observed that his own re-
lations that were princes of Argos and Messana, by en-
deavouring to introduce an arbitrary government had
ruined themselves and their people; he, that he might
benefit his country, and secure the succession to his own
family, could think upon no better expedient, than to
communicate his power to the senate, and taking the
great men of the realm into part of the government with
himself; and by this means the crown continued in his
family for many ages. But whether it was Lycurgus, or,
as some learned men are of opinion, Theopompus, that in-
troduced that mixed form of government among the La-
cedemonians, somewhat more than a hundred years after
Lycurgus’s time, (of whom it is recorded, that he used
to boast, that by advancing the power of the senate
above that of the prince, he had settled the kingdom
upon a sure foundation, and was like to leave it in a
lasting and durable condition to his posterity,) which of
368
A DEFENCE OF THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND,
them socver it was, I say, he has left a good example
to modern princes; and was as creditable a counsellor,
as his counsel was safe. For that all men should sub-
mit to any one man, so as to acknowledge a power in
him superior to all human laws, neither did any law
ever enact, nor indeed was it possible that any such
law should ever be; for that cannot be said to be a law
that strikes at the root of all laws, and takes them quite
away : it being apparent that your positions are incon-
sistent with the nature of all laws, being such as ren-
der them no laws at all. You endeavour notwith-
standing, in this fourth chapter, to make good by
examples, what you have not been able to do by any
reasons that you have alleged hitherto. Let us con-
sider whether your examples help your cause; for they
many times make things plain, which the laws are
either altogether silent in, or do but hint at. We will
begin first with the Jews, whom we suppose to have
known most of the mind of God; and then, according
to your own method, we will come to the times of
Christianity. And first, for those times in which the
Israelites being subject to kings, who, or howsoever
they were, did their utmost to cast that slavish yoke
from off their necks. Eglon the king of Moab had
made a conquest of them ; the seat of his empire
was at Jericho; he was no contemner of the true God;
when his name was mentioned, he rose from his seat:
the Israelites had served him eighteen years; they sent
a present to him, not as to an enemy, but to their own
prince ; notwithstanding which outward veneration
and profession of subjection, they killed him by a wile,
as an enemy to their country. You will say perhaps,
that IChud, who did that action, had a warrant from
God for so doing. He had so, it is like ; and what
greater argument of its being a warrantable and
praiseworthy action ? God uses not to put men upon
things that are unjust, treacherous, and cruel, but upon
such things as are virtuous and laudable. But we read
no where that there was any positive command from
Heaven in the case. “The Israelites called upon
God;” so did we. And God stirred up a saviour for
them ; so he did for us. Eglon of a neighbouring
prince became a prince of the Jews; of an enemy to
them he became their king. Our gentleman of an
English king became an enemy to the English nation;
so that he ceased to be a king. Those capacities are
inconsistent. No man can be a member of the state,
and an enemy to it at the same time. Antony was
never looked upon by the Romans as a consul, nor
Nero as an emperor, after the senate had voted them
both enemies. This Cicero tells us in his Fourth Phi-
lippic: “If Antony be a consul,” says he, “Brutus is
an enemy; but if Brutus be a saviour and preserver of
the commonwealth, Antony is an enemy: none but
robbers count him a consul.” By the same reason, say
I, who but enchmies to their country look upon a ty-
rant as a king * So that Eglon's being a foreigner,
and King Charles a prince of our own, will make no
difference in the case; both being enemies and both
tyrants, they are in the same circumstances. If Ehud
killed him justly, we have done so too in putting our
king to death. Samson that renowned champion of
the Hebrews, though his countrymen blamed him for
it, “Dost thou not know,” say they, “that the Philis-
times have dominion over us * Yet against those
Philistines, under whose dominion he was, he himself
undertook a war in his own person, without any other
help; and whether he acted in pursuance of a com-
mand from Heaven, or was prompted by his own valour
only, or whatsoever inducement he had, he did not
put to death one, but many, that tyrannized over his
country, having first called upon God by prayer, and
implored his assistance. So that Samson counted it no
act of impiety, but quite contrary, to kill those that
enslaved his country, though they had dominion over
himself too; and though the greater part of his coun-
trymen submitted to their tyranny. “But yet David,
who was both a king and a prophet, would not take
away Saul's life, because he was God's anointed.”
Does it follow, that because David refused to do a
thing, therefore we are obliged not to do that very
thing P David was a private person, and would not
kill the king ; is that a precedent for a parliament, for
a whole nation P David would not revenge his own
quarrel, by putting his enemy to death by stealth;
does it follow, that therefore the magistrates must not
punish a malefactor according to law He would not
kill a king ; must not an assembly of the states there-
fore punish a tyrant? he scrupled the killing of God's
anointed; must the people therefore scruple to condemn
their own anointed 2 especially one that after having
so long professed hostility against his own people, and
washed off that anointing of his, whether sacred or
civil, with the blood of his own subjects. I confess
that those kings, whom God by his prophets anointed
to be kings, or appointed to some special service, as he
did Cyrus, Isa. xliv, may not improperly be called the
Lord's anointed: but all other princes, according to the
several ways of their coming to the government, are
the people's anointed, or the army's, or many times the
anointed of their own faction only. But taking it for
granted, that all kings are God's anointed, you can
never prove, that therefore they are above all laws,
and not to be called in question, what villanies soever
they commit. What if David laid a charge upon him-
self and other private persons, not to stretch forth their
hands against the Lord's anointed 2 Does not God
himself command princes not so much as “to touch
his anointed P’ which were no other than his people,
Psal. cv. He preferred that anointing, where with his
people were anointed, before that of kings, if any
such thing were. Would any man offer to infer from
this place of the Psalmist, that believers are not to
be called in question, though they offend against the
laws, because God commands princes not to touch his
anointed * King Solomon was about to put to death
Abiathar the priest, though he were God’s anointed too;
and did not spare him because of his anointing, but be-
cause he had been his father's friend. If that sacred and
civil anointing, wherewith the high priest of the Jews
was anointed, whereby he was not only constituted high
priest, but a temporal magistrate in many cases, did
IN ANSWER TO SALMASIUS'S DEFENCE OF THE KING.
369
not exempt him from the penalty of the laws; how
comes a civil anointing only to exempt a tyrant? But
you say, “ Saul was a tyraut, and worthy of death : ”
What then P It does not follow, that because he de-
served it, that David in the circumstances he was then
under had power to put him to death without the people's
authority, or the command of the magistracy. But
was Saul a tyrant? I wish you would say so; indeed
you do so, though you had said before in your Second
Book, page 32, That “he was no tyrant, but a good
king, and chosen of God.” Why should false accusers,
and men guilty of forgery, be branded, and you escape
without the like ignominious mark P For they practise
their villanies with less treachery and deceit, than you
write and treat of matters of the greatest moment.
Saul was a good king, when it served your turn to
have him so; and now he is a tyrant, because it suits
with your present purpose. But it is no wonder, that
you make a tyrant of a good king; for your principles
look as if they were invented for no other design, than
to make all good kings so. But yet David, though he
would not put to death his father-in-law, for causes
and reasons that we have nothing to do withal, yet in
his own defence, he raised an army, took and possessed
cities that belonged to Saul, and would have defended
Keilah against the king's forces, had he not under-
stood, that the citizens would be false to him. Suppose
Saul had besieged the town, and himself had been the
first that had scaled the walls; do you think David
would presently have thrown down his arms, and have
betrayed all those that assisted him to his anointed
enemy 2 I believe not. What reason have we to think
David would have stuck to do what we have done,
who when his occasions and circumstances so required,
proffered his assistance to the Philistines, who were
then the professed enemies of his country, and did that
against Saul, which I am sure we should never have
done against our tyrant? I am weary of mentioning
your lies, and ashamed of them. You say, it is a maxim
of the English, “That enemies are rather to be spared
than friends; ” and that therefore “we conceived we
ought not to spare our king's life, because he had been
our friend.” You impudent liar, what mortal ever
heard this whimsy before you invented it? But we
will excuse it. You could not bring in that thread-
bare flourish, of our being more fierce than our own
mastiffs, (which now comes in the fifth time, and will as
oſt again before we come to the end of your book,) with-
out some such introduction. We are not so much more
fierce than our own mastiffs, as you are more hungry
than any dog whatsoever, who return so greedily to
what you have vomited up so often. Then you tell us,
that David commanded the Amalekite to be put to
death, who pretended to have killed Saul. But that
instance, neither in respect to the fact, nor the person,
has any affinity with what we are discoursing of. I do
not well understand what cause David had to be so
severe upon that man, for pretending to have hastened
the king's death, and in effect to have put him out of
his pain, when he was dying; unless it were to take
*>
away from the Israelites all suspicion of his own hav-
ing been instrumental in it, whom they might look upon
as one that had revolted to the Philistines, and was part
of their army. Just such another action as this of Da.
vid's do all men blame in Domitian, who put to death
Epaphroditus, because he had helped Nero to kill him-
self. After all this, as another instance of your impu-
dence, you call him not only the “ anointed of the
Lord,” but “the Lord's Christ,” who a little before you
said was a tyrant, and acted by the impulse of some
evil spirit. Such mean thoughts you have of that reve-
rend name, that you are not ashamed to give it to a
tyrant, whom you yourself confess to have been pos-
Now I come to that precedent,
from which every man that is not blind, must needs
infer the right of the people to be superiour to that of
kings. When Solomon was dead, the people assem-
bled themselves at Sichem to make Rehoboam king.
Thither himself went, as one that stood for the place,
that he might not seem to claim the succession as his
inheritance, nor the same right over a freeborn people,
that every man has over his father's sheep and oxen.
The people propose conditions, upon which they were
willing to admit him to the government. He desires
three days’ time to advise ; he consults with the old
men; they tell him no such thing, as that he had an
absolute right to succeed, but persuade him to comply
with the people, and speak them fair, it being in their
power whether he should reign or not. Then he ad-
vises with the young men that were brought up with
him; they, as if Salmasius's phrenzy had taken them,
thunder this right of kings into his ears; persuade him
to threaten the people with whips and scorpions: and
he answered the people as they advised him. When
all Israel saw, that the king hearkened not to them,
then they openly protest the right of the people, and
their own liberty; “What portion have we in David P
To thy tents, O Israel! now look to thine own house,
David.” When the king sent Adoram to them, they
stoned bim with stones, and perhaps they would not have
stuck to have served the king himself so, but he made
haste and got out of the way. The next news is of a great
army raised by Rehoboam, to reduce the Israelites to
their allegiance. God forbids him to proceed, “Go
not up,” says he, “to war against your brethren the
children of Israel; for this thing is of me.” Now con-
sider, heretofore the people had desired a king; God
was displeased with them for it, but yet permitted them
to make a king according to that right that all nations
have to appoint their own governors. Now the people
reject Rehoboam from ruling them; and this God not
only suffers them to do, but forbids Rehoboam to
make war against them for it, and stops him in his
undertaking; and teaches him withal, that those that
had revolted from him were not rebels in so doing;
but that he ought to look upon them as brethren.
Now recollect yourself: you say, that all kings are
of God, and that therefore the people ought not to
resist them, be they never such tyrants. I answer
you, the convention of the people, their votes, their
acts, are likewise of God, and that by the testimony
of God himself in this place ; and consequently ac-
sessed with the devil.
370
A DEFENCE OF THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND,
cording to your argument, by the authority of God
himself, princes ought not to resist the people. For
as certain as it is, that kings are of God, and what-
ever argument you may draw from thence to enforce a
subjection and obedience to them : so certain is it, that
free assemblies of the body of the people are of God,
and that maturally affords the same argument for their
right of restraining princes from going beyond their
bounds, and rejecting them if there be occasion; 11or is
their so doing a justifiable cause of war, any more than
the people of Israel’s rejecting Rehoboam was. You
ask why the people did not revolt from Solomon 2
Who but you would ask such an impertinent question 2
You see they did revolt from a tyrant, and were neither
punished nor blamed for it. It is true, Solomon fell
into some vices, but he was not therefore a tyrant; he
made amends for his vices by many excellent virtues,
that he was famous for, by many benefits which accrued
to the nation of the Jews by his government. But
admit that he had been a tyrant: many tinies the cir-
cumstances of a nation are such that the people will
not, and many times such that they cannot, depose &l
tyrant. You see they did it when it was in their
power. “But,” say you, “Jeroboam’s act was ever
had in detestation; it was looked upon as an unjust
revolt from a lawful prince; he and his successors were
accounted rebels.” I confess we find his revolt from
the true worship of God often found fault with ; but I
no where find him blamed for revolting from Rehobo-
am; and his successors are frequently spoken of as
wicked princes, but not as rebels. “Acting contrary
to law and right,” say you, “cannot introduce or
establish a right.” I pray, what becomes then of your
right of kings? Thus do you perpetually baffle your-
self. You say, “Adulteries, murders, thefts are daily
committed with impunity.” Are you not aware, that
here you give an answer to your own question, how it
comes to pass, that tyrants do so often escape un-
punished P You say, “Those kings were rebels, and
yet the prophets do no where dissuade the people from
their allegiance.” And why do you, you rascally false
prophet, endeavour to persuade the people of England
not to yield obedience to their present magistrates,
though in your opinion they are rebels “This Eng-
lish faction of robbers,” say you, “allege for them-
selves, that by some immediate voice from Heaven, they
were put upon their bloody enterprise.” It is noto-
riously evident, that you were distracted when you
wrote these lines; for as you have put the words toge-
ther, they are neither Latin, nor sense. And that the
English pretend to any such warrant, as a justification
of their actions, is one of those many lies and fictions,
that your book is full of But I proceed to urge you
with examples. Libna, a great city, revolted from Jo-
ram, because he had forsaken God: it was the king
therefore that was guilty, not the city, nor is the city
blamed for it. He that considers the reason that is
given why that city rejected his government, must
conclude, that the Holy Ghost ratlıcr approves of what
they did than condemns them for it.
revolts are no precedents,” say you.
)
But why were
“These kind of
you then so vain, as to promise in the beginning of
this chapter, that you would argue from examples,
whereas all the examples that you allege, are mere
negatives, which prove nothing 2 and when we urge
examples that are solid and positive, you say they are
no precedents. Who would endure such a way of ar-
guing P You challenged us at precedents; we pro-
duced them ; and what do you do P you hang back,
and get out of the way. I proceed : Jehu, at the com-
mand of a prophet, slew a king; nay, he ordered the
death of Ahaziah, his own liege prince. If God would
not have tyrants put to death by their own subjects, if
it were a wicked thing so to do, a thing of a bad ex-
ample; why did God himself command it 2 If he
commanded it, it was a lawful, commendable, and a
praiseworthy action. It was not therefore lawful to
kill a tyrant, because God commanded it; but God
commanded it, because, antecedently to his command,
it was a justifiable and a lawful action. Again, Je-
hoiada the high priest did not scruple to depose Atha-
liah, and kill her, though she had been seven years in
actual possession of the crown. “But,” say you, “she
took upon her the government, when she had no right
to it.” And did not you say yourself, but a while ago,
“ that Tiberius assumed the sovereignty, when it be-
longed not at all to him " And yet you then affirmed,
that, according to our Saviour's doctrine, we ought to
yield obedience to such tyrants as he was. It were a
most ridiculous thing to imagine, that a prince, who
gets in by usurpation, may lawfully be deposed; but
one that rules tyrannically may not. “But,” say you,
“Athaliah could not possibly reign according to the
law of the Jewish kingdom, ‘Thou shalt set over thee
a king,’ says God Almighty; he does not say, Thou
shalt set over thee a queen.” If this argument have
any weight, I may as well say, the command of God
was, that the people should set over themselves a king,
not a tyrant. So that I am even with you. Amazias
was a slothful, idolatrous prince, and was put to death,
not by a few conspirators; but rather, it should seem,
by the nobility, and by the body of the people. For
he fled from Jerusalem, had none to stand by him,
and they pursued him to Lachish : they took counsel
against him, says the history, because he had forsaken
God: and we do not find that Azarias his son pro-
secuted those that had cut off his father. You quote
a great many frivolous passages out of the rabbins, to
prove that the kings of the Jews were superiour to
the Sanhedrim. You do not consider Zedekiah's own
words, Jer. xxxviii. “The king is not he that can
do any thing against you.” So that this was the
prince's own style. Thus he confessed himself inſe-
riour to the great council of the realm. “Perhaps,”
say you, “he meant, that he durst not deny them
any thing for fear of sedition.” But what does your
perhaps signify, whose most positive asserting any
thing is not worth a louse? For nothing in nature can
be more fickle and inconsistent than you are. How
of you have appeared in this discourse inconsistent
with yourself; unsaying with one breath what you
have said with another P Here, again, you make com-
IN ANSWER TO SALMASIUS'S DEFENCE OF THE KING. 371
parisons betwixt King Charles, and some of the good
kings of Judah. You speak contemptibly of David, as
if he were not worthy to come in competition with him.
“ Consider David,” say you, “an adulterer, a murderer;
King Charles was guilty of no such crimes. Solomon
his son, who was accounted wise,” &c. Who can with
patience hear this filthy, rascally fool, speak so irrever-
ently of persons eminent both in greatness and piety P
Dare you compare King David with King Charles; a
most religious king and prophet, with a superstitious
prince, and who was but a novice in the christian reli-
gion; a most prudent wise prince with a weak one; a
valiant prince with a cowardly one ; finally, a most
just prince with a most unjust one º Have you the
impudence to commend his chastity and sobriety, who
is known to have committed all manner of lewdness in
company with his confident the duke of Buckingham P
It were to no purpose to inquire into the private actions
of his life, who publicly at plays would embrace and
kiss the ladies lasciviously, and handle virgins’ and
matrons’ breasts, not to mention the rest. I advise you
therefore, you counterfeit Plutarch, to abstain from
such like parallels, lest I be forced to publish those
things concerning King Charles, which I am willing
to conceal. Hitherto we have entertained ourselves
with what the people of the Jews have acted or at-
tempted against tyrants, and by what right they did it
in those times, when God himself did immediately, as
it were, by his voice from heaven govern their com-
monwealth. The ages that succeeded, do not afford us
any authority, as from themselves, but confirm us in
our opinion by their imitating the actions of their fore-
fathers. For after the Babylonish captivity, when God
did not give any new command concerning the crown,
though the royal line was not extinct, we find the
people return to the old mosaical form of government
again. They were one while tributaries to Antiochus,
king of Syria; yet when he enjoined them things that
were contrary to the law of God, they resisted him,
and his deputies, under the conduct of their priests, the
Maccabees, and by force regained their former liberty.
After that, whoever was accounted most worthy of it,
had the principality conferred upon him. Till at last,
Harcanus the son of Simon, the brother of Judah, the
Maccabee, having spoiled David's sepulchre, enter-
tained foreign soldiers, and began to invest the priest-
hood with a kind of regal power. After whose time
his son Aristobulus was the first that assumed the
crown; he was a tyrant indeed, and yet the people
stirred not against him, which is no great wonder, for
he reigned but one year. And he himself being over-
taken with a grievous disease, and repenting of his
own cruelty and wickedness, desired nothing more than
to die, and had his wish. His brother Alexander suc-
ceeded him; “and against him,” you say, “the people
raised no insurrection, though he were a tyrant too.”
And this lie might have gone down with us, if Jose-
phus’s history had not been extant. We should then
have had no memory of those times, but what your Jo-
sippus would afford us, out of whom you transcribe a
few senseless and useless apophthegms of the Phari-
sees. The history is thus: Alexander administered
the public affairs ill, both in war and peace; and
thon, h he kept in pay great numbers of Pisidians and
Cilicians, yet could he not protect himself from the
rage of the people: but whilst he was sacrificing they
fell upon him, and had almost smothered him with
boughs of palm trees and citron trees. Afterward the
whole nation made war upon him six years, during
which time, when many thousands of the Jews had
been slain, and he himself being at length desirous of
peace, demanded of them, what they would have him
to do to satisfy them; they told him nothing could do
that but his blood, nay, that they should hardly pardon
him after his death. This history you perceived was
not for your purpose, and so you put it off with a few
pharisaical sentences; when it had been much better,
either to have let it quite alone, or to have given a true
relation of it: but you trust to lies more than to the
truth of your cause. Even those eight hundred Pha-
risees, whom he commanded to be crucified, were of
their number that had taken up arms against him. And
they with the rest of the people had solemnly protested,
that if they could subdue the king's forces, and get his
person into their power, they would put him to death.
After the death of Alexander, his wife Alexandra took
the government upon her, as Athaliah had formerly
done, not according to law, (for you have confessed,
that the laws of the Jews admitted not a female to wear
the crown,) but she got it partly by force, for she main-
tained an army of foreigners; and partly by favour,
for she had brought over the Pharisees to her interest,
which sort of men were of the greatest authority with
the people. Them she had made her own, by putting
the power into their hands, and retaining to herself
only the name. Just as the Scotch presbyterians lately
allowed Charles the name of king, but upon condition,
that he would let them be king in effect. After the
death of Alexandra, Hyrcanus and Aristobulus, her sons,
contended for the sovereignty; Aristobulus was more
industrious, and having a greater party, forced his
elder brother out of the kingdom. A while after, when
Pompey passed through Syria, in his return from the
Mithridatic war; the Jews, supposing they had now
an opportunity of regaining their liberty, by referring
their cause to him, dispatch an embassy to him in their
own names; they renounce both the brothers; complain
that they had enslaved them. Pompey deposed Aristo-
bulus, leaves the priesthood, and such a principality as
the laws allowed, to Hyrcanus the elder. From that
time forward he was called high priest, and Ethnarcha.
After these times in the reign of Archelaus, the son of
Herod, the Jews sent fifty ambassadors to Augustus
Caesar; accused Herod that was dead, and Archelaus
his son, that then reigned ; they deposed him as much
as in them lay, and petitioned the emperor, that the
people of the Jews might be governed without a king.
Caesar was moved at their entreaty, and did not appoint a
king over them, but a governor, whom they called an
ethnarch. When that governor had presided ten years
over Judea, the people sent ambassadors again to
Rome, and accused him of tyranny. Caesar heard
2 B
372
A DEFENCE OF THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND,
them graciously ; sent for the governor, condemned
him to perpetual exile, and banished him to Vienna.
Answer me, now, that people that accused their own
princes, that desired their condemnation, that desired
their punishment, would not they themselves rather, iſ
it had been in their power, and that they might have
had their choice; would not they, I say, rather have
put them to death themselves; you do not deny, but
that the people and the nobles often took up arms
against the Roman deputies, when by their avarice, or
their cruelty, their government was burdensonne and
But you give a ridiculous reason for this,
You say, “they were not
oppressive.
as all the rest of yours are.
yet accustomed to the yoke;” very like they were not,
under Alexander, Herod, and his son. “But,” say
you, “they would not raise war against Caius Caesar,
nor Petronius.” I confess they did not, and they did
very prudently in abstaining, for they were not able.
Will you hear their own words, on that occasion 2
“We will not make war,” say they, “because we can-
not.” That thing, which they themselves acknow-
ledge they refrained from for want of ability, you, false
hypocrite, pretend they refrained from out of religion.
Then with a great deal of toil you do just nothing at
all; for you endeavour to prove out of the fathers,
(though you had done it as superficially before,) that
kings are to be prayed for. That good kings are to be
prayed for, no man denies; nay, and bad ones too, as
long as there are any hopes of them : so we ought to
pray for highwaymen, and for our enemies. But
how not that they may plunder, spoil, and murder
us; but that they may repent. We pray both for
thieves and enemies; and yet who ever dreamt, but
that it was lawful to put the laws in execution against
one, and to fight against the other P I value not the
Egyptian liturgy that you quote; but the priest that
you mention, who praycd that Commodus might suc-
ceed his father in the empire, did not pray for any
thing in my opinion, but imprecated all the mischiefs
imaginable to the Roman state. You say, “that we
have broken our faith, which we engaged more than
once, in solemn assemblies, to preserve the authority
and majesty of the king.” But because hereafter you
are more large upon that subject, I shall pass it by in
this place; and talk with you when you come to it
again. You return then to the fathers; concerning
whom take this in short. Whatever they say, which
is not warranted by the authority of the Scrip-
tures, or by good reason, shall be of no more regard
with me, than if any other ordinary man had said it.
The first that you quote is Tertullian, who is no ortho-
dox writer, notorious for many errours; whose autho-
rity, if he were of your opinion, would stand you in no
stead. But what says he He condemns tumults
and rebellions. So do we. But in saying so, we do
not mean to destroy all the people's rights and privi-
leges, all the authority of senates, the power of all
magistrates, the king only excepted. The fathers de-
claim against seditions rashly raised by the giddy heat
of the multitude; they speak not of the inferiour ma-
gistrates, of senates, of parliaments encouraging the
people to a lawful opposing of a tyrant. Hence Am-
brose, whom you quote; “Not to resist,” says he, “but
to weep and to sigh, these are the bulwarks of the
priesthood; what one is there of our little number,
who dare say to the emperor, I do not like your laws?
This is not allowed the priests, and shall laymen pre-
tend to it?” It is evident of what sort of persons he
speaks, viz. of the priests, and such of the people as
are private men, not of the magistrates. You see by
how weak and preposterous a reason he lighted a torch
as it were to the dissensions, that were afterwards to
arise betwixt the laity and the clergy concerning even
civil or temporal laws. But because you think you
pressed hardest upon us with the examples of the pri-
mitive Christians; who though they were harassed as
much as a people could be, yet, you say, “they never
took up arms against the emperor:” I will make it ap-
pear, in the first place, that for the most part they could
not : secondly, that whenever they could, they did :
and thirdly, that whether they did or did not, they
were such a sort of people, as that their example de-
serves to have little sway with us. First therefore, no
man can be ignorant of this, that when the common-
wealth of Rome expired, the whole and sovereign
power in the empire was settled in the emperor; that
all the soldiers were under his pay; insomuch that if
the whole body of the senate, the equestrian order, and
all the common people, had endeavoured to work a
change, they might have made way for a massacre of
themselves, but could not in any probability retrieve
their lost liberty: for the empire would still have con-
tinued, though they might perhaps have been so lucky
as to have killed the emperor. This being so, what
could the Christians do It is true, there were a great
many of them; but they were dispersed, they were gene-
rally persons of mean quality, and but of small interest
in the world. How many of them would one legion
have been able to keep in awe ? Could so inconsider-
able a body of men as they were in those days ever
expect to accomplish an enterprise that many famous
generals, and whole armies of tried soldiers, had lost
their lives in attempting P When about 300 years after
our Saviour's nativity, which was near upon 20 years
before the reign of Constantine the Great, when Dio-
clesian was emperor, there was but one Christian legion
in the whole Roman empire; which legion, for no
other reason than because it consisted of christians, was
slain by the rest of the army at a town in France call-
ed Octodurum. “The Christians,” say you, “conspired
not with Cassius, with Albinus, with Niger;” and does
Tertullian think they merited by not being willing to
lose their lives in the quarrels of infidels f It is evident
therefore, that the Christians could not free themselves
from the yoke of the Roman emperors; and it could
be no ways advantageous to their interest to conspire
with infidels, as long as heathen emperors reigned.
But that afterwards the Christians made war upon ty-
rants, and defended themselves by force of arms when
there was occasion, and many times revenged upon
tyrants their enormities, I am now about to make ap-
pear. In the first place, Constantine, being a chris-
IN ANSWER TO SALMASIUS'S DEFENCE OF THE KING.
373
tian, made war upon Licinius, and cut him off, who
was his partner in the sovereign power, because he
molested the eastern Christians; by which act of his he
declared thus much at least, that one magistrate might
punish another: for he for his subjects' sake punished
Licinius, who to all intents was as absolute in the em-
pire as himself, and did not leave the vengeance to
God alone : Licinius might have done the same to
Constantine, if there had been the like occasion. So
them, if the matter be not wholly reserved to God’s
own tribunal, but that men have something to do in
the case, why did not the parliament of England stand
in the same relation to King Charles, that Constantine
did to Licinius P. The soldiers made Constantine what
he was: but our laws have made our parliaments equal,
nay, superiour, to our kings. The inhabitants of Con-
stantinople resisted Constantius an Arian emperor, by
force of arms, as long as they were able; they opposed
Hermogenes whom he had sent with a military power
to depose Paul an orthodox bishop; the house whither
he had betaken himself for security they fired about his
ears, and at last killed him right out. Constans threat-
ened to make war upon his brother Constantius, unless
he would restore Paul and Athanasius to their bishop-
rics. You see those holy fathers, when their bishoprics
were in danger, were not ashamed to stir up their
prince's own brother to make war upon him. Not long
after, the christian soldiers, who then made whom they
would emperors, put to death Constans the son of Con-
stantinus, because he behaved himself dissolutely and
proudly in the government, and translated the empire
to Magnentius. Nay, those very persons that saluted
Julian by the name of emperor, against Constantius's
will, who was actually in possession of the empire, (for
Julian was not then an apostate, but a virtuous and
Valiant person,) are they not amongst the number of
those primitive Christians, whose example you propose
to us for our imitation ? Which action of theirs, when
Constantius by his letters to the people very sharply
and earnestly forbad, (which letters were openly read
to them,) they all cried out unanimously, that them-
selves had but done what the provincial magistrates,
the army, and the authority of the commonwealth had
decreed. The same persons declared war against
Constantius, and contributed as much as in them lay,
to deprive him both of his government and his life.
How did the inhabitants of Antioch behave themselves,
who were none of the worst sort of Christians ? I will
warrant you they prayed for Julian, after he became
an apostate, whom they used to rail at in his own pre-
sence, and scoffing at his long beard bid him make
ropes of it: upon the news of whose death they offered
public thanksgivings, made feasts, and gave other
bublic demonstrations of joy. Do you think they used,
when he was alive, to pray for the continuance of his
life and health P Nay, is it not reported, that a chris-
tian soldier, in his own army, was the author of his
death º Sozomen, a writer of ecclesiastical history,
does not deny it, but commends him that did it, if the
fact were so. “For it is no wonder,” says he, “that
Some of his own soldiers might think within himself,
that not only the Greeks, but all mankind hitherto had
agreed, that it was a commendable action to kill a ty-
rant; and that they deserve all men's praise, who are
willing to die themselves to procure the liberty of all
others: so that that soldier ought not rashly to be con-
demned, who in the cause of God and of religion, was
so zealous and valiant.” These are the words of So-
zomen, a good and religious man of that age. By
which we may easily apprehend what the general
opinion of pious men in those days was upon this point.
Ambrose himself being commanded by the emperor
Valentinian the younger, to depart from Milan, refused
to obey him, but defended himself and the palace by
force of arms against the emperor's officers, and took
upon him, contrary to his own doctrine, to resist the
higher powers. There was a great sedition raised at
Constantinople against the emperor Arcadius, more
than once, by reason of Chrysostom’s exile. Hitherto
I have shewn how the primitive Christians behaved
themselves towards tyrants; how not only the chris-
tian soldiers, and the people, but the fathers of the
church themselves, have both made war upon them,
and opposed them with force, and all this before St.
Austin's time: for you yourself are pleased to go down
no lower; and therefore I make no mention of Valen-
tinian the son of Placidia, who was slain by Maximus
a senator, for committing adultery with his wife; nor
do I mention Avitus the emperor, whom, because he
disbanded the soldiers, and betook himself wholly to a
luxurious life, the Roman senate immediately deposed;
because these things came to pass some years after St.
Austin's death. But all this I give you : suppose I had
not mentioned the practice of the primitive Christians;
suppose they never had stirred in opposition to tyrants;
suppose they had accounted it unlawful so to do; I
will make it appear, that they were not such persons,
as that we ought to rely upon their authority, or can
safely follow their example. Long before Constantine's
time the generality of Christians had lost much of the
primitive sanctity and integrity both of their doctrine
and manners. Afterwards, when he had vastly enriched
the church, they began to fall in love with honour and
civil power, and then the christian religion went to
wreck. First luxury and sloth, and then a great drove
of heresies and immoralities, broke loose among them;
and these begot envy, hatred, and discord, which
abounded every where. At last, they that were linked
together into one brotherhood by that holy band of re-
ligion, were as much at variance and strife among
themselves as the most bitter enemies in the world
could be. No reverence for, no consideration of, their
duty was left among them : the soldiers and com-
manders of the army, as oft as they pleased themselves,
created new emperors, and sometimes killed good ones
as well as bad. I need not mention such as Veramnio,
Maximus, Eugenius, whom the soldiers all of a sudden
advanced and made them emperors; nor Gratian, an
excellent prince; nor Valentinian the younger, who
was none of the worst, and yet were put to death by
them. It is true, these things were acted by the sol-
diers, and soldiers in the field; but those soldiers were
374
A DEFENCE OF THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND,
christians, and lived in that age which you call evan-
gelical, and whose example you propose to us for our
imitation. Now you shall hear how the clergy managed
themselves: pastors and bishops, and sometimes those
very fathers whom we admire and extol to so high a
degree, every one of whom was a leader of their several
flocks; those very men, I say, fought for their bishop-
rics, as tyrants did for their sovereignty; sometimes
throughout the city, sometimes in the very churches,
sometimes at the altar, clergymen and laymen fought
promiscuously; they slew one another, and great
slaughters were made on both sides. You may remem-
ber Damasus and Urcisinus, who were contemporaries
with Ambrose. It would be too long to relate the tu-
multuary insurrections of the inhabitants of Constan-
tinople, Antioch, and Alexandria, especially those under
the conduct and management of Cyrillus, whom you
extol as a preacher up of obedience; when the monks
in that fight, within the city, had almost slain Orestes,
Theodosius's deputy. Now who can sufficiently won-
der at your impudence, or carelessness and neglect?
“Till St. Austin's time, say you, and lower down than
the age that he lived in, there is not any mention ex-
tant in history, of any private person, of any com-
mander, or of any number of conspirators, that have
put their prince to death, or taken up arms against
him.” I have named to you, out of known and ap-
proved histories, both private persons and magistrates,
that with their own hands have slain not only bad but
very good princes: whole armies of Christians, many
bishops among them, that have fought against their
own emperors.
with a great flourish of words, persuade or boast of
obedience to princes: and I, on the other side, produce
both those same fathers, and others besides them, that
by their actions have declined obedience to their princes,
even in lawful things; have defended themselves with
a military force against them; others that have opposed
forcibly, and wounded their deputies; and others that,
being competitors for bishoprics, have maintained civil
wars against one another: as if it were lawful for
Christians to wage war with Christians for a bishopric,
and citizens with citizens; but unlawful to fight
against a tyrant, in defence of our liberty, of our wives
and children, and of our lives themselves. Who would
own such fathers as these ? You produce St. Austin,
who, you say, asserts, that “the power of a master over
his servants, and a prince over his subjects, is one and
the same thing.” But I answer; if St. Austin assert
any such thing, he asserts what neither our Saviour,
nor any of his apostles ever asserted; though for the
confirmation of that assertion, than which nothing can
be more false, he pretends to rely wholly upon their
authority.
chapter, are stuffed with mere lies, or things carelessly
and loosely put together, that are little to the purpose:
and that every one that reads them, will discover by
what has been said already. For what concerns the
pope, against whom you disclaim so loudly, I am con-
tent you should bawl at him, till you are hoarse. But
You produce some of the fathers, that
The three or four last pages of this fourth
whereas you endeavour to persuade the ignorant, that
“all that called themselves Christians, yielded an entire
obedience to princes, whether good or bad, till the
papal power grew to that height, that it was acknow-
ledged superiour to that of the civil magistrate, and till
he took upon him to absolve subjects from their allegi-
ance:” I have sufficiently proved by many examples
before and since the age that St. Augustine lived in,
that nothing can be more false. Neither does that
seem to have much more truth in it, which you say in
the last place; viz. that pope Zachary absolved the
Frenchmen from their oath of allegiance to their king.
For Francis Hottoman, who was both a Frenchman
and a lawyer, and a very learned man, in the 13th
chapter of his Francogallia, denies that either Chil-
peric was deposed, or the kingdom translated to Pepin,
by the pope's authority; and he proves out of very an-
cient chronicles of that nation, that the whole affair was
transacted in the great council of the kingdom, accord-
ing to the original constitution of that government,
Which being once done, the French histories, and pope
Zachary himself, deny that there was any necessity of
absolving his subjects from their allegiance. For not
only Hottoman, but Guiccard, a very eminent historian
of that nation, informs us, that the ancient records of
the kingdom of France testify, that the subjects of that
nation upon the first institution of kingship amongst
them, reserved a power to themselves, both of choosing
their princes, and of deposing them again, if they
thought fit: and that the oath of allegiance, which
they took, was upon this express condition; to wit,
that the king should likewise perform what at his
coronation he swore to do. So that if kings, by
misgoverning the people committed to their charge,
first broke their own oath to their subjects, there
needs no pope to dispense with the people's oaths;
the kings themselves by their own perfidiousness hav-
ing absolved their subjects. And finally, pope Zachary
himself, in a letter of his to the French, which
you yourself quote, renounces, and ascribes to the
people that authority, which you say he assumes to
himself: for, if a prince be accountable to the people,
being beholden to them for his royalty; if the people,
since they make kings, have the same right to depose
them, as the very words of that pope are ; it is not
likely that the Frenchmen would by any oath depart
in the least from that ancient right, or ever tie up their
own hands, so as not to have the same right that their
ancestors always had, to depose bad princes, as well
as to honour and obey good ones; nor is it likely that
they thought themselves obliged to yield that obedience
to tyrants, which they swore to yield only to good
princes. A people obliged to obedience by such an
oath is discharged of that obligation, when a lawful
prince becomes a tyrant, or gives himself over to sloth
and voluptuousness; the rule of justice, the very law
of nature, dispenses with such a people's allegiance. So
that even by the pope's own opinion, the people were
under no obligation to yield obedience to Chilperic,
and consequently had no need of a dispensation.
IN ANSWER TO SALMASIUS'S DEFENCE OF THE KING.
375
CIIAP. V.
Though I am of opinion, Salmasius, and always
was, that the law of God does exactly agree with the
law of nature; so that having shewn what the law of
God is, with respect to princes, and what the practice
has been of the people of God, both Jews and Chris-
tians, I have at the same time, and by the same dis-
course, made appear what is most agreeable to the law
of nature : yet because you pretend “to confute us
most powerfully by the law of nature,” I will be con-
tent to admit that to be necessary, which before I had
thought would be superfluous; that in this chapter I
may demonstrate, that nothing is more suitable to the
law of nature, than that punishment be inflicted upon
tyrants. Which if I do not evince, I will then agree
with you, that likewise by the law of God they are
exempt. I do not purpose to frame a long discourse
of nature in general, and the original of civil societies;
that argument has been largely handled by many
learned men, both Greek and Latin. But I shall en-
deavour to be as short as may be ; and my design is
not so much to confute you, (who would willingly have
spared this pains,) as to shew that you confute your-
self, and destroy your own positions. I will begin
with that first position, which you lay down as a fun-
damental, and that shall be the groundwork of my en-
suing discourse. “The law of nature,” say you, “is
a principle imprinted on all men's minds, to regard
the good of all mankind, considering men as united
together in societies. But this innate principle cannot
procure that common good, unless, as there are people
that must be governed, so that very principle ascertain
who shall govern them.” To wit, lest the stronger op-
press the weaker, and those persons, who for their
mutual safety and protection have united themselves
together, should be disunited and divided by injury
and violence, and reduced to a bestial savage life again.
This I suppose is what you mean. “Out of the num-
ber of those that united into one body,” you say, “there
must needs have been some chosen, who excelled the rest
in wisdom and valour; that they, either by force or by
persuasion, might restrain those that were refractory,
and keep them within due bounds. Sometimes it would
so fall out, that one single person, whose conduct and
valour was extraordinary, might be able to do this, and
sometimes more assisted one another with their advice
and counsel. But since it is impossible, that any one
man should order all things himself, there was a neces-
sity of his consulting with others, and taking some
into part of the government with himself; so that
whether a single person reign, or whether the supreme
power reside in the body of the people, since it is im-
Possible, that all should administer the affairs of the
Commonwealth, or that one man should do all, the
government does always, lie upon the shoulders of
many. And afterwards you say, “both forms of go-
Vernment, whether by many or a few, or by a single
Person, are equally according to the law of nature, viz.
That it is impossible for any single person so to go-
vern alone, as not to admit others into a share of the
government with himself.” Though I might have
taken all this out of the third book of Aristotle's Poli-
tics, I chose rather to transcribe it out of your own
book; for you stole it from him, as Prometheus did fire
from Jupiter, to the ruin of monarchy, and overthrow
of yourself, and your own opinion. For inquire as
diligently as you can for your life into the law of .
nature, as you have described it, you will not find the
least footstep in it of kingly power, as you explain it.
“The law of nature,” say you, “in ordering who
should govern others, respected the universal good of
all mankind.” It did not then regard the private good
of any particular person, not of a prince; so that the
king is for the people, and consequently the people
superiour to him : which being allowed, it is impos-
sible that princes should have any right to oppress or
enslave the people; that the inferiour should have right
to tyrannize over the superiour. So that since kings
cannot pretend to any right to do mischief, the right
of the people must be ackowledged, according to the
law of nature, to be superiour to that of princes; and
therefore, by the same right, that before kingship was
known, men united their strength and counsels for
their mutual safety and defence; by the same right,
that for the preservation of all men's liberty, peace, and
safety, they appointed one or more to govern the rest; by
the same right they may depose those very persons
whom for their valour or wisdom they advanced to the
government, or any others that rule disorderly, if they
find them, by reason of their slothfulness, folly, or im-
piety, unfit for government: since nature does not re-
gard the good of one, or of a few, but of all in general.
For what sort of persons were they whom you suppose
to have been chosen º' You say, “they were such as
excelled in courage and conduct,” to wit, such as by
nature seemed fittest for government; who by reason
of their excellent wisdom and valour, were enabled to
undertake so great a charge. The consequence of this
I take to be, that right of succession is not by the law
of nature; that no man by the law of nature has right
to be king, unless he excel all others in wisdom and
courage; that all such as reign and want these quali-
fications, are advanced to the government by force or
faction ; have no right by the law of nature to be what
they are, but ought rather to be slaves than princes.
For nature appoints that wise men should govern fools,
not that wicked men should rule over good men, fools
over wise men ; and consequently they that take the
government out of such men's hands, act according to
the law of nature. To what end nature directs wise
men should bear the rule, you shall hear in your own
words; viz. “That by force or by persuasion, they
may keep such as are unruly within due bounds.”
But how should he keep others within the bounds of
their duty, that neglects, or is ignorant of, or wilfully
acts contrary to, his own 2 Allege now, if you can,
any dictate of nature by which we are enjoined to neg-
lect the wise institutions of the law of nature, and have
no regard to them in civil and public concerns, when
we see what great and admirable things nature herself
376
A DEFENCE OF THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND,
effects in things that are inanimate and void of sense,
rather than lose her end. Produce any rule of nature, or
natural justice, by which inferiour criminals ought to be
punished, but kings and princes to go unpunished; and
not only so, but though guilty of the greatest crimes im-
aginable, be had in reverence and almost adored. You
agree, That “all forms of government, whether by many,
or few, or by a single person, are equally agreeable to
the law of nature.” So that the person of a king is not by
the law of nature more sacred than a senate of nobles, or
magistrates, chosen from amongst the common people,
who you grant may be punished, and ought to be if they
offend; and consequently, kings ought to be so too, who
are appointed to rule for the very same end and purpose
that other magistrates are. “For,” say you, “nature
does not allow any single person to rule so entirely, as
not to have partners in the government.” It does not
therefore allow of a monarch ; it does not allow one
single person to rule so, as that all others should be in
a slavish subjection to his commands only. You that
give princes such partners in the government, “as in
whom,” to use your own words, “the government
always resides,” do at the same time make others col-
leagues with them, and equal to them; nay, and con-
sequently you settle a power in those colleagues of
punishing and of deposing them. So that while you
yourself go about, not to extol a kingly government,
but to establish it by the law of nature, you destroy it;
no greater misfortune could befall sovereign princes,
than to have such an advocate as you are. Poor un-
happy wretch! what blindness of mind has seized you,
that you should unwittingly take so much pains to
discover your knavery and folly, and make it visible to
the world, (which before you concealed in some mea-
sure, and disguised,) that you should be so industrious
to heap disgrace and ignominy upon yourself? What
offence does Heaven punish you for, in making you
appear in public, and undertake the defence of a des-
perate cause, with so much impudence and childishness,
and instead of defending it, to betray it by your ignor-
ance P What enemy of yours would desire to see you
in a more forlorn, despicable condition than you are,
who have no refuge left from the depth of misery, but
in your own imprudence and want of sense, since by
your unskilful and silly defence, you have rendered
tyrants the more odious and detestable, by ascribing to
them an unbounded liberty of doing mischief with im-
punity ; and consequently have created them more
enemies than they had before ? But I return to your
contradictions. When you had resolved with yourself
to be so wicked, as to endeavour to find out a founda-
tion for tyranny in the law of nature, you saw a neces-
sity of extolling monarchy above other sorts of govern-
ment; which you cannot go about to do, without doing
as you use to do, that is, contradicting yourself. For
having said but a little before, “That all forms of go-
vernment, whether by more or fewer, or by a single
person, are equally according to the law of nature,”
now you tell us, “that of all these sorts of government,
that of a single person is most natural:” may, though
you had said in express terms but lately, “that the law
of nature does not allow, that any government should
reside entirely in one man.” Now upbraid whom you
will with the putting of tyrants to death; since you
yourself, by your own folly, have cut the throats of all
monarchs, may even of monarchy itself. But it is not
to the purpose for us here to dispute which form of go-
vernment is best, by one single person, or by many. I
confess many eminent and famous men have extolled
monarchy; but it has always been upon this supposi-
tion, that the prince was a very excellent person, and
one that of all others deserved best to reign; without
which supposition, no form of government can be so
prone to tyranny as monarchy is. And whereas you
resemble a monarchy to the government of the world
by one Divine Being, I pray answer me, whether you
think that any other can deserve to be invested with a
power here on earth, that shall resemble his power that
governs the world, except such a person as does infi-
nitely excel all other men, and both for wisdom and
goodness in some measure resemble the Deity P and
such a person, in my opinion, none can be but the Son
of God himself—And whereas you make a kingdom
to be a kind of family, and make a comparison betwixt
a prince and the master of a family; observe how lame
the parallel is. For a master of a family begot part
of his household, at least he feeds all those that are of
his house, and upon that account deserves to have the
government; but the reason holds not in the case of
a prince ; nay, it is quite contrary. In the next
place, you propose to us for our imitation the example
of inferiour creatures, especially of birds, and amongst
them of bees, which according to your skill in na-
tural philosophy, are a sort of birds too; “The bees
have a king over them.” The bees of Trent you
mean ; do not you remember 2 all other bees you
yourself confess to be commonwealths. But leave
off playing the fool with bees; they belong to the
Muses, and hate, and (you see) confute, such a beetle
as you are. “The quails are under a captain.” Lay
such snares for your own bitterns; you are not fowler
good enough to catch us. Now you begin to be per-
sonally concerned. Gallus Gallinaceus, a cock, say
you, “has both cocks and hens under him.” How can
that be, since you yourself that are Gallus, and but too
much Gallinaceus, by report cannot govern your own
single hen, but let her govern you ? So that if a Gal-
limaceus be a king over many hens, you that are a slave
to one, must own yourself not to be so good as a Gal-
limaceus, but some Stercorarius Gallus, some dunghill-
cock or other. For matter of books, there is no body
publishes huger dunghills than you, and you disturb
all people with your shitten cock-crow; that is the
only property in which you resemble a true cock. I
will throw you a great many barley-corns, if in ran-
sacking this dung-hill book of yours, you can shew me
but one jewel. But why should I promise you barley,
that never pecked at corn, as that honest plain cock
that we read of in MEsop, but at gold, as that roguey
cock in Plautus, though with a different event; for
you found a hundred Jacobusses, and he was struck
dead with Euclio's club, which you deserve more than
IN ANSWER TO SALMASIUS'S DEFENCE OF THE KING.
377
he did. But let us go on : “That same natural reason
that designs the good and safety of all mankind, re-
quires, that whoever be once promoted to the sovereign-
ty, be preserved in the possession of it.” Whoever
questioned this, as long as his preservation is consistent
with the safety of all the rest? But is it not obvious to
all men, that nothing can be more contrary to natural
reason, than that any one man should be preserved and
defended, to the utter ruin and destruction of all others?
But yet (you say) “it is better to keep and defend a
bad prince, may one of the worst that ever was, than to
change him for another; because his ill government
cannot do the commonwealth so much harm as the
disturbances will occasion, which must of necessity be
raised before the people can get rid of him.” But what
is this to the right of kings by the law of nature ? If
mature teaches me rather to suffer myself to be robbed
by highwaymen, or if I should be taken captive by
such, to purchase my liberty with all my estate, than
to fight with them for my life, can you infer from thence,
that they have a natural right to rob and spoil me *
Nature teaches men to give way sometimes to the vio-
lence and outrages of tyrants, the necessity of affairs
sometimes enforces a toleration with their enormities;
what foundation can you find in this forced patience
of a nation, in this compulsory submission, to build a
right upon, for princes to tyrannize by the law of nature?
That right which nature has given the people for their
own preservation, can you affirm that she has invested
tyrants with for the people's ruin and destruction 8
Nature teaches us, of two evils to choose the least;
and to bear with oppression, as long as there is a ne-
cessity of so doing; and will you infer from hence,
that tyrants have some right by the law of nature to
oppress their subjects, and go unpunished, because, as
circumstances may fall out, it may sometimes be a less
mischief to bear with them than to remove them P
Remember what yourself once wrote concerning
bishops against a jesuit; you were then of another
opinion than you are now : I have quoted your words
formerly; you there affirm “that seditious civil dissen-
sions and discords of the nobles and common people
against and amongst one another are much more tole-
rable, and less mischievous, than certain misery and
destruction under the government of a single person,
that plays the tyrant.” And you said very true. For
you had not then run mad; you had not then been
bribed with Charles his Jacobusses. You had not got
the Kings’-evil. I should tell you perhaps, if I did not
know you, that you might be ashamed thus to prevari-
cate. But you can sooner burst than blush, who have
cast off all shame for a little profit. Did you not re-
member, that the commonwealth of the people of Rome
flourished and became glorious when they had banished
their kings? Could you possibly forget that of the Low
Countries P which, after it had shook off the yoke of
the king of Spain, after long and tedious wars, but
crowned with success, obtained its liberty, and feeds
such a pitiful grammarian as yourself with a pension :
but not with a design that their youth might be so in-
fatuated by your sophistry, as to choose rather to return
to their former slavery, than to inherit the glorious
liberty which their ancestors purchased for them. May
those pernicious principles of yours be banished with
yourself into the most remote and barbarous corners of
the world. And last of all, the commonwealth of Eng-
land might have afforded you an example, in which
Charles, who had been their king, after he had been
taken captive in war, and was found incurable, was
put to death. But “they have defaced and impover-
ished the island with civil broils and discords, which
under its kings was happy, and swam in luxury.”
Yea, when it was almost buried in luxury and volup-
tuousness, and the more inured thereto, that it might
be enthralled the more easily; when its laws were
abolished, and its religion agreed to be sold, they de-
livered it from slavery. You are like him that pub-
lished Simplicius and Epictetus in the same volume;
a very grave stoic, “who call an island happy, because
it swims in luxury.” I am sure no such doctrine ever
came out of Zeno's school. But why should not you,
who would give kings a power of doing what they list,
have liberty yourself to broach what new philosophy
you please? Now begin again to act your part. “There
never was in any king's reign so much blood spilt, so
many families ruined.” All this is to be imputed to
Charles, not to us, who first raised an army of Irishmen
against us; who by his own warrant authorized the Irish
nation to conspire against the English ; who by their
means slew two hundred thousand of his English subjects
in the province of Ulster, besides what numbers were slain
in other parts of that kingdom; who solicited two armies
towards the destruction of the parliament of England,
and the city of London ; and did many other actions
of hostility before the parliament and people had listed
one soldier for the preservation and defence of the go-
vernment. What principles, what law, what religion
ever taught men rather to consult their ease, to save
their money, their blood, may their lives themselves,
than to oppose an enemy with force P for I make no
difference between a foreign enemy and another, since
both are equally dangerous and destructive to the good
of the whole nation. The people of Israel saw very
well, that they could not possibly punish the Benja-
mites for murdering the Levite's wife, without the loss
of many men's lives: and did that induce them to sit
still 2 Was that accounted a sufficient argument why
they should abstain from war, from a very bloody civil
warf Did they therefore suffer the death of one poor
woman to be unrevenged 8 Certainly if mature teaches
us rather to endure the government of a king, though
he be never so bad, than to endanger the lives of a
great many men in the recovery of our liberty; it must
teach us likewise not only to endure a kingly govern-
ment, which is the only one that you argue ought to
be submitted to, but even an aristocracy and a de..
mocracy: nay, and sometimes it will persuade us, to
submit to a multitude of highwaymen, and to slaves
that mutiny. Fulvius and Rupilius, if your principles
had been received in their days, must not have en-
gaged in the servile war (as their writers call it) after
the Praetorian armies were slain: Crassus must not
378
A DEFENCE OF THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND,
have marched against Spartacus, aſter the rebels had
destroyed one Roman army, and spoiled their tents:
nor must Pompey have undertaken the Piratic war.
But the state of Rome must have pursued the dictates
of nature, and must have submitted to their own slaves,
or to the pirates, rather than run the hazard of losing
some men's lives. You do not prove at all, that nature
has imprinted any such notion as this of yours on the
minds of men ; and yet you cannot forbear boding us
ill luck, and denouncing the wrath of God against us,
(which may Heaven divert, and inflict it upon yourself,
and all such prognosticators as you,) who have punish-
ed, as he deserved, one that had the name of our king,
but was in fact our implacable enemy; and we have
made atonement for the death of so many of our coun-
trymen, as our civil wars have occasioned, by shedding
his blood, that was the author and cause of them.
Then you tell us, that a kingly government appears to
be more according to the laws of nature, because more
nations, both in our days, and of old, have submitted
to that form of government than ever did to any other.”
I answer, if that be so, it was neither the effect of any
dictate of the law of nature, nor was it in obedience to
any command from God. God would not suffer his
own people to be under a king ; he consented at last,
but unwillingly; what nature and right reason dic-
tates, we are not to gather from the practice of most
nations, but of the wisest and most prudent. The
Grecians, the Romans, the Italians, and Carthaginians,
with many other, have of their own accord, out of
choice, preferred a commonwealth to a kingly govern-
ment; and these nations that I have named, are better
instances than all the rest. Hence Sulpitius Severus
says, “That the very name of a king was always very
odious among a free-born people.” But these things
concern not our present purpose, nor many other im-
pertinences that follow over and over again. I will
make haste to prove that by examples, which I have
proved already by reason; viz. that it is very agreeable
to the law of nature, that tyrants should be punished ;
and that all nations, by the instinct of nature, have
punished them; which will expose your impudence,
and make it evident, that you take a liberty to publish
palpable downright lies. You begin with the Egyp-
tians; and indeed, who does not see, that you play the
gipsy yourself throughout * “Amongst them,” say
you, “there is no mention extant of any king, that was
ever slain by the people in a popular insurrection, no
war made upon any of their kings by their subjects,
no attempt made to depose any of them.” What think
you then of Osiris, who perhaps was the first king that
the Egyptians ever had 2 Was not he slain by his
brother Typhon, and five and twenty other con-
spirators P And did not a great part of the body of the
people side with them, and fight a battle with Isis and
Orus, the late king's wife and son 2 I pass by Sesostris,
whom his brother had well nigh put to death, and
Chemmis and Cephrenes, against whom the people
were deservedly enraged ; and because they could not
do it while they were alive, they threatened to tear
them in pieces after they were dead. Do you think
that a people that durst lay violent hands upon good
kings, had any restraint upon them, either by the light
of nature or religion, from putting bad ones to death P
Could they that threatened to pull the dead bodies of
their princes out of their graves, when they ceased to
do mischief, (though by the custom of their own coun-
try the corpse of the meanest person was sacred and
inviolable,) abstain from inflicting punishment upon
them in their lifetime, when they were acting all their
villanies, if they had been able, and that upon some
maxim of the law of nature ? I know you would not
stick to answer me in the affirmative, how absurd soever
it be ; but that you may not offer at it, I will pull out
your tongue. Know then, that some ages before Cephre-
nes's time, one Ammosis was king of Egypt, and was
as great a tyrant, as who has been the greatest; him
the people bore with. This you are glad to hear; this
is what you would be at. But hear what follows, my
honest Telltruth. I shall speak out of Diodorus,
“They bore with him for some while, because he was
too strong for them.” But when Actisanes king of
Ethiopia made war upon him, they took that opportu-
nity to revolt, so that being deserted, he was easily
subdued, and Egypt became an accession to the king-
dom of Ethiopia. You see the Egyptians, so soon as
they could, took up arms against a tyrant; they joined
forces with a foreign prince, to depose their own king,
and disinherit his posterity; they chose to live under a
moderate and good prince, as Actisanes was, though a
foreigner, rather than under a tyrant of their own.
The same people with a very unanimous consent took
up arms against Apries, another tyrant, who relied
upon foreign aids that he had hired to assist him.
Under the conduct of Amasis their general they con-
quered, and afterwards strangled him, and placed
Amasis in the throne. And observe this circumstance
in the history; Amasis kept the captive king a good
while in the palace, and treated him well : at last,
when the people complained that he mourished his own
and their enemy; he delivered him into their hands,
who put him to death in the manner I have mentioned.
These things are related by Herodotus and Diodorus.
Where are you now 2 do you think that any tyrant
would not choose a hatchet rather than a halter P “After-
wards,” say you, “when the Egyptians were brought
into subjection by the Persians, they continued faithful
to them;” which is most false; they never were faith-
ful to them : for in the fourth year after Cambyses had
subdued them, they rebelled. Afterwards, when Xerxes
had tamed them, within a short time they revolted
from his son Artaxerxes, and set up one Inarus to be
their king. After his death they rebelled again, and
created one Tachus king, and made war upon Ar-
taxerxes Mnemon. Neither were they better subjects
to their own princes, for they deposed Tachus, and
conferred the government upon his son Nectanebus, till
at last Artaxerxes Ochus brought them the second
time under subjection to the Persian empire. When
they were under the Macedonian empire, they declared
by their actions, that tyrants ought to be under some
restraint: they threw down the statues and images of
IN ANSWER TO SALMASIUS'S DEFENCE OF THE KING.
379
Ptolemaeus Physco, and would have killed him, but
that the mercenary army, that he commanded, was too
strong for them. His son Alexander was forced to
leave his country by the mere violence of the people,
who were incensed against him for killing his mother:
and the people of Alexandria dragged his son Alexan-
der out of the palace, whose insolent behaviour gave
just offence, and killed him in the theatre : and the
same people deposed Ptolemaeus Auletes for his many
crimes. Now since it is impossible, that any learned
man should be ignorant of these things that are so
generally known ; and since it is an inexcusable fault
in Salmasius to be ignorant of them, whose profession
it is to teach them others, and whose very asserting
things of this nature ought to carry in itself an argu-
ment of credibility; it is certainly a very scandalous
thing (I say) either that so ignorant, illiterate a block-
head, should, to the scandal of all learning, profess
himself, and be accounted a learned man, and obtain
salaries from princes and states; or that so impudent
and notorious a liar should not be branded with some
particular mark of infamy, and for ever banished from
the society of learned and honest men. Having
searched among the Egyptians for examples, let us
now consider the Ethiopians their neighbours. They
adore their kings, whom they suppose God to have ap-
pointed over them, even as if they were a sort of gods:
and yet whenever the priests condemn any of them,
they kill themselves: and on that manner, says Diodo-
rus, they punish all their criminals; they put them
not to death, but send a minister of justice to command
them to destroy their own persons. In the next place,
you mention the Assyrians, the Medes, and the Per-
sians, who of all others were most observant of their
princes: and you affirm, contrary to all historians that
have wrote any thing concerning those nations, that
“the regal power there had an unbounded liberty an-
nexed to it, of doing what the king listed.” In the
first place, the prophet Daniel tells us, how the Baby-
lonians expelled Nebuchadnezzar out of human society,
and made him graze with the beasts, when his pride
grew to be insufferable. The laws of those countries
were not entitled the laws of their kings, but the laws
of the Medes and Persians; which laws were irrevoca-
ble, and the kings themselves were bound by them:
insomuch that Darius the Mede, though he earnestly
desired to have delivered Daniel from the hands of the
princes, yet could not effect it. “Those nations, “ say
you, “thought it no sufficient pretence to reject a prince,
because he abused the right that was inherent in him
as he was sovereign.” But in the very writing of these
words you are so stupid, as that with the same breath
that you commend the obedience and submissiveness
of those nations, of your own accord you make mention
of Sardanapalus's being deprived of his crown by Ar-
baces. Neither was it he alone that accomplished that
enterprize; for he had the assistance of the priests
(who of all others were best versed in the law) and of
the people; and it was wholly upon this account that
he deposed him, because he abused his authority and
power, not by giving himself over to cruelty, but to
luxury and effeminacy. Run over the histories of He-
rodotus Ctesias, Diodorus, and you will find things
quite contrary to what you assert here; you will find
that those kingdoms were destroyed for the most part
by subjects, and not by foreigners; that the Assyrians
were brought down by the Medes, who then were their
subjects, and the Medes by the Persians, who at that
time were likewise subject to them. You yourself
confess, that “Cyrus rebelled, and that at the same
time in divers parts of the empire little upstart govern-
ments were formed by those that shook off the Medes.”
But does this agree with what you said before? Does
this prove the obedience of the Medes and Persians
to their princes, and that Jus Regium which you had
asserted to have been universally received amongst
those nations 2 What potion can cure this brainsick
frenzy of yours ? You say, “it appears by Herodo-
tus how absolute the Persian kings were.” Cambyses
being desirous to marry his sisters, consulted with the
judges, who were the interpreters of the laws, to
whose decision all difficult matters were to be refer-
red. What answer had he from them 2 They told
him, they knew no law which permitted a brother to
marry his sister; but another law they knew, that the
kings of Persia might do what they listed. Now to
this I answer, if the kings of Persia were really so ab-
solute, what need was there of any other to interpret
the laws, besides the king himself? Those superfluous
unnecessary judges would have had their abode and
residence in any other place rather than in the palace,
where they were altogether useless. Again, if those
kings might do whatever they would, it is not credi-
ble, that so ambitious a prince as Cambyses, should be
so ignorant of that grand prerogative, as to consult
with the judges, whether what he desired were accord-
ing to law. What was the matter then f either they
designed to humour the king, as you say they did, or
they were afraid to cross his inclination, which is the
account that Herodotus gives of it; and so told him of
such a law, as they knew would please him, and in
plain terms made a fool of him, which is no new thing
with judges and lawyers now-a-days. “But,” say you,
“Artabanus a Persian told Themistocles, that there was
no better law in Persia, than that by which it was
enacted, that kings were to be honoured and adored.”
An excellent law that was without doubt, which com-
manded subjects to adore their princes ! but the primi-
tive fathers have long ago damned it; and Artabanus
was a proper person to recommend such a law, who
was the very man that a little while after slew Xerxes
with his own hand. You quote regicides to assert
royalty. I am afraid you have some design upon
kings. In the next place, you quote the poet Claudian,
to prove how obedient the Persians were. But I ap-
peal to their histories and amnals, which are full of the
revolts of the Persians, the Medes, the Bactrians, and
Babylonians, and give us frequent instances of the
murders of their princes. The next person whose au-
thority you cite, is Otanes the Persian, who likewise
killed Smerdis then king of Persia, to whom, out of the
hatred which he bore to a kingly government, he
380
A DEFENCE OF THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND,
reckons up the impieties and injurious actions of kings,
their violation of all laws, their putting men to death
without any legal conviction, their rapes and adulte-
ries; and all this you will have called the right of
kings, and slander Samuel again as a teacher of such
doctrines. You quote Homér, who says that kings de-
rive their authority from Jupiter; to which I have
already given an answer. For King Philip of Mace-
don, whose asserting the right of kings you make use
of; I will believe that Charles his description of it, as
soon as his. Then you quote some sentences out of a
fragment of Diogenes a Pythagorean ; but you do not
tell us what sort of a king he speaks of Observe
therefore how he begins that discourse; for whatever
follows must be understood to have relation to it.
“Let him be king,” says he, “that of all others is
most just, and so he is that acts most according to law;
for no man can be king that is not just; and without
laws there can be no justice.” This is directly opposite
to that regal right of yours. And Ecphantas, whom you
likewise quote, is of the same opinion : “Whosoever
takes upon him to be a king, ought to be naturally
most pure and clear from all imputation.” And a little
aſter, “Him,” says he, “we call a king, that governs
well, and he only is properly so.” So that such a king
as you speak of, according to the philosophy of the
Pythagoreans, is no king at all. Hear now what Plato
says in his Eighth Epistle: “Let kings,” says he, “be
liable to be called to account for what they do : Let the
laws control not only the people but kings themselves,
if they do any thing not warranted by law.” I will
mention what Aristotle says in the Third Book of his
Politics; “It is neither for the public good, nor is it
just,” says he, “seeing all men are by nature alike
and equal, that any one should be lord and master over
all the rest, where there are no laws; nor is it for the
public good, or just, that one man should be a law to
the rest, where there are laws; nor that any one, though
a good man, should be lord over other good men, nor
a bad man, over bad men.” And in the Fifth Book,
says he, “That king whom the people refuse to be
governed by, is no longer a king, but a tyrant.” Hear
what Xenophon says in Hiero: “People are so far
from revenging the deaths of tyrants, that they confer
great honour upon him that kills one, and erect statues
in their temples to the honour of tyrannicides.” Of
this I can produce an eye-witness, Marcus Tullius, in
his oration pro Milone; “The Grecians,” says he,
“ascribe divine worship to such as kill tyrants: what
things of this nature have I myself seen at Athens,
and in the other cities of Greece how many religious
observances have been instituted in honour of such
men how many hymns ! They are consecrated to im-
mortality and adoration, and their memory endea-
voured to be perpetuated.” And lastly, Polybius, an
historian of great authority and gravity, in the Sixth
Book of his History, says thus: “When princes began
to indulge their own lusts and sensual appetites, then
kingdoms were turned into so many tyrannies, and the
subjects began to conspire the death of their governors;
neither was it the profligate sort that were the authors
of those designs, but the most generous and magnani-
mous.” I could quote many such like passages, but 1
shall instance in no more, From the philosophers you
appeal to the poets; and I am very willing to follow
you thither. Æschylus is enough to inform us, that
the power of the kings of Greece was such, as not to
be liable to the censure of any laws, or to be ques-
tioned before any human judicature; for he in that
tragedy that is called, The Suppliants, calls the king
of the Argives, “a governor not obnoxious to the judg-
ment of any tribunal.” But you must know, (for the
more you say, the more you discover your rashness
and want of judgment,) you must know, I say, that
one is not to regard what the poet says, but what per-
son in the play speaks, and what that person says ; for
different persons are introduced, sometimes good, some-
times bad; sometimes wise men, sometimes fools; and
such words are put into their mouths, as it is most
proper for them to speak; not such as the poet would
speak, if he were to speak in his own person. The
fifty daughters of Danaus, being banished out of
Egypt, became suppliants to the king of the Argives;
they begged of him, that he would protect them from
the Egyptians, who pursued them with a fleet of ships.
The king told them he could not undertake their pro-
tection, till he had imparted the matter to the people;
“For,” says he, “if I should make a promise to you, I
should not be able to perform it, unless I consult with
them first.” The women being strangers and sup-
pliants, and fearing the uncertain suffrages of the people,
tell him, “That the power of all the people resides in
him alone; that he judges all others, but is not judged
himself by any.” He answers: “I have told you al-
ready, That I cannot do this thing that you desire of
me, without the people's consent; nay, and though I
could, I would not.” At last be refers the matter to
the people; “I will assemble the people,” says he,
“ and persuade them to protect you.” The people met,
and resolved to engage in their quarrel; insomuch that
Danaus their father bids his daughters “be of good
cheer, for the people of the country, in a popular con-
vention, had voted their safeguard and defence.” If I
had not related the whole thing, how rashly would this
impertinent Ignoramus have determined concerning
the right of kings among the Grecians, out of the
mouths of a few women that were strangers and sup-
pliants, though the king himself, and the history, be
quite contrary ! The same thing appears by the story
of Orestes in Euripides, who after his father's death
was himself king of the Argives, and yet was called in
question by the people for the death of his mother, and
made to plead for his life, and by the major suffrage
was condemned to die. The same poet, in his play
called “The Suppliants,” declares, That at Athens the
kingly power was subject to the laws; where Theseus
then king of that city is made to say these words: “This
is a free city, it is not governed by one man; the
people reigns here.” And his son Demophoon, who
was king after him, in another tragedy of the same
poet, called Heraclidae; “I do not exercise a tyran-
nical power over them, as if they were Barbarians:
IN ANSWER TO SALMASIUS's DEFENCE OF THE KING.
381
I am upon other terms with them; but if I do them
justice, they will do me the like.” Sophocles in his
(Edipus shews, That anciently in Thebes the kings
were not absolute neither: hence says Tiresias to
(Edipus, “I am not your slave.” And Creon to the
same king, “I have some right in this city,” says he,
“as well as you.” And in another tragedy of the same
poet, called Antigone, Æmon tells the king, “That the
city of Thebes is not governed by a single person.”
All men know, that the kings of Lacedaemon have been
arraigned, and sometimes put to death judicially.
These instances are sufficient to evince what power the
kings in Greece had. Let us consider now the Ro-
mans: You betake yourself to that passage of C. Mem-
mius in Sallust, of kings having a liberty to do what
they list, and go unpunished ; to which I have given
an answer already. Sallust himself says in express
words, “That the ancient government of Rome was
by their laws, though the name and form of it was
regal : which form of government, when it grew into a
tyranny, you know they put down and changed.”
Cicero, in his oration against Piso, “Shall I,” says he,
“account him a consul, who would not allow the senate
to have any authority in the commonwealth P Shall I
take notice of any man as consul, if at the same time
there be no such thing as a senate; when of old the
city of Rome acknowledged not their kings, if they
aeted without or in opposition to the senate P’’ Do you
hear; the very kings themselves at Rome signified
nothing without the senate. “But,” say you, “Ro-
mulus governed as he listed;” and for that you quote
Tacitus. No wonder: the government was not then
established by law; they were a confused multitude of
strangers, more likely than a regulated state; and all
mankind lived without laws, before governments were
settled. But when Romulus was dead, though all the
people were desirous of a king, not having yet expe-
rienced the sweetness of liberty, yet, as Livy informs
us, “The sovereign power resided in the people; so
that they parted not with more right than they retain-
ed.” The same author tells us, “That the same power
was afterwards extorted from them by their emperors.”
Servius Tullius at first reigned by fraud, and as it were
a deputy to Tarquinius Priscus; but afterward he re-
ferred it to the people, Whether they would have him
reign or no? At last, says Tacitus, he became the au-
thor of such laws as the kings were obliged to obey.
Do you think he would have done such an injury to
himself and his posterity, if he had been of opinion,
that the right of kings had been above all laws? Their
last king, Tarquinius Superbus, was the first that put
an end to that custom of consulting the senate concern-
ing all public affairs: for which very thing, and other
enormities of his, the people deposed him, and banished
him and his family. These things I have out of Livy
and Cicero, than whom you will hardly produce any
better expositors of the right of kings among the Ro-
mans. As for the dictatorship, that was but temporary,
and was never made use of, but in great extremities,
and was not to continue longer than six months. But
that which you call the right of the Roman emperors,
y
was no right, but a plain downright force; and was
gained by war only. “But Tacitus,” say you, “that
lived under the government of a single person, writes
thus; the gods have committed the sovereign power in
human affairs to princes only, and have left to subjects
the honour of being obedient.” But you tell us not
where Tacitus has these words, for you were conscious
to yourself, that you imposed upon your readers in
quoting them; which I presently smelt out, though I
could not find the place of a sudden : for that expres-
sion is not Tacitus's own, who is an approved writer,
and of all others the greatest enemy to tyrants; but
Tacitus relates that of M. Terentius, a gentleman of
Rome, being accused for a capital crime, amongst other
things that he said to save his life, flattered Tiberius
on this manner. It is in the Sixth Book of his Annals.
“The gods have entrusted you with the ultimate judg-
ment in all things; they have left us the honour of
obedience.” And you cite this passage as if Tacitus
had said it himself; you scrape together whatever
seems to make for your opinion, either out of ostenta-
tion, or out of weakness; you would leave out nothing
that you could find in a baker's or a barber's shop; nay,
you would be glad of any thing that looked like an ar-
gument, from the very hangman. If you had read Ta-
citus himself, and not transcribed some loose quotations
out of him by other authors, he would have taught you
whence that imperial right had its original. “After the
conquest of Asia,” says he, “the whole state of our affairs
was turned upside down; nothing of the ancient integrity
of our forefathers was left amongst us; all men shook
off that former equality which had been observed, and
began to have reverence for the mandates of princes.”
This you might have learned out of the Third Book of
his Annals, whence you have all your regal right.
“When that ancient equality was laid aside, and in-
stead thereof ambition and violence took place, tyran-
nical forms of government started up, and fixed them-
selves in many countries.” The same thing you
might have learned out of Dio, if your natural levity
and unsettledness of judgment would have suffered
you to apprehend any thing that is solid. He tells us
in the Fifty-third Book of his History, out of which
book you have made some quotation already, That Oc-
tavius Caesar, partly by force, and partly by fraud,
brought things to that pass, that the emperors of Rome
became no longer ſettered by laws. For he, though he
promised to the people in public that he would lay
down the government, and obey the laws, and become
subject to others; yet under pretence of making war
in several provinces of the empire, still retained the
legions, and so by degrees invaded the government,
which he pretended he would refuse. This was not re-
gularly getting from under the law, but breaking for-
cibly through all laws, as Spartacus the gladiator might
have done, and then assuming to himself the style of
prince or emperor, as if God or the law of nature had
put all men and all laws into subjection under him.
Would you inquire a little further into the original of
the right of the Roman emperors 2 Marcus Antonius,
whom Caesar (when by taking up arms against the
382
A DEFENCE OF THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND,
commonwealth he had got all the power into his
hands) had made consul, when a solemnity called the
Lupercalia was celebrated at Rome, as had been con-
trived beforehand, that he should set a crown upon Cae-
sar's head, though the people sighed and lamented at
the sight, caused it to be entered upon record, that
Marcus Antonius, at the Lupercalia, made Caesar king
at the instance of the people. Of which action Cicero
in his second Philippic says, “was Lucius Tarquinius
therefore expelled, Spurius Cassius, Sp. Melius, and
Marcus Manilius put to death, that after many ages
Marcus Antonius should make a king in Rome, con-
trary to law P” But you deserve to be tortured, and
loaded with everlasting disgrace, much more than
Mark Antony; though I would not have you proud
because he and yourself are put together; for I do not
think so despicable a wretch as you fit to be compared
with him in any thing but his impiety; you that in
those horrible Lupercalia of yours set not a crown upon
one tyrant's head, but upon all, and such a crown as
you would have limited by no laws, nor liable to any.
Indeed if we must believe the oracles of the emperors
themselves, (for so some christian emperors, as Theodo-
sius and Valens, have called their edicts, Cod. lib. 1.
tit. 14.) the authority of the emperors depends upon
that of the law. So that the majesty of the person
that reigns, even by the judgment, or call it the oracle,
of the emperors themselves, must submit to the laws,
on whose authority it depends. Hence Pliny tells
Trajan in his Panegyric, when the power of the empe-
rors was grown to its height, “A principality and an
absolute sovereignty are quite different things. Tra-
jan puts down whatever looks like a kingdom; he
rules like a prince, that there may be no room for a
magisterial power.” And afterwards, “whatever I
have said of other princes, I said that I might shew
how our prince reforms and corrects the manners of
princes, which by long custom have been corrupted
and depraved.” Are you not ashamed to call that the
right of kings, that Pliny calls the corrupt and de-
praved customs of princes P But let this suffice to
have been said in short of the right of kings, as it was
taken at Rome. How they dealt with their tyrants,
whether kings or emperors, is generally known. They
expelled Tarquin. “But,” say you, “how did they
expel him 2 Did they proceed against him judicially P
No such matter: when he would have come into the
city, they shut the gates against him.” Ridiculous
fool; what could they do but shut the gates, when he
was hastening to them with part of the army P And
what great difference will there be, whether they ba-
nished him or put him to death, so they punished him
one way or other? The best men of that age killed
Caesar the tyrant in the very senate. Which action of
theirs, Marcus Tullius, who was himself a very excel-
lent man, and publicly called the father of his coun-
try, both elsewhere, and particularly in his second
Philippic, extols wonderſully. I will repeat some of
his words: “All good men killed Caesar as far as
in them lay. Some men could not advise in it, others
wanted courage to act in it, others an opportunity, all
one.
had a good will to it.” And aſterwards, “what
greater and more glorious action (ye holy gods!) ever
was performed, not in this city only, but in any
other country f what action more worthy to be re-
commended to everlasting memory P I am not un-
willing to be included within the number of those
that advised it, as within the Trojan horse.” The
passage of Seneca may relate both to the Romans
and the Grecians: “there cannot be a greater nor
more acceptable sacrifice offered up to Jupiter, than a
wicked prince.” For if you consider Hercules, whose
words these are, they shew what the opinion was of
the principal men amongst the Grecians in that age.
If the poet, who flourished under Nero, (and the most
worthy persons in plays generally express the poet's
own sense,) then this passage shews us what Seneca
himself, and all good men, even in Nero's time, thought
was fit to be done to a tyrant; and how virtuous an
action, how acceptable to God, they thought it to kill
So every good man of Rome, as far as in him
lay, killed Domitian. Pliny the second owns it openly
in his Panegyric to Trajan the emperor, “we took plea-
sure in dashing those proud looks against the ground,
in piercing him with our swords, in mangling him with
axes, as if he had bled and felt pain at every stroke:
no man could so command his passion of joy, but
that he counted it a piece of revenge to behold his
mangled limbs, his members torn asunder, and after
all, his stern and horrid statues thrown down and
burnt.” And afterwards, “they cannot love good
princes enough, that cannot hate bad ones as they de-
serve.” Then amongst other enormities of Domitian,
he reckons this for one, that he put to death Epaphro-
ditus, that had killed Nero: “Had we forgotten the
avenging Nero's death P Was it likely that he would
suffer his life and actions to be ill spoken of, whose
death he revenged P’’ He seems to have thought it
almost a crime not to kill Nero, that counts it so great
a one to punish him that did it. By what has been
said, it is evident, that the best of the Romans did not
only kill tyrants, as oft as they could, and howsoever
they could ; but that they thought it a commendable
and a praiseworthy action so to do, as the Grecians had
done before them. For when they could not proceed
judicially against a tyrant in his lifetime, being in-
feriour to him in strength and power, yet after his
death they did it, and condemned him by the Valerian
law. For Valerius Publicola, Junius Brutus his col-
league, when he saw that tyrants, being guarded with
soldiers, could not be brought to a legal trial, he de-
vised a law to make it lawful to kill them any way,
though uncondemned; and that they that did it, should
afterwards give an account of their so doing. Hence,
when Cassius had actually run Caligula through with
a sword, though every body else had done it in their
hearts, Valerius Asiaticus, one that had been consul,
being present at that time, cried out to the soldiers,
that began to mutiny because of his death, “I wish I
myself had killed him.” And the senate at the same
time was so far from being displeased with Cassius for
what he had done, that they resolved to extirpate the
IN ANSWER TO SALMASIUS'S DEFENCE OF THE KING.
383
memory of the emperors, and to raze the temples that
had becn erected in honour of them. When Claudius
was presently saluted emperor by the soldiers, they
forbad him by the tribune of the people to take the
government upon him; but the power of the soldiers
prevailed. The senate declared Nero an enemy, and
made inquiry after him, to have punished him accord-
ing to the law of their ancestors; which required, that
he should be stripped naked, and hung by the neck
upon a forked stake, and whipped to death. Consider
now, how much more mildly and moderately the Eng-
lish dealt with their tyrant, though many are of opinion,
that he caused the spilling of more blood than ever
Nero himself did. So the senate condemned Domitian
after his death ; they commanded his statues to be
pulled down and dashed in pieces, which was all they
could do. When Commodus was slain by his own
officers, neither the senate nor the people punished the
fact, but declared him an enemy, and inquired for his
dead corpse, to have made it an example. An act of
the senate made upon that occasion is extant in Lam-
pridius: “Let the enemy of his country be deprived of
all his titles; let the parricide be drawn, let him be
torn in pieces in the Spoliary, let the enemy of the
gods, the executioner of the senate, be dragged with a
hook,” &c. The same persons in a very full senate
condemned Didus Julianus to death, and sent a tribune
to slay him in the palace. The same senate deposed
Maximinus, and declared him an enemy. Let us hear
the words of the decree of the senate concerning him,
as Capitolinus relates it: “The consul put the ques-
tion, ‘Conscript fathers, what is your pleasure concern-
ing the Maximines P. They answered, “They are
enemies, they are enemies, whoever kills them shall
be rewarded.’” Would you know now, whether the
people of Rome, and the provinces of the empire, obeyed
the senate, or Maximine the emperor P Hear what the
same author says, the senate wrote letters into all the
provinces, requiring them to take care of their common
safety and liberty; the letters were publicly read. And
the friends, the deputies, the generals, the tribunes, the
soldiers of Maximine, were slain in all places; very
few cities were found, that kept their faith with the
public enemy. Herodian relates the same thing. But
what need we give any more instances out of the
Roman histories P Let us now see what manner of
thing the right of kings was in those days, in the na-
tions that bordered upon the empire. Ambiorix, a king
of the Gauls, confesses “the nature of his dominion to
be such, that the people have as great power over him,
as he over them.” And consequently, as well as he
judged them, he might be judged by them. Vercin-
getorix, another king in Gaul, was accused of treason
These things Caesar relates in his
by his own people.
history of the Gallic wars. “Neither is the regal power
among the Germans absolute and uncontrollable; lesser
matters are ordered and disposed by the princes ;
greater affairs by all the people. The king or prince
is more considerable by the authority of his persua-
sions, than by any power that he has of commanding.
If his opinion be not approved of, they declare their
dislike of it by a general murmuring noise.” This is
out of Tacitus. Nay, and you yourself now confess,
that what but of late you exclaimed against as an un-
heard of thing, has been often done, to wit, that “no
less than fiſty Scottish kings have been either banish-
ed, or imprisoned, or put to death, nay, and some of
them publicly executed.” Which having come to pass
in our very island ; why do you, as if it were your
office to conceal the violent deaths of tyrants, by bury-
ing them in the dark, exclaim against it.as an abomin-
able and unheard of thing P You proceed to commend
the Jews and Christians for their religious obedience
even to tyrants, and to heap one lie upon another; in
all which I have already confuted you. Lately you
made large encomiums on the obedience of the Assy-
rians and Persians, and now you reckon up their rebel-
lions; and though but of late you said they never had
rebelled at all, now you give us a great many reasons
why they rebelled so often. Then you resume the nar-
rative of the manner of our king's death, which you
had broken off so long since; that if you had not taken
care sufficiently to appear ridiculous and a fool then,
you may do it now. You said, “he was led through
the members of his own court.” What you mean by
the members of the court, I would gladly know. You
enumerate the calamities that the Romans underwent
by changing their kingdom into a commonwealth. In
which I have already shewn how grossly you give
yourself the lie. What was it you said, when you
wrote against the Jesuit P You demonstrated, that “ in
an aristocracy, or a popular state, there could but be
seditions and tumults, whereas under a tyrant nothing
was to be looked for, but certain ruin and destruction;”
and dare you now say, you vain corrupt mortal, that
“ those seditions were punishments inflicted upon them
for banishing their kings 2 " Forsooth, because King
Charles gave you a hundred Jacobusses, therefore the
Romans shall be punished for banishing their kings.
But “they that killed Julius Caesar, did not prosper
a"terwards.” I confess, if I would have had any tyrant
spared, it should have been him. For although he in-
troduced a monarchical government into a free state by
force of arms, yet perhaps himself deserved a kingdom
best; and yet I conceive that none of those that killed
him can be said to have been punished for so doing, any
more than Caius Antonius, Cicero's colleague, for de-
stroying Catiline, who when he was afterward con-
demned for other crimes, says Cicero in his oration pro
Flacco, “Catiline's sepulchre was adormed with flow-
ers.” For they that favoured Catiline, they rejoiced ;
they gave out then, that what Catiline did was just, to
increase the people's hatred against those that had cut
him off. These are artifices, which wicked men make
use off, to deter the best of men from punishing tyrants,
and flagitious persons, I might as easily say the quite
contrary, and instance in them that have killed tyrants,
and prospered afterwards; if any certain inference
might be drawn in such cases from the events of things.
You object further, “that the English did not put their
hereditary king to death in like manner, as tyrants
used to be slain, but as robbers and traitors are exe-
384
A DEFENCE OF THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND,
cuted.” In the first place I do not, nor can any wise
man, understand what a crown's being hereditary should
contribute to a king's crimes being unpunishable.
What you ascribe to the barbarous cruclty of the Eng-
lish, proceeded rather from their clemency and mode-
ration, and as such, deserves commendation ; who,
though the being a tyrant is a crime that comprehends
all sorts of enormities, such as robberies, treasons, and
rebellions against the whole nation, yet were content-
ed to inflict no greater punishment upon him for being
so, than they used of course to do upon any common
highwayman, or ordinary traitor. You hope “some
such men as Harmodius and Thrasibulus will rise up
against us, and make expiation for the king's death,
by shedding their blood that were the authors of it.”
But you will run mad with despair, and be detested
by all good men, and put an end to that wretched life
of yours, by hanging yourself, before you see men like
Harmodius avenging the blood of a tyrant upon such
as have done no other than what they did themselves.
That you will come to such an end is most probable,
nor can any other be expected of so great a rogue; but
the other thing is an utter impossibility. You mention
thirty tyrants that rebelled in Gallienus's time. And
what if it fall out, that one tyrant happens to oppose
another, must therefore all they that resist tyrants be
accounted such themselves P You cannot persuade men
into such a belief, you slave of a knight; nor your au-
thor Trebellius Pollio, the most inconsiderable of all
historians that have writ. “If any of the emperors
were declared enemics by the senate,” you say, “it
was done by faction, but could not have been by law.”
You put us in mind what it was that made emperors
at first: it was faction and violence, and to speak
plainer, it was the madness of Antony, that made gene-
rals at first rebel against the senate, and the people of
Rome; there was no law, no right for their so doing.
“Galba,” you say, “was punished for his insurrection
against Nero.” Tell us likewise how Vespasian was
punished for taking up arms against Vitellius. “There
was as much difference, you say, “betwixt Charles
and Nero, as betwixt those English butchers, and the
Roman senators of that age.” Despicable villain! by
whom it is scandalous to be commended, and a praise
to be evil spoken of: but a few periods before, dis-
coursing of this very thing, you said, “that the Roman
senate under the emperors was in effect but an assem-
bly of slaves in robes:” and here you say, “that very
senate was an assembly of kings; ” which if it be
allowed, then are kings, according to your own opinion,
but slaves with robes on. Kings are blessed, that have
such a fellow as you to write in their praise, than whom
no man is more a rascal, no beast more void of sense,
unless this one may be said to be peculiar to you, that
none ever brayed so learnedly. You make the parliament
of England more like to Nero, than to the Roman se-
nate. This itch of yours of making similitudes enforces
me to rectify you, whether I will or no ; and I will let
you see how like King Charles was to Nero; Nero,
you say, “ commanded his own mother to be run through
with a sword.” But Charles murdered both his prince,
and his father, and that by poison. For to omit other
evidences; he that would not suffer a duke that was
accused for it, to come to his trial, must needs have
been guilty of it himself. Nero slew many thousands
of Christians; but Charles slew many more. There
were those, says Suetonius, that praised Nero after he
was dead, that longed to have had him again, “that
hung garlands of flowers upon his sepulchre,” and
gave out that they would never prosper, that had been
his enemies. And some there are transported with
the like phrensy, that wish for King Charles again,
and extol him to the highest degree imaginalle, of
whom you, a knight of the halter, are a ringleader.
“The English soldiers, more savage than their own
mastiffs, erected a new and unheard of court of justice.”
Observe this ingenious symbol, or adage of Salmasius,
which he has now repeated six times over, “more sa-
vage than their own mastiffs.” Take notice, orators
and schoolmasters; pluck, if you are wise, this elegant
flower, which Salmasius is so very fond of: commit
this flourish of a man, that is so much a master of
words, to your desks for safe custody, lest it be lost.
Has your rage made you forget words to that degree,
that like a cuckoo, you must needs say the same thing
over and over again ' What strange thing has befallen
you? The poet tells us, that spleen and rage turned
Hecuba into a dog; and it has turned you, the lord of
St. Lupus, into a cuckoo. Now you come out with
fresn contradictions. You had said before, page 113,
that “princes were not bound by any laws, neither
coercive, nor directory; that they were bound by no law
at all.” Now you say, that “you will discourse by and
by of the difference betwixt some kings and others, in
point of power; some having had more, some less.”
You say, “you will prove that kings cannot be judged,
nor condemned by their own subjects, by a most solid
argument;” but you do it by a very silly one, and it
is this: You say, “There was no other difference than .
that betwixt the judges, and the kings of the Jews;
and yet the reason why the Jews required to have
kings over them, was because they were weary of their
judges, and hated their government.” Do you think,
that, because they might judge and condemn their
judges, if they misbehaved themselves in the govern-
ment, they therefore hated and were weary of them,
and would be under kings, whom they should have no
power to restrain and keep within bounds, though they
should break through all laws? Who but you ever ar-
gued so childishly P So that they desired a king for
some other reason, than that they might have a master
over them, whose power should be superiour to that of
the law ; which reason, what it was, it is not to our
present purpose to make a conjecture. Whatever it
was, both God and his prophets tell us, it was no piece
of prudence in the people to desire a king. And now
you fall foul upon your rabbins, and are very angry
with them for saying, that a king might be judged and
condemned to undergo stripcs; out of whose writings
you said before you had proved, that the kings of the
Jews could not be judged. Wherein you confess, that
you told a lie when you said you had proved any such
IN ANSWER TO SALMASIUS'S DEFENCE OF THE KING. 385
thing out of their writings. Nay, you come at last to
forget the subject you were upon, of writing in the
king's defence, and raise little impertinent contro-
versies about Solomon's stables, and how many stalls
he had for his horses. Then of a jockey you become
a ballad-singer again, or rather, as I said before, a
raving distracted cuckoo. You complain, that in these
latter ages, discipline has been more remiss, and the
rule less observed and kept up to ; viz. because one ty-
rant is not permitted, without a check from the law, to
let loose the reins of all discipline, and corrupt all
men's manners. This doctrine, you say, the Brown-
ists introduced amongst those of the reformed religion;
so that Luther, Calvin, Zuinglius, Bucer, and all the
most celebrated orthodox divines, are Brownists in
your opinion. The English have the less reason to
take your reproaches ill, because they hear you belch-
ing out the same slanders against the most eminent
doctors of the church, and in effect against the whole
reformed church itself.
CHAP. VI.
After having discoursed upon the law of God and
of nature, and handled both so untowardly, that you
have got nothing by the bargain but a deserved re-
proach of ignorance and knavery; I cannot apprehend
what you can have further to allege in defence of your
royal cause, but mere trifles. I for my part hope I
have given satisfaction already to all good and learn-
ed men, and done this noble cause right, should I
break off here; yet lest I should seem to any to de-
cline your variety of arguing and ingenuity, rather
than your immoderate impertinence, and tittle-tattle, I
will follow you wherever you have a mind to go; but
with such brevity as shall make it appear, that after
having performed whatever the necessary defence of
the cause required, if not what the dignity of it me-
rited, I now do but comply with some men's expecta-
tion, if not their curiosity. “Now,” say you, “I shall
allege other and greater arguments.” What! greater
arguments than what the law of God and nature aſ-
forded ? Help, Lucinal the mountain Salmasius is in
labour ! It is not for nothing that he has got a she-
husband. Mortals, expect some extraordinary birth.
“If he that is, and is called a king, might be accused
before any other power, that power must of necessity
be greater than that of the king ; and if so, then must
that power be indeed the kingly power, and ought to
have the name of it: for a kingly power is thus de-
fined; to wit, the supreme power in the state residing
in a single person, and which has no superiour.” O
ridiculous birth ! a mouse crept out of the mountain
help grammarians ! one of your number is in danger
of perishing! the law of God and of nature are safe;
but Salmasius's dictionary is undone. What if I
should answer you thus f That words ought to give
place to things; that we having taken away kingly
government itself, do not think ourselves concerned
about its name and definition; let others look to that,
who are in love with kings: we are contented with
the enjoyment of our liberty; such an answer would
be good enough for you. But to let you see that I
deal fairly with you throughout, I will answer you,
not only from my own, but from the opinion of very
wise and good men, who have thought, that the name
and power of a king are very consistent with a power
in the people and the law superiour to that of the king
himself. In the first place, Lycurgus, a man very
eminent for wisdom, designing, as Plato says, to sc-
cure a kingly government as well as it was possible,
could find no better expedient to preserve it, than by
making the power of the senate, and of the Ephori,
that is, the power of the people, superiour to it. The-
seus, in Euripides, king of Athens, was of the same
opinion; for he to his great honour restored the peo-
ple to their liberty, and advanced the power of the
people above that of the king, and yet left the regal
power in that city to his posterity. Whence Euripi-
des in his play called the “Suppliants,” introduces
him speaking on this manner: “I have advanced
the people themselves into the throne, having freed
the city from slavery, and admitted the people to a
share in the government, by giving them an equal
right of suffrage.” And in another place to the herald
of Thebes, “in the first place,” says he, “you begin
your speech, friend, with a thing that is not true, in
styling me a monarch : for this city is not governed
by a single person, but is a free state; the people
reigns here.” These were his words, when at the same
time he was both called and really was king there.
The divine Plato likewise, in his eighth epistle,
“Lycurgus,” says he, “introduced the power of the
senate and of the Ephori, a thing very preservative
of kingly government, which by this means has
honourably flourished for so many ages, because the
law in effect was made king. Now the law cannot be
king, unless there be some, who, if there should be oc-
casion, may put the law in execution against the king.
A kingly government so bounded and limited, he him-
self commends to the Sicilians: “Let the people enjoy
their liberty under a kingly government; let the king
himself be accountable; let the law take place even
against kings themselves, if they act contrary to law.”
Aristotle likewise, in the third book of his Politics,
“of all kingdoms,” says he, “that are governed by
laws, that of the Lacedemonians seems to be most truly
and properly so.” And he says, all forms of kingly
governments are according to settled and established
laws, but one, which he calls trapſ3agiXsia, or Absolute
Monarchy, which he does not mention ever to have
obtained in any nation. So that Aristotle thought such
a kingdom, as that of the Lacedemonians was to be
and deserve the name of a kingdom more properly than
any other; and consequently that a king, though sub-
ordinate to his own people, was nevertheless actually
a king, and properly so called. Now since so many
and so great authors assert, that a kingly government
both in name and thing may very well subsist even
where the people, though they do not ordinarily exer-
386 A DEFENCE OF THE
PEOPLE OF ENGLAND,
cise the supreme power, yet have it actually residing
in them, and exercise it upon occasion ; be not you of
so mean a soul as to fear the downfall of grammar, and
the confusion of the signification of words to that de-
gree, as to betray the liberty of mankind, and the state,
rather than your glossary should not hold water. And
know for the future, that words must be conformable
to things, not things to words. By this means you
will have more wit, and not run on in infinitum, which
now you are afraid of. “It was to no purpose then
for Seneca,” you say, “to describe those three forms of
government, as he has done.” Let Seneca do a thing
to no purpose, so we enjoy our liberty. And if I mis-
take us not, we are other sort of men, than to be en-
slaved by Seneca's flowers. And yet Seneca, though
he says, that the sovereign power in a kingly govern-
ment resides in a single person, says withal, that “the
power is the people's,” and by them committed to the
king for the welfare of the whole, not for their ruin and
destruction ; and that the people has not given him a
propriety in it, but the use of it. “Rings at this rate,”
you say, “do not reign by God but by the people.”
As if God did not so overrule the people, that they set
up such kings, as it pleases God. Since Justinian
himself openly acknowledges, that the Roman empe-
rors derived their authority from that “royal law,
whereby the people granted to them and vested in them
all their own power and authority.” But how oft shall
we repeat these things over and over again Then you
take upon you to intermeddle with the constitution of
our government, in which you are no way concerned,
who are both a stranger and a foreigner; but it shews
your sauciness, and want of good manners. Come
then, let us hear your solecisms, like a busy coxcomb
as you are. You tell us, but it is in false Latin, “that
what those desperadoes say, is only to deceive the
people.” You rascal' was it not for this that you, a
renegado grammarian, were so forward to intermeddle
with the affairs of our government, that you might in-
troduce your solecisms and barbarisms amongst us 2
But say, how have we deceived the people “The
form of government which they have set up, is not po-
pular, but military.” This is what that herd of fugi-
tives and vagabonds hired you to write. So that I
shall not trouble myself to answer you, who bleat what
you know nothing of, but I will answer them that
hired you. “Who excluded the lords from parliament,
was it the people * Ay, it was the people; and in so
doing they threw an intolerable yoke of slavery from
off their necks. Those very soldiers, who you say did
it, were not foreigners, but our own countrymen, and
a great part of the people; and they did it with the
consent, and at the desire, of almost all the rest of the
people, and not without the authority of the parliament
neither. “Was it the people that cut off part of the
house of commons, forcing some away P’ &c. Yes, I
say, it was the people. For whatever the better and
sounder part of the senate did, in which the true power
of the people resided, why may not the people be
said to have done it P What if the greater part of the
senate should choose to be slaves, or to expose the go-
vernment to sale, ought not the lesser number to inter-
pose, and endeavour to retain their liberty, if it be in
their power P “But the officers of the army and their
soldiers did it.” And we are beholden to those officers
for not being wanting to the state, but repelling the
tumultuary violence of the citizens and mechanics of
London, who, like that rabble that appeared for Clodius,
had but a little before beset the very parliament house 2
Do you therefore call the right of the parliament, to
whom it properly and originally belongs, to take care
of the liberty of the people both in peace and war, a
military power P But it is no wonder that those traitors
that have dictated these passages to you, should talk at
that rate; so that profligate faction of Antony and his
adherents used to call the senate of Rome, when they
armed themselves against the enemics of their country,
The camp of Pompey. And now I am glad to under-
stand, that they of your party envy Cromwell, that
most valiant general of our army, for undertaking that
expedition in Ireland, (so acceptable to Almighty God,)
surrounded with a joyful crowd of his friends, and pro-
secuted with the well-wishes of the people, and the
prayers of all good men : for I question not but at the
news of his many victories there, they are by this time
burst with spleen. I pass by many of your imperti-
nencies concerning the Roman soldiers. What follows
is most notoriously false : “The power of the people,”
say you, “ ceases where there is a king.” By what
law of right is that P Since it is known that almost all
kings, of what nations soever, received their authority
from the people upon certain conditions; which if the
king do not perform, I wish you would inform us, why
that power, which was but a trust, should not return to
the people, as well from a king, as from a consul, or
any other magistrate. Tor when you tell us, that it is
necessary for the public safety, you do but trifle with
us; for the safety of the public is equally concerned,
whether it be from a King, or from a Senate, or from a
Triumvirate, that the power wherewith they were en-
trusted reverts to the people, upon their abuse of it;
and yet you yourself grant, that it may so revert from
all sorts of magistrates, a king only excepted. Cer-
tainly, if no people in their right wits ever committed
the government either to a king, or other magistrates,
for any other purpose than for the common good of
them all, there can be no reason why, to prevent the
utter ruin of them all, they may not as well take it
back again from a king, as from other governors; nay,
and it may with far greater ease be taken from one,
than from many. And to invest any mortal creature
with a power over themselves, on any other terms than
upon trust, were extreme madness; nor is it credible
that any people since the creation of the world, who
had freedom of vill, were ever so miserably silly, as
either to part with the power for ever, and to all pur-
poses, or to revoke it from those whom they had en-
trusted with it, but upon most urgent and weighty
reasons. If dissensions, if civil wars, are occasioned
thereby, there cannot any right accrue from thence to
the king, to retain that power by force of arms, which
the people challenge from him as their own. Whence
IN ANSWER TO SALMASIUS'S DEFENCE OF THE KING.
387
it follows, that what you say, and we do not deny, that
“governors are not likely to be changed,” is true with
respect to the people's prudence, not the king's right;
but that therefore they ought never to be changed,
upon no occasion whatsoever, that does not follow by
no means; nor have you hitherto alleged any thing,
or made appear any right of kings to the contrary, but
that all the people concurring, they may lawfully be
deposed, when unfit for government; provided it may
be done, as it has been often done in your own country
of France, without any tumults or civil wars. Since
therefore the safety of the people, and not that of a ty-
rant, is the supreme law ; and consequently ought to
be alleged on the people's behalf against a tyrant, and
not for him against them: you that go about to pervert
so sacred and so glorious a law, with your fallacies
and jugglings; you who would have this supreme law,
and which of all others is most beneficial to mankind,
to serve only for the impunity of tyrants; let me tell
you, (since you call us Englishmen so often inspired,
and enthusiasts, and prophets,) let me, I say, be so far
a prophet, as to tell you, that the vengeance of God
and man hangs over your head for so horrid a crime;
although your subjecting all mankind to tyranny, as
far as in you lies, which in effect is no better than con-
demning them to be devoured by wild beasts, is in
itself part of its own vengeance; and whithersoever
you fly, and wheresoever you wander, will first or last
pursue you with its furies, and overtake you, and cause
you to rave worse than you do at present. I come
now to your second argument, which is not unlike the
first : If the people may resume their liberty, “there
would be no difference,” say you, “betwixt a popular
state and a kingdom; but that in a kingdom one man
rules, and in a popular state many.” And what if that
were true; would the state have any prejudice by it 2
But you yourself tell us of other differences that would
be notwithstanding; to wit, of “Time and succession;
for in popular states, the magistrates are generally
chosen yearly ;” whereas kings, if they behave them-
selves well, are perpetual; and in most kingdoms there
is a succession in the same family. But let them differ
from one another, or not differ, I regard not those petty
things: in this they agree, that when the public good
requires it, the people may, without doing injury to
any, resume that power for the public safety, which
they committed to another for that end and purpose.
“But according to the royal law, by the Romans so
called, which is mentioned in the institutes, the people
of Rome granted all their power and authority to the
prince.” They did so by compulsion; the emperor
being willing to ratify their tyranny by the authority
of a law. But of this we have spoken before; and
their own lawyers, commenting upon this place in the
institutes, confess as much. So that we make no ques-
tion but the people may revoke what they were forced
to grant, and granted against their wills. But most
rational it is to suppose, that the people of Rome trans-
ferred no other power to the prince, than they had be-
fore granted to their own magistrates; and that was a
power to govern according to law, and a revocable, not
an absurd, tyrannical power. Hence it was, that the
emperors assumed the consular dignity, and that of the
tribunes of the people; but aſter Julius Caesar, not one
of them pretended to the dictatorship: in the Circus
Maximus they used to adore the people, as I have said
already out of Tacitus and Claudian. But “as here-
tofore many private persons have sold themselves into
slavery, so a whole nation may.” Thou jailbird of a
knight, thou day-spirit, thou everlasting scandal to thy
native country ! The most despicable slaves in the
world ought to abhor and spit upon such a factor for
slavery, such a public pander as thou art. Certainly
if people had so enslaved themselves to kings, then
might kings turn them over to other masters, or sell
them for money, and yet we know that kings cannot
so much as alienate the demesnes of the crown: and
shall he, that has but the crown, and the revenues that
belong to it, as an usufructuary, and those given him
by the people, can he be said to have, as it were, pur-
chased the people, and made them his propriety
Though you were bored through both ears, and went
barefoot, you would not be so vile and despicable, so
much more contemptible than all slaves, as the broach-
ing such a scandalous doctrine as this makes you. But
go on, and punish yourself for your rogueries as now
you do, though against your will. You frame a long
discourse of the law of war; which is nothing to the
purpose in this place: for neither did Charles conquer
us; and for his ancestors, if it were never so much
granted that they did, yet have they often renounced
their title as conquerors. And certain it is, That we
were never so conquered, but that as we swore allegi-
ance to them, so they swore to maintain our laws, and
govern by them : which laws, when Charles had noto-
riously violated, taken in what capacity you will, as
one who had formerly been a conquerer or was now a
perjured king, we subdued him by force, he himself
having begun with us first. And according to your
own opinion, “Whatever is acquired by war, becomes
his property that acquired it.” So that how full soever
you are of words, how impertinent soever a babbler,
whatever you prate, how great a noise soever you make,
what quotations soever out of the rabbins, though you
make yourself never so hoarse, to the end of this chap-
ter, assure yourself, That nothing of it makes for the
king, he being now conquered, but all for us, who by
God’s assistance are conquerors.
CHAP. VII.
To avoid two very great inconveniencies, and, con-
sidering your own weight, very weighty ones indeed,
you denied in the foregoing chapter, that the people's
power was superior to that of the king; for if that
should be granted, kings must provide themselves of
some other name, because the people would indeed be
king, and some divisions in your system of politics
would be confounded : the first of which inconveni-
- 2 C
388
A DEFENCE OF THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND,
encies would thwart with your dictionary, and the lat-
ter overthrow your politics. To these I have given
such an answer as shews, that though our own safety
and liberty were the principal things I aimed the pre-
servation of, yet withal, I had some consideration of
salving your dictionary, and your politics. “Now,”
say you, “I will prove by other arguments, That a
king cannot be judged by his own subjects; of which
arguments this shall be the greatest and most convin-
cing, that a king has no peer in his kingdom.” What!
Can a king have no peer in his kingdom ' What then
is the meaning of those twelve ancient peers of the
kings of France 2 Are they ſables and trifles 2 Are
they called so in vain, and in mock only ” Have a
care how you affront those principal men of that king-
dom; who if they are not the king's peers, as they are
called, I am afraid your dictionary, which is the only
thing you are concerned for, will be found more faulty
in France than in England. But go to, let us hear
your demonstration, that a king has no peer in his own
kingdom. “Because,” say you, “the people of Rome,
when they had banished their king, appointed not one,
but two consuls: and the reason was, That if one of
them should transgress the laws, his colleague might
be a check to him.” There could hardly have been de-
vised any thing more silly: how came it to pass then,
that but one of the consuls had the bundles of rods car-
ried before him, and not both, if two were appointed,
that each might have a power over the other? And
what if both had conspired against the commonwealth 2
Would not the case then be the very same that it would
have been, if one consul only had been appointed with-
out a colleague P But we know very well, that both
consuls, and all other magistrates, were bound to obey
the senate, whenever the senate and the people saw,
that the interest of the commonwealth so required.
We have a famous instance of that in the decemvirs,
who though they were invested with the power of con-
suls, and were the chief magistrates, yet the authority
of the senate reduced them all, though they struggled
to retain their government. Nay, we read that some
consuls, before they were out of office, had been de-
clared enemies, and arms have been taken up against
them; for in those days no man looked upon him as a
consul, who acted as an enemy. So war was waged
against Antony, though a consul, by authority of the
senate; in which being worsted, he would have been
put to death, but that Octavius, affecting the empire,
sided with him to subvert the commonwealth. Now
whereas you say, “that it is a property peculiar to
kingly majesty, that the power resides in a single per-
son ;” that is but a loose expression, like the rest of
what you say, and is contradicted by yourself a little
after: “for the Hebrew judges,” you say, “ruled as
long as they lived, and there was but one of them at
a time; the Scripture also calls them kings: and yet
they were accountable to the great council.” Thus
we see, that an itch of vain glory, in being thought to
have said all that can be said, makes you hardly say
any thing but contradictions. Then I ask, what kind
of government that was in the Roman empire, when
sometimes two, sometimes three emperors, reigned all
at once P Do you reckon them to have been empe-
rors, that is, kings, or was it an aristocracy, or a tri-
umvirate P Or will you deny, that the Roman empire
under Antoninus and Verus, under Dioclesian and
Maximian, under Constantine and Licinius, was still
but one entire empire 2 If these princes were not
kings, your three forms of government will hardly
hold; if they were, then it is not an essential property
of a kingly government, to reside in a single person.
“If one of these offend,” say you, “then may the other
refer the matter to the senate, or the people, where he
may be accused and condemned.” And does not the
senate and the people then judge, when the matter is
so referred to them 2 So that if you will give any cre-
dit to yourself, there needs not one colleague to judge
another. Such a miserable advocate as you, if you
were not so wretched a fellow as you are, would de-
serve compassion; you lie every way so open to blows,
that if one were minded for sport's sake to make a
pass at any part of you, he could hardly miss, let him
aim where he would. “It is ridiculous,” say you, “to
imagine, that a king will ever appoint judges to con-
demn himself.” But I can tell you of an emperor,
that was no ridiculous person, but an excellent prince,
and that was Trajan, who when he delivered a dagger
to a certain Roman magistrate, as the custom was, that
being the badge of his office, frequently thus admo-
nished him, “Take this sword, and use it for me, if I
do as I ought; if otherwise, against me : for miscar-
riages in the supreme magistrate are less excusable.”
This Dion and Aurelius Victor say of him. You see
here, that a worthy emperor appointed one to judge
himself, though he did not make him equal. Tibe-
rius perhaps might have said as much out of vanity
and hypocrisy; but it is almost a crime to imagine,
that so good and virtuous a prince as Trajan, did not
really speak as he thought, and according to what he
apprehended right and just. How much more reason-
able was it, that though he were superiour to the se-
nate in power, and might, if he would, have refused to
yield them any obedience, yet he actually did obey
them, as by virtue of his office he ought to do, and ac-
knowledged their right in the government to be supe-
riour to his own For so Pliny tells us in his Panegy-
ric, “The senate both desired and commanded you to be
consul a fourth time; you may know by the obedience
you pay them, that this is no word of flattery, but of
power.” And a little after, “This is the design you
aim at, to restore our lost liberty.” And Trajan was
not of that mind alone; the senate thought so too, and
were of opinion, that their authority was indeed su-
preme : for they that could command their emperor,
might judge him. So the emperor Marcus Aurelius,
when Cassius governor of Syria endeavoured to get the
empire from him, referred himself either to the senate,
or the people of Rome, and declared himself ready to
lay down the government, if they would have it so.
Now how should a man determine of the right of kings
better, and more truly, than out of the very mouths of
the best of kings? Indeed every good king accounts
IN ANSWER TO SALMASIUS'S DEFENCE OF THE KING.
389
either the senate, or the people, not only equal, but
superiour to himself by the law of nature. But a
tyrant being by nature inferiour to all men, every one
that is stronger than he, ought to be accounted not
only his equal, but superiour: for as heretofore nature
taught men from force and violence to betake them-
sclves to laws; so wherever the laws are set at naught,
the same dictate of nature must necessarily prompt us
to betake ourselves to force again. “To be of this
opinion,” says Cicero pro Sestio, “is a sign of wisdom;
to put it in practice, argues courage and resolution;
and to do both, is the effect of virtue in its perfection.”
Let this stand then as a settled maxim of the law of
nature, never to be shaken by any artifices of flatterers,
that the senate, or the people, are superiour to kings,
be they good or bad : which is but what you yourself
do in effect confess, when you tell us, that the au-
thority of kings was derived from the people. For that
power, which they transferred to princes, doth yet na-
turally, or, as I may say, virtually reside in themselves
notwithstanding: for so natural causes, that produce
any effect by a certain eminency of operation, do always
retain more of their own virtue and energy than they
impart; nor do they, by communicating to others, ex-
haust themselves. You see, the closer we keep to na-
ture, the more evidently does the people's power appear
to be above that of the prince. And this is likewise
certain, that the people do not freely, and of choice,
settle the government in the king absolutely, so as to
give him a propriety in it, nor by nature can do so;
but only for the public safety and liberty, which, when
the king ceases to take care of, then the people in effect
have given him nothing at all : for nature says, the
people gave it him to a particular end and purpose;
which end, if neither nature nor the people can attain,
the people's gift becomes no more valid than any other
void covenant or agreement. These reasons prove very
fully, that the people are superiour to the king; and so
your “greatest and most convincing argument, that a
king cannot be judged by his people, because he has
no peer in his kingdom,” nor any superiour, falls to
the ground. For you take that for granted, which we
by no means allow. “In a popular state,” say you,
“the magistrates being appointed by the people, may
likewise be punished for their crimes by the people: in
an aristocracy the senators may be punished by their
colleagues: but it is a prodigious thing to proceed
criminally against a king in his own kingdom, and
make him plead for his life.” What can you conclude
from hence, but that they who set up kings over them,
are the most miserable and most silly people in the
World P But, I pray, what is the reason why the peo-
Ple may not punish a king that becomes a malefactor,
as well as they may popular magistrates and senators
in an aristocracy P Do you think that all they who
live under a kingly government, were so strangely in
love with slavery, as when they might be free, to choose
Vassalage, and to put themselves all and entirely under
the dominion of one man, who often happens to be an
ill man, and often a fool, so as whatever cause might
be, to leave themselves no refuge in, no relief from, the
laws nor the dictates of nature, against the tyranny of
a most outrageous master, when such a one happens?
Why do they then tender conditions to their kings,
when they first enter upon their government, and pre-
scribe laws for them to govern by ? Do they do this
to be trampled upon the more, and be the more laughed
to scorn ? Can it be imagined, that a whole people
would ever so vilify themselves, depart from their own
interest to that degree, be so wanting to themselves, as
to place all their hopes in one man, and he very often
the most vain person of them all P To what end do
they require an oath of their kings, not to act any
thing contrary to law We must suppose them to do
this, that (poor creatures 1) they may learn to their
sorrow, that kings only may commit perjury with im-
punity. This is what your own wicked conclusions
hold forth. “If a king, that is elected, promise any
thing to his people upon oath, which, if he would not
have sworn to, perhaps they would not have chose
him, yet if he refuse to perform that promise, he falls
not under the people's censure. Nay, though he swear
to his subjects at his election, that he will administer
justice to them according to the laws of the kingdom;
and that if he do not, they shall be discharged of their
allegiance, and himself ipso facto cease to be their
king ; yet if he break this oath, it is God and not man
that must require it of him.” I have transcribed these
lines, not for their elegance, for they are barbarously
expressed; nor because I think there needs any answer
to them, for they answer themselves, they explode and
damn themselves by their notorious falsehood and
loathsomeness: but I did it to recommend you to kings
for your great merits; that among so many places as
there are at a court, they may put you into some pre-
ferment or office that may be fit for you. Some are
princes' secretaries, some their cup-bearers, some mas-
ters of the revels: I think you had best be master
of the perjuries to some of them. You shall not be
master of the ceremonies, you are too much a clown
for that; but their treachery and perfidiousness shall be
under your care. But that men may see you are both
a fool and a knave to the highest degree, let us consider
these last assertions of yours a little more marrowly :
“A king,” say you, “though he swear to his subjects
at his election, that he will govern according to law,
and that if he do not, they shall be discharged of their
allegiance, and he himself ipso facto cease to be their
king; yet can he not be deposed or punished by them.”
Why not a king, I pray, as well as popular magis-
trates? because in a popular state, the people do not
transfer all their power to the magistrates. And do they,
in the case that you have put, vest it all in the king,
when they place him in the government upon those
terms expressly, to hold it no longer than he uses it
well ? Therefore it is evident, that a king sworn to ob-
serve the laws, if he transgress them, may be punished
and deposed, as well as popular magistrates. So that
you can make no more use of that invincible argument
of the people's transferring all their right and power to
the prince; you yourself have battered it down with
your own engines. Hear now another most powerful
390
A DEFENCE OF THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND,
and invincible argument of his, why subjects cannot
judge their kings, “because he is bound by no law,
being himself the sole lawgiver.” Which having been
proved already to be most false, this great reason comes
to nothing, as well as the former. But the reason why
princes have but seldom been proceeded against for
personal and private crimes, as whoredom, and adul-
tery, and the like, is not because they could not justly
be punished even for such, but lest the people should
receive more prejudice through disturbances that might
be occasioned by the king's death, and the change of
affairs, than they would be profited by the punishment
of one man or two. But when they begin to be uni-
versally injurious and insufferable, it has always been
the opinion of all nations, that then, being tyrants, it
is lawful to put them to death any how, condemned or
uncondemned. Hence Cicero, in his Second Philippic,
says thus of those that killed Caesar, “they were the
first that ran through with their swords, not a man who
affected to be king, but who was actually settled in the
government; which, as it was a worthy and godlike
action, so it is set before us for our imitation.” How
unlike are you to him “Murder, adultery, injuries,
are not regal and public, but private and personal
crimes.” Well said, parasite you have obliged all
pimps and profligates in courts by this expression.
How ingeniously do you act both the parasite and the
pimp with the same breath ! “A king that is an adul-
terer, or a murderer, may yet govern well, and conse-
quently ought not to be put to death, because, together
with his life, he must lose his kingdom ; and it was
never yet allowed by God's laws, or man's, that for one
and the same crime, a man was to be punished twice.”
Infamous foulmouth wretch! By the same reason the
magistrates in a popular state, or in an aristocracy,
ought never to be put to death, for fear of double
punishment; no judge, no semator must die, for they
must lose their magistracy too, as well as their lives.
As you have endeavoured to take all power out of the
people's hands, and vest it in the king, so you would
all majesty too: a delegated translatitious majesty we
allow, but that majesty does chiefly and primarily re-
side in him, you can no more prove, than you can, that
power and authority does. “A king,” you say, “can-
not commit treason against his people, but a people
may against their king.” And yet a king is what he
is for the people only, not the people for him. Hence
I infer, that the whole body of the people, or the greater
part of them, must needs have greater power than the
king. This you deny, and begin to cast up accounts.
“He is of greater power than any one, than any two,
than any three, than any ten, than any hundred, than
any thousand, than any ten thousand :” be it so, “he
is of more power than half the people.” I will not
deny that neither; “add now half of the other half,
will he not have more power than all those * Not at
all. Go on, why do you take away the board P Do
you not understand progression in arithmetic? He
begins to reckon after another manner. “Has not the
king, and the nobility together, more power 2" No, Mr.
Changeling, I deny that too. If by the nobility, whom
you style optimates, you mean the peers only; for it
may happen that amongst the whole number of them,
there may not be one man deserving that appellation:
for it often falls out, that there are better and wiser
men than they amongst the commons, whom in con-
junction with the greater or the better part of the
people, I should not scruple to call by the name of, and
take them for, all the people. “But if the king is not
superiour in power to all the people together, he is then
a king but of single persons, he is not the king of the
whole body of the people.” You say well, no more he
is, unless they are content he should be so. Now,
balance your accounts, and you will find that by mis-
casting, you have lost your principal. “The English
say, that the right of majesty originally and principally
resides in the people; which principle would introduce
a confusion of all states.” What, of an aristocracy and
democracy? But let that pass. What if it should over-
throw a gynaeocracy too? (i. e. a government of one or
more women,) under which state, or form of government,
they say, you are in danger of being beaten at home;
would not the English do you a kindness in that, you
sheepish fellow, you ? But there is no hope of that.
For it is most justly so ordered, since you would sub-
ject all mankind to tyranny abroad, that you yourself
should live in a scandalous most unmanlike slavery at
home. “We must tell you,” you say, “what we mean
by the word People.” There are a great many other
things, which you stand more in need of being told :
for of things that more immediately concern you, you
seem altogether ignorant, and never to have learnt any
thing but words and letters, not to be capable of any
thing else. But this you think you know, that by the
word people we mean the common people only, exclu-
sive of the nobility, because we have put down the
House of Lords. And yet that very thing shews, that
under the word people we comprehend all our natives,
of what order and degree soever; in that we have
settled one supreme senate only, in which the nobility
also, as a part of the people, (not in their own right, as
they did before ; but representing those boroughs or
counties, for which they may be chose,) may give their
votes. Then you inveigh against the common people,
as being “blind and brutish, ignorant of the art of
governing ;” you say there is “nothing more empty,
more vain, more inconstant, more uncertain than they.”
All which is very true of yourself, and it is true like-
wise of the rabble, but not of the middle sort, amongst
whom the most prudent men, and most skilful in
affairs, are generally found; others are most commonly
diverted either by luxury and plenty, or by want and
poverty, from virtue, and the study of laws and govern-
ment. “There are many ways,” you say, “by which
kings come to the crown, so as not to be beholden to
the people at all for it;” and especially, “those that
inherit a kingdom.” But those nations must certainly
be slaves, and born to slavery, that acknowledge any
one to be their lord and master so absolutely, as that
they are his inheritance, and come to him by descent,
without any consent of their own; they deserve not the
appellation of subjects, nor of freemen, nor can they
IN ANSWER TO SALMASIUS'S DEFENCE OF THE KING.
391
justly be reputed such; nor are they to be accounted
as a civil society, but must be looked on as the posses-
sions and estate of their lord, and his family: for I see
no difference as to the right of ownership betwixt them,
and slaves, or beasts. Secondly, “they that come to
the crown by conquest, cannot acknowledge them-
selves to have received from the people the power
to usurp.” We are not now discoursing of a con-
queror, but of a conquered king ; what a conqueror
may lawfully do, we will discourse elsewhere; do you
keep to your subject. But whereas you ascribe to
kings that ancient right, that masters of families have
over their households, and take an example from thence
of their absolute power; I have shewn already over
and over, that there is no likeness at all betwixt them.
And Aristotle (whom you name so often) if you had
read him, would have taught you as much in the be-
ginning of his Politics, where he says they judge
amiss, that think there is but little difference betwixt
a king, and a master of a family: “For that there is
not a numerical, but a specifical difference betwixt a
kingdom and a family.” I’or when villages grew to
be towns and cities, that regal domestic right vanished
by degrees, and was no more owned. Hence Diodorus,
in his first book, says, that anciently kingdoms were
transmitted not to the former kings' sons, but to those
that had best deserved of the people. And Justin,
“Originally,” says he, “the government of nations,
and of countries, was by kings, who were exalted to
that height of majesty, not by popular ambition, but
for their moderation, which commended them to good
men.” Whence it is manifest, that, in the very begin-
ning of nations, that fatherly and hereditary govern-
ment gave way to virtue, and the people's right: which
is the most natural reason and cause, and was the true
rise of kingly government. For at first men entered
into societies, not that any one might insult over all
the rest, but that in case any should injure another,
there might be laws and judges to protect them from
wrong, or at least to punish the wrong doers. When
men were at first dispersed and scattered asunder, some
wise and eloquent man persuaded them to enter into
civil societies; “that he himself,” say you, “might
exercise dominion over them, when so united.” Per-
haps you meant this of Nimrod, who is said to have
been the first tyrant. Or else it proceeds from your
own malice only, and certainly it cannot have been
true of those great and generous spirited men, but is a
fiction of your own, not warranted by any authority
that I ever heard of. For all ancient writers tell us,
that those first instituters of communities of men had
a regard to the good and safety of mankind only, and
not to any private advantages of their own, or to
make themselves great or powerful. One thing I
cannot pass by, which I suppose you intended for an
emblem, to set off the rest of this chapter: “If a con-
sul,” say you, “ had been to be accused before his
magistracy expired, there must have been a dictator
created for that purpose;” though you had said before,
“that for that very reason there were two of them.”
Just so your positions always agree with one another,
and almost every page declares how weak and frivolous
whatever you say or write upon any subject is. “Un-
der the ancient Saxon kings,” you say, “the people
were never called to parliaments.” If any of our own
countrymen had asserted such a thing, I could easily
have convinced him that he was in an errour. But I
am not so much concerned at your mistaking our affairs,
This in effect is all you
Many other
because you are a foreigner.
say of the right of kings in general.
things I omit, for you use many digressions, and put
things down that either have no ground at all, or are
nothing to the purpose, and my design is not to vie
with you in impertinence.
CHAP. VIII.
If you had published your own opinion, Salmasius,
concerning the right of kings in general, without
affronting any persons in particular, notwithstanding
this alteration of affairs in England, as long as you
did but use your own liberty in writing what yourself
thought fit, no Englishman could have had any cause
to have been displeased with you, nor would you have
made good the opinion you maintain ever a whit the
less. For if it be a positive command both of Moses
and of Christ himself, “That all men whatsoever,
whether Spaniards, French, Italians, Germans, Eng-
lish, or Scots, should be subject to their princes, be they
good or bad,” which you asserted, p. 127, to what pur-
pose was it for you, who are a foreigner, and unknown
to us, to be tampering with our laws, and to read us
lectures out of them as out of your own papers and
miscellanies, which, be they how they will, you have
taught us already in a great many words, that they
ought to give way to the laws of God P But now it is
apparent, that you have undertaken the defence of this
royal cause, not so much out of your own inclination,
as partly because you were hired, and that at a good
round price too, considering how things are with him
that set you on work; and partly, it is like, out of ex-
pectation of some greater reward hereafter; to publish
a scandalous libel against the English, who are injuri-
ous to none of their neighbours, and meddle with their
own matters only. If there were no such thing as that
in the case, is it credible, that any man should be so
impudent or so mad, as though he be a stranger, and
at a great distance from us, yet of his own accord to
intermeddle with our affairs, and side with a party 2
What the devil is it to you, what the English do
amongst themselves? What would you have, prag-
matical puppy 2 What would you be at P Have you
no concerns of your own at home P I wish you had
the same concerns that that famous Olus, your fellow-
busybody in the Epigram, had ; and perhaps so you
have ; you deserve them, I am sure. Or did that hot-
spur your wife, who encouraged you to write what you
have done for outlawed Charles's sake, promise you
some profitable professor's place in England, and God
392
A DEFENCE OF THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND,
knows what gratifications at Charles's return ? But
assure yourselves, my mistress and my master, that
England admits neither of wolves, nor owners of
wolves: so that it is no wonder you spit so much ve-
nom at our English mastiffs. It were better for you
to return to those illustrious titles of yours in France;
first to that hungerstarved lordship of yours at *St.
Lou ; and in the next place to the sacred consistory of
the most christian king. Being a counsellor to the
prince, you are at too great a distance from your own
country. But I see full well, that she neither desires
you, nor your counsel; nor did it appear she did, when
you were there a few years ago, and began to lick a
cardinal's trencher: she is in the right, by my troth,
and can very willingly suffer such a little fellow as
you, that are but one half of a man, to run up and down
with your mistress of a wife, and your desks full of
trifles and fooleries, till you light somewhere or other
upon a stipend, large enough for a knight of the gram-
mar, or an illustrious critic on horseback, if any prince
or state has a mind to hire a vagabond doctor, that is
to be sold at a good round price. But here is one that
will bid for you; whether you are a merchantable com-
modity or not, and what you are worth, we shall see by
and by. You say, “the parricides assert, that the go-
vernment of England is not merely kingly, but that it
is a mixed government.” Sir Thomas Smith, a coun-
tryman of ours in Edward the Sixth's days, a good
lawyer, and a statesman, one whom you yourself will
not call a parricide, in the beginning of a book which
he wrote “ of the commonwealth of England,” asserts
the same thing, and not of our government only, but
of almost all others in the world, and that out of Aris-
totle; and he says it is not possible, that any govern-
ment should otherwise subsist. But as if you thought
it a crime to say any thing, and not unsay it again,
you repeat your former threadbare contradictions. You
say, “there neither is nor ever was any nation, that did
not understand by the very name of a king, a person
whose authority is inferiour to God alone, and who is
accountable to no other.” And yet a little after you
confess, “that the name of a king was formerly given
to such powers and magistrates, as had not a full and
absolute right of themselves, but had a dependence
upon the people, as the suffetes among the Carthagini-
ans, the Hebrew judges, the kings of the Lacedemo-
nians, and of Arragon.” Are you not very consistent
with yourself? Then you reckon up five several sorts
of monarchies out of Aristotle; in one of which only
that right obtained, which you say is common to all
kings. Concerning which I have said already more
than once, that neither doth Aristotle give an instance
of any such monarchy, nor was there ever any such in
being: the other four he clearly demonstrates that they
were bounded by established laws, and the king's
power subject to those laws.
was that of the Lacedemonians, which in his opinion
did of all others best deserve the name of a kingdom.
The second was such as obtained among barbarians,
The first of which four
which was lasting, because regulated by laws, and be-
cause the people willingly submitted to it; whereas
by the same author's opinion in his third book, what
king soever retains the sovereignty against the peo-
ple's will, is no longer to be accounted a king, but a
downright tyrant; all which is true likewise of his
third sort of kings, which he calls MEsymmetes, who
were chosen by the people, and most commonly for a
certain time only, and for some particular purposes,
such as the Roman dictators were. The fourth sort he
makes of such as reigned in the heroical days, upon
whom for their extraordinary merits the people of their
own accord conferred the government, but yet bounded
by laws; nor could these retain the sovereignty against
the will of the people; nor do these four sorts of kingly
governments differ, he says, from tyranny in any thing
else, but only in that these governments are with the
good liking of the people, and that against their will.
The fifth sort of kingly government, which he calls
trapſ3agiXéta, or absolute monarchy, in which the su-
preme power resides in the king's person, which you
pretend to be the right of all kings, is utterly con-
demned by the philosopher, as neither for the good of
mankind, nor consonant to justice or nature, unless
some people should be content to live under such a go-
vernment, and withal confer it upon such as excel all
others in virtue. These things any man may read in
the third book of his Politics. But you, I believe, that
once in your life you might appear witty and florid,
pleased yourself with making a comparison “betwixt
these five sorts of kingly government, and the five
zones of the world; betwixt the two extremes of kingly
power, there are three more temperate species interposed,
as there lie three zones betwixt the torrid and the fri-
gid.” Pretty rogue ! what ingenious comparisons he
always makes us! may you for ever be banished whi-
ther you yourself condemn an absolute kingdom to be,
that is, to the frigid zone, which when you are there,
will be doubly cold to what it was before. In the
mean while we shall expect that new-fashioned sphere
which you describe, from you our modern Archimedes,
in which there shall be two extreme zones, one torrid,
and the other frigid, and three temperate ones lying
betwixt. “The kings of the Lacedenonians, you say,
might lawfully be imprisoned, but it was not lawful to
put them to death.” Why not P Because the minis-
ters of justice, and some foreign soldiers, being sur-
prised at the novelty of the thing, thought it not law-
ful to lead Agis to his execution, though condemned
to die? And the people of Lacedemon were displeased
at his death, not because condemned to die, though a
king, but because he was a good man and popular,
and had been circumvented by a faction of the great
ones. Says Plutarch, “Agis was the first king, that
was put to death by the ephori;” in which words he
does not pretend to tell us what lawfully might be
done, but what actually was done. For to imagine that
such as may lawfully accuse a king, and imprison him,
may not also lawſully put him to death, is a childish
* St. Lou, in Latin, Sanctus Lupus, Saint Wolf, is the name of a place
in Irance, where balmasius had some small estate, and was called Su
from St. Lupus, a German bishop, who with St. German came over into
Eugland, Anno Dom, 429,
IN ANSWER TO SALMASIUS'S DEFENCE OF THE KING.
393
At last you betake yourself to give an ac-
“There never
conceit.
count of the right of English kings.
was,” you say, “but one king in England.” This you
say, because you had said before, “unless a king be
sole in the government, he cannot be a king.” Which
if it be true, some of them, who I had thought had been
kings of England, were not really so ; for to omit
many of our Saxon kings, who had either their sons
or their brothers partners with them in the government,
it is known that King Henry II, of the Norman race,
reigned together with his son. “Let them shew,” say
you, “a precedent of any kingdom under the govern-
ment of a single person, who has not an absolute power:
though in some kingdoms more remiss, in others more
intense.” Do you shew any power that is absolute,
and yet remiss, you ass? is not that power that is ab-
solute, the supreme power of all P How can it then be
both supreme and remiss? Whatsoever kings you shall
acknowledge to be invested with a remiss (or a less)
power, those I will easily make appear to have no ab-
solute power; and consequently to be inferiour to a
people, free by nature, who is both its own lawgiver,
and can make the regal power more or less intense or
remiss; that is, greater or less. Whether the whole
island of Britain was anciently governed by kings, or
no, is uncertain. It is most likely, that the form of
their government changed according to the exigencies
of the times. Whence Tacitus says, “the Britains
anciently were under kings; now the great men amongst
them divide them into parties and factions.” When the
Romans left them, they were about forty years without
kings; they were not always therefore under a kingly
government, as you say they were. But when they
were so, that the kingdom was hereditary, I positively
deny; which that it was not, is evident both from the
series of their kings, and their way of creating them;
for the consent of the people is asked in express words.
When the king has taken the accustomed oath, the
archbishop stepping to every side of the stage erected
for that purpose, asks the people four several times in
these words, “Do you consent to have this man to be
your king P’’ Just as if he spoke to them in the Roman
style, Vultis, Jubetis hunc Regnare 2 “Is it your plea-
sure, do you appoint this man to reign P” Which would
be needless, if the kingdom were by the law hereditary.
But with kings, usurpation passes very frequently for
law and right. You go about to ground Charles's
right to the crown, who was so often conquered himself,
upon the right of conquest. William, surnamed the
conqueror, forsooth, subdued us. But they who are
not strangers to our history, know full well, that the
strength of the English nation was not so broken in
that one fight at Hastings, but that they might easily
have renewed the war. But they chose rather to ac-
“pt of a king, than to be under a conqueror and a ty-
rant: they swear therefore to William, to be his liege-
men, and he swears to them at the altar, to carry him-
self towards them as a good king ought to do in all
respects. When he broke his word, and the English
betook themselves again to their arms, being diffident
of his strength, he renewed his oath upon the Holy
Evangelists, to observe the ancient laws of England.
And therefore, if after that he miserably oppressed the
English, (as you say he did,) he did it not by right of
conquest, but by right of perjury. Besides, it is cer-
tain, that many ages ago, the conquerors and conquer-
ed coalesced into one and the same people: so that
that right of conquest, if any such ever were, must
needs have been antiquated long ago. His own words
at his death, which I give you out of a French manu-
script written at Caen, put all out of doubt, “I appoint
no man (says he) to inherit the kingdom of England.”
By which words, both his pretended right of conquest,
and the hereditary right, were disclaimed at his death,
and buried together with him. I see now that you have
gotten a place at court, as I foretold you would ; you
are made the king’s chief treasurer and steward of his
court craft: and what follows, you seem to write ex
officio, as by virtue of your office, magnificent Sir. “If
any preceding kings, being thereunto compelled by
factions of great men, or seditions amongst the com-
mon people, have receded in some measure from their
right, that cannot prejudice the successor; but that he
is at liberty to resume it.” You say well; if therefore
at any time our ancestors have through neglect lost
any thing that was their right, why should that pre-
judice us their posterity ? If they would promise for
themselves to become slaves, they could make no such
promise for us; who shall always retain the same right
of delivering ourselves out of slavery, that they had of
enslaving themselves to any whomsoever. You won-
der how it comes to pass that a king of Great Britain
must now-a-days be looked upon as one of the magis-
trates of the kingdom only; whereas in all other kingly
governments in christendom, kings are invested with
a free and absolute authority. For the Scots, I remit
you to Buchanan : for France, your own native coun-
try, to which you seem to be a stranger, to Hottoman's
Franco-Gallia, and Girardus a French historian: for
the rest, to other authors, of whom none that I know
of were Independants: out of whom you might have
learned a quite other lesson concerning the right of
kings, than what you teach. Not being able to prove,
that a tyrannical power belongs to the kings of Eng-
land by right of conquest, you try now to do it by
right of perjury. Kings profess themselves to reign
“by the grace of God:” what if they had professed
themselves to be gods 2 I believe if they had, you
might easily have been brought to become one of their
priests. So the archbishops of Canterbury pretended
to archbishop it by “Divine Providence.” Are you
such a fool, as to deny the pope's being a king in the
church, that you may make the king greater than a
pope in the state P But in the statutes of the realm the
king is called our Lord. You are become of a sudden
a wonderful Nomenclator of our statutes : but you
know not that many are called lords and masters who
are not really so : you know not how unreasonable a
thing it is to judge of truth and right by titles of ho-
nour, not to say of flattery. Make the same inference,
if you will, from the parliament's being called the
king's parliament; for it is called the king's bridle too,
394
A DEFENCE OF THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND,
or a bridle to the king : and therefore the king is no
more lord or master of his parliament, than a horse is
of his bridle. But why not the king's parliament,
since the king “summons them f° I will tell you
why; because the consuls used to indict a meeting of
the senate, yet were they not lords over that council.
When the king therefore summons or calls together a
parliament, he does it by virtue and in discharge of
that office, which he has received from the people, that
he may advise with them about the weighty affairs of
the kingdom, not his own particular affairs. Or when
at any time the parliament debated of the king's own
affairs, if any could properly be called his own, they
were always the last things they did; and it was in
their choice when to debate of them, and whether at
all or no, and depended not upon the king's pleasure.
And they whom it concerns to know this, know very
well, that parliaments anciently, whether summoned
or not, might by law meet twice a year: but the laws
are called too, “the king's laws.” These are flattering
ascriptions; a king of England can of himself make no
law; for he was not constituted to make laws, but to
see those laws kept, which the people made. And you
yourself here confess, that “parliaments meet to make
laws;” wherefore the law is also called the law of the
land, and the people's law. Whence King Ethelstane
in the preface to his laws, speaking to all the people,
“I have granted you every thing,” says he, “by your
own law.” And in the form of the oath, which the
kings of England used to take before they were made
kings, the people stipulate with them thus; “Will you
grant those just laws, which the people shall choose?”
The king answers, “I will.” And you are infinitely
mistaken in saying, that “when there is no parliament
sitting, the king governs the whole state of the king-
dom, to all intents and purposes, by a regal power.”
For he can determine nothing of any moment, with
respect to either peace or war: nor can he put any stop
to the proceedings of the courts of justice. And the
judges therefore swear, that they will do nothing ju-
dicially, but according to law, though the king by
word, or mandate, or letters under his own seal, should
command the contrary. Hence it is that the king is
often said in our law to be an infant; and to possess
his rights and dignities, as a child or a ward does his :
see the Mirror, Cap. 4. Sect. 22. And hence is that
common saying amongst us, that “the king can do no
wrong :” which you, like a rascal, interpret thus,
“Whatever the king does, is no injury, because he is
not liable to be punished for it.” By this very com-
ment, if there were nothing else, the wonderful impu-
dence and villany of this fellow discovers itself suffi-
ciently. “It belongs to the head,” you say, “to com-
mand, and not to the members: the king is the head of
the parliament.” You would not trifle thus, if you had
any guts in your brains. You are mistaken again
(but there is no end of your mistakes) in not distin-
guishing the king's counsellors from the states of the
realm: for neither ought he to make choice of all of
them, nor of any of them, which the rest do not ap-
prove of; but for electing any member of the house of
commons, he never so much as pretended to it. Whom
the people appointed to that service, they were seve-
rally chosen by the votes of all the people in their re-
spective cities, towns, and counties. I speak now of
things universally known, and therefore I am the
shorter. But you say, “it is false that the parliament
was instituted by the people, as the worshippers of
saint Independency assert.” Now I see why you took
so much pains in endeavouring to subvert the papacy;
you carry another pope in your belly, as we say. For
what else should you be in labour of, the wife of a
woman, a he-wolf, impregnated by a she-wolf, but
either a monster, or some new sort of papacy 2 You
now make he-saints and she-saints, at your pleasure,
as if you were a true genuine pope. You absolve kings
of all their sins, and as if you had utterly vanquished
and subdued your antagonist the pope, you adorn your-
self with his spoils. But because you have not yet
profligated the pope quite, till the second and third, and
perhaps the fourth and fifth part of your book of his su-
premacy come out, which book will nauseate a great
many readers to death, sooner than you will get the
better of the pope by it; let it suffice you in the mean
time, I beseech you, to become some antipope or other.
There is another she-saint, besides that Indepen-
dency that you deride, which you have canonized in
good earnest; and that is, the tyranny of kings: you
shall therefore by my consent be the high priest of
tyranny ; and that you may have all the pope's titles,
you shall be a “servant of the servants,” not of God,
but of the court. For that curse pronounced upon Ca-
naan seems to stick as close to you, as your shirt. You
call the people “a beast.” What are you then your-
self? For neither can that sacred consistory, nor your
lordship of St. Lou, exempt you its master from being
one of the people, nay, of the common people; nor
can make you other than what you really are, a most
loathsome beast. Indeed, the writings of the prophets
shadow out to us the monarchy and dominion of great
kings by the name, and under the resemblance, of a
great beast. You say, that “there is no mention of
parliaments held under our kings, that reigned before
William the Conqueror.” It is not worth while to jan-
gle about a French word: the thing was always in
being ; and you yourself allow that in Saxon times,
Concilia Sapientum, Wittena-gemots, are mentioned.
And there are wise men among the body of the peo-
ple, as well as amongst the nobility. But “in the
statute of Merton made in the twentieth year of King
Henry the third, the earls and barons are only named.”
Thus you are always imposed upon by words, who
yet have spent your whole life in nothing else but
words; for we know very well that in that age, not
only the guardians of the cinque-ports, and magistrates
of cities, but even tradesmen are sometimes called ba-
ions; and without doubt, they might much more rea-
sonably call every member of parliament, though never
so much a commoner, by the name of baron. For that in
the fifty-second year of the same king's reign, the com-
moners as well as the lords were summoned, the statute
of Marlbridge, and most other statutes, declare in ex-
IN ANSWER TO SALMASIUS'S DEFENCE OF THE KING.
395
press words; which commoners King Edward the third,
in the preface to the statute-staple, calls, “Magnates
Comitatum, the great men of the counties,” as you
very learnedly quote it for me; those to wit, “that
came out of several counties, and served for them ;”
which number of men constituted the house of com-
mons, and neither were lords, nor could be. Besides,
a book more ancient than those statutes, called, “ Mo-
dus habendi Parliamenta, i. e. the manner of holding
parliaments,” tells us, that the king and the commons
may hold a parliament, and enact laws, though the
lords, the bishops are absent; but that with the lords,
and the bishops, in the absence of the commons, no
parliament can be held. And there is a reason given
for it, viz. because kings held parliaments and councils
with their people before any lords or bishops were
made; besides, the lords serve for themselves only, the
commons each for the county, city, or borough that
sent them. And that therefore the commons in parlia-
ment represent the whole body of the nation; in which
respect they are more worthy, and every way preſer-
able to the house of peers. “But the power of Judi-
cature,” you say, “never was invested in the house of
commons.” Nor was the king ever possessed of it:
remember though, that originally all power proceeded,
and yet does proceed, from the people. Which Marcus
Tullius excellently well shews in his oration, “De
lege Agraria, of the Agrarian law :” “As all powers,
authorities, and public administrations ought to be
derived from the whole body of the people; so those
of them ought in an especial manner so to be de-
rived, which are ordained and appointed for the com-
mon benefit and interest of all, to which employments
every particular person may both give his vote for the
choosing such persons, as he thinks will take most care
of the public, and withal by voting and making inter-
est for them, lay such obligations upon them, as may
entitle them to their friendship and good offices in
time to come.” Here you see the true rise and original
of parliaments, and that it was much ancienter than
the Saxon chronicles. Whilst we may dwell in such
a light of truth and wisdom, as Cicero's age afforded,
you labour in vain to blind us
obscurer times. By the saying whereof I would not
be understood to derogate in the least from the autho-
rity and prudence of our ancestors, who most certainly
went further in the enacting of good laws, than either
the ages they lived in, or their own learning or educa-
tion seem to have been capable of; and though some-
times they made laws that were none of the best, yet
as being conscious to themselves of the ignorance and
infirmity of human nature, they have conveyed this
doctrine down to posterity, as the foundation of all laws,
which likewise all eur lawyers admit, that if any law,
or custom, be contrary to the law of God, of nature, or
of reason, it ought to be looked upon as null and void.
Whence it follows, that though it were possible for you
to discover any statute, or other public sanction, which
ascribed to the king a tyrannical power, since that
would be repugnant to the will of God, to nature and
to right reason, you may learn from that general
with the darkness of
and primary law of ours, which I have just now
quoted, that it will be null and void. But you will
never be able to find, that any such right of kings has
the least foundation in our law. Since it is plain
therefore, that the power of judicature was originally
in the people themselves, and that the people never
did by any royal law part with it to the king, (for the
kings of England neither used to judge any man, nor
can by the law do it, otherwise than according to laws
settled and agreed to : Fleta, Book I. Cap. 17.) it fol-
lows, that this power remains yet whole and entire in
the people themselves. For that it was either never
committed to the house of peers, or if it were, that it
may lawfully be taken from them again, you yourself
will not deny. But, “It is in the king's power,” you
say, “to make a village into a borough, and that into
a city; and consequently, the king does in effect cre-
ate those that constitute the Commons House of Par-
liament.” But, I say, that even towns and boroughs
are more ancient than kings; and that the people is
the people, though they should live in the open fields.
And now we are extremely well pleased with your
Anglicisms, COUNTY COURT, THE TURNE,
HUNDREDA: You have quickly learnt to count
your hundred Jacobusses in English.
Quis expedicit Salmasio suam. HUNDREDAM
Picamque docuit verba mostra comari ?
Magister artis venter, et Jacobaci
Centum, erulantis viscera marsupii Regis
Quod si dolosi spes reſulserit mummi,
Ipse Antichristi modó qui Primatum Papa?
Minatus uno est dissipare suffiatu,
Cantabit ultrö Cardinalitium melos.
Who taught Salmasius, that French chatt’ring pie,
To aim at English, and HUNDREDA cry 7
The starving rascal, flush'd with just a Hundred
English Jacobusses, HUNDREDA blunder'd.
An outlaw'd king's last stock.-A hundred mºre,
Would make him pimp for th’ Antichristian whore;
And in Rome's praise employ his poison’d breath,
Who threat'ned once to stink the Pope to death.
The next thing you do is to trouble us with a long
discourse of the earls and the barons, to shew that the
king made them all; which we readily grant, and for
that reason they were most commonly at the king's
beck; and therefore we have done well to take care,
that for the future they shall not be judges of a free
people. You affirm, that “the power of calling par-
liaments as often as he pleases, and of dissolving them
when he pleases, has belonged to the king time out of
mind.” Whether such a vile, mercenary foreigner as
you, who transcribe what some fugitives dictate to
you, or the express letter of our own laws, are more to
be credited in this matter, we shall inquire hereafter.
But say you, “there is another argument, and an in-
vincible one, to prove the power of the kings of Eng-
land superior to that of the parliament; the king's
power is perpetual and of course, whereby he adminis-
ters the government singly without the parliament ;
that of the parliament is extraordinary, or out of course,
396
A DEFENCE OF THE PEOl'LE OF ENGLAND
and limited to particulars only, nor can they enact any
thing so as to be binding in law, without the king.”
Where does the great force of this argument lie? In
the words “ of course and perpetual * W*hy, many
inferiour magistrates have an ordinary and perpetual
power, those whom we call justices of the peace.
Have they therefore the supreme power? And I have
said already, that the king's power is committed to
him, to take care, by interposing his authority, that
nothing be done contrary to law, and that he may see
to the due observation of our laws, not to top his own
upon us: and consequently that the king has no power
out of his courts; nay, all the ordinary power is rather
the people's, who determine all controversies themselves
by juries of twelve men. And hence it is, that when
a malefactor is asked at his arraignment, “How will
you be tried ?” he answers always, according to law
and custom, “ by God and my country;” not by God
and the king, or the king's deputy. But the authority
of the parliament, which indeed and in truth is the
supreme power of the people committed to that senate,
if it may be called extraordinary, it must be by reason
of its eminence and superiority; else it is known they
are called ordines, and therefore cannot properly be
said to be extra ordinem, out of order; and if not ac-
tually, as they say, yet virtually they have a perpetual
power and authority over all courts and ordinary
magistrates, and that without the king. And now it
seems our barbarous terms grate upon your critical ears,
forsooth ! whereas, if I had leisure, or that it wore
worth my while, I could reckon up so many barbarisms
of yours in this one book, as, if you were to be chastized
for them as you deserve, all the schoolboys’ ferulas in
christendom would be broken upon your; nor would
you receive so many pieces of gold as that wretched
poet did of old, but a great many more boxes on the
ear. You say, “It is a prodigy more monstrous than
all the most absurd opinions in the world put together,
that the Bedlams should make a distinction betwixt
the king's power and his person.” I will not quote
what every author has said upon this subject; but if
by the words Personam Regis, you mean what we call
in English, the person of the king; Chrysostom, who
was no Bedlam, might have taught you, that it is no
absurd thing to make a distinction betwixt that and
his power; for that further explains the apostle's com-
mand of being subject to the higher powers, to be meant
of the thing, the power itself, and not of the persons
of the magistrates. And why may not I say that a
king, who acts any thing contrary to law, acts so far
forth as a private person, or a tyrant, and not in the
capacity of a king invested with a legal authority ? If
you do not know, that there may be in one and the
same man more persons or capacities than one, and
that those capacities may in thought and conception
be severed from the man himself, you are altogether
ignorant both of Latin and common sense. But this
you say to absolve kings from all sin and guilt; and
that you may make us believe, that you are gotten into
the chair yourself, which you have pulled the pope out
of “The king,” you say, “is supposed not capable
of committing any crime, because no punishment is
consequential upon any crime of his.” Whoever there-
fore is not punished, offends not; it is not the theft,
but the punishment, that makes the thief. Salmasius
the Grammarian commits no solecisms now, because
he is from under the ſerula; when you have overthrown
the pope, let these, for God's sake, be the canons of
your pontificate, or at least your indulgencies, whether
you shall choose to be called the high priest St. Tyran-
ny, or St. Slavery. I pass by the reproachful language,
which towards the latter end of the chapter you give
the state of the commonwealth, and the church of
England; it is common to such as you are, you con-
temptible varlet, to rail at those things most that are
most praiseworthy. But that I may not seem to have
asserted any thing rashly concerning the right of the
kings of England, or rather concerning the people's
right with respect to their princes; I will now allege
out of our ancient histories a few things indeed of
many, but such as will make it evident, that the Eng-
lish lately tried their king according to the settled laws
of the realm, and the customs of their ancestors. After
the Romans quitted this island, the Britains for about
forty years were sui juris, and without any kings at
all. Of whom those they first set up, some they put
to death. And for that, Gildas reprehends them, not
as you do, for killing their kings, but for killing them
uncondemned, and (to use his own words) “non pro
veri examinatione,” without inquiring into the matter
of fact. Vortigern was for his incestuous marriage
with his own daughter condemned (as Nennius informs
us, the most ancient of all our historians next to Gil-
das) by St. German, “and a general council of the
Britains,” and his son Vortimer set up in his stead.
This came to pass not long after St. Augustine's death,
which is enough to discover how futilous you are, to
say, as you have done, that it was a Pope, and Zachary
by name, who first held the lawfulness of judging
kings. About the year of our Lord 600, Morcantius,
who then reigned in Wales, was by Oudeceus, bishop
of Llandaff, condemned to exile, for the murder of his
uncle, though he got the sentence off by bestowing
some lands upon the church. Come we now to the
Saxons, whose laws we have, and therefore I shall quote
none of their precedents. Remember, that the Saxons
were of a German extract, who never invested their
kings with any absolute, unlimited power, but consult-
ed in a body of the more weighty affairs of govern-
ment; whence we may perceive, that in the time of our
Saxon ancestors parliaments (the name itself only ex-
cepted) had the supreme authority. The name they gave
them, was “councils of wise men;” and this in the
reign of Ethelbert, of whom Bede says, “that he made
laws in imitation of the Roman laws, cum concilio
sapientum; by the advice, or in a council of his wise
men.” So Edwin king of Northumberland, and Ina
king of the west Saxons, “having consulted with their
wise men, and the elders of the people,” made new
laws. Other laws King Alfred made, “by the advice”
in like manner of “his wise men;” and he says himself,
“that it was by the consent of them all, that they were
IN ANSWER TO SALMASIUS’S DEFENCE OF THE KING.
397
commanded to be observed.” From these and many
other like places, it is as clear as the sun, that chosen
men even from amongst the common people, were mem-
bers of the supreme councils, unless we must believe,
that no men are wise but the nobility. We have like-
wise a very ancient book, called the “Mirror of Jus-
tice,” in which we are told, that the Saxons, when they
first subdued the Britains, and chose themselves kings,
required an oath of them, to submit to the judgment of
the law, as much as any of their subjects, Cap. 1. Sect.
2. In the same place it is said, that it is but just that
the king have his peers in parliament, to take cogni-
zance of wrongs done by the king, or the queen; and
that there was a law made in King Alfred's time,
that parliaments should be holden twice a year at Lon-
don, or oftener, if need were: which law, when through
neglect it grew into disuse, was revived by two statutes
in King Edward the Third’s time. And in another an-
cient manuscript, called “Modus tenendi Parliamenta,”
we read thus, “If the king was summoned, he is guilty
of perjury; and shall be reputed to have broken his
coronation oath.” For how can he be said to grant
those good laws, which the people choose, as he is sworn
to do, if he hinders the people from choosing them,
either by summoning parliaments seldomer, or by dis-
solving them sooner, than the public affairs require, or
admit P And that oath which the kings of England
take at their coronation, has always been looked upon
by our lawyers as a most sacred law. And what re-
medy can be found to obviate the great dangers of the
whole state, (which is the very end of summoning par-
liaments,) if that great and august assembly may be
dissolved at the pleasure many time of a silly, head-
strong king 2 To absent himself from them, is certainly
less than to dissolve them; and yet by our laws, as
that Modus lays them down, the king neither can nor
ought to absent himself from his parliament, unless he
be really indisposed in health; nor then neither, till
twelve of the peers have been with him to inspect his
body, and give the parliament an account of his indis-
position. Is this like the carriage of servants to a
master P On the other hand the house of commons,
without whom there can be no parliament held, though
summoned by the king, may withdraw, and having
made a secession, expostulate with the king concerning
maleadministration, as the same book has it. But,
which is the greatest thing of all, amongst the laws of
King Edward, commonly called the Confessor, there
is one very excellent, relating to the kingly office;
which office, if the king do not discharge as he ought,
then, says the law, “he shall not retain so much as the
name of a king.” And lest these words should not be
sufficiently understood, the example of Chilperic king
of France is subjoined, whom the people for that cause
deposed. And that by this law a wicked king is liable
to punishment, that sword of King Edward, called
Curtana, denotes to us, which the earl of Chester used
to carry in the solemn procession at a coronation; “a
token,” says Matthew Paris, “ that he has authority
by law to punish the king, if he will not do his duty;”
and the sword is hardly ever made use of but in capital
punishments. This same law, together with other laws
of that good King Edward, did William the Conqueror
ratify in the fourth year of his reign, and in a very full
council held at Verulam, confirmed it with a most so-
lemn oath: and by so doing, he not only extinguished
his right of conquest, if he ever had any over us, but
subjected himself to be judged according to the tenour
of this very law. And his son Henry swore to the ob-
servance of King Edward's laws, and of this amongst
the rest; and upon those only terms it was that he
was chosen king, while his elder brother Robert was
alive. The same oath was taken by all succeeding
kings, before they were crowned. Hence our ancient
and famous lawyer Bracton, in his first book, Chap.
viii, “There is no king in the case,” says he, “where
will rules the roast, and law does not take place.”
And in his third book, Chap. ix, “A king is a king so
long as he rules well; he becomes a tyrant when he
oppresses the people committed to his charge.” And
in the same chapter, “The king ought to use the power
of law and right as God’s minister and vicegerent;
the power of wrong is the Devil's, and not God's ;
when the king turns aside to do injustice, he is the
minister of the Devil.” The very same words almost
another ancient lawyer has, who was the author of the
book called “Fleta ;” both of them remembered that
truly royal law of King Edward, that fundamental
maxim in our law, which I have formerly mentioned,
by which nothing is to be accounted a law, that is con-
trary to the laws of God, or of reason; no more than a
tyrant can be said, to be a king, or a minister of the
Devil a minister of God. Since therefore the law is
chiefly right reason, if we are bound to obey a king,
and a minister of God; by the very same reason, and
the very same law, we ought to resist a tyrant, and a
minister of the Devil. And because controversies arise
oftener about names than things, the same authors tell
us, that a king of England, though he have not lost
the name of a king, yet is as liable to be judged, and
ought so to be, as any of the common people. Bracton,
Book I. Chap. viii.; Fleta, Book I. Chap. xvii; “No
man ought to be greater than the king in the admini-
stration of justice; but he himself ought to be as little
as the least in receiving justice, si peccat, if he offend.”
Others read it, si petat. Since our kings therefore are
liable to be judged, whether by the name of tyrants,
or of kings, it must not be difficult to assign their legal
judges. Nor will it be amiss to consult the same authors
upon that point. Bracton, Book I. Chap. xvi; Fleta,
Book I. Chap. 17; “The king has his superiours in
the government; the law, by which he is made king ;
and his court, to wit, the earls, and the barons: comites
(earls) are as much as to say, companions; and he
that has a companion, has a master; and therefore, if
the king will be without a bridle, that is, not govern
by law, they ought to bridle him.” That the commons
are comprehended in the word barons, has been shewn
already; and in the books of our ancient laws they
are frequently said to have been called peers of parlia-
ment: and especially in the Modus tenendi, &c. “There
shall be chosen,” says that book, “ out of all the peers
398
A DEFENCE OF THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND,
of the realm, five and twenty persons, of whom five
shall be knights, five citizens, and five burgesses; and
two knights of a county have a greater vote in grant-
ing and rejecting than the greatest earl in England.”
And it is but reasonable they should, for they vote for
a whole county, &c. the earls for themselves only.
And who can but perceive, that those patent earls, whom
you call earls made by writ, (since we have now nome
that hold their earldoms by tenure) are very unfit per-
sons to try the king, who conferred their honours upon
them 2 Since therefore by our law, as appears by that
old book, called “the Mirror,” the king has his peers, who
in parliament have cognizance of wrongs done by the
king to any of his people; and since it is notoriously
known, that the meanest man in the kingdom may
even in inferiour courts have the benefit of the law
against the king himself, in case of any injury, or
wrong sustained ; how much more consonant to justice,
how much more necessary is it, that in case the king
oppress all his people, there should be such as have
authority not only to restrain him, and keep him within
bounds, but to judge and punish him for that govern-
ment must needs be very ill, and most ridiculously
constituted, in which remedy is provided in case of
little injuries, done by the prince to private persons,
and no remedy, no redress for greater, no care taken
for the safety of the whole; no provision made to the
contrary, but that the king may, without any law, ruin
all his subjects, when at the same time he cannot by
law so much as hurt any one of them. And since I
have shewn, that it is neither good manners, nor ex-
pedient, that the lords should be the king's judges; it
follows, that the power of judicature in that case does
wholly, and by very good right, belong to the com-
mons, who are both peers of the realm, and barons, and
have the power and authority of all the people com-
mitted to them. For since (as we find it expressly in
our written law, which I have already cited) the com-
mons together with the king made a good parliament
without either lords or bishops, because before either
lords or bishops had a being, kings held parliaments
with their commons only; by the very same reason the
commons apart must have the sovereign power without
the king, and a power of judging the king himself; be-
cause before there ever was a king, they in the name of
the whole body of the nation held councils and parlia-
ments, had the power of judicature, made laws, and
made the kings themselves, not to lord it over the peo-
ple, but to administer their public affairs. Whom if
the king, instead of so doing, shall endeavour to injure
and oppress, our law pronounces him from time for-
ward not so much as to retain the name of a king, to
be no such thing as a king: and if he be no king,
what need we trouble ourselves to find out peers for
him P For being then by all good men adjudged to
be a tyrant, there are none but who are peers good
enough for him, and proper enough to pronounce sen-
tence of death upon him judicially. These things being
so, I think I have sufficiently proved what I undertook,
by many authorities, and written laws; to wit, that
since the commons have authority by very good right
to try the king, and since they have actually tried him,
and put him to death, for the mischief he had done
both in church and state, and without all hope of
amendment, they have done nothing therein but what
was just and regular, for the interest of the state, in
discharging of their trust, becoming their dignity, and
according to the laws of the land. And I cannot upon
this occasion, but congratulate myself with the honour
of having had such ancestors, who founded this go-
vernment with no less prudence, and in as much liberty
as the most worthy of the ancient Romans or Grecians
ever founded any of theirs: and they must needs, if
they have any knowledge of our affairs, rejoice over
their posterity, who when they were almost reduced
to slavery, yet with so much wisdom and courage win-
dicated and asserted the state, which they so wisely
founded upon so much liberty, from the unruly govern-
ment of a king.
CHAP. IX.
I THINK by this time it is sufficiently evident, that
kings of England may be judged even by the laws of
England ; and that they have their proper judges,
which was the thing to be proved. What do you do
further? (for whereas you repeat many things that you
have said before, I do not intend to repeat the answers
that I have given them). “It is an easy thing to de-
monstrate, even from the nature of the things for which
parliaments are summoned, that the king is above the
parliament. The parliament (you say) is wont to be
assembled upon weighty affairs, such as wherein the
safety of the kingdom and of the people is concerned.”
If therefore the king call parliaments together, not for
his own concerns, but those of the nation, nor to settle
those neither, but by their own consent, at their own
discretion, what is he more than a minister, and as it
were an agent for the people * since without their suf-
frages that are chosen by the people, he cannot exact
the least thing whatsoever, either with relation to him-
self, or any body else P Which proves likewise, that
it is the king's duty to call parliaments whenever the
people desire it; since the people's and not the king's
concerns are to be treated of by that assembly, and to
be ordered as they see cause. For although the king’s
assent be required for fashion sake, which in lesser
matters, that concerned the welfare of private persons
only, he might refuse, and use that form, “the king
will advise;” yet in those greater affairs, that con-
cerned the public safety, and liberty of the people in
general, he had no negative voice: for it would have
been against his coronation oath to deny his assent in
such cases, which was as binding to him as any law
could be, and against the chief article of Magna
Charta, cap. 29. “We will not deny to any man, nor
will we delay to render to every man, right and justice.”
Shall it not be in the king's power to deny justice, and
shall it be in his power to deny the enacting of just
IN ANSWER TO SALMASIUS'S DEFENCE OF THE KING.
309
laws? Could he not deny justice to any particular
person, and could he to all his people 2 Could he not
do it in inferiour courts, and could he in the supreme
court of all P Or, can any king be so arrogant as to
pretend to know what is just and profitable better than
the whole body of the people? Especially, since “he
is created and chosen for this very end and purpose, to
do justice to all,” as Bracton says, lib, iii. c. 9, that is,
to do justice according to such laws as the people
agree upon. Hence is what we find in our records,
7 H. IV. Rott. Parl, num. 59, the king has no pre-
rogative, that derogates from justice and equity. And
formerly when kings have refused to confirm acts of
parliament, to wit, Magna Charta and some others, our
ancestors have brought them to it by force of arms. And
yet our lawyers never were of opinion, that those laws
were less valid, or less binding, since the king was
forced to assent to no more than what he ought in jus-
tice to have assented to voluntarily, and without con-
straint. Whilst you go about to prove that kings of
other nations have been as much under the power
of their senates or councils, as our kings were, you do
not argue us into slavery, but them into liberty. In
which you do but that over again, that you have from
the very beginning of your discourse, and which
some silly Leguleians now and then do, to argue un-
awares against their own clients. But you say,
“We confess that the king, wherever he be, yet is
supposed still to be present in his parliament by virtue
of his power; insonuch, that whatever is transacted
there, is supposed to be done by the king himself:”
and then as if you had got some pretty bribe or small
morsel, and tickled with the remembrance of your
purse of gold, “we take,” say you, “what they give
us;” and take a halter then, for I am sure you deserve
it. But we do not give it for granted, which is the
thing you thought would follow from thence, “that
therefore that court acts only by virtue of a delegated
power from the king.” For when we say, that the regal
power, be it what it will, cannot be absent from the
parliament, do we thereby acknowledge that power to
be supreme * Does not the king's authority seem rather
to be transferred to the parliament, and, as being the
lesser of the two, to be comprised in the greater 8 Cer-
tainly, if the parliament may rescind the king's acts
whether he will or no, and revoke privileges granted
by him, to whomsoever they be granted : if they may
set bounds to his prerogative, as they see cause; if they
may regulate his yearly revenue, and the expenses of
his court, his retinue, and generally all the concerns of
his household; if they may remove his most intimate
friends and counsellors, and, as it were, pluck them out
of his bosom, and bring them to condign punishment;
finally, if any subject may by law appeal from the
king to the parliament, (all which things, that they
may lawfully be done, and have been frequently prac-
tised, both our histories and records, and the most
eminent of our lawyers, assure us,) I suppose no man
in his right wits will deny the authority of the parlia-
ment to be superiour to that of the king. For even in
an interregnum the authority of the parliament is in
being, and (than which nothing is more common in our
histories) they have often made a free choice of a suc-
cessor, without any regard to an hereditary descent.
In short, the parliament is the supreme council of the
nation, constituted and appointed by a most free people,
and armed with ample power and authority, for this
end and purpose; viz. to consult together upon the
most weighty affairs of the kingdom; the king was
created to put their laws in execution. Which thing
after the parliament themselves had declared in a public
edict, (for such is the justice of their proceedings, that
of their own accord they have been willing to give an
account of their actions to other nations,) is it not pro-
digious, that such a pitiful fellow as you are, a man of
no authority, of no credit, of no figure in the world, a
mere Burgundian slave, should have the impudence to
accuse the parliament of England, asserting by a public
instrument their own and their country’s right, “ of a
detestable and horrid imposture ?” Your country may
be ashamed, you rascal, to have brought forth a little
inconsiderable fellow of such profligate impudence.
But perhaps you have somewhat to tell us, that may be
for our good : go on, we will hear you. “What laws,”
say you, “can a parliament enact, in which the bishops
are not present P Did you then, you madman, expel
the order of bishops out of the church, to introduce them
into the state º O wicked wretch ! who ought to be
delivered over to Satan, whom the church ought to for-
bid her communion, as being a hypocrite, and an
atheist, and no civil society of men to acknowledge as
a member, being a public enemy, and a plague-sore to
the common liberty of mankind; who, where the
gospel fails you, endeavour to prove out of Aristotle,
Halicarnassaeus, and then from some popish authorities
of the most corrupt ages, that the king of England is
the head of the church of England, to the end that you
may, as far as in you lies, bring in the bishops again,
his intimates and table-companions, grown so of late,
to rob and tyrannize in the church of God, whom God
himself has deposed and degraded, whose very order
you had heretofore asserted in print that it ought to be
rooted out of the world, as destructive of and pernicious
to the christian religion. What apostate did ever so
shamefully and wickedly desert as this man has done,
I do not say his own, which indeed never was any, but
the christian doctrine which he had formerly asserted 2
“The bishops being put down, who under the king,
and by his permission, held plea of ecclesiastical causes,
upon whom,” say you, “will that jurisdiction de-
volve * O villain have some regard at least to your
own conscience; remember before it be too late, if at
least this admonition of mine come not too late, re-
member that this mocking the Holy Spirit of God is an
inexpiable crime, and will not be left unpunished.
Stop at last, and set bounds to your fury, lest the wrath
of God lay hold upon you suddenly, for endeavouring
to deliver the flock of God, his anointed ones that are
not to be touched, to enemies and cruel tyrants, to be
crushed and trampled on again, from whom himself by
a high and stretched-out arm had so lately delivered
them; and from whom you yourself maintained, that
400
A DEFENCE OF THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND,
they ought to be delivered, I know not whether for
any good of theirs, or in order to the hardening of
your own heart, and to further your own damnation.
If the bishops have no right to lord it over the church,
certainly much less have kings, whatever the laws of
men may be to the contrary. For they that know any
thing of the gospel know thus much, that the govern-
ment of the church is altogether divine and spiritual,
and no civil constitution. Whereas you say, that “ in
secular affairs, the kings of England have always had
the sovereign power;” our laws do abundantly declare
that to be false. Our courts of justice are erected and
suppressed, not by the king's authority, but that of the
parliament; and yet in any of them, the meanest sub-
ject might go to law with the king; nor is it a rare
thing for the judges to give judgment against him,
which if the king should endeavour to obstruct by any
prohibition, mandate, or letters, the judges were bound
by law, and by their oaths, not to obey him, but to re-
ject such inhibitions as null and void in law. The
king could not imprison any man, or seize his estate
as forfeited ; he could not punish any man, not sum-
moned to appear in court, where not the king, but the
ordinary judges give sentence; which they frequently
Hence our
’ says he,
did, as I have said, against the king.
Bracton, lib. 3, cap. 9, “The regal power,’
“is according to law; he has no power to do any
wrong, nor can the king do any thing but what the
law warrants.” Those lawyers that you have consult-
ed, men that have lately fled their country, may tell
you another tale, and acquaint you with some statutes,
not very ancient neither, but made in King Edward IV,
King Henry VI, and King Edward VIth's days; but
they did not consider, that what power soever those
statutes gave the king, was conferred upon him by
authority of parliament, so that he was beholden to
them for it; and the same power that conferred it,
might at pleasure resume it. How comes it to
pass, that so acute a disputant as you, should suffer
yourself to be imposed upon to that degree, as to
make use of that very argument to prove the king's
power to be absolute and supreme, than which no-
thing proves more clearly, that it is subordinate to
that of the parliament? Our records of the greatest
authority with us declare, that our kings owe all
their power, not to any right of inheritance, of con-
quest, or succession, but to the people. So in the par-
liament rolls of King Henry IV, numb. 108, we read,
that the kingly office and power was granted by the
commons to King Henry IV, and before him, to his
predecessor King Richard II, just as kings use to grant
commissioners' places and lieutenantships to their de-
puties, by edicts and patents. Thus the house of com-
mons ordered expressly to be entered upon record,
“ that they had granted to King Richard to use the
same good liberty, that the kings of England before
him had used :” which because that king abused to
the subversion of the laws, and “contrary to his oath
at his coronation,” the same persons, that granted him
that power, took it back again, and deposed him. The
same men, as appears by the same record, declared in
open parliament, “ that having confidence in the pru-
dence and moderation of King Henry the IVth, they
will and enact, that he enjoy the same royal authority
that his ancestors enjoyed.” Which if it had been any
other than in the nature of a trust, as this was, either
those houses of parliament were foolish and vain, to
give what was none of their own, or those kings that
were willing to receive as from then), what was already
theirs, were too injurious both to themselves and their
posterity; neither of which is likely. “A third part
of the regal power,” say you, “is conversant about the
militia; this the kings of England have used to order
and govern, without fellow or competitor.” . This is as
false as all the rest that you have taken upon the cre-
dit of fugitives: for in the first place, both our own his-
tories, and those of foreigners, that have been any
whit exact in the relation of our affairs, declare, that
the making of peace and war always did belong to the
parliament. And the laws of St. Edward, which our
kings were bound to swear that they would maintain,
make this appear beyond all exception, in the chapter
“De Heretochiis,” viz. “That there were certain offi-
cers appointed in every province and county through-
out the kingdom, that were called Heretochs, in Latin,
duces, commanders of armies, that were to command
the forces of the several counties,” not for the honour
of the crown only, “but for the good of the realm.
And they were chosen by the general council, and in
the several counties at public assemblies of the inha-
bitants, as sheriffs ought to be chosen.” Whence it is
evident, that the forces of the kingdom, and the com-
manders of those forces, were anciently, and ought to
be still, not at the king's command, but at the people's;
and that this most reasonable and just law obtained in
this kingdom of ours, no less than heretofore it did in
the commonwealth of the Romans. Concerning which,
it will not be amiss to hear what Cicero says, Philip. 1.
“All the legions, all the forces of the commonwealth,
wheresoever they are, are the people of Rome's; nor
are those legions, that deserted the consul Antonius,
said to have been Antony's, but the commonwealth's
legions.” This very law of St. Edward, together with
the rest, did William the Conqueror, at the desire and
instance of the people, confirm by oath, and added over
and above, cap. 56, “That all cities, boroughs, castles,
should be so watched every night, as the sheriffs, the
aldermen, and other magistrates, should think meet for
the safety of the kingdom.” And in the 6th law,
“Castles, boroughs, and cities, were first built for the
defence of the people, and therefore ought to be main-
tained free and entire, by all ways and means.” What
then 2 Shall towns and places of strength in times of
peace be guarded against thieves and robbers by com-
mon councils of the several places; and shall they not
be defended in dangerous times of war, against both
domestic and foreign hostility, by the common council
of the whole nation P If this be not granted, there can
be no freedom, no integrity, no reason, in the guarding
of them : nor shall we obtain any of those ends, for
which the law itself tells us, that towns and fortresses
were at first founded. Indeed our ancestors were will-
IN ANSWER TO SALMASIUS'S DEFENCE OF THE KING.
401
ing to put any thing into the king's power, rather than
their arms, and the garrisons of their towns; conceiv-
ing that to be neither better nor worse, than betraying
their liberty to the fury and exorbitancy of their princes.
Of which there are so very many instances in our his-
tories, and those so generally known, that it would be
superfluous to mention any of them here. But “the
king owes protection to his subjects; and how can he
protect them, unless he have men and arms at command?”
But, say I, he had all this for the good of the kingdom,
as has been said, not for the destruction of his people,
and the ruin of the kingdom: which in King Henry
the IIId's time, one Leonard, a learned man in those
days, in an assembly of bishops, told Rustandus, the
pope's nuncio and the king's procurator, in these words;
“All churches are the pope's, as all temporal things
are said to be the king’s, for defence and protection,
not his in propriety and ownership, as we say; they
are his to defend, not to destroy.” The aforementioned
law of St. Edward is to the same purpose; and what
does this import more than a trust 2 Does this look
like absolute power P Such a kind of power a com-
mander of an army always has, that is, a delegated
power; and yet both at home and abroad he is never
the less able to defend the people that choose him.
Our parliaments would anciently have contended with
our kings about their liberty and the laws of St. Ed-
ward, to very little purpose; and it would have been
an unequal match betwixt the kings and them, if they
had been of opinion, that the power of the sword be-
longed to them alone: for how unjust laws soever
their kings would have imposed upon them, their
charter, though never so great, would have been a
weak defence against force. But say you, “What
would the parliament be the better for the militia,
since without the king’s assent they cannot raise the
least farthing from the people towards the maintaining
it P’’ Take you no thought for that: for in the first
place you go upon a false supposition, “that parlia-
ments cannot impose taxes without the king's assent,”
upon the people that send them, and whose concerns
they undertake. In the next place, you, that are
so officious an inquirer into other men's matters, can-
not but have heard, that the people of their own ac-
cord, by bringing in their plate to be melted down,
raised a great sum of money towards the carrying on of
this war against the king. Then you mention the
largeness of our king's revenue: you mention over and
over again five hundred and forty thousands: that
“those of our kings that have been eminent for their
bounty and liberality have used to give large boons
out of their own patrimony.” This you were glad to
hear; it was by this charm, that those traitors to their
country allured you, as Balaam the prophet was en-
ticed of old, to curse the people of God, and exclaim
against the judicial dispensations of his providence.
You fool! what was that unjust and violent king the
better for such abundance of wealth P What are you
the better for it? Who have been no partaker of any
part of it, that I can hear of, (how great hopes soever
you may have conceived of being vastly enriched by
it,) but only of a hundred pieces of gold, in a purse
wrought with beads. Take that reward of thine ini-
quity, Balaam, which thou hast loved, and enjoy it.
You go on to play the fool; “the setting up of a
standard is a prerogative that belongs to the king only.”
How so? Why because Virgil tells us in his AEmeis,
“that Turnus set up a standard on the top of the tower
at Laurentum, for an ensign of war.” And do not you
know, Grammarian, that every general of an army
does the same thing? But, says Aristotle, “The king
must always be provided of a military power, that he
may be able to defend the laws; and therefore the king
must be stronger than the whole body of the people.”
This man makes consequences just as Ocnus does ropes
in hell; which are of no use but to be eaten by asses.
For a number of soldiers given to the king by the
people, is one thing, and the sole power of the militia
is quite another thing; the latter, Aristotle does not
allow that kings ought to be masters of, and that in
this very place which you have quoted; “ He ought,”
says he, “to have so many armed men about him, as
to make him stronger than any one man, than many
men got together; but he must not be stronger than all
the people.” Polit. lib. 3, cap. 4. Else instead of pro-
tecting them, it would be in his power to subject both
people and laws to himself. For this is the difference
betwixt a king and a tyrant: a king, by consent of
the senate and people, has about him so many armed
men, as to enable him to resist enemies, and suppress
seditions. A tyrant, against the will both of senate
and people, gets as great a number as he can, either of
enemies, or profligate subjects, to side with him against
the senate and the people. The parliament therefore
allowed the king, as they did whatever he had besides,
the setting up of a standard; not to wage war against
his own people, but to defend them against such as
the parliament should declare enemies to the state:
if he acted otherwise, himself was to be accounted an
enemy; since according to the very law of St. Edward,
or according to a more sacred law than that, the law
of nature itself, he lost the name of a king, and was
no longer such. Whence Cicero in his Philip. “He
forfeits his command in the army, and interest in his
government, that employs them against the state.”
Neither could the king compel those that held of him
by knight-service, to serve him in any other war,
than such as was made by consent of parliament;
which is evident by many statutes. So for customs
and other subsidies for the maintenance of the navy,
the king could not exact them without an act of parlia-
ment; as was resolved about twelve years ago, by the
ablest of our lawyers, when the king's authority was
at the height. And long before them, Fortescue, an
eminent lawyer, and chancellor to King Henry the
sixth, “The king of England,” says he, “can neither
alter the laws, nor exact subsidies without the people's
consent.” Nor can any testimonies be brought from an-
tiquity, to prove the kingdom of England to have been
merely regal. “The king,” says Bracton, “ has a ju-
risdiction over all his subjects;” that is, in his courts
of justice, where justice is administered in the king's
402
A DEFENCE OF THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND,
name indeed, but according to our own laws. “All are
subject to the king;” that is, every particular man is;
and so Bracton explains himself in the places that I have
cited. What follows is but turning the same stone over
and over again, (at which sport I believe you are able
to tire Sisiphus himself) and is sufficiently answered by
what has been said already. For the rest, if our parlia-
ments have sometimes complimented good kings with
submissive expressions, though neither savouring of flat-
tery nor slavery, those are not to be accounted due to
tyrants, nor ought to prejudice the people's right: good
manners and civility do not in ſringe liberty. Where-
as you cite out of Sir Edward Coke and others, “ that
the kingdom of England is an absolute kingdom;”
that is said with respect to any foreign prince, or
the emperor: because as Camden says, “It is not
under the patronage of the emperor:” but both of them
affirm, that the government of England resides not in
king alone, but in a body politic. Whence Fortescue,
in his book de Laud. Leg. Ang. cap. 9, “The king of
IEngland,” says he, “ governs his people, not by a
merely regal, but a political power; for the English
are governed by laws of their own making.” Foreign
authors were not ignorant of this : hence Philip de
Comines, a grave author, in the Fifth Book of his Com-
mentaries, “Of all the kingdoms of the earth,” says
he, “that I have any knowledge of, there is none in my
opinion where the government is more moderate, where
the king has less power of hurting his people, than in
England.” Finally, “It is ridiculous,” say you, “for
them to affirm that kingdoms were ancienter than kings;
which is as much as if they should say, that there was
light before the sun was created.” But with your good
leave, Sir, we do not say that kingdoms, but that the
people, were before kings. In the mean time, who can
be more ridiculous than you, who deny there was light
before the sun had a being P You pretend to a curios ty
in other men's matters, and have forgot the very first
things that were taught you. “You wonder how they
that have seen the king sit upon his throne, at a session
of parliament, (sub aureo et serico Coelo, under a golden
and silken heaven,) under a canopy of state, should so
much as make a question, whether the majesty resided
in him, or in the parliament º' They are certainly
hard of belief, whom so lucid an argument, coming
down from heaven, cannot convince. Which golden
heaven, you, like a stoic, have so devoutly and se-
riously gazed upon, that you seem to have forgot what
kind of heaven Moses and Aristotle describe to us; for
you deny, that there was any light in Moses's heaven
before the sun; and in Aristotle's you make three tem-
perate zones. How many zones you observed in that
golden and silken heaven of the king's, I know not;
but I know you got one zone (a purse) well tempered
with a hundred golden stars by your astronomy.
CIIAP. X.
SINCE this whole controversy, whether concerning
the right of kings in general, or that of the king of
England in particular, is rendered difficult and intri-
cate, rather by the obstimacy of parties, than by the
nature of the thing itself; I hope they that prefer truth
before the interest of a faction, will be satisfied with
what I have alleged out of the law of God, the laws
of nations, and the municipal laws of my own country,
that a king of England may be brought to trial, and
put to death. As for those whose minds are either
blinded with superstition, or so dazzled with the splen-
dour and grandeur of a court, that magnanimity and
true liberty do not appear so glorious to them, as they
are in themselves, it will be in vain to contend with
them, either by reason and arguments, or examples.
But you, Salmasius, seem very absurd, as in every
other part of your book, so particularly in this, who
though you rail perpetually at the Independents, and
revile them with all the terms of reproach imaginable,
yet assert to the highest degree that can be the independ-
ency of a king, whom you defend; and will not allow
him to “ owe his sovereignty to the people, but to his
descent.” And whereas in the beginning of your book
you complained, that he was “put to plead for his life,”
here you complain “that he perished without being
heard to speak for himself.” But if you have a mind
to look into the history of his trial, which is very faith-
fully published in French, it may be you will be of an-
other opinion. Whereas he had liberty given him for
some days together, to say what he could for himself,
he made use of it not to clear himself of the crimes
laid to his charge, but to disprove the authority of his
judges, and the judicature that he was called before.
And whenever a criminal is either mute, or says no-
thing to the purpose, there is no injustice in condemn-
ing him without hearing him, if his crimes are noto-
rious, and publicly known. If you say, that Charles
died as he lived, I agree with you : if you say, that he
died piously, holily, and at ease, you may remember
that his grandmother Mary, Queen of Scots, an infa-
mous woman, died on a scaffold with as much outward
appearance of piety, sanctity, and constancy, as he did.
And lest you should ascribe too much to that presence
of mind, which some common malefactors have so great
a measure of at their death ; many times despair, and
a hardened heart, puts on as it were a vizor of courage;
and stupidity, a shew of quiet and tranquillity of mind:
sometimes the worst of men desire to appear good, un-
daunted, innocent, and now and then religious, not
only in their life, but at their death ; and in suffering
death for their villanies, use to act the last part of their
hypocrisy and cheats, with all the shew imaginable;
and like bad poets or stageplayers, are very ambitious
at being clapped at the end of the play. “Now,” you
say, “you are come to inquire who they chiefly were,
that gave sentence against the king.” Whereas it
ought first to be inquired into, how you, a foreigner,
and a French vagabond, came to have any thing to
** IN ANSWER TO SALMASIUS'S DEFENCE OF THE KING.
403
do to raise a question about our affairs, to which you
are so much a stranger ? And what reward induced
you to it? But we know enough of that, and who satis-
fied your curiosity in these matters of ours; even those
fugitives, and traitors to their country, that could easily
hire such a vain fellow as you, to speak ill of us. Then
an account in writing of the state of our affairs was
put into your hands by some hairbrained, half protes-
tant, half papist chaplain or other, or by some sneak-
ing courtier, and you were put to translate it into Latin;
out of that you took these narratives, which, if you
please, we will examine a little: “Not the hundred
thousandth part of the people consented to this sentence
of condemnation.” What were the rest of the people then,
that suffered so great a thing to be transacted against
their will P. Were they stocks and stones, were they
mere trunks of men only, or such images of Britains, as
Virgil describes to have been wrought in tº pestry P
Purpurea interti tollant aula'a Britanni,
And Britains interwove held up the purple hangings.
For you describe no true Britains, but painted ones, or
rather needle-wrought men instead of them. Since
therefore it is a thing so incredible, that a warlike na-
tion should be subdued by so few, and those of the
dregs of the people, (which is the first thing that occurs
in your narrative,) that appears in the very nature of
the thing itself to be most false. “The bishops were
turned out of the house of lords by the parliament it-
self.” The more deplorable is your madness, (for are
not you yet sensible that you rave?) to complain of their
being turned out of the parliament, whom you yourself
in a large book endeavour to prove ought to be turned
out of the church. “One of the states of parliament,
to wit, the house of lords, consisting of dukes, earls,
and viscounts, was removed.” And deservedly were
they removed; for they were not deputed to sit there
by any town or county, but represented themselves
only ; they had no right over the people, but (as if
they had been ordained for that very purpose) used
frequently to oppose their rights and liberties. They
were created by the king, they were his companions,
his servants, and, as it were, shadows of him. He
being removed, it was necessary they should be reduced
to the same level with the body of the people, from
amongst whom they took their rise. “One part of the
parliament, and that the worst of all, ought not to have
assumed that power of judging and condemning the
king.” But I have told you already, that the house
of commons was not only the chief part of our parlia-
ment, while we had kings, but was a perfect and entire
parliament of itself, without the temporal lords, much
more without the bishops. But, “the whole house of
commons themselves were not admitted to have to do
with the trial of the king ” To wit, that part of them
was not admitted, that openly revolted to him in their
minds and counsels; whom, though they styled him
their king, yet they had so often acted against as an
enemy. The parliament of England, and the deputies
sent from the parliament of Scotland, on the 13th of
January, 1645, wrote to the king, in answer to a letter
of his, by which he desired a deceitful truce, and that
he might treat with them at London ; that they could
not admit him into that city, till he had made satisfac-
tion to the state for the civil war that he had raised in
the three kingdoms, and for the deaths of so many of
his subjects slain by his order; and till he had agreed
to a true and firm peace upon such terms as the parlia-
ments of both kingdoms had offered him so often
already, and should offer him again. He on the other
hand either refused to hear, or by ambiguous answers
eluded, their just and equal proposals, though most
humbly presented to him seven times over. The par-
liament at last, after so many years' patience, lest the
king should overturn the state by his wiles and delays,
when in prison, which he could not subdue in the field,
and lest the vanquished enemy, pleased with our divi-
sions, should recover himself, and triumph unexpectedly
over his conquerors, vote that for the future they would
have no regard to him, that they would send him no
more proposals, nor receive any from him: after which
vote, there were found even some members of parlia-
ment, who out of the hatred they bore that invincible
army, whose glory they envied, and which they would
have had disbanded, and sent home with disgrace, after
they had deserved so well of their nation, and out of a
servile compliance with some seditious m?nisters, find-
ing their opportunity, when many, whom they knew
to be otherwise minded than themselves, having been
sent by the house itself to suppress the presbyterians,
who began already to be turbulent, were absent in the
several counties, with a strange levity, not to say per-
fidiousness, vote that that inveterate enemy of the state,
who had nothing of a king but the name, without giv-
ing any satisfaction or security, should be brought back
to London, and restored to his dignity and government,
as if he had deserved well of the nation by what he had
done. So that they preferred the king before their re-
ligion, their liberty, and that very celebrated covenant
of theirs. What did they do in the mean time, who
were sound themselves, and saw such pernicious coun-
cils on foot? Ought they therefore to have been want-
ing to the nation, and not provide for its safety, because
the infection had spread itself even in their own house?
But, who secluded those ill-affected members ? “ The
English army,” you say: so that it was not an army
of foreigners, but of most valiant, and faithful, honest
natives, whose officers for the most part were members
of parliament; and whom those good secluded mem-
bers would have secluded their country, and banished
into Ireland; while in the mean time the Scots, whose
alliance began to be doubtful, had very considerable
forces in four of our northern counties, and kept garri-
sons in the best towns of those parts, and had the king
himself in custody; whilst they likewise encouraged
the tumultuating of those of their own faction, who
did more than threaten the parliament, both in city and
country, and through whose means not only a civil,
but a war with Scotland too shortly after brake out.
If it has been always counted praise-worthy in pri-
vate men to assist the state, and promote the public
good, whether by advice or action ; our army sure
2 D
404
A DEFENCE OF THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND,
was in no fault, who being ordered by the parliament
to come to town, obeyed and came, and when they
were come, quelled with ease the faction and uproar
of the king's party, who sometimes threatened the
house itself. For things were brought to that pass,
that of necessity either we must be run down by
them, or they by us. They had on their side most of
the shopkeepers and handicraftsmen of London, and
generally those of the ministers, that were most ſac-
tious. On our side was the army, whose fidelity,
moderation, and courage were sufficiently known. It
being in our power by their means to retain our liberty,
our state, our common safety, do you think we had
not been fools to have lost all by our negligence and
folly P. They who had had places of command in the
king's army, after their party were subdued, had laid
down their arms indeed against their wills, but conti-
nued enemies to us in their hearts: and they flocked to
town, and were here watching all opportunities of re-
newing the war. With these men, though they were
the greatest enemies they had in the world, and thirsted
after their blood, did the Presbyterians, because they
were not permitted to exercise a civil as well as an
ecclesiastical jurisdiction over all others, hold secret
correspondence, and took measures very unworthy of
what they had formerly both said and done; and they
came to that spleen at last, that they would rather en-
thral themselves to the king again, than admit their
own brethren to share in their liberty, which they like-
wise had purchased at the price of their own blood ;
they choose rather to be lorded over once more by a
tyrant, polluted with the blood of so many of his own
subjects, and who was enraged, and breathed out no-
thing but revenge, against those of them that were left,
than endure their brethren and friends to be upon the
square with them. The Independents, as they are
called, were the only men, that from first to last kept
to their point, and knew what use to make of their vic-
tory. They refused (and wisely, in my opinion) to
make him king again, being then an enemy, who
when he was their king, had made himself their enemy:
nor were they ever the less averse to a peace, but they
very prudently dreaded a new war, or a perpetual sla-
very under the name of a peace. To load our army
with the more reproaches, you begin a silly confused
narrative of our affairs; in which, though I find many
things false, many things frivolous, many things laid
to our charge for which we rather merit; yet I think
it will be to no purpose for me to write a true relation,
in answer to your false one. For you and I are argu-
ing, not writing histories, and both sides will believe
our reasons, but not our narrative; and indeed the na-
ture of the things themselves is such, that they cannot
be related as they ought to be, but in a set history; so
that I think it better, as Sallust said of Carthage, rather
to say nothing at all, than to say but a little of things
of this weight and importance. Nay, and I scorn so
much as to mention the praises of great men, and of
Almighty God himself, (who in so wonderful a course
of affairs ought to be ſrequently acknowledged,) amongst
your slanders and reproaches. I will therefore only
pick out such things as seem to have any colour of ar-
gument. You say, “the English and Scots promised
by a solemn covenant, to preserve the majesty of the
king.” But you omit upon what terms they promised
it; to wit, if it might consist with the safety of their
religion and their liberty. To both which, religion
and liberty, that king was so averse to his last breath,
and watched all opportunities of gaining advantages
upon them, that it was evident that his life was danger-
ous to their religion, and the certain ruin of their liberty.
But then you fall upon the king's judges again: “If
we consider the thing aright, the conclusion of this
abominable action must be imputed to the Independ-
ents, yet so as the Presbyterians may justly challenge
the glory of its beginning and progress.” Hark, ye
Presbyterians, what good has it done you ? How is
your innocence and loyalty the more cleared by your
seeming so much to abhor the putting the king to death?
You yourselves, in the opinion of this everlasting talk-
ative advocate of the king your accuser, “went more
than half-way towards it; you were seen acting the
fourth act and more, in this tragedy; you may justly
be charged with the king's death, since you shewed
the way to it; it was you and only you that laid his
head upon the block.” Wo be to you in the first place,
if ever Charles his posterity recover the crown of Eng-
land; assure yourselves, you are like to be put in the
black list. But pay your vows to God, and love your
brethren who have delivered you, who have prevented
that calamity from falling upon you, who have saved
you from inevitable ruin, though against your wills.
You are accused likewise for that “some years ago
you endeavoured by sundry petitions to lessen the king's
authority, that you published some scandalous expres-
sions of the king himself in the papers you presented
him with in the name of the parliament; to wit, in
that declaration of the lords and commons of the 26th
of May 1642, you declared openly in some mad posi-
tions that breathed nothing but rebellion, what your
thoughts were of the king's authority: Hotham by
order of parliament shut the gates of Hull against the
king; you had a mind to make a trial by this first act
of rebellion how much the king would bear.” What
could this man say more, if it were his design to recon-
cile the minds of all Englishmen to one another, and
alienate them wholly from the king 2 for he gives them
here to understand, that if ever the king be brought
back, they must not only expect to be punished for his
father's death, but for the petitions they made long
ago, and some acts that past in full parliament, con-
cerning the putting down the common-prayer and
bishops, and that of the triennial parliament, and seve-
ral other things that were enacted with the greatest
consent and applause of all the people that could be ;
all which will be looked upon as the seditions and mad
positions of the Presbyterians. But this vain fellow
changes his mind all of a sudden; and what but of late,
“when he considered it aright,” he thought was to be
imputed wholly to the Presbyterians, now that “he con-
siders the same thing from first to last,” he thinks the
| Independents were the sole actors of it. But even now
IN ANSWER TO SALMASIUS'S DEFENCE OF THE KING.
405
he told us, “the Presbyterians took up arms against
the king, that by them he was beaten, taken captive,
and put in prison :” now he says, “this whole doctrine
of rebellion is the Independents’ principle.” O ! the
faithfulness of this man's narrative how consistent he is
with himself! what need is there of a counter-narrative
to this of his, that cuts its own throat? But if any
man should question whether you are an honest man
or a knave, let him read these following lines of yours:
“It is time to explain whence and at what time this
sect of enemies to kingship first began. Why truly
these rare puritans began in Queen Elizabeth's time to
crawl out of hell, and disturb not only the church, but
the state likewise; for they are no less plagues to the
latter than to the former.” Now your very speech be-
wrays you to be a right Balaam; for where you de-
signed to spit out the most bitter poison you could,
there unwittingly and against your will you have pro-
nounced a blessing. For it is notoriously known all
over England, that if any endeavoured to follow the
example of those churches, whether in France or Ger-
many, which they accounted best reformed, and to ex-
ercise the public worship of God in a more pure man-
ner, which our bishops had almost universally corrupted
with their ceremonies and superstitions; or if any
seemed either in point of religion or morality to be bet-
ter than others, such persons were by the favour of
episcopacy termed Puritans. These are they whose
principles you say are so opposite to kingship. Nor
are they the only persons, “most of the reformed re-
ligion, that have not sucked in the rest of their prin-
ciples, yet seem to have approved of those that strike
at kingly government.” So that while you inveigh
bitterly against the Independents, and endeavour to
separate them from Christ's flock, with the same breath
you praise them; and those principles which almost
every where you affirm to be peculiar to the Indepen-
dents, here you confess have been approved of by most
of the reformed religion. Nay, you are arrived to that
degree of impudence, impiety, and apostacy, that
though formerly you maintained bishops ought to be
extirpated out of the church root and branch, as so
many pests and limbs of antichrist, here you say the
king ought to protect them, for the saving of his coro-
nation oath. You cannot shew yourself a more in-
famous villain than you have done already, but by ab-
juring the protestant reformed religion, to which you
are a scandal. Whereas you tax us with giving a
“toleration of all sects and heresies,” you ought not to
find fault with us for that; since the church bears with
such a profligate wretch as you yourself, such a vain
fellow, such a liar, such a mercenary slanderer, such an
apostate, one who has the impudence to affirm, that the
best and most pious of Christians, and even most of
those who profess the reformed religion, are crept out
of hell, because they differ in opinion from you. I
had best pass by the calumnies that fill up the rest of
this chapter, and those prodigious tenets that you as-
cribe to the Independents, to render them odious; for
neither do they at all concern the cause you have in
hand, and they are such for the most part as deserve
to be laughed at and despised, rather than receive a
serious answer.
CHAP. XI.
You seem to begin this eleventh chapter, Salmasius,
though with no modesty, yet with some sense of your
weakness and trifling in this discourse. For whereas
you proposed to yourself to inquire in this place, by
what authority sentence was given against the king;
you add immediately, which nobody expected from you,
that “it is in vain to make any such inquiry; to wit,
because the quality of the persons that did it leaves
hardly any room for such a question.” And therefore
as you have been found guilty of a great deal of im-
pudence and sauciness in the undertaking of this cause,
so since you seem here conscious of your own imper-
tinence, I shall give you the shorter answer. To your
question then; by what authority the house of commons
either condemned the king themselves, or delegated
that power to others; I answer, they did it by virtue
of the supreme authority on earth. How they come to
have the supreme power, you may learn by what I
have said already, when I have refuted your imper-
timencies upon that subject. If you believed yourself,
that you could ever say enough upon any subject, you
would not be so tedious in repeating the same thing so
many times over. And the house of commons might
delegate their judicial power by the same reason, by
which you say the king may delegate his, who received
all he had from the people. Hence in that solemn
league and covenant that you object to us, the parlia-
ments of England and Scotland solemnly protest and
engage to each other, to punish the traitors in such
manner as “the supreme, judicial authority in both
nations, or such as should have a delegated power from
them,” should think fit. Now you hear the parlia-
ments of both nations protest with one voice, that they
may delegate their judicial power, which they call the
supreme; so that you move a vain and frivolous con-
troversy about delegating this power. “But,” say
you, “there were added to those judges, that were
made choice of out of the house of commons, some offi-
cers of the army, and it never was known, that soldiers
had any right to try a subject for his life.” I will
silence you in a very few words: you may remember,
that we are not now discoursing of a subject, but of an
enemy; whom if a general of an army, after he has
taken him prisoner, resolves to dispatch, would he be
thought to proceed otherwise than according to custon,
and martial law, if he himself with some of his officers
should sit upon him, and try and condemn him 2 An
enemy to a state, made a prisoner of war, cannot be
looked upon to be so much as a member, much less a
king in that state. This is declared by that sacred law
of St. Edward, which denies that a bad king is a king
at all, or ought to be called so. Whereas you say, it
was “not the whole, but a part of the house of com-
406
A DEFENCE OF THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND,
mons, that tried and condemned the king,” I give you
this answer: the number of them, who gave their votes
for putting the king to death, was far greater than is
necessary, according to the custom of our parliaments,
to transact the greatest affairs of the kingdom, in the
absence of the rest; who since they were absent through
their own fault, (for to revolt to the common enemy in
their hearts, is the worst sort of absence,) their absence
ought not to hinder the rest who continued faithful to
the cause, from preserving the state; which when it
was in a tottering condition, and almost quite reduced
to slavery and utter ruin, the whole body of the
people had at first committed to their fidelity, pru-
dence, and courage. And they acted their parts
like men; they set themselves in opposition to the un-
ruly wilfulness, the rage, the secret designs of an in-
veterate and exasperated king ; they preferred the
common liberty and safety before their own; they out-
did all former parliaments, they outdid all their ances-
tors, in conduct, magnanimity, and steadiness to their
cause. Yet these very men did a great part of the
people ungratefully desert in the midst of their under-
taking, though they had promised them all fidelity, all
the help and assistance they could afford them. These
were for slavery and peace, with sloth and luxury,
upon any terms: others demanded their liberty, nor
would accept of a peace, that was not sure and honour-
able. What should the parliament do in this case ?
Ought they to have defended this part of the people,
that was sound, and continued faithful to them and their
country, or to have sided with those that deserted both f
I know what you will say they ought to have done.
You are not Eurylochus, but Elpenor, a miserable en-
chanted beast, a filthy swine, accustomed to a sordid
slavery even under a woman ; so that you have not the
least relish of true magnanimity, nor consequently of
liberty, which is the effect of it: you would have all
other men slaves, because you find in yourself no
generous, ingenuous inclinations; you say nothing,
you breathe nothing, but what is mean and servile.
You raise another scruple, to wit, “that he was the
king of Scotland too, whom we condemned;” as if he
might therefore do what he would in England. But
that you may conclude this chapter, which of all others
is the most weak and insipid, at least with some witty
quirk, “there are two little words,” say you, “that
are made up of the same number of letters, and differ
only in the placing of them, but whose significations
are wide asunder, to wit, Wis and Jus, (might and
right).” It is no great wonder, that such a three-let-
tered man as you, (fur, a thief) should make such a
witticism upon three letters: it is the greater wonder
(which yet you assert throughout your book) that two
things so directly opposite to one another as those two
are, should yet meet and become one and the same
thing in kings. For what violence was ever acted
by kings, which you do not affirm to be their right 2
These are all the passages, that I could pick out of
nine long pages, that I thought deserved an answer.
The rest consists either of repetitions of things that
have been answered more than once, or such as have
no relation to the matter in hand. So that my being
more brief in this chapter than in the rest is not
to be imputed to want of diligence in me, which, how
irksome soever you are to me, I have not slackened,
but to your tedious impertinence, so void of matter
and sense.
CHAP. XII.
I wish, Salmasius, that you had left out this part of
your discourse concerning the king's crime, which it
had been more advisable for yourself and your party
to have done; for I am afraid lest in giving you an
answer to it, I should appear too sharp and severe upon
him, now he is dead, and hath received his punish-
ment. But since you choose rather to discourse con-
fidently and at large upon that subject, I will make
you sensible, that you could not have done a more in-
considerate thing, than to reserve the worst part of
your cause to the last, to wit, that of ripping up and
inquiring into the king’s crimes; which when I shall
have proved them to have been true and most exorbi-
tant, they will render his memory unpleasant and
odious to all good men, and imprint now in the close
of the controversy a just hatred of you, who undertake
his defence, on the reader's minds. Say you, “his
accusation may be divided into two parts, one is con-
versant about his morals, the other taxeth him with
such faults as he might commit in his public capacity.”
I will be content to pass by in silence that part of his
life that he spent in banquetting, at plays, and in the
conversation of women; for what can there be in lux-
ury and excess worth relating ' And what would those
things have been to us, if he had been a private per-
son P But since he would be a king, as he could not
live a private life, so neither could his vices be like
those of a private person. For in the first place, he
did a great deal of mischief by his example: in the
second place, all that time that he spent upon his lust,
and his sports, which was a great part of his time, he
stole from the state, the government of which he had
undertaken : thirdly and lastly, he squandered away
vast sums of money, which were not his own, but the
public revenue of the nation, in his domestic luxury
and extravagance. So that in his private life at home
he first began to be an ill king. But let us rather
pass over to those crimes, “that he is charged with on
the account of misgovernment.” Here you lament
his being condemned as a tyrant, a traitor, and a mur-
derer. That he had no wrong done him, shall now be
made appear. But first let us define a tyrant, not ac-
cording to vulgar conceits, but the judgment of Aris-
totle, and of all learned men. He is a tyrant who re-
gards his own welfare and profit only, and not that
of the people. So Aristotle defines one in the tenth
book of his Ethics, and elsewhere, and so do very many
others. Whether Charles regarded his own or the
people's good, these few things of many, that I shall
IN ANSWER TO SALMASIUS'S DEFENCE OF THE KING.
407
but touch upon, will evince. When his rents and
other public revenues of the crown would not defray
the expenses of the court, he laid most heavy taxes
upon the people; and when they were squandered
away, he invented new ones; not for the benefit,
honour, or defence of the state, but that he might hoard
up, or lavish out in one house, the riches and wealth,
not of one, but of three nations. When at this rate he
broke lose, and acted without any colour of law to
warrant his proceedings, knowing that the parliament
was the only thing that could give him check, he en-
deavoured either wholly to lay aside the very calling
of parliaments, or calling them just as often, and no
oſtener, than to serve his own turn, to make them en-
tirely at his devotion. Which bridle when he had cast
off himself, he put another bridle upon the people ; he
put garrisons of German horse and Irish foot in many
towns and cities, and that in time of peace. Do you
think he does not begin to look like a tyrant? In which
very thing, as in many other particulars, which you
have formerly given me occasion to instance, though
you scorn to have Charles compared with so cruel a
tyrant as Nero, he resembled him extremely much.
For Nero likewise often threatened to take away the
senate. Besides, he bore extreme hard upon the con-
sciences of good men, and compelled them to the use
of ceremonies and superstitious worship, borrowed from
popery, and by him reintroduced into the church.
They that would not conform, were imprisoned or
banished. He made war upon the Scots twice for no
other cause than that. By all these actions he has
surely deserved the name of a tyrant once over at least.
Now I will tell you why the word traitor was put into
his indictment: when he assured his parliament by
promises, by proclamations, by imprecations, that he
had no design against the state, at that very time did
he list Papists in Ireland, he sent a private embassy
to the king of Denmark to beg assistance from him of
arms, horses, and men, expressly against the parlia-
ment; and was endeavouring to raise an army first in
England, and then in Scotland. To the English he
promised the plunder of the city of London; to the
Scots, that the four northern counties should be added
to Scotland, if they would but help him to get rid of
the parliament, by what means soever. These projects
not succeeding, he sent over one Dillon, a traitor, into
Ireland with private instructions to the natives, to fall
suddenly upon all the English that inhabited there.—
These are the most remarkable instances of his treasons,
not taken up upon hearsay and idle reports, but disco-
wered by letters under his own hand and seal. And
finally I suppose no man will deny that he was a mur-
derer, by whose order the Irish took arms, and put to
death with most exquisite torments above a hundred
thousand English, who lived peaceably by them, and
without any apprehension of danger; and who raised
So great a civil war in the other two kingdoms. Add
to all this, that at the treaty in the Isle of Wight the
king openly took upon himself the guilt of the war,
and cleared the parliament in the confession he made
there, which is publicly known. Thus you have in
short why King Charles was adjudged a tyrant, a trai-
tor, and a murderer. “But,” say you, “why was he
not declared so before, neither in that solemn league
and covenant, nor afterwards when he was delivered
to them, either by the Presbyterians or the Indepen-
dents, but on the other hand was received as a king
ought to be, with all reverence P” This very thing is
sufficient to persuade any rational man, that the parlia-
ment entered not into any councils of quite deposing
the king, but as their last refuge, after they had suſ-
fered and undergone all that possibly they could, and
had attempted all other ways and means. You alone
endeavour maliciously to lay that to their charge, which
to all good men cannot but evidence their great patience,
moderation, and perhaps a too long forbearing with the
king's pride and arrogance. But “in the month of
August, before the king suffered, the house of commons,
which then bore the only sway, and was governed by
the Independents, wrote letters to the Scots, in which
they acquainted them, that they never intended to alter
the form of government that had obtained so long in
England under king, lords, and commons.” You may
sce from hence, how little reason there is to ascribe the
deposing of the king to the principles of the Indepen-
dents. They, that never used to dissemble and conceal
their tenets, even then, when they had the sole manage-
ment of affairs, profess, “That they never intended to
alter the government.” But if afterwards a thing came
into their minds, which at first they intended not, why
might they not take such a course, though before not
intended, as appeared most advisable, and most for the
nation's interest? Especially when they found, that the
king could not possibly be intreated or induced to as-
sent to those just demands, that they had made from
time to time, and which were always the same from
first to last. He persisted in those perverse sentiments
with respect to religion and his own right, which he
had all along espoused, and which were so destructive
to us; not in the least altered from the man that he
was, when in peace and war he did us all so much
mischief. If he assented to any thing, he gave no ob-
scure hints, that he did it against his will, and that
whenever he should come into power again, he would
look upon such his assent as null and void. The same
thing his son declared by writing under his hand, when
in those days he run away with part of the fleet, and
so did the king himself by letters to some of his own
party in London. In the mean time, against the avowed
sense of the parliament, he struck up a private peace
with the Irish, the most barbarous enemies imaginable
to England, upon base dishonourable terms; but when-
ever he invited the English to treaties of peace, at those
very times, with all the power he had, and interest he
could make, he was preparing for war. In this case,
what should they do, who were entrusted with the care
of the government? Ought they to have betrayed the
safety of us all to our most bitter adversary 2 Or would
you have had them left us to undergo the calamities of
another seven years' war, not to say worse? God put a
better mind into them, of preferring, pursuant to that
very solemn league and covenant, their religion and
408
A DEFENCE OF THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND,
liberties, before those thoughts they once had, of not
rejecting the king; for they had not gone so far as to
vote it; all which they saw at last, (though indeed later
than they might have done,) could not possibly subsist,
as long as the king continued king. The parliament
ought and must of necessity be entirely free, and at
liberty to provide for the good of the nation, as occa-
sion requires; nor ought they so to be wedded to their
first sentiments, as to scruple the altering their minds,
for their own, or the nation's good, if God put an
opportunity into their hands of procuring it. But
“the Scots were of another opinion; for they, in a let-
ter to Charles, the king's son, call his father a most
sacred prince, and the putting him to death a most
execrable villamy.” Do not you talk of the Scots,
whom you know not; we know them well enough, and
know the time when they called that same king a most
execrable person, a murderer, and a traitor; and the
putting a tyrant to death a most sacred action. Then
you pick holes in the king's charge, as not being pro-
perly penned; and you ask “why we needed to call
him a traitor and a murderer, after we had styled him
a tyrant; since the word tyrant includes all the crimes
that may be ;” and then you explain to us grammati-
cally and critically, what a tyrant is. Away with
those trifles, you pedagogue, which that one definition
of Aristotle's, that has lately been cited, will utterly
confound; and teach such a doctor as you, that the
word tyrant (for all your concern is barely to have
some understanding of words) may be applied to one,
who is neither a traitor nor a murderer. But “the
laws of England do not make it treason in the king,
to stir up sedition against himself or the people.” Nor
do they say, that the parliament can be guilty of trea-
son by deposing a bad king, nor that any parliament
ever was so, though they have often done it; but our
laws plainly and clearly declare, that a king may vio-
late, diminish, nay, and wholly lose his royalty. For
that expression in the law of St. Edward, of “losing
the name of a king,” signifies neither more nor less,
than being deprived of the kingly office and dignity;
which befel Chilperic king of France, whose example
for illustration sake is taken notice of in the law itself.
There is not a lawyer amongst us, that can deny, but
that the highest treason may be committed against the
kingdom as well as against the king. I appeal to
Glanville himself, whom you cite, “If any man at-
tempt to put the king to death, or raise sedition in the
realm, it is high treason.” So that attempt of some
papists to blow up the parliament-house, and the lords
and commons there with gunpowder, was by King
James himself, and both houses of parliament, declared
to be high treason, not against the king only, but
against the parliament and the whole kingdom. It
would be to no purpose to quote more of our statutes,
to prove so clear a truth; which yet I could easily do.
For the thing itself is ridiculous, and absurd to ima-
gine, that high treason may be committed against the
king, and not against the people, for whose good, nay,
and by whose leave, as I may say, the king is what
he is: so that you babble over so many statutes of ours
to no purpose; you toil and wallow in our ancient
law-books to no purpose; for the laws themselves
stand or fall by authority of parliament, who always
had power to confirm or repeal them; and the parlia-
ment is the sole judge of what is rebellion, what high
treason, (laºsa majestas,) and what not. Majesty never
was vested to that degree in the person of the king, as
not to be more conspicuous and more august in parlia-
ment, as I have often she win: but who can endure to
hear such a senseless fellow, such a French mounte-
bank, as you, declare what our laws are 2 And, you
English fugitives! so many bishops, doctors, lawyers,
who pretend that all learning and ingenuous literature
is fled out of England with yourselves, was there not
one of you that could defend the king's cause and your
own, and that in good Latin also, to be submitted to
the judgment of other nations, but that this brainsick,
beggarly I’renchman must be hired to undertake the
defence of a poor indigent king, surrounded with so
many infant-priests and doctors 2 This very thing, I
assure you, will be a great imputation to you amongst
foreigners; and you will be thought deservedly to have
lost that cause, you were so far from being able to
defend by force of arms, as that you cannot so much
as write in behalf of it. But now I come to you
again, good man Goosecap, who scribble so finely;
if at least you are come to yourself again: for I find
you here towards the latter end of your book in a
deep sleep, and dreaming of some voluntary death or
other, that is nothing to the purpose. Then you
“ deny, that it is possible for a king in his right wits
to embroil his people in seditions, to betray his own
forces to be slaughtered by enemies, and raise ſac-
tions against himself.” All which things having been
done by many kings, and particularly by Charles the
late king of England, you will no longer doubt, 1
hope, especially being addicted to Stoicism, but that
all tyrants, as well as profligate villains, are down-
right mad. Hear what Horace says, “Whoever
through a senseless stupidity, or any other cause what-
soever, hath his understanding so blinded, as not to
discern truth, the Stoics account of him as of a mad-
man: and such are whole nations, such are kings and
princes, such are all mankind; except those very few
that are wise.” So that if you would clear King
Charles from the imputation of acting like a madman,
you must first vindicate his integrity, and shew that
he never acted like an ill man. “But a king,” you
say, “cannot commit treason against his own subjects
and vassals.” In the first place, since we are as free as
any people under heaven, we will not be imposed upon
by any barbarous custom of any other nation whatso-
ever. In the second place, suppose we had been the
king's vassals; that relation would not have obliged
us to endure a tyrant to reign and lord it over us. All
subjection to magistrates, as our own laws declare, is
circumscribed, and confined within the bounds of ho-
nesty, and the public good. Read Leg. Hen. I. Cap.
55. The obligation betwixt a lord and his tenants is
mutual, and remains so long as the lord protects his te-
nant; (this is all our lawyers tell us;) but if the lord be
IN ANSWER TO SALMASIUS'S DEFENCE OF THE KING.
409
too severe and cruel to his tenant, and do him some
heinous injury, “The whole relation betwixt them,
and whatever obligation the tenant is under by having
done homage to his lord, is utterly dissolved and ex-
tinguished.” These are the very words of Bracton and
Fleta. So that in some case, the law itself warrants
even a slave, or a vassal, to oppose his lord, and allows
the slave to kill him, if he vanquish him in battle. If
a city or a whole nation may not lawfully take this
course with a tyrant, the condition of freemen will be
worse than that of slaves. Then you go about to ex-
cuse King Charles's shedding of innocent blood, partly
by murders committed by other kings, and partly by
some instances of men put to death by them lawfully.
For the matter of the Irish massacre, you refer the
reader to 'Eurov Baqi)\tki); and I refer you to Eicono-
clastes. The town of Rochel being taken, and the
townsmen betrayed, assistance shewn, but not afforded
them, you will not have laid at Charles's door; nor
have I any thing to say, whether he was faulty in that
business or not; he did mischief enough at home; we
need not inquire into what misdemeanours he was
guilty of abroad. But you in the mean time would
make all the protestant churches, that have at any time
defended themselves by force of arms against princes,
who were professed enemies of their religion, to have
been guilty of rebellion. Let them consider how much
it concerns them for the maintaining their ecclesiasti-
cal discipline, and asserting their own integrity, not to
pass by so great an indignity offered them by a person
bred up by and amongst themselves. That which
troubles us most is, that the English likewise were be-
trayed, in that expedition. He, who had designed
long ago to convert the government of England into a
tyranny, thought he could not bring it to pass, till the
flower and strength of the military power of the nation
were cut off. Another of his crimes was, the causing
some words to be struck out of the usual coronation
oath, before he himself would take it. Unworthy and
abominable action | The act was wicked in itself;
what shall be said of him that undertakes to justify it?
For by the eternal God, what greater breach of faith,
and violation of all laws, can possibly be imagined P
What ought to be more sacred to him, next to the holy
sacraments themselves, than that oath P Which of the
two do you think the more flagitious person, him that
offends against the law, or him that endeavours to
make the law equally guilty with himself? Or rather
him who subverts the law itself, that he may not seem
to offend against it? For thus that king violated that
oath, which he ought most religiously to have sworn
to ; but that he might not seem openly and publicly to
violate it, he craftily adulterated and corrupted it; and
lest he himself should be accounted perjured, he turned
the very oath into a perjury. What other could be ex-
pected, than that his reign would be full of injustice,
craft, and misfortune, who began it with so detestable
an injury to his people 2 And who durst pervert and
adulterate that law, which he thought the only obsta-
cle that stood in his way, and hindered him from per-
verting all the rest of the laws: But “that oath’’ (thus
you justify him) “lays no other obligation upon kings,
than the laws themselves do : and kings pretend, that
they will be bound and limited by laws, though indeed
they are altogether from under the power of the laws.”
Is it not prodigious, that a man should dare to express
himself so sacrilegiously and so senselessly, as to as-
sert, that an oath sacredly sworn upon the Holy Evan-
gelists, may be dispensed with, and set aside as a little
insignificant thing, without any cause whatsoever !
Charles himself refutes you, you prodigy of impiety,
who, thinking that oath no light matter, choose rather
by a subterfuge to avoid the force of it, or by a fallacy
to elude it, than openly to violate it; and would rather
falsify and corrupt the oath, than manifestly forswear
himself after he had taken it. But “The king indeed
swears to his people, as the people do to him; but the
people swear fidelity to the king, not the king to them.”
Pretty invention 1 Does not he that promises, and binds
himself by an oath to do any thing to or for another,
oblige his fidelity to them that require the oath of him 2
Of a truth, every king swears Fidelity, and Service,
and Obedience to the people, with respect to the per-
formance of whatsoever he promises upon oath to do.
Then you run back to William the Conqueror, who
was forced more than once to swear to perform, not
what he himself would, but what the people and the
great men of the realm required of him. If many
kings “are crowned without the usual solemnity,” and
reign without taking any oath, the same thing may be
said of the people; a great many of whom never took
the oath of allegiance. If the king by not taking an
oath be at liberty, the people are so too. And that part
of the people that has sworn, swore not to the king only,
but to the realm, and the laws, by which the king
came to his crown; and no otherwise to the king, than
whilst he should act according to those laws, that
“ the common People,” that is, the house of Com-
mons, should choose; (quas vulgus elegerit.) For it
were folly to alter the phrase of our law, and turn
it into more genuine Latin. This clause, (quas
vulgus elegerit,) which the commons shall choose,
Charles before he was crowned, procured to be razed
out. “But,” say you, “without the king's assent the
people can choose no laws;” and for this you cite two
statutes, viz. Anno 37 H. VI, Cap. 15, and 13 Edw. IV,
Cap. 8: but these two statutes are so far from appear-
ing in our statute-books, that in the years you mention
neither of those kings enacted any laws at all. Go now
and complain, that those fugitives, who pretended to
furnish you with matter out of our statutes, imposed
upon you in it; and let other people in the mean time
stand astonished at your impudence and vanity, who
are not ashamed to pretend to be thoroughly versed in
such books, as it is so evident you have never looked
into, nor so much as seen. And that clause in the
coronation oath, which such a brazen-faced brawler as
you call fictitious, “The king's friends,” you say your-
self, “acknowledge, that it may possibly be extant in
some ancient copies, but that it grew into disuse, be-
cause it had no convenient signification.” But for
that very reason did our ancestors insert it in the oath,
410
A DEFENCE OF THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND,
that the oath might have such a signification as would
not be for a tyrant's conveniency. If it had really
grown into disuse, which yet is most false, there was
the greater need of reviving it; but even that would
have been to no purpose, according to your doctrine :
“For that custom of taking an oath, as kings now-a-
days generally use it, is no more,” you say, “than a
bare ceremony.” And yet the king, when the bishops
were to be put down, pretended that he could not do it
by reason of that oath. And consequently that rever-
end and sacred oath, as it serves for the king's turn, or
not, must be solemn and binding, or an empty cere-
mony: which I earnestly entreat my countrymen to
take notice of, and to consider what manner of a king
they are like to have, if he ever come back. For it
would never have entered into the thoughts of this ras-
cally foreign grammarian, to write a discourse of the
rights of the crown of England, unless both Charles
Stuart now in banishment, and tainted with his father's
principles, and those profligate tutors that he has along
with him, had industriously suggested to him what
they would have writ. They dictated to him, “That
the whole parliament were liable to be proceeded
against as traitors, because they declared without the
king's assent all them to be traitors, who had taken up
arms against the parliament of England; and that
parliaments were but the king's vassals: that the oath,
which our kings take at their coronation, is but a cere-
mony:” And why not that a vassal too? So that no
reverence of laws, no sacredness of an oath, will be
sufficient to protect your lives and fortunes, either from
the exorbitance of a furious, or the revenge of an ex-
asperated, prince, who has been so, instructed from his
cradle, as to think laws, religion, nay, and oaths them-
selves, ought to be subject to his will and pleasure.
How much better is it, and more becoming yourselves,
if you desire riches, liberty, peace, and empire, to ob-
tain them assuredly by your own virtue, industry, pru-
dence, and valour, than to long after and hope for
them in vain under the rule of a king £ They who are
of opinion that these things cannot be compassed but
under a king, and a lord, it cannot well be expressed
how mean, how base, I do not say, how unworthy,
thoughts they have of themselves; for in effect, what
do they other than confess, that they themselves are
lazy, weak, senseless, silly persons, and framed for
slavery both in body and mind P And indeed all man-
ner of slavery is scandalous and disgraceful to a free-
born ingenuous person; but for you, after you have
recovered your lost liberty, by God’s assistance, and
your own arms; after the performance of so many
valiant exploits, and the making so remarkable an ex-
ample of a most potent king, to desire to return again
into a condition of bondage and slavery, will not only
be scandalous and disgraceful, but an impious and
wicked thing ; and equal to that of the Israelites, who
for desiring to return to the Egyptian slavery were so
severely punished for that sordid, slavish temper of
mind, and so many of them destroyed by that God
who had been their deliverer. But what say you now,
who would persuade us to become slaves * “The
king,” say you, “ had a power of pardoning such as
were guilty of treason, and other crimes; which evinces
sufficiently, that the king himself was under no law.”
The king might indeed pardon treason, not against the
kingdom, but against himself; and so may any body
else pardon wrongs done to themselves; and he might,
perhaps, pardon some other offences, though not always.
But does it follow, because in some cases he had the
right of saving a malefactor's life, that therefore he
must have a right to destroy all good men 2 If the
king be impleaded in an inferiour court, he is not
obliged to answer, but by his attorney : does it there-
fore follow, that when he is summoned by all his sub-
jects to appear in parliament, he may choose whether
he will appear or no, and refuse to answer in person 2
You say, “That we endeavour to justify what we
have done by the Hollanders’ example;” and upon
this occasion, fearing the loss of that stipend with
which the Hollanders feed such a murrain and pest as
you are, if by reviling the English you should con-
sequently reflect upon them that maintain you, you
endeavour to demonstrate “how unlike their actions
and ours are.” The comparison that you make be-
twixt them I resolve to omit (though many things in
it are most false, and other things flattery all over,
which yet you thought yourself obliged to put down,
to deserve your pension). For the English think
they need not allege the examples of foreigners for
their justification. They have municipal laws of
their own, by which they have acted ; laws with rela-
tion to the matter in hand the best in the world : they
have the examples of their ancestors, great and gal-
lant men, for their imitation, who never gave way to
the exorbitant power of princes, and who have put
many of them to death, when their government be-
came insupportable. They were born free, they stand
in need of no other nation, they can make what laws
they please for their own good government. One
law in particular they have a great veneration for,
and a very ancient one it is, enacted by nature itself,
That all human laws, all civil right and government,
must have a respect to the safety and welfare of good
men, and not be subject to the lusts of princes. From
hence to the end of your book I find nothing but rub-
bish and trifles, picked out of the former chapters; of
which you have here raised so great a heap, that I can-
not imagine what other design you could have in it,
than to presage the ruin of your whole fabric. At last,
after an infinite deal of tittle-tattle, you make an end,
calling “God to witness, that you undertook the de-
fence of this cause, not only because you were desired
so to do, but because your own conscience told you,
that you could not possibly undertake the defence of a
better.” Is it fit for you to intermeddle with our
matters, with which you have nothing to do, because
you were desired, when we ourselves did not desire
you ? to reproach with contumelious and opprobrious
language, and in a printed book, the supreme magis-
tracy of the English nation, when according to the
authority and power that they are intrusted with, they
do but their duty within their own jurisdiction, and all
IN ANSWER TO SALMASIUS'S DEFENCE OF THE KING.
41 I
this without the least injury or provocation from them?
(for they did not so much as know that there was such
a man in the world as you) And I pray by whom
were you desired 2 By your wife, I suppose, who, they
say, exercises a kingly right and jurisdiction over you;
and whenever she has a mind to it (as Fulvia is made
to speak in that obscene epigram, that you collected
some centoes out of, page 320) cries, “Either write, or
let us fight;” that made you write perhaps, lest the
signal should be given. Or were you asked by Charles
the younger, and that profligate gang of vagabond
courtiers, and like a second Balaam called upon by an-
other Balak to restore a desperate cause by ill writing,
that was lost by ill fighting 2 That may be ; but there
is this difference, for he was a wise understanding man,
and rid upon an ass that could speak, to curse the
people of God: thou art a very talkative ass thyself,
and rid by a woman, and being surrounded with the
healed heads of the bishops, that heretofore thou hadst
wounded, thou seemest to represent that beast in the
Revelation. But they say, that a little after you had
written this book you repented of what you had done.
It is well, if it be so; and to make your repentance
public, I think the best course that you can take will
be, for this long book that you have writ, to take a
halter, and make one long letter of yourself. So Judas
Iscariot repented, to whom you are like ; and that
young Charles knew, which made him send you the
purse, Judas his badge; for he had heard before, and
found afterward by experience, that you were an apos-
'tate and a devil. Judas betrayed Christ himself, and
you betray his church; you have taught heretofore,
that bishops were antichristian, and you are now re-
volted to their party. You now undertake the defence
of their cause, whom formerly you damned to the pit
of hell. Christ delivered all men from bondage, and
you endeavour to enslave all mankind. Never ques-
tion, since you have been such a villain to God him-
self, his church, and all mankind in general, but that
the same fate attends you that befell your equal, out
of despair rather than repentance, to be weary of your
life, and hang yourself, and burst asunder as he did;
and to send before-hand that faithless and treacherous
conscience of yours, that railing conscience at good
and holy men, to that place of torment that is prepared
for you. And now I think, through God’s assistance,
I have finished the work I undertook, to wit, the de-
fence of the noble actions of my countrymen at home,
and abroad, against the raging and envious madness
of this distracted sophister; and the asserting of the
common rights of the people against the unjust domi-
nation of kings, not out of any hatred to kings, but ty-
rants: nor have I purposely left unanswered any one
argument alleged by my adversary, nor any one ex-
ample or authority quoted by him, that seemed to have
any force in it, or the least colour of an argument.
Perhaps I have been guilty rather of the other extreme,
of replying to some of his fooleries and trifles, as if they
were solid arguments, and thereby may seem to have
attributed more to them than they deserved. One thing
yet remains to be done, which perhaps is of the greatest
concern of all, and that is, that you, my country men,
refute this adversary of yours yourselves, which I do
not see any other means of your effecting, than by a
constant endeavour to outdo all men's bad words by
your own good deeds. When you laboured under more
sorts of oppression than one, you betook yourselves to
God for refuge, and he was graciously pleased to hear
your most earnest prayer and desires. He has glo-
riously delivered you, the first of nations, from the two
greatest mischiefs of this life, and most pernicious to
virtue, tyranny and superstition; he has endued you
with greatness of mind to be the first of mankind, who
after having conquered their own king, and having had
him delivered into their hands, have not scrupled to con-
demn him judicially, and pursuant to that sentence of
condemnation, to put him to death. Aſter the performing
so glorious an action as this, you ought to do nothing
that is mean and little, not so much as to think of,
much less to do, any thing but what is great and sub-
lime. Which to attain to, this is your only way; as you
have subdued your enemies in the field, so to make ap-
pear, that unarmed, and in the highest outward peace and
tranquillity, you of all mankind are best able to subdue
ambition, avarice, the love of riches, and can best avoid
the corruptions that prosperity is apt to introduce, (which
generally subdue and triumph over other nations,) to
shew as great justice, temperance, and moderation in
the maintaining your liberty, as you have shewn cou-
rage in freeing yourselves from slavery. These are
the only arguments, by which you will be able to
evince, that you are not such persons as this fellow re-
presents you, Traitors, Robbers, Murderers, Parricides,
Madmen; that you did not put your king to death out
of any ambitious design, or a desire of invading the
rights of others, not out of any seditious principles or
sinister ends; that it was not an act of fury or mad-
ness; but that it was wholly out of love to your liberty,
your religion, to justice, virtue, and your country, that
you punished a tyrant. But if it should fall out other-
wise, (which God forbid,) if as you have been valiant
in war, you should grow debauched in peace, you that
have had such visible demonstrations of the goodness
of God to yourselves, and his wrath against your
enemies; and that you should not have learned by so
eminent, so remarkable an example before your eyes,
to fear God, and work righteousness; for my part, I
shall easily grant and confess (for I cannot deny it)
whatever ill men may speak or think of you, to be
very true. And you will find in a little time, that
God's displeasure against you will be greater than
it has been against your adversaries, greater than his
grace and favour has been to yourselves, which you
have had larger experience of than any other nation
under heaven.
T R. E. A T I S. E.
C IV IL POW ER IN E C C L E S I ASTICAL CA US ES;
SHRWRNG
THAT IT IS NOT LAWFUL FOR ANY POWER ON EARTH TO
COMPEL IN MATTERS OF RELIGION.
[FIRST Published 1659.]
TO THE PARLIAMENT OF THE COMMON WEALTH OF ENGLAND, WITH THE DOMINIONS THEREOF.
I HAVE prepared, Supreme Council against the much-
expected time of your sitting, this treatise; which,
though to all christian magistrates equally belonging,
and therefore to have been written in the common lan-
guage of christendom, natural duty and affection hath
confined and dedicated first to my own nation; and
in a season wherein the timely reading thereof, to the
easier accomplishment of your great work, may save
you much labour and interruption : of two parts usu-
ally proposed, civil and ecclesiastical, recommending
civil only to your proper care, ecclesiastical to them
only from whom it takes both that name and nature.
Yet not for this cause only do I require or trust to find
acceptance, but in a twofold respect besides: first, as
bringing clear evidence of scripture and protestant
maxims to the parliament of England, who in all their
late acts, upon occasion, have professed to assert only
the true protestant christian religion, as it is contained
in the Holy Scriptures: next, in regard that your
power being but for a time, and having in yourselves
a christian liberty of your own, which at one time or
other may be oppressed, thereof truly sensible, it will
concern you while you are in power, so to regard other
men's consciences, as you would your own should be
regarded in the power of others; and to consider that
any law against conscience is alike in force against
any conscience, and so may one way or other justly
redound upon yourselves. One advantage I make no
doubt of, that I shall write to many eminent persons
of your number, already perfect and resolved in this
important article of Christianity. Some of whom I re- |
member to have heard often for several years, at a
council next in authority to your own, so well joining
religion with civil prudence, and yet so well distin-
guishing the different power of either; and this not
only voting, but frequently reasoning why it should be
so, that if any there present had been before of an opinion
contrary, he might doubtless have departed thence a
convert in that point, and have confessed, that then
both commonwealth and religion will at length, if ever,
flourish in christendom, when either they who govern
discern between civil and religious, or they only who so
discern shall be admitted to govern. Till then, nothing
but troubles, persecutions, commotions can be expected;
the inward decay of true religion among ourselves, and
the utter overthrow at last by a common enemy. Of
civil liberty I have written heretofore, by the appoint-
ment, and not without the approbation, of civil power:
of christian liberty I write now, which others long
since having done with all freedom under heathen em-
perors, I should do wrong to suspect, that I now shall
with less under christian governors, and such especi-
ally as profess openly their defence of christian liber-
ty; although I write this, not otherwise appointed or
induced, than by an inward persuasion of the christian
duty, which I may usefully discharge herein to the
common Lord and Master of us all, and the certain hope
of his approbation, first and chiefest to be sought: in
the hand of whose providence I remain, praying all
success and good event on your public councils, to the
defence of true religion and our civil rights.
John MILTON.
A T R E A TIS E
OF
CIVIL POWER IN ECCI,ESIASTICAL CAUSES.
Two things there be, which have been ever found
working much mischief to the church of God, and the
advancement of truth ; force on one side restraining,
and hire on the other side corrupting, the teachers there-
of. Few ages have been since the ascension of our
Saviour, wherein the one of these two, or both toge-
ther, have not prevailed. It can be at no time, there-
fore, unseasonable to speak of these things; since by
them the church is either in continual detriment and
oppression, or in continual danger. The former shall be
at this time my argument; the latter as I shall find God
disposing me, and opportunity inviting. What I argue,
shall be drawn from the Scripture only; and therein
from true fundamental principles of the gospel, to all
knowing Christians undeniable. And if the governors
of this commonwealth, since the rooting out of prelates,
have made least use of force in religion, and most have
favoured christian liberty of any in this island before
them since the first preaching of the gospel, for which
we are not to forget our thanks to God, and their due
praise; they may, I doubt not, in this treatise, find
that which not only will confirm them to defend still
the christian liberty which we enjoy, but will incite
them also to enlarge it, if in aught they yet straiten
it. To them who perhaps hereafter, less experienced
in religion, may come to govern or give us laws, this
or other such, if they please, may be a timely instruc-
tion: however, to the truth it will be at all times no
unneedful testimony, at least some discharge of that
general duty, which no Christian, but according to what
he hath received, knows is required of him, if he have
aught more conducing to the advancement of religion,
than what is usually endeavoured, freely to impart it.
It will require no great labour of exposition, to un-
fold what is here meant by matters of religion; being
as soon apprehended as defined, such things as belong
chiefly to the knowledge and service of God; and are
either above the reach and light of nature without re-
velation from above, and therefore liable to be variously
understood by human reason, or such things as are en-
joined or forbidden by divine precept, which else by
the light of reason would seem indifferent to be done
or not done; and so likewise must needs appear to
every man as the precept is understood. Whence I
here mean by conscience or religion that full per-
suasion, whereby we are assured, that our belief and
practice, as far as we are able to apprehend and pro-
bably make appear, is according to the will of God
and his Holy Spirit within us, which we ought to fol-
low much rather than any law of man, as not only his
word every where bids us, but the very dictate of rea-
son tells us. Acts iv. 19. “Whether it be right in the
sight of God, to hearken to you more than to God,
judge ye.” That for belief or practice in religion, ac-
cording to this conscientious persuasion, no man ought
to be punished or molested by any outward force on
earth whatsoever, I distrust not, through God's im-
plored assistance, to make plain by these following
arguments.
First, it cannot be denied, being the main foundation
of our protestant religion, that we of these ages, having
no other divine rule or authority from without us, war-
rantable to one another as a common ground, but the
Holy Scripture, and no other within us but the illumina-
tion of the Holy Spirit so interpreting that scripture as
warrantable only to ourselves, and to such whose con-
sciences we can so persuade, can have no other ground in
matters of religion but only from the Scriptures. And
these being not possible to be understood without this
divine illumination, which no man can know at all
times to be in himself, much less to be at any time
for certain in any other, it follows clearly, that mo man
or body of men in these times can be the infalli-
ble judges or determiners in matters of religion to any
other men's consciences but their own. And there-
fore those Bereans are commended, Acts xvii. 11, who
after the preaching even of St. Paul, “searched the
Scriptures daily, whether those things were so.” Nor
did they more than what God himself in many places
commands us by the same apostle, to search, to try, to
judge of these things ourselves: and gives us reason
also, Gal. vi. 4, 5, “Let every man prove his own
work, and then shall he have rejoicing in himself alone,
and not in another: for every man shall bear his own
burden.” If them we count it so ignorant and irreli-
gious in the papist, to think himself discharged in
God's account, believing only as the church believes,
how much greater condemnation will it be to the pro-
testant his condemner, to think himself justified, be-
lieving only as the state believes? With good cause,
therefore, it is the general consent of all sound pro-
testant writers, that neither traditions, councils, nor
canons of any visible church, much less edicts of any
magistrate or civil session, but the Scripture only, can
3.
414
A TREATISE OF CIVIL POWER
be the final judge or rule in matters of religion, and
that only in the conscience of every christian to him-
self. Which protestation made by the first public re-
formers of our religion against the imperial edicts of
Charles the fifth, imposing church-traditions without
Scripture, gave first beginning to the name of Protes-
tant; and with that name hath ever been received this
doctrine, which prefers the Scripture before the church,
and acknowledges none but the Scripture sole inter-
preter of itself to the conscience. For if the church be
not sufficient to be implicitly believed, as we hold it is
not, what can there else be named of more authority
than the church but the conscience, than which God
only is greater, l John iii. 202 But if any man shall
pretend that the Scripture judges to his conscience for
other men, he makes himself greater not only than the
church, but also than the Scripture, than the consciences
of other men : a presumption too high for any mortal,
since every true Christian, able to give a reason of his
faith, hath the word of God before him, the promised
Holy Spirit, and the mind of Christ within him, 1 Cor.
ii. 16; a much better and safer guide of conscience,
which as far as concerns himself he may far more cer-
tainly know, than any outward rule imposed upon him
by others, whom he inwardly neither knows nor can
know ; at least knows nothing of them more sure than
this one thing, that they cannot be his judges in reli-
gion. I Cor. ii. 15, “The spiritual man judgeth all
things, but he himself is judged of no man.” Chiefly
for this cause do all true protestants account the pope
Antichrist, for that he assumes to himself this infalli-
bility over both the conscience and the Scripture; “sit-
ting in the temple of God,” as it were opposite to God,
“ and exalting himself above all that is called God, or
is worshipped,” 2 Thess. ii. 4. That is to say, not only
above all judges and magistrates, who though they be
called gods, are far beneath inſallible; but also above
God himself, by giving law both to the Scripture, to the
conscience, and to the Spirit itself of God within us.
Whenas we find, James iv. 12, “There is one lawgiver,
who is able to save and to destroy: Who art thou that
judgest another " That Christ is the only lawgiver of
his church, and that it is here meant in religious mat-
ters, no well-grounded Christian will deny. Thus also
St. Paul, Rom. xiv. 4, “Who art thou that judgest the
servant of another P to his own lord he standeth or
falleth : but he shall stand ; for God is able to make
him stand.” As therefore of one beyond expression
bold and presumptuous, both these apostles demand,
“Who art thou,” that presumest to impose other law
or judgment in religion than the only lawgiver and
judge Christ, who only can save and destroy, gives to
the conscience P And the forecited place to the Thes-
salouians, by compared effects, resolves us, that be he
or they who or wherever they be or can be, they are of
far less authority than the church, whom in these things
as protestants they receive not, and yet no less Anti-
christ in this main point of Antichristianism, no less a .
pope or popedom than he at Rome, if not much more,
by setting up supreme interpreters of Scripture either
those doctors whom they follow, or, which is far worse,
themselves as a civil papacy assuming unaccountable
supremacy to themselves, not in civil only, but in eccle-
siastical causes. Seeing then that in matters of reli
gion, as hath been proved, none can judge or determine
here on earth, no not church-governors themselves,
against the consciences of other believers, my inference
is, or rather not mine but our Saviour's own, that in
those matters they neither can command nor use con-
straint, lest they run rashly on a pernicious consequence,
forewarned in that parable, Matt. xiii. from the 29th to
the 31st verse: “Lest while ye gather up the tares, ye
root up also the wheat with them. Let both grow to-
gether until the harvest: and in the time of harvest I
will say to the reapers, Gather ye together first the
tares,” &c. Whereby he declares, that this work
neither his own ministers nor any else can discern-
ingly enough or judgingly perform without his own
immediate direction, in his own fit season, and that
they ought till then not to attempt it. Which is
further confirmed, 2 Cor. i. 24, “Not that we have
dominion over your faith, but are helpers of your
joy.” If apostles had no dominion or constraining
power over faith or conscience, much less have ordinary
ministers, 1 Pet. v. 2, 3, “Feed the flock of God, &c.
not by constraint, neither as being lords over God's
heritage.” But some will object, that this overthrows
all church-discipline, all censure of errours, if no man
can determine. My answer is, that what they hear is
plain Scripture, which forbids not church-sentence or
determining, but as it ends in violence upon the con-
science unconvinced. Let whoso will interpret or de-
termine, so it be according to true church-discipline,
which is exercised on them only who have willingly
joined themselves in that covenant of union, and pro-
ceeds only to a separation from the rest, proceeds never
to any corporal inforcement or forfeiture of money,
which in all spiritual things are the two arms of Anti-
christ, not of the true church ; the one being an inqui-
sition, the other no better than a temporal indulgence
of sin for money, whether by the church exacted or
by the magistrate; both the one and the other a
temporal satisfaction for what Christ hath satisfied
eternally; a popish commuting of penalty, corporal
for spiritual; a satisfaction to man, especially to the
magistrate, for what and to whom we owe none : these
and more are the injustices of force and fining in
religion, besides what I most insist on, the violation of
God's express commandment in the gospel, as hath
been shewn. Thus then, if church-governors cannot
use force in religion, though but for this reason, be-
cause they cannot infallibly determine to the conscience
without convincement, much less have civil magis-
trates authority to use force where they can much less
judge; unless they mean only to be the civil execu-
tioners of them who have no civil power to give them
such commission, no, nor yet ecclesiastical, to any
force or violence in religion. To sum up all in brief,
if we must believe as the magistrate appoints, why not
rather as the church 2 If not as either without con-
vincement, how can force be lawful ? But some are
ready to cry out, what shall then be done to blas-
IN ECCLESIASTICAL CAUSES.
415
phemy 2 Them I would first exhort, not thus to terrify
and pose the people with a Greek word ; but to teach
them better what it is, being a most usual and common
word in that language to signify any slander, any ma-
licious or evil speaking, whether against God or man,
or any thing to good belonging: Blasphemy or evil
speaking against God maliciously, is far from con-
science in religion, according to that of Mark ix. 39,
“There is none who doth a powerful work in my
name, and can lightly speak evil of me.” If this suf-
fice not, I refer them to that prudent and well delibe-
rated act, August 9, 1650, where the parliament de-
fines blasphemy against God, as far as it is a crime be-
longing to civil judicature, plenius ac melius Chrysippo
et Crantore; in plain English, more warily, more ju-
diciously, more orthodoxally than twice their number
of divines have done in many a prolix volume: al-
though in all likelihood they whose whole study and
profession these things are, should be most intelligent
and authentic therein, as they are for the most part, yet
neither they nor these unerring always, or infallible.
But we shall not carry it thus; another Greek appari-
tion stands in our way, Heresy and Heretic; in like
manner also railed at to the people as in a tongue un-
known. They should first interpret to them, that he-
resy, by what it signifies in that language, is no word
of evil note, meaning only the choice or following of
any opinion good or bad in religion, or any other
learning : and thus not only in heathem authors, but in
the New Testament itself, without censure or blame;
Acts xv. 5, “Certain of the heresy of the Pharisees
which believed;” and xxvi. 5, “After the exactest he-
resy of our religion I lived a Pharisee.” In which
tense presbyterian or independent may without re-
proach be called a heresy. Where it is mentioned
with llame, it seems to differ little from schism; 1
Cor. xi. 18, 19, “I hear that there be schisms among
you,” &c. for there must also heresies be among you,
&c. Though some, who write of heresy after their
own heads, would make it far worse than schism ;
whenas on the contrary, schism signifies division, and
in the worst-sense; heresy, choice only of one opinion
before another, which may be without discord. In
apostolic times, therefore, ere the Scripture was writ-
ten, heresy was a doctrine maintained against the doc-
trine by them delivered ; which in these times can be
no otherwise defined than a doctrine maintained against
the light which we now only have, of the Scripture.
Seeing therefore, that no man, no synod, no session o
men, though called the Church, can judge definitively
the sense of Scripture to another man's conscience,
which is well known to be a general maxim of the
protestant religion; it follows plainly, that he who
holds in religion that belief, or those opinions, which
to his conscience and utmost understanding appear
with most evidence or probability in the Scripture,
though to others he seem erroneous, can no more be
justly censured for a heretic than his censurers; who
do but the same thing themselves, while they censure
him for so doing. For ask them, or any protestant,
which hath most authority, the church or the Scrip-
ture ? They will answer, doubtless, that the Scrip-
ture; and what hath most authority, that no doubt but
they will confess is to be followed. He then, who to
his best apprehension follows the Scripture, though
against any point of doctrine by the whole church re-
ceived, is not the heretic; but he who follows the
church against his conscience and persuasion grounded
on the Scripture. To make this yet more undeniable,
I shall only borrow a plain simile, the same which our
own writers, when they would demonstrate plainest,
that we rightly prefer the Scripture before the church,
use frequently against the papist in this manner. As
the Samaritans believed Christ, first for the woman's
word, but next and much rather for his own, so we the
Scripture: first on the church's word, but afterwards
and much more for its own, as the word of God ; yea,
the church itself we believe then for the Scripture. The
inference of itself follows: if by the protestant doc-
trine we believe the Scripture, not for the church's
saying, but for its own, as the word of God, then ought
we to believe what in our conscience we apprehend the
Scripture to say, though the visible church, with all her
doctors, gainsay: and being taught to believe them
only for the Scripture, they who so do are not heretics,
but the best protestants: and by their opinions, what-
ever they be, can hurt no protestant, whose rule is not
to receive them but from the Scripture: which to inter-
pret convincingly to his own conscience, none is able
but himself guided by the Holy Spirit; and not so
guided, none than he to himself can be a worse deceiver.
To protestants, therefore, whose common rule and touch-
stone is the Scripture, nothing can with more conscience,
more equity, nothing more protestantly can be permit-
ted, than a free and lawful debate at all times by writ-
ing, conference, or disputation of what opinion soever,
disputable by Scripture: concluding, that no man in re-
ligion is properly a heretic at this day, but he who main-
tains traditions or opinions not probable by Scripture,
who, for aught I know, is the papist only; he the only he-
retic, who counts all heretics but himself. Such as these,
indeed, were capitally punished by the law of Moses,
as the only true heretics, idolaters, plain and open de-
serters of God and his known law : but in the gospel
such are punished by excommunion only. Tit. iii. 10,
“Am heretic, after the first and second admonition, re-
ject.” But they who think not this heavy enough,
and understand not that dreadful awe and spiritual
efficacy, which the apostle hath expressed so highly
to be in church-discipline, 2 Cor. x. of which amon, and
think weakly that the church of God cannot long sub-
sist but in a bodily fear, for want of other proof will
needs wrest that place of St. Paul, Rom. xiii. to set up
civil inquisition, and give power to the magistrate both
of civil judgment, and punishment in causes ecclesi-
astical. But let us see with what strength of argu-
ment; “let every soul be subject to the higher powers.”
First, how prove they that the apostle means other
powers, than such as they to whom he writes were
then under; who meddled not at all in ecclesiastical
causes, unless as tyrants and pèrsecutors P And from
them, I hope, they will not derive either the right of
4 16
A TREATISE OF CIVIL POWER
magistrates to judge in spiritual things, or the duty of
such our obedience. How prove they next, that he
entitles them here to spiritual causes, from whom he
withheld, as much as in him lay, the judging of civil P
1 Cor. vi. 1, &c. If he himself appealed to Caesar, it
was to judge his innocence, not his religion. “For
rulers are not a terrour to good works, but to the evil:”
then are they not a terrour to conscience, which is the
rule or judge of good works grounded on the Scripture.
But heresy, they say, is reckoned among evil works,
Gal. v. 20, as if all evil works were to be punished by
the magistrate; whereof this place, their own citation,
reckons up besides heresy a sufficient number to con-
fute them; “uncleanness, wantonness, enmity, strife,
emulations, animosities, contentions, envyings;” all
which are far more manifest to be judged by him than
heresy, as they define it; and yet I suppose they will
not subject these evil works, nor many more suchlike,
to his cognizance and punishment. “Wilt thou then
not be afraid of the power P Do that which is good,
and thou shalt have praise of the same.” This shews
that religious matters are not here meant; wherein
from the power here spoken of, they could have no
praise : “For he is the minister of God to thee for
good :” True; but in that office, and to that end, and
by those means, which in this place must be clearly
found, if from this place they intend to argue. And
how, for thy good by forcing, oppressing, and ensnar-
ing thy conscience P Many are the ministers of God,
and their offices no less different than many; none
more different than state and church government.
Who seeks to govern both, must needs be worse than
any lord prelate, or church pluralist: for he in his own
faculty and profession, the other not in his own, and
for the most part not thoroughly understood, makes
himself supreme lord or pope of the church, as far as
his civil jurisdiction stretches; and all the ministers of
God therein, his ministers, or his curates rather in the
function only, not in the government; while he him-
self assumes to rule by civil power things to be ruled
only by spiritual : whenas this very chapter, verse 6,
appointing him his peculiar office, which requires ut-
most attendance, forbids him this worse than church
plurality from that full and weighty charge, wherein
alone he is “the minister of God, attending continually
on this very thing.” To little purpose will they he, e
instance Moses, who did all by immediate divine di-
rection; no nor yet Asa, Jehosaphat, or Josiah, who
both might, when they pleased, receive answer from
God, and had a commonwealth by him delivered them,
incorporated with a national church, exercised more in
bodily than in spiritual worship: so as that the church
might be called a commonwealth, and the whole com-
monwealth a church: nothing of which can be said of
Christianity, delivered without the help of magistrates,
yea, in the midst of their opposition; how little then
with any reference to them, or mention of them, save
only of our obedience to their civil laws, as they coun-
tenance good, and deter evil? which is the proper work
of the magistrate, following in the same verse, and
shews distinctly wherein he is the minister of God, “a
revenger to execute wrath on him that doth evil.”
But we must first know who it is that doth evil: the
heretic they say among the first. Let it be known
then certainly who is a heretic; and that he who holds
opinions in religion professedly from tradition, or his
own inventions, and not from Scripture, but rather
against it, is the only heretic: and yet though such,
not always punishable by the magistrate, unless he do
evil against a civil law, properly so called, hath been
already proved, without need of repetition. “But if
thou do that which is evil, be afraid.” To do by
Scripture and the gospel, according to conscience, is
not to do evil; if we thereof ought not to be afraid, he
ought not by his judging to give cause: causes there-
fore of religion are not here meant. “For he beareth
not the sword in vain.” Yes, altogether in vain, if it
smite he knows not what; if that for heresy, which
not the church itself, much less he, can determine ab-
solutely to be so ; if truth for errour, being himself so
often fallible, he bears the sword not in vain only, but
unjustly and to evil. “Be subject not only for wrath,
but for conscience sake :” How for conscience sake,
against conscience P By all these reasons it appears
plainly, that the apostle in this place gives no judg-
ment or coercive power to magistrates, neither to
those then, nor these now, in matters of religion ; and
exhorts us no otherwise than he exhorted those
Romans. It hath now twice befallen me to assert,
through God’s assistance, this most wrested and vexed
place of Scripture; heretofore against Salmasius, and
regal tyranny over the state ; now against Erastus,
and state tyranny over the church. If from such un-
certain, or rather such improbable, grounds as these,
they endue magistracy with spiritual judgment,
they may as well invest him in the same spiritual
kind with power of utmost punishment, excommu-
nication; and then turn spiritual into corporal, as no
worse authors did than Chrysostom, Jerome, and
Austin, whom Erasmus and others in their notes on
the New Testament have cited, to interpret that cut-
ting off which St. Paul wished to them who had brought
back the Galatians to circumcision, no less than the
amercement of their whole virility: and Grotius adds,
that this concising punishment of circumcisers became
a penal law thereupon among the Visigoths: a dan-
gerous example of beginning in the spirit to end so in
the flesh; whereas that cutting off much likelier seems
meant a cutting off from the church, not unusually so
termed in Scripture, and a zealous imprecation, not a
command. But I have mentioned this passage to shew
how absurd they often prove, who have not learned to
distinguish rightly between civil power and ecclesias-
tical. How many persecutions then, imprisonments,
banishments, penalties, and stripes; how much blood-
shed have the forcers of conscience to answer for, and
protestants rather than papists' For the papist, judg-
ing by his principles, punishes them who believe not
as the church believes, though against the Scripture;
but the protestant, teaching every one to believe the
Scripture, though against the church, counts heretical,
and persecutes against his own principles, them who
IN ECCLESIASTICAL CAUSES.
4.17
in any particular so believe as he in general teaches
them; them who most honour and believe divine Scrip-
ture, but not against it any human interpretation though
universal; them who interpret Scripture only to them-
selves, which by his own position, none but they to
themselves can interpret: them who use the Scripture
no otherwise by his own doctrine to their edification,
than he himself uses it to their punishing ; and so
whom his doctrine acknowledges a true believer, his
discipline persecutes as a heretic. The papist exacts
our belief as to the church due above Scripture; and
by the church, which is the whole people of God,
understands the pope, the general councils, prelatical
only, and the surnamed fathers: but the forcing pro-
testant, though he deny such belief to any church what-
soever, yet takes it to himself and his teachers, of far
less authority than to be called the church, and above
Scripture believed : which renders his practice both
contrary to his belief, and far worse than that belief,
which he condemns in the papist. By all which, well
considered, the more he professes to be a true protest-
ant, the more he hath to answer for his persecuting
than a papist. No protestant therefore, of what sect
soever, following Scripture only, which is the common
sect wherein they all agree, and the granted rule of
every man's conscience to himself, ought by the com-
mon doctrine of protestants, to be forced or molested
for religion. But as for popery and idolatry, why they
also may not hence plead to be tolerated, I have much
less to say. Their religion the more considered, the
less can be acknowledged a religion; but a Roman
principality rather, endeavouring to keep up her old
universal dominion under a new name, and mere sha-
dow of a catholic religion; being indeed more rightly
named a catholic heresy against the Scripture, sup-
ported mainly by a civil, and except in Rome, by a
foreign, power : justly therefore to be suspected, not
tolerated by the magistrate of another country. Be-
sides, of an implicit faith which they profess, the con-
science also becomes implicit, and so by voluntary ser-
vitude to man's law, forfeits her christian liberty.
Who then can plead for such a conscience, as being
implicitly enthralled to man instead of God, almost
becomes no conscience, as the will not free, becomes
no will? Nevertheless, if they ought not to be tolerated,
it is for just reason of state, more than of religion;
which they who force, though professing to be protest-
ants, deserve as little to be tolerated themselves, being
no less guilty of popery, in the most popish point.
Lastly, for idolatry, who knows it not to be evidently
against all Scripture, both of the Old and New Testa-
ment, and therefore a true heresy, or rather an impiety,
wherein a right conscience can have nought to do; and
the works thereof so manifest, that a magistrate can
hardly err in prohibiting and quite removing at least
the public and scandalous use thereoff
From the riddance of these objections, I proceed yet
to another reason why it is unlawful for the civil ma-
gistrate to use force in matters of religion; which is,
because to judge in those things, though we should
grant him able, which is proved he is not, yet as a
civil magistrate he hath no right. Christ hath a go-
vernment of his own, sufficient of itself to all his ends
and purposes in governing his church, but much dif-
ferent from that of the civil magistrate; and the dif-
ference in this very thing principally consists, that it
governs not by outward force; and that for two rea-
sons. First, Because it deals only with the inward man
and his actions, which are all spiritual, and to outward
force not liable. 2dly, To shew us the divine excel-
lence of his spiritual kingdom, able, without worldly
force, to subdue all the powers and kingdoms of this
world, which are upheld by outward force only. That
the inward man is nothing else but the inward part of
man, his understanding and his will; and that his ac-
tions thence proceeding, yet not simply thence, but
from the work of divine grace upon them, are the whole
matter of religion under the gospel, will appear plainly
by considering what that religion is; whence we shall
perceive yet more plainly that it cannot be forced.
What evangelic religion is, is told in two words, Faith
and Charity, or Belief and Practice. That both these
flow, either, the one from the understanding, the other
from the will, or both jointly from both ; once indeed
naturally free, but now only as they are regenerate
and wrought on by divine grace, is in part evident to
common sense and principles unquestioned, the rest by
Scripture: concerning our belief, Matt. xvi. 17, “Flesh
and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Fa-
ther which is in heaven.” Concerning our practice, as
it is religious, and not merely civil, Gal. v. 22, 23, and
other places, declare it to be the fruit of the spirit
only. Nay, our whole practical duty in religion is con-
tained in charity, or the love of God and our neigh .
bour, no way to be forced, yet the fulfilling of the
whole law; that is to say, our whole practice in reli-
gion. If then both our belief and practice, which
comprehend our whole religion, flow from faculties of
the inward man, free and unconstrainable of themselves
by nature, and our practice not only from faculties
endued with freedom, but from love and charity be-
sides, incapable of force, and all these things by trans-
gression lost, but renewed and regenerated in us by
the power and gift of God alone; how can such re-
ligion as this admit of force from man, or force be any
way applied to such religion, especially under the free
offer of grace in the gospel, but it must forth with frus-
trate and make of no effect, both the religion and the
gospel? And that to compel outward profession, which
they will say perhaps ought to be compelled, though
inward religion cannot, is to compel hypocrisy, not to
advance religion, shall yet, though of itself clear
enough, be ere the conclusion further manifest. The
other reason why Christ rejects outward force in the
government of his church, is, as I said before, to shew
us the divine excellence of his spiritual kingdom, able
without worldly force to subdue all the powers and
kingdoms of this world, which are upheld by outward
force only ; by which to uphold religion otherwise
than to defend the religious from outward violence, is
no service to Christ or his kingdom, but rather a dis-
paragement, and degrades it from a divine and spiritual
4.18
A TREATISE OF CIVIL POWER
kingdom, to a kingdom of this world: which he denies
it to be, because it needs not force to confirm it: John
xviii. 36. “If my kingdom were of this world, then
would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered
to the Jews.” This proves the kingdom of Christ not
governed by outward force, as being none of this world,
whose kingdoms are maintained all by force only ; and
yet disproves not that a christian commonwealth may
defend itself against outward force, in the cause of
religion as well as in any other: though Christ him-
self coming purposely to die for us, would not be so
defended. I Cor. i. 27, “God hath chosen the weak
things of the world, to confound the things which are
mighty.” Then surely he hath not chosen the force of
this world to subdue conscience, and conscientious men,
who in this world are counted weakest; but rather
conscience, as being weakest, to subdue and regulate
force, his adversary, not his aid or instrument in go-
verning the church : 2 Cor. x. 3, 4, 5, 6, “For though
we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh : for
the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty
through God to the pulling down of strong holds, cast-
ing down imaginations, and every high thing that ex-
alts itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing
into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ:
and having in a readiness to avenge all disobedience.”
It is evident by the first and second verses of this
chapter, and the apostle here speaks of that spiritual
power by which Christ governs his church, how all-
sufficient it is, how powerful to reach the conscience,
and the inward man with whom it chiefly deals, and
whom no power else can deal with. In comparison of
which, as it is here thus magnificently described, how
uneffectual and weak is outward force with all her
boisterous tools, to the shame of those Christians, and
especially those churchmen, who to the exercising of
church-discipline, never cease calling on the civil ma-
gistrate to interpose his fleshly force An argument
that all true ministerial and spiritual power is dead
within them; who think the gospel, which both began
and spread over the whole world for above three hun-
dred years, under heathen and persecuting emperors,
cannot stand or continue, supported by the same divine
presence and protection, to the world's end, much
easier under the defensive favour only of a christian
magistrate, unless it be enacted and settled, as they
call it, by the state, a statute or state religion; and
understand not that the church itself cannot, much less
the state, settle or impose one title of religion upon our
obedience implicit, but can only recommend or pro-
pound it to our free and conscientious examination :
unless they mean to set the state higher than the
church in religion, and with a gross contradiction give
to the state in their settling petition that command of
our implicit belief, which they deny in their settled
conſession both to the state and to the church. Let
them cease then to importune and interrupt the magis-
trate from attending to his own charge in civil and
moral things, the settling of things just, things honest,
the defence of things religious, settled by the churches
within themselves; and the repressing of their contra-
ries, determinable by the common light of nature ;
which is not to constrain or to repress religion probable
by Scripture, but the violaters and persecuters thereof:
of all which things he hath enough and more than
enough to do, left yet undone; for which the land
groans, and justice goes to wrack the while. Let him
also forbear force where he hath no right to judge, for
the conscience is not his province, lest a worst wo ar-
rive him, for worse offending than was denounced by
our Saviour, Matt. xxiii. 23, against the Pharisees:
Ye have forced the conscience, which was not to be
forced; but judgment and mercy ye have not executed;
this ye should have done, and the other let alone. And
since it is the counsel and set purpose of God in the
gospel, by spiritual means which are counted weak, to
overcome all power which resists him ; let them not
go about to do that by worldly strength, which he hath
decreed to do by those means which the world counts
weakness, lest they be again obnoxious to that saying,
which in another place is also written of the Pharisees,
Luke vii. 30, “That they frustrated the counsel of
God.” The main plea is, and urged with much vehe-
mence to their imitation, that the kings of Judah, as
I touched before, and especially Josiah, both judged
and used force in religion : 2 Chron. xxxiv. 33, “He
made all that were present in Israel to serve the Lord
their God:” an argument, if it be well weighed, worse
than that used by the false prophet Shemaia to the high
priest, that in imitation of Jehoiada, he ought to put
Jeremiah in the stocks, Jer. xxix. 24, 26, &c. for which
he received his due denouncement from God. But to
this besides I return a threefold answer: First, That
the state of religion under the gospel is far differing
from what it was under the law; then was the state of
rigour, childhood, bondage, and works, to all which
force was not unbefitting ; now is the state of grace,
manhood, freedom, and faith, to all which belongs will-
ingness and reason, not force : the law was then writ-
ten on tables of stone, and to be performed according
to the letter, willingly or unwillingly ; the gospel,
our new covenant, upon the heart of every believer, to
be interpreted only by the sense of charity and inward
persuasion: the law had no distinct government or
governors of church and commonwealth, but the priests
and Levites judged in all causes, not ecclesiastical
only, but civil, Deut. xvii. 8, &c. which under the
gospel is forbidden to all church-ministers, as a thing
which Christ their master in his ministry disclaimed,
Luke xii. 14, as a thing beneath them, 1 Cor. vi. 4,
and by many other statutes, as to them who have a
peculiar and far differing government of their own.
If not, why different the governors P Why not church-
ministers in state-affairs, as well as state-ministers in
church-affairs 2 If church and state shall be made one
flesh again as under the law, let it be withal considered,
that God, who then joined them, hath now severed
them ; that which, he so ordaining, was then a lawful
conjunction, to such on either side as join again what
he hath severed would be nothing now but their own
presumptuous fornication. Secondly, the kings of
Judah, and those magistrates under the law, might have
* IN ECCLESIASTICAL CAUSES.
419
recourse, as I said before, to divine inspiration; which
our magistrates under the gospel have not, more than
to the same spirit, which those whom they force have
oſttimes in greater measure than themselves: and so,
instead of forcing the Christian, they force the Holy
Ghost; and, against that wise forewarning of Gama-
liel, fight against God. Thirdly, those kings and
magistrates used force in such things only as were un-
doubtedly known and forbidden in the law of Moses,
idolatry and direct apostacy from that national and strict
enjoined worship of God; whereof the corporal punish-
ment was by himself expressly set down : but magis-
trates under the gospel, our free, elective, and rational
worship, are most commonly busiest to force those
things which in the gospel are either left free, nay,
sometimes abolished when by them compelled, or else
controverted equally by writers on both sides, and
sometimes with odds on that side which is against
them. By which means they either punish that which
they ought to favour and protect, or that with corporal
punishment, and of their own inventing, which not
they, but the church, had received command to chastise
with a spiritual rod only. Yet some are so eager in
their zeal of forcing, that they refuse not to descend
at length to the utmost shift of that parabolical proof,
Luke xiv. 16, &c. “Compel them to come in :” there-
fore magistrates may compel in religion. As if a para-
ble were to be strained through every word or phrase,
and not expounded by the general scope thereof; which
is no other here than the earnest expression of God's
displeasure on those recusant Jews, and his purpose to
preſer the Gentiles on any terms before them; expressed
here by the word compel. But how compels he
Doubtless no other way than he draws, without which
no man can come to him, John vi. 44, and that is by
the inward persuasive motions of his Spirit, and by his
ministers; not by the outward compulsions of a magis-
trate or his officers. The true people of Christ, as is
foretold, Psalm cz. 3, “are a willing people in the day
of his power;” then much more now when he rules all
things by outward weakness, that both his inward
power and their sincerity may the more appear. “God
loveth a cheerful giver:” them certainly is not pleased
with an uncheerful worshipper : as the very words de-
clare of his evangelical invitations, Isa. lv. 1, “Ho,
every one that thirsteth, come.” John vii. 37, “If any
man thirsteth.” Rev. iii. 18, “I counsel thee.” And
xxii. 17, “Whosoever will, let him take the water of
life freely.” And in that grand commission of preach-
ing, to invite all nations, Mark xvi. 16, as the reward
of them who come, so the penalty of them who come
not, is only spiritual. But they bring now some rea-
son with their force, which must not pass unanswered,
that the church of Thyatira was blamed, Rev. ii. 20,
for suffering the false “prophetess to teach and to se-
duce.” I answer, That seducement is to be hindered
by fit and proper means ordained in church-discipline,
by instant and powerful demonstration to the contrary;
by opposing truth to errour, no unequal, match ; truth
the strong, to errour the weak, though sly and shifting.
Force is no honest confutation, but uneffectual, and for
the most part unsuccessful, ofttimes fatal to them who
use it: sound doctrine, diligently and duly taught, is
of herself both sufficient, and of herself (if some secret
judgment of God hinder not) always prevalent against
seducers. This the Thyatirians had neglected, suffer-
ing, against church-discipline, that woman to teach
and seduce among them : civil force they had not
then in their power, being the christian part only of
that city, and then especially under one of those ten
great persecutions, whereof this the second was raised
by Domitian : force therefore in these matters could not
be required of them who were under force themselves.
I have shewn, that the civil power hath neither right,
nor can do right, by forcing religious things: I will
now shew the wrong it doth, by violating the funda-
mental privilege of the gospel, the new birthright of
every true believer, christian liberty: 2 Cor. iii. 17,
“Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.”
Gal. iv. 26. “Jerusalem which is above is free;
which is the mother of us all.” And ver. 31, “We are
not children of the bond woman, but of the free.” It
will be sufficient in this place to say no more of christian
liberty, than that it sets us free not only from the bond-
age of those ceremonies, but also from the forcible im-
position of those circumstances, place and time, in the
worship of God: which though by him commanded in
the old law, yet in respect of that verity and freedom
which is evangelical, St. Paul comprehends both kinds
alike, that is to say, both ceremony and circumstance,
under one and the same contemptuous name of “weak
and beggarly rudiments,” Gal. iv. 3, 9, 10; Col. ii. 8,
with 16; conformable to what our Saviour himself
taught, John iv. 21, 23, “Neither in this mountain, nor
yet at Jerusalem. In spirit and in truth; for the
Father seeketh such to worship him :” that is to say, not
only sincere of heart, for such he sought ever; but also,
as the words here chiefly import, not compelled to
place, and by the same reason, not to any set time; as
his apostle by the same spirit hath taught us, Rom. xiv.
5, &c. “One man esteemeth one day above another;
another,” &c.; Gal. iv. 10, “Ye observe days and months,”
&c.; Col. ii. 16. These and other such places in Scrip-
ture the best and learnedest reformed writers have
thought evident enough to instruct us in our freedom,
not only from ceremonies, but from those circumstances
also, though imposed with a confident persuasion of
morality in them, which they hold impossible to be in
place or time. By what warrant then our opinions
and practices herein are of late turned quite against
all other protestants, and that which is to them ortho-
doxal, to us becomes scandalous and punishable by
statute, I wish were once again considered; if we mean
not to proclaim a schism in this point from the best and
most reformed churches abroad. They who would seem
more knowing, confess that these things are indiffer-
ent, but for that very cause by the magistrate may be
commanded. As if God of his special grace in the gos-
pel had to this end freed us from his own command-
ments in these things, that our freedom should subject
us to a more grievous yoke, the commandments of men.
As well may the magistrate call that common or un-
2 E
420
A TREATISE OF CIVIL POWER
clean which God hath cleansed, forbidden to St. Peter,
Acts x. 15; as well may he loosen that which God hath
straitened, or straiten that which God hath loosened,
as he may enjoin those things in religion which God
hath left free, and lay on that yoke which God hath
taken off. For he hath not only given us this gift as
a special privilege and excellence of the free gospel
above the servile law, but strictly also hath commanded
us to keep it and enjoy it. Gal. v. 13, “You are called
to liberty.” I Cor. vii. 23, “Be not made the servants
of men.” Gal. v. 14, “Stand fast therefore in the liberty
where with Christ hath made us free; and be not en-
tangled again with the yoke of bondage.” Neither is
this a mere command, but for the most part in these
forecited places, accompanied with the very weightiest
and in most reasons of christian religion : Rom. xiv. 9,
10, “ For to this end Christ both died, and rose, and
revived, that he might be Lord both of the dead and
living. But why dost thou judge thy brother P’’ &c.
How presumest thou to be his lord, to be whose only
Lord, at least in these things, Christ both died, and
rose, and lived again P “We shall all stand before the
judgment-seat of Christ.” Why then dost thou not
only judge, but persecute in these things for which we
are to be accountable to the tribunal of Christ only,
our Lord and lawgiver ? I Cor. vii. 23, “Ye are bought
with a price; be not made the servants of men.”
Some trivial price belike, and for some frivolous pre-
tences paid in their opinion, if bought and by him re-
deemed, who is God, from what was once the service
of God, we shall be enthralled again, and forced by
men to what now is but the service of men. Gal. iv.
31, with v. 1, “We are not children of the bondwoman,
&c. stand fast therefore,” &c. Col. ii. 8, “Beware lest
any man spoil you, &c. after the rudiments of the
world, and not after Christ.” Solid reasons whereof
are continued through the whole chapter. Ver. 10,
“Ye are complete in him, which is the head of all
principality and power:” not completed therefore or
made the more religious by those ordinances of civil
power, from which Christ their head hath discharged
us; “blotting out the hand-writing of ordinances tha:
as against us, which was contrary to us; and took it
out of the way, nailing it to his cross,” ver, 14. Blotting
out ordinances written by God himself, much more
those so boldly written over again by men : ordinances
which were against us, that is, against our frailty, much
more those which are against our conscience. “Let no
man therefore judge you in respect of,” &c. wer. 16. Gal.
iv. 3, &c. “Even so we, when we were children, were
in bondage under the rudiments of the world: But
when the fulness of time was come, God sent forth his
Son, &c. to redeem them that were under the law, that
we might receive the adoption of sons, &c. Where-
fore thou art no more a servant, but a son, &c. But
now, &c. how turn ye again to the weak and beggarly
rudiments, whereunto ye desire again to be in bond-
age 2 Ye observe days,” &c. Hence it plainly ap-
pears, that if we be not free, we are not sons, but still
servants unadopted; and if we turn again to those weak
and beggarly rudiments, we are not free ; yea, though
willingly, and with a misguided conscience, we desire
to be in bondage to them ; how much more then if
unwillingly and against our conscience Ill was our
condition changed from legal to evangelical, and small
advantage gotten by the gospel, if ſor the spirit of
adoption to freedom promised us, we receive again the
spirit of bondage to ſear; if our fear, which was then
servile towards God only, must be now servile in re-
ligion towards men : strange also and preposterous
fear, iſ when and wherein it hath attained by the re-
demption of our Saviour to be filial only towards God,
it must be now servile towards the magistrate : who,
by subjecting us to his punishment in these things,
brings back into religion that law of terrour and satis-
faction belonging now only to civil crimes ; and
thereby in effect abolishes the gospel, by establishing
again the law to a far worse yoke of servitude upon us
than before. It will therefore not misbecome the
meanest Christian to put in mind christian magistrates,
and so much the more freely by how much the more
they desire to be thought christian, (for they will be
thereby, as they ought to be in these things, the more
our brethren and the less our lords,) that they meddle
not rashly with christian liberty, the birthright and
outward testimony of our adoption ; lest while they
little think it, nay, think they do God service, they
themselves, like the sons of that bondwoman, be found
persecuting them who are freeborn of the Spirit, and
by a sacrilege of not the least aggravation, bereaving
them of that sacred liberty, which our Saviour with
his own blood purchased for them.
A ſourth reason, why the magistrate ought not to
use force in religion, I bring from the consideration of
all those ends, which he can likely pretend to the in-
terposing of his force therein : and those hardly can
be other than first the glory of God; next, either the
spiritual good of them whom he forces, or the temporal
punishment of their scandal to others. As for the pro-
moting of God's glory, none, I think, will say that his
glory ought to be promoted in religious things by un-
warrantable means, much less by means contrary to
what he hath commanded. That outward force is
such, and that God's glory in the whole administration
of the gospel according to his own will and counsel
ought to be fulfilled by weakness, at least so refuted,
not by force; or if by force, inward and spiritual, not
outward and corporeal, is already proved at large.
That outward force cannot tend to the good of him
who is ſorced in religion, is unquestionable. For in
religion whatever we do under the gospel, we ought to
be thereof persuaded without scruple; and are justified
by the faith we have, not by the work we do: Rom.
xiv. 5, “Let every man be fully persuaded in his own
mind.” The other reason which follows necessarily is
obvious, Gal. ii. 16, and in many other places of St.
Paul, as the groundwork and foundation of the whole
gospel, that we are “justified by the faith of Christ,
and not by the works of the law.” If not by the works
of God’s law, how then by the injunctions of man's
law P Surely force cannot work persuasion, which is
faith; cannot therefore justify nor pacify the con-
IN ECCLESIASTICAL CAUSES.
421
science; and that which justifies not in the gospel,
condemns; is not only not good, but sinful to do:
Rom. xiv. 23, “Whatsoever is not of faith, is sin.” It
concerns the magistrate them to take heed how he forces
in religion conscientious men: lest by compelling them
to do that whereof they cannot be persuaded, that
wherein they cannot find themselves justified, but by
their own consciences condemned, instead of aiming at
their spiritual good, he force them to do evil; and
while he thinks himself Asa, Josiah, Nehemiah, he be
found Jeroboam, who caused Israel to sin; and thereby
draw upon his own head all those sins and shipwrecks
of implicit faith and conformity, which he hath forced,
and all the wounds given to those little ones, whom to
offend he will find worse one day than that violent
drowning mentioned Matt. xviii. 6. Lastly, as a pre-
face to force, it is the usual pretence, That although
tender consciences shall be tolerated, yet scandals
thereby given shall not be unpunished, prophane and
licentious men shall not be encouraged to neglect the
performance of religious and holy duties by colour of
any law giving liberty to tender consciences. By
which contrivance the way lies ready open to them
hereafter, who may be so minded, to take away by little
and little that liberty which Christ and his gospel, not
any magistrate, hath right to give : though this kind
of his giving be but to give with one hand, and take
away with the other, which is a deluding, not a giv-
ing. As for scandals, if any man be offended at the
conscientious liberty of another, it is a taken scandal,
not a given. To heal one conscience, we must not
wound another: and men must be exhorted to beware.
of scandals in christian liberty, not forced by the ma-
gistrate; lest while he goes about to take away the
scandal, which is uncertain whether given or taken, he
take away our liberty, which is the certain and the sa-
cred gift of God, neither to be touched by him, nor to
be parted with by us. None more cautious of giving
scandal than St. Paul. Yet while he made himself
“servant to all,” that he “might gain the more,” he
made himself so of his own accord, was not made so by
outward force, testifying at the same time that he “was
free from all men,” 1 Cor. ix. 19 ; and thereafter ex-
horts us also, Gal. v. 13, “Ye were called to liberty,
&c. but by love serve one another:” then not by force.
As for that fear, lest prophane and licentious men
should be encouraged to omit the performance of re-
ligious and holy duties, how can that care belong to
the civil magistrate, especially to his force P For if
prophane and licentious persons must not neglect the
performance of religious and holy duties, it implies,
that such duties they can perform, which no protestant
will affirm. They who mean the outward perform-
ance, may so explain it; and it will then appear yet
more plainly, that such performance of religious and
holy duties, especially by prophane and licentious per-
sons, is a dishonouring rather than a worshipping of
God; and not only by him not required, but detested :
Prov. xxi. 27, “The sacrifice of the wicked is an abomi-
nation; how much more when he bringeth it with a
wicked mind P’’ To compel therefore the prophane to
of Christ,” Gal. vi. 2.
things holy in his prophaneness, is all one under the
gospel, as to have compelled the unclean to sacrifice in
his uncleanness under the law. And I add withal,
that to compel the licentious in his licentiousness, and
the conscientious against his conscience, comes all to
one : tends not to the honour of God, but to the mul-
tiplying and the aggravating of sin to them both. We
read not that Christ ever exercised force but once ;
and that was to drive prophane ones out of his tem-
ple, not to force them in ; and if their being there was
an offence, we find by many other scriptures that their
praying there was an abomination ; and yet to the
Jewish law, that nation, as a servant, was obliged; but
to the gospel each person is left voluntary, called only,
as a son, by the preaching of the word; not to be driven
in by edicts and force of arms. For if by the apostle,
Rom. xii. 1, we are “beseeched as brethren by the
mercies of God to present our bodies a living sacrifice,
holy, acceptable to God, which is our reasonable ser-
vice” or worship, then is no man to be forced by the
compulsive laws of men to present his body a dead
sacrifice; and so under the gospel most unholy and
unacceptable, because it is his unreasonable service,
that is to say, not only unwilling but unconscionable.
But if prophane and licentious persons may not omit
the performance of holy duties, why may they not par-
take of holy things P Why are they prohibited the
Lord's supper, since both the one and the other action
may be outward; and outward performance of duty
may attain at least an outward participation of bene-
fit? The church denying them that communion of
grace and thanksgiving, as it justly doth, why doth
the magistrate compel them to the union of performing
that which they neither truly can, being themselves
unholy, and to do seemingly is both hateful to God,
and perhaps no less dangerous to perform holy duties
irreligiously, than to receive holy signs or sacraments
unworthily P All prophane and licentious men, so
known, can be considered but either so without the
church as never yet within it, or departed thence of
their own accord, or excommunicate : if never yet
within the church, whom the apostle, and so con-
sequently the church, have nought to do to judge, as
he professes, 1 Cor. v. 12, then by what authority doth
the magistrate judge ; or, which is worse, compel in
relation to the church 2 If departed of his own accord,
like that lost sheep, Luke xv. 4, &c. the true church
either with her own or any borrowed force worries him
not in again, but rather in all charitable manner sends
after him; and if she find him, lays him gently on her
shoulders; bears him, yea bears his burdens, his errours,
his infirmities any way tolerable, “so fulfilling the law
If excommunicate, whom the
church hath bid go out, in whose name doth the magis-
trate compel to go in P The church indeed hinders
none from hearing in her public congregation, for the
doors are open to all: nor excommunicates to destruc-
tion; but, as much as in her lies, to a final saving. Her
meaning therefore must needs be, that as her driving
out brings on no outward penalty, so no outward force
or penalty of an improper and only a destructive power
42.2
A TREATISE OF CIVIL POWER IN ECCLESIASTICAL CAUSES.
should drive in again her infectious sheep; therefore
sent out because infectious, and not driven in but with
the danger not only of the whole and sound, but also
of his own utter perishing. Since force neither in-
structs in religion, nor begets repentance or amendment
of life, but on the contrary, hardness of heart, formality,
hypocrisy, and, as I said before, every way increase of
sin ; more and more alienates the mind from a violent
religion, expelling out and compelling in, and reduces
it to a condition like that which the Britons complain
of in our story, driven to and fro between the Picts and
the sea. If after excommunion he be found intractable,
incurable, and will not hear the church, he becomes as
one never yet within her pale, “a heathen or a pub-
lican,” Matt. xviii. 17, not further to be judged, no not
by the magistrate, unless for civil causes; but left to
the final sentence of that Judge, whose coming shall
be in flames of fire; that Maranatha, l Cor. xvi. 22,
than which to him so left nothing can be more dread-
ful, and ofttimes to him particularly nothing more
speedy, that is to say, The Lord cometh: in the mean
while delivered up to Satan, 1 Cor. v. 5, 1 Tim. i. 20,
that is, from the fold of Christ and kingdom of grace
to the world again, which is the kingdom of Satan;
and as he was received “from darkness to light, and
from the power of Satan to God,” Acts xxvi. 18, so
now delivered up again from light to darkness, and
from God to the power of Satan ; yet so as is in both
places manifested, to the intent of saving him, brought
sooner to contrition by spiritual than by any corporal
severity. But grant it belonging any way to the
magistrate, that prophane and licentious persons omit
not the performance of holy duties, which in them were
odious to God even under the law, much more now
under the gospel ; yet ought his care both as a magis-
trate and a Christian, to be much more that conscience
be not inwardly violated, than that licence in these
things be made outwardly conformable: since his part
is undoubtedly as a Christian, which puts him upon this
office much more than as a magistrate, in all respects
to have more care of the conscientious than of the pro-
phane; and not for their sakes to take away (while
they pretend to give) or to diminish the rightful liberty
of religious consciences.
On these four, scriptural reasons, as on a firm square,
this truth, the right of christian and evangelic liberty,
will stand immovable against all those pretended con-
sequences of licence and confusion, which for the most
part men most licentious and confused themselves, or
such as whose severity would be wiser than divine
wisdom, are ever aptest to object against the ways of
God : as if God without them, when he gave us this
liberty, knew not of the worst which these men in their
arrogance pretend will follow : yet knowing all their
worst, he gave us this liberty as by him judged best.
As to those magistrates who think it their work to set-
tle religion, and those ministers or others, who so oſt
call upon them to do so, I trust, that having well con-
sidered what hath been here argued, neither they will
continue in that intention, nor these in that expectation
from them; when they shall find that the settlement
of religion belongs only to each particular church by
persuasive and spiritual means within itself, and that
the defence only of the church belongs to the magis-
trate. Had he once learnt not further to concern him-
self with church-affairs, half his labour might be spared,
and the commonwealth better tended. To which end,
that which I premised in the beginning, and in due
place treated of more at large, I desire now concluding,
that they would consider seriously what religion is:
and they will find it to be, in sum, both our belieſ and
our practice depending upon God only. That there
can be no place then left for the magistrate or his force
in the settlement of religion, by appointing either what
we shall believe in divine things, or practise in re-
ligious, (neither of which things are in the power of
man either to perform himself, or to enable others,) I
persuade me in the christian ingenuity of all religious
men, the more they examine seriously, the more they
will find clearly to be true : and find how false and de-
viseable that common saying is, which is so much re-
lied upon, that the christian magistrate is “Custos
utriusque Tabulae,” Keeper of both Tables, unless is
meant by keeper the defender only : neither can that
maxim be maintained by any proof or argument, which
hath not in this discourse first or last been refuted.
For the two tables, or ten commandments, teach our
duty to God and our neighbour from the love of both ;
give magistrates no authority to force either: they seek
that from the judicial law, though on false grounds,
especially in the first table, as I have shewn ; and
both in first and second execute that authority for the
most part, not according to God’s judicial laws, but
their own. As for civil crimes, and of the outward
man, which all are not, no, not of those against the
second table, as that of coveting; in them what power
they have, they had from the beginning, long before
Moses or the two tables were in being. And whether
they be not now as little in being to be kept by any
Christian as they are two legal tables, remains yet as
undecided, as it is sure they never were yet delivered
to the keeping of any christian magistrate. But of
these things perhaps more some other time; what may
serve the present hath been above discoursed suffi-
ciently out of the Scriptures: and to those produced,
might be added testimonies, examples, experiences, of
all succeeding ages to these times, asserting this doc-
trine: but having herein the Scripture so copious and
so plain, we have all that can be properly called true
strength and nerve; the rest would be but pomp and
encumbrance. Pomp and ostentation of , eacling is ad-
mired among the vulgar : but doubtless in matters of
religion he is learnedest who is plainest. The brevity
I use, not exceeding a small manual, will not there-
fore, I suppose, be thought the less considerable, un-
less with them perhaps who think that great books
only can determine great matters. I rather choose
the common rule, not to make much ado, where less may
serve. Which in controversies, and those especially of
religion, would make them less tedious, and by conse-
quence read oftener by many more, and with more
benefit.
C O N S I D E R A T I O N S
TOUC II ING THE I, IKEI, IEST MEANS
TO REMOVE HIRELINGS OUT OF THE CHURCH.
WII ERRIN IS A LSO. DIS COURS FID
OF TITHES, CHURCH-FEES, AND CHURCH-REVENUES; AND WHETHER ANY
MAINTENANCE OF MINISTERS CAN BE SETTLED BY LAW.
[FIRst PUBLISHED 1659.]
TO THE PARLIAMENT OF THE COMMON WEALTH OF ENGLAND, WITH THE DOMINIONS THEREOF.
Owing to your protection, Supreme Senate' this liberty
of writing, which I have used these eighteen years on
all occasions to assert the best rights and freedoms both
of church and state, and so far approved, as to have
been trusted with the representment and defence of
your actions to all christendom against an adversary
of no mean repute; to whom should I address what I
still publish on the same argument, but to you, whose
magnanimous councils first opened and unbound the
age from a double bondage under prelatical and regal
tyranny; above our own hopes heartening us to look
up at last like men and Christians from the slavish de-
jection, wherein from father to son we were bred up
and taught; and thereby deserving of these nations, if
they be not barbarously ingrateful, to be acknowledged,
next under God, the authors and best patrons of reli-
gious and civil liberty, that ever these islands brought
forth P The care and tuition of whose peace and safety,
after a short but scandalous night of interruption, is
now again, by a new dawning of God’s miraculous
providence among us, revolved upon your shoulders.
And to whom more appertain these considerations,
which I propound, than to yourselves, and the debate
before you, though I trust of no difficulty, yet at pre-
sent of great expectation, not whether ye will gratify,
were it no more than so, but whether ye will hearken
to the just petition of many thousands best affected
both to religion and to this your return, or whether ye
will satisfy, which you never can, the covetous pre-
tences and demands of insatiable hirelings, whose dis-
affection ye well know both to yourselves and your
resolutions 2 That I, though among many others in
this common concernment, interpose to your delibera-
tions what my thoughts also are ; your own judgment
and the success thereof hath given me the confidence:
which requests but this, that if I have prosperously,
God so favouring me, defended the public cause of this
commonwealth to foreigners, ye would not think the
reason and ability, whereon ye trusted once (and repent
not) your whole reputation to the world, either grown
less by more maturity and longer study, or less avail-
able in English than in another tongue: but that if it
sufficed some years past to convince and satisfy the
unengaged of other nations in the justice of your do-
ings, though then held paradoxal, it may as well suffice
now against weaker opposition in matters, except here
in England with a spirituality of men devoted to their
temporal gain, of no controversy else among protest-
ants. Neither do I doubt, seeing daily the acceptance
which they find who in their petitions venture to bring
advice also, and new models of a commonwealth, but
that you will interpret it much more the duty of a
Christian to offer what his conscience persuades him
may be of moment to the freedom and better constitut-
ing of the church : since it is a deed of highest charity
to help undeceive the people, and a work worthiest
your authority, in all things else authors, assertors, and
now recoverers of our liberty, to deliver us, the only
people of all protestants left still undelivered, from the
oppressions of a simonious decimating clergy, who
shame not, against the judgment and practice of all other
churches reformed, to maintain, though very weakly,
their popish and oft refuted positions; not in a point
of conscience wherein they might be blameless, but in
a point of covetousness and unjust claim to other men's
goods; a contention foul and odious in any man, but
most of all in ministers of the gospel, in whom conten-
tion, though for their own right, scarce is allowable,
Till which grievances be removed, and religion set
free from the monopoly of hirelings, I dare affirm, that
no model whatsoever of a commonwealth will prove
successful or undisturbed ; and so persuaded, implore
divine assistance on your pious counsels and proceed-
ings to unanimity in this and all other truth.
Joh N MILTON.
C O N S I D E R A T I O N S
TOUCHING THE LIKELIRST M RANS
TO REMOVE HIRELINGS OUT OF THE CHURCH.
THE former treatise, which leads in this, began with
two things ever found working much mischief to the
one side restraining, and hire on the other side corrupt-
ing, the teachers thereof. The latter of these is by
much the more dangerous: for under force, though no
thank to the forcers, true religion ofttimes best thrives
and flourishes; but the corruption of teachers, most
commonly the effect of hire, is the very bane of truth
in them who are so corrupted. Of force not to be used
in matters of religion, I have already spoken; and so
stated matters of conscience and religion in faith and
divine worship, and so severed them from blasphemy
and heresy, the one being such properly as is despiteful,
the other such as stands not to the rule of Scripture, and
so both of them not matters of religion, but rather
against it, that to them who will yet use force, this only
choice can be left, whether they will force them to be-
lieve, to whom it is not given from above, being not
forced thereto by any principle of the gospel, which is
now the only dispensation of God to all men; or
whether being protestants, they will punish in those
things wherein the protestant religion denies them to
be judges, either in themselves infallible, or to the con-
sciences of other men; or whether, lastly, they think
fit to punish errour, supposing they can be infallible
that it is so, being not wilful, but conscientious, and,
according to the best light of him who errs, grounded
on Scripture: which kind of errour all men religious,
or but only reasonable, have thought worthier of pardon,
and the growth thereof to be prevented by spiritual
means and church-discipline, not by civil laws and out-
ward force, since it is God only who gives as well to
believe aright, as to believe at all; and by those means,
which he ordained sufficiently in his church to the full
execution of his divine purpose in the gospel. It re-
mains now to speak of hire, the other evil so mischievous
in religion: whereof I promised then to speak further,
when I should find God disposing me, and opportunity
inviting. Opportunity I find now inviting; and ap-
prehend therein the concurrence of God disposing;
since the maintenance of church-ministers, a thing not
properly belonging to the magistrate, and yet with such
importunity called for, and expected from him, is at
present under public debate. Wherein lest any thing
may happen to be determined and established preju-
dicial to the right and freedom of the church, or advan-
tageous to such as may be found hirelings therein, it
will be now most seasonable, and in these matters,
wherein every Christian hath his free suffrage, no way
misbecoming christian meekness to offer freely, without
disparagement to the wisest, such advice as God shall
incline him and enable him to propound : since hereto-
fore in commonwealths of most fame for government,
civil laws were not established till they had been first
for certain days published to the view of all men, that
whoso pleased might speak freely his opinion thereof,
and give in his exceptions, ere the law could pass to a
full establishment. And where ought this equity to
have more place, than in the liberty which is insepar-
able from christian religion ? This, I am not ignorant,
will be a work unpleasing to some; but what truth is
not hateful to some or other, as this, in likelihood, will
be to none but hirelings. And if there be among them
who hold it their duty to speak impartial truth, as the
work of their ministry, though not performed without
money, let them not envy others who think the same
no less their duty by the general office of Christianity,
to speak truth, as in all reason may be thought, more
impartially and unsuspectedly without money.
Hire of itself is neither a thing unlawful, nor a
word of any evil note, signifying no more than a
due recompence or reward; as when our Saviour
saith, “the labourer is worthy of his hire.” That
which makes it so dangerous in the church, and pro-
perly makes the hireling, a word always of evil signi-
fication, is either the excess thereof, or the undue man-
ner of giving and taking it. What harm the excess
thereof brought to the church, perhaps was not found
by experience till the days of Constantine; who out of
his zeal thinking he could be never too liberally a
nursing father of the church, might be not unfitly said
to have either overlaid it or choked it in the nursing.
Which was foretold, as is recorded in ecclesiastical
traditions, by a voice heard from heaven, on the very
day that those great donations and church-revenues
were given, crying aloud, “This day is poison poured
THE LIKELIEST MEANS TO REMOVE HIRELINGS, &c. 425
into the church.” Which the event soon after verified,
as appears by another no less ancient observation,
“That religion brought forth wealth, and the daughter
devoured the mother.” But long ere wealth came into
the church, so soon as any gain appeared in religion,
hirelings were apparent; drawn in long before by the
very scent thereof. Judas therefore, the first hire-
ling, for want of present hire answerable to his covet-
ing, from the small number or the meanness of such
as then were the religious, sold the religion itself
with the founder thereof, his master. Simon Magus
the next, in hope only that preaching and the gifts of
the Holy Ghost would prove gainful, offered before-
hand a sum of money to obtain them. Not long after,
as the apostle foretold, hirelings like wolves came in by
herds: Acts xx. 29, “For I know this, that after my
departing shall grievous wolves enter in among you,
not sparing the flock.” Tit. i. 11, “Teaching things
which they ought not, for filthy lucre's sake.” 2 Pet.
ii. 3, “And through covetousness shall they with
feigned words make merchandise of you.” Yet they
taught not false doctrine only, but seeming piety:
1 Tim. vi. 5, “Supposing that gain is godliness.”
Neither came they in of themselves only, but invited
ofttimes by a corrupt audience: 2 Tim. iv. 3, “For
the time will come, when they will not endure sound
doctrine, but after their own lusts they will heap to
themselves teachers, having itching cars: ” and they
on the other side, as fast heaping to themselves disci-
ples, Acts xx. 30, doubtless had as itching palms :
2 Pet. ii. 15, “Following the way of Balaam, the son of
Bosor, who loved the wages of unrighteousness,” Jude
11, “They ran greedily after the errour of Balaam for
reward.” Thus we see, that not only the excess of hire
in wealthiest times, but also the undue and vicious
taking or giving it, though but small or mean, as in
the primitive times, gave to hirelings occasion, though
not intended, yet sufficient to creep at first into the
church. Which argues also the difficulty, or rather the
impossibility, to remove them quite, unless every minis-
ter were, as St. Paul, contented to preach gratis; but
few such are to be found. As therefore we cannot
justly take away all hire in the church, because we
cannot otherwise quite remove all hirelings, so are we
not, for the impossibility of removing them all, to use
therefore no endeavour that fewest may come in ; but
rather, in regard the evil, do what we can, will always
be incumbent and unavoidable, to use our utmost dili-
gence how it may be least dangerous: which will be
likeliest effected, if we consider, first, what recompence
God hath ordained should be given to ministers of the
church; (ſor that a recompence ought to be given them,
and may by them justly be received, our Saviour him-
self from the very light of reason and of equity hath
declared, Luke x. 7, “The labourer is worthy of his
hire;”) next, by whom ; and lastly, in what manner.
What recompence ought to be given to church-minis-
ters, God hath answerably ordained according to that
difference, which he hath manifestly put between those
his two great dispensations, the law and the gospel.
Under the law he gave them tithes; under the gospel,
having left all things in his church to charity and
christian freedom, he hath given them only what is
justly given them. That, as well under the gospel, as
under the law, say our English divines, and they only
of all protestants, is tithes; and they say true, if any
man be so minded to give them of his own the tenth
or twentieth ; but that the law therefore of tithes is in
force under the gospel, all other protestant divines,
though equally concerned, yet constantly deny. For
although hire to the labourer be of moral and perpe-
tual right, yet that special kind of hire, the tenth, can
be of no right or necessity, but to that special labour
for which God ordained it. That special labour was
the levitical and ceremonial service of the tabernacle,
Numb. xviii. 21, 31, which is now abolished: the right
therefore of that special hire must needs be withal
abolished, as being also ceremonial. That tithes were
ceremonial, is plain, not being given to the Levites till
they had been first offered a heave-offering to the Lord,
ver, 24, 28. He then who by that law brings tithes
into the gospel, of necessity brings in withal a sacrifice,
and an altar; without which tithes by that law were
unsanctified and polluted, ver. 32, and therefore never
thought on in the first christian times, till ceremonies,
altars, and oblations, by an ancienter corruption, were
brought back long before. And yet the Jews, ever
since their temple was destroyed, though they have
rabbies and teachers of their law, yet pay no tithes, as
having no Levites to whom, no temple where, to pay
them, no altar whereon to hallow them: which argues
that the Jews themselves never thought tithes moral,
but ceremonial only. That Christians therefore should
take them up, when Jews have laid them down, must
needs be very absurd and preposterous. Next, it is
as clear in the same chapter, that the priests and Levites
had not tithes for their labour only in the tabernacle,
but in regard they were to have no other part nor in-
heritance in the land, ver. 20, 24, and by that means
for a tenth, lost a twelfth. But our Levites undergo-
ing no such law of deprivenent, can have no right
to any such compensation : nay, if by this law they
will have tithes, can have no inheritance of land, but
forfeit what they have. Besides this, tithes were of two
sorts, those of every year, and those of every third year:
of the former, every one that brought his tithes, was to
eat his share: Deut. xiv. 23, “Thou shalt eat before
the Lord thy God, in the place which he shall choose
to place his name there, the tithe of thy corn, of thy
wine, and of thine oil,” &c. Nay, though he could
not bring his tithe in kind, by reason of his distant
dwelling from the tabernacle or temple, but was there-
by forced to turn it into money, he was to bestow that
money on whatsoever pleased him, oxen, sheep, wine, or
strong drink; and to eat and drink thereof there before
the Lord, both he and his houshold, ver, 24, 25, 26. As
for tithes of every third year, they were not given only
to the Levite, but to the stranger, the fatherless, and
the widow, ver, 28, 29, and chap. xxvi. 12, 13. So
that ours, if they will have tithes, must admit of these
sharers with them. Nay, these tithes were not paid
in at all to the Levite, but the Levite himself was to
426
THE LIKELIEST MEANS TO REMOVE
come with those his fellow-guests, and eat his share
of them only at his house who provided them; and
this not in regard of his ministerial office, but because
he had no part or inheritance in the land. Lastly,
the priests and Levites, a tribe, were of a far different
constitution from this of our ministers under the
gospel : in them were orders and degrees both by
family, dignity, and office, mainly distinguished ;
the high priest, his brethren and his sons, to whom
the Levites themselves paid tithes, and of the best,
were eminently superiour, Numb. xviii. 28, 29. No
protestant, I suppose, will liken one of our minis-
ters to a high priest, but rather to a common Levite.
Unless then, to keep their tithes, they mean to bring
back again bishops, archbishops, and the whole gang
of prelatry, to whom will they themselves pay tithes, as
by that law it was a sin to them if they did not? ver,
32. Certainly this must needs put them to a deep de-
mur, while the desire of holding fast their tithes with-
out sin may tempt them to bring back again bishops,
as the likeness of that hierarchy that should receive
tithes from them ; and the desire to pay none, may ad-
vise them to keep out of the church all orders above
them. But if we have to do at present, as I suppose
we have, with true reformed protestants, not with
papists or prelates, it will not be denied that in the gos-
pel there be but two ministerial degrees, presbyters and
deacons; which if they contend to have any succession,
reference or conformity with those two degrees under
the law, priests and Levites, it must needs be such
whereby our presbyters or ministers may be answer-
able to priests, and our deacons to Levites; by which
rule of proportion it will follow that we must pay our
tithes to the deacons only, and they only to the minis-
ters. But if it be truer yet, that the priesthood of Aaron
typified a better reality, I Pet. ii. 5, signifying the
christian true and “holy priesthood to offer up spiritual
sacrifice;” it follows hence, that we are now justly
exempt from paying tithes to any who claim from
Aaron, since that priesthood is in us now real, which in
him was but a shadow. Seeing then by all this which
has been shewn, that the law of tithes is partly cere-
monial, as the work was for which they were given,
partly judicial, not of common, but of particular right
to the tribe of Levi, nor to them alone, but to the owner
also and his houshold, at the time of their offering,
and every three years to the stranger, the fatherless,
and the widow, their appointed sharers, and that they
were a tribe of priests and deacons improperly com-
pared to the constitution of our ministry; and the tithes
given by that people to those deacons only; it follows
that our ministers at this day, being neither priests nor
Levites, nor fitly answering to either of them, can have
no just title or pretence to tithes, by any consequence
drawn from the law of Moses. But they think they
have yet a better plea in the example of Melchisedec,
who took tithes of Abraham ere the law was given;
whence they would infer tithes to be of moral right.
But they ought to know, or to remember, that not ex-
amples, but express commands, oblige our obedience to
God or man : next, that whatsoever was done in re-
ligion before the law written, is not presently to be
counted moral, when as so many things were then
done both ceremonial and judaically judicial, that we
need not doubt to conclude all times before Christ
more or less under the ceremonial law. To what end
served else those altars and sacrifices, that distinction
of clean and unclean entering into the ark, circum-
cision, and the raising up of seed to the elder brother 2
Gen. xxxviii. 8. If these things be not moral, though
before the law, how are tithes, though in the example
of Abraham and Melchisedec P But this instance is so
far from being the just ground of a law, that aſter all
Circumstances duly weighed both from Gen. xiv. and
Heb. vii. it will not be allowed them so much as an
example. Melchisedec, besides his priestly benedic-
tion, brought with him bread and wine sufficient to re-
fresh Abraham and his whole army; incited to do so,
first, by the secret providence of God, intending him
for a type of Christ and his priesthood; next, by his
due thankfulness and honour to Abraham, who had
freed his borders of Salem from a potent enemy: Abra-
ham on the other side honours him with the tenth of
all, that is to say, (for he took not sure his whole estate
with him to that war,) of the spoils, Heb. vii. 4. Incited
he also by the same secret providence, to signify as
grandfather of Levi, that the Levitical priesthood was
excelled by the priesthood of Christ. For the giving
of a tenth declared, it seems, in those countries and
times, him the greater who received it. That which
next incited him, was partly his gratitude to requite the
present, partly his reverence to the person and his bene-
diction: to his person, as a king and priest, greater
therefore than Abraham, who was a priest also, but not
a king. And who unhired will be so hardy as to say,
that Abraham at any other time ever paid him tithes,
either before or aſter; or had then, but for this acci-
dental meeting and obligement; or that else Melchise-
dec had demanded or exacted them, or took them other-
wise than as the voluntary gift of Abraham P. But our
ministers, though neither priests nor kings more than
any other Christian, greater in their own esteem than
Abraham and all his seed, for the verbal labour of a
seventh day's preachment, not bringing, like Melchise-
dec, bread or wine at their own cost, would not take
only at the willing hand of liberality or gratitude, but
require and exact as due, the tenth, not of spoils, but
of our whole estates and labours; nor once, but yearly.
We then it seems, by the example of Abraham, must
pay tithes to these Melchisedecs: but what if the per-
son of Abraham can neither no way represent us, or
will oblige the ministers to pay tithes no less than
other men 2 Abraham had not only a priest in his loins,
but was himself a priest, and gave tithes to Melchise-
dec either as grandfather of Levi, or as father of the
faithful. If as grandfather (though he understood it
not) of Levi, he obliged not us, but Levi only, the in-
feriour priest, by that homage (as the apostle to the
Hebrews clearly enough explains) to acknowledge the
greater. And they who by Melchisedec claim from
Abraham as Levi's grandfather, have none to seek their
tithes of but the Levites, where they can find them.
HIRELINGS OUT OF THE CHURCH.
427
If Abraham, as father of the faithful, paid tithes to
Melchisedec, then certainly the ministers also, if they
be of that number, paid in him equally with the rest.
Which may induce us to believe, that as both Abraham
and Melchisedec, so tithes also in that action typical
and ceremonial, signified nothing else but that sub-
jection which all the faithful, both ministers and
people, owe to Christ, our high priest and king.
In any literal sense, from this example, they never
will be able to extort that the people in those days
paid tithes to priests, but this only, that one priest once
in his life, of spoils only, and in requital partly of a
liberal present, partly of a benediction, gave voluntary
tithes, not to a greater priest than himself, as far as
Abraham could then understand, but rather to a priest
and king joined in one person. They will reply, per-
haps, that if one priest paid tithes to another, it must
needs be understood that the people did no less to the
priest. But I shall easily remove that necessity, by
remembering them that in those days was no priest,
but the father, or the first-born of each family; and by
consequence no people to pay him tithes, but his own
children and servants, who had not wherewithal to pay
him, but of his own. Yet grant that the people then
paid tithes, there will not yet be the like reason
to enjoin us; they being then under ceremonies, a
mere laity, we now under Christ, a royal priesthood
1 Pet. ii. 9, as we are coheirs, kings and priests with
him, a priest for ever after the order or manner of Mel-
chisedec. As therefore Abraham paid tithes to Mel-
chisedec because Levi was in him, so we ought to pay
mone because the true Melchisedec is in us, and we in
him, who can pay to none greater, and hath freed us,
by our union with himself, from all compulsive tributes
and taxes in his church. Neither doth the collateral
place, Heb. vii. make other use of this story, than to
prove Christ, personated by Melchisedec, a greater
priest than Aaron : ver, 4. “Now consider how great
this man was,” &c.; and proves not in the least man-
ner that tithes be of any right to ministers, but the
contrary : first, the Levites had a commandment to take
tithes of the people according to the law, that is, of
their brethren, though they come out of the loins of
Abraham, ver, 5. The commandment then was, it
seems, to take tithes of the Jews only, and according
to the law. That law changing of necessity with the
priesthood, no other sort of ministers, as they must
needs be another sort under another priesthood, can re-
ceive that tribute of tithes which fell with that law,
unless renewed by another express command, and ac-
cording to another law ; no such law is extant. Next,
Melchisedec not as a minister, but as Christ himself in
berson, blessed Abraham, who “ had the promises,”
ver. 6, and in him blessed all both ministers and peo-
ple, both of the law and gospel: that blessing declared
him greater and better than whom he blessed, ver. 7,
receiving tithes from them all, not as a maintenance,
which Melchisedec needed not, but as a sign of homage
and subjection to their king and priest: whereas minis-
ters bear not the person of Christ in his priesthood or
kingship, bless not as he blesses, are not by their bless-
ing greater than Abraham, and all the faithful with
themselves included in him; cannot both give and
take tithes in Abraham, cannot claim to themselves
that sign of our allegiance due only to our eternal king
and priest, cannot therefore derive tithes from Melchi-
sedec. Lastly, the eighth verse hath thus; “Here
men that die receive tithes: there he received them, of
whom it is witnessed that he liveth.” Which words
intimate, that as he offered himself once for us, so he
received once of us in Abraham, and in that place the
typical acknowledgment of our redemption : which
had it been a perpetual annuity to Christ, by him
claimed as his due, Levi must have paid it yearly, as
well as then, ver, 9, and our ministers ought still, to
some Melchisedec or other, as well now as they did in
Abraham. But that Christ never claimed any such
tenth as his annual due, much less resigned it to the
ministers, his so officious receivers, without express
commission or assignment, will be yet clearer as we
proceed. Thus much may at length assure us, that
this example of Abraham and Melchisedec, though I
see of late they build most upon it, can so little be the
ground of any law to us, that it will not so much avail
them as to the authority of an example. Of like im-
pertinence is that example of Jacob, Gen. xxviii. 22,
who of his free choice, not enjoined by any law, vowed
the tenth of all that God should give him : which for
aught appears to the contrary, he vowed as a thing no
less indifferent before his vow, than the foregoing part
thereof: that the stone, which he had set there for a
pillar, should be God's house. And to whom vowed
he this tenth, but to God f Not to any priest, for we
read of none to him greater than himself: and to God,
no doubt, but he paid what he vowed, both in the
building of that Bethel, with other altars elsewhere,
and the expense of his continual sacrifices, which none
but he had a right to offer. However therefore he
paid his tenth, it could in no likelihood, unless by such
an occasion as befell his grandfather, be to any priest.
But, say they, “All the tithe of the land, whether of
the seed of the land, or of the fruit of the tree, is the
Lord's, holy unto the Lord, Lev. xxvii. 30.” And this
before it was given to the Levites; therefore since they
ceased. No question; For the whole earth is the
Lord's, and the fulness thereof, Psal. xxiv. 1, and the
light of nature shews us no less : but that the tenth is
his more than the rest, how know I, but as he so de-
clares it? He declares it so here of the land of Canaan
only, as by all circumstance appears, and passes, by
deed of gift, this tenth to the Levite; yet so as offered
to him first a heave-offering, and consecrated on his
altar, Numb. xviii. all which I had as little known, but
by that evidence. The Levites are ceased, the gift re-
turns to the giver. How then can we know that he
hath given it to any other Or how can these men
presume to take it unoffered first to God, unconsecrated,
without another clear and express donation, whereof
they shew no evidence or writing 2 Besides, he hath
now alienated that holy land; who can warrantably
affirm, that he hath since hallowed the tenth of this
land, which none but God hath power to do or can
428
THE LIKELIEST MEANS TO REMOVE
warrant? Their last proof they cite out of the gospel,
which makes as little for them, Matt. xxiii. 23, where
our Saviour denouncing woe to the scribes and Phari-
sees, who paid tithe so exactly, and omitted weightier
matters, tells them, that these they ought to have done,
that is, to have paid tithes. For our Saviour spake
them to those who observed the law of Moses, which
was yet not fully abrogated, till the destruction of the
temple. And by the way here we may observe, out of
their own proof, that the scribes and Pharisees, though
then chief teachers of the people, such at least as were
not Levites, did not take tithes, but paid them: so
much less covetous were the scribes and Pharisees in
those worse times than ours at this day. This is so
apparent to the reformed divines of other countries,
that when any one of ours hath attempted in Latin to
maintain this argument of tithes, though a man would
think they might suffer him without opposition, in a
point equally tending to the advantage of all ministers,
yet they forbear not to oppose him, as in a doctrine not
fit to pass unopposed under the gospel. Which shews
the modesty, the contentedness of those foreign pastors,
with the maintenance given them, their sincerity also
in the truth, though less gainſul, and the avarice of
ours; who through the love of their old papistical
tithes, consider not the weak arguments, or rather con-
jectures and surmises, which they bring to defend them.
On the other side, although it be sufficient to have
proved in general the abolishing of tithes, as part of
the judaical or ceremonial law, which is abolished all,
as well that before as that after Moses; yet I shall
further prove them abrogated by an express ordinance
of the gospel, founded not on any type, or that munici-
pal law of Moses, but on moral and general equity,
given us in stead : 1 Cor. ix. 13, 14, “Know ye not,
that they who minister about holy things, live of the
things of the temple; and they which wait at the altar,
are partakers with the altar * So also the Lord hath
ordained, that they who preach the gospel, should live
of the gospel.” He saith not, should live on things
which were of the temple, or of the altar, of which were
tithes, for that had given them a clear title: but abro-
gating that former law of Moses, which determined
what and how much, by a later ordinance of Christ,
which leaves the what and how much indefinite and
free, so it be sufficient to live on : he saith, “The Lord
hath so ordained, that they who preach the gospel,
should live of the gospel;” which hath neither temple,
altar, nor sacrifice : Heb. vii. 13, “ For he of whom
these things are spoken, pertaineth to another tribe, of
which no man gave attendance at the altar:” his minis-
ters therefore cannot thence have tithes. And where
the Lord hath so ordained, we may find easily in more
than one evangelist: Luke X, 7, 8, “In the same house
remain, eating and drinking such things as they give :
for the labourer is worthy of his hire, &c. And into
whatsoever city you enter, and they receive you, eat
such things as are set before you.” To which ordi-
nance of Christ it may seem likeliest, that the apostle
refers us both here, and 1 Tim. v. 18, where he cites
this as the saying of our Saviour, “That the labourer
is worthy of his hire.” And both by this place of Luke,
and that of Matt. x. 9, 10, 11, it evidently appears,
that our Saviour ordained no certain maintenance for
his apostles or ministers, publicly or privately, in house
or city received; but that, whatever it were, which
might suffice to live on ; and this not commanded or
proportioned by Abraham or by Moses, whom he might
easily have here cited, as his manner was, but declared
only by a rule of common equity, which proportions the
hire as well to the ability of him who gives, as to the
labour of him who receives, and recommends him only
as worthy, not invests him with a legal right. And
mark whereon he grounds this his ordinance; not on a
perpetual right of tithes from Melchisedec, as hirelings
pretend, which he never claimed, either for himself, or
for his ministers, but on the plain and common equity
of rewarding the labourer; worthy sometimes of single,
sometimes of double honour, not proportionable by
tithes. And the apostle in this forecited chapter to the
Corinthians, ver, 11, affirms it to be no great recom-
pence, if carnal things be reaped for spiritual sown;
but to mention tithes, neglects here the fittest occasion
that could be offered him, and leaves the rest free and
undetermined. Certainly if Christ or his apostles had
approved of tithes, they would have, either by writing
or tradition, recommended them to the church ; and that
soon would have appeared in the practice of those pri-
mitive and the next ages. But for the first three hun-
dred years and more, in all the ecclesiastical story, I
find no such doctrine or example: though errour by
that time had brought back again priests, altars, and
oblations; and in many other points of religion had
miserably judaized the church. So that the defenders
of tithes, after a long pomp, and tedious preparation
out of heathen authors, telling us that tithes were paid
to Hercules and Apollo, which perhaps was imitated
from the Jews, and as it were bespeaking our expect-
ation, that they will abound much more with authori-
ties out of christian story, have nothing of general ap-
probation to begin with from the first three or four
ages, but that which abundantly serves to the confut-
ation of their tithes; while they confess that church-
men in those ages lived merely upon freewill-offerings.
Neither can they say, that tithes were not then paid
for want of a civil magistrate to ordain them, for Chris-
tians had then also lands, and might give out of them
what they pleased ; and yet of tithes then given we
find no mention. And the first christian emperors,
who did all things as bishops advised them, supplied
what was wanting to the clergy not out of tithes,
which were never motioned, but out of their own im-
perial revenues; as is manifest in Eusebius, Theodoret,
and Sozomen, from Constantine to Arcadius. Hence
those ancientest reformed churches of the Waldenses,
if they rather continued not pure since the apostles,
denied that tithes were to be given, or that they were
ever given in the primitive church, as appears by an
ancient tractate in the Bohemian history. Thus far
hath the church been always, whether in her prime or
in her ancientest reformation, from the approving of
tithes: nor without reason; for they might easily per-
HITRELINGS OUT
OF THE CHURCH. 429
ceive that tithes were fitted to the Jews only, a national
church of many incomplete synagogues, uniting the
accomplishment of divine worship in one temple; and
the Levites there had their tithes paid where they did
their bodily work; to which a particular tribe was set
apart by divine appointment, not by the people's elec-
tion: but the christian church is universal; not tied to
nation, diocess, or parish, but consisting of many par-
ticular churches complete in themselves, gathered not
by compulsion, or the accident of dwelling nigh toge-
ther, but by free consent, choosing both their particular
church and their church-officers. Whereas if tithes be
set up, all these christian privileges will be disturbed
and soon lost, and with them christian liberty.
The first authority which our adversaries bring, after
those fabulous apostolic canons, which they dare not
insist upon, is a provincial council held at Cullen,
where they voted tithes to be God's rent, in the year
356; at the same time perhaps when the three kings
reigned there, and of like authority. For to what
purpose do they bring these trivial testimonies, by
which they might as well prove altars, candles at noon,
and the greatest part of those superstitions fetched from
paganism or Jewism, which the papist, inveigled by
this fond argument of antiquity, retains to this day ?
To what purpose those decrees of I know not what
bishops, to a parliament and people who have thrown
out both bishops and altars, and promised all reforma-
tion by the word of God f And that altars brought
tithes hither, as one corruption begot another, is evi-
dent by one of those questions, which the monk Aus-
tin propounded to the pope, “concerning those things,
which by offerings of the faithful came to the altar;”
as Beda writes, l. i. c. 27. If then by these testimo-
nies we must have tithes continued, we must again
have altars. Of Fathers, by custom so called, they
quote Ambrose, Augustin, and some other ceremonial
doctors of the same leaven : whose assertion, without
pertinent scripture, no reformed church can admit;
and what they vouch is founded on the law of Moses,
with which every where pitifully mistaken, they again
incorporate the gospel; as did the rest also of those
titular Fathers, perhaps an age or two before them, by
many rites and ceremonies, both Jewish and heathen-
ish, introduced; whereby thinking to gain all, they
lost all : and instead of winning Jews and pagans to
be Christians, by too much condescending they turned
Christians into Jews and pagans. To heap such un-
convincing citations as these in religion, whereof the
Scripture only is our rule, argues not much learning
nor judgment, but the lost labour of much unprofitable
reading. And yet a late hot Querist” for tithes, whom
ye may know by his wits lying ever beside him in the
margin, to be ever beside his wits in the text, a fierce
reformer once, now rankled with a contrary heat, would
send us back, very reformedly indeed, to learn reforma-
tion from Tyndarus and Rebuffus, two canonical pro-
moters. They produce next the ancient constitutions
of this land, Saxon laws, edicts of kings, and their
councils, from Athelstan, in the year 928, that tithes
* Prynne,
by statute were paid : and might produce from Ina,
above 200 years before, that Romescot or Peter's penny
was by as good statute law paid to the pope; from 725,
and almost as long continued. And who knows not
that this law of tithes was enacted by those kings and
barons upon the opinion they had of their divine right?
as the very words import of Edward the Confessor, in
the close of that law : “For so blessed Austin preached
and taught; ” meaning the monk, who first brought
the Romish religion into England from Gregory the
pope. And by the way I add, that by these laws, imi-
tating the law of Moses, the third part of tithes only
was the priest's due ; the other two were appointed for
the poor, and to adorn or repair churches; as the ca-
nons of Ecbert and Elfric witness : Concil. Brit. If
then these laws were founded upon the opinion of di-
vine authority, and that authority be found mistaken
and erroneous, as hath been fully manifested, it follows,
that these laws fall of themselves with their false foun-
dation. But with what face or conscience can they
allege Moses or these laws for titles, as they now en-
joy or exact them ; whereof Moses ordains the owner,
as we heard before, the stranger, the fatherless, and
the widow, partakers of the Levite; and these Fathers
which they cite, and these though Romish rather than
English laws, allotted both to priest and bishop the
third part only 2 But these our protestant, these our
new reformed English presbyterian divines, against
their own cited authors, and to the shame of their pre-
tended reformation, would engross to themselves all
tithes by statute; and supported more by their wilful
obstimacy and desire of filthy lucre, than by these both
insufficient and impertinent authorities, would persuade
a christian magistracy and parliament, whom we trust
God hath restored for a happier reformation, to impose
upon us a judaical ceremonial law, and yet from that
law to be more irregular and unwarrantable, more com-
plying with a covetous clergy, than any of those popish
kings and parliaments alleged. Another shift they
have to plead, that tithes may be moral as well as the
sabbath, a tenth of fruits as well as a seventh of days:
I answer, that the prelates who urge this argument
have least reason to use it, denying morality in the
sabbath, and therein better agreeing with reformed
churches abroad than the rest of our divines. As
therefore the seventh day is not moral, but a convenient
recourse of worship in fit season, whether seventh or
other number; so neither is the tenth of our goods,
but only a convenient subsistence morally due to minis-
ters. The last and lowest sort of their arguments,
that men purchased not their tithe with their land, and
such like pettifoggery, I omit; as refuted sufficiently
by others: I omit also their violent and irreligious ex-
actions, related no less credibly ; their seizing of pots
and pans from the poor, who have as good right to
tithes as they ; from some, the very beds; their suing
and imprisoning, worse than when the canon law was
in force; worse than when those wicked sons of Eli
were priests, whose manner was thus to seize their
pretended priestly due by force; 1 Sam. ii. 12, &c.
430
THE LIKELIEST MEANS TO REMOVE
“Whereby men abhorred the offering of the Lord.”
And it may be feared, that many will as much abhor
the gospel, if such violence as this be suffered in her
ministers, and in that which they also pretend to be
the offering of the Lord. For those sons of Belial
within some limits made seizure of what they knew
was their own by an undoubted law ; but these, from
whom there is no sanctuary, seize out of men's
grounds, out of men's houses, their other goods of
double, sometimes of treble value, for that which, did
not covetousness and rapine blind them, they know to
be not their own by the gospel which they preach.
Of some more tolerable than these, thus severely God
hath spoken ; Isa. xlvi. 10, &c. “They are greedy
dogs; they all look to their own way, every one for
his gain, from his quarter.” With what anger then
will he judge them who stand not looking, but un-
der colour of a divine right, fetch by force that which
is not their own, taking his name not in vain, but in
violence P Nor content, as Gehazi was, to make a cun-
ning, but a constrained advantage of what their master
bids them give freely, how can they but return smitten,
worse than that sharking minister, with a spiritual
leprosy P And yet they cry out sacrilege, that men will
not be gulled and baffled the tenth of their estates, by
giving credit to frivolous pretences of divine right.
Where did God ever clearly declare to all nations, or
in all lands, (and none but fools part with their estates
without clearest evidence, on bare supposals and pre-
sumptions of them who are the gainers thereby,) that
he required the tenth as due to him or his Son perpetu-
ally and in all places P. Where did he demand it, that
we might certainly know, as in all claims of temporal
right is just and reasonable P or if demanded, where
did he assign it, or by what evident conveyance to mi-
misters ? Unless they can demonstrate this by more
than conjectures, their title can be no better to tithes
than the title of Gehazi was to those things which by
abusing his master's name he rooked from Naaman.
Much less where did he command that tithes should
be fetched by force, where left not under the gospel,
whatever his right was, to the freewill-offerings of
men 2 Which is the greater sacrilege, to bely divine
authority, to make the name of Christ accessory to vio-
lence, and robbing him of the very honour which he
aimed at in bestowing freely the gospel, to commit
simony and rapine, both secular and ecclesiastical ;
or on the other side, not to give up the tenth of civil
right and propriety to the tricks and impostures of
clergymen, contrived with all the art and argument
that their bellies can invent or suggest ; yet so ridicu-
lous and presuming on the people's dulness and super-
stition, as to think they prove the divine right of their
maintenance by Abraham paying tithes to Melchisedec,
whenas Melchisedec in that passage rather gave main-
tenance to Abraham ; in whom all, both priests and
ministers as well as laymen, paid tithes, not received
them. And because I affirmed above, beginning this
first part of my discourse, that God hath given to mi-
misters of the gospel that maintenance only which is
justly given them, let us see a little what hath been
thought of that other maintenance besides tithes, which
of all protestants our English divines either only or
most apparently both require and take. Those are fees
for christenings, marriages, and burials: which, though
whoso will may give freely, yet being not of right, but
of free gift, if they be exacted or established, they be-
come unjust to them who are otherwise maintained ;
and of such evil note, that even the council of Trent,
1. ii. p. 240, makes them liable to the laws against
simony, who take or demand fees for the administering
of any sacrament: “Che la simodo volendo levare gli
abusi introdotti,” &c. And in the next page, with like
severity, condemns the giving or taking for a benefice,
and the celebrating of marriages, christenings, and
burials, for fees exacted or demanded : nor counts it
less simony to sell the ground or place of burial. And
in a state-assembly at Orleans, 1561, it was decreed,
“Che non si potesse essiger cosa alcuna, &c. p. 429,
That nothing should be exacted for the administring
of sacraments, burials, or any other spiritual function.”
Thus much that council, of all others the most popish,
and this assembly of papists, though, by their own
principles, in bondage to the clergy, were induced,
either by their own reason and shame, or by the light
of reformation then shining in upon them, or rather
by the known canons of many councils and synods long
before, to condemn of simony spiritual fees demanded.
For if the minister be maintained for his whole ministry,
why should he be twice paid for any part thereof *
Why should he, like a servant, seek wails over and
above his wages * As for christenings, either they
themselves call men to baptism, or men of themselves
come : if ministers invite, how ill had it become John
the Baptist to demand fees for his baptizing, or Christ
for his christenings P Far less becomes it these now,
with a greediness lower than that of tradesmen calling
passengers to their shop, and yet paid beforehand, to
ask again for doing that which those their founders did
freely. If men of themselves come to be baptized, they
are either brought by such as already pay the minister,
or come to be one of his disciples and maintainers: of
whom to ask a fee as it were for entrance is a piece of
paltry craft or caution, befitting none but beggarly
artists. Burials and marriages are so little to be any
part of their gain, that they who consider well may
find them to be no part of their function. At burials
their attendance they allege on the corpse; all the
guests do as much unhired. But their prayers at the
grave; superstitiously required : yet if required, their
last performance to the deceased of their own flock.
But the funeral sermon ; at their choice, or if not, an
occasion offered them to preach out of season, which is
one part of their office. But something must be spoken
in praise; if due, their duty; if undue, their corruption:
a peculiar simony of our divines in England only.
But the ground is broken, and especially their unright-
eous possession, the chancel. To sell that, will not only
raise up in judgment the council of Trent against them,
but will lose them the best champion of tithes, their
zealous antiquary, Sir Henry Spelman; who in a book
written to that purpose, by many cited canons, and some
HIRELINGS OUT OF THE CHURCH. 43?
even of times corruptest in the church, proves that ſees | sury, and distributed to the ministers according to
exacted or demanded for sacraments, marriages, burials, their several labours: and that was judged either by
and especially for interring, are wicked, accursed, si- some extraordinary person, as Timothy, who by the
moniacal, and abominable: yet thus is the church, for apostle was then left evangelist at Ephesus, 2 Tim. iv.
all this noise of reformation, left still unreſormed, by 5, or by some to whom the church deputed that care.
the censure of their own synods, their own favourers, This is so agreeable to reason, and so clear, that any
a den of thieves and robbers. As for marriages, that one may perceive what iniquity and violence hath pre-
ministers should meddle with them, as not sanctified or vailed since in the church, whereby it hath been so
legitimate, without their celebration, I find no ground ordered, that they also shall be compelled to recompense
in Scripture either of precept or example. Likeliest it the parochial minister, who neither chose him for their
is (which our Selden hath well observed, l. 2, c. 28, teacher, nor have received instruction from him, as
Ux. Eb.) that in imitation of heathen priests, who were being either insufficient, or not resident, or inferiour to
wont at nuptials to use many rites and ceremonies, and whom they follow ; wherein to bar them their choice,
especially, judging it would be profitable, and the in- is to violate christian liberty. Our law books testify,
crease of their authority, not to be spectators only in that before the council of Lateran, in the year 1179,
business of such concernment to the life of man, they in- and the fifth of our Henry II, or rather before a de-
sinuated that marriage was not holy without their bene- cretal Epistle of pope Innocent the IIId, about 1200,
diction, and for the better colour, made it a sacrament; be- and the first of King John, “any man might have
ing of itself a civil ordinance, a household contract, a given his tithes to what spiritual person he would :”
thing indifferent and free to the whole race of mankind, and as the Lord Coke notes on that place, Instit, part 2,
not as religious, but as men: best, indeed, undertaken to that “this decretal bound not the subjects of this realm,
religious ends, and as the apostle saith, l Cor. vii. “in but as it seemed just and reasonable.” The pope took
the Lord.” Yet not therefore invalid or unholy with- his reason rightly from the above-cited place, I Cor.
out a minister and his pretended necessary hallowing, ix. 11, but falsely supposed every one to be instructed
more than any other act, enterprise, or contract of civil | by his parish priest. Whether this were then first so
life, which ought all to be done also in the Lord and decreed, or rather long before, as may seem by the laws
to his glory: all which, no less than marriage, were of Edgar and Canute, that tithes were to be paid, not
by the cunning of priests heretofore, as material to to whom he would that paid them, but to the cathedral
their profit, transacted at the altar. Our divines deny church or the parish priest, it imports not; since the
it to be a sacrament; yet retained the celebration, till reason which they themselves bring, built on false sup-
prudently a late parliament recovered the civil liberty position, becomes alike infirm and absurd, that he
of marriage from their encroachment, and transferred should reap from me, who sows not to me; be the
the ratifying and registering thereof from the canonical cause either his defect, or my free choice. But here it
hop to the proper cognizance of civil magistrates. will be readily objected, What if they who are to be
r’sº then, that God hath given to ministers under instructed be not able to maintain a minister, as in
the gospel that only which is justly given them, that many villages 2 I answer, that the Scripture shews in
is to say, a due and moderate livelihood, the hire of many places what ought to be done herein. First I
their labour, and that the heave-offering of tithes is offer it to the reason of any man, whether he think the
abolished with the altar; yea, though not abolished, knowledge of christian religion harder than any other
yet lawless, as they enjoy them; their Melchisedechian | art or science to attain. I suppose he will grant that
right also trivial and groundless, and both tithes and it is far easier, both of itself, and in regard of God's
fees, if exacted or established, unjust and scandalous; assisting Spirit, not particularly promised us to the at-
we may hope, with them removed, to remove hirelings | tainment of any other knowledge, but of this only :
in some good measure, whom these tempting baits, by since it was preached as well to the shepherds of Beth-
law especially to be recovered, allure into the church. lehem by angels, as to the eastern wise men by that
The next thing to be considered in the maintenance star ; and our Saviour declares himself anointed to
of ministers, is by whom it should be given. Wherein preach the gospel to the poor, Luke iv. 18; then surely
though the light of reason might sufficiently inform us, to their capacity. They who after him first taught it,
it will be best to consult the Scripture: Gal. vi. 6, were otherwise unlearned men : they who before Hus
“Let him that is taught in the word, communicate to and Luther first reformed it, were for the meanness of
him that teacheth, in all good things:” that is to say, their condition called, “the poor men of Lions:” and
in all manner of gratitude, to his ability. 1 Cor. ix. 11, in Flanders at this day, “le Gueus,” which is to say,
“If we have sown unto you spiritual things, is it a Beggars. Therefore are the Scriptures translated into
great matter if we reap your carnal things P’’ To whom every vulgar tongue, as being held in main matters of
therefore hath not been sown, from him wherefore belief and salvation, plain and easy to the poorest: and
should be reaped 2 1 Tim. v. 17, “Let the elders that such no less than their teachers have the spirit to guide
rule well, be counted worthy of double honour; espe- them in all truth, John xiv. 26, and xvi. 13. Hence
cially they who labour in word and doctrine.” By we may conclude, if men be not all their lifetime under
these places we see, that recompence was given either a teacher to learn logic, natural philosophy, ethics, or
by every one in particular who had been instructed, or mathematics, which are more difficult, that certainly it
by them all in common, brought into the church-trea- is not necessary to the attainment of christian know-
432
THE LIKELIEST MEANS TO REMOVE
ledge, that men should sit all their life long at the feet
of a pulpited divine; while he, a lollard indeed over
his elbow cushion, in almost the seventh part of forty
or fifty years teaches them scarce half the principles of
religion; and his sheep ofttimes sit the while to as little
purpose of benefitting, as the sheep in their pews at
Smithfield ; and for the most part by some simony or
other bought and sold like them : or if this comparison
be too low, like those women, 1 Tim. iii. 7, “Ever learn-
ing and never attaining;” yet not so much through
their own fault, as through the unskilful and immetho-
dical teaching of their pastor, teaching here and there
at random out of this or that text, as his ease or fancy,
and ofttimes as his stealth, guides him. Seeing then
that christian religion may be so easily attained, and by
meanest capacities, it cannot be much difficult to find
ways, both how the poor, yea all men, may be soon
taught what is to be known of Christianity, and they
who teach them, recompensed. First, if ministers of
their own accord, who pretend that they are called and
sent to preach the gospel, those especially who have no
particular flock, would imitate our Saviour and his dis-
ciples, who went preaching through the villages, not
only through the cities, Matt. ix. 35, Mark vi. 6, Luke
xiii. 22, Acts viii. 25, and there preached to the poor as
well as to the rich, looking for no recompence but in
heaven : John iv. 35, 36, “Look on the fields, for they
are white already to harvest: and he that reapeth, re-
ceiveth wages, and gathereth fruit unto life eternal.”
This was their wages. But they will soon reply, we
ourselves have not where withal; who shall bear the
charges of our journey P To whom it may as soon be
answered, that in likelihood they are not poorer, than
they who did thus; and if they have not the same faith,
which those disciples had to trust in God and the pro-
mise of Christ for their maintenance as they did, and
yet intrude into the ministry without any livelihood of
their own, they cast themselves into miserable hazard
or temptation, and ofttimes into a more miserable neces-
sity, either to starve, or to please their paymasters rather
than God; and give men just cause to suspect, that
they came neither called nor sent from above to preach
the word, but from below, by the instinct of their own
hunger, to feed upon the church. Yet grant it needful
to allow them both the charges of their journey and the
hire of their labour, it will belong next to the charity
of richer congregations, where most commonly they
abound with teachers, to send some of their number to
the villages round, as the apostles from Jerusalem sent
Peter and John to the city and villages of Samaria,
Acts viii. 14, 25; or as the church at Jerusalem sent
Barnabas to Antioch, chap. xi. 22, and other churches
joining sent Luke to travel with Paul, 2 Cor. viii. 19;
though whether they had their charges borne by the
church or no, it be not recorded. If it be objected, that
this itinerary preaching will not serve to plant the
gospel in those places, unless they who are sent abide
there some competent time; I answer, that if they stay
there a year or two, which was the longest time usually
staid by the apostles in one place, it may suffice to teach
them, who will attend and learn all the points of reli-
gion necessary to salvation; then sorting them into
several congregations of a moderate number, out of the
ablest and zealousest among them to create elders, who,
exercising and requiring from themselves what they
have learned, (for no learning is retained without con-
stant exercise and methodical repetition,) may teach and
govern the rest: and so exhorted to continue faithful
and stedfast, they may securely be committed to the
providence of God and the guidance of his Holy Spirit,
till God may offer some opportunity to visit them again,
and to confirm them : which when they have done,
they have done as much as the apostles were wont to
do in propagating the gospel, Acts xiv. 23, “And when
they had ordained them elders in every church, and had
prayed with fasting, they commended them to the Lord,
on whom they believed.” And in the same chapter,
ver. 21, 22, “When they had preached the gospel to
that city, and had taught many, they returned again
to Lystra, and to Iconium and Antioch, confirming the
souls of the disciples, and exhorting them to continue
in the faith.” And chap. xv. 36, “Let us go again,
and visit our brethren.” And wer. 41, “He went
through Syria and Cilicia, confirming the churches.”
To these I might add other helps, which we enjoy now,
to make more easy the attainment of christian religion
by the meanest: the entire Scripture translated into
English with plenty of notes; and somewhere or other,
I trust, may be found some wholesome body of divinity,
as they call it, without school-terms and metaphysical
notions, which have obscured rather than explained
our religion, and made it seem difficult without cause.
Thus taught once for all, and thus now and then visited
and confirmed, in the most destitute and poorest places
of the land, under the government of their own elders
performing all ministerial offices among them, they
may be trusted to meet and edify one another whether
in church or chapel, or, to save them the trudging of
many miles thither, nearer home, though in a house or
barn. For notwithstanding the gaudy superstition of
some devoted still ignorantly to temples, we may be
well assured, that he who disdained not to be laid in a
manger, disdains not to be preached in a barn; and
that by such meetings as these, being indeed most
apostolical and primitive, they will in a short time ad-
vance more in christian knowledge and reformation of
life, than by the many years' preaching of such an in-
cumbent, I may say, such an Incubus ofttimes, as will
be meanly hired to abide long in those places. They
have this left perhaps to object further; that to send
thus, and to maintain, though but for a year or two,
ministers and teachers in several places, would prove
chargeable to the churches, though in towns and cities
round about. To whom again I answer, that it was
not thought so by them who first thus propagated the
gospel, though but few in number to us, and much less
able to sustain the expense. Yet this expense would
be much less than to hire incumbents, or rather incum-
brances, for lifetime; and a great means (which is the
subject of this discourse) to diminish hirelings. But be
the expense less or more, if it be found burdensome to
the churches, they have in this land an easy remedy in
HIRELINGS OUT OF THE CHURCH.
433
their recourse to the civil magistrate; who hath in his
hands the disposal of no small revenues, leſt perhaps
anciently to superstitious, but meant undoubtedly to
good and best uses; and therefore, once made public,
appliable by the present magistrate to such uses as the
church, or solid reason from whomsoever, shall con-
vince him to think best. And those uses may be, no
doubt, much rather than as glebes and augmentations
are now bestowed, to grant such requests as these of
the churches; or to erect in greater number, all over
the land, schools, and competent libraries to those
schools, where languages and arts may be taught free
together, without the needless, unprofitable, and incon-
venient removing to another place. So all the land
would be soon better civilized, and they who are taught
freely at the public cost might have their education
given them on this condition, that therewith content,
they should not gad for preferment out of their own
country, but continue there thankful for what they re-
ceived freely, bestowing it as freely on their country,
without soaring above the meanness wherein they were
born. But how they shall live when they are thus bred
and dismissed, will be still the sluggish objection. To
which is answered, that those public foundations may
be so instituted, as the youth therein may be at once
brought up to a competence of learning and to an ho-
nest trade; and the hours of teaching so ordered, as
their study may be no hindrance to their labour or
other calling. This was the breeding of St. Paul,
though born of no mean parents, a free citizen of the
Roman empire: so little did his trade debase him, that it
rather enabled him to use that magnanimity of preach-
ing the gospel through Asia and Europe at his own
Thus those preachers among the poor Wal-
denses, the ancient stock of our reformation, without
these helps which I speak of, bred up themselves in
trades, and especially in physic and surgery, as well as
in the study of Scripture, (which is the only true theo-
logy,) that they might be no burden to the church; and
by the example of Christ, might cure both soul and
body; through industry joining that to their ministry,
which he joined to his by gift of the spirit. Thus re-
lates Peter Gilles in his history of the Waldenses in
Piemont. But our ministers think scorn to use a trade,
and count it the reproach of this age, that tradesmen
preach the gospel. It were to be wished they were all
tradesmen; they would not so many of them, for want
of another trade, make a trade of their preaching : and
yet they clamour that tradesmen preach; and yet they
preach, while they themselves are the worst tradesmen
of all. As for church-endowments and possessions, I
meet with none considerable before Constantine, but
the houses and gardens where they met, and their
places of burial; and I persuade me, that from the an-
cient Waldenses, whom deservedly I cite so often, held,
“That to endow churches is an evil thing; and, that
the church then fell off and turned whore, sitting on
that beast in the Revelation, whem under pope Sylves-
ter she received those temporal donations.” So the fore-
cited tractate of their doctrine testifies. This also their
own traditions of that heavenly voice witnessed, and
charges.
some of the ancient fathers then living foresaw and
deplored. And indeed, how could these endowments
thrive better with the church, being unjustly taken by
those emperors, without suffrage of the people, out of
the tributes and public lands of each city, whereby the
people became liable to be oppressed with other taxes.
Being therefore given for the most part by kings and
other public persons, and so likeliest out of the public,
and if without the people's consent, unjustly, however
to public ends of much concernment, to the good or
evil of a commonwealth, and in that regard made pub-
lic though given by private persons, or which is worse,
given, as the clergy then persuaded men, for their souls’
health, a pious giſt; but as the truth was, ofttimes a
bribe to God, or to Christ for absolution, as they were
then taught, from murders, adulteries, and other hein-
ous crimes; what shall be found heretofore given by
kings or princes out of the public, may justly by the
magistrate be recalled and reappropriated to the civil
revenue: what by private or public persons out of their
own, the price of blood or lust, or to son:e such purga-
torious and superstitious uses, not only may, but ought
to be taken off from Christ, as a ſoul dishonour laid
upon him, or not impiously given, nor in particular to
any one, but in general to the church's good, may be
converted to that use, which shall be judged tending
more directly to that general end. Thus did the princes
and cities of Germany in the first reformation; and
defended their so doing by many reasons, which are
set down at large in Sleidan, Lib. 6, Anno 1526, and
Lib. 11, Anno 1537, and Lib. 13, Anno 1540. But that
the magistrate either out of that church-revenue which
remains yet in his hand, or establishing any other
maintenance instead of tithe, should take into his own
power the stipendiary maintenance of church-minis-
ters, or compel it by law, can stand neither with the
people's right, nor with christian liberty, but would
suspend the church wholly upon the state, and turn
ministers into state pensioners. And for the magistrate
in person of a nursing father to make the church his
mere ward, as always in minority, the church, to whom
he ought as a magistrate, Isa. xlix. 23, “to bow down
with his face toward the earth, and lick up the dust of
her feet; ” her to subject to his political drifts or con-
ceived opinions, by mastering her revenue; and so by
his examinant committees to circumscribe her free elec-
tion of ministers, is neither just nor pious; no honour
done to the church, but a plain dishonour: and upon
her whose only head is in heaven, yea upon him, who
is only head, sets another in effect, and which is most
monstrous, a human on a heavenly, a carnal on a spi-
ritual, a political herd on an ecclesiastical body; which
at length by such heterogeneal, such incestuous con-
junction, transforms her ofttimes into a beast of many
heads and many horns. For if the church be of all
societies the holiest on earth, and so to be reverenced
by the magistrate; not to trust her with her own belief
and integrity, and therefore not with the keeping, at
least with the disposing, of what revenue shall be found
justly and lawfully her own, is to count the church not
a holy congregation, but a pack of giddy or dishonest
434
THE LIKELIEST MEANS TO REMOVE
persons, to be ruled by civil power in sacred affairs.
But to proceed further in the truth yet more freely,
seeing the christian church is not national, but consist-
ing of many particular congregations, subject to many
changes, as well through civil accidents, as through
schisms and various opinions, not to be decided by any
outward judge, being matters of conscience, whereby
these pretended church-revenues, as they have been
ever, so are like to continue endless matter of dissen-
sion both between the church and magistrate, and the
churches among themselves, there will be ſound no
better remedy to these evils, otherwise incurable, than
by the incorruptest council of those Waldenses, or first
reformers, to remove them as a pest, an apple of discord
in the church, (for what else can be the effect of riches,
and the snare of money in religion 2) and to convert
them to those more profitable uses above expressed, or
other such as shall be judged most necessary; consider-
ing that the church of Christ was founded in poverty
rather than in revenues, stood purest and prospered best
without them, received them unlawfully from them who
both erroneously and unjustly, sometimes impiously,
gave them, and so justly was ensnared and corrupted by
them. And lest it be thought that, these revenues with-
drawn and better employed, the magistrate ought instead
to settle by statute some maintenance of ministers, let
this be considered first, that it concerns every man's
conscience to what religion he contributes; and that the
civil magistrate is intrusted with civil rights only, not
with conscience, which can have no deputy or repre-
senter of itself, but one of the same mind: next, that
what each man gives to the minister, he gives either as
to God, or as to his teacher; if as to God, no civil
power can justly consecrate to religious uses any part
either of civil revenue, which is the people's, and must
save them from other taxes, or of any man's propriety,
but God by special command, as he did by Moses, or
the owner himself by voluntary intention and the per-
suasion of his giving it to God. Forced consecrations
out of another man's estate are no better than forced
vows, hateful to God, “who loves a cheerful giv, r?”
but much more hateful, wrung out of men's purses to
maintain a disapproved ministry against their con-
science; however unholy, infamous, and dishonourable
to his ministers and the free gospel, maintained in such
unworthy manner as by violence and extortion. If he
give it as to his teacher, what justice or equity compels
him to pay for learning that religion which leaves
freely to his choice, whether he will learn it or no,
whether of this teacher or another, and especially to
pay for what he never learned, or approves not; where-
by, besides the wound of his conscience, he becomes
the less able to recompense his true teacher P Thus far
hath been inquired by whom church-ministers ought to
be maintained, and hath been proved most natural,
most equal and agreeable with Scripture, to be by them
who receive their teaching; and by whom, if they be
unable. Which ways well observed can discourage
none but hirelings, and will much lessen their number
in the church.
It remains lastly to consider, in what manner God
hath ordained that recompense be given to ministers of
the gospel; and by all Scripture it will appear, that he
hath given it them not by civil law and freehold, as
they claim, but by the beneyolence and free gratitude
of such as receive them: Luke x. 7, 8, “Eating and
drinking such things as they gave you. If they re-
ceive you, eat such things as are set before you.”
Matt. X. 7, 8, “As ye go, preach, saying, The king-
dom of God is at hand, &c. Freely ye have received,
freely give.” If God have ordained ministers to preach
freely, whether they receive recompense or not, then
certainly he hath forbid both them to compel it, and
others to compel it for them. But freely given, he ac-
counts it as given to himself: Phil. iv. 16, 17, 18, “Ye
sent once and again to my necessity: not because I
desire a gift; but I desire fruit, that may abound to
your account. Having received of Epaphroditus the
things which were sent from you, an odour of sweet
smell, a sacrifice acceptable, well-pleasing to God;”
which cannot be from force or unwillingness. The
same is said of alms, Heb. xiii. 16, “To do good and to
communicate, forget not; for with such sacrifice God is
well pleased.” Whence the primitive church thought
it no shame to receive all their maintenance as the alms
of their auditors. Which they who defend tithes, as if
it made for their cause, whenas it utterly confutes them,
omit not to set down at large; proving to our hands
out of Origen, Tertullian, Cyprian, and others, that the
clergy lived at first upon the mere benevolence of their
hearers; who gave what they gave, not to the clergy,
but to the church; out of which the clergy had their
portions given them in baskets, and were thence called
sportularii, basket-clerks: that their portion was a very
mean allowance, only for a bare livelihood; according
to those precepts of our Saviour, Matt. x. 7, &c. the
rest was distributed to the poor, They cite also out of
Prosper, the disciple of St. Austin, that such of the
clergy as had means of their own, might not without
sin partake of church maintenance; not receiving
thereby food which they abound with, but feeding on
the sins of other men: that the Holy Ghost saith of
such clergymen, they eat the sins of my people; and
that a council at Antioch, in the year 340, suffered not
either priest or bishop to live on church-maintenance
without necessity. Thus far tithers themselves have
contributed to their own confutation, by confessing that
the church lived primitively on alms. And I add, that
about the year 359, Constantius the emperor having
summoned a general council of bishops to Arminium
in Italy, and provided for their subsistence there, the
British and French bishops judging it not decent to
live on the public, chose rather to be at their own
charges. Three only out of Britain constrained through
want, yet refusing offered assistance from the rest, ac-
cepted the emperor's provision; judging it more con-
venient to subsist by public than by private sustenance.
Whence we may conclude, that bishops then in this
island had their livelihood only from benevolence; in
which regard this relater Sulpitius Severus, a good
author of the same time, highly praises them. And the
Waldenses, our first reformers, both from the Scripture
HIRELINGS OUT OF THE CHURCH.
435
and these primitive examples, maintained those among
them who bore the office of ministers by alms only.
Take their very words from the history written of them
in French, Part 3, Lib. 2, Chap. 2, “La nourriture et
ce de quoy mous sommes couverts, &c. Our food and
clothing is sufficiently administered and given to us
by way of gratuity and alms, by the good people.
whom we teach.” If then by alms and benevolence,
not by legal force, not by tenure of freehold or copy-
hold : for alms, though just, cannot be compelled; and
benevolence forced is malevolence rather, violent and
inconsistent with the gospel; and declares him no true
minister thereof, but a rapacious hireling rather, who
by force receiving it, eats the bread of violence and
exaction, no holy or just livelihood, no not civilly
counted honest; much less beseeming such a spiritual
ministry. But, say they, our maintenance is our due,
tithes the right of Christ, unseparable from the priest,
no where repealed; if then, not otherwise to be had,
by law to be recovered: for though Paul were pleased
to forego his due, and not to use his power, I Cor.
ix. 12, yet he had a power, ver. 4, and bound not
others. I answer first, because I see them still so loth
to unlearn their decimal arithmetic, and still grasp their
tithes as inseparable from a priest, that ministers of
the gospel are not priests; and therefore separated from
tithes by their exclusion, being neither called priests
in the New Testament, nor of any order known in
Scripture: not of Melchisedec, proper to Christ only;
not of Aaron, as they themselves will confess; and the
third priesthood only remaining, is common to all the
faithful. But they are ministers of our high priest.—
True, but not of his priesthood, as the Levites were to
Aaron ; for he performs that whole office himself in-
communicably. Yet tithes remain, say they, still un-
released, the due of Christ; and to whom payable, but
to his ministers ? I say again, that no man can so
understand them, unless Christ in some place or other
so claim them. That example of Abraham argues no-
thing but his voluntary act; honour once only done,
but on what consideration, whether to a priest or to a
king, whether due the honour, arbitrary that kind of
honour or not, will after all contending be left still in
mere conjecture: which must not be permitted in the
claim of such a needy and subtle spiritual corporation,
pretending by divine right to the tenth of all other
men's estates; nor can it be allowed by wise men or
the verdict of common law. And the tenth part,
though once declared holy, is declared now to be no
holier than the other nine, by that command to Peter,
Acts x. 15, 28, whereby all distinction of holy and un-
holy is removed from all things. Tithes therefore,
though claimed, and holy under the law, yet are now
released and quitted both by that command to Peter,
and by this to all ministers, above-cited Luke x. “eat-
ing and drinking such things as they give you :”
made holy now by their free gift only. And therefore
St. Paul, 1 Cor. ix. 4, asserts his power indeed; but
of what P not of tithes, but “to eat and drink such
things as are given” in reference to this command;
which he calls not holy things, or things of the gospel,
as if the gospel had any consecrated things in answer
to things of the temple, ver, 13, but he calls them
“your carnal things,” ver, 11, without changing their
property. And what power had he Not the power
of force, but of conscience only, whereby he might law-
fully and without scruple live on the gospel; receiving
what was given him, as the recompence of his labour
For if Christ the Master hath professed his kingdom
to be not of this world, it suits not with that profession,
either in him or his ministers, to claim temporal right
from spiritual respects. He who refused to be the di.
vider of an inheritance between two brethren, cannot
approve his ministers, by pretended right from him, to
be dividers of tenths and freeholds out of other men's
possessions, making thereby the gospel but a cloak of
carnal interest, and to the contradiction of their master,
turning his heavenly kingdom into a kingdom of this
world, a kingdom of force and rapine : to whom it will
be one day thundered more terribly than to Gehazi, for
thus dishonouring a far greater master and his gospel;
“Is this a time to receive money, and to receive gar-
ments, and oliveyards, and vineyards, and sheep and
oxen 2° The leprosy of Naaman, linked with that
apostolic curse of perishing imprecated on Simon Ma-
gus, may be feared will “cleave to such and to their
seed for ever.” So that when all is done, and belly
hath used in vain all her cunning shifts, I doubt not
but all true ministers, considering the demonstration of
what hath been here proved, will be wise, and think it
much more tolerable to hear, that no maintenance of
ministers, whether tithes or any other, can be settled by
statute, but must be given by them who receive instruc-
tion; and freely given, as God hath ordained. And
indeed what can be a more honourable maintenance to
them than such, whether alms or willing oblations, as
these; which being accounted both alike as given to
God, the only acceptable sacrifices now remaining,
must needs represent him who receives them much in
the care of God, and nearly related to him, when not
by worldly force and constraint, but with religious awe
and reverence, what is given to God, is given to him;
and what to him, accounted as given to God. This
would be well enough, say they ; but how many will
so give 2 I answer, as many, doubtless, as shall be well
taught, as many as God shall so move. Why are ye
so distrustful, both of your own doctrine and of God's
promises, fulfilled in the experience of those disciples
first sent P Luke xxii. 35, “When I sent you without
purse, and scrip, and shoes, lacked ye any thing 2 And
they said, Nothing.” How then came ours, or who
sent them thus destitute, thus poor and empty both of
purse and faith 2 Who style themselves embassadors of
Jesus Christ, and seem to be his tithe-gatherers, though
an office of their own setting up to his dishonour, his
exacters, his publicans rather, not trusting that he will
maintain them in their embassy, unless they bind him
to his promise by a statute-law, that we shall maintain
them. Lay down for shame that magnific title, while
ye seek maintenance from the people: it is not the man-
ner of embassadors to ask maintenance of them to whom
they are sent. But he who is Lord of all things, hath
2 F
436
THE LIKELIEST MEANS TO REMOVE
so ordained : trust him then ; he doubtless will com-
mand the people to make good his promises of main-
tenance more honourably unasked, unraked for. This
they know, this they preach, yet believe not: but think
it as impossible, without a statute-law, to live of the
gospel, as if by those words they were bid go eat their
Bibles, as Ezekiel and John did their books; and such
doctrines as these are as bitter to their bellies; but will
serve so much the better to discover hirelings, who can
have nothing, though but in appearance, just and solid
to answer for themselves against what hath been here
spoken, unless perhaps this one remaining pretence,
which we shall quickly see to be either false or unin-
genuous.
They pretend that their education, either at school or
university, hath been very chargeable, and therefore
ought to be repaired in future by a plentiful mainte-
nance: whenas it is well known, that the better half of
them, (and ofttimes poor and pitiful boys, of no merit
or promising hopes that might entitle them to the pub-
lic provision, but their poverty and the unjust favour
of friends,) have had the most of their breeding, both at
school and university, by scholarships, exhibitions, and
fellowships at the public cost, which might engage them
the rather to give freely, as they have freely received.
Or if they have missed of these helps at the latter place,
they have after two or three years left the course of
their studies there, iſ they ever well began them, and
undertaken, though furnished with little else but igno-
rance, boldness, and ambition, if with no worse vices, a
chaplainship in some gentleman's house, to the frequent
embasing of his sons with illiterate and narrow prin-
ciples. Or if they have lived there upon their own,
who knows not that seven years charge of living there,
to them who fly not from the government of their pa-
rents to the licence of a university, but come seriously
to study, is no more than may be well defrayed and
reimbursed by one year's revenue of an ordinary good
benefice P If they had then means of breeding from
their parents, it is likely they have more now ; and if
they have, it needs must be mechanic and uningenuous
in them, to bring a bill of charges for the learning of
those liberal arts and sciences, which they have learned
(if they have indeed learned them, as they seldom have)
to their own benefit and accomplishment. But they
will say, we had betaken us to some other trade or pro-
fession, had we not expected to find a better livelihood
by the ministry. This is that which I looked for, to
discover them openly neither true lovers of learning,
and so very seldom guilty of it, nor true ministers of
the gospel. So long ago out of date is that old true
saying, 1 Tim. iii. 1, “If a man desire a bishopric, he
desires a good work:” for now commonly he who de-
sires to be a minister, looks not at the work, but at the
wages; and by that lure or lowbell, may be tolled from
parish to parish all the town over. But what can be
plainer simony, than thus to be at charges beforehand,
to no other end than to make their ministry doubly or
trebly beneficial P To whom it might be said, as justly
as to that Simon, “Thy money perish with thee, be-
cause thou hast thought, that the gift of God may be
purchased with money; thou hast neither part nor lot
in this matter.” Next, it is a fond errour, though too
much believed among us, to think that the university
makes a minister of the gospel; what it may conduce
to other arts and sciences, I dispute not now : but that
which makes fit a minister, the Scripture can best in-
form us to be only from above, whence also we are bid
to seek them; Matt. ix. 38, “ Pray ye therefore to the
Lord of the harvest, that he will send forth labourers
into his harvest.” Acts xx. 28, “The flock, over which
the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers.” Rom. x.
15, “How shall they preach, unless they be sent?”
By whom sent? by the university, or the magistrate,
or their belly P No surely, but sent from God only, and
that God who is not their belly. And whether he be
sent from God, or from Simon Magus, the inward sense
of his calling and spiritual ability will sufficiently tell
him; and that strong obligation felt within him, which
was felt by the apostle, will often express from him the
same words: 1 Cor. ix. 16, “Necessity is laid upon
me, yea, woe is me if I preach not the gospel.” Not
a beggarly necessity, and the woe feared otherwise of
perpetual want, but such a necessity as made him will-
ing to preach the gospel gratis, and to embrace poverty,
rather than as a woe to fear it. 1 Cor. xii. 28, “God
hath set some in the church, first apostles,” &c. Ephes.
iv. 11, &c. “He gave some apostles, &c. For the
perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry,
for the edifying of the body of Christ, till we all come
to the unity of the faith.” Whereby we may know,
that as he made them at the first, so he makes them
still, and to the world's end. 2 Cor. iii. 6, “Who hath
also made us fit or able ministers of the New Testa-
ment.” 1 Tim. iv. 14, “The giſt that is in thee, which
was given thee by prophecy, and the laying on of the
hands of the presbytery.” These are all the means,
which we read of, required in Scripture to the making
of a minister. All this is granted, you will say; but
yet that it is also requisite he should be trained in
other learning : which can be no where better had than
at universities. I answer, that what learning, either
human or divine, can be necessary to a minister, may
as easily and less chargeably be had in any private
house. How deficient else, and to how little purpose,
are all those piles of sermons, notes, and comments on
all parts of the Bible, bodies and marrows of divinity,
besides all other sciences, in our English tongue; many
of the same books which in Latin they read at the uni-
versity P And the small necessity of going thither to
learn divinity I prove first from the most part of them-
selves, who seldom continue there till they have well
got through logic, their first rudiments; though, to say
truth, logic also may much better be wanting in dis-
putes of divinity, than in the subtile debates of lawyers,
and statesmen, who yet seldom or never deal with syl-
logisms. And those theological disputations there held
by professors and graduates are such, as tend least of
all to the edification or capacity of the people, but
rather perplex and leaven pure doctrine with scholas-
tical trash, than enable any minister to the better
preaching of the gospel. Whence we may also com-
HIRELINGS OUT OF THE CHURCH.
437
pute, since they come to reckonings, the charges of his
needful library; which, though some shame not to
value at 600l. may be competently furnished for 60l.
If any man for his own curiosity or delight be in books
further expensive, that is not to be reckoned as neces-
sary to his ministerial, either breeding or function.
But papists and other adversaries cannot be confuted
without fathers and councils, immense volumes, and of
vast charges. I will shew them therefore a shorter and
a better way of confutation: Tit. i. 9, “Holding fast
the faithful word, as he hath been taught, that he may
be able by sound doctrine, both to exhort and to con-
vince gainsayers:” who are confuted as soon as heard,
bringing that which is either not in Scripture, or
against it. To pursue them further through the ob-
scure and entangled wood of antiquity, fathers and
councils fighting one against another, is needless, end-
less, not requisite in a minister, and refused by the first
reformers of our religion. And yet we may be con-
fident, if these things be thought needful, let the state
but erect in public good store of libraries, and there
will not want men in the church, who of their own in-
clinations will become able in this kind against papist
or any other adversary. I have thus at large examined
the usual pretences of hirelings, coloured over most
commonly with the cause of learning and universities;
as if with divines learning stood and ſell, wherein for
the most part their pittance is so small ; and, to speak
freely, it were much better there were not one divine
in the universities, no school-divinity known, the idle
sophistry of monks, the canker of religion; and that
they who intended to be ministers, were trained up in
the church only by the Scripture, and in the original
languages thereof at school ; without fetching the
compass of other arts and sciences, more than what
they can well learn at secondary leisure, and at
home.—Neither speak I this in contempt of learning,
or the ministry, but hating the common cheats of both;
hating that they, who have preached out bishops, pre-
lates, and canonists, should, in what serves their own
ends, retain their false opinions, their pharisaical leaven,
their avarice, and closely their ambition, their plurali-
ties, their nonresidences, their odious fees, and use their
legal and popish arguments for tithes: that independ-
ents should take that name, as they may justly from
the true freedom of christian doctrine and church-disci-
pline subject to no superiour judge but God only, and
seek to be dependents on the magistrates for their
maintenance ; which two things, independence and
state-hire in religion, can never consist long or cer-
tainly together. For magistrates at one time or other,
not like these at present our patrons of christian liberty,
will pay none but such whom by their committees of
examination they find conformable to their interests
and opinions: and hirelings will soon frame themselves
to that interest, and those opinions which they see best
pleasing to their paymasters; and to seem right them-
selves, will force others as to the truth. But most of all
they are to be reviled and shamed, who cry out with
the distinct voice of notorious hirelings; that if ye set-
tle not our maintenance by law, farewell the gospel;
than which nothing can be uttered more false, more
ignominious, and I may say, more blasphemous against
our Saviour; who hath promised without this condi-
tion, both his Holy Spirit, and his own presence with
his church to the world’s cnd : nothing more false,
(unless with their own mouths they condemn them-
selves for the unworthiest and most mercenary of all
other ministers,) by the experience of 300 years after
Christ, and the churches at this day in France, Austria,
Polonia, and other places, witnessing the contrary
under an adverse magistrate, not a ſavourable; nothing
more ignominious, levelling, or rather undervaluing
Christ beneath Mahomet. For if it must be thus, how
can any Christian object it to a Turk, that his religion
stands by force only; and not justly fear from him
this reply, Yours both by force and money, in the judg-
ment of your own preachers? This is that which
makes atheists in the land, whom they so much com-
plain of: mot the want of maintenance, or preachers,
as they allege, but the many hirelings and cheaters
that have the gospel in their hands; hands that still
crave, and are never satisfied. Likely ministers indeed,
to proclaim the faith, or to exhort our trust in God,
when they themselves will not trust him to provide for
them in the message whereon, they say, he sent them;
but threaten, for want of temporal means, to desert it;
calling that want of means, which is nothing else but
the want of their own faith : and would force us to pay
the hire of building our faith to their covetous incre-
dulity. Doubtless, if God only be he who gives minis-
ters to his church till the world's end; and through the
whole gospel never sent us for ministers to the schools
of philosophy, but rather bids us beware of such “vain
deceit,” Col. ii. 8, (which the primitive church, after two
or three ages not remembering, brought herself quickly
to confusion,) if all the faithful be now “a holy and a
royal priesthood,” I Pet. ii. 5, 9, not excluded from the
dispensation of things holiest, after free election of the
church, and imposition of hands, there will not want
ministers elected out of all sorts and orders of men, for
the gospel makes no difference from the magistrate
himself to the meanest artificer, if God evidently favour
him with spiritual gifts, as he can easily, and oft hath
done, while those bachelor divines and doctors of the
tippet have been passed by. Heretofore in the first
evangelic times, (and it were happy for christendom
if it were so again,) ministers of the gospel were by
nothing else distinguished from other christians, but by
their spiritual knowledge and sanctity of life, for which
the church elected them to be her teachers and over-
seers, though not thereby to separate them from what-
ever calling she then found them following besides; as
the example of St. Paul declares, and the first times of
Christianity. When once they affected to be called a
clergy, and became, as it were, a peculiar tribe of Le-
vites, a party, a distinct order in the commonwealth,
bred up for divines in babbling schools, and fed at the
public cost, good for nothing else but what was good
for nothing, they soon grew idle : that idleness, with
fulness of bread, begat pride and perpetual contention
with their feeders the despised laity, through all ages
438
THE LIKELIEST MEANS TO REMOVE HIRELINGS, &c.
ever since; to the perverting of religion, and the dis-
turbance of all christendom. And we may confidently
conclude, it never will be otherwise while they are
thus upheld undepending on the church, on which
alone they anciently depended, and are by the magis-
trate publicly maintained a numerous faction of indi-
gent persons, crept for the most part out of extreme
want and bad nurture, claiming by divine right and
freehold the tenth of our estates, to monopolize the
ministry as their peculiar, which is free and open to all
able Christians, elected by any church. Under this
pretence exempt from all other employment, and en-
riching themselves on the public, they last of all prove
common incendiaries, and exalt their horns against the
magistrate himself that maintains them, as the priest of
Rome did soon after against his benefactor the emperor,
and the presbyters of late in Scotland. Of which hire-
ling crew, together with all the mischiefs, dissensions,
troubles, wars merely of their kindling, christendom
might soon rid herself and be happy, if Christians
would but know their own dignity, their liberty, their
adoption, and let it not be wondered if I say, their
spiritual priesthood, whereby they have all equally ac-
cess to any ministerial function, whenever called by
their own abilities, and the church, though they never
came near commencement or university. But while
protestants, to avoid the due labour of understanding
their own religion, are content to lodge it in the breast,
or rather in the books, of a clergyman, and to take it
thence by scraps and mammocks, as he dispenses it in
his Sunday’s dole; they will be always learning and
never knowing ; always infants ; always either his
vassals, as lay papists are to their priests; or at odds
with him, as reformed principles give them some light
to be not wholly conformable; whence infinite disturb-
ances in the state, as they do, must needs follow. Thus
much I had to say; and, I suppose, what may be
enough to them who are not avariciously bent other-
wise, touching the likeliest means to remove hirelings
out of the church; than which nothing can more con-
duce to truth, to peace and all happiness both in church
and state. If I be not heard nor believed, the event
will bear me witness to have spoken truth; and I in
the mean while, have borne my witness, not out of sea-
son, to the church and to my country.
L E. 'I' T E R 'I' O
A FR I E N ID,
CONCERNING
THE RUPTURES OF THE COMMONWEALTH.
PUBLISHED FROM THE MANUSCRIPT.
SIR,
Upon the sad and serious discourse which we fell into
last night, concerning these dangerous ruptures of the
Commonwealth, scarce yet in her infancy, which can-
not be without some inward flaw in her bowels; I
began to consider more intensely thereon than hitherto
I have been wont, resigning myself to the wisdom and
care of those who had the government; and not find-
ing that either God or the public required more of me,
than my prayers for them that govern. And since you
have not only stirred up my thoughts, by acquainting
me with the state of affairs, more inwardly than I
knew before ; but also have desired me to set down my
opinion thereof, trusting to your ingenuity, I shall
give you freely my apprehension, both of our present
evils, and what expedients, if God in mercy regard us,
may remove them. I will begin with telling you how
I was overjoyed, when I heard that the army, under
the working of God's Holy Spirit, as I thought, and
still hope well, had been so far wrought to christian hu-
mility, and self-denial, as to confess in public their
backsliding from the good old cause, and to shew the
fruits of their repentance, in the righteousness of their
restoring the old famous parliament, which they had
without just authority dissolved: I call it the famous
parliament, though not the harmless, since none well-
affected, but will confess, they have deserved much
more of these nations, than they have undeserved.
And I persuade me, that God was pleased with their
restitution, signing it, as he did, with such a signal
victory, when so great a part of the nation were des-
perately conspired to call back again their AEgyptian
bondage. So much the more it now amazes me, that
they, whose lips were yet scarce closed from giving
thanks for that great deliverance, should be now re-
lapsing, and so soon again backsliding into the same
fault, which they confessed so lately and so solemnly
to God and the world, and more lately punished in
those Cheshire rebels; that they should now dissolve
that parliament, which they themselves re-established,
and acknowledged for their supreme power in their
other day's humble representation: and all this, for no
apparent cause of public concernment to the church or
commonwealth, but only for discommissioning nine
great officers in the army; which had not been done,
as is reported, but upon notice of their intentions against
the parliament. I presume not to give my censure
on this action, not knowing, as yet I do not, the bot-
tom of it. I speak only what it appears to us without
doors, till better cause be declared, and I am sure to all
other nations most illegal and scandalous, I fear me
barbarous, or rather scarce to be exampled among any
barbarians, that a paid army should, for no other cause,
thus subdue the supreme power that set them up. This,
I say, other nations will judge to the sad dishonour of
that army, lately so renowned for the civilest and best
ordered in the world, and by us here at home, for the
most conscientious. Certainly, if the great officers and
soldiers of the Holland, French, or Venetian forces,
should thus sit in council, and write from garrison to
garrison against their superiours, they might as easily
reduce the king of France, or duke of Venice, and put
the United Provinces in like disorder and confusion.
Why do they not, being most of them held ignorant of
true religion ? because the light of nature, the laws of
human society, the reverence of their magistrates, co-
venants, engagements, loyalty, allegiance, keeps them
in awe. How grievous will it then be how infamous
to the true religion which we profess! how dishonour-
able to the name of God, that his fear and the power
of his knowledge in an army professing to be his,
should not work that obedience, that fidelity to their
supreme magistrates, that levied them and paid them;
when the light of nature, the laws of human society,
covenants and contracts, yea common shame, works in
other armies, amongst the worst of them | Which will
undoubtedly pull down the heavy judgment of God
among us, who cannot but avenge these hypocrisies,
violations of truth and holiness; if they be indeed so
as they yet seem. For neither do I speak this in re-
proach to the army, but as jealous of their honour, in-
citing them to manifest and publish with all speed,
some better cause of these their late actions, than hath
440
LETTER TO A FRIEND, &c.
hitherto appeared, and to find out the Achan amongst
them, whose close ambition in all likelihood abuses
their honest natures against their meaning to these dis-
orders; their readiest way to bring in again the common
enemy, and with him the destruction of true religion,
and civil liberty. But, because our evils are now
grown more dangerous and extreme, than to be reme-
died by complaints, it concerns us now to find out what
remedies may be likeliest to save us from approaching
ruin. Being now in anarchy, without a counselling
and governing power; and the army, I suppose, find-
ing themselves insufficient to discharge at once both
military and civil affairs, the first thing to be found
out with all speed, without which no commonwealth
can subsist, must be a senate or general council of
state, in whom must be the power, first to preserve the
public peace; next, the commerce with foreign nations;
and lastly, to raise moneys for the management of
these affairs: this must either be the parliament re-ad-
mitted to sit, or a council of state allowed of by the
army, since they only now have the power. The terms
to be stood on are, liberty of conscience to all profess-
ing Scripture to be the rule of their faith and worship;
and the abjuration of a single person. If the parlia-
ment be again thought on, to salve honour on both
sides, the well affected part of the city, and the con-
gregated churches, may be induced to mediate by pub-
lic addresses, and brotherly beseechings; which, if
there be that saintship among us which is talked of,
ought to be of highest and undeniable persuasion to
reconcilement. If the parliament be thought well dis-
solved, as not complying fully to grant liberty of con-
science, and the necessary consequence thereof, the
removal of a forced maintenance from ministers, then
must the army forth with choose a council of state,
whereof as many to be of the parliament, as are un-
doubtedly affected to these two conditions proposed.
That which I conceive only able to cement, and unite
for ever the army, either to the parliament recalled, or
this chosen council, must be a mutual league and oath,
private or public, not to desert one another till death :
that is to say, that the army be kept up, and all these
officers in their places during life, and so likewise the
parliament or counsellors of state; which will be no
way unjust, considering their known merits on either
side, in council or in field, unless any be found false to
any of these two principles, or otherwise personally
criminous in the judgment of both parties. If such a
union as this be not accepted on the army's part, be
confident there is a single person underneath. That
the army be upheld, the necessity of our affairs and
factions will constrain long enough perhaps, to content
the longest liver in the army. And whether the civil
government be an annual democracy, or a perpetual
aristocracy, is not to me a consideration for the extre-
mities wherein we are, and the hazard of our safety
from our common enemy, gaping at present to devour
us. That it be not an oligarchy, or the faction of a
few, may be easily prevented by the numbers of their
own choosing, who may be found infallibly constant
to those two conditions fore-named, full liberty of con-
science, and the abjuration of monarchy proposed : and
the well-ordered committees of their faithfullest adher-
ents in every county, may give this government the
resemblance and effects of a perfect democracy. As
for the reformation of laws, and the places of judica-
ture, whether to be here, as at present, or in every
county, as hath been long aimed at, and many such
proposals, tending no doubt to public good, they may
be considered in due time, when we are past these per-
nicious pangs, in a hopeful way of health, and firm
constitution. But unless these things, which I have
above proposed, one way or other, be once settled, in
my fear, which God avert, we instantly ruin; or a
best become the servants of one or other single person,
the secret author and fomenter of these disturbances.
You have the sum of my present thoughts, as much as
I understand of these affairs, freely imparted; at your
request, and the persuasion you wrought in me, that I
might chance hereby to be some way serviceable to the
Commonwealth, in a time when all ought to be endea-
vouring what good they can, whether much or but
little. With this you may do what you please, put
out, put in, communicate, or suppress: you offend not
me, who only have obeyed your opinion, that in doing
what I have done, I might happen to offer something
which might be of some use in this great time of need.
However, I have not been wanting to the opportunity
which you presented before me, of shewing the readi-
ness which I have in the midst of my unfitness, to
whatever may be required of me, as a public duty.
October 20, 1659.
THR
PRESENT MEANS AND BRIEF DELINEATION
A
QP
F. R. E. E. C. O M M O N W E A L T H,
EASY TO BE PUT IN PRACTICE, AND WITHOUT DELAY.
IN A LETTER TO GENERAL MONK.
PUBLISHED FROM THR MANUSCRIPT.
First, All endeavours speedily to be used, that the
ensuing election be of such as are already firm, or in-
clinable to constitute a free commonwealth, (according
to the former qualifications decreed in parliament, and
not yet repealed, as I hear.) without single person, or
house of lords. If these be not such, but the con-
trary, who foresees not, that our liberties will be utterly
lost in this next parliament, without some powerful
course taken, of speediest prevention? The speediest
way will be to call up forthwith the chief gentlemen
out of every county; to lay before them (as your ex-
cellency hath already, both in your published letters to
the army, and your declaration recited to the members
of parliament) the danger and confusion of readmitting
kingship in this land; especially against the rules of
all prudence and example, in a family once ejected,
and thereby not to be trusted with the power of re-
venge: that you will not longer delay them with vain
expectation, but will put into their hands forthwith the
possession of a free commonwealth; if they will first
return immediately and elect them, by such at least of
the people as are rightly qualified, a standing council
in every city and great town, which may then be dig-
nified with the name of city, continually to consult the
good and flourishing state of that place, with a compe-
tent territory adjoined ; to assume the judicial laws,
either those that are, or such as they themselves shall
new make severally, in each commonalty, and all judi-
catures, all magistracies, to the administration of all
justice between man and man, and all the ornaments
of public civility, academies, and such like, in their own
hands. Matters appertaining to men of several coun-
ties or territories, may be determined, as they are here
at London, or in some more convenient place, under
equal judges.
Next, That in every such capital place, they will
choose them the usual number of ablest knights and
burgesses, engaged for a commonwealth, to make up
the parliament, or (as it will from henceforth be better
called) the Grand or General Council of the Nation :
whose office must be, with due caution, to dispose of
forces, both by sea and land, under the conduct of your
excellency, for the preservation of peace, both at home
and abroad; must raise and manage the public revenue,
but with provident inspection of their accompts; must
administer all foreign affairs, make all general laws,
peace or war, but not without assent of the standing
council in each city, or such other general assembly as
may be called on such occasion, from the whole terri-
tory, where they may, without much trouble, deliber-
ate on all things fully, and send up their suffrages
within a set time, by deputies appointed. Though
this grand council be perpetual, (as in that book I
proved would be best and most conformable to best
examples,) yet they will then, thus limited, have so
little matter in their hands, or power to endanger our
liberty; and the people so much in theirs, to prevent
them, having all judicial laws in their own choice, and
free votes in all those which concern generally the
whole commonwealth; that we shall have little cause
to fear the perpetuity of our general senate; which
will be then nothing else but a firm foundation and
custody of our public liberty, peace, and union, through
the whole commonwealth, and the transactors of our
affairs with foreign nations.
If this yet be not thought enough, the known expe-
dient may at length be used, of a partial rotation.
Lastly, If these gentlemen convocated refuse these
fair and noble offers of immediate liberty, and happy
condition, no doubt there be enough in every county
who will thankfully accept them; your excellency once
more declaring publicly this to be your mind, and hav-
ing a faithful veteran army, so ready and glad to assist
you in the prosecution thereof. For the full and abso-
lute administration of law in every county, which is the
difficultest of these proposals, hath been of most long de-
sired; and the not granting it held a general grievance.
The rest, when they shall see the beginnings and pro-
ceedings of these constitutions proposed, and the orderly,
the decent, the civil, the safe, the noble effects thereof,
will be soon convinced, and by degrees come in of their
own accord, to be partakers of so happy a government.
THE
READY AND EASY WAY
TO ESTABLISH
A FR E E C O M M O N W E A L T H,
AND THE EXCELLENCE THEREOF, COMPARED WITH THE INCONVENIENCIES AND DANGERS
OF READMITTING KINGSHIP IN THIS NATION,
[FIRST PUBLISHED 1660.]
Et nos
Consilium dedimus Syllae, demus populo numc.
(Although, since the writing of this treatise, the face
of things hath had some change, writs for new elec-
tions have been recalled, and the members at first
chosen re-admitted from exclusion; yet not a little re-
joicing to hear declared the resolution of those who
are in power, tending to the establishment of a free
commonwealth, and to remove, if it be possible, this
noxious humour of returning to bondage, instilled of
late by some deceivers, and nourished from bad princi-
ples and false apprehensions among too many of the
people; I thought best not to suppress what I had
written, hoping that it may now be of much more use
and concernment to be freely published, in the midst
of our elections to a free parliament, or their sitting to
consider freely of the government; whom it behoves
to have all things represented to them that may direct
their judgment therein; and I never read of any state,
scarce of any tyrant, grown so incurable, as to refuse
counsel from any in a time of public deliberation, much
less to be offended. If their absolute determination be
to inthrall us, before so long a Lent of servitude, they
may permit us a little shroving-time first, wherein to
speak freely, and take our leaves of liberty. And be-
cause in the former edition, through haste, many faults
escaped, and many books were suddenly dispersed, ere
the note to mend them could be sent, I took the oppor-
tunity from this occasion to revise and somewhat to
enlarge the whole discourse, especially that part which
argues for a perpetual senate. The treatise thus re-
vised and enlarged, is as follows.
A The Parliament of England, assisted by a great
number of the people who appeared and stuck to them
faithfullest in defence of religion and their civil liber-
ties, judging kingship by long experience a govern-
ment unnecessary, burdensome, and dangerous, justly
and magnanimously abolished it, turning regal bond-
age into a free commonwealth, to the admiration and ter-
rour of our emulous neighbours. They took themselves
not bound by the light of nature or religion to any
former covenant, from which the king himself, by
many forfeitures of a latter date or discovery, and our
own longer consideration thereon, had more and more
unbound us, both to himself and his posterity; as hath
been ever the justice and the prudence of all wise na-
tions, that have ejected tyranny. They covenanted
“to preserve the king's person and authority, in the
preservation of the true religion, and our liberties;”
not in his endeavouring to bring in upon our consci-
ences a popish religion; upon our liberties, thraldom ;
upon our lives, destruction, by his occasioning, if not
complotting, as was after discovered, the Irish massa-
cre ; his fomenting and arming the rebellion; his
covert leaguing with the rebels against us; his reſus-
ing, more than seven times, propositions most just and
necessary to the true religion and our liberties, tendered
him by the parliament both of England and Scotland.
They made not their covenant concerning him with no
difference between a king and a God; or promised him,
as Job did to the Almighty, “to trust in him though
he slay us:” they understood that the solemn engage-
ment, wherein we all forswore kingship, was no more
a breach of the covenant, than the covenant was of the
protestation before, but a faithful and prudent going
on both in words well weighed, and in the true sense
of the covenant “without respect of persons,” when we
could not serve two contrary masters, God and the
king, or the king and that more supreme law, sworn
in the first place to maintain our safety and our
liberty. They knew the people of England to be
a free people, themselves the representers of that
freedom ; and although many were excluded, and
as many fled (so they pretended) from tumults to
Oxford, yet they were left a sufficient number to act in
parliament, therefore not bound by any statute of pre-
ceding parliaments, but by the law of nature only,
which is the only law of laws truly and properly to all
mankind fundamental; the beginning and the end of
all government; to which no parliament or people that
will throughly reform, but may and must have recourse,
as they had, and must yet have, in church-reform-
ation (if they throughly intend it) to evangelic rules;
not to ecclesiastical canons, though never so ancient,
!”
THE READY AND EASY WAY, &c.
443
so ratified and established in the land by statutes
which for the most part are mere positive laws, neither
natural nor moral; and so by any parliament, for just
and serious considerations, without scruple to be at any
time repealed.) If others of their number in these things
were under force, they were not, but under free con-
science; if others were excluded by a power which
they could not resist, they were not therefore to leave
the helm of government in no hands, to discontinue
their care of the public peace and safety, to desert the
people in anarchy and confusion, no more than when
so many of their members left them, as made up in
outward formality a more legal parliament of three
estates against them. The best-affected also, and best-
principled of the people, stood not numbering or com-
puting, on which side were most voices in parliament,
but on which side appeared to them most reason, most
safety, when the house divided upon main matters,
What was well motioned and advised, they examined
not whether fear or persuasion carried it in the vote,
neither did they measure votes and counsels by the in-
tentions of them that voted; knowing that intentions
either are but guessed at, or not soon enough known ;
and although good, can neither make the deed such,
nor prevent the consequence from being bad : suppose
bad intentions in things otherwise well done ; what
was well done, was by them who so thought, not the
less obeyed or followed in the state; since in the church,
who had not rather follow Iscariot or Simon the magi-
ciam, though to covetous ends, preaching, than Saul,
though in the uprightness of his heart persecuting the
gospel PłSafer they therefore judged what they thought
the better counsels, though carried on by some perhaps
to bad ends, than the worse by others, though endea-
voured with best intentions: and yet they were not to
learn, that a greater number might be corrupt within
the walls of a parliament, as well as of a city; (whereof
in matters of nearest concernment all men will be
judges; nor easily permit, that the odds of voices in
their greatest council shall more endanger them by
corrupt or credulous votes, than the odds of enemies
by open assaults; judging, that most voices ought not
always to prevail, where main matters are in question.
If others hence will pretend to disturb all counsels;
what is that to them who pretend not, but are in real
danger; not they only so judging, but a great, though
not the greatest, number of their chosen patriots, who
might be more in weight than the others in numbers:
there being in number little virtue, but by weight and
measure wisdom working all things, and the dangers
on either side they seriously thus weighed.) From the
treaty, short fruits of long labours, and seven years
war; security for twenty years, if we can hold it; re-
formation in the church for three years: then put to
shift again with our vanquished master. His justice,
his honour, his conscience declared quite contrary to
ours; which would have furnished him with many
such evasions, as in a book entitled, “An Inquisition
for Blood,” soon after were not concealed: bishops not
totally removed, but left, as it were, in ambush, a re-
serve, with ordination in their sole power; their lands
already sold, not to be alienated, but rented, and the
sale of them called “sacrilege; ” delinquents, few of
many brought to condign punishment; accessories
punished, the chief author, above pardon, though, after
utmost resistance, vanquished ; not to give, but to re-
ceive, laws; yet besought, treated with, and to be thank-
ed for his gracious concessions, to be honoured, wor-
shipped, glorified. If this we swore to do, with what
righteousness in the sight of God, with what assurance
that we bring not by such an oath, the whole sea of
blood-guiltiness upon our heads ' If on the other side
we prefer a free government, though for the present not
obtained, yet all those suggested fears and difficulties,
as the event will prove, easily overcome, we remain
finally secure from the exasperated regal power, and
out of snares; shall retain the best part of our liberty,
which is our religion, and the civil part will be from
these who defer us, much more easily recovered, being
neither so subtle nor so awful as a king reinthroned.
Nor were their actions less both at home and abroad,
than might become the hopes of a glorious rising com-
monwealth : nor were the expressions both of army and
people, whether in their public declarations, or several
writings, other than such as testified a spirit in this
nation, no less noble and well fitted to the liberty of a
commonwealth, than in the ancient Greeks or Romans.
Nor was the heroic cause unsuccessfully defended to
all christendom, against the tongue of a famous and
thought invincible adversary; nor the constancy and
fortitude, that so nobly vindicated our liberty, our
victory at once against two the most prevailing usurp-
ers over mankind, superstition and tyranny, unpraised
or uncelebrated in a written monument, likely to out-
live detraction, as it hath hitherto convinced or si-
lenced not a few of our detractors, especially in parts
abroad. I After our liberty and religion thus prosper-
ously fought for, gained, and many years possessed,
except in those unhappy interruptions, which God
hath removed ; now that nothing remains, but in all
reason the certain hopes of a speedy and immediate
settlement for ever in a firm and free commonwealth,
for this extolled and magnified nation, regardless
both of honour won, or deliverances vouchsafed from
heaven, to fall back, or rather to creep back so poorly,
as it seems the multitude would, to their once abjured
and detested thraldom of kingship, to be ourselves the
slanderers of our own just and religious deeds, though
done by some to covetous and ambitious ends, yet not
therefore to be stained with their infamy, or they to
asperse the integrity of others; and yet these now by
revolting from the conscience of deeds well done, both
in church and state, to throw away and forsake, or
rather to betray, a just and noble cause for the mixture
of bad men who have ill-managed and abused it, (which
had our fathers dome heretofore, and on the same pre-
tence deserted true religion, what had long ere this
become of our gospel and all protestant reformation so
much intermixed with the avarice and ambition of
some reformers?) and by thus relapsing, to verify all
the bitter predictions of our triumphing enemies, who
will now think they wisely discerned and justly cen-
444
THE READY AND EASY WAY
sured both us and all our actions as rash, rebellious,
hypocritical, and impious; not only argues a strange,
degenerate contagion suddenly spread among us, fitted
and prepared for new slavery, but will render us a scorn
and derision to all our neighbours. And what will
they at best say of us, and of the whole English name,
but scoffingly, as of that foolish builder mentioned by
our Saviour, who began to build a tower, and was not
able to finish it? Where is this goodly tower of a
commonwealth, which the English boasted they would
build to overshadow kings, and be another Rome in
the west P The foundation indeed they lay gallantly,
but fell into a worse confusion, not of tongues, but of
factions, than those at the tower of Babel; and have
left no memorial of their work behind them remaining,
but in the common laughter of Europe . . Which must
needs redound the more to our shame, if we but look
on our neighbours the United Provinces, to us inferiour
in all outward advantages; who notwithstanding, in
the midst of greater difficulties, courageously, wisely,
constantly went through with the same work, and are
settled in all the happy enjoyments of a potent and
flourishing republic to this day. ||
JBesides this, if we return to kingship, and soon re-
pent, (as undoubtedly we shall, when we begin to find
the old encroachments coming on by little and little
upon our consciences, which must necessarily proceed
from king and bishop united inseparably in one inter-
est,) we may be forced perhaps to fight over again all
that we have fought, and spend over again all that we
have spent, but are never like to attain thus far as we
are now advanced to the recovery of our freedom,
never to have it in possession as we now have it, never
to be vouchsafed hereafter the like mercies and signal
assistances from Heaven in our cause, if by our in-
grateful backsliding we make these fruitless; flying
now to regal concessions from his divine condescen-
sions, and gracious answers to our once importuning
prayers against the tyranny which we then groaned
under; making vain and viler than dirt the blood of
so many thousand faithful and valiant Englishmen,
who left us in this liberty, bought with their lives;
losing by a strange after-game of folly all the battles
we have won, together with all Scotland as to our
conquest, hereby lost, which never any of our kings
could conquer, all the treasure we have spent, not that
corruptible treasure only, but that far more precious of
all our late miraculous deliverances; treading back
again with lost labour all our happy steps in the pro-
gress of reformation, and most pitifully depriving our-
selves the instant fruition of that free government,
which we have so dearly purchased, a free common-
wealth, not only held by wisest men in all ages the
noblest, the manliest, the equallest, the justest govern-
ment, the most agreeable to all due liberty and propor-
tioned equality, both human, civil, and christian, most
cherishing to virtue and true religion, but also (I may
say it with greatest probability) plainly commended,
or rather enjoined by our Saviour himself, to all Chris-
tians, not without remarkable disallowance, and the
brand of Gentilism upon kingship. God in much dis-
pleasure gave a king to the Israelites, and imputed it
a sin to them that they sought one : but Christ ap-
parently forbids his disciples to admit of any such
heathenish government; “The kings of the Gentiles,”
saith he, “exercise lordship over them;” and they that
“exercise authority upon them are called benefactors:
but ye shall not be so ; but he that is greatest among
you, let him be as the younger; and he that is chief,
as he that serveth.” The occasion of these his words
was the ambitious desire of Zebedee's two sons, to be
exalted above their brethren in his kingdom, which
they thought was to be ere long upon earth. That he
speaks of civil government, is manifest by the former
part of the comparison, which infers the other part to
be always in the same kind. And what government
comes nearer to this precept of Christ, than a free com-
monwealth; wherein they who are the greatest, are
perpetual servants and drudges to the public at their
own cost and charges, neglect their own affairs, yet
are not elevated above their brethren ; live soberly in
their families, walk the street as other men, may be
spoken to freely, familiarly, friendly, without adora-
tion PIVhereas a king must be adored like a demigod,
with a dissolute and haughty court about him, of vast
expense and luxury, masks and revels, to the de-
bauching of our prime gentry both male and female;
not in their pastimes only, but in earnest, by the loose
employments of court-service, which will be then
thought honourable. There will be a queen of no less
charge; in most likelihood outlandish and a papist,
besides a queen-mother such already; together with
both their courts and numerous train : then a royal
issue, and ere long severally their sumptuous courts;
to the multiplying of a servile crew, not of servants
only, but of nobility and gentry, bred up then to
the hopes not of public, but of court-offices, to be
stewards, chamberlains, ushers, grooms, even of the
close-stool; and the lower their minds debased with
court-opinions, contrary to all virtue and reforma-
tion, the haughtier will be their pride and profuse-
ness. We may well remember this not long since at
home; nor need but look at present into the French
court, where enticements and preferments daily draw
away and pervert the protestant nobility. As to the
burden of expense, to our cost we shall soon know it;
for any good to us deserving to be termed no better
than the vast and lavish price of our subjection, and
their debauchery, which we are now so greedily cheap-
ening, and would so fain be paying most inconsider-
ately to a single person; who for any thing wherein
the public really needs him, will have little else to do,
but to bestow the eating and drinking of excessive

dainties, to set a pompous face upon the superficial
actings of state, to pageant himself up and down in
progress among the perpetual bowings and cringings
of an abject people, on either side deifying and adoring
him for nothing done that can deserve it. For what
can he more than another man P who, even in the ex-
pression of a late court-poet, sits only like a great cipher
set to no purpose before a long row of other significant
figures. Nay, it is well and happy for the people, if
*** A
TO ESTABLISH A FREE COMMONWEALTH.
445
, their king be but a cipher, being ofttimes a mischief, a
pest, a scourge of the nation, and which is worse, not
to be removed, not to be controlled, much less accused
or brought to punishment, without the danger of a
common ruin, without the shaking and almost sub-
version of the whole land: whereas in a free common-
wealth, any governor or chief counsellor offending
may be removed and punished, without the least com-
motion. Certainly then that people must needs be
mad, or strangely infatuated, that build the chief hope
of their common happiness or safety on a single per-
son; who, if he happen to be good, can do no more
than another man; if to be bad, hath in his hands to
do more evil without check, than millions of other men.]
The happiness of a nation must needs be firmest and
certainest in full and free council of their own electing,
where no single person, but reason only, sways. And
what madness is it for them who might manage nobly
their own affairs themselves, sluggishly and weakly
to devolve all on a single person; and more like boys
under age than men, to commit all to his patronage
and disposal, who neither can perform what he under-
takes, and yet for undertaking it, though royally paid,
will not be their servant, but their lord ' How unmanly
must it needs be, to count such a one the breath of our
nostrils, to hang all our felicity on him, all our safety,
our well-being, for which if we were aught else but
sluggards or babies, we need depend on none but God
and our own counsels, our own active virtue and in-
dustry ! “Go to the ant, thou sluggard,” saith Solo-
mon; “consider her ways, and be wise; which having
no prince, ruler, or lord, provides her meat in the sum-
mer, and gathers her food in the harvest:” which evi-
dently shews us, that they who think the nation un-
done without a king, though they look grave or
haughty, have not so much true spirit and understand-
ing in them as a pismire: neither are these diligent
creatures hence concluded to live in lawless anarchy,
or that commended, but are set the examples to impru-
dent and ungoverned men, of a frugal and self-govern-
ing democracy or commonwealth; safer and more
thriving in the joint providence and counsel of many
industrious equals, than under the single domination
of one imperious lord. It may be well wondered that
any nation, styling themselves free, can suffer any man
to pretend hereditary right over them as their lord;
whenas by acknowledging that right, they conclude
hemselves his servants and his vassals, and so renounce
heir own freedom. Which how a people and their
leaders especially can do, who have fought so glori-
ously for liberty; how they can change their noble
words and actions, heretofore so becoming the majesty
of a free people, into the base necessity of court-flat-
teries and prostrations, is not only strange and ad-
mirable, but lamentable to think on. That a nation
should be so valorous and courageous to win their
liberty in the field, and when they have won it, should
be so heartless and unwise in their counsels, as not to
know how to use it, value it, what to do with it, or with
themselves; but after ten or twelve years' prosperous
war and contestation with tyranny, basely and besot-
tedly to run their necks again into the yoke which they
have broken, and prostrate all the fruits of their victory
for nought at the ſect of the vanquished, besides our
loss of glory, and such an example as kings or tyrants
never yet had the like to boast of, will be an ignominy
if it befall us, that never yet befell any nation pos-
sessed of their liberty; worthy indeed themselves,
whatsoever they be, to be for ever slaves, but that part
of the nation which consents not with them, as I per-
suade me of a great number, far worthier than by their
means to be brought into the same bondage. W Con-
sidering these things so plain, so rational, I cannot but
yet further admire on the other side, how any man,
who hath the true principles of justice and religion in
him, can presume or take upon him to be a king and
lord over his brethren, whom he cannot but know, whe-
ther as men or Christians, to be for the most part every
way equal or superior to himself: how he can display
with such vanity and ostentation his regal splendour,
so supereminently above other mortal men; or being
a Christian, can assume such extraordinary honour
and worship to himself, while the kingdom of Christ,
our common king and lord, is hid to this world, and
such Gentilish imitation forbid in express words by
himself to all his disciples. All protestants hold that
Christ in his church hath left no vicegerent of his
power; but himself, without deputy, is the only head
thereof, governing it from heaven: how then can any
christian man derive his kingship from Christ, but with
worse usurpation than the pope his headship over the
church, since Christ not only hath not left the least
shadow of a command for any such vicegerence from
him in the state, as the pope pretends for his in the
church, but hath expressly declared, that such regal
dominion is from the Gentiles, not from him, and hath
strictly charged us not to imitate them therein "
I doubt not but all ingenuous and knowing men
will easily agree with me, that a free commonwealth
without single person or house of lords is by far the
best government, if it can be had ; but we have all this
while, say they, been expecting it, and cannot yet at-
tain it. It is true indeed, when monarchy was dis-
solved, the form of a commonwealth should have forth-
with been framed, and the practice thereof immedi-
ately begun; that the people might have soon been
satisfied and delighted with the decent order, ease, and
benefit thereof: we had been then by this time firmly
rooted past fear of commotions or mutations, and now
flourishing: this care of timely settling a new govern-
ment instead of the old, too much neglected, hath been
our mischief. Yet the cause thereof may be ascribed
with most reason to the frequent disturbanées, inter-
ruptions, and dissolutions, which the parliament hath
had, partly from the impatient or disaffected people,
partly from some ambitious leaders in the army; much
contrary, I believe, to the mind and approbation of the
army itself, and their other commanders, once unde-
ceived, or in their own power. W Now is the opportu-
nity, now the very season, wherein we may obtain a
free commonwealth, and establish it for ever in the
land, without difficulty or much delay. Writs are sent


4.46
THE READY AND EASY WAY
out for elections, and, which is worth observing, in the
name, not of any king, but of the keepers of our
liberty, to summon a free parliament; which then
only will indeed be free, and deserve the true honour
of that supreme title, if they preserve us a free people.
Which never parliament was more free to do; being
now called not as heretofore, by the summons of a king,
but by the voice of liberty: and if the people, laying
aside prejudice and impatience, will seriously and
calmly now consider their own good, both religious
and civil, their own liberty and the only means thereof,
as shall be here laid down before them, and will clect
their knights and burgesses able men, and according
to the just and necessary qualifications, (which, for
aught I hear, remain yet in force unrepealed, as they
were formerly decreed in parliament,) men not ad-
dicted to a single person or house of lords, the work is
done ; at least the foundation firmly laid of a free com-
monwealth, and good part also erected of the main
structure. For the ground and basis of every just and
free government, (since men have smarted so oft for
committing all to one person,) is a general council of
ablest men, chosen by the people to consult of public
affairs from time to time for the common good. In
this grand council must the sovereignty, not trans-
ferred, but delegated only, and as it were deposited,
reside; with this caution, they must have the forces by
sea and land committed to them for preservation of the
common peace and liberty; must raise and manage
the public revenue, at least with some inspectors de-
puted for satisfaction of the people, how it is employed;
must make or propose, as more expressly shall be said
anon, civil laws, treat of commerce, peace, or war with
foreign nations, and, for the carrying on some particu-
lar affairs with more secrecy and expedition, must
elect, as they have already out of their own number
and others, a council of state."
& And, although it may seem strange at first hearing,
by reason that men's minds are prepossessed with the
motion of successive parliaments, I affirm, that the
grand or general council, being well chosen, should oe
perpetual: for so their business is or may be, and oft-
times urgent; the opportunity of affairs gained or lost
in a moment. The day of council cannot be set as
the day of a festival; but must be ready always to pre-
vent or answer all occasions. By this continuance
they will become every way skilfullest, best provided
of intelligence from abroad, best acquainted with the
people at home, and the people with them. The ship
of the commonwealth is always under sail; they sit at
the stern, and if they steer well, what need is there to
change them, it being rather dangerous P. Add to
this, that the grand council is both foundation and .
main pillar of the whole state; and to move pillars
and foundations, not faulty, cannot be safe for the
building. I see not therefore, how we can be ad-
vantaged by successive and transitory parliaments;
but that they are much likelier continually to unsettle
rather than to settle a free government, to breed com-
motions, changes, novelties, and uncertainties, to bring
neglect upon present affairs and opportunities, while
all minds are in suspense with expectation of a new
assembly, and the assembly for a good space taken up
with the new settling of itself. After which, if they
find no great work to do, they will make it, by altering
or repealing former acts, or making and multiplying
new ; that they may seem to see what their predeces-
sors saw not, and not to have assembled for nothing :
till all law be lost in the multitude of clashing statutes.
But if the ambition of such as think themselves in-
jured, that they also partake not of the government,
and are impatient till they be chosen, cannot brook the
perpetuity of others chosen before them; or if it be
feared, that long continuance of power may corrupt
sincerest men, the known expedient is, and by some
lately propounded, that annually (or if the space be
longer, so much perhaps the better) the third part of
senators may go out according to the precedence of
their election, and the like number be chosen in their
places, to prevent their settling of too absolute a power,
if it should be perpetual : and this they call “partial
rotation.” But I could wish, that this wheel or partial
wheel in state, if it be possible, might be avoided, as
having too much affinity with the wheel of Fortune.
For it appears not how this can be done, without dan-
ger and mischance of putting out a great number of
the best and ablest: in whose stead new elections may vº
***** _-----------~~
bring in as many raw, unexperienced, and otherwise
affected, to the weakening and much altering for the
worse of public transactions. Neither do I think a
perpetual senate, especially chosen or entrusted by the
people, much in this land to be feared, where the well-
affected, either in a standing army, or in a settled mi-
litia, have their arms in their own hands. Safest
therefore to me it seems, and of least hazard or inter-
ruption to affairs, that none of the grand council be
moved, unless by death, or just conviction of some
crime: for what can be expected firm or stedfast from
a floating foundation 2 however, I forejudge not any
probable expedient, any temperament that can be
found in things of this nature, so disputable on either
side. Yet lest this which I affirm be thought my
single opinion, I shall add sufficient testimony. King-
ship itself is therefore counted the more safe and dur-
able because the king, and for the most part his coun-
cil, is not changed during life: but a commonwealth
is held immortal, and therein firmest, safest, and most
above fortune: for the death of a king causeth ofttimes
many dangerous alterations; but the death now and
vº
\,:
Z
then of a senator is not felt, the main body of them .
still continuing permanent in greatest and noblest
commonwealths, and as it were eternal. Therefore
among the Jews, the supreme council of seventy, called
the Sanhedrim, founded by Moses, in Athens that of
Areopagus, in Sparta that of the ancients, in Rome the
senate, consisted of members chosen for term of life;
and by that means remained as it were still the same
to generations. In Venice they change indeed oftener
than every year some particular council of state, as that
of six, or such other: but the true senate, which up-
holds and sustains the government, is the whole aris-
tocracy immovable. So in the United Provinces, the
To ESTABLISH A FREE COMMONWEALTII.
447
N
states general, which are indecd but a council of state
deputed by the whole union, are not usually the same
persons for above three or six years; but the states of
every city, in whom the sovereignty hath been placed
time out of mind, are a standing senate, without suc-
cession, and accounted chiefly in that regard the main
prop of their liberty. And why they should be so in
every well-ordered commonwealth, they who write of
policy give these reasons; “That to make the senate
successive, not only impairs the dignity and lustre of
the senate, but weakens the whole commonwealth, and
brings it into manifest danger; while by this means
the secrets of state are frequently divulged, and matters
of greatest consequence committed to inexpert and no-
vice counsellors, utterly to seek in the full and inti-
mate knowledge of affairs past.” I know not therefore
what should be peculiar in England, to make successive
parliaments thought safest, or convenient here more
than in other nations, unless it be the fickleness, which
is attributed to us as we are islanders: but good educa-
tion and acquisite wisdom ought to correct the fluxible
fault, if any such be, of our watery situation. It will
be objected, that in those places where they had per-
petual senates, they had also popular remedies against
their growing too imperious: as in Athens, besides
Areopagus, another senate of four or five hundred; in
Sparta, the Ephori; in Rome, the tribunes of the peo-
ple. But the event tells us, that these remedies either
little avail the people, or brought them to such a licen-
tious and unbridled democracy, as in fine ruined them-
selves with their own excessive power. So that the
main reason urged why popular assemblies are to be
trusted with the people's liberty, rather than a senate
of principal men, because great men will be still en-
deavouring to enlarge their power, but the common
sort will be contented to maintain their own liberty, is
by experience found false; none being more immoder-
ate and ambitious to amplify their power, than such
popularities, which were seen in the people of Rome;
who at first contented to have their tribunes, at length
contented with the senate that one consul, then both,
soon after, that the censors and praetors also should be
created plebeian, and the whole empire put into their
hands; adoring lastly those, who most were adverse to
the senate, till Marius, by fulfilling their inordinate
desires, quite lost them all the power, for which they
had so long been striving, and left them under the
tyranny of Sylla : the balance therefore must be ex-
actly so set, as to preserve and keep up due authority
on either side, as well in the senate as in the people.
And this annual rotation of a senate to consist of three
hundred, as is lately propounded, requires also another
popular assembly upward of a thousand, with an an-
swerable rotation. Which, besides that it will be
liable to all those inconveniences found in the aforesaid
remedies, cannot but be troublesome and chargeable,
both in their motion and their session, to the whole
land, unwieldy with their own bulk, unable in so great
a number to mature their consultations as they ought,
if any be allotted them, and that they meet not from
so many parts remote to sit a whole year lieger in one
place, only now and then to hold up a forest of ſingers,
or to convey each man his bean or ballot into the box,
without reason shewn or common deliberation; incon-
tinent of secrets, if any be imparted to them ; emulous
and always jarring with the other senate. The much
better way doubtless will be, in this wavering coil-
dition of our affairs, to defer the changing or circum-
scribing of our senate, more than may be done with
ease, till the commonwealth be throughly settled in
peace and safety, and they themselves give us the oc-
casion. Military men hold it dangerous to change
the form of battle in view of an enemy : neither did
the people of Rome bandy with their senate, while any
of the Tarquins lived, the enemies of their liberty;
nor sought by creating tribunes, to defend themselves
against the fear of their patricians, till sixteen years
after the expulsion of their kings, and in full security
of their state, they had or thought they had just cause
given them by the senate. Another way will be,
to well qualify and refine elections: not committing
all to the noise and shouting of a rude multitude, but
permitting only those of them who are rightly qualified,
to nominate as many as they will ; and out of that
number others of a better breeding, to choose a less
number more judiciously, till after a third or fourth
sifting and refining of exactest choice, they only be
left chosen who are the due number, and seem by most
voices the worthiest. To make the people fittest to
choose, and the chosen fittest to govern, will be to
mend our corrupt and faulty education, to teach the
people faith, not without virtue, temperance, modesty, !/
sobriety, parsimony, justice; not to admire wealth or
honour; to hate turbulence and ambition ; to place
every one his private welfare and happiness in the
public peace, liberty, and safety. They shall not then
need to be much mistrustful of their chosen patriots in
the grand council; who will be then rightly called the
true keepers of our liberty, though the most of their
business will be in foreign affairs. But to prevent all
mistrust, the people then will have their several ordinary
assemblies (which will henceforth quite annihilate the
odious power and name of committees) in the chief
towns of every country, without the trouble, charge, or
time lost of summoning and assembling from far in so
great a number, and so long residing from their own
houses, or removing of their families, to do as much at
home in their several shires, entire or subdivided, to-
ward the securing of their liberty, as a numerous as-
sembly of them all formed and convened on purpose
with the wariest rotation. Whereof I shall speak more
ere the end of this discourse: for it may be referred to
time, so we be still going on by degrees to perfection.
The people well weighing and performing these things,
I suppose would have no cause to fear, though the par-
liament abolishing that name, as originally signifying
but the parley of our lords and commons with the Nor-
man king when he pleased to call them, should, with
certain limitations of their power, sit perpetual, if their
ends be faithful and for a free commonwealth, under
the name of a grand or general council. Till this be
done, I am in doubt whether our state will be ever
}
448
THE READY AND EASY WAY
certainly and throughly settled; never likely till then
to see an end of our troubles and continual changes, or
at least never the true settlement and assurance of our
liberty. The grand council being thus firmly constitut-
ed to perpetuity, and still, upon the death or default of
any member, supplied and kept in full number, there
can be no cause alleged, why peace, justice, plentiful
trade, and all prosperity should not thereupon ensue
throughout the whole land; with as much assurance as
can be of human things, that they shall so continue (if
God favour us, and our wilful sins provoke him not)
even to the coming of our true and rightful, and only
to be expected King, only worthy as he is our only
Saviour, the Messiah, the Christ, the only heir of his
eternal Father, the only by him anointed and ordained
since the work of our redemption finished, universal
Lord of all mankind." The way propounded is plain,
easy, and open before us; without intricacies, without
the introducement of new or absolute forms or terms, or
exotic models; ideas that would effect nothing ; but
with a number of new injunctions to manacle the na-
tive liberty of mankind; turning all virtue into pre-
scription, servitude, and necessity, to the great impair-
ing and frustrating of christian liberty. I say again,
this way lies free and smooth before us; is not tangled
with inconveniencies; invents no new incumbrances;
requires no perilous, no injurious alteration or circum-
scription of men's lands and properties ;"secure, that in
this commonwealth, temporal and spiritual lords re-
moved, no man or number of men can attain to such
wealth or vast possession, as will need the hedge of an
agrarian law (never successful, but the cause rather of
sedition, save only where it began seasonably with first
possession) to confine them from endangering our pub-
lic liberty. To conclude, it can have no considerable
9bjection made against it, that it is not practicable; lest
t be said hereafter, that we gave up our liberty for
want of a ready way or distinct form proposed of a free
commonwealth. And this facility we shall have above
our next neighbouring commonwealth, (if we can keep
us from the fond conceit of something like a duke of
Venice, put lately into many men's heads by some one
or other subtly driving on under that notion his own
ambitious ends to lurch a crown,) that our liberty shall
not be hampered or hovered over by any engagement
to such a potent family as the house of Nassau, of whom
to stand in perpetual doubt and suspicion, but we shall
live the clearest and absolutest free nation in the world.
On the contrary, if there be a king, which the in-
considerate multitude are now so mad upon, mark how
far short we are like to come of all those happinesses,
which in a free state we shall immediately be possessed
of First, the grand council, which, as I shewed be-
fore, should sit perpetually, (unless their leisure give
them now and then some intermissions or vacations,
easily manageable by the council of state left sitting.)
shall be called, by the king's good will and utmost en-
deavour, as seldom as may be. For it is only the king's
right, he will say, to call a parliament; and this he
will do most commonly about his own affairs rather
than the kingdom's, as will appear plainly so soon as
they are called. For what will their business then be,
and the chief expense of their time, but an endless tug-
ging between petition of right and royal prerogative,
especially about the negative voice, militia, or subsidies,
demanded and ofttimes extorted without reasonable
cause appearing to the commons, who are the only true
representatives of the people and their liberty, but will
be then mingled with a court-faction; besides which,
within their own walls, the sincere part of them who
stand faithful to the people will again have to deal with
two troublesome counter-working adversaries from
without, mere creatures of the king, spiritual, and the
greater part, as is likeliest, of temporal lords, nothing
concerned with the people's liberty. If these prevail not
in what they please, though never so much against the
people's interest, the parliament shall be soon dissolved,
or sit and do nothing; not suffered to remedy the least
grievance, or enact aught advantageous to the people.
Next, the council of state shall not be chosen by the
parliament, but by the king, still his own creatures,
courtiers, and favourers; who will be sure in all their
counsels to set their master's grandeur and absolute
power, in what they are able, far above the people's
liberty. I deny not but that there may be such a king,
who may regard the common good before his own, may
have no vicious favourite, may hearken only to the
wisest and incorruptest of his parliament: but this
rarely happens in a monarchy not elective; and it be-
hoves not a wise nation to commit the sum of their
well-being, the whole state of their safety to fortune.
What need they ; and how absurd would it be, whenas
they themselves, to whom his chief virtue will be but
to hearken, may with much better management and
dispatch, with much more commendation of their own
worth and magnanimity, govern without a master P
Can the folly be parralleled, to adore and be the slaves
of a single person, for doing that which it is ten thou-
sand to one whether he can or will do, and we without
him might do more easily, more effectually, more laud-
ably ourselves P Shall we never grow old enough to
be wise, to make seasonable use of gravest authorities,
experiences, examples 2 Is it such an unspeakable joy
to serve, such felicity to wear a yoke P to clink our
shackles, locked on by pretended law of subjection,
more intolerable and hopeless to be ever shaken off,
than those which are knocked on by illegal injury and
violence P Aristotle our chief instructor in the univer-
sities, lest this doctrine be thought sectarian, as the
royalist would have it thought, tells us in the third of
his Politics, that certain men at first, for the matchless
excellence of their virtue above others, or some great
public benefit, were created kings by the people, in
small cities and territories, and in the scarcity of others
to be found like them; but when they abused their
power, and governments grew larger, and the number
of prudent men increased, that then the people, soon
deposing their tyrants, betook them, in all civilest
places, to the form of a free commonwealth. And why
should we thus disparage and prejudicate our own na-
tion, as to fear a scarcity of able and worthy men united
in counsel to govern us, if we will but use diligence
TO ESTABLISH A FREE COMMONWEALTH.
449
er
- s
and impartiality, to find them out and choose them, ra-
ther yoking ourselves to a single person, the natural
adversary and oppressor of liberty; though good, yet
far easier corruptible by the excess of his single power
and exaltation, or at best, not comparably sufficient to
bear the weight of government, nor equally disposed to
make us happy in the enjoyment of our liberty under
him P
But admit, that monarchy of itself may be conveni-
ent to some nations; yet to us who have thrown it out,
received back again, it cannot but prove pernicious.
For kings to come, never forgetting their former ejec-
tion, will be sure to fortify and arm themselves suffi-
ciently for the future against all such attempts hereafter
from the people: who shall be then so narrowly watched
and kept so low, that though they would never so ſain,
and at the same rate of their blood and treasure, they
never shall be able to regain what they now have pur-
chased and may enjoy, or to free themselves from any
yoke imposed upon them : nor will they dare to go
about it; utterly disheartened for the future, if these
their highest attempts prove unsuccessful; which will
be the triumph of all tyrants hereafter over any people
that shall resist oppression ; and their song will then
be, to others, How sped the rebellious English P to our
posterity, How sped the rebels your fathers? This is not
my conjecture, but drawn from God’s known denounce-
ment against the gentilizing Israelites, who, though
they were governed in a commonwealth of God's own
ordaining, he only their king, they his peculiar people,
yet affecting rather to resemble heathen, but pretending
the misgovernment of Samuel's sons, no more a reason
to dislike their commonwealth, than the violence of
Eli's sons was imputable to that priesthood or religion,
clamoured for a king. They had their longing, but
with this testimony of God's wrath; “Ye shall cry out
in that day, because of your king whom ye shall have
chosen, and the Lord will not hear you in that day.”
Us if he shall hear now, how much less will he hear
when we cry hereafter, who once delivered by him from
a king, and not without wonderous acts of his provi-
dence, insensible and unworthy of those high mercies,
are returning precipitantly, if he withhold us not, back
to the captivity from whence he freed us! Yet neither
shall we obtain or buy at an easy rate this new gilded
yoke, which thus transports us: a new royal revenue
must be found, a new episcopal ; for those are indivi-
dual : both which being wholly dissipated, or bought
by private persons, or assigned for service done, and
especially to the army, cannot be recovered without
general detriment and confusion to men's estates, or a
heavy imposition on all men's purses; benefit to none
but to the worst and ignoblest sort of men, whose hope
is to be either the ministers of court riot and excess, or
the gainers by it : but not to speak more of losses and
extraordinary levies on our estates, what will then be
the revenges and offences remembered and returned,
not only by the chief person, but by all his adherents;
accounts and reparations that will be required, suits,
indictments, inquiries, discoveries, complaints, informa-
tions, who knows against whom or how many, though
perhaps neuters, if not to utmost infliction, yet to im-
prisonment, fines, banishment, or molestation * if not
these, yet disfavour, discountenance, disregard, and
contempt on all but the known royalist, or whom
he favours, will be plenteous. Nor let the new royal-
ized presbyterians persuade themselves, that their
old doings, though now recanted, will be forgotten ;
whatever conditions be contrived or trusted on. Will
they not believe this; nor remember the pacifica-
tion, how it was kept to the Scots; how other so-
lemn promises many a time to us? Let them but now
read the diabolical forerunning libels, the faces, the
gestures, that now appear foremost and briskest in all
public places, as the harbingers of those, that are in
expectation to reign over us; let them but hear the in-
solencies, the menaces, the insultings, of our newly ani-
mated common enemies crept lately out of their holes,
their Lell I might say, by the language of their in-
fernal pamphlets, the spew of every drunkard, every
ribald ; nameless, yet not for want of licence, but for
very shame of their own vile persons, not daring to
name themselves, while they traduce others by name;
and give us to foresee, that they intend to second their
wicked words, if ever they have power, with more
wicked deeds. Let our zealous backsliders forethink
now with themselves how their necks yoked with these
tigers of Bacchus, these new fanatics of not the preach-
ing, but the sweating tub, inspired with nothing holier
than the venereal pox, can draw one way under mo-
narchy to the establishing of church discipline with
these new disgorged atheisms: yet shall they not have
the honour to yoke with these, but shall be yoked under
them; these shall plough on their backs. And do
they among them, who are so forward to bring in the
single person, think to be by him trusted or long re-
garded ? So trusted they shall be, and so regarded, as
by kings are wont reconciled enemies; neglected, and
soon after discarded, if not persecuted for old traitors;
the first inciters, beginners, and more than to the third
part actors, of all that followed. It will be found also,
that there must be then, as necessary as now, (for the
contrary part will be still feared.) a standing army;
which for certain shall not be this, but of the fiercest
cavaliers, of no less expense, and perhaps again under
Rupert. But let this army be sure they shall be soon
disbanded, and likeliest without arrear or pay; and
being disbanded, not be sure but they may as soon be
questioned for being in arms against their king : the
same let them fear who have contributed money;
which will amount to no small number, that must then
take their turn to be made delinquents and compound-
ers. ‘They who past reason and recovery are devoted
to kingship perhaps will answer, that a greater part by
far of the nation will have it so, the rest therefore must
yield. Not so much to convince these, which I little
hope, as to confirm them who yield not, I reply, that
this greatest part have both in reason, and the trial of
just battle, lost the right of their election what the go-
vernment shall be: of them who have not lost that
right, whether they for kingship be the greater num-
ber, who can certainly determine P Suppose they be,
450
THE READY AND EASY WAY
yet of freedom they partake all alike, one main end of
government: which if the greater part value not, but
will degenerately forego, is it just or reasonable, that
most voices against the main end of government should
enslave the less number that would be free ? more just
it is, doubtless, if it come to force, that a less number
compel a greater to retain, which can be no wrong to
them, their liberty, than that a greater number, for the
pleasure of their baseness, compel a less most injuri-
ously to be their fellow-slaves. They who seek no-
thing but their own just liberty, have always right to
win it and to keep it, whenever they have power, be
the voices never so numerous that oppose it. And how
much we above others are concerned to defend it from
kingship, and from them who in pursuance thereof so
perniciously would betray us and themselves to most
certain misery and thraldom, will be needless to repeat.
Having thus far shewn with what ease we may now
obtain a free commonwealth, and by it, with as much
ease, all the freedom, peace, justice, plenty, that we
can desire ; on the other side, the difficulties, troubles,
uncertainties, nay rather impossibilities, to enjoy these
things constantly under a monarch : I will now pro-
ceed to shew more particularly wherein our freedom
and flourishing condition will be more ample and se-
cure to us under a free commonwealth, than under
kingship.
The whole freedom of man consists either in spirit-
f
'ual or civil liberty. As for spiritual, who can be at
rest, who can enjoy any thing in this world with con-
tentment, who hath not liberty to serve God, and to
save his own soul, according to the best light which
God hath planted in him to that purpose, by the read-
ing of his revealed will, and the guidance of his Holy
Spirit 2 That this is best pleasing to God, and that
the whole protestant church allows no supreme judge
or rule in matters of religion, but the Scriptures; and
these to be interpreted by the Scriptures themselves,
which necessarily infers liberty of conscience; I have
heretofore proved at large in another treatise; and
might yet further, by the public declarations, contes-
sions, and admonitions of whole churches and states,
obvious in all histories since the reformation.
† This liberty of conscience, which above all other
things ought to be to all men dearest and most pre-
cious, no government more inclinable not to favour
only, but to protect, than a free commonwealth; as be-
ing most magnanimous, most fearless, and confident
of its own fair proceedings. Whereas kingship, though
looking big, yet indeed most pusillanimous, full of
fears, full of jealousies, startled at every umbrage, as
it hath been observed of old to have ever suspected
most and mistrusted them who were in most esteem
for virtue and generosity of mind, so it is now known
to have most in doubt and suspicion them who are
most reputed to be religious. Queen Elizabeth,
though herself accounted so good a protestant, so mo-
derate, so confident of her subjects’ love, would never
give way so much as to presbyterian reformation in
this land, though once and again besought, as Camden
relates, but imprisoned and persecuted the very propo-
sers thereof; alleging it as her mind and maxim un-
alterable, that such reformation would diminish regal
authority. What liberty of conscience can we then
expect of others, far worse principled from the cradle,
trained up and governed by popish and Spanish coun-
sels, and on such depending hitherto for subsistence?
Especially what can this last parliament expect, who
having revived lately and published the covenant, have
re-engaged themselves, never to readmit episcopacy 2
Which no son of Charles returning but will most cer-
tainly bring back with him, if he regard the last and
strictest charge of his father, “to persevere in, not the
doctrine only, but government of the church of Eng-
land, not to neglect the speedy and effectual sup-
pressing of errours and schisms;” among which he ac-
counted presbytery one of the chief. Or if, notwith-
standing that charge of his father, he submit to the
covenant, how will he keep faith to us, with disobe-
dience to him; or regard that faith given, which must
be founded on the breach of that last and solemnest
paternal charge, and the reluctance, I may say the
antipathy, which is in all kings, against presbyterian
and independent discipline P #For they hear the gospel
speaking much of liberty; a word which monarchy
and her bishops both fear and hate, but a free common-
wealth both favours and promotes; and not the word
only, but the thing itself. ' But let our governors be-
ware in time, lest their hard measure to liberty of con-
science be found the rock whereon they shipwreck
themselves, as others have now done before them in the
course wherein God was directing their steerage to a
free commonwealth ; and the abandoming of all those
whom they call sectaries, for the detected falsehood
and ambition of some, be a wilful rejection of their
own chief strength and interest in the freedom of all
protestant religion, under what abusive name soever
calumniated. " *
ff The other part of our freedom consists in the civil
rights and advancements of every person according to
his merit: the enjoyment of those never more certain,
and the access to these never more open, than in a free
commonwealth. Both which, in my opinion, may be
best and soonest obtained, if every country in the land
were made a kind of subordinate commonalty or com-
monwealth, and one chief town or more, according as
the shire is in circuit, made cities, if they be not so
called already; where the nobility and chief gentry,
from a proportionable compass of territory annexed to
each city, may build houses or palaces befitting their
quality, may bear part in the government, make their
own judicial laws, or use these that are, and execute
them by their own elected judicatures and judges with-
out appeal, in all things of civil government between
man and man ; so they shall have justice in their own
hands, law executed fully and finally in their own
counties and precincts, long wished and spoken of, but
never yet obtained; they shall have none then to blame
but themselves, if it be not well administered; and
fewer laws to expect or fear from the supreme autho-
rity; or to those that shall be made, of any great con-
cernment to public liberty, they may, without much
TO ESTABLISH A FIREE COMMON WEALTH.
451
trouble in these commonalties, or in more general as-
semblies called to their cities from the whole territory
on such occasion, declare and publish their assent or
dissent by deputies, within a time limited, sent to the
grand council; yet so as this their judgment declared
shall submit to the greater number of other counties or
commonalties, and not avail them to any exemption of
themselves, or refusal of agreement with the rest, as it
may in any of the United Provinces, being sovereign
within itselſ, ofttimes to the great disadvantage of that
union. In these employments they may, much better
than they do now, exercise and sit themselves till their
lot fall to be chosen into the grand council, according
as their worth and merit shall be taken notice of by the
people. As for controversies that shall happen between
men of several counties, they may repair, as they do
now, to the capital city, or any other more commodi-
ous, indifferent place, and equal judges. And this I
find to have been practised in the old Athenian com-
monwealth, reputed the first and ancientest place of
civility in all Greece; that they had in their several
cities a peculiar, in Athens a common government;
and their right, as it befel them, to the administration
of both. They should have here also schools and acade-
mies at their own choice, wherein their children may
be bred up in their own sight to all learning and noble
education; not in grammar only, but in all liberal arts
and exercises. This would soon spread much more
knowledge and civility, yea, religion, through all parts
of the land, by communicating the natural heat of
government and culture more distributively to all ex-
treme parts, which now lie numb and neglected, would
soon make the whole nation more industrious, more in-
genious at home; more potent, more honourable abroad.
To this a free commonwealth will easily assent; (may,
the parliament hath had already some such thing in
design;) for of all governments a commonwealth aims
most to make the people flourishing, virtuous, noble,
and high-spirited. Monarchs will never permit; whose
aim is to make the people wealthy indeed perhaps, and
well fleeced, for their own shearing, and the supply of
regal prodigality ; but otherwise softest, basest, vicious.
est, servilest, easiest to be kept under: and not only in
fleece, but in mind also sheepishest; and will have all
the benches of judicature annexed to the throne, as a
gift of royal grace, that we have justice done us;”
whenas nothing can be more essential to the freedom
of a people, than to have the administration of justice,
and all public ornaments, in their own election, and
within their own bounds, without long travelling or
depending upon remote places to obtain their right, or
any civil accomplishment; so it be not supreme, but
subordinate to the general power and union of the
whole republic. In which happy firmness, as in the
particular above-mentioned, we shall also far exceed
the United Provinces, by having, not as they, (to the
retarding and distracting ofttimes of their counsels or
ur sentest occasions,) many sovereignties united in one
commonwealth, but many commonwealths under one
united and intrusted sovereignty. And when we have
our forces by sea and land, either of a faithful army,
or a settled militia, in our own hands, to the firm esta-
blishing of a free commonwealth, public accounts under
our own inspection, general laws and taxes, with their
causes in our own domestic suffrages, judicial laws,
offices, and ornaments at home in our own ordering
and administration, all distinction of lords and com-
moners, that may any way divide or sever the public
interest, removed ; what can a perpetual senate have
then, wherein to grow corrupt, wherein to encroach
upon us, or usurp 2 or if they do, wherein to be formi-
dable P. Yet if all this avail not to remove the fear or
envy of a perpetual sitting, it may be easily provided,
to change a third part of them yearly, or every two or
three years, as was above-mentioned ; or that it be at
those times in the people's choice, whether they will
change them, or renew their power, as they shall find
Cà l'IS6.
!? I have no more to say at present: few words will
save us, well considered; few and easy things, now
seasonably done. But if the people be so affected as
to prostitute religion and liberty to the vain and ground-
less apprehension, that nothing but kingship can re-
store trade, not remembering the frequent plagues and
pestilences that then wasted this city, such as through
God’s mercy we never have felt since; and that trade
flourishes no where more than in the free common-
wealths of Italy, Germany, and the Low Countries, be-
fore their eyes at this day; yet if trade be grown so
craving and importunate through the profuse living of
tradesmen, that nothing can support it but the luxuri-
ous expenses of a nation upon trifles or superfluities;
so as if the people generally should betake themselves
to frugality, it might prove a dangerous matter, lest
tradesmen should mutiny for want of trading; and that
therefore we must forego and set to sale religion,
liberty, honour, safety, all concernments divine or hu-
man, to keep up trading : if, lastly, after all this light
among us, the same reason shall pass for current, to
put our necks again under kingship, as was made use
of by the Jews to return back to Egypt, and to the
worship of their idol queen, because they falsely
imagined that they then lived in more plenty and pros-
perity; our condition is not sound but rotten, both in
religion and all civil prudence; and will bring us soon,
the way we are marching, to those calamities, which
attend always and unavoidably on luxury, all national
judgments under foreign and domestic slavery: so far
we shall be from mending our condition by monarch-
ising our government, whatever new conceit now pos-
sesses us. However, with all hazard I have ventured
what I thought my duty to speak in season, and to
forewarn my country in time; wherein I doubt not but
there be many wise men in all places and degrees, but
am sorry the effects of wisdom are so little seen among
us. Many circumstances and particulars I could have
added in those things whereof I have spoken : but a
few main matters now put speedily in execution, will
suffice to recover us, and set all right: and there will
want at no time who are good at circumstances; but
men who set their minds on main matters, ar.d suf-
ficiently urge them, in these most difficult times I find
2 G
452
THE READY AND EASY WAY, &c.
not many. What I have spoken, is the language of
that which is not called amiss “The good old Cause:”
if it seem strange to any, it will not seem more strange,
I hope, than convincing to backsliders. Thus much I
should perhaps have said, though I were sure I should
have spoken only to trees and stones; and had none to
cry to, but with the prophet, “O earth, earth, earth !”
to tell the very soil itself, what her perverse inhabit-
ants are deaf to. Nay, though what I have spoke
should happen (which thou suffer not, who didst create
mankind free nor thou next, who didst redeem us
from being servants of men') to be the last words of
our expiring liberty. But I trust I shall have spoken
persuasion to abundance of sensible and ingenuous
men ; to some perhaps, whom God may raise to these
stones to become children of reviving liberty; and may
reclaim, though they seem now choosing them a cap-
tain back for Egypt, to bethink themselves a little, and
consider whither they are rushing; to exhort this tor-
rent also of the people, not to be so impetuous, but to
keep their due channel; and at length recovering and
uniting their better resolutions, now that they see
already how open and unbounded the insolence and
rage is of our common enemies, to stay these ruinous
proceedings, justly and timely fearing to what a pre-
cipice of destruction the deluge of this epidemic mad-
d hurry us, through the general defection of
and abused multitude.


BRIEF NOTES UPON
A L A T E S E R M ON,
TITLED,
T H E FE, A R O F G O D A N D T H E KING ;
HED AND SINCE PUBLISHIKD
w GRIFFITH, D. D.
AND CHA PLAIN TO THE LATE K I N G.
WHEREIN MANY NOTORIOUS WRESTINGS OF SCRIPTURE, AND OTHER FALSITIES, ARE OBSERVED.
(FIRst PUBLIs IIEd. 1660.]
I affi RMED in the preface of a late discourse, intitled,
“The ready Way to establish a Free Commonwealth,
and the Dangers of re-admitting Kingship in this Na-
tion,” that the humour of returning to our old bondage
was instilled of late by some deceivers; and to make
good, that what I then affirmed was not without just
ground, one of those deceivers I present here to the
people : and if I prove him not such, refuse not to be
so accounted in his stead.
He begins in his epistle to the General,” and moves
cunningly for a licence to be admitted physician both
to church and state; then sets out his practice in phy-
sical terms, “a wholesome electuary to be taken every
morning next our hearts;” tells of the opposition which
he met with from the college of state physicians, then
lays before you his drugs and ingredients; “Strong
purgatives in the pulpit, contempered of the myrrh of
mortification, the aloes of confession and contrition, the
rhubarb of restitution and satisfaction;” a pretty fan-
tastic dose of divinity from a pulpit mountebank, not
unlike the fox, that turning pedlar opened his pack of
ware before the kid; though he now would seem, “to
personate the good Samaritan,” undertaking to “de-
scribe the rise and progress of our national malady,
and to prescribe the only remedy;” which how he per-
forms, we shall quickly see.
“First, he would suborn St. Luke as his spokesman
to the General, presuming, it seems, “to have had as
perfect understanding of things from the very first,” as
the evangelist had of his gospel; that the General, who
hath so eminently born his part in the whole action,
“might know the gertainty of those things” better
from him a partial sequestered enemy; for so he pre-
sently appears, though covertly, and like the tempter,
* Monk.
commencing his address with an impudent calumny
and affront to his excellence, that he would be pleased
“to carry on what he had so happily begun in the
name and cause” not of God only, which we doubt not,
but “of his anointed,” meaning the late king's son ; to
charge him most audaciously and falsely with the re-
nouncing of his own public promises and declarations,
both to the parliament and the army, and we trust his
actions ere long will deter such insinuating slanderers
from thus approaching him for the future. But the
General may well excuse him ; for the Comforter him-
self scapes not his presumption, avouched as falsely,
to have empowered to those designs “him and him
only,” who hath solemnly declared the contrary. What
famatic, against whom he so often inveighs, could
more presumptuously affirm whom the Comforter hath
empowered, than this anti-famatic, as he would be
thought f
THE TEXT.
Prov. xxiv. 21, My son, fear God and the king, and
meddle not with them that be seditious, or desirous
of change, &c.
Letting pass matters not in controversy, I come to
the main drift of your sermon, the king; which word
here is either to signify any supreme magistrate, or else
your latter object of fear is not universal, belongs not
at all to many parts of christendom, that have no king;
and in particular not to us. That we have no king
since the putting down of kingship in this common-
wealth, is manifest by this last parliament, who, to the
time of their dissolving, not only made no address at
all to any king, but summoned this next to come by

4.54 BRIEF NOTES ON DR.
GRIEFITH'S SERMON.
the writ formerly appointed of a free commonwealth,
without restitution or the least mention of any kingly
right or power; which could not be, if there were
at present any king of England. The main part there-
fore of your sermon, if it mean a king in the usual
sense, is either impertinent and absurd, exhorting your
auditory to fear that which is not; or if king here be,
as it is understood, for any supreme magistrate, by
your own exhortation they are in the first place not to
meddle with you, as being yourself most of all the se-
ditious meant here, and the “desirous of change,” in
stirring them up to “fear a king,” whom the present
government takes no notice of.
You begin with a vain vision, “God and the king at
the first blush” (which will not be your last blush)
“seeming to stand in your text like those two cheru-
bims on the mercy-seat, looking on each other.” By
this similitude, your conceited sanctuary, worse than
the altar of Ahaz, patterned from Damascus, degrades
God to a cherub, and raises your king to be his colla-
teral in place, notwithstanding the other differences you
put; which well agrees with the court-letters, lately
published, from this lord to the other lord, that cry him
up for no less than angelical and celestial.
Your first observation, page 8, is, “That God and
the king are coupled in the text, and what the Holy
Ghost hath thus firmly combined, we may not, we must
not dare to put asunder;” and yourself is the first man
who puts them asunder by the first proof of your doc-
trine immediately following, Judg. vii. 20, which
couples the sword of the Lord and Gideon, a man who
not only was no king, but refused to be a king or
monarch, when it was offered him, in the very next
chapter, ver. 22, 23, “I will not rule over you, neither
shall my son rule over you ; the Lord shall rule over
you.” Here we see, that this worthy heroic deliverer of
his country thought it best governed, if the Lord go-
verned it in that form of a free commonwealth, which
they then enjoyed, without a single person. And thus
is your first scripture abused, and most impertinently
cited, nay, against yourself, to prove, that “kings at
their coronation have a sword given them,” which you
interpret “the militia, the power of life and death put
into their hands,” against the declared judgment of
our parliaments, nay, of all our laws, which reserve to
themselves only the power of life and death, and render
you in their just resentment of this boldness another
Dr. Manwaring.
Your next proof is as false and frivolous, “The king,”
say you, “is God's sword-bearer;” true, but not the
king only : for Gideon, by whom you seek to prove
this, neither was nor would be a king ; and as you
yourself confess, page 40, “There be divers forms of
“He bears not the sword in vain,”
government.”
Rom. xiii. 4: This also is as true of any lawful rulers,
especially supreme; so that “Rulers,” ver. 3, and there-
fore this present government, without whose authority
you excite the people to a king, bear the sword as well
as kings, and as little in vain. “They fight against
God, who resist his ordinance, and go about to wrest
the sword out of the hands of his anointed.” This is
likewise granted: but who is his anointed 2 Not every
king, but they only who were anointed or made kings
by his special command; as Saul, David, and his race,
which ended in the Messiah, (from whom no kings at
this day can derive their title,) Jehu, Cyrus, and if any
other were by name appointed by him to some parti-
cular service: as for the rest of kings, all other su-
preme magistrates are as much the Lord's anointed as
they ; and our obedience commanded equally to them
all ; “for there is no power but of God,” Rom. xiii. 1 :
and we are exhorted in the gospel to obey kings, as
other magistrates, not that they are called any where
the Lord’s anointed, but as they are the “Ordinance of
man,” 1 Pet. ii. 13. You therefore and other such
false doctors, preaching kings to your auditory, as the
Lord's only anointed, to withdraw people from the pre-
sent government, by your own text are self-condemned,
and not to be followed, not to be “meddled with,” but
to be noted, as most of all others the “seditious and
desirous of change.”
Your third proof is no less against yourself. Psal. cw.
15, “Touch not mine anointed.” For this is not spoken
in behalf of kings, but spoken to reprove kings, that
they should not touch his anointed saints and servants,
the seed of Abraham, as the verse next before might
have taught you : he reproved kings for their sakes,
saying, “Touch not mine anointed, and do my pro-
phets no harm;” according to that, 2 Cor. i. 21, “He
who hath anointed us, is God.” But how well you
confirm one wrested scripture with another! I Sam.
viii. 7, “They have not rejected thee, but me :” grossly
misapplying these words, which were not spoken to
any who had “resisted or rejected” a king, but to them
who much against the will of God had sought a king,
and rejected a commonwealth, wherein they might have
lived happily under the reign of God only, their king.
Let the words interpret themselves; ver. 6, 7, “But
the thing displeased Samuel, when they said, Give us
a king to judge us: and Samuel prayed unto the Lord.
And the Lord said unto Samuel, Hearken unto the voice
of the people in all that they say unto thee; for they
have not rejected thee, but they have rejected me, that
I should not reign over them.” Hence you conclude,
“so indissoluble is the conjunction of God and the
king.” O notorious abuse of Scripture! whenas you
should have concluded, so unwilling was God to give
them a king, so wide was the disjunction of God from
a king. Is this the doctrine you boast of, to be “so
clear in itself, and like a mathematical principle, that
needs no farther demonstration ?” Bad logic, bad ma-
thematics, (for principles can have no demonstration
at all,) but worse divinity. O people of an implicit
faith, no better than Romish, if these be thy prime
teachers, who to their credulous audience dare thus
juggle with Scripture, to allege those places for the proof
of their doctrine, which are the plain refutation: and this
is all the Scripture which he brings to confirm his point.
The rest of his preachment is here groundless chat,
save here and there a few grains of corn scattered to
entice the silly fowl into his net, interlaced here and
there with some human reading, though slight, and not
BRIEF NOTES ON DR.
GRIFFITH'S SERMON.
455
without geographical and historical mistakes: as page
29, Suevia the German dukedom, for Suecia the Nor-
thern kingdom : Philip of Macedon, who is generally
understood of the great Alexander's father only, made
contemporary, page 31, with T. Quintus the Roman
commander, instead of T. Quintius, and the latter
Philip : and page 44, Tully cited “in his third oration
against Verres,” to say of him, “that he was a wicked
consul,” who mever was a consul: nor “Trojan se-
dition ever portrayed " by that verse of Virgil, which
you cite page 47, as that of Troy: schoolboys could
have told you, that there is nothing of Troy in that
whole portraiture, as you call it, of Sedition. These
gross mistakes may justly bring in doubt your other
loose citations, and that you take them up somewhere
at the second or third hand rashly, and without due
considering.
Nor are you happier in the relating or the moraliz-
ing your fable, “The frogs” (BEING once A FREE NA-
Tion, saith the fable) “petitioned Jupiter for a king:
he tumbled among them a log: they found it insen-
sible; they petitioned then for a king that should be
active: he sent them a crane'' (a Stork, saith the fa-
ble) “which straight fell to pecking them up.” This
you apply to the reproof of them who desire change:
whereas indeed the true moral shews rather the folly
of those who being free seek a king; which for the
most part either as a log lies heavy on his subjects,
without doing aught worthy of his dignity and the
charge to maintain him, or as a stork, is ever pecking
them up, and devouring them.
But “by our fundamental laws, the king is the high-
est power,” page 40. If we must hear mooting and
law lectures from the pulpit, what shame is it for a
doctor of divinity not first to consider, that no law can
be fundamental, but that which is grounded on the
light of nature or right reason, commonly called moral
Law : which no form of government was ever counted,
but arbitrary, and at all times in the choice of every
free people, or their representers. This choice of go-
vernment is so essential to their freedom, that longer
than they have it, they are not free. In this land not
only the late king and his posterity, but kingship itself,
hath been abrogated by a law; which involves with as
good reason the posterity of a king forfeited to the
people, as that law heretofore of treason against the
king, attainted the children with the father. This law
against both king and kingship they who most ques-
tion, do not less question all enacted without the king
and his antiparliament at Oxford, though called mon-
grel by himself. If no law must be held good, but
what passes in full parliament, then surely in exact-
ness of legality no member must be missing: for look
how many are missing, so many counties or cities that
sent them want their representers. But if, being once
chosen, they serve for the whole nation, then any mum-
ber, which is sufficient, is full, and most of all in times
of discord, necessity, and danger. The king himself
was bound by the old mode of parliaments, not to be
absent, but in case of sickness, or some extraordinary
occasion, and then to leave his substitute; much less
might any member be allowed to absent himself. If
the king then and many of the members with him,
without leaving any in his stead, forsook the parlia-
ment upon a mere panic fear, as was that time judged
by most men, and to levy war against them that sat,
should they who were left sitting, break up, or not dare
enact aught of nearest and presentest concernment to
public safety, for the punctilio wanting of a full num-
ber, which no law-book in such extraordinary cases hath
determined Certainly if it were lawful for them to
fly from their charge upon pretence of private safety,
it was much more lawful for these to set and act in
their trust what was necessary for the public. By a
law therefore of parliament, and of a parliament that
conquered both Ireland, Scotland, and all their ene-
mies in England, defended their friends, were gene-
rally acknowledged for a parliament both at home and
abroad, kingship was abolished : this law now of late
hath been negatively repealed; yet kingship not posi-
tively restored, and I suppose never was established by
any certain law in this land, nor possibly could be : for
how could our forefathers bind us to any certain form of
government, more than we can bind our posterity ? If
a people be put to war with their king for his misgo-
vernment, and overcome him, the power is then un-
doubtedly in their own hands how they will be governed.
The war was granted just by the king himself at the
beginning of his last treaty, and still maintained to be
so by this last parliament, as appears by the qualifica-
tion prescribed to the members of this next ensuing,
that none shall be elected, who have borne arms against
the parliament since 1641. If the war were just, the
conquest was also just by the law of nations. And he
who was the chief enemy, in all right ceased to be the
king, especially after captivity, by the deciding ver-
dict of war; and royalty with all her laws and preten-
sions yet remains in the victor's power, together with
the choice of our future government. Free common-
wealths have been ever counted fittest and properest
for civil, virtuous, and industrious, nations, abounding
with prudent men worthy to govern; monarchy fittest
to curb degenerate, corrupt, idle, proud, luxurious
people. If we desire to be of the former, nothing better
for us, nothing nobler than a free commonwealth : if
we will needs condemn ourselves to be of the latter, de-
spairing of our own virtue, industry, and the number
of our able men, we may then, conscious of our own
unworthiness to be governed better, sadly betake us to
our befitting thraldom : yet choosing out of our num-
ber one who hath best aided the people, and best merit-
ed against tyranny, the space of a reign or two we may
chance to live happily enough, or tolerably. But that
a victorious people should give up themselves again to
the vanquished, was never yet heard of, seems rather
void of all reason and good policy, and will in all pro-
bability subject the subduers to the subdued, will ex-
pose to revenge, to beggary, to ruin, and perpetual
bondage, the victors under the vanquished: than which
what can be more unworthy 2
From misinterpreting our law, you return to do again
the same with Scripture, and would prove the su
456
GRIFFITH'S SERMON.
BRIEF NOTES ON DR.
premacy of English kings from 1 Pet. ii. 13, as if that
were the apostle's work: wherein if he saith that “the
king is supreme,” he speaks so of him but as an “ordi-
nance of man,” and in respect of those “governors that
are sent by him,” not in respect of parliaments, which
by the law of this land are his bridle; in vain his
bridle, if not also his rider: and therefore hath not
only co-ordination with him, which you falsely call
seditious, but hath superiority above him, and that
neither “ against religion,” nor “right reason:” no nor
against common law ; for our kings reigned only by
law. But the parliament is above all positive law,
whether civil or common, makes or unmakes them
both ; and still the latter parliament above the former,
above all the former lawgivers, then certainly above
all precedent laws, entailed the crown on whom it
pleased; and as a great lawyer saith, “is so transcend-
ent and absolute, that it cannot be confined either for
causes or persons, within any bounds.” But your cry
is, no parliament without a king. If this be so, we
have never had lawful kings, who have all been created
kings either by such parliaments, or by conquest: if
by such parliaments, they are in your allowance none;
if by conquest, that conquest we have now conquered.
So that as well by your own assertion as by ours, there
can at present be no king. And how could that person
be absolutely supreme, who reigned, not under law
only, but under oath of his good demeanour, given to
the people at his coronation, ere the people gave him
his crown f and his principal oath was to maintain
those laws, which the people should choose. If then
the law itself, much more he who was but the keeper
and minister of law, was in their choice, and both he
subordinate to the performance of his duty sworn, and
our sworn allegiance in order only to his performance.
You fall next on the consistorian schismatics; for so
you call Presbyterians, page 40, and judge them to have
“enervated the king's supremacy by their opinions
and practice, differing in many things only in terms
from popery ;” though some of those principles, which
you there cite concerning kingship, are to be read in
Aristotle's Politics, long ere popery was thought
on. The presbyterians therefore it concerns to be
well forewarmed of you betimes; and to them I leave
you.
As for your examples of seditious men, page 54, &c.
Cora, Absalom, Zimri, Sheba, to these you might with
much more reason have added your own name, who
“blow the trumpet of sedition” from your pulpit against
the present government: in reward whereof they have
sent you by this time, as I hear, to your “own place,”
for preaching open sedition, while you would secm to
preach against it.
As for your Appendix annexed of the “Samaritan
revived,” finding it so foul a libel against all the well
affected of this land, since the very time of ship-money,
against the whole parliament, both lords and commons,
except those that fled to Oxford, against the whole re-
formed church, not only in England and Scotland, but
all over Europe, (in comparison whereof you and your
prelatical party are more truly schismatics and secta-
rians, nay, more properly fanatics in your ſames and
gilded temples, than those whom you revile by those
names,) and meeting with no more Scripture or solid
reason in your “Samaritan wine and oil,” than hath
already been found sophisticated and adulterate, I
leave your malignant narrative, as needing no other
confutation, than the just censure already passed upon
you by the council of state.
A C C E D E N C E
C O M M E N C E D G R A M M A R,
SUPPLIED WITH
SU FFICI E N T R U L E S
For the USE OF SUCH AS, YoungeR or elder, ARE DESIROUS, WITHOUT MoRe TROUBLE THAN Needs, TO ATTAIN THE LATIN
TONGUE ; THE EIDER SORT ESPECIALLY, WITH LITTLE TEACHING, AND THEIR own INDUSTRY.
[F1RST PUBLISHED 1669.]
TO THE READER.
It hath been long a general complaint, not without cause, in the bringing up of youth, and still is, that the
tenth part of man's life, ordinarily extended, is taken up in learning, and that very scarcely, the LATIN Tong UE.
Which tardy proficience may be attributed to several causes: in particular, the making two labours of one, by
learning first the Accedence, then the Grammar in Latin, ere the language of those rules be understood. The
only remedy of this was to join both books into one, and in the English Tongue; whereby the long way is
much abbreviated, and the labour of understanding much more easy: a work supposed not to have been done
formerly; or if done, not without such difference here in brevity and alteration, as may be found of moment.
That of Grammar, touching letters and syllables, is omitted, as learnt before, and little different from the Eng-
lish Spelling-book; especially since few will be persuaded, to pronounce Latin otherwise than their own English.
What will not come under rule, by reason of the much variety in declension, gender, or construction, is also
here omitted, lest the course and clearness of method be clogged with catalogues instead of rules, or too much
interruption between rule and rule: which Linaker, setting down the various idioms of many verbs, was forced
to do by alphabet, and therefore, though very learned, not thought fit to be read in schools. But in such words,
a dictionary stored with good authorities will be found the readiest guide. Of figurate construction, what is
useful is digested into several rules of Syntaxis: and Prosody, after this Grammar well learned, will not need
to be Englished for him who hath a mind to read it. Account might be now given what addition or alteration
from other Grammars hath been here made, and for what reason. But he who would be short in teaching, must
not be long in prefacing : the book itself follows, and will declare sufficiently to them who can discern.
ACCEDENCE COMMENCED GRAMMAR.
LATIN Grammar is the art of right understanding,
speaking, or writing Latin, observed from them who
have spoken or written it best. a
Grammar hath two parts: right wording, usually
called Etymology; and right joining of words, or Syn-
taxis.
Etymology, or right wording, teacheth what belongs
to every single word or part of speech.
Of Latin Speech are eight General Parts.
Noun Adverb
Pronoun g Conjunction º
Verb \ Declined. Preposition Undeclined.
Participle Interjection
DECLINED are those words which have divers end-
ings; as homo a man, hominis of a man ; amo I love,
amas thou lovest. Undeclined are those words which
458
have but one ending, as bene well, cum when, tum
then.
Nouns, pronouns, and participles are declined with
gender, number, and case; verbs, as hereafter in the
verb.
Of Genders.
GENDERs are three, the masculine, ſeminine, and
neuter. The masculine may be declined with this ar-
ticle hic, as hic vir a man; the feminine with this arti-
cle, haec, as hac mulier a woman; the neuter with this
article, hoc, as hoc saxum a stone.
Of the masculine are generally all nouns belonging
to the male kind, as also the names of rivers, months,
and winds.
Of the ſeminine, all nouns belonging to the female
kind, as also the names of countries, cities, trees, some
few of the two latter excepted: of cities, as Agragas
and Sulmo, masculine; Argos, Tibur, Praeneste, and
such as end in um, neuter; Anxur both. Of trees,
oleaster and spinus, masculine: but oleaster is read
also feminine, Cic. Verr. 4. Acer, siler, suber, thus,
robur, neuter.
And of the neuter are all nouns, not being proper
names, ending in um, and many others.
Some nouns are of two genders, as hic or haec dics
a day; and all such may be spoken both of male and
female, as hic or haec parens a father or mother: some
be of three, as hic haec and hoc felix happy.
Of Numbers.
WoRDs declined have two numbers, the singular and
the plural. The singular speaketh but of one, as lapis
a stone. The plural of more than one, as lapides
stones; yet spnetimes but of one, as Athenae the city
of Athens, literae an epistle, tedes tedium a house.
Note, that some nouns have no singular, and some
no plural, as the nature of their signification requires.
Some are of one gender in the singular; of another,
or two genders, in the plural, as reading will best
teach.
Of Cases.
Nouns, pronouns, and participles are declined with
six endings, which are called cases, both in the singu-
lar and plural number. The nominative, genitive,
dative, accusative, vocative, and ablative.
The nominative is the first case, and properly nameth
the thing, as liber a book.
The genitive is englished with this sign of, as libri
of a book.
The dative with this sign to, or for, as libro to or for
a book. -
The accusative hath no sign.
The vocative calleth or speakcth to, as O liber, O
book, and is commonly like the nominative,
But in the neuter gender the nominative, accusa-
tive, and vocative, are like in both numbers, and in the
plural end always in a.
The ablative is englished with these signs, in, with,
of, for, from, by, and such like, as de libro of or ſtom
ACCEDENCE COMMENCED GRAMMAR.
the book, pro libro for the book; and the ablative
plural is always like the dative.
Note, that some nouns have but one ending through-
out all cases, as frugi, nequam, nihil; and all words of
number from three to a hundred, as quatuor four,
quinque five, &c.
Some have but one, some two, some three cases only, .
in the singular or plural, as use will best teach.
Of a Noun.
A Nou N is the name of a thing, as manus a hand,
domus a house, bonus good, pulcher fair.
Nouns be substantives or adjectives.
A noun substantive is understood by itself, as homo
a man, domus a house.
An adjective, to be well understood, requireth a sub-
stantive to be joined with it, as bonus good, parvus
little, which cannot be well understood unless some-
thing good or little be either named, as bonus vira
good man, parvus puer a little boy; or by use under-
stood, as homestum an honest thing, boni good men.
The Declining of Substantives.
Nouns substantives have five declensions or forms of
ending their cases, chiefly distinguished by the different
ending of their genitive singular.
The first Declension.
THE first is when the genitive and dative singular
end in te, &c. as in the example following.
Plural.
Nom. Voc, musae
Gen. musarum
at. Abl, musis
Singular.
No. Voc. Abl, musa
Gen. Dat. muste
Acc. musam.
This one word familia joined with pater, mater,
filius, or filia, endeth the genitive in as, as pater fa-
milias, but sometimes familiae. Dea, mula, equa,
liberta, make the dative and ablative plural in abus;
filia and nata in is or abus.
The first declension endeth always in a, unless in
some words derived of the Greek: and is always of the
feminine gender, except in names attributed to inen,
according to the general rule, or to stars, as cometa,
planeta.
Nouns, and especially proper names derived of the
Greek, have here three endings, as, es, e, and are de-
clined in some of their cases after the Greek form.
AEneas, acc. AEnean, voc. AEnea ; Anchises, acc. An-
chisen, voc. Anchise, or Anchisa, abl. Anchise. Pene-
lope, Penelopes, Penelopen, voc. abl. Penelope. Some-
times following the Latin, as Marsya, Philocteta, for as
and es; Philoctetam, Eriphylam, for an and em. Cic.
The second Declension.
THE second is when the genitive singular endeth in
i, the dative in o, &c.
Singular.
Nom. Voc, liber
Gen. libri
Dat. Abl, libro
Acc. librum.
Plural.
Nom. Voc. libri
Gen. librorum
Dat. Abl, libris
Acc. libros.
ACCEDENCE COMMENCED GRAMMAR.
459
Note, that when thc nominative endeth in us, the
vocative shall end in e, as dominus Ó domine, except
deus Ó deus. And these following, agnus, lucus, vul-
gus, populus, chorus, fluvius, e or us.
When the nominative endeth in ius, if it be the pro-
per name of a man, the vocative shall end in i, as
Georgius Ó Georgi; hereto add filius ó fili, and genius
ô geni.
All nouns of the second declension are of the mascu-
line or neuter gender; of the masculine, such as end in
er, or, or us, except some few, humus, domus, alvus,
and others derived of the Greek, as methodus, antido-
tus, and the like, which are of the feminine, and some
of them sometimes also masculine, as atomus, phaselus;
to which add ficus the name of a disease, grossus,
pampinus, and rubus.
Those of the neuter, except virus, pelagus, and vul-
gus, (which last is sometimes masculine,) end all in
um, and are declined as followeth :
Pluratl.
Nom. A c. Voc. studia
Singular.
Nom. Ac. Voc. studium
Gen. studii Gen. studiorum
Dat. Abl. studio. Dat. Abl, studiis.
Some nouns in this declension are of the first example
singular, of the second plural, as Pergamus the city
Troy, plur. haec Pergama; and some names of hills, as
Maenalus, Ismarus, haec Ismara; so also Tartarus, and
the lake Avernus; others are of both, as sibilus, jocus,
locus, hi loci, or haec loca. Some are of the second
example singular, of the first plural, as Argos, coelum,
plur. hi coeli; others of both, as rastrum, capistrum,
filum, fraenum ; plur. fracni or fracna. Nundinum, &
epulum, are of the first declension plural, nundinae,
epulte; balneum of both, balneae or balnea.
Greek proper names have here three endings, os, on,
and us long from a Greek diphthong. Haec Delos,
hanc Delon. Hoc Ilion. The rest regular, Hic Pan-
thus, Ó Panthu, Virg.
The third Declension.
THE third is when the genitive singular endeth in is,
the dative in i, the accusative in em, the ablative in e,
and sometimes in i; the nom. acc. voc. plural in es,
the genitive in um, and sometimes in ium, &c.
Plural.
Nom. Acc. Voc. panes
Gen. panum
Dat. A bl. panibus.
Singular.
Nom. Gen. Voc. panis
Dat. pani
Acc, panem
Abl, pane
Singular.
Nom. Voc. parens
Gen. parentis
Dat. parenti
Acc. parentem
Abl, parente.
This third declension, with many endings, hath all
genders, best known by dividing all nouns hereto be-
longing into such as either increase one syllable long
or short in the genitive, or increase not at all.
Such as increase not in the genitive are generally
ſeminine, as nubes nubis, caro carnis.
Except such as end in er, as hic venter ventris, and
Plural.
Nom. A c. Voc. parentes
Gem, parentum
Dat. Abl, parentibus.
these in is following, natalis, aqualis, lienis, orbis,
callis, caulis, collis, follis, mensis, ensis, fustis, funis,
panis, penis, crinis, ignis, cassis, fascis, torris, piscis,
unguis, vermis, vectis, postis, axis, and the compounds
of assis, as centussis.
But canalis, finis, clunis, restis, sentis, amnis, corbis,
linter, torquis, anguis, hic or haec: to these add vepres.
Such as end in e are neuters, as mare, rete, and two
Greek in es, as hippomanes, cacoèthes.
Nouns increasing long.
Nouns increasing one syllable long in the genitive
are generally feminine, as haec pietas pietatis, virtus
virtutis.
Except such as end in ans masculine, as dodrans,
quadrans, sextans; in ens, as oriens, torrens, bidens, a
pickaxe.
In or, most commonly derived of verbs, as pallor,
clamor; in o, not thence derived, as termio, senio, ser-
mo, temo, and the like.
And these of one syllable, sal, Sol, ren, splen, as, bes,
pes, mos, flos, ros, dens, mons, pons, fons, grex.
And words derived from the Greek in en, as lichen ;
in er, as crater; in as, as adamas; in es, as lebes; to
these, hydrops, thorax, phoenix.
But scrobs, rudens, stirps, the body or root of a tree,
and calx a heel, hic or haec.
Neuter, these of one syllable, mel, fel, lac, far, ver,
cor, aes, was vasis, os ossis, os oris, rus, thus, jus, crus,
pus. And of more syllables in al and ar, as capital,
laquear, but halec hoc or hec. d
Nouns increasing short.
No UNs increasing short in the genitive are generally
masculine, as hic sanguis sanguinis, lapis lapidis.
Except, feminine all words of many syllables ending
in do or go, as dulcedo, compago; arbor, hyems, cus-
pis, pecus pecudis : These in ex, forfex, carex, tomex,
supellex : In ix, appendix, histrix, coxendix, filix :
Greek nouns, in as and is, as lampas, iaspis : To these
add chlamys, bacchar, sindon, icon.
But margo, cinis, pulvis, adeps, forceps, pumex, ra-
mex, imbrex, obex, silex, cortex, onyx, and sardonyx,
hic or haec.
Neuters are all ending in a, as problema: in en, ex-
cept hic pecten; in ar, as jubar: in er these, verber,
iter, uber, cadaver, zinziber, laser, cicer, siser, piper,
papaver, sometimes in ur, except hic furfur, in us, as
onus, in ut, as caput; to these marmor, tequor, ador.
Greek proper names here end in as, an, is, and ens,
and may be declined some wholly after the Greek form,
as Pallas, Pallados, Palladi, Pallada; others in some
cases, as Atlas, acc. Atlanta, voc. Atla. Garamas, plur.
Garamantes, acc. Garamantas. Pan, Panos, Pana.
Phyllis, Phyllidos, voc. Phylli, plur. Phyllides, acc.
Phyllidas. Tethys, Tethyos, acc. Tethyn, voc. Tethy.
Neapolis Neapolios, acc. Neapolin. Paris, Paridos or
Parios, acc. Parida, or Parin. Orpheus, Orpheos, Or-
phei, Orphea, Orpheu. But names in eus borrow
sometimes their genitive of the second declension, as
Erechtheus, Erechthei. Cic. Achilles or Achilleus,
460
AccEDENCE COMMENCED GRAMMAR.
Achillei ; and sometimes their accusative im on or um,
as Orpheus Orpheon, Theseus Theseum, Perseus Per-
seum, which sometimes is formed after Greek words of
the first declension ; Latim, Perseus or Perses, Persæ
Persæ Persem Persæ Persa.
The fourth Declensiom.
THE fourth is when the genitive singular endeth in
us, the dative singular in ui, and sometimes in u, plural
in ibus, and sometimes in ubus.
Plural.
Nom. Acc. Voc. sensus
Gen. sensuum
Dat. Abl. sensibus.
Singular.
Nom. Gem. Voc. sensus
Dat. sensui
Acc. sensum
Abl. sensu.
The fourth declension hath two endings, us amd u ;
us generally masculine, except some few, as hæc
manus, ficus, the fruit of a tree, acus, porticus, tribus,
but penus and specus hic or hæc. U of the neuter,
as gelu, gemu, veru ; but in the singular most part
defective.
Proper names in os and o long, pertaining to the
fourth declension Greek, may belomg best to the fourth
in Latin, as Androgeos, gem. Androgeo, acc. Andro-
geon ; hic Athos, hunc Atho, Virg. ; hæc Sappho, gen.
Sapphus, acc. Sappho. Better authors follow the
Latin form, as Dido Didonis Didonem. But Jesus
Jesu Jesum Jesu Jesu.
The fifth Declensiom.
THE fifth is when the genitive and dative singular
end in ei, &c.
ASingular. IPlural.
Nom. Voc. res Nom. Ac. Voc. res
Gem. Dat. rei Gem. rerum
Acc. rem Dat. Abl. rebus.
Abl. re. <*
All nouns of the fifth declension are of the feminime
gender, except dies hic or hæc, and his compound me-
ridies hic only. -
Some nouns are of more declensions than one, as vas
vasis of the third in the singular, of the second in the
plural vasa vasorum. Colus, laurus, and some others,
of the second and fourth. Saturnalia, saturnalium or
saturmaliorum, saturnalibus, and such other names of
feasts. Poëmatum, poëmatis or poëmatibus, of the
second and third plural. Plebs of the third and fifth,
plebis or plebei.
The Declining Qf Adjectives.
A NoUN adjective is declined with three termina-
tions, or with three articles.
Am adjective of three terminations is declined like
the first and second declension of substantives joined
together after this manner.
Singular.
N. bonus bona bonum
G. boni bonæ boni
D. bomo bonæ bono
A. bonum bonam bonum
V. bome bona bonum
A. bono bona bono.
Plural.
No. Vo. boni bonæ bona
G. bonorum bonarum
bonorum
Dat. Abl. bonis
A. bonos bomas bona
In like manner those in er and ur, as sacer sacra sa-
crum, satur satura saturum ; but unus, totus, solus,
alius, alter, ullus, uter, with their compounds neuter,
uterque, and the like, make their genitive singular in
ius, the dative im i, as unus una unum, gen. unius,
dat. uni, in all the rest like bomus, save that alius
maketh in the neuter gender aliud, and in the dative
alim, and sometimes in the genitive.
Ambo and duo be thus declined in the plural only.
Nom. Voc. ambo ambæ ambo
Gem. amborum ambarum amborum
I)at. Abl. ambobus ambabus ambobus
Acc. ambos or ambo, ambas ambo.
Adjectives of three articles have in the nominative
either one ending, as hic, hæc, & hoc felix ; or two,
as hic & hæc tristis & hoc triste ; and are declined
like the third declensiom of substantives, as followeth.
Plural.
Nom. hi & hæ felices, &
lhaec felicia
Gem. felicium
Dat. Abl. felicibus
Acc. hos & has felices, &
hæc felicia
Voc. δ felices, & ó felicia.
Plural.
Nom. hi & hæ tristes &
hæc tristia
Gem. tristium
Dat Abl. tristibus
Acc. hos & has tristes, &
haec tristia
Voc. Ö tristes, & ó tristia.
Singular.
No. hic hæc & hoc felix
Gem. felicis
I)at. felici
Acc. hunc & hanc feli-
cem, & hoc felix
Voc. Ö felix. -
Abl. felice or felici.
' Singular.
Mo. hic & hæc tristis &
hoc triste
Gem. tristis
Dat. Abl. tristi
Acc. hunc & hanc tris-
tem, & hoc triste
TVoc. ó tristis, & ó triste.
There be also amother sort which have in the nomi-
native case three terminatioms and three articles, as hic
acer, hic & hæc acris, hoc acre. In like manner be
declined equester, volucer, amd some few others, being
in all other cases like the examples beforegoing.
Comparisoms of Nouns.
ADJECTIvEs, whose signification may increase or be
diminished, may form comparisom, whereof there be
two degrees above the positive word itself, The com-
parative, and superlative.
The positive signifieth the thing itself without com-
paring, as durus hard.
The comparative exceedeth his positive in significa-
tion, compared with some other, as durior harder ; and
is formed of the first case of his positive that endeth
in i, by putting thereto or and us, as of duri, hic & hæc
durior, & hoc durius: of dulci, dulcior, dulcius.
The superlative exceedeth his positive in the highest
degree, as durissimus hardest; and it is formed of the
first case of his positive that emdeth in is, by put-
ting thereto simus, as of duris durissimus, dulcis dul-
cissimus.
If the positive end in er, the superlative is formed of
the nominative case by putting to it rimus, as pulcher
pulcherrimus. Like to these are vetus veterrimus, ma-
turus maturimus; but dexter dexterrimus, and sinister,
sinisterior, sinisterrimus.
All these nouns emding in lis make the superlative
ACCEDENCE COMMENCED GRAMMAR.
461
by changing is into lirmus, as humilis, similis, facilis,
gracilis, agilis, docilis docillimus.
All other nouns ending in lis do follow the general
rule, as utilis utilissimus.
Of these positives following are formed a different
sort of superlatives ; of superus, supremus and summus ;
inferus, infimus and imus; exterus, extimus and ex-
tremus ; posterus postremus.
Some of these want the positive, and are formed
from adverbs; of intra, interior intimus, ultra ulterior
ultimus, citra citerior citimus, pridem prior primus,
prope propior proximus.
Others from positives without case, as nequam, ne-
quior, nequissimus.
Some also from no positive, as ocior ocissimus.
Some wamt the comparative, as novus novissimus, in-
clytus inclytissimus.
Some the superlative, as senex senior,juvenis junior,
adolescens adolescentior. -
Some ending in us, frame their comparative as ifthey
ended in ens, benevolus, maledicus, magnificus magni-
ficentior magnificentissimus.
These following are without rule, bonus melior opti-
mus, malus pejor pessimus, magnus major maximus,
parvus minor minimus; multus plurimus, multa plu-
rima, multum plus plurimum.
Ifa volume come before us, it is compared with ma-
gis and maximè, as pius, magis pius, maximè pius ;
idoneus, magis and maximè idoneus. Yet some of
these follow the general rule, as assiduus assiduissi-
mus, strenuus strenuior, exiguus exiguissimus, tenuis
tenuior tenuissimus.
Of a Promoum.
A PRONOUN is a part of speech that standeth for a
noun substantive, either present or before spoken of, as
ille he or that, hic this, qui who.
There be ten pronouns, ego, tu, sui, ille, ipse, iste,
hic, is, qui, and quis, besides their compounds, egomet,
tute, hicce, idem, quisnam, aliquis, and such others.
The rest so called, as meus, tuus, suus, noster, vester,
nostras, vestras, cujus, and cujas, are not pronouns, but
adjectives thence derived.
Of pronouns such as shew the thing present are
called demonstratives, as ego, tu, hic ; and such as re-
fer to a thing antecedent, or spoken of before, are
called relatives, as qui who or which.
Quis, and often qui, because they ask a question, are
called interrogatives, with their compounds, ecquis,
numquis.
Declemsioms Qf Promouns are three.
Ego, tu, sui, be of the first declension, and be thus
declined.
Singular. Plural.
Nom. Acc. nos
Gen. nostrum or nostri
Dat. Abl. nobis
Voc. caret.
Nom. ego
Gem. mei
Dat. mihi
Acc. Abl. me
Voc. caret.
Singular Plura?.
Nom. Voc. tu Nom. Acc. Voc. vos
Gen. tui Gem. vestrum or vestri
Dat. tibi Dat. Abl. vobis.
Acc. Abl. te.
Nom. Voc. caret
Gem. sui
Sing. Dat. sibi
Plur. Acc. Abl. se.
From these three be derived meus, tuus, suus, nos-
ter, vester, nostras, vestras, (which are called posses-
sives,) whereof the former five be declined like adjec-
tives of three terminations, except that meus in the vo-
cative case maketh mi, mea, meum ; nostras, vestras,
with three articles, as hic & hæc nostras, & hoc nostras
or nostrate, vestrate. In other cases according to rule.
These three, ille, iste, ipse, be of the second declen-
sion, making their genitive singular in ius, their dative
in i ; and the former two be declined like the adjective
alius, and the third like unus, before spoken of.
Nom. ille illa illud, Gem. illius, Dat. illi.
Nom. iste ista istud, Gen. istius, Dat. isti.
Nom. ipse ipsa ipsum, Gen. ipsius, Dat. ipsi.
These four, hic, is, qui, and quis, be of the third de-
clensiom, making their genitive singular in jus, with j
consonant, amd be declined after this mamner.
Plural.
Nom. hi hæ hæc
Gem. horum harum horum
Dat. Abl. his
Acc. hos has hæc
Voc. caret.
Sing.
Singular.
Nom. hic hæc hoc
Gen. hujus
Dat. huic
Acc. hunc hanc hoc
|Voc. caret
Abl. hoc hac hoc.
Ofiste and hic is compounded istic, istæc, istoc or is-
tuc. Acc. istunc, istamc, istoc or istuc. Abl. istoc,
istac, istoc. Plur. istæc only.
Singular. Plural.
Nom. is ea id Nom. ii eæ ea
Gen. ejus Gem. eorum earum eorum
Dat. ei Dat. Abl. iis or eis
Acc. eum eam id Acc. eos eas ea
Voc. caret Voc. caret.
Abl. eo ea eo.
Singular. Plural.
Nom. qui quæ quod Nom. qui, quæ quæ
Gen. cujus Gen. quorum quârum quo-
Dat. cui TUlIm.
4cc. quem quam quod | Dat. Abl. quibus or queis
Voc. caret 4cc. quos quas quæ
Ab. quo qua quo or qui. | Voc. caret.
In like manner, quivis, quilibet, and quicumque the
compounds.
Sing. Nom. quis, qua or quæ, quid, Gem. &c. like
qui. So quisquam, quisnam, compounds.
Of quis are made these pronoun adjectives, cujus
cuja cujum, whose; and hic & hæc cujus and hoc
cujate, of what nation. -
Quisquis is defective, and thus declined,
% Quisquis
Nom. ò % Quoquo
. . . | Acc. W Quicquid | Ab. K Quaqua
Quicquid \ W Quoquo.
Of a Verö.
A VeRB is a part of spcech, that betokeneth bcing,
462
ACCEDENCE COMMENCED GRAMMAR.
as sum I am; or doing, as laudo I praise; and is de-
clined with mood, tense, number, and person.
Moods.
THERE be four moods, which express the manner of
doing; the indicative, the imperative, the potential or
subjunctive, and the infinitive.
The indicative mood sheweth or declareth, as laudo
I praise.
The imperative biddeth or exhorteth, as lauda
praise thou.
The potential or subjunctive is englished with these
signs, may, can, might, would, could, should : or with-
out them as the indicative, if a conjunction go before or
follow ; as laudem I may or can praise. Cum lauda-
rem when I praised. Cavissem, si praevidissem, I had
bewared if I had foreseen.
The infinitive is englished with this sign, to, as lau-
dare to praise.
Tenses.
THERE be three tenses which express the time of
doing : the present, the preterit or past, and the future.
The present tense speaketh of the time that now is, as
audo I praise.
The preterit speaketh of the time past, and is distin-
guished by three degrees: the preterimperfect, the pre-
terperfect, and the preterpluperfect.
The preterimperfect speaketh of the time not per-
fectly past, as laudabam I praised or did praise.
The preterperfect speaketh of the time perfectly past,
as laudavi I have praised.
The preterpluperfect speaketh of the time more than
perfectly past, as laudaveram I had praised.
The future tense speaketh of the time to come, as
laudabo I shall or will praise.
Persons.
THRoug H all moods, except the infinitive, there be
three persons in both numbers, as, sing. laudo I praise,
laudas thou praisest, laudat he praiseth ; plur. lauda-
mus we praise, laudatis ye praise, laudant they praise.
Except some verbs which are declined or formed in the
third person only, and have before them this sign, it,
as taedet it irketh, oportet it behoveth, and are called
impersonals.
The verb which betokeneth being is properly the
verb sum only, which is therefore called a verb sub-
stantive, and formed after this manner.
Indicative.
Pres. I am.
sing. Sum, es, est, Plur. Sumus, estis, sunt.
Pret. I was.
imp. I Eram, eras, erat, Pl, eramus, eratis. erant.
I have been.
Pret. Fui, fuisti, fuit, Plur. fuimus, fuistis, fuerunt
perfect. or fuere. -
I had been.
Pret. | Fueram, fueras, fuerat, Plur, fueramus, fueratis,
plup. fuerant.
Fu- I shall or will be.
ture. Ero, eris, erit, Plur. erimus, eritis, erunt. .
Imperative.
Be thou.
Sing Sis, es, Sit, | Plur Si- || Sitis, este, Sint,
est0. I est0. mus, estote, Sunto.
Potential.
Pres. I may or can be.
sing. Sim, sis, sit, Pl. simus, sitis, sint.
I might or could be.
Preter- || Essem or forem, es, et, Pl. essemus, essetis,
imperf. essent or forent.
Preter- I might or could have been.
perfect. | Fuerim, ris, rit, Pl. rimus, ritis, rint.
Preterplup. If I had been.
with a con- || Fuissem, es, et. Pl, emus, etis, ent.
junction, Si
Future, If I shall be, or shall have been.
Si. Fuero, ris, rit, Pl. rimus, ritis, rint.
Infinitive.
Pres. | Preter-
arſect, Fuisse, to h -
and Esse, to be || “...” been.” ave or had
}reter- & pret. been.
imperf. pluper.
Future. | Fore, to be hereafter.
In like manner are formed the compounds; absum,
adsum, desum, obsum, praesum, prosum, possum; but
possum something varies after this manner.
Indicat. Pres. Sing. Possum, potes, potest, Plur. pos-
sumus, potestis, possunt. The other are regular, pote-
ram, potui, potueram, potero.
Imperative it wants.
Potent. Pres. Possum, &c. Preterimperſect, Possem.
Infin. Pres. Posse. Preterit, Potuisse.
|Woices.
IN Verbs that betoken Doing are two voices, the
Active and the Passive.
The Active signifieth to do, and always endeth in o,
as doceo I teach.
The Passive signifieth what is done to one by an-
other, and always endeth in or, as doceor I am taught.
From these are to be excepted two sorts of verbs.
The first are called Neuters, and cannot take or in the
passive, as curro I run, sedeo I sit; yet signify some-
times passively, as vapulo I am beaten.
The second are called Deponents, and signify act-
ively, as loguor I speak; or neuters, as glorior I boast:
but are formed like passives.
Conjugations.
VERBs both active and passive have four conjuga-
tions, or forms of declining, known and distinguished
by their infinitive mood active, which always endeth
in re.
In the first conjugation, after a long, as laudare to
praise.
In the second, after e long, as habere to have.
In the third, after e short, as legere to read.
In the fourth, after i long, as audire to hear.
In these four conjugations, verbs are declined or
formed by mood, tense, number, and person, after these
examples.
ACCEDENCE COMMENCED GRAMMAR.
463
Indicative Mood.
Present Tense.
Singular. Plural.
/~ -N /~ — `- -N
I Thou He We Ye They
praise. praise. praise.
". praisest. praiseth.
audo, laudas, laudat,
Habeo, habes, habet, habemus, habetis, habent.
Lego, legis, legit, legimus, legitis, leg.unt.
Audio, audis, audit, audimus, auditis, audiunt.
Preter- Laudabam, I praised, or did praise.
imperfect Fº bas, bat, Pl, bamus, batis, bant.
- º * . y
tense sing. Audiebam,
Preter- hº I have praised.
perſect * } isti, it, Plimus, istis, crunt or ere.
..., Legi
tense sºng. Audivi
I had praised.
Preter- Laudaveram }
pluperfect #.º ras, rat, Pl, ramus, ratis, rant.
*S***9. Audiveram. W
run. Hº {bis, bit, Pl, bimus, bitis, bunt.
tense sung. º, : es, et, Plur. emis, etis, ent.
Imperative Mood.
Praise Let him Let us Praise Let them
thou. raise. }. €. praise.
lauda, Laudet, Pl. Lau- Laudate, Laudent,
laudato. laudato. demus. laudatote. laudanto.
S | Habe, Habeat, Pl, Ha- Habete, Habeant,
'? I habeto. habeto. beamus. habetote. habento.
; ) Lege, Legat, Pl, Le- Legite, Legant,
à |legito. legito, gamus, legitote. legunto.
Audi, Audiat, Pl. Au- Audite, Audiant,
udito. audito. diamus. auditote. audiunto.
Potential Mood.
Laudem, laudes, laudet, Pl, laudemus, lau-
Present Habeam, detis, laudent.
tense sing. Legam, X as, at, Pl, amus, atis, ant.
Audiam.
Preterim- Laudarem, I might or could praise.
Haberem, ge
perfect Legerem res, ret, Pl, remus, retis, rent.
tense svng. Audirem 2
I might or could have praised.
Preter Laudaverin,
ſect Habuerim, ris, rit. Pl. ri ... . . ...;
periec Legerim, , rit, Pt. rimus, ritus, rint.
tense sing. Audiyerim
If I had praised.
Preterplu. Laudavissem,
sing. with Habuissem,
a conjunc- Legissem,
tion, Si Audivissem,
ses, set, Plur, semus, setis,
Selnt.
If I shall praise, or shall have praised.
Fut Laudavero,
Ulture
tense sing Habuero, ris, rit, Plur. rimus, ritis, rint
- sang. Legero, \ 5 * * v3 tº S, Tills, run
Audivero,
Infinitive Mood.
Present Laudare, Praise,
and Pre- Habere, \ Have.
terimper- Legere, § ° Read.
fect tense. Audire, G Hear.
laudamus, laudatis, laudant.
Preterper- hº Praised.
fect & Pre-Habuisse, (. To have or had | Had.
terpluper- Legisse, \ g Read.
fect tense. Audivisse, Heard.
Verbs of the third conjugation irregular in some
Tenses of the Active Voice.
Indicative Mood.
Present Tense.
Singular. Plural.
Volo, vis, vult, Volumus, vultis, volunt.
Nolo, Nolumus molunt.
ing in this Tense.
Malumus, mavultis, malunt.
The rest is want-
Malo, mavis, mavult,
Volui.
Nolui.
Malui.
Volo and Malo want the Imperative Mood.
Preterit.
Imperative.
g § Noli, ... ; Nolite,
Sing. U Nolito. Plur. & Nolitote.
Potential.
* Velim,
. Nolim, º. is, it, Plur. imus, itis, int.
* Malim, y
Preterim- Vellem,
perfect Nollem, (e. et, Plur. emus, etis, ent
tense sing. Mallenn,
Infinitive.
Welle,
Present. & Nolle,
Malle.
Indicat, Pres. Edo, edis or es, edit or est, Plur. editis
or estis.
Imper. Ede or es. Edito or esto. Edat, edito or
esto. Plur. Edite or este. Editote or estote.
Poten. Preterimperfect Tense, Ederem or essem.
Infinit. Edere or esse.
Verbs of the fourth Conjugation irregular, in some
Tenses active.
Eo, and queo with his compound nequeo, make eunt
and queunt in the plural indicative present, and in their
preterimperfectibam and quibam ; their future, ibo and
quibo.
Imperat. I, ito. Eat, ito.
Eant, eunto.
Potent. Eam, Irem, &c.
Plur. Eamus. Ite, itote.
The forming of the Passive Voice.
Indicative.
I am praised.
§ Laudor, aris or are, atur, . I amur, amini, antur.
3|Habeor, eris or ere, etur, s emur, emini, entur.
... |Legor, eris or ere, itur, S. imur, imini, untur.
§ |Audior, iris or ire, itur, imur, imini, iumtur.
P-
I was praised.
Preterim. Hººdºbar, \ *
--- tº Habebar, ( baris or bare, batur
perfect y 3. 3.
Legebar,
...' Plur. bamur, bamini, bantur.
tense sung. Audiebar
464
ACCEDENCE COMMENCED GRAMMAR.
Note that the passive voice hath no preterperſect, nor
the tenses derived from thence in any mood.
I shall or will be praised.
Laudabor, R beris or bere, bitur, Plur.
Future Habebor, $ bimur, bimini, buntur.
tense sing. Legar, Neris or ere, etur, Pl, emur, emini,
Audiar, $ elitur.
Imperative.
S, Be thou !. Let him be praised.
.# Laudare, laudatar. Laudetur, laudator,
... Habere, habetor. Habeatur, habetor,
§ | Legere, legitor. Legatur, legitor.
P+ | Audire, auditor. Audiatur, auditor.
Let us be R •o sº, Let them be
'aised e ye praised. ... :
praised. praised.
s Laudemur. Laudamini, laudaminor. Laudentur,
S- laudantor.
§ Habeamur. Habemini, habeminor. Habeantur,
ſº habentor.
Legamur. Legimini, legiminor. Legantur,
leguntor.
Audiamur. Audimini, audiminor. Audiantur,
audiuntor.
Potential.
I may or can be praised.
Lauder, eris or ere, etur, Plur. emur, emini,
Habear, Cll tul'.
Present e * -
sin Legar, X aris or are, atur, Plur. amur, amini,
'9. Audiar, antul".
I might or should be praised.
Preterim Ilaudarer,
)erfect Haberer, (reris or rere, retur, Plur. remur,
!. Legerer, § remini, rentur.
9. Audirer,
Infinitive.
Present and Laudari Praised.
reterim Haberi To be J Had.
}. Ct Legi Read.
I tº Audiri Heard.
Verbs irregular in some Tenses passive.
EpoR, editur or estur: the rest is regular.
The verb Fio, is partly of the third, and partly of
the fourth conjugation, and hath only the infinitive of
the passive form.
Indicat. Pres. sing. Fio, fis, fit, plur. fimus, fitis,
fiunt. Preterimperfect, Fiebam. Preterperfect it wants.
Future, Fiam, &c.
Imperat. Fi, fito. plur. Fite, fitote, Finant, fiunto.
Poten. Pres. Fiam, &c. Preterimperfect, Fierem.
Infinit. Fieri.
Also this verb Fero, is contracted or shortened in
some tenses, both active and passive, as Fers, fert, for
feris, ſerit, &c.
Indicat. Pres, sing. Fero, fers, fert. plur.—-fertis—
Preterperfect, Tuli.
Imperat. Fer, ferto, &c. pl. Ferte, fertote.
Potent. Preterimperfect, Ferrem, &c.
Infinit. Terre.
Passive.
Indic. Pres, sing. Feror, ferris or ferre, fertur, &c.
Imperat. sing. Ferre, fertor, &c.
Potent. Preterimperfect, Ferrer.
Infinit. Feri.
Of Gerunds and Supines.
THERE be also belonging to the infinitive mood of
all verbs certain voices called gerunds and supines,
both of the active and passive signification.
The first gerund in di, as laudandi of praising or of
being praised. The second in do, as laudando in prais-
ing or in being praised. The third in dum, as laudan-
dum to praise or to be praised.
Note that in the two latter conjugations the gerunds
end sometimes in undi, do, dum, as dicendi or dicundi:
but from eo always eundi, except in the compound am-
biendi.
Supines are two. The first signifieth actively, as
laudatum to praise; the latter passively, as laudatu to
be praised. Note that most neuters of the second con-
jugation, and volo, nolo, malo, with many other verbs,
have no supine.
Verbs of the four conjugations irregular in the preter-
perfect tense or supines.
VERBs of the first conjugation form their preterper-
fect tense in avi, supine in atum, as laudo laudavi lau-
datum.
Except
Poto potavi potatum or potum; neco necavi necatum
Or nectum.
Domo, tono, sono, crepo, veto, cubo, form ui, itum,
as cubui cubitum ; but secui sectum, fricui frictum,
mico micui: yet some of these are found regular in the
preterperfect tense or supine, especially compounded,
as increpavit, discrepavit, dimicavit, somatum, dimica-
tum, intonatum, infricatum, and the like.
Plico and his compounds form ui or avi, as explicui
or explicavi, explicitum or explicatum ; except suppli-
co, and such as are compounded with a noun, as dupli-
co, multiplico in avi only.
But lavo lavi lautum lotum or lavatum, juvo juvi,
adjuvo adjuvi adjutum.
Do dedi datum. Sto steti statum, in the compounds,
stitum, and sometimes stato, as praestum priestiti
praestitum and praestatum.
VERBs of the second conjugation form their preter-
perfect tense in ui, their supine in itum, as habeo habui
habitum. -
Some are regular in their preterperfect tense, but not
in their supines, as doceo docui doctum, misceo miscui
mistum, teneo tenui tentum, torreo torrui tostum, cen-
seo censui censum, pateo patui passum, careo carui
cassum and caritum.
Others are irregular both in preterperfect tense and
supines, as jubeo jussi jussum, sorbeo sorbui and sorpsi
sorptum, mulceo mulsi mulsum, luceo luxi.
Deo in di, as sedeo sedi sessum, video widi visum, pran-
ACCEDENCE COMMENCED GRAMMAR.
465
deo prandi pransum. And some in si, as suadeo suasi
suasum, rideo risi risum, ardeo arsi arsum. Four double
their first letters, as pendeo pependi pensum, mordeo
momordi morsum, spondeo spopondi sponsum, tondeo
totondi tonsum; but not in their compounds, as depen-
di depensum.
Geo in si, and some in xi, as urgeo ursi, mulgeo
mulsi and mulximulctum, augeo auxi auctum, indul-
geo indulsi indultum, frigeo frixi, lugeo luxi.
Ieo, leo, and meo nevi, vieo viewi vietum : but cieo
cievi citum, deleo delevi deletum, fleo flewi fletum, com-
pleo complevi completum; as also the compounds of
oleo, except redoleo and suboléo; but adolevi adultum,
neo nevi netum, but mameo mansi, torqueo torsi tortum,
haereo haesi.
Weo in vi, as ferved ſervi, but deferved deferbui, con-
miveo connivi and connixi, movi motum, vovi votum,
cavi cautum, favi ſautum.
THE third conjugation formeth the preterperfect
tense by changing o of the present tense into i: the
supine without certain rule, as lego legi lectum, bibo
bibi bibitum, lambo lambi, scabo scabi, ico ici ictum,
mando mandi mansum, pando pandi passum, edo edi
esum or estum, in like manner comedo, the other com-
pounds esum only ; rudo rudi, sallo salli salsum, psallo
psalli, emo emi emptum, viso visi visum, verto verti
versum, solvo solvi solutum, volvo volvi volutum, exuo
exui exutum, but ruo rui ruitum, in compound rutum,
as derui derutum; ingruo, metuo metui.
Others are irregular both in preterperfect tense and
supine. -
In bo, scribo scripsi scriptum, nubo nupsi nuptum,
cumbo cubui cubitum.
In co, vinco vici victum, dico dixi dictum ; in like
manner duco ; parco peperci and parsi parsum and
parcitum.
In do, these three lose n, findo fidi fissum, scindo
scidi scissum, fundo fudi fusum. These following,
vado, rado, laedo, ludo, divido, trudo, claudo, plaudo,
rodo, si and sum, as rosi rosum, but cedo cessi cessum.
The rest double their first letters in the preterperfect
tense, but not compounded, as tundo tutudi tunsum,
contundo contudi contusum, and so in other com-
pounds, Pendo pependi pensum, dependo dependi,
tendo tetendi tensum and tentum, contendo contendi,
pedopepedi peditum, cado cecidi casum, occido, recido
recidi recasum. The other compounds have no supine.
Caedo cecidi capsum, occido occidi occisum. To these
add all the compounds of do in this conjugation, addo,
credo, edo, dedo, reddo, perdo, abdo, obdo, condo, indo,
trado, prodo, vendo vendidi venditum, except the double
compound, obscondo obscondi. -
In go, ago egi actum, dego degi, satago sategi, frango
fregi fractum, pango to join pegi pactum, pango to
sing panxi, ango anxi, jungo junxijunctum; but these
five, fingo mingo pingo stringo ringo lose n in their
supines, as finxi fictum; mingo minxi, figo fixi fixum,
rego rexi rectum; diligo, negligo, intelligo, lexi lec-
tum, spargo sparsi sparsum. These double their first
letter, tango tetigi tactum, but not in his compounds,
as contingo contigi, pango to bargain pepigi pactum. .
pungo and repungo pupugi and punxi punctum, the
other compounds punxi only.
Ho in xi, traho traxi tractum, veho vexi vectum.
In lo, wello velli and vulsi vulsum, colo colui cul-
tum ; excello, praecello, cellui celsum ; alo alui alitum
and altum. The rest not compounded, double their
first letter, fallo fefelli falsum, refello refelli, pello
pepuli pulsum, compello compuli, cello ceculi, percello
perculi and perculsi perculsum.
In mo, vomo vomui vomitum, tremo tremui, premo
pressi pressum, como, premo, demo, sumo, after the
same manner as sumpsi sumptum.
In no, sino sivi situm, sterno stravi stratum, sperno
sprevi spretum, lino levi lini and livi litum, cerno crevi
cretum, temno tempsi, COn temn O contempsi contemp-
tum, gigno genui genitum, pono posui positum, cano
cecini cantum, concino concinui concentum.
In po, rumpo rupi ruptum, scalpo scalpsi scalptum ;
the rest in ui, strepo strepui strepitum.
In quo, linquo liqui, relinquo reliqui relictum, coquo
coxi coctum.
In ro, verro verri and versi versum, sero to sow Sevi
satum, in compound, situm, as inserto insitum ; sero of
another signification most used in his compounds,
assero, consero, desero, exero, serui sertum ; uro ussi
ustum, gero gessi gestum, quaero quaesivi quaesitum,
tero trivi tritum, curro, excurro, praecurro, cucurri cur-
sum, the other compounds double not, as concurro con-
curri.
In so, accerso, arcesso, incesso, lacesso, ivi itum, ca-
pesso both i and ivi, pinso pinsui pistum and pinsitum.
In sco, pasco pavi pastum; compesco, dispesco, ui;
posco poposci, disco didici, quinisco quexi, nosco movi
notum, but agnosco agnitum, cognosco cognitum.
In to, sisto stiti statum, flecto flexi flexum, pecto
pexui and pexi pexum and pectitum, necto mexui and
nexi nexum, plecto plexi plexum, sterto stertui, meto
messui messum, mitto misi missum, peto petivi petitum.
In vo, vivo vixi victum.
In xo, texo texui textum, nexo nexui nexum.
In cio, facio ſeci factum, jacio jeci jactum, lacio lexi
lectum, specio spexi spectum, with their compounds,
but elicio elicui elicitum.
In dio, fodio fodi fossum.
In gio, fugio fugi fugitum.
In pio, capio cepi captum, rapio rapui raptum, cupio
cupivi cupitum, sapio sapui and sapivi sapitum.
In rio, pario peperi partum.
In tio, quatio quassi quassum, concutio concussi con-
CUISSUl Ill.,
In uo, pluo plui and pluvi plutum, struo struxi struc-
tum, fluo fluxi fluxum.
THE fourth conjugation formeth the preterperfect
tense in ivi, the supine in itum.
Except, Venio veni ventum, comperio, reperio reperi
repertum, cambio campsi campsum, sepio sepsi septum,
sarcio Sarsi sartum, fulceo fulci ſultum, sentio sensi
sensum, haurio hausi haustum, sancio sanxi sanctum
and sancitum, vincio vinxi vinctum, salio salui saltum,
466
in compound Sultum, as desilio desilui desultum, amicio
amicui amictum, aperio, operio perui pertum, veneo
venivi venum, singultivi singultum, sepelivi sepul-
tum.
Of Verbs Compounded.
THESE verbs compounded change a into e through-
out, damno, lacto, sacro, fallo, arceo, tracto, partio, far-
cio, carpo, patro, scando, spargo, as conspergo conspersi
conspersum. t
These following change their first vowel into i, and
some of them their supines into e, habeo, lateo, salio,
statuo, cado, laedo, cano, quaero, caedo, tango, egeo,
teneo, taceo, sapio, rapio, place0, displiceo displicui
displicitum ; except complace0, perplace0, posthabeo.
Scalpo, calco, salto, change a into u, as exculpo ;
claudo, quatio, lavo, lose a, as excludo, excutio, eluo.
These following change their first vowel into i, but
not in the preterperſect tense, and sometimes a into e
in the supine, emo, sedeo, rego, frango, capio, jacio,
lacio, specio, premo, as comprimo compressi compres-
sum, conjicio conjeci conjectum, pango in two only,
compingo, impingo : ago, in all but perago, satago,
circumago, dego, and cogo coegi facio with a prepo-
sition only, not in other compounds, as inficio, olfacio:
lego in these only, diligo, eligo, intelligo, negligo,
seligo, in the rest not, as praelego, add to these super-
sedeo.
Of Verbs Defective.
VERBs called inceptives, ending in sco, borrow their
preterperfect tense from the verb whereof they are de-
rived, as tepesco tepui from tepeo, ingemisco ingemui
from ingemo ; as also these verbs cermo to see, vidi
from video, sido sedi from sedeo, fero tuli from tulo out
of use, in the supine latum, tollo sustuli sublatum from
suffero.
These want the preterperfect tense.
Verbs ending in asco, as puerasco; in isco, as satis-
co; in urio, except parturio, esurio; these also, verpo,
ambigo, ſerio, ſuro, polleo, mideo, have no preſerperfect
tellSé.
Contrary, these four, odi, coepi, movi, memini, are
found in the preterperſect tense only, and the tenses
derived, as odi, oderam, oderim, odisse, except memini,
which hath memento mementote in the imperative.
Others are defective both in tense and person, as aio,
ais, ait, Plur. aiunt. The preterimperfect aiebam is
intire, Imperative, ai. -
aiamus, aiant.
Ausim, for ausus sim, ausis, ausit, Plur. ausint,
Salveo, salvebis, salve salveto, salvete salvetote, sal-
Vere.
Ave aveto, avete avetote.
l'axo, faxis, faxit, faxint.
Quaeso, Plur. quaesumus.
Infit, infiunt.
Inquio or inquam, inquis, inquit, Plur. inquiunt.
Inquiebat. Cie. Topic. inquisti, inquit. Future, inquies,
inquiet. Imperat. inque inquito. Potent, inquiat,
Dor the first person passive of do, and for beſore far-
Potential, aias, aiat, Plur.’
ACCEDENCE COMMENCED GRAMMAR.
ris or farre in the indicative, are not read, nor der or
for in the potential.
Of a Participle.
A Participle is a part of speech, partaking with the
verb from whence it is derived in voice, tense, and sig-
nification, and with a noun adjective in manner of
declining.
Participles are either of the active or passive voice.
Of the active two. One of the present tense ending
in ans, or ens, as laudans praising, habens, legens, au-
diems, and is declined like foelix, as hic haec & hoc
habens, Gen. habentis, Dat. habenti, &c. Docens, do-
centis, &c. But from eo, euns, and in the compounds
icns euntis, except ambiens ambientis. Note that
some verbs otherwise defective have this participle, as
aiens, inquiens.
The other of the future tense is most commonly
formed of the first supine, by changing m into rus, as
of laudatum laudaturus to praise or about to praise,
habiturus, lecturus, auditurus; but some are not regu-
larly formed, as of sectum secaturus, of jutum juva-
turus, somitum soniturus, partum pariturus, argutum
arguiturus, and such like ; of sum, futurus: this as
also the other two participles following are declined
like bonus.
This participle, with the verb sum, affordeth a second
future in the active voice, as laudaturus sum, es, est,
&c. as also the future of the infinitive, as laudaturum
esse to praise hereafter, futurum esse, &c.
Participles of the passive voice are also two, one of
the preterperfect tense, another of the future.
A participle of the preterperfect tense is formed of
the latter supine, by putting thereto s, as of laudatu
laudatus praised, of habitu habitus, lectu lectus, auditu
auditus.
This participle, joincd with the verb sum, supplieth
the want of a preterperfect and preterpluperfect tense
in the indicative mood passive, and both them and the
future of the potential; as also the preterperfect and
preterpluperfect of the infinitive, and with ire or fore
the future; as laudatus sum or ſui I have been praised,
Plur. laudati sumus or ſuimus we have been praised,
laudatus eram or fueram, &c. Potential, laudatus sim
or fuerim, laudatus essem or fuissem, laudatus ero or
fuero. Infinit, laudatum esse or fuisse to have or had
been praised; laudatum ire or fore to be praised hereafter.
Nor only passives, but some actives also or neuters,
besides their own preterperſect tense borrow another
from this participle; Coeno coenavi and coenatus sum,
Juravi and juratus, Potawi and potus sum, Titubavi
and titubatus, Careo carui cassus sum, Prandeo prandi
and pransus, Pateopatui and passus sum, Placco placui
placitus, Suesco suevi suetus sum, Libct libuit and li-
bitum est, Licet licuit licitum, Pudet puduit puditum,
Piget piguit pigitum, Taedet taeduit pertaesum est, and
this deponent Mereor merui and meritus sum.
These neuters following, like passives, have no other
preterperfect tense, but by this participle, Gaudeo ga-
visus sum, Fido fisus, Audeo ausus, Fio factus, Soleo
solitus sum.
ACCEDENCE COMMENCED GRAMMAR.
467
These deponents also form this participle from supines
irregular; Labor lapsus, patior passus, perpetior per-
pessus, fateor fassus, confiteor confessus, diffiteor dif-
ſessus, gradior gressus, ingredior ingressus, ſatiscor
fessus, metior mensus, utor usus, ordior to spin orditus,
to begin orsus, nitor nisus and mixus, ulciscor ultus,
irascor iratus, reor ratus, obliviscor oblitus, fruor fruc-
tus or fruitus, misereor misertus, tuor and tueor tuitus,
loquor locutus, sequor secutus, experior expertus, pa-
cicor pactus, nanciscor nactus, apiscor aptus, adipis-
cor adeptus, queror questus, proficiscor profectus, ex-
pergiscor experrectus, comminiscor commentus, mascor
natus, morior mortuus, orior ortus sum.
A participle of the future passive is formed of the
gerund in dum, by changing m into s, as of laudandum
laudandus to be praised, of habendum habendus, &c.
And likewise of this participle with the verb Sum, may
be formed the same tenses in the passive, which were
formed with the participle of the preterperfect tenses,
as laudandus sum or fui, &c.
Infinit. Landandum esse or fore.
Of verbs deponent come participles both of the ac-
tive and passive form, as loquor loquens locutus loco-
turus loquendus; whereof the participle of the preter
tense signifieth sometimes both actively and passively,
as dignatus, testatus, meditatus, and the like.
Of an Adverb.
AN Adverb is a part of speech joined with some
other to explain its signification, as valdé probus very
honest, bené est it is well, valdé doctus very learned,
bené mane early in the morning.
Of adverbs, some be of Time, as hodie to-day, cras
to-morrow, &c.
Some be of Place, as ubi where, ibi there, &c. And
of many other sorts needless to be here set down.
Certain adverbs also are compared, as doctè learnedly,
doctius doctissimè, fortiter fortius fortissimé, saepe saepi-
ūs saepissimè, and the like.
Of a Conjunction.
A Conjunction is a part of speech that joineth words
and sentences together.
Of Conjunctions some be copulatives, as et and, quo-
que also, nec neither.
Some he disjunctive, as autor.
Some be causal, as nam for, quia because, and many
such like.
Adverbs when they govern mood and tense, and
join sentences together, as cum, ubi, postguam, and the
like, are rather to be called conjunctions. -
Of a Preposition.
A Preposition is a part of speech most commonly
either set before nouns in apposition, as ad patrem, or
joined with any other words in composition, as indoctus.
These six, di, dis, re, se, am, con, are not read but in
composition.
As adverbs having cases after them may be called
prepositions, so prepositions having none, may be
counted adverbs.
Of an Interjection.
AN Interjection is a part of speech, expressing some
passion of the mind.
Some be of sorrow, as heu, hei.
Some be of marvelling, as papae.
Some of disdaining, as vah.
Some of praising, as euge.
Some of exclaiming, as Ó, proh, and such like.
Figures of Speech.
WoRDs are sometimes increased or diminished by a
letter or syllable in the beginning, middle, or ending,
which are called Figures of speech.
Increased.
In the beginning, as Gnatus for natus, tetuli for tuli.
Prothesis.
In the middle, as Rettulit for retulit, cinctutus for
cinctus. Epenthesis.
In the end, as Dicier for dici. Paragoge.
Diminished.
In the beginning, as Ruit for eruit. Apherisis.
In the middle, as Audiit for audiwit, dixti for dixisti,
lamna for lamina. Syncope.
In the end, as Consili for consilii; scin for scisne.
Apocope.
2 H
THE
SECOND PART OF GRAMMAR,
COMMON (,Y CAI,I,IED
SYNTAXIS, OR CONSTRUCTION.
HITHERTo the eight parts of speech declined amd un-
declined have been spoken of single, amd each one by
itself: now followeth Syntaxis or Construction, which
is the right joining of these parts together in a sentence.
Construction consisteth either in the agreement of
words together in mumber, gender, case, and person,
which is called concord ; or the goverming of one the
other in such case or mood as is to follow.
Of the Comcords.
THE RE be Three concords or agreements.
The first is of the adjective with l.is substantive.
The second is of the verb with his nominative case.
The third is of the relative with his antecedent.
An adjective (under which is comprehended both
pronoum and participle) with his substantive or substan-
tives, a verb with his nominative case or cases, and a
relative with his antecedent or antecedents, agree all
in number, and the two latter in person also: as Amicus
Viri docti. Præceptor prælegit, vos vero neg-
ligitis. Xenophon et Plato fuere æquales. Vir sapit
qui pauca loquitur. Pater et præceptor veniunt. Yea
though the conjunction be disjunctive, as, Quos neque
desidia neque luxuria vitiaverant. Celsus. Pater et
præceptor, quos quæritis. But if a verb singular fol-
CertuS,
low many mominatives, it must be applied to each of
them apart, as, Nisi foro et curiæ officium ac verecun-
dia sua constiterit. Val. Max.
An adjective with his substantive, and a relative with
his antecedent agree in gender and case ; but the rela-
tive not in case always, being ofttimes govermed by
other constructions: as, Amicus certus in re incerta
cernitur. Liber quem dedisti mihi.
And if it be a participle serving the infimitive mood
future, it ofttimes agrees with the substantive meither
in gender nor in number, as, Hanc sibi rem præsidio
sperat futurum. Cic. Audierat mon datum iri filio uxo-
rem. Terent. Omnia potius actum iri puto quam de
provinciis. Cic.
But when a verb cometh between two nominative
cases not of the same number, or a relative betweem
two substantives not of the same gender, the verb im
number, and the relative in gender may agree with
either of them ; as, Amantium iræ amoris reintegratio
est. Quid enim nisi vota supersunt. Tuentur illum
globum qui terra dicitur. Animal plenum rationis,
quem vocamus hominem. Lutetia est quam nos Pari-
sios dicimus.
And if the mominative cases be of several persons, or
the substantives and antecedents of several genders, the
verb shall agree with the secomd person before the third,
and with the first before either ; and so shall the ad-
jective or relative in their gender ; as, Ego et tu sumus
in tuto. Tu et pater periclitamini. Pater et mater
mortui sunt. Frater et soror quos vidisti.
But in things that have mot life, an adjective or re-
lative of the neuter gender may agree with substantives
or antecedents masculine or feminime, or both together;
as, Arcus et calami sunt bona. Arcus et calami quæ
Pulchritudinem, constantiam, ordinem in
Ira
fregisti.
consiliis factisque conservanda putat. Cic. Off. 1.
et ægritudo permista sunt. Sal.
Note that the infinitive mood, or any part of a sem-
tence, may be instead of a nominative case to the verb,
or of a substantive to the adjective, or of am antece-
dent to the relative, amd them the adjective or relative
shall be of the neuter gender : and if there be more
parts of a sentence than one, the verb shall be in the
plural number ; Diluculo surgere saluberrimum est.
Virtutem sequi, vita est honestissima. Audito procon-
sulem in Ciliciam tendere. In tempore veni, quod
omnium rerum est primum. Tu multum dormis et sæpe
potas, quæ duo sunt corpori imimica.
Sometimes also an adverb is put for the nominative
case to a verb, amd for a substantive to an adjective ;
as, Partim signorum sunt combusta. Prope senties et
vicies erogatum est. Cic. Verr. 4.
Sometimes also agreement, whether it be in gender
or number, is grounded on the sense, mot om the words ;
as, Illum senium, for illum senem. Iste scelus, for iste
scelestus. Ter. Transtulit in Eunuchum suam, mean-
ing comoediam. Ter. Pars magna obligati, meaning
homines. Liv. Impliciti laqueis nudus uterque, for
ambo. Ov. Alter in alterius jactantes lumina vultus,
I. ACCEDENCE COMMENCEJD GRAMMAR.
469
Ovid : that is, Alter et alter. Insperanti ipsa refers
te nobis, for mihi. Catul. Disce omnes, Virg. Æn. 2,
for tu quisquis es. Dua importuma prodigia, quos
egestas tribuno plebis constrictos addixerat. Cic. pro
Sest. Pars mersi tenuêre ratem. R'emus cum fratre
Quirimo jura dabant, Virg : that is, Rhemus et frater
Quirimus. Divellimur inde Iphitus et Pelias mecum.
Virg.
Comstructiom of Substantives.
HITHE RTo of concord or agreement ; the other part
followeth, which is Govermimg, whereby one part of
speech is governed by another, that is to say, is put in
such case or mood as the word that governeth or goeth
before in constructiom requireth.
When two substantives come together betokening
divers things, whereof the formey may be an adjective
in the neuter gender takem for a substantive, the latter
(which also may be a pronoun) shall be in the genitive
case ; as, Facundia Ciceronis. Amator studiorum.
Ferimur per opaca locorum. Corruptus vanis rerum,
Hor. Desiderium tui. Pater ejus.
Sometimes, the former substantive, as this word offi-
cium or mos, is umderstood ; as Oratoris est, it is the
part of an orator. Extremæ est dementiæ, it is the
manner of extreme madness. Ignavi est, it is the qua-
lity of a slothful mam. Ubi ad Dianæ veneris; tem-
plum is umderstood. Justitiæne prius mirer belline
laborum, Virg : understand causâ. Neque ille sepositi
ciceris, neque longæ invidit avenæ. Hor. Supply
partem.
But ifboth the substantives be spoken of one thing,
which is called appositiom, they shall be both of the
same case ; as, Pater meus vir amat me puerum.
Words that signify quality, following the substantive
whereof they are spoken, may be put in the gemitive or
ablative ease ; as, Puer bonæ indolis, or bonâ indole.
Some have a genitive only ; as, Ingentis rex mominis.
Liv. Decem annorum puer. Hujusmodi pax. Hujus
generis animal. But genus is sometimes in the accu-
sative: as, Si hoc genus rebus mon proficitur. Varr. de
Re rust. And the cause or manmer of a thing in the
ablative only : as, Sum tibi naturâ parens, præceptor
consiliis.
Opus amd Usus, when they signify meed, require am
ablative; as, Opus est mihi tuo judicio. Viginti minis
usus est filio. But opus is sometimes takem for am ad-
jective undeclined, and signifieth meedful : as, Dux
nobis et auctor opus est. Alia quæ opus sunt para.
Constructiom of Adjectives, goverming a Genitioe.
ADJECTivEs that signify desire, knowledge, ignor-
ance, remembrance, forgetfulness, and such like ; as
also certain otbers derived from verbs, amd ending im
ax, require a genitive ; as Cupidus auri. Peritus bçlli.
Ignarus omnium. Memor præteriti. Reus furti. T.
max propositi. Tempus edax rerum.
Adjectives called nouns partitive, because they sig-
mify part of some whole quantity or mumber, govern
the word that signifieth the thimg parted or divided, in
the genitive; as Aliquis nostrum, Primus omnium.
Aurium mollior est sinistra. Oratorum eloquentissimus.
A nd oft in the meuter gender ; as Multum lucri. Id
negotii. Hoc noctis. Sometimes, though seldom, a
word signifying the whole, is read in the same case
with the partitive, as Habet duos gladios quibus altero
te occisurum minatur, altero villicum, Plaut. for Quo-
rum altero. Magnum opus habeo in manibus ; quod
jampridem ad hunc ipsum (me autem dicebat) quædam
institui. Cic. Acad. I. Quod quædam for cujus quaedam.
A Dative.
ADJecTivEs that betoken profit or disprofit, likemess
or umlikeness, fitness, pleasure, submitting or belong-
ing to any thing, require a dative ; as. Labor est utilis
corpori. Equalis Hectori. Idoneus bello. Jucundus
omnibus. Parenti supplex. Mihi proprium.
But such as betoken profit or disprofit have some-
times an accusative with a prepositiom ; as Homo ad
nullam partem utilis. Cic. Inter se æquales.
And some adjectives signifying likeness, unlikeness,
or relation, may have a genitive. Par hujus. Ejus
culpæ affimes. Domini similis es. Commune animan-
tium est conjunctionis appetitus. Alienum dignitatis
ejus. Cic. Fin. 1. Fuit hoc quomdam proprium populi
Romani, longè a domo bellare. But propior and
proximus admit sometimes an accusative ; as proximus
Pompeium sedebam. Cic. »
An Accusative.
Nou Ns of measure are put after adjectives of like sig-
mification im tbe accusative, and sonetimes in the abla-
tive ; as Turris alta centum pedes. Arbor lata tres di-
gitos. Liber crassus tres pollices, or tribus pollicibus.
Sometimes in the genitive ; as Areas latas pedum de-
mùm facito.
All words expressimg part or parts of a thing, may
be put in the accusative, or sometimes in the ablative;
as Saucius frontem or fronte. Excepto quòd non simul
esses cætera lætus, Hor. Nuda pedem. Ov. Os hu-
merosque deo similis. Virg. Sometimes in the genitive;
as Dubius mentis.
A m Ablative.
ADJECTIVES of the comparative degree cnglished
with this sign them or by, as dignus, indignus, praedi-
tus, contentus, and thcse words of price, carns, vilis,
require an ablative; as Frigidior glacie. Multo doc-
tior. Uno pede altior. Dignus honore. Virtute præ-
dittis. Sorte suâ contentus. Asse charum.
But of comparatives, plus, amplius, and minus, may
govern a genitive; also a nominative, or am accusative;
as Plus quinquaginta hominum.
millium.
Amplius duorum
Ne plus tertia pars eximatur mellis. Varro.
Paulo plus quingentos passus. Ut ex suâ cujusque
parte ne minus dimidium ad fratrem perveniret, Cic.
Verr. 4. And dignus, indignus, have Sometimes a ge-
mitive after them ; as Militia est operis altera digna
tui. Indignus avorum. Virg.
Adjectives betokeming plenty or want, will have am
ablative, and sometimes a gemitive ; as Vacuus irâ, or
iræ. Nulla epistola inanis re aliquâ.' Ditissimus agri.
470
ACCEDIENCE COMMENCED GRAMMAR.
Stultorum plena sunt omnia. Integer vitae, scelerisque
purus. Expers omnium. Vobis immunibus hujus esse
moli dabitur.
Words also betokemimg the cause, or form, or man-
mer of a thing, are put after adjectives in the ablative
case ; as Pallidus irâ. Trepidus morte futurâ. No-
mine Grammaticus, re Barbarus.
Of' Promouns.
PRONO UNs differ mot in construction from moums, ex-
cept that possessives, Meus, tuus, suus, noster, vester,
by a cerfaim mammer of speech, are somctimes joined to
a substantive, which govcrns their primitive understood
with a noun or participle in a gemitive case ; as Dico
meâ unius operâ rempublicam esse liberatam, Cic. for
Mei unius opcrà. In like mammer Nostra duorum, trium,
paucorum, omnium virtute, for nostrum, duorum, &c.
Meum solius peccatum, Cic. Ex tuo ipsius animo, for
Tui ipsius. Ex suâ cujusque parte, Id. Verr. 2. Ne
tua quidem recentia proximi prætoris vestigia persequi
poterat. Cic. Verr. 4. Si meas præsentis preces mom
putas profuisse, Id. pro. Planc. Nostros vidisti flentis
ocellos. Ovid.
Also a relative, as qui or is, somctimes answers to
am antecedent moum or promoum primitive understood
im the possessive ; as, Omnes laudare fortunas meas,
qui filium haberem tali ingenio præditum. Terent.
Comstructiom of Verbs.
VERBs for the most part govern either one case after
them, or more tham one in a different manner of com-
structiom.
C2f the Verb substantive Sum, and such li};e, with a
mominative and other oblique cases.
VE RBs that signify being, as Sum, existo, fio ; and
certaim passives, as Dicor, vocor, salutor, appellor, ha-
beor, existimor, videor ; also verbs of motiom or rest, as
inccdo, discedo, sedeo, with such like, will have a
nominative case after them, as they have before them,
because both cases belong to the same persom or thing,
and the latteris rather in am apposition with the former,
than govermed by the verb ; as Temperantia est virtus.
Horatius salutatur poeta. Ast ego quæ divum incedo
regina.
And if est be an impersonal, it may sometimcs go-
vern a genitive, as Usus poetæ, ut moris est, licentia.
IPhaedrus l. 4. Negavit moris esse Græcorum ut, &c.
Cic. Verr. 2.
But if the following moum be of anothcr person, or
mot directly spol: en of the former, both after Sum amd
all his compounds, except possum, it shall be put in
the dative ; as Est mihi domi pater. Multa petentibus
desunt multa.
And if a thing be spoken of, relating to the persom,
it may be also in the dative ; as Sum tibi præsidio.
Haec res est mihi voluptati. Quorum alteri Capitomi
cognomem fuit. Cic. Pastori momen Faustulo fuisse
ferunt. Liv.
Qf Verbs transitive with ant accusat 've, amd the e.vcep-
tioms thereto belomging.
VERbs active or deponent, called transitive, because
the'r action passeth forth on some persom or thimg, will
have an accusative after them of the person or thing
to whom the actiom is done ; as Amo te. Vitium fuge.
Deum venerare. Usus promptos facit. Juvat me.
Oportet te.
Also verbs called neuters, may have am accusative of
their own significatiom ; as Duram servit servitutem.
Longam ire viam. Endymionis somnum dormis.
Pastillos Rusillus olet. Nec vox hominem sonat. Cum
glaucum saltasset. Paterc. Agit lætum convivam.
Horat. Hoc me latet.
But these verbs, though transitive, Misereor and
miseresco, pass into a genitive ; as Miserere mei.
Sometimes into a dative : Huic misereor. Sem. Dilige
bonos, miseresce malis. Boetius.
Reminiscor, obliviscor, recordor, and memini, some-
times also require a genitive ; as Datæ fidei reminisci-
tur. Memimi tui. Obliviscor carminis. Sometimes
retain the accusative ; as Recordor pueritiam. Omnia
quæ curant senes meminerunt. Plaut.
These impersonals also, interest and refert, signify-
ing to concerm, require a gemitive, except in these ab-
latives feminime, Mea, tua, sua, nostra, vestra, cuja.
And the measure of concermmentis often added im these
genitives, magni, parvi, tanti, quanti, with their com-
pounds ; as Interest omnium rectè agere. Tuâ refert
teipsum mosse. Vestrâ parvi interest.
But verbs of profitimg or disprofiting, believing,
plcasing, obeying, opposing, or being angry with, pass
into a dative : as Non potes mihi commodare nec im-
commodare. Placeo omnibus. Crede mihi. Nimium
me crede colori. Pareo parentibus. Tibi 1'epugno.
Adolescenti mihil est quod succenseat. But of the first
and third sort, Juvo, adjuvo, lædo, offendo, retain am
accusative.
Lastly these transitives, fungor, fruor, utor, potior,
and verbs betokeming want, pass direct into an ablative.
Fungitur officio. Alienâ frui insanià. Utere sorte tuâ.
But fungor, fruor, utor, had anciently an accusative.
Verbs of want, and potior, may have also a genitive.
Pecuniæ indiget. Quasi tu hujus indigeas patris.
Potior urbe, or urbis.
Sometimes a phrase of the same signification with a
single verb, may have the case of the verb after it ; as
Id operam do, that is to say, id ago, Idme estis au-
thores mihi ? for id suadetis. Quid me vobis tactio
est? for tangitis. Plaut. Quid tibi hanc curatio est
rem ? Id.
The Accusative with a Gemitive.
IIiTiiERto of transitives goveriming their accusative,
or other case, in single and direct construction : now
of such as may have after them more cases than one
in construction direct and oblique, that is to say, with
an accusative, a genitive, dative, other accusative, or
ablative.
Verbs o! esteeming, buying, or selling, besides their
ACCEDENCIE COMMENCED GRAMMAR.
471
accusative, will have a gemitive betokemimg the value
or price : Flocci, nihili, pili, hujus, and the like after
verbs of esteeming: Tanti, quanti, pluris, minoris, and
such like, put without a substantive, after verbs of
buying or selling; as Non hujus te æstimo. Ego illum
flocci pendo. Æqui boni hoc facio or consulo. Quanti
mercatus es hunc equum ? Pluris quam vellem.
But the word of value is sometimes in the ablative;
as Parvi or parvo æstimas probitatem. And the word
of pvice most usually ; as Teruncio eum mon emerim.
And particularly in these adjectives, Vili, paulo, mini-
mo, magno, nimio, plurimo, duplo, put without a sub-
stantive ; as Vili vendo triticum. Redimite captum
quàm queas minimo. And sometimes minore for mi-
moris. Nam a Cælio propinqui minore centessimis
nummum movere non possunt. Cic. Att. 1. 1. But
verbs neuter or passive have only the oblique cases
after them ; as Tanti eris aliis, quanti tibi fueris. Pu-
dor parvi penditur. Which is also to be observed in
the following rules.
And this neuter valeo governeth the word of value
in the accusative ; as Demarii dicti quod denos æris
valebant. Varr.
Verbs of admonishing, accusing, condemning, ac-
quittimg, will have, besides their accusative, a gemitive
of the crime, or penalty, or thing ; as Admonuit me
errati. Accusas me furti ? Vatem sceleris damnat.
Furem dupli condemnavit. And sometimes am ablative
with a prepositiom, or without; as Comdemmabo eodem
ego te crimine. Accusas furti, an stupri, an utroque ?
De repetundis accusavit, or damnavit. Cic.
Also these impersonals, pœnitet, tædet, miseret, mise-
rescit, pudet, piget, to their accusative will have a
genitive, either of the persom, or of the thing ; as Nos-
tri nosmet pceuitet. Urbis me tædet. Pudet me neg-
ligentiæ.
An Accusative with a Dative.
VERBs of giving or restoring, promising or paying,
commanding or shewing, trusting or threatenimg, add
to their accusative a dative of the persom ; as Fortuna
multis nimium dedit. Hæc tibi promitto. /Es alienum
mihi numeravit. Frumentum imperat civitatibus.
Quod et cui dicas, videto. Hoc tibi suadeo. Tibi or
ad te scribo. Pecuniam omnem tibi credo. Utrique
mortem minatus est. •
To these add verbs active compounded with these
prepositions, præ, ad, ab, com, de, ex, ante, sub, post,
ob, in, amd inter ; as Præcipio hoc tibi. Admovit urbi
exercitum. Collegæ suo imperium abrogavit. Sic
parvis componere magna solebam.
Neuters have a dative only ; as Meis majoribus vir-
tute præluxi. But some compounded with præ and
ante may have an accusative ; as Præstat ingenio alius
alium. Multos anteit sapieutia. Others with a pre-
position ; as Quæ ad ventris victum conducunt. Im
htec studia incumbite. Cic.
Also all verbs active, betokeming acquisition, liken-
ing, or relation, commonly englished with to or for,
have to their accusative a dative of the persom ; as
Magnam laudem sibi peperit. Huic habeo, non tibi.
Se illis æquarunt. Expedi mihi hoc negotium : but
mihi, tibi, sibi, sometimes are added for elegance, the
as Suo hunc sibi jugulat gladio.
as Non omnibus dor-
sense not requiring;
Terent. Neuters a dative only ;
mio. Libet mihi. Tibi licet.
Sometimes a verb transitive will have to his accusa-
tive a double dative, one of the persom, amother of the
thing ; as Do tibi vestem piguori. Verto hoc tibi
vitio. Hoc tu tibi laudi duces.
A double Accusative.
VERBs of asking, teaching, arraying, and concealing,
will have two accusatives, one of the person, amother of
the thing ; as Rogo te pecuniam. Doceo te literas.
Quod te jamdudum hortor. Induit se calceos. Hoc
me celabas.
Amd being passives, they retain one accusative of
the thing, as Sumtumque recingitur anguem. Ovid.
Met. 4. Induitur rogam. Mart.
But verbs of arraying sometimcs change the one ac-
cusative into an ablative or dative ; as Induo te tumicâ,
or tibi tunicam. Instravit equum penulâ, or equo pe-
nulam.
Am Accusative vith am Ablative.
VE R 3s transitive may have to their accusative an ab-
lative of the instrument or cause, matter or manner of
doimg ; and meuters the ablative only ; as Ferit eum
gladio. Taceo metu. Malis gaudet alienis. Summa
eloquentia causam egit. Capitolium saxo quadrato
substructum est. Tuo consilio nitor. Vescor pane.
Affluis opibus. Amore abundas. Sometimes with a
prepositiom of the mammer; as Summâ cum humamitate
me tractavit.
Verbs of endowing, imparting, depriving, discharg-
img, filling, emptying, and the like, will have an abla-
tive, and sometimes a genitive ; as Dono te hoc annulo.
Plurimâ salute te impertit. Aliquem familiarem suo
sermone participavit. Paternum servum sui participavit
Interdico tibi aquâ et igni. I,ibero te hoc
metu. Implentur veteris Bacchi.
Also verbs of comparing or exceeding, will have an
ablative of the excess ; as Praefero hunc multis gradi-
bus. Magno intervallo eum superat.
Afler all mammer of verbs, the word signifying amy
part of a thing may be put in the gemitive, accusative,
or ablative ; as Absurdè facis qui angas te animi.
Pemdet animi. Discrucior animi. Desipit mentis.
Candet dentes. Rubet capillos. Ægrotat animo,
magis quam corpore.
consilii.
Nouns of Time and Place after Verbs.
NouNs betokening part of time be put after verbs in
the ablative, and sometimes im the accusative ; as
Nocte vigilas, luce dormis. Nullam partem noctis re-
quiescit, Cic. Abhinc triennium ex Andro commigra-
vit. Ter. Respondit triduo illum, ad summum quatri-
duo periturum. Cic. Or if continuance of time, in the
accusative, sometimes in the ablative ; as Sexagiuta
annos natus. Hyemem totam stertis. ' Imperium de-
472
ACCEDENCE COMME, NC EL) GRAMMAR.
ponere maluerunt, quam id tenere punctum temporis
contra religionem. Cic. Imperavit triennio, et decem
mensibus. Suet. Sometimes with a preposition ; as
l'erè in diebus paucis, quibus hæc acta sunt. Ter.
Rarely with a gemitive ; as, Temporis angusti mansit
concordia discors. Lucam.
Also nouns betokemimg space between places are put
in the accusative, and sometimes in the ablative ; as,
Pedem hinc me discesseris. Abest ab urbe quingentis
millibus passuum. Terrâ marique gentibus imperavit.
Nouns that signify place, and also proper names of
greater places, as countries, be put after verbs of movimg
or remaining, with a preposition, signifyimg to, from,
in, or by, in such case as the prepositiom requireth ;
as Proficiscor ab urbe. Vivit in Angliâ. Veni per
Galliam in Italiam.
But if it be the proper name of a lesser place, as of
a city, town, ox lesser island, or any of these four,
Humus, domus, militia, bellum, with these signs,
om, in, or at, before them, being of the first or second
declension, and singular mumber, they shall be put in
the genitive ; if of the third declensiom, or plural mum-
ber, or this word rus, in the dative or ablative ; as,
Vixit Romæ, Londimi. Ea habitabat Rhodi. Comon
plurimum Cypri vixit. Cor. Nep. Procumbit humi
bos. Domi bellique simul viximus. Militavit Cartha-
gimi, or Carthagine. Studuit Athenis. Ruri or rure
educatus est.
If the verb of moving be to a place, it shall be put
in the accusative ; as Eo Romam, domum, rus. If
from a place, in the ablative ; as Discessit Londino,
Abiit domo. Rure est reversus.
Sometimes with a preposition ; as A Brundusio pro-
fectus est, Cic. Mamil. Ut ab Athenis in Boeotiam
irem. Sulpit. apud Cic. Fam. l. 4. Cum te profectum
ab domo scirem. Liv. l. 8.
Comstructiom of Passives.
A VERB passive will have after it am ablative of the
doer, with the preposition a or ab before it, sometir.es
without, and more oftem a dative ; as Virgilius legitur
a me. Fortes creantur fortibus. Hor. Tibi fama peta-
tur. And neutro-passives, as Vapulo, vemeo, liceo, ex-
ulo, fio, may have the same construction ; as Ab hoste
venire.
Sometimes am accusative of the thing is foumd after
a passive : as Coronari Olympia. Hor. Epist. 1. Cy-
clopa movetur. Hor. for saltat or egit. Purgor bilem.
Id.
Constructiom of Gerunds amd Supines.
GERUNDs and supines will have such cases as the
verb from whemce they come ; as Otium scribendi lite-
ras. Eo auditum poetas. Ad consulendum tibi.
A gerund in di is commomly govermed both of sub-
stantives and adjectives in mammer of a gemitive ; as
Causa videndi. Amor habendi. Cupidus visendi. Cer-
tus eundi. And sometimes govermeth a genitive plural;
as Illorum videndi gratiâ. Ter.
Gerunds in do are used after verbs in manner of an
ablative, according to former rules, with or without a
prepositiom ; as, Defessus sum ambulando. A discendo
Cæsar dando, sublevando, ignos-
Im apparando consumunt
facile deterretur.
cendo, gloriam adeptus est.
diem.
A gerund in dum is used in mammer of am accusative
after prepositions governing that case ; as, Ad eapien-
dum hostes. Ante domandum ingentes tollent amimos.
Virg. Ob redimendum captivos. Inter coemandum.
Gerunds in significatiom are ofttimes used as parti-
ciples in dus ; Tuorum consiliorum reprimendorum
causâ. Cic. Orationem Latinam legendis nostris efficies
plemiorem, Cic. Ad accusamdos homines præmio du-
Cltul'.
A gerund in dum joined with the impersonal est, and
implying some necessity or duty to do a thing, may
have both the active and passive construction of the
verb from whence it is derived; as Utendum est ætate.
Ov. Pacem Trojano a rege petendum. Virg. Iteramdum
eadem ista mihi. Cic. Serviendum est mihi amicis.
Plura dixi, quam dicendum fuit. Cic. pro Sest.
Constructiom of Verb with Verb.
WHEN two verbs come together, without a nomina-
tive case betweem them, the latter shall be in the in-
finitive mood ; as Cupio discere. Or in the first supine
after verbs of movimg ; as Eo cubitum, spectatum. Or
in the latter with an adjective ; as Turpe est dictu.
Facile factu. Opus scitu.
But if a case come between, not governed of the
former verb,it shall always be am accusative before the
infinitive mood ; as Te rediisse incólumem gaudeo.
Malo me divitem esse, quam haberi.
And this infinitive esse, will have always after it am
accusative, or the same case which the former verb
governs ; as Expedit bonos esse vobis. Quo mihi com-
misso, non licet esse piam. But this accusative agree-
eth with another understood before the infinitive ; as
Expedit vobis vos esse bonos. Natura beatis omnibus
esse dedit. Nobis non licet esse tam disertis. The
same construction may be used after other infinitives
neuter or passive like to esse in signification ; as Max-
imo tibi postea et civi, et duci evadere contigit. Val.
Max. l. 6.
Sometimes a noun adjective or substantive governs
am infinitive: as Audax omnia perpeti. Dignus amari.
Consilium ceperunt ex oppido profugere. Cæs. Mimari
divisoribus ratio mom erat. Cic. Verr. l.
Sometimes the infinitive is put absolute for the pre-
terinmperfect or preterperfect tense : as, Ego illud sedulo
negare factum. Ter. Galba autem multas similitudines
afferre. Cic. Ille contra hæc omnia ruere, agere vitam.
Ter.
Constructiom of Participles.
PARTICIP LEs govern such cases as the verb from
whence they come, according to their active or passive
signification ; as, Fruiturus amicis. Nunquam audita
mihi. Diligendus ab omnibus. Sate sanguine divùm.
Telamone creatus. Corpore mortali cretus. Lucret.
Nate dea. Edite regibus. Lævo suspensi loculos tabu-
lasque }acerto. Hor. Census equestrem summam. Id.
ACCEDENCE COMMENCED GRAMMAR.
473
Abeundum est mihi. Venus orta mari. Exosus bella.
Virg. Exosus diis. Gell. Arma perosus. Ovid. But
Pertæsus hath an accusative otherwise than the verb ;
as Pertæsus ignaviam. Semet ipse pertæsus. Suct.
To these add participial adjectives emding in bilis of
the passive significatiom, and requiring like case after
them ; as Nulli penetrabilis astro lucus erat.
Participles changed into adjectives have their con-
struction by the rules of adjectives, as Appetens vini.
Fugitans litum. Fidens animi.
An Ablative put absolute.
Two Nouns together, or a noun and promoun with a
participle expressed or understood, put absolutely, that
is to say, meither governing nor governed of a verb,
shall be put in the ablative ; as Authore senatu bellum
geritur. Me duce vinces. Caesare veniente hostes
fugerunt. Sublato clamore prælium committitur.
Constructiom of Adverbs.
EN and ecce will have a nominative, or an accusative,
and sometimes with a dative ; En Priamus. Ecce tibi
status noster. En habitum. Ecce autem alterum.
Adverbs of quantity, time, and place require a geni-
tive ; as Satis loquentiæ, sapientiæ parum satis. Also
compounded with a verb ; as Is rerum suarum satagit.
Tunc temporis ubique gentium. Eo impudentiæ pro-
cessit. Quoad ejus fieri poterit.
To these add Ergo signifying the cause ; as Illius
ergo. Virg. Virtutis ergo. Fugæ atque formidinis ergo
non abiturus. Liv.
Others will have such cases as the nouns from whence
they come ; as Minime gentium. Optime omnium.
Venit obviam illi. Canit similiter huic. Albanum,
sive Falernum te magis oppositis delectat. Hor.
Adverbs are joined in a sentence to several moods of
verbs.
Of time. Ubi, postquam, cum or quum, to an indica-
tive or subjumctive ; as Hæc ubi dicta dedit. Ubi nos
laverimus. Postquam excessit ex ephebis. Cum faciam
vitula. Virg. Cum canerem reges. Id.
Donec while, to an indicative. Donec eris fælix.
Donec until, to an indicative or subjunctive; Cogere
donec oves jussit. Virg. Donec ea aqua decocta sit.
Colum.
Dum while, to am indicative. Dum apparatur virgo.
Dum until, to an indicative or subjunctive; as Dum
redeo. Tertia dum Latio regnantem viderit testas.
Dum for dummodo so as, or so that, to a subjunctive;
Dum prosim tibi.
Quoad while, to an indicative. Quoad expectas con-
tubernalem. Quoad until, to a subjunctive. Omnia
integra servabo, quoad exercitus huc mittatur.
Simulac, simulatque to am indicative or subjunctive;
as Simulac belli patiens erat, simulatque adoleverit
8etas.
Ut as, to the same moods. Ut salutabis, ita resalu-
taberis. Ut sementem feceris, ita et metos. Hor. Ut
so soon as, to am indicative omly : as Ut ventum est in
urbem. -
Quasi, tamquam, perimde, ac si, to a subjunctive only ;
as Quasi non morimus nos inter nos. Tanquam feceris
ipse aliquid.
Ne of forbidding, to am imperative or subjunctive ;
as Ne sævi. Ne metuas.
Certain adverbs of quantity, quality, or cause ; as
Quam, quoties, cur, quare, &c. Thence also qui, quis,
quantus, qualis, and the like, coming into a sentence
after the principal verb, govern the verb following in
a subjunctive ; as Videte quàm valdè malitiae suae
confidat. Cic. Quid est cur tu in isto loco sedeas ? Cic.
pro Cluent. Subsideo mihi diligentiam comparavi,
quæ quanta sit intelligi non potest, nisi, &c. Cic. pro
Quint. Nam quid hoc iniquius dici potest. Quam me
qui caput alterius fortunasque defendam, priore loco
discere. Ibid. NuJlum est officium tam sanctum atque
solenne, quod non avaritia violare soleat. Ibid. Non
me fallit, si consulamini quid sitis responsuri. Ibid.
Dici vix potest quam multa sint quæ respondeatis ante
fieri oportere. Ibid. Docui quo die hunc sibi promi-
sisse dicat, eo die ne Romæ quidem eum fuisse. Ibid.
Conturbatus discedit neque mirum cui hæc optio tam
misera daretur. Ibid. Narrat quo in loco viderit Quin-
tium. Ibid. Recte majores eum qui socium fefellisset
in virorum bonorum numero non putarunt haberi opor-
tere. Cic. pro Rosc. Am. Quæ concursatio percontam-
tium quid prætor edixisset, ubi coenaret, quid enunti
asset. Cic. Agrar. l.
Of Conjunctions.
CoNJUNCTIoNs copulative and disjunctive, and these
four, Quam, nisi, præterquam, am, couple like cases;
as Socrates docuit Xenophontem et Platonem. Aut
dies est, aut nox. Nescio albus an ater sit. Est minor
natu quàm tu. Nemini placet præterquam sibi.
Except when some particular construction requireth
otherwise ; as Studui Romæ et Athenis. Emi fundum
centum nummis et pluris. Accusas furti, an stupri, an
utroque ?
They also couple for the most part like moods and
tenses, as Recto stat corpore, despicitque terras. But
not always like tenses ; as Nisi me laetasses, et vanâ
spe produceres. Et habetur, et referetur tibi a me
gratia.
Of other conjunctions, some govern an indicative,
some a subjunctive, according to their several signifi-
CatlOnS.
Etsi, tametsi, etiamsi, quanquam, an indicative ;
quamvis and licet, most commonly a subjunctive ; as
Etsi nihil novi afferebatur. Quanquam animus memi-
nisse horret. Quamvis Elysios miretur Græcia cam-
pos. Ipse licet venias.
Ni, misi, si, siquidem, quod, quia, postquam, postea
quam, antequam, priusquam, am indicative or subjunc-
tive ; as Nisi vi mavis eripi. Ni faciat. Castigo te, non
quòd odeo habeam, sed quòd amem. Antequam dicam.
Si for quamvis, a subjunctive only. Redean ? Non si
me obsecret. -
Si also conditional may sometimes govern both verbs
of the sentence in a subjunctive ; as Respiraro si te vi-
dero. Cic. ad Attic.
Quando, quandoquidem, quoniam, an indicative; as
474
ACCEDENCE COMMENCED GRAMMAR.
Dicite quandoquidem in molli consedimus herbâ.
Quoniam convenimus ambo.
Cum, seeing that, a subjunctive ; as Cum sis officiis
Gradive virilibus aptus.
Ne, an, num, of doubting, a subjunctive ; as Nihil
refert, fecerisne, an persuaseris. Vise num redierit.
Interrogatives also ofdisdain or reproach understood,
govern a subjunctive ; as Tantum dem, quantum ille
poposcerit? Cic. Verr. 4. Sylvam tu Scantiam vendas ?
Cic. Agrar. Hunc tu mom ames ? Cic. ad Attic. Fu-
rem aliquem aut rapacem accusaris ? Vitanda semper
erit omnis avaritiæ suspicio. Cic. Ver. 4. Sometimes
am infinitive; as Mene incœpto desistere victam ? Virg.
Ut that, lest not, or although, a subjumctive ; as Te
oro, ut redeat jam in viam. Metuo ut substet hospes.
Ut omnia contingat quæ volo.
Qf Prepositions.
Of Prepositions some will have an accusative after
them, some am ablative, some both, according to their
different signification.
An accusative these following, Ad, apud, ante, ad-
versus, adversum, cis, citra, circum, circa, circiter, con-
tra, erga, extra, inter, intra, infra, juxta, ob, ponè, per,
propè, propter, post, pemes, præter, secundum, supra,
secùs, trans, ultra, usque, versus : but versus is most
commonly set after the case it governs, as Londinum
V €1`SUIS.
And for am accusative after ad, a dative sometimes
is used in poets ; as It clamor cœlo. Virg. Coelo si
gloria tollit AEneadum. Sil. for ad coelum.
An ablative these, A, ab, abs, absque, cum, coram,
de, e, ex, pro, præ, palàm, sine, tenus, which last is
also put after his case, being most usually a genitive,
ifit be plural ; as Capulo temus. Aurium temus.
These, both , cases, In, sub, super, subter, clam, pro-
cul.
In, signifying to, towards, into, or against, requires
an accusative ; as Pisces emptos obolo in cœnam seni.
Animus in Teucros benignus. Versa est in cineres
Troja. In te committere tantum quid Troes potuere ?
Ilastly, when it signifies future time, or for ; as Bellum
in trigesimum diem indixerunt. Designati consules in
annum sequentem. Alii pretia faciunt in singula ca-
pita camum. Var. Otherwise im will have an ablative ;
as In urbe. In terris.
Sub, when it signifies to, or in time, about, or a little
before, requires an accusative ; as Sub umbram pro-
peremus. Sub id tempus. Sub noctem. Otherwise
an ablative. Sub pedibus. Sub umbrâ.
Super signifying beyond, or present time, an accu-
sative ; as Super Garamantas et Indos. Super coenam,
Suet. at supper time. Of or concerning, am ablative ;
as Multa super Priamo rogitans. Super hac re.
Super, over or upom, may have either case ; as Su-
per ripas Tiberis effusus. Sueva sedens super arma.
Fronde super viridi.
So also may subter ; as Pugnatum est super subter-
que terras. Subter densâ testudine. Virg. Clam pa-
trem or patre. Procul muros. Liv. Patriâ procul.
Prepositions in composition govern the same cases as
before in appositiom. Adibo hominem. Detrudunt
naves scopulo. And the preposition is sometimes re-
peated ; as Detrahere de tuâ famâ nunquam cogitavi.
Amd sometimes understood, governeth his usual case;
as Habeo te loco parentis. Apparuit humama specie.
Cumis erant oriundi. Liv. Liberis parentibus oriun-
dis. Colum. Mutat quadrata rotumdis. Hor. Pridie
compitalia. Pridie nonas or calendas. Postridie idus.
Postridie ludos. Before which accusatives ante or
post is to be understood. Filii id ætatis. Cie. Hoc
noctis. Liv. Understand Secundum. Or refer to part of
time. Omnia Mercurio similis. Virg. Understand per.
Of Interjectioms.
CERTAIN interjections have several cases after them.
O, a nominative, accusative, or vocative ; as O festus
dies hominis. O ego lævus. Hor. O fortunatos. O
formose puer.
Others a nominative or am accusative ; as Heu pris-
ca fides! Heu stirpem invisam ! Proh sancte Jupiter!
Proh deum atque hominum fidem ! Hem tibi Davum !
Yea, though the interjection be understood ; as Me
miserum ! Me coecum, qui hæc ante non viderim
Others will have a dative ; as Hei mihi. Væ misero
mihi. Terent.
T H E H IS TO R Y O F B R IT A I N,
THAT PART ESPECIALLY, NOW CALLED ENGLAND ;
FROM THE FIRST TRADITIONAL BEGINNING, CONTINUED TO THE
NORMAN CONQUEST.
COLLECTED OUT OF THE ANCIENTEST AND BEST AUTHORS THEREOF.
[PUBLISHED F Royſ. A copy correctºd BY THE AUTHoR HIMSELF, 1670.]
THE FIRST BOOK.
THE beginning of nations, those excepted of whom
sacred books have spoken, is to this day unknown.
Nor only the beginning, but the deeds also of many
succeeding ages, yea, periods of ages, either wholly
unknown, or obscured and blemished with fables.
Whether it were that the use of letters came in long
after, or were it the violence of barbarous inundations,
or they themselves, at certain revolutions of time, fatally
decaying, and degenerating into sloth and ignorance;
whereby the monuments of more ancient civility have
been some destroyed, some lost. Perhaps disesteem
and contempt of the public affairs then present, as not
worth recording, might partly be in cause. Certainly
ofttimes we see that wise men, and of best ability, have
forborn to write the acts of their own days, while they
beheld with a just loathing and disdain, not only how
unworthy, how perverse, how corrupt, but often how
ignoble, how petty, how below all history, the persons
and their actions were ; who, either by fortune or some
rude election, had attained, as a sore judgment and
ignominy upon the land, to have chief sway in manag-
ing the commonwealth. But that any law, or super-
stition of our philosophers, the Druids, forbad the Bri-
tains to write their memorable deeds, I know not why
any out of Caesar" should allege: he indeed saith, that
their doctrine they thought not lawful to commit to
letters; but in most matters else, both private and
public, among which well may history be reckoned,
they used the Greek tongue; and that the British
Druids, who taught those in Gaul, would be ignorant
of any language known and used by their disciples, or
so frequently writing other things, and so inquisitive
into highest, would for want of recording be ever
children in the knowledge of times and ages, is not
likely. Whatever might be the reason, this we find,
that of British affairs, from the first peopling of the
island to the coming of Julius Caesar, nothing certain,
a Caes, l. 6.
either by tradition, history, orancient fame, hath hitherto
been left us. That which we have of oldest seeming,
hath by the greater part of judicious antiquaries been
long rejected for a modern fable.
Nevertheless there being others, besides the first sup-
posed author, men not unread, nor unlearned in anti-
quity, who admit that for approved story, which the
former explode for fiction; and seeing that ofttimes
relations heretofore accounted fabulous have been after
found to contain in them many footsteps and reliques
of something true, as what we read in poets of the
flood, and giants little believed, till undoubted wit-
nesses taught us, that all was not feigned ; I have
therefore determined to bestow the telling over even of
these reputed tales; be it for nothing else but in favour
of our English poets and rhetoricians, who by their art
will know how to use them judiciously.
I might also produce example, as Diodorus among
the Greeks, Livy and others among the Latins, Poly-
dore and Virunnius accounted among our own writers.
But I intend not with controversies and quotations to
delay or interrupt the smooth course of history; much
less to argue and debate long who were the first in-
habitants, with what probabilities, what authorities each
opinion hath been upheld ; but shall endeavour that
which hitherto hath been needed most, with plain and
lightsome brevity, to relate well and orderly things
worth the noting, so as may best instruct and benefit
them that read. Which, imploring divine assistance,
that it may redound to his glory, and the good of the
British nation, I now begin.
THAT the whole earth was inhabited before the flood,
and to the utmost point of habitable ground from those
effectual words of God in the creation, may be more
than conjectured. Hence that this island also had her
dwellers, her affairs, and perhaps her stories, even in
that old world those many hundred years, with much
476
Book I.
THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
reason we may infer. After the flood, and the dispers-
ing of nations, as they journeyed leisurely from the
east, Gomer the eldest son of Japhet, and his offspring,
as by authorities, arguments, and affinity of divers
names is generally believed, were the first that peopled
all these west and northern climes. But they of our
own writers, who thought they had done nothing, un-
less with all circumstance they tell us when, and who
first set foot upon this island, presume to name out of
fabulous and counterfeit authors a certain Samothes or
Dis, a fourth or sixth son of Japhet, (who they make,
about 200 years after the flood, to have planted with
colonies, first the continent of Celtica or Gaul, and
next this island ; thence to have named it Samothea,)
to have reigned here, and after him lineally four kings,
Magus, Saron, Druis, and Bardus. But the forged
Berosus, whom only they have to cite, no where
mentions that either he, or any of those whom they
bring, did ever pass into Britain, or send their people
hither. So that this outlandish figment may easily
excuse our not allowing it the room here so much as
of a British fable.
That which follows, perhaps as wide from truth,
though seeming less impertinent, is, that these Samo-
theans under the reign of Bardus were subdued by
Albion, a giant, son of Neptune; who called the island
after his own name, and ruled it 44 years. Till at
length passing over into Gaul, in aid of his brother
Lestrygon, against whom Hercules was hasting out of
Spain into Italy, he was there slain in fight, and Ber-
gion also his brother.
Sure enough we are, that Britain hath been anciently
termed Albion, both by the Greeks and Romans. And
Mela, the geographer, makes mention of a stony shore
in Languedoc, where by report such a battle was ſought.
The rest, as his giving name to the isle, or even land-
ing here, depends altogether upon late surmises. But
too absurd, and too unconscionably gross is that fond
invention, that waſted hither the fifty daughters of a
strange Dioclesian king of Syria; brought in, doubt-
less, by some illiterate pretender to something mistaken
in the common poetical story of Danaus king of Argos,
while his vanity, not pleased with the obscure begin-
ning which truest antiquity affords the nation, laboured
to contrive us a pedigree, as he thought, more noble.
These daughters by appointment of Danaus on the
marriage-night having murdered all their husbands,
except Linceus, whom his wife's loyalty saved, were
by him, at the suit of his wife their sister, not put to
death, but turned out to sea in a ship unmanned; of
which whole sex they had incurred the hate : and as
the tale goes, were driven on this island. Where the
inhabitants, none but devils, as some write, or as others,
a lawless crew left here by Albion, without head or
governor, both entertained them, and had issue by
them a second breed of giants, who tyrannized the
isle, till Brutus came.
The eldest of these dames in their legend they call
Albina; and from thence, for which cause the whole
scene was framed, will have the name Albion derived.
Incredible it may seem so sluggish a conceit should
prove so ancient, as to be authorized by the elder Nin-
nius, reputed to have lived above a thousand years ago.
This I find not in him : but that Histion, sprung of
Japhet, had four sons; Francus, Romanus, Alemannus,
and Britto, of whom the Britains;* as true, I believe,
as that those other nations, whose names are resembled,
came of the other three; if these dreams give not just
occasion to call in doubt the book itself, which bears
that title.
Hitherto the things themselves have given us a
warrantable dispatch to run them soon over. But now
of Brutus and his line, with the whole progeny of
kings, to the entrance of Julius Caesar, we cannot so
easily be discharged; descents of ancestry, long con-
tinued, laws and exploits not plainly seeming to be
borrowed, or devised, which on the common belief have
wrought no small impression; defended by many, de-
nied utterly by few. For what though Brutus and
the whole Trojan pretence were yielded up; (seeing
they who first devised to bring us from some noble
ancestor, were content at first with Brutus the consul;
till better invention, although not willing to forego the
name, taught them to remove it higher into a more
fabulous age, and by the same remove lighting on the
Trojan tales in affectation to make the Britain of one
original with the Roman, pitched there;) yet those old
and inborn names of successive kings, never any to
have been real persons, or done in their lives at least
some part of what so long hath been remembered, can-
not be thought without too strict an incredulity.
For these, and those causes above mentioned, that
which hath received approbation from so many, I have
chosen not to omit. Certain or uncertain, be that upon
the credit of those whom I must follow; so far as keeps
aloof from impossible and absurd, attested by ancient
writers from books more ancient, I refuse not, as the
due and proper subject of story. The principal author
is well known to be Geoffrey of Monmouth; what he
was, and whence his authority, who in his age, or be-
fore him, have delivered the same matter, and such
like general discourses, will better stand in a treatise
by themselves. Allf of them agree in this, that Bru-
tus was the son of Silvius; he of Ascanius; whose
father was Eneas a Trojan prince, who at the burning
of that city, with his son Ascanius, and a collected
number that escaped, after long wandering on the sea,
arrived in Italy. Where at length by the assistance
of Latinus king of Latiam, who had given him his
daughter Lavinia, he obtained to succeed in that king-
dom, and left it to Ascanius, whose son Silvius (though
Roman histories deny Silvius to be the son of Ascanius)
had married secretly a niece of Lavinia.
She being with child, the matter became known to
Ascanius. Who commanding his “magicians to inquire
by art, what sex the maid had conceived,” had answer,
“ that it was one who should be the death of both his
parents; and banished for the fact, should after all, in a
far country, attain the highest honour.” The predic-
tion failed not, for in travail the mother died. And
* Hollinshed.
f IIenry of IIuntingdon, Matthew of Westminster.
Book I.
477
THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
Brutus (the child was so called) at fifteen years of age,
attending his father to the chace, with an arrow unfor-
tunately killed him.
Banished therefore by his kindred, he retires into
Greece. Where meeting with the race of Helenus king
Priam's son, held there in servile condition by Pandra-
sus then king, with them he abides. For Pyrrhus, in
revenge of his father slain at Troy, had brought thither
with him Helenus, and many others into servitude.
There Brutus among his own stock so thrives in virtue
and in arms, as renders him beloved to kings and great
captains, above all the youth of that land. Whereby
the Trojans not only began to hope, but secretly to
move him, that he would lead them the way to liberty.
They allege their numbers, and the promised help of
Assaracus a noble Greekish youth, by the mother's side
a Trojan; whom for that cause his brother went about
to dispossess of certain castles bequeathed him by his
father. Brutus considering both the forces offered
him, and the strength of those holds, not unwillingly
COn SelltS.
First therefore having fortified those castles, he with
Assaracus and the whole multitude betake them to the
woods and hills, as the safest place from whence to ex-
postulate; and in the name of all sends to Pandrasus
this message, “That the Trojans holding it unworthy
their ancestors to serve in a foreign kingdom had re-
treated to the woods; choosing rather a savage life
than a slavish : if that displeased him, that then with
his leave they might depart to some other soil.”
As this may pass with good allowance that the Tro-
jans might be many in these parts, (for Helenus was
by Pyrrhus made king of the Chaonians, and the sons
of Pyrrhus by Andromache Hector's wife, could not but
be powerful through all Epirus,) so much the more it
may be doubted, how these Trojans could be thus in
bondage, where they had friends and countrymen so
potent. But to examine these things with diligence,
were but to confute the fables of Britain, with the fa-
bles of Greece or Italy: for of this age, what we have
to say, as well concerning most other countries, as this
island, is equally under question. Be how it will,
Pandrasus not expecting so bold a message from the sons
of captives, gathers an army; and marching towards
the woods, Brutus who had notice of his approach nigh
to the town called Sparatinum, (I know not what town,
but certain of no Greek name,) over night planting
himself there with good part of his men, suddenly sets
upon him, and with slaughter of the Greeks pursues
him to the passage of a river, which mine author names
Akalon, meaning perhaps Achelous or Acheron; where
at the ford he overlays them afresh. This victory ob-
tained, and a sufficient strength left in Sparatinum,
Brutus with Antigonus, the king's brother, and his
friend Anacletus, whom he had taken in the fight, re-
turns to the residue of his friends in the thick woods;
while Pandrasus with all speed recollecting, besieges
the town. Brutus to relieve his men besieged, who
earnestly called him, distrusting the sufficiency of his
force, bethinks himself of this policy. Calls to him
Anacletus, and threatening instant death else, both to
him and his friend Antigonus, enjoins him, that he
should go at the second hour of night to the Greekish
leagre, and tell the guards he had brought Antigonus
by stealth out of prison to a certain woody vale, unable
through the weight of his fetters to move him further,
entreating them to come speedily and fetch him in.
Anacletus to save both himself and his friend Antigonus,
swears this, and at a fit hour sets on alone toward the
camp; is met, examined, and at last unquestionably
known. To whom, great profession of fidelity first
made, he frames his tale, as had been taught him ; and
they now fully assured, with a credulous rashness
leaving their stations, fared accordingly by the ambush
that there awaited them. Forth with Brutus divided
his men into three parts, leads on in silence to the camp;
commanding first each part at a several place to enter,
and forbear execution, till he with his squadron pos-
sessed of the king's tent, gave signal to them by trum-
pet. The sound whereof no sooner heard, but huge
havock begins upon the sleeping and unguarded enemy,
whom the besieged also now sallying forth, on the other
side assail. Brutus the while had special care to seize
and secure the king's person ; whose life still within
his custody, he knew was the surest pledge to obtain
what he should demand. Day appearing, he enters
the town, there distributes the king’s treasury, and
leaving the place better fortified, returns with the king
his prisoner to the woods. Straight the ancient and
grave men he summons to council, what they should
now demand of the king.
After long debate Mempricius, one of the gravest,
utterly dissuading them from thought of longer stay in
Greece, unless they meant to be deluded with a subtle
peace, and the awaited revenge of those whose friends
they had slain, advises them to demand first the king's
eldest daughter Innogen in marriage to their leader
Brutus with a rich dowry, next shipping, money, and
fit provision for them all to depart the land.
This resolution pleasing best, the king now brought
in, and placed in a high seat, is briefly told, that on
these conditions granted, he might be free; not granted
he must prepare to die.
Pressed with fear of death, the king readily yields;
especially to bestow his daughter on whom he confessed
so noble and so valiant: offers them also the third part
of his kingdom, if they like to stay; if not, to be their
hostage himself, till he had made good his word.
The marriage therefore solemnized, and shipping
from all parts got together, the Trojans in a fleet, no
less written than three hundred four and twenty sail,
betake them to the wide sea: where with a prosperous
course, two days and a night bring them on a certain
island long before dispeopled and left waste by sea-rowers,
the name whereof was then Leogecia, now unknown.
They who were sent out to discover, came at length to
a ruined city, where was a temple and image of Diana
that gave oracles: but not meeting first or last, save
wild beasts, they return with this notice to their ships;
wishing their general would inquire of that oracle what
voyage to pursue.
Consultation had, Brutus taking with him Gerion
478 THE HISTORY
OF ENGLAND. Book 1.
his diviner, and twelve of the ancientest, with wanton
ceremonies before the inward shrine of the goddess, in
verse (as it seems the manner was) utters his request,
“ Diva potens memorum,” &c.
Goddess of shades, and huntress, who at will
Walk'st on the rolling sphere, and through the deep
On thy third reign the earth look now, and tell
What land, what seat of rest thou bidd'st me seek,
What certain seat, where I may worship thee
For aye, with temples vow’d, and virgin choirs.
To whom sleeping before the altar, Diana in a vision
that night thus answered, “ Brute sub occasum solis,”
&c.
Brutus, far to the west, in th’ ocean wide,
Beyond the realm of Gaul, a land there lies,
Seagirt it lies, where giants dwelt of old,
Now void it fits thy people; thither bend
Thy course, there shalt thou find a lasting seat,
Where to thy sons another Troy shall rise;
And kings be born of thee, whose dreaded might
Shall awe the world, and conquer nations bold.
These verses originally Greek, were put in Latin,
saith Virunnius, by Gildas a British poet, and him to
have lived under Claudius. Which granted true, adds
much to the antiquity of this fable; and indeed the
Latin verses are much better, than of the age for Geof.
frey ap Arthur, unless perhaps Joseph of Exeter, the
only smooth poet of those times, befriended him. In
this, Diana overshot her oracle thus ending, “Ipsis
totius terrae subditus orbis erit,” That to the race of
Brute, kings of this island, the whole earth shall be
subject.
But Brutus, guided now, as he thought, by divine
conduct, speeds him towards the west; and after some
encounters on the Afric side, arrives at a place on the
Tyrrhene sea; where he happens to find the race of
those Trojans, who with Antenor came into Italy; and
Corineus, a man much famed, was their chief: though
by surer authors it be reported, that those Trojans with
Antenor were seated on the other side of Italy, on the
Adriatic, not the Tyrrhene shore. But these joining
company, and past the Herculean Pillars, at the mouth
of Ligeris in Aquitania cast anchor: where after some
discovery made of the place, Corineus, hunting nigh
the shore with his men, is by messengers of the king
Goffarius Pictus met, and questioned about his errand
there. Who not answering to their mind, Imbertus,
one of them, lets fly an arrow at Corineus, which he
avoiding, slays him : and the Pictavian himself here-
upon levying his whole force, is overthrown by Brutus,
and Corineus; who with the battle-axe which he was
wont to manage against the Tyrrhene giants, is said
to have done marvels. But Goffarius having drawn to
his aid the whole country of Gaul, at that time governed
by twelve kings, puts his fortune to a second trial;
wherein the Trojans, overborn by multitude, are driven
back, and besieged in their own camp, which by good
foresight was strongly situate. Whence Brutus un-
expectedly issuing out, and Corineus in the mean
while, whose device it was, assaulting them behind
from a wood, where he had conveyed his men the night
before: the Trojans are again victors, but with the loss
of Turon a valiant nephew of Brutus: whose ashes, left
in that place, gave name to the city of Tours, built
there by the Trojans. Brutus finding now his powers
much lessened, and this yet not the place foretold him,
leaves Aquitain, and with an easy course arriving at
Totness in Devonshire, quickly perceives here to be the
promised end of his labours.
The island, not yet Britain but Albion, was in a
manner desert and inhospitable; kept only by a rem-
nant of giants, whose excessive force and tyranny had
consumed the rest. Them Brutus destroys, and to his
people divides the land, which with some reference to
his own name he thenceforth calls Britain. To Cori-
neus, Cornwall, as now we call it, fell by lot; the rather
by him liked, for that the hugest giants in rocks and
caves were said to lurk still there; which kind of mon-
sters to deal with was his old exercise.
And here with leave bespoken to recite a grand fable,
though dignified by our best poets: while Brutus, on
a certain festival day solemnly kept on that shore,
where he first landed, was with the people in great
jollity and mirth, a crew of these savages breaking in
upon them, began on a sudden another sort of game,
than at such a meeting was expected. But at length
by many hands overcome, Goemagog the hugest, in
height twelve cubits, is reserved alive, that with him
Corineus, who desired nothing more, might try his
strength ; whom in a wrestle the giant catching aloft,
with a terrible hug broke three of his ribs: nevertheless
Corineus enraged, heaving him up by main force, and
on his shoulders bearing him to the next high rock,
threw him headlong, all shattered, into the sea, and
left his name on the cliff, called ever since Langoema-
gog, which is to say, the giant's leap.
After this, Brutus in a chosen place builds Troja
Nova, changed in time to Trinovantum, now London :
and began to enact laws; Heli being then high priest
in Judaea: and having governed the whole isle twenty-
four years, died, and was buried in his new Troy. His
three sons, Locrine, Albanact, and Camber, divide the
land by consent. Locrine had the middle part Loegria;
Camber possessed Cambria, or Wales; Albanact, Al-
bania, now Scotland. But he in the end by Humber
king of the Hunds, who with a fleet invaded that land,
was slain in fight, and his people drove back into
Loegria. Locrine and his brother go out against
Humber; who now marching onward, was by them
defeated, and in a river drowned, which to this day
retains his name. Among the spoils of his camp and
navy, were found certain young maids, and Estrildis
above the rest, passing fair, the daughter of a king in
Germany; from whence Humber, as he went wasting
the sea coast, had led her captive : whom Locrine,
though before contracted to the daughter of Corineus,
resolves to marry. But being forced and threatened
by Corineus, whose authority and power he feared,
Guendolen the daughter he yields to marry, but in
secret loves the other: and ofttimes retiring, as to some
private sacrifice, through vaults and passages made
under ground, and seven years thus enjoying her, had
by her a daughter equally fair, whose name was Sabra.
Book I. THE HISTORY
OF ENGLAND. 479
But when once his fear was off by the death of Corine-
us. not content with secret enjoyment, divorcing Guen-
dolen, he makes Estrildes now his queen. Guendolen,
all in rage, departs into Cornwall, where Madan, the
son she had by Locrine, was hitherto brought up by
Corineus his grandfather. And gathering an army of
her father's friends and subjects, gives battle to her
husband by the river Sture; wherein Locrine, shot
with an arrow, ends his life. But not so ends the fury
of Guendolen; for Estrildis, and her daughter Sabra,
she throws into a river: and, to leave a monument of
revenge, proclaims that the stream be thenceforth call-
ed after the damsel’s name; which, by length of time,
is changed now to Sabrina, or Severn.
Fifteen years she governs in behalf of her son; then
resigning to him at age, retires to her father's dominion,
This, saith my author, was in the days of Samuel.
Madan hath the praise to have well and peacefully
ruled the space of forty years, leaving behind him two
sons, Mempricius, and Malim. Mempricius had first
to do with the ambition of his brother, aspiring to share
with him in the kingdom; whom therefore, at a meet-
ing to compose matters, with a treachery, which his
cause needed not, he slew.
Nor was he better in the sole possession, whereof so
ill he could endure a partner, killing his nobles, an
those especially next to succeed him; till lastly, given
over to unnatural lust, in the twentieth of his reign,
hunting in a forest, he was devoured by wolves.
His son Ebranc, a man of mighty strength and sta-
ture, reigned forty years. He first, after Brutus, wasted
Gaul; and returning rich and prosperous, builded Ca-
erebranc, now York; in Albania, Alclud, Mount Agned,
or the Castle of Maidens, now Edinburgh. He had
twenty sons and thirty daughters by twenty wives. His
daughters he sent to Silvius Alba into Italy, who be-
stowed them on his peers of the Trojan line. His sons,
under the leading of Assaracus their brother, won them
lands and signiories in Germany; thence called from
these brethren, Germania; a derivation too hastily
supposed, perhaps before the word Germanus, or the
Latin tongue was in use. Some who have described
Henault, as Jacobus Bergomas, and Lassabeus, are
cited to affirm, that Ebranc, in his war there, was by
Brunchildis, lord of Henault, put to the worse.
Brutus, therefore, surnamed Greenshield, succeeding,
to repair his father's losses, as the same Lessabeus re-
ports, fought a second battle in Henault, with Brun-
child, at the mouth of Scaldis, and encamped on the
river Hania. Of which our Spencer also thus sings:
Let Scaldis tell, and let tell Hania,
And let the marsh of Esthambruges tell
What colour were their waters that same day,
And all the moor 'twixt Flversham and Dell,
With blood of Henalois, which therein fell;
How oft that day did sad Brunchildis see
The Greenshield dyed in dolorous vermeil, &c.
But Henault, and Brunchild, and Greenshield, seem
newer names than for a story pretended thus ancient.
Him succeeded Leil, a maintainer of peace and
d Called now Carlisle.
equity; but slackened in his latter end, whence arose
some civil discord. He built, in the North, Cairleil ;"
and in the days of Solomon.
Rudhuddibras, or Hudibras, appeasing the commo-
tions whis h his father could not, founded Caerkeynt or
Canterbury, Cacrguent or Winchester, and Mount Pa-
ladur, now Septonia or Shaftesbury: but this by others
is contradicted.
Bladud his son built Caerbadus or Bath, and those
medicinal waters he dedicated to Minerva; in whose
temple there he kept fire continually burning. He
was a man of great invention, and taught necromancy;
till having made him wings to fly, he fell down upon
the temple of Apollo in Trinovant, and so died after
twenty years reign.
Hitherto, from father to son, the direct line hath run
on : but Leir, who next reigned, had only three daugh-
ters, and no male issue: governed laudibly, and built
Caerleir, now Leicester, on the bank of Sora. But at
last, falling through age, he determines to bestow his
daughters, and so among them to divide his kingdom.
Yet first, to try which of them loved him best, (a trial
that might have made him, had he known as wisely
how to try, as he seemed to know how much the trying
behooved him,) he resolves a simple resolution, to ask
them solemnly in order; and which of them should
profess largest, her to believe. Gonorill the eldest,
apprehending too well her father's weakness, makes
answer, invoking Heaven, “That she loved him above
her soul.” “Therefore,” quoth the old man, overjoyed,
“since thou so honourest my declining age, to thee and
the husband whom thou shalt choose, I give the third
part of my realm.” So fair a speeding, for a few words
soon uttered, was to Regan, the second, ample instruc-
tion what to say. She, on the same demand, spares no
protesting; and the gods must witness, that otherwise
to express her thoughts she knew not, but that “She
loved him above all creatures;” and so receives an
equal reward with her sister. But Cordeilla, the
youngest, though hitherto best beloved, and now before
her eyes the rich and present hire of a little easy sooth-
ing, the danger also, and the loss likely to hetide plain
dealing, yet moves not from the solid purpose of a sin-
cere and virtuous answer. “Father,” saith she, “my
love towards you is as my duty bids: what should a
father seek, what can a child promise more ? They,
who pretend beyond this, flatter.” When the old man,
sorry to hear this, and wishing her to recall those
words, persisted asking ; with a loyal sadness at her
father's infirmity, but something, on the sudden, harsh,
and glancing rather at her sisters than speaking her
own mind, “Two ways only,” saith she, “I have to
answer what you require me: the former, your com-
mand is, I should recant; accept then this other which
is left me; look how much you have, so much is your
value, and so much I love you.” “Then hear thou,”
quoth Leir, now all in passion, “what thy ingratitude
hath gained thee; because thou hast not reverenced
thy aged father equal to thy sisters, part in my king-
dom, or what else is mine, reckon to have none.” And,
480
Book 1.
THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND
without delay, gives in marriage his other daughters,
Gonorill to Maglaunus duke of Albania, Regan to
Hennimus duke of Cornwal; with them in present
half his kingdom; the rest to follow at his death. In
the mean while, fame was not sparing to divulge the
wisdom and other graces of Cordeilla, insomuch that
Agamippus, a great king in Gaul, (however he came by
his Greek name, not found in any register of French
kings,) seeks her to wife; and nothing altered at the
loss of her dowry, receives her gladly in such manner
as she was sent him. After this King Leir, more and
more drooping with years, became an easy prey to his
daughters and their husbands; who now, by daily en-
croachment, had seized the whole kingdom into their
hands : and the old king is put to sojourn with his
eldest daughter attended only by threescore knights.
But they in a short while grudged at, as too numerous
and disorderly for continual guests, are reduced to
thirty. Not brooking that affront, the old king betakes
him to his second daughter: but there also, discord
soon arising between the servants of differing masters
in one family, five only are suffered to attend him.
Then back again he returns to the other; hoping that
she his eldest could not but have more pity on his gray
hairs : but she now refuses to admit him, unless he be
content with one only of his followers. At last the re-
membrance of his youngest, Cordeilla, comes to his
thoughts; and now acknowledging how true her words
had been, though with little hope from whom he had
so injured, be it but to pay her the last recompense she
can have from him, his confession of her wise fore-
warning, that so perhaps his misery, the proof and
experiment of her wisdom, might something soften her,
he takes his journey into France. Now might be seen
a difference between the silent, or downright spoken
affection of some children to their parents, and the
talkative obsequiousness of others; while the hope of
inheritance overacts them, and on the tongue's end
enlarges their duty. Cordeilla, out of mere love, with-
out the suspicion of expected reward, at the mrssage
only of her father in distress, pours forth true filial
tears. And not enduring either that her own, or any
other eye should see him in such forlorn condition as
his messenger declared, discreetly appoints one of her
trusted servants first to convey him privately towards
some good sea-town, there to array him, bathe him,
cherish him, furnish him with such attendance and
state as beseemed his dignity; that then, as from his
first landing, he might send word of his arrival to her
husband Agamippus. Which done, with all mature and
requisite contrivance, Cordeilla, with the king her hus-
band, and all the barony of his realm, who then first
had news of his passing the sea, go out to meet him ;
and aſter all honourable and joyful entertainment,
Agamippus, as to his wife's father, and his royal guest,
surrenders him, during his abode there, the power and
disposal of his whole dominion : permitting his wife
Cordeilla to go with an army, and set her father upon
his throne. Wherein her piety so prospered, as that
she vanquished her impious sisters, with those dukes;
and Leir again, as saith the story, three years obtained
the crown. To whom, dying, Cordeilla, with all regal
solemnities, gave burial in the town of Leicester: and
then, as right heir succeeding, and her husband dead,
ruled the land five years in peace. Until Marganus
and Cunedagius, her two sisters' sons, not bearing that
a kingdom should be governed by a woman, in the
unseasonablest time to raise that quarrel against a wo-
man so worthy, make war against her, depose her, and
imprison her; of which impatient, and now long un-
exercised to suffer, she there, as is related, killed her-
self. The victors between them part the land; but
Margamus, the eldest sister's son, who held, by agree-
ment, from the north side of Humber to Cathness, in-
cited by those about him, to invade all as his own right,
wars on Cunedagius, who soon met him, overcame, and
overtook him in a town of Wales, where he left his life,
and ever since his name to the place.
Cunedagius was now sole king, and governed with
much praise many years, about the time when Rome
was built.
Him succeeded Rivallo his son, wise also and fortu-
nate ; save what they tell us of three days raining
blood and swarms of stinging flies, whereof men died.
In order then Gurgustius, Jago or Lago, his nephew;
Sisilius, Kinmarcus. Then Gorbogudo, whom others
name Gorbodego, and Gorbodion, who had two sons,
Perrex, and Porrex. They, in the old age of their fa-
ther, falling to contend who should succeed, Porrex,
attempting by treachery his brother's life, drives him
into France; and in his return, though aided with the
force of that country, defeats and slays him. But by
his mother Widena, who less loved him, is himself,
with the assistance of her women, soon after slain in
his bed : with whom ended, as is thought, the line of
Brutus. Whereupon the whole land, with civil broils,
was rent into five kingdoms, long time waging war
each on other; and some say fifty years. At length
Dunwallo Molmutius, the son of Cloten king of Corn-
wal, one of the foresaid five, excelling in valour and
goodliness of person, after his father's decease, found
means to reduce again the whole island into a mo-
narchy; subduing the rest at opportunities. First,
Ymner king of Loegria, whom he slew ; then Rudau-
cus of Cambria, Staterius of Albania, confederate toge-
ther. In which fight Dunwallo is reported, while the
victory hung doubtful, to have used this art. He takes
with him 600 stout men, bids them put on the armour
of their slain enemies; and so unexpectedly approach-
ing the squadron, where those two kings had placed
themselves in fight, from that part which they thought
sccurest, assaults and dispatches them. Then display-
ing his own ensigns, which before he had concealed,
and sending notice to the other part of his army what
was done, adds to them new courage, and gains a final
victory. This Dunwallo was the first in Britain that
wore a crown of gold; and therefore by some reputed
the first king. He established the Molmutine laws, ſa-
mous among the English to this day; written long
after in Latin by Gildas, and in Saxon by King Al-
fred: so saith Geoſfrey, but Gildas denies to have known
aught of the Britains before Caesar; much less knew
Book I.
481
THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
Alfred. These laws, whoever made them, bestowed on
temples the privilege of sanctuary ; to cities also,
and the ways thither leading, yea to plows, granted a
kind of like refuge; and made such riddance of thieves
and robbers, that all passages were safe. Forty years
he governed alone, and was buried nigh to the Temple
of Concord; which he, to the men.ory of peace restored,
had built in Trinovant.
His two sons, Belinus and Brennus, contending
about the crown, by decision of friends, came at length
to an accord: Brennus to have the north of Humber,
Belinus the sovereignty of all. But the younger not
long so contented, that he, as they whispered to him,
whose valour had so oft repelled the invasions of Ceul-
phus the Morine duke, should now be subject to his
brother, upon new design sails into Norway; enters
league and affinity with Elsing that king : which Be-
linus perceiving, in his absence dispossesses him of all
the inorth. Brennus, with a fleet of Norwegians, makes
towards Britain ; but encountered by Guithlac, the
Danish king, who, laying claim to his bride, pursued
him on the sea, his haste was retarded, and he bereft of
his spouse; who, from the fight, by a sudden tempest,
was with the Danish king driven on Northumberland,
and brought to Belinus. Brennus, nevertheless, find-
ing means to recollect his navy, lands in Albania, and
gives battle to his brother in the wood Calaterium; but
losing the day, escapes with one single ship into Gaul.
Meanwhile the Dane, upon his own offer to become
tributary, sent home with his new prize, Belinus re-
turns his thoughts to the administering of justice, and
the perfecting of his father's law. And to explain
what highways might enjoy the fores id privileges, he
caused to be drawn out and paved four main roads to
the utmost length and breadth of the island, and two
others athwart; which are since attributed to the Ro-
mans. Brennus, on the other side, soliciting to his aid
the kings of Gaul, happens at last on Seginus duke of
the Allobroges; where his worth, and comeliness of
person, won him the duke's daughter and heir. In
whose right he shortly succeeding, and, by obtained
leave, passing with a great host through the length of
Gaul, gets footing once again in Britain. Now was
Belinus unprepared: and now the battle ready to join,
Conuvenna, the mother of them both, all in a fright,
throws herself between; and calling earnestly to Bren-
nus her son, whose absence had so long deprived her
of his sight, after embracements and tears, assails him
with such a motherly power, and the mention of things
so dear and reverend, as irresistibly wrung from him
all his enmity against Belinus.
Then are hands joined, reconciliation made firm, and
counsel held to turn their united preparations on ſo-
reign parts. Thence that by these two all Gallia was
overrun, the story tells; and what they did in Italy,
and at Rome, (if these be they, and not Gauls, who
took that city,) the Roman authors can best relate. So
far from home I undertake not for the Monmouth
Chronicle; which here, against the stream of history,
carries up and down these brethren, now into German y;
then again to Rome, pursuing Gabius and Porsena,
two unheard-of consuls. Thus much is more generally
believed, that both this Brennus, and another famous
captain, Britomarus, whom the epitomist Florus and
others mention, were not Gauls, but Britains; the name
of the first in that tongue signifying a king, and of the
other a great Britain. However, Belinus, after a while,
returning home, the rest of his days ruled in peace,
wealth, and honour, above all his predecessors; build-
ing some cities, of which one was Caerose upon Osca,
since Caerlegion ; beautifying others, as Trinovant,
with a gate, haven, and a tower, on the Thames, re-
taining yet his name; on the top whereof his ashes
are said to have been laid up in a golden urn.
After him Gurguntius Barbirus was king, mild and
just; but yet, inheriting his father's courage, he sub-
dued the Dacian, or Dane, who refused to pay the tri-
bute covenanted to Belinus for his enlargement. In his
return, finding about the Orkneys thirty ships of Spain,
or Biscay, fraught with men and women for a planta-
tion, whose captain also Bartholinus, wrongfully banish-
ed, as he pleaded, besought him that some part of his
territory might be assigned them to dwell in, he sent
with them certain of his own men to Ireland, which
then lay unpeopled, and gave them that island, to hold
of him as in homage. He was buried in Caerlegion, a
city which he had walled about.
Guitheline his son is also remembered as a just and
good prince ; and his wife Martia to have excelled so
much in wisdom, as to venture upon a new institution of
laws. Which King Alfred translating, called Marchen
Leage; but more truly thereby is meant the Mercian
law, not translated by Alfred, but digested or incorpor-
ated with the West-Saxon. In the minority of her
son she had the rule; and them, as may be supposed,
brought forth these laws, not herself, for laws are mas-
culine births, but by the advice of her sagest counsel-
lors; and therein she might do virtuously, since it be-
fel her to supply the nonage of her son; else nothing
more awry from the law of God and nature, than that
a woman should give laws to men.
Her son Sisilius coming to years, received the rule;
then, in order, Kimarus; then Danius, or Elanius, his
brother. Then Morindus, his son by Tanguestela, a
concubine, who is recorded a man of excessive strength,
valiant, liberal, and fair of aspect, but immamely cruel;
not sparing, in his anger, enemy or friend, if any
weapon were in his hand. A certain king of the Mo-
rines, or Picards, invaded Northumberland; whose
army this king, though not wanting sufficient numbers,
chiefly by his own prowess overcame; but dishonoured
his victory by the cruel usage of his prisoners, whom
his own hands, or others in his presence, put all to
several deaths: well fitted to such a bestial cruelty was
his end; for hearing of a huge monster, that from the
Irish sea infested the coast, and, in the pride of his
strength, foolishly attempting to set manly valour
against a brute vastness, when his weapons were all in
vain, by that horrible mouth he was catched up and
devoured.
Gorbonian, the eldest of his five sons, than whom a
juster man lived not in his age, was a great builder of
482
Dook I.
THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
temples, and gave to all what was their due : to his
gods, devout worship ; to men of desert, honour and
preferment; to the commons, encouragement in their
labours and trades, defence and protection from injuries
and oppressions; so that the land flourished above her
neighbours; violence and wrong seldom was heard of.
His death was a general loss: he was buried in Tri-
In OVallt.
Archigallo, the second brother, followed not his ex-
ample; but depressed the ancient nobility; and, by
peeling the wealthier sort, stuffed his treasury, and
took the right way to be deposed.
Elidure, the next brother, surnamed the Pious, was
set up in his place: a mind so noble, and so moderate,
as almost is incredible to have been ever found. For,
having held the sceptre five years, hunting one day in
the forest of Calater, he chanced to meet his deposed
brother, wandering in a mean condition; who had
been long in vain beyond the seas, importuning foreign
aids to his restorement; and was now, in a poor habit,
with only ten followers, privately returned to find sub-
sistence among his secret friends. At the unexpected
sight of him, Elidure himself also then but thinly ac-
companied, runs to him with open arms; and, after
many dear and sincere welcomings, conveys him to the
city Alclud; there hides him in his own bedchamber.
Afterwards feigning himself sick, summons all his
peers, as about greatest affairs; where admitting them
one by one, as if his weakness endured not the disturb-
ance of more at once, causes them, willing or unwilling,
once more to swear allegiance to Archigallo. Whom,
after reconciliation made on all sides, he leads to York;
and, from his own head, places the crown on the head
of his brother. Who thenceforth, vice itself dissolving
in him, and forgetting her firmest hold, with the ad-
miration of a deed so heroic, became a true converted
man; ruled worthily ten years, died, and was buried
in Caerleir. Thus was a brother saved by a brother,
to whom love of a crown, the thing that so often daz-
zles and vitiates mortal men, for which thousands of
nearest blood have destroyed each other, was in respect
of brotherly dearness, a contemptible thing.
Elidure now in his own behalf re-assumes the go-
vernment, and did as was worthy such a man to do.
When Providence, that so great a virtue might want
no sort of trial to make it more illustrious, stirs up Wi-
genius and Peredure, his youngest brethren, against
him who had deserved so nobly of that relation, as least
of all by a brother to be injured. Yet him they defeat,
him they imprison in the tower of Trinovant, and di-
vide his kingdom; the North to Peredure, the South to
Vigenius. After whose death Peredure obtaining all,
so much the better used his power, by how much the
worse he got it: so that Elidure now is hardly missed.
But yet, in all right owing to his elder the due place
whereof he had deprived him, fate would that he should
die first: and Elidure, after many years imprisonment,
is now the third time seated on the throne; which at
last he enjoyed long in peace, finishing the interrupted
e Matth. Westm.
f II untingd. I. i. & g
g Verstegan denies this ; and says it was called so by the Saxons, from
course of his mild and just reign, as full of virtuous
deeds as days to his end.
After these five sons of Morindus, succeeded also
their sons in order. • Regin of Gorbonian, Marganus
of Archigallo, both good kings. But Enniaunus, his
brother, taking other courses, was after six years de-
posed. Then Idwallo, taught by a near example, go-
verned soberly. Then Runno, then Geruntius, he of
Percdure, this last the son of Elidure. From whose
loins (for that likely is the durable and surviving race
that springs of just progenitors) issued a long descent
of kings, whose names only for many successions,
without other memory, stand thus registered: Catellus,
Coillus, Porrex, Cherin, and his three sons, Fulgenius,
Eldadus, and Andragius, his son Urianus; Eliud,
Eledaucus, Clotemus, Gurguntius, Merianus, Bleduno,
Capis, Ocnus, Sisillius; twenty kings in a continued
row, that cither did nothing, or lived in ages that wrote
nothing; at least, a foul pretermission in the author of
this, whether story or fable; himself weary, as seems,
of his own tedious tale.
But to make amends for this silence, Blegabredus
next succeeding, is recorded to have excelled all before
him in the art of musick; opportunely, had he but left
us one song of his twenty predecessors’ doings.
Yet after him nine more succeeded in name; his
brother Archimailus, Eldol, Redion, Rederchius, Sa-
mulius, Penissel, Pir, Capoirus; but Cliguellius, with
the addition of modest, wise, and just.
His son Heli reigned forty years, and had three sons,
Lud, Cassibelan, and Nennius. This Heli seems to be
the same whom Ninius, in his Fragment, calls Mino-
can ; for him he writes to be the father of Cassibelan.
Lud was he who enlarged and walled about Trinovant;
there kept his court, made it the prime city, and called
it from his own name Caerlud, or Lud's town, now
London. Which, as is alleged out of Gildas, became
matter of great dissension betwixt him and his brother
Nennius; who took it heinously that the name of Troy,
their ancient country, should be abolished for any new
one. Lud was hardy, and bold in war; in peace, a
jolly feaster. He conquered many islands of the sea,
saith Huntingdon, and was buried by the gate, which
from thence we call Ludgate.8 His two sons, Andro-
geus and Tenuantius, were left to the tuition of Cassi-
belan; whose bounty and high demeanour so wrought
with the common people, as got him easily the king-
dom transferred upon himself. He nevertheless, con
tinuing to favour and support his nephews, confers
freely upon Androgeus London with Kent; upon
Tenuantius, Cornwal; reserving a superiority both
over them, and all the other princes to himself, till the
Romans for awhile circumscribed his power. Thus
far, though leaning only on the credit of Geoffrey
Monmouth, and his assertors, I yet, for the specified
causes, have thought it not beneath my purpose to re-
late what I found. Whereto I neither oblige the belief
of other person, nor overhastily subscribe mine own.
Nor have I stood with others computing or collating
Lud, in our ancient language, people, and gate, quasi porta populi ; of all
the gates of the city, that having the greatest passage of people; especially
before Newgate was built, which was about the reign of "Il enry ll.
Book II.
483
THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
years and chronologies, lest I should be vainly curious
about the time and circumstance of things, whereof the
substance is so much in doubt. By this time, like one
who had set out on his way by night, and travelled
through a region of smooth or idle dreams, our history
now arrives on the confines, where daylight and truth
meet us with a clear dawn, representing to our view,
though at a far distance, true colours and shapes.
For albeit Caesar, whose authority we are now first to
follow, wanted not who taxed him of misrepresenting in
his Commentaries, yea in his civil war against Pompey,
much more, may we think, in the British affairs, of
whose little skill in writing he did not easily hope to
be contradicted ; yet now, in such variety of good au-
thors, we hardly can miss, from one hand or other, to
be sufficiently informed, as of things past so long
ago. But this will better be referred to a second dis-
COUll'SC.
THE SECOND BOOK.
I AM now to write of what befel the Britains from
fifty and three years before the birth of our Saviour,
when first the Romans came in, till the decay and ceas-
ing of that empire; a story of much truth, and for the
first hundred years and somewhat more, collected with-
out much labour. So many and so prudent were the
writers, which those two, the civilest and the wisest of
European nations, both Italy and Greece, afforded to
the actions of that puissant city. For worthy deeds
are not often destitute of worthy relaters: as by a cer-
tain fate, great acts and great cloquence have most
commonly gone hand in hand, equalling and honouring
each other in the same ages. It is true, that in obscurest
times, by shallow and unskilful writers, the indistinct
noise of many battles and devastations of many king-
doms, overrun and lost, hath come to our ears. For
what wonder, if in all ages ambition and the love of
rapine hath stirred up greedy and violent men to bold
attempts in wasting and ruining wars, which to poste-
rity have left the work of wild beasts and destroyers,
rather than the deeds and monuments of men and con-
querors But he whose just and true valour uses the
necessity of war and dominion not to destroy, but to
prevent destruction, to bring in liberty against tyrants,
law and civility among barbarous nãtions, knowing
that when he conquers all things else, he cannot conquer
Time or Detraction, wisely conscious of this his want,
as well as of his worth not to be forgotten or concealed,
honours and hath recourse to the aid of eloquence, his
friendliest and best supply; by whose immortal re-
cord his noble deeds, which else were transitory, become
fixed and durable against the force of years and gene-
rations, he fails not to continue through all posterity,
over Envy, Death, and Time also victorious. Therefore
when the esteem of science and liberal study waxes low
in the commonwealth, we may presume that also there
all civil Virtue and worthy action is grown as low to
a decline : and then cloquence as it were consorted in
the same destiny, with the decrease and fall of virtue,
corrupts also and fades; at least resigns her office of
relating to illiterate and frivolous historians, such as
the persons themselves both descrve, and are best pleas-
cd with ; whilst they want either the understanding
to choose better, or the innocence to dare invite the
examining and searching style of an intelligent and
ſaithful writer to the survey of their unsound exploits,
better befriended by obscurity than fame. As for these,
the only authors we have of British matters, while the
power of Rome reached hither, (for Gildas affirms that
of the Roman times no British writer was in his days
extant, or if any were, either burnt by enemies or
transported with such as fled the Pictish and Saxon
invasions,) these therefore only Roman authors there
be, who in the Latin tongue have laid together as much,
and perhaps more than was requisite to a history of
Britain. So that were it not for leaving an unsightly
gap so near to the beginning, I should have judged
this labour, wherein so little seems to be required above
transcription, almost superfluous. Notwithstanding
since I must through it, if aught by diligence may be
added or omitted, or by other disposing may be more
explained or more expressed, I shall assay.
Julius Caesar (of whom, and of the Roman free state
more than what appertains, is not here to be discours-
ed) having subdued most part of Gallia, which by a
potent faction he had obtained of the senate as his pro-
vince for many years, stirred up with a desire of adding
still more glory to his name, and the whole Roman
empire to his ambition ; some * say, with a far meaner
and ignobler, the desire of British pearls, whose big-
ness he delighted to balance in his hand; determines,
and that upon no unjust pretended occasion, to try his
force in the conquest also of Britain. For he under-
stood that the Britains in most of his Gallian wars had
sent supplies against him ; had received fugitives of
the Bellowaci his enemies; and were called over to
aid the cities of Armorica, which had the year before
conspired all in a new rebellion. Therefore Caesar,b
though now the summer well nigh ending, and the
season unagreeable to transport a war, yet judged it
would be great advantage, only to get entrance into
the isle, knowledge of men, the places, the ports, the
accesses; which then, it seems, were even to the Gauls
our neighbours almost unknown. For except mer-
chants and traders, it is not oft,” saith he, that any use
to travel thither; and to those that do, besides the sea-
coast, and the ports next to Gallia, nothing else is
known. But here I must require, as Pollio did, the
diligence, at least the memory, of Caesar: for if it were
true, as they of Rhemes told him, that Divitiacus, not
long before a puissant king of the Soissons, had Britain
also under his command, besides the Belgian colonies
which he affirms to have named, and peopled many
provinces there; if also the Britains had so frequently
given them aid in all their wars; if lastly, the Druid
learning honoured so much among them, were first
taught them out of Britain, and they who soonest
a Suet. vit, Caes.
b Year before Christ 53. c Caes. Conn. l. l.
2 I
484
Book II.
THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
would attain that discipline, sent hither to learn; d it
appears not how Britain at that time should be so ut-
terly unknown in Gallia, or only known to merchants,
yea to them so little, that being called together from
all parts, none could be found to inform Caesar of what
bigness the isle, what nations, how great, what use of
war they had, what laws, or so much as what commo-
dious havens for bigger vessels. Of all which things
as it were then first to make discovery, he sends Caius
Volusenus, in a long galley, with command to return
as soon as this could be effected. He in the mean
time with his whole power draws nigh to the Morine
coast, whence the shortest passage was into Britain.
Hither his navy, which he used against the Armoricans,
and what else of shipping can be provided, he draws
together. This known in Britain, the embassadors
are sent from many of the states there, who promise
hostages and obedience to the Roman empire. Them,
after audience given, Caesar as largely promising and
exhorting to continue in that mind, sends home, and
with them Comius of Arras, whom he had made king
of that country, and now secretly employed to gain a
Roman party among the Britains, in as many cities as
he found inclinable, and to tell them that he himself
was speeding thither. Volusenus, with what disco-
very of the island he could make from aboard his ship,
not daring to venture on the shore, within five days re-
turns to Caesar. Who soon after, with two legions,
ordinarily amounting, of Romans and their allies, to
about 25,000 foot, and 4500 horse, the foot in 80 ships
of burden, the horse in 18, besides what galleys were
appointed for his chief commanders, sets off, about the
third watch of night, with a good gale to sea; leaving
behind him Sulpitius Rufus to make good the port with
a sufficient strength. But the horse, whose appointed
shipping lay windbound eight mile upward in another
haven, had much trouble to embark. Caesar, now
within sight of Britain, beholds on every hill multi-
tudes of armed men ready to forbid his landing; and
*Cicero writes to his friend Atticus, that the accesses of
the island were wondrously fortified with strong works
or moles. Here from the fourth to the ninth hour of
day he awaits at anchor the coming up of his whole
fleet. Meanwhile, with his legates and tribunes, con-
sulting and giving order to fit all things for what
might happen in such a various and floating water-
fight as was to be expected. This place, which was a
narrow bay, close environed with hills, appearing no
way commodious, he removes to a plain and open
shore eight miles distant; commonly supposed about
Deal in Kent. Which when the Britains perceived,
their horse and chariots, as then they used in fight
scowering before, their main power specding after,
some thick upon the shore, others not tarrying to be
assailed, ride in among the waves to encounter, and
assault the Romans even under their ships, with such
a bold and free hardihood, that Caesar himself between
confessing and excusing that his soldiers were to come
down from their ships, to stand in water heavy armed,
and to ſight at once, denies not but that the terror of
such new and resolute opposition made them forget
their wonted valour. To succour which he commands
his galleys, a sight unusual to the Britains, and more
apt for motion, drawn from the bigger vessels, to row
against the open side of the enemy, and thence with
slings, engines, and darts, to beat them back. But
neither yet, though amazed at the strangeness of those
new seacastles, bearing up so near, and so swiftly as
almost to overwhelm them, the hurtling of oars, the
battering of fierce engines against their bodies barely
exposed, did the Britains give much ground, or the Ro-
mans gain; till he who bore the eagle of the tenth
legion, yet in the galleys, first beseeching his gods,
said thus aloud, “Leap down soldiers, unless you mean
to betray your ensign; I for my part will perform what
I owe to the commonwealth and my general.” This
uttered, overboard he leaps, and with his eagle fiercely
advanced runs upon the enemy; the rest heartening
one another not to admit the dishonour of so nigh losing
their chief standard, follow him resolutely. Now was
fought eagerly on both sides. Ours who well knew
their own advantages, and expertly used them, now in
the shallows, now on the sand, still as the Romans went
trooping to their ensigns, received them, dispatched
them, and with the help of their horse, put them every
where to great disorder. But Caesar causing all his
boats and shallops to be filled with soldiers, commanded
to ply up and down continually with relief where they
saw need; whereby at length all the foot now disem-
barked, and got together in some order on firm ground,
with a more steady charge put the Britains to flight:
but wanting all their horse, whom the winds yet with-
held from sailing, they were not able to make pur-
suit. In this confused fight," Scaeva a Roman soldier
having pressed too far among the Britains, and beset
round, after incredible valour shown, single against a
multitude, swam back safe to his general ; and in
the place that rung with his praises, earnestly besought
pardon for his rash adventure against discipline; which
modest confessing after no bad event, for such a deed,
wherein valour and ingenuity so much outweighed
transgression, easily made amends and preferred him
to be a centurion. Caesar also is brought in by Julian,
attributing to himself the honour (if it were at all an
honour to that person which he sustained) of being the
first that left his ship, and took land: but this were to
make Caesar less understand what became him than
Scaeva. The Britains finding themselves mastered in
fight, forth with send ambassadors to treat of peace,
promising to give hostages, and to be at command.
With them Comius of Arras also returned; whom hi-
thcrto, since his first coming from Caesar, they had de-
tained in prison as a spy: the blame whereof they lay
on the common people; for whose violence, and their
own imprudence, they crave pardon. Caesar complain-
ing they had first sought peace, and then without cause
had begun war, yet content to pardon them, commands
hostages: whereof part they bring in straight, others,
far up in the country to be sent for, they promise in a
few days. Meanwhile the people disbanded and sent
tl Cacs. Coin. 1. 4. e Cic. Att. l. 4. Ep. 17. f Camden.
g Valer. Max. Plutarch. h In Caesaribus.
Book II.
485
THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
home, many princes and chief men from all parts of
the isle submit themselves and their cities to the dis-
pose of Caesar, who lay then encamped, as is thought,
on Barham down. Thus had the Britains made their
peace; when suddenly an accident unlooked for put
new counsels into their minds. Four days after the
coming of Caesar, those eighteen ships of burden, which
from the upper haven had taken in all the Roman
horse, borne with a soft wind to the very coast, in sight
of the Roman camp, were by a sudden tempest scat-
tered and driven back, some to the port from whence
they loosed, others down into the west country; who
finding there no safety either to land or to cast anchor,
chose rather to commit themselves again to the trou-
bled sea; and, as Orosius reports, were most of them
cast away. The same night, it being full moon, the
galleys left upon dry land, were, unaware to the Ro-
mans, covered with a springtide, and the greater ships,
that lay off at anchor, torn and beaten with waves, to
the great perplexity of Caesar, and his whole army;
who now had neither shipping left to convey them back,
nor any provision made to stay here, intending to have
wintered in Gallia. All this the Britains well perceiv-
ing, and by the compass of his camp, which without
baggage appeared the smaller, guessing at his num-
bers, consult together, and one by one slyly withdraw-
ing from the camp, where they were waiting the con-
clusion of a peace, resolve to stop all provisions, and to
draw out the business till winter. Caesar, though ig-
norant of what they intended, yet from the condition
wherein he was, and their other hostages not sent, sus-
pecting what was likely, begins to provide apace, all
that might be, against what might happen; lays in
corn, and with materials fetched from the continent,
and what was left of those ships which were past help,
he repairs the rest. So that now by the incessant la-
bour of his soldiers, all but twelve were again made
serviceable. While these things are doing, one of the
legions being sent out to forage, as was accustomed,
and no suspicion of war, while some of the Britains
were remaining in the country about, others also going
and coming freely to the Roman quarters, they who
were in station at the camp gates sent speedily word
to Caesar, that from that part of the country, to which
the legion went, a greater dust than usual was seen to
rise. Caesar guessing the matter, commands the co-
horts of guard to follow him thither, two others to suc-
ceed in their stead, the rest all to arm and follow. They
had not marched long, when Caesar discerns his legion
sore overcharged: for the Britains not doubting but
that their enemies on the morrow would be in that
place, which only they had left unreaped of all their
harvest, had placed an ambush; and while they were
dispersed and busiest at their labour, set upon them,
killed some, and routed the rest. The manner of
their fight was from a kind of chariots; wherein riding
about and throwing darts, with the clutter of their
horse, and of their wheels, they ofttimes broke the
rank of their enemies; then retreating among the horse,
and quitting their chariots, they fought on foot. The
i Dion, Caesar Com. 5,
charioteers in the mean while somewhat aside from the
battle, set themselves in such order that their masters
at any time oppressed with odds, might retire safely
thither, having performed with one person both the
nimble service of a horseman, and the stedfast duty of
a foot soldier. So much they could with their chariots
by use and exercise, as riding on the speed down a steep
hill, to stop suddenly, and with a short rein turn swiftly,
now running on the beam, now on the yoke, then in
the seat. With this sort of new skirmishing the Ro-
mans now over-matched and terrified, Caesar with op-
portune aid appears; for then the Britains make a
stand : but he considering that now was not fit time to
offer battle, while his men were scarce recovered of so
late a fear, only keeps his ground, and soon after leads
back his legions to the camp. Further action for many
days following was hindered on both sides by foul
weather; in which time the Britains dispatching mes-
sengers round about, learn to how few the Romans
were reduced, what hope of praise and booty, and now,
if ever, of freeing themselves from the fear of like in-
vasions hereafter, by making these an example, if they
could but now uncamp their enemies; at this intima-
tion multitudes of horse and foot coming down from all
parts, make towards the Romans. Caesar foreseeing
that the Britains, though beaten and put to flight,
would easily evade his foot, yet with no more than
thirty horse, which Comius had brought over, draws
out his men to battle, puts again the Britains to flight,
pursues with slaughter, and returning burns and lays
waste all about. Whereupon embassadors the same
day being sent from the Britains to desire peace, Caesar
as his affairs at present stood, for so great a breach
of faith, only imposes on them double the former hos-
tages to be sent after him into Gallia: and because
September was nigh half spent, a season not fit to
tempt the sea with his weatherbeaten fleet, the same night
with a fair wind he departs towards Belgia; whither
two only of the British cities sent hostages, as they pro-
mised, the rest neglected. But at Rome when the news
came of Caesar's acts here, whether it were esteemed
a conquest or a fair escape, supplication of twenty days
is decreed by the senate, as either for an exploit done,
or a discovery made, wherein both Caesar and the Ro-
mans gloried not a little, though it brought no benefit
either to him or to the commonwealth.
The winter following, Caesar, as his custom was,
going into Italy, whenas he saw that most of the Bri-
tains regarded not to send their hostages, appoints his
legates whom he left in Belgia, to provide what pos-
sible shipping they could either build, or repair. Low
built they were to be, as thereby easier both to freight,
and to hale ashore; nor needed to be higher, because
the tide so often changing, was observed to make the
billows less in our sea than those in the Mediterranean:
broader likewise they were made, for the better trans-
porting of horses, and all other freightage, being in-
tended chiefly to that end. These all about six hundred
in a readiness, with twenty-eight ships of burden, and
what with adventurers, and other hulks about two hun-
486
Book II.
THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
dred, Cotta one of the legates wrote them, as Athenaeus
affirms, in all one thousand; Caesar from port Iccius, a
passage of some thirty mile over, leaving behind him
Labienus to guard the haven, and for other supply at
need, with five legions, though but two thousand horse,
about sunset hoisting sail with a slack south-west, at
midnight was becalmed. And finding when it was
light, that the whole navy lying on the current, had
fallen off from the isle, which now they could descry on
their left hand; by the unwearied labour of his sol-
diers, who refused not to tug the oar, and kept course
with ships under sail, he bore up as near as might be,
to the same place where he had landed the year before;
where about moon arriving," no enemy could be seen.
For the Britons, which in great number, as was after
known, had been there, at sight of so huge a fleet durst
not abide. Caesar forth with landing his army, and en-
camping to his best advantage, some notice being
given him by those he took, where to find his enemy;
with the whole power, save only ten cohorts, and three
hundred horse, left to Quintus Atrius for the guard
of his ships, about the third watch of the same night,
marches up twelve miles into the country. And at
length by a river, commonly thought the Stowre in
Kent, espies embattled the British forces. They with
their hoises and chariots advancing to the higher
banks, oppose the Romans in their march, and begin
the fight; but repulsed by the Roman cavalry, give back
into the woods to a place notably made strong both by
art and nature; which, it seems, had been a fort, or
hold of strength raised heretofore in time of wars among
themselves. I'or entrance, and access on all sides, by
the ſelling of huge trees overthwart one another, was
quite barred up; and within these the Britons did their
utmost to keep out the enemy. But the soldiers of the
seventh legion locking all their shields together like a
roof close over head, and others raising a mount, with-
out much loss of blood took the place, and drove them
all to forsake the woods. I’ursuit they made not long,
as being through ways unknown; and now evening
came on, which they more wisely spent in choosing
out where to pitch and fortify their camp that night.
The next morning Caesar had but newly sent out his
men in three bodies to pursue, and the last no further
gone than yet in sight, when horsemen all in post from
Quintus Atrius bring word to Caesar, that almost all
his ships in a tempest that night had suffered wreck,
and lay broken upon the shore. Caesar at this news
recalls his legions, himself in all haste riding back to
the seaside, beheld with his eyes the ruinous prospect.
About forty vessels were sunk and lost, the residue so
torn and shaken, as not to be new-rigged without much
labour. Straight he assembles what number of ship-
wrights either in his own legions or from beyond sea
could be summoned; appoints Labienus on the Belgian
side to build more; and with a dreadful industry of ten
days, not respiting the soldiers day or night, drew up
all his ships, and intrenched them round within the
circuit of his camp. This done, and leaving to their
defence the same strength as before, he returns with
his whole forces to the same wood, where he had de-
feated the Britons; who preventing him with greater
powers than before, had now repossessed themselves of
the place, under Cassibelan their chief leader: whose
territory from the states bordering on the sea was
divided by the river Thames about eighty miles in-
ward. With him formerly other cities had continual
war; but now in the common danger had all made
choice of him to be their general. Here the British
horse and charioteers meeting with the Roman cavalry
fought stoutly; and at first, something overmatched,
they retreat to the near advantage of their woods and
hills, but still followed by the Romans, made head
again, cut off the forwardest among them, and after
some pause, while Caesar, who thought the day's work
had been done, was busied about the intrenching of his
samp, march out again, give fierce assault to the very
stations of his guards and sentries; and while the main
cohorts of two legions, that were sent to the alarm,
stood within a small distance of each other, terrified at
the newness and boldness of their fight, charged back
again through the midst, without loss of a man. Of
the Romans that day was slaim Quintus Laberius Durus
a tribune; the Britons having ſought their fill at the
very entrance of Caesar's camp, and sustained the re-
sistance of his whole army intrenched, gave over the
assault. Caesar here acknowledges, that the Roman
way both of arming, and of fighting, was not so well
fitted against this kind of enemy; for that the foot in
heavy armour could not follow their cunning flight, and
durst not by ancient discipline stir from their ensign;
and the horse alone disjoined from the legions, against
a foe that turned suddenly upon them with a mixed
encounter both of horse and foot, were in equal danger
both following and retiring. Besides their fashion
was, not in great bodies, and close order, but in small
divisions and open distances to make their onset; ap-
pointing others at certain spaces, now to relieve and
bring off the weary, now to succeed and renew the con-
flict; which argued no small experience, and use of
arms. Next day the Britons afar off upon the hills
begin to show themselves here and there, and though
less boldly than before, to skirmish with the Roman
horse. But at noon Caesar having sent out three
legions, and all his horse, with Trebonius the legate,
to seek fodder, suddenly on all sides they set upon the
foragers, and charge up after them to the very legions,
and their standards. The Romans with great courage
beat them back, and in the chace, being well seconded
by the legions, not giving them time either to rally, to
stand, or to descend from their chariots as they were
wont, slew many. From this overthrow, the Britons
that dwelt farther off betook them home; and came no
more after that time with so great a power against
Caesar. Whereof advertised, he marches onward to
the frontiers of Cassibelan,' which on this side was
bounded by the Thames, not passable except in one
place, and that difficult, about Coway-stakes near Oat-
lands, as is conjectured. Hither coming he descries
on the other side great forces of the enemy, placed in
k Pefore the birth of Christ, 52.
l Camden,
Book II.
487
THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
good array; the bank set all with sharp stakes, others
in the bottom, covercq with water; whereof the marks,
in Beda's time, were to be seen, as he relates. This
having learned by such as were taken, or had run to
him, he ſirst commands his horse to pass over; then his
foot, who wading up to the neck, went on so resolutely
and so fast, that they on the other side, not enduring
the violence, retreated and fled. Cassibclan no more
now in hope to contend for victory, dismissing all but
four thousand of those charioteers, through woods and
intricate ways attends their motion; where the Romans
are to pass, drives all before him ; and with continual
sallies upon the horse, where they least expected, cut-
ting off some and terriſying others, compels them so
close together, as gave them no leave to fetch in prey
or booty without ill success. Whereupon Caesar strictly
commanding all not to part from the legions, had
nothing left him in his way but empty fields and
houses, which he spoiled and burnt. Meanwhile the
Trinobantes, a state or kingdom, and perhaps the great-
est then among the Britons, less ſavouring Cassibelan,
send ambassadors, and yield to Caesar upon this reason.
Immanuentius had been their king ; him Cassibelan
had slain, and purposed the like to Mandubratius his
son, whom Orosius calls Androgorius, Beda Androgius;
but the youth escaping by flight into Gallia, put him-
self under the protection of Caesar. These entreat, that
Mandubratius may be still defended, and sent home to
succeed in his father's right. Caesar sends him, de-
mands forty hostages and provision for his army, which
they inmediately bring in, and have their confines
protected from the soldiers. By their example the
Cenimagni, Segontiaci, Ancalites, Bibroci, Cassi (so I
write them, for the modern names are but guessed) on
like terms make their peace. By them he learns that
the town of Cassibelan, supposed to be Verulam, was
not far distant; fenced about with woods and marshes,
well stuffed with men and much cattle. For towns
them in Britain were only woody places ditched round,
and with a mud wall encompassed against the inroads
of enemies. Thither goes Caesar with his legions, and
though a place of great strength both by art and
nature, assaults it in two places. The Britons after
some defence fled out all at another end of the town;
in the flight many were taken, many slain, and great
store of cattle found there. Cassibelan for all these
losses yet deserts not himself; nor was yet his authority
so much impaired, but that in Kent, though in a man-
ner possessed by the enemy, his messengers and com-
mands find obedience enough to raise all the people.
By his direction, Cingetorix, Carvilius, Taximagulus,
and Segonax, four kings reigning in those countries
which lie upon the sea, lead them on to assault that
camp, wherein the Romans had entrenched their ship-
ping: but they whom Caesar left there issuing out slew
many, and took prisoner Cingetorix a noted leader,
without loss of their own. Cassibelan after so many
defeats, moved especially by revolt of the cities from
him, their inconstancy and falsehood one to another,
uses mediation by Comius of Arras to send ambassadors
In Pliny. n Oros. lib. 6, c. 7, and 8. o Dion, Mela, Caesar,
about treaty of yielding. Caesar, who had determined
to winter in the continent, by reason that Gallia was
unsettled, and not much of the summer now behind,
commands him only hostages, and what yearly tribute
the island should pay to Rome, forbids him to molest
the Trinobantes, or Mandubratius; and with his hos-
tages, and a great number of captives, he puts to sea,
having at twice cnbarked his whole army. At his return
to Rome, as from a glorious enterprise, he offers to Venus,
the patroness of his family, a corslet of British pearls."
Howbeit other ancient writers have spoken more
doubtfully of Caesar's victories here; and that in plain
terms he fled from hence; for which the common verse
in Lucan, with divers passages here and there in Taci-
tus, is alleged. Paulus Orosius," who took what he
wrote from a history of Suetonius now lost, writes, that
Caesar in his first journey, entertained with a sharp
fight, lost no small number of his foot, and by tempest
nigh all his horse. Dion affirms, that once in the
second expedition all his foot were routed ; Orosius
that another time all his horse. The British author,
whom I use only then when others are all silent, hath
many trivial discourses of Caesar's being here, which
are best omitted. Nor have we more of Cassibelan,
than what the same story tells, how he warred soon
after with Androgeus, about his nephew slain by Eve-
linus nephew to the other; which business at length
composed, Cassibelan dies, and was buried in York, if
the Monmouth book fable not. But at Caesar's coming
hither, such likeliest were the Britons, as the writers
of those times,” and their own actions represent them ;
in courage and warlike readiness to take advantage by
ambush or sudden onset, not inferiour to the Romans,
nor Cassibelan to Caesar; in weapons, arms, and the
skill of encamping, embattling, fortiſying, overmatch-
ed; their weapons were a short spear and light target,
a sword also by their side, their fight sometimes in
chariots fanged at the axle with iron sithes, their bodies
most part naked, only painted with woad in sundry
figures, to seem terrible,” as they thought, but, pursued
by enemies, not mice of their painting to run into bogs
worse than wild Irish up to the neck, and there to stay
many days holding a certain morsel in their mouths no
bigger than a bean, to suffice hunger;' but that receipt,
and the temperance it taught, is long since unknown
among us : their towns and strong holds were spaces
of ground fenced about with a ditch, and great trees
felled overthwart each other, their buildings within
were thatched houses for themselves and their cattle :
in peace the upland inhabitants, besides hunting, tended
their flocks and herds, but with little skill of country
affairs; the making of cheese they commonly knew
not, wool or flax they spun not, gardening and planting
many of them knew not; clothing they had none, but
what the skins of beasts afforded them, and that not
always; yet gallantry they had,s painting their own
skins with several portraitures of beast, bird, or flower,
a vanity which hath not yet left us, removed only from
the skin to the skirt behung now with as many coloured
ribands and gewgaws: towards the seaside they tilled
r IIerodian. S Solinus.
p II erodian. q Dion.
488
Book II
THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
the ground, and lived much after the manner of the Gauls
their neighbours, or first planters: their money was
brazen pieces or iron rings, their best merchandize tin,
the rest trifles of glass, ivory, and such like:" yet gems
and pearls they had, saith Mela, in some rivers: their
ships of light timber wickered with ozier between, and
covered over with leather, served not therefore to trans-
port them far, and their commodities were fetched away
by foreign merchants: their dealing, saith Diodorus,
plain and simple without fraud; their civil government
under many princes and states,” not confederate or con-
sulting in common, but mistrustful, and ofttimes warring
one with the other, which gave them up one by one an
easy conquest to the Romans: their religion was go-
verned by a sort of priests or magicians, called Druids
from the Greek name of an oak, which tree they had in
great reverence, and the mistletoe especially growing
thereon. Pliny writes them skilled in magic no less
than those of Persia; by their abstaining from a hen,
a hare, and a goose, from fish also, saith Dion, and their
opinion of the soul's passing after death into other
bodies,y they may be thought to have studied Pythago-
ras; yet philosophers I cannot call them, reported men
factious and ambitious, contending sometimes about
the archpriesthood not without civil war and slaughter;
nor restrained they the people under them from a lewd,
adulterous, and incestuous life, ten or twelve men, ab-
surdly against nature, possessing one woman as their
common wife, though of nearest kin, mother, daughter,
or sister; progenitors not to be gloried in. But the
gospel, not long after preached here, abolished such
impurities, and of the Romans we have cause not to
say much worse, than that they beat us into some
civility; likely else to have continued longer in a bar-
barous and savage manner of life. After Julius (for
Julius before his death tyrannously had made himself
emperor of the Roman commonwealth, and was slain
in the senate for so doing) he who next obtained the
empire, Octavianus Caesar Augustus, either contemning
the island, as Strabo would have us think, whose
neither benefit was worth the having nor enmity worth
the fearing; or out of a wholesome state-maxim,
as some say, to moderate and bound the empire from
growing vast and unwieldy, made no attempt against
the Britons. But the truer cause was party civil war
among the Romans, partly other affairs more urging.
For about twenty years after,” all which time the Bri-
tons had lived at their own dispose, Augustus, in imi-
tation of his uncle Julius, either intending or seeming
to intend an expedition hither, was come into Gallia,
when the news of a revolt in Pannonia diverted him :b
about seven years after in the same resolution, what
with the unsettledness of Gallia, and what with am-
bassadors from Britain which met him there, he pro-
ceeded not. The next year, difference arising about
covenants, he was again prevented by other new com-
motions in Spain. Nevertheless some of the British
potentates omitted not to seek his friendship by gifts
offered in the Capitol, and other obsequious addresses.
Insomuch that the whole island * became even in those
days well known to the Romans; too well perhaps for
them, who from the knowledge of us were so like to
prove enemies. But as for tribute, the Britons paid none
to Augustus, except what easy customs were levied on
theslight commodities wherewith they traded into Gallia.
Aſter Cassibelan, Tenantius the younger son of Lud,
according to the Monmouth story, was made king.
For Androgeus the elder, conceiving himself generally
hated for siding with the Romans, forsook his claim
here, and followed Caesar's fortune. This king is re-
corded just and warlike.
His son Kymbeline, or Cunobeline, succeeding, was
brought up, as is said, in the court of Augustus, and
with him held friendly correspondences to the end ;
was a warlike prince; his chief seat Camalodunum,
or Maldon, as by certain of his coins, yet to be seen,
appears. Tiberius, the next emperor, adhering always
to the advice of Augustus, and of himself less caring
to extend the bounds of his empire, sought not the
Britons; and they as little to incite him, sent home
courteously the soldiers of Germanicus, that by ship-
wreck had been cast on the British shore." But Ca-
ligula,” his successor, a wild and dissolute tyrant, hav-
ing passed the Alps with intent to rob and spoil those
provinces, and stirred up by Adminius the son of Cu-
nobeline; who, by his father banished, with a small
number fled thither to him, made semblance of march-
ing toward Britain; but being come to the ocean, and
there behaving himself madly and ridiculously, went
back the same way : yet sent before him boasting
letters to the senate, as if all Britain had been
yielded him. Cunobeline now dead, Adminius the
eldest by his father banished from his country, and
by his own practice against it from the crown,
though by an old coin seeming to have also reigned ;
Togodumnus, and Caractacus the two younger, uncer-
tain whether unequal or subordinate in power, were
advanced into his place. But through civil discord,
Bericus (what he was further, is not known) with
others of his party flying to Rome,f persuaded Clau-
dius the emperor to an invasion. Claudius now consul
the third time, and desirous to do something, whence
he might gain the honour of a triumph, at the persua-
sion of these fugitives, whom the Britons demanding,
he had denied to render, and they for that cause had
denied further amity with Rome, makes choice of this
island for his province :g and sends before him Aulus
Plautius the praetor, with this command, if the business
grew difficult, to give him notice. Plautius with much
ado persuaded the legions to move out of Gallia, mur-
muring that now they must be put to make war be-
yond the world's end, for so they counted Britain; and
what welcome Julius the dictator found there, doubt-
less they had heard. At last prevailed with, and hoist-
ing sail from three several ports, lest their landing
should in any one place be resisted, meeting cross
d Tacit, an. l. 2
t Caesar. u Tacitus, Diodor, Strabo, Lucan. ...x Tacitus. ... y Caesar.
z Strabo, l. 2. a Year before the birth of Christ, 32.
b Dion, 1.49 : year before the birth of Christ, 25 : Dion, l. 53, 24.
c Strabo, l; 4. - . .
e Year after the birth of Christ, 16. Dion, Sueton. Cat. Ano. Dom. 40.
f l]ion. g 43. Sueton.
Book II. THE HISTORY
OF ENGLAND. 489
winds, they were cast back and disheartened; till in
the night a meteor shooting flames from the East, and
as they ſancied directing their course, they took heart
again to try the sea, and without opposition landed.
For the Britons, having heard of their unwillingness
to come, had been negligent to provide against them ;
and retiring to the woods and moors, intended to frus-
trate and wear them out with delays, as they had served
Caesar before. Plautius, after much trouble to find
them out, encountering first with Caractacus, then with
Togodumnus, overthrew them; and receiving into
conditions part of the Boduni, who were then subject
to the Catuellani, and leaving there a garrison, went
on toward a river: where the Britons not imagining
that Plautius without a bridge could pass, lay on the
further side careless and secure. But he sending first
the Germans, whose custom was, armed as they were,
to swim with ease the strongest current, commands
them to strike especially at the horses, whereby the
chariots, wherein consisted their chief art of fight, be-
came unserviceable. To second them he sent Vespa-
sian, who in his latter days obtained the empire, and
Sabinus his brother; who unexpectedly assailing those
who were least aware, did much execution. Yet not
for this were the Britons dismayed; but reuniting the
next day, fought with such a courage, as made it hard
to decide which way hung the victory : till Caius
Sidius Geta, at point to have been taken, recovered
himself so valiantly, as brought the day on his side;
for which at Rome he received high honours. After
this the Britons drew back toward the mouth of
Thames, and, acquainted with those places, crossed
over; where the Romans following them through bogs
and dangerous flats, hazarded the loss of all. Yet the
Germans getting over, and others by a bridge at some
place above, fell on them again with sundry alarms
and great slaughter; but in the heat of pursuit run-
ning themselves again into bogs and mires, lost as
many of their own. Upon which ill success, and see-
ing the Britons more enraged at the death of Togo-
dumnus, who in one of these battles had been slain,
Plautius fearing the worst, and glad that he could hold
what he held, as was enjoined him, sends to Claudius.
He who waited ready with a huge preparation, as if
not safe enough amidst the flower of all his Romans,
like a great Eastern king, with armed elephants
marches through Gallia. So full of peril was this en-
terprise esteemed, as not without all this equipage, and
stranger terrours than Roman armies, to meet the
native and the naked British valour defending their
country. Joined with Plautius, who encamping on
the bank of Thames attended him, he passes the river.
The Britons, who had the courage, but not the wise
conduct of old Cassibelan, laying all stratagem aside,
in downright manhood scruple not to affront in open
field almost the whole power of the Roman empire.
But overcome and vanquished, part by force, others by
treaty come in and yield. Claudius therefore, who
took Camalodunum, the royal seat of Cunobeline, was
often by the army saluted Imperator; a military title
which usually they gave their general after any notable
exploit; but to others, not above once in the same
war; as if Claudius, by these acts, had deserved more
than the laws of Rome had provided honour to reward.
Having therefore disarmed the Britons, but remitted
the confiscation of their goods," for which they wor-
shipped him with sacrifice and temple as a god, leaving
Plautius to subdue what remained ; he returns to
Rome, from whence he had been absent only six
months, and in Britain but sixteen days; sending the
news before him of his victories, though in a small part
of the island. By which is manifestly refuted that
which Eutropius and Orosius write of his conquering
at that time also the Orcades islands, lying to the North
of Scotland; and not conquered by the Romans (for
aught found in any good author) till above forty years
aſter, as shall appear. To Claudius the senate, as for
achievements of highest merit, decreed excessive
honours; arches, triumphs, annual solemnities, and the
surname of Britannicus both to him and his son.
Suetonius writes, that Claudius found here no resist-
ance, and that all was done without stroke: but this
seems not probable. The Monmouth writer names
these two sons of Cunobeline, Guiderius and Arviragus;
that Guiderius being slain in fight, Arviragus, to con-
ceal it, put on his brother's habiliments, and in his per-
son held up the battle to a victory; the rest, as of Hano
the Roman captain, Genuissa the emperor's daughter,
and such like stuff, is too palpably untrue to be worth
rehearsing in the midst of truth. Plautius after this,
employing his fresh forces to conquer on, and quiet the
rebelling countries, found work enough to deserve at
his return a kind of triumphant riding into the Capitol
side by side with the emperor.i Vespasian also under
Plautius had thirty conflicts with the enemy; in one
of which encompassed, and in great danger, he was
valiantly and piously rescued by his son Titus : * two
powerful nations he subdued here, above twenty towns
and the Isle of Wight; for which he received at Rome
triumphal ornaments, and other great dignities. For
that city in reward of virtue was ever magnificent;
and long after when true merit was ceased among
them, lest any thing resembling virtue should want
honour, the same rewards were yet allowed to the very
shadow and ostentation of merit. Ostorius in the room
of Plautius vicepraetor met with turbulent affairs; the
Britons not ceasing to vex with inroads all those coun-
tries that were yielded to the Romans; and now the
more eagerly,” supposing that the new general, unac-
quainted with his army, and on the edge of winter,
would not hastily oppose them. But he weighing
that first events were most available to breed fear or
contempt, with such cohorts as were next at hand, sets
out against them : whom having routed, so close he
follows, as one who meant not to be every day molest-
ed with the cavils of a slight peace, or an emboldened
enemy. Lest they should make head again, he dis-
arms whom he suspects; and to surround them, places
many garrisons upon the rivers of Antona and Sabrina.
But the Icenians, a stout people, untouched yet by
k Sueton. Vesp, Dio. l. 60, 47. -
b Dion, I. 62, Tacit, an. 14, 44. i Sueton. Claud. 5, 24.
l 50. Tacit, an. 12. m Futropius,
490
Book II.
THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
these wars, as having before sought alliance with the
Romans, were the first that brooked not this. By their
example others rise; and in a chosen place, fenced
with high banks of earth and narrow lanes to prevent
the horse, warily encamp. Ostorius though yet not
strengthened with his legions, causes the auxiliar
bands, his troops also alighting, to assault the ram-
part. They within, though pestered with their own
number, stood to it like men resolved, and in a narrow
compass did remarkable deeds. But overpowered at
last, and others by their success quieted, who till then
wavered, Ostorius next bends his force upon the Can-
gians, wasting all even to the sea of Ireland, without
foe in his way, or them, who durst, ill handled; when
the Brigantes, attempting new matters, drew him back
to settle first what was unsecure behind him. They, of
whom the chief were punished, the rest forgiven, soon
gave over; but the Silures, no way tractable, were not
to be repressed without a set war. To further this,
Camalodunum was planted with a colony of veteran
soldiers; to be a firm and ready aid against revolts,
and a means to teach the natives Roman law and
civility. Cogidunus also a British king, their fast
friend, had to the same intent certain cities given
him : " a haughty craft, which the Romans used, to
make kings also the servile agénts of enslaving others.
But the Silures, hardy of themselves, relied more on
the valour of Caractacus; whom many doubtful, many
prosperous successes had made eminent above all that
ruled in Britain. He, adding to his courage policy,
and knowing himself to be of strength inferior, in
other advantages the better, makes the seat of his war
among the Ordovices; a country wherein all the odds
were to his own party, all the difficulties to his enemy.
The hills and every access he fortified with heaps of
stones, and guards of men ; to come at whom a river
of unsafe passage must be first waded. The place, as
Camden conjectures, had thence the name of Caer-ca-
radoc on the west edge of Shropshire. He himself
continually went up and down, animating his officers
and leaders, that “this was the day, this the field,
either to defend their liberty, or to die free;” calling to
mind the names of his glorious ancestors, who drove
Caesar the dictator out of Britain, whose valour hither-
to had preserved them from bondage, their wives and
children from dishonour. Inflamed with these words,
they all vow their utmost, with such undaunted resolu-
tion as amazed the Roman general; but the soldiers
less weighing, because less knowing, clamoured to be
led on against any danger. Ostorius, after wary cir-
cumspection, bids them pass the river: the Britons no
sooner had them within reach of their arrows, darts,
and stones, but slew and wounded largely of the Ro-
mans. They on the other side closing their ranks,
and over head closing their targets, threw down the
loose rampires of the Britons, and pursue them up the
hills, both light and armed legions; till what with
galling darts and heavy strokes, the Britons, who wore
neither helmet nor cuirass to defend them, were at last
overcome. This the Romans thought a famous vic-
n Tacit. vit. Agric.
w
tory; wherein the wife and daughter of Caractacus
were taken, his brothers also reduced to obedience;
himself escaping to Cartismandua, queen of the Bri-
gantes, against faith given was to the victors delivered
bound; having held out against the Romans nine
years, saith Tacitus, but by truer computation, se-
ven. Whereby his name was up through all the ad-
joining provinces, even to Italy and Rome; many
desiring to see who he was, that could withstand
so many years the Roman puissance: and Caesar,
to extol his own victory, extolled the man whom he
had vanquished. Being brought to Rome, the peo-
ple as to a solemn spectacle were called together,
the emperor's guard stood in arms. In order came
first the king's servants, bearing his trophies won
in other wars, next his brothers, wife, and daughter,
last himself. The behaviour of others, through fear,
was low and degenerate; he only neither in coun-
tenance, word, or action submissive, standing at the
tribunal of Claudius, briefly spake to this purpose: “If
my mind, Caesar, had been as moderate in the height
of fortune, as my birth and dignity was eminent,
I might have come a friend rather than a captive into
this city. Nor couldst thou have disliked him for a
confederate, so noble of descent, and ruling so many na-
tions. My present estate to me disgraceful, to thee is
glorious. I had riches, horses, arms, and men ; no
wonder then if I contended, not to lose them. But if
by fate, yours only must be empire, then of necessity
ours among the rest must be subjection. If I sooner
had been brought to yield, my misfortune had been
less notorious, your conquest had been less renowned ;
and in your severest determining of me, both will be
soon forgotten. But if you grant that I shall live, by
me will live to you for ever that praise which is so near
divine, the clemency of a conqueror.” Caesar moved
at such a spectacle of fortune, but especially at the no-
bleness of his bearing it, gave him pardon, and to all
the rest. They all unbound, submissly thank him, and
did like reverence to Agrippina the emperor's wife, who
sat by in state; a new and disdained sight to the manly
eyes of Romans, a woman sitting public in her female
pride among ensigns and armed cohorts. To Ostorius
triumph is decreed; and his acts esteemed equal to
theirs, that brought in bonds to Rome famousest kings.
But the same prosperity attended not his later actions
here; for the Silures, whether to revenge their loss of
Caractacus, or that they saw Ostorius, as if now all
were done, less earnest to restrain them, beset the pre-
fect of his camp, left there with legionary bands to ap-
point garrisons: and had not speedy aid come in from
the neighbouring holds and castles, had cut them all
off; notwithstanding which, the prefect with eight
centurions, and many their stoutest men, were slain :
and upon the neck of this, meeting first with Roman
foragers, then with other troops hasting to their relief,
utterly foiled and broke them also. Ostorius sending
more aſter, could hardly stay their flight ; till the
weighty legions coming on, at first poised the battle,
at length turned the scale : to the Britons without
O”
8-)
y
S
Book II.
491
THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
much loss, for by that time it grew night. Then was
the war shivered, as it were, into small frays and bick-
erings; not unlike sometimes to so many robberies, in
woods, at waters, as chance or valour, advice or rash-
ness, led them on, commanded or without command.
That which most exasperated the Silures, was a report
of certain words cast out by the emperor, “That he
would root them out to the very name.” Therefore two
cohorts more of auxiliars, by the avarice of their leaders
too securely pillaging, they quite intercepted; and be-
stowing liberally the spoils and captives, whereof they
took plenty, drew other countries to join with them.
These losses falling so thick upon the Romans, Osto-
rius with the thought and anguish thereof ended his
days; the Britons rejoicing, although no battle, that
yet adverse war had worn out so great a soldier. Caesar
in his place ordains Aulus Didius; but ere his coming,
though much hastened, that the province might not
want a governor, the Silures had given an overthrow
to Manlius Valens with his legion, rumoured on both
sides greater than was true, by the Silures to animate
the new general ; by him in a double respect, of the
more praise if he quelled them, or the more excuse if
he failed. Meantime the Silures forgot not to infest
the Roman pale with wide excursions; till Didius
marching out, kept them somewhat more within bounds.
Nor were they long to seek, who after Caractacus should
lead them ; for next to him in worth and skill of war,
Venutius, a prince of the Brigantes, merited to be their
chief. He at first faithful to the Romans, and by them
protected, was the husband of Cartismandua, queen of
the Brigantes, himself perhaps reigning elsewhere.
She who had betrayed Caractacus and her country
to adorn the triumph of Claudius, thereby grown
powerful and gracious with the Romans, presuming
on the hire of her treason, descrted her husband;
and marrying Vellocatus one of his squires, con-
ſers on him the kingdom also. This deed so odious
and full of infamy, disturbed the whole state; Venu-
tius with other forces, and the help of her own subjects,
who detested the example of so foul a fact, and withal
the uncomeliness of their subjection to the monarchy
of a woman, a piece of manhood not every day to be
found among Britons, though she had got by subtile
train his brother with many of his kindred into her
hands, brought her soon below the confidence of being
able to resist longer. When imploring the Roman aid,
with much ado, and after many a hard encounter, she
escaped the punishment which was ready to have seized
her. Venutius thus debarred the authority of ruling
his own household, justly turns his anger against the
Romans themselves; whose magnanimity not wont to
undertake dishonourable causes, had arrogantly inter-
meddled in his domestic affairs, to uphold the rebellion
of an adulteress against her husband. And the king-
dom he retained against their utmost opposition; and
of war gave them their fill; first in a sharp conflict of
uncertain event, then against the legion of Caesius Na-
sica. Insomuch that Didius growing old, and manag-
ing the war by deputies, had work enough to stand on
o Tacit. vit. Agric.
his deſence, with the gaining now and then of a small
castle. And Nero 9 (for in that part of the isle things
continued in the same plight to the reign of Vespasian)
was minded but for shame to have withdrawn the Ro-
man forces out of Britain : in other parts whereof,
about the same time other things befel.P. Verannius,
whom Nero sent hither to succeed Didius, dying in
his first year, save a few inroads upon the Silures, left
only a great boast behind him, “That in two years, had
he lived, he would have conquered all.” But Suetonius
Paulinus, who next was sent hither, esteemed a soldier
equal to the best in that age, for two years together
went on prosperously, both confirming what was got,
and subduing onward. At last over-confident of his
present actions, and emulating others, of whose deeds
he heard from abroad, marches up as far as Moma, the
isle of Anglesey, a populous place. For they, it seems,
had both entertained fugitives, and given good assist-
ance to the rest that withstood him. He makes him
boats with flat bottoms, fitted to the shallows which he
expected in that narrow frith; his foot so passed over,
his horse waded or swam. Thick upon the shore stood
several gross bands of men well weaponed, many
women like furies running to and fro in dismal habit,
with hair loose about their shoulders, held torches in
their hands. The Druids (those were their priests, of
whom more in another place) with hands liſt up to
Heaven uttering direful prayers, astonished the Ro-
mans; who at so strange a sight stood in amaze,
though wounded : at length awakened and encouraged
by their general, not to fear a barbarous and lunatic
rout, fall on, and beat them down scorched and rolling
in their own fire. Then were they yoked with garri-
sons, and the places consecrate to their bloody super-
stitions destroyed. For whom they took in war, they
held it lawful to sacrifice; and by the entrails of men
used divination. While thus Paulinus had his thought
still fixed before to go on winning, his back lay broad
open to occasion of losing more behind : for the Bri-
tons, urged and oppressed with many unsufferable in-
juries, had all banded themselves to a general revolt.
The particular causes are not all written by one au-
thor; Tacitus who lived next those times of any to us
extant, writes that Prasutagus king of the Icenians,
abounding in wealth, had left Caesar coheir with his
two daughters; thereby hoping to have secured from
all wrong both his kingdom and his house; which fell
out far otherwise. For under colour to oversee and
take possession of the emperor's new inheritance, his
kingdom became a prey to centurions, his house to
ravening officers, his wife Boadicea violated with
stripes, his daughters with rape, the wealthiest of his
subjects, as it were, by the will and testament of their
king thrown out of their estates, his kindred made lit-
tle better than slaves. The new colony also at Cama-
lodunum took house or land from whom they pleased,
terming them slaves and vassals; the soldiers comply-
ing with the colony, out of hope hereafter to use the
same licence themselves. Moreover the temple erected
to Claudius as a badge of their eternal slavery, stood a
p Tacit. Hist. 3. Sueton.
492
Book II.
THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
great eyesore; the priests whereof, under pretext of
what was due to the religious service, wasted and em-
bezzled each man's substance upon themselves. And
Catus Decianus the procurator endeavoured to bring
all their goods within the compass of new confiscation,"
Lastly,
Seneca, in his books a philosopher, having drawn the
Britons unwillingly to borrow of him vast sums upon
fair promises of easy loan, and for repayment to take
their own time, on a sudden compels them to pay in
all at once with great extortion. Thus provoked by
heaviest sufferings, and thus invited by opportunities
in the absence of Paulinus, the Icenians, and by their
examples the Trinobantes, and as many else as hated
servitude, rise up in arms. Of these ensuing troubles
many foregoing signs appeared; the image of victory
at Camalodunum fell down of itself with her face turn-
ed, as it were, to the Britons; certain women, in a kind
of ecstacy, foretold of calamitics to come : in the coun-
cil-house were heard by night barbarous noises; in the
theatre hideous howlings, in the creek horrid sights,
betokening the destruction of that colony; hereto the
ocean seeming of a bloody hue, and human shapes at
low ebb, leſt imprinted on the sand, wrought in the
Britons new courage, in the Romans unwonted fears.
Camalodunum,where the Romans had seated themselves
to dwell pleasantly, rather than defensively, was not
fortificſ, ; against that therefore the Britons make first
assault. The soldiers within were not very many.
Decianus the procurator could send them but two hun-
dred, those ill armed : and through the treachery of
some among them, who secretly favoured the insurrec-
tion, they had deferred both to entrench, and to send
out such as bore not arms; such as did, flying to the
temple, which on the second day was forcibly taken,
were all put to the sword, the temple made a heap, the
rest rifled and burnt. Petilius Cerealis coming to his
succour, is in his way met and overthrown, his whole
legion cut to pieces; he with his horse hardly escaping
to the Roman camp. Decianus, whose rapine was the
cause of all this, fled into Gallia. But Suetonius at
these tidings not dismayed, through the midst of his
enemy's country, marches to London (though not
to ruled a colony, yet full of Roman inhabitants, and
for the frequency of trade, and other commodities, a
town even them of principal note) with purpose to have
made there the seat of war. But considering the
smallness of his numbers, and the late rashness of Pe-
tilius, he chooses rather with the loss of one town to
save the rest. Nor was he flexible to any prayers or
weeping of them that besought him to tarry there; but
taking with him such as were willing, gave signal to
depart; they who through weakness of sex or age, or
love of the place, went not along, perished by the
enemy; so did Verulam, a Roman free town. For the
Britons omitting forts and castles, flew thither first
where richest booty and the hope of pillaging tolled
them on. In this massacre about seventy thousand
Romans and their associates, in the places above men-
tioned, of certain lost their lives. None might be
by disavowing the remitment of Claudius.
q Dion. r Dion. 1, 62.
spared, none ransomed, but tasted all either a present
or a lingering death; no cruelty that either outrage or
the insolence of success put into their heads, was left
unacted. The Roman wives and virgins hanged up
all naked," had their breasts cut off, and sewed to their
mouths; that in the grimness of death they might
seem to eat their own flesh; while the Britons ſell to
feasting and carousing in the temple of Andate their
goddess of victory. Suetonius adding to his legion
other old officers and soldiers thereabout, which gather-
ed to him, were near upon ten thousand; and purpos-
ing with those not to defer battle, had chosen a place
narrow, and not to be overwinged, on his rear a wood;
being well informed that his enemy were all in front
on a plain unapt for ambush: the legionaries stood
thick in order, empaled with light armed ; the horse
on either wing. The Britons in companies and
squadrons were every where shouting and swarming,
such a multitude as at other time never; no less
reckoned than two hundred and thirty thousand : so
fierce and confident of victory, that their wives also
came in waggons to sit and behold the sports, as they
made full account of killing Romans: a folly doubt-
less for the serious Romans to smile at, as a sure token
of prospering that day: a woman also was their com-
mander in chief. For Boadicea and her daughters
ride about in a chariot, telling the tall champions as
a great encouragement, that with the Britons it was
usual for women to be their leaders. A deal of other
fondness they put into her mouth not worth recital;
how she was lashed, how her daughters were handled,
things worthier silence, retirement, and a vail, than for
a woman to repeat, as done to her own person, or to
hear repeated before a host of men. The Greek histo-
rians sets her in the field on a high heap of turves, in a
loose-bodied gown, declaiming, a spear in her hand, a
hare in her bosom, which after a long circumlocution,
she was to let slip among them for luck's sake; then
praying to Andate the British goddess, to talk again
as fondly as before. And this they do out of a vanity,
hoping to embellish and set out their history with the
strangeness of our manners, not caring in the mean
while to brand us with the rankest note of barbarism,
as if in Britain women were men, and men women. I
affect not set speeches in a history, unless known for
certain to have been so spoken in effect as they are
written, nor then, unless worth rehearsal : and to in-
vent such, though eloquently, as some historians have
done, is an abuse of posterity, raising in them that read
other conceptions of those times and persons than were
true. Much less therefore do I purpose here or else-
where to copy out tedious orations without decorum,
though in their authors composed ready to my hand.
Hitherto what we have heard of Cassibelan, Togadum-
nus, Venusius, and Caractacus, hath been full of mag-
nanimity, soberness, and martial skili: but the truth
is, that in this battle and whole business the Britons
never more plainly manifested themselves to be right
Barbarians; no rule, no foresight, no forecast, experi-
ence, or estimation, either of themselves or of their
Dion.
Book II.
493
THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
enemies; such confusion, such impotence, as seemed
likest not to a war, but to the wild hurry of a distract-
ed woman, with as mad a crew at her heels. Therefore
Sietonius, contemming their unruly noises and fierce
looks, heartens his men but to stand close a while, and
strike man fully this headless rabble that stood nearest,
the rest would be a purchase rather than a toil. And
so it fell out; for the legion, when they saw their
time, bursting out like a violent wedge, quickly broke
and dissipated what opposed them; all else only held
out their necks to the slayer; for their own carts and
waggons were so placed by themselves, as left them
but little room to escape between. The Roman slew
all; men, women, and the very drawing horses lay
heaped along the field in a gory mixture of slaughter.
About fourscore thousand Britons are said to have been
slain on the place; of the enemy scarce four hundred,
and not many more wounded. Boadicea poisoned her-
self, or, as others say, sickened and died. t. She was
of stature big and tall, of visage grim and stern, harsh
of voice, her hair of a bright colour flowing down to
her hips; she wore a plaited garment of divers colours,
with a great golden chain; buttoned over all a thick
robe. Gildas calls her the crafty lioness, and leaves
an ill fame upon her doings. Dion sets down other-
wise the order of this fight, and that the field was not
won without much difficulty, nor without intention of
the Britons to give another battle, had not the death
of Boadicea come between. Howbeit Suetonius, to
preserve discipline, and to dispatch the reliques of war,
lodged with all the army in the open field; which
was supplied out of Germany with a thousand horse
and ten thousand foot; thence dispersed to winter, and
with incursions to waste those countries that stood out.
But to the Britons famine was a worse affliction; hav-
ing left off, during this uproar, to till the ground, and
made reckoning to serve themselves on the provisions
of their enemy. Nevertheless those nations that were
yet untamed, hearing of some discord risen between
Suetonius and the new procurator Classicianus, were
brought but slowly to terms of peace; and the rigour
used by Suetonius on them that yielded, taught them
the better course to stand on their defence.u For it is cer-
tain that Suetonius, though else a worthy man, overproud
of his victory, gave too much way to his anger against
the Britons. Classician therefore sending such word
to Rome, that these severe proceedings would beget an
endless war, Polycletus, no Roman but a courtier, was
sent by Nero to examine how things went. He ad-
monishing Suetonius to use more mildness, awed the
army, and to the Britons gave matter of laughter.
Who so much even till then were nursed up in their
native liberty, as to wonder that so great a general
with his whole army should be at the rebuke and or-
dering of a court-servitor. But Suetonius a while
after, having lost a few galleys on the shore, was bid
resign his command to Petronius Turpilianus, who not
provoking the Britons, nor by them provoked, was
thought to have pretended the love of peace to what
indeed was his love of ease and sloth. Trebellius
Maximus followed his steps, usurping the name of
gentle government to any remissness or neglect of dis-
cipline; which brought in first license, next disobe-
dience into his camp ; incensed against him partly for
his covetousness, partly by the incitement of Roscius
Caelius, legate of a legion; with whom formerly dis-
agreeing, now that civil war began in the empire, he
fell to open discord; " charging him with disorder and
sedition, and him Caelius with peeling and defrauding
the legions of their pay; insomuch that Trebellius,
hated and deserted of the soldiers, was content a
while to govern by base entreaty, and forced at
length to flee the land. Which notwithstanding
remained in good quiet, governed by Caelius and
the other legate of a legion, both faithful to Vitel-
lius then emperor; who sent hither Vectius Bola-
nus; under whose lenity, though not tainted with
other fault, against the Britons nothing was done,
nor in their own discipline reformed.* Petilius Ce-
realis by appointment of Vespasian succeeding, had
to do with the populous Brigantes in many bat-
tles, and some of those not unbloody. For as we
heard before, it” was Venusius who even to these
times held them tack, both himself remaining to the
end unvanquished, and some part of his country not so
much as reached. It appears also by several passages
in the histories of Tacitus,z that no small matter of
British forces were commanded over sea the year before
to serve in those bloody wars between Otho and Vitel-
lius, Vitellius and Vespasian contending for the empire.
To Cerealis succeeded Julius Frontinus in the govern-
ment of Britain," who by taming the Silures, a people
warlike and strongly inhabiting, augmented much his
reputation. But Julius Agricola, whom Vespasian in
his last year sent hither, trained up from his youth in
the British wars, extended with victories the Roman
limit beyond all his predecessors. His coming was in
the midst of summer; and the Ordivices to welcome
the new general had hewn in pieces a whole squadron
of horse which lay upon their bounds, few escaping.
Agricola, who perceived that the noise of this defeat
had also in the province desirous of novelty stirred up
new expectations, resolves to be beforehand with the
danger: and drawing together the choice of his legions
with a competent number of auxiliaries, not being met
by the Ordovices, who kept the hills, himself at the
head of his men, hunts them up and down through
difficult places, almost to the final extirpating of that
whole nation. With the same current of success, what
Paulinus had left unfinished he conquers in the isle of
Mona: for the islanders altogether fearless of his ap-
proach, whom they knew to have no shipping, when
they saw themselves invaded on a sudden by the aux-
iliars, whose country-use had taught them to swim
over with horse and arms, were compelled to yield.
This gained Agricola much opinion: who at his very
entrance, a time which others bestowed of course in
hearing compliments and gratulations, had made such
lon. . . • w u Tacit yit. Agric.
W I ac, hist, l. 1, and vit. Agric. Anno post Christ. 69.
y Calvis.
x Tacit. hist. 2. and vit. Agric. -
a Post Christ. 79.
2 Tacit. hist. 3. and vit. Agric
494
Book II.
THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
early progress into laborious and hardest enterprises.
But by far not so famous was Agricola in bringing
war to a speedy end, as in cutting off the causes from
whence war arises. For he knowing that the end of
war was not to make way for injuries in peace, began
reformation from his own house; permitted not his at-
tendants and followers to sway, or have to do at all in
public affairs: lays on with equality the proportions of
corn and tribute that were imposed; takes off exactions,
and the fees of encroaching officers, heavier than the
tribute itself. For the countries had been compelled
before, to sit and wait the opening of public granaries,
and both to sell and to buy their corn at what rate the
publicans thought fit; the purveyors also commanding
when they pleased to bring it in, not to the nearest,
but still to the remotest places, either by the compound-
ing of such as would be excused, or by causing a dearth,
where none was, made a particular gain. These griev-
ances and the like, he in the time of peace removing,
brought peace into some credit; which before, since
the Romans coming, had as ill a name as war. The
summer following, Titus then emperor,” he so continu-
ally with inroads disquieted the enemy over all the
isle, and aſter terrour so allured them with his gentle
demeanour, that many cities which till that time would
not bend, gave hostages, admitted garrisons, and came
in voluntarily. The winter he spent all in worthy ac-
tions; teaching and promoting like a public father the
institutes and customs of civil life. The inhabitants
rude and scattered, and by that the proner to war, he so
persuaded to build houses, temples, and seats of justice;
and by praising the forward, quickening the slow,
assisting all, turned the name of necessity into an
emulation. He caused moreover the noblemen's sons
to be bred up in liberal arts; and by preferring the
wits of Britain before the studies of Gallia, brought
them to affect the Latin eloquence, who before hated
the language. Then were the Roman fashions imi-
tated, and the gown ; after a while the incitements
also and materials of vice, and voluptuous life, proud
buildings, baths, and the elegance of banqueting ;
which the foolisher sort called civility, but was indeed
a secret art to prepare them for bondage. Spring ap-
pearing, he took the field, and with a prosperous ex-
pedition wasted as far northward as frith of Taus all
that obeyed not, with such a terrour, as he went, that
the Roman army, though much hindered by tempestu-
ous weather, had the leisure to build forts and castles
where they pleased, none daring to oppose them. Be-
sides, Agricola had this excellence in him, so pro-
vidently to choose his places where to fortify, as not
another general then alive. No sconce or fortress of
his raising was ever known either to have been forced,
or yielded up or quitted. Out of these impregnable by
siege, or in that case duly relieved, with continual
irruptions he so prevailed, that the enemy, whose
manner was in winter to regain what in summer he
had lost, was now alike in both seasons kept short and
streightened. I'or these exploits, then esteemed so
great and honourable, Titus, in whose reign they were
D Post Christ. 80. c Dion. l. 66. Post Christ. 82.
achieved, was the fifteenth time saluted imperator;”
and of him Agricola received triumphal honours. The
fourth summer, Domitian then ruling the empire, he
spent in settling and confirming what the year before
he had travelled over with a running conquest. And
had the valour of his soldiers been answerable, he
had reached that year, as was thought, the utmost
bounds of Britain. For Glota and Bodotria, now
Dumbritton, and the frith of Edinburgh, two opposite
arms of the sea, divided only by a neck of land, and
all the creeks and inlets on this side, were held by
the Romans, and the enemy driven as it were into
another island. In his fifth year" he passed over into
the Orcades, as we may probably guess, and other
Scotch isles; discovering and subduing nations, till then
unknown. He gained also with his forces that part of
Britain which faces Ireland, as aiming also to conquer
that island; where one of the Irish kings driven out
by civil wars coming to him, he both gladly received,
and retained him as against a fit time. The summer
ensuing, on mistrust that the nations beyond Bodotria
would generally rise, and forelay the passages by land,
he caused his fleet, making a great show, to bear along
the coast, and up the friths and harbours; joining most
commonly at night on the same shore both land and
sea-forces, with mutual shouts and loud greetings.
At sight whereof the Britons, not wont to see their sea
so ridden, were much daunted. Howbeit the Caledo-
nians e with great preparation, and by rumour, as of
things unknown much greater, taking arms, and of
their own accord beginning war by the assault of sundry
castles, sent back some of their fear to the Romans
themselves: and there were of the commanders, who
cloaking their fear under show of sage advice, coun-
selled the general to retreat back on this side Bodo-
tria. He in the mean while having intelligence, that
the enemy would fall on in many bodies, divided also
his army into three parts. Which advantage the Bri-
tons quickly spying, and on a sudden uniting what
before they had disjointed, assail by night with all
their forces that part of the Roman army which they
knew to be the weakest; and breaking in upon the
camp, surprised between sleep and fear, had begun some
execution. When Agricola, who had learnt what way
the enemies took, and followed them with all speed,
sending before him the lightest of his horse, and foot
to charge them behind, the rest as they came on to
affright them with clamour, so plied them without res-
pite, that by approach of day the Roman ensigns glit-
tering all about, had encompassed the Britons : who
now after a sharp fight in the very ports of the camp,
betook them to their wonted refuge, the woods and
ſens, pursued a while by the Romans; that day else in
all appearance had ended the war. The legions reim-
couraged by this event, they also now boasting, who
but lately trembled, cry all to be led on as far as there
was British ground. The Britons also not acknow-
ledging the loss of that day to Roman valour, but to
the policy of their captain, abated nothing of their
stoutness; but arming their youth, conveying their
d Post Christ, 83. e Post Christ. 84.
Book II. THE IIISTORY
OF ENGLAND, 49.5
wives and children to places of safety, in frequent as-
semblies, and by solemn covenants bound themselves
to mutual assistance against the common enemy. About
the same time a cohort of Germans having slain their
centurion with other Roman officers in a mutiny, and
for fear of punishment fled on shipboard, launched
forth in three light galleys without pilot; and by tide
or weather carried 19und about the coast, using piracy
where they landed, while their ships held out, and as
their skill served them, with various fortune, were the
first discoverers to the Romans that Britain was an
island. & The following summer, Agricola having
before sent his navy to hover on the coast, and with
sundry and uncertain landings to divert and disunite
the Britons, himself with a power best appointed for
expedition, wherein also were many Britons, whom he
had long tried, both valiant and faithful, marches on-
ward to the mountain Grampius, where the British,
above thirty thousand, were now lodged, and still in-
creasing; for neither would their old men, so many as
were yet vigorous and lusty, be left at home, long prac-
tised in war, and every one adorned with some badge,
or cognizance of his warlike deeds long ago. Of whom
Galgacus, both by birth and merit the prime leader to
their courage, though of itself hot and violent, is by
his rough oratory, in detestation of servitude and the
Roman yoke, said to have added much more eagerness
of fight, testified by their shouts and barbarous ap-
plauses. As much did on the other side Agricola exhort
his soldiers to victory and glory; as much the
soldiers by his firm and well-grounded exhortations
were all on a fire to the onset. But first he orders them
on this sort: Of eight thousand auxiliary foot he makes
his middle ward, on the wings three thousand horse,
the legions as a reserve, stood in array before the camp;
either to seize the victory won without their own haz-
ard, or to keep up the battle if it should need. The
British powers on the hill side, as might best serve for
show and terrour, stood in their battalions; the first on
even ground, the next rising behind, as the hill ascend-
ed. The field between rung with the noise of horse-
men and chariots ranging up and down. Agricola
doubting to be overwinged, stretches out his front,
though somewhat with the thinnest, insomuch that
many advised to bring up the legions: yet he not al-
tering, alights from his horse, and stands on foot before
the ensigns. The fight began aloof, and the Britons
had a certain skill with their broad swashing swords
and short bucklers either to strike aside, or to bear off
the darts of their enemy; and withal to send back
showers of their own. Until Agricola discerning that
those little targets and unwieldy glaves ill pointed,
would soon become ridiculous against the thrust and
close, commanded three Batavian cohorts, and two of
the Tungrians exercised and armed for close fight, to
draw up, and come to handy strokes. The Batavians,
as they were commanded, running in upon them, now
with their long tucks thrusting at the face, now with
their piked targets bearing them down, had made good
riddance of them that stood below; and for haste omit-
ting further execution, began apace to advance up hill,
Meanwhile
the horsemen flee, the charioteers mix themselves
to fight among the foot, where many of their horse
also fallen in disorderly, were now more a mischief
to their own, than before a terrour to their cne-
mies. The battle was a confused heap, the ground
unequal ; men, horses, chariots, crowded pellmell ;
sometimes in little room, by and by in large, fighting,
rushing, ſelling, overbearing, overturning. They on
the bill, which were not yet come to blows, perceiving
the fewness of their enemies, came down amain ; and
had enclosed the Romans unawares behind, but that
Agricola with a strong body of horse, which he reserved
for such a purpose, repelled them back as fast; and
others drawn off the front, were commanded to wheel
about and charge them on the backs. Then were the
Romans clearly masters ; they follow, they wound,
they take, and to take more, kill whom they take: the
Britons, in whole troops with weapons in their hands
one while fleeing the pursuer, anon without weapons
desperately running upon the slayer. But of all them,
when once they got the woods to their shelter, with
fresh boldness made head again, and the forwardest on
seconded now by all the other colorts.
a sudden they turned and slew, the rest so hampered,
as had not Agricola, who was every where at hand,
sent out his readiest cohorts, with a part of his horse to
alight and scour the woods, they had received a foil in
the midst of victory; but following with a close and
orderly pursuit, the Britons fled again, and were to-
tally scattered ; till might and weariness ended the
chase. And of them that day ten thousand fell; of
the Romans three hundred and forty, among whom
Aulus Atticus the leader of a cohort ; carried with heat
of youth and the fierceness of his horse too far on. The
Romans jocund of this victory, and the spoil they got,
spent the night; the vanquished wandering about the
field, both men and women, some lamenting, some
calling their lost friends, or carrying off their wounded;
others forsaking, some burning, their own houses; and
it was certain enough, that there were who with a
stern compassion laid violent hands on their wives and
children, to prevent the more violent hands of hostile
injury. Next day appearing, manifested more plainly
the greatness of their loss received; every where silence,
desolation, houses burning afar off, not a man seen, all
fled, and doubtful whither: such word the scouts bring-
ing in from all parts, and the summer now spent, no
fit season to disperse a war, the Roman general leads
his army among the Horestians; by whom hostages
being given, he commands his admiral with a sufficient
navy to sail round the coast of Britain; himself with
slow marches, that his delay in passing might serve to
awe those new conquered nations, bestows his army in
their winter-quarters. The fleet also having fetched a
prosperous and speedy compass about the isle, put in
at the haven Trutulensis, now Richburgh near Sand-
wich, from whence it first set out:" and now likeliest,
if not two years before, as was mentioned, the Romans
might discover and subdue the isles of Orkney; which
f Dion, l, 66. g Pest Christ. 85,
h Camden. Juven, sat. 2.
496
Book II.
THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
others with less reason, following i Eusebius and Oro-
sius, attribute to the deeds of Claudius. These perpe-
tual exploits abroad won him wide ſame: with Domi-
tian, under whom great virtue was as punishable as
open crime, won him hatred." For he maligning the
renown of these his acts, in shew decreed him honours,
in secret devised his ruin. Agricola therefore com-
manded home for doing too much of what he was sent
to do, left the province to his successor quiet and se-
cure. Whether he, as is conjectured, were Salustius
Lucullus, or before him some other, for Suetonius only
names him legate of Britain under Domitian; but ſur-
ther of him, or aught else done here until the time of
Hadrian, is no where plainly to be found. Some gather
by a preface in Tacitus to the book of his histories,
that what Agricola won here, was soon after by Do-
mitian either through want of valour lost, or through
envy neglected. And Juvenal the poet speaks of Arvi-
ragus in these days, and not before, king of Britain;
who stood so well in his resistance, as not only to be
talked of at Rome, but to be held mºtter of a glorious
triumph, if Domitian could take him captive, or over-
come him. Then also Claudia Rufina the daughter of
a Briton, and wife of Pudence a Roman senator, lived
at Rome famous by the verse of Martial for beauty,
wit, and learning. The next we hear of Britain, is,
that when Trajan was emperor, it revolted, and was
subdued. But Hadrian next entering on the empire,”
they soon unsubdued themselves. Julius Severus, saith
Dion, then governed the island, a prime soldier of that
age: he being called away to suppress the Jews then
in tumult left things at such a pass, as caused the em-
peror in person to take a journey hither;" where many
things he reformed, and, as Augustus and Tiberius
counselled, to gird the empire within moderate bounds,
he raised a wall with great stakes driven in deep, and
fastened together, in manner of a strong mound, four-
score mile in length, to divide what was Roman from
Barbarian ; as his manner was to do in other frontiers
of his empire, where great rivers divided not the limits.
No ancient author names the place, but old inscriptions,
and the ruin itself, yet testifies where it went along be-
tween Solway frith by Carlisle, and the mouth of
Tine.” Hadrian having quieted the island, took it for
honour to be titled on his coin, “The restorer of Bri-
tain.” In his time also Priscus Licinius, as appears
by an old inscription, was lieutenant here. Antoninus
Pius reigning,P the Brigantes ever least patient of
foreign servitude, breaking in upon Genounia (which
Camden guesses to be Guinethia or North Wales) part
of the Roman province, were with the loss of much ter-
ritory driven back by Lollius Urbicus, who drew an-
other wall of turves; in likelihood much beyond the
former, and as Camden proves, between the frith of
Dumbritton, and of Edinburgh ; to hedge out incur-
sions from the north. And Seius Saturniutis, as is col-
lected from the digests,” had charge here of the Roman
navy. With like success did Marcus Aurelius, next
emperor, by his legate Calphurnius Agricola, finish here
k Dion. l. 66. | Post Christ, 86.
a new war: Commodus aſter him obtaining the empire.
In his time, as among so many different accounts may
seem most probable, 3 Lucius a supposed king in some
part of Britain, the first of any king in Europe, that we
read of, received the Christian faith, and this nation
the first by public authority professed it: a high and
singular grace from above, if sincerity and perseverance
went along, otherwise an empty boast, and to be feared
the verifying of that true sentence, “The first shall be
last.” And indeed the praise of this action is more
proper to King Lucius, than common to the nation ;
whose first professing by public authority was no real
commendation of their true faith, which had appeared
more sincere and praise-worthy, whether in this or
other nation, first professed without public authority
or against it, might else have been but outward con-
formity. Lucius in our Monmouth story is made the
second by descent from Marius; Marius the son of
Arviragus is there said to have overthrown the Picts
then first coming out of Scythia, slain Roderic their
king ; and in sign of victory to have set up a monu-
ment of stone in the country since called Westmaria;
but these things have no foundation. Coilus the son
of Marius, all his reign, which was just and peaceable,
holding great amity with the Romans, left it hereditary
to Lucius. He (if Beda err not, living near five hun-
dred years after, yet our ancientest author of this re-
port) sent to Elutherius, then bishop of Rome,” an
improbable letter, as some of the contents discover,
desiring that by his appointment he and his people
might receive Christianity. From whom two religious
doctors, named in our chronicles Faganus and Deru-
vianus, forth with sent, are said to have converted and
baptized well nigh the whole nation:" thence Lucius
to have had the surname of Levermaur, that is to say,
great light. Nor yet then first was the christian faith
here known, but even from the latter days of Tiberius,
as Gildas confidently affirms, taught and propagated,
and that as some say by Simon Zelotes, as others by
Joseph of Arimathea, Barnabas, Paul, Peter, and their
prime disciples. But of these matters, variously writ-
ten and believed, ecclesiastic historians can best deter-
mine ; as the best of them do, with little credit given
to the particulars of such uncertain relations. As for
Lucius, they write,” that after a long reign he was
buried in Gloucester; but dying without issue, left the
kingdom in great commotion. By truer testimony X
we find that the greatest war which in those days
busied Commodus, was in this island. For the nations
northward, notwithstanding the wall raised to keep
them out, breaking in upon the Roman province,
wasted wide; and both the army and the leader that
came against them wholly routed, and destroyed ;
which put the emperor in such a fear, as to dispatch
hither one of his best commanders, Ulpius Marcellus.”
He a man endowed with all nobleness of mind, frugal
and temperate, mild and magnanimous, in war bold
and watchful, invincible against lucre, and the assault
of bribes; what with his valour, and these his other
in Post Christ., 122. Spartianus ibid.
q Cap. vit. Ant. Post Christ. 144.
i Eutrop. 1.7. . . -
m Spartianus in vit. II adrian.
o Camden. p Pausan, archad.
r Post Christ. 162. Digest. l. 36. s Beda. t Post Christ. 181,
u Nennius, x Geoff. Mon. y Dion. l. 72.
z Post Christ. 183.
Book II.
497
THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
virtues, quickly ended this war that looked so danger-
ous, and had himself like to have been ended by the
peace which he brought home, for presuming to be so
worthy and so good under the envy of so worthless
and so bad an emperor. “After whose departure the
Roman legions fell to sedition among themselves; fif-
teen hundred of them went to Rome in name of the
rest, and were so terrible to Commodus himself, as that
to please them he delivered up to their care Perennis
the captain of his guard, for having in the British war
removed their leaders, who were senators, and in their
places put those of the equestrian order. Notwith-
standing which compliance, they endeavoured here to
set up another emperor against him; and Helvius Per-
timax, who succeeded governour, found it a work so
difficult to appease them, that once in a mutiny he was
left for dead among many slain; and though afterwards
he severely punished the tumulters, was fain at length
to seek a dismission from his charge. After him Clo-
dius Albinus * took the government; but he, for having
to the soldiers made an oration against monarchy, by
the appointment of Commodus was bid resign to Junius
Severus.d But Albinus in those troublesome times
ensuing under the short reign of Pertinax and Didius
Julianus,e found means to keep in his hands the go-
vernment of Britain; although Septimius Severus,’
who next held the empire, sent hither Heraclitus to
displace him; but in vain, for Albinus with all the
British powers and those of Gallia met Severus about
Lyons in France,8 and fought a bloody battle with him
for the empire, though at last vanquished and slain.
The government of Britain" Severus divided between
two deputies; till then one legate was thought suf-
ficient; the north he committed to Virius Lupus.
iWhere the Meatae rising in arms, and the Caledonians,
though they had promised the contrary to Lupus,"
preparing to defend them, so hard beset, he was com-
pelled to buy his peace, and a few prisoners with great
sums of money. But hearing that Severus had now
brought to an end his other wars, he writes him plainly
the state of things here, “the Britons of the north made
war upon him, broke into the province, and harassed
all the countries nigh them, that there needed suddenly
either more aid, or himself in person.” Severus, though
now much weakened with age and the gout, yet de-
sirous to leave some memorial of his warlike achieve-
ments here, as he had done in other places, and besides to
withdraw by this means his two sons from the pleasures
of Rome, and his soldiers from idleness, with a mighty
power, far sooner than could be expected, arrives in
Britain. "The northern people much daunted with the
report of so great forces brought over with him, and yet
more preparing, send embassadors to treat of peace, and
to excuse their former doings. The emperor now loth
to return home without some memorable thing done,
whereby he might assume to his other titles the addi-
tion of Britannicus, delays his answer, and quickens
his preparations; till in the end, when all things were
in readiness to follow them, they are dismissed without
effect. His principal care was to have many bridges
laid over bogs and rotten moors, that his soldiers might
have to fight on sure footing. For it seems through
lack of tillage, the northen parts were then, as Ireland
is at this day; and the inhabitants in like manner
wanted to retire, and defend themselves in such watery
places half naked. He also being past Adrian's wall,"
cut down woods, made ways through hills, fastened
and filled up unsound and plashy ſens. Notwithstand-
ing all this industry used, the enemy kept himself so
cunningly within his best advantages, and seldom ap-
pearing, so opportunely found his times to make irrup-
tion upon the Romans, when they were most in straits
and difficulties, sometimes training them on with a few
cattle turned out, and drawn within ambush cruelly
handling them, that many a time enclosed in the midst
of sloughs and quagmires, they chose rather themselves
to kill such as were faint and could not shift away,
than leave them there a prey to the Caledonians.”
Thus lost Severus, and by sickness in those noisome
places, no less than fifty thousand men: and yet de-
sisted not, though for weakness carried in a litter, till
he had marched through with his army to the utmost
northern verge of the isle: and the Britons offering
peace, were compelled to lose much of their country
not before subject to the Romans.P Severus on the
frontiers of what he had firmly conquered, builds a
wall cross the island from sea to sea; which one author
judges the most magnificent of all his other deeds;
and that he thence received the style of Britannicus;
in length a hundred and thirty-two miles. Orosius
adds it fortified with a deep trench, and between certain
spaces many towers or battlements. The place whereof
some will have to be in Scotland, the same which Loi-
lius Urbicus had walled before. " Others affirm it only
Hadrian's work re-edified ; both plead authorities and
the ancient track yet visible: but this I leave among
the studious of these antiquities to be discussed more at
large. While peace held, the empress Julia meeting
on a time certain British ladies, and discoursing with
the wife of Argentocoxus a Caledonian, cast out a scoff
against the looseness of our island women; whose
manner then was to use promiscuously the company of
divers men. Whom straight the British woman boldly
thus answered : “Much better do we Britons fulfil the
work of nature than you Romans; we with the best
men accustom openly; you with the basest commit
private adulteries.” Whether she thought this answer
might serve to justify the practice of her country, as
when vices are compared, the greater seems to justify
the less; or whether the law and custom wherein she
was bred, had whipped out of her conscience the better
dictate of nature, and not convinced her of the shame,
certain it is, that whenas other nations used a liberty
not unnatural for one man to have many wives, the
Britons” altogether as licentious, but more absurd and
preposterous in their license, had one or many wives
º tºº. spartianº ºist. 200.
a Jamprid, in comm, Post Christ. 136. , b Capitolin. in Pert.
ç Capitolin; in Alb. d Post Christ, 193. e Dion Did. Jul.
f Spartian. in Sever. g blerod. l. 3. ) l bid.
i Digest, l. 28. tit. 6. k Dion. 1 Herod, l. 3.
q Futropii Pean. Oros. i. 7. Cassid. Chro.
1 Buchanan. -
o Dion.
S Caesar,
498
Book II.
THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
in common among ten or twelve husbands; and those
for the most part incestuously. But no sooner was Se-
verus returned into the province, than the Britons take
arms again. Against whom Severus, worn out with
labours and infirmity, sends Antoninus his eldest son,
expressly commanding him to spare neither sex nor
age. But Antoninus, who had his wicked thoughts
taken up with the contriving of his father's death, a
safer enemy than a son, did the Britons not much de-
triment. Whereat Severus, more overcome with grief
than any other malady, ended his life at York. After
whose decease Antoninus Caracalla his impious son,
concluding peace with the Britons, took hostages and
departed to Rome. The conductor of all this northern
war Scottish writers name Donaldus, he of Monmouth
Fulgenius, in the rest of his relation nothing worth.
From hence the Roman empire declining apace, good
historians growing scarce, or lost, have left us little
else but fragments for many years ensuing. Under
Gordian the emperor we find, by the inscription" of an
altar-stone, that Nonius Philippus governed here. Un-
der Galienus we read there was a strong and general
revolt from the Roman legate. Of the thirty tyrants
which not long aſter took upon them the style of em-
peror,” by many coins found among us, Lollianus, Vic-
torinus, Posthumus, the Tetrici, and Marius are con-
jectured to have risen or born great sway in this
island.y Whence Porphyrius, a philosopher then liv-
ing, said that Britain was a soil fruitful of tyrants;
and is noted to be the first author that makes mention
of the Scottish nation. While Probus was emperor,”
Bonosus the son of a rhetorician, bred up a Spaniard,
though by descent a Briton, and a matchless drinker;
nor much to be blamed, if, as they write, he were still
wisest in his cups; having attained in warfare to high
honours, and lastly in his charge over the German ship-
ping, willingly, as was thought, miscarried, trusting
on his power with the western armies, and joined with
Proculus, bore himself a while for emperor; but after
a long and bloody fight at Cullen, vanquished by
Probus, he hanged himself, and gave occasion of a
ready jest made on him for his much drinking :*
“Here hangs a tankard, not a man.” After this,
Probus with much wisdom prevented a new rising
here in Britain by the severe loyalty of Victorinus a
Moor, at whose cntreaty he had placed here that go-
vernour which rebelled. For the emperor upbraiding
him with the disloyalty of whom he had commended,
Victorinus undertaking to set all right again, hastes
thither, and finding indeed the governour to intend
sedition, by some contrivance not mentioned in the
story, slew him, whose name" some imagine to be
Cornelius Lelianus. They write also that Probus
gave leave to the Spaniards, Gauls, and Britons to
plant vines, and to make wine; and having subdued
the Vandals and Burgundians in a great battle," sent
over many of them hither to inhabit, where they did
good service to the Romans, when any insurrection
happened in the isle. After whom Carus emperor
going against the Persians, left Carinus" one of his
sons to govern among other western provinces this
island with imperial authority ; but him Dioclesian,
saluted emperor by the eastern arms, overcame and
slew. About which time Carausius,” a man of low
parentage, born in Menapia, about the parts of Cleves
and Juliers, who through all military degrees was
made at length admiral of the Belgic and Armoric seas,
then much infested by the Franks and Saxons, what
he took from the pirates, neither restoring to the owners
nor accounting to the public, but enriching himself,
and yet not scouring the seas, but conniving rather at
those sea robbers, was grown at length too great a de-
linquent to be less than an emperor; for fear and
guiltiness in those days made emperors oftener than
merit: and understanding that Maximianus Hercu-
lius," Dioclesian's adopted son, was come against him
into Gallia, passed over with the navy, which he had
made his own, into Britain, and possessed the island.
Where he built a new h fleet after the Roman fashion,
got into his power the legion that was left here in gar-
rison, other outlandish cohorts detained, listed the very
merchants and factors of Gallia, and with the allure-
ment of spoil invited great numbers of other barbarous
nations to his part, and trained them to sea service,
wherein the Romans at that time were grown so out of
skill, that Carausius with his navy did at sea what be
listed, robbing on every coast; whereby Maximilian,
able to come no nearer than the shore of Boloigne, was
forced to conclude a peace with Carausius, and yield
him Britain; as one fittest to guard the province there
against inroads from the North But not long after k
having assumed Constantius Chlorus to the dignity of
Caesar, sent him against Carausius; who in the mean
while had made himself strong both within the land
and without." Galfred of Monmouth writes, that he
made the Picts his conſederates; to whom, lately come
out of Scythia, he gave Albany to dwell in : and it is
observed, that before his time the Picts are not known
to have been any where mentioned, and then first by
Eumenius a rhetorician." He repaired and ſortified
the wall of Severus with seven castles, and a round
house of smooth stone on the bank of Carron, which
river, saith Nimnius, was of his name so called ; he
built also a triumphal arch in remembrance of some
victory there obtained.” In France he held Gessoria-
cum, or Boloigne; and all the Franks, which had by
his permission seated themselves in Belgia, were at his
devotion. But Constantius hasting into Gallia, besieges
Boloigne, and with stones and timber obstructing the
port, keeps out all relief that could be sent in by Ca-
rausius. Who cre Constantius, with the great fleet
which he had prepared, could arrive hither, was slain
treacherously o by Alectus one of his friends, who
longed to step into his place; when he seven years,
and worthily as some say, as others tyrannically, had
ruled the island. So much the more did Constantius
t Post Christ. 211.
Cami). Cumber. - - -
y Post Christ. 267. Camden, Gildas, Iſieronym.
282. Vopisc. in J}onas. a Zozim. l. l.
c Zozimus. d Post Christ. 283.
Spartianus in Sever, u Post Christ. 242.
x Post Christ. 250. Eumen. Paneg. Const.
& Z Post Christ.
b (Xand.
Vopisc, in Carin.
e Post Christ. 284,
Eutrop. Oros.
i Victor. Eutrop,
lm Paneg. 2.
Aurel. Victor. de Caesar.
g Eumen. Paneg, 2.
k Post Christ. 291.
n Paneg. Sigonius.
f Post Christ. Q85.
h Post Christ, 286.
Buchanan.
o Post Christ. 292.
Book II.
499
THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
prosecute that opportunity, before Alectus could well
strengthen his affairs : P and though in ill weather,
putting to sea with all urgency from several havens to
spread the terrour of his landing, and the doubt where
to expect him, in a mist passing the British fleet un-
seen, that lay scouting near the isle of Wight, no sooner
got ashore, but fires his own ships, to leave no hope of
refuge but in victory. Alectus also, though now much
dismayed, transfers his fortune to a battle on the shore;
but encountered by Asclepiodotus, captain of the prae-
torian bands, and desperately rushing on, unmindful
both of ordering his men, or bringing them all to fight,
save the accessories of his treason, and his outlandish
hirelings, is overthrown, and slain with little or no loss
to the Romans, but great execution on the Franks.
His body was found almost naked in the field, for his
purple robe he had thrown aside, lest it should descry
him, unwilling to be found. The rest taking flight to
London, and purposing with the pillage of that city to
escape by sea, are met by another part of the Roman
army, whom the mist at sea disjoining had by chance
brought thither, and with a new slaughter chased
through all the streets. The Britons, their wives also
and children, with great joy go out to meet Constan-
tius, as one whom they acknowledge their deliverer
from bondage and insolence. All this seems by Eume-
nius," who then lived, and was of Constantius's hous-
hold, to have been done in the course of one continued
action; so also thinks Sigonius, a learned writer: though
all others allow three years to the tyranny of Alectus.
In these days were great store of workmen, and excel-
lent builders in this island, whom, after the alteration
of things here, the AEduans in Burgundy entertained
to build their temples, and public edifices. Dioclesian
having hitherto successfully used his valour against the
enemies of his empire, uses now his rage in a bloody
persecution against his obedient and harmless christian
subjects: from the feeling whereof neither was this
island, though most remote, far enough removed."
Among them here who suffered gloriously, Aron, and
Julius of Caerleon upon Usk, but chiefly Alban of Veru-
lam, were most renowned; the story of whose martyr-
dom soiled, and worse martyred with the fabling zeal
of some idle fancies, more fond of miracles, than appre-
hensive of truth, deserves not longer digression. Con-
stantius, aſter Dioclesian, dividing the empire with Ga-
lerius, had Britain among his other provinces; where
either preparing or returning with a victory from an ex-
pedition against the Caledonians, he died at York. His
son Constantine, who happily came post from Rome to
Boloigne, just about the time, saith Eumenius, that his
father was setting sail his last time hither, and not long
before his death, was by him on his deathbed named,
and after his funeral, by the whole army saluted empe-
ror. There goes a fame, and that seconded by most of
our own historians, though not those the ancientest,
that Constantine was born in this island, his mother
Helena the daughter of Coilus a British prince, not
sure the father of King Lucius, whose sister she must
then be, ſor that would detect her too old by a hundred
years to be the mother of Constantine. But to salve
this incoherence, another Coilus is feigned to be then
earl of Colchester. To this therefore the Roman authors
give no testimony, except a passage or two in the
Panegyrics, about the sense whereof much is argued :
others t nearest to those times clear the doubt, and write
him certainly born of a mean woman, Helena, the con-
cubine of Constantius, at Naisus in Dardania. " How-
beit, ere his departure hence, he seems to have had
some bickerings in the North, which by reason of more
urgent affairs composed, he passes into Gallia; and
after four years returns either to settle or to alter the
state of things here, until a new war against Maxentius
called him back, leaving Pacatianus his vicegerent.
× He deceasing, Constantine his eldest son enjoyed for
his part of the empire, with all the provinces that lay
on this side the Alps, this island also. 9 But falling to
civil war with Constans his brother, was by him slain ;
who with his third brother Constantius coming into
Britain, seized it as victor. Against him rose Mag-
mentius,” one of his chief commanders, by some affirmed
the son of a Briton, he having gained on his side great
forces, contested with Constantius in many battles for
the sole empire; but vanquished, in the end slew him-
self. * Somewhat before this time Gratianus. Funarius,
the father of Valentinian, aſterwards emperor, had chief
command of those armies which the Romans kept here.
b And the Arian doctrine which then divided christen-
dom, wrought also in this island no small disturbance;
a land, saith Gildas, greedy of every thing new, sted-
fast in nothing. At last “ Constantius appointed a
synod of more than four hundred bishops to assemble
at Ariminum on the emperor's charges, which the rest
all refusing, three only of the British, poverty constrain-
ing them, accepted ; though the other bishops among
them offered to have born their charges; esteeming it
more honourable to live on the public, than to be ob-
noxious to any private purse. Doubtless an ingenuous
mind, and far above the presbyters of our age; who
like well to sit in assembly on the public stipend, but
liked not the poverty that caused these to do so. After
this Martinus was deputy of the province; who being
offended with the cruelty which Paulus, an inquisitor
sent from Constantius, exercised in his inquiry after
those military officers who had conspired with Magnen-
tius, was himself laid hold on as an accessory: at which
enraged he runs at Paulus with his drawn sword; but
failing to kill him, turns it on himself. Next to whom,
as may be guessed, Alipius was made deputy. In the
mean time Julian," whom Constantius had made
Caesar, having recovered much territory about the
Rhine, where the German inroads before had long in-
sulted, to relieve those countries almost ruined, causes
eight hundred pinnaces to be built; and with them,
by frequent voyages, plenty of corn to be fetched in
from Britain ; which even then was the usual bounty
p Camd. ex Nin. Eumen. Pan. 3, Oros. 1.7, c. 25, . q Fumen.
r Gildas. s Author, ign, post Marcellin. Walesii. Post Christ. 306.
Eutrop. Eumen. idem. Auth, ignot,
t lgem vit. Auth, ignot. Euseb. Const. Oros. l. 7. 25 cap, Cass. Chron.
u Post Christ. 307. Sigon. -
x Post Qhrist. 311. Camd. Ammian, l. 20. and in cum Valesius.
y Post Christ. 310. Libanius in Basilico. z Post Christ. 343. Camd.
ex Firmico, . - a Post Christ. 350. Camden.
b Post Christ. 353. Ammian. c Post Christ, 359.
d Liban. Or, 10. Zozim. l. 3. Marcel. l. 18.
2 K
500
OF ENGLAND. Book II.
THE HISTORY
of this soil to those parts, as oſt as French and Saxon
pirates hindered not the transportation.” While f
Constantius yet reigned, the Scots and Picts breaking
in upon the Northern confines, Julian, being at Paris,
sends over Lupicinus, a well-tried soldier, but a proud
and covetous man, who with a power of light-armed
Herulians, Batavians, and Maesians, in the midst of
winter sailing from Boloigne, arrives at Rutupiae,
seated on the opposite shore, and comes to London, to
consult there about the war; but soon after was recalled
by Julian, then chosen emperor. Under whom we read
not of aught happening here, only that Palladius, one
of his great officers, was hither banished. g This year,
Valentinian being emperor, the Atticots, Picts, and Scots,
roving up and down, and last the Saxons with perpetual
landings and invasions harried the South coast of
Britain; slew Nectaridius who governed the sea
borders, and Bulchobaudes with his forces by an am-
bush. With which news Valentinian not a little per-
plexed, sends first Severus high steward of his house,
and soon recalls him ; then Jovinus, who intimating
the necessity of greater supplies, he sends at length
Theodosius, a man of tried valour and experience,
father to the first emperor of that name. He h with
selected numbers out of the legions, and cohorts, crosses
the sea from Boloigne to Rutupiae; from whence with
the Batavians, Herulians, and other legions that ar-
rived soon aſter, he marches to London ; and dividing
his forces into several bodies, sets upon the dispersed
and plundering enemy, laden with spoil; from whom
recovering the booty which they led away, and were
forced to leave there with their lives, he restores all to
the right owners, save a small portion to his wearied
soldiers, and enters Londom victoriously; which, before
in many straits and difficulties, was now revived as with
a great deliverance. The numerous enemy with whom
he had to deal, was of different nations, and the war
scattered: which Theodosius, getting daily some intel-
ligence from fugitives and prisoners, resolves to carry
on by sudden parties and surprisals, rather than set
battles; nor omits he to proclaim indemnity to such
as would lay down arms, and accept of peace, which
brought in many. Yet all this not ending the work,
he requires that Civilis, a man of much uprightness,
might be sent him, to be as deputy of the island, and
Dulcitius a famous captain. Thus was Theodosius
busied, besetting with ambushes the roving enemy,
repressing his roads, restoring cities and castles to
their former safety and defence, laying every where
the firm foundation of a long peace, when i Valentinus
a Pannonian, for some great offence banished into
Britain, conspiring with certain exiles and soldiers
against Theodosius, whose worth he dreaded as the only
obstacle to his greater design of gaining the isle into
his power, is discovered, and with his chief accomplices
delivered over to condign punishment: against the
rest, Theodosius with a wise lenity suffered not inquisi-
tion to proceed too rigorously, lest the fear thereof ap-
pertaining to so many, occasion might arise of new
trouble in a time so unsettled. This done, he applies
himself to reform things out of order, raises on the con-
fines many strong holds; and in them appoints due
and diligent watches: and so reduced all things out
of danger, that the province, which but lately was un-
der command of the enemy, became now wholly Ro-
man, new named Valentia of Valentinian, and the city
of London, Augusta. Thus Theodosius nobly acquit-
ting himself in all affairs, with general applause of the
whole province, accompanied to the sea-side returns to
Valentinian. Who about five years after sent hither
Fraomarius, a king of the Almans," with authority of
a tribune over his own country forces; which then,
both for number and good service, were in high esteem.
Against Gratian, who succeeded in the Western em-
pire, Maximus a Spaniard, and one who had served in
the British wars with younger Theodosius, (for he
also, either with his father, or not long after him,
seems to have done something in this island,) and now
general of the Roman armies here, either discontented
that Theodosius was preferred before him to the em-
pire, or constrained by the soldiers who hated Gratian,
assumes the imperial purple;" and having attained
victory against the Scots and Picts, with the flower
and strength of Britain, passes into France ; there
slays Gratian, and without much difficulty, the
space of n five years obtains his part of the empire,
overthrown at length, and slain by Theodosius. With
whom perishing most of his followers, or not returning
out of Armorica, which Maximus had given them to
possess, the South of Britain by this means exhausted
of her youth, and what there was of Roman soldiers on
the confines drawn off, became a prey to savage inva-
sions;9 of Scots from the Irish seas, of Saxons from
the German, of Picts from the North. A ainst them,
firstP Chrysanthus the son of Marcian a bishop, made
deputy of Britain by Theodosius, demeaned himself
worthily: then Stilicho a man of great power, whom
Theodosius dying left protector of his son Honorius,
either came in person, or sending over sufficient aid,
repressed them, and as it seems new fortified the wall
against them. But that legion being called away,
when the Roman armies from all parts hasted to re-
lieve Honorius, then besieged in Asta of Piemont, by
Alaric the Goth, Britain was left exposed as before, to
those barbarous robbers. Lest any wonder how the
Scots came to infest Britain from the Irish sea, it must
be understood, that the Scots not many years before
had been driven all out of Britain by Maximus; and
their king Eugenius slain in fight, as their own annals
report: whereby, it seems, wandering up and down
without certain seat, they lived by scumming those
seas and shores as pirates. But more authentic writers
confirm us, that the Scots, whoever they be originally,
came first into Ireland, and dwelt there, and named it
Scotia long before the North of Britain took that name.
s Orosius, who lived at this time, writes that Ireland
f Post Christ, 360. A min. l. 20
e Amm. l. 23 ... •v.
h Post Christ. 367.
g Post Christ. 364, Amm. l. 26, 27.
i Post Christ. 368. Amm. l. 28. Zozim. 1. 4. - g
k Post Christ, 373. A mm. 1.29. - l Zozim. l. 4. Sigon.
m Pros. Aquitanic. Cliron. Post Christ. 383.
n Gildas. Post Christ. 388. Beda. Ninn. o Post Christ. 389.
p Socrat. 1.7. Claudian de laud. Stil. l. 2. and de Bello Get.
q Post, Christ, 402. * * *
F Ethelwerd Sax. am. Bede epit. in the year 565; and Bede, l. 2. c. 4.
s Oros. l. 1. c. 2. .
Book II.
501
THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
was then inhabited by Scots, About this time," though
troublesome, Pelagius a Briton found the leisure to
bring new and dangerous opinions into the church,
and is largely writ against by St. Austin. But the
Roman powers which were called into Italy, when
once the fear of Alaric was over, made return into se-
veral provinces; and perhaps Victorinus of Tolosa,
whom Rutilius the poet much commends, might be
then prefect of this island; if it were not he whom
Stilicho sent hither. Buchanan writes, that endeavour-
ing to reduce the Picts into a province, he gave the
occasion of their calling back Fergusius and the Scots,
whom Maximus with their help had quite driven out
of the island : and indeed the verses of that poet speak
him to have been active in those parts. But the time
which is assigned him later by Buchanan after Gra-
tianus Municeps, by Camden after Constantine the ty-
rant, accords not with that which follows in the plain
course of history. " For the Vandals having broke in
and wasted all Belgia, even to those places from
whence easiest passage is into Britain, the Roman
forces here, doubting to be suddenly invaded, were all
in uproar, and in tumultuous manner set up Marcus,
who it may seem was then deputy. But him not
found agreeable to their heady courses, they as hastily
kill; * for the giddy favour of a mutinying rout is as
dangerous as their fury. The like they do by 9 Gra-
tian a British Roman, in four months advanced, adored,
and destroyed. There was among them a common
soldier whose name was Constantine, with him on a
sudden so taken they are, upon the conceit put in them
of the luckiness in his name, as without other visible
merit to create him emperor. It fortuned that the
man had not his name for nought; so well he knew
to lay hold, and make good use of an unexpected offer.
He therefore with a wakened spirit, to the extent of his
fortune dilating his mind, which in his mean condition
before lay contracted and shrunk up, orders with good
advice his military affairs: and with the whole force
of the province, and what of British was able to bear
arms, he passes into France, aspiring at least to an
equal share with Honorius in the empire. Where, by
the valour of Edobecus a Frank, and Gerontius a
Briton, and partly by persuasion, gaining all in his
way, he comes to Arles.” With like felicity by his son
Constans, whom of a monk he had made a Caesar,
and by the conduct of Gerontius he reduces all Spain
to his obedience. But Constans after this displacing
Gerontius, the affairs of Constantine soon went to
wreck; for he by this means alienated, set up Max-
imus one of his friends against him in Spain;" and
passing into France, took Vienna by assault, and having
slain Constans in that city, calls on the Vandals against
Constantine; who by him incited, as by him before
they had been repressed, breaking forward, overrun
most part of France. But when Constantius Comes,
the emperor's general, with a strong power came out
of Italy, P Gerontius, deserted by his own forces, re-
tires into Spain; where also growing into contempt
t Post Christ. 405.
with the soldiers, aſter his flight out of France, by whom
his house in the night was beset.* having first with a
few of his servants defended himself valiantly, and
slain above three hundred, though when his darts and
other weapons were spent he might have escaped at a
private door, as all his servants did, not enduring to
leave his wife Nonmichia, whom he loved, to the vio-
lence of an enraged crew, he first cuts off the head o.
his friend Alanus, as was agreed; next his wife, though
loth and delaying, yet by her entreated and importuned,
refusing to outlive her husband, he dispatched; for
which her resolution, Sozomenus an ecclesiastical
writer gives her high praise, both as a wife, and as a
christian. Last of all, against himself he turns his
sword; but missing the mortal place, with his poniard
finishes the work. Thus far is pursued the story of a
famous Briton, related negligently by our other histo-
rians. As for Constantine, his ending was not answer-
able to his setting out; for he with his other son Ju-
lian besieged by Constantius in Arles, and mistrusting
the change of his wonted success, to save his head,
poorly turns priest; but that not availing him, is car-
ried into Italy, and there put to death ; having four
years acted the emperor. While these things were
doing,” the Britons at home, destitute of Roman aid,
and the chief strength of their own youth, that went
first with Maximus, then with Constantine, not return-
ing home, vexed and harassed by their wonted ene-
mies, had sent messages to Honorius; but he at that
time not being able to defend Rome itself, which the
same year was taken by Alaric, advises them by his
letter to consult how best they might for their own
safety, and acquits them of the Roman jurisdiction.*
They therefore thus relinquished, and by all right the
government relapsing into their own hands, thenceforth
betook themselves to live after their own laws, deſend-
ing their bounds as well as they were able; and the
Armoricans, who not long aſter were called the Britons
of France, followed their example. Thus expired this
great empire of the Romans; first in Britain, soon
after in Italy itself: having born chief sway in this
island, though never thoroughly subdued, or all at
once in subjection, if we reckon from the coming in of
Julius to the taking of Rome by Alaric, in which year
Honorius wrote those letters of discharge into Britain,
the space of 462 years.f And with the empire fell also
what before in this Western world was chiefly Roman;
learning, valour, eloquence, history, civility, and even
language itself, all these together, as it were, with
equal pace, diminishing and decaying. Henceforth
we are to steer by another sort of authors; near enough
to the things they write, as in their own country, if
that would serve ; in time not much belated, some of
equal age; in expression barbarous, and to say how
judicious, I suspend a while : this we must expect; in
civil matters to find them dubious relaters, and still to
the best advantage of what they term Holy Church,
meaning indeed themselves: in most other matters of
religion, blind, astonished, and struck with superstition
x Sozom; 1; 9.
a Post Christ. 409,
u Post Christ, 407, Zozim. l. 6.
y Oros. l. 7. Z Post Christ, -108.
- b Sozom. l. 9.
c Qlympiodor. apud Photium.
* d Gildas, Beda, Zozim. 1, 6.
e Procopius vandalic.
f Calvis. Sigon.
502
Book III.
THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND
as with a planet; in one word, Monks. Yet these
guides, where can be had no better, must be followed;
in gross, it may be true enough ; in circumstances
each man, as his judgment gives him, may reserve
his faith, or bestow it. But so different a state of
things requires a several relation.
THE THIRD BOOK.
This third book having to tell of accidents as va-
rious and exemplary as the intermission or change of
government hath any where brought forth, may de-
serve attention more than common, and repay it with
like benefit to them who can judiciously read : consider-
ing especially that the late civil broils had cast us into
a condition not much unlike to what the Britons them
were in when the imperial jurisdiction departing hence
left them to the sway of their own councils; which
times by comparing seriously with these latter, and
that confused anarchy with this interreign, we may be
able from two such remarkable turns of state, produc-
ing like events among us, to raise a knowledge of our-
selves both great and weighty, by judging hence what
kind of men the Britons generally are in matters of so
high enterprise; how by nature, industry, or custom,
fitted to attempt or undergo matters of so main con-
sequence: for if it be a high point of wisdom in every
private man, much more is it in a nation, to know it-
self; rather than puffed up with vulgar flatteries and
encomiums, for want of self-knowledge, to enterprise
rashly and come off miserably in great undertakings.
* [Of these who swayed most in the late troubles,
few words as to this point may suffice. They had
arms, leaders, and successes to their wish; but to make
use of so great an advantage was not their skill.
To other causes therefore, and not to the want of
force, to warlike manhood in the Britons, both those,
and these lately, we must impute the ill husbanding of
those fair opportunities, which might seem to have put
liberty so long desired, like a bridle, into their hands.
Of which other causes equally belonging to ruler,
priest, and people, above hath been related: which, as
they brought those ancient natives to misery and ruin,
by liberty, which, rightly used, might have made them
happy; so brought they these of late, after many la-
bours, much bloodshed, and vast expense, to ridiculous
frustration : in whom the like defects, the like miscar-
riages notoriously appeared, with vices not less hate-
ful or inexcusable,
For a parliament being called, to address many
things, as it was thought, the people with great cou-
rage, and expectation to be eased of what discontented
them, chose to their behoof in parliament, such as they
thought best affected to the public good, and some in-
deed men of wisdom and integrity; the rest, (to be sure
the greater part,) whom wealth or ample possessions,
or bold and active ambition (rather than merit) had
commended to the same place.
But when once the superficial zeal and popular
fumes that acted their New magistracy were cooled,
and spent in them, strait every one betook himself (set-
ting the commonwealth behind, his private ends before)
to do as his own profit or ambition led him. Then was
justice delayed, and soon after denied : spight and
favour determined all: hence faction, thence treachery,
both at home and in the field: every where wrong, and
oppression : foul and horrid deeds committed daily, or
maintained, in secret, or in open. Some who had been
called from shops and warehouses, without other merit,
to sit in supreme councils and committees, (as their
breeding was,) fell to huckster the commonwealth.
Others did thereafter as men could sooth and humour
them best; so he who would give most, or, under covert
of hypocritical zeal, insinuate basest, enjoyed unwor-
thily the rewards of learning and fidelity ; or escaped
the punishment of his crimes and misdeeds. Their
votes and ordinances, which men looked should have
contained the repealing of bad laws, and the immediate
constitution of better, resounded with nothing else, but
new impositions, taxes, excises ; yearly, monthly,
weekly. Not to reckon the offices, gifts, and prefer-
ments bestowed and shared among themselves: they
in the mean while, who were ever faithfullest to this
cause, and freely aided them in person, or with their
substance, when they durst not compel either, slighted
and bereaved after of their just debts by greedy seques-
trations, were tossed up and down after miserable at-
tendance from one committee to another with petitious
in their hands, yet either missed the obtaining of their
suit, or though it were at length granted, (mere shame
and reason ofttimes extorting from them at least a shew
of justice,) yet by their sequestrators and subcommittees
abroad, men for the most part of insatiable hands, and
noted disloyalty, those orders were commonly disobey-
ed: which for certain durst not have been, without
secret compliance, if not compact with some superiours
able to bear them out. Thus were their friends con-
fiscate in their enemies, while they forfeited their debt-
ors to the state, as they called it, but indeed to the
ravening seizure of innumerable thieves in office: yet
were withal no less burdened in all extraordinary
assessments and oppressions, than those whom they
took to be disaffected : nor were we happier creditors
to what we called the state, than to them who were
sequestered as the state's enemies.
For that faith which ought to have been kept as
sacred and inviolable as any thing holy, “ the Public
Faith,” after infinite sums received, and all the wealth
of the church not better employed, but swallowed up
into a private Gulf, was not ere long ashamed to con-
fess bankrupt. And now besides the sweetness of
bribery, and other gain, with the love of rule, their
own guiltiness and the dreaded name of Just Account,
which the people had long called for, discovered plainly
that there were of their own number, who secretly con-
a The following paragraphs, within crotchets, have been omitted in all
the former editions of our author's Iſistory of Bwitain, except that pub-
lished in the collection of his works, 1738, 2 vol. folio, and the subsequent
edition in quarto.
Book III.
503
THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
trived and fomented those troubles and combustions in
the land, which openly they sat to remedy; and would
continually find such work, as should keep them from
being ever brought to that Terrible Stand of laying
down their authority for lack of new business, or not
drawing it out to any length of time, though upon the
ruin of a whole nation.
And if the state were in this plight, religion was not
in much better; to reform which, a certain number of
divines were called, neither chosen by any rule or cus-
tom ecclesiastical, nor eminent for either piety or
knowledge above others left out; only as each member
of parliament in his private fancy thought fit, so elected
one by one. The most part of them were such, as had
preached and cried down, with great shew of zeal, the
avarice and pluralities of bishops and prelates; that
one cure of souls was a full employment for one spirit-
ual pastor how able soever, if not a charge rather above
human strength. Yet these conscientious men (ere
any part of the work done for which they came toge-
ther, and that on the public salary) wanted not bold-
ness, to the ignominy and scandal of their pastorlike
profession, and especially of their boasted reformation,
to seize into their hands, or not unwillingly to accept
(besides one, sometimes two or more of the best livings)
collegiate masterships in the universities, rich lectures
in the city, setting sail to all winds that might blow
gain into their covetous bosoms: by which means these
great rebukers of nonresidence, among so many distant
cures, were not ashamed to be seen so quickly plural-
ists and nonresidents themselves, to a fearful condem-
nation doubtless by their own mouths. And yet the
main doctrine for which they took such pay, and in-
sisted upon with more vehemence than gospel, was but
to tell us in effect, that their doctrine was worth no-
thing, and the spiritual power of their ministry less
available than bodily compulsion ; persuading the
magistrate to use it, as a stronger means to subdue and
bring in conscience, than evangelical persuasion : dis-
trusting the virtue of their own spiritual weapons,
which were given them, if they be rightly called, with
full warrant of sufficiency to pull down all thoughts
and imaginations that exalt themselves against God.
But while they taught compulsion without convince-
ment, which not long before they complained of as
executed unchristianly, against themselves; these in-
tents are clear to have been no better than antichris-
tian: setting up a spiritual tyranny by a secular power,
to the advancing of their own authority above the
magistrate, whom they would have made their execu-
tioner, to punish church-delinquencies, whereof civil
laws have no cognizance.
And well did their disciples manifest themselves to
be no better principled than their teachers, trusted with
committeeships and other gainful offices, upon their
commendations for zealous, (and as they sticked not to
term them,) godly men; but executing their places
like children of the devil, unfaithfully, unjustly, un-
mercifully, and where not corruptly, stupidly. So that
between them the teachers, and these the disciples,
there hath not been a more ignominious and mortal
wound to faith, to piety, to the work of reformation,
nor more cause of blaspheming given to the enemies of
God and truth, since the first preaching of reformation.
The people therefore looking one while on the sta-
tists, whom they beheld without constancy or firmness,
labouring doubtfully beneath the weight of their own
too high undertakings, busiest in petty things, trifling
in the main, deluded and quite alienated, expressed
divers ways their disaffection; some despising whom
before they honoured, some deserting, some inveighing,
some conspiring against them. Then looking on the
churchmen, whom they saw under subtle hypocrisy to
have preached their own follies, most of them not the
gospel, timeservers, covetous, illiterate persecuters, not
lovers of the truth, like in most things whereof they
accused their predecessors: looking on all this, the
people which had been kept warm a while with the
counterfeit zeal of their pulpits, after a false heat, be-
came more cold and obdurate than before, some turning
to lewdness, some to flat atheism, put beside their old
religion, and foully scandalized in what they expected
should be new.
Thus they who of late were extolled as our greatest
deliverers, and had the people wholly at their devotion,
by so discharging their trust as we see, did not only
weaken and unfit themselves to be dispensers of what
liberty they pretended, but unfitted also the people,
now grown worse and more disordinate, to receive or
to digest any liberty at all. For stories teach us, that
liberty sought out of season, in a corrupt and degene-
rate age, brought Rome itself to a farther slavery : for
liberty hath a sharp and double edge, fit only to be
handled by just and virtuous men; to bad and disso-
lute, it becomes a mischief unwieldy in their own
hands: neither is it completely given, but by them
who have the happy skill to know what is grievance
and unjust to a people, and how to remove it wisely;
what good laws are wanting, and how to frame them
substantially, that good men may enjoy the freedom
which they merit, and the bad the curb which they
need. But to do this, and to know these exquisite
proportions, the heroic wisdom which is required, sur-
mounted far the principles of these narrow politicians:
what wonder then if they sunk as these unfortunate
Britons before them, entangled and oppressed with
things too hard and generous above their strain and
temper ? For Britain, to speak a truth not often
spoken, as it is a land fruitful enough of men stout and
courageous in war, so it is naturally not over-fertile of
men able to govern justly and prudently in peace,
trusting only in their mother-wit ; who consider not
justly, that civility, prudence, love of the public good,
more than of money or vain honour, are to this soil in
a manner outlandish; grow not here, but in minds
well implanted with solid and elaborate breeding, too
impolitic else and rude, if not headstrong and intract-
able to the industry and virtue either of executing or
understanding true civil government. Valiant indeed,
and prosperous to win a field ; but to know the end
and reason of winning, unjudicious, and unwise: in
good or bad success, alike unteachable. For the sun,
504 THE HISTORY
OF ENGLANI). Book IIT.
which we want, ripens wits as well as fruits; and as
wine and oil are imported to us from abroad, so must
ripe understanding, and many civil virtues, be imported
into our minds from foreign writings, and examples of
best ages; we shall else miscarry still, and come short
in the attempts of any great enterprise. Hence did
their victories prove as fruitless, as their losses danger-
ous; and left them still conquering under the same
grievances, that men suffer conquered : which was
indeed unlikely to go otherwise, unless men more than
vulgar bred up, as few of them were, in the knowledge
of ancient and illustrious deeds, invincible against
many and vain titles, impartial to friendships and rela-
tions, had conducted their affairs: but then from the
chapman to the retailer, many whose ignorance was
more audacious than the rest, were admitted with all
their sordid rudiments to bear no mean sway among
them, both in church and state.
From the confluence of all their errours, mischiefs,
and misdemeanors, what in the eyes of man could be
expected, but what befel those ancient inhabitants,
whom they so much resembled, confusion in the end ?
But on these things, and this parallel, having enough
insisted, I return to the story, which gave us matter of
this digression.]
The Britons thus, as we heard, being left without
protection from the empire, and the land in a manner
emptied of all her youth, consumed in wars abroad, or
not caring to return home, themselves, through long
subjection, servile in mind," slothful of body, and with
the use of arms unacquainted, sustained but ill for many
years the violence of those barbarous invaders, who now
daily grew upon them. For although at first greedy
of change," and to be thought the leading nation to
freedom from the empire, they seemed awhile to bestir
them with a shew of diligence in their new affairs,
some secretly aspiring to rule, others adoring the name
of liberty, yet so soon as they felt by proof the weight
of what it was to govern well themselves, and what was
wanting within them, not stomach or the love of licence,
but the wisdom, the virtue, the labour, to use and
maintain true liberty, they soon remitted their heat,
and shrunk more wretchedly under the burden of their
own liberty, than before under a foreign yoke. Inso-
much that the residue of those Romans, which had
planted themselves here, despairing of their ill deport-
ment at home, and weak resistance in the field by those
few who had the courage or the strength to bear arms,
nine years after the sacking of Rome removed out of
Britain into France," hiding for haste great part of
their treasure, which was never after found.” And
now again the Britons, no longer able to support them-
selves against the prevailing enemy, solicit Honorius
to their aid, with mournful letters, embassages, and
vows of perpetual subjection to Rome, if the northern
foe were but repulsed. & He at their request spares
them one legion, which with great slaughter of the
Scots and Picts drove them beyond the borders, rescued
the Britons, and advised them to build a wall across
the island, between sea and sea, from the place where
Edinburgh now stands to the frith of Dumbritton, by
the city Alcluith. But the material being only turf,
and by the rude multitude unartificially built up with-
out better direction, availed them little. For no
sooner was the legion departed, but the greedy spoilers
returning, land in great numbers from their boats and
pinnaces, wasting, slaying, and treading down all be-
fore them. Then are messengers again posted to
Rome in lamentable sort, beseeching that they would
not suffer a whole province to be destroyed, and the
Roman name, so honourable yet among them, to be-
come the subject of Barbarian scorn and insolence.
* The emperor, at their sad complaint, with what speed
was possible, sends to their succour. Who coming
suddenly on those ravenous multitudes that minded
only spoil, surprise them with a terrible slaughter.
They who escaped fled back to those seas, from whence
yearly they were wont to arrive, and return laden with
booties. But the Romans, who came not now to rule,
but charitably to aid, declaring that it stood not longer
with the ease of their affairs to make such laborious
voyages in pursuit of so base and vagabond robbers,
of whom neither glory was to be got, nor gain, exhort-
ed them to manage their own warfare; and to defend
like men their country, their wives, their children, and
what was to be dearer than life, their liberty, against
an enemy not stronger than themselves, if their own
sloth and cowardice had not made them so : if they
would but only find hands to grasp defensive arms,
rather than basely stretch them out to receive bonds.
| They gave them also their help to build a new wall,
not of earth as the former, but of stone, (both at the
public cost, and by particular contributions,) traversing
the isle in a direct line from east to west, between cer-
tain cities placed there as frontiers to bear off the
enemy, where Severus had walled once before. They
raised it twelve foot high, eight broad. Along the
south shore, because from thence also like hostility
was feared, they place towers by the sea-side at certain
distances, for safety of the coast. Withal they instruct
them in the art of war, leaving patterns of their arms
and weapons behind them; and with animating words,
and many lessons of valour to a faint-hearted audience,
bid them finally farewel, without purpose to return.
And these two friendly expeditions, the last of any
hither by the Romans, were performed, as may be
gathered out of Beda and Diaconus, the two last years
of Honorius. " Their leader, as some modernly write,
was Gallio of Ravenna; Buchanan, who departs not
much from the fables of his predecessor Boethius, names
him Maximianus, and brings against him to this battle
Fergus first king of Scots, after their second supposed
coming into Scotland, Durstus, king of Picts, both
there slain, and Dioneth an imaginary king of Britain,
or duke of Cornwall, who improbably sided with them
against his own country, hardly escaping.” With no
less exactness of particular circumstances he takes upon
him to relate all those tumultuary inroads of the Scots
c Zozim. l. 6. d Post Clarist 418.
f Gildas. Post Christ. 422.
h Bede, l. l. c. 2.
b Gild. Bede. Malins.
e lºthelwerd. annal. Sax.
g Diaconus, l, 14.
i Gildas. - k Post Christ, 423.
| Bede, ibid. Gildas. m Blond. Sabellic.
n Buch. l. 5.
Book III.
505
THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
and Picts into Britain, as if they had but yesterday
happened, their order of battle, manner of fight, num-
ber of slain, articles of peace, things whereof Gildas
and Beda are utterly silent, authors to whom the Scotch
writers have none to cite comparable in antiquity; no
more therefore to be believed for bare assertions, how-
ever quaintly drest, than our Geoffrey of Monmouth,
when he varies most from authentic story. But either
the inbred vanity of some, in that respect unworthily
called historians, or the fond zeal of praising their
nations above truth, hath so far transported them, that
where they find nothing faithfully to relate, they fall
confidently to invent what they think may either best
set off their history, or magnify their country.
The Scots and Picts in manners differing somewhat
from each other, but still unanimous to rob and spoil,
hearing that the Romans intended not to return, from
their gorroghs or leathern frigates 9 pour out themselves
in swarms upon the land more confident than ever; and
from the north end of the isle to the very wall's side,
then first took possession as inhabitants; while the Bri-
tons with idle weapons in their hands stand trembling
on the battlements, till the half naked Barbarians with
their long and formidable iron hooks pull them down
headlong. The rest not only quitting the wall, but
towns and cities, leave them to the bloody pursuer,
who follows killing, wasting, and destroying all in his
way. From these confusions arose a famine, and from
thence discord and civil commotion among the Britons;
each man living by what he robbed or took violently
from his neighbour. When all stores were consumed
and spent where men inhabited, they betook them to the
woods, and lived by hunting, which was their only
sustainment. P To the heaps of these evils from with-
out were added new divisions within the church. q For
Agricola the son of Severianus a Pelagian bishop had
spread his doctrine wide among the Britons, not unin-
fected before. The sounder part, neither willing to
embrace his opinion to the overthrow of divine grace,
nor able to refute him, crave assistance from the churches
of France: who send them Germanus bishop of Aux-
erre, and Lupus of Troyes. They by continual preach-
ing in churches, in streets, in fields, and not without
miracles, as is written, confirmed some, regained others,
and at Verulam in a public disputation put to silence
their chief adversaries. This reformation in the church
was believed to be the cause of their success a while
after in the field. For the Saxons and Picts with joint
force,s which was no new thing before the Saxons at
least had any dwelling in this island, during the abode
of Germanus here, had made a strong impression from
the north. ‘The Britons marching out against them,
and mistrusting their own power, send to Germanus
and his colleague, reposing more in the spiritual
strength of those two men, than in their own thousands
armed. They came, and their presence in the camp
was not less than if a whole army had come to second
them. It was then the time of Lent, and the people,
instructed by the daily sermons of these two pastors,
came flocking to receive baptism. There was a place
in the camp set apart as a church, and tricked up with
boughs upon Easter-day. The enemy understanding
this, and that the Britons were taken up with religions
more than with feats of arms, advances after the pas-
chal feast, as to a certain victory. German, who also
had intelligence of their approach, undertakes to be
captain that day; and riding out with selected troops
to discover what advantages the place might offer,
lights on a valley compassed about with hills, by which
the enemy was to pass. And placing there his ambush,
warns them, that what word they heard him pronounce
aloud, the same they should repeat with universal shout.
The enemy passes on securely, and German thrice
aloud cries Hallelujah; which answered by the sol-
diers with a sudden burst of clamour, is from the hills
and valleys redoubled. The Saxons and Picts on a
sudden supposing it the noise of a huge host, throw
themselves into flight, casting down their arms, and
great numbers of them are drowned in the river which
they had newly passed. This victory, thus won with-
out hands, left to the Britons plenty of spoil, and the
person and the preaching of German greater authority
and reverence than before. And the exploit might pass
for current, if Constantius, the writer of his life in the
next age, had resolved us how the British army came
to Wall t baptizing; for of any paganism at that time,
or long before, in the land we read not, or that Pela-
gianism was rebaptized. The place of this victory, as
is reported, was in Flintshire," by a town called Guid
cruc, and the river Allen, where a field retains the name
of Maes German to this day. But so soon as German
was returned home,” the Scots and Picts, (though now
so many of them Christians, that Palladius a deacon
was ordained and sent by Celestine the pope to be a
bishop over them,) were not so well reclaimed, or not
so many of them, as to cease from doing mischief to
their neighbours, where they found no impeachment
to fall in yearly as they were wont. They therefore of
the Britons who perhaps were not yet wholly ruined,
in the strongest and south-west parts of the isle,” send
letters to Ætius, then third time consul of Rome, with
this superscription; “To AEtius thrice consul, the groans
of the Britons.” And aſter a few words thus: “ The
barbarians drive us to the sea, the sea drives us back to
the barbarians: thus bandied up and down between
two deaths, we perish either by the sword or by the
sea.” But the empire, at that time overspread with
Huns and Vandals, was not in condition to lend them
aid. Thus rejected and wearied out with continual
flying from place to place, but more afflicted with fa-
mine, which then grew outrageous among them, many
for hunger yielded to the enemy; others either more
resolute, or less exposed to wants, keeping within
woods and mountainous places, not only defended
themselves, but sallying out, at length gave a stop to
the insulting foe, with many seasonable defeats; led
by some eminent person, as may be thought, who ex-
horted them not to trust in their own strength, but in
o Gildas, Bede. p Rede, q Constantius.
r Post Christ. 426. Prosp. Aquit. Matth, West, ad ann. H46.
S Post Christ. 430. t Constant, vit, German.
u Usser, Primod. p. 333. •
x Post Christ. 431. Prosp. Aquit. Ethelwerd.
º - - y Florent Gild. Bede.
2 Malmsbury, l. i. c. i. p. 8. Post Christ. 446.
506
Book III.
THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
divine assistance. And perhaps no other here is meant
than the foresaid deliverance by German, if computa-
tion would permit, which Gildas either not much re-
garded, or might mistake; but that he tarried so long
here, the writers of his life assent not.” Finding there-
fore such opposition, the Scotch or Irish robbers, for so
they are indifferently termed, without delay get them
home. The Picts, as before was mentioned, then first
began to settle in the utmost parts of the island, using
now and then to make inroads upon the Britons. But
they in the mean while thus rid of their enemies, begin
afresh to till the ground; which after cessation yields
her fruit in such abundance, as had not formerly been
known, for many ages. But wantonness and luxury,
the wonted companions of plenty, grow up as fast;
and with them, if Gildas deserve belief, all other vices
incident to human corruption. That which he notes
especially to be the chief perverting of all good in the
land, and so continued in his days, was the hatred of
truth, and all such as durst appear to vindicate and
maintain it. Against them, as against the only dis-
turbers, all the malice of the land was bent. Lies
and falsities, and such as could best invent them,
were only in request. Evil was embraced for good,
wickedness honoured and esteemed as virtue. And
this quality their valour had, against a foreign
enemy to be ever backward and heartless; to civil
broils eager and prompt. In matters of government,
and the search of truth, weak and shallow ; in false-
hood and wicked deeds, pregnant and industrious.
Pleasing to God, or not pleasing, with them weighed
alike ; and the worse most an end was the weigher.
All things were done contrary to public welfare and
safety; nor only by secular men, for the clergy also,
whose example should have guided others, were as
vicious and corrupt. Many of them besotted with con-
tinual drunkenness, or swollen with pride and wilful-
ness, full of contention, full of envy, indiscrete, incom-
petent judges to determine what in the practice of life
is good or evil, what lawful or unlawful. Thus fur-
nished with judgment, and for manners thus qualified
both priest and lay, they agree to choose them several
kings of their own ; as near as might be, likest them-
selves; and the words of my author import as much.
Rings were anointed, saith he, not of God's anointing,
but such as were cruellest; and soon after as inconsider-
ately, without examining the truth, put to death, by
their anointers, to set up others more fierce and proud.
As for the election of their kings, (and that they had
not all one monarch, appears both in ages past and by
the sequel,) it began, as high as may be guessed, either
this year" or the following, when they saw the Ro-
mans had quite deserted their claim. About which
time also Pelagianism again prevailing by means of
some few, the British clergy too weak, it seems, at dis-
pute, entreat the second time German to their assist-
ance; who coming with Severus a disciple of Lupus,
that was his former associate, stands not now to argue,
for the people generally continued right; but inquiring
those authors of new disturbance, adjudges them to
banishment. They therefore by consent of aſ were
delivered to German ; who carrying them over with
him,c disposed of them in such place where neither
they could infect others, and were themselves under
cure of better instruction. But Germanus the same
year died in Italy; and the Britons not long after
found themselves again in much perplexity, with no
slight rumour that their old troublers the Scots and
Picts had prepared a strong invasion, purposing to
kill all, and dwell themselves in the land from end to
end. But ere their coming in, as if the instruments of
divine justice had been at strife, which of them first
should destroy a wicked nation, the pestilence, fore-
stalling the sword, left scarce alive whom to bury the
dead; and for that time, as one extremity keeps off an-
other, preserved the land from a worse incumbrance of
those barbarous dispossessors, whom the contagion
gave not leave now to enter far. "And yet the Bri-
tons, nothing bettered by these heavy judgments, the
one threatened, the other felt, instead of acknowledg-
ing the hand of Heaven, run to the palace of their king
Vortigern with complaints and cries of what they sud-
denly feared from the Pictish invasion. Vortigern,
who at that time was chief rather than sole king, un-
less the rest had perhaps left their dominions to the
common enemy, is said by him of Monmouth, to have
procured the death first of Constantine, then of Con-
stance his son, who of a monk was made king, and by
that means to have usurped the crown. But they who
can remember how Constantine, with his son Constance
the monk, the one made emperor, the other Caesar, pe-
rished in France, may discern the simple fraud of this
fable. But Vortigern however coming to reign, is de-
ciphered by truer stories a proud unfortunate tyrant, and
yet of the people much beloved, because his vices sorted
so well with theirs. For neither was he skilled in war,
nor wise in counsel, but covetous, lustful, luxurious,
and prone to all vice; wasting the public treasure in
gluttony and riot, careless of the common danger, and
through a haughty ignorance unapprehensive of his
own. Nevertheless importuned and awakened at
length by unusual clamours of the people, he summons
a general council, to provide some better means than
heretofore had been used against these continual an-
noyances from the north. Wherein by advice of all it
was determined, that the Saxons be invited into Bri-
tain against the Scots and Picts; whose breaking in
they either shortly expected, or already found they had
not strength enough to oppose. The Saxons were a
barbarous and heathen nation, famous for nothing else
but robberies and cruelties done to all their neighbours,
both by sea and land; in particular to this island, wit-
mess that military force, which the Roman emperors
maintained here purposely against them, under a spe-
cial commander, whose title, as is found on good re-
cord,e was “Count of the Saxon shore in Britain,” and
the many mischiefs done by their landing here, both
aloue and with the Picts, as above hath been related,
a Gildas. - b Post Christ. 447. Constant. Bede.
c Post Christ. 448. Sigon. Gildas.
d Malms. l. 1.
e Notitiae imperii.
Book III.
507
THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
witness as much.f They were a people thought by
good writers to be descended of the Sacae, a kind of
Scythians in the north of Asia, thence called Sacasons,
or sons of Sacae, who with a flood of other northern na-
tions came into Europe, toward the declining of the
Roman empire; and using piracy from Denmark all
along these seas, possessed at length by intrusion all
that coast of Germany,” and the Netherlands, which
took thence the name of Old Saxony, lying between
the Rhine and Elve, and from thence north as far as
Eidora, the river bounding Holsatia, though not so
firmly or so largely, but that their multitude wandered
yet uncertain of habitation. Such guests as these the
Britons resolve now to send for, and entreat into their
houses and possessions, at whose very name heretofore
they trembled aſar off. So much do men through im-
patience count ever that the heaviest, which they bear
at present, and to remove the evil which they suffer,
care not to pull on a greater; as if variety and change
in evil also were acceptable. Or whether it be that
men in the despair of better, imagine fondly a kind of
refuge from one misery to another.
* The Britons therefore with Vortigern, who was
then accounted king over them all, resolve in full coun-
cil to send embassadors of their choicest men with
great gifts, and saith a Saxon writer, in these words
desiring their aid; “Worthy Saxons, hearing the ſame
of your prowess, the distressed Britons wearied out,
and overpressed by a continual invading enemy, have
sent us to beseech your aid. They have a land fertile
and spacious, which to your commands they bid us
surrender. Heretofore we have lived with freedom,
under the obedience and protection of the Roman em-
pire. Next to them we know none worthier than
yourselves: and therefore become suppliants to your
valour. Leave us not below our present enemies, and
to aught by you imposed, willingly we shall submit.”
Yet Ethelwerd writes not that they promised subjec-
tion, but only amity and league. They therefore who
had chief rule among them, hearing themselves en-
treated by the Britons, to that which gladly they would
have wished to obtain of them by entreating, to the
British embassy return this answer:k “Be assured
henceforth of the Saxons, as of faithful friends to the
Britons, no less ready to stand by them in their need,
than in their best of fortune.” The embassadors return
joyful, and with news as welcome to their country,
whose sinister fate had now blinded them for destruc-
tion. The Saxons, consulting first their gods, (for
they had answer, that the land whereto they went, they
should hold three hundred years, half that time conquer-
ing, and half quietly possessing,) furnish out three
long gallies,” or kyules, with a chosen company of
warlike youth, under the conduct of two brothers,
Hengist and Horsa, descended in the fourth degree
from Woden ; of whom, deified for the fame of his
acts, most kings of those nations derive their pedigree.
These, and either mixed with these, or soon after by
themselves, two other tribes, or neighbouring people,
Jutes and Angles, the one from Jutland, the other from
Anglen by the city of Sleswick, both provinces of Den-
mark, arrive in the first year of Martian the Greek em-
peror, from the birth of Christ four hundred and fifty,"
received with much good-will of the people first, then
of the king, who after some assurances given and taken,
bestows on them the isle of Tanet, where they first
landed, hoping they might be made hereby more eager
against the Picts, when they fought as for their own
country, and more loyal to the Britons, from whom they
had received a place to dwell in, which before they
wanted. The British Neunius writes, that these bre-
thren were driven into exile out of Germany, and to
Vortigern who reigned in much fear, one while of the
Picts, then of the Romans and Ambrosius, came oppor-
tunely into the haven. ” For it was the custom in Old
Saxony, when their numerous offspring overflowed the
narrowness of their bounds, to send them out by lot
into new dwellings wherever they found room, either
vacant or to be forced. P But whether sought, or
unsought, they dwelt not here long without employ-
ment. For the Scots and Picts were now come down,
some say, as far as Stamford, in Lincolnshire, whom
perhaps not imagining to meet new opposition, the
Saxons, though not till aſter a sharp encounter, put to
flight;q and that more than once; slaying in fight,"
as some Scotch writers affirm, their king Eugenius the
son of Fergus. s Hengist perceiving the island to be
rich and fruitful, but her princes and other inhabitants
given to vicious ease, sends word home, inviting others
to a share of his good success. Who returning with
seventeen ships, were grown up now to a sufficient
army, and entertained without suspicion on these terms,
that they “should bear the brunt of war against the
Picts, receiving stipend, and some place to inhabit.”
With these was brought over the daughter of Hengist,
a virgin wonderous fair, as is reported, Rowen the
British call her : she by commandment of her father,
who had invited the king to a banquet, coming in
presence with a bowl of wine to welcome him, and to
attend on his cup till the feast ended, won so much
upon his fancy, though already wived, as to demand
her in marriage upon any conditions. Hengist at first,
though it fell out perhaps according to his driſt, held
off, excusing his meanness; then obscurely intimating
a desire and almost a necessity, by reason of his aug-
mented numbers, to have his narrow bounds of Tanet
enlarged to the circuit of Kent, had it straight by do-
nation ; though Guorangonus, till then, was king of
that place ; and so, as it were overcome by the great
munificence of Vortigern, gave his daughter. And
still encroaching on the king's favour, got further leave
to call over Octa and Ebissa, his own and his brother's
son; pretending that they, if the north were given
them, would sit there as a continual defence against
the Scots, while himself guarded the east. They
therefore sailing with forty ships, even to the Or-
cades, and every way curbing the Scots and Picts,
possessed that part of the isle which is now Nor-
f Florent Wigorn, ad an: 370.
h ºthelwerd. Malmsb. Witichind, gest, Sax. l. 1.
k Witichind. - 1 Gildas.
g F.thelwerd.
i Malms.
m lede.
n Post Christ. 450. Nennius. Malms.
p II enry II untingd. • q Ethelwerd.
S Nenn. t Gildas, Bed, Nenn.
o Malms.
r Bed. Nen.
508 THE HISTORY
Book III.
OF ENGLAND.
thumberland. Notwithstanding this, they complain
that their monthly pay was grown much into arrear;
which when the Britons found means to satisfy, though
alleging withal, that they to whom promise was made
of wages were nothing so many in number : quieted
with this a while, but still seeking occasion to fall off,
they find fault next, that their pay is too small for the
danger they undergo, threatening open war, unless it
be augmented. Guortimer, the king's son, perceiving
his father and the kingdom thus betrayed, from that
time bends his utmost endeavour to drive them out,
They on the other side making league with the Picts
and Scots, and issuing out of Kent, wasted without
resistance almost the whole land even to the western
sea, with such a horrid devastation, that towns and
colonies overturned, priests and people slain, temples
and palaces, what with fire and sword, lay altogether
heaped in one mixed ruin. Of all which multitude
so great was the sinfulness that brought this upon them,
Gildas adds, that few or none were likely to be other
than lewd and wicked persons. The residue of these,
part overtaken in the mountains were slain ; others
subdued with hunger preferred slavery before instant
death ; some getting to rocks, hills, and woods, inac-
cessible, preferred the fear and danger of any death,
before the shame of a secure slavery;" many fled over
sea into other countries; some into Holland, where yet
remain the ruins of Brittenburgh, an old castle on the
sea, to be seen at low water not far from Leyden, either
built, as writers of their own affirm, or seized on by
those Britons, in their escape from Hengist; others
into Armorica, peopled, as some think, with Britons
long before, either by gift of Constantine the Great, or
else of Maximus, to those British forces which had
served them in foreign wars;Y to whom those also that
miscarried not with the latter Constantine at Arles,
and lastly, these exiles driven out by Saxons, fled for
refuge. But the ancient chronicles of those provinces
attest their coming thither to be then first when they
fled the Saxons; and indeed the name of Britain in
Trance is not read till aſter that time. Yet how a sort
of fugitives, who had quitted without stroke their own
country, should so soon win another, appears not, un-
less joined to some party of their own settled there be-
fore. *Vortigern, nothing bettered by these calamities,
grew at last so obdurate as to commit incest with his
daughter, tempted or tempting him out of an ambition
to the crown. For which being censured and con.
demned in a great synod of clerks and laics, partly
for fear of the Saxons, according to the counsel
of his peers, he retired into Wales, and built him
there a strong castle in Radnorshire,” by the advice
of Ambrosius a young prophet, whom others call Mer-
lin. Nevertheless Faustus, who was the son thus in-
cestuously begotten, under the instructions of German,
or some of his disciples, for German was dead before,
proved a religious man, and lived in devotion by the
river Remnis, in Glamorganshire. " But the Saxons,
though finding it so easy to subdue the isle, with most
of their forces, uncertain for what cause, returned home:
whenas the easiness of their conquest might seem rather
likely to have called in more; which makes more pro-
bable that which the British write of Guortimer. “For
he coming to reign, instead of his father deposed for
incest, is said to have thrice driven and besieged the
Saxons in the isle of Tanet; and when they issued out
with powerful supplies sent from Saxony, to have
ſought with them four other battles, whercof three are
named ; the first on the river Darwent, the second at
Episford, wherein Horsa the brother of Hengist fell,
and on the British part Catigern the other son of Vor-
tigern. The third in a field by Stonar, then called
Lapis Tituli, in Tanet, where he beat them into their
ships that bore them home, glad to have so escaped,
and not venturing to land again for five years after. In
the space whereof Guortimer dying, commanded they
should bury him in the port of Stonar; persuaded that
his bones lying there would be terrour enough, to keep
the Saxons from ever landing in that place: they, saith
Nennius, neglecting his command, buried him in Lin-
coln. But concerning these times, ancientest ammals
of the Saxons relate in this manner, d In the year four
hundred and fifty-five, Hengist and Horsa fought
against Vortigern, in a place called Eglesthrip, now
Ailsford in Kent, where Horsa lost his life, of whom
Horsted, the place of his burial, took name.
After this first battle and the death of his brother,
Hengist with his son Esca took on him kingly title,”
and peopled Kent with Jutes; who also then, or not
long after, possessed the Isle of Wight, and part of
Hampshire lying opposite. f Two years after in a fight
at Creganford, or Craford, Hengist and his son slew of
the Britons four chief commanders, and as many thou-
sand men; the rest in great disorder flying to London,
with the total loss of Kent. & And eight years passing
between, he made new war on the Britons; of whom,
in a battle at Wippeds-fleot, twelve princes were slain,
and Wipped the Saxon earl, who left his name to that
place, though not sufficient to direct us where it now
stands. " His last encounter was at a place not men-
tioned, where he gave them such an overthrow, that
flying in great fear they left the spoil of all to their
enemies. And these perhaps are the four battles, ac-
cording to Nennius, fought by Guortimer, though by
these writers far differently related; and happening
besides many other bickerings, in the space of twenty
years, as Malmsbury reckons. Nevertheless it plainly
appears that the Saxons, by whomsoever, were put to
hard shifts, being all this while fought withal in Kent,
their own allotted dwelling, and sometimes on the very
edge of the sea, which the word Wippeds-fleot seems
to intimate. But Guortimer now dead, and none of
courage left to defend the land, Vortigern either by the
power of his faction, or by consent of all, reassumes
the government: and Hengist thus rid of his grand
opposer, hearing gladly the restorement of his old fa-
vourer, returns again with great forces; but to Vorti-
germ, whom he well knew how to handle without
x Malms. l. 1. c. 1.
y IIunting, l. 1.
Jenn.
u Primord. p. 418.
z N “nn. Malmsb. ºl
b Gilulas. c Nenn.
d Post Christ. 455, Bede. Ethelwerd. Florent, Annal. Sax.
e The kingdom ºf Kent. f Post Christ. 457.
g Post Christ. 465. h Post Christ. 473. i Nennius
Book III.
509
THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
warring, as to his son-in-law, now that the only author
of dissension between them was removed by death,
offers nothing but all terms of new league and amity.
The king, both for his wife's sake and his own sottish-
ness, consulting also with his peers not unlike himself,
readily yields; and the place of parley is agreed on ;
to which either side was to repair without weapons.
Hengist, whose meaning was not peace, but treachery,
appointed his men to be secretly armed, and acquainted
them to what intent. KThe watchword was, Nemet
eour saxes, that is, Draw your daggers; which they
observing, when the Britons were thoroughly heated
with wine (for the treaty it seems was not without
cups) and provoked, as was plotted, by some affront,
dispatched with those poniards every one his next man,
to the number of three hundred, the chief of those that
could do aught against him, either in counsel or in
field. Vortigern they only bound and kept in custody,
until he granted them for h’s ransom three provinces,
which were called afterward Essex, Sussex, and Mid-
dlesex. Who thus dismissed, retiring again to his
solitary abode in the country of Guorthigirniaun, so
called by his name, from thence to the castle of his
own building in North Wales, by the river Tiebi;
and living there obscurely among his wives, was at
length burnt in his tower by fire from Heaven, at the
prayer, as some say, of German, but that coheres not;
as others, by Ambrosius Aurelian ; of whom, as we
have heard at first, he stood in great fear, and partly
for that cause invited in the Saxons. Who, whether
by constraint or of their own accord, after much mis-
chief done, most of them returning back into their
own country, left a fair opportunity to the Britons of
avenging themselves easier on those who staid be-
hind. Repenting therefore, and with earnest suppli-
cation imploring divine help to prevent their final
rooting out, they gather from all parts, and under the
leading of Ambrosius Aurelianus, a virtuous and
modest man, the last here of the Roman stock, ad-
vancing now onward against the late victors, defeat
them in a memorable battle. Common opinion, but
grounded chiefly on the British fables, makes this Am-
brosius to be a younger son of that Constantine, whose
eldest, as we heard, was Constance the monk; who
both lost their lives abroad usurping the empire. But
the express words both of Gildas and Bede assure us,
that the parents of this Ambrosius having here born
regal dignity, were slain in these Pictish wars and
commotions in the island. And if the fear of Ambrose
induced Vortigern to call in the Saxons, it seems Vor-
tigern usurped his right. I perceive not that Nennius
makes any difference between him and Merlin; for
that child without father, that prophesied to Vortigern,
he names not Merlin, but Ambrose; makes him the
son of a Roman consul, but concealed by his mother,
as fearing that the king therefore sought his life:
yet the youth no sooner had confessed his parentage,
but Vortigern either in reward of his predictions, or
as his right, bestowed upon him all the west of Bri-
tain ; himself retiring to a solitary life. Whosever son
he was, he was the first," according to surest authors,
that led against the Saxons, and overthrew them ; but
whether before this time or after, none have written.
This is certain, that in a time when most of the Saxon
forces were departed home, the Britons gathered
strength; and either against those who were left re-
maining, or against their whole powers the second time
returning, obtained this victory. Thus Ambrose as
chief monarch of the isle succeeded Vortigern ; to whose
third son Pascentius he permitted the rule of two re-
gions in Wales, Buelth and Guorthigirniaum. In his
days, saith Nennius,” the Saxons prevailed not much :
against whom Arthur, as being then chief general for
the British kings, made great war, but more renowned
in songs and romances, than in true stories. And the
sequel itself declares as much. For in the year four
hundred and seventy seven,” Ella, the Saxon, with his
three sons, Cymen, Pleting, and Cissa, at a place in
Sussex called Cymenshore, arrive in three ships, kill
many of the Britons, chasing them that remained into
the wood Andreds Leage. P Another battle was fought
at Mercreds-Burnamsted, wherein Ella had by far the
victory; but q Huntingdon makes it so doubtful, that
the Saxons were constrained to send home for supplies.
r Four years after died Hengist, the first Saxon king of
Kent; noted to have attained that dignity by craft, as
much as valour, and giving scope to his own cruel na-
ture, rather than proceeding by mildness or civility.
His son Oeric, surnamed Oisc, of whom the Kentish
kings were called Oiscings, succeeded him, and sate
content with his father’s winnings, more desirous to
settle and defend, than to enlarge his bounds: he reign-
ed twenty-four years. S By this time Ella and his son
Cissa besieging Andredchester, supposed now to be
Newenden in Kent, take it by force, and all within it
put to the sword.
Thus Ella, three years after the death of Hengist,
began his kingdom of the South-Saxons; t peopling it
with new inhabitants, from the country which was then
Old Saxony, at this day Holstein in Denmark, and
had besides at his command all those provinces, which
the Saxons had won on this side Humber.u Animated
with these good successes, as if Britain were become
now the field of fortune, Kerdic another Saxon prince,
the tenth by lineage from Woden,” an old and prac-
tised soldier, who in many prosperous conflicts against
the enemy in those parts had nursed up a spirit too big
to live at home with equals, coming to a certain place,
which from thence took the name of Kerdic-shore, with
five ships, and Kenric his son, the very same day over-
threw the Britons that opposed him; and so effectually,
that smaller skirmishes after that day were sufficient to
drive them still further off, leaving him a large territory.
* After him Porta another Saxon, with his two sons
Bida and Megla, in two ships arrive at Portsmouth
thence called, and at their landing slew a young Bri-
1 Post Christ. 180. Malms. Bed. l. 2. c. 5.
S Post Christ. 492. Camden. t The kingdom of South-Saxons.
k Malms. l Min. ex legend St. Ger. Galfrid. Monmouth.
m Gildas, Bed. n N
i tº Ill? .
o Post Christ, 477. Sax. an. Ethelw. Florent.
p Post Christ. 485, Florent. q 11 untingd.
u led...!; 1; c. 15. and l. g. s. 5. - - X Sax. ann. Onn.
y l’ost Christ. 495. z Post Christ. 501. Sax. an. Othm. l I untingdon
510
Book III.
THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
tish nobleman, with many others who unadvisedly set
upon them.” The Britons to recover what they had
lost, draw together all their forces, led by Natanleod,
or Nazaleod, a certain king in Britain, and the greatest,
saith one; but with him five thousand of his men Ker-
dic puts to rout and slays. From whence the place in
Hantshire, as far as Kerdicsford, now Chardford, was
called of old Nazaleod. Who this king should be, hath
bred much question ; some think it to be the British
name of Ambrose; others to be the right name of his
brother, who for the terrour of his eagerness in fight,
became more known by the surname of Uther, which
in the Welch tongue signifies Dreadful. And if ever
such a king in Britain there was as Uther Pendragon,
for so also the Monmouth book surnames him, this in
all likelihood must be he. Kerdic by so great a blow
given to the Britons had made large room about him;
not only for the men he brought with him, but for such
also of his friends, as he desired to make great; for
which cause, and withal the more to strengthen him-
self, his two nephews Stuff and Withgar, in three
vessels bring him new levies to Kerdic-shore.' Who,
that they might not come sluggishly to possess what
others had won for them, either by their own seeking,
or by appointment, are set in a place where they could
not but at their first coming give proof of themselves
upon the enemy; and so well they did it, that the Bri-
tons after a hard encounter left them masters of t.e
field." About the same time, Ella the first South-Saxon
king died; whom Cissa, his youngest son, succeeded;
the other two failing before him.
Nor can it be much more or less than about this time,
for it was before the West-Saxon kingdom, that Uffa,
the eighth from Woden, made himself king of the East-
Angles; d who by their name testify the country above
mentioned; from whence they came in such multitudes,
that their native soil is said to have remained in the
days of Beda uninhabited.” Huntingdon defers the
time of their coming in to the ninth year of Kerdic's
reign : for, saith he, at first many of them strove for
principality, seizing every one his province, and for
some while so continued, making petty wars among
themselves; g till in the end Uffa, of whom those kings
were called Uffings, overtopped them all in the year
five hundred and seventy one; h then Titilus his son,
the father of Redwald, who became potent.
And not much after the East-Angles, began also the
East-Saxons to erect a kingdom under Sleda, the tenth
from Woden. But Huntingdon, as before, will have
it later by cleven years, and Erchenwin to be the first
king.
Kerdic the same in power, though not so fond of title,
forbore the name twenty-four years after his arrival;
but then founded so firmly the kingdom of West-
Saxons, that it subjected all the rest at length, and
became the sole monarchy of England. The same
year he had a victory against the Britons at Kerdic's
ford, by the river Aven; and after eight years," another
great fight at Kerdic's leage, but which won the day
a Post Christ. 508. Ann, omn. II untingul. Camden. USS. Primord.
is not by any set down. Hitherto have been collected
what there is of certainty with circumstance of time
and place to be found registered, and no more than
barely registered, in annals of best note; without de-
scribing after Huntingdon the manner of those battles
and encounters, which they who compare, and can
judge of books, may be conſident he never found in
any current author, whom he had to follow. But this
disease hath been incident to many more historians:
and the age whereof we now write hath had the ill hap,
more than any since the first fabulous times, to be sur-
charged with all the idle ſancies of posterity. Yet that
we may not rely altogether on Saxon relaters, Gildas,
in antiquity far before these, and every way more cre-
dible, speaks of these wars in such a manner, though
nothing conceited of the British valour, as declares the
Saxons in his time and before to have been ſoiled not
seldomer than the Britons. I'or besides that first vic-
tory of Ambrose, and the interchangeable success long
after, he tells that the last overthrow, which they re-
ceived at Badon-hill, was not the least; which they in
their oldest annals mention not at all. And because
the time of this battle, by any who could do more than
guess, is not set down, or any foundation given from
whence to draw a solid compute, it cannot be much
wide to insert it in this place. For such authors as we
have to follow give the conduct and praise of this ex-
ploit to Arthur; and that this was the last of twelve
great battles, which he fought victoriously against the
Saxons. The several places written by Nennius in
their Welch names' were many hundred years ago un-
known, and so here omitted. But who Arthur was,
and whether ever any such reigned in Britain, hath
been doubted heretofore, and may again with good
reason. For the monk of Malmsbury, and others,
whose credit hath swayed most with the learneder sort,
we may well perceive to have known no more of this
Arthur five hundred years past, nor of his doings, than
we, now living; and what they had to say, transcribed
out of Nennius, a very trivial writer yet extant, which
hath already been related ; or out of a British book,
the same which he of Monmouth set forth, utterly un-
known to the world, till more than six hundred years
after the days of Arthur, of whom (as Sigebert in his
chronicle confesses) all other histories were silent, both
foreign and domestic, except only that fabulous book.
Others of later time have sought to assert him by old
legends and cathedral regests. But he who can accept
of legends for good story, may quickly swell a volume
with trash, and had need be furnished with two only
necessaries, leisure and belief; whether it be the writer,
or he that shall read. As to Arthur, no less is in doubt
who was his father; for if it be true, as Nennius or his
notist avers, that Arthur was called Mab-Uther, that is
to say, a cruel son, for the fierceness that men saw in
him of a child, and the intent of his name Arturus im-
ports as much, it might well be that some in after-ages,
who sought to turn him into a fable, wrested the word
Uther into a proper name, and so feigned him the son
b Post Christ, 514; An, onn, c Huntingdon.
d The kingdom of East-Angles. e Malmsb. l. l. c. 5. Bed. l. 1. c. 15.
f II untingd, l. 2. p. 313, 315. . . g Bed. l. 2. c. 15.
h Malms, l. 1. c. 6. i Post Christ. 519,
Sax. ann. Olmn, 527. €ll I) .
Book III.
THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 51 |
of Uther; since we read-not in any certain story, that
ever such person lived till Geoffrey of Monmouth set
him off with the surname of Pendragon. And as we
doubted of his parentage, so may we also of his puis-
sance; for whether that victory at Badon-hill were his
or no, is uncertain; Gildas not naming him, as he did
Ambrose in the former. Next, if it be true as Caradoc
relates, m that Melvas, king of that country which is
now Somerset, kept from him Gueniver his wife a whole
year in the town of Glaston, and restored her at the
entreaty of Gildas, rather than for any enforcement that
Arthur with all his chivalry could make against a small
town defended only by a moory situation ; had either
his knowledge in war, or the force he had to make,
been answerable to the fame they bear, that petty king
had neither dared such affront, nor he been so long,
and at last without effect, in revenging it. Considering
lastly how the Saxons gained upon him every where
all the time of his supposed reign, which began, as
some write,n in the tenth year of Kerdic, who wrung
from him by long war the counties of Somerset and
Hampshire; there will remain neither place nor cir-
cumstance in story, which may administer any likeli-
hood of those great acts, that are ascribed to him. “This
only is alleged by Nennius in Arthur's behalf, that the
Saxons, though vanquished never so oft, grew still
more numerous upon him by continual supplies out of
Germany. And the truth is, that valour may be over-
toiled, and overcome at last with endless overcoming.
But as for this battle of mount Badon, where the Sax-
ons were hemmed im, or besieged, whether by Arthur
won, or whensoever, it seems indeed to have given a
most undoubted and important blow to the Saxons,
and to have stopped their proceedings for a good while
after. Gildas himself witnessing, that the Britons,
having thus compelled them to sit down with peace, fell
thereupon to civil discord among themselves. Which
words may seem to let in some light toward the search-
ing out when this battle was fought. And we shall find
no time since the first Saxon war, from whence a longer
peace ensued, than from the fight at Kerdic's Leage, in
the year five hundred and twenty seven, which all the
chronicles mention, without victory to Kerdic ; and
give us argument from the custom they have of mag-
nifying their own deeds upon all occasions, to presume
here his ill speeding. And if we look still onward,
even to the forty-fourth year after, wherein Gildas
wrote, if his obscure utterance be understood, we shall
meet with every little war between the Britons and
Saxons. PThis only remains difficult, that the victory
first won by Ambrose was not so long before this at
Badon siege, but that the same men living might be
eyewitnesses of both ; and by this rate hardly can the
latter be thought won by Arthur, unless we reckon him
a grown youth at least in the days of Ambrose, and
much more than a youth, if Malmsbury be heard, who
affirms all the exploits of Ambrose to have been done
chiefly by Arthur as his general, which will add much
unbelief to the common assertion of his reigning after
m Caradoc, Llancarvon, vit. Gild,
m Malms. antiquit. Glaston. Post Christ, 529.
o Primord. p. 468. Polychronic. l. 5. c. 6.
Ambrose and Uther, especially the fight of Badon
being the last of his twelve battles. But to prove by
that which follows, that the fight at Kerdic's leage,
though it differ in name from that of Badon, may be
thought the same by all effects; Kerdic three years
aſter," not proceeding onward, as his manner was, on
the continent, turns back his forces on the Isle of
Wight; which, with the slaying of a few only in
Withgarburgh, he soon masters; and not long sur-
viving, left it to his nephews by the mother's side, Stuff
and Withgar : the rest of what he had subdued, Ken-
ric his son held; and reigned twenty-six years, in
whose tenth years Withgar was buried in the town of
that island which bore his name. Notwithstanding
all these unlikelihoods of Arthur's reign and great
achievements, in a narration crept in I know not how
among the laws of Edward the Confessor, Arthur the
famous king of Britons, is said not only to have ex-
pelled hence the Saracens, who were not then known
in Europe, but to have conquered Friesland, and all
the north-east isles as far as Russia, to have made
Lapland the eastern bound of his empire, and Norway
the chamber of Britain. When should this be done *
From the Saxons, till after twelve battles, he had no
rest at home; after those, the Britons, contented with
the quiet they had from their Saxon enemies, were so
far from seeking conquests abroad, that by report of
Gildas above cited, they fell to civil wars at home.
Surely Arthur much better had made war in old Sax-
ony, to repress their flowing hither, than to have won
kingdoms as far as Russia, scarce able here to defend
his own. Buchanan our neighbour historian repre-
hends him of Monmouth, and others, for fabling in the
deeds of Arthur; yet what he writes thereof himself,
as of better credit, shows not whence he had but from
those fables; which he seems content to believe in
part, on condition that the Scots and Picts may be
thought to have assisted Arthur in all his wars and
achievements; whereof appears as little ground by
credible story, as of that which he most counts fabu-
lous. But not further to contest about such uncer-
tainties.
In the year five hundred and forty-seven, Ida the
Saxon, sprung also from Woden in the tenth degree,
began the kingdom of Bernicia in Northumberland;
built the town Bebenburgh, which was after walled;
and had twelve sons, half by wives and half by concu-
bines. Hengist, by leave of Vortigern, we may re-
member, had sent Octave and Ebissa, to seek them
seats in the north, and there, by warring on the Picts,
to secure the southern parts. Which they so prudently
effected, that what by force and fair proceeding, they
well quieted those countries; and though so far distant
from Kent, nor without power in their hands, yet kept
themselves nigh a hundred and eighty years within
moderation; and, as inſeriour governours, they and
their offspring gave obedience to the kings of Kent, as
to the elder family. Till at length following the ex-
ample of that age, when no less than kingdoms were
p Gildas. q Post Christ. 530. Sax, an omn.
S
r Post Christ. 53.4. S Post ("hrist, 5 -1.
t Post Christ. 547. Annal, omn. Bed, lèſ it. Mal, us.
5 12
Book III.
THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
the prize of every fortunate commander, they thought
it but reason, as well as others of their nation, to as-
sume royalty. Of whom Ida was the first, u a man in
the prime of his years, and of parentage as we heard;
but how he came to wear the crown, aspiring or by
free choice, is not said. Certain enough it is, that his
virtues made him not less noble than his birth; in war
undaunted and unfoiled, in peace tempering the awe
of magistracy with a natural mildness, he reigned
about twelve years. * In the mean while Kenric in a
fight at Searesbirig, how Salisbury, killed and put to
flight many of the Britons; and the fourth year after
at Beranvirig, now Banbury, as some think, with
Keaulin his son, put them again to flight. Keaulin
shortly after succeeded his father in the West-Sax-
ons. And Alla, descended also of Woden, but of an-
other line, set up a second kingdom in Deira, the south
part of Northumberland,” and held it thirty years;
while Adda, the son of Ida, and five more after him,
reigned without other memory in Bernicia : and in
Kent, Ethelbert the next year began.” But Esca the
son of Hengist had left Otha, and he Emeric to rule
after him ; both which, without adding to their
bounds, kept what they had in peace fifty-three years.
But Ethelbert in length of reign equalled both his
progenitors, and as Beda counts, three years exceeded.
* Young at his first entrance, and unexperienced, he
was the first raiser of civil war among the Saxons;
claiming from the priority of time wherein Hengist
took possession here, a kind of right over the later
kingdoms; and thereupon was troublesome to their
confines: but by them twice defeated, he who but now
thought to seem dreadful, became almost contemptible.
For Keaulin and Cutha his son, pursuing him into his
own territory," slew there in battle, at Wibbandun,
two of his earls, Oslac and Cheban. By this means
the Britons, but chiefly by this victory at Badon, for
the space of forty-four years, ending in five hundred
and seventy-one, received no great annoyance from
the Saxons: but the peace they enjoyed, by ill using
it, proved more destructive to them than war. For
being raised on a sudden by two such eminent suc-
cesses, from the lowest condition of thraldom, they
whose eyes had beheld both those deliverances, that by
Ambrose and this at Badon, were taught by the expe-
rience of cither fortune, both kings, magistrates, priests,
and private men, to live orderly. But when the next
age,” unacquainted with past evils, and only sensible
of their present ease and quiet, succeeded, straight fol-
lowed the apparent subversion of all truth, and justice,
in the minds of most men : scarce the least forestep
or impression of goodness leſt remaining through all
ranks and degrees in the land; except in some so very
few, as to be hardly visible in a general corruption :
which grew in short space not only manifest, but odious
to all the neighbouring nations. And first their kings,
amongst whom also the sons or grandchildren of Am-
brose, were foully degenerated to all tyranny and vici-
ous life. Whereof to hear some particulars out of Gil-
das, will not be impertinent. They avenge, saith he,
and they protect, not the innocent, but the guilty;
they swear oſt, but perjure; they wage war, but civil
and unjust war. They punish rigorously them that rob
by the high-way; but those grand robbers, that sit with
them at table, they honour and reward. They give
alms largely, but in the face of their almsdeeds, pile
up wickedness to a far higher heap. They sit in the
seat of judgment, but go seldom by the rule of right;
neglecting and proudly overlooking the modest and
harmless, but countenancing the audacious, though
guilty of abominable crimes; they stuff their prisons,
but with men committed rather by circumvention than
by any just cause. Nothing better were the clergy,
but at the same pass, or rather worse than when the
Saxons came first in ; unlearned, unapprehensive, yet
impudent; subtle prowlers, pastors in name, but in-
deed wolves; intent upon all occasions, not to ſeed the
flock, but to pamper and well-line themselves : not
called, but scizing on the ministry as a trade, not as a
spiritual charge; teaching the people not by sound
doctrine, but by evil example ; usurping the chair of
Peter, but through the blindness of their own worldly
lusts, they stumble upon the seat of Judas; deadly haters
of truth, broachers of lies; looking on the poor Chris-
tian with eyes of pride and contempt; but ſawning on
the wickcdest rich men without shame: great promoters
of other men's alms, with their set exhortations; but
themselves contributing ever least: slightly touching
the many vices of the age, but preaching without end
their own grievances, as done to Christ; seeking after
preferments and degrees in the church, more than after
heaven; and so gained, made it their whole study how
to keep them by any tyranny. Yet lest they should
be thought things of no use in their eminent places,
they have their niceties and trivial points to keep in
awe the superstitious multitude; but in true saving
knowledge leave them still as gross and stupid as them-
selves; bunglers at the Scripture, nay, forbidding and
silencing them that know ; but in worldly matters,
practised and cunning shifters; in that only art and
simony great clerks and masters, bearing their heads
high, but their thoughts abject and low. He taxes
them also as gluttonous, incontinent, and daily drunk-
ards. And what shouldst thou expect from these, poor
laity, so he goes on, these beasts, all belly £ Shall these
amend thee, who are themselves laborious in evil do-
ings Shall thou see with their eyes, who see right
forward nothing but gain * Leave them rather, as bids
our Saviour, lest ye fall both blindfold into the same
Are all thus 2 Perhaps mot all, or not so
grossly. But what availed it Eli to be himself blame-
less, while he commived at others that were abominable P
Who of them hath been envied for his better life? Who
of them hath hated to consort with these, or withstood
their entering the ministry, or endeavoured zealously
their casting out? Yet some of these perhaps by others
are legended for great saints. This was the state of
government, this of religion among the Britons, in
x Post Christ, 552. Annal. omn.
u Malms - *
z Post Christ. 500. Annal Florent.
y Post Čhrist. 556. Camden.
perd ition.
b Malms.
a Post Christ. 561. -
d Gildas
c Ann. omn. Post Christ. 508.
Book III.
THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 5 13
that long calm of peace, which the fight at Badon-hill
had brought forth. Whereby it came to pass, that so
fair a victory came to nothing. Towns and cities were
not reinhabited, but lay ruined and waste; nor was it
long ere domestic war breaking out wasted them more.
For Britain,” as at other times, had then also scveral
kings: five of whom Gildas, living then in Armorica
at a safe distance, boldly reproves by name: first, Con-
stantine, (ſabled the son of Cador, duke of Cornwall,
Arthur's half, by the mother's side,) who then reigned
in Cornwall and Devon, a tyrannical and bloody king,
polluted also with many adulteries: he got into his
power two young princes of the blood royal, uncertain
whether before him in right, or otherwise suspected ;
and after solemn oath given of their safety the year
that Gildas wrote, slew them with their two governors
in the church, and in their mother's arms, through the
abbot's cope which he had thrown over them, thinking
by the reverence of his vesture to have withheld the
murderer. These are commonly supposed to be the
sons of Mordred, Arthur's nephew, said to have revolt-
ed from his uncle, giving him in a battle his death's
wound, and by him after to have been slain. Which
things, were they true, would much diminish the blame
of cruelty in Constantine, revenging Arthur on the
sons of so false a Mordred. In another part, but not
expressed where, Aurelius Conanus was king : him he
charges also with adulteries, and parricide; cruelties
worse than the former; to be a hater of his country's
peace, thirsting after civil war and prey. His con-
dition, it seems, was not very prosperous, for Gildas
wishes him, being now leſt alone, like a tree withering
in the midst of a barren field, to remember the vanity
and arrogance of his father, and claer brethren, who
came all to untimely death in their youth. The third
reigning in Demetia, or South Wales, was Vortipor,
the son of a good father; he was, when Gildas wrote,
grown old, not in years only, but in adulteries; and
in governing, full of falsehood and cruel actions. In
his latter days, putting away his wife, who died in di-
vorce, he became, if we mistake not Gildas, incestuous
with his daughter. The fourth was Cuneglas, im-
brued in civil war; he also had divorced his wife, and
taken her sister, who had vowed widowhood: he was
a great enemy to the clergy, high-minded, and trust-
ing to his wealth. The last, but greatest of all in
power, was Maglocune, and greatest also in wicked-
mess: he had driven out, or slain, many other kings,
or tyrants, and was called the Island Dragon, perhaps
having his seat in Anglesey; a profuse giver, a great
warrior, and of a goodly stature. While he was yet
young, he overthrew his uncle, though in the head of
a complete army, and took from him the kingdom :
then touched with remorse of his doings, not without
deliberation, took upon him the profession of a monk;
but soon forsook his vow, and his wife also ; which
for that vow he had left, making love to the wife of
his brother's son then living. Who not refusing the
offer, if she were not rather the first that enticed, found
means both to dispatch her own husband, and the ſor-
mer wife of Maglocume, to make her marriage with
him the more unquestionable. Neither did he this for
want of better instructions, having had the learnedest
and wisest man, reputed of all Britain, the instituter
of his youth. Thus much, the utmost that can be
learnt by truer story, of what past among the Britons
from the time of their useless victory at Badon, to the
time that Gildas wrote, that is to say, as may be guess-
ed, from five hundred and twenty-seven to five hun-
dred and seventy-one, is here set down altogether; not
to be reduced under any certainty of years. But now
the Saxons, who for the most part all this while had
been still, unless among themselves, began aſtesh to
assault them, and ere long to drive them out of all
which they had maintained on this side Wales. For
Cuthulf, the brother of Keaulin, by a victory obtained
at Bedanſord, now Bedford, took from them four good
towns, Liganburgh, Eglesburgh, Bensington now Ben-
son in Oxfordshire, and Ignesham ; but outlived not
many months his good success. And after six years
more; Keaulin, and Cuth win his son, gave them great
overthrow at Deorrham in Gloucestershire, slew three
of their kings, Comail, Condidan, and Farinmaile; and
three of their chief cities, Gloucester, Cirencester, and
Badencester. The Britons notwithstanding, after some
space of time," judging to have outgrown their losses,
gather to a head and encounter Keaulin, with Cutha
his son, at Fethanleage; whom valiantly fighting, they
slew among the thickest, and, as is said, forced the
Saxons to retire. But Keaulin, reinforcing the fight,
put them to a main rout; and following his advantage,
took many towns, and returned laden with rich booty.
The last of those Saxons, who raised their own
achievements to a monarchy, was Crida, much about
this time, first founder of the Mercian kingdom, draw-
ing also his pedigree from Woden. Of whom all to
write the several genealogies, though it might be done
without long search, were in my opinion to encumber
the story with a sort of barbarous names, to little pur-
pose. I This may suffice, that of Woden's three sons,
from the eldest issued Hengist, and his succession; from
the second, the kings of Mercia; from the third all
that reigned in West-Saxony, and most of the North-
umbers, of whom Alla was one, the first king of Deira ;
which, after his death, the race of Ida seized, and made
it one kingdom with Bernicia,m usurping the childhood
of Edwin, Alla's son; whom Ethelric, the son of Ida,
expelled. Notwithstanding others write of him, that
from a poor life, and beyond hope in his old age, com-
ing to the crown, he could hardly, by the access of a
kingdom, have overcome his former obscurity, had
not the fame of his son preserved him. Once more
the Britons," ere they quitted all on this side the
mountains, forgot not to show some manhood; for
meeting Keaulin at Woden's-beorth, that is to say,
at Woden's-mount in Wiltshire; 9 whether it were
by their own forces, or assisted by the Angles, whose
hatred Keaulin had incurred, they ruined the whole
e Primord. p. 444,
f Pºst Christ. 577;
The kingdom of Mercia.
f Post Christ. 571, Camden. Annal, omn.
h Post Christ. 584. i Huntingd.
ll untingd. Matt. Westin.
1 Malmsb. l. 1. c. 3. In Florent, ad ann. Post Christ, 559.
n Post Christ. 5:#8. Annal, omn,
o Post Christ. 592. Florent. Bed. l. 2. c. 3. Malms. Florent, Sax, ann.
5 14
Book IV
THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
army, and chased him out of his kingdom; from
whence flying, he died the next year in poverty, who a
little before was the most potent, and indeed sole king
of all the Saxons on this side the Humber. But who
was chief among the Britons in this exploit had been
worth remembering, whether it were Maglocume, of
whose prowess hath been spoken, or Teudric king of
Glamorgan, whom the regest of Landaff recounts to
have been always victorious in fight; to have reigned
about this time, and at length to have exchanged his
crown for an hermitage; till in the aid of his son
Mouric, whom the Saxons had reduced to extremes,
taking arms again, he defeated them at Tinterne by
the river Wye; but himself received a mortal wound.P
The same year with Keaulin, whom Keola the son of
Cuthulf, Keaulin's brother, succeeded, Crida also the
Mercian king deceased, in whose room Wibba succeed-
ed; and in Northumberland, Ethelfrid, in the room of
Ethelric, reigning twenty-four years. Thus omitting
fables, we have the view of what with reason can be
relied on for truth, done in Britain since the Romans
forsook it. Wherein we have heard the many miseries
and desolations brought by divine hand on a perverse
nation; driven, when nothing else would reform them,
out of a fair country, into a mountainous and barren
corner, by strangers and pagans. So much more
tolerable in the eye of heaven is infidelity professed,
than christian faith and religion dishonoured by un-
christian works. Yet they also at length renounced
their heathenism; which how it came to pass, will be
the matter next related.
THE FOURTH BOOK.
THE Saxons grown up now to seven absolute king-
doms, and the latest of them established by succession,
finding their power arrive well migh at the utmost of
what was to be gained upon the Britons, and as little
fearing to be displanted by them, had time now to sur-
vey at leisure one another's greatness. Which quickly
bred among them either envy or mutual jealousies; till
the west kingdom at length grown overpowerful, put
an end to all the rest.” Meanwhile, above others,
Ethelbert of Kent, who by this time had well ripened
his young ambition, with more ability of years and ex-
perience in war, what before he attempted to his loss,
now successfully attains : and by degrees brought all
the other monarchies between Kent and Humber to be
at his devotion. To which design the kingdom of
West Saxons, being the firmest of them all, at that
time sore shaken by their overthrow at Woden's-beorth,
and the death of Keaulin, gave him, no doubt, a main
advantage; the rest yielded not subjection, but as he
earned it by continual victories. b And to win him the
more regard abroad, he marries Bertha the French
king's daughter, though a Christian, and with this con-
p Post Christ. 503.
a Red. Malms.
c 13ed. l. l. c. 22. tl B
b Bed. l. l. c. 25.
ed. l. 2. c. l.
dition, to have the free exercise of her faith, under the
care and instruction of Letardus a bishop, sent by her
parents along with her; the king notwithstanding and
his people retaining their old religion. • Beda out of
Gildas lays it sadly to the Britons' charge, that they
never would vouchsafe their Saxon neighbours the
means of conversion; but how far to blame they were,"
and what hope there was of converting in the midst of
so much hostility, at least falsehood, from their first
arrival, is not now easy to determine. “Howbeit not
long after they had the christian faith preached to
them by a nation more remote, and (as report went,
accounted old in Beda's time) upon this occasion.
The Northumbrians had a custom at that time, and
many hundred years after not abolished, to sell their
children for a small value into any foreign land. Of
w! ich number two comely youths were brought to
Rome, whose fair and honest countenances invited
Gregory, archdeacon of that city, among others that
beheld them, pitying their condition, to demand whence
they were; it was answered by some who stood by,
that they were Angli of the province Deira, subjects to
Alla king of Northumberland; and by religion, pagans
Which last Gregory deploring, framed on a sudden
this allusion to the three names he heard; that the
Angli so like to angels should be snatched ‘de ira,’
that is, from the wrath of God, to sing hallelujah ; and
forth with obtaining license, of Benedict the pope, had
come and preached here among them, had not the
Roman people, whose love endured not the absence of
so vigilant a pastor over them, recalled him then on
his journey, though but deferred his pious intention.
f For a while after, succeeding in the papal seat, and
now in his fourth year, admonished, saith Beda, by
divine instinct, he sent Augustin, whom he had de-
signed for bishop of the English nation, and other
zealous monks with him, to preach to them the gospel.
Who being now on their way, discouraged by some
reports, or their own carnal fear, sent back Austin, in
the name of all, to beseech Gregory they might return
home, and not be sent a journey so full of hazard, to a
ficroe and infidel nation, whose tongue they understood
not. Gregory with pious and apostolic persuasions
exhorts them not to shrink back from so good a work,
but cheerfully to go on in the strength of divine assist-
ance. The letter itself, yet extant among our writers
of ecclesiastic story, I omit here, as not professing to
relate of those matters more than what mixes aptly
with civil affairs. The abbot Austin, for so he was
ordained over the rest, reincouraged by the exhorta-
tions of Gregory, and his fellows by the letter which
he brought them, came safe to the isle of Tanet,” in
number about forty, besides some of the French nation,
whom they took along as interpreters. Ethelbert the
king, to whom Austin at his landing had sent a new
and wondrous message, that he came from Rome to
proffer heaven and eternal happiness in the knowledge
of another God than the Saxons knew, appoints them
to remain where they had landed, and necessaries to
Malms, l. 1. c. 3
€ * & f Post Christ, 596.
g Post Christ. 597.
Book IV.
515
THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
be provided them, consulting in the mean time what
was to be done. And after certain days coming into
the island, chose a place to meet them under the open
sky, possessed with an old persuasion, that all spells,
if they should use any to deceive him, so it were not
within doors, would be unavailable. They on the
other side called to his presence, advancing for their
standard a silver cross, and the painted image of our
Saviour, came slowly forward, singing their solemn
litanies: which wrought in Ethelbert more suspicion
perhaps that they used enchantments; till sitting down
as the king willed them, they there preached to him,
and all in that assembly, the tidings of salvation.
Whom having heard attentively, the king thus an-
swered : “Fair indeed and ample are the promises
which ye bring, and such things as have the appear-
ance in them of much good ; yet such as being new
and uncertain, I cannot easily assent to, quitting the
religion which from my ancestors, with all the English
nation, so many years I have retained. Nevertheless
because ye are strangers, and have endured so long a
journey, to impart us the knowledge of things, which
I persuade me you believe to be the truest and the
best, ye may be sure, we shall not recompense you
with any molestation, but shall provide rather how we
may friendliest entertain ye; nor do we forbid whom
ye can by preaching gain to your belief.” And ac-
cordingly their residence he allotted them in Doroverne
or Canterbury his chief city, and made provision for
their maintenance, with free leave to preach their doc-
trine where they pleased. By which, and by the ex-
ample of their holy life, spent in prayer, fasting, and
continual labour in the conversion of souls, they won
many; on whose bounty and the king's, receiving
only what was necessary, they subsisted. There stood
without the city on the east side, an ancient church
built in honour of St. Martin, while yet the Romans
remained here : in which Bertha the queen went out
usually to pray : " here they also began first to preach,
baptize, and openly to exercise divine worship. But
when the king himself, convinced by their good life
and miracles, became christian, and was baptized, which
came to pass in the very first year of their arrival, then
multitudes daily, conforming to their prince, thought
it honour to be reckoned among those of his faith.
To whom Ethelbert indeed principally showed his
favour, but compelled none. i For so he had been
taught by them who were both the instructors and the
authors of his faith, that christian religion ought to be
voluntary, not compelled. About this time Kelwulf
the son of Cutha, Keaulin's brother, reigned over the
West Saxons," after his brother Keola or Kelric, and
had continual war either with English, Welsh, Picts,
or Scots. But Austin, whom with his fellows Ethel-
bert had now endowed with a better place for their
abode in the city, and other possessions necessary to
livelihood, crossing into France, was by the archbishop
of Arles, at the appointment of pope Gregory, ordained
archbishop of the English ; and returning, sent to
h Post Christ. 508. i Bed. l. 2. c. 5.
k Sax, ann. Malms. Post Christ. 601.
L
Rome Laurence and Peter, two of his associates, to
acquaint the pope of his good success in England, and
to be resolved of certain theological, or rather levitical
questions: with answers to which, not proper in this
place, Gregory sends also to the great work of convert-
ing, that went on so happily, a supply of labourers,
Mellitus, Justus, Paulinus, Rufinian, and many others;
who what they were, may be guessed by the stuff which
they brought with them, vessels and vestments for the
altar, copes, reliques, and for the archbishop Austin a
pall to say mass in : to such a rank superstition that
age was grown, though some of them yet retaining an
emulation of apostolic zeal. Lastly, to Ethelbert they
brought a letter with many presents. Austin, thus ex-
alted to archiepiscopal authority, recovered from the
ruins and other profane uses a christian church in Can-
terbury, built of old by the Romans, which he dedicated
by the name of Christ's church, and joining to it built
a seat for himself and his successors; a monastery also
near the city eastward, where Ethelbert at his motion
built St. Peter's, and enriched it with great endow-
ments, to be a place of burial for the archbishops and
kings of Kent : so quickly they stepped up into fel-
lowship of pomp with kings. "While thus Ethelbert
and his people had their minds intent, Ethelfrid the
Northumbrian king was not less busied in far different
affairs: for being altogether warlike, and covetous of
ſame, he more wasted the Britons than any Saxon king
before him; winning from them large territories, which
either he made tributary, or planted with his own sub-
jects. "Whence Edan king of those Scots that dwelt
in Britain, jealous of his successes, came against him
with a mighty army, to a place called Degsastan ; but
in the fight losing most of his men, himself with a few
escaped : only Theobald the king's brother, and the
whole wing which he commanded, unfortunately cut
off, made the victory to Ethelfrid less intire. Yet from
that time no king of Scots in hostile manner durst pass
into Britain for a hundred and more years after : and
what some years before Kelwulf the West Saxon is
annalled to have done against the Scots and Picts,
passing through the land of Ethelfrid a king so potent,
unless in his aid and alliance, is not likely. Buchanan
writes as if Ethelfrid, assisted by Keaulin whom he mis-
titles king of East Saxons, had before this time a bat-
tle with Aidan, wherein Cutha, Keaulin's son, was slain.
But Cutha, as is above written from better authority,
was slain in fight against the Welsh twenty years be-
fore. © The number of Christians began now to in-
crease so fast that Augustin, ordaining bishops under
him, two of his assistants Mellitus and Justus, sent
them out both to the work of their ministry. And
Mellitus by preaching converted the East Saxons, over
whom Sebert the son of Sleda, by permission of Ethel-
bert, being born of his sister Ricula, then reigned.
Whose conversion Ethelbert to gratulate, built them
the great church of St. Paul in London to be their
bishop's cathedral; as Justus also had his built at Ro-
chester, and both gifted by the same king with fair
d. l. 2. c. 34.
l Red, l. i. c. 97. In F3ed. J. Q. C.
o Post Christ, 604. Bed, l. 2. c. 3.
in Post Christ. 603.
5 § 6 THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND). - Book IV
possessions. Hitherto Austin laboured well among
inſidels, but not with like commendation soon aſter
among Christians. For by means of Ethelbert sum-
moning the Britain bishops to a place on the edge of
Worcestershire, called from that time Augustin's oak,
he requires them to conform with him in the same day
of celebrating Easter, and many other points wherein
they differed from the rites of Rome: which when they
refused to do, not prevailing by dispute, he appeals to
a miracle, restoring to sight a blind man whom the
Britons could not cure. At this something moved,
though not minded to recede from their own opinions
without further consultation, they request a second
meeting : to which came seven Britain bishops, with
many other learued men, especially from the famous
monastery of Bangor, in which were said to be so
many monks, living all by their own labour, that being
divided under seven rectors, none had fewer than three
hundred. One man there was who staid behind, a
hermit by the life he led, who by his wisdom effected
more than all the rest who went: being demanded,
for they held him as an oracle, how they might know
Austin to be a man from God, that they might follow
him, he answered, that if they found him meek and
humble, they should be taught by him, for it was like-
liest to be the yoke of Christ, both what he bore him-
self, and would have them bear; but if he bore himself
proudly, that they should not regard him, for he was
then certainly not of God. They took his advice, and
hasted to the place of meeting. Whom Austin, being
already there before them, neither arose to meet, nor
received in any brotherly sort, but sat all the while
pontifically in his chair. Whereat the Britons, as
they were counselled by the holy man, neglected him,
and neither hearkened to his proposals of conformity,
nor would acknowledge him for an archbishop : and
in the name of the rest, P Dinothus, then abbot of
Bangor, is said thus sagely to have answered him :
“As to the subjection which you require, be thus per-
suaded of us, that in the bond of love and charity we
are all subjects and servants to the church of God, yea
to the pope of Rome, and every good Christian, to
help them forward, both by word and deed, to be the
children of God : other obedience than this we know
not to be due to him whom you term the pope; and
this obedience we are ready to give both to him and
to every Christian continually. Besides, we are go-
verned under God by the bishop of Caerleon, who is to
oversee us in spiritual matters.” To which Austin thus
presaging, some say menacing, replies, “Since ye re-
fuse to accept of peace with your brethren, ye shall have
war from your enemies; and since ye will not with us
preach the word of life to whom ye ought, from their
hands ye shall receive death.” This, though writers
agree not whether Austin spake it as his prophecy, or
as his plot against the Britons, fell out accordingly.
q For many years were not past, when Ethelfrid, whe-
ther of his own accord, or at the request of Ethelbert,
incensed by Austin, with a powerful host came to West-
chester, then Caer-legion. Where being met by the
British forces, and both sides in readiness to give the
onset, he discerns a company of men, not habited for
war, standing together in a place of some safety ; and
by them a squadron armed. Whom having learnt
upon some inquiry to be priests and monks, assembled
thither after three days’ fasting, to pray for the good .
success of their forces against him, “therefore they
first,” saith he, “shall feel our swords; for they who
pray against us, fight heaviest against us by their
prayers, and are our dangerousest enemies.” And with
that turns his first charge upon the monks: Brocmail,
the captain set to guard them, quickly turns his back,
and leaves above twelve hundred monks to a sudden
massacre, whereof scarce fifty escaped. But not so easy
work found Ethelſrid against another part of Britons
that stood in arms, whom though at last he overthrew,
yet with slaughter nigh as great to his own soldiers.
To excuse Austin of this bloodshed, lest some might
think it his revengeful policy, Beda writes, that he
was dead long before, although if the time of his sitting
archbishop be right computed sixteen years, he must
survive this action. " Other just ground of charging
him with this imputation appears not, save what evi-
dently we have from Geoffrey of Monmouth, whose
weight we know. *The same year lxelwulf made war
on the South Saxons, bloody, saith Huntingdon, to both
sides, but most to them of the south :" and four years
after dying, left the government of West Saxons to
Kinegils and Cuichelm, the sons of his brother Keola.
Others, as Florent of Worcester, and Matthew of West-
minster, will have Cuichelm son of Kinegils, but ad-
mitted to reign with his father, in whose third year"
they are recorded with joint forces or conduct to have
fought against the Britons in Beandune, now Bindon
in Dorsetshire, and to have slain of them above two
thousand. * More memorable was the second year
following, by the death of Ethelbert the first christian
king of Saxons, and no less a favourer of all civility in
that rude age. He gave laws and statutes after the
example of Roman emperors, written with the advice
of his sagest counsellors, but in the English tongue,
and observed long after. Wherein his special care was
to punish those who had stolen aught from church or
churchman, thereby shewing how gratefully he received
at their hands the christian faith. Which, he no sooner
dead, but his son Eadbald took the course as fast to
extinguish ; not only falling back into heathenism,
but that which heathenism was wont to abhor, marry-
ing his father's second wife. Then soon was perceived
what multitudes for fear or countenance of the king
had professed Christianity, returning now as eagerly to
their old religion. Nor staid the apostacy within one
province, but quickly spread over to the East Saxons;
occasioned there likewise, or set forward, by the death
of their christian king Sebert: whose three sons, of
whom two are named Sexted and Seward, neither in
his lifetime would be brought to baptism, and after his
decease reestablished the free exercise of idolatry; nor
p Spelman. Concil. p. 108. q Sax. ann, Hunting. Post Christ, 607.
r Malins, gest. pont. l. l. S Sax. all n.
t Pest Christ. 611. Sax. ann. Malm. u Post Christ. 614. Caund.
x Post Christ, 616. Sax. an. - y Maims.
Book IV
517
THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
so content, they set themselves in despight to do some
open profanation against the other sacrament. Coming
therefore into the church where Mellitus the bishop
was ministering, they required him in abuse and scorn
to deliver to them unbaptized the consecrated bread :
and him refusing drove disgracefully out of their do-
minion. Who crossed forth with into Kent, where
things were in the same plight, and thence into France,
with Justus bishop of Rochester. But divine venge-
ance deferred not long the punishment of men so ini-
pious; for Eadbald, vexed with an evil spirit, fell often
into foul fits of distraction; and the sons of Sebert, in
a fight against the West Saxons, perished with their
whole army. But Eadbald, within the year, by an
extraordinary means became penitent. For when
Lawrence the archbishop and successor of Austin was
preparing to ship for France, after Justus and Mellitus,
the story goes, if it be worth believing, that St. Peter,
in whose church he spent the night before in watching
and praying, appeared to him, and to make the vision
more sensible, gave him many stripes for offering to
desert his flock; at sight whereof the king (to whom
next morning he showed the marks of what he had
suffered, by whom and for what cause) relenting and
in great fear, dissolved his incestuous marriage, and
applied himself to the christian faith more sincerely
than before, with all his people. But the Londoners,
addicted still to paganism, would not be persuaded to
receive again Mellitus their bishop, and to compel them
was not in his power. * Thus much through all the
south was troubled in religion, as much were the north
parts disquieted through ambition. For Ethelſrid of
Bernicia, as was touched before, having thrown Edwin
out of Deira, and joined that kingdom to his own, not
content to have bereaved him of his right, whose known
virtues and high parts gave cause of suspicion to his
enemies, sends messengers to demand him of Redwald
king of East Angles; under whose protection, after
many years wandering obscurely through all the island,
he had placed his safety. Redwald, though having
promised all defence to Edwin as to his suppliant, yet
tempted with continual and large offers of gold, and
not contemming the puissance of Ethelſrid, yielded at
length, either to dispatch him, or to give him into their
hands: but earnestly exhorted by his wife, not to be-
tray the faith and inviolable law of hospitality and re-
fuge given,” prefers his first promise as the more reli-
gious; nor only refuses to deliver him, but since war
was thereupon denounced, determines to be beforehand
with the danger; and with a sudden army raised,
surprises Ethelfrid, little dreaming an invasion, and in
a fight near to the east side of the river Idle, on the
Mercian border, now Nottinghamshire, slays him,b
dissipating easily those few forces which he had got
to march out overhastily with him; who yet, as a
testimony of his fortune not his valour to be blamed,
slew first with his own hands Reiner the king's son.
His two sons Oswald and Oswi, by Acca, Edwin's
sister, escaped into Scotland. By this victory Red-
wald became so far superiour to the other Saxon kings,
Z Post Christ, 617. a Malms. l. 1, c. 3. b Camden.
that Beda reckons him the next after Ella and Ethel-
bert; who, besides this conquest of the north, had
likewise all on the other side Humber at his obedience.
He had formerly in Kent received baptism,” but coin-
ing home, and persuaded by his wife, who still it seems
was his chief counsellor to good or bad alike, relapsed
into his old religion: yet not willing to forego his new,
thought it not the worst way, lest perhaps he might
err in either, for more assurance to keep them both ; and
in the same temple erected one altar to Christ, another
to his idols. But Edwin, as with more deliberation he
undertook, and with more sincerity retained, the christian
profession, so also in power and extent of dominion far
exceeded all before him; subduing all, saith Beda,
English or British, even to the isles, then called Me-
vanian, Anglesey, and Man; settled in his kingdom
by Redwald, he sought in marriage Edelburga, whom
others called Tate, the daughter of Ethelbert. To
whose embassadors Eadbald her brother made answer,
that “to wed their daughter to a pagan, was not the
christian law.” Edwin replied, that “to her religion
he would be no hinderance, which with her whole
household she might freely exercise. And moreover,
that if examined it were found the better, he would
embrace it.” These ingenuous offers, opening so fair
a way to the advancement of truth, are accepted,” and
Paulinus as a spiritual guardian sent along with the
virgin. He being to that purpose made bishop by
Justus, omitted no occasion to plant the Gospel in those
parts, but with small success, till the next year • Cui-
chelm, at that time one of the two West-Saxon kings,
envious of the greatness which he saw Edwin growing
up to, sent privily Eumerus a hired swordsman to as-
sassin him ; who, under pretence of doing a message
from his master, with a poisoned weapon stabs at Ed-
win, conferring with him in his house, by the river
Derwent in Yorkshire, on an Easter-day; which Lilla
one of the king’s attendants, at the instant perceiving,
with a loyalty that stood not then to deliberate, aban-
doned his whole body to the blow; which notwith-
standing made passage through to the king's person
with a wound not to be slighted. The murderer en-
compassed now with swords, and desperate, forere-
venges his own fall with the death of another, whom his
poniard reached home. Paulinus omitting no opportunity
to win the king from misbelief, obtained at length this
promise from him ; that if Christ whom he so magni-
fied, would give him to recover of his wound, and
victory of his enemies who had thus assaulted him, he
would then become christian, in pledge whereof he
gave his young daughter Eanfled, to be bred up in re-
ligion; who, with twelve others of his family, on the
day of Pentecost was baptized. And by that time well
recovered of his wound, to punish the author of so foul
a fact, he went with an army against the West Sax-
ons: whom having quelled by war, and of such as had
conspired against him, put some to death, others par-
doned, he returned home victorious, and from that time
worshipped no more his idols, yet ventured not rashly
into baptism, but first took care to be instructed rightly
c Bed. l. 2. c. 15. d Post Christ. 626. e Post Christ. 625,
5 | 8 THE HISTORY
OF ENGLAND. Book IV.
what he learnt, examining and still considering with
himself and others whom he held wisest; though Bo-
niface the pope, by large letters of exhortation both to
him and his queen, was not wanting to quicken his be-
lief. But while he still deferred, and his deferring
might seem now to have passed the maturity of wis-
dom to a faulty lingering, Paulinus by revelation, as
was believed, coming to the knowledge of a secret
which befel him strangely in the time of his troubles,
on a certain day went in boldly to him, and laying his
right hand on the head of the king, asked him if he re-
membered what that sign meant; the king trembling,
and in amaze rising up, straight fell at his feet. “Be-
hold,” saith Paulinus, raising him from the ground,
“God hath delivered you from your enemies, and
given you the kingdom as you desired : perform now
what long since you promised him, to receive his doc-
trine, which I now bring you, and the faith, which if
you accept, shall to your temporal felicity add eternal.”
The promise claimed of him by Paulinus, how and
wherefore made, though savouring much of legend is
thus related. Redwald, as we have heard before, daz-
zled with the gold of Ethelfrid, or by his threatening
overawed, having promised to yield up Edwin, one of
his faithful companions, of which he had some few
with him in the court of Redwald, that nover shrunk
from his adversity, about the first hour of the night
comes in haste to his chamber, and calling him forth
for better secrecy, reveals to him his danger, offers him
his aid to make escape; but that course not approved,
as seeming dishonourable without more manifest cause
to begin distrust towards one who had so long been
his only refuge, the friend departs. Edwin left alone
without the palace gate, full of sadness and perplexed
thoughts, discerns about the dead of night a man
neither by countenance nor by habit to him known,
approaching towards him. Who after salutation asked
him, “why at this hour, when all others were at rest,
he alone so sadly sat waking on a cold stone.” Edwin
not a little misdoubting who he might be, asked him
again, “what his sitting within doors, or without, con-
cerned him to know.” To whom he again, “Think
not that who thou art, or why sitting here, or what
danger hangs over thee is to me unknown : but what
would you promise to that man, whoever would be-
friend you out of all these troubles, and persuade Red-
wald to the like ’’’ “All that I am able,” answered
Edwin. And he, “What if the same man should pro-
mise to make you greater than any English king hath
been before you ?” “I should not doubt,” quoth Ed-
win, “to be answerably grateful.” “And what if to
all this he would inform you,” said the other, “in a
way to happiness, beyond what any of your ancestors
hath known 2 would you hearken to his council f?'
Edwin without stopping promised “he would.” And
the other laying his right hand on Edwin’s head,
“When this sign,” saith he, “shall next befal thee,
remember this time of night, and this discourse, to
perform what thou hast promised;” and with these
words disappearing, he left Edwin much revived, but
not less filled with wonder, who this unknown should
be. When suddenly the friend who had been
gone all this while to listen further what was like to
be decreed of Edwin, comes back and joyfully bids
him rise to his repose, for that the king's mind, though
for a while drawn aside, was now fully resolved not
only not to betray him, but to defend him against all
enemies, as he had promised. This was said to be
the cause why Edwin admonished by the bishop of a
sign which had befallen him so strangely, and as h
thought so secretly, arose to him with that reverence
and amazement, as to one sent from heaven, to claim
that promise of him which he perceived well was
due to a divine power, that had assisted him in his
troubles. To Paulinus therefore he makes answer,
that the christian belief he himself ought by promise,
and intended to receive ; but would confer first with
his chief peers and counsellors, that if they like-
wise could be won, all at once might be baptized.
They therefore being asked in council what their
opinion was concerning this new doctrine, and well
perceiving which way the king inclined, every one
thereafter shaped his reply. The chief priest, speaking
first, discovered an old grudge he had against his gods,
for advancing others in the king's favour above him
their chief priest: another hiding his court-compliance
with a grave sentence, commended the choice of cer-
tain before uncertain, upon due examination; to like
purpose answered all the rest of his sages, none openly
dissenting from what was likely to be the king's creed:
whereas the preaching of Paulinus could work no such
effect upon them, toiling till that time without success,
Whereupon Edwin, renouncing heathenism, became
Christian: and the pagan priest, offering himself freely
to demolish the altars of his former gods, made some
amends for his teaching to adore them. f With Edwin,
his two sons Osfrid and Eanfrid, born to him by Quen-
burga, daughter, as saith Beda, of Kearle king of Mer-
cia, in the time of his banishment, and with them most
of the people, both noble and commons, easily convert-
ed, were baptized; he with his whole family at York,
in a church easily built up of wood, the multitude most
part in rivers. Northumberland thus christened, Pau-
linus, crossing Humber, converted also the province of
Lindsey, and Blecca the governor of Lincoln, with his
household and most of that city; wherein he built a
church of stone, curiously wrought, but of small con-
tinuance; for the roof in Beda's time, uncertain whether
by neglect or enemies, was down ; the walls only
standing. Meanwhile in Mercia, Kearle, a kinsman of
Wilbba, saith Huntingdon, not a son, having long with-
held the kingdom from Penda, Wibba’s son, left it now
at length in the fiftieth year of his age: with whom
Kinegils and Cuichelm, the West-Saxon kings, two
years after," having by that time it seems recovered
strength, since the inroad made upon them by Edwin,
fought at Cirencester, then made truce. But Edwin
seeking every way to propagate the faith, which with
so much deliberation he had received, persuaded Eorp-
wald, the son of Redwald, king of East-Angles, to em-
f Post Christ. 627.
g Post Christ. 629. Sax. ann.
Book IV.
519
THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
brace the same belief;h willingly or in awe, is not
known, retaining under Edwin the name only of a
king. But Eorpwald not long survived his conver-
sion, slain in fight by Richert a pagan : whereby the
people having lightly followed the religion of their king,
as lightly fell back to their old superstitions for above
three years after: Edwin in the mean while, to his
faith adding virtue, by the due administration of jus-
tice wrought such peace over all his territories, that
from sea to sea man or woman might have travelled in
safety. His care also was of fountains by the way side,
to make them fittest for the use of travellers. And not
unmindful of regal state, whether in war or in peace,
he had a royal banner carried before him. But having
reigned with much honour seventeen years, he was at
length by Kedwallay or Cadwallon, king of the Bri-
tons, who with aid of the Mercian Penda had rebelled
against him, slain in a battle with his son Osfrid, at a
place called Hethfield, and his whole army overthrown
or dispersed in the year six hundred and thirty three,k
and the forty-seventh of his age, in the eye of man
worthy a more peaceful end. His head brought to
York was there buried in the church by him begun.
Sad was this overthrow, both to church and state of the
Northumbrians: for Penda being a heathen, and the
British king, though in name a Christian, but in deeds
more bloody than the pagan, nothing was omitted of
barbarous cruelty in the slaughter of sex or age; Ked-
walla threatening to root out the whole nation, though
then newly christian. I'or the Britons, and, as Beda
saith, even to his days, accounted Saxon Christianity
no better than paganism, and with them held as little
communion. From these calamities no refuge being
left but flight, Paulinus taking with him Ethilburga the
queen and her children, aided by Bassus, one of Ed-
win's captains, made escape by sea to Eadbald king of
Kent: who receiving his sister with all kindness, made
Paulinus bishop of Rochester, where he ended his days.
After Edwin, the kingdom of Northumberland became
divided as before, each rightful heir seizing his part;
in Deira Osric, the son of Elfric, Edwin's uncle, by
profession a Christian, and baptized by Paulinus : in
Bernicia, Eanfrid the son of Ethelfrid; who all the
time of Edwin, with his brother Oswald, and many of
the young nobility, lived in Scotland exiled, and had
been there taught and baptized. No sooner had they
gotten each a kingdom, but both turned recreant,
sliding back into their old religion; and both were the
same year slain ; Osric by a sudden eruption of Ked-
walla, whom he in a strong town had unadvisedly be-
sieged; Eanfrid seeking peace, and inconsiderately
with a few surrendering himself. Kedwalla now ranged
at will through both those provinces, using cruelly his
conquest;" when Oswald the brother of Eanfrid with
a small but christian army unexpectedly coming on,
defeated and destroyed both him and his huge forces,
which he boasted to be invincible, by a little river run-
ning into Tine, near the ancient Roman wall then
called Denisburn, the place afterwards Heaven-field,
from the cross reported miracles for cures, which Os-
wald there erected before the battle, in token of his
faith against the great number of his enemies. Ob-
taining the kingdom he took care to instruct again the
people in Christianity. Sending therefore to the Scot-
tish elders, Beda so terms them, among whom he had
received baptism, requested of them some faithful
teacher, who might again settle religion in his realm,
which the late troubles had much impaired; they, as
readily hearkening to his request, send Aidan, a Scotch
monk and bishop, but of singular zeal and meekness,
with others to assist him, whom at their own desire he
seated in Lindisfarne, as the episcopal seat, now Holy
Island: and being the son of Ethelfrid, by the sister
of Edwin, as right heir, others ſailing, easily reduced
both kingdoms of Northumberland as before into one;
nor of Edwin’s dominion lost any part, but enlarged it
rather; over all the four British nations, Angles, Britons,
Picts, and Scots, exercising regal authority. Of his de-
votion, humility, and almsdeeds, much is spoken ; that
he disdained not to be the interpreter of Aidan, preach-
ing in Scotch or bad English, to his nobles and house-
hold servants; and had the poor continually served at
his gate, after the promiscuous manner of those times :
his meaning might be upright, but the manner more
ancient of private or of church-contribution is doubtless
more evangelical. m. About this time the West-Saxons,
anciently called Gevissi, by the preaching of Berinus,
a bishop, whom pope Honorius had sent, were con-
verted to the faith with Kinegls their king : him Os-
wald received out of the font, and his daughter in
marriage. " The next year Cuichelm was baptized in
Dorchester, but lived not to the year’s end. The East-
Angles also this year were reclaimed to the faith of
Christ, which for some years past they had thrown off.
But Sigbert the brother of Eorpwald now succeeded in
that kingdom, praised for a most christian and learned
man: who while his brother yet reigned, living in
France an exile, for some displeasure conceived against
him by Redwald his father, learned there the christian
faith; and reigning soon after, in the same instructed
his people, by the preaching of Felix a Burgundian
bishop.
• In the year six hundred and forty Eadbold deceas-
ing, left to Ercombert, his son by Emma the French
king's daughter, the kingdom of Kent; recorded the
first of English kings, who commanded through his
limits the destroying of idols; laudably, if all idols
without exception; and the first to have established
Lent among us, under strict penalty; not worth re-
membering, but only to inform us, that no Leut was
observed here till his time by compulsion : especially
being noted by some to have fraudulently usurped
upon his elder brother Ermenred,” whose right was
precedent to the crown. Oswald having reigned eight
years, worthy also as might seem of longer life, fell
into the same fate with Edwin, and from the same
hand, in a great battle overcome and slain by Penda,
at a place called Maserfield, now Oswestre in Shrop-
!, Post Christ. 632. Sax, ann.
- i Florent. Genealog.
Post Christ. 633.
| Post Christ. 634.
1) Post Christ. 636.
m Post Christ. 635. Sax, an.
q Post Christ. 612.
o Post Christ. 610. p Mat. West.
520 THE HISTORY
OF ENGLAND. Book IV.
shire," miraculous, as saith Beda, after his death.
* His brother Oswi succeeded him; reigning, though
in much trouble, twenty-eight years; opposed either
by Penda, or his own son Alfred, or his brother's son
Ethilwald. ‘Next year Kinegils the West-Saxon king
dying left his son Kenwalk in his stead, though as yet
unconverted. About this time Sigebert king of East-
Angles having learnt in France, ere his coming to
reign, the manner of their schools, with the assistance
of some teachers out of Kent instituted a school here
after the same discipline, thought to be the university
of Cambridge, then first founded; and at length weary
of his kingly office, betook him to a monastical life;
commending the care of government to his kinsman
Egric, who had sustained with him part of that burden
before. It happened some years after, that Penda
made war on the East-Angles: they expecting a sharp
encounter, besought Sigebert, whom they esteemed an
expert leader, with his presence to confirm the soldiery;
and him refusing, carried by force out of the monastery
into the camp; where acting the monk rather than the
captain, with a single wand in his hand, he was slain
with Egric, and his whole army put to flight. Anna
of the royal stock, as next in right, succeeded; and
hath the praise of a virtuous and most christian prince.
u But Kenwalk the West-Saxon having married the
sister of Penda, and divorced her, was by him with
more appearance of a just cause vanquished in fight,
and deprived of his crown : whence retiring to Anna
king of East-Angles, after three years abode in his
courts he there became cliristian, and afterwards re-
gained his kingdom. Oswi in the former years of his
reign had sharer with him Oswin, nephew of Edwin,
who ruled in Deira seven years, commended much for
his zeal in religion, and for comeliness of person, with
other princely qualities, beloved of all. Notwithstand-
ing which, dissensions growing between them, it came
to arms. Oswin seeing himself much exceeded in
numbers, thought it more prudence, dismissing his
army, to reserve himself for some better occasion. But
committing his person with one faithful attendant to
the loyalty of Hunwald an earl, his imagined friend,
he was by him treacherously discovered, and by com-
mand of Oswi slain. y Aſter whom within twelve
days, and for grief of him whose death he foretold,
died bishop Aidan, famous for his charity, meekness,
and labour in the gospel. The fact of Oswi was de-
testable to all; which therefore to expiate, a monastery
was built in the place where it was done, and prayers
there daily offered up for the souls of both kings, the
slain and the slayer. Kenwalk, by this time re-in-
stalled in his kingdom, kept it long, but with various
fortune; for Beda relates him ofttimes afflicted by his
enemies,” with great losses; and in six hundred and
fifty-two, by the annals, fought a battle (civil war
Ethelword calls it) at Bradanford by the river Aſene;
against whom, and for what cause, or who had the
victory, they write not. Camden names the place
Bradford in Wiltshire, by the river Avon, and Cuthred
his near kinsman, against whom he fought, but cites
no authority; certain it is, that Kenwalk four years
before had given large possessions to his nephew
Cuthred, the more unlikely therefore now to have re-
belled.
“The next year Peada, whom his father Penda,
though a heathen, had for his princely virtues made
prince of Middle-Angles, belonging to the Mercians,
was with that people converted to the faith. For com-
ing to Oswi with request to have in marriage Alfleda
his daughter, he was denied her, but on condition that
he with all his people should receive Christianity.
Hearing therefore not unwillingly what was preached
to him of resurrection and eternal life, much persuaded
also by Alfrid the king's son, who had his sister Kymi-
burg to wife, he easily assented, for the truth's sake
only as he professed, whether he obtained the virgin or
no, and was baptized with all his followers. Return-
ing, he took with him four presbyters to teach the
people of his province; who by their daily preaching
won many. Neither did Penda, though himself no
believer, prohibit any in his kingdom to hear or believe
the gospel, but rather hated and despised those, who,
professing to believe, attested not their faith by good
works; condemning them for miserable and justly to
be despised, who obey not that God, in whom they
choose to believe. How well might Penda, this heathen,
rise up in judgment against many pretended Christians,
both of his own and these days' yet being a man bred
up to war, (as no less were others then reigning, and
ofttimes one against another, though both Christians,)
he warred on Anna king of the " East Angles, perhaps
without cause, for Anna was esteemed a just man, and
at length slew him. About this time the East Saxons,
who, as above hath been said, had expelled their bishop
Mellitus, and renounced the faith, were by the means
of Oswi thus reconverted. Sigebert, surnamed the
small, being the son of Seward, without other memory
of his reign, left his son king of that province, after
him Sigebert the second; who coming often to visit
Oswi his great friend, was by him at several times
fervently dissuaded from idolatry, and convinced at
length to ſorsake it, was there baptized; on his return
home taking with him Kedda a laborious preacher,
afterwards made bishop ; by whose teaching, with
some help of others, the people were again recovered
from misbelief. But Sigebert some years after, though
standing fast in religion, was by the conspiracy of two
brethren, in place near about him, wickedly murdered;
who being asked, “What moved them to a deed so
heinous,” gave no other than this barbarous answer;
“That they were angry with him for being so gentle
to his enemies, as to forgive them their injuries when-
ever they besought him.” Yet his death seems to have
happened not without some cause by him given of
divine displeasure. For one of those earls who slew
him, living in unlawful wedlock, and therefore excom-
municated so severely by the bishop, that no man
might presume to enter into his house, much less to sit
t Post Christ. 613. Sax. am.
'amden. s Ped, l. 3. c. 14. -
r Candon x Post Christ. 648.
u Post Christ. 645, sax. tl ll.
z Bed. l. 3. c. 7. Post Christ. 652.
y Post Christ. 65l. Bede. * * *
b Post Christ, Ö54. Sax. an.
a Post Christ. 653.
Book IV. THE HISTORY
OF ENGLAND. 521
at meat with him, the king not regarding his church-
censure, went to feast with him at his invitation.
Whom the bishop meeting in his return, though peni-
tent for what he had done, and fallen at his ſect, touched
with the rod in his hand, and angrily thus foretold :
“Because thou hast neglected to abstain from the house
of that excommunicate, in that house thou shalt die;”
and so it fell out, perhaps from that prediction, God
bearing witness to his minister in the power of church-
discipline, spiritually executed, not juridically on the
contemner thereof. This year 9 665 proved fortunate
to Oswi, and fatal to Penda; for Oswi by the continual
inroads of Penda having long endured much devast-
ation, to the endangering once by assault and fire
Bebbanburg," his strongest city, now Bamborrow-cas-
tle, unable to resist him, with many rich presents offered
to buy his peace, which not accepted by the pagan,"
who intended nothing but destruction to that king,
though more than once in affinity with him, turning
gifts into vows, he implores divine assistance, devoting,
if he were delivered from his enemy, a child of one
year old, his daughter, to be a nun, and twelve portions
of land whereon to build monasteries. His vows, as
may be thought, found better success than his proffered
gifts; for hereupon with his son Alfrid, gathering a
small power, he encountered and discomfited the Mer-
cians, thirty times excceding his in number, and led on
by expert captains, at a place called Laydes, now
Leeds in Yorkshire. Besides this Ethelwald, the son
of Oswald, who ruled in Deira, took part with the
Mercians; but in the fight withdrew his forces, and in
a safe place expected the event: with which unseason-
able retreat the Mercians, perhaps terrified aud mis-
doubting more danger, fled; their commanders, with
Penda himself, most being slain, anong whom Edil-
here the brother of Anna, who ruled after him the East-
Angles, and was the author of this war; many more
flying were drowned in the river, which Beda calls
Winwed, then swolm above its banks.g. The death of
Penda, who had been the death of so many good kings,
made general rejoicing, as the song witnessed. At the
river Winwed, Amma was avenged. To Edelhere suc-
ceeded Ethelwald his brother, in the East-Angles; to
Sigebert in the IEast-Saxons, Suidhelm the son of Sex-
bald, saith Bede," the brother of Sigebert, saith Malms-
bury; he was baptized by Kedda, then residing in the
East-Angles, and by Ethelwald the king received out
of the font. But Oswi in the strength of his late victory,
within' three years after subdued all Mercia, and of the
Pictish nation greatest part, at which time he gave to
Peada his son-in-law the kingdom of South-Mercia,
divided from the Northern by Trent. But Peada the
spring following, as was said, by the treason of his wife
the daughter of Oswi, married by him for a special Chris-
tian, on the feast of Easterk not protected by the holy
time, was slain. The Mercian nobles, Immin, Eaba,
and Eadbert, throwing off the government of Oswi, set
up Wulfer the other son of Penda to be their king,
whom till then they had kept hid, and with him ad-
ç Post Christ. 655. d Bed. l. 3. c. 16. e Camd.
f Qamden. g Mat. West, b. Bed, l. 3, c. 22,
i Post Christ, 658. Sax. ann. Post Christ. 639. Sax. ann.
hered to the christian faith. Kenwalk the West-Saxon,
now settled at home, and desirous to enlarge his do-
minion, prepares against the Britons, joins battle with
them at Pen in Somersetshire, and overcoming, pursues
them to Pedridan. Another fight he had with them
before, at a place called Witgeornesburg, barely men-
tioned by the monk of Malmsbury. Nor was it long
cre he ſell at variance with Wulfer the son of Penda,
his old enemy, scarce yet warm in his throne, fought
with him at Possentesburgh, on the Easter holy days,"
and as Ethelwerd saith, took him prisoner; but the
Saxon annals, quite otherwise, that Wulfer winning
the field, wasted the West-Saxon country as far as
Eskesdun : nor staying there, took and wasted the
isle of Wight, but causing the inhabitants to be bap-
tized, till then unbelievers, gave the island to Ethel-
wald king of South-Saxons, whom he had received out
of the font. The year m six hundred and sixty-four a
synod of Scottish and English bishops, in the presence
of Oswi and Alfred his son, was held at a monastery in
those parts, to debate on what day Easter should be
kept; a controversy which long before had disturbed
the Greek and Latin churches : wherein the Scots not
agreeing with the way of Rome; nor yielding to the
disputants on that side, to whom the king most in-
clined, such as were bishops here, resigned, and returned
home with their disciples. Another clerical question
was there also much controverted, not so superstitious
in my opinion as ridiculous, about the right shaving of
crowns. The same year was seen an eclipse of the sun
in May, followed by a sore pestilence beginning in the
South,” but spreading to the North, and over all Ireland
with great mortality. In which time the East-Saxons,
after Swithelm's decease, being governed by Siger the
son of Sigebert the small, and Sebbi of Seward, though
both subject to the Mercians; Siger and his people
unsteady of faith, supposing that this plague was come
upon them for renouncing their old religion, fell off
the second time to infidelity. Which the Mercian king
Wulfer understanding, sent Jarumannus a faithful
bishop, who with other his fellow-labourers, by sound
doctrine and gentle dealing, soon recured them of
their second relapse. In Kent, Ercombert expiring,
was succeeded by his son Ecbert. In whose fourth
year,0 by means of Theodore, a learned Greekish
monk of Tarsus, whom pope Vitalian had ordained
archbishop of Canterbury, the Greek and Latin tongue,
with other liberal arts, arithmetic, music, astronomy,
and the like, began first to flourish among the Saxons;
as did also the whole land, under potent and religious
kings, more than ever before, as Bede affirms, till his
own days. Two years P after in Northumberland died
Oswi, much addicted to Romish rites, and resolved,
had his disease released him, to have ended his days
at Rome. Ecfrid, the eldest of his sons begot in wed-
lock, succeeded him. After other q three years, Ecbert
in Kent deceasing, left nothing memorable behind
him, but the general suspicion to have slain or commived
at the slaughter of his uncle's two sons, Elbert and
| Post Christ. 661. Sax. ann.
m Malmys,
p Post Christ. 670. Sax, ann,
m, Post Christ. 664. Bed.
o Post Christ, Ötö. Sax. ann.
q Post Christ. 673. Sax. ann.
522
Book IV.
THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
Egelbright. In recompense whereof he gave to the '
mother of them part of Tanct, wherein to build an ab-
bey; the kingdom fell to his brother Lothair. And
much about this time by best account it should be, how-
ever placed in Beda,” that Ecſtid of Northumberland, hav-
ing war with the Mercian Wulfer, won from him Lind-
sey, and the country thereabout. Sebbi having reigned
over the East-Saxons thirty years, not long before his
death, though long before desiring, took on him the
habit of a monk; and drew his wiſe at length, though
unwilling, to the same devotion. Kenwalk also dying
left the government to Sexburga his wife, who outlived
him in it but one year, driven out, saith Mat. Westm.
by the nobles disdaining female government. * Aſter
whom several petty kings, as Beda calls them, for ten
years space divided the West-Saxons; others name
two, Escwin, the nephew of Kinegils, and Kentwin
the son, not petty by their deeds :u for Escwin ſought
a battle with Wulfer,” at Bedanhafde, and about a year
after both deceased ; but Wulfer not without a stain
left behind him of selling the bishoprick of London to
Wini; the first simonist we read of in this story: Ken-
walk had before expelled him from his chair at Win-
chester. Ethelred, the brother of Wulſer, obtaining
next the kingdom of Mercia, not only recovered Lindsey,
and what besides in those parts Wulfer had lost to
Ecſtid some years before, but found himself strong
enough to extend his arms another way, as far as Kent,
wasting that country without respect to church or mo-
nastery, much also endamaging the city of Rochester,
notwithstanding what resistance Lothair could make
against him. ” In August six hundred and seventy-
eight was seen a morning comet for three months fol-
lowing, in manner of a fiery pillar. And the South-
Saxons about this time were converted to the christian
faith, upon this occasion. Wilfred bishop of the Nor-
thumbrians cntering into contention with Ecfrid the
king, was by him deprived of his bishoprick, and long
wandering up and down as far as Rome," returned at
length into England; but not daring to approach the
north, whence he was banished, bethought him where
he might to best purpose elsewhere exercise his minis-
try. The south of all other Saxons remained yet
heathen ; but Ediwalk their king not long before had
been baptized in Mercia, perstaded by Wulfer, and
by him, as hath been said, received out of the font.
b For which relation's sake he had the Isle of Wight,
and a province of the Meannari adjoining given him
on the continent about Meanesborow in Hantshire,
which Wulfer had a little before gotten from Kenwalk.
Thither Wilfrid takes his journey, and with the help of
other spiritual labourers about him, in short time planted
there the gospel. It had not rained, as is said, of
three years before in that country, whence many of
the people daily perished by famine; till on the first
day of their public baptism, soft and plentiful showers
descending restored all abundance to the summer fol-
lowing. " Two years after this, Kentwin the other
s Bed l. 4. c. t Post Christ. 07:4. Bed. 1. 4. c. 12.
West-Saxon king above named, chaced the Welsh
Britons, as is chronicled without circumstance, to
the very sea-shore. But in the year, by Beda's reck-
oning, six hundred and eighty-three," Kedvalla a
West-Saxon of the royal line, (whom the Welsh
will have to be Cadwallader, last king of the Britons)
thrown out by faction, returned from banishment, and
invaded both Kentwin, if then living, or whoever
else had divided the succession of Kenwalk, slay-
ing in fight Edelwalk the South-Saxon, who op-
posed him in their aid; " but soon after was re-
pulsed by two of his captains, Bertune and Andune,
who for a while held the province in their power."
But Kedwalla gathering new force, with the slaughter
of Bertune, and also of Edric the successor of Edel-
walk, won the kingdom; but reduced the people to
heavy thraldom. Then addressing to conquer the
Isle of Wight, till that time pagan, saith Beda, (others
otherwise, as above hath been related,) made a vow,
though himself yet unbaptized, to devote the south
part of that island, and the spoils thereof, to holy uses.
Conquest obtained, paying his vow as then was the be-
lief, he gave his fourth to bishop Wilfrid, by chance
there present; and he to Bertwin a priest, his sister's
son, with commission to baptize all the vanquished,
who meant to save their lives. But the two young
sons of Arwald, king of that island, met with much
more hostility: for they, at the enemy's approach fly-
ing out of the isle, and betrayed where they were hid
not far from thence, were led to Kedwaller, who lay
then under cure of some wounds received, and by his
appointment, after instruction and baptism first given
them, harshly put to death, which the youths are said
above their age to have christianly suffered. In Kent
Lothair died this year of his wounds received in the
fight against the South-Saxons, led on by Edric, who
descending from Ermenred, it seems challenged the
crown, and wore it, though not commendably, one
year and a half: but coming to a violent death," left
the land exposed a prey either to homebred usurpers, or
neighbouring invaders. Among whom Kedwalla,
taking advantage from their civil distempers, and
marching easily through the South-Saxons, whom he
had subdued, sorely harassed the county, untouched
of a long time by any hostile incursion. But the
Kentish men, all parties uniting against a common
enemy, with joint power so opposed him, that he was
constrained to retire back; his brother Mollo in the
flight, with twelve men in his company, seeking
shelter in a house was beset, and therein burnt by the
pursuers: Kedwalla much troubled at so great a loss,
recalling and soon rallying his disordered forces, re-
turned fiercely upon the chasing enemy;" nor could
he be got out of the province, till both by fire and
sword he had avenged the death of his brother." At
length Victred, the son of Ecbert, attaining the king-
dom, both settled at home all things in peace, and se-
cured his borders from all outward hostility.” While
. . .2,
x Malms. Post Christ. 676. y Bed. l. l. c. 12.
a Post Chris'"; b Reti. H.
r Mal: 1:s.
11 Sax. Kill.
z Post ( 'hrist. 678.
c P, St Christ. 681. Sax, all.
- 4. c. 13. Camden.
Post Christ. 683. Sax, an .
e Bed. l. 4. c. 15. f Malms. Post. Christ. 684. g Bed. l. 4. c. 15.
h Post Christ. 685. Malms.
i Sax, an. Malms, k Post Christ. 686.
l Post Christ. 687. m Bed.
Book IV.
523
THE HISTORY OF ENGLANI).
thus Kedwalla disquieted both West and East, after
his winning the crown, Ecfrid the Northumbrian,
and Ethelred the Mercian, fought a sore battle by the
river Trent; wherein Elſwin brother to Ecfrid, a youth
of eighteen years, much beloved, was slain ; and the
accident likely to occasion much more shedding of
blood, peace was happily made up by the grave exhor-
tation of Archbishop Theodore, a pecuniary fine only
paid to Ecfrid, as some satisfaction for the loss of his
brother's life. Another adversity befel Ecſrid in his
family, by means of Ethildrith his wife, king Anna's
daughter, who having taken him for her husband, and
professing to love him above all other men, persisted
twelve years in the obstinate refusal of his bed, thereby
thinking to live the purer life. So perversely then
was chastity instructed against the apostle's rule. At
length obtaining of him with much importunity her
departure, she veiled herself a nun, then made abbess
of Ely, died seven years after of the pestilence; and
might with better warrant have kept faithfully her un-
dertaken wedlock, though now canonized St. Audrey
of Ely. In the mean while Ecfrid had sent Bertus
with a power to subdue Ireland, a harmless nation,
saith Beda, and ever friendly to the English ; in both
which they seem to have left a posterity much unlike
them at this day; miserably wasted, without regard
had to places hallowed or profane; they betook them-
selves partly to their weapons, partly to implore divine
aid ; and, as was thought, obtained it in their full
avengement upon Ecfrid. For he the next year, against
the mind and persuasion of his sagest friends, and es-
pecially of Cudbert a famous bishop of that age,
marching unadvisedly against the Picts, who long be-
fore had been subject to Northumberland, was by them
feigning flight, drawn unawares into narrow straits,
overtopped with hills, and cut off with most of his
army. From which time, saith Beda, military valour
began among the Saxons to decay, not only the Picts
till then peaceable, but some part of the Britons also
recovered by arms their liberty for many years after.
Yet Alfrid elder, but base brother to Ecfrid, a man said
to be learned in the Scriptures, recalled from Ireland,
to which place in his brother's reign he had retired,
and now succeeding, upheld with much honour, though
in narrower bounds, the residue of his kingdom. Ked-
walla having now with great disturbance of his neigh-
bours reigned over the West-Saxons two years, besides
what time he spent in gaining it, wearied perhaps
with his own turbulence, went to Rome, desirous there
to receive baptism, which till then his worldly affairs
had deferred ; and accordingly, on Easter-day, six
hundred and eighty-nine,” he was baptized by Sergius
the pope, and his name changed to Peter. All which
notwithstanding, surprised with a disease, he outlived
not the ceremony so far sought much above the space
of five weeks, in the thirtieth year of his age, and in
the church of St. Peter was there buried, with a large
epitaph upon his tomb. Him succeeded Ina of the
royal family, and from the time of his coming in for
many years oppressed the land with like grievances,
as Kedwalla had done before him, insomuch that in
those times there was no bishop among them. His
first expedition was into Kent, to demand satisfaction
for the burning of Mollo: Victred, loth to hazard all,
for the rash act of a few, delivered up thirty of those
that could be found accessory, or as others say, pa-
cified Ina with a great sum of money.” Meanwhile, .
at the incitement of Ecbert, a devout monk, Wil-
brod, a priest eminent for learning, passed over sea,
having twelve others in company, with intent to
preach the gospel in Germany.p And coming to
Pepin chief regent of the Franks, who a little before
had conquered the hither Frisia, by his countenance
and protection, promise also of many benefits to them
who should believe, they found the work of conversion
much the easier, and Wilbrod the first bishopric in
that nation. But two priests, each of them Hewald
by name, and for distinction surnamed from the colour
of their hair, the black and the white, by his example
piously affected to the souls of their countrymen the
Old Saxons, at their coming thither to convert them
met with much worse entertainment. For in the house
of a farmer, who had promised to convey them, as they
desired, to the governour of that country, discovered
by their daily ceremonies to be christian priests, and
the cause of their coming suspected, they were by him
and his heathen neighbours cruelly butchered; yet not
unavenged, for the governour enraged at such violence
offered to his strangers, sending armed men slew all
those inhabitants, and burnt their village. q Aſter
three years in Mercia, Ostrid the queen, wife to Ethel-
red, was killed by her own nobles, as Beda's epitome
records; Florence calls them Southimbrians, negli-
gently omitting the cause of so strange a fact. "And
the year following, Bethred a Northumbrian general,
was slain by the Picts. S Ethelred, seven years after
the violent death of his queen, put on the monk, and
resigned his kingdom to Kenrid the son of Wulfer his
brother. ‘The next year Alfrid in Northumberland
died, leaving Osred a child of eight years to succeed
him. “ Four years after which, Kenred, having a
while with praise governed the Mercian kingdom,
went to Rome in the time of pope Constantine, and
shorn a monk spent there the residue of his days.
Kelred succeeded him, the son of Ethelred, who had
reigned the next before. With Kenred went Offa the
son of Siger, king of the East-Saxons, and betook him
to the same habit, leaving his wife and native country;
a comely person in the prime of his youth, much de-
sired of the people; and such his virtue by report, as
might have otherwise been worthy to have reigned.
* Ina the West-Saxon one year after fought a battle,
at first doubtful, at last successful, against Gerent king
of Wales. 9. The next year Bertfrid, another Northum-
brian captain, fought with the Picts, and slaughtered
them, saith Huntingdon, to the full avengement of
Ecfrid's death. z. The fourth year after, Ina had an-
other doubtful and cruel battle at Woodnesburgh in
n Post Christ. 689.
p Post (“hrist. 69 1.
S. Post Christ. 704.
o Malms. Sax, an. Ethelwerd.
q Post Christ, 607. r Post Christ, 698.
t Post Christ. 705. u Post Christ. 709.
x Post Christ. 710. Sax. A unal.
- - y II untingd. Post Christ. 711.
z Bed. Epid. Post Christ. 715.
524
Book IV.
THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
Wiltshire, with Kenred the Mercian, who died the year
following a lamentable death : * for as he sat one day
feasting with his nobles, suddenly possessed with an
evil spirit, he expired in despair, as Boniface arch-
bishop of Mentz, an Englishman, who taxes him for a
defiler of nuns, writes by way of caution to Ethelbald
his next of kin, who succeeded him. Osred also a
young Northumbrian king, slain by his kindred in the
eleventh of his reign for his vicious life and incest
committed with nuns, was by Kenred succeeded and
avenged; he reigning two years left Osric in his room.
* In whose seventh year, if Beda calculate right, Vic-
tred king of Kent deceased, having reigned thirty-four
years, and some part of them with Suebbard, as Bedae
testifies. He left behind him three sons, Ethelbert,
Eadbert, and Alric his heirs. "Three years after which
appeared two comets about the sun, terrible to behold,
the one before him in the morning, the other after him
in the evening, for the space of two weeks in January,
bending their blaze toward the north; at which time
the Saracens furiously invaded France, but were ex-
pelled soon after with great overthrow. The same year
in Northumberland, Osric, dying or slain, adopted
Kelwulf the brother of Kenred his successor, to whom
Beda dedicates his story;e but writes this only of him,
that the beginning and the process of his reign met
with many adverse commotions, whereof the event was
then doubtfully expected. Meanwhile Ina, seven
years before having slain Kenwulf, to whom Florent
gives the addition of Clito, given usually to none but
of the blood royal, and the fourth year after overthrown
and slain Albright another Clito, driven from Taunton
to the South-Saxons for aid, vanquished also the East-
Angles in more than one battle, as Malmsbury writes,
but not the year; whether to expiate so much blood,
or infected with the contagious humour of those times,
Malmsbury saith, at the persuasion of Ethelburga his
wife, went to Rome, and there ended his days; yet this
praise leſt behind him, to have made good laws, the
first of Saxon that remain extant to this day, and to
his kinsman Edelard bequeathed the crown, no less
than the whole monarchy of England and Wales. For
Ina, if we believe a digression in the laws of Edward
confessor, was the first king crowned of English and
British, since the Saxons' entrance; of the British by
means of his second wife, some way related to Cad-
wallader last king of Wales, which I had not noted,
being unlikely, but for the place where I found it.
* Aſter Ina, by a surer author, Ethelbald king of Mer-
cia commanded all the provinces on this side Humber,
with their kings: the Picts were in league with the
English, the Scots peaceable within their bounds, and
of the Britons part were in their own government,
part subject to the English. In which peaceful state
of the land, many in Northumberland, both nobles and
commons, laying aside the exercise of arms, betook
them to the cloister; and not content so to do at home,
many in the days of Ina, clerks and laics, men and
women, hasting to Rome in herds, thought themselves
no where sure of eternal life till they were cloistered
there. Thus representing the state of things in this
island, Beda surceased to write. Out of whom chiefly
has been gathered, since the Saxons' arrival, such as
hath been delivered, a scattered story picked out here
and there, with some trouble and tedious work, from
among his many legends of visions and miracles;
toward the latter end so bare of civil matters, as
what can be thence collected may seem a calendar
rather than a history, taken up for the most part with
succession of kings, and computation of years, yet
those hard to be reconciled with the Saxon annals.
Their actions we read of were most commonly wars,
but for what cause waged, or by what councils carried
on, no care was had to let us know; whereby their
strength and violence we understand, of their wis-
dom, reason, or justice, little or nothing, the rest
superstition and monastical affectation ; kings one
after another leaving their kingly charge, to run their
heads fondly into a monk’s cowl; which leaves us
uncertain whether Beda was wanting to his matter, or
his matter to him. Yet from hence to the Danish in-
vasion it will be worse with us, destitute of Beda. Left
only to obscure and blockish chronicles; whom Malms-
bury, and Huntingdon, (for neither they nor we had
better authors of those times,) ambitious to adorn the
history, make no scruple ofttimes, I doubt, to interline
with conjectures and surmises of their own; them rather
than imitate, I shall choose to represent the truth
naked, though as lean as a plain journal. Yet William
of Malmsbury must be acknowledged, both for style
and judgment, to be by far the best writer of them all:
but what labour is to be endured turning over volumes of
rubbish in the rest, Florence of Worcester, Huntingdon,
Simeon of Durham, Hoveden, Matthew of Westmin-
ster, and many others of obscurer note, with all their
monachisms, is a penance to think. Yet these are our
only registers, transcribers one after another for the
most part, and sometimes worthy enough for the things
they register. This travail, rather than not know at
once what may be known of our ancient story, sifted
from ſables and impertinences, I voluntarily undergo;
and to save others, if they please, the like unpleasing
labour; except those who take pleasure to be all their
lifetime raking the foundations of old abbeys and ca-
thedrals. But to my task now as it befalls. § In the
year seven hundred and thirty-three, on the eighteenth
kalends of September, was an eclipse of the sun about
the third hour of day, obscuring almost his whole
orb as with a black shield. h Ethelbald of Mercia be-
sieged and took the castle or town of Somerton : i and
two years after Beda our historian died, some say the
year before. * Kelwulf in Northumberland three years
after became monk in Lindisfarne, yet none of the se-
verest, for he brought those monks from milk and water
to wine and ale; in which doctrine no doubt but they
were soon docile, and well might, for Kelwulf brought
with him good provision, great treasure and revenues
of land, recited by Simeon, yet all under pretence of
a Sax, an. Huntingd. Post Christ, 716. e
l, Post Clirist. 718. c I,. 5, c. Q. Post Chrisſ. 725.
d Post Christ. 728. e Bed. 1, 5, c. 21.
f Bede, Post Christ. 731. .
h Ethelwerd.
k Post Christ. 738. Malms.
g Post Christ,733. Sax. an.
i Post Christ. 735.
Book IV.
525
THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
following (I use the author's words) poor Christ, by
voluntary poverty: no marvel then if such applause
were given by monkish writers to kings turning monks,
and much cunning perhaps used to allure them. To
Eadbert his uncle's son, he left the kingdom, whose
brother Ecbert, archbishop of York, built a library
there. But two years after, while Eadbert was busied
in war against the Picts, Ethelbald the Mercian, by
ſoul fraud, assaulted part of Northumberland in his
absence, as the supplement to Beda's epitome records.
In the West-Saxons, Edelard, who succeeded Ina,
having been much molested in the beginning of his
reign, with the rebellion of Oswald his kinsman, who
contended with him for the right of succession, over-
coming at last those troubles, died in peace seven hun-
dred and forty-one," leaving Cuthred one of the same
lineage to succeed him; who at first had much war
with Ethelbald the Mercian, and various success, but
joining with him in league two years after,” made war
on the Welsh; Huntingdon doubts not to give them a
great victory. 9 And Simeon reports another battle
fought between Britons and Picts the year ensuing.
Now was the kingdom of East-Saxons drawing to a
period, for Sigeard and Senfred the sons of Sebbi hav-
ing reigned a while, and after them young Offa, who
soon quitted his kingdom to go to Rome with Kenred,
as hath been said, the government was conferred on
Selred son of Sigebert the Good, who having ruled
thirty-eight years,” came to a violent death; how or
wherefore, is not set down. After whom Swith red was
the last king, driven out by Ecbert the West-Saxon:
but London, with countries adjacent, obeyed the Mer-
cians till they also were dissolved. & Cuthred had now
reigned about nine years, when Kinric his son, a va-
liant young prince, was in a military tumult slain by
his own soldiers. The same year Eadbert dying in
Kent, his brother Edilbert reigned in his stead. F But
after two years, the other Eadbert in Northumberland,
whose war with the Picts hath been above mentioned,
made now such progress there, as to subdue Kyle, so
saith the auctarie of Bede, and other countries there-
about, to his dominion; while Cuthred the West-Saxon
had a fight with Ethelhun, one of his nobles, a stout
warrior, envied by him in some matter of the common-
wealth,” as far as by the Latin of Ethelwerd can be
understood, (others interpret it sedition,) and with much
ado overcoming, took Ethelhun for his valour into fa-
vour, by whom faithfully served in the twelfth or thir-
teenth of his reign, he encountered in a set battle with
Ethelbald the Mercian at Beorford, now Burford in
Oxfordshire, ‘one year after against the Welsh, which
was the last but one of his life. Huntingdom, as his
manner is to comment upon the annal text, makes a
terrible description of that fight between Cuthred and
Ethelbald, and the prowess of Ethelhun, at Beorford,
but so affectedly, and therefore suspiciously, that I
hold it not worth rehearsal; and both in that and the
latter conflict gives victory to Guthred; after whom
Sigebert,” uncertain by what right, his kinsman, saith
Florent, stepped into the throne, whom, hated for his
cruelty and other evil doings, Kinwulf, joining with
most of the nobility, dispossessed of all but Hamshire;
that province he lost also within a year,” together with
the love of all those who till then remained his adhe-
rents, by slaying Cumbran, one of his chief captains,
who for a long time had faithfully served, and now dis-
suaded, him from incensing the people by such tyran-
nical practices. y Thence flying for safety into Andrew's
wood, forsaken of all, he was at length slain by the
swineherd of Cumbran in revenge of his master, and
Kinwulf, who had undoubted right to the crown, joy-
fully saluted king. z. The next year Eadbert the Nor-
thumbrian, joining forces with Unust king of the Picts,
as Simeon writes, besieged and took by surrender the
city of Alcluith, now Dunbritton in Lennox, from the
Britons of Cumberland; and ten days after,a the whoſe
army perished about Niwanbirig, but to tell us how, he
forgets. In Mercia, Ethelbald was slain at a place
called Secandune, now Seckington in Warwickshire,
the year following,” in a bloody fight against Cuthred,
as Huntingdon surmises, but Cuthred was dead two or
three years before ; others write him murdered in the
night by his own guard, and the treason, as some say,
of Beornred, who succeeded him; but ere many months
was defeated and slain by Offa. Yet Ethelbald seems
not without cause, after a long and prosperous reign,
to have fallen by a violent death ; not shaming, on the
vain confidence of his many alms, to commit unclean-
ness with consecrated nuns, besides laic adulteries, as
the archbishop of Mentz in a letter taxes him and his
predecessor, and that by his example most of his peers
did the like ; which adulterous doings he foretold him
were likely to produce a slothful offspring, good for
nothing but to be the ruin of that kingdom, as it fell
out not long after.” The next year Osmund, accord-
ing to Florence, ruling the South-Saxons, and Swith red
the East, Eadbert in Northumberland, following the
steps of his predecessor, got him into a monk’s hood;
the more to be wondered, that having reigned worthil y
twenty-one years,” with the love and high estimation
of all, both at home and abroad, still able to govern,
and much entreated by the kings his neighbours, not
to lay down his charge; with offer on that condition
to yield up to him part of their own dominion, he could
not be moved from his resolution, but relinquished his
regal office to Oswulf his son; who at the year's end,e
though without just cause, was slain by his own ser-
vants. And the year after died Ethelbert, son of Vic-
tred, the second of that name in Kent. After Oswulf,
Ethelwald, otherwise called Mollo, was set up king;
who in his third year' had a great battle at Eldune, by
Melros, slew Oswin a great Lord, rebelling, and gain-
ed the victory. But the third year after g fell by the
treachery of Alcred, who assumed his place. h The
m Post Christ. 741. Malmsb. Sax. an.
p Post Christ. 7 (6.
r Post Christ. 750.
t Post Christ. 753.
x Post Christ. 755.
l Post Christ. 740.
n Post Christ. 743. Sim. Dun.
o Post Christ. 744. I loved. Malms. Sax, an.
q Post Christ. 748. Sax. an: l l untingd.
S II untingd. Post Christ. 752. Camd.
u Sax, an. Post Christ. 754. Malms.
z Post Christ. 756. Camd. a Camd.
- - Sax. am, Epit. Bed. Sim. 1)um.
c Post Christ, 756. d Sim. I jun. Eccles. 1. 2.
e Post Christ. 759. . ſ Post Christ, 762. Sim. Dun. Mlat. West.
g Post Christ. 765. Sim. Dun.
h Post Christ. 709.
y II untingdom.
b Post Christ. 757.
526
Book IV.
THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
fourth year after which, Cataracta an ancient and fair
city in Yorkshire, was burnt by Armed a certain tyrant;
who the same year came to like end. i And after five
years more, Alcred the king, deposed and forsaken by
all his people, fled with a few, first to Bebba, a strong
city of those parts, thence to Kinot, king of the Picts.
Ethelred, the son of Mollo, was crowned in his stead.
Meanwhile Offa the Mercian, growing powerful, had
subdued a neighbouring people by Simeon, called
Hastings; and fought successfully this year with
Alric king of Kent, at a place called Occanford : the
annals also speak of wondrous serpents then seen in
Sussex. Nor had Kinwulf the West-Saxon given
small proof of his valour in several battles against the
Welsh heretofore ; but this year seven hundred and
seventy-five," meeting with Offa, at a place called Be-
sington, was put to the worse, and Offa won the town
for which they contended. In Northumberland, Ethel-
red having caused three of his nobles, Aldulf, Kinwulf,
and Ecca, treacherously to be slain by two other peers,
was himself the next year driven into banishment,
Elfwald the son of Oswulf succeeding in his place, yet
not without civil broils; for in his second year m Os-
bald and Athelheard, two noblemen, raising forces
against him, routed Bearne his general, and pursuing
burnt him at a place called Seletune. I am sensible
how wearisome it may likely be, to read of so many
bare and reasonless actions, so many names of kings
one after another, acting little more than mute persons
in a scene: what would it be to have inserted the long
bead-roll of archbishops, bishops, abbots, abbesses,
and their doings, neither to religion profitable, nor to
morality, swelling my authors each to a voluminous
body, by me studiously omitted ; and left as their pro-
priety, who have a mind to write the ecclesiastical
matters of those ages P. Neither do I care to wrinkle
the smoothness of history with rugged names of places
unknown, better harped at in Camden, and other cho-
rographers. n Six years therefore passed over in silence,
as wholly of such argument, bring us to relate next
the unfortunate end of Kinwulf the West-Saxon ; who
having laudably reigned about thirty-one years, yet
suspecting that Kineard, brother of Sigebert the former
king, intended to usurp the crown after his decease, or
revenge his brother's expulsion, had commanded him
into banishment: 9 but he lurking here and there on
the borders with a small company, having had intelli-
gence that Kinwulf was in the country thereabout, at
Merantun, or Merton in Surrey, at the house of a wo-
man whom he loved, went by night and beset the
place. Kinwulf, over confident either of his royal pre-
sence, or personal valour, issuing forth with a few
about him, runs fiercely at Kineard, and wounds him
sore; but by his followers hemmed in, is killed among
them. The report of so great an accident soon running
to a place not far off, where many more attendants
awaited the king's return, Osric and Wifert, two earls,
hasted with a great number to the house, where Kine-
i Post Christ, 774. Sinn. Dun. k Post Christ, 775, Sax, an.
I Post Christ. 778. Sim, ſ)un. m Post Christ. 780. Sinn. Dun.
ard and his fellows yet remained. He seeing himself
surrounded, with fair words and promises of great gifts
attempted to appease them; but those rejected with
disdain, fights it out to the last, and is slain with all
but one or two of his retinue, which were nigh a hun-
dred. Kinwulf was succeeded by Birthric, being both
descended of Kerdic the founder of that kingdom. P
Not better was the end of Elfwald in Northumber-
land, two years after slain miserably by the con-
spiracy of Siggan, one of his nobles, others say of
the whole people at Scilcester by the Roman wall;
yet undeservedly, as his sepulchre at Hagustald, now
Hexam upon Tine, and some miracles there said to
be done," are alleged to witness, and Siggan five years
after laid violent hands on himself." Osred son of
Alcred advanced into the room of Elfwald, and within
one year driven out, left his seat vacant to Ethelred
son of Mollo, who after ten years of banishments
(imprisonment, saith Alcuin) had the sceptre put again
into his hand. The third year of Birthric king of
West-Saxons, gave beginning from abroad to a new
and fatal revolution of calamity on this land. For
three Danish ships, the first that had been seen
here of that nation, arriving in the west; to visit these,
as was supposed, foreign merchants, the king's ga-
therer of customs taking horse from Dorchester, found
them spies and enemies. I'or being commanded to
come and give account of their lading at the king's
custom house, they slew him, and all that came with
him ; as an earnest of the many slaughters, rapines,
and hostilities, which they returned not long after to
commit over all the island. ‘Of this Danish first
arrival, and on a sudden worse than hostile aggression,
the Danish history far otherwise relates, as if their
landing had been at the mouth of Humber, and their
spoilful march far into the country; though soon re-
pelled by the inhabitants, they hasted back as fast to
their ships: but from what cause, what reason of state,
what authority or public council the invasion proceed-
ed, makes not mention, and our wonder yet the more,
by telling us that Sigefrid then king in Denmark, and
long after, was a man studious more of peace and quiet
than of warlike matters. " These therefore seem rather
to have been some wanderers at sea, who with public
commission, or without, through love of spoil, or hatred
of Christianity, seeking booties on any land of Chris-
tians, came by chance, or weather, on this shore. * The
next year Osred in Northumberland, who driven out
by his nobles had given place to Ethelred, was taken,
and forcibly shaven a monk at York. X And the year
after, Oelf, and Oelfwin, sons of Elfwald, formerly
king, were drawn by fair promises from the principal
church of York, and after by command of Ethelred
cruelly put to death at Wonwaldremere,” a village by
the great pool in Lancashire, now called Winander-
mere. “Nor was the third year less bloody; for Osred,
who, not liking a shaven crown, had desired banish-
ment and obtained it, returning from the Isle of Man
u Ibid. 1, 4. • Sim. Dunºº, cºntan, 1.3.
n Post Christ. 786. Ethelwerd. Malms. o Sax. an. Camd.
p Post Christ. 788. Sim. Dun. Malms. q Cauld.
y Post Christ. 791. Sim. Dun. z Cand.
a Post Christ. 792, Sim. Dun. Eccles. l. 2.
r Malms.
Book IV.
527
| THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
with small forces, at the secret but deceitful call of
certain nobles, who by oath had promised to assist him,
were also taken, and by Ethelred dealt with in the
same manner: who, the better to avouch his cruelties,
thereupon married Elfled the daughter of Offa; for in
Offa was found as little faith or mercy. He the same
year, having drawn to his palace Ethelbrite king of
East-Angles, with fair invitations to marry his daugh-
ter, caused him to be there inhospitably beheaded, and
his kingdom wrongfully seized, by the wicked counsel
of his wife, saith Mat. Westm. annexing thereto a long
unlikely tale. For which violence and bloodshed to
make atonement, with friars at least, he bestows the
relics of St. Alban in a shrine of pearl and gold. "Far
worse it fared the next year with the relics in Lindis-
farme; where the Danes landing pillaged that monas-
tery; and of friars killed some, carried away others
captive, sparing neither priest nor lay : which many
strange thunders and fiery dragons, with other impres-
sions in the air seen frequently before, were judged to
foresignify. This year Alric third son of Victred ended
in Kent his long reign of thirty-four years; with him
ended the race of Hengist: thenceforth whomsoever
wealth or faction advanced took on him the name and
state of a king. The Saxon annals of seven hundred
and eighty-four name Ealmund then reigning in
Kent; but that consists not with the time of Alric, and
I find him no where else mentioned. The year fol-
lowinge was remarkable for the death of Offa the Mer-
cian, a strenuous and subtile king; he had much in-
tercourse with Charles the Great, at first enmity, to the
interdicting of commerce on either side, at length
much amity and firm league, as appears by the letter
of Charles himself yet extant, procured by Alcuin a
learned and prudent man, though a monk, whom the
kings of England in those days had sent orator into
France, to maintain good correspondence between them
and Charles the Great. He granted, saith Hunting-
don, a perpetual tribute to the pope out of every house
in his kingdom,” for yielding perhaps to translate the
primacy of Canterbury to Litchfield in his own do.
minion. He drew a trench of wondrous length be-
tween Mercia and the British confines from sea to sea.
Ecſerth the son of Offa, a prince of great hope, who
also had been crowned nine years before his father's
decease, restoring to the church what his father had
seized on, yet within four months by a sickness ended
his reign; and to Kenulf, next in the right of the same
progeny, bequeathed his kingdom. Meanwhile the
Danish pirates, who still wasted. Northumberland,
venturing on shore to spoil another monastery at the
mouth of the river Don, were assailed by the English,
their chief captain slain on the place; then returning
to sea, were most of them shipwrecked; others driven
again on shore, were put all to the sword. Simeon
attributes this their punishment to the power of St.
Cudbert, offended with them for the rifling his convent.
* Two years after this died Ethelred, twice king, but
not exempted at last from the fate of many of his pre-
decessors, miserably slain by his people, some say de-
servedly, as not inconscious with them who trained
Osred to his ruin. Osbald a nobleman exalted to the
throne, and, in less than a month, deserted and expel-
led, was forced to fly from Lindisfarne by sea to the
Pictish king, and dicd an abbot. Eadhulf, whom
Ethelred six years before had commanded to be put to
death at Rippon, before the abbey-gate, dead as was
supposed, and with solemn dirge carried into the church,
after midnight found there alive, I read not how, then
banished, now recalled, was in York created king. In
Kent Ethelbert or Pren, whom the annals call Ead-
bright, (so different they often are one from another,
both in timing and in naming,) by some means having
usurped regal power, after two years reign contending
with Kenulf the Mercian, was by him taken prisoner,
and soon after out of pious commiseration let go : but
not received of his own, what became of him Malms-
bury leaves in doubt. Simeon writes, that Kenulf com-
manded to put out his eyes, and lop off his hands; but
whether the sentence were executed or not, is left as
much in doubt by his want of expression. The second
year after this, they in Northumberland, who had con-
spired against Ethelred,f now also raising war against
Eardulf, under Wada their chief captain, after much
havoc on either side at Langho, by Whaley in Lanca-
shire, the conspirators at last fleeing, Eardulf returned
with victory. The same year London, with a great multi-
tude of her inhabitants, by a sudden fire was consumed.
The year eight hundred 8 made way for great alteration
in England, uniting her seven kingdoms into one, by
Ecbert the famous West-Saxon ; him Birthrick dying
childless left next to reign, the only survivor of that
lineage, descended from Inegild the brother of ling Ina.
h And according to his birth liberally bred, he began
early from his youth to give signal hopes of more than
ordinary worth growing up in him ; which Birthric
fearing, and withal his juster title to the crown, secretly
sought his life, and Ecbert perceiving, fled to Offa, the
Mercian: but he having married Eadburgh his daugh-
ter to Birthric, easily gave ear to his embassadors
coming to require Ecbert: he, again put to his shifts,
escaped thence into France; but after three years'
banishment there, which perhaps contributed much to
his education, Charles the Great then reigning, he was
called over by the public voice, (for Birthric was newly
dead,) and with general applause created king of West-
Saxons. The same day Ethelmund at Kinnersford
passing over with the Worcestershire men, was met by
Weolstan another nobleman with those of Wiltshire,
between whom happened a great fray, wherein the
Wiltshire men overcame, but both dukes were slain, no
reason of their quarrel written ; such bickerings to re-
count, met often in these our writers, what more worth
is it than to chronicle the wars of kites or crows, flock-
ing and fighting in the air 2 * The year following, Ear-
dulf the Northumbrian leading forth an army against
Kenwulf the Mercian for harbouring certain of his
enemies, by the diligent mediation of other princes and
b Post Christ. 793. Sim. Dun,
c Post, Christ. 794. Malms.
d Asser. Men. Sim. Dun.
e Post Christ. 796. Sim, Dun.
g Post Christ. 800,
f Post Christ. 708. Sim, Dun.
* k Post Christ. 801. Sim. līun.
h Malms. i Sax, an.
528
Book IV
THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
prelates, arms were laid aside, and amity soon sworn
between them. But Eadburga, the wife of Birthric,
a woman every way wicked, in malice especially cruel,
could not or cared not to appease the general hatred
justly conceived against her; accustomed in her hus-
band's day, to accuse any whom she spighted;" and
not prevailing to his ruin, her practice was by poison
secretly to contrive his death. It fortuned, that the
king her husband, lighting on a cup which she had
tempered, not for him, but for one of his great favour-
ites, whom she could not harm by accusing, sipped
thereof only, and in a while after, still pining away,
ended his days; the favourite, drinking deeper, found
speedier the operation. She, fearing to be questioned
for these facts, with what treasure she had, passed over
sea to Charles the Great, whom, with rich giſts coming
to his presence, the emperor courtly received with this
pleasant proposal: “Choose, Eadburga, which of us
two thou wilt, me or my son,” (for his son stood by him,)
“to be thy husband.” She, no dissembler of what she
liked best, made easy answer: “Were it in my choice,
I should choose of the two your son rather, as the
younger man.” To whom the emperor, between jest
and earnest, “ Hadst thou chosen me, I had bestowed
on thee my son ; but since thou hast chosen him, thou
shalt have neither him nor me.” Nevertheless he as-
signed her a rich monastery to dwell in as abbess;
for that life it may seem she chose next to profess: but
being a while after detected of unchastity with one of
her followers, she was commanded to depart thence:
from that time wandering poorly up and down with
one servant, in Pavia a city of Italy, she finished at
last in beggary her shameful life. In the year eight
hundred and five " Cuthred, whom Kenulf the Mercian
had, instead of Pren, made king in Kent, having ob-
scurely reigned eight years, deceased. In Northum-
berland, Eardulf the year following was driven out of
his realm by Alfwold,” who reigned two years in his
room; after whom Eandred son of Eardulf thirty-three
years; but I see not how this can stand with the sequel
of story out of better authors: much less that which
Buchanan relates, the year following,P of Achaius king
of Scots, who having reigned thirty-two years, and
dying in cight hundred and nine, I had formerly aided
(but in what year of his reign tells not) Hungus king
of Picts with ten thousand Scots, against Athelstan a
Saxon or Englishman, then wasting the Pictish bor-
ders; that Hungus by the aid of those Scots, and the
help of St. Andrew their patron, in a vision by night,
and the appearance of his cross by day, routed the
astonished English, and slew Athelstan in fight. Who
this Athelstan was, I believe no man knows; Buchanan
supposes him to have been some Danish commander,
on whom king Alured or Alfred had bestowed Northum-
berland; but of this I find no footstep in our ancient
writers; and if any such thing were done in the time
of Alfred, it must be little less than a hundred years
aſter: this Athelstam therefore, and this great over-
throw, seems rather to have been the fancy of some
legend than any warrantable record. . . Meanwhile
Ecbert having with much prudence, justice, and cle-
mency, a work of more than one year, established his
kingdom and himself in the affections of his people,
turns his first enterprise against the Britons, both them
of Cornwall and those beyond Severn, subduing both.
In Mercia, Kenulſ, the sixth year aſter,s having reigned
with great praise of his religious mind and virtues both
in peace and war, deceased. His son Kenelm, a child
of seven years, was committed to the care of his elder
sister Quendrid: who, with a female ambition aspiring
to the crown, hired one who had the charge of his
nurture to murder him, led into a woody place upon
pretence of hunting. ‘The murder, as is reported,
was miraculously revealed; but to tell how, by a dove
dropping a written note on the altar at Rome, is a long
story, told, though out of order, by Malmsbury, and
under the year eight hundred and twenty-one by Mat.
West., where I leave it to be sought by such as are
more credulous than I wish my readers. Only the note
was to this purpose:
Low in a mead of kine under a thorn,
Of head bereft, lieth poor Kenelm kingborn.
Keolwulf, the brother of Kenulf, aſter one year's reign,
was driven out by one Bernulf an usurper;" who in
his third year,” uncertain whether invading or invaded,
was by Ecbert, though with great loss on both sides,
overthrown and put to flight at Ellandune or Wilton :
yet Malmsbury accounts this battle fought in eight
hundred and six ; a wide difference, but frequently
found in their computations. Bernulf thence retiring
to the East-Angles, as part of his dominion by the late
seizure of Offa, was by them met in the field and slain:
but they, doubting what the Mercians might do in re-
venge hereof, forth with yielded themselves both king
and people to the sovereignty of Ecbert. As for the
kings of East-Angles, our annals mention them not
since Ethelwald ; him succeeded his brother's sons,’ as
we find in Malmsbury, Aldulf (a good king, well ac-
quainted with Bede) and Elwold who left the kingdom
to Beorn, he to Ethelred the father of Ethelbrite, whom
Offa perfidiously put to death. Simeon and Hoveden,
in the year seven hundred and forty-nine, write that
Elfwald king of East-Angles dying, Hunbeanna and
Albert shared the kingdom between them ; but where
to insert this among the former successions is not easy,
nor much material : after Ethelbrite, none is named of
that kingdom till their submitting now to Ecbert : he
from this victory against Bernulf sent part of his army
under Ethelwulf his son, with Alstan bishop of Shir-
burn, and Wulferd a chief commander, into Kent. Who,
finding Baldred there reigning in his eighteenth year,
overcame and drove him over the Thames; whereupon
all Kent, Surrey, Sussex, and lastly Essex, with her
king Swith red, became subject to the dominion of Ec-
bert. Neither were these all his exploits of this year;
the first in order set down in Saxon annals being his
fight against the Devonshire Welsh, at a place called
l Malms. l. 2. Asser. m Post Christ. 802. Sim. Dun. -
in Pºst Christ, 805. Malms. Sax. an. o Post Christ,806. Huntingd.
Sim. Dun. p Post Christ. 808. Mat. West. q Post Christ: 809.
S Post Christ. 819. Sax. an.
r Sim. Dun. Post (.hrist. 813. Sax. am.
X Post Christ. 823, Sax, an:
t Malms, u Post Christ. 820, Ingulf.
y Florent. Genealog. Bed. i. 2. c. 15.
Book V.
THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 529
Gaſulford, now Camelſord in Cornwall. “Ludiken the
Mercian, after two years preparing to avenge Bernulf
his kinsman on the East-Angles, was by them with his
five consuls, as the annals call them, surprised and put
to the sword: and Withlaf his successor first vanquished,
then upon submission, with all Mercia, made tributary
to Ecbert. Meanwhile the Northumbrian kingdom of
itself was fallen to shivers; their kings one after another
so often slain by the people, no man daring, though
never so ambitious, to take up the sceptre, which many
had found so hot, (the only effectual cure of ambition
that I have read,) for the space of thirty-three years
after the death of Ethelred son of Mollo, as Malmsbury
writes, there was no king : many noblemen and pre-
lates were fled the country. Which misrule among
them the Danes having understood, ofttimes from their
ships entering far into the land, infested those parts
with wide depopulation, wasting towns, churches, and
monasteries, for they were yet heathen : the Lent be-
fore whose coming, on the north side of St. Peter's
church in York was seen from the roof to rain blood.
The causes of these calamities, and the ruin of that
kingdom, Alcuin, a learned monk living in those days,
attributes in several epistles, and well may, to the gene-
ral ignorance and decay of learning, which crept in
among them after the death of Beda, and of Ecbert the
archbishop ; their neglect of breeding up youth in the
Scriptures, the spruce and gay apparel of their priests
and nuns, discovering their vain and wanton minds.
Examples are also read, even in Beda's days, of their
wanton deeds: thence altars defiled with perjuries,
cloisters violated with adulteries, the land polluted with
the blood of their princes, civil dissensions among the
people ; and finally, all the same vices which Gildas
alleged of old to have ruined the Britons. In this es-
tate Ecbert, who had now conquered all the south,
finding them in the year eight hundred and twenty-
seven,” (for he was marched thither with an army to
complete his conquest of the whole island,) no wonder
if they submitted themselves to the yoke without re-
sistance, Eandred their king becoming tributary,
"Thence turning his forces the year following he sub-
dued more thoroughly what remained of North-Wales.
THE FIFTH BOOK.
The sum of things in this island, or the best part
thereof, reduced now under the power of one man,
and him one of the worthiest, which, as far as can be
found in good authors, was by none attained at any
time here before, unless in fables; men might with
some reason have expected from such union, peace and
plenty, greatness, and the flourishing of all estates and
degrees: but far the contrary fell out soon after, inva-
sion, spoil, desolation, slaughter of many, slavery of
the rest, by the forcible landing of a fierce nation;
Danes commonly called, and sometimes Dacians by
others, the same with Normans; as barbarous as the
Saxons themselves were at first reputed, and much
more : for the Saxons first invited came hither to dwell;
these unsent for, unprovoked, came only to destroy.a
But if the Saxons, as is above related, came most of
them from Jutland and Anglen, a part of Denmark,
as Danish writers affirm, and that Danies and Normans
are the same ; then in this invasion, Danes drove out
And Normans afterwards
Which invasion per-
Danes, their own posterity.
none but ancienter Normans.b
haps, had the heptarchy stood divided as it was, had
either not been attempted, or not uneasily resisted ;
while each prince and people, excited by their nearest
concernments, had more industriously defended their
own bounds, than depending on the neglect of a de-
puted governour, sent ofttimes from the remote residence
of a secure monarch. Though as it ſell out in those
troubles, the lesser kingdoms revolting from the West-
Saxon yoke, and not aiding each other, too much con-
cerned for their own safety, it came to no better pass;
while severally they sought to repel the dawger nigh
at hand, rather than jointly to prevent it far off. But
when God hath decreed servitude on a sinful nation,
fitted by their own vices for no condition but servile,
all estates of government are alike unable to avoid it.
God hath purposed to punish our instrumental punish-
crs, though now christians, by other heathen, accord-
ing to his divine retaliation ; invasion for invasion,
spoil for spoil, destruction for destruction. The Saxons
were now full as wicked as the Britons were at their
arrival, broken with luxury and sloth, either secular or
superstitious; for laying aside the exercise of arms, and
the study of all virtuous knowledge, some betook them
to overworldly or vicious practice, others to religious
idleness and solitude, which brought forth nothing but
vain and delusive visions; easily perceived such by
their commanding of things, either not belonging to
the gospel, or utterly forbidden, ceremonies, relics,
monasteries, masses, idols; add to these ostentation of
alms, got ofttimes by rapine and oppression, or inter-
mixed with violent and lustful deeds, sometimes pro-
digally bestowed as the expiation of cruelty and blood-
shed. What longer suffering could there be, when
religion itself grew so void of sincerity, and the greatest
shows of purity were impured 2
ECBERT.
EcBERT in full height of glory, having now enjoyed
his conquest seven peaceful years, his victorious army
long since disbanded, and the exercise of arms perhaps
laid aside; the more was found unprovided against a
sudden storm of Danes from the sea, who landing in
the “thirty-second of his reign, wasted Shepey in Kent.
Ecbert the next year," gathering an army, for he had
heard of their arrival in thirty-five ships, gave them
battle by the river Carr in Dorsetshire ; the event
whereof was, that the Danes kept their ground, and
, Z Qamden. Post Christ. 825. Ingulf,
St.
- m Post Christ. 827.
in Post Christ. 828. Mat. We Christ. 827
a Calvisius.
b Pontan. I list. Dan.
- c Post Christ. 832, Sax, annal.
d Post Christ. 833. Sax, an,
530 THE HISTORY
OF ENGLAND. Book V.
encamped where the field was fought ; two Saxon
leaders, Dudda and Osmund, and two bishops, as some
say, were there slain. This was the only check of for-
tune we read of, that Ecbert in all his time received.
For the Danes returning two yearse after with a great
navy, and joining forces with the Cornish, who had
entered league with them, were overthrown and put to
flight. Of these invasions against Ecbert the Danish
history is not silent; whether out of their own records
or ours may be justly doubted : for of these times at
home I find them in much uncertainty, and beholden
rather to outlandish chronicles, than any records of
their own. The victor Ecbert, as one who had done
enough, seasonably now, after prosperous success, the
next f year with glory ended his days, and was buried
at Winchester.
ETHELWOLF.
ETH Elwolf the son of Ecbert succeeded, by Malms-
bury described a man of mild mature, not inclined to
war, or delighted with much dominion; that therefore
contented with the ancient West-Saxon bounds, he
gave to Ethelstan his brother, or son, as some write,
the kingdom of Kent and Essex. & But the Saxon an-
nalist, whose authority is elder, saith plainly, that both
these countries and Sussex were bequeathed to Ethel-
stan by Ecbert his father. The unwarlike disposition
of Ethelwolf gave encouragement no doubt, and easier
entrance to the Danes, who came again the next year
with thirty-three ships; h but Wulfherd, one of the
king's chief captains, drove them back at Southamp-
ton with great slaughter; himself dying the same year,
of age, as I suppose, for he seems to have been one of
Dcbert's old commanders, who was sent with Ethelwolf
to subdue Kent. Ethelhelm, another of the king's cap-
tains, with the Dorsetshire men, had at first like suc-
cess against the Danes at Portsmouth ; but they rein-
forcing stood their ground, and put the English to
rout. Worse was the success of earl Herebert at a place
called Mereswar, slain with the most part of his army.
'The year following in Lindsey also, East-Angles, and
Kent, much mischief was done by their landing;k
where the next year, emboldened by success, they came
on as far as Canterbury, Rochester, and London itself,
with no less cruel hostility ; and giving no respite to
the peaceable mind of Ethelwolf, they yet returned
with the next year in thirty-five ships, fought with
him, as before with his father at the river Carr, and
made good their ground. In Northumberland, Ean-
dred the tributary king deceasing left the same tenure
to his son Etheldred, driven out in his fourth year,"
and succeeded by Readwulf, who soon after his coro-
nation hasting forth to battle against the Danes at
Alvetheli, ſell with the most part of his army; and
Ethelred, like in fortune to the former Ethelred, was
reexalted to his seat. And, to be yet further like him in
fate, was slain the fourth year after. Osbert succeeded
in his room. But more southerly, the Danes next year."
after met with some stop in the full course of their out-
rageous insolencies. For Earnulf with the men of
Somerset, Alstan the bishop, and Osric with those of
Dorsetshire, setting upon them at the river's mouth of
Pedridan, slaughtered them in great numbers, and ob-
tained a just victory. This repulse quelled them, for
aught we hear, the space of six years; * then also re-
newing their invasion with little better success. For
Reorle an earl, aided with the forces of Devonshire,
assaulted and overthrew them at Wigganbeorch with
great destruction; as prosperously were they fought
the same year at Sandwich, by king Ethelstan, and
Ealker his general, their great army defeated, and nine
of their ships taken, the rest driven off; however to ride
out the winter on that shore, Asser saith, they then
first wintered in Shepey isle. Hard it is, through the
bad expression of these writers, to define this fight,
whether by sea or land; Howeden terms it a sea-fight.
Nevertheless with fifty ships (Asser and others add
three hundred) they entered the mouth of the Thames,P
and made excursions as far as Canterbury and London,
and as Ethelwerd writes, destroyed both ; of London,
Asser signifies only that they pillaged it. Bertulf also
the Mercian, successor of Withlaf, with all his army
they forced to fly, and him beyond the sea. Then pass-
ing over Thames with their powers into Surrey, and the
West-Saxons, and meeting there with king Ethelwolf
and Ethelbald his son, at a place called Ak-Lea, or
Oke-Lea, they received a total defeat with memorable
slaughter. This was counted a lucky year'ſ to Eng-
land, and brought to Ethelwolf great reputation. Bur-
hed therefore, who after Bertulf held of him the Mer-
cian kingdom, two years after this, imploring his aid
against the North Welsh, as then troublesome to his
confines, obtained it of him in person, and thereby re-
duced them to obedience. This done, Ethelwolf sent
his son Alfred, a child of five years, well accompanied
to Rome, whom Leo the pope both consecrated to be
king afterwards, and adopted to be his son; at home
Ealker with the forces of Kent, and Huda with those
of Surrey, fell on the Danes at their landing in Tanet,
and at first put them back; but the slain and drowned
were at length so many on either side, as left the loss
equal on both : which yet hindered not the solemnity of
a marriage at the feast of Easter, between Burhed the
Mercian, and Ethelswida king Ethelwolf’s daughter.
Howbeit the Danes next year' wintered again in Shepey.
Whom Ethelwolf, not finding human health sufficient
to resist, growing daily upon him, in hope of divine
aid, registered in a book and dedicated to God the
tenth part of his own lands, and of his whole kingdom,
eased of all impositions, but converted to the main-
tenance of masses and psalms weekly to be sung for
the prospering of Ethelwolf and his captains, as it ap-
pears at large by the patent itself, in William of
Malmsbury. Asser saith, he did it for the redemption
of his soul, and the souls of his ancestors. After which,
as having done some great matter to shew himself at
| Post Christ. 840. Sax. an. Sim. Dun. Mat. West.
nn Post Christ. 844. n Post Christ. 845. Sax. an
| Post Christ. 837. Sax. am. i Post Christ. 838. Sax. an.
k Post Christ. 839. Sax, an.
o Post Christ. 851. Sax, an Asser. p ifuntinui Mär. West.
q Post Christ. 853. Sax. am. Asser. r Malms. Post Christ. 854. Sax. an.
Book W. THE HISTORY
OF ENGLAND. 5:31
Rome, and be applauded of the pope; he takes a long
and cumbersome journey thither with young Alfred
again, s and there stays a year, when his place required
him rather here in the field against pagan enemies
left wintering in his land. Yet so much manhood he
had, as to return thence no monk; and in his way
home took to wife Judith daughter to Charles the Bald,
king of France. But ere his return, Ethelbald his
eldest son, Alstan his trusty bishop, and Enulf earl of
Somerset conspired against him : their complaints
were, that he had taken with him Alfred his youngest
son to be there inaugurated king, and brought home
with him an outlandish wife; for which they endea-
voured to deprive him of his kingdom. The disturb-
ance was expected to bring forth nothing less than
war: but the king abhorring civil discord, after many
conferences tending to peace, condescended to divide
the kingdom with his son: division was made, but the
matter so carried, that the eastern and worst part was
malignly afforded to the father; the western and best
given to the son: at which many of the nobles had
great indignation, offering to the king their utmost as-
sistance for the recovery of all; whom he peacefully
dissuading, sat down contented with his portion as-
signed. In the East-Angles, Edmund lineal from the
ancient stock of those kings, a youth of fourteen years
only, but of great hopes, was with consent of all but his
own crowned at Bury. About this time, as Buchanan
relates, u the Picts, who not long before had by the
Scots been driven out of their country, part of them
coming to Osbert and Ella, then kings of Northumber-
land, obtained aid against Donaldus the Scottish king,
to recover their ancient possession. Osbert, who in
person undertook the expedition, marching into Scot-
land, was at first put to a retreat; but returning soon
after on the Scots, oversecure of their supposed victory,
put them to flight with great slaughter, took prisoner
their king, and pursued his victory beyond Stirling
bridge. The Scots unable to resist longer, and by em-
bassadors entreating peace, had it granted them on
these conditions: the Scots were to quit all they had
possessed within the wall of Severus : the limits of
Scotland were beneath Stirling bridge to be the river
Forth, and on the other side, Dunbritton Frith ; from
that time so called of the British then seated in Cum-
berland, who had joined with Osbert in this action,
and so far extended on that side the British limits. If
this be true, as the Scots writers themselves witness,
(and who would think them fabulous to the disparage-
ment of their own country P) how much wanting have
been our historians to their country’s honour, in letting
pass unmentioned an exploit so memorable, by them
remembered and attested, who are wont oftener to ex-
tenuate than to amplify aught done in Scotland by
the English ; Donaldus, on these conditions released,
soon after dies, according to Buchanan, in 858. Ethel-
wolf, chief king in England, had the year before ended
his life, and was buried as his father at Winchester.x
He was from his youth much addicted to devotion; so
that in his father's time he was ordained bishop of
Winchester; and unwillingly, for want of other legi-
timate issue, succeeded him in the throne; managing
therefore his greatest affairs by the activity of two
bishops, Alstan of Sherburne, and Swithine of Win-
chester. But Alstan is noted of covetousness and op-
pression, by William of Malmsbury; y the more vehe-
mently no doubt for doing some notable damage to
that monastery. The same author writes,” that Ethel-
wolf at Rome paid a tribute to the pope, continued to
his days. However he were facile to his son, and se-
ditious nobles, in yielding up part of his kingdom, yet
his queen he treated not the less honourably, for whom-
soever it displeased. “The West-Saxons had decreed
ever since the time of Eadburga, the infamous wife of
Birthric, that no queen should sit in state with the
king, or be dignified with the title of queen. But
Ethelwolf permitted not that Judith his queen should
lose any point of regal state by that law. At his death
he divided the kingdom between his two sons, Ethel-
bald and Ethelbert; to the younger Kent, Essex,
Surrey, Sussex, to the elder all the rest; to Peter and
Paul certain revenues yearly, for what uses let others
relate, who write also his pedigree, from son to father,
up to Adam.
ETHELBALD and ETHELBERT.
ETHELBALD, unnatural and disloyal to his father,b
fell justly into another, though contrary sin, of too
much love for his father's wife ; and whom at first he
opposed coming into the land, her now unlawfully
marrying, he takes into his bed; but not long enjoy-
ing died at three years end," without doing aught
more worthy to be remembered; having reigned
two years with his father, impiously usurping, and
three after him, as unworthily inheriting. And his
hap was all that while to be unmolested with the
Danes; not of divine favour doubtless, but to his
greater condemnation, living the more securely his
incestuous life. Huntingdon on the other side much
praises Ethelbald, and writes him buried at Sher-
burn, with great sorrow of the people, who missed
him long after. Mat. Westm. saith, that he repent-
ed of his incest with Judith, and dismissed her : but
Asser, an eyewitness of those times, mentions no such
thing.
ETHELBERT alone.
ETHELBALD by death removed, the whole kingdom
came rightly to Ethelbert his next brother. Who,
though a prince of great virtue and no blame, had as
short a reign allotted him as his faulty brother, nor that
so peaceful; once or twice invaded by the Danes. But
they having landed in the west with a great army, and
sacked Winchester, were met by Osric earl of South-
ampton, and Ethelwolf of Berkshire, beaten to their
ships, and forced to leave their booty. Five years
s Post Christ. 855. Asser.
u Post Christ. 857.
x Mat. West. St. 857
t Asser, ... .
y Malms. Suitline.
b Asser. Malms.
all.
z Sigon, de regu. Ital. 1. 5.
a Asser.
Siim. Dun. c Post Christ. 800. Sax.
2 M
532 THE HISTORY
OF ENGLAND. Book V.
after," about the time of his death, they set foot again
in Tanet; the Kentishmen, wearied out with so fre-
quent alarms, came to agreement with them for a cer-
tain sum of money; but ere the peace could be ratified,
and the money gathered, the Danes, impatient of de-
lay, by a sudden eruption in the night soon wasted all
the East of Kent. Meanwhile, or something before,
Ethelbert deceasing was buried as his brother at Sher-
burn.
ETHELRED
ETHELRED, the third son of Ethelwolf, at his first
coming to the crown was entertained with a fresh in-
vasion of Danes," led by Hinguar and Hubba, two
brothers, who now had got footing among the East-
Angles; there they wintered, and coming to terms of
peace with the inhabitants, furnished themselves of
horses, forming by that means many troops with riders
of their own : these pagans, Asser saith, came from the
river Danubius. Fitted thus for a long expedition,
they ventured the next yearf to make their way over
land and over Humber as far as York: them they
found to their hands embroiled in civil dissensions;
their king Osbert they had thrown out, and Ella leader
of another faction chosen in his room; who both,
though late, admonished by their common danger,
towards the year's end with united powers made head
against the Danes and prevailed; but pursuing them
overeagerly into York, then but slenderly walled, the
Northumbrians were every where slaughtered, both
within and without; their kings also both slain, their
city burnt, saith Malmsbury, the rest as they could
made their peace, overrun and vanquished as far as the
river Tine, and Egbert of English race appointed king
over them. Bronton, no ancient author, (for he wrote
since Mat. West.) nor of much credit, writes a particu-
lar cause of the Danes coming to York; that Bruern a
nobleman, whose wife king Osbert had ravished, called
in Hinguar and Hubba to revenge him. The example
is remarkable, if the truth were as evident. Thence
victorious, the Danes next year" entered into Mercia
towards Nottingham, where they spent the winter.
Burhed then king of that country, unable to resist,
implores the aid of Ethelred and young Alfred his
brother; they assembling their forces and joining with
the Mercians about Nottingham, offer battle: i the
Danes, not daring to come forth, kept themselves
within that town and castle, so that no great fight was
hazarded there; at length the Mercians, weary of long
suspense, entered into conditions of peace with their
enemies. After which the Danes, returning back to
York, made their abode there the space of one year,"
committing, some say, many cruelties. Thence em-
barking to Lindsey, and all the summer destroying
that country, about September they came with like
fury into Kesteven, another part of Lincolnshire; where
Algar, the earl of Howland, now Holland, with his
forces, and two hundred stout soldiers belonging to the
abbey of Croiland, three hundred from about Boston,
Morcard lord of Brunne, with his numerous family,
well trained and armed, Osgot governor of Lincoln
with five hundred of that city, all joining together,
gave battle to the Danes, slew of them a great multi-
tude, with three of their kings, and pursued the rest to
their tents; but the night following, Gothrun, Baseg,
Osketil, Halfden, and Hamond, five kings, and as
many earls, Frena, Hinguar, Hubba, Sidroc the elder
and younger, coming in from several parts with great
forces and spoils, great part of the English began to
slink home. Nevertheless Algar with such as forsook
him not, all next day in order of battle facing the
Danes, and sustaining unmoved the brunt of their
assaults, could not withhold his men at last from pur-
suing their counterfeited flight; whereby opened and
disordered, they fell into the snare of their enemies,
rushing back upon them. Algar and those captains
forenamed with him, all resolute men, retreating to a
hill side, and slaying of such as followed them, mani-
fold their own number, died at length upon heaps of
dead which they had made round about them. The
Danes, thence passing on into the country of East-An-
gles, rifled and burnt the monastery of Ely, overthrew
earl Wulketul with his whole army, and lodged out
the winter at Thetford; where king Edmond assailing
them was with his whole army put to flight, himself
taken, bound to a stake, and shot to death with arrows,
his whole country subdued. The next year in with
great supplies, saith Huntingdon, bending their march
toward the West-Saxons, the only people now left in
whom might seem yet to remain strength or courage
likely to oppose them, they came to Reading, fortified
there between the two rivers of Thames and Kenet, and
about three days after sent out wings of horse under
two earls to forage the country;' but Ethelwolf earl
of Berkshire, at Englefield a village migh, encountered
them, slew one of their earls, and obtained a great vic-
tory. Four days after came the king himself and his
brother Alfred with the main battle ; and the Danes
issuing forth, a bloody fight began, on either side
great slaughter, in which earl Ethelwolf lost his life;
but the Danes, losing no ground, kept their place of
standing to the end. Neither did the English for this
make less haste to another conflict at Escesdune or
Ashdown, four days after, where both armies with their
whole force on either side met. The Danes were em-
battled in two great bodies, the one led by Bascai and
Halfden, their two kings, the other by such earls as
were appointed; in like manner the English divided
their powers, Ethelred the king stood against their
kings; and though on the lower ground, and coming
later into the battle from his orisons, gave a fierce on-
set, wherein Bascai (the Danish history names him
Ivarus the son of Regnerus) was slain. Alfred was
placed against the earls, and beginning the battle ere
his brother came into the field, with such resolution
charged them, that in the shock most of them were
slain ; they are named Sidroc elder and younger, Os-
bern, Frean, Harald: at length in both divisions the
e Post Christ. 866, Sax, an. Huntingſ.
!hrist, 865. Sax. an.
d Post Christ. 865. Sax SSCIT, h Post Christ. 868.
f Post Christ. 867. Sax, an. 8
k Post Christ. 869. Sim. Dun.
1 Asser... . -
l Post Christ. 870, Ingulf. m Post Christ. 871. Sax, an. in Asser.
Book V.
533
THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
Danes turn their backs; many thousands of them cut
off, the rest pursued till night. So much the more it
may be wondered to hear next in the annals, that the
Danes, fourteen days after such an overthrow fighting
again with Ethelred and his brother Alfred at Basing,
(under conduct, saith the Danish history, of Agnerus
and Hubbo, brothers of the slain Ivarus,) should ob-
tain the victory; especially since the new supply of
Danes mentioned by Asser 9 arrived after this action.
But after two months, the king and his brother fought
with them again at Mertun, in two squadrons as before,
in which fight hard it is to understand who had the
better; so darkly do the Saxon annals deliver their
meaning with more than wonted infancy. Yet these
I take (for Asser is here silent) to be the chief fountain
of our story, the ground and basis upon which the
monks later in time gloss and comment at their plea-
sure. Nevertheless it appears, that on the Saxon part,
not Heamund the bishop only, but many valiant men
lost their lives. P This fight was followed by a heavy
summer plague; whereof, as is thought, king Ethel-
red died in the fifth year of his reign, and was buried at
Winburn, where his epitaph inscribes that he had his
death's wound by the Danes, according to the Danish
history 872. Of all these terrible landings and devas-
tations by the Danes, from the days of Ethelwolf till
their two last battles with Ethelred, or of their leaders,
whether kings, dukes, or earls, the Danish history of
best credit saith nothing; so little wit or conscience it
seems they had to leave any memory of their brutish
rather than manly actions; unless we shall suppose
them to have come, as above was cited out of Asser,
from Danubius, rather than from Denmark, more pro-
bably some barbarous nation of Prussia, or Livonia, not
long before scated more northward on the Baltic sea.
ALFRED.
ALFRED, the fourth son of Ethelwolf, had scarce per-
formed his brother's obsequies, and the solemnity of his
own crowning, when at the month's end in haste with
a small power he encountered the whole army of Danes
at Wilton, and most part of the day foiled them; but
unwarily following the chase, gave others of them the
advantage to rally ; who returning upon him now
weary, remained masters of the field. This year, as is
affirmed in the annals, nine battles had been fought
against the Danes on the south side of Thames, besides
innumerable excursions made by Alfred and other
leaders; one king, nine earls were fallen in fight, so that
weary on both sides at the year's end, league or truce
was concluded. Yet next year q the Danes took their
march to London, now exposed to their prey; there
they wintered, and thither came the Mercians to renew
peace with them. The year following they roved back
to the parts beyond Humber, but wintered at Torksey
in Lincolnshire, where the Mercians now the third time
made peace with them. Notwithstanding which, re-
moving their camp to Rependune in Mercia, now
o Pontan. Hist. Dan. 1. 4.
Repton upon Trent in Derbyshire, and there winter-
ing, they constrained Burhed the king to fly into
foreign parts, making seizure of his kingdom ; he run-
ning the direct way to Rome,” (with better reason than
his ancestors,) died there, and was buried in a church
by the English school. His kingdom the Danes farmed
out to Kelwulf, one of his houshold servants or officers,
with condition to be resigned them when they com-
manded. From Rependune they dislodged, Haſden
their king leading part of his army northward, wintered
by the river Time, and subjecting all those quarters,
wasted also the Picts and British beyond : but Guth-
run, Oskitell, and Anwynd, other three of their kings,
moving from Rependune, came with a great army to
Grantbrig, and remained there a whole year. But Al-
fred that summer proposing to try his fortune with a
fleet at sea, (for he had found that the want of shipping
and neglect of navigation had exposed the land to these
piracies,) met with seven Danish rovers, took one, the
rest escaping; an acceptable success from so small a
beginning: for the English at that time were but little
experienced in sea-affairs. The next" year's first mo-
tion of the Danes was towards Warham castle, where
Alfred meeting them, either by policy, or their doubt
of his power, Ethelwerd saith, by money brought them
to such terms of peace, as that they swore to him upon
a hallowed bracelet, others say upon certain * relics, (a
solemn oath it seems, which they never vouchsafed be-
fore to any other nation,) forth with to depart the land :
but falsifying that oath, by night with all the horse
they had (Asser saith, y slaying all the horsemen he
had) stole to Exeter, and there wintered. In Nor-
thumberland, Hafden their king began to settle, to di-
vide the land, to till, and to inhabit. Meanwhile they
in the west, who were marched to Exeter, entered the
city, coursing now and then to Warham; but their
fleet the next” year, sailing or rowing about the west,
met with such a tempest near to Swanswich or Gnave-
wic, as wrecked one hundred and twenty of their
ships, and left the rest easy to be mastered by those
galleys, which Alfred had set there to guard the seas,
and straiten Exeter of provision. He the while be-
leaguering a them in the city, now humbled with the
loss of their navy, (two navies, saith Asser, the one at
Gnavewic, the other at Swanwine,) distressed them so,
as that they give him as many hostages as he required,
and as many oaths, to keep their covenanted peace,
and kept it. For the summer coming on, they departed
into Mercia, whereof part they divided among them-
selves, part left to Kelwulf their substituted king. The
twelfthtide following,” all oaths forgotten, they came
to Chippenham in Wiltshire, dispeopling the countries
round, dispossessing some, driving others beyond the
sea; Alfred himself with a small company was forced
to keep within woods and fenny places, and for some
time all alone, as Florent saith, sojourned with Dun-
wulf a swineherd, made afterwards for his devotion
and aptness to learning bishop of Winchester. Haſden
and the brother of Hinguare coming with twenty-three
q Post Christ. 872. Sax. am,
S Post Christ. 874. Sax. an
p. Camden.
r Post Christ. 873. Sax. an. Camd.
t Post Christ. 875. Sax. an.
u Post Christ. 876. Sax. an,
z Post Christ. 877. Sax. an.
b Post Christ, 878. Sax, an.
y Florent.
a Asser.
c Sitn. Dun.
x Florent.
534
Book W.
THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
ships from North Wales, where they had made great
spoil, landed in Devonshire, nigh to a strong castle
named Kin with ; where, by the garrison issuing forth
unexpectedly, they were slain with twelve hundred of
their men." Meanwhile the king about Easter, not
despairing of his affairs, built a fortress at a place
called Athelney in Somersetshire, therein valiantly
defending himself and his followers, frequently sally-
ing forth. The seventh week after he rode out to a
place called Ecbryt-stone in the east part of Selwood:
thither resorted to him with much gratulation the So-
merset and Wiltshire men, with many out of Hamp-
shire, some of whom a little before had fled their
country; with these marching to Ethandune, now
Edindon in Wiltshire, he gave battle to the whole
Danish power, and put them to flight.e. Then be-
sieging their castle, within fourteen days took it.
Malmsbury writes, that in this time of his recess,
to go a spy into the Danish camp, he took upon him
with one servant the habit of a fiddler; by this means
gaining access to the king’s table, and sometimes to
his bed chamber, got knowledge of their secrets, their
careless encamping, and thereby this opportunity of
assailing them on a sudden. The Danes, by this
misfortune broken, gave him more hostages, and re-
newed their oat's to depart out of his kingdom.
Their king Gytro or Gothrum offered willingly to
receive baptism,’ and accordingly came with thirty
of his friends to a place called Aldra or Aulre, near
to Athelney, and were baptized at Wedmore; where
Alfred received him out of the font, and named him
Athelstan. After which they abode with him twelve
days, and were dismissed with rich presents. Where-
upon the Danes removed next 8 year to Cirences-
ter, thence peaceably to the East-Angles; which
Alfred, as some write, had bestowed on Goth run
to hold of him; the bounds whereof may be read
among the laws of Alfred. Others of them went to
Tulham on the Thames, and joining there with a great
fleet newly come into the river, thence passed over into
France and Flanders, both which they entered so far
conquering or wasting, as witnessed sufficiently, that
the French and Flemish were no more able than the
English, by policy or prowess, to keep off that Danish
inundation from their land." Alſred thus rid of them,
and intending for the future to prevent their landing ;
three years after (quiet the mean while) with more
ships and better provided puts to sea, and at first met
with four of theirs, whereof two he took, throwing the
men overboard, then with two others, wherein two
were of their princes, and took them also, but not
without some loss of his own. After three years an-
other fleet of them appeared on these seas, so huge
that one part of them thought themselves sufficient to
enter upon East-France, the other came to Rochester,
and beleaguered it; they within stoutly defending
themselves, till Alfred with great forces, coming down
upon the Danes, drove them to their ships, leaving for
haste all their horses behind them." The same year
f Camden.
Alfred sent a fleet toward the East-Angles, then inha-
bited by the Danes, which, at the mouth of Stour,
meeting with sixteen Danish ships, after some ſight
took them all, and slow all the soldiers on board ; but
in their way home lying careless, were overtaken by
another part of that fleet, and came off with loss :
whereupon perhaps those Danes, who were settled
among the East-Angles, erected with new hopes, vio-
lated the peace which they had sworn to Alfred, who
spent the next year in repairing London (besieging,
saith Huntingdon) much ruined and unpeopled by the
Danes; the Londoners, all but those who had been led
away captive," soon returned to their dwellings, and
Ethred, duke of Mercia, was by the king appointed
their governour. "But after thirteen years respite of
peace, another Danish fleet of two hundred and fifty
sail, from the east part of France, arrived at the mouth
of a river in East-Kent, called Limen, migh to the
great wood Andred, famous for length and breadth;
into that wood they drew up their ships four miles
from the river's mouth, and built a fortress. After
whom Haesten, with another Danish fleet of eighty
ships, entering the mouth of Thames, built a fort at
Middleton, the former army remaining at a place call-
ed Apeltre. Alfred, perceiving this, took of those
Danes who dwelt in Northumberland a new oath of
fidelity, and of those in Essex hostages, lest they
should join, as they were wont, with their countrymen
newly arrived.” And by the next year having got to-
gether his forces, between either army of the Danes
encamped so as to be ready for either of them, who
first should happen to stir forth ; troops of horse also
he sent continually abroad, assisted by such as could
be spared from strong places, wherever the countries
wanted them, to encounter foraging parties of the
enemy. The king also divided sometimes his whole
army, marching out with one part by turns, the other
keeping intrenched. In conclusion rolling up and down,
both sides met at Farnham in Surrey; where the Danes
by Alfred's horse troops were put to flight, and crossing
the Thames to a certain island near Coln in Essex, or
as Camden thinks by Colebrook, were besieged there
by Alfred till provision ſailed the besiegers, another
part staid behind with their king wounded. Mean-
while Alfred preparing to reinforce the siege of Colney,
the Danes of Northumberland, breaking faith, came
by sea to the East-Angles, and with a hundred ships
coasting southward, landed in Devonshire, and be-
sieged Exeter; thither Alfred hasted with his powers,
except a squadron of Welsh that came to Lon-
don: with whom the citizens marching forth to
Beamflet, where Haesten the Dane had built a strong
fort, and left a garrison, while he himself with the main
of his army was entered far into the country, luckily
surprise the fort, master the garrison, make prey of all
they find there; their ships also they burnt or brought
away with good booty, and many prisoners, among
whom the wife and two sons of Haesten were sent to
the king, who forthwith set them at liberty. Where-
h Post Christ. 882. Sax, an.
k Sim. Dun.
d Asser... . e Camden.
g Post Christ. 879. Sax. an.
i Post Christ. 885. Sax, an.
m Silm. Thun, n Post Christ.
| Post Christ, 886. Sax. an: -
o Post Christ. 894. Sax, an.
893. Sax. an.
Book V. THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 6:35
upon Haesten gave oath of amity and hostages to the
king; he in requital, whether freely or by agreement,
a sum of money. Nevertheless, without regard of faith
given, while Alſred was busied about Exeter, joining
with the other Danish army, he built another castle in
Essex at Shoberie, thence marching westward by the
Thames, aided with the Northumbrian and East-Ang-
lish Danes, they came at length to Severn, pillaging
all in their way. But Ethred, Ethelm, and Ethelnoth,
the king's captains, with united forces pitched nigh to
them at Buttingtun, on the Severn bank in Mont-
gomeryshire,P the river running between, and there
many weeks attended; the king meanwhile blocking
up the Danes who besieged Exeter, having eaten part
of their horses, the rest urged with hunger broke forth
to their fellows, who lay encamped on the east side of
the river, and were all there discomfited with some loss
of valiant men on the king's party; the rest fled back
to Essex, and their fortress there. Then Laf, one of
their leaders, gathered before winter a great army of
Northumbrian and East-Anglish Danes, who leaving
their money, ships, and wives with the East-Angles,
and marching day and night, sat down before a city
in the west called Wirheal near to Chester, and took it
ere they could be overtaken. The English after two
days' siege, hopeless to dislodge them, wasted the
country round to cut off from them all provision, and
departed. ‘I Soon after which, next year, the Danes
no longer able to hold Wirheal, destitute of victuals,
entered North Wales; thence laden with spoils, part
returned into Northumberland, others to the East-An-
gles as far as Essex, where they seized on a small
island called Meresig. And here again the annals re-
cord them to besiege Exeter, but without coherence of
sense or story. " Others relate to this purpose, that re-
turning by sea from the siege of Exeter, and in their
way landing on the coast of Sussex, they of Chichester
sallied out and slew of them many hundreds, taking
also some of their ships. The same year they who
possessed Meresig, intending to winter thereabout,
drew up their ships, some into the Thames, others into
the river Lee, and on the bank thereof built a castle
twenty miles from London; to assault which, the Lon-
doners aided with other forces marched out the summer
following, but were soon put to flight, losing four of
the king's captains. * Huntingdon writes quite the
contrary, that these four were Danish captains, and the
overthrow theirs: but little credit is to be placed in
Huntingdon single. For the king thereupon with his
forces lay encamped nearer the city, that the Danes
might not infest them in time of harvest; in the mean
time, subtilely devising to turn Lee stream several
ways, whereby the Danish bottoms were left on dry
ground: which they soon perceiving, marched over
land to Quatbrig on the Severn, built a fortress, and
wintered there; while their ships left in Lee were either
broken or brought away by the Londoners; but their
wives and children they had left in safety with the
East-Angles. ‘The next year was pestilent, and be-
p Camde
-- - Il. - Post Christ. 895. Sax, an.
r Sinn. Lun. Florent. Q *
sides the common sort, took away many great earls,
Kelmond in Kent, Brithulf in Essex, Wulfred in
Hampshire, with many others; and to this evil the
Danes in Northumberland and East-Angles ceased not
to endamage the West Saxons, especially by stealth,
robbing on the south shore in certain long galleys.
But the king causing to be built others twice as long
as usually were built, and some of sixty or seventy oars
higher, swifter and steadier than such as were in use
before either with Danes or Frisons, his own invention,
some of these he sent out against six Danish pirates,
who had done much harm in the Isle of Wight, and
parts adjoining. The bickering was doubtful and in-
tricate, part on the water, part on the sands; not with-
out loss of some eminent men on the English side.
The pirates at length were either slain or taken, two
of them stranded ; the men brought to Winchester,
where the king then was, were executed by his com-
mand ; one of them escaped to the East-Angles, her
men much wounded : the same year not fewer than
twenty of their ships perished on the south coast with
all their men. And Rollo the Dane or Norman land-
ing here, as Mat. West, writes, though not in what
part of the island, after an unsuccessful fight against
those forces which first opposed him, sailed into France
and conquered the country, since that time calied Nor-
mandy. This is the sum of what passed in three years
against the Danes, returning out of France, set down
so perplexly by the Saxon annalist, ill-gifted with ut-
terance, as with much ado can be understood sometimes
what is spoken, whether meant of the Danes, or of the
Saxons. After which troublesome time, Alfred enjoy-
ing three years of peace, by him spent, as his manner
was, not idly or voluptuously, but in all virtuous em-
ployments both of mind and body, becoming a prince
of his renown, ended his days in the year nine hun-
dred," the fifty-first of his age, the thirtieth of his reign,
and was buried regally at Winchester: he was born
at a place called Wanading in Berkshire, his mother
Osburga, the daughter of Oslac the king's cupbearer,
a Goth by nation, and of noble descent. He was of
person comelier than all his brethren, of pleasing
tongue and graceful behaviour, ready wit and memory;
yet through the fondness of his parents towards him,
had not been taught to read till the twelfth year of his
age; but the great desire of learning, which was in
him, soon appeared by his conning of Saxon poems
day and night, which with great attention he heard by
others repeated. He was besides excellent at hunting,
and the new art then of hawking, but more exemplary
in devotion, having collected into a book certain pray-
ers and psalms, which he carried ever with him in his
bosom to use on all occasions. He thirsted after all
liberal knowledge, and oft complained, that in his
youth he had no teachers, in his middle age so little
vacancy from wars and the cares of his kingdom; yet
leisure he found sometimes, not only to learn much
himself, but to communicate thereof what he could to
his people, by translating books out of Latin into
S Post Christ. 806, Sax. am, t Post Christ. 897. Sax, an.
u Post Christ, 900, Asser. 7 th
536
Book V.
THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
English, Orosius, Boethius, Beda's history and others;
permitted none unlearned to bear office, either in court
or commonwealth. At twenty years of age, not yet
reigning, he took to wife Egelswitha the daughter of
Ethelred a Mercian earl. The extremities which befel
him in the sixth of his reign, Neothan abbot told him,
were justly come upon him for neglecting in his
younger days the complaint of such as injured and op-
pressed repaired to him, as then second person in the
kingdom, for redress; which neglect, were it such in-
deed, were yet excusable in a youth, through jollity of
mind unwilling perhaps to be detailed long with sad
and sorrowful narrations; but from the time of his un-
dertaking regal charge, no man more patient in hearing
causes, more inquisitive in examining, more exact in
doing justice, and providing good laws, which are yet
extant; more severe in punishing unjust judges or ob-
stinate offenders. Thieves especially and robbers, to
the terrour of whom in cross ways were hung upon a
high post certain chains of gold, as it were daring any
one to take them thence; so that justice seemed in his
days not to flourish only, but to triumph: no man than
he more frugal of two precious things in man's life,
his time and his revenue; no man wiser in the disposal
of both. His time, the day and night, he distributed by
the burning of certain tapers into three equal portions;
the one was for devotion, the other for public or private
affairs, the third for bodily refreshment; how each
hour passed, he was put in mind by one who had that
office. His whole annual revenue, which his first care
was should be justly his own, he divided into two equal
parts; the first he employed to secular uses, and sub-
divided those into three, the first to pay his soldiers,
household servants and guard, of which divided into
three bands, one attended monthly by turm ; the second
was to pay his architects and workmen, whom he had
got together of several nations; for he was also an ele-
gant builder, above the custom and conceit of English-
men in those days: the third he had in readiness to
relieve or honour strangers according to their worth,
who came from all parts to see him, and to live under
him. The other equal part of his yearly wealth he de-
dicated to religious uses, those of four sorts; the first
to relieve the poor, the second to the building and main-
tenance of two monasteries, the third of a school, where
he had persuaded the sons of many noblemen to study
sacred knowledge and liberal arts, some say at Oxford;x
the fourth was for the relief of foreign churches, as far
as India to the shrine of St. Thomas, sending thither
Sigelm bishop of Sherburn, who both returned safe,
and brought with him many rich gems and spices;
gifts also and a letter he received from the patriarch at
Jerusalem; sent many to Rome, and from them re-
ceived relics. Thus far, and much more might be said
of his noble mind, which rendered him the mirror of
princes; his body was diseased in his youth with a
great soreness in the siege, and that ceasing of itself,
with another inward pain of unknown cause, which
held him by frequent fits to his dying day: yet not
disenabled to sustain those many glorious labours of
his life both in peace and war.
EDWARD the Elder.
Edward the son of Alfred succeeded, in learning
not equal, in power and extent of dominion surpassing
his father. The beginning of his reign had much dis-
turbance by Ethelwald an ambitious young man,” son
of the king’s uncle, or cousin german, or brother, for
his genealogy is variously delivered. He vainly avouch-
ing to have equal right with Edward of succession to
the crown possessed himself of Winburn in Dorset,”
and another town diversly named, giving out that there
he would live or die; but encompassed with the king's
forces at Badbury a place nigh, his heart failing aim,
he stole out by night, and fled to the Danish army be-
yond Humber. The king sent after him, but not
overtaking, found his wife in the town, whom he had
married out of a nunnery, and commanded her to be
sent back thither. PAbout this time the Kentish men
against a multitude of Danish pirates fought prosper-
ously at a place called Holme, as Hoveden records.
Ethelwald, aided by the Northumbrians with shipping,
three years after," sailing to the East-Angles, persuaded
the Danes there to fall into the king's territory, who
marching with him as far as Crecklad, and passing the
Thames there, wasted as far beyond as they durst ven-
ture, and laden with spoils returned home. The king
with his powers making speed after them, between the
Dike and Ouse, supposed to be Suffolk and Cam-
bridgeshire, as far as the fens northward, laid waste all
before him. Thence intending to return, he com-
manded that all his army should follow him close
without delay; but the Kentish men, though often
called upon, lagging behind, the Danish army pre-
vented them, and joined battle with the king: where
duke Sigulf and earl Sigelm, with many other of the
nobles were slain ; on the Danes' part, Eoric their
king, and Ethelwald the author of this war, with others
of high note, and of them greater number, but with
great ruin on both sides; yet the Danes kept in their
power the burying of their slain. Whatever followed
upon this conflict, which we read not, the king two
years after with the Danes," both of East-Angles and
Northumberland, concluded peace, which continued
three years, by whomsoever broken : for at the end
thereof * king Edward, raising great forces out of
West-Sex and Mercia, sent them against the Danes
beyond Humber; where staying five weeks, they made
great spoil and slaughter. The king offered them
terms of peace, but they rejecting all entered with
the next year into Mercia, rendering no less hostility
than they had suffered; but at Tetnal in Staffordshire,
saith Florent, were by the English in a set battle over-
thrown. King Edward, then in Kent, had got toge-
ther of ships about a hundred sail, others gone south-
ward came back and met him. The Danes, now sup-
posing that his main forces were upon the sea, took
z II unting.
y Ibid. * . . . . *
b Post Christ, 902,
x Malms. .
a Post Christ. 901. Sax, an.
c T'ost Christ. 905, Sax. an.
- d Post Christ. 907. Sax. an.
e Post Christ. 910. Sax. am.
f Post Christ. 911. Sax, am.
Book V.
537
THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
liberty to rove and plunder up and down, as hope of
prey led them, beyond Severn. & The king guessing
what might embolden them, sent before him the lightest
of his army to entertain them ; then following with
the rest, set upon them in their return over Cantbrig
in Gloucestershire, and slew many thousands, among
whom Ecwils, Haſden, and Hinguar their kings,
and many other harsh names in Huntingdon; the place
also of this fight is variously written, by Ethelwerd and
Florent called Wodensfield. h The year following,
Ethred the duke of Mercia, to whom Alfred had given
London, with his daughter in marriage, now dying,
King Edward resumed that city, and Oxford, with the
countries adjoining, into his own hands; and the year
after built, or much repaired by his soldiers, the town
of Hertford on either side Lee; and having a sufficient
number at the work, marched about middle summer
with the other part of his forces into Essex, and en-
camped at Maldon, while his soldiers built Witham :
where a good part of the country, subject formerly to
the Danes, yielded themselves to his protection. “Four
years after (Florent allows but one year) the Danes
from Leicester and Northampton, falling into Oxford-
shire, committed much rapine, and in some towns
thereof great slaughter; while another party wasting
Hertfordshire, met with other fortune: for the country
people, inured now to such kind of incursions, joining
stoutly together, fell upon the spoilers, and recovered
their own goods, with some booty from their enemies.
About the same time Elfled the king's sister sent her
army of Mercians into Wales, who routed the Welsh,
took the castle of Bricnan-mere by Brecknock, and
brought away the king's wife of that country, with
other prisoners. Not long after she took Derby from
the Danes, and the castle by a sharp assault. " But
the year ensuing brought a new fleet of Danes to Lid-
wic in Devonshire, under two leaders, Otter and Roald;
who sailing thence westward about the land's end, came
up to the mouth of Severn; there landing wasted the
Welsh coast, and Irchenfield part of Herefordshire;
where they took Kuneleac a British bishop, for whose
ransom King Edward gave forty pound : but the men
of Hereford and Gloucestershire assembling put them
to flight; slaying Roald and the brother of Otter, with
many more, pursued them to a wood, and there beset
compelled them to give hostages of present departure.
The king with his army sat not far off, securing from
the south of Severn to Avon; so that openly they durst
not, by night they twice ventured to land; but found
such welcome that few of them came back; the rest
anchored by a small island, where many of them fa-
mished; then sailing to a place called Deomed, they
crossed into Ireland. The king with his army went
to Buckingham, staid there a month, and built two
castles or forts on either bank of Ouse ere his departing;
and Turkitel a Danish leader, with those of Bedford
and Northampton, yielded him subjection. n Where-
upon the next year, he came with his army to the town
of Bedford, took possession thereof, staid there a month,
and gave order to build another part of the town, on
the south side of Ouse. " Thence the year following
went again to Maldon, repaired and fortified the town.
Turkitel the Dane having small hope to thrive here,
where things with such prudence were managed
against his interest, got leave of the king, with as
many voluntaries as would follow him, to pass into
France. PEarly the next year King Edward reedified
Tovechester now Torchester; and another city in the
annals called Wigingmere. Meanwhile the Danes in
Leicester and Northamptonshire, not liking perhaps
to be neighboured with strong towns, laid siege to
Torchester; but they within repelling the assault one
whole day till supplies came, quitted the siege by
night; and pursued close by the besieged, between
Birnwud and Ailsbury were surprised, many of them
made prisoners, and much of their baggage lost. Other
of the Danes at Huntingdon, aided from the East-
Angles, finding that castle not commodious, left it,
and built another at Temsford, judging that place more
opportune from whence to make their excursions; and
soon after went forth with design to assail Bedford :
but the garrison issuing out slew a great part of them,
the rest fled. After this a greater army of them, ga-
thered out of Mercia and the East-Angles, came and
besieged the city called Wigingmere a whole day; but
finding it defended stoutly by them within, thence
also departed, driving away much of their cattle :
whereupon the English, from towns and cities round
about joining forces, laid siege to the town and castle
of Temsford, and by assault took both ; slew their king
with Toglea a duke, and Mannan his son an earl,
with all the rest there found; who chose to die rather
than yield. Encouraged by this, the men of Kent,
Surrey, and part of Essex, enterprise the siege of Col-
chester, nor gave over till they won it, sacking the
town and putting to sword all the Danes therein, ex-
cept some who escaped over the wall. To the succour
of these a great number of Danes inhabiting ports and
other towns in the East-Angles united their force; but
coming too late, as in revenge beleaguered Maldon :
but that town also timely relieved, they departed, not
only frustrate of their design, but so hotly pursued,
that many thousands of them lost their lives in the
flight. Forthwith King Edward with his West-Saxons
went to Passham upon Ouse, there to guard the pas-
sage, while others were building a stone wall about
Torchester; to him their earl Thurfert, and other lord
Danes, with their army thereabout, as far as Weolud,
came and submitted. Whereat the king's soldiers joy-
fully cried out to be dismissed home : therefore with
another part of them he entered Huntingdon, and re-
paired it, where breaches had been made; all the people
thereabout returning to obedience. The like was done
at Colchester by the next remove of his army; after
which both East and West-Angles, and the Danish
forces among them, yielded to the king, swearing al-
legiance to him both by sea and land : the army
also of Danes at Grantbrig, surrendering themselves,
f Ethelwerd 2 an. h Post Christ. 917. Sax. i Post Christ. 913. Sax, an.
Post Christ. 917. Sax. an. 1 Huntingd. Catma.
m Post Christ. 919, Sax. an.
o Post Christ. 920, Sax. an.
n Post Christ. 919. Sax, an.
p Post Christ. 921. Sax. am.
538
Book V.
THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND,
took the same oath. The summer following a he
came with his army to Stamford, built a castle there
on the south side of the river, where all the people
of these quarters acknowledged him supreme. During
his abode there, Elfled his sister, a martial woman,
who after her husband's death would no more marry,
but gave herself to public affairs, repairing and
fortifying many towns, warring sometimes, died at
Tamworth the chief seat of Mercia, whereof by gift
of Alfred her father she was lady or queen ; where-
by that whole nation became obedient to King Ed-
ward, as did also North Wales, with Howel, Cle-
daucus, and Jeoth well, their kings. Thence passing
to Nottingham, he entered and repaired the town,
placed there part English, part Danes, and received
fealty from all in Mercia of either nation. " The next
autumn, coming with his army into Cheshire, he built
and fortified Thelwell; and while he staid there, call-
ed another army out of Mercia, which he sent to repair
and fortify Manchester. * About midsummer following
he marched again to Nottingham, built a town over
against it on the south side of that river, and with a
bridge joined them both ; thence journeyed to a place
called Bedecanwillin in Pictland ; there also built
and fenced a city on the borders, where the king of
Scots did him honour as to his sovereign, together with
the whole Scottish nation; the like did Reginald and
the son of Eadulf, Danish princes, with all the Nor-
thumbrians, both English and Danes. The King also
of a people thereabout called Streatgledwalli (the
North-Welsh, as Camden thinks, of Strat-Cluid in
Denbighshire, perhaps rather the British of Cumber-
land) did him homage, and not undeserved. For,
Buchanan himself confesses, that this king Edward,
with a small number of men compared to his enemies,
overthrew in a great battle the whole united power
both of Scots and Danes, slew most of the Scottish no-
bility, and forced Malcolm, whom Constantine the
Scotch king had made general, and designed heir of
his crown, to save himself by flight sore wounded. Of
the English he makes Athelstan the son of Edward
chief leader; and so far seems to confound times and
actions, as to make this battle the same with that
fought by Athelstan about twenty-four years after at
Bruneford, against Anlaf and Constantine, whereof
hereafter. But here Buchanan u takes occasion to in-
weigh against the English writers, upbraiding them
with ignorance, who affirm Athelstan to have been su-
preme king of Britain, Constantine the Scottish king
with others to have held of him : and denies that in the
annals of Marianus Scotus any mention is to be found
thereof; which I shall not stand much to contradict,
for in Marianus, whether by surname or by nation
Scotus, will be found as little mention of any other
Scottish affairs, till the time of king Dunchad slain by
Machetad, or Macbeth, in the year 1040: which gives
cause of suspicion, that the affairs of Scotland before
that time were so obscure, as to be unknown to their
own countrymen, who lived and wrote his chronicle
r Post Christ. 923. Sax, an.
not long after. But King Edward thus nobly doing,
and thus honoured, the year x following died at Faren-
don; a builder and restorer even in war, not a de-
stroyer of his land. He had by several wives many
children; his eldest daughter Edgith he gave in mar-
riage to Charles king of France, grandchild of Charles
the Bald above mentioned : of the rest in place con-
venient. His laws are yet to be seen. He was buried
at Winchester, in the monastery, by Alfred his father.
And a few days after him died Ethelward his eldest
son, the heir of his crown. He had the whole island
in subjection, yet so as petty kings reigned under him.y
In Northumberland, after Ecbert whom the Danes
had set up and the Northumbrians, yet unruly under
their yoke, at the end of six years had expelled, one
Ricsig was set up king, and bore the name three
years; then another Ecbert, and Guthred; the latter,
if we believe legends, of a servant made king by com-
mand of St. Cudbert, in a vision ; and enjoined by an-
other vision of the same saint, to pay well for his
royalty many lands and privileges to his church and
monastery. But now to the story.
ATHELSTAN.
ATHELSTAN, next in age to Ethelward his brother,
who deceased untimely few days before, though born
of a concubine, yet for the great appearance of many
virtues in him, and his brethren being yet under age,
was exalted to the throne at Kingston upon Thames,”
and by his father's last will, saith Malmsbury, yet
not without some opposition of one Alfred and his ac-
complices; who not liking he should reign, had con-
spired to seize on him after his father's death, and to
put out his eyes. But the conspirators discovered,
and Alfred, denying the plot,” was sent to Rome, to
assert his innocence before the pope; where taking his
oath on the altar, he fell down immediately, and car-
ried out by his servants, three days after died. Mean-
while beyond Humber the Danes, though much awed,
were not idle. Inguald, one of their kings, took pos-
session of York; Sitric, who some years b before had
slain Niel his brother, by force took Davenport in
Cheshire; and however he defended these doings,
grew so inconsiderable," that Athelstan with great so-
lemnity gave him his sister Edgith to wiſe: but he
enjoyed her not long, dying ere the year's end; nor
his sons Anlaf and Guthfert the kingdom, driven out
the next 4 year by Athelstan : not unjustly saith Hun-
tingdon, as being first raisers of the war. Simeon calls
him Gudfrid a British king, whom Athelstan this year
drove out of his kingdom; and perhaps they were both
one, the name and time not much differing, the place
only mistaken. Malmsbury differs in the name also,
calling him Adulf a certain rebel. Them also I wish
as much mistaken, who write that Athelstan, jealous of
his younger brother Edwin's towardly virtues, lest
added to the right of birth they might some time or
other call in question his illegitimate precedence,
t Ruch. l. 6. u Buch. l. 6.
II untingd. Mat, West. y Sim. Dun.
q Post Christ. 922. Sax. an.
s Post Christ. 924.
x Post Christ. 925. Sax, an.
a Malm b Sim. Dun.
z Post Christ, 926, S.
d Post. Christ. 927. Sax, an.
c Malms. Mat. West.
Book W.
539
THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
caused him to be drowned in the sea; * exposed, some
say, with one servant in a rotten bark, without sail or
oar; where the youth far off land, and in rough wea-
ther despairing, threw himself overboard ; the ser-
vant, more patient, got to land, and reported the
success. But this Malmsbury confesses to be sung in
old songs, not read in warrantable authors: and Hun-
tingdon speaks as of a sad accident to Athelstan, that
he lost his brother Edwin by sea; far the more credible,
in that Athelstan, as it is written by all, tenderly loved
and bred up the rest of his brethren, of whom he had
no less cause to be jealous. And the year' following
he prospered better than from so foul a fact, passing
into Scotland with great puissance, both by sea and
land, and chasing his enemies before him, by land as
far as Dunfeoder and Wertermore, by sea as far as
Cathness. The cause of this expedition, saith Malms-
bury, was to demand Guthfert the son of Sitric, thither
fled, though not denied at length by Constantine, who
with Eugenius king of Cumberland, at a place called
Dacor or Dacre in that shire, surrendered himself and
each his kingdom to Athelstan, who brought back with
him for hostage the son of Constantine.g. But Guth-
fert escaping in the mean while out of Scotland, and
Constantine, exasperated by this invasion, persuaded
Anlaf, the other son of Sitric, then fled into Ireland,
h others write Anlaf king of Ireland and the Isles, his
son-in-law, with six hundred and fifteen ships, and the
king of Cumberland with other forces, to his aid. This
within four yearsi effected, they entered England by
Humber, and fought with Athelstan at a place called
Wendume, others term it Brunanburg, others Brune-
ford, which Ingulf places beyond Humber, Camden in
Glendale of Northumberland on the Scotch borders;
the bloodiest fight, say authors, that ever this island
saw : to describe which the Saxon annalist, wont to be
sober and succinct, whether the same or another writer,
now labouring under the weight of his argument, and
overcharged, runs on a sudden into such extravagant
fancies and metaphors, as bear him quite beside the
scope of being understood. Huntingdon, though him-
self peccant enough in this kind, transcribes him word
for word as a pastime to his readers. I shall only sum
up what of him I can attain, in useful language. The
battle was fought eagerly from morning to night;
some fell of King Edward's old army, tried in many a
battle before; but on the other side great multitudes,
the rest fled to their ships. Five kings, and seven of
Anlaf's chief captains, were slain on the place, with
Froda a Norman leader; Constantine escaped home,
but lost his son in the fight, if I understand my author;
Anlaf by sea to Dublin, with a small remainder of his
great host. Malmsbury relates this war, adding many
circumstances after this manner: that Anlaf, joining
with Constantine and the whole power of Scotland,
besides those which he brought with him out of Ire-
land, came on far southwards, till Athelstan, who had
retired on set purpose to be the surer of his enemies,
enclosed from all succour and retreat, met him at
Bruneford. Anlaf perceiving the valour and resolution
of Athelstan, and mistrusting his own forces, though
numerous, resolved first to spy in what posture his
enemies lay : and imitating perhaps what he heard
attempted by King Alfred the age before, in the habit
of a musician, got access by his lute and voice to the
king's tent, there playing both the minstrel and the
spy : then towards evening dismissed, he was observed
by one who had been his soldier, and well knew him,
viewing earnestly the king's tent, and what approaches
lay about it, then in the twilight to depart. The sol-
dier forth with acquaints the king, and by him blamed
for letting go his enemy, answered, that he had given
first his military oath to Anlaf, whom if he had betray-
ed, the king might suspect him of like treasonous mind
towards himself; which to disprove, he advised him to
remove his tent a good distance off; and so done, it
happened that a bishop, with his retinue coming that
night to the army, pitched his tent in the same place
from whence the king had removed. Anlaf, coining
by night as he had designed, to assault the camp, and
especially the king's tent, finding there the bishop in-
stead, slew him with all his followers. Athelstan took
the alarm, and as it seems, was not found so unpro-
vided, but that the day now appearing, he put his men
in order, and maintained the fight till evening; wherein
Constantine himself was slain with five other kings,
and twelve earls; the annals were content with seven,
in the rest not disagreeing. Ingulf abbot of Croyland,
from the authority of Turketul a principal leader in
this battle, relates it more at large to this effect: That
Athelstan, above a mile distant from the place where
execution was done upon the bishop and his supplies,
alarmed at the noise, came down by break of day upon
Anlaf and his army, overwatched and wearied now
with the slaughter they had made, and something out
of order, yet in two main battles. The king, therefore
in like manner dividing, led the one part, consisting
most of West Saxons, against Anlaf with his Danes
and Irish, committing the other to his chancellor Tur-
ketul, with the Mercians and Londoners, against Con-
stantine and his Scots. The shower of arrows and
darts overpassed, both battles attacked each other with
a close and terrible engagement, for a long space nei-
ther side giving ground. Till the chancellor Turketul,
a man of great stature and strength, taking with him
a few Londoners of select valour, and Singin who led
the Worcestershire men, a captain of undaunted
courage, broke into the thickest, making his way first
through the Picts and Orkeners, then through the
Cumbrians and Scots, and came at length where Con-
stantine himself fought, unhorsed him, and used all
means to take him alive ; but the Scots valiantly de-
fending their king, and laying load upon Turketul,
which the goodness of his armour well endured, he had
yet been beaten down, had not Singin his faithful
second at the same time slain Constantine; which once
known, Aulaf and the whole army betook them to
flight, whereof a huge multitude fell by the sword.
e Tost Christ. 933. Sim. Dun.
f Post Christ, 934. Sax, an. Sim. Dun.
g Florent h Florent, Sim. Dun.
i Post Christ, 938. Sax, an. Malms
540
Book W.
THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
This Turketul, not long after leaving worldly affairs,
became abbot of Croyland, which at his own cost he
had repaired from Danish ruins, and left there this
memorial of his former actions. Athelstan with his
brother Edmund victorious thence turning into Wales,
with much more ease vanquished Ludwal the king,
and possessed his land. But Malmsbury writes, that
commiserating human chance, as he displaced, so he
restored both him and Constantine to their regal state:
for the surrender of King Constantine hath been above
spoken of. However the Welsh did him homage at
the city of Hereford, and covenanted yearly payment
of gold twenty pound, of silver three hundred, of oxen
twenty-five thousand, besides hunting dogs and hawks.
He also took Exeter from the Cornish Britons, who till
that time had equal right there with the English, and
bounded them with the river Tamar, as the other
British with Wey. Thus dreaded of his enemies, and
renowned far and near, three years k after he died at
Gloucester, and was buried with many trophies at
Malmsbury, where he had caused to be laid his two
cousin germans, Elwin and Ethelstan, both slain in the
battle against Anlaf. He was thirty years old at his
coming to the crown, mature in wisdom from his child-
hood, comely of person and behaviour; so that Alfred
his grandfather in blessing him was wont to pray he
might live to have the kingdom, and put him yet a
child into soldier's habit. He had his breeding in the
court of Elfled his aunt, of whose virtues more than
female we have related, sufficient to evince that his
mother, though said to be no wedded wife, was yet such
of parentage and worth, as the royal line disdained not,
though the song went in Malmsbury's days (for it
seems he refused not the authority of ballads for want
of better) that his mother was a farmer's daughter,
but of excellent feature; who dreamed one night she
brought forth a moon that should enlighten the whole
land: which the king's nurse hearing of took her home
and bred up courtly; that the king, coming one day
to visit his nurse, saw there this damsel, liked her, and
by earnest suit prevailing, had by her this famous
Athelstan, a bounteous, just, and affable king, as
Malmsbury sets him forth, nor less honoured abroad
by foreign kings, who sought his friendship by great
gifts or affinity ; that Harold king of Noricum sent
him a ship whose prow was of gold, sails purple, and
other golden things, the more to be wondered at, sent
from Noricum, whether meant Norway or Bavaria, the
one place so far from such superfluity of wealth, the
other from all sea: the embassadors were Helgrim and
Offrid, who found the king at York. His sisters he
gave in marriage to greatest princes; Elgif to Otho
son of Henry the emperor; Egdith to a certain duke
about the Alps; Edgiv to Ludwic king of Aquitain,
sprung of Charles the Great; Ethilda to Hugo king
of France, who sent Aldulf son of Baldwin earl of
I’landers to obtain her. From all these great suitors,
especially from the emperor and king of France, came
rich presents, horses of excellent breed, gorgeous trap-
pings and armour, relics, jewels, odours, vessels of
onyx, and other precious things, which I leave poeti-
cally described in Malmsbury, taken, as he confesses,
out of an old versifier, some of whose verses he recites.
The only blemish left upon him was the exposing his
brother Edwin, who disavowed by oath the treason
whereof he was accused, and implored an equal hear-
But these were songs, as before hath been said,
which add also that Athelstan, his anger over, soon
repented of the fact, and put to death his cupbearer,
who had induced him to suspect and expose his brother;
put in mind by a word falling from the cupbearer's
own mouth, who slipping one day as he bore the king's
cup, and recovering himself on the other leg, said
aloud fatally, as to him it proved, one brother helps
the other. Which words the king laying to heart,
and pondering how ill he had done to make away his
brother, avenged himself first on the adviser of that
fact, took on him seven years' penance, and as Mat.
West. saith, built two monasteries for the soul of his
brother. His laws are extant among the laws of other
Saxon kings to this day.
ing.
EDMUND.
EDMUND not above eighteen years 1 old succeeded his
brother Athelstan, in courage not inferior. For in the
second of his reign he freed Mercia of the Danes that
remained there, and took from them the cities of Lin-
coln, Nottingham, Stamford, Derby, and Leicester,
where they were placed by King Edward, but it seems
gave not good proof of their fidelity. Simeon writes,
that Anlaf setting forth from York, and having wasted
southward as far as Northampton, was met by Edmund
at Leicester; but that ere the battles joined, peace was
made between them by Odo and Wulstan the two arch-
bishops, with conversion of Anlaf; for the same year
Edmund received at the fontstone this or another An-
laf, as saith Huntingdon, not him spoken of before,
who died this year, (so uncertain they are in the story
of these times also,) and held Reginald another king of
the Northumbrians, while the bishop confirmed him :
their limits were divided north and south by Watling-
street. But spiritual kindred little availed to keep
peace between them, whoever gave the cause; for we
read him two years m after driving Anlaf (whom the
annals now first call the son of Sitric) and Suthfrid son
of Reginald out of Northumberland, taking the whole
country into subjection. Edmund the next n year
harassed Cumberland, then gave it to Malcolm king of
Scots, thereby bound to assist him in his wars, both
by sea and land. Mat. West, adds, that in this action
Edmund had the aid of Leolin prince of North Wales,
against Dummail the Cumbrian king, him depriving
of his kingdom, and his two sons of their sight. But
the year 9 after, he himself by strange accident came to
an untimely death : feasting with his nobles on St.
Austin's day at Puclekerke in Gloucester, to celebrate
the memory of his first converting the Saxons; he spied
k Post Christ. 941. Sax. an. Malms. Ingulf. *
| Post Christ. 942. Sax, an. m Post Christ. 944. Sax, an.
n Post Christ. 915. Sax. an.
o Post Christ. 946. Sax, an.
Book V.
541
THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
Leof a noted thief, whom he had banished, sitting
among his guests: whereat transported with too much
vehemence of spirit, though in a just cause, rising from
the table he run upon the thief, and catching his hair,
pulled him to the ground. The thief, who doubted
from such bandling no less than his death intended,
thought to die not unrevenged; and with a short dag-
ger struck the king, who still laid at him, and little
expected such assassination, mortally into the breast.
The matter was done in a moment, ere men set at table
could turn them, or imagine at first what the stir
meant, till perceiving the king deadly wounded, they
flew upon the murderer and hewed him to pieces; who
like a wild beast at bay, seeing himself surrounded,
desperately laid about him, wounding some in his fall.
The king was buried at Glaston, whereof Dunstan was
then abbot; his laws yet remain to be seen among the
laws of other Saxon kings.
EDRED.
EDRED, the third brother of Athelstan, the sons of
Edmund being yet but children, next reigned, not de-
generating from his worthy predecessors, and crowned
at Kingston. Northumberland he thoroughly subdued,
the Scots without refusal swore him allegiance; yet
the Northumbrians, ever of doubtful faith, soon after
chose to themselves one Eric a Dane. Huntingdon
still haunts us with this Anlaf, (of whom we gladly
would have been rid,) and will have him before Eric re-
called once more and reign four years,” then again put
to his shifts. But Edred entering into Northumberland,
and with spoils returning, Eric the king fell upon his
rear. Edred turning about, both shook off the enemy,
and prepared to make a second inroad : which the
Northumbrians dreading rejected Eric, slew Amancus
the son of Anlaf, and with many presents appeasing
Edred submitted again to his government;4 nor from
that time had kings, but were governed by earls, of
whom Osulf was the first. " About this time Wulstan
archbishop of York, accused to have slain certain men
of Thetford in revenge of their abbot, whom the towns-
men had slain, was committed by the king to close
custody; but soon after enlarged, was restored to his
place. Malmsbury writes, that his crime was to have
connived at the revolt of his countrymen : but King
Edred two years after, * sickening in the flower of his
youth, died much lamented, and was buried at Win-
chester.
EDWI.
EDw1, the son of Edmund, now come to age, after
his uncle Edred's death took on him the government,
and was crowned at Kingston. His lovely person sur-
named him the fair, his actions are diversely reported,
by Huntingdon not thought illaudable. But Malms-
bury and such as follow him write far otherwise, that
he married, or kept as concubine, his near kinswoman,"
p Post Christ. 950. Sim. Dun.
some say both her and her daughter; so inordinately
given to his pleasure, that on the very day of his coro-
nation he abruptly withdrew himself from the company
of his peers, whether in banquet or consultation, to sit
wantoning in the chamber with his Algiva, so was her
name, who had such power over him. Whereat his
barons offended sent bishop Dunstan, the boldest among
them, to request his return: he, going to the chamber,
not only interrupted his dalliance, and rebuked the
lady, but taking him by the hand, between force and
persuasion brought him back to his nobles. The king
highly displeased,” and instigated perhaps by her who
was so prevalent with him, not long after sent Dun-
stan into banishment, caused his monastery to be rifled,
and became an enemy to all monks and friars. Where-
upon Odo archbishop of Canterbury pronounced a se-
paration or divorce of the king from Algiva. But that
which most incited William of Malmsbury against him,
he gave that monastery to be dwelt in by secular priests,
or, to use his own phrase, made it a stable of clerks:
at length these affronts done to the church were so re-
sented by the people, that the Mercians and Northum-
brians revolted from him, and set up Edgar his bro-
ther,y leaving to Edwi the West-Saxons only, bounded
by the river Thames; with grief whereof, as is thought,
he soon after ended his days,” and was buried at Win-
chester. Meanwhile a Elfin, bishop of that place, after
the death of Odo ascending by simony to the chair of
Canterbury, and going to Rome the same year for his
pall, was frozen to death in the Alps.
EDGAR.
EDGAR by his brother's death now "king of all Eng-
land at sixteen years of age, called home Dunstan out
of Flanders, where he lived in exile. This king had
no war all his reign ; yet always well prepared for
war, governed the kingdom in great peace, honour, and
prosperity, gaining thence the surname of peaceable,
much extolled for justice, clemency, and all kingly
virtues, the more, ye may be sure by monks, for his
building so many monasteries; as some write, every
year one: for he much favoured the monks against se-
cular priests, who in the time of Edwi had got posses-
sion in most of their convents. His care and wisdom
was great in guarding the coast round with stout ships
to the number of three thousand six hundred. Mat.
West, reckons them four thousand eight hundred, di-
vided into four squadrons, to sail to and fro, about the
four quarters of the land, meeting each other; the first
of twelve hundred sail from east to west, the second of
as many from west to east, the third and fourth be-
tween north and south; himself in the summer time
with his fleet. Thus he kept out wisely the force of
strangers, and prevented foreign war, but by their too
frequent resort hither in time of peace, and his too
much favouring them, he let in their vices unaware.
Thence the people, saith Malmsbury, learned of the
outlandish Saxons rudeness, of the Flemish daintiness
y Howed
l" lºost Christ. 953. Sim, Dun.
t Ethelwerd. u Mat, West.
. . q. Howed.
S Post Christ. 955. Sim. Dun.
x Post Christ. 956.
a Post Christ. Q58. Mat, West.
b Post Christ. 959. Malms.
z Post Christ. 955. Sax. au.
c Mat. West.
5-42
Book W.
THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
and softness, of the Danes drunkenness ; though I
doubt these vices are as naturally homebred here as in
any of those countries. Yet in the winter and spring
time he usually rode the circuit as a judge itimerant
through all his provinces, to see justice well adminis-
tered, and the poor not oppressed. Thieves and rob-
bers he rooted almost out of the land, and wild beasts
of prey altogether; enjoining Ludwal, king of Wales,
to pay the yearly tribute of three hundred wolves,
which he did for two years together, till the third year
no more were to be found, nor ever after ; but his laws
may be read yet extant. Whatever was the cause,
he was not crowned till the thirtieth of his age, but
then with great splendour and magnificence at the
city of Bath, in the feast of Pentecost. This year."
died Swarling a monk of Croyland, in the hundred
and forty-second year of his age, and another soon
after him in the hundred and fifteenth ; in that fenny
and waterish air the more remarkable. King Edgar
the next year went to Chester, and summoning to
his court there all the kings that held of him,
took homage of them : their names are Kened king
of Scots, Malcolm of Cumberland, Maccuse of the
Isles, five of Wales, Dufwal, Huwal, Grifith, Jacob,
Judethil ; these he had in such awe, that going one
day into a galley, he caused them to take each man
his oar, and row him down the river Dee, while he
himself sat at the stern ; which might be done in mer-
riment, and easily obeyed ; if with a serious brow,
discovered rather vain-glory, and insulting haughtiness,
than moderation of mind. And that he did it seriously
triumphing, appears by his words then uttered, that
his successors might then glory to be kings of England,
when they had such honour done them. And perhaps
the divine power was displeased with him for taking
too much honour to himself; since we read, that f the
year following he was taken out of this life by sick-
ness in the height of his glory and the prime of his
age, buried at Glaston abbey. The same year, as
Mat. West. relates, he gave to Kened, the Scottish
king, many rich presents, and the whole country of
Laudian, or Lothien, to hold of him on condition, that
he and his successors should repair to the English
court at high festivals when the king sat crowned ;
gave him also many lodging places by the way, which
till the days of Henry the second were still held by
the kings of Scotland. He was of stature not tall,
of body slender, yet so well made, that in strength he
chose to contend with such as were thought strongest,
and disliked nothing more, than that they should spare
him for respect, or fear to hurt him. Kened king of
Scots, then in the court of Edgar, sitting one day at
table, was heard to say jestingly among his servants,
he wondered how so many provinces could be held in
subjection by such a little dapper man: his words
were brought to the king's ear; he sends for Kened
as about some private business, and in talk draw-
ing him forth to a secret place, takes from under
his garment two swords, which he had brought with
him, gave one of them to Kened; and now, saith he,
it shall be tried which ought to be the subject; for it
is shameful for a king to boast at table, and shrink in
ſight. Kened much abashed fell presently at his feet,
and besought him to pardon what he had simply
spoken, no way intended to his dishonour or disparage-
ment; wherewith the king was satisfied. Camden,
in his description of Ireland, cites a charter of King
2dgar, wherein it appears he had in subjection all the
kingdoms of the isles as far as Norway, and had sub-
dued the greatest part of Ireland with the city of Dub-
lin: but of this other writers make no mention. In
his youth having heard of Elfrida, daughter to Ordgar
duke of Devonshire much commended for her beauty,
he sent Earl Athelwold, whose loyalty he trusted most,
to see her; intending, if she were found such as answer-
ed report, to demand her in marriage. He at the first
view taken with her presence, disloyally, as it oft hap-
pens in such employments, began to sue for himself;
and with consent of her parents obtained her. Re-
turning therefore with scarce an ordinary commenda-
tion of her feature, he easily took off the king's mind,
soon diverted another way. But the matter coming to
light how Athelwold had forestalled the king, and El-
frida's beauty more and more spoken of, the king now
heated not only with a relapse of love, but with a deep
sense of the abuse, yet dissembling his disturbance,
pleasantly told the earl, what day he meant to come
and visit him and his fair wife. The earl seemingly
assured his welcome, but in the mean while acquaint-
ing his wife, earnestly advised her to deform herself
what she might, either in dress or otherwise, lest the
king, whose amorous inclination was not unknown,
should chance to be attracted. She, who by this time
was not ignorant, how Athelwold had stepped between
her and the king, against his coming arrays herself
richly, using whatever art she could devise might ren-
der her the more amiable; and it took effect. For the
king, inflamed with her love the more for that he had
been so long defrauded and robbed of her, resolved not
only to recover his intercepted right, but to punish the
interloper of his destined spouse ; and appointing with
him as was usual a day of hunting, drawn aside in a
forest now called Harewood, smote him through with
a dart. Some censure this act as cruel and tyrannical,
but considered well, it may be judged more favourably,
and that no man of sensible spirit but in his place,
without extraordinary perfection, would have done the
like: for next to life what worse treason could have been
committed against him It chanced that the earl's
base son coming by upon the fact, the king sternly
asked him how he liked his game; he submissly an-
swering, that whatsoever pleased the king, must not
displease him; the king returned to his wonted tem-
per, took an affection to the youth, and ever after
highly favoured him, making amends in the son for
what he had done to the father. Elfrida forth with he
took to wife, who to expiate her former husband's
death, though therein she had no hand, covered the
place of his bloodshed with a monastery of nuns to
sing over him. Another fault is laid to his charge, no
d Post Christ. 973. Sax, an. Ingulf. e Post Christ, 974. Sax. an.
f Post Clarist, 975,
Book VI. THE HISTORY
543
OF ENGLAND.
way excusable, that he took a virgin Wilfrida by force
out of the nunnery, where she was placed by her
friends to avoid his pursuit, and kept her as his concu-
bine : but lived not obstinately in the offence; for
sharply reproved by Dunstan, he submitted to seven
years penance, and for that time to want his corona-
tion : but why he had it not before, is left unwritten.
Another story there goes of Edgar fitter for a novel
than a history; but as I find it in Malmsbury, so I re-
late it. While he was yet unmarried, in his youth he
abstained not from women, and coming on a day to
Andover, caused a duke's daughter there dwelling, re-
ported rare of beauty, to be brought to him. The
mother not daring flatly to deny, yet abhorring that
her daughter should be so deflowered, at fit time of
night sent in her attire one of her waiting maids: a
maid it seems not unhandsome nor unwitty; who sup-
plied the place of her young lady. Night passed, the
maid going to rise but daylight scarce yet appearing,
was by the king asked why she made such haste; she
answered, to do the work which her lady had set her;
at which the king wondering, and with much ado
staying her to unfold the riddle, for he took her to be
the duke's daughter, she falling at his feet besought
him, that since at the command of her lady she came
to his bed, and was enjoyed by him, he would be
pleased in recompence to set her free from the hard
service of her mistress. The king a while standing in
a study whether he had best be angry or not, at length
turning all to a jest, took the maid away with him, ad-
vanced her above the lady, loved her, and accompanied
with her only, till he married Elfrida. These only are
his faults upon record, rather to be wondered how they
were so few, and so soon left, he coming at sixteen to
the licence of a sceptre; and that his virtues were so
many and mature, he dying before the age wherein
wisdom can in others attain to any ripeness: however,
with him died all the Saxon glory. From henceforth
nothing is to be heard of but their decline and ruin
under a double conquest, and the causes foregoing;
which, not to blur or taint the praises of their former
actions and liberty well defended, shall stand severally
related, and will be more than long enough for another
book.
THE SIXTH BOOK.
Eow ARD the Younger.
Edward, the eldest son of Edgar by Egelfleda his
first wife, the daughter of duke Ordmer, was according
to right and his father's will placed in the throne;
Elſrida, his second wife, and her faction only repining,
who laboured to have had her son Ethelred, a child of
seven years, preferred before him; that she under that
pretence might have ruled all. Meanwhile comets
were seen in heaven, portending not famine only,
which followed the next year, but the troubled state of
the whole realm not long after to ensue. The troubles
begun in Edwin's days, between monks and secular
priests, now revived and drew on either side many of
the nobles into parties. For Elſere duke of the Mer-
cians, with many other peers, corrupted as is said with
gifts,” drove the monks out of those monasteries where
Edgar had placed them, and in their stead put secular
priests with their wives. But Ethelwin duke of East-
Angles, with his brother Elfwold, and earl Britnorth,
opposed them, and gathering an army defended the
abbeys of East-Angles from such intruders. To ap-
pease these tumults, a synod was called at Winchester;
and, nothing there concluded, a general council both
of nobles and prelates was held at Caln in Wiltshire,
where while the dispute was hot, but chiefly against
Dunstan, the room wherein they sat fell upon their
heads, killing some, maiming others, Dunstan only
escaping upon a beam that fell not, and the king ab-
sent by reason of his tender age. This accident quiet-
ed the controversy, and brought both parts to hold with
Dunstan and the monks. Meanwhile the king ad-
dicted to a religious life, and of a mild spirit, simply
permitted all things to the ambitious will of his step-
mother and her son Ethelred : to whom she, displeased
that the name only of king was wanting, practised
thenceforth to remove King Edward out of the way;
which in this manner she brought about. Edward on
a day wearied with hunting, thirsty and alone, while
his attendants followed the dogs, hearing that Ethelred
and his mother lodged at Corvesgate, (Corfe castle,
saith Camden, in the isle of Purbeck,) innocently went
thither. She with all show of kindness welcoming
him, commanded drink to be brought forth, for it seems
he lighted not from his horse; and while he was drink-
ing, caused one of her servants, privately before in-
structed, to stab him with a poniard. The poor youth,
who little expected such unkindness there, turning
speedily the reins, fled bleeding; till through loss of
blood falling from his horse, and expiring, yet held
with one foot in the stirrup, he was dragged along the
way, traced by his blood, and buried without honour
at Werham, having reigned about three years: but the
place of his burial not long after grew famous for
miracles. After which by duke Elfere (who, as
Malmsbury saith,” had a hand in his death) he was
royally interred at Skepton or Shaftsbury. The mur-
deress Elfrida, at length repenting, spent the residue
of her days in sorrow and great penance.
ETHELRED.
ETHELRED, second son of Edgar by Elfrida, (for
Edmund died a child,) his brother Edward wickedly
removed, was now next in right to succeed, and ac-
cordingly crowned at Kingston: reported by some, fair
of visage, comely of person, elegant of behaviour;' but
the event will show, that with many sluggish and ig-
noble vices he quickly shamed his outside; born and
prolonged a fatal mischief of the people, and the ruin
a Florent. Sim. Dun. - b Post Christ. 978. Malms.
c Post Christ. Q79. Malms. d I'lorent. Sim, Dun.
544
Book VI.
THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
of his country; whereof he gave early signs from his
first infancy, bewraying the font and water while the
bishop was baptizing him. Whereat Dunstan much
troubled, for he stood by and saw it, to them next him
broke into these words, “By God and God's mother,
this boy will prove a sluggard.” Another thing is
written of him in his childhood; which argued no bad
nature, that hearing of his brother Edward's cruel
death, he made loud lamentation ; but his furious
mother, offended therewith, and having no rod at hand,
beat him so with great wax-candles, that he hated the
sight of them ever after. Dunstan though unwilling
set the crown upon his head; but at the same time
foretold openly, as is reported, the great evils that were
to come upon him and the land, in avengement of his
brother's innocent blood.” And about the same time,
one midnight, a cloud sometimes bloody, sometimes
fiery, was seen over all England; and within three
years f the Danish tempest, which had long surceased,
revolved again upon this island. To the more ample
relating whereof, the Danish history, at least their
latest and diligentest historian, as neither from the first
landing of Danes, in the reign of West-Saxon Brithric,
so now again from first to last, contributes nothing;
busied more than enough to make out the bare names
and successions of their uncertain kings, and their
small actions, at home: unless out of him I should
transcribe what he takes, and I better may, from our
own annals; the surer and the sadder witnesses of their
doings here, not glorious, as they vainly boast, but
most inhumanly barbarous. & For the Danes well un-
derstanding that England had now a slothful king to
their wish, first landing at Southampton from seven
great ships, took the town, spoiled the country, and
carried away with them great pillage; nor was De-
vonshire and Cornwall uninfested on the shore, pirates
of Norway also harried the coast of West-chester:i and
to add a worse calamity, the city of London was burnt,
casually or not, is not written. k It chanced four years
after, that Ethelred besieged Rochester; some way or
other offended by the bishop thereof. Dunstan, not
approving the cause, sent to warm him that he provoke
not St. Andrew the patron of that city, nor waste his
lands; an old craft of the clergy to secure their
church-lands, by entailing them on some Saint: the
king not hearkening, Dunstan, on this condition that
the siege might be raised, sent him a hundred pounds,
the money was accepted and the siege dissolved. Dun-
stan, reprehending his avarice, sent him again this
word, “because thou hast respected money more than
religion, the evils which I foretold shall the sooner
come upon thee; but not in my days, for so God hath
spoken.” The next year was calamitous, bringing
strange fluxes upon men, and murrain upon cattle.
m Dunstan the year following died, a strenuous bishop,
zealous without dread of person, and for aught appears,
the best of many ages, if he busied not himself too
much in secular affairs. He was chaplain at first to
IXing Athelstan, and Edmund who succeeded, much
employed in court affairs, till envied by some who laid
many things to his charge, he was by Edmund forbid-
den the court; but by the earnest mediation, saith In-
gulf, of Turketul the chancellor, received at length to
favour, and made abbot of Glaston; lastly by Edgar
and the general vote, archbishop of Canterbury. Not
long after his death, the Danes arriving in Devonshire
were met by Goda lieutenant of that country, and
Strenwold a valiant leader, who put back the Danes,
but with loss of their own lives. n The third year fol-
lowing, under the conduct of Justin and Guthmund
the son of Steytan, they landed and spoiled Ipswich,
fought with Britnoth duke of the East-Angles about
Maldon, where they slew him; the slaughter else had
been equal on both sides. These and the like depre-
dations on every side the English not able to resist, by
council of Siric then archbishop of Canterbury, and
two dukes Ethelward and Alfric, it was thought best
for the present to buy that with silver, which they
could not gain with their iron ; and ten thousand
pounds was paid to the Danes for peace. Which for
a while contented; but taught them the ready way
how easiest to come by more. o The next year but one,
they took by storm and rifled Bebbanburg, an ancient
city near Durham : sailing thence to the mouth of
Humber, they wasted both sides thereof, Yorkshire
and Lindsey, burning and destroying all before them.
Against these went out three noblemen, Frana, Frithe-
gist, and Godwin; but being all Danes by the father's
side, willingly began flight, and forsook their own
forces betrayed to the enemy. PNo less treachery was
at sea; for Alfric, the son of Elfer duke of Mercia, whom
the king for some offence had banished, but now recall-
ed, sent from London with a fleet to surprise the Danes,
in some place of disadvantage, gave them over night
intelligence thereof, then fled to them himself; which
his fleet, saith Florent, perceiving, pursued, took the
ship, but missed of his person; the Londoners by
chance grappling with the East-Angles made them
fewer, saith my author, by many thousands. Others
say," that by this notice of Alfric the Danes not only
escaped, but with a greater fleet set upon the English,
took many of their ships, and in triumph brought them
up the Thames, intending to besiege London : for An-
laf king of Norway, and Swane of Denmark, at the
head of these, came with ninety-four galleys. The
king, for this treason of Alfric, put out his son's eyes;
but the Londoners both by land and water so valiantly
resisted their besiegers, that they were forced in one
day, with great loss, to give over. But what they
could not on the city, they wrecked themselves on the
countries round about, wasting with sword and fire all
Essex, Kent, and Sussex. Thence horsing their foot,
diffused far wider their outrageous incursions, without
mercy either to sex or age. The slothful king, instead
of warlike opposition in the field, sends ambassadors
to treat about another payment; F the sum promised
was now sixteen thousand pounds; till which paid,
the Danes wintered at Southampton; Ethelred in-
m Post Christ, Q88, Malms.
f Post Christ. 982. Malms.
Sinn. Dun. Hoved.
l Post Christ. 987. Malins.
e Sinn. IXun.
! Eadmer. I'lorent. h Hoyed.
Post Christ. 986. Malins. Ingulf.
o Post Christ. 993. Sim, Dun.
q Post Christ. 994. Sim. Dun.
n Post Christ. 991. Sim. Dun.
p Florent. Huntingd.
r Malms.
|Book VI.
545
THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
viting Anlaf to come and visit him at Andover,” where
he was royally entertained, some say baptized, or
confirmed, adopted son by the king, and dismissed
with great presents, promising by oath to depart and
molest the kingdom no more; t which he performed;
but the calamity ended not so, for after some inter-
mission of their rage for three years," the other navy
of Danes sailing about to the west, entered Severn,
and wasted one while South Wales, then Cornwall
and Devonshire, till at length they wintered about
Tavistock. For it were an endless work to relate
how they wallowed up and down to every par-
ticular place, and to repeat as oft what devasta-
tions they wrought, what desolations left behind
them, easy to be imagined. ” In sum, the next year
they afflicted Dorsetshire, Hampshire, and the Isle of
Wight; by the English many resolutions were taken,
many armies raised, but either betrayed by the false-
hood, or discouraged by the weakness, of their leaders,
they were put to the rout or disbanded themselves. For
soldiers most commonly are as their commanders, with-
out much odds of valour in one nation or other, only as
they are more or less wisely disciplined and conducted.
y The following year brought them back upon Kent,
where they entered Medway, and besieged Rochester;
but the Kentish men assembling gave them a sharp
encounter, yet that sufficed not to hinder them from
doing as they had done in other places. Against these
depopulations the king levied an army; but the un-
skilful leaders not knowing what to do with it when
they had it, did but drive out time, burdening and im-
poverishing the people, consuming the public treasure,
and more emboldening the enemy, than if they had sat
quietly at home. What cause moved the Danes next”
year to pass into Normandy, is not recorded ; but that
they returned thence more outrageous than before.
Meanwhile the king, to make some diversion, under-
takes an expedition both by land and sea into Cumber-
land, where the Danes were most planted; there and
in the Isle of Man, or, as Camden saith, Anglesey,
imitating his enemies in spoiling and unpeopling. The
Danes from Normandy, arriving in the river Ex, laid
siege to Exeter; a but the citizens, as those of London,
valorously defending themselves, they wrecked their
anger, as before, on the villages round about. The
country people of Somerset and Devonshire assembling
themselves at Penho, shewed their readiness, but want-
ed a head; and besides being then but few in number,
were easily put to flight; the enemy plundering all at
will, with loaded spoils passed into the Isle of Wight;
from whence all Dorsetshire and Hampshire felt
again their fury. The Saxon annals write, that before
their coming to Exeter, the Hampshire men had a
bickering with them,” wherein Ethelward the king's
general was slain, adding other things hardly to be
understood, and in one ancient copy; so end. Ethel-
red, whom no adversity could awake from his soft and
sluggish life, still coming by the worse at fighting, by
the advice of his peers not unlike himself, sends one of
his gay courtiers, though looking loftily, to stoop
basely, and propose a third tribute to the Danes: they
willingly hearken, but the sum is enhanced now to
twenty-four thousand pounds, and paid ; the Danes
thereupon abstaining from hostility. But the king, to
strengthen his house by some potent affinity, marries
Emma,” whom the Saxons call Elgiva, daughter of
Richard duke of Normandy. With him Ethelred for-
merly had war, or no good correspondence, as appears
by a letter of pope John the fifteenth," who made peace
between them about eleven years before ; puffed up
now with his supposed access of strength by this affi-
nity, he caused the Danes all over England, though
now living peaceably,” in one day perfidiously to be
massacred, both men, women, and children; sending
private letters to every town and city, whereby they
might be ready all at the same hour; which till the
appointed time (being the ninth of July) was concealed
with great silence, and performed with much unani-
mity; so generally hated were the Danes. Mat. West.
writes, that this execution upon the Danes was ten
years after; that Huna, one of Ethelred's chief cap-
tains, complaining of the Danish insolences in time of
peace, their pride, their ravishing of matrons and vir-
gins, incited the king to this massacre, which in the
madness of rage made no difference of innocent or no-
cent. Among these, Gunhildis the sister of Swane was
not spared, though much deserving not pity only, but
all protection: she, with her husband earl Palingus
coming to live in England, and receiving Christianity,
had her husband and young son slain before her face,
herself then beheaded, foretelling and denouncing
that her blood would cost England dear. & Some say
this was done by the traitor Edric, to whose custody
she was committed; but the massacre was some years
before Edric's advancement; and if it were done by
him afterwards, it seems to contradict the private cor-
respondence which he was thought to hold with the
Danes. For Swane, breathing revenge, hasted the next
year into England," and by the treason or negligence
of Count Hugh, whom Emma had recommended to the
government of Devonshire, sacked the city of Exeter,
her wall from east to west-gate broken down : after
this wasting Wiltshire, the people of that county, and
of Hampshire, came together in great numbers with
resolution stoutly to oppose him; but Alfric their gene-
ral, whose son's cyes the king had lately put out, madly
thinking to revenge himself on the king, by ruining
his own country, when he should have ordered his
battle, the enemy being at hand, feigned himself taken
with a vomiting; whereby his army in great discon-
tent, destitute of a commander, turned from the enemy:
who straight took Wilton and Salisbury, carrying the
pillage thereof to the ships. ' Thence the next year
landing on the coast of Norfolk, he wasted the country,
and set Norwich on fire; Ulfketel duke of the East-
Angles, a man of great valour, not having space to
gather his forces, after consultation had, thought it
best to make peace with the Dane, which he breaking
d Calvis.
u Post Christ. 997, Sim, Dun.
y Post Christ. 999, Sim: l)un.
a Post Christ. 1001. Sinn, Dun.
s Malms. . tº Huntingd.
x Post Christ, 998. Sim. Dun.
2 Post Christ. 1000. Sim. Dun.
aivus: . . g Mlat. West.
i Post Christ. 1094. Sinn. Dun.
b Post Christ. 1002. Sim. Dun.
e lºlorent. Huntingd.
h Post Christ. 1003. Sim. Dun.
c. Malms.
546 THE HISTORY
OF ENGLAND. Book VI.
within three weeks, issued silently out of his ships,
came to Thetford, staid there a night, and in the morn-
ing left it flanning. Ulſketel, hearing this, command-
ed some to go and break or burn his ships; but they
not daring or neglecting, he in the mean while with
what secresy and speed was possible, drawing together
his forces, went out against the enemy, and gave them a
fierce onset retreating to their ships: but much inferi-
our in number, many of the chief East-Angles there
lost their lives. Nor did the Danes come off without
great slaughter of their own; conſessing that they
never met in England with so rough a charge. The
next year," whom war could not, a great famine drove
Swane out of the land. But the summer following,
another great fleet of Danes entered the port of Sand-
wich, thence poured out over all Kent and Sussex,
made prey of what they found. The king levying an
army out of Mercia, and the West-Saxons, took on him
for once the manhood to go out and face them ; but
they, who held it safer to live by rapine, than to hazard
a battle, shifting lightly from place to place, frustrated
the slow motions of a heavy camp, following their
wonted course of robbery, then running to their ships.
Thus all autumn they wearied out the king's army,
which gone home to winter, they carried all their pil-
lage to the Isle of Wight, and there staid till Christ-
mas; at which time the king being in Shropshire, and
but ill employed, (for by the procurement of Edric, he
caused, as is thought, Alſhelm, a noble duke, treacher-
ously to be slain,” and the eyes of his two sons to be
put out,) they came forth again, overrunning Hamp-
shire and Berkshire, as far as Reading and Walling-
ford: thence to Ashdune, and other places thereabout,
neither known nor of tolerable pronunciation ; and re-
turning by another way, found many of the people in
arms by the river Kenet; but making their way
through, they got safe with vast booty to their ships.
* The king and his courtiers wearied out with their last
summer's jaunt after the nimble Dames to no purpose,
which by proof they found too toilsome for their soft
bones, more used to beds and couches, had recourse to
their last and only remedy, their coffers; and send now
the fourth time to buy a dishonourable peace, every
time still dearer, not to be had now under thirty-six
thousand pound (for the Danes knew how to milk such
easy kine) in name of tribute and expenses: which out
of the people over all England, already half beggared,
was extorted and paid. About the same time Ethelred
advanced Edric, surnamed Streon, from obscure con-
dition to be duke of Mercia, and marry Edgitha the
king's daughter. The cause of his advancement,
Florent of Worcester, and Mat. West. attribute to his
great wealth, gotten by fine policies and a plausible
tongue: he proved a main accessory to the ruin of
England, as his actions will soon declare. Ethelred
the next year,” somewhat rousing himself, ordained
that every three hundred and ten hides (a hide is so
much land as one plow can sufficiently till) should set
out a ship or galley, and every nine hides find a corslet
and headpiece : new ships in every port were built,
victualled, fraught with stout mariners and soldiers,
and appointed to meet all at Sandwich. A man might
now think that all would go well; when suddenly a
new mischief sprung up, dissension among the great
ones; which brought all this diligence to as little suc-
cess as at other times before. Birthric, the brother of
Edric, falsely accused Wulnoth, a great officer set over
the South-Saxons, who, fearing the potency of his ene-
mies, with twenty ships got to sea, and practised piracy
on the coast. Against whom, reported to be in a place
where he might be easily surprised, Birthric sets forth
with eighty ships; all which, driven back by a tempest
and wrecked upon the shore, were burnt soon after by
Wulmoth. Disheartened with this misfortune, the
king returns to London, the rest of his navy after him;
and all this great preparation to nothing. Whereupon
Turkill, a Danish earl, came with a navy to the isle of
Tanet,” and in August a far greater, led by Heming
and Ilaf, joined with him. Thence coasting to Sand-
wich, and landed, they went onward and began to
assault Canterbury; but the citizens and East-Kentish
men, coming to composition with them for three thou-
sand pounds, they departed thence to the Isle of Wight,
robbing and burning by the way. Against these the
king levies an army through all the land, and in seve-
ral quarters places them high the sea, but so unskilfully
or unsuccessfully, that the Danes were not thereby
hindered from exercising their wonted robberies. It
happened that the Danes were one day gone up into
the country far from their ships; the king having notice
thereof, thought to intercept them in their return; his
men were resolute to overcome or die, time and place
advantageous; but where courage and fortune was not
wanting, there wanted loyalty among them. Edric
with subtile arguments, that had a show of deep policy,
disputed and persuaded the simplicity of his fellow
counsellors, that it would be best consulted at that time
to let the Dames pass without ambush or interception.
The Danes, where they expected danger finding mone,
passed on with great joy and booty to their ships.
After this, sailing about Kent, they lay that winter in
the Thames, forcing Kent and Essex to contribution,
ofttimes attempting the city of London, but repulsed
as oft to their great loss. Spring begun, leaving their
ships, they passed through Chiltern wood into Oxford-
shire,' burnt the city, and thence returning with di-
vided forces, wasted on both sides the Thames; but
hearing that an army from London was marched out
against them, they on the north side passing the river
at Stanes, joined with them on the south into one
body, and enriched with great spoils, came back through
Surrey to their ships; which all the Lent-time they
repaired. After Easter sailing to the East-Angles they
arrived at Ipswich, and came to a place called Ring-
mere, where they heard that Ulfketel with his forces
lay, who with a sharp encounter soon entertained them;
but his men at length giving back, through the sub-
tlety of a Danish servant among them who began the
| Post Christ. 1006. Sim. Dun.
k Post Christ. 1005. Siim. Dun. *
n Post Christ. 1U07. Sitn. Dun.
m lºlorent.
o Post Christ. 1008. Sim. Dun. p Post Christ, 1009. Sim. Dun,
q Post Christ. 1010, Sim. Dun. Florent,
Book VI.
547
THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND,
flight, lost the field; though the men of Cambridge-
shire stood to it valiantly. In this battle Ethelstan,
the king's son-in-law, with many other noblemen, were
slain; whereby the Danes, without more resistance,
three months together had the spoiling of those coun-
tries and all the ſens, burnt Thetford and Grantbrig,
or Cambridge; thence to a hilly place not far off, called
by Huntingdon, Balesham, by Camden, Gogmagog
hills, and the villages thereabout, they turned their
fury, slaying all they met save one man, who getting
up into a steeple, is said to have defended himself
against the whole Danish army. They therefore so
leaving him, their foot by sea, their horse by land
through Essex, returned back laden to their ships left
in the Thames. But many days passed not between,
when sallying again out of their ships as out of savage
dens, they plundered over again all Oxfordshire, and
added to their prey Buckingham, Bedford, and Hert-
fordshire; r then like wild beasts glutted returning to
their caves. A third excursion they made into Nor-
thamptonshire, burnt Northampton, ransacking the
country round ; then as to fresh pasture betook them
to the West-Saxons, and in like sort harassing all
Wiltshire, returned, as I said before, like wild beasts
or rather sea monsters to their water-stables, accomplish-
ing by Christmas the circuit of their whole year's good
deeds; an unjust and inhuman nation, who, receiving
or not receiving tribute where none was owing them,
made such destruction of mankind, and rapine of their
livelihood, as is a misery to read. Yet here they ceased
not; for the next years repeating the same cruelties on
both sides the Thames, one way as far as Huntingdon,
the other as far as Wiltshire and Southampton, soli-
cited again by the king for peace, and receiving their
demands both of tribute and contribution, they slighted
their faith; and in the beginning of September laid
siege to Canterbury. On the twentieth day, by the
treachery of Almere the archdeacon, they took part of
it and burnt it, committing all sorts of massacre as a
sport; some they threw over the wall, others into the
fire, hung some by the privy members; infants, pulled
from their mothers’ breasts, were either tossed on spears,
or carts drawn over them; matrons and virgins by the
hair dragged and ravished. ‘Alfage the grave arch-
bishop above others hated of the Dames, as in all coun-
sels and actions to his might their known opposer,
taken, wounded, imprisoned in a noisome ship ; the
multitude are tithed, and every tenth only spared.
* Early the next year before Easter, while Ethelred
and his peers were assembled at London, to raise now
the fifth tribute amounting to forty-eight thousand
pound, the Danes at Canterbury propose to the arch-
bishop,” who had been now seven months their prisoner,
life and liberty, if he paid them three thousand pound:
which he refusing as not able of himself, and not will-
ing to extort it from his tenants, is permitted till the
next Sunday to consider; then hauled before the coun-
sel, of whom Turkill was chief, and still refusing, they
rise, most of them being drunk, and beat him with the
s Post Christ...1011: Sim: Dun.
u Post Christ, 1012. Sim. Dun.
2 N
r II untingd.
t Eadmer. Malms,
blunt side of their axes, then thrust forth deliver him
to be pelted with stones; till one Thrun a converted
Dane, pitying him half dead, to put him out of pain,
with a pious impiety, at one stroke of his axe on the
head dispatched him. His body was carried to Lon-
don, and there buried, thence afterward removed to
Canterbury. By this time the tribute paid, and peace
so often violated sworn again by the Danes, they dis-
persed their fleet; forty-five of them, and Turkill their
chief, staid at London with the king, swore him allegi-
ance to defend his land against all strangers, on condi-
tion only to be fed and clothed by him. But this
voluntary friendship of Turkill was thought to be de-
ceitful, that staying under this pretence he gave intel-
ligence to Swane, when most it would be seasonable
to come. y In July therefore of the next year, King
Swane arriving at Sandwich, made no stay there, but
sailing first to Humber, thence into Trent, landed and
encamped at Gainsburrow ; whither without delay re-
paired to him the Northumbrians, with Uthred their
earl; those of Lindsey also, then those of Fisburg, and
lastly all on the north of Watlingstreet (which is a
highway from east to west-sea) gave oath and hostages
to obey him. From whom he commanded horses and
provision for his army, taking with him besides bands
and companies of their choicest men; and committing
to his son Canute the care of his fleet and hostages, he
marches towards the South-Mercians, commanding his
soldiers to exercise all acts of hostility; with the terrour
whereof fully executed, he took in few days the city of
Oxford, then Winchester; thence tending to London,
in his hasty passage over the Thames, without seeking
bridge or ford, lost many of his men. Nor was his
expedition against London prosperous; for assaying
all means by force or wile to take the city, wherein
the king then was, and Turkill with his Danes, he
was stoutly beaten off as at other times. Thence back
to Wallingford and Bath, directing his course, after
usual havoc made, he sat a while and refreshed his
army. There Ethelm, an earl of Devonshire, and
other great officers in the west, yielded him subjec-
tion. These things flowing to his wish, he betook
him to his navy, from that time styled and accounted
king of England; if a tyrant, saith Simeon, may be
called a king. The Londoners also sent him hostages,
and made their peace, for they feared his fury. Ethel-
red, thus reduced to narrow compass, sent Emma his
queen, with his two sons had by her, and all his trea-
sure, to Richard II, her brother, duke of Normandy;
himself with his Danish fleet abode some while at Green-
wich, then sailing to the Isle of Wight, passed after
Christmas into Normandy; where he was honourably
received at Roan by the duke, though known to have
born himself churlishly and proudly towards Emma his
sister, besides his dissolute company with other women.
Meanwhile Swane” ceased mot to exact almost insup-
portable tribute of the people, spoiling them when he
listed; besides, the like did Turkill at Greenwich. The
next year beginning," Swane sickens and dies; some
y Post Christ. 1013. Sinn. Dun.
x F. admer. -
d Post Christ. 1014. Sim. Dun. Mat. West.
Z Malms.
548
Book VI.
THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
say terrified and smitten by an appearing shape of St.
Edmund armed, whose church at Bury he had threat-
ened to demolish; but the authority hereof relies only
upon the legend of St. Edmund. After his death the
Danish army and fleet made his son Canute their
king : but the nobility and states of England sent mes-
sengers to Ethelred, declaring that they preferred none
before their native sovereign, if he would promise to
govern them better than he had done, and with more
clemency. Whereat the king rejoicing sends over his
son Edward with embassadors, to court both high and
low, and win their love, promising largely to be their
mild and devoted lord, to consent in all things to their
will, follow their counsel, and whatever had been done
or spoken by any man against him, freely to pardon,
if they would loyally restore him to be their king. To
this the people cheerfully answered, and amity was
both promised and confirmed on both sides. An em-
bassy of lords is sent to bring back the king honcur-
ably; he returns in Lent, and is joyfully received of
the people, marches with a strong army against Ca-
nute; who having got horses and joined with the men
of Lindsey, was preparing to make spoil in the coun-
tries adjoining; but by Ethelred unexpectedly coming
upon him, was soon driven to his ships, and his con-
federates of Lindsey, left to the anger of their country-
men, executed without mercy both by fire and sword.
Canute in all haste sailing back to Sandwich, took the
hostages given to his father from all parts of England,
and with slit noses, ears cropped, and hands chopped
off, setting them ashore, departed into Denmark. Yet
the people were not disburdened, for the king raised
out of them thirty thousand pound to pay his fleet of
Danes at Greenwich. To these evils the sea in Oc-
tober passed his bounds, overwhelming many towns in
England, and of their inhabitants many thousands.
* The year following, an assembly being at Oxford,
Edric of Streon having invited two noblemen, Sigeferth
and Morcar, the sons of Earngrun of Seavenburg, to
his lodging, secretly murdered them; the king, for
what cause is unknown, seized their estates, and caused
Algith the wife of Sigeferth to be kept at Maidulfs-
burg, now Malmsbury; whom Edmund the prince
there married against his father's mind, then went and
possessed their lands, making the people there subject
to him. Mat. Westm. saith, that these two were of
the Danes who had seated themselves in Northumber-
land, slain by Edric under colour of treason laid to
their charge. They who attended them without,
tumulting at the death of their masters," were beaten
back; and driven into a church, defending themselves
were burnt there in the steeple. Meanwhile Canute
returning from Denmark with a great navy," two hun-
dred ships richly gilded and adorned, well fraught
with arms and all provision; and, which Encomium
Emmae mentions not, two other kings, Lachman of
Sweden, Olav of Norway, arrived at Sandwich : and,
as the same author then living writes, sent out spies to
discover what resistance on land was to be expected;
who returned with certain report, that a great army of
English was in readiness to oppose them. Turkill,
who upon the arrival of these Danish powers kept faith
no longer with the English, but joining now with Ca-
nute," as it were now to reingratiate himself aſter his
revolt, whether real or complotted, counselled him
(being yet young) not to land, but to leave to him the
management of this first battle: the king assented, and
he with the forces which he had brought, and part of
those which arrived with Canute, landing to their wish,
encountered the English, though double in number, at
a place called Scorastan, and was at first beaten back
with much loss. But at length animating his men
with rage only and despair, obtained a clear victory,
which won him great reward and possessions from
Canute. But of this action no other writer makes
mention. From Sandwich therefore sailing about to
the river Frome, and there landing, over all Dorset,
Somerset, and Wiltshire he spread wasteful hostility.’
The king lay then sick at Cosham in this county;
though it may seem strange how he could lie sick there
in the midst of his enemies. Howbeit Edmund in one
part, and Edric of Streon in another, raised forces by
themselves; but so soon as both armies were united,
the traitor Edric being found to practise against the
life of Edmund, he removed with his army from him ;
whereof the enemy took great advantage. Edric easily
cnticing the forty ships of Danes to side with him, re-
volted to Canute: the West-Saxons also gave pledges,
and furnished him with horses. By which means the g
year ensuing, he with Edric the traitor passing the
Thames at Creclad, about twelfthtide, entered into
Mercia, and especially Warwickshire, depopulating all
places in their way. Against these prince Edmund,
for his hardiness called Ironside, gathered an army;
but the Mercians refused to fight unless Ethelred with
the Londoners came to aid them ; and so every man
returned home. After the festival, Edmund, gathering
another army, besought his father to come with the
Londoners, and what force besides he was able; they
came with great strength gotten together, but being
come, and in a hopeful way of good success, it was told
the king, that unless he took the better heed, some of
his own forces would fall off and betray him. The
king daunted with this perhaps cunning whisper of the
enemy, disbanding his army, returns to London. Ed-
mund betook him into Northumberland, as some thought
to raise fresh forces; but he with earl Uthred on the
one side, and Canute with Edric on the other, did little
else but waste the provinces; Canute to conquer them,
Edmund to punish them who stood neuter : for which
cause Stafford, Shropshire, and Leicestershire, felt
heavily his hand; while Canute, who was ruining the
more southern shires, at length marched into Northum-
berland; which Edmund hearing dismissed his forces,
and came to London. Uthred the earl hasted back to
Northumberland, and finding no other remedy, submit-
ted himself with all the Northumbrians, giving hostages
to Canute. Nevertheless by his command or connivance,
b Post Christ. 1015. Sinn. Dun. c Malms.
d Leges Edw. Conf. Tit. deduct. Norm.
e Encom. Em. f Camd.
g Post Christ, 1016. Sim. Dun.
Book VI.
549
THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
and the hand of one Turebrand a Danish lord, Uthred
was slain, and Iric another Dane made earl in his
stead. This Uthred, son of Walteof, as Simeon writes,
in his treatise of the siege of Durham, in his youth ob-
tained a great victory against Malcolm, son of Kened
king of Scots, who with the whole power of his king-
dom was fallen into Northumberland, and laid siege to
Durham. Walteof the old earl, unable to resist, had
secured himself in Bebbanburg, a strong town; but
Uthred gathering an army raised the siege, slew most
of the Scots, their king narrowly escaping, and with
the heads of their slain fixed upon poles beset round
the walls of Durham. The year of this exploit Simeon
clears not, for in 969, and in the reign of Ethelred, as
he affirms, it could not be. Canute by another way
returning southward, joyful of his success, before
Easter came back with all the army to his fleet.
About the end of April ensuing, Ethelred, after a
long, troublesome, and ill governed reign, ended his
days at London, and was buried in the church of
St. Paul.
EDMUND IRONSIDE.
After the decease of Ethelred, they of the nobility
who were then at London, together with the citizens,
chose h Edmund his son (not by Emma, but a former
wife the daughter of Earl Thored) in his father's room;
but the archbishops, abbots, and many of the nobles
assembling together, elected Canute; and coming to
Southampton where he then remained, renounced be-
fore him all the race of Ethelred, and swore him
fidelity: he also swore to them, in matters both religi-
ous and secular, to be their faithful lord. But Ed-
mund, with all speed going to the West-Saxons, was
joyfully received of them as their king, and of many
other provinces by their example. Meanwhile Canute
about mid May came with his whole fleet up the river
to London; then causing a great dike to be made on
the Surrey side, turned the stream, and drew his ships
thither west of the bridge; then begirting the city
with a broad and deep trench, assailed it on every
side; but repulsed as before by the valorous defend-
ants, and in despair of success at that time, leaving
part of his army for the defence of his ships, with the
rest sped him to the West-Saxons, ere Edmund could
have time to assemble all his powers; who yet with
such as were at hand, invoking divine aid, encountered
the Danes at Pen by Gillingham in Dorsetshire, and
put him to flight. After midsummer, increased with new
forces, he met with him again at a place called Sheras-
tan, now Sharstan; but Edric, Almar, and Algar, with
the Hampshire and Wiltshire men, then siding with
the Danes, he only maintained the fight, obstinately
fought on both sides, till night and weariness parted
them. Daylight returning renewed the conflict, where-
in the Danes appearing inferiour, Edric to dishearten
the English cuts off the head of one Osmer, in counte-
nance and hair somewhat resembling the king, and
holding it up, clies aloud to the English, that Edmund
being slain, and this his head, it was time for them to
fly; which fallacy Edmund perceiving, and openly
showing himself to his soldiers, by a spear thrown at
Edric, that missing him yet slew one next him," and
through him another behind, they recovered heart, and
lay sore upon the Danes till night parted them as be-
fore : for ere the third morn, Canute, sensible of his
loss, marched away by stealth to his ships at London,
renewing there his leaguer. Some would have this
battle at Sherastan the same with that at Scorastan be-
fore mentioned, but the circumstance of time permits
not, that having been before the landing of Canute,
this a good while after, as by the process of things ap-
pears. From Sherastan or Sharstan Edmund returned
to the West-Saxons, whose valour Edric fearing lest it
might prevail against the Danes, sought pardon of his
revolt, and obtaining it swore loyalty to the king, who
now the third time coming with an army from the
West-Saxons to London, raised the siege, chasing Ca-
nute and his Danes to their ships. Then after two
days passing the Thames at Brentford, and so coming
on their backs, kept them so turned, and obtained the
victory; then returns again to his West-Saxons, and
Canute to his siege, but still in vain; rising therefore
thence, he entered with his ships a river then called
Arenne; and from the banks thereof wasted Mercia;
thence their horse by land, their foot by ship came to
Medway. Edmund in the mean while with multiplied
forces out of many shires crossing again at Brentford,
came into Kent, seeking Canute ; encountered him at
Otford, and so defeated, that of his horse they who
escaped fled to the isle of Sheppey; and a full victory
he had gained, had not Edric still the traitor by some
wile or other detained his pursuit: and Edmund,
who never wanted courage, here wanted prudence to
be so misled, ever after forsaken of his wonted for-
tune. Canute crossing with his army into Essex,
thence wasted Mercia worse than before, and with
heavy prey returned to his ships: them Edmund with
a collected army pursuing overtook at a place called
Assandune or Asseshill, now Ashdown in Essex; the
battle on either side was fought with great vehemence;
but perfidious Edric perceiving the victory to incline
towards Edmund, with that part of the army which
was under him fled, as he had promised Canute, and
left the king overmatched with numbers: by which de-
sertion the English were overthrown, duke Alfric, duke
Godwin, and Ulfketel the valiant duke of East-Angles,
with a great part of the mobility slain, so as the Eng-
lish of a long time had not received a greater blow.
Yet after a while Edmund, not absurdly called Iron-
side, preparing again to try his fortune in another field,
was hindered by Edric and others of his faction, advis-
ing him to make peace and divide the kingdom with
Canute. To which Edmund overruled, a treaty ap-
pointed, and pledges mutually given, both kings met
together at a place called Deorhirst in Gloucestershire;
" Edmund on the west side of Severn, Canute on the
east, with their armies, then both in person waſted into
an island, at that time called Olanege,” now Alney, in
h Florent. Aelred in the life of Edw. Conf. i Florent. Sim. Dun.
k Malms. | Camd. m Camd. n Camd.
550
Book VI.
THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
the midst of the river; swearing amity and brother-
hood, they parted the kingdom between them. Then
interchanging arms and the habit they wore, assessing
also what pay should be allotted to the navy, they de-
parted each his way. Concerning this interview and
the cause thereof others write otherwise; Malmsbury,
that Edmund grieving at the loss of so much blood
spilt for the ambition only of two men striving who
should reign, of his own accord sent to Canute, offering
him single combat, to prevent in their own cause the
effusion of more blood than their own ; that Canute,
though of courage enough, yet not unwisely doubting
to adventure his body of small timber, against a man
of iron sides, refused the combat, offering to divide the
kingdom. This offer pleasing both armies, Edmund
was not difficult to consent; and the decision was, that
he as his hereditary kingdom should rule the West-
Saxons and all the South, Canute the Mercians and
the North. Huntingdon followed by Mat. Westm. re-
lates, that the peers on every side wearied out with con-
tinual warfare, and not refraining to affirm openly that
they two who expected to reign singly, had most rea-
son to fight singly, the kings were content; the island
was their lists, the combat knightly ; till Knute, find-
ing himself too weak, began to parley, which ended as
is said before. After which the Londoners bought their
peace of the Danes, and permitted them to winter in
the city. But King Edmund about the feast of St. An-
drew unexpectedly deceased at London, and was buried
near to Edgar his grandfather at Glaston. The cause
of his so sudden death is uncertain ; common fame,
saith Malmsbury, lays the guilt thereof upon Edric,
who to please Canute, allured with promise of reward
two of the king's privy chamber, though at first ab-
horring the fact, to assassinate him at the stool, by
thrusting a sharp iron into his hinder parts. Hunting-
don, and Mat. Westm. relate it done at Oxford by the
son of Edric, and something vary in the manner, not
worth recital. Edmund dead, Canute meaning to reign
sole king of England, calls to him all the dukes, ba-
roms, and bishops of the land, cunningly demanding
of them who were witnesses what agreement was made
between him and Edmund dividing the kingdom, whe-
ther the sons and brothers of Edmund were to govern
the West-Saxons after him, Canute living 2 They who
understood his meaning, and feared to undergo his
anger, timorously answered, that Edmund they knew
had left no part thereof to his sons or brethren, living
or dying; but that he intended Canute should be their
guardian, till they came to age of reigning. Simeon
affirms, that for ſear or hope of reward they attested
what was not true : notwithstanding which, he put
many of them to death not long after.
CANUTE, or KNUTE.
CANUTE having thus sounded the nobility,” and by
them understood, received their oath of fealty, they the
pledge of his bare hand, and oath from the Danish no-
bles; whereupon the house of Edmund was renounced,
o Post Christ. 1017. Sim. Dun. Sax. an. p Encom, Fum. Ingulf.
and Canute crowned. Then they enacted, that Edwi
brother of Edmund, a prince of great hope, should be
banished the realm. But Canute, not thinking himself
secure while Edwi lived, consulted with Edric how to
make him away; who told him of one Ethelward a de-
cayed nobleman, likeliest to do the work. Ethelward
sent for, and tempted by the king in private with
largest rewards, but abhorring in his mind the deed,
promised to do it when he saw his opportunity; and so
still deferred it. But Edwi afterwards received into
favour, as a snare, was by him, or some other of his
false friends, Canute contriving it, the same year slain.
Edric also counselled him to dispatch Edward and Ed-
mund, the sons of Ironside; but the king doubting
that the fact would seem too foul done in England,
sent them to the king of Sweden, with like intent; but
he, disdaining the office, sent them for better safety to
Solomon king of Hungary; where Edmund at length
died, but Edward married Agatha daughter to Henry
the German emperor. A digression in the laws of Ed-
ward Confessor under the title of Lex Noricorum saith,
that this Edward, for fear of Canute, fled of his own
accord to Malesclot king of the Rugians, who received
him honourably, and of that country gave him a wife.
Canute, settled in his throne, divided the government
of his kingdom into four parts; the West-Saxons to
himself, the East-Angles to earl Turkill, the Mercians
to Edric, the Northumbrians to Iric; then made peace
with all princes round about him, and, his former wife
being dead, in July married Emma, the widow of king
Ethelred. The Christmas following was an ill feast to
Edric, of whose treason the king having now made use
as much as served his turn, and fearing himself to be the
next betrayed, caused him to be slain at London in the
palace, thrown over the city wall, and there to lie un-
buried; the head of Edric fixed on a pole, he commanded
to be set on the highest tower of London, as in a double
sense he had promised him for the murder of King Ed-
mund to exalt him above all the peers of England.
Huntingdom, Malmsbury, and Mat. Westm. write, that
suspecting the king’s intention to degrade him from
his Mercian dukedom, and upbraiding him with his
merits, the king enraged caused him to be strangled
in the room, and out at a window thrown into the
Thames. Another writes, p that Eric at the king's
command struck off his head. Other great men, though
without fault, as duke Norman the son of Leofwin,
Ethelward son of duke Agelmar, he put to death at
the same time, jealous of their power or familiarity
with Edric: and notwithstanding peace, kept still his
army; to maintain which, the next year q he squeezed
out of the English, though now his subjects, not his
enemies, seventy-two, some say, eighty-two thousand
pound, besides fifteenthousand out of London. Mean-
while great war arose at Carr, between Uthred son of
Waldef, earl of Northumberland, and Malcolm son of
Kened king of Scots, with whom held Eugenius king
of Lothian. But here Simeon the relater seems to have
committed some mistake, having slain Uthred by Ca-
nute two years before, and set Iric in his place: Iric
q Pöst Christ. 1018. Sim. Dun. II untingd. Mat. West.
Book VI.
551
THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
therefore it must needs be, not Uthred, who managed
this war against the Scots. About which time at a
convention of Danes at Oxford, it was agreed on both
parties to keep the laws of Edgar; Mat. Westm, saith
of Edward the elder. The next t year Canute sailed
into Denmark, and there abode all winter. Hunting-
don and Mat. Westm. say, he went thither to repress
the Swedes; and that the night before a battle was
fought with them, Godwin, stealing out of the camp
with his English, assaulted the Swedes, and had got
the victory ere Canute in the morning knew of any
fight. For which bold enterprise, though against dis-
cipline, he had the English in more esteem ever after.
In the spring, at his return into England,” he held in
the time of Easter a great assembly at Chichester, and
the same year was with Turkill the Dane at the dedi-
cation of a church by them built at Assendune, in the
place of that great victory which won him the crown.
But suspecting his greatness, the year following ban-
ished him the realm, and found occasion to do the like
by Iric the Northumbrian earl upon the same jealousy.
“Nor yet content with his conquest of England, though
now above ten years enjoyed, he passed with fifty
ships into Norway, dispossessed Olave their king, and
subdued the land," first with great sums of money sent
the year before to gain him a party, then coming with
an army to compel the rest. Thence returning king of
England, Denmark, and Norway, yet not secure in his
mind, * under colour of an embassy sent into banish-
ment Hacun a powerful Dane, who had married the
daughter of his sister Gunildis, having conceived some
suspicion of his practices against him: but such course
was taken, that he never came back; either perishing
at sea, or slain by contrivance the next y year in Ork-
ney. Canute therefore having thus established himself
by bloodshed and oppression, to wash away, as he
thought, the guilt thereof, sailing” again into Denmark,
went thence to Rome, and offered there to St. Peter
great gifts of gold and silver, and other precious things;
besides the usual tribute of Romscot, giving great alms
by the way,” both thither and back again, freeing many
places of custom and toll with great expense, where
strangers were wont to pay, having vowed great amend-
ment of life at the sepulchre of Peter and Paul, and to
his whole people in a large letter written from Rome
yet extant. At his return therefore he built and dedi-
cated a church to St. Edmund at Bury, whom his an-
cestors had slain,” threw out the secular priests, who
had intruded there, and placed monks in their stead;
then going into Scotland, subdued and received hom-
age of Malcolm, and two other kings there, Melbeath
and Jermare. Three years" after, having made Swane,
his supposed son by Algiva of Northampton, duke
Alfhelm's daughter, (for others say the son of a priest,
whom Algiva barren “ had got ready at the time of her
feigned labour,) king of Norway, and Hardecnute, his
son by Emma, king of Denmark; and designed
Harold, his son by Algiva of Northampton, king of
England; died f at Shaftsbury, and was buried at
Winchester in the old monastery. This king, as ap-
pears, ended better than he began ; for though he
seems to have had no hand in the death of Ironside,
but detested the fact, and bringing the murderers,
who came to him in hope of great reward, forth
among his courtiers, as it were to receive thanks, after
they had openly related the manner of their killing
him, delivered them to deserved punishment, yet he
spared Edric, whom he knew to be the prime author
of that detestable fact; till willing to be rid of him,
grown importune upon the confidence of his merits,
and upbraided by him that he had first relinquished,
then extinguished, Edmund for his sake; angry to be
so upbraided, therefore said he with a changed coun-
tenance, “traitor to God and me, thou shalt die;
thine own mouth accuses thee, to have slain thy master
my confederate brother, and the Lord's anointed.”
g Whereupon although present and private execution
was in rage done upon Edric, yet he himself in cool blood
scrupled not to make away the brother and children of
Edmund, who had better right to be the Lord's anoint-
ed here than himself. When he had obtained in Eng-
land what he desired, no wonder if he sought the love
of his conquered subjects for the love of his own quiet,
the maintainers of his wealth and state for his own
profit. For the like reason he is thought to have mar-
ried Emma, and that Richard duke of Normandy her
brother might the less care what became of Alfred and
Edward, her sons by King Ethelred. He commanded
to be observed the ancient Saxon laws, called aſter-
wards the laws of Edward the Confessor, not that he
made them, but strictly observed them. His letter
from Rome professes, if he had done aught amiss in his
youth, through negligence or want of due temper, full
resolution with the help of God to make amends, by
governing justly and piously for the future; charges
and adjures all his officers and viscounts, that neit';er
for fear of him, or favour of any person, or to enrich
the king, they suffer injustice to be done in the land;
commands his treasurers to pay all his debts ere his re-
turn home, which was by Denmark, to compose mat-
ters there; and what his letter professed, he performed
all his life after. But it is a fond conceit in many
great ones, and pernicious in the end, to cease from no
violence till they have attained the utmost of their am-
bitions and desires; then to think God appeased by their
seeking to bribe him with a share, however large, of
their ill-gotten spoils; and then lastly to grow zealous
of doing right, when they have no longer need to do
wrong. Howbeit Canute was famous through Europe,
and much honoured of Conrade the emperor, then at
Rome, with rich gifts and many grants of what he
there demanded for the freeing of passages from toll
and custom. I must not omit one remarkable action
done by him, as Huntingdon reports it, with great
scene of circumstance, and emphatical expression, to
shew the small power of kings in respect of God;
r Post Christ, 1019. Sim. Dun. -
s Post Christ. 1020. Sim. Dun.
t Post Christ. 1021. Sim. 1).un. Malms.
u Post Christ. 1028. Sim, Dun. x Post Christ. 1029. Sim. Dun.
X Fº §t. 1030. Sim, Dun.
c l l untingd.
e Elorent.
z Post Christ. 1031. Sim. Dun.
b Post Christ, 1032. Sinn. I) un,
t! Post Christ. 1035. Sim... 1)un.
f Florent. g Malms.
552 THE HISTORY
OF ENGLANTD. Book VI.
which, unless to court-parasites, needed no such la-
borious demonstration. He caused his royal seat to be
set on the shore, while the tide was coming in ; and
with all the state that royalty could put into his coun-
tenance, said thus to the sea; “Thou sea belongest to
me, and the land whereon I sit is mine; nor hath any
one unpunished resisted my commands: I charge thee
come no further upon my land, neither presume to wet
the feet of thy sovereign lord.” But the sea, as before,
came rolling on, and without reverence both wet and
dashed him. Whereat the king quickly rising wish-
ed all about him to behold and consider the weak
and frivolous power of a king, and that none in-
deed deserved the name of a king, but he whose
eternal laws both heaven, earth, and sea obey. A
truth so evident of itself, as I said before, that unless
to shame his court-flatterers, who would not else be
convinced, Canute needed not to have gone wetshod
home : the best is, from that time forth he never would
wear a crown, esteeming earthly royalty contemptible
and vain. .
HAROLD.
HARold for his swiftness surnamed Harefoot,h the
son of Canute by Algiva of Northampton, (though
some speak doubtfully as if she bore him not, but had
him of a shoemaker's wife, as Swane before of a priest;
others of a maidservant, to conceal her barrenness,) in
a great assembly at Oxford was by duke Leofric and
the Mercians, with the Londoners, according to his
father's testament, elected king; but without the re-
gal habiliments, which Ælnot, the archbishop, having
in his custody, refused to deliver up, but to the sons of
Emma, for which Harold ever after hated the clergy;
and-(as the clergy are wont thence to infer) all religion.
Godwin earl of Kent, and the West-Saxons with him,
stood for Hardecnute. Malmsbury saith, that the con-
test was between Dane and English; that the Danes
and Londoners grown now in a manner Danish, were
all for Hardecnute: but he being then in Denmark,
Harold prevailed, yet so as that the kingdom should be
divided between them; the west and south part reserv-
ed by Emma for Hardecnute till his return. But Ha-
rold, once advanced into the throne, banished Emma
his mother-in-law, seized on his father's treasure at
Winchester, and there remained. * Emma, not hold-
ing it safe to abide in Normandy while duke William
the bastard was yet under age, retired to Baldwin earl
of Flanders. In the mean while Elfred and Edward
sons of Ethelred, accompanied with a small number of
Norman soldiers in a few ships, coming to visit their |
mother Emma not yet departed the land, and perhaps
to see how the people were inclined to restore them
their right, Elfred was sent for by the king then at
London; but in his way met at Guilford by earl God-
win, who with all seeming friendship entertained him,
was in the night surprised and made prisoner, most of
his company put to various sorts of cruel death, deci-
mated twice over; then brought to London, was by the
king sent bound to Ely, had his eyes put out by the
way, and delivered to the monks there, died soon after
in their custody. Malmsbury gives little credit to this
story of Elfred, as not chronicled in his time, but ru-
moured only. Which Emma however hearing sent
away her son Edward, who by good hap accompanied
not his brother, with all speed into Normandy. But
the author of “Encomium Emmae,” who seems plainly
(though nameless) to have been some monk, yet lived,
and perhaps wrote within the same year when these
things were done; by his relation, differing from all
others, much aggravates the cruelty of Harold, that
he, not content to have practised in secret (ſor openly
he durst not) against, the life of Emma, sought many
treacherous ways to get her son within bis power; and
resolved at length to forge a letter in the name of their
mother, inviting them into England, the copy of which
letter he produces written to this purpose.
“EMMA in name only queen, to her sons Edward
and Elfred imparts motherly salutation. While we
severally bewail the death of our lord the king, most
dear sons ! and while daily you are deprived more and
more of the kingdom your inheritance; I admire what
counsel ye take, knowing that your intermitted delay
is a daily strengthening to the reign of your usurper,
who incessantly goes about from town to city, gaining
the chief nobles to his party, either by gifts, prayers,
or threats. But they had much rather one of you
should reign over them, than to be held under the
power of him who now overrules them. I entreat
therefore, that one of you come to me speedily, and
privately, to receive from me wholesome counsel, and
to know how the business which I intend shall be ac-
complished. By this messenger present, send back
what you determine. Farewel, as dear both as my
own heart.”
These letters were sent to the princes then in Nor-
mandy, by express messengers, with presents also as
from their mother; which they joyfully receiving, re-
turn word by the same messengers, that one of them
will be with her shortly; naming both the time and
place. Elfred therefore the younger (for so it was
thought best) at the appointed time, with a few ships
and small numbers about him appearing on the coast,
no sooner came ashore but fell into the snare of earl
Godwin, sent on purpose to betray him; as above was
related. Emma greatly sorrowing for the loss of her
son, thus cruelly made away, fled immediately with
some of the nobles her faithfullest adherents into Flan-
ders, had her dwelling assigned at Bruges by the earl;
where having remained about two years, she was
visited out of Denmark by Hardecnute her son ; and
he not long had remained with her there, when Harold
in England, having done nothing the while worth
memory, save the taxing of every port at eight marks
of silver to sixteen ships, died at London, some say at
h Florent. Brompton. Huntingd. Mat. West.
i Encom. Ein. g
k Post Christ. 1086. Sim. Dun.
| Post Christ. 1039. Sinn. Dun. Huntingd.
Book VI.
oo:3
THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
Oxford, and was buried at Winchester. m. After which,
most of the nobility, both Danes and English now
agreeing, send embassadors to Hardecnute still at
Bruges with his mother, entreating him to come and
receive as his right the seeptre; who before midsum-
mer came with sixty ships, and many soldiers out of
Denmark.
HARDECNUTE,
HARDEcNUTE received with acclamation, and seated
in the throne, first called to mind the injuries done to
him or his mother Emma in the time of Harold ; sent
Alfric archbishop of York, Godwin, and others, with
Troud his executioner, to London, commanding them
to dig up the body of King Harold, and throw it into a
ditch; but by a second order, into the Thames. Whence
taken up by a fisherman, and conveyed to a churchyard
in London belonging to the Danes, it was interred
again with honour. This done, he levied a sore tax,
that eight marks to every rower, and twelve to every
officer in his fleet, should be paid throughout England:
by which time they who were so forward to call him
over had enough of him ; for he, as they thought, had
too much of theirs. After this he called to account
Godwin earl of Kent, and Leving bishop of Worcester,
about the death of Elfred his half brother, which Alfric
the archbishop laid to their charge; the king deprived
Leving of his bishopric, and gave it to his accuser: but
the year following, pacified with a round sum, restored
it to Leving. " Godwin made his peace by a sump-
tuous present, a galley with a gilded stem bravely rig-
ged, and eighty soldiers in her, every one with brace-
lets of gold on each arm, weighing sixteen ounces,
helmet, corslet, and hilts of his sword gilded; a Danish
curtaxe, listed with gold or silver, hung on his left
shoulder, a shield with boss and nails gilded in his leſt
hand, in his right a lance; besides this, he took his
oath before the king, that neither of his own counsel
or will, but by the command of Harold, he had done
what he did, to the putting out Elfred's eyes. The like
oath took most of the nobility for themselves, or in his
behalf. "The next year Hardecnute sending his
house-carles, so they called his officers, to gather the
tribute imposed ; two of them, rigorous in their office,
were slain at Worcester by the people; whereat the
king enraged sent Leofric duke of Mercia, and Seward
of Northumberland, with great forces and commission
to slay the citizens, rifle and burn the city, and waste
the whole province. Affrighted with such news, all
the people fled : the countrymen whither they could,
the citizens to a small island in Severn, called Bever-
ege, which they fortified and defended stoutly till
peace was granted them, and freely to return home.
But their city they found sacked and burnt; where-
with the king was appeased. This was commendable
in him, however cruel to others, that towards his half.
brethren, though rivals of his crown, he shewed him-
self always tenderly affectioned; as now towards Ed-
ward, who without fear came to him out of Normandy,
and with unſeigned kindness received, remained safely
and honourably in his court. P But Hardecnute the
year following, at a feast wherein Osgod a great Dan-
ish lord gave his daughter in marriage at Lambeth to
Prudon another potent Dane, in the midst of his mirth,
sound and healthful to sight, while he was drinking
ſell down speechless, and so dying, was buried at
Winchester beside his father. He was it seems a great
lover of good cheer; sitting at table four times a day,
with great variety of dishes and superfluity to all comers.
Whereas, saith Huntingdon, in our time princes in
their houses made but one meal a day. He gave his
sister Gunildis, a virgin of rare beauty, in marriage to
Henry the Alman emperor; and to send her forth pom-
pously, all the nobility contributed their jewels and
richest ornaments. But it may seem a wonder, that our
historians, if they deserve that name, should in a mat-
ter so remarkable, and so near their own time, so much
differ. Huntingdon relates, against the credit of all
other records, that Hardecnute thus dead, the English
rejoicing at this unexpected riddance of the Danish
yoke, sent over to Elſred, the elder son of Emma by
King Ethelred, of whom we heard but now that he
died a prisoner at Ely, sent thither by Harold six years
before; that he came now out of Normandy, with a
great number of men, to receive the crown; that earl
Godwin, aiming to have his daughter queen of Eng-
land, by marrying her to Edward a simple youth, for
he thought Elfred of a higher spirit than to accept her,
persuaded the nobles, that Elfred had brought over too
many Normans, had promised them land here, that it
was not safe to suffer a warlike and subtle nation to
take root in the land, that these were to be so handled
as none of them might dare for the future to flock
hither, upon pretence of relation to the king: there-
upon by common consent of the nobles, both Elfred
and his company were dealt with as was above related;
that they then sent for Edward out of Normandy, with
hostages to be left there of their faithful intentions to
make him king, and their desires not to bring over
with him many Normans; that Edward at their call
came then first out of Normandy; whereas all others
agree, that he came voluntarily over to visit Hardec-
nute, as is before said, and was remaining then in
court at the time of his death. For Hardecnute dead,
saith Malmsbury, Edward, doubting greatly his own
safety, determined to rely wholly on the advice and fa-
vour of earl Godwin; desiring therefore by messengers
to have private speech with him, the earl a while deli-
berated: at last assenting, prince Edward came, and
would have fallen at his feet; but that not permitted,
told him the danger wherein he thought himself at pre-
sent, and in great perplexity besought his help, to con-
vey him some whither out of the land. Godwin soon
apprehending the fair occasion that now as it were
prompted him how to advance himself and his family,
cheerfully exhorted him to remember himself the son
of Ethelred, the grandchild of Edgar, right heir to the
crown at full age; not to think of flying, but of reign-
ing, which might easily be brought about, if he would
m Post Christ. 1040. Sim. Dun. Malms. n Malms.
o Post Christ. 1041. Sim. Dun. p Post Christ. 1042. Sim. Dun.
554 THE HISTORY
OF ENGLAND. Book VI.
follow his counsel; then setting forth the power and
authority which he had in England, promised it should
be all his to set him on the throne, if he on his part
would promise and swear to be for ever his friend, to
preserve the honour of his house, and to marry his
daughter. Edward, as his necessity then was, con-
sented easily, and swore to whatever Godwin required.
An assembly of states thereupon met at Gillingham,
where Edward pleaded his right; and by the power-
ful influence of Godwin was accepted. Others, as
Brompton, with no probability write, that Godwin at
this time was fled into Denmark, for what he had done
to Elfred, returned and submitted himself to Edward
then king, was by him charged openly with the death
of Elfred, and not without much ado, by the interces-
sion of Leofric and other peers, received at length into
ſavour.
EDWARD the Confessor.
GLAD were the English delivered so unexpectedly
from their Danish masters, and little thought how near
another conquest was hanging over them. Edward,
the Easter following, crowned at Winchester, the same
year accompanied with earl Godwin, Leofric, and Si-
ward, came again thither on a sudden, and by their
counsel seized on the treasure of his mother Emma.
The cause alleged is, that she was hard to him in the
time of his banishment; and indeed she is said not
much to have loved Ethelred her former husband, and
thereafter the children by him ; she was moreover moted
to be very covetous, hard to the poor, and profuse to
monasteries. " About this time also King Edward, ac-
cording to promise, took to wife Edith or Egith earl
Godwin's daughter, commended much for beauty, mo-
desty, and beyond what is requisite in a woman, learn-
ing. Ingulſ, then a youth lodging in the court with
his father, saw her oſt, and coming from the school,
was sometimes met by her and posed, not in grammar
only, but in logic. Edward the next year but ones
made ready a strong navy at Sandwich against Mag-
nus king of Norway, who threatened an invasion, had
not Swane king of Denmark diverted him by a war at
home to defend his own land; t not out of good will to
Edward, as may be supposed, who at the same time
expressed none to the Danes, banishing Gunildis the
niece of Canute with her two sons, and Osgod by sur-
name Clapa, out of the realm. u Swane, overpowered
by Magnus, sent the next year to entreat aid of King
Edward; Godwin gave counsel to send him fifty ships
fraught with soldiers; but Leofric and the general
voice gainsaying, none were sent. * The next year Ha-
rold Harvager, king of Norway, sending embassadors,
made peace with King Edward; but an earthquake at
Worcester and Derby, pestilence and famine in many
places, much lessened the enjoyment thereof. 9. The
next year Henry the emperor, displeased with Bald-
win earl of Flanders, had straitened him with a great
army by land; and sending to King Edward, desired
him with his ships to hinder what he might his escape
by sea. The king therefore, with a great navy, coming
to Sandwich, there staid till the emperor came to an
agreement with earl Baldwin. Mean while Swane
son of earl Godwin, who, not permitted to marry Ed-
giva the abbess of Chester by him deflowered, had left
the land, came out of Denmark with eight ships, feign-
ing a desire to return into the king's favour; and Beorn
his cousin german, who commanded part of the king's
navy, promised to intercede, that his earldom might be
restored him. Godwin therefore and Beorn with a few
ships, the rest of the fleet gone home, coming to Pe-
vensey, (but Godwin soon departed thence in pursuit of
twenty-nine Danish ships, who had got much booty on
the coast of Essex, and perished by tempest in their re-
turn,) Swane with his ships comes to Beorn at Pevensey,
guilefully requests him to sail with him to Sandwich,
and reconcile him to the king, as he had promised.
Beorn mistrusting no evil where he intended good, went
with him in his ship attended by three only of his ser-
vants: but Swane, set upon barbarous cruelty, not re-
conciliation with the king, took Beorn now in his
power, and bound him ; then coming to Dartmouth,
slew and buried him in a deep ditch. After which the
men of Hastings took six of his ships, and brought
them to the king at Sandwich; with the other two he
escaped into Flanders, there remaining till Aldred
bishop of Worcester by earnest mediation wrought his
peace with the king. About this time King Edward
sent to pope Leo, desiring absolution from a vow which
he had made in his younger years, to take a journey to
Rome, if God vouchsafed him to reign in England;
the pope dispensed with his vow, but not without the
expense of his journey given to the poor, and a monas-
tery built or re-edified to St. Peter; who in vision to a
monk, as is said, chose Westminster, which King Ed-
ward thereupon rebuilding endowed with large privi-
leges and revenues. The same year, saith Florent of
Worcester, certain Irish pirates with thirty-six ships
entered the mouth of Severn, and with the aid of Grif.
fin prince of South Wales, did some hurt in those parts:
then passing the river Wye, burnt Dunedlam, and
slew all the inhabitants they found. Against whom
Aldred bishop of Worcester, with a few out of Glou-
cester and Herefordshire, went out in haste: but Griffin,
to whom the Welsh and Irish had privily sent messen-
gers, came down upon the English with his whole
power by night, and early in the morning suddenly
assaulting them, slew many, and put the rest to flight.
*The next year but one, King Edward remitted the
Danish tax which had continued thirty-eight years
heavy upon the land since Ethelred first paid it to the
Danes, and what remained thereof in his treasury he
sent back to the owners: but through imprudence laid
the foundation of a far worse mischief to the English;
while studying gratitude to those Normans, who to him
in exile had been helpful, he called them over to public
offices here, whom better he might have repaid out of
his private purse; by this means exasperating either
X Post Christ. 1048. Sim. T)un.
Malms
q Post Christ. 1043. Sim. Dun. . . r. Malms.
- t Post Christ. 1046. Sim. Dun.
s Post Christ. 1045. Sim. IXun.
u Post Christ. 1047. Sinn. Dun.
y Post Christ, 1049. Sim. Dun.
* f z Malms,
a Post Christ. 1051. Sim, Dun. Ingulf.
Book VI.
555
THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
nation one against the other, and making way by de-
grees to the Norman conquest. Robert a monk of that
country, who had been serviceable to him there in time
of need, he made bishop, first of London, then of Can-
terbury; William his chaplain, bishop of Dorchester.
Then began the English to lay aside their own ancient
customs, and in many things to imitate French man-
ners, the great peers to speak French in their houses,
in French to write their bills and letters, as a great
piece of gentility, ashamed of their own : a presage of
their subjection shortly to that people, whose fashions
and language they affected so slavishly. But that
which gave beginning to many troubles ensuing hap-
pened this year, and upon this occasion. "Eustace
earl of Boloign, father of the famous Godfrey who won
Jerusalem from the Saracens, and husband to Goda the
king's sister, having been to visit King Edward, and
returning by Canterbury to take ship at Dover, one of
his harbingers, insolently seeking to lodge by force in
a house there, provoked so the master thereof, as by
chance or heat of anger to kill him. The count with
his whole train going to the house where his servant
had been killed, slew both the slayer and eighteen
more who defended him. But the townsmen running
to arms requited him with the slaughter of twenty more
of his servants, wounded most of the rest; he himself
with one or two hardly escaping, ran back with clamour
to the king ; whom, seconded by other Norman
courtiers, he stirred up to great anger against the citi-
zens of Canterbury. Earl Godwin in haste is sent for,
the cause related and much aggravated by the king
against that city, the earl commanded to raise forces,
and use the citizens thereof as enemies. Godwin, sorry
to see strangers more favoured of the king than his
native people, answered, that “it were better to summon
first the chief men of the town into the king's court, to
charge them with sedition, where both parties might
be heard, that not found in fault they might be acquit-
ted; if otherwise, by fine or loss of life might satisfy
the king, whose peace they had broken, and the count
whom they had injured: till this were done refusing to
prosecute with hostile punishment them of his own
country unheard, whom his office was rather to defend.”
The king displeased with his refusal, and not knowing
how to compel him, appointed an assembly of all the
peers to be held at Gloucester, where the matter might
be fully tried ; the assembly was full and frequent ac-
cording to summons: but Godwin mistrusting his own
cause, or the violence of his adversaries, with his two
sons, Swane and Harold, and a great power gathered
out of his own and his sons' earldoms, which contained
most of the south-east and west parts of England,
came no farther than Beverstan, giving out that their
forces were to go against the Welsh, who intended an
irruption into Herefordshire; and Swane under that
pretence lay with part of his army thereabout. The
Welsh understanding this device, and with all dili-
gence clearing themselves before the king, left Godwin
detected of false accusation in great hatred to all the
assembly. Leofric therefore and Siward, dukes of great
power, the former in Mercia, the other in all parts be-
yond Humber, both ever faithful to the king, send
privily with speed to raise the forces of their provinces.
Which Godwin not knowing sent bold to King Ed-
ward, demanding count Eustace and his followers,
together with those Boloignians, who, as Simeon
writes, held a castle in the jurisdiction of Canterbury.
The king, as then having but little force at hand,
entertained him a while with treaties and delays, till
his summoned army drew nigh, then rejected his de-
mands. Godwin, thus matched, commanded his sons
not to begin fight against the king; begun with, not
to give ground. The king's forces were the flower of
those counties whence they came, and eager to fall on :
but Leofric and the wiser sort, detesting civil war,”
brought the matter to this accord; that hostages given
on either side, the cause should be again debated at
London. Thither the king and lords coming with
their army, sent to Godwin and his sons (who with
their powers were come as far as Southwark) command-
ing their appearance unarmed with only twelve at-
tendants, and that the rest of their soldiers they should
deliver over to the king. They to appear without
pledges before an adverse faction denied ; but to dis-
miss their soldiers refused not, nor in aught else to
obey the king as far as might stand with honour and
the just regard of their safety. This answer not
pleasing the king, an edict was presently issued forth,
that Godwin and his sons within five days depart the
land. He, who perceived now his numbers to dimin-
ish, readily obeyed, and with his wife and three sons,
Tosti, Swame, and Gyrtha, with as much treasure as
their ship could carry, embarked at Thorney, sailed
into Flanders to earl Baldwin, whose daughter Judith
Tosti had married : for Wulnod his fourth son was then
a hostage to the king in Normandy; his other two,
Harold and Leofwin, taking ship at Bristow, in a
vessel that lay ready there belonging to Swane, passed
into Ireland. King Edward, pursuing his displeasure,
divorced his wife Edith earl Godwin’s daughter, send-
ing her despoiled of all her ornaments to Warewel
with one waiting-maid; to be kept in custody by his
sister the abbess there. “His reason of so doing was as
harsh as his act, that she only, while her nearest rela-
tions were in banishment, might not, though innocent,
enjoy ease at home. After this, William duke of
Normandy, with a great number of followers, coming
into England, was by King Edward honourably enter-
tained, and led about the cities and castles, as it were
to shew him what ere long was to be his own, (though
at that time, saith Ingulf, no mention thereof passed
between them,) them, after some time of his abode here,
presented richly and dismissed, he returned home.
e The next year Queen Emma died, and was buried at
Winchester. The chronicle attributed to John Bromp-
ton a Yorkshire abbot, but rather of some nameless
author living under Edward III, or later, reports that
the year before, by Robert the archbishop she was ac-
cused both of consenting to the death of her son Elfred,
and of preparing poison for Edward also ; lastly of too
b Malms. c Sim. Dun.
d Malms. e Post Christ. 1052, Sim. Dun.
556
Book VI.
THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
much familiarity with Alwin bishop of Winchester:
that to approve her innocence, praying overnight to
St. Swithune, she offered to pass blindfold between
certain ploughshares redhot, according to the ordalian
law, which without harm she performed; that the king
thereupon received her to honour, and from her and the
bishop, penance for his credulity; that the archbishop,
ashamed of his accusation, fled out of England: which,
besides the silence of ancienter authors, (for the bishop
fled not till a year after,) brings the whole story into
suspicion, in this more probable, if it can be proved,
that in memory of this deliverance from the nine
burning ploughshares, Queen Emma gave to the abbey
of St. Swithune nine manors, and bishop Alwin other
nine. About this time Griffin prince of South Wales
wasted Herefordshire; to oppose whom the people of
that country, with many Normans, garrisoned in the
castle of Hereford, went out in arms, but were put to
the worse, many slain, and much booty driven away
by the Welsh. Soon after which Harold and Leofwin,
sons of Godwin, coming into Severn with many ships,
in the confines of Somerset and Dorsetshire, spoiled
many villages, and resisted by those of Somerset and
Devonshire, slew in a fight more than thirty of their
principal men, many of the common sort, and returned
with much booty to their fleet. f King Edward on the
other side made ready above sixty ships at Sandwich
well stored with men and provision, under the conduct
of Odo and Radulf two of his Norman kindred, en-
joining them to find out Godwin, whom he heard to
be at sea. To quicken them, he himself lay on ship-
board, ofttimes watched and sailed up and down in
search of those pirates. But Godwin, whether in a
mist, or by other accident, passing by them, arrived in
another part of Kent, and dispersing several messengers
abroad, by fair words allured the chief men of Kent,
Surrey, and Essex, to his party; which news coming
to the king's fleet at Sandwich, they hasted to find him
out; but missing of him again, came up without effect
to London. Godwin, advertised of this, forth with
sailed to the Isle of Wight; where at length his two
sons Harold and Leofwin finding him, with their united
navy lay on the coast, forbearing other hostility than
to furnish themselves with fresh victuals from land as
they needed. Thence as one fleet they set forward to
Sandwich, using all fair means by the way to increase
their numbers both of mariners and soldiers. The king
then at London, startled at these tidings, gave speedy
order to raise forces in all parts that had not revolted
from him ; but now too late, for Godwin within a few
days after with his ships or galleys came up the river
Thames to Southwark, and till the tide returned
had conference with the Londoners; whom by fair
speeches (for he was held a good speaker in those
times) he brought to his bent. The tide returned,
and none upon the bridge hindering, he rowed up
in his galleys along the south bank; where his land-
army, now come to him, in array of battle now stood on
the shore; then turning toward the north side of the
river, where the king's galleys lay in some readiness,
and land forces also not far off, he made shew as offer-
ing to fight; but they understood one another, and the
soldiers on either side soon declared their resolution not
to fight English against English. Thence coming to
treaty, the king and the earl reconciled, both armies
were dissolved, Godwin and his sons restored to their
former dignities, except Swane, who, touched in con-
science for the slaughter of Beorn his kinsman, was
gone barefoot to Jerusalem, and, returning home, died
by sickness or Saracens in Lycia ; his wife Edith, God-
win's daughter, King Edward took to him again, dig-
nified as before. Then were the Normans, who had
done many unjust things under the king's authority,
and given him ill counsel against his people, banished
the realm; some of them, not blamable, permitted to
stay. Robert archbishop of Canterbury, William of
London, Ulf of Lincoln, all Normans, hardly escaping
with their followers, got to sea. The archbishop went
with his complaint to Rome; but returning, died in
Normandy at the same monastery from whence he
came. Osbern and Hugh surrendered their castles,
and by permission of Leofric passed through his coun-
tries with their Normans to Macbeth king of Scotland.
* The year following, Rhese, brother to Griffin, prince
of South Wales, who by inroads had done much damage
to the English, taken at Bulendun, was put to death
by the king's appointment, and his head brought to
him at Gloucester. The same year at Winchester, on the
second holy day of Easter, earl Godwin, sitting with the
king at table, sunk down suddenly in his seat as dead:
his three sons, Harold, Tosti, and Girtha, forth with car-
ried him into the king's chamber, hoping he might re-
vive: but the malady had so seized him, that the fifth
day after he expired. The Normans who hated God-
win give out, saith Malmsbury, that mention happen-
ing to be made of Elfred, and the king thereat looking
sourly upon Godwin, he, to vindicate himself, uttered
these words: “Thou, O king, at every mention made
of thy brother Elfred, lookest frowningly upon me;
but let God not suffer me to swallow this morsel, if I
be guilty of aught done against his life or thy advan-
tage; ” that after these words, choaked with the mor-
sel taken, he sunk down and recovered not. His first
wife was the sister of Canute, a woman of much in-
famy for the trade she drove of buying up English
youths and maids to sell in Denmark, whereof she
made great gain; but ere long was struck with thun-
der and died. " The year ensuing, Siward earl of
Northumberland, with a great number of horse and
foot, attended also by a strong fleet at the king's
appointment, made an expedition into Scotland, van-
quished the tyrant Macbeth, slaying many thousands
of Scots with those Normans that went thither, and
placed Malcolm son of the Cumbrian king in his stead;
yet not without loss of his own son, and many other
both English and Danes. Told of his son's death, he
asked whether he received his death's wound before or
behind. When it was answered, before; “I am glad,”
saith he, “ and should not else have thought him,
though my son, worthy of burial.” In the mean while
f Malms. g Post Christ. 1053, Silm. Dun.
h Post Christ. 1051. Sim, Dun. i Huntingd.
Book VI.
557
THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
King Edward, being without issue to succeed him, sent
Aldred bishop of Winchester with great presents to the
emperor, entreating him to prevail with the king of
Hungary, that Edward, the remaining son of his bro-
ther Edmund Ironside, might be sent into England.
Siward, but one year surviving his great victory, died
at York; k reported by Huntingdon a man of giant like
stature; and by his own demeanour at point of death
manifested, of a rough and mere soldierly mind. For
much disdaining to die in bed by a disease, not in the
field fighting with his enemies, he caused himself com-
pletely armed, and weaponed with battleaxe and shield,
to be set in a chair, whether to fight with death, if he
could be so vain, or to meet him (when far other wea-
pons and preparations were needful) in a martial bra-
very; but true fortitude glories not in the feats of war,
as they are such, but as they serve to end war soonest
by a victorious peace. His earldom the king bestowed
on Tosti the son of earl Godwin : and soon after, in a
convention held at London, banished without visible
cause, Huntingdon saith for treason, Algar the son of
Leofric; who, passing into Ireland, soon returned with
eighteen ships to Griffin prince of South Wales, re-
questing his aid against King Edward. He, assem-
bling his powers, entered with him into Herefordshire;
whom Radulf a timorous captain, son to the king's
sister, not by Eustace, but a former husband, met two
miles distant from Hereford; and having horsed the
English, who knew better to fight on foot, without
stroke he with his French and Normans beginning to fly,
taught the English by his example. Griffin and Algar,
following the chase, slew many, wounded more, enter-
ed Hereford, slew seven canons defending the minster,
burnt the monastery and reliques, then the city; kill-
ing some, leading captive others of the citizens, re-
turned with great spoils; whereof King Edward hav-
ing notice gathered a great army at Gloucester under
the conduct of Harold, now earl of Kent, who strenu-
ously pursuing Griffin entered Wales, and encamped
beyond Straddale. But the enemy flying before him
farther into the country, leaving there the greater part
of his army with such as had charge to fight, if occa-
sion were offered, with the rest he returned, and fortified
Hereford with a wall and gates. Meanwhile Griffin
and Algar, dreading the diligence of Harold, after
many messages to and fro, concluded a peace with him.
Algar, discharging his fleet with pay at West-Chester,
came to the king, and was restored to his earldom.
But Griffin with breach of faith, the next year set
upon Leoſgar the bishop of Hereford and his clerks
then at a place called Glastbrig, with Agelnorth vis-
count of the shire, and slew them; but Leofric, Harold,
and King Edward, by force, as is likeliest, though it be
not said how, reduced him to peace. " The next year,
Edward son of Edmund Ironside, for whom his uncle
King Edward had sent to the emperor, came out of
Hungary, designed successor to the crown; but within
a few days after his coming died at London, leaving
behind him Edgar Atheling his son, Margaret and
Christiana his daughters. About the same time also died
earl Leofric in a good old age, a man of no less virtue
than power in his time, religious, prudent, and faithful
to his country, happily wedded to Godiva, a woman of
great praise. His son Algar found less favour with King
Edward, again banished the year after his father's death,”
but he again by the aid of Griffin and a fleet from
Norway, maugre the king, soon recovered his earldom.
° The next year Malcolm king of Scots, coming to visit
King Edward, was brought on his way by Tosti the
Northumbrian, to whom he swore brotherhood : yet the
next year but one,” while Tosti was gone to Rome
with Aldred archbishop of York for his pall, this sworn
brother, taking advantage of his absence, roughly
harassed Northumberland. The year passing to an
end without other matter of moment, save the frequent
inroads and robberies of Griffin, whom no bonds of
faith could restrain, King Edward sent against him
aſter Christmas Harold now duke of West-Saxons,"
with no great body of horse, from Gloucester, where
he then kept his court; whose coming heard of Griffin
not daring to abide, nor in any part of his land holding
himself secure, escaped hardly by sea, ere Harold,
coming to Rudeland, burnt his palace and ships there,
returning to Gloucester the same day. F But by the
middle of May setting out with a fleet from Bristow,
he sailed about the most part of Wales, and met by his
brother Tosti with many troops of horse, as the king
had appointed, began to waste the country; but the
Welsh giving pledges, yielded themselves, promised
to become tributary, and banish Griffin their prince;
who lurking somewhere was the next years taken and
slain by Griffin prince of North Wales; his head with
the head and tackle of his ship sent to Harold, by him
to the king, who of his gentleness made Blechgent and
Rith wallon, or Rivallon, his two brothers, princes in
his stead; they to Harold in behalf of the king swore
fealty and tribute. Yet the next year Harold having
built a fair house at a place called Portascith in Mon-
mouthshire, and stored it with provision, that the king
might lodge there in time of hunting, Caradoc, the son
of Griffin slain the year before,” came with a number of
men, slew all he found there, and took away the pro-
vision. Soon after which the Northumbrians in a tu-
mult at York beset the palace of Tosti their earl, slew
more than two hundred of his soldiers and servants,
pillaged his treasure, and put him to fly for his life.
The cause of this insurrection they alleged to be, for
that the queen Edith had commanded, in her brother
Tosti's behalf, Gospatric a nobleman of that country to
be treacherously slain in the king’s court; and that
Tosti himself the year before with like treachery had
caused to be slain in his chamber Gamel and Ulf, two
other of their noblemen, besides his intolerable exac-
tions and oppressions. Then in a manner the whole
country, coming up to complain of their grievances,
met with Harold at Northampton, whom the king at
Tosti's request had sent to pacify the Northumbrians;
but they laying open the cruelty of his government,
k Post Christ. 1055. Sim. Dun. -
m, Post Christ. 1057. Sim. Dun.
o Post Christ. 1059.
| Post Christ. 1056, Sim. Dun.
n, Post Christ. 1958. Sim. Dun.
D Post Christ. 1061. Sim, Dun.
q Post Christ. 1062. Sim. Dun.
S Post Christ. 1064. Sim. Dun.
t Post Christ. 1065. Sim. Duu.
r Post Christ. 1063. Sim. Dun.
u Camden.
558
IBook VI.
THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
and their own birthright of freedom not to endure the
tyranny of any governor whatsoever, with absolute re-
fusal to admit him again, and Harold hearing reason,
all the accomplices of Tosti were expelled the earldom.
He himself, banished the realm, went into Flanders;
Morcar the son of Algar made earl in his stead.
Huntingdon tells another cause of Tosti's banishment,
that one day at Windsor, while Harold reached the
cup to King Edward, Tosti, envying to see his younger
brother in greater favour than himself, could not for-
lear to run furiously upon him, catching hold of his
hair; the scuffle was soon parted by other attendants
rushing between, and Tosti forbidden the court. He
with continued fury riding to Hereford, where Harold
had many servants, preparing an entertainment for the
king, came to the house and set upon them with his
followers; then lopping off hands, arms, legs of some,
heads of others, threw them into buts of wine, meath,
or ale, which were laid in for the king's drinking : and
at his going away charged them to send him this word,
that of other fresh meats he might bring with him to
his farm what he pleased, but of souse he should find
plenty provided ready for him : that for this barbarous
act the king pronounced him banished; that the Nor-
thumbrians, taking advantage at the king's displeasure
and sentence against him, rose also to be revenged of
his cruelties done to themselves. But this no way
agrees; for why then should Harold or the king so
much labour with the Northumbrians to readmit him,
if he were a banished man for his crimes done before ?
About this time it happened, that Harold putting to
sea one day for his pleasure,” in a fisherboat, from his
manor at Boseham in Sussex, caught with a tempest
too far off lands was carried into Normandy ; and by
the earl of Pontiew, on whose coast he was driven, at
his own request brought to duke William; who, enter-
taining him with great courtesy, so far won him, as to
promise the duke by oath of his own accord, not only
the castle of Dover then in his tenure, but the kingdom
also after King's Edward's death to his utmost endea-
vour, thereupon betrothing the duke's daughter then
too young for marriage, and departing richly presented.
Others say, that King Edward himself, after the death
of Edward his nephew, sent Harold thither on purpose
to acquaint duke William with his intention to be-
queath him his kingdom 9 but Malmsbury accounts
the former story to be the truer. Ingulf writes, that
King Edward now grown old, and perceiving Edgar
his nephew both in body and mind unfit to govern,
especially against the pride and insolence of Godwin's
sons, who would never obey him ; duke William on
the other side of high merit, and his kinsman by the
mother, had sent Robert archbishop of Canterbury, to
acquaint the duke with his purpose, not long before
Harold came thither. The former part may be true,
that King Edward upon such considerations had sent
one or other; but archbishop Robert was fled the land,
and dead many years before. Eadmer and Simeon
write, that Harold went of his own accord into Nor-
mandy, by the king's permission or connivance, to get
free his brother Wulnod and nephew Hacun the son of
Swane, whom the king had taken hostages of Godwin,
and sent into Normandy; that King Edward foretold
Harold, his journey thither would be to the detriment
of all England, and his own reproach; that duke Wil-
liam then acquainted Harold, how Edward ere his
coming to the crown had promised, if ever he attained
it, to leave duke William successor after him. Last of
these Matthew Paris writes, that Harold, to get free of
duke William, affirmed his coming thither not to have
been by accident or force of tempest, but on set pur-
pose, in that private manner to enter with him into
secret confederacy : so variously are these things re-
ported. After this King Edward grew sickly,” yet as
he was able kept his Christmas at London, and was
at the dedication of St. Peter's church in Westminster,
which he had rebuilt; but on the eve of Epiphany, or
Twelfthtide, deceased much lamented, and in the
church was entombed. That he was harmless and
simple, is conjectured by his words in anger to a pea-
sant, who had crossed his game, (for with hunting and
hawking he was much delighted,) “by God and God's
mother,” said he, “I shall do you as shrewd a turn if
I can ;” observing that law maxim, the best of all his
successors, “ that the king of England can do no
wrong.” The softness of his nature gave growth to
factions of those about him, Normans especially and
English; these complaining, that Robert the archbishop
was a sower of dissension between the king and his
people, a traducer of the English; the other side, that
Godwin and his sons bore themselves arrogantly and
proudly towards the king, usurping to themselves equal
share in the government, ofttimes making sport with
his simplicity;” that through their power in the land,
they made no scruple to kill men of whose inheritance
they took a liking, and so to take possession. The
truth is, that Godwin and his sons did many things
boisterously and violently, much against the king's
mind; which not able to resist, he had, as some say,
his wife Edith Godwin’s daughter in such aversation,
as in bed, never to have touched her; whether for this
cause, or mistaken chastity, not commendable; to in-
quire further, is not material. His laws held good and
just, and long after desired by the English of their
Norman kings, are yet extant. He is said to be at
table not excessive, at festivals nothing puffed up with
the costly robes he wore, which his queen with curious
art had woven for him in gold. He was full of alms-
deeds, and exhorted the monks to like charity. He is
said to be the first English king that cured the disease
thence called the king's evil; yet Malmsbury blames
them who attribute that cure to his royalty, not to his
sanctity; said also to have cured certain blind men
with the water wherein he hath washed his hands. A
little before his death, lying speechless two days, the
third day, after a deep sleep, he was heard to pray, that
if it were a true vision, not an illusion which he had
seen, God would give him strength to utter it, other-
wise not. Then he related how he had seen two de-
vout monks, whom he knew in Normandy to have
x Malms. y Leges Ed. Conf. Tit. Lex Noricor.
2. Post Christ. 1066. Sim, Dun. a II untingd,
Book VI.
559
THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
lived and died well, who appearing told him they were
sent messengers from God to ſoretel, that because the
great ones of England, dukes, lords, bishops, and ab-
bots, were not ministers of God, but of the devil, God
had delivered the land to their enemies; and when he
desired, that he might reveal this vision, to the end
they might repent, it was answered, they neither will
repent, neither will God pardon them : at this relation
others trembling, Stigand the simonious archbishop,
whom Edward much to blame had suffered many years
to sit primate in the church, is said to have laughed,
as at the feverish dream of a doting old man; but the
event proved it true.
HAROLD, son of Earl Godwin.
HARold, whether by King Edward a little before his
death ordained successor to the crown, as Simeon of
Durham and b others affirm; or by the prevalence of
his faction, excluding Edgar the right heir, grandchild
to Edmund Ironside, as Malmsbury and Huntingdon
agree ; no sooner was the funeral of King Edward
ended, but on the same day was elected and crowned
king: and no sooner placed in the throne, but began
to frame himself by all manner of compliances to gain
affection, endeavoured to make good laws, repealed
bad, became a great patron to church and churchmen,
courteous and affable to all reputed good, a hater of
evildoers, charged all his officers to punish thieves, rob-
bers, and all disturbers of the peace, while he himself
by sea and land laboured in the defence of his country:
so good an actor is ambition. In the mean while a
blazing star, seven mornings together, about the end
of April was seen to stream terribly, not only over
England, but other parts of the world; foretelling here,
as was thought, the great changes approaching: plain-
liest prognosticated by Elmer, a monk of Malmsbury,
who could not foresee, when time was, the breaking of
his own legs for soaring too high. He in his youth
strangely aspiring, had made and fitted wings to his
hands and feet; with these on the top of a tower, spread
out to gather air, he flew more than a furlong; but the
wind being too high, came fluttering down, to the
maiming of all his limbs; yet so conceited of his art,
that he attributed the cause of his fall to the want of a
tail, as birds have, which he forgot to make to his hinder
parts. This story, though seeming otherwise too light
in the midst of a sad narration, yet for the strangeness
thereof, I thought worthy enough the placing, as I
found it placed in my author. But to digress no farther:
Tosti the king's brother coming from Flanders, full of
envy at his younger brother's advancement to the
crown, resolved what he might to trouble his reign ;
forcing therefore them of Wight Isle to contribution,
he sailed thence to Sandwich, committing piracies on
the coast between. Harold, then residing at London,
with a great number of ships drawn together, and of
horse troops by land, prepares in person for Sandwich:
whereof Tosti having notice directs his course with
sixty ships towards Lindsey," taking with him all the
seamen he found, willing or unwilling; where he burnt
many villages, and slew many of the inhabitants; but
Edwin the Mercian duke, and Morcar his brother, the
Northumbrian earl, with their forces on either side, soon
drove him out of the country. Who thence betook him
to Malcolm the Scottish king, and with him abode the
whole summer. About the same time duke William
sending embassadors to admonish Harold of his promise
and oath, to assist him in his plea to the kingdom, he
made answer, that by the death of his daughter be-
trothed to him on that condition, he was absolved of
his oath ; d or not dead, he could not take her now an
outlandish woman, without consent of the realm ; that
it was presumptuously done, and not to be persisted in,
if without consent or knowledge of the states, he had
sworn away the right of the kingdom ; that what he
swore was to gain his liberty, being in a manner then
his prisoner; that it was unreasonable in the duke, to
require or expect of him the foregoing of a kingdom,
conferred upon him with universal favour and acclama-
tion of the people. To this flat denial he added con-
tempt, sending the messengers back, saith Matthew
Paris, on maimed horses. The duke, thus contemptu-
ously put off, addresses himself to the pope, setting
forth the justice of his cause ; which Harold, whether
through haughtiness of mind, or distrust, or that the
ways to Rome were stopped, sought not to do. Duke
William, besides the promise and oath of Harold, al-
leged that King Edward, by the advice of Seward,
Godwin himself, and Stigand the archbishop, had
given him the right of succession, and had sent him
the son and nephew of Godwin, pledges of the gift :
the pope sent to duke William, after this demonstration
of his right, a consecrated banner. Whereupon he
having with great care and choice got an army of tall
and stout soldiers, under captains of great skill and
mature age, came in August to the port of St. Valerie.
Meanwhile Harold from London comes to Sandwich,
there expecting his navy; which also coming, he sails
to the Isle of Wight; and having heard of duke Wil-
liam's preparations and readiness to invade him, kept
good watch on the coast, and foot forces every where
in fit places to guard the shore. But ere the middle
of September, provision failing when it was most
needed, both fleet and army return home. When on a
sudden, Harold Harvager king of Norway, with a navy
of more than five hundred great ships, e (others lessen
them by two hundred, others augment them to a thou-
sand,) appears at the mouth of Tine; to whom earl
Tosti with his ships came as was agreed between them ;
whence both uniting set sail with all speed, and entered
the river Humber. Thence turning into Ouse, as far
as Rical, landed, and won York by assault. At these
tidings Harold with all his power hastes thitherward;
but ere his coming, Edwin and Morcar at Fulford by
York, on the north side of Ouse, about the feast of St.
Matthew had given them battle ; successfully at first,
but overborn at length with numbers; and forced to
turn their backs, more of them perished in the river,
than in the fight. The Norwegians taking with them
b Hoved. Florent. c Malms.
d Eadmer. e Malms. Matt. Paris.
560
Book VI.
THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
five hundred hostages out of York, and leaving there
one hundred and fifty of their own, retired to their
ships. But the fifth day after, King Harold with a
great and well-appointed army coming to York, and
at Stamford bridge, or Battle bridge on Darwent, as-
sailing the Norwegians, after much bloodshed on both
sides, cut off the greatest part of them, with Harvager
their king, and Tosti his own brother.f But Olave the
king's son, and Paul earl of Orkney, left with many
soldiers to guard the ships, surrendering themselves
with hostages, and oath given never to return as ene-
mies, he suffered freely to depart with twenty ships,
and the small remnant of their army. g. One man of
the Norwegians is not to be forgotten, who with incre-
dible valour keeping the bridge a long hour against
the whole English army, with his single resistance
delayed their victory; and scorning offered life, till in
the end no man daring to grapple with him, either
dreaded as too strong, or contemned as one desperate,
he was at length shot dead with an arrow ; and by his
fall opened the passage of pursuit to a complete victory.
Wherewith Harold lifted up in mind, and forgetting
now his former shows of popularity, defrauded his sol-
diers their due and well-deserved share of the spoils.
While these things passed in Northumberland, duke
William lay still at St. Valerie; his ships were ready,
but the wind served not for many days; which put the
soldiery into much discouragement and murmur,
taking this for an unlucky sign of their success; at last
the wind came favourable, the duke first under sail
awaited the rest at anchor, till all coming forth, the
whole fleet of nine hundred ships with a prosperous
gale arrived at Hastings. At his going out of the boat
by a slip falling on his hands, to correct the omen, h a
soldier standing by said aloud, that their duke had
taken possession of England. Landed, he restrained
his army from waste and spoil, saying that they ought
to spare what was their own. But these things are
related of Alexander and Caesar, and I doubt thence
borrowed by the monks to inlay their story. The
duke for fifteen days after landing kept his men quiet
within the camp, having taken the castle of Hastings,
or built a fortress there. Harold secure the while, and
proud of his new victory, thought all his enemies now
under foot; but sitting jollily at dinner, news is brought
him that duke William of Normandy with a great
multitude of horse and foot, slingers and archers, be-
sides other choice auxiliaries which he had hired in
France, was arrived at Pevensey. Harold, who had
expected him all the summer, but not so late in the
year as now it was, for it was October, with his forces
much diminished after two sore conflicts, and the de-
parting of many others from him discontented, in great
haste marches to London. Thence not tarrying for
supplies, which were on their way towards him, hurries
into Sussex, (for he was always in haste since the day
of his coronation,) and ere the third part of his army
could be well put in order, finds the duke about nine
miles from Hastings, and now drawing nigh, sent spies
before him to survey the strength and number of his
f Camd. g Malms.
enemies: them discovered, such the duke causing to
be led about, and after well filled with meat and drink,
sent back. They not otherwise brought word, that the
duke's army were most of them priests; for they saw
their faces all over shaven ; the English then using to
let grow on their upper lip large mustachios, as did
anciently the Britons. The king laughing answered,
that they were not priests, but valiant and hardy sol-
diers. Therefore said Girtha his brother, a youth of
noble courage and understanding above his age, “For-
bear thou thyself to fight, who art obnoxious to duke
William by oath, let us unsworn undergo the hazard
of battle, who may justly fight in the defence of our
country; thou, reserved to fitter time, mayst either
reunite us flying, or revenge us dead.” The king not
hearkening to this, lest it might seem to argue fear in
him or a bad cause, with like resolution rejected the
offers of duke William sent to him by a monk before
the battle, with this only answer hastily delivered,
“Let God judge between us.” The offers were these,
that Harold would either lay down the sceptre, or hold
it of him, or try his title with him by single combat in
sight of both armies, or refer it to the pope. These re-
jected, both sides prepared to fight the next morning,
the English from singing and drinking all night, the
Normans from confession of their sins, and communion
of the host. The English were in a strait disadvanta-
geous place, so that many, discouraged with their ill
ordering, scarce having room where to stand, slipped
away before the onset, the rest in close order, with their
battleaxes and shields, made an impenetrable squadron:
the king himself with his brothers on foot stood by the
royal standard, wherein the figure of a man fighting
was inwoven with gold and precious stones. The
Norman foot, most bowmen, made the foremost front,
on either side wings of horse somewhat behind. The
duke arming, and his corslet given him on the wrong
side, said pleasantly, “The strength of my dukedom
will be turned now into a kingdom.” Then the whole
army singing the song of Rowland, the remembrance
of whose exploits might hearten them, imploring lastly
divine help, the battle began ; and was fought sorely
on either side : but the main body of English foot by
no means would be broken, till the duke, causing his
men to feign flight, drew them out with desire of pur-
suit into open disorder, then turned suddenly upon
them so routed by themselves, which wrought their
overthrow; yet so they died not unmanfully, but turning
oft upon their enemies, by the advantage of an upper
ground, beat them down by heaps, and filled up a great
ditch with their carcasses. Thus hung the victory
wavering on either side from the third hour of day to
evening; when Harold having maintained the fight
with unspeakable courage and personal valour, shot
into the head with an arrow, fell at length, and left
his soldiers without heart longer to withstand the un-
wearied enemy. With Harold fell also his two bro-
thers, Leofwin and Girtha, with them greatest part of
the English nobility. His body lying dead a knight or
soldier wounding on the thigh, was by the duke pre-
h Sim. Dun.
Book VI.
THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND, 561
sently turned out of military service Of Normans and
French were slain no small number; the duke himself
that day not a little hazarded his person, having had
three choice horses killed under him. Victory ob-
tained, and his dead carefully buried, the English also
by permission, he sent the body of Harold to his mother
without ransom, though she offered very much to re-
deem it; which having received she buried at Waltham,
in a church built there by Harold. In the mean while,
Edwin and Morcar, who had withdrawn themselves
from Harold, hearing of his death, came to London ;
sending Aldgith the queen their sister with all speed
to West-chester. Aldred archbishop of York, and many
of the nobles, with the Londoners, would have set up
Edgar the right heir, and prepared themselves to fight
for him; but Morcar and Edwin not liking the choice,
who each of them expected to have been chosen before
him, withdrew their forces, and returned home. Duke
William, contrary to his former resolution, (if Florent
of Worcester, and they who follow him, i say true,)
wasting, burning, and slaying all in his way; or rather,
as saith Malmsbury, not in hostile but in regal manner,
came up to London, met at Barcham by Edgar, with
the nobles, bishops, citizens, and at length Edwin and
Morcar, who all submitted to him, gave hostages and
swore fidelity, he to them promised peace and defence;
yet permitted his men the while to burn and make
prey. Coming to London with all his army, he was
on Christmas-day solemnly crowned in the great church
at Westminster, by Aldred archbishop of York, having
first given his oath at the altar, in presence of all the
people, to defend the church, well govern the people,
maintain right law, prohibit rapine and unjust judg-
i Sim. Dun.
ment. Thus the English, while they agreed not about
the choice of their native king, were constrained to
take the yoke of an outlandish conqueror. With what
minds and by what course of life they had fitted them-
selves for this servitude, William of Malmsbury spares
not to lay open. Not a few years before the Normans
came, the clergy, though in Edward the Confessor's
days, had lost all good literature and religion, scarce
able to read and understand their Latin service; he
was a miracle to others who knew his grammar. The
monks went clad in fine stuffs, and made no difference
what they eat; which though in itself no fault, yet to
their consciences was irreligious. The great men,
given to gluttony and dissolute life, made a prey of
the common people, abusing their daughters whom
they had in service, then turning them off to the stews;
the meaner sort tippling together night and day, spent
all they had in drunkenness, attended with other vices
which effeminate men's minds. Whence it came to
pass, that carried on with fury and rashness more than
any true fortitude or skill of war, they gave to William
their conqueror so easy a conquest. Not but that some
few of all sorts were much better among them ; but
such was the generality. And as the long-suffering of
God permits bad men to enjoy prosperous days with
the good, so his severity ofttimes exempts not good
men from their share in evil times with the bad.
If these were the causes of such misery and thral-
dom to those our ancestors, with what better close can
be concluded, than here in fit season to remember this
age in the midst of her security, to fear from like vices,
without amendment, the revolution of like calamities?
TRUE RELIGION, HERESY, SCHISM, TOLERATION:
AND W II AT BRST M EA NS MAY BE USRD
AGAINST THE GROWTH OF POPERY.
[FIRST PUBLISHED 1673.]
It is unknown to no man, who knows aught of con-
cernment among us, that the increase of popery is at
this day no small trouble and offence to greatest part
of the nation; and the rejoicing of all good men that
it is so : the more their rejoicing, that God hath given
a heart to the people, to remember still their great and
happy deliverance from popish thraldom, and to esteem
so highly the precious benefit of his gospel, so freely
and so peaceably enjoyed among them. Since therefore
some have already in public with many considerable
arguments exhorted the people, to beware the growth
of this Ronnish weed; I thought it no less than a com-
mon duty, to lend my hand, how unable soever, to so
good a purpose. I will not now enter into the laby-
rinth of councils and fathers, an entangled wood, which
the papists love to fight in, not with hope of victory,
but to obscure the shame of an open overthrow ; which
yet in that kind of combat, many heretofore, and one
of late, hath eminently given them. And such manner
of dispute with them to learned men is useful and very
commendable. But I shall insist now on what is
plainer to common apprehension, and what I have to
say, without longer introduction.
True religion is the true worship and service of God,
learnt and believed from the word of God only. No
man or angel can know how God would be worshipped
and served, unless God reveal it: he hath revealed and
taught it us in the Holy Scriptures by inspired minis-
ters, and in the gospel by his own Son and his apos-
tles, with strictest command, to reject all other tra-
ditions or additions whatsoever. According to that
of St. Paul, “Though we or an angel from heaven
preach any other gospel unto you, than that which we
have preached unto you, let him be anathema, or ac-
cursed.” And Deut. iv. 2: “Ye shall not add to the
word which I command you, neither shall you dimi-
nish aught from it.” Rev. xxii. 18, 19: “If any man
shall add, &c. If any man shall take away from the
words,” &c. With good and religious reason therefore
all protestant churches with one consent, and particu-
larly the church of England in her thirty-nine articles,
artic. 6th, 19th, 20th, 21st, and elsewhere, maintain
these two points, as the main principles of true reli-
gion; that the rule of true religion is the word of God
only ; and that their faith ought not to be an implicit
faith, that is to believe, though as the church believes,
against or without express authority of Scripture. And
if all protestants, as universally as they hold these two
principles, so attentively and religiously would ob-
serve them, they would avoid and cut off many debates
and contentions, schisms and persecutions, which too
oſt have been among them, and more firmly unite
against the common adversary. For hence it directly
follows, that no true protestant can persecute, or not
tolerate, his fellow-protestant, though dissenting from
him in some opinions, but he must flatly deny and re-
nounce these two his own main principles, whereon
true religion is founded; while he compels his brother
from that which he believes as the manifest word of
God, to an implicit faith (which he himself condemns)
to the endangering of his brother's soul, whether by
rash belief, or outward conformity: for “whatsoever is
not of faith, is sin.”
I will now as briefly shew what is false religion or
heresy, which will be done as easily: for of contraries
the definitions must needs be contrary. Heresy there-
fore is a religion taken up and believed from the tra-
ditions of men, and additions to the word of God.
Whence also it follows clearly, that of all known sects,
or pretended religions, at this day in christendom, po-
pery is the only or the greatest heresy: and he who is
so forward to brand all others for heretics, the obsti-
nate papist, the only heretic. Hence one of their own
famous writers found just cause to style the Romish
church “Mother of errour, school of heresy.” And
whereas the papist boasts himself to be a Roman Ca-
tholic, it is a mere contradiction, one of the pope's bulls,
as if he should say, universal particular, a catholic
schismatic. For catholic in Greek signifies universal :
and the christian church was so called, as consisting of
OF TRUE RELIGION, HERESY, SCHISM, TOLERATION.
563
all nations to whom the gospel was to be preached, in
contradistinction to the Jewish church, which consisted
for the most part of Jews only.
Sects may be in a true church as well as in a false,
when men follow the doctrine too much for the teach-
er's sake, whom they think almost infallible; and this
becomes, through infirmity, implicit faith ; and the
name sectary pertains to such a disciple.
Schism is a rent or division in the church, when it
comes to the separating of congregations; and may
also happen to a true church, as well as to a false; yet
in the true needs not tend to the breaking of commu-
nion, if they can agree in the right administration of
that wherein they communicate, keeping their other
opinions to themselves, not being destructive to faith.
The Pharisees and Sadducees were two sects, yet both
met together in their common worship of God at Jeru-
salem. But here the papist will angrily demand, What!
are Lutherans, Calvinists, anabaptists, Socinians, Ar-
minians, no heretics 2 I answer, all these may have
some errours, but are no heretics. Heresy is in the
will and choice professedly against Scripture; errour
is against the will, in misunderstanding the Scripture
after all sincere endeavours to understand it rightly :
hence it was said well by one of the ancients, “ Err I
may, but a heretic I will not be.” It is a human frailty
to err, and no man is infallible here on earth. But so
long as all these profess to set the word of God only
before them as the rule of faith and obedience; and
use all diligence and sincerity of heart, by reading, by
learning, by study, by prayer for illumination of the
Holy Spirit, to understand the rule and obey it, they
have done what man can do : God will assuredly par-
don them, as he did the friends of Job; good and pious
men, though much mistaken, as there it appears, in
some points of doctrine. But some will say, with
Christians it is otherwise, whom God hath promised by
his Spirit to teach all things. True, all things abso-
lutely necessary to salvation : but the hottest disputes
among protestants, calmly and charitably inquired into,
will be ſound less than such. The Lutheran holds con-
substantiation; an errour indeed, but not mortal. The
Calvinist is taxed with predestimation, and to make God
the author of sin; not with any dishonourable thought
of God, but it may be overzealously asserting his ab-
solute power, not without plea of Scripture. The
anabaptist is accused of denying infants their right to
baptism; again they say, they deny nothing but what
the Scripture denies them. The Arian and Socinian are
charged to dispute against the Trinity: they affirm to
believe the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, according to
Scripture and the apostolic creed; as for terms of trinity,
triniumity, coessentiality, tripersonality, and the like,
they reject them as scholastic notions, not to be found
in Scripture, which by a general protestant maxim is
plain and perspicuous abundantly to explain its own
meaning in the properest words, belonging to so high
a matter, and so necessary to be known ; a mystery
indeed in their sophistic subtilties, but in Scripture a
plain doctrine. Their other opinions are of less mo-
ment. They dispute the satisfaction of Christ, or
rather the word “satisfaction,” as not scriptural: but
they acknowledge him both God and their Saviour.
The Arminian lastly is condemned for setting up free
will against free grace; but that imputation he dis-
claims in all his writings, and grounds himself largely
upon Scripture only. It cannot be denied, that the
authors or late revivers of all these sects or opinions
were learned, worthy, zealous, and religious men, as
appears by their lives written, and the same of their
many eminent and learned followers, perfect and
powerful in the Scriptures, holy and unblamable in
their lives: and it cannot be imagined, that God would
desert such painful and zealous labourers in his church,
and ofttimes great sufferers for their conscience, to
damnable errours and a reprobate sense, who had so
often implored the assistance of his Spirit; but rather,
having made no man infallible, that he hath pardoned
their errours, and accepts their pious endeavours, sin-
cerely searching all things according to the rule of
Scripture, with such guidance and direction as they can
obtain of God by prayer. What protestant then, who
himself maintains the same principles, and disavows all
implicit faith, would persecute, and not rather charit-
ably tolerate, such men as these, unless he mean to ab-
jure the principles of his own religion 2 If it be asked,
how far they should be tolerated : I answer, doubtless
equally, as being all protestants; that is, on all occa-
sions to give account of their faith, either by arguing,
preaching in their several assemblies, public writing,
and the freedom of printing. For if the French and
Polonian protestants enjoy all this liberty among
papists, much more may a protestant justly expect it
among protestants; and yet sometimes here among us,
the one persecutes the other upon every slight pretence.
But he is wont to say, he enjoins only things indif-
ferent. Let them be so still ; who gave him authority
to change their nature by enjoining them P if by his
own principles, as is proved, he ought to tolerate con-
troverted points of doctrine not slightly grounded on
Scripture, much more ought he not impose things in-
different without Scripture. In religion nothing is
indifferent, but, if it come once to be imposed, is either
a command or a prohibition, and so consequently an
addition to the word of God, which he professes to dis-
allow. Besides, how unequal, how uncharitable must
it needs be, to impose that which his conscience cannot
urge him to impose, upon him whose conscience for-
bids him to obey ! What can it be but love of conten-
tion for things not necessary to be done, to molest the
conscience of his brother, who holds them necessary to
be not done º To conclude, let such a one but call to
mind his own principles above mentioned, and he must
necessarily grant, that neither he can impose, nor the
other believe or obey, aught in religion, but from the
word of God only. More amply to understand this,
may be read the 14th and 16th chapters to the Romans,
and the contents of the 14th, set forth no doubt but
with full authority of the church of England : the
gloss is this; “Men may not contemm or condemn
one the other for things indifferent.” And in the 6th
article above mentioned, “Whatsoever is not read in
2 O
564
OF TRUE RELIGION, HERESY, SCHISM, TOLERATION.
Holy Scripture, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be
required of any man as an article of faith, or necessary
to salvation.” And certainly what is not so, is not to
be required at all; as being an addition to the word of
God expressly forbidden.
Thus this long and hot contest, whether protestants
ought to tolerate one another, if men will be but rational
and not partial, may be ended without need of more
words to compose it.
Let us now inquire, whether popery be tolerable or
no. Popery is a double thing to deal with, and claims
a twofold power, ecclesiastical and political, both
usurped, and the one supporting the other.
But ecclesiastical is ever pretended to political. The
|Pope by this mixed faculty pretends right to kingdoms
and states, and especially to this of England, thrones
and unthrones kings, and absolves the people from their
obedience to them ; sometimes interdicts to whole na-
tions the public worship of God, shutting up their
churches: and was wont to drain away greatest part
of the wealth of this then miserable land, as part of his
Patrimony, to maintain the pride and luxury of his
court and prelates: and now, since, through the infi-
nite mercy and favour of God, we have shaken off his
Babylonish yoke, hath not ceased by his spies and
agents, bulls and emissaries, once to destroy both king
and parliament; perpetually to seduce, corrupt, and
pervert as many as they can of the people. Whether
therefore it be fit or reasonable, to tolerate men thus
principled in religion towards the state, I submit it to
the consideration of all magistrates, who are best able
to provide for their own and the public safety. As for
tolerating the exercise of their religion, supposing their
state-activities not to be dangerous, I answer, that tole-
ration is either public or private ; and the exercise of
their religion, as far as it is idolatrous, can be tolerated
neither way: not publicly, without grievous and unsuf-
ſerable scandal given to all conscientious beholders;
not privately, without great offence to God, declared
against all kind of idolatry, though secret. Ezek. viii.
7, 8: “And he brought me to the door of the court,
and when I looked, behold, a hole in the wall. Then
said he unto me, Son of man, dig now in the wall: and
when I had digged, behold a door; and he said unto
me, Go in, and behold the wicked abominations that
they do here.” And ver. 12; “Then said he unto me,
Son of man, hast thou seen what the ancients of the
house of Israel do in the dark P” &c. And it appears
by the whole chapter, that God was no less offended
with these secret idolatries, than with those in public;
and no less provoked, than to bring on and hasten his
judgments on the whole land for these also.
Having shewn thus, that popery, as being idolatrous,
is not to be tolerated either in public or in private ; it
must be now thought how to remove it, and hinder the
growth thereof, I mean in our natives, and not foreign-
ers, privileged by the law of nations. Are we to punish
them by corporal punishment, or fines in their estates,
upon account of their religion 2 I suppose it stands not
with the clemency of the gospel, more than what ap-
pertains to the security of the state : but first we must
*
remove their idolatry, and all the furniture thereof,
whether idols, or the mass wherein they adore their
God under bread and wine : for the commandment
forbids to adore, not only “any graven image, but the
likeness of any thing in heaven above, or in the earth
beneath, or in the water under the earth; thou shalt not
bow down to them, nor worship them, for I the Lord
thy God am a jealous God.” If they say, that by re-
moving their idols we violate their consciences, we
have no warrant to regard conscience which is not
grounded on Scripture: and they themselves confess
in their late defences, that they hold not their images
necessary to salvation, but only as they are enjoined
them by tradition.
Shall we condescend to dispute with them 2 The
Scripture is our only principle in religion ; and by that
only they will not be judged, but will add other prin-
ciples of their own, which, forbidden by the word of
God, we cannot assent to. And [in several places of the
gospel] the common maxim also in logic is, “against
them who deny principles, we are not to dispute.” Let
them bound their disputations on the Scripture only,
and an ordinary protestant, well read in the Bible, may
turn and wind their doctors. They will not go about
to prove their idolatries by the word of God, but turn
to shifts and evasions, and frivolous distinctions: idols
they say are laymen's books, and a great means to stir
up pious thoughts and devotion in the learnedest. I
say, they are no means of God's appointing, but plainly
the contrary: let them hear the prophets; Jer. x. 8;
“The stock is a doctrine of vanities.” Hab. ii. 18;
“What profiteth the graven image, that the maker
thereof hath graven it; the molten image and a teacher
of lies º' But they allege in their late answers, that
the laws of Moses, given only to the Jews, concern not
us under the gospel; and remember not that idolatry
is forbidden as expressly: but with these wiles and
fallacies “compassing sea and land, like the Pharisees
of old, to make one proselyte,” they lead away privily
many simple and ignorant souls, men and women,
“ and make them twofold more the children of hell
than themselves,” Matt. xxiii. 15. But the apostle
hath well warned us, I may say, from such deceivers
as these, for their mystery was then working. “I be-
seech you, brethren,” saith he, “mark them which
cause divisions and offences, contrary to the doctrine
which ye have learned, and avoid them; for they that
are such, serve not our Lord Jesus Christ, but their own
belly, and by good words and fair speeches deceive
the heart of the simple,” Rom. xvi. 17, 18.
The next means to hinder the growth of popery will
be, to read duly and diligently the Holy Scriptures,
which, as St. Paul saith to Timothy, who had known
them from a child, “are able to make wise unto salva-
tion.” And to the whole church of Colossi; “Let the
word of Christ dwell in you plentifully, with all wis-
dom,” Col. iii. 16. The papal antichristian church
permits not her laity to read the Bible in their own
tongue: our church on the contrary hath proposed it
to all men, and to this end translated it into English,
with profitable notes on what is met with obscure,
OF TRUE RELIGION, HERESY, SCHISM, TOLERATION.
565
though what is most necessary to be known be still plain-
est; that all sorts and degrees of men, not understand-
ing the original, may read it in their mother tongue.
Neither let the countryman, the tradesman, the lawyer,
the physician, the statesman, excuse himself by his
much business from the studious reading thereof. Our
Saviour saith, Luke x. 41, 42: “Thou art careful and
troubled about many things, but one thing is needful.”
If they were asked, they would be loth to set earthly
things, wealth or honour, before the wisdom of salva-
tion. Yet most men in the course and practice of their
lives are found to do so; and through unwillingness to
take the pains of understanding their religion by their
own diligent study, would fain be saved by a deputy.
Hence comes implicit faith, ever learning and never
taught, much hearing and small proficience, till want
of fundamental knowledge easily turns to superstition
or popery: therefore the apostle admonishes, Eph. iv.
14: “That we henceforth be no more children, tossed
to and fro and carried about with every wind of doc-
trine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness
whereby they lie in wait to deceive.” Every member
of the church, at least of any breeding or capacity, so
well ought to be grounded in spiritual knowledge, as,
if need be, to examine their teachers themselves, Acts
xvii. 11 : “They searched the Scriptures daily, whether
those things were so.” Rev. ii. 2: “Thou hast tried
them which say they are apostles, and are not.” How
should any private Christian try his teachers, unless he
be well grounded himself in the rule of Scripture, by
which he is taught. As therefore among papists, their
ignorance in Scripture chiefly upholds popery; so among
protestant people, the frequent and serious reading
“hereof will soonest pull popery down.
Another means to abate popery, arises from the con-
stant reading of Scripture, wherein believers, who agree
in the main, are every where exhorted to mutual for-
bearance and charity one towards the other, though
dissenting in some opinions. It is written, that the
coat of our Saviour was without seam; whence some
would infer, that there should be no division in the
church of Christ. It should be so indeed ; yet seams
in the same cloth neither hurt the garment, nor mis-
become it; and not only seams, but schisms will be
while men are fallible: but if they who dissent in
matters not essential to belief, while the common ad-
versary is in the field, shall stand jarring and pelting
at one another, they will be soon routed and subdued.
The papist with open mouth makes much advantage of
our several opinions; not that he is able to confute the
worst of them, but that we by our continual jangle
among ourselves make them worse than they are in-
deed. To save ourselves therefore, and resist the com-
mon enemy, it concerns us mainly to agree within
ourselves, that with joint forces we may not only hold
our own, but get ground ; and why should we mot?
The gospel commands us to tolerate one another,
though of various opinions, and hath promised a good
and happy event thereof; Phil. iii. 15: “Let us there-
fore, as many as be perfect, be thus minded ; and if
in any thing ye be otherwise minded, God shall reveal
even this unto you.” And we are bid, 1 Thess. v. 21 :
“Prove all things, hold fast that which is good.” St.
Paul judged, that not only to tolerate, but to examine
and prove all things, was no danger to our holding fast
that which is good. How shall we prove all things,
which includes all opinions at least founded on Scrip-
ture, unless we not only tolerate them, but patiently
hear them, and seriously read them 2 If he who thinks
himself in the truth professes to have learnt it, not by
implicit faith, but by attentive study of the Scriptures,
and full persuasion of heart; with what equity can he
refuse to hear or read him, who demonstrates to have
gained his knowledge by the same way 2 Is it a fair
course to assert truth, by arrogating to himself the only
freedom of speech, and stopping the mouths of others
equally gifted 2 This is the direct way to bring in that
papistical implicit faith, which we all disclaim. They
pretend it would unsettle the weaker sort; the same
groundless fear is pretended by the Romish clergy. At
least then let them have leave to write in Latin, which
the common people understand not; that what they
hold may be discussed among the learned only. We
suffer the idolatrous books of papists, without this fear,
to be sold and read as common as our own : why not
much rather of anabaptists, Arians, Arminians, and Soci-
nians? There is no learned man but will confess he
hath much profited by reading controversies, his senses
awakened, his judgment sharpened, and the truth which
he holds more firmly established. If then it be profit-
able for him to read, why should it not at least be
tolerable and free for his adversary to write P In logic
they teach, that contraries laid together more evidently
appear: it follows then, that all controversy being per-
mitted, falsehood will appear more false, and truth the
more true; which must needs conduce much, not only
to the confounding of popery, but to the general con-
firmation of unimplicit truth.
The last means to avoid popery is, to amend our
lives: it is a general complaint, that this nation of late
years is grown more numerously and excessively vicious
than heretofore; pride, luxury, drunkenness, whoredom,
cursing, swearing, bold and open atheism every where
abounding: where these grow, no wonder if popery
also grow apace. There is no man so wicked, but at
some times his conscience will wring him with thoughts
of another world, and the peril of his soul; the trouble
and melancholy, which he conceives of true repentance
and amendment, he endures not, but inclines rather to
some carnal superstition, which may pacify and lull his
conscience with some more pleasing doctrine. None
more ready and officious to offer herself than the
Romish, and opens wide her office, with all her facul-
ties, to receive him; easy confession, easy absolution,
pardons, indulgences, masses for him both quick and
dead, Agnus Dei's, relics, and the like: and he, instead
of “working out his salvation with fear and trembling,”
straight thinks in his heart, (like another kind of fool
than he in the Psalms,) to bribe God as a corrupt judge;
and by his proctor, some priest, or friar, to buy out his
peace with money, which he cannot with his repent-
ance. For God, when men sin outrageously, and will
566
OF TRUE RELIGION, HERESY, SCHISM, TOLERATION.
not be admonished, gives over chastizing them, perhaps
by pestilence, fire, sword, or famine, which may all turn
to their good, and takes up his severest punishments,
hardness, besottedness of heart, and idolatry, to their
final perdition. Idolatry brought the heathen to hein-
ous transgressions, Rom. ii. And heinous transgres-
sions ofttimes bring the slight professors of true religion
to gross idolatry: 1 Thess. ii. 11, 12: “For this cause
God shall send them strong delusion, that they should
believe a lie, that they all might be damned who be-
lieve not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteous-
ness.” And Isaiah xliv, 18, speaking of idolaters,
“They have not known nor understood, for he hath
shut their eyes that they cannot see, and their hearts
that they cannot understand.” Let us therefore, using
this last means, last here spoken of, but first to be done,
amend our lives with all speed; lest through impeni-
tency we run into that stupidity which we now seek
all means so warily to avoid, the worst of superstitions,
and the heaviest of all God's judgments, popery.
A
BRIEF HISTORY OF MOSCOVIA,
AND OF OTHER LESS KNOWN COUNTRIES LYING EASTWARD OF RUSSIA AS
FAR AS CATHAY.
GATHERED FROM THE WRITINGS OF SEVERAL EYEWITNESSES.
[first publish RD 1682.]
THE PREFACE.
THE study of geography is both profitable and delightful; but the writers thereof, though some of them exact
enough in setting down longitudes and latitudes, yet in those other relations of manners, religion, government,
and such like, accounted geographical, have for the most part missed their proportions. Some too brief and
deficient satisfy not; others too voluminous and impertinent cloy and weary out the reader, while they tell long
stories of absurd superstitions, ceremonies, quaint habits, and other petty circumstances little to the purpose.
Whereby that which is useful, and only worth observation, in such a wood of words, is either overslipped, or
soon forgotten; which perhaps brought into the mind of some men more learned and judicious, who had not the
leisure or purpose to write an entire geography, yet at least to assay something in the description of one or two
countries, which might be as a pattern or example to render others more cautious hereafter, who intended the
whole work. And this perhaps induced Paulus Jovius to describe only Moscovy and Britain. Some such
thoughts, many years since, led me at a vacant time to attempt the like argument, and I began with Moscovy,
as being the most northern region of Europe reputed civil; and the more northern parts thereof first discovered
by English voyagers. Wherein I saw I had by much the advantage of Jovius. What was scattered in many
volumes, and observed at several times by eyewitnesses, with no cursory pains I laid together, to save the reader
a far longer travail of wandering through so many desert authors; who yet with some delight drew me after
them, from the eastern bounds of Russia, to the walls of Cathay, in several late journies made thither over land
by Russians, who describe the countries in their way far otherwise than our common geographers. From pro-
ceeding further other occasions diverted me. This Essay, such as it is, was thought by some, who knew of it,
not amiss to be published ; that so many things remarkable, dispersed before, now brought under one view,
might not hazard to be otherwise lost, nor the labour lost of collecting them. -
M O S C O VI A :
OR,
R E L A TI O N S O F M O S CO W I A,
AS FAR AS IHATH BEEN DISCO, WFRED BY ENGLISH VOYAGES :
GATHERED FROM THE WRITINGS OF SEVERAL EYE WITNESSES :
AND THE OTHER LESS KNOWN COUNTRIES LYING EASTWARD OF RUSSIA AS FAR AS CATHAY,
LATELY DISCOVERED AT SEVERAL TIMES BY THE RUSSIANS.
CIHAP. I.
A. brief description.
THE empire of Moscovia, or as others call it Russia,
is bounded on the north with Lapland and the ocean;
southward by the Crim Tartar; on the west by Lithu-
ania, Livonia, and Poland; on the east by the river Ob,
or Oby, and the Nagayan Tartars on the Volga as far
as Astracan.
The north parts of this country are so barren, that
the inhabitants fetch their corn a thousand miles; a and
so cold in winter, that the very sap of their wood fuel
burning on the fire freezes at the brand's end, where it
drops. The mariners, which were left on shipboard in
the first English voyage thither, in going up only from
the cabins to the hatches," had their breath so congealed
by the cold, that they fell down as it were stifled. The
bay of St. Nicholas, where they first put in," lieth in
sixty-four degrees; called so from the abbey there built
of wood, wherein are twenty monks, unlearned, as then
they found them, and great drunkards: their church is
fair, full of images and tapers. There are besides but
six houses, whereof one built by the English. In the
bay over against the abbey is Rose Island, full of
damask and red roses, violets, and wild rosemary; the
isle is in circuit seven or eight miles; about the midst
of May, the snow there is cleared, having two months
been melting ; then the ground in fourteen days is
dry, and grass knee-deep within a month; after Sep-
tember frost returns, and snow a yard high : it hath a
house built by the English near to a fresh fair spring.
North-east of the abbey, on the other side of Duina, is
the castle of Archangel, where the English have an-
other house. The river Duina, beginning about seven
hundred miles within the country, having first re-
ceived Pinega, falls here into the sea, very large and
swift, but shallow. It runneth pleasantly between
hills on either side; beset like a wilderness with high
fir and other trees. Their boats of timber, without any
iron in them, are either to sail, or to be drawn up with
ropes against the stream.
North-east beyond Archangel standeth Lampas,”
where twice a-year is kept a great fair of Russes, Tar-
tars, and Samoéds; and to the landward Mezen, and
Slobotca, two towns of traffic between the river Pecho-
ra, or Petzora, and Duina: to seaward lies the cape of
Candinos, and the island of Colgoieve, about thirty
leagues from the bar of Pechory in sixty-nine degrees.f
The river Pechora or Petzora, holding his course
through Siberia, how far the Russians thereabouts
know not, runneth into the sea at seventy-two mouths,
full of ice; abounding with swans, ducks, geese, and
partridge, which they take in July, sell the feathers,
and salt the bodies for winter provision. On this river
spreading to a lake stands the town of Pustozera in
sixty-eight degrees, having some eighty or a hundred
houses, where certain merchants of Hull wintered in
the year sixteen hundred and eleven. The town Pe-
chora, small and poor, hath three churches. They
traded there up the river four days’ journey to Oustzil-
ma a small town of sixty houses. The Russians that
have travelled say, that this river springs out of the
mountains of Jougoria, and runs through Permia. Not
far from the mouth thereof are the straits of Vaigats,
of which hereaſter: more eastward is the point of
Naramzy, the next to that the river Ob;h beyond which
the Moscovites have extended lately their dominion.
Touching the Riphaean mountains, whence Tanais was
anciently thought to spring, our men could hear no-
thing; but rather that the whole country is champaign,
a Hack. 251.
b Ibid. vol. i. 248.
c 1 bid. 376. d Ibid. 365.
e Ibid. 284.
g l bid. l'urc.
f Purc. part 3, 533.
h Pul c. 549, 445, 551.
A BRIEF HISTORY OF MOSCOWIA,
569
and in the northernmost part huge and desert woods of
fir, abounding with black wolves, bears, buffs, and an-
other beast called rossomakka, whose female bringeth
forth by passing through some narrow place, as be-
tween two stakes, and so presseth her womb to a
disburdening. Travelling southward they found the
country more pleasant, fair, and better inhabited, corn,
pasture, meadows, and huge woods. Arkania (if it be
not the same with Archangel) is a place of English
trade, from whence a day's journey distant, but from
St. Nicholas a hundred versts, Colmogro stands on the
Duina; a great town not walled, but scattered. The
English have here lands of their own, given them by
the emperor, and fair houses: not far beyond, Pinega,
running between rocks of alabaster and great woods,
meets with Duina. From Colmogro to Ustiug are five
hundred versts or little miles, an ancient city upon the
confluence of Juga and Sucana into Duina,k which
there first receives his name. Thence continuing by
water to Wologda, a great city so named of the river
which passes through the midst; it hath a castle walled
about with brick and stone, and many wooden churches,
two for every parish, the one in winter to be heated,
the other used in summer; this is a town of much
traffic, a thousand miles from St. Nicholas. All this
way by water no lodging is to be had but under open
sky by the river side, and other provision only what
they bring with them. From Wologda by sled they go
to Yeraslave on the Volga, whose breadth is there at
least a mile over, and thence runs two thousand seven
hundred versts to the Caspian sea, having his head
spring out of Bealozera, which is a lake, amidst whereof |
is built a strong tower, wherein the kings of Moscovy
reserve their treasure in time of war. From this town
to Rostove, then to Pereslave, a great town situate on
a fair lake; thence to Mosco.
Between Yeraslave and Mosco, which is two hun-
dred miles, the country is so fertile, so populous and
full of villages, that in a forenoon seven or eight hundred
sleds are usually seen coming with salt-fish, or laden
back with corn.m
Mosco the chief city, lying in fifty-five degrees, dis-
tant from St. Nicholas fifteen hundred miles, is reputed
to be greater than London with the suburbs, but rudely
built;" their houses and churches most of timber, few
of stone, their streets unpaved; it hath a fair castle
four-square, upon a hill, two miles about, with brick
walls very high, and some say eighteen foot thick, six-
teen gates, and as many bulwarks; in the castle are
kept the chief markets, and in winter on the river, being
then firm ice. This river Moscua on the south-west side
encloses the castle, wherein are nine fair churches with
round gilded towers, and the emperor's palace; which
neither within nor without is equal for state to the
king's houses in England, but rather like our buildings
of old fashion, with small windows, some of glass, some
with lattices, or iron bars.
They who travel from Mosco to the Caspian, go by
water down the Moscua to the river Occa;” then by
i Hack. 376. 1 Ibid. 377, 248.
4. k l bid, 312.
m l bid, 251, 335. º
n Ibid. 313.
certain castles to Rezan, a famous city now ruinate ;
the tenth day to Nysnovogrod, where Occa falls into
Volga, which the Tartars call Edel. From thence the
eleventh day to Cazan a Tartar city of great wealth
heretofore, now under the Russian ; walled at first with
timber and earth, but since by the emperor Vasiliwich
with freestone. From Cazan, to the river Cama, falling
into Volga from the province of Permia, the people
dwelling on the left side are Gentiles, and live in woods
without houses :P beyond them to Astracan, Tartars of
Mangat, and Nagay: on the right side those of Crim-
me. From Mosco to Astracan is about six hundred
leagues. The town is situate in an island on a hill-side
walled with earth, but the castle with earth and tim-
ber; the houses, except that of the governor, and some
few others, poor and simple; the ground utterly bar-
ren, and without wood: they live there on fish, and
sturgeon especially; which hanging up to dry in the
streets and houses brings whole swarms of flies, and
infection to the air, and oft great pestilence. This island
in length twelve leagues, three in breadth, is the Rus-
sian limit toward the Caspian, which he keeps with a
strong garrison, being twenty leagues from that sea,
into which Volga falls at seventy mouths. From St.
Nicholas, or from Mosco to the Caspian, they pass in
forty-six days and nights, most part by water.
Westward from St. Nicholas twelve hundred miles is
the city.9 Novogrod fifty-eight degrees, the greatest
mart town of all this dominion, and in bigness not in-
ferior to Mosco. The way thither is through the western
bottom of St. Nicholas bay, and so along the shore full
of dangerous rocks to the monastery Soloſky, wherein
are at least two hundred monks; the people thereabout
in a manner savages, yet tenants to those monks.
Thence to the dangerous river Owiga, wherein are wa-
terfalls as steep as from a mountain, and by the violence
of their descent kept from freezing : so that the boats
are to be carried there a mile over land ; which the te-
nants of that abbey did by command, and were guides
to the merchants without taking any reward. Thence
to the town Povensa, standing within a mile of the
famous lake Onega three hundred and twenty miles
long, and in some places seventy, at narrowest twenty-
five broad, and of great depth. Thence by some mo-
masteries to the river Swire; then into the lake Ladis-
cay much longer than Onega; after which into the river
Volhusky, which through the midst of Novogrod runs
into this lake, and this lake into the Baltic sound by
Narva and Revel. Their other cities toward the western
bound are Plesco, Smolensko, or Wobsco.
The emperor exerciseth absolute power: if any man
die without male issue, his land returns to the empe-
ror." Amy rich man, who through age or other impo-
tency is unable to serve the public, being informed of,
is turned out of his estate, and forced with his family
to live on a small pension, while some other more de-
serving is by the duke's authority put into possession.
The manner of informing the duke is thus: Your grace,
saith one, hath such a subject, abounding with riches,
) l bid. 334.
r Ibid. 240.
O I biºl. 325.
q ibid. 365.
570
A BRIEF HISTORY OF MOSCOWIA.
but for the service of the state unmeet; and you have
others poor and in want, but well able to do their coun-
try good service. Immediately the duke sends forth to
inquire, and calling the rich man before him, Friend,
saith he, you have too much living, and are unservice-
able to your prince; less will serve you, and the rest
maintain others who deserve more. The man thus
called to impart his wealth repines not, but humbly
answers, that all he hath is God’s and the duke's, as if
he made restitution of what more justly was another's,
than parted with his own. Every gentleman hath rule
and justice over his own tenants: if the tenants of two
gentlemen agree not, they seek to compose it; if they
cannot, each brings his tenant before the high judge
of that country. They have no lawyers, but every man
pleads his own cause, or else by bill or answer in
writing delivers it with his own hands to the duke:
yet justice, by corruption of inferior officers, is much
perverted. Where other proof is wanted, they may try
the matter by personal combat, or by champion. If a
debtor be poor, he becomes bondman to the duke, who
lets out his labour till it pay the debt; till then he re-
mains in bondage. Another trial they have by lots.s
The revenues of the emperor are what he list, and
what his subjects are able; and he omits not the
coarsest means to raise them: for in every good town
there is a drunken tavern, called a Cursemay, which
the emperor either lets out to farm, or bestows on some
duke, or gentleman, in reward of his service, who for
that time is lord of the whole town, robbing and spoil-
ing at his pleasure, till being well enriched, he is sent
at his own charge to the wars, and there squeezed of
his ill-got wealth; by which means the waging of war
is to the emperor little or nothing chargeable.
The Russian armeth not less in time of war than
three hundred thousand men,” half of whom he takes
with him into the field, the rest bestows in garrisons
on the borders. He presseth no husbandman or mer-
chant but the youth of the realm. He useth no foot,
but such as are pioneers, or gunners, of both which sort
thirty thousand. The rest being horsemen, are ail
archers, and ride with a short stirrup, after the Turkish.
Their armour is a coat of plate, and a skull on their
heads. Some of their coats are covered with velvet, or
cloth of gold; for they desire to be gorgeous in arms,
but the duke himself above measure ; his pavilion
covered with cloth of gold or silver, set with precious
stones. They use little drums at the saddle-bow, in-
stead of spurs, for at the sound thereof the horses run
more swiftly.
They fight without order; nor willingly give battle,
but by stealth or ambush. Of cold and hard diet mar-
wellously patient; for when the ground is covered with
snow frozen a yard thick, the common soldier will lie
in the field two months together without tent, or cover-
ing over head; only hangs up his mantle against that
part from whence the weather drives, and kindling a
little fire, lies him down before it, with his back under
the wind ; his drink, the cold stream mingled with
oatmeal, and the same all his food: his horse, fed with
green wood and bark, stands all this while in the open
field, yet does his service. The emperor gives no pay
at all, but to strangers; yet repays good deserts in war
with certain lands during life; and they who oftenest
are sent to the wars, think themselves most favoured,”
though serving without wages. On the twelfth of
December yearly, the emperor rides into the field,
which is without the city, with all.his mobility, on jen-
nets and Turkey horses in great state; before him five
thousand harquebusiers, who shoot at a bank of ice, till
they beat it down; the ordnance, which they have very
fair of all sorts, they plant against two wooden houses
filled with earth at least thirty foot thick, and begin-
ning with the smallest, shoot them all off thrice over,
having beat those two houses flat. Above the rest six
great cannon they have, whose bullet is a yard high,
so that a man may see it flying: then out of mortar-
pieces they shoot wildfire into the air. Thus the em-
peror having seen what his gunners can do, returns
home in the same order.
They follow the Greek church, but with excess of
superstitions :2 their service is in the Russian tongue.
They hold the ten commandments not to concern them,
saying, that God gave them under the law, which
Christ by his death on the cross hath abrogated : the
eucharist they receive in both kinds. They observe
four lents, have service in their churches daily, from
two hours before dawn till evening;" yet for whore-
dom, drunkenness, and extortion none worse than the
clergy.
They have many great and rich monasteries, where
they keep great hospitality. That of Trojetes hath in
it seven hundred friars, and is walled about with brick
very strongly, having many pieces of brass ordnance
on the walls; most of the lands, towns, and villages
within forty miles belong to those monks, who are also
as great merchants as any in the land. During Easter
holydays when two friends meet, they take each other
by the hand; one of them saying, The Lord is risen ;
the other answering," It is so of a truth; and then they
kiss, whether men or women. The emperor esteemeth
the metropolitan next to God, after our lady, and St.
Nicholas, as being his spiritual officer, himself but his
temporal. “But the Muscovites that border on Tarta-
ria are yet pagans.
When there is love between two,e the man, among
other trifling gifts, sends to the woman a whip, to sig-
nify, if she offend, what she must expect; and it is a
rule among them, that if the wife be not beaten once a
week, she thinks herself not beloved, and is the worse;
yet they are very obedient, and stir not forth, but at
some seasons. Upon utter dislike, the husband di-
vorces; which liberty no doubt they received first with
their religion from the Greek church, and the imperial
laws.
Their dead they bury with new shoes on their feet,8
as to a long journey; and put letters testimonial in
their hands to St. Nicholas, or St. Peter, that this was
u I biºl. 230. 250.
t Ibid. 314. -
a libid. 242, 321.
y l bid. 316.
s flac. 300.
x 1 bid. 314. 250. z Ibid. 253.
d T bid. 320. Q54.
b Ibid. 320. 4.
g Ibid. 242, 254, 323.
w c 1 bid. 318.
e Ibid. 322. %.
!.
f Ibid. 31.4
A BRIEF HISTORY OF MOSCOWIA.
57 I
a Russe or Russes, and died in the true faith; which,
as they believe, St. Peter having read, forthwith admits
him into heaven. -
They have no learning," nor will suffer to be among
them; their greatest friendship is drinking; they are
great talkers, liars, flatterers, and dissemblers. They
delight in gross meats and noisome fish; their drink is
better, being sundry sorts of meath; the best made
with juice of a sweet and crimson berry called Maliena,
growing also in France; other sorts with blackcherry,
or divers other berries: another drink they use in the
spring drawn from the birch-tree root, whose sap after
June dries up. But there are no people that live so
miserably as the poor of Russia; if they have straw
and water they make shift to live; for straw dried and
stamped in winter time is their bread; in summer grass
and roots; at all times bark of trees is good meat with
them; yet many of them die in the street for hunger,
none relieving or regarding them.
When they are sent into foreign countries,k or that
strangers come thither, they are very sumptuous in
apparel, else the duke himself goes but meanly.
In winter they travel only upon sleds,' the ways
being hard, and smooth with snow, the rivers all
frozen : one horse with a sled will draw a man four
hundred miles in three days; in summer the way is
deep, and travelling ill. The Russe of better sort goes
not out in winter, but on his sled; in summer on his
horse: in his sled he sits on a carpet, or a white bear's
skin; the sled drawn with a horse well decked, with
many fox or wolf tails about his neck, guided by a boy
on his back, other servants riding on the tail of the
sled.
The Russian sea breeds a certain beast which they
call a morse; m who seeks his food on the rocks, climb-
ing up with help of his teeth; whereof they make as
great account as we of the elephant's tooth.
CHAP. II.
Of Samoedia, Siberia, and other countries north-east,
subject to the Muscovites.
North-EAST of Russia lieth Samoedia by the river
Ob. This country was first discovered by Oneke a
Russian; who first trading privately among them in
rich furs, got great wealth, and the knowledge of their
country; then revealed his discovery to Boris protector
to Pheodor, shewing how beneficial that country gain-
ed would be to the empire. Who sending embassadors
among them gallantly attired, by fair means won their
subjection to the empire, every head paying yearly two
skins of richest sables. Those messengers travelling
also two hundred leagues beyond Ob eastward, made
report of pleasant countries, abounding with woods and
fountains, and people riding on elks and loshes; others
drawn on sleds by rein-deer; others by dogs as swift
as deer. The Samoëds that came along with those mes-
sengers, returning to Mosco, admired the stateliness of
that city, and were as much admired for excellent
shooters, hitting every time the breadth of a penny, as
far distant as hardly could be discerned.
The river Ob is reported a by the Russes to be in
breadth the sailing of a summer's day; but full of
islands and shoals, having neither woods, nor, till of late,
inhabitants. Out of Ob they turn into the river Tawze.
The Russians have here, since the Samoëds yielded
them subjection, two governors, with three or four
hundred gunners; have built villages and some small
castles; all which place they call Mongozey or Mol-
gomsay.” Further upland they have also built other
cities of wood, consisting chiefly of Poles, Tartars, and
Russes, fugitive or condemned men ; as Vergateria,
Siber, whence the whole country is named, Tinna,
thence Tobolsca on this side Ob, on the rivers Irtis,
and Tobol, chief seat of the Russian governor; above
that, Zergolta in an island of Ob, where they have a
customhouse. Beyond that on the other side Ob, Na-
rim, and Tooina, now a great city." Certain churches
also are erected in those parts; but no man forced to
religion; beyond Narim eastward on the river Telta is
built the castle of Comgoscoi, and all this plantation
began since the year 1590, with many other towns like
these. And these are the countries from whence come
all the sables and rich furs.
The Samoëds have no towns or certain place of abode,
but up and down where they find moss for their deer;a
they live in companies peaceably, and are governed by
some of the ancientest amongst them, but are idolaters.
They shoot wondrous cunningly; their arrow-heads
are sharpened stones, or fish bones, which latter serve
them also for needles; their thread being the sinews
of certain small beasts, where with they sow the furs
which clothe them; the furry side in summer outward,
in winter inward. They have many wives, and their
daughters they sell to him who bids most; which, if
they be not liked, are turned back to their friends, the
husband allowing only to the father what the marriage
feast stood him in. Wives are brought to bed there by
their husbands, and the next day go about as before.
They till not the ground; but live on the flesh of those
wild beasts which they hunt. They are the only guides
to such as travel Jougoria, Siberia, or any of those
north-east parts in winter;e being drawn on sleds with
bucks riding post day and night, if it be moonlight,
and lodge on the snow under tents of deer-skins, in
whatever place they find enough of white moss to feed
their sled-stags, turning them loose to dig it up them-
selves out of the deep snow : another Samoëd, stepping
to the next wood, brings in store of firing : round about
which they lodge within their tents, leaving the top
open to vent smoke; in which manner they are as warm
as the stoves in Russia. They carry provision of meat
with them, and partake besides of what fowl or veni-
son the Samoëd kills with shooting by the way; their
h Hac. 241, 314.
- i Ibid. 328.
1 1 bid. 314.
m Ibid. 252 k Ibid. 239.
id. 252.
a Purch, part 3. p. 513, 540.
bid. 504, 506,
b e Purch. part 3, p. 526, 507.
d Ibid. 522. 555. P. e
l bid. 548.
572
A BRIEF HISTORY OF MOSCOWIA.
drink is melted snow. Two deer being yoked to a sled,
riding post, will draw two hundred miles in twenty-
four hours without resting, and laden with their stuff,
will draw it thirty miles in twelve.
CHAP. III.
Of Tingoesia, and the countries adjoining eastward,
as far as Cathay.
Beyond Narim and Comgoscoia the soldiers of those
garrisons, travelling by appointment of the Russian
governor in the year 1605, found many goodly coun-
tries not inhabited, many vast deserts and rivers; till
at the end of ten weeks they spied certain cottages and
herds, or companies of people, which came to them with
reverent behaviour, and signified to the Samočds and
Tartars, which were guides to the Russian soldiers,
that they were called Tingoési; that their dwelling
was on the great river Jenissey. This river is said to
be ſar bigger than Ob,” distant from the mouth thereof
four days and nights sailing; and likewise falls into
the sea of Naramzie : it hath high mountains on the
east, some of which cast out fire, to the west a plain and
fertile country, which in the spring-time it overflows
about seventy leagues; all that time the inhabitants
keep them in the mountains, and then return with their
cattle to the plain. The Tingoési are a very gentle
nation, they have great swoln throats, like those in
Italy that live under the Alps; at persuasion of the
Samočds they forthwith submitted to the Russian go-
vernment: and at their request travelling the next year
to discover still eastward, they came at length to a river,
which the savages of that place called Pisida," some-
what less than Jenissey; beyond which hearing ofttimes
the tolling of brazen bells, and sometimes the noise of
men and horses, they durst not pass over; they saw there
certain sails aſar off, square, and therefore supposed to
belike Indian or China sails, and the rather for that they
report that great guns have been heard shot off from
those vessels. In April and May they were much de-
lighted with the fair prospect of that country, reple-
mished with many rare trees, plants, and flowers, beasts
and fowl. Some think here to be the borders of Tan-
gut in the north of Cathay." Some of those Samoëds,
about the year 1610, travelled so far till they came in
view of a white city, and heard a great din of bells,
and report there came to them men all armed in iron
from head to foot. And in the year 1611, divers out
of Cathay, and others from Alteen Czar, who styles
himself the golden king, came and traded at Zergolta,
or Surgoot, on the river Ob, bringing with them plates
of silver. Whereupon Michael Pheodorowich the Rus-
sian emperor, in the year 1619, sent certain of his people
from Tooma to Alteen, and Cathay, who returned with
embassadors from those princes. These relate,' that
from Tooma in ten days and a half, three days whereof
over a lake, where rubies and sapphires grow, they
came to the Alteen king, or king of Alty; through his
land in five weeks they passed into the country of
Sheromugaly, or Mugalla, where reigned a queen
called Manchica; whence in four days they came to
the borders of Cathay, fenced with a stone wall, fifteen
fathom high ; along the side of which, having on the
other hand many pretty towns belonging to Queen
Manchica, they travelled ten days without seeing any
on the wall, till they came to the gate; where they saw
very great ordnance lying, and three thousand men in
watch. They traffic with other nations at the gate, and
very few at once are suffered to enter. They were
travelling from Tooma to this gate twelve weeks; and
from thence to the great city of Cathay ten days.
Where being conducted to the house of embassadors,
within a few days there came a secretary from King
Tambur, with two hundred men well apparelled,
and riding on asses, to feast them with divers sorts
of wine, and to demand their message; but having
brought no presents with them, they could not be
admitted to his sight; only with his letter to the
emperor they returned, as is aforesaid, to Tobolsca.
They report, that the land of Mugalla reaches from
Boghar to the north sea,é and hath many castles built
of stone, foursquare, with towers at the corners covered
with glazed tiles; and on the gates alarm-bells, or
watch-bells, twenty pound weight of metal ; their
houses built also of stone, the ceilings cunningly
painted with flowers of all colours. The people are
idolaters; the country exceeding fruitful. They have
asses and mules, but no horses. The people of Cathay
say, that this great wall stretches from Boghar to the
north sea, four months journey, with continual towers
a slight shot distant from each other, and beacons on
every tower; and that this wall is the bound between
Magulla and Cathay. In which are but five gates;
those narrow, and so low, that a horseman sitting up-
right cannot ride in. Next to the wall is the city Shi-
rokalga; it hath a castle well furnished with short
ordnance and small shot, which they who keep watch
on the gates, towers, and walls, duly at sun-set and
rising discharge thrice over. The city abounds with
rich merchandise, velvets, damasks, cloth of gold, and
tissue, with many sorts of sugars. Like to this is the
city Yara, their markets smell odoriferously with spices,
and Tayth more rich than that. Shirooan yet more
magnificent, half a day's journey through, and exceed-
ing populous. From hence to Cathaia the imperial
city is two days journey, built of white stone, four-
square, in circuit four days going, cornered with four
white towers, very high and great, and others very fair
along the wall, white intermingled with blue, and loop-
holes furnished with ordnance. In the midst of this
white city stands a castle built of magnet, where the
king dwells, in a sumptuous palace, the top whereof is
overlaid with gold. The city stands on even ground
encompassed with the river Youga, seven days journey
from the sea. The people are very fair but not war-
like, delighting most in rich traffick. These relations
are referred hither, because we have them from Rus
c Ibid.
... Purch. part 3. p. 527. b Ibid. 527. 551, 546, 527.
d Ibid. 528, e Ibid. 543, 546. f Ibid. 797. g Ibid. 799.
A BRIEF HISTORY OF MOSCOWIA.
573
sians; who report also, that there is a sea beyond" Ob,
so warm, that all kind of seafowl live thereabout as
well in winter as in summer. Thus much briefly of the
sea and lands between Russia and Cathay.
CHAP. IV.
The succession of Moscovia dukes and emperors, taken
out of their chronicles by a Polac, with some later
additions.”
THE great dukes of Moscovy derive their pedigree,
though without ground, from Augustus Caesar: whom
they fable to have sent certain of his kingdom to be
governors over many remote provinces; and among
them, Prussus over Prussia; him to have had his seat
on the eastern Baltic shore by the river Wixel ; of
whom Rurek, Sinaus, and Truuor descended by the
fourth generation, were by the Russians, living then
without civil government, sent for in the year 573, to
bear rule over them, at the persuasion of Gostomislius
chief citizen of Novogrod. They therefore, taking
with them Olechus their kinsman, divided those coun-
tries among themselves, and each in his province
taught them civil government.
Ivor, son of Rurek, the rest dying without issue, be-
came successor to them all; being left in nonage un-
der the protection of Olechus. He took to wiſe Olha
daughter to a citizen of Plesco, of whom he begat Sto-
slaus; but after that being slain by his enemies, Olha
his wife went to Constantinople, and was there bap-
tized Helena.
Stoslaus fought many battles with his enemies; but
was at length by them slain, who made a cup of his
skull, engraven with this sentence in gold; “Seeking
after other men's, he lost his own.” His sons were Te-
ropulchus, Olega, and Volodimir.
Volodimir, having slain the other two, made himself
sole lord of Russia; yet after that fact inclining to
christian religion, had to wife Anna sister of Basilius
and Constantine Greek emperors; and with all his
people, in the year 988, was baptized, and called Ba-
silius. Howbeit Zonaras reporteth, that before that
time Basilius the Greek emperor sent a bishop to them;
at whose preaching they not being moved, but requir-
ing a miracle, he after devout prayers, taking the book
of gospel into his hands, threw it before them all into
the fire; which remaining there unconsumed, they
were converted.
Volodimir had eleven sons, among whom he divided
his kingdom; Boristus and Glebus for their holy life
registered saints; and their feast kept every year in
November with great solemnity. The rest, through
contention to have the sole government, ruined each
other; leaving only Jaroslaus inheritor of all.
Volodimir, son of Jaroslaus, kept his residence in the
ancient city Kiow upon the river Boristhenes. And
h Purch. p. 806.
after many conflicts with the sons of his uncles and
having subdued all, was called Monomachus. He
made war with Constantine the Greek emperor, wasted
Thracia, and returning home with great spoils to pre-
pare new war, was appeased by Constantine; who sent
Neophytus bishop of Ephesus, and Eustathius abbot of
Jerusalem, to present him with part of our Saviour's
cross, and other rich gifts, and to salute him by the
name of Czar, or Caesar: with whom he thenceforth
entered into league and amity.
After him in order of descent Wuszevolodus, George,
Demetrius.
Then George his son, who in the year 1237 was slain
in battle by the Tartar prince Bathy, who subdued
Muscovia, and made it tributary. From that time the
Tartarians made such dukes of Russia, as they thought
would be most pliable to their ends; of whom they re-
quired, as oft as embassadors came to him out of Tar-
tary, to go out and meet them ; and in his own court
to stand bareheaded, while they sate and delivered their
message. At which time the Tartars wasted also Po-
lonia, Selesia, and Hungaria, till pope Innocent the
Fourth obtained peace of them for five years. This
Bathy, say the Russians, was the father of Tamerlane,
whom they call Temirkutla.
Then succeeded Jaroslaus, the brother of George,
then Alexander his son.
Daniel, the son of Alexander, was he who first made
the city of Mosco his royal seat, builded the castle, and
took on him the title of great duke.
John, the son of Daniel, was surnamed Kaleta, that
word signifying a scrip, out of which, continually car-
ried about with him, he was wont to deal his alms.
His son Simeon, dying without issue, left the king-
dom to John his next brother; and he to his son De-
metrius, who leſt two sons, Basilius and George.
Basilius reigning had a son of his own name, but
doubting lest not of his own body, through the suspicion
he had of his wife's chastity, him he disinherits, and
gives the dukedom to his brother George.
George, putting his nephew Basilius in prison,
reigns; yet at his death, either through remorse, or
other cause, surrenders him the dukedom.
Basilius, unexpectedly thus attaining his supposed
right, enjoyed it not long in quiet; for Andrew and
Demetrius, the two sons of George, counting it injury
not to succeed their father, made war upon him, and
surprising him on a sudden, put out his eyes. Not-
withstanding which, the boiarens, or nobles, kept their
allegiance to the duke, though blind, whom therefore
they called Cziemnox.
John Vasiliwich, his son, was the first who brought
the Russian name out of obscurity into renown. To
secure his own estate, he put to death as many of his
kindred, as were likely to pretend ; and styled himself
great duke of Wolodimiria, Moscovia, Novogardia,
Czar of all Russia. He won Plesco, the only walled
city in all Muscovy, and Nowogrod, the richest, from
the Lithuanians, to whom they had been subject fiſty
years before ; and from the latter carried home three
a Hac. vol. i. p. 221.
574
A BRIEF HISTORY OF MOSCOWIA.
hundred waggons laden with treasure. He had war
with Alexander king of Poland, and with the Livoni-
ans; with him, on pretence of withdrawing his daugh-
ter Helena, whom he had to wife, from the Greek
church to the Romish; with the Livonians for no other
cause, but to enlarge his bounds: though he were often
foiled by Plettebergius, great master of the Prussian
knights. His wife was daughter to the duke of Ty-
versky; of her he begat John; and to him resigned
his dukedom; giving him to wife the daughter of Ste-
ven, palatine of Moldavia; by whom he had issue
Demetrius, and deceased soon after. Vasiliwich, there-
fore, reassuming the dukedom, married a second wife
Sophia, daughter to Thomas Palaeologus : who is said
to have received her dowry out of the pope's treasury,
upon promise of the duke to become Romish.
This princess, of a haughty mind, often complaining
that she was married to the Tartar's vassal, at length by
continual persuasions, and by a wile, found means to
ease her husband and his country of that yoke. For
whereas till then the Tartar had his procurators, who
dwelt in the very castle of Mosco, to oversee state
affairs, she feigned that from heaven she had been
warned, to build a temple to saint Nicholas on the
same place where the Tartar agents had their house.
Being therefore delivered of a son, she made it her re-
quest to the prince of Tartary, whom she had invited
to the baptizing, that he would give her that house,
which obtaining, she razed to the ground, and removed
those overseers out of the castle; and so by degrees
dispossessed them of all which they held in Russia.
She prevailed also with her husband, to transfer the
dukedom from Demetrius the son of John deceased, to
Gabriel his eldest by her.
Gabriel, no sooner duke, but changed his name to
Basilius, and set his mind to do nobly; he recovered
great part of Moscovy from Witoldus duke of Lithu-
ania; and on the Boristhenes won Smolensko and
many other cities in the year 1514. He divorced his
first wiſe, and of Helena daughter to duke Glinski be-
gat Juan Vasiliwich.
Juan Vasiliwich, being left a child, was committed
to George his uncle and protector; at twenty-five years
of age he vanquished the Tartars of Cazan and Astra-
can, bringing home with him their princes captive ;
made cruel war in Livonia, pretending right of inherit-
ance. He seemed exceedingly devout; and whereas
the Russians in their churches use out of zeal and re-
verence to knock their heads against the ground, his
forehead was seldom free of swellings and bruises, and
very often seen to bleed. The cause of his rigour in
government he alleged to be the malice and treachery
of his subjects. But some of the P nobles, incited by
his cruelty, called in the Crim Tartar, who in the year
1571 broke into Russia, burnt Mosco to the ground.
He reigned fifty-four years, had three sons, of which
the eldest, being strook on a time by his father, with
grief thereof died; his other sons were Pheodor and
Demetrius. In the time of Juan Vasiliwich the Eng-
lish came first by sea into the north parts of Russia.
Pheodor Juanowich, being under age, was left to
the protection of Boris, brother to the young empress,
and third son by adoption in the emperor's will." After
forty days of mourning, the appointed time of corona-
tion being come, the emperor issuing out of his palace,"
the whole clergy before him, entered with his nobility
the church of Blaveshina or blessedness; whence after
service to the church of Michael, then to our lady
church, being the cathedral. In midst whereof a chair
was placed, and most unvaluable garments put upon
him; there also was the imperial crown set on his head
by the metropolitan, who out of a small book in his
hand read exhortations to the emperor of justice and
peaceable government. After this, rising from his chair
he was invested with an upper robe, so thick with
orient pearls and stones, as weighed two hundred
pounds, the train born up by six dukes; his staff im-
perial was of a unicorn's horn three foot and a half
long, beset with rich stones; his globe and six crowns
carried before him by princes of the blood; his horse
at the church door stood ready with a covering of em-
broidered pearl, saddle and all suitable, to the value of
three hundred thousand marks. There was a kind of
bridge made three ways, one hundred and fifty fathom
long, three foot high, two fathom broad, whereon the
emperor with his train went from one church to another
above the infinite throng of people making loud accla-
mations: at the emperor's returning from those churches
they were spread underfoot with cloth of gold, the
porches with red velvet, the bridges with scarlet and
stammel cloth, all which, as the emperor passed by,
were cut and snatched by them that stood next; be-
sides new minted coins of gold and silver cast among
the people. The empress in her palace was placed be-
fore a great open window in rich and shining robes,
among her ladies. After this the emperor came into
parliament, where he had a banquet served by his no-
bles in princely order; two standing on either side his
chair with battleaxes of gold; three of the next rooms
great and large, being set round with plate of gold
and silver, from the ground up to the roof. This tri-
umph lasted a week, wherein many royal pastimes
were seen ; after which, election was made of the no-
bles to new offices and dignities. The conclusion of
all was a peal of one hundred and seventy brass ord-
nance two miles without the city, and twenty thou-
sand harquebuzes twice over; and so the emperor with
at least fifty thousand horse returned through the city
to his palace, where all the nobility, officers, and mer-
chants brought him rich presents. Shortly after the
emperor, by direction of Boris, conquered the large
country of Siberia, and took prisoner the king thereof;
he removed also corrupt officers and former taxes. In
sum, a great alteration in the government followed, yet
all quietly and without tumult. These things reported
abroad strook such awe into the neighbour kings, that
the Crim Tartar, with his wives also, and many nobles
valiant and personable men, came to visit the Russian.
There came also twelve hundred Polish gentlemen,
many Circassians, and people of other nations, to offer
b Horsey's Observations. c Hac. vol. 466.
d Horsey.
A BRIEF HISTORY OF MOSCOVIA.
575
service; embassadors from the Turk, the Persian, Geor-
gian, and other Tartar princes; from Almany, Poland,
Sweden, Denmark. But this glory lasted not long,
through the treachery of Boris, who procured the death
first of Demetrius, then of the emperor himself, where-
by the imperial race, after the succession of three hun
dred years, was quite extinguished.
Boris adopted, as before was said, third son to Juan
Vasiliwich, without impeachment now ascended the
throne; but neither did he enjoy long what he had so
wickedly compassed, divine revenge rising up against
him a counterfeit of that Demetrius, whom he had
caused to be murdered at Ouglets.” This upstart,
strengthened with many Poles and Cossacks, appears
in arms to claim his right out of the hands of Boris,
who sent against him an army of two hundred thou-
sand men, many of whom revolted to this Demetrius:
Peter Basman, the general, returning to Mosco with
the empty triumph of a reported victory. But the
enemy still advancing, Boris one day, after a plentiful
meal, finding himself heavy and pained in the stomach,
laid him down on his bed ; but cre his doctors, who
made great haste, came to him, was found speechless,
and soon after died with grief, as is supposed, of his ill
success against Demetrius. Before his death, though
it were speedy, he would be shorn, and new christened.
He had but one son, whom he loved so fondly, as not
to suffer him out of sight; using to say he was lord
and father of his son, and yet his servant, yea his slave.
To gain the people's love, which he had lost by his ill
getting the empire, he used two policies; first he caused
Mosco to be fired in four places, that in the quenching
thereof he might shew his great care and tenderness of
the people; among whom he likewise distributed so
much of his bounty, as both new built their houses,
and repaired their losses. At another time the people
murmuring, that the great pestilence, which had then
swept away a third part of the nation, was the punish-
ment of their electing him, a murderer, to reign over
them, he built galleries round about the utmost wall of
Mosco, and there appointed for one whole month twenty
thousand pound to be given to the poor, which well nigh
stopped their mouths. After the death of Boris, Peter
Basman, their only hope and refuge, though a young
man, was sent again to the wars, with him many Eng-
lish, Scots, French, and Dutch ; who all with the other
general Goleeche fell off to the new Demetrius, whose
messengers, coming now to the suburbs of Mosco, were
brought by the multitude to that spacious field before
the castle gate, within which the council were then sit-
ting, many of whom were by the people's threatening
called out, and constrained to hear the letters of Deme-
trius openly read: which, long ere the end, wrought so
with the multitude, that furiously they broke into the
castle, laying violence on all they met; when straight
appeared coming towards them two messengers of De-
metrius formerly sent, pitifully whipped and roasted,
which added to their rage. Then was the whole city in
an uproar, all the great counsellors’ houses ransacked,
especially of the Godomovas, the kindred and family of
Boris. Such of the nobles that were best beloved by en-
treaty prevailed at length to put an end to this tumult.
The empress, flying to a safer place, had her collar of
pearl pulled from her neck; and by the next message
command was given to secure her, with her son and
daughter. Whereupon Demetrius by general consent
was proclaimed emperor. The empress, now seeing
all lost, counselled the prince her son to follow his
father's example, who, it seems, had dispatched himself
by poison; and with a desperate courage beginning
the deadly health, was pledged effectually by her son;
but the daughter, only sipping, escaped. Others as-
cribe this deed to the secret command of Demetrius,
and self-murder imputed to them, to avoid the envy of
such a command.
Demetrius Evanowich, for so he called himself, who
succeeded, f was credibly reported the son of Gregory
Peupoloy a Russe gentleman, and in his younger years
to have been shorn a friar, but escaping from the mo-
nastery, to have travelled Germany and other coun-
tries, but chiefly Poland : where he attained to good
sufficiency in arms and other experience; which raised
in him such high thoughts, as, grounding on a common
belief among the Russians that the young Demetrius
was not dead, but conveyed away, and their hatred
against Boris, on this foundation, with some other cir-
cumstances, to build his hopes no lower than an empire;
which on his first discovery found acceptation so gene-
rally, as planted him at length on the royal seat: but
not so firmly as the fair beginning promised; for in a
short while the Russians finding themselves abused
by an impostor, on the sixth day after his marriage,
observing when his guard of Poles were most secure,
rushing into the palace before break of day, dragged
him out of his bed, and when he had confessed the
fraud, pulled him to pieces; with him Peter Basman
was also slain, and both their dead bodies laid open in
the market-place. He was of no presence, but other-
wise of a princely disposition ; too bountiful, which
occasioned some exactions; in other matters a great
lover of justice, not unworthy the empire which he had
gotten, and lost only through greatness of mind, neg-
lecting the conspiracy, which he knew the Russians
were plotting. Some say their hatred grew, for that
they saw him alienated from the Russian manners and
religion, having made Buchinskoy a learned protestant
his secretary. Some report from Gilbert's relation,
who was a Scot, a captain of his guard, that lying on
his bed awake, not long before the conspiracy, he saw
the appearance of an aged man coming toward him, at
which he rose, and called to them that watched; but
they denied to have seen any such pass by them. He
returning to his bed, and within an hour after, troubled
again with the same apparition, sent for Buchinskoy,
telling him he had now twice the same night seen an
aged man, who at his second coming told him, that
though he were a good prince of himself, yet for the
injustice and oppression of his inferiour ministers, his
empire should be taken from him. The secretary coun-
selled him to embrace true religion, affirming that for
e Post Christ. 1604, Purch. part 3, p. 750.
f Purch. part 3. p. 764.
576
A BRIEF HISTORY OF MOSCOVIA.
lack thereof his officers were so corrupt. The emperor
seemed to be much moved, and to intend what was
persuaded him. But a few days after, the other secre-
tary, a Russian, came to him with a drawn sword, of
which the emperor made slight at first; but he after bold
words assaulted him, straight seconded by other con-
spirators, crying liberty. Gilbert, with many of the guard
oversuddenly surprised, retreated to Coluga, a town
which they fortified; most of the other strangers were
massacred, except the English, whose mediation saved
also Buchinskoy. Shusky, who succeeded him, reports in
a letter to King James otherwise of him ; that his right
name was Gryshca the son of Boughdan; that to escape
punishment for villanies done, he turned friar, and fell
at last to the black art; and fearing that the metropo-
litan intended therefore to imprison him, fled into Let-
tow; where by counsel of Sigismund the Poland king,
he began to call himself Demetry of Onglitts; and by
many libels and spies privily sent into Mosco, gave out
the same; that many letters and messengers thereupon
were sent from Boris into Poland, and from the patri-
arch, to acquaint him who the runagate was: but the
Polanders giving them no credit, furnished him the
more with arms and money, notwithstanding the
league ; and sent the palatine Sandamersko and other
lords to accompany him into Russia, gaining also a
prince of the Crim Tartars to his aid; that the army of
Boris, hearing of his sudden death, yielded to this
Gryshca, who, taking to wife the daughter of Sanda-
mersko, attempted to root out the Russian clergy, and
to bring in the Romish religion, for which purpose
many Jesuits came along with him. Whereupon
Shusky with the nobles and metropolitans, conspiring
against him, in half a year gathered all the forces of
Moscovia, and surprising him, found in writing under
his own hand all these his intentions; letters also from
the pope and cardinals to the same effect, not only to
set up the religion of Rome, but to force it upon all,
with death to them that refused.
Vasily Evanowich Shusky,8 after the slaughter of
Demetry or Gryshca, was elected emperor, having not
long before been at the block for reporting to have seen
the true Demetrius dead and buried ; but Gryshca not
only recalled him, but advanced him to be the instru-
ment of his own ruin.
fifty; nobly descended, never married, of great wis-
dom reputed, a favourer of the English : for he saved
them from rifling in the former tumults. Some say"
he modestly refused the crown, till by lot four times
together it fell to him; yet after that, growing jealous
of his title, removed by poison and other means all the
nobles, that were like to stand his rivals; and is said
to have consulted with witches of the Samoéds, Lap-
pians, and Tartarians, about the same fears; and being
warned of one Michalowich to have put to death three
of that name, yet a fourth was reserved by fate to suc-
ceed him, being then a youth attendant in the court,
one of those that held the golden axes, and least sus.
He was then about the age of
by another reviving Demetrius brought in by the
Poles; whose counterfeited hand, and strange relating
of privatest circumstances, had almost deceived Gilbert
himself, had not their persons been utterly unlike; but
Gryshca's wife so far believed him for her husband, as
to receive him to her bed. Shusky, besieged in his
castle of Mosco, was adventurously supplied with some
powder and ammunition by the English; and with two
thousand French, English, and Scots, with other forces
from Charles king of Sweden. The English, after
many miseries of cold and hunger, and assaults by the
way, deserted by the French, yielded most of them to
the Pole, near Smolensko, and served him against the
Russ. “Meanwhile this second Demetrius, being now
rejected by the Poles, with those Russians that sided
with him laid siege to Mosco; Zolkiewsky, for Sigis-
mund king of Poland, beleaguers on the other side with
forty thousand men; whereof fifteen hundred English,
Scotch, and French. Shusky, despairing success, be-
takes him to a monastery; but with the city is yielded
to the Pole; who turns now his force against the coun-
terfeit Demetrius; he seeking to fly is by a Tartar
slain in his camp. Smolensko held out a siege of two
years, then surrendered. Shusky the emperor, carried
away into Poland, there ended miserably in prison.
But before his departure out of Moscovy, the Polanders
in his name sending for the chief nobility, as to a last
farewel, cause them to be entertained in a secret place
and there dispatched : by this means the easier to sub-
due the people. Yet the Poles were starved at length
out of those places in Mosco, which they had fortified.
Wherein the Russians, who besieged them, found, as
is reported, sixty barrels of man's flesh powdered, be-
ing the bodies of such as died among them, or were
slain in fight.
| After which the empire of Russia broke to pieces,
the prey of such as could catch, every one naming him-
self, and striving to be accounted, that Demetrius of
Ouglitts. Some chose Uladislaus King Sigismund's
son, but he not accepting, they fell to a popular govern-
ment; killing all the nobles under pretence of favour-
ing the Poles. Some overtures of receiving them were
made, as some say, to King James, and Sir John Meric
and Sir William Russell employed therein. Thus
Russia remaining in this confusion, it happened that a
mean man, a butcher, dwelling in the north about
Duina, inveighing against the baseness of their nobi-
lity,” and the corruption of officers, uttered words, that
if they would but choose a faithful treasurer to pay well
the soldiers, and a good general, (naming one Pozarsky,
a poor gentleman, who after good service done, lived
not far off retired and neglected,) that then he doubt-
ed not to drive out the Poles. The people assent, and
choose that general; the butcher they make their trea-
surer; who both so well discharged their places, that
with an army soon gathered they raise the siege of
Mosco, which the Polanders had renewed; and with
Boris Licin, another great soldier of that country, fall
into consultation about the choice of an emperor, and
pected. But before that time he also was supplanted
g Post Christ. 1606. h Purch. part 3. p. 769, &c.
i Post Christ. 1609.
k Purch. 779.
in Purch. part 3. 700.
l Post Christ. 1612.
A BRIEF HISTORY OF MOSCOWIA. 577
choose at last Michalowich, or Michael Pheodorowich,
the fatal youth, whose name Shusky so feared.
n Michael Pheodorowich thus elected by the valour of
Pozarsky and Boris Licin, made them both generals of
his forces, joining with them another great commander
of the Cossacks, whose aid had much befriended him;
the butcher also was made a counsellor of state. Fi-
mally, a peace was made up between the Russians and
the Poles; and that partly by the mediation of King
James.
CHAP. V.
The first discovery of Russia by the north-east, 1553,
with the English embassies, and entertainments at
that court, until the year 1604.
THE discovery of Russia by the northern ocean,”
made first, of any nation that we know, by English-
men, might have seemed an enterprise almost heroic ;
if any higher end than the excessive love of gain and
traffic had animated the design. Nevertheless, that in
regard that many things not unprofitable to the know-
ledge of nature, and other observations, are hereby come
to light, as good events ofttimes arise from evil occa-
sions, it will not be the worst labour to relate briefly
the beginning and prosecution of this adventurous
voyage; until it became at last a familiar passage.
When our merchants perceived the commodities of
England to be in small request abroad, and foreign
merchandise to grow higher in esteem and value than
before, they began to think with themselves, how this
might be remedied. And seeing how the Spaniards and
Portugals had increased their wealth by discovery of
new trades and countries, they resolved upon some new
and strange navigation. At the same time Sebastian
Chabota, a man for the knowledge of sea affairs much
renowned in those days, happened to be in London.
With him first they consult; and by his advice conclude
to furnish out three ships for the search and discovery
of the northern parts. And having heard that a cer-
tain worm is bred in that ocean, which many times
eateth through the strongest oak, they contrive to cover
some part of the keel of those ships with thin sheets of
lead; and victual them for eighteen months; allowing
equally to their journey, their stay, and their return.
Arms also they provide, and store of munition, with
sufficient captains and governors for so great an enter-
prise. To which among many, and some void of ex-
perience, that offered themselves, Sir Hugh Willoughby,
a valiant gentleman, earnestly requested to have the
charge. Of whom before all others both for his goodly
personage, and singular skill in the services of war,
they made choice to be admiral; and of Richard Chan-
celor, a man greatly esteemed for his skill, to le chief
pilot. This man was brought up by Mr. Henry Sid-
ney, afterwards deputy of Ireland, who coming where
the adventurers were gathered together, though then a
young man, with a grave and elegant speech com-
mended Chancelor unto them.
After this, they omitted no inquiry after any person,
that might inform them concerning those north-easterly
parts, to which the voyage tended; and two Tartarians
then of the king's stable were sent for ; but they were
able to answer nothing to purpose. So after much de-
bate it was concluded, that by the twentieth of May
the ships should depart. Being come near Greenwich,
where the court then lay, presently the courtiers came
running out, the privy council at the windows, the rest
on the towers and battlements. The mariners all ap-
parelled in watchet, or skycoloured cloth, discharge
their ordnance; the noise whereof, and of the people
shouting, is answered from the hills and waters with
as loud an echo. Only the good King Edward then
sick beheld not this sight, but died soon after. From
hence putting into Harwich, they staid long and lost
much time. At length passing by Shetland, they
kenned a far off Ægelands, being an innumerable sort
of islands called Rost Islands in sixty-six degrees.
Thence to Lofoot in sixty-eight, to Seinam in seventy
degrees; these islands belong all to the crown of Den-
mark. Whence departing Sir Hugh Willoughby set
out his flag, by which he called together the chief men
of his other ships to counsel; where they conclude, in
case they happened to be scattered by tempest, that
Wardhouse, a noted haven in Finnmark, be the appoint-
ed place of their meeting. The very same day after-
noon so great a tempest arose, that the ships were some
driven one way, some another, in great peril. The
general with his loudest voice called to Chancelor not
to be far from him; but in vain, for the admiral sailing
much better than his ship, and bearing all her sails,
was carried with great swiftness soon out of sight; but
before that, the ship-boat, striking against her ship,
was overwhelmed in view of the Bonaventure, whereof
Chancelor was captain. "The third ship also in the
same storm was lost. But Sir Hugh Willoughby
escaping that storm, and wandering on those desolate
seas till the eighteenth of September, put into a haven
where they had weather as in the depth of winter; and
there determining to abide till spring, sent out three
men south-west to find inhabitants; who journied three
days, but found none; then other three went westward
four days journey, and lastly three south-east three
days; but they all returning without news of people,
or any sign of habitation, Sir Hugh with the company
of his two ships abode there till January, as appears
by a will since found in one of the ships; but then
perished all with cold. This river or haven was Arzina
in Lapland, near to Kegor,” where they were found dead
the year after by certain Russian fishermen. Whereof
the English agent at Mosco having notice, sent and
recovered the ships with the dead bodies and most of
the goods, and sent them for England; but the ships
being unstaunch, as is supposed, by their two years
wintering in Lapland, sunk by the way with their
dead, and them also that brought them. But now
Chancelor, with his ship and company thus left, shaped
in Post Christ. 1613. a Iſac. vol. i. 2-13, 234,
b IIac. 235. S 1 bid. 161.
678
A BRIEF HISTORY OF MOSCOVIA.
his course to Wardhouse, the place agreed on to ex-
pect the rest; where having staid seven days without
tidings of them, he resolves at length to hold on his
voyage ; and sailed so far till he found no night, but
continual day and sun clearly shining on that huge
and vast sea for certain days. At length they enter
into a great bay, named, as they knew after, from St.
Nicholas; and spying a fisherboat, made after him to
know what people they were. The fishermen amazed
with the greatness of his ship, to them a strange and
new sight, sought to fly; but overtaken, in great fear
they prostrate themselves, and offer to kiss his feet;
but he raising them up with all signs and gestures of
courtesy, sought to win their friendship. They no
sooner dismissed, but spread abroad the arrival of a
strange nation, whose humanity they spake of with
great affection; whereupon the people running toge-
ther, with like return of all courteous usage receive
them ; offering them victuals freely, nor refusing to
traffic, but for a loyal custom which bound them from
that, without first the consent had of their king. After
mutual demands of each other's nation, they found
themselves to be in Russia, where Juan Vasiliwich at
that time reigned emperor. To whom privily the go-
vernor of that place sending notice of the strange
guests that were arrived, held in the mean while our
men in what suspense he could. The emperor well
pleased with so unexpected a message, invites them to
his court, offering them post horses at his own charge,
or if the journey seemed over long, that they might
freely traffic where they were. But ere this messenger
could return, having lost his way, the Muscovites
themselves loath that our men should depart, which
they made shew to do, furnished them with guides and
other conveniences, to bring them to their king's pre-
sence. Chancelor had now gone more than half his
journey, when the sledman sent to court meets him on
the way; delivers him the emperor's letters; which
when the Russes understood, so willing they were to
obey the contents thereof, that they quarrelled and
strove who should have the preferment to put his horses
to the sled. So after a long and troublesome journey
of fifteen hundred miles he arrived at Mosco. After
he had remained in the city about twelve days, a mes-
senger was sent to bring them to the king's house.
Being entered within the court gates, and brought into
an outward chamber, they beheld there a very honour-
able company to the number of a hundred, sitting all
apparelled in cloth of gold down to their ancles: next
conducted to the chamber of presence, there sat the em-
peror on a lofty and very royal throne; on his head a
diadem of gold, his robe all of goldsmith's work, in his
hand a chrystal sceptre garnished and beset with pre-
cious stones; no less was his countenance full of ma-
jesty. Beside him stood his chief secretary; on his
other side the great commander of silence, both in cloth
of gold; then sat his council of a hundred and fiſty
round about on high seats, clad all as richly. Chan-
celor, nothing abashed, made his obeisance to the em-
peror after the English manner. The emperor having
taken and read his letters, after some inquiry of King
Edward's health, invited them to dinner, and till then
dismissed them. But before dismission the secretary
presented their present bareheaded ; till which time
they were all covered; and before admittance our men
had charge not to speak, but when the emperor de-
manded aught. Having sat two hours in the secretary's
chamber, they were at length called in to dinner; where
the emperor was set at table, now in a robe of silver,
and another crown on his head. This place was called
the golden palace, but without cause, for the English-
men had seen many fairer; round about the room, but
at distance, were other long tables; in the midst a cup-
board of huge and massy goblets, and other vessels of
gold and silver; among the rest four great flaggons
migh two yards high, wrought in the top with devices
of towers and dragons' heads. The guests ascended to
their tables by three steps; all apparelled in linen, and
that lined with rich furs. The messes came in without
order, but all in chargers of gold, both to the emperor,
and to the rest that dined there, which were two hun-
dred persons; on every board also were set cups of
gold without number. The servitors, one hundred
and forty, were likewise arrayed in gold, and waited
with caps on their heads. They that are in high favour
sit on the same bench with the emperor, but far off.
Before meat came in, according to the custom of their
kings, he sent to every guest a slice of bread ; whom
the officer naming, saith thus, John Basiliwich, em-
peror of Russ, &c., doth reward thee with bread, at
which words all men stand up. Then were swans in
several pieces served in, each piece in a several dish,
which the great duke sends about as the bread, and so
likewise the drink. In dinner-time he twice changed
his crown, his waiters thrice their apparel; to whom
the emperor in like manner gives both bread and drink
with his own hands; which they say is done to the
intent that he may perfectly know his own household;
and indeed when dinner was done, he called his nobles
every one before him by name; and by this time can-
dles were brought in, for it grew dark; and the Eng-
lish departed to their lodgings from dinner, an hour
within night.
In the year ſiſteen hundred and fifty-five, Chancelor
made another voyage to this place with letters from
Queen Mary ; had a house in Mosco, and diet ap-
pointed him; and was soon admitted to the emperor's
presence in a large room spread with carpets; at his
entering and salutation all stood up, the emperor only
sitting, except when the queen's name was read, or
spoken; for then he himself would rise: at dinner he
sat bareheaded ; his crown and rich cap standing on a
pinnacle by. “Chancelor returning for England, Osep
Napea, governor of Wologda, came in his ship embas-
sador from the Russe; but suffering shipwreck in Pet-
tislego, a bay in Scotland, Chancelor, who took more
care to save the embassador than himself, was drowned,
the ship rifled, and most of her lading made booty by
the people thereabout.
In the year fifteen hundred and fifty-seven, Osep
d Hac. 258, 263, 465.
e Ibid. 286, f Ibid. 310, &c.
A BRIEF HISTORY OF MOSCOWIA.
579
Napea returned into his country with Anthony Jen-
kinson, who had the command of four tall ships. He
reports of a whirlpool between the Rost Islands and
Loſoot called Malestrand; which from half ebb to half
flood is heard to make so terrible a noise, as shakes the
door-rings of houses in those islands ten miles off;
whales that come within the current thereof make a
pitiful cry; trees carried in and cast out again have
the ends and boughs of them so beaten, as they seem
like the stalks of bruised hemp. About Zeinam they
saw many whales very monstrous, hard by their ships;
whereof some by estimation sixty foot long ; they
roared hideously, it being then the time of their en-
gendering. At Wardhouse, he saith, the cattle are fed
with fish. Coming to Mosco, he found the emperor
sitting aloft in a chair of state, richly crowned, a staff
of gold in his hand wrought with costly stone. Dis-
tant from him sat his brother, and a youth the empe-
ror's son of Casan, whom the Russe had conquered ;
there dined with him diverse embassadors, christian
and heathen, diversely apparelled : his brother with
some of the chief nobles sat with him at table : the
guests were in all six hundred. In dinner-time came
in six musicians; and standing in the midst, sung
three several times, but with little or no delight to our
men; there dined at the same time in other halls two
thousand Tartars, who came to serve the duke in his
wars. The English were set at a small table by them-
selyes, direct before the emperor; who sent them diverse
bowls of wine and meath, and many dishes from his
own hand : the messes were but mean, but the change
of wines and several meaths were wonderful. As oft
as they dimed with the emperor, he sent for them in
the morning, and invited them with his own mouth.
g On Christmas day being invited, they had for other
provision as before, but for store of gold and silver
plate excessive; among which were twelve barrels of
silver, hooped with fine gold, containing twelve gal-
lons apiece.
In the year fifteen hundred and sixty was the first
English traffic to the Narve in Livonia, till then con-
cealed by Danskers and Lubeckers.
Fifteen hundred and sixty-one. The same Anthony
Jenkinson made another voyage to Mosco; and arrived
while the emperor was celebrating his marriage with
a Circassian lady; during which time the city gates
for three days were kept shut; and all men what-
soever straitly commanded to keep within their houses;
except some of his household; the cause whereof is not
known.
Fifteen hundred and sixty-six. He made again the
same voyage;" which now men usually made in a
month from London to St. Nicholas with good winds,
being seven hundred and fifty leagues.
Fifteen hundred and sixty-eight. Thomas Randolf,
2sq. went embassador to Muscovy, from Queen Eliza-
beth ; and in his passage by sea met nothing remark-
able save great store of whales, whom they might see
engendering together, and the spermaceti swimming
on the water. At Colmogro he was met by a gentle-
man from the emperor, at whose charge he was con-
ducted to Mosco : but met there by no man; not so
much as the English; lodged in a fair house built for
embassadors; but there confined upon some suspicion
which the emperor had conceived; sent for at length
after seventeen weeks' delay, was ſain to ride thither
on a borrowed horse, his men on foot. In a chamber
before the presence were sitting about three hundred
persons, all in rich robes taken out of the emperor's
wardrobe for that day; they sat on three ranks of
benches, rather for shew than that the persons were of
honour; being merchants, and other mean inhabitants.
The embassador saluted them, but by them unsaluted
passed on with his head covered. At the presence door
being received by two which had been his guardians,
and brought into the midst, he was there willed to
stand still, and speak his message from the queen; at
whose name the emperor stood up, and demanded her
health : then giving the embassador his hand to kiss,
fell to many questions. The present being delivered,
which was a great silver bowl curiously graven, the
emperor told him, he dined not that day openly because
of great affairs; but, saith he, I will send thee my
dinner, and augment thy allowance. And so dismiss-
ing him, sent a duke richly apparelled soon after to his
lodging, with fifty persons, each of them carrying meat
in silver dishes covered ; which himself delivered into
the embassador's own hands, tasting first of every dish,
and every sort of drink; that done set him down with
his company, took part, and went not thence unrewarded.
The emperor sent back with this embassador another of
his own called Andrew Savin.
Fiſtcen hundred and seventy-one. Jenkinson made
a third voyage; but was staid long at Colmogro by
reason of the plague in those parts; at length had
audience where the court then was, near to Pereslave ;
to which place the emperor was returned from his
Swedish war with ill success: and Mosco the same
year had been wholly burnt by the Crim: in it the
English house, and diverse English were smothered in
the cellars, multitudes of people in the city perished,
all that were young led captive with exceeding spoil.
Fifteen hundred and eighty-three. “Juan Basiliwich
having the year before sent bis ambassador Pheodor
Andrewich about matters of commerce, the queen made
choice of Sir Jerom Bowes, one of her household, to go
into Russia; who being attended with more than forty
persons, and accompanied with the Russe returning
home, arrived at St. Nicholas. The Dutch by this
time had intruded into the Muscovy trade, which by
privilege long before had been granted solely to the
English ; and had corrupted to their side Shalkan the
chancellor, with others of the great ones ; who so
wrought, that a creature of their own was sent to meet
Sir Jerom at Colmogro, and to offer him occasions of
dislike : until at Vologda he was received by another
from the emperor; and at Heraslave by a duke well
accompanied, who presented him with a coach and tem
geldings. Two miles from Mosco met him four gen-
tlemen with two hundred horse, who, after short salut-
g Hac. 317. h Ibid. 311.
i l bid. 373. k Ibid. vol. i. 158.
2 p
580
A BRIEF HISTORY OF MOSCOWIA.
ation, told him what they had to say from the emperor,
willing him to alight, which the embassador soon re-
fused, unless they also lighted; whereon they stood
long debating; at length agreed, great dispute fol-
lowed, whose foot should first touch the ground. Their
message delivered, and then embracing, they conducted
the embassador to a house at Mosco, built for him pur-
posely. At his going to court, he and his followers
honourably mounted and apparelled, the emperor's
guard were set on either side all the way about six
thousand shot. At the court gate met him four noble-
men in cloth of gold, and rich fur caps, embroidered
with pearl and stone; then four others of greater de-
gree, in which passage there stood along the walls,
and sat on benches, seven or eight hundred men in
coloured satins and gold. At the presence door met
him the chief herald, and with him all the great officers
of court, who brought him where the emperor sat: there
were set by him three crowns of Muscovy, Cazan, and
Astracan; on each side stood two young noblemen,
costly apparelled in white, each of them had a broad
axe on his shoulder; on the benches round sat above
an hundred noblemen. Having given the embassador
his hand to kiss, and inquired of the queen's health, he
willed him to go sit in the place provided for him, nigh
ten paces distant; from thence to send him the queen's
letters and present. Which the embassador thinking
not reasonable stepped forward ; but the chancellor
meeting him, would have taken his letters; to whom
the embassador said, that the queen had directed no
letters to him ; and so went on and delivered them to
the emperor's own hands; and after a short withdraw-
ing into the council-chamber, where he had conference
with some of the council, he was called in to dinner:
about the midst whereof, the emperor standing up, drank
a deep carouse to the queen's health, and sent to the
embassador a great bowl of Rhenish wine to pledge
him. But at several times being called for to treat
about affairs, and not yielding aught beyond his com-
mission, the emperor not wont to be gainsaid, one day
especially broke into passion, and with a stern counte-
nance told him, he did not reckon the queen to be his
fellow ; for there are, quoth he, her betters. The em-
bassador not holding it his part, whatever danger
might ensue, to hear any derogate from the majesty of
his prince, with like courage and countenance told him
that the queen was equal to any in christendom, who
thought himself greatest; and wanted not means to
offend her enemies whomsoever. Yea, quoth he, what
sayest thou of the French and Spanish kings 2 I hold
her, quoth the embassador, equal to either. Then what
to the German emperor P Her father, quoth he, had the
emperor in his pay. This answer misliked the duke
so far, as that he told him, were he not an embassador,
he would throw him out of doors. You may, said the
embassador, do your will, for I am now fast in your
country; but the queen, I doubt not, will know how
to be revenged of any injury offered to her embassador.
Whereat the emperor in great sudden bid him get
home; and he with no more reverence than such usage
required, saluted the emperor, and went his way.
Notwithstanding this, the Muscovite, soon as his mood
left him, spake to them that stood by many praises of
the embassador, wishing he had such a servant, and
presently after sent his chief secretary to tell him, that
whatever had passed in words, yet for his great respect
to the queen, he would shortly after dispatch him with
honour and full contentment, and in the mean while he
much enlarged his entertainment. He also desired,
that the points of our religion might be set down, and
caused them to be read to his nobility with much ap-
probation. And as the year before he had sought in
marriage the lady Mary Hastings, which took not effect,
the lady and her friends excusing it, he now again re-
newed the motion to take to wife some one of the queen's
kinswomen, either by sending an embassage, or going
nimself with his treasure into England. Now happy
was that nobleman, whom Sir Jerom Bowes in public
favoured ; unhappy they who had opposed him : for
the emperor had beaten Shalkan the chancellor very
grievously for that cause, and threatened not to leave
one of his race alive. But the emperor dying soon
after of a surfeit, Shalkan, to whom then almost the
whole government was committed, caused the embas-
sador to remain close prisoner in his house nine weeks.
Being sent for at length to have his dispatch, and
slightly enough conducted to the council-chamber, he
was told by Shalkan, that this emperor would conde-
scend to no other agreements than were between his
father and the queen before his coming : and so dis-
arming both him and his company, brought them to
the emperor with many affronts in their passage, for
which there was no help but patience. The emperor,
saying but over what the chancellor had said before,
offered him a letter for the queen: which the embassa-
dor, knowing it contained nothing to the purpose of
his embassy, refused, till he saw his danger grow too
great; nor was he suffered to reply, or have his inter-
preter. Shalkan sent him word, that now the English
emperor was dead; and hastened his departure, but
with so many disgraces put upon him, as made him
fear some mischief in his journey to the sea : having
only one mean gentleman sent with him to be his con-
voy; he commanded the English merchants in the
queen's name to accompany him, but such was his
danger, that they durst not. So arming himself and
his followers in the best wise he could, against any
outrage, he at length recovered the shore of St. Nicho-
las. Where he now resolved to send them back by his
conduct some of the affronts which he had received.
Ready therefore to take ship, he causes three or four
of his valiantest and discreetest men to take the empe-
ror's letter, and disgraceful present, and to deliver it,
or leave it at the lodging of his convoy, which they
safely did ; though followed with a great tumult of
such as would have forced them to take it back.
Fifteen hundred and eighty-four. At the coronation
of Pheodor the emperor, Jerom Horsey being then
agent in Russia, and called for to court with one John
de Wale, a merchant of the Netherlands and a subject
of Spain, some of the nobles would have preferred the
Fleming before the English. But to that our agent would
A BRIEF HISTORY OF MOSCOVIA. 581
in no case agree, saying he would rather have his legs
cut off by the knees, than bring his present in course
aſter a subject of Spain. The emperor and prince Boris
perceiving the controversy, gave order to admit Horsey
first : who was dismissed with large promises, and
seventy messes with three carts of several meath sent
aſter him.
Fiſteen hundred and eighty-eight. Dr. Giles
I'letcher went embassador from the queen to Pheodor
then emperor; whose relations being judicious and
exact are best read entirely by themselves. ' This em-
peror, upon report of the great learning of John Dee
the mathematician, invited him to Mosco, with offer of
two thousand pounds a year, and from prince Boris one
thousand marks; to have his provision from the emperor's
table, to be honourably received, and accounted as one
of the chief men in the land. All which Dee accepted
not.
One thousand six hundred and four. Sir Thomas
Smith was sent embassador from King James to Boris
then emperor; and staid some days at a place five miles
from Mosco, till he was honourably received into the
city; met on horseback by many thousands of gentle-
men and nobles on both sides the way; where the em-
bassador alighting from his coach, and mounted on
his horse, rode with his trumpets sounding before him;
till a gentleman of the emperor's stable brought him a
gennet gorgeously trapped with gold, pearl, and stone,
especially with a great chain of plated gold about his
neck, and horses richly adorned for his followers. Then
came three great noblemen with an interpreter offering
a speech ; but the embassador deeming it to be cere-
mony, with a brief compliment found means to put it
by. Thus alighting all, they saluted, and gave hands
mutually. Those three, after a tedious preamble of the
emperor's title thrice repeated, brought a several com-
pliment of three words a piece, as namely, the first, To
know how the king did ; the next, How the embassa-
dor; the third, That there was a fair house provided
him. Then on they went on either hand of the embas-
sador, and about six thousand gallants behind them ;
still met within the city by more of greater quality to
the very gate of his lodging : where fifty gunners were
his daily guard both at home and abroad. The pres-
taves, or gentlemen assigned to have the care of his
entertainment, were earnest to have had the embassa-
dor's speech and message given them in writing, that
the interpreter, as they pretended, might the better
translate it; but he admonished them of their foolish
demand. On the day of his audience, other gennets
were sent him and his attendants to ride on, and two
white palfreys to draw a rich chariot, which was par-
cel of the present; the rest whereof was carried by his
followers through a lane of the emperor's guard; many
messengers posting up and down the while, till they
came through the great castle, to the uttermost court
gate. There met by a great duke, they were brought
up stairs through a stone gallery, where stood on each
hand many in fair coats of Persian stuff, velvet, and da-
l IIack. 508.
mask. The embassador by two other counsellors being
led into the presence, after his obeisance done, was to
stay and hear again the long title repeated; then the
particular presents; and so delivered as much of his
embassage as was then requisite. After which the em-
peror, arising from his throne, demanded of the king's
health; so did the young prince. The embassador then
delivered his letters into the emperor's own hand,
though the chancellor offered to have taken them. He
bore the majesty of a mighty emperor; his crown and
sceptre of pure gold, a collar of pearls about his neck,
his garment of crimson velvet embroidered with pre-
cious stone and gold. On his right side stood a fair
globe of beaten gold on a pyramis with a cross upon
it; to which, before he spake, turning a little he cross-
ed himself. Not much less in splendour on another
throne sate the prince. By the emperor stood two no-
blemen in cloth of silver, high caps of black fur, and
chains of gold hanging to their feet; on their shoul-
ders two poleaxes of gold; and two of silver by the
prince; the ground was all covered with arras or tapes-
try. Dismissed, and brought in again to dinner, they
saw the emperor and his son seated in state, ready to
dine ; each with a skull of pearl on their bare heads,
their vestments changed. In the midst of this hall
seemed to stand a pillar heaped round to a great height
with massy plate curiously wrought with beasts, fishes,
and fowl. The emperor's table was served with two
hundred noblemen in coats of gold; the prince's table
with young dukes of Casan, Astracan, Siberia, Tarta-
ria, and Circassia. The emperor sent from his table to
the embassador thirty dishes of meat, to each a loaf of
extraordinary fine bread. Then followed a number
more of strange and rare dishes piled up by half do-
zens, with boiled, roast, and baked, most part of them
besauced with garlic and onions. In midst of dinner
calling the embassador up to him he drank the king's
health, who receiving it from his hand, returned to his
place, and in the same cup, being of fair chrystal,
pledged it with all his company. After dinner they
were called up to drink of excellent and strong meath
from the emperor's hand; of which when many did but
sip, he urged it not; saying he was best pleased with
what was most for their health. Yet after that, the
same day he sent a great and glorious duke, one of
them that held the golden poleaxe, with his retinue,
and sundry sorts of meath, to drink merrily with the
embassador, which some of the English did, until the
duke and his followers, lightheaded, but well rewarded
with thirty yards of cloth of gold, and two standing
cups, departed. At second audience the embassador
had like reception as before: and being dismissed, had
dinner sent after him with three hundred several dishes
of fish, it being Lent, of such strangeness, greatness,
and goodness, as scarce would be credible to report.
The embassador departing was brought a mile out of
the city with like honour as he was first met; where
lighting from the emperor's sled, he took him to his
coach, made fast upon a sled; the rest to their sleds,
an easy and pleasant passage
582
A BRIEF HISTORY OF MOSCOWIA.
Names of the Authors from whence these Relations
have been taken ; being all either Eyewitnesses, or
immediate Relaters from such as were.
The journal of Sir Hugh Willoughby.
Discourse of Richard Chancelor.
Another of Clement Adams, taken from the mouth of
Chancelor.
Notes of Richard Johnson, servant to Chancelor.
The Protonotaries Register.
Two Letters of Mr. Hen. Lane.
Several voyages of Jenkinson.
Southam and Sparks.
The journal of Randolf the embassador.
Another of Sir Jerom Bowes.
The coronation of Pheodor, written by Jerom Horsey.
Gourdon of Hull's voyage to Pechora.
The voyage of William Pursglove to Pechora.
Of Josias Logan.
Hessel Gerardus, out of Purchas, part 3. l. 3.
Russian relations in Purch. 797. ibid. 806. ibid.
The embassage of Sir Thomas Smith
Papers of Mr. Hackluit.
Jansonius. -
A D E C L A R AT I O N
() F
LETTERS PATENTS,
FOR THE ELECTION OF THIS PRESENT KING OF POLAND,
JOHN THE THIRD,
ELECTED ON THE 22nd OF MAY LAST PAST, A. D. 1674.
CONTAINING THE REASONS OF THIS EI.ECTION, THE GREAT VIRTUES AND MERITS OF THE SAID SERENE ELECT, HIS EMIN ENT SER-
VICES IN war, ESPECIALLY IN HIS LAST GREAT VICTORY AGAINST THE TURKS AND TARTARS, WHEREOF MANY PARTICULARS
ARE HERE RELATED, NOT PUBLISHED BEFORE.
NOW FAITH FULLY TRAN SLATED FROM THE LATIN COPY.
IN the name of the most Holy and Individual Trinity,
the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
WE Andrew Trezebicki, bishop of Cracovia, duke of
Severia, John Gembicki of Uladislau and Pomerania,
&c.; bishops to the number of ten.
Stanislaus Warszycki, Castellan of Cracovia; Alex-
ander Michael Lubomirski of Cracovia, &c.; palatines
to the number of twenty-three.
Christopherus Grzymaltouski of Posnania, Alex-
ander Gratus de Tarnow of Sandiner; castellans to the
number of twenty-four.
Hiraleus Polubinski, high marshal of the great
dukedom of Lithuania, Christopherus Pac, high chan-
cellor of the great dukedom of Lithuania, senators and
great officers, to the number of seventy-five.
WE declare by these our present letters unto all and
single persons whom it may concern : our common-
wealth, being again left widowed by the unseasonable
death of that famous Michael late king of Poland, who,
having scarce reigned full five years, on the tenth day
of November, of the year last past, at Leopolis, chang-
ed his fading crown for one immortal; in the sense of
so mournful a funeral and fresh calamity, yet with un-
daunted courage, mindful of herself in the midst of
dangers, forebore not to seek remedies, that the world
may understand she grows in the midst of her losses;
it pleased her to begin her counsels of preserving her
country, and delivering it from the utmost chances of
an interreign, from the divine Deity, (as it were by the
only motion of whose finger, it is easy that kingdoms
be transferred from nation to nation, and kings from
the lowest states to thrones;) and therefore the business
was begun according to our country laws, and ances-
tors' institutions. After the convocation of all the states
of the kingdom ended, in the month of February, at
Warsaw, by the common consent of all those states, on
the day decreed for the election the twentieth of April:
at the report of this famous act, as though a trumpet
had been sounded, and a trophy of virtue erected, the
wishes and desires of foreign princes came forth of their
own accord into the field of the Polonian liberty, in a
famous strife of merits and goodwill towards the com-
monwealth, every one bringing their ornaments, ad-
vantages, and gifts to the commonwealth : but the com-
monwealth becoming more diligent by the prodigal
ambition used in the last interreign, and factions, and
disagreeings of minds, nor careless of the future, con-
sidered with herself whether firm or doubtful things
were promised, and whether she should seem from the
present state to transfer both the old and new honours
of Poland into the possession of strangers, or the mili-
tary glory, and their late unheard of victory over the
Turks, and blood spilt in the war, upon the purple of
some unwarlike prince; as if any one could so soon
put on the love of the country, and that Poland was
not so much an enemy to her own nation and fame, as
to favour strangers more than her own; and valour
being found in her, should suffer a guest of new power
to wax proud in her: therefore she thenceforth turned
her thoughts upon some one in her own nation, and at
length abolished (as she began in the former election)
that reproach cast upon her, under pretence of a secret
maxim, “That none can be elected king of Poland,
584
DECLARATION FOR THE EIECTION
but such as are born out of Poland ;” neither did she
seek long among her citizens whom she should pre-
fer above the rest; (for this was no uncertain or sus-
pended election, there was no place for delay;) for al-
though in the equality of our nobles many might be
elected, yet the virtue of a hero appeared above his
equals: therefore the eyes and minds of all men were
willingly, and by a certain divine instinct, turned upon
the high marshal of the kingdom, captain of the army,
John Sobietski. The admirable virtue of the man, the
high power of marshal in the court, with his supreme
command in arms, senatorial honour, with his civil mo-
desty, the extraordinary splendour of his birth and for-
tune, with open courtesy, piety towards God, love to
his fellow-citizens in words and deeds; constancy,
faithfulness, and clemency towards his very enemies,
and what noble things soever can be said of a hero,
did lay such golden chains on the minds and tongues
of all, that the senate and people of Poland and of the
great dukedom of Lithuania, with suffrages and agree-
ing voices named and chose him their king ; not with
his seeking or precipitate counsel, but with mature de-
liberations continued and extended till the third day.
Certainly it conduced much for the honour of the
most serene elect, the confirmation of a free election,
and the eternal praise of the people electing, that the
great business of an age was not transacted in one day,
or in the shadow of the night, or by one casual heat:
for it was not right that a hero of the age should in a
moment of time (and as it were by the cast of a die)
be made a king, whenas antiquity by an ancient pro-
verb has delivered, “ that Hercules was not begot in
one might;" and it hath taught, that election should
shine openly under a clear sky, in the open light.
The most serene elect took it modestly, that his
nomination should be deferred till the third day, plainly
shewing to endeavour, lest his sudden facility of assent
being suspected, might detract from their judgment,
and the world might be enforced to believe by a more
certain argument, that he that was so chosen was
clected without his own ambition, or the envy of cor-
rupted liberty; or was it by the appointed counsel of
God, that this debate continued three whole days, from
Saturday till Monday, as if the Cotimian victory (be-
gun on the Saturday, and at length on the third day
after accomplished, after the taking of the Cotimian
castle) had been a lucky presage of his royal reward;
or, as if with an auspicious omen, the third day of
election had alluded to the regal name of JOHN the
Third.
The famous glory of war paved his way to the crown,
and confirmed the favour of suffrages to his most
serene elect. He the first of all the Polonians shewed
that the Scythian swiftness (troublesome heretofore to
all the monarchies in the world) might be repressed by
a standing fight, and the terrible main battalion of the
Turk might be broken and routed at one stroke. That
we may pass by in silence the ancient rudiments of
warfare, which he stoutly and gloriously managed
under the conduct and authority of another, against
the Swedes, Moscovites, Borussians, Transylvanians,
and Cossacks: though about sixty cities taken by him
from the Cossacks be less noised in the mouth of fame;
yet these often and prosperous battles were a prelude
to greatest victories in the memory of man. Myriads
of Tartars had overrun within this six years with their
plundering troops the coast of Podolia, when a small
force and some shattered legions were not sufficient
against the hostile assault, yet our general knowing
not how to yield, shut himself up (by a new stratagem
of war) in Podhajecy, a strait castle, and fortified in
haste, whereby he might exclude the cruel destruction,
which was hastening into the bowels of the kingdom ;
by which means the Barbarian, deluded and routed,
took conditions of peace; as if he had made his inroad
for this only purpose, that he might bring to the most
serene elect matter of glory, victory.
For these four last years the famous victories of So-
bietski have signalized every year of his warlike com-
mand on the Cossacks and Tartarians both joined
together; the most strong province of Braclavia, as far
as it lies between Hypanis and Tyral, with their cities
and warlike people, were won from the Cossack
enemy.
And those things are beyond belief, which two years
ago the most serene elect, after the taking of Camenick
(being undaunted by the siege of Laopolis) performed
to a miracle by the hardness and fortitude of the Polo-
nian army, scarce consisting of three thousand men, in
the continual course of five days and nights, sustaining
life without any food, except wild herbs; setting upon
the Tartarians, he made famous the names of Narulum,
Niemicrovia, Konarnum, Kalussia, obscure towns be-
fore, by a great overthrow of the Barbarians. He slew
three sultans of the Crim Tartars, descended of the
royal Gietian family, and so trampled on that great
force of the Scythians, that in these later years they
could not regain their courage, nor recollect their
forces. But the felicity of this last autumn exceeded
all his victories; whenas the fortifications at Choci-
mum, famous of old, were possessed and fortified by
above forty thousand Turks, in which three and forty
years ago the Polonians had sustained and repressed
the forces of the Ottoman family, drawn together out
of Asia, Africa, and Europe, fell to the ground within
a few hours, by the only (under God) imperatorious
valour and prudence of Sobietski; for he counted it his
chief part to go about the watches, order the stations,
and personally to inspect the preparations of warlike
ordnance, to encourage the soldiers with voice, hands,
and countenance, wearied with hunger, badness of
weather, and three days standing in arms; and he
(which is most to be admired) on foot at the head of
the foot forces, made through, and forced his way to
the battery, hazarding his life devoted to God and his
country; and thereupon made a cruel slaughter within
the camp and fortifications of the enemy; while the
desperation of the Turks whetted their valour, and he
performed the part of a most provident and valiant
captain: at which time three bashaws were slain, the
fourth scarce passed with difficulty the swift river of
Tyras; eight thousand jamizaries, twenty thousand
OF JOHN III, KING OF POLAND.
585
chosen spachies, besides the more common soldiers,
were cut off; the whole camp with all their ammunition
and great ordnance, besides the Assyrian and Phrygian
wealth of luxurious Asia, were taken and pillaged;
the famous castle of Cotimia, and the bridge over Ty-
ras, strong fortresses, equal to castles on each side the
river, were additions to the victory. Why therefore
should not such renowned heroic valour be crowned
with the legal reward of a diadem P All christendom
have gone before us in example, which, being arrived
to the recovery of Jerusalem under the conduct of
Godfrey of Bulloin, on their own accord gave him that
kingdom, for that he first scaled the walls of that city.
Our most screne elect is not inferiour, for he first
ascended two main fortresses of the enemy.
The moment of time adorns this victory unheard of
in many ages, the most serene king Michael dying the
day before, as it were signifying thereby that he gave
way to so great valour, as if it were by his command
and favour, that this conqueror might so much the more
gloriously succeed from the helmet to the crown, from
the commander's staff to the sceptre, from his lying in
the field to the regal throne.
The commonwealth recalled the grateful and never
to be forgotten memory of his renowned father, the
most illustrious and excellent James Sobietski, cas-
tellan of Cracovia, a man to be written of with sedulous
care; who by his golden eloquence in the public
councils, and by his hand in the scene of war, had so
often amplified the state of the commonwealth, and
defended it with the arms of his family. Neither can
we believe it happened without Divine Providence, that
in the same place wherein forty years ago his renowned
father, embassador of the Polonian commonwealth, had
made peace and covenants with Cimanus the Turkish
general, his great son should revenge with his sword
the peace broke, Heaven itself upbraiding the perfidious
enemy. The rest of his grandsires and great grand-
sires, and innumerable names of famous senators and
great officers, have as it were brought forth light to
the serene elect by the emulous greatness and glory of
his mother's descent, especially Stanislaus Zelkievius,
high chancellor of the kingdom, and general of the
army, at whose grave in the neighbouring fields, in
which by the Turkish rage in the year sixteen hundred
and twenty he died, his victorious nephew took full re-
venge by so remarkable an overthrow of the enemy :
the immortal valour and fatal fall of his most noble
uncle Stanislaus Danilovitius in the year sixteen hun-
dred and thirty-five, palatine of Russia, doubled the
glory of his ancestors; whom desirous of honour, and
not enduring the sluggish peace wherein Poland then
slept secure, valour and youthful heat accited at his
own expense and private forces into the Tauric fields;
that by his footing, and the ancient warlike Polonian
discipline, he might lead and point the way to these
merits of Sobietski, and being slain by Cantimiz the
Tartarian Cham, in revenge of his son by him slain,
he might by his noble blood give lustre to this regal
purple. Neither hath the people of Poland forgot the
most illustrious Marcus Sobietski, elder brother of our
most screne elect, who, when the Polonian army at
Batto was routed by the Barbarians, although occasion
was offered him of escape, yet chose rather to die in
the overthrow of such valiant men, a sacrifice for his
country, than to buy his life with a dishonourable re-
treat; perhaps the divine judgment so disposing, whose
order is, that persons pass away and fail, and causes
and events happen again the same; that by the repeated
fate of the Huniades, the elder brother, of great hopes,
removed by a lamented slaughter, might leave to his
younger brother surviving the readier passage to the
throne. That therefore which we pray may be happy,
auspicious, and fortunate to our orthodox commonwealth,
and to all christendom, with free and unanimous votes,
none opposing, all consenting and applauding, by the
right of our free election, notwithstanding the absence
of those which have been called and not appeared ;
We being led by no private respect, but having only
before our eyes the glory of God, the increase of the
ancient catholic church, the safety of the common-
wealth, and the dignity of the Polish nation and name,
have thought fit to elect, create, and name, JOHN in
Zolkiew and Zloczew Sobietski, supreme marshal
general of the kingdom, general of the armies, gover-
nor of Neva, Bara, Strya, Loporovient, and Kalussien,
most eminently adorned with so high endowments,
merits, and splendour, to be KING of Poland, grand
duke of Lithuania, Russia, Prussia, Mazovia, Samo-
gitia, Kyovia, Volhinia, Padlachia, Podolia, Livonia,
Smolensko, Severia, and Czerniechovia, as we have
elected, created, declared, and named him : I the afore-
said bishop of Cracovia (the archiepiscopal see being
vacant) exercising the office and authority of primate,
and by consent of all the states, thrice demanded, op-
posed by none, by all and every one approved, con-
clude the election ; promising faithfully, that we will
always perform to the same most serene and potent
elect prince, lord JoHN the Third, our king, the same
faith, subjection, obedience, and loyalty, according to
our rights and liberties, as we have performed to his
blessed ancestor, as also that we will crown the same
most serene elect in the next assembly at Cracovia, to
that end ordained, as our true king and lord, with the
regal diadem, with which the kings of Poland were
wont to be crowned ; and after the manner which the
Roman Catholic church beforetime hath observed in
anointing and inaugurating kings, we will anoint and
inaugurate him: yet so as he shall hold fast and observe
first of all the rights, immunities both ecclesiastical
and secular, granted and given unto us by his ancestor
of blessed memory; as also these laws, which we our-
selves in the time of this present and former interreign,
according to the right of our liberty, and better pre-
servation of the commonwealth, have established.
And if, moreover, the most serene elect will bind him-
self by an oath, to perform the conditions concluded
with those persons sent by his majesty before the ex-
hibition of this present decree of election, and will
provide in best manner for the performance of them
by his authentic letters; which decree of election we,
by divine aid desirous to put in execution, do send by
586 DECLARATION FOR THE ELECTION, &c.
common consent, to deliver it into the hand of the
most serene elect, the most illustrious and reverend
lord bishop of Cracovia, together with some senators
and chief officers, and the illustrious and magnificent
Benedictus Sapieha, treasurer of the court of the great
dukedom of Lithuania, marshal of the equestrian order;
committing to them the same decree of intimating an
oath, upon the aforesaid premiscs, and receiving his
subscription; and at length to give and deliver the
same decree into the hands of the said elect, and to act
and perform all other things which this affair requires;
in assurance whereof the seals of the lords senators,
and those of the equestrian order deputed to sign, are
here affixed.
Given by the hands of the most illustrious and re-
verend father in Christ, the lord Andrew Olszowski,
bishop of Culma and Pomisania, high chancellor of
the kingdom, in the general ordinary assembly of the
kingdom, and great dukedom of Lithuania, for the
election of the new king. Warsaw, the twenty-second
day of May, in the year of our Lord sixteen hundred
and seventy-four.
In the presence of Franciscus Praskmouski, provost
of Guesna, abbot of Sieciethovia, chief secretary
of the kingdom ; Joannes Malachowski, abbot of
Mogila, referendary of the kingdom, &c.; with
other great officers of the kingdom and clergy, to
the number of fourscore and two. And the rest,
many great officers, captains, secretaries, cour-
tiers, and inhabitants of the kingdom, and great
dukedom of Lithuania, gathered together at War-
saw to the present assembly of the election of the
kingdom and great dukedom of Lithuania.
Assistants at the solemn oath taken of his sacred
majesty on the fifth day of the month of June, in
the palace at Warsaw, after the letters patents de-
livered upon the covenants, and agreements, or
capitulations, the most reverend and excellent
lord Francisco Bonvisi, archbishop of Thessalomi-
ca, apostolic nuncio; count Christopherus a Scaff-
gotsch, Caecareus Tussanus de Forbin, de Jason,
bishop of Marseilles in France, Joannes free-baron
Hoverbec, from the marquis of Brandenburg,
embassadors, and other envoys and ministers of
State.
L E T T E R S O F
S T A T E
TO MOST OF
THE SOVEREIGN PRINCES AND REPUBLICS OF EUROPE,
DURING THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE COMMON WEALTH AND THE PROTECTORS OLIVER AND
RICHAIRD CROMWELL.
LETTERS WRITTEN IN THE
NAME OF THE PARLIAMENT,
The Senate and People of ENGLAND, to the most noble
Senate of the City of HAM Boroug H.
For how long a series of past years, and for what
important reasons, the friendship entered into by our
ancestors with your most noble city has continued to
this day, we both willingly acknowledge, together
with yourselves; nor is it a thing displeasing to us,
frequently also to call to our remembrance. But as to
what we understand by your letters dated the twenty-
fifth of June, that some of our people deal not with
that fidelity and probity, as they were wont to do in
their trading and commerce among ye; we presently
referred it to the consideration of certain persons well-
skilled in those matters, to the end they might make a
more strict inquiry into the frauds of the clothiers, and
, other artificers of the woollen manufacture. And we
farther promise, to take such effectual care, as to make
you sensible of our unalterable intentions, to preserve
sincerity and justice among ourselves, as also never to
neglect any good offices of our kindness, that may re-
dound to the welfare of your commonwealth. On the
other hand, there is something likewise which we not
only required, but which equity itself, and all the laws
of God and man, demand of yourselves; that you will
not only conserve inviolable to the merchants of our
nation their privileges, but by your authority and
power defend and protect their lives and estates, as it
becomes your city to do. Which as we most earnestly
desired in our former letters; so upon the repeated
complaints of our merchants, that are daily made be-
fore us, we now more earnestly solicit and request it:
they complaining, that their safety, and all that they
have in the world, is again in great jeopardy among
ye. For although they acknowledge themselves to
have reaped some benefit for a short time of our former
letters sent you, and to have had some respite from the
injuries of a sort of profligate people; yet since the
coming of the same Coc--m to your city, (of whom we
complained before,) who pretends to be honoured with a
sort of embassy from , the son of the lately deceas-
ed king, they have been assaulted with all manner of ill
language, threats, and naked swords of ruffians and
homicides, and have wanted your accustomed protec-
tion and defence; insomuch, that when two or three
of the merchants, together with the president of the so-
ciety, were hurried away by surprise aboard a certain
privateer, and that the rest implored your aid, yet they
could not obtain any assistance from you, till the mer-
chants themselves were forced to embody their own
strength, and rescue from the hands of pirates the per-
sons seized on in that river, of which your city is the
mistress, not without extreme hazard of their lives.
Nay, when they had fortunately brought them home
again, and as it were by force of arms recovered
them from an ignominious captivity, and carried the
pirates themselves into custody; we are informed, that
Coc--m was so audacious, as to demand the release of
the pirates, and that the merchants might be delivered
prisoners into his hands. We therefore again, and
again, beseech and adjure you, if it be your intention,
that contracts and leagues, and the very ancient com-
merce between both nations should be preserved, (the
thing which you desire,) that our people may be able
to assure themselves of some certain and firm support
and reliance upon your word, your prudence, and au-
thority; that you would lend them a favourable au-
dience concerning these matters, and that you would
inflict deserved punishment as well upon Coc--m, and
the rest of his accomplices in that wicked act, as upon
those who lately assaulted the preacher, hitherto un-
| punished, or command them to depart your territories;
588
LETTERS OF STATE.
nor that you would believe, that expelled and exiled
Tarquins are to be preferred before the friendship, and
the wealth, and power of our republic. For if you do
not carefully provide to the contrary, but that the ene-
mies of our republic shall presume to think lawful
the committing of any violences against us in your
city, how unsafe, how ignominious the residence of
our people there will be, do you consider with your-
selves | These things we recommend to your prudence
and equity, yourselves to the protection of Heaven.
Westminster, Aug. 10, 1649.
To the Senate of HAMBorough.
Your conspicuous favour in the doubtful condition
of our affairs is now the reason, that after victory and
prosperous success, we can no longer question your
good-will and friendly inclination towards us. As for
our parts, the war being almost now determined, and
our enemies every where vanquished, we have deemed
nothing more just, or more conducing to the firm
establishment of the republic, than that they who by
our means (the Almighty being always our captain
and conductor) have either recovered their liberty, or
obtained their lives and fortunes, after the pernicious
ravages of a civil war, of our free gift and grace,
should testify and pay in exchange to their magistrates
allegiance and duty in a solemn manner, if need re-
quired : more especially when so many turbulent and
exasperated persons, more than once received into pro-
tection, will make no end, either at home or abroad, of
acting perfidiously, and raising new disturbances. To
that purpose we took care, to enjoin a certain form of
an oath, by which all who held any office in the com-
monwealth, or, being fortified with the protection of
the law, enjoyed both safety, ease, and all other con-
veniencies of life, should bind themselves to obedience
in words prescribed. This we also thought proper to
be sent to all colonies abroad, or wherever else our
people resided for the convenience of trade; to the end
that the fidelity of those, over whom we are set, might
be proved and known to us, as it is but reasonable and
necessary. Which makes us wonder so much the more
at what our merchants write from your city, that they
are not permitted to execute our commands by some or
other of your order and degree. Certainly what the
most potent United Provinces of the Low Countries,
most jealous of their power and their interests, never
thought any way belonging to their inspection, namely,
whether the English foreigners swore fidelity and
allegiance to their magistrates at home, either in these
or those words, how that should come to be so sus-
pected and troublesome to your city, we must plainly
acknowledge, that we do not understand. But this
proceeding from the private inclinations or fears of
some, whom certain vagabond Scots, expelled their
country, are said to have enforced by menaces, on pur-
pose to deter our merchants from swearing fidelity to
us, we impute not to your city. Most earnestly there-
fore we intreat and conjure ye (for it is not now the
interest of trade, but the honour of the republic itself
l
that lies at stake) not to suffer any one among ye, who
can have no reason to concern himself in this affair, to
interpose his authority, whatever it be, with that su-
premacy which we challenge over our own subjects, not
by the judgment and opinion of foreigners, but by the
laws of our country; for who would not take it amiss,
if we should forbid your Hamburghers, residing here,
to swear fidelity to you, that are their magistrates at
home P Farewel.
Jam. 4, 1649.
To the most Sereme and Potent Prince, PHILIP the
Fourth, Ring of SPAIN : the Parliament of the Com-
monwealth of ENGLAND, Greeting.
We send to your majesty Anthony Ascham, a person
of integrity, learned, and descended of an ancient fa-
mily, to treat of matters very advantageous, as we
hope, as well to the Spanish, as to the English nation.
Wherefore in friendly manner we desire, that you
would be pleased to grant, and order him a safe and
honourable passage to your royal city, and the same
in his return from thence, readily prepared to repay
the kindness when occasion offers. Or if your majesty
be otherwise inclined, that it may be signified to him
with the soonest, what your pleasure is in this par-
ticular, and that he may be at liberty to depart without
molestation.
Feb. 4, 1649.
To the most Sereme and Potent Prince, PHILIP the
Fourth, King of SPAIN : the Parliament of the Com-
monwealth of ENGLAND, Greeting.
WHAT is the condition of our affairs, and by what
heinous injuries provoked and broken, at length we
began to think of recovering our liberty by force of
arms; what constituted form of government we now
make use of, can neither be concealed from your ma-
jesty, nor any other person, who has but cast an impar-
tial eye upon our writings published on these occasions.
Neither ought we to think it a difficult thing, among
fit and proper judges of things, to render our fidelity,
our equity, and patience, manifest to all men, and
justly meriting their approbation; as also to defend
our authority, honour, and grandeur, against the infa-
mous tongues of exiles and fugitives. Now then, as to
what is more the concern of foreign nations, after hav-
ing subdued and vanquished the enemies of our coun-
try, through the miraculous assistance of Heaven, we
openly and cordially profess ourselves readily prepared
to have peace and friendship, more desirable than all
enlargement of empire, with our neighbour nations.
For these reasons we have sent into Spain, to your
majesty, Anthony Ascham, of approved dexterity and
probity, to treat with your majesty concerning friend-
ship, and the accustomed commerce between both na-
tions; or else, if it be your pleasure, to open a way for
the ratifying of new articles and alliances. Our request
therefore is, that you will grant him free liberty of
access to your-majesty, and give such order, that care
LETTERS
OF STATE. 589
may be taken of his safety and honour, while he resides
a public minister with your majesty; to the end he
may freely propose what he has in charge from us, for
the benefit, as we hope, of both nations; and certify to
us with the soonest, what are your majesty's sentiments
concerning these matters.
Westminster, Feb. 4, 1649.
To the most Sereme Prince, Jon N the Fourth, ICing of
Portugal: the Parliament of the Commonwealth of
ENGLAND, Greeting.
After we had suffered many, and those the utmost,
mischiefs of a faithless peace, and intestine war, our
being reduced to those exigencies, that if we had any
regard to the safety of the republic, there was a neces-
sity of altering for the chiefest part the form of govern-
ment; is a thing which we make no question is well
known to your majesty, by what we have both publicly
written and declared in justification of our proceedings.
To which, as it is but reason, if credit might be rather
given than to the most malicious calumnies of loose
and wicked men; perhaps we should find those persons
more amicably inclined, who now abroad have the
worst sentiments of our actions. For as to what we
justify ourselves to have justly and strenuously per-
formed after the example of our ancestors, in pursuance
of our rights, and for recovery of the native liberty of
Englishmen, certainly it is not the work of human force
or wit to eradicate the perverse and obstinate opinions
of people wickedly inclined concerning what we have
done. But after all, in reference to what is common
to us with all foreign nations, and more for the general
interest on both sides, we are willing to let the world
know, that there is nothing which we more ardently
desire, than that the friendship and commerce, which
our people have becn accustomed to maintain with all
our neighbours, should be enlarged and settled in the
most ample and solemn manner. And whereas our
people have always driven a very great trade, and
gainful to both nations, in your kingdom; we shall
take care, as much as in us lies, that they may not
meet with any impediment to interrupt their dealings.
However, we foresee that all our industry will be in
vain, if, as it is reported, the pirates and revolters of
our nation shall be suffered to have refuge in your
ports, and after they have taken and plundered the
laden vessels of the English, shall be permitted to sell
their goods by public outcries at Lisbon. To the end
therefore that a more speedy remedy may be applied to
this growing mischief, and that we may be more clearly
satisfied concerning the peace which we desire, we
have sent to your majesty the most noble Charles Vane,
under the character of our agent, with instructions and
a commission, a plenary testimonial of the trust we
have reposed, and the employment we have conferred
upon him. Him therefore we most earnestly desire
your majesty graciously to hear, to give him credit,
and to take such order, that he may be safe in his per-
son and his honour, within the bounds of your domi-
mions. These things, as they will be most acceptable
to us, so we promise, whenever occasion offers, that the
same offices of kindness to your majesty shall be
mutually observed on all our parts.
Westminster, Feb. 4, 1649.
To the most Sereme Prince, Joh N the Fourth, King of
Port UGAL : the Parliament of the Commonwealth of
ENGLAND, Greeting.
ALMost daily and most gricvous complaints are
brought before us, that certain of our seamen and offi-
cers, who revolted from us the last year, and treacher-
ously and wickedly carried away the ships with the
command of which they were entrusted, and who,
having made their escape from the port of Ireland,
where, being blocked up for almost a whole summer
together, they very narrowly avoided the punishment
due to their crimes, have now betaken themselves to
the coast of Portugal, and the mouth of the river Ta-
gus: that there they practise furious piracy, taking and
plundering all the English vessels they meet with sail-
ing to and fro upon the account of trade; and that all
the adjoining seas are become almost impassable, by
reason of their notorious and infamous robberies. To
which increasing mischief unless a speedy remedy be
applied, who does not see, but that there will be a
final end of that vast trade so gainful to both nations,
which our people were wont to drive with the Portu-
guese ? Wherefore we again and again request your
majesty, that you would command those pirates and
revolters to depart the territories of Portugal: and
that, if any pretended embassadors present themselves
from *******, that you will not vouchsafe to give them
audience; but that you will rather acknowledge us,
upon whom the supreme power of England, by the
conspicuous favour and assistance of the Almighty, is
devolved; and that the ports and rivers of Portugal
may not be barred and defended against your friends
and confederates fleet, no less serviceable to your emo-
lument than the trade of the English.
To the most Sereme Prince Leopold, Archduke of
Austri A, Governor of the SPANISH Low Countries,
wnder King PHILIP.
So soon as word was brought us, not without a most
grievous complaint, that Jane Puckering, an heiress of
an illustrious and opulent family, while yet by reason
of her age she was under guardians, not far from the
house wherein she then lived at Greenwich, was vio-
lently forced from the hands and embraces of her at-
tendants; and of a sudden in a vessel to that purpose
ready prepared, carried off into Flanders by the trea-
chery of one Walsh, who has endeavoured all the
ways imaginable, in contempt of law both human and
divine, to constrain a wealthy virgin to marriage, even
by terriſying her with menaces of present death : We
deeming it proper to apply some speedy remedy to so
enormous and unheard of piece of villany, gave orders
to some persons to treat with the governors of Newport
and Ostend (for the unfortunate captive was said to be
530 LETTERS
OF STATE.
landed in one of those two places) about rescuing the
freeborn lady out of the hands of the ravisher. Who,
both out of their singular humanity and love of virtue,
lent their assisting aid to the young virgin in servi-
tude, and by downright robbery rifled from her habita-
tion : so that to avoid the violence of her imperious
masters, she was as it were deposited in a nunnery,
and committed to the charge of the governess of the
society. Wherefore the same Walsh, to get her again
into his clutches, has commenced a suit against her in
the ecclesiastical court of the bishop of Ypre, pretend-
$ng a matrimonial contract between him and her. Now
in regard that both the ravisher and the ravished per-
son are natives of our country, as by the witnesses upon
their oaths abundantly appears; as also for that the
splendid inheritance, aſter which most certainly the
criminal chiefly gapes, lies within our territories; so
that we conceive, that the whole cognizance and de-
termination of this cause belongs solely to ourselves;
therefore let him repair hither, he who calls himself
the husband, here let him commence his suit, and de-
mand the delivery of the person, whom he claims for
his wife. In the mean time, this it is that we most
earnestly request from your highness, which is no
more than what we have already requested by our
agent residing at Brussels, that you will permit an aſ-
flicted and many ways misused virgin, born of honest
parents, but pirated out of her native country, to re-
turn, as far as lies in your power, with freedom and
safety home again. This not only we, upon all oppor-
tunities offered, as readily preparcd to return the same
favour and kindness to your highness, but also huma-
mity itself, and that same hatred of inſany, which
ought to accompany all persons of virtue and courage
in defending the honour of the female sex, seem alto-
gether jointly to require at your hands.
Westminster, March 28, 1650.
To the most Serene Prince, Joh N the Fourth, King of
Po RTUGAL.
UNDERSTANDING that your majesty had both ho-
nourably received our agent, and immediately given
him a favourable audience, we thought it became us
to assure your majesty without delay, by speedy let-
ters from us, that nothing could happen more accept-
able to us, and that there is nothing which we have de-
creed more sacred, than not to violate by any word or
deed of ours, not first provoked, the peace, the friend-
ship, and commerce, now for some time settled between
us and the greatest number of other foreign nations,
and among the rest with the Portuguese. Nor did we
send the English fleet to the mouth of the river Tagus
with any other intention or design than in pursuit of
enemies so often put to flight, and for recovery of our
vessels, which being carried away from their owners by
force and treachery, the same rabble of fugitives con-
ducted to your coasts, and even to Lisbon itself, as to
the most certain ſairs for the sale of their plunder. But
we are apt to believe, that by this time almost all the
Portuguese are abundantly convinced, from the flagi-
tious manners of those people, of their audaciousness,
their fury, and their madness. Which is the reason we
are in hopes, that we shall more easily obtain from
your majesty, first, that you will, as far as in you lies,
be assistant to the most illustrious Edward Popham,
whom we have made admiral of our new fleet, for the
subduing those detested freebooters; and that you will
no longer suffer them, together with their captain, not
guests, but pirates, not merchants, but the pests of
commerce, and violaters of the law of nations, to har-
bour in the ports and under the shelter of the fortresses
of your kingdom; but that wherever the confines of
Portugal extend themselves, you will command them
to be expelled as well by land as by sea. Or if you
are unwilling to proceed to that extremity, at least
that with your leave it may be lawful for us, with our
proper forces to assail our own revolters and sea rob-
bers; and if it be the pleasure of Heaven, to reduce
them into our power. This, as we have earnestly de-
sired in our former letters, so now again with the great-
est ardency and importunity we request of your ma-
jesty. By this, whether equity, or act of kindness,
you will not only enlarge the ſame of your justice
over all well-governed and civil nations, but also in a
greater measure bind both us and the people of Eng-
land, who never yet had other than a good opinion of the
Portuguese, to yourself and to your subjects. Farewel.
Westminster, April 27, 1650.
To the HAMBURGHERs.
MoRE than once we have written concerning the
controversies of the merchants, and some other things
which more nearly concern the dignity of our repub-
lic, yet no answer has been returned. But under-
standing that affairs of that nature can hardly be de-
termined by letters only, and that in the mean time
certain seditious persons have been sent to your city by
*******, authorized with no other commission than
that of malice and audaciousness, who make it their
business utterly to extirpate the ancient trade of our
people in your city, especially of those whose fidelity
to their country is most conspicuous; therefore we
have commanded the worthy and most eminent
Richard Bradshaw, to reside as our agent among ye;
to the end he may be able more at large to treat and
negotiate with your lordships such matters and affairs,
as are interwoven with the benefit and advantages of
both republics. Him therefore we request ye with the
soonest to admit to a favourable audience; and that in
all things that credit may be given to him, that honour
paid him, as is usual in all countries, and among all
nations paid to those that bear his character.
Westminster, April 2, 1650.
To the HAM BURGHERs.
Most Noble, Magnificent, and Illustrious,
our dearest Friends;
THAT your sedulities in the reception of our agent
were so cordial and so egregious, we both gladly un-
I.ETTERS
501
OF STATE.
derstand, and earnestly exhort ye that you would per-
severe in your goodwill and affection towards us. And
this we do with so much the greater vehemence, as
being informed, that the same exiles of ours, concern-
ing whom we have so frequently written, now carry
themselves more insolently in your city than they were
wont to do, and that they not only openly affront, but
give out threatening language in a most despightful
manner against our resident. Therefore once more by
these our letters we would have the safety of his per-
son, and the honour due to his quality, recommended
to your care. On the other side, if you inflict severe and
timely punishment upon those fugitives and ruffians, as
well the old ones as the new-comers, it will be most accept-
able to us, and becoming your authority and prudence.
Westminster, May 31, 1650.
To PHILIP the Fourth, King of SPAIN.
To our infinite sorrow we are given to understand,
that Anthony Ascham, by us lately sent our agent to
your majesty, and under that character most civilly and
publicly received by your governors, upon his first
coming to your royal city, naked of all defence and
guard, was most bloodily murdered in a certain inn,
together with John Baptista de Ripa his interpreter,
butchered at the same time. Wherefore we most
earnestly request your majesty, that deserved punish-
ment may be speedily inflicted upon those parricides,
already apprehended, as it is reported, and committed
to custody; who have not only presumed to wound
ourselves through his sides, but have also dared to stab,
as it were, to the very heart, your faith of word and
royal honour. So that we make no question, but what
we so ardently desire would nevertheless be done effec-
tually, by a prince of his own accord so just and pious,
though nobody required it. As to what remains, we
make it our further suit, that the breathless carcass
may be delivered to his friends and attendants to be
brought back and interred in his own country, and that
such care may be taken for the security of those that
remain alive, as is but requisite; till having obtained
an answer to these letters, if it may be done, they shall
return to us the witnesses of your piety and justice.
Westminster, June 28th, 1650.
To PHILIP the Fourth, King of SpAIN.
How heinously, and with what detestation, your ma-
jesty resented the villanous murder of our agent, An-
thony Ascham, and what has hitherto been done in the
prosecution and punishment of his assassinates, we
have been given to understand, as well by your ma-
jesty's own letters, as from your ambassador don Al-
phonso de Cardenos, Nevertheless so often as we con-
sider the horridness of that bloody fact, which utterly
subverts the very foundations of correspondence and
commerce, and of the privilege of cmbassadors, most
sacred among all nations, so villanously violated with-
out severity of punishment; we cannot but with utmost
importunity repeat our most urgent suit to your ma-
jesty, that those parricides may with all the speed in a-
ginable be brought to justice, and that you would not
suffer their merited pains to be suspended any longer
by any delay or pretence of religion. For though most
certainly we highly value the friendship of a potent
prince; yet it behoves us to use our utmost endeavours,
that the authors of such an enormous parricide should
receive the deserved reward of their impiety. Indeed,
we cannot but with a grateful mind acknowledge that
civility, of which by your command our people were
not unsensible, as also your surpassing affection for us,
which lately your ambassador at large unfolded to us:
nor will it be displeasing to us, to return the same good
offices to your majesty, and the Spanish nation, when-
ever opportunity offers. Nevertheless, iſ justice be not
satisficq without delay, which we still most earnestly
request, we see not upon what ſoundations a sincere
and lasting friendship can subsist. For the preserva-
tion of which, however, we shall omit no just and laud-
able occasion; to which purpose we are likewise apt
to believe, that the presence of your embassador does
not a little conduce.
To the SPAN is II Embassador.
Most Excellent Lord,
THE council of state, so soon as their weighty affairs
would permit them, having carried into parliament the
four writings, which it pleased your excellency to im-
part to the council upon the nineteenth of December
last, have received in command from the parliament, to
return this answer to the first head of those writings,
touching the villanous assassinates of their late agent,
Anthony Ascham.
The parliament have so long time, so often, and so
justly demanded their being brought to deserved punish-
ment, that there needs nothing further to be said on a
thing of so great importance, wherein (as your excel-
lency well observed) his royal majesty's authority itself
is so deeply concerned, that, unless justice be done upon
such notorious offenders, all the foundations of human
society, all the ways of preserving friendship among
nations, of necessity must be overturned and abolished.
Nor can we apprehend by any argument drawn front
religion, that the blood of the innocent, shed by a pro-
pensely malicious murder, is not to be avenged. The
parliament therefore once more most urgently presses,
and expects from his royal majesty, according to their
first demands, that satisfaction be given them effectually
and sincerely in this matter.
To the most Earcellent Lo RD ANTHoNY Jon N LEw is
DE LA CERDA, Duke of MEDINA CELI, Governor of
ANDALUSIA: the Council of State constituted by Alw-
thority of Parliament, Greeting.
WF have received advice from those most accom-
plished persons, whom we lately sent with our fleet
into Portugal, in pursuit of traitors, and for the reco-
very of our vessels, that they were most civilly received
by your excelleney, as often as they happened to touch
592
LETTERS OF STATE,
upon the coasts of Gallaecia, which is under your go-
vernment, and assisted with all things necessary to
those that perform long voyages. This civility of yours,
as it was always most acceptable to us, so it is now
more especially at this time, while we are sensible of
the illwill of others in some places towards us without
any just cause given on our side: therefore we make
it our request to your illustrious lordship, that you will
persevere in the same good-will and affection to us,
and that you would continue your favour and assist-
ance to our people, according to your wonted civility,
as often as our ships put in to your harbours: and be
assured, that there is nothing which we desire of your
lordship in the way of kindness, which we shall not
be ready to repay both to you and yours, whenever the
like occasion shall be offered us.
Sealed with the seal of the council,
J. BRADSHAw, President.
Westminster, Nov. 7th, 1650.
To the Illustrious and Magnificent Senate of the City
of DANTzick.
Magnificent and most Noble Lords,
our dearest Friends;
MANY letters are brought us from our merchants
trading upon the coast of Borussia, wherein they com-
plain of a grievous tribute imposed upon them in the
grand council of the Polanders, enforcing them to pay
the tenth part of all their goods for the relief of the
king of Scots, our enemy. Which in regard it is
plainly contrary to the law of nations, that guests and
strangers should be dealt withal in such a manner; and
most unjust, that they should be compelled to pay
public stipends in a foreign commonwealth to him from
whom they are, by God's assistance, delivered at home;
we make no question, but that out of respect to that
liberty, which as we understand you yourselves enjoy,
you will not suffer so heavy a burden to be laid on
merchants in your city, wherein they have maintained
a continual amity and commerce, to the extraordinary
advantage of the place for many years together. If
therefore you think it convenient, to undertake the
protection of our merchants trading among ye, which
we assuredly expect, as well from your prudence and
equity, as from the dignity and grandeur of your city;
we shall take that care, that you shall be sensible from
time to time of our grateful acceptance of your kind-
ness, as often as the Dantzickers shall have any deal-
ings within our territories, or their ships, as frequently
it happens, put into our ports.
Westminster, Febr. 6, 1650.
To the Portugal Agent.
Most Illustrious Lord,
WE received your letters dated from Hampton the
fifteenth of this month, wherein you signify, that you
are sent by the king of Portugal to the parliament of
the commonwealth of England; but say not under
what character, whether of embassador, or agent, or
envoy, which we would willingly understand by your
credential letters from the king, a copy of which you
may send us with all the speed you can. We would
also further know, whether you come with a plenary
commission, to give us satisfaction for the injuries, and
to make reparation for the damages, which your king
has done this republic, protecting our enemy all the
last summer in his harbours, and prohibiting the
English fleet, then ready to assail rebels and fugitives,
which our admiral had pursued so far; but never re-
straining the enemy from falling upon ours. If you
return us word, that you have ample and full commis-
sion to give us satisfaction concerning all these matters,
and send us withal a copy of your recommendatory
letters, we shall then take care, that you may with all
speed repair to us upon the Public Faith: at which
time, when we have read the king’s letters, you shall
have liberty freely to declare what further commands
you have brought along with you.
The Parliament of the Commonwealth of ENGLAND, to
the most Screme Prince D. FERDINAND, Grand Duke
of Tusca NY, &c.
We have received your highness's letters, dated
April twenty-two, sixteen hundred and fifty-one, and
delivered to us by your resident, Signor Almeric Sal-
vetti, wherein we readily perceive how greatly your
highness favours the English name, and the value you
have for this nation; which not only our merchants,
that for many years have traded in your ports, but also
certain of our young mobility, either travelling through
your cities, or residing there for the improvement of
their studies, both testify and confirm. Which as they
are things most grateful and acceptable to us, we also
on our parts make this request to your highness, that
your serenity will persevere in your accustomed good-
will and affection towards our merchants, and other
citizens of our republic, travelling through the Tuscan
territories. On the other side, we promise and under-
take, as to what concerns the parliament, that nothing
shall be wanting, which may any way conduce to the
confirmation and establishment of that commerce and
mutual friendship, that now has been of long con-
tinuance between both nations, and which it is our
earnest wish and desire should be preserved to perpe-
tuity, by all offices of humanity, civility, and mutual
observance.
Sealed with the seal of the parlia-
ment, and subscribed by WIL-
LIAM LENTHALL, speaker of
the parliament of the common-
wealth of England.
Westminster,
Jan. 20, 1651.
The Parliament of the Commonwealth of ENGLAND, to
the Illustrious and Magnificent Senate of the City
of HAMBoroug H.
Most Noble, Magnificent, and Illustrious,
our dearest Friends;
THE parliament of the commonwealth of England.
out of their earnest desire to continue and preserve the
LETTERS OF STATE. 593
ancient friendship and mutual commerce between the
2nglish nation and your city, not long since sent
thither Richard Bradshaw, esq., with the character of
our resident; and among other instructions tending to
the same purpose, gave him an express charge to de-
mand justice against certain persons within your juris-
diction, who endeavoured to murder the preacher be-
longing to the English society, and who likewise laid
impious hands upon the deputy president, and some of
the principal merchants of the same company, and
hurried them away aboard a privateer. And although
the aforesaid resident, upon his first reception and
audience, made known to your lordships in a particular
manner the commands which he received from us;
upon which it was expected, that you would have made
those criminals ere this a severe example of your justice;
yet when we understood our expectations were not
answered, considering with ourselves what danger both
our people and their estates were in, if sufficient pro-
vision were mot made for their security and protection
against the malice of their enemies, we again sent
orders to our aforesaid resident, to represent to your
lordships our judgment upon the whole matter; as also
to exhort and persuade ye, in the name of this repub-
lic, to be careful of preserving the friendship and alli-
ance contracted between this commonwealth and your
city, as also the traffic and commerce no less advan-
tageous for the interest of both : and to that end, that
you would not fail to protect our merchants, together
with their privileges, from all violation, and more par-
ticularly against the insolences of one Garmes, who
has carried himself contumeliously toward this repub-
lic, and publicly cited to the Chamber of Spire certain
merchants of the English company residing in your
city, to the great contempt of this commonwealth, and
trouble of our merchants; for which we expect such
reparation, as shall be conscntaneous to equity and
justice.
To treat of these heads, and whatever else more
largely belongs to the common friendship of both re-
publics, we have ordered our resident aforesaid to
attend your lordships, requesting that ample credit
may be given to him in such matters, as he shall pro-
pose relating to these affairs.
Sealed with the parliament seal,
and subscribed, Speaker, &c.
Westminster,
March 12, 1651.
The Parliament of the Commonwealth of ENGLAND, to
the most Sereme CHRISTIANA, Queen of the Swedes,
GoTHs, and VANDALs, &c., Greeting.
Most Serene Queen;
WE have received and read your majesty's letters to
the parliament of England, dated from Stockholm, the
twenty-sixth of September last, and delivered by Peter
Spering Silvercroon; and there is nothing which we
more vehemently and cordially desire, than that the
ancient peace, traffic, and commerce of long continu-
ance between the English and Swedes may prove diu-
turnal, and every day increase. Nor did we question,
but that your majesty’s embassador was come amply
instructed to make those proposals chiefly, which should
be most for the interest and honour of both nations, and
which we were no less readily prepared to have heard,
and to have done effectually that which should have
been thought most sceure and beneficial on both sides.
But it pleased the Supreme Moderator and Governor
of all things, that before he had desired to be heard as
to those matters, which he had in charge from your
majesty to propound to the parliament, he departed
this life, (whose loss we took with that heaviness and
sorrow, as it became persons whom it no less beloved
to acquiesce in the will of the Almighty,) whence it
comes to pass, that we are prevented hitherto from
knowing your majesty's pleasure, and that there is a
stop at present put to this negotiation. Wherefore we
thought we could do no less than by these our letters,
which we have given to our messenger on purpose sent
with these unhappy tidings, to signify to your majesty,
how acceptable your letters, how grateful your public
minister were to the parliament of the commonwealth
of England; as also how earnestly we expect your
friendship, and how highly we shall value the amity
of so great a princess; assuring your majesty, that we
have those thoughts of increasing the commerce be-
tween this republic and your majesty's kingdom, as
we ought to have of a thing of the highest importance,
which for that reason will be most acceptable to the
parliament of the commonwealth of England. And so
we recommend your majesty to the protection of the
Divine Providence.
Sealed with the parliament seal,
and subscribed, Speaker, &c.
Westminster,
March —, 1651.
The Parliament of the Commonwealth of ENGLAND, to
the most Serene and Potent Prince, PHILIP the
Fourth, King of SPAIN, Greeting.
THE merchants of this commonwealth, who trade in
your majesty's territories, make loud complaints of ex-
traordinary violence and injuries offered them, and of
new tributes imposed upon them by the governors and
other officers of your ports and places where they traf-
fic, and particularly in the Canary islands, and this
against the articles of the league solemnly ratified by
both nations on the account of trade; the truth of
which complaints they have confirmed by oath. And
they make it out before us, that unless they can enjoy
their privileges, and that their losses be repaired; lastly
that except they may have some certain safeguard and
protection for themselves and their estates against those
violences and injuries, they can no longer traffic in
those places. Which complaints of theirs being duly
weighed by us, and believing the unjust proceedings
of those ministers either not at all to have reached your
knowledge, or else to have been untruly represented to
your majesty, we deemed it convenient to send the
complaints themselves, together with these our letters,
to your majesty. Nor do we question, but that your
majesty, as well out of your love of justice, as for the
sake of that commerce no less gainful to your subjects
than our people, will command your governors to de-
594 LETTERS
OF STATE,
sist from those unjust oppressions of our merchants,
and so order it, that they may obtain speedy justice,
and due satisfaction for those injuries done them by
don Pedro de Carillo de Guzman, and others; and that
your majesty will take care, that the merchants afore-
said may reap the fruit of those articles; and be so far
under your protection, that both their persons and their
estates may be secure and free from all manner of in-
jury and vexation. And this they believe they shall
for the greatest part obtain if your majesty will be
pleased to restore them that expedient, taken from
them, of a judge-conservator, who may be able to de-
fend them from a new consulship more uneasy to them;
lest iſ no shelter from injustice be allowed them, there
should follow a necessity of breaking off that com-
merce, which has hitherto brought great advantages
to both nations, while the articles of the league are
violated in such a manner.
Westm. Aug. —, 1651.
To the most Sereme Prince, the Duke of VENICE, and
the most Illustrious Senate.
Most Serene Prince, most Illustrious Senate,
our dearest Friends;
CERTAIN of our merchants, by name John Dickins,
and Job Throckmorton, with others, have made their
complaints to us, that upon the twenty-eighth of No-
vember, sixteen hundred and fifty-one, having seized
upon a hundred butts of caviare it; the vessel called the
Swallow, riding in the Downs, Isaac Taylor master,
which were their own proper goods, and laden aboard
the same ship in the Muscovite Bay of Archangel,
and this by the authority of our court of admiralty;
in which court, the suit being there depending, they
obtained a decree for the delivery of the said butts of
caviare into their possession, they having first given
security to abide by the sentence of that court: and
that the said court, to the end the said suit might be
brought to a conclusion, having written letters, accord-
ing to custom, to the magistrates and judges of Venice;
wherein they requested liberty to cite John Piatti to
appear by his proctor in the English court of admiralty,
where the suit depended, and prove his right: never-
theless, that the said Piatti and one David Rutts a
Hollander, while this cause depends here in our court,
put the said John Dickins, and those other merchants,
to a vast deal of trouble about the said caviare, and
solicit the seizure of their goods and estates as forfeited
for debt. All which things, and whatever else has
hitherto been done in our foresåid court is more at large
set forth in those letters of request aforementioned ;
which aſter we had viewed, we thought proper to be
transmitted to the most serenc republic of Venice, to
the end they might be assistant to our merchants in
this cause. Upon the whole therefore, it is our earnest
request to your highness, and the most illustrious
senate, that not only those letters may obtain their due
force and weight; but also, that the goods and estates
of the merchants, which the foresaid Piatti and David
Rutts have endeavoured to make liable to forfeiture,
may be discharged; and that the said defendants may
be referred hither to our court, to try what right they
have in their claim to this caviare. Wherein your
highness and the most serenc republic will do as well
what is most just in itself, as what is truly becoming
the spotless amity between both republics : and lastly,
what will gratefully be recompensed by the goodwill and
kind offices of this republic, whenever occasions offer.
Sealed with the scal of the council,
and subscribed President of the
council.
Whitehall,
Feb. —, 1652.
To the Spanish Embassador.
Most Excellent Lord,
THE council of state, according to a command from
the parliament, dated the second of March, having
taken into serious deliberation your excellency’s paper
of the fifteenth of February, delivered to the commis-
sioners of this council, wherein it secned good to your
excellency to propose, that a reply might be given to
two certain heads therein specified as previous, returns
the following answer to your excellency.
The parliament, when they gave an answer to those
things which were proposed by your excellency at your
first audience, as also in those letters which they wrote
to the most serene king of Spain, gave real and ample
demonstrations, how grateful and how acceptable that
friendship and that mutual alliance, which was offered
by his royal majesty, and by yourself in his name,
would be to them ; and how fully they were resolved,
as far as in them lay, to make the same returns of
friendship and good offices.
After that, it seemed good to your excellency, at
your ſirst audience in council upon the nineteenth
of December old style, to propound to this council, as
a certain ground or method for an auspicious com-
mencement of a stricter amity, that some of their body
might be nominated, who might hear what your excel-
lency had to propose; and who having well weighed
the benefit, that might redound from thence, should
speedily report the same to the council. To which
request of yours that satisfaction might be given, the
council appointed certain of their number to attend
your excellency, which was done accordingly. But
instead of those things, which were expected to have
been propounded, the conference produced no more
than the above mentioned paper: to which the answer
of the council is this.
When the parliament shall have declared their minds,
and your excellency shall have made the progress as
above expected, we shall be ready to confer with your
excellency, and to treat of such matters as you shall
propose in the name of the king your master, as well
in reference to the friendship already concluded, as the
entering into another more strict and binding ; or as
to any thing else, which shall be offered by ourselves
in the name of this republic : and when we descend to
particulars, we shall return such answers as are most
proper, and the nature of the thing proposed shall re-
quire.
Whitehall, March 21, 1652,
LETTERS OF STATE. 595
The Parliament of the Commonwealth of ENGLAND, to
the most Sereme Prince FREDERICK the Third, ſing
of DENMARK, &c. Greeting.
Most Serene and Potent King,
WE have received your majesty’s letters, dated from
Copenhagen the twenty-first of December last, and
delivered to the parliament of the commonwealth of
England by the noble Henry Willemsem Rosenwyng
de Lynsacker, and most gladly perused them, with that
affection of mind, which the matters therein propounded
justly merit, and request your majesty to be fully per-
suaded of this, that the same inclinations, the same
desires of continuing and preserving the ancient friend-
ship, commerce, and alliance, for so many years main-
tained between England and Denmark, which are in
your majesty, are also in us. Not being ignorant, that
though it has pleased Divine Providence, beholding
this nation with such a benign and favourable aspect,
to change for the better the received form of the former
government among us; nevertheless, that the same
interests on both sides, the same common advantages,
the same mutual alliance and free traffic, which pro-
duced the former leagues and confederacies between
both nations, still endure and obtain their former force
and virtue, and oblige both to make it their common
study by rendering those leagues the most beneficial
that may be to each other, to establish also a nearer
and sounder friendship for the time to come. And if
your majesty shall be pleased to pursue those counsels,
which are manifested in your royal letters, the parlia-
ment will be ready to embrace the same with all ala-
crity and fidelity, and to contribute all those things to
the utmost of their power, which they shall think may
conduce to that end. And they persuade themselves,
that your majesty for this reason will take those coun-
sels in reference to this republic, which may facilitate
the good success of those things propounded by your
majesty to ourselves so desirous of your amity. In the
mean time, the parliament wishes all happiness and
prosperity to your majesty and people.
Under the seal of the parlia-
ment, and subscribed in
its name, and by the au-
thority of it, Speaker, &c.
Westminster,
April —, 1652.
The Parliament of the Commonwealth of ENGLAND, to
the most Illustrious and Magnificent, the Proconsuls
and Senators of the HANSE Towns, Greeting.
Most Noble, Magnificent, and Illustrious,
our dearest Friends ;
THE parliament of the commonwealth of England
has both received and perused your letters of the six-
teenth of January last, delivered by your public mi-
nister Leo ab Aysema, and by their authority have
given him an audience; at what time he declared the
cordial and friendly inclinations of your cities toward
this republic, and desired that the ancient friendship
might still remain on both sides. The parliament
therefore, for their parts, declare and assure your lord-
ships, that they deem nothing more grateful to them-
selves, than that the same friendship and alliance,
which has hitherto been maintained between this na-
tion and those cities, should be renewed, and firmly ra-
tified; and that they will be ready, upon all occasions
fitly offered, what they promise in words solemnly to
perform in real deeds; and expect that their ancient
friends and confederates should deal by them with the
same truth and integrity. But as to those things,
which your resident has more particularly in charge
in regard they were by us reſerred entire to the coun-
cil of state, and his proposals were to be there consi-
dered, they transacted with him there, and gave him
such answers, as seemed most consentaneous to
cquity and reason, of which your resident is able
to give you an account; whose prudence and con-
spicuous probity proclaim him worthy the public cha-
racter by you conferred upon him.
Under the seal of the parlia-
ment, in the name, and by
the authority of it, sub-
scribed, Speaker, &c.
Westminster,
April –, 1652.
The Parliament of the Commonwealth of ENGLAND, to
the Illustrious and Magnificent Senate of the City of
HAM Bolto UGH, Greeting.
Most Noble, Magnificent, and Illustrious,
our dearest Friends;
THE parliament of the commonwealth of England
has received and perused your letters, dated from Ham-
borough the fifteenth of January last, and delivered
by the noble Leo ab Aysema, yours and the rest of the
Hanseatic cities resident, and by their own authority
gave him audience; and as to what other particular
commands he had from your city, they have referred
them to the council of state, and gave them orders to
receive his proposals, and to treat with him as soon as
might be, concerning all such things as seemed to be
just and equal : which was also done accordingly.
And as the parliament has made it manifest, that they
will have a due regard to what shall be proposed by
your lordships, and have testified their singular good-
will toward your city, by sending their resident thither,
and commanding his abode there; so on the other side
they expect, and deservedly require from your lord-
ships, that the same equity be returned to them, in
things which are to the benefit of this republic, either
already proposed, or hereafter to be propounded by our
said resident in their name to your city, anciently our
friend and confederate.
Under the seal of the parlia-
ment, in the name, and by
the authority of it, sub-
scribed, Speaker, &c.
Westminster,
April –, 1652.
2 Q
596 LETTERS
OF STATE.
The Council of State of the Republic of ENGLAND, to
the most Sereme Prince FERDINAND the Second,
Grand Duke of Tuscany, Greeting.
THE council of state being informed by letters from
Charles Longland, who takes care of the affairs of the
2nglish in your highness's court of Leghorn, that
lately fourteen men of war belonging to the United
Provinces came into that harbour, and openly threat-
ened to sink or burn the English ships that were riding
in your port; but that your Serenity, whose protection
and succour the English merchants implored, gave
command to the governor of Leghorn, that he should
assist and defend the English vessels: they deemed it
their duty to certify to your highness how acceptable
that kindness and protection, which you so favourably
afforded the English nation, was to this republic; and
do promise your highness, that they will always keep
in remembrance the merit of so deserving a favour, and
will be ready upon all occasions to make the same re-
turns of friendship and good offices to your people, and
to do all things else, which may conduce to the preser-
vation and continuance of the usual amity and com-
merce between both nations. And whereas the Dutch
men of war, even in the time of treaty offered by them-
selves, were so highly perfidious as to fall upon our
fleet in our own roads, (in which ſoul attempt, God, as
most just arbiter, showed himself offended and oppo-
site to their design,) but also in the ports of foreigners
endeavoured to take or sink our merchant vessels; we
thought it also necessary to send this declaration also
of the parliament of the commonwealth of England to
your highness, the publishing of which was occasioned
by the controversies at present arisen between this re-
public and the United Provinces. By which your
highness may easily perceive how unjust and contrary
io all the laws of God and of nations those people have
acted against this republic ; and how cordially the
parliament laboured, for the sake of public tranquillity,
to have retained their pristine friendship and alliance.
In the name, and by the autho-
rity of the Council, subscribed,
President.
|Whitehall,
July 29, 1652.
To the SPAN Ish Embassador.
Most Excellent Lord,
THE council of state, upon mature deliberation of
that paper which they received from your excellency,
º }. 1652, as also upon that which your excellency
at your audience the +% of this month delivered to the
council, return this answer to both those papers: that
the parliament, &c. was always very desirous of pre-
serving the firm friendship and good peace settled at
present between this republic and his royal majesty of
Spain, from the time that first your excellency signified
the tendency of his majesty's inclinations that way,
and was always ready to ratify and confirm the same
to the benefit and advantage of both nations. And
this the council of state in the name, and by command
of the parliament, in their papers ofttimes made known
to your excellency; and particularly, according to
your excellency’s desire, made choice of commissioners
to attend and receive from your excellency such pro-
posals as might conduce to the same purpose. At
which meeting, instead of making such proposals, it
seemed good to your excellency only to propound
Some general matters, as it were previous to a future
conference, concerning which it seemed to the council
that the parliament had in former papers fully made
known their sentiments. Nevertheless for more ample
and accumulative satisfaction, and to remove all scru-
ples from your excellency concerning those matters
which they at that time proposed, the council in that
paper, dated tº declared themselves ready to come
to a conſerence with your excellency, concerning those
things which you had in charge from his royal majesty,
as well in reference to the pristine amity, as to any
farther negotiation; as also touching such matters as
should be exhibited by us, in the name of this repub-
lic; and when we came to such particulars as were to
the purpose, and the nature of the thing required, then
to give convenient answers. To which it seemed good
to your excellency to make no reply, nor to proceed
any farther in that affair for almost two months.
About that time the council received from your excel-
lency your first paper, dated . }. wherein you only
made this proposal, that the articles of peace and league
between the late King Charles and your master, dated
the # of November, 1630, might be reviewed, and
that the several heads of it might be either enlarged or
left out, according to the present condition of times and
things, and the late alteration of government. Which.
being no more than what we ourselves briefly and
clearly signified in our foresaid paper of the * Nº.
the council expected, that some particular articles
would have been propounded out of that league, with
those amplifications and alterations of which you made
mention; since otherwise it is impossible for us to re-
turn any other answer concerning this matter, than
what we have already given. And whereas your ex-
cellency in your last paper seems to charge us with
delay, the council therefore took a second review of the
foresaid paper of the º Nº. and of what was therein
propounded, and are still of opinion, that they have
fully satisfied your excellency in that former paper:
to which they can only farther add, that so soon as
your excellency shall be pleased, either out of the
leagues already made, or in any other manner, to frame
such conditions as shall be accommodated to the pre-
sent state of things and times, upon which you desire to
have the foundations of friendship laid on your side,
they will immediately return you such answers as by
them shall be thought just and reasonable, and which
shall be sufficient testimonials, that the parliament still
perseveres in the same desires of preserving an untaint-
ed and firm amity with the king your master, and that
on their parts they will omit no honest endeavours, and
worthy of themselves, to advance it to the highest
perſection.
I'urthermore, the council deems it to be a part of
LETTERS
597
OF STATE.
their duty, that your excellency should be put in mind
of that paper of ours, dated January 30, 1651, to which
in regard your excellency has returned no answer as
yet, we press and expect that satisfaction be given to
the parliament, as to what is therein mentioned.
The Answer of the Council of State to the Reply of
the Lords Embassador's Eartraordinary from the
Ring of DENMARK and Norway, delivered to the
Commissioners of the Council, to the Answer which
the Council gave to their fourteen Demands.
To the end that satisfaction may be given to the
foresaid lords embassadors in reference to the answer
of the council to the fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, and
ninth article, the council consents, that this following
clause shall be added at the end of their answers: that
is to say, besides such colonies, islands, ports, and
places, under the dominion of either party, to which it
is by law provided that nobody shall resort upon the
account of trade or commerce, unless upon special
leave first obtained of that party to which that colony,
island, port, or places belong. -
The receiving of any person into any ship, that shall
be driven in by stress of weather into the rivers, ports,
or bays, belonging to either party, shall not render that
vessel liable to any trouble or search, by the answer of
the council to the eleventh article, as the foresaid lords
embassadors in their reply seem to have understood,
unless it be where such a receiving shall be against
the laws, statutes, or custom of that place where the
vessel put in, wherein it seems to the council, that
there is nothing of severity ordained, but what equally
conduces to the security of both republics.
As to the proving the property of such ships and
goods as shall be cast ashore by shipwreck, the coun-
cil deems it necessary that an oath be administered in
those courts which are already, or shall hereafter be
constituted, where the claimers may be severally heard
and every body's right be determined and adjudged ;
which cannot be so clearly and strictly done by writ-
ten certificates, whence many scruples and doubts may
arise, and many frauds and deceits creep into that sort
of proof, which it concerns both parties to prevent.
The council also deems it just, that a certain time be
prefixed, before which time, whoever does not prove
himself the lawful owner of the said goods, shall be
excluded, to avoid suits. But as to the manner of put-
ting perishable goods to sale, that are cast ashore by
shipwreck, the council thinks it meet to propose the
way of selling by inch of candle, as being the most
probable means to procure the true value of the goods
for the best advantage of the proprietors. Neverthe-
less, if the foresaid lords embassadors shall propose
any other method already found out, which may more
properly conduce to this end, the council will be no
hindrance, but that what is just may be put in prac-
tice. Neither is it to be understood, that the considera-
tion of this matter shall put any stop to the treaty.
As to the punishment of those, who shall violate the
propounded treaty, the council has made that addition,
which is mentioned in their answer to the fourteenth
article, for the greater force and efficacy of that article,
and thereby to render the league itself more firm and
lasting.
As to the last clause of the fourteenth article, we
think it not proper to give our assent to those leagues
and alliances, of which mention is made in the afore-
said answers, and which are only generally propound-
ed, before it be more clearly apparent to us what they
are. But when your excellencies shall be pleased to
explain those matters more clearly to the council, we
may be able to give a more express answer to those
particulars.
A Reply of the Council of State to the Answer of the
foresaid Lords Embassadors, which was returned to
the sir Articles propounded by the Council aforesaid,
in the Name of the Republic of ENGLAND.
THE council, having viewed the commissions of the
foresaid lords embassadors, giving them power to trans-
act with the parliament or their commissioners, concern-
ing all things expedient to be transacted in order to the
reviving the old leagues, or adding new ones, believed
indeed the foresaid lords to have been furnished with
that authority, as to be able to return answers, and nego-
tiate all things, as well such as should be propounded by
this republic, as on the behalf of the king of Denmark
and Norway, and so did not expect the replies, which
it has pleased the foresaid lords embassadors to give to
the first, second, third, and fifth demand of the coun-
cil, whereby of necessity a stop will be put to this
treaty, in regard it is but just in itself, and so resolved
on in council, to comprehend the whole league, and
to treat at the same time as well concerning those
things which regard this republic, as those other mat-
ters, which concern the king of Denmark and Norway.
Wherefore it is the earnest desire of the council, that
your excellencies would be pleased to return an answer
to our first, second, third, and fifth demand.
As to the fourth article concerning the customs of
Gluckstadt, in regard they are now abolished, as your .
excellencies have mentioned in your answer, the coun-
cil presses that their abrogation may be ratified by this
treaty, lest they should be reimposed hereafter.
As to the sixth article concerning piracy, the council
inserted it, as equally appertaining to the benefit of
both, and to the establishing of trade in common, which
is much disturbed by pirates and searobbers. And
whereas the answer of the lords embassadors, as to this
article, relates only to enemies, but makes no mention
of pirates, the council therefore desires a more distinct
reply to it.
And whereas the foresaid lords embassadors in their
reply to the answer of the council have passed over
both their tenth article, and the answer of the council
to it; the council have thought it necessary to add this
following article, to their following demands.
That the people and inhabitants of the republic of
England trading into any kingdoms, regions, or terri-
tories of the king of Denmark and Norway, shall not
LETTERS
OF STATE,
for the future pay any more customs, tribute, taxes,
duties, or stipends, or in any other manner, than the
people of the United Provinces, or any other foreign
nation, that pays the least, coming in or going out of
harbour ; and shall enjoy the same, and as equally
ample freedom, privileges, and immunities, both com-
ing and going, and so long as they shall reside in the
country, as also in fishing, trading, or in any other
manner which any other people of a foreign nation
enjoys, or may enjoy in the foresaid kingdoms, and
throughout the whole dominions of the said king of
Denmark and Norway: which privileges also the sub-
jects of the king of Denmark and Norway shall equally
enjoy throughout all the territories and dominions of
the republic of England.
The Council of State of the Republic of ENGLAND, to
the most Sereme Prince, FERDIN AND the Second,
Grand Duke of TuscANY, Greeting.
Most Serene Prince, our dearest Friend,
THE council of State understanding, as well by your
highness's agent here residing, as by Charles Long-
land, chief factor for the English at Leghorn, with
what affection and fidelity your highness undertook
the protection of the English vessels putting into the
port of Leghorn for shelter, against the Dutch men of
war threatening them with nothing but ransack and
destruction, by their letters of the twenty-ninth of July
(which they hope are by this time come to your high-
mess's hands) have made known to your highness how
grateful and how acceptable it was to them; and at the
same time sent to your serenity a declaration of the par-
liament of the commonwealth of England, concerning
the present differences between this Republic and the
United Provinces. And whereas the council has again
been informed by the same Charles Longland, what
further commands your highness gave for the security
and defence of the English vessels, notwithstanding
the opposite endeavours of the Dutch, they deemed
this opportunity not to be passed over, to let your
highness understand once more, how highly they es-
teem your justice and singular constancy in defending
their vessels, and how acceptable they took so great a
piece of service. Which being no mean testimony of
your solid friendship and affection to this republic, your
highness may assure yourself, that the same offices of
kindness and goodwill towards your highness shall
never be wanting in us; such as may be able to de-
monstrate how firmly we are resolved to cultivate both
long and constantly, to the utmost of our power, that
friendship which is between your serenity and this re-
public. In the mean time, we have expressly com-
manded all our ships, upon their entrance into your
ports, not to ſail of paying the accustomed salutes by
firing their guns, and to give all other due honours to
your highness.
Whitehall,
Sept. — 1652.
Sealed with the Council-Seal, and
subscribed, President.
To the SPAN is II Embassador, Alphonso DE CAR-
DEN AS.
Most Excellent Lord,
You R excellency’s letters of the Tºr of November
1652, delivered by your secretary, together with two
petitions enclosed, concerning the ships, the Sampson
and San Salvadore, were read in council. To which
the council returns this answer, That the English man
of war meeting with the aforesaid ships not in the
Downs, as your excellency writes, but in the open sea,
brought them into port as enemies' ships, and therefore
lawful prize; and the court of admiralty, to which it
properly belongs to take cognizance of all causes of
this nature, have undertaken to determine the right in
dispute; where all parties concerned on both sides
shall be fully and freely heard, and you may be as-
sured that right shall take place. We have also sent
your excellency's request to the judges of that court,
to the end we may more certainly understand what
progress they have made in their proceeding to judg-
ment. Of which, so soon as we are rightly informed,
we shall take care that such orders shall be given
in this matter, as shall correspond with justice, and
become the friendship that is between this republic and
your king. Nor are we less confident, that his royal
majesty will by no means permit the goods of the ene-
mies of this commonwealth to be concealed, and escape
due confiscation under the shelter of being owned by
his subjects.
Sealed with the Council-Seal,
and subscribed,
William Masham, President.
Whitehall,
Nov. 11, 1652.
To the SPAN is H Embassador.
Most Excellent Lord,
But lately the council has been informed by cap-
tain Badiley, admiral of the fleet of this republic in
the Straits, that after he himself, together with three
other men of war, had for two days together engaged
eleven of the Dutch, put into Porto Longone, as well
to repair the damages he had received in the fight, as
also to supply himself with warlike ammunition; where
the governor of the place performed all the good offices
of a most just and courteous person, as well towards
his own, as the rest of the men of war under his con-
duct. Now in regard that that same place is under
the dominion of the most serene king of Spain, the
council cannot but look upon the singular civility of
that garrison to be the copious fruit of that stricter
mutual amity so auspiciously commenced; and there-
fore deem it to be a part of their duty, to return their
thanks to his majesty for a kindness so opportunely
received, and desire your excellency to signify this to
your most serene king, and to assure him, that the par-
liament of the commonwealth of England will be al-
ways ready to make the same returns of friendship and
civility upon all occasions offered.
Sealed with the Council-Seal,
Westminster, and subscribed,
Nov. 11, 1652. William Masham, President.
LETTERS
OF STATE. 599
The Parliament of the Commonwealth of ENGLAND,
to the most Sereme Prince FERDIN AND the Second,
Grand Duke of Tuscany, Greeting.
Most Serene Prince, our dearest Friend,
THE Parliament of the Commonwealth of England
has received your letters dated from Florence, August
17, concerning the restitution of a certain ship laden
with rice, which ship is claimed by captain Cardi of
Leghorn. And though the judges of our admiralty
have already pronounced sentence in that cause against
the aforesaid Cardi, and that there be an appeal de-
pending before the delegates ; yet upon your high-
ness's request, the parliament, to testify how much
they value the goodwill and alliance of a prince so
much their friend, have given order to those who are
entrusted with this affair, that the said ship, together
with the rice, or at least the full price of it, be re-
stored to the aforesaid captain Cardi; the fruit of which
command his proctor here has effectually already reap-
ed. And as your highness by favourably affording your
patronage and protection to the ships of the English in
your port of Leghorn, has in a more especial manner
tied the parliament to your serenity; so will they, on
the other side, take care, as often as opportunity offers,
that all their offices of sincere friendship and good-
will towards your highness may be solidly effectual
and permanent; withal recommending your high-
ness to the divine benignity, and protection of the
Almighty.
Sealed with the Seal of the Com-
monwealth, and subscribed,
Speaker, &c.
Westminster,
Nov. 1652.
The Parliament of the Commonwealth of ENGLAND,
to the most Serene and Potent Prince, King of DEN-
MARK, &c.
Most Serene and Potent King,
THE Parliament of the Commonwealth of England
have received information from their admiral of that
fleet so lately sent to Copenhagen, your majesty's port,
to convoy our merchants homeward bound, that the
foresaid ships are not permitted to return along with
him, as being detained by your majesty's command ;
and upon his producing your royal letters, declaring
your justifications of the matter of fact, the parliament
denies, that the reasons laid down in those letters fo
the detaining of those ships are any way satisfactory
to them. Therefore that some speedy remedy may be
applied in a matter of so great moment, and so highly
conducing to the prosperity of both nations, for pre-
venting a greater perhaps ensuing mischief, the par-
liament have sent their resident at Hambrough, Richard
Bradshaw, esquire, a person of great worth and known
fidelity, with express commands to treat with your
majesty, as their agent also in Denmark, concerning
this affair: and therefore we entreat your majesty, to
give him a favourable audience and ample credit in
whatever he shall propose to your majesty, on our
behalf, in reference to this matter; in the mean time
recommending your majesty to the protection of Di-
vine Providence.
Under the Seal of the Parliament,
and in their Name, and by their
Authority, subscribed, Speaker,
&c.
Westminster,
Nov. 6, 1652.
The Parliament of the Commonwealth of ENGLAND,
to the most Sereme Prince, the Duke of VENICE,
Greeting.
THE Parliament of the Commonwealth of England
has received your highness's letters, dated June 1, 1652,
and delivered by Lorenzo Pallutio, wherein they not
only gladly perceive both yours, and the cordial in-
clination of the senate towards this republic, but have
willingly laid hold of this opportunity to declare their
singular affection and goodwill towards the most Serene
Republic of Venice; which they shall be always ready
to make manifest both really and sincerely, as often as
opportunity offers. To whom also all the ways and
means, that shall be propounded to them for the pre-
serving or increasing mutual friendship and alliance,
shall be ever most acceptable. In the mean time we
heartily pray, that all things prosperous, all things
favourable, may befall your highness and the most
serene Republic.
Sealed with the Parliament
Seal, and subscribed,
Speaker, &c.
Westminster,
Dec. 1652.
The Parliament of the Republic of ENGLAND, to the
most Sereme Prince, FERDIN AND the Second, Grand
Duke of Tuscany, Greeting.
Although the parliament of the republic of Eng-
land some time since redoubled their commands to all
the chief captains and masters of ships arriving in the
ports belonging to your highness, to carry themselves
peacefully and civilly, and with becoming observance
and duty to a most serene prince, whose friendship
this republic so earnestly endeavours to preserve, as
having been obliged by so many great kindnesses; an
accident altogether unexpected has fallen out, through
the insolence, as they hear, of captain Appleton, in the
port of Leghorn, who offered violence to the sentinel
then doing his duty upon the mole, against the faith
and duty which he owes this republic, and in contempt
of the reverence and honour which is justly owing to
your highness: the relation of which action, as it was
really committed, the parliament has understood by
your letters of the seventh and ninth of December,
dated from Florence; as also more at large by the
most worthy Almeric Salvetti, your resident here. And
they have so sincerely laid to heart your highness's
honour, which is the main concern of this complaint,
that they have referred it to the Council of State, to
take care that letters be sent to capt. Appleton, to come
away without stop or stay by land, in order to his giv-
ing an account of this unwonted and extraordinary act,
600 LETTERS
Ol' STATE.
(a copy of which letters is sent here with enclosed,) who
so soon as he shall arrive, and be accused of the fact,
we promise, that such a course shall be taken with
him, as may sufficiently testify that we no less heinously
brook the violation of your right than the infringement
of our own authority. Moreover, upon imature debate
concerning the recovered ship, called the Phoenix of
Leghorn, which affair is also related and pressed by
your highness and your resident here, to have been
done by captain Appleton, contrary to promise given,
whereby he was obliged not to fall upon even the Hol-
landers themselves within sight of the lantern ; and
that your highness, trusting to that faith, promised
security to the Hollanders upon your word; and there.
fore that we ought to take care for the satisfaction of
those, who suffer damage under the protection of your
promise ; the parliament begs of your excellency to be
assured, that this fact, as it was committed without their
advice or command, so it is most remote from their
will and intention, that your highness should undergo
any detriment or diminution of your honour by it.
Rather they will make it their business, that some ex-
pedient may be found out for your satisfaction, accord-
ing to the nature of the fact, upon examination of the
whole matter. Which that they may so much the
more fully understand, they deem it necessary, that
captain Appleton himself should be heard, who was
bound by the same faith, and is thought by your ex-
cellency at least to have consented to the violation of
it; especially since he is so suddenly to return home.
And so soon as the parliament has heard him, and
have more at large conferred with your resident con-
cerning this matter of no small moment, they will pro-
nounce that sentence that shall be just, and consenta-
neous to that extreme goodwill, which they bear to
your highness, and no way unworthy the favours by
you conferred upon them. Of which that your high-
ness might not make the least question in the mean
time, we were willing to certify your highness by this
express on purpose sent, that we shall omit no oppor-
tunity, to testify how greatly we value your friend-
ship.
Sealed with the Parliament Seal,
and subscribed, Speaker,
&c.
Westminster,
Dec. 14, 1652.
The Council of State of the Republic of England, to
the most Sereme Prince, FREDERICK, Heir of No R-
way, Duke of SLEswick, HolsATIA, STORMARIA,
DITMARSH, Count in OLDENBURGH and DELMEN-
HoRST, Greeting.
Though it has pleased the most wise God, and most
merciful Moderator of all things, besides the burden
which he laid upon us in common with our ancestors,
to wage most just wars in defence of our liberty against
tyrannical usurpation, signally also to succour us with
those auspices and that divine assistance, beyond what
he afforded to our predecessors, that we have been able
not only to extinguish a civil war, but to extirpate the
causes of it for the future, as also to repel the unex-
pected violences of foreign enemies; nevertheless, with
grateful minds, as much as in us lies, acknowledging
the same favour and beniguity of the Supreme Deity
towards us, we are not so puffed up with the success of
our affairs, but that rather instructed in the singular
justice and providence of God, and having had long
experience of ourselves, we abominate the thoughts of
war, if possible to be avoided, and most eagerly em-
brace peace with all men. Therefore, as hitherto we
never were the first that violated or desired the viola-
tion of that friendship, or those ancient privileges of
leagues, that have been ratified between us and any
princes or people whatever; so your highness, in
consideration of your ancient amity with the English,
left us by our ancestors, may, with a most certain
assurance, promise both yourself and your people all
things equitable, and all things friendly from us.
Lastly, as we highly value, which is no more than
what is just and reasonable, the testimonies of your
affection and good offices offered us, so we shall make
it our business, that you may not at any time be sen-
sible of the want of ours, either to yourself or yours.
And so we most heartily recommend your highness to
the omnipotent protection of the Almighty God.
Whitehall,
July —, 1653.
Sealed with the Council Seal,
and subscribed, President.
To the Count of OLDENBURGH.
Most Illustrious Lord,
THE parliament of the commonwealth of ENGLAND -
have received an extraordinary congratulation from
your excellency, most kindly and courteously delivered
to us by word of mouth by Herman Mylius, your
counsellor and doctor of laws: who wished all things
lucky and prosperous, in your name, to the parliament
and English interest, and desired that the friendship
of this republic might remain inviolable within your
territories. He also desired letters of safe conduct, to
the end your subjects may the more securely trade and
sail from place to place ; together with our orders to
our public ministers abroad, to be aiding and assisting
to your excellency and your interests with their good
offices and counsels. To which requests of his we
willingly consented, and granted both our friendship,
the letters desired, and our orders to our public minis-
ters under the seal of the parliament. And though it
be some months ago since your public minister first
came to us, however that delay neither arose from any
unwillingness on our part to assent to the request made
in your excellency’s name, or that your deputy was at
any time wanting in his sedulity, (whose solicitations
were daily and earnest with all the diligence and im-
portunity that became him, to the end he might be
dispatched,) but only it happened so, that at that time
the greatest and most weighty affairs of the republic
were under debate and serious negotiation. Of which
we thought meet to certify your illustrious lordship,
lest any body, through a false construction of this de-
lay, should think those favours unwillingly or hardly
obtained, which were most gladly granted by the par-
LETTERS
OF STATE. 60 I
liament of the commonwealth of England. In whose
name these are commanded to be signed.
Henry Scobel, clerk of the parliament.
To the most Illustrious and Noble Senators, Scu LTETs,
LANDAM, and Senators of the Evangelic Cantons
of Switzer LAND, ZURICK, BERN, GLARIS, BALE,
SchAFFH UseN, APPENZEL, also the Confederates of
the same Religion in the country of the GRISONs, of
GENEVA, ST. GALI, MALHAUSEN, and BIENNE, our
dearest friends;
YoUR letters, most illustrious lords and dearest con-
federates, dated December twenty-four, full of civility,
goodwill, and singular affection towards us and our
republic, and what ought always to be greater and
more sacred to us, breathing fraternal and truly chris-
tian charity, we have received. And in the first place,
we return thanks to Almighty God, who has raised
and established both you and so many noble cities, not
so much intrenched and fortified with those enclosures
of mountains, as with your innate fortitude, piety, most
prudent and just administration of government, and
the faith of mutual confederacies, to be a firm and in-
accessible shelter for all the truly orthodox. Now then
that you who over all Europe were the first of mortals,
who after deluges of barbarous tyrants from the north,
Heaven prospering your valour, recovered your liberty,
and being obtained, for so many years have preserved
it untainted, with no less prudence and moderation;
that you should have such noble sentiments of our
liberty recovered ; that you, such sincere worshippers
of the gospel, should be so constantly persuaded of our
love and affection for the orthodox faith, is that which
is most acceptable and welcome to us. But as to your
exhorting us to peace, with a pious and affectionate
intent, as we are fully assured, certainly such an ad-
monition ought to be of great weight with us, as well
in respect of the thing itself which you persuade, and
which of all things is chiefly to be desired, as also for
the great authority, which is to be allowed your lord-
ships above others in this particular, who in the midst
of loud tumultuous wars on every side enjoy the sweets
of peace both at home and abroad, and have approved
yourselves the best example to all others of embracing
and improving peace; and lastly, for that you per-
suade us to the very thing, which we ourselves of our
own accords, and that more than once, consulting as
well our own, as the interest of the whole evangelical
communion, have begged by embassadors, and other
public ministers, namely, friendship and a most strict
league with the United Provinces. But how they
treated our embassadors sent to them to negotiate, not
a bare peace, but a brotherly amity and most strict
league; what provocations to war they afterwards gave
us; how they fell upon us in our own roads, in the
midst of their embassador's negotiations for peace and
allegiance, little dreaming any such violence; you
will abundantly understand by our declaration set
forth upon this subject, and sent you together with
these our letters. But as for our parts, we are wholly
intent upon this, by God's assistance, though prosper-
ous hitherto, so to carry ourselves, that we may neither
attribute any thing to our own strength or forces, but
all things to God alone, nor be insolently puffed up
with our success; and we still retain the same ready
inclinations to embrace all occasions of making a just
and honest peace. In the mean time yourselves, illus-
trious and most excellent lords, in whom this noble and
pious sedulity, out of mere evangelical affection, exerts
itself to reconcile and pacify contending brethren, as
ye are worthy of all applause among men, so doubtless
will ye obtain the celestial reward of peace-makers
with God; to whose supreme benignity and favour, we
heartily recommend in our prayers both you and yours,
no less ready to make returns of all good offices both
of friends and brethren, if in any thing we may be
serviceable to your lordships.
Sealed with the Parliament Seal,
and subscribed, Speaker, &c.
Westminster,
Octob. 1653.
To the SPAN Is H Embassador.
Most Illustrious Lord,
Upon grievous complaints brought before us by
Philip Noel, John Godal, and the society of merchants
of Foy in England, that a certain ship of theirs called
the Ann of Foy, an English ship by them fitted out,
and laden with their own goods, in her return home to
the port of Foy about Michaelmas last, was unjustly
and without any cause set upon and taken by a certain
privateer of Ostend, Erasmus Bruer commander, and
the seamen unworthily and barbarously used : the
council of state wrote to the marquis of Leda concern-
ing it, (a copy of which letter we also send enclosed
to your excellency,) and expected from him, that with-
out delay orders would have been given for the doing
of justice in this matter. Nevertheless after all this,
the foresaid Noel, together with the said company,
make further heavy complaint, that although our
letters were delivered to the marquis, and that those
merchants from that time forward betook themselves to
Bruges to the court there held for maritime causes,
and there asserted and proved their right, and the
verity of their cause, yet that justice was denied them;
and that they were so hardly dealt with, that, though
the cause had been ripe for trial above three months,
nevertheless they could obtain no sentence from that
court, but that their ship and goods are still detained,
notwithstanding the great expenses they have been at
in prosecuting their claim. Now your excellency well
knows it to be contrary to the law of nations, of traffic,
and that friendship which is at present settled between
the English and Flemings, that any Ostender should
take any English vessel, if bound for England with
English goods; and that whatever was inhumanly
and barbarously done to the English seamen by that
commander, deserves a rigorous punishment. The
council therefore recommends the whole matter to your
excellency, and makes it their request, that you would
write into Flanders concerning it, and take such speedy
care, that this business may no longer be delayed, but
602
LETTERS OF STATE,
that justice may be done in such a manner that the
foresaid ship, together with the damages, costs, and
interest, which the English have sustained and been
out of purse, by reason of that illegal seizure, may be
restored and made good to them by the authority of
the court, or in some other way ; and that care be
taken, that hereafter no such violence be committed,
but that the amity between our people and the Flem-
ings may be preserved without any infringement.
Signed in the name, and by the command
of the council of state, appointed by
authority of parliament.
To the Marquis of LEDA.
GREAT complaints are brought before us by Philip
Noel, John Godal, and the company of Foy merchants,
concerning a ship of theirs, called the Ann of Foy,
which being an English vessel by them fitted out, and
laden with their own goods, in her return home to her
own port about Michaelmas last, was taken unawares
by a freebooter of Ostend, Erasmus Bruer commander.
It is also further related, that the Ostenders, when the
ship was in their power, used the seamen too inhu-
manly, by setting lighted match to their fingers, and
plunging the master of the ship in the sea till they
almost drowned him, on purpose to extort a false con-
ſession from him, that the ship and goods belonged to
the French. Which though the master and the rest
of the ship's, crew resolutely denied, nevertheless the
Ostenders carried away the ship and goods to their
own port. These things, upon strict inquiry and ex-
amination of witnesses, have been made manifest in
the admiralty court in England, as will appear by the
copies of the affidavits herewith sent your lordship.
Now in regard that that same ship, called the Ann of
Foy, and all her lading of merchandise and goods,
belong truly and properly to English, so that there is no
apparent reason why the Ostender should seize by force
either the one or the other, much less carry away the
master of the ship, and use the seamen so unmer-
cifully : and whereas according to the law of nations,
and in respect of the friendship between the Flemings
and the English, that ship and goods ought to be re-
stored : we make it our earnest request to your excel-
lency, that the English may have speedy justice done,
and that satisfaction may be given for their losses, to
the end the traffic and friendship, which is between
the English and Flemings, may be long and inviolably
preserved.
To the SPAN is H Embassador.
THE parliament of the commonwealth of England,
understanding that several of the people of this city
daily resort to the house of your excellency, and other
embassadors and public ministers from foreign nations
here residing, merely to hear mass, gave order to the
council of state, to let your excellency understand, that
whereas such resort is prohibited by the laws of the
nation, and of very evil example in this our republic,
and extremely scandalous; that they deem it their
duty to take care that no such thing be permitted
henceforward, and to prohibit all such assemblies for
the future. Concerning which, it is our desire, that
your excellency should have a fair advertisement, to
the end that henceforth your excellency may be more
careful of admitting any of the people of this republic
to hear mass in your house. And as the parliament
will diligently provide that your excellency’s rights
and privileges shall be preserved inviolable, so they
persuade themselves, that your excellency during your
abode here, would by no means, that the laws of
this republic should be violated by yourself or your
attendants.
A Summary of the particular real Damages sustained
by the ENGLISH Company, in many places of the
EAST-INDIE's, from the Dutch Company in Hol-
land.
1. THE damages comprehended in the sixteen ar-
ticles, and formerly exhibited, amounting to 298,555
royals , of which is of our money 74,638l. 15s. 00d.
2. We demand satisfaction to be given for the in-
comes of the island of Pularon, from the year sixteen
hundred and twenty-two, to this time, of two hundred
thousand royals , besides the future expense, till the
right of jurisdiction over that island be restored in the
same condition, as when it was wrested out of our
hands, as was by league agreed to, amounting of our
money to . cº * º . 50,000l. 00s. 00d.
3. We demand satisfaction for all the merchandise,
provision, and furniture taken away by the agents of
the Dutch company in the Indies, or to them deliver-
ed, or to any of their ships bound thither, or returning
home; which sum amounts to 80,635 royals, of our
money g º º e 20, 1581. 00s. 000.
4. We demand satisfaction for the customs of Dutch
merchandise laden on board their ships in Persia, or
landed there from the year sixteen hundred and
twenty-four, as was granted us by the King of Persia,
which we cannot value at less than fourscore thousand
royals. e º e o 20,000l. 00s. 004.
5. We demand satisfaction for four houses maliciously
and unjustly burnt at Jocatra, together with the ware-
houses, magazines, and furniture, occasioned by the
Dutch governor there, of all which we have informa-
tion from the place itself, after we had exhibited our
first complaints: the total of which damage we value
at . e e & º & 60,000l. 00s. 004.
We demand satisfaction for thirty-two thousand
eight hundred and ninety-nine pound of pepper,
taken out of the ship Endymion in sixteen hundred
and forty-nine, the total of which damage amounts
to º º e o & . 6,000l. 00s. 00d.
220,796l. 15s, 000.
LETTERS OF STATE.
603
A Summary of some particular Damages sustained also
from the Dutch EAST-INDIA Company.
1. For damages sustained by those who besieged
Bantam, whence it came to pass, that for six years to-
gether we were excluded from that trade, and conse-
quently from an opportunity of laying out in pepper
six hundred thousand royals, with which we might have
laden our homeward-bound ships; for want of which
lading they rotted upon the coast of India. In the mean
time our stock in India was wasted and consumed in
mariners' wages, provision, and other furniture; so that
they could not value their loss at less than twenty hun-
dred and four thousand royals . 600,000l. 00s. 004.
2. More for damages by reason of our due part lost
of the fruits in the Molucca islands, Banda and Am-
boyna, from the time that by the slaughter of our men
we were thence expelled, till the time that we shall be
satisfied for our loss and expenses; which space of time,
from the year sixteen hundred and twenty-two, to this
present year sixteen hundred and fifty, for the yearly
revenue of 250,000 lib. amounts in twenty-eight years
t() * *...* º 700,000l. 00s. 00a.
sixteen hundred and twenty-four.
sixteen hundred and twenty-nine, is valued at eight
3. We demand satisfaction for one hundred and two
thousand nine hundred and fifty-nine royals, taken from
us by the Mogul's people, whom the Dutch protected
in such a manner, that we never could repair our losses
out of the money or goods of that people, which lay in
their junks, which we endeavoured to do, and was in
our power, had not the Dutch unjustly defended them.
Which lost money we could have trebled in Europe,
and value at * º 77,200l. 00s. 004.
4. For the customs of Persia, the half part of which
was by the king of Persia granted to the English, anno
Which to the year
thousand royals; to which add the four thousand lib.
which they are bound to pay since sixteen hundred and
twenty-nine, which is now one and twenty years, and
it makes up the sum of 84,000l. 00s. 00a.
From the first account 220,796l. 15s, 00a.
Sum total . * 1,681,996l. 15s. 00a.
The interest from that time will far exceed the
principal.
L E. T. T. E. R. S
WRITTRN
IN THE NAME OF OLIVER THE PROTECTOR.
To the Count of OLDENBURGH.
Most Illustrious Lord,
By your letters dated January twenty, sixteen hun-
dred and fifty-four, I have been given to understand,
that the noble Frederic Matthias Wolisog and Chris-
topher Griphiander were sent with certain commands
from your illustrious lordship into England; who when
they came to us, not only in your name congratulated
our having taken upon us the government of the
English republic, but also desired, that you and your
territories might be comprehended in the peace which
we are about to make with the Low Countries, and
that we would confirm by our present authority the let-
ters of safe conduct lately granted your lordship by
the parliament. Therefore in the first place we return
your lordship our hearty thanks for your friendly con-
gratulation, as it becomes us; and these will let you
know that we have readily granted your two re-
quests. Nor shall you find us wanting upon any
opportunity, which may at any time make manifest
our affection to your lordship. And this we are apt
to believe you will understand more at large from
your agents, whose fidelity and diligence in this affair
of yours, in our court, has been eminently conspicu-
ous. As to what remains, we most heartily wish the
blessings of prosperity and peace, both upon you and
your affairs.
Your illustrious lordship's most affectionate,
OLIVER, protector of England, Scotland,
and Ireland, &c.
To the Count of OLDENBURGH.
Most Illustrious Lord,
We received your letters, dated May the second,
from Oldenburgh, most welcome upon more than one
account; as well for that they were full of singular
civility and goodwill towards us, as because they were
delivered by the hand of the most illustrious count An-
thony, your beloved son; which we look upon as so
604
LETTERS OF STATE.
much the greater honour, as not having trusted to re-
port, but with our own eyes, and by our own observation,
discerned his virtues becoming such an illustrious ex-
traction, his noble manners and inclinations, and lastly,
his extraordinary affection toward ourselves. Nor is
it to be questioned but he displays to his own people
the same fair hopes at home, that he will approve him-
self the son of a most worthy and most excellent father,
whose signal virtue and prudence has all along so ma-
naged affairs, that the whole territory of Oldenburgh
for many years has enjoyed a profound peace, and all
the blessings of tranquillity, in the midst of the raging
confusions of war thundering on every side. What
reason therefore why we should not value such a
friendship, that can so wisely and providentially shun
the enmity of all men 2 Lastly, most illustrious lord,
it is for your magnificent * present that we return you
thanks; but it is of right, and your merits claim, that
we are cordially,
Your illustrious lordship's most affectionate,
OLIVER, &c.
Westminster,
June 29, 1654.
Superscribed, To the most Illustrious Lord, ANTHoNY
GUNTHER, count in Oldenburgh, and Delmenhorst,
lord in Jehvern and Kniphausen.
OLIVER, Protector of the Commonwealth of ENGLAND,
Scot LAND, and IRE LAND, &c., To the most Sereme
Prince, CHARLEs G USTAvus King of the Swedes,
Goths, and VANDALs, Great Prince of FINLAND,
Duke of EST HONIA, CARE LIA, BREME, VERDEN,
STETTIN in PoMERANIA, CAssubi A, and VANDALIA ;
Prince of RUGIA, Lord of ING RIA, WIsMARIA, as
also Count PALATINE of the RHINE, and Duke of
BAVARIA, CLEVEs, and Monts, &c., Greeting.
Most Serene King,
Though it be already divulged over all the world,
that the kingdom of the Swedes is translated to your
majesty with the extraordinary applause and desires of
the people, and the free suffrages of all the orders of
the realm; yet that your majesty should rather choose,
that we should understand the welcome news by your
most friendly letters, than by the common voice of
ſame, we thought no small argument both of your
goodwill towards us, and of the honour done us among
the first. Voluntarily therefore and of right we con-
gratulate this accession of dignity to your egregious
merits, and the most worthy guerdon of so much virtue.
And that it may be lucky and prosperous to your ma-
jesty, to the nation of the Swedes, and the true chris-
tian interest, which is also what you chiefly wish, with
joint supplication we implore of God. And whereas
your majesty assures us, that the preserving entire the
league and alliance lately concluded between this re-
public and the kingdom of Sweden shall be so far your
care, that the present amity may not only continue
firm and inviolable, but, if possible, every day increase
* The horses which threw him out of the coach-box.
and grow to a higher perfection, to call it into question,
would be a piece of impiety, after the word of so great
a prince once interposed, whose surpassing fortitude
has not only purchased your majesty an hereditary
kingdom in a foreign land, but also could so far pre-
vail, that the most august queen, the daughter of Gus-
tavus, and a heroess so matchless in all degrees of
praise and masculine renown, that many ages back-
ward have not produced her equal, surrendered the
most just possession of her empire to your majesty,
neither expecting nor willing to accept it. Now
therefore it is our main desire, your majesty should
be every way assured, that your so singular affection
toward us, and so eminent a signification of your
mind, can be no other than most dear and welcome
to us; and that no combat can offer itself to us more
glorious, than such a one wherein we may, if pos-
sible, prove victorious in outdoing your majesty's
civility by our kind offices, that never shall be want-
ling.
Your majesty's most affectionate,
OLIVER, protector of the com-
monwealth of England, Scot-
land, and Ireland, &c.
Westminster,
July 4, 1654.
To the most Illustrious Lord, LEwis MENDEz de
HARDo.
WHAT we have understood by your letters, most il-
lustrious lord, that there is an embassador already no-
minated and appointed by the most serene king of
Spain, on purpose to come and congratulate our hav-
ing undertaken the government of the republic, is not
only deservedly acceptable of itself, but rendered much
more welcome and pleasing to us by your singular
affection, and the speed of your civility, as being de-
sirous we should understand it first of all from your-
self. For, to be so beloved and approved by your lord-
ship, who by your virtue and prudence have obtained
so great authority with your prince, as to preside, his
equal in mind, over all the most important affairs of
that kingdom, ought to be so much the more pleasing
to us, as well understanding that the judgment of a sur-
passing person cannot but be much to our honour and
ornament. Now as to our cordial inclinations toward
the king of Spain, and ready propensity to hold friend-
ship with that kingdom, and increase it to a stricter
perfection, we hope we have already satisfied the pre-
sent embassador, and shall more amply satisfy the
other so soon as he arrives. As to what remains, most
illustrious lord, we heartily wish the dignity and fa-
vour, wherein you now flourish with your prince, per-
petual to your lordship; and whatever affairs you carry
on for the public good, may prosperously and happily
succeed.
Your illustrious lordship's most affectionate,
Whitehall, Sept. 1654. OLIVER, &c.
LETTERS OF STATE.
605
To the most Sereme Prince, CHARLES GUSTAVUS
Adolphus, King of the Swedes, GoTIIs, and VAN-
DALs, &c.
BEING so well assured of your majesty's goodwill to-
wards me by your last letters, in answer to which I
wrote back with the same affection, methinks I should
do no more than what our mutual amity requires, if
as I communicate my grateful tidings to reciprocal
joy, so when contrary accidents fall out, that I should
lay open the sense and grief of my mind to your ma-
jesty, as my dearest friend. For my part, this is my
opinion of myself, that I am now advanced to this de-
gree in the commonwealth, to the end I should consult
in the first place and as much as in me lies, for the
common peace of the protestants. Which is the reason,
that of necessity it behoves me more grievously to lay
to heart what we are sorry to hear concerning the
bloody conflicts and mutual slaughters of the Breme-
ners and Swedes. But this I chiefly bewail, that being
both our friends, they should so despitefully combat
one against another, and with so much danger to the
interests of the protestants; and that the peace of Mun-
ster, which it was thought would have proved an asy-
lum and safeguard to all the protestants, should be the
occasion of such an unfortunate war, that now the arms
of the Swedes are turned upon those, whom but a little
before, among the rest, they most stoutly defended for
religion's sake; and that this should be done more
especially at this time, when the papists are said to
persecute the reformed all over Germany, and to return
to their intermitted for some time oppressions, and
their pristine violences. Hearing therefore, that a
truce for some days was made at Breme, I could not for-
bear signifying to your majesty, upon this opportunity
offered, how cordially I desire, and how earnestly I
implore the God of peace, that this truce may prove
successfully happy for the good of both parties, and
that it may conclude in a most firm peace, by a
commodious accommodation on both sides. To which
purpose, if your majesty judges that my assistance may
any ways conduce, I most willingly offer and promise
it, as in a thing, without question, most acceptable to
the most holy God. In the mean time, from the bot-
tom of my heart, I beseech the Almighty to direct and
govern all your counsels for the common welfare of
the christian interest, which I make no doubt but that
your majesty chiefly desires.
Whitehall,
Octob. 26, 1654.
Your majesty's most affectionate,
OLIVER, &c.
To the Magnificent and most Noble, the Consuls and
Senators of the City of BREME.
By your letters delivered to us by your resident
Henry Oldenburgh, that there is a difference kindled
between your city and a most potent neighbour, and
to what straits you are thereby reduced, with so much
the more trouble and grief we understand, by how
much the more we love and embrace the city of Breme,
so eminent above others for their profession of the or-
thodox faith. Neither is there any thing which we
account more sacred in our wishes, than that the whole
protestant name would knit and grow together in bro-
therly unity and concord. In the mean time, most
certain it is, that the common enemy of the reformed
rejoices at these our dissensions, and more haughtily
every where exerts his fury. But in regard the con-
troversy, which at present exercises your contending
arms, is not within the power of our decision, we im-
plore the Almighty God, that the truce begun may ob-
tain a happy issue. Assuredly, as to what you desired,
we have written to the king of the Swedes, exhorting
him to peace and agreement, as being most chiefly
grateful to Heaven, and have offered our assistance in
so pious a work. On the other side, we likewise ex-
hort yourselves to bear an equal mind, and by no means
to refuse any honest conditions of reconciliation. And
so we recommend your city to Divine Protection and
Providence.
Your lordship's most affectionate,
OLIVER, protector of the common-
wealth of England, &c.
Whitehall,
Oct. 26, 1654.
Oliver, Protector of the Republic of ENGLAND, to the
most Illustrious Prince of TARENTUM.
You R love of religion apparently made known in
your letters to us delivered, and your excelling piety
and singular affection to the reformed churches, more
especially considering the nobility and splendour of
your character, and in a kingdom too, wherein there
are so many and such abounding hopes proposed to all
of eminent quality that revolt from the orthodox faith,
so many miseries to be undergone by the resolute and
constant, gave us an occasion of great joy and conso-
lation of mind. Nor was it less grateful to us, that we
had gained your good opinion, upon the same account
of religion, which ought to render your highness most
chiefly beloved and dear to ourselves. We call God
to witness, that whatever hopes or expectations the
churches according to your relation had of us, we may
be able one day to give them satisfaction, if need re-
quire, or at least to demonstrate to all men, how much it
is our desire never to fail them. Nor should we think
any fruit of our labours, or of this dignity or supreme
employment which we hold in our republic, greater
than that we might be in a condition to be serviceable
to the enlargement, or the welfare, or which is more
sacred, to the peace of the reformed church. In the
mean time, we exhort and beseech your lordship,
to remain stedfast to the last minute in the orthodox
religion, with the same resolution and constancy, as
you profess it received from your ancestors with piety
and zeal. Nor indeed can there be any thing more
worthy yourself, or your religious parents, nor in con-
sideration of what you have deserved of us, though we
wish all things for your own sake, that we can
wish more noble or advantageous to your lordship,
than that you would take such methods, and apply
yourself to such studies, that the churches, especially
606
LETTERS OF STATE.
of your native country, under the discipline of which
your birth and genius have rendered you illustriously
happy, may be sensible of so much the more assured
security in your protection, by how much you excel
others in lustre and ability.
Whitehall, April –, 1654.
Olive R, the Protector, &c., To the most Serene Prince,
IM MANUEL Duke of SAvoy, Prince of Piemont,
Greeting.
Most Serene Prince,
LETTERs have been sent us from Geneva, as also
from the Dauphinate, and many other places bordering
upon your territories, wherein we are given to under-
stand, that such of your royal highness's subjects, as
profess the reformed religion, are commanded by your
edict, and by your authority, within three days after
the promulgation of your edict, to depart their native
seats and habitations, upon pain of capital punishment,
and forfeiture of all their fortunes and estates, unless
they will give security to relinquish their religion
within twenty days, and embrace the Roman catholic
faith. And that when they applied themselves to
your royal highness in a most suppliant manner,
imploring a revocation of the said edict, and that
being received into pristine favour, they might be
restored to the liberty granted them by your predeces-
sors, a part of your army fell upon them, most cruelly
slew several, put others in chains, and compelled the
rest to fly into desert places, and to the mountains
covered with where some hundreds of fami-
lies are reduced to such distress, that it is greatly
to be feared, they will in a short time all miserably
perish through cold and hunger. These things, when
they were related to us, we could not choose but
be touched with extreme grief and compassion for
the sufferings and calamities of this afflict d people.
Now in regard we must acknowledge ourselves
linked together not only by the same tie of hu-
manity, but by joint communion of the same religion,
we thought it impossible for us to satisfy our duty to
God, to brotherly charity, or our profession of the same
religion, if we should only be affected with a bare sor-
row for the misery and calamity of our brethren, and
not contribute all our endeavours, to relieve and suc-
cour them in their unexpected adversity, as much as in
us lies. Therefore in a great measure we most earn-
estly beseech and conjure your royal highness, that
you would call back to your thoughts the moderation
of your most serene predecessors, and the liberty by
them granted and confirmed from time to time to their
subjects the Vaudois. In granting and confirming
which, as they did that which without all question was
most grateful to God, who has been pleased to reserve
the jurisdiction and power over the conscience to him-
self alone, so there is no doubt, but that they had a due
consideration of their subjects also, whom they found
stout and most faithful in war, and always obedient in
peace. And as your royal serenity in other things
most laudably follows the footsteps of your immortal
Snow,
ancestors, so we again and again beseech your royal
highness, not to swerve from the path wherein they
trod in this particular; but that you would vouchsafe
to abrogate both this edict, and whatsoever else may
be decreed to the disturbance of your subjects upon the
account of the reformed religion; that you would ratiſy
to them their conceded privileges and pristine liberty,
and command their losses to be repaired, and that an
end be put to their oppressions. Which if your royal
highness shall be pleased to see performed, you will do
a thing most acceptable to God, revive and comfort the
miserable in dire calamity, and most highly oblige all
your neighbours, that profess the reformed religion,
but more especially ourselves, who shall be bound to
look upon your clemency and benignity toward your
subjects as the fruit of our earnest solicitation. Which
will both engage us to a reciprocal return of all good
offices, and lay the solid foundations not only of esta-
blishing, but increasing, alliance and friendship be-
tween this republic and your dominions. Nor do we
less promise this to ourselves from your justice and
moderation; to which we beseech Almighty God to
incline your mind and thoughts. And so we cordially
implore just Heaven to bestow upon your highness and
your people the blessings of peace and truth, and pros-
perous success in all your affairs.
Whitehall, May –, 1655.
OLIVER, Protector of the Republic of ENGLAND, to the
most Sereme Prince of TRANSILVANIA, Greeting.
Most Serene Prince,
By your letters of the sixteenth of November, sixteen
hundred and fifty-four, you have made us sensible of
your singular goodwill and affection towards us; and
your envoy, who delivered those letters to us, more
amply declared your desire of contracting alliance and
friendship with us. Certainly for our parts we do not
a little rejoice at this opportunity offered us, to declare
and make manifest our affection to your highness, and
how great a value we justly set upon your person. But
after fame had reported to us your egregious merits
and labours undertaken in behalf of the christian re-
public, when you were pleased that all these things,
and what you have farther in your thoughts to do in
the defence and for promoting the christian interest,
should be in friendly manner imparted to us by letters
from yourself, this afforded us a more plentiful occa-
sion of joy and satisfaction, to hear that God, in those
remoter regions, had raised up to himself so potent and
renowned a minister of his glory and providence: and
that this great minister of heaven, so famed for his
courage and success, should be desirous to associate
with us in the common defence of the protestant re-
ligion, at this time wickedly assailed by words and
deeds. Nor is it to be questioned but that God, who
has infused into us both, though separated by such a
spacious interval of many climates, the same desires
and thoughts of defending the orthodox religion, will
be our instructor and author of the ways and means
whereby we may be assistant and useful to ourselves
LETTERS OF STATE.
607
and the rest of the reformed cities; provided we watch
all opportunities, that God shall put into our hands,
and be not wanting to lay hold of them. In the mean
time we cannot without an extreme and penetrating
sorrow forbear putting your highness in mind, how
unmercifully the duke of Savoy has persecuted his own
subjects, professing the orthodox faith, in certain val-
leys, at the feet of the Alps: whom he has not only
constrained by a most severe edict, as many as refuse
to embrace the catholic religion, to forsake their native
habitations, goods, and estates, but has fallen upon
them with his army, put several most cruelly to the
sword, others more barbarously tormented to death,
and driven the greatest number to the mountains, there
to be consumed with cold and hunger, exposing their
houses to the fury, and their goods to the plunder, of
his executioners. These things, as they have already
been related to your highness, so we readily assure
ourselves, that so much cruelty cannot but be griev-
ously displeasing to your ears, and that you will not be
wanting to afford your aid and succour to those miser-
able wretches, if there be any that survive so many
slaughters and calamities. For our parts, we have
written to the duke of Savoy, beseeching him to re-
move his incensed anger from his subjects; as also to
the king of France, that he would vouchsafe to do the
same ; and lastly, to the princes of the reformed re-
ligion, to the end they might understand our sentiments
concerning so fell and savage a piece of cruelty.
Which, though first begun upon those poor and help-
less people, however threatens all that profess the same
religion, and therefore imposes upon all a greater ne-
cessity of providing for themselves in general, and
consulting the common safety; which is the course
that we shall always follow, as God shall be pleased to
direct us. Of which your highness may be assured,
as also of our sincerity and affection to your serenity,
whereby we are engaged to wish all prosperous success
to your affairs, and a happy issue of all your enter-
prises and endeavours, in asserting the liberty of the
gospel, and the worshippers of it.
Whitehall, May —, 1655.
OLIVER, Protector, to the most Sereme Prince, CHARLEs
Gustavus Adolphus, King of the Swedes, Greeting.
WE make no question, but that the fame of that most
rigid edict has reached your dominions, whereby the
duke of Savoy has totally ruined his protestant subjects
inhabiting the Alpine valleys, and commanded them
to be exterminated from their native seats and habita-
tions, unless they will give security to renounce their
religion received from their forefathers, in exchange
for the Roman catholic superstition, and that within
twenty days at farthest : so that many being killed,
the rest stripped to their skins, and exposed to most
certain destruction, are now forced to wander over de-
sert mountains, and through perpetual winter, together
with their wives and children, half dead with cold and
hunger: and that your majesty has laid it to heart,
with a pious sorrow and compassionate consideration,
we as little doubt. For that the protestant name and
cause, although they differ among themselves in some
things of little consequence, is nevertheless the same
in general, and united in one common interest; the
hatred of our adversaries, alike incensed against pro-
testants, very easily demonstrates. Now there is no-
body can be ignorant, that the kings of the Swedes
have always joined with the reformed, carrying their
victorious arms into Germany in defence of the protest-
ants without distinction. Therefore we make it our
chief request, and that in a more especial manner to
your majesty, that you would solicit the duke of Savoy
by letters; and, by interposing your intermediating
authority, endeavour to avert the horrid cruelty of this
edict, if possible, from people no less innocent than
religious. For we think it superfluous to admonish
your majesty whither these rigorous beginnings tend,
and what they threaten to all the protestants in gene-
ral. But if he rather choose to listen to his anger,
than to our joint entreaties and intercessions; if there
be any tie, any charity or communion of religion to be
believed and worshipped, upon consultations duly first
communicated to your majesty, and the chief of the
protestant princes, some other course is to be speedily
taken, that such a numerous multitude of our innocent
brethren may not miserably perish for want of succour
and assistance. Which, in regard we make no question
but that it is your majesty's opinion and determination,
there can be nothing in our opinion more prudently
resolved, than to join our reputation, authority, coun-
sels, forces, and whatever else is needful, with all the
speed that may be, in pursuance of so pious a design.
In the mean time, we beseech Almighty God to bless
your majesty.
Oliver, Protector, &c. to the High and Mighty Lords,
the States of the UNITED PRovi Nces.
WE make no question, but that you have already
been informed of the duke of Savoy's edict, set forth
against his subjects inhabiting the valleys at the feet
of the Alps, ancient professors of the orthodox faith;
by which edict, they are commanded to abandon their
native habitations, stripped of all their fortunes, unless
within twenty days they embrace the Roman faith ;
and with what cruelty the authority of this edict has
raged against a needy and harmless people, many being
slain by the soldiers, the rest plundered and driven
from their houses, together with their wives and chil-
dren, to combat cold and hunger among desert moun-
tains, and perpetual snow. These things with what
commotion of mind you heard related, what a fellow-
feeling of the calamities of brethren pierced your
breasts, we readily conjectured from the depth of our
own sorrow, which certainly is most heavy and afflict-
ive. For being engaged together by the same tie of
religion, no wonder we should be so deeply moved
with the same affections upon the dreadful and unde-
served sufferings of our brethren. Besides, that your
conspicuous piety and charity toward the orthodox,
wherever overborn and oppressed, has been frequently
608 LETTERS
OF STATE.
experienced in the most urging straits and calamities
of the churches. For my own part, unless my thoughts
deceive me, there is nothing wherein I should desire
more willingly to be overcome, than in goodwill and
Pharity toward brethren of the same religion, afflicted
and wronged in their quiet enjoyments; as being one
that would be accounted always ready to prefer the
peace and safety of the churches before my particular
interests. So far therefore as hitherto lay in our power,
we have written to the duke of Savoy, even almost to
supplication, beseeching him, that he would admit
into his breast more placid thoughts and kinder effects
of his favour toward his most innocent subjects and
suppliants; that he would restore the miserable to their
habitations and estates, and grant them their pristine
freedom in the exercise of their religion. Moreover,
we wrote to the chiefest princes and magistrates of the
protestants, whom we thought most nearly concerned
in these matters, that they would lend us their assistance
to entreat and pacify the duke of Savoy in their be-
half. And we make no doubt now but you have done
the same, and perhaps much more. For this so dan-
gerous a precedent, and lately renewed severity of ut-
most cruelty toward the reformed, if the authors of it
meet with prosperous success, to what apparent dangers
it reduces our religion, we need not admonish your
prudence. On the other side, if the duke shall once
but permit himself to be atoned and won by our united
applications, not only our afflicted brethren, but we
ourselves shall reap the noble and abounding harvest
and reward of this laborious undertaking. But if he
still persist in the same obstinate resolutions of reducing
to utmost extremity those people, (among whom our
religion was either disseminated by the first doctors of
the gospel, and preserved from the defilement of su-
perstition, or else restored to its pristine sincerity long
before other nations obtained that felicity,) and deter-
mines their utter extirpation and destruction; we are
ready to take such other course and counsels with
yourselves, in common with the rest of our reformed
friends and confederates, as may be most necessary
for the preservation of just and good men, upon the
brink of inevitable ruin; and to make the duke him-
self sensible, that we can no longer neglect the heavy
oppressions and calamities of our orthodox brethren.
Farewel.
To the Evangelic Cities of Switzer LAND.
WE make no question, but the late calamity of the
Piedmontois, professing our religion, reached your
cars before the unwelcome news of it arrived with us:
who being a people under the protection and jurisdic-
tion of the duke of Savoy, and by a severe edict of their
prince commanded to depart their native habitations,
unless within three days they gave security to embrace
the Roman religion, soon after were assailed by armed
violence, that turned their dwellings into slaughter-
houses, while others, without number, were terrified
into banishment, where now naked and afflicted, with-
out house or home, or any covering from the weather,
and ready to perish through hunger and cold, they
miserably wander thorough desert mountains, and
depths of snow, together with their wives and children.
And far less reason have we to doubt, but that so soon
as they came to your knowledge, you laid these things
to heart, with a compassion no less sensible of their
multiplied miseries than ourselves; the more deeply
imprinted perhaps in your minds, as being next neigh-
bours to the sufferers. Besides, that we have abundant
proof of your singular love and affection for the ortho-
dox faith, of your constancy in retaining it, and your
fortitude in defending it. Seeing then, by the most
strict communion of religion, that you, together with
ourselves, are all brethren alike, or rather one body
with those unfortunate people, of which no member
can be afflicted without the feeling, without pain,
without the detriment and hazard of the rest ; we
thought it convenient to write to your lordships con-
cerning this matter, and let you understand, how much
we believe it to be the general interest of us all, as
much as in us lies, with our common aid and succour
to relieve our exterminated and indigent brethren; and
not only to take care for removing their miseries and
afflictions, but also to provide, that the mischief spread
no farther, nor encroach upon ourselves in general, en-
couraged by example and success. We have written
letters to the duke of Savoy, wherein we have most
earnestly besought him, out of his wonted clemency,
to deal more gently and mildly with his most faithful
subjects, and to restore them, almost ruined as they are,
to their goods and habitations. And we are in hopes,
that by these our entreaties, or rather by the united in-
tercessions of us all, the most serene prince at length will
be atoned, and grant what we have requested with so
much importunity. But if his mind be obstinately
bent to other determinations, we are ready to commu-
nicate our consultations with yours, by what most pre-
valent means to relieve and re-establish most innocent
men, and our most dearly beloved brethren in Christ,
tormented and overlaid with so many wrongs and op-
pressions; and preserve them from inevitable and un-
deserved ruin. Of whose welfare and safety, as I am
assured, that you, according to your wonted piety, are
most cordially tender; so for our own parts, we cannot
but in our opinion prefer their preservation before our
most important interests, even the safeguard of our own
life. Farewel.
Westminster,
May 19th, 1655.
Superscribed, To the most Illustrious and Potent
Lords, the Consuls and Senators of the Protes-
tant Cantons and Confederate Cities of Swit-
zerland, Greeting.
O. P.
To the most Serene and Potent Prince, Lewis, King
of FRANCE.
Most Serene and Potent King;
BY your majesty's letters, which you wrote in an-
swer to ours of the twenty-fifth of May, we readily un-
derstand, that we failed not in our judgment, that the
LETTERS OF STATE.
609
inhuman slaughter, and barbarous massacres of those
men, who profess the reformed religion of Savoy, per-
petrated by some of your regiments, were the effects
neither of your orders nor commands. And it afforded
us a singular occasion of joy, to hear that your majesty
had so timely signified to your colonies and officers,
whose violent precipitancy engaged them in those in-
human butcheries, without the encouragement of law-
ful allowance, how displeasing they were to your ma-
jesty; that you had admonished the duke himself to for-
bear such acts of cruelty; and that you had interposed
with so much fidelity and humanity all the high vene-
ration paid you in that court, your near alliance and
authority, for restoring to their ancient abodes those
unfortunate exiles. And it was our hopes, that that
prince would in some measure have condescended to
the good pleasure and intercessions of your majesty.
But finding not any thing obtained, either by your
own, nor the entreaties and importunities of other
princes in the cause of the distressed, we deemed it not
foreign from our duty, to send this noble person, under
the character of our extraordinary envoy, to the duke
of Savoy, more amply and fully to lay before him, how
deeply sensible we are of such exasperated cruelties,
inflicted upon the professors of the same religion with
ourselves, and all this too out of a hatred of the same
worship. And we have reason to hope a success of
this negotiation so much the more prosperous, if your
majesty would vouchsafe to employ your authority
and assistance once again with so much the more ur-
gent importunity ; and as you have undertaken for
those indigent people, that they will be faithful and
obedient to their prince, so you would be graciously
pleased to take care of their welfare and safety, that
no farther oppressions of this nature, no more such
dismal calamities, may be the portion of the innocent
and peaceful. This being truly royal and just in it-
self, and highly agreeable to your benignity and cle-
mency, which every where protects in soft security
so many of your subjects professing the same religion,
we cannot but expect, as it behoves us, from your
majesty. Which act of yours, as it will more closely
bind to your subjection all the protestants throughout
your spacious dominions, whose affection and fidelity
to your predecessors and yourself in most important
distresses have been often conspicuously made known:
so will it fully convince all foreign princes, that
the advice or intention of your majesty were no way
contributory to this prodigious violence, whatever
inflamed your ministers and officers to promote it.
More especially, if your majesty shall inflict deserv-
ed punishment upon those captains and ministers,
who of their own authority, and to gratify their own
wills, adventured the perpetrating such dreadful acts
of inhumanity. In the mean while, since your majesty
has assured us of your justly merited aversion to these
most inhuman and cruel proceedings, we doubt not
but you will afford a secure sanctuary and shelter
within your kingdom to all those miserable exiles, that
shall fly to your majesty for protection; and that you
will not give permission to any of your subjects, to
assist the duke of Savoy to their prejudice. It remains
that we make known to your majesty, how highly we
esteem and value your friendship : in testimony of
which, we farther affirm, there shall never be wanting
upon all occasions the real assurances and effects of our
protestation.
Your majesty's most affectionate,
OLIVER, Protector of the Com-
monwealth of England, &c.
Whitehall,
July 29, 1655.
To the most Eminent Lord, Cardinal MAzARINE.
Most Eminent Lord Cardinal,
HAvi NG deemed it necessary to send this noble per-
son to the king with letters, a copy of which is here
enclosed, we gave him also farther in charge, to salute
your excellency in our name, as having intrusted to
his fidelity certain other matters to be communicated
to your eminency. In reference to which affairs, I
entreat your eminency to give him entire credit, as
being a person in whom I have reposed a more than
ordinary confidence.
Your eminency’s most affectionate,
OLIVER, Protector of the Com-
monwealth of England.
Whitehall,
July 29, 1655.
Olive R, Protector of the Commonwealth of ENGLAND,
To the most Sereme Prince, FREDERIC III., King of
DENMARK, No Rw AY, &c.
WITH what a severe and unmerciful edict Immanuel
duke of Savoy has expelled from their native seats his
subjects inhabiting the valleys of Piedmont, men other-
wise harmless, only for many years remarkably famous
for embracing the purity of religion ; and after a
dreadful slaughter of some numbers, how he has ex-
posed the rest to the hardships of those desert moun-
tains, stripped to their skins, and barred from all relief,
we believe your majesty has long since heard, and
doubt not but your majesty is touched with a real com-
miseration of their sufferings, as becomes so puissant a
defender and prince of the reformed faith : for indeed
the institutions of christian religion require, that what-
ever mischiefs and miseries any part of us undergo, it
should behove us all to be deeply sensible of the same:
nor does any man better than your majesty foresee, if
we may be thought able to give a right conjecture of
your piety and prudence, what dangers the success and
example of this fact portend to ourselves in particular,
and to the whole protestant name in general. We
have written the more willingly to yourself, to the end
we might assure your majesty, that the same sorrow,
which we hope you have conceived for the calamity of
our most innocent brethren, the same opinion, the same
judgment you have of the whole matter, is plainly and
sincerely our own. We have therefore sent our letters
to the duke of Savoy, wherein we have most impor-
tunately besought him, to spare those miserable people,
that implore his mercy, and that he would no longer
suffer that dreadful edict to be in force : which if your
majesty and the rest of the reformed princes would
610
LETTERS OF STATE,
vouchsafe to do, as we are apt to believe they have
already dome, there is some hope, that the anger of the
most serene duke may be assuaged, and that his indig-
nation will relent upon the intercession and importuni-
ties of his neighbour princes. Or if he persist in his
determinations, we protest ourselves ready, together
with your majesty, and the rest of our confederates of
the reformed religion, to take such speedy methods, as
may enable us, as far as in us lies, to relieve the dis-
tresses of so many miserable creatures, and provide
for their liberty and safety. In the mean time we
beseech Almighty God to bless your majesty with all
prosperity.
Whitehall, May –, 1655.
Olive R, Protector of the Commonwealth of ENGLAND,
&c., To the most Noble the Consuls and Senators of
the City of GENEVA,
WE had before made known to your lordships our
excessive sorrow for the heavy and unheard of cala-
mities of the protestants, inhabiting the valleys of
Piedmont, whom the duke of Savoy persecutes with
so much cruelty; but that we made it our business, that
you should at the same time understand, that we are
not only affected with the multitude of their sufferings,
but are using the utmost of our endeavours to relieve
and comfort them in their distresses. To that pur-
pose we have taken care for a gathering of alms to be
made throughout this whole republic ; which upon
good grounds we expect will be such, as will demon-
strate the affection of this nation toward their brethren,
labouring under the burden of such horrid inhumani-
ties; and that as the communion of religion is the same
between both people, so the sense of their calamities
is no less the same. In the mean time, while the col-
lections of the money go forward, which in regard they
will require some time to accomplish, and for that the
wants and necessities of those deplorable people will
admit of no delay, we thought it requisite to remit be-
fore-hand two thousand pounds of the value of England
with all possible speed, to be distributed among such
as shall be judged to be most in present need of com-
fort and succour. Now in regard we are not ignorant
how deeply the miseries and wrongs of those most
innocent people have affected yourselves, and that you
will not think amiss of any labour or pains where you
can be assisting to their relief, we made no scruple to
commit the paying and distributing this sum of money
to your care; and to give you this farther trouble, that
according to your wonted piety and prudence, you
would take care, that the said money may be distri-
buted equally to the most necessitous, to the end that
though the sum be small, yet there may be something
to refresh and revive the most poor and needy, till we
can afford them a more plentiful supply. And thus,
not making any doubt but you will take in good part
the trouble imposed upon ye, we beseech Almighty
God to stir up the hearts of all his people professing
the orthodox religion, to resolve upon the common
defence of themselves, and the mutual assistance of
each other against their imbittered and most implaca-
ble enemies: in the prosecution of which, we should
rejoice that our helping hand might be any way ser-
viceable to the church. Farewel.
Fifteen hundred pounds of the foresaid two thousand
will be remitted by Gerard Hench from Paris, and the
other five hundred pounds will be taken care of by
letters from the lord Stoup.
June 8, 1655.
Olive R, Protector of the Commonwealth of ENGLAND,
&c., To the most Sereme Prince, the Duke of VENICE.
Most Serene Prince,
As it has been always a great occasion of rejoicing
to us, whenever any prosperous success attended your
arms, but more especially against the common enemy
of the Christian name; so neither are we sorry for the
late advantage gained by your fleet, though, as we
understand, it happened not a little to the detriment of
our people : for certain of our merchants, William and
Daniel Williams, and Edward Beale, have set forth in
a petition presented to us, that a ship of theirs, called
the Great Prince, was lately sent by them with goods
and merchandise to Constantinople, where the said
ship was detained by the ministers of the Port, to carry
soldiers and provisions to Crete; and that the said ship
being constrained to sail along with the same fleet of
the Turks, which was set upon and vanquished by the
galleys of the Venetians, was taken, carried away to
Venice, and there adjudged lawful prize by the judges
of the admiralty. Now therefore in regard the said
ship was pressed by the Turks, and forced into their
service without the knowledge or consent of the owners
directly or indirectly obtained, and that it was impos-
sible for her, being shipped with soldiers, to withdraw
from the engagement, we most earnestly request your
serenity, that you will remit that sentence of your
admiralty, as a present to our friendship, and take such
care, that the ship may be restored to the owners, no
way deserving the displeasure of your republic by any
act of theirs. In the obtaining of which request, more
especially upon our intercession, while we find the
merchants themselves so well assured of your clemency,
it behoves us not to question it. And so we beseech
the Almighty God to continue his prosperous blessings
upon your noble designs, and the Venetian republic.
Your serenity’s and the Venetian repub-
lic's most affectionate,
OLIVER, Protector of the Com-
monwealth of England, &c.
Westminster,
Decemb. —, 1655.
Olive R, Protector of the Commonwealth of ENGLAND,
&c., To the most Screme Prince, Lewis, King of
FRANCE.
Most Serene King,
CERTAIN of our merchants, by mame Samuel Mico,
William Cockain, George Poyner, and several others,
in a petition to us have set forth, That in the year 1650,
LETTERS
611
OF STATE.
they laded a ship of theirs, called the Unicorn, with
goods of a very considerable value; and that the said
ship being thus laden with silk, oil, and other merchan-
dise, amounting to above thirty-four thousand of our
pounds, was taken by the admiral and vice-admiral of
your majesty's fleet in the Mediterranean sea. Now it
appears to us, that our people who were then in the
ship, by reason there was at that time a peace between
the French and us, that never had been violated in the
least, were not willing to make any defence against
your majesty's royal ships, and therefore, overruled be-
sides by the fair promises of the captains Paul and
Terrery, who faithfully engaged to dismiss our people,
they paid their obedience to the maritime laws, and
produced their bills of lading. Moreover, we find that
the merchants aforesaid sent their agent into France, to
demand restitution of the said ship and goods: and then
it was, that after above three years slipped away, when
the suit was brought so far, that sentence of restitution
or condemnation was to have been given, that his emi-
mency cardinal Mazarine acknowledged to their factor
Hugh Morel, the wrong that had been done the mer-
chants, and undertook that satisfaction should be given,
so soon as the league between the two nations, which
was then under negotiation, should be ratified and
confirmed. Nay, since that, his excellency M. de
Bourdeaux, your majesty’s embassador, assured us in
express words, by the command of your majesty and
your council, That care should be taken of that ship
and goods in a particular exception, apart from those
controversies, for the decision of which a general pro-
vision was made by the league: of which promise, the
embassador, now opportunely arrived here to solicit
some business of his own, is a testimony no way to be
questioned. Which being true, and the right of the
merchants in redemanding their ship and goods so
undeniably apparent, we most earnestly request your
majesty, that they may meet with no delay in obtain-
ing what is justly their due, but that your majesty will
admit the grant of this favour, as the first fruits of our
revived amity, and the lately renewed league between
us. The refusal of which as we have no reason to
doubt, so we beseech Almighty God to bless with all
prosperity both your majesty and your kingdom.
Your majesty's most affectionate,
OLIVER, Protector of the Common-
wealth of England, Scotland,
and Ireland, &c.
Westminster,
Dec. —, 1655.
To the Evangelic Cities of SwitzERLAND.
IN what condition your affairs are, which is not the
best, we are abundantly informed, as well by your
public acts transmitted to us by our agent at Geneva,
as also by your letters from Zuric, bearing date the
twenty-seventh of December. Whereby, although we
are sorry to find your peace, and such a lasting league
of confederacy, broken ; nevertheless since it appears
to have happened through no fault of yours, we are in
hopes that the imiquity and perverseness of your ad-
Versaries are contriving new occasions for ye to make
known your long ago experienced fortitude and resolu-
tion in defence of the Evangelic faith. For as for
those of the canton of Schwitz, who account it a capital
crime for any person to embrace our religion, what
they are might and main designing, and whose insti-
gations have incensed them to resolutions of hostility
against the orthodox religion, nobody can be ignorant,
who has not yet forgot that most detestable slaughter
of our brethren in Piedmont. Wherefore, most be-
loved friends, what you were always wont to be, with
God’s assistance still continue, magnanimous and re-
solute; suffer not your privileges, your confederacies,
the liberty of your consciences, your religion itself to
be trampled under foot by the worshippers of idols;
and so prepare yourselves, that you may not seem to
be the defenders only of your own freedom and safety,
but be ready likewise to aid and succour, as far as in
you lies, your neighbouring brethren, more especially
those most deplorable Piedmontois; as being certainly
convinced of this, that a passage was lately intended
to have been opened over their slaughtered bodies to
your sides. As for our part be assured, that we are no
less anxious and solicitous for your welfare and pros-
perity, than if this conflagration had broken forth in
our republic; or as if the axes of the Schwitz Canton
had been sharpened for our necks, or that their swords
had been drawn against our breasts, as indeed they
were against the bosoms of all the reformed. There-
fore so soon as we were informed of the condition of
your affairs, and the obstimate animosities of your ene-
mies, advising with some sincere and honest persons,
together with some ministers of the church most emi-
ment for their piety, about sending to your assistance
such succour as the present posture of our affairs would
permit, we came to those results which our envoy Pell
will impart to your consideration. In the mean time
we cease not to implore the blessing of the Almighty
upon all your counsels, and the protection of your most
just cause, as well in war as in peace.
Your lordships and worships most affectionate,
OLIVER, Protector of the Com-
monwealth of England, &c.
Westminster,
Jan. —, 1655.
OLIVER, Protector of the Commonwealth of ENGLAND,
&c., To the most Serene Prince, CHARLEs GUSTAvus,
by the Grace of God King of the Swedes, Goths,
and VANDALs, Great Prince of FINLAND, &c.
Most Serene King,
SEEING it is a thing well known to all men, that
there ought to be a communication of concerns among
friends, whether in prosperity or adversity; it cannot
but be most grateful to us, that your majesty should
vouchsafe to impart unto us by your letters the most
pleasing and delightful part of your friendship, which
is your joy. In regard it is a mark of singular civility,
and truly royal, as not to live only to a man's self, so
neither to rejoice alone, unless he be sensible that his
friends and confederates partake of his gladness. Cer-
tainly then, we have reason to rejoice for the birth of
the young prince born to such an excellent king, and
2 R
612 LETTERS
OF STATE.
sent into the world to be the heir of his father's glory
and virtue; and this at such a lucky season, that we
have no less cause to congratulate the royal parent with
the memorable omen that befell the famous Philip of
Macedon, who at the same time received the tidings of
Alexander's birth, and the conquest of the Illyrians.
For we make no question, but the wresting of the
kingdom of Poland from papal subjection, as it were a
horn dismembered from the head of the beast, and the
peace, so much desired by all good men, concluded
with the duke of Brandenburgh, will be most highly
conducing to the tranquillity and advantage of the
church. Heaven grant a conclusion correspondent to
such signal beginnings; and may the son be like the
father in virtue, piety, and renown, obtained by great
achievements. Which is that we wish may luckily
come to pass, and which we beg of the Almighty, so
propitious hitherto to your affairs.
Your majesty's most affectionate,
OLIVER, Protector of the Com-
monwealth of England, &c.
To the King of DENMARK.
Most Serene and Potent Prince,
Westminster,
Feb. —, 1655.
Jo HN FREEMAN and Philip Travess, citizens of this
republic, by a petition presented to us, in their own
and the name of several other merchants of London,
have made a complaint, That whereas about the month
of March, in the year 1653, they freighted a certain
ship of Sunderburg, called the Saviour, Nicholas
Weinskinks master, with woollen cloth, and other
commodities to the value of above three thousand
pound, with orders to the master, that he should sail
directly up the Baltic for Dantzic, paying the usual
tribute at Elsenore, to which purpose in particular
they gave him money : nevertheless that the said mas-
ter, perfidiously and contrary to the orders of the said
merchants, slipping by Elsenore without paying the
usual duty, thought to have proceeded in his voyage,
but that the ship for this reason was immediately
seized and detained with all her lading. After due
consideration of which complaints, we wrote in favour
of the merchants to your majesty's embassador residing
at London, who promised, as they say, that as soon as
he returned to your majesty, he would take care that
the merchants should be taken into consideration.
But he being sent to negotiate your majesty's affairs
in other countries, the merchants attended upon him
in vain, both before and after his departure ; so that
they were forced to send their agent to prosecute their
right and claim at Copenhagen, and demand restitution
of the ship and goods; but all the benefit they reaped
by it was only to add more expenses to their former
damages, and a great deal of labour and pains thrown
away; the goods being condemned to confiscation,
and still detained : whereas by the law of Denmark,
as they set forth in their petition, the master is to be
punished for his offence, and the ship to be condemned
but not the goods. And they look upon this misfor-
tune to lie the more heavy upon them, in regard the
duty which is to be paid at Elsenore, as they tell
us, is but very small. Wherefore seeing our mer-
chants seem to have given no cause of proscription,
and for that the master confessed before his death,
that this damage befell them only through his neglect;
and the father of the master deceased, by his petition
to your majesty, as we are given to understand, by
laying all the blame on his son, has acquitted the
merchants; we could not but believe the detaining of
the said ship and goods to be most unjust; and there-
fore we are conſident, that so soon as your majesty
shall be rightly informed of the whole matter, you
will not only disapprove of these oppressions of your
ministers, but give command that they be called to an
account, that the goods be restored to the owners or
their factors, and reparation made them for the losses
they have sustained. All which we most earnestly
request of your majesty, as being no more than what
is so just and consentaneous to reason, that a more
equitable demand, or more legal satisfaction cannot
well be made, considering the justice of our merchants’
cause, and which your own subjects would think but
fair and honest upon the like occasions.
To the most Sereme Prince, Jon N the Fourth, Iſing of
Po RTUGAL, &c.
Most Serene King,
The peace and friendship which your majesty de-
sired, by your noble and splendid embassy sent to us
some time since, after certain negotiations begun by
the parliament in whom the supreme power was vested
at that time, as it was always most affectionately wished
for by us, with the assistance of God, and that we might
not be wanting in the administration of the govern-
ment which we have now taken upon us, at length we
brought to a happy conclusion, and as we hope, as a
sacred act, have ratified it to perpetuity. And therefore
we send back to your majesty your extraordinary em-
bassador, the lord John Roderigo de Sita Meneses,
count of Pennaguiada, a person both approved by your
majesty's judgment, and by us experienced to excel in
civility, ingenuity, prudence, and fidelity, besides the
merited applause which he has justly gained by accom-
plishing the ends of his embassy, which is the peace
which he carries along with him to his country. But
as to what we perceive by your letters dated from
Lisbon the second of April, that is to say, how highly
your majesty esteems our amity, how cordially you
favour our advancement, and rejoice at our having
taken the government of the republic upon us, which
you are pleased to manifest by singular testimonies of
kindness and affection, we shall make it our business,
that all the world may understand, by our readiness
at all times to serve your majesty, that there could be
nothing more acceptable or grateful to us. Nor are
we less earnest in our prayers to God for your majesty's
safety, the welfare of your kingdom, and the prosperous
success of your affairs.
Your majesty's most affectionate,
OLIVER, &c.
I.ETTERS
6.13
OF STATE,
Oliver, Protector of the Commonwealth of ENGLAND,
&c., To the High and Mighty States of the UNITED
PRov INCEs.
Most High and Mighty Lords, our dearest Friends;
CERTAIN merchants, our countrymen, Thomas Bas-
sel, Richard Beare, and others their copartners, have
made their complaints before us, that a certain ship of
theirs, the Edmund and John, in her voyage from the
coast of Brazil to Lisbon, was set upon by a privateer
of Flushing, called the Red Lion, commanded by
Lambert Bartelson, but upon this condition, which the
writing signed by Lambert himself testifies, that the
ship and whatsoever goods belonged to the English
should be restored at Flushing : where when the vessel
arrived, the ship indeed with what peculiarly belonged
to the seamen was restored, but the English merchants’
goods were detained and put forthwith to sale: for the
merchants who had received the damage, when they
had sued for their goods in the court of Flushing, after
great expenses for five years together, lost their suit
by the pronouncing of a most unjust sentence against
them by those judges, of which some, being interested
in the privateer, were both judges and adversaries, and
no less criminal altogether. So that now they have
no other hopes but only in your equity and uncorrupted
faith, to which at last they fly for succour: and which
they believed they should find the more inclinable to
do them justice, if assisted by our recommendation.
And men are surely to be pardoned, if, afraid of all
things in so great a struggle for their estates, they
rather call to mind what they have reason to fear from
your authority and high power, than what they have
to hope well of their cause, especially before sincere
and upright judges: though for our parts we make
no question, but that induced by your religion, your
justice, your integrity, rather than by our entreaties,
you will give that judgment which is just and equal,
and truly becoming yourselves. God preserve both
you and your republic to his own glory, and the defence
and succour of his church.
OLIVER, Protector of the Common-
wealth of England, &c.
º
Westminster,
April 1, 1656.
OLIVER, Protector of the Commonwealth of ENGLAND,
Scotland, and IRELAND, &c., To the most Sereme
Prince, CHARLEs GUSTAvus, King of the Swedes,
GoTHs, and VANDALs, Great Prince of FINLAND,
Duke of EsthoNIA, CARELIA, BREME, VERDEN,
STETTIN, Pom ERANIA, CAssubiA, and VANDALIA,
Prince of RUGIA, Lord of INGRIA and Wis MARIA,
Count PALATINE of the RHINE, Duke of BAvARIA,
JULIERs, CLEVEs, and Monts.
Most Serene Prince,
PETER JULius Coict having accomplished the affairs
of his embassy with us, and so acquitted himself, that
he is not by us to be dismissed without the ornament
of his deserved praises, is now returning to your ma-
Jesty. For he was most acceptable to us, as well and
chiefly for your own sake, which ought with us to be
of high consideration, as for his own deserts in the di-
ligent acquittal of his trust. The recommendation
therefore which we received from you in his behalf,
we freely testiſy to have been made good by him, and
deservedly given by yourself; as he on the other side
is able with the same fidelity and integrity, to relate
and most truly to declare our singular affection and
observance toward your majesty. It remains for us
to beseech the most merciful and all powerful God, to
bless your majesty with all felicity, and perpetual course
of victory over all the enemies of his church.
Your majesty's most affectionate,
OLIVER, Protector of the Common-
wealth of England, &c.
Westminster,
April 17, 1656.
Olive R, Protector of the Commonwealth of ENGLAND,
&c., To the most Serene and Potent Prince, LEwis,
King of FRANCE.
Most Serene Prince,
John DETHIc, mayor of the city of London for this
year, and William Wakefield, merchant, have made
their addresses to us by way of petition, complaining,
that about the middle of October, sixteen hundred and
forty-nine, they freighted a certain ship called the Jo-
mas of London, Jonas Lightfoot master, with goods
that were to be sent to Ostend ; which vessel was taken
in the mouth of the river Thames, by one White of
Barking, a pirate, robbing upon the seas by virtue of a
commission from the son of King Charles deceased,
and carried to Dunkirk, then under the jurisdiction of
the French. Now in regard that by your majesty's
edict in the year sixteen hundred and forty-seven, re-
newed in sixteen hundred and forty-nine, and by some
other decrees in favour of the parliament of England,
as they find it recorded, it was enacted, that no vessel
or goods taken from the English, in the time of that
war, should be carried into any of your majesty's ports
to be there put to sale; they presently sent their factor
Hugh Morel to Dunkirk, to demand restitution of the
said ship and goods from M. Lestrade then governor
of the town; more especially finding them in the place
for the most part untouched, and neither exchanged or
sold. To which the governor made answer, that the
king had bestowed that government upon him of his
free gift or service done the king in his wars, and there-
fore he would take care to make the best of the reward of
his labour. So that having little to hope from an an-
swer so unkind and unjust, after a great expense of
time and money, the factor returned home. So that
all the remaining hopes, which the petitioners have,
seem wholly to depend upon your majesty's justice and
clemency, to which they thought they might have the
more easy access by means of our letters; and there-
fore that neither your clemency nor your justice may
be wanting to people despoiled against all law and
reason, and contrary to your repeated prohibitions, we
make it our request. Wherein, if your majesty vouch-
safe to gratify us, since there is nothing required but
what is most just and equitable, we shall deem it as
614 LETTERS
OF STATE.
obtained rather from your innate integrity, than any
entreaty of ours.
Your majesty's most affectionate,
OLIVER, Protector of the Com-
monwealth of England, &c.
Westminster,
May —, 1656.
OLIVER, Protector of the Commonwealth of ENGLAND,
&c., To the High and Mighty Lords, the States of
the UNITED PROVINCEs.
Most High and Mighty Lords, our dearest Friends;
Joh N BRow N, Nicholas Williams, and others, citi-
zens of London, have set forth in their petitions to us,
that when they had every one brought in their propor-
tions, and freighted a certain ship called the Good
Hope of London, bound for the East Indies, they gave
orders to their factor, to take up at Amsterdam two
thousand four hundred Dutch pounds, to ensure the
said ship ; that afterwards this ship, in her voyage to
the coast of India, was taken by a ship belonging to
the East India Company; upon which they who had
engaged to ensure the said vessel refused to pay the
money, and have for this six years by various delays
eluded our merchants, who with extraordinary dili-
gence, and at vast expenses, endeavoured the recovery
of their just right. Which in regard it is an unjust
grievance, that lies so heavy upon the petitioners, for
that some of those who obliged themselves are dead or
become insolvent; therefore that no farther losses may
accrue to their former damages, we make it our earnest
request to your lordships, that you will vouchsafe your
integrity to be the harbour and refuge for people tossed
so many years, and almost shipwrecked in your courts
of justice, and that speedy judgment may be given ac-
cording to the rules of equity and honesty in their
cause, which they believe to be most just. In the mean
time we wish you all prosperity to the glory of God,
and the welfare of his church. e
Your high and mighty lordships most affectionate,
OLIVER, Protector of the Com-
monwealth of England, &c.
Westminster,
May –, 1656.
Olive R, Protector of the Commonwealth of ENGLAND,
&c., To the High and Mighty Lords, the States of
the UNITED PRovi NCEs.
Most High and Mighty Lords, our dearest Friends;
THE same persons in whose behalf we wrote to your
lordships in September the last year, Thomas and Wil-
liam Lower, the lawful heirs of Nicholas Lower de-
ceased, make grievous complaints before us, that they
are oppressed either by the favour or wealth of their
adversaries, notwithstanding the justice of their cause;
and when that would not suffice, although our letters
were often pleaded in their behalf, they have not been
able hitherto to obtain possession of the inheritance
left them by their father's will. I’rom the court of
Holland, where the suit was first commenced, they
were sent to your court, and from thence hurried
away into Zealand, (to which three places they carried
our letters) and now they are remanded, not unwill-
ingly, back again to your supreme judicature; for
where the supreme power is, there they expect supreme
justice. If that hope fail them, eluded and frustrated,
after being so long tossed from post to pillar for the
recovery of their right, where at length to find a rest-
ing place they know not. I'or as for our letters, if
they find no benefit of these the fourth time written,
they can never promise themselves any advantage
for the future from slighted papers. However, it
would be most acceptable to us, if yet at length, after
so many contempts, the injured heirs might meet with
some relief by a speedy and just judgment, if not
out of respect to any reputation we have among
ye, yet out of a regard to your own equity and jus-
tice. Of the last of which we make no question, and
confidently presume you will allow the other to our
friendship.
Your high and mighty lordships most affectionate,
OLIVER, Protector of the Com-
monwealth of England, &c.
Westminster,
May –, 1656.
OLIVER, Protector of the Commonwealth of ENGLAND,
&c., To the most Sereme Prince Jon N, King of Port-
TU G A L.
Most Serene King,
WHEREAs there is a considerable sum of money ow-
ing from certain Portugal merchants of the Brasile
company to several English merchants, upon the ac-
count of freightage and demorage, in the years sixteen-
hundred and forty-nine and sixteen-hundred and fifty,
which money is detained by the said company by your
majesty's command, the merchants before mentioned
expected, that the said money should have been paid
long since according to the articles of the last league,
but now they are afraid of being debarred all hopes
and means of recovering their debts; understanding
your majesty has ordered, that what money is owing
to them by the Brasile company shall be carried into
your treasury, and that no more than one half of the
duty of freightage shall be expended toward the pay-
ment of their debts; by which means the merchants
will receive no more than the bare interest of their money,
while at the same time they utterly lose their principal.
Which we considering to be very severe and heavy
upon them, and being overcome by their most reason-
able supplications, have granted them these our letters
to your majesty; chiefly requesting this at your hands,
to take care that the aforesaid Brasile company may
give speedy satisfaction to the merchants of this repub-
lic, and pay them not only the principal money which
is owing to them, but the five years interest; as being
both just in itself, and conformable to the league
so lately concluded between us; which on their be-
half in most friendly manner we request from your
majesty.
Your majesty's most affectionate,
OLIVER, Protector of the Com-
monwealth, &c.
From our Palace
at Westminster,
July —, 1656.
LETTERS
OF STATE. 615
Olive R, Protector of the Commonwealth of ENGLAND,
&c., To the most Sereme Prince, CHARLES GUSTAVUS,
Ring of the Swedes, GoT IIs, and VANDALs, &c.
Most Serene King,
As it is but just that we should highly value the
friendship of your majesty, a prince so potent and so
renowned for great achievements; so is it but equally
reasonable that your extraordinary embassador, the
most illustrious lord Christiern Bond, by whose sedu-
lity and care a strict alliance is most sacredly and so-
lemnly ratified between us, should be most acceptable to
us, and no less deeply fixed in our esteem. Him there-
fore, having now most worthily accomplished his em-
bassy, we thought it became us to send back to your
majesty, though not without the high applause which
the rest of his singular virtues merit; to the end, that
he, who was before conspicious in your esteem and
respect, may now be sensible of his having reaped still
more abundant fruits of his sedulity and prudence ſrom
our recommendation. As for those things which yet
remain to be transacted, we have determined in a short
time to send an embassy to your majesty for the settling
of those affairs. In the mean time, Almighty God
preserve in safety so great a pillar of his church, and
of Swedland's welfare.
Your majesty's most affectionate,
OLIVER, Protector of the Com-
monwealth of England, &c.
From our palace
at Westminster,
July —, 1656.
OLIVER, Protector of the Commonwealth of ENGLAND,
&c., To the most Sereme Prince LEwis, King of
FRANCE.
Most Serene King, our most dear Friend
and Confederate;
CERTAIN merchants of London, Richard Baker and
others, have made their complaint in a petition to us,
that a certain hired ship of theirs, called the Endeavour,
William Jop master, laden at Teneriff with three hun-
dred pipes of rich Canary, and bound from thence for
London, in her voyage between Palma and that island,
upon the twenty-first of November, in the year sixteen
hundred and fifty-five, was taken by four French ves-
sels, seeming ships of burden, but fitted and manned
like privateers, under the command of Giles de la
Roche their admiral; and carried with all their freight,
and the greatest part of the seamen, to the East Indies,
whither he pretended to be bound, (fourteen excepted,
who were put ashore upon the coast of Guiney,) which
the said Giles affirmed he did with that intent, that
none of them might escape from so remote and bar-
barous a country to do him any harm by their testi-
mony. For he confessed he had neither any commis-
sion to take the English vessels, neither had he taken
any, as he might have done before, well knowing
there was a firm peace at that time between the French
and our republic: but in regard he had designed to
revictual in Portugal, from whence he was driven by
contrary winds, he was constrained to supply his ne-
cessities with what he found in that vessel ; and
believed the owners of his ships would satisfy the mer-
chants for their loss. Now the loss of our merchants
amounts to sixteen thousand English pounds, as will
easily be made appear by witnesses upon oath. But
if it shall be lawful, upon such trivial excuses as these,
for pirates to violate the most religious acts of princes,
and make a sport of merchants for their particular be-
nefits, certainly the sanctity of leagues must fall to the
ground, all faith and authority of princes will grow
out of date, and be trampled under foot. Wherefore
we not only request your majesty, but believe it mainly
to concern your honour, that they, who have ventured
upon so slight a pretence to violate the league and
most sacred oath of their sovereign, should suffer the
punishment due to such perfidiousness and daring in-
solence ; and that in the mean time the owners of those
ships, though to their loss, should be bound to satisfy
our merchants for the vast detriment, which they have
so wrongfully sustained. So may the Almighty long
preserve your majesty, and support the interest of
France against the common enemy of us both.
Your majesty’s most affectionate,
From our palace
at Westminster,
Aug. —, 1656.
OLIVER, Protector, &c.
OLIVER, Protector of the Commonwealth of ENGLAND,
To his Eminency Cardinal MAZARINE.
Most Eminent Lord,
HAVING an occasion to send letters to the king, we
thought it likewise an offered opportunity to write to
your eminency. For we could not think it proper to
conceal the subject of our writing from the sole and
only person, whose singular prudence governs the most
important interests of the French nation, and the most
weighty affairs of the kingdom with equal fidelity,
counsel, and vigilance. Not without reason we com-
plain, in short, to find that league by yourself, as it
were a crime to doubt, most sacredly concluded, al-
most the very same day contemned and violated by
one Giles a Frenchman, a petty admiral of four ships,
and his associates, equally concerned, as your eminency
will readily find by our letters to the king, and the
demands themselves of our merchants. Nor is it un-
known to your excellency, how much it concerns not
only inferior magistrates, but even royal majesty itself,
that those first violators of solemn alliances should be
severely punished. But they, perhaps, by this time
being arrived in the East Indies, whither they pre-
tended to be bound, enjoy in undisturbed possession
the goods of our people as lawful prize won from an
enemy, which they robbed and pillaged from the
owners, contrary to all law, and the pledged faith of
our late sacred league. However, this is that which
we request from your eminency, that whatever goods
were taken from our merchants by the admiral of those
ships, as necessary for his voyage, may be restored by
the owners of the same vessels, which was no more than
616
LETTERS OF STATE.
what the rovers themselves thought just and equal ;
which, as we understand, it lies within your power to
do, considering the authority and sway you bear in the
kingdom.
Your eminency's most affectionate,
OLIVER, Protector of the Com-
monwealth, &c.
From our palace
at Westminster,
Aug. —, 1656.
OLIVER, Protector of the Commonwealth of ENGLAND,
&c., To the most High and Mighty Lords, the States
of the UNITED PRov INCEs.
Most High and Mighty Lords, our dearest
Friends and Confederates;
We make no doubt but that all men will bear us
this testimony, that no considerations, in contracting
foreign alliances, ever swayed us beyond those of de-
fending the truth of religion, or that we accounted any
thing more sacred, than to unite the minds of all the
friends and protectors of the protestants, and of all
others who at least were not their enemies. Whence
it come to pass, that we are touched with so much the
more grief of mind, to hear that the protestant princes
and cities, whom it so much behoves to live in friend-
ship and concord together, should begin to be so jealous
of each other, and so ill disposed to mutual affection;
more especially, that your lordships and the king of
Sweden, than whom the orthodox faith has not more
magnanimous and courageous defenders, nor our re-
public confederates more strictly conjoined in interests,
should seem to remit of your confidence in each other;
or rather, that there should appear some too apparent
signs of tottering friendship and growing discord be-
tween ye. What the causes are, and what progress
this alienation of your affection has made, we protest
ourselves to be altogether ignorant. However, we
cannot but conceive an extraordinary trouble of mind
for these beginnings of the least dissension arisen among
brethren, which infallibly must greatly endanger the
protestant interests. Which if they should gather
strength, how prejudicial it would prove to protestant
churches, what an occasion of triumph it would afford
our enemies, and more especially the Spaniards, can-
not be unknown to your prudence, and most industri-
ous experience of affairs. As for the Spaniards, it has
already so enlivened their confidence, and raised their
courage, that they made no scruple by their embassa-
dor residing in your territories, boldly to obtrude their
counsels upon your lordships, and that in reference to
the highest concerns of your republic ; presuming
partly with threats of renewing the war, to terrify,
and partly with a false prospect of advantage to solicit
your lordships, to forsake your ancient and most faith-
ful friends, the English, French, and Danes, and enter
into a strict confederacy with your old enemy, and
once your domineering tyrant, now seemingly atoned;
but, what is most to be feared, only at present treacher-
ously fawning to advance his own designs. Certainly
he who of an inveterate enemy lays hold of so slight
an occasion of a sudden to become your counsellor,
what is it that he would not take upon him P Where
would his insolency stop, if once he could but see with
his eyes, what now he only ruminates and labours in
his thoughts; that is to say, division and a civil war
among the protestants P. We are not ignorant that
your lordships, out of your deep wisdom, frequently re-
volve in your minds what the posture of all Europe is,
and what more especially the condition of the protes-
tants: that the cantons of Switzerland adhering to the
orthodox faith are in daily expectation of new trou-
bles to be raised by their countrymen embracing the
popish ceremonies; scarcely recovered from that war,
which for the sake of religion was kindled and blown
up by the Spaniards, who supplied their enemies both
with commanders and money : that the councils of the
Spaniards are still contriving to continue the slaughter
and destruction of the Piedmontois, which was cruelly
put in execution the last year: that the protestants un-
der the jurisdiction of the emperor are most grievously
harassed, having much ado to keep possession of their
native homes: that the king of Sweden, whom God, as
we hope, has raised up to be a most stout defender
of the orthodox faith, is at present waging with all the
force of his kingdom a doubtful and bloody war with
the most potent enemies of the reformed religion: that
your own provinces are threatened with hostile confe-
deracies of the princes your neighbours, headed by the
Spaniards: and lastly, that we ourselves are busied in
a war proclaimed against the king of Spain. In this
posture of affairs, if any contest should happen between
your lordships and the king of Sweden, how miserable
would be the condition of all the reformed churches
over all Europe, exposed to the cruelty and fury of
unsanctified enemies' These cares not slightly seize
us; and we hope your sentiments to be the same;
and that out of your continued zeal for the common
cause of the protestants, and to the end the present
peace between brethren professing the same faith, the
same hope of etermity, may be preserved inviolable,
your lordships will accommodate your counsels to throse
considerations, which are to be preferred before all
others; and that you will leave nothing neglected, that
may conduce to the establishing tranquillity and union
between your lordships and the king of Sweden.
Wherein if we can any way be useful, as far as our
authority, and the favour you bear us will sway your
lordships, we freely offer our utmost assistance, pre-
pared in like manner to be no less serviceable to the
king of Sweden, to whom we design a speedy embassy,
to the end we may declare our sentiments at large con-
cerning these matters. We hope moreover, that God
will bend your minds on both sides to moderate coun-
sels, and so restrain your animosities, that no provoca-
tion may be given, either by the one or the other, to
fester your differences to extremity; but that on the
other side both parties will remove whatever may give
offence or occasion of jealousy to the other. Which if
you shall vouchsafe to do, you will disappoint your
enemies, prove the consolation of your friends, and in
the best manner provide for the welfare of your repub-
lic. And this we beseech you to be fully convinced of.
LETTERS
OF STATE. 617
that we shall use our utmost care to make appear, upon
all occasions, our extraordinary affection and goodwill
to the states of the United Provinces. And so we most
earnestly implore the Almighty God to perpetuate his
blessings of peace, wealth, and liberty, upon your re-
public ; but above all things to preserve it always
flourishing in the love of the christian faith, and the
true worship of his name.
Your high and mightinesses most affectionate,
OLIVER, Protector of the Com-
monwealth of England, &c.
From our palace
at Westminster,
Aug. —, 1656,
OLIVE Protector of the Commonwealth of ENG-
LAND, &c. To the most Sereme Prince, JoHN, King of
Port UGAL.
Most Serene Prince,
Upon the eleventh of July last, old style, we receiv-
ed by Thomas Maynard the ratification of the peace
negotiated at London by your extraordinary embassa-
dor; as also of the private and preliminary articles, all
now confirmed by your majesty: and by our letters
from Philip Meadows, our agent at Lisbon, dated the
same time, we understand that our ratification also of
the same peace and articles was by him, according to
our orders sent him, delivered to your majesty: and
thus the instruments of the forementioned ratification
being mutually interchanged on both sides in the be-
ginning of June last, there is now a firm and settled
peace between both nations. And this pacification has
given us no small occasion of joy and satisfaction, as
believing it will prove to the common benefit of both
nations, and to the no slight detriment of our common
enemies, who as they found out a means to disturb the
former league, so they left nothing neglected to have
hindered the renewing of this. Nor do we question in
the least, that they will omit any occasion of creating
new matter for scandals and jealousies between us.
Which we however have constantly determined, as
much as in us lies, to remove at a remote distance from
our thoughts; rather we so earnestly desire, that this
our alliance may beget a mutual conſidence, greater
every day than other, that we shall take them for our
enemies, who shall by any artifices endeavour to mo-
lest the friendship by this peace established between
ourselves and both our people. And we readily per-
suade ourselves, that your majesty's thoughts and in-
tentions are the same. And whereas it has pleased
your majesty, by your letters dated the twenty-fourth
of June, and some days after the delivery by our agent
of the interchanged instrument of confirmed peace, to
mention certain clauses of the league, of which you
desired some little alteration, being of small moment to
this republic, as your majesty believes, but of great
importance to the kingdom of Portugal; we shall be
ready to enter into a particular treaty in order to those
proposals made by your majesty, or whatever else may
conduce, in the judgment of both parties, to the farther
establishment and more strongly fastening of the
league: wherein we shall have those due consider-
ations of your majesty and your subjects, as also of our
own people, that all may be satisfied; and it shall be
in your own choice, whether these things shall be ne-
gotiated at Lisbon, or at London. However, the league
being now confirmed, and duly sealed with the seals of
both nations, to alter any part of it would be the same
thing as to annul the whole; which we are certainly
assured your majesty by no means desires to do. We
heartily wish all things lucky, all things prosperous to
your majesty. From our palace at Westminster, Aug.
—, 1656.
Your majesty's most affectionate,
OLIVER, Protector of the Common-
wealth of England, &c.
Olive R, Protector of the Commonwealth of ENGLAND,
&c., To the most Serene Prince, Joh N, King of Port-
TU G A L.
Most Serene King,
WE have received the unwelcome news of a wicked
and inhuman attempt to have murdered our agent
Philip Meadows, residing with your majesty, and by
us sent upon the blessed errand of peace; the heinous-
ness of which was such, that his preservation is only
to be attributed to the protection of Heaven. And we
are given to understand, by your letters dated the
twenty-sixth of May last, and delivered to us by Tho-
mas Maynard, that your majesty, justly incensed at
the horridness of the fact, has commanded inquiry to
be made after the criminals, to the end they may be
brought to condign punishment: but we do not hear
that any of the ruffians are yet apprehended, or that
your commands have wrought any effect in this par-
ticular. Wherefore we thought it our duty openly to
declare, how deeply we resent this barbarous outrage
in part attempted, and in part committed : and there-
fore we make it our request to your majesty, that due
punishment may be inflicted upon the authors, associ-
ates, and encouragers of this abominable fact. And to
the end that this may be the more speedily accomplished,
we farther demand, that persons of honesty and sin-
cerity, well wishers to the peace of both nations, may
be entrusted with the examination of this business, that
so a due scrutiny may be made into the bottom of this
malicious contrivance, to the end both authors and
assistants may be the more severely punished. Unless
this be done, neither your majesty's justice, nor the
honour of this republic, can be vindicated; neither can
there be any stable assurance of peace between both
nations. We wish your majesty all things fortunate
and prosperous. From our palace at Whitehall,
August –, 1656.
Your majesty's most affectionate,
OLIVER, Protector of the Common-
wealth of England, &c.
618
LETTERS OF STATE.
Olive R, Protector of the Commonwealth of ENGLAND,
&c., To the most Illustrious Lord, the CoN DE
D'Op EMIRA.
Most Illustrious Lord,
You R singular goodwill towards us and this republic
has laid no mean obligation upon us, nor slightly tied
us to acknowledgment. We readily perceived it by
your letters of the twenty-fifth of June last, as also by
those which we received from our agent Philip Mea-
dows, sent into Portugal to conclude the peace in
agitation, wherein he informed us of your extraordi-
mary zeal and diligence to promote the pacification, of
which we most joyfully received the last ratification;
and we persuade ourselves, that your lordship will
have no cause to repent either of your pains and dili-
gence in procuring this peace, or of your goodwill to
the English, or your ſidelity towards the king, your
sovereign; more especially considering the great hopes
we have that this peace will be of high advantage to
both nations, and not a little inconvenient to our ene-
mies. The only accident that fell out unfortunate and
mournful in this negotiation, was that unhallowed
villamy mefariously attempted upon the person of our
agent, Philip Meadows: the concealed authors of
which intended piece of inhumanity ought no less
diligently to be sought after, and made examples to
posterity, than the vilest of most openly detected assas-
sinates. Nor can we doubt in the least of your king's
severity and justice in the punishment of a crime so
horrid, nor of your care and sedulity to see, that there
be no remissness of prosecution, as being a person
bearing due veneration to the laws of God, and sanctity
among men, and no less zealous to maintain the peace
between both nations, which never can subsist if such
inhuman barbarities as these escape umpunished and
unrevenged. But your abhorrence and detestation of
the fact is so well known, that there is no need of in-
sisting any more at present upon this unpleasing sub-
ject. Therefore, having thus declared our goodwill
and affection to your lordship, of which we shall be
always ready to give apparent demonstrations, there
nothing remains, but to implore the blessings of Divine
favour and protection upon you, and all yours. From
our palace at Westminster, Aug. —, 1656.
Your lordship's most affectionate,
OLIVER, Protector of the Common-
wealth of England, &c.
Olive R, Protector of the Commonwealth of ENGLAND,
&c., To the most Sereme Prince, CHARLEs GUSTAVUs,
Ring of the Swedes, GoTHs, and VANDALs, &c.
Most Serene King, our dearest Friend
and Confederate;
BEING assured of your majesty's concurrence both in
thoughts and counsels for the defence of the protestant
faith against the enemies of it, if ever, now at this time
most dangerously vexatious; though we cannot but
rejoice at your prosperous successes, and the daily
tidings of your victories, yet on the other side we can-
not but be as deeply afflicted, to meet with one thing
that disturbs and interrupts our joy; we mean the bad
news intermixed with so many welcome tidings, that
the ancient friendship between your majesty and the
States of the United Provinces looks with a dubious
aspect, and that the mischief is exasperated to that
height, especially in the Baltic sea, as seems to bode
an unhappy rupture. We confess ourselves ignorant
of the causes; but we too easily foresee, that the events,
which God avert, will be fatal to the interests of the
protestants. And therefore, as well in respect to that
most strict alliance between us and your majesty, as
out of that affection and love to the reſormed religion,
by which we all of us ought chiefly to be swayed, we
thought it our duty, as we have most carnestly exhorted
the States of the United Provinces to peace and mode-
ration, so now to persuade your majesty to the same.
The protestants have enemies every where enow and
to spare, inflamed with inexorable revenge; they never
were known to have conspired more perniciously to our
destruction: witness the valleys of Piedmont, still reek-
ing with the blood and slaughter of the miserable ;
witness Austria, lately turmoiled with the emperor's
edicts and proscriptions; witness Switzerland. But
to what purpose is it, in many words to call back the
bitter lamentations and remembrance of so many cala-
mities ' Who so ignorant, as not to know, that the
counsels of the Spaniards, and the Roman pontiff, for
these two years have filled all these places with confla-
grations, slaughter, and vexation of the orthodox 2 If
to these mischiefs there should happen an access of
dissension among protestant brethren, more especially
between two potent states, upon whose courage, wealth,
and fortitude, so far as human strength may be relied
upon, the support and hopes of all the reformed churches
depend; of necessity the protestant religion must be in
great jeopardy, if not upon the brink of destruction.
On the other side, if the whole protestant name would
but observe perpetual peace among themselves with
that same brotherly union as becomes their profession,
there would be no occasion to fear, what all the arti-
fices or puissance of our enemies could do to hurt us
which our fraternal concord and harmony alone would
easily repel and frustrate. And therefore we most
earnestly request and beseech your majesty, to harbour
in your mind propitious thoughts of peace, and incli-
nations ready bent to repair the breaches of your pris-
tine friendship with the United Provinces, if in any
part it may have accidentally suffered the decays of
mistakes or misconstruction. If there be any thing
wherein our labour, our fidelity, and diligence may be
useful toward this composure, we offer and devote all
to your service. And may the God of heaven favour
and prosper your noble and pious resolutions, which
together with all felicity, and a perpetual course of
victory, we cordially wish to your majesty.
Your majesty's most affectionate,
OLIVER, Protector of the Com-
monwealth of England, &c.
From our palace
at Westminster,
Aug. —, 1656.
LETTERS
619
OF STATE.
Olive R, Protector of the Commonwealth of ENGLAND,
&c., To the States of Holla N D.
Most High and Mighty Lords, our dearest Friends;
It has been represented to us, by William Cooper,
a minister of London, and our countryman, that John
le Maire of Amsterdam, his father-in-law, about three
and thirty years ago devised a project, by which the
revenues of your republic might be very much ad-
vanced without any burden to the people, and made
an agreement with John Vandenbrook, to share be-
tween them the reward, which they should obtain for
their invention; which was the settling of a little seal
to be made use of in all the provinces of your territories,
and for which your High and Mightinesses promised
to pay the said Vandenbrook and his heirs the yearly
sum of three thousand gilders, or three hundred English
pounds. Now although the use and method of this
little seal has been found very easy and expeditious,
and that ever since great incomes have thereby accrued
to your High and Mightinesses, and some of your pro-
vınces, nevertheless nothing of the said reward, though
with much importunity demanded, has been paid to
this day; so that the said Vandenbrook and le Maire
being tired out with long delays, the right of the said
grant is devolved to the foresaid William Cooper our
countryman ; who, desirous to reap the fruit of his
father-in-law's industry, has petitioned us, that we
would recommend his just demands to your High and
Mightinesses, which we thought not reasonable to deny
him. Wherefore, in most friendly wise, we request
your High and Mightinesses favourably to hear the
petition of the said William Cooper, and to take such
care, that the reward and stipend, so well deserved,
and by contract agreed and granted, may be paid him
annually from this time forward, together with the
arrears of the years already passed. Which not doubt-
ing but your High and Mightinesses will vouchsafe to
perform, as what is no more than just and becoming
your magnificence, we shall be ready to shew the
same favour to the petitions of your countrymen upon
any occasions of the same nature, whenever presented
to us.
Your High and Mightinesses most affectionate,
OLIVER, Protector of the
Commonwealth, &c.
From our palace at
Whitehall, Sep-
tember —, 1666.
OLIVER, Protector of the Commonwealth of ENGLAND,
&c., To the most Sereme Prince, Lewis, King of
FRANCE.
Most Serene King, our dearest Friend
and Confederate;
AGAINST our will it is, that we so often trouble your
majesty with the wrongs done by your subjects after a
peace so lately renewed. But as we are fully per-
suaded, that your majesty disapproves their being com-
mitted, so neither can we be wanting to the complaints
of our people. That the ship Anthony of Dieppe was
legally taken before the league, manifestly appears by
the sentence of the judges of our admiralty court.
Part of the lading, that is to say, four thousand hides,
Robert Brown, a merchant of London, fairly bought of
those who were cntrusted with the sale, as they then-
selves testify. The same merchant, after the peace
was confirmed, carried to Dieppe about two hundred
of the same hides, and there having sold them to a
currier, thought to have received his money, but ſound
it stopped and attached in the hands of his factor; and
a suit being commenced against him, he could obtain
no favour in that court ; wherefore, we thought it
proper to request your majesty, that the whole matter
may be referred to your council, that so the said money
may be discharged from an unjust and vexatious ac-
tion. I'or if acts done and adjudged before the peace
shall aſter peace renewed be called into question and
controversy, we must look upon assurance of treaties to
be a thing of little moment. Nor will there be any end
of these complaints, if some of these violators of leagues
be not made severe and timely examples to others.
Which we hope your majesty will speedily take into
your care. To whom God Almighty in the mean time
vouchsafe his most holy protection.
Your majesty's most affectionate,
OLIVER, Protector of the Com-
monwealth of England, &c.
From our palace
at Whitehall,
Sept. —, 1656.
OLIVER, Protector of the Commonwealth of ENGLAN p,
&c., To the most Sereme Prince, Jo HN, King of
Port UGAL.
Most Serene King,
THE peace being happily concluded between this
republic and the kingdom of Portugal, and what refers
to trade being duly provided for and ratified, we deemed
it necessary to send to your majesty Thomas Maynard,
from whom you will receive these letters, to reside in
your dominions, under the character and employment
of a consul, and to take care of the estates and inter-
ests of our merchants. Now in regard it may fre-
quently so fall out, that he may be enforced to desire
the privilege of free admission to your majesty, as well
in matters of trade, as upon other occasions for the in-
terest of our republic, we make it our request to your
majesty, that you will vouchsafe him favourable access
and audience, which we shall acknowledge as a sin-
gular demonstration and testimony of your majesty's
goodwill towards us. In the mean time we beseech
Almighty God to bless your majesty with all prosperity.
From our court at Westminster, Octob. –, 1656.
Your majesty's most affectionate,
OLIVER, Protector of the Com-
monwealth of England, &c.
To the King of the Swed Es.
Most Serene and Potent King,
ALT Hough your majesty's wonted and spontaneous
favour and goodwill toward all deserving men be such,
620
LETTERS OF STATE.
that all recommendations in their behalf may seem
superfluous, yet we were unwilling to dismiss without
our letters to your majesty this noble person, William
Vavassour, knight, serving under your banners, and
now returning to your majesty : which we have done
so much the more willingly, being informed, that for-
merly following your majesty's fortunate conduct, he
had lost his blood in several combats, to assert the noble
cause for which you fight. Insomuch, that the suc-
ceeding kings of Swedeland, in remuneration of his
military skill, and bold achievements in war, rewarded
him with lands and annual pensions, as the guerdons
of his prowess. Nor do we question, but that he may
be of great use to your majesty in your present wars,
who has been so long conspicuous for his fidelity and
experience in military affairs. It is our desire there-
fore, that he may be recommended to your majesty
according to his merits; and we also further request,
that he may be paid the arrears due to him. This, as
it will be most acceptable to us, so we shall be ready
upon the like occasion, whenever offered, to gratify
your majesty, to whom we wish all happiness and
prosperity.
Your majesty's most affectionate,
OLIVER, Protector of the Com-
monwealth of England, &c.
Olive R, Protector of the Commonwealth of ENGLAND,
&c., To the most Serene Prince, Joh N, King of
Po RTUGAL.
Most Serene King, our dearest Friend
and Confederate ;
Thomas Evans, a master of a ship, and our coun-
tryman, has presented to us a petition, wherein he sets
forth, that in the years 1649 and 1650 he served the
Brasile company with his ship the Scipio, being a ves-
sel of four hundred tons, and of which he was master;
that the said ship was taken from him, with all the
lading and furniture, by your majesty's command ; by
which he has received great damage, besides the loss
of six years gain arising out of such a stock. The
commissioners by the league appointed on both sides
for the deciding controversies valued the whole at
seven thousand of our pounds, or twice as many mil-
reys of Portugal money, as they made their report to
us. Which loss falling so heavy upon the foresaid
Thomas, and being constrained to make a voyage to
Lisbon for the recovery of his estate, he humbly be-
sought us, that we would grant him our letters to your
majesty in favour of his demands-We, therefore,
(although we wrote the last year in the behalf of our
merchants in general to whom the Brasile company
was indebted, nevertheless that we may not be want-
ing to any that implore our aid,) request your majesty,
in regard to that friendship which is between us, that
consideration may be had of this man in particular,
and that your majesty would give such orders to
all your ministers and officers, that no obstacle may
hinder him from demanding and recovering without
delay what is owing to him from the Brasile company,
or any other persons. God Almighty bless your ma-
jesty with perpetual felicity, and grant that our friend-
ship may long endure.
From our palace at Westminster, Octob. —, 1656.
Your majesty's most affectionate,
OLIVER, Protector of the Common-
wealth of England, &c.
OLIVER, Protector of the Commonwealth of ENGLAND,
&c., To the Illustrious and Magnificent Senate of
HAM Bo Roug H.
Most Noble, Magnificent, and Right Worshipful;
JAMEs and Patrick Hays, subjects of this common-
wealth, have made grievous complaint before us, That
they, being lawful heirs of their brother Alexander who
died intestate, were so declared by a sentence of your
court pronounced in their behalf against their brother's
widow; and the estates of their deceased brother, toge-
ther with the profits, only the widow’s dowry except-
ed, being adjudged to them by virtue of that sentence;
nevertheless, to this very day they could never reap
any benefit of their pains and expenses in obtaining
the said judgment, notwithstanding their own declared
right, and letters formerly written by King Charles in
their behalf; for that the great power and wealth of
Albert van Eyzen, one of your chief magistrates, and
with whom the greatest part of the goods was depo-
sited, was an opposition too potent for them to sur-
mount, while he strove all that in him lay that the
goods might not be restored to the heirs. Thus disap-
pointed and tired out with delays, and at length re-
duced to utmost poverty, they are become suppliants to
us, that we would not forsake them, wronged and op-
pressed as they are in a confederated city. We there-
fore, believing it to be a chief part of our duty, not to
suffer any countryman of ours in vain to desire our pa-
tronage and succour in distress, make this request to
your lordships, which we are apt to think we may
easily obtain from your city, That the sentence pro-
nounced in behalf of the two brothers may be ratified
and duly executed, according to the intents and pur-
poses for which it was given; and that you will not
suffer any longer delay of justice, by an appeal to the
chamber of Spire, upon any pretence whatever: for we
have required the opinions of our lawyers, which we
have sent to your lordships fairly written and signed.
But if entreaty and fair means will nothing avail, of
necessity (and which is no more than according to the
customary law of nations, though we are unwilling to
come to that extremity) the severity of retaliation must
take its course; which we hope your prudence will
take care to prevent. From our palace at Westmin-
ster, Octob. 16, 1656.
Your lordship's most affectionate,
OLIVER, Protector of the Common-
wealth of England, &c.
LETTERS OF STATE. º
621
Oliver, Protector of the Commonwealth of ENGLAND,
&c., To the most Serene and Potent LEWIS, King of
FRANCE.
Most Serene and Potent King, our dearest
Friend and Confederate;
We are apt to believe, that your majesty received
our letters dated the 14th of May, of the last year,
wherein we wrote that John Dethic, mayor of London
that year, and William Waterford, merchant, had by
their petition set forth, That a certain vessel called the
Jonas, freighted with goods upon their account, and
bound for Dunkirk, then under the jurisdiction of the
French, was taken at the very mouth of the Thames,
by a searover, pretending a commission from the son
of the late King Charles: which being directly con-
trary to your edicts and the decrees of your council,
that no English ship, taken by the enemies of the par-
liament, should be admitted into any of your ports,
and there put to sale, they demanded restitution of the
said ship and goods from M. Lestrade, then governor
of the town, who returned-them an answer no way be-
coming a person of his quality, or who pretended obe-
dience to his sovereign ; That the government was
conferred upon him for his good service in the wars,
and therefore he would make his best advantage of it,
that is to say, by right or wrong ; for that he seemed
to drive at: as if he had received that government of
your majesty's free gift, to authorize him in the rob-
bing your confederates, and contemning your edicts
set forth in their favour. For what the King of France
forbids his subjects any way to have a hand in, that
the king's governor has not only suffered to be com-
mitted in your ports, but he himself becomes the pi-
rate, seizes the prey, and openly avouches the fact.
With this answer therefore the merchants departed,
altogether baffled and disappointed; and this we sig-
nified by our letters to your majesty the last year with
little better success; for as yet we have received no re-
ply to those letters. Of which we are apt to believe
the reason was, because the governor was with the
army in Flanders; but now he resides at Paris, or ra-
ther flutters unpunished about the city, and at court,
enriched with the spoils of our merchants. Once more
therefore we make it our request to your majesty,
which it is your majesty's interest in the first place to
take care of, that no person whatever may dare to jus-
tify the wrongs done to your majesty's confederates by
the contempt of your royal edicts. Nor can this cause
be properly referred to the commissioners appointed for
deciding common controversies on both sides; since in
this case not only the rights of confederates, but your
authority itself, and the veneration due to the royal
name, are chiefly in dispute. And it would be a won-
der, that merchants should be more troubled for their
losses, than your majesty provoked at encroachments
upon your honour. Which while you disdain to brook,
with the same labour you will demonstrate, that you
neither repent of your friendly edicts in favour of our
republic, nor connived at the injuries done by your
subjects, nor neglected to give due respect to our de-
mands. From our court at Westminster, Novemb. —,
1656.
Your majesty's most bounden by goodwill,
by friendship and solemn league,
OLIVER, Protector of the Commonwealth, &c.
Olive R, Protector of the Commonwealth of ENGLAND,
&c., To the most Serene and Potent Prince, FREDE-
Ric III., King of DENMARK, Norway, the VANDALs,
and Goths; Duke of Sleswic, Ho LSATIA, STOR-
MATIA, and DITH MARSH ; Count in OLDEN BURGH
and DELMENHORST ; Śic.
Most Serene and Potent King, our dearest
Friend and Confederate;
WE received your majesty's letters dated the 16th of
February, from Copenhagen, by the most worthy Si-
mon de Pitkum, your majesty's agent here residing.
Which when we had perused, the demonstrations of
your majesty's goodwill towards us, and the impor-
tance of the matter concerning which you write, affected
us to that degree, that we designed forthwith to send
to your majesty some person, who being furnished with
ample instructions from us, might more at large declare
to your majesty our counsels in that affair. And though
we have still the same resolutions, yet hitherto we have
not been at leisure to think of a person proper to be
entrusted with those commands, which the weight of
the matter requires; though in a short time we hope to
be more at liberty. In the mean while we thought it
not convenient any longer to delay the letting your
majesty understand, that the present condition of affairs
in Europe has employed the greatest part of our care
and thoughts; while for some years, to our great grief,
we have beheld the protestant princes, and supreme
magistrates of the reformed republics, (whom it rather
behoves, as being engaged by the common tie of reli-
gion and safety, to combine and study all the ways
imaginable conducing to mutual defence,) more and
more at weakening variance among themselves, and
jealous of each other's actions and designs; putting
their friends in fear, their enemies in hope, that the
posture of affairs bodes rather enmity and discord, than
a firm agreement of mind to defend and assist each
other. And this solicitude has fixed itself so much the
deeper in our thoughts, in regard there seems to appear
some sparks of jealousy between your majesty and the
king of Sweden; at least, that there is not that con-
junction of affections, which our love and goodwill in
general toward the orthodox religion so importunately
requires: your majesty, perhaps, suspecting that the
trade of your dominions will be prejudiced by the king
of Sweden; and on the other side, the king of Sweden
being jealous, that by your means the war which he
now wages is made more difficult, and that you oppose
him in his contracting those alliances which he seeks.
It is not unknown to your majesty, so eminent for
your profound wisdom, how great the danger is that
threatens the protestant religion, should such suspicions
long continue between two such potent monarchs;
622 LETTERS
OF STATE.
more especially, which God avert, if any symptom of
hostility should break forth. However it be, for our
parts, as we have earnestly exhorted the king of Swe-
den, and the states of the United Provinces to peace,
and moderate counsels, (and are beyond expression
glad to behold peace and concord renewed between
them, for that the heads of that league are transmitted
to us by their lordships the states-general,) so we
thought it our duty, and chiefly becoming our friend-
ship, not to conceal from your majesty what our senti-
ments are concerning these matters, (more especially
being affectionately invited so to do by your majesty's
most friendly letters, which we look upon, and embrace,
as a most singular testimony of your goodwill towards
us,) but to lay before your eyes how great a necessity
Divine Providence has imposed upon us all that profess
the protestant religion, to study peace among ourselves,
and that chiefly at this time, when our most embittered
enemies seem to have on every side conspired our de-
struction. There is no necessity of calling to remem-
brance the valleys of Piedmont still besmeared with
the blood and slaughter of the miserable inhabitants;
nor Austria, tormented at the same time with the em-
peror's decrees and proscriptions; nor the impetuous
onsets of the popish upon the protestant Switzers. Who
can be ignorant, that the artifices and machinations of
the Spaniards, for some years last past, have filled all
these places with the confused and blended havoc of
fire and sword P. To which unfortunate pile of miseries,
if once the reformed brethren should come to add their
own dissensions among themselves, and more espe-
cially two such potent monarchs, the chiefest part of
our strength, and among whom so large a provision of
the protestant security and puissance lies stored and
hoarded up against times of danger, most certainly the
interests of the protestants must go to ruin, and suffer
a total and irrecoverable eclipse. On the other side, if
peace continue firmly ſixed between two such powerful
neighbours, and the rest of the orthodox princes; if we
would but make it our main study, to abide in bro-
therly concord, there would be no cause, by God's
assistance, to fear neither the force nor the subtilty of
our enemies; all whose endeavours and laborious toils
our union alone would be able to dissipate and frus-
trate. Nor do we question, but that your majesty, as
you are freely willing, so your willingness will be con-
stant in contributing your utmost assistance, to procure
this blessed peace. To which purpose we shall be
most ready to communicate and join our counsels with
your majesty; professing a real and cordial friendship,
and not only determined inviolably to observe the
amity so auspiciously contracted between us, but, as
God shall enable us, to bind our present alliance with
a more strict and fraternal bond. In the mean time,
the same eternal God grant all things prosperous and
successful to your majesty.
Your majesty's most closely united by friendship,
alliance, and goodwill,
OLIVER, Protector of the
Commonwealth of Eng-
land, &c.
I'rom our court
at Whi.ehall,
Dec. —, 1656.
OLIVER, Protector of the Commonwealth of ENGLAND,
&c., To the most Serene and Illustrious Prince and
Lord, the Lord WILLIAM, Landgrave of Hesse,
Prince of HE REFELDT, Count in CUTzENELLEBoo EN,
Decia LIGENHAIN, WIDDA, and ScHAUNBURG, &c.
Most Serene Prince,
WE had returned an answer to your letters sent us
now near a twelvemonth since, for which we beg your
highness's pardon, had not many, and those the most
important affairs of the republic under our care, con-
strained us to this unwilling silence. I'or what letters
could be more grateful to us, than those which are
written from a most religious prince, descended from
religious ancestors, in order to settle the peace of re-
ligion, and the harmony of the church P which letters
attribute to us the same inclimations, the same zeal to
promote the peace of christendom, not only in your
own but in the opinion and judgment of almost all the
christian world, and which we are most highly glad to
find so universally ascribed to ourselves. And how
far our endeavours have been signal formerly through-
out these three kingdoms, and what we have effected
by our exhortations, by our sufferings, by our conduct,
but chiefly by divine assistance, the greatest part of our
people both well know, and are sensible of, in a deep
tranquillity of their consciences. The same peace we
have wished to the churches of Germany, whose dis-
sensions have been too sharp, and of too long endur-
ance; and by our agent Dury for many years in vain
endeavouring the same reconciliation, we have cordially
offered whatever might conduce on our part to the
same purpose. We still persevere in the same deter-
minations, and wish the same fraternal charity one
among another, to those churches. But how difficult
a task it is to settle peace among those sons of peace,
as they give out themselves to be, to our extreme grief
we more than abundantly understand. For that the
reformed, and those of the Augustan confession, should
cement together in a communion of one church, is
hardly ever to be expected : it is impossible by force
to prohibit either from defending their opinions, whether
in private disputes, or by public writings; for force
can never consist with ecclesiastical tranquillity. This
only were to be wished, that they who differ, would
suffer themselves to be entreated, that they would dis-
agree more civilly, and with more moderation ; and
notwithstanding their disputes, love one another; not
embittered against each other as enemies, but as bre-
thren dissenting only in trifles, though in the funda-
mentals of faith most cordially agreeing. With incul-
cating and persuading these things, we shall never be
wearied; beyond that, there is nothing allowed to
human force or counsels: God will accomplish his own
work in his own time. In the mean while, you, most
serene prince, have left behind you a noble testimony
of your affection to the churches, an eternal monument
becoming the virtue of your ancestors, and an exem-
plar worthy to be followed by all princes. It only then
remains for us to implore the merciful and great God
LETTERS OF STATE,
t;23
to crown your highness with all the prosperity in other
things which you can wish for; but not to change
your mind, than which you cannot have a better, since
a better cannot be, nor more piously devoted to his
glory.
Westminster, March —, 1656.
Olive R, Protector of the Commonwealth of ENGLAND,
&c., To the most Sereme Prince, the Duke of Court-
LAN D.
JMost Serene Prince,
We have been abundantly satisfied of your affection
to us, as well at other times, as when you kindly enter-
tained our embassador in his journey to the duke of
Muscovy, for some days together making a stop in
your territories: now we are no less confident, that
your highness will give us no less obliging testimonies
of your justice and equity, as well out of your own
goodnature, as at our request. For we are given to
understand, that one John Johnson, a Scotsman, and
master of a certain ship of yours, having faithfully dis-
charged his duty for seven years together in the service
of your highness, as to your highness is well known,
at length delivered the said ship, called the Whale, in
the mouth of the river, according as the custom is, to
one of your pilots, by him to be carried safe into har-
bour. But it so fell out, that the pilot, being ignorant
of his duty, though frequently warned and admonished
by the said Johnson, as he has proved by several wit-
nesses, the said ship ran aground and split to pieces,
not through any fault of the master, but through the
want of skill, or obstinacy of the pilot. Which being
so, we make it our earnest request to your highness,
that neither the said shipwreck may be imputed to the
forementioned Johnson the master, nor that he may
upon that account be deprived of the wages due to
him; by the only enjoyment of which, he having lately
suffered another misfortune at sea, he hopes however
to support and comfort himself in the extremity of his
Wallts.
From our court at Westminster,
March —, 1657.
OLIVER, Protector of the Commonwealth of ENGLAND,
&c., To the most Noble the Consuls and Senators of
the Republic of DANTzick.
Most Noble and Magnificent, our dearest Friends;
WE have always esteemed your city flourishing in in-
dustry, wealth, and studious care to promote all useful
arts and sciences, fit to be compared with any the most
noble cities of Europe. Now in regard that in this
war, that has been long hovering about your confines,
you have rather chosen to side with the Polanders,
than with the Swedes; we are most heartily desirous,
that for the sake of that religion which you embrace,
and of your ancient commerce with the English, you
would chiefly adhere to those counsels, which may
prove most agreeable to the glory of God, and the
dignity and splendour of your city. Wherefore we en-
treat ye, for the sake of that friendship which has been
long established between yourselves and the English
nation, and if our reputation have obtained any favour
or esteem among ye, to set at liberty Count Conis-
mark, conspicuous among the principal of the Swedish
captains, and a person singularly famed for his con-
duct in war, but by the treachery of his own people
surprised at sea; wherein you will do no more than
what the laws of war, not yet exasperated to the
height, allow; or if you think this is not so agreeable
to your interests, that you will however deem him wor-
thy a more easy and less severe confinement. Which
of these two favours soever you shall determine to
grant us, you will certainly perform an act becoming
the reputation of your city, and highly oblige besides
the most famous warriors and most eminent captains
of all parties: and lastly, lay upon ourselves an obli-
gation not the meanest; and perhaps it may be worth
your interest to gratify us.
From our Court at West-
minster, April–, 1656.
Your lordship's affection-
ate, OLIVER, &c.
Olive R, Protector of the Commonwealth of ENGLAND,
Scot LAND, and IRE LAND, &c., To the most Sereme
and Potent Prince and Lord, Emperor and Great
Duke of all Russia; sole Lord of VolodoMARIA,
Moscow and Novog RAGE ; King of CAzAN, ASTRA-
cAN, and SIBERIA ; Lord of Wobscow, Great Duke
of SMoleNsko, TUERscoy, and other Places; Lord
and Great Duke of Novog Rod, and the Lower Pro-
vinces of CHERNIGoy, REzANsco, and others ; Lord
of all the No RTHERN CLIMEs ; also Lord of Ev ER-
sco, CARTALINscA, and many other Places.
ALL men know how ancient the friendship, and how
vast the trade has been for a long train of years be-
tween the English nation and the people of your en:-
pire: but that singular virtue, most August Emperor.
which in your majesty far outshines the glory of your
ancestors, and the high opinion which all the neigh-
bouring princes have of it, more especially moves us to
pay a more than ordinary veneration and affection to
your majesty, and to desire the imparting of some
things to your consideration, which may conduce to
the good of christendom and your own interests.
Wherefore, we have sent the most accomplished
Richard Bradshaw, a person of whose fidelity, inte-
grity, prudence, and experience in affairs, we are well
assured, as having been employed by us in several
other negotiations of this nature, under the character
of our agent to your majesty; to the end he may more
at large make known to your majesty our singular
goodwill and high respect toward so puissant a mo-
march, and transact with your majesty concerning the
matters abovementioned. Him therefore we request
your majesty favourably to receive in our name, and
as often as shall be requisite to grant him free access
to your person, and no less gracious audience; and
lastly, to give the same credit to him in all things
which he shall propose or negotiate, as to ourselves, if
we were personally present. And so we beseech Al-
624 LETTERS
OF STATE,
mighty God to bless your majesty and the Russian em-
pire with all prosperity.
Your majesty’s most affectionate,
OLIVER, Protector of the Com-
monwealth of ENGLAND, &c.
From our Court
at Westminster,
April —, 1657.
Olive R, Protector of the Commonwealth of ENGLAND,
&c., To the most Serene and Potent Prince, CHARLEs
GUSTAv Us, King of the Swed Es, GoTHs, and WAN-
DALs, &c.
Most Serene and Potent King, our dearest
Friend and Confederate ;
THE most honourable William Jepson, colonel of
horse, and a senator in our parliament, who will have
the honour to deliver these letters to your majesty, will
make known to your majesty, with what disturbance
and grief of mind we received the news of the fatal
war broke out between your majesty and the King of
Denmark, and how much it is our cordial and real en-
deavour, not to neglect any labour or duty of ours, as
far as God enables us, that some speedy remedy may
be applied to this growing mischief, and those calami-
ties averted, which of necessity this war will bring
upon the common cause of religion; more especially
at this time, now that our adversaries unite their forces
and pernicious counsels against the profession and pro-
fessors of the orthodox faith. These and some other
considerations of great importance to the benefit and
public interest of both nations, have induced us to send
this gentleman to your majesty, under the character of
our extraordinary envoy. Whom we therefore desire
your majesty kindly to receive, and to give credit to
him in all things, which he shall have to impart to your
majesty in our name; as being a person in whose fide-
lity and prudence we very much conſide. We also
farther request, That your majesty will be pleased
fully to assure yourself of our goodwill and most un-
doubted zeal, as well toward your majesty, as for the
prosperity of your affairs. Of which we shall be rea-
dily prepared with all imaginable willingness of mind
to give unquestionable testimonies upon all occasions.
From our court at Westminster, August –, 1657.
Your majesty's friend, and most strictly
counited confederate,
OLIVER, Protector of the Common-
wealth of England, &c.
OLIVER, Protector of the Commonwealth of ENGLAND,
&c., To the most Serene Prince, the Lord FREDERIC
Wí LLIAM, Marquis of BRANDENBURGH, High Cham-
berlain of the Imperial Empire, and Prince Elector,
Duke of MAG DE BURG, PRUss IA, JULIERs, CLEVEs,
Monts, STETTIN, Pom ERANIA, of the CAssi UBIANs
and VANDALs, as also of SILESIA, C RosNA, and CAR-
Novi A, Burgrave of Non-RINBURG, Prince of HAL-
BERSTADT and MINDA, Count of MARK and RAve Ns-
BERG, Lord in RAVENSTEIN.
Most Serene Prince, our dearest Triend
and Confederate;
Such is the fame of your highness's virtue and pru-
dence both in peace and war, and so loudly spread
through all the world, that all the princes round about
are ambitious of your friendship; nor does any one de-
sire a more faithful or constant friend and associate:
therefore to the end your highness may know, that we
are also in the number of those that have the highest
and most honourable thoughts of your person and me-
rits, so well deserving of the commonwealth of chris-
tendom; we have sent the most worthy colonel Wil-
liam Jepson, a senator in our parliament, in our name
to kiss your highness's hands; and withal to wish the
continuance of all prosperity to your affairs, and in
words at large to express our goodwill and affection to
your serenity; and therefore make it our request, That
you will vouchsafe to give him credit in those matters
concerning which he has instructions to treat with your
highness, as if all things were attested and confirmed
by our personal presence. I’rom our court at White-
hall, August –, 1657.
Olive R, Protector of the Commonwealth of ENGLAND,
&c., To the most Noble the Consuls and Senators of
the city of HAM Boroug H.
Most Noble, most Magnificent, and Worthy,
THE most accomplished colonel William Jepson, a
senator in our parliament, being sent by us to the most
serene king of Sweden, is to travel through your city;
and therefore we have given him in command, not to
pass by your lordships unsaluted in our name; and
withal to make it our request, That you will be ready
to assist him upon whatsoever occasion he shall think
it requisite to crave the aid of your authority and coun-
sel. Which the more willingly you shall do, the more
you shall find you have acquired our favour,
From our court at Westminster, Aug. —, 1657.
To the most Noble, the Consuls and Senators of the
city of BREME.
How great our affection is toward your city, how
particular our goodwill, as well upon the account of
your religion, as for the celebrated splendour of your
city, as formerly you have found; so when occasion
offers, you shall be further sensible. At present, in re-
gard the most accomplished colonel William Jepson, a
senator in our parliament, is to travel through Bremen
with the character of our envoy extraordinary to the
king of Sweden, it is our pleasure that he salute your
lordships lovingly and friendly in our name; and that
if any accident fall out, wherein your assistance and
friendship may be serviceable to him, that he may
have free admission to desire it, upon the score of our
alliance. Wherein we are confident you will the less
be wanting, by how much the more reason you will
have to be assured of our singular love and kindness
for your lordships. From our court at Whitehall,
Aug. —, 1657.
LETTERS
625
OF STATE.
Olive R, Protector of the Commonwealth of ENGLAND,
&c. To the most Noble the Senators and Consuls of
the City of LUBECK.
Most Noble, Magnificent, and Right
Worshipful, our dearest Friends;
Colonel William Jepson, a person of great honour,
and a senator in our parliament, is to pass with the
character of a public minister from your city to the
king of Sweden, encamping not far from it. Where-
fore we desire your lordships, that if occasion require,
upon the account of the friendship and commerce be-
tween us, you will be assistant to him in his journey
through your city, and the territories under your juris-
diction. As to what remains, it is our farther pleasure,
that you be saluted in our name, and that you be as-
sured of our goodwill and ready inclinations to serve
your lordships. From our court at Westminster, Au-
gust –, 1657.
OLIVER, Protector of the Commonwealth of ENGLAND,
&c., To the City of HAMBoroug H.
Most Noble, Magnificent, and Right Worshipful;
PHILIP MEADows, who brings these letters to your
lordships, is to travel through your city with the cha-
racter of our agent to the king of Denmark. Therefore
we most earnestly recommend him to your lordships,
that if any occasion should happen for him to desire it,
you would be ready to aid him with your authority and
assistance: and we desire that this our recommenda-
tion may have the same weight at present with your
lordships as formerly it wout to have ; nor shall we be
wanting to your lordships upon the same opportunities.
From our court at Whitehall, August —, 1657.
OLIVER, Protector of the Commonwealth of ENGLAND,
&c., To the most Serene Prince, FREDERic, Heir of
Norway, Duke of SLEswic, HolsATIA, and DIT-
MARSH, Count in OLDEN BURGH and DELMENHoRST.
Most Serene Prince, our dearest Friend;
CoLoREL William Jepson, a person truly noble in
his country, and a senator in our parliament, is sent by
us, as our envoy extraordinary to the most serene king
of Sweden; and may it prove happy and prosperous
for the common peace and interests of christendom
We have given him instructions, anong other things,
that in his journey, after he has kissed your serenity’s
hands in our name, and declared our former goodwill
and constant zeal for your welfare, to request of your
serenity also, that being guarded with your authority,
he may travel with safety and convenience through
your territories. By which kind act of civility, your
highness will in a greater measure oblige us to returns
of answerable kindness. From our court at Westmin-
ster, Avg. —, 1657.
OLIVER, Protector of the Commonwealth of ENG LAN p,
&c., To the most Serene Prince, I'ERDINAND, Great
Duke of Tusca NY.
Most Serene Great Duke, our dearest Friend;
The company of our merchants trading to the castern
coasts of the Mediterranean sea, by their petition to us,
have set forth, that William Ellis, master of a ship
called the Little Lewis, being at Alexandria in Egypt,
was hired by the Basha of Memphis, to carry rice,
sugar, and coffee, either to Constantinople or Smyrna,
for the use of the Grand Seignior; but that contrary
to his faith and promise given, he bore away privately
from the Ottoman fleet, and brought his ship and lading
to Leghorn, where now he lives in possession of his
prey. Which villanous act being of dangerous exam-
ple, as exposing the Christian name to scandal, and
the fortunes of our merchants living under the Turks
to violence and ransac ; we therefore make it our
request to your highness, that you will give command,
that the said master be apprehended and imprisoned,
and that the vessel and goods may remain under
seizure, till we shall have given notice of our care for
the restitution of those goods to the sultan : assuring
your highness of our readiness to make suitable re-
turns of gratitude, whenever opportunity presents itself.
From our court at Westminster, September –, 1657.
Your highness's most affectionate,
OLIVER, Protector of the Common-
wealth of England, &c.
Olive R, Protector of the Commonwealth of ENGLAN p,
&c., To the most Serene Prince, the Lord FREDERIC-
WILLIAM, Marquis of BRANDENBURGH, &c.
Most Serene Prince, our most dear
Friend and Confederate ;
By our last letters to your highness, either already
or shortly to be delivered by our embassador William
Jepson, we have imparted the substance of our em-
bassy to your highness; which we could not do with-
out some mention of your great virtues, and demonstra-
tion of our own goodwill and affection. Nevertheless,
that we may not seem too superficially to have gilded
over your transcending deservings of the protestant
interests; we thought it proper to resume the same
subject, and pay our respect and veneration, not
more willingly, or with a greater fervency of mind,
but somewhat more at large to your highness: and
truly most deservedly, when daily information reaches
our ears, that your faith and conscience, by all man-
ner of artifices tempted and assailed, by all manner of
arts and devices solicited, yet cannot be shaken, or by
any violence be rent from your friendship and alliance
with a most magnanimous prince and your confederate:
and this, when the affairs of the Swedes are now
reduced to that condition, that in adhering to their
alliance, it is manifest, that your highness rather con-
sults the common cause of the reformed religion, than
your own advantage. And when your highness is
6 X6
LETTERS OF STATE,
almost surrounded and besieged by cucumies either pri-
vately lurking, or almost at your gates; yet such is
your constancy and resolution of mind, such your con-
duct and prowess becoming a great general, that the
burthen and massy bulk of the whole affair, and the
event of this important war, seems to rest and depend
upon your sole determination. Wherefore your high-
mess has no reason to question, but that you may rely
upon our friendship and unfeigned affection; who
should think ourselves worthy to be forsaken of all
men's good word, should we secm careless in the least
of your unbiemished fidelity, your constancy, and the
rest of your applauded virtues; or should we pay less
respect to your highness upon the common score of
religion. As to those matters propounded by the most
accomplished John Frederic Schlever, your counsellor
and agent here residing, iſ hitherto we could not re-
turn an answer, such as we desired to do, though with
all assiduity and diligence laboured by your agent;
we entreat your highness to impute it to the present
condition of our affairs, and to be assured, that there
is nothing which we account more sacred, or more
earnestly desire, than to be serviceable and assisting
to your interests, so bound up with the cause of reli-
gion. In the mean time we beseech the God of
mercy and power, that so signal a prowess and for-
titude may never languish or be oppressed, nor be
deprived the fruit and due applause of all your pious
undertakings. From our court at Westminster, Sep-
tember —, 1657.
Your highness's most affectionate,
OLIVER, Protector of the Common-
wealth of England, &c. .
To the most Ercellent Lord, M. De Bordeaua, Er-
traordinary Embassador from the most Sereme ſing
of FRANCE.
Most Excellent Lord,
LucAs Luci E, merchant of London, has made
his complaint to the most serene lord protector, con-
cerning a certain ship of his, called the Mary; which
in her voyage from Ireland to Bayonne, being driven
by tempest into the port of St. John de Luz, was there
detained by virtue of an arrest, at the suit of one Mar-
tim de Lazan : nor could she be discharged, till the
merchants had given security to stand a trial for the
property of the said ship and lading. For Martin
pretended to have a great sum of money owing to
him by the parliament for several goods of his, which
in the year 1642 were seized by authority of parlia-
ment, in a certain ship called the Sancta Clara. But
it is manifest, that Martin was not the owner of the
said goods, only that he prosecuted the claim of the
true owner Richald and Iriat, together with his part-
ner, whose name was Antonio Fernandez ; and that
upon the said Martin and Antonio's falling out among
themselves, the parliament decreed, that the said goods
should be stopped till the law should decide to which
of the two they were to be restored. Upon this, An-
thony was desirous, that the action should proceed; on
the other side, neither Martin, nor any body for him,
has hitherto appeared in court : all which is evidently
apparent by Lucas's petition hereto annexed. So that
it seems most unreasonable, that he who refused to
try his pretended title with Antonio, to other men's
goods, in our own courts, should compel our people,
and the true owners, to go to law for their own in a
foreign dominion. And that the same is apparent to
your excellency's equity and prudence, the most serene
lord protector makes no quest on ; by whom I am
therefore commanded in a particular manner, to recom-
mend this fair and homest cause of Lucas Lucie to your
excellency's consideration ; to the end that Martin,
who neglects to try his pretended right here, may not
under that pretence have an opportunity in the
French dominions to deprive others of their rightful
claims.
Westminster, Your excellency’s most affectionate.
October –, 1657.
Oliver, Protector of the Commonwealth of ENGLAND,
&c., To the most Sereme Duke and Senate of the Re-
public of VENICE.
Most Sereme Duke and Senate, our dearest Friends;
So numerous are the tidings brought us from your
fortunate successes against the Turks, that there is no-
thing wherein we have more frequent occasion to em-
ploy our pens, than in congratulating your serenities
for some signal victory. For this so recently obtained,
we give ye joy, as being not only most auspicious and
seasonable to your republic ; but, which is more glori-
ous, so greatly tending to the deliverance of all the
Christians groaning under Turkish servitude. More
particularly we recommend to your serenity and the
senate Thomas Galily, formerly master of the ship
called the Relief, who for these five years together has
been a slave; though this be not the first time we have
interceded in his behalf, yet now we do it the more
freely, as in a time of more than ordinary exultation.
He having received your commands, to serve your re-
public with his ship, and engaging alone with several
of the enemies' galleys, sunk some, and made a great
havoc among the rest : but at length his ship being
burnt, the brave commander, and so well deserving of
the Venetian republic, was taken, and ever since for
five years together has endured a miserable bondage
among the barbarians. To redeem himself he had not
where withal; for whatsoever he had, that he makes
out was owing to him by your highness and the senate,
upon the account either of his ship, his goods, or for
his wages. Now in regard he may not want relief,
and for that the enemy refuses to discharge him upon
any other condition, than by exchange of some other
person of equal value and reputation to himself; we
most earnestly entreat your highness, and the most se-
rene senate; and the afflicted old man, father of the
said Thomas, full of grief and tears, which not a little
moved us, by our intercession begs, that in regard so
many prosperous combats have made ye masters of so
many Turkish prisoners, you will exchange some one
LETTERS
627
OF STATE.
of their number, whom the enemy will accept for so
stout a seaman taken in your service, our countryman,
and the only son of a most sorrowful father. Lastly,
that whatsoever is due to him from the republic, upon
the score of wages, or upon any other account, you
will take care to see it paid to his father, or to whom
he shall appoint to receive it. The effect of our first
request, or rather of your equity, was this, that the
whole matter was examined, and upon an exact stating
of the accounts the debt was agreed; but perhaps by
reason of more important business intervening, no pay-
ment ensued upon it. Now the condition of the mise-
rable creature admits of no longer delay; and therefore
some endeavour must be used, if it be worth your while
to desire his welfare, that he may speedily be delivered
from the noisome stench of imprisonment. Which, as
you flourish no less in justice, moderation, and prudence,
than in military fame and victorious success, we are
confident you will see done, of your own inmate hu-
manity and freewill, without any hesitation, without
any incitement of ours. Now that you may long flou-
rish, after a most potent enemy subdued, our daily
prayers implore of the Almighty. From our court at
Westminster, October –, 1657.
Your highness's most affectionate,
OLIVER, Protector of the Com-
monwealth of England, &c.
Oliver, Protector of the Commonwealth of ENGLAND,
&c., To the High and Mighty Lords, the States of
the UNITED PROVINCEs.
Most High and Mighty Lords, our dearest
Friends and Confederates;
THE most illustrious William Nuport, your extraor-
dinary embassador for some years residing with us, is
now returning to your lordships; but with this condi-
tion, that after this respite obtained from your lordships,
he shall return again in a short time. For he has re-
mained among us, in the discharge of his trust, with
that fidelity, vigilance, prudence, and equity, that
neither you nor we could desire greater virtue and
probity in an embassador, and a person of unblemished
reputation; with those inclinations and endeavours to
preserve peace and friendship between us, without any
fraud or dissimulation, that while he officiates the duty
of your embassador, we do not find what occasion of
scruple or offence can arise in either nation. And we
should brook his departure with so much the more
anxiety of mind, considering the present juncture of
times and affairs, were we not assured, that no man
can better or more faithfully declare and represent to
your lordships, either the present condition of affairs,
or our goodwill and affection to your government.
Being therefore every way so excellent a person, and
so very deserving both of yours and our republic, we
request your lordships to receive him returning, such
as we unwillingly dismiss him, laden with the real
testimonials of our applauses. Almighty God grant
all prosperity to your affairs, and perpetuate our
friendship, to his glory, and the support of his orthodox
church.
Your high and mightinesses most devoted.
From our Court at Westminster,
Nov. —, 1657.
Olive R, Protector of the Commonwealth of ENGLAND,
&c., To the High and Mighty Lords, the States of
the UNITED PROVINCEs.
Most High and Mighty Lords, our dearest
Friends and Confederates;
GeoRGE Downing is a person of eminent quality,
and, after a long trial of his fidelity, probity, and dili-
gence, in several and various negotiations, well ap-
proved and valued by us. Him we have thought fit-
ting to send to your lordships, dignified with the
character of our agent, and amply furnished with our
instructions. We therefore desire your lordships, to
receive him kindly, and that so often as he shall signify
that he has any thing to impart in our name to your
lordships, you will admit him free audience, and give
the same credit to him, and entrust him with whatso-
ever you have to communicate to us, which you may
safely do, as if ourselves were personally present. And
so we beseech Almighty God to bless your lordships,
and your republic with all prosperity, to the glory of
God and the support of his Church.
Your high and mightinesses most affectionate,
From our court at Whitehall, OLIVER, &c.
December —, 1657.
To the States of Holla Nd.
THERE being an alliance between our republic and
yours, and those affairs to be transacted on both sides
that without an agent and interpreter, sent either by
yourselves, or from us, matters of such great moment
can hardly be adjusted to the advantage of both na-
tions, we thought it conducing to the common good of
both republics, to send George Downing, a person of
eminent quality, and long in our knowledge and esteem
for his undoubted fidelity, probity, and diligence, in
many and various negotiations, dignified with the
character of our agent, to reside with your lordships,
and chiefly to take care of those things, by which the
peace between us may be preserved entire and diutur-
nal. Concerning which we have not only written to
the States, but also thought it requisite to give notice
also of the same to your lordships, supreme in the go-
vernment of your province, and who make so consider-
able a part of the United Provinces; to the end you
may give that reception to our resident which becomes
him, and that whatever he transacts with your High
and Mighty States, you may assure yourselves, shall
be as firm and irrevocable, as if ourselves had been
present in the negotiation. Now the most merciful
God direct all your counsels and actions to his glory,
and the peace of his church.
Westm. Decemb. —, 1657.
2 S
628
LETTERS OF STATE.
OLIVER, Protector of the Commonwealth of ENGLAND,
&c., To the most Sereme Prince, FERDINAND, Great
Duke of TuscANY.
Most Serene Great Duke, our much
honoured Friend,
You R highness's letters, bearing date from Florence
the 10th of November, gave us no small occasion of
content and satisfaction; finding therein your goodwill
towards us, so much the more conspicuous, by how
much deeds than words, performances than promises,
are the more certain marks of a cordial affection. For
what we requested of your highness, that you would
command the master of the Little Lewis, William Ellis,
(who most ignominiously broke his faith with the
Turks,) and the ship and goods to be seized and de-
tained, till restitution should be made to the Turks, lest
the christian name should receive any blemish by
thieveries of the like nature; all these things, and that
too with an extraordinary zeal, as we most gladly un-
derstood before, your highness writes that you have
seen diligently performed. We therefore return our
thanks for the kindness received, and make it our
farther request, that when the merchants have given
security to satisfy the Turks, the master may be dis-
charged, and the ship, together with her lading, be
forth with dismissed, to the end we may not seem to
have had more care perhaps of the Turks’ interest, than
our own countrymen. In the mean time, we take so
kindly this surpassing favour done us by your highness,
and most acceptable to us, that we should not refuse to
be branded with ingratitude, if we should not ardently
desire a speedy opportunity, with the same promptitude
of mind, to gratify your highness, whereby we might be
enabled to demonstrate our readiness to return the same
good offices to so noble a benefactor upon all occasions.
Your highness's most affectionate,
From our court at Westminster, OLIVER, &c.
December —, 1657.
Olive R, Protector of the Commonwealth of ENGLAND,
&c., To the most Sereme and Potent Prince CHARLEs
GUSTAv Us, King of the Swed Es, Goths, and WAN-
DALs, &c.
Most Serene and Potent Prince, our most
Invincible Friend and Confederate;
By your majesty's letters, dated the 21st of February
from your camp in Seland, we found many reasons to
be affected with no small joy, as well for our own par-
ticular, as in regard of the whole christian republic in
general. In the first place, because the King of Den-
mark, being become an enemy, not induced thereto, as
we are apt to believe, by his own inclinations or interests,
but deluded by the artifices of our common adversaries,
is reduced to that condition by your sudden eruption
into the very heart of his kingdom, with very little
bloodshed on either side, that, what was really true, he
will at length be persuaded, that peace would have
been more beneficial to him, than the war which he
has entered into against your majesty. Then again,
when he shall consider with himself, that he cannot
obtain it by any more speedy means, than by making
use of our assistance, long since offered him to procure
a reconciliation, in regard your majesty so readily en-
treated by the letters only delivered by our agent, by
such an easy concession of peace, most clearly made it
apparent how highly you esteemed the intercession of
our friendship, he will certainly apply himself to us;
and then our interposition in so pious a work will
chiefly require, that we should be the sole reconciler
and almost author of that peace, so beneficial to the
interests of the protestants; which, as we hope, will
suddenly be accomplished. For when the enemies of
religion shall despair of breaking your united forces
by any other means than setting both your majesties at
variance, then their own fears will overtake them, lest
this unexpected conjunction, which we ardently desire,
of your arms and minds, should turn to the destruction
of them that were the kindlers of the war. In the
mean time, most magnanimous king, may your
prowess go on and prosper; and the same felicity
which the enemies of the church have admired in the
progress of your achievements, and the steady career
of your victories against a prince, now your con-
federate, the same by God's assistance, may you en-
force them to behold once more in their subversion.
From our palace at Westminster,
March 30, 1658.
Oliver, Protector of the Commonwealth of ENGLAND,
&c., To the most Serene Prince, FERDINAND, Great
Duke of TuscANY.
Most Serene Prince,
THE answer which we have given to your agent
here residing, we believe, will fully satisfy your high-
mess as to our admiral, who but lately put into your
ports. In the mean time, John Hosier, master of a
ship called the Owner, has set forth in a petition to us,
that in April, 1656, he hired out his ship by a charty-
party agreement, to one Joseph Armam, an Italian, who
manifestly broke all the covenants therein contained;
so that he was enforced, lest he should lose his ship
and lading, together with his whole principal stock,
openly to set forth the fraud of his freighter, after the
manner of merchants; and when he had caused it to
be registered by a public notary, to sue him at Leg-
horn. Joseph, on the other side, that he might make
good one fraud by another, combining with two other
litigious traders, upon a feigned pretence, by perjury,
seized upon six thousand pieces of eight, the money of
one Thomas Clutterbuck. But as for his part, the said
Hosier, after great expenses and loss of time, could ne-
wer obtain his right and due at Leghorn: nor durst he
there appear in court, being threatened as he was, and
waylaid by his adversaries. We therefore request your
highness, that you would vouchsafe your assistance
to this poor oppressed man, and according to your
wonted justice, restrain the insolence of his adversary.
For in vain are laws ordained for the government of
LETTERS
629
OF STATE,
cities by the authority of princes, if wrong and vio-
lence, when they cannot abrogate, shall be able by
threats and terrour to frustrate the refuge and sanc-
tuary of the laws. However, we make no doubt, but
that your highness will speedily take care to punish a
daring boldness of this nature; beseeching Almighty
God to bless your highness with peace and prosperity.
From our court at Westminster,
April 7, 1658.
To the most Sereme and Potent Prince, Lewis, King
of FRANCE.
Most Serene and Potent King, and most
August Friend and Confederate;
You R majesty may call to mind, that at the same
time, when the renewing the league between us was in
agitation, and no less auspiciously concluded, as the
many advantages from thence accruing to both nations,
and the many annoyances thence attending the com-
mon enemy, sufficiently testify; those dreadful butche-
ries befel the Piedmontois, and that we recommended,
with great fervency of mind and compassion, their
cause, on all sides forsaken and afflicted, to your com-
miseration and protection. Nor do we believe that
your majesty of yourself, was wanting in a duty so
pious, that we may not say, beseeming common huma-
mity, as far as your authority, and the veneration due
to your person, could prevail with the duke of Savoy.
Certain we are, that neither ourselves, nor many other
princes and cities, were wanting in our performances,
by the interposition of embassies, letters, and entrea-
ties. After a most bloody butchery of both sexes, and
all ages, at length peace was granted, or rather a cer-
tain clandestine hostility covered over with the name
of peace. The conditions of peace were agreed in
your town of Pignerol ; severe and hard, but such as
those miserable and indigent creatures, after they had
suffered all that could be endured that was oppressive
and barbarous, would have been glad of, had they
been but observed, as hard and unjust as they were.
But by false constructions, and various evasions, the
assurances of all these articles are eluded and vio-
lated; many are thrust out from their ancient abodes;
many are forbid the exercise of their religion, new
tributes are exacted, a new citadel is imposed upon
them; from whence the soldiers frequently making
excersions, either plunder or murder all they meet.
Add to all this, that new levies are privately preparing
against them, and all that embrace the protestant reli-
gion are commanded to depart by a prefixed day; so
that all things seem to threaten the utter extermination
of those deplorable wretches, whom the former massacre
spared. Which I most earnestly beseech and conjure
ye, most Christian king, by that RIGHT HAND which
signed the league and friendship between us, by that
same goodly ornament of your title of MOST CHRIS-
TIAN, by no means to suffer, nor to permit such
liberty of rage and fury uncontrolled, we will not say,
in any prince, (for certainly such barbarous severity
could never enter the breast of any prince, much less
so tender in years, nor into the female thoughts of his
mother,) but in those sanctificq cut-throats, who, pro-
ſessing themselves to be the servants and disciples of
our Saviour Christ, who came into the world to save
sinners, abuse his meek and peaceful name and pre-
cepts to the most cruel slaughter of the innocent.
Rescue, you that are able in your towering station,
worthy to be able, rescue so many suppliants prostrate
at your feet, from the hands of ruffians, who, lately
drunk with blood, again thirst after it, and think it
their safest way to throw the odium of their cruelty
upon princes. But as for you, great prince, suffer not,
while you reign, your titles, nor the confines of your
kingdom, to be contaminated with this same Heaven-
offending scandal, nor the peaceful gospel of Christ to
be defiled with such abominable cruelty. Remember,
that they submitted themselves to your grandfather
Henry, most friendly to the protestants, when the vic-
torious Lesdiguieres pursued the retreating Savoyard
over the Alps. There is also an instrument of that
submission registered among the public acts of your
kingdom, wherein it is excepted and provided among
other things, that from that time forward the Piedmon-
tois should not be delivered over into the power of any
ruler, but upon the same condition upon which your in-
vincible grandfather received them into his protection.
This protection of your grandfather these suppliants
now implore from you as grandchild. It is your ma-
jesty’s part, to whom those people now belong, to give
them that protection which they have chosen, by some
exchange of habitation, if they desire it, and it may be
done : or if that be a labour too difficult, at least to
succour them with your patronage, your commisera-
tion, and your admittance into sanctuary. And there
are some reasons of state, to encourage your majesty not
to refuse the Piedmontois a safe asylum in your king-
dom: but I am unwilling that you, so great a king,
should be induced to the defence and succour of the
miserable by any other arguments than those of your
ancestor's pledged faith, your own piety, royal benig-
nity, and magnanimity. Thus the immaculate and
intire glory of a most egregious act will be your own,
and you will find the Father of mercy, and his Son,
King Christ, whose name and doctrine you have win-
dicated from nefarious inhumanity, so much the more
favourable and propitious to your majesty, all your
days. The God of mercy and power infuse into your
majesty's heart a resolution, to defend and save so
many innocent Christians, and maintain your own
honour.
Westminster, May –, 1658.
To the Evangelic Cities of the SwitzERs.
Illustrious and most Noble Lords, our
dearest Friends;
How heavy and intolerable the sufferings of the
Piedmontois, your most afflicted neighbours, have
been, and how unmercifully they have been dealt with
by their own prince, for the sake of their religion, by
reason of the fellness of the cruelties, we almost trem-
630
LETTERS OF STATE,
ble to remember, and thought it superfluous to put you
in mind of those things, which are much better known
to your lordships. We have also seen copies of the
letters which your embassadors, promoters and wit-
nesses of the peace concluded at Pignerol, wrote to
the duke of Savoy, and the president of his council at
Turin ; wherein they set forth, and make it out, that
all the conditions of the said peace are broken, and
were rather a snare than a security to those miserable
people. Which violation continued from the conclu-
sion of the peace till this very moment, and still grow-
ing more heavy every day than other; unless they
patiently endure, unless they lay themselves down to
be trampled under foot, plashed like mortar, or abjure
their religion, the same calamities, the same slaughters
hang over their heads, which three years since made
such a dreadful havoc of them, their wives, and chil-
dren; and which, if it must be undergone once more,
will certainly prove the utter extirpation of their whole
race. What shall such miserable creatures do 2 in
whose behalf no intercession will avail, to whom no
breathing time is allowed, nor any certain place of
refuge. They have to do with wild beasts, or furies
rather, upon whom the remembrance of their former
murders has wrought no compassion upon their coun-
trymen, no sense of humanity, nor satiated their raven-
ous thirst after blood. Most certainly these things are
not to be endured, if we desire the safety of our brethren
the Piedmontois, most ancient professors of the ortho-
dox faith, or the welfare of our religion itself. As for
ourselves so far remote, we have not been wanting to
assist them as far as in us lay, nor shall we cease our
future aid. But you, who not only lie so near adjoin-
ing, as to behold the butcheries, and to hear the out-
cries and shrieks of the distressed, but are also mext
exposed to the fury of the same enemies; consider for
the sake of the immortal God, and that in time, what
it behoves ye now to do : consult your prudence, your
piety, and your fortitude ; what succour, what relief
and safeguard you are able, and are bound to afford
your neighbours and brethren, who must else undoubt-
edly and speedily perish. Certainly the same religion
is the cause, why the same enemies also seek your per-
dition; why, at the same time the last year, they me-
ditated your ruin, by intestine broils among your-
selves. It seems to be only in your power next under
God, to prevent the extirpation of this most ancient
scion of the purer religion, in those remainders of the
primitive believers; whose preservation, now reduced
to the very brink of utter ruin, if you neglect, beware
that the next turn be not your own. These admoni-
tions, while we give ye freely, and out of brotherly
love, we are not quite as yet cast down: for what lies
only in our power so far distant, as we have hitherto,
so shall we still employ our utmost endeavours, not
only to procure the safety of our brethren upon the
precipice of danger, but also to relieve their wants.
May the Almighty God vouchsafe to both of us, that
peace and tranquillity at home, that settlement of times
and affairs, that we may be able to employ all our
wealth and force, all our studies and counsels in the
defence of his church against the rage and fury of her
enemies.
From our court at Whitehall, May –, 1658.
To his Eminency, Cardinal MAzARINE.
Most Iºminent Lord,
THE late most grievous crueltics, and most bloody
slaughters perpetrated upon the inhabitants of the val-
leys of Piedmont, within the duke of Savoy's do-
minions, occasioned the writing of the enclosed letters
to his majesty, and these other to your eminency. And
as we make no doubt but that such tyranny, and inhu-
manities, so rigorously inflicted upon harmless and in-
digent people, are highly displeasing and offensive to
the most serene king ; so we readily persuade ourselves,
that what we request from his majesty in behalf of those
unfortunate creatures, your eminency will employ your
endeavour and your favour to obtain, as an accumula-
tion to our intercessions. Seeing there is nothing
which has acquired more goodwill and affection to the
French nation, among all the neighbouring professors
of the reformed religion, than that liberty and those
privileges, which by public acts and edicts are granted
in that kingdom to the protestants, And this among
others was one main reason, why this republic so ar-
dently desired the friendship and alliance of the
French people. For the settling of which we are now
treating with the king's embassador, and have made
those progresses, that the treaty is almost brought to a
conclusion. Besides that, your eminency’s singular
benignity and moderation, which in the management of
the most important affairs of the kingdom you have
always testified to the protestants of France, encou-
rages us to expect what we promise to ourselves from
your prudence and generosity; whereby you will not
only lay the foundations of a stricter alliance between
this republic and the kingdom of France, but oblige us
in particular to returns of all good offices of civility
and kindness: and of this we desire your eminency to
rest assured.
Your eminency's most affectionate.
OLIVER, Protector of the Commonwealth of ENGLAND,
&c., To the most Serene and Potent Prince, Lewis,
Ring of FRANCE.
Most Serene and Mighty King, our most ©
August Friend and Confederate;
It being the intention of Thomas viscount Falcon-
bridge, our son-in-law, to travel into France, and no
less his desire, out of his profound respect and venera-
tion to your majesty, to be admitted to kiss your royal
hands; though by reason of his pleasing conversation
we are unwilling to part with him, nevertheless not
doubting but he will in a short time return from the
court of so great a prince, celebrated for the resort of
so many prudent and courageous persons, more nobly
prepared for great performances, and fully accomplish-
ed in whatsoever may be thought most laudable and
virtuous, we did not think it fit to put a stop to his ge-
LETTERS OF STATE.
631
nerous resolutions. And though he be a person, who,
unless we deceive ourselves, carries his own recom-
mendations about him, wheresoever he goes; yet if he
shall find himself somewhat the more favoured by your
majesty for our sake, we shall think ourselves honour-
ed and obliged by the same kindness. God Almighty
long preserve your majesty in safety, and continue a
lasting peace between us, to the common good of the
christian world.
From our court at Whitehall,
May — , 1658.
Oliver, Protector of the Commonwealth of ENGLAND,
&c., To the most Eminent Lord, Cardinal MAZARINE.
Most Eminent Lord,
HAVING recommended to the most serene king Tho-
mas viscount Falconbridge our son-in-law, desirous to
see France; we could not but acquaint your eminency
with it, and recommend him in like manner to your-
self, not ignorant of what moment and importance it
will be to our recommendation first given him. Por
certainly, what benefit or advantage he shall reap by
residing in your country, which he hopes will not be
small, he cannot but be beholden for the greatest part of
it to your favour and goodwill; whose single prudence
and vigilancy supports and manages the grand affairs
of that kingdom. Whatever therefore grateful obliga-
tion your eminency shall lay upon him, you may be
assured you lay upon ourselves, and that we shall num-
ber it among your many kindnesses and civilities
already shown us.
Westminster, May — , 1658.
OLIVER, Protector, &c., To the most Eminent Lord,
Cardinal MAzARINE.
Most Eminent Lord,
HAVING sent the most illustrious Thomas Bellasis,
viscount Falconbridge, our son-in-law, to congratulate
the king upon his arrival in the camp at Dunkirk; I
gave him order to attend and wish your eminency long
life and health in our name, and to return thanks to
your eminency, by whose fidelity, prudence, and vigi-
lancy, it chiefly comes to pass, that the affairs of France
are carried on with such success in several parts, but
more especially in near adjoining Flanders, against
our common enemy the Spaniard ; from whom we
hope that open and armed courage now will soon ex-
act a rigorous account of all his frauds and treacheries.
which that it may be speedily done, we shall not be
wanting, either with our forces, as far as in us lies, or
with our prayers to Heaven.
From our court at Whitehall,
Oliven, Protector of the Commonwealth of ENGLAND,
&c., To the most Serene and Potent I’rince, LEW is,
Ičing of FRANCE.
Most Serene and Potent Prince, our most
August Friend and Confederate;
So soon as the news was brought us, that your ma-
jesty was arrived in your camp, and was sate down
with so considerable an army before Dunkirk, that in-
famous nest of pirates, and place of refuge for searob-
bers, we were greatly overjoyed, in certain assurance
that in a short time now, with God's assistance, the
seas will be more open and less infested by those plum-
dering rovers; and that your majesty, by your mili-
tary prowess, will now take speedy vengeance of the
Spanish frauds; by whom one captain was by gold cor-
rupted to the betraying of Hesden, another treacher-
ously surprised at Ostend. We therefore send the most
noble Thomas viscount Falconbridge, our son-in-law,
to congratulate your majesty's arrival in your camp so
near us, and that your majesty may understand from
his own lips, with what affection we labour the pros-
perity of your achievements, not only with our united
forces, but our cordial prayers, that God would long
preserve your majesty, and perpetuate our established
friendship, to the common good of the christian word
From our court at Westminster,
May –, 1658.
To the most Sereme Prince, FERDIN AND, Grand Duke
of TUSCANY.
Most Serene Great Duke,
IN regard your highness in your letters has ever
signified your extraordinary affection toward us, we
are not a little grieved, that either it should be so ob-
scurely imparted to your governors and ministers, or
by them so ill interpreted, that we can reap no benefit
or sign of it in your port of Leghorn, where your friend-
ship towards us ought to be most clearly and truly
understood : rather, that we should find the minds of
your subjects daily more averse and hostile in their de-
meanour toward us. For how unkindly our fleet was
lately treated at Leghorn, how little accommodated
with necessary supplies, in what a hostile manner twice
constrained to depart the harbour, we are sufficiently
given to understand, as well from undoubted witnesses
upon the place, as from our admiral himself, to whose
relation we cannot but give credit, when we have
thought him worthy to command our fleet. Upon his
first arrival in January, after he had caused our letters
to be delivered to your highness, and all offices of ci-
vility had passed between our people and yours; when
he desired the accommodation of Porto Ferraro ; an-
swer was made, it could not be granted, lest the king
of Spain, that is to say our enemy, should be offended.
And yet what is there which a prince in friendship
more frequently allows to his confederate, than free en-
trance into his ports and harbours? Or what is there
that we can expect from a friendship of this nature,
632 LETTERS
OF STATE.
more ready to do us unkindness than befriend us, or
aid us with the smallest assistance, for fear of provok-
ing the displeasure of our enemies 2 At first indeed,
prattic was allowed, though only to two or three of our
seamen out of every ship, who had the favour to go
ashore. But soon after, it being noised in the town, that
our ships had taken a Dutch vessel laden with corn
for Spain, that little prattic we had was prohibited;
Longland the English consul was not permitted to go
aboard the fleet; the liberty of taking in fresh water,
which is ever free to all that are not open enemies, was
not suffered, but under armed guards, at a severe rate;
and our merchants, which reside in the town to the vast
emolument of your people, were forbid to visit their
countrymen, or assist them in the least. Upon his last
arrival, toward the latter end of March, nobody was
suffered to come ashore. The fifth day after, when our
admiral had taken a small Neapolitan vessel, which
fell into our hands by chance, above two hundred great
shot were made at our feet from the town, though with-
out any damage to us. Which was an argument, that
what provoked your governors without a cause, as if
the rights of your harbour had been violated, was dome
out at sea, at a great distance from your town, or the
jurisdiction of your castle. Presently our long boats,
sent to take in fresh water, were assailed in the port,
and one taken and detained ; which being redemand-
ed, answer was made, that neither the skiff nor the
seamen should be restored, unless the Neapolitan vessel
were dismissed ; though certain it is, that she was
taken in the open sea, where it was lawful to seize her.
So that ours, after many inconveniences suffered, were
forced at length to set sail, and leave behind them the
provision, for which they had paid ready money. These
things, if they were not done by your highness's con-
sent and command, as we hope they were not, we de-
sire you would make it appear by the punishment of
the governor, who so easily presumed to violate his
master's alliances; but if they were done with your
highness's approbation and order, we would have your
highness understand, that as we always had a singular
value for your friendship, so we have learnt to distin-
guish between injuries and acts of kindness.
Your good friend, so far as we may,
OLIVER, Protector of the Com-
monwealth of England, &c.
From our court
at Whitehall,
May –, 1658.
Olive R, Protector of the Commonwealth of ENGLAND,
&c., To the most Serene and Potent Prince, Lewis,
King of FRANCE.
Most Serene and Potent Prince, our most
August Confederate and Friend;
By so speedily repaying our profound respect to your
majesty, with an accumulation of honour, by such an
illustrious embassy to our court; you have not only
made known to us, but to all the people of England,
your singular benignity and generosity of mind, but
also how much you favour our reputation and dignity:
for which we return our most cordial thanks to your
majesty, as justly you have merited from us. As for
the victory which God has given, most fortunate, to
our united forces against our enemies, we rejoice with
your majesty for it; and that our people in that battle
were not wanting to your assistance, nor the military
glory of their ancestors, nor their own pristine fortitude,
is most grateful to us. As for Dunkirk, which, as your
majesty wrote, you were in hopes was near surrender:
it is a great addition to our joy, to hear from your
majesty such speedy tidings, that it is absolutely now
in your victorious hands; and we hope moreover, that
the loss of one city will not suffice to repay the twofold
treachery of the Spaniard, but that your majesty will
in a short time write us the welcome news of the sur-
render also of the other town. As to your promise,
that you will take care of our interest, we mistrust it
not in the least, upon the word of a most excellent
king, and our most assured friend, confirmed withal
by your embassador, the most accomplished duke of
Crequi. Lastly, we beseech Almighty God to prosper
your majesty and the affairs of France, both in peace
and war.
|Westminster, June —, 1658.
OLIVER, Protector of the Commonwealth of ENGLAND,
&c., To the most Eminent Lord, Cardinal MAZARINE.
Most Eminent Lord,
WHILE we are returning thanks to the most serene
king, who to honour and congratulate us, as also to
intermix his joy with ours for the late glorious victory,
has sent a splendid embassy to our court; we should
be ungrateful, should we not also by our letters pay
our due acknowledgments to your eminency; who, to
testify your goodwill towards us, and how much you
make it your study to do us all the honour which lies
within your power, have sent your nephew to us, a
most excellent and most accomplished young gentle-
man; and if you had any nearer relation, or any person
whom you valued more, would have sent him more
especially to us, as you declare in your letters; adding
withal the reason, which, coming from so great a per-
sonage, we deem no small advantage to our praise and
ornament; that is to say, to the end that they, who are
most nearly related to your eminency in blood, might
learn to imitate your eminency, in shewing respect and
honour to our person. And we would have it not to
be their meanest strife to follow your example of civil-
ity, candour, and friendship to us; since there are not
more conspicuous examples of extraordinary prudence
and virtue to be imitated than in your eminency; from
whence they may learn with equal renown to govern
kingdoms, and manage the most important affairs of
the world. Which that your eminency may long and
happily administer, to the prosperity of the whole realm
of France, to the common good of the whole christian
republic, and your own glory, we shall never be want-
ing in our prayers to implore.
Your excellency's most affectionate.
IFrom our court at Whitehall, June –, 1658.
LETTERS OF STATE.
633
OLIVER, Protector of the Commonwealth of ENGLAND,
&c., To the most Serene and Potent Prince, CHARLEs
Gustavus, King of the Swedes, Goths, and VAN-
DALS, &c.
Most Serene and Potent Prince, our dearest
Confederate and Friend ;
As often as we behold the busy counsels, and various
artifices of the common enemies of religion, so often do
we revolve in our minds how necessary it would be,
and how much for the safety of the christian world,
that the protestant princes, and most especially your
majesty, should be united with our republic in a
most strict and solemn confederacy. Which how ar-
dently and zealously it has been sought by ourselves,
how acceptable it would have been to us, if ours, and
the affairs of Swedeland, had been in that posture and
condition, if the said league could have been sacredly
concluded to the good liking of both, and that the one
could have been a seasonable succour to the other, we
declared to your embassadors, when first they entered
into treaty with us upon this subject. Nor were they
wanting in their duty; but the same prudence which
they were wont to shew in other things, the same wis-
dom and sedulity they made known in this affair.
But such was the perfidiousness of our wicked and
restless countrymen at home, who, being often received
into our protection, ceased not however to machinate
new disturbances, and to resume their formerly often
frustrated and dissipated conspiracies with our enemies
the Spaniards, that being altogether taken up with the
preservation of ourselves from surrounding dangers, we
could not bend our whole care, and our entire forces,
as we wished we could have done, to defend the com-
mon cause of religion. Nevertheless what lay in our
power we have already zealously performed: and what-
ever for the future may conduce to your majesty’s in-
terests, we shall not only shew ourselves willing, but
industrious to carry on, in union with your majesty,
upon all occasions. In the mean time we most gladly
congratulate your majesty's victories, most prudently
and courageously achieved, and in our daily prayers
implore Almighty God long to continue to your ma-
jesty a steady course of conquest and felicity, to the
glory of his name.
From our court at Whitehall, June –, 1658.
OLIVER, Protector of the Commonwealth of ENGLAND,
&c., To the most Serene Prince, the King of Por-
TUGAL.
Most Serene King, our Friend and Confederate;
Joh N BUFFIELD, of London, merchant, hath set forth
in a petition to us, that in the year 1649, he delivered
certain goods to Anthony, John, and Manuel Ferdi-
nando Castaneo, merchants in Tamira, to the end that
after they had sold them, they might give him a just
account, according to the custom of merchants: after
which, in his voyage for England, he fell into the
hands of pirates; and being plundered by them, re-
ceived no small damage. Upon this news, Anthony
and Manuel, believing he had been killed, presently
looked upon the goods as their own, and still detain
them in their hands, refusing to come to any account;
covering this fraud of theirs with a sequestration of
English goods, that soon after ensued. So that he
was forced the last year, in the middle of winter, to
return to Portugal and demand his goods, but all in
vain. For that the said John and Anthony could by
no fair means be persuaded, either to deliver the said
goods or come to any account; and which is more to
be admired, justified their private detention of the
goods by the public attainder. Finding therefore that
being a stranger, he should get nothing by contending
with the inhabitants of Tamira in their own country, he
betook himself for justice to your majesty : humbly
demanded the judgment of the conservator, appointed
to determine the causes of the English ; but was sent
back to the cognizance of that court, from which he
had appealed. Which though in itself not unjust, yet
seeing it is evident, that the merchants of Tamira make
an ill use of your public edict to justify their own pri-
vate cozenage, we make it our earnest request to your
majesty, that according to your wonted clemency you
would rather refer to the conservator, being the proper
judge in these cases, the cause of this poor man afflicted
by many casualties, and reduced to utmost poverty; to
the end he may recover the remainder of his fortunes
from the faithless partnership of those people. Which
when you rightly understand the business, we make
no question, but will be no less pleasing to your ma-
jesty to see done, than to ourselves. From our court
at Westminster, Aug. 1658.
To the most Sereme Prince, Leopold, Archduke of
AUSTRIA, Governor of the Low Countries under
PHILIP ſing of SPAIN.
Most Serene Lord,
CHARLEs HARBord, knight, has set forth in his
petition to us, that having sent certain goods and
household-stuff out of Holland to Bruges under your
jurisdiction, he is in great danger of having them ar-
rested out of his hands by force and violence. For that
those goods were sent him out of England in the year
1643, by the earl of Suffolk, for whom he stood bound
in a great sum of money, to the end he might have
wherewithal to satisfy himself, should he be compelled
to pay the debt. Which goods are now in the pos-
session of Richard Greenville, knight, who broke open
the doors of the place where they were in custody, and
made a violent seizure of the same, under pretence of
we know not what due to him from Theophilus earl of
Suffolk, by virtue of a certain decree of our court of
chancery, to which those goods, as being the earl's,
were justly liable; whereas by our laws, neither the
earl now living, whose goods they are, is bound by
that decree, neither ought the goods to be seized or
detained ; which the sentence of that court, now sent
to your serenity, together with these letters, positively
declares and proves. Which letters the said Charles
634
LETTERS OF STATE.
Harbord has desired of us, to the end we would make
it our request to your highness, that the said goods
may be forthwith discharged from the violent seizure,
and no less unjust action of the said Richard Green-
ville, in regard it is apparently against the custom and
law ºf nations, that any person should be allowed the
liberties to sue in a foreign jurisdiction upon a plaint,
wherein he can have no relief in the country where
the cause of action first arose. Therefore the reason of
justice itself, and your far celebrated equanimity en-
couraged us to recommend this cause to your highness;
assuring your highness, that whenever any dispute
shall happen in our courts concerning the rights and
properties of your people, you shall ever find us ready
and quick in our returns of favour. Westminster, —
Your highness's most affectionate,
OLIVER, Protector of the Com-
monwealth of England.
L E. T. T. E. R. S
WRITTRN
IN THE NAME OF RICHARD, PROTECTOR.
Richard, Protector of the Commonwealth of ENGLAND,
&c., To the most Serene and Potent Prince, LEwis,
King of FRANCE.
Most Serene and Potent King, our Friend
and Confederate;
So soon as our most serene father, Oliver, Protector
of the Commonwealth of England, by the will of God
so ordaining, departed this life upon the third of Sep-
tember, we being lawfully declared his successor in
the supreme magistracy, though in the extremity of
tears and sadness, could do no less than with the first
opportunity by these our letters make known a matter
of this concernment to your majesty ; by whom, as
you have been a most cordial friend to our father and
this republic, we are confident the mournful and unex-
pected tidings will be as sorrowfully received. Our
business now is, to request your majesty, that you
would have such an opinion of us, as of one who has
determined nothing more religiously and constantly,
than to observe the friendship and confederacy con-
tracted between your majesty and our renowned fa-
ther: and with the same zeal and goodwill to confirm
and establish the leagues by him concluded, and to
carry on the same counsels and interests with your
majesty. To which intent it is our pleasure that our
ambassador, residing at your court, be empowered by
the same commission as formerly; and that you will
give the same credit to what he transacts in our name,
as if it had been done by ourselves. In the mean time
we wish your majesty all prosperity.
From our court at Whitehall,
Sept. 5, 1658.
To the most Eminent Lord Cardinal MAZARINE.
THough nothing could fall out more bitter and
grievous to us, than to write the mournful news of our
most serene and most renowned father's death ; never-
theless, in regard we cannot be ignorant of the high
esteem which he had for your eminency, and the great
value which you had for him ; nor have any reason to
doubt, but that your eminency, upon whose care the
prosperity of France depends, will no less bewail the
loss of your constant friend, and most united confeder-
ate; we thought it of great moment, by these our
letters, to make known this accident so deeply to be
lamented, as well to your eminency as to the king;
and to assure your eminency, which is but reason, that
we shall most religiously observe all those things,
which our father of most serene memory was bound by
the league to see confirmed and ratified: and shall
make it our business, that in the midst of your mourn-
ing for a friend so faithful and flourishing in all vir-
tuous applause, there may be nothing wanting to
preserve the faith of our confederacy. For the conser-
vation of which on your part also, to the good of
both nations, may God Almighty long preserve your
eminency.
Westminster, Sept. 1658.
RICHARD, Protector of the Commonwealth of ENGLAND,
&c., To the most Serene Prince, CHARLEs GUSTAvus,
Ring of the Swedes, GoTHs, and VANDALs, &c.
Most Serene and Potent King, our
Friend and Confederate;
WHEN we consider with ourselves that it will be a
difficult matter for us to be imitators of our father's
LETTERS
635
OF STATE.
virtues, unless we should observe and endeavour to
hold the same confederacies which he by his prowess
acquired, and out of his singular judgment thought
most worthy to be embraced and observed ; your ma-
jesty has no reason to doubt, that it behoves us to pay
the same tribute of affection and goodwill, which our
father of most serene memory always paid to your
majesty. Therefore, although in this beginning of our
government and dignity I may not find our affairs in
that condition, as at present to answer to some particu-
lars which your embassadors have proposed, yet it is
our resolution to continue the league concluded by our
father with your majesty, and to enter ourselves into a
stricter engagement; and so soon as we shall rightly
understand the state of affairs on both sides, we shall
always be ready on our part to treat of those things,
which shall be most chiefly for the united benefit of
both republics. In the mean time, God long preserve
your majesty to his glory, and the defence and safe-
guard of his orthodox church.
From our court at Westminster,
October, 1658.
Rich ARD, Protector of the Commonwealth of ENG-
LAND, &c. To the most Serene and Potent Prince,
CHARLEs GUSTAvus, King of the Swedes, GoTHs, and
VANDALs, &c.
Most serene and potent King, our
Friend and Confederate;
WE have received two letters from your majesty, the
one by your envoy, the other transmitted to us from
our resident Philip Meadows, whereby we not only
understood your majesty's unfeigned grief for the death
of our most serene father, in expressions setting forth
the real thoughts of your mind, and how highly your
majesty esteemed his prowess and friendship, but also
what great hopes your majesty conceived of ourselves
advanced in his room. And certainly, as an accumu-
lation of paternal honour in deeming us worthy to suc-
ceed him, nothing more noble, more illustrious, could
befall us than the judgment of such a prince; nothing
more fortunately auspicious could happen to us, at our
first entrance upon the government, than such a con-
gratulator; nothing, lastly, that could more vehemently
incite us to take possession of our father's virtues, as
our lawful inheritance, than the encouragement of so
great a king. As to what concerns your majesty’s in-
terests, already under consideration between us, in
reference to the common cause of the protestants, we
would have your majesty have those thoughts of us,
that since we came to the helm of this republic, though
the condition of our affairs be such at present, that they
chiefly require our utmost diligence, care, and vigi-
Jancy at home, yet that we hold nothing more sacred,
and that there is not any thing more determined by us,
than, as much as in us lies, never to be wanting to the
league concluded by our father with your majesty.
To that end, we have taken care to send a fleet into
the Baltic sea, with those instructions which our agent,
to that purpose empowered by us, will communicate
to your majesty; whom God preserve in long safety,
and prosper with success in defence of his orthodox
religion.
From our court at Westminster,
October 13, 1658.
Rich ARD, Protector, To the most Sereme and Potent
Prince, CHARLEs GUSTAvus, King of the Swed Es,
GoTHs, and VANDALs, &c.
Most serene and potent King, our
Friend and Confederate ;
We send to your majesty, nor could we send a pre-
sent more worthy or more excellent, the truly brave
and truly noble Sir George Ascue, knight, not only
famed in war, and more especially for his experience
in sea-affairs, approved and tried in many desperate
engagements; but also endued with singular probity,
modesty, ingenuity, learning, and for the sweetness of
his disposition caressed by all men; and which is the
sum of all, now desirous to serve under the banners of
your majesty, so renowned over all the world for your
military prowess. And we would have your majesty
be fully assured, that whatsoever high employment
you confer upon him, wherein fidelity, fortitude, expe-
rience, may shine forth in their true lustre, you cannot
entrust a person more faithful, more courageous, nor
easily more skilful. Moreover, as to those things we
have given him in charge to communicate to your
majesty, we request that he may have quick access,
and favourable audience, and that you will vouchsafe
the same credit to him as to ourselves if personally
present: lastly, that you will give him that honour as
you shall judge becoming a person dignified with his
own merits and our recommendation. Now God
Almighty prosper all your affairs with happy success
to his own glory, and the safeguard of his orthodox
church.
From our court at Whitehall,
October, 1658.
RICHARD, Protector of the Commonwealth of ENGLAND,
&c., To the most Sereme and Potent Prince, CHARLEs
GUSTAvus, King of the SwedEs, GoTHs, and WAN-
DALS, &c.
Most serene and potent King, our dearest
Friend and Confederate;
SAMUEL PIGGOT of London, merchant, in a petition
delivered to us, sets forth, that he lately sent from
London into France, upon the account of trade, two
vessels, the one called the Post, Tiddie Jacob master,
the other the Water-Dog, Garbrand Peters master.
That from France, being laden with salt, they sailed
for Amsterdam; at Amsterdam the one took in ballast
only; the other laden with herrings, in copartnership
with one Peter Heinbergh, sailed away for Stettin in
Pomerania, which is under your jurisdiction, there to
unlade her freight; but now he hears that both those
vessels are detained somewhere in the Baltic sea by
your forces; notwithstanding that he took care to send
636 LETTERS
OF STATE.
a writing with both those ships, sealed with the seal
of the admiralty-court, by which it appeared that he
alone was the lawful owner of both the vessels and
goods, that part excepted which belonged to Hein-
bergh. Of all which, in regard he has made full proof
before us, we make it our request to your majesty, (to
prevent the ruin and utter shipwreck of the poor man's
estate, by the loss of two ships at one time,) that you
would command your officers to take care for the
speedy discharge of the said vessels. God long pre-
serve your majesty to his own glory, and the safeguard
of his orthodox church.
RICHARD, Protector of the Commonwealth of ENGLAND,
&c., To the high and mighty Lords, the States of
WEST FRIEz LAND.
Most high and mighty Lords, our dearest
Friends and Confederates;
MARY GRIN DER, widow, in a petition presented to
us, has made a most grievous complaint, that whereas
Thomas Killegrew, a commander in your service, has
owed her for these eighteen years a considerable sum
of money, she can by her agents neither bring him to
pay the said money, nor to try his title at law to the
same, if he has any. Which that he may not be com-
pelled to do by the widow’s attorney, he has petitioned
your highnesses, that nobody may be suffered to sue
him for any money that he owes in England. But
should we signify no more than only this to your
highnesses, that she is a widow, that she is in great
want, the mother of many small children, which her
creditor endeavours to deprive of almost all that little
support they have in this world, we cannot believe we
need make use of any greater arguments to your lord-
ships, so well acquainted with those divine precepts
forbidding the oppression of the widow and the father-
less, to persuade ye not to grant any such privilege,
upon a bare petition, to the fraudulent subverter of the
widow’s right; and which for the same reason we
assure ourselves you will never admit.
From our court at Westminster,
January 27, 1659.
Rich ARD, Protector of the Commonwealth of ENGLAND,
&c., To the most Sereme Prince, Lewis, King of
TRANCE.
Most Serene and Potent Prince, our most
august Confederate and Friend ;
WE have been given to understand, and that to our
no small grief, that several protestant churches in Pro-
vence were so maliciously affronted and disturbed by
a certain turbulent humourist, that the magistrates at
Grenoble, who are the proper judges of such causes,
thought him worthy of exemplary punishment; but
that the convention of the clergy, which was held not
far from those places, obtained of your majesty, that
the whole matter should be removed up to Paris, there
to be heard before your royal council. But they not
having as yet made any determination in the business,
those churches, and more especially that of Yvoire, are
forbid to meet for the worship of God. Most earnestly
therefore we request your majesty, that in the first
place you would not prohibit those from preaching in
public, whose prayers to God for your safety and the
prosperity of your kingdom you are so free to suffer;
then, that the sentence given against that impertinent
disturber of divine service, by the proper judges of
those causes at Grenoble, may be duly put in execution.
God long preserve your majesty in safety and pros-
perity; to the end that, if you have any good opinion
of our prayers, or think them prevalent with God, you
may be speedily induced to suffer the same to be pub-
licly put up to heaven by those churches, now forbid
their wonted meetings.
Westminster, Feb. 18, 1659.
To the most Eminent Lord Cardinal MAzARINE.
Most eminent Lord Cardinal;
THE most illustrious lady, late wife of the deceased
duke of Richmond, is now going into France, together
with the young duke her son, with an intention to re-
side there for some time. We therefore most earnestly
request your eminency, that if any thing fall out,
wherein your authority, favour, and patronage may be
assisting to them, as strangers, you would vouchsafe
to protect their dignity, and to indulge the recommen-
dation of it not the meanest, in such a manner, that if
any addition can be made to your civility towards all
people, especially of illustrious descent, we may be
sensible our letters have obtained it. Withal, your
excellency may assure yourself, your recommendation,
whenever you require the like from us, shall be of
equal force and value in our esteem and care.
Westminster, Feb. 29, 1659.
Richard, Protector of the Commonwealth of ENGLAND,
&c., To the most Sereme Prince, John, King of Port-
TUGAL.
Most Serene and potent Prince, our
Friend and Confederate;
ALTHough there are many things which we are
bound to impart by writing to a king our friend, and
in strict confederacy with our republic, yet there is
nothing which we ever did more willingly, than what
we do at this present, by these our letters to congratu-
late this last victory, so glorious to the kingdom of
Portugal, obtained against our common enemy the
Spaniard. By which, how great an advantage will
accrue not only to your own but to the peace and re-
pose of all Europe, and that perhaps for many years,
there is nobody but understands. But there is one thing
more, wherein we must acknowledge your majesty's
justice, the most certain pledge of victory: that satis-
faction has been given by the commissioners appointed
at London, according to the 24th article of the league,
to our merchants, whose vessels were hired by the Bra-
zil company. Only there is one among them still re-
maining Alexander Bence of London, merchant, whose
LETTERS OF STATE.
637
ship called the Three Brothers, John Wilks master,
being hired and laden, and having performed two
voyages for the said company, yet still they refuse to
pay him his wages according to their covenants; when
the rest that only performed single voyages are already
paid. Which why it should be done, we cannot un-
derstand, unless those people think, in their judgment,
that person more worthy of his hire, who did them only
single service, than he who earned his wages twice.
We therefore earnestly request your majesty, that satis-
faction may be given, for his service truly performed,
to this same single Alexander, to whom a double sti-
pend is due ; and that, by virtue of your royal author-
ity, you would prefix the Brazil company as short a
day as may be, for the payment of his just due, and
repairing his losses; seeing that their delays have been
the occasion, that the loss sustained by the merchant
has very near exceeded the money itself which is
owing for his wages. So God continue your majesty's
prosperous successes against the common enemy.
From our court at Westminster,
Feb. 23, 1659.
Richard, Protector of the Commonwealth of ENG-
LAND, &c., To the most eminent Lord Cardinal
MAZARINE.
Most Eminent Lord ;
BY letters to your eminency, about eight months
since, dated June 13, we recommended to your emi-
nency the cause of Peter Pet, a person of singular pro-
bity, and in all naval sciences most useful both to us
and our republic. His ship called the Edward, in the
year 1646, as we formerly wrote, was taken in the
mouth of the Thames by one Bascon, and sold in the
port of Boulogne; and though the king in his royal
council the 4th of November, 1647, decreed, that what
money the council should think fitting to be given in
recompense of the loss, should be forthwith paid in
satisfaction to the owner; nevertheless, as he sets forth,
he could never reap the benefit of that order. Now in
regard we make no question but that your eminency,
at our desire, gave strict command for the speedy exe-
cution of that decree; we make it therefore our renewed
request, that you would vouchsafe to examine where
the impediment lies, or through whose neglect or con-
tumacy it came to pass, that in ten years time the
king's decree was not obeyed; and employ your au-
thority so effectually, that the money then decreed,
which we thought long since satisfied, may be speedily
demanded and paid to our petitioner. Thus your
eminency will perform an act most grateful to jus-
tice, and lay moreover a singular obligation upon
ourselves.
From our court at Westminster,
Feb. 25, 1659.
The two following Letters, after the Deposal of
Rich ARD, were written in the Name of the Par-
liament Restored.
The Parliament of the Commonwealth of ENGLAND,
&c. To the most Serene and Potent Prince, CHARLES
GUSTAvus, King of the Swedes, GoTHs, and VAN-
DALs, &c.
Most Serene and Potent King, our dearest Friend;
SINCE it has pleased the most merciful and omnipo-
tent God, at whose disposal only the revolutions of all
kingdoms and republics are, to restore us to our pris-
time authority, and the supreme administration of the
English affairs; we thought it convenient in the first
place to make it known to your majesty; and to sig-
nify moreover as well our extraordinary affection to
your majesty, so potent a protestant prince, as also our
most fervent zeal to promote the peace between your
majesty and the king of Denmark, another most power-
ful protestant king, not to be reconciled without our
assistance, and the good offices of our affection. Our
pleasure therefore is, that our extraordinary envoy,
Philip Meadows, be continued in the same employ-
ment with your majesty, with which he has been
hitherto intrusted from this republic. To which end
we impower him by these our letters to make proposals,
act, and negotiate with your majesty, in the same
manner as was granted him by his last recommenda-
tions: and whatsoever he shall transact and conclude
in our name, we faithfully promise and engage, by
God's assistance, to confirm and ratify. . The same
God long support your majesty, the pillar and support
of the protestant interests.
WILLIAM LENTHAL,
Speaker of the Parliament of the
Commonwealth of England.
Westminster,
May 15, 1659.
The Parliament of the Commonwealth of ENGLAND,
&c., To the most Sereme Prince, FREDERick, King of
DENMARK.
Most serene King, and most dear Friend;
SEEING it now is come to pass, that by the will and
pleasure of the most merciful and powerful God, the
supreme moderator of all things, we are restored to our
pristine place and dignity, in the administration of the
public affairs, we thought it convenient in the first
place, that a revolution of this government should not
be concealed from your majesty's notice, a prince both
our neighbour and confederate; and withal to signify
how much we lay to heart your ill success: which you
will easily perceive by our zeal and diligence, that
never shall be wanting in us to promote and accom-
plish a reconciliation between your majesty and the
king of Sweden. And therefore we have commanded
our extraordinary envoy with the most serene king of
Sweden, Philip Meadows, to attend your majesty, in
our mame, in order to these matters, and to impart,
propound, act, and negotiate such things as we have
638 LETTERS OF STATE.
given him in charge to communicate to your majesty: | dauntedly supported by your fortitude and magna
and what credit you shall give to him in this his em- nimity.
ployment, we request your majesty to believe it given Westminster, . WILLIAM LENTHAL,
to ourselves. God Almighty grant your majesty a May 15, 1659. Speaker of the Parliament of the
happy and joyful deliverance out of all your difficulties Commonwealth of England.
and afflicting troubles, under which you stand so un-
M A N IF E S TO OF 'I' H E L O R D P R O TE C 'I' O R.
OF THE
COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND, SCOTLAND, IRELAND, &c.
PUBLISHED BY CONSENT AND ADVICE OF HIS COUNCIL.
WHEREIN IS SHEWN THE REASONABLENESS OF THE CAUSE OF THIS REPUBLIC AGAINST
THE DEPREDATIONS OF THE SPANIARDS.
[WRITTEN IN LATIN my Joan Milton, AND FIRST PRINTED IN 1655; TRANs LATED INTo ENGLISH IN 1738.]
•
THAT the motives whereby we have been lately induced
to make an attack upon certain islands in the West In-
dies, which have been now for some time in the hands of
the Spaniards, are exceeding just and reasonable, every
one will easily see, who considers in what a hostile
manner that king and his subjects have all along, in
those parts of America, treated the English nation;
which behaviour of theirs as it was very unjust at the
beginning, so ever since with the same injustice they
have persevered in it, in a direct contrariety to the
common law of nations, and to particular articles of
alliance made betwixt the two kingdoms.
It must indeed be acknowledged, the English for
some years past have either patiently borne with these
injuries, or only defended themselves; which may pos-
sibly give occasion to some to look upon that late
expedition of our fleet to the West Indies, as a war
voluntarily begun by us, instead of considering that
this war was first begun and raised by the Spaniards
themselves, as in reality it will be found to be, and
(though this republic have done all that lay in their
power to establish peace and commerce in those parts)
hitherto kept up and carried on by them with the
greatest eagerness,
That the Spaniards themselves are the occasion of
this war, will evidently appear to every one who con-
siders how, as oft as they find opportunity, without any
just cause, and without being provoked to it by any
injury received, they are continually murdering, and
sometimes even in cold blood butchering, any of our
countrymen in America they think fit; while in the
mean time they seize upon their goods and fortunes,
demolish their houses and plantations, take any of their
ships they happen to meet with in those seas, and treat
the sailors as enemies, may, even as pirates. For they
give that opprobrious name to all, except those of their
own nation, who venture to sail in those seas. Nor do
they pretend any other or better right for so doing, than
a certain ridiculous gift of the pope on which they rely,
and because they were the first discoverers of some
parts of that western region: by virtue of which name
and title, which they arrogate to themselves, they main-
tain that the whole power and government of that
western world is lodged only in their hands. Of which
very absurd title we shall have occasion to speak more
fully, when we come to consider the causes assigned
by the Spaniards for their thinking themselves at liberty
to exercise all sorts of hostilities against our country-
men in America, to such a degree, that whoever are
driven upon those coasts by stress of weather or ship-
wreck, or any other accident, are not only clapt in
chains by them as prisoners, but are even made slaves;
while they, notwithstanding all this, are so unreason-
able as to think, that the peace is broken, and very
much violated by the English ; and that even in
Europe, if they attempt any thing against them in
those parts, with a view to make reprisals, and to de-
mand restitution of their goods.
But though the king of Spain's ambassadors in our
country, depending on a Spanish faction which had
always a very considerable influence in the last king's
council, as well as his father's, did not scruple to make
a great many unreasonable complaints and ridiculous
demands upon the most trivial accounts, whenever the
English did any thing of this kind; yet those princes,
though too much attached to the Spaniards, would by
no means have the hands of their subjects bound up,
when the Spaniards thought they should have the free
use of theirs. On the contrary, they allowed their sub-
jects to repel force by force, and to consider such of the
Spaniards, as could not be brought at any rate to keep
the peace in those parts, as enemies. So that about
the year 1640, when this affair was debated in the last
king's council, and when the Spanish ambassador de-
64()
A MANIFESTO OF THE LORD PROTECTOR,
sired that some ships bound for America, lying in the
mouth of the river, and just ready to weigh anchor,
should be stopt, as being capable of doing mischief to
the Spaniards in that part of the world; and when at the
same time he refused the English, who asked it of him
by some members of the council appointed for that pur-
pose, the privilege of trading to the West Indies, it was
nevertheless resolved upon, that these ships should pur-
sue their intended voyage, which accordingly they
did.
Thus far the aforesaid princes were not wanting to
their subjects, when they made war in those places
privately for their own interest, though, by reason of
the power of the above-mentioned Spanish faction,
they would not espouse their cause publicly, in the
way they ought to have done, and in a mal.ner suit-
able to the ancient glory of the English nation. And
certainly, it would have been the most unbecoming
and disgraceful thing in the world for us, who by the
kind providence of God had in our possession so many
ships equipped and furnished with every thing requisite
to a war by sea, to have suffered these ships rather to
have grown worm-eaten and rot at home for want of
use, than to have been employed in avenging the blood
of the English, as well as that of the poor Indians,
which in those places has been so unjustly, so cruelly,
and so often shed by the hands of the Spaniards : since
God has made of one blood all nations of men for to
dwell on all the face of the earth, having determined
the times before appointed, and the bounds of their ha-
bitation. And surely God will one time or other take
vengeance on the Spaniards, who have shed so much
innocent blood, who have made such terrible havoc
among the poor Indians, slain so many thousands of
them with the utmost barbarity, dome them so many
injuries, and harassed and persecuted them in such a
miserable manner, whatever time that may happen,
and by whose hand soever it may be executed.
But in order to justify our conduct, there is no need
of having recourse to the common relation that men
have to one another, which is no other than that of
brethren, whereby all great and extraordinary wrongs
done to particular persons ought to be considered as in
a manner done to all the rest of the human race; since
their having so often robbed and murdered our own
countrymen was cause sufficient of itself, for our hav-
ing undertaken that late expedition, and has given us
abundant reason to avenge ourselves on that people ;
to pass by at present a great many other reasons, and
to take into consideration our own safety for the future,
and likewise that of our allies, especially those among
them who are of the orthodox religion; and to omit
several other causes, whereby we were prompted to this
expedition, of which we have no need at present to
give a particular enumeration, since our principal de-
sign at this time is to declare and shew to the world
the justice and equity of the thing itself, and not
to reckon up all the particular causes of it. And that
we may do this with the greater perspicuity, and ex-
plain generals by particulars, we must cast our eyes
back a little upon things that are past, and strictly
examine all the transactions betwixt the English and
Spaniards, consider what has been the state of affairs
on both sides, so far as may respect the mutual rela-
tion of the two kingdoms, both since the first discovery
of America, and since the reformation : which two
great events, as they happened much about the same
time, so they produced every where vast changes and
revolutions, especially amongst the English and Spa-
niards, who since that time have conducted and ma—
naged their affairs in a very different, if not quite con-
trary, way to what they did formerly. For though the
last king and his father, against the will of almost all
their subjects, patched up any way two leagues with
the Spaniards; yet the different turns of the two na-
tions, proceeding from the difference of their religious
principles, and the perpetual dissensions that were in
the West Indies, together with the jealousies and sus-
picions which the Spaniards had all along of the Eng-
lish, (being always mightily afraid of losing their
treasures in America,) have not only frustrated all the
late attempts made by this commonwealth to obtain a
peace upon reasonable and honourable terms, but were
likewise the principal reasons why Philip II, in Queen
Elizabeth's reign, broke that ancient league, that had
subsisted so long, without any violation, betwixt this
nation and his ancestors of the house of Burgundy and
Castile; and having made war upon that queen, pro-
posed to subdue this whole nation : which very thing
in the year 1588 he attempted with all his might,
while in the mean time he was treating about the es-
tablishment of a peace; which certainly cannot but be
still deeply rooted in the minds of the English, and
will not easily be extirpated. And though aſter that
there was some kind of peace and commerce in Europe,
(and it was of such sort, that no Englishman durst pro-
ſess his own religion within any part of the Spanish
dominions, or have the Holy Bible in his house, or
even aboard a ship,) yet in the West Indies the Spa-
niard from that time has never allowed them either to
enjoy peace, or to have the privilege of trading ; con-
trary to what was expressly stipulated concerning both
these things in that league of the year 1542, concluded
between Henry VIII, king of England, and the em-
peror Charles V, in which peace and free commerce
were expressly established between these two princes
and their people, through every part of their respective
dominions, through all their ports and territories, with-
out any exception of the West Indies, which was them
subject to that emperor.
But as to that article, of a peace to be maintained
on the part of both nations through all the countries of
the world; this is indeed plainly contained in all the
treaties of peace that were ever betwixt them, nor is
there any exception relating to commerce in any of
these treaties, till that which was made in the year
1604, with which that in the year 1630 does perfectly
agree. In which two last treaties it was resolved upon,
that both nations should have a privilege of trading in
every part of one another's dominions, in all those
places, where, before the war between Philip II, king
of Spain, and Elizabeth queen of England, there was
OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND, &c.
641
any commerce, according to what was usual and cus-
tomary in ancient alliances and treatics made before
that time.
those treaties, which do plainly leave the matter du-
bious and uncertain, and so King James was satisfied
to make peace with Spain any how, since he only re-
newed the very same treaty which had been concluded
a little before the death of Queen Elizabeth, who
charged her deputies when it was in agitation, among
other things, to insist warmly on having a privilege
of trading to the West Indies.
But King James, who was mightily desirous of
making peace with the Spaniards, was content to leave
that clause so expressed, as both parties might explain
it in their own way, and as they judged would be most
for their own advantage; though these words, “Ac-
cording to what is usual and customary in ancient al-
liances and treaties,” are so to be understood as it is
reasonable they should, according to what in justice
ought to be done, and not according to what has been
done on the part of the Spaniards, to their manifest
violation, (which has afforded perpetual matter of com-
plaint to the English, and has been an occasion of
continual quarrels betwixt the two nations,) it is most
evident from the express words of ancient treaties, that
the English had a privilege both of peace and com-
merce, through all the Spanish dominions.
Moreover, if the way of observing ancient treaties
and agreements is to be taken from their manifest
violation, the Spaniards have some pretence for ex-
plaining that clause, in the last treaties, as debarring
the English from all manner of commerce in these
parts. And for all that, during one half the time that
intervened betwixt the foresaid treaty in the year 1542,
and the beginning of the war betwixt Philip II, and
Elizabeth, so far as we can judge from the manner in
which things were carried on, it would appear that
trading in these places was as much allowed as pro-
hibited. But when the Spaniards would permit no
commerce at all, they and the English came from the
exchange of goods to that of blows and wounds; and
this not only before the war broke out betwixt Philip
and Elizabeth, but likewise after a peace was made in
the year 1604 by King James, and another by his son
in 1630, and yet so as not to stop the course of trade
through Europe. However, the king of Spain, after
this late interruption of our trade, has now judged that
the contests in America may be extended to Europe
itself.
But we neither insist on the interpretation of treaties,
nor the right of commerce by virtue of these treaties,
or on any other account, as if this contest of ours with
Spain were necessarily to be founded on these. This
is built on the clearest and most evident reasons in the
world, as will presently appear. Nevertheless, there
are some things of such a nature, that though it be not
so necessary to found a war upon them, yet they may
These are the very individual words of
very justly be obstacles to the establishing of a peace,
or at least to the renewing of an alliance, in which
these things are not granted, which have either been
granted in former pactions, or may reasonably be ex-
pected. And this may serve as an answer to that ques-
tion; Why, since we have renewed the ancient treaties
we had formerly made with all other nations, we have
not done the same with Spain 2 And may serve to con-
vince the world, that in the articles of alliance we have
not, as is objected, demanded his right eye, far less both
eyes, by our refusing to be liable to the cruel and
bloody inquisition in those places where we have
been allowed to traffic, but have only insisted upon
having such a privilege of carrying on trade, as we
were not to be deprived of, either by ancient treaties,
or the law of nature. For though the king of Spain
has assumed to himself a power of prescribing us the
laws and bounds of commerce, by authority of a law
made by the pope, whereby he discharges all traffic
with Turks, Jews, and other inſidels:* and though
under this pretence, even in time of peace, his ships of
war, in other places besides the West Indies, have
taken and plundered our ships; and though by the
same authority of the pope, and under pretence of a
certain gift he has from him, he claims the Indians for
his subjects, as if forsooth they also were subject unto
him, who are neither under his authority nor protec-
tion : yet we maintain, that neither the pope nor the
king of Spain is invested with any such power, as either
to rob them of their liberty, or us of the privilege of
conversing and trading with them, which we have by
the law of nature and nations, but especially with those
who, as we formerly observed, are not under the power
and government of the king of Spain.
Another obstacle to our renewing an alliance with
Spain is sufficiently manifest, and at the same time
very remarkable; which is this, that any of our am-
bassadors and public ministers who are sent into that
kingdom, either for the sake of cultivating a good un-
derstanding, or about any other business, betwixt the
two commonwealths, are altogether uncertain of their
lives, the king being tied down to such opinions, as
hinder him from providing for their safety against
murderers, so as they may not be always in the most
imminent danger; whose privileges, in order to keep
up and preserve friendship between princes and com-
monwealths, have by the law of nations been always
considered as inviolable, and as a thing much more
sacred than those altars of refuge, whose privileges,
built on the authority of the pope and the church
of Rome, have been hitherto applied to elude the
force of laws and justice, which we demanded should
be put in execution against the murderers of Mr.
Anthony Ascham, who was sent by this republic into
Spain, to procure and establish friendship betwixt the
two nations. For which barbarous murder there has
never as yet been any satisfaction made, nor punishment
* William Stephens of Bristol and some other London merchants, in the
§. 1606 and, 1607, trading with those people who live on the coast of
orocco, with three vessels, some ships belonging to the king of Spain that
Yere pirating along these coasts, having come upon them in the bay of
Saffia and the harbour of Santo Cruz, while they were lying at anchor,
plundered them, without giving any other reason for their doing it than
this, that the king their master would not allow of any commerce with in-
fidels; and the ioss these merchants sustained at that time was counputed
at more than 2000l.
642
A MANIFESTO OF THE LORD PROTECTOR
inflicted on the authors of it, nor could this ever be ob-
tained, though it was demanded by the parliament; *
and in their name several times urged with the great-
est warmth by the council of state. And this has been
hitherto one continued obstacle, and a very just one
too, to the renewing of an alliance betwixt the two na-
tions; nay, if we consider how other nations have fre-
quently acted in like cases, it may be considered as a
very just cause for a war.
But as to the disputes that have arisen in the West
Indies, though we, both in the continent itself, and in
the islands, have plantations as well as they, and have
as good, may, a better right to possess them, than the
Spaniards have to possess theirs, and though we have
a right to trade in those seas, equally good with theirs;
yet without any reason, or any damage susta.ned, and
that when there was not the least dispute about com-
merce, they have been continually invading our colo-
nies in a hostile way, killing our men, taking our ships,
robbing us of our goods, laying waste our houses and
fields, imprisoning and enslaving our people: this
they have been doing all along till these present times,
wherein they have of late engaged in an expedition
against them.
For which reason, contrary to what used to be done
formerly in the like case, they have detained our ships
and merchants, and confiscated their goods almost
every where through the Spanish dominions; so that
whether we turn our eyes to America or Europe, they
alone are undoubtedly to be considered as the authors
of the war, and the cause of all the inconveniences and
all the bloodshed with which it may possibly be at-
tended.
There are a great many instances of the most cruel
and barbarous treatment, the English have perpetually
met with from the Spaniards in the West Indies; and
that even in time of peace, both since the year 1604,
when the peace was patched up by King James, till
the time that the war broke out again, and since that
last peace, which was concluded in the year 1630, to
this very day. We shall only mention a few of
them.t -
After a peace was concluded in the year 1605, a ship
called the Mary, Ambrose Birch commander, was
trading on the north coast of Hispaniola : the master
being allured with promises of a safe and free commerce,
by one father John and six of his accomplices, to go
ashore to see some goods, twelve Spaniards in the
mean time while going aboard to see the English goods,
while the English suspecting no frauds were shewing
* This is evident from the parliament's letter, signed by the hand of the
Speaker, to the King of Spain; in the month of January, 1650, the words
whereof are as follow. “We demand of your majesty, and insist upon it,
“ that public justice be at length satisfied for the barbarous murder of An-
“thony Ascham our resident at your court, and the ratlier, that after we
have seen condign punishment inflicted on the authors of such a detest.
‘ able crime, we may be in no fear hereafter to send our ambassador to
your royal court, to lay before you such things as may be equally ad-
“vantageous to your majesty and our commonwealth. On the contrary,
“if we should suffer that blood, the shedding whereof was a thing in many
“respects so remarkably horrible, to pass unrevenged, we must of neces-
“sity be partakers in that detestable crime in the sight of God, our only
“deliverer and the eternal fountain of our mercies, and in the eye of the
“whole English nation ; especially if ever we should send any other of
our country men into that kingdom, where murder is allowed to go quite
“unpunished. ... But we have so great an º of your majesty, that we
“will not easily be brought to believe that your royal authority is sub-
“jected to any other power superior to it within your own dominions,”
# As a ship called the Ulysses was trading, along the coast of Guiana,
the merchants and sailors happened to go ashore, by the persuasion of
.
them their wares, the priest giving a signal from the
shore, the Spaniards every man drew his dagger, and
stabbed all the English that were in the ship, except
two who leaped into the sca, and the rest ashore were
put to death with an unparalleled cruelty; the master
himself stript of his clothes, and fastened to a tree, was
exposed naked to be bit by the flies and vermin. And
after he had continued in this miserable case for the
space of twenty hours, a negro hearing his groans
came to the place, and as he was just on the point of
expiring, stabbed him with a spear. This ship with
her goods was valued at 5400l.
Another ship called the Archer was taken at St. Do-
mingo, and all the sailors put to death. She was reck-
oned worth 1300l.
Another ship, called the Friendship of London, with
her loading, was taken by Lodowic Fajard, admiral of
the Spanish fleet, all her goods confiscated, and the
merchants and mariners thrown into the sea, except
one boy who was reserved for a slave. This ship with
her loading was estimated at 1500l.
The sailors going ashore out of another ship, called
the Scorn, (the Spaniards having solemnly sworn they
would do them no prejudice,) were all nevertheless
bound to trees and strangled. The ship with all her
goods was seized, and the merchants, to whom she be-
longed, lost at this time 1500l.
In the year 1606, a ship called the Neptune, was
taken at Tortuga, by the Spanish guarda costas, valued
at 4300l. i.
The same year, another ship, called the Lark, was
taken by Lodowic Fajard, and confiscated with all her
loading, valued at 4570l.
Another, called the Castor and Pollux, was taken by
the Spaniards at Florida, by whom she was confiscated,
and all her sailors either killed or made slaves; for
they were never heard of aſterwards. This vessel with
her loading was valued at 15,000l. §
In the year 1608, a Plymouth ship called the
Richard, commanded by Henry Challins, fitted out at
the expense of Lord Popham, lord chief justice of
England, Ferdinand Gorges knight, and others, to go
to Virginia, happening to be driven by stress of weather
upon the southern part of the Canary Islands, in her
way from thence to the coast of Virginia, she chanced
to fall in with eleven Spanish ships returning from St.
Domingo, who seized her; and though the captain, to
rescue himself out of their hands, produced a royal
passport, yet the ship with all her goods was confis-
cated, the captain himself barbarously used by them
Berry, governor of that place, who had promised, nay, even sworn that
they should receive no hurt j, nevertheless there were thirty of them taken
j committed to prison, Upon which the governor writes a letter to the
merchant, acquainting him, that he had indeed taken thirty of his men,
and that because some foreigners, who had come there to trade with them,
had defrauded him of 20,000 ducats, which, if he would send him, he swore
he would restore all his inen, and allow him the liberty of commerce. I he
merchant sent him the sum he demanded, part, in ready money, part in
goods, which after the governor had received, he ordered all the thirty
men to be fastened to trees and strangled, except the chirurgeon, who was
reserved, to cure the governor of a certain disease. This ransom, together
with other damages sustained there, was computed at 7000l.
I John Davis lost two ships with all their goods, and the Spaniards slew
all the men that were aboard of then, to the entire loss of that voyage, and
this was computed at 3500/.
§ Another ship belonging to some London merchants, John Lock com-
mander, was taken by the Spanish fleet, at the isle of Tortuga, because she
had been trading there, and had felled some trees; for this she was
confiscated, most of the sailors | to death, and the rest condemned to
&
the galleys. This was esteemed a loss of 5300!.
*
OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND, &c.
643
and sent to the galleys. This was a damage of more
than 2500l.
A ship, called the Aid, was served mu, h the same
way by Lodowic Fajard, having been taken under pre-
tence of friendship; she too with her goods was con-
fiscated, and all the sailors sent to the galleys, where
some were cudgelled to death for reſusing to ply the
oars. Which vessel with her goods, by the Spaniards'
own estimation, was worth 7000l.
The same year another ship, called the gallant Anne,
William Curry commander, as she was trading at His-
paniola, was likewise confiscated with all her goods,
and all the sailors hanged; each of them, by way of
ridicule, having a piece of paper sewed to his coat,
which had these words written upon it, “Why came ye
hither P’’ This ship with her burden was valued at
8000l. These instances do sufficiently shew what kind
of peace the Spaniards maintained with us during the
reign of King James, who was always very much
afraid of breaking the peace with them. And we may
also plainly discover the same acts of hostility and
barbarous treatment ever since the last peace, which
was made in the year 1630, to this very day. For this
end we will first speak a little of those colonies, that
were planted by some noblemen of this nation, in the
isle of Catclina, which they call the isle of Providence,
and the island of Tortuga, by them called the island of
Association. These islands about the year 1629, being
then quite uninhabited, having neither men nor cattle
in them, were seized by the English, who at that time
were at war with the Spaniards. The year following,
when peace was established betwixt the two nations,
the Spaniards having made no exception about these
islands, King Charles, in a charter under the great
seal of England, declared himself master of the isle of
Providence and some other islands adjacent to it, which
he thought no way inconsistent with his peace, and
gave them in possession to some noblemen and their
heirs, and next year he extended this grant to the isle
of Tortuga.
And though the above-mentioned planters had got
possession of these islands by the king’s grant, and
though this grant was exceeding well founded, first on
the law of nature, since neither the Spaniards, nor any
other people whatever, were in possession of these
places when they seized them; and secondly, on the
right of war, since they were taken possession of in
time of war, and were not excepted in the articles of
peace, whence it follows from the second article of the
last treaty, that the title of the Spaniards to these
islands (even supposing they had had one) was made
null by their own consent: and though likewise, neither
the aforesaid company of planters in general, nor any
one of them in particular by any action of theirs, had
given any just cause of offence, either to the king of
Spain or to any of his subjects, till they had first in
a violent manner attacked our ships and colonies, and
had slain several of the English, and set fire to their
houses: yet the Spaniards, being firmly resolved to
break the peace in these places, about the twenty-se-
cond of January 1632, wº any the least provoca-
T
tion, betwixt the isle of Tortuga and the cape of Flo-
rida, in a hostile manner fell upon a certain ship be-
longing to the company, called the Sea-Flower, on her
return from the isle of Providence, in which engage-
ment they slew some of the men aboard that ship, and
wounded others.
After this, about the year 1634, the isle of Tortuga
was attacked by four ships belonging to the Spaniards,
without any injury done on the part of the English, in
which attack upwards of sixty were slain, many wound-
ed and taken prisoners, their houses burnt down and
quite demolished, their most valuable goods carried off
by the Spaniards, and the English almost wholly
driven out of that island; of whom some were hanged,
others carried to the Havanna, and detained in the
most abject slavery. One Grymes, who had been a
gunner in Tortuga, was distinguished from the rest, by
a death remarkably cruel. Some of them flying for re-
fuge to a certain desart island called Santa Cruz, were
again set upon by the Spaniards, who even pursued
them thither with three galleys in the month of March
1636, of whom forty were killed, and the rest taken
prisoners, and used with the utmost barbarity.
In the year 1635, July 24th, the Spaniards, with two
great ships and one galley, made likewise an attack
upon the isle of Providence, and they fought for se-
veral hours, but at that time they were repulsed and
forced to give over their enterprise. However, they
attempted the same thing a second time, about the
year 1640, with twelve ships, some large, and some of
a lesser size, whereof the admiral's ship was called the
Armadillo of Carthagena, one of the greater galleys of
the royal plate-fleet, and having sent a great number
of soldiers ashore, they were confident of making them-
selves masters of the whole island; but yet were re-
pulsed with a great deal of damage, and forced to re-
treat. Nevertheless, having equipped another fleet,
they returned a little after, when the planters, at vari-
ance among themselves, did not so much employ their
thoughts about what method they should take to de-
ſend themselves, as about the terms upon which they
might most advantageously surrender; which terms,
upon their giving up the island, they found no diffi-
culty to obtain. But the island was by this means
wrested out of the bands both of the planters and the
commonwealth, of whom the former sustained the loss
of more than 80,000l. and the latter, besides the loss of
the island, hereby received a very open and public af.
front. After the Spaniards had thus made themselves
masters of the isle of Providence, a ship bringing some
passengers hither, who wanted to transport themselves
to this place from New-England, the Spaniards by
stratagem having found means to get her brought
within gun-shot, (the people in the ship knowing no-
thing of their late conquest of that island,) she was in
great danger of being taken, and with very much diffi-
culty rescued herself; the master of the ship, a very
honest and worthy man, was killed by a bullet-shot
from the island.
Nor were the Spaniards content to confine the acts
of hostility, which they have exercised upon the people
644
A MANIFESTO OF THE LORD PROTECTOR
of that colony, within the boundaries of America, but
have also treated them in the same hostile manner in
Europe. For in the year 1638, December 25th, a ship
belonging to that same company, called the Providence,
Thomas Newman commander, two leagues from
Dungeness on the very coast of England, was as-
saulted and taken by Sprengfeld, captain of a privateer
belonging to Dunkirk, to which place this ship was
brought, and her cargo detained, which even by the
computation of many persons in that place, was reck-
oned to amount to the sum of 30,000l. As for the
sailors, some were slain, some wounded, and the rest,
after having been treated with the greatest inhumanity
in their own ship, were hurried away to Dunkirk,
where they met with much the same usage, till they
found some way to make their escape; and though the
owners demanded satisfaction in the most earnest man-
ner, and the last king by his resident Mr. Balthasar
Gerber, and both by letters written with his own hand,
and the hand of secretary Coke, asked reparation on
their behalf; yet they could neither procure the resti-
tution of their goods, nor the least compensation for
these losses.
But there are other examples of the Spanish cruelty,
which are of a later date, and still more shocking ;
such as that of their coming from Porto-Rico and at-
tacking Santa Cruz about the year 1651, an island that
was not formerly inhabited, but at that time possessed
by an English colony governed by Nicol. Philips, who
with about an hundred more of the colony was barba-
rously murdered by the hands of the Spaniards, who
besides this attacked the ships in the harbour, plundered
their houses and razed them from the very foundation;
and when they could find no more to sacrifice to their
fury, (the rest of the inhabitants having fled to the
woods,) returning to Porto-rico, they gave the miser-
able remnant, who were well nigh famished, time to
remove from Santa Cruz, and to betake themselves to
some other neighbouring islands. But a little time
thereafter, they returned in quest and pursuit of those
who sculked in the woods; but they had the good for-
tune to find a way of making their escape, and stealing
away privately to other islands.
In the same year 1631, a ship belonging to John
Turner being driven into the harbour of Cumanagola
by tempestuous winds, was seized by the governor of
that place, and confiscated with all her lading.
The same was done to captain Cranley's ship and
her goods.”
And in the year 1650, a certain vessel pertaining to
Samuel Wilson, loaden with horses, was taken on the
high seas in her way to Barbadoes, and carried to the
Havanna. Both the ship and her goods were confis-
cated, most of the sailors imprisoned, and like slaves
obliged to work at the fortifications.
The same hardships were endured by the sailors
aboard a certain ship of Barnstable about two years
* And also to one belonging to John Bland, commanded by Nicol.
Philips, in the very same harbour. * -
+ But Swanley, our admiral, was not so civilly treated in Sicily, in the
harbour of Drepano, when in the year 1653, about the month of June, his
ship called the Henry Bonaventure, together with a large and very rich
since, which in her return from some of our plantations
in the Carribee islands, springing a leak hard by His-
paniola, the sailors to save themselves, being obliged
to get into the long boat, got ashore, where they were
all made slaves, and obliged to work at the fortifica-
tions.
By these, and many more examples of the same
kind too long to be reckoned up, it is abundantly evi-
dent, the king of Spain and his subjects think they are
no way bound by any condition of peace to be per-
formed to us on their part in these places, since they
have habitually exercised all sorts of hostilities against
us, may have even done such things as are more insuf-
ferable, and more grievous, than open acts of hostility;
and since that cruelty, with which they usually treat
the English in America, is so contrary to the articles of
peace, that it does not so much as seem suitable to the
laws of the most bloody war: however, in that embargo
of the king of Spain, by which he orders our merchant
ships and their goods to be seized and confiscated, the
whole blame is laid upon the English, whom he brands
with the odious names of treaty-breakers and violators
of the most sacred peace, and likewise of free com-
merce, which he pretends to have so religiously main-
tained on his part, and gives out that we have violated
the laws of peace and commerce with such strange and
professed hostility, that we attempted to besiege the
town of St. Domingo in the isle of Hispaniola. Which
is the only cause he offers, why the goods of the Eng-
lish are confiscated in Spain, and the trading people
confined ; though this is likewise aggravated by his
boasted humanity; for he maintains that he in the
most friendly way received our fleets into his harbours,t
where it could be of any advantage for them to enter,
and that his ministers did not at all require of us a
strict observance of the articles of peace, that were
agreed to by the two crowns, which forbid both parties
to enter a harbour with more than six or eight ships of
W 311".
But as he, by talking in this strain, acquits our fleets
of all trespasses and violations of treaty in these har-
bours, since if any such thing as is objected has been
done and passed over, it has been done by the allow-
ance of himself and his ministers; and as it is exceed-
ing manifest, that he has not been so favourable for
nought, if he will but reflect with himself what vast
profits he has received from our fleets, so on the other
hand, that the king and his ministers have not at all
in fact observed the agreements he speaks of, in the
twenty-third article of which, the following provision
is made in the most express terms; “That if any dif-
“ferences should happen to arise betwixt the two com-
“monwealths, the subjects on both sides should be
“advertised, that they should have six months from
“the time of the advertisement to transport their effects,
“during which time there should be no arrest, inter-
“rupting, or damaging, of any man's person or goods.”
Dutch ship called the Peter, which he had taken, was by the treachery of
the Spanish governor in that place, taken by seven Dutch ships, under the
command of the younger ºf in the very harbour, no further than a
Sinall gun's shot from the bulwarks, whereby the merchants, to whom that
ship belonged, lost more than 63,000l.
OF THE COMMON WEALTH OF ENGLAND.
645
In which affair, the king truly has shown but very
little regard to those contracts, which he charges us
with having broken, as appears from that late confis-
cation of our goods. But what he declares in that
edict concerning the acts of hostility committed in the
West Indies, their being to be considered as a viola-
tion of peace and free commerce in these parts, is a
new and quite different explanation from what has
ever been propounded hitherto by either of the two
republics, though both parties have frequently had
occasions to declare their judgment about this mat-
ter.
But seeing the king of Spain has declared both by
word and deed, that the articles of peace ought to be
thus understood, it follows, that by so many acts of
hostility committed against the English in these parts,
and which first began on his side, and have been
continued from the very time of the last concluded
treaty, as was formerly observed, to this very day;
hence I say it follows, that he seems to be convinced,
that the sacred bonds of friendship have been first
broken on his side. Which thing is so clear and ma-
nifest, that our adversaries themselves in this contro-
versy are ashamed to deny the fact, and choose rather
to dispute with us concerning the right of possession;
which must be in the following manner: as the king
of Spain, among his other titles, has assumed that of
king of the Indies, so they affirm, that the whole Indies
, and Indian sea, both south and north, belong to him,
and that they are all enemies and pirates, who approach
these places without his commission. Which if it were
true, both we and all other nations ought to leave and
restore to him all our possessions there, and having
brought back whatever colonies we have sent thither,
should beg his pardon for the injury we have done him;
but if we consider a little more narrowly the truth and
reasonableness of this title, we shall find that it is built
upon a very slender and weak foundation, to have such
a vast pile of war and contentions erected upon it, as
the present is likely to be. They pretend to have a
double title, one founded upon the pope's gift, and an-
other upon their having first discovered those places.
As to the first, we know the pope has been always very
liberal in his gifts of kingdoms and countries, but in
the mean time we cannot but think, that in so doing,
he acts in a very different manner from him, whose
vicar he professes himself, who would not so much as
allow himself to be appointed a judge in the dividing
of inheritances, far less give any one whole kingdoms
at his pleasure, like the pope, who has thought fit to
make a present of Dngland, Ireland, and some other
kingdoms,
But we deny his being invested with any such au-
thority, nor do we think there is any nation so void of
understanding, as to think that so great power is lodg-
ed in him, or that the Spaniards would believe this or
acquiesce in it, if he should require them to yield up
as much as he has bestowed. But if the French and
others, who acknowledge the pope's authority in ec-
clesiastical matters, have no regard to this title of the
Spaniards, it cannot be expected we should think of it
any otherwise. And so we leave this point, as not de-
serving a fuller answer.
Nor is the other title of any greater weight, as if the
Spaniards in consequence of their having first discover-
cd some few parts of America, and given names to
some islands, rivers, and promontories, had for this
reason lawfully acquired the government and dominion
of that new world. But such an imaginary title
founded on such a silly pretence, without being in pos-
session, cannot possibly create any true and lawful
right. The best right of possession in America is that
which is ſounded on one's having planted colonies
there, and settled in such places as had either no inha-
bitants, or by the consent of the inhabitants, if there
were any ; or at least, in some of the wild and uncul-
tivated places of their country, which they were not
numerous enough to replenish and improve ; since
God has created this earth for the use of men, and or-
dered them to replenish it throughout.
If this be true, as the Spaniards will be found to hold
their possessions there very unjustly, having purchased
all of them against the will of the inhabitants, and as
it were plucked them out of their very bowels, having
laid the foundations of their empire in that place, in
the blood of the poor natives, and rendered several large
islands and countries, that were in a tolerable case
when they found them, so many barren desarts, and
rooted out all the inhabitants there; so the English
hold their possessions there by the best right imagin-
able, especially those islands where the Spaniards have
fallen upon their colonies, and quite demolished them;
which islands had no other inhabitants at all, or if they
had, they were all slain by the Spaniards, who had
likewise deserted these places, and left them without
any to improve or cultivate them : so that by the law
of nature and nations they belong to any who think fit
to take possession of them, according to that common
and well-known maxim in law, “Such things as be-
long to none, and such as are abandoned by their for-
mer possessors, become his property who first seizes
them.” Although, granting that we had beat the
Spaniards out of those places where we have planted
our colonies, out of which they had at first expelled
the inhabitants, we should have possessed them with
better right, as the avengers of the murder of that peo-
ple, and of the injuries sustained by them, than the
Spaniards their oppressors and murderers. But since
we have settled our colonies in such places as were
neither possessed by the natives nor the Spaniards, they
having left behind them neither houses nor cattle, nor
any thing that could by any means keep up the right
of possession, the justness of our title to these places
was so much the more evident, and the injuries done
us by the Spaniards so much the more manifest, espe-
cially our right to those places that were seized while
the two nations were at war with each other, such as
the isles of Providence and Tortuga, which if the Spa-
niards could have shewn to be theirs, by any former
title which they have not yet produced, yet since they
have not dome it in the last treaty of peace, by the se-
cond article of this treaty, they have for the future cut
646
A MANIFESTO OF THE LORD PROTECTOR.
themselves off from all such pretence, and if they had
any right, have now lost it. It is unnecessary to talk
any further upon this argument.
There is no intelligent person but will easily see how
empty and weak those reasons are, that the Spaniard
has for claiming to himself alone an empire of such a
vast and prodigious extent. But we have said this
much, in order to shew the weakness of those pretences,
whereby the Spaniards endeavour to justify themselves
for having treated us with so much cruelty and bar-
barity in the West Indies, for having enslaved, hang-
ed, drowned, tortured, and put to death our country-
men, robbed them of their ships and goods, and de-
molished our colonies, even in the time of profound
peace, and that without any injury received on their
part: which cruel usage and havoc, made among
our people, and such as were of the same orthodox
faith with them, as oft as the English call to remem-
brance, they cannot miss to think that their former
glory is quite gone, and their ships of war become en-
tirely useless, if they suffer themselves to be any longer
treated in such a disgraceful manner: and moreover,
to be not only excluded from all free commerce in so
great and opulent a part of the world, but likewise to
be looked upon as pirates and robbers, and punished in
the same manner as they, if they presume to sail those
seas, or so much as look that way; or, in fine, have
any intercourse or dealing even with their own colo-
nies that are settled there.
Concerning the bloody Spanish inquisition we shall
say nothing, this being a controversy common to all
protestants, nor shall we speak of the many semimaries
of English priests and jesuits nestling under the pro-
tection of the Spaniards, which is a perpetual cause of
stumbling, and very great danger to the common-
wealth ; since what we principally propose is, to shew
the grounds and reasons of the controversies in the
West Indies, and we are confident we have made it
plain to all, who weigh things fairly and impartially,
that necessity, honour, and justice, have prompted us
to undertake this late expedition. First, we have been
prompted to it by necessity; it being absolutely neces-
sary to go to war with the Spaniards, since they will
not allow us to be at peace with them : and then
honour, and justice, seeing we cannot pretend to either
of these, if we sit still and suffer such unsufferable in-
juries to be done our countrymen, as those we have
shewn to have been done them in the West Indies.
And truly they see but a very little way, who form
their notion of the designs and intentions of the Span-
iards, according to that friendly aspect, with which the
present declension of their affairs has obliged them to
look upon us in these parts of the world, (that face
which they have put on being only a false one,) for it
is certain they have the same mind, and the very same
desires, which they had in the year 1588, when they
endeavoured to subdue this whole island ; nay, it is
certain their hatred is more inflamed, and their jealous-
ies and suspicions more increased by this change of the
state of our affairs, and of the form of our republic.
But if we omit this opportunity, which by reason of
some things that have lately happened, may perhaps
give us an occasion to fall upon some way, whereby
through the assistance of God we may provide for our
safety, against this old and implacable enemy of our
religion and country; it may happen, he will recover
such a degree of strength, as will render him as formi-
dable and hard to be endured as before. One thing is
certain, he always will and cannot but have the great-
est indignation against us. Meanwhile, if we suffer
such grievous injuries to be done our countrymen in
the West Indies, without any satisfaction or revenge ;
if we suffer ourselves to be wholly excluded from that
so considerable a part of the world; if we suffer our
malicious and inveterate enemy (especially now, after
he has made peace with the Dutch) to carry off with-
out molestation, from the West Indies, those prodigious
treasures, whereby he may repair his present damages,
and again bring his affairs to such a prosperous and
happy condition, as to deliberate with himself a second
time, what he was thinking upon in the year 1588;
namely, whether it would be more adviseable to begin
with subduing England, in order to recover the United
Provinces, or with them, in order to reduce England
under his subjection; without doubt he will not find
fewer, but more, causes why he should begin with
England. And if God should at any time permit those
intentions of his to have their desired effect, we have
good ground to expect, that the residue of that cruel
havoc, he made among our brethren at the foot of the
Alps, will be first exercised upon us, and after that
upon all protestants; which, if we may give credit to
the complaints that were made by those poor orthodox
Christians, was first designed and contrived in the
court of Spain, by those friers whom they call mis-
sionaries.
All these things being considered, we hope the time
will come, when all, but especially true Englishmen,
will rather lay aside their private animosities among
themselves, and renounce their own proper advantages,
than through an excessive desire of that small profit to
be made by trading to Spain, (which cannot be obtained
but upon such conditions as are dishonourable and in
some sort unlawful, and which may likewise be got
some other way,) expose, as they now do, to the ut-
most danger, the souls of many young traders, by those
terms upon which they now live and trade there, and
suffer the lives and fortunes of many christian brethren
in America, and in fine, the honour of this whole na-
tion, to be exposed, and, what of all is the most
momentous and important, let slip out of their hands
the most noble opportunities of promoting the glory of
God, and enlarging the bounds of Christ's kingdom :
which, we do not doubt, will appear to be the chief end
of our late expedition into the West Indies against the
Spaniards, to all who are free of those prejudices which
hinder people from clearly discerning the truth.
J O A N N IS MIILT O N I O PIER A
OMNIA LATINA.
VIZ.
I. DEFENSIO PRO POPULO ANGLICANO, CONTRA CLAUDII SALMASII DEFENSIONEM REGIAM.
II. DEFENSIO SECUNDA PRO POPULO ANGLICANO, CONTRA ALEXANDRUM MORUM ECCLESIASTEN.
III. DEFENSIO PRO SE, CUI ADJUNGITUR JOANNIS PHILIPPI RESPONSIO AD APOLOGIAM ANONYMI CUJUSDAM
TENEBRIONIS PRO REGE ET POPULO ANGLICANO INFANTISSIMAM.
IV, LITERÆ, SENATUS ANGLICANI, NECNON CROMWELLI, &c. NOMINE AC JUSSU CONSCRIPTÆ.
v. ARTIS LOGICÆ INSTITUTIO AD PETRI RAMI METHODUM CONCINNATA.
VI. EPISTOLARUM FAMILIARIUM LIBER UNUS, QUIBUS ACCESSERUNT EJUSDEM, JAM OLIM IN COLLEGIO
ADOLESCENTIS, PROLUSIONES QUÆDAM ORATORIÆ.
VII. SCRIPTUM DOMINI PROTECTORIS, CONTRA HISPANOS.
DEFENSIO PRO POPULO ANGLICANO,
CONTRA
CLAUDII SALMASII DEFENSIONEM REGIAM.*
[f 1mst PuBi.isE ED 1651.]
PRÆFATIO.
TAMETsi vereor, si in defendendo populo Anglicano
tam sim profusus verborum, vacuus rerum, quàm est
plerisque visus in defensione regia Salmasius, nè ver-
bosissimi simul et ineptissimi defensoris nomem meritus
esse videar ; tamen cùm in mediocri quavis materia
tractanda nemo sibi adeò properandum esse existimet,
quin exordio saltem aliquo pro dignitate suscepti à se
operis uti soleat, id ego in re omnium ferè maxima
dicenda si non omittam, neque nimis astringam, spero
equidem, duas propemodum res, quas magnopere vel-
lem, assecuturum me esse ; alteram, ut causæ huic no-
bilissimæ, et seculorum omnium memoriâ dignissimæ
nulla ex parte, quantum in me est, desim ; alteram, ut
reprehensam in adversario futilitatem et redundantiam,
devitâsse tamen ipse nihilo minus judicer, Dicam enim
res neque parvas neque vulgares; regem potentissimum,
oppressis legibus, religione afflicta, pro libidine reg-
nantem, tandem à suo populo, qui servitutem longam
servierat, bello victum ; indè im custodiam traditum ; et
cùm nullam omnimo meliùs de se sperandi materiam
vel dictis vel factis præberet, à summo demum regni
concilio capite damnatum ; et pro ipsis regiæ foribus
securi percussum. Dicam etiam, quod ad levandos
magna superstitione hominum animos multùm contu-
lerit, quo jure, præsertim apud nos, judicatum hoc at-
que peractum sit ; meosque cives fortissimos et integer-
rimos, deque universis orbis terrarum civibus ac popu-
lis egregiè meritos, ab improbissimis maledicorum, sive
nostratium, sive exterorum calumniis, tum imprimis ab
hujus inanissimi sophistæ maledictis, qui pro duce et
coryphæo cæterorum se gerit, facilè defendam. Quæ
enim ullius regis alto solio sedentis majestas unquam
tanta eluxit, quanta tum populi Anglicani effulgebat.
cùm, excussa illa veteri superstitione, quæ diu inva-
luerat, ipsum regem, seu potiùs de rege hostem, qui
solus mortalium impunitatem sibi divino jure vemdica-
bat, suis legibus irretitum judicio perfundere, et quo is
quemcumque alium supplicio affecisset, eodem sontem
* Printed fron an edition im folio, corrected by the authov,
ipsum afficere non vereretur. At quid ego haec tanquam
populi facta prædico ? quæ ipsa per se penè vocem
edunt, et præsentem ubique testantur Deum. Qui,
quoties suæ sapientissimæ menti complacitum est, su-
perbos et effrænatos reges, supra humanum modum sese
attollentes, solet deturbare, et tota saepe cum domo fun-
ditus evertit. Illius mos manifesto mumime ad salutem
et libertatem propè amissam subitò erecti, illum ducem
secuti, et impressa passim divina vestigia venerantes,
viam, haud obscuram sed illustrem, illius auspiciis
commonstratum et patefactam ingressi sumus. Haec
ego omnia dignè satis explicare, et quod omnes fortasse
gentes legant atque ætates, monumentis tradere, si di-
ligentiâ solum meâ, cujusmodicumque est, meis tamtum
viribus sperem me posse, frustra sim. Quæ enim oratio
tam augusta atque magnifica, quod tam excellens in-
genium, huic omeri subeundo par esse queat, ut, cùm
illustrium virorum aut civitatum res gestas vix reperia-
tur tot seculis qui luculentè possit scribere, opinetur
quisquam hæc, non hominum, sed omnipotentis planè
Dei, gloriosè et mirabilitèr facta ullis se verbis aut stylo
assequi posse ? Quod quidem munus ut susciperem,
tametsi summi in republica nostra viri sua authoritate
perfecerunt, mihique hoc negotium datum esse volue-
runt, ut quæ illi, Deo ductore, magnâ cum gloriâ ges-
sere, ea, quod certè proximum est, contra invidiam et ob-
trectationem, quas in res ferrum et apparatus belli nihil
potest, alio gemere armorum defenderem ; quorum ego
quidem judicium magno mihi ornamento esse existimo,
me scilicet eorum suffragiis eum esse præ cæteris, qui
hanc patriæ meæ fortissimis liberatoribus haud poeniten-
dam operam navarem: qùin et ipse ab ineunte adolescen-
tia iis eram studiis incensus, quæ me ad optima quæque
si minùs facienda, at certè laudanda, incitatum ferebant.
His tamen diffisus adminiculis, ad divinam opem re-
curro ; Deumque Opt. Max. domorum omnium largito-
rem invoco, ut quàm prosperè quamque piè nostri illi
ad libertatem clarissimi duces regios fastus, et domina-
650
PRÆFATIO.
tum impotentem, acie fregerunt, dein memorabili tan-
dem supplicio extinxerunt, quamque facili negotio
nuper unus de multis ipsum regem veluti ab inferis re-
surgentem, inque illo libro post mortem edito novis
argutiis, et verborum lenociniis, populi se venditantem
redarguit atque summovit, tam ego feliciter tamque
verè declamatoris hujus exotici petulantiam et menda-
cia refellam atque discutiam. Qui alienigena cùm sit,
et quamvis id millies meget, grammaticus, non ea stipe
contentus quam hoc nomine meretur, magmus ardelio
esse maluit; non reipub. solùm immiscere se ausus,
sed alienæ: cùm neque modestiam, neque judicium,
neque aliud quicquam afferat, quod oporteret sanè tam-
tum arbitrum, prætur arrogantiam et grammaticam.
Et sanè hæc quæ jam latinè utcumque scripsit, si inter
Anglos et nostro sermone protulisset, vix esset, credo,
qui de responso laborandum esse judicaret; sed par-
tim trita, et refutationibus jam crebris explosa, negli-
geret, partim tyrannica et foeda, vilissimo quovis man-
cipio vix ferenda, quamvis alioqui regias secutus ipse
partes, aversaretur. Nunc cùm inter exteros, et nos-
trarum rerum penitus ignaros grandi pagina turgescat,
sunt illi quidem, qui res nostras perperàm intelligunt,
edocendi ; hic suo more, (quandoquidem tanta maledi-
cendi aliis libidine fertur,) suo inquam more ac modo,
erit tractandus. Quod siquis miretur fortè, cur ergò
tam diu intactum et ovantem, mostroque omnium si-
lentio inflatum volitare passi simus, de aliis sanè ne-
scio, de me audacter possum dicere, non mihi verba aut
argumenta, quibus causam tuerer tam bonam, diu quæ-
renda aut investiganda fuisse, si otium et valetudinem
(quæ quidem scribendi laborem ferre possit) nactus
essem. Qua cum adhuc etiam tenui admodum utar,
carptim hæc cogor, et intercisis penè singulis horis,
vix attingere, quæ continenti stylo atque studio perse-
qui debuissem. Unde hoc si minùs dabitur, cives meos
præstantissimos, patriæ conservatores digno laudum
præconio celebrare, quorum immortalia facinora jam
toto orbe claruerunt; defendere tamem, et ab hujus im-
portuni literatoris insolentia, et professoriæ linguæ in-
temperiis, vindicare haud mihi difficile futurum spero.
IPessimè emim vel naturâ vel legibus comparatum foret,
si arguta servitus, libertas muta esset; et haberent ty-
ranni qui pro se dicerent, non haberent qui tyrannos
debellare possunt : miserum esset, si hæc ipsa ratio,
quo utimur Dei munere, non multò plura ad homines
conservandos, liberandos, et, quantum natura fert, in-
ter se tequandos, quàm ad opprimendos et sub unius
imperio malè perdendos, argumenta suppeditaret.
Causam itaque pulcherrimam hac certâ fiduciâ laeti
aggrediamur ; illinc fraudem, fallaciam, ignorantiam,
atque barbariem ; hinc lucem, veritatem, rationem, et
seculorum omnium optimorum studia, atque doctrinam
mobiscum stare.
Age nunc jam, satis præfati, quoniam cum criticis
res est, tam culti voluminis titulum imprimis videamus
quid ait ; * Defensio regia pro Carolo I. ad Car II.'
Magnum sanè præstas, O quisquis es! patrem defendis
ad filium ; mirum ni causam obtineas. Verùm ego te
falso aliàs sub nomine, nunc sub nullo latitantem, Sal-
masi, ad alia voco subsellia, ad alios judices, ubi tu
illud euge et sophôs, quod in palæstra tua literaria
captare miserè soles, fortasse non audies. Sed cur ad
regem filium defensio hæc regia? non opus est tortore,
confitentem habemus reum ; “ Sumptibus inquit rc-
giis.” O te venalem oratorem et sumptuosum ! Siccine
defensionem pro Carolo patre, tuâ sententiâ, rege opti-
mo, ad Carolum filium regem pauperrimum noluisti,
nisi sumptibus regiis ? Sed veterator etiam haud irri-
diculus esse voluisti, qui regiam defensionem dixeris ;
non enim ampliùs tua quam vendidisti, sed legitimè
jam regia defensio est ; centenis mimirum Jacobæis
emta, ingenti pretio ab egentissimo rege : non enim
ignota loquimur ; novimus qui illos aureos domum at-
tulit tuam, qui crumenam illam tessellis vitreis variatam,
novimus qui te avaras manus porrigentem vidit, in spe-
ciem quidem ut Sacellanum regis missum cum munere,
re vera ut ipsum munus amplecterere; et una tantùm mer-
cede acccpta totum penè regis ærarium exinanires. Sed
eccum ipsum, crepant fores, prodit histrio im proscenium.
Date operam et cum silentio animadvertite,
Ut pernoscatis quid sibi Eunuchus velit.
Nam quicquid est, præter solitum cothurmatus incedit.
* Horribilis nuper nuntius aures nostras atroci vulnere,
sed magis mentes, perculit, de parricidio apud Anglos
in persona regis sacrilegorum hominum nefaria con-
spiratione admisso.' Profectò nuntius iste horribilis
aut gladium multò longiorem eo quem strinxit Petrus
habuerit oportet, aut aures istæ auritissimæ fuerint,
quas tam longinquo vulnere perculerit: nam aures non
stolidas ne offendisse quidem potuit. Ecqua enim vo-
bis fit injuria, ecquis vestrùm læditur, si nos hostes et
perduelles nostros, sive plebeios, sive mobiles, sive re-
ges, morte multamus? At ista mitte, Salmasi, quæ ad
te nihil attinent : ego enim de te etiam horribilem ha-
beo quem apportem nuntium ; quique omnium gramma-
ticorum et criticorum aures, modò teretes habent et
doctas, atrociori vulnere si non perculerit, mirabor; de
parricidio apud Hollandos in persona Aristarchi, nefa-
riâ Salmasii audaciâ, admisso: te magnum scilicet cri-
ticum sumptibus regiis conductum, ut defensionem re-
giam scriberes, non solùm putidissimo exordio, præfi-
carum funebribus mugis et maemiis simillimo, mullius
mom fatui mentem miseratione permovisse, sed primâ
statim clausulâ risum penè legentibus multiplici bar-
barismo concitâsse. Quid enim, quæso, est parricidi-
um in personâ regis admittere, quid in personâ regis ?
quæ unquam latinitas sic locuta est ? nisi aliquem mo-
bis fortè Pseudophilippum narras, qui personam regis
indutus, nescio quid parricidii apud Anglos patrave-
rit ; quod verbum verius opinione tuâ ex ore tibi exci-
disse puto. Tyrammus enim, quasi histrionalis quidam
rex, larva tantùm et persona regis, non verus rex est.
Cæterùm ob hujusmodi noxas Gallicolatimas, quibus
passim scates, non tam mihi, neque enim est otium,
quàm ipsis tuis grammatistis poenas dabis; quibus ego
te deridendum et vapulandum propino. Hoc multò atro-
cius; quod à summis magistratibus nostris de regestatu-
tum est, id sacrilegorum hominum nefaria conspiratione
admissum ais. Tune, furcifer, potentissimi nuper reg-
ni, nunc reipub. eo potentioris, acta et consulta sic no-
minas ? quorum de factis nè rex quidem ullus ut quic-
PRAE FATIO.
651
quam gravius pronuntiaret, aut scriptum ederet, addu-
ci adhuc potuit. Merità itaque amplissimi Ordines Hol-
landite, liberatorum olim patriae vera progenies, defensi-
onem hanc tyrannicam, populorum omnium libertatipes-
tilentissimam, edicto suo tenebris damnărunt; cujus et
ipsum authorem onnis libera civitas suis prohibere ſini-
bus, aut ejicere, deberet: eague praecipue quae tam ingra-
tum tamgue tetrum reipublica hostem suo stipendio alit;
cujus ille reipublicae, haud secus atque nostrae, funda-
menta ipsa atque causas oppugnat; necnon utramgue
ună et eaſlem operá labefactare et subruere conatur;
praestantissimosque illic libertatis vindices nostrorum
sub nomine maledictis proscindit. Reputate jam vo-
biscum, illustrissimi fooderatorum Ordines, et cum
animis vestris cogitate, quis hunc regiae potestatis
assertorem ad scribendum impulerit, quis nuper apud
vos regiè se gerere incoeperit, quae consilia, qui comatus,
quae turbo denique per Hollandiam secutae sint, quae
nunc essent, quâm vobis parata servitus, novusque do-
minus erat, atque illa vestra tot annorum armis atque
laboribus vindicata libertas, quâm propè, extincta apud
vos nunc foret, nisi opportunissima nuper temerarii
juvenis morte respirãsset. Sed pergit iste noster am-
pullari, et mirabiles tragedias fingere, “ Quoscumque
inſandus hic,” parricidialis mimirum barbarismi Salma-
siani, “ rumor attigit, haud secus ac si fulmine afflati
essent, derepente his arrectaeque horrore comae et vox
faucibus hesit.” Quod nunc primitās auditum discant
physici, comas fulmine arrectas. Verum quis hoc
mescit, viles et imbelles animos, magni cujuspiam faci-
noris vel rumore, obstupescere; quodgue prius fuerunt,
tum se maximé stipites indicare. Alii “ lacrymas non
teauerunt,” mulierculae credo aulicae, autsiqui his mol-
liores; inter quos et inse Salmasius nova quadam me-
tamorphósi Salmacis factus est; et fonte hoc suo lacry-
marum fictitio, et nocte parato, viriles animos emollire
collatur. Moneo itaque et cavere jubeo,
infamis ne quem malê fortibus undis
Salmacis enervet. — ne vir clim venerit, exeat inde
Semivir, et tactis subitó mollescat in undis,
“Fortius veró,” inquit, “animati,” (nam fortes puto et
animosos ne nominare quiden nisi putide potest) tauta
“indignationis flammâ exarserunt, ut vix se caperent.”
Furiosos illos non flocci facimus; vera fortitudine
suique compote istos minaces pellere, et in fugam ver-
tere, consuevimus. “Nemo certé nom diras imprecatus
est tanti sceleris authoribus.” Vox tamen, uttu modó
aiebas, “faucibus hesit;” atque haesisset utinam in
hunc usque diem, si de nostris duntaxat perfugis hoc
vis intelligi, quod nos etiam pro comperto habemus,
nihil illis frequentius in ore esse, quâm diras et impre-
cationes, omnibus bonis abominandas quidem, mon
tamen metuendas, De aliis credibile vix est, cum
supplicii de rege sumti ſama illuc pervenisset, reper-
tum in libero presertim populo fuisse ullum, tam ad
servitutem matum, qui nos dicto laederet, aut factum
nostrum crimini daret; immo potius omnes bomosom-
nia bona dixisse; quinetiam Deo gratias egisse, qui
exemplum justitiae tam illustre et excelsum edideret,
oubdque cateris regibus tam salutari documento esse
’ nescio
possit. Istos itaque “ſeros ac ferreos caedem,”
cujus, “miserabilem ac mirabilem” plorantes, cum suo
tinnulo oratore, “post regium in orbe nomen natum
notumque,” frigidissimo, etiam atque etian plorare
jubemus. At quis interim é ludo feré puer, aut & coe-
nobio quovis fraterculus, casum hunc regis non multö
disertitis, immo latinius, hoc oratore regio declamitās-
set P Verum ego incotior sim, si infantiam hujus ct
deliramenta hunc in modum toto volumine accurate
persequar; quod tamen libens ſacerem, (quoniam super-
bià et fastidio, ut ferunt, supra modum turget,) mi mole
tantum libri inconcinna atque incondita se protegeret,
et veluti miles ille Terentianus post principia lateret:
callido same consilio, ut defessus singula notando etiam
acerrimus quisque, taedio prius conficerctur, quam om-
nia red argueret. Nunc ejus quoddam specimen dare
hac veluti prolusione dun taxat volui; et cordatis lec-
toribus à principio statim degustandum hominem prae-
bere, ut in hac paginae unius promulside experiamur
quam lauté nos et luculenter cacteris ferculis excepturus
sit; quantas ineptias atque infantias toto opere conges-
serit, qui tam densas, ubi minimè decuit, in ipsá fronte
collocavit. Exinde multa garrientem, et scombris con-
cionantem, facilé practerco; ad nostras autem res quod
attinet, haud dubitamus quin ea, quae authoritate par-
lamenti scripta publicé et declarata sunt, apud omnes
bonos et prudentes exteros plus ponderis habitura sint,
quam unius impudentissimi homuncionis calumniae, et
mendacia; qui ab exulibus nostris, patriae hostibus,
pretio conductus, quolibet eorum dictante quibus operam
suam locaverat, aut rumusculum spargente, falsissima
quaeque corradere, et in chartam conjicere, non dubita-
vit. Utdue planè intelligant omnes quâm non illi reli-
gio sit, quid libet scribere, verum an falsum, pium an
impium, haud alius mihi testis adhibendus crit, quâm
ipse Salmasius. Scribit is in Apparatu contra prima-
tum Papae, “maximas esse causas cur ecclesia redire
ab episcopatu debeat ad apostolicam ‘presbyterorum'
institutionem ; longé majus ex episcopatu introductum
in ecclesian esse malum, quâm illa schismata quae
prius metuebantur: pestem illam, quae ex co ecclesias
invasit, totum ecclesiae corpus miserabili tyrannide
pessundedisse; immo ipsos reges ac principes sub ju-
gum misisse; majorem in ecclesiam utilitatem redun-
daturam hierarchià totă extincta, quâm solo capite
Papa.” p. 169. “Posse episcopatum cum papatu tolli
cum summo bono ecclesiae; sublato episcopatu ruere
ipsum papatum, super illo utpote fundatum.” p. 171.
“Cur removeri debeat in illis regnis, quae jam papatuj
renuntiãrunt, proprias habere causas. Curibi episco-
patus retineatur se non videre; non integram videre
reformationem quae hac in parte imperfecta sit; millil
afferri posse rationis aut causae probabilis, cur sublato
papatu retineri debeat aut possit episcopatus.” p. 197,
Haec et multó plura cum ante annos quatuor scripserit,
tanta nunc vanitate et impudentia est, ut parlamentum
Angliae graviter incusare hoc loco audeat, quod episco-
patum “mon solium senatu ejiciendum, sed etiam peni-
tus abjiciendum, censuerint.” Quid 2 quëd ipsum
etiam episcopatum suadet atgue defendit, iisdem usus
argumentis et rationibus, quas libro illo priore magmo
652
PRÆFATIO.
impetu confutaverat ; * necessarios” nempe ** fuisse
episcopos, et omnino retinendos, ne mille pestiferæ
sectæ et hereses in Anglia pullularent.” O vafrum et
versipellem ! adeone te etiam in sacris non puduit de-
sultorem agere, propè dixeram, ecclesiam prodere ;
cujus tu ideò sanctissima instituta tanto strepitu asseru-
isse videris, ut quoties tibi commodum esset, eo majore
cum infamia ea ipsa ludificari atque subvertere posses.
Neminem hoc latet, cùm regni ordines, ecclesiæ mos-
træ, ad exemplum cæterarum, reformandæ studio fla-
grantes,•episcopatum funditùs tollere statuissent, primò
regem intercessisse, dein bellum nobis eâ potissimùm
causâ intulisse ; quod ipsi tandem in perniciem vertit. I
nunc, et te defensorem regium esse gloriare, qui, ut re-
gem gnaviter defendas, susceptam à temetipso ecclesiæ
causam nunc palàm prodis atque oppugnac : cujus
gravissimâ quidem censurâ esses motandus. De forma
autem reipub. nostræ, quoniam tu, professor triobolaris
et extraneus, remotis capsulis atque scriniis tuis muga-
rum refertissimis, quas meliùs in ordinem redigere po-
teras, in aliena repub. satagere et odiosus esse mavis,
sic breviter tibi, vel cuivis potiùs te prudentiori, re-
spondeo ; eam formam esse quam nostra tempora atque
dissidia ferunt ; non qualis optanda esset, sed qualem
abstinata improborum civium discordia esse patitur.
Quæ autem respublica factionibus laborat, atque armis
se tuetur, si sanæ et integræ tantùm partis rationem
habet, cæteros sive plebeios sive optimates præterit aut
excludit, satis profectò æqua est ; quamvis regem et
proceres, suis ipsa malis edocta, ampliùs nolit. “ Con-
cilium ” autem illud ** supremum,” quòd insectaris,
atque etiam “ concilii præsidem,” mæ tu ridiculus es ;
concilium enim illud, quod somnias, non est supremum,
sed parlamenti authoritate ad certum duntaxat tempus
constitutum, quadraginta virorum ex suo ferè numero,
quorum quilibet, cæterorum suffragiis, præses esse po-
test. Semper autem hoc usitatissimum fuit, ut par-
lamentum, qui noster sematus est, delectos ex suorum
numero pauciores, quoties visum erat, constitueret: iis
unum in locum ubivis conveniendi, et veluti minoris
cujusdam habendi senatùs, potestas delata est. Iisdem
res sæpè gravissimæ, quo celeriùs et majori cum silen-
tio transigerentur, commissæ atque creditæ ; classis,
exercitus, ærarii cura aut procuratio, quævis denique
pacis aut belli munia. Hoc, sive concilium nominetur,
sive quid aliud, verbo fortè novum, re antiquum est ;
et sine quo nulla omnino respub. rectè administrari
potest. De regis autem supplicio, et rerum apud nos
conversione, mitte vociferari, mitte virus illud tuum
acerbitatis evomere ; donec ista “ quâ lege, quo jure,
quo judicio” facta sint, te licèt repugnante, singulis
capitibus ostendam, et pedem conferam. Si tamen in-
stas “ quo jure, quâ lege,” eâ, inquam, lege quam Deus
ipse et natura sanxit, ut omnia, quæ reipub. salutaria
essent, legitima et justa haberentur. Sic olim sapi-
entes tui similibus responderunt. “ Leges per tot an-
nos ratas refixisse” nos criminaris; bonasne an malas
non dicis, mec si diceres audiendus esses, nam nostræ
leges ole quid ad te ? Utinam plures refixissent tum
leges, tum leguleios; rectiùs sanè et rei christianæ et
populo consuluissent. Frendes quòd “ hæc, Mamii,
terræ-filii, vix domi nobiles, vix suis noti, licere sibi
crediderint.” Meminisses quæ te non solùm libri
sacri, sed etiam lyricus doceat.
——— Valet ima summis
Mutare, et insignem attemuat Deus
Obscura promems ———
Sic etiam habeto; eorum, quos tu vix nobiles esse ais,
alios mulli vestrarum partium vel generis nobilitate
cedere; alios ex se natos per industriam atque virtutem
ad veram nobilitatem iter affectare, et cum nobilissimis
quibusque posse conferri ; se autem malle “ filios ter-
ræ ” dici, modò suæ, et domi strenuè facere, quam sine
terra et lare fumos vendendo, quod tu facis, homo nihili
et stramineus eques, in aliena terra dominorum nutu et
stipendio famem tolerare : ab ista, mihi crede, peregri-
natione ad agnatos potiùs et gentiles deducendus, nisi
hoc unum saperes, quòd frivolas quasdam prælectiones
et nugamenta scis tantâ mercede apud exteros effutire.
Reprehendis quòd magistratus nostri ** colluviem om-
nium sectarum recipiant;” quid ni recipiant? quos ec-
clesiæ est è cœtu fidelium ejicere, non magistratuum è
civitate pellere ; siquidem in leges civiles non peccant.
Primò homines, ut tutò ac liberè sine vi atque injuriis
vitam agerent, convenere in civitatem ; ut sanctè et
religiosè, in ecclesiam ; illa leges, hæc disciplinam ha-
bet suam, planè diversam : hinc toto orbe christiano
per tot annos bellum ex bello seritur, quòd magistratus
et ecclesia inter se officia confundunt. Quapropter et
papisticam minimè toleramus; neque enim eam tam
esse religionem intelligimus, quàm obtentu religionis
tyrannidem pontificiam civilis potentiæ spoliis ornatam,
quæ contra ipsum Christi institutum ad se rapuit.
“ Independentes,” quales à te solo finguntur, mulli
apud nos umquam visi ; præter eos duntaxat qui, cùm
classes et synodos supra ecclesiam quamque singularem
esse non agnoscant, eas omnes velut hierarchiæ par-
ticulas quasdam, aut certè truncum ipsum, eradicandas
esse tecum sentiunt. Hinc nomen Independentium
apud vulgus obtinuit. Quod restat ; video te id agere,
ut regum omnium et monarcharum non invidiam solùm,
sed etiam bellum atrocissimum, in nos concites. Olim
rex Mithridates, quamvis causâ dissimili, omnes reges
in Romanos concitabat, eadem propè calumniatus;
Romanis consilium esse, omnia regna subvertere, iis
mulla humana neque divina obstare, à principio nihil
nisi partum armis habuisse, latrones, regnorum max-
imè hostes : hæc Mithridates regi Arsaci: te verò in
illa tua exedra infantissimè rhetoricantem quæ fiducia
proxevit, ut ad bellum hortando, et licèt nolis videri,
“ classicum canendo,” ullum vel inter pueros regem
commovere te posse animum induceres; isto præsertim
ore tam exili et ramcidulo, ut ne mures quidem Ho-
mericos, te buccinatore, bellum unquam ranumculis
illaturos fuisse credam ? Tantum abest ut metuam
quid tu belli nobis aut periculi, homo ignavissime, apud
exteros reges istâ tuâ rabidâ et insulsâ simul facundiâ
conflare possis: qui ad illos, ac si ** regum capita*
quasi “ pilas habeamus, de coronis quasi trocho luda-
mus, sceptra imperialia non pluris faciamus quàm bacula
morionum capitata,” lusoriè sanè nos defers. At tu
PRÆFATIO.
653
interea, stultissimum caput, morionis ipse baculo dig-
missimus es, qui reges ac principes tam puerilibus argu-
mentis ad bellum suaderi putes. Omnes deinde popu-
los inclamas, dicto audientes tuo, sat scio, minimè
futuros. Hibernorum etiam consceleratam illam ac
barbaram colluviem regiis partibus in auxilium vocas.
Quod unicum indicio esse potest quàm scelestus sis et
væcors, quàm omnes penè mortales impietate, audacia,
et furore, superes, qui devotæ gentis fidem atque
opem implorare non dubitas, cujus ab impia societate,
tot civium innocentissimorum sanguine perfusa, etiam
rex ipse aut abhorruit semper, aut abhorrere se si-
mulavit. Et quam ille perfidiam, quam ille crudeli-
tatem occultare, quantum potuit, atque ab se longè
amovere, summo studio contendit, eam tu, bipedum
nequissime, quo minùs ultrò atque palàm suscipias,
neque Deum neque homines vereris. Agedum ;
Hibernis igitur fautoribus ac sociis ad defensionem re-
gis jam te accinge. Caves imprimis, quod cauto me-
hercule opus erat, nequis te Tullio fortasse aut Demos-
theni omnem eloquentiæ laudem præreptum ire suspi-
caretur; et prædicis, “ oratorio more non tibi agendum
videri.” Næ tu haud stultè sapis ; id quod non potes,
mom videtur tibi esse agendum ; oratoriè autem ut tu
ageres, quis, qui te satis novit, unquam expectavit ?
qui nihil elaboratè, nihil distinctè, nihil quod sapiat,
in lucem emittere aut soles aut potes ; sed veluti Cris-
pinus alter, aut Tzetzes ille græculus, modò ut multum
scribas, quàm rectè, non laboras ; neque si labores
valeas. * Agetur,” inquis, “ haec causa, toto orbe au-
diente, et quasi ad judicandum sedente.” Id adeò
nobis pergratum est, ut adversarium non cerebrosum et
imperitum, qualis tu es, sed cordatum et intelligentem
dari jam nobis optemus. Perorans planè tragicus es,
immò Ajax ipse Lorarius : “ Horum ego injustitiam,
impietatem, perfidiam, crudelitatem, proclamabo cœlo
et terræ, ipsosque authores convictos posteris tradam,
reosque peragam.” O Flosculos ! Tune igitur sine
sale, sine genio, proclamator et rabula, bonis authori-
bus divexandis tantùm aut transcribendis natus, quic-
quam de tuo quod vivat producere te putas posse ?
quem unà cum scriptis tuis futilissimis abreptum ætas,
mihi crede, proxima oblivioni mandabit. Nisi si de-
fensio hæc regia suo fortasse responso aliquid debitura
est, si neglecta jam pridem et consopita, in manus ite-
rum sumatur. Idque ego ab illustrissimis Hollandiæ
Ordinibus peterem, ut eam è fisco protinus dimissam,
neque enim thesaurus est, pervagari, quò velit, sinant.
Si enim qua vanitate, inscitia, falsitate, referta sit,
planum omnibus fecero, quò latiùs excurrit, eò arctiùs,
meâ quidem sententiâ, supprimitur. Jam nos quem-
admodum “ reos peragat,” videamus.
D E F E N S I O P R O P O P U L O A N G L I C A N O,
CONTRA
CLAUDII SALMASII DEFENSIONEM REGIAM.
CAPUT I.
QUONIAM tibi, vano homini et ventoso, multum hinc
forsitan superbiæ, Salmasi, multum spiritùs accessit,
magnæ scilicet Britanniæ regem fidei defensorem esse,
te verò regis, ego quidem et illum regi titulum, et hunc
tibi jare pari ac merito concedam : cum sanè rex fidem,
tu regem sic defenderis, ut causam uterque suam ever-
tisse potiùs videatur. Quod cum passim infrà, tum
hoc primo capite ostendam. Dixeras tu quidem prae-
fationis paginâ duodecimâ “ ornari pigmentis rhetoricis
tam bonam et justam causam non debere : nam sim-
pliciter rem, ut gesta est, marrare, regem defendere est.”
Quando igitur toto hoc capite, in quo narrationem illam
simplicem futuram pollicitus eras, neque rem simplici-
ter, ut gesta est, narras, neque non pigmentis, quamtum
in eo genere consequi potes, rhetoricis ornas, profectò
vel tuo judicio si standum esset, causa regia neque
bona neque justa erit. Quanquam hoc cave tibi sumas
quod dat nemo, posse te quicquam rhetoricè marrare;
qui meque oratoris, meque historici, immò me caussidici
quidem partes narrando sustinere potes ; sed quasi cir-
culator quispiam, arte circumforamea, magnam de te
in proœmio, velut in posterum diem, expectationem
concitabas, non tam ut rem promissam tum demùm
narrares, quàm ut pigmenta illa misera, et ampullas
fuco refertas, lectoribus quàm plurimis divenderes.
Nam “ de facto dicturus tot novitatum monstris te cir-
cundari ac terreri sentis, ut quid primum exequaris,
quid deinde, quid postremò, nescias.” Hoccine est
simpliciter narrare ? Dicam quod res est, tot tuorum
ipse mendaciorum monstris primum terreri te sentis,
deinde tot mugis, tot ineptiis levissimum illud caput
non “ circumdari” solùm, sed circumagi, “ ut quid pri-
mum, quid deinde, quid postremò” dicendum ullo tem-
pore sit, non modò nunc “ nescias,” sed munquam antea
non nesciveris. “ Inter difficultates quæ occurrunt
ad exprimendam tam incredibilis flagitii immanitatem
hoc unum facile dictu suppetit, quod iterum iterumque
repeti debet,” nempe “ solem ipsum atrocius factum
nunquam adspexisse alterum.” Multa sol aspexit,
bone magister, quæ Bernardus mom vidit. Solem autem
654
PRO POPULO ANGLICANO DEFENSIO.
iterum atque iterum repetas licebit, id tu quidem pru-
denter feceris, quod nom mostra flagitia, sed defensionis
tuæ frigus vehementissimè postulabit. “ Regum,”
inquis, “ origo cum sole movo cœpit.” Dii te, Dama-
sippe, deaeque solstitio donent, quo te calfacias, qui me
pedem sine “ sole ;'' nequis fortasse te umbraticum
doctorem esse dicat. At hercle etiam in temebris es,
qui jus patrium à regio non distinguis : et cùm reges
patriæ patres nominaveris, eâ statim metaphorâ per-
suasisse credis, ut quicquid de patre mom negaverim,
id comtinuò de rege verum esse comcedam. Pater et
rex (liversissima sunt.
nos, sed mos regem creavimus. Patrem matura dedit
populo, regem ipse populus dedit sibi ; non ergò prop-
ter regem populus, sed propter populum rex est ; feri-
mus patrem, morosum etiam et durum, fe.imus et
regem ; sed me patrem quidem ferimus tyranmum.
Pater si filium interficit, capite pœnas dabit : cur non
item rex eadem justissima lege tenebitur, si populum,
id est, filios suos, perdiderit ? præsertim cùm pater, ut
me pater sit, efficere non possit, rex facilè possit, ut me-
que pater sit neque rex, Quod si “ de facti qualitate,”
quod ais, “indè” æstimandum est, tibi dico, peregrine,
et rebus nostris alienissime, testis oculatus et indigema
tibi dico ; mos regem neque “bonum,” neque “ justum,”
neque “ clementum,” meque ** religiosum,” neque
“ pium,” neque “ pacificum;” sed hostem prope decem-
malem ; nec parentem patriæ, sed vastatorem, “ de
medio sustulisse.” “ Solet hoc fieri,” fateris, inficias
enim ire non audes, “ sed non à reformatis, regi re-
formato.” Siquidem reformatus is dici potest, qui,
scriptis ad papam literis, sanctissimum appellaverat pa-
trem, qui papistis æquior semper quàm orthodoxis fuit.
Talis cùm fuerit, ne suæ quidem familiæ primus à re-
formatis est “ de medio” sublatus. Quid ? ejus avia
Maria nonme à reformatis exuto regno solum vertere
coacta est, supplicio demùm capitis affecta, me Scotis
quidem reformatis ægrè ferentibus ? immo si operam
contulisse dicam, haud mentiar. In tanta autem regum
** reformatorum ° paucitate, nihil hujusmodi accidisse,
ut eorum aliquis morte plecteretur, non est quod mire-
mur. Licere autem regem nequam, sive tyrannum,
regno pellere, vel supplicio quovis, prout meritus erit,
punire, (etiam summorum sententiâ theologorum, qui
ipsi reformamdæ ecclesiæ authores fuere,) aude tu modò
megare, Comcedis quàm plurimos reges mom sicca
morte periisse, hunc “ gladio,” illum “ veneno,” alium
squalore * carceris,” aut “laqueo.” Omnium tamem
hoc tibi miserrimum videtur, et monstri quiddam si-
mile, regem in judicium adduci, “ causam capitis dicere
coactum, condemnatum, securi percussum.” Dic mihi,
homo insipientissime, annon humanius, ammon æquius,
annon ad legis omnium civitatum accommodatius est,
cujuscunque criminis reum in judicio sistere, sui de-
fendendi copiam facere, lege condemnatum ad mortem
haud immeritam ducere, ità ut damnato vel pœnitendi,
vel se colligendi, spatium detur, quàm statim ut pre-
hensus est, indictâ causâ, pecudis in modum mactare ?
Quotusquisque est reorum, qui, si optio detur, non illo
potiùs quàm hoc modo puniri se maluerit ? Quæ ratio
igitur animadvertendi in civem moderatior est habita,
Pater nos genuit ; at nom rex
cur non eadem in regem quoque moderatior, et vel ipsi
regi acceptior, fuisse existimanda est ? Tu secretò et.
sime arbitris extinctum regem malebas, vel ut exempli
tam boni salubritate omnis memoria careret, vel ut facti
tam præclari conscientia defugisse lucem, aut leges
atque ipsam justitiam minimè sibi amicam habuisse,
videretur. Exaggeras deinde rem, quòd neque per
tumultum aut factionem optimatium, aut rebellium
furorem, sive militum sive populi ; non odio, non metu,
non studio domimamdi, non cæco animi impetu, sed
consilio et ratione, meditatum diu facinus peregerint.
O meritò quidem ex te jurisconsulto grammaticum !
qui ab accidentibus causæ, ut loquuntur, quæ per se
nihil valent, vituperationes instituis, cum nondum do-
cueris illud facimus in vitio an in laude ponendum sit:
jam vide quàm in te facilè incurram. Si pulchrum et
decorum fuit ; eò magis laudandi quòd, mullis affecti-
bus occupati, solius honestatis causâ fecerint; si ar-
duum et grave, quòd mom cæco impetu, sed consilio et
ratione. Quanquam ego hæc divino potiùs instinctu
gesta esse crediderim, quoties memoriâ repeto, quàm
inopinato animorum ardore, quanto consensu totus
exercitus, cui magna pars populi se adjunxerat, ab
omnibus penè regni provinciis una voce regem ipsum
suorum omnium malorum authorem ad supplicium
deposcebat. Quicquid erat, sive magistrum sive po-
pulum spectes, mulli unquam excelsiore animo, et, quod
etiam adversarii fatentur, sedatiore, tam egregium fa-
cimus et vel heróicis ætatibus dignum, aggressi sunt:
quo non leges tantùm et judicia, dehimc mortalibus ex
æquo restituta, sed ipsam justitiam nobilitârunt, séque
ipsâ illustriorem dehinc, séque ipsâ majorem post hoc
insigme judicium, reddidere. Jam tertiam prope hujus
capitis paginam exantlavimus, nec tamen illa simplex
narratio, quam promisit, usquam apparet. Queritur
mos docere, “ quoties rex molestè et odiosè regnat, im.
punè posse regno exui : ab hac,” inquit, “ doctrina
inducti, si mille rebus meliorem regem habuissent, non
ei vitam conservâssent.” Spectate hominis acumem ;
mam istuc aveo ex te scire, quo pacto hoc sequitur, nisi
tu nobis concesseris, nostro rege mille rebus meliorem
molestè et odiosè regnare ; unde in eum deductus es
locum, ut humc quem defendis, iis regibus qui molestè
et odiosè regnant mille rebus deteriorem facias; id est
tyrannorum omnium fortasse immanissimum. ' Macfi
estote reges tam strenuo defensore. Nunc narrare im-
cipit. * Torserunt eum variis crucibus.” Dic quibus.
“ De carcere in carcerem traduxerunt.” Nec injuriâ,
quippe ex tyranno hostem bello captum. “ Custodiis
sæpè mutatis:” ne ipsæ mutarent fidem. “ Libertatis
interdum spe ostensa, interdum et rcstitutionis per pac-
tionem.” Vide quàm non antea meditatum mobis fuerit,
quam non “ tempora et modos” diu captavimus regis
abdicandi. Quas res ab eo tum propemodùm victore
multo antè postulavimus, quæ nisi concederentur, nulla
libertas, nulla salus populo speranda erat, easdem à
captivo suppliciter, haud semel, immò ter et ampliùs
petivimus; toties repulsam accepimus. Cum nulla de
rege spes reliqua esset, fit parlamenti consultum illud
nobile, nequa deinceps ad regem postulata mitterentur;
non ex quo is tyrannus esse, sed ex quo insanabilis
PRO POPULO ANGLICANO DEFENSIO. 6:55
esse, coepit. Postea tamen quidam ex scnatorum nu-
mero mova sibi consilia capientes, et idoneum tempus
macti, conditiones iterum regi ferendas decernunt; pari
sanè scelere atque dementia ac Romamus olim senatus,
reclamante Marco Tullio et cum eo bonis omnibus, le-
gatos decrevit ad Antonium : pari etiam eventu, nisi
Deo immortali visum aliter fuisset, illos in servitutem
tradere, nos in libertatem vindicare. Nam cùm rex
nihilo plus quàm antea concessisset, quod ad firmam
pacem et compositionem revera spectaret, illi tamen
satisfactum sibi à rege esse statuunt. Pars itaque
sanior, cùm se vemque publicam prodi videret, fidem
fortissimi et semper reipub. fidissimi exercitùs implorat.
In quo mihi quidem hoc solum occurrit quod nolim
dicere, nostras legiones rectiora sensisse quàm patres
conscriptos : et salutem reipub. armis attulisse, quam
illi suis suffragiis propè damnaverant. Multa deinde
flebiliter marrat, verùm tam inscitè, ut luctum emendi-
care, non commovere, videatur. Dolet, quòd “ eo modo,
quo nullus umquam, rex supplicium capitis passus sit :”
cùm sæpiùs affirmaverit, nullum unquam regem sup-
plicium capitis omnino esse passum. Tune, fatue, mo-
dum cum modo conferre soles, ubi factum cum facto
quod conferas non habes ? * Supplicium,” inquit,
“ capitis passus est, ut latro, ut sicarius, ut parricida,
ut proditor, ut tyrannus.” Hoccine est regem de-
fendere, an sententiam de rege ferre, eâ sanè quæ à
nobis lata est, multò severiorem ? quis te tam subitò
pellexit ut nobiscum pronuntiares ? Queritur ** persom-
atos carnifices regi caput amputâsse.” Quid hoc ho-
mine facias ? questus est suprà “ de parricidio in per-
soma regis admisso,” nunc im persona carmificis admis-
sum queritur. Quid reliqua percurram, partim falsis-
sima, partim frivola “ de pugnis et calcibus” militum
gregariorum, et licentiâ “ spectamdi cadaveris quatuor
solidis taxatâ,” quæ frigidissimi literatoris inscitiam et
pusillitatem animi clamitant ; legentem certè neminem
pilo tristiorem reddere possunt : satius mehercule
fuisset Carolo filio, quemvis ex eo balatromum grege
comduxisse, qui ad coronam in triviis elegidia camtant,
quàm oratorem hunc, (luctificabilem dicam, an perridi-
culum ?) deplorando patris infortunio adhibuisse ; tam
insipidum et insulsum, ut me ex lacrymis quidem ejus
mica salis exiguissima possit exprimi. Narrare jam
desiit ; et quid deinde agat, dictu sanè difficile est;
adeò lutulentus et enormis fluit; nunc fremit, nunc
oscitat, nullum quidlibet garriendi modum sibi statuit,
vel decies eadem repetendi, quæ ne semel quidem dicta
non sordescerent. Et certè nescio, an blateromis cujus-
piam extemporales quælibet mugæ, quas ille uno pede
stans versiculis fortè effuderit, non digniores multo sint
quæ chartâ illinantur ; adeò indignissimas esse reor
quibus seriò respondeatur. Prætereo quòd regem
“ religionis protectorem * laudat, qui ecclesiæ bellum
intulit, ut episcopos religionis hostes et tyrammos in
ecclesia retineret. “ Puritatem autem religionis” qui
potuit is conservare, ab impurissimis episcoporum tra-
ditionibus et cæremoniis ipse sub jugum missus ?
“ Sectarum ” verò, quibus tu ** sacrilegos suos coetus
tenendi licentiam ” ais “ dari,” quam ipsa Hollandia
mom dat, errores velim enumeres : interim nemo te
magis sacrilegus, qui perpetuò maledicendi pessimam
omnium ]icentiam tibi sumis. “ Non poterant gra-
viùs rempubl. laedere quàm ejus dominum tollendo.”
Disce, verna, disce, mastigia, nisi dominum tollis, tollis
rempublicam : privata rcs est, non publica quae domi-
num habet. * At pastores facinus eorum abominantes
cum summa imjustitia persequuntur.” Pastores illos me-
quis fortè nesciat quales sint, breviter dicam ; iidem
sunt qui regi resistendum armis esse, et verbo et scriptis
docuerunt; qui omnes tamquam Merozum indesinenter
execrari non destiterunt, quotquot huic bello aut arma,
aut pecuniam, aut vires, non suppeditâssent ; quod illi
mon contra regem, sed contra tyrannum Saule quovis
aut Achabo, immo Nerone ipso, Neroniorem susceptum
esse in concionibus sacris vaticinabantur. Sublatis
episcopis et sacerdotibus, quos pluralistarum et non re-
sidentium nomine insectari vehementissimè solebamt,
in eorum amplissima sacerdotia, hic bima, ille trima,
quàm ocyssimè irruebant: unde suos greges quàm
turpiter negligant pastores isti meritò egregii nemo
non videt : nullus pudor, nulla numinis reverentia, de-
mentes cupiditate et furiatos cohibere potuit, donec
pessimo ecclesiæ publico eâdem ipsi infaniâ flagrarent,
quam paulò antè sacerdotibus in usserant. Nunc quòd
avaritia eorum nondum satiata est, quòd inquies ambi-
tione animus turbas concire, pacem odisse, consuevit,
in magistratus qui nunc sunt, id quod priùs im regem
fecerant, seditiosè concionari non desinunt; regem
scilicet pium crudeliter sublatum ; quem modò ipsi
diris omnibus devotum, omni authoritate regia spo-
liandum, et bello sacro persequendum, in manus
parlamento, quasi divinitùs, tradiderant; sectas scilicet
mom extirpari, quod certè à magistratibus postulare per-
absurdum est, qui avaritiam et ambitionem, quæ duæ
in ecclesia hæreses perniciosissimæ sunt, ex ipsorum
ordine pastorum ac tribu, mullo adhuc modo aut ratione
extirpare valuerunt. Quas illi sectas apud nos insectan-
tur, obscuras esse scio, quas ipsi sequumtur, famosas, et
ecclesiæ Dei longè periculosiores ; quarum principes
Simon ille MIagus et Diotrephes fuere. IIos tamen,
nequissimi cùm sint, adeò non persequimur, ut factiosis,
et res novas quotidie molientibus nimiùm indulgeamus.
Offendit jam te Gallum et errabundum, quod Amgli
“ suis molossis,” quæ tua camina facundia est, ** fero
ciores,” nullam “legitimi successoris et haeredis ”
regni, nullam “ matu minimi,” nullam * reginæ Bohe-
miæ ” ratiomem habuerint. Tute respondebis tibi, mom
ego. “ Ubi reipub. forma mutatur ex monarchica in
aliam, non datur successio inter differentis regiminis
curatores.” Apparat. de Primatu. “ Minima,” inquis,
“ regni unius pars ” hæc omnia “ per tria regna ” ef-
fecit : et digni quidem, si hoc verum esset, quibus in
cæteros imperium sit, viris in foemimas. “ Isti sunt
qui regimem regni antiquum in alium qui à pluribus
tyrannis temeatur, mutare præsumpserunt;” rectè qui-
dem illi et feliciter ; quos tu reprehendere non potes,
quim simul foedissimè barbarus et soloecus sis, mom mo-
ribus solùm, sed syntaxi etiam, grammaticorum oppro-
brium. “ Amgli maculam hauc uunquam deleverint.”
Immò tu, licèt omnium literatorum litura ipse sis, et
verè macula, Anglorum tamen famam ct sempiternam
656
PRO POPULO ANGLICANO DEFENSIO.
gloriam nunquam valueris commaculare. Qui tanta
animi magnitudine, quanta omni memoriâ vix audita
est, non hostes tantùm armatos, sed hostiles intus, id
est, superstitiosas vulgi opiniones eluctati atque super-
gressi, liberatorum cognomen posthac per omnes gentes
in commune sibi pepererunt : popnlariter id ausi, quod
apud alias nationes heróicæ tantùm virtutis esse ex-
istimatur. “ Reformati et antiqui christiani” quid hac
in parte fecerint, aut facturi essent, tum respondebi-
mus, cùm de jure tecum suo loco agetur ; ne tuo vitio
laboremus, qui gerrones omnes et battos loquacitate vin-
cis. Quæris quid sis in nostra causa Jesuitis responsurus.
Tuas res age, transfuga ; pudeat te facinorum tuorum,
quando ecclesiam tui pudet ; qui primatum papæ, et
episcopos, tam jactanter modò et ferociter adortus, nunc
episcoporum assecla factus es. Fateris “ aliquos refor-
matorum,” quos non nominas, (ego tamen nominabo,
quoniam tu eos “ Jesuitis longè pejores esse” ais, Lu-
therum nempe, Zuinglium, Calvinum, Bucerum, Pa-
ræum, cum aliis multis,) docuisse, ** amovendum esse”
tyrannum : “ quis autem sit tyrannus ad judicium
sapientium et doctorum se retulisse. Isti vero qui ? an
sapientes, an docti, am virtute nobiles, an nobilitate il-
lustres.” Liceat, quæso, populo, qui servitutis jugum
in cervicibus grave sentit, tam sapienti esse, tam docto,
tamque nobili, ut sciat quid tyranno suo faciendum sit,
etiamsi neque exteros, neque grammaticos sciscitatum
mittat. Tyrannum autem fuisse hunc, non Angliae so-
lùm et Scotiæ parlamenta cùm verbis tum factis diser-
tissimis declaraverunt, sed totus ferè utriusque regni
populus assentitus est ; donec episcoporum technis et
fraudibus in duas postea factiones discessit. Quid si
Deus, quemadmodum eos qui lucis evangelicæ parti-
cipes fiant, ità eos qui decreta ejus in reges hujus mun-
di potentissimos exequantur, non multos sapientes aut
doctos, non multos potentes, non multos nobiles esse
voluit? ut per eos qui mom sunt aboleret eos qui sunt;
ut me glorietur caro coram eo. Tu quis es qui oblatras ?
an doctus ? qui spicilegia, qui lexica et glossaria ad
senectutem usque trivisse potiùs videris, quàm authores
bonos cum judicio aut fructu perlegisse ? unde nil præ-
ter codices, et varias lectiones, et luxatum et mendo-
sum, crepas; doctrinæ solidioris ne guttulam quidem
hausisse te ostendis. An tu sapiens ? qui de minutiis
minutissimis rixari et mendicorum bella gerere soles,
qui nunc astronomis, nunc medicis, in sua arte creden-
dis, imperitus ipse et rudis, convitia dicis; qui, siquis
tibi voculæ unius aut literulæ in exemplari quovis ab
te restitutæ gloriolam præripere conaretur, igni et aquâ,
si posses, illi interdiceres ? Et tamen stomacharis, et
tamen ringeris, quòd omnes te grammaticum appellant.
Hamondum, nuper regis hujus sacellanum imiprimis
dilectissimum, in libro quodam nugatorio, nebulonem
appcllas, quòd is te grammaticum appellavisset: idem,
credo, esses ipsi regi convitium facturus, et defensionem
hanc totam retractaturus, si sacellani sui de te judicium
approbâsse audivisses. Jam vide quàm te Anglorum
unus, quos tu “fanaticos, indoctos, obscuros, improbos,”
vocitare audes, contemnam et ludibrio habeam, (nam
mationem ipsam Anglicanam de te quicquam publicè
cogitare curculiunculo, indignissimum esset,) qui sur-
sùm, deorsùm, quoquoversùm versatus et volutatus,
nihil nisi grammaticus es: immo ac si Deo cuilibet
votum ipso Midâ stultius nuncupâsses, quicquid attrec-
tas, nisi cùm soloecismos facis, grammatica est. Quis-
quis igitur “ de fæce illa plebis,” quam tu exagitas,
(illos emim verè optimates mostros, quorum sapientiam,
virtutem, et nobilitatem, facta inclyta satis testantur,
non sic dehonestabo, ut te illis, aut tibi illos componere
velim,) quisquis, inquam, de fæce illa plebis hoc tan-
tummodò sibi persuascrit, non esse se regibus natum,
sed Deo et patriæ, multò sanè te doctior, multò sapi-
entior, multò probior, et ad omnem vitam utilior, ex-
istimandus erit. Nam doctus ille sine literis, tu litera-
tus sine doctrina ; qui tot linguas calles, tot volumina
percurris, tot scribis, et tamen pecus es.
CAPUT II.
Quod argumentum pro se “ indubitatum ” esse, supe-
riore capite perorans dixerat Salmasius, “ rem ità se
habere ut creditur, cùm omnes unamimiter idem de ea
sentiant;” quod tamen is “ de facto” falsissimè affir-
mabat, id ego munc, de jure regio disceptaturus, potero
in ipsum verissimè affirmare. Cùm enim regem defi-
niat, “ cujus suprema est in regno potestas, nulli alii
nisi Deo obnoxia, cui quod libet licet, qui legibus solu-
tus est,” siquidem id definiri dicendum est, quod infi-
mitum in terris ponitur: evincam ego contrà, non meis
tantùm, sed vel ipsius testimoniis, et rationibus, nullam
gentem aut populum, qui quidem ullo numero sit, nam
omnem penetrare barbariem necesse non est, nullam, in-
quam, gentem istiusmodi jura aut potestatem regi con-
cessisse, ** ut legibus solutus esset, ut quod libet liceret,
ut omnes judicaret, à memine judicaretur;” nec verò
ullum, cujuscumque gentis tam servili ingenio exsti-
tisse puto, præter unum Salmasium, qui tyranno-
rum immania quæque flagitia regum jura esse asseve-
rârit. Eorum plerique apud nos, qui regi maximè
favebant, ab hac tam turpi sententia semper abhorruere;
quinetiam ipse, nondum pretio corruptus, his de rebus
longè aliter sensisse aliis jampridem scriptis facilè de-
prehenditur. Adeò ut hæc non ab homine libero in
libera civitate, nedum in repub. mobilissima, et Bata-
vorum academia celeberrima, sed in ergastulo quovis
aut catastra, tam servili vernilitate scripta esse videam-
tur. Etenim, si quicquid regi libet, id jure regio lici-
tum erit, (quod teterrimus ille Antoninus Caracalla, ab
Julia noverca per incestum edoctus, non statim ausus
est crcdere,) nemo profectò est, aut unquam fuit, qui
tyrannus dici debeat. Cùm enim divina omnia atque
humana jura violavit, nihilo tamen minùs rex, jure re-
gio insons erit. Quid enim peccavit homo tequissimus?
jure suo usus est in suos. Nihil rex tam horrendum,
tam crudele, támque furiosum, committere in suos po-
test, quod præter jus regium fieri quispiam possit queri
aut expostulare. Hoc “ tu jus regium à jure gentium,
vel potiùs naturali, originem habere” statuis, bellua ?
Quid enim hominem te dicam, qui in omne hominum
genus adeò iniquus et inhumanus es; quique omnem
PRO POPULO ANGLICANO DEFENSIO.
657
gentem humanam, Deo simillimam, sic deprimere at-
que projicere conaris, ut quos nunc superstitio, numc
scelus aut ignavia quorumdam, aut denique perfidia,
tam feros atque immites dominos gentibus imposuit, eos
à natura matre mitissima comparatos atque impositos
esse doceas. Quâ tu nefariâ doctrinâ multò jam fero-
ciores factos, non solùm ad proterendos omnes mortales,
et posthac miseriorem in modum conculcandos, immit-
tis, sed jure naturali, jure regio, ipsis etiam populi legi-
bus, in populum armare, quo nihil simul stultius et
sceleratius esse potest, contendis. Dignus profectò qui,
contrà atque olim Dionysius, ex grammatico tyrannus
ipse sis; non quo tibi in alium quemvis detur illa re-
gia licentia malè faciendi, sed illa altera malè pereundi:
quâ solâ, ut inclusus ille Capreis Tiberius, à temetipso
perditus quotidie te sentias perire. Verùm jus illud
regium paulò accuratiùs quale sit consideremus. “ Sic
oriens totus,” inquis, * judicavit, sic occidens.” Non
reponam tibi quod Aristoteles et Marcus Cicero, autho-
res, si qui alii, cordatissimi, ille in Politicis, hic in ora-
tione de provinciis scripsit, gentes Asiaticas facilè ser-
vitutem pati, Judæos autem et Syros servituti matos
fuisse: fateor paucos ferè libertatem velle, aut ea posse
uti, solos nempe sapientes, et magnanimos; pars longè
maxima justos dominos mavult, sed tamen justos; in-
justos et intolerabiles ferendi, neque Deus unquam
universo generi humano tam infensus fuit, neque ullus
unquam populus tam ab omni spe et consilio derelic-
tus, ut necessitatem hanc atque legem, omnium duris-
simam, in se atque in suos liberos ultrò statueret. Pro-
fers imprimis “ verba regis in Ecclesiaste sapientiâ
clari.” Nos itaque ad legem Dei provocamus, de rege
posteriùs videbimus; cujus exinde sententiam rectiùs
intelligemus. Audiatur ipse Deus, Deut. 17. ** Cùm
ingressus fueris in terram, quam Jehova Deus dat
tibi, et dices, statuam super me Regem, sicut omnes
gentes quæ sunt circa me : ” Quod ego omnes velim
etiam atque etiam animadvertant, teste hic ipso Deo,
penes populos omnes ac nationes arbitrium semper
fuisse, vel ea, quæ placeret, forma reipub. utendi,
vel hanc in aliam mutandi : de Hebræis disertè hoc
dicit Deus, de reliquis haud abnuit : deinde for-
mam reipub. monarchia perfectiorem, ut sunt res hu-
manæ, suique populi magis ex usu Deo visam esse :
cum hanc ipse formam instituerit; monarchiam non
misi serò petentibus, idque ægrè, concederet. Sin re-
gem planè vellent, ut ostenderet Deus id se Jiberum
populo reliquisse, ab uno am à pluribus respub. ad-
ministraretur, modò justè, regi etiam futuro leges con-
stituit, quibus cautum erat, nt “ ne multiplicet sibi
equos, ne uxores, me divitias ;" ut intelligeret nihil sibi
in alios licere, qui nihil de se statuere extra legem po-
tuit. Jussus itaque est “ omnia legis illius præcepta,”
etiam suâ manu perscribere ; perscripta ** observare;
ne efferatur animus ejus præ fratribus suis.” Ex quo
perspicuum est, regem æquè ac populum istis legibus
astrictum fuisse. In hanc ferme sententiam scripsit
Josephus, legum suæ gentis interpres idoneus, in sua
repub. versatissimus, mille aliis tenebrionibus Rabbinis
anteponendus. Antiquitat. lib. 4. 'AptoTorparia μὲν οῦν
κράτιστον, &c. “ Optimum est,” inquit, “ optimatium
regimen ; nec vos alium reipub. statum requiratis; satis
enim est Deum habere præsidem. Attamen si tanta
vos regis cupido ceperit, plus legibus et Deo tribuatis,
quàm suae sapientiae ; prohibeatur autem, si potentior
fieri studet, quàm rebus vestris expedit.” Haec et
plura Josephus in istum Deuteronomii locum. Alter,
Philo Judæus, gravis author, Josephi coaetaneus, legis
Mosaicæ studiosissimus, in quam universam diffusa
commentatione scripsit, cum in libro de creatione prin-
cipis hoc caput legis interpretatur, non alio pacto re-
gem legibus solvit, atque hostis quilibet solutus legibus
dici possit, τοὺς ἐπί λύμα kai %nuig τῶν ύτηκοων, &c.
“ qui,” inquit, “ ad perniciem et detrimentum populi
magnam sibi acquirunt potentiam, non reges sed hostes
appellandi sunt ; ea facientes, quæ hostes mullâ pace re-
conciliandi faciunt; nam qui per speciem gubernandi
faciunt injuriam, apertis hostibus pejores sunt; hos enim
facile est propulsare, illorum autem malitia haud facilè
detegitur.” Detecti igitur, quid obstat quo minùs hos-
tium loco habendi sint? Sic libro secundo Allegoriarum
legis, “ rex et tyrannus contraria sunt;” et deinde, “ rex
non imperat tantùm, sed paret.” Vera sunt ista, dicet
aliquis ; regem oportet quidem leges, ut qui maximè,
observare; verùm si secùs fecerit, qua lege puniendus ?
eadem, inquam, lege qua caeteri; exceptiones enim nul-
las reperio. Sed nec de sacerdotibus, sed nec de infimis
quidem magistratibus, puniendis lex ulla scribitur ; qui
omnes, cùm de iis puniendis nulla lex scripta sit, pari
certè jure et ratione possent impunitatem scelerum om-
nium sibi vendicare ; quam tamen neque eorum quis-
quam vemdicavit, meque ullum iis arbitrorideirco esse da-
turum. Hactenus ex ipsa Dei lege didicimus regem le-
gibus obtemperare debuisse ; ncc se præ cæteris efferre,
qui etiam fratres ejus sunt. Nunc am quid aliud Eccle-
siastes moneat videamus. Cap. 8. ver. 1, &c. “ Man-
datum regis observa ; vel propter juramentum Dei, me
perturbatè à facie ejus abito, me persistito in re mala,
nam quicquid volet faciet. Ubi verbum regis, ibi
dominatio; et quis dicat ei, quid facis ?” Satis constat
Ecclesiastem hoc in loco non synedrio magno, non
senatui, sed privato cuique præcepta dare. Jubet man-
data sua observare, vel propter juramentùm Dei ; at
quis jurat regi, nisi rex vicissim in leges divinas atque
patrias juratus sit? Sic Reubenitæ et Gaditæ obediem-
tiam suam Jehosuae pollicentur, Jos. 1. “ Ut dicto au-
dientes Mosi fuimus, ità erimus tibi, modò ut Deus te-
cum sit, quemadmodum fuit cum Mose.” Comditionem
vides expressam. Alioquin ipsum audi Ecclesiasten,
cap. 9. “ Verba sapientum submissa potiùs audienda
esse, quàm clamorem dominantis inter stolidos.” Quid
porrò monet? “ Ne persistito in re mala, nam quicquid
volet faciet,” in malos nimirum faciet authoritate legum
armatus, nam leniter, aut severè agere, prout volet, po-
test. Nihil hic tyrannicum sonat, mihil quod vir bonus
extimescat. “ Ubi verbum regis, ibi dominatio, et
quis dicat ei, quid facis ?” Et tamen legimus qui regi
dixerit non solùm, quid fecisti, sed etiam, stultè fecisti.
1 Sam. 13. At Samuel extraordinarius. Tuum tibi
regero, licèt infrà dictum pag. 49. ** quid,” inquis,
“ extraordinarium in Saule et Davide ?” itidem ego,
quid, inquam, in Samuele ? Prophcta fuit: sunt et illi
658
PRO POPULO ANGLICANO DEFENSIO.
hodie, qui ejus exemplo faciunt ; ex voluntate enim
Dei vel “ expressâ” vel “ tacitâ” agunt : quod etiam
ipse infrà concedis, pag. 50. Prudenter igitur Eccle-
siastes hoc in loco monet privatos, me cum rege com-
tendant : mam etiam cum divite, cum potenti quovis,
ut plurimùm damnosa contentio est. Quid ergò ? an
optimates, am omnes reliqui magistratus, am populus
universus, quoties delirare libet regi, me hiscere quidem
audebumt ? an stolido, impio, furenti, bonis omnibus
perniciem machinamti nom obstabunt, non obviam ibunt,
me divina omnia atque humana pervertere occupet, me
rapinis, me incendiis, ne cædibus, per omnes regni fines
grassetur, ita “ legibus solutus, ut quod libet liceat ?”
O de Cappadocis eques catastris ! quem omnis libera
matio (si umquam post hoc in matione libera pedem
ponere audebis) aut im ultimas terras veluti portentum
cxportandum ejicere, aut servitutis camdidatum dedere
in pistrinum debebit, ea lege atque omime, ut si te inde
exemerit, ipsa sub aliquo tyranno, eoque stultissimo,
pro te molat. Quid enim poterit dici, aut ab aliis dic-
tum peti, tam truculentum, aut ridiculum, quod in te
mom cadat ? Perge modò : “ Israëlitæ regem à Deo
petentes eodem jure se ab eo gubernari velle dixerunt,
quo omnes aliæ mationes, quæ hoc regimine uterentur.
At orientis reges summo jure, et potestate mom circum-
scripta regnabant, teste Virgilio,
Regem non sic Ægyptus et ingens
Lydia, nec populi Parthorum, et Medus Hydaspes
Observant. oc»
Primùm, quid nostra refert qualem sibi regem Israëlitæ
voluerint, præsertim Deo irato, non solùm quòd regem
vellent ad exemplum gentium, et mom suæ legis, sed
planè quòd vellent regem ? Deinde regem injustum,
aut legibus solutum, petivisse credibile non est, qui
Samuëlis filios legibus obstrictos ferre non potuerumt,
et ab eorum tantùm avaritia ad regem confugerumt.
Postremò, quod ex Virgilio rccitas, non probat reges
orientis “ absoluta potestate” regnâsse; Apes enim illæ
Virgilianæ, quæ vel Ægyptiis et Medis observantiores
regum sunt, teste tamen eodem poëta—“ Magnis agi-
tant sub legibus ævum.”—Non ergò sub regibus omni
lege solutis. At vide quàm tibi minimè velim malè ;
cùm plerique te nebulonem esse judicent, ostendam te
personam tantùm nebulonis mutuam sumpsisse. In
apparatu ad primatum papæ, doctores quosdam Tri-
dentinos exemplo apium usos ais, ut monarchiam papæ
probarent: ab his tu pari malitia hoc mutuum cepisti.
Quod illis itaque respondisti cùm probus esses, jam
factus nebulo tute respondebis tibi, tuaque tibi manu
personam nebulonis detrahes. “ Apium respub. est;
atque ità physici appellant : Regem habent, sed inno-
cuum ; ductor est potiùs quàm tyrannus; non verberat,
mon vellicat, non mecat apes subditas.” Minimè igitur
mirum, si ità observant. Istas meherculè apes malâ
ave tibi tactio erat ; Tridentinæ enim licèt sint, fucum
te esse indicamt. Aristoteles autem, rerum politicarum
scriptor diligentissimus, monarchiæ genus Asiaticae,
quod et barbaricum vocat, κατa vδμον, id est, secundùm
legem, fuisse affirmat. Pol. 3. Immo cum monarchiæ
quinque species enumeret, quatuor secundùm legem,
et suffragante populo, fuisse scribit, tyrannicas autem,
quòd iis tanta potestas, volente licèt populo, data erat ;
regnum verò lacomicum maximè regnum videri, quòd
mom omnia penès regem erant. Quinta, quam is trap-
ßaoiXéav vocat, et ad quam solam id refert, quod tu
regum omnium jus esse scribis, ut ad libitum regnent,
ubinam gentium, aut quo tempore unquam obtimuerit,
non dicit : mec aliam ob caussam fecisse mentionem
ejus videtur, quàm ut absurdam, injustam, et maximè
tyrannicam, esse demonstraret. Samuelem ais, cùm
eos ab eligendo rege deterreret, “ jus illis regium” ex-
posuisse. Unde haustum, à lege Dei ? at illa lex jus
regium, ut vidimus, longè aliud exhibuit : an ab ipso
Deo per Samuëlem loquente? at improbavit, vitupera-
vit, vitio dedit : mom igitur jus regium divimitùs datum,
sed morem regnandi pravissimum, superbiâ regum et
dominandi libidine arreptum exposuit propbeta ; nec
quid debebant reges, sed quid volebant facere; rationem
enim regis populo indicavit, sicut antea ratiomem sacer-
dotum Eliadarum eodem verbo (quod tu p. 33, Hebraico
etiam soloecismo nBwn vocas) suprà indicaverat. C. 2.
“ ratio sacerdotum istorum cum populo hæc erat, v. 13.”
impia videlicet, odiosa, et tyrannica: ratio itaque illa
nequaquam jus erat, sed injuria. Sic etiam patres
antiqui hunc locum exposuerunt ; unus mihi erit mul-
torum instar, Sulpitius Severus, Hieronymi æqualis,
eique charus, et Augustini judicio vir doctrimâ et sapi-
entiâ pollens. Is in historia sacra Samuelem ait domi-
nationem regiam, et superba imperia, populo exponere.
Sanè jus regium non est dominatio et superbia ; sed jus
atque imperium Yegium, teste Sallustio, conservandæ
libertatis atque augendæ reipub. causâ datum, im su-
perbiam dominationemque se convertit. Idem theologi
omnes orthodoxi, idem jurisconsulti, idem rabbini ple-
rique, ut ex Sichardo didicisse potuisti, de explicatione
hujus loci sentiunt; me rabbinorum enim quisquam jus
regis absolutum isto loco tractari dixit. Ipse infrà
cap. 5. pag. 106. “ non Alexandrimum Clementem solùm,
sed omnes hic” quereris “errare,” te unum ex omnibus
rem acu tetigisse : Jam verò cujus vel impudentiæ est
vel socordiæ, contra omnes, præsertim orthodoxos, mores
regum ab ipso Deo dammatissimos in jus regium com-
vertere ; et honesta juris præscriptione defendere : cum
jus tamen illud in rapinis, injuriis, violentiis, contume-
liis, sæpiùs consistere fatearis. Am quisquam sic “ sui
juris” unquam fuit, ut rapere, agere, prosternere, per-
miscere omnia sibi liceret? an Latini, quod affirmas,
hæc “ suo jure ab alìquo fieri umquam dixerunt ?”
Dixerat apud Sallustium C. Memmius tribunus plebis,
in superbiam et impunita flagitia mobilitatis invectus,
“ impune quælibet facere, id est, regem esse ;*' arrisit
hoc tibi, et statim in lucro ponis, nequicquam sanè, si
paulùm evigilaveris. An jus hic regium asseruit ?
annon plebis ignaviam potiùs increpuit, quæ nobiles
impunè dominari siueret, eosque mores regios jam rur-
sus pateretur, quos jure suo majores illorum cum rege
ipso finibus expulerant. Marcum Tullium saltem con-
suluisses; is te et Sallustium, et Samuelem etiam rectiùs
interpretari docuisset. Qui, pro C. Rabirio, “ nemo,”
imquit, “ nostrùm igmorat consuetudinem regiam ; re-
gum sunt hæc imperia, animadverte et dicto pare;”
PRO POPULO ANGLICANO DEFENSIO.
659
aliaque hujusmodi ex poëtis ibidem recitat, quae non
jus, sed “ consuetudinem regiam” vocat, eaque legere
et spectare nos ait debere, non “ ut delectemur solùm,
sed ut cavere etiam et effugere discamus.” Vides quàm
te malè multaverit Sallustius, quem tyrannis inimicis-
simum, juris tyranmici patronum attulisse te putabas.
Nutare, mihi crede, et suum sibi occasum accelerare
jus regium videtur, dum ruentis in modum temuissima
quaeque sic arripit, seque sustinere iis testibus atque
exemplis comatur, quae tardiùs fortasse alioqui ruitu-
rum vehementiùs proturbant. “ Summum,” inquis,
“ jus, summa injuria est, id in regibus maximè locum
habet ; qui cùm summo jure utuntur, ea faciunt in
quibus Samuel dicit jus regis esse positum.” Miserum
jus; quod tu jam ad extrema perductus, nisi per sum-
mam injuriam defendere ulteriùs non potes! Summum
jus id dicitur, cùm quis formulas legum sectatur, sin-
gulis penè literis immoratur, aequitatem non servat ;
aut scriptum jus callidè nimis et malitiosè interpretatur,
ex quo illud proverbium Cicero ortum esse ait. Cùm
autem jus omne de fonte justitiæ manare certum sit, im-
pius sis necesse est, qui ** regem injustum esse, iniquum,
violentem, raptorem esse, et quales esse solebant” qui
pessimi erant, jus regis esse dicis, idque “ prophetam
populo insinuâsse.” Quod enim jus summum aut re-
missum, scriptum aut non scriptum, ad maleficia per-
petramda esse potest? Id me tibi de aliis concedere, de
rege pernegare, in mentem veniat, habeo quem tibi op-
ponam, et puto regem, qui istiusmodi jus regium et
sibi et Deo invisum esse profitetur : Psal. 49. ** an con-
sociaretur tibi solium ærumnarum, formantis molestiam
per statutum.” Noli igitur Deo hanc atrocissimam
injuriam facere, quasi is regum pravitates et nefaria
facinora jus esse regium doceret, qui etiam hoc nomine
societatem cum improbis regibus se detestari docet,
quòd molestiam et ærummas omnes populo juris regii
titulo creare soleant. Noli prophetam Dei falsò insi-
mulare ; quem, tu dum juris regii isto loco doctorem
habere putas, non verum nobis affers Samuelem ; sed,
ut venefica illa, imanem umbram evocas ; quamvis et
illum ab inferis Samuelem non adeò mendacem fuisse
credam, quin illud quod tu jus regium vocas, impoten-
tiam potiùs tyrannicam dicturus fuisset. Jus datem
sceleri legimus, tuque “ licentiæ jure concessæ reges
minùs bonos uti consuevisse” ais. At jus hoc, ad per-
niciem humani generis abs te introductum, non esse à
Deo datum probavimus; restat, ut sit à Diabolo; quod
infrà clariùs liquebit. “ Hæc,” inquis, ** licentia dat
posse, si velis ; ” et authorem hujus juris habere
Ciceronem præ te fers. Numquam ægrè facio ut tes-
timonia tua recitem, tuis enim ipse testibus conficere
te soles. Audi igitur verba Ciceromis in 4tâ Philipp.
“ Quæ causa justior est belli gerendi, quàm servitutis
depulsio ? in qua etiamsi non sit molestus dominus,
tamen est miserrimum posse si velit,” posse vi scili-
cet ; nam de jure si loqueretur, repugnantia diceret, et
ex justa belli causa injustam faceret. Non est igitur
jus regium quod tu describis, sed injuria, sed vis, et
violentia regum. Transis ab regia licentia ad priva-
tam: “ licet privato mentiri, licet ingrato esse.” Licet et
regibus; quid inde effici; licebit ergò regibus impune
2 U
rapere, occidere, stuprare ? Quid interest ad injuriæ
gravitatem rex am latro, an aliuude hostis, populum
occidat, diripiat, in servitutem agat ? eodem certè jure,
et hunc et illum humanae societatis inimicum, et pestem,
propulsare atque ulcisci debemus ; immo regem eò
justiùs, quòd is tot beneficiis et honoribus nostris
auctus commissam sibi sub juramento publicam salutem
prodat. Concedis postremò “ leges dari à Mose, se-
cundùm quas rex ille quandoque eligendus imperare
debebat, quamvis diversas ab illo jure quod Samuel
proposuit.” Quod cum assertione tua dupliciter pug-
nat ; cùm enim regem legibus omnino solutum posueris,
nunc obstrictum dicis : dein jus juri contrarium ponis
Mosis et Samuëlis, quod est absurdum. At “ servi,”
inquit Propheta, “ vos eritis regi.” Ut servos fuisse
non abnuerim ; non jure tamen regio servi fuerunt,
sed regum fortasse plurimorum usurpatione et imjustitia.
Illam enim petitionem obstinatam non jure regio, sed
suo merito, in poenam illis cessuram propheta præmo-
nuit. At verò si regi legibus soluto quicquid libet licu-
erit, profectò rex longè plus quàm dominus erit, populus
infra omnium servorum infimos plus quàm infimus.
Servus enim vel alienigena legem Dei vindicem inju-
riosum in dominum habebat; populus universus, libera
nimirum gens, vindicem in terris neminem, nullam
legem habebit, quò læsus, afflictus, et spoliatus confu-
giat : à servitute regum Ægyptiorum ideo liberatus,
ut uni ex fratribus suis, duriore si libeat servitute, op-
primendus traderetur. Quod cùm meque divinæ legi
nec rationi consentaneum sit, dubium nemini esse
potest, quin propheta mores enarraverit, non jus regum,
neque mores prorsus regum omnium, sed plurimorum.
Descendis ad rabbinos, duosque adducis eadem, qua
priùs, infelicitate : nam caput illud de rege, in quo
R. Joses jus regium aiebat contineri, Deuteronomii
esse, non Samuelis, manifestum est. Samuelis enim
ad terrorem duntaxat populo injiciendum pertinere
rectissimè quidem et contra te dixit R. Judas. Per-
miciosum enim est id jus nominari atque doceri, quod
injustitia planè est, nisi abusivè forsitam jus nominetur.
Quo etiam pertinet versus 18. * Et exclamabitis die
illa propter regem vestrum, sed non exaudiet vos Je-
hovah ; ” obstinatos nimirum ista poena manebat, qui
regem nolente Deo dari sibi voluerunt. Quanquam ista
verba non prohibent, quo minus et vota et quidvis aliud
tentare potuerint. Si enim clamare ad Deum contra
regem populo licebat, licebat proculdubio omnem etiam
aliam inire rationem honestam sese à tyrannide expe-
diendi. Quis enim, quovis malo cùm premitur, sic ad
Deum clamat ut caetera omnia quæ officii sunt sui neg-
ligat, ad otiosas tantùm preces devolutus ? Verum ut-
cumque sit, quid hoc ad jus regium, quid ad jus nos-
trum ? qui regem nec invito Deo unquam petivimus,
nec ipso dante accepimus, sed jure gentium usi, nec
jubente Deo nec vetante, nostris legibus constituimus.
Quæ cùm ità se habeant, mom video quamobrem nobis
laudi atque virtuti tribuendum non sit, regem ahjecisse;
quandoquidem Israëlitis crimini est datum regem pe-
tisse. Quod etiam res ipsa comprobavit; nos enim qui
regem, cùm haberemus, depreeati sumus, tandem ex-
auditos Deus liberavit ; illos, qui cùm non haberent,
660
PRO POPULO ANGLICANO DEFENSIO.
à Deo efflagitabant, servire jussit ; donec Babylone
redeuntes ad pristinum reipub. statum reversi sunt.
Ludum Talmudicum deinde aperis; quim et hoc sinis-
tro augurio tentatum. Dum enim regem non judicari
cupis ostendere, ostendis ex codice Sanhedrim ** regem
nec judicari nec judicare;” quod cum petitione istius
populi pugnat, qui ideo regem petebant, ut judicaret:
id frustrà resarcire studes ; intelligi nempe id de regi-
bus Postbabylonicis debere. At ecce tibi Maimonides,
qui “ hanc inter reges Israëlitas et Judæos differentiam
ponit : Davidis enim posteros judicare et judicari ;''
Israëliticis meutrum concedit. Occurris tibi, tecum
enim litigas, aut cum rabbinis tuis ; meam rem agis.
Hoc “ primis in regibus locum non habuisse,” quia
dictum est v. 17. ** vos eritis ei servi: ” consuetudine
scilicet, non jure ; aut si jure, poenas petendi regis,
quamvis nom sub hoc fortè vel sub illo, at sub pleris-
que, luebant, quod nos mon attingit. Tibi verò adversario
opus non est, adeò semper tibi adversaris. Narras enim
pro me, ut primò Aristobulus, pòst Jannæus cognomen-
to Alexander, jus illud regium nom à synedrio, juris
custode et interprete, acceperint, sed paulatim sibi
assumpserint, et sematu renitente usurpaverint: quorum
in gratiam bella illa fabula de primoribus synedrii “ â
{Gabriele examimatis” adinventa est, jusque hoc mag-
mificum, quo niti maximè videris, “ regem” scilicet
“ non judicari,” ex illa fabula plusquam anili, utpote
vabbinica, conflatum esse fateris. Reges autem He-
bræorum ** judicari posse, atque etiam ad verbera dam-
mari,” fusè docet Sichardus ex libris rabbinicis, cui tu
hæc omnia debes, et tamen obstrepere non erubescis.
Quinimmo legimus ipsum Saulem cum filio Jonathane
sortis judicium atque etiam capitale subiise, suoque ip-
sum edicto paruisse. Uzzias quoque à sacerdotibus
templo deturbatus, lepræ judicio, tamquam unus è po-
pulo, se submisit, rexque esse desiit. Quid si templo
excedere, quid si magistratu abire, et seorsim habitare,
noluisset, jus illud regium legibus solutum sibi asse-
ruisset, an passuros fuisse censes Judæos et sacerdotes
templum contaminari, leges violari, populum univer-
sum contagione periclitari ? In leprosum ergò regem
vigebunt leges, in tyrannum nihil poterunt ? Ecquis
tam demens aut stultus est, ut existimet, cùm rex mor-
bosus mè populum contagione lædat, cautum atque pro-
visum legibus sit, si rex impius, iniquus, crudelis, po-
pulum diripiat, excruciet, occidat, rempub. . funditùs
evertat, nullum his malis longè gravioribus remedium
legibus repertum esse? Verùm “exemplum ullius regis
afferri non potest, qui judicium capitis subierit injus vo-
catus.” Ad illud Sichardus haud absurdè respondet, per-
inde esse, ac si quis ad hunc modum dissereret. Cæsar
nunquam citatus est coram Electore ; ergò si Palatinus
diem Cæsari dixerit, non tenetur Cæsar in judicio re-
spondere. Cùm tamen doceat bulla aurea Carolum 4tum
se et successores suos huic cognitionisubjecisse. Quid in
corrupto populi statu regibus adeò indultum fuisse mira-
mur, ubi tot privati aut opibus suis aut gratia impunita-
tem vel gravissimorum scelerum assequuntur? Illud
autem &vvreô6vvov, id est, “ â nemine pendere, mulli
mortalium rationem reddere,” quod tu regiæ majestatis
maximè proprium esse ais, Aristoteles Polit. 4. c. 10. |
maximè tyrannicum, et in libera natione minimè feren-
dum, esse affirmat. Tu vero Antonium tyramnum im-
manissimum, Romanæ reipub. eversorem, idoneum
sanè authorem producis, non esse justum reposci à rege
factorum suorum rationem : et tamen Herodem cædis
reum ad causam dicendam in Parthos proficisceris ac-
cersivit ad se Amtomius : et animadversurus etiam in
regem fuisse creditur, misi rex eum auro corrupisset.
Ita ab eodem fonte profluxit regiæ potestatis Antoni-
ana assertio, et tua “ regia defensio.” At non sine ra-
tione, inquis, “ nam reges ab alio non habent quòd
regnant, sed soli Deo acceptum referunt.” Dic sodes
quinam ? nam istiusmodi reges extitisse unquam, nego.
Prinius enim Saul, nisi populus refragante etiam Deo
regem voluisset, nunquam rex fuisset ; et quamvis rex
renuntiatus esset Mispae, vixit tamem penè privatus,
armentum patris secutus, donec Gilgale rex à populo
secundùm creatus est. Quid David ? quamvis unctus
à Deo, nonne iterum unctus est ab Judæis Chebrone,
deinde ab omnibus Hebræis, pacto tamen prius foe-
dere ? 2 Sam. ô. l Chron. 11. Foedus autem obligat
reges, et intra certos fines continet. Sedit Salomon,
inquis, “ super solium Domimi et cumctis placuit,”
1 Paralip. 29. ergo et placuisse populo aliquid erat.
Constituit Jehoiadas regem Joasum, foedus tamen eo-
dem tempore pepigit inter regem et populum. 2 Reg.
11. Hos reges, necnon et reliquos Davidis posteros,
et à Deo et à populo constitutos fateor; cæteros omnes,
ubicumque gentium, à populo tantùm constitutos esse
affirmo; tu ostende constitutos esse à Deo ; nisi eâ
solum ratione qua omnia, cùm maxima tum mimi-
ma, à Deo fieri et constitui dicuntur. Solium itaque
Davidis, peculiari quodam jure, solium Jehovæ dici-
tur ; solium aliorum regum mom alio, atque cætera
omnia, Jehovæ sunt. Quod tu ex eodem capite di-
dicisse potuisti, v. 11. 12. “ tua sunt omnia in cœlo
et in terra, tuum est, Jehova, regnum ; divitiæ et
gloria à facie tua sunt, vis et potentia, &c.” Dici-
turque hoc toties, non ut intumescant reges, sed ut
moneantur, quamvis deos se esse putent, Deum ta-
men supra se esse, cui debent omnia. Unde illa
Essemorum et poëtarum doctrina, reges “ non sine
Deo, et ab Jove esse,” facile intelligitur ; omnes enim
homines à Deo itidem sumus, Deique gemus. Jus igi-
tur hoc universum Dei non tollit jus populi ; quo mi-
nùs omnes cæteri reges, non à Deo nominati, regnum
suum soli populo acceptum referant; cui propterea ra-
tionem reddere tenentur. Quod quamquam vulgus as-
sentari regibus solet, ipsi tamen reges sive boni, ut
Homericus ille Sarpedom, sive mali, ut illi apud Lyri-
cum tyranni, agnoscunt.
Πλaîks, rim δή νύι τε τιμήμεσθα μάλιεα, &c.
Glauce, cur nos maximo honore afficimur
In Lycia, omnes autem nos tanquam deos intuentur?
Ipse sibi respondet ; quia virtute cæteris prælucemus :
quare fortiter pugnemus, inquit, ne Lycii nobis igna-
viam objiciant : qua voce et honores regios à populo
acceptos, et bellicæ administrationis rationem populo
veddendam esse, innuit. Mali autem reges, ut metum
populo incutiant, Deum imperii regii authorem palam
PRO POPULO ANGLICANO DEFENSIO.
661
prædicant : tacitis autem votis mullum numen præter
IFortunam venerantur. Juxta illud Horatii:
Te Dacus asper, te profugi Scythæ,
Regumque matres barbarorum, et
Purpurei metuunt tyranni,
Injurioso ne pede proruas
Stantem columnam, neu populus frequens
Ad arma cessantes, ad arma
Concitet, imperiumque frangat.
Si ergò regis hodie per Deum regnant, etiam populi
per Deum in libertatem se vindicant, quandoquidem
omnia à Deo et per Deum fiunt. Utrumque etiam
aequè testatur Scriptura, et reges per eum regnare, et
per eum solio dejici ; cùm tamen id utrumque longè
sæpius à populo fieri perspiciamus, quàm à Deo. Jus
itaque populi pariter ac regis, quicquid est, à Deo est.
Populus ubicunque sine Deo manifesto regem creavit,
potest eodem jure suo regem rejicere. Tyrannum sanè
tollere quàm constituere divinius est; plusque Dei
cernitur in populo, quoties injustum abdicat regem,
quàm in rege qui innocentem opprimit populum. Immo
reges noxios Deo authore judicat populus: hoc enim
ipso honore dilectos suos decoravit Deus, Psal. 149. ut
Christum regem suum laudibus celebrantes, gentium
reges, quales sub evangelio sunt omnes tyramni, “vin-
culis coërcerent, inque eos jus scriptum exercerent,”
qui jure omni scripto atque legibus solutos se esse
gloriantur. Ne quis tam stolidè, ne quis tam impiè,
credat tanti esse apud Deum reges, ferè mortalium ig-
navissimos, ut eorum 11utu orbis terrarum totus pendeat
et gubermetur; eorum ut gratiâ, præque illis, divinum,
ut ita dicam, hominum genus eodem quo bruta et vi-
lissima quæque animalia loco atque numero habendum
sit. Agè nunc, ne nihil enim agas, M. Aurelium, quasi
tyrannis faventem, in medium profers ; at satius tibi
fuit Marcum Aurelium non attigisse. Ille an Deum de
principibus solum judicare dixerit nescio. Xiphilinus
certè, quem citas, de àvrapxug loquitur; ττερί άvτapχιας δ
esὸς μόνος κρίνειν δύναται. dvrapxuav autem monarchiæ
synonymum illic esse non assentior ; eoque minùs quo
sæpius præcedentia lego; nam qui cohæreat, aut quid
sibi velit aliena illa sententia subitò insititia, qui le-
gerit miretur ; presertim cùm Marcus Aurelius, impe-
ratorum optimus, mon aliter cum populo egerit, ut Ca-
pitolinus tradit, quàm est actum sub civitate libera ;
jus autem populi quin supremum tunc fuerit nemo du-
bitat. Idem Thraseam, Helvidium, Catonem, Dio-
nem, Brutum, tyrannicidas omnes, aut istam gloriam
æmulantes coluisse, sibique reipublicæ formam propo-
suisse, in qua æquis legibus parique jure, omnia admi-
mistrarentur, in primo libro de vita sua profitetur: in
quarto, non se, sed legem, dominum esse. Agnovit
etiam omnia senatùs populique esse: nos, inquit, adeò
nihil proprium habemus, ut in vestris ædibus habitemus.
Hæc Xiphidinus. Tantum abfuit ut quicquam jure
regio sibi arrogaret. Moriens, filium suum regnaturum
ea lege Romanis commendavit, si dignus esset : jus
itaque illud regnandi absolutum atque fictitium, tam-
quam à Deo per mamus traditum, illam denique ávTap-
xiav præ se non tulit. “ Plema” tamen “ omnia Græ-
cerum et Latinorum monumenta esse” ais: at nusquam
visa ; ** plena Judæorum,” et tamen addis “ Judæos in
plerisque regiæ potestati minùs æquos fuisse :" immò
Græcos et Latinos multo minüs tyrannis æquos et re-
peristi et reperies ; multo minus Judæos, si liber ille
Samuelis in quo is, 1 Sam. 10. jus regni descripserat,
exstaret; quem librum doctores Hebræorum à regibus
discerptum aut combustum esse tradiderunt, quo im-
puniùs tyrannidem in suos exercerent. Circumspice
jam, numquid captare possis : occurrit tibi rex David
postremò torquendus, Psal. 17. “ â facie tuâ judicium
meum prodeat:” ergo, inquit Barnachmoni, “ nullus
judicat regem nisi Deus.” Et tamen similius veri vi-
detur, Davidem hæc scripsisse, cùm à Saule vexatus,
ne Jonathanis quidem judicium, quamvis jam tum unc-
tus à Deo, detractabat. “ Si est in me iniquitas, tu me
affice morte,” inquit, 1 Sam. 20; deinde ut quivis alius
ab hominibus falso accusatus, ad judicium Dei provo-
cat; id sequentia declarant, “ tui occuli vident quæ
recta sunt, cùm exploraveris cor meum,” &c. Quid
hoc ad judicium regium, aut forense ? Sanè jus regium
illi maximè labefactant atque destruunt, qui funda-
mentis tam fallacibus niti, atque exædificari, produnt.
En tritum illud tandem, et aulicorum nostratium argu-
mentum palmarium. * Tibi soli peccavi,” Psal. 51. 6.
quasi verò rex David in mœrore et lacrymis poeniten-
tiam agens, sordidatus et squalidus in terra jacens,
misericordiam à Deo suppliciter petens, quicquam de
jure regio cogitaverit hæc loquutus ; cùm se vix jure
mancipii dignum esse arbitraretur. An omnem Dei
populum, fratres suos, usque adeò præ se contempsit,
ut cædibus, adulteriis, rapinis, peccare in eos non se
posse censeret? absit à rege tam sancto tanta superbia,
tamque foeda igmoratio vel sui vel proximi. “ Tibi”
igitur “ soli peccavi” proculdubio intelligendum est,
tibi præcipuè. Utcumque sit, profectò verba psallentis,
et sententiæ affectibus plenæ, haudquaquam sunt ad
jus explicandum accommodatæ, aut eò trahendæ. At
** non est in jus vocatus, mec coram synedrio causam
capitis dixit.” Esto ; qui enim potuit id resciri, quod
adeò sime arbitris, et secretò peractum fuit, ut per ali-
quot fortasse annos (cujusmodi aulæ arcana sunt) vix
unus aut alter conscius fuisse videatur, 2 Sam. 12.
“ Tu hoc clàm fecisti.” Deinde quid si in privatis
etiam puniendis cessaret synedrium ? am quis iude pu-
miemdos non esse argumentabitur ? Sed ratio obscura
non est ; ipse se condemaverat, ver. 5. “ reus capitis
vir ille qui fecit hoc ;” cui statim subjecit propheta,
** tu vir ille es ;” prophetæ etiam judicio capitis reus.
Verumtamen Deus pro suo jure atque in Davidem ex-
imiâ clementiâ, et peccato absolvit regem, et ipsâ mor-
tis sententiâ, quam is in semetipsum pronuntiaverat,
v. 13. “ nom es moriturus.” Nunc in advocatum nescio
quem sanguinarium debaccharis, et im eo totus es ut
perorationem ejus refellas : de qua ipse viderit ; ego
quod propositum mihi est, id ago, ut quàm paucissimis
absolvam. Quædam tamen præterire non possum ;
primùm, insignes repugnantias tuas: qui p. 30. hæc
habes: “ Israëlitæ non deprecantur injustum regem,
violentem, raptorem, et quales esse solerent qui pessimi.
A p. 42. advocatum vellicas quòd Israëlitis tyrannum
petisse arguerat. * An de fumo,” inquis, “ in flammam
662
PRO POPULO ANGLICANO DEFENSIO.
ire præcipites maluerunt, id est, sævitiam pessimorum
tyrannorum experiri, potiùs quàm judices malos pati,
quibus jam assueverant ?” Illic Hebræos maluisse ais
tyrannos quàm judices, hîc judices maluisse quàm ty
ramnos; et “ mihil minùs quàm tyramnum voluisse.” De
tuo igitur respondebit tibi advocatus, juxta enim te om-
nis rex jure regio tyrannus est. Quod sequitur bene
habet, “ authoritatem in populo maximam tunc fuisse,
quòd judices repudiârunt, regem optârunt.” Memineris,
cùm hoc ego à te reposcam. Negas “ Deum iratum
Israëlitis regem tamquam tyrannum aut pœnam attribu-
isse, sed ut rem salutarem et bonam.” Quod tamen facilè
refellitur. Cur enim exclamarent propter regem illum
quem elegerant, misi quòd res mala erat imperium re-
gium ; non quidem per se, sed quòd plerumque, sicut
Propheta hic monet, im superbiam et dominatiomem se
convertit. Si adhuc mon satisfacio, agnosce jam tua,
syngrapham agnosce tuam, et erubesce. Apparat. ad pri-
matum, “ Iratus Deus regem illis dedit, offensus eorum
peccatis, quòd Deum habere regem remuissent. Ita
ecclesia quasi in pœnam ejus delicti, quòd à puro Dei
cultu desciverat, in unius mortalis monarchæ plusquam
regium dominatum data est.” Tua igitur similitudo si
sibi constat, aut dedit Deus regem Israëlitis in poenam,
et tanquam rem malam, aut dedit papam ecclesiæ in
bonum, et tamquam rem bonam. Quid hoc homine
levius, quid insanius ? Quis huic in re minima fidem
habeat, qui tantis in rebus quid asserat, et mox meget,
mihil pensi habet. Affirmas, p. 29. “ regem legibus
solutum esse apud omnes gentes, sic Oriens judicavit,
sic Occidens.” At, p. 43. * omnes reges Orientis karó
vδμον et legitimos fuisse ; immò Ægypti reges in max-
imis mimimisque rebus legibus obstrictos,'° cùm initio
capitis hoc te probaturum pollicitus sis, omnes reges
“ solutos legibus” esse, “ leges dare, non accipere.”
Equidem non irascor tibi ; aut enim insanis, aut stas à
nobis. Hoc certè oppugnare est, non defendere, hoc
regem est ludos facere. Sin minùs, Catulliamum pro-
fectò illud * in te aptissimè quadrat, sed inversum; nam
quamtò quis umquam optimus poëta fuit, tamtò tu pessi-
mus omnium patronus. Certè misi stupor ille, quo
advocatum esse “ demersum ” ais, te potiùs obcæcavit,
jam tute ** obrutuisse” te senties. Nunc “ omnibus
quoque gentium regibus leges datas fuisse” fateris;
“ non tamen ut iis temerentur, judiciorum metu et pœ-
mæ capitis.” Quod nequedum ex scriptura, neque ex
ullo authore fide digno, ostendisti. Tu igitur paucis
accipe : leges civiles iis dare qui legibus non tementur,
stultum et ridiculum est ; omnes alios punire, uni dum-
taxat omnium scelerum impunitatem dare, cùm lex
neminem excipiat, imiquissimum est. Quæ duo in sa-
pientes legumlatores minimè cadunt, multò minùs in
Deum. Ut omnes autem videant te nullo modo ex
Hebræorum scriptis id probare, quod probandum hoc
capite susceperas, esse ex magistris tua sponte confiteris,
“ qui negant alium suis majoribus regem agnoscendum
fuisse præter Deum, datum autem in pœnam fuisse.”
Quorum ego in sententiam pcdibus eo. Non decet
enim, neque dignum est regem esse, misi qui cæteris
* Tantò pessimus omnium Poeta,
Quanto tu optimus oinnium Patronus.
omnibus longè antecellit ; ubi multi sunt æquales, ut
sunt in omni civitate plurimi, imperium ex æquo atque
per vices dandum esse arbitror : æquali, aut plerumque
deteriori, ac sæpissime stulto, servire omnes, quis non
indignissimum putet ? Nec “ad commendationem re-
galis imperii” plus “ facit,” quòd Christus à regibus
originem duxit, quàm facit ad pessimorum regum com-
mendationem, Christum eos habuisse nepotem. “ Rex
est Messias :” agnoscimus, gaudemus, et quàm citis-
simè veniat oramus; dignus enim est, nec ei quisquam
similis aut secundus : interim regia gubernatio com-
missa indignis et immerentibus, ut plerumque fieri
solet, plus mali quàm boni attulisse humano generi
rectè existimatur. Nec continuò sequitur omnes reges
tyranmos esse. Verùm ita esto: do tibi hoc, ne me
nimis tenacem putes ; utere tu jam dato. “ Hæc duo
sequuntur,” inquis, “ Deus ipse rex fuerit tyrannorum
dicendus, et quidem tyrannus ipse maximus.” Horum
alterum si non sequitur, sequitur profectò illud quod
toto libro tuo semper ferè sequitur, te non scripturæ
solùm, sed tibimet, perpetuò contradicere, ut qui proxi-
ma periodo suprà dixeras, “ unum Deum regem esse
omnium rerum, quas et ipse creavit.” Creavit autem
et tyrannos et dæmonas ; eorum itaque rex vel tuâ
ipsius sententiâ. In alterum despuimus, et blasphemum
illud tibi os obturatum volumus, qui Deum affirmes
tyrannum esse maximum, si tyrannorum, quod ipse
sæpius dicis, rex et dominus dieatur. Sed nec rem
regiam multò plus adjuvas, dum ostendis, Mosen etiam
cum “ summa potestate regem fuisse.” Nam fuerit sanè
vel quivis alius, dummodò is sit qui res nostras, quem-
admodum Moses, “ ad Deum referre” possit. Exod.
xviii. 19. Verùm meque Mosi, quamquam is Dei quasi
sodalis fuit, licuit in Dei populo quicquid libuit facere.
Quid enim ille ? “ Venit ad me hic populus,” inquit,
** ad consulemdum Deum ;*' mom ergo ad mandata Mo-
sis accipienda. Tum suscipit Jethro, “ esto tu pro
hoc populo erga Deum, et commonefacias eos de legi-
bus Dei.” Et Moses, Deut. iv. 5. “ docui vos statuta
et judicia, quemadmodum præcepit mihi Deus.” Un-
de ** fidelis ” dicitur ** in tota domo Dei.” Num. xii.
Rex itaque Jehova tum populi fuit ; Moses veluti in-
terpres tantùm Jehovæ regis. Impium igitur et sacri-
legum te esse oportet, qui summam hanc potestatem à
Deo ad hominem injussus ausis transferre, quam ipse
Moses non summam, sed vicariam tantùm et interme-
diam sub præsenti numine, obtinuit. Accedit etiam cu-
mulus ad improbitatem tuam, quòd Mosen hic summa
potestate regem fuisse dicas ; cùm in Apparatu ad pri-
matum,” p. 230. “ Eum in commune eum Lxx senio-
ribus populum rexisse ; et primum populi, non domi-
num fuisse” dixeris. Si igitur rex fuit, ut erat certè,
et regum optimus, idque sicut ipse ais, cum “ potestate
planè summa et regia,” nec tamen dominus, neque so-
lus populum regebat, vel te authore ; necessariò sequi-
tur, reges, quamvis summa potestate præditos, jure ta-
nem regio atque summo, mon esse dominos, neque so-
los populum regere debere ; quantò minus ad libitum
suum. Jam verò qua impudentiâ Dei mandatum
PRO POPULO ANGLICANO DEFENSIO.
663
ementiris, ** de rege statim atque ingressi essent ter-
ram sanctam sibi constituendo.” Deut. xvii. Suppri-
mis enim veteratoriè quod præcedit, “ si dixeris, sta-
tuam super me regem ;” tuque memento quid à te jam
reposcam ; cùm dixeris, p. 42. “ liberrima tunc potes-
tate populus erat praeditus.” Nunc iterum famaticus
am profanus esse velis, ipse videres. “ Deus,” inquis,
“ cum tanto ante determinaverit regium regimen insti-
tuendum tanquam optimum populi illius regeudi sta-
tum, quomodo haec conciliabuntur ? Propheta repug-
navit, Deus sic egit cum propheta, ut quasi nollct.”
Videt se illaqueatum, videt se impeditum : jam atten-
dite quanta cum malitia adversùs prophetam, impietate
adversùs Deum, expedire se quaerat: “ cogitandum in
his est,” inquit, “ Samuelem esse, cujus filii populum
tunc judicabant; eos populos repudiabat ob corrupta
judicia ; Samuel igitur noluit filios suos à populo reji-
ci ; Deus ut gratificaretur prophetæ suo, innuit non
valdè sibi placere, quod populus desideraret.” Dic uno
verbo, improbe, quod per ambages dicis ; Samuel po-
pulo fucum fecit, Samueli Deus. Non advocatus ergò,
sed tu ** ceritus” ille et “lymphaticus” es, qui modò ut
regem honores nil Deum revereris. Isne tibi Samuel
videtur, qui saluti aut charitati patriæ filiorum avari-
tiam et ambitionem præposuerit, qui populo recta et sa-
lutaria petenti, tam callido consilio, tamque vafro, illu-
serit, falsa pro veris docuerit ? Isme tibi Deus, qui in re
tam turpi cuivis gratificaretur, aut cum populo simulatè
ageret? Aut ergo jus regium non erat quod Propheta
populo exposuit, aut jus illud, teste Deo et Propheta,
malum, molestum, violentum, inutile, sumptuosum rei-
pub. erat ; aut denique, quod nefas est dicere, et Deus
et Propheta populo verba dare voluerunt. Passim
enim testatur Deus valdè sibi displicuisse quòd regem
petissent. ver. 7. “ Non te sed me spreverunt me reg-
nem super ipsos, secundùm illa facta quibus derelique-
runt me, et coluerunt Deos alienos:” acsi species quæ-
dam idololatriæ videretur regem petere, qui adorari se,
et honores propè divinos tribui sibi postulat. Sanè, qui
supra omnes leges terrenum sibi dominum imponit,
propè est ut sibi Deum statuat alienum; Deum utique
haud sæpe rationabilem, sed profligata sæpiùs ratione
brutum, et belluinum. Sic l Sam. x. 19. “ Vos spre-
vistis Deum vestrum, qui ipse servat vos ab omnibus
malis et angustiis vestris, cùm dixistis ei, regem præ-
pones nobis :” et cap. xii. 12. “ Vos regem petistis,
cùm Jehova sit rex vester:” et ver. 17. “ Videte ma-
lum vestrum magnum esse coram Jehova, petendo vo-
bis regem.” Et contemptim Hosea de rege, xiii. 10,
11. “ Ubi rex tuus, ubinam est ? servet te jam in ci-
vitatibus tuis. Ubi vindices tui ? quomiam dixisti, da
mihi regem et proceres : dedi tibi regem in ira mea.”
Hinc Gedeon ille heros rege major, “ Non dominabor
in vos, neque filius meus in vos dominabitur, sed domi-
nabitur in vos Jehova,” Jud. viii. planè ac si simul do-
cuisset, non hominis esse dominari in homines, sed solius
Dei. Hinc Hebræorum rempublicam, in qua Deus prin-
cipatum solus temuit, θεοκρatiav vocat Josepbus, contra
Apionem grammaticum /Egyptium, et maledicum tui si-
milem. Populus denique resipiscens, apud Isaiam, xxvi.
13. calamitosum hoc sibi fuisse queritur, quòd alios præ-
Indicio sunt haec omnia
In historia
ter Deum dominos habuerat.
regem, irato Deo, Israëlitis fuisse datum.
tyranni Abimelechi quis est cui non risum moveas? de
quo dicitur, cùm is partim saxo à muliere, partim
armigeri gladio, interfectus fuerit, “ reddidit Detis
malum Abimelechi. Haec,” inquis, “ historia potentis-
simè adstruit Deum solum regum judicem esse et vin-
dicem :'' immo tyrannorum, nebulonum, nothorum, si
hoc valebit : quicumque per fas aut nefas tyrannidem
occupaverit, is jus regium statim in populum adeptus
erit, poenas effugit ; confestim arma magistratui de
manibus fluent, mussare deinceps populus non aude-
bit. Verùm quid si magnus aliquis latro hoc modo
in bello periisset, an Deus ergò solus latronum vin-
Quid si carnificis manu lege damnatus, an
malum reddidisset ? Ne ju-
dex ?
ideo minùs illi Deus
dices quidem eorum unquam legisti lcge postula-
tos ; tamen “ in optimatum statu vel primcipem, si
quid committat, posse ac debere judicari,” ultrò fateris,
p. 47. cur non item tyrannus in regno ? quia Deus red-
didit malum Abimelechi. At reddidit quoque mulier
illa, reddidit etiam armiger, in quos ille ambos jus re-
gium habere præ se tu]it. Quid si reddidisset magis-
tratus, annon is idcircò Dei gladium gerit, ut malum
malis reddat? Ab hoc * potentissimo” de morte Abi-
melecli argumento ad verborum contumelias more suo
se convertit ; nil nisi ** coenum et lutum ” ore funditat;
cùm eorum, quæ promisit se probaturum, mihil vel ex
sacris libris, vel ex rabbinicis, probaverit. Nam neque
regem legibus solutum esse, nec cur puniri, si delin-
quat, solus mortalium non debeat, quicquam ostendit.
Immo suis ipse testibus se induit, et sententiam suæ
contrariam esse veriorem suometipse opere demonstrat.
Cùmque argumentis parùm proficiat, criminationibus
atrocissimis omnium in mos odium excitare comatur,
quasi rege optimo ef innocentissimo crudeliter sublato.
* Am Solomon,” inquit, “ melior rex Carolo primo fuit?”
Sunt, ut verum fatear, qui patrem ejus Jacobum cum
Solomone comparare non dubitârunt, et natalibus
quidem anteferre. Solomon Davidis filius ; is primò
Saulis musicus erat; Jacobus Darlii comitis filius, qui
Davidem musicum, reginæ uxoris thalamos m octe im-
gressum, cum ostio pessulum obdidisse deprehendit, haud
multò pòst interfecit, ut narrat Buchamanus. Natali-
bus ergò illustrior Jacobus, et secundus Solomon saepe
dictus, quamvis Davidis musici filius an fuerit dubium
sit. At Carolum conferre cum Solomone qui tibi in
mentem venire potuerit non video. Quem enim tu
Carolum tot laudibus tollis, ejus pervicaciam, avari-
tiam, crudelitatem, et sævum in omnes pios atque bo-
nos dominatum, ejus bella, incendia, rapinas, et mise-
rorum civium cædes inmumeras, dum hæc scribo, Caro-
lus ipse filius in illa publicæ pœnitentiæ sedecula apud
Scotos coram populo confitetur atque deplorat: immò
tuum illud regium jus ejurat. Verùm si parallelis tam-
topere delectaris, Carolum cum Solomone comferamus.
Solomon à meritissimo “ fratris” supplicio * regnum
auspicatus est :'' Carolus à patris funere ; mom dico à
nece, quamvis indicia veneni omnia in corpore patris
mortui conspecta sint ; ista enim suspicio in Bucching-
hamio constitit; quem tamen Carolus, et regis inter-
664
PRO POPULO ANGLICANO DEITENSIO.
fectorem et sui patris, non solùm in comitiis omni culpa
exemit, sed, ne omninò res ea senatûs cognitioni sul)ji-
ceretur, comitia dissolvit. Solomon ** gravissimis tribu-
tis populum pressit:” ut ille in templum Dei et ædifi-
cia publica impendit. Carolus in luxum. Solomon à
plurimis uxoribus ad idolorum cultum pellectus est, hic
ab una. Pellectus in fraudem Solomon, pellexisse alios
non legitur ; hic alios, non solum uberrimis corruptæ
ecclesiæ præmiis pellexit, sed etiam edictis et canoni-
bus ecclesiasticis coëgit, ut invisa reformatis omnibus
altaria statuerent, et pictos in pariete crucifixos altari-
bus imminentes adorarent. At non est ideo “ Solomon à
populo capitis damnatus.” Nec inde, inquam, sequitur
damnari à populo mon debuisse ; multa enim incidere
potuerunt, cur id tum expedire populo non videretur.
Populus certè quid sui juris esset haud multo pòst et
verbis et factis patefecit : cùm Solomonis filium decem
tribus expulerunt; et nisi maturè se in fugam conje-
cisset, etiam lapidibus regem tantummodò minacem
obruturos fuisse credibile est.
CAPUT III.
CUM satis jam disputatum atque conclusum sit, re-
ges Mosaïcos, ex præscripto Dei, omnibus obstrictos
legibus pariter cum populo fuisse, nullas legum excep-
tiones perscriptas inveniri, ut reges “ quod vellent,
impunè possent," aut ut “ â populo puniri ne possint;
Deum” proinde “ vindictam de his tribunali suo reser-
vâsse” falsissimum esse, sine authore, sine ratione dic-
tum, videamus an id suadeat evangelium, quod dis-
suasit lex, mon imperavit: videamus an evangelium,
divinum illud libertatis præconium, nos in servitu-
tem addicat regibus et tyrannis, quorum ab impotenti
imperio etiam servitutis cujusdam magistra lex vetus
populum Dei liberavit. Primum argumentum ducis à
persona Christi, quem quis nescit non privati soJùm, sed
etiam servi personam ideo sumpsisse, ut nos liberi esse-
mus. Neque hoc de interna tantùm libertate intelligem-
dum est, non de civili; quàm enim aliena sunt ista quae
Maria, mater Christi, ejus in aventu cecinit, “ superbos
dissipavit cogitatione cordis ipsorum, detraxat dynastas
è thronis, humiles evexit,” si adventus ejus tyrannos po-
tius in solio stabiliret, Christianos omnes eorum sævis-
simo imperio subjiceret. Ipse sub tyrannis nascendo, ser-
viendo, patiendo, omnem honestam Jibertatem nobis ac-
quisivit: ut posse servitutem, si necesse est, æquo animo
pati, sic posse ad libertatem honestè aspirare non ab-
stulit Christus, sed majorem in modum dedit. Hinc
Paulus, ] Cor. vii. non de evangelica solùm, sed de
civili libertate, sic statuit : “ Servus vocatus es ? ne sit
tibi curae ; sin autem potes liber fieri, potiùs utere ;
pretio empti estis, ne estote servi hominum.° Frustra
igitur ab exemplo Christi ad servitutem nos hortaris,
qui suæ servitutis pretio libertatem nobis etiam civilem
confirmavit. Et formam quidem servi mostra vice sus-
cepit, amimum verò liberatoris nunquam non retinuit :
unde jus regium quid sit, longè aliter docuisse osten-
dam, atque tu doces; qui non regii, sed tyramici juris,
idque in republica novus professor, siqua gens tyran-
mum sive hæreditarium, sive adventitium, sive fortui-
tum, sortita erit, eam non solùm necessitate, sed etiam
religione, servam esse statuis. Tuis autem, ut soleo,
in te utar testimoniis. Interrogavit Petrum Christus,
cùm ab eo coactores quidam Galilæi didrachma exige-
bant, Mat. xvii. à quibus acciperent reges terræ tributa,
sive censum, à filiis suis, an ab alienis ? respondet ei
Petrus, ab alienis. Ergò, inquit Christus, “ liberi sunt
filii ; sed ne offendamus illos, da iis pro me et pro te.”
Variè hic locus interpretes exercet, cuinam persolve-
rentur hæc didrachma, alii sacerdotibus in sanctuarium,
alii Cæsari : ego quidem Herodi persoluta, interverso
sanctuarii reditu, sentio fuisse. Varia enim ab Herode
et filiis ejus exacta tributa, ab Agrippa tandem remissa,
narrat Josephus. Hoc autem tributum per se exiguum,
multis aliis adjunctum, grave erat: gravia autem fue-
rint oportet de quibus hic Christus loquitur, alioqui, in
republica etiam, pauperes capite censi fuerunt. Hinc
itaque Christus Herodis injustitiam arguendi, cujus
sub ditione erat, occasionem cepit. Qui, cum cæteri
reges terræ (siquidem patriæ parentes dici se cupiant)
non filiis, id est, civibus suis, sed alienis, bello nempe
subactis, graviora tributa imperare soleant, hic contra
non alienos, sed filios opprimeret. Utcumque sit, sive
filios hic, cives regum proprios, sive filios Dei, id est,
fideles et in universum Christianos intelligi concedas,
ut intelligit Augustinus, certissimum est, si filius fuit
Petrus, et proinde liber, nos etiam authore Christo
liberos esse : vel ut cives, vel ut Christianos: non esse
ergò juris regii à filiis et liberis tributa graviora exi-
gere. Testatur enim Christus persolvisse se, non quod
deberet, sed ne illos offendendo qui exigebant negotium
sibi privatus exhiberet: cum officium ac munus lom-
gissimè diversum in illo vitæ suæ curriculo explendum
sibi esset. Dum igitur negat Christus jus regium esse,
graviora vectigalia liberis imponere, certè spoliare,
diripere, occidere, excruciare proprios cives, et praeser-
tim Christianos, jus esse regium multò evidentiùs
negat. Hunc in modum de jure regio cum et aliàs
disputâsse videatur, venire in suspicionem quibusdam
coepit, non se tyrannorum licentiam pro jure regio ha-
bere. Non enim de nihilo erat, quòd Pharisæi interro-
gatione hnjusmodi animum ejus tentarent, quòd de
jure regio percontaturi, eum neminem curare, non re-
spicere personam hominum, dixerint ; neque de nihilo,
quòd is proposita sibi istiusmodi questione irasceretur,
Mat. xxii. An te quispiam si insidiosè aggredi, si lo-
quentem captare vellet, si elicere ex te quod fraudi
futurum tibi sit, de jure regio sub rege interrogaret ?
an tu cuipiam de istoc interroganti irascerere ? non
opinor. Vel hinc ergò perspicias, mon id eum de jure
regio sensisse quod regibus gratum erat. Idem ex re-
sponso ejus apertissimè colligitur, quo ille percontatores
amandare à se potiùs quàm docere videtur. Poseit
numisma censûs ; “ Cujus,” inquit, “imago ista est ?
Cæsaris. Reddite ergo Cæsari quæ sunt Cæsaris, quæ
Dei sunt Deo.” Immo quæ populi sunt populo red-
denda esse quis nescit ? Reddite omnibus quod debetis,
inquit Paulus, Rom. xiii. mon ergò Cæsari omnia.
Libertas nostra non Cæsaris, verùm ab ipso Deo natale
PRO POPULO ANGLICANO DEFENSIO.
665
nobis donum est; eam Cæsari cuivus reddere, quam
ab eo non accepimus, turpissimum esset, et humana
origine indignissimum. Si enim os hominis et vnl-
tum aspiciens interrogaret quisquam, cujus ista imago
esset, annon facilè quivis responderet Dei esse ? Cùm
igitur Dei simus, id est, verè liberi, ob eamque causam
soli Deo reddendi, profectò Caesari nos, id est, homini,
et præsertim injusto, improbo, tyramno, in servitutem
tradere, sine piaculo, et quidem maximo sacrilegio non
possumus. Interim quæ Cæsaris sint, quae Dei, in
medio relinquit. Quòd si idem erat hoc numisma, quod
didrachmum illud Deo pendi solitum, ut certè postea
sub Vespasiano fuit, tum sanè controversiam non mi-
nuit Christus, sed implicavit: cùm impossibile sit Deo
et Cæsari idem simul reddere. At enim ostendit quae
Cæsaris essent; numisma nempe illud Caesaris imagine
signatum. Quid igitur inde lucraris præter denarium
vel Cæsari vel tibi ? Aut enim Cæsari Christus præter
denarium illud nihil dedit, cætera omnia nobis asseruit,
aut si quicquid pecuniae Cæsaris nomine inscriptum
esset, id Cæsari dedit, contrarius jam sibi, nostra ferè
omnia Cæsari dabit, qui duo modò didrachma regibus
non se ex debito persolvere, et suo et Petri nomine
professus est. Ratio denique infirma est quâ niteris;
non enim principis effigiem habet moneta, ut principis
esse, sed ut probam se esse, moneat; atque se principis
momine insignitam me quis audeat adulterare. Sin
autem ad jus regium inscriptio tantum valerat, reges
profectò nostras omnium facultates, uti essent suæ,
sola nominis inscriptione statim perficerent ; aut si
nostra omnia jam sua sunt, quod tuum dogma est,
non idcirco Cæsari numisma illud reddendum ërat,
quia Cæsaris momen aut imaginem prætulit, sed quia
Cæsaris jam antea jure erat, nulla licèt imagine sig-
natum. Ex quo manifestum est, Christum hoc im
loco non tam nos officii nostri erga reges aut Cae-
sares ita perplexè atque ambiguè admonere voluisse,
quàm Pharisæos hypocritas improbitatis et militiæ ar-
guere. Quid ? rursus cùm ei nuntiarent Pharisæi Hc-
rodem ejus vitae insidias parare, an humile aut demis-
sum ab eo responsum, tyranno reddendum, tulerunt?
Immo “ ite,” inquit, * et dicite vulpi illi;” innuens
reges non jure regio, sed vulpino, civibus suis insidiari.
Atqui “ sub tyranno supplicium mortis subire sustinuit.”
Enimverò qui potuit misi sub tyranno ? ** supplicium
sub tyranno passus est;” ergò ad injustissima quævis
juris regii testis et assertor: egregius tu quidem offi-
ciorum ratiocinator es. Verùm Christus quamvis nostri
liberandi, non sub jugum mittendi, causâ servum se
fecerit, tamen ad hunc modum se gessit ; nec juri quic-
quam regio præter æquum et bonum concessit. Nunc
ad præcepta ejus hac de re aliquando veniamus. Ze-
bedæi filios maximam in regno Christi, quod mox in
terris futurum somniabant, dignitatem affectantes, sic
Christus corripuit, ut omnes simul Christianos com-
monefaceret, quale jus magistratûs et imperii civilis
apud eos constitui voluerit. “ Scitis,” inquit, * prin-
cipes gentium in eas dominari, et magnatus authorita-
tem exercere in eas, verùm non ita erit inter vos. Sed
quicunque volet inter vos magnus fieri, esto vester
minister; et quicumque volet inter vos primus esse, esto
vester servus.” Haec tu nisi mente captus tecum facere
credidisses ? hisne te argumentis vincere, ut reges nos-
tros rerum dominos existimemus ? Tales in bello hostes
nobis contingant, qui in castra hostium (quanquam et
armatos vincere sat scimus) uti tu soles, caeci atque im-
ermes tamquam in suos incidant: ita semper, quod tibi
maximè adversatur, id demens, veluti firmissimum
causae tuae subsidium, comparare consuevisti. Petebant
Israëlitæ regem, “ ut habebant omnes istæ gentes :”
dissuasit Deus multis verbis, quæ Christus hic sum-
matim complexus est, “ scitis principes gentium in eas
dominari : * petentibus tamen iis dedit regem Deus,
quamvis iratus : Christus, ne peteret omnino Chris-
tianus populus more gentium dominaturum, adhibita
cautione antevertit ; ** inter vos non ita erit.” Quid
hoc clariùs dici potuit? non erit inter vos ista regum
superba dominatio, tametsi specioso titulo euergetæ et
benefici vocentur ; sed qui magnus inter vos fieri vult,
(quis autem principe major ?) “ esto vester minister:”
et qui primus sive “ princeps, (Luc. xxii.) esto vester
servus.” Non erravit itaque Advocatus ille quem im-
sectaris, sed authorem habuit Christum, si regem Chris-
tianum populi ministrum esse dixit, uti est certè omnis
bonus magistratus. Rex autem inter Christianos aut
omninò non erit, aut erit servus omnium ; si planè vult
esse dominus, esse simul Christianus non potest. Quin
et Moses, legis quodammodo servilis institutor, mon
populo tamen superbè dominabatur, sed onus ipse
populi ferebat; ferebat in sinu populum, ut nutricius
lactantem ; Num. xi. Nutricius autem servus est. Plato
non dominos, sed servatores et adjutores, populi appel-
lamdos esse magistratus docuit; populum non servos, sed
altores, magistratuum, ut qui alimenta et stipendia ma-
gistratibus etiam regibus præbeant. Eosdem Aristoteles
custodes et ministros legum vocat, Plato et ministros et
servos. Ministros Dei Apostolus quidem appellat, quod
tamen nequaquam obstat quò minùs sint et legum et
populi ; tam leges enim quàm magistratus propter po-
pulum sunt. Et tamen hanc tu ** Fanaticorum Angliæ
Molossorum opinionem” esse clamitas. Molossos esse
Anglos certè non putarem, nisi quòd tu illos, hybrida,
latratu tàm degeneri oblatras ; Lupi, si diis placet,
Sancti Dominus : Lupus nimirum sanctus queritur
Molossos esse fanaticos. Germanus olim, cujus ille
Lupus Trecassimus collega fuit, incesto apud nos regi
Vortigerno authoritate sua regnum abrogavit. Sanctus
itaque Lupus talem te Lupi non sancti, sed famelici
cujuspiam et latrunculi, dominum, illo apud Martialem
viperarum domino viliorem, aspernatur : qui et latram-
tem ipse domi, ut ferunt, Lyciscam habes, quæ tibi
miserè dominatur; cujus partim impulsu etiam scrip-
sisse hæc diceris ; unde mirum non est velle te regiam
dominationem aliis obtrudere, qui foemineum ipse domi
dominatum ferre tam serviliter assuevisti. Sis itaque
Lupi Dominus, sit Lupa tui domina, sis Lupus ipse, sis
Lycanthropus, molossis meherculè Anglicamis ludi-
brium debes. Verùm lupos venari nunc non est otium;
sylvis itaque egressi, in viam regiam redeamus. Qui
contra omnem in ecclesia primatum nuper scripsisti,
nunc “ Petrum Apostolicæ coronæ principem appellas.”
Quis tibi authoritate tam fluxa homunculo fidenm ha-
666
PRO POPULO ANGI,ICANO IDETENSIO.
beat? Quid Petrus ? ** subjecti estote omni humanæ
ordinationi propter Dominum, sive regi ut superemi-
menti, sive præsidibus, ut qui per eum mittantur, ad
ultionem quidem facinorosorum, laudem verò benefa-
cientium ; quoniam ita est voluntas Dei.” Scripsit
hæc Petrus mon solùm privatis, sed etiam advenis per
Minorem ferè Asiam dispersis, atque dispalatis ; qui,
in iis ubi degebant locis, nullius juris præterquam hos-
pitalis capaces erant. An tu incolas, liberos, nobiles,
indigenarum conventus, comitia, parlamenta idem in
sua patria, quod sparsos et peregrinos in aliena, decere
putas? an idem privatos decere in sua, quod senatores
et magistratus, sine quibus me reges quidem esse pos-
sunt? fac tamen indigenas fuisse, fac non privatos, sed
senatum ipsum Romamum, cui hæc scripta sunt. Quid
inde assequeris? cùm nullum præceptum cui ratio
aliqua adjuncta est, quenquam ultra illam præceptu
ratiomem obligare aut soleat aut possit. “ Estote sub-
jecti, ότοτάymre, id est, si vim verbi spectes, subordinati,
seu legitimè subjecti, ij yàp rd£tc vδμος, inquit Aristo-
teles ; lex est ordo. “ Subjecti estote propter Domi-
num.” Quamobrem ? quia cùm rex, tum præses, con-
stituitur à Deo ad ultionem facinorosorum, laudem be-
nefacientium. “ Quomiam ita voluntas est Dei.” Vi-
delicet ut talibus obsequamur, quales hic describuntur;
de aliis nullum hic verbum. Vides quam optimè hu-
jus præcepti constet ratio ; addit, v. 16. “ ut liberi,”
non ergò ut mancipia. Quid si versa vice ad crucem
et perniciem bonorum, ad impunitatem et laudem et
præmia facinorosorum, regment ? an in perpetuum sub-
jecti erimus non privati solùm, sed primores, sed magis-
tratus omnes, ipse denique senatus ? Anmom humana
ordinatio dicitur ? cur ergò potestas humana, ad con-
stituendum quod hominibus bonum et salubre est, va-
lebit, ad tollendum quod iisdem malum et exitiosum
est, non valebit ? Atqui rex ille, cui subjecti esse ju-
bentur, erat Romæ ea tempestate Nero tyrannus ; ergò
tyrannis etiam subjecti esse debemus. At, inquàm, et
dubium hoc est, Nero an Claudius tunc temporis rerum
potiretur, et illi qui subjecti esse jubentur, advenæ,
dispersi, privati, non consules, non prætores, non sena-
tus Romanus, erant. Nunc Paulum adeamus (quoniam
tu quod nobis de regibus licere mom vis, id tibi de
Apostolis licere autumas, ut principatum Petro modò
des, modò eripias): Paulus hæc ad Romanos, c. xiii.
** omnis anima potestatibus supereminentibus subjecta
esto ; non est enim potestas nisi à Deo, quae autem
sunt potestates à Deo sunt ordinatæ :” Romanis hæc
scribit, non, ut Petrus, advenis, dispersis, sed pri-
vatis tamen potissimum et plebeiis ; ita etiam scribit,
ut totam reipub. administrandæ rationem, originem,
finem, luculentissimè doceat. Quò magis obedientiæ
quoque nostræ vera ac distincta ratio, ab omni servi-
tute disjuncta, eluceret. “ Omnis anima,” hoc est,
quisque homo, “ subjectus esto.” Quid sibi Apostolus
proponat hoc capite satis explanavit Chrysostomus,
rot£, roüro δεικνύc, &c. ** facit hoc,” inquit, “ ut osten-
dat Christum leges suas non ad hoc induxisse, ut com-
munem politiam everteret, sed ut in melius statueret.”
Non ergò ut Neronem, aut tyrannum quemvis alium
supra omnem legem et poemam constitueudo, crude-
lissimum unius imperium in omnes mortales consta-
biliret. ** Utque simul doceret superflua et inutilia
bella non esse suscipienda,” mom ergò bella damnat
contra tyrannum, hostem patriæ intestinum, atque adeò
periculosissimum, suscepta. “ Pervulgatus tumc erat
hominum sermo traducens Apostolos tamquam seditiosos,
et novatores, quasi omnia ad evertendum leges com-
munes et facerent et dicerent ; his nunc ora obstruit.”
Non ergò tyrannorum defensiones conscripserunt
Apostoli, quod tu facis, sed ea fecerunt, ea docuerunt,
quæ suspecta omnibus tyrannis defensione apud illos
potiùs, et interpretatione quadam, egebant. Propositum
Apostolo quid fuerit ex Chrysostomo vidimus; nunc
verba scrutemur. “ Omnis anima potestatibus super-
eminentibus subjecta esto;” quæ tamen istæ sint mom
statuit: non enim jura atque institnta omnium mationum
abolere, unius libidini omnia permittere, in animo erat.
Certè optimus quisque imperator authoritatem legum
et senatùs authoritate sua longè superiorem semper
agnovit. Idem apud omnes mationes nom barbaras jus
semper sanctissimum fuit. Unde Pindarus apud
Herodotum, vóμον τdvrwv ßaoiXêa, legem omnium re-
gem esse, dixit ; Orpheus in hymnis non mortalium
solùm, sed immortalium etiam, regem appellat;
/ ^• J*
'ASavdTov ka)\άω kai Svntòv àyvòv àvaxTa
Oùpdvuov vóμον.
Reddit rationem. Avròc yàp μόνος ζύων διακα κparúvet,
“ Lex enim sola viventium gubernaculum tenet.” Plato
in legibus rò κparêv ἐν τῆ τόλει, id quod in civitate plu-
rimum debet posse, legem esse ait. In epistolis eam
maximè rempub. laudat, ubi lex, et domina et rex ho-
minum, non homines tyranni legum sunt. Eadem
Aristotelis sententia in Politicis, eadem Ciceronis in
Legibus, ita leges præesse magistratibus, ut magistra-
tus præsumt populo. Cùm itaque sapientissimorum
virorum judicio, prudentissimarum civitatum institutis,
lex semper potestas summa atque suprema habita sit,
nec evangelii doctrina cum ratione aut cum jure gen-
tium pugnet, is utique potestatibus superemimentibus
verissimè subjectus erit, qui legibus, et magistratibus
juxta leges rempub. gubernantibus, ex animo paret.
Non ergò solùm populo subjectionem hanc, sed regibus
etiam, præcipit ; qui supra leges nequaquam sunt.
“ Non est enim potestas nisi à Deo ; id est, nulla reipub.
forma, nulla homines regendi legitima ratio. Antiquis-
simæ etiam leges ad authorem Deum olim refereban-
tur ; est enim lex, ut Cicero in Philipp. 12. nihil aliud
nisi recta et à mumine deorum tracta ratio, imperans
honesta, prohibens contraria. A Deo igitur est magis-
tratuum institutio, ut eorum administratione gens hu-
mana sub legibus viveret : hanc autem vel illam admi-
nistrationis formam, hos vel illos magistratus, eligendi
optio proculdubio penès liberas homiuum nationes sem-
per fuit. Hinc Petrus et regem et presides dv0po)7rtvnv
kriaiv, humanam creationem, vocat ; et Hosea c. 8.
“ constituunt reges, at non ex me; præficiunt principes
quos non agnosco.” In ista enim sola Hebræorum
repub. ubi Deum variis modis consulere poterant, de
regis nominatione ad Deum referri ex lege oportebat :
cæteræ gentes mandatum à Deo nullum istiusmodi
PRO POPULO ANGLICANO DEFENSIO.
667
accepimus. Aliquamdo aut ipsa regiminis forma, si
vitiosa sit, aut illi qui potestatem obtinent, et ab homi-
nibus, et à diabolo, sunt. Luc. 4. “ Tibi dabo potesta-
tem hanc omnem, nam mihi tradita est, et cui volo do
illam.” Hinc princeps hujus mundi dicitur, et Apoca-
lyp. 13. dedit Bestiæ Draco potentiam suam, et thro-
num suum, et potestatem magnam. Proptereà necesse
est hic intelligi non potestates quascumque, sed legiti-
mas, prout etiam infra describuntur ; necesse est in-
telligi potestates ipsas, non semper eos qui imperium
obtinent. Hinc dilucidè Chrysostomus, “ Quid ais ?”
inquit ; * omnis ergò primceps à Deo constitutus est ?
non dico: mom enim de quovis principe, sed de ipsa
re, loquitur Apostolus; non dicit, non est princeps nisi
à Deo, sed non est potestas.” Hæc Chrysostomus.
** Quæ autem potestates sunt, à Deo sunt ordinatæ.”
Legitimas ergò vult hic intelligi Apostolus ; malum
enim et vitium, cùm ataxia sit, non est ut possit ordi-
mari, et esse simul vitiosum. Hoc enim duo simul con-
traria ponit, taxim et ataxian. “ Quæ autem sunt,” ita
interpretaris ac si diceretur, “ quae nunc sunt;” quo
faciliùs probare possis etiam Neroni, qui, ut opinaris,
tumc ** imperavit,” Romanos obtemperare debuisse ;
nostra samè bona venia : quàm enim voles de Anglicana
repub. malè sentias, in ea tamen Anglos acquiescere
debere, quoniam “ munc est,” et “ â Deo ordinatur,” ut
Neromis olim imperium, necesse habebis concedere.
Neque euim Nero minùs quàm Tiberius “ artibus ma-
tris imperium mihil ad se pertinens” occupaverat, ne
legitimè partum fuisse respondeas. Quò sceleratior et
doctrinæ retractator ipse tuæ, Romanos potestati quæ
tunc fuit subjectos esse vis, Anglos potestati quæ nunc
est subjectos esse non vis. Verùm nullæ im hoc orbe
terrarum res duæ magis è regione adversae sibi sunt,
quàm tu mequissimus nequissimo semper ferè adversus
es tibi. Quid autem facies miser ? acumime hoc tuo
regem adolescentem planè perdidisti ; ab ipsa enim
tua sententia extorquebo ut fatearis, hamc potestatem
in Anglia, quæ nunc est, à Deo ordinatam esse ; atque
omnes proinde Anglos intra ejusdem reipublicæ fines
eidem potestati subjectos esse debere. Attendite igitur,
critici, et mamus abstimete; Salmasii nova hæc emen-
datio est, in epistola ad Romanos ; non quæ sunt
potestates, “ sed quæ nunc existunt” reddi debere adim-
venit; ut Neroni tyranno tumc scilicet imperanti sub-
jectos esse omnes oportuisse demonstraret. At ό bone,
Anκύθιον ἀπόλεσac : ut regem modò, ita nunc interpre-
tamentum hoc tam bellum, perdidisti. Quam tu epis-
tolam sub Nerone scriptam esse ais, sub Claudio scrip-
ta est, principe simplici, et non malo : hoc viri docti
certissimis argumentis compertum habent ; quinquen-
mium etiam Neronis laudatissimum fuit, unde argu-
mentum hoc toties inculcatum, quod multis in ore est,
multis imposuit, tyranno parendum esse, eò quòd Pau-
lus hortatus est Romanos ut Neroni essent subjecti,
callidum indocti cujuspiam commentum esse reperi-
tur. “ Qui obsistit potestati,” scilicet legitimæ, ** Dei
ordinationi obsistit.” Astringit etiam reges praeceptum
hoc, qui legibus et senatui obsistumt. At verò qui po-
testati vitiosæ, aut potestatis non vitiosæ corruptori et
eversori, obsistit, an is Dei ordinationi obsistit ? sanus,
credo, mon dixeris. Tollit omnem dubitationem sequens
versiculus, de legitima tantùm potestate Apostolum bic
loqui. Definiendo enim explicat, nequis errare, et
opiniones hinc stolidas aucupari, possit, qui sint magis-
tratus potestatis hujus ministri, et quam ob causam
subjectos esse nos hortetur; “ Magistratus non sunt
timori bonis operibus, sed malis ; bomi à potestate hac
laudem adipiscentur ; magistratus minister est Dei
nostro bono datus ; non frustra gladium gerit, vindex
ad iram ei qui malum facit.” Quis negat, quis recusat,
nisi improbus, quin hujusmodi potestati aut potestatis
administro libens se subjiciat ? non solùm ad vitandam
“ iram” et offensionem, aut poenæ metu, sed etiam
“ propter conscientiam.” Sine magistratibus enim et
civili gubernatione, nulla respublica, nulla societas
humana, nulla vita, esse potest. Quæ autem potestas,
qui magistratus, contraria his facit, neque illa, neque
hic, à Deo propriè ordinatus est. Unde neque tali vel
potestati, vel magistratui, subjectio debetur aut præci-
pitur, neque nos prudenter obsistere prohibemur: non
enim potestati, non magistratui, obsistemus, qui hic
optimè depingitur, sed prædoni, sed tyranno, sed hosti;
qui si magistratus tamen dicendus erit, eò dumtaxat
quòd habet potestatem, quòd ad pœnam nostram ordi-
nari à Deo videri potest, etiam diabolus hoc modo ma-
gistratus erit. Sanè unius rei una vera definitio est :
si ergò Paulus hic magistratum definit, quod quidem
accuratè facit, eadem definitione, iisdem verbis tyran-
mum, rem maximè contrariam, definire non potuit.
Unde quem ipse magistratum definivit atque descrip-
sit, ei duntaxat subjectos nos esse voluisse, non ejus
contrario tyranno, certissimè colligitur. “ Propter hoc
tributa solvitis;” rationem adjungit ad præceptum ;
unde Cbrysostomus, “ Cur,” inquit, “ vectigalia regi
damus ? annom tamquam nobis prospicienti, curæ ac
tuitionis mercedem solventes ? atqui nihil illi solvis-
semus, nisi ab initio utilem mobis talem esse præfectu
ram cognovissemus.” Quapropter illud repetam quod
suprà dixi ; quandoquidem subjectio hæc non simpli-
citer, sed cum adjuncta ratione, à mobis requiritur, illa
profectò ratio quæ adjungitur, subjectionis nostræ vera
norma erit: Cum ista ratione non subjecti, rebelles ;
siue ista ratione subjecti, servi erimus et socordes. “At
Angli,” inquis, “ nihil minùs quàm liberi, quia mali,
quia flagitiosi.” Nolo ego Gallorum vitia commemo-
rare, quamvis sub regibus sint ; neque Anglorum mi-
mis excusare ; dico tamen illa esse flagitia, quæ sub
regibus, tamquam in Ægypto didicerunt; neque dum
in deserto ; licèt Dei sub imperio, dediscere statim po-
tuerunt. Spes est tamen de plerisque bona ; ut ne
sanctissimos hic optimosque viros et veritatis studiosis-
simos collaudare incipiam ; quorum apud mos non mi-
norem credo esse numerum, quàm ubi tu maximum esse
existimas. At “jugum Anglis durum imponitur.” Quid
si illis, qui jugum cæteris civibus imponere studebant?
quid si suo deinde merito subactis ? mam cæteri puto
mom molestè ferunt, exhausto civilibus bellis ærario,
sumptibus propriis suam se tolerare libertatem. Re-
]abitur jam ad rabbinos mugivendos. Regem legibus
astrictum esse negat, ex iis tamen probat “ læsæ ma-
jestatis reum esse posse, si jus suum patiatur imminui:”
668
PRO POPULO ANGLICANO DEFENSIO.
astrictus itaque et non astrictus, reus et non reus rex,
erit: adeò frequenter enim solet repugnare sibi, ut ipsa
repugnantia huic homini germana atque gemella esse
videatur. Atqui Deus, inquis, multa regna Nebu-
chadnezzari in servitutem dedit. Fateor ad certum
tempus dedisse, Jer. 27. 7. Anglos in servitutem Ca-
rolo Stuarto ad semihorulam dedisse ostende ; permi-
sisse non negaverim, dedisse nunquam audivi. Aut si
Deus in servitutem dat populum, quoties tyrannus plus
populo potest, cur non idem liberare dicendus erit,
quoties plus potest populus tyranno ? am is Deo tyran-
nidem suam, nos Deo libertatem nostram, acceptam
non feremus ? Non est malum in civitate quod Deus
non immittat, Amos 3. famem, pestilentiam, seditionem,
hostem ; ecquod mam horum civitas ab se non totis
viribus amolietur ? faciet profectò, si possit, quamvis ab
ipso Deo immissa hæc esse sciat ; nisi è cœlo ipse secùs
jusserit. Cur non tyrannos pariter amovebit, si plus
polleat? an ejus unius impotentiam ad commune ma-
lum esse magis à Deo credemus, quàm potentiam totius
civitatis ad commune bonum ? Absit à civitatibus, ab-
sit ab omni coetu hominum ingemuorum, doctrinæ tam
stupidæ, tamque pestiferæ, labes, quæ vitam omnem
civilem funditus delet, gentem humanam universam,
propter umum atque alterum tyrannum, ad quadrupe-
dum propè conditionem detrudit: cum illi supra omnem
legem excelsi par in utrumque genus et pecudum et
hominum jus atque imperium obtinebunt. Mitto jam
stulta illa dilemmata, in quibus et te jactes, nescio quem
fìngis, “ potestatem illam supereminentem de populo
velle intelligere;” tametsi affirmare non dubito omnem
magistratùs authoritatem à populo proficisci. Hinc
Cicero pro Flacco, “ Illi nostri sapientissimi et sanctis-
simi majores, quae scisceret plebs, quæ populus juberet,
juberi vetarique voluerunt.” Hinc Lucius Crassus,
orator eximius, et senatùs eo tempore princeps, cujus
tum causam agebat ad populum. “ Nólite,” inquit,
“ sinere nos cuiquam servire, nisi vobis universis, qui-
bus et possumus et debemus.” Quamvis enim senatus
populum regeret, populus tamen illam moderandi et
regendi sui potestatem senatui tradiderat. Unde
majestatem populo Romano frequentiùs quàm regibus
olim attributam legimus. Idem Marcus Tullius pro
Plancio ; ** Est enim conditio liberorum populorum,
praecipueque hujus principis populi et omnium gentium
domini, posse suffragiis vel dare vel detrahere quod
velit cuique ; nostrum est ferre modicè populi volun-
tates : honores si magni non putemus, non servire
populo; sin eos expetamus, non defatigari supplicando.”
Egone ut regem populi servum dicere metuam, cùm
senatus Romanus, tot regum dominus, servum se populi
professus sit? Vera sunt hæc, inquies, in populari statu ;
nondum enim lex regia potestatem populi in Augus-
tum, et successores ejus, transtulerat. Hem tibi ergò
Tiberium illum, quem tu “ tyrannum, plus vice sim-
plici,” fuisse ais, ut revera fuit; is tamen dominus,
etiam post legem i]lam regiam, appellatus à quodam,
ut tradit Suetonius, denuntiavit ne se ampliùs con-
tumeliae causâ nominaret. Audisne ? tyrannus iste
dominus dici contumeliæ sibi duxit. Idem in senatu,
* Dixi et numc, et sæpe aliâs, patres conscripti, bonum
et salutarcm principem, quem vos tanta et tam libera
potestate instruxistis, senatui servire debere, et univer-
sis civibus sæpe, et plerumque etiam singulis ; neque
id dixisse me poenitet ; et bonos et aequos et faventes
vos habui dominos, et adhuc habeo.” Nec simulata
hæc ab eo si dixeris, ut erat simulandi callidissimus,
quicquam proficies ; quis enim id videri se cupit, quod
esse non debet ? Hinc ille mos non Neroni solùm,
quod scribit Tacitus, sed cæteris etiam imperatoribus
fuit, populum in circo adorandi. De quo Claudianus,
VI. ** Cons. Honorii.
O quantum populo secreti numinis addit
lmperii præsens species, quantamque rependit
Majestas alterna vicem, cum regia circi
Connexum gradibus veneratur purpnra vulgus,
Consensuque cavae sublatus in æthera vallis
Plebis adoratæ reboat fragor. 99
Qua adoratione quid aliud imperatores Romani, nisi uni-
versam plebem, etiam post legem regiam, suos esse do-
minos fatebantur? Atque illud est, quod initio statim
suspicatus sum, te glossariis pervolutandis, et tricis qui-
busdam laboriosis magnificè divulgandis, operam potiùs
dedisse, quàm bonis authoribus attentè et studiosè perle-
gendis; qui veterum scriptorum sapientia ne leviter qui-
dem imbutus, rem praestantissimorum opinionibus philo-
sophorum, et prudentissimorum in republica principum,
dictis celebratissimam, novam esse prorsus, et “ enthu-
siastarum ” tantummodò “ deliriis” somniatam, censes.
I numc, Martimum illum sutorem, et Gulielmum Pel-
lionem, quos adeò despicis, ignorantiæ collegas et
mystagogos tibi sume : quanquam erudire te poterunt
illi, et illos tibi gryphos dissolvere stolidissimos, “ An
in democratia serviat populus, cùm serviat rex in mo-
marchia ; utrùm totus an pars ejus ?” Ita illi, cum tibi
(Edipi vice fuerint, tu illis Sphinx in malam rem præ-
ceps abeas licebit; alioquin fatuitatum tuarum et ænig-
matum finem nullum fore video. Rogas, “ Cùm reges
Apostolus mominat, an de populo eos intelligemus ?”
Pro regibus quidem orandum esse Paulus docet, 1 Tim.
ii. 2. at priùs pro populo orandum esse docuerat, “ v. 1.
Sunt tamen et de regibus, et de populo nonnulli, pro
quibus orare etiam vetamur. Pro quo non orem, eùmne
ex lege non pumiam ? quid vetat ? Atqui “ cum hæc
scriberet Paulus, imperabant vel pessimi;” hoc etiam
falsum est, scriptam enim sub Claudio et hanc episto-
lam fuisse certissimis argumentis evincit Ludovicus
Capellus. De Nerone cùm mentionem facit Paulus, non
regem, sed “ leonem,” id est belluam immanem, vocat,
cujus ex ore ereptum se gaudet, 2 Tim. iv. Pro regibus
itaque, non pro belluis, “ orandum, ut vitam tranquil-
lam et quietam transigamus, cum pietate ” tamen
“ omni et honestate.” Vides non tam regum hic quàm
tranquillitatis, pietatis, honestatis, etiam rationem esse
habendam. Quis autem populus non se suosque liberos
tuendo (contra tyrannum an contra hostem nihil inte-
rest) vitam “ sollicitam, inquietam,” bellicosam, hones-
tam, agere, quàm sub hoste vel tyranno, non solùm
æquè sollicitam et inquietam, sed turpem etiam, ser-
vilem, et inhonestam. Teipsum testem adhibebo, non
quo tanti sis, sed ut perspiciant omnes quàm sis duplex,
et fraudulentus, et mancipium regis mercenarium.
PRO POPULO ANGLICANO DEFENSIO.
669
« Quis,” inquis, “ non perferre mallet in repub. aristo-
cratica ex optimatum æmulatione dissensiones oriri
solitas, quàm ex uno monarcha, tyrannico more im-
perare consueto, certam miseriam ac perniciem ? Popu-
Ius Romanus prætulit statum illum reipub. quantum-
libet discordiis agitatæ jugo Cæsarum intolerabili.
Populus, qui vidandae seditionis causâ monarchicum
statum praeoptavit, ubi expertus est levius esse malum
quod vitare voluit, ad priora saepe redire expetit.” Haec
ct plura tua verba sunt in illa de episcopis dissertatione,
sub Walonis Messalini adscititio nomine edita, p. 412.
contra Petavium Loiolitam, cùm ipse magis Loiolita
sis, et eo de grege pessimus. Quid hac de re Scriptura
sacra statuerit, et vidimus et omni diligentia investi-
gàsse non poenitet: unde quid senserint patres antiqui
per tot ingentia volumina exquirere pretium fortasse
operæ non erit. Si quid enim afferunt, quod Scriptura
non exhibuit, eorum authoritatem, quantacunque sit,
meritò repudiamus. Quod autem ex Irenæo profers,
“ reges Dei jussu constitui aptos his qui in illo tempore
ab iis reguntur,” cum Scriptura pugnat evidentissimè.
Cùm enim judices ad regendum populum suum ap-
tiores regibus esse palàm significâsset Deus, id tamen
totum voluntati atque arbitrio populi permisit, ut ap-
tiorem sibi sub optimatibus formam reipub. deteriore
sub regibus, si vellent, permutarent. Legimus etiam
saepe regem malum bomo populo datum, et contra, re-
gem bonum populo malo. Virorum itaque sapientis-
simorum est perspicere quid populo aptissimum et uti-
lissimum sit: constat enim neque omni populo, neque
eidem semper, eundem reipub. statum comvenire, sed
vel hunc vel illum, prout civium virtus et industria
nunc augescit, nunc minuitur. Qui tamen potestatem
adimit populo eligendi sibi quam velit reipub. formam,
adimit profectò id in quo civilis libertas tota ferè com-
sistit. Citas deinde Justinum Martyrem, Antoninis
imperatorum optimis obsequium deferentem ; quisnam
iis tam egregiis et moderatis non detulisset ? ** At
quantò, inquis, nos hodie pejores Christiani ? tulerunt
illi principem diversæ religionis.” Privati scilicet, et
viribus longè inferiores. “ Nunc sanè pontificii regem
non ferrent reformatum,” nec “ reformati pontificium.”
Facis tu quidem prudenter, ut ostendas te nec pontifi-
cium esse, nec reformatum ; facis etiam liberaliter; ultrò
enim largiris quod nunc non petivimus, omnes hodie
Christianos in hoc planè consentire, quod tu solus insigni
audacia atque scelere oppugnas, patrum etiam quos lau-
das dissimillimus; illi enim pro Christianis, ad profanos
reges, defensionis eomscribebant, tu pro rege pontificio
atque deterrimo contra Christianos et Reformatos.
Multa deinde ex Athenagora, multa ex Tertulliano,
futiliter depromis, quæ ab ipsis Apostolis multò clariùs
et explanatiùs dicta jam sunt. Tertullianus autem
longissimè à te dissentit, qui regem vis esse dominum:
quod tu aut nescivisti, aut nequiter dissimulâsti. Is
enim christiamus ad imperatorem ethnicum in Apolo-
getico ausus est scribere, non oportere imperatorem
appellari dominum. “ Augustus,” inquit, “ imperii for-
mator, ne dominum quidem dici se volebat, hoc enim
Dei est cognomen : dicam planè imperatorem domi-
mum ; sed quando non cogor ut dominum Dei vice di-
cam : cæterùm liber sum illi, Dominus meus Deus
unus est,” &c.; et ibidem “ qui pater patriae est, quo-
modo dominus est?” Gratulare nunc tibi de Tertulli-
ano, quem sanè praestabat missum fecisse. “ At parri-
cidas appellat qui Domitianum interfecerunt.” Rectè
appellat ; uxoris enim et famulorum insidiis, à Parthe-
mio, et Stephano interceptarum pecuniarum reo, est
interfectus. Quod si senatus populusque Romanus
hostem judicatum, ut Neronem prius judicabant, et ad
supplicium quærebant, more majorum punivissent, eos
parricidas appellaturum fuisse censes ? immo si ap-
pellâsset, dignus ipse supplicio fuisset ; uti tu furcâ
jam dignus es. Origeni responsum idem.quadrabit
quod Irenæo. Athanasius reges terræ ad humana tri-
bunalia vocare nefarium esse dicit. Quis hoc dixit
Athanasio ? verbum enim Dei nullum hic audio. Cre-
dam itaque ego imperatoribus potiùs et regibus, de
se falsum hoc esse fatentibus, quàm Athamasio. Ad-
fers deinde Ambrosium ex proconsule et catechumeno
episcopum, verba illa Davidis, “ tibi soli peccavi,” im-
peritè, ne dicam assentatoriè, interpretantem. Volebat
is omnes alios imperatori subjectos esse, ut imperato-
rem ipse subjiceret sibi. Quàm enim superbè, et fastu
plusquàm pontificio, Theodosium imperatorem Medio-
lani tractaverit, cædis Thessalonicensis reum ipse judi-
caverit, ingressu ecclesiæ prohibuerit, quàm se deinde
novitium et rudem evangelicæ doctrinæ ostenderit,
omnibus notum est. Imperatorem ad pedes ejus pro-
volutum excedere salutatorio jussit ; sacris tandem
restitutum, et postquam obtulisset, altari adstantem his
vocibus extra cancellos exegit. “ O imperator, inte-
riora loca tantùm sacerdotibus sunt attributa, quæ cæ-
teris contingere non licet.” Doctorme hic evangelii,
am Judaicorum pontifex rituum fuit ? Hic tamen (quæ
omnium ferè ecclesiasticorum artes sunt) imperatorem
cæteris dominum imposuit, ut imperatoris ipse domi-
nus esset. His itaque verbis Theodosium tanquam
sibi subjectum repulit; “ Coæqualium hominum es
imperator et conservorum ; umus enim omnium domi-
nus rex et Creator.” Bellè profectò ; quam veritatem
calliditas et assentatio episcoporum obscuravit, eam
iracundia unius, et ut molliùs dicam, zelus ineruditus,
protulit in lucem. Ambrosii imperitiæ tuam subjungis
ignorantiam aut haeresim, qui disertè negas “ sub ve-
teri foedere remissionem peccatorum per sanguinem
Christi locum tunc habuisse, cum David Deo confite-
batur ei soli se peccavisse.” p. 68. Orthodoxi, non
nisi per sanguinem agni mactati ab initio mundi, pec-
cata unquam remissa fuisse credunt ; te novum hære-
ticum cujusnam discipulus sis nescio ; certè summi
Theologi discipulus ille, quem exagitas, à vero non
aberravit, cum dixit potuisse quemvis è populo pari
jure cum Davide Deum his verbis inclamâsse, “ tibi
soli peccavi.” Augustinum deinde ostentas; clericos
Hipponenses nescio quos producis ; nam Augustini
quæ sumt abs te allata mobis non obsunt. Quidni enim
fateamur cum propheta Daniële, Deum tempora mu-
tare, regma dare, et regna auferre, per homines tamen.
Si regnum Deus solus Carolo dedit, idem Carolo abstu-
$it, optimatibus et populo dedit. Si ea de causa præstan-
dam Carolo obedientiam fuisse dicis, eamdem munc
670
PRO POPULO ANGLICANO DEFENSIO.
magistratibus nostris prœstandam esse dicas necesse est.
Nam Deum et nostris etiam magistratibus eamdem de-
disse potestatem, quam dat malis regibus “ ad casti-
ganda populi peccata,” ipse concedis; nostros itaque
à Deo pariter coustitutos removere à magistratu nemo,
vel tuo judicio, nisi Deus potest. Atque ita, uti soles,
tuum tibi ipse mucronem in temet vertis, tuus tibi
ipse sicarius es; neque injuriâ, cum eò improbi-
tatis et impudentiæ processeris, eò stuporis et in-
saniæ, ut quos digito violandos non esse tot argumen-
tis probas, eosdem omnium suorum bello persequendos
esse idem affirmes. Ismaëlem, Godoliæ præfecti im-
terfectorem, ab Hieronymo parricidam esse momima-
tum ais, et meritò; præsidem enim Judææ, virum bo-
num, sime ulla causa interemit. Idem Hieronymus in
Ecclesiastem, præceptum illud Solomonis, “ Os regis
observa,” cum præcepto Pauli concordare dixit ; et
laudandus quidem, quòd locum istum cæteris sui tem-
poris moderatiùs exposuit. “ Ad inferiora tempora post
Augustinum mon descendes, ut doctorum sententiam
exquiras.” Ut omnes tamen intelligant faciliùs mentiri
te posse quàm tacere, si quos adhuc haberes tuae sen-
tentiæ fautores, post unam statim periodum non tem-
peras tibi, quò minùs ad Hispalensem Isidorum, Gre-
gorium Turomensem Ottonem, Frinsingensem etiam in
mediam barbariem, descendas. Quorum authoritas
quàm nullius apud nos pretii sit si modò scivisses, non
huc eorum obscurum testimonium per mendacium ad-
duxisses. Vultis scire cur ad hæc tempora descendere
non audet, cur abdit se, cur subitò evanescit ? dicam :
quot sunt Ecclesiæ Reformatæ præstantissimi doctores,
tot videt acerrimos sibi adversarios fore. Faciat modò
periculum, sentiet quàm facilè reluctantem, omnes in
unum vires conferentem, Lutheris, Zuingliis, Calvinis,
Buceris, Martyribus, Palaeis, im aciem eductis fundam
atque obruam. Leidenses etiam tuos tibi oppomam,
quorum academia, quorum respub. floremtissima, liber-
tatis olim domicilium, isti denique literarum humani-
orum fontes atque rivi, servilem illam æruginem tuam,
et innatam barbariem, eluere non potuerunt. Qui cùm
theologum orthodoxum habeas neminem tibi faventem,
quem tuo commodo nominare possis, ommium præsidio
reformatorum nudatus, confugere ad Sorbomam non
erubescis : quod tu collegium doctrinæ pontificiæ ad-
dictissimum nullius apud orthodoxos authoritatis esse
non ignoras. Sorbonæ igitur absorbendum tam scele-
ratum tyrannidis propugnatorem tradimus ; tam vile
mancipium nostrum esse nolumus ; qui “ populum
universum regi ignavissimo parem esse” megat. Frus-
tra id in papam deonerare atque transferre contendis,
quod omnes liberæ mationes, ommis religio, omnes
orthodoxi, sibi sumunt, in se suscipiunt. Papa quidem
cum episcopis suis, dum tenuis et nullarum virium
erat, tuæ hujus foedissimæ doctrinæ author primus ex-
titit : iis demùm artibus magnas opes, magnamque
potentiam, paulatim adeptus, tyrannorum ipse maximus
evasit. Quos tamen omnes sibi firmissimè devinxit,
cùm populis, quorum animos jamdiu superstitione op-
pressos tenuerat, suaderet, non posse regibus quamlibet
pessimis, nisi se fidelitatis sacramentum solvente, im-
perium abrogari. Verùm tu scriptores orthodoxos de-
vitas, et quæ communis et motissima ipsorum sententia
est, eam à papa introductam esse causatus, veritatem
in invidiam rapere comaris. Quod nisi astutè faceres,
appareret te meque papanum esse neque reformatum,
sed mescio quem semibarbarum Edomæum Herodi-
amum, qui tyrannum quemque immamissimum, tanquam
Messiam coelo demissum, colas atque adores. “ De-
monstrâsse te” hoc dicis “ ex doctrina patrum, pri-
morum quatuor sæculorum, quæ sola evangelica et
christiana censeri debet.” Periit huic homini pudor ;
quàm multa sunt ab illis dicta atque scripta, quæ Chris-
tus et Apostoli neque docuerunt neque approbârunt ?
quàm multa im quibus reformati omnes à patribus dis-
sentiunt? Quid autem ex patribus demonstravisti ?
“ reges etiam malos à Deo constitui.” Fac esse con-
stitutos, ut omnia etiam mala quodammodo à Deo com-
stituuntur: “ eos proinde Deum solum habere judicem,
supra leges esse, nulla lege scripta, non scripta, maturali,
meque divina, posse reos fieri à subditis, meque apud
subditos suos.” Quare ? certè mulla lex vetat, nulla
reges excipit: ratio, et jus, et fas omne, amimadverti in
omnes qui peccant indiscriminatim jubet. Neque tu
legem ullam scriptam, non scriptam, maturalem, aut
divinam, protulisti quæ vetaret. Cur ergò non in
reges quoque animadvertendum ? “ quia sunt etiam
mali à Deo constituti.” Nebulonem te magis an bar-
dum et caudicem esse dicam ? nequissimus sis oportet,
qui doctrinam perniciosissimam in vulgus dissemimare
audeas, stupidissimus, qui ratione tam stolida maximè
nitaris. Dixit Deus, Isaiæ 54. “ Ego creavi inter-
fectorem ad perdendum;” ergò interfector supra leges
est ; excute hæc, et pervolve quantum voles, parem
utrobique consequentiam invenies. Nam et papa
etiam eodem modo, quo tyrannus, à Deo est consti-
tutus, et ecclesiæ im poenam datus, quod supra ex
scriptis etiam tuis ostendimus ; tamen “ quia in fas-
tigium potestatis non ferendum, tyrannidi mon ab-
similis, primatum suum evexit, cùm eum, tùm episco-
pos, meliori jure tollendos esse” affirmas “ quàm fuere
constituti.” Wal. Mes. p. 412. Papam et episcopos,
quamvis ab irato Deo constitutos, ex ecclesia tollendos
esse ais, quia sunt tyranni ; tyrannos ex repub. tollen-
dos esse negas quia sunt ab irato Deo constituti. Ineptè
prorsus et absurdè : cùm enim papa ipsam conscien-
tiam, quæ sola regnum ejus est, invito quoquam lædere
In Ol) possit, eum, qui revera tyrannus esse non potest,
quasi tyrannum gravissimum tollendum esse clamas;
tyrannum autem verum, qui vitam et facultates nostras
omues in potestate sua habet, et sine quo papa in ec-
clesia tyrannus esse nequit, eum in repub. omnino fe-
rendum esse contendis. Hæc tua sibi invicem collata
tam imperitum te tamque puerilem sive falsi sive veri
argutatorem produnt, ut levitas tua, inscitia, temeri-
tas, incogitantia, neminem posthac latere queat. At
ratio subest altera, “ rerum vices inversæ viderentur,”
quippe in melius; actum enim esset de rebus humanis,
si quæ res pessimo loco sunt, in eodem semper sta-
rent : in melius inquam ; authoritas enim regia ad po-
pulum rediret, ab cujus voluntate atque suffragiis pro-
fecta primò, atque in unum ex suo numero derivata
erat: potestas ab eo qui injuriam intulit, ad eum qui
PRO POPULO AN
671
JLICANO DEFENSIO.
injuriam est passus, æquissima lege transiret ; cùm
tertius nemo inter homines idoneus esse possit, alieni-
genam enim judicare quis ferret? omnes æquè homines
legibus temerentur, quo nihil justius esse potest: deus
mortalis nemo esset. Quem qui inter homines consti-
tuit, non minùs in rempub. scelestus est, quàm in ec-
clesiam. Tuis iterum in te armis utar. “ Maximam
hæresin esse” ais “ qua creditur unum hominem in loco
Christi sedere : duæ hæ motæ antichristum signant,
infallibilitas in spiritualibus, et onmipotenti t in tem-
poralibus,” Apparat. ad Primat. p. 171. An reges in-
fallibiles ? Cur ergò omnipotentes ? aut si hoc sunt,
cur minùs exitiales rebus civilibus quàm papa spiritu-
alibus ? An verò Deus res civiles prorsus non curat?
si non curat, certè nos curare non prohibet ; si curat,
eamdem in republica reformationem atque in ecclesia
vult fieri ; præsertim si infallibilitatem et omnipoten-
tiam attributam homini easdem malorum omnium
utrinque causas esse exploratum sit. Non enim in
negotiis civilibus eam patientiam præcepit, ut sævissi-
mum quemlibet tyrannum respublica ferret, ecclesia
mon ferret ; immò contrarium potiùs præcepit: et ec-
clesiæ quidem nulla arma præter patientiam, innocen-
tiam, preces, et disciplinam evangelicam, reliquit;
reipublicæ et magistratibus simul omnibus nom pati-
entiam, sed leges et gladium, injuriarum et violentiæ
vindicem, in mamus tradidit. Unde hujus hominis
perversum et præposterum ingenium aut mirari subit
aut ridere ; qui in ecclesia Helvidius est et Thraseas
et planè tyrannicida ; in republica commune omnium
tyrannorum mancipium et satelles. Cujus sententia si
locum habeat, non nos solùm rebellavimus, qui regem,
sed reformati etiam omnes, qui papam dominum invitis
regibus, rejecerunt. Jamdiu autem est quòd suis ipse
telis concisus jacet. Sic enim homo est, modò mamus
adversarii ne desit, ipse in se tela abundè suppeditat:
nec quisquam ad refutandum se, aut irridendum, com-
modiores ansas ministrat. Defessus etiam cædendo
citiùs quis absedat, quàm hic terga præbendo.
CAPUT IV.
v
MAGNAM à regibus iniisse te gratiam, omnes prin-
cipes et terrarum dominos demeruisse, defensione hac
regia te fortè putas, Salmasi, cùm illi, si bona sua,
remque suam, ex veritate potiùs quàm ex adulationi-
bus tuis vellent æstimare, neminem te pejùs odisse,
neminem à se longiùs abigere atque arcere, debeant.
Dum emim regiam potestatem supra leges im immen-
sum extollis, admones eâdem operâ omnes ferè popu-
los servitutis suæ nec opinatœ ; eoque vehementiùs im-
pellis ut veternum illum, quo se esse liberes inaniter
somniabant, repentè excutiant ; momiti abs te, quod
mon putabant, servos se esse regum. Eoque minùs
tolerandum sibi esse regium imperium existimabunt,
quò magis tu iis persuasum reddideris tam infinitam
potestatem non sua patientiâ crevisse, sed ab initio ta-
lem atque tantam ipso jure regio natam fuisse. Ita
te, tuamque hanc defensionem, sive populo persuase-
ris, sive non persuaseris, omnibus posthac regibus fu-
mestam, exitialem, et execrabilem, fore necesse erit.
Si enim populo persuaseris, jus regium omnipotens
esse, regnum amplius non feret; si non persuaseris, non
feret reges, dominationem tuam injustam pro jure
usurpantes. Me si audiamt, quibus integrum hoc est,
seque circumscribi legi!)us patiantur, pro incerto, im-
becillo, violento, imperio quod nunc habent, curarum
atque formidinum pleno, firmissimum, pacatissimum,
ac diuturnum, sibi conservabunt. Consilium hoc sibi,
suisque regnis, adeò salutiferum si propter authorem
contempserint, sciant non tam esse meum, quàm regis
olim sapientissimi. Lycurgus enim Spartanorum rex,
antiqua regum stirpe oriundus, cùm propinquos videret
suos Argis et Messemæ rerum potitos, regnum quemque
suum in tyrannidem convertisse, sibique pariter suisque
civitatibus exitio fuisse, ut patriae simul saluti consule-
ret, et dignitatem in familia sua regiam quàm diutissimè
conservaret, consortem imperii senatum, et ephororum
potestatem in ipsum regem quasi censoriam, firma-
mentum regno suo, indixit. Quo facto regnum suis
nepotibus firmissimum in multa secula transmisit. Sive,
ut alii volunt, Theopompi, qui centum ampliùs annis
post Lycurgum Lacedæmone regnabat, ea moderatio
fuit, ut popularem ephororum potestatem superiorem
quàm suam constitueret, eoque facto gloriatus est sta-
bilivisse se regnum, multoque majus ac diuturnius filiis
reliquisse; exemplum profectò haud ignobile hodierni
reges ad imitandum habuerint, eumdem etiam consilii
tutissimi authorem egregium, Majorem enim legibus
dominum, ut perferrent homines hominem omnes
unum, nulla lex unquam sanxit; me potuit quidem
sancire. Quæ enim lex leges omnes evertit, ipsa lex
esse mom potest. Cùm itaque eversorem te, et parrici-
dam legum omnium, rejiciant ab se leges, exemplis
redintegrare certamen, hoc capite, conaris. Faciamus
itajue periculum in exemplis: sæpe enim, quod leges
tacent, et tacendo tantùm innuunt, id exempla evidem-
tiùs docent. Ab Judæis auspicabimur, voluntatis di-
vinæ consultissimis ; ** postea ad Christianos” tecum
** descendemus.” Initium autem altiùs petitum ab eo
tempore faciemus, quo Israëlitæ, regibus quocunque
modo subjecti, jugum illud servile cervicibus dejecerunt.
Rex Moabitarum Eglon Israëlitas bello subegerat ;
sedem imperii inter ipsos Hierichunte posuerat : mu-
minis contemptor non erat, facta enim Dei mentione, è
solio surrexit : servierant Israëlitæ Egloni annos duo-
deviginti ; non ut hosti, sed ut suo regi, munus mise-
rant. Hunc tamem dum publicè mumerantur ut regem
suum, interficiumt per insidias ut hostem. Verùm
Ehudes, qui interfecit, Dei monitu id fecisse creditur.
Quid factum hujusmodi commemdare magis potuit ?
Ad honesta enim quæque et laudabilia hortari solet
Deus, non ad injusta, infida, truculenta. Expressum
autem Dei mandatum habuisse nusquam legimus,
“ clamârunt filii Israëlis ad Jehovam;” clamavimus et
mos : excitavit iis Jehova servatorem ; excitavit et no-
lois. Ille ex vicino domesticus, ex hoste rex, factus
erat ; noster ex rege hostis : non ergo rex erat ; nam
neque civis ullo modo esse potest, qui reipublicæ est
672
PRO POPULO ANGLICANO DEFENSIO.
hostis; neque consul habebatur Antonius, neque Nero
imperator, ex quo uterque hostis à senatu est judicatus.
Quod Cicero quarta Philippica de Antonio clarissimè
docet: “ Si consul Antonius, Brutus hostis ; si conser-
vator reipublicæ Brutus, hostis Antonius. Quis illum
consulem, misi latrones, putant ?” Pari ego jure, quis
tyrannum, inquam, regem, nisi hostes patriæ, putant ?
Fuerit itaque Eglon externus, fuerit noster domesticus
necne, quandoquidem uterque hostis et tyrannus, pa-
vum refert.
trum supplicio jure affecimus. Quin et heros ille Samp-
som, incusantibus etiam popularibus suis, (Jud. 15.)
** An mesciebas Phelisthæos dominium habere im nos ?”
suis tamen dominis bellum solus intulit, neque unum sed
multos simul patriæ suæ tyrannos, sive Dei, sive pro-
priæ virtutis instinctu, occidit; conceptis priùs ad Deum
precibus ut auxilio sibi esset. Non impium ergò sed
pium Sampsoni visum est, dominos, patriæ tyrannos
occidere; cum tamen pars major civium servitutem non
detrectaret. At David, rex et propheta, noluit Saulem
interimere “ umctum Dei.” Non quicquid noluit
David, continuò nos obligat ut molimus ; noluit David
privatus ; id statim nolle synedrium, parlamentum,
totum populum, necesse erit ? noluit inimicum dolo
occidere, molet ergò magistratus noxium lege punire ?
noluit regem occidere, timebit ergò senatus tyramnum
plectere ?`religio erat illi unctum Dei interficere, am
ergò religio erit populo unctum suum capitis damnare?
præsertim qui unctionem illam, vel sacram vel civilem,
totus cruore civium delibutus, tam longa hostilitate
aboleverat ? Equidem reges, vel quos Deus per pro-
phetas unxit, vel quos ad certum opus, sicuti olim Cy-
rum, nominatim destinavit, Isa. 44. unctos Domini
agnosco ; cæteros vel populi, vel militum, vel factionis
tantummodò suæ, unctos esse arbitror. Verùm ut con-
cedam tibi omnes reges esse unctos Domini ; esse ta-
men idcirco supra leges, non esse ob scelera quæcunque
puniendos, nunquam evinces. Quid enim ? et sibi et
privatis quibusdam interdixit David, ne extenderent
manus suas in unctum Domini. At regibus interdixit
ipse Dominus, Psal. 105. ne attingerent unctos suos,
id est, populum suum. Uuctionem sui populi prætulit
umctioni, siqua erat, regum. Am ergò fideles punire, si
quid contra leges commiserint, nom licebit ? Unctum
Domini sacerdotem, Abiatharem, prope erat ut rex So-
lomon morte multaret ; neque illi, quòd unctos Domini
esset, pepercit, sed quòd patris fuerat amicus. Si ergò
summum sacerdotem, summum eumdem in plerisque
magistratum, unctio illa Domini, et sacra et civilis, ex-
imere supplicio non potuit, cur unctio tantùm civilis ty-
rannum eximeret? At “ Saul quoque tyrannus erat, et
morte dignus;” esto : non inde enim sequetur, dignum
aut idoueum fuisse Davidem, qui sine populi authori-
tate, aut magistratuum jussu, Saulem regem quocunque
in loco interficeret. Itane verò Saul tyrannus erat?
Utinam diceres ; quinimmo dicis; cùm tamen suprà
dixeris, cap. 2. pag. 32. “ Tyrannum non fuisse, sed
bonum et electum.” Ecquid causæ est numc cur in
foro quadruplator aut falsarius quispiam stigmate note-
tur, tu eadem careas ignominiæ mota ? cùm meliori
profectò fide sycophantari soleant illi, quàm tu scribere,
Si illum Ehudes jure trucidavit, mos mos-
et res vel maximi momenti tractare. Saul igitur, si id
ex usu est tuo, bonus erat rex ; sim id minüs tibi ex-
pedit, repentè non rex bonus, sed tyrannus erit; quod
certè mirum non est ; dum enim potentiæ tyrannicæ
tam impudenter lenocimaris, quid aliud facis quàm ex
bonis regibus tyrannos omnes. At verò David, quam-
vis regem socerum multis de causis, quæ ad mos nihil
attinent, interimere nollet, sui tamen tuendi causâ co-
pias comparare, Saulis urbes vel occupare vel insidere,
non dubitavit ; et Cheilam oppidum contra Saulem etiam
praesidio tenuisset, misi oppidanos erga se malè anima-
tos cognovisset. Quid si Saul, urbe obsessa, scalis
muro admotis, primus ascendere voluisset, am censes
Davidem arma protinus abjecturum, suos omnes
uncto hosti proditurum fuisse ? non existimo. Quidni
emim fecisset quod nos fecimus, qui, rationum suarum
necessitate coactus, Phelisthæis patriæ hostibus ope-
ram prolixè suam pollicitus, id fecit contra Saulem,
quod nos in nostrum tyrannum credo nunquam fe-
cissemus ? Pudet me, et jam diu pertæsum est, men-
daciorum tuorum ; “ Inimicis potiùs parcendum quàm
amicis,” Anglorum esse dogma fingis ; “ seque regi
suo parcere non debuisse, quia amicus erat.” Quis
umquam hoc priùs audivit, quàm à te confictum esset,
hominum mendacissime ? Verùm ignoscimus : deerat
nempe huic capiti præstantissimum illud et tritissimum
orationis tuæ pigmentum, jam quintò, et ante finem
libri decies, ex loculis tuis et myrotheciis expromen-
dum, “ molossis suis ferociores.” Non tam Angli suis
molossis ferociores sunt, quàm tu cane quovis rabido
jejunior, qui ad illam, quam toties evomuisti, cramben
duris ilibus identidem redire sustines. David denique
Amalechitam interfici jussit, Saulis, ut simulavit ipse,
interfectorem ; nulla hic meque facti neque personarum
similitudo. Quòd misi David ad Phelisthæos defecisse,
et pars eorum exercitùs fuisse visus, eò diligentiùs
omnem à se suspicionem maturandæ regi necis amovere
studuit, non erat, meo quidem judicio, cur virum illum
tam malè exciperet, qui moribundum jam regem, et
aegrè morientem, opportuno vulnere se confecisse
nuntiavit. Quod idem factum im Domitiano, qui
Epaphroditum similiter capite damnavit, eò quòd
Neronem im adipiscemda morte adjuvisset, ab omnibus
reprehenditur. Nova deinde audacia quem tyrannum
modò dixeras, et “ malo spiritu agitatum,” hunc non
jam satis habes unctum Domini, sed “ Christum Do-
mini ” vocare; adeò tibi vile Christi nomen videtur, ut
illo tam sancto nomine vel dæmoniacum tyrannum im-
pertire non metuas. Venio nunc ad exemplum illud, in
quo, qui jus populi jure regis antiquius esse non videt,
cæcus sit oportet. Mortuo Solomone, populus de com-
stituendo ejus filio Sechemi comitia habebat ; profectus
est eò Roboamus candidatus, me regnum tanquam hære-
ditatem adire, ne populum liberum tamquam paternos
boves possidere, videretur: proponit populus condi-
tiones regni futuri ; ad deliberandum rex triduum sibi
dari postulat; consulit seniores; nihil illi de jure re-
gio, sed ut populum obsequio et pollicitationibus con-
ciliet sibi, suadent, penès quem erat, vel illum creare
regem vel præterire. Consulit deinde æquales suos,
secum à pueris educatos; illi, Salmasiano quodam
PRO POPULO ANGLICANO DEFENSIO.
673
oestro perciti, nil præter jus regium intonare, scuticas
et scorpiones ut minitetur hortari. Horum ex consilio
respondit Roboamus populo. Videns itaque totus
Israël regem “ non auscultâsse sibi,” suam protinus
libertatem et populare jus liberis palàm vocibus testa-
tur. “ Quae nobis portio cum Davide ? ad temtoria tua,
Israël ; jam ipse videris de domo tua, David.” Missum
deinde à rege Adoramum lapidibus obruerunt ; exem-
plum fortasse aliquod etiam in regem edituri, nisi
maxima celeritate se in fugam contulisset. Parat in-
gentem exercitum, quo in suam ditionem Israëlitas re-
digeret: prohibet Deus ; ** me ascendite,” inquit, “ ne
pugnate contra fratres vestros, filios Israëlis, nam à me
facta est res ista.” Adverte jam animum ; populus an-
tea regem volebat, displicuit id Deo; eorum tamen
juri noluit intercedere : nunc populus Roboamum non
vult regem, id Deus non solùm penès populum esse
simit, sed regem eo nomine bella moventem vetat ac
reprimit: nec ideo rebelles, sed nihilo minùs fratres,
eos qui desciverant appellandos esse docet. Collige te
nunc jam ; sunt omnes, inquis, reges à Deo, ergo
populus vel tyrannis resistere non debet. Vicissim
ego, sunt, inquam, populi conventus, comitia, studia,
suffragia, plebiscita pariter à Deo, teste hic ipso ; ergò
et rex itidem resistere non debet populo, authore etiam
eodem Deo. Quàm enim certum est, esse hodie reges
à Deo, quàmque hoc valet ad imperandam populo obe-
dientiam, tam est certam esse à Deo etiam hodie libera
populi concilia, tamque hoc valet vel ad cogendos in
ordinem reges, vel ad rejiciendos ; meque magis prop-
terea bellum populo inferre debebunt, quàm debuit
IRoboamus. Quæris cur ergò non defecerint Israëlitæ
à Solomone ? quis præter te tam stulta interrogaret,
cùm defecisse constet impunè à tyramno ? In tia
quædam lapsus est Solomon ; non idcirco statim ty-
rannus : sua vitia magnis virtutibus, magnis de repub.
meritis, compensabat: fac tyrannum fuisse; sæpe est
ut populus nolit tyrannum tollere, sæpe est ut non
possit: satis est sustulisse cùm potuerit. At ** factum
Jeroboami semper improbatum fuit, et apostasia ejus
detestata, successores ejus pro rebellibus semper habi-
ti.” Apostasiam ejus non à Roboamo, sed à vero cultu
Dei, reprehensam sæpiùs lego ; et successores quidem
ejus sæpe reprobos, rebelles nusquam, dictos memini.
“ Si quid fiat,” inquis, “ juri et legibus contrarium, ex
eo jus fieri non potest.” Quid quæso tum fiet juri re-
gio ? Sic tuus ipse perpetuò refutatores. ** Quotidie,”
inquis, “ adulteria, homicidia, furta, impunè commit-
tuntur.” An mescis nunc te tibi respondere quærenti
cur toties tyrannis impunè fuerit ? * Rebelles fuerunt
isti reges, prophetæ tamen populum ab eorum subjec-
tione non abducebant.” Cur ergò, sceleste, et pseudo-
propheta, populum Anglicanum à suis magistratibus,
tuo sint licèt judicio rebelles, abducere comaris ? ** Al-
legat,” inquis, “ Anglicani latrocinii factio, se ad id
scelus, quod tam nefariè suscepit, nescio qua voce coe-
litùs missa impulsos fuisse.” Primùm delirâsse te cùm
hæc scriberes planè video, neque mentis neque latini-
tatis compotem satis fuisse : deinde Anglos hoc un-
quam allegâsse, de innumeris mendaciis et figmentis
tuis est unum. Sed pergo exemplis tecum agere ;
Libna, urbs validissima, ab Joramo rege defecit, quia
dereliquerat Deum ; defecit ergò rex, non urbs illa,
ncque defectione ista notatur; sed si adjectam ratio-
nem spectes, approbari potiùs videtur. “ In exemplum
trahi non debent hujusmodi defectiones.” Cur ergò
tanta vaniloquentiâ pollicitus es, exemplis te nobiscum
toto hoc capite decertaturum, cùm exempla ipse nulla
præter meras negationes, quarum nulla vis est ad
probandum, afferre possis: mos quæ certa et solida at-
tulimus, negas in exemplum trahi debere ? Quis te
hoc modo disputantcm non explodat? Provocâsti
nos exemplis; exempla protulimus ; quid tu ad hæc ?
tergiversaris, et diverticula quæris ; pregredior itaque.
Jehu regem à propheta jussus occidit, etiam Achaziam
suum regem legitimum occidendum curavit. Si moluis-
set Deus tyrannum interimi à cive, si impium hoc, si
mali exempli fuisset, cur jussit fieri ? si jussit, certè lici-
tum, laudabile, præclarum fuit. Non tamen tyrannum
perimi, quia Deus jussit, idcirco bonum erat et licitum,
sed quia bonum et licitum erat, idcirco Deus jussit. Jam
septem annos regnantem Athaliam Jehoiada sacerdos
regno pellere et trucidare non est veritus. “At regnum,”
inquis, * non sibi debitum sumpserat.” Annom Tibe-
rius multò postea ** imperium ad se nihil pertinens ?”
illi tamem, et id genus tyrannis aliis, ex doctrina Christi
obediendum esse suprà affirmabas : ridiculum planè
esset, si potestatem regiam non ritè adeptum interficere
liceret, pessimè gerentem non liceret. At per leges reg-
mare non potuit utpote fœmina, “ constitues autem supra
te regem,” non regimam. Hoc si sic abibit, constitues,
inquam, super te regem, non tyranmum.
Amaziam regem ignavum et idololatrum
non conjurati quidam, sed principes et populus, quod
verisimiliusest, morte affecerunt: mam fugientem Hiero-
solymis, et adjutum à nemine, Lachisum usque perse-
cuti sunt. Hoc consilium iniisse dicuntur “ ex quo is
Deum ° deseruerat, neque ullam ab Azaria filio de
morte patris quæstionem habitam fuisse legimus. Mul-
tùm rursus mugaris ex rabbinis, ut regem Judaicum
supra synedrium constituas ; ipsa regis verba Zedechiæ
non attendis, Jer. 38. “ Non is est rex, qui possit con-
tra vos quicquam.” Sic principes alloquitur ; fassus se
planè suo senatu inferiorem ; “ Fortasse,” inquis, “ mi-
hil negare illis ausus metu seditionis.” At tuum illud
“ fortasse” quanti quæso est, cujus asseveratio firmis-
sima non est pili? quid enim te levius, quid inconstan-
tius, quid instabilius ? quoties te varium et versicolorem,
quoties tibimet discordem, dissidentem à temetipso, et
discrepantem, offendimus ? Rursus comparationes in-
stituis Caroli cum bonis Judææ regibus. Davidem
imprimis quasi contemnendum aliquem mominas ;
“ Sume tibi Davidem,” inquis, “ adulterii simul et ho-
micidii reum ; nihil tale in Carolo. Solomon ejus
filius qui sapiens audiit vulgò.” Quis non indignetur
maximorum et sanctissimorum virorum nomina ab im-
purissimo nebulome et vappa humc in modum jactari ?
Tune Carolum cum Davide, regem et prophetam reli-
giosissimum cum superstitioso et Christianæ doctrinæ
vix imitiato, sapientissimum cum stolido, fortissimum
cum imbelli, justissimum cum iniquissimo, conferre sus-
tinuisti ? castimoniam tu ejus et continentiam laudes,
Pares ergò
jam sumus.
674 PRO POPULO ANGLICANO DEFENSIO.
quem cum Duce Bucchingamio flagitiis omnibus co-
opertum novimus ? secretiora ejus et recessus perscru-
tari quid attinet, qui in theatro medias mulieres petu-
lanter amplecti, et suaviari, qui virginum et matrona-
rum papillas, ne dicam cætera, pertractare im propatulo,
consueverat ? Te porrò moneo, Pseudoplutarche, ut
istiusmodi parallelis ineptissimis dehinc supersedeas,
me ego quæ tacerem alioqui libens de Carolo, necesse
habeam enuntiare. Contra tyrannos quid tentatum à
populo aut peractum fuerit, et quo jure, per ea tempora
quibus ipse Deus Hebræorum rempub. suo nutu ac
verbo quasi præsens regebat, hactenus liquet. Quæ
sequuntur ætates non mos sua authoritate ducunt, sed,
ad majorum suorum normam et rationem omnia diri-
gentes, imitatione sua nostram tantummodò confirmant.
Cùm itaque Deus post captivitatem Babyîonicam nul-
lum iis de repub. mandatum dedisset novum, quamvis
regia soboles extincta non esset, ad antiquam et Mo-
saicam reipub. formam reverterumt. Antiocho Syriæ
regi, cui erant vectigales, ejusque praesidibus, quòd is
vetita imperaret, per Maccabæos pontifices restiterunt;
seque armis in libertatem vindicârunt ; dignissimo
deinde cuique principatum dederumt: donec Hyrcanus
Simonis Judæ Maccabæi fratris filius, expilato Davidis
sepulcro, militem externum alere, et regiam quandam
potestatem adjicere sacerdotio, cœpit ; unde filius ejus
Aristobulus diadema sibi primus imposuit. Nihil in
eum populus quamvis tyranmum movit aut molitus est;
neque mirum, annum tantummodò regnantem. Ipse
etiam morbo gravissimo correptus, et suorum facinorum
pœnitentiâ ductus, mortem sibi optare nom destitit, donec
inter ea vota expiravit. Ejus frater Alexander proxi-
mus regnabat. “ Contra hunc,” ais, ** neminem in-
surrexisse,” tyrannus cùm esset. O te securè menda-
cem, si periisset Josephus, restaret tantum Josippus
tuus, ex quo pharisæorum quædam mullius usus apo-
phthegmata depromis. Res itaque sic se habet ; Alex-
ander, cùm et domi et militiæ rempub. malè adminis-
traret, quamvis magna Pisidarum et Cilicum manu
conductitia se tutaretur, populum tamen cohibere non
potuit, quin ipsum etiam sacrificantem, utpote indig-
num eo munere, thyrsis palmeis et citreis penè obrue-
ret ; exinde per sexennium gentis ferè totius gravi
bello petitus est; in quo Judæorum multa millia cùm
occidisset, et pacis tandem cupidus interrogaret eos
quid vellent à se fieri, responderunt uno ore omnes,
ut moreretur ; vix etiam mortuo se veniam daturos.
Hanc historiam, tibi incommodissimam, quoquo modo
avertere ut posses, fraudi tuæ turpissimæ pharisaicas
quasdam sententiolas obtendisti ; cùm exemplum hoc
aut omnino prætermisisse, aut rem, sicuti gesta erat,
fideliter narrâsse, debuisses, nisi veterator et lucifugus
mendaciis longè plus quàm causæ confideres. Quin-
etiam Pharisæi illi octingenti, quos in crucem tolli
jussit, ex eorum numero erant, qui contra ipsum arma
ceperant: quique omnes cùm cæteris una voce testati
sunt, se regem morte affecturos fuisse, si bello victus im
suam potestatem venisset. Post maritum Alexandrum
Alexandra regnum capessit; ut olim Athalia, non le-
gitimè, nam regnare fœminam leges non siuebant, quod
ipse modò fassus es, sed partim vi, (extraneorum enim
exercitum ducebat) partim gratiâ; nam Pharisæos,
qui apud vulgus plurimum poterant, sibi conciliaverat
hac lege, ut momen imperii penès illam, imperium ipsum
penès illos, foret. Haud aliter atque apud mos nuper
Scoti presbyteri momen Regis Carolo concesserunt, ea
mercede ut regnum sibi reservare possent. Post Alex-
andræ obitum, Hyrcanus et Aristobulus ejus filii de
regno contendunt ; hic, viribus et industria potior, fra-
trem natu majorem regno pellit. Pompeio deinde in
Syriam à Mithridatico bello divertente, Judæi mactos
se jam æquissimum libertatis suæ arbitrum Pompeium
rati, legationem pro se mittunt ; fratribus utrisque re-
gibus renuntiamt ; ad servitutem se ab iis adductos
queruntur ; Pompeius Aristobulum regno privavit ;
Hyrcano pontificatum reliquit, et principatum more
patrio legitimum ; exinde pontifex et etbmarcha dictus
est. Iterum sub Archelao Herodis filio Judæi, missis
ad Augustum Cæsarem quinquaginta legatis et He-
rodem mortuum et Archeläum graviter accusârunt;
regnum huic pro sua virili parte abrogarumt, Cæsarem
orant ut populum Judaicum sine regibus esse permit-
teret. Quorum Cæsar precibus aliquantum permotus,
mon regem eum, sed ethnarcham dumtaxat, constituit.
Ejus anno decimo, rursus eum populus per legatos ad
Cæsarem tyrannidis accusat ; quibus Cæsar benignè
auditis, Romam accersitum, et judicio damnatum, Vi-
ennam in exilium misit. Jam mihi velim respondeas;
qui suos reges accusatos, qui damnatos, qui punitos
volebant, annon ipsi, si potestas facta, si optio data sibi
esset, annon ipsi, inquam, judicio damnâssent, ipsi
supplicio affecissent ? Jam in Romanos præsides, avarè
et crudeliter provinciam administrantes, populum et
primores etiam sæpiùs arma sumpsisse mom negas ;
causas more tuo stultissimas affingis, “ nondum jugo
erant assueti;” sub Alexandro scilicet, Herode, ejusque
filiis. At C. Caesari, et Petronio * bellum inferre”
noluerunt. Prudenter illi quidem, non poterant. Vis
ipsorum audire verba ? τολεμεῖν μέν οὐ βελόμενοι διὰ τὸ
punδ' άν δύvao-0at. Quod ipsi fatentur imbecillitatis esse
suæ, hoc tu hypocrita ad religionem refers. Magno
dein molimine prorsus nihil agis, dum ex patribus
probas, quod et antea tamen pari oscitatione feceras,
pro regibus orandum esse. Nam pro bonis quis negat ?
pro malis quoad spes est; pro latronibus etiam et pro
hostibus; non ut agros depopulentur, aut nos occisione
occidant, sed ut resipiscant. Oramus pro utrisque ;
illos tamen legibus, hos armis, vindicare quis vetat ?
“ Liturgias /Egyptiacas” nil moror ; sacerdos autem
ille qui orabat, uti ais, ut “ Commodus patri succede-
ret,” meo quidem judicio non orabat, sed Romano im-
perio pessima imprecatus est. “ Fidem,” ais, “ fre-
gisse nos, de authoritate et majestate regis conservamda
solemni conventione non semel interpositam.” Expecto
te fusiùs ista de re infrà, illic te rursus conveniam.
Redis ad patrum commentationes, de quibus boc sum-
matim accipe ; Quicquid illi dixerint, meque ex libris
sacris, aut ratione aliqua satis idonea confirmaverint,
perinde mihi erit, ac si quis alius è vulgo dixisset.
Primum adfers Tertullianum, scriptorem haud ortho-
doxum, multis erroribus notatum, ut si tecum sen-
tiret, pro nihilo tamem hoc esset. Quid autem ille ?
PRO POPULO ANGLICANO DEFENSIO.
675
damnat tumultus, damnat rebelliones; damnamus et
mos, neque hinc statim de jure omni populorum, de
privilegiis, et smatiìs consultis, de potestate magis-
tratuum omnium cæterorum præterquam unius regis,
præjudicatum esse volumus : loquuntur isti de se-
ditionibus temere conflatis, et multitudinis insania,
mom de magistratibus, non de senatu, aut parla-
mento ad legitima arma populum contra tyrannos
convocante. Unde Ambrosius quem citas, “ Non re-
pugnare, flere, gemere, hæc sunt munimenta sacerdotis;
et quis est qui potest vel unus vel inter paucos dicere
imperatori, Lex tua mihi non probatur? non permittitur
hoc dicere sacerdotibus; permittetur laicis ?” Vides jam
planè de quibus hic loquatur de sacerdotibus, de laicis
privatis, non de magistratibus: vides quàm infirma ta-
men et præpostera ratione usus, dissentioni inter laicos et
sacerdotes, delegibus etiam civilibus, postmodùm futuræ
facem prætulit. Sed quoniam primorum Christianorum
exemplis urgeri nos maximè, et redargui, putas, quòd illi
omnibus modis vexati ** bellum in Cæsares non move-
rent," ostendam primò non potuisse, deinde quoties pote-
rant movisse, postremò etiamsi cùm possent non movis-
sent, non esse tamen cæteroqui dignos, quorum ex vita
et moribus, tantis in rebus, exempla sumamus. Primùm
ignorare hoc nemo potest, ex quo Romana respublica
mulla fuit, ommes imperii vires rerumque summam ad
unum Cæsarem rediisse ; omnes legiones sub uno Cæ-
sare stipendia meruisse : adeò ut senatus ad unum
omnis, totus ordo equester, plebs universa, si novis re-
bus studuisset, poterant se quidem internecioni obje-
cisse, ad libertatem tamen recuperamdam nihil prorsus
effecissent; nam imperatorem si fortè sustulissent, im-
perium tamen mansisset. Jam verò Christiani, immu-
meri licèt, at sparsi, inermes, plebeii et plerunque
infimi, quid potuerunt ? quantam eorum multitudinem
una legio in officio facilè continuisset ? Quod magni
saepe duces cum interitu suo, et veteranorum exerci-
tuum deletione, incassum tentârunt, isti è plebecula
ferè homuli posse se ad exitum perducere sperarent ?
cùm amnis à Christo nato prope trecentis, ante Con-
stantinum plùs minùs viginti, imperante Diocletiano,
sola Thebæa legio Christiana esset; eoque ipso mo-
mine à reliquo exercitu in Gallia, ad Octodurum oppi-
dum, cæsa est. “ Cum Cassio, cum Albino, cum Ni-
gro” nom conjurârunt: idne illis gratiæ vult apponi
Tertullianus, quòd sanguinem pro infidelibus non pro-
fuderunt ? Constat igitur Christianos ab imperato-
rum imperio liberare se non potuisse : cum aliis con-
jurare non Christianis nequaquam sibi expedivisse,
quamdiu imperatores ethnici regnabant. Bellum au-
tem tyrammis postea intulisse Christianos aut armis se
defendisse, aut tyrannorum facta mefaria sæpe ultos
esse, nunc ostendam. Primus omnium Constantimus,
jäm Christiamus, consortem imperii Licinium, Orienta-
libus Christianis gravem, bello sustulit; quo facto illud
simul declaravit, posse à magistratu in magistratum
animadverti ; cùm is Licinium pari jure secum reg-
nantem, subditorum ejus causâ, supplicio affecerit, nec
Deo soli pœnam reliquerit : poterat enim Licinius
Constantinum, si Constantinus populum sibi attribu-
tum iis modis oppressisset, eodem supplicio affecisse.
*. 2 X
v
Postquam igitur à Deo ad homines redacta res est,
quod Licinio Constantinus erat, cur non idem Carolo
senatus ? Constantimum enim milites, senatum jura
constituerunt regibus parem, immo superiorem. Con-
stamtio imperatori Ariano Byzantini, quoad poterant,
armis restiterunt; missum cum militibus Hermoge-
nem, ad pellendum ecclesia Paulum orthodoxum epis-
copum, facto impetu repulerunt, et incensis ædibus,
quo se receperat, semiustum et laniatum interfecerunt.
Constans fratri Constantio bellum mimatur, mi Paulo
et Athanasio episcopis sedes suas restituat; videsne ut
istos sanctissimos patres, de episcopatu cùm agitur,
bellum fraternum in regem suum concitare non pu-
duit ? Haud multò pòst Christiani milites, qui tunc
temporis quos volebant imperatores creabant, Constan-
tem Constantini filium, dissolutè et superbè regnan-
tem, interfecerunt, translato ad Magnentium imperio.
Quid ? qui Julianum nondum apostatam, sed pium et
strenuum, invito Constantio imperatore suo, imperato-
rem salutârunt, annon ex illis Christianis fuerunt,
quos tu exemplo nobis proponis ? Quod factum Con-
stantius cum suis literis ad populum recitatis acriter
prohiberet, clamârunt omnes, fecisse se ut provincialis,
et miles, et reipublicæ authoritas, decreverat. Iidem
bellum Constantio indixerunt, et, quantum in se erat,
imperio ac vita spoliârunt. Quid Antiocheni, homines
apprimè Christiani? orârunt, credo, pro Juliano jam
apostata, quem palàm adire, et convitiis proscindere,
solebant, cujus barbam illudentes promissam, fumes ex
ea conficere jubebant. Cujus morte audita, supplica-
tiones, epulas, et lætitiam, publicè indixerunt, ejus
pro vita et incolumitate preces fudisse censes ? Quid ?
quòd eumdem etiam à Christiano commilitome interfec-
tum esse ferunt. Sozomenus certè scriptor ecclesiasticus
non negat; immo, siquis ita fecisset, laudat. où yàp
&τεικός τινα τὸν τότε sparsvopevtov, &c. “ Non est
mirum,” inquit, “ aliquem ex militibus hoc secum co-
gitâsse; non Græcos solùm, sed omnes homines ad hanc
usque ætatem tyrannicidas laudare solitos esse, qui
pro omnium libertate mortem oppetere non dubitant;
nec temere quis hunc militem reprehendat, Dei et reli-
gionis causâ tam stremuum.” Hæc Sozomenus, ejus-
dem ætatis scriptor, vir bouus et sanctus ; ex quo, quid
reliqui ea tempestate viri boni hac de re senserint, fa-
cilè perspicimus. Ipse Ambrosius ab imperatore Valen-
timiano minore jussus urbe Mediolano excedete, parere
moluit, sed circumseptus armato populo se, atque basili-
cam suam, contra regios præfectos armis defendit; et
summæ potestati resistere, contra quàm docuit ipse, est
ausus. Constantinopoli haud semel, propter exilium
Chrysostomi, contra Arcadium imperatorem seditio
maxima commota est. In tyrannos igitur quid antiqui
Christiani fecerint, non milites solùm, sed populus, sed
ipsi patres, vel resistendo, vel gerendo bellum, vel com-
citando, usque ad Augustini tempora, quomiam tibi
ulteriùs progredi non libet, breviter exposui. Valen-
timianum enim Placidiæ filium interfectum à Maximo
patricio, ob stuprum uxori ejus illatum, taceo: Avitum
etiam imperatorem, dimissis militibus suis, luxuria
diffluentem à senatu Romano confestim exutum impe-
rio non memoro: quia annos aliquot post Augustini
676
PRO POPULO ANGLICANO DEFENSIO.
obitum ista acciderunt. Verùm dono tibi hoc omne, tu
mihil horum exposuisse me fimge, paruerint per omnia
suis regibus veteres Christiani, quicquam contra tyram-
nos me fecerint, aut fecisse voluerint, non esse tamen eos
quorum authoritate miti debeamus, aut à quibus exem-
pla petere salutariter possimus ; quod superest, nunc
docebo. Jamdiu ante Constantinum populus Chris-
tiamus multum de primæva illa sanctimonia et since-
ritate cum doctrinæ tum morum deperdiderat. Post-
quam immensis opibus ditata ab eo ecclesia honores,
dominatum, et potentiam civilem, adamare cœpit, sta-
tim omnia in præceps ruere. Primò luxus et segnities,
errorum deinde omnium et vitiorum caterva, veluti so-
lutis aliunde carceribus, in ecclesiam immigravit ; hinc
invidentia, odium, discordia, passim redundabat; tam-
dem haud mitius inter se charissimo religionis vinculo
fratres quàm hostes acerrimi dissidebant ; nullus pudor,
nulla officii ratio, restabat ; milites, et copiarum præ-
fecti, quoties ipsis visum erat, nunc imperatores novos
creabant, nunc bonos pariter ac malos necabant. Quid
Vetranniones et Maximos, quid Eugenios, à militibus
ad imperium subitò evectos, quid Gratianum optimum
principem, quid Valentinianum minorem mom pessimum,
occisos ab iis, commemorem ? Militum hæc quidem
facinora et castrensium, sed tamen Christianorum illius
aetatis, quam tu maximè evangelicam et imitandam
esse ais. Jam ergò de ecclesiasticis pauca accipe : pas-
tores et episcopi, et nonnunquam illi, quos admiramur,
patres, sui quisque gregis ductores, de episcopatu nom
secus quàm de tyrannide certabant: nunc per urbem,
nunc in ipsa ecclesia, ad ipsum altare, sacerdotes et laici
promiscuè digladiabantur ; cædes faciebant, strages
utrinque magnas nonnumquam ediderunt. Damasi et
Ursicini, qui cum Ambrosio floruerunt, potest memi-
nisse. Longum esset Byzantinos, Antiochenos, et
Alexandrinos, illos tumultus, sub Cyrillo præsertim,
quem tu laudas obedientiæ prædicatorem, duce ac pa-
tre ; occiso pæne à monachis, in illo urbico prælio,
Oreste Theodosii præfecto. Jam tua quis vel impu-
dentia vel supimitate mon obstupescat ? “ Usque ad
Augustinum,” inquis, “ et infra ejus vetatem, mulla cu-
jusquam privati aut præfecti, aut plurium conjuratorum
extat in historiis mentio, qui regem suum necaverii;t,
aut contra eum armis pugnârint: ”
historiis notissimis et privatos, et proceres, qui non
malos tantùm, sed vel optimos reges, sua manu truci-
daverint; totos Christianorum exercitus, multos cum
iis episcopos, qui contra suos imperatores pugnaverint.
Adfers patres, obedientiam erga regem, multis verbis
aut suadentes aut ostentantes ; adfero ego partim
eosdem, partim alios patres haud paucioribus factis
obedientiam, etiam licitis in rebus, detrectantes, armis
se contra imperatorem defendentes, alios praesidibus
ejus vim et vulnera inferentes, alios, episcopatùs com-
petitores, civilibus præliis inter se dimicantes; scilicet
de episcopatu Christianos cum Christianis, cives cum
civibus, confligere fas erat, de libertate, de liberis et
conjugibus, de vita, cum tyranno, nefas. Quem non
poeniteat hujusmodi patrum ? Augustinum inducis “ de
potestate domini in servos, et regis in subditos” idem
nominavi ego ex
pronuntiantem ; respondeo, ista si dicat Augustinus, ea
dicere, quae neque Christus, neque ejus Apostoli, un-
quam dixerunt; cùm eorum tamen sola authoritate rem
alioqui apertissimè falsam commendare videatur. Quæ
supersunt hujus capitis tres vel quatuor paginæ, aut
mera esse mendacia, aut oscitationes identidem repe-
titas, ex iis quæ à mobis responsa jam sunt, per se
quisque deprehendet. Nam ad papam quod attinet, in
quem multa gratis peroras, facilè te patior ad ravim
usque declamitare. Quod tamen ad captandos rerum
imperitos tam prolixè adstruis, “ regibus, sive justis
sive tyrannis, subjectum fuisse omnem Christianum,
donec potestas papæ regali major agnosci coepta est, et
subjectos sacramento fidelitatis liberavit,” id esse fal-
sissimum plurimis exemplis “ et usque ad Augustinum,
et infra ejus ætatem,” prolatis demonstravimus. Sed
meque illud, quod postremò dicis, “ Zachariam pon-
tificem Gallos juramento fidelitatis absolvisse,” multò
verius esse videtur. Negat Franciscus Hotomanus, et
Gallus, et jurisconsultus, et vir doctissimus, in Franco-
gallia sua, cap. 13. abdicatum authoritate papæ Chil-
pericum, aut regnum Pipino delatum ; sed in magno
gentis concilio pro sua pristima authoritate transactum
fuisse id omne negotium, ex ammalibus Francorum
vetustissimis probat. Solvi deinde illo sacramento
Gallos omnimo opus fuisse, negant ipsa Gallorum
monumenta, negat ipse papa Zacharias. Monumentis
enim Francorum traditur, teste non solùm Hotomano,
sed Girardo historiarum illius gentis notissimo scrip-
tore, veteres Francos ut eligendi, sic abdicandi, si vide-
retur, suos reges jus sibi omne antiquitus reservâsse ;
neque aliud sacramentum regibus, quos creabant, dicere
consuevisse, quàm se illis hoc pacto fidem et officium
præstituros, si vicissim illi, quod eodem tempore jurati
etiam spondent, præstiterint. Si ergò reges, rempub-
licam sibi commissam malè gerendo, fidem jusjurandi
fregerint priores, nil opus est papá, ipsi stiâ perfidiâ
populum sacramento solverunt. Papa denique Zacha-
rias, quam tu authoritatem sibi ais arrogâsse, eam in
epistola illa ad Francos abs te citata ipse sibi derogavit,
populo attribuit. Nam “ si princeps populo, cujus
beneficio regnum possidet, obnoxius est, si plebs regem
constituit, et destituere potest,” quæ ipsius verba sunt
papae, verisimile non est voluisse Francos de antiquo
jure suo, ullo postmodùm jurejurando, præjudicium
facere ; aut unquam ita sese obstrinxisse, quin semper
sibi liceret, quod majoribus suis licuit, reges bonos
quidem colere, malos amovere ; nec eam præstare
fidem tyrannis, quam bonis regibus dare sese arbitrati
sunt. Tali obstrictum juramento populum, vel tyran-
mus ex rege factus, vel ignavia corruptus, suo ipse per-
jurio solvit, solvit ipsa justitia, solvit naturæ lex ipsa.
unde pontifex quod solveret, etiam ipsius pontificis
judicio nihil prorsus erat.
CAPUT V.
QUANQUAM in ea sum opinione, Salmasi, semperque
fui, legem Dei cum lege maturæ optimè consentire,
adeòque, si satis ostendi quid divina lege sit de regibus
PRO POPULO ANGLICANO DEFENSIO.
677
statutum, quid à populo Dei factum et Judaico et
Christiano, ostendisse me, eodem tempore eademque
opera, quid legi naturali maximè consentaneum sit;
tamen quia ** confutari nos lege naturæ validissimè
nunc posse ” arbitraris, quod supervacuum esse modò
existimabam, id nunc ultrò necessarium fatebor ; ut
contra te hoc capite planum faciam, nihil congruentius
maturae etiam legibus esse, quàm tyrannos plecti. Id
nisi evincam, non recuso quin, Dei quoque legibus pu-
miri non posse, è vestigio tibi concedam. Non est con-
silium de natura jam, deque origine civilis vitæ, longam
orationem contexere ; istud enim argumentum viri di-
sertissimi cum Græci, tum Latini, copiosè pertractârunt;
ipse et brevitati, quantum licet, studeo, et huic rei do
operam, ut non tam ego, qui labori huic parcissem
libens, sed tute te redarguas, teque subvertas. Ab eo
igitur quod ipse ponis incipiam, et disputationis hujus
futuræ fundamenta jaciam. “ Lex,” inquis, “ maturæ
est ratio omnium hominum mentibus insita, bonum
respiciens universorum populorum, quatenus homines
inter se societate gaudent. Bonum illud commune
non potest procurare, nisi etiam, ut sunt quos regi
necesse est, disponat quoque qui regere debeant.”
Ne scilicet, ut quisque fortior est, debiliorem opprimat;
atque ita quos mutua salus ac defensio unum in locum
congregaverat, vis atque injuria distrahat, et ad vitam
agrestem redire cogat. Estne hoc quod volebas, etsi
verbosiùs ? ** Ex ipsorum” itaque “ mumero qui in
unum convenére, deligi'' ais “ oportuisse quosdam sa-
pientia aut fortitudine caeteris præstantes, qui vel vi
vel persuadendo malè morigeros in officio continerent;
sæpe umum id præstare potuisse, cujus excellens sit
virtus et prudentia ; interdum plures, qui mutuis con-
siliis id faciant. Cæterùm cum unus omnia providere
et administrare non possit, necesse est ut consilia cum
pluribus participet, et in societatem regiminis alios
admittat. Ita sive ad unum revocetur imperium, sive
ad universum redeat populum, quia nec omnes simul
rempub. gubernare possunt, nec umus omnia, ideo re-
vera penès plures semper regimen consistit.” Et in-
frà. “ Ipsa autcm regendi ratio, sive per plures, sive
per pauciores, sive per unum, dispensetur, æquè ma-
turalis est, cum ex naturæ ejusdem principiis descen-
dat, quæ non patitur ita unius singularitatem guber-
mare, ut mon alios socios imperandi habeat.” Hæ cùm
ex Aristotelis tertiò politicorum decerpsisse potueram,
malui abs te decerpta transcribere, quæ tu Aristoteli,
ut ignem Jovi Prometheus, ad eversionem monarcha-
rum, et perniciem ipsius tuam, surripuisti. Jam enim
prolatam à temetipso naturæ legem excute quantum
voles ; mullum juri regio, prout tu jus illud explicas,
in natura locum, mullum ejus vestigium, prorsus inve-
nies. ' “ Lex,” inquis, “ naturæ, cum disponeret qui
regere alios deberent, universorum populorum bomum
respexit.” Non igitur unius, non monarchæ. Est
itaque rex propter populum : populus ergò rege potior
et superior; superior cum sit et potior populus, nullum
jus regis existere potest, quo populum is affligat, aut in
servitute habeat, inferior superiorem. Jus malè faci-
endi cùm sit regi nullum, manet jus populi naturâ
supremum ; ut quo jure homines consilia et vires mu-
tuæ defensionis gratiâ, ante reges creatos, primò com-
sociavere, quo jure ad communem omnium salutem,
pacem, libertatem, conservandam unum vel plures
cæteris præfecerunt, eodem jure, quos propter virtutem
et prudentiam caeteris præposuerant, possent eosdem
aut quoscumque alios rempub. malè gerentes, propter
ignaviam, stultitiam, improbitatem, perfidiam, vel
coërcere vel abdicare : cùm natura non unius vel pau-
corum imperium, sed universorum salutem, respexerit
semper et respiciat. Jam verò populus quosnam delc-
git ? ** sapientia” inquis “ aut fortitudine caeteris præ-
stantes,” nempe qui maturâ maximè regno idonei visi
sunt, * cujus excellens virtus, et prudentia praestare id”
muneris “ potuit.” Jus igitur successionis maturâ mul-
lum, nullus naturâ rex, misi qui sapientia et fortitudine
cæteris omnibus præcellit: cæteri vel vi, vel factione,
contra naturam reges sunt, eum servi potiùs esse debe-
rent. Dat enim natura sapientissimo cuique in minüs
sapientes imperium, non viro malo in bonos, non sto-
lido in sapientes : his igitur imperium qui abrogant,
omnino convenienter naturae faciunt. Cui fini sapien-
tissimum quemque matura constituat regem, ex temet-
ipso audi ; ut vel naturæ vel legibus “ malè morigeros
in officio contineat.” Continere autem in officio po-
testne is alios, officium qui negligit, aut nescit, aut
pervertit, ipse suum ? Cedò jam quodvis naturæ præ-
ceptum, quo jubeamur instituta naturæ sapientissima
in rebus publicis et civilibus non observare, non cu-
rare, pro nihilo habere, cùm ipsa in rebus naturalibus
et inanimatis, ne suo fiue frustretur, sæpissimè res
magnas atque miras efficere soleat. Ostende ullam
vel naturæ vel naturalis justitiæ regulam, qua opor-
teat reos minores puniri, reges et malorum omnium
principes impunitos esse, immò inter maxima flagitia
coli, adorari, et Deo proximos haberi. Concedis “ ip-
sam regendi rationem, sive per plures, sive per pau-
ciores, sive per unum, dispensetur, aeque naturalem
esse.” Non est ergò rex vel optimatibus vel populi
magistratibus naturâ sanctior, quos cùm pumire posse
ac debere, si peccant, suprà sis largitus, idem de regi-
bus, eidem fimi ac bono constitutis, fateare necesse est.
“ Non” enim “ patitur natura,” inquis, “ ita unius sin-
gularitatem gubernare, ut non alios socios imperandi
habeat.” Minimè ergò patitur monarcham, minimè
unum ita imperare, ut cæteros omnes sui unius im-
perii servos habeat. Socios autem imperandi qui
tribuis regi, “ penès quos semper regimem consistat”
das eidem collegas, et æquales ; addis qui pumire, addis
qui abdicare possint. Ita, uti semper facis, dum po-
testatem regiam non jam exauges, sed tamtummo-
dò naturâ constituis, aboles : adeò ut nihil putem
inauspicatius accidere regibus potuisse, quàm te de-
fensorem. O infelicem ac miserum ! quæ te mentis
caligo in hanc impulit fraudem, ut latentem antehac
diu, et quasi personatum, improbitatem atque inscitiam
tuam nunc tanto conatu insciens nudares ipse, et om-
nibus patefaceres: tuoquemet opprobrio operam ipse
tuam locares, tuo ipse ludibrio tam gnaviter inservires?
Quæ te ira numinis quasve pœnas luentem, in lucem
et ora hominum evocavit, ut tanto apparatu causam
teterrimam impudentissimè simul et stolidissimè de-
678
PRO POPULO ANGLICANO DEFENSIO.
fenderes, atque ita defendendo invitus, perque inscitiam,
proderes? Quis te pejùs perditum vellet, quis miseri-
orem ? cui jam sola imprudentia, sola vaecordia, saluti
esse potest, ne sis miserrimus, si tyrannos, quorum
causam suscepisti, imperita ac stulta defensione tantò
magis invisos ac detestabiles omnibus, contrà quàm
sperabas, reddideris, quanto iis majorem male'aciendi
et impunè dominandi licentiam de industria attribueris;
eoque plures eorundem hostes inconsultò excitaveris.
Sed redeo ad tua tecum dissidia. Cùm tantum in te
scelus admiseris, ut tyrannidem naturâ fundare studeas,
præ cæteris gubernandi rationibus monarchiam primò
laudandam tibi esse vidisti ; id, uti soles, incoeptare
sine repugnantia nequis. Cum enim modò dixeras,
“ ipsam regendi rationem, sive per plures, sive per
pauciores, sive per unum, æque maturalem esse,” statim
** eam, quæ per unum exercetur, ex his tribus, magis
naturalem esse” ais, inmò qui etiam recèns dixeras,
“ non patitur natura unius singularitatem gubernantis.”
Jam tyrannorum necem objice cui voles, qui et mon-
archas omnes, et monarchiam ipsam, tua fatuitate
jugulâsti. Verùm quæ sit melior administrandi rem-
pub. ratio, per unum an per plures, non est nunc dis-
serendi locus. Et monarchiam quidem multi celebres
viri laudârunt, si tamen is, qui solus regnat, vir om-
nium optimus, et regno dignissimus, sit ; id nisi con-
tingat, mihil monarchiâ procliviùs in eam tyrannidem,
quæ pessima est, labitur. Jam quòd ad unius ** exem-
plar Dei expressam esse ” dicis, quis potentiam divinæ
similem in terris obtinere dignus est, nisi qui, cætero-
rum omnium longè præstantissimus, etiam bonitate ac
sapientia est Deo simillimus ; is autem solus, mea qui-
dem sententia, expectatus ille Dei filius est. Quòd
regnum in familiam rursus contrudis, ut patrifamilias
regem assimiles, pater certè suæ familiæ regnum me-
retur, quam omnem vel generavit, vel alit : in rege
nihil est hujusmodi, sed planè coutrâ sunt omnia.
Animalia deinde nobis gregalia, imprimis ** aves,” et
in iis “ apes,” siquidem te physiologo aves istæ sunt,
imitandas proponis. “ Apes regem habent.” Triden-
tinæ scilicet, annon meministi ? cæterarum, te teste,
“ respub. est.” Verum tu desine de apibus fatuari ;
musarum sunt, oderunt te scarabæum, et, ut vides, re-
darguunt. ** Coturnices sub ortygometra.” Istos
onocrotalis tuis tende laqueos; nos tam stolido aucupio
non capimur. Atqui jam tua res agitur, non nostra.
“ Gallus gallinaceus,” inquis, “ tam maribus quàm
foeminis imperitat.” Qui potest hoc fieri ? Cum tu
ipse gallus, et, ut ferunt, vel nimiùm gallinaceus, non
tuæ gallinae, sed illa tibi imperitet, et in te regnum ex-
erceat : si gallimaceus ergò plurium foeminarum rex est,
tu gallinæ mancipium tuæ, non gallinaceum te, sed
stercorarium quemdam esse gallum, oportet. Pro libris
certè nemo te majora edit sterquilinia, et gallicinio tuo
stercoreo omnes obtundis; hoc unicum galli gallinacei
habes. Jam ego multa hordei grana daturum me tibi
promitto, si, totum hoc vertendo sterquilinium tuum,
vel unam mihi gemmam ostenderis. Sed quid ego tibi
hordeum ? qui non hordeum, ut Æsopicus ille, simplex
et frugi gallus, sed aurum, ut Plautimus ille nequam,
scalpturiendo quaesisti ; quamvis exitu adhuc dispari ;
tu enim centum Jacobæos aureos inde reperisti, cum
Euclionis fuste potiùs, quo misellus ille Plautinus, ob-
truncari dignior sis. Sed pergendum est. “ Eadem
utilitatis et incolumitatis omnium ratio naturalis pos-
tulat, ut qui semel ad gubernandum constitutus est,
conservetur.” Quis negat, quatenus ejus conservatio
cum incolumitate omnium consistit ? ad perniciem
autem omnium conservari unum, quis non videt
alienissimum à natura esse ? At “ malum etiam re-
gem conservari, immo pessimum ” omnino vis, “ eò
quod non tantum mali civitati procurat malè guber-
nando, quantum creatur cladium ex seditionibus, quæ
ad eum tollendum suscitantur.” Quid hoc ad jus
regum naturale ? An, si natura me monet, ut latro-
nibus diripiendum me permittam, ut captum me totis
facultatibus redimam potiùs, quàm ut dimicare de vita
cogar; latronum tu inde jus maturale constitues ? Sua-
det natura populo, ut tyrannorum violentiæ monnun-
quam cedat, cedat temporibus; tu ista populi mecessi-
tate ac patientia jus etiam naturale tyramnorum funda-
bis ? Quod illa jus populo sui conservandi causâ dedit,
tu illam tyranno, perdendi populi causâ, jus idem de-
disse affirmabis? Docet natura, ex duobus malis eligen-
dum esse minus; et quamdiu necesse est tolerandum :
an tu hinc tyranno, utpote minori fortasse interdum
malo, jus impunè malefaciendi exoriri naturale statues?
Recordare saltem ea, quæ jam pridem ipse de episcopis
contra Loiolitam scripsisti, à me suprà tertio capite re-
citata his planè contraria ; Illic ** seditiones, dissem-
tiones, discordias optimatium et populi, longè levius
esse malum,” affirmas, * quàm sub uno monarcha ty-
ranno certam miseriam ac perniciem.” Et vera tu
quidem affirmabas ; nondum enim insaniebas, nondum
Carolinis Jacobæis delinitus et deauratus in morbum
regium incideras. Diceram fortasse, nisi is esses qui
es, pudeat te tandem prævaricationis tuæ turpissimæ;
tibi verò dirumpi facilius est quàm erubescere, qui, ut
rem faceres, pudorem jamdiu amisisti. Annon ipse
memineras Romanos florentissimam et gloriosissimam
rempub. post exactos reges habuisse ? potuit fieri ut
Batavorum obliviscere ? quorum respub. Hispaniarum
rege pulso post bella diutina, feliciter tamen gesta, li-
bertatem fortiter et gloriosè consequuta est, teque
grammaticastrum equitem stipendio alit suo, nom ut
juventus Batavica te prævaricatore et sophista tam
nihil sapere discat, ut ad servitutem Hispanieam redire
mallet, quàm paternæ libertatis ac gloriæ hæres esse ;
istam doctrinæ pestem ad Riphæos ultimos, et glacia-
lem oceanum, quò te in malam rem abire par est, tecum
auferas licebit: Exemplo denique sunt Angli, qui Ca-
rolum tyrannum bello captum, et insanabilem, obtrun-
cârunt. At “ insulam beatam sub regibus, et luxu
affluentem, discordiis deformârunt.” Immo luxu penè
perditam, quò tolerantior servitutis esset, extinctis
deinde legibus, et mancipata religione, servientem libe-
rarunt. En autem Epicteti cum Simplicio editorem,
Stoicum gravissimum, cui “luxu affluens insula” beata
esse videtur! Ex porticu Zenonis nunquam tale, sat
scio, documentum prodiit. Quid refert, an te doctore quic-
quid libet regibus licebit, tibi ipsi non licebit lupi do-
mino ex lupanari tuo, tanquam ex novo quodam lyceo,
IPRO POPULO ANGLICANO DEFENSIO, 679
quamcunque libet emittere philosophiam ? Sed resume
nunc quam suscepisti personam. “ Numquam sub ullo
rege tantum cruoris haustum est, tot familiæ desolatæ;”
Hoc totum Carolo imputandum est, non Anglis; qui
exercitum Hibernicorum priùs in nos paraverat, omnes
Hibernos conjurare contra Anglos suo ipse diplomate
jusserat ; per illos ducena circiter millia Anglorum
una in provincia Ultonia occiderat; de reliquis nihil
dico: binos exercitus in exitium parlamenti Anglicani
urbisque Londini sollicitaverat ; multa alia hostiliter
fecerat, priusquam à populo aut magistratibus, tuendae
reipub. causâ, vel unus miles conscriptus esset. Quae
doctrina, quæ lex, quæ unquam religio, sic homines
instituit, ut otio consulendum, ut pecuniæ, ut sanguini,
ut vitæ, potiùs parceudum esse ducerent, quàm hosti
obviàm eundum ? Nam externo an imtestino, quid
interest? cum interitus reipub. sive ab hoc, sive ab
illo, fumestus æquè et acerbus impendeat. Vidit totus
Israël non posse se sine multo sanguine Levitæ ux-
orem stupro enectam ulcisci; am igitur quiescendum
sibi esse duxit, an bello civili, quamvis truculen-
tissimo, supersedendum ? an unam igitur muliercu-
lam mori inultam est passus ? Certè si natura nos
docet quamvis pessimi regis dominatum potiùs pati,
quàm, in recuperanda libertate, plurimorum civium
salutem in discrimen adducere, doceret eadem non
regem solùm perferre, quem tamen solum perferem-
dum esse contendis, sed optimatium, sed paucorum,
quoque potentiam ; latronum etiam nonnunquam et
servorum rebellantium multitudinem. Non Fulvius
aut Rupilius ad bellum servile post cæsos exercitus
prætorios, mom Crassus in Spartacum post deleta con-
sularium castra, non Pompeius ad piraticum bellum,
exiisset. Romani vel servis, vel piratis, ne tot civium
sanguis effunderetur, hortante scilicet natura, succu-
buissent. “ Hunc” itaque “ sensum,” aut hujusmodi
ullum “gentibus impressisse naturam” musquam osten-
dis : et tamen non desinis malè ominari, et vindictam
divinam, quam in te augurem tuique similes avertat
Deus, nobis denuntiare ; qui nomine tantùm regem,
re hostem acerbissimum, debito supplicio ulti sumus;
et innumerabilem bonorum civium cædem authoris
poenà expiavimus. Nunc magis naturalem esse mo-
marchiam ex eo probari ais, quod “ plures nationes et
nunc et olim regium statum receperint, quàm optima-
tem et popularem.” Respondeo primùm neque Deo
m que natura suadente id factum esse ; Deus, nisi in-
vitus, populum suum sub regio imperio esse noluit;
natura quid suadeat et recta ratio, mom ex pluribus,
sed ex prudentissimis nationibus, optimè perspicitur.
Græci, Romami, Itali, Carthaginienses, multique alii,
suopte ingenio, vel optimatium vel populi imperium
regio prætulerunt ; atque hæ quidem mationes cætera-
vum omnium instar sunt. Hinc Sulpitius Severus,
“ regium momen cunctis ferè liberis gentibus semper
invisum” fuisse, tradit. Verùm ista non jam huc per-
tinent, nec quæ sequuntur multa, imami futilitate à te
sæpius repetita : ad illud festino, ut quod rationibus
firmavi, id exemplis nunc ostendam, esse vel maximè
secundùm naturam, tyrannos quoquo modo puniri ; id
omnes gentes, magistrâ ipsâ naturâ, sæpiùs fecisse ; ex
quo inpudentia tua prædicanda, et turpissima mem-
tiendi licentia, omnibus innotescere dehinc poterit.
Primos omnium inducis Ægyptios ; et certè quis te per
omnia Ægyptizare non videat ? “ Apud hos,” inquis,
“ nusquam mentio extat ullius regis à populo per se-
ditiones occisi, nullum bellum illatum, aut quicquam
factum à populo, quo è solio dejiceretur?” Quid ergò ?
Osiris rex Ægyptiorum fortasse primus, annon à fratre
Typhone, et viginti quinque aliis conjuratis, interemp-
tus est ? quos et magna pars populi secuta magnum
cum Iside et Oro, regis conjuge et filio, prælium com-
misit ? Prætereo Sesostrim à fratre per insidias penè
oppressum ; Chemmin etiam et Cephremem, quibus
populus meritò infensus, quos vivos mom poterat, mor-
tuos se discerpturum mimatus est. Qui reges optimos
obtruncare sunt ausi, eosne putas, maturæ lumine aut
religione aliqua retentos, à pessimis regibus manus ab-
stinuisse ? qui reges mortuos, et tum demùm innocuos,
sepulchro eruituros se minitabantur, ubi etiam pauper-
culi cujusque corpus inviolatum esse solet, vivosne illi
et nocentissimos propter naturæ legem punire, si modò
viribus valerent, vererentur ? Affirmares hæc, scio,
quamlibet absurda ; at enim ego, me affirmare audeas,
elinguem te reddam. Scito igitur, multis ante Ce-
phrenem sæculis, regnâsse apud /Egyptos Ammosim ;
et tyrannum, ut qui maximè, fuisse ; eum Ægyptii
aequo animo pertulerunt. Lætaris ; hoc enim est quod
vis. At reliqua audi, vir optime et veracissime ; Diodori
enim verba sunt quæ recito ; μάχρι μ€ν τινος ἐκapr£pev
où òvvdμενοι, &c. tolerabant aliquamdiu oppressi, quia
resistere potentioribus nullo modo poterant. Quam-
primùm verò Actisanes, Æthiopum rex, bellum gerere
cum eo cœpit, nacti occasiomem plerique defecerunt,
eoque facilè subacto, Ægyptus regno Æthiopum ac-
cessit. Vides hic Ægyptios, quamprimùm poterant,
arma contra tyrannum tulisse, copias cum externo rege
conjunxisse, ut regem suum ejusque posteros regno pri-
varent, bonum et moderatum regem, qualis erat Acti-
sanes, maluisse externum, quàm tyrannum domesti-
cum. Iidem Ægyptii, consensu omnium maximo, Aprien
tyrannum suum, conductitiis copiis præsidentem, duce
Amasi, prælio victum strangulârunt; Amasi viro mobili
regnum dederunt. Hoc etiam adverte ; Amasis captum
regem ad tempus in ipsa regia honestè asservabat: in-
cusante demùm populo, injustè eum facere qui suum et
ipsorum hostem aleret, tradidit populo regem ; qui eum
prædicto supplicio affecit. Hæc Herodotus et Diodo-
rus. Quid amplius tibi quæris ? ecquam tyrammum
censes mom maluisse vitam securi quàm laqueo finire?
Postea sub Persarum imperium * redacti Ægyptii
fideles,” inquis, “ exstitere;” quod falsissimum est; in
fide enim Persarum numquam permansere ; sed quarto
post ammo quàm subacti à Cambyse fuerant, rebellârunt.
Domiti deinde à Xerxe, haud multò pòst ab ejus filio
Artaxerxe defecerunt, regem Inarum quendam sibi ad-
sciverunt. Quo occiso iterum fidem mutant, et, con-
stituto rege Tacho, Artaxerxi Mnemoni bellum indicunt.
Sed, meque suo regi fideliores, ablatum patri regnum filio
Nectamebo tradunt: donec tandem ab Artaxerxe Ocho
in ditionem Persarum rediguntur. Sub Macedonum
etiam imperio, quantum in se erat, tyrannos coercen-
680
IPRO POPULO ANGLICANO DEFENSIO.
dos esse factis indicârunt; statuas et imagines Ptole-
mæi Physcomis dejecerunt, ipsum mercenario exercitu
præpollentem interficere nequiverunt. Alexander, ejus
filius, ob cædem matris concursu populi in exilium agitur:
filium item ejus Alexandrum, insolentiùs dominantem,
Alexandrinus populus vi abreptum ex regia in gymma-
sio publico interfecit : Ptolemæum denique Auleten ob
multa flagitia regmo expulit. Hæc tam nota cùm non
possit nescire vir doctus, non debuerit qui hæc docere
profiteatur, qui fidem tantis in rebus haberi sibi postu-
let ; quis non pudendum et indignissimum esse dicat,
hunc, vel tam rudem et indoctum, tanta cum infamia
bonarum literarum, pro doctissimo circumferre se tumi-
dum, et stipendia regum et civitatum ambire, vel tam
improbum et mendacem, non insigni aliqu^ ignominia
notatum, ex omnium communitate et consortio tum
doctorum tum bonorum exterminari. Postquam Ægyp-
tum lustravimus ; ad Æthiopes jam proximos visamus.
IRegem à Deo electum, ut credunt, quasi Deum quen-
dam adorant: quoties tamen eum sacerdotus damnant,
ipse mortem sibi consciscit. Sic enim, Diodoro teste,
omnes alios maleficos puniunt ; non ipsi morte affici-
unt, sed ipsos reos lictore misso mori jubent. Ad As-
syrios deinde et Medos et Persas, regum observantissi-
mos, accedis: “ jus illic regium summa cum licentia
quidlibet faciendi conjunctum fuisse” contra omnium
historicorum fidem affirmas.
ut regem Nebuchadnezzarem, plus nimio superbientem,
homines à se depulerint, et ad bestias ablegaverint.
Jus eorum mon regium, sed Medorum et Persarum, id
est populi jus, appellatur ; quod cùm irrevocabile esset,
reges etiam obligavit. Darius itaque Medus eripere
manibus satraparum Danielem, quanquam id maximè
agebat, non potuit. “ Populi,” inquis, “ nefas esse tum
credebant regem repudiare, quòd illo jure abuteretur.”
Inter ipsa tamen hæc verba adeò miserè obtorpes, ut
dum istorum populorum obedientiam et modestiam
laudas, ereptum Sardamapalo regnum ab Arbace tua
sponte commemores. Eripuit autem is non solus, sed
partim à sacerdotibus juris peritissimis, partim à popu-
lo, adjutus, atque hoc præsertim nomine eripuit, quòd
is jure regio, non ad crudelitatem, sed ad luxuriam tan-
tummodò et mollitiem, abuteretur. Percurre Herodo-
tum, Ctesiam, Diodorum, intelliges omninò contrà esse
quàm dicis, “â subditis ut plurimùm ea regna destructa
fuisse, non ab externis:” Assyrios reges à Medis, Me-
dos à Pérsis, utrisque tum subditis, sublatos fuisse.
“ Cyrum” ipse ** rebellâsse, et arreptas tyrannides in
diversis imperii locis” fateris. Hoccine est jus regium
apud Medos et Persas, et observantiam eorum in reges,
quod instituisti, asserere ? Quae te Anticyra tam delirum
sanare potest? “ Persarum reges quali jure regnârint
ex Herodoto,” inquis, “ liquet.” Cambyses, cùm soro-
rem in matrimonio habere cuperet, judices regios con-
sulit, delectos “ ex populo viros,” legum interpretes, ad
quos omnia referri solebant. Quid illi ? negant se in-
venire legem, quae jubeat fratrem secum in matrimoni-
um sororem jungere ; aliam tamem invenisse, qua liceat
Persarum regi facere quae libeat. Primùm si rex
omnia pro suo jure poterat, quid alio legum interprete
quàm ipso rege opus erat ? supervacanei isti judices
Narrat imprimis Daniel .
ubivis potiùs quàm in regia mansissent. Deinde si
regi Persarum quidvis licuit, incredibile est id adeò
nescivisse Cambysem, dominationis cupidissimum, ut
quid licitum esset judices illos percontaretur. Quid
ergò ? vel ** gratificari” volentes ** regi,” ut fateris ipse,
vel à tyranno sibi metuentes, ut ait Herodotus, facilem
quandam se reperisse legem simulant, palpum regi ob-
trudentes: quod in judicibus et legum peritis, hac
etiam ætate, novum non est. At verò “ Artabamus
Persa dixit ad Themistoclem, mullam legem apud
Persas esse meliorem illâ quâ sancitum fuerat, regem
esse honorandum et adorandum.” Præclaram tu qui-
dem legem de adoratione regum introducis, etiam à
patribus antiquis damnatam ; præclarum etiam legis
commendatorem Artabamum, qui ipse haud multò
postea sua manu Xerxem regem suum trucidavit.
Probos regem defensores regicidas nobis adfers: suspi-
cor te regibus insidias quasdam moliri. Claudianum
citas poëtam, Persarum obedientiæ testem. At ego te
ad res eorum gestas et annales revoco, defectionibus
Persarum, Medorum, Bactrianorum, Babyloniorum,
etiam cædibus regum, refertissimos. Proximus tibi
author est Otanes Persa, ipse etiam Smerdis inter-
fector sui regis, qui cum odio potestatis regiæ, injurias
et facinora regum exponat, violationes legum, caedes
indemmatorum, stupra, adulteria, hoc tu jus regium
vis appellari, et Samuelis iterum calumniandi im men-
tem tibi venit. De Homero, qui reges esse ab Jove
cecinit, supra respondi : Philippo regi, jus regium in-
terpretanti, tam credam quàm Carolo. Ex Diogenis
deinde Pythagoræi fragmento quædam producis, at
quali is de rege dicat taces. Accipe igitur quo ille usus
est exordio; ad quod referri quæ sequuntur cuncta de-
bent. ** Rex ille
fuerit, qui justissimus est, justissimus autem, qui max-
imè legitimus;” nam sine justitia nullus “ rex esse
poterit, neque justitia sine lege.” Hæc cum jure tuo
regio è regione pugnant. Eadem abs te recitatus Ec-
phantas philosophatur. Aít óè kav tov sic dvràv Kara-
sdvra, &c. * oportet qui regnum suscipit purissimum et
lucidissimum maturâ esse :" et infra, δ kat' dpsrdv ÉÉâp-
χων, &c. ** ille qui imperat secundùm virtutem, nomi-
natur rex, et est.” Quem tu igitur regem vocas, Py-
thagoreorum judicio rex non est. Jam tu vicissim
Platonem audi in epistola octava, άρχ) yvyv£αθω υττεύ-
0vvoc ßaaiXtxij, &c. ; “ sit regia potestas reddendæ
rationi obnoxia ; leges dominentur et aliis civibus et
ipsis etiam regibus, si quid præter leges facerint.”
Addo Aristotelem Polit. 3. ἐν μ£ν τοι όμοίοις kav tootc oöre
συμφερον ἐστίν, &c. ** inter similes et æquales neque
utile est neque justum, esse unum omnium dominum,
neque ubi leges non sunt, neque ut ipse lex sit, neque
ubi sunt leges ; neque bomum bonorum, neque non
bonum non bonorum dominum esse.” Et lib. quinto,
“ Quem populus non vult, statim is non rex, sed ty-
rannus est,” c. 10. Hem tibi etiam Xenophontem in
Hierone, dvri roù ripwpéîv άι ττόλεις άυτοῖς, &c. ** tamtum
abest ut tyrannorum necem civitates ulciscantur, ut
magnis honoribus afficiant eum, qui tyrannum inter-
fecerit, imagines etiam tyrannicidarum in templis sta-
tuunt.” Testem occulatum adjiciam Marcum Tullium
BaoiXsùς κ' ἐum δ δικάιότaroc, &c.
PRO POPULO ANGLICANO DEFENSIO.
681
pro Milone. * Graeci homines deorum honores tribu-
unt iis viris qui tyrannos necaverunt: quæ ego vidi
Athenis, quæ aliis in urbibus Græciæ, quas res divinas
talibus institutas viris, quos cantus, quæ carmina ?
prope ad immortalitatem, et religionem, et memoriam
consecrantur.” Polybius denique, author gravissimus,
Historiarum 6to. röre δε τὰς ἐπιθυμίαις ἐτόμενοι, &c.
“ cum principes,” inquit,“ cupiditatibus obsequi coepe-
runt, tum de regno facta est tyrannis, et conspiratio in
caput dominantium imibatur; cujus quidem authores
erant mon deterrimi civium, sed generosissimi quique
et maximi animi.” Longè plura cùm mihi suppeterent,
hæc pauca delibavi: obruor enim copiâ. A philosophis
ad poëtas jam provocas; eò te libentissimè sequimur.
** Potestatem mullis legibus, nullis judiciis, obnoxiam
in Græcia reges obtinuisse vel unus,” inquis, “AEscby-
lus potest docere ; qui in tragœdia, Supplices, regem
Argivorum άκριτον τρύravvv vocat, non judicabilem
rectorem.” Verum tu scito, (præcipitem enim te et
mullius judicii esse, quocunque te vertis, eò magis per-
spicio,) scito, inquam, non quid poëta, sed quis apud
poëtam quidque dicat, spectandum esse : variæ enim
personæ inducuntur, munc bonæ, nunc malæ, nunc
sapientes, nunc simplices, non semper quid poëtæ vide-
atur, sed quid cuique maximè conveniat, loquentes.
Danai filiae quinquaginta, ex Ægypto profugæ, ad
Argivorum regem supplices pervenerant; orant uti se
contra vim Ægyptiorum, classe insequentium, defen-
dat; respondet rex non posse se, nisi rem priùs cum
populo communicet.
» v €\m w * p. » a p. p.
Eyò δ' άν οὐ κραίνοιμ' ύττόσχεσιν τὰρος
Aοτόν δέ ττάσι τοῖσδε κοινόσας τἐρι.
Mulieres peregrinæ et supplices, incerta populi suffra-
gia veritæ, regem denuò blandiùs compellant.
Σύ τοι ττόλις, σὺ δὲ τὸ δημιον,
IIρύravις άκριτος όν.
£6 e. «a * s* e* * & * a ea ))
Tu instar urbis es et populi, prætor injudicatus.
Rursus rex,
Et trov ôè καί τρίν, δυκ άνευ δήμε τέδs
IIράδαιμ' àv ούδάτερ κρατῶν. -
“ Dixi antea, non sine populo hæc faciam, ne si
possem quidem.”
De re itaque tota ad populum refert,
'Eyò òè λdec ovvka)\ιόν ἐγχωpiac
IIείσω τὸ κοινόν.
Populus itaque decernit opem Danai filiabus ferendam ;
unde illa semis Danai lætantis.
eapo-siré traiôες, εν τὰ τῶν ἐγχωρίων
Aήμε δάδοκτaι τavr€\j Jmgio uara.
** Bono estote animo filiæ, benè decreverunt
“Indigenarum, in conventu populari, perfectissima
suffragia.”
Haec nisi protulissem, quàm temere statuisset sciolus
iste de jure regio apud Græcos ex ore mulierum, et
peregrinarum, et supplicum'; cùm et ipse rex, et ipsa
res gesta, longè aliud nos doceat. Idem etiam docet
Euripidis Orestes, qui, mortuo patre, Argivorum ipse
rex, ob cædem matris à populo in judicium vocatus,
ipse causam dixit, et suffragiis populi capite damnatus
est. Athenis regiam potestatem legibus obnoxiam
fuisse testatur idem Euripides etiam in Supplicibus,
ubi hæc Theseus Athenarum rex—
où yàp àρχεrat
'Evòς πρὸς ἀνδρὸς, ἀλλ' ἐλεvSèpa ττόλις,
a* » » g»
Ajjpog ö' άνάσσει—
** non regitur
** Ab uno viro, sed est libera hæc civitas,
“ Populus autem regnat—”
Sic ejus filius Demophoon, rex item Atheniensium,
apud eundem poëtam in Heraclidis.
Où yàp Tvpavvîô' ύστε ßapßáρων ἐχω,
'AXX' ijv ôíkata δρά, δίkata τὰσομat.
“ Non enim iis tyrannicè tanquam barbaris impero,
“Sed si facio justa quæ sunt, justa mihi rependentur.”
Non aliud Thebis jus regium antiquitùs fuisse testatur
Sophocles in OEdipo tyranno, unde et Tiresias et Creon
AEdipo ferociter responsant, ille
où yàp τι σοί άδ δοῦλος
“ Non servus tibi sum.”
Hic,
kápoi τόλεως μάτεστι τjjc, δ' οὐ σοί μόνφ.
“ Est et mihi jus in hac civitate uon tibi solùm.”
Et Aenon Creonti in Antigone.
IIόλις yàp övk £σS', ijrug àvòpòc ἐσ$' ἐνός.
“ Non est civitas, quæ unius est viri.”
Jam verò Lacedæmoniorum reges in judicium sæpe
adductos, et interdum morte multatos, nemo ignorat.
Atque hæc quidem antiquum in Græcia jus regium
quale fuerit satis declarant. Ad Romanos veniamus.
Tu ad illud imprimis recurris non Sallustianum, sed
C. Memmii apud Sallustium, “ impunè quidvis fa-
cere :” cui suprà responsum est. Sallustius ipse di-
sertis verbis author est, “Romano imperium legitimum,
nomen imperii regium, habuisse:” quod cum “ se in
dominationem convertit,” ut nôsti, expulerunt. Sic
M. Tullius in Pisonem, “ ego consulem esse putem,
qui senatum esse in repub. non putavit ? et sine eo
consilio consulem numerem, sine quo Romæ me reges
quidem esse potuerunt?” Audin? regem Romæ sine
senatu nihil fuisse ? ** At Romulus, ut iibitum, Roma-
nis imperitaverat, ut ait Tacitus.” Nondum enim
fundata legibus, colluvies potiùs comvenarum quàm
respub. erat : omnes olim mortales sine legibus vive-
bant, cùm respublicæ nondum essent. Post Romulum
autem, authore Livio, etsi regem omnes volebant, li-
bertatis dulcedine nondum experta, “ Populo tamen
summa potestas permissa est, ut non plus darent juris
quàm detinerent ; jus illud” à Cæsaribus “ vi ademp-
tum fuisse” idem ait. Servius Tullius dolo primùm,
quasi Tarquinii Prisci vicarius, regnabat; postea verò
ad populum ipse retulit, “ vellent juberentne se reg-
mare;” tandem ut ait Tacitus, “ sanctor legum fuit,
queis etiam reges obtemperarent.” Fecissetne hanc
sibi et posteris injuriam, si supra leges priùs fuisse jus
682
PRO POPULO ANGLICANO DEFENSIO.
regium sensisset ? Ultimus illorum regum Tarquinius
Superbus “ morem de omnibus sematum comsulendi
primus solvit ;" ob hæc et alia flagitia populus L.
Tarquinio regi imperium abrogavit ; exulemque esse
cum conjuge ac liberis jussit. Hæc ferè ex Livio et
Cicerone ; quibus alios juris regii apud Romanos haud
tu interpretes attuleris meliores. Ad dictaturam quod
attinet, temporaria tantùm fuit, numquam adhibita mi
difficillimis reipub. temporibus, et intra sex menses de-
ponenda. Jus autem imperatorum quod vocas, non jus
illud, sed vis, planè erat ; imperium nullo jure præter-
quàm armis partum. At “ Tacitus,” inquis “ qui sub
imperio floruit,” ista scripsit. “ Principi summum re-
rum arbitrium dii dederunt, subditis obsequii gloria re-
]icta est.” Nec dicis quo loco ; tibi conscius mimirum
insigniter lectoribus imposuisse ; quod mihi quidem sta-
tim suboluit, quamvis locum illum non statim reperi.
Non enim Taciti hæc verba sunt, scriptoris boni, et ty-
rannis adversissimi, sed apud Tacitum M. Terentii cu-
jusdam equitis Romani, qui capitis reus, inter alia, quæ
metu mortis ab eo dicta sunt, sic Tiberium adulatur, an-
malium 6to. “Tibi summum rerum judicium dii dederunt,
nobis obscquii gloria relicta est.” Hanc tu quasi Taciti
sententiam profers, qui sententias tibi commodas non
ex pistrina solùm, aut tonstrina, sed ex ipsa carnificina,
oblatas non respueres : ita omnia vel ostentationis
causâ, vel imbecillitatis conscientiâ, undecumque cor-
radis. Tacitum ipsum si legere maluisses, quàm alicubi
decerptum negligentiùs transcribere, docuisset te is,
jus illud imperatorum unde ortum sit. “ Post Actiacam
victoriam, verso civitatis statu, nihil usquam prisci aut
integri moris ; omnes exuta æqualitate jussa principis
aspectare ;'' docuisset idem, annalium 3tio, unde tuum
omne jus regium ; “ Postquam exui æqualitas, et pro
modestia ac pudore ambitio et vis incedebat, provenére
dominationes ; multosque apud populos æternùm man-
sere.” Idem ex Dione poteras didicisse, si immata le-
vitas et inconstantia tua quicquam te altiùs percipere
pateretur. Narrat enim is l. 53. abs te citato, ut partim
armis, partim dolo et simulatione Octaviani Cæsaris,
effectum sit, ut imperatores legibus soluti essent ; dum
enim pro concione pollicetur se principatu abiturum,
legibus et imperiis etiam aliorum obtemperaturum, per
causam belli in provinciis suis gerendi, retentis apud
se semper legionibus, dum simulatè renuit imperium,
sensim invasit. Non est hoc legibus ritè solutum esse,
sed legum vincula, quod gladiator ille Spartacus po-
tuit, vi solvere; nomen deinde principis aut imperatoris
et dvroKpdropoc sibi arrogare, quasi Deus aut matura
lex omnes et homines et leges illi subjecisset. Vis
altiùs paulò juris Cæsarei originem cognoscere ? Mar-
cus Antonius, jussu Cæsaris, qui, armis in rempublicam
mefariè sumptis, tum plurimum poterat, consul factus,
cùm Lupercalia Romæ celebrarentur, ex composito, ut
videbatur, diadema capiti Cæsaris cum gemitu et plan-
gore populi imposuit: ascribi deinde jussit in fastis ad
Lupercalia, C. Cæsari Antonium consulem, jussu
populi, regnum detulisse. Qua de re Cicero in secunda
Philippica ; ** Ideone L. Tarquinius exactus, Spurius
Cassius, Sp. Melius, M. Manlius mecati, ut multis post
sæculis à M. Antonio, quod fas non est, rex Romæ
constitueretur ?” Tu verò omni malo cruciatu atque
infamia sempiterna etiam ipso Antonio dignior es;
quamquam tu hinc moli superbire, non enim te, homi-
nem despicatissimum, ulla re alia quàm scelere cum
Antonio conferendum putem, qui, in hisce tuis Luper-
calibus nefandis, non uni tantùm, sed omnibus tyrannis,
diadema cunctis legibus solutum, nullâ solvendum, im-
ponere studuisti. Certè si ipsorum Cæsarum oraculo
credendum est, sic enim appellant Christiani impera-
tores Theodosius et Valens edictum suum, cod. l. 1. tit.
14. de authoritate juris imperatorum pendet authoritas.
Majestas ergò regnantis, vel ipsorum Cæsarum sive
judicio sive oraculo, submittenda legibus est, de qui-
bus pendet. Hinc, adulta jam potestate imperatoria,
ad Trajanum Plinius in Panegyrico ; “ Diversa sunt
maturâ dominatio et principatus. Trajamus regnum
ipsum arcet ac summovet, sedemque obtinet principis,
me sit domino locus.” Et infrà, “ omnia, quæ de aliis
principibus à me dicta sunt, eò pertinent ut ostendam,
quàm longa consuetudine corruptos, depravatosque,
mores principatùs parens noster reformet, et corrigat.”
Quod depravatos principatùs mores Plinius, id tene
pudet jus regium perpetuò vocitare ? Verùm hactenùs
de jure regio apud Romanos breviter. Quid illi in
tyránnos suos, sive reges, sive imperatores, fecerint,
vulgò notum est. Tarquinium expulerunt. Sed “ quo-
modo,” inquis, “ expulerunt; am in jus vocarunt? me-
quaquam ; portas venienti clauserunt.” Ridiculum
caput ! quidni clauderent advolanti cum parte copi-
arum ? quid refert exulare jussus fuerit an mori, modò
poenas dedisse constat? Ca. Cæsarem tyrannum ex-
cellentissimi ejus ætatis viri in senatu interfecerunt;
id factum M. Tullius et ipse vir optimus, et pater patriæ
publicè dictus, miris laudibus, cùm alibi passim, tum
in 2da Philippica, celebravit. Pauca recitabo. “ Omnes
bomi, quantum in ipsis fuit, Cæsarem occiderunt; aliis
consilium, aliis animus, aliis occasio, defuit, voluntas
nemini.” Et infrà. “ Quæ enim res unquam, proh
sancte Jupiter, non modò in hac urbe, sed in omnibus
terris est gesta major, quæ gloriosior, quæ commenda-
tior hominum memoriæ sempiternæ ? in hujus me
consilii societatem, tanquam in equum Trojanum, in-
ckudi cum principibus non recuso.” Illud Senecæ
tragici et ad Græcos referri potest, et ad Romamos :
Victima haud ulla amplior
Potest, magisque opima mectari Jovi,
Quàm rex imiquus.
Nam si ad Herculem spectes, cujus hæc sententia in-
ducitur, quid senserint illa ætate Græcorum summi viri
ostendit: si ad poëtam, qui sub Nerone floruit (et sen-
sum ferè suum poëtæ personis optimis affingere solemt)
significabat et quid ipse, et quid omnes viri boni, ætate
etiam Neronis, faciendum tyranno censuerint; quam-
que pium, quamque diis gratum, esse duxerint tyran-
micidium. Sic optimi quique Romanorum, quantum
in se erat, Domitianum occiderunt. Palàm hoc pro-
fitetur Plinius secundus in illo ad Trajanum imperato-
rem Panegyrico. * Juvabat illidere solo superbissimos
vultus, instare ferro, sævire securibus, ut si singulos
ictus sanguis dolorque sequeretur: nemo tam tempe-
rans gaudii, quin instar ultionis videretur cernere lace-
PRO POPULO ANGLICANO IDEFENSIO.
683
ros artus, truncata membra, postremò truces horrendas-
que imagines abjectas excoctasque flammis.” Et deinde,
“ non satis amant bonos principes, qui malos satis non
oderint.” Tum inter flagitia Domitiani ponit, quòd
is Epaphroditum, Neronis utcumque interfectorem, tru-
cidaverit. ** An excidit dolori nostro modò vindicatus
Nero, permitteret credo famam vitamque ejus carpi,
qui mortem ulciscebatur?” Planè quasi sceleri proxi-
mum esse judicaret, non interfecisse Neronem, scelus
gravissimum vindicâsse interfectum. Ex his manifes-
tum est, Romanorum præstantissimos quosque viros
non solum tyrannos quoquo modo, quoties poterant,
occidisse, sed factum illud, ut Græci olim, in maxhma
laude posuisse: vivum enim tyrannum quoties judicare
mon poterant viribus inferiores, mortuum tamen et ju-
dicabant, et lege Valeria damnabant. Valerius enim
Publicola, Junii Bruti collega, cum videret non posse
stipatos suis militibus tyrannos ad judicium perduci,
1egem tulit, qua indemmatum quovis modo occidere
liceret ; deinde facti rationem reddere. Hinc C. Cali-
gulam, quem Cassius ferro, omnes votis interfecerunt;
Valerius Asiaticus, vir consularis, cùm non adesset, ad
milites tamcn ob necem ejus tumultuantes exclamat,
“ utinam ego interfecissem ;* scnatus eodem tempore
abolendam Cæsarum memoriam, ac diruenda templa,
censuit; tantum abfuit ut Cassio irasccretur ; Clau-
dium, à militibus imperatorem mox salutatum vetant
per tribunum plebis principatum capescere ; vis autem
militum vicit. Neronem senatus hostem judicavit, et,
ut puniretur more majorum quærebat ; id genus pœnæ
erat, ut nudi cervix insereretur furcæ, corpus virgis ad
mecem crederetur. Vide quantò mitiùs et moderatiùs
Angli cum tyranno egerint suo, qui multorum judicio
plus ipso Nerone sanguinis fundendi author fuerat. Sic
Domitianum mortuum senatus dammavit; quod potuit,
imagines ejus coràm detrahi, et solo affligi, jussit. Com-
modus à suis interfectus, non vindicatus à senatu aut
populo, sed hostis judicatus est, qui etiam cadaver ejus
ad supplicium quærebant. Ea de re senatusconsultum
cxtat apud Lampridium ; “ Hosti patriæ honores de-
trahantur, parricida trahatur, in spoliario lanietur,
hostis deorum, carnifex senatùs unco trahatur,” &c.
Iidem Didium Julianum imperatorem frequentissimo
senatu capitis damnârunt ; et, misso tribuno, occidi in
palatio jusserunt. Iidem Maximimo imperium abrogá-
vumt, hostemque judicârunt. Juvat ipsum senatuscom-
sultum ex Capitolino recitare. ** Consul retulit; Pa-
tres Conscripti, de Maximinis quid placet?” responsum
est, “ hostes, hostes ; qui eos occiderit, præmium mere-
bitur.” Vis scire populus Romanus et provinciae Maxi-
mino imperatori an senatui paruerint ? audi eumdem
Capitolinum. “ Literas mittit senatus” ad omnes pro-
vincias, ut communi saluti libertatique subveniant; quae
auditæ sunt ab omnibus. Ubique amici, administratores,
duces, tribuni, milites, Maximini interfecti sunt: paucæ
civitates fidem hosti publico servaverunt. Eadem tradit
Herodiamus. Quid plura de Romamis ? Jam apud fini-
timas mationes quale jus regum illa tetate fuerit videa-
Jmus. Apud Gallos rex eorum Ambiorix ** sua ejusmodi
esse imperia” fatetur, “ ut non minus haberet in se juris
multitudo, quàm ipse in multitudinem.” Judicabatur
ergò mom minùs quam judicabat. I{cx item Vercinge-
torix proditionis insimulatus est à suis; tradit hæc
Cæsar, bellum Gallicum scribens. Nec “ Germanorum
regibus infinita aut libera potestas” erat; “ de minoribus
rebus principes consultant, de majoribus omnes. IRex
aut princeps auditur authoritate suadendi magis quàm
jubendi potestate ; si displicuit sententia, fremitu asper-
mantur.” Hæc Tacitus. Tu verò, quod inauditum
prorsus esse modò exclamabas, nunc sæpiùs factum
concedis, “ quinquaginta” nimirum “ Scotorum reges
aut expulsos, aut incarceratos, aut necatos, quosdam
etiam im publico capitali supplicio affectos.” Quod in
ipsa Britannia factitatum est, cur tu, tyrannorum ves-
pillo, infandum, inauditum, esse tanta ejulatione vo-
ciferaris ? Pergis Judæorum et Christia:orum erga
tyrannos suos religionem extollere, et mendacia ex
mendaciis serere, quæ jam toties refutavimus. Modò
Assyriorum et Persarum obedientiam latè prædicabas,
nunc eorum rebelliones enumeras ; et quos nunquam
rebellâsse paulò ante dixeras, nunc cur iidem toties
rebell.: verint multas causas affers. Ad narrationem
deinde sumpti de rege supplicii, tamdiu intermissam,
revertis, ut, si tunc fortè satis sedulò ineptus et ridi-
culus non eras, nunc esses. “ Per aulæ suæ membra
ductum ” narras. Quid per aulæ membra intelligas
scire gestio. Romanorum calamitates ex regno in
rempub. verso recenses, in quo te tibimet turpissimè
mentiri suprà ostendimus. Qui ad Loiolitam, ** sediti-
ones tantùm sub optimatibus et populo, certam sub
tyranno perniciem esse," demonstrabas, nunc, hominum
vamissime et corruptissime, “ ob reges olim ejectos
seditionum illa mala tamquam supplicia illos hausisse”
audes dicere ? scilicet quia centum Jacobæis donavit
te postea rex Carolus, idcirco reges expulsos luemt Ro-
mani. At malè cessit Julii Cæsaris interfectoribus.
Sanè si cui unquam tyranno, huic parcitum vellem ;
quamvis enim regnum in repub. violentiùs invadebat,
erat tamen regno fortasse dignissimus: nec ideo quem-
quam magis putem interfecti Cæsaris pœnas pepen-
disse, quàm deleti Catilimæ Caium Antonium Ciceronis
collegam : quo postea de aliis criminibus damnato, ut
inquit Cicero pro Flacco, “ sepulchrum Catilimæ flori-
bus ormatum est.” Fautores enim Catilinæ tumc ex-
ultabamt, “ justa Catilimæ tum facta esse dictitabant,"
ad invidiam cæteris conflandam, qui Catilinam sus-
tulerant. Hæ sunt improborum artes, quibus viros
præstantissimos à supplicio tyrannorum, et pumiendis
etiam sæpe facinorosissimis, deterreant. Dicerem ego
contrà, quod facile esset, quoties bene cessit et prosperè
tyrannorum interfectoribus, si quid certi de eventu re-
rum colligere quis posset. Objectas, quòd ** regem
hæreditarium Angli mon illo affecerint supplicio, quo
tyranmi solent mactari, sed eo, quo latrones et pro-
ditionis rei.” Primùm hæreditas ad maleficiorum im-
punitatem quid conferat nescio: conferre quicquam ut
credat sapiens, fieri vix potest. Quod tu deinde ad
“ immanitatem” refers, in eo lemitas potiùs Anglorum,
et moderatio, prædicamda erat ; qui, cùm tyrannum
esse omnes in patriam impietates, latrocinia, proditiones,
perduelliones, in se complectatur, satis habebant sup-
plicium haud gravius de tyranno sumere, quàm de
684
PRO POPULO ANGLICANO DEFENSIO.
simplici latrone quovis, aut proditore vulgari, sumere
solebant. Speras “ exorituros esse aliquos Harmodios
et Thrasybulos, qui, nostrorum cæde, tyranni manibus
parentent.” At tu citiùs animum despondebis, et
vitam de dignam, omnibus bonis execrandus, antè sus-
pemdio finieris, quàm Harmodios Harmodiorum san-
guine litantes tyramno videas. Tibi enim illud accidere
verisimillimum est, deque te tam scelerato quis augu-
rari rectiùs possit: alterum est impossibile. Tyran-
norum triginta mentionem facis qui sub Gallieno re-
bellârunt. Quid si tyrannus tyrannum oppugnat, an
omnes ergò qui oppugnant tyranmum, aut tollunt, ty-
ranni erunt ipsi ? haud tu id persuaseris, mancipium
equestre ; neque is qui author tibi est, Trebellius Pol-
lio, historicorum propè ignobilissimus. “ Si qui hostes,”
inquis, “ â senatu judicati sunt, factio id fecit, non jus.”
Nobis in memoriam revocas quid fecit imperatores ;
factio nempe, et vis, et, ut planiùs dicam, furor An-
tonii, non jus, fecit, ut contra senatum populumque
Romanum ipsi priùs rebellarent. “ Dedit,” inquis,
“ poenas Galba, qui contra Neronem insurrexit.” Dic
etiam quas pœnas dedit Vespasianus, qui contra Vi-
tellium. “ Tantum,” inquis, ** abfuit Carolus à Ne-
rone, quamtum isti laniones Anglicani à senatoribus
illius temporis Romanis.” Trifurcifer, à quo laudari
vituperium est, vituperari laus magna: paucis modò
periodis interpositis, hac ipsa de re scribens, “ senatum
sub imperatoribus togatorum mancipiorum consessum
fuisse” aiebas, nunc eundem “ senatum” ais “ con-
sessum regum fuisse :” hoc si ita est, quid obstat quin
reges, te authore, togata mancipia sint ? Beatos hoc
laudatore reges! quo inter homines nihil nequius, in-
ter quadrupedes nihil amentius : nisi si hoc illi pecu-
liare dicam esse, quòd nemo literatiùs rudit. Senatum
Angliæ Neromi vis esse similiorem quàm senatui Ro-
mano : cogit me cacoëthes hoc tuum ineptissimas con-
glutinandi similitudines, ut corrigam te ; et quàm
similis Neroni fuerit Carolus, ostendam. ** Nero,” in-
quis, “ matrem suam” ferro “ necavit.” Carolus et
patrem et regem veneno ; nam, ut alia omittam indicia,
qui ducem veneficii reum legibus eripuit, fieri non po-
tuit quin ipse reus quoque fuerit. Nero multa millia
Christianorum occidit, Carolus multo plura. Non de-
fuerunt, teste Suetonio, qui Neronem mortuum lauda-
rent, qui desiderarent, qui per longum tempus, “ vermis
æstivisque floribus tumulum ejus ornarent,” ejus imi-
micis omnia mala ominarentur: mon desunt qui Caro-
lum eadem insaniâ desiderent, et summis laudibus
extollant, quorum tu, patibularis eques, chorum ducis.
“ Milites Angli molossis suis ferociores novum et inau-
ditum tribunal instituerunt.” En acutissimum Salmasii
sive symbolum sive adagium, jam sexies inculcatum,
“ Molossis suis ferociores ;* adeste rhetores, vosque
ludimagistri, delibate, si sapitis, flosculum hunc ele-
gantissimum, qui tam Salmasio in deliciis est ; codicil-
lis vestris et capsulis mandate copiosissimi hominis
pigmentum, me intereat. Adeone etiam verba tua com-
sumpsit rabies, ut, cuculi in modum, eadem identidem
occinere cogaris ? Quid hoc moirstri esse dicam ? Ra-
bies, ut fabulantur, vertit Hecubam in camem, te S'i
Lupi dominum vertit in cuculum. Jam novas exordiris
repugnantias : supra p. 113. affirmaveras “ Principem
legibus solutum esse, non cogentibus” solùm, sed * di-
rigentibus, mullas esse omninò quibus teneatur;” nunc
dicturum te ais “ infrà de regum differentia, quatenus
potestate, alii minore, alii majore, in regnando fuerunt.”
Vis probare, “ reges non potuisse judicari, nec damnari
à subjectis suis argumento,” ut ipse ais, “ firmissimo,”
revera stolidissimo ; * nihil,” inquis, “ aliud inter ju-
dices et reges discrimen fuit : atqui Judæi judicum
tædio odioque adducti reges postulabant.” Am quia
judices illos magistratum malè gerentes judicare et
damnare poterant, ideone putas tædio odioque eorum
adductos postulâsse reges, quos jura omnia violantes
pumire, aut in ordinem cogere, non poterant ? quis,
excepto te uno, tam fatuê ratiocinari solet ? Aliud igi-
tur quiddam erat cur regem peterent, quàm ut haberent
dominum legibus superiorem ; de quo nunc divinare
nihil attinet: quicquid erat, haud prudenti consilio
factum et Deus et propheta ejus testatus est. Iterum
rabbinis tuis, ex quibus probâsse te suprà asserebas
regem Judæorum non judicari, nunc litem acerrimam
intendis, quòd regem et judicari et verberari posse tra-
diderint : quod idem planè est acsi faterere ementitum
te tunc esse, quod ex rabbinis probâsse dixeras. Eo
demùm descendis ut de numero equilium Solomonis,
quot “ is equorum præsepia habuerit,'° oblitus regiæ
defensionis, controversias putidulas concites. Tandem
ab agasone ad equitem redis aretalogum et tautologum,
vel potiùs ad id monstri quod priùs eras, cuculum ra-
biosum. Quereris enim “ postremis” hisce * sæculis
disciplinæ vigorem laxatum, regulam corruptam ;*
quòd uni scilicet tyramno, cunctis legibus soluto, disci-
plinam omnem laxare, mores omnium corrumpere, im-
punè non liceat. Hanc doctrimam ** Brumistas inter
reformatos” introduxisse ais. Ita Lutherus, Calvimus,
Zuinglius, Bucerus, et Orthodoxorum quotquot cele-
berrimi theologi fuere, tuo judicio Brunistæ sunt. Quo
æquiore animo tua maledicta perferunt Angli, cùm in
ecclesiæ doctores præstantissimos, totamque adeò eccle-
siam reformatam, iisdem propè contumeliis debacchari
te audiant.
CAPUT VI.
PosT legem Dei et naturæ agitatam abs te frustra,
et pessimè tractatam, unde nihil præter ignorantiæ
simul et improbitatis ignominiam retulisti, quid deinde,
in hac causa regia, praeter nugas agere possis, non vi-
deo. Cùm autem omnibus et bonis et doctis viris huic
etiam causæ mobilissimæ abunde me satisfecisse spe-
rem, etiamsi hoc loco finem respondendi facerem, ia-
men ne interea videar aliis varietatem potiùs et acumen
tuum, quàm immodicam loquacitatem, defugisse, quò
voles usque progrediar: eâ tamen brevitate, ut facilè
appareat, me iis omnibus perfunctum, si minùs quæ
dignitas, at saltem quæ necessitas, causæ requirebat,
nunc hominum quorumvis expectationi, vel etiam curi-
.ositati, morem gerere. “ Hinc alius,” inquis, “ et major
PRO POPULO ANGLICANO DEFENSIO.
685
argumentorum mihi surget ordo.” An major eo argu-
mentorum ordine quem lex Dei et maturæ suppedi-
tabat ? Fer opem, Lucina ; parturit Mons Salmasius;
mon de nihilo nupsit uxori ; foetum aliquem ingentem
exspectate, mortales• “ Si is, qui rex est ac dicitur,
postulari posset apud aliam potestatem, eam omnino
regiâ majorem esse oporteret ; quæ autem major statu-
etur, hanc verè regiam dici, et esse, necesse esset. Sic
enim definienda potestas regia : quæ summa est in re-
pub. et singularis, et supra quam nulla alia agnos-
citur.” O murem verè montanum et ridiculum ! Suc-
currite, grammatici, grammatico laboranti ; actum est
non de lege Dei aut naturæ, sed de glossario. Quid
si sic responderem tibi ? cedant nomina rebus, non est
nostrùm nomini cavere, qui rem sustulimus ; curent id
alii quibus cordi sunt reges ; nos nostra utimur liber-
tate : responsum sanè haud iniquum auferres. Verùm
ut me per omnia ex aequo et bono tecum agere intelli-
gas, non ex mea solùm, sed ex optimorum olim et pru-
dentissimorum virorum sententia, respondebo, qui et
nomen et potestatem regiam cum potestate legum
et populi majore posse optimè consistere judicârunt.
Lycurgus imprimis, vir sapientia clarissimus, cùm vel-
let maximè potestati regiæ consulere, ut author est
Plato, nullam aliam ejus conservandæ rationem inve-
nire potuit, quàm ut senatùs et ephororum, id est,
populi potestatem regiâ majorem in sua patria consti-
tueret. Idem sensit Theseus Euripidæus, qui cùm
Athenarum rex esset, populo tamen Atheniensi in
libertatem cum magna sua gloria vindicato, et potes-
tatem popularem extulit supra regiam, et regnum mi-
hilo secius in illa civitate suis posteris reliquit. Unde
Euripides in Supplicibus ita loquentem inducit.
Aήμον katêgrmo' dvròv εἰς μovapyiav
'Eλευ$epajo ac τήνδ' ίσόμηφον ττόλιν.
“ Populum constitui ipsum in monarchiam,
Liberans hanc urbem æqualejus suffragii habentem.”
Et rursus ad præconem Thebanum.
IIρότον μέν ήρέω τοῦ λόys Jsvδός, ἐνs,
Zmróv τὸpavvov èv$άδ', où yàp àpxsrai
' Evòc Tpòc àvôpòς, άλλ' ἐλευ$$pa tr6\ις,
Aiiuog ò' άνάσσει.
“ Primùm incoepisti orationem falsò, hospes,
Quærens tyrannum hic, non enim regitur
Ab uno viro, sed est libera hæc civitas,
Populus autem regnat.
Hæc ille ; cùm tamen rex im illa civitate et esset, et
dictus esset. Testis est etiam divinus Plato in epistola
octava, “ Induxit Lycurgus senatum et ephororum
potestatem, rijc ßagv\tkijc apxijc σωτήριον, potestati vegiæ
maximè salutarem, quæ hac ratione per tot sæcula
magna cum laude conservata est ; postquam lex domina
rex facta est hominum.” Lex autem rex esse mom po-
test, nisi sit qui in regem quoque, si usus venerit, lege
possit agere. Sic temperatam potestatem regiam Sici-
liensibus commendat, ἐλενSepta ytyv£oso perà ßaoiXucije
dpxìc, &c. “ sit libertas cum regia potestate; sit regia
potestas υττεὐ$vvog reddendæ rationi obnoxia; domine-
tur lex etiam regibus, siquid præter legem fecerint.”
Aristoteles denique, Politicorum tertio, “ In repub.
Spartanorum videtur,” inquit, “ regnum esse maximè,
eorum regnorum quæ sunt secundüm legem :” omnes
autem regni species secundùm legem fuisse ait, præter
unam, quam vocat TaußaoiXeiav, neque talem usquam
extitisse meminit. Tale itaque regnum maximè om-
nium propriè et dici et esse regnum sensit Aristoteles,
quale apud Spartanos fuit ; talem proinde regem non
minùs propriè et dici et esse regem, ubi tamen populus
supra regem erat, negare non potuit. Cùm tot tam-
tique authores et nomen et rem regiam sua fide salvam
regi præstiterent, etiam ubi populus penès se summam
potestatem, tametsi exercere non solet, tamen, quoties
opus est, obtinet, noli tam amgusto animo summæ re-
rum grammaticalium, hoc est vocabulorum, sic timere,
ut potiùs quàm glossarii tui ratio turbetur, aut detri-
menti quid capiat, prodere libertatem omnium, et
rempub. velis. Scito etiam dehinc, nomina rebus ser-
vire, non res nominibus ; ita plus sapies, nec “ in in-
finitum,” quod metuis, “ ibis. Frustrâ ergò Seneca
tria illa genera statuum ita describit.” Frustretur Se-
neca, nos liberi simus ; et misi fallor, non ii sumus quos
flores Senecæ in servitutem reducant. Seneca autem,
si summam in uno potestatem esse dicit, “ populi,”
tamen ** eam” dicit “ esse,” commissam videlicet regi ad
salutem omnium, non ad perniciem ; nec mancipio, sed
usu dumtaxat, à populo datam. “ Non jam ergò per
Deum reges regnant, sed per populum.” Quasi verò
Deus non ita regat populum, ut cui Deus vult, regnum
tradat populus ; cum in ipsis institutionibus imperator
Justinianus palàm agnoscat, exinde Cæsares regnâsse,
ex quo ** lege regia populus iis et in eos omne imperium
suum, et potestatem, concessit.” Sed quousque ista re-
coquemus, quæ jam toties refutavimus ? Rursùs, quod
ingenium tuum importunum et agreste, mores odiosis-
simos indicat, in nostra repub. quæ ad te nihil pertinet,
alienigena et peregrinus curiosum te infers. Accede
igitur, ut te tanto ardeliome dignum est, cum insigni
soloecismo. “ Quicquid,” inquis, “ illi perditi homines
dicunt, ad populum decipiendum pertiment.” O scele-
rate ! hoccime erat, quòd dimimutus capite grammaticus
in nostram rempub. te ingerere cupiebas, ut soloecismis
nos tuis et barbarismis oppleres ? Verùm tu dic, popu-
lum qno modo decepimus ? “ Forma regimimis quam
introduxere non popularis est, sed militaris.” Ista
scilicet grex ille perfugarum mercedulà comductum
jussit te scribere : non tibi igitur, qui ea blatis, quorum
mihi] intelligis, sed iis qui te pretio conduxerunt, re-
spomdebitur. Quis “ ordinem. procerum è parlamento
ejecit? am populus?” Immo populus ; eoque facto ser-
vitutis jugum à cervicibus suis haud ferendum dejecit.
Ipsi milites, à quibus hoc factum dicis, non exteri, sed
cives, et magna pars populi fuere ; idque cætero ferè
consentiente populo et cupiente, nec sine parlamenti
etiam authoritate, fecerunt. * Am populus,” inquis,
“ plebeium ordinem domùs inferioris mutilavit, alios
fugamdo, &c.” Populus inquam ; quod enim senatùs
pars potior, id est sanior, fecit, in quo vera populi po-
testas residebat, quid mi id populum fecisse dicam ?
Quid si servire, quid si vaenum rempub. dare, im sematu
6S6
PRO POPULO ANGLICANO DEFENSIO
plures maluerint, ammon id impedire, et libertatem re-
timere, si in manu est sua, paucioribus licebit ? * At
duces hoc fecerunt cum militibus suis.” Habenda igitur
gratia est ducibus, quòd operas et tabernarios Londi-
menses, qui paulò antè, veluti fæx illa Clodiana, ipsam
curiam obsederant, ferocientes repulerint, reipub. mom
defuerint. Tune idcirco jus parlamenti primarium ac
proprium, ut libertati imprimis populi sive pace sive
bello prospiciat, “ militarem dominationem” appella-
bis ? Verùm hoc à perduellibus dici, qui tibi ista dictâ-
vunt, non est mirum ; sic enim perditissima olim Anto-
miorum factio senatum Romanum, contra hostes patriæ
ad saga eumtem, “ Castra Pompeii” appellare solebat.
Jam verò fortissimo nostri exercitùs ductori Cromuello,
quòd is amicorum læto agmine stipatus, <von sine fa-
vore populi secundo, votis etiam bonorum omnium pro-
sequentibus, in bellum Hibernicum Deo gratissimum
proficisceretur, invidisse tuos gaudeo ; auditis enim
postea tot ejus victoriis, jam arbitror eos livore conta-
buisse. Multa prætereo, quæ de Romanis militibus
prolixè nugaris: quod sequitur à veritate remotissimum
esse quis non videt? “ Populi,” inquis, “ potestas esse
desinit, ubi regis esse incipit.” Quo tandem jure ? cùm
satis constet, omnes ferè ubique gentium reges sub
certis conditionibus traditum sibi regnum à populo ac-
cipere: quibus si rex mom steteiit, cur illa potestas,
quæ fiduciaria tantùm fuit, ad populum redire non de-
beat, tam à rege quàm à consule, vel ab alio quovis
magistratu, tu velim doceas : nam quòd “ salutem
reipub. id” ais “ postulare,” ineptias dicis; cùm salutis
ratio eadem omninò sit, sive à rege, sive ab optimatibus,
sive à triumviris, imperio sibi tradito perperam utenti-
bus, “ potestas illa ad populum revertatur ; ° posse
autem à magistratibus quibuscumque, præterquam à
rege solo, ad populum reverti ipse concedis. Sanè si
meque regi, neque ullis magistratibus, imperium in se
populus mentis compos dederit, misi tantummodò com-
munis omnium salutis causâ, nihil potest obstare quo
minùs, ob causas planè contrarias, ne interitus omnium
sequatur, haud secus regi quàm aliis magistratibus, quod
deditimperium adimere possit: quid quòd uni etiam faci-
liùs quàm pluribus ademerit ? et potestatem in se plus-
quam fiduciariam cuiquam mortalium tradere summæ
esset insaniæ: neque credibile est ullum ab orbe terrarum
condito populum, qui quidem suæ spontis esset, adeò
miserè desipuisse, ut vel omnem prorsus potestatem ab
se alienaret, aut suis magistratibus concreditam, sine
causis gravissimis, ad se revocaret. Quod si discor-
diae, si bella intestima, indè oriantur, regium certè jus
mullum indè oritur illius potestatis per vim retinen-
dæ, quam populus suam sibi vendicat. Ex quo effi-
citur, quod ad prudentiam populi, non ad jus regis,
referendum est, quodque nos non megamus, “ rectorem
non facilè mutamdum esse :'' mumquam ergò aut nulla
prorsus de causa, nullo modo sequitur: neque tu adhuc
quicquam allegâsti, neque jus ullum regis expromp-
sisti, quo minùs liceat consentienti populo regem haud
idoneum regno privare ; siquidem id, quod etiam in
Gallia tua sæpiùs factum est, sine tumultu ac civili
bello fieri possit. Cùm itaque salus populi suprema
lex sit, non salus tyranni, ac proinde populo in tyran-
mum, non tyranno in populum, prodesse debeat, tu,
qui tam sanctam legem, tam augustam, tuis praestigiis
pervertere es ausus, qui legem inter homines supremam,
et populo maximè salutarem, ad tyrannorum dumtaxat
impunitatem valere voluisti, tu inquam scito, qüando-
quidem Angli “ enthusiastæ, et enthei, et vates,” toties
tibi sumus, me vate scito, Deum tibi atque homines
tanti piaculi ultores imminere : quanquam universum
genus humanum subjicere tyrannis, id est, quantum im
te fuit, ad bestias damnare, hoc ipsum scelus tam im-
mane sua partim in te ultio est, suis te furiis quocun-
que fugis terrarum, atque oberras, vel citiùs vel seriùs
imsequetur ; et pejore etiam eâ, quam munc insanis,
insamiâ agitabit. Venio nunc ad alterum argumentum
tuum, prioris haud dissimile; si populo resumere liceret
potestatem suam, “ nihil tum esset discriminis inter
popularem et regalem statum, nisi quòd in hoc singuli
rectores constituuntur, in illo plures :” quid si nihil
aliud interesset, numquid indè respub. detrimenti ca-
peret ? Ecce autem aliæ differentiæ à temetipso alla-
tæ, “ temporis” nimirum “ et successionis ; cùm popu-
lares magistratus annui ferè sint,” reges, nisi quid
committant, perpetui ; et in eadem plerunque familia.
Differant ergò inter se aut non differant, de istis enim
mimutiis nihil laboro, in hoc certè conveniunt, quod
utrobique populus, quoties id interest reipub., potest
quam alteri potestatem, salutis publicæ causâ, tradide-
rat, eam ad se rursus nec injuriâ, eandem ob causam,
revocare. “ At lege regia Romæ sic appellata, de qua
in institutis, populus Romanus principi, et in eum, omne
imperium suum et potestatem concessit.” Nempe vi Cæ-
sarum coactus, qui honesto legis titulo suam tantummodo
violentiam sanxerunt; de quo suprà, id quod ipsi juris-
consulti in hunc locum non dissimulant. Quod igitur
legitimè, et volente populo, concessum non est, id re-
vocabile quin sit non dubitamus. Verumtamen rationi
maximè consentaneum est, populum Romanum non
aliam potestatem transtulisse in principem, atque priùs
concesserat suis magistratibus ; id est imperium legiti-
mum et revocabile, non tyrannicum et absurdum ; quo-
circa et consularem et tribunitiam potestatem Cæsares
recepére ; dictatoriam nemo post Julium ; populum in
circo adorare etiam solebant, ut ex Tacito Claudiamo
suprà meminimus. Verùm ut “ multi olim privati se
in servitutem alteri vendiderunt, sic potest populus
universus.” O equitem ergastularium et mamgomem,
patriæ etiam tuæ æternum opprobrium ! quem servitu-
tis tam foedum procuratorem ac lenonem publicum
etiam servitia infima cujusvis catastræ abhorrere at-
que conspuere deberent! Sanè si populus hunc in mo-
dum se regibus mancipâsset, posset et reges eundem
populum alteri cuivis domino mancipare, aut pretio
addicere ; et tamen constat regem me patrimonium
quidem coronae posse alienare. Qui igitur coronæ,
quod aiunt, et patrimonii regii, usum fructum solùm à
populo concessum habet, is populi ipsius manceps
erit ? Non si pertusis auribus utrisque perforatus eques,
non si gypsatis pedibus cursitares, tam esses omnium
servorum vilissimus, quam nunc es, hujus tam puden-
dæ author sententiæ. Perge poenas tuorum scelerum
invitus, quod nunc facis, de temetipso sumere. Multa
PRO POPULO ANGLICANO DEFENSIO.
687
postremò de jure belli balbutis, quæ hic locum non
habent; nam neque Carolus nos bello vicit, et majores
ejus, etsi maximè vicissent, isti tamen juri sæpius re-
nuntiaverant; nec verò tam unquam victi fuimus, ut
mos in eorum momem, illi in nostras leges, non vicissim
jurarent; quas cùm Carolus insigniter violâsset, vel
olim victorem, vel nunc regem perjurum, priùs ab ipso
lacessiti armis debellavimus : ex tua autem sententia
* quod armis quæritur, transit in ejus dominium qui
acquisivit.” Sis itaque deinceps hac in parte quàm
voles verbosus, sis, quod in Solino dudùm fuisti, exer-
citator Plinianus, blateronum omnium verbosissimus,
quicquid exinde argutaris, quicquid turbas, quicquid
rabbinicaris, quicquid rauces, ad finem usque hujus
capitis, id totum non jam pro rege devicto, sed pro
nobis divina ope victoribus, contra regem desudare te
scias.
CAPUT VII.
PRopTER duo incommoda sanè maxima, et pro tuo
pondere gravissima, potestatem populi esse regiâ ma-
jorem proximo capite negâsti: quippe, si concederes,
quærendum regi aliud nomen esset, translato in popu-
lum regis vocabulo ; et partitiones quædam politicæ
conturbarentur : quorum alterum vocabularii d.spen-
dium foret, alterum tuorum crux politicorum. Ad ea
sic à nobis responsum est, ut primum salutis et liber-
tatis mostræ, deinde etiam nomenclaturæ tuæ et poli-
tices, habita monnulla ratio esset. Nunc “ aliis rati-
onibus evincendum esse” ais, “ regem à sibi subjectis
judicari non posse, quarum hæc erit maximè potens et
valida, quòd rex parem in suo regno non habeat.”
Quid ais? non habet rex in suo regno parem ? quid
ergò illi duodecim vetustissimi Franciæ pares? an
fabulæ sunt et nugæ ? am frustra et ad ludibrium sic
nominati ? Cave istam viris Galliæ principibus com-
tumeliam dixeris. An quia inter se pares ? quasi verò
mobilitatis totius Gallicæ duodenos tantùm inter se
pares esse, aut dicendos idcirco Franciæ pares, existi-
mandum sit. Quod nisi revera sint regis Franciæ pares,
quòd cum eo rempub. pari jure atque consilio adminis-
tret, vide ne in Franciæ regno potiùs quàm in nostra
repub. quod unicum tua interest, glossario illudatur.
Age verò, fac planum, non esse regi in regno suo pa-
rem. “ Quia,” inquis, “ populus Romanus post reges
exactos, duos constituit consules, nom unum ; ut si
unus peccaret, coërceri à collega posset.” Vix fingi
quicquam potuit ineptius : cur igitur unus duntaxat
consulum fasces apud se habuit, mon uterque, si ad
alterutrum coërcendum alter datus erat ? quid si etiam
uterque contra rempub. conjurâsset, an meliore loco res
fuisset, quàm si collegam alteri nullum dedissent ?
Constat autem et ambos consules, et magistratus omnes,
obtemperare senatui semper debuisse, quoties id è re-
pub. esse patribus et plebi visum est. Hujus rei Mar-
cum Tullium in oratione pro Sestio locupletissimum
testem habeo : à quo simul brevissimam Romanæ
civitatis descriptionem accipe; quam is et “ sapientis-
simè constitutam,” et omnes bonos cives nosse eam
oportere, dicebat, quod idem et nos dicimus. “ Majores
nostri, cùm regum potestatem non tulissent, ita magis-
tratus annuos creaverunt, ut consilium senatus reipub.
praeponerent sempiternum : deligerentur autem in id
consilium ab universo populo; aditusque in illum sum-
mum ordinem omnium civium industriæ ac virtuti
pateret: senatum reipub. custodem, præsidem, propug-
iiatorem, collocaverunt : hujus ordinis authoritate uti
magistratus, et quasi ministros gravissimi consilii esse,
voluerunt.” Exemplo illustri esse poterunt Decemviri;
qui cùm potestate consulari et summa præditi essent,
eos tamen omnes simul, etiam reuitentes, patrum au-
thoritas in ordinem coëgit; consules etiam nonnullos,
antequam magistratum deposuerant, hostes judicatos
et contra eos sumpta arma esse legimus: hostilia enim
Sic bellum
authoritate est
facientem, esse consulem nemo putabat.
contra Antonium consulem senatûs
gestum : in quo victus pœnas capitis dedisset, nisi
Octavianus Cæsar, regnum affectans, evertendæ reipub.
consilium cum eo iniiset. Jam quòd “ hoc proprium
esse ” ais ** majestatis regalis, ut imperium penès
unicum sit,” haud minùs lubricum est, et à te quidem
ipso statim refellitur : * Judices,” enim “ Hebraeorum
et singuli, et toto vitæ spatio, imperium obtinebant;
scriptura quoque reges eos vocat ; et tamen à syne-
drio magno” judicabantur. Ita fit, dum dixisse om-
mia vis videri, ut mihil ferè misi pugnantia loquaris.
Quaero deinde qualem tu formam regiminis esse
dicas, cùm Romanum imperium duo simul tresve
imperatores habuerunt ; an imperatores tibi, id est
reges, an optimates, an triumviri, videntur fuisse ?
An verò dices Romanum imperium sub Antonio et
Vero, sub Diocletiamo et Maximiano, sub Constantino
et Licinio, non unum imperium fuisse ? Jam ista tua
“ statuum tria genera ” tuismet ipsius argutiis peri-
clitantur, si reges isti non fuere : si fuere, mon est
ergò proprium imperii regii, ut penès unicum sit.
** Alter,” inquis, “ horum si deliquat, potest alter de
eo referre ad populum vel ad sematum, ut accusetur
et condemnetur.” Ammon ergò judicat vel populus
vel senatus ad quos alter ille refert? Si quid igitur
ipse tribuis tibi, collegâ opus non erat ad judicandum
collegam. Heu te defensorem, nisi execrabilis potiùs
esses, planè miserandum ! undiquaque ictibus adeò
opportunum, ut si fortè per lusum destimare quis vellet
quovis te loco punctim ferire, vix esse credo ubi temere
possit aberrare. * Ridiculum” esse statuis, “ regem in
se judices dare velle, à quibus capite damnaretur.”
Atqui ego non ridiculum, sed optimum, tibi oppono
imperatorem Trajanum ; qui præfectum prætorio Sa-
buramum, cùm ei insigne potestatis, uti mos erat, pu-
gionem daret, crebrò sic monuit: “ Accipe hunc gladi-
um pro me, si rectè agam, sim aliter, in me magis, quòd
moderatorem omnium vel errare minùs fas sit.” Hæc
Diom et Aurelius Victor. Vides ut judicem in se sta-
tuerit imperator egregius quamvis non parem. Hoc
idem Tiberius per simulationem et vaniloquentiam for-
tasse dixisset ; Trajanium autem virum optimum et
sanctissimum non id ex animo dixisse quod verum,
688
PRO POPULO ANGLICANO DEFENSIO.
quod jus et fas, esse sentiebat, scelestus penè sit qui
arbitretur. Quanto justiùs ergò senatui, cùm viribus
superior potuerit non parere, planè ex officii ratione
paruit; et jure superiorem est fassus, De quo Plinius
in panegyrico. “ Senatus ut susciperes quartum con-
sulatum et rogavit et jussit; imperii hoc verbum, mon
adulationis esse, obsequio tuo crede:” et paulò pòst,
“ hæc nempe intentio tua, ut libertatem revoces ac re-
ducas.” Quod Trajanus de se, idem senatus de Tra-
jano sensit, suamque authoritatem revera esse supre-
mam ; nam qui imperatorem jubere potuit, potuit
eundem et judicare. Sic Marcus Aurelius imperator,
cùm præfectus Syriæ Cassius regnum ei eripere coma-
retur, obtulit se in judicium vel senatui vel populo Ro-
mano; paratus regno cedere, siquidem iis ita videretur.
Jam verò quis rectiùs aut meliùs de jure regio existi-
mare et statuere queat, quàm ex ore ipso regum opti-
morum. Profectò, jure naturali, rex quisque bonus vel
senatum vel populum habet sibi semper et parem et
superiorem : Tyranmus autem cùm matura infimus om-
nium sit, nemo non illi par atque superior existimandus
est, quicumque viribus plus valet. Quemadmodum
enim à vi olim ad leges, duce naturâ, deventum est,
ita, ubi leges pro nihilo habentur, necessariò, eâdem
etiam duce, ad vim est redeundum. “ Hoc sentire,”
inquit Cicero pro Sestio, “ prudentiæ est; facere, forti-
tudinis; et sentire verò et facere, perfectæ eumulatæque
virtutis.” Maneat hoc igitur in natura, nullis parasi-
torum artibus concutiendum, rege sive bono, sive malo,
vel senatum vel populum esse superiorem. Quod et
ipse confiteris, cùm potestatem regiam à populo in
1'egem transiisse dicis. Quam enim regi potestatem
dedit, eam naturâ, ac virtute quadam, vel ut ita dicam
virtualiter, etiam cum alteri dederit, tamen in se habet :
Quæ enim causæ naturales isto modo per eminentiam
quandam quidvis efficiunt, plus semper suæ retinent
virtutis quàm impertiunt; nec impertiendo se exhauri-
unt. Vides, quò propiùs ad• naturam accedimus, eò
evidentiùs potestatem populi supra regiam eminere.
Illud etiam constat, populum, modò id ei liberum sit,
potestatem regi suam simpliciter et mancipio numquam
dare, meque maturâ posse dare ; sed tantùm salutis et
libertatis publicæ causâ, quam cùm rex procurare de-
stiterit, intelligitur populum nihil dedisse ; quia certo
fimi tantummodò dedit, monente ipsa matura ; quem
finem si neque natura, neque populus assequitur, non
erit magis ratum quod dedit, quàm pactum quodvis aut
foedus irritum. His rationibus firmissimè probatur
superiorem rege esse populum ; unde argumentum hoc
tuum, “ maximè potens et validum, non posse regem
judicari, quia parem in suo regno non habet, nec supe-
riorem,” diluitur. Id enim assumis, quod nullo modo
concedimus. “ In populari statu,” inquis, “ magistra-
tus, à populo positus, ab eodem ob crimen plecti potest;
i;) statu aristocratico optimates, ab iis quos habent col-
* legas ; sed pro monstro est, ut rex in regno suo cogatur
causam capitis dicere.” Quid munc aliud concludis,
quàm miserrimos esse omnium et stultissimos, qui re-
gem sibi constituunt? Sed quamobrem, quæso, non
poterit populus tam regem pumire reum, quàm popula-
rem magistratum, aut optimates? An putas omnes po-
pulos, qui sub regibus vivunt, amore servitutis usque
eò deperiisse, ut, liberi cùm essent, servire maluerint,
seque omnes, seque totos, in unius dominium viri sæpe
mali sæpe stulti ita tradere, ut contra dominum, si sors
ferat, immanissimum, nullum in legibus, nullum in
natura ipsa, præsidium salutis, aut perfugium, sibi re-
liquerint ? Cur ergò regibus primò regnum ineuntibus
conditiones ferunt ; cur leges etiam dant regnandi ? an
ut sperni se eò magis atque irrideri paterentur ? adeone
populum umiversum se abjicere, se deserere, sibi deesse,
spem omnem in uno homine, eoque ferè vamissimo, col-
locare ? Cur item jurant reges nihil se contra legem
facturos ? ut discant nempe miseri mortales, suo maxi-
mo malo, solis licere regibus impunè pejerare. Id quod
hæc tua nefanda consectaria demonstrant. “ Si rex
qui eligitur, aliqua vel cum sacramento promiserit,
quæ misi promisisset, fortasse mec sumptus esset, si
stare nolit conventis, à populo judicari non potest. Im-
mò si subditis suis juraverit in electione, se secundùm
leges regni justitiam administraturum, et nisi id faciat,
eos sacramento fidelitatis fore solutos, et facto ipso
abiturum esse potestate, à Deo non ab hominibus
poena in fallentem exposcenda est.” Descripsi hæc,
non ob elegantiam, sunt enim incultissima; nec quòd
ampliùs refutationis iudigeant, etenim ipsa se refu-
tant, se explodunt, se damnant apertissima falsitate sua,
atque turpitudine ; sed eò feci, ut ob merita tua egregia
commendarem te regibus : qui inter officia aulæ tam
multa aliquem dignitatis locum, aut munus idoneum
tibi, prospiciant: cum enim alii sint à rationibus, alii
à poculis, alii à voluptatibus, tu iis commodissimè sanè
eris à perjuriis ; tu regiæ non elegantiæ, nam inscitus
nimiùm es, sed perfidiae, summus arbiter eris. Verùm
ut summam in te stultitiam summa improbitate con-
junctam esse omnes fateantur, expendamus paulo ac-
curatiùs præclara illa, quæ proximè affirmásti: “ Rex,”
inquis, * etsi subditis juraverit in electione, se secum-
dùm leges regnaturum,” et mi faciat, “ eos sacramento
fidelitatis solutos fore, et se facto ipso abiturum potes-
tate,” abdicari tamen aut puniri ab iis non poterit.
Qui minùs, quæso, rex quàm popularis magistratus ?
quia in eo regimine populus non omnem transfundit
potestatem suam ad magistratum. Am hic igitur in re-
gem ? cui regnum in se non diutius tradunt, quàm id
benè gesserit. Tam itaque rex, juratus in leges, reus
abjici aut punire poterit, quàm popularis magistratus.
Nam argumento illo pancratico omnis in regem trans-
latæ potestatis ampliùs uti non potes, quod tuis ipse
machinis imprudens arietâsti. Cognoscite nunc “aliam
potentissimam et invictam ejus rationem cur subditi re-
gem”judicare nequeant “ quia legibus solutus est, quia
leges solus rex omnes fert;” quæ cum falsissima esse
jam toties probaverim, hæc etiam invicta tua ratio cum
priore ad nihilum recidit. Cæterùm rex ob delicta
quævis privata, utpote stuprum, adulterium, et similia,
si rarò plectitur, non tam justitia quàm æquitate id fit,
ne plus turbarum ex morte regis, et rerum mutatione,
populo eveniat, quàm boni ex uno atque altero vindi-
cato. Ex quo verò omnibus gravis et intolerandus esse
incipit, tum quidem, quoquo possunt modo, judicatum
vel injudicatum omnes nationes tyrannum occidere fas
PRO POPULO ANGLICANO DEFENSIO.
689
csse semper credidere. Unde Marcus Tullius in se-
cunda Philippica de Cæsaris interfectoribus. “ Hi
primi cum gladiis non in regnum appetentem, sed in
regnantem, impetum fecerunt: quod cum ipsum factum
per se præclarum atque divinum est, tum est positum
ad imitandum.” Quàm hujus tu dissimilis! “ Homi-
cidium, adulterium, injuria, non hæc crimima regia
sunt, sed privata.” Euge, parasite, lenones jam omnes
et propudia aulica hac voce demeruisti ; O quàm lepidè
simul et parasitaris, et eâdem operâ lenocinaris ! “ Rex
adulter benè potest regnare, et homicida, ideoque vitâ
privari non debet, quia cum vita regno quoque exuere-
tur ; at nunquam hoc fuit probatum legibus divimis
aut humanis, ut duplex vindicta de uno crimine su-
meretur.” Os impurum et infame ! eadem ratione nec
populares magistratus, mec optimates, me duplici poema
afficerentur, ne judex quidem, aut senator, flagitiosus
poenas capite ullas persolvere debebit; cum vita enim et
ipsi suo magistratu privarentur. Ut potestatem, sic
majestatem etiam, populo adiimere et in regem conferre
studes ; vicariam si vis et translatitiam, primariam
certè non potes, uti nec potestatem. “ Crimen,” in-
quis, “ majestatis non potest committere rex adversùs
populum suum ; potest autem populus adversùs re-
gem.” Et tamen rex propter populum dumtaxat rex
est, non populus propter regem. Populus igitur uni-
versus, aut pars major, plus semper rege debet posse:
negas, et calculos ponis, “ plus potest quàm singuli,
bini, termi, deni, centemi, milleni, decies milleni.” Esto.
“ Plus quàm dimidia pars populi.” Non repugno.
“ Quid si alterius dimidiæ pars altera accedat, annon
adhuc plus poterit ?” Minimè. Progredere ; quid au-
fers abacum, peritissime logista, am progressionem arith-
meticam mom calles ? Vertit rationes, et “ annom rex
cum optimatibus plus potestatis habeat,” quærit ; ite-
rum nego, Vertumne, si pro optimatibus proceres in-
telligas; quoniam accidere potest, ut nemo inter eos
optimatis nomine sit dignus: fit etiam sæpiùs, ut multò
plures de plebe sint, qui virtute et sapientia proceres
antecellant; quibus cùm pars populi major vel potior
accedit, eos umiversi populi instar esse haud verear
dicere. “ At si plus quàm universi non potest, ergò
rex erit tantùm singulorum, mom omnium universim
sumptorum :” rectè ; nisi ipsi voluerimt. Rationes jam
subducito ; comperies te imperitè supputando sortem
perdidisse. “ Dicunt Angli penès populum jus majes-
tatis ex origine et natura residere, hoc verò est omnium
statuum eversionem imducere.” Etiamne aristocratiæ,
et democratiæ ? Credibile sanè narras : quid si etiam
gynæcocratiæ, sub quo statu ferunt te domi propemo-
dùm vapulare, amnom bearent te Angli, O perpusilli
homo animi ? sed hoc frustra speraveris; tequissimè
enim est comparatum, ut qui tyrannidem foris imponere
omnibus cupias, ipse domi tuæ servitutem servias tur-
pissimam, et minimè virilem. “ Doceamus te oportet,”
inquis, “ quid momime populi intelligi velimus.” Per-
multa sunt, quæ te doceri potiùs oporteret ; nam quæ
te propiùs attingunt, videris ea penitùs nescire, et
præter literulas mihil umquam didicisse, ne percipere
quidem potuisse. Hoc tamen scire te putas, nos populi
nomine plebem solùm intelligere quòd “ optimatum
consessum abrogavimus.” At illud est ipsum, qtiod
demonstrat nos populi vocabulo omnes ordinis cujus-
cumque cives comprehendere ; qui unam tantummodo
populi euriam supremam stabilivimus, in qua etiam
proceres, ut pars populi, non pro sese quidem solis, ut
antea, sed pro iis municipiis, à quibus electi fuerint,
suffragia ferendi legitimum jus habent. Inveheris
deinde in plebem, * cæcam” eam et “ brutam, regendi
artem non habere ; nil plebe ventosius, vanius, levius,
mobilius:” Conveniunt in te optimè hæc omnia ; et de
infima quidem plebe sunt etiam vera, de media non
item ; quo ex numero prudentissimi ferè sunt viri, et
rerum peritissimi: cæteros hinc luxus et opulentia,
inde egestas et inopia, à virtute et civilis prudentiæ
studio plerumque avertit. “ Plures” numc esse “ modos”
asseris “ regum constituendorum, qui nihil populo
debent hoc nomine,” et imprimis illi, “ qui regnum
habent hæreditarium.” At verò servae sint istæ na-
tiones oportet, et ad servitutem natæ, quæ talem agnos-
cant dominum, cui se sine assensu suo hæreditate ob-
venisse credant: pro civibus certè, aut ingenuis et
liberis, haberi non possunt ; nec rempub. habere ullam
censendae ; quinimmò inter facultates, et possessiones
quasi heri sui, et herilis filii, numerandæ sunt: mam
quod ad jus dominii, quid distentâ servitiis et pecoribus
non video. Secundò, “ qui armis sibi regnum fecit,
populum,” inquis, “ non potest authorem agnoscere
imperii prolati vel usurpati.” At nobis non de victore,
sed de subacto rege, sermo nunc est ; quid victor pos-
sit aliàs disputabimus; tu hoc age. Quod autem regi
jus patrisfamilias antiquum toties attribuis, ut inde
“ absolutæ potestatis in regibus exemplum” petas, dis-
simillimum id esse jam sæpiùs ostemdi: Aristoteles etiam
ille, quem crepas, vel initio politicorum, si legisses, idem
te docuisset : ubi ait malè eos judicare, qui inter pa-
trem familias et regem parùm interesse existimant ;
“ regnum enim à familia, non numero solùm, sed specie
differre.” Postquam enim pagi in oppida et urbes cre-
vere, evanuit paulatim jus illud regale familite, et ag-
nosci desitum est. Hinc scribit Diodorus, l. 1. regna
antiquitùs dari non regum filiis, sed iis quorum maxima
in populum beneficia extiterumt. Et Justinus, “ Prin-
cipio rerum, gentium mationumque imperium penès
reges erat; quos ad fastigium hujus majestatis, non
ambitio popularis, sed spectata inter bonos moderatio,
provehebat.” Unde perspicuum est, in ipso gentium
principio, imperium paternum et hæreditarium virtuti
et populari statim juri cessisse. Quæ origo imperii regii
et ratio et causa maximè naturalis est. Ob eam enim
ipsam causam primò homines in unum convenere, non
ut umus omnes insultaret, sed ut, quocumque alterum
lædente, me lex deesset, meve judex inter homimes, quo
læsus aut defendatur aut saltem vindicetur. Dispersos
olim homines et dispalatos disertus aliquis, et sapiens, ad
vitam civilem traduxit: tu ** hoc maximè consilio,” im-
quis, “ ut in congregatos imperium haberet.” Nim-
brotum fortasse intelligis, qui tyrannorum primus fu-
isse dicitur: vel hæc tua solius malitia est, quæ in illos
olim magnos et excelsi amimi viros cadere non potuit ;
tuum solius commentum, à nemine, quod sciam, ante
te traditum ; cum utilitatem et salutem generis humani,
690
PRO POPULO ANGLICANO DEFENSIO.
non sua commoda, suumque dominatum, respexisse
illos primos urbium conditores antiquorum omnium
monumentis proditum sit, Unum præterire non pos-
sum, quo tu veluti emblemate quodam exornare credo
cætera hujus capitis voluisti : si ** consulem,” inquis,
in judicium venire oportuisset, priusquam magistratu
abisset, dictator ad hoc creandus fuisset,” cum initio
dixeris, “ ideo collegam ei fuisse datum.” Sic tua sem-
per inter se congruunt, et quid de quaque re dicas,
quidve scribas, quàm nullius momenti sit, paginis ferè
singulis declarant. “ Sub antiquis regibus Anglo-
saxonicis plebem,” ais, “ ad comitia regni numquam
vocari solitam esse.” Si quis mostrorum hoc affirmâs-
set, possem eum haud multo negotio erroris arguere ;
tua ista peregrina affirmatione res mostras hallucinante
minùs moveor. Et de communi regum jure quæ ha-
buisti hæc ferè sunt. Reliqua multa, nam et sæpissimè
devius esse soles, prætermitto, vel quæ fundamento mi-
tumtur mullo, vel quæ extra causam posita sunt : non
enim id operam do, ut tibi par esse loquacitate videar.
CAPUT VIII.
Si de communi regum jure, Salmasi, quæ sentires,
ea sine contumelia cujusquam protulisses, quamvis in
hac rerum apud Anglos mutatione, tamen, cùm libertate
scribendi uterere tuâ, neque erat cur quisquam Anglo-
rum tibi succenseret, neque in asserenda, quam tueris,
semtentia minus effecisses. Nam si hoc et Mosis et
Christi præceptum est, “ omnes regibus suis tam bonis
quàm malis subjici, sive Hispanos, sive Gallos, sive
Italos, sive Germanos, sive Anglos, sive Scotos,” quod
suprà (p. 127.) affirmabas, quid attinebat te, exterum
et ignotum, jura nostra balbutire, eaque velle nobis è
cathedra quasi schedulas tuas, et miscellanea, prælegere,
quæ utcunque legibus divinis debere cedere multis
antea verbis docueras. Nunc satis constat non tam
tuopte ingenio ad causam regiam adjecisse te animum,
quàm partim pretio, pro ejus, qui te conduxit, copia
maximo, partim spe præmii cujusdam majoris, conduc-
tum fuisse, ut Anglos vicinorum nemini molestos, re-
rum tamtummodò suarum arbitros, libello infami lace-
rares. Hoc nisi esset, quenquamne tantâ credibile est
impudentiâ esse aut insaniâ, ut longinquus et extraneus
immergere se gratis in res nostras, ad partes etiam se
adjungere, non dubitaret ? Nam quid tua, malum, re-
fert, quid rerum Angli inter se gerant ? Quid tibi vis,
Ole, quid tibi quæris? nihilne domi habes quod ad te
pertinet ? Utinam eadem haberes, quæ habuit ille mo-
tissimus in epigrammate Olus ; et fortasse habes; dig-
nus profectò es. An uxor tua stimulatrix illa, quæ ut
in gratiam exulis Caroli haec scriberes etiam currentem
incitâsse fertur, ampliores fortè in Anglia professiones,
et honoraria nescio quæ, redeunte Carolo, ominata tibi
est ? At scitote, fœmina virque, non esse locum in An-
glia neque lupo neque lupi domino. Unde mirum non
est te toties in molossos nostros tantam rabiem effudisse.
Quin redis ad illustres illos in Gallia titulos tuos, et
imprimis ad famelicum illum lupi dominatum, deinde
ad consistorium illud regis Christianissimi sacrum ; ni-
mis longo intervallo consiliarius peregrè abes à patria.
Verùm illa, quod planè video, neque te desiderat neque
consilia tua; ne cùm redires quidem paucis ab hinc
annis, et culinam cardinalitiam olfacere et sectari
coepisses: sapit mehercule, sapit, teque oberrare semi-
virum Gallum cum uxore viro, et refertissimis inaniarum
scrimiis, facilè sinit; donec stipem sive equiti gram-
matistæ, sive illustri Hippocritico, satis largam alicubi
gentium inveneris ; si cui fert animus regi vel civitati,
doctorem erraticum et venalem mercede maxima liceri.
Sed eccum tibi licitatorem ; vendibilis necne sis, et
quanti, jam statim videbimus. “ Pertendunt,” inquis,
“ parricidæ, regni Anglicani statum mixtum esse, non
merè regium.” Pertendit idem sub Edvardo 6to Smithus
noster, jurisconsultus idem bonus, et politicus, quem
fuisse parricidam non dices, ejus libri ferè initio, quem
de repub. Anglicana scripsit; meque id de nostra solùm,
sed de ommi penè repub. idque ex Aristotelis sententia
verum esse affirmat ; neque aliter ullam rempub. stare
posse. At enim, quasi piaculum esse crederes quic-
quam dicere sine repugnantiis, ad priores illas et jam
tritissimas fœdè revolveris. “ Nullam gentem ” ais
“ esse, nec fuisse umquam, quæ regis appellatione non
intellexerit eam potestatem quæ solo Deo mimor est,
quæque solum Deum judicem haberet;” et tamen paulo
post fateris, “ momen regis datum vel olim fuisse ejus-
modi potestatibus et magistratibus, qui plenum et libe-
rum jus non haberent, sed à populi mutu dependens,”
ut “ suffetes Carthaginiensium, judices Hebraeorum,
reges I.acedæmoniorum,” et postremo “ Arragonen-
sium.” Satisne bellè tibi constas ? Tum quinque mo-
marchiæ species ex Aristotele recenses, quarum una
tantùm jus illud obtinuit, quod tu regibus commune
omnibus esse dicis. De qua haud semel jam dictum est,
nullum ejus exemplum vel ab Aristotele allatum, vel
usquam extitisse: quatuor reliquas, et legitimas, et le-
gibus fuisse minores, dilucidè ostendit. Primum horum
erat regnum Laconicum, et maximè quidem, ejus sen-
tentiâ, regnum eorum quatuor quæ legitima erant.
Secundum erat barbaricum, hoc solo diuturnum quia
legitimum, et volente populo: nolente autem, ommis
rex continuò non erit rex sed tyrannus, si invito populo
regnum retinuerit, eodem teste Aristotele, ]. 5. Idem
de tertia regum specie dicendum est, quos ille æsym-
metas vocat, electos à populo, et ad certum plerumque
tempus, certasque causas, quales ferè apud Romamos
fuere dictatores. Quarta species eorum est, qui heroicis
temporibus regnabant, quibus ob egregia merita reg-
mum ultro à populo delatum erat, sed legitimum tamen;
neque verò hi misi volente populo regnum tenebant,
nec alia re magis differre has quatuor regni species à
tyrannide ait, quàm quòd illic volente, hic invito, po-
pulo regnetur. Quinta denique regni species, quæ
τapgaoi\sia dicitur, et est cum summa potestate, quale
tu jus regum omnium esse vis, à philosopho planè dam-
matur, ut neque utile, neque justum, neque naturale,
misi sit ut populus ferre possit istiusmodi regnum,
iisque deferat qui virtute aliis omnibus longè prælu-
cent. Hæc, 3tio politicorum, cuivis obvia sunt. Verùm
PRO POPULO ANGLICANO DEFENSIO.
69]
tu, credo, ut vel semel ingeniosus et floridus esse vide-
rere, “ has quinque monarchiæ species quinque zonis”
mumdi assimilare gestiebas ; ** Inter duo extrema poten-
tia regalis tres aliae species interpositæ magis tempe-
ratæ videntur, ut inter zonas torridam et frigidam, quæ
mediæ jacent.” Festivum caput! quàm pulchras nobis
similitudines semper concimmas! Tu igitur, quò reg-
mum “ absolutæ potestatis” ipse damnas, ad zonam
frigidam hinc ocyùs amolire ; quae post adventum illic
tuum plus duplo frigebit : nos interim à te novo Archi
mede sphæram illam, quam describis, mirabilem ex-
pectamus, in qua duae sint extremæ zonæ, una torrida,
altera frigida, tres mediæ temperatæ. “ Reges,” in-
quis, “ Lacedæmoniorum in vincula conjici fas erat,
morte multari fas non erat.” Quare ? an quia damna-
tum capite Agidem lictores et peregrini milites, rei no-
vitate perculsi, regem ducere ad mortem non esse fas
existimabant? Et populus quidem Spartanus ejus mor-
tem ægrè tulit, non quòd rex capitali supplicio affectus
fuerit, sed quòd bonus, et popularis, factione divitum
judicio illo circumventus esset. Sic itaque Plutarcbus,
“ primus rex Agis ab ephoris est morte multatus;”
quibus verbis non quid fas, sed quid factum sit, tan-
tummodò narrat. Nam qui regem in jus ducere, vel
etiam in vincula possunt, illos non posse eumdem sup-
plicio ultimo afficere, puerile est credere. Acciugeris
jam tandem ad jus regum Anglicorum. “ Rex,” im-
quis, “ in Anglia unus semper fuit.” Hoc eo dicis, quia
modò dixeras, “ rex mon est nisi unus sit et unicus.”
Quid si ita est, aliquot sanè quos credebam Angliae
reges fuisse, non erant: nam ut multos omittam Sax-
onicorum, qui consortes imperii vel filios vel fratres
habuere, constat Henricum 2dum è stirpe Normanica
cum filio regnâsse. “ Ostendant,” inquis, “ aliquod
regnum sub unius imperio, cui nom potestas absoluta
adjuncta fuerit, in quibusdam tamen magis remissa, in
aliis magis intenta.” Ostende tu potestatem absolutam
remissam, asime ; ammom absoluta est summa ? Quomo-
do ergò summa et remissa simul erit ? quoscunque
fateberis reges cum remissa potestate esse, eos non esse
cum absoluta facilè vincam ; inferiores proinde esse
populo naturâ libero, qui et suus ipse legislator est, et
potestatem regiam vel intendere, vel remittere, potest.
Eritannia am tota olim regibus paruerit, incertum :
verisimilius est, prout tempora ferebant, nunc hanc,
nunc illam, reipub. formam adhibuisse. Hinc Tacitus,
“ Britanni olim regibus parebant, nunc per principes
factionibus et studiis trahuntur.” Deserti à Romamis,
xL circiter ammos sine regibus fuere: “ regnum* ita-
que “ perpetuum,” quod affirmas, antiquitùs non fuit;
fuisse autem hæreditarium præcisè nego; quod et re-
gum series, et mos creandi, eorum demonstrat: disertis
enim verbis petuntur populi suffragia. Postquam enim
rex consuetum juramentum dedit, accedens archiepis-
copus ad quatuor partes exstructi suggesti, toties rogat
populum universum his verbis, “ Consentire vultis de
habendo ipsum regem ?” planè ac si Romano more
dixisset, Vultis, jubetis, hunc regnare ? quod opus mom
foret, si regnum jure esse hæreditarium ; verùm àpud
reges usurpatio pro jure sæpissimè obtimet. Tu Caroli
bello toties victijus regium jure belli fundare adniteris:
Y
Gulielmus scilicet cognomento “ Conquæstor” nos sub-
jugavit. At sciunt qui in nostra historia peregrini non
sunt, Anglorum opes uno illo prælio Hastingensi non
adeò attritas fuisse, quin bellum facilè instaurare p0-
tuissent. Sed regem accipere, quàm victorem et tyran-
num pati, malebant. Daut itaque jusjurandum Guli-
elmo, se fidem ei servaturos: dat pariter Gulielmus
juramentum illis, admotus altari, se omnia, quæ per est
bonum regem, iis esse vicissim præstiturum. Cum
falleret fidem, et rursus Angli arma caperent, diffisus
ipse suis viribus, juravit denuò, tactis Evangeliis, anti-
quas se leges Angliae observaturum. Si postea igitur
Anglos miserè afHixit, mom id jure belli, sed jure per-
jurii, fecit. Certum est, præterea, jam multis ab hinc
sæculis victos et victores in unam gentem coaluisse;
ut jus illud belli, si quod unquam fuit, antiquari jam-
diu necesse sit. Ipsius verba morientis, quæ ex libro
Cadomensi fide dignissimo descripta reddimus, omnem
dubitationem tollunt. “ Neminem,” inquit, “ Anglici
regni constituo hæredem.” Qua voce jus illud belli,
simulque illud hæreditarium, cum ipso mortuo Guli-
elmo conclamatum atque sepultum est. Video nunc
aliquam te in aula dignitatem, quod prædixi fore, esse
adeptum ; summus nimirum aulicæ astutiæ quæstor
regius et procurator es factus. Unde hoc quod sequi-
tur videris ex officio scribere, vir magnifice. “ Siquis
prædecessorum regum factionibus procerum, vel se-
ditionibus plebis, coactus, aliquid de suo jure remiserit,
id non potest successori obesse, quin id iterum sibi vin-
dicet.” Rectè mones : itaque si quo tempore majores
nostri aliquid de jure suo per ignaviam amisere, an id
oberit nobis, eorum posteris ? Pro se illi quidem servi-
tutem spondere, si vellent, pro nobis certè non poterant;
quibus idem semper jus erit nosmet liberandi, quod illis
erat in servitutem se cuilibet tradendi. Miraris “ quid
faciat,” ut “ rex Britanniæ hodie debeat haberi pro
magistratu tantum regni, qui autem alia regna in
Christiamitate obtinent, plena et libera potestate polle-
ant.” De Scotia remitto te ad Buchananum, de Gallia
etiam tua, ubi hospes esse videris, ad Francogalliam
Hotomani, et Girardum Franciæ historicum, de cæteris
ad alios, quorum nulli quod sciam independentes erant:
ex quibus de jure regio longè alia poteras didicisse,
quàm quæ doces. Cùm jure belli tyrannidem regibus
Angliæ asserere nequiveris, facis jam periculum in jure
parasitico. Edicunt reges se regmare * Dei gratiâ :”
quid si Deos se esse edixissent ? te, credo, flaminem
facilè erant habituri: sic pontifex Cantuariensis « Dei
providentia” archiepiscopari præ se tulit. Tune ista
fatuitate papam mon vis esse regem in ecclesia, ut re-
gem constituere plusquam papam in repub. possis? At
in regni statutis appellatur “ rex dominus noster.”
Mirus tu quidem statutorum nostrorum nomenculator
repentè evasisti; nescis tamen multos dici dominos qui
non sunt; nescis quàm iniquum sit ex titulis honorariis,
me dicam adulatoriis, de jure et veritate rerum statuere.
Eodem refer quod “ parlamentum regis” dicitur : nam
et frænum regis vocatur ; adeoque non magis rex par-
lamenti est dominus, quam equus est sui dominus fræmi.
At “ cur mom regis parlamentum, cum ab eo convoce-
tur.” Dicam tibi, quia convocatur etiam senatus à
692
PRO POPULO ANGLICANO DEFENSIO.
comsule, neque propterea domimus illius concilii erat.
Quòd itaque rex parlamentum convocat, id facit pro
officio suo ac munere, quod à populo accepit, ut etiam,
quos convocat, eos de arduis regni negotiis consuleret,
mom de suis: aut siqua dici sua possunt, de iis postremo
semper loco agi solitum erat; ad arbitrium etiam par-
lamenti, nom suum. Nec verò ignorant, quorum id in-
terest scire, parlamentum sive vocatum, sive mon voca-
tum, bis intra vertentem ammum antiquitùs ex lege
potuisse convenire. At “ regis etiam leges nuncupan-
tur.” Sunt istæ quidem ad regem phaleræ ; rex autem
Angliæ legem ferre per se potest nullam ; neque enim
ad leges ferendas, sed ad custodiendas à populo latas,
constitutus erat. Tuque hîc fateris “ congregari” id-
circo “ parlamentum, ut leges conderet.` Quapropter
et lex terræ vocatur, et lex populi : unde Ethelstamus
rex in præfatione legum, ubi omnes alloquitur, “ vo-
bis,” inquit, “ lege vestrâ” omnia largitus sum : et in
formula juramenti, quo reges Angliæ antequam crea-
rentur obstringere se solebant, sic populus à rege stipu-
latur. “ Concedis justas leges quas vulgus elegerit?”
respondet rex, “ Concedo.” Erras etiam totâ Angliâ,
“ qui regem, quo tempore parlamentum mon habetur,
plenè planèque totum regni statum regio jure guber-
mare” ais. Nam neque de bello, meque de pace, quod
magni sit momenti, quicquam decernere, me in jure
quidem dicundo curiarum decretis intercedere potest.
Jurant itaque judices nihil se in judiciis exercendis nisi
ex lege facturos, etiamsi rex ipse dicto, aut mandato,
vel etiam literis proprio annulo obsignatis, aliter impe-
raret. Hinc sæpius in nostro jure rex ** infans ” dici-
tur ; nec sua jura aut dignitates, misi pueri aut pupilli
in modum, possidere. Spec. Just. c. 4. sect. 22. Hinc
etiam illud apud mos crebrò dici solitum, “ rex non
potest facere injuriam.” Quod tu hoc modo sceleratè
interpretaris, “ non est injuria quam facit rex, quia in
eo mom punitur.” Admirabilem hominis impudentiam
et improbitatem vel hoc solo interpretamento quis non
perspiciat ? “ Capitis est imperare,” inquis, “ non
membrorum ; rex parlamenti caput est.” Siccine mu-
garere, si cor tibi saperet ? erras iterum (sed quis finis
errorum est tuorum ?) in quo regis consiliarios à parla-
menti ordinibus non distinguis ; nam neque illos qui-
dem omnes, horum verò nullus reliquis non probatos,
eligere debebat rex ; in plebeium autem ordinem ut
quemquam eligeret, id sibi ne sumebat quidem umquam.
Quibus id muneris populus delegabat, per municipia
singuli suffragiis omnium eligebantur; motissima lo-
quor, eoque brevior sum. “ Falsum” autem “ esse” ais,
“ quod sanctæ independentiæ cultores asserunt, parla-
mentum à populo fuisse institutum.” Video jam quid
sit cur papatum tanto impetu evertere contendas: alium
ipse papatum in alvo, quod aiunt, gestas : quid enim
aliud uxor uxoris, lupus ex lupa gravidus, nisi aut por-
tentum, aut papatum aliquem novum, parturire te
oportebat? certè papa germanus quasi jam esses, sanc-
tos et sanctas pro arbitrio facis; reges etiam omni pec-
'ato absolvis, et, quasi strato jam hoste, ejus exuviis
opimum te ornas. Verùm, quia papa nondum per te
planè cecidit, dum libri illius tui “ de primatu,” se-
cunda et tertia, et fortasse quarta et quinta, pars prodi-
erit, qui multos mortales tædio priùs enecabit, quàm
tu papam eo libro subegeris, sit satis interea, quæso, ad
antipapatum saltem aliquem posse ascendere; est altera,
quam tu, præter illam independentiam abs te irrisam,
sanctorum in numerum seriò retulisti, tyrannis regia :
sanctæ ergò tyrannidis regiæ tu pontifex eris maximus;
et nequid desit tibi ad papales titulos, “ servus etiam
servorum” eris, mon Dei, sed aulæ ; quoniam illa Che-
maami maledictio adhæsisse tibi ad prtecordia videtur.
“ Bestiam ” appellas “ populum.” Quid interim es
ipse ? Non enim sacrum illud consistorium, neque
sanctus ille lupus, te dominum suum aut populo ex-
emerit aut vulgo; neque effecerit, quin, sicuti es, teter-
rima ipse bestia sis. Certè libri sacri prophetici mag-
norum regum monarchiam et dominationem immanis
bestiæ nomine ac specie adumbrare solent. “ Sub re-
gibus ante Gulielmum,” inquis, “ nulla parlamenti
mentio exstat.” De vocabulo Gallicano altercari non
libet: res semper fuit: et Saxonicis temporibus “ Con-
cilium Sapientum” vocari solitum concedis. Sapientes
autem tam sunt plebis quàm procerum ex mumero. At
“ in statuto Mertonensi, vigesimo Hem. tertii, comitum
et baronum tantum fit mentio.” Ita te semper nomina
decipiunt, qui tantùm in nominibus ætatem omnem
cointrivisti ; nobis enim satis constat, et Quinque-por-
tuum curatores, et decuriones urbicos, nonnunquam et
mercatores, illo sæculo baronum nomine appellatos
fuisse ; neque dubium omnino est, quin parlamenti
quosque senatores, quantumvis plebeios, ætas illa jure
multò potiore barones nuncupaverit: mam et anno
ejusdem regis 52 tam nobiles, quàm plebeios, fuisse
convocatos, Marlbrigii statutum, sicut et reliqua fere
statuta omnia, disertis verbis testantur : quos etiam
plebeios comitatuum magnates Edouardus tertius in
præfatione Statuti Stapli, quam perdoctè pro me reci-
tas, vocavit ; eos mimirum “ qui de singulis civitatibus
pro toto comitatu venerant ;" qui quidem plebeium
ordinem constituebant, neque erant proceres, aut esse
poterant: Tradit etiam liber statutis illis vetustior, qui
inscribitur, “ Modus habendi parlamenta,” licere regi
cum plebe sola parlamentum habere, legesque ferre,
quamvis comites et episcopi non adsint ; mon itidem
licere regi cum comitibus et episcopis, si plebs mon
aderit. Hujus rei ratio quoque adjicitur; quia cum non-
dum comites aut episcopi constituti essent, reges cum
populo tamen parlamenta et concilia peragebant: deinde
comites pro se tantùm veniunt ; plebeii pro suo quis-
que municipio. Ex quo iste ordo universi populi no-
mine adesse intelligitur ; eoque nomine et potiorem, et
mobiliorem, ordine patricio, omnique ex parte antepo-
mendum esse. Sed “judicandi potestas,” inquis, “ penès
domum plebeiam nunquam fuit.” Neque penès regem
Angliæ fuit umquam : illud tamen memineris, principio
omnem potestatem à populo fluxisse, et etiamnum pro-
ficisci. Quod et Marcus Tullius de lege agraria pul-
cherrimè ostendit. “ Cum ommes potestates, imperia,
curationes, ab universo populo proficisci convenit, tum
eas profectò maximè, quæ comstituuntur ad populi
fructum aliquem, et commodum ; in quo et universi
deligant, quem populo maximè consulturum putent, et
unusquisque studio et suffragio suo viam sibi ad bene-
PRO POPULO ANGLICANO DEFENSIO.
693
ficium impetrandum munire possit.” Vides parlamen-
torum veram originem, illis Saxonicis archivis longè
vetustiorem. Dum in hac luce veritatis et sapientiae
versari licebit, frustra mobis obscuriorum ætatum teme-
bras offumdere conaris. Quod non eò dici à me quis-
quam existimet, quasi ego de authoritate et prudentia
majorum mostrorum detrahi quicquam velim ; qui in
legibus bonis ferendis plus sanè præstiterunt, quàm vel
illa sæcula, vel illorum ingenium et cultus, tulisse
videatur: et quamvis leges rarò mon bonas irrogarent,
ignorantiæ tamen, et imbecillitatis humanæ, sibi con-
scii, hoc veluti fumdamentum legum omnium posteris
tradi voluerunt, quod et nostri jurisperiti omnes agnos-
cunt, ut si qua lex aut consuetudo legi divinæ aut
naturali, aut rationi denique, repugnaret, ea ne pro lege
sancitâ habeatur. Unde tu, etiamsi edictum fortasse
aliquod aut statutum in jure nostro, quo regi tyranmica
potestas attribuatur, invenire posses, id, cùm et divinæ
volumtati, et maturæ, et rationi, contrarium sit, intelli-
gito, ex generali et primaria ista lege nostra quam at-
tuli, rescindi apud nos, et ratum non esse ; verùm tu
jus mullum tale regium apud nos invenies. Cum enim
judicandi potestas primitùs in ipso populo fuisse con-
stet, Anglos autem eam ab se in regem nulla lege re-
gia umquam transtulisse, (meminem enim judicare aut
solet aut potest rex Angliæ, misi per leges provisas jam
et approbatas: Fleta 1. 1. c. 17.) sequitur eandem ad-
huc integram atque totam im populo sitam esse ; nam
parium domui aut nunquam traditam, aut recuperari
jure, posse, non negabis. At, “ regis est,” inquis, ** de
vico municipium,” de eo ** civitatem facere; ergò illos
creat qui constituunt domum inferiorem.” At inquam,
oppida et municipia regibus antiquiora sunt ; etiam
in agris populus est populus. Jam Anglicismis tuis
magnopere delectamur ; QIotttttfc Gtottrt, QCÌ)e (Tutm,
buiiDreua ; mira mempe docilitate centenos Jacobaeos
tuos Anglicè mumerare didicisti.
“ Quis expedivit” Salmasio suam Hundredam,
Picamque ** docuit mostra verba conari ? **
“ Magister artis venter,” et Jacobaei
Centum, exulantis viscera marsupii regis.
** Quòd si dolosi spes refulserit nummi,'°
Ipse Antichristi qui modò primatum papæ
Minatus uno est dissipare smflatu,
** Cantabit” ultrò cardinalitium ** melos.”
Longam deinde de comitibus et baromibus disserta-
tionem subtexis; ut ostendas regem esse eorum omnium
creatorem, quod facilè concedimus, eoque nomine re-
gibus plerumque serviebant ; ideoque me gentis libere
deinceps judices essent rectè providimus. « Potestatem
convocandi parlamentum quoties libet, et quando vult
dissolvendi, ex omni temporis memoria penès regem
esse” affirmas. Tibine igitur, balatroni mercenario et
peregrino, perfugarum dictata exscribenti, an disertis
legum nostrarum verbis, fides habenda sit, infià vide-
Ibimus. “At,” inquis, “ reges Angliae parlamento ma-
Jus imperium habuisse alio argumento probatur, eoque
invincibili ; regis potestas perpetua est et ordimaria,
quæ per se sine parlamento regnum administrat; par-
lamenti extraordinaria est authoritas, et ad certas tan-
tum res, nec sine rege quicquam validi statuere ido-
mea.” Ubinam dicamus vim magnam latere hujus
argumenti ? an in “ ordiuaria et perpetua ?” Atqui
minores multi magistratus habent potestatem ordina-
riam et perpetuam, quos iremarchas vocamus; an sum-
mam ergò habent ? Suprà etiam dixi potestatem regi
idcirco traditam à populo fuisse, ut videret authoritate
sibi commissa me quid contra legem fiat; utque leges
custodiret nostras, non ut nobis imponeret suas: regis
proinde potestatem, misi in regni curiis et per eas, esse
mullam : immo populi potius ordinaria est omnis,
qui per duodecim viros de omnibus judicat. Atque
hinc est quòd interrogatus in curia reus, “ Cui te per-
mittis judicandum ?” respondet semper ex more atque
Jege, “ Deo et populo,” mom Deo et regi, aut regis vi-
cario. Parlamenti autem authoritas, quae, re et veri-
tate, summa populi potestas in illum senatum collata
est, si extraordinaria est dicenda, id tantùm propter
ejus emimentiam dicitur ; alioqui, ut motum est, ipsi
ordines appellantur, non extra ordinem ergò; et si non
actu, quod aiunt, virtute tamen, perpetuum habent in
omnes curias et potestates ordinarias jus atque authori-
tatem ; idque sine rege. Offendunt nunc limatulas,
opinor, aures tuas nostrorum barbaræ locutiones :
cujus ego, si vacaret, aut operæ pretium esset, tot bar-
barismos hoc uno libro motare possem, quot, si pro
merito lueres, profectò omnes puerorum ferulas in te
frangi oporteret, nec tot aureos tibi dari, quot illi quon-
dam pessimo poëtae; colaphos longè plures. “ Prodi-
gium esse” ais, “ omnibus portemti sopinionum monstro-
sius, quòd famatici personam regis à potestate ejus se-
jungant." Equidem dicta singulorum non præstitero :
personam autem si pro homine vis dici, separari à
potestate ejus nec absurdè posse Chrysostomus, haud
fanaticus, docere te potuit ; qui præceptum Apostoli de
potestatibus ita explanat, ut potestatem ibi et rem, non
hominem, intelligi asserat. Quidni dicam regem, qui
contra leges quid facit, id agere ut privatum vel ty-
rannum, non ut regem legitima potestate præditum ?
Tu si nno in homine posse plures esse personas, easque
ab ipso homine sensu et cogitatione separabiles, non
intelligis, et sensùs communis et latimitatis planè expers
es. Sed hoc eò dicis, ut reges peccato omni absolvas,
utque erepto papæ primatu indutum te esse existime-
mus: “ Rex," inquis, “ non posse peccare intelligitur,
quia peccatum ejus pœna non consequitur.” Quisquis
ergò non punitur, non peccat; non furtum, sed poena,
facit furem ; Salmasius grammaticus mon facit soloecis-
mos, quia manum ferulæ subduxit : post eversum à te
papam sint isti sanè pontificatùs tui canones, vel certè
indulgentiæ tuæ, sive sanctæ tyramidis, sive sanctae
servitutis, pontifex dici mavis. Congesta extremo
capite maledicta tua in “ Anglicanæ reipub. et ecclesiæ
statum” prætereo : hoc enim habent tui similes, homo
contemptissime ; ut quidque plurima dignum est
laude, id solent per calumniam maximè vituperare.
Sed de jure regio apud mos, seu potiùs de jure populi
in regem, ne quid temere affirmâsse videar, proferre ex
ipsis monumentis non gravabor, quamvis pauca qui-
dem de multis, ea tamen quibus liquidò satis constabit,
Anglos ex lege et instituto, et more etiam majorum
suorum, regem nuper judicavisse. Post Romanorum
694
PRO POPULO ANGLICANO DEFENSIO.
ex insula discessum, sui juris Britanmi circiter amnos
40, sine regibus fuere ; quos primos creârunt, eorum
mommullos supplicio affecere. Britammos eo momine
Gildas, contrà quàm tu facis, reprehendit, mom quòd
reges necaverè, sed quòd imjudicatos, vel ut ejus ver-
bis utar, “ mon pro veri examinatione.” Vortigernus
ob incestas cum filia muptias, teste Nennio historico-
rum nostrorum post Gildam antiquissimo, damnatur
“ à beato Germano, et omni comcilio Britomum,” ejus-
que filio Guorthemiro regnum traditur. Haud multò
hæc post Augustini obitum gesta sumt : unde vanitas
tua facilè redarguitur, qui suprà asseruisti, primum
omnium papam, et nominatim Zachariam, docuisse,
judicari reges posse. Circa amnum Christi 600, Mor-
cantius, qui tunc temporis in Cambria vegnabat, prop-
ter cædem patrui ab Oudoceo Lamdaviæ episcopo in
exilium damnatur ; quamquam is exilii sententiam,
latifundiis quibusdam ecclesiæ domatis, redemit. Ad
Saxones jam veniamus ; quorum jura cum reperien-
tur, facta prætermittam. Saxones Germanis oriundos
memineris ; qui mec infinitam aut liberam potestatem
regibus dedere, et de rebus majoribus consultare
omnes solebant ; ex quibus intelligere est, parla-
mentum, si solum momen excipias, etiam apud Sax-
Et ab
iis quidem concilium sapientum passim nominatur ;
ipsis Ethelberti temporibus, quem “ decreta, judiciorum
juxta exempla Romanorum, cum concilio sapientum
constituisse” memorat Beda; sic Edwinus Northanym-
brorum, Imas occidentalium Saxonum, rex, “ habito
cum sapientibus et senioribus concilio,” novas leges
promulgavit; alias Aluredus edidit “ ex comcilio” item
“ prudentissimorum ; atque iis,” inquit, “ omnibus pla-
cuit edici earum observationes.” His atque aliis multis
hujusmodi locis luce clarius est, delectos etiam ex plebe
conciliis maximis interfuisse ; nisi siquis proceres solos
sapientes esse arbitratur. Extat etiam apud nos peranti-
quus legum liber, cui titulus “ Speculum Justiciario-
rum,” in quo traditur primos Saxones, post Britanniam
onum majores summa authoritate viguisse.
subactam, cùm reges crearent, ab iis jusjuramdum exi-
gere consuevisse, se, ut quemvis alium è populo, legibus
ac judiciis subjectos fore, cap. 1. sect. 2. Ibidem ait jus
esse et æquum ut rex suos in parlamento habeat pares,
qui de injuriis, quas vel rex vel regina fecerit, cognos-
cerent ; regnante Aluredo sancitum legibus fuisse, ut
singulis ammis parlamentum bis Londini, vel eo sæpiùs,
si opus esset, haberetur. Quæ lex cùm pessimo juris
neglectu in desuetudinem abiisset, duabus sub Edouar-
do 3tio sanctionibus renovata est. In alio etiam antiquo
manuscripto, qui “ Modus Parlamenti” inscribitur, hæc
legimus; si rex parlamentum priùs dimiserit, quàm ea
ommia transigantur quorum causâ comcilium indictum
erat, perjurii reus erit ; et juramentum illud, quod reg-
mum initurus dederat, violâsse censebitur. Quomodo
enim, quod juratus est, justas leges comcedit, quas po-
pulus elegerit, si earum eligendi facultatem petenti
populo mon dat, vel rariùs parlamentum convocando,
vel citiùs dimittendo, quàm res populi ferunt ? Jus
autem illud jurandum, quo rex Angliæ se obligat,
nostri jurisperiti pro sanctissima lege semper habuere.
Quod autem maximis reipub. periculis remedium in-
veniri potest (qui solus convocandi parlamenti finis
erat) si conventus ille magnus et augustissimus ad re-
gis libitum stultissimi sæpe et pervicacissimi dissolve-
tur ? Posse à parlamento abesse, proculdubiò minus est,
quàm parlamentum dissolvere : at rex per leges mos-
tras, illo Modorum libro traditas, abesse à parlamento,
misi planè ægrotaret, neque potuit, meque debuit: et
ne tum quidem nisi inspecto ejus corpore à duodecim
regni paribus, qui de adversa regis valetudine testimo-
mium perhibere in senatu possemt: solentme servi cum
domino sic agere ? Contrà verò plebeius ordo, sine quo
parlamentum haberi non potest, etiam à rege convoca-
tus potuit non adesse, et secessione facta, de repub.
malè gesta cum rege expostulare : quod et prædictus
liber testatur. Verùm, quod caput est, inter leges
Edouardi regis vulgò Confessoris, una est eximia, quæ
de regis officio tractat; cui rex officio si desit, “ momen
regis in eo non constabit.” Hoc quid esset, ne non satis
intelligeretur, Chilperici Francorum regis exemplum
submectit, cui idcircò regnum à populo abrogatum erat.
Puniri autem malum regem ex legis hujus sententia
oportere, significabat ille S. Edouardi gladius, cui no-
men Curtana erat, quem in regum creatione et pompa
gestare comes palatii solebat ; “ in signum,” inquit
noster Matthæus Paris, ** quòd et regem, si oberret, ha-
beat de jure potestatem cohibendi:” gladio autem me-
mo ferè misi capite punitur. Hanc legem, cum aliis boni
illius Edouardi, Gulielmus ipse conquæstor, anmo regni
quarto, ratam habuit: et frequentissimo Anglorum com-
cilio prope Verulamium religiosissimè juratus cqnfir-
mavit: quo facto nom solùm jus omne belli, si quod in
nos habuit, ipse extinxit, sed etiam hujus legis judicio
atque sententiæ se subjecit. Ejus etiam filius Henri-
cus cùm in omnes Edouardi leges, tùm in hanc quoque,
juravit; atque iis duntaxat conditionibus, vivente ad-
huc fratre Roberto matu majore, in regem est electus.
Jurârunt eadem omnes deinceps reges, antequam insig-
nia regni acciperent. Hinc celebris ille et antiquus
noster jurisconsultus Bractonus, l. 1. c. 8. “ Non est
rex, ubi dominatur voluntas, et nom lex.” Et l. 3. c. 9.
“ rex est dum benè regit; tyrannus, dum populum
sibi creditum violenta opprimit dominatione.” Et
ibidem, “ exercere debet potestatem juris, ut vicarius et
minister Dei : potestas autem injuriae diaboli est, non
Dei : cum declinat ad injuriam rex, diaboli minister
est.” Eadem ferme habet vetustus alter jurisconsultus,
libri illius author qui Fleta inscribitur, memor nempe
uterque et legis illius Edvardinæ, verè quidem regiæ,
et regulæ illius in jure nostro primariæ, à me suprà
dictæ, qua mihil Dei legibus et rationi contrarium
haberi pro lege potest ; uti nec tyranmus pro rege,
nec minister diaboli pro ministro Dei. Cum itaque
lex maximè ratio recta sit, siquidem regi, siquidem
Dei ministro, obediendum est; eadem prorsùs et ra-
tione et lege, tyranno et diaboli ministro erit resis-
tendum. Et quoniam de nomine sæpius quàm de
re ambigitur, tradunt iidem, regem Angliæ, etiamsi
nomen regis nondum perdiderit, judicari tamen, ut
quilibet è vulgo, et posse et debere. Bractom. l. l.
c. 8. Fleta, l. 1. c. 17. “ non debet esse rege major
quisquam in exhibitione juris ; minimus autem esse
PRO POPULO ANGLICANO DEFENSIO.
695
debet in judicio suscipiendo, si peccat,” alii legunt,
“ si petat.” Judicari igitur cùm debeat rex noster, sive
tyranni sub nomine, sive regis, quos habeat item judices
legitimos dictu difficile non debet esse. Eosdem con-
sulere authores haud pejus erit. Bractom, l. 2. c. 16.
Fleta. l. 1. c. 17. * In populo regendo rex habet supe-
riores, legem, per quam factus est rex, et curiam suam,
videlicet comites et barones : comites dicuntur quasi
socii regis, et qui habet socium, habet magistrum ; et
ideo si rex fuerit sine fræno, id est sine lege, debent ei
frænum ponere.” Baronum autem nomine plebeium
ordinem comprehendi suprà ostendimus ; quin et pares
etiam parlamenti eosdem fuisse dictos, libri legum nos-
trarum antiqui passim tradunt : et imprimis liber ille,
cui titulus Parlamenti Modus ; “ Eligentur ” inquit
“ de omnibus regni paribus 25,” quorum erunt “ quin-
que milites, quinque cives,” id est urbium delegati,
“ quinque municipes : et duo milites pro comitatu ma-
jorem vocem habent in concedendo et contradicendo
quàm major comes Angliæ ;” et meritò quidem ; illi
enim pro tota aliqua provincia aut municipio suffragia
ferumt, isti pro se quisque dumtaxat.
illos “ codicillares,” quos vocas, et “ rescriptitios,” cùm
feudales jam nulli sint, ad judicandum regem à quo
creabantur minimè omnium idoneos esse, quis non vi-
det ? Cùm itaque jus nostrum sit, ut est in illo speculo
antiquo, regem habere pares, qui in parlamento cog-
noscant et judicent, “ si quid rex im aliquem populi sui
peccaverit,” si notissimum sit licere apud nos cuivis è
populo in minoribus quibusque curiis injuriarum ac-
tionem regi intendere ; quantò justius est, quantoque
magis necessarium, si rex im universos peccaverit, ut
habeat qui eum non refræmare solùm et coërcere, sed
judicare et punire, possint. Pessimè enim et ridiculè
institutam esse eam necesse est rempub. in qua de mi-
nimis regum injuriis etiam privato cuivis cautum sit,
de maximis nihil in commune provisum, nihil de salute
omnium, quo minùs liceat ei universos sine lege per-
dere, qui ne unum quidem lædere per legem poterat.
Comites autem esse regis judices, cùm ostensum sit
meque decere neque expedire, sequitur judicium illud
totum ad plebeium ordinem, qui et pares regni, et ba-
rones, et populi totius potestate sibi delegata præditi
sunt, jure optimo pertinere. Cùm enim, (ut in mostro
jure scriptum est, quod suprà attuli,) plebs sola cum
vege sine comitibus aut episcopis parlamentum consti-
tuat, quia rex cum sola plebe, etiam ante comites aut
episcopos natos, parlamenta peragere solebat, eadem
prorsus ratione plebs sola supremam et sine rege, et
regem ipsum judicandi, potestatem habebit, quòd etiam
ante ullum regem creatum, ipsa umiversi populi nomine
comcilia et parlamenta peragere, judicare, ferre leges,
ipsa reges creare, solita erat; nom ut populo domina-
rentur, sed ut rem populi administrarent. Quem si rex
contra injuriis afficere, et servitute opprimere, comatus
fuerit, ex ipsa legis nostræ sententia nomen regis in eo
non constat, rex non est ; quòd si rex non sit, quid est
quod ei pares ampliùs quæramus ? Tyramnum enim
jam re ipsa ab omnibus bonis juidicatum nulli non satis
pares atque idonei sunt, qui supplicio mactandum esse
pro tribunali judicent. Hæc cum ita sint, tot testimo-
Comites autem
niis, tot legibus prolatis, abundè hoc demùm, quod erat
propositum, evicisse arbitror, cùm judicare regem penès
plebem jure optimo sit, cumque plebs regem de repub.
deque ecclesia, sine spe ulla sanitatis, pessimè meritum
supplicio ultimo affecerit, rectè atque ordine, exque re-
pub. suaque fide, dignitate, legibus denique patriis,
fecisse. Neque possum hic non gratulari mihi de ma-
joribus nostris, qui non minore prudentia ac libertate,
quàm Romani olim, aut Græcorum praestantissimi,
hanc rempub. instituerunt; neque potertmt illi, siquid
nostrarum rerum sentiunt, non sibi eti : m gratulari de
posteris suis; qui tam sapientèr institutam, tanta liber-
tate fundatam, ab impotenti regis dominatione, cum
redacti penè in servitutem cssent, tam fortiter, tamque
prudenter, vindicârunt.
CAPUT IX.
SAtis jam arbitror palàm esse, regem Angliæ etiam
Anglorum legibus judicari posse ; suos habere judices
legitimos; quod erat probandum. Quid tu porrò ?
(nam quæ tu repetis, ad ea mom repetam mea :) ** ex
rebus nunc ipsis propter quas comitia indici solent, pro-
clive,” inquis, “ est ostendere regem esse supra parla-
mentum.” Sit sanè proclive quantum voles, in quo
præcipitem te dari jam statim senties. “ Parlamen-
tum,” inquis, “ congregari solet ad majoris momemti
negotia, in quibus regni salus et populi versatur.” Si
rex parlamentum convocat ad procurandas res populi,
non suas, neque id nisi assensu eorum atque arbitrio
quos convocat, quid aliud est, obsecro, nisi minister
populi et procurator ? cùm, sine suffragiis eorum quos
populus mittit, ne tantillum quidem, neque de aliis,
neque de seipso, decernere possit. Quod etiam argu-
mento est, officium esse regis, toties parlamentum com-
vocare, quoties populus id petit: quandoquidem et res
populi, non regis, iis comitiis tractantur, idque populi
arbitrio. Quamvis enim regis quoque assensus honoris
causâ peti soleret, quem in rebus mimoris momemti ad
privatorum dumtaxat commoda spectantibus poterat nom
præbere, poterat pro illa formula dicere, “ rex delibera-
bit,” de iis tamen, quæ ad salutem omnium communem
et libertatem pertinebant, prorsus abnuere mullo modo
poterat ; cùm id et contra juramentum regium esset,
quo veluti lege firmissima tenebatur, et contra præci-
puum Magnæ Chartæ articulum, c. 29. “ Non negabi-
mus, non differemus, cuiquam jus aut justitiam.” Nom
megabit rex justitiam, negabit ergò justas leges ? non
cuiquam, an ergò omnibus ? me in curia quidem ulla
minori, am ergo in senatu supremo ? an verò rex ullus
tantum sibi arrogabit, ut quid justum sit, quid utile, se
unum universo populo scire meliùs existimet? Cùm
“ ad hoc creatus et electus sit, ut justitiam faciat uni-
versis,” Bractom. l. 3. c. 9. per eas nimirum leges “ quas
vulgus” elegerit. Unde illud in archivis nostris 7. H.
4. Rot. Parl. num. 59. “ non est ulla regis prærogativa,
quæ ex justitia et æquitate quicquam derogat.” Et
reges olim acta parlamenti confirmare recusantes, Char-
696
PR.() POPULO ANGLICAN () I)J)FENSIO.
tam videlicet Magnam et hujusmodi alia, majores nostri
stepenumerò armis coëgere ; neque propterea minùs
valere illas leges, aut minùs legitimas esse, jurisperiti
mostri statuunt: quamdoquidem assensum rex iis decretis
coactus præbuit, quibus jure atque sponte assentiri de-
bebat. Tu dum contendis aliarum etiam gentium reges
in potestate vel synedrii vel senatùs, vel concilii sui
aequè fuisse, non nos in servitutem asseris, sed eas in
libertatem : in quo idem facere pergis, quod ab initio
fecisti, quodque faciunt pragmaticorum stultissimi, ut
incauti seipsos in lite sæpiùs contra veniant. At nos
scilicet fatemur “regem, ubicumque absit, in parlamento
tamen censeri præsentem vi potestatis : ergò quodcun-
que illic agitur à rege ipso actum intelligi.” Tum
quasi bolum aliquem mactus esses aut mercedulam,
illorum recordatione Caroleorum delinitus, “ accipi-
mus,” inquis, “ quod dant:” accipe igitur, quo dignus
es, magnum malum ; non enim damus, quod sperabas,
inde sequi “ curiam illam nom alia potiri potestate
quàm à rege delegata.” Si enim dicitur, potestas regis,
quæcumque ea sit, à parlamento abesse mon potest, an
suprema continuò dicitur ? annon potiùs transferri in
parlamentum potestas regia videtur, utque minor ma-
jore contineri ? sanè si parlamentum potest, molente et
invito rege, acta ejus et privilegia quibusvis data re-
vocare atque rescindere, si ipsius regis prærogativas,
prout videtur, circumscribere, si proventus ejus annuos
et impensas aulæ, si famulitium ipsum, si totam denique
rem domesticam regis moderari, si vel intimos ejus con-
siliarios atque amicos amovere, vel etiam è simu abripere
ad supplicium, potest, si cuivis denique de plebe à rege
ad parlamentum quacunque de re provocatio est lege
data, non itidem a parlamento ad regem, quæ omnia et
posse fieri, et fuisse sæpiùs facta, cùm monumenta pub-
lica, tum legum mostrarum consultissimi testantur, ne-
minem esse arbitror, modò mens ei sama sit, qui par-
lamentum supra regem esse non fateatur. Nam in
interregno etiam parlamentum viget; et quod historiis
nostris testatissimum est, nulla hæreditatis ratione ha-
bita, sæpe, quem sibi visum est, suffragiis liberrimis
regem creavit. Ut summatim dicam quod res est, par-
lamentum est supremum gentis concilium, ad hoc ip-
sum à populo planè libero constitutum, et potestate
plena instructum, ut de summis rebus in commune com-
sulat; rex ideo erat creatus, ut de consilio et sententia
illorum ordinum consulta omnia exequenda curaret.
Quod cum parlamentum ipsum edicto nuper suo pub-
licè declararet, neque enim pro æquitate sua recusabat
vel externis gentibus actionum suarum rationem ultrò
ac sponte reddere, ecce tibi, è gurgustio nullius homo
authoritatis, aut fidei, aut rei, Burgundus iste Verna,
qui summum Angliæ senatum, jus patrium atque
suum scripto asserentem, “ detestandæ et horribilis
imposturæ ” insimulat. Patriam mehercule tuam pu-
debit, verbero, se tantæ impudentiæ homuncionem
genuisse. Sed habes fortasse juæ salutariter monitos
nos velis ; agedum, auscultamus. “ Quas,” inquis,
“ leges sancire potest parlamentum, in quo nec praesu-
lum ordo comparet ?” Tune ergo, furiose, præsules ex
ecclesia extirpatum ibas, ut in parlamenta induceres ?
O hominem impium, et Satanæ tradendum, quem neque
ecclesia non ejicere hypocritam et atheum, neque ulla
respub. recipere communem libertatis pestem atque
labem, deberet ; qui etiam, quod nequit ex Evangelio,
id ex Aristotele et Halicarnassæo, deinde ex statutis
papisticis pravissimorum temporum, probare adnititur,
regem Angliæ caput esse Anglicanæ ecclesiæ, ut epis-
copos, compransores suos et mecessarios nuper factos,
quos ipse Deus exturbavit, novos iterum pruedones et
tyrannos, pro virili sua parte, sanctæ Dei ecclesiæ im-
ponat; quorum universum ordinem, tanquam religioni
Christiante p. rniciosissimum, eradicandum esse stir-
pitùs, editis antea libris clamosè contemderat. Quis
unquam apostata, non dico à sua, quæ nulla certa est,
sed à Christiana doctrina, quam ipse asseruerat, defec-
tione tam foeda atque nefaria descivit ? “ Episcopis de
medio sublatis, qui sub rege, et ex ejus arbitrio de cau-
sis ecclesiæ cognoscebant,” quæris “ ad quos redibit ea
cognitio.” O perditissime, verere tandem vel consci-
entiam tuam ; memineris dum licet ; misi si hoc serò
nimis te moneo, memineris qùàm non impunè tibi erit,
quàm inexpiabile demùm sit, sanctum Dei spiritum sic
illudere. Subsiste aliquando, et pone aliquem furori
modum, ne te accensa ira numinis repentè corripiat;
qui Christi gregem, unctosque Dei minimè tangendos,
iis hostibus et sævissimis tyrannis obterendos iterum et
persultandos tradere cupis, à quibus elata modò et
mirifica Dei manus eos liberavit : tuque ipse, nescio
eorumne ad fructum ullum, an ad perniciem et obdura-
tionem tuam, liberaudos esse docuisti. Quòd si jus
mullum dominandi in ecclesiam est episcopis, certè
multo minùs est regibus ; quicquid hominum statuta
edicunt. Sciunt enim, qui labris aliquanto plusquam
primoribus evangelium gustârunt, ecclesiæ guber-
nationem divinam esse totam ac spiritualem, non civi-
lem. ** In secularibus ” autem, quòd ais “ supremam
jurisdictionem habuisse regem Angliæ,” id falsum esse
jura mostra ubertim declarant. Curias omnes ubi ju-
dicia exercentur, mom rex, sed parlamenti authoritas,
vel constituit, vel tollit; in quibus tamen minimo cuivis
è plebe licebat regem in jus vocare ; neque rarò judices
contra regem pronuntiare solebant; id si rex vel inter-
dicto, vel mandato, vel scriptis literis, impedire conare-
tur, ex juramento et lege non parebant judices, sed
ejusmodi mandata rejiciebant, et pro mihilo habebant :
non poterat rex quenquam in vincula conjicere, aut
ullius bona in publicum addicere ; poterat neminem
supplicio punire, nisi in aliquam curiam priùs citatum,
ubi non rex sed consueti judices sententias tulere ; idque
sæpe, ut suprà dixi, contra regem. Hinc moster Brac-
tonus, l. 3. c. 9. “ regia potestas juris est, non injuriæ ;
et nihil aliud potest rex, nisi id solùm quod de jure
potest.” Aliud tibi suggerunt causidici tui, qui muper
solum verterunt; ex statutis nempe quibusdam haud
antiquis sub Edvardo 4to, Henrico 7timo, Edvardo 6to,
promulgatis : neque viderunt, quamcumque regi potes-
tatem statuta illa comcedunt, eam à parlamento con-
cessam esse omnem et quasi precariam ; quam et eadem
authoritas poterat revocare. Cur sic passus es nasuto
tibi imponi, ut quo maximè argumento regis potestatem `
ex decretis parlamenti pendere demonstratur, eo abso-
lutam esse et supremam probare te crederes ? Nam et
PRO POPULO ANGLICANO DEFENS[O.
697
monumenta nostra sanctiora testantur, reges nostros
non haereditati, non armis, non successioni, sed populo,
suam omnem potestatem debere. Talis potestas regia
Henrico quarto, talis ante eum Richardo secuudo, à
plebeio ordine concessa legitur ; Rot. Parlament.
l Hem. 4. num, 108. haud secùs atque rex aliquis
præsidibus suis præfecturas et provincias edicto et
diplomate solet concedere. Id nempe literis publicis
consignari disertè jussit communium domus, “ conces-
sisse se regi Richardo, ut tali bonâ libertate” frueretur,
“ qualem ante eum reges Angliæ habuere;” qua cum
rex ille ** contra fidem sacramenti sui ” ad eversionem
legum abuteretur, ab iisdem orbatus regno est. Iidem
etiam, quod et eadem rotula testatur, in parlamento
edicunt, se, prudentia et moderatione Henrici 4ti
confisos, “ velle ac jubere ut in eadem magna liber-
tate regia sit, quam ejus progenitores obtinuere.”
Illa autem nisi fiduciaria planè fuisset, quemadmodum
hæc fuit, necesse est profectò et parlamenti illius or-
dines, qui concederent quod suum non erat, ineptos ac
vanos, et reges illos qui, quod suum jam erat, con-
cessum ab aliis vellent accipere, et sibi et posteris im-
jurios nimis fuisse : quorum utrumvis credibile non
est. “ Tertia pars,” inquis, “ regiæ potestatis versatur
circa militiam ; hanc partem reges Angliæ sine pari et
æmulo tractârunt.” Neque hoc veriùs quàm cætera quæ
perfugarum fide scripsisti. Primùm enim pacis et
belli arbitrium penès magnum regni senatum semper
fuisse, et historiæ passim nostræ, et exterorum, quot-
quot res nostras paulò accuratiùs attigere, testantur.
Sancti etiam Edvardi leges, in quas jurare nostri reges
tenebantur, certissimam fidem faciunt, capite de here-
tochiis, “ fuisse quasdam potestates per provincias et
singulos comitatus regni constitutas, qui heretoches
vocabantur, latinè ductores exercitùs,” qui provincia-
libus copiis præerant, mom “ ad homorem coronæ” so-
lùm, sed “ ad utilitatem regni.” Isti vero eligebantur
“ per commune concilium, et per singulos comitatus im
pleno conventu populari, sicut et vicecomites eligi de-
bent.” Ex quo facilè perspicitur, et copias regni et
copiarum ductores in potestate populi, non regis, et
antiquitùs fuisse, et esse oportere : illamque legenm
æquissimam nostro in regno haud minùs valuisse,
quàm olim in populari Romanorum statu valebat. De
qua et M. Tullium audire non abs re fuerit. Philipp.
10. “ Omnes legiones, omnes copiæ quæ ubique sunt,
Populi R. sunt. Neque enim legiones, quæ Antoni-
um consulem reliquerunt, Antonii potiùs quàm reipub.
fuisse dicuntur.” Sancti autem Edouardi legem illam,
cum aliis illius legibus Gulielmus ille conquæstor dic-
tus, populo sic volente ac jubente, juratus confirmavit;
sed et hanc insuper adjecit, c. 56. ** Omnes civitates,
burgos, castella, singulis noctibus ita custodiri, prout
vicecomes, et aldermanni, cæterique præpositi per
commune concilium ad utilitatem regni, meliùs provi-
debunt;” et lege 62, “ ideo castella, burgi, civitates
ædificatæ sunt ad tutionem gentium et populorum
regni, idcirco et observari debent cum omni libertate,
integritate, et ratione.” Quid ergo ? custodientur
arces et oppida in pace contra fures et maleficos mom
nisi per commune concilium ejusdem loci, non custo-
dientur in maximo belli metu contra hostes sive exter-
nos sive intestinos, per commune concilium totius
gentis ? sanè illud nisi concedatur, neque “ libertas,”
neque “ integritas,” nec ** ratio ” demique, in iis custo-
diendis ulla esse poterit ; neque earum rerum quicquam
assequemur, quarum causâ fundari primùm urbes et
arces lex ipsa dicit. Majores certè nostri quidvis po-
tiùs regi quàm sua arma et oppidorum præsidia tradere
solebant; idem esse rati ac si libertatem ipsi stiam
ferocitati regum et impotentiae proditum irent. Cujus
rei exempla in historiis nostris uberrima cùm sint, et
jam notissima, inserere huic loco supervacaneum esset.
At “ protectionem rex debet subditis ; quomodo eos
protegere poterit, nisi arma virosque habeat im sua po-
testate ?” At, inquam, habebat haec omnia ad utilita-
tem regni, ut dictum est, non ad civium interitum et
regni disperditionem : quod, et Henrici 3tii temporibus,
prudenter Leonardus quidam vir doctus, in episcoporum
conventu, respondit Rustando papæ nuntio et regis
procuratori : “ omnes ecclesiae sunt domini papæ, ut
omnia principis esse dicimus, ad tuitionem, non ad
fruitionem vel proprietatem,” quod aiunt ; ad defensi-
onem, “ non ad dispersionem :” eadem et prædictæ
legis Edouardi sententia erat ; quid est hoc aliud nisi
potestate fiduciaria ; mom absoluta ? qualem cum impe-
rator bellicus ferè habeat, id est delegatam, non planè
propriam, non eò segniùs populum, à quo eligitur, sive
domi sive militiæ defendere solet. Frustra autem par
lamenta, et impari sane congressu de legibus sancti
Edouardi et libertate olim cuni regibus contendissent,
si penès regem solum arma esse oportere existimàssent;
mam et leges quamlibet iniquas ipse dare si voluisset,
frustra se “ chartâ” quantumvis “ magnâ ” contra fer-
rum defendissent. “ At quid proderit,” inquis, “ par
lamento militiæ magisterium habere, cùm me terumcium
quidem ad eam sustimemdam queat, molente rege, de
populo cogere.” Ne sit ea tibi cura : primùm enim
hoc falsò pomis, parlamenti ordines '* mom posse sime
rege tributa populo imponere,” à quo et ipsi missi sunt,
et cujus causam suscipiunt. Deimde non potest te fu-
gere, tam sedulum de alienis rebus percontatorem, sua
sponte populum, vasis aureis atque argenteis com-
flatis, magnam vim pecuniæ in hoc bellum contra
regem impendisse. Amplissimos exinde regum mos-
trorum annuos reditus recenses : nil nisi ** millies quin-
genties quadragies” crepas ; ** ex patrimonio regis
maximas largitiones” fieri solitas ab iis * regibus, qui
liberalitatis laudibus emicuerunt,” avidus audieras: hac
te illecebra, veluti Balaamum illum infamem, proditores
patriæ ad suam causam perduxere; ut Dei populo male-
dicere, et divinisjudiciis obstrepere, auderes, Stulte; quid
tandem regi injusto ac violento tam immensæ opes pro-
fuere ? Quid etiam tibi? ad quem nihil prorsus eorum,
qute spe ingenti devoraveras, pervenisse audio, præter
unam illam crumenulam, vitreis globulis vermiculatam,
et centemis aureolis confertam. Cape istam, Balaame,
quam adamàsti, iniquitatis mercedem, ac fruere. Pergis
enim desipere ; * Erectio standardi,” id est “ vexilli,
ad regem solum pertinet.” Quapropter ? quia
——Belli signum Lauremti Turnus ab arce
Extulit.
698
PRO POPULO ANGLICANO DEFENSIO.
Tune verò nescis, grammatice, hoc idem cujusvis im-
peratoris bellici munus esse ? At “ ait Aristoteles,
necesse est regi præsidium adsistere, quo leges tueri
possit; ergò oportet regem plus armis posse quàm
populum universum.” Tales hic homo consequentias
torquere solet, quales Ocnus funes apud inferos ; quæ
nulli sunt usui, nisi ut comedantur ab asimis : aliud
enim est præsidium à populo datum, aliud armorum
omnium potestas, quam Aristoteles hoc ipso, quem pro-
tulisti, loco à regibus abjudicat. Oportet, inquit, ha-
beat rex tantam circa se mamu'm armatorum, “ quanta
singulis vel compluribus fortior sit, populo verò mi-
nor; §vvat δὲ τοσαύτην ἰσχύν ύστε ἐkάστε μέν κάι ἐνὸς κάι
ανμπλειόνων κράιττω, τοῦ δέ τλή$8c jjTrto. Polit. l. 3. c. 11.
Alioqui sanè, sub specie tuendi, possit statim et popu-
lum et leges sibi subjicere. Hoc autem rex et tyrannus
interest ; rex à senatu, et populo volente ac libente,
quid satis est præsidii circa se habet contra hostes et
seditiosos : tyranmus, invito sematu ac populo, vel hos-
tium, vel perditorum civium, præsidium sibi quàm
maximum comparare studet, contra sematum ipsum et
populum. Concessit itaque parlamentum regi, ut alia
omnia, sic standardi erectionem ;” non ut infesta patriæ
signa inferret, sed ut populum contra eos defenderet,
quos parlamentum hostes judicat ; si secus fuisset, ipse
hostis judicandus erat ; cùm juxta ipsam sancti Edou-
ardi, vel, quod sanctius est, ipsam naturæ legem,
nomem regis perdiderit. Unde in prædicta Philippica,
“ amittit is omne exercitùs et imperii jus, qui eo impe-
rio et exercitu rempub. oppugnat.” Neque licebat regi
* feudales” illos “ equites” ad ** bellum ” evocare,
quod parlamenti authoritas non decrevisset ; id quod
ex statutis pluribus manifestum est. Idem de vecti-
galibus et censu navali censendum ; quem imperare
civibus sine senatusconsulto rex non potuit: atque ita
gravissimi legum nostrarum interpretes, annis abhinc
plus minus duodecim, tum cùm adhuc firmissimum erat
regium imperium, publicè statuerunt. Sic diu ante
eos Fortescutius, Henrici 6ti cancellarius, juris nostri
consultissimus; rex Angliæ, inquit, neque leges mutare
potest, neque tributa, molente populo, imponere. Sed
mec probaverit quisquam ullis testimomiis amtiquorum
“ regni Angliæ statum merè ” esse “ regalem. Habet
rex,” inquit Bractonus, “ jurisdictionem super omnes.”
Id est in curia ; ubi regis quidem nomine, nostris au-
tem legibus, jus redditur. “ Omnis sub rcge est ;* id
est singuli : atque ita se explicat ipse Bractonus locis
à me suprà citatis. Ad ea quæ restant, ubi eundem
volvis lapidem, in quo vales ipsum, credo, Sisyphum
delassare, ex suprà dictis abunde respondetur. De
cætero, si quando parlamenta suum regibus bonis ob-
sequium amplissimis verbis citra assentationem et
servitutem detulere, id, quasi eodem modo tyrannis
delatum esset, intelligi, aut populo fraudi esse, non
debet; neque enim justo obsequio libertas imniwuituv.
Quod autem ex Edvardo Coco et aliis citas, “ Angliæ
regnum absolutum est imperium,” id est si ad ullum
regem externum, aut Caesarem, respicias ; vel, ut
Cambdemus ait, “ quia in imperii clientela non est: ”
alioqui adjicit uterqne imperium hoc consistere non
** ex rege” solo, sed “ ex corpore politico.” Ünde
Fortescutius, de laud. legum Angl. c. 9. ** rex,” inquit,
“ Angliæ ” populum gubernat “ non mera potestate
regia, sed politica : populus enim iis legibus guberna-
tur, quas” ipse fert. Externos hoc etiam scriptores
non latebat. Hinc Philippus Comimaeus, author gra-
vissimus, commentariorum quinto ; “ inter onmia orbis
terræ regna, quorum ego notitiam habeo, non est, meâ
quidem sententiâ, ubi publicum moderatiùs tractetur,
meque ubi regi minus liceat in populum, quàm in
Anglia.” Postremò ** ridiculum est,” inquis, “ argu-
mentum, quod afferunt, regna ante reges fuisse, quasi
dicas lucem ante solem extitisse.” At nos, ό bone vir,
non regna, sed populum, ante reges fuisse dicimus.
Quem interim te magis ridiculum dicam, qui lucem
ante solem extitisse, quasi ridiculum, negas. Ita dum
in aliemis curiosus esse vis, elementa dedidicisti. Mi-
raris denique, “ eos qui regem in comitiis regni vide-
runt solio sedentem, sub aureo et serico coelo, potuisse
in dubium vocare, utrùm penès regem an penès parla-
mentum majestas sit.” Incredulos profectò homines
marras, quos tam lucidum argumentum, è cœlo ipso
petitum, nihil movit. Quod tu coelum aureum homo
stoicus adeò es rcligiosè et unicè contemplatus, ut et
cœli Mosaïci et Aristotelici oblitus esse penitus videare:
cum in illo ** lucem ante solem exstitisse” negaveris,
im hoc tres zonas temperatas esse suprà docueris. Quot
zomas in illo regis aureo et serico coelo observaveris,
nescio: hoc scio, te zonam unam, centum stellis aureis
bene temperatam, ex illa tua coelesti contemplatione
abstulisse.
CAPUT X.
CUM hæc omnis controversia de jure, sive generatim
vegio, sive separatim regis Angliæ, obstinatis partium
contemtionibus, quàm ipsâ rei maturâ difficilior facta
sit, spero, qui studium veritatis factiomibus antepomumt,
iis ea me ex lege Dei, jureque gentium, ex institutis
demique patriis, copiosè attulisse, quæ regem Angliæ
judicari posse, atque etiam capite pumiri, indubitatum
reliquerint. Cùm cæteris, quorum animos aut super-
stitio occupavit, aut mentis aciem anticipata regii splen-
doris admiratio ità perstrinxit, ut nihil in virtute ac
libertate vera illustre ac splendidum videre possint, sive
ratione et argumentis agamus, sive exemplis, frustra
contendimus. Tu verò, Salmasi, ut reliqua omnia, ita
hoc etiam absurdè admodum facere videris, qui cùm
omnes independentes omnibus probris onerare non de-
sinas, regem ipsum quem defendis, maximè omnium
independentem fuisse statuis : neque “ regnum populo,
sed generi, debuisse : deinde quem “ capitis causam
dicere coactum” iwitio gvaviter dolebas, eum nunc
« inanditum periisse” quereris. At verò totam causæ
dictionem ejus, fide summa Gallicè editam, inspicere si
libet, persuasum tibi aliud fortasse erit. Carolo certè
cùm per aliquot dies continuos amplissima loquendi
facta copia esset, mon ille quidem est eâ usus ad objecta
sibi crimima diluendum, sed ad judicium illud, ac ju-
PRO POPULO ANGLICANO DEFENSIO.
699
dices, omninò rejiciendum. Qui autem reus aut tacet,
aut aliena semper respondet, eum non est injuria, si
manifestus criminum sit, vel inauditum condemnari.
Carolum si * mortem” ais “ planè egisse vitæ respon-
dentem,” assentior: si dicis piè et sanctè et “ securè”
vitam finiisse, scito aviam ejus Mariam, infamem foe-
minam, pari in speciem pietate, sanctitate, constantia,
in pegmate occubuisse : ne animi praesentiæ, quæ in
morte.quibusvis è vulgo maleficis permagna sæpè est,
nimium tribuas: sæpè desperatio aut obfirmatus animus
fortitudinis quandam speciem et quasi personam induit;
sæpè stupor tranquillitatis : videri se bonos, intrepidos,
innocentes, interdum et sanctos, pessimi quique non
minùs in morte quàm in vita cupiunt ; inque ipsa scele-
rum suorum capitali poena solent ultimam simulationis
suæ et fraudum, quàm possunt speciocissimè, pompam
ducere ; et, veluti poëtæ aut histriones deterrimi, plau-
sum in ipso exitu ambitiosissimè captare. Nunc “ ad
istam quæstionem pervenisse te ” ais, “ quâ tractandum
est, quinam fuerint illius regiæ condemnationis præ-
cipui authores.” Cùm de te potiùs inquirendum sit,
quomodo tu, homo exterus, et Gallicanus erro, ad quæs-
tionem de rebus nostris, tibi jam alienis, habendam
perveneris ? quo pretio emptus ? verum de eo satis
constat. Te verò percontantem de rebus nostris quis
demùm docuit ? ipsi nimirum perfugæ, & perduelles
patriæ, qui te hominem vanissimum macti, mercede
ad maledicendum facilè adduxerunt. Data deinde
tibi est aliqua aut furibundi cujuspiam sacellani semi-
papistæ, aut servientis aulici, de statu rerum scriptiun-
cula ; eam ut latinè verteres negotium tibi dabatur:
hinc istæ marrationes confectae, quas, si videtur, pau-
lùm excutiamus. “ In hanc condemnationem non cen-
tena-millesima pars populi consensit.” Quid ergò
cæteri, qui sese molentibus tantum facinus fieri sunt
passi ? an stipites, an trunci hominum, an fortè quales
illi in scena Virgiliana,
Purpurea intexti tollunt aulæa Britanni ?
Non enim veros tu quidem Britannos, sed pictos ne-
scio quos, vel etiam acupictos, videris mihi velle dicere.
Cùm itaque incredibile sit gentem bellicosam à tam
paucis, iisque infimis de plebe sua, sub jugum mitti,
quod in narratione tua primum occurrit, id esse falsis-
simum apparet. “ Ordo ecclesiasticus erat ab ipso
senatu ejectus.” Eò miserior itaque tua est insania,
necdum enim te sentis insanire, qui eos è parlamento
quereris ejectos, quos tute ex ecclesia ejiciendos esse,
libro longissimo scribis ? “ Senatùs alter ordo qui in
proceribus consistebat, ducibus, comitibus, vicecomi-
tibus, statione sua dejectus est.” Et meritò, à mullo
enim municipio missi pro se tantùm sedebant, nihil
juris in populum habebant, juri tamen ejus et libertati,
suo quodam instituto, refragari in plerisque consueve-
rant; erant à rege constituti, ejus comites, et famuli, et
quasi umbræ, quo amoto, ipsi necesse est ad plebem,
unde orti sunt, redigerentur. “ Una et deterrima por-
tio parlamenti potestatem sibi vindicare non debuit re-
ges judicandi.” At plebeius ordo, quod te suprà docui,
non solùm parlamenti pars erat potissima, etiam sub
regibus, sed per se ipse parlamentum omnibus mumeris
absolutum et legitimum, etiam sine comitibus, nedum
ecclesiasticis, constituebat. Atqui “ me tota quidem
haec ipsa pars ad sententiam de regis capite ferendam
admissa est.” Pars illa nempe non admissa, quem
verbo regem, re hostem toties judicaverat, ad eum ani-
mis atque consiliis palàm defecerat. Parlamenti or-
dines Anglicani cum iis qui à Scotiæ itidem parlamento
missi erant legati, idibus Januarii 1645, rescripserant
regi, dolosas inducias et habenda secum Londini collo-
quia petenti, non posse se eum in urbem admittere,
donec is de bello civili tribus jam regnis ejus opera
excitato, de cædibus tot civium ejus jussu factis reipub.
satisfecisset; deque pace firma atque sincera iis con-
ditionibus cavisset, quas ei utriusque regni parlamenta
et tulerant saepius, et latura essent: ipse è contrario
postulata eorum æquissima jam septies humillimè ob-
lata, responsionibus aut surdis repudiaverat, aut am-
biguis eluserat. Ordines tandem post tot annorum
patientiam ut ne fraudulentus rex, quam debellare
rempub. in acie non valebat, eam in vinculis per dila-
tiones everteret, et jucundissimum ex nostris dissidiis
fructum capiens, de victoribus etiam suis restituris hos-
tis insperatum sibi triumphum ageret, decernunt, se
regis deinceps rationem non habituros, nullas se ei
postulationes ampliùs esse missuros, aut ab eo accep-
turos: post hæc tamen decreta reperti sunt ex ipso or-
dinum numero, qui invectissimi exercitùs odio, cujus
maximis rebus gestis invidebant, quemque, post ingen-
tia merita, dimittere cum ignomimia cupiebant, et
ministris aliquot seditiosis, quibus miserè serviebant,
morem gerentes, opportumum sibi tempus nacti, cum
eorum multi, quos à se lougè dissentire sciebant, ad
sedandos presbyterianorum gliscentes jam tumultus,
missi ab ipso ordine, in provinciis abessent, mira levi-
tate, ne dicam perfidia, decernumt, inveteratum hostem,
verbotenùs duntaxat regem, nulla penè ab eo satisfac-
tione priùs accepta, aut cautione facta, ad urbem esse
reducendum ; in summam dignitatem atque imperium
æquè esse restituendum, ac si de repub. præclarè me-
ritus esset. Ita religioni, libertati, fœderi denique illi
à se toties jactato regem præponebant. Quid illi in-
terea qui integri tam pestifera agitari consilia vide-
bant? An ideo deesse patriæ, saluti suorum non pros-
picere debuerant, eo quod istius mali contagio in
ipsorum ordinem penetraverat? At quis istos exclusit
malè sanos ? ** Exercitus,” inquis, “ Anglicanos,” id
est, non extermorum, sed fortissimorum et fidissimorum
civium ; quorum tribuni plerique senatores ipsi erant,
quos illi boni exclusi patria ipsa excludendos, et in
Hiberniam procul ablegandos esse censuerant; dum
Scotia interim dubia jam fide quatuor Angliæ provin-
cias suis finibus proximas magnis copiis insidebant,
firmissima earum regionum oppida præsidiis tenebant,
regem ipsum in custodia habebant: dum ipsi etiam
factiones suorum atque tumultus, parlamento plusquam
minaces, et in urbe et in agris passim fovebant, qui
tumultus paulò pòst in bellum non civile solùm, sed et
Scoticum illud erupere. Quòd si privatis etiam consiliis
aut armis subvenire reipublicæ laudatissimum semper
fuit, non est certè cur exercitus reprehendi possit, qui
parlamenti authoritate ad urbem accersitus imperata
700
PRO POPULO ANGLICANO DEFENSIO.
fecit; et regiorum factionem atque tumultum ipsi curiæ
sæpiùs minitantem facilè compescuit. In id autem
discrimen adducta res erat, ut aut nos ab illis, aut illos
à nobis opprimi necesse esset. Stabant ab illis Lon-
dinensium plerique institores atque opifices, et minis-
trorum factiosissimi quique ; à nobis exercitus magna
fide, modestia, virtute cognitus. Per hos cum retinere
libertatem, rempub., salutem liceret, an hæc omnia
per ignaviam et stultitiam prodenda fuisse censes ?
Debellati regiarum partium duces arma quidem inviti,
animum hostilem non deposuerant: omnibus belli re-
novandi occasionibus intenti ad urbem se receperant.
Cum his, quamvis inimicissimis, quamvis sanguinem
eorum avidè sitientibus, presbyteriani, postquam non
permitti sibi in omnes tam civilem quàm ecclesias-
ticam dominationem viderunt, clandestima consilia, et
prioribus tum dictis tum factis indignissima consociare
cœperant: eoque acerbitatis processere, ut mallent se
regi denuò mancipare, quàm fratres suos in partem
illam libertatis, quam et ipsi suo sub sanguine acqui-
siverant, admittere ; mallent tyrannum tot civium cru-
ore perfusum, ira in superstites, et concepta jam ultione
ardentem rursus experiri dominum, quàm fratres, et
amicissimos æquo jure ferre sibi pares. Soli indepen-
dentes qui vocantur, et ad ultimum sibi constare, et sua
uti victoria sciebant: qui ex rege hostem se fecerat,
eum ex hoste regem esse amplius, sapienter, meo qui-
dem judicio, nolebant: neque pacem idcircò non vole-
bant, sed involutum pacis momime aut bellum novum,
aut æternam servitutem prudentes metuebant. Exer-
citum autem nostrum quo fusiùs infamare possis, mar-
rationem quandam rerum nostrarum inconditam et
strigosam exordiris : in qua tametsi multa falsa, multa
frivola reperio, multa abs te vitio data, quæ laudi du-
cenda essent, huic tamen alteram ex adverso marra-
tionem opponere nihil arbitror attinere. Rationibus
enim hic non narrationibus certatur ; atque illis utro-
bique, non his fides habebitur. Et sauè sunt ejusmodi
res istæ, ut nisi justa historia dici pro dignitate neque-
ant. Melius itaque puto, quod de Carthagine Sallus-
tius, silere tantis de rebus, quàm parùm dicere. Neque
committam ut mon solùm virorum illustrium, sed Dei
præcipuè maximi laudes, in hac rerum seri mirabili
sæpissimè iterandas, tuis hoc libro intexam opprobriis.
Ea igitur dumtaxat, quæ argumenti habere speciem vi-
dentur, pro more decerpam. “ Anglos et Scotos ” quòd
ais “ solenmi conventione promisisse, se regis majes-
tatem conservaturos,” omittis quibus id conditionibus
promisere ; si salva nimirum religione et libertate id
fieri posset : quibus utrisque ad extremum usque spiri-
tum iniquus adeò et insidiosus rex iste erat, ut, vivente
illo, et religionem periclitaturam, et libertatem interi-
turam esse, facilè appareret. Sed redis jam ad illos
regii supplicii authores. “ Si res ipsa ponderibus suis
et momentis rectè æstimetur, exitus facti nefandi ita
independentibus imputari debet, ut principii et pro-
gressùs gloriam presbyteriami sibi possent vindicare.”
Audite, presbyteriani, ecquid nunc juvat, ecquid con-
fert ad innocentiæ et fidelitatis opinionem vestræ, quòd
à rege puniendo abhorrere tantopere videremini ? Vos
isto regis actore verbosissimo, accusatore vestro, “ plus-
quam dimidium itineris confecistis;” vos “ ad quartum
actum et ultra in dramate hoc desultando frigultientes
spectati estis:” vos “ meritò regis occisi crimine notari
debetis ; ut qui viam ad ipsum occidendum mumiistis;”
vos “ nefariam illam securim cervicibus ejus inflixistis,
non alii.° Væ vobis imprimis, si unquam stirps Caroli
regnum posthac in Anglos recuperabit: in vos, mihi
credite, cudetur hæc faba. Sed Deo vota persolvite,
fratres diligite liberatores vestros, qui illam calami-
tatem atque certam perniciem ab invitis etiam vobis
hactenus prohibuere. Postulamini vos item, quòd
“ aliquot annos antè per varias petitiones jus regis im-
minuere moliti estis, quòd voces contumeliosas regi
illis ipsis libellis quos nomine senatùs regi porrexistis,
insertas publicastis;” videlicet “ in illa declaratione
dominorum et communium, Maii 26, 1642, apertè quid
sensistis de regis authoritate aliquot perduellionem spi-
rantibus et insanis positionibus fassi estis. Hullæ op-
pidi portas Hothamus, tali mandato à senatu accepto,
venienti regi occlusit;” vos “ quid rex pati posset, hoc
primo rebellionis experimento cognoscere concupivis-
tis.” Quid hoc dici potuit accommodatiùs ad concili-
andos inter se Anglorum animos, atque à rege penitùs
abalienandos ? cum intelligere hinc possint, si rex re-
vertatur, se non solùm regis mortem, sed etiam peti-
tiones quondam suas, et frequentissimi parlamenti acta
de liturgia et episcopis abolendis, de triennali parla-
mento, et quæcumque summo populi consensu ac plausu
sancita sunt, tanquam seditiosas atque “ insanas pres-
byterianorum positiones” luituros. Sed repentè mu-
tat animum homo levissimus; et quod modò “ rem
ipsam rectè æstimanti” sibi videbatur solis presbyteri-
amis deberi, id nunc ** rem ” eamdem “ ab alto revol-
venti ° independentibus totum deberi videtur. Modò
presbyteriamos “ vi aperta atque armis contra regem
grassatos esse,” eumque ab iis ** bello victum, captum,
in carcerem conjectum” affirmabat, nunc omnem “ hanc
rebellionis doctrinam” independentium esse scribit. O
hominis fidem et constantiam ! quid aliam jam opus est
marrationem comparare contra tuam, quæ ipsa sibi tam
turpiter decoxit? Verùm de te siquis dubitat, albusme
an ater homo sis, tua legat quæ sequuntur. “ Tem-
pus est,” inquis, “ pandere unde et quando proruperit
inimica regibus secta: belli isti sanè puritani sub reg-
mo Elisabethæ prodire tenebris Orci, et ecclesiam inde
turbare primùm cœperunt, immo rempub. ipsam : non
enim sunt minores reipub. pestes quàm ecclesiæ.” Nunc
te verè Balaamum vox ipsa sonat; ubi enim virus omne
acerbitatis evomere cupiebas, ibi insciens atque invitus
benedixisti. Hoc enim tota Anglia notissimum est, si
qui ad exemplum ecclesiarum vel Gallicarum vel Ger-
manicarum, ut quasque reformatiores esse judicabant,
puriorem cultûs divini rationem sequi studebant, quam
penè omnem episcopi nostri cæremoniis et superstitioni-
bus contaminaverant, si qui tandem pietate erga Deum,
aut vitæ integritate cæteris præstabant, eos ab episco-
porum fautoribus puritanos fuisse nominatos. Hi sunt
quorum doctrinam regibus inimicam esse clamitas ; ne-
que hi solùm, nam “ plerique reformatorum,” inquis,
“ qui in alios disciplinæ ejus articulos non jurarunt,
hunc tamen unum videntur approbasse, qui regiæ ad-
PRO POPULO ANGLICANO DEFENSIO.
7()1
versatur dominationi.” Ita independentes, dum gra-
vissimè insectaris, laudas ; qui eos ab integerrima
Christianorum familia deducis; et quam doctrinam in-
dependentium esse propriam ubique asseris, eam nunc
“ reformatorum plerosque approbasse” confiteris ; eò
usque demùm audaciæ, impietatis, apostasiae provectus
es, ut etiam episcopos, quos tanquam pestes et Anti-
christos ex ecclesia radicitùs evellendos, atque exter-
minandos esse nuper docuisti, eos nunc “ â rege tuendos
fuisse” affirmas, ne quid ** sacramento ” scilicet “ in-
augurationis derogatum iret.” Nihil est ulterius jam
sceleris aut infamiae quò possis procedere, quàm, quod
solum superest, ut reformatam, quam polluis, religio-
nem quamprimùm ejures. Quòd autem nos ais “ om-
nes sectas et hæreses tolerare,” id moli accusare ; quan-
diu te impium, qui Christianorum sanctissimos, et ple-
rosque etiam reformatos tibi adversos “ è tenebris Orci
prodire” audes dicere, te vanum, mendacem, et con-
ductitium calumniatorem, te denique apostatam ecclesia
tamen toleret. Tuas autem exinde sycophantias, quibus
magnam reliqui capitis partem insumis, et quæ mon-
strosa dogmata independentibus, ad cumulandam iis
invidiam, affingis, quidmi omittam ? cùm neque ad
causam hanc regiam omninò pertineant, et ea ferè sint
quæ risum potiùs aut contemptum cujusvis quàm refu-
tationem mereantur.
CAPUT XI.
Ad umdecimum hoc caput videre mihi, Salmasi, quam-
vis nullo cum pudore, cum aliqua tamem conscientia
futilitatis tuæ accedere. Cùm enim hoc loco perquiren-
dum tibi proposueris “ qua authoritate” promumtiatum
de rege fuerit, subjungis, quod à te nemo expectabat;
“ frustra id quæri;” scilicet “ quæstioni huic vix locum
reliquit qualitas hominum qui id fecere.” Cùm igitur,
quàm es importunitatis et impudentiæ in hac causa
suscipienda compertus, tam sis munc etiam loquacitatis
tibi conscius, eò à me brevius responsum feres. Quæ-
renti jam tibi “ qua authoritate” ordo plebeius vel ju-
dicavit ipse regem, vel aliis id judicium delegavit, re-
spondeo suprema: supremam quemadmodum habuerit,
docebunt te ea quæ tunc à me dicta sunt, cùm te suprà
hac ipsa de re graviter ineptientem redarguerem. Quòd
si tibi saltem crederes, posse te ullo tempore quod satis
est dicere, mom eadem toties cantare odiosissimè soleres.
Aliis autem delegare suam judicandi potestatem ordo
plebeius eadem samè ratione potuit, qua tu regem, qui
et ipse omnem potestatem à populo accepit, eamdem
aliis delegare potuisse dicis. Unde in illa solenni com-
ventione, quam nobis objecisti, cùm Angliæ tum Sco-
tiæ summi ordines religiosè profitentur ac spondent, ea
se supplicia de perduellibus esse sumpturos, * quibus
utriusque gentis potestas judiciaria suprema, aut qui ab
ea delegatam potestatem accepturi erant,” plectendos
judicarent. Audis hic utriusque gentis senatum una
voce testantem se posse suam authoritatem judiciariam,
quam “ supremam” ipsi vocant, aliis delegare : vanam
ergò et frivolam de ista potestatis delegatione contro-
versiam moves. At “ cum his,” inquis, “judicibus è
domo inferiori selectis juncti etiam judices fuere ex co-
hortibus militaribus sumpti ; nunquam autem militum
fuit civem jüdicare.” Paucissimis te retundam ; non
enim de cive nunc, sed de hoste memineris nos loqui:
quem si imperator bellicus cum tribunis militaribus
suis, bello captum, et è vestigio, si ita videretur, oc-
cidendum, pro tribunali judicare voluerit, an quicquam
præter jus belli aut morem censebitur fecisse ? qui au-
tem hostis reipublicæ, et bello captus est, me pro cive
quidem is, nedum pro rege in ea repub. haberi potest.
Hanc ipsa lex regis Eduardi sacrosancta sententiam
tulit ; quæ negat malum regem aut esse regem, aut
oportere regis nomine appellari. Ad illud autem quod
ais non ** integram ” plebis domum, sed “ mancam et
mutilam de regis capite judicasse,” sic habeto; eorum,
qui regem plectendum esse censebant, longè majorem
fuisse numerum, quàm qui res quascunque in parla-
mneuntO transigere, etiam per absentiam cæterorum, ex
lege debebant: qui cum suo vitio atque culpa abessent
(defectio enim animorum ad communem hostem pes-
sima absentia erat) nullam iis, qui in fide permanserant,
afferre moram conservandæ reipub. poterant ; quam
vacillantem, et ad servitutem atque interitum prope
redactam, populus universus eorum fidei, prudentiæ,
fortitudini, primò commiserat. Atque illi quidem
strenuè rem gessere ; exulcerati regis impotentiæ, fu-
rori, insidiis sese objecere ; omnium libertati atque
saluti suam posthabuere ; omnia antehac parlamenta,
omnes majores suos prudentia, magnanimitate, con-
stantia supergressi. Hos tamen populi magna pars,
quamvis omnem illis fidem, operam, atque auxilium
pollicita, ingratis animis in ipso cursu deseruit. Pars
hæc servitutem et pacem cum ignavia atque luxuria
ullis conditionibus volebat : pars altera tamen liber-
tatem poscebat, pacem non nisi firmam atque honestam.
Quid hîc ageret senatus ? partem hanc samam, et sibi
et patriæ fidelem defenderet, an desertricem illam se-
queretur ? Scio quid agere oportuisse dices ? non enim
Eurylochus, sed Elpenor es, id est vile auimal Circæ-
um, porcus immundus, turpissima servitute etiam sub
foemina assuetus ; unde nullum gustum virtutis et, quæ
ex ea nascitur, libertatis habes ; omnes esse servos cu-
pis, quòd nihil in tuo pectore gemerosum aut liberum
sentis, nihil non ignobile atque servile aut loqueris aut
spiras. Injicis porrò scrupulum quòd ** et Scotiæ rex
erat, de quo statuimus,” quasi idcirco in Anglia impune
quidvis illi facere liceret. Ut hoc caput denique præ
cæteris elumbe atque aridum aliquo saltem facetè dicto
queas concludere, “ duæ,” inquis, “ sunt voculæ iisdem
ac totidem elementis constantes, solo literarum situ
differentes, sed immane quantum significatione differ-
entes, Vis, et Jus.” Minimè profectò mirum est, te
trium literarum hominem tam scitam ex tribus literis
argutiolam exculpere potuisse; hoc magis miramdum
est quod toto libro asseris, duas res tam inter se cæte-
roqui “ differentes,” in regibus unum atque idem esse.
Quæ enim vis est umquam à regibus facta, quam mom
jus regium tu esse affirmasti ? Hæc sunt quæ novem
paginis bene longis responsione digma animadvertere
702
IPRO POPULO ANGLICANO DEFENSIO.
potui ; cætera sunt ea, quœ aut identidem repetita
haud semel refutavimus, aut ad hanc causam discep-
tandam nullum habent momentum. Itaque solito nunc
brevior si sum, id non meæ diligentiæ, quam in hoc
summo tædio languescere non patior, sed tuæ loquaci-
tati, rerum et rationum tam cassæ atque inami, impu-
tandum erit.
CAPUT XII.
VELLEM equidem, Salmasi, ne cui fortè videar in
regem Carolum, suo fato atque supplicio defunctum,
iniquior esse aut acerbior, ut totum hunc de “ crimini-
bus ejus ” locum, quod et tibi et tuis consultius fuisset,
silentio præteriisses. Nunc verò quoniam id magis
placuit, ut de iis præfidenter et verbosè diceres, faciam
profectò ut intelligas, mihil à te fieri incogitamtiùs po-
tuisse, quàm ut deterrimam causæ tuæ partem, nempe
ejus crimina, ad extremum refricamda et accuratiùs im-
quirenda reservares ; quæ, cùm vera et atrocissima
ostendero fuisse, et ejus memoriam omnibus bonis in-
gratam atque invisam, et tui defensoris odium quàm
maximum in animis legentium novissimè relinquant.
“ Duæ,” inquis, “ partes ejus accusationis fieri pos-
sunt ; una in reprehensione vitæ versatur, altera in
delictis quæ tanquam rex potuit committere. Et vitam
quidem ejus inter convivia, et ludos, et foeminarum
greges dilapsam facilè tacebo : quid enim habet luxus
dignum memoratu ? Aut quid hæc ad nos, si tantùm
privatus fecisset? postquam voluit rex esse, ut nec sibi
vivere, ita me peccare quidem sibi solùm potuit.” Pri-
mùm enim exemplo suis vehementissimè nocuit ; se-
cundo loco, quod temporis libidinibus et rebus ludicris
impendit, quod erat plurimum, id totum reipub., quam
susceperat gubernandam, subduxit ; postremò im-
mensas opes, innumerabilem pecuniam non suam, sed
publicam luxu domestico dilapidavit. Itaque domi
rex malus primùm esse cœpit. Verùm ad ea potiùs
crimina “ quæ malè regnando commisisse arguitur”
transeamus. Hic doles “ tyrannum” eum, “ prodito-
rem,” et “ homicidam” fuisse judicatum. Id non inju-
ria factum demonstrabitur. Tyrammum autem priùs,
non ex vulgi opinione, sed ex Aristotelis et doctorum
omnium judicio definiamus. Tyrannus est qui suam
duntaxat, non populi utilitatem spectat. Ita Aristoteles
ethicorum decimo, et alibi, ita alii plerique. Suane
commoda an populi spectarit Carolus, pauca hæc de
multis, quæ tantummodò perstringam, testimonio erunt.
Cum aulæ sumptibus patrimonium et proventus regii
non sufficerent, imponit gravissima populo tributa ;
iisque absumptis, nova excogitavit ; non ut rempub.
vel augeret, vel ornaret, vel defenderet, sed ut populi
non unius opes vel unam in domum congerendas in-
ferret, vel una in domo dissiparet. Hunc in modum
sine lege cùm pervolaret omnia, quod umicum sciebat
sibi fræno fore, parlamentum aut funditus abolere, aut
convocatum haud sæpius quàm id suis rationibus con-
duceret, sibi soli reddere obnoxium conatus est. Quo
fræno sibi detracto, aliud ipse populo fœnum injecit :
Germanos equites, pedites Hibernos per urbes, perque
oppida quasi in præsidiis, cùm bellum esset nullum,
collocandos curavit: parumne tibi adhuc tyrannus vi-
detur ? In quo etiam, ut in aliis multis rebus, quod
suprà per occasionem abs te datam ostendi (quanquam
tu Carolum Neroni crudelissimo conferri indignaris)
Neroni perquàm similis erat : nam et senatum ille è
repub. se sublaturum persæpe erat minatus. Interea
conscientiis religiosorum hominum supra modum gra-
vis, ad cæremonias quasdam et superstitiosos cultus,
quos è medio papismo in ecclesiam reduxerat, omnes
adigebat ; renuentes aut exilio aut carcere multabat ;
Scotos bis eam ob causam bello adortus est. Huc
usque simplici saltem vice momen tyranni commeruisse
videatur. Nunc cur adjectum in accusatione proditoris
nomen fuerit exponam. Cum huic parlamento sæpiùs
pollicitis, edictis, execrationibus confirmasset, se nihil
contra rempub. moliri, eodem ipso tempore aut papis-
tarum delectus in Hibernia habebat, aut ]egatis ad re-
gem Daniæ clanculùm missis, arma, equos, auxilium
disertè contra parlamentum petebat, aut exercitum
mumc Anglorum nunc Scotorum pretio sollicitabat ;
illis urbem Londinum diripiemdam, his quatuor provin-
cias Aquilonares Scotorum ditioni adjungendas pro-
misit, si sibi ad parlamentum quoquo modo tollendum
commodare suam operam vellent. Cùm hæc non suc-
cederent, cuidam Dillonio perduelli dat secretiora ad
Hibernos mandata, quibus juberentur omnes Anglos
ejus insulæ colonos repentè armis adoriri. Hæc ferè
proditionum ejus monumenta sunt, non vanis rumoribus
collecta, sed ipsis literis ipsius manu subscriptis atque
signatis comperta. Homicidam denique fuisse, cujus
acceptis mandatis Hiberni arma ceperint, ad quinquies
centena millia Anglorum in summa pace nihil tale
metuentium exquisitis cruciatibus occiderint, qui etiam
tantum reliquis duobus reguis bellum civile conflarit,
neminem puto negaturum. Addo enim quod in illo
Vectensi colloquio hujus belli et culpam et crimen rex
palàm in se suscepit, eoque omni parlamentum notissi-
ma confessione sua liberavit. Habes munc breviter
quamobrem rex Carolus et tyrannus et proditor et
homicida judicatus fuerit. At “ cur non prius,” inquis,
neque in illo ** solenni fædere,” neque postea cùm de-
dititius esset, vel “â presbyterianis” vel “ab independen-
tibus” sic judicatus est, sed potiùs, “ ut regem decuit
accipi, omni reverentia est exceptus ?” Vel hoc solo
argumento persuaderi cuivis intelligenti queat, non
nisi serò tandem, et postquam omnia sustinuerant, om-
nia tentaverant, omnia perpessi erant, deliberatum
ordinibus fuisse regem abjicere. Tu id solus malitiosè
nimis in invidiam rapis, quod summam eorum patien-
tiam, æquanimitatem, moderationem, fastusque regii
tolerantiam mimis fortasse longam apud omnes bonos
testabitur. At “ mense Augusto qui præcessit ejus
supplicium, domus communium, quæ sola jam tum
regnabat et independentibus eratobnoxia, scripsit literas
ad Scotos, quibus testabatur, nunquam sibi in animo
fuisse mutare statum, qui huc usque in Anglia obtinuerat
sub rege, domo dominorum et communium.” Vide jam
quàm non doctrinæ independentium abrogatio regis
PRO POPULO ANGLICANO DEFENSIO.
703
attribuenda sit. Qui suam dissimulare doctrinam non
solent, etiam potiti rerum profitentur “ numquam sibi
in animo fuisse statum regni mutare.” Quod si id
postmodùm in mentem venit, quod in animo non fuit,
cur non licebat quod rectius, et è repub. magis esse
videbatur, id potissimum sequi? præsertim cum Carolus
neque exorari, neque flecti ullo modo potuerit, ut jus-
tissimis eorum postulatis, quæque semper eadem ab
initio obtulerant, assentiretur. Quas initio de religione,
quas de jure suo sententias perversissimas tuebatur,
nobisque adeò calamitosas, in iisdem permanebat: ab
illo Carolo nihil mutatus, qui et pace et bello tanta
nobis omnibus mala intulerat. Siquid est assensus, id
et invitè facere, et quamprimùm sui juris foret, pro ni-
hilo se habiturum haud obscuris indiciis significabat :
idem apertè filius, abducta secum per eos dies classis
parte, scripto, idem ipse per literas ad suos quosdam in
urbe declarabat. Interea cum Hibernis Anglorum
hostibus immanissimis, reclamante parlamento, foedis
conditionibus occultè pacem coagmentaverat, Anglos
ad. repetita inutiliter colloquia et pacem quoties invita-
bat, toties contra eos omni studio bellum coquebat.
Hic illi quibus concredita respub. erat, quò se verte-
rent? an commissam sibi nostram omnium salutem in
mamus hosti acerbissimo traderemt ? An alterum belli
propè internecini septennium, nequid pejus ominemur,
gerendum nobis iterum, et examtlandum relinquerent?
Deus meliorem illis mentem injecit, ut prioribus de
rege non movendo cogitationibus, non enim ad decreta
pervenerant, rempub., religionem, libertatem ex ipso
illo fœdere solenni anteponeremt ; quæ quidem stante
rege constare non posse, tardiùs illi quidem quàm
oportuit, sed aliquamdo tamen viderunt. Sanè parla-
mento nunquam non liberum atque integrum esse de-
bet, ex re mata quàm optimè reipub. consulere ; neque
ita se prioribus addicere sententiis, ut religio sit in
posterum, etiamsi Deus dederit, vel sibi, vel reipub.
plus sapere. At “ Scoti non idem sentiunt, quimimo
ad filium Carolum scribentes, sacratissimum regem
appellant parentem ejus, et sacerrimum facinus quo
necatus est.” Cave plura de Scotis, quos non novisti;
nos novimus, cum eundem regem “ sacerrimum,” et
homicidam et proditorem ; facimus quo tyrannus neca-
retur, “ sacratissimum” appellarent. Nunc regi quam
dicam scripsimus, quasi parùm commodè scriptam
cavillaris, et “ quid opus fuerit ad elogium illud tyranni
addere proditoris et homicidæ titulos,” quæris : * cùm
tyranni appellatio omnia mala comprehendat:” tum
quis tyrannus sit grammaticè et glossematicè etiam
doces. Aufer mugas istas, literator, quas una Aristote-
lis definitio modò allata nullo negotio difflabit; quæque
te doctorem docebit nomen tyramni, quoniam tua nihil
interest præter nomina intelligere, posse citra pro-
ditionem et homicidium stare. Atqui “ leges Angli-
canæ non dicunt proditionis crimen regem incurrere si
procuraverit seditionem contra se vel populum suum.”
Neque dicunt, inquam, parlamentum læsæ majestatis
reum esse, si malum regem tollat, aut unquam fuisse,
cum sæpius olim sustulerit : posse autem regem suam
majestatem lædere atque minuere, immò amittere, clara
voce testantur. Quod enim in illa lege sancti Edouardi
legitur, “ nomen regis perdere,” nihil aliud est quàm
regio munere ac dignitate privari; quod accidit Chil-
perico Franciæ regi, cujus exemplum illustrandae rei
causa eodem loco lex ipsa ponit. Committi autem
summam perduellionem tam in regnum, quàm in re-
gem, non est apud nos jurisperitus qui inficias ire pos-
sit. Provoco ad ipsum, quem profers Glanvillanum.
“ Siquis aliquid fecerit in mortem regis, vel seditionem
regni, crimen proditionis esse.” Sic illa machimatio,
qua papistæ quidem parlamenti curiam cum ipsis ordi-
nibus uno ictu pulveris mitrati in auras disjicere
parabant, non in regem solum, sed in parlamentum et
regnum, ab ipso Jacobo et utraque ordinum domo
“ summa proditio '° judicata est. Quid plura attinet
in re tam evidenti, quæ tamen facilè possem, statuta
nostra allegare ? cùm ridiculum planè sit et ratione
ipsa abhorrens, committi perduellionem in regem
posse, in populum non posse, propter quem et cujus
gratia, cujus, ut ita dicam, bona venia, rex est id
quod est. Frustra igitur tot statuta nostra deblateras,
frustra in vetustis legum Anglicarum libris exerces te
atque volutas ; ad quas vel ratas vel irritas habendas
parlamenti authoritas semper valuit ; cujus etiam so-
lius est, quid sit perduellio, quid laesa majestas, inter-
pretari : quam majestatem nunquam sic à populo in
regem transiisse, ut non multo celsior atque angustior
in parlamento conspiciatur, jam sæpiùs ostendi. Te
verò vappam et circulatorem Gallum jura nostra im-
terpretantem quis ferat ? Vos verò Anglorum per-
fugæ, tot episcopi, doctores, jurisconsulti, qui literaturam
omnem et eruditionem vobiscum ex Anglia aufugisse
prædicatis, adeone ex vestrùm numero nullus causam
regiam atque suam defendere satis strenuè satisque
latinè sciebat, gentibusque exteris dijudicandam expo-
mere, ut cerebrosus iste et crumenipeta Gallus mercede
accersendus in partes necessariò esset, qui regis inopis,
tot doctorum et sacerdotum infantia stipati, patrocinium
susciperet? magna, mihi credite, infamia etiam hoc
nomine apud exteras nationes flagrabitis ; et meritò
vos utique cecidisse causa omnes existimabunt, quam
ne verbis quidem, nedum armis aut virtute sustinere
valuistis. Sed ad te redeo, vir bone, dicendi perite, si
tute modò ad te rediisti; nam sternentem te tam prope
finem et de “ morte” voluntaria nescio quid abs re
somniantem offendo ; tum statim negas “ cadere in
regem suæ mentis compotem, ut populum seditionibus
distrahat, exercitus suos hostibus debellandos tradat, ut
factiones contra se suscitet.” Quæ omnia cum et alii
multi reges, et Carolus ipse fecerit, dubitare non potes,
præsertim Stoicus, quin ut omnes improbi, sic omnes
quoque tyramni prorsùs insaniant. Flaccum audi.
Quem mala stultitia, et quæcumque inscitia veri
Coecum agit, insanum Chrysippi porticus et grex
Autumat, hæc populos, hæc magnos formula reges,
Excepto sapiente, tenet.——
Si igitur insani cujuspiam facti crimen à rege Carolo
amovere cupis, debebis improbitatem ab eo priùs amo-
vere quàm insaniam. At enim “ rex non potuit pro-
ditionem in eos committere, qui vassalli ipsius et sub-
jecti fuere.” Primùm, cùm æquè atque ulla gens
704
PRO POPULO ANGLICANO DEFENSIO.
homimum liberi simus, nullum barbarum morem fraudi
nobis esse patiemur: fac deinde “ vassalos” fuisse mos
regis, ne sic quidem tyrannum perferre dominum tene-
mur. Omnis ea subjectio, ut ipsæ leges mostræ loquum-
tur, “ honesto et utili ” definita est. Leg. Hem. 1. c.
55. Fidem eam esse ** nutuam,” jurisconsulti omnes
tradumt, si dominus “ ligeam,” quod aiunt, “ defen-
sionem” præstiterit : sin è contrario nimiùm sævus
fuerit, aut atrocem aliquam injuriam intulerit, “ dis-
solvi et penitùs extingui omnem homagii connexio-
nem.” Haec ipsa Braetoni verba et Fletæ sunt. Unde
vassallum est ubi lex ipsa in dominum armat; cumque
singulari certamine à vassalo, si acciderit, interimen-
dum tradit. Idem si universæ civitati aut mationi in
tyrannum nom licuerit, deterior liberorum hominum con-
ditio quàm servorum erit. Nunc Caroli homicidia alio-
rum regum partim homicidiis, partim justè factis excu-
sare contend.s. De laniena Hiberniensi “remittis lecto-
rem ad opus illud regium Iconis Basilicæ ;” et ego te
remitto ad Iconoclastem. “Captam Rupellam,” proditos
Rupellenses, “ ostentatam potiùs quàm datam opem,”
imputari Carolo non vis: imputetur necme meritò, non
habeo dicere ; satis superque ab eo peccatum est domi,
me externa persequi curem : ommes interim ecclesias
protestantium, quotquot ullo tempore se contra leges
religionis hostes armis defenderunt, eodem nomine re-
bellionis dammas. Quam contumeliam ab alummo suo
sibi illatam quanti intersit ad disciplinam ecclesias-
ticam, suamque tuemdam integritatem, mon negligere,
secum ipsi cogitent : nos etiam Anglos ea expeditione
proditos acerbè tulimus. Qui enim regnum Angliæ in
tyrannidem convertere diu meditatus erat, non, nisi
extincto priùs militari civium robore ac flore, cogitata
perficere se posse arbitrabatur. Aliud erat crimen
regis quod ex jurejurando à regibus regnum capes-
sentibus dari solito verba quædam ejus jussu erasa
fuerint, antequam jurasset. O facimus indignum et
execrandum ! impium qui fecit, quid dicam qui de-
fendit ? nam quae potuit, per Deum immortalem, quae
perfidia, aut juris violatio esse major ? quid illi sanc-
tius post sacratissima religionis mysteria illo jurejuran-
do esse debuit ? Quis quæso sceleratior, isne qui, in
legem peccat, an qui, secum legem ipsam ut peccare fa-
ciat, dat operam ? aut demique ipsam legem tollit, me
peccasse videatur ? Agedum, jus hoc religiosissimè ju-
randum rex iste violavit ; sed ne palàm tamen violasse
videretur, turpissimo quodam adulterio per dolum cor-
rupit; et ne pejerasse diceretur, jus ipsum jurandum in
perjurium vertit. Quid aliud potuit sperari, nisi injus-
tissimè, versutissimè, atque infelicissimè regnaturum'
esse eum, qui ab injuria tam detestanda auspicatus
regnum est ; jusque illud primum adulterare auderet,
quod solum impedimento sibi fore, ne jura omnia per-
verteret, putebat. At enim “ sacramentum * illud,
sic enim defendis, “ non magis obligare reges potest,
quàm leges; legibus autem se devinciri velle præ se
ferunt, et secundùm eas vivere, cùm tamen re vera iis
soluti sint.” Quemquamme tam sacrilego tamque im-
cesto ore esse, ut sacramentum religiosissimum, tactis
Evangeliis datum, quasi per se leviculum, solvi sine
causa posse asserat? Te verò, scelus atque portentum,
ipse Carolus redarguit; qui cùm sacramentum illud
mom esse per se leve quidpiam existimaret, idcircò ejus
religionem aut subterfugere, aut fallacia quavis eludere
satius duxit, quàm apertè violare ; et corruptor jusju-
ramdi hujus et falsarius esse maluit, quàm manifestè
perjurus. At verò “ jurat quidem rex populo suo, ut
populus vicissim regi, sed populus jurat regi fidelita-
tem, non populo rex.” Lepidum sanè hominis com-
mentum ! annon qui juratus promittit atque spondet, se
quidpiam fideliter præstiturum, fidem suam iis obligat,
qui jusjurandum ab eo exigunt? Rex sanè omnis quoad
præstanda ea qute promittit, et “ fidelitatem,” et “ ob-
sequium,” et “ obedientiam populo” jurat. Hic ad
Gulielmum Conquæstorem recurris, qui ipse, non quod
sibi collibitum erat, sed quod populus ab eo et mag-
mates postulabant, id omne haud semel jurare est coac-
tus se præstiturum. Quòd si multi reges “ coronam”
solemni ritu mon “ accipiunt,” et proinde non jurant, et
tamem regmant, idem de populo responderi potest; cu-
jus pars magna fidelitatem numquam juravit. Si rex
ob eam causam solutus erit, erit et populus. Quæ
autem pars populi jurabat, mon regi solùm, sed regno
et legibus jurabat, à quibus rex factus est, et quidem
eatenus tantùm regi, quoad is leges observaret, “ quas
vulgus,” id est, communitas sive plebeius ordo “elege-
rit.” Stultior enim sit, qui legum mostrarum loquelam
ad puriorem semper latimitatem exigere velit. Hanc
clausulam, “ quis vulgus elegerit,” Carolus, antequam
coromam acciperet, ex formula juramemti regii eraden-
dam curavit. At, imquis, “ sine regis assensu nullas
leges vulgus elegerit ;” eoque nomine duo statuta
citas, unum anni xxxvii. Hem. 6. c. xv. alterum “ de-
cimo-tertio” Edouardi iv. c. viii. Tantum autem abest,
quo minùs eorum alterutrum in libro statutorum usquam
appareat, ut annis abs te citatis, meque rex iste neque
ille ullum omninò statutum promulgaverit. Tu fidem
jam perfugarum, statuta tibi dictantium, elusus que-
rere; dum alii tuam admirantur impudentiam simul et
vanitatem, quem non pudebat iis in libris versatissimum
videri velle, quos inspexisse nunquam, me vidisse qui-
dem tam facilè argueris. Clausulam autem istam jus-
jurandi, quam tu perfricti oris balatro “commentitiam”
audes dicere, “ regis,” inquis, “ defensores fieri posse
aiunt,” ut in aliquot antiquis exemplaribus extiterit,
“ sed in desuetudinem abiise, quòd commodam signi-
ficationem non haberet. Verùm ob id ipsum majores
nostri illam clausulam in hoc regis jurejurando posuere,
ut significationem tyrannidi semper non commodam
haberet. In desuetudinem autem si abierat, quod ta-
men falsissimum est, quis neget multò meliori jure
revocamdam fuisse ? frustra, si te audiam : quippe ** im
regibus” mos ille “ jurandi, qui hodie receptus est,
cæremonialis est tantùm.” Atqui rex, cùm episcopos
aboleri oportuit, per illud jusjurandum non licere sibi
causafus est. Atque ita sacramentum illud sanctissi-
mum, quoties ex usu est regis, vel solidum quiddam et
firmum erit, vel inane tantùm et “ cæremoniale.” Quod
ego vos obtestor, Angli, etiam atque etiam animadver-
tatis : et qualem estis regem habituri, si redierit, vobis-
cum reputetis: non enim in mentem venisset umquam
huic grammatico sceleroso et extrameo de jure regis
PRO POPULO ANGLICANO DEFENSIO.
705
Anglorum velle scribere, aut posse, nisi Carolus ille
extorris, disciplina patria imbutus, umaque illi moni-
tores ejus profligatissimi, quid hac de re scribi vellent
omni studio suggessissent. Dictabant huic illi, “ totum
parlamentum proditionis in regem insimulari posse,”
vel ob hoc solum, quòd “ sine assensu regis declaravit
omnes esse proditores qui arma contra parlamentum
Angliæ sumpserunt; vassallum scilicet regis esse par-
lamentum ;*' jusjurandum verò regium “ cæremoniale
tantùm ” esse, quidni * vassallum ” etiam ? Ita neque
Jegum ulla sanctitas, neque sacramenti ulla fides, aut
religio, quicquam valebit ad cohibendam à vita atque
fortunis vestrùm omnium vel libidinem effrænati regis,
vel ultionem exacerbati : qui ita institutus à pueritia est,
ut leges et religionem, ipsam denique fidem vassallari
sibi, et servire suis libitis arbitretur debere. Quantò
præstabilius esset, vobisque dignius, si opes, si liber-
tatem, si pacem, si imperium vultis, à virtute, indus-
tria, prudentia, fortitudine vestra indubitanter petere
hæc omnia, quàm sub regio dominatu incassùm spe-
rare ? Certè qui sine rege ac domino parari hæc posse
non putant, dici non potest, quàm abjectè, quàm mom
honestè, non dico quàm indignè, de se ipsi statuant:
quid enim aliud nisi se inertes, imbecillos, mentis in-
opes atque consilii, corpore atque animo ad servitium
natos, fatentur esse ? Et servitus quidem omnis homini
ingemuo turpis est ; vobis autem post libertatem Deo
vindice, vestroque marte recuperatam, post tot fortia
facinora, et exemplum in regem potentissimum tam
memorabile editum, velle rursus ad servitutem, etiam
præter fatum, redire, non modò turpissimum, sed et
impium erit, et sceleratum : parque vestrum scelus il-
lorum sceleri erit, qui, servitutis olim Ægyptiacæ desi-
derio capti, multis tandem cladibus ac variis divinitùs
absumpti, liberatori Deo poenas tam servilis animi de-
dere. Quid tu interim, servitutis conciliator? “ Potuit,”
inquis, “ rex proditionis et delictorum aliorum gratiam
facere ; quod satis evincit legibus eum solutum fuisse."
Proditionis quidem, non quæ in regnum, sed quæ in
se commissa erat, poterat rex, ut quivis alius, gratiam
facere : poterat et quorundam aliorum fortasse malefi-
ciorum, quamquam non id semper: an ideò qui malefi-
cum servandi nonnunquam jus quoddam habet, idem
continuò omnes bonos perdendi jus ullum habebit ?
Citatus in curiam, eamque inferiorem, respondere non
tenetur, misi per procuratorem, rex, uti nec de populo
quidemi ullus; an ideo in parlamentum citatus ab uni-
versis mon veniet? non ipse respondebit ? “ Comari”
nos, ais, “ Batavorum exemplo factum mostrum tueri,”
atque himc, stipendio scilicet metuens, quo te Batavi
lu^m atque pestem alunt, ne Anglos infamando etiam
Batavos altores tuos infamasse videaris, demonstrare
cupis quàm “dissimile sit quod hi et quod illi fecerunt.”
Quam ego collationem tuam, quamquam in ea quædam
sunt falsissima, alia, ne salario fortasse tuo non satis
litares, palpum olent, omittam. Negant enim Angli
opus sibi esse, ut exterorum quorumvis exemplo facta
sua tueantur. Habent leges, quas secuti sunt, patrias,
hac in parte, sicubi terrarum aliæ sunt, optimas: habent
quos imitentur, majores suos, viros fortissimos, qui im-
moderatis regum imperiis mumquam cessere ; multcs
cornm intolerantiùs se gerentes per supplicium necavere.
In libertate sunt mati, sibi sufficiunt, quas volunt leges
possunt sibi ferre; unam præ cæteris colunt antiquissi-
mam, à natura ipsa latam, quæ omnes leges, jus omne
atque imperium civile, non ad regum libidinem, sed ad
bonorum maximè civium salutem refert. Jam præter
quisquilias et rudera superiorum capitum restare nihil
video ; quorum quidem acervum cum satis magnum in
fine congesseris, nescio quid aliud tibi volueris, nisi
hujus tuae fabricae ruinam quasi præsagire. Tandem
aliqnando post immensam loquacitatem rivos claudis;
“ Deum testatiis, te hanc causam tuendam suscepisse,
non tantùm quia rogatus, sed quia meliorem nullam te
potuisse defendere, conscientia tibi suggessit.” Roga-
tus tu in res nostras tibi aliemissimas, mobis non rogan-
tibus, te interponas ? Tu populi Anglicami summos
magistratus pro authoritate proque imperio sibi com-
misso quod suum munus est in sua ditione agentes,
nulla injuria lacessitus (neque enim natum te esse
sciebant) indignissimis verborum comtumeliis laceres,
libroque infami edito proscindas ? A quo autem roga-
tus? An ab uxore, credo, quæ jus regium, ut perhibent,
in te exercet ; quæque tibi, quoties libet, ut illa Ful-
via, cujus, ex epigrammate obscoeno, centones modò
consuisti (p. 320.) ** aut ° scribe “ aut pugnemus” ait:
unde tu, me signa caneremt, scribere malebas. Am ro-
gatus fortasse à Carolo minore, et perditissimo illo
peregrinantium aulicorum grege, quasi alter Balaamus
ab altero Balacco rege accersitus, ut jacentem regis
causam, et malè pugnando amissam maledicendo eri-
gere dignarere ? Sic sanè fieri potuit ; nisi quod hoc
ferè interfuit ; ille enim vir sagax asino insidens locu-
tuleio ad execrandum venit ; tu asinus loquacissimus
insessus à fœmina, et sematis, quos vulneraveras, epis-
coporum capitibus obsitus, apocalypticæ illius bestiæ
parvam quamdam imaginem exprimere videris. Sed
ferunt pœnituisse te hujus libri, pòst paulò quàm
scripsisses. Benè profectò habet ; tuam itaque ut tes-
tere omnibus pœnitentiam, nihil tibi priùs faciemdum
erit, quàm ut pro libro tam longo unam tantummodò
literam adhuc longam ex te facias. Sic emim pœnituit
Iscariotem illum Judam, cui similis es; idque movit puer
Carolus, qui crumenam idcircò tibi, insigne illud Judæ
proditoris, dono misit, quòd primùm audierat, et postmo-
dùm sciebat, te apostatam esse et diabolum. Judas ille
Christum prodidit, tu Christi ecclesiam; episcopos Amti-
christos esse docueras, ad eos defecisti: quos Imferis dam-
naveras, eorum causam suscepisti: Christus omnes homi-
mes liberavit, tu omnes ad servitutem redigere conatus
es: ne dubita, postquàm in Deum, in ecclesiam, in
omne genus hominum tam impius fuisti, quiu te etiam
idem exitus maneat, ut desperatione magis quam poeni-
tentia ductus, tuique pertæsus, ab infelici tamdem
arbore pendens, sicut et par ille tuus olim, medius cre-
pes; illamque malefidam et fallacem conscientiam, bo-
norum et sanctorum insectatricem, ad destinatas tibi
quandoque supplicii sedes præmittas. Hactemus, quod
imitio institueram ut meorum civium facta egregia con-
tra insamam et lividissimam furentis sophistæ rabiem,
et domi et foris defenderem, jusque populi commune
| ab injusto regum dominatu assererem, non id quidem
706
PRO POPULO ANGLICANO DEFENSIO.
regum odio, sed tyrannorum, Deo bene juvante videor
jam mihi absolvisse : neque ullum sine responso vel ar-
gumentum, vel exemplum, vel testimonium ab adver-
sario allatum sciens prætermisi, quod quidem firmitatis
in se quidquam, aut probationis vim ullam habere vide-
retur ; im alteram fortasse partem culpæ propior, quòd
sæpiusculè ineptiis quoque ejus, et argutiis tritissimis,
quasi argumentis, respondendo, id iis tribuisse videar,
quo dignæ mom erant. Unum restat, et fortasse maxi-
mum, ut vos quoque, ô cives, adversarium hunc vestrum
ipsi refutetis ; quod nulla alia ratione video posse fieri,
nisi omnium maledicta vestris optimè factis exuperare
perpetuò contendatis. Vota vestra et preces ardentis-
simas Deus, cum servitutis haud uno genere oppressi,
ad eum confugistis, benignè exaudiit. Quæ duo in
vita hominum mala sanè maxima sunt, et virtuti dam-
nosissima, tyrannis et superstitio, iis vos gentium pri-
mos gloriosè liberavit ; eam animi magnitudinem vo-
bis injecit, ut devictum armis vestris et dedititium re-
gem judicio inclyto judicare, et condemnatum punire,
primi mortalium non dubitaretis. Post hoc facinus
tam illustre, nihil humile aut angustum, nihil non mag-
num atque excelsum et cogitare et facere debebitis.
Quam laudem ut assequamini, hac sola incedendum
est via, si ut hostes bello domuistis, ita ambitionem,
avaritiam, opes, et secundarum rerum corruptelas,
quæ subigunt cæteras gentes hominum, ostenderitis
posse vos etiam inermes media in pace omnium morta-
lium fortissimè debellare : si, quam in repellenda ser-
vitute fortitudinem præstitistis, eam in libertate con-
servanda justitiam, temperantiam, moderationem præ-
stiteritis. His solis argumentis et testimoniis evincere
potestis, non esse vos illos, quos hic probris insequitur,
“ Perduelles, latrones, sicarios, parricidas, famaticos ; ”
non vos ambitionis aut alieni invadendi studio, mon se-
ditione, aut pravis ullis cupiditatibus, non amentia aut
furore percitos, regem trucidasse, sed amore libertatis,
religionis, justitiæ, honestatis, patriæ denique chari-
tate accensos, tyrannum pumiisse. Sin autem, quod,
bone Deus, ne unquam siveris, aliter in animum im-
duxeritis, si im bello fortes, in pace turpes eritis, qui
manifestum sensistis numen vobis tam propitium, hos-
tibus tam grave, neque exemplo tam insigni et memo-
rando ante oculos posito, Deum vereri, et justitiam co-
lere didiceritis ; quod ad me attimet, concedam sanè et
fatebor, neque enim potero megare, ea omnia, quæ
nunc maledici et mendaces de vobis pessimè aut lo-
quuntur aut sentiunt, vera esse : vosque multò iratio-
rem brevi tempore experturi estis Deum, quàm aut in-
fensum inimici vestri, aut vos benignum et faventem
et paternum, præ cæteris omnibus terrarum orbis gen-
tibus hodiernis, experti estis.
IDEFENSIO SECUNDA PRO POPULO ANGLICANO.
CONTRA
INFAMEM LIBELLUM ANONYMUM,
cu 1 TITULUs,
REGII SANGUINIS CLAMOR AD COELUM, ADVERSUS PARRICIDAS ANGLICANOS.
[fiRst Published 1654.]
QUod in omni vita hominum, omnique genere officii
est primum, ut grati semper erga Deum, ejusque me-
mores beneficiorum simus, tum præsertim, si qua supra
spem votumque evenerint, uti, ob ea, singulares atque
solemnes gratias quamprimùm referamus, id mihi nunc
in ipso limine orationis tribus potissimùm de causis
video esse faciendum. Primùm iis me natum tempori-
bus patriæ, quibus civium virtus eximia, et supergressa
omnes majorum laudes magnitudo animi atque con-
stantia, obtestata priùs Deum, eundemque sequuta
manifestissimum ducem, editis post orbem conditum
exemplis factisque fortissimis, et gravi dominatione
rempublicam, et indignissima servitute religionem libe-
ravit. Deinde, cùm extitissent subitò multi, qui, ut
est ferè ingenium vulgi, egregiè facta odiosè crimina-
rentur, unusque, præ cæteris, literatorio fastu, et con-
cepta de se gregalium suorum opinione inflatus ac
fidens, conscripto in mos libro admodum infani, tyran-
morum omnium patrocinium nefariè suscepisset, me
potiùs quàm alium quemvis, neque tanti nominis ad-
versario, neque tantis rebus dicendis visum imparem,
ab ipsis patriæ liberatoribus has partes accepisse com-
muni omnium consensu ultrò delatas, ut causam et
populi Anglicani, et ipsius adeò libertatis, siquis un-
quam alius, publicè defenderem. Postremò, in re tam
ardua et expectationis plena, neque civium meorum de
me sive spem, sive judicium illud fefellisse, neque ex-
terorum quamplurimis cùm doctis viris, tum rerum
peritis non satisfecisse ; adversarium verò, quamvis au-
dacissimum, ita profligasse, ut animo simul et existi-
matione fracta cederet ; triennioque toto, quo postea
vixit, multa licèt minatus ac fremens, nullam tamen
ampliùs molestiam nobis exhiberet, nisi quòd vilissi-
morum quorumdam hominum obscuram operam subsidio
sibi corrogaret, et laudatores nescio quos ineptos atque
immodicos, ad inopinatam ac recentem infamiam, siquo
modo posset, sarciendam subornaret; quod statim pate-
bit. : Hæc ego divinitus mihi accidisse bona, et magna
quidem ratus, appositissi; denique non modò ad' per-
Z
solvendas numini ex debito gratias, sed ad auspicium
quoque optimum instituti operis capiendum, cum vene-
ratione, ut facio, imprimis commemoranda esse duxi.
Nam quis est qui patriæ decora non arbitretur sua ?
quid patriæ cujusquam esse magis decori aut gloriæ
potest, quàm libertas, non civili tantùm vitæ, sed divino
etiam cultui restituta ? quæ gens, quæ civitas, aut fe-
liciùs aut fortiùs hanc sibi utrobique peperit? Etenim
fortitudo, cùm non tota in bello atque armis eniteat,
sed contra omnes æquè formidines diffundat vim suam
atqne intrepida sit, Græci quidem illi, quos maximè
admiramur, et Romani, ad tollendos ex civitatibus ty-
rannos nullam ferè virtutem, præter studium libertatis,
expedita arma, promptasque manus attulere ; cætera
omnia in proclivi, inter laudes omnium et plausus, et
læta omnia, peragebant ; nec tam ad discrimen et am-
biguum facinus quàm ad certamen virtutis gloriosissi-
mum atque pulcherrimum, ad præmia denique et coro-
nas spemque immortalitatis certissimam properabant.
Nondum enim tyrannis res sacra erat ; nondum tyranmi,
Christi scilicet proreges atque vicarii repentè facti, cùm
benevolentia non possent ; cæca vulgi superstitione
sese munierant : nondum clericorum malis artibus
.attonita plebs, ad barbariem ea foediorem, quæ stoli-
dissimos mortalium infamat Indos, degeneraverat. Illi
enim noxios sibi dæmonas, quos abigere non possunt,
pro diis colunt; hæc tyrannos nè liceret tollere cùm
posset, impotentissimos creabat in se deos ; et humani
gemeris pestes in suam perniciem consecrabat. At con-
tra has omnes traditarum diu opinionum, religionum,
calumniarum, atque terrorum densissimas acies, hoste
ipso vehementiùs ab aliis formidatas, decertandum An-
glis erat. Quæ omnia, edocti meliùs, et proculdubio
coelitus imbuti, tanta causæ fiducia, tanta animorum
firmitate ac virtute superarunt, ut cùm numero populus
sanè magnus essent, animis tamen tam erectis tamque
excelsis, vulgus esse desierint; Britanniaque ipsa post-
hac, quæ tyrannorum terra ferax dicta olim est, munc
liberatorum longè feracior, perpetua sæculorum om-
708
DEFENSIO SECUNDA PRO POPULO ANGLICANO.
nium celebratione dici meruerit. Quos mom legum
contemptus aut violatio in effrænatam licentiam effudit;
non virtutis et gloriæ falsa species, aut stulta veterum
aemulatio inani momine libertatis incendit, sed immo-
centia vitæ, morumque sanctitas rectum atque solum
iter ad libertatem veram docuit, legum et religionis
justissima defensio necessariò armavit. Atque illi qui-
dem Deo perinde confisi, servitutem honestissimis armis
pepulere : cujus laudis etsi mullam partem mihi ven-
dico, à reprehensione tamen vel timiditatis vel ignaviæ,
siqua infertur, facilè me tueor. Neque enim militiæ
labores et pericula sic defugi, ut mon alia ratione, et
operam, multò utiliorem, nec minore cum periculo meis
civibus navarim, et animum dubiis in rebus neque de-
missum unquam, neque ullius invidiæ, vel etiam mortis
plus aequo metuentem præstiterim. Nam cùm aù ado-
lescentulo humanioribus essem studiis, ut qui maximè
deditus, et ingemio semper quàm corpore validior, post-
habita castrensi opera, qua me gregarius quilibet ro-
bustior facilè superasset, ad ea me contuli, quibus plus
potui ; ut parte mei meliore ac potiore, si saperem, non
deteriore, ad rationes patriæ, causamque hanc præstan-
tissimam, quamtum maximè possem momentum acce-
derem. Sic itaque existimabam, si illos Deus res ge-
rere tam praeclaras voluit, esse itidem alios à quibus
gestas dici pro dignitate atque ornari, et defensam ar-
mis veritatem, ratione etiam, (quod unicum est præsi-
dium verè ac propriè humanum,) defendi voluerit.
Unde est, ut dum illos invictos acie viros admiror, de
mea interim provincia non querar ; immo mihi gratuler,
et gratias insuper largitori n.unerum cœlesti iterum
summas agam obtigisse talem, ut aliis invidenda multò
magis, quàm mihi ullo modo poenitentia videatur. Et
me quidem nemini vel infimo libens confero; nec ver-
bum de me ullum insolentius facio ; ad causam verò
omnium mobilissimam, ac celeberrimam, et hoc simul
defensores ipsos defendendi munus ornatissimum ip-
sorum mihi suffragiis attributum atque judiciis, quoties
animum refero, fateor me mihi vix temperare, quin
altius atque audentiùs quàm pro exordii ratione in-
surgam ; et grandius quiddam, quod eloqui possim,
quæram : quandoquidem oratores illos antiquos et in-
signes, quantum ego ab illis non dicendi solùm sed et
loquendi facultate, (in extranea praesertim, qua utor
necessariò, lingua, et persæpe mihi nequaquam satis-
facio,) haud dubiè vincor, tantùm omnes omnium æta-
tum, materiæ nobilitate et argumento vincam. Quod
ct rei tantam expectationem ac celebritatem adjecit, ut
jam ipse me sentiam non in foro aut rostris, uno dum-
taxat populo, vel Romano, vel Atheniensi circumfusum;
sed attenta, et confidente quasi tota penè Europa, et
judicium ferente, ad universos quacuº que gravissi-
morum hominum, urbium, gentium, consessus atque
conventus, et priore defensione, dixisse, et hac rursus
dicturum. Jam videor mihi, ingressus iter, transma-
rinos tractus et porrectas latè regiones, sublimis perlus-
trare; vultus innumeros atque ignotos, animi sensus
mecum conjunctissimos. Hinc Germanorum virile et
infestum servituti robur, inde Francorum vividi dig-
mique nomine liberales impetus, hinc Hispanorum con-
sulta virtus, Italorum inde sedata suique compos mag-
nanimitas ob oculos versatur. Quicquid uspiam libe-
rorum pectorum, quicquid ingenui, quicquid magna-
nimi aut prudens latet aut se palàm profitetur, alii tacitè
favere, alii apertè suffragari, accurrere alii et plausu
accipere, alii tamdem vero victi, dedititios se tradere.
Videor jam mihi, tantis circumseptus copiis, ab Her-
culeis usque columnis ad extremos Liberi patris terminos,
libertatem diu pulsam atque exulem, longo intervallo
domum ubique gentium reducere : et, quod Triptolemus
olim fertur, sed longè nobiliorem Cereali illa frugem
ex civitate mea gentibus importare ; restitutum nempe
civilem liberumque vitæ cultum, per urbes, per regna,
perque nationes disseminare. Sed nec ignotus planè, nec
fortasse non gratus rursum advenero; si sum idem, qui
pugnacissimum tyrannorum satellitem, et opinione ple-
rorumque, et sui fiducia insuperabilem antea creditum,
cùm nos nostrasque acies contumeliosè lacesseret, et
optimates nostri me primùm intuerentur, singulari cer-
tamime congressus, adacto convitiantis in jugulum hoc
stylo, immò suismet ipsius telis, collocavi ; et nisi velim
tot undique lectorum intelligentium calculis atque sen-
tentiis, neutiquam addictis mihi aut obnoxiis diffidere
prorsus et derogare, opima spolia retuli. Hæc sime ulla
vaniloquentia ità esse re vera, vel illud maximè argu-
mento esse potest, quod ego nec sine Dei nutu reor ac-
cidisse, quòd, cùm à regina Suedorum serenissima, qua
vivit opinor nemo, aut olim vixit, vel optimarum artium,
vel doctorum hominum studiosior, honorificè samè esset
invitatus, venissetque et Salmasius et Salmasia, (uter
enim horum is erat, uxoris palàm dominatus cum fama
tum domi incertum admodu`m reddiderat,) quo in loco
peregrinus magno in honore degebat, ibi eum nostra
defensio nihil tale metuentem occupavit. Qua statim
à pluribus perlecta, regina quidem, quæ et ipsa cum
primis perlegerat, de sua pristima benignitate ac muni-
ficentia, id solum spectans quod se dignum erat, in hos-
pitem nihil remisit: de cætero, si audita sæpius et quæ
arcana non sunt, licet referre, tanta animorum facta
subitò mutatio est, ut qui nudiustertius summa gratia
floruerat, numc penè obsolesceret ; nec ità multò post
discedens cum bona venia hoc unum in dubio permul-
tis relinqueret, honoratiorne advenerit, an contemptior
abierit. Sed neque aliis in locis detrimentum levius
fecisse famæ satis constat. Verùm hæc omnia non
eò attuli; quò me cuiquam venditarem, neque enim est
opus ; sed quò id dumtaxat latiùs ostenderem, quod
initio institui, quas ob causas, et quàm non leves, ab
agendis Deo Optimo Maximo gratiis potissimùm sim
exorsus ; mihique proœmium hoc fore honestissimum
atque pulcherrimum, in quo præcipuè, tot argumen-
tis enumeratis, demonstrare liceat, me, haud exper-
tem licèt calamitatum humanarum, me tamem, resque
meas Deo curæ esse ; me maximis prope de rebus, et
ad patriæ necessaria tempora accommodatis, et civilis
vitæ religionisque ex usu maximè futuris, non uno pro
populo, medum uno pro reo, sed pro universo potiùs
hominum genere, contra humanæ libertatis hostes,
quasi in communi omnium gentium et frequentissimo
concursu disserentem, divino favore et auxilio adjutum
atque auctum : quo ego majus aut gloriosius quicquam
mihi tribuere, meque possim ullo tempore meque cu-
CONTRA INFAMEM LIBELLUM ANONYMUM.
709
piam. Eundem proinde immortalem Deum oro, ut con-
sueta ejus ope ac benignitate sola fretus, qua integri-
tate, diligentia, fide, felicitate etiam, fortissimè justis-
simeque simul facta haud ità pridem defendi, eadem,
vel ea amplius, authores ipsos, meque tantis viris igno-
miniæ causa, non honoris additum ab immeritis oppro-
briis, atque calumniis vindicare sufficiam. Quòd si est,
qui contemni hæc satiùs arbitretur potuisse, fateor
equidem, si apud eos qui nos rectè nôssent haec spar-
gerentur: cæteris qua tandem ratiome constabit non
esse verum quicquid adversarius noster est mentitus ?
cùm autem, data, quæ par est, opera, à nobis erit, ut
quo præcessit calumnia, eodem vindex quoque veritas
sequatur, et illos de nobis perperam sentire opinor de-
situros, et istum fortasse mendaciorum pudebit: si non
puduerit, tum demùm, satiùs contempserimus. Huic
interea responsum pro meritis celeriùs expedivissem,
nisi se falsis rumoribus hactenus muniisset ; dum sœ-
pius denuntiaret, an incudem sudare Salmasium, nova
volumina in nos fabricare, jam jamque editurum : ex
quo hoc solum est consequutus, ut maledicentiæ pœnas
aliquanto seriùs daret: expectandum enim duxi potiùs,
ut potiori viribus adversario, integrum me servarem.
Sed cum Salmasio debellatum jam puto mihi esse, ut-
pote mortuo ; et quemadmodum mortuo, non dicam :
non enim ut ille mihi cæcitatem, sic ego illi mortem
vitio vertam. Quanquam sunt, qui mos etiam necis
ejus reos faciunt, illosque nostros nimis acriter strictos
aculeos ; quos dum repugnando altiùs sibi infixit, dum
quod præ manibus habebat opus, vidit spissiùs proce-
dere, tempus responsionis abiisse, operis gratiam per-
iisse, recordatione amissæ famæ, existimationis, prin-
cipum denique favoris, ob rem regiam malè defensam,
erga se imminuti, triennali tamdem moestitia, et amimi
magis ægritudine, quàm morbo confectum obiisse. Ut-
cumque sit, si iterum cum hoste satis mihi cognito, si
bella etiam posthuma gerenda sunt, cujus feroces ac
strenuos impetus facilè sustinui, ejus languentes et
moribundos conatus non est ut reformidem.
Nunc verò ad hoc quicquid est hominis, qui nos in-
clamat, aliquando veniamus : clamorem quidem audio,
non regii sanguinis, ut prae se fert titulus, sed obscuri
cujuspiam nebulonis; clamantem enim nusquam repe-
rio. Eho ! quis es? homone an nemo ? hominum certè
infimi, nè mancipia quidem, sine nomine sunt. Sem-
perne ergò mihi cum anonymis res erit ? at verò hi re-
gios haberi se vel maximè volunt : miror si regibus sic
persuaserint. Regum sequaccs atque amicos regum
non pudet ; quo pacto igitur sunt isti regibus amici?
non dant munera ; immo verò libentiùs multò accipi-
umt: res suas non impendunt, qui ne nomina qui-
dem causæ regiæ dare audent : quid ergò ? verba
dant, sed nec verba gratis dare suis regibus, vel satis
benevoli in animum inducunt, vel satis constantes no-
mine adscripto audent. Me quidem, ό divδρες άνόνυμοι,
fas enim sit Græcè quos Latinè quid nominem non re-
perio, me inquam, cùm vester ille Claudius de jure re-
gio, materia sanè gratiosissima, sine nomine tamen
orsus esset scribere, et exemplo possem uti, usque adeò
neque mei, neque causæ puditum est, ut ad rem tantam
accedere, nisi nomen palàm professus, turpe ducerem.
Quid ego in republica palàm videor contra reges, cur
vos in regno, vel regum sub patrocinio, non nisi furtim
et clanculum, contra rempublicam audetis? cur in tuto
pavidi, cur in luce nocturni, summam potentiam, sum-
mam gratiam, timiditate invidiosa planè atque suspecta
obscuratis? satisne vobis ut præsidii sit in regibus vere-
mini? sic tecti, sic obvoluti non vos meherculè ad
asserendum jus regium defensores, sed ad ærarium
compilamdum fures potiùs videmini venisse. Equidem
quod sum, profiteor ; quod regibus nego jus esse, vcl
in regno quovis legitimo pernegare ausim : nemo me
laeserit m;onarcha, quin se priùs damnet, tyrannum fas-
sus. Si tyrannos insector, quid hoc ad reges? quos
ego à tyrannis longissimè sejungo. Quantum à viro
malo distat vir bonus, tantundem à tyranno discrepare
regem contendo : unde efficitur, tyrannum non modò
non esse regem, sed regi quidem adversissimum semper
imminere. Et sanè qui monumenta rerum percurrit,
plures à tyrannis quàm à populo oppressos reges, atque
sublatos inveniet. Qui igitur tollendos affirmat tyran-
nos, non reges, sed inimicissimos regibus, immo infes-
tissimos regum hostes tollendos affirmat. Vos contrà,
quod regibus jus datis, ut qnicquid libeat jus sit, non
est jus, sed injuria, sed scelus, sed ipsa pernicies: ve-
memato isto munere, non salutari, quos supra omnem
vim atque periculum fore prædicatis, eos ipsi occiditis;
regem et tyrannum idem esse, siquidem idem utrobique
jus est, statuitis. Nam si isto suo jure, rex nom utitur
(utetur autem mumquam quamdiu rex, non tyrannus,
erit) non hoc regi, sed viro assignandum est. Quid
autem absurdius illo jure regio fingi queat, quo si quis
utatur, quoties rex vult esse, toties esse vir bonus de-
sinat; quoties vir esse bonus maluerit, toties se arguerit
mom esse regem ? quo quid in reges dici comtumeliosius
potest? Hoc jus qui docet, ipse sit oportet injustissi-
mus, atque omnium pessimus : pejor autem quo pacto
fiat, quàm si quales format ac fingit alios, talis ipse
imprimis fuerit ? Quòd si omnis vir bonus, ut anti-
quorum secta quædam magnificè sanè philosophatur,
est rex, pari ratione sequitur, omnem virum malum pro
suo quem: que modulo tyrannum esse : neque enim
magnum, nè hoc nomine intumescat, sed infimum
quiddam est tyrannus ; et quantò omnium maximus,
tantò omnium vilissimus, et maximè servilis. Alii
enim suis tantùm vitiis volentes serviunt ; hic non modò
suis, sed ministrorum etiam atque satellitum importu-
nissimis flagitiis etiam nolens cogitur servire ; et suas
quasdam tyrannides abjectissimo cuique suorum con-
cedere : tyranni igitur servorum infimi, suis serviunt
etiam servitiis. Quamobrem rectè hoc momen vel in
mimimum quemque tyrannorum pugilem, vel in hunc
etiam clamatorem poterit convenire ; qui in hac causa
tyrannica cur tam stremuè vociferetur, ex his quae dicta
sunt, quæque mox dicentur, satis liquebit: uti etiam cur
anomymus: aut enim turpiter conductus, clamorem hunc
suum regio sanguini, Salmasium sequutus, vendidit; aut
infamis doctrimæ conscientia pallens, aut vita flagitiosus
ac turpis, latere si cupit, mirum non est: aut fortassis
ità se parat, ut sicubi spem quaestüs uberiorem odoretur,
desertis quandoque regibus integrum sibi sit, ad quam-
libet etiam futuram rempublicam transfugere; mè tunc
7 10
DEFENSIO SECUNDA PRO POPULO ANGLICANO,
quidem sine exemplo magni sui Salmasii, qui affulgente
lucro captus, ab orthodoxis ad episcopos, a popularibus
ad regios, etiam senex defect. Tu igitur iste e gur-
gustio clamator, qui sis non fallis; frustra tibi ista la-
tibula quiesisti: extrahére mihi crede, neque Plutonis
ista galea diutius te teget: dejerabis, quoad vixeris, me
aut ctecum non esse, aut tibi saltem non connivere. Quis
igitur sit, quod genus hominis, qua spe adductus, qui-
bus illecebris, quibus lenociniis delimitus, ad hanc cau-
sam regiam accesserit, (Milesia propemodum, aut
Baiana fabula est,) si vacat nunc audite.
Est “Morus” quidam, partim Scotus, partim Gallus;
në tota hominis inſamia, gens una, aut regio minium
laboraret; homo improbus, et cum aliorum, tum, quod
gravissimum est, amicorum, quos ex intimis inimicissi-
mos sibi fecit, testimoniis quamplurimis infidus, men-
dax, ingratus, maledicus, et virorum perpetuus obtrec-
tator et ſoºminarum, quarum mec pudicitize plus unquam
parcere, quam famae consuevit. Is, ut primae aetatis
obscuriora praeteream, primum Genevae Griecas literas
docuit ; verúm, stepius licet momen suum Graece
Morum discipulis interpretatus, stultum et nequam
ipse dediscere nequivit; quin eo potius furore est
agitatus cum tot scelerum esset sibi conscius, quamvis
fortasse nondum compertus, ut pastoris in ecclesia
munus ambire, atque istis moribus inquinare non hor-
resceret. Verum baud diu presbyterorum censuram
effugere potuit, mulierarius ac vanus, multisque aliis
criminibus notatus, multis ab orthodoxa fide erroribus
damnatus, quos et turpiter ejuravit, et ejuratos impiè
retinuit, tandem adulterii manifestus. Hospitis ancil-
lam quandam forté adamaverat; eam pauld post etiam
alteri nuptam sectari non destitit; tuguriolum quoddam
intrare hortuli, solum cum sola, vicini stepe animad-
verterant. Citra adulterium, inquis ; poterat enim
quidvis aliud : sané quidem ; poterat confabulari,
mimirum de re hortensi, praelectiones quasdam suas
sciolae fortasse foeminie et audiendi cupidae expromere
de hortis, Alcinoi putà vel Adonidis; poterat nunc
areolas laudare, unbram tantummodo desiderare, liceret
modó ficui morum inserere, complures indé sycomoros
quam citissimé enasci, ambulationem amoenissimam ;
modum deinde insitionis mulieri poterat monstrare:
haec et plura poterat, quis negat? Veruntamen pres-
byteris satisſacere non poterat, quin illum tanquam
adulterum censura ſerirent, et pastoris munere indig-
num prorsus judicarent : harum et hujusmodi accusa-
tionum capita in bibliotheca illius urbis publica etiam-
num asservantur. Interea, dum haec palām nota non
essent, ab ecclesia, quae Middleburgi erat Gallica,
procurante Salmasio, in Hollandiam vocatus, magna
cum offensione Spanhemii, viri sané docti, et pastoris
integerrimi, qui eum Genevae antea probè noverat,
literas testimoniales, quas vocant, dum alii non feren-
dum existimarent, ut homo istiusmodi ecclesiae testi-
monio ornaretur, alii quidvis potitis ferendum, quâm
ipsum hominem, aegrè a Genevensibus, et non alia
quàm sui discessils conditione, atque illas quidem fri-
gidulas, tandem impetravit. In Hollandiam ut venit,
ad salutandum Salmasium profectus, domi ejus in
uxoris ancillam, cui Pontine nomen erat, oculos nequiter
conjecit: semper enim in ancillis prolabitur libido
hominis; hinc summa assiduitate Salmasium coepit
colere, et quoties licuit Pontiam. Nescio an ille com-
moditate hominis et assentatione captus, an hic optabi-
lem excogitasse se conveniendae eo sepius Pontite
occasionem ratus, prior sermones injecerit de responso
Miltonii ad Salmasium. Utut ſuit, Morus propugnan-
dum suscipit Salmasium: et Salmasius quidem theo-
logicam in ea urbe cathedram sua opera pollicetur
Moro; Morus et hanc et aliud insuper suaviculum,
furtivos Pontiae concubitus pollicetur sibi. Per causam
consulendi de hoc opere Salmasium, dies ac noctes
eam domum frequentat. Jamgue ut olim Pyramus
in morum, ita nunc repente morus in Pyramum trans-
mutatus sibi videtur, Genevensis in Babylonium ;
verüm illo juvene quantò improbior, tantô fortunatior,
nunc suam. Thisben, facta sub eodem tecto copia, ut
libitum est, Pontiam alloquitur; rimam in pariete
conquirere opus non erat : spondet matrimonium ;
ea spe pellectam vitiat; eodemgue scelere, horreo
dicere, sed dicendum est, sacrosancti evangelii mi-
nister, hospitalem etiam domum constuprat. Ex
hoc demum congressu, mirum quiddam, et praeter
Solitum naturae prodigiosum accidit, ut et foemima
et mas etiam conciperet, Pontia quidem Morillum,
quod et Plinianum exercitatorem diu postea exer-
cuit Salmasium ; Morus ovum hoc irritum et ven-
tosum, ex quo tympanites iste clamor regii san-
guinis prornpit. Quod quidem primö regiis nos-
tris in Belgio esurientibus pergrata admodum sorbitio
fuit ; nunc rupto putamine, vitiosum ac putridum
repertum a versantur. Nam Morus hoc suo foetu
haud mediocriter inflatus, et Arausiacam factionem
totam demeruisse se sentiens, jam integras professionum
cathedras spe improba devoraverat, et suam Pontiam
utpote ancillam et pauperculam, jam gravidam scele-
ratus deseruerat. Illa despectam se atque delusam
querens, et synodi fidem et magistratiis imploravit. Sic
tandem evulgata haec res, et conviviis pené omnibus,
ac circulis diu risum et cachinnos praebuit. Unde
aliquis, et lepidi sané, quisquis erat, ingenii, hoc dis-
tichon,
Galli ex concubitu gravidam te, Pontia, Mori,
Quis bene moratam, morigeramgue neget?
Sola Pontia non risit; sed nec querendo quicquam
profecit; clamor enim regii sanguinis clamorem stupri,
et stupratae mulierculae ploratum facilè obruerat; Sal-
masius quoque illatam sibi hanc totique familiae et in-
juriam et labem aegrè ſerens, seque ab amico et lauda-
tore suo sic ludos factum, sic adversario rursus obnox-
ium, accedente ad priores ejus in causa regia infelici-
tates forsitan hoc etiam infortunio, haud ità multó póst
supremum diem obiit. Verúm aliquantò haec posterius.
Interim Salmasius, Salmacidis quodam ſato, ut enim
momen, ità et fabula non abludit, nescius hermaphro-
ditum se adjunxisse sibi Morum tam gignendi quâm
pariendi compotem, quid is domi genuisset ignarus,
quod peperit exosculatur; librum nempe istum in quo
sentit se Magnum toties dici, et suo forté judicio dignè,
aliorum certé stulté atque ridiculé laudatum. Itaque
CONTRA INFAMEM LIBELLUM ANONYMUM.
7 1 1
typographum festimanter quaerit ; et fugientem ab se
jamdiu famam, retinere frustrâ conatus, quas laudes,
quas potiùs foedas sui adulationes per hunc atque alios
miserè concupiverat, iis etiam divulgandis obstetricatur
ipse atque subservit. Ad hanc operam Vlaccus quidam
est visus omnium maximè idoneus; huic facilè per-
suadet, non modò ut librum illum cxcudendum curaret,
quod memo reprehendisset ; sed etiam ut epistolæ ad
Carolum videlicet missæ, multis in me, qui hominern
numquam nôram, probris et contumeliis refertæ, sub-
scripto nomine se profiteretur authorem. Nequis igitur
miretur cur se exorari tam facilè sit passus, ut me tam
impudenter mulla de causa lacesseret, et alienas etiam
intemperies in se transferre atque præstare tam pro mi-
hilo duceret, erga omnes etiam alios quemadmodum se
gesserit, sicuti ego compertum habeo, ostendam. Est
Vlaccus unde gentium nescio, vagus quidam librariolus,
veterator atque decoctor notissimus ; is Londini ali-
quamdiu bibliopola fuit clancularius ; qua ex urbe, post
innumeras fraudes, obseratus aufugit. Eumdem Parisiis
fide cassum et malè agendo insignem, vita tota Jacobæa
cognovit : unde olim quoque profugus nè multis qui-
dem parasangis audet appropinquare; nunc si cui opus
est balatrone perditissimo atque venali, prostat Hagæ-
comitis typographus recoctus. Nunc ut intelligatis,
quid dicat, quidve agat, quàm nihil pensi habeat, mihil
esse tam sanctum, quod non lucro vel exiguo posterius
putet, seque non causa publica, quod quis putâsset, sic
in me esse debacchatum, fatentem ipsum in se testem
producam. Is cùm vidisset quod in Salmasium scrip-
seram, nonnullis librariis æra meruisse, scribit ad ami-
cos quosdam meos mecum ageremt, ut siquid haberem
excudendum, sibi committeretur ; se typis longè meli-
oribus, quàm qui priùs excudisset, mandaturum : re-
spondi per eosdem, non habere me in præsentia, quod
excuso esset opus. Ecce autem ! cui suam operam tam
officiosè modò detulerat, in eum haud ita multò post,
scripti contumeliosissimi non excusor solùm sed et au-
thor, subdititius licèt, prodit. Indignantur anici ; re-
scribit impudentissimus, mirari se simplicitatem eorum,
et rerum imperitiam, qui officii rationem aut honesti ab
se exigant aut desiderent, cùm videant quibus rebus
quæstum faciat: se ab ipso Salmasio illam epistolam,
cum libro accepisse ; qui rogabat, id uti sua gratia,
vellet facere quod fecit; si Miltonio, vel cuivis alteri
visum esset respondere, nullum sibi esse scrupulum ;
siquidem eadem sua opera uti voluerint : id est, vel in
Salmasium vel in Carolum ; mamque id erat solum
quod in responso ejusmodi futurum expectare poterat.
Quid plura ? Hominem videtis ; ad reliquos mumc
pergo, mon enim unus est dumtaxat, qui hanc in mos
Pegii clamoris quasi tragœdiam adornavit. Em igitur
imitio, ut solet, dramatis personæ : clamor prologus,
Vlaccus balatro, aut si mavultis, Salmasius Vlacci
balatromis persona et lacernis involutus, duo poetastri
cerevisiali vappa temulenti, Morus adulter et stuprator.
Mirificos sanè tragœdos ! bellum certamem mihi para-
tum ! Verùm qualescunque sortiti, quoniam alios atque
hujusmodi adversarios vix est ut causa nostra habcre
possit, nunc singulos aggrediamur ; hoc tantùm præ-
fati, si cui mimus gravitatis nostra alicubi refutatio ha-
bere videbitur, cogitare eum debere, non cum gravi
adversario, sed cum grege histriomico, nobis rem esse ;
ad quem dum refutatiouis genus accommodandum erat,
non semper quid magis decuisset, sed quid illis dignum
esset, spectandum duximus.
Regii sanguinis clamor ad coelum adversùs parricidas
Anglicanos.
Siquidem non jure fusum ostendisses, More, istum san-
guinem, haud incredibile narrares : nunc, quemadmo-
dum primis restituti evangelii temporibus, monachi,
cùm argumentis minùs valerent, ad spectra nescio quæ,
et ficta monstra decurrere solebant ; sic vos, postquam
omnia defecere, ad clamores musquam auditos, et obso-
letas fraterculorum artes revertimini. Voces è cóelo
audire quemquam nostrorum, longè abest ut credas;
ego te clamores ab inferis audisse, quod postulas, facilè
crediderim. Verùm hunc regii sanguinis clamorem dic
sodes quis audivit? Te ais: nugæ : pri 1. ùm enim malè
audis: ad coelum autem qui clamor perveniat, si quis
præter Deum, justi puto soli et integerrimi quique au-
diunt, ut qui possint, immunes ipsi, iram Dei consciis
denuntiare. Tu verò quorsum audires, am ut satyram
cinaedus scriberes ? Videris enim eodem tempore, et
ementitus hunc clamorem ad cœlum, et cum Pontia
furtim libidinatus esse. Multa te impediunt, More,
multa, intus forisque circumsonant, quæ te res istius-
modi ad cœlum perlatas audire non simunt ; et si nihil
aliud, certè qui contra ipsum te ad cœlum quam pluri-
mus fit clamor. Clamat contra te, si nescis, moecha
illa tua hortensis, tuo maximè pastoris sui exemplo, de-
ceptam se esse questa ; clamat comtra te maritus, cujus
torum violasti ; clamat Pomtia, cui pactum muptiale
temerasti ; clamat, siquis est, quem probro gemitum,
infantulum abdicasti ; horum omnium clamores ad cœ-
lum contra te, si non audis, neque illum regii sangui-
mis audiveris: interea libellus iste, non regii sanguinis
clamor ad cœlum, sed lascivientis Mori hinnitus ad
Pontiam, rectius inscribetur. Quæ sequitur epistola,
prolixa quidem, et bene putida, partim Carolo, partim
Miltonio, alteri amplificando, alteri infamamdo, dedica-
tur. Ab ipso statim initio authorem discite : “ Caroli
regma,” inquit, “in sacrilegam parricidarum, et (quia ver-
ba desunt idonea, Tertullianæa voce abutimur) Deicida-
rum potestatem venerunt.” Hæc sive Salmasiæa, sive
Moræa, sive Vlaccæa sartago sit, prætereamus. Hoc verò
aliis ridendum, Carolo indignandum profectò est, quod
paulò post, “ neminem,” ait, “ vivere felicitatis Caroli
studiosiorem.” Quime eamdem et epistolandi, et excu-
deudi operam Caroli hostibus detulisti, te vivit nemo
felicitatis ejus studiosior ? Miserum profectò dicis re-
gem sic ab amicis omnibus derelictum, ut qui intimi
restant, iis vappa typographus comparare se audeat.
Miserrimum, cujus fidelissimis, Vlaccus perfidus fide ac
studio nom cedat: quo quid insolentius de se, contemp-
tius de rege amicisque regiis promunciare potuit? Ne-
que hoc minùs ridiculum, induci idiotam et operarium
de rebus gravissimis ac regiis virtutibus philosophan-
tem, eaque dicentem, qualiacumque sunt, quibus nec
Salmasius ipse, nec Morus meliora dixisset. Equidem
Salmasium, ut sæpe aliàs, ità hoc loco haud obscurè,
712
DEFENSIO SECUNDA PRO POPULO ANGLICANO,
simulta lectione, judicio tamen puerili et nullius usûs
hominem deprehendi; qui cum legere potuisset sum-
mos in Spartana civitate optimè instituta magistratus,
siquid forté viro malo excidisset sapienter dictum, id
ei adimi jussisse, et in virum aliquem bonum ac frugi
sortitione conferri, aded id omne quod decorum dicitur
ignorarit, ut é contra, quas probum atque prudentem
decere sententias arbitraretur, eas homini nequissimo
attribui sustineret. Bono es animo, Carole: veterator
Vlaccus, “quae sua est in Deum fiducia,” bono animo
te esse jubet. “Noli tot mala perdere:” Vlaccus de-
coctor perditissimus, qui bona omnia, siqua habuit, per-
didit, author tibi est, perdere ut nolis mala: “Fruere
novercante fortuna : ” potin'es ut mê fruare, hortatore
priesertim tali, qui alienis etiam fortunis frui per fas et
nefas tot annis consuevit? “In sapientiam penitàs in-
gurgitasti, etingurgita:” sic monet, sic praecipit regum
institutor sané optimus Vlaccus gurges, qui arrepta atra-
mentosis manibus, coriacea lagena, inter combibones
operas, ingenti haustu, sapientiam tibi propinat. Hec
audet tuus Vlaccus, tam praeclara monita, nomine etiam
conscripto, quae Salmasius, quae Morus, caeterique pugiles
tui aut timidi non audent, aut superbi non dignantur;
nimirum quoties te monito est opus aut defenso, alieno
semper nomine, atque periculo, non suo, sapientes aut
fortes sunt. Desimatergö, quisquis hic est, “strenuam et
animosam facundiam” ipse suam inaniter jactare; dum
“vir,” si diis placet, “insignis, decoro ingenio nomen
suum celeberrimum” edere metuit; librum quo regium
sanguinem ulcisci se ait, ne dicare quidem Carolo nisi
per Vlaccum interpretem et vicarium ausus, verbis
typographi miseré contentus significare, “librum ” se,
sine nomine, “si pateris, O rex, tuo nomini dicatum
ire.” Sic functus Carolo in me impetum parat minita-
bundus: “Post haec prooemia, tubam terribilem inflabit
& Savuéotoc “ille Salmasius.” Salubritatem praedicis
et concentās musici novum genus futurum : isti enim
tubae terribili, cum inflabitur, nulla aptior excogitari
symphonia poterit, quâm si affatim oppedetur, Buccam
verö Salmasius mimis inflatam me afferat moneo: quo
enim attulerit inflatiorem, eú mihi crede, opportuniorem
ad colaphos praebebit; qui thaumasii Salmasii rhyth-
micum hunc sonum, quo delectaris, buccis ambabus
resonantibus, numerose reddent. Pergis cornicari.
“Qui nec parem nec secundum habet, in universo lite-
rarum et scientiarum orbe.” Vestram fidem | Eruditi,
quotauot estis, vestram ſidem Siccine vobis omnibus
anteferri cimicem grammaticum, cujus res atque spes
omnis in glossario vertebaturf Quem vel extremum
meritó occupet scabies, si cum viris verè doctis compa-
retur. Haec autem, nisi ab infimo quopiam et infra
Vlaccum ipsum vaēcorde affirmari tam fatuè nequive-
runt. “Quique jam stupendam et inflnitam eruditionem
coelestijunctam ingenio ad causam tute majestatis con-
tulit.” Simeministis quod supra narravi, ipsum Sal-
masium attulisse hand epistolam cum libro excu-
dendam, vel ab ipso scriptam, vel ab anonymo quovis,
vernamgue typographum exorasse, ut quod author nol-
let, ipse suum nomen adscriberet, cognoscetis profectô
pusilli omnino, et abjectissimi hominem ingenii suis
laudibus tam miserè velificantem, et immensa encomia
tam stolidi laudatoris aucupantem. “Opus aeternum
frustrà sugillantibus nonnullis,jurisconsulti mirarisatis
nequeunt quod homo Gallus ità subitó res Anglicas,
leges, decreta, instrumenta, ità teneat, enodet, &c.”
Immo quám incptierit in nostris legibus et psittacus
fuerit, nostris etiam jurisconsultis testibus, abunde
ostendinus. “Sed ipse mox altera, quam in rebelles
molitur, impressione, simul Theonum ora comprimet,
simul Miltonum nobis pro eo ac meretur concastigatum
dabit.” Tu igitur ut pisciculus ille anteambulo, prae-
curris balaenam Salmasium, impressiones in haec littora
minitantem; nos ferramenta acuimus, expressuri si
quid habent impressiones et concastigationes illae sive
oleisive gari. Bonitatem interea magni viri mirabimur
plusquam Pythagoricam, qui animalia quoque miser-
atus, et praesertim pisces, quorum carnibus, me quadra-
gesima quidem parcit, iis tam decenter involvendis tot
volumina destinárit, tot pauperum millibus, thunnorum,
credo, aut scombrorum, chartaceas in singulos tunicas
testamento legarit.
Gaudete scombri, et quicquid est piscium salo,
Qui frigida hyeme incolitis algentes freta,
Veström misertus ille Salmasius eques
Bonus amicire nuditatem cogitat;
Chartaeque largus apparat papyrinos
Vobis cucullos praeferentes Claudii
Insignia momengue et decus Salmasii,
Gestetis ut per omne cetarium forum
Equitis clientes, scriniis mungentium
Cubito virorum, et capsulis gratissimos.
Haec habui in editionem diu exspectatam tam nobi-
lis libri; cujus impressionem, dum, ut ais, molitur Sal-
masius, tu ejus domum, More, foedissima compressione
Pontiae contaminasti. Et videtur sané, ad hoc opus
absolvendum, Salmasius diu multumque incubuisse;
paucis enim ante mortem diebus, cum vir quidam
doctus, a quo hoc ipsum accepi, misisset, qui ex eo
quaereret, ecduando apparatüs partem secundam in
primatum papae editurus esset, respondit, ad illud opus
non ante reversurum se, quâm absolvisset quod adhue
commentaretur adversus Miltonium. Ità ego etiam
papte refutandus praeferor; et quem illi primatum in
ecclesia negavit, eum mihi ultro in inimicitia sua con-
cedit; sic ego primatui papae jam jam evertendo salu-
tem attuli; ego redivivum hunc Catilinam, non in toga,
ut consul olim Tullius, né per somnum quidem, sed
aliud omnino agens, Romanis moenibus averti; non
unus profectſ cardinalatus mihi hoc nomine debebitur;
wereor, né translato in me regum nostrorum titulo,
defensor fidei ab Romano pontifice appellandus sim.
Videtis quantus invidiae artifex in me concitandae
Salmasius fuerit; verüm ipse viderit, qui, tam homesta
provincia turpiter relicta, alienis se controversiis im-
miscuerit, ab ecclesiae causa, ad civiles et externas.
quarum sua nihil intererat, se traduxerit; cum papa
inducias fecerit; et, quod ſoedissimum ſuit, cum epis-
copis, post bellum apertissimum, in gratiam redierit.
Veniamus nunc ad mea crimina: estne quod in vita aut
moribus reprehendatº Certé nihil : Quid ergo 2 Quod
memo nisi immamis ac barbarus fecisset, formam milli
ac caecitatem objectat,
Monstrum horrendum, informe, ingens, cui lumen adem ptum.
CONTRA INFAMEM LIBELLUM ANONYMUM.
713
Nunquam existimabam equidem fore, ut de forma cnm
Cyclope certamen mihi esset; verùm statim se revocat.
** Quanquam nec ingens, quo mihil est exilius, exsan-
guius, contractius.” Tametsi virum mihil attinet de
forma dicere, tandem quando hic quoque est, unde
gratias Deo agam, et mendaces redarguam, nè quis
(quod Hispanorum vulgus de hæreticis, quos vocant,
plus nimio sacerdotibus suis credulum, opinatur) me
fortè cyuocephalum quempiam, aut rhinocerota esse
putet, dicam. Deformis quidem à nemine, quod sciam,
qui modò me vidit, sum unquam habitus ; formosus
necne, minùs laboro ; statura fateor non sum procera :
sed quæ mediocri tamen quàm parvæ propior sit: sed
quid si parva, qua et summi saepe tum pace tum bello
viri fuere, quanquam parva cur dicitur, quæ ad vir-
tutem satis magna est. Sed neque exilis admodum,
eo sanè animo iisque viribus ut cùm ætas vitæque ratio
sic ferebat, nec ferrum tractare, nec stringere quotidiano
usu exercitatus nescirem ; eo accinctus, ut plerumque
eram, cuivis vel multò robustiori exaequatum me puta-
bam, securus quid mihi quis injuriæ vir viro inferre
posset. Idem hodie animus, eædem vires, oculi mom
iidem ; ità tamen extrinsecus illæsi, ità sine nube clari
ac lucidi, ut eorum qui acutissimùm cernunt: in hac
solùm parte, memet invito, simulator sum. In vultu,
quo “ nihil exsanguius” esse dixit, is manet etiamnum
color exsangui et pallenti planè contrarius, ut quadra-
genario major vix sit cui non denis prope annis videar
matu minor ; neque corpore contracto neque cute. In
his ego si ulla ex parte mentior, multis millibus popu-
larium meorum, qui de facie me môrunt, exteris etiam
non paucis, ridiculus meritò sim: sin iste in re minimè
necessaria, tàm impudenter et gratuitò mendax com-
perietur, poteritis de reliquo eandem conjecturam
facere. Atque haec de forma mea vel coactus : de tua
quanquam et contemptissimam accepi, et habitantis in
te improbitatis atque malitiæ vivam imaginem, neque
ego dicere, neque ullus audire curat. Utinam de cæ-
citate pariter liceret inhumanum hunc refellere adver-
sarium ; sed non licet ; feramus igitur : non est
miserum esse cæcum ; miserum est cæcitatem non
posse ferre: quidni autem feram, quod unumquemque
ità parare se oportet, ut si acciderit, non ægrè ferat,
quod et humanitus accidere cuivis mortalium, et præ-
stantissimis quibusdam, atque optimis omni memoria
viris accidisse sciam : sive illos memorem, vetustatis
ultimæ priscos vates, ac sapientissimos; quorum calam-
itatem, et dii, ut fertur, multò potioribus donis com-
pensârunt, et homines eo honore affecerunt, ut ipsos
inculpare maluerint deos, quàm cæcitatem illis crimimi
dare. De augure Tiresia quod traditur, vulgò notum.
De Phineo sic cecinit Apollonius in Argonauticis :
'Ovδ' άσσον άτιζετο kai Atòς άvτοῦ
Xρειον άτρεκάως ιερόν νόον άν$pυτοισι,
Tó kai öi yiigac μάν ἐτί δnvatòv iaXX&v
'Ek δ' ἐλετ' άφSa\μόν γλνκερὸν φάος.
neque est veritus Jovem ipsum
Edens veraciter mentem divinam hominibus:
Quare et senectam ei diuturnam dedit,
Eripuit autem oculorum dulce lumen,
Caeterum Deus et ipse veritas est : in qua homi-
nes edocenda quò quis veracior eò similior Deo
acceptiorque sit, oportet. Non est pium veritatis im-
videntem Dcum credere; aut molle hominibus quàm
liberrimè impertitam : ob nullam igitur noxam, di-
vinus vir, et humani generis erudiendi studiosis-
simus, ut philosophorum etiam complures, caruisse
luminibus videtur. Sive illos commemorem civili pru-
dentia gestisque rebus admirabiles olim viros; primùm
Timoleontem Corinthium, et civitatis suæ, et Siciliæ
totius liberatorem ; quo virum meliorem, aut in repub-
lica sanctiorem, nulla ætas tulit; tum Appium Clati-
dium, cujus in senatu pulchrè dicta sententia, Italiam
Pyrrho, gravi hoste, seipsum cæcitate non liberavit;
tum Caecilium Metellum pontificem, qui mon urbem
solùm, sed et fatum urbis Palladium, et penitissima
sacra dum ab incendio servavit, suos oculos perdidit ;
quamqnam aliàs certè Deus pietati tam egregiae favere
se, etiam inter gentes, testatus est: quod tali igitur viro
usu venit, ponendum in malis esse vix putem. Quid
alios recentiorum temporum adjungam, vel illum Ve
netiarum principem Dandulum longè omnium præstan-
tissimum ; vel Boëmorum Ziscam ducem fortissimum,
orthodoxæ fidei propugnatorem ? Quid summi nomiuis
theologos Hieronymum Zanchium, nonmullosque alios?
cùm et ipsum Isaacum patriarcham, quo nemo umquam
mortalium Deo charior fuit, annos haud paucos, caecum
vixisse constet; aliquot fortasse Jacobum etiam ejus
filium, et ipsum Deo haud minùs dilectum : cùm de-
mique Christi servatoris nostri divino testimonio com-
pertissimum sit, illum homimem ab se sumatum, neque
ob suum, neque ob parentum suorum aliquod peceatum,
etiam ab utero cæcum fuisse. Ad me quod attinet, te
testor, Deus, memtis intimæ, cogitationumque omnium
indagator, me nullius rei, (quamquam hoc apud me
sæpius, et quàm maximè potui, seriò quæsivi et reces-
sus vitæ omnes excussi,) mullius vel recèns vel olim
commissi, mihimet conscium esse, cujus atrocitas hanc
mihi præ cæteris calamitatem creare, aut accersisse
meritò potuerit. Quod etiam ullo tempore scripsi
(quoniam hoc nunc me luere quasi piaculum regii ex-
istimant atque adeò triumphant) testor itidem Deum,
me nihil istiusmodi scripsisse, quod non rectum et ve-
rum, Deoque gratum esse, et persuaserim tum mihi, et
etiamnum persuasus sim ; idque nulla ambitione, lucro,
aut gloria ductus ; sed officii, sed honesti, sed pietatis
in patriam ratione sola ; nec reipublicæ tantùm, sed
ecclesiæ quoque liberandæ causa potissimùm fecisse :
adeò ut cùm datum mihi publicè esset illud in defen-
sionem regiam negotium, eodemque tempore et adversa
simul valetudine, et oculo jam penè altero amisso, com-
flictarer, prædicerentque disertè medici, si hunc laborem
suscepissem, fore, ut utrumque brevi amitterem, uihil
ista præmonitione deterritus, non medici, mè Æsculapii
quidem Epidaurii ex adyto vocem, sed divinioris cu-
jusdam intus monitoris viderer mihi audire ; duasque
sortes, fatali quodam natu, jam mihi propositas, hiuc
cæcitatem, indè officium ; aut oculorum jacturam ne-
cessariò faciemdam, aut summum officium deserendum :
occurrebantque animo bina illa fata, quæ retulisse Del-
phis consulentem de se matrem, marrat Thetidis filius.
714
DEFENSIO SECUNDA PRO POPULO ANGLICANO,
Atx0ačiac kiipac pepéptev Savároto réNorðs,
Et uév k' at St Hévov Totov tróNiv Čiuopdxopat,
"Q\t to uév uot v6oroc' &rap k\éog āq,0irov čarat.
Ei čá Kev otrač’tkwuat pi\}v čc trarpiða yaiav,
"Q\stó uot k\éoç to 0\óv štri Ömpôv Šē uot atºv
"Eggeral.
Iliad. 9.
Duplicia fata ducere ad mortis finem :
Si hic manens circa Troilm urbem pugnavero,
Amittitur mihi reditus; sed gloria immortalis erit:
Si domum revertor dulce ad patrium solum,
Amittitur milli gloria pulchra, sed diuturna vita
Erit.
Unde sic mecum reputabam, multos graviore malo
minus bonum, morte gloriam, redemisse; mihi contra
majus bonum minore cum malo proponi : ut possem cum
caecitate sola wel honestissimum officii munus implere;
quod utipsa gloria per se est solidius, ità cuique opta-
tius atque antiquius debet esse. Hac igitur tam brevi
luminum usura, quanta maxima quivi cum utilitate
publica, quoad liceret, fruendum esse statui. Videtis
quid praetulerim, quid amiserim, qua inductus ratione:
desinantergöjudiciorum Dei calumniatores maledicere,
deque me somnia sibi fingere: sic denique habento;
me sortis meſe neque pigere neque poemitere; immotum
atque fixum in sententia perstare; Deum iratum neque
sentire, neque habere, immö maximis in rebus cle-
mentiam ejus et benignitatem erga me paternam expe-
riri atque agnoscere; in hoc presertim, quod solante
ipso atque animum confirmante in ejus divina voluntate
acquiescam ; quid is largitus milli sit quâm quid nega-
verit stepius cogitans : postremö molle me cum suo
quovis rectissimé facto, facti mei conscientiam permu-
tare, aut recordationem ejus gratam mihi semper atque
tranquillam deponere. Ad caccitatem denique quod
attinet, malle me, si necesse est, mean, quâm vel suam,
More, vel tuam. Vestra imis sensibus immersa, nequid
sani videatis aut solidi, mentem obcaecat: mea, quam
objicitis, colorem tantummodo rebus et superficiem de-
mit; quod verum ac stabile in is est contemplationi
mentis non adimit. Quâm multa deinde sunt quae videre
mollem, quâm multa quae possem libens non videre,
quam pauca reliqua sunt quae videre cupiam. Sed ne-
que ego cascis, afflictis, moerentibus, imbecillis, tametsi
vos id miserum ducitis, aggregari me discrutior; quan-
doquidem spes est, eo me propius ad misericordiam
summi patris atque tutelam pertinere. Est quoddam
per imbecillitatem, praeeunte Apostolo, ad maximas
vires iter: sim ego debilissimus, dummodo in mea de-
bilitate immortalis ille et melior vigor eo se efficacius
exerat; dummodo in meistenebris divini vultàs lumen
eo clarius eluceat; tum enim infirmissimus ero simul et
validissimus, caecus eodem tempore et perspicacissimus;
hac possim ego infirmitate consummari, hac perfici, pos-
sim in hac obscuritate sic ego irradiari. Et sané haud
ultima Dei cura caeci sumus; quinos, quð minus quic-
quam aliud praeter ipsum cernere valemus, ed clemen-
tius atque benigniūs respicere dignatur. Vae qui illu-
dit nos, was qui laedit, execratione publica devovendo;
nos ab injuriis hominum non modó incolumes, sed peně
sacros, divina lex reddidit, divinus favor; mec tam ocu-
lorum hebetudine, quâm coelestium alarum umbra has
nobis fecisse tenebras videtur, factas illustrare rursus
interiore ac longe praestabiliore lumine haud raro solet.
Huc reſero, quðd et amici officiosius nunc etiam quâm
solebant, colunt, observant, adsunt; quëd et nonnulli
sunt, quibuscum Pyladeas atque Theseas alternare
voces verorum amicorum liceat.
Opear. "Epire vöv 6taš Troööc plot. IIv. pi\a y' tywy knösö-
plata.
Orest. Wade gubernaculum mei pedis. Py, pergratam
mihi habens curam. Eurip, in Orest.
Et alibi,
Atô8 xiip wirmpéry pi\p.
Da manum ministro amico.
Atô8 &#pp grºw xeip', 60my now 3’ &yº.
Da collo manum tuam, ductor autem viae ero tibi ego.
Id. in Her. furent.
Non enim hoc casu factum me omnino nullum; non
quicquid est probi aut cordati hominis, positum in ocu-
lis putant esse. Quin et summi quoque in republica
viri, quandoquidem non otio torpentem me, sed impi-
grum et summa discrimina pro libertate inter primos
adeuntem oculi deseruerunt, ipsi non deserunt; verúm
humana qualia sint, secum reputantes, tanquam emerito
favent, indulgent, vacationem atque otium faciles con-
cedunt; si quid est ornamenti, non detrahunt; si quid
publici muneris, non adimunt ; si quid ex ea re com-
modi, non minuunt; et quamvis non tequé nunc utilis,
praebendum nihilo minus benigné censent; eodem
planè honore, acsi, ut olim Atheniensibus mos erat, in
Prytaneo alendum decrevissent. Sic mihi et apud Deum
et apud homines caecitatem solari mean quandiu licuerit,
amissos honesti causa oculos, memo meos lugeat; absit
quoque utipse lugeam, aut vel animisatis ut ně habeam
quo calcitatis convitiatores facilé possim contemmere,
vel veniae ut mê possim facilius condonare. Ad te,
quisquis es, redeo, qui parum tibi constans, nunc pumi-
lionem me, nunc Antaeum vis esse: “Non aliud" post-
remö optas “libentius foederatis Belgii Provinciis, quâm
uttam facile, tamgue feliciter defungantur, hoc bello,
quam defungetur Salmasius Miltonio.” Cui ego voto
facilè assensero, arbitror me nostris successibus reique
Anglicanae nec ominari malê nec malê precari.
En verö iterum clamorem, alienum quendam et stri-
dulum ! anseres puto alicunde advolare: jam sentio
quid sit; memini clamoris haud esse tragoediam; pro-
dit chorus: en duo poétastri; vel duo vel unus, biformi
sané specie et bicolore; Sphingemme dicam an Hora-
tianum illud monstrum Poéticum, capite muliebri, cer-
vice asinina variis indutum plumis, undique collatis
membris: id profectd ipsissimum est. Rhapsodus vide-
licet quispiam, centonibus et pannis obsitus; unusne
an duo incertum, nam et Anonymus quoque est. Poé-
tas equidem verè dictos et diligo et colo, et audiendo
stepissimé delector; illorum etiam plerosque tyrannis
esse scio inimicissimos, si vel à primis exorsus ad Buch-
anamum usaue nostrum recenserem: istos veró versicu-
lorum mugivendos, quis non oderit? quo genere homi-
CONTRA INFAMEM LIBELLUM ANONYMUM.
715
mum nihil stultius, aut vanius, aut corruptius, aut
mendacius. Laudant, vituperant, sine delectu, sine
discrimine, judicio, aut modo, nunc principes, nunc
plebeios, doctos juxtà atque indoctos, probos an impro-
bos, perinde habent; prout Cantharus, aut spes num-
muli, aut ſatuus ille furor inflat ac rapit; congestris
undique et verborum et rerum tot discoloribus ineptiis
tamgue putidis, ut laudatum longe praestet sileri, et
pravo, quod aiunt, vivere maso, quam sic laudari: vitu-
peratus veró qui sit, haud mediocri sané honori sibi
ducat, se tam absurdis, tam stolidis nebulonibus displi-
cere. Primus qui est, si modó bini sunt, dubito poéta
sit an caementaris; ità Salmasio os oblinit, immo totum
quasi parietem dealbat atque incrustat. Curru nempe
“ triumphantem” inducit, heroëm gigantomachum,
“ hastilia et caestus,” et nescio quae nugamenta armo-
rum vibrantem, doctos omnes pedibus quadrigam se-
quentes, sed post terga ejus innumeris spatiis relictos,
utpote “quem numen rebus trepidis salutem orbis ad-
moverit; tandem ergo tali tempus erat tegi umbone
reges, parente” nimirum “juris et imperii.” Delirus
necesse est fuerit et bis puer Salmasius, qui his laudibus
non solum tantopere sibi placuerit, sed excudendas
etiam quám primum de se tam scduló curaverit: Mi-
sellus etiam poéta atque indecorus, qui grammaticum,
quod genus hominum poétis ministrum semper atque
subserviens fuit, tam immodicis laudibus dignetur.
Alter verö non versos facit, sed planè insanit enthusi-
astarum omnium quos tam rabidé insectatur, ipse amen-
tissimus: hic Salmasii carnifex quasi sit, Syri damae
filius, Lorarios invocat et Cadmum ; veratro deinde
ebrius, totam, quicquid ubique est, servulorum et bal-
lionum sentinam, ex Indice Plautino evomit; credas
lingua Oscum non latiné loquentem, ant inferarum,
quas natat, paludum coaxare ranam. Tum ut intelli-
gatis, quantus sit iamborum artifex, dualus syllabis
una in voce peccat, altera producta, altera perperam
correpta.
Hi trucidato rege per horrendum meſas.
Aufer istas, asine, “ vacivitatum ” tuarum clitellas;
et tria verba, si potes, sani ac sobrii tandem hominis
affer; si tua ista cucurbita et “blennum caput” vel
ad punctum temporis potest sapere : interea te ego
puerorum “virgidemiis”
lium. Tu mihi sic perge maledicere, ut “Cromuello
pejor” tibi sim, qua nulla majore me laude afficere po-
tuisti. Te veró benevolumne dicam, an stolidum, an
hostem insidiosum ? benevolus certé nones, verba enim
hostem indicant; cur ergö tam stolidus ſuisti vitupera-
tor, ut anteferre me tanto viro in buccan tibi venerit P
ecouid tu non intelligis, an me putas non intelligere,
quo graviora vestra in me esse odia ostenditis, ed vos
ampliora mea in rempublicam merita prædicare, vestra
tot opprobria, tot mea esse apud meos praecomia Nam
si vos me omnium maximè odistis, sané ego vos om-
mium maximé exulceravi, vos ego maximé afflixi, cau-
seque vestrae nocui : id si ità est, idem ego de meis
civibus optime quoque merui.; hostis enim vel testimo-
nium vel judicium, etsi alias leve admodum, de suo ta-
men dolore longé est gravissimum. An poèta non
tuis caedendum trado Orbi-
meministi, cum de Achillis mortui armis, Ajax et Ulysses
contenderent, non Graecos populares scd Trojanos hostes
ex sententia Nestoris judiccs datos?
Totiveka Towgiv tºpäuev čvpport ràvös &ikagat.
Quapropter Trojanis permittamus prudentibus hanc
litem judicandam.
Et pauld post,
O't pa &tkmv ióštav Čiri aplot trouñoovrat,
où rivi pa qipovreć, Štrei uá\a travraç 'Axaloëc
"Igov dréx0aipeat Kakic pºpumpièvot armc.
Qui justum judicium de iis ſecerint,
Nemini gratificantes, cum vehementer omnes Achivos
AEquè odorint, mali memores damni.
Haec Smyrnaeus ille, sive Calaber. Insidiosus itaque sis
oportet, megue in invidiam conjicere labores, qui quod
judicium in hoste rectum atque sincerum esse solet, id
dolo malo et gravius liedendi animo corrumpis atque de-
pravas, ita non vir modó, sed et hostis depravatissimus
es. Verúm ego mullo negotio frustrabor te, vir bone;
quanquam enim Ulyssem, id est, quâm optimé de patria
meritum me esse sané perquam vellem, tamen Achilleia
arma non ambio; coelum in clypeo pictum, quod alii, non
ego, in certamine aspiciant, praeferre, onus non pictum
sed verum, humeris portare, quod ego, non alii sentiant,
non quaero: equidem cum nullas omnino simultates
aut inimicitias ullo cum homine privatas geram, medue
ullus, quod sciam, mecum gerat, tot in me maledicta
jactari, tot probra torqueri, reipublicae duntaxat causa,
non mea, eo aequiore animo fero: mec praemii et com-
modorum inde provenientium, partem longè minimam,
ignominiae longé maximam pervenisse ad me queror;
contentins quae honesta factu sunt, ea propter se solum
appetisse, et gratis persequi: id alii viderint, tuque
scito, me illas “opinitates’ atque “opes,” quas mihi
exprobas, non attigisse, neque eo nomine quo maximé
accusas, obolo factum ditiorem. Hic rursus infit Morus,
et secunda epistola causas scribendi refert; cuinam *
“Lectori Christiano' nempe moechus et stuprator
Morus salutem: piam sane epistolam promittis; jam
causas incipe. “Excitati sunt Europaearum gentium
animi, maximè omnium Galli nostri reformati, ut par-
ricidium et parricidas, &c. cognoscerent.” Galli et ipsi
reformati contra leges bella gesserunt ; quid ulterius
ſuissent facturi, paribus usi rerum successibus, affirmari
non potest: certé reges ipsorum, si qua earum rerum
monumentis fides, ab illis haud minus metuebant sibi,
quam a nobis noster: megue injuria, quoties meminis-
sent quae etiam illi scriptitarunt, et minati saepe sunt :
Nolint igitur, quicquid tu causare, splendidè nimis de
se polliceri, iniquius de nobis sentire. Pergit in causis.
“Equidem ea Anglorum melioris notae consuetudime
sum usus.” Qui tibi sunt melioris notae, viris bonis
sunt pessimae. “Ut ausim dicere me ista hominum
monstra nosse intus et in cute.” Putabam te moechas
tantummodo tuas et scorta; tu etiam monstra intus et
in cute. “Ut momen meum premerem, facile impe-
trarunt Angli quibuscum consuevi.” Et astute quidem
illi: sic enim sperabant et se impudentia tua ed largiore
fruituros, ct te tua fama, etiam tum mala, eo minus
7 16
DEFENSIO SECUNDA PRO POPULO ANGLICANO,
causæ nociturum. Noverant enim te, et quàm esses
olim bonus hortorum custos, et nunc rasus licèt et
pumicatus sacerdos, ut à Pontia me Pilata quidem ab-
stinere manus potueris ; nec de nihilo sanè, si enim à
conficienda carmg carnifex dictus putatur, cur minüs tu
conficiendo Pontiam Pontifex factus ex sacerdote tibi
videare ? Hæc cùm de te non nescirent alii, cùm non
posses ipse quin tibimet conscires, tamen incredibili, et
execranda quadam impietate palam audes profiteri, te
“ Dei gloriam unice quærere, et vindicare:” et dum
ipse turpissima quæris, simul accusare alios, quod
“ pietatis larvam criminibus imponant:” cùm id nemo
manifestiùs ac sceleratiùs quàm tu ipse facis, unquam
fecerit. “ Ad rerum ” ais ** gestarum seriem magno ”
tibi “ fuisse adjumento cum alios scriptores tum max-
ime elenchum motuum nuperorum in Anglia.” Næ tu
ineptus homo es, qui tanto clamore facto, quod tuum
sit mihil afferas ; sed scriptores tantùm, regiis partibus
addictos eoque meritò suspectos authores contra nos
adducere potuisti, quorum fides si elevabitur, progredi
nequeas. Nos igitur scriptores illos, si opus erit et
elenchum elemcho refutabimus, non illis per te, sed tibi
per illos, cum visum erit respondebimus ; tibi quæ de
tuo protuleris, videndum interea, ut tueri queas ; quæ
cujusmodi sint, ab impio et planè atheo nomine pro-
fecta, audiant nunc omnes pii et horrescant. ** Jubet
amor Dei, et injuriæ sancto ejus nomini factæ sensus
acerrimus cogit supplices manus ad Deum attollere.”
Abde, abde obscoenas illas manus, quas libidine et am-
bitione supinatus attollere non vereris, nè cœlum ipsum
quoque audeas iis manibus incestâre, quibus sacra re-
ligionis mysteria contrectando polluisti. Quam enim
divinam ultionem aliis temerarius et væcors imprecaris,
eam in ipsius tuum impurissimum caput devocasse te
olim intelliges.
Hactenus clamoris quasi præludia fuere; nunc, (sum-
mas enim, et propè solas in hoc dramate partes clamor
obtinet,) quàm potest maximo hiatu, rictum diducit: in
coelum scilicet iturus ; quo si ascenderit, in neminem
profectò acriùs clamabit quàm im ipsum clamatorem
Morum. “ Cùm omnibus seculis sacra fuerit regum
majestas, &c.” Multa, tu quidem, More, vulgariter,
multa malitiosè in nos declamas, quæ nihil attinent :
regis enim cædes, et tyranni supplicium non sumt idem,
More, non sunt, inter se distant longissimè, atque dis-
tabunt, dum sensus et ratio, jus atque fas, rectique et
obliqui judicium hominibus concedetur. Verùm de
his satis jam sæpiùs dictum, satis defensum est: non
patiar qui tot diris inanibus lædere non potes, ut repe-
tita crambe nos demum occidas. De patientia, deinde
et pietate, bellè disputas: sed
-——de virtute loquutus
Clunem agitas : ego te ceventem more verebor ?
** Omnes ” ais “ reformatos, praesertim Belgas et Gal-
los, factum nostrum horruisse ;'' et statim, “ bonis
ubique non licuisse, idem sentire et loqui.” Sed te tibi
repugnare leviculum est ; hoc multo indignius atque
atrocius : ** præ nostro,” inquis, “ scelere, nihil fuit
Judæorum scelus, Christum crucifigentium, sive homi-
num mentem, sive sceleris effectus compares.” Furiose!
tune Christi minister perpetratum facinus in Christum
tam leviter fers, quacumque demum “ mente ” vel
“ effectu,” ut pari scelere interfectum quemlibet regem
audeas dicere ? Judæi certè clarissimis indiciis Dei
filium agnovisse poterant; nos Carolum non esse ty-
ramnum, nulla ratione potimus intelligere. Eventüs
autem, ad minuendum scelus, ineptissimè facis mem-
tionem : verùm semper animadverto regios, quò quis-
que acrior est, eò leviùs ferre quicquid committitur in
Christum, quàm si quid in regem : cui tamen cùm
Christi præcipuè causa obediendum doceant, facilè
ostendunt se neque Christum verè colere, neque regem:
sed aliud quiddam sibi quærentes, incredibilem hanc
erga reges fidem ac religionem suam, vel ambitioni,
vel occultis quibusdam aliis cupiditatibus obtendere.
“ Prodiit ergo magnus literarum princeps Salmasius.”
Desine toties magnum illud, More ; quod millies licèt
ingesseris, haud cuiquam profectò intelligenti persua-
seris magnum esse Salmasium, sed minimum esse Mo-
rum, et nullius pretii homulum, qui, quid deceat igna-
rus, magni cognomine tam imperitè abutatur. Nos
grammaticis atque criticis, quorum summa laus aut in
alienis lucubrationibus edendis, aut librariorum memdu-
lis corrigendis versatur, industriam quidem ac literarum
scientiam, doctrinae etiam haud contemnendæ laudem,
ac præmia libenter concedinmus, magni cognonem haud
largimur. Is solus magnus est appellandus, qui res
magnas aut gerit, aut docet, aut dignè scribit : res au-
tem magnæ sunt solæ, quæ vel vitam hanc nostram
efficiunt beatam, aut saltem cum honestate commodam
atque jucundam, vel ad alteram ducunt beatiorem.
Horum verò Salmasius quid egit ? egit verò nihil: quid
autem docuit aut scripsit magnum ? nisi fortè contra
episcopos, et primatum papæ, quod ipse postea et suis
moribus, et aliis in mos pro episcopatu scriptis, recan-
tatum penitus evertit. Magnus ergo scriptor dici nºn
debet, qui aut nihil magnum, aut quod optimum in
vita scripserat, ei foedissimè renunciavit. “ Literarum
princeps” ut sit, et alphabeti per me licet ; at verò tibi
non “ princeps” modò “ literarum” est, sed “ patronus
regum,” et “ patronus quidem dignus tantis clientibus.”
Pulchrè tu quidem regibus consuluisti, ut post alios
insignes titulos, Claudii Salmasii clientes appellentur.
Ea nimirum lege solvimimi cunctis aliis legibus reges,
ut in clientelam grammatico tradatis vos Salmasio,
sceptra ferulæ submittatis: “ Debebunt ei reges, dum
stabit orbis, dignitatis et salutis suæ vindicias.” Audite
principes ; qui pessimè vos defendit, immo ne defendit
quidem, nemo enim oppugnavit, dignitatem et salu-
tem vestram sibi imputat. Hoc nempe solum con-
sequuti sunt, qui superbissimum grammaticum susti-
nendis regum rationibus et tinearum et blattarum foro
advocarunt. “ Cui quantum res regia, tantumdem
etiam ecclesia debebit;” non laudem sanè, sed meri-
tissimam desertæ suæ causæ notam. Nunc in laudes
effunderis defensionis regiæ ; “ ingenium, doctrinam,
infinitum prope rerum usum, et intimam sacri et pro-
fani juris penum, concitatæ orationis vigorem, elo-
quentiam, facundiam aurei illius operis” admiraris,
quorum cum nihil affuisse homini contendo (quid
enim Salmasio cum eloquentia?) tum aureum fuisse
CONTRA INFAMEM LIBEILLUM ANONYMUM.
717
illu& opus vel centies fateor; tot enim Carolus aureos
mumeravit, me dicam quid Arausiacus etiam princeps
in idem opus profuderit. “ Numquam major surrexit
vir magnus, nunquam magis Salmasius :" et tantò
quidem major ut se ruperit, quàm magnus enim fuerit
in illo opere jam vidimus ; et siquid ejusdem argu-
menti, ut fertur, posthumum reliquit, fortasse videbimus.
Non equidem inficior, edito illo libro, Salmasium in
ore omnium fuisse, regiis mirè placuisse ; * ab augus-
tissima Sueciæ regina, amplissimis praemiis invitatum;
quinimò tota illa contentione Salmasio secunda omnia,
adversa mibi penè omnia fuere. Primùm de illius eru-
ditione, erat hominum summa opinio, quam multis ab
annis jam diu collegerat, libros conscribendo multos,
et bene magnos, non eos quidem plerumque utiles, scd
abstrusissimis de rebus, et summorum authorum citati-
unculis differtos ; quo nihil citiùs literatorum vulgus
in admirationem rapit ; me verò quis essem, nemo in
iis ferè regionibus nórat; magnam ille sui expectatio-
nem concitârat, attentior operi quàm solebat aliàs, ut
in re tanta ; ego mei nullam potui movere : immò verò
multi me ab illo dehortabantur, tyronem cum veterano
congressurum, partim imvidentes, nè utcumque milii
gloriæ foret cum tanto hoste decertasse ; partim et mihi,
et causæ metuentes, nè utriusque gravi cum ignominia
victus discederem ; causa denique speciosa atque plau-
sibilis, inveterata vulgi opinio, sive superstitio dicenda
potiùs est, et propensus in regium nomen favor Salmasio
vires et spiritus addiderat ; eadem omnia contra me
fecére, quo magis est mirandum, quamprimum responsio
nostra prodiit, non si à plerisque avidè arriperetur,
videre gestientibus ecquis tam præceps animi esset ut
auderet cum Salmasio confligere, sed tam esse placitam
' multis atque gratam, ut, non authoris, sed ipsius veri-
tatis ratione habita, qui modò summo in homore fuerat
Salmasius, nunc quasi detracta, sub qua latuerat, per-
sona, et existimatione, et animo repentè caderet; seque
asserere, tametsi omnibus nervis id agens, quoad vixit
postea non valuerit. Te verò, serenissima Suecorum
regina, tuumque illud acre judicium fallere haud diu
potuit ; tu veritatis partium studiis anteferendæ, prin-
ceps atque author propè dicam cœlestis extitisti.
Quamvis enim illum hominem eximiæ doctrinæ fama,
causæque regiæ patrocinio tunc temporis longè omnium
celeberrimum, à te invitatum, multis honoribus affecis-
ses, tamen prodeunte illo responso, et singulari æqua-
nimitate abs te perlecto, postquam vanitatis et apertis-
simæ corruptelæ redargutum Salmasium, multa leviter,
multa immoderatè, falsa quædam, adversùs seipsum
alia, et prioribus sententiis contraria disseruisse ami-
madverteras, ad quæ, coram accitus, ut ferunt, quod satis
responderet nihil habuit, ita palàm animo affecta es, ut
ab illo tempore meque hominem, ut antea, colere, neque
ejus ingenium aut doctrinam magni facere, et, quod
erat planè inopinatum, ejus adversario propensiùs
favere, qmnes te intelligerent. Quod enim erat in ty-
rannos dictum, negabas id ad te ullo modo pertinere :
unde et apud te fructum, et apud alios famam rectissi-
mæ conscientiæ adepta es. Cùm enim tua facta satis
declarent, tyrannum te non esse, hæc tua tam aperta
animi significatio adhuc clariùs demonstrabat, te ejus
rei me omnino quidem tibi esse consciam. O me spe
mea omni feliciorem ! (eloquentiam enim, nisi quæ in
ipsa veritate Suada est, nullam mihi sumo ;) qui, cùm
in ea patriae tempora incidissem, ut necesse esset in
causa tam ardua tamque invidiosa versari, ut jus omne
regium impugnare viderer, tam illustrem, tam verè
regiam nactus sim integritatis meæ testem atque inter-
pretem, nullum me verbum fecisse contra reges, sed
çontra regum labes ac pestes, dumtaxat tyrannos. Te
verò magnanimam, Augusta, te tutam undique divina
planè virtute ac sapientia munitam ! quæ quod in jus
tuum ac dignitatem poterat videri scriptum, non solum
tam æquo animo atque sedato, tam incredibili mentis
candore, vultusque vera serenitate perlegere sustinuisti;
sed contra ipsum patronum tuum ejusmodi sententiam
ferre, ut ejus adversario palmam etiam adjudicare à
plerisque existimeris. Quo te honore, qua te venerati-
one, regina, prosequi semper debuero, cujus excelsa
virtus ac magnitudo animi non tibi solùm gloriosa, sed
mihi etiam tam fausta atque fortunata, et suspicione
me omni atque infamia apud alios reges liberavit,
et præclaro ac immortali hoc beneficio tibi in per-
petuum devinxit. Quàm bene de æquitate tua, de-
que justitia et sentire exteri, et sentire et sperare
semper tui populi debebunt, qui, cùm tua res ac
majestas ipsa agi videretur, tam nihil turbatam te
de tuo haud minùs placidè, quàm de populi jure soles,
judicantem viderunt. Jam tu quidem haud temerè, tot
conquisita undique volunina, tot literarum monumenta
congessisti, non quasi te illa quicquam docere, sed
ut ex illis tui cives te discere, tuæque virtutis ac sapi-
entiæ præstantiam contemplari possint; cujus ipsa divæ
species, nisi tuo animo penitùs insedisset, et quasi oculis
conspiciendam se tibi præbuisset, haud ulla profectò li-
brorum lectione, tam incredibiles amores excitasset in
te sui : quò magis illum mentis tuæ vigorem planè
aethereum et quasi purissimam divinæ auræ partem in
illas ultimas regiones delapsam admiramur; quam me-
que cœlum illud triste ac mubilosum ullis frigoribus ex-
tinguere aut gravare, neque solum illud horridum ac
salebrosum, quod et ingenia quoque incolarum haud rarò
indurat, quicquam in te inæquale aut asperum creare po-
tuit: quim et ipsa terra illa, tot metallis foecunda, si
aliis noverca, tibi certè alma parens, te summis enixa
viribus totam auream produxisse videtur. Dicerem
Adolphi filiam invicti atque inclyti regis unicam pro-
lem, nisi tu illi, “ Christima,” tantum præluceres, quan-
tum viribus sapientia, belli artibus pacis studia præ-
cellunt. Jam inde profectò regina austri haud sola
celebrabitur : habet nunc et septentrio reginam suam,
et dignam sanè quæ non modò sapientissimum illum
Judæorum regem, aut siquis umquam similis futurus
esset, auditum proficisceretur, sed ad quam alii tam-
quam ad clarissimum regalium virtutum exemplar, et
visendam omnibus heroimam, undique concurrant: nul-
lumque in terris fastigium par esse ejus laudibus ac
meritis fateantur, in qua minimum hoc esse videant,
quòd sit regina, tot gentium monarcha. Non autem
hoc minimum, quòd etiam hoc esse decorum suorum
mimimum ipsa sentiat, aliudque longè majus atque
sublimius meditetur, quàm regnare ; hoc ipso nonine.
718
I)EFENSIO SECUNDA PRO POPULO ANGLICANO,
innumeris regibus præponenda. Potest itaque, si ea
manet Suecorum gentem calamitas, regnum abdicare,
reginam deponere numquam potest, non Sueciæ sed
totius orbis terrarum dignam se imperio testata.
In has digressum me reginæ meritissimas laudes
nemo est, opinor, qui non collaudet, nedum reprehen-
dat ; quas ego quidem sine summa ingratitudinis
culpa, vel aliis tacentibus, prætermittere non potui ;
qui nescio qua mea sorte, sanè felicissima, aut si quis
est occultus vel siderum, vel animorum, vel rerum con-
sensus aut moderamem, tantam arbitram quam ommium
minimè sperabam, omnium maximè optabam, tam mihi
æquam et faventem in ultimis terris repererim. Nunc
ad relictum opus, longè quidem diversissimum, rede-
undum tamen est. “ Infremuisse,” ais, “ nos ad defen-
sionis regiæ famam ; dispexisse igitur grammaticas-
trum aliquem famelicum, qui venalem calamum parri-
cidii patrocinio vellet commodare.” Hæc abs te ma-
litiosissimè ficta sunt, ex quo memineras, regios, cum
suis mendaciis ac maledicentiæ præconem dispicerent,
adiisse grammaticum, si non famelicum, certè auri plus
nimio sitientem Salmasium ; qui non solùm præsentem
operam suam, sed bonam quoque mentem, si quam
priùs habuit, illis libentissimè vendidit ; ex quo memi-
meras Salmasium, fama jam deplorata atque perdita,
cum dispiceret, qui existimationem afflictam atque ob-
tritam, quoquo modo reparare quiret, te invenisse justo
Dei judicio, non, unde excussus es, ministrum Gene-
vensem, sed episcopum Lampsacenum, id est, ex horto
Priapum, suæ domùs constupratorem ; unde et insul-
sissimas laudes, tanto cum dedecore emptas aversatus,
et ex amico inimicissimus factus, tibi laudatori suo,
multa moriens imprecatus est. “ Unus inventus est,
magnus scilicet heros, quem Salmasio opponerent, Jo-
amnes Miltomus.” Ego heroëm me esse nesciebam, tu
heroïs cujuspiam fortè filius per me sis licèt; totus
enim noxa es. Atque unum me esse inventum, qui
causam populi Anglicani tuear, si reipublicæ rationes
cogito, sanè quàm doleo, si laudem, ejus participem
habere me neminem facilè patior. Quis et unde sim
dubium ais esse. Tam olim erat dubium quis Ho-
merus, quis Demosthenes. Equidem tacere diu, et
posse non scribere, quod numquam potuit Salmasius,
didiceram ; eaque in sinu gestabam tacitus, quæ si tum
proferre libuisset, æquè ac nunc, inclaruisse jamdudum
poteram : sed cunctantis famæ avidus non eram, me
hæc quidem, nisi idonea data occasione umquam prola-
turus ; nihil laborans etsi alii me quæcumque nossem
scire nesciebant ; mon enim famam sed opportunitatem
cujusque rei præstolabar ; unde factum est, ut multò
ante plurimis essem motus, quàm Salmasius motus esset
sibi ; numc Andremone notior est caballo. “ Homone
an vermis.” Equidem malim me vermem esse, quod
fatetur de se etiam rex Davides, quàm tuum vermem
im pectore numquam moriturum intùs celare. “Aiunt,”
inquis, “ hominem Camtabrigiensi academia ob flagitia
pulsum, dedecus et patriam fugisse, et in Italiam com-
migrasse.” Vel hinc licebit conjicere quàm veraces illi
fuerint, ex quibus res mostras auditione accepisti ; liic
enim et te et illos impudentissimè mentiri et mòrunt
omnes qui me nôrunt, et statim ampliùs ostendam. Pu]-
sus verò Cantabrigia, cur in Italiam potiùs quàm in
Galliam aut Hollandiam commigrarem ? ubi tu tot fla-
gitiis coopertus, minister Evangelii, non modò impunè
vivis, sed concionaris, sed sacra etiam ministeria, summo
cum illius ecclesiæ opprobrio, inquinatissimis manibus
conspurcas. Cur verò in Italiam, More ? novus credo
Saturnus, ut alicubi laterem, in Latium scilicet profugi.
Verùm ego Italiam, non, ut tu putas, facinorosorum la-
tibulum aut asylum, sed humanitatis potiùs, et civilium
doctrinarum omnium hospitium et movercam antea, et
expertus sum. “ Reversus librum de divortiis conscrip-
sit.” Non aliud scripsi atque ante me Bucerus de regno
Christi copiosè, Fagius in Deuteromonium, Erasmus in
Epistolam primam ad Corinthios dedita opera in Anglo-
rum gratiam, aliique multi percelebres viri, in commune
bonum scripserunt. Quod in illis nemo reprehendit,
cur id milii præ cæteris fraudi esset, non intelligo : vel-
lem hoc tantùm, sermone vernaculo me non scripsisse;
non enim in vernas lectores incidissem ; quibus solemne
est sua bona ignorare, aliorum mala irridere. Tene
verò, turpissime, de divortiis obstrepere, qui cum Pon-
tia ancilla tibi desponsata, post stuprum eo obtentu
illatum, immanissimum omnium divortium fecisti ? Et
tamen erat illa Salmasii famula, Anglica, ut fertur,
foemina, regiis partibus apprimè dedita ; nempe hoc
erat, scelerate, adamasti ut rem regiam, reliquisti ut rem
publicam, cujus tamen conversionis, quam odisse adeo
vis videri, vi le me ipse author fueris ; vide inquam me
subversa funditus dominatione Salmasiana Pontiam ipse
in rem publicam converteris. Et hoc modo multas tu
quidem una in urbe res publicas, regius licet, aut fun-
dasse diceris aut ab aliis fundatas minister publicus
administrare. Hæc tua sunt divortia, seu mavis, diver-
ticula, umde in me Curius prodiisti. Ad mendacia munc
redis. “ Cum de regis capite inter conjuratos ageretur,
scripsit ad eos, et mutantes in malam partem impulit.”
Ego vero neque ad eos scripsi, neque impellere attinebat,
quibus id onmino agere sine me deliberatum jam erat :
verùm ea de re quid scripserim, infrà dicetur, uti etiam
de Iconoclaste. Nunc quomiam iste (hominem an dicam
hæreo, purgamentum potiùs hominis) ab ancillarum
adulteriis, ad adulterandam omnem veritatem progres-
sus, congestis in me tot uma serie mendaciis, apud ex-
teros infamem reddere conatus est, peto me quis rem
secùs interpretetur, aut in invidiam trahat, neve mo-
lestè ferat, si de me plura quàm vellem et dixi suprà,
et porrò dicam : ut si oculos à cæcitate, nomen ab ob-
livione aut calumnia non possum, vitam tamen possim
ab ea saltem obscuritate quæ cum macula sit, in lucem
vindicare. Idque non unam ob causam mihi erit neces-
sariò faciendu:m. Primùm ut tot viros bonos atque
doctos, qui per omnes vicinas gentes nostra jam legunt,
deque me haud malè sentiunt, ne propter hujus male-
dicta mei poeniteat; verùm ita sibi persuadeant mom eum
esse me, qui honestam orationem inhonestis moribus,
aut liberè dicta serviliter factis, umquam dedecorarim ;
vitamque nostram, Deo benejuvante, ab omni turpitu-
dine ac flagitio remotam longè semper fuisse:. deinde,
ut quos laudandos mihi sumo viros illustres ac laude
diguos, hi sciant mihil me pudendum magis existimare,
quàm si ad eorum laudes vituperandus ipse ac mequam
CONTRA INFAMEM LIBELLUM ANONYMUM.
719
accederem ; sciat demique populus Anglicanus, quem
ut defenderem, meum sive fatum sive officium, sua vir-
tus impulit, si vitam pudentur atque honestè semper egi,
meam defensioncm, nescio an honori aut ornamento,
certè pudori aut dedecori nunquam sibi fore : qui igitur,
et unde sim, nunc dicam. Londini sum natus, genere
honesto, patre viro integerrimo, matre probatissima, et
eleemosynis per viciniam potissimùm mota. Pater me
puerulum humaniorum literarum studiis destinavit ;
quas ita avidè arripui, ut ab anno ætatis duodecimo
vix unquam ante mediam noctem à lucubrationibus
cubitum discederem ; quæ prima oculorum permicies
fuit: quorum ad naturalem debilitatem accesserant et
crebri capitis dolores ; quæ omnia cum discendi impe-
tum non retardarent, et in ludo literario, et sub aliis
domi magistris erudiemdum quotidie curavit: ita variis
instructum linguis, et percepta haud leviter philosophiæ
dulcedine, ad gymnasium gentis alterum, Cantabrigiam
: misit: Illic disciplinis atque artibus tradi solitis sep-
tennium studui: procul omni flagitio, bonis omnibus
probatus, usquedum magistri, quem vocant, gradum,
cum laude etiam adeptus, non in Italiam, quod iumpu-
rus ille cömminiscitur, profugi, sed sponte mea domum
me contuli, meique etiam desiderium, apud collegii
plerosque socios à quibus eram haud mediocriter cultus,
reliqui. Paterno rure, quo is transigendæ senectutis
causa concesserat, evolvendis Graecis Latinisque scrip-
toribus summum per otium totus vacavi ; ita tamem
ut nonnunquam, rus urbe mutarem, aut coëmendo-
rum gratia librorum, aut novum quidpiam in mathe-
maticis, vel in musicis, quibus tum oblectabar, addis-
cendi. Exacto in hunc modum quinquennio, post
matris obitum, regiomes exteras, et Italiam potissi-
mùm, videndi cupidus, exorato patre, uno cum famulo
profectus sum. Abeuntem vir clarissimus Henricus
Woottonus, qui ad Venetos orator Jacobi regis diu
fuerat, et votis et præceptis, eumti peregrè sanè uti-
lissimis, eleganti epistola perscriptis, me amicissimè
prosequutus est. Commendatum ab aliis mobilissimus
vir Thomas Scudamorus vicecomes Slegonensis, Caroli
regis legatus, Parisiis humanissimè accepit; meque
Hugoni Grotio viro eruditissimo, ab regina Suecorum
tunc temporis ad Galliæ regem legato, quem invisere
cupiebam, suo nomine, et suorum uno atque altero de-
ducente, commendavit: Discedenti post dies aliquot
Italiam versùs, literas ad mercatores Anglos, quâ iter
eram facturus, dedit, ut quibus possent offieiis mihi
præstò essent. Nicæa solvens, Genuam perveni ; mox
Liburnum et Pisas, inde Florentiam. Illa in urbe,
quam præ cæteris propter elegantiam cum linguae tum
ingeniorum semper colui, ad duos circiter menses sub-
stiti ; illic multorum et nobilium sanè et doctorum
hominum familiaritatem statim contraxi; quorum etiam
privatas academias (qui mos illic, cum ad literas huma-
niores, tum ad amicitias conservandas laudatissimus
est) assiduè frequentavi. Tui enim Jacobe Gaddi,
Carole Dati, Frescobalde, Cultellime, Bommatthæi,
Clementille, Francine, aliorumque plurium memoriam,
apud me semper gratam atque jucundam, nulla dies
delebit. Florentia Senas, inde Romam profectus, post-
quam illius urbis antiquitas et prisca fama me ad bi-
mestre ferè spatium tenuisset, (ubi et Luca Holstenio,
aliisque viris cum doctis tum ingeniosis, sum usus hu-
manissimis,) Neapolim perrexi : Illic per eremitam
quendam, quicum Roma iter feceram, ad Joannem
Baptistam Mansum, marchionem ViIlemsem, virum
nobilissimum atque gravissimum, (ad quem Torquatus
Tassus insignis poeta Italus de amicitia scripsit,) sum
introductus ; eodemque usus, quamdiu illic fui, sanè
amicissimo ; qui et ipse me per urbis loca et proregis
aulam circumduxit, et visendi gratia haud semel ipse
ad hospitium venit : Discedenti seriò excusavit se,
tametsi multò plura detulisse mihi officia maximè
cupiebat, non potuisse illa in urbe, propterea quòd mo-
lebam in religione esse tectior. In Siciliam quoque et
Græciam trajicere volentem me, tristis ex Anglia belli
civilis nuntius revocavit : Turpe enim existimabam,
dum mei cives domi de libertate dimicarent, ne animi
causa otiosè peregrinari. Romam autem reversurum,
monebant mercatores se didicisse per literas parari
mihi ab Jesuitis Anglis insidias, si Romam reverterem ;
eò quod de religione mimis liberè loquutus essem. Sic
enim mecum statueram, de religioue quidem iis in locis
sermones ultrò mom inferre ; interrogatus de fide, quic-
quid essem passurus, nihil dissimulare. Romam itaque
nihilominùs redii : Quid essem, si quis interrogabat,
neminem celavi ; si quis adoriebatur, in ipsa urbe pon-
tificis, alteros prope duos menses, ovthodoxam religio-
nem, ut antea, liberrimè tuebar : Deoque sic volente,
incolumis Florentiam rursus perveni ; haud minùs mei
cupientes revisens, ac si in patriam revertissem. Illic
totidem, quot priùs, menses libeuter commoratus, nisi
quod ad paucos dies Luccam excucurri, transcenso
Apenmino, per Bononiam et Forraram, Venetias con-
tendi. Cui urbi lustrandæ cum mensem unum impen-
dissem, et libros, quos per Italiam conquisiveram, in
navem imponendos curâssem, per Veromam ac Medio-
lanum, et Pæminas Alpes, lacu denique Lemanno,
Genevam delatus sum. Quæ urbs, cùm in mentem
mihi hinc veniat Mori calumniatoris, facit ut Deum
hic rursus testem invocem, me his omnibus in locis,
ubi tam multa licent, ab omni flagitio ac probro inte-
grum atque intactum vixisse, illud perpetuò cogitantem,
si hominum latere oculos possem, Dei certè non posse.
Genevæ cum Joanne Deodato, theologiæ professore
doctissimo, quotidianus versabar. Deinde eodem itin-
ere, quo priùs, per Galliam, post annum et tres plus
minus menses in patriam revertor ; eodem ferme
tempore quo Carolus cum Scotis, rupta pace, bellum
alterum quod vocant episcopale, redintegrabat ; in
quo fusis primo congressu regiis copiis, cùm vide-
ret etiam omnes Anglos, et meritò quidem, in se
pessimè animatos, malo coaetus, mon sponte, par-
lamentum haud ita multò post convocavit. Ipse,
sicubi possem, tam rebus turbatis et fluctuantibus,
locum consistendi circumspiciens, mihi librisque meis,
sat amplam in urbe domum comduxi ; ibi ad inter-
missa studia beatulus me recepi; rerum exitu Deo im-
primis, et quibus id muneris populus dabat, facile per-
misso. Interea parlamento rem strenuè gerente, episco-
porum fastus detumuit. Ut primùm loquendi saltem
cœpta est libertas concedi, omnia in episcopos apeririora;
720
DEFENSIO SECUNDA PRO POPULO ANGLICANO,
alii de ipsorum vitiis, alii de ipsius ordinis vitio con-
queri; iniquum esse, se solos ab ecclesiis omnibus,
quotquot reformatæ sunt, discrepare ; exemplo fratrum,
sed maximè ex verbo Dei, gubernari ecclesiam conve-
mire. Ad hæc sanè experrectus, cùm veram affectari
viam ad libertatem cernerem, ab his imitiis, his passi-
bus, ad liberandam servitute vitam omnem mortalium,
rectissimè procedi, si ab religione disciplina orta, ;d
mores et instituta reipublicæ emanaret, cùm etiam me
ita ab adolescentia parassem, ut quid divini, quid
humani esset juris, ante omnia possem non ignorare,
meque consuluissem ecquando ullius usus essem futurus,
si nunc patriæ, immo verò ecclesiæ totque fratribus
evangelii causa, periculo sese objicientibus deessem,
statuti, etsi tunc alia quædam meditabar, huc omne im-
genium, omnes industriæ vires transferre. Primùm
itaque de reformanda ecclesia Anglicana, duos ad ami-
cum quemdam libros conscripsi : Deinde, cum duo præ
cæteris magni nominis episcopi suum jus contra minis-
tros quosdam primarios assererent, ratus de iis rebus,
quas amore solo veritatis, et ex officii Christiani ratione
didiceram, haud pejùs me dicturum, quàm qui de suo
quaestu et injustissimo dominatu contendebant, ad
hunc, libris duobus, quorum unus de episcopatu præ-
latico, alter de ratione disciplinæ ecclesiasticæ inscri-
bitur, ad illum, scriptis quibusdam animadversionibus,
et mox apologia, respondi ; et ministris facundiam ho-
minis, ut ferebatur, aegrè sustinentibus, suppetias tuli ;
et ab eo tempore, si quid postea responderent, interfui.
Cùm petiti omnium telis episcopi tandem cecidissent,
otiumque ab illis esset, verti aliò cogitationes; si qua
in re possem libertatis veræ ac solidæ rationem promo-
vere ; quae non foris, sed intus quærenda, non pug-
mando, sed vitam rectè instituendo recteque adminis-
trando, adipiscenda potissimùm est. Cùm itaque tres
omnino animadverterem libertatis esse species, quæ
nisi adsint, vita ulla transigi commodè vix possit, ec-
clesiasticam, domesticam seu privatam, atque civilem,
deque prima jam scripsissem, deque tertia magistratum
sedulò agere viderem, quæ reliqua secunda erat, do-
mesticam mihi desumpsi ; ea quoque tripartita, cùm
videretur esse, si res conjugalis, si liberorum institutio
rectè se haberet, si denique liberè philosophandi potestas
esset, de conjugio non solùm ritè contrahendo, verùm
etiam, si necesse esset, dissolvendo, quid sentirem ex-
plicui ; idque ex divina lege quam Christus non sus-
tulit, nedum aliam, toto lege Mosaica graviorem, civil-
iter sanxit; quid item de excepta solùm fornicatione
sentiendum sit, et meam aliorumque sententiam ex-
prompsi, et clarissimus vir Seldemus noster, in uxore
Hebraea plùs minùs biennio pòst edita, uberiùs demon-
stravit. Frustrâ enim libertatem in comitiis et foro
crepat, qui domi, servitutem viro indignissimam, infe-
riori etiam servit ; ea igitur de re aliquot libros edidi ;
eo præsertim tempore cùm vir saepe et conjux hostes
inter se acerrimi, hic domi cum liberis, illa in castris
hostium materfamilias versaretur, viro caedem atque
perniciem minitans. Institutionem deinde liberorum
uno opusculo breviùs quidem tractabam ; sed quod satis
arbitrabar iis fore, qui ad eam rem, qua par esset dili-
gentia, incumberent.; qua quidem re, nihil ad imbu-
endas, unde vera atque interna oritur libertas, virtute
hominum mentes, nihil ad rempublicam bene gerendam,
et quam diutissimè conservandam majus momentum
potest afferre. Postremò de typographia liberanda, me
veri et falsi arbitrium, quid edendum, quid premendum,
penès paucos esset, eosque ferè indoctos, et vulgaris
judicii homines, librorum inspectioni præpositos, per
quos memimi ferè quicquam quod supra vulgus sapiat,
in lucem emittere, aut licet aut libet, ad justæ orationis
modum Areopagiticam scripsi. Civilem, quæ pos-
trema species restabat, non attigeram ; quam, magis-
tratui satis curæ esse cernebam : Neque de jure regio
quicquam à me scriptum est, donec rex hostis à sematu
judicatus, belloque victus, causam captivus apud ju-
dices diceret, capitisque damnatus est. Tum verò tam-
dem, cùm presbyteriami quidam ministri, Carolo priùs
infestissimi, nunc independentium partes suis anteferri,
et in senatu plus posse indignantes, parlamenti sen-
tentiæ de rege latæ (non faeto irati, sed quod ipsorum
factio non fecisset) reclamitarent, et quantum in ipsis
erat, tumultuarentur, ausi affirmare protestantium doc
trinam, omnesque ecclesias reformatas ab ejusmodi in
reges atroci sententia abhorrere, ratus falsitati tam
apertæ palàm eundum obviàm esse, me tum quidem de
Carolo quicquam scripsi aut suasi, sed quid in genere
contra tyrannos liceret, adductis haud paucis sum-
morum theologorum testimoniis, ostendi ; et insignem
hominum meliora profitentium, sive ignorantiam sive
impudentiam propè concionabundus incessi. Liber iste
non nisi post mortem regis prodiit, ad componendos
potiùs hominum animos factus, quàm ad statuendum
de Carolo quicquam quod non mea, sed magistratuum
intererat, et peractum jam tum erat. Hanc intra pri-
vatos parietes meam operam numc ecclesiæ, nunc rei-
publicae gratis dedi ; mihi vicissim vel hæc vel illa
præter incolumitatem nihil ; bonam certè conscientiam,
bonam apud bonos existimationem, et honestam hanc
dicendi libertatem facta ipsa reddidere : Commoda alii,
alii honores gratis ad se trahebant : Me nemo ambien-
tem, nemo per amicos quicquam petentem, curiæ foribus
affixum petitorio vultu, aut minorem conventuum ves-
tibulis hærentem nemo me unquam vidit. Domi fere
me continebam, meis ipse facultatibus, tametsi hoe
civili tumultu magna ex parte sæpe tetentis, et censum
fere iniquiùs mihi impositum, et vitam utcumque frugi
tolerabam. His rebus confectis, cùm jam abundè otii
existimarem mihi futurum, ad historiam gentis, ab ul-
tima origine repetitam, ad hæc usque tempora, si pos-
sem, perpetuo filo deducemdam me converti : Quatuor
jam libros absolveram, cum ecce nihil tale cogitantem
me, Caroli regno in rempublicam redacto, concilium
statùs, quod dicitur, tum primùm authoritate parlamenti
constitutum, ad se vocat, meaque opera ad res præser-
tim externas uti voluit. Prodiit haud multò post attri-
butus regi liber, contra parlamentum invidiosissimè sane
scriptus: Huic respondere jussus, Iconi Iconoclasten
opposui; nom ** regiis manibus insultans,” ut insimu-
lor, sed reginam veritatem regi Carolo anteponendam
arbitratus ; immo cum præviderem hanc calumniam
cuivis maledico in promptu fore, ipso exordio, et sæpe
aliàs, quoad licuit, à me istam invidiam sum amolitus.
CONTRA INFAMEM LIBELLUM ANONYMUM.
721
Prodiit deinde Salmasius ; cui quis responderet, adeò
non diu, quod ait Morus, dispiciebant, ut me in concilio
tum etiam praesentem statim omnes ultro nominarent.
Hactentis ad obturandum os tuum, More, et mendacia
redarguenda bonorum maximè virorum in gratiam, qui
me aliàs non mórint, mei rationem reddidi. Tu igitur,
More, tibi dico immunde, φιμῦθητι, obmutesce inquam ;
quo enim magis mihi maledixeris, eo me rationes meas
uberiùs explicare coëgeris ; ex quo aliud lucrari nihil
poteris, quàm ut tibi mendaciorum opprobrium adhuc
gravius concilies, mihi ad integritatis commendationem
eo latiùs viam aperias. Reprehenderam ego Salmasium,
quòd extraneum se et alienigenam rebus nostris immis-
cuisset: Tu instas, “ ad eos, qui ad Angliam non per-
tinent, hanc defensionem maxime pertinere.” Quid
enim ? “ Possint,” inquis, “ Angli existimari studio
partium acriùs agere ; Gallos verò consentaneum est
rei, non hominum, rationem habuisse.” Ad hæc eadcm
quæ priùs regero ; externum et longinquum, qualis tu
es, in alienas res præsertim turbatas, immersurum se
meminem nisi corruptum; Salmasium prius demonstravi
mercede conductum ; te constat per Salmasium et Arau-
sionenses professoriam cathedram petiise; deinde, quod
foedius est, exagitas parlamentum, et subagitas Pon-
tiam. Quam autem affers rationem, cur hæc ad exteros
potius pertimcrent, deridicula prorsùs est; si enim Angli
partium studiis feruntur, quid vos aliud, qui illos solos
sequimimi, quàm eorum affectus duntaxat in vos trans-
fertis ? Adeò ut, si Anglis illis credendum in sua causa
non est, vobis profectò sit multò minùs ; qui rerum
nostrarum nihil intelligitis, aut saltem creditis, nisi
quas ab ipsis accepistis, quibus, vestra quoque senten-
tia, vix est credendum. Hic rursum effundis te in lau-
dem magni Salmasii: Magnus sanè tibi fuit, quem tu
quasi pro lenone habuisti ancillæ suæ ; laudas tamen;
at is te non laudat, immo ante mortem palàm est abo-
minatus, seque ipse millies incusavit, quod Spanhemio
gravissimo theologo, de te, quàm impius esses, non cre-
didisset. Nunc totus in rabiem versus rationi quasi re-
nuntias; “ Jamdudum ratione” scilicet ** defunctus est
Salmasius.” Tu clamandi tantum et furendi partes
tibi deposcis, et tamem primas in maledicendo etiam
tribuis Salmasio ; “ non quia verbis stevit, sed quia
Salmasius.” O σπερμολόys ! Has mempe argutias
morigeranti debemus Pontiæ. Hinc clamor tuus
argutari atque etiam minurizare didicit ; hinc mini-
tabundus quoque, “ experiemini,” inquis, « aliquando,
foedissimæ belluae, quid styli potuerint.” Tene expe-
riemur, ancillariole, tene moeche, aut stylum tuum,
ancillis tantummodo metuendum ? Cui si quis rapha-
num aut mugilem solùm intenderit, actum mehercule
præclarè tecum putes, si nate non fissa, et incolumi
stylo isto salaci tuo, queas an fugere. « Equidem
non adeo sum,” inquis, “ vacui capitis, ut provinciam
à Salmasio susceptam aggrediar : ” Quam ille qui-
dem sine capite admodum vacuo, nunquam aggres-
sus fuisset ; festivè tu quidem vacuitate capitis, mag-
mum Salmasium tibi antepomis. « At regii sanguinis
clamorem ad cœlum tollere,” quod * imeruditiº etiam,
“ debent:” hoc nempè tuum esse ais. Clama, vocife-
'are, boa; perge hypocritari, sancta verba usurpare, et
Priapeia vivere : Exurget, mihi crede, aliquando quem
iuclamas toties ultionum Deus ; exurget, teque impri-
mis eradicabit, diaboli ministrum, et reformatæ eccle-
siæ infandum dedecus et luem. Inculpantibus Salmasii
maledicentiam quamplurimis, respondes, “ Sic cum
parricidis monstrorum omnium turpissimis, fuisse agen-
dum.” Laudo ; telis enim nos instruis: et quo te pacto,
tuosque perduelles tractari conveniat, commodus doces,
nosque ipse absolvis. Nunc quando ratione nihil potes,
ne audes quidem occupatum ab Salmasio jus omne re-
gium, et quicquid est in eo rationis causatus, à com-
tumeliis et rabie ad narrationes quasdam miserabiles
conversus, expers rationis, institutos ab initio clamores
tantùm persequeris: quas partim Salmasianas recoxisti,
partim ex elencho illo ἐλεγχιεω anonymo, qui non pa-
tria solùm, sed nonine etiam profugit, descriptas inter-
polasti: quarum ad præcipua capita, vel im Iconoclaste,
vel in Salmasianis ita jam respondi, ut citra modum
historiae, responderi ampliùs posse non putem. Sem-
perne ego ut identidem eandem orbitam teram, et ad
balatronis cujusque stridorem dicta toties cogar iterare?
nom faciam ; neque mea sic abutar vel opera vel otio.
Si quis conductitios ejulatus, et compositos venalissimi
hominis ploratus, si quis declamatiunculas, quas etiam
ancillaris concubitus, adulterimas edixit et spurias, Mo-
rilli nothi gemellas, fide satis locupletes, arbitratur esse,
ad me quod attinet, uihil quidem moror, quo minùs
ita existimet; neque emim est ut ab ejusmodi credulo
ac temerario metuendum nobis quicquam sit: attingam
tamén pauca, multorum instar, ex quibus tam quis
ipse, quàm quid dicat, et quid de reliquo judicandum
sit, summatim intelligetis. Postquam de camera ple-
bis et camera procerum ad unam redigenda, multa
exoticus deblateravit (quod postulatum nemo sanus
reprehenderet) “ ut æqualitate,” inquit, “ in rem-
publicam invecta, ad eamdem in ecclesiam introdu-
cendam procederetur; tunc enim adhuc stabant epis-
copi : hic misi sit purus putus anabaptismus, nihil
video.” Quis hoc à theologo et ministro Gallico spe-
rasset unquam ? sanè qui amabaptismus quid sit, nisi
hoc sit, non videt, eum ego crediderim haud magis vi-
dere quid sit baptismus. Sed si res propriis vocabulis
appellare malimus, æqualitas in republica non est ana-
baptismus, sed democratia, longè antiquior: in ecclesia
praesertim constituta, est disciplina apostolica. At
enim “ stabant episcopi.” Fatemur, stabant et Genevoe;
cum illa civitas et episcopum et eundem legitimum
principem religionis causa expulit; quod illis laudi,
cur id nobis probro ducitur ? scio quid tibi vis, More,
Genevensium suffragia ultum is; quibus dimissus cum
ignomimia, am ejectus ex illa ecclesia fueris, in dubio
est. Te ergo cum Salmasio tuo ab evangelico hoc in-
stituto descivisse, et ad episcopos transfugisse, si modò
refert quo tu transfugeris, apparet. ** Deinde ad minis-
trorum,” inquis, “ nostratium tequalitatem respublica
transiit, ut palàm sit eumdem spiritum tunc viguisse
qui octavo demum anno nefando regis parricidio rem
peregit.” Ergo idem ut videtur spiritus et ministros
constituit vestrates, et parricidium peregit: Perge ut
occepisti, quas par est apostatam, eructave insanias.
“ Non plures,” inquis, “ tribus libellis supplicibus con-
792
DEFENSIO SECUNDA PRO POPULO ANGLICANO.
fecerunt, qui in regem amimadverti postulabant.” Quod
notum est, et ipse memimi falsissimum esse. Sanè qui
has res apud nos memoriæ mandarunt, non tres tantum-
modo libellos istiusmodi, sed multos ex diversis Angliæ
provinciis, exercitusque legionibus unius ferè mensis
spatio, tres uno die allatos fuisse memorant. Vides
quanta cum gravitate hac de re deliberaverit senatus,
cujus cunctationem populus lenitatis mimiae suspectam
tot supplicibus libellis eximendam putavit. Quot reris
millia hominum fuisse idem sentientium, qui senatum
ad id hortari, quod jam tum seriò agitabat, vel impor-
tumum existimarent vel supervacaneum ? quorum ex
numero et ipse fui, qui tamen quid voluerim obscurum
non est. Quid si conticuissent omnes rei magnitudine
perculsi, eone mimùs habuisset sematus in re tamta
quod statueret, expectandusne populi nutus erat, ex
quo tantorum exitus consiliorum penderet? enimverò
supremum gentis concilium, ab universo populo ea
mente adhibitum, ut impotentem regis dominatum
coerceret, posteaquam efferatum et repugnantem bello
cepisset, si recurrere ad jussa populi deberet, velit ju-
beatne de captivo hoste supplicium sumi, profectò qui
rempublicam fortissimè recuperassent, quid aliud fecisse
viderenter quàm in laqueos tyranni à populo, si fors ita
ferret, absoluti sese præcipites dedisse ? aut si accepta
maximis de rebus decernendi summa potestate, de iis
quæ præsertim vulgi captum superant, non dico ad
populum (nam cum hac potestate ipsi populus jam
sunt) sed ad multitudinem rursus referre cogerentur,
quæ, imperitiæ suæ conscia, ad eos prius omnia refule-
rat, quis ultro citroque referendi fimis esset ? quis tam-
dem in hoc Euripo consistendi locus ? quod firma-
mentum inter libellos istiusmodi tot capitum levissimo-
rum, quæ salus quassatis rebus hominum foret ? quid
si restituendum regno Carolum postulassent? cujus-
modi libellos extitisse aliquot non supplices sed minaces
fatendum est seditiosorum hominum, quorum munc
odium, nunc miseratio æquè stulta aut malitiosa esse
solebat ; horumme ratio habenda fuit ? qui “ ut cum
rege colloquium institueretur, ingenti,” inquis, “ mu-
mero pagis relictis ad parlamenti fores accurrebant ;
quorum sematores, immisso milite, plurimos trucida-
runt.” Et Surrienses dicis paganos, qui nescio alio-
rumne malitia, agrestes ipsi, an sua improbitate impulsi,
cum libello supplice bene poti, et comessabundi potiùs,
quam aliquid petituri, per urbem ibant ; mox curiæ
fores, facto agmine, ferociter obsederunt; collocatos ibi
milites stationibus deturbarunt, unum ad ipsas curiæ
fores occiderunt, priusquam illos vel dicto vel facto
quisquam lacessisset; inde meritò pulsi ac malè mul-
tati, haud ultra duos tresve occisi, vinolentiam potiùs
quàm ** libertatem spirantes.” Passim concedis “ po-
tiores fuisse independentium partes, non numero, sed
consilio et virtute militari.” Unde ego et jure et
merito superiores quoque fuisse contendo : mihil enim
est naturæ convenientius, nihil justius, nihil humano
generi utilius aut melius, quàm ut minor majori, non
numerus numero, sed virtuti, consilium consilio cedat;
qui prudentia, qui rerum usu, industria, atque virtute
pollent, hi mea quidem sententia, quantumvis pauci,
quantovis munero, plures erunt, et suffragiis ubique
potiores. Multa sparsim inseris de “ Cromucllo,” quæ
cujusmodi sint infra videbimus; de reliquis responsum
jampridem Salmasio est. Judicium quoque regis non
prætermittis, quamvis et illud à mago tuo rhetore
miserabiliter sit declamatum. Proceres, id est, regis
purpuratos, et ministros ferè aulicos, à judicando rege
ais abhorruisse : Nos id parùm referre, altero libro
ostendimus. “ Deinde curiarum judices erasos; quippe
qui responderamt esse contra Angliæ leges, regem judicio
sisti.” Nescio quid tunc responderint, scio quid jam
approbent atque defendant : non est novum, judices,
quos minimè decet, meticulosos esse. ** Præficitur ergo
sordidæ et sceleratæ curiæ par præses, obscurissimus
et petulantissimus nebulo.” Te verò tot vitiis et scele-
ribus obstrictum, immo meram spurcitiem, merum sce-
lus, usque adeo obduxisse menti et sensibus callum,
nisi tua mens potiùs tota callus est, ut in Deum atheus,
et sacrorum contaminator, in homines inhumanus, cu-
jusque optimi calumniator esse ausis, quid aliud est
esse quàm germanum Iscariotam atque diabolum ?
Quamvis autem tua vituperatio laus summa sit, tamen
præstantissimo viro cui oblatras, necnon amico mihi
semper plurimùm colendo, nequaquam deero ; quomi-
mus ab improbissimis perfugarum et Mororum linguis,
quas, nisi causa reipublicæ numquam sensisset, vin-
dicem. Est Joannes Bradsciamus, (quod nomen libertas
ipsa, quacumque gentium colitur, memoriæ sempiternæ
celebrandum commendavit,) nobili familia, ut satis
motum est, ortus ; unde patriis legibus addiscendis,
primam omnem ætatem sedulò impendit ; dein consul-
tissimus causarum ac disertissimus patronus, libertatis
et populi vindex acerrimus, et magnis reipublicæ
negotiis est adhibitus, et incorrupti judicis munere ali-
quoties perfunctus: Tandem uti regis judicio præsidere
vellet, à senatu rogatus, provinciam sanè periculosissi-
mam non recusavit. Attulerat enim ad legum scien-
tiam ingenium liberale, animum excelsum, mores in-
tegros ac nemini obnoxios ; unde illud munus omni
prope exemplo majus ac formidabilius, tot sicariorum
pugionibus ac minis petitus, ita constanter, ita graviter,
tanta animi cum præsentia ac dignitate gessit atque
implevit, ut ad hoc ipsum opus, quod jam olim Deus
edendum in hoc populo mirabili providentia decreverat,
ab ipso Numine designatus atque factus videretur ; et
tyrannicidarum omnium gloriam tantum superaverit,
quantò est humanius, quantò justius, ac majestate ple-
mius, tyrannum judicare, quàm injudicatum occidere.
Alioqui nec tristis, nec severus, sed commis ac placidus,
personam tamen quam suscepit tantam, æqualis ubique
sibi, ac veluti consul non unius amni, pari gravitate
sustinet: ut non de tribunali tantùm, sed per omnem
vitam judicare regem diceres. In consiliis ac laboribus
publicis maximè omnium indefessus, multisque par
unus ; domi, si quis alius, pro suis facultatibus hospi-
talis ac splendidus, amicus longè fidelissimus, atque in
omni fortuna certissimus, bene merentes quoscunque
nemo citiùs aut libentiùs agnoscit, neque majore be-
mevolentia prosequitur ; nunc pios, nunc doctos, aut
quavis ingenii laude cognitos, nunc militares etiam et
fortes viros ad inopiam redactos suis opibus sublevat;
iis si non indigent, colit tamen libens atque amplec-
CONTRA INFAMEM LIBELLUM ANO, NYMUM.
723
titur ; alienas laudes perpetuò prædicare, suas tacere,
solitus ; hostium quoque civilium, si quis ad sanitatem
rediit, quod experti sumt plurimi, memo ignoscentior.
Quòd si causa oppressi cujuspiam defendenda palam,
si gratia aut vis potentiorum oppugnanda, si in quem-
quam bene meritum, iugratitudo publica objurgauda
sit, tum quidem in illo viro, vel facundiam vel constan-
tiam nemo desideret, non patronum, non amicum, vel
idoneum magis et intrepidum, vel disertiorem alium
quisquam sibi optet; habet, quem non minæ dimovere
recto, non metus aut munera proposito bono atque
officio, vultusque ac mentis firmissimo statu dejicere
valeant. Quibus virtutibus, et plerisque merito charus,
et inimicissimis non contemnendus, gestarum egregiè
rerum in republica laudem, dirupto te, More, tuique
similibus, apud omnes tum exteros tum posteros, in
omne ævum propagabit. Sed pergendum: IRex capite
damnatus est: “ contra hanc vesaniam Londini pulpita
fere omnia detonare.” Ligneo isto tonitru haud mul-
tum terres; istos Salmoneas nihil veremur, qui fic-
titium illud fulmen et arrogatum sibi, aliquando luent;
graves profectò authores et sinceri, qui paulò ante ex
iisdem pulpitis contra pluralistas et nonresidentes stre-
pitu æquè horribili detonabant ; paulò post, raptis hic
sibi termis, ille quatermis prælatorum sacerdotiis, quos
tomamdo abegerant, atque inde nomresidentes necessario
facti, eodem ipsi crimine temebantur im quod detoma-
hant, et sui quisque tonitrus bidemtal factus est: meque
ullus adhuc pudor ; nunc in vindicandis sibi decimis
toti sunt ; et sanè si decimarum tanta sitis est, censeo
affatim decimandos : non terræ fructus tantùm, sed et
maris fluctus sibi habeant decumanos. Iidem primò
bellum suadebant in regem, ut in hostem exitio de-
votum ; mox capto hosti, et imputatæ à semetipsis
totiès cædis ac sanguinis effusi damnato, parci volebant
utpote regi. Ita im pulpitis tanquam in taberna qua-
dam meritoria, quæ volunt mercimonia, quæ volunt
scruta, vendunt popello; et quod miserius est, quæ jam
veudidere, quotiès volunt reposcunt. At “ Scoti regem
sibi reddi flagitabant, commemorant senatus promissa
quando Anglis regem tradiderant.” Atqui ego vel
Scotos etiam fatentes habeo, nulla omnimo promissa
publica intercessisse, cum rex traderetur ; et turpe sanè
fuisset Anglis, regem suum à Scotis in Anglia conduc-
titiis, reddendum non fuisse misi per conditiomes: quid?
quòd ipsa parlamenti responsio ad Scotorum cartulas
id. Mart. 1647, edita, ullam hac de re interpositam ab
se fidem, quo pacto rex tractandus esset, dilucidè me-
gat; imdigmum quippe censuisse, uom misi ea lege sua
jura obtineri à Scotis potuisse. Attamem ** regem
veddi sibi flagitabant.” Mites, credo, homines frange-
bantur animo, desiderium sui regis ferre diutiùs mom
poterant : immo verò iidem illi, cùm ab initio horum in
Britannia motuum, de jure regio haud semel im parla-
mento retulissent, essetque ab omnibus assensum, ob
tres maximè causas regem privari regno posse, si ty-
rannus existat, si fundum regium alienet, si suos deserat,
circa annum 1645. Parlamento Perthæ habito sen-
tentias rogare cœperunt; sitne rex, quem sanctis infes-
tum esse constet, communione eeclesiæ interdicendus ?
verùm antequam ea de re quicquam decerneretur, Mon-
3 A
trossius ad eam urbem cum copiis accedens conventum
disturbavit. Iidem, in suo quodam ad Cromuellum
inperatorem responso, Au. 1650, fatentur punitum jure
regem, juris tantummodo formam fuisse vitiosam, eo
quòd ipsi in illius judicii consortium mon vocarentur.
Hoc ergo facinus sine illis atrox, cum illis egregium
fuisset, ex eorum quippe nutu fas atque nefas pendebat,
justum atque injustum definieudum erat: quid isti, ob-
secro, rege sibi reddito lenius in eum statuissent? At
“ Delegati Scotici à senatu Amglico responsum hoc
prius tulerant, nolle se regni Anglicani formam immu-
tare, postea tamen respondere se tunc noluisse, nunc
velle, prout salus reipublicæ postularet.” Et rectè
quidem responderunt: quid tu hinc ? “ hæc stropha,”
inquis, “ omnia foedera, commercium, ipsumque sensum
communem evertit.” Tuum quidem evertit, qui mescis
inter libera promissa, et pactam fœderis fidem quid in-
tersit: Angli de forma reipublicæ suæ futura, cujus
rationem Seotis reddere necesse mon erat, quod tum
ipsis videbatur, liberè quidem responderit ; nunc salus
reipublicæ aliud suadebat ; si fidem, si jusjurandum
populo datum violare mollent. Utrum sanctius obli-
gare putas, liberumne de forma reipublicæ futura
datum Scoticis legatis responsum, an necessarium de
salute reipublicæ procuranda datum suo populo jusju-
randum et summam fidem ? Licere autem parlamento
vel senatui, prout expedit, consilia mutare, quoniam
quicquid nos affirmamus, anabaptisticum tibi est et
moDstrosum, malo ex Cicerone audias pro Plancio.
* Stare omnes debemus tamquam in orbe aliquo reipub-
* licæ ; qui quoniam versetur, eam deligere partem de-
* bemus, ad quam mos illius utilitas salusque converterit.
* Et statim. Neque enim inconstantis puto, sententiam,
* tanquam aliquod navigium atque cursum, ex reipub-
* licæ tempestate moderari. Ego verò hæc didici, hæc
* vidi, hæc scripta legi, hæc de sapientissimis et claris-
* simis viris et in hac republica, et in aliis civitatibus
* monumenta nobis literæ prodiderunt, non semper
* easdem sententias, ab iisdem, sed quascumque reipub-
* licæ status, inclimatio temporum, ratio concordiæ pos-
* tularet, esse defendendas.” Hæc, Marcus Tullius :
sed tu, Mlore, Hortensium mavis; hæc illae ætatis
quæ civile maximè prudentia floruerunt; quæ si se-
quuntur amabaptistæ, mea quidem sententia sapiunt.
Quàm multa alia possem proferre, quæ à ministerculis
hisce et suo Salmasio, si res mom verba spectemus, planè
indocto, pro anabaptisticis damuantur. At “ nihilo,”
imquis, “ plus potuerant potentissimi Belgii foederati
ordines, qui per oratores suos et prece et pretio oblato
strenuè allaborarunt sacrum regis caput redimere.”
Velle profectò justitiam sic redimere, idem erat atque
regem salvum nolle : verùm didicerunt, mom omnes
esse mercatores ; non adeò vendacem esse senatum
Anglicanum. Quod autem ad judicium regis, “ ut
plurima,” inquis, “ Christo similia Carolus pateretur,
milites in eum ingeminant ludibria." Plura quidem
passus est similia Christus maieficis, quàm Carolus
Christo ; et multa istiusmodi jactabantur vulgò ab iis
quibus ad invidiam facti majorem excitandam, quidvis
fingere aut fictum referre studium erat : fac tamen
gregarios milites insolentiùs se gessisse; non id continuò
724
DEFENSIO SECUNDA PRO POPULO ANGLICANO,
in causam est conferendum. “ Mactatum vero esse
quempiam ad pedes regis prætereuntis apprecantem ut
Deus ejus misereretur,” nec antea audivi unquam, nec
convenire quemquam adhuc potui qui audivisset: quin
immo tribunum ipsum, qui toto illius judicii tempore
custodiis præfuit, regisque à latere vix discessit, inter-
rogandum hac de re curavi: is denique nec audisse se
hoc antea, et pro certo scire falsissimum id esse, com-
stanter asseverabat. Ex quo intelligi potest tuarum
narrationum fides, etiam in reliquis quàm firma sit.
Nam in benevolentia quoque et adoratione, si posses,
Carolo post mortem procuranda, quàm in odio nobis
vel iniquissimè comflando haud multo veracior invemi-
eris. “ Auditum,” ais, “ fuisse regem in fatali pegmatc
episcopo Londimensi ingeminantem, memento, memen-
to.” Id regis judices anxios mempe habuit, quid illa
ultimum iterata vox sibi voluisset ; accersitur, ut ais,
episcopus, et illud geminum “ memento” quid sibi
quæsivisset, additis minis, enuntiare jubetur. Is prinò
(sic enim fingi expediebat) ex composito nimirum deli-
cias fecit, et, quasi arcanum quoddam, prodere recusavit.
Cum illi vehementiùs instarent, id quasi metu sibi ex-
pressum, et molenti extortum, ægrè tandem edidit, quod
revera quovis pretio divulgatum vellet. ** Jusserat
me,” inquiens, “ rex, ut si possem ad filium pervenire,
hoc supremum morientis patris mandatum ad eum per-
ferrem, ut regno et potestati suæ restitutus, vobis suæ
necis authoribus ignosceret : hoc me meminisse, rex
iterum atque iterum jussit.” O magis, regemne dicam
pietatis, an episcopum rimarum plenum ! qui rem tam
secretò in pegmate suæ fidei commissam ut effutiret,
tam facilè expugnari potuit. At ó taciturne ! jampri-
dem Carolus hoc idem inter alia præcepta filio mam-
daverat, in illa Icone Basilica ; quem librum ideo
scriptum satis apparet, ut omni cum diligentia nobis
vel invitis secretum illud, qua ostentatione simulatum
erat, eadem paulo, pòst evulgaretur. Sed video plane
decrevisse vos Carolum quemdam absolutissimu:n, si
non Stuartum hunc, at saltem hyperboreum ali-
quem et fabulosum, fucatis quibuslibet coloribus de-
pictum, imperitis rerum obtrudere : ita fabellam hanc
velut acroama quoddam, diverbiis et sententiolis pul-
chrè distinctum, nescio quem ethologum imitatus,
ad inescandas vulgi aures putidè concinnasti. Ego
verò, ut non negaverim interrogatum fortasse obi-
ter ab uno vel altero concessorum hac de re episco-
pum, ita accersitum, dedita opera vel à concilio vel ab
illo judicum collegio, quasi id omnes curassemt, aut
sollicitè quæsivissent non comperio. Sed demus inde
quæ vis : dederit in pegmate suprema hæc episcopo man-
data, ut suæ necis authoribus ignosceretur, perferenda
ad filium Carolus : quid tam egregium aut singulare
præter cæteros eò loci deductos fecit ? quotusquisque
est morientium in pegmate, qui peracturus jam vitae
fabulam, cùm hæc mortalia quàm vana sint videt, non
idem faciat; et inimicitias, iras, odia, tamquam ex scena
quadam jam exiturus, libens non deponat, aut saltem
simulet, ut vel m,isericordiam, vel innocentiæ opinionem
suæ in animis hominum relinquat ? Simulasse Ca-
rolum, nequc unquam ex animo, et sincero mentis pro-
posito tale mandatum dedisse filio, “ ut suæ necis
authoribus ignosceret,” vel si hoc palàm aliud tamem
clanculum mandasse, argumentis non levibus demon-
strari potest: nam filius, alioqui plus satis patri obse-
quens, patris gravissimo atque ultimo præcepto tam
religiosè sibi per episcopum tradito, haud dubiè paruis-
set: qui autem paruit, cujus vel jussu vel authoritate
(luo legati nostri, alter in Hollandia, alter in Hispania,
et hic me suspicione quidem ulla regiæ mecis reus, tru-
cidati sunt ? qui denique haud semel scripto publico
edixit atque omnibus palam fecit, se molle patris sui
interfectoribus ullo pacto veniam concedere ? Hanc
igitur narratiumculam tuam vide an veram esse velis;
quæ quo magis collaudat patrem, eo magis vituperat
filium. Nunc instituti oblitus, non regii sanguinis ad
cœlum, sed populi senatum clamores ementiris, odio-
sissimus post Salmasium in republica aliema pragma-
ticus et ardelio, qui tam fœdè præsertim res tuas domi
agas. Tuane voce, impurissime, populus pro se utatur,
cujus halitum ipsum oris lue venerea fœtidum purus
omnis aversaretur ? tu vero perfugarum ac perditorum
voces populo attribuis; et quod agyrta peregrinus ad
coronam solet, vilissimorum dumtaxat animalium voces
imitaris. Quis autem negat ea posse tempora sæpiùs
accidere, in quibus civium longè major numerus im-
proborum sit ; qui Catilinam vel Antonium, quàm sa-
niorem senatus partem sequi malint ; neque idcirco
boni cives obniti contra, et fortiter facere non debebunt,
sui magis officii, quàm paucitatis rationem ducentes:
tuam ergo tam bellam pro nostro populo oratiumculam,
ne charta omnino pereat, in ammales Volusi suadeo
inseras ; nobis rhetorculo tam hircoso atque olido, non
est usus. Dehinc injuriarum im ecclesiam postulamur.
“ Exercitus est omnium hæreseωn Lerna.” Qui mom
maledicunt, exercitum nostrum ut fortissimum, ita mo-
destissimum ac religiosissimum esse confitentur: aliis
im castris ferè potatur, variis libidinibus indulgetur,
rapitur, alea luditur, juratur et perjuratur: in his nos-
tris quod datur otii, disquirendæ veritati impenditur,
sacræ scripturæ invigilatur; nec quisquam pulchrius
existimat hostem ferire, quàm se atque alios cœlestium
cognitione rerum erudire, aut bellicam magis quàm evan-
gelicam militiam exercere. Et sanè si proprium belli
usum consideramus, quid aliud magis deceat milites ?
qui ideo constituti sunt atque conscripti, ut essent legum
defensores, paludati justitiæ satellites, ecclesiæ propug-
matores: quid illis, non ferocius aut truculentius, sed
civi}ius aut humanius esse oporteat ? qui non bellum
serere ac metere, sed pacem et incolumitatem humano
gencri arare, vero ac proprio fime laborum suorum de-
bent. Quòd siquos ad haec præclara instituta aspirantes
vel alienus error, vel sua animi infirmitas transversos
abducit, in eos, non ferro sæviendum, sed rationibus ac
monitis precibus quoque ad Deum fusis enitendum,
cujus est solius omnes animo errores dispellere, et coeles-
tem veritatis lucem, cui volet impertire. Hæreses
quidem, sic verè dictas, nos nullas approbamus, me
omnes quidem toleramus ; extirpatas etiam volumus,
sed quibus convenit modis, præceptis nimirum et sa-
niore doctrina, ut in mente sitas, non ferro ac flagris
quasi ex corpore evellendas. “ Altera,” inquis, “ par
nostra injuria est in temporali, quod vocant, ecclesiæ
CONTRA INFAMEM LIBELLUM ANONYMUM.
725
fundo.” Percontare Belgas vel etiam Germaniæ su-
perioris protestantes, numquid ab ecclesiæ bonis ab-
stinuerint; in quos Caesar Austriacus quoties bellum
movet, vix alium quærit bclli titulum, quàm ut bona
ecclesiæ restitui jubeat. Verùm illa profectò non
ecclesiæ, sed ecclesiasticorum duntaxat bona fuere, qui
hoc maximè sensu clerici, vel etiam holoclerici, ut qui
sortem totam invasissent, rectius nominari poterant ;
immo lupi veriùs plerique eorum, quàm aliud quidvis
erant dicendi ; luporum autem bona, vel congestas po-
tiùs prædas majorum ex superstitione partas, quam per
tot stecula quaestui habuerumt, in usus transferre belli
à semetipsis conflati, nefas non erat, quando aliud non
erat reliquum, unde sumptus belli tam gravis ac diu-
turni suppeterent. Atqui “ expectabatur, ut episcopis
ereptae opes in pastores ecclesiarum erogarentur.” Ex-
pectabamt, scio, illi, et avebant omnia in se transfundi :
nulla enim est vorago tam profunda, quae non expleri
citiùs quàm clericorum avaritia possit. Aliis fortasse
in locis, haud æquè ministris provisum ; nostris jam
satis superque bene erat ; oves potiùs appellandi quàm
pastores, pascuntur magis quàm pascunt; pinguia illis
plerumque omnia, ne ingenio quidem excepto ; decimis
enim saginantur, improbato ab aliis omnibus ecclesiis
more ; Deoque sic diffidunt, ut eas malint per magis-
tratum atque per vim suis gregibus extorquere, quàm
vel divinæ providentiæ, vel ecclesiarum benevolentiæ
et gratitudini debere; atque inter hæc tamen et apud
discipulos et apud discipulas, tam crebrò convivantur,
ut quid domicoenium sit, aut domiprandium penè ne-
sciant: hinc itaque luxuriant plerique, non egent; libe-
rique eorum et conjuges luxu et lautitiis, cum divitum
liberis atque conjugibus certant : hanc novis latifundiis
adauxisse luxuriam, idem prorsus fuisset, ac si quis
novum vcnemum (quam olim pestem sub Constantino
vox missa cœlitùs, deflevit) in ecclesiam infudisset.
Proximum est ut de injuriis in Deum, quarum tres
maximè nominantur, de fiducia nimirum divinæ opis,
“ de precibus etiam atque jejuniis,” reddenda nobis
ratio sit. Verùm ex ore tuo, hominum corruptissime,
te redarguo ; illudque apostoli abs te prolatum in te
retorqueo, Quis es tu qui “ alienum servum judicas ?”
coram domino nostro sine stemus vel cadamus. Illud
insuper addam Davidis prophetæ, cùm flens affligo je-
junio amimam meam, tum hoc vertitur in summum
probrum mihi. Cæteras hac de re tuas garritiones
febriculosas, quas nemo bis legat, minutim persequi si
vellem, haud leviùs profectò ipse peccem. Nec minus
aliena sunt quæ de successibus prolixè oscitas : Cave
tibi, More, et vide, ne post Pontianos sudores, grave-
dinem fortè contraxeris aut polypum ; metuendum, ne,
ut Salmasius ille magmus nuper, thermas refrigeres.
Equidem de successu sic paucis respondeo ; causam
successu neque probari bonam, neque argui malam :
nos causam mostram non ex eventu, sed eventum ex
causa judicari postulamus. Jam rationes politicas
desumis tibi tractandas, mancipium cathedrarium,
immo cathedralitium ; injurias mimirum nostras, in
omnes reges ac populos. Quas? nobis enim nihil tale
propositum erat; res nostras tautummodo egimus, ali-
orum missas fecimus; siquid ad vieinos ab exemplo
nostro boni redundavit, haud in videmus ; si quid secùs
non nostra id culpa, sed abutentium evenire credimus.
Regis aut populi, te balatronem suarum injuriarum in-
terpretem, quinam tandem constituerunt? certè oratores
eorum ac legatos, alii in senatu, ipse in concilio cum
audirentur sæpè audivi non solùm de suis injuriis nihil
querentes, sed amicitiam nostram ac societatem ultrò
petentes ; quinetiam regum suorum ac principum no-
mine, de rebus nostris nobis gratulantes, etiam bene
precantes, pacem ac diuturnitatem, atque eosdem felices
successus, in perpetuum exoptantes. Ncn inimicorum
hæ voces, non eorum qui odissent, ut tu prædicas ; aut
tu mendacii, quod in te levissimum est, aut reges ipsi
fraudum ac malarum artium, quod illis inhonestis-
simum foret, damnentur necesse est. Verüm scripta
nostra objectas confitentium, “ dedisse nos exemplum
populis omnibus salutare, tyrannis omnibus formidan-
dum.” Immane crimen profectò narras ; idem ferè
atque si dixisset quispiam,
Discite justitiam moniti, et non temnere Divos.
Numquid dici potuit perniciosius ? ** hæc Cromuellius
ad Scotos post Dumbarrense prælium scripsit.” Et se
quidem et illa nobili victoria dignè. * Ejusmodi sesamo
et papavere conspersæ sunt infames Miltomi paginæ.”
Illustrem tu quidém collegam semper mihi adjungis,
et in hoc facinore parem planè facis, nonnunquam et
superiorem ; quo ego nomine cohonestari me maximè
abs te putem, siquid à te honestum posset proficisci.
“ Crematæ vero,” inquis, “ sunt istae p ginæ à carnifice
Parisiensi supremi senatus authoritate.” Nequaquam
id comperi à senatu factum, sed ab officiario quodam
urbico, locotenente civili mescio an imcivili, cui clerici
quidam, ignavissima animalia, authores fuere ; tam ex
dissito atque longinquo, abdomini suo, quod aliquando
precor evenire possit, augurantes. Censes non potuisse
nos vicissim Salmasii defensionem regiam cremasse ?
potuissem sanè vel ipse à magistratibus nostris hoc
facilè impetrasse, misi illam contumeliam contemptu
potiùs ulciscendam existimassem : vos ignem igne pro-
perantes extinguere, Herculeum præbuistis rogum,
unde clarior exurgerem ; mos consultiùs, defensionis
regiae frigus calfaciendum mom censuimus. Illud miror,
tam esse majorum dissimiles factos Tolosates (nam et
Tolosæ combustos nos accepimus) ut qua in urbe sub
Raimundis comitibus, et libertas ct religio defensa
olim tam insigniter est, in ea nunc et libertatis et re-
ligionis defensio combureretur. ** Utinam et Scriptor,”
inquis. Itane ergastulum ? et ego parem me reddam
tibi salutem, More, tu egregiè cavisti ; ut qui nigriori-
bus multò ignibus jamdudum pereas : urunt te adul-
teria tua, urunt stupra, urunt perjuria, quorum ope
desponsatam tibi stupro fœminam perfidus excussisti;
urunt perditissimi furores, qui impulerunt te, ut sacro-
sancta munia facinorosus concupisceres, et imperspec-
tum Domini corpus incestis manibus sacerdos pollueres;
sanctitatem etiam simulans, in sanctitatis simulatores,
dira omnia hoc tuo clamore denunciares; tuumque ex-
ecrabile caput, tuamet ipsius damnatum sententia irre-
tires: his tu sceleribus et infamiis totus flagras, his tu
flammis furialibus dies atque noctes torreris, dasque
726
DEFENSIO SECUNDA PRO POPULO ANGLICANO
nobis poenas quibus graviores imprecari tibi nullus
hostis potest. Me interim concremationes vestrae non
laedunt, non tangunt, et istis ignominiis habeo com-
plura quae opponam grata meo animo atque jucunda.
Una me curia, unus fortè lictor Parisiensis, malarum
avium impulsu, combussit; at quamplurimi per totam
Galliam viri boni atoue docti nihilo minus legunt, ap-
probant, amplectuntur ? quamplurimi per immensum
Germaniae totius tractum, libertatis ferè domicilium, per
coeteras quoque regiones, quàcunque eius vestigia ulla
adhuc manent; quin et ipsa Graecia, ipsae Athenae At-
ticae, quasi jam rediviva, nobilissimi alumni sui Phi-
larae voce, applausere. Hoc etiam verè possum dicere,
quo primàm tempore nostra defensio est edita, et legen-
tium studia incaluere, nullum vel principis vel civitatis
legatum in urbe tum fuisse, qui non vel fortè obvio
mihi gratularetur, vel conventum apud se cuperet vel
domi inviseret. Tuos verò nefas sit praeterire manes,
Adriane Pauui, qui legatus ad nos summo cum honore
missus, Hollandiae decus atque ornamentum, summam
in me ac singularem benevolentiam tuam, etiamsi vi-
dere nunquam contigerit, multis saepè nuntiis signifi-
candam curasti. Hoc verò etiam saepius recolere me-
moria juvat, quod sine Dei propitio numine accidere
arbitror nunquam potuisse; mihi, qui contra reges, ut
videbatur, scripseram, majestatem ipsam regiam placidè
annuisse ; meaeque integritati, necnon sententiae, ut
veriori, testimonium divino proximum perhibuisse.
Quid enim verear hoc dicere, quoties augustissimam
reginam illam, quantis cum laudibus in ore omnium
versetur, mecum cogito. Equidem Atheniensem illum
sapientissimum, cui me tamen non confero, ne ipsius
quidem Pythii testimonio, quàm me illius judicio
ornatiorem existimem. Quòd si milmi quidem hac
scribere adolescenti contigisset, et oratoribus idem
quod poétis liceret, haud dubitassem proſectò sortem
meam deorum sorti nonnullorum anteferre: quippe
illos de forma duntaxat aut de musica deos, humano
sub judice, contendisse; me hominem in certamine
longè omnium praeclarissimo, dea judice, superiorem
discessisse. Sic me cohonestatum, nemo nisi carniſex
ignominiosè audeat tractare, tam qui jusserit, quàm
qui fecerit. Hic vehementer laboras, ut ne facta nos-
tra Belgicorum pro libertate facinorum exemplo tueri
queamus; quod à Salmasio quoque frustra laboratum
est: cui quod tunc respondi, idem tibi nunc respon-
sum volo; Falli qui nos opinatur cujusquam exemplo
niti; Belgarum pro libertate facinora adjuvisse saepius
ac fovisse, emulari necesse nunquam habuisse; siguid
pro libertate fortiter faciendum est, authores ipsi
nobis sumus, praeire, non sequi alios assueti. Tu
verò etiam ad bellum contra nos tressis orator, stul-
tissimis argumentis, et te verberone dignis, Gallos
hortaris: “ Nostros,” inquis, “ legatos excipere Gal-
licus spiritus nunquam sustinebit.” Sustinuit, quod
plus est, suos jam ter et amplius ad nos ultrò mittere:
Galli igitur generosi, ut solent; tu degener et spu-
rius, politicarum rationum rudis ac falsus deprehen-
deris. Hinc id agis ut demonstres, “ à foederatis ordi-
nibus ex composito rem in longum duci, eosque nobis-
cum nec foedus nec bellum velle.” Atqui interest pro-
fectò ipsorum ordinum, non pati consilia sua sic nudari,
et, utita dicam, vitiari à Genevense per fuga apud se sta-
bulante, qui si diutiús toleretur, non ancillis modò, sed
consiliis etiam publicis stuprum videtur illaturus; cùm
ipsi fraterna atque sincera omnia prae se ferant; nunc
pacem, quae vota sunt bonorum omnium, perpetuam
nobiscum redintegraverint. “ Jucundum erat,” inquit,
“videre quibus ludibriis, quibus periculis furciferi illi
legati,” Anglorum scilicet, “ quotidie conflictarentur,
non modo ab Anglis regiis, &c, sed maxime omnium à
Batavis.” Nisi exploratum nobis jam diu esset quibus-
nam et prioris legati Dorislai caedes, et duorum postea
accepta injuriae referendae sint, en delatorem, qui hos-
pites et altoressuos etiam falsò deferat: Hunccine apud
vos, Batavi, non modò venereum in ecclesia ministrum,
sed sanguinarium etiam, nec violandi solum juris omnis
hortatorem, sed violati quoque falsum indicem ac pro-
ditorem ali ?
Ultimus accusationum titulus est “ nostra injuria in
reformatas ecclesias.” At verò qui magis nostra in illas
quàm illarum in nos? si exemplo instes, certè si ab
ipsis Valdensibus et Tolosanis, ad Rupellamam usque
famem monumenta repetas, nos omnium ecclesiarum
ultimi reperiemur contra tyrannos arma sumpsisse, at
primi capite damnasse. Sanè quia nobis hoc primis in
manu adhuc fuit: quid illi, si data similis facultas fuis-
set, fuissent facturi, opinor ne ipsos quidem satis nosse.
Equidem in ea sum sententia: contra quem bellum
gerimus, eum, siduis rationis aut judicii usussit, hostem
à nobis judicari; hostem autem tam interficere quàm
oppugnare eodem semperjure licuisse: Tyrannus igitur
cùm non noster solum, sed totius propè generis humani
publicus hostis sit, eum quo jure armis oppugnari,
eodem posse et interfici. Nec verò hacc mea unius sen-
tentia est, aut nova; eandem et aliis olim sive prudentia
sive sensus communis dictavit. Hinc pro Rabirio M.
Tullius : “ Si interfici Saturninum nefas fuit, arma
sumpta esse contra Saturninum sine scelere non possunt;
si arma jure sumpta concedis, interfectum jure concedas
necesse est.” Plura hac de re et suprà dixi, et stepè
aliàs, et per se res obscura non est: Ex quibus quid Galli
etiam, eadem data occasione fuissent facturi, ipse queas
divinare. Addo et hoc amplius: quicunque armis ty-
rannum oppugnant, iidem, quantum in se est, et inter-
ficiunt: immo, quicquid vel sibi vel aliis ineptè satis
persuadere cupiunt, jam interficere. Sed et doctrina
haec nobis haud magis quàm Gallis, quos tu hoc piaculo
cupis eximere, debetur: unde enim Francogallia illa,
nisi ex Gallia, unde Vindiciae contra tyrannos? qui
liber etiam Bezae vulgò tribuitur; undè alii, quorum
meminit Thuanus ? tu tamen, quasi ego solus, “ id
satagit,” inquis, “Miltonus, cujus ego piacularem ve-
saniam pro meritis excepissem.” Tu excepisses, furci-
fer? cujus nefaria flagitia si ecclesia illa Middelbur-
gensis, te pastore infamis et infelix, pro meritis exce-
pisset, jamdudum te Satanae mandasset; si pro meritis
excepisset magistratus, jamdudum adulteria patibulo
pendens luisses: Et luiturus propediem sane videris;
evigilavit enim, ut audio muper, tua illa ecclesia Mid-
delburgensis, suaeque famae consuluit, teque caprimul-
gum pastorem, immo hircum potius olentissimum, able-
CONTRA INFAMEM LIBELLUM ANONYMUM.
797
gavit ab se in malam crucem ; hinc et magistratus
Amsterodamensis pulpitum quoque interdixit tibi, or-
chestram tuam ; tuumque illud os impudicum eo ex loco
ad summam omnium bonorum offensionem conspici,
illam impiam vocem vetuit in sacro publicè audiri: re-
stat jam tibi sola Graecarum literarum professio ; et
haec quoque brevi eripienda, praeter unam illam lite-
ram, cujus non professor, sed discipulus mox pensilis
meritò futurus es. Neque hæc iratus tibi ominor, sed
dumtaxatjus dico: maledicis enim tantum abest ut talibus
offendamur qualis tu es, ut tales semper nobis vel ex-
optemus ; immo divina planè benevolentia fieri arbitre-
mur, ut qui nos acerrimè clamitarunt, tales potissimum
semper extiterint ; qui maledicendo non infamant, sed
honestant, sed laudant, non laudando certè maledixis-
sent. Sed irruentem modò quid te retinuit tam fortem
homuncionem ? “ Nisi mihi,” inquis, ** religio fuisset in
magni Salmasii provinciam excurrere, cui solida de
magno scilicet adversario victoria relinquetur.” Siqui-
dem et ille et ego nunc magnus tibi videor, eò difficilior
provincia, præsertim mortuo, fortassis ero; de victoria,
modò veritas vincat, parum solicitus. Interim tu clami-
tas; “ parricidium in doctrinam vertunt, eamque refor-
matarum ecclesiarum consensione cupiunt quidem, non
audent aperto ore defendere; fuit, inquit Miltonus,
etiam summorum hæc sententia theologorum, qui ipsi re-
formamdæ ecclesiæ authores fuere.” Fuit, inquam, et id
fusius docui in eo libro qui nostro idiomate Tenor sive
Tenura Regum et Magistratuum inscriptus est, secun-
dùm editus, et alibi : nunc actum toties, agendi fasti-
dium cepit : illic ex Luthero, Zuinglio, Calvino,
Bucero, Martyre, Paræo, citantur ipsa verbatim loca ;
ex illo denique Cnoxo, quem “ unum,” me, “ Scotum”
ais “ innuere, quemque hac in re reformatos omnes,
præsertim Gallos, illa ætate condemnasse.” Atqui ille
contrà, quod ibi narratur, se illam doctrinam momimatim
à Calvimo, summisque aliis ea tempestate theologis,
quibuscum familiariter consueverat, hausisse affirmat :
plura etiam illic nostrorum, regnante Maria et Eliza-
betha, sinceriorum theologorum in eandem sententiam
deprompta reperies. Tu verò tandem conceptis ad
Deum precibus malè prolixis peroras impius abominan-
dis ; et os illud adulterum, obduratus coelo offers: simo
te facilè, neque interpello ; major enim cumulus ad
impietatem tuam accedere mon potuit. Revertor nunc
ad id quod suprà pollicitus sum, et objecta Cromuello
præcipua crimina quæ sunt, in medio hic ponam ; ut
sparsa quàm fuerint levia possit intelligi, quæ collecta
nullum pondus in se habent. “ Coram pluribus testibus
pronunciavit sibi in animo esse, monarchias omnes
evertere, reges omnes exitio dare.” Quæ tua sit mar-
rationum fides, jam aliquoties vidimus ; dixit fortasse
tibi perfugarum aliquis Cromuellum ita dixisse ; ex
illis multis testibus nullum nominas: quod itaque sine
authore maledicis, suopte vitio ruit. Non is est Crom-
uellus, quem de suis jam factis ullus unquam vanilo-
quum audierit ; tantùm abest ut infecta quæ sunt,
tamque difficilia, de iis insolentius quicquam promittere
ac minitari consueverit : sanè ista tibi qui narrarunt,
nisi voluntate atque natura magis quàm consilio men-
daces essent, hoc saltem quod ab ingenio ejus alienis-
simum est non affinxissent. Regibus autem, quos ut
sibi caveant frequenter mones, licebit cum saluti pro-
spexerint suæ, spreto te monitore tam imperito, non ser-
munculos ex trivio arripere, sed rationes se dignas inire,
quibus quid sua intersit faciliùs perspexerint. Alterum
est crimen persuasisse regi Cromuellum, “ ut im insu-
lam Vectim clanculum se subduceret.” Constat regem
Carolum rem suam multis aliàs rebus, ter fuga perdi-
disse ; primùm cum Londino Eboracum fugit, dein:le
cum ad Scotos in Anglia conductitios, postremò cum ad
insulam Vectim. At hujus postremæ suasor erat Cro-
muellus. Optimè ; sed tamen ego regios illos primùm
miror, qui Carolum totiès affirmare non dubitant fuisse
prudentissimum, et eundem simul vix unquam suæ
spontis ; sive apud amicos sive inimicos, in aula vel in
castris, in aliena ferè potestate semper fuisse ; nunc
uxoris, nunc episcoporum, nunc purpuratorum, nunc
militum, denique hostium : pejora plerumque consilia,
et pejorum fermè sequutum ; Carolo persuadetur,
Carolo imponitur, Carolo illuditur, metus incutitur,
spes vana ostenditur, velut præda omnium communis,
tam amicorum quàm hostium, agitur et fertur Carolus.
Aut hæc è scriptis suis tollant, aut sagacitatem Caroli
prædicare desistant. Fateor deinde, quamvis prudentia
atque consilio præstare pulchrum sit, tamen ubi res-
publica factionibus laborat, suis incommodis haud ca-
rere ; et consultissimum quemque eo magis obnoxium
calumniis utriusque partis reddere: hoc sæpe Cromuello
obfuit ; hinc presbyteriani, inde hostes quicquid in se
durius fieri putant, non id communi sematus consilio,
sed Cromuello soli imputant ; immo siquid per impru-
dentiam ipsi malè gerunt, id dolis et fraudibus Cromuelli
assignare non erubescunt; culpa ommis in eum deriva-
tur, omnis in eum faba cuditur. Et tamen certissimum
est, fugam ad Vectim regis Caroli, absenti tum aliquot
milibus passuum Cromuello, tam novum accidisse et
inopinatum, quàm cuilibet ex senatu tum in urbe ver-
santi, quem ut de re inopinatissima sibi recens allata
per literas certiorem fecit. Res autem ita se habuit;
exercitùs universi vocibus rex territus, qui eum nullis
officiis suis aut pollicitis factum meliorem, ad suppli-
cium poscere jam tunc cœperat, statuit cum duobus
tantummodo consciis nocturna fuga sibi consulere :
verùm fugiendi certior, quàm quo fugeret, per comi-
tum suorum vel imperitiam vel timiditatem, inops
consilii quo se reciperet, Hamundo Vectis insulæ
præsidi se ultro dedidit; ea spe, facilem sibi ex ea
insula, parato clam navigio, transitum in Galliam aut
in Belgium fore. Haec ego de fuga regis in Vec-
tim ex iis comperi, quibus rem totam pernoscendi
quàm proxima facultas erat. Sed et hoc quoque cri-
minosum est, quòd per Cromuellum, “ Angli ingentem
de Scotis parti sunt victoriam.” Non “ parti sunt,”
More, sed sine soloecismo claram sibi pepererunt ; tu
verò cogita, quàm Scotis cruentum illud prælium fuerit,
cujus tu mentionem tantummodo facere nequivisti, quin
instabile præ metu professorium caput tuum ad Pris-
ciani pluteum mutando allideres. Sed videamus porro
quantum flagitium Cromuelli fuerit, Scotos irrum-
pentes, imperium sibi in Anglos jam pollicentes, nobilis-
simo post multas ætates prælio vicisse. “ Inter has
728
DEFENSIO SECUNDA PRO POPULO ANGLICANO,
turbas, dum Cromuellus cum exercitu abest :” Immò
dum hostem in Angliæ viscera jam progressum, jam
parlamento ipsi imminentem Cromuellus, etiam defici-
entes Cambros ad fidem reducemdo, et obsidione longa
defessus, ut vidit, ut vicit, ut gloriosissimè fudit, pres-
byterianos “ tædium Cromuelli ceperat :” Hic verum
dicis; dum is communem hostem cum vitæ discrimine
propulsat, hi militantem pro sese et in acie fortiter di-
micantem confictis criminibus accusant domi; et Hum-
tingtonum centurionem quendam im ejus caput sub-
ornant. Quis tantæ ingratitudinis foeditatem sine
fremitu vel audire possit? Eorundem instinctu, nequis-
simum genus homuncionum ac petulantissimum, ty-
rones tabernarum maximo numero curiæ fores obsident:
senatum, quicquid ipsis videtur (quo quid indignius ?)
clamore suo ac mimis cogunt decernere : jamque re-
ducem à Scotis victorem fortissimum, aut exulantem,
aut poenas indignissimas dantem vidissemus Camillum
nostrum ; nisi Fairfaxius imperator, invictissimi legati
sui tantum dedecus perferendum non censuisset ; nisi
cunctus exercitus, et is quoque satis ingratè habitus,
tam atrocia prohibuisset. Urbem itaque ingressus,
urbicos nullo negotio repressit ; Scotorum hostium
partibus addictos meritò senatu movit : pars reliqua,
insolentiis tabernariorum jam liberata, colloquium Vec-
tense, contra senatùs consultum edictumque publicum
cum rege initum, rescimdit: Huntingtonus autem ille
accusator, impunis et sui juris relictus, tandem poeni-
tentia ductus, ipse sua sponte à Cromuello veniam
petiit, et à quibus esset subormatus ultro fassus est.
Hæc ferè sunt quæ fortissimo patriæ liberatori, nisi ad
quæ supra respondi, crimina objiciuntur ; quæ quid
valeant videtis. Verùm ego tantum virum, deque hac
republica tam insignitè meritum, si dumtaxat mihil mali
commisisse defendam, nihil egero; cum præsertim non
reipublicæ solùm, sed et mea quoque intersit, ut qui
eadem infamia tam prope sim conjunctus, quàm op-
timum eum, atque omni laude dignissimum, gentibus,
quoad possum, omnibus atque sæculis demonstrare.
Est * Oliverius Cromuellus” genere nobili atque illustri
ortus: nomen republica olim sub regibus benè adminis-
trata clarum, religione simul orthodoxa vel restituta
tum primùm apud nos vel stabilita clarius: Is matura
jam atque firmata ætate, quam et privatus traduxit,
nulla re magis quàm religionis cultu purioris, et in-
tegritate vitæ cognitus, domi in occulto creverat; et
ad summa quæque tempora fiduciam Deo fretam et
ingentem animum tacito pectore aluerat. Parlamento
ab rege ultimùm convocato, sui municipii suffragiis
lectus senatorium munus obtinuit ; illic rectissimis sen-
tentiis consiliisque firmissimis statim innotuit: ubi ad
arma deventum est, delata sua opera, equitum turmæ
praeficitur ; sed bonorum virorum concursu, ad ejus
signa undique confluentium, auctus copiis, et gestarum
rerum magnitudine et celeritate conficiendi summos
ferè duces brevi superavit. Nec mirum ; sui enim
noscendi exercitatissimus miles, quicquid intus hostis
erat, spes vanas, metus, cupiditates, apud se prius aut
deleverat, aut subactas jam habuerat ; in se priùs im-
perator, sui victor, de se potissimùm triumphare didice-
rat ; itaque ad externum hostem, quo primùm die in
castra venit, veteramus, et in illa omni castrensi militia
consummatus, accessit. Non est ut in his possim ora-
tionis carceribus, tot urbes captas, tot prælia et quidem
maxima, in quibus munquam victus aut fusus, Britan-
micum orbem totum continuis victoriis peragravit, pro
dignitate rerum exequi ; quæ justæ sanè historiae
grande opus, et iterum quasi campum quendam dicendi,
et exæquata rebus narrandi spatia desiderant. Sufficit
hoc unicum singularis et prope divinæ virtutis in-
dicium, tantam in eo viguisse sive animi vim atque
ingenii, sive disciplinæ non ad militarem modo, sed ad
Christianam potiùs normam et sanctimoniam institutæ,
ut omnes ad sua castra tanquam ad optimum non mili-
taris dumtaxat scientiæ, sed religionis ac pietatis gym-
masium, vel jam bonos et fortes undique attraheret, vel
tales, ipsius maximè exemplo, efficeret: eosque toto
belli, pacis etiam nonnunquam intermediæ tempore, per
tot animorum et rerum vicissitudines, non largitionibus
et militari licentia, sed authoritate et solo stipendio,
adversantibus licèt multis, in officio contineret et adhuc
contineat: qua quidem laude meque Cyro, neque Epa-
minondæ, meque antiquorum ulli excellentissimo im-
peratori laus ulla major attribui solet. Hinc enim
exercitum, quo nemo minori spatio majorem aut in-
structiorem, sibi comparavit, et per omnia dicto audi-
entem, et civibus gratum atque dilectum ; et hostibus,
armatis quidem formidolosum, pacatis admirabilem,
quorum in agris atque sub tectis ita non gravis, et sine
omni maleficio versabatur, ut cum regiorum suorum
vim, vinolentiam, impietatem, atque libidimes, cogita-
rent, mutata sorte læti, non nunc hostes, sed hospites
advenisse crederent; præsidium bonis omnibus, ter-
rorem malis, virtutis etiam ommis et pietatis hortatores.
Sed neque te fas est præterire, Fairfaxi, in quo cum
summa fortitudine summam modestiam, summam vitæ
sanctitatem, et natura et divimus favor conjunxit : Tu
harum in partem laudum evocandus tuo jure ac merito
es ; quanquam in illo nunc tuo secessu, quantus olim
Literni Africanus ille Scipio, abdis te quoad potes ; nec
hostem solùm, sed ambitionem, et quæ præstantissimum
quemque mortalium vincit, gloriam quoque vicisti ;
tuisque virtutibus et præclarè factis, jucundissimum et
gloriosissimum per otium frueris, quod est laborum
omnium et humanarum actionum vel maximarum finis;
qualique otio cùm antiqui heroes, post bella et decora
tuis haud majora, fruerentur, qui eos laudare conati
sunt poetæ, desperabant se posse alia ratione id quale
esset dignè describere, nisi eos fabularentur, coelo re-
ceptos, deorum epulis accumbere. Verùm te sive vale-
tudo, quod maxime crediderim, sive quid aliud retraxit,
persuasissimum hoc habeo, nihil te à rationibus reipub-
licæ divellere potuisse, nisi vidisses quantum libertatis
conservatorem, quàm firmum atque fidum Anglicanæ
rei columen ac munimentum im successore tuo relin-
queres. Te enim salvo, Cromuelle, me Deo quidem
satis confidit, qui rebus Anglorum, satis ut salvæ sint,
metuat ; cùm videat tam faventem tibi, tam evidenter
opitulantem ubique Deum. Verùm tibi tum soli de-
certanda alia bellorum palæstra erat.
Quid autem multa ? res maximas, qua tu celeritate
soles, eadem si possum brevitate expediam. Amissa
CONTRA INFAMEM LIBELLUM ANONYMIUM. 729
Hiberuia præter unam urbem tota, tu, exercitu trans-
misso, uno statim prælio Hibernicorum opes fregisti ;
reliqua indies conficiebas ; cùm repentè ad bellum,
Scoticum revocaris. Hinc contra Scotos irruptionem
cum rege suo im Angliam parantes, indefessus proficis-
eeris; regnum illud, quod omnes reges nostri octingen-
tis annis non poterant, uno circiter anno perdomuisti,
et Anglorum ditioni adjecisti ; reliquas eorum copias,
validissimas tamen et expeditas, per summan despera-
tionem in Angliam tum ferè præsidiis nudatam, inopina
impressione facta, Vigornium usque progressas, mag-
mis itineribus assecutus, uno prælio delevisti; capta penè
tota gentis nobilitate. Hinc alta pax domi: tum te,
sed neque tum primùm, non minùs consiliis, quàm belli
artibus valere sensimus ; id quotidie in senatu agebas,
vel ut cum hoste pacta fides servaretur, vel uti ea, quæ
ex republica essent, mature decernerentur. Cum videres
moras necti, privatæ quemque rei, quàm publicæ, atten-
tionem, populum queri delusum se sua spe, et potcmtia
paucorum circumventum esse, quod ipsi toties moniti
molebant, eorum dominationi finem imposuisti. Parla-
mentum aliud comvocatur novum ; concessa iis dun-
taxat, quibus par erat, eligendi potestate ; conveniunt
electi ; mibi] agunt; cùm se invicem dissidiis et alter-
cationibus diu defatigassent, animadvertentes plerique
se rebus tantis exequendis, neque pares esse, meque
idoneos, ipsi sese dissolvunt. Deserimur Cromuelle ;
tu solus superes, ad te rerum summa nostrarum rediit ;
in te solo consistit ; insuperabili tuæ virtuti cedimus.
cumcti, nemine vel obloquente, nisi qui aut æquales in-
æqualis ipse honores sibi quærit, aut digniori concessos
invidet, aut non intelligit nihil esse in societate homi-
num magis vel Deo gratum, vel rationi consentaneum,
esse in civitate nihil æquius, nihil utilius, quàm potiri
rerum dignissimum. Eum te agnoscunt omnes, Cro-
muelle, ea tu civis maximus et gloriosissimus, dux
publici consilii, fortissimorum exercituum imperator,
pater patriæ gessisti: sic tu spontanea bomorum om-
nium et animitùs missa voce salutaris : alios titulos
te digmos tua facta non norunt, non ferunt, et superbos
illos, vulgi licet opinione magnos, meritò respuunt.
Quid enim est titulus, misi definitus quidam digmitatis
modus ? tuæ res gestæ cùm admirationis, tum certè
titulorum modum omnem excedunt ; et velut pyrami-
dum apices coelo se condunt, populari titulorum aura
excelsiores. Sed quoniam summis etiam virtutibus, qui
honos habetur, humano quodam fastigio finiri ac ter-
minari, non dignum est, sed tamem expedit, assumpto
quodam titulo patris patriæ simillimo, non evehi te
quidem, sed tot gradibus ex sublimi descendere, et ve-
lut in ordinem cogi, publico commodo, et sensisti et
sustinuisti ; vegium momen majestate longè majore
aspernatus. Et merito quidem : quod enim nomen,
privatus sub jugum mittere, et ad nihilum planè redi-
gere potuisti, eo si tantus vir factus caperere, idem
penè faceres, atque si gentem aliquam idololatram Dei
veri ope cùm subegisses, victos abs te coleres deos. Tu
igitur, Cromuelle, magnitudine illa animi macte esto;
te enim decet: tu patriæ liberator, libertatis auctor, cus-
tosque idem et conservator, neque graviorem personam,
mreque augustiorem suscipere potes aliam; qui non modò
regum res gestas, sed heroum quoque nostrorum fabulas
factis exuperasti. Cogita saepiùs, quám caram rem, ab
quàm cara parente tua, libertatem à patria tibi commen-
datam atque concreditam, apud te depositam habcs; quod
ab electissimis gentis universæ viris, illa modò expecta-
bat, id numc à te uno expectat, per te unum consequi
sperat. Reverere tantam de te expectationcm, spem
patriæ de te unicam ; reverere vultus et vulnera tot
fortium virorum, quotquot, te duce, pro libertate tam
strenuè decertarunt ; manes etiam eorum qui in ipso
certamine occubuerunt : reverere exterarum quoque
civitatum existimatiouem de nobis atque sermones;
quantas res de libertate mostra, tam fortiter parta, de
nostra republica, tam gloriosè exorta sibi polliceantur:
quæ si tam citò quasi aborto evanuerit, profectò nihil
aequè dedecorosum huic genti, atque pudendum fuerit:
teipsum denique reverere, ut pro qua adipiscenda liber-
tate, tot ærumnas pertulisti, tot pericula adiisti, eam
adeptus, violatam per te, aut mlla im parte imminutam
aliis, ne sinas esse. Profectò tu ipse liber siue uobis
esse non potes ; sic enim natura comparatum est, ut
qui aliorum libertatem occupat, suam ipse primus om-
mium amittat; seque primum omnium intelligat ser-
viri : atque id quidem mom injuria. At verò, si patronus
ipse libertatis, et quasi tutelaris deus, si is, quo memo
justior, nemo sanctior est habitus, ncmo vir melior,
quam vindicavit ipse, eam postmodùm invaserit, id non
ipsi tantùm, sed universæ virtutis ac pietatis rationi
perniciosum ac lethale propemodum sit necesse est :
ipsa honestas, ipsa virtus decoxisse videbitur, religionis
angusta fides, existimatio perexigua in posterum erit,
quo gravius generi humamo vulnus, post illud primum,
infligi nullum poterit. Onus longè gravissimum sus-
cepisti, quod te penitùs explorabit, totum te atque in-
timum perscrutabitur atque ostendet, quid tibi animi,
quid virium insit, quid ponderis; vivatne in te verè illa
pietas, fides, justitia, animique moderatio, ob quas evec-
tum te præ cæteris Dei numine ad hanc summam dig-
nitatem credimus. Tres nationes validissimas consilio
regere, populos ab institutis pravis ad meliorem, quàm
ante hac, frugem ac disciplinam velle perducere, remo-
tissimas in partes, sollicitam mentem, cogitationesque
immittere, vigilare, prævidere, nullum laborem accu-
sare, mulla voluptatum blandimenta mon spermere, divi-
tiarum atque potentiæ ostentationem fugere, hæc sunt
illa ardua, præ quibus bellum ludus est; hæc te vemti-
' labunt atque excutient, hæc virum poscunt divino
fultum auxilio, divino penè colloquio momitum atque
edoctum. Quæ tu, et plura, sæpenumero quin tecum
reputes atque amimo revolvas, non dubito: uti et illud,
quibus potissimùm queas modis et illa maxima perficere,
et libertatem salvam nobis reddere et auctiorem. Quod
meo quidem judicio, haud alia ratione rectiùs effeceris,
quàm si primùm quos laborum atque discriminum co-
mites habuisti, eosdem, quod facis, conciliorum socios
cum primis adhibueris ; viros sanè et modestissimos, et
integerrimos, et fortissimos; quos tot mortes conspectæ,
tot strages ante ora editæ, non ad crudelitatem, aut
duritiem animi ; sed ad justitiam, et numinis reveren-
tiam, et humanæ sortis miserationem, ad libertatem
denique eo acriùs retinendam erudierunt, quo gravio-
730
DEFENSIO SECUNDA PRO POPULO ANGLICANO,
ribus ejus causa, periculis ipsi suum caput objecêre :
Non illi quidem ex colluvione vulgi, aut advenarum,
non turba collectitia, sed melioris plerique notæ cives,
genere vel mobili, vel non inhonesto, fortunis vel am-
plis, vel mediocribus ; quid si ipsa paupertate aliqui
commendatiores ? quos non præda convocavit, sed
difficillima tempora, rebus maximè dubiis, sæpè ad-
versis, ad liberamdam tyrannide rempubl. excitarunt;
non in tuto aut curia sermones inter se atque sentem-
tias tantùm, sed manus cum hoste conserere paratos.
Quòd nisi spes semper infinitas, atque inanes per-
sequemur, in quibus tandem mortalium sisti aut
confidi possit mom video, si his horùmque similibus
fides non habebitur. Quorum fidelitatis certissimum
pignus, et indubitatum habemus, quòd pro republica
vel mortem oppetere, si ita sors tulisset, mom recusarint;
pietatis, quòd implorato suppliciter dei auxilio, totiesque
ab eo insigniter adjuti, à quo auxilium petere, eidem
gloriam tribuere omnem rerum prosperè gestarum
consueverint ; justitiæ, quòd etiam regem in judicium
adduxerint, damnato parci noluerimt : moderationis,
quòd et eam experti jam diu sumus, et, quam ipsi sibi
peperere pacem, si eorundem per injuriam rumpatur,
quæ mala inde oritura sunt, ipsi primi sint persensuri,
ipsi prima vulnera suis corporibus excepturi, deque suis
omnibus fortunis atque ornamentis feliciter jam partis
rursus dimicaturi ; fortitudinis denique, quòd nulli un-
quam libertatem feliciùs aut fortiùs recuperaverint;
me arbitremur ullos alios posse diligentiùs conservare.
Gestit clarorum virorum nomina commemorare oratio
mea: te primum, Fletuode, quem ego ab ipsis tyrociniis
ad hos usque militiæ honores, quos nunc obtines à
summis proximos, humanitate, mansuetudine, benigni-
tate animi eundem movi; hostis fortem et imperterri-
tum, sed et mitissimum quoque victorem sensit : Te,
Lamberte, qui vix modicæ dux manùs, ducem Hamil-
tonum juvenis, totius Scotiæ juventutis flore ac robore
circumseptum, et progredientem retardasti, et retir-
datum sustinuisti: Te, Desboroe, te, Hualei, qui atro-
cissimas hujus belli pugnas vel audienti mihi vel
legenti, inter hostes confertissimos expectati semper
occurristis : Te, Overtome, mihi multis abhinc amnis, et
studiorum similitudine, et morum suavitate, concordia
plusquam fraterna conjunctissime ; te Marstonensi
prælio illo memorabili, pulso sinistro cornu nostro, re-
spectantes in fuga duces stantem cum tuo pedite, et
hostium impetus propulsantem inter densas utrimque
caedes vidére: Scotico deinde bello, ut primùm Cromu-
elli auspiciis, tuo marte occupata Fifæ littora, et pate-
factus ultra Sterlinium aditus est, te Scoti occidentales,
te Boreales humanissimum hostem, te Orcades extremæ
domitorem fatentur. Addam et nonnullos, quos toga
celebres et pacis artibus, consiliarios tibi advocasti, vel
amicitia vel fama mihi cognitos ; Huitlochium, Piche-
ringum, Striclandium, Sidnamum, atque Sidneium,
(quod ego illustre momem nostris semper adhæsisse par-
tibus laetor) Montacutium, Laurentium, summo ingenio
ambos, optimisque artibus expolitos ; aliosque permul-
tos eximiis meritis cives, partim senatorio jampridem
munere, partim militari opera insignes. His et orna-
tissimis viris et spectatissimis civibus libertatem nos-
tram proculdubio rectè commiseris ; immo quibus tutiùs
committi possit aut concredi, haud facilè quis dixerit.
Deinde si ecclesiam ecclesiæ reliqueris, teque ac magis-
tratus eo onere, et dimidio simul et alienissimo, prudens
levaveris ; nec duas potestates longè diversissimas,
civilem et ecclesiasticam, siveris inter se scortari; seque
invicem promiscuis ac falsis opibus in speciem quidem
firmare re autem vera labefactare ac demum subvertere:
si vim omnem ab ecclesia sustuleris; vis autem num-
quam aberit ; quandiu pecunia, ecclesiæ toxicum, veri-
tatis angina, enuntiandi evangelii merces, vi etiam ab
molentibus coacta, erit ; ejeceris ex ecclesia nummula-
rios illos, non columbas sed columbam, sanctum ipsum
spiritum, cauponantes. Tum si leges non tot rogaveris
novas, quot abrogaveris veteres; sunt enim sæpè in
republica, qui multas leges ferendi, ut versificatores
multa carmina fundendi, impetigine quadam- pruriunt :
sed leges quo sunt plures, eo ferè sunt deteriores ; non
cautiones sed cautes, tu necessarias dumtaxat retinueris,
alias tuleris, non quæ bonos cum malis eodem jugo
subjiciant, aut quibus, dum improborum fraudes præ-
caventur, quod bonis liberum esse debet, vetatur, sed
quæ in vitia tantum animadvertant, res per se licitas
abutentium ob noxam, non prohibeant. Leges enim
ad frænandam maliciam solum sunt comparatæ, virtu-
tis libertas formatrix optima atque auctrix est. Deinde
si juventutis institutioni ac moribus meliùs prospexeris,
quàm est adhuc prospectum, nec dociles juxta atque
, indociles, gnavos atque ignavos, impensis publicis ali
æquum senseris, sed jam doctis, jam benè meritis doc-
torum præmia reservaveris. Tum si liberè philosophari
volentibus permiseris, quæ habent, sine magistelli cu-
juspiam privato examine, suo periculo in lucem pro-
ferre : ita enim maximè veritas effloruerit ; nec semi-
doctorum semper sive censura, sive invidia, sive tenuitas
animi, sive superstitio aliorum inventa, omnemque sci-
entiam suo modulo metietur, suoque arbitrio nobis im-
pertiverit. Postremò si ipse neque verum neque fal-
sum, quicquid id est, audire metueris : eos autem
minimè omnium audieris, qui sese liberos esse non
credunt, nisi aliis esse liberis, per ipsos non liceat ; nec
studiosius aut violentius quicquam agunt, quàm ut
fratrum non corporibus modò sed conscientiis quoque
vincula imjiciant; pessimamque omnium tyrannidem,
vel pravarum consuetudinum vel opinionum suarum et
in rempublicam et in ecclesiam inducant; tu ab eorum
parte semper steteris, qui non suam tamtummodo sectam
aut factionem, sed omnes æquè cives, æquali jure libe-
ros esse in civitate arbitrantur oportere. Hæc si cui
satis libertas non est, quæ quidem à magistratibus ex-
hiberi potest, is mihi ambitionis atque turbarum, quam
libertatis ingenuæ studiosior videtur ; præsertim cum
agitatus tot factionibus populus, ut post tempestatem,
cùm fluctus nondum resederunt, statum illum rerum
optabilem atque perfectum, ipse mon admittat.
Nam et vos, ô cives, quales ipsi sitis ad libertatem
vel acquirendam vel retinendam haud parvi interest :
nisi libertas vestra ejusmodi sit, quæ meque parari ar-
mis, neque auferri possit, ea autem sola est, quæ pie-
tate, justitia, temperantia, vera denique virtute nata,
altas: atque intimas radices animis vestris egerit, non
CONTRA INFAMEM LIBELLUM ANONYMUM.
731
deerit profect qui volis istam, quam vi atque armis
quaesivisse gloriamini, etiam sine armis citó eripiat.
Multos bellum auxit, quos pax minuit; si perfuncti
bello, pacis studia neglexeritis, si bellum pax vestra
atgue libertas, bellum tantummodó vestra virtus est,
vestra summa gloria, invenietis, mihi credite, ipsam
pacem vobis infestissimam ; pax insa vestrum bellum
longe difficillimum, et quam putastis libertatem, servitus
vestra erit. Nisi per veram atque sinceram in Deum
atdue homines pietatem, non vanam atque verbosam,
sed efficacem et operosam, superstitiones animis, religi-
onis veræ ac solidae ignoratione ortas, abegeritis, habe-
bitis, qui dorso atque cervicibus vestris, tanquam ju-
mentis insidebunt; qui vos etiam victores bello suam
veluti praedam sub hasta non bellica mundinabuntur;
et ex ignorantia et superstitione vestra, uberem quaestum
facient. Nisi avaritiam, ambitionem, luxuriam menti-
bus, immo familiis quoque vestris luxum expuleritis,
quem tyrannum foris et in acie quaerendum credidistis
eum domi, eum intus vel duriorem sentietis, immö
multi indies tyranni ex ipsis praecordiis vestris intole-
randi pullulabunt. Hos vincete in primis, haec pacis
militia est, hae sunt victoriae, difficiles quidem, et in-
cruentee, illis bellicis et cruentis longè pulchriores; nisi
hic quoque victores eritis, illum modo in acie hostem
atdue tyrannum, aut non omnino aut frustra vicistis:
nam pecuniae vim maximam in aerarium inferendi ra-
tiones posse calidissimas excogitare, pedestres atque
navales copias impigré posse instruere, posse cum le-
gatis exterorum caute agere, societates et foedera perite
contrahere, si qui majus atque utilius ac sapientius in
republica existimavistis esse, quam incorrupta populo
judicia praestare, afflictis per injuriam atque oppressis
opem ferre, suum cuique jus expeditum reddere, quanto
sitis in errore versati, tum serö nimis perspicietis, cum
illa magna repentè vos fefellerint, haec parva vestro
nunc judicio et neglecta adversa tum vobis et exitio
fuerint. Quin et exercituum et sociorum, quibus con-
fiditis, fluxa fides, nisi justitiae sola authoritate retine-
atur: et opes atque honores, quos plerique sectantur,
facilè dominos mutant: ubi virtus, ubi industria, et
laborum tolerantia plus viget, ed transfugiunt, et igna-
vos deserunt. Sic gens gentem urget, aut sanior pars
gentis corruptiorem proturbat: sic vos regios dejecistis.
Si vos in eadem vitia prolabi, si illos imitari, eaſlem
sequi, easdem inanitates aucupari ceperitis, vos profectè
regii istis, vel eisdem adhuc hostibus, vel aliis vicissim
opportuni; qui isdem ad Deum precibus, eadem pati-
entia, integritate, solertia freti, qua vos primô valuistis,
depravatos nunc, et in regium luxum atque socordiam
prolapsos, meritó subjugabunt. Tum verö, quod mise-
rum est, videbimini, planè quasi Deum vestri poenitu-
isset, pervasisse ignem ut fumo pereatis: quantae nunc
admirationi, tantae tumc omnibus contemptioni eritis;
hoc solum quod aliis fortasse, non volis, prodesse in
posterum queat, salutare documentum relicturi, quantas
res vera virtus et pietas efficere potuisset, cum ficta et
adumbrata, duntaxat bellè simulando, et aggredi tam-
tas, et progressus in is tantos per vos ſacere valuerit.
Non enim, si propter vestram sive imperitiam, sive in-
constantiam, sive improbitatem tam prae, larè facta
male cesserunt, idcirco viris melioribus minus post haec
vel licebit vel sperandum erit. Sed liberare vos denud
tam facilé corruptos memo, ne Cromuellus quidem, nec
tota, si revivisceret, Brutorum natio liberatorum, aut
si velit, possit, aut si possit, yelit. Quid enim quis-
quam vobis libera suffragia et eligendi quos vultis
in senatum potestatem tum assereret, an ut sute quis-
que factiones hominis per urbes, aut qui conviviis unc-
tius vos, et majoribus poculis per municipia colonos ac
rusticos exceperit, eum quantumvis indignum eligere
possitis 2 ita non prudentia, non authoritas, sed factio
et sagina, aut ex tabernis urbicis caupones et insti-
tores reipublicae, aut ex pagis bubulcos, et were pe-
cuarios senatores, nobis creaverit. Illis nempe rem-
publicam commendaret, quibus vel rem privatam memo
committeret; illis aerarium et vectigalia qui rem suam
turpiter prodegere? illis publicos reditus, quos depecu-
lentur, quos ex publicis privatos reddant? an legisla-
tores ut illi extempló gentis universae fiant, qui ipsi
quid lex, quid ratio, quid fas aut jus, rectum aut cur-
vum, licitum aut illicitum sit, nunquam intellexerint P
qui potestatem omnem in violentia, dignitatem in su-
perbia atque fastidio positam existiment? Qui in senatu
nihil prius agant, quâm ut amicis pravé gratificentur,
inimicis memores adversen turf qui propinquos sibiac
necessarios, tributis imperandis, bonis proscribendis,
per provincias substituant, homines plerosque viles ac
perditos, qui suarum ipsi auctionum sectores, grandem
exinde pecuniam cogant, coactam intervertant, rem-
publicam fraudent, provincias expilent, se locupletent
ad opulentiam atque fastum ex mendicitate hesterna
ac sordibus repentini emergamt 2 quis tales ferat servos
furaces, dominorum vicarios ? quis ipsos furum dominos
ac patronos, libertatis idomeos fore custodes crediderit,
aut illiusmodi curatoribus reipublicte (quingenti licet
consueto numero sint ex municipiis onnibus bunc in
modum electi) pilo se factum liberiorem putet, cum et
libertatis ipsi custodes et quibus custoditur, tam pauci
tum sint futuri, qui libertate uti atque frui vel sciant
vel dignisint? Libertate autem indigni, quod omitten-
dum postremö non est, erga ipsos primum liberatores
ingratissimi feré existunt. Quis nunc talium pro liber-
tate pugnare, aut vel minimum adire perieulum velit 2
non convenit, non cadit in tales esse liberos; utut li-
bertatem strepant atque jactent, servi sunt et domi et
foris, nec sentiunt; et cum senserint tandem, et velut
ferocientes equi fraenum indignantes, non verte liberta-
tis amore (quam solus vir bonus rectè potest appetere)
sed superbia et cupiditatibus parvis impulsi, jugum ex-
cutere comabuntur, etiamsi armis rem saepius tentave-
rint, nihil tamen proficient; mutare servitutem fortasse
poterunt, exuere non poterunt. Id quod Romanisetiam
antiquis luxu jam fractis ac diffiuentibus perstepè ac-
cidit; recentioribus multó magis; cum longo post tem-
pore Crescentii Nomentani auspiciis, et postea duce
Nicolao Rentio, qui se tribunum plebis nominaverat,
antiquam renovare gloriam, et rempublicam restituere
affectarent. Scitote enim, me forté stomachemini, aut
quemguam praeter vosmetipsos inculpare possilis, sci-
tote, quemadmodum esse liberum idem planè est atque
esse pium, esse sapientem, esse justum ac temperantem,
732
DEFENSIO SECUNDA PRO POPULO ANGLICANO.
sui providum, alieni abstinentem, atque exinde demum
magnanimum ac fortem, ita his contrarium esse, idem
esse atque esse servum; solitoque Dei judicio et quasi ta-
lione justissima fit, ut quæ gens se regere seque mode-
rari nequit, suisque ipsa se libidinibus in servitutem
tradidit, ea aliis, quibus nollet, dominis tradatur ; nec
libens modò, sed invita quoque serviat. Quod etiam
et jure ct natura ipsa sancitum est, ut qui impos sui,
qui per inopiam mentis aut furorem suas res rectè ad-
ministrare mequit, im sua potestate me sit ; sed tamquam
pupillus, alieno dedatur imperio ; nedum ut alienis ne-
gotiis, aut reipublicæ præficiendus fit. Qui liberi igitur
vultis permanere, aut sapite imprimis, aut quamprimùm
resipiscite : si servire durum est, atque molitis, rectae
rationi obtemperare discite, vestrùm esse compotes ;
postremo factioribus, odiis, superstitionibus, injuriis,
libidinibus ac rapimis invicem abstimete. Id nisi pro
virili vestra parte feceritis, neque Deo neque hominibus,
me vestris quidem jam mumc liberatoribus, idonei pote-
ritis videri, penes quos libertas et reipublicæ guberma-
tio, et imperandi aliis, quod tam cupidè vobis arrogatis,
potestas relinquenda sit: cum tutore potius aliquo rerum-
que vestrarum fideli ac forti curatore tamquam pupilla
gens, tum quidem indigeatis. Ad me quod attinet, quo-
cumque res redierit, quam ego operam meam maximè
ex usu reipublicæ futuram judicavi, haud gravatim
certè, et ut spero, haud frustra impendi ; meaque arma
pro libertate, non solùm ante fores extuli, sed etiam iis
ita latè sum usus, ut factorum minimè vulgarium jus
atque ratio, et apud nostros et apud exteros explicata,
defensa, atque bonis certè omnibus probata, et ad me-
orum civium summam laudem, et posterorum ad ex-
emplum præclarè constet. Si postrema primis non
satis responderint, ipsi viderint ; ego quæ eximia, quæ
excelsa, quæ omni lande propè majora fuere, iis testi-
monium, prope dixerim monumentum, perhibui, haud
citò interiturum ; et si aliud mihil, certè fidem meam
liberavi. Quemadmodum autem poeta is qui epicus
vocatur, si quis paulò accuratior, minimeque abnormis
est, quem heroem versibus canendum sibi proponit,
ejus non vitam omnem, sed unam ferè vitæ actionem,
Achillis putà ad Trojam, vel Ulyssis reditum, vel Æneæ
in Italiam adventum ornandum sibi sumit, reliquas
praetermittit ; ita mihi quoque vel ad officium, vel ad
excusationem satis fuerit, unam saltem popularium
meorum heroicè rem gestam exornasse ; reliqua præ-
tereo, omnia universi populi præstare quis possit ? si
post tam fortia facinora foediùs deliqueritis, si quid vo-
bis indignum commiseritis, loquetur profectò posteritas,
et judicium feret ; jacta strenuè fundamenta fuisse,
præclara imitia, immò plusquam initia ; sed qui opus
exædificarent, qui fastigium imponerent, non sine
commotione quadam animi desiderabit; tantis imcœptis,
tantis virtutibus, non adfuisse perseverantiam dolebit;
ingentem gloriæ segetem, et maximarum rerum ge-
rendarum materiam præbitam videbit, sed materiæ
defuisse viros: non defuisse qui monere recta, hortari,
incitare qui egregiè tum facta, tum qui fecissent, con-
decorare, et victuris in omne ævum celebrare laudibus
potuerit.
AUTHORIS PRO SE DEFENSIO,
CONTRA
ALEXANDRUM MORUM ECCLESIASTEN,
ILIBELLI FAMOSI, CUI TITULUS, •• REGII SANGUINIS CLAMOR AD COELUM ADVERSUS PARRICIDAS ANGLICANOS,”
AUTHOREM IRECTÉ DICTUM.
[f I RsT PUBLismi RD 1654.]
NIHII, equidem aut antea inaudituni, aut mea tum ex-
pectatione alienum, cùm libertatis causam primò accepi
defendendam, usu vemturum mihi arbitratus sum, si
liberatores Patriæ, cives meos, unus præ cæteris publicè
laudassem, tyrannorum jus infinitum atque injurium
coarguissem, ut improborum ommium in me propè
unum ferentur odia, atque redundarent. Prævidebam
etiam tum bellum vobis, Angli, cum hostibus haud
diuturnum, mihi cum perfugis, et eorum mercenariis
sempiternum propemodum fore : ut quorum vos tela de
manibus eripuissetis, eorum in me maledicta atque con-
vitia eò acriùs conjicerentur. In vos ergo furor hos-
tium atque impetus deferbuit: mihi, ut videtur, soli
hujus belli reliquiæ supersunt ; contemptissimæ qui-
dem illæ, sed ut ferè sunt infirmorum impetus anima-
lium, satis infestæ. Non perditorum duntaxat civium,
sed exterorum etiam ut quisque aliemarum rerum plus
nimio curiosus, ut quisque importunissimus, corruptis-
simusque est, in me involat, officii tantummodo mei
satagentem ; in me omne virus et aculeos diriget. Quo
fit, ut quod plerique ad commendationem operis, et
audientiam sibi faciemdam præfari imitio solent, se ab
exili atque humili rerum materia ad res dictu gravis-
simas atque maximas aspirare, id mihi in præsentia
nequaquam concessum sit ; ut cui munc contrà vel in-
vito atque nolenti à rebus maximis et gloriosissimis
dicendis ad res obscuras, anonymorum latebras, et ad-
versarii turpissimi per sequenda lustra atque flagitia
necessariò sit descendendum. Quod etsi parum exor-
dienti honorificum et ad reddemdos lectorum amimos
attentiores minus accommodatum esse videatur, habet
tamen quod exemplo haud absimili, cùm viris optimis
et præstantissimis idem contigerit, consolari possit:
siquidem et Africanus ipse Scipio, postquam ea gesserat
quibus nihil in eo laudis genere felicius aut majus po-
tuit, inclinatione rerum suarum perpetua et decrescente
semper suæ virtutis materia usus esse videtur: et primò
dux quidem summus, atque Hannibale superior, mox
contra hostem Syrum et imbellem legatus, tribunorum
deinde impotentia vexatus, suam tandem communire
villam Liternensem contra fures atque latrones coactus
est: in hac tamen rerum suarum declivitate atque de-
scensu par ipse semper sibi et æqualis dicitur fuisse.
Unde ego, utque aliis aliundè monitis, quicquid sortis
aut provinciæ dederit modò Deus, multò licet priore
angustius, atque tenuius, id nom aspernari erudiov.
Sed quemadmodum dux bonus, (quidmi enim bonos in
omni genere liceat imitari ?) contra hostem qualem-
cunque boni ducis officium explebit ; vel si hoc nimis
invidiosum est, ut sutor bomus, ita enim vir sapiens
olim philosophatus est, ex eo quodcunque est ad manum
corio calceamentum quàm potest optimum conficiet, sic
ego ex hoc calceamento (argumentum enim cùm insti-
tuissem dicere puduit) trito præsertim jam antea atque
dissuto, siquid concinnare quod legentium auribus tan-
tùm non fastidio sit potero, experiar. Parsurus utique
omninò huic operæ, nisi accusationes mihi nescio quas
falsas, et mendacia objecisset adversarius, quam ego
maculam aut suspiciomem adhærere mihi minimè volo.
Quando hoc necessariò tollendum mihi onus est, dabit
quisque veniam, uti spero, si populo qui non defui pri-
dem et reipublicæ, mihimet nunc non defuero.
Quoniam itaque “ tuam fidem,” More, quam in ipso
libelli titulo tu ** publicam ” vocas, ego publicatam
jamdudum et perditam scio, ita ultrò statim nobis ob-
stringis, ut “ siquid eorum in te agnosceres,” quæ de
te ego scripserim, “ majorem in modum irascerere,” ex
ore imprimis tuo, quo laqueo solet improbus irretiri
semper et capi, judicandum te omnibus atque damnam-
dum addico. Cùm enim et ex perpetua calumnia, qua
meum omne dictum aut factum in deterrimam partem
trahis, meque obruere invidia quæris, et ex contumeliis
quas semper imiquissimas undique in me arripis jacien-
das, ex omnibus denique signis atque indiciis iræ
facilè appareat vehementissimè te, quamvis id usque
neges, et apertissimè irasci, effugere non potes quin
731
AUTHORIS PRO SE DEFENSIO,
arguaris agnoscere in te ea, quæ vel “affinxisse” tibi
me ais, vel im lucem protulisse.
Duæ sunt res quarum ego te postulabam : altera in-
juriarum, altera flagitiorum. Injuriarum, quòd libelli
in nos clamosissimi author extitisses; nam quòd popu-
lum Anglicanum satis lædere existimares te non posse,
nisi me eximiè | ræter cæteros læsisses, id ego honori
mihi potius, quàm contumeliæ duco. Flagitia verò
tua commemorare, ut dignum erat, idcirco mon grava-
bar, ut ostenderem, siquidem is est habendus clamoris
author, qui edidit, et alius certè præter te nemo hacte-
mus comparuit, quàmcasto ex ore clamor ille prorupisset.
Quid tu ad haec ? megas te authorem illius libelli ; et
ita sedulò, ita prolixè negas, cùm tamen liber ille me-
quaquam tibi displiceat, ut magis mihi pertimuisse
videare, me illum librum scripsisse, quàm ne illa in te
tot probra admisisse reperiaris; de quibus sic leviter et
timidè, sed simul versutè ac veteratoriè te purgas, ut
memo non subesse ulcus perspiciat. Haud incallido
fortasse consilio ; nam quis unum libellum scripserit,
quàm quis multa stupra fecerit, difficilior longè est pro-
batio ; libellus sine arbitris confici potuit; hæc siue
sociis, et scelerum consciis non potuerunt: illic vestigia
penè nulla necessariò apparent; hic plurima indicia et
præcedunt, et umà adsunt, et subsequuntur. Itaque,
si pernegasses ad te librum illum pertinere, arbitrabaris
eadem opera et fidem meam de reliqua tua vita saltem
apud longinquos infirmari, et mea credulitate atque im-
juria, qua te scilicet temere violassem, tuam magna ex
parte levari infamiam : sin ire inficias de libello non
posses, restare tibi hoc solum prævidebas, quo nihil
difficilius erat aut acerbius, ut de moribus et flagitiis
haud perfunctoriè respondendum tibi esset. Verùm
ego nisi hoc doceo, misi planum facio aut te authorem
illius libelli famosissimi in nos esse, aut te satis causæ
præbuisse cur pro authore meritò haberi debeas, non
recuso quin abs te victus in hac causa cum dedecore
atque pudore turpiter discedam ; nullam à me culpam
meque imprudentiæ, neque temeritatis, neque maledi-
centiæ deprecor.
Prodiit hoc biennio anonymus et probrosus liber,
** Regii sanguinis clamor ad cœlum adversus Parricidas
Anglicanos” inscriptus ; in quo libro, cùm Respublica
Anglorum tota, tum nominatim “ Cromuellus,” eo qui-
dem tempore nostrorum exercituum imperator, nunc
totius reipublicæ vir summus, omni verborum contu-
melia laceratur : secundùm eum, sic illi anonymo
visum est, maledictorum pars maxima im me conjicitur.
Vix suis integer schedulis liber iste in consilio mibi est
traditus ; ab eo mox consessu, qui quæstionibus tum
præfuit, alter mittitur : significatum quoque est, ex-
pectari à me hanc operam reipub. navandam, ut huic
importuno clamatori os obturarem. Verùm me, tüm
maximè, et infirma simul valetudo, et duorum funerum
luctus domesticus, et defectum jam penitus oculorum
Jumen diversa longè sollicitudine urgebat : foris quo-
que adversarius ille prior, isti longè præferendus, im-
pendebat ; jamjamque se totis viribus incursurum
indies mimitabatur: quo derepente mortuo levatum me
parte aliqua laboris ratus, et valetudine partim despe-
rata, partim restituta, utcunque confirmatus, ne omnino ]
vel summorum hominum expectationi deesse,vel omnem
inter tot mala abjecisse curam existimationis viderer,
ut primùm de isto clamatore anonymo certum aliquid
comperiendi facultas data est, hominem aggredior.
De te, More, dictum hoc volo: quem ego (quamvis tu
nunc, quasi insons omnium atque insciens falsò te ac-
cusari vocifereris) nefandi illius clamoris vel esse au-
thorem, vel esse pro authore haud injuria habeudum
statuo. Et cur sic statuam nunc audies. Primùm
ego, meque hoc leve putaveris, famam communem,
consentientem, constantem sum sequutus; neque eam
solùm quæ populi vox, et ab antiquis Dea credita est,
et à nobis hodie vox Dei nuncupatur, sed eam etiam,
ut legitimè tecum agi intelligas, quam jurisperiti ab
authoribus et probis et benè notis exortam, fidem adji-
cere testimonio docent. Verè hoc dico et religiosè,
me toto biennio nullum neque popularem, neque pere-
grinum convenisse, cum quo de isthoc libello sermones
mihi fuissent, quin omnes una voce te ejus authorem
dici consentirent, neminem præter te alium nomina-
rent. Ita universim obtinuit hæc fama, ut te possim
ipsum hujus rei testem producere. Recita tuum ipse
testimonium. -
Testimonium Mori, pag. 10.
“Neque verò tacui, si cui fortè subiit aliquid ejusmodi
“ suspicari, sed pa'am et exertè respondi reclamans, con-
“ questusque sum invito supponi mihi foetum alienum,
* siquidem illius auctor libri vel ex parte vel in totum
** existimarer.”
Quamvis hoc falsum sit tacuisse te, aut reclamasse
quod plurimi testantur, qui te de eo libro et confitentem
et gloriantem audierunt, dum hoc tutum tibi, aut lucro
aut homori credidisti fore, hic tamen vides, quàm hæc
fuerit concepta altè, nec sine causa proculdubio, homi-
num opinio, ut ne familiaribus quidem tuis persuadere
potueris, quo minùs “ reclamantem” te et “ conque-
rentem” atque “invitum” illius libri authorem “ vel ex
parte vel in totum existimarint.” Quid si ego, qui te
nostris partibus inimicissimum esse, et de republica
nostra pessimè solere loqui intelligerem, hac plusquam
fama nixus, hac hominum non vulgarium communi
opinione atque consensu adductus, hoc pro certo sump-
sissem, te hunc libellum composuisse ? Tu contra quid
affers, quamobrem tantæ hominum, etiam amicorum
tuorum consensioni de inimico nostro facilè habere
fidem nom debuerim ? Factum negas. At quotusquis-
que est reorum, qui multis etiam testibus in judicio
convictus atque damnatus in ipso supplicii loco, ubi
etiam poena capitali jamjam plectendus est, pernegare
crimem suum non soleat; immò secretum quodvis ante-
actae vitæ facinus suum proferre in lucem non malit,
cujus poenas meritas dare se nunc dicat, quàm de illo
crimine confiteri de quo sit condemnatus ? Accedit
quod is tum negat, cùm sententia jam lata, cùm expe-
dita et imminente jam securi, nihil juvat neque prodest
negare : tu propterea, quòd prodest, quòd est cur me-
tuas, quòd manendum tibi in iis provinciis si faterere
non esset, idcirco negas. Pacis articulos inter nos et
Foederatas Provincias “ Latinè conditos” vertisse te
CONTRA ALEXANDRUM MORUM, ECCLESIASTEN.
735
dicis. Legito itaque nonum, decimum, et undecimum,
quos tu cùm vertebas, solùm vertere debuisti.
Articulus pacis In OÍT Ul S.
Quod meutra dictarum rerump. hostes alterius vei-
pub. declaratos vel declarandos, in ejus dominia re-
cipiet, neque eorum alicui in prædictis locis vel aliò
quocumque, etiam extra sua dominia auxilium, con-
silium, hospitium, concedet, nec istiusmodi hostibus
ullum auxilium, consilium, hospitium, favorem, pecu-
mias præstari permittet.
Articulus decimus.
Quòd si alterutra dictarum rerumpub. aliquem suum
fuisse et esse hostem, et in sua dominia receptum esse,
aut ibidem commorari per literas suas publicas alteri
significaverit, tunc illa resp. quae hujusmodi literas re-
ceperit, intra spatium viginti octo dierum tenebitur
dicto hosti mandare, ut extra sua dominiia exeat. Et
siquis praedictorum hostium intra quindecimum diem
non exiverit, singuli morte et amissione bonorum mul-
tabuntur.
Articulus undecimus.
Quod nullus hostis publicus reip. Angliæ in aliqua
oppida, vel alia loca recipietur ; neque Domini Ordines
Generales aiicui hujusmodi hosti publico in locis præ-
dictis, pecuniis, commeatu, aut alio quocumque modo
auxilium, consilium, aut favorem dari permittent.
Hæccine audis ? quàm diligenter, quàm severè ab
utraque republica tribus continuis articulis cautum at-
que provisum sit, nequis alterius hostis ab alterutra
hospitio vel tecto recipiatur ; qui hostis declaratus vel
declarandus ab alterutra sit, ei ut aqua et igni ab altera
sit interdicendum, ut morte etiam multandus sit, ni intra
dies quindecim post denunciatum sibi discessum sar-
cinas collegerit ? Hæccine, inquam, sime metu ac tre-
pidatione audis? qui si hostis esse aut fuisse deprehen-
déris, nosque ut viros fortes decet, in sententia per-
sistemus, neque articulos otiosos ad numerum duntaxat
cornposuimus, ubi tua illa stipendia, et sacrarum histo-
riarum professiones ? cui de tota illa ditione intra pau-
cos dies decedendum erit ; et relictis historiis, illa vitæ
tuæ fabula nequissima nescio quibus im terris peragenda.
Quis enim hostis noster magis publicus est dicendus,
quàm is, qui libro famosissimo in vulgus edito totam
Angliæ rempub. inhumanissimis verborum contumeliis
proscindit atque dilaniat? latrocinii, cædis, perduellio-
nis, impietatis, parricidii, immò novo prorsus vocabulo
deicidii demùm incusat ; omnes principes, populos,
mationes in mos, tanquam in monstra ac pestes generis
humani ad arma, quantum im se est, concitat; et quasi
ad commune atque sacrum bellum nobis inferendum
hortatur ? Hunc tu confecisse librum misi pertinaciter
negares, mullus munc locus consistendi iis in locis tibi
esset. Cum igitur tibi tam sit omnino periculosum
fateri, cùm incolumitatis et commodorum tuorum, ac
prope salutis tam vehementer intersit librum istum
ejurare, cur tua inimici et improbissimi hominis nega-
tio contra famam constantem, immò verò quod plus est,
contra tot hominum satis perspicacium, et amicorum
aliquot tuorum opinionem valere debeat, non video.
At enim dicis, non te solum negasse ; testem habere
** reverendum antistitem Ottonum,”
Duyteum ** admonuerit te illius libri non esse auctorem,
sibi probè motum auctorem longè alium.” Itaque ex
ipsis Duræi literis ostendam, meque probè hoc movisse
Ottonum, neque testem omnino esse, vel siquid testatur,
ex eo reddi te multo quàm antea suspectiorem.
qui clarissimum
Ex Literis Duræi, Haga, April 44 1654.
Quod ad responsum Miltoni ad eum librum, cui titu-
lus Regii Sanguinis Clamor : equidem à ministro
quodam Midelburgensi, qui Mori perfamiliaris est,
certior sum factus, Morum non esse illius libri author-
em, sed ministrum quendam Gallicum, quem Morus
sub conditione silentii eidem nominavit.
Et ex alteris Amsterodamo, April 33. 1654.
Cum D. Ottono colloquutus sum ; hic quidem acer-
rimè regius est, et Moro perquam intimus ; idque mihi
dixit, quod superioribus literis ad te scripsi, Morum
non esse ** Clamoris Regii Sanguinis” authorem.
Ex quibus hoc in primis nemo non intelligit, Ottomo,
ut qui partibus regiis addictissimus, nobis inimicissimus,
Moro à secretis sit, ne si sua quidem fide quicquam af-
ferat, credendum esse. Nunc autem cùm apertè fatea-
tur Ottonus, quicquid hac de re sciat, abs te hausisse,
tua sola authoritate niti, tuum hoc apud se depositum
arcanum esse, non hoc Ottoni testimonium, sed tua
adhuc sola negatio est : immò verò potiùs tua clara
confessio dicenda erit, illius te libelli vel componendi
vel procurandi cum paucissimis esse conscium ; si non
authorem, at certè socium et administrum ; vel tua
opera vel tuo consilio librum illum fuisse editum.
Quod si ita est, ut est sanè per tuum testem, ex tuomet-
ipsius ore verisimillimum, equidem haud metuo, ne te
falsò insimulasse dicar, si vel authorem ipsum affirma-
verim te, vel eodem numero habuerim. Quis nom jam
planè perspiciat, quàm penitùs ex sinu tuo liber iste
prodierit? quàm non de nihilo constantissima de te ista
fama invaluerit? verùm adhuc clarius hoc idem statim
perspicere cuivis licebit. Jam enim à fama, quod
postmodum apparebit, minimè fallaci, ne vocis invidia
contra me utaris, ad justam probationem et compertis-
simos mihi testes transeo. Accipe in primis literarum
partem, quæ haud ita multo pòst Lugduno Batavorum
sunt datæ, quàm libellus iste clamosus Hagæ-Comitis
est editus. Missæ sunt hæ literæ ad amicum quemdam
meum ab homine et docto et prudente, et rerum peri-
tissimo, mihi satis noto, et in Hollandia motissimo : in
quibus libelli cujusdam famosi facta mentione, hæc
statim verba subjungit.
Literæ Leidenses, Septemb. 27, stilo novo, 1652.
“ Nec majoris momenti est iste Mori liber, cui titulus
Clamor Regii sanguimis ad Coelum : satisque vendibi-
lis fuit, donec author illius vitiata Salmasii uxoris an-
cilla, ipse suam existimationem commaculavit.” Hæ
literæ, eodem puto memse, integræ sumt evulgatæ,
inque actis diurnis apud nos quinto quoque die hebdo-
madæ prodire solitis, palam extant , ejusque authoritate
7:36
AUTHORIS PRO SE DEFENSIO,
vel qui misit eas, vel qui edidit, fidem facilè suam tu-
entur, meam absolvunt. Hæc habui neque levia,
neque ullo modo contemmemda, cur hunc Regii Sangui-
mis Clamorem opus tuum esse crediderim : famam con-
stantem, non vulgi, sed amplissimorum l;ominum per
biennium totum opinionem atque consensum, literas
viri intelligentissimi atque honestissimi vicina ex urbe
missas, quibus an quid certius in re præsertim longin-
qua de inimico et extraneo homime, et omni infamia
jamdudum cooperto, expectandum fuerit aut requirem-
dum, haud scio. Age vero ; me tu me tristem mimis et
obstimatum queraris, aliquanto laxiùs te habebo, quo
deinde fortiùs teneam atque constringam : quoniam
attributum tibi librum elegantulum sic aversaris atque
horres, contra hæc omnia quæ afferre hactenus potui
tam valida, tuam valere singularem et suspectissimam
negationem patiar ; remittam tibi hoc totum atque
largiar, non esse te hujus libelli, qui Regii Sanguinis
Clamor inscribitur, authorem ; et tamen, quod jam for-
sitan expectas, non sic abibis. Constat iste liber et
coagmentatur proœmiis quibusdam et epilogis, epistola
ad Carolum, altera ad lectorem, c!auditur carmine, al-
tero in Salmasium ** Eucharistico,” altero in me diffa-
matorio : si ullam hujus libri paginam, si versiculum
fortè unicum scripsisse aut contulisse, si edidisse, aut
procurasse, aut suasisse, si denique edendo præfuisse,
aut vel operæ tantillum accommodasse te reperero,
quandoquidem nemo alius existit, tu mihi solus totius
operis reus, et author, et clamator eris. Neque verò
meam hanc severitatem, aut vehementem animum esse
dixeris; idem apud omnes fere gentes jure et æquis-
simis legibus est comparatum. Quod ab omnibus re-
ceptissimum est adducam, jus civile imperatorium.
Legito Institut. Justiniami, l. 4, de injuriis, tit. 4.
Siquis ad infamiam alicujus libellum, aut carmen
(aut historiam) scripserit, composuerit, ediderit, dolove
malo fecerit, quo quid eorum fieret, &c. Adjiciunt aliæ
leges; “ Etiamsi alterius nomine ediderit, vel sine no-
mine.” Et omnes decernunt eum pro authore haben-
dum esse atque plectendum. Quæro nunc ex te, non
utrùm Regii Sanguinis Clamorem, sed an præmissam
Clamori epistolam Carolo dicatam, ullamve ejus par-
ticulam feceris, scripseris, edideris, edendamve curave-
ris ? quæro am alteram ad lectorem, quæro denique an
illud in fame carmen condideris, aut vulgandum cura-
veris ? nihildum ad hæc respondisti; si Clamorem ip-
sum tantum modo abdicasses, omnemque ejus particu-
lam gnaviter ejurasses, salva fide evasisse te putabas,
nosque probè ludificasse ; epistolam videlicet ad Caro-
lum filium, aut ad lectorem, carmem etiam iambum,
IRegii Sanguinis Clamorem non esse. Tu itaque sic
breviter habeto, ne tergiversari in posteram queas, aut
prævaricari ; me diverticulum ullum, aut latibulum
sperare ; ut jam sciant omnes quàm non mendax, sed
veriloqua, aut saltem non de nihilo ista fama de te in-
crebuerit, tu, inquam, sic habcto: me non fama solum, sed
eo testimonio, quo nullum certius esse potest comperisse,
te et libelli totius cui Regii Sanguinis Clamor est titulus,
editionem administrasse, et operam typographicam cor-
rexisse, et epistolaam illam ad Carolum secundum,
Vlacci momen præferentem, vel solum, vel ** cum uno
atque altero” composuisse. Id quod tuum ipsum nomen
Alexander Morus exemplis aliquot illius epistolæ sub-
scriptus, multis ejus rei testibus oculatis clariùs indica-
vit, quàm tu negare aut expedire te ullo pacto queas.
Si dicis, importunitati quorumdam amicorum te hoc de-
disse, ut epistolæ nomen tuum apponeres, non aliunde
quàm ex ore tuo sic excusanti tibi occurro. Qui solen-
niter affirmas, et eo præsertim loco paginæ 39, in quo,
ut credatur tibi enixè flagitas “ tueri te tua, aliena tunc
demum forte curaturum cum excussus propriis fueris.”
Teipso itaque flagitante, credendum non est te momen
tuu'm illi epistolæ fuisse subscripturum, tua nisi esset: id
quod sequente pagina penè confiteris, tuamque ipse frau-
dem detegis et fallaciam, qua fretus clamoris authorem te
esse toties negas. “ Nam quis non misereatur,” inquis,
“ hallucinationis tuæ cùm præfationem typographo
tribuis modo, modo adimis: Clamorem totum im me
confers, qui ne particulam quidem ullam ejus extuli.”
Hoc cui non suboleat ? cum præfationis seu epistolæ
simul et Clamoris mentionem facis, Clamoris ne ullam
quidem particulam conferri in te sinis ; præfationis
nullam respuis, nullam inficiaris: immò quasi errorem
meum videris propemodum ridere, quòd satis constan-
ter non dixerim tuam esse. Si insciente te et prorsus
ignaro factum hoc dicis, ut nomen tuum subscribere-
tur, primùm credibile mon est quenquam esse ausum
mittendæ ad Regem epistolæ cum dedicato libro ex-
cusæ, alienum momen ipso inconsulto subscribere.
Complures deinde sunt, qui ex te ipso audierunt, cùm
tuam esse illam epistolam vel interrogantibus fate-
rere, vel ultrò ipse prædicares. Verùm tua mecme
fuerit, non admodum laboro ; tune solus an “ cum
umo aut altero” eam composueris; quod et hic pag. 41
subindicare ludibundus propè videris. Te istius ego
non epistolæ dumtaxat, sed et libelli infamissimi solum
propè conscium, te ejusdem editorem aut edendi ad-
ministrum, te epistolæ ad Carolum aliquam multis
exemplaribus divulgatæ subscriptorem notissimum, te
scriptorem etiam confessum, te ergò omnium legum
consensu atque sententia totius operis authorem ipsum
tuo ore convictum atque constrictum temeo. Hæc quo
dicam testimonio tam remotus, et unde mihi tam liquidò
constare potuerint, si quæris, non fama, inquam, sola
sed partim testibus religiosissimis qui coràm hæc mihi
sanctissimè asseverarunt, partim literis vel ad alios vel
ad me scriptis. Literarum verba ipsa expromam, scri-
bentium nomina non edam ; propterea quod in rebus
alioqui notissimis necesse non habeo. Hem tibi im-
primis ab homine probo, et cui ad hanc rem pervesti-
gamdam haud mediocris facultas fuit, literas Haga
Comitis ad me datas.
Ex Literis Hag. Com.
Exploratissimum mihi est, Morum ipsum Clamoris
Regii Sanguinis exemplar nonnullis aliis imprimen-
dum obtulisse, antequam Vlaccus illud accepisset; ip-
sum corrigendis operarum erratis præfuisse ; ab ipso
exemplaria, ut primum quodque absolutum est, com-
pluribus impertita ac dissipata.
Videm' ut hæc dilucida atque distincta sint, ut non
CONTRA ALEXANDRUM
737
MORUM, ECCLESIASTEN.
dubiis rumoribus collecta, sed data opera ac diligentia
hominis iis in locis ac rebus versatissimi, pervestigata
et inquisita, certissimis indiciis comprobata atque com-
perta ? Atqui testem, inquies, unum jus omne rejecit :
en itaque ex ore duorum testium, quo testimonio neque
sacrum, neque civile jus quicquam amplius aut !ocu-
pletius desiderat, firmatum à me omne verbum, ut di-
citur, et corroboratum habebis. Accipe nunc sis quæ
vir honestissimus idemque intelligentissimus et certò
sibi cognita, et illic testatissima Amsterodamo sic scribit.
Ex Literis Amsterodamo.
Certissimum est omnes ferè per hæc loca Morum pro
authore illius libri habuisse, qui “ Regii Sanguinis
Clamor” inscribitur ; nam et schedas à prælo exceptas
ipse correxit, et aliqua exemplo subscriptum dedica-
toriæ nomen Mori præferebant, cujus et ipse author
erat; dixit enim ipse amico cuidam meo, se illius epis-
tolæ authorem fuisse: immò nihil certius est, quam
illam sibi Morum vel attribuisse, vel agnovisse pro sua.
Verùm requiris adhunc tertium : non id quidem
cogit lex, attamen indulget. Esto; largissima per me
lege utere: potest fieri, ut terni opus sint testes : coarc-
tatum tibi à me juris quicquam non dices. Addo jam
tertium.
Ex alteris literis Haga Comitis.
Dixit mihi Hagæ Comitis vir quidam primarius,
habere se Regii Sanguinis Clamorem, cum ipsa Mori
epistola.
Vides quàm largiter tibi admetiar: clara enim hæc
sunt, quis neget? tu tamen scito clariora apud me esse,
quæ datæ fidei causa reticeo, quam quæ munc palam
exhibeo. Quod si adhuc tamen vis cumulum, fortassis
accedet. Interea nunc libero ac soluto animo ad re-
liqua proficiscor; quandoquidem id quod Deum Opt.
Max. precatus sum, adeptum me esse spero, ut memini
videar, viro præsertim bono et intelligenti, incertis
rumoribus elatus temerè, accusationem contra te falsam
instituisse, mec fictis criminibus immocentem, quod que-
reris, et immeritum perfudisse, sed tectum atque du-
plicem veris redarguisse, latentem atque sectantem
tenebras in lucem protraxisse: quod quidem et ex ipsa
testimonii claritate perspicuum esse reor, et in ipsis
plurimorum hominum nom conscientiis modò, sed et
sermonibus, ubi hæc gesta sunt, clarius elucere. Qui-
bus si ego testimonium denuntiare possem, obruerere,
mihi crede, multitudine tot testium : quos tamen ali-
quando sponte sua veritati tam illustri, si opus erit, sua
nomina palam daturos esse confido. Quòd si hanc pro-
bationis vim atque evidentiam, quam me judex quidem
severissimus repudiasset, tu falsam tamen esse, id quod
incredibile est, contendere audebis, erit fortasse cur de
tuo queraris atque deplores infortunio, aut iratum tibi
atque infensum agnoscas Deum, qui per aliorum vel
errorem vel mendacium assignati tibi hujus libelli illa
alia tua dedecora in ecclesia diutius mom ferenda, latiùs
patefieri, et personam illam ecclesiasticam, quam cir-
cum fers impudentissimè, detrahi tibi voluerit ; me cur
incuses deinceps aut reprehendas non erit, immo nec
umquam fuit, velles modò tua in nos commissa recog-
noscere ; verùm illa mordicus inficiari nimium tibi ex-
pedit, et simul pergis lacessere. Noli igitur, quod jam
iterum moneo, me inculpare, si rursus quæ nolis nunc
vicissim audieris. Sed videamus quid sit. Primùm
occurrit mihi, nec opinatò, mea pro Pop. Anglicano De-
fensio secunda, typis Vlacci malevoli mendosissimè ac
malitiosissimè excusa ; omissis nonnnnquam verbis in-
tegris, non sine structurae totius atque sententiæ vel de-
pravatione vel iuteritu. Quod ego omnes volo momitos,
qui mea curant legisse, nequid meum ex officina homi-
nis inimici et veteratoris exire integrum aut sincerum
existiment. Huic accessio est, Vlacci itidem mala merx,
“ Alexandri Mori fides publica.” Ita ego quos à me
longissimè summovisse ac protelasse sum ratus, eos vel
invitus sub iisdem pellibus conjunctissimos mihi repe-
rio. Sic est profecto ; qui liberrimè riserit hos homines,
sibi devinxerit. Cavendum sanè et procul fugiendum
erit cui putaverint isti nasum esse aduncum ; ne ali-
quando satis irrisi, irridentis naribus dumtaxat uncis
ipsi sese tamquam uniones hinc atque inde suspendant.
Cognoscite verò nunc adversarium, siquis unquam fuit,
degenerem, iniquum, odiosum. Nam ut primùm, nescio
quo casu per amicum meum, non id agentem ut ab isto
gratiam iniret ullam, intellexit me ad Clamorem Regii
Sanguinis responsum in se cdere, æstuare mens homi-
mis conscia, et omnes in partes versare se cœpit, Iuter
alia trepidantis atque degeneris animi indicia, qui libel-
Jum modò famosum tam cupidè, tamque improbè in
alios edidisset, libellum nunc supplicem ad legatum
foederatorum ordinum apud nos commorantem scribit,
orans atque obsecrans, uti eum Dom. Protectore quam
instantissimè de supprimenda mea defensione ageret.
Cùm responsum tulisset impetrari nequaquam id posse,
exire nihilominus in lucem, jamque admavigare animad-
versorem in se librum cum spicilegio quodam et collec-
taneis facinorum suorum conturbatus, et huc, illuc
cursitans, circumspectissimus deinde homo, totus in
speculis est; oculos ab litore dimovere vix audet; ubi
advenisse librum cognovit, suumque statim indicem
sensit, prece nescio an pretio exorat librarium, ut ex-
emplum illius libri ullum ne divenderet, donec ipse re-
sponsum suum confecisset ; id est, ut commercii fidem
violaret, donec iste “ fidem publicam” conflasset. Ita
bonus ille vir quingenta plus minus exempla rectè et
emendatè edita suo arbitratu premit, dum Vlaccus im-
terim jacturam alienam suum ratus compendium, quot
sibi videtur memdosa imprimit. Bene agis, Vlacce, ut
consuevisti ; sed auctarium hoc damni quid sibi vult
adjectum ? cur appendices vos ipsos adjunxistis mihi,
hominum importunissimi ? nemone ut possit me velle,
quin vos quoque vel ingratissimum unus unà ferre co-
gatur ? Ergo ego, ut videtur, mom cæcus, sed cæcias.
quos volebam propellere nebulones, attraxi. Tu verò,
adeone tibi, More, tuoque sive genio sive ingenio diffi-
sus es, ut victurum te, et in manus hominum perven-
turum desperares, nisi te mihi asseclam quocumque
irem, malè conciliatum agglutinares, et emptoribus
etiam molentibus te obtruderes ? verùm expertus jam
didici quid sit picem attrectare ; et erat hoc, opinor,
haud minus Vlacci astutia provisum, qui non typogra-
phus solùm, sed arithmeticus, quod jam fateor, vetulus,
738
AUTHORIS PRO SE DEFENSIO,
metuebat me “ Alexandri Mori* meglecta * fides pub-
liea" jaceret, seque à soricibus ægrè tueretur, misi hanc
artem aligationis, verè cauponariam, adhibuisset, et
vile ac vitiosum vendibili miscuisset. Age verò, quo-
miam necesse est cum Defensione pro Pop. Anglicamo,
Alexandri Mori fidem publicam coëmere, quamquam
parva hæc, utcunque nummulorum jactura erit, discere
ex te avenus, quid sit “ Mori fides publica ?° utrùm
confessionem tuæ fidei publicam nobis exhibes, an quid
in symbolum ? Hæc enim tua fides publica est, opinor ;
privata am sit dicant, qui te Spir. Sanctum mon agnos-
cere accusant. Quid ergo est ? tuamme dicamus fidem
esse publicam, an fidem publicam esse tuam ? Tuam
fidem sicut et pudicitiam esse publicam, non est diffi-
cile ut credamus. Qui enim alienas uxores et ancillas
vis esse publicas, quidni tua omnia, pudorem etiam ac
fidem publicam esse velis ? An verò hoc est quod di-
cis, fidem publicam esse tuam ? at hoc qui potest fieri ?
Tune fidem publicam pro scorto abduxisse te putas,
tua ut simul esset et publica ? aut captiosus hic titulus
est, aut sensu vacuus. Si tua fides hæc est, quemad-
modum est publica ? si publica est, quemadmodum
est tua ? Relinquitur ut vel imprudens hoc titulo sig-
nificasse videare cùm Alexandri Mori fides publica
sit, adeoque non tua ; rursus cùm tua sit, ideòque non
publica, hanc quam affers fidem repugnantem et im-
plicitam, nec publicam esse nec tuam. Quid ergo ?
aut dubiam, aut inanem, aut denique nullam. Quod
si comtendis hanc fidem omnimo esse publicam, quæ
tua tanta impudentia est, More, ut cùm fidem ipse
mullam habeas quam pro te afferas, tot flagitia perpe-
trare fide publica existimes tibi licere ? ut nunquam
aliàs dici veriùs, quàm de te versiculus iste videatur,
quicquid peccat Morus, plectitur fides publica. Hæc
tibi uni licentia si comcedatur, non tu Alexander Mo-
rus, sed Alexander ille Phrygius mea quidem semtentia
i*minaberis. Beatum interim te, cui militet fides
publica. Contra quem autem ? contra meas nempe
** calumnias.” Quas taudem illas ? an quòd infamis
libelli Clamoris Regii authorem te affirmaverim, nunc
etiam justa probatione arguerim ? at verbum de isto
Clamore in tua fide publica nullum. An quòd hor-
tensem te adulterum, domesticum Pontiæ stupratorem
enarraverim ? at horti percautè tu quidem ac timidè
mentionem facis ; facta utrobique flagitia aut non om-
mino, aut oblique tantùm et frigidè negas. Quid ergo
fidem publicam sollicitare opus erat iis de rebus, quas
audacter ipse negare non potes ? nihil sanè, nisi quòd
circumforanei pharmacopolæ et vanissimi circulatoris
hoc solum tibi defuit, ut elogiis ac testimoniis, nescio
quo pacto adscitis atque correptis, et ostentata fide
publica te venditares. Tibi igitur si “ scurra” sum,
minus commoveor ; quandoquidem is, qui ab oraculo
sapientissimus, ab tui similibus scurra Atticus est dic-
tus. Cur autem scurra tibi videor, More ? an quòd
nequitias tuas interdum falsè perstrinxerim ? me tu stul-
tior sis, More, et adhuc magis ridendus, si quenquam
putas, modò emunctæ maris sit, ad tuos fœtores, nisi
sale conspersos, posse appropinquare. Sed vide, quàm
tibi temperaverim, quàm leniter tecum egerim : Cùm
enim in ipsa fronte libri nullo negotio potuerim tibi
paria retulisse, et affixo tibi cognomento appositissimo
atque meritissimo ita scripsisse, “ Contra Alexandrum
Morum adulterum et cinædum,” cohibui me ; partim
tui misertus, partim ut legentium oculis atque auribus
mommihil consulerem, ne subito occursu tantæ fœditatis
atque offensione averterentur.
Sed de his plus satis ; infantissimo munc titulo ad
librum ipsum veniamus: id quod te, ut video, non de-
lectat ; nam rectà eunti viam obstruis; et ægrotantem
doctorculum nescio quem Cramtzium cum lectulo et
culcitra, tanquam aggerem aut vallum obdis tibi et
transversum extrudis. Qui “ æger,” ut ipse ait, et mi
fallor ægerrimus, id est maledicendi cupidissimus, haud
scio am ventilata lo(lice vix se in cubitum erexerit, ut
hæc sua febriculosa somnia deliraret. Mox quasi tes-
tamento jam facto subjicit, “ Scripsi propria manu et
subsignavi licet aeger corpore.” Age jam tu, si vis,
animam ; nos resignemus ; et lectori imprimis quid
legaveris inspiciamus : multam, opinor, salutem ; ne
unciolam quidem ; quid ergo? plorare : “ I.ege si potes
et luge.” Me verò, quòd ignotus minimè expectabam,
secundum hæredem quincunce toto maledictorum
aspergis. “ Lege,” inquis, “ et luge sæculi vicem, in
quo maledicentiæ tantum licet :" Luge potiùs tot im-
sipientes doctorculos, quos misi maturè caveat hoc
sæculum, vereor ne propediem et lugeat et luat. Tu
verò tum luxisses, cum inaudita audacia Salmasius
homo privatus, extraneus, nulla injuria lacessitus, in
universam Anglicanam remp. atque senatum foedissi-
mis contumeliis bacchatus est : tum luxisses, cùm pro-
brosus iile anonymus Clamorem Regii Sanguinis im
nos eructavit, nec acerbissimis modò verborum contu-
meliis ad rabiem usque furit ac stevit, sed nobiscum si
agi oportere, decere, convenire, rationibus et argu-
mentis, ut ipse putat, Christianis defendere conatur.
Cognosce nunc, si potes, tuam ipse iniquitatem : cùm
extermi, ad quos nostra mihil pertinent, mobis vel acer-
bissimè maledicunt, et maledicentiam ipsam defendunt,
vis omnes “ legant:" cùm ego et pro meo in patriam
officio, et magistratuum jussu, meos cives ac populares,
me denique ipsum probris omnibus læsum defendo, vis
omnes “ lugeant.” Tum cavere lectorem jubes, ne
me ** credat historicum.” At neque tu Albertus es
Crantzius ; et hoc tibi edico caveas, me ego antequam
peroravero te citiùs memdacem, quàm tu me “ fabula-
torem ” coarguas. “ Quis et qualis sit iste Miltonus,”
inquis, “ ignoro.” Non displicet ; neque enim tanti
est tuum nosse aut non nosse : Ego verò te statim novi
et morbum tuum. “ Quis sit,” inquis, “ ignoro ;
libelli ejus satis docent.” Indocilis ergo Crantzius, qui
ignorat; temerarius item atque injurius, qui ignotum
illæsus laedis, qui per calumniam ac maledicendi præ-
properam libidinem ex libro de divortiis, loco nom citato,
verbis aut mom plenè aut perperam adscriptis, blas-
phemiæ falsò insimulas. Tu antè, quisquis es Crantzi,
in malam pestem abieris, quam dixisse me “ Doctrinam
Evangelii et Dom. nostri Jesu Christi de divortio esse
diabolicam,” usquam inveneris. Quòd si dixi fortasse,
quam inde conficiunt vulgares interpretes doctrinam,
qua post divortium necessariò factum, omne aliud ma-
trimonium interdicunt, esse diabolicam, id esse blas-
CONTRA ALEXANDRUM
739
MORUM, ECCLESIASTEN.
phemiam quo tu pacto evincis? nisi si fortè theologorum
dictatis quibusvis contradicere, nunc primùm blasphemia
est credenda. Quod autem affirmas doctrinam de di-
vortiis “ ab omnibus patribus à theologis veteribus et
hodiernis, ab omnibus academiis et ecclesiis Britannicis,
Hollandicis, Gallicis” eodem modo explicari, scito te
vehementer hallucinari : et ignorantiam doctori tibi et
præsertim reprehensori turpem prodere : quam si vacat,
in eo libro, qui à me “ Tetrachordon” est inscriptus,
exues. Poteris ibi, si libet, discere, quam ego tueor
sententiam eam et patrum aliquot, et summorum postea
theologorum Buceri, Fagii, Martyris, Erasmi fuisse ;
quorum hic justo tractatu Phimostomum quendam doc-
torem, tui comparem, eademque ferè blaterantem refel-
lit. Interea non miror laborare te tantopere de inhiben-
dis divortiis, cùm animadverto etiam domi tuæ haud
leve accidere divortium solere ; nimirum sensùs com-
munis ab loquacitate tua. Quis enim mentis compos
aut sententiæ suæ sic loquitur ? “ In Salmasio vix ipsi
inimici aliud requirunt, quàm quod fuerit iracundior, et
male conjugatus.” Patere te doceri, doctorcule, quod
pueruli sciant. Non requirebant illi quod fuit, sed quod
uon fuit. Ais me “ Eunuchum dixisse Salmasium,”
quod nunquam dixi ; duos tantummodo versus ex Eu-
nuchi Terentiami prologo desumpsi, ut scenicum plo-
rantis exordium, et lamentabile ridiculum risu, ut par
erat, exciperem. “ Nihil minus quam Eunuchum ”
fuisse affirmas : id mea nihil refert. Tu tamem, quid
hac in parte solus tam audacter promuncies, cave.
Adeòne legum nescius ac rudis es, ut ullam rem diffi-
ciliùs probare te posse sine duobus testibus arbitreris ?
Sed minitaris deinde ; ** siquando prodibit viri summi
posthumus liber, Miltonius sentiet mortuos quoque
mordere.” Vos ipsi existimare potestis, qui vivum non
pertimui, eumdem mortuum quàm non reformidem.
AEternum latrans exangues terreat umbras,
Si mordacem in me mortuum emiseritis, scitote neque
melle neque mulso placatum à me iri. Cognoscetis an
et ego λόγον ἐπιτάφιον commodè possim scribere. ** Dii
boni,” inquis, “ quam miger est Miltonius, si fides Sal-
masio ?” at ipsam inferorum fuliginem si secum trahat,
me, Deo benè juvante, denigrare non poterit. Tu
Salmasii in me comvitia ut lætè nunc refers! quasi pul-
mentum ægroto tibi hoc esset: contra illa comvitia cùm
ego me, ut par atque æquum est, defendam, tunc tuum
illud triste et querebumdum rursus aridiemus, * Lege ct
luge ;” et illi “ Dii boni” tui tunc rursus fortassè im-
plorabuntur. Sed dic, quaeso, sacrosanctæ theologiae
doctor, quos tu Deos bonos colis ? vereor ne catechu-
menus hic potiùs, quàm doctor dicendus sis. Docent
sacrae literæ unum esse bonum Deum. Tibi si Dii
boni sunt, erit fortassis et bona Dea ; cujus tu sacerdos
et mystagogus Corybantem in me nunc agis. Ego
qu£e in Morum attuli, quanquam tu ** falsissima esse”
præfidenter affirmas, sciunt illi esse vera, qui rebus
omnibus interfuere, quique mullum Genevæ Crantzium
eo tempore cognoverunt. Hoc sanè miretur quispiam
si hæc Mori fides publica est, quo pacto, quòve uomine
tua ista privata fides huc nobis ex grabatulo in praefa-
tionem irrepsit. Iniquitas certè in me tua fidem de
«5 lj
illo quam infercis hic tuam in dubium vocat, qui me
accusas, quòd “ innocentissimo typographo parcere non
potuerim.” Ergo Vlaccus qui me sibi prorsus ignotum
petulantissimis convitiis adscripto nomine palam ap-
petivit, tibi “ innoccntissimus” est. Audi ergo iterum,
theologe, cui tu sacræ scientiæ vix imitiatus mihi videris,
audi quam te tuosque mores theologia sacra et sapien-
tissimus præceptor dedoceat : qui absolvit improbum,
et qui condemnat justum, abominationi Jehovæ sunt
æquè ambo. Verùm haud scio utrum in me ex ignoto
factum modò inimicum iniquior, an in amicum ipsum
ineptior sis Morum : cujus predicatas virtutes tot vitiis
interpunctas, et prope alteruas introducis, ut non
sed maculis tantummodo variatum, non
Morum, sed morionem demisissc abs tuis laudi-
bus videaris. Pictor sanè eximius primam laudis
lineam cum litura ducis ; ** semper magnas inimicitias
exercuit cum æmulis.” Vitium narras, Crantzi, im mi-
nistro evangelii quam minimè tolerandum ; praesertim
cùm “ iis inimicitiis ipse,” quod fateris, “ nimia lo-
quendi libertate, locum saepe præbuerit.” Deinde est
arrogans et Gallicè “ Altierus,” et Spanhemii judicio
et tuo. Hactenus nigro lapillo ; nunc vario: “ Fœlix
ingenium, nisi crabrones irritasset.” Aemulos nimirum
suos, non ipse aquila, sed ut muscas olim scarabeus ille
vespæ filius. “ Nullum novit Salmasius nobiliorem
genium, si laboris tolerantior fuisset :” Ignavus igitur
Morus; et tamen semper genio satis indulsit. Additque
ipse Salmasius “ variè læsisse uxorem suam :” Unde
protervus in matronas etiam Morus ; ** præter incom-
siderationem” quoque “ tali homime indignam :” Sal-
masio itaque judice, quid est Morus misi morus ? Hic
autem fateor satis causæ fuisse, cur “ ægrum ” te sub-
scriberes ; manifestò enim febricitas. Qui sic tibi dix-
isse Salmasium ais, “ siquid in ” Pontia “ peccavit”
Morus, “ ego sum leno et uxor mea lema.” Festivè tu
quidem in hoc dramate personarum numerum auxisti,
et uberem ridemdi ansam, sicui otium esset, porrexisti.
Verùm siquid hujusmodi Salmasius amico tibi et pri-
vatim, siquid incommodius de se vel de uxore familiar-
iter locutus est, id tu, nisi planè delirares, amicitiam
saltem reveritus et arcamum domesticum, non tam sto-
lidè hoc im effutisses. Sed redis ad laudes,
“ acutum judicium Mori ;” adjunge ** imconsidera-
ornatum,
loco
tionem” illam “ tali homine indignam,” res duas inter
“ Foelicitatem in comciomando ;”
et infœlicitatem in scortando : par alterum im Mori
laudibus appositissimum. Accedit corollari loco ** trium
linguarum peritia :” quæ professorem hunc tandem
consummat nobis trilinguem ; id est, cum supradictis
virtutibus paulò plus quàm triobolarem. Cum voto
denique finem facis ineptiendi ; ut “ Deus Christiam-
orum” (modo enim reliquisse ** Deos bonos” tuos vide-
ris) “hanc mentem inspiret potestatibus, ut hanc scrip-
turiendi licentiam Christiamis infamem compescant.”
Vos itaque priores compescant, à quibus hæc omnis
licentia primò exorta est : mihi mei defendendi jus ac
potestatem adversus contumelias vestras, uti spero, mon
eripient. Intelliges tum ipse, quàm ego libens omni
hoc genere contentionum supersedeam. Atque tibi
jam, ut puto, satisfactum est : idque eò ampliùs feci,
se comjunctissimas.
740
AUTHORIS PRO SE DEFENSIO,
quòd doctorem te sacrosanctæ theologiæ cum amplis-
simo phylacterio agnoscerem ; doctoribus autem miri-
ficè delector.
Nunc Vlaccum paucis dignemur : nam et Vlaccus
responsat, typographus meus, et necessarius jam factus.
Responsa hominis breviter collegam, ut perspiciatis
quàm bellè quadrent. Es veterator, inquam, Vlacce.
Sum bonus, inquit, “ arithmeticus.” Et tamen que-
runtur, qui tibi expensum tulerunt, pessimè te nume-
rare. Ego ad probitatis normam te exigo. Hem tibi,
inquit, “ canonem logarithmicum ! Sophistica hæc
est, Vlacce, non logistica : perinde quasi idcirco solùm
arithmeticam didicisses, quod in ea falsi regulam doceri
audiveras. Clamcularius es, inquam, et obæratus aufu-
gisti. Tu mihi “ sinuum tabulas,” et “ tangentium,”
et “ secantium ” crepas. At quibus tecum ratio est,
expensi tabulis te urgent : idque ipsum est quòd simu-
osum te nimis, et alieni cupidiùs tangentem, et malè
secantem queruntur. “ Trigonometriam,” inquis,
“ conversis sinubus in logarithmos artificialem absolvi.”
At artificia interim tua et versutias creditores luunt:
Non trigonometram, sed tetragonum sine fraude cum
illis te esse oportuit ; non angulos et obliquitates, sed
suum cuique metiri ac reddere. De cætero, ad tuam
te confessionem ipsam rejicio. Londimi, Parisiis, iniqui
librarii, iniquum judicium, iniqui judices ; tu solus in-
teger et castus : at illi contra te unum omnes cùm
audientur, vera esse ea quæ de te dixi, nemo non
fatebitur. In me autem quàm scelestus fueris, facile
evincam. Prinùm scripsisti ad Hartlibium, petens, ut
mea, siquid haberem, posses excudere ; et simul de mea
oculorum calamitate, essemne omnino orbus luminum,
sedulò et quasi dolens quæsivisti: mox proditoriè, cùm
iutelligeres nihil tibi à me excudendum venire, cæcita-
tem mihi, quam quasi sollicitè modò et dolenter in-
quirebas, eam statim sceleratè insultans palam expro-
brasti. Nam typographus, inquis, sum ; ** quid ad
typographos tam magnæ controversiæ, misi ut operam
suam ?” Acutum sanè et typographicum ! Non alius
quisquam typographis plus hac in parte quàm ego con-
Num ergò tu famosissimo libello tuum sub-
scribere professum nomen quasi author esses, debuisti?
et cujus ex libris lucrari cupiebas, neque nunc primùm,
ut audio, lucratus es, ejus momen turpissimis contumeliis
maculare, cum privilegio scilicet, licere tibi existi-
masti ? “ Bellum,” inquis, “ erat;” et simul miratur
tua vastitas, quòd, facta pace, bacchationes in me priva-
tim tuas et singularem insolentiam impunè tibi esse
moluerim. Nescis enim, vappa, quid belli ratio, in
causa etiam longissimè diversa, ab temulenta tua
rabie discrepet. An siquis existimationem meam priva-
tùs per causam belli famoso libro violaverit, ea mihi
injuria devoranda est, ut ne possim, cùm visum erit, me
justa et expectata defensione vindicare ? * Non me pu-
duit,” inquis, “ quanquam ignominiosè accusatum, al-
teram editionem adornare.” At non omnes tibi similes
sunt, Vlacce, ut non pudeat fidem, pudorem, omnia lucro
postponere ; cujus foeda cupiditas adeò vilem tibi et ab-
jectum animum ingeneravit, ut tuis ipse typis teipsum
graphicè nebulonem depinxisse mon erubescas; eodem-
que tempore mihi maledicere, et meis ex libris quæs-
cesserim.
tum facere. In quo quid cani similius fieri abs te p0-
tuit? cujus ego allatrantis capiti, cùm os illud vehe-
menter inflixissem, exclamas tu quidem et quæritaris;
mox ut esculentum esse comperisti, reversus blandulè,
rodis simul et liguris. Tu verò mea ut non omninò
attigisse debuisti, aut non corrupisse ; nunc inimicus
librum meum mon solùm excudisti, sed ultione vilissima
deformatum ac mutilatum et adversariis hinc inde ob-
sessum exposuisti: quorum alterum rapacissimam lu-
celli cujusvis aviditatem tuam, alterum et tuam singu-
larem militiam et tuarum mercium improbitatem decla-
rat. Hæc tua sunt, Vlacce. Nunc remoto te circumpede
berum tuum aggredi tandem ab latere aperto liberiùs
licebit. Qui quamvis non modò intus turpis, et sibi
conscius, sed foris jam penè omnibus manifestus atque
perspicuus sit, tamem cùm in audacia positam sibi esse
spem unicam statuerit, absterso ore, ut in proverbio
sacro scortum illud, et assumpta non solum viri sancti
oratione atque persona, sed sapientissimi quoque titulo
Ecclesiastes novus cum mala cruce, et sacrarum litera-
rum professor profanus incedit. Adeò ut mirentur
omnes in quo summa esse tot vitia reperirentur, in eo
illa omnia potuisse ab impudentia tam longè superari.
Ego verò eorum quæ de te scripsi, More, cùm “ af-
finxerim ” sanè nihil, affirmaverim autem ea quæ et cre-
berrima passim fama, et mihi privatim testibus idoneis
essent cognita, utrius hoc nostri “ ad sempiternum dede-
cus” futurum sit, non id tuum, quod tamen tibi arrogas,
judicium erit, sed, Dei voluntate, hominum integrorum
sententiis dirimetur. Tu interim præfationis mihi (quid
enim ** tui præfatio” si nondum assequor) vel “ va-
missimi” vel “ mendacissimi,” quanquam uberrima tibi
mendaciorum copia est, mitte “ comparare.” Testimo-
nialium ut sis tibimet callidissimus æruscator, præfa-
tionum tamen coactorem te mihi nolo. Nam quod ais,
quæ de te protuli “ ejusmodi esse, nemo ut sit eorum
quibus paulo propius innotuisti, quamvis iniquior esset,
quin falsitatis perpetuæ coarguat,” id usque eò veritati
planè contrarium est, ut eorum qui te “ propius” no-
runt, multi nuntiis, non memo literis questus mecum
sit huic me argumento facinorum tuorum tam uberi et
copioso parùm satisfecisse ; tantum abesse, quicquam
ut finxerim, ut permultas, præclaras etiam, tuas res
gestas silentio præterierim : se, si adfuissent, quod et
optabant quoque nonnulli, largiore me palmarum tua-
rum accessione et copia facilè fuisse instructuros. Tuum
ergo illud “ miserere,” quo tu et operarius tuus, par
bipedum odiosissimum, “ misereri meam vicem” vultis
ridiculè videri, vobis vestrisque vicibus móneo reserve-
tis, ego à me procul arceo : miserationes improborum
cujusmodi sint, didici. Nam quid est, obsecro, quod
miserationem hanc vestram inhumanam tandem com-
moverit ? quòd ** in te” nempe ** hominem immeritum
grassatus sim.” At ô gemina impudentia, et conscio-
rum par callosissimum ! vosne ut audeatis vos * imme-
ritos” asseverare, nisi fortè vocis ambiguo colluditis,
quorum alter Clamorem illum infamem atque infandum
edidit, alter excudit, uterque divulgavit? Discant hinc
omnes, quæ vos “ cum bomo Deo” affirmare soleatis,
quàm sint pro nihilo habenda. Nec precationem feli-
ciùs, quàm miserationem adscivisti ; ut ad “justam mo-
CONTRA ALEXANDRUM
MORUM, ECCLESIASTEN. 741
minis tui defensionem aggredienti veram et verecun-
dam suggerat tibi Deus orationem, ab omni mendacio
et obscoenitate prorsus abliorrentem :” Alterum enim
nunquam es praestiturus, ut mendaciis abstineas; alte-
rum iniquissimè precaris, ut cùm tua facta obscœnissi-
ma sint, orationem suggerat tibi Deus factis abhorren-
tem : quod contrà precari debuisses, ut suggereret tibi
Deus non verecundam, sed obscœnam : sic enim tua
facta verbis saltem propriis et non mendacibus Deo at-
que hominibus confessus esses ; sic non hypocritam
egisses; quod Deo longè gratius fuisset. Nunc non
Deus te, sed tua illa Dea audit Cotytto, sive ea Laverna,
sive utraque est, labra tacitè moventem:
** Da mihi fallere; da justo sanctoque videri :
“ Noctem peccatis, et stupris objice nubem.”
Quaeris qui sciam quæ tu tecum ? Dicam. Vocale
quiddam, si nescis, omnis, totusque homo est: non lin-
gua, non vox hominis sola loquitur ; vita ipsa, mores,
facta, quid quisque velit, tacente sæpiùs lingua, clamant
atque testantur. Tu itaque hæc tacitè ; illa clarè ;
*• Orationem videlicet ob omni mendacio et obscoenitate
prorsus abhorrentem, hoc est inquis dissimillimam
tuæ.° De hoc utroque sigillatim à me tuo ordine re-
spondebitur. A mendaciis exordiris : ** nam ut hinc,”
inquis * ordiar, quid mendacius ipsa fronte libelli tui ?
quem,” nescis quare, Defensionem Secundam pro Populo
Anglicano vocem ; ** re quidem vera” inquis “ teterri-
mam contra me satyram et ventosissimum panegyricum
à te dictum tibi.” Nae tu mendacia jejunus admodum
et esuriens, sed inani morsu captas, si toto libro nihil
mendacius ipsa fronte invenire potes : Quam ego et
veracem esse, et per omnia libro consentaneam facilè
demonstrabo ; quid enim appositius, quid accommoda-
tius ad defensionem populi Anglicani, quàm si ejus
vitam et mores turpissimos esse convincam, qui probro-
sissimo libello edito populum Anglicanum tanta injuria
lacessisset? eum te esse confirmo. Quid si digressus
aliquoties essem, et in materia præsertim tam trita et
sæpe tristi lectoris nonnunquam recreare animum ali-
unde experirer ? Tùne adeo pressus et minimè laxus
homo es, ut latum unguem ab argumenti cancellis dis-
cedere quoquam licere non putes ? quæ lex rhetorum
tuorum digressiones istiusmodi reprehendit? Ego si
exemplis, quod possem, oratorum illustrium explicarem
quid hac in parte liceat et usitatum sit, efficerem ut
appareret statim facili negotio, quàm tu harum rerum
rudis atque ignarus sis. Nec solam satyram, quod ais,
in te scripsi, sed ut perspicerent omnes, libentiùs me et
multo studiosiùs bonos collaudare, quàm malos vitupe-
rare, clarissimorum aliquot nominum laudes, qui vel
patriam armis et consilio egregiè liberassent, vel mihi
saltem facta eorum defendenti favissent, (cum id etiam
causam cohonestaret,) et passim admiscui, et pleniùs
introduxi. Atque adeò me hoc quidem, quòd serenis-
simæ Suecorum Reginæ gratias potiùs, quàm laudes
persolverim, tu umquam ostenderis à defensione pop.
Anglicani, cui illa impensè existimata est favisse, ali-
enum fuisse. Quid si, quod objectas, me denique lau-
dassem aliquantisper digressus? quis ea tempora, eas
persæpe causas incidere non fateatur, ut propriæ laudes
etiam sanctissimis modestissimisque viris indecoræ non
sint, nec umquam fuerint ? hunc etiam locum uberri-
mum exemplorum illustrare copia si vellem, equidem
me omnibus facilè probarem tu obmutesceres. Sed me
nusquam laudavi ; nec, quod criminaris, panegyricum
à me mihimet dictum usquam invenies: Singulare
quidem in me divini numinis beneficium, quòd me ad
defendendam libertatis tam fortiter vindicatæ causam
præter cæteros evocasset, et agnovisse fateor, et num-
quam non agnoscere debere : et praeclaram hinc mini-
meque culpandam, ut ego quidem arbitror, exordiendi
materiam sumpsisse. Petitus deinde ab illo Clamore
Regio convitiis omnibus atque calumniis, et infimorum
numero habitus, non me laudibus, quanquam id nefas
non erat, contra adversarios despectores, sed nuda ac
simplici rerum mearum narratione contentus, tuebar:
id populi Anglicani quem defendebam, quanti inter-
esset, uti ego meam existimationem non planè abjicerem
nec obtrectandam quibusvis et obculcandam relin-
querem, præfatus antequam mei facerem mentionem
sedulò ostendi ; offensionem denique si cujus fortè hac
in re incurrissem, haud negligenter sum deprecatus.
Haec tu si propter invidentiam et livorem aut non
legere aut meminisse non vis, quid est reliqui nisi ut
crepes ? nullum enim in fronte libri mendacium, nisi
abs te per malitiam atque calumniam conflatum reperi-
etur. Quanto mendacior “ Alexandri Mori fides pub-
lica ?” an te omnia in illo libro ex fide publica scrip-
sisse audes dicere ? atqui aut hoc tibi necessariò dicen-
dum, aut libri illius fronti mulla fides est. Ita tu dum
in titulo tuo putidus, in meo malitiosus es, aut fides
publica frontem per te, aut tua frons fidem perdidit.
Pergis de mendaciis. * Alterum est,” inquis, “ au-
thorem esse me libri, cui titulus, Clamor Sanguinis
Regii.” Quod cum ego verum esse firmissimis testi-
momiis jam suprà demonstraverim, teque illius libri
certissimum curatorem atque editorem, omnium jure
gentium et legibus pro authore habendum esse, sequi-
tur ut quæ mei fallendi spe nixus hoc loco vociferaris,
quasi author non esses, tametsi infirma per se, atque
imamia sumt, numc fundamento illo fallaci subruto, sua
sponte corruant atque subsidant: simulque ut totum
illud mendacium, illa omnis “ temeritas, impudentia,
immanitas,” qua me per summam impudentiam hinc
omeras, in teipsum recidat. Exclamantem itaque et
frigentem et tuo laqueo impeditum, te hic prætereo :
nugas autem quasdam tuas sine risu non possum ; per
quas acutiùs et miserabiliùs exclamare te putas. * Nam
licet,” inquis, “ ea crimina quæ in me conjicis vera
essent, tamen contra jus et fas omne esset, quod nullius
in nos authoritatis, quoddam tribunal excitas, crimina-
tiones publicè spargis.” An nescis ergo, hominum
ineptissime, idem hoc tribunal esse, eamdem sellam
atque authoritatem, jus idem criminandi et judicandi,
quod ego vestro primùm Salmasio, mox Clamatori Re-
gio defensione justissima eripui ? vestrum ego nunc
exemplum atque judicium in vos converto, vestro jure
utor; vestrum ipsum tribunal, vestra subsellia, quæ in
nos parastis, de vestris erepta mamibus in vosjustissimè
statuo. * Deinde,” inquis, ** tametsi libri author illius
essem, non tibi tamen integrum fuisset tot scommata
749
AUTHORIS PRO SE DEFENSIO,
nihil ad causam pertinentia huic propinare sæculo.”
Videte, quæso, æquitatem hominis : Sibi et Salmasio
licere vult omnia, calumnias, mendacia, contumelias ;
nobis vera in illos crimina retorquere, quasi ad causam
scilicet minùs pertinentia, mon licebit. Sanè qui res,
rationesque rerum recto judicio ponderare solent, mom
dubito quin mecum sentiant, nihil vehementius ad cau-
sam pertinere, quàm quali quis vita atque moribus sit
qui eam acerrimè defendat. Ego causam Regiam, qui
vehementissimè defenderit, si aut corruptum esse aut
facinorosum arguo, haud levi argumento impugnâsse
me causam Regiam satis intelligo: Si mendacem, si
turpem, si perfidum per omnem vitam criminatorem
nostrum esse ostendo, eundem quoque in nos esse eò
faciliùs fidem facio. Tu interim cùm duo tibi propo-
sueris ; ** alterum,” ut ostenderes ** nec esse te libri
autorem illius, nec id fuisse mihi persuasum ;” alterum,
** falsa esse quæ in te conjecta sunt probra,” nihil ho-
rum efficis; sed dissolutus ac fluens, modò huc, modò
illuc vagando, tum eadem inculcando, ignarus quàm in
propinquo tibi effusè munc, pabulanti latens à tergo
atque intactus hostis instet, dum nescire me putas quid
sit libelli authorem esse, aut qnid tu feceris, in eadem
perstas vel futilitate vel fallacia. “ Quid commerui ?
quid peccavi ? quando populum tuum læsi?” Cavil-
laris etiam ; “ quando boves tuos aut equos abegi?”
Nom tu boves meos abegisti, cacus pastor ut sis ; sed
alienas oves abduxisti, tuam deseruisti Phryx novus
Alexander, vel etiam Cataphryx Morus. At “ sciscitari
ex amicis” credo poteram, quos isthic apud nos habes,
mec ** paucos nec vulgaris notæ.” Quasi verò ego,
qui “ divinus,” ut ais, “ non sum,” tuos amicos quinam
essent, scirem, qui ante humc Clamorem belluinum abs
te editum, ne vagiisse quidem adhuc te aut infantem
natum sciebam. Aut tu planè sensu, vel saltem logica
destitutus es, aut ejus rudimenta non sic didicisses,
relationes in sensum non incurrere. Itaque et inimicos
esse tibi tam multos eosque tua non pietate, sed turpi-
tudine quæsitos necdum audieram ; neque ut “ ludi-
briis” tam esses ** opportunus,” meque ut tu, Veneris
nepos, ** Jumonem” sic iratam tibi haberes : quæ tibi
essent infensa numina æque ignorabam, et qui essent
Crantzio ** Dii boni.” “ Anni duo sunt,” inquis, “ ex
quo tuum hoc drama exornas.” Quamquam hoc perri-
diculum est, quod optasses numquam editum, id serò
editum queri, et sum ego qui elaboratum rectè atque
limatum siquid est, id diu accurasse si dicor, non repre-
hendendum me magis quàm scriptores quosque optimos
putem, qui tarditatem scribendi imputatam sibi à sciolis
facilè contempsere, tamen et hoc esse falsissimum ex pro-
oemio superioris libri intelligitur, ubi cur maturiùs non
respondissem causam reddidi, et errare te vehementer
scito, si operis tam ardui fuisse credis vel inanem cla-
morem refutare, vel te cuivis obnoxium ludos facere.
Ncc mihi tot subcisivis horulis “ dicta illa Floralia,” quæ
vocas, quot tibi furtivis noctibus atque dieculis facta illa
Pescennina stetere. Et “ periisset” samè, hic enim tecum
sentio, paradisus ille tuus, et ficus et morus et sycomo-
rus, quibus nequitiam tuam, quantum potuit fieri,
honestè adumbratam, quoniam sunt qui rem oculis non
visam, factam credi nolint, istius defensionis inanitatem
ridens, vel argutè vel contemptim exposui: periissent,
inquam, illi omnes mon sanè flosculi, sed arbusculæ, nisi
tu in horto moechatus esses : ex hortensi et suburbana
cultione tua, non ex urbanitate mea amoenitas ista
omnis effloruit. Quod autem “ in frontispicio satyræ
im te meæ” (quæ non magis satyra est, quàm quæ est
Marci Tullii in Vatinium quemvis oratio) ** tanquam
propylæum operis illustre collocasse” me ais, ** quid
Morus Græcè significet,” frustrâ tu quidem propylaea
somnias; non ita eram decori nescius, ut sublime quic-
quam aut tragicum in historia tua ponerem : Ego tugu-
riolum illud tuum in horto, tu Palatium illud vetus, in
quo hortus ille erat, fortasse cogitabas; et in iìla olitoris
cellula, haud dubiè Palatimus adulter tibi videbaris.
Id ipsum autem Græce significare te dixi quod etsi
lingua mulla esset, reipsà te esse nunc dico. Illud
tamen negaverim, quoties te tuo momine Morum appello,
“invidiam me velle,” quod quereris, “ ex nomine fa-
cere,” et moriam tibi objicere ; mihi enim id ferè in
mentem non venit; sed professori Græcæ linguæ Græ-
cum etymon Mori ita perpetuò salire per cerebrum tibi
solet, ut nemo salutare te possit More, quin tu ab eo te
stultum appellari morose admodum suspicêris. Haec
sunt et hujusmodi quæ tu paginis paulo minùs viginti,
cùm authorem te non esse Clamoris Regii probare de-
buisses, nugatus es : in quibus singulis si otiari tecum
diutiùs et morari vellem, ipse Morus essem. Nunc
tandem seriò videris velle agere. “ Non rumores, non
sermones, sed literas testes dabis, admonitum me fuisse
ne in hominem innoxium incurrerem.” Literas ergo
inspiciamus, quas in medium affers “ amplissimi viri
D. Nieuportii foederati Belgii legati” ad te scriptas ;
quas tu, ut videtur, literas non ad probationis vim, quam
mullam habent, sed ad ostentationem solùm legendas
proposuisti. Is, quod singularem “ viri amplissimi”
humanitatem declarat (quid enim is non viri boni, qui
tui indignissimi causâ tantopere laboraret ?) ad Dom.
Thurloium secretarium adit, tuas literas communicat.
Cùm nihil se proficere videret, ad me duos viros nobiles,
amicos meos, cum literis iisdem tuis allegat. Quid
illi ? Literas illas Mori recitant, rogant, et legatum
Nieuportium idem rogare aiunt, uti literis tuis, quibus
authorem Clamoris Regii megares te esse, fidem habe-
rem. Respondi mon esse æquum quod postularent ;
meque tanta fide Morum, meque id fieri solere, ut contra
famam commumem et rem alioqui satis compertam me-
gantis de se rei et adversarii solis literis crederetur.
Illi, cùm aliud è contra nihil quod dicerent haberent,
pugnare desinunt. Si hæc non credis, tute percurre
legati literas, quibus ego nunc testibus in te utor.
“ Optabat eum non invulgare librum :” verùm id mei
juris erat et potestatis. “ Ne tibi hanc injuriam facerem,
ut illud tibi opus imputarem :” At liquere sibi, aut unde
sibi liqueret, injurium tibi hoc esse quòd imputassem,
non scribit. Saltem ut “ nihil vellem inserere, quod te
tangeret.” Quidni verò te tangeret quod ad te pertinet,
nisi id ad te mon pertinere demonstrasset ? demonstrare
autem non potuisse, argumento firmissimo est, quòd
cùm Dom. Thurloio secretario idem denuò persuadere
vellet, nihil habuit quod mitteret, præterquam idem
illud exemplum literarum tuarum ; ex quo et illud
CONTRA ALEXANDRUM
MORUM, ECCLESIASTEN. 743
facilè perspicuum est, “ rationes” illas ad me allatas
** ob quas optabat,” ne vellem eum librum evulgare,
nihil conjunctum cum reipubl. rationibus habuisse.
Noli itaque tu literas legati corrumpere : nihil illic de
“ hostili spiritu,” nihil de “ importuno tempore :” tan-
tùm “ dolere” se scribit “ noluisse me rogatu suo tantil-
lum moderationis ostendere : ” id est, noluisse me suo
privatim rogatu tibi adversario publico rem gratam fa-
cere ; opus excusum et jam penè editum revocare et de
integvo retexere. Excusatum me habeat “ vir amplis-
simus,” et praesertim legatus, si injurias publicas priva-
tis intercessionibus condonare noluerim, nec sanè
potuerim ; multoque minùs eas injurias Clamoris
Regii, quæ neque ad bellum neque ad pacem recens
factam ullo modo spectarent. Bellum illud contra
Anglos non contra rempubl. fuit: bellum vestrum non
contra Anglos, sed contra rempubl. est. An siquis re-
giarum partium per bellum Regium quicquam in nos
commisit, id per pacem Batavicam à nobis non erit
vindicandum ? siquis in rempubl. nostram contumeliosè
quid scripsit, id post pacem cum Batavis factam non
erit refellendum ? am per alienum bellum plus Regiis
in nos, quàm per nostram pacem nobis in Regios lice-
bit ? At non nos cum Regiis ut eorum Clamatoribus,
sed cum iis provinciis pacem fecimus, à quibus causa
Regia longissimè sejuncta est; eamque pacem in qua de
hostibus nostræ reipubl. non modo non favendis, sed me
tecto quidem recipiendis nominatim exceptum est. At
enim hoc “intempestivum,” et “ átrsspoka)\ov fuit quod
alienissimo tempore cùm omnia hic et isthic festis ob
pacem ignibus collucerent,” tu solus gelida perfunderis.
Equidem non in eo positam άπειροka\tav existimabam
tu lautus homo ista meliùs : doleo non satis perpensa à
me officii momenta in te mei. At graviter peccatum
est ; tum enim “ lætis clamoribus nostrum vestrumque
coelum consomabat.” Quasi verò te ardelione et incen-
diario benè multato, non multo lætiùs illi ignes pacifici
et sociales relucerent: quasi etiam “ vestrum nostrum-
que coelum” faustis clamoribus non multò lætiùs con-
sonet ; cùm infaustus et feralis inimicorum clamor com-
pescitur. Quod tu itaque alienissimum tempus, id ego
opportunissimum fuisse contendo: nec ** obstrepuisse”
me, quod ais, “ Pacis articulis,” sed acclamasse et plau-
sisse. Postremò et me prorsus ignoras, et tibimet intra
paucos versiculos manifestò mendax deprehenderis.
“ Abs te,” inquis, “ quo factum sit animo non inter-
pretor:” Et statim, quòd “ depositis armis, animum
retineres armatum.” Mirum mi ex eo bello quaestum
feci, aut stipendium aliquod mavale, qui factam pacem
usque eò molestè tulerim. Dicam igitur quod me di-
cere neque ullum obsequium, meque necessitas cogit.
Falleris tu quidem magnoperè, si quenquam esse An-
glorum putas, qui Foederatis Provinciis me uno sit
amicior, aut voluntate conjunctior ; qui præclariùs de
republ. illa sentiat; qui eorum industriam, artes, inge-
mium, libertatem aut pluris faciat, aut sæpiùs collaudet;
qui bellum incoeptum cum iis minùs voluerit, suscep-
tum pacatiùs gesserit, compositum seriò magis trium-
pharit ; qui denique obtrectatoribus eorum minùs um-
quam crediderit. Unde tu nullam in me calumniam
mendaciorem aut minùs congruentem affingere potuisti.
“ At illum rerum cardinem aucupatus csse videor, ut
prodeuntibus demum articulis pacis obstreperem.” Tu
scilicet cardo rerum ; in te pacis articuli vertuntur; hunc
si attingas, actum de pace est. At quem hominem ? quo
numero ? civem credo egregium, senatorem primarium,
ornamentum curiæ : immò ne civem quidem, sed in-
quilinum, alienigenam, et Scoto-Gallum impurissimum,
odiosum omnibus atque offensum, reipubl. hostem, qui
si quò expulsus, ejectus, et in rem malam amandatus
esset, me tantillum quidem articulis pacis noceretur ;
immò satisfieret potiùs. Tu itaque desine, si sapis,
politicari; et pacis articulos cave dehinc mussites, ne-
quis te ex pacis articulis Regii Clamoris editorem ad
supplicium poscat. Pollicitus sum, inquis, legato, “ nihil
indecens exiturum è calamo meo.” Neque fefelli; vel
siquid omninò illa in parte commisi, in me solum com-
misi, dum tuos excutere putores, tua tractare inquima-
menta sustinui: et, quòd illic etiam praefatus sum, non
tam quid me magis decuisset, quàm quid te dignum
esset spectabam. Nec tamen indecentiùs aut acerbiùs
in te ego, quàm olim viri gravissimi im improbum quem-
que ac perditum et concionibus honestissimo quoque
civitatis in loco atque conventu habitis, et scriptis pa-
lam editis invecti sunt. Verùm ad illud nunc venio
quod virum sanctissimum et hujus ætatis longè castis-
simum offendit Morum ; ** illoto” scilicet “ sermone
utor, verbis mudis et prætextatis. Propudium hominis
et prostibulum ! Tene illota verba reprehendere, qui
facta turpissima patrare mom erubuisti ? Jam non poeni-
teret profectò, siquid in hoc genere liberiùs paulo dix-
issem ; etiamsi aliud inde nihil assequutus essem, nisi
ut elicerem ex te dissimulationem hanc improbissimam,
teque personatum omnibus vel hinc palam educerem
hypocritarum omnium deterrimum. Quod autem tu
mihi dictum libro toto ostemderis, quod verbum illotius,
quàm hoc ipsum Morus? sed non in verbo neque in re,
sed in te vitium omne atque obscœnitas tota est. Tu
fauno quovis aut nudo satyro turpior, bona verba uti
nuda essent tuis moribus effecisti. Tuam nulla umbra,
me ficus ipsa quidem, velare turpitudinem potuit. Qui
te dicit, tuaque flagitia, eum necesse est obscoena di-
cere. Itaque si in tuum opprobrium vel muda verba
exeruissem, facilè me etiam gravissimorum authorum
exemplo defendissem. Qui ita semper existimarunt,
verba nuda atque exerta cum indignatione prolata, non
obscœnitatem, sed gravissimæ reprehensionis vehemen-
tiam significare. Quis unquam Pisoni annalium scrip-
tori, qui propter virtutem et pudicos mores Frugi dictus
est, vitio vertit, quòd in ammalibus questus est “ adole-
scentes pemi deditos esse.” Quis unquam Sallustium
scriptorem gravissimum reprehendit, quòd etiam im
historia dixit ;
“ Ventre, manu, pene, alea, bona patria dilacerari.**
Quid Herodotum, Senecam, Suetonium, Plutarchum,
authores omnium gravissimos adducam ? quos tu si ne-
gas verba etiam plusquam prætextata, resque satis turpes
rebus gravioribus aliquoties immiscuisse, satis declaras
te iis in authoribus versatum non esse. Hoc si omani tem-
pore et loco indecens est, quoties tu Erasmo doctissimo
qui Roterodami stat æreus, quoties Thomæ Moro nos-
744
AUTHORIS PRO SE DEFENSIO,
tro, cujus tu nomen tuo commaculas, quoties denique
ipsis ecclesiae patribus antiquis, Alexandrino Clementi,
Arnobio, Lactantio, Eusebio, dum obscoena veterum re-
ligionum mysteria vel denudant, vel derident, indecen-
tia et obscoenitatis dicam scribere debebis P. Verum tu
fortassé, ut sunt ſeré hypocritae, verbis tetrici, rebus
obscoeni, ne ipsum quidem Mosen ista noxa immunem
abs te dimiseris ; cum alibi stepius, tum etiam ubi
Phinite hasta qua parte mulierem transfixerit, siqua
ſides Hebreis, aperté narrat. Neipsum quidem Jobum
pudentissimum ac patientissimum, dum meretricem
sibi uxorem nudato et prisco sermone imprecatur, si
ipse alienae uxori insidiatus unquam fuisset. Non te
Salomonis Euphemismi censorem, non prophetarum
scripta tuam turpiculi immö nunnunquam planè ob-
scoenicensuram effugerint, quoties Masorethis et Ra-
binis, pro eo quod diserté scriptum est, suum libet Keri
adscribere. Ad me quod attinet, fateor malle me cum
sacris scriptoribus ºb0vbb.huova, quâm cum futilibus Ra-
binis siloxhuova esse. Tuque frustra Marcum Tullium
inclamas; qui si “in aureo’’ illo quem citas, “ de Offi-
ciis libro,” illud jocandi genus elegans, urbanum, in-
geniosum, facetum arbitratur, quo genere non modó
Plautus et Atticorum antiqua comoedia, sed etian phi-
losophorum Socraticorum libri referti sunt, id quod illic
legisse poteras, non ille mihi quidem nimis angustos,
non nimis severos decori statuisse fines videtur, ut cui-
quam difficile sit intra eos fines sese continere; nedum
ut ego me non continuerim. Noli itaque tu mihi homo
inquinatissimus, de honesto et decoro ineptire ; non est
tuum, mihi crede; immö tu sic habeto, nihil minus de-
cere, nihil ab ratione ipsa decori magis abhorrere, quâm
te talem, qualis es, lautum sermonem usurpare, aut
illotum reprehendere. Sed videris nunc velle rem om-
nem in pauca redigere: “Non sum,” inquis, “autor
Clamoris.” Non suades. “Res patet, dilucet, eamque
pluribus argumentis affirmare tam sit ineptun), quâm
in clarissimum solem mortale lumen inferre.” Desime
ampullas; dic tandem aliquid. “Ipse ego quantum
possum reclamo.” Nempe nunc denuo; minacitèr modó
et regiè; nunc miseré. “Amici non tacent.” Ex ore
tuo. “Ecclesiastae admonent.” Fide tua. “Legati
couſimant.” Ex literis tuis. Quid hoc omne aliud est,
nisi illa initio tua singularis negatio, “Non sum au-
thor P” Verum tu, antequam ad hunc locum pervenisti,
jamdiu intelligis miser quo loco res tuæ sint; quos in
laqueos te indueris; quibus à me winculis obses tenea-
ris: nunc quantum voles clama, to non authorem Cla-
moris esse ; cum omnium gentium leges atque jura,
praecomem te mihi pro clamatore, procuratorem pro au-
thore tradiderint. Quid nunc authore fiat, aut ubi
terrarum degat, nihil moror: vixerit sanč in Gallia, et
simul in Hollandia “jucundum fuerit videre,” quod
narrat inse, “quibus ludibriis, quibus periculis legati
nostri” ed tempore couflictarentur: sit vel Satanicae
minister synagogae, non laboro; hoc saltem unum bené
ſecit, quod te tam diligentem sibi tamgue fidelem dia-
conum, non Evangelii, sed infamissimi libelli minis-
trum reliquit. Age nunc triumphos de me istos, quos
ego flebiles tibi effician: profer in medium, si potes,
mea illa “mendacia, mean illam imprudentiam, teme-
ritatem, audaciam, pertinaciam et impudentiam,” meum
illud ingens piaculum quëd te Regii Clamoris affirma-
verim authorem. Clama quantum potes é longinquo
ad populum Anglicanum quem illo antea nefario cla-
more edito tam indignè lassisti : nam accedere non
audes. Vociferare, inquam, si satis in tuto es; “Quan-
tum te, popule Anglicane, tua de Miltono ſefellit opi-
nio !” Haec enim ipsa dum clamas, dum plaudis tibi,
et tanquam elapso gratularis, nescis me lustra tua, et
sylvas anonymas indagasse, nescis in plagiste meis
esse: sentit pop. Anglicanus me non poenitendum vel
defensorem juris sui, vel venatorem ferarum Suarum.
En ego te reluctantem obtorto collo, traductum per
ora omnium, pestem populi, in ecclesia verrem, cauda
non minus, quâm obliquo dente maleficum, in con-
spectum omnium protraho. Teque belluam pop. An-
glicano inspectandam, non aedilitatis, sed defensionis
meae gratissimum munus edo. Tu interea, nequid de-
sit ad triumphum, quem de me, ut putas, deluso atque
decepto agis, quod authorem Clamoris te dixerim, ad-
hibes, ut solet, jocos. Et “frontem,” inquis, “imme-
ritó perfricare diceris, tota enim jamdudum frons tibi
periit.” Noli nunc de me queri; noli “ sarcasmos,” et
“sannas” et scommata,” simulata rursus gravitate, re-
prehendere: memineris ut hi ludi à teipso instaurati et
introducti nunc sint; ut reprehensos modó et damnatos
ipse nunc revoces. Facetus esse cupis; non succurrit
in praesentia: suggeram itaque ego jocos quosdam
tuos; et quod triumphum maximé deceat, militares :
quique admoneant te temporis cujusdam, in quo frons
tua tam validè “perfricta” est, ut tibi tum multo ma-
luisses totam frontem periisse. Meministi fortasse illius
dici, immo verö diei, credo, et horae et loci meministi,
cum tu Pontiam in domo Salmasii ultimúm, ut opinor,
convenisti: tu illam, ut copulac renunciares; illa te, ut
nuptiis diem diceres. Quae ubi è contrario pactum
stupro conjugium dissolvere in animo tibi esse videt,
tum veró tua innuba, non enim dicam Tisiphone, im-
patiens tantae injuriae in faciem tibi atque oculos, non
sectis unguibus, furens involavit. Tu qui teste Crant-
zio (praestat enim non sine tua fide publica tantum cer-
tamen exordiri) qui teste, inquam, Crantzio “Gallicé
Altier,” Latiné feroculus esses, teste Deodato, “terri-
biles ungues ad tui tutelam haberes,” pro virili tua
parte ad foemineum hoc genus pugnac te comparas.
Stat arbitra certaminis Juno Salmasia. Ipse Salmasius
in conclavi proximo decumbens pedibus aeger, ut prae-
lium commissum audiit, risu penè moritur. At heu
nefas imbellis noster Alexander, et Amazoni congres-
sus impar, succumbit. Illa inferiorem macta, in frontem
et supercilia nasumgue hominis tum primum superné
peccat: miris capreolis et Phrygiano opere totum ja-
centis vultum percurrit: munquam tibi More lineamenta
Pontiae minus placuere. Ipse plena jam utraque mar-
gine genarum, scriptus et in mento necdum finitus,
aegrè tandem surgis : sed me poeniteat te, homo ad un-
guem factus; non jam professor, sed tamen Doctor
Pontificius: jure enim poteras tanquam in picta tabula
scripsisse, “Pontia fecit.” Quid autem P Doctor 2
immö codex jam factus, in quo ultrix Pontia sua ad-
versaria exaravit stilo novo. Sensisti puto Vlacci tabu-
CONTRA ALEXANDRUM
MORUM, ECCLESIASTEN. 745
las tangentium et secantium ad radium cifrarum nescio
quot lugubrium in pelle tua excudi. Tu tùm More
“ facie mom integra” domum te proripuisti ; fronte qui-
dem exporrecta, quam vix contrahere jam poteras ;
superciliosus tamen et caperatus, quippe derepentè
multò literatior; et quantum potes, abdis te quoque,
reconditæ ut posses dici homo literaturæ. Eho noster
Ecclesiastes! ubi es ? quid lates ? expectant te jam
nunc, qui “ tibi aures è superiore loco dicenti accom-
modare ” solebant. Sed tibi misero nunc Pontia è
superiore loco dixit, tuisque auribus umgues accommo-
davit. Redde nunc tuum vultum mobis, Ecclesiastes,
antiquum sanè et rugis venerandum ; cur apocryphus
vis esse ? cùm ipsa Pontia pontifice canonicus jam
maximè sis et rubricatus. Quin etiam hinc critici,
inde antiquarii ad fores te inclamant; tui videndi desi-
derio ardent. Emanavit, nescio quo pacto, novas
quasdam inscriptiones Gruterianas apud te esse ; alii
Arabicas, alii Copticas aiunt; qui verius, Ponticas ex
terra Taurica. Omnes uno ore consentiunt pulcherri-
mas esse oportere, utpote im ære frontis tuæ tam gra-
phicè, Pontiamo præsertim onyche, insculptas. Nemini
respondet Morus, omnibus negatur, spernit omnium
desideria; et delibutus unguentis domi, literas dediscere
Pontianas mavult. Hæc habui, More, quoniam te
mecum jocandi cupidum animadverti, quo ego tuum
de me triumphum velut militari carmine exornatum
volebam. Quidni enim pugnas tuas tum maximè com-
memoraremi ? quamquam palma quidem erat Pontiæ ;
illa tibi lemmiscos tantummodo reliquit. Etenim quod
tuum non est, tibi non attribuo ; tametsi tu id toto
libro, quasi absurdum meum insectaris, oblitus te pro-
curatione et chirographo tuo fidejussorem mihi factum;
oblitus, quod æs alienum tu esse dicis, id nunc legitimè
mon minus tuum esse, quàm cujum tu esse dicis. Tu
itaque cœcitatem cyclopeam mihi exprobrasti ; et quòd
impudentius est, dum id negas fecisse, iterum facis :
Qui mulli tum fuerant oculi, nunc ** exemptiles” et
“ Lamiarum ” sunt. “ Narcissus ” nunc sum; quia
te depingente molui Cyclops esse ; quia tu effigiem
mei dissimillimam, “ praefixam poematibus” vidisti.
Ego verò si impulsu et ambitione librarii, me imperito,
scalptori, propterea quòd in urbe alius eo belli tempore
non erat, infabrè scalpendum permisi, id me neglexisse
potiùs eam rem arguebat, cujus tu mihi nimium cultum
objiciis. Tu itidem is es, qui clarissimum virum, Con-
silii Statús tum præsidem, contumeliis incessisti; de
quo iratior, quam de meipso, quæsivi ex te quid aliud
esset calumniari perpetuò bonos, quam esse diabolum.
Hinc tu pulchram nactus hypocritandi occasionem ex
Crantziama videlicet calumnia, quasi ego ** Christi
doctrinam de divortio quemadmodum à tbeologis expli-
cari solet, diabolicam ” dixissem, qui ater modò eras et
maledicentissimus, nunc albus repentè factus, et mitis et
patiens “ agis gratias,” quòd “ te communi cum coelesti
doctrina convitio honestem.” — Hyæna! aut siqua alia
est bellua, tam tetra fraude noxia atque infamis; tume
coelestem doctrinam tot tuorum facinorum asylum atque
perfugium speras fore ? Sed perge quò temdis : si enim
theologorum quasvis explicationes pro cœlesti doctrima
amplecteris, toto coelo, ut te dignum est, erras. Quin
et Apostoli gloriosum illud cum bestiis pugnandi mar-
tyrium tibimet tribuis nequissime ; qui nuper non
homo cum bestia, sed ipse bestia cum homine, id est
cum fœmina, de fide connubiali abs te rupta pugnam
tam inhonestam pugnasti. I{eversus deinde ad mores
pristinos, solitamque jactantiam, dicendo me provocas.
* Ncque verò,” inquis, “ mihi tantum derogo, quan-
quam nihil arrogo, ut te commodius aut faciliùs quàm
me putem posse dicere.” Concedo equidem, si tibi
istum in modum furari licet : hæc enim ipsa verba,
quibus copiam tuam venditas, ex oratione Marci Tullii
pro Roscio Amerino apertissimè furatus es. Atque
hinc puto est, quòd Francofurtanas mundinas librorum
tuorum catalogo tam copioso nobis obtrudas cùm edi-
torum tum edendorum : ex quibus aliqui sunt quos
videre gestiam ; et imprimis illum “ de gratia et libero
arbitrio,” ad amicam præsertim illam si scriptus est,
cujus tu nunc gratiam, rejecta pro arbitrio Pontia,
accommodato forsitam argumento ambis : tum illum
“ de Scriptura sacra,” quorum scriptores multa huma-
mitùs et imprudenter scripsisse ferunt te affirmare:
illam deinde “ pro Calvino,” quem tu veluti pro-
phetam extructo monumento Pharisæus exornas, vita
et moribus jugulas: mam quæ “ prodibunt” opera tua,
quæ “ premis et retractas, et ad umbilicum spectantia
moliris,” ea meritò suspicantur omnes esse turpissima.
Illam “ de piis fraudibus dissertationem” sanè ex-
pecto: nam de impiis abs te factis fraudibus abundè
audivimus: enim vero “ Commentarius ille tuus,” qui-
nam sit in quintum “ Evangelium” futurus demiror ;
nam illa quatuor priora jamdudum factis abnegasti :
unde et “ Theoremata illa practica” mirè desidero,
mam tu in practicis egregius homo sine controversia es ;
id quod de te tot fabulæ nom fabulæ testantur. Ad illa
autem “loca Novi Foederis, et axiomata quibus ex Veteri
Novum Foedus illustratur,” Pomtiæ quoque notas vel-
lem simul ederes. Et postremò isthuc memineris, te
alterum volumen operum tuorum, quod Genevæ in
bibliotheca publica etiamnum extat, totum omisisse :
uti etiam inscriptiones illas, cum frontispicio mirabili,
quas quamvis opus Pontiamum, in tua tamen membrana
tuas esse, adstipulante etiam Justiniano, rectè dixerim:
mam moctes tuas, mescio an Atticas cum Pontia, sive
dialogum morillum, alii spurium, alii dumtaxat embry-
omem, qui subtiliùs non inter libros, sed inter liberos
tuos mumerandum existimant. Sed properabas credo
ad alteram instituti operis partem, calumnias meas.
Nam mendacia, id nempe unicum, quòd te authorem
Clamoris dixerim, partem tui operis longè maximam
tandem aliquando confecisse te significas. Cùm autem
leve hoc merito cuiquam videri possit, etiamsi falsa
aliqua persuasione imbutus attribuissem tibi librum
istum, alioqui nec improbatum tibi, nec tua existima-
tione indigmum, cur unam tantummodo noxam tam
verbosè tam iracundè summa cum invidia rei per se
levissimæ sic exaggeres atque exagites, perinde quasi
in se omnes impietates et crimina complecteretur, misi
jam antea docuissem, id magis mirandum possit cui-
quam videri. Sed ea nimirum arx erat umica, in qua
spem omnem collocaveras ; si persuasisses plerisque te
authorem Clamoris non esse, meque mentitum, in altera
746
AUTHORIS PRO SE DEFENSIO,
parte quam de calumniis vocas, de quibus quod pro te
dicas nihil prorsus habes, sperabas te facili defensione
usurum contra me scilicet mendacem jam antea com-
pertum, teque omnes vitæ maculas apud longinquos et
ignotos hac arte gratis eluiturum. Verùm ego cum
præter spem opinionemque tuam te authorem Clamoris
tergiversamtem licet et reclamantem legitimè argue-
rim, mon dubito quin ad flagitia quoque tua, et quas
tu calumnias dici mavis, accuratiùs prout res feret exe-
quemdas apud omnes rerum æquos æstimatores fidem
integram attulero. Nunc quàm frigidè, quàm invitè,
quàm planè sontis in morem vafri ac vetuli has abs te
dictas calumnias tractes, quamque infoeliciter amoliri
abs te coneris, reliquum est ut ostendam. Primùm
cunctabundus, et incerto pede à prioribus castris in hæc
altera cum multis impedimentis ægrè et me vix quidem
transis: quippe â mendacio non ad alterum mendacium,
id enim non audes dicere, sed ad ** calumnias” dun-
taxat et “ rumusculos.” Itaque ad mendacium illud
toties jactatum, modò dimissum atque præteritum per-
petuò recurris, cum præsens arguere, siquod esset, de-
beres: et adversarii quod miserum est, quàm tui secu-
rior, in illo errore, quemadmodum credi vis meo, quam
in tua nunc apud te recta conscientia multò plus repo-
situm tibi spei atque præsidii declaras. Atqui non
meo, siquod fuit, mendacio, sed tua de veritate, siqua
fuit, munire debuisti. At enim “ authoritate propria
meras calumnias intento, quas nullo argumento probo,
mullo teste confirmo.” Vis igitur dicam apertius rem
ipsam ? nam te, ut video, præ ista mollitie frontis non
perfrictæ, sed inscriptæ modò, pudet dicere ; qui ne
stuprum quidem aut adulterium toto responso nominare
homo pudentissimus et flos castitatis ausus es, me “ va-
missimam fabulam” scilicet et obscoenam, id est tua
facta “ retexeres.” Dicam ergo, et quia non abnuis,
rerum ordinem sequar.
Est Claudia Pelletta quædam, pellicem posthac nomi-
nemus licet, nescio an tuam solùm ; quæ, cum anciila
in eadem domo honestissimi viri Genevensis esset, in
qua tu hospes eras turpissimus, cum calone et rhedario
communis tibi fuit. Ea muliercula, postmodum nupta,
quod stupri tecum habuerat commercium adulterio con-
tinuavit. Cedo “ testes,” inquis, et “ argumenta.” Nu-
gator! quid tu testes ex me ubi non sunt, quæris, quas
ubi erant, fugisti ? Genevam revertere, ubi horum cri-
minum jamdiu reus factus es. Dic velle te modò abo-
lendæ calumniæ causa judicium his de rebus legitimum
fieri ; invenies qui tecum libentissimè his de criminibus
experiri lege velint; qui vadari, qui sponsionem facere
non recusent. Nec testes deerunt. Aderit imprimis
Hortulamus ille qui te vidit, cùm in illud tuguriolum
cum fæmina solus intrares ; vidit, cùm illa Claudia tua
clauderet fores ; vidit postea egressum te, amplexantem
palàm cùm muliere impudica, et usque eò petulantem,
ut illum veterem hortorum custodem obscoenum, non
ex ficu, ut olim, sed ex moro factum conspexisse ex-
istimaret. Aderunt et alii quos viri gravissimi, qui
tuum nomen detulerunt, testes in promptu habent. Cu-
jus tu testimonii vim veritus cum dimanasse rem illam
sentires quam in occulto patrasse te arbitrabaris, ut in-
famis ille reus Siciliensis, no: jam quid responderes,
sed quemamodum non responderes, cogitare coepisti. et
paulo ante ferox judiciique cupidus (nam de aliis quo-
que multis rebus et antea et tum etiam deferebaris) de-
missus repentè et consternatus, abeundi licentiam (id
quod plerique maximè volebant, me in rem tam foedam
de pastore suo inquirere cogerentur) quasi jamjam
abiturus petisti. Per hanc tu rationem liberatus judicii
metu, cùm alibi non haberes quò te reciperes, omni
munere cùm Ecclesiæ tùm Scholæ, omnique stipemdio
privatus, octo circiter vel decem menses in eadem urbe
foedis factis notatus detrectata causæ dictione vixisti :
quo nullum majus argumentum contra te esse potuit.
Nunc posteaquam oblatum tibi certamen defugisti,
tuisque commodis carere omnibus, quàm judicium de
illa re pati maluisti, posteaquam tuo ipsius judicio
temet ipse damnasti, à me homine longinquo testes et
argumenta ridicule sanè quæris. Quinimmò, ut dixi,
Genevam revertere ; et quando vadimonium illud taim
malè obiisti, i sodes ad supplicium quod te illic manet
adulterio debitum ; si pristima illius urbis religiosissi-
mæ disciplina nondum refrixit. Ad illa verò sponsalitia
stupra tu quod attinet cum Pontia, quæ te ubique de-
cantatum et digito monstratum insignem hominem illis
in provinciis reddidere, multo minus est cur à me
“ testes” et “ argumenta” postules. Famam ipsam
communem, constantem, et illa centum vel potiùs mille
ora, si vis, in judicium voca: hæc totidem sunt testes
quibus si in foro sæpe creditum est, cur ego de adver-
sario publico non crederem ? cur ego solus quæ in ore
omnibus et sermone sunt, adversarius tacerem ? sed
nec testes hic mihi, nec justo numero, mec literæ desunt;
in quibus literis et libidines tuæ et illa perjuria quorum
ope elapsus ex judicio es, cum horrore ac detestatione
maxima narrantur. Sunt et muti testes qui etiam sine
voce testantur; illa nocturna itinera quæ Hagacomitis
Leidam cucurristi ; illi nocturni et furtivi congressus
cum Pontia ; cum qua tu muliere per causam, ut aiunt,
impudicitiæ divortium fecisti. Si tu eam parùm pudicè
versatam interdiu cum aliis credidisti, cur alii te conti-
nentiorem noctu cum eadem consuevisse crederent? an
expectas dum servulum tuum in te producam, nequitia-
rum tuarum diu conscium, donec, nondum planè amisso
pudore, aufugere abs te in bonam frugem conspectae
ipsis oculis libidines tuæ pudefactum coëgerunt? Opus
utique non erit servum illum ad quaestionem poscere :
Ipse detestatus tanta in Ecclesiastico homine flagitia,
latè prædicat. Tu interim ut lectorum, si non aures,
at saltem oculos invitare possis, oratiumculam nescio
quam infercis hic putidissimam, historicorum more,
lunulis adnotatam, quasi acutissimam nimirum et lectu
dignissimam : non orationem, sed chorum quendam
Battologorum introductum abs te aliquis putet; amico-
rum scilicet tuorum, hortantium ut “ teipsum reverea-
ris;” ut “ ungues tuos," quos tibi fatentur “non deesse,”
ad necessaria magis tempora, Pontianam credo alteram
dimicationem, velis potiùs reservare : mecum ne velis
“ in arenam descendere.” Sed perdunt suam operam
amici verbosissimi, sua monita præclara, tot curta
adagia, triviorum symbol , oleum nempe tuum Batto-
logiae professor: illis posthabitis me potius usus es con-
sultore adversario, ut responderes cum tuo magno malo.
CONTRA ALEXANDRUM MORUM, ECCLESIASTEN.
717
Non ut “ tuum” ego ** silentium in conscientiam ne
verterem,”. sed ut conscientiam tuam suo, quod optat,
silentio frui me sinerem. Nam attendite quæso, et
cognoscite nunc, si umquam aliàs, hypocritam mumeris
omnibus absolutum. Videt mecesse sibi esse aliquid
. pro se dicere ; se intuetur, quamvis invitus; videt in
turpi præter turpe nihil esse quod possit responderi ;
circumspectat ecquid foris propè se refugii sit, ecquid
adminiculi quo inniti possit; ecquid quo se tegere, sub
quo latitare ; ecquos in societatem et communionem
scelerum suorum possit attrahere, ecquem ordinem aut
genus hominum suis privatis rationibus illigare, ut
causam suam quasi communem communi periculo et
aliorum existimatione defenderet ; nihil magis idoneum
invenire potuit, in quod omne suum dedecus transferret,
mihil in quod deonerare spurcitiam suam commodiùs
posset, quàm ipsam Ecclesiam Dei: “ Si mea,” inquit,
“ propriè tantum res ageretur, imponere fibulam ori
meo et obmutescere poteram exemplo Domini mei :
sed universus ordo noster, et Ecclesia Dei per meum
petitur latus.” O scortum et ganearum antistes! cujus
mom ori magis, quàm inguini fibulam impositam opor-
tuit ; quamto tibi præstitisset obmutuisse, “ exemplo
Domini tui,” cui Christus Dominus silentium cum ca-
pistro imperavit, quàm ecclesiam Dei hac tanta igno-
nimia affecisse ? Ais “ universum ordinem vestrum à
me licèt obliquè stigmate notari.” A me ais ? dic ubi ;
recita, si potes, locum ; nisi fortè quòd ego in mercena-
rios, id tu in ministros Evangelii dictum putas. Erras
More ; et aliud fortasse multo justiùs haud absimile
comquestus esses ; mon ego vestrum ordinem obliquè,
sed te extra ordinem tua pontifex et obliquo et directo
et transverso stigmate notavit. “ Ecclesia,” inquis,
“ Dei, cui mea omnia tempora consecravi, per meum
petitur latus.” Per tuumne latus turpissime ? qui tan-
tum abest, ut omnia tua tempora Ecclesiæ consecrave-
ris, ut ipsa EccIesiæ tempora, omisso nonnumquam
matutino comcionandi munere, furtivis libidinibus con-
secrasse haud semel dicaris. Ne repetam quid etiam
temporis famosis libellis Ecclesiastes consecraveris.
Per tuumne latus ? at nihil omnino est quod graviore
cum vulnere Ecclesiam petat, quàm tuum ipsum impu-
rissimum, Ecclesiæ tam malè contiguum latus. Hoc
si vis intelligi per tuum latus, id est, per tuam turpitu-
dinem, propter tua scelera Ecclesiam opprobriis impio-
rum peti, macula aspergi, infamiam contrahere, hoc
quidem verum esse non diffiteor. Itaque universus
ordo tuus, et ministri præsertim Gallici, qui te optimè
morumt, me tuo illo pestifero latere diutius periclitentur,
teipsum quantum possunt, tuique contagionem amovere
ab se atque depellere conantur: causam ullam aut ra-
tionem tuam communicatam sibi molumt ; ne scelerum
tuorum atque dedecorum participes fiant : ejectum te
ex suo ordine, et exturbatum, ut meritus es, cupiunt ;
et illam, quam ais “ fibulam” ori tuo impudicissimo
affigere conantur. Macte estote integritate vestra at-
que constantia, viri Ecclesia digni; prospicite, ut insti-
tuistis, Ecclesiæ puritati, existimationi, disciplinæ ex-
emplo: amovete à lateribus vestris immumdum illud et
verrimum latus, cujus non solùm ictu Ecclesia læditur,
sed affrictu etiam polluitur. Nolite hanc indignissimam
k
contumeliam pati, ut is, cùm flagitiorum suorum nomine
meritis conviciis atque infamia petitur, non se peti, scd
quasi is, quia cœnum hominis est, idcirco murus et
munimentum Ecclesiae esset, per suum latus Ecclesiam
peti dicat. Abigite procul ab Ecclesiæ septis concion-
antem lupum ; vocem illam hircinam tot stupris et
adulteriis impuratam, populo verba dantem, imò ven-
dentem, idque è superiore, quod jactat, loco, ne siveritis
in sacro cœtu ampliùs audiri. Profectò si Ethnicorum
legibus, verbi gratia Solonis cautum est, nequis rhetor
turpitudine vitae notatus, civilem concionem habendi
ad populum, ne Atticorum quidem si disertissimus fu-
isset, jus haberet, additaque præclara ratio est, plus
exemplo nocere turpem, quàm oratione quamvis castis-
sima atque sanctissima prodesse, quo etiam nomine
Timarchus, vir inter primos illius reipub. accusante
Æschine, damnatus est, quanto est indignius scorta-
torem atque adulterum tamquam Dei nuntium et minis-
trum, ad Christianum populum sacras habendi con-
ciones jus in Ecclesia perniciosissimum obtinere.
Nolite committere, ut magistratus Ethnicus, Deique
expers, religiosior atque sanctior in foro fuisse, quàm
Christi sacra synodus in Ecclesia esse videatur. Nolite
vereri, quem iste scrupulum callidus injecit, si eum
quem approbastis, cui sanctas manus imposuistis, cui
gregem Dei commisistis, perspectum nunc adulterimum
et spurium ejeceritis, nequis vestrum judicium aut pru-
dentiam desideret; neque enim Paulus hac in parte,
ut nôstis, vidit omnia : illud veremini, si pastoris in
munere talem retinueritis, ne ommes non judicium modò
et prudentiam, sed religionem quoque et pietatem et
gregis denique curam im vobis requirant. Hæc ad
pastores de te, More ; nunc ad gregem pro me pauca
dicam. “ Patriæ,” inquis, “ meæ greges qui pascuntur
inter lilia, nescio quam in invidiam vocas.” Utinam
me ista lilia, spinas esse aliquando sentiant; verùm non
ego tuæ patriæ greges in invidiam, sed tuus Clamor
Regius ad societatem sui furoris vocare cupiebat. Quem
enim non irritassent istiusmodi opprobria ? “ maximè
omnium Galli mostri reformati, non modo horrendo
facto perculsi, sed ejusdem injusta infamia pressi, plu-
vimum allaboraverunt, ut parricidium et parricidas
cognoscerent.” Hæc et multa alia aeerba quidem et
planè hostilia Clamor iste Gallorum sub nomine refor-
matorum, in nos clamitavit: ad quæ omni respondi
solum, Gallis etiam reformatis impositam eamdem olim
mecessitatem fuisse, ut suum quoque Regem hostis nu-
mero haberent. Verùm ego incogitantior (quid enim
de me non fatear potius, aut mon indictum velim, quod
Ecclesias Galliæ reformatas, quas esse scio mobis om-
nibus charissimas, in imvidiam vocare possit) incogi-
tantior, inquam, fui, qui isti insanissimo Clamori vocem
ullam Ecclesiarum aut fratrum interjectam esse credi-
dissem, Scimus eos quo sub regno vivant, quibus in
periculis, quibus in angustiis Evangelii causa versen-
tur ; et tamen amplum hoc sibi esse, si tueri sua que-
ant. Nos ut vel minimam nostra causa invidiam apud
suos reges aut offensionem susciperent, numquam peti-
vimus ; ut de nostris factis aut consiliis suum semsum
declararent, tametsi fratrum judicia plurimi semper
fecimus, tamen ne hoc iis periculum crearet, nunquam
748
AUTHORIS PRO SE DEFENSIO,
postulavimus; preces eorum, non sententias aut suffra-
gia prodesse nobis censuimus, suam autem erga reges
fidem ex suo in nos odio verborumque acerbitate per-
spici aut probari non arbitramur. Multa dcinde præ-
teris, “ quæ nimis meum in religione animum pro-
dunt ;'° et sapis : fac et illud quoque prætereas, quòd
“ te hominem sacris addictum ” Cotyttiis, credo, aut
Isiacis, non Evangelicis (nisi addictum ita ut devotum
intelligis) “ adversarium,” quod ego mihi honestissi-
mum duco, nactus sum. At emim illi “ qui diversum
à nobis in religione sentiunt,” sic enim tibi prospiciens,
Ecclesiæ prospicere videri velles, “ ex ista fabula Ec-
clesiis nostris insultandi ansam arripiunt, quasi pati-
antur, ipsæ qualia vulgò turpia dictu sacrificulis ob-
jiciuntur suis:” et meritò quidem, si patiantur, verùm
spes est, non esse passuras: salus certè unica rercm
est, si pati noluerint. Si enim patiantur, quæ tu in
me tela levissime conjecisti, ea in te ego acutissima re-
torqueo. “ Satanæ triumphus paratur, scandalum in-
firmioribus creatur, inimicis gaudium, sociis dolor,
fidei damnum.” Haec vera sunt non me accusante,
sed te impunito. Talem esse quenquam in reformata
videlicet Ecclesia ministrum adversarii gaudent: accu-
sat aliquis ? multum, mihi crede, de isto gaudio pro-
tinus remittunt: damnatur is incorruptis et integerrimiis
Ecclesiarum suffragiis ? Nihil æquè dolent: nam qui
presbyterum reformatum flagitiorum incusat, accusat
idem sacerdotes omnes et sacrificulos eorundem facino-
rum sibi conscios: qui illum absolvit, hos multo faciliùs
absolvat necesse est. Frustra nos quidem opinionum
quarumdam et dogmatum, frustra etiam fidei reforma-
tionem gloriamur, nisi morum sancta censura pariter
quoque vigeat. Non doctrinam tantùm reformatam,
sed doctores reformatos esse convenit, si ereptam “ sa-
crificulis,” ereptam “ Satanæ insultandi ansam” cupi-
mus. “ Magnum,” ais, “ homorem habere me ordi-
mibus Foederati Belgii, quos indigere putem notore
me :” monitore opinor volebas dicere. Immò verò tu
illis quem honorem habuisti ? quorum existimatio gra-
vissima tam apud te parum potuit, ut eorum de te
opinionem fallere turpissimè malueris, quàm flagitiosam
vitæ tuæ licentiam refrænare ; quique ejusmodi homo
cùm sis, arrogare tibi tantum potes, ut existimes tot
viros gvaves atque prudentes te “ motore,” etiam “ è
superiore loco” indigere ; tuo “ admonitu” posse un-
quam sapere ; ut idcirco os tuum è suggesto importu-
missimum tantæ gravissimorum hominum frequentiæ,
et præsertim sacræ concioni offerendum sit. Qui
denique apud quos tanto te in pretio esse dicis, iis
nihil aliud nisi aut minimum judicium, aut maximam
doctorum penuriam relinquis. Minimum profectò ipsi
sibi honorem habent, qui abs te doctore et Ecclesiaste
meliores discedere se posse crediderint.
nihilominus buccam inflas : “ Quid nunc, inquis, me-
morem tot illustres ac principes viros, tot proceres, tot
Ecclesias, tot academias, quæ me fovent et ornant, vel
optant et exambiunt.” Et ego, quid, inquam, nunc
memorem tot agyrtas, tot empiricos, tot seplasiarios,
tot circulatores, quos Romæ aut Venetiis iisdem penè
vcrbis suas pyxides et pharmaca vendentes, præteriens
audivi. Atqui “ dum haec scribo,” inquis, “literas
Verùm tu .
accipio quibus ad Ecclesiastæ ordinarii munus et saerte
theologiæ professionem invitor in urbe nobilissima.”
Nam hoc certè habes, in quo omnes doctores circum-
foraneos ventalitios ambitione superas. Primùm per
amicos tui similes occultam das operam, ut quot potes
ex locis inviteris: posteaquam id difficile repertum est,.
ex quo jam passim motus es, hoc solum (quæ tua animi
egestas atque mendicitas vera est) miserè contendis, et
nonnunquam perficis ut omnino inviteris, quamvis ea
diserta lege et pactu interposito, ut omnino me venias.
Hoc modo invitatum te nuper in Galliam, et ni fallor,
Montalbanum, invitatum et Franekeram, vel Groning-
ham intelligo: Harum utram in urbem sanè nescio, in
alterutram sat scio: de loco enim fateor nondum satis
liquere, de re satis. Hanc demum rationem excogitare
coacti sunt homines importunitate tua fatigati et victi,
qua et abs te simul tanquam à peste sibi caverent, et
tuæ miseræ gloriolæ multo cum risu vela panderent;
teque erraticum sophistam et planum tuismet ventis
ludibrium commendaremt. Sed me cui forte vanior
quàm mendacior esse videaris, in illud nunc incidimus
usitatissimum tibi et impudentissimum artificium quod-
dam tuum maledicendi simul et maledicentiam vitupe-
randi. Quoties enim strenuè conviciando vel ad ino-
piam vel ad ravim, quasi ad incitas redactus es exhausto
penu, dum novum virus colligis, subitò bonus et bellus
abhorrere te fingis à conviciis omnibus: nolle te scili-
cet “luto ludere,” nolle “ sordes mihi regerendo manus
tuas coinquimare ; non placere tibi de cane latrante
victoriam ; '° malle te “ omittere latrantem camiculam.”
Quid hæc quæso nisi convicia sunt? quæ dum depo-
nere te dicis, totis viribus intorques ; ita caudam atte-
rere et simul ringere idem tibi est: idque ipsum agis,
dum agere te negas ; usque eò totus ex mendacio com-
flatus, ut ne verax quidem utrovis modo sine mendacio
esse possis: si enim negas te nunc maledicere, quod tu
negas, verba ipsa, te invito, fatentur ; si fateris, tua
eadem verba id ipsum, quod fateris, negant. Quid est,
si hæc non est “ maledicendi ars” illa, quam tu
“ Dæmonum Rhetoricam” imfamis libelli editor ** vo-
care te” ais “ solere ?” Sic tu nimirum homo sanctus et
veriloquus, “ Christum didicisti et doces:” id est, dum
latrare te negas, mordes. Tibimet tam apertè mendax,
in me ut sis religiosior, nom expecto : tentas, ut video,
omnia, captas omnia ; siquem fortè rumusculum, aut
susurrum aquilones cum fugitivis famigerantibus ad
vos perferunt, aures arrigis: Hinc illud, “ non is es,”
inquis, “ de quo mentiri fama vereatur;” minùs quidem
tu hic subdolus es, quàm soles. Famam etiam men-
dacem mihi minitaris ; dici nempe “ me aliorum im-
genia ex moribus meis æstimare, nulli mom vitio quod
insequor obnoxium.” Ergo ego scortator, ut fama men-
titur, ergo adulter ; hæc enim in te crimina insector.
Fac sanè periculum famae ; age, insimula, dic, si-
quid habes, audacter et clare ; tempus, locum, no-
mina simul ede ; quod ego in te facio. Dic cum qua
Claudia Pelletta, dic cum qua Pontia, dic siquo in horto,
siqua in domo, noctu am interdiu, siquod in judicium
adductus umquam sim, siquod unquam recusaverim :
hæc tibi omnia dicenda sunt, haec ego in te omnia de-
monstravi. Invenies profectò me ad injurias meas
CONTRA ALEXANDRUM
MORUM, ECCLESIASTEN. 749
tuaque crimina persequenda attulisse hanc dicendi li-
bertatem, et anteactae vitæ meæ certiss'mum indicium
atque fructum, et agendæ posthac firmissimum propo-
situm. Nunquam me libertatis hujus pœnitere audies,
ut Lucium Crassum pœnituisse olim ferunt, quòd Caium
Carbonem unquam in judicium vocavisset ; cùm hac
sua severitate præcisam sibi aut circumscriptam in
posterum liberius vivendi veniam apud omnes arbitrare-
tur. Is Caium Carbonem civem improbum in judicium
senatùs populique Rom. vocavit: ego te, More, et meo
et pop, Anglicani nomine, quem tu infami Clamore
edito prior lacessisti, illo Carbome multò migriorem,
judicia patria detrectantem, saeculorum omnium judi-
ciis trado. Quid tui interim famigeruli de me mussi-
tent aut loquantur, unicè securus. Tu senties eam
esse vitæ meæ et apud me conscientiam, et apud bonos
existimationem, eam esse et præteritæ fiduciam et reli-
quæ spem bonam, ut nihil impedire me aut absterrere
possit, quo minus flagitia tua, si pergis lacessere, etiam
liberiùs adhunc et diligentiùs persequar ; teque simul
tuasque etiam famae quas meditaris corruptelas et per-
spexero facilè et risero. Interea, ne cui dubium sit,
quim tu omnia pervestigando nihil prorsus in me ha-
beas quod verum crimen sit, aut si haberes, quin ad
cupidissimè statim et malitiosissimè diceres modisque
omnibus amplificares, videamus quàm non crimina quæ
simt, des crimini ; etiam rectè facta quàm odiosè calum-
mieris. Primùm “ cur Clamori autoris anonymi respon-
derim ” quæris, * et non tot aliis qui nomen ediderunt
suum.” Quis adversario tam aliena et inepta interro-
ganti rationem redderet? ego tamen ut quàm æquani-
miter tecum agam, videas, reddam. Cur Clamoris
authori responderim, rogas? quia jussus, inquam, pub-
licè ab iis quorum authoritas apud me gravis esse de-
buit : vix alioqui manum admoturus. Deinde quia
nominatim læsus: nam et tu hic, quamvis id minimè
velis ut existimationis aliquam meæ quoque rationem
ducam, veniam vel invitus dabis, quam omnes boni
dant, scio, libentissimè. At cur “ non aliis,” inquis,
respondisti ? “ Clamant et illi, nec minus fortiter : *'
rursus respondeo, ut prius, quia ad rationes publicas
non vocatus nom accedo. Deimde, quia mon læsus; nam
et hoc, quamvis tu id maximè velles ut impunè tibi
quenquam lædere liceret, mom est leve. Deinde quia
ex vestro ipsorum judicio tantum Salmasio tribuimus
(quem defensorem Regium, quasi solus is esset et in-
star omnium, nominare soletis) ut post illum posse
quemquam alium dicere quod momenti esset mon exis-
timaremus. Vis plura? quia liberum erat ; quia non
vacabat; quia denique homo sum, humana mihi latera
sunt, non ferrea, tu licet Alexander ærarius sis. Aliud
quiddam opus est, ut mihi videtur, quo tot importumis
Clamatoribus ora melius obturentur. Quàm multa tuus
ille Stentor anonymus clamitabat, quæ à Salmasio cla-
mata priùs et conclamata erant ? quibus ego toties
repetitis, quamvis cùm miseria ac tædio sæpiùs respon-
dissem, tamen quia cum isto vociferatore verboso cer-
tare ubique non libuit, “ lamguet” tibi scilicèt ** oratio
mea, quoties pro populo dico:” tibi, inquam, cui ** Gal-
lica nive frigidius est” non esse tautologum. De me
si accuratiùs dixi, non eò id feci, quo ego minùs po-
pulo quàm mihi studerem, sed propterea quòd tuus Cla-
mor tum quidem novum aliquid suppeditabat, unde
possem ab odiosa crambe vestra nonnunquam respirare.
Quod itaque facetè inquis “ non immeritò Defensio pro
Populo secunda dicitur;” quoniam id faustum est, ex
ore præsertim adversarii, omen accipio. Tu licèt no-
vum quotannis clamorem edideris, rumpas te priùs
licebit, quàm Clamorem secundum edidisse dicaris.
Alterum meum crimen est quòd in laudes Reginæ Sue-
corum serenissimæ per occasionem ab adversario ipso
datam, digressus sum : et inter alia dixeram (satis mo-
destè quidem ut opinor) nequid adtribuerem mihi quòd
Reginam contra Regiam, ut videbatur, causam, tam
mihi faventem reperissem, nescire me planè qua mea
sorte id evenisset: malebam ad sortem, ad sidera, ad,
siquis est occultus vel animorum vel rerum, conseri-
sum aut moderamen, quàm ad meum quicquid erat vel
ingenii, vel acuminis, vel copiae referre videri. Hanc
tu calumniandi simul et parasitandi materiam nactus,
fremere exemplo, quasi indignum hoc esset ; et ** lu-
tum ” illud in visceribus tuis concretum, in ore mox
tibi, ut frequentissimè solet, fluitare. Age, despue ;
quid est? ** eam,” inquis, “ propterea tam importunè
laudabas, ut cum ea te componeres iutum.” Tune
Morus es an Momus ? am uterque idem est? utro te
nomine appellem dubito : quis emim præter Morum aut
Momum tam sinistrè ac perperam interpretatus haec
esset? quod ullum dictum modestissimum haec tanta
malitia nom depravaret atque perverteret ? Tum illud
simul depromis ex peculio tuo servile et parasiticum ;
“ nesciebat Christima se tibi esse tam familiarem.” Te-
ne scabellum homimis ex tuis loculis et immunditiis
Christinae suggerere quid nesciat, aut quid dicat? atqui
sciebat se illa pro sua singulari in literatos benevolentia
Salmasio familiarem ; cui me tamen arbitrio suo liber-
rimaque sententia haud semel dicta est prætulisse.
Sed “ hoc unum,” inquis, “ Regima mom meruit abs te
laudari.” Abs te ergo illaudatissime ? concedo libens !
quis enim obstare potest, si tibi modò libeat vel invitis-
simi cujusvis laudes contaminare ? experire sanè ; per-
sequere modo istud, quod veluti specimen laudationum
tuarum egregium hoc loco inseruisti ; * quam supra
mortalitatis modum inusitata naturae vis, et stupendum
ingenii lumem evexit.” Perge, inquam, et macte isto
ore : ab isto exorsu quantumvis in sublime evoles per
me licet : isto enim tenore, si perrexeris, mirificum tu
quidem fastigium ac propè nubiferum tam altis sub-
structionibus impositurus videris. Mihi, fateor, non
placet sic altè insurgere ; unde statim necesse erit, vel
ridiculè ruam, vel inter nubes frigescam. Attamen
“ iis,” inquis, “ dotibus insignis es, quæ possunt etiam
heroibus animum laxantibus placere.” Esto; sunt et
tua dotes et præsertim scripta, quæ heroibus placere
quiddam aliud laxantibus, possint. Et im primis ista
tua quæ sequitur sapientissima et ministello te digna ad
typographos conciuncula ; quam idcirco prætereo :
mam ad tertium jam crimen meum perveni; quòd
dixerim mimirum, uno cum famulo me peregrè fuisse.
Crimen grave; quo ego nomine haud uno in loco per-
stringor : id scilicet nefas erat meminisse, ne versifica-
tores vestri, qui ex egestate nescio qua emersisse me per
7Ö() AUTHORIS PRO
SE DEFENSIO,
hanc rerum apud nos conversionem versificabant, ceci-
misse falsa reperirentur. Jocum verò hic tuum, quando
hæc tam rara avis est, non possum prætermittere.
Non equidem vobis “ typographis litem unquam inten-
derim, non certè magis quàm illi servo qui Miltonum
euntem peregrè comitabatur.” O longè et miserè pe-
titum ! quid hac capitis cucurbita facias, ex qua, ut id
maximè labores, nullam salis micam potis es extundere.
Sed quietus homo et fugitans litium es ; itaque non
meo sed ne tuo quidem servo intendis, qui domesticæ
turpitudinis tuæ fugitivus, secretiora flagitia et nefarias
libidines tuas divulgavit. Quartum est, siquidem id
crimen dici meum debet, quod tuum est mendacium,
“ in eodem” scilicet “libro, quem scatere,” ais, “ dis-
cinctorum mepotum festivitatibus, ausum me censuram
agere, et graviter concionari de republ. deque civium
officio.” • Quis non germanum te nunc dicat epicureum ?
cujus neque in moribus honestas, neque in scriptis
urbanitas ulla reperiatur. Mirum non est si hoc nomine
facetiis omnibus infensior sis, cùm quia negantur tibi,
tum quia te pungunt: non mirum est, inquam, si tibi
tam ulceroso sal omnis inimicus est. Id mirum, pro-
fessor cùm sis, cur mihi succenseas qui sic diligenter
salarium tibi curo. At verò quos tu ** jocos è lustro
popinaque desumptos” falsò ais (nisi desumptos ex lus-
tris idcirco dicis, quòd te illic latitantem extraxerint)
eos si cæteri omnes non inhonestos aut illiberales, sed
honestos atque urbanos, tuamque putredinem perfricanti
sales concessos non negaverint, tum quidem tua profes-
soris insulsi ignorantia, ut persæpè alias, hinc satis
manifesta est, qui id parum convenire dicas, quod Mar-
cus Tullius in oratore summum esse statuit, ubi de
oratione L. Crassi in Cn. Domitium summa cum admi-
ratione sic loquitur. Nec enim concio major unquam
fuit, nec apud populum gravior oratio, quàm hujus
contra collegam in censura nuper, neque lepore et festi-
vitate conditior, Et paulo infra, id uni Crasso conti-
gisse ait, ut non solùm venustissimus et urbanissimus,
sed et omnium gravissimus et severissimus et esset et
videretur. Quin etiam Platoni et Socraticis nihil
magis convenire aut decuisse visum est, quàm rebus
interdum severissimis intermistus atque inspersus lepos.
H;ec ego viris doctis et intelligentibus quin et supra et
nunc denuò satis probaverim, non dubito. Te interim
non reprehendo, qui “ mollior,” inquis “ debuit esse
transitus à maso ad supercilium :” nam digitorum Pon-
tiæ credo adhuc meministi, quàm iste transitus abs
tuo naso ad supercilia minimè mollis fuerit. Foe-
licem te quidem, si hoc tum mulierculæ persuasis-
ses : sed de oratorum transitionibus, More, judicium
longè aliud faciendum est. “ At leges scribo,” hoc
quintum crimen est, “ quibus se teneat non populu s
modò, sed illi etiam qui me præceptore nihil egent.”
Quid tu mihi quo quis egeat, homo levissime et arro-
gantissime ? tene “ superiore ex loco” egent Fœderati
Ordines concionatore, me ex inferiore, quod omnibus
ex æquo civibus licet, mostri non tam egeant libero
hortatore ? non est, More, cur ego me natum in mea
patria tam inutilem existimem, cùm te in aliena tam
arrogantem videam ; non est, quam ob rem te mercede
concionantem, quàm me gratis monentem rectiora putem
posse suadere. Hæc mea quinque sunt peccata mor-
tifera ; nam illa septem, opinor, conficere nequisti. Ex
quo intelligitur, inania quàm fuerint quæ “ condonasse”
mihi te dicis, cùm sint tam levia, quæ crimineris.
Nisi et illud fortè criminosum mihi vis esse, quòd Deum
testem invocarim ; et certè parùm abest ut istud quoque
in criminibus meis numeres. “ Himc illa,” inquis,
“ nimium sane sollicita protestatio.” Quænam ista
fuit, More ? audies vel invitus ; nec illam nunc recito,
sed iisdem conceptis verbis (neque enim poenitet, et hic
etiam peregrinationem meam calumniaris) rursus Deum
testem invoco, me illis omnibus im locis, ubi tam multa
licent, ab omni flagitio ac probro integrum atque in-
tactum vixisse, illud perpetuò cogitantem, si hominum
latere oculos possem, Dei certè non posse. Hæc tibi
“ mimium sollicita protestatio” est, More : cui non
magis sollicitum est, Deum testem invocare, quàm in-
vocatum pejerare. Quàm multi et quàm muluis de
rebus te accusent, non ignoras : aude modò, siquid im
te integri, siquid incorrupti est, iisdem quibus ego nunc
præivi tibi verbis, teipsum defendere. Dic age in hæc
verba : Deum testem invoco me ab omnibus illis flagitiis
quorum insimulor, integrum atque intactum semper
vixisse ; me neque Claudiæ, neque Pontiæ, meque ullius
omnino foeminæ stupratorem esse aut adulterum. Non
audebis, opinor, tametsi facilè perjurus esse diceris, in
hæc verba præeuntem me sequi. Verùm si Dei non
audes, hominum saltem fidem implora. Genevam, in-
quam redi, permitte te illic magistratibus et populo ;
dic illis ut castum et innocentem hominem, falsò insi-
mulatum, deceat : Viri Genevemses, multorum apud vos
et gravissimorum criminum accusor ; si ita vixi, si inter
vos ita versatus sum, ut hæc per idoneos testes et argu-
menta probari vobis possint, en sisto me ; legitimum
pati judicium, quod antea recusavi, nunc non recuso.
Hoc multo minùs audebis, sat scio: malis tergiversari,
ut supra dixi, malis aliunde perfugia et latebras et di-
verticula veterami scortatoris in modum quærere. Ve-
runtamen “honestam” fuisse illam “ orationem” meam
fateris; sed “ præcedenti parùm consentientem.” Cui-
nam præcedenti obsecro ? vellem recitasses : ego enim
aliquot retrò paginis pro certo habeo, me minimum
quidem obscoeni vestigium inveniri posse, quia tanto
intervallo de te nulla fit mentio. Quòd siquem alium
locum intelligis, ubi in tua vitia salsè animadversum
est, velim te scire, quicquid tu ex “ Platone” detorsisti,
meque alienum esse neque inverecundum eodem in
libro cum acrimonia et sale (“ profligati” enim “ pu-
doris” verba nusquam illic reperies) et turpia insectari,
et de “ Deo cogitare.” Sanè si oratoris præceptum hoc
verum atque honestum est, in eodem vultu convenire et
pudorem et acrimoniam, quidni itidem in eodem ore
conveniant ? Nullius enim pudentis pudorem minuit
vehemens et falsa turpitudinis exprobratio vel etiam
irrisio, sed pudorem, in quo prius non erat, impudenti
reo nulla res efficaciùs incutere videtur. Tu vide, ut
cum pudore et “ cogitatione Dei” tua stare perpetua
possint mendacia, Ecclesiastes adulterime ; qui scrip-
sisse me ais “ Romæ martyrii fuisse candidatum ;
structas ab Jesuitis vitæ meæ insidias.” Ad quod
utrumque mendacium diluendum opus est nihil aliud,
CONTRA ALEXANDRUM MORUM, ECCLESIASTEN.
751
nisi ut quis locum ipsum libri inspiciat : et cur ea de
re aliquid omnino scripserim, conjectura per se assequi
nemo facilè non poterit, cui id modò credibile mon sit
eum “ ob flagitia in Italiam profugisse,” qui religionis
ibidem confitendæ periculum toties adierit. Nugaris
deinde multa, et ** machæras et legiones” garris Pontiæ
mastigia. Verùm hæc satis risimus : nunc luculentam
et insignem calumniam quaeso attendite ; ut cognos-
catis qua fide vel in sacris etiam literis, quas cum sum-
ma ecclesiæ ignominia profitetur, versari soleat ; quàm
nulla isti falsario Ecclesiastæ religio sit verbum ipsum
Dei sacrosanctum corrumpere, si id commodum sibi
fore crediderit. Ego ut refellerem eos, qui gramma-
tistæ aut critico magni titulum et cognomen largiri
ineptissimè solent, sic scripseram : Is solus magnus est
appellandus, qui res magnas aut gerit aut docet,
aut dignè scribit. Quis hac verissima sententia
offendatur, nisi grammatista ? Quiul hic noster pro-
fessor ? id est, inquit, qui res magnas docet, “ ut
Miltonus de Divortiis,” aut dignè scribit “ ut Mil-
tonus idem pro Populo, bis magnus.” Lepidum sanè
interpretamentum, More ! et ejusdem planè artificii,
quo Evangelii etiam locum illum de divortiis non
verbo, sed factis interpretatus es. Licet ob scorta-
tionem dimittere vel uxorem vel sponsam : Morus cum
desponsata sibi Pontia scortatus est, ergo, licet Moro
sponsam ob scortationem dimittere. Vos ** O tot Prin-
cipes, tot Proceres, tot Ecclesiæ, tot Academiæ, quæ
hunc hominem fovetis et ornatis, vel optatis et exam-
bitis,” evocate nunc certatim hunc vobis, quà sacrarum,
quâ profanarum literarum interpretem tam fidum et
religiosum ; ut sacras profanare literas apud vos quà
actis, quâ commentis suis possit. Vel si id minimè
vultis, nam doctorem hunc commentitium longè latèque
olfecisse jamdiu videmini, date saltem et concedite hoc
palpum tumori hominis et gloriolæ : evocate quæso per
literas quàm honorificas ludionem hunc cathedrarium ;
sed cum hac cautione, si salvi esse vultis, clam inter-
posita, cum hoc urbanissimo interdicto, ut nullo modo
accedat. Miros profectò reddet ludos inter tot cathe-
dras, dum professiones et prælectiones et murmura et
plausus et Pontias novas sibi somniat. Sed dimitto
nunc hominem, quia me prope dimittet. Aliò se ver-
tit ; imò verò “ quò se vertat,” non habet. Simulat
velle nunc de vita et moribus suis causam pro se dicere.
Exordiri jam putares hominem, et velle aliquid præfari;
cùm in ipso statim præfationis vestibulo, elusa omnium
expectatione perorat. Tam tenue se esse argumentum,
tam turpe etiam dum reperit, vel ipsa rerum inopia
subitò exarescit, vel ipsa foeditate perculsus et quasi
sideratus obmutescit: Vultus, vox, latera deficere vi-
dentur ; animus tamen veteratorius, et ut dixi antea,
indurati utroque jamdiu foro veteris et crebri somtis
artes mon deficiunt. “ Quò me vertam ?” quò te ver-
tas, miselle ? quis umquam nocens reus demissa barba
sordidatus et squalens tam miserabili prooemio depro-
catus unquam judices est? quo te, si innocens, si in-
sons, si tutus undique tibi esses, quò te, inquam, nisi
ad te verteres ? tecum loquerere, te consuleres, extra te
ne quæreres ? Sed heu miserum te! discordia tibi
tecum gravissima jamdiu est. Nihil tibi invisum
magis, quàm tecum habitare, apud te esse ; neminem
libentiùs, quàm te ipsum fugis. IFrustra : tecum enim
fugis miser, te sequeris : Quod agitat intus est, intus
et flagellum et tortor argus ille tuus, qui te semper non
“ Junoniis,” quod quereris, “ artibus,” sed piaculorum
tuorum oestro agitatum, cinctus mille oculis ac testibus
persequitur. Quid nunc agas ? nam æstuantem te
misere et pendentem video. An “ tuas ipse laudes
vesanus decantares ?” vesanus profectò sis, si id sus-
cipias ; vesanus, si id unquam cogitabas. “ Vitamme
conscribas et facinora omnia tua ?” pervellem equidem ;
sed vereor me non ** Morus,” sed ** Florus” nimiùm in
tuis floralibus, id est, multo brevior quàm par esset,
futurus sis. Vereor ne invideas nobis tot lepidas fabel-
las, qui unam solùm “ retexere,” hortensem nimirum
illam, tantopere gravatus sis. Sanè qui illas lites Ju-
nonias omnes, qui illa jurgia Salmasii prætermiseris,
qui prælium illud mobile Pontianum mihi tantis rebus
parùm idoneo reliqueris, qui denique totam illam Pon-
tiæ Sestiada sicco pede præterieris, præteribis opinor
silentio Tibaltianam quoque illam, et illius nuper do-
mus calamitatem, ubi tu procax in ancillam, proditor
in herum extitisti: nam ancillis, ut videtur, quocunque
vadis, nullum abs te refugium est. Tacebitur et vidua
illa quam tu, solatii tum plenus, nunc inops, cùm de
marito recens mortuo velle consolari præ te ferebas, ejus
pudicitiam tentasse diceris: Nec dices credo qua domo
egredientem te cum scorto intempesta nocte Amstero-
dami illa mulier vidit; quae delinita primùm pollicita-
tionibus tuis, nox decepta, novissimè momen tuum ad
presbyteros detulit; qui tuum nomen recipere, quod ob
priora facinora ejiciendum ex suo ordine et circumscri-
bendum statuebant, me aucto scelere, cùm augeri poena
tua mon posset, augeretur ordinis infamia, recusarunt.
Quid ergo ? ** am quæ fecisses uno cum servo itinera ”
nocturna illa mempe Hage Leidam “ posteris nar-
rares ?” ne hoc quidem sat scio, voles : verùm illa ser-
vus ipse passim copiosè marrat, et permulta alia præ-
clare abs te gesta : cætera jam tritissima plurimisque
per ea loca testibus confirmata. Age vero ; post dubi-
tationem sanè miseram quæ te perplexum tamdiu atque
suspensum tenuit, post tui fugam, quò tamdem fugis ?
quo ad extremum te recipis ? “ fidei,” inquis, “ publicæ
monumenta consulamus.” Acta tua credo jam publica,
quæ in bibliotheca Genevensium enumerata centum
prope articulis, tuorum scelerum monumenta posteritati
servantur. “ A Geneva exorsus,” inquis, “ fabellam
nescio quam poetarum authoritate submixam instituis.”
Ferax tu quidem sæculum poetarum dicis, qui tot una
in urbe, tibique omnes infestos quæraris ; nigrum te
aliquem oportet esse, ipsoque moro migriorem, quem
tot poetæ oderint ; festivum quoque hominem, qui
quorum authoritas testium te jugulavit, eorum nunc
poeticam iniquiorem in te causeris. Verùm ista te fes-
tivitas mihil im hoc tempore adjuvabit. Permulti sunt
in illa civitate viri honestissimi, monnulli presbyteri,
doctores, ministri, nescio an poetæ, qui fabellam tibi
hanc in foro agere cupiunt ; qui non sua carmina re-
citare, sed tua crimina pro testimonio dicere parati jam-
pridem sunt. Nemo sic unquam poetam recitantem, ut
tu hos omnes contra te testantes et fugisti et fugies.
752
AUTHORIS PRO SE DEFENSIO,
Adeone verò singulari impudentia occaluisti, ut insti-
tutam in te legitimè accusatiomem testatissimam, cujus
vim atque authoritatem cùm sustinere non posses, dis-
cedendi, et veluti in exilium abeundi licentiam exo-
rasti, hanc tu quasi “ fabellam nescio quam ” eludere
et uno verbo leviculo sic amoliri abs te posse, existimes ?
At “ permulti sunt,” inquis, “ in hoc Belgio, qui me
Genevæ familiariter usi optimè omnium morunt quàm
non ibi nullo in pretio fuerim.” Audi igitur quæ sint
honestissimorum hominum de te judicia primò Genevæ,
deinde in Belgio. Duorum verba ipsa ex literis de-
sumpta, in medium proferam.
Literæ Genevæ datæ pridiè Id. Octob. 1654.
Mirari certè nostrates satis non possunt, ita te interiora
gnoti aliàs hominis nosse, tam nativis coloribus depinx-
sse, ut ne ab illis quidem, quibus familiarissimè usus
est, tota hominis histrionia vel certiùs vel feliciùs po-
tuisset adumbrari : unde hærent meritò et ego cum
illis, quâ fronte ävaioxvvroc licet homo et oris improbi,
im publicum rursus theatrum prodire sit ausurus. Illud
enim summum foelicitatis tuæ hac in parte compendium,
quod non vel ficta vel ignota aliàs hominis scelera at-
tuleris, sed quæ omnium et amicissimorum etiam ore
decantata, integri cœtus authoritate et assensu, immo
plurium adhuc scelerum accessione luculenter possint
corroborari.
i
i
Et infra. Credas velim vix ullum hic reperiri am-
plius, ubi multos annos publico munere, sed cum summo
hujus Ecclesiæ dedecore functus est, qui prostituti
pudoris homini patrocinium suum vel audeat vel sus-
tineat amplius commodare.
Hæc sunt eorum voces, qui penitissimè te nôrunt:
quam turpem tui memoriam Genevæ reliqueris, hæ lite-
ræ, aliæque benè multæ si proferrentur, docerent. Nunc
in Belgio aliisque locis qua fama sis, “ quo in pretio,”
cognosce. Viri probatissimi tibique noti non literas so-
lùm, sed quoniam abs te priùs nominatus, idque in tua
causa, atque laudatus est, nomen quoque edam. Is est
vir gravissimus Joannes Duræus ; qui dum Ottoni sola
fide nixus interponit se, mecùmque agit, ut innocentem
te scilicet missum facerem, noii potest non fateri simul
quàm longè alia de te cæterorum penè omnium ex-
istimatio, aliusque sermo sit.
Ex literis Duræi Basilia, Octob. 3. 1654.
Quod ad Mori vitia improbitatemque attinet, non
videtur Ottomus ita de eo sentire : scio tamen alios pes-
simè de eo loqui, manus ejus in omnes pene, manus
omnium in eum esse, plerosque etiam Gallicæ synodi
ministros dare operam ut ei pastoris munus abrogetur.
Neque hic aliam Basileæ reperio de eo hominum opi-
nionem, quàm quæ in Belgio est eorum qui eum mi-
nimè amant.
O pulchrum elogium ! quo tu omnium penè morta-
lium judicio Ismaeli hosti Ecclesiæ, quàm ministro
pacis et evangelii similior judicaris. Hunc tuæ ubique
gentium existimationis testem integerrimum, si potes,
rejice. Mihi credulitatem desine objectare: “ Nemo
omnes, neminem omnes fefellerunt,” tua tibi verba re-
gero. Hæc cùm ita sint, perficiam haud multo nego-
tio, ut intelligas, quàm exiguum tibi in aliis præsi-
dium sit, cùm tam exiguum tibi im teipso fuerit. Quod
enim potest aliena fides testimonium de te aliis per-
hibere, cùm tua fides perhibere mullum quod juvet
aut cui confidas, de temetipso possit tibi ? Et videte
quæso quàm dissoluto animo, quam abjecto desertor
sui et perfuga ad patrocinium alienæ fidei ab se trans-
fugiat. “ Neque vero,” inquit, “ tempus teram in eo-
rum sollicita refutatione, quæcunque tu garris.” I,audo
te læti animi atque jucundi, nihil tu magis sollicitè,
quam sollicitudinem ipsam vitas. Mea modò “ nimis
sollicita” tibi fuit ad Deum “ protestatio :° nunc tuam
non minùs “ sollicitam” putas tuorum criminum ** refu-
tationem.” Atque ego si duntaxat “ garrio,” haud
multam samè sollicitudinem tua refutatio desiderabit.
Ignavissimus profectò sis, aut malè conscius necesse est,
cui tam facilis tuimetipsius defensio, tam gravis et
“ sollicita” videatur : ineptus planè et ridendus, qui
nullum tempus inutilius terere te putes, quàm in eo
ipso quod ad rem, siquid vides, et ad causam maximè
pertineat. Nam “ quid proficiam,” inquis, “ si fabulam
hanc penitus retexuero ? statim aliam ordieris.” Sanè
quidem difficile id esset nemini; neque de nihilo te urit
ista suspicio. Tanta enim tu solus fabularum sylva es,
ut ex tuis unius rebus gestis atque nequitiis suppeditare
centum triviis atque circulis umde multos in dies rideant
satis fabularum unus possis. Atque adeo hujus fabulæ
actum jam quartum peregimus : exit Morus; aliam
credo vult personam induere. * Ut semel,” inquit,
“ defungamur, quod fuerit Ecclesiæ Genevensis, quod
civitatis illius de me judicium hæ docebunt literæ testi-
moniales, alia occasione datæ.” Ita est; ad elogia nunc
transit sua ; actus quintus incipit ; nova planè persona,
sed eodem tamen subtus latente Moro, prodit cornicula,
sed et ea quoque personata : miris nescio quot repentè
plumis adscititiis atque coloribus ita indutus, ut phoeni-
copterus nescio quis potiùs, et exornati quiddam monstri
simile videatur. Aves Aristophanicas expoliasse homi-
nem diceres ; sed mala ave, mi fallor; cum se non jam
fabulam agere, sed apologum Æsopicum in se verum
demonstrare nudatus intelliget. Cùm enim hasce plu-
mas nec tuas esse, More, et partim obsoletas, quæque
sua sponte mox defluant, partim falsis coloribus fucatas,
partim dolo, malisque artibus surreptas docuero, dubium
non est, quin delusus abs te olim grex avium, mumc
factus certior qui sis, de repetundis plumis jure tecum
sit acturus; et ablato quisque suo, obscoenam sub pbœ-
nice upupam non deplumem te modò, sed depygem
demum relinquat: Primæ omnium “literæ Genevensi-
um testimoniales” cristam tibi erigunt: quas illi multò
mallent, sat scio, aut numquam tibi datas, qualis postea
evasisti, aut abs te numquam prolatas. Semper ego
quidem de Genevensi civitate, pro eo ac debeo, honesta
omnia et sentire soleo et loqui : religionis cultum
purioris, primumque studium, in republica deinde
prudentiam, æqualitatem, moderationem, constantiam
propè admiror ; qua se tam arctis finibus, inter vicinos
hinc inde potentissimos et imminentes, summa in pace
ac libertate per tot jam annos conservat et tuetur: rec-
tiusque in re vix mediocri et meliùs id agit quòd civilis
vitæ omnis principium atque finis est, idque populo suo
CONTRA ALEXANDRUM MORUM, ECCLESIASTEN.
753
fœliciùs præstat, quàm summis opibus instructi, summis
opinione hominum adjuti consiliis reges maximi servi-
entibus praestant suis. De Genevensibus igitur, quod
eorum laudem, et existimationem possit imminuere,
mom est ut quicquam velim aut queam dicere, etiamsi
de his literis testimonialibus ea dicerem, quæ et ab aliis
dicta olim ipsi fatentur, et ad me recentiùs allata sunt.
Sed necesse non est ; non dicam igitur qua occasione
sint datae ; propterea quòd ipse non hac, sed “alia oc-
casione” datas esse ait. Non quaeram, utrùm summa
Ecclesiæ senatusque voluntas honorarium hoc Moro
testimonium sua sponte concesserit, an impudentissima
hominis postulatio, cùm accusatus gravissimorum cri-
minum nequisset se defendere, ab iis duntaxat abstulerit
qui Ecclesiæ pastorumque communi existimationi per-
peram metuentes, amandare ab se hominem quoquo
modo malebant, quàm hæc publico judicio severiùs
perquiri, nec sine offensa fortassis infirmiorum palam
agitari. Non dicam, id quod multi tamen dicunt mihi-
que confirmant, nec conventu frequenti, nec solito
conveniendi die datas hasce literas : ne id quidem di-
cam scribenti adstitisse Morum ; unde illud fortasse
** tralatitium,” et ** exambire” ex elegantiis Mori selec-
tioribus tam in promptu erant ; et “ rupta concionante
NToro subsellia, gemmæque illæ clarissimæ ;” quæ
omnia usque eo vel cupiditatem scribentis vel judicium
non grave significant, ut non solùm nimio laudandi
studio laudes ipsas corrupisse, quod vitium ab eo qui to-
tius nomine Ecclesiæ scripsit, quam maximè abesse debu-
it, sed indignissimum ornare dum studet, non tam vivum
decorare, quàm mortuum et putentem illis odoribus dif-
fertum funerasse videatur. Non dicam denique illa no-
mina in conventu subscripta mon esse, circum vicos
cursasse Morum, et pastores domi singulos adortum,
quo sibi faciliùs hasce subscriptiones expugnaret ;
propterea quòd erant in conventu qui reclamare, qui
intercedere, qui obsistere non desinebant, qui sese mon
audiri graviter conquesti sunt. Nihil horum dicam ;
quod nonnulli tamen dicunt, etiam qui illo tempore
Genevæ rebus illis omnibus interfuere ; multi aliis in
locis “ Deùm hominumque fidem implorantes atque
jurati” nulla se “ simultate, sed officii” religione com-
motos, hæc dicere : adeoque illis literis fidem se ad-
jungere non posse ; quorum inter primos virum sanc-
tissimum Fredericum Spanhemium, theologiæ profes-
sorem et pastorem reveremdum fuisse intelligo : Hoc
solùm dico, hasce literas, quod idem de literis reveren-
dissimi viri Joannis Deodati est dicendum, ante sex-
ennium datas, multis postea maleficiis ab ipso Moro
obliteratas jampridem esse et antiquatas. Nondum
imerebuerat Claudia, nondum hortus, et illa, ad Clau-
diam nescio an cum Claudia, Mori suavissima cohor-
tatio:
—Poma alba ferebat,
Qui post migra tulit Morus:—
Id quod viris proculdubio integerrimis et honestissimis,
harum literarum subscriptoribus, quin imposuerit non
dubito. At postquam illa cum muliere, primò amcilla,
d, inde nupta, occultari diutiùs consuetudo istius nefaria
non potuit, factus iterum reus, cùm honestam rationem
defendendi sui nullam inveniret, et manifestis in rebus
teneretur, fractus jam animo, atque id maximè veritus,
si judicium fieret, nequid in se gravius consuleretur,
quo ipso die promuncianda de se sententia presbytero-
rum, deinde magistratuum erat, judicium declinat,
licentiam abeundi petit. Illi necessitatem hanc rati
se hoc modo effugisse, quam impositam sibi minimè
volebant, ut Ecclesiæ ministrum tantorum scelerum
damnare, et in homine Ecclesiastico tam triste exem-
plum statuere cogerentur, libenter assensere. Petit
insuper literas impudentissimus homo commendatitias.
Id verò postulape ab judicibus suis reum indignè fe-
rentes, prorsùs recusant : ita bonus ille tabellarius per-
manere sine literis illa in urbe, omni munere exutus,
circiter decem menses coactus est : Etesiis credo sacri-
ficans, ut aliquam saltem auram commendatitiam im-
petrare aliquò posset : Donec multi gravissimi viri ne
moram quidem ejus illa in urbe ferendam rati, rursus
rem adducere in judicium cœperunt. Id autem cùm
ad novas lites, et, ut supra dixi, offensionem infirmorum
spectare videretur, consultius tandem visum est, quoquo
modo hominem ablegare : rursus itaque dant literas ;
“ non frigidulas,” quod antea dixisse me queritur, sed,
quod nunc dico, frigidissimas ; mom ut commendare
cuiquam mortalium, sed amandare ab se hominem plane
viderentur. Hoc si ita non est, More, postulo mihi re-
spondeas, cur superiores illas Genevensium literas, haud
uno nomine jam obsoletas, quæque recentiora facinora
tua à me tibi potissimùm objecta, ne attingunt quidem ;
quæ ego vix attigi, ut minùs mihi comperta, “ blas-
phemias” nempe “ tuas in Spiritum Sanctum,” aliaque
opiniomum monstra uberiùs commemoramt, cur et illas
in quibus parùm sibi de te credi à plerisque subscrip-
tores tui queruntur, cur, inquam, illas utrasque in me-
dium protuleris, has movissimas de medio removeris ?
Cedo proximas hasce literas post alteram in te accusa-
tionem illam gravissimam ab aliis ægerrimè, ab aliis
facilè, sed eodem tui removendi animo ab omnibus
concessas. Sapies opinor, non exhibebis; non delec-
tant te istæ literæ ; ex quibus mutatam de te Geneven-
sium opinionem, refrigerata amicissimorum studia
manifestò perspicere possimus ; eosque his literis non
te laudatum, sed ab se, dummodo longissimè remotum,
quasvis in terras exportatum cupiisse. Hæc Mori fides
publica est; qua se in Ecclesiam credere, quàm in Spi-
ritum Sanctum planius facit. Quæ reliqua à me dicta
in eum sunt neque diluit, neque refellit, ne oppugnat
quidem. Sed quoniam, Vlacco fidejussore, tomum in-
super alterum fidei publicæ promittit, im quo “ virorum
aliquot insignium, senatusque et ecclesiæ Midelbur-
gensis, et Amstelodamensis testimonia” dicentur, dum
volumen illud, cudendum, puto, in Gallia, excudendum
Hagae-Comitis à Vlacco expectamus, aut ne expec-
tamus quidem, visum est de toto hoc genere testimoni-
orum pauca disserere.
Magnum ego ornamentum quidem virtutis testimo-
nium publicum esse fateor ; argumentum perinde cer-
tum atque firmum longè abest ut existimem ; nam ut
illud omittam quòd virtutis multo difficilior quàm num-
morum spectatio est, hoc sanè constat, privatorum pri-
vatos mores, et præsertim vitia ad aures gravissimas,
75 |
AUTHORIS PRO SE DEFENSIO,
tot alioqui negotiis occupatas, rarissimè perferri. Et
testimonium publicum tam qui petunt, quâm qui dant,
boni juxta malique ſeré sunt; et petunt quidem mali
stepiùs quam bomi, ſalsa specie proborum induti. Ut
quisque optimus est, ita minimè testimonio eget aliemo:
neque enim facit quicquam vir bonus ut noscatur, seipso
contentus. Si commendato est opus, virtutem semper
apud se habet commendatricem optimam ; si defenso,
obtrectationibus nimirum et calumniis haud raró appe-
titus, eandem circundat sibi integritatem suam, et in-
victam recte factorum conscientiam ; quo veluti muni-
mento atque praesidio firmissimo, improborum homimum
et impetus vanos excipit, et tela frustratur. Contrà
hic noster onnia: non enim virtutem, sed opinionem
duntaxat ejus integumentum vitiorum, sibi compara-
verat: ut retectus, ut deprehensus, abscondere diatius
improbitatem suam non potest, exors ipse fidei et nau-
ſragus ad alienam fidem se conſert: quorum oculis
antea servierat, eorum nunc manus commendatitias
implorat; et singulari quadam atque inaudita bactentis
impudentia, quorum judicium experiri non audet,
eorum postulat testimonium. Propterea quëd meanet
ipsius sententia damnatus turpissimè discedo, quðd
sententias vestras horreo atque defugio, “literas”
quaeso date innocentiae, pietatis, pudicitiae apud vos
mea', “testimoniales.” Si hassitatur, si ambigitur, si ad
aliis denique reclamatur rei vehementissimë commotis,
quê non demittit se? quo non descendit? circumcur-
sare, ambire, prensare, obtestari, et quð adire non au-
det, có amicorum allegationes dimittere. Aguntur
fortunae hominis, agitur caput, existimatio, immö Ec-
clesiae, totius et sacri ordinis existimatio agitur. Ex-
pugnantur multi, partim fatigati, partim inducti, partim
veriti nequid istius ignominiae in publicum redundaret,
partim delictis ignoscere, literato parcere, laboranti
consulere suae bonitatis esse arbitrati. Ita tandem
victor iste laureatas literas aufert; ita emendicata
quovis tempore vel occasione, non jam testimonia de se
publica, qute si fuissent ipse abolevit, sed sua de pub-
lico reportata spolia ad coronam venditat; nec tam
laudes videtur suas, quâm poenitentiam publicam cir-
cumferre. Quem enim non poemiteat praeconem sese
laudum ejus ſuisse, qui ad omnes postea libidines tam
turpem sui auctionem fecerit: nunc ejusdem sese man-
gonem fieri, qui servus omnium nequissimus ministrum
se licitanti cuivis Ecclesiae ex hac laudum catasta ven-
dibiliorem, et sacrarum literarum miseris emptoribus
venalem se pretii quantivis professorem profitetur.
Nam viderint per Deum immortalem, qui existius vel
commendatione vel impunitate ignoscentes et bonos
haberi se postulant, ne ista bonitas in malum desinat;
viderint me ipsis bonis fraudi sit. Cúm necesse sit,
serpat latilis, serpat ocyūs ista contagio pastoris in
gregem, doctoris in scholam ; atque in ipsos fortasse
bonorum istorum liberos, qui sophistae huic errabundo
et infami in disciplinam traduntur. Widerint ne tot
pigmentis illita atque ornata turpitudo, tauta bonarum
laudum jactura atque dispendio dealbata labes, spem
faciat et aliis, eamque mentem injiciat, posse se quoque
tutissimo hoc exemplo, eandem scholis, eandem eccle-
siis inferre personam, sine suo periculo cum summa
etiam commendatione improbissimam. Cogitent, qui
celari adversarios nostras maculas putant oportere, non
celando sed eluendo maculas purgari: celando apparere
multo manifestius, et majorem indies foeditatem contra-
here. Postremö viderint, he Ecclesiastas hujusmodi
amovere ab Ecclesia tamdiu negligant, donec ipsa Ec-
clesia cum Ecclesiastis una amoveatur. Sané cum
apostoli praeceptum de Episcopo notissimum sit, cum
ab extraneisetiam bonum habere testimonium oportere,
quid adversariis laetius aut triumphandum magis potest
accidere, quam cum legerint atque audierint, quinon
levi atque incerta, sed constante ſama, summéque con-
sentiente, multis testibus, multis in locis flagitosus
atgue nefarius compertus sit, eum quasi Ecclesiae lu-
men unicum et ornamentum collatitiis presbyterorum
laudibus, et multiplici commendatione publica decorari.
Quod hostibus nostris gaudium me diuturmum sit, pro-
videri non alia ratione potest, nisi siquis poterit ex-
emplo, reque ipsa demonstrare, nullum esse pestibus
hujusmodi in Ecclesia reformata consistendi locum :
haec testimonia, has laudes tum olim datas, cum is, cui
dabantur, longè alius affectaret videri, atque esse nunc
perspicitur, ipsum nunc irritas et nequaquam suas
usurpasse sibi fraude pessima; et amicorum de se elogia
suo ipsius vitio abrogata, non ad vilissimas merces in-
volvendas, quo ſato mala scripta solent ſeré perire,
sed ad foedissimas flagitiorum ipsius sordes integen-
das, pro involucris abusum esse. Ego certe in priore
illa defensione, et publicë jussus et privatim laesus, nisi
siquam dicendo peperissem mihi honestam existima-
tionem, eam silendo amittere, et quasi vacuam posses-
sore, occupandam mendaciis et opprimendam relin-
quere maluissem, et patriae, et mihi simul, cum una
eadengue causa esset, communem operam summo
studio impendi. Nunc accusatis graviter ab eodem
quasi immeritum et innoxium hominem per calumnias
et mendacia infamassem, ut impudentiam illius redar-
guerem, innocentiam tuerer mean, et siquid vel antea
jam dixi commodè, wel in posterum quod ex usu sit
dicturus sum, si non doctrinae et ingenii laudem, fa-
mam saltem integram, et colendae veritatis fidem afferre
possem, ad contentionem hanc per se minime gratam,
sed necessariam tamen, denuo descendi. Neque veró
est, si haec non essent, cur hujus opera aut poemitere
me, aut pigere quenquam alium, si ni conscium sibi-
met, debeat. Sané improbos vituperare, et bonos lau-
dare, quandoquidem hoc priemi nobilissimi, illud poenae
gravissimae rationem habet, et aequé justum et justitiae
propé summa est: quin et ad vitam bené instituendam
par fere momentum utritisque cernimus. Ita denique
cognatae inter se hae dua res sunt, unoque et codem
opere absolvuntur, ut improborum vituperatio, probo-
rum dici laudatio quodammodo possit. Verum ut jus
et ratio atque usus utrobique par sit, non itidem est par
gratia : nam qui alterum vituperat, duarum is uno
tempore gravissimarum rerum onus atque invidiam
Sustinet, et accusandi alterum, et de se bené sentiendi.
Itaque laudant facilè nunc boni, nunc mali dignos
juxta atque indignos; accusare memo liberê atque in-
trepidé, nisi solus integer, vel audet vel potest. Nos
qui adolescentes tot sub magistris exudare in umbra
CONTRA ALEXANDRUM
755
MORUM, ECCLESIASTEN.
eloquentiam solemus, vimque ejus demonstrativam in
vituperatione haud minùs, quàm in laude arbitramur
esse positam, tyramnorum antiqua nomina fortiter sanè
ad pluteum concidimus. Et Mezentium, si fors ferat,
putidis rursum antithetis enecamus ; aut Agrigentinum
Phalarim tristi enthymematum mugitu, quàm in suo
tauro, exquisitiùs torremus. In xysto nimirum aut in
palæstra, nam in republica plerumqüe tales adoramus
potiùs et colimus, et potentissimos et maximos et au-
gustissimos appellamus. Atqui oportuit aut non in
ludicro primam ferè ætatem umbratiles consumpsisse,
aut aliquando cùm patriæ, cùm reipublicæ est opus, re-
lictis rudibus, in solem ac pulverem atque aciem audere;
aliquando veros lacertos contendere, vera arma vibrare,
verum hostem petere. Parte alia Suffenos et Sophistas;
alia Pharisæos et Simones et Hymenaeos et Alexan-
dros, veteres quidem illos, multo mucrone insectamur:
hodiernos et in Ecclesia redivivos collatis elogiis lau-
damus, professionibus et stipendiis et cathedris, incom-
parabiles videlicet et doctissimos et sanctissimos viros,
ornamus. Ad censuram si fortè ventum est, sicui fortè
persona et speciosa pellis detrahitur, si turpis introrsum,
immò verò si palam atque apertè facinorosus arguitur,
sunt qui hunc malint, nescio quo studio, quove metu
adducti, testimoniis publicè defensum, quàm animad-
versione debita notatum. Mea ab his fateor, quod ali-
quoties res ipsa jam docuit, satis longè disjuncta ratio
est : ut siquid adolescens in illo otio literarum vel præ-
ceptis doctorum vel meis lucubrationibus profeci, id
omne ad usum vitæ generisque humani, siquid tant
latè possem, pro infirma parte mea conferrem. Quod
si etiam ex privatis nonnunquam inimicitiis delicta
publica animadverti et sæpè corrigi solent, et adversa-
rium nunc non modò meum, sed penè omnium commu-
nem, hominem nefarium, reformatæ religionis et sacri
maximè ordinis opprobrium, literatorum labem, juven-
tutis perniciosissimum præceptorem, immundum in
sacris Ecclesiasten, impulsus omnibus causis justissima
vituperatione prosecutus sum, eo necme cum fructu,
quo oporteat, viderint illi, quorum potissimùm interest
exemplum in isto edere, me quidem spero (cur enim
diffidam ?) rem nequo Deo ingratam, neque Ecclesiæ
insalubrem, neque reipublicæ inutilem præstitisse.
A U T H O R I S A D A L E X A N D R I M O R I
SUPPLEMENTUM RESPONSIO.
HANc ego defensionem meam cùm ante .duos menses
hactenus parassem, ne consumptum fortè biennium al-
terum in se profligando clamitet Morus, tanto cum de-
siderio Supplementum illud fidei publicæ contra me
promissum expectabam, ut nihil mihi longius videretur.
Didiceram enim ex Vlacco peroramte, recessisse quidem
in Galliam Morum, non tamen quiescere : sed vel diffi-
sum viribus Genevensium attritis, vel quòd manu tam
exigua vix satis sibi instructus ad decernendum uno
prælio videretur, novum contra me exercitum, et quod
mirandum sit, Medioburgicorum et Amsterodamensium
in Gallia conscribere : Consules etiam et Scabimos mag-
na cum manu signisque infestis adventare. Serò tan-
dem erepsere novæ copiae ; sine quibus prima acies,
opinor, labare atque dehiscere videbatur. Sed cur tam
serò, cur ab extemporali homine tam tardè advenerint
siquis miratur, erant scilicet literæ quædam mortuorum
longo situ eruendae ; erant quoque subsidia hæc con-
sularia tam gravis, armaturæ, mira itinerum ratione
** ex Gallia,” teste Vlacco, “ transmittenda:” Quid si
etiam ibidem conficienda ? quibus cùm ipse Vlaccus,
homo æquissimus, ut habeatur fides non postulet, sed
quod * æquum et justum cuique videbitur,” id ut “ ju-
dicetur,” sic omnino faciamus. “ Sufficit Vlacco,”
Supplementi hujus collectitii legato, lectorum “ curi-
3 C
ositati,” mon incredulitati “ satisfecisse,” nempe fidei
publicæ, ex Gallia in Hollandiam, quasi postliminio
quodam reversæ, fidem defore uniuscujusque privatam,
haud ab re sanè suspicabatur. Primum hoc velim uni-
cuique in mentem veniat, quod supra demonstratum
est, publica testimonia qua ambitione ferè comparentur;
in re privata quid valeant ; quàm sæpe hallucinentur:
me deinde non ficta crimina in Morum, non ignota,
non obscura, sed vera, sed jam vulgata atque testata,
in foro denique et judicio agitata haud semel, atque
versata protulisse. Non igitur calumniatores nos,
non testes in se, sed suos esse judices intelligat Mo-
rus : id jure aequissimo ; quoniam ipse in nos prior
has partes sibi sumpsit ; nos ipse prior judicavit ;
suam in nos sententiam iniquissimam edidit. Pro-
latis autem utrinque testimoniis cur secundùm eos
meritò pronuntiemus, qui Morum gravissimè accusant,
in causa est cùm ipsius comperta in nos audacia atque
improbitas singularis, tum ipsius testimonii quamvis
“ publica,” tamen ambigua fides ; quæ consuetis atque
tritissimis laudandi formulis prosequitur Morum, ob-
jecta illi crimina ab accusatoribus tam multis non diluit.
Quid enim affert vel hoc supplementum, More, quod ad
rem pertineat ? Accusabant te Genevæ gravissimi viri
Theodorus Troncinus pastor et theolcgiæ professor, duo
756
AUTHORIS AD ALEXANDRI MORI
alii pastores Mermilliodus et Pittetus multis opinor
testibus adductis ; accusabant multorum criminum, et
commissi præsertim in horto quodam probri turpissimi.
Tu hic contrà literas producis Deodati senis ; qui ve-
mire in conventum jamdiu desierat; nec quid ibi ge-
reretur, nisi ex te tuisque fautoribus audire consueve-
vat. Literas deinde Sartorii, ne non sarsisse omni ex
parte causam tuam viderere ; tum Gothofridi juriscom-
sulti, ne non satis cavisse ; has omnes literas jam ante
scriptas, quàm hæc tua flagitia vel ad Ecclesiam delata,
vel amicis, ut solet, omnium ultimis, credibilia essent.
ÜQuæ igitur à me tibi objiciuntur, horum nihil negant.
Fac autem disertis verbis megasse: haudquaquam tamen
istorum negatio affirmatione potior tot hominum probis-
simorum erit, quorum praesertim testium vim ac verita-
tem cùm sustimere non posses, petita subitò abvundi
licentia, non absolutus judicio, sed elapsus, evasisti.
Literis deinde Gemevensium mon sine multorum gravi
intercessione atque etiam indignatione, ut supra dixi,
concessis, tu quasi Rheno amne lustratus (quo “ devec-
tum te in Belgium ” ais) et noxa omni ablutus, utcum-
que commendatus, mirum non erat si, convocata illic
fortè synodo Gallo-Belgica, tanquam Mercurius quidam
novus Gallo-Belgicus, non tu quidem illuminatus, sed
combustus, ut fit, in synodo, ad tempus latuisti. Eas
autem literas cùm supra dixerim fore, ut in medium
mullo modo proferres, ne prioribus hic positis quanto
essent frigidiores perspiceremus, lepidè tu quidem
“ exemplar earum mancisci te non potuisse ” causaris.
Quòd autem dixi ad tempus, non semper latuisse te, id
facilè constat, primùm quòd in illa ipsa synodo ** tra-
jecti” ad Mosam habita, quò primùm appulisti rumores
quosdam “ contra doctrinam ” tuam et “ conversatio-
mem” illis in regionibus jam esse “ sparsos,” et sus-
piciones haud leves de te passim vel novas haberi, vel
veteres recruduisse, neque ita te iis absolutum, quim ad
alteram postea synodum mova rursus commendatione
opus tibi fuerit, declarat, quæ sequitur Ecclesiæ Medio-
burgenæ ad Campensem synodum epistola, declarat
etiam illius epistolæ subscriptor primarius Joanmes
Longus ejusdem ecclesiæ pastor, qui tua tum quidem
larva inter alios deceptus, perspectis nunc demum et
exploratis moribus tuis, nunquam te misi maximæ com-
tumeliæ detestationisque causa dicitur nominare. Immò
verba ipsa tua declarant quibus fateris post seditionem
Midelburgi ortam, im qua amicus quidam tuus potentis-
simus dignitate excidit eos, qui post eum rerum potiti
sunt, in te non “ æquè propensâ fuisse voluntate :" id
tu eorum ignorantiæ assignatum vis, quibus tu theo-
logiæ professor celeberrimus “ non æquè familiariter
innotuisses ;" cùm ad suspectos jam mores tuos revera
sit referendum. Quid enim ad te advenam seditio ?
qui suffragiis omnium publicè accersitus non studiis
partium, sed bona fama ac diligentia in isto munere
theologico tueri existimationem tuam notus æque om-
nibus debebas. Hic tamen quaereris quòd ** ejectum”
te dixerim “ ab Ecclesia illa.” Ego verò non * ejec-
tum ” te dixi, sed tantummodo ablegatum ; idque non
de ipsa ejiciendi vel ablegandi formula, sed de volum-
tate eorum abs te jam aliemata intellectum volui. In
hoc non admodum errasse me testis esse potest vir, ut
audio, probatissimus, quem suprà appellavi, Joaunes
I.ongus ejusdem ecclesiæ pastor, qui nunc, inquam,
longè secus de te sentit et loquitur, atque primò sensit,
cùm in tuam commendationem “ omnium nomine” sub-
scripsit; Testis est vir spectatissimus Joannes Duræus,
qui non unam Ecclesiam Midelburgensem ejecisse te,
sed universam penè synodum Gallo-Belgicam ejectum
velle scribit. I'rustra igitur synodi Groudensis actum
illud subjungis, quod factis recentioribus irritum fe-
cisti ; frustra, inquam, actum illud quod apertissimi te
mendacii coarguit : etenim illius synodi authoritatem
idcirco adhibuisse te ais, ut “ sciam omnia ritè et
solemniter” in synedrio Midelburgensi de te ** acta :”
ipsa synodus non ritè, non solemniter hæc esse acta, sed
“ nonnullos defectus in modo agendi” notat. Vellem
scire illos defectus cujusmodi fuerint, cur tu Midelbur-
gensium testimonia sine nonnullis defectibus in modo
agendi auferre non potueris. Illud interea temendum
memoria est, quibus cum “ defectibus” Genevensium
testimonia adeptus sis: quanto reverà cum dedecore,
quanto in speciem cum honore illi te dimiserint. Pror-
sus, quasi id unum sibi reliquum necessariò decrevis
sent, laudandum te esse atque tollendum. Verùm, ut
dixi, laudes illas qualescunque perspecta postmodum
et cognita vitæ tuæ turpitudo antiquavit jamdiu atque
delevit : ut ad infamiam potiùs tuam hæc omnia com
ducere videantur, qui tam prueclaram de te olim homi-
num opinionem, admissis in te postea tot probris, tam
foede fefelleris. Ventum tamdem ad Pontiam est;
quam sic à me falsò nominatam contendis. Ego verò
authorem Batavum et notissimum illud de te distichon,
quo me facilè defendam, recito :
Galli ex comcubitu gravidam te Pontia Mori,
Quis benè moratam morigeramque neget ?
Bontiam, fateor, aliud apud me nanuscriptum habet.
Sed prima utrobique litera, quae sola variat, ejusdem
ferè apud vos potestatis est. Alterum ego nomen ut
notius, ut elegantius salvo jure criticorum præposui.
Satis de nomine ; munc rem ipsam consideremus. Quis
tam est reus, quis tam omni genere criminationum
oblitus, qui, si solus audiatur, causam suam vel Cas-
sianis judicibus probare non queat? Tu quam attulisti
hujus rei marrationem, ejusmodi est, ut nemo sit, modò
integer atque attentus accedat, quin te, etiam inau-
ditis accusatoribus tuis, vel planè condemnandum, vel
suspicione gravissima non absolvendum arbitretur.
“ Uxorem ” ais “ Salmasii graviter tibi infensam, et
ob eas rationes quas commenorare ” non vis, “ mihil
intentatum reliquisse, ut te in nassam infaustissimi
matrimonii compingeret.” Primùm illud suspiciosis-
simum est quod celas; illud nempe arcanum quod tibi
tam modesto homini et ministro uxorem amici sic ini-
micam potuit reddere. Mirum deinde inimicitiæ genus
narras, quo impulsa uxor amici tui famulam sibi dilec-
tissimam nuptum tibi dare cupiebat. Nassa autem
illud matrimonium qui potuit dici ? nisi tute eam vel
sponsione aliqua tibi induisses, vel escam avidè mimis
appetisses, atque ita meritò infaustissimum, quod stupro
auspicatus esses, matrimonium reddidisses. “ Nihil,”
inquis, * intentatum reliquit.” Quid ergo inter alia
SUPPLEMENTUM RESPONSIO. 757.
tentaverit ut ipse nobis divinandum relinquis; immò
ipse non taces, ipse effutire non erubescis; et illud su-
prà dictum è Crantzio, paulò infra quasi palmarium
quiddam pro te ex ore Salmasii repetis; “ Siquid in
Pontia peccavit Morus, ego sum leno, et uxor mea
lena.” Hanc scilicet pulcherrimam fore defensionem
tibi apud omnes amens credidisti, si ostendisses lenone
Salmasio, eiusque uxore lena, te non ignobile stuprum
fecisse; et non nisi dominis perductoribus ancillam
vitiasse. “ Hoc vulgo innotuit;” tu verò “ palam
vehementissime que reluctari.” Euge corculum pudo-
ris, deliciae castitatis ! Tune reluctari verò ? virginali,
ut videtur, verecundia homo massa muliebri indutus.
Nam piscis, nisi captus, non reluctatur: illa proſectò
mulier nisi thunnum te perspexisset, nisi facilem, nisi
opportunum, nisi obnoxium ancillae suae deprehendis-
set, nunquam tibi istos laqueosita elimasset, nunquam
tibi Vulcanios illos casses tua Juno tam facilè adaptas-
set; nunquam in virum gravem, Ecclesiastem, doctum,
celebrem, qui mariti domum inter amicissimos ſre-
quentasset, nunquam nisi in mulierosum et notae in-
continentiae hominem tale quicquam moliri aut tentare
ausa esset. At, inquis, “ cum factione quadam se
conjunxit, quae qualis fuerit, aperire tibi nolo.” Ergo
hoc etiam non minus suspitiosum nobis relinquis, quòd
tua multùm interfuit aperuisse, quae ista factio, quo in
loco te tot Ecclesiarum, tot synodorum, tot magistra-
tuum testimoniis ac sigillis loricatum hominem et
cataphractum tam acritèr oppugnarit. Si ob vitae
sanctimoniam, concionandi assiduitatem, professoriae
facultatis praestantiam te odio habuisset, nihil aequè
tibi laudi ac defensioni esse potuit: nunc cùm in re
omnium potissimum explicanda tectus atque astutus
esse malueris, credendum est non factionem, sed benè
magnum bonorum virorum numerum ob impuros mores
tuos, vitamque offensam meritò te odisse. Deinde, si
Midelburgi, si Amsterodami, ubi tanto in pretio atque
honore apud omnes fuisse te praedicas, tam numerosa
te factio adorta est, claudicare tua fides publica vide-
tur; eosque demum esse factionem qui te tantopere
laudarunt. Sin Hagae aut Lugduni primimista factio
in te tam acriterest concitata, nihil profectò obstat quò
minùs appareat deseruisse te tandiu et pastoris et pro-
ſessoris munus utrobigue sacrum, ut Hagae libellos
famosos, ministerium tui Evangelii ministrares; Lug-
duni Pontiam ancillam, id est Nassam ipse tuam secta-
rere; tuosque illos, post diurnum saepe discessum, tot
nocturnos ad eam vicina ex urbe reditus, tot cum ea
furtivos, inscientibus dominis, congressus vicinitati
notissimos, tantum in te odium plurimorum commo-
visse. Hos tu “ admissarios” uxoris Salmasii vocas;
et ignominiam defuncti amici tui matronae, ejusque
propinquis non ferendam inuris. Haec scilicet cum
“ Ruffino” et factione illa, “ horrenda criminationum
tonitrua displosit, et totum insanis clamoribus Belgium
implevit.” I nunc, et à me conficta haec esse clamita;
dic meas has esse calumnias; quas ego non calumnias,
sed criminationes ab universo penè Belgio, te confi-
tente, accepi. Has ego tacerem ? his non crederem ?
proque tua in nos mostramque rempubl. injuria, scelere,
audacia veras esse non judicarem ? quam tu fac-
tionem, cam ego probissimorum hominum multitu-
dinem, testimonium, judicium esse non arbitrer?
Hoccine divina animadversione factum non putem,
ut dum aliis famosos libellos tam diligenter adornares,
famosus ipse passim libellus fieres ? Tu verò cum
“ existimationem” tuam “ hacrere,” ut ais, “ ad me-
tas” videres, et “ linguis omnium vapulares,” haud
insolita audacissimi cujusque concilio, potentiorum
studiis fretus, quos affectatis concionibus, et Corinthii
aeris tinnitu illo tibi fortè conciliaveras, “ prior Pon-
tiam in jus vocas.” Contrà Salmasius, non insa-
niam, ut tu appellas, sed “ causam se uxoris destituere
non posse” per amicos tibi denuntiat. Quod eum
fuisse facturum nisi justam quoque causanº credidisset,
tibi verisimile esse non debet. Tu, “non sine consilio
summorum et sapientissimorum totius Belgii capitum,”
quorum nimirum patrocinium vel adulando, vel sup-
pliciter ambiendo ad omnes nequitiarum tuarum even-
tus tibi comparaveras, “litem in suprema Hollandiae
curia prosequeris.” Quo in loco potentiam quorundam,
ut dixi, non innocentiam tuam praesidio tibi maximo
fuisse, si vel teipsum audiamus causam hic tuam quanto
potes cum artificio et cautione dicentem, obscurum non
est. “Desperabant” adversarii “fore se” illa in curia
tuam “ afflicturos” se esse “ famam”
non desperabant. Quid ita? quia paucorum vim atque
opes in foro dominari, cacteros pene omnes favere sibi
videbant. At verò non tuam, sed suam ipsi famam
accusatores tui afflixissent, si tu aequo judicio superior
ipsorum opinione futurus videbaris. “ Omnes,” in-
quis, “omni ope me unum oppugnabant;” non “de-
fuisse” tamen “ amicos” tibi “agnoscis:” paucos
igitur et potentes fuisse illos necesse est: id quod
etiam “ miratos et conquestos esse inimicos tuos” usque
eò non diffiteris, ut ne noceret tibi ista gratia tam aperta
ac manifesta veritus, haud semel subirasci te simules
amicis tuis, cumque iis expostulare, quasi parùm pru-
denter tibi et non satis cautè favissent. Itaque “su-
prema capita, quae tibi suum in hac causa praesidium
obtulere, enixè rogasti, siguid valeres gratia, ne quid
eorum autoritas de victoria innocentiae tuae delibaret.”
Illius judicii exitus qui demùm fuerit, non dicis; Ad-
versarii certè, tantum abfuit ut jure aut aequitate victos
se esse arbitrarentur, ut quos tu reos modò feceras, hi
nunc petitores ad synodum provocarent; et quod ob-
tinere à magnatibus jus suum non poterant, id impe-
trare per Ecclesiam facilè, se posse sperarent. Verum
et in illa synodo nimis multùm valuisse gratiam gratis,
ut aiunt, id est nullis omnino meritis tuis datam, etiam
ex iis quae pergis ipse narrare, satis constat. “Adsunt
delegati Lugdunenses; saccum producunt oppletum
ſoedissimis criminationibus:” satis amplum, opinor, si
“ superiores:'
tua omnia fagitia contineret, ut induendo etiam tibi,
si egisses fortè poenitentiam, sufficere potuerit. “Ur-
gent delegati, ut preelegerentur omnia, quae secum
sacco illo gerebantur:” vel ut latinius dixisses, porta-
bantur in sacco; è te enim puto, gerebantur in sindone.
Sed synodi pars magna “ reluctari, famosos esse libel-
los.” Animadvertite quaeso movam ac singularem ju-
dicum aequitatem atque prudentiam; qui criminationes
cuni testimoniis in judicium allatas, neque dum per
758
AUTHORIS AD ALEXANDRI MORI
lectas, tanquam famosos libellos, rejiciendas esse con-
tendunt. Horum vicit sententia : excurrit confestim
unus eorum, gratulabundus Moro, et “ bonum factum,
inquit; nihil comtra te legetur.” En iterum severos
judices! quorum sententia in Mori gratiam sic mani-
festò lata est, ut unus eorum pati non possit quin ex-
ipso judicio de sella prosiliret, gratulatum reo. Puduit
Morum ipsum tam dissolutae sententite : perturbari
demuò se simulat, et ægrè ferre, mom perlegi illa volu-
mina criminum suorum. Objurgatus itaque bonus ille
judex et acriter ab ipso reo increpitus, redit in coetum ;
caeterisque facile persuadet, ut mutata priore sentemtia
statueretur omm*a legenda esse. At verò, quæ isti
judices primùm legenda non esse, ad arbitrium deinde
rei, conversis eadem hora sentemtiis, legenda esse de-
creverant, de iis tandem perlectis quàm nom autemtè,
quàm mon severè, quàm denique im reum propensè
judicaverint, intellectu difficile non est. Consurgunt
judices ; reum frequentes adeunt; ** amplectuntur;” et
cui palam modò gratificare, ei nunc apertè gratulari
non dubitant. Quamquam ego in hoc toto judicio mon
tam Mori, quàm ejus personæ atque ordinis habitam
esse rationem crediderem. Synodi præses ipse Rive-
rius complexus te, “ numquam Æthiops, inquit, ita
dealbatus est, quemadmodum hodiè tu fuisti.” Tume
verò adeò obesa mare homo es, ut irrisum te potiùs,
quàm absolutum hoc proverbio non sentias ? Riverius
cùm Æthiopem te lavando et operam et laticem frustra
perdidisset, dealbavit. Tu jam salve mobis, Aethiops,
aut, si mavis, paries dealbate ; quamdoquidem quo
Paulus Ananiam, eodem te synodi præses titulo deco-
ravit. Nunc ipsum decretum synodi perpendamus.
“ Leetis chartis iis quæ allatæ fuerunt à delegatis Lug-
(lumensibus circa litem illam quæ im suprema Hollandiæ
curia mutilabatur, nihil im iis repertum est, quod valeret
adimendæ ecclesiis libertati, qua Morum ad sacras con-
ciones habendas cum occasio se dabat, invitare sole-
bant.” Hæc, etiamsi tua sola fide accipiamus, quàm
obscura, quàm tepida, quàm ægrè absolvant reum, aut
me absolvant quidem, quis non videt ? qui te olim maxi-
mis cumulare laudibus solebant, nunc multis criminibus
insimulatum, me uno quidem verbo tenuissimo purum
aut insontem pronuntiant. Nom commendant te eccle-
siis ; ** libertatem” tantummodo iis non “ adimunt” qua
te, non ad pastoris assiduum munus, sed “ cum occasio
se dabat,” ad concionandum fortuitò “ invitare sole-
bant.” Ista autem occasio si se nunquam daret, id
sibi displicere aut detrimenti quicquam inde capturam
esse eeclesiam, haudquaquam ostendunt.
pro ara pulpitum est; illa in aula te jactas bucca motis-
sima ; et quo turpior domi, eò clamosior in coetu es :
quicquid in occulto, quicquid im “ sacco” illo peccas,
hic tua cymbala, tua æra concrepare strenuè non desi-
nis ; et tuum illud rostrum musquam impudentius,
quàm in rostris offers. * I nunc,” inquis, * et stupra et
spurios tibi finge.” Immò, ito tu, inquam, et stupra
tua si audes vel uno verbo disertè nega : id quod toto
hoc libro facere non es ausus. “ Consulantur acta
publica;" immò consulantur acta privata, acta furtiva,
acta nocturna tua, quæ vulgatissima istis regionibus
iamdiu innotuere. Unde spurii si nom extiterint, non
Tibi interim
continuò tu castus, sed eò fortasse nequior fuisti. Hac-
tenus quæ tu testimonia attulisti aut malè parta, aut
jam exoleta, id est aliquanto priùs data, quam patefacta
ea fuerimt facinora quæ à me tibi potissimùm objiciun-
tur, ostendi. Quibus testimoniis si ab innumeris passim
viris bonis quos numquam nominatim læseras non est
creditum id quod ipsi subscriptores tui queruntur, de
me nostrisque hominibus, quos injuriis maximis ultrò
irritasti, si mon credamus, non est meritò quod queri
quisqu m possit. Postremas omnium literas Amstero-
damensium consulum et rectorum, mescio cujus opera,
quove pacto comparatas, ex Gallia transmittis : neque
ad tempus omni ex parte satis accommodatus, et ad rem
certè minimè appositas. Ego quæ tu ipse flagitiosa
feceris, coarguo ; tu quid magistratus in te mom fecerit
hoc testimonio duntaxat ostendis. Scripsi equidem,
et, quod tum palam testatus sum, non pro certissimo, sed
ut nuper audiveram, idque etiam per literas fide dignas,
magistratum Amsterodamensem tibi pulpitum interdix-
isse. Tu literas fateris “ per omnes gentes” contra te
ab ** adversariis” tuis ** missitatas.” Et eos adversarios
numc scribis esse tuos ; ego et bonos viros esse eos ac-
ceperam, et te adversarium sciebam esse meum. Ex
ipsis quæro magistratibus Amsterodamensium, num
istiusmodi quippiam allatum ad se de adversario non
tantum suo, sed civitatis etiam suæ, silentio praetermit-
tendum censuissent ? Hoc igitur si verum nom sit, est
quoqne levissimum ; de quo et ego minimè laborare, et
tu minimè exultare debeas. Numquid est aliud quod
testentisr tibi hæ literae ? est aliud. Te ** ex quo tem-
pore apud se in publico munere versatus es, nihil ad-
misisse quod justum prædictis calumniis locum dare
potuerit.” Quid si antè admiseris, quàm ad eos ve-
misti ? Nam quibus consulibus admissa abs te quæque
fuerint, cujus in scabinatum pruritiones tuæ inciderint,
si ex ratiome fastorum mon habeo dicere, id mom dices,
arbitror, ita magni referre. Quid, inquam, si ante ad-
miseris ? quod ego quidem pro certo habeo. Tum sanè
et hoc quoque testimonium, ancile tuum, haud multò
plus ponderis, quàm alterius cujusquam habuerit ; ut,
quod de iis, quæ auditione tantum acceperat ab aliis,
testificetur. Quod autem adjungitur te ** extra culpam
motamve fuisse,” id adeò liquidò mom ita se habet, ut
etiam reliqua in dubium vocare videatur. Non alium
igitur atque teipsum tuis Consulibus opponam ; qui te
culpatum, notatum, vexatum, linguis omnium toto
Belgio vapulasse, haud semel, pluribusque verbis con-
fessus es. Commodùm itaque intersertant, “ ut ad nos
relatum est.” A quibus autem ? mam et ad mos longè
alia et à plurimis relata sunt: utrorum qui hæc tam
variè referunt anteponenda fides sit, ipsi nostram æquè
ac suam existimationem esse sciunt. At verò non ad se
omnia quamvis consules, relata esse ut doceam, respon-
deant mihi rogo libellus iste in nos famosus, à Moro
editus, relatusne ad se fuerit ? quem libellum edidisse
in nostram rempubl. non ministri erat Evangelici,
sed ardelionis et calumniatoris, et nebulonis male-
dicentissimi. Si negant de hoc libello quicquam sibi
perlatum, posse et multa alia etiam improbissima
non perferri ad se de hoc Moro velim existiment.
Sim fateantur allatum sibi esse illius libri editorem fu-
SUPPLEMENTUM RESPONSIO.
759
isse Morum, suum tamen illi testimonium tanquam
homini reverendo, probo, inculpato perhibuerint, sci-
ant nos istiusmodi testimonium etiam consulum et
scabimorum tanquam levissimum, et nullius planè
authoritatis repudiare. Horum, inquis, rectorum “gra-
vitatem, fidem, autoritatem si nosses, sexcentis mil-
lenorum Miltonorum libellis retundendis parem agno-
sceres.” Ergo verò, mi homo, id nescio an ita facilè
agnoscerem ; quandoquidem et id nescio, apu<ivδην, am
τλεrtvênv, virtute am censu magistratum illum in civi-
tate sua obtineant. Neque me latet consules, et præ-
tores, illustriora longè quàm nunc sunt nomina, etiam
Verrem, reorum omnium Romæ perditissimum, studiosè
defendisse, cum provincia tota, virique boni universi
gravissimè accusarent. Hoc summum fidei tuae pub-
licæ propugnaculum, eademque basis et firmamentum
maximum, quàm mullo tamen megotio labefactetur et
corruat, vides. Sequitur ecclesiæ Amsterodamensis
Gallo-Belgicæ testimonium, subscriptore imprimis Hot-
tono, Mori intimo, et quod suprà demonstravimus, Re-
gii Clamoris conscio. Valdè nobis probatum sit necesse
est hujusmodi testimonium, cujus subscriptionis prin-
ceps est Hottonus. Sed tamen quid afferat, videamus.
“ Tantum abesse,” ait, “ ut eorum criminum eum reum
esse sciamus aut agnoscamus, quorum à quodam Miltone
Anglo accusatur.”—Hujus fidei vis maxima, ut video, in
ignorantiæ professione posita est. Quid hoc testimonio
faciamus ? quid hac fide ? quæ suâ se potissimùm ig-
norantiâ commendat. Reum esse nescimus, mom agno-
scimus : hoc quis praeterea toto propemodum Belgio
ignorat, quæ illi præcipuè crimina objicio, eorum ipsum
in utroque foro, non reum modò diuturnum fuisse, sed
plurimorum judicio damnatissimum ; nec nisi poten-
tium quorundam studiis, utque sacro potiùs ordini quàm
ipsi consuleretur, fuisse absolutum. Tantum abest ut
reum esse sciamus, “ ut contrà potius ab illo aliquoties
conciones sacras rogaverimus.” Contenti nempe hoc
forensi judicio, ubi gratia plus justo potuit ; et sua-
dente præsertim Hottomo, quoties ipse respirare et
suis parcere lateribus decrevisset. Verum hoc quid
efficit ? aut quis est nescius multos in concionibus satis
esse placitos, satis suaves ac tinnulos, qui in omni
vita reliqua offensioni maximæ fuerint? Etenim qui
suis libidinibus explendis dat operam, quid obstat quo
minus idem titillandis alienis auribus commodè servire
possit. Quod reliquum est, index potiùs operis, quàm
testimonium dici meretur: quando enim aliud quod
dicat non habet, “ satis superque testantur,” inquit,
** de ipso aliarum ecclesiarum in quibus vixit diutiùs
quam apud nos, publica documenta ad quæ nos iis con-
sentiendo referimus.” Quæ vox detrectantium penè,
et libenter hoc negotio expedire se cupientium prorsus
videtur ; facitque ut non immeritò suspicemur, testimo-
nium hoc, tametsi planè friget, non sine sudore tamen
Mori, allaborante etiam Hottono, multis repugnantibus,
impetratum ægrè fuisse. Epilogi loco est “ curatorum
scholæ ” testimonium. Verum in schola quid tu decla-
mites, quid recites, aut quemamodum te geras, neque
tanti esse reor ut cognoscere curemus, neque ad hanc
causam pertinet. Vitam et mores tuos excutimus : quos
cum isti vix attingere, et ad literas superiores malle
nos remittere videantur, quod ad eorum testimonium
infirmandum satis sit, superius quoque dictum putemus.
Ad finem aliquando pervemimus tuæ Fidei publicae ;
quæ ex Gallico ferè scrmone iii Gallico-latinum “ trala-
titia” inanissimi libri maximam partem occupat. Co-
pias jam omnes tuas cum supplemento etiam lustra-
vimus: peramplas quidem eas, sed ad pompam sanè
potius, quàm ad verum robur comparatas. Hæ sunt
plumæ tuæ, sub quibus corniculam latitare te dixi. Haec
vestis illa multicolor qua Morum revera, id est morio-
nem te induisti : his tu phaleris me populum quidem fe-
felleris : tu que si sapuisses, aut ullo rerum usu prædi-
tus fuisses, nullius fore usus tibi hæc omnia, quod ad
tuam attinet causam, facilè intellexisses. Potest for-
tasse quispiam, cujus momen alioqui numquam audis-
semus, tam sui venditandi causa quam tui, phalerata
verba tibi dedisse : potest aliorum pudor et bonitas
flagitanti ac sudanti, et agi jam tuam existimationem
miserè querenti, hoc tantulum non denegasse. Potes
tu per interpretes Hottonos multa confecisse : et tanen
post hæc omnia scito te nihil quod ad rem pertineat in
medium protulisse. Quid juverit, quæso, vel in foro
testimonia generatim dicta, quid elogia de tuis “ doti-
bus,” quid incertas blandientium amicorum laudes
proferre, si ego te certorum criminum accuso ? Accu-
sarunt te adulterii Gemevæ olim viri graves ; tempus,
locum, adulterum monimarunt : multorum præterea
criminum te detulerunt. Quid si istam farraginem
pro testimonio Judicibus tum tuis ostendisses ? accep-
turosne putas fuisse eos, teque absolvendum istis cri-
mimibus fuisse continuò judicaturos ? immò verò jus-
sissent te, ablatis hisce mugis, appositè respondere ;
ullamne cum ista fœmina rem, rationemve habueris; illo
in horto eamne comvemeris ; illo in tugurio, clausis fori-
bus, solusne cum sola fueris. Hæc et hujusmodi mult
ex te requisissent ; ad quæ singula, neque in illo tum
judicio, quod te jure absolvere vel suspicione posset
(judicium enim illud petita abeundi licentia commodum
prævertisti) neque in hoc libro, tot alioqui ineptiis re-
fertissimo, quicquam respondes. Facis idem prorsus
in causa quoque Pontiana: quid in foro transactum sit,
quamtopere tua gratia ad præjudicium miseræ mulier-
culæ post Salmasii obitum valuerit, suspiciosè ad-
modum ipse marras. De illis mocturmis Haga Leidam
itineribus, de illis cum Pontia clandestinis atque noc-
turnis congressibus, quanquam hæc et multò plura
hujusmodi omnibus in ore sunt, mullum verbum facis.
Quid haec prorsus alienissima nobis obtrudis ? immò
quid omnimo hamc tantam literarum ac testimoniorum
congeriem tibi ullo tempore comparâsti ? an quod tuæ-
met ipse conscientiæ satis probatus apud te mom eras?
an quod de te nec tibi ipsi, nec spontameis hominum
sermonibus credere audebas, nisi tot coactis nominibus
ac testimoniis tibimet confirmatum hoc esset atque tes-
tatum, id quod alioqui nunquam credidisses, te virum
bonum aut tolerabilem posse cuiquam videri ? An verò
tot criminibus accusatus, cùm de te homines ubique
pessimè loquerentur, commendationibus totidem sanare
illa vulnera posse te existimasti ? atqui vides quo ste-
pius ex mala valetudine ad inanem medicimam, ex
novis maleficiis et rumoribus inde natis ad novas per-
760
AUTHORIS AD ALEXANDRI MORI
petuò commendationes recurris, earum authoritatem eò
semper minorem abs te reddi atque imdies leviorem :
ægrotare mimirum existimationem tuam et morbosissi-
mam esse, quæ tot purgationibus, tot medicamentis im-
digeat commendationum quis est quin suspicetur ? Sed
fortasse longinquas in urbes quemadmodum prædicas,
ad professiones amplissimas persæpè invitatus, hoc te
quasi commeatu, iter facturus, instruxisti. Optimè :
quæro itaque am proficisci im animo tibi fuerit ad eos
homines qui te ignorassent, qui am satis mossent? si ad
illos, venustus profectò homo necesse est tibi fueris, qui
ab illis invitatum iri te umquam credideris, qui te igno-
rassent : Si ad hos qui te jam satis norant, quid hoc
tanto commendationum instrumento ac sarcina ad eos
opus erat, quibus jam antea commendatissimum te esse
ex eo ipso, quòd invitassent, sciebas. Perspicuum
igitur est, nullam ob rem aliam, tantam vim testimo-
miorum commendatitiam sic te studiosè congessisse et
in promptu semper habuisse, nisi vel ad ostentationem
quandam circulatoriam, ad quam artem factum te
præcipuè atque natum existimarim, vel impendentis
ignominiæ metu, quam ex flagitiis mondum patefactis
certissimam tibi expectabas. Ut haberes nimirum
speciosum aliquid et publicum et foris partum, quod
privatæ atque domesticæ 'et erumpenti interdum ex
latebris opponeres infamiae ; utque procerum atque
doctorum splendidis testimoniis, im quibus consequendis
gratia atque ambitio mumc ferè plurimuum possunt, con-
tra populi veras voces te communires. Verum ista te
spes ut dixi, et frustrata jam est, et frustrabitur ; cùm
quia tuam obtegere improbitatem atque mequitiam,
neque lux ulla neque tenebræ possunt, tum quia hoc
ipsum quicquid est munimenti, quo te circumsepsisti,
per se satis infirmum atque rimosum est. Id planius
adhuc fiet, si testimonia hæc tua, quemadmodum per
se singula consideravimus, ita nunc postrema primis,
prima mediis conferamus; et doctores proceresque tuos
inter se paulisper committamus. Ut intelligi tamdem
possit, quæ fides illius fidei publicae, illorum testium
sit, ubi aut alii ab aliis tam longè dissentiunt, aut ple-
rique tam multa vel dissimulant vel nesciunt, quæ sua
sponte alii fatentur. Illud imprimis exemplo sit, quod
in iis literis occurrit quæ Genevensis esse ecclesiæ di-
cuntur. * Nihil utique illi,” id est Moro, “ vel ab in-
fensissimis hostibus meritò objici queat, quod justæ sit
reprehensioni obnoxium.” Ego contrà mom quæ
hostes objiciunt Moro, sed quæ amici ejus, quæ testes
ejus et “ justæ reprehensioni obnoxia” fatentur, et ipsi
in eo reprehendunt, ex his iisdem testimoniis depro-
mam.—Quid enim Deodatus ? “ Non provocat qui-
dem ” Morus, “ sed terribiles ungues habet ad sui tute-
lam.” Quos ungues ? nam istiusmodi quicquam inter
Evangelici ministri arma non reperio ; et eloquentiam
nolim à viro docto atque humano, tam truci metaphora
significari : Reliquum est, ut ungues illos, feritatem
atque ferociam hominis interpretemur, quos non ad
tutelam sui, sed ad injuriam aliorum, in nos certè ni-
miùm expeditos atque acres feræ similior quàm pastori
exercuit. Apertiora haud paulò sunt quæ Georgius
Crantzius, Alberti æmulus, ne ab avunculo fortè suo
historica fide superetur, et quantò ægrior tantò fortasse
veracior ultrò nobis largitur. “ Ego Mori notitiam habui
et Genevæ et in Belgio; semper magnas inimicitias
exercuit cum æmulis, quibus ipse locum sæpe praebuit
mimia libertate loquendi.” Et hoc teste, contra quàm
ab altero dictum modò est, et “ ungues habet” et pro-
vocat Morus. “ Ferox” atque ** fidens, crabronum irri-
tator” infestissimus: Beelsebubem prope alterum dicas,
nisi quod ille muscas : I,aboris alioqui “ intolerantior,”
teste etiam laudatore Salmasio ; cujus et “ uxorem
varie læserat,” et alia quædam commiserat “ inconsi-
deratione tali homine indigna.” Hæc ab amicis ac tes-
tibus tuis vis ipsa veritatis expressit ; quæ quamvis
favore et studio dicentium in molliorem partem flectan-
tur, ejusmodi tamen sunt quæ ingenium tuum palam
omnibus faciant, et hujus testimonii totius fidem infir-
mare haud mediocriter atque infringere videantur:
cujus altera pars probum, inoffensum, sanctum, omni
labe ac vitio carentem, altera contentiosum, turbulen-
tum, arrogantem, garrulum, ignavum, injurium, incon-
sideratum denique et stultum nobis exhibet Morum.
Sic fuit tua fides publica, id est, mulla : reverteris nunc
iterum ad privatam, quæ nulla minor est. “ At vides
interea,” inquis, “ quàm non tralatitio me dignentur
affectu, quos tu vis mihi furcas comparare.” Immò tu
vide, si potes, ira atque amentia impeditus, quàm ve-
hementer hallucineris, quàm nihil attentè agas. Nom
ego hoc “ de Batavis,” sed Genevensibus intelligi vo-
lebam ; nec quid hi statuissent, sed quid tu meruisses.
“ Verba,” inquis, ** tua recognosce, Orestis æmule.”
Recognosco, inquam, Orestis æmule! Cujus flagitia si
pro meritis excepisset magistratus, jamdudum adulteria
patibulo pendens luisses : nimirum Genevæ, ubi adul-
terii delatus eras ; ad alios magistratus cognitio illius
facti pertinere mon potuit. Quæ sequuntur porrò et
luiturus propediem videris, et hæc non iratus tibi omi-
mor, sed dumtaxat jus dico, facilè demonstrant, non tum
prædixisse me quid sis passurus, sed pronuntiasse quid
esses meritus ; idque (cùm de nobis ipse prior judi-
casses) pari jure meo fecisse. I nunc non conscientiæ
integritate, non justa defensione, sed scelerum impuni-
tate quod facis effer te et gloriare. * Huic,” inquis,
“ fungo, nuper è terra nato quem aut quos opposui?”
Erras More, et me non nosti : mihi lentè crescere, et
velut occulto ævo satius semper fuit. Tu ille fumgus
qui ex ephebis modò Genevam profectus, Græcarum
literarum professor subitò emersisti ; et tot viris natu
“ grandioribus ecclesiastis, jureconsultis, medicis, illa
ingenii tunc primùm efflorescentis gratia,” ut tu satis
fungosè narras, “ palmam” præripuisti : mox inter
fungos, et olera, et armamenta olitoria, fungo recens
tuberamte, non tu quidem Claudium extinxisti, sed
Claudiam supinasti. Nunc ** conciliare” me jubes
mea “ dicta,” si possum, “ et fabulas,” cum magistra-
tuum “ dictis atque judiciis” abs te scilicet emendicatis:
Ego verò mea dicta cum tuis factis facilè conciliavero ;
de ipsorum dictis atque judiciis ipsi viderint: nos ut non
porticibus, ita nec iisdem judiciis fruimur. Tu tecum
si potes temetipsum concilia ; qui totum illud Gene-
vense negotium, et gravissimum in te crimen adulterii,
quasi fabulam de infenso erga te magistratuum ani-
mo, summa cura, summoque studio refellere conaris.
SUPPLEMENTUM RESPONSIO.
761
Cur illam quæ vehementissimè ad te pertinuit,
tam facilè prætermittis, hanc quae te minimè attingit
corrogatis tot testibus tanta mole refutare contendis ?
Sanè si ipse tibimet constare vis videri, nosque tuum
institutum et respondendi rationem intuemur, qui fa-
bulas confutatione indignas esse censes, aut illud in te
verum crimem, aut hoc de te non verum magistratûs
judicium credamus oportebit.—At non omni ex parte
vituperandus est Morus ; habet suas laudes ; magna
vitia magnis virtutibus compensat ; facit quod in ho-
mine ecclesiastico laudatissimum simul et rarissimum
est, ut gratis concionetur. “ Nullo,” inquit, “ stipen-
dio auctoratus gratuitam ecclesiæ operam rogatus
præsto :* immò verò fortuitam ; ex quo videlicet am-
pliore mercede proposita, relicto pastoris munere, sa-
crarum historiarum professor factus es ; id est reverâ, ex
sacrario in scholam ad stipendium uberius emigrasti:
tum si cujus rogatu fortè concionaris, hoc tamquam be-
neficii loco imputas ; cum assiduum pastoris ministe-
rium deserueris, ut hanc subcisivam operam desertæ
abs te ecclesiæ non sine maximo compendio tuo gratis
impertire videaris. Tu verò More, si ecclesiam Medio-
burgensem, quæ te, ut ais, tam honorificè invitasset,
tanto cum fructu audisset, tam ægrè dimisisset, sine
gravissima causa reliquisses, et ad alium gregem, idem-
que munus pastoris te contulisses, reprehendendum
meritò et levitatis arguendum existimarim. Nunc cùm
“ Attalicis,” ut ipse ais, “ conditionibus” non Christi-
anis, et “ emolumenti fructu ” longè uberiore adductus,
non de grege im gregem desultorius tantummodo pastor
transieris, sed illo munere longè potiore posthabito, ex
Evangelii ministro mutatus in professorem et histori-
cum, ex ipsis ecclesiæ adytis ad promoeria regressus
sis, non mercenarii solum, sed defectoris propè numero
habendum te esse, si habenda vetcris et sanctissimæ
disciplinæ ulla ratio est, affirmare non vereor. At con-
cionaris tamen : et strenuè quidem, nunquam “ majore
cum fructu” Attalico, ad Pergamenos putâ, mom tuum
ad gregem ; quibus si fortè aures vix satis teretes pru-
riunt, tu, vitio cantorum planè converso, rogatus nun-
quam desistis : et velut sacerdos Phrygiæ matris non-
dum exsectus, aut Curetum aliquis, moves libenter
tua crotala; mon ut vagitum quempiam fabulosum,
sed ut rumores flagitiorum tuorum plus nimio veraces
famatica vociferatione obruas. Hoc tu septemario stre-
pitu et doctrina fortuita, ut quivis olim cyclicus aut
sophista, si rogatus recitas, desertum Pastoris munus
assiduum explere te putas? At concionator est bellus
et facundus. Ita, credo, ut est orator : cui proverbia
si demas, et insutos versiculorum centones, orationis
ipso filo atque contextu mihil inormatius, mihil imcom-
positius, nihil verbosius atque putidius ; nihil ubi
venustatem, numerum, atque nervos paulò disertiore
homine dignos magis requiras. Unum est in quo
graviter titubatum à me esse fateor: Græcarum litera-
rum professorem dixi, quem sacrarum historiarum
dixisse debui: enimverò incredibile mihi prorsus, et
portento simile videbatur, historiarum sacrarum eum
esse professorem, qui tot profanarum argumentum ipse
atque materies esset. Tu verò mihi rectiùs, More, mom
historiarum, sed calumniarum professor deinceps nomi-
naberis. Quod ne quis à me secus atque res ipsa se
habet dictum arbitretur, mea ipsa verba abs te prolata
in medio ponam ; tuam deinde horum interpretatio-
nem, quam dico esse calumniam : ut quàm impudenter
et malitiosè agas, quod et suprà idque sæpius demon-
stravi, et hinc qualem te sacræ etiam literae tortorem
proculdubio sentiant, præterire neminem possit. Re-
stat jam tibi sola Græcarum literarum professio : ergo
hoc ego ** crimini” tibi do, quòd Græcas literas es
professus: ergo ego “ Græcas literas earumque pro-
fessores cogo in ordinem.” Ergo ego “ Graecas literas
ad ima subsellia relego.” Quis horum quicquam sequi
præter te dixerit ? ipsa malitia si operam tibi suam
locasset, tale quippiam ex meis verbis ullam in pa.tam
torquendo exprimere qui tandem potuisset? tu hoc non
solum pro verissimo tibi sumis, verum etiam ut non
nasutum minus conjectorem te, quàm navum esse ca-
lunmiatorem intelligamus, “ cur Græcas ” inquis “lite-
ras, earumque professores cogas in ordinem, nisi me
fallit animus, olfeci fucum :” Nempè Salmasius cùm
esset Græcæ linguæ callentissimus, et hujus ego au-
thoritatem elevare statuissem, id ut quoquo modo pos-
sem, Græcas literas, “ ejus,” si diis placet, “ regna, ad
ima subsellia relegavi.” Quis calumniari solertiùs,
quàm hariolari te nunc dicat ? Atqui uon meus ille
fucus, vir sagacissim;e, sed tuus mucus quem olfecisti,
tantummodo erat. Mihi enim cum Salmasio de Græ-
cis non magis literis quàm calendis contestata lis erat;
non illum literis vel Græcis vel Latinis, sed authorita-
tum et rationum ponderibus, afHigendum atque ster-
mendum esse intelligebam. Hinc tu, propterea quòd
omnes cupidè ambages quæris, nequid ad rem dicere
cogaris, ut olim paupertatis, ita mumc Græcarum lite-
rarum in laudes ridiculè sanè transcurris. Quas ego
cum neque nesciam, et, siquis alius, plurimi faciam,
mihil profectò ineptius, nihil alienius fingere potuisti,
quàm despectas à me esse Græcas literas : cum non
tibi illas, sed te illis probro esse dixerim. Sed hæc tua
perpetua ferè ratio est ; ubi non fictis criminibus urge-
ris, ut me obmutuisse planè videaris, data tibi esse à
me crimini quælibet fingis, aut absurda quævis et fal-
sissima de me inseris eaque in primis quæ dicta mun-
quam sunt, refutanda irripis : Hic strepis, hic tumul-
tuaris, hic te jactas, Si adulterii te postulo, pauper-
tatem scilicet contemno ; paupertas tibi contra me toto
pemu loculorum tuorum defendenda est : Si stupri
arguo, Græcas literas mimirum vellico ; Græcarum
literarum obtrectator oppugnandus tibi sum : Sic tu
vera fictis eludere conaris, ut hoc fumo excitato oc-
cultare turpem fugam et convictissimi solutis pu-
dorem atque silentium possis. Vide autem, dum
Græcas literas tam veteratoriè laudas, ut irascantur
tibi literæ Latinæ ; tuumque “ jecur latinum,” ut satis
sanum non sit. “ Quota pars hæc est, inquis, spu-
torum et alaporum ?” Ne tu masculum tibi alapum
hoc soloecismo meruisti : nam foemineas esse alapas
quas tot sensisti, mirum non est si invitus agnoscas.
Verùm hæc missa faciamus ; levia sunt, vetera sunt;
alius repentè homo jam factus est Morus; ad sanita-
tem jamjamque est rediturus ; gradum unum atque al-
terum fecit ; paulò veracior, paulò candidior ab rheto-
762
AUTHORIS AD ALEXANDRI MORI SUPPLEMENTUM RESPONSIO.
rica Diaboli (sic enim calumniam supra nominat) ad
rhetoricam transit Juliami. * Vicisti,” inquis, ** Mil-
tone.” Hanc nempe vocem, ut ille olim (ne non Apos-
tata satis germanus per omnia videaris) veritate victus
emisisti. Sed vide, ne sincerum quod est, cauponum
more, mendatio statim diluas. “ Confitentem,” inquis,
“ habes reum.” Ego verò reum quidem habeo; con-
fitentem non habeo: nisi si id pro confesso est haben-
dum quicquid tu silentio præteriisti: sic enim et libel-
lum in nos famosum edidisse, et hosti nostro dicasse,
et Anglicanam Rempublicam indignissimis modis, me-
que nominatim illæsus læsisse, totam denique fabulam
Genevensem confiteris. Ab hac prævaricatione ad pre-
cationem quandam artificiose compositam te confers;
sive ea tuæ fidei publicæ extrema confessio dicenda
est; ad quam Deum testem invocas, tremendum fateor
et testem et judicem. Multa confiteris, multa ploras,
peccata quidem “longè gravissima,” sed qu£e ad nos
nihil attineant, quia penitùs latent, et etiamnum incon-
fessa nobis sunt. Et ista quidem si in occulto, clausis-
que foribus, ut peccare anteà, ita nunc precari in ani-
mum induxisses, laudassem equidem te, deque benig-
nitate et clementia divina benè sperare jussissem : nunc
cum in platea media orantem te hic reperiam, ad ho-
mines potiùs quàm ad Deum concinnatas has esse pre-
ces, et quasi ultima jacentis tuæ fidei publicæ suspiria
judicarim. “ Te Deus, te testem invoco, an non videant
homines in corde isto quae tu non vides.” O confes-
sionem claram atque simplicem ! immò verò quid ob-
scurius, quid cautius, quid jureconsultius composuisse
poteras, ut decem causidicos vel adhibuisse viderere, vel
pertimuisse ? Nam quid hoc.est, obsecro ? ** an non vi-
deant homines in corde isto.” Quid vident homines in
corde ? Urinatore hic opus est Delio. Verùm quid quis
in corde videat, viderit. Ego facta palam, audita, visa,
testata refero : quas nemo meas esse calumnias sine
maxima calumnia dixerit. “ Longè turpior sum,” in-
quis, “ re quidem vera quàm illi fingunt; ob illa tot
abscondita, quorum apud te reus verè sum.” Sic tu
nota ignotis, clara absconditis delere atque eluere co-
maris: occulta, incerta, latentia confiteris, ut explorata,
certa, manifesta eò impudentiùs negare possis: ad ex-
tremum eò descendis, ut confessionem hanc, quasi
libellum famosum de temetipso conscribas, quò faciliùs
veram accusationem aliorum possis evadere. Tu hæc
atque hujusmodi valere apud Deum cave existimes;
apud homines certè vel mediocriter sagaces, minimè
valebunt. Quod si linguis, ut ipse ais, atque conviciis
omnium jamdiu verberatus, resipuisti aliquando revera,
et ad bonam frugem revertisti, gaudeo. Nos te sic
veram egisse pœnitentiam arbitrabimur, si tuarum in
nos injuriarum et maledicentiæ famosæ pœnituisse
tamdem intelligemus.
J O A N N IS P H I L I PP I
A N G L I
R E S P O N S I O
A D
APOLOGIAM ANONYMI CUJUSDAM TEN EBRIONIS PRO REGE ET POPULO ANGLICANO INFANTISSI MAM.
(Finst published 1655.]
CoNTRA famosum anonymi cujusdam libellum, in quo
senatus populusque Anglicanus turpissimis convitiis
lacerabatur, quem jam vulgo notum est, Salmasii gram-
matici infame opus fuisse, prodiit nuper Joannis Miltoni
Angli pro patria sua defensio. Liber sané probus,
omniumque doctorum virorum judicio domi forisque
multum approbatus. Quicum talis esset, expectabatur
quidem vel Salmasii ipsius, vel alius alicujus viri lite-
rati responsio. Illarum certë partium magni intererat
electum aliquem et disertum virum ad causam suam
jam diu laborantem et ruentem adhibuisse. Cúm ecce
demum ex omnibus illis rumorem montibus, quos assi-
dué fama nostras ad aures afferebat, tandem prorepit
exiguusiste mus, qui miserè stridens rodit tantummodó,
aliud quidem nihil agit; vel, ut verius dicam, inanes
quasdam mortiunculas captat, dentemque in dente fati-
gat, authorem certé non laedit, ejus autem argumento-
rum vim et acumen nē assequitur quidem. Mirati
primūm sumus quis esset; nomen enim ignobile, futili-
tatis certé suae conscius, celat. Cum veró libellus ejus,
macri nescio cujus et jejuni ingenii indicium, perlectus
esset, in eo statim, tanquam in speculo, virum conspex-
imus. Quis igitur sit, póst videbimus. Hoc verö jam
tacere non possum, hominem quendam valdé obscurum
et vilem eum esse apparere; qui tamen arrogantia sua
mendaciisque fretus, ut morientem et pené defunctam
regis sui causam aliquantulum resuscitare videretur,
hominumque animos jam sedatos, et judiciis Dei statim
acquieturos, iterum commoveret atque irritaret, Dei
Omnipotentis voluntati, summeque justitiae se opponere
(quam ille tâm insignibus et mirandis irae suae exem-
plis in regem, regisque fautores editis, omnibus vult
esse notam) et supremos reipublicae nostrae Magistratus
accusare, convitiisque indignissimis infamare ausus est.
Veruntamen ita obtorpescit, tam insulsus est, tamgue
somniculosum se glirem praebet, ut certissimum cause
suae jam languentis, et in totum penê perditae omen
praese fert. Omnium enim debilissimam atque iniquis-
simam certe causam illam necesse est esse, qua in de-
fendenda fautores ejus non solum armis, verüm etiam
ratione et argumentis inferiores sint. Meritó igitur
clim talis esset, ab ipso Miltono neglectus et contemptus
est. Multó enim indignior ab omnibus existimabatur,
quam ut spectata jam facundia limati illius atque culti
authoris ad eruenda sterquilinia, rabidamdue loquacita-
tem tam effraenis atque stulti blateronis refutandan
descenderet. Verum né inter suos perfugas imanis iste
rabula se venditaret et aliquid magnum, vel quod uno
sané prandiolo dignum sit, se scripsisse crederet, equi-
dem cum in patriam pietate, tum instauratae nuper
libertatis apud nos amore ductus, necnon illi etiam viro
mihi semper observando, quem iste insectatur, multis
officiis devinctus, pati non poteram, quin hujus ineptis-
simi nebulonis petulantiam retundendam mihi, né ro-
gatus quidem, susciperem. Quemadmodum igitur
Romani olim tirones in palum se primô gladiis et pilis
exercebant, ita ego in hunc caudicem stylum acuere et
ingenii vixdum pubescentis rudimenta deponere haud
incommodë me posse confido. Cum adversario enim
tam insipido et vulgari, exiguo saltem quivisingenio,
et eruditione quantumvis leviter imbutus, etiam de im-
proviso congredi sine periculo poterit. Prius igitur
quam opus ipsum aggrediar, operae pretium videtur, au-
thorem hujus Apologiae illustrem, si diis placet, et diser-
tum, in occulto tamen latentem, investigare. Sunt
qui dicunt nomen illi Jano esse, obscuro homini
et bonarum literarum rudi, ex illo grege leguleiorum
quos pragmaticos vocant. Verum cum meminissem
bifrontem esse Janum, alterum sincipitium in ejus oc-
cipitio quaerendum mihi esse statui. Itaque alteri sin-
cipitionomen, utiego indiciis quibusdam comperi, Bram-
malo est. Is librum nuper stylo atque sensu huic pené
geminum scripsit Anglicé EikovokNásnv, cujus et hunc
foetum esse haud temere plures autumant. Virum
igitur, quanquam et hic vultum in occipitio gerit, si
libet, cognoscite. Nam, ut ipse profitetur, theologie
doctor est, et episcopus Hiberniensis. Is cum ab
ineunte aetate homo discinctus et ebriosus, episcoporum,
qui tune in Anglia dominabantur, luxum, opes, am-
bitionem ante oculos haberet, inedia pressus et latrantis
stomachi instinctu, nihil sibi utilius esse duxit, quâm
ut sacerdotis munere indutus, Ecclesiam, tune quidem
764
JOANNIS PHILIPPI RESPONSIO
lupis omnibus patentem, invaderet; et conciunculis
aliquot ad illorum temporum pravitatem compositis in-
structus, quas de scripto recitandas circumferre solebat,
nobilium hominum mensas, et sacellani pinguem ali-
quam mercedem, siqua ejusmodi offa se obtulisset,
ambiebat; ubi coenis quâm lautissimis, precibus quâm
brevissimis uterentur. Inter alios Derbiae comiti se
clanculum offerebat.—Tandem veró nequitiis coopertus,
benevolentiam et favorem comitis Straffordiae, proregis
in Hibernia, quem multiplicis nomine perduellionis
totus populus ad supplicium tandem poscebat, assenta-
tionibus et impudentia turpiter aucupatus est. Ille
hominem se nactum esse ratus ad omnia facinora pa-
ratum, quique populum adulatoriis et aulicis concio-
nibus suis ad suscipiendum servitutis jugum paratiorem
redderet, episcopum eum Derriensem in Hibernia cre-
avit. Jam verö post expulsos reges et praelatos, ad
priorem vitae inopiam redactus, rursus esuriens, “Cu-
rium” nunc “simulat” qui “Bacchanalia” modó vixit;
utdue pietatis obtentu cunctam rabiem in eos effun-
deret, quiet insum et caeteros istiusmodi latrones ovili-
bus Ecclesiae opimis expulerunt, spe etiam nonnulla
ampliorem aliquem episcopatum, mendaciorum suorum
et audaciae praemium sub minore Carolo devorandi, pel-
lem ovinam induit, nil praeter pietatem et sanctimo-
niam prae se fert; ita tamen, ut oblonga lupi cauda
infra institam sacerdotalem facilè appareat.
En virum egregium prae caeteris qui apologiam pro
rege et populo Anglicano scribendam sibi sumit! Age
verö, pro “rege” ut libet. Sed quid tu pro “populo
Anglicano,” qui Dominum tuum Straffordium, hostem
populi acerrimum meritis poemis affecit, teque pessimum
ejus in Ecclesia Hiberniensi ad omnia scelera minis-
trum pari supplicio affecisset, nisi aut fuga aut obscu-
ritas tua eorum manibus, qui Dominum plectebant, te
furem eripuisset. Curetiam apologiam “pro populof"
An pro is qui regem puniverunt? haud credo; dices,
pro is qui regi ſavebant periodus P. At illi id non re-
quirunt, ut qui, facta pace, modicé multati, sua jam
bona securé possideant, suamgue fidem reipublicae nos-
trae obstrinxerint. Unde tua ista apologia aut absurda
planè est, aut mimium intempestiva. Verum tu is
homo es, qui titulum istum libri tui, utpote speciosum,
vel cum maxima quavis absurditate arripere voluisti :
Contra “Joannis” scilicet “Polypragmatici” defen-
sionem. Sic ejus nimirum contra Claudium Anony-
mum, satis concinné quidem dictum, si Claudium cum
Anonymo conjunxelis, insulsè imitaris. Verúm non is
polypragmaticus est, qui libertatem laudat, tyrannos
damnat, civium suorum rectè et decore facta defendit;
sed tu potius, tuique similes were sic dici debent, qui
cum ecclesiasticos esse Vos profiteamini, et Ecclesiam
vestra polypragmatica perdidistis, et rerum civilium
administrationem nihil ad vos pertinentem perpetuo
conturbatis. Sed causa suberat gravis cur scriberes,
credo, contra “defensionem” Miltoni “destructivam.”
Brammale dic nobis cujum pecus 7 anne latinum ?
Non, verüm monachorum, illi sic rure loquuntur.
Cognoscite jam hominem in illa nempe barbarie scho-
lasticorum quám in clarorum authorum puritate et
sapientia versatiorem, quorum lucem vespertilio iste
ferre nunquam potuit. Unde demum prodeat apologia
ista videamus. “Antwerpia;” hoc enim solum prae-
clarus iste protestantium episcopus, asylum, ut videtur,
invenire sibi potuit, inter jesuitarum et monachorum
catervas, quibuscum tales pseudepiscopi libentissimé
esse solent. Rectè igitur meo judicio et se dignè
faciunt protestantes exteri, qui turbatores istiusmodi
errabundos suis coetibus abigunt. Saltem non ausus
est apud ullam Batavorum civitatem hoc suum opuscu-
lum typis mandare, veritus me illustrissimi foederatorum
ordines, ut Salmasii nuper sui libellum publicè dam-
narunt, ita se quoque extorrem et erraticum nebulo-
nem multó severius punirent. Quod illis quidem in
laudem atque honorem, huic meritó in opprobrium
cedere debet.
Jam ad lectorem quaedam praefatur, et pauca sané, sed
quae Stultitiam hominis et ignorantiam illiteratam plus
mimio prodant. Queritur “unam tantum ” Salmasii
“impressionem,” iddue “magna cum difficultate in
lucem erupisse; ” ejus autem libri quem Miltonus
scripsit “tot esse exemplaria, ut” nesciat “cui lectorem
remitteret.” Itaque nihil hic reperio, cur non amico
nostro gratulemur, Salmasium salsé rideamus. Annon
haec satis ad arguendam causae tuæ foeditatem visa
sunt P Miltonum omnes cum favore et plausu teipso
teste legunt; Salmasium abjiciunt, nihili faciunt. His
tua pervicacia aded non movetur, ut omnes idcirco
“mortales veritatem odisse, mendaciorum et convitio-
rum amore flagare,” impudentissimè accuses, ipse in-
terim non apostolus, non propheta, neque evangelista,
sed scortator et helluo satis notus, et ganeonum dun-
taxat episcopus. Vos verö lectores, quos non huma-
miter appellat, sed in ipso exordio tam petulanter per-
stringit, tam docti reprehensoris vestri imprimis sen-
sum, deinde literas vereri jam discite ; primum enim
ait Miltoni defensionem “invidiosè elaboratam,” de-
inde tot excusis exemplaribus approbatissimam esse
fatetur; haec sané apud omnes qui Latiné intelligunt
pugnantia sunt. Tum “tot sunt,” inquit, “illius ex-
emplaria, ut nescio cui lectorem remitterem.” Satius
tu quidem, qui vel prima pagina soloecismos evitare
non potes, ad Orbilii cujusvis flagra remittendus es,
apud quem nulla poteris apologia uti, quin omnes te
pueri virgis et ferulis pulchrè depexum atque ornatum
dimittant. Verum te jam primó auguror hac in parte
haud raró peccaturum, qui tam rem manè incipis.
Neque lectorem stulté alloqui satis habes, seded etiam
ulterius audaciae processisti (quo vitio ignorantia max-
imè laborare solet) ut Leidensi Academiae celeberrimae
ineptias tuas foetidissimas epistola etiam stultissimè
scripta dedicare ausus sis. “Alumnum ”te academiae
“quondam ” fuisse affirmas. Tunc veró academiae
ullius unquam alumnus, cujus inſantiae propemodum
illiteratae quemlibet vel in agris ludum literarium pu-
deret P Leidensem autem “alumnum ” fuisse unquam
te dicere audere, dubium tibi ne sit, quin illa academia
vehementissimè indignetur; majori enim contumelia
urbem illam afficere non potes, cujus te “quondam
alumnum ” ſuisse praedicas; quanquam illud “quon-
dam,” si unquam fuit, multorum postea annorum cra-
AD APOLOGIAM ANONYMI
CUJUSDAM TENEBRIONIS. 7(35
pula in lustris atque popinis jam diu proluisti. Sed et
tu ** eorum tutelam expetis.” Hominum stupidissime,
tutelam tu tuae barbariæ in musarum domicilio quæris,
quarum hoc ipsum munus est, vinctam barbariem
' catenis in terras ultimas exterminare : nescis medios
dilapsus in hostes. Saltem dum academicosalloqueris,
simula te literatum quempiam esse, vel ad punctum
temporis, si potes. “ Salmasius,” ais, “ mihi ansam
præbuit qui tamen omnibus arripuit:” quænam ista
balbuties est ? Fac modo academia, quam interpellas,
te intelligat alumnum suum, vix credo ammotinum.
** Ncc calamum,” inquis, “ im manum sumere aude-
rem ” (sapuisses tu quidem si ausus non fuisses) “ misi
Miltoni amentia me invitum provocasset.” At ille te
non magis provocavit, quàm qui prætereunt importu-
num et improbissimi oris canem, quem inani latratu
insequentem ita contemnit, ut vix fuste te dignetur aut
calce. ** Quid vero,” inquis, “ ab extero qui inter im-
hospitales Caucasos vitam degit, expectari poterit?”
Nihil sanè : Expectationem tu nostram minimè fefel-
listi : neque certè erat opus ut te inter Caucasos vitam
degere faterere, lingua te tua ipsique mores barbarum
clamitant: Tuaque illa Caucasea “ poma ” si dare
velles, scito omnes Alcinoos magnoperè aspernari. Ad
academiam quereris inter alia quòd “ Banausi et Me-
chamici in pulpitam ascenderunt.” Perdoctus tu qui-
den et idoneus, qui Banausos, et Mechamicos in pul-
pitum ascendentes insecteris, qui pariter atque illi
grammaticæ rudis, haud illis magis pulpitum declinare
potes. Postremò “ Alienigenam ” te “ Anglum ” ap-
pellas. ** Id ” quidem rectissimè : Aliena enim sentis,
aliena loqueris, quidni alienigenam te Anglum esse
dicas, id est spurium, quem Augli veluti purgamentum
suæ patriæ atque piaculum jure quidem ad Caucasos
ablegârunt.
IN PRÆLUDIUM AD
P R AE F A T I O N E M.
IN præludiis esse se existimat vir gravis; ludos ut
videtur episcopales mox editurus. IFavete spectatores
Ludiomi episcopo. Verum putaret quis hominem mom
prologum agere, sed in ipso proœmio Orestem insanum
aut Athamanta saltare. “ Ne insaniens cacodæmon
Johannes Miltonus, &c.” O mitem et mansuetum !
quàm non iracundè, quàm humaniter exorditur ! quod
aliis, quamlibet furentibus, extremum maledicentite est,
id huic pro levi tantùm præludio habetur. Sed hoc
novum non est : sic enim Pharisæi olim, veri ejus pro-
genitores, Christum ipsum à cacodæmone agitari dice-
bant; ut nemo vel hoc vel pejus in se dici, præsertim
ab hoc episcopo verè diabolico, molestè ferat. Offen-
ditur imprimis quòd Miltonus reipubl. insignia, quem-
admodum Salmasius regis in fronte libri posuit. Hæc
ille posita ibi ait tanquam foenum in cornu, “ ut cumcti
sibi caverent;” quod hoc ad alios nescio.
Brammale non miror fœnum in cornu usque adeò hor-
Te verò
rescere, quoties tot tua adulteria animo revolvis. Omitto
deinde quæ de cruce furcifer atque etiam de lyra stul-
tissimè deliras: et certè præludia professus, nihil aliud
nisi nugas agis. “ Parlamentum et concilium satis
aetatis habent seipsos armis defendere.” Atqui tuum
erat potiùs cogitare, satisne ætatis haberes Latinè ut
possis ad ipsum scribere. “ Sed ringit illum Salma-
sius,” vel ut posteà perdoctè sanè emendavit, “ ringit
ille pro Salmasio,” (menda an emendatio vitiosior sit,
lectorum esto judicium,) “ peregrinos veretur: num tu
credis quòd tot nefanda, &c.” Væ tibi Prisciane! nam
soloecismos hic non singulos, sed turmatim effundit.
Quàm verò peregrinos vereatur Miltonus, et imprimis
illum Thrasybombomachidem Salmasium, qui libros
ejus perlegerit abundè norit. “ Ego,” inquis, “liber-
tatem peto à libero suo populo Anglicamo, ut quod in
re tanti ponderis liberè proferre possim.” Tumc ut
quicquam quod liberum sit liberè proferre possis, man-
cipium aulæ fœdissimum, Straffordii famulus et minis-
ter, gulæ etiam atque inguini turpissimè serviens epis-
copus ? Quem populus opinor universus de libertate
concionantem veluti obscœnum portentum abomina-
retur ; vel etiam lapidibus obrueret, aut siquid mitius,
ecquis huc vincula et compedes, exclamarent; ut Ro-
mani olim, Claudii quodam aulico ad concionamdum
misso, “ Io, Saturnalia!” repentè clamabant. Nam
servis Romæ, nisi festis Saturnalibus, liberè loqui non
licebat. “ Nos,” inquis, “ super dejectos cantando epi-
niceia triúmphamus.” Rectè quidem super hostes qui
propter commoda quædam sua cum tyramno conjurati,
patriam ad servitutem redigere conabantur: et epinicia
nos quidem minimè omnium superbè cantamus, Deo
semper gloriam tribuimus. Verùm quid sibi volunt
“ epiniceia” tua, Bardocuculle ? An quia tam strenuè
pergræcari solitus es, Græcè idcircò intelligere te putas?
“ Angit” Miltonum, inquis, “ quòd Salmasius extra-
neus aliquam notitiam caperet illarum rerum, quæ nunc
fiunt in Anglia : ” non quòd “ notitiam caperet,” sed
quòd rerum nihil ad se pertinentium arbitrum se faceret,
veritatem turpissimis mendaciis perverteret, quos non
morat, in eos convitiis et contumeliis inveheretur.
“ Fures,” inquis, “ lucem timent.” Tu igitur fur om-
nium pessimus, qui lucem times et nomen celas. Sacra
etiam impuris manibus attrectas. Prov. 29. Cùm
boni regnant, populus gaudet ; cùm mali dominantur,
populus dolet : ea de causa cùm Carolus dominabatur,
populus dolebat. Quod omnes satis meminerunt. Ne-
que leve signum est, eos jam gaudere, bonis remp. ge-
rentibus; Carolum emim filium, etiam cum exercitu
jam venientem, et libertatem, qua incedit, omnibus pol-
licentem, tamquam hostem aversamtur ubique, et fu-
giunt, vi etiam et armis cum summa alacritate propul-
Samt.
Quam autem sis ineptus nunquam clariùs perspi-
citur, quàm cùm de te loqueris, ut hic. ** Fateor,”
quis, “ ut huic veteratori respondeam, me multò infe-
riorem bonis omnibus et adjumentis vitæ spoliatum.”
Quibusmam bonis ? Si bonis animi, doctrina et ingenio
sis inferior, cur nom parem tubi congressum potiùs
quæsivisti ? Sed is puto es, qui esse doctum, esse
im-
eloquentem nihil aliud, nisi esse divitem existimes:
766
JOANNIS PHILIPPI RESPONSIO
ut bonis externis et vitæ adjumentis spoliatus si
sis, doctrina quoque et ingenio spoliatus tibi vide-
are. Ain' vero tu “ bonis omnibus spoliatum te
esse ?” Callidus nimis es et vafer, cupis celare divitias
tuas, verùm non potes. Indicabo ego te et facultates
tuas. Praeter illa bona, quæ erepta tibi esse dicis, re-
stat adhuc tibi, non enim celabis, ingens, eoque ingen-
tius, quòd nemo tibi eripiet, soloecismorum peculiam ;
in eo genere divitiarum, meminem te locupletiorem
cognovi. Extorrem præterea te esse queritaris; vah
quam indigne ! Ut perspicias igitur quàm sum pro te
sollicitus, est in Cilicia oppidum Soli antiquum, ut per-
hibent, et satis amplum ; illuc omnes qui soloecismos
tam strenuè facere solent, coloniam ducunt; sarcinas
igitur quàm primùm collige, eò enim te, tuasque
omnes facultates suadeo transferas. Permagna ibi
te latifundia, mihi crede, manent, immò, nisi fallor,
Soloecorum omnium principatum facilè unus obtinebis.
Verùm quod nullum tibi unquam fuit (si ingenium di-
cis quo inferiorem te factum fateris) id tibi mos scilicet
eripuisse insimulas. Cùm te contrà ab adversario
multas dictiones, et aptè usitata ab eo verba ineptè suf-
furari non pudeat. “ Superbire” Miltonum ais, “ no-
minibus suis et titulis in fromtispicio suspensis.” Quæ
ille nomina præter suum, quos ille titulos in fronte libri
suos posuit ? An ideo superbus, quia se sui neque no-
minis neque causæ pudebat ? Hæccine tibi “ phylac-
teria” sunt ? “ Salmasium,” inquis, Miltonus, “ tan-
quam amonymum commitiis et scommatibus scurrilibus
persequitur:” multò certè sermonis lepore et facetiis in
hominem jocatur, tu scurrile quicquam ab eo dictum
mequis ostendere. “ Sed seculo venturo omnes Miltomi
hoc nomine misere vapulabunt, me fortè ” (id est ejus
loquela, misi fortè) “ judicet mundus, &c.” Quicquid
de Miltonis seculo venturo fiat, tu vates ventriloquus
et infantissimus fide mulla es dignus. “ Sed mil novi
viros optimos nomina sua reticuisse.” Nempe quia tu
ità facis. “ Sic sanctus Paulus ad Hebræos;” scripsit
enim ad nationem suo nomini infensissimam, de rebus
admodum novis et parum creditis ; tu verò populo An-
glicano, tu exteris tibi et causæ tuæ, ut ipse ais, mi-
nimè iniquis, de re notissima, et apud omnes gentes, ut
idem ais, receptissima, et tamen malè tibi conscius no-
men occultas. “ Sic Beza.” Rectè meministi, scrip-
sit enim “ Vindicias contra Tyrannos,” quas tu inter
** veritates” illas, “ quæ, ut nunc temporis, vix hiscere
audebant,” recenses. “ Virtus,” inquis, apud nos “ vitio
vertitur.” Quia Brammali scilicet virtutes, ebrietas,
voracitas, alea, scortatio, vitia habentur. “ Sed Canta-
brigia et Oxonium suis invictis declarationibus se ab
hoc crimine liberarunt.” At invictæ illæ declarationes
fatuitatis et vaecordiæ facilè evincuntur: academiarum
enim non erant, sed prælatorum factionis, quæ ibi re-
liqua erat. Rectiùs nunc sapiunt academiæ. * Gene-
vam,” inquis, “ Deodatus” hoc crimine “ liberavit.”
Solus fortasse sensum ille suum, non totius academiæ
judicium explicavit. “ I.eydam quoque Salmasius.”
Non Leydensis tamen, sed externus. Leydenses liber-
tate priùs recuperata, quàm literis clari erant.
“ Tot ergò doctorum et bonorum agmine circumval-
latus,” vix uno videlicet atque altero, “ faciam rem non
erat et armis se tuetur (non jure) tui.”
difficilem, causam Dei omnipotentis dicturus,” Dei
nimirum tui, hoc est ventris, aut Bacchi, qui tibi om-
nipotens est; cujus auspiciis Brammalus
Grammaticus, geometra, minister, alipta, sacerdos,
Augur, scoenobates, medicus, magus, omnia movit.
Brammalus esuriens, in coelum, jusseris, ibit.
Sed eodem credo successu, quo grammaticatur. Nam
“ in tantam crevit audaciam, ut quicquid libet dicere,
licet:” hæc ejus syntaxis est. “ Sed” Miltonus ** mo-
narchiam è mundo tollere laborat.” Dic ubi ? Omni-
bus enim populis semper hoc liberum reliquit, sive mo-
marchiam vellent, sive aliam regiminis formam ; tam-
tummodò nolentibus imponi moluit. Ad soloecismos
tuos redeo, qui jam vix intermittunt; “ Quidni Salma-
sio non pepercit rabula ? Videtur tamen sua canima fe-
rocia catenis vinctus vel potiùs vinciendus, qui omnes
undique mordit.” Unde tibi isti mitores orationis et
lumina, Brammale ? Fieri non potest, quin omnes ob-
scurorum virorum epistolas et loculos expilaveris. Cri-
mini das Miltono, “ quod is in partem adjutorii” (ejus
enim barbarismis utor) “ Deum vocet.” Facis ut te
decet episcopum atheum et prophanum. Sed miraris
“ qua fronte” Miltonus “ ausus est dicere,” se “ haec,
jubente parlamento, evulgasse.” Primum Miltonùs
hoc nusquam dicet ; sed dixisse finge, ut certè fingis,
quid tu contra? “ Si vera,” inquis, ** narrat, ubi Brown,
vel Elsing, vel Scobel, clerici parlamentariorum ?”
Næ tu homo verè minutulus es, et nullius pretii: mi-
hilne putas jubente atque etiam libente parlamento
prodire in lucem posse, misi cui momen clerici parla-
mentarii adscribatur ? Mirum est tot tibi nugas cogi-
tanti non hoc etiam in mentem venisse, quod vulgò
dicitur,
Clericus in libro non valet ova duo.
Præsertim cujus tu farinæ clericus es, qui mediocriter
saltem Latinè non intelligis; si enim intellexisses, non
hæc ejus verba, “ quæ authoritate parlamenti scripta
et declarata sunt,” de ejus libro dicta existimares, verùm
de publicis parlamenti scriptis, et declarationibus pas-
sim editis. Neque te quicquam ex verbis ejus lucra-
tum esse censisses, quamvis quod dixisse eum falsò ac-
cusas, “ factionem” rempubl. dixisset; factionem enim
tam in bonam quàm in malam partem olim dici vel
pueris motum est. Progrederis deinde. ** Una factio
Quid tu hic
tibi velis ? Si capis ipse, bene est, ego quidem non
capio. Ut nec sequentia tua de “ parlamento supremo,
concilio summo, de grammatica” denique * comparandi
gradibus laborante.” Id te angit potius quòd hierar-
chia tua gradibus laborat. “ Hunc,” inquis, ** honorem
Deo ceditis, ut dum vos vestris mundanis gaudeatis,
nè minimam religionis aut animarum curam suscipere
velle, palàm profitemini.” En iterum foede soloecum !
Sed sane dignum est, et tu, qui animarum cura quid
sit, nunquam scivisti, eam civili gladio commissam cre-
deres. Nos verò, ais, “ magno impetu prosternimus
veræ religionis cultores.” Hostes quidem civiles et
proditores, religionis autem cultores, religionis causa
non prosternimus. “ Salmasium” deinde crepas: tace
AD APOLOGIAM ANONYMI CUJUSDAM TENEBRIONIS.
767
de Salmasio, ille suos patitur manes, et in Suecorum
aula jam diu friget. Sed Miltonus, ut omnes respub-
licas et “ illustrissimos etiam Hollandiæ ordines ” in
partes suas pelliceret, “ illorum principi ° oblatrat.
Advertite Hollandi, principem nuper mortuum, vestrum
principem appellat, nec vos quidem liberos esse patitur.
Cavete, dum licet, me pervagante hujusmodi aulicorum
doctrina elatus, alter quispiam apud vos princeps ac
dominus succrescat. Tandem “ præludium” hoc grandi
solæcismo pene claudit, “ haereditarium regis imperium,
cui totus populus per multos annos juratus consen-
tierunt.” Vos lectores eruditi, quotquot literas huma-
niores amatis, præfantem hunc Bavium, immò barba-
rum, odio quo dignus est, et sibilo prosequimini.
CAP. I.
PRAELUDIIs amotis fabulam expectabamus, promissas
nimirum illas Miltoni confutationes. Et certè hoc
sensu revera fabulam agit ; eorum enim quæ promisit,
nihil præstat ; sed partim maledictis, partim insulsis
regiæ fortunae miserationibus totum hoc caput exhau-
rit. “ Non sum,” inquit, “ tam audax Phormio, ut
Salmasio me compararem, quàm Miltonus, qui se Sal-
masio opponere auderet.” Næ tu Phormio quis fuerit
in comœdia parùm videris intelligere. At quid ais ?
“ Miltonum Salmasio opponerè se audere,” grammati-
corum Pyrgopolynici? Facinus ingens marras. « Nam
si authoritate,” inquis, ** dirimenda lis sit, plus fidei
uni Salmasio, quàm mille millenis Miltomis omnes in-
genui et docti darent.” At verò qui authoritatem vel
Salmasio vel Miltono dant, nisi quam eorum alteruter
ratione et argumentis sibi acquirit, ipsi neque docti,
neque ingenui sunt. Miltonum exteris antehac ig-
notum veritas et ratio commendavit : Salmasium imame
momen, et multæ lectionis opinio commemdare sine
ratione non valuit, quin ab amicis etiam ejus, et fautor-
ibus longè inferior in hoc certamine sit judicatus. Tu
totam de patribus disputationem satis callidè abs te ,
amoves, et quos nunquam consulueris. “ Miltonum in
plurimis Salmasio castigandum relinquis.” Munus pro-
fectò satis arduum Salmasio reliquisti, qui Miltomi re-
sponsum cùm legeret, ita, ut videtur, perculsus est et
quatefactus, ut, soluta alvo, in latrinam putem confu-
gisse: unde scripsit ad amicos, cacabundus in hæc verba:
“ Ego istum Miltonum permerdabo et permingam.”
IBalistam satis validam in postico geras oportet, Salmasi,
qua merdas tam longè contorquere aut explodere te
posse putas. Hinc est quòd tam fœtida meditantem jam
diu in aula Sueciæ fœtere te dicant: neque mirum est, si
Sueciæ regina, quamvis opinione vulgi primùm decepta,
nunc suo acri judicio compertum te et cognitum tam
olentem Mævium à se abjecerit. Ferunt alii, cùm pa-
ginam umam atque alteram responsi illius percurrisset,
furore correptum sic subitò rodomontari cæpisse. “ Ego
perdam istum nebulonem et totum parlamentum.” Hæc
verba ipsius ad nos delata retuli ; et sanè si istiusmodi
homo est, mom is idoneus qui castiget alios, sed qui ipse
castigetur, in phreneticorum potiùs gymnasium depor-
tandus. Progredere, * prætermissis,” ut ais, “ oratoriis
et verisimilibus et Cicerone, Aristotele, Euripide, So-
phocle, et aliis ethnicorum scriptis. Non enim Christi-
amis necessariò recurrendum est ad ethnicos.” Nescis
ergò Salmasium tuum hanc priùs affectasse viam ?
Miltomus eò tantùm adversarium secutus est provocan-
tem. Tu verò interim hypocrita ignaviæ tuæ consulis,
qui cum nullum sanè bonum, aut facundum authorem
unquam attigeris, id studio pietatis non fecisse te simu-
las. Miltonus aiebat, ** pater nos genuit, non rex.”
Tu inde momen patris à specie ad numerum detorques,
ut captiones hinc quasdam et amphibolias frigidissimas
consuere possis; quas ne recitatione quidem dignas exis-
timo, adeo sunt ineptæ et mucosæ. “ Si verò,” inquis,
.“ rex juvenis uxorem ambiens papam patrem sanctissi-
mum appellaverit, non tam acri censura perstrigendus.”
Sic Zimri juvemis Moabissam uxorem ambiens à religio-
ne vera defecit ; an excusatior idcirco est ? ** Probabile,”
verò, ais, “ esse quòd literam secretariis suis scribendam
commisit.” Eò magis culpandus, qui rem tanti mo-
menti, quæque religionem atque honorem suum im dubi-
um vocare poterat, secretariis tam minimè probis com-
miserit. Verùm et nos ** regem Hispaniarum regem
Catholicum” appellamus. Istarum literarum exemplar
aequum est te proferre, si potes, sicuti nos regis ad
papam protulimus. “ Et quidni,” inquis, “ papam
patrem sanctissimum appellaveritis, si in politicis vobis-
cum sentiret.” Sic scurræ solent deprehensi ; quod se
fecisse constat, id alios facere velle calumniantur.
Hos mores scurrarum lepidissime depingit Plautus :
Nihil est profecto stultius atque stolidius,
Neque mendaciloqnius, neque perjurius,
Quàm urbani assidui cives, quos scurras vocant ;
Qui omnia se simulamt scire, nec quicquam sciunt,
Quod quisquam in animo habet, aut habiturus est, sciunt,
Quæ neque futura, neque facta sunt, tamen illi sciunt.
* Si hos vernes,” ais, “ regum auribus insidiantes, et
velut intus existentes, prohibent alienum, ut memimem
sibi fidelem audire poterat, rex radicitus extirpasset,
&c.” Credo istos vermes et auribus et cerebro tuo im-
sidiantes, grammaticæ rudimenta, siqua tibi insculpta
erant, penitùs exedisse. Rursus “ Deodatum” affers,
** qui regem nostrum unicum reformatæ religionis de-
fensorem insignivit.” At, inquam, longius abfuit
Deodatus, quam ut Carolum in cute nosse posset ; ne
dicam clausisse oculos, si post Rupellenses reformatos
tam à Carolo præclarè defensos hoc dixerit. Sed pergis,
“ vobis qui Carolum è mundo sustulistis, tamdem rede-
undi patet via in Ægyptum, ex quo ægrè detinemini.”
Eja solorum decus, quàm te jam in mumicipio tuo so-
lensi oblectas, à quo memo te possit detinere, me si
furca quidem expelleret. Miltonus, ais, “ nec locum,
nec librum, ubi à se prolata” è summorum theologorum
libris ** im veniemus, exhibet.” At ista loca Miltonus
facilè protulisset, misi ipse Salmasius adversos sibi
plerosque reformatos theologos haud umo in loco fassus
esset ; quæ tamen loca eorum scripta legentibus ita
passim occurrunt, ut hinc tua potiùs ignorantia constet,
qui neque illos, neque ipsum Salmasium prelegisse
videris. Jam “ Davidis” exemplum omnibus notum
768
JOANNIS PHILIPPI RESPONSIO
marras. Rationes autem illas, quas attulit Miltomus ;
cur exemplum illud ad causam hanc non pertineret,
non attingis ; tantummodò unctum Domini, unctum
Domini ingeminas. Dic sodes ergò, estne ommis rex
unctus Domini ? Omnis, ais, præsertim Christianus.
Cur ergò dux Josua quinque unctos Domini uno die
suspendit ? Nam Christianos si dices non fuisse, ridicu-
lum est ; quandoquidem Christianum profiteri, cùm sit
maleficus, meminem supplicio debito eximere potest.
“ David,” inquis, “ viam nobis monstravit tolerantiæ,
ut Deo judici relinquetur, qui impoenitentem percutiet,
ut morietur.” Quid me cogis ? defessus jam penè
sum, solenses tuas delitias perambulando. Ad David-
em recurris; Salmasio responsum erat eadem inculcanti,
Davidem privatum privatas injurias ulcisci moluisse.
v. - • · ©* - • e
Tu parlamentum omne privatum esse dicis, regem Ca-.
rolum, unctum Domini fuisse ; mihil tamen horum pro-
bas ; nihil ab adversario dictum cum ratione oppugnas.
“ Si ex aura populari,” inquis, “ diademata regibus
auferenda, quis non vellet se ex infima plebe terræ
filium potiùs esse quàm regem ?” Id noli timere ; ut-
cumque non deessent reges. Neque te, credo, hoc de-
terrebat, quò minùs episcopatum turpiter ambires, quam-
vis populo invisum. “ At Miltonus,” ais, “ dum potes-
tatem populi in reges suos imprudenter praedicat, reges
omnes esse tyrannos instruit.” Sic sanè ut lex instruit
homicidas, quia vetat.
ς ς
Jam Troja maneret,” ais,
** Consilio Priami si foret usa senis.**
At verò noster Priamus, vel Paris potiùs, non Trojæ
usus consilio, sed Helenæ suæ, et se perdidit et regnum
suum. Jam ordine perrupto ad nonum puto vel deci-
mum caput excurris. Miltonum, ais, asseruisse, “ nul-
lum membrum parlamenti absque proprio consensu in
3 udicium vocari posse, regem” autem tu saltem “ mem-
brum ” parlamemti esse dicis. Præpropere tu quidem
id ibas petitum, quod nusquam erat, neque à quoquam,
quod memini, unquam dictum. Hoc etiam responsum
tulisse regem, cùm quinque membra posceret falsissi-
mum est, quòd ex illa re gesta satis liquet. “ Nosti,”
inquis, “ quod nisi à sicariis vestris impeditus populus
esset, regem è vestris manibus eripuissent.” Verùm
quos tu populum esse existimas, nos non putamus. An
vero regiorum gregem illum perditum, totiesque domi-
tum, populum appellas ? Nos ita non existimamus :
victi bello, quod ipsi intulerant, jus populi amiserunt.
Miltonum gravitur accusas, quod dixerit, Salmasium
regis mortem ineptè plorantem, legentium neminem
pilo tristiorem reddidisse. Non ergo in Miltonum, sed
in stolidissimas conducti ploratoris nænias culpam con-
ferre debes.
Men' moveat quippe, et cantet si naufragus, assem
Protulerim. —— Verum : nec nocte paratum
Plorabit, qui me volet incurpasse querela.
** Majori patientia,” inquis, “ ferunt episcopi convitia
tua.” Episcoporum sanè patientia omnibus nota est.
Hic verò quasi interno dolore perculsus, magno fervore
et conatu, episcoporum cæremonias et ambitiones as-
serere contendis. Unde apertiùs licet conjicere, te
Brammalum lurconem illum quem antea diximus esse,
qui episcopos combibones, et commessatores tuos, belli
civilis faces, tam gnaviter defendis. “ Quot duxerit
Hippia moecnos,” inquis, “ innumerabiles sunt.” At
multò magis innumerabiles, quot Brammulus fecerit
mœchas. “ Sed rex noster,” ais, “ templa nostra de-
center ornavit et honoravit in honorem Dei, nunquam
in equorum stabulos convertebat.” Numquam, mihi
crede, templa vestra tàm “ decenter ornavit,” quàm tu
Solorum templa egregiis tuis ornasti solœcismis, quo-
rum monumenta sane sempiterna nunquam interibunt.
Te Deum omnes soloeci, te patronum tam præclare de
illo municipio meritum colent posthac in secula, et invo
cabunt ; in memoriam etiam eloquentiæ tuæ tam asi-
nimte, non scholas discipulis tuis, sed ** stabulos” dica-
bunt. Regem autem vestrum aio minimè omnium
“ templa” ormasse, sed ipsum potius in equorum stabula,
atque in haras etiam convertisse, dum tot immundos
prælatos, tot porcos episcopos, te denique spurcissimum
in Ecclesiam introduxit.—“ Regias” jam “ partes agi,”
dicis, si Presbyterianos graviùs incusemus. Nec tamen
Christus ipse et Apostoli, falsos Evangelii doctores,
fratres subdititios, religionis prætextu Ecclesiæ insidi-
antes, mitiùs olim increpabant.—Am ergò dicta eorum
aut scripta “ digladiari in se invicem” dices, quòd
suos vel libentes, vel deficientes à fide atque integri-
tate liberrimè reprehenderent ? ** Ubi mutatur forma
reipublicæ ex monarchia in aliam, non datur successio,
&c.” Non hunc Miltonus solùm, sed Salmasius ** obi-
cem Carolo secundo” posuit; ejus enim verba sunt, si
advertisses. Verùm tu, aut coecus aut demens, in socios
pariter ac hostes incurris. “ Tanta,” inquis, “ illorum
astutia omnia obliterata sunt, ut conclamatum est de
viribus humanis ; sed nos qui per fidem in Deum ex-
pectamus resurrectionem futuram, &c.” Apage sis
temulente. Quid tibi aut vinolentiis tuis cùm fide,
quem si porcula tua majora ita consopirent, ut resurgere
nunquam posses, feliciùs profecto consultum tibi foret.
“ Scires libenter quid per populum” velimus. Scirem
ego vicissim, quid Romani per senatum populumque
Romanum voluerint. Quæris “ quod remedium restat
populo contra tyrannidem parlamenti.” Tum id quo-
que dicam, cùm causæ quid erit ; nunc supervacua ne
quære.
CAP. II.
DEFINIERAT Salmasius regem “ Deo solo minorem,
legibus solutum ; si nostram rempub. sic definiret ali-
quis,” consensuros nos esse ais, qui tamen regis illam
definitionem oppugnavimus. Institutum hoc tuum
esse video, cùm refutare nihil possis, posse saltem ca-
lummiari. * Et qui penetrabit” Miltoni “ scripta,”
inquis, “ nil præter barbariem et insaniam inveniet.”
Dirumpi ergo necesse est te, qui tot viros doctos et
probos de Miltomi scriptis longè aliter sentire, invitus
quotidie cernis. Barbariem verò tu cuiquam impu-
dentissime ? quem præter linguæ fatuitatem, cùm
AD APOLOGIAM ANONYMII
CUJUSDAM TENEBRIONIS. 769
sensus belluini et stupor, tum etiam mores in ipsa
vastitate barbariæ matum atque nutritum clamant.
Utcunque tamem siquid affers audiamus. “ Petrus su-
premum vocat regem.” Supereminentem quidem
vocat; idque vulgari potiùs loquendi more, quàm verè
politico, pro eorum captu ad quos scripsit. Sic consul
Romanus ùtraroc est vocatus, id est supremus, quo modo
et Poloniæ rex, et dux Venetiarum supremus vocari
potest; qui tamen, si politicas rationes accuratiùs inire
volumus, et multorum instituta regnorum, supremi non
sunt. Ita igitur supremum vocâsse regem Apostolus
censendus est, ut tamen leges cujusque gentis, et jura,
et reipub. formam inviolatam esse vellet.---Et certè non
tam supremus quis sit, docet aut disputat, quàm quas
ob causas et quatenus obedientiam sive supremis, sive
præsidibus præstare debeamus: id Miltonus copiosè
explicuit; tu nescio an tuæ conscientia vecordiæ, con-
sultò prætermittis. * Quasi,” inquis, ** triginta Athe-
nis tyranni non plus poterant in damnum populi, quàm
unus si maximè tyrannus esse voluerit.” At inquam
ego contrà, nullus umquam fuit unus, “ si maximè ty-
ramnus esse voluerit,” quin tyrannos non triginta solùm,
sed trecentos, atque etiam multò plures in damnum
populi constituere soleret : frustra igitur sub uno sive
monarchia, tyranno melius populo fore speras: nullus
enim in republica tyrannus umquam unus fuit, quin
plurimos sibi adsciscere tyrannos necesse habuerit.
“ Rex si abutetur,” inquis, “ potestate sua in regni de-
trimentum, à suis subditis impediri potest et debet.”
Rectè concedis: sed quousque impediri possit ac debeat
non dicis. Potest enim tyrannus eousque procedere in
detrimentum regni, ut nisi vim vi repellamus, eumque
pro hoste habeamus, impedire nullo modo possimus.
Concedis igitur ipse, et frustra contendis veritate victus,
sed videri concedere non vis, pertinaciæ studiosior,
quam veritatis; nam quod impediri ais tyrannum de-
bere, “ non in judicium trahi et capite plecti” vel ** ab
uno” vel “ ab omnibus,” sed “ Dei judicio relinquen-
dum esse,” nugæ sunt, et gratis dictæ; qute singula,
non affirmanda, sed probanda tibi restant. Vis mo-
marchiam reipublicæ forma esse perfectiorem. Id nos
in præsentia non agimus. Tua tamen argumenta, quo-
niam vacat, videamus. “ Introductam à Deo” dicis
“ in ultimum et præstantissimum remedium populo
toties ab inimicis subacto sub judicibus.”—Primùm cur
illud præstantissimum remedium non primò potiùs,
quàm ad ultimum adhibitum fuerit, cùm Deus rempub.
suam quam præstantissimis legibus formaret; deinde
cùm Israëlitæ regem peterent, pòst ammos circiter
quadringentos subjudicibus exactos, si monarchia præ-
stantissimum illud remedium Deo visum est, cur ab ea
dissuaserit populum suum ac deterruerit, solum. Cur
denique petentes eos peccati gravissimi reos fecerint,
fac quæso intelligamus: “ quòd Theocratiam,” inquis,
“ rejicerent,” nempe sub judicibus. At verò illi non
minùs in monarchia theocratiam retinere poterant, ac
debebant; sin minùs, tu monarchiam dum præstantis-
simam esse dicis, non theocratiam sed atheocratiam
cave dixeris; in qua Deus tam præsens regere suum
populum quàm sub judicibus non potuit. Certè si
gubernantibus illis theocratiam in republica fuisse
dicis, ut certe fuit, haud aliam gerendae reipublicae
formam praestantiorem, ut sunt res mortalium, invenire
quisquam poterit. “ Respondeat mihi,” inquis, “tuus
populus Anglicanus, utrùm ligneo Caroli jugo excusso,
aliquam miseriarum relaxationem inveniant.” Re-
spondet itaque jugum se Caroli ferreum à conscientiis
suis depulisse,jugum idem episcoporum; sua vectigalia,
suosque census non nunc aulicæ luxuriæ, et libidinibus,
sed vincendis hostibus et propagandis imperii finibus
ultröse impendere.“ Leges,” ais, “Mosi et regibus à Deo
datas quibus regant populum ; num populo lex data, ut
reges regeret?” Immò apertè leges tam Mosi et regibus,
quàm cætero populo sunt datae, ut tàm se, quàm popu-
lum regerent ; sin minùs, ita ut regerentur ab aliis, ut
ne lex Dei cuivis mortalium frustra daretur. “ Quis
gerit,” inquis, “ gladium ? populus ?” Immò populus
per magistratum, quem sive unum sive plures ex omni
suo numero elegerit. Neque ullas propterea confu-
siones, quas métuis, excitari necesse erit. “ Si vel
pedem,” inquis, “ figeres,” de regibus actum erit òòc
τοῦ εήσω kai την γην κινήσω. Utinam pedem ipse
tandem figeres, Silene, si Brammalus es. Nam nos
locum, ubi stes ebrius, dare non possumus, quin ea
quæ fixissima sunt et firmissima, tibi in gyrum moveri,
et cum cerebro tuo semper madente circumnatare vide-
antur. “ Quis te,” inquis, “ juramento regi præstito.
liberare potuit?” Juramentum ipsum, quo regi non
propter regem, sed reipubl. causa, obstricti fuimus;
quam cùm perditum iret, et suum ipse priùs jusjuran-
dum violavit, et nostrum solvit. Nihil enim naturæ,
nihil rationi aut gentium juri contrarium magis esset,
quàm si regi jusjurandum suum violare ad libidinem
liceret, populus servare fidem ad permiciem suam tene-
vetur. “ Ut dicto audientes Mosi fuimus, ita erimus
tibi, modo Deus tecum sit, quemadmodum fuit cum
Mose.” Sic Reubemitæ ad Jehosuam. “ Conditionem
hic nullam ” vides “ expressam.” Ad Anticyras ergò
naviga, aut domi crapulam edormisce; cras, mihi crede,
nihil expressius videbis, neque tam stultè interrogabis,
“ quid si Deus Josuam desereret,” sed quid si Josua
Deum desereret : tum enim quid facturi essent Reu-
benitæ, tibi respondebimus. ** Nutare mihi crede jus
regium videtur.” Hoc de jure regio, prout Salmasius
describit, dictum est. Neque est hoc ** monarchiam
legitimam in Carolo trucidare,” quod tu toties invidiosè
et parasiticè vociferaris. Nunc quod minimè es, vatem
scilicet et conciomatorem piissimum multis deincèps
verbis agere cupis ; dumque adulterum videri te
metuis, profers adulterimum. * Digitum Dei agnosci-
mus et veneramur punientem ingratum populum.”
At populo benè est et prosperè, quem tu nequicquam
ingratitudinis accusas; tu potiùs Dei digitum agnosce,
te tuosque unà cum omnibus tyranni fautoribus insig-
niter punientem. “ Nondum,” ais, * Hispania et Pon-
tificii velum abduxerunt.” Quid nobis Hispaniam et
Pontificios toties immeritò objicis ; qui non ignoremus
Carolum tuum minorem in Belgio commorantem lega-
tos ad Papam misisse, ut vel ab ipso Antichristo rex
reformatus contra patriam et reformatos auxilium im-
ploraret ? “ Persecutio,” inquis, ** jam in Anglia max-
ima est, quæ fuerat à tempore quo populus aliquis
770
JOANNIS PIIILIPPI RESPONSIO
inhabitabat.” An major ea quam Brammalus in
Hibernia nuper excitavit, qui curiam inquisitionis, con-
scientiis hominum tàm infestam et tyrannicam, primus
omnium in Hiberniam introduxit. Te verò iIIum
ipsum fuisse sequentia clariùs ostendunt. In hoc enim
jam totus es, ut Ecclesiasticam tyrannidem defendas.
“ Nam quod tanta,” inquis, * jam patimur, hæc est
ratio præcipua, quod in aliquibus Anabaptistarum et
cæterorum omnium schismaticorum clamoribus viam
concedentes, umo dato absurdo sequuntur infinita.”
Ipsissimus hic Brammalus ille antiquum obtines, qui re-
formatis omnibus schismaticorum nomine infamatis om-
nem conscientiæ libertatem adimere perpetuò studebas.
Nunc illorum importunitati, id est, conscientiæ, etiam
nonnulla umquam concessa fuisse graviter doles.
“ Reges Anglorum judicari posse à suis subditis,'° Mil-
tomum ais docere, “ exemplo pravorum temporum, et
jure à sapientibus damnatis chartis obsoletis, et ob
multas corruptiones meritò explosis.” Quid isto ho-
minum genere absurdius aut impudentius ? quærunt
modò quo jure, quâ lege factum quidque à nobis sit,
si leges non recitamus, contra eas fecisse nos judicant ;
si leges nostras proferimus antiquas, ratas, atque notis-
simas, hi statim * obsoletas et meritò explosas ” esse
aiunt: nec tamen quo tempore explosæ aut abrogatæ
fuerint, usquam ostendunt. Ita, dum tyrannidem sine
autoritate asserere cupiunt, et vetera et nova pariter
rejiciunt. “ Quidni,” inquis, Uzzias rex leprosus “ â
.sacerdotibus templo deturbaretur, cum Deus leprae pro-
bendæ, et leprosi omnis excludendi potestatem et
maudatum sacerdotibus dederat.” At verò idem
Deus, lex eadem omnis malefici puniendi potesta-
tem et mandatum magistratibus dederat, neque ma-
gis tamen leprosi regis exturbandi, quàm malefici
regis puniendi vel hic vel illic mentio facta est. Si
Jepræ judicio regem eximi non vis, quia nominatim
non excipitur, eadem certè ratione neque ullis aliis
legibus aut judiciis regem exemeris. Sed video
quid agitis, ut regem quamvis vestrâ sententiâ supre-
mum, vobis tamen sacerdotibus subjiciatis, utque rex in
populum absoluto atque supremo dominaretur imperio,
vos sacrificuli supremo superiores eodem imperio domi-
naremini in regem. ** Consensus,” inquis, “ populi et
inauguratio tantùm adjumcta necessaria fuere.” Hoc
in Saule, Davide, ejusque posteris concedo, de quibus
nominatim creandis Dei mandatum præcesserat: tu
idem de Carolo aut ullis ejus majoribus ostende.
“ Rex,” ais, “ nunquam pepigit cum populo, ut illi
eum castigarent si aliter quàm bene regeret.” Neque
populus cum rege pepigit, se illi, quicquid collibitum
est facienti, in perniciem suam obtemperaturos. Neque
verò in privato quovis syngrapho, ullus unquam pepigit
ut creditoribus liceret, si is debitum non solveret, lege
in eum agere, et in carcerem conjicere, ejusque bona
possidere, quoad plenè sibi satisfactum esset. Hæc et
istiusmodi quæ accidere mollemus, in pactionibus et
foederibus vel honoris causâ vel boni ominis consulto
non exprimimus; quia cum paciscimur, talia nunquam
eventura optamus ; quae etiam sine monitis intelligere
per se quisque et cavere debet. Tu hic tritum illud
ingeris ; “ per me reges regant;" fatemur, sicut et per
&
eum sunt, agunt, et moventur omnia : tu ** modo pecu-
liari,” inquis. Tu, inquam, de tuo hoc dicis, autori-
tatem verbi divini nullam affers. Suljicis, “ alioqui
cui fini illa præcepta obedientiæ in Novo Testamento.”
Quoties tibi respondebitur, obedientiam absurdam et
irrationabilem in Novo Testamento non praecipi ; sed
qualis ea, et quibus, et quam ob causam præstanda sit,
luculentissimè doceri. Qui habet aures, audiat. “ Qui
repugnant,” inquis, “ damnabuntur, quod proculdubio
mumquam mimaretur Apostolus, si privatorum tantùm
*ationem vel paucorum habuerat.” Quasi verò multi
privati sine magistratuum authoritate seditiosi esse non
possint ; quid hoc ad populum cùm magistratibus et
Parlamento contra tyrannos arma sumentem ? “ Hoc
honore Deus dilectos suos decoravit, ut gentium reges
vinculis coercerent, &c.” Id fieri dicis “ Evangelicis
non legalibus catenis.” Insipidè prorsus. An vindicta
ergò sic exercetur in gentes ? An ferreæ compedes
Evangelii vincula sunt, quas Psalmus ille regibus et
proceribus mimatur ? Tu hoc, ut soles, de sacerdotibus,
non de bomis magistratibus et populo intelligi vis, qui
pontificale quoddam regnum tuorum in omnes Laicos
futurum somnias, “ Israelitæ,” inquis, “ quia regem
rejecêre, à Salmansore in captivitatem sunt abducti.
Judæi, qui regi Rehoboamo fideles manserant, sub
illius tutela securi vivebant.” Historiam sacræ Scrip-
turæ si consuluisses, non nescires Hierosolymas sub
ipso statim Rehoboamo à Sesako Ægyptiorum rege
captas, et thesauris suis spoliatas, longè priùs quàm
Israëlitæ in captivitatem abducerentur. ** Jeroboamo
Deus decem tribus assignavit, quod de vestra repub.
nobis non constat.” Tam nobis, inquam, de nostra
repub. quàm vobis de vestro Carolo: immò longè plù§.
“ Vestros,” inquis, “ Capnomantes et Entheos pro Dei
vatibus nom recipimus.” Neque nos te praesertim
aleatorem, ebriosum, et scortatorem episcopum : cujus
vaticinia hoc capite soloecorum floribus ornatissima in
gratiam tui studiosorum, nequid tàm emuncti authoris
desideraretur, huc in fine congessimus. * Aristocratia
nonmunquam cachistocratia dicenda.” Tàm orthogra-
phicè hoc abs te quàm etymologicè est dictum, siqui-
dem duo contraria simul vera esse possunt. “ Spes
nulla restat ut im pristinam felicitatem restituamur.
Nec dubitamus quin plus apud Deum valebunt miseriæ
nostræ. Regibus potius mandâsset Apostolus populo
obedire, me solio suo dejiciantur. Non dicimus quin
reges tementur. Velut defessi reformatæ religionis ;
in aliquibus illis viam concedentes, uno dato absurdo
sequuntur infinita, &c.”
CAP. III.
“ Duobus capitibus à tergo relictis.” Etiamne à
fuga incipis, tergiversator ? At mos mom tergum, sed
frontem, sed nomen etiam tuum fronti inscriptum
maluimus. Manedum igitur, obverte faciem illam
insignem Brammaleam, non ferri, sed vimi vulneribus .
sauciam, gemmulis cœruleis, rubeolis, purpureis et
AD APOLOGIAM ANONYMI CUJUSDAM TENEBRIONIS.
77 1
purulentissimis bullatam atque distinctam ; nam quibus
te quisquam telis, nisi si raphanis fugientem insequatur
moechum, nescio. Sed fortasse more Parthico fugiens
soles tela conjicere : conjice ergo. “ Qui populo,” in-
quis, “ potestatem gladii ascribit, populum impunem re-
linquere necesse habet; quis enim populum puniret leges
transgredientem ?” Fateor, siquidem universus peccat,
nam universum punire populum, ne rex quidem aut
solet aut potest. Non magis ergò necesse est populum
impunem relinquere, si populus, quàm si rex potestatem
gladii solus habeat ; cùm in statu populari pœnis æquè
obnoxius quisque sit atque in monarchiâ. “ Liturgiam
profligavimus.” Missale scilicet Papisticum, paucis
admodum mutatis, ex I.atino duntaxat Anglicè editum,
unà cum episcopis qui tam fraudulenter eam et pa-
pisticè concinnârunt, quid mi profligaremus ? nam et
aliam, ut fateris ipse, substituimus, magis videlicet or-
thodoxam, et verbo Dei consentaneam, ut, qui requirit,
habeat, si necesse est, qua salubriter possit uti. “ Sub-
jecti estote propter dominum, quamobrem ? quia con-
stituitur potestas à Deo ad ultionem facinorosorum, &c.”
At “ Rex, cui subjecti esse jubentur, erat Nero vel
Claudius.” Gemeralem doctrinam de magistratu, quis
sit aut esse debeat, tradit Apostolus, deque obedientia,
quare magistratui præstanda sit, quod tibi satis sit.
Nero an Claudius regnaverit, nihil refert ; desine tan-
dem nugis istis nos obtundere. * Judæorum,” inquis,
“ cæremoniis et lege judiciaria liberamur.” Incassùm
igitur tu tantoperè laboras, ut mos regii apud illos im-
perii exemplo in servitutem regibus addicas. * Utcun-
que,” inquis “ de Dei instinctu gloriamimi, ad tribunal
divinum sistendi, respondebitis, &c.” Quid alii tunc
responsuri sint, me sit tibi curæ. Tu, quid de alea, de
scortis, de ebrietate episcopali respondebit Brammalus,
ipse cogita. Potestates non legitimas, sed quascunque
intelligi, ais, ab Apostolo, quia Deus præfecit Saulem
et cæteros malos reges Judæis. At verò Paulus de
potestate loquitur, quam et summè legitimam descri-
hit ; non loquitur de viro, qui, à Deo licet electus, si
postea mequissimus evadit, et potestatem exercet longè
aliam, atque à Deo accepit, et cui dumtaxat mos illic
obedire jubemur, id sibi, non Deo imputandum erit.
“ Verisimilius,” inquis, “ quòd Anglia Carolo filio de-
bellandi, tandem im crepitum putidissimum et ridiculum
erupturi sint.” Videsne jam ut Dens, omnium rerum
arbiter, omen hoc tuum, vemtriloque, in te tuosque
avertit? Videsne ut ipse tuus Carolus in crepitum eva-
muit, immò ipse crepitus fieri putidissimus optaret,
dummodò ex hostium manibus hoc pacto elabi queat.
“ Supponemus,” inquis, “tuam rempubl. in tyrannidem
degenerare, non temeris obedire illorum potestati ?”
Concede tu priùs, si rex in tyranmum degeneraret, non
teneri te regi obedire ; tum mos satis maturè tibi de re-
publica respondebimus. “ Potuit,” inquis, “ Apostolus
dixisse bonos magistratus.” At verò ita dixisse, ex
descriptione magistratùs quam ibi posuit, apertè liquet.
“ Sed nullo,” inquis, “ argumento fortius evincitur
τegis potestas, quàm quod Apostoli mandant nullis con-
ditionibus limitatam.” At rursus inquam, ipsa potes-
tatis descriptio, quæ copiosissima ibi est, conditiones
sapienti abundè suppeditat. “ Rex,” inquis, “ à Deo
obedientiam præcepisse, sed privatis et singulis.
missus quantumvis malus ferendus, caetera mala in
poenam veniunt.” Quasi vcrò rex etiam malus in
poenam non veniret, quod tibi toties in ore est, “ re-
mediis” idcirco vel tuo judicio “ auferendus. Multum,”
inquis, ** Miltono debent orthodoxi, quòd tam ridi-
culam opinionem iis assignaret, populum scilicet uni-
versum regi ignavissimo esse parem.” Magno sanè
acumine mendacium hoc vibras ; sed parum inde lu-
craris. Miltonus enim populum non solùm parem regi,
sed superiorem semper affirmavit. Hoc loco sententiam
suam non profert, Salmasium tantummodo perstringit,
quod ex Sorbonistarum scriptis populum regi vel parem
esse negaverit, quem superiorem dixisse oportuerit.
Verùm ità miserè cæcutire soles, ut in Salmasium pro
Miltono impetum saepiusculè facias. Hæc præter im-
eptias densissimas, quas infra omne responsum esse
judico, confutationum tuarum in hoc capite summa est;
unde otium nobis hic etiam tàm pingue accidit, ut
rursus vacet elegantias hominis mitidissimas gleba so-
lorum ubere natas ad ornandas Soloecorum porticus et
spatia decerpere. * Tuba somitum incertum edit, ut
nemo se ad colendum Deum præparare potest. Nom
dubitamus quin multi religionem Christianam amplexi
sint. Tanquam nulla erat malorum principum po-
testas. Non quin Deus omnia ita disposuit. Si enim
ad populum provocandum (ut vos primò fecistis ut
omnia confundaretis) nemo per diem integrum imperare
poterat. Omnes patres mullius æstimat. Sed utinam
tam humaniter cùm Carolo agere voluistis. Populum
contra regem defendere suscipis.” Et alia hujusmodi.
CAP. IV.
“ IN præcedentibus Miltonus leo rugiens, qui reges
omnes devoraret, hic draco occultè insidians, et vulpe-
culam agit, nam quo lapidem non potest, vota jacit.”
Aut insanit hic homo, aut versus facit, novas chimæras,
novas metamorphoostc fingit sibi lymphatus. Certè
Miltonus si leo rugiens vobis est visus, facitis haud ab-
surdè, ut id sponte fateamini. Te contrà asinum ruden-
tem prima voce aguovimus, teque risu perimde et fustibus
excipimus. “ Semper,” inquis, “ populum in adjutori-
um vocat Priapus in horto.” Quod Priapus in horto,
id Brammalus in sacello. Verissimum hoc esse tota
ferè Hibernia non ignorat. “ Quos populus,” inquis,
** creat, si mulla Dei ratio habeatur, potiùs obedientiam
ab iis postularet, quàm illis præberet.” Praeter illa
quae priùs respondi, qualem requirat obedientiam Apos-
tolus, scias insuper, Apostolos non toti Romano senatui
et consulibus, meque magno ullius gentis concilio, aut
ullius regni ordinibus conventus legitimos peragentibus
PRex
verò, ut nosti, singulis quidem major, universis verò
minor est. Beneficia deinde Caroli in populum enume-
ras, quæ nulla umquam exstitere, sed damna potiùs et
detrimenta, et summa planè dedecora. “ Unctum
Domini,” inquis, ** vel Christum Domini si dicas Chris-
tianum non tam interest.” Atqui Salmasius Saulem
Christum Domini nuncupaverat, Tibi ut videtur, Saul
non solùm inter prophetas sed inter Christianos est.
3 D
772
JOANNIS PHILIPPI RESPONSIO
Dicitur autem, 1 Reg. 11. Salomon obdormivit, et Re-
hoboamus regnavit loco ejus. Et hoc, inquis, dicitur,
“ antequam populus Sechem venit ut illum regem face-
rent.” Hoc verò non aliter dictum fuisse, quàm ut
historiæ series manifestior esset, ex primo sequentis
capitis versu apparet. Populus enim Sechemum venit,
ut Rehoboamum regem constituerent, vel regnare face-
rent, ut est Hebraicè ; ergo antea certè aut mon regna-
vit, aut in Judæa tantùm. “ Populum,” inquis, “ per
incendiarios fuisse incitatum, videlicet Jeroboamum et
comites suos.” At verò Jeroboamus non populum, sed
populus illum incitavit. Jeroboamus enim, audita
Salomonis morte, adhuc in Ægypto morabatur. Sed
Israëlitæ mittentes accersiverunt eum, l Reg. 12. Mira-
ris “ impudentiam” ejus qui affirmaret, “ non vocari
rebelles qui in Roboamum arma sumpserunt.” Tuam
potius non impudentiam solùm, sed impietatem demiror,
qui eos rebelles appellare ausus sis, quos Deus eo ipso
loco fratres sui populi nominavit. At instas, ibidem
etiam dictum esse, “ sic rebellavit domus Israel à
domo David.” At verò verbum hic ** rebellavit” mitiùs
intelligi pro quacunque defectione, neque in malum
sensum rapi debet. Propterea vertunt alii ** defecit,”
non “ rebellavit ;° cujus enim defectionis authorem se
Deus ipse profitetur, scriptura malam et illicitam pro-
culdubiò non dicit. Sic Ezechia verbo non minùs
duro rebelâsse in regem Assyriæ dicitur ; quod tamen
ejus factum Deus etiam auxilio cœlitùs misso approba-
vit. Deus Israëlitis regem petentibus graviter iratus
est, quamvis regis petendi, si vellent, ex lege Mosis jus
habuerit ? Tu, “ num irascitur Deus,” inquis, “populo
petenti quod ad illos jure pertinet.” Id, inquam,
facilè potest fieri ; nihil enim obstat quo minus id ad
populum jure pertineret, et tamen irasci Deus illis
meritò potuit, quod cùm in eo quod optimum erat ac-
quievisse penes ipsos esset, deterius quod erat antepone-
bant. Affirmas “ Deum graviore pœna puniise rebelles
Israëlitas,” quippe “ veram sui cognitionem ab iis abs-
tulisse.” At ubi id unquam legisti, nugator, Israëlitas
illam defectionem idololatria luisse, cùm Deus ipse
Jeroboamo mox rebellaturo bona omnia pollicitus sit,
seque illi Israëlitas traditurum esse, si ejus præceptis
auscultasset, l Reg. 11. Sed orthodoxi, inquis, “ semper
cùm Carolo fuere, nam quicquid moribus peccant non-
nulli, inopia coacti, religionem tamen reformatam non
deseruerunt.” Num verò vestros orthodoxos, cum rege
suo, inopia coëgit gentes vicinas ebrio agmine, blasphe-
mo, libidinosissimo ac ferocissimo oberrare, omnique im-
pietatis genere omnes Anglos, tamquam sui similes, infa-
- mes reddere? “Nobiscum” tua sententia “vitulæ aureæ;
vobiscum mensa dominica, oratio dominica, symbolum
Apostolorum, decem mandata.” Atqui ea ipsa sacra quæ
apud vos solos esse inaniter jactas, vobis, pro more vestro,
superstitiosè et hypocriticè abutentibus, nihil aliud pro-
fecto quàm vitulæ aureæ sunt. “ Deum,” inquis, “ sibi
contrarium statuimus.” Quidni ? An quod argumen-
tum Salmasii nihil valere ostendit Miltonus, idcirco
me Deum sibi contrarium statuit. Dixerat Salmasius,
omnes reges esse à Deo ; Miltonus non omnes reges,
sed omnes regendi formas, salutis causa adhibitas, cujus
etiam causa populi conventus, comitia, et consilia ha-
bentur. Ergo vel ipsius argumento non magis regi
licet resistere populo propter rempubl. convocato,
quàm populo licet resistere regi à Deo ordinato, quam-
doquidem et populi conventus legitimi à Deo quoque
sunt ut Secheni olim contra Roboamum fuisse testifi-
catur ipse Deus. “ Utrum,” inquis, “ ille tyrannus,
qui viginti tribus amnis regnans, neminem pro sua
voluntate mori coëgit; am vos qui inter decem annos
regem ipsum et plus quàm quingentos mille hominum
trucidastis ?” Quid ais, mille quingentos ? numerum
sane perexiguum narras ; neque ullus umquam, credo
minori jacturâ bellum tàm sævum confecit. Profectò
si tam scires latinè quam sis malitiosè loqui, non
quingentos mille, sed quingenta millia, opinor te
dicere voluisse. Quis verò Carolo pejor tyrannus,
quis pœna dignior, qui per tria regna plus decies
centena hominum millia partim laniema illa Hiber-
mica, partim bello iniquissimo occidit. Negas quod
superiore argumento dictum est, regem non debere
populo resistere : negas populum quicquam posse
in regem, quia populus “ inferior est,” rex “ supe-
rior.” At memineris regem naturâ superiorem non
esse, sed consensu tantùm est suffragiis populi ad eam
esse dignitatem evectum, publicæ salutis causâ ; quo
ab officio si planè desciveret, superior esse desinit ;
quia cur esset superior causa nulla ampliùs est. Cùm
munus regium perperam administraverat, ob quod
munus duntaxat, cùm unus è multis primò fuerit, fac-
tus omnium supremus est. Ad id quod dixerat Mil-
tonus, non quod Deus jussit tyrannum interimi, ideo
bonum erat, sed quod bonum erat, idcirco Deus jussit,
tu respondes, “ cujus contrarium verum est. Nam
quicquid Deus jubet, bonum est, et ideo bonum, quòd
Deus jubet.” Doctum verò neminem hoc latet, bonum
in positivum et morale divisum esse. Positivum est,
quod antè indifferens, bonum tunc incipit esse, cum à
Deo jubetur. Morale verò bonum, æternum et immu-
tabile mamet, sive Deus jusserit, sive non jusserit ;
bonum hujusmodi est tyranmum perimi: ad quod faci-
mus præclarum ducem illum Jehu, tum fortè nihil tale
cogitantem, præ ceteris incitavit. Quod autem ais,
** bonitatem à divina voluntate pendere,” erras, ut cæ-
tera; bonitas enim non minùs de essentia Dei est,
quàm ipsa Dei voluntas. Verùm de his nimis multa
cùm stolido et idiota. Percurrimus in hoc capite
quicquid argumenti vim ullam in se habere videatur,
ut bonis viris et intelligentibus quàm maximè satisfiat:
cæteris ejus ineptiis et nugamentis qui movetur, eum
neque moramur, neque retinemus quo minùs in castra
adversarii nostri tàm diserti atque eruditi transire pos-
sit; his etiam floribus, sapientiæ et judicii ejus causâ,
coronatus, quos hortorum Solensium custos iste ficul-
meus suorum fautorum capiti nectendos largiter paravit.
Olfaciant modo priùs quàm suave olent. “ Nil tam
horrendum excogitari possit quin laudabile fiet. Po-
puli conventus, comitia, plebiscitus pariter à Deo.
Non dicimus quin tyrannus impedire debet. Tu ad
Antipodas ablegandus, Londini Constantinopolim.
Coronam ad se jure pertinentem poposcivisse. Passa
marem, miramur hyænam. Quos tamen rectius sen-
tiisse judicas,” cum multis aliis.
AD APOLOGIAM ANONYMI CUJUSDAM TENEBRIONIS.
773
CAP. V.
OMissis quae initio hujus capitis trita jam et toties
refutata stupidissimè regeris, venio nunc ad id, in quo
levitatis arguis qui dixerit, jus successionis naturâ
nullum esse, eo quod “ lex Dei primogenituræ legem
tulit;'° cùm divina autem lege consentire legem ma-
turæ dictum est. Tuum verò erat, non nescivisse
quantum inter se differant successio in regnum, et
successio in patrimonium : principio enim regnorum,
regnandi successio non filio sed dignissimo cuique
semper delata est ; mox regum usurpatio, mon populi
consensus filios regum dignioribus prætulit. Hoc
etiam turpe et servile est, libera hominum capita
.nter possessiones numerare, qui profectò dum liberi
sunt, hæreditate nemini obvenire possunt. Tuque
jus hæreditarium, quicquid garris, ex lege Dei
nunquam ostenderis. Nam quod soli testatur Deus
Davidi ejusque posteris dedisse se, id universis ac-
cornmodari regnis aut regibus nullo jure potest.
“ Jus,” inquis, “ successionis pacem et concordiam
inter homines nutrit ; est maxime naturale, ne con-
timuis litibus mundus flagraret.” Historias ergo om-
mium gentium percurre ; invenies in monarchia dis-
cordias tetriores, bella sæviora, idque sæpius accidisse,
quam in repub. Haud rarò ipsi regum filii de summa
rerum inter se bello acerrimo, mutuaque caede conten-
dunt. Unde apud Turcas, ubi jus successionis absolu-
tissimum est, nihil ad pacem publicam magis condu-
cere putatur, quàm filio natu maximo regnum ineunte,
cæteros fratres interfici. Nonnunquam de successionis
jure manifestò non constat, hinc etiam bella sævissima
et maximè diuturna, quarum sub regno calamitatum
nostra imprimis Anglia testis esse potest. Ità neque
monarchia per se neque respub. concordiæ parens est;
sed moderatus ubique civium animus et ambitione va-
cuus. Sed summa authoritas “ uni contigit ordinis ser-
vandi gratia.” At si tyranno, pessimus ille ordo qui
omnem ordinem, jura omnia divina et humana perver-
tit. “ Christus,” inquis, “ suos deputatos et vicege-
rentes in terris reges posuit.” Fatemur, si bonos, ty-
ranni autem quo possunt modo Christi vicem gerere ?
Imterea mom nos “ contumaciae,” quod ais, sed tu im-
pietatis tuæ Christum vindicem expecta; qui regnum
Christi in terris violentum et tyrannicum blasphemus
audes existimare: Vicarius enim, non Christi, qui ejus
exemplum non imitatur, sed diaboli est. Quod regem
deinde confers cum patrefamilias, satis clarè ostensum
est à Miltono, jus patris diversissimum esse, et longè
antiquius. Cùm autem mon solum reges mali, sed mala
omnia “ in scclerum poenam, vel ad probamdam pati-
entiain nostram à Deo data sint:” eaque omnia justis
remediis ab hominibus summa cùm prudentiæ laude
amoveri et possint et debeant, solos reges vel pœnæ
causa, vel patientiæ ferre, et turpe et ridiculum et ex-
tremæ esset insaniæ. “ Sed variis morbis laborantibus
rex manus imposuit et sanavit ; angelum aureum cuili-
bet ægroto dedit.” Sive sanavit, sive excantavit nihil
nunc refert ; medendi enim domo nunc infideles, ut Ves-
pasianus olim, sæpiùs hypocritæ præditi fuere. Illum
angelum aureum, quem singulis aegrotis dedit, non
illum fuisse, qui Bethesdæ aquas commovit ; nec sa-
nandi vim ullam habuisse, sat scio ; quo te aureo scilicet
angelo sic opinor stupere, ut ante te Salmasius coelum
illud Caroli aureum et sericum obstupuit, meque hoc
coelo quicquam altius cernere uterque videmini, aut de
eo quicquam sublimius cogitare, quàm aureum esse.
“ Florentissima,” inquis, “ Romanorum respubl. exactis
regibus, numquam subsistere potuit donec in monar-
chiam redintegrata fuerit.” Quod contra omnium his-
toriarum fidem planè est; quæ testantur omnes, Ro-
manam rempub. sub consulibus et senatüs authoritate
ad illam magnitudinem crevisse : sub imperatorum
verò luxuria, tyrannide, atque inertia statim conse-
nuisse, imperiumque simul et gloriam belli atque jus-
titiæ in illa libera civitate olim partam sub imperato-
ribus citò amisisse. “ Sed quod Anglia,” inquis, “ nimio
luxu et libertate perdita fuit, non Caroli tyrannidi, sed
vestræ nequitiæ attribuendum est.” Immo aulæ fœ-
dissimæ, regisque voluptarii atque ignavissimi exemplo
rectè attribuimus, ad cujus vitae rationem quamplurimi
sese composuere. Jam regem defendis, qui Ducem
Buckinghamiæ veneficii suspectum “ ]egibus eripuit ;
quasi,” inquis, “ hoc regibus crimini datetur, quod om-
nibus natura concedit, ut suos familiares amarent.”
Itane carnifex ? satisne regem excusari putas, quod
familiarem illum et amicissimum habuerit, qui patris
ejus veneno sublati à supremo regni concilio postulatus
esset ? At quid poteras in regem atrocius dixisse ?
“ Sed credibile non fuit ducem Buckinghamiæ Jacobo
insidias struere velle, qui illum in tantam potestatem
evexit.” Quin immo satis notum est, mores Bucking-
hamii Jacobo tandem graviter displicuisse, unde is
magnam malum sibi metuens, duas maximè res dein-
ceps agere instituit, ut et patri necem strueret, et filio
os subliniret, ejusque gratiam omni studio captaret ;
quod sanè, objectis juveni mollissimo voluptatum om-
mium illecebris, statim perfecit. Reprehendis, quòd
Carolus Neroni collatus sit. ** Nam,” inquis, “ Metro-
polim vestram non diripuit,” scilicet quia non potuit;
at qui nunc Scotis, nunc sicariis suis, morem sibi modò
gererent, haud semel diripiendam obtulit. Restat ut
rosarum hujus Solensium fasciculum in fine exhiberem ;
et possem quidem ubertim, sed cum viam jam toties
digito monstraverim, ubi germinant, ubi crescunt, ju-
cundius fortasse cuique erit proprio ungue decerpere.
· CAP. VI.
“ REGUM et bonorum omnium hoste prostrato (suis
telis im faciem suam resilientibus) recurrere coactus est
ad elumbes aliquot argutias, et trita argumenta.” Pros-
trato hoste, quis sodes est coactus, egregie soloecista ?
momem enim licet attuleris nullum, cognomem certe hoc
apud omnes in posterum reportabis. Ain' verò “ suis
telis in fáciem resilientibus ?” Si sua sponte, Dedalea
pro facto narras, aut Vulcania quædam nova automata?
An vero, te retorquente, resiliunt tela illa ? Teme ergo
774
JOANNIS PHILIPPI RESPONSIO
illum prostravisse hostem, asime, cujus argumentum vel
levissimum omni mole concutere, aut movere loco non
vales ? Exultantem asinum in apologo herus verberibus
malè multavit, quid triumphante hoc asino faciamus ?
præsertim qui neque purpuram indutus, neque pellem
leonimam, sed propria palam scabritie motus, rictu isto
asinimo, istoque miserrimo clangore atque ridiculo tri-
umphum canere audeat. “ Omnes,” inquis, “ in suis
vegnis monarchæ absoluti traußaatXstac exercent, quòd
et Galli de suo rege multum gloriantur.” Ad scrip-
tores Gallos si recurrisses, Girardum, Hottomannum,
Sesellium, plurimosque alios, nunquam id affirmares.
Galli liberos se, et verè Francos passim gloriantur: ab
omni memoria penes se fuisse, regum salutis omnium
causâ, vel eligere vel abjicere. Hac ratione Pipino,
necnon post cum aliis imperium Galliæ delatum : quod
vulgo motum est. Hac etiam ætate cum multæ civi-
tates, tum etiam Burdegalenses idem sentire sese factis
ostenderunt, dum vi et armis vel sui regis vel ejus
præsidum Tag3aotXstav et tyrannidem strenuè propul-
sant. “ Si cui Deus vult,” inquis, “ populus regnum
tradit, jam dic aliud de tribus capellis, unde tot quæs-
tiones et lites ?” Unde nisi à te, tuique similibus, qui
id perpetuo contenditis, ut regnum iis tradatur, quibus
populus non vult, ac proinde nec Deus. Deus enim,
si cui regnum vellet, facilè perficeret, ut regnum illi
traderet populus. Jam tu dic aliquid de tribus capellis.
“ Quantumvis,” inquis, “ nummi nobis desint, num-
quam tamen deerunt parati ad tuendam veritatem.”
Nummi quidem vobis et merito desunt, et tamen longe
major apud vos virtutis, honestatis, sapientiæ, pudoris
penuria est, quàm mummorum. Id quod mores vestri
perditissimi exteris jam passim graves et odiosi testan-
tur. Deesse autem non magis nummos quàm ad cau-
sam vestram tuendam paratos, argumento ipse maximo
es, qui homo indoctissimus cum sis et inertissimus, pri-
mus omnium et adhuc ferè solus, ad hoc te munus ac-
cinxeris. Dixerat Salmasius, quamvis id falso, * rc-
giminis Anglorum formam non popularem sed milita-
rem esse.” Tu hoc Miltonum ** concedere coactum
esse,” dicis: “ nec tamen ab Aristotele ta\em regiminis
formam recensitam usque meministi.” Vel hinc com-
stat te neque Miltonum attentè satis, neque Aristotelem
omnino forsan legisse. Apud Miltonum enim conces-
sionem illam nusquam invenies. Apud Aristotelem
sparmyó aìòte, id est “ ducis perpetui,” qui in quibus-
dam civitatibus summæ rerum præficeretur, mentionem
sæpè factam esse meminisses. Jam de * diabolo por-
cos tondente” stolidè nugaris, “ ubi ingens clamor, sed
nulla lana ;” parciùs itaque diabolus porcos suos
tondebat, quàm Brammalus oves Hibernicas deglubere
consuevit ; à quibus et lanam et pellem multo cum
clamore populi detrabere solebat. “ Scoti,” inquis,
“ inaudito ostracismo Montisrossamum interfecere.”
Inauditus ille quidem ostracismus qui patibulo homines
affigit. Nam vel sciolos non fugit, ostracismum nom
mortis, sed relegationis genus fuisse. * Reges,” im-
quis, “ sub potestate populi collocatos pejori conditione
nobis repræsentas, quam ex populo universo perditissi-
mus.” At vel ista conditione noli metuere ne qui reges
in posterum esse velint ; utcunque enim mon deerunt
reges. Cætera hujus capitis, quâ seria, quà ludicra,
insulsa adeo et inficeta sunt, ut quamvis nihil mihi
tribuam, quod non admodum exiguum sit, poeniteat
tamen nonmumquam et penè suppudeat, cum adversario
tamen nihili manus conseruisse. Postremò casus sui
regis graves sanè et tragicos ad comoediam redigit.
“ Jovem ” adulterum, “ Amphytrionem ” maritum,
“ Mercurium et Sosiam” servos, ** super mundi the-
atrum” agit. Nil possum rectiùs facere quam ut istius
modi phrases præteream : nam in hominem tam stultum
et nullius pretii quicquid aut seriò dixeris aut joco, et
operam perdideris et salem. Præstat tamen hunc vel
incassum defricare, quam responsione licet indignum,
mostro tamen silentio tumentem et jactabundum dimit-
tere.
CAP. VII.
HAcTENUs opusculi tui futilissimi dimidium percur-
rimus, et quanquam te plùs satis indoctum, insipidum,
soloecum, arrogantem, et languidum jamdudum inve-
nimus, tamen quò longiùs procedimus, eo inanior, eoque
jejunior semper occurris, et præter adagia quædam et
disticha vulgata, quæ memoriter, credo, elementarius
puer didiceras, quæque me negent forte lectores vel se-
midoctulum te esse, per fas et mefas inserere laboras,
cæteram omnem argumentorum, sensûs, Latinitatis
perpusillam amnonam exhausisse videris. Nihil est
igitur in hoc capite quod agam, quàm ut captiunculas
quasdam tuas, et gryphos dissolvam, quibus dum ad-
versarium capere te existimas, teipsum capi ostendam.
Dixerat Miltonus jure maturali regem quemque bonum
senatum vel populum habere sibi semper et parem et
superiorem. Ad hæc tu, “ quis umquam,” inquis,
“ talia άαύerara audivit? Si par est, non est superior:
si superior, mom par.” Quis plumbeo potuit gladio
quicquam acutius ? At nescim' quid Lælius ille sapiens
apud Ciceronem ? Maximum est in amicitia superiorem
parem esse inferiori. Quin hic quoque vociferare,
“ quis unquam talia ἀσύςara audivit ?” Disputatum
est à multis, sitne par regi populus vel senatus. Infit
Miltomus, utrumlibet regi et parem esse et superiorem.
Cur ista megas posse consistere ? Certè si juxta regu-
lam, omne majus in se continet minus, superior qui est,
nihil obstiterit, quò minùs idem par sit. Jam eccum
tibi ** modum hunc sine OEdipo solutum,” Dave. Nunc
ad secundam hominis tendiculam venio. “ Si Davidi
privato non licuit Saulem tyramnum interficere, quo-
mcdo jam unicuique concedis, si viribus plus valet.”
Sumis quæ memo est largitus, tyrannum fuisse Saulem.
Non enim qui facta quædam tyrannica in unum atque
alterum per iram aut libidinem perpetrat, is statim est
tyrannus; ut nec injustus, qui injusta quædam. Sed qui
consilio, instituto, viribus, dolis hoc solum studet atque
molitur, ut potentiam legibus majorem sibi arripiat, jus
omne populi et libertatem subvertat, vindicare se co-
mantibus vim atque bellum inferat, is verè atque propriè
tyrannus est ; quo in genere nullus umquam Carolo
pejor fuit. Qui igitur Davidem privatas adversùm se
AD APOLOGIAM ANONYMI
CUJUSDAM TENEBRIONIS. 776
regis injurias ulcisci noluisse dixit, potuit idem nihil
sibi repugnans dicere, tyrannum interficere cuivis licere
qui viribus plus valeat. Dixerat Miltonus ad servitu-
tem matas istas nationes quae talem dominum agnos-
cant, cui se sine assensu suo hæreditate obvenisse cre-
dant. “ Ergo,” inquis, “ tu ad servitutem natus qui
Carolum hæreditarium multos annos agnoscebas, aut
cum multis aliis dissimulabas.” Hanc tu sententiam
detrumcas, ejus loco subdititia pomis, “ quæ regem
hæreditarium agnoscunt.” Parlamenta autem Angliae,
præterito sæpè hæreditatis obtentu, diadema, cui visum
est, suis liberis suffragiis, imponere consueverunt; quod
multis exemplis demonstrari potest. Non ergo Angli
ad servitutem nati, quod tu nequiter probare niteris,
verna Canopi. Quartum hoc est, in quo adversarium
cepisse te somnias. Ob eam causam affirmaverat ille,
homines in unum primò convenisse, non ut unus omnes
insultaret, sed ut quocumque alterum lædente, ne lex
deesset neve judex inter homines, quo læsus defendatur,
aut vindicetur. Ad hæc tu, “ Nemo,” inquis, “ à te
plus petiit quàm tu per lucida intervalla tua sponte
concedis.” Lucidum certe intervallum vel ad punctum
temporis contigisse umquam tibi vix reor, ita semper
falleris. Quæ enim petis, mon regibus solùm sed ma-
gistratibus omnibus concessimus ; quorum nihil est
quod in tyrannum convenire possit. I.egem enim
primo constituimus, deinde judicem ex lege rectum et
incorruptum. Horum quodcumque petis et impetra-
veris, tuam causam minimè juvabit.
CAP. VIII.
QUoD superiùs prædixi fore, ut post tritas argutias
quasdam potius quàm argumenta & aulicorum velita-
tiones toties profligatas, äd summam inopiam homuncio
iste redigeretur, neque reliquum ei quicquam fore
præter maledicta et rabiem, id hoc capite manifestiùs
liquet. Et sanè ad priora illa quæ attulit, quamquam
primò statim conspectu sensûs et ingenii inanissima
ubique apparuére vestigia, tamen quia quandam ratio-
nis et argumenti speciem præ se ferebant, utcunque
paucis respondimus. In hoc autem capite cùm Milto-
mus antiquas Anglorum leges ac monumenta regiæ
causæ passim tàm adversa diligentissimè protulisset ;
iste è contrà, cùm neque doctrinam, neque antiqui-
tatem, neque acumen, meque authoritatem ullam, quâ
suam tueatur causam, afferre possit, hoc tantùm ha-
bet quod respondeat, miserè balbutiens jura illa mos-
tra notissima, vetustissima, et maximè rata, ** obsoleta
jam et timeis comesta esse.” Verùm non tam dubito
quin omnes docti et intelligentes viri huic fatuanti non
responderi oportere judicent, quàm vereor ne reprehen-
dant, si insanienti et rabioso operam dedero. Qui verò
hujus mendaciis et maledicentiâ à veritate abduci se
patiúntur, eos profectò tam parvi pendimus, ut quam-
cunque ad partem accesserint, susque deque nobis sit;
immo contra nos isto animo quàm nobiscum stare ma-
lumus.
CAP. IX.
Huic etiam capiti prioris haud absimili responsum
prorsus idem conveniet. Nam qui contra legem Dei
et naturæ dilucidè explicatam, contra rationes eviden-
tissimas, juraque gentium plurimarum, tum nostræ
etiam firmissima, contra testimonia denique optimorum
virorum uberrima nihil præter commenta tantum sua,
atque deliria opponere, aut in medium proferre potest,
ejus profectò ita disputantis rationem ullam siquis ha-
buerit, certè non doctus, non disertus, non diligens,
non acutus, sed malè feriatus duntaxat meritò videatur.
Quod autem nos impudentissimè accusare non dubitat,
quasi Papæ authoritatem in Angliam reducere medite-
mur, à quo et dictis et factis abhorruisse semper nos tam
palàm omnibus existit, id sanè et ridendum maximè
est, tum etiam ostendit quanta cæteroqui cum malitia,
quàm nulla cum fide in accusandis nobis versetur, qui
crimen ommium judicio à mobis alienissimum, cunctis
absolventibus, imputare atque affigere non vereatur.
Ad CAP. X. XI.
De duobus quæ sequuntur capitibus, idem quod de
præcedentibus duobus dicendum est. Tenuissimus
modò et inanissimus qui fuit, nunc est planè nullus,
aut siquid nihilo minus est : hujus igitur inanitati re-
spondere si vellem, responderem certè memini : quidni
igitur conticescam ?
CAP. XII.
JAM ad metam enervis et languidus properans soloe-
cista, tamen ut ultimo conatu erigere se paululùm vi-
deatur, ad priorem verborum sine rebus prolixitatem et
tædium redit. Quare ne quis nos propter virium aut
rationis defectum priora capita tanta brevitate percur-
risse existimet, aut per ignaviam quicquam remisisse,
quæ alicujus modò momenti videantur, non sum arbi-
tratus prætereunda esse, “ Parlamentum,” inquis, “ per-
petuum est instar nullius parlamenti ; hoc enim est
funditùs parlamentum tollere.” Ecquem tu jam nisi
Carolum ipsum criminaris ? Qui ipse parlamentum hoc
perpetuum esse jussit, et facto gloriatus, inter ea quæ
vocare acta gratiæ solebat, sæpissimè recensuit, non ut
populum beneficio aliquo afficeret, sed arte quadam ty-
rammica dum perpetuum esse juberet, ut quod ex temet
'ipso jam accipimus, fumditùs tolleret. Cùm autem
“ catharticum remedium sit,” quemadmodum ais, tolli
certè aut dissolvi non debet; donec morbi, quorum re-
medium est, tollantur, et libertati sua firmitas bonaque
valetudo redeat. Siquid nos Carolum peccâsse dicimus;
tu verbis totidem, velut amoebaea canens lyturgica,
paria commisisse parlamentum accusas, deque Carolo
nihil non verum esse concedis, dummodò idem de par-
lamento occinere tibi liceat: verùm hoc non est Caro-
776
JOANNIS PHILIPPI RESPONSIO, &c.
lum purgare, aut noxa eximere, quò minùs meritas
pœnas dederit. “ Sed antequam parlamentum hoc
incoepit, nè verbum,” inquis, “ vel minima scintilla
de Caroli scilicet malefactis eluxit.” At verò populi
clamores, gemitus et suspiria, partim propter gravissi-
mas tributorum exactiones, partim propter episcoporum
persecutiones, tam acerbas, ut multi patriam deserere
cogerentur, regia item consilia, edicta, facta, ab ipsis
regni ejus imitiis, et parlamentorum omnium quæ con-
vocavit intempestiva semper et infensa dissolutio rem
longè aliter se habere declarant ; adeo ut hac de causa
populus, sive prudentiæ regis, sive voluntati diffisus,
unicam sibi in parlamento spem, præsidium, refugium,
salutem reliquam esse palàm testaretur ; unde rex irâ
et livore prorsus tyrannico exardescens, ut populi
gemitus per vim etiam comprimeret, crudelissimo edicto
sanxit, nequis parlamenti convocandi mentionem fa-
ceret, donec tandem metu populi ob hæc minimè qui-
escentis parlamentum invitissimus convocaret. Multa,
inquis, “ à vobis fingi quis non credet ut crimen ves-
trum in regem exonerare possitis, numquid tale apparet
in ejus libro divinitus scripto ?” Malo te libri illius
admiratorem esse, quàm me ; quid enim habet præter
fucos et jactationes inanissimas ? Diceres & tu idem,
si epistolas ejus prælio Nasibiensi captas, manu propria
scriptas et obsignatas, incorrupto et integro judicio
perlegisses, ubi se suasque artes tyrannicas non celat.
“ Independentes” Jesuitis similes esse ais, “ qui regem
abrogârunt, statum reipub. mutarunt, et tamen professi
sunt nunquam sibi in animo fuisse hæc facere.” Quid
ad nos Jesuitæ ? Quasi verò prudentiæ non esset, mon
Jesuitismi, posteriora sæpè consilia prioribus anteferre,
siquidem meliora esse postmodùm didiceris. Primò
nobis prodire tenus aliquid visum est, immo magnum
tàm ad ecclesiæ quàm reipub. restitutionem ; cum à
Deo ultra dari sentiremus, an ejus nos praesentiam, et
providentiam ad facta tam egregia præeuntem asper-
maremur, aut sequi nollemus, ne progressus nostros
felices et planè inopinatos, hostis et invidus levitatis et
inconstantiæ nomine perstringeret? Sæpè arguis quod
parlamentum pro “ corpore solo” sine capite sumamus.
Verùm si metaphoras amovere malles, rectiùs continuò
saperes, sciresque parlamentum ejusmodi corpus esse,
cui caput adjungi non sit necesse ; neque enim vel
caput vel cauda, sed commune ac liberum gentis con-
cilium facit, ut parlamentum sit atque dicatur. “ Vi,”
inquis, “ hanc infamiam et calumniam apud exteras
mationes nobis exulantibus amoveam,” scilicet eorum
ex numero non esse qui causam regiam latinè sciret
defendere, “ huic rabulæ respondeo.” Egregium sanè
responsorem ! Tune vero lucifuga verberabilissime
præ ceteris electus, qui nos ex latebris aggrederere, et
pro tuis omnibus unus responderes ? Doctum procul-
dubio gregem, præclara ingenia necesse est esse, quo-
rum tu ductor es, tam grandis non Arcadicus aut Rea-
timus, sed soloecus asinus. Latinè tu ut responderes,
cujus barbarismis et soloecismis omnes paginæ, ut pri-
orum capitum, sic hujus ultimi, refertæ sunt ? “ Tam
castus ut exemplum praebuit. Tu hæc refricas ut regi
comvitiare. A famulis rimari. Nisi fulcientur. Tanta
caligine, ut justitiam causæ metiuntur. Ne millesima
pars petitionum ad eam deferrerentur. Toties purgatum
ut nil præter momen manere potest. Tamto acumine
ut maxima pars mundi mirantur ac stupent. Tanto
strepitu ut cætera theatra pro tempore silent. Non
quin indies precamur. Non mitius eorum consilium
interpretarer. Carolum filium reum causatis.” Digni
profecto regii tam stupido propugnatore, qui, cùm cau-
sam nequissimam susceperis tuendam et literas profes-
sus, tam illiteratus sis, ab ipsis clientibus tuis quos tui
pudeat, ad illa gurgustia et temebras, unde tam stolidè
emersisti cum sibilo et flagris reducendus es; aut certè
carnifici potiùs in disciplinam crucis tradendus, ut cum
nihil aliud percipere possis, elementa discas patibularia.
“ Quicquid,” inquis, “ erravero in hac apologia meæ
tenuitati imputandum est.” Ita prorsus existimo : at
pessimè interim meo quidem judicio consuluit tibi
tenuitas tua, quæ te impulit, ut, cui par nom eras, oneri
succedere auderes, sub quo prætumidum et inflatum eo
faciliùs comminui te et frangi necesse erat. Ego certè
tenuem te magis am crassum dixerim vixdum scio, ita
omni planè dimensione et forma rudis indigestaque
moles, vacare mihi videris. Jam te aulici, qui “ regis
auro vescuntur,” si priùs neglexerint, quod miserè
quereris, et fame perire sinant, post causam eorum tàm
malè et ridiculè abs te defensam multo justius oderint,
atque contempserint ; nisi fortè periscelide illa regia,
quam tanti facis, fauces tuas de rege tam nequiter
meritas elidendas potiùs quàm offis aulicis, quas esuris,
farciendas putant. Jam præsertim cum à regis laude
ad regis et regiorum gravem vituperationem transeas,
et nobis ex adversario percommodus repente homo
factus sis ; testis enim ipse novus accedis, regem suo
officio vel imparem fuisse, vel minimè intentum, quod
“ petitiones” nimirum subditorum raro legeret. “ Quod
nemo ausus esset de proditoribus queri, proditorum
metu,” quibus maximè auscultabat : quod “ cameraris
et famulis” omnia crederet, otio ipse deditus. Unde
libet profecto exclamare cum illo sene in fabula :
** Ita me dii amabunt ut hunc ego ausculto lubens;
Nimis lepidè facit verba” de regiis suis.
** Neque compellare volo illum, ne desinat
Memorare mores” regis et regiorum.
Eorum enim plurimos qui quidem regis gratia maximè
pollebant, eos fatetur fuisse qui commodorum potissi-
mum suorum et libidinum causa regem sequerentur,
vel mente captum potiùs, quo vellent, ducerent. , Si-
mam itaque et præteribo, ut et regis perjuria haud
minori impietate atque inscitia excusantem, et statim
tam acriter dammantem. Neque occurrit præterea
quod refutatione illa indigeat. Ad ultimum enim,
consumptis in nos maledictis, diris execrationibus, cha-
ritatem nescio quam suam ostentare cupit. Verum
nos cujus convitia et imprecationes non veremur, etiam
vota pro nobis et preces haud pluris æstimamus. Fi-
niam itaque certamen hoc, haud libenter quidem à me
cum isto nugigerulo susceptum ; solum hoc est in quo
si non aliis, at mihimet saltem aliqua ex parte pIaceo,
eam mihi scribendi occasionem primam oblatam esse,
ex qua et patria in se rectum atque pium, et amici
gratum senserint.
I, I T E R AE S E N A T U S A N G L I C A N I:
NEC NON
C R. O M W E L L I I,
& c.
NOMINE AC JUSSU CONSCRIPTÆ.
Sematus Populusque ANglicANUs Amplissimo Civi-
tatis HAMBURGENsis Senatui, Salutem.
QuAM diù, quàmque multis de causis instituta à ma-
joribus mostris cum amplissima vestra civitate amicitia
in hunc usque diem permanserit, et vobiscum una li-
benter agnoscimus, et sæpiùs etiam recolere non est
molestum. De eo autem quod ex literis vestris 25
Junii datis intelligimus, homines quosdam nostros non
ea qua soliti sunt fide ac probitate in suis apud vos
negotiis versari, mos quidem ad certos ejusmodi rerum
peritos statìm vetulimus, ut in lanarios, cæterosque
panni opifices acriùs inquirerent; eamque porrò ope-
ram daturos mos esse pollicemur, ut et æqui bomique
studium apud nos, et nostra ommia erga vos officia
constare sentiatis. Verùm et quiddam est quod etiam
à vobis vicissim non nos duntaxat, sed ipsum jus et fas
omne postulat; ut nostræ gentis mercatoribus, vestris
hospitibus et sua privilegia conservare, et eorum vitam,
atque fortunas, prout ea civitate dignum est, vestris
opibus defendere velitis. Quod, ut prioribus literis
enixè petivimus, ita nunc etiam ut vehementiùs effla-
gitemus, faciunt quotidianæ mercatorum querelæ,
quas ad nos deferunt ; suam nimirùm salutem atque
rem omnem rursus apud vos in dubio esse Quamvis
enim literarum nostrarum quas pridem ad vos dedi-
mus fructum aliquem ad tempus percepisse se fate-
antur, et ab injuriis nefariorum hominum aliquantùm
respirasse, nunc tamen post adventum Cochrani illius
im urbem vestram (de quo etiam priùs questi sumus)
qui mandatam jam sibi à Carolo defuncti nuper regis
filio legationem nescio quam prædicat, se omnibus com-
tumeliis, minis, armis etiam Sicariorum petitos solita
vestra defensione atque tutela caruisse.
unus atque alter è mercatoribus cum ipso etiam socie-
tatis præfecto, in navem quandam prædatoriam per in-
sidias abducti essent, cæterique vestram fidem implo-
rarent, à vobis tamen nullum auxilium impetrare
potuerint, donec ipsi suo marte mercatores, non sine
magno suorum discrimine captos in eo flumine, cujus
vestra urbs domina est, ex latronum manibus eripere
cogerentur. Quos cum illi bonis auspiciis domum re-
Adeò ut cum
duxissent, et ab indigna servitute veluti manu asseruis-
sent, captos etiam piratas ipsos in custodiam dedissent,
Cochramum illum perfugam et perduellem eò audaciæ
processisse accipimus, ut et prædatores dinmitti liberos,
et mercatores tradi sibi vinctos postulet. Vos autem
etiam atque etiam hortamur et obtestamur, si pactiones,
et foedera, et pervetustum utriusque gentis commercium,
id quod petitis, inviolatè servari studetis, ut nostri cer-
tum aliquod atque firmum sibi præsidium im vestra fide,
prudentia, authoritate collocare demum possint ; vos
autem uti eos his de rebus benignè audiatis ; tàm de
Cochrano, cæterisque sceleris illius sociis, quàm de iis
qui nuper in comciomatorem, impunè adhuc, impetum
fecerunt supplicium sumere velitis, aut è finibus exire
jubeatis. Neque pulsos atque exules Tarquinios ami-
citiæ atque opibus populi Anglicani anteferendos exis-
timetis. Si enim per vos non steterit quo minùs reipub.
nostræ hostes quidvis licere sibi contra nos in urbe
vestra confidant, quàm non tuta aut honesta amplius
nostrorum ibi commoratio sit, vos cum animis vestris
cogitate. Hæc vestræ prudentiæ et æquitati ; vos ipsos
Divino Numimi commendatos volumus. Valete.
Vestmonasterio, dat. Aug. 10, 1649.
Sematui HAM BURGENsI.
PersPEctA nobis æquanimitas vestra dubiis in rebus
nostris, facit nunc ut sanè prosperis, ac benè gestis,
de vestra voluntate, et amico in nos animo nequaquam
dubitemus. Nos quidem, confecto jam pænè bello, et
profligatis ubique patriæ hostibus, nihil æquius, aut
ad pacem, remque publicam stabiliendam firmius esse
duximus, quam ut illi qui vel libertatem, ductore sem-
per Deo, per nos adepti sunt, vel vitam atque fortunas
post belli civilis facinora, nostro dono atque gratia
receperunt, nobis vicissim suis magistratibus fidem et
officium, solenni, si opus esset, more testarenter, atque
præstarent. Præsertim cum tot homines inquieti et
inimici, semel atque iterum in fidem accepti, mullum
neque domi neque foris perfidiosè agendi, movasque
turbas excitandi finem faciant. Itaque formulam
quandam sponsionis perscribendam curavimus, qua
778
LITERÆ SENATUS ANGLICANI.
omnes qui aut munus aliquod in repub. sustinerent,
aut legum præsidio muniti incolumitate, otio, cæteris-
que vitæ commodis fruerentur, conceptis verbis se
obstringeremt. Hanc etiam per omnes Colonias et
quacumque gentium nostri cives negotiandi causa
agerent, mittendam censuimus ; ut eorum quibus præ-
ficimur, fidem, prout decet atque necesse est, explora-
tam et cognitam habeamus. Quo magis mirari subit
quod ex urbe vestra mercatores nostri scribunt, sibi
mandata mostra per unum atque alterum vestri ordinis
exequi non licere. Sanè quod potentissimæ fœdera-
torum in Belgio provinciæ suarum rerum et rationum
consultissimæ, mihil ad se pertinere existimaverunt, si
peregrini scilicet Angli debitam suis domi magistrati-
bus in hæc vel illa verba fidem astringant, id quo pacto
vestræ civitati suspectum aut molestum esse possit,
fatemur planè nos nescire. Verum hoc à privato quo-
rumdam sive studio sive formidine profectum, quos
errabumdi quidam et pulsi patria Scoti, minis dicun-
tur impulisse, ut mercatores nostros a fide sua mobis
obliganda deterrerent, civitati non imputamus. Inter-
ea tamen summo vos opere hortamur atque etiam
rogamus (non enim mercatura jam, sed respub. ipsa
agitur) ut me quenquam apud vos patiamini, cujus
hoc mihil potest interesse, authoritati quam nos in
nostros populares, non exterorum arbitrio aut judicio,
sed jure patrio obtinemus, suam quamcumque authori-
tatem interpomere. Quis enim mon ægrè ferat, si nos
vestris hic Hamburgensibus sua erga vos fide interdi-
ceremus. Valete.
Dat. Jam. 4. 1649.
Serenissimo ac potentissimo Principi PH 1 LI ppo Quarto
HisPANIARUM IRegi, Parlamem'um Reipub. ANGLIÆ,
Salutem.
ANTONIUM Aschamum virum probum, eruditum, et
luculenta familia ortum, de rebus in commune, tam
Hispanorum, quàm Anglorum genti, ut spes est, valde
utilibus, ad majestatem vestram legamus. Quamobrem
ut ei honestum iter, atque tutum in urbem regiam, sicut
moris est, necnon et reditum concedere, et præstare
velis, parem referre gratiam parati, officiosè petimus.
Sin id minùs placuerit, ut quæ vestra hac in parte sit
voluntas, ei quam primùm significetur, utque tutò quo
volet abeundi potestas fiat.
Dat. Feb. 4. 1649.
Seremissimo ac potemtissimo Principi PHILIPPo Quarto
HisPANIARUM Regi, Parlamentum Reipub. ANGLIÆ,
ASalutem.
QUIs rerum nostrarum status sit, quamque atrocibus
injuriis subacti, sumptis tandem armis, capessendæ
libertatis consilium ceperimus, constituta qua nunc
utimur republicæ forma, meque majestatem vestram
potest latere, meque alium quemvis, qui evulgata super
hac re scripta mostra æquo animo perlegerit. Nobis
profecto fidem nostram, æquitatem, patientiam, testa-
tam cu ctis et probatam reddere, authoritatem etiam,
honorem et decus nostrum adversus infames exulum et
perfugarum linguas tueri, apud idoneos rerum æstima-
tores difficile non debet esse. Nunc quod exterarum
natiomum magis interest, deletis, aut depressis patriæ
hostibus, Deo nempe mirificè adjuti, ad pacem et ami-
citiam omni imperio potiorem cum vicinis gentibus ha-
bendam, paratos nos esse palam atque ex animo pro-
fitemur. Has ob causas spectatae solertiæ et probitatis
virum Antonium Aschamum in Hispaniam ad majes-
tatem vestram misimus ; qui de amicitia deque solito
inter utramque gentem commercio cum majestate ves-
tra agat ; vel etiam ad novas pactiones, si ita visum
fuerit, de integro sanciendas viam muniat. Huic
igitur vestræ majestatis adeundi copiam ut faciatis,
ejusque incolumitati, necnon etiam honori, quoad isto
apud vos munere perfuncturus est, velitis prospicere
rogamus : ut et ea quæ à nobis mandata habet, utrique
genti, ut speramus, profutura, liberè exponat ; et men-
tis vestræ qui sensus his de rebus sit, nos quam primùm
certiores faciat.
Westmonasterio, dat. Feb. 4. 1649.
Serenissimo Principi JoANNI Quarto LusitANI E Regi,
Parlamentum Reipub. ANGLIÆ, Salutem.
MULTA nos et infidæ pacis, et imtestini belli mala
ultima perpessos, eò demùm loci redactos fuisse, ut si
salvam rempubl. vellemus, ejus administrandi ratio
magna ex parte immutandi esset, ex iis quæ à nobis
hac de re scripta publicè et declarata sunt, majestati
vestræ jam pridem notum esse arbitramur. Quibus, ut
par est, si fides potiùs haberetur, quàm improbissimis
perditorum hominum calumniis, sanè qui foris de re-
bus nostris pessimè jam sentiunt, iis fortasse multò
aequioribus uteremur. Nam quod nos jure nostro, pro-
que gentilitia Anglorum libertate, rectè et majorum
more fortiter fecisse contendimus, de eo pravas et ob-
stinatas nequissimorum hominum opiniones ex animis
evellere, humanæ opis aut ingenii certè non est. Numc
autem quod nobis cum nationibus externis commune,
et in rem utrinque magis existit, amicitiam et com-
mercium quod nostris hominibus, cum vicina quacum-
que gente consuevit esse, non imminutum, sed auctum
atque ratum magnoperè cupimus. Cumque vestro in
regno populares nostri permagna et per utrique gemti
quaestuosa habeant negotia, iis ne impedimentum ali-
quod aut incommodum afferatur, quantum in nobis cst,
curabimus. Id verò prædicimus frustrà fore, dum piratis
et defectoribus nostris perfugium sibi vestris in portubus
reperire, et omerariis Anglorum mavibus, vi captis atque
direptis, bona civium nostrorum sub hasta vendere
Olissipone, ut nuntiatur, permissum est. Huic malo
quo maturiùs occuratur, et de ea, quam petimus, ami-
citia clariùs ut constet, nobilissimum virum Carolum
Vane, oratoris munere præditum, cum mandatis atque
diplomate, commissi sibi muneris teste, ad majestatem
vestram legavimus. Eum itaque benignè audire,
fidem ei adhibere, ejus denique incolumitati atque
honori, per omnes regni vestri fines, ut velis consulere
obtestamur. Haec omnia et mobis pergrata, et ma-
jestati vestræ, si fortè usus venerit, nostra omnium
officia mutua fore pollicemur.
|Westmonasterio, dat. Feb. 4. 1649.
LITERÄE SENATUS ANGLICANI.
779
Serenissimo Principi JoANNI Quarto I,UsitANIÆ Regi,
Parlamentum Reipub. ANGLIÆ, Salutem.
QUoTIDIANI ferè, et perquàm graves afferentur ad
nos nuntii, classiarios quosdam nostros, et gubernatores,
qui, abductis per scelus atque proditionem, quibus
præerant, navibus, superiore anno à nobis defecerant,
elapsos demùm ex eo portu Hiberniæ, in quo aestate
fermè tota obsessi, vix poenam suis flagitiis dignam
effugerant, ad Lusitaniæ nunc oram, Tagique fluminis
ostium se yecepisse : Ibi captis atque direptis quæ ad
mercaturam ultrò citròque commeant Anglorum ma-
vigiis, piraticam strenuè facere, et vicina quæque
maria, fretumque omne Gaditamum latrociniis infestum
atque infame reddidisse. Cui malo nisi primo quoque
tempore obviàm eatur, actum esse de commercio, quod
nostris hominibus cum I.usitanis peramplum et per
utrique genti quæstuosum est, quis mon videt ? Quam-
obrem à vestra majestate etiam atque etiam petimus,
ut piratas mostros et defectores, Portugalliæ finibus
exire jubeas; et siqui à Carolo Stuarto pseudolegati
adsunt, eorum uti rationem ne habere digneris ; nosque
potius agnoscas, ad quos Anglicarum jam summa re-
rum, Deo planè aspirante, rediit; utque nostræ amico-
rum classi, non minus vestris quam Anglorum com-
modis inservienti, Lusitaniæ portus, atque flumina
præcludi me simas. * * *
PHILIPPO Quarto HISPANIARUM Regi.
QUAM gravitèr quàmque acerbè tulerit majestas
vestra nefariam illam Antonii Aschami oratoris nostri
cædem, et quid puniendis ejus interfectoribus hactenus
effectum sit cum ex literis vestris, tum ex Domino
Alphonso de Cardenas legato vestro percepimus. Ve-
runtamen facinoris illius atrocitatem quoties nobiscum
reputamus quæ et ipsam vel habendi vel conservandi
commercii rationem funditùs tollit, si legatorum jus
apud omnes nationes sanctissimum impunè tanto scelere
violabitur, non possumus quin majestatem vestram
summa instantia iterùm efflagitemus ut supplicium de
illis parricidis primo quoque tempore debitum sumatur,
utque justitiam ulla mora aut obtentu religionis frus-
trari diutiùs ne sinat. Et quanquam potentissimi regis
amicitiam plurimi certè facimus, tamen ut tam infandi
parricidii authores dignas suo scelere poenas persolvant
omnem dare operam debemus. Humanitatem quidem
illam, quam jussu vestro in Hispaniæ portubus nostri
homines persensêre, præclaram etiam vestrte majestatis
in nos voluntatem, quam nuper amplissimis verbis
vestro nomine legatus nobis exposuit, grato animo
agnoscimus, neque non voluptati nobis erit eadem pa-
riter officia, si quis usus venerit, vestræ majestati et
Hispanorum genti reddere. At nisi justitiæ sine mora
satisfiat quod jamdiu petimus, quo miti fundamento
amicitia sincera ac diuturna possit non videmus, cujus
tamen conservamdæ à nobis quidem nulla honesta oc-
casio facilè omittetur, cui etiam fimi præsentiam legati
apud nos vestri conducere existimamus.
Legato HISPAN1co.
Excellentissime Domine,
CoNcILIUM Status, quam primùm per gravissima
reipub. negotia licuit, in parlamentum attulit quatuor
illa scripta quæ visum est excellentiæ vestræ undevi-
gesimo proximi Decembris cum concilio communicare,
concilium à parlamento in mandatis habet, quod ad pri-
mum scriptorum illorum caput, de nuperi scilicet resi-
dentis sui Dom. Aschami nefariis interfectoribus, re-
sponsum hoc reddere :
Parlamentum tamdiu, totiès, tamque meritò, debitum
eorum supplicium postulasse ut ampliùs dicere opus
non sit in re tanta, ubi (ut excellentia vestra pulchrè
meminit) regiæ majestatis ipsa agitur authoritas: Et
sine qua re omnis ratio societatis humanæ et conser-
vandæ inter gentes amicitiæ tolli necesse erit. Neque
sane ullo ab religione petito argumento intelligere
possumus, innocentium sanguinem scelestissima cæde
effusum non esse vindicandum. Etiamnum itaque
instat parlamentum et ab regia majestate expectat, ut,
juxta priora sua postulata, satisfactio sibi re ipsa atque
effectu detur.
Serenissimo Principi LeopoLDo AUSTRIÆ Archiduci,
Provinciarum in Belgio sub PHILIPPO rege Præsidi.
UT primùm ad nos mom sine gravissima querela
perlatum est, Janam Puccheringam illustri et opu-
lenta familia puellam hæredem, cum adhuc propter
aetatem sub tutoribus esset, haud procul ea domo, in
qua tum fortè Gremovici agebat, de manibus et com-
plexu famularum raptam fuisse, et parato ad id na-
vigio in Flandriam subitò deportatam, Walcii cujusdam
insidiis, qui per fas et mefas omni molitus est, ut pu-
pillam locupletem, vel ostenso mortis metu, ad nubem-
dum sibi adigeret, huic tàm atroci tàmque inaudito
sceleri primo quoque tempore occurrendum esse rati,
dedimus quibusdam negotium, ut cum præfectis Neo-
porti et Ostendæ (nam in ea fortè loca infelix illa dice-
batur appulsa) agerent de ingenua raptoris manibus
eripienda. Qui utrique pro sua singulari humanitate
et honesti studio, captivæ, perque latrocinium domo
abductæ opem libenter tulerunt; illa verò ut præda-
torum vim quoquo modo effugeret, in cœnobium vota-
rum virginum veluti sequestrò deposita est. Quam ut
ille Walcius inde abduceret, actionem in foro eccle-
siastico Iprensis episcopi de contracto secum matrimo-
nio instituit. Veruntamen, cum et raptor et rapta nos-
trates omninò sint, ipsum etiam facimus in nostra
ditione perpetratum, quod juratis testibus abundè li-
quet, hæreditas denique tam lauta, quam illum im-
primis inhiasse constat, in nostra potestate sit, hujus
propterea causæ cognitionem totam, atque judicium
ad mos duntaxat pertinere arbitramur. Vemiat huc
igitur qui se sponsum nominat, suam hic litem instruat,
quamque jure suam contendit esse uxorem, tradi sibi
postulet. Hoc interim a vestra celsitudine vehemem
tèr petimus, quod et per mostrum internuntium Brux-
ellis commorantem jam aliquoties petivimus, ut afflic-
780
LITERÆ SENATUS ANGLICANI.
tam et indignis modis habitam puellam, homestis
parentibus ortam, sua ex patria prædatorium in mo-
dum abductam, quoàd potes, liberam et incolumem
redire domum sinas. Hoc abs te nom nos tantùm,
siquam vestræ celsitudini parem à nobis gratiam,
parque beneficium reddi posse acciderit, sed ipsa etiam
humanitas, ipse pudor qui ad tuendum sexus illius
honorem et pudicitiam viris bonis atque fortibus inesse
debet, jumctis unà precibus afflagitare videntur. Vale.
Westmonasterio, Martii 28, 1650.
Serenissimo Principi JoANNI Quarto LUSITANIÆ
Regi.
QUod Oratorem nostrum et honorificè acceperit ma-
jestas vestra, et benignè statim audierit, nullam inter-
ponendam esse moram statuimus, quin alteris quam
primùm literis nostris intelligeres, gratissimum id
mobis accidisse ; nosque nihil sanctius decrevisse, quàm
pacem, amicitiam, commercium, quod nobis cum na-
tionibus plerisque exteris, et inter eas cum Lusitanis
jam diù est, nullo nostro dicto aut facto, mom prius
lacessiti, violare ; nec alia mente aut consilio classem
Anglicanam Tagi fluminis ad ostium misisse, quàm
hostes jam totiès fugatos persequendi, resque nostras
repetendi, quas per vim et proditionem suis dominis
ablatas, colluvies ista perfugarum vestras in oras, ip-
samque etiam Olissipomem, tanquam ad certissimas
latrocinii sui mundinas, asportavit. Verùm isti homi-
mes cujus audaciæ, furoris, et insaniæ sint, ex ipsorum
moribus flagitiosissimis omnes jam penè Lusitanos
abundè perspexisse arbitramur. Quo faciliùs à majes-
tate vestra impetraturos nos esse confidimus, primùm
ut illustrissimo viro Odoardo Poppamo, quem huic
movæ classi præfecimus, quibus potes rebus ad præda-
tores hosce debellandos adjumento esse velis, utque eos
cum duce suo, non hospites, sed piratas, non merca-
tores, sed commercii pestes, jurisque gentium viola-
tores, intra regni vestri portus, et munimenta diutiùs
consistere me sinas; sed qua patent Lusitaniæ fines,
terra marique pelli jubeas : sin hoc minùs, ut nobis
saltem pace vestra liceat defectores nostros, et prædones
propriis dumtaxat viribus aggredi, et, si Deus dederit,
in nostram potestatem redigere. Hoc ut prioribus
literis vehementur petivimus, sic jam idem studio
maximo atque opere ab majestate vestra contendimus.
Hac sive æquitate, sive beneficio, non justitiæ solùm
tuæ famam per omnes gentes benè moratas adauxeris,
sed et nos imprimis, populumque Anglicanum Lusi-
tanis jam ante à minime adversum, tibi tuoque populo
majorem in modum devinxeris. Vale.
Vestmonasterio, dat. 27 Aprilis, 1650.
HAMBURGENsiBUs.
DE controversiis mercatorum, nonnullis etiam aliis
de rebus quæ Reipubl. nostræ dignitatem aliquanto
propriùs attingere videntur, scriptum inter mos haud
semel, atque responsum est. Cum verò istiusmodi
megotia solis literis confici vix posse intelligamus, esse
autem à Carolo Stuarto immissos in urbem vestram
R
seditiosos quosdam, nulla re magis quàm scelere atque
audacia instructos, qui id agunt, ut nostrorum homi-
num, quorum præsertim fides in patriam perspectior sit,
commercium tàm vetustum in civitate vestra funditùs
tollant, idcircò virum nobilem et spectatissimum Rich-
ardum Bradshaw nostrum apud vos internuntium esse
jussimus : qui secundùm ea quæ à nobis mandata habet,
de rebus iis atque negotiis quæ cum utriusque reipubl.
utilitatibus conjuncta sunt, vobiscum uberiùs commu-
nicare, et transigere possit. Hunc igitur ut benevolè
quam primùm audiatis rogamus ; utque ei per omnia
fides ea, isque honos habeatur, qui hujusmodi munus
rectè obeuntibus ubique gentium haberi solet. Valete.
|Westmonasterio, dat. 2 Aprilis, 1650.
HAMBURGENSIBUs.
Amplissimi, magnifici, et spectabiles Viri,
Amici charissimi ;
STUDIA vestra quibus venientem ad vos residentem
nostrum accepistis, tàm propensa, tamque egregia ex-
titisse, et libenter intelligimus, et in eadem erga nos
voluntate atque animo perseverare velitis magnoperè
hortamur. Idque eò vehementiùs, quòd perlatum ad
nos est, exules illos nostros, de quibus jam sæpe scrip-
simus, efferre se solito insolentiùs in urbe vestra, nec
contumelias solùm, sed et minas quasdam atrocissimas
in oratorem nostrum palàm projicere. Hujus itaque
salutem atque etiam debitum honorem hisce rursùs
literis commendatissimum vobis esse volumus. In illos
autem perfugas et sicarios, tàm veteres quàm recentes,
si maturiùs animadvertetis, et nobis gratissimum, et au-
thoritate vestra atque prudentia dignum feceritis. Valete.
Vestmonasterio, dat. 31 Maii, 1650.
PHILIPPO Quarto HISPANIARUM Rega.
ANToNiuM Aschamum à nobis ad majestatem vestram
nuper missum oratorem, eoque nomine à præfectis ves-
tris perhumaniter et publicè acceptum, post itineris
pericula tam longinqui, primo statim adventu in urbem
regiam, omni præsidio nudatum, tam foedo parricidio
confossum in diversorio quodam, et cum Joanne Bap-
tista de Ripa ejus interprete mactatum esse, magno
sanè cum dolore accepimus. De illis autem parricidis
jam comprehensis, ut fertur, et in custodiam datis, qui
nom nos dumtaxat per illius latera, sed vestram quoque
fidem atque honorem consauciare ac pænè transfigere
sunt ausi, deque eorum quibuscunque hortatoribus ac
sociis ut supplicium tanto scelere dignum primo quoque
tempore sumatur, opere quam maximo à majestate
vestra petimus. Quanquam id nihilo minus factum
iri, quod petimus, utpote à rege sua sponte pio atque
justo, etiamsi nemo peteret, mom dubitamus. Quod re-
liquum est, ut corpus exanime amicis suis atque famulis
in patriam deportandum tradatur, utque eorum saluti
qui supersunt ea, quæ par est, ratione consultum atque
provisum tantisper sit rogamus, donec responso ad
hasce literas, si fieri potest, secum ablato, vestræ pieta-
tis atque justitiæ testes ad mos quam primùm redierint.
Westmonasterio, Dat. 28 Junii, 1650
LITERÆ SENATUS ANGLICANI. 78]
Excel!entissimo Domino ANTONIO LUDovico DE LA
Cet DA, Medi N E CELI Duci, AN DALITI/E Praesidi ;
Consilium Status Parlamenti ANGLIÆ authoritate
conustitutum, Salutem.
AccipiMus ab ornatissimis viris quos nuper in Portu-
galliam ad persequendos proditores, resque nostras
repetendas cum classe misimus, se ab Amplitudine
Vestra, quoties contigit ut Gallæciæ oram legerent,
quæ præfectura vestra est, et perhumaniter illis portu-
bus exceptos fuisse, et iis rebus omnibus adjutos, quæ
navigantibus usui solent esse. Ei vestra humanitas,
cum pergrata nobis omni tempore fuisset, tum est nunc
præcipuè, cum aliorum iniquum in nos animum nullo
merito nostro aliquibus in locis experimur. Petimus
itaque abs te, ** Illustrissime Domine,” ut in eadem erga
mos voluntate ac benevolentia permamere velis : utque
nostris hominibus, quoties ad ea littora naves appule-
rimt, pro solita humanitate tua, favere et adjumento esse
pergas ; tibique persuadeas mihil mos beneficii loco abs
te petere quod non eodem studio vel tibi vel tuis red-
dere, si quando similis occasio nobis dabitur, parati
erimus.
Vestmonasterio, Dat. 7 Novemb. 1650.
Signat. Consilii sigillo,
Jo. BRADSHAw Praeses.
Illustri et Magnífíco Civitatis GEDANENsis Senatui.
Magnifici atque Amplissimi Domini, Amici Charissimi;
FREQUENtes ad nos literae mercatorum nostrorum, qui
Βorussiæ per oram negotiantur, allatæ sunt, quibus
tributum grave quoddam et insolitum nuper in magno
Polonorum concilio imponi sibi queruntur: ut decimam
scilicet facultatum suarum omnium partem sublevando
Scotorum regi, nostro hosti, suppeditarent. Quod cum
juri gentium contrarium planè sit, tractari humc in
modum hospites et mercatores, iniquissimum etiam, ut
cujus tyramnide sint domi, divina ope, liberati, iidem in
aliena republica stipendia persolvere cogerentur, non
dubitamus quin pro illa libertate, qua frui vos intelligi-
mus, tam grave onus mercatoribus imperari in urbe
vestra pati nolitis ; in qua amicitiam et commercium,
nec sine magno vestræ civitatis emolumento, per tot
annos habuere. Si est igitur ut nostrorum hominum
apud vos mercaturam facientium tutelam suscipere
velitis, quod quidem cùm ab æquitate et prudentia
vestra, tum etiam à dignitate splendidissimæ urbis haud
dubitantèr expectamus, eam operam dabimus, ut gra-
tissimum id esse nobis omni tempore sentiatis; quotiès
in ditione nostra Gedanenses vel negotia habuerint, vel
maves, quod sæpè fit, ad portus nostros appulerint. '
Westmonasterio, Dat. 6 Feb. 1650.
Internuntio PoRTUGALLIco.
Illustris Domine,
LITERAs tuas hujus mensis quinto decimo Hamptoma
ad nos datas accepimus. Im quibus significas te à rege
Portugalliæ ad Parlamentum Reipublicæ Angliæ mis-
sum esse: quo autem muneris titulo, sive legati, sive
agentis, sive internuntii mon dicis ; id quod ex literis
quas à rege habes commendatitias sive credentiales in-
telligere velimus ; quarum exemplar ad nos poteris
quam primùm mittere; simul et illud scire, satismè plena
potestate instructus venias ad eas injurias expiandas,
damnaque ea resarcienda, quæ à rege vestro illata huic
reipublicæ sunt : dum hostem nostrum tota æstate
proxima suis portubus tutatus classem Anglicanam in
rebelles et perfugas quos eò usque insecuta erat, impe-
tum facere parantem cohibuit, hostem ab invadendis
nostris non cohibuit. De his omnibus ut satisfacias, si
ampla et libera mandata accepisse te scripseris, et iila-
rum quas diximus literarum exemplar unâ miseris, dein-
ceps curabimus, ut ad nos fide publica primo quoque
tempore tutò commeare possis : ubi cum regis literæ
perlectæ fuerint, tibi, quæ mandata porrò attulisti ea
liberè exponendi facultas dabitur.
Parlamentum Reipub. ANGLIÆ Serenissimo Principi
D. FERDINAN Do Secundo, Magmo Duci ET RURIAE,
&c. Salutem.
LITERAs celsitudinis vestræ 22 Aprilis 1651, Flo-
rentiæ datas, et à residente vestro domino Almerico
Salvetti nobis redditàs accepimus, in quibus Anglico
nomini quantoperè faveat celsitudo vestra gentemque
eam quanti faciat, facilè perspicimus, id quod non so-
lùm mercatores nostri, qui in portubus vestris multos
jam annos negotiantur, verùm etiam adolescentes qui-
que nostræ nationis nobilissimi, atqne honestissimi, qui
vestras per urbes aut iter fecere, aut excolendi ingenii
causa commorati sunt, testantur atque confirmant, quæ
cum nobis pergrata sanè sint, et acceptissima, tum hoc
etiam atque etiam petimus, ut quo animo, quoque
studio in nostros mercatores, aliosque nostræ reipublicæ
cives Hetruscam ditionem peragrantes, seremitas vestra
consuevit esse, in eo velit perseverare : nosque vicissim
pollicemur atque recipimus, quod ad Parlamentum at-
tinet, nihil defuturum, quod et commercio et amicitiæ
mutuæ, quæ inter utramque gentem jam diù invetera-
vit, firmandæ ac stabiliendæ possit conducere; quam
quidem omnibus utrinque humanitatis officiis, mutua-
que observantia, in perpetuum conservari cupimus at-
que optamus.
Westmonasterio, 20 Jamayii, 1651.
Subscripsit et Parlamenti sigillum apponi fecit
G U LIE LM US LENTHALL,
Prolocutor Parlamenti Reipub. Angliæ.
Parlamentum Reipub. ANGLIÆ, Illustri et magnifico
Civitatis HAMBURGENsis Senatui, Salutem.
Amplissimi, magnifici, et spectabiles viri,
Amici charissimi;
PARLAMENTUM Reipublicae Angliæ cum antiquam
amicitiam, mutuumque commercium, quæ inter gentem
Anglicam vestramque civitatem est, continuatum mag-
moperè vellet et conservatum, haud ita pridem Richayd-
um Bradshaw, armigerum, residentis munere præditum
illùc misit, eique inter alia mandata eò spectantia di-
782
LITERÆ SENATUS ANGLICANI.
sertis verbis mandavit, ut contra quosdam vestræ ditionis
justitiam efflagitaret, qui societatis Anglicæ conciona-
torem interficere sunt conati, quique deputato illius so-
cietatis impias manus injecêre, et mercatoribus quibus-
dam ejus societatis præcipuis impias manus injecêre,
eosque in navem prædatoriam abduxerant, et quamvis
prædictus residens, cum exciperetur primum et audi-
retur, accepta ab hac republica mandata illa sigillatim
vobis nota fecerit, quibus justitiæ vestræ exemplum in
maleficos illos edendum expectabatur, tamen cùm ex-
pectationi mostræ responsum non esse intelligeremus,
illud nobiscum cogitantes quanto in periculo et nostri
homines et illorum facultates versarentur, si de incolu-
mitate illorum et tutela adversus hostium malitiam et
iniquos oppugnatores non satis provisum esset, vursùs
prædicto residenti in mandatis dedimus, ut nostrum ejus
rei sensum representaret: utque hujus reipublicæ no-
mine vos ut amicitiam et necessitudinem inter hanc
rempub. vestramque civitatem initam magnumque
usum qui huic reipub. cum vestra civitate intercedit
conservare, adeoque mercatores nostros cum eorum pri-
vilegiis sine ulla violatione protegere velitis hortare-
tur ; utque nominatim in quemdam, cui nomen Garmes
est, qui se in hanc rempublicam contumeliosè gessit,
certosque ex societate mercatorum Anglica, vestra in
urbe commorantes, ad contumeliam hujus reipublicæ
magnamque nostrorum mercatorum molestiam, in Spi-
rensem cameram publicè citavit: quare reparationem
ejusmodi expectamus quæ æquitati et justitiæ consen-
tanea est.
De hisce capitibus, et si quid amplius ad hujus rei-
pub. cum vestra civitate amicitiam pertinuerit, prædic-
tum residentem hujus reipublicæ nomine ad vos jussi-
mus accedere : cui, ut fidem amplam in iis quæ huc
spectantia proposuerit habeatis, rogamus.
Westmomasterio, dat. 12 Martii, 1651.
Subscripsit, et Parlamenti sigillum imprimendum
curavit, Prolocutor, &c.
Parlamentum Reipub. ANGLIÆ seremissimæ CH Ris-
TIANJE, SUE coRUM, GoTHORUM, VANDALORUMQUE
I?eginæ, &c. Salutem.
Serenissima Regina ;
MAJESTATis vestræ literas ad parlamentum reipub.
Angliæ 26 proximè elapsi Septembris Stockholma da-
tas per Petrum Spierimg Silvercroom accepimus, et per-
legimus: et veterem quidem amicitiam, nec mom com-
mercium magnumque usum, qui Anglis cum Suecorum
gente antiquitùs intercedit, permanere atque indies au-
gere vehementer atque ex animo cupimtis: Neque du-
bitamus, quin legatus à majestate vestra ampliter im-
structus venerit ad ea maximè proponenda, quæ in rem
atque decus genti utrique futura imprimis fuissent,
quæque mos audire ex eo paratissimi fuissemus, et quod
utrinque potissimum salubre atque utile videretur, id
primo quoque tempore effectum reddidisse. Verüm
summo rerum moderatori Deo ita visum est, ut is ante-
quam audiri se petiisset de iis quae parlamento expo-
menda ab majestate vestra in mandatis habebat, evenit
ut ex hac vita excederet (cujus quidem desiderium ita
ægrè atque acerbè tulimus, ut qui simul in divina vo-
luntate acquiescere debeamus) unde et majestatis ves-
træ quæ mens esset adhuc scire nequeamus, ejusque
rei progressibus in presens injecta mora sit : quocircà
optimum nobis visum est hisce literis, quas, misso hac
ipsa de re nuntio mostro, dedimus, sigmificare vestræ
majestati, quam gratæ literæ vestræ quamque accep-
tus vester publicus minister parlamento reipub. Angliæ
fuerit ; simulque vestræ majestatis amicitiam quamto-
perè expectamus ; quàmque etiam, ut par est, tantae
principis amicitiam plurimi faciemus : deque illo quod
inter hanc rempub. et majestatis vestræ regnum est
commercio exaugendo, ita existimabimus quemadmo-
dum de re maximi utrobique momenti existimare de-
bemus: quod et ea de causa parlamento reipub. Am-
gliæ acceptissimum erit. Adeoque vestram majestatem
divinæ tutelæ recommendare volumus : Quorum no-
mine et authoritate.
Datis Westmomasterio die Martis anm. Dom. 1651.
Subscripsit et Parlamenti Sigillum imprimendum
curavit Prolocutor Parlamenti Reipub. Angliæ.
Parlamentum Reipublicæ AN6LIAE Serenissimo Prin-
cipi FERDINANDO Secundo HETRURIÆ Magno Duci,
Salutem.
LITERAs celsitudinis vestræ 22 Aprilis 1651, Floren-
tia datas, et à residente vestro domino Almerico Salvetti
nobis redditas accepimus ; in quibus Anglico nomini
quantopere faveat celsitudo vestra, gentemque eam
quanti faciat, facile perspicimus: id quod mom solùm
mercatores nostri, qui in portubus vestris multos jam
ammos negotiantur, verum etiam adolescentes quique
nostrae nationis mobilissimi atque honestissimi, qui ves-
tras per urbes aut iter fecere, aut excolendi ingenii causa
commorati sunt, testantur atque confirmant. Quæ
cum nobis pergrata sane sunt et acceptissima, tum hoc
etiam atque etiam petimus, ut quo amimo quoque studio
in nostros mercatores, aliosque nostræ reipublicæ cives
Hetruscam ditionem peragrantes seremitas vestra con-
suevit esse, in eo velit perseverare: nosque vicissim
pollicemur atque recipimus, quod ad parlamentum at-
timet, mihil defuturum, quod et commercio et amicitiæ
mutuæ, quæ inter utramque rempub. tam diu invete-
ravit, firmandæ ac stabiliendæ possit conducere : quam
quidem omnibus utrinque humanitatis officiis, mutua-
que observantia, in perpetuum conservari cupimus at-
que optamus.
Westmonasterio, Maii 22, 1651.
Parlamentum Reipublicæ ANGLIJE seremissimo ac po-
tentissimo Principi PHILIPPo Quarto HisPANIARUM
Regi, Salutem.
PERMAGNAs nobis querelas deferunt hujus reipub.
mercatores, qui in ditionibus vestræ majestatis merca-
turam faciunt, de vi multa atque injuriis sibi allatis,
deque novis etiam tributis sibi impositis à prefectis
aliisque officialibus vestrorum portuum et locorum, ubi
negotia habent, et nominatim in insulis Camariis,
LITERÆ SENATUS ANGLICANI.
783
idque contra foederis articulos, quos commercii causa
utraque matio inter se sanxit. Quas eorum querelas
veras esse jurejurando confirmavere. Nobisque demon-
strant, misi jus suum obtinere possint, suaque damna
resarciantur, nisi denique contra vim istiusmodi atque
injurias præsidium aliquod certum, atque tutelam et
sibi et fortunis suis habituri sint, non posse se amplius
iis in locis negotiari. Quibus eorum querelis graviter
à nobis perpensis, cumque facta illorum ministrorum
iniqua, aut non omnino aut secus quàm res se habet ad
motitiam vestræ majestatis pervenisse existimemus,
visum est nobis ipsas eorum querelas cum hisce litteris
ad majestatem vestram unà mittere ; nec dubitamus
quin majestas vestra, cum ipsius justitiæ amore, tum
etiam commercii causa, quod vestris haud minus quam
mostris hominibus fructuosum est, suis præcipere velit,
ut ab iniquis illis nostrorum vexationibus abstineant,
utque hujus gentis mercatores expeditam justitiam ob-
timere queant, necnon debitam earum injuriarum repa-
rationem, quæ à domino Petro de Carillo de Guzman,
atque aliis, allatæ sibi sunt, contra prædictos foederis
articulos, utque perficere velit majestas vestra, ut prae-
dicti mercatores fructum illorum articulorum percipere
queant, in eaque vestra tutela sint, ut tam ipsi quam
fortunæ suæ ab omni injuria liberæ et incolumes esse
possint. Hoc autem magna ex parte consecuturos se
esse putant, si ademptam sibi illam de judice conscr-
vatore schedulam, qui eos à novo quodam consulatu in
se quidem iniquiore defendat, majestas vestra rursus
concesserit ; me si nullum ab injuria refugium sibi de-
tur, abrumpi illud commercium, quod utrique genti
commoda haud parva attulit, violatis hunc in modum
fœderis articulis, necesse sit.
}Westmomasterio, Augusti, 165l.
Seremissimo Principi VeNETIARUM Duci, Senatuique
Celsissimo, Concilium Status Parlamenti Reipub.
ANGLIÆ Authoritate constitutum, Salutem.
Serenissime Princeps, celsissime Senatus,
Amici charissimi ;
MERcAToREs quidam nostri, quorum alteri Joannes
Dickons, alteri Job Throckmorton momen est, simulque
alii apud nos questi sunt, quòd cum Novembris octavo
et vigesimo 1651, ex jure et authoritate curiæ nostræ
ammiralatus occupassent in navi Hirundine vulgo
muncupata, cui in Dunis consistenti Isaacus Taylor
magister erat, centum dolia caveari vulgò dicti, quæ
sua propria bona essent, inque sinu Moscovitico Arch-
angeli dicto eadem in navem imposita; atque im ea
curia, prout lege agitur, decretum obtinuissent, quo
dicta caveari dolia sibi traderentur, fide sua priùs inter-
posita, se in illius curiæ sententia acquieturos; quodque
eadem curia, quo lis illa ad exitum perduceretur, cum
pro more scripsisset ad magistratusjudicesque Venetos,
literas, quibus petebant uti Joannem Piattum (Veneta
sub ditione digentem, qui cavearum illum sibi vendi-
cat) citarent quo re per procuratorem in ammiralatus
curia Anglica se sisteret, ubi lis ista pendet, jusque
suum probaret, tamen idem Piattus, et quidam David
IRutts Hollandus, dum causa hæc im nostro hic foro
pendet, multum supradicto Joanni Dickons, aliisque
illis mercatoribus de cavearo isthoc negotium facessit;
eorumque bona et facultates nexu occupandas Venetiis
curat: quae omnia singulatim, et quid hactcnus in
predicta mostra curia sit actum in literis illis requisito-
riis fusiùs exponitur ; quas postquam à nobis inspectæ
essent, ad serenissimam Venetiarum rempub. ut mer-
catoribus in hac causa adjumento esse possint, trans-
mittendas censuimus ; atque ab ea vehementèr peti-
mus, ut non solum illae literæ vim suam atque pondus
illic habere queant, sed etiam ut bona illa et facultates
mercatorum, quas prædictus Piattus et David Rutts
nexu illigandas curarunt, liberentur ; dictique rei ad
nostram hic curiam remittantur, quid sui sit juris in
hoc cavearo sibi vendicando lege experturi. Qua in
re celsitudo vestra et serenissima respub. fecerit et quod
aequissimum in se est, et quod illibata utriusque reipub.
amicitia est dignum, quod denique, oblata quavis oc-
casione, pari hujus reipub. benevolentia atque officiis
compensabitur.
Datis ab Alba Aula, die Feb. 1652.
Sübscripsit et Concilii Sigillum imprimendum
curavit, Consilii Præses.
Ad legatum HisPANICUM.
Excellentissime Domine,
CoNciLiUM Status cum ex mandato parlamenti secum-
do die mensis Martii accepto de charta excellentiæ ves-
træ 17 Feb. commissariis hujus concilii exhibita delibe-
rationem seriam habuerit, in qua excellentiæ vestræ
visum est, proponere uti duobus capitibus illis nominatis
quasi præviis responderetur, responsum hoc excellentiæ
vestræ reddendum censet.
Parlamentum, ubi ad ea respondit, quæ ab excellentia
vestra cum primum audiretur proposita sunt, tum etiam
in iis literis quas ad Serenissimum Hispaniarum Regem
scripsit, quàm sibi grata quamque accepta illa fuerit
amicitia, ususque mutuus qui et ab illius regia majes-
tate et à vobis ejus momine oblatus est, quam demique
deliberatum sibi fuerit, parem amicitiam quod ad se at-
timet, pariaque officia reddere uberius declaravit.
Exinde visum vestræ excellentiæ, cum primum au-
dita in concilio est Decembris 19 styli veteris, huic
concilio proponere, veluti rationem quamdam auspican-
dæ arctioris hujus amicitiæ, cujus facta tum à vobis
mentio erat, uti certi ex suo corpore nominarentur, qui
ea quæ attulisset excellentia vestra audirent, iis per-
pensis de eorum utilitate ad concilium referre quam
primum possint, cui vestro postulato ut satisfieret certos
ex suo numero concilium nominavit, qui excellentiam
vestram conveniremt, quod et proinde factum est eorum-
que loco quæ proponenda expectabantur, chartam illam
supradictam congressio ea protulit, ad quam responsum
hoc concilii est.
Cum parlamentum ea declaraverit, vestraque excel-
lentia progressum eum fecerit qui supradictus est, para-
tos nos esse, cum excellentia vestra in colloquium venire
iis de rebus, quas domini regis vestri nomine proposue-
ritis, tam de amicitia jam pridem imita, quam de arctiore
ineunda, aut si quid à nobis hujus reipub. nomine in
784
LITERÆ SENATUS ANGLICANI.
medium proferetur ; cumque ad singula ventum erit,
ita respondebimus, ut par est, naturaque rei postulabit.
Alba Aula, Martii 12, 1652.
Parlamentum Reipub. ANGLIÆ, serenissimo Principi
FREDERico Tertio DANIÆ Regi, &c. Salutem.
Serenissime et potentissime Rex ;
LITERAs vestræ majestatis, undevigesimo proximi
Decembris ad parlamentum reipub. Angliæ ab arce
regia Haphniæ datas, per virum nobilem Hemricum
Willemsen Rosenwing de Lysacker accepimus, eoque
animi affectu, quem res illic propositæ merentur, liben-
tissimè perlegimus, vestræque majestati persuasum hoc
esse cupimus, eundem animum, eadem veteris amicitiae,
commercii, ac mecessitudinis, quæ Angliæ cum Dania
per tot annos intercessit, continuandæ et conservandæ
studia, quae in majestate vestra sunt, in nobis quoque
esse ; haud nescientes, quamvis divinæ Providentiæ
visum sit, gentem hanc tàm benignè et placidè respici-
enti receptam apud mos prioris regimimis formam im
melius mutare, easdem tamem utrimque rationes, eadem
in commune commoda, eumdem mutuò usum atque
liberum commercium, quæ pactiones priores et foedera
inter utramque nationem pepererunt, etiamnum du-
rare vimque priorem obtinere, utrasque etiam obligare,
ut communem dent operam, fœdera illa quàm utilissima
sibi mutuo reddendo, ut amicitiam quoque propriorem
ac stabiliorem indies reddant ; cumque vestræ majestati
placuerit ea persequi consilia, quæ in literis vestris
regiis scripta sunt, parlamentum eadem amplecti cum
alacritate omni ac fide paratum erit, eaque omnia pro
virili sua parte conferre, quae illum ad finem conducere
arbitrabuntur; sibique persuadent, majestatem vestram
hac de causa, ea itidem consilia capturum esse ad hanc
rempub. spectantia (cui etiam provisum pactis priori-
bus est) quæ ad hasce res facere possint ab majestate
vestra nobis tàm cupientibus propositas. Parlamentum
interea majestati vestræ ac populo fœlicitatem prospera
que omnia precatur.
Datis Westmonasterio, die April. Am. Dom. 1652.
Sub Sigillo Parlamenti subscripsit ejus
nomine atque authoritate Prolocutor
Parlamenti Reipub. Angliae.
Parlamentum Reipub. ANGLIÆ illustribus et magnificis
HANSEATICARUM Civitatum Proconsulibus ac Sema-
toribus, Salutem.
Amplissimi, magnifici, et spectabiles Viri,
Amici charissimi ;
PARLAMENTUM Reipubl. Angliae literas vestras sexto
decimo Januarii proximè elapsi datas, perque vestrum
publicum ministrum Leonem ab Aisema allatas, accepit
atque perlegit, eumque ex earum authoritate audivit,
qui et vestrarum civitatum erga hanc rempub. propem-
sum et amicum animum exposuit, et antiqua illa inter
easdem amicitia ut porrò maneat petivit. Parlamen-
tum itaque pro se testatur atque confirmat pergratum
sibi esse, pristinam illam amicitiam ac necessitudinem,
quæ huic genti cum illis civitatibus intercessit, et re-
novari ratamque permanere, seque fore paratum qua-
vis occasione commodùm oblata quod verbis in se
recipit id reipsa solidè prestare, eademque fide et in-
tegritate antiqui illi amici et foederati sui ut secum
agant expectat: quæ autem prætereà residens vester
speciatim in mandatis habuit, cum ea ad concilium
status integra à nobis remissa fuerint, quæque propo-
suisset ibidem consultata, responsum illic atque trans-
actum cum eo ita fuit, prout quidque maximè cum
aequalitate et ratione consentire visum est, quod et
residens vester remunciare ad vos poterit : cujus pru-
dentia et spectata probitas collata in eum à vobis pub-
lici muneris mota dignum prædicat.
Datis Westmonast. die April. Am. Dom. 1652.
Sub Sigillo Parlamenti subscripsit, ejusque
nomine et authoritate, Prolocutor Parla-
menti Reipub. Angliæ.
Parlamentum Reapub. ANGLIÆ allustra et magmfico
Civitatis HAMBURGENSIS Senatui, Salutem.
Amplissimi, magnifici, et spectabiles Viri,
Amici charissimi ;
PARLAMENTUM Reipub. Angliae literas vestras quinto
decimo Januarii proxime elapsi Hamburgo datas, per-
que mobilem virum Dominum Leonem ab Aisema
vestrum et caeterarum civitatum Hamseaticarum resi-
dentem allatas, accepit atque perlegit, eumque ex
earum authoritate audivit, et quæ amplius ab vestra
civitate mandata speciatim habuit, de iis ad concilium
status remisit, quibus ut exciperent quæ ab eo propo-
merentur, deque iis quæ justa et æqua viderentur, cum
eo quàm primum transigerent, authores fuimus ; quod
etiam exinde factum est. Utque parlamentum earum
rerum quæ à vobis afferentur debitam rationem sem-
per se esse habiturum ostendit, suumque erga vestram
civitatem singulare studium, misso illuc residente suo,
ibique manere jusso, testatum reddidit; ita vicissim
expectat, et meritò quidem postulat, à vobis æqua reddi
iis in rebus quæ hujus reipub. ex usu, ab suo dicto
residente suoque momime vestræ civitati, antiquitùs
amicæ mobis et foederatæ, vel jam exposita vel in pos-
terum exponenda erunt.
Vestmonasterio, dat. die April. Am. Dom. 1652.
Sub Sigillo Parlamenti subscripsit ejus no-
mime atque authoritate Prolocutor Parla-
menti Reipub. Angliæ.
Comcilium Status Ièeipublicæ ANGLIÆ Serenissimo
Principi D. FERDINANDo Secundo Magno Duci
HETRURIÆ, Salutem.
CoNciLIUM Status cum à Carolo Longlando, qui
in portu celsitudinis vestræ Liburnensi mercatorum
Anglicorum negotia procurat, certius per literas fie-
ret, quatuordecim maves præsidiarias Foederatorum
Belgarum in eum portum nuper venisse, qui naves
Anglorum in ipso portu vestro aut incensuros se esse
aut depressuros mimati palám sunt, vestramque sere-
nitatem, cujus fidem atque opem Angliæ merca-
tores ibi commorantes imploraverant, Liburniensis
ILITERÆ SENATUS ANGLICANI
785
præsidii præfecto mandasse, uti illis Anglorum na-
vibus auxilio esset, sui muneris atque officii judicavit
esse, uti celsitudinem vestram certiorem faceret,
quàm huic reipublicae gratissima sit benevolentia illa
atque tutela, quam mercatoribus Auglis tam benignè
præbuistis, vestraeque celsitudini promittit atque in
se recipit mansuram apud se in omne tempus hu-
jus benè meriti gratiam, paratumque se omni occa-
sione fore parem amicitiam pariaque officia vestro
populo reipsa præstare, omniaque facere, quae conser-
vandæ inter hanc gentem atque vestram solitæ benevo-
lentiæ, atque commercio possint conducere. Cumque
naves Fœderatarum Belgii Provinciarum inter ipsa de
foedere colloquia à semetipsis oblata in classem nostram
summa cum perfidia non solùm in ipsis stationibus
hostilia inceptaverint (quo in facinore DEUS, tamquam
arbiter justissimus, adversum se illis atque infensum
ostendit) verùm etiam in exterorum portubus naves
mercatorum nostrorum capere aut demergere conatæ
sint, necessarium etiam censuimus scriptum hoc parla-
menti reipublicæ Angliæ ad celsitudinem vestram unà
mittere ; cujus emittendi occasionem dedere controver-
siæ inter hanc rempub. et Belgii provincias in præsen-
tia coortae. Ex quo celsitudo vestra facilè perspiciat,
quàm iniqua, quam contra fas omne atque jus gentium
facta illius populi in hanc rempub. extiterint, et quàm
ex animo parlamentum studuerit, publicæ pacis causa,
amicitiam eorum et societatem pristinam retinuisse.
Datis ab Alba Aula, Julii 29, 1652.
Subscripsit Concilii Nomine atque Authoritate
Concilii Præses.
Ad Legatum HisPANICUM.
Excellentissime Domine,
CoNcILIUM Status, deliberatione habita de illa char-
tula quam % £; 1652, ab excellentia vestra accepit,
tum etiam de illa quam in concilio status cum audiretur
i% hujus mensis vestra exhibuit excellentia, ad binas
illas chartulas responsum hoc reddit : parlamentum
reipubl. Angliæ firmam amicitiam bonamque pacem,
quæ huic repub. est cum Hispaniarum regia majestate,
conservandi percupidum, ex quo idem primùm regis
prædicti animum eodem inclinare excellentia vestra
significavit, paratum semper fuisse eam utriusque gen-
tis bomo quam maximè firmare ac stabilire. Idque
concilium status parlamenti nomine atque mandato
suis chartulis aliquoties excellentiæ vestræ demonstra-
vit; et speciatim, prout excellentia vestra petiverat,
commissarios delegit, quæ et excellentiam vestram
convenirent, ab eaque acciperent, quæ ad predictum
finem conducentia proponerentur ; quo in conventu
eorum loco proponendorum visum est nobis generatim
quædam, quasi futuro prævia colloquio, exhibere, de
quibus concilio videbatur, parlamentum qui suus esset
sensus chartis prioribus planum fecisse: tamen quo
cumulatiùs satisfieret, utque excellentiæ vestræ mequa
dubitatio restaret iis de rebus quæ tum proposuerat,
concilium in ea chartula quæ í %##; data est, paratum
se esse ostendit cum excellentia vestra im colloquium
venire iis de rebus quæ à parte regiæ majestatis præ-
dictæ in mandatis haberet, tàm de pristina amicitia
quàm de actione futura, de iis etiam quæ à nobis hujus
reipub. nomine exhiberentur; cumque ad singula veni-
retur ea, quæ par esset, resque postularet, responsa
dare : ad quæ visum est excellentiæ vestræ nihilum
respondere neque per duos pene menses in ea re ulterius
progredi. Vestramque chartulam 4}£; 1652, datam
concilium ex eo tempore primam ab excellentia vestra
accepit, in eaque hoc solum proponitis, uti pacis atque
fœderis articuli inter Carolum regem nuperum ves-
trumque Dominum {%, Novembris 1630, pacti denuò
percurrantur, utque ejus capita quaeque vel amplifi-
centur vel immutenter pro temporum et rerum alio
munc statu, necnon regendæ reipublicæ forma immu-
tata, quod cum mihil amplius esset, quàm quod et mos
in prædicta nostra chartula í, £#, summatim atque
dilucidè significaveramus, expectabat concilium quos-
dam speciatim articulos ex eo foedere ab excellentia
vestra propositum iri, cum ea amplificatione, iisque
mutationibus, quarum facitis mentionem, cum alioqui
nobis impossibile sit ullum aliud responsum hac de re
dare, quàm quod jam dedimus. Verùm cum excel-
lentia vestra ex charta sua novissima dilationem in
mos conferre videatur, concilium idcircò chartulam ves-
tram prædictam *$}j; datam, quodque in ea pro-
positum erat denuò inspexit, seque de eo quod illic
est propositum, priore illa chartula excellentiæ vestræ
plenè satisfecisse arbitratur, cui et hoc solum potest
adjicere, se, cum excellentiæ vestræ videbitur, vel ex
foederibus jam factis vel alio quovis modo ejusmodi ferre
conditiones, quæ ad præsentem rerum ae temporum
statum erunt accommodatæ, quibus à parte vestra fun-
dari amicitiam vultis, ea vobis responsa exinde redditu-
rum, quæ ab se ad ea reddi aequum erit, quæque parla-
mentum in eodem perseverare studio testentur, illibatam
atque firmam cum rege vestro domino amicitiam com-
servamdis. Eaque ut augescat etiam, parlamentum
omnem honestam seque dignam operam pro se qùidem
dabit.
Concilium praeterea sui officii ducit esse, exeellen-
tiam vestram illius nostræ chartulæ Januarii 30, 1651,
ad vos datæ admoneri, cui cum excellentia vestra re-
sponsum nondum dederit, instamns proinde atque ex-
pectamus, ut parlamento, de qua illic re facta mentio
est, satisfactio detur.
Responsum Comcilii Status ad Replicationem Domi-
morum Legatorum Eaetraordinariorum seremissimi
Regis DANIÆ et NoRWEGIÆ, Commissariis Concilis
traditam, ad Responsum illud quod reddidit Conci-
lium ad quatuordecim eorum postulationes.
IPRae.DicTis Dominis Legatis ut satisfiat de responso
concilii ad quintum, sextum, septimum, octavum, et
nonum articulum, assentitur concilium huic sequenti
clausulæ suo responsorum fine adjiciendæ. Videlicet,
præter illas colonias, insulas, portus et loca in partis
alterutrius ditione, ad quæ loca me quis negotiandi aut
commercii habendi causa accedat, lege cautum est, nisi
impetrata prius ejus partis licentia speciali, ad quam
illa colonia, insula, portus, aut loca pertimuerint
736
LITERÆ SENATUS ANGILICANI
Receptio cujusquam in navem quæ in flumina, portus,
aut simus alterutrius partis compulsa erit navem illam
ulli exhibendæ molestiæ aut perscrutationi ex responso
concilii ad articulum undecimum obnoxiam mom faciet,
quemadmodum prædicti domini legati in replicatione
sua videntur intellexisse, præterquam ubi illa receptio
contra leges, statuta, aut morem illius loci est, in quo
illa navis portum capesserit, qua in re videtur concilio
nihil statui quod durius sit, sed quod utriusque reipub.
saluti sit aequè conducibile.
Quod ad probandum cujusnam propriè naves et bona
illa erunt, quæ in naufragio ejici acciderint, concilium
existimat necesse esse jusjurandum dari in illis curiis,
quæ ad hujusmodi causas aut jam sunt constitutæ aut
erunt constituendæ, ubi qua illa sibi vendicant audiri
singuli possint, et cujusque jus cognosci ac dijudicari,
quod scriptis testimoniis, quæ vulgo * certificata ”
nuncupantur, tam clarè atque distinctè fieri non potest,
unde multi scrupuli ac dubitationes existere poterunt,
multæ etiam fraudes ac doli in illud genus probationis
irrepere, quod ne eveniat utriusque partis interest pro-
videre. Concilium etiam æquum esse arbitratur, definiri
certum tempus, ante quod tempus qui justum earum
rerum dominum se esse non probaverit, excludetur ad
evitandas sine fine lites. Quod autem ad modum venun-
dandi ea bona quæ ejecta in maufragio facile corrum-
puntur, visum est comcilio eum modum proponere qui
ad lucernam dicitur, ut qui sit modus maximè probabilis
verum bonorum pretium eliciendi ad dominorum emo-
lumentum ; tamen si prædicti domini legati inventam
aliam rationem attulerint quæ huic fimi magis condu-
cere videbitur, per concilium non stabit quo minus id
fiat quod æquum erit: neque intelligitur ob hamc rem
huic tractationi moram afferendi occasio ulla praebeatur.
Quod autem ad eorum supplicium qui propositum
foedus ruperint, concilium id adjecit, cujus in responso
suo ad articulum quartum decimum fit mentio ad majo-
rem ejus articuli efficaciam, ipsumque foedus eò firmius
atque diuturnius reddendum.
Ad clausulam articuli quarti decimi extremam quod
attinet respondere, non expedire censemus illis foede-
ribus ac societatibus, quarum in prædictis responsis
facta est mentio, quæque generatim duntaxat propo-
nuntur assensum nostrum exhibere antequam quales
illæ sint, exploratius nobis fuerit, de quibus cum ex-
cellentiis vestris visum erit concilium certius facere, re-
sponsum expressius ad id reddere poterimus.
Rcplicatio Concilii Status ad responsum prædictorum
Dominorum Legatorum quod ad senos articulos à
praedicto Concilio nomine Reipub. ANGLIAE eæhibitos
est redditum.
CoNciLiUM, inspectis prædictorum dominorum lega-
torum diplomatis quibus collata in eos potestas est trans-
igendi cum parlamento aut ejus commissariis de iis
omnibus quæ transigi expediverit, fœderaque vetusta
renovandi novaque jungendi, existimabat quidem prœ-
dictos dominos legatos ea authoritate esse præditos, ut
et responsa dare possent, et omnia transigere, tam quæ
à parte hujus reipub. quam quæ à parte Regis Daniæ
et Norwegiæ ferrentur, adeoque responsa quæ prædictis
dominis legatis ad primam, secundam, tertiam et quin-
tam concilii postulationem dare libuit haud expectabat,
quo factum erit, ut huic præsenti tractationi necessario
more afferatur, cum et in se æquissimum sit, et im com-
cilio deliberatum, fœdus integrum tractando simul
complecti tam de iis quæ ad hanc rempublicam quam
quæ ad regna Damiæ et Norwegiæ spectant. Qua-
propter concilium enixè flagitat, ut excellentiæ vestræ
vespondere ad predictum nostrum primum, secundum,
tertium, et quintum postulatum velint.
Ad quartum articulum de portoriis Gluckstadii cum
ea jam antiquata sint, quemadmodum excellentiæ
vestræ in responso meminerunt, instat concilium uti
eorum illa antiquatio etiam per hoe foedus rata habea-
tur, ne forte in posterum revocentur.
Quod ad sextum articulum, qui de pyratica est, eum
quidem inseruit concilium ut qui ad utriusque com-
moda æquè pertineret, et ad commercium in commune
stabiliendum, quod à pyratis atque prædomibus per-
quàm turbatur atque interrumpitur ; cumque responsum
dominorum legatorum de hoc articulo ad hostes tan-
tùm referatur, mentionem piratarum nullam faciat,
concilium idcirco expressius responsum ad id petit.
Cumque prædicti domini legati in sua replicatione
ad responsum concilii et decimum suum articulum, et
ad eum concilii responsum prætermiserint, concilio me-
cessarium visum est prioribus suis postulatis sequentem
hunc articulum adjungere.
Populum et incolas reipub. Angliæ, qui negotia aut
commercium per ulla regna, regiones, aut ditionem
Regis Daniæ et Norwegiæ habuerint portorii, tributi,
census, vectigalis aut stipendii cujusvis plus in poste-
rum non solvere aut alio quovis modo atque populus
fœderatarum Belgii Provinciarum, aliave quævis na-
tio externa minimum illic solvens mercaturamque fa-
ciens, si solvit aut solutura est, parique frui et aequè
ampla libertate privilegiis et immunitatibus, cum in
adventu, tum in reditu, ct quamdiu illic commorabun-
tur, in piscatu etiam, mercatura, atque alio quocunque
modo, quo ullius exteræ gentis populus in prædictis
regnis totaque ditione dicti Regis Daniæ et Norwegiae ,
fruitur ant frui queat ; quibus itidem privilegiis popu-
lares Regis Damiae et Norwegiæ per omnes provincias
ac ditionem Reipublicæ Angliæ pariter fruentur.
Concìlium Status Reipub. ANGLIÆ seremissimo Prin-
cipi Domnino FERDINANDO Secundo, Magno Duci
HETRURIÆ, Salutem.
Serenissime Princeps, Amice Charissime,
CoNsILIUM Status, cognito tàm per oratorem celsitu-
dimis vestræ hic commorantem, quam per Carolum
Longlandum mercatorum Anglicorum negotia Liburni
procurantem, quanta cum benevolentia ac fide celsitudo
vestra mavium Anglicarum in Liburniensem portum se
recipientium tutelam susceperit, contra Belgarum naves
prædatorias exitium illis atque direptionem mimitantes,
literis undetrigesimo Julii datas (quas ad celsitudinem
vestram, jamdudum pervenisse sperat) significavit
quam id sibi gratum acceptumque accidisset, codcm-
LITERÆ SENATUS ANGLICANI.
787
que tempore scriptum parlamenti reipublicæ Angliæ de
controversiis inter hanc rempublicam et Fœderatas
Belgii Provincias in praesentia exortis ad seremitatem
vestram unà misit. Cumque rursus per eundem Caro-
lum Longlandum concilium intellexerit, quae ulterius
mandata dederit celsitudo vestra de incolumitate atque
tutela navibus Anglicis præstanda, etiam Belgis, ne id
fieret, importunè contra nitentibus, ne hanc quidem oc-
casionem prætereundam esse censuit, significandi rur-
sus celsitudini vestræ se vestram justitiam et singula-
rem in tutandis navibus suis constantiam cum plurimi
facere tum sibi etiam gratissimam habere. Quod cum
solidae amicitiae studiique vestri in hanc rempub. haud
leve indicium sit, persuadere sibi poterit cclsitudo ves-
tra paria officia atque studia in nobis erga vestram cel-
situdinem nunquam se esse desideraturam. Quæque
declarare possint quàm nobis deliberatum sit eam ami-
citiam, quæ huic reipub. cum vestra seremitate est,
quàm constantissimè atque diutissimè pro virili nostra
parte conservare. Nos iuterim navibus nostris omni-
bus, quæ vestros portus intraverint, disertis verbis mam-
davimus, ut salutationes explosione tormentorum con-
suetas, omnemque honorem debitum vestræ celsitudini
exhibere meminerint. •
Datis Alba Aula, Septemb. 1652.
Et concilii sigillo deinde consignandis subscripsit
Concilii Præses.
Ad Legatum Hispanicum ALPHoNsUM de Cardemas.
Excellentissime Domime,
LITERÆ excellentiæ vestræ t*5 Novembris l652 datæ,
et à secretario vestro Novembris 8 redditæ, unà cum
duobus libellis supplicibus simul involutis, im concilio
recitatæ sunt de navibus mimirùm Samsone et San
Salvadore vulgò nominatis ; ad quas concilium respon-
sum hoc reddit: navem Anglicam præsidiariam, cum
in prædictas naves non in Dunis, ut scribit excellentia
vestra, sed in alto incidisset, tamquam hostium mavem
prædæ habitam im portum adduxisse; curiamque Am-
miralatus, ad quam propriè de causis hujusmodi attinet
cognoscere, illius causæ cognitionem pro jure sibi
sumpsisse ; ubi singuli partis utriusque quorum id
interest ampliter et liberè audientur, jusque suum
quisque obtinebit: vestræ porrò excellentiæ rogatum
ad illius curiæ judices misimus, quo certiùs intelliga-
mus quousque iis de navibus im judicio processerint.
Quod simul ac nobis compertum erit, ea dari mandata
hac de re curabimus, quæ et æquum erit, et ea dignum
amicitia, quæ huic reipublicæ cum rege vestro inter-
cedit, nec minùs confidimus, regiam ejus majestatem
minimè passurum esse, hujus reipublicæ hostium boma
sub nomine ejus subjectorum elabi aut delitescere.
Subscripsit et concilii sigillum apponemdum curavit
Gulielmus Masham, Comcilii Præses.
Datis ab Alba Aula, l l Novemb. am. Dom. 1652.
Legato HISPANIENsI.
Excellentissime Domine,
ALLATUM nuper ad comcilium est ab mavarcho nostro
Bodileo navium hujus reipublicæ ad Gaditanum mare
præfecto, se cum tribus aliis navibus præsidiariis post-
quam undecim Belgicarum impetum continuato bidui
certamine sustinuisset, ad portum Longonem vulgò
dictum ad sarcienda quædam in eo prælio accepta
incommoda, easque res comparandas quæ sibi ad pug-
mam opus essent, in portum Longonem vulgò dictum
se recepisse, ubi ejus loci præfectus in eum cæterasque
sub ejus ductu naves omnia et justissimi et humanis-
simi simul viri officia implevit; cumque is locus in
ditione serenissimi regis Hispaniarum sit, concilium
certè singularem presidii illius humanitatem reipsa
cognitam arctioris amicitiae mutuae tam auspicatò
cœptæ fructum uberem esse existimat ; suique adeò
officii ducit esse, ob acceptum tam opportuuò benefi-
cium ejus majestati gratias agere, vestramque rogat
excellentiam, ut hoc regi suo serenissimo velit primo
quoque tempore significare, eique persuasum reddere,
parlamentum reipub. Angliæ paratum semper fore,
paria amicitiæ atque humanitatis officia oblata quavis
occasione referre.
Dat. Westmonasterio, 1 1 Nov. An. Dom. 1652.
Subscripsit et concilii sigillum apponendum curavit
GULIELMUs MASHAM, Concilii Præses.
Parlamentum Reipub. AN G LI ae, Seremissimo Principi
D. FERDINAN Do Secundo, Magno Duci HETRURIÆ,
Salutem.
Seremissime Princeps, Amice Charissime,
PARLAMENTUM reipub. Angliæ literas vestræ celsi-
tudinis Augusti septimo decimo, Florentia datas, acce-
pit: in quivus de restitutione navis cujusdam agitur
oryza onustæ, quæ navis à capitaneo Car'io Liber-
miensi vendicatur. Et quamvis in mostra ammiralatus
curia contra predictum Cardium im ea causa sententia
judicum lata jam sit, et apud delegatos provocatio
tum penderet, tamen cum hoc celsitudo vestra petat,
parlamentum, quo tam amici principis benevolentiam
ac mecessitudinem quanti faciat testificari possit, mam-
davit quibus curæ ea res est, ut navis illa cum oryza,
vel saltem ejus justum pretium prædicto capitameo Car-
dio reddatur ; cujus mandati fructum procurator ejus
apud mos re ipsa jam percepit. Et quemadmodum cel-
situdo vestra, suum uavibus Anglorum im portu Libur-
miensi patrocinium atque tutelam bemigmè præbendo,
parlamentum sibi magnoperè devinxit (cujus rei gestæ
marratio tam ab oratore hic vestro, quàm à Carolo
Longlamd mercatorum mostrorum illic procuratore, de-
lata nuper ad nos est) ita parlamemtum summo vicissim
studio dabit operam, quotiescumque occasio dabitur, ut
sua omnia sinceræ amicitite atque benevolentiæ officia
im celsitudinem vestram solidè constare possint ; quam
adeò divinæ bemigmitati atque tutelæ commendatissi-
mam vult esse.
Datis Westmonasterio, die Novemb. 1652.
Subscripsit et sigillum reipub. apponendum curavit
Prolocutor Parlamemti Reipub. Angliæ.
3 E
788 LITERÆ SENATUS ANGLICANI.
Parlamentum Reipub. ANGLIÆ Serenissimo et Potem-
tissimo Principi DANI E Regi, &c.
Serenissime et Potentissime Rex,
PARLAMENTUM reipublicæ Angliæ postquam accepit
ab illius classis præfecto quæ muper ad Hafniam majes-
tatis vestræ portum missa est, ut navibus mercatorum
nostrorum inde redeuntibus domum præsidio esset ;
prædictis navibus permissum mon esse secum discedere;
verùm illic majestatis vestræ jussu retineri ; productis
etiam ab eo literis regis vestram ea im re sententiam
declarantibus, megat explicatas in iis literis rationes
cur naves illæ retineantur ulla in parte sibi satisfacere :
ut igitur in re tanti planè momenti, quæque ad pros-
perum utriusque gentis statum tantoperè conducit,
sequuturo fortasse majori cuipiam incommodo maturiùs
occurratur, misit parlamentum virum illustrissimum et
spectatæ fidei Richardum Bradshaw armigerum, Ham-
burgi oratorem, qui itidem ad majestatem vestram ora-
toris munus impleat, cum iis disertè mandatis, ut de
prædicto negotio agat: vestramque adeò rogamus ma-
jestatem eidem velit viro et aurem benignam et fidem
amplam perhibere, quicquid super hoc negotio vestræ
majestati nostro nomine proposuerit : quam nos divinæ
tutelæ et providentiae commendatam volumus.
Datis Westmomasterio, 6 die Novemb. am. Dom. 1652.
Sub sigillo parlamenti ejusque nomine atque au-
thoritate subscripsit Prolocutor Parlamenti Rei-
publicæ Angliae.
Parlamentum Reipub. ANGLIÆ Serenissimo Principi
VENETIARUM Duci, Salutem.
PARLAMENTUM reipublicæ Angliæ literas celsitudinis
vestræ, primo Junii 1652 datas, per Laurentium Palu-
tium accepit, ex quibus cum et vestrum, et senatus
propensum in hanc rempublicam animum prospiciat,
occasionem hanc suum vicissim erga serenissimam
rempublicam Venetam singulare studium ac benevo-
lentiam declarandi, libenter arripuit, quam et re ipsa
idque ex animo, demonstrare quoties usus venerit,
haudquaquam gravabitur, cui et omnes vel conser-
vandæ vel etiam augendæ amicitiæ ususque mutui ra-
tiones in medium allatæ erunt itidem acceptissimæ,
vestræque adeò celsitudini et Reipublicæ Serenissimæ
fausta omnia ac prospera exoptat atque precatur.
Datis Westmonasterio, die Decemb. am. Dom. 1652.
Subscripsit et parlamenti sigillum imponendum
curavit Prolocutor Parlamenti Reipub. Angliae.
Parlamentum Reipub. ANGLIÆ Serenissimo Principi
FERDINAN Do Secundo, HETRURIÆ Magno Duci, Sa-
lutem.
CUM parlamentum reipub. Angliæ antehac suis ma-
varchiis atque præfectis navium ad loca sub vestræ
celsitudinis ditione appellentibus, etiam atque etiam
mandaverit, ut se pacatè atque modestè gererent,
eaque quà decet observantia erga principem sere-
nissimum, cujus hæc respub. et conservare amici-
*
tiam tantoperè studeat, et tantis beneficiis affecta sit,
prorsus inopinatum sibi quidem accidit, quod à ma-
varcho Appletono in Liburniensi portu insolentiùs
factum esse accepit; eum nimirùm ab eo vigili dum in
molestationem ageret, vim attulisse, idque tum con-
tra fidem atque obsequium huic reipublicæ ab eo debi-
tum, tum contra observantiam atque honorem qui ves-
træ celsitudini sua in ditione jure optimo debetur: quam
rem totam sicuti gesta est, ex literis vestris 7 et 9 De-
cembris, Florentia datis, parlamentum intellexit ; ube-
riùs etiam per spectatissimum virum Almericum Sal-
vettum, vestrum hic residentem ; atque vestræ celsitu-
dinis honorem, qui hac in re agi videtur, usque adeò
sibi commendatum habet, ut concilio status id negotii
dederit, uti literas navarcho Appletono quam primum
seribendas curaret, quibus is terrestri itinere confestim
huc advolare juberetur, insoliti hujus facti et extraor-
dinarii rationem redditurus (quarum exemplum litera-
vum his inclusum unà mittitur) qui ubi advemerit et
facti postulabitur, de eo id statutum iri pollicemur,
quod testificari possit se vestri juris violationem haud
minùs moleste ferre, quam si ipsum jus suum violaretur.
Quinetiam de nave dicta Phoenice Liburni recuperata
consultatione habita, quæ res à celsitudine vestra nec-
non ab oratore suo narratur atque urgetur, contra datam
à navarcho Appletono fidem fuisse, qua obstrictus erat
ne Hollandos intra conspectum portus aut lanternæ ado-
riretur, vestramque celsitudinem ea fiducia nixam, Hol-
landis fide data de incolumitate promisisse, debere
proinde eorum satisfactioni prospicere, quibus vestra
sub fide damnum datum est, parlamentum ab excellem-
tia vestra petit, ut hoc sibi persuasum habeat, hanc
rem, quemadmodum sine suo consilio aut mandato est
gesta, ita hoc etiam ab sua voluntate ac mente lon-
gissimè abesse, ut celsitudo vestra ullo incommodo aut
honoris imminutione ex illo facto afficiatur: quin imò
se operam daturum, ut vobis satisfaciendi aliqua ratio
ineatur, prout sibi quæstione habita de re tota consti-
terit : quam ut pleniùs intelligere possit, ipsum navar-
chum Appletonum ab se audiri necessarium esse judi-
cat ; qui et eadem fide obstrictus erat, et ab excel-
lentia vestra creditur, ejusdem violationi saltèm assem-
sisse ; præsertim cum is tam brevi sit ad nos reversu-
vus, atque illum postquam parlamentum audiverit,
et cum dicto oratore vestro rationes amplius contulerit,
hac de re haud exigui sane momenti, eam sententiam
feret, quæ et æqua erit, summæque benevolentiæ qua
celsitudinem vestram prosequitur consentanea, collatis
denique à vobis in se beneficiis haud indigna. De qua
ne interim dubitaret celsitudo vestra, literis per eundem
hunc tabellarium statim missis certiorem factam primo
quoque tempore volebat ; seque nullam occasionem
esse prætermissurum, qua possit re ipsa testari, vestram
amicitiam quanti faciat.
Datis Westmonasterio, 14 die Decembris,
am. Dom. 1652.
Subscripsit et parlamenti sigillum imprimendum
curavit, Prolocutor Parlamenti Reipub. Angliæ.
LITERAE SENATUS ANGLICANI.
789
Concilium Status Reip. ANG LICANE Seremissimo Prin-
cipi FREDERico, Haredi Norwegia, Duc, Slesvici,
Holsatia, Starmatia, Ditmarsia, Comiti in Olden-
burgh et Delmenhorst, Salutem.
QUANQUAM sapientissimo Deo visum est rerum om-
nium moderatori clementissimo, praeter illud onus quod
nobis cum majoribus nostris commune imposuit, ut pro
libertate nostra contra tyrannos honestissima bella gere-
remus, iis nos etiam auspiciis eague divina ope prae illis
insigniter adjuvare, ut non solum civile bellum restrin-
guere, sed et causas ejus in futurum praecidere, nec non et
hostium externorum inopinatos impetus propulsare va-
luerimus, eundem tamen supremi numinis in nos favo-
rem ac benignitatem gratissimis quantum possumus
animis agnoscentes, non ita rerum nostrarum successi-
bus efferimur, ut non singularem potius Dei justitiam
ac providentiam edocti, atque nosmet largiter experti,
et bellum omne quantum licet aversemur, et pacem
cum omnibus cupidissimè amplectamur. Quemadmo-
dum igitur quae amicitia quaeque foederum jura nobis
cum populis quibuscumque ac principibus antiqua in-
tercessere, ea hactenus cuiquam mec violavimus priores,
nec violata voluimus, ita et celsitudo vestra, pro vetusta
sua cum Anglis et à majoribus accepta amicitia, pote-
rit certissima animi persuasione de nobis a qua omnia
atque amica, et sibi et suis polliceri. Denique ut de-
lata à celsitudine vestra nobis sua studia atque officia
plurimi ut parest facimus, ita operam dabinus ut ne-
que nostra ullo tempore vel sibi vel suis deesse sentiat:
vestramgue aded celsitudinem omnipotentiae numini-
que Dei omnipotentis quâm maximè commendatam
cupimus.
Datis in Alba Aula, die Julii, am. 1653.
Subscripsit et consilii sigillum imprimendum curavit,
Concilii Praeses.
Comiti OLDENBURGIco.
Illustrissime Domine,
PARLAMENTUM reipub. Angliae plurimam salutem ab
amplitudine vestra officiosissimé atque humanissimé
sibi dictam, per Hermannum Mylium, jurisconsultum
deputatum et consiliarium vestrum accepit: quiet fausta
omnia parlamento reique Anglicae, vestro nomine pre-
catus est, et hujus reipub. amicitiam ut vobis sarta tecta
permaneret simul expetivit: literasetiam liberi comme-
atus, quibus vestrae ditionis populus ed tutius negotia-
retur, navigaret, et commercia exerceret, nec non et
nostra ad publicos foris ministros mandata uti amplitu-
dini vestrae rebusque vestris, suis officiis atque consiliis
opitularentur, idem à nobis petivit. Nos et petitis
hisce libenter annuimus, et cum amicitiam, túm etiam
literas illas expetitas, illaque ad ministros publicos
mandata sub parlamentisigillo concessimus. Et quan-
quam aliquot jam menses abierunt, ex quo vester pub-
licus minister ad nos primum accessit, ea tamen dilatio
neque ex ed orta est, quo nos petitioni, amplitudinis
vestraenomine factae, assentiri gravaremur, neque quo
vester deputatus nos assidue sollicitare ullo tempore
destiterit, (qui certe omnicum diligentia, nec non offici-
osa simul instantia, ut conſecto negotio, compos voti
dimitteretur, quotidié nos efflagitavit,) verúm exeo solum
accidit, quëd maxima quidem et gravissima reipub.
negotia, quaeque ad eam vehementer pertimere, aut agi-
tarentur per hoc totum ſere tempus, aut transigerentur.
Qua de re dignitatem vestram illustriss. certiorem faci-
endam esse censuimus, ut ne quis dilationem hanc secus
interpretando, gravatim aut aegrè impetratum hoc esse
existimet, quod a parlamento reipub. Angliae libentis-
simé concessum est. Cujus nomine consignare haec
jussus est,
HEN Ricus ScoBELL, Clericus Parlam.
Parlamentum Reipub. ANG LIE I'llustribus et Amplissi-
mis Consulibus, Scultetis, Landam. et Senatoribus
Cantonum Helvetiae Evangelicorum, Tigurini, Ber-
mensis, Glaronensis, Basileensis, Schaffusiensis, Ab-
batiscellani, mec mom ejusºlem Religionis Confedera-
torum in Rhaetia, Geneva, Sanctogalli, Multusii, et
Biennae, Amicis mostris charissimis, Salutem.
LITERAs vestras, illustres domini atque amici charis-
simi, Decembris 24, 1652, ad nos datas, accepimus,
omni humanitate, benevolentia, studioque erga nos
nostramgue rempub. egregio reſertas; quoddue nobis
semper majus et antiquius debet esse, charitatem frater-
nam et vere christianam spirantes. Deoque imprimis
optimo maximo gratias agimus, qui vos totgue vestras
civitates nobilissimas, non tam illis montium claustris
quam insita vestra fortitudine, pietate, et prudentissima
aequissimaque rerum civilium administratione, mutua
denique foederum fide circumvallatas atque munitas,
firmissimum universis orthodoxis praesidium illis in locis
excitavit atque constituit: vos deinde, qui per omnem
Europam primi fere mortalium post invectas ab Aqui-
lone barbarorum regum tyrannidos, Deo vestram virtu-
tem prosperante, libertatem vobis peperistis, partam
haud minore prudentia ac moderatione, tot per annos
illibatam conservastis ; de nobis nostraque libertate
nuper vindicata tâm praeclaré sentire, tamque sinceros
evangelii cultores de nostro in orthodoxam fidem amore
ac studio, tam constantër persuaderi, id quidem longé
nobis gratissimum est. Quod autem ad pacem nos pié
sané et affectu, ut nobis est persuasissimum, veré chris-
tiano adhortamini, permagnum certé pondus apud nos
ea adhortatio habere debet; cum propter ipsam rem,
quam suadetis, maxime expetendam, túm propter sum-
mam etiam authoritatem, qute vobis prae caeteris hac in
parte meritó tribuenda est, qui inter maximos circum-
quaque bellorum tumultus, et ipsi summam pacein
domi forisque tamdiu colitis, et aliis omnibus pacis co-
lendae simul hortatores et exemplum optimum extitistis;
cum id denique suadeatis, quod nos dedita opera, iddue
haud semel, non tam nostris rationibus, quam univer-
ste rei evangelicte prospicientes, per legatos aliosque
publicos ministros petivimus, amicitiam mimirüm et
arctissimum ſodus cum foederatus Belgarum provinciis
ſeriendum. Verum illi (sive illa perpetuo nobis infesta,
regiis addicta partibus, tyrannidis et ipsa apud suos
affectatte comperta Arausiana factio potius dicenda est)
790
LITERÆ SENATUS ANGLICANI.
quo pacto legatos nostros, non de pace, sed de fraterna
amicitia ac foedere arctissimo venientes acceperint, quas
postea belli causas præbuerint, ut mos, inter ipsa lega-
torum suorum de foedere colloquia, instructa classe mi-
hil tale cogitantes, in ipsis mavium stationibus nostris,
ultrò lacesserint, ex illo à nobis ea de re publicè scripto,
et nunc unà cum hisce literis ad vos misso, abundè in-
telligetis. Nos autem im id sedulò incumbimus, Deo
benè juvante, quamvis re hactenùs tàm prosperè gesta,
ut neque nostris quicquam viribus aut copiis tribuamus,
sed uni omnia Deo, meque successibus insolentèr effe-
ramur: eundemque animum retinemus conficiendæ
justæ atque honestæ pacis omnes occasiones amplecti
paratissimum. Vos interim, illustres ac præstantissimi
domini, quibus pium atque præclarum hoc studium est,
solo evangelico amore impulsis, fratres inter se cer-
tantes componere atque conciliare, et omni apud ho-
mines laude digni, cœlestis illius pacificorum præmii
apud Deum haud dubiè compotes futuri, cujus summæ
benignitati atque gratiæ vos vestrosque omnes ex animo
commendatos volumus, si qua in re vobis usui esse
possumus, ad omnia cum amicorum tùm fratrum officia
promptissimi. -»
Datis Westmonasterio, die Oetobris, am. Dom. 1653.
Subscripsit et parlamenti sigillum imprimendum
curavit Prolocutor parlamenti reipub. Angliæ.
Legato HisPAN 1 co.
Illustrissime Domine,
CUM graves ad nos allatæ essent querelæ Philippi
Noelli, Joannis Godalli, et societatis mercatorum in
Anglia Foyensium, mavem quandam suam Ammam
Foyensem dictam, navem Anglicam à sese instructam,
suis mercibus onustam, cum domum suam ad portum
Foyensem cursum temeret, circa festum Michaelis Arch-
angeli, à nave quadam presidiaria Ostendensi, cui
præfuit Erasmus Bruerus, oppressam injustè et sime
causa captam fuisse, inque ea mautas indignè et barbarè
tractatos, consilium status ea de re ad Marchionem
Ledæ scripsit, (quarum literarum exemplar amplitudini
vestræ unà cum his mittimus) expectabatque ab eo sine
mora mandatum iri, ut ex jure et æquo ista in re quam
primum ageretur. Verùm cum denuò prædictus No-
éllus unà cum illa societate graviter queratur, quamvis
literæ nostræ Marchioni redditæ fuerint, et mercatores
illi ab eo tempore se Brugas ad maritimarum causarum
curiam contulerint, ibique jus suum suæque causæ
veritatem probaverint, justitiam tamen sibi denegari,
tamque iniquè secum agi, ut quamvis per tres ampliùs
menses cognitioni matura res fuerit, tamen ab illa curia
se impetrare non posse ut sententiam tandem ferat;
quin navis eorum et bona mihilo minus retineantur,
seque per hanc moram im persequendo jure suo magnos
sumptus fecisse. Non ignorat amplitudo vestra et juri
gentium et commercii et amicitiæ, quæ inter Anglos
et Flandros est, contrarium esse, ut mavis aliqua Osten-
densis navem aliquam Anglicam caperet, si quidem
mercibus Anglicis onusta Angliam petat ; quæque ab
illo præfecto in nautas Anglicos inhumaniter ac barbarè
commissa sunt pœnam gravem mereri. Concilium
itaque hanc rem amplitudini vestræ commendat, petit-
que ut de ea im Flandriam scribere velitis, eamque
operam primo quoque tempore dare, ut me hoc nego-
tium diutiùs extrahatur, sed uti ea justitia fiat, ut præ-
dicta navis et bona, unà cum damnis, sumptibus et
foenore quæ Angli isti propter illam injustam intercep-
tionem sustinuerunt, authoritate curiæ maritimæ Bru-
gensis, aut alio modo bomo iis reddantur, utque curetur
nequa ejusmodi interceptio deinceps fiat, quin amicitia
quæ nostris hominibus cum 1'landris intercedit sine
ulla violatione conservetur.
Obsignatum nomine et jussu concilii status parla-
nenti authoritate constituti.
Marchioni LE D/E.
Illustrissime Domine,
G RAVEs ad nos allatæ sunt querelæ, à Philippo
Noëllo, et Joanni Godallo, et societate mercatorum
Foyensium, de nave quadam sua, cui momen Anna
Foyensis, quæ cum esset navis Anglica, ab illis in-
strueta, et ipsorum solummodo mercibus omnsta, circiter
festum Michaelis Archangeli ad portum suum remavi-
gans, à nave præsidaria quæ ad Ostendam pertinebat,
cujus erat præfectus Erasmus Bruerus, de improviso
capta fuit. Nuntiatum porrò est, Ostendenses, cum in
sua potestate navis esset, nautas omnes nimis imhuma-
miter tractasse, accenso fune digitis admoto, et mavis
magistrum undis immersisse, atque poene suffocasse,
ut minimè veram ab ipso confessionem extorquerent,
de navi atque mercimoniis illis, quasi Gallorum essent.
Quod tametsi magister ille cæterique socii mavis firmi-
ter pernegabant, Ostendenses tamen, et navim et mer-
cedes in portum suum abduxerunt. Hæc in curia
mavali Angliæ, inquisitione facta, testibusque adhibitis,
vera esse apparuere, ut ex autographis testimoniorum
quæ cum his literis simul misimus manifesto liquebit.
Cum itaque illa navis, Anna Foyensis dicta, atque
mercimonia omnia peculiariter verè ac propriè ad An-
glos pertineant, adeo ut nulla causa appareat cur
Ostendenses vel illam vel ea vi caperent, multò minùs
auferrent mavis magistrum, aut societatem tam durè
tractarent ; cumque secundùm leges mationum atque
amicitiam inter Anglos Flamdrosque, mavim illam at-
que mercimonia reddi oporteat, magnoperè petimus ab
excellentia vestra, ut jus suum Anglicani maturè obti-
meant, atque illis satisfiat qui damnum acceperunt,
utque commercium, et amicitia quæ inter Anglos Flan-
drosque est, diù atque firmitèr conservetur.
Legato HisPANico.
PARLAMENTUM reipublicæ Angliæ cum intelligat,
plurimos ex populo in hac urbe tàm excellentiæ vestræ,
quàm aliorum legatorum et ministrorum ab exteris
regionibus publicorum his versantium domos missæ
audiendæ causa frequentare, concilio status mandavit,
uti excellentiæ vestræ significaret, cùm hoc gentis
hujus legibus dammatum, ac in hac nostra republica
mali admodum exempli sit, offensiomisque plenum,
censere. se, sui planè officii esse, ne quid tale dehinc
LITERÆ SENATUS ANGLICANI. 791
fiat providere ; coetusque ejusmodi in futurum prorsùs ę * • * *
interdicere. Qua de re excellentiam vestram admoni- „Summarum damnoru m aliquot p. articularium quibus
tam nunc esse cupimus, ut ne quem ex populo hujus | “" à Belgica Orientalis Indiae Societate affecti
reipublicæ missae audiendæ causa suam in domum S ll 7}2?0S.
posthâc velit admittere. Et quemadmodum parlamen- 1. PRoPTER damna quæ per eos feci- l. s d
tum diligenter curabit, ut legati jus et privilegia quae- | mus qui Bantamum obsederunt, unde
que vestræ excellentiæ inviolata serventar, ita hoc sibi | factum est ut per sex annos continuos
persuasissimum habet, excellentiam vestram, quamdiu | eo commercio exclusi simus, et conse-
hic commoratur, leges hujus reipub. per se suosve nolle | quenter occasione sexcenties mille re-
ullo modo violatas. gios in coëmendo pipere locandi pro
rata nostra portione, quo multas naves
Summarium damnorum singulorum et haud fictorum | nostras in reditu onerare potuissemus,
quibus Societas Anglicana multis Orientalis Indiæ quo onere cum carerent passim per In-
locis à Belgica Societate affecta est. diae littora cariem traxere : interea sors
nostra apud Indos quæ vel pecuniæ
1. DAMNA illa sedecim articulis com- 1. s. d. | vel bonorum erat stipendio nautico
prehensa et pridem exhibita, quorum commeatu alioque apparatu imminuta
summa est 298555 regiorum $ quæ est et exhausta est, adeo ut prædictæ jac-
11; Onet{e mOstrae . • «.-* • - 74638 15 O | turæ haud minoris æstimari queant
2. De Pularonis insulæ fructibus vicies centies et quater millenis regiis,
satisfactionem dari postulamus ab id est nostræ monetæ *-* «-* — 600000 0 0
anno 1622, ad hoc usque tempus, du- 2. Plura etiam propter damna ex
centies millenum regiorum § præter amissa parte nostra debita fructuum in
dispendium futurum donec jus ditionis insulis Moluccis, Banda et Amboyna,
in illam insulam nobis restituatur eo ex quo tempore per caedem nostrorum
verum statu in quo fuit cum erepta ibi factam pulsi inde sumus ad usque
nobis est, prout foedere sancitum erat : illud tempus quo de jactura hac atque
quod est nostræ monetæ - «- - 50000 0 0 | dispendio nobis satisfiat, quod spatium
3. Satisfactionem postulamus de om- temporis ab anno 1622, ad hunc annum
nibus illis meircimoniis cibariis et ap- praesentem 1650, pro reditu anno 25000
paratibus, qui ab agentibus societatis librarum, annis 28, summam conficit 700000 0 0
Belgiæ apud Indos ablati sunt, aut iis 3. Reparationem insuper postula-
traditi, aut ulli ex eorum navibus eo mus centies et bis millemum nongento-
cursum tenentibus aut inde redeunti- rum quinquaginta novem regiorum
bus, quorum summa est 80635 regio- Surattæ, à populo Mogulli nobis abla-
rum : nostrae monetae «- v-* - 20158 0 0 | torum, quos Belgæ eum in modum tu-
4. Satisfactionem postulamus ob tati sunt, ut neque ex pecuniis neque
portoria mercium Belgicarum quæ in ex bonis ejus populi quæ in ipsorum
Perside aut navibus impositæ sunt, aut juncis seu navibus erant damna nostra
in terram expositæ ab anno 1624, prout resarcire possemus, quod quidem per-
nobis à rege Persarum concessum erat, ficere et comati sumus et in manu
quæ minoris æstimare non possumus nostra situm erat, nisi eos Belgæ ini-
quam octogies millenis regiis - - 20000 0 0 | quissimè defendissent, quæ pecunia
5. Satisfactionem postulamus ob amissa ad impensas faciendas jamdu-
quatuor ædes malitiosissimè et ini- dum in Europa triplum peperisset:
quissimè Joccatræ incensas, unà cum quod nos æstimamus s-s •- — 77020 0 0
mercium apothecis repositoriis et appa- 4. Ob portoria Persidis quorum di-
ratibus, cui rei prætor illic Belgicus midia pars ab rege Persarum Anglis
occasionem dedit, de quibus omnibus ex comcessa est anno 1624, quæ usque ad
eo ipso loco certiores postea facti sumus ammum 1629 supputata æstimatur oc-
quam priores querelas exhibueramus ; ties millemis regiis, quemadmodum
cujus damni summa est ducenties mil- prius exponitur qua ratione subducta
lemum regiorum e-» *-* -• - 50000 0 0 | quatuor mille librarum in annos sin-
6. Satisfactionem postulamus ob gulos præbere tementur ab anno 1629,
32890 libras piperis ex nave Endi- à quo unus et viginti anni sunt, atque
nione vi ablatas anno 1649, cujus - indè summa conficietur - s-a «-» 84000 0 0
damni summa est - �- *-* - 6000 0 0 Ab altero summario - 220796 15 0
220796 15 0 | ,.,„„, figuræ Summa totalis — 16818 16 15 0
*-* • • • - - -> figuræ O
regil
IXebitum ab eo tempore foenus sortem ipsam longè superabit.
LITERÆ OLIVERII PROTECTORIS
NOMINE SCRIPTÆ.
Comiti OLDENBURGIco.
Illustrissime Domine;
PER literas vestras Januarii die vigesimo 1654 datas,
certior sum factus, mobilem virum Fridericum Matthiam
Wolisogum secretarium vestrum, et Christophorum
Griphiandrum, cum certis mandatis ab illustrissima
dignitate vestra in Angliam missos fuisse. Qui cùm
ad nos accessissent, et susceptam Anglicanæ reipublicæ
administrationem nobis vestro nomine gratulati sunt ;
et uti vos vestraque ditio in hanc pacem, quam cum
foederatis Belgii ordinibus proxime fecimus, assumere-
mimi : ut demique salvam-guardiam illam quam vulgo
vocant, à parlamento nuper vobis concessam, nostra
nunc authoritate confirmaremus, petiverunt: ob istam
itaque gratulationem tam amicam maximas, ut æquum
est, gratias agimus : et illa duo postulata libenter con-
cessimus ; nulli etiam occasioni in posterum defuturi,
quæ studium in vos nostrum poterit ullo tempore de-
clarare. Idque ex supradictis oratoribus vestris pleniùs
vos arbitror intellecturos; quorum fides, ac diligentia,
in hoc vestro apud nos negotio præclarè constitit. Quod
reliquum est, vobis, rebusque vestris felicitatem, atque
ex voto pacem omnem exopto.
Westmonasterio, Jum. 27, 1654.
Illustrissimae dignitatis vestræ studiosissimus,
OLIVERIUs, Angliæ, Scotiæ, Hiberniæ, &c.
Protector.
Comiti OLDEN BURG1co.
Illustrissime Domine;
LITERAs vestras Maii secundo die Oldenburgo datas
accepi haud uno nomine gratissimas ; cùm quòd essent
ipsæ singulari erga me humanitate ac benevolentiâ re-
fertae ; tum quòd illustrissimi Domini Comitis Antonii
perdilecti filii vestri manu redditæ. Id quod eò magis
honorificum mihi duco, ex quo illius virtutes tanta
stirpe dignas, moresque eximios, studium denique in
me egregium, non tam acceptum ab aliis, quàm re ipsâ
cognitum atque perspectum, jam habeo. Neque du-
bium esse potest, quin eamdem quoque suis domi spem
faciat, fore se patris optimi præstantissimique similli-
mum ; cujus præclara virtus atque prudentia perfecit,
ut tota illa ditio Oldenburgica permultis ab annis, et
summa pace frui, et pacis commoda percipere, inter
sævissimos undique circumstrepentium bellorum tu-
multus, potuerit. Talem itaque amicitiam quidni ego
quam plurimi facerem, quæ potest inimicitias omnium
tam sapienter ac providè cavere ? Pro munere denique
illo magnifico est, Illustrissime Domine, quòd gratias
habeo ; pro jure est ac merito tuo, quòd ex animo sum
Illustrissimae dignitatis vestræ studiosissimus,
OLIVERI Us, Angliæ, Scotiæ, Hiberniæ, &c.
IProtector.
Westmonasterio, 29 Jumii, 1654.
Illustrissimo Domino ANToNio GUNTHERo, Comiti
in Oldenburgh, et Delmenhorst, Domino in Jeh-
verm, et Kniphausem.
OLIVERI Us Protector Reipub. Angliæ, Scotiae, Hiber-
miæ, &c. Seremissimo Principi CAROLO GUSTAVO
Suecorum, Gothorum, Vandalorumque Regi, Magno
Principi Finlandiæ, Duci Esthomiæ, Careliæ, Bre-
mae, Verdae, Stetimi, Pomeramide, Cassubiae et Vanda-
liæ, Principi Rugiæ, Domino Ingriæ, Wissmariæ,
mecmom Comiti Palatino Rhemi, Bavariae, Jul. Cliviæ
et Momtium Duci, &c. Salutem.
Serenissime Rex ;
CUM Suecorum regnum per hosce dies summis populi
studiis, omniumque ordinum suffragiis liberrimis, trans-
latum ad vos esse, toto orbe terrarum percrebuerit, id
maluisse majestatem vestram suis literis amicissimis,
quàm vulgata fama nos intelligere, et summæ benevo-
lentiæ erga nos vestræ, et honoris inter primos attributi,
argumentum haud leve esse ducimus. Illam itaque
vestris meritis egregiis accessionem dignitatis, præmi-
umque virtute tanta dignissimum, et sponte et jure
vobis gratulamur : idque ut majestati vestræ, Sueco-
rumque genti, reique toti christianæ, bonum atque
faustum sit, quod et vobis maximè in votis est, junctis
precibus Deum oramus. Quòd autem foederis inter
hanc rempublicam Sueciæque regnum recens icti con-
servationem majestas vestra, quod ad se attinet inte-
gerrimam, usque eò curæ sibi fore confirmat, ut quæ
numc intercedit amicitia, non permanere solum, sed, si
id fieri potest, augescere etiam indies possit, id vel in
dubium vocare nefas esse, tua tanti principis fide inter-
posita, cujus eximia virtus non solùm in peregrina terra
regnum tibi hæreditarium peperit, sed tantùm etiam
LITERÆ OLIVERII PROTECTORIS.
793
potuit, ut augustissima regina, Gustavi filia, cui parem
omni laude heroinam multa retrò secula non tulêre,
possessione imperii justissima inopinanti tibi ac nolenti
ultrò cederet. Vestrum denique tam singulare erga
nos studium, tamque præclaram animi significationem
nobis esse gratissimam, omni ratione persuasum esse
vobis cupimus ; nullumque nobis pulchrius certamen
fore, quàm ut vestram humanitatem nostris officiis nullo
tempore defuturis, si id potest fieri, vincamus.
Majestatis vestræ studiosissimus,
OLIVERI Us, Reip. Angliæ, Scotiæ,
Hiberniæ, &c. Protector.
Westmonasterio, die
4 Julii, 1654.
Illustrissimo Domino LUdovico MEN DEzIO DE HARo.
Quod accepi ex literis suis, illustrissime Domine,
constitutum ac nominatum jam esse ab serenissimo
Hispaniarum rege legatum, qui de suscepta à me Am-
glicana republica gratulatum huc primo quoque tempore
veniret ; cùm est meritò per se gratum, tùm tu id, qui
ex te imprimis hoc me cognoscere voluisti, ut esset mihi
aliquanto gratius atque jucundius, singulari tuo studio
atque officii celeritate effecisti. Sic enim diligi atque
probari me abs te, qui virtute tua atque prudentia tan-
tam apud regem tuum authoritatem tibi conciliasti, ut
vel maximis illius regni negotiis par animo præsis,
haud minori profectò mihi voluptati debet esse, quàm
judicium præstantissimi viri ornamento mihi intelligo
fore. De meo autem in serenissimum Hispaniarum
regem propenso animo, et ad amicitiam cum isto regno
conservandam, atque etiam indies exaugendam, promp-
tissimo, et huic qui nunc adest legato satisfecisse me
spero, et alteri, cùm advenerit, cumulatè satisfacturum.
De cætero, illustrissime Domine, qua nunc flores apud
regem tuum dignitate ac gratia, eam tibi perpetuam
exopto; quasque res geris bono publico et administras,
volo tibi prosperè feliciterque evenire.
Amplitudinis tuæ illustrissimæ studiosissimus,
OLIVERI Us Protector Reipub. Angliæ, Scotiae,
Hiberniæ, &c.
Alba Aula, Septembris die, 1654. •
Serenissimo Principi CARoLo GUsTAvo Adolpho, Sue-
corum, Gothorum, Vandalorumque Regi, &c.
CUM de voluntate vestræ majestatis in me singulari
ex vestris sim nuper literis persuasus, quibus et ipse
pari studio rescripserim, videor mihi ex ratione prorsus
amicitiæ nostræ deinceps facturus, si quemadmodum
quæ grata acciderint ad lætitiam mutuam communicem,
ita quæ contraria, de iis vobis tanquam amicissimis,
animi mei sensum doloremque aperiam. De me equi-
dem sic existimo, eo me in loco reipub. jam esse consti-
tutum, ut communi Protestantium paci imprimis, et
quantum in me est, consulere debeam. Quo gravius
necesse est feram quæ de Bremensium et Suecorum
præliis mutuisque cladibus ad mos perferuntur. Illud
primum doleo, amicos utrosque nostros tam atrociter,
tamque Protestantium rationibus periculosè, inter se
decertare ; pacem deinde illam monasteriensem, quae
reformatis omnibus summo praesidio credebatur fore,
ejusmodi peperisse infœlix bellum : ut nunc arma Sue-
corum in eos conversa sint, quos inter cæteros paulo
ante religionis causâ acerrimè defenderent: idque po-
tissimum hoc tempore fieri, cum pontificii per totam
fere Germaniam reformatos ubique rursus opprimere,
et ad intermissas paulisper injurias, vimque pristinam,
redire palam dicantur. Cum itaque intelligerem di-
erum aliquot inducias ad Bremam urbem jam esse fac-
tas, non potui sane quin majestati vestræ, occasione
hac data, significarem quàm cupiam ex animo, quam-
que enixè Deum pacis orem, uti istæ induciæ utrique
parti feliciter cedant ; utque in pacem firmissimam ex
compositione utrinque commoda possint desinere: quam
ad rem si meam operam conferre quicquam, aut usui
fore, majestas vestra judicaverit, eam vobis libentissimè,
ut in re Divino Numini proculdubio acceptissima, pol-
liceor atque defero. Interea majestatis vestræ consilia
omnia ut ad communem christianæ rei salutem dirigat
Deus atque gubernet, quod idem non dubito quin et
vos maximè velitis, animitùs exopto.
Alba Aula, Oct.
26, 1653.
Majestatis vestræ studiosissimus,
OI.IvE RI Us Prot. Reip. Angliæ, &c.
Magnificis amplissimisque Consulibus ac Senatoribus
Civitatis Bremensis.
Ex literis vestris per oratorem vestrum Henricum
Oldenburgum ad nos datis, coortum civitati vestræ
cum vicimo potentissimo dissidium, quasque exinde ad
angustias redacti sitis, eò majore cum molestia ac do-
lore intelligo, quo magis Bremensem civitatem, præter
cæteras orthodoxa religione præstantem, diligo atque
amplector; neque in votis quicquam habeo antiquius,
quàm ut universum Protestantium nomen fraterno
consensu atque concordia in unum tandem coalescat.
Lætari interim communem reformatorum hostem hisce
nostris contentionibus, et ferocius passim instare, certis-
simum est. Ipsa autem controversia, cum decisionis
nostræ non sit quæ vos jam nunc exercet, Deum itaque
oro ut quæ cœptæ sunt induciæ possint foelicem exitum
sortiri. Equidem quod petistis, ad Suecorum regem ea
de re scripsi suasor pacis atque concordiæ, Deo nimi-
rum imprimis gratæ, meamque operam ut in re tam
pia libens detuli, vos uti æquum animum, neque ab
ullis pacis conditionibus, honestis quidem illis, abhor-
rentem suadeo geratis ; vestramque civitatem divinæ
tutelæ ac providentiæ commendo.
Alba Aula, Oct.
26, 1654.
Amplitudinis vestræ studiosissimus,
OLIVERI Us Prot. Reipub. Angliæ, &c.
OLIVE riUs Protector Reip. Angliæ Illustrissimo
Principi Tarentino, S. P. D.
'PERSPECTUs ex literis tuis ad me datis religionis
amor tuus, et in ecclesias reformatas pietas eximia,
studiumque singulare, in ista præsertim generis nobili-
tate ac splendore, eoque sub regno in quo deficientibus
ab orthodoxa fide tot sunt nobilissimis quibusque spes
uberes propositæ, tot firmioribus incommoda subeumda,
permagno me planè gaudio ac voluptate affecit. Nec
minus gratum erat placuisse me tibi eo ipso religionis
794
LITERÆ OLIVERII PROTECTORIS.
nomine, quo tu mihi dilectus atque charus imprimis
esse debes. Deum autem obtestor ut quam de me
spem ecclesiarum et expectationem esse ostendis, pos-
sim ei aliquando vel satisfacere, si opus erit, vel de-
monstrare omnibus, quàm cupiam non deesse. Nullum
equidem fructum laborum meorum, nullum hujus quam
obtineo in repub. meâ sive dignitatis sive muneris, nec
ampliorem existimarem, nec jucundiorem, quàm ut
idoneus sim, qui ecclesiæ reformatæ vel amplificationi
vel incolumitati, vel quod maximum est, paci inscr-
viam. Te verò hortor magnopere ut religionem ortho-
doxam, qua pietate ac studio à majoribus acceptam
profiteris, eadem amimi firmitate atque constantia ad
extremum usque retineas. Nec sanè quicquam erit te
tuisque parentibus religiosissimis dignius, nec quod pro
tuis in me meritis quanquam tuâ causâ cupio omnia,
optare tibi melius aut præclarius queam, quàm si sic
te pares atque instituas, ut ecclesiæ, præsertim patriæ,
quarum in disciplina tam felici indole tamque illustri
loco matus es, quanto cæteris præluces, tanto firmius
in te præsidium suis rebus constitutum esse sentiant.
Vale.
Alba Aula, die Aprilis, 1655.
OLIVE RI Us Protector Reipub. Angliae Serenissimo
Principi IM MANUELI Sabaudiae, Duci Pedemomtii
Principi, Salutem.
Seremissime Princeps;
Redditae sunt nobis Genevâ, necnon ex Delphinatu
aliisque multis ex locis ditioni vestræ finitimis literæ,
quibus certiores facti sumus, regalis vestræ celsitudinis
subditis reformatam religionem profitentibus, vestro
edicto atque authoritate imperatum nuper esse, uti tri-
duo quàm hoc edictum promulgatum erit suis sedibus
atque agris excedant pœnâ capitis, et fortunarum
omnium amissione proposita, nisi fidem fecerint se, dere-
licta religione sua, intra dies viginti catholicam religi-
onem amplexuros: Cumque se supplices ad celsitudi-
nem vestram regalem contulissent, petentes uti edictum
illud revocetur, utque ipsi, pristinam in gratiam recepti,
concessæ à serenissimis majoribus vestris libertati resti-
tuantur, partem tamen exercitus vestri in eos impetum
fecisse, multos crudelissime trucidâsse, alios vinculis
mandâsse, reliquos in deserta loca montesque nivibus
coopertos expulisse, ubi familiarum aliquot centuriæ
eo loci rediguutur, ut sit metuendum ne frigore et fame
brevi sint miserè omnes perituræ. Hæc cum ad nos
perlata essent, haud sane potuimus quin, hujus afflic-
tissimi populi tanta calamitate audita, summo dolore ac
miseratione commoveremur. Cum autem non humani-
tatis modo, sed ejusdem religionis communione, adeoque
fraterna penitus necessitudine cum iis conjunctos nos
esse fateamur, satisfieri à nobis neque nostro erga Deurm
officio, meque fraternæ charitati, neque religionis ejus-
dem professioni posse existimavimus, si in hac fratrum
nostrorum calamitate ac miseria solo sensu doloris affi-
ceremur, nisi etiam ad sublevanda eorum tot mala
inopinata, quantum in nobis est situm, omnem operam
nostram conferamus. Itaque à vestra imprimis celsi-
tudine regali majorem in modum enixè petimus et ob-
testamur, ut ad instituta seremissimorum majorum
suorum, concessamque ab iis omni tempore et confir-
matam subditis suis Vallensibus libertatem, velit ani-
mum referre. In qua concedenda atque confirmanda,
quemadmodum id præstiterunt, quod Deo per se gra-
tissimum proculdubio est, qui conscientiæ jus inviola-
bile ac potestatem penes se unum esse voluit, ita dubium
non est quin subditorum etiam suorum meritam rati-
onem habuerint, quos et in bello strenuos ac fidelissi-
mos, et in pace dicto semper audientes, experti fuissent.
Utque seremitas vestra regalis in cæteris omnibus et
benignè et gloriosè factis avorum suorum vestigiis
optimè insistit, ita in hoc nolit ab iisdem discedere
etiam atque etiam obsecramus ; sed et hoc edictum,
et si quod aliud inquietandis reformatae religionis causâ
subdntis suis rogatum sit, uti abroget; ipsos patriis se-
dibus atque bonis restituat; concessa jura ac libertatem
pristinam ratam iis faciat; accepta damna sarciri, et
eorum vexationibus finem imponi jubeat. Quod si fe-
cerit regalis oelsitudo vestra, et rem Deo acceptissimam
fecerit, miseros illos et calamitosos erexerit et recreârit,
et à suis omnibus vicinis, quotquot reformatam religi-
onem colunt, maximam gratiam inierit; mobisque po-
tissimùm, qui vestram in illos benignitatem atque cle-
mentiam obtestationis nostræ fructum arbitrabimur.
Quod et ad omnes officiorum reddendas vices nos obli-
gaverit; nec stabiliendæ solùm verum etiam augendæ
inter hanc remp. vestramque ditionem necessitudinis
et amicitiæ fundamenta firmissima jecerit. Neque verò
hoc minus ab justitia vestra et moderatione amimi nobis
pollicemur: quam in partem Deum Opt. Max. oramus
uti mentem vestram et cogitationes flectat: vobisque
adeo vestroque populo pacem, ac veritatem, et successus
rerum omnium felices, ex animo precamur.
Alba Aula, Maio, 1655.
OLIvE RI Us Protector Reipub. Angliæ, &c. Serenissimo
Principi Transylvaniæ, Salutem.
Serenissime Princeps ;
Ex literis vestris sexto-decimo Novembris 1654, ad
nos datis, singularem erga mos benevolentiam vestram
atque studium perspeximus ; et internumtius vester,
qui illas nobis literas dedit, de contrahenda nobiscum
societate et amicitia voluntatem vestram ampliùs coram
exposuit. Nos certè occasionem hanc esse datam, unde
nostrum quoque erga vos animum, et quanti celsitu-
dinem vestram meritò faciamus, declarare atque osten-
dere possimus, haud mediocriter sanè gaudemus. Cum
autem vestra in rempublicam christianam præclara
merita laboresque suscepti ad nos usque famâ perve-
nerint, et hæc omnia certiùs, et quæ amplius rei chris-
tianæ vel defendendæ vel promovendæ causâ in animo
habeatis, celsitudo vestra suis literis communicata no-
bis amicissimè voluerit, ea uberiorem insuper lætandi
materiam nobis attulere : Deum nempe iis in regioni-
bns excitâsse sibi tam potentem atque egregium suae
gloriæ ac providentiæ ministrum ; qui, cum virtute at-
que armis tantum possit, de religione communi Protes-
tantium tuenda, cui * mumc undique malè et dictum et
factum est, nobiscum unà sociare consilia cupiat. Deus
LITERAE OLIVERII PROTECTORIS.
796
autem, qui utrisque nobis, tametsi locorum intervallo
tam longè disjunctis, eundem religionis orthodoxæ de-
fendendæ studium atque animum injecit, dubium non
est quin earum præcipue rationum author nobis futurus
sit, unde et nobis, et inter nos, et reformatorum reliquis
principibus ac civitatibus, hac in re maximo esse adju-
mento atque usui possimus, occasionibus certè omnibus
intenti, si quas Deus obtulerit, iis quod ad nos attinet,
eodem Deo benè juvante, non deerimus. Interea celsi-
tudini vestræ sine summo dolore commemorare non
possumus, quantâ inclementiâ dux Allobrogum subditos
suos Alpinarum quarundam vallium incolas, ortho-
doxam religionem retinentes, persequutus sit. Quos non
solùm severissimo edicto, quotquot Romanam religio-
nem suscipere recusârunt, sedes avitas bonaque omnia
relinquere coëgit; verùm etiam suo exercitu adortus
est, qui multos crudelissime concidit, alios barbarè per
exquisitos cruciatus necavit, partem verò maximam in
montes expulit fame et frigore absumendam, exustis
domibus, et siqua eorum bona ab illis carnificibus non
sint direpta. Hæc ut ad vos jamdudum nuntiata sunt,
et celsitudini vestrae tantam crudelitatem graviter dis-
plicuisse, et vestram opem atque auxilium, quantum in
vobis est, illis miserrimis, siqui tot cædibus atque miseriis
adhuc supersunt, non defuturum, nobis facilè persuade-
tur. Nos literas duci Sabaudiæ, ad deprecandum ejus
infensum in suos animum, jam scripsimus; sicut et
Gallorum regi, idem ut is etiam velit facere ; vicinis
denique reformatæ religionis principibus, uti de illa
sævitia tam immani quid nos sentiamus intelligere pos-
sint: quæ quanquam in illos inopes primum cœpta est,
idem tamen omnibus eandem religionem profitentibus
minatur: eoque majorem illis prospiciendi sibi in com-
mune suisque omnibus consulendi nccessitatem impo-
nit: quam et nos eandem rationem, prout Deus nobis
in animum induxerit, semper sequemur. Id quod cel-
situdo vestra persuadere sibi poterit quemadmodum et
de singulari nostro erga se studio atque affectu, quo
prosperos rerum omnium successus vobis animitùs ex-
optamus; et vestra incoepta omnia atque conatus, qui-
bus Evangelii cultorumque ejus libertati studetis, foeli-
cem exitum sortiri volumus.
Alba Aula, Maio, 1655.
OLIVERI Us Protect. Serenissimo Principi CARolo
GUsTAvo AdoLPHo, Suecorum Regi, Salutem.
PERVENIssE nuper im regna vestra illius edicti acer-
bissimi famam, quo dux Sabaudiæ subjectos sibi Alpi-
mos incolas, reformatam religionem profitentes, fundi-
tùs afflixit, et nisi religione Romana suam mutare
fidem à majoribus acceptam intra dies viginti velint,
patriis sedibus exterminari jussit, unde multis inter-
fectis, cæteri spoliati, et ad interitum certissimum ex-
positi, per incultissimos montes hyememque perpetuam,
fame et frigore confecti, cum conjugibus ac parvulis
jam nunc aberrant; et hæc graviter tulisse majestatem
vestram nobis persuasissimum est. Nam Protestantium
nomen atque causam, tametsi inter se de rebus mom
maximis dissentiunt, communem tamen et penè unam
esse, adversariorum par in omnes Protestantes odium
facile demonstrat. Et Suecorum reges suam cum re-
formatis conjunxisse semper causam, illatis etiam in
Germaniam armis ad Protestantium religionem sine
discrimine tuendam, nemo est qui ignoret : petimus
imprimis igitur, idque majorem in modum, à majes-
tate vestra (nisi id jam fecerit, quod et reformato-
rum aliæ respublicæ et nos fecimus) ut cum Sabau-
diæ duce per literas velit agere ; suaque authoritate
interposita, et hanc tantam edicti atrocitatem ab homi-
nibus cum innocuis tum religiosis deprecando, si
fieri potest, avertere conetur: etenim hæc initia tam
sæva quo spectent, quid nobis omnibus minentur, ad-
mouere vestram majestatem supervacuum esse arbitra-
mur. Quòd si is iræ suæ, quam nostris omnium preci-
bus, auscultare maluerit : nobis profecto, siquod est
vinculum, siqua religionis charitas aut communio cre-
denda atque colenda est, communicato prius vestra cum
majestate cæterisque reformatorum primoribus consiiio,
alia quamprimùm ineunda ratio erit, qua provideri
maturè possit, nè tanta innocentissimorum fratrum nos-
trorum multitudo omni ope destituta miserrimè pereat.
Quod idem quin majestati vestræ visum jam sit atque
decretum cum nullo modo dubitemus, nihil consultius,
ut nostra quidem fert sententia, esse poterit quam ut
gratiam, authoritatem, consilia, opes, et siquid aliud
necesse est, in hanc rem primo quoque tempore confe-
ramus. Interea majestatem vestram Deo Opt. Max.
commendatam ex animo volumus.
OLIVERIUS Protector Reip. Angliæ, &c. Eaecelsis et
Præpotentibus Dominis Faederati Belgii Ordinibus.
EDIcTUM ducis Sabaudiæ nuperrimum im subjectos
sibi Alpinos incolas, orthodoxam religionem antiquitüs
profitentes, quo illi edicto, ni intra dies viginti fidem
Romanam amplectantur, exuti fortumis omnibus, pa-
triæ quoque sedes relinquere jubentur, et quanta crude-
litate in homines innoxios atque inopes, nostrosque,
quod maximè refert, in Christo fratres, illius edicti
auctoritas grassata sit, occisis permultis ab exercitùs
parte contra eos missa, direptis reliquis atque domo ex-
pulsis, unde illi cum conjugibus ac liberis fame et
frigore conflictari inter asperrimos montes nivesque
perpetuas jamdiu coacti sunt, rumore et vicinis undique
ex locis creberrimis literis ac munciis cognovisse vos
jamdudum existimamus. Qua autem animi commoti-
ome, quo sensu fraternæ calamitatis, hæc vos affecerint,
facilè ex dolore nostro qui certe est gravissimus intelli-
gere videmur. Qui enim eodem religionis vinculo con-
juncti sumus, quidni iisdem plane affectibus in tam
gravi atque indigma fratrum nostrorum commoveremur?
Et vestra quidem in orthodoxos, ubicunque locorum
disjectos atque oppressos, spectata pietas atque in multis
ecclesiarum difficultatibus et adversis rebus jam sæpe
cognita est. Ego certe, nisi me fallit amimus, quavis
in re potius, quàm studio et charitate erga fratres reli-
gionis causâ violatos atque afflictos, vinci sustineam :
quandoquidem ecclesiarum salutem atque pacem im-
columitati etiam propriæ libens prætulerim. Quod
igitur hactenus potuimus, ad Sabaudiæ ducem scripsi-
mus; suppliciter penè rogantes, ut in hos homines in-
'i96
LITERÆ OLIVERII PROTECTORIS.
nocentissimos et subditos et supplices suos placatiorem
animum ac voluntatem suscipiat, suas sedes atque for-
tunas miseris reddat, pristinam etiam in religione liber-
tatem concedat. Scripsimus præterea ad summos
Protestantium principes et magistratus, ad quos hæc
maximè pertinere judicavimus, ut in Sabaudiæ duce
exorando suam conferre operam nobiscum unâ velint.
Hæc eadem, et plura, forsitam vos quoque fecistis.
Nam exemplum hoc tam periculosum, et instaurata
nuper in reformatos tanta crudelitas, si auctoribus bene
cedat, quantum in discrimen adducta religio sit vestram
commonefacere prudentiam nihil attinet. Et is quidem
si flecti nostris omnium precibus et exorari se passus
erit, præclarum nos atque uberem suscepti hujus laboris
fructum ac præmium reportabimus. Sin ea in sententia
perstiterit, ut apud quos nostra religio vel ab ipsis
evangelii primis doctoribus tradita per manus et im-
corruptè servata, vel multo antè quàm apud cæteras
gentes sinceritati pristinæ restituta est, eos ad summam
desperationem redactos, deletos funditùs ac perditos
velit, paratos nos esse commune aliquod vobiscum
cæterisque reformatis fratribus ac sociis consilium ca-
pere, quo et saluti pereuntium justorum consulere com-
modissimè queamus, et is demum sentiat orthodoxorum
injurias atque miserias tam graves non posse nos neg-
ligere. Valete.
Civitatibus Helvet{orum Evangelicis.
NoN dubitamus quin ad aures vestras aliquanto citius
quàm ad nostras illa nuper calamitas pervenerit Alpi-
morum hominum religionem nostram profitentium, qui
Sabaudiæ ducis in fide ac ditione cùm sint, sui principis
edicto patriis sedibus emigrare jussi, ni intra triduum
satisdedissent se Romanam religionem suscepturos,
mox armis petiti et ab exercitu ducis sui occisi, etiam
permulti in exilium ejecti, nunc sine lare, sine tecto,
nudi, spoliati, afflicti, fame et frigore moribundi, per
montes desertos atque nives cum conjugibus ac liberis
miserrimè vagantur. Multo est minus cur dubitemus
quin hæc, ut primum vobis nuntiata sunt, pari atque
nos tantarum miseriarum sensu, eoque fortasse graviore
quo illorum fimibus propiores estis, dolore affecerint.
Vestrum emim in primis orthodoxæ fidei studium egre-
gium, summamque in ea cum retinenda constantiam
tum defendenda fortitudinem, abundè novimus. Cum
itaque religionis arctissimâ communione fratres, vel
potius unum corpus, cum his miseris vos pariter nobis-
cum sitis, cujus membrum nullum affligi sine sensu,
sine dolore, sine detrimento atque periculo reliquorum
potest, scribendum ad vos hac de re et significandum
censuimus, quanti nostrum omnium interesse arbitre-
mur, ut fratres nostros ejectos, atque inopes communi
ope atque auxilio, quoad fieri potest, juvemus et con-
solemur ; nec eorum tantummodo malis et miseriis re-
movendis, verum etiam nequid serpat latius, nequid
periculi exemplo atque eventu vel nobis omnibus creari
possit, maturè prospiciamus. Ijiteras nos quidem ad
Sabaudiæ ducem scripsimus, quibus, uti cum subditis
suis fidelissimis pro clementiâ suâ lenius agat, eosque
jam prope perditos suis sedibus ac bonis restituat, vehe-
menter petivimus. Et his quidem nostris, vel nostrûm
potius omnium conjunctis precibus, exoratum iri prin-
cipem serenissimum, quodque ab eo tanto opere peti-
vimus, facile concessurum speramus. Sin illi in men-
tem secùs venerit, communicare vobiscum consilia
parati sumus, qua potissimum ratione oppressos tot in-
juriis atque vexatos innocentissimos homines, nobisque
charissimos in Christo fratres, sublevare atque erigere,
et ab interitu certissimo atque indignissimo conservare,
possimus. Quorum salutem atque incolumitatem pro
vestra pietate vobis quam maxime cordi esse confido:
Ego eam certe vel gravissimis meis rationibus, immò
incolumitate propriâ, potiorem habendam esse ex-
istimem. Valete.
Westmonasterio, Maii 19, 1655.
Superscript.
Illustribus atque amplissimis Dominis, Helve-
ticorum Pagorum Protestantium et Confoede-
ratarum Civitatum Consulibus ac Senatoribus,
Salutem.
O. P.
Seremissimo potentissimoque Principi LUDovico Galliæ
Regi.
Serenissime potentissimeque Rex ;
Ex literis majestatis vestræ, quibus illa ad meas
quinto et vigesimo Maii proximi datas rescribit, facilè
intelligo nequaquam fefellisse me eam opinionem, qua
mihi quidem persuasum erat, cædes illas immanissimas,
barbaramque eorum hominum stragem, qui religionem
reformatam in Sabaudia profitentur, à cohortibus qui-
busdam vestris factam, neque jussu vestro meque man-
dato accidisse. Quæ quantum majestati vestræ dis-
plicuerit, id vos vestris militum tribunis, qui hæc tam
inhumana suo solo impetu injussi perpetraverant, ita
maturè significâsse, deque tanta crudelitate ducem ip-
sum Sabaudiæ monuisse, pro reducendis denique istis
miseris exulibus unde pulsi sunt, vestram omnem gra-
tiam, necessitudinem, authoritatem tanta cum fide atque
humanitate interposuisse, majorem equidem in modum
sum lætatus. Ea nempe spes erat, illum principem
voluntati ac precibus majestatis vestræ aliquid saltem
hac in re fuisse concessurum. Verùm cum neque
vestro, neque aliorum principum rogatu atque instantia,
in miserorum causa quicquam esse impetratum per-
spiciam, haud alienum ab officio meo duxi, ut hunc
nobilem virum, extraordinarii nostri commissarii mu-
nere instructum, ad Allobrogum ducem mitterem ; qui
tantæ crudelitatis in ejusdem nobiscum religionis cul-
tores, idque ipsius religionis odio adhibitæ, quo sensu
afficiar, uberiùs eidem exponat. Atque hujus quidem
legationis eo feliciorem exitum speravero, si adhibere
denuò et adhuc majore cum instantia suam authorita-
tem atque operam majestati vestræ placuerit ; et quem-
admodum fideles forg illos inopes dictoque audientes
principi suo ipsa in se recepit, ita velit eorundem inco-
lumitati atque saluti cavere, ne quid iis hujusmodi in-
juriæ et calamitatis atrocissimæ innocentibus et pacatis
deinceps inferatur. Hoc cum in se justum ac verè re-
gium sit, necnon benignitati vestræ atque clementiæ,
quæ tot subditos vestros eandem illam religionem se-
LITERÆ OLIVERII PROTECTORIS.
797
quentes ubique salvos et incolumes præstat, summè
consentaneum, à majestate vestra, ut par est, non pos-
sumus quin expectemus. Quæ hac simul operâ,
cum universos per sua regna Protestantes, quorum
studium erga vos summaque fides maximis in rebus
perspecta jam saepe et cognita est, arctiùs sibi de-
vimxerit, tum exteris etiam omnibus persuasum red-
diderit, nihil ad hoc facimus contulisse regis com-
silium, quicquid ministri regii atque præfecti con-
tulerunt. Præsertim si majestas vestra poenas ab iis
ducibus ac ministris debitas repetiverit, qui authoritate
propria, suaque pro libidine, tam immania patrare
scelera sunt ausi. Interea cum majestas vestra factum
hoc inhumanissimum, quo dignum est odio, aversari se
testetur, non dubito quin miseris illis atque ærumnosis
ad vos confugientibus, tutissimum in regno suo recep-
tum atque perfugium sit præbitura ; nec subditorum
suorum cuiquam, ut contra eos duci Allobrogum aux-
ilio adsit, permissura. Extremum illud est, ut majes-
tatem vestram, quanti apud me sua amicitia sit, certi-
orem faciam : Cujus rei neque fructum ullo tempore
defuturum confirmo.
Alba Aula, Julii
29, 1655.
Majestatis vestræ studiosissimus,
OLIVE RI Us Prot. Reip. Angliæ, &c.
Eminentissimo Domino Cardinali MAZARINO.
Eminentissime Domine Cardinalis;
CUM nobilem hunc virum cum literis, quarum exem-
plar hic inclusum est, ad regem mittere necessarium
statuissem, tum ei, ut eminentiam vestram meo nomine
salutaret, simul in mandatis dedi, certasque res vobis-
cum communicandas ejus fidei commisi: Quibus in
rebus eminentiam rogo vestram, uti summam ei fidem
habere velit, utpote in quo ego summam fiduciam re-
posuerim.
Alba Aula, Julii
29, 1655.
Eminentiæ vestræ studiosissimus,
OLIVERIUs, Prot. Reipub. Angliæ.
OlivERiUs Protector Reip. Angliae, Seremissimo Prin-
cipi FREDERIco III. Damiae, Norwegiæ, &c. Regi,
Salutem.
QUAM severo nuper et inclementi edicto, Allobrogum
dux Immanuel suos ipse subditos Alpinarum vallium
incolas, innoxios homines et religionis cultu purioris
jam multis ab seculis notos ac celebres, religionis causâ
finibus • patriis exegerit, et, occisis permultis, reliquos
per illa desertissima loca malis omnibus et miseriis in-
opes ac nudos exposuerit, et audisse jamdudum arbi-
tramur majestatem vestram, et gravissimum ex ea re,
prout tantum reformatæ fidei defensorem ac principem
decuit, dolorem percepisse. Siquidem pro institutis
christianæ religionis quæ mala atque miserias pars ali-
qua nostrorum patitur, earum sensu penitus eodem
tangi omnes debemus ; et sanè omnibus nobis et uni-
verso Protestantium nomini hujus facti eventus atque
exemplum, quid periculi ostendat, nemo vestra majes-
tate, si nos ejus pietatem atque prudentiam rectè movi-
mus, melius videt. Scripsimus itaque libenter, ut
quem dolorem ob hanc fratrum innocentissimorum ca-
lamitatem, quam sententiam, quod judicium de re tota
vestrum esse speramus, idem planè et uostrum esse sig-
mificemus. Itaque ad ducem Sabaudiæ literas dedi-
mus, in quibus uti miseris atque supplicibus parcat,
illudque atrox edictum porrò esse ratum ne sinat, mag-
mopere ab eo petivimus. Quod si majestas vestra cæte
rique reformatorum principes fecerint, ut jam fecisse
credimus, spes est leniri posse serenissimi ducis animum,
et hanc iram suam tot saltem vicinorum principum in-
tercessioni atque instantiæ condonaturum ; sim perse-
verare in instituto suo maluerit, paratos nos esse tes-
tamur, cum majestate vestra, cæterisque religionis re-
formatæ sociis, eam inire rationem, quâ tot miserorum
hominum subvenire quamprimum inopiæ, providere
saluti ac libertati, pro virili parte nostra possimus.
Vestræ interea majestati bona omnia atque fausta à
Deo Opt. Max. precamur.
Vestmonasterio, Maio, 1655.
OlIvE RI Us Prot. Reipub. Angliæ, &c. Amplissimis
Consulibus et Senatoribus Civitatis Gemevensis, Sa-
lutem.
SUMMUM dolorem nostrum quem ex maximis et
inauditis Protestantium calamitatibus valles quasdam
Pedemontanas incolentium percepimus, quos Allobro-
gum dux tanta crudelitate persequutus est, jampridem
vobis exposuissemus, nisi id magis operam dedissemus,
ut eodem tempore intelligeretis tantis eorum miseriis
non affici nos solum, verum etiam de sublevandis iis
atque solandis, quantum in nobis est, prospicere.
Quapropter eleemosynas per hanc totam rempublicam
colligendas curavimus : quas ejusmodi fore haud im-
meritò expectamus, quæ nationis hujus affectum erga
fratres suos tam immania perpessos demonstrare pos-
sint, et quemadmodum religionis eadem utrinque com-
munio est, ita sensum quoque eundem calamitatum
esse ; interea dum pecuniæ collectio maturatur, quod
sine spatio temporis fieri nequit, et miserorum istorum
egestas atque inopia pati moram non potest, necessa-
rium duximus duo millia librarum Anglicarum, quanta
fieri potuit celeritate, præmittere inter eos distribuenda
qui præsentissima ope atque solatio indigere maximè
videbuntur. Cum autem nescii non simus immocentis-
simorum hominum miseriæ atque injuriæ quantopere
vos affecerint, nec vobis quicquam labori aut molestiæ
fore quod illis adjumento atque auxilio esse possit,
prædictam pecuniæ summam illis calamitosis curan-
dam ac numerandam ad vos transferre mom dubitavimus;
idque vobis negotii dare, ut pro vestra pietate ac pru-
dentia providere velitis qua ratione æquissima quam
primum illa pecunia egentissimis quibusque distribui
queat, ut quamvis summa sane exigua sit, aliquid
tamen sit saltem, quo illi inopes recreari ac refici in
præsens aliquantum possint, domec uberiorem iis co-
piam suppeditare poterimus : vos hanc vobis datam
molestiam æqui bonique consulturos esse cum mon
dubitemus, tum etiam Deum Opt. Max. oramus, uti
populo suo religionem orthodoxam j)rofitenti det ani-
mum sui in commune defendendi, sibique mutuò opem
ferendi contra hostes suos immamissimos ; qua in re
798
LITERAE OLIVERII PROTECTORIS.
nostram quoque operam ecclesiae utcunque usui fore
laetaremur. Valete.
Mille quingentie librae de praedictis
bis millibus à Gerardo Hensh
Parisiis, quingentae reliquae per
literas a Domino Stoupio, cura-
buntur.
Junii 8, 1655.
Olive RIUs Protector Reip. Angliae, Seremissimo
Principi Venetiarum Duci.
Seremissime Princeps;
CUM rebus vestris omnibus contra hostem praesertim
christiani nominis prospere gestis laetari semper con-
suevimus, tum et illo navalis praelii novissimo successu
nequaquam sané dolemus, quamvis id aliquo nostro-
rum cum detrimento accidisse intelligamus. Ostend-
erunt enim mobis, per libellum supplicem, negotiatores
quidam nostri, Gulielmus et Daniel Gulielmi necnon
Edoardus Bealus, navem suam, cui nomen Princeps
Magnus, Constantinopolim ab se commercii causá
missam nuper ſuisse: eam navem ab aula Turcica,
ministris ad commeatum et milites in Cretam insulam
deportandos retentam, dum in illa classe Turcarum
coacta eo navigaret, quae à classe Venetorum oppug-
nata in itinere et superata est, captam et Venetias
abductam, ab maritimarum causarum judicibus adjudi-
catam publicó ſuisse. Cum itaque, inscientibus domi-
his et nullo modo probantibus, navis illa Turcis operam
dare invitissima coacta sit, seque ex ea pugna expli-
care militibus referta non potuerit; serenitatem ves-
tram magnopere rogamus, ut sententiam illam mari-
timae curiae velit nostrae amicitiae condonare, navemaue
illam suis dominis, de vestra republica nullo suo facto
malê meritis, restituendam curare. Qua in re impe-
tranda, nobis praesertim petentibus, cum mercatores
ipsos de vestra clementia bené sperare videamus, nos
utique de ca dubitare non debemus: qui et praeclara
vestra concilia remdue Venetam terrá marique maxime
uti pergat fortunare Deus omnipotens ex animo op-
tamus.
Serenitatis vestrae Venetaeque Reip, studiosissimus,
OLIVERI Us Protector Reip. Angliae, &c.
Westmonasterio, Decemb. 1655.
Olive RIUs Prot. Reip. Anglia, &c. Seremissimo Prin-
cipi LUpovico Galliarum Regi.
Seremissime Rex;
MERCAto REs aliquot nostrates, quorum nomina sunt
Samuel Mico, Gulielmus Cocainus, Georgius Poy-
nerus, aliique complures, per libellum supplicem
nobis ostenderunt se, anno 1650, in navem quandam,
cui insigne unicornus crat, permagnas rationes suas
contulisse: eam navem bombyce, oleo, aliisque mer-
cibus onustam, quae, plus minus, triginta quatuor milli-
bus librarum nostrarum ab iisdem a stimata sunt, ab
nave praetoria et propraetoria majestatis vestræ in Medi-
terraneo Mari Orientali oppressam atque captam ſuisse:
nostros autem illa in navi, propterca quod nobis eo
tempore cum Gallis illibata pax erat, cum contra naves
regias vi se defendere noluissent, promissis Pauli et
Terrerii navarchorum inductos, qui velle se nostros
dimittere aiebant, prolatis onerum libellis, maritimis
legibus paruisse: mercatores proinde suprā dictos pro-
curatorem suum, qui navem illam ac bona restituenda
sibi peteret, in Galliam misisse: ibi post triennium
eoque amplius consumptum, cum ad sententiam de re-
stitutione ferendam perventum jam esset, cardinalis
Mazarini eminentiam eorum procuratori Hugoni Mo-
rello factam mercatoribus istis injuriam agnovisse ;
datumque iri satisfactionem, ut primum confirmata
pax inter utramgue gentem, foedusque, quod tum agi-
tabatur, confectum atque ratum esset, in se recepisse:
immö recentius majestatis vestrae apud nos legatum
excellentissimum dominum de Bordeaux, ex mandato
vestro vestrique concilii, disertis verbis confirmâsse,
hujus navis atque bonorum peculiari exceptione ha-
bitum iri rationem, etiam seorsim ab iis controversiis,
de quibus in commune decidendis ex foedere provisum
est: hujus promissi legatum ipsum, qui nunc percom-
modè negotiorum quorundam suorum causã ad vos
transmeavit, testem esse posse locupletem. Quae cum
ita sunt, jusque horum mercatorum in repetendis rebus
suis tam praeclare constet, a majestate vestra majorem
in modum petimus, ut in eo obtinendo mulla is mora
diutius afferatur, velitoue nostro rogatu has nobis
redintegratae amicitiae et instaurati recéns foederis esse
primitias. Quod et fore confidimus, vobisque fausta
omnia vestroque regno à Deo Opt. Max, precamur.
Majestatis vestrae studiosissimus,
Olive RIUS Prot. Reip. Angliae, &c.
Westmonasterio,
Decemb. 1655.
Civitatibus Helvetiorum Evangelicis.
Ex vestris ad nostam actis publicis per commissarios
nostros Genevå transmissis, quâm literis 27 Decembris
Tyguri datis, quo in loco res vestrae sint, cum non sºut
optimo, satis superque intelligimus: In quo etsi pacem
vestram, tamgue diuturnum sociale foedus ruptum, dole-
mus, tamen cum id vestra culpå nequaquam accidisse
appareat, novam hinc vobis ex adversariorum iniquitate
et pertinacia illustrandae fortitudinis, constantiaeque
vestrae in evangelica fide jam olim cognitae, parari
rursus materiem confidimus. Nam Suitenses, qui, re-
ligionem nostram si quis amplectatur, capitale censent,
quid moliantur, quibus hortatoribus tam hostiles spiritus
in orthodoxam religionem susceperint, latere meminem
potest, cui modó indigmissima illa fratrum nostrorum
in Pedemontio facta strages animo nondum excidit.
Quapropter, dilectissimi amici, quod soletis esse, aspi-
rante Deo fortes estote; jura vestra atque foedera, immo
conscientiae libertatem, religionemgue ipsam idolorum
cultoribus obculcandam, concedere molite; vosque ita
parate, ut non propriae duntaxat libertatis atque salutis
propugnatores esse videamini, sed ut fratribus quoque
vicinis, Pedemontanis praesertim illis terumnosissimis,
quibus potestis rebus, opitulari atque adesse possitis:
hoc certó persuasi per illorum corpora ac neces ad ves-
tra latera illum nuper aditum ſuisse pateſactum. De
me scitote, incolumitatem vestram resque prosperas hom
minus mihi curae ac solicitudini esse, quâm si in hac
LITERÆ OLIVERII PROTECTORIS.
799
nostra Rep. coortum hoc incendium, quàm si in nos-
tras cervices expeditæ Suitensium secures illæ (sicuti
revera sunt in omnes reformatos) strictique enses essent.
Ut primum itaque à vobis de statu rerum vestrarum, et
obstinato hostium animo, certiores facti sumus, adhibitis
in concilium viris quibusdam honestissimis, et ecclesiæ
aliquot ministris pietate spectatissimis, de subsidio
vobis mittendo, quantum quidem rationes nostræ in
præsentia ferre possunt, ea decrevimus, quæ commissa-
rius noster Pellus vobiscum communicabit. De cætero
vestra omnia consilia, causamque imprimis hanc ves-
tram justissimam sive pace sive bello tuendam, Deo
Opt. Max. fautori commendare non desiuimus.
Vestrarum amplitudinum ac dig-
nitatum studiosissimus,
Olive RI Us Prot. Reip. Angliæ, &c.
Westmonasterio,
Jan. 1655. '
OlIvE RI Us Protector Reip. Angliæ, &c. Serenissimo
Principi CARoLO GUsTAvo, Dei Gratia Suecorum,
Gothorum, Vandalorumque IRegi, Magmo Principi
Finlamdiae, &c.
Serenissime Rex ;
CUM amicorum inter se mutua omnia, tam adversa
quam prospera, atque communia debere esse nemo non
intelligat, quòd jucundissimam amicitiæ partem majes-
tas vestra, gaudium nempe suum impertitum nobis, per
suas literas voluerit, non potest id quidem nobis mom
esse longè gratissimum : quandoquidem et hoc singu-
laris indicium humanitatis verèque regiæ est, ut nec
vivere, ita me gaudere quidem sibi soli velle misi amicos
quoque et fœderatos eâdem, quâ se, lætitiâ affectos esse
scmtiat. Itaque regi tam præstanti et matum esse filium
principem, quem paternæ virtutis atque gloriæ spere-
mus hæredem, meritò gaudemus, et idem quod regi
olim fortissimo, Philippo Macedomi, sive felicitatis sive
decoris, domi simul et foris, contigisse gratulamur :
Cui eodem tempore et natus Alexander filius, et Illyri-
corum gens potentissima subacta, memoratur. Nam et
Poloniæ regnum vestris armis ab imperio papamo, quasi
cornu quoddam, avulsum, et cum duce Brandenburgico
pax piorum votis omnium exoptata, fremdentibus licèt
adversariis, facta, quin ad ecclesiæ pacem atque fruc-
tum permagnum sit momentum habitura non dubita-
mus. Det modò finem Deus tam præclaris initiis dig-
mum ; det modò filium, virtute, pietate, rebusque gestis
patri similem: id quod et auguramur sanè, et à Deo
Opt. Max. tam vestris rebus jam antè propitio, ex ani-
mo precamur.
Westmonasterio,
Feb. 1655.
Majestatis vestræ studiosissimus,
OLIVERI Us Prot. Reip. Angliæ, &c.
Damia, Regi.
Seremissime ac potentissime Princeps;
QUESTI sunt per libellum supplicem, suo aliorumque
mercatorum Londimensium nomine nobis exhibitum,
Joannes Fremannus et Philippus Travesius, hujus reip.
cives, se circiter mensem Octobris 1653, cum in navem
quandam Sunderburgensem, cui momen Salvatori, Ni-
colao Weinshinks magistro, merces varias, pannum
laneum, aliamque vestem textilem ac mercimonia plus
tribus millibus librarum aestimata imposuissent, magis-
tro mandasse, ut per fretum Balticum recto cursu Dam-
tiscum navigaret, utque ad Elsenorum vectigal solveret,
eique etiam pecuuiam ad eam rem curasse: supradictum
tamen magistrum perfidiosè, et contrà quàm ipsi à merca-
toribus mandatum erat, prætervectum Elsenorum nullo
portorio soluto Balticum pernavigasse. Navisque per
hanc causam cum toto onere, non sine magno mercato-
rum damno, publicata atque retenta est. Quorum in
gratiam jampridem ad legatum majestatis vestræ, Lou-
dimi tunc temporis commorantem, scripsimus; qui, ut
ipsi aiunt, pollicitus est, ut primum ad majestatem
vestram rediisset, daturum operam, uti ratio mercato-
rum haberetur. Verum cum is postea aliis im regiomi-
bus majestatis vestræ negotia obiret, et ante discessum
ejus et postea frustra se eum adiise ostendunt: unde
procuratorem suum mittere coacti sunt, qui jus suum
Hafniæ persequeretur, navemque illam ac bona liberari,
sibique reddi, flagitaret: verum exinde nullum se fruc-
tum percepisse, nisi ut ad damna vetera novas impen-
sas, et susceptum frustra laborem, adjungerent: cum
fisco damnata, et retenta hactenus sint bona, tametsi
ex lege Daniæ, quemadmodum ipsi in libello suo de-
monstrant, magister quidem mavis ob suum delictum
est ipse puniendus, navisque, non bona proscriptioni
sunt obnoxia : eoque gravius accidisse sibi hoe malum
existimant, quòd, sicuti nobis perlatum est, vectigal
illud, quod Elsenoræ solvere debuisset, est admodum
exiguum. Quapropter, cum mercatores nostri nullam
proscriptioni causam præbuisse videantur, confessusque
ipse magister paulo amte obitum sit, suo solùm delicto
illatum hoc mercatoribus detrimentum esse, cumque
pater defuncti jam magistri ipse per libellum supplicem
majestati vestræ exhibitum, sicuti mos accepimus, cul-
pam omnem in filium suum contulerit, mercatores absol-
verit, haud sane potuimus quin navis illius bonorumque
retentionem iniquissimam esse arbitraremur; adeoque
confidimus, simulatque majestas vestra hac de re certior
facta erit, fore ut non modo has ministrorum suorum in-
jurias improbet, verum etiam ipsos rationem reddere,
bonaque illa suis dominis eorumve procuratoribus quam-
primum restitui, damnaque inde data sarciri, jubeat.
Quod et mos à majestate vestra majorem in modum pe-
timus, utpote rem usque adeo æquam et rationi consen-
taneam, ut æquiorem petere aut expectare in causa
tam justa nostrorum civium non posse videamur, haud
minus æqua vestris subditis, quoties data occasio erit,
reddituri.
Seremissimo Principi JoANNI Quarto Lusitaniæ, &c.
Regi.
Serenissime Rex ;
QUAM pacem et amicitiam cum Anglicana republica
majestas vestra, legatione amplissima ac splendidissima
jampridem ad nos missa, expetivit, eam à parlamento,
quæ tum potestas rebus præfuit, inchoatam, et à nobis
summo semper studio exoptatam, Deo imprimis fa-
vente, proque ea quam accepimus reipublic«e adminis-
tratione, feliciter tandem eonfecimus, et in perpetuum,
80()
LITERÆ OLIVERII PRO'I'ECTO]RIS.
uti spes est, sanximus. Itaque legatum vestrum ex-
traordinarium dominum, Joannem Rodericum de Saa
Meneses, comitem Penmaguiadamum, virum cum ma-
jestatis vestræ judicio comprobatum, tum humanitate,
ingenio, prudentiâ, fide, præstantissimum à nobis re-
pertum, cum expleti muneris egregia laude, et reportata
secum pace, vobis reddimus. Quòd autem, per literas
secundo die Aprilis Ulyssipome datas, majestas vestra
quanti nos faciat, quamque impensè dignitati nostræ
faveat, nosque rempublicam suscepisse gubernamdam
quantopere lætata sit, haud obscuris indiciis singularis
benevolentiæ testatur, id vero mihi gratissimum esse,
ex meis in majestatem vestram paratissimis omni tem-
pore officiis, dabo operam ut facilè posthac omnes im-
telligant. Neque segniùs interea pro incolumitate
vestra, vestrique regni felici statu, rerumque prospero
successu, conceptis ad Deum precibus contendo.
Majestatis vestræ studiosissimus,
OlivE RI Us Reipub. Angliæ, Scotiæ,
Hiberniæ, &c. Protector.
OlivERiUs Protector I{eip. Angliæ, &c. Eaecelsis et
Præpotentibus Faederati Belgii Ordinibus, S. D.
Excelsi et præpotentes Domini, amici charissimi;
OsTENDUNT nobis mercatores quidam, cives nostri,
Thomas Busselus, Richardus Bearus, aliique socii, ma-
vem quamdam suam, Edmundi et Joannis nomine in-
signitam, dum ab ora Brasiliana Olyssiponem conten-
deret, ab navi quadam prædatoria Flissengensi, cui
nomen Rubro Leoni, magister Lambertus Bartelsomus,
oppugnatam se dedidisse ; verum ea lege et pacto (id
quod ipsum Lamberti chirographum obsignatum testa-
bitur) ut navis, et quæcumque in illa fuissent Anglorum
bona, Flissingæ restituerentur : eò cum appulsum est,
navem quidem et nauticorum peculia reddita, merca-
torum Anglicorum bona adempta, eorumque auctionem
statim esse factam : se, mercatores nempe quibus hoc
damni datum est, cum in foro Flissingensium suas res
repeterent, iniquissima sententia lata, litem cum gran-
dibus impensis post quinquennium perdidisse, ab iis
nimirum judicibus abjudicatam, quorum nonnulli, cum
in illa navi prædatoria suas rationes collatas habuissent,
et judices et adversarii et rei simul erant: nihil jam
sibi superesse spei nisi in vestra æquitate et incorrupta
fide, ad quam nunc demum confugiunt: eam sibi fore
propensiorem existimârunt, si nostra commendatio ac-
cessisset. Et hominibus condonandum hoc sane est,
si in hac tanta fortunarum suarum dimicatione omnia
timentibus, quid ab summa auctoritate atque potentia
vestra sibi metuendum, quam quid apud integros prae-
sertim judices de sua causa sit bene sperandum, sæpius
in mentem veniat: nos quin religione, justitia, inte-
gritate vestra potius quam rogatu nostro adducti, quod
æquum, quod justum, quod vobis denique dignum est
judicaturi sitis, non dubitamus.
rempub. ad gloriam suam, suæque ecclesiæ præsidium,
conservet!
Olive RI Us Protector Reip. Angliæ, &c.
Vestmonasterio, April. I, 1656.
Deus vos vestramque
Oliv ERI Us Protector Reipub Angliæ, &c. Seremissimo
Principi CARoLo GUsTAvo, Suecorum, Gothorum,
Vandalorumque Regi, Magmo Principi Finlandiae,
Duci Esthomiae, Careliæ, Bremae, Verdae, Stetini,
Pomeramiae, Cassubiae et Vandaliae, Principi Ièugiae,
Domino Ingriæ, Wismariae, necmon Comiti Palatino
I?hemi, Bavariæ, Jul. Cliviæ et Momtium Duci, &c.
Serenissime Princeps;
PERFUNctus legatione sua apud nos Petrus Julius
Coictus, atque ita perfunctus ut sua debita laude non
inormatus à nobis dimittendus sit, ad majestatem ves-
tram revertitur. Fuit enim cùm vestro præcipuè nomine,
quod jure apud nos plurimi esse debet, nobis gratissi-
mus, tum suo etiam merito, suo nempe munere diligen-
tissimè obito, haud parum acceptus. Quam igitur
commendationem vestram de eo accepimus, eam (si
quid ad eam accedere testimonio ullo potest) et ab ipso
impletam, et à vobis meritissimè datam, libentes utique
testamur: quemadmodum et is poterit nostrum erga
majestatem vestram singulare studium et observantiam,
eadem fide atque integritate ad vos referre, verissimeque
exponere. Extremum illud est ut majestati vestræ
felicitatem omnem victoriarumque cursum contra omnes
hostes ecclesiæ perpetuum, à Deo Opt. Maximoque
optemus. -
Majestatis vestræ studiosissimus,
OLIVERI Us, Protector Reip. Angliæ, &c.
Westmonasterio, April. 17, 1656.
OLIVERI Us Protector Reip. Angliae, &c. Seremissimo ac
potentissimo Principi LUDovico Galliæ Regi, S. D.
Serenissime Princeps;
ADIERUNT ad nos, per libellum supplicem, Joannes
Dethic urbis Londimi in hunc annum præfectus, et
Gulielmus Wakefield mercator, conquesti, se anno
1649, Calendas circiter Octob. navem quandam, cui
nomen Jonæ Londimensi, Jona quoque cognomento
I,ighthaghe magistro, suis mercibus, quæ Ostendam
mitterentur, onerâsse : eam navem à prædone quodam
Barkingensi, cui nomen White, (is filii regis Caroli
defuncti nomine piraticam faciebat,) in ipso Thamesis
ostio oppressam, atque inde Dunkirkam, quæ eo tem-
pore in ditione Gallorum erat, fuisse abductam : cum
autem edicto majestatis vestræ ann. 1647, et ann. rursus
1649, aliquot etiam consilii regii decretis, in gratiam
parlamenti Anglicani, cautum esse intelligerent, me
naves ullæ aut merces, illius belli tempore, quoquo
obtentu Anglis ereptæ, in majestatis vestræ portus
quoscunque asportarentur, venalesve essent, misisse se
statim Dunkirkam procuratorem suum, Hugonem
Morellum negotiatorem, qui à domino Lestrado, illius
oppidi per id tempus præfecto, reddi sibi suam navem
cum mercibus postularet, cum eas præsertim magna ex
parte adhuc integras, neque dum permutatas aut diven-
ditas, in ipso oppido deprehendisset. Respondit præ-
fectus, se regis Galliæ dono, ob navatam reipub. operam,
præfecturam eam accepisse : curaturum proinde, uti ea
sibi pretium operæ sit. Hoc responso frustratus, post
LITERÆ OLIVERII PROTECTORIS.
801
magnum cum temporis tum pecuniae dispendium, pro-
curator domum revertitur. Petitores, quæ restat sibi
spes, eam in vestra sola clementia atque justitia reposi-
tam esse vident; ad quam per nostras literas faciliorem
sibi aditum fore crediderunt: ea ne desit hominibus,
contra jus omne et repetita vestra interdicta spoliatis,
rogamus. Quod tamen si impetrabimus, quandoquidem
hoc sanè æquissimum videtur, ab insita æquitate
vestra, potius quam rogatu nostro, impetratum id esse
statuemus.
Majestatis vestræ studiosissimus,
OLIVERI Us, Protector Reip. Angliæ, &c.
Westmonasterio, Maio, 1656.
OlivERius Protector I?eip. Angliae, &c. Excelsis et prae-
potentibus Dominis Faederati Belgii Ordinibus, S. D.
Excelsi et praepotentes Domini, amici charissimi ;
DE MoNsTRÄRUNT nobis, per libellum supplicem, Joan-
nes Brunus, Nicolaus Gulielmus, aliique Londimenses,
se, cum in navem, cui Bonæ Esperantzae Londimensi
nomen inditum erat, in Orientalem Indiam mavigatu-
ram, sortem quisque suam contulisset, procuratori suo
negotium dedisse Februario mense 1644, ut bis mille
quadringentas libras Belgicas ad illius mavis periculum
præstandum Amsterodami curaret : ea navis cum in
itinere, ad oram ipsam Indiae, ab Hollandica quadam,
quæ ex navibus orientalis illius societatis erat, capta
esset ; qui præstando periculo se obligaverant, pactam
pecuniam numerare recusâsse ; et sextum jam annum
posse mostros, qui summa cum assiduitate maximisque
impensis jus suum persecuti sunt, dilationibus variis
eludere. Quod cum petitoribus grave admodum atque
iniquum videatur, et nonnulli ex iis qui se obligârunt
vel jam diem obierint vel solvendo non sint, nequid
fortè ad priora damna summi discriminis accedat, mag-
nopere à vobis petimus, ut per tot annos in foro jactatis
ac propriè naufragis istis vestram æquitatem portum
esse atque perfugium velitis; utque de causa sua, quam
illi justissimam esse confidunt, primu quoque tempore
judicium fiat. Vobis interim omnia ad Dei gloriam,
ecclesiæque præsidium, faustè atque feliciter evenire
volumus.
Excelsarum et præpotentium dominationum
vestrarum studiosissimus,
Olive RI Us, Prot. Reip. Angliæ, &c.
Westmomasterio, Maio, 1656.
OlivE RI Us Protector Reip. Angliæ, &c. Eccelsis et
præpotentibus Dominis Fæderati Belgii Ordinibus,
AS. D.
Excelsi et præpotentes Domini, amici charissimi;
CoNQUERUNTUR apud nos graviter iidem, de quibus
antea circa idus Septemb. superioris anni literas ad vos
dedimus, Thomas et Guilielmus Lower, defuncti Nicho-
lai Lower hæredes legitimi, se adversariorum suorum
sive gratiâ sive opibus oppressos, quamvis causa sua
imprimis optima, et, cum id satis non esset, literis etiam
nostris ter deinceps commendati fuissent, impetrare
hactenus nullo modo posse ut relictam testamento
hæreditatem adire sibi liceat : Ab Hollandiæ foro, ubi
primùm actio instituta erat, vestram ad curiam rejecti,
inde in Zelandiam transmissi, (quæ tria in loca totidem
nostras literas attulerunt,) ab Zelandia nunc rursus ad
vestrum summum judicium haud inviti remittuntur :
ubi enim potestas summa est, ibi æquitatem quoque
summam esse sperant: si ea spes fallat, elusi atque
irriti, post hanc tantam juris obtinendi causâ concursa-
tionem suam, quem demum consistendi locum habituri
sint, nesciunt : nam de literis nostris, si his jam quartis
nos viderint nihil proficere, non est ut in posterum quic-
quam sibi polliceantur. Nobis certè gratissimum erit,
si post tot rejectiones, facto sine mora judicio, hæredes
plurimum quidem in aequitate atque justitia vestra, ali-
quid etiam in authoritate apud vos nostra præsidii sibi
fuisse intellexerint. Quorum de altero non dubitamus,
alterum vel amicitiæ nostræ daturos vos esse confi-
dimus.
Excelsarum et præpotentium dominationum
vestrarum studiosissimus,
OlIvE RI Us Protector Reipub. Angliæ, &c.
Westmonasterio, Maio, 1656.
OlIvE RI Us Protector Reipub. Angliæ, &c. Serenissimo
Principi JoANNI Lusitaniæ Regi.
Seremissime Rex;
CUM mercatoribus quibusdam Anglis, à nonnullis
mercatoribus Lusitanis ex societate Brasiliensi, vecturae
commorationisque nomine, ann. 1649, et 1650, grandis
pecunia debeatur, quæ pecunia à supradicta societate
jussu majestatis vestræ retinetur, expectabant quidem
dicti mercatores uti ea pecunia ex conditionibus prox-
imi fœderis jampridem sibi numerata esset. Verùm me
amputetur sibi spes omnis ac ratio recuperandi sua de-
bita verentur, ex quo intelligunt statuisse majestatem
vestram ut quam pecuniam Brasiliensis societas ipsis
debuisset in ærarium vestrum inferretur, utque portorii
dimidia pars solvendis iis debitis impenderetur ; atque
hoc pacto mercatores legitimum duntaxat lucrum, sive
foenus pecuniæ suæ, accepturi essent ; ipsa forte interim
funditùs intereunte. Quod nos nobiscum reputantes
quàm durum sit, eorumque justissimis precibus victi,
as nostras ad majestatem vestram literas ipsis con-
cessimus: hoc potissimum à vobis postulantes, uti
præstandum curetis, ut supradicta societas Brasili-
ensis hujus reipub. mercatoribus quamprimum satis-
faciat, tam de summa pecuniæ cuique eorum debita,
quam de foenore quinquennali : cum hoc et per se jus-
tum sit, et fœderi nuper vobiscum inito consentaneum :
quod et nos eorum nomine à majestate vestra peramicè
petimus.
Majestatis vestræ studiosissimus,
OlivERius Prot. Reip. Angliæ, &c.
Eæ palatio mostro Westmonasterio,
die Julii, 1656.
802
LITERÆ OLIVERII PROTECTORIS.
OLIVERI Us Protector Reip. Angliæ, &c. Serenissimo
Principi CARoLo GUsTAvo, Suecorum, Gothorum,
Vandalorumque Regi, &c.
Serenissime Rex 5
CUM amicitiam majestatis vestræ, tanti primcipis re-
busque gestis tam clari, meritò plurimi faciamus, tum
is, cujus operâ fœdus inter mos arctissimum sancitum est,
illustrissimus dominus Christiernus Bondus, legatus
vester extraordinarius necesse est gratus mobis et com-
mendabilis hoc nomine imprimis fuerit. Humc itaque
hac legatione laudatissimè perfunctum, non sine summa
cæterarum etiam virtutum egregiarum laude, ad vos
dimittendum censuimus: ut qui antea in pretio apud
vos atque honore fuit, nunc uberiores assiduitatis atque
prudentiæ suæ fructus ex hac nostra commendatione
percepisse se sentiat. Quæ reliqua transigenda sunt, de
iis legationem brevi mittendam ad majestatem vestram
decrevimus: quam interim Deus incolumem defendendæ
ecclesiæ suæ reique Sueciæ columen conservet.
Majestatis vestræ studiosissimus,
OLIVERI Us Prot. Reip. Angliæ, &c.
Eae palatio mostro Westmomasterii,
Julii Am. Dom. 1656.
OLIvERius Protector Revpub. Angliæ, &c. Seremissimo
Principi LUDovico Galliæ Regi, S. D.
Serenissime Rex, amice ac fœderate charissime;
DETULERUNT ad nos, per libellum supplicem, mer-
catores quidam Londimenses, Richardus Baker ejusque
socii, mavem quandam Anglicanam ab se conductam,
cui momen vernaculum The Endeavour, magister Gu-
lielmus Joppus, trecentis atque tredecim vimi optimi
culeis ex Tenariffa insula Londinum advehendis omus-
tam, dum inter Palmam et supradictam insulam cur-
sum teneret, à quatuor navibus Gallicis, in speciem
quidem onerariis, sed prædatorium in modum armatis,
quibus Ægidius de la Roche navarchus erat, primo ac
vigesimo Novembris die, An. Dom. 1655, occupatam
fuisse, atque in Orientalem Indiam, quo is iter sibi
esse prædicabat, cum omni omere ac plerisque nautarum
abductam ; reliquis quatuordecim ad Guineam Nigri-
tarum in littus quoddam expositis. Quod eo consilio
Ægidius fecisse se dictitabat, nequis eorum, ex terra
tam longinqua et inhumana forte elapsus, testimonio
læderet. IFatebatur enim, se neque mandatis instructum,
ut Anglorum naves caperet, neque alias quas poterat
antea ccpisse, ut propterea quod inter Gallos nostram-
que remp. per eos ipsos dies convenisse pacem non ig-
morabat: sed cum in Portugallia constitutum sibi esset
commeatus accipere, et ab adversis ventis rejectus at-
tingere ea loca non potuisset, coactum se, ad supplen-
dum quae opus sibi essent, iis uti quæ in ista nave re-
perisset : credere se proinde, illarum uavium dominos
de damno satisfacturos. Damnum autem constat supra
sedecim mil1e libras Anglicas, id quod ex juratis testi-
bus facile apparebit, mcrcatoribus nostris datum. Ve-
rùm si tan levibus de causis temerare acta principum
religiosissima, et quasi ludibrio habere, negotiatoribus
quibusvis ob sua commoda licuerit, concidet profecto
omnis postbac foederum sanctitas, omnis principum fides
atque authoritas obsolescet, proque nihilo habebitur.
Quapropter non rogamus tantum, sed majestatis ves-
træ quàm maximè interesse arbitramur, ut qui regis
sui foedus, jusque jurandum sanctissimum, primi om-
nium tam facile violare sunt ausi, quamprimum dent
poenas tantæ perfidiæ atque audaciæ debitas ; utque
illarum interea navium domini de damno, etiam ipso
suorum præjudicio, mercatoribus nostris summam per
injuriam illato, satisfaciant. Deus majestatem vestram
diutissimè conservet, remque Gallicam contra commu-
mem utriusque nostrum hostem tueatur atque sustineat.
Majestatis vestræ studiosissimus,
OLIVERI Us Protector Reip.
Eæ palatio nostro Westmonasterii,
die Augusti An. Dom. 1656.
OlivERiUs Protector Reip. Angliæ Eminentissimo
Domino Cardinali MAZARI No.
Eminentissime Domine ;
CUM dandæ mihi literæ ad regem essent, eandem
quoque ad eminentiam vestram scribendi occasionem
arbitrabar mihi oblatam : cujus enim unius viri pru-
dentia singularis Gallorum res maximas, summaque
regni negotia, pari fide, consilio, ac vigilantia, modera-
tur, eum celari qua de re scriberem non convenire ex-
istimabam. Foedus enim à vobis, quod dubitare nefas
esset, sanctissime percussum, eodem penè die spretum
ac violatum à Gallo quodam Ægidio, quatuor navium
præfecto, ejusque sociis mequaquam inscientibus, que-
rimur : quemadmodum et ex literis nostris ad regem
datis, et ex ipsis mercatorum nostrorum postulatis,
facile poterit cognoscere eminentia vestra; quam præter
cæteros non fugit, quanti non magistratuum dumtaxat,
verum etiam ipsius regiæ majestatis, intersit violatores
fœderum primos eos severiùs- puniri. Verum illi for-
tasse, quo tendebant, in Orientalem Indiam jam nunc
appulsi, nostrorum bona, contra jus omne atque fidem
in recentissimo foedere erepta, veluti prædam ab hos-
tibus captam sibi habent. Illud est interea quod emi-
mentiam vestram rogamus, ut quæ ab mavium præfecto,
tamquam itineri suo necessaria, nostris ablata sunt, ea
ab illarum mavium domiuis, id quod ipsi prædatores
æquum esse censebant, restituantur : qua in re vestram
enimentiam, qua valet authoritate, plurimum posse in-
telligimus.
Eminentiæ vestræ studiosissimus,
OLIVERI Us, Prot. Reip. Angliæ, &c.
Eae palatio mostro Westmonasterii.
die Augusti Am. 1656.
OlivERI Us Prot. 1èeipub. Angliæ, &c. Eæcelsis et præ-
potentibus Dominis Fœderati Belgii Ordinibus, S. D.
Excelsi et præpotentes Domini, amici
ac fœderati charissimi ; *
NoN dubitamus nos quidem quin omnes testimonium
hoc nobis perhibituri sint, nullas in contrahendis ex-
ternis amicitiis rationes defendeuda religionis veritate
LITERÆ OLIVERII PROTEC i ORIS.
8(}3
potiores unquam nobis fuisse, nec conjungendis eorum
animis, qui Protestantium vel amici ac defensores, vel
saltem non hostes essent, antiquius nos quicquam
habuisse. Quo graviore animi dolore commovemur,
quoties annumtiatum est, Protestantium principes ac
civitates, quæ sibi mutuo amicissimæ summeque com-
cordes esse deberent, suspectos inter se esse et non op-
timè animatos ; vos præsertim regemque Sueciæ, qui-
bus fortiores orthodoxa fides defensores non habct, neque
socios nostra respub. sibi conjumctiores, videri non
aequè ac consuevistis vobis invicem confidere, immo
indicia quædam vel nascentis inter vos dissidii, vel
vacillantis amicitiæ, haud obscura apparere. Causae
quæ fuerint utrinque, et usque quo progressa animorum
aliematio sit, ignotum esse mobis profitemur : verum-
tamen haud potuimus quin gravem sane molestiam
animo caperemus ex ipsis initiis vel minimæ dissen-
sionis inter fratres coortæ, ex qua tantum creari Protes-
tantium rebus discrimen necesse sit ; quæque si ingra-
vescerit (quod Deus ne siverit) quantum inde Reformatis
Ecclesiis periculum impenderet, quanta triumpbandi
materies inimicis nostris, et Hispanis potissimum, dare-
tur, latere vestram prudentiam usumque rerum solertis-
simum non potest. Hispano certe tantum hinc fiduciæ,
tantum spiritùs, accessit, ut non dubitaverit, per legatum
suum apud vos commorantem, sua vobis consilia, idque
de summa Reip. vestræ, audacissimè obtrudere: et par-
tim injecto renovandi belli metu terrere, partim ostentata
utilitatis falsa specie sollicitare vestros animos est ausus,
ut relictis ejus hortatu amicis vetustis ac fidelissimis,
Gallo, Anglo, atque Sueco, arctissimam cum hoste ac
tyranno quondam vestro, pacato nunc scilicet, et, quod
maxime metuendum est, blandiente, coire societatem
velletis. Same qui ex hoste inveteratissimo, arrepta tam
levi occasione pro consiliario repente vestro se gerit,
quid est quod iste sibi non sumeret, quò non audaciæ
progrederetur, si cernere id semel oculis posset, quod
nunc animo düntaxat concipit atque molitur, discordi-
am nempe inter Protestantes ac bellum intestinum.
Nescii mom sumus, vos, pro sapientia vestra, qui sit
Europæ universæ status, quæ Protestantium præsertim
conditio, sæpius cum animis vestris cogitare ; Helveti-
orum pagos, orthodoxam fidem sequentes, nc vorum
motuum à popularibus suis fidem papæ sequentibus jam
jamque ciendorum expectatione suspensos teneri, ex
eo vix dum bello emersos, quod religionis planè causâ
ab Hispano, qui hostibus eorum et duces dederat et
pecuniam suppeditaverat, conflatum est atque accen-
sum ; vallium Alpinarum incolis consilia Hispanorum
eandem rursus machinari cædem atque perniciem, quam
superiore anno crudelissimè intulerunt ; Protestantes
Germanos sub ditione Cæsaris gravissimè vexari, sedes-
que patrias ægrè retinere; regem Sueciæ quem Deus,
uti speramus, fortissimum religionis orthodoxæ propug-
matorem excitavit, cum potentissimis reformatæ fidei hos-
tibus bellum anceps atque asperrimum totis regni
viribus gerere ; vestris provinciis infesta vicinorum
papistarum, quorum princeps Hispanus est, nuper icta
fœdera mimitari; nos denique imdicto Hispanorum regi
bello esse occupatos. In hac rerum inclinatione siqua
inter vos regemque Sueciæ discordia existeret, reforma-
3 F
tarum totius Europæ ecclesiarum quam miseranda com-
ditio esset, quæ immanium hostium crudelitati ac furori
objicerentur? Haec nos cura haud leviter tangit; eun-
demque vestrum esse sensum confidimus, proque vestro
in communi Protestantium causa præclaro semper
studio, utque pax inter fratres eandem fidem, eandem
spem sequentes intemerata servetur, vos vestra consilia
ad has rationes esse accommodaturos, quæ cæteris
quibuscunque anteponendae sunt, nec quod paci inter
vos Sueciæque regem stabiliendæ possit conducere,
quicquam esse omissuros. Qua in re si nos usùs ullius
esse possumus, quantum apud vos vel authoritate vel
gratia valemus, nostram vobis operam libentissimè pro-
fitemur, Sueciæ quoque regi eandem deferre paratissimi,
ad quem etiam legationem quamprimùm mittere in
animo habemus, quæ hac de re quid nostræ sententiæ
sit exponat. Deumque vestros utrimque animos ad
moderata consilia flexurum esse speramus, vosque co-
hibiturum, nequid ab alterutra parte fiat quod irritare
possit, remque ad extrema deducere : sed ut, contrà,
pars utraque removere velit quicquid alterutri offensum
aut suspiciosum esse queat. Id si feceritis, et hostes
frustrabimini, et amicis solatio eritis, et vestræ denique
saluti reipubl. quàm optimè prospicietis. Hoc etiam
uti persuasissimum sit vobis rogamus, daturos mos esse
operam, quoties facultas oblata erit, uti nostrum erga
fœderatas Belgii provincias summum studium benevo-
lentiaque appareat. Deum proinde assiduis precibus
obtestamur, ut vestram remp. pace, opibus, libertate,
atque imprimis Christianæ fidei amore ac vero cultu,
florentissimam conservare perpetuò velit.
Vestrarum celsitudinum potentium studiosissimus,
OLIVERI Us Protector Reip. Angliæ, &c.
Eæ Palatio nostro Westmon. die Aug. 1656.
OLIVE RI Us Protector Reip. Angliæ, &c. Serenissimo
Principi JoANN I Lusitaniæ Regi, S. D.
Serenissime Rex ;
DIE undecimo Julii proximi, stylo veteri, sanctionem
pacis à majestate vestra jam ratæ, à legato vestro extra-
ordinario Londini transactæ, necnon arcamorum et præ-
liminarium articulorum, per Thomam Maynardum
accepimus: perque literas à Philippo Meadow, mostro
Olyssipone internuntio, eodem tempore datas, nostram
etiam dictæ pacis et articulorum sanctionem, pro iis
mandatis quæ à nobis ea de re aeceperat, majestati
vestræ ab ipso redditam intelligimus : cum supra-
dicta sanctionis instrumenta ineunte Junio proximo
vicissim data acceptaque fuissent, adeo ut nunc inter
utramque gentem pax firmissima sancita sit. Qua
ex pace nos quidem voluptatem haud mediocrem per-
cipimus ; propterea quòd eam et communi utrius-
que gentis ntilitati fore arbitramur, hostiumque com-
munium haud levi detrimento : qui ut prioris foederis
turbandi rationem aliquam primò invenerunt, ita nunc,
me idem instaurari fœdus posset, intentatum nihil re-
liquerunt. Neque dubium nobis est, quin suspiciomum
utrimque offensionumque inter nos materiam creandi
occasionem nullam prætermissuri sint. Quas nos qui-
dem, quantum in nobis est, quàm longissimè amovere
804
LITERÆ OLIVERII PROTECTORIS.
animo nostro ita constanter decrevimus, immo ut ma-
jorem indies mutuam fiduciam hæc nostra pariat neces-
situdo, tam vehementer cupimus, ut eos pro hostibus
habituri simus, qui ullis artibus amicitiam nostram im-
minuere conabuntur, inter mos nostrosque populos hac
pace stabilitam ; eundemque esse majestatis vestræ
animum ac voluntatem facilè nobis persuademus :
Cumque placuerit majestati vestræ suis in literis ad
nos quarto et vigesimo Junii, stylo novo, datis, et die-
bus aliquot post instrumentum confirmatæ pacis datum
atque acceptum nostro internuntio traditis, clausularum
quarundam hujus foederis mentiomem facere, quas ali-
quantum immutatas velit, ut quæ huic reipublicæ, quem-
admodum majestas vestra censet, levis admodum sint
momenti, Portugalliæ regno maximi, peculiari tracta-
tione agere iis de rebus qute à majestate vestra p. )po-
nuntur, et si quid præterea foederi stabiliendo, vel etiam
arctiùs obstringendo, conducere alterutri parti videbi-
tur, parati erimus: in qua majestatis vestræ, suique
populi haud secus atque nostri, ut utrisque æquè sa-
tisfiat, rationem habebimus : atque hæc omnia Olyssi-
pone an Londini agitanda ac transigenda sint, vestra
optio erit. Verùm hoc foedere jam rato, signisque
gentis utriusque ritè obsignato, dato denique vicissim
atque accepto, immutare partem ejus ullam idem esset
atque totum rescindere; quod majestatem vestram mi-
nimè velle pro certo habemus. Majestati vestræ fausta
omnia ac prospera exoptamus.
Majestatis vestræ studiosissimus,
OLIVERIUs Protector Reip. Angliæ, &c.
Ea: Palatio nostro Westmonasterii,
Augusti die 1656.
OLIVERI Us Protector I{eip. Angliæ, &c. Serenissimo
Principi JoANNI Lusitaniæ Regi, S. D.
Serenissime Rex ;
PERLATUM ad nos est facinus illud inhumanum ac
nefarium, quo cædes Philippi Meadowes, internuntii
apud vos nostri, transigendæ pacis causâ à nobis missi,
attentata est : cujus atrocitas tanta fuit, ut divino plane
numini atque tutelæ ejus conservatio attribuenda sit.
Nosque ex litteris majestatis vestræ, sexto et vigesimo
Maii proximi ad nos datis, perque Thomam Maynardum
nobis redditis, permotam facti indignitate majestatem
vestram de authoribus jussisse quæri intelligimus, ut
supplicium de iis, pro eo ac meriti sunt, sumatur.
Verùm comprehensos esse ullos ex iis, aut jussa vestra
hac in parte quicquam effecisse, nondum accepimus.
Quapropter nostrum esse duximus palam significare,
tentatum illud facinus barbarum, et partim commissum,
quàm indignè feramus: atque adeo à majestate vestra
postulamus, ut ab illius facinoris authoribus, sociis, ad-
ministris, supplicium debitum repetatur: Et quo hoc
maturiùs fiat, ut honestissimi integerrimique viri, qui-
que gentis utriusque paci quàm maximè student, huic
quæstioni præficiantur, quò res penitùs investigari,
tamque in authores sceleris quam in ministros severiùs
animadverti possit. Id nisi fiat, neque majestatis
vestræ justitia, neque nostra hujusque reipub. existi-
matio, vindicari, neque conservandæ inter utramque
gentem amicitiæ ulla ratio firma esse, poterit.
tati vestræ foelicia faustaque omnia precamur.
Majestatis vestræ studiosissimus,
OLIVE RI Us Protector Reipub. Angliæ, &c.
Majes-
Eae Palatio mostro Westmonasterii,
Aug. die 1656.
OLIVERI Us Protector Ièeip. Angliae, &c. Illustrissimo
Domino Comiti MI RANo, S. D.
Illustrissime Domine ;
SINGULARE tuum erga me atque hanc rempub. stu-
dium haud mediocriter nos demeruit, tibique devinxit:
id vestris ex literis, 25 Junii proximi ad me scriptis,
facile perspexi, tum etiam ex iis, quas ab internuntio
nostro Philippo Meadowes, conficiendæ pacis causâ ad
Lusitaniæ regem à nobis misso, accepi: quibus is de
eximio vestro studio atque opera in hac pace transi-
genda abundè nos docuit: hujus novissimam sanctionem
et accepi libentissimè, mihique persuadeo fore, ut neque
collatæ in hanc pacem operæ tuæ, neque in Anglos be-
nevolentiæ, neque fidei erga regem hac in re spectatæ,
unquam te pœniteat: quandoquidem, annuente Deo,
sperandum est, hanc pacem et utrique genti permagna
emolumenta, et hostibus incommoda haud exigua, esse
allaturam. Quod solum in hoc negotio triste atque in-
faustum accidit, fuit illud facinus in internuntium nos-
trum Philippum Meadowes nefariè susceptum atque
tentatum : Cujus in occultos auctores haud segnius in-
quiri oportuit, quam in manifestos sceleris ministros:
neque de regis vestri justitia ac severitate in tanto
scelere puniendo, neque de tua cum primis ad eam rem
opera, ut qui fas piumque colas, et pacis inter utram-
que nationem studiosus fueris, dubitare possum : quæ
quidem stare nullo modo potest, si facta hujusmodi ne-
faria impunita atque inulta ibunt. Verùm tua facinoris
illius nota detestatio facit, ut necesse mihi non sit plura.
de hac re in præsentia dicere. Cum itaque de mea erga
te benevolentia, quam et rebus omnibus demonstrare
paratissimus ero, certiorem te fecerim, extremum illud
est, ut te tuaque omnia divinæ benignitati ac tutelæ
à me scias esse commendatissima.
Amplitudinis vestræ studiosissimus,
OLIVE RI Us Prot. Reip. Angliæ, &c.
Eæ palatio mostro Westmonasterii,
Aug. die 1656.
OLIVERI Us Protector Reip. Angliæ, &c. Serenissamo
Principi CARoLo GUsTAvo Suecorum, Gothorum,
Vandalorumque Regi, &c.
Serenissime Rex, amice ac foederate charissim;e ;
CùM eundem nobiscum animum, idem consilium, im
majestate vestra inesse animadvertam, Protestantium
fidei defendendæ contra hostes ejus, hoc tempore, si
unquam aliàs, infestissimos, unde est quòd tam prosperis
successibus vestris victoriarumque nuntiis penè quoti-
die lætemur, tum illud sanè vehementer doleo, quòd
unum lætitiam hanc nostram turbat atque corrumpit,
perferri ad nos, inter læta cætera, vestram cum fœdera-
tis Belgii provinciis amicitiam pristinam non satis con-
LITERÆ OLIVERII PROTECTORIS.
8()5
stare ; remque eo deductam inter vos, in mari præser-
tim Baltico, ut ad discordiam spectare videatur. Cujus
causas quidem ignorare me fateor; eventum certe (nisi
Deus avertat) Protestantium summæ rei periculosissi-
mum fore facile perspicio. Quapropter pro illa artissi-
ma necessitudine, quæ cum utrisque vestrùm nobis in-
tercedit, proque eo, quo duci omnes imprimis debemus,
religionis reformatæ studio atque amore, nostrum esse
censuimus, quemadmodum foederatos Belgii ordines ad
pacem et æquanimitatem magnopere hortati sumus, ita
nunc majestatem vestram hortari. Satis superque hos-
tium Protestantibus ubique est: nunquam acrioribus
odiis inflammati conspirâsse in exitium nostrum um-
dique videntur. Testes Alpinae valles, haud ita pridem
miserorum cæde ac sanguine redundantes; testis Aus-
tria, edictis nuper et proscriptionibus Cæsariis con-
cussa ; testis Helvetia ; quid enim attinet pluribus ver-
bis tot calamitatum recentium memoriam luctumqne
revocare ? Hæc omnia loca quis nescit Hispanorum et
Romani pontificis consilia incendiis, cladibus, vexationi-
bus orthodoxorum, per hoc biennium miscuisse ? Si ad
hæc tot mala Protestantium fratrum inter se dissensio
accesserit, inter vos præsertim, quorum in virtute, opi-
bus, constantia, præsidium ecclesiis reformatis consti-
tutum est maximum, quantum humanæ opis est, peri-
clitari religionem ipsam reformatam, atque in summo
discrimine versari, necesse erit. Quod contra, si uni-
versum Protestantium nomen ea qua decet inter se
fraterna consensione perpetuam pacem coluerit, nihil
omnino erit quod pertimescamus, quid hostium vel artes
vel vires incommodare nobis possint, quos sola nostra
concordia vel propulsabit vel frustrabitur. Quapropter
majestatem vestram majorem in modum oro atque ob-
secro, ut ad confirmandam cum foederatis provinciis
amicitiam pristinam, si qua in parte collapsa est aut
imminuta, propensum atque benignum animum afferre
velit. Siquid est in quo mea opera, fides, diligentia,
ad compositionem usui esse possit, eam omnem vobis
profiteor atque defero. Deus modò aspiret, faustumque
esse jubeat, quod cum summa felicitate cursuque per-
petuo rerum prosperarum majestati vestræ exopto.
Majestatis vestræ studiosissimus, •
OLIVERius Protector Reipub. Angliæ, &c.
Er palatio nostro Westmonasterii, die Aug. 1656.
OLIVERIUs Protector Reip. Angliae, &c. Ordinibus
Hollandiae.
Excelsi et præpotentes Domini, amici charissim ;
DEMONSTRATUM est nobis à Gulielmo Coopero, pas-
tore Londimensi, civeque nostro, Joannem le Maire
Amsterodamensem, socerum suum, ante annos circiter
triginta-tres rationem quamdam excogitâsse, qua reip.
vestræ reditus, sine ullo populi onere, multo auctiores
fierent; factaque cum Joanne Van den Brook societate
partiendi inter se præmii, quod ex illo invento suo re-
portâssent, (id autem erat parvi sigilli in provinciis
constitutio,) ob hoc celsitudines vestras præpotentes
supradicto Van den Brook ejusque posteris tria millia
geldricorum (quæ trecentas libras valent) in singulos
annos pensitanda spospondisse : jam verò, etsi invcnta
illa parvi sigilli ratio facilis admodum et expedita re-
perta est, magnosquc ex eo tempore reditus celsitu-
dinibus praepotentibus vestris, nonnullisque vestris pro-
vinciis, retulit, tamen ad hodiernam usque diem, quam-
vis multa sollicitatione petitum, illius pacti praemii
nihildum adnumcratum esse : unde postquam supra-
dictis Van den Brook et le Maire longarum dilationum
pertaesum est, actionem illam in supradictum Guliel-
mum Cooperum civem nostrum jure esse translatam :
qui, cum fructum industriæ soceri sui percipere cupiat,
ad nos per libellum supplicem se contulit, ut hanc ejus
postulationem celsitudinibus vestris præpotentibus com-
mendare vellemus ; quod ei non esse denegandum
censuimus. Quapropter celsitudines vestras præpotentes
amicè rogamus, uti petitionem supradicti Gulielmi
Cooperi ea de re benignè audire velitis, pactumque in-
dustriæ præmium, atque stipendium tam justum, et pro
numero tot annorum præteritorum et annua deinceps
pensione solvendum curare. Quod cum non dubitemus
quin celsitudines vestræ præpotentes libenter facturæ
sint, utpote et justum, et munificentia vestra dignum,
parati ct nos vicissim erimus, vestris quoque populari-
bus in postulatis suis, quoties nobis edentur, æquè pro-
penso animo favere.
Vestrarum celsitudinum præpotentium studiosissimus,
Oliv E RI Us Protector Reip. Angliæ, &c.
Eae palatio nostro Westmonasterii,
die Septemb. an. 1656.
OlivERius Protector Reip. Angliæ, &c. Serenissimo
Principi LUdovico Galliæ Regi.
Serenissime Rex, amice ac foederate charissime ;
INviTi facimus ut majestatem vestram de suorum in-
juriis, post pacem instauratam, toties interpellemus :
verùm et vos factas nolle confidimus, et nos nostrorum
querimoniis deesse non possumus. Navem Antonium
Diepensem ante foedus jure captam ex judicum senten-
tia, curiæ nostræ maritimæ præsidentium, facile con-
stat. Ejus prædæ partem, quatuor millia plus mimus
coriorum, Robertus Brumus, mercator Londimensis, ab
iis qui auctioni præfuerunt, quod et ipsi testantur, co-
émit : ex iis circiter ducenta cùm Diepam advecta post
ratam pacem coriario cuidam Diepensi vendidisset
pecuniamque redegisset, ea pecunia in manibus procu-
ratoris sui occupata atque retenta, litem sibi impingi,
suumque jus illo in foro se obtinere non posse, queritur.
Quocirca majestatem vestram rogandum censuimus, ut
ad consilium suum de re tota referri velit, pecuniamque
illam iniquissima lite extricari. Etenim si ante pacem
facta et judicata, post pacem rursus in controversiam
atque judicium vocabuntur, quis sit fructus foederum
futurus, non videmus. Verùm hujusmodi querelarum
nullus finis erit, nisi in fœdifragos hosce tam frequentes
exemplum aliquod severitatis maturè statuatur ; id
quod majestati vestræ quamprimùm curæ fore speramus:
Quam Deus interim tutela sua sanctissima dignetur.
Majestatis vestræ studiosissimus,
OlivERius Protector Reip. Angliæ, &c.
Eae palatio nostro Westmonasterii,
die Septemb. an. 1656.
'806
LITERAE OLIVERII PROTECTORIS.
OLIVERI Us Protector Reipub. Anglia, &c. Seremissimo
Principi JoANNI Lusitaniae Regi.
Seremissime Rex;
TRANSACTA jam feliciter inter hanc rempub. Lusita-
nitrdue regnum pace, necnon ad commercium quod
attinet recte atque exordine cautum atque sancitum cum
sit, necessarium esse duximus Thomam Maynardum, à
quo hae literae perferuntur, ad majestatem vestram mit-
tere; qui consulis munere negotiatorio, vestra in di-
tione, ad mercatorum res rationesque ordinandas, fun-
gatur. Cúm autem hoc stepius usu venire possit, ut
adeundi majestatem vestram fieri sibi copiam nonnun-
quam postulet, tam de commercio quam aliis de rebus
quae nostra hujusque reip. interesse possint, à majestate
vestra petimus, utilli, quoties audito opus sit, benignum
velitis aditum atque aurem praebere; id vestrae erga
nos benevolentiae pro argumento singulari atque in-
dicio habebimus: interim majestativestrae Deum Opt.
Max. fortunare omnia volumus.
Majestatis vestrae studiosissimus,
Olive Rius, Protector Reipub. Angliae, &c.
Ea: Aula mostra Westmonasterii,
die Octob. 1656.
Suecorum Itegi.
Serenissime potentissimeque Rex;
TAMETs, ea est solita majestatis vestrae et spontanea
in viros bene meritos benevolentia, ut omnis eorum
commendatio supervacanea possit videri, tamen nobi-
lem hunc virum Gulielmum Vavasorem, cquitem aura-
tum, majestatis vestrae sub signis merentem, et ad vos
jam proficiscentem, noluimus sine nostris ad majesta-
tem vestram literis dimittere. Quod eo libentius feci-
mus, posteaguam significatum nobis est, jampridem
eum, majestatis vestrae auspicia secutum, multis in
praeliis vestra causa suum sanguinem profudisse: adeo
ut Suecorum reges proximi ob militarem ejus peritiam,
operamgue saepe in bello strenué navatam, eum agro et
annuis pensionibus, veluti virtutis praemio, remunera-
verint. Neque veró dubitamus quin majestati vestrae
in hodiernis bellis permagno sit usui futurus, cum sit
fide ac bellicarum rerum scientia jamdin spectata.
Eum itaque majestati vestrae, pro eo ac meritus est,
commendatum cupimus; simulque rogamus, ut quae illi
praeterita stipendia processerint solvantur. Hoc nobis
erit gratissimum ; mec gratificari vicissim majestati
vestrae, quoties facultas erit, gravabimur ; cui fausta
omnia ac prospera exoptamus.
Majestatis vestrae studiosissimus,
OLIVERI Us Protector Reip. Angliae, &c.
Ex palatio mostro Westmonasterii, -
die Octob. am. 1656.
Olive RI Us Protector Reip. Anglia, &c. Seremissimo
Principi JoANNI Lusitania Regi, S. D.
Serenissime Rex, amice ac foederate charissime;
Exhib UIT nobis libellum supplicem Thomas Evans
nauclerus, civis noster, in quo ostendit, se an. 1649, ct
1650, cum navi sua, cui momen Scipioni, quadringen-
tarum amphorarum, et cui ipse praefuit, societati Bra-
siliensi operam navāsse : eam navem, cum onere toto
et apparatu, majestatis vestrae jussu ereptam sibi esse:
unde dammum homini factum, praeter amissum ex
tanta sorte sexennii lucrum, commissarii, ex foedere ad
decidendas controversias utrinque dati, plus septem
millibus librarum nostrarum, sive bis totidem milreis
Lusitanicis, aestimãrunt; quemadmodum et ad nos re-
tulerunt. Quod detrimentum tam grave cum supra-
dictum Thomam vehementer afflixerit, coactus ad re-
petendas ex foedere res suas Olyssipponem navigare,
petiit suppliciter à nobis, ut literas mostras hac de re
ad majestatem vestram sibi daremus: nos, tametsi in
communi causa mercatorum, quibus à societate Brasi-
liensi debebatur, superiore anno scripsimus, tamen me
cui nostram opem poscenti defuisse videamur, majes-
tatem vestram pro amicitia rogamus, ut hujus nomina-
tim hominis ratio habeatur; utdue velitmajestas vestra
suis omnibus ita praecipere, ut ne quid obstare possit,
quo minus is in ea urbe, quod sibi à societate Brasi-
liensivel aliunde debctur, sine ullo impedimento exi-
gere, et sine mora possit recuperare. Deus majestatem
vestram perpetua felicitate augeat; nostramgue amici-
tiam faxit quâm diuturnam.
Majestatis vestrae studiosissimus,
OLIVERI Us Protector Reipub. Angliae, &c.
Ea: palatio nostro Westmonasterii,
die Octob. am. 1656.
Olive RIUs Protect. Reipub. Angliae, &c. Illustri et
Magnifico Civitatis Hamburgensis Senatui, S. D.
Amplissimi, magnifici, et spectabiles
viri, amici charissimi;
GRAVEM detulerunt ad nos querimoniam Jacobus et
Patricius Hays, cives hujus reip. se, sui fratris Alex-
andri, qui intestatus diem obiit, haeredes legitimi cum
sint, atque ita ipsius curiae vestrae sententia, ante annos
duodecim secundum se lata, contra fratris viduam pro-
nuntiati fuissent, bonague defuncti fratris cum fructi-
bus, excepta solum vidua dote, adjudicata sibi ex ed
judicio essent, non potuisse tamen hactenus, neque pro
suo jure, neque literis Caroli olim regis eaden de re
scriptis, ullum laborum suorum ac sumptuum ex ea
sententia fructum consequi: obesse sibiscilicet poten-
tiam atque opes Alberti van Eizen, decurionis apud
vos primarii, apud quem bonorum pars maxima de-
posita est; eum agere omnia, ne ea bona haeredibus
restituantur. Elusi, ac dilationibus confecti, summam
denique ad inopiam redacti, supplicant nobis me se
negligamus tantis injuriis, foºderata in civitate, oppres-
sos. Quod nos cum officii imprimis nostri intelligamus
esse, ut nequis civis noster praesidium suis rebus, atque
susceptum patrocinium in nobis requirat, petimus quod
à civitate vestra videamur facile impetrare posse, ut
sententiam ipsimet vestram hisce fratribus ratam esse
velitis; neque per causam provocationis ad Spirensem
Cameram, vel primö simulatae vel nunc irritae, moram
justitiae fieri diutius patianini. Nam de summa ipsius
causte jurisperitorum nostrorum sententias requisivinus;
LITERÆ OLIVERII PROTECTORIS.
807
umaque descriptas obsignatasque ad vos misimus. Quod
si rogando nihil proficitur, erit necessariò, idque ex
consueto jure gentium, quod tamen minimè vellemus,
ad reciproca deveniendum : id me accidat, vos pro ves-
tra prudentia provisuros esse confidimus.
Amplitudinum vestrarum studiosissimus,
OLIvE RI Us Protector Reipub. Angliæ, &c.
Eæ palatio nostro Westmonasterii,
die Octob. 16. am. 1656.
Olive RIUS Protector Reipub. Angliæ, Serenissimo ae
potentissimo Principi LUDovico Galliæ Regi, S. D.
Serenissime potentissimeque Rex, amice ac
foederate charissime ;
PERVENISSE ad majestatem vestram literas nostras
arbitramur, Maii quarto-decimo superioris anni datas:
in quibus Joannem Dethicum, eodem anno Londimi
urbis præfectum, et Gulielmum Wakefeild, mercatorem,
per libellum supplicem nobis ostendisse scripsimus,
navem Jonam suis mercibus onustam, quæ Ostendam
veherentur, Dunkirkam, quæ tum temporis in Gallica
ditione erat, à prædone quodam Caroli Stuarti filii
auspiciis piraticam faciente ex ipso Thamesis ostio fuisse
abreptam : se, cum ex edictis vestris vestrique consilii
decretis, quibus erat cautum, nequa navis Anglorum, ab
hostibus parlamenti capta, vestris portubus reciperetur,
venalisve esset, à domino Lestrado, illius oppidi præ-
fecto, postulâssent, ut reddi sibi navem suam atque bona
juberet, responsum ab eo tulisse, samè meque viro pri-
mario dignum, neque eo qui regi suo satis dicto audiens
videretur, se scilicet ab rege Galliæ, ob navatam im bello
operam, hanc præfecturam præmio accepisse ; curatu-
rum proinde uti ea quàm maximè quæstui sibi sit ; per
fas videlicet ac nefas: id enim minime laborare vide-
batur. Quasi verò hanc præfecturam atque provinciam
majcstatis vestræ domo accepisset, ut socios juxtà spo-
liaret, vestraque edicta in eorum gratiam promulgata
pro nihilo haberet. Quod enim rex Galliæ, si maximè
ab hostibus factum contra nos voluisset, facti tamen
participes suos esse vetuit, id regius præfectus, contra
regium interdictum, non modo fieri est passus, ut mos
vestris in portubus diripereimur, prædæque essemus,
verum etiam ipse diripuit, ipse prædæ habuit, seque facti
authorem palam professus est. Hoc itaque responso
mercatores, infecto negotio, irriti atque elusi discessere:
nosque hæc itidem superiore anno majestati vestræ per
literas significavimus, successu licèt haud multo meli-
ore ; nihildum enim responsi ad eas literas habuimus.
Quod mom habuerimus accidisse id credimus, prop-
terea quòd eo tempore præfectus ille apud exercitum
in Flandria fuit ; nunc in urbe ipsa Parisiorum degit,
vel potius per urbem, perque aulam, nostrorum spoliis
locupletatus impunè volitat. A majestate igitur vestra
nunc demuò id petimus, quod ipsius majestatis vestræ
interest in primis providere, nequis ad sociorum injurias
edictorum regiorum contemptionem audeat adjun-
gere: sed neque ad legatos sive commissarios de com-
troversiis communibus utrimque dandos rejici propriè
hæc causa poterit ; quandoquidem hic non sociorum
jus duntaxat, sed auctoritas ipsa vestra, regiique no-
minis reverentia, agitur. Illud enim mirum sit, si
mercatores damna sua molestiüs quàm majestas vestra
sui ferat immiuutionem. Eam si non ferat, eadem
opera simul perficiet, ut neque amicissimorum de repub.
nostra edictorum poenituisse, neque in suorum injuriis
commivisse, neque nostræ postulatioui non tribuisse quod
par sit, videatur.
Majestati vestræ voluntate, amicitia, foedere,
devinctissimus,
OlivERiUs Prot. Reip. Angliae, &c.
Eae Aula mostra Westmonasterio,
die Novemb. am. 1656.
O lIvE RI Us Protector Reip. Angliae, &c. Serenissimo
potentissimoque Principi FRE DE RI co III. Damiae,
Norvegiae, Vandalorum, Gothorumque Regi ; Duci
„Slesvici, Holsatiae, Stormariæ, et Dithmarsia; ; C'o-
^miti in Oldemburgh et Delmenhorst, &c. S. D.
Seremissime potentissimeque Rex, amice ac foederate
charissime ;
LITERAs majestatis vestræ sexto-decimo Februarii
Hafniâ datas ab ormatissimo viro Simone de Petkum,
oratore apud nos vcstro, accepimus. Iis perlectis, ct
voluntatis erga nos vestræ præclara significatio, et ipsius
rei, de qua scriptum erat, pondus usque eò nos permovit,
ut statim ad majestatem vestram mittere qui, mandatis
nostris instructus, nostra consilia vobis hac de re ple-
missime exponeret, in amimo haberemus. Et quanquam
idem nobis etiamnum animus manet, hactemus tamen
idoneum aliquem cum iis mandatis dimittere, quæ
gravissimum hujusmodi negotium postularet, non potu-
imus ; quemadmodum jam brevi facturos nos esse spe-
ramus. Interea non omittendum diutiùs existimavimus
majestatem vestram certiorem facere, præsentem rerum
in Europa statum haud mediocri nos cura ac cogitatione
sollicitos tenuisse: cum ab aliquot jam amnis summo
cum dolore videamus Protestamtium principes, ac civi-
tatum primores, (quos, ex communi religionis atque
salutis vinculo, omnem sese mutuò confirmandi ac de-
fendendi inire rationem oporteret,) inter se indies magis
magisque infirmè animatos, quid quisque moliatur,
quidve struat, suspectum habere ; metum amicis, spem
hostibus præbentes, imimicitias atque dissidia potius
hac rerum inclinatione portendi, quam firmum invicem
animorum consensum, ad præsidium mutuum ac defen-
sionem. Atque hæc quidem sollicitudo eo altiùs animo
nostro insedit, quo magis in majestate vestra regeque
Sueciæ adhuc aliquid residere mutuæ suspicionis vide-
tur; vel saltem non eam existere voluntatum conjunc-
tionem, quam communis nostrum omnium in orthodox-
am religionem amor ac studium flagitaret ; dum
majestati vestræ injecta forte aliqua suspicio est, fore
ut ab rege Sueciæ detrimentum aliquod ditionis vestræ
commerciis afferatur; suspicante vicissim Suecorum
rege, ne, per vos, et bellum quod nunc gerit difficilius
et contrahendarum societatum ratio impeditior, sibi
reddatur. Non præterit majestatem vestram, pro ea
summa prudentia, quam adhibere suis omnibus in rebus
solet, quantum discriminis Protestantium summæ rei
impendat, si istiusmodi suspiciones inter vos diu versen-
808
LITERÆ OLIVERII PROTECTORIS.
tur; quanto magis, quod Deus avertet, siquod hostilita-
tis indicium erumperet. Utcumque hæc se habeant,
mos, quemadmodum et Suecorum regem, et foederati
Belgii ordines, ad pacem et moderata consilia magno-
pere hortati sumus, (adeoque redintegrari inter eos pa-
cem atque concordiam vehementer gaudemus, nam et
capita quoque illius foederis à dominis Ordinibus trans-
missa ad nos sunt,) ita nostras esse partes duximus, nos-
traeque amicitiæ quam maxime convenire, ut qui sensus
noster his de rebus sit, majestatem vestram ne celaremus,
(præsertim cùm, ut ita faciamus, majestatis vestræ literis
amicissimis tam studiose invitemur ; id quod etiam
benevolentiæ erga nos vestræ pro argumento singu-
lari sanè habemus atque amplectimur,) vestræque
majestati ante oculos poneremus, quantum nobis ne-
cessitatem, qui Protestantium religionem sequimur, di-
vina providentia imposuerit colendi inter mos pacem,
idque numc maximè, cum hostes nostri acerrimè, si um-
quam alias, rem gerere, et conjurâsse undique in per-
niciem nostram, videntur. Valles Alpinas, miserorum
nuper incolarum cæde ac sanguine madentes, comme-
morare nihil attinet ; nec conquassatam per eosdem
dies Cæsareis proscriptionibus atque edictis Austriam ;
nec denique contra Helvetios Protestantes Helvetiorum
Papistarum infestos impetus. •Quis nescit Hispanorum
dolos ac machinationes per hosce aliquot annos hæc
loca omnia incendiis, ruinis, cladibus Protestantium,
permiscuisse ? Si ad hæc mala reformatorum fratrum
inter se dissensio velut cumulus accedat, inter vos præ-
sertim, qui mostrarum virium tanta pars estis, et in qui-
l)us tantum præsidii ac roboris Protestantium dubiis
temporibus comparatum atque repositum est; quod ad
opem humanam attinet, pessùm ire Protestantium res,
et in extremo discrimine atque occasu versari, mecesse
erit. Quod contra, si pax constet inter vos vicinos, cæ-
terosque orthodoxos principes, si concordiæ fraternæ
omni ex parte studeatur, non erit cur, Deo bene juvante,
vel vim vel versutiam nostrorum hostium pertimesca-
mus; quorum conatus nostra sola consensio vel dissipabit
vel frustrabitur. Neque vero dubitamus quin majestas
vestra ad hanc pacem beatam impertiri suam operam,
quam potes maximam, et libens velit, et velle desitura
non sit. Qua in re ipse etiam communicare consilia cum
majestate vestra, atque conjungere, paratissimus ero ;
utpote et veram amicitiam professus, et cui non solum
pactam inter nos tam auspicatò servare pacem delibe-
ratum omnimo sit, verum etiam necessitudinem hanc,
quæ numc intercedit, prout Deus facultatem dabit, arc-
tiori vinculo constringere. Idem Deus interim majes-
tati vestræ secunda ac prospera omnia concedat.
Majestati vestræ amicitia, foedere, ac voluntate,
conjunctissimus,
OLIVERIUS Protector Reipub. Angliæ, &c.
Dabantur eae Aula mostra Westmonasterii,
Decem. an. 1656.
OLIVERI Us Protect. I?eipub. Amgliæ, &c. Seremissimo
illustrissimoque Principi ac Domino, Domino GU-
LI ElMo, Hassiae Langravio, Principi Herefeldiæ,
Comiti in Cattimeliboeo, Decia Ligenhain, Nidda et
Schaumburgo, &c.
Serenissime Princeps;
Ad literas celsitudinis vestræ nom sic altero pòst
anno, quod prope jam pudet, rescripsissemus, nisi mos
admodum invitos permulta sanè, eaque gravissima,
quorum curam, pro nostro in repub. munere, differre
non potuimus, interpellâssent. Quæ enim literæ de-
bebant esse nobis gratiores, quàm quæ à principe reli-
giosissimo, majoribus quoque religiosissimis orto, de
pace religionis, deque concordia ecclesiarum concilianda,
sunt scriptæ ; quæ etiam literæ eumdem planè animum,
idem pacis christianæ promovendæ studium, non solum
suo, verum etiam universi ferè orbis christiani opinione
ac judicio, et ipsæ nobis tribuunt, et universim attribu-
tum esse gratulantur ? Et nos quidem per tria hæc olim
regna quid hac in parte simus conati, quidque hortando,
ferendo, præeundo, divino maxime auxilio, effecerimus,
et norunt nostri plerique, et in summa conscientiæ
tranquillitate sentiunt. Eandem præsertim Germaniæ
totius ecclesiis, ubi acriùs ferè, jamque diu nimis dis-
sidetur, pacem optavimus ; perque nostrum Duræum,
hoc idem multos jam annos frustra molientem, siquid
eam in rem nostra opera conferre posset, ex animo de-
tulimus. In eadem nos etiamnum sententia permane-
mus; eandem illis ecclesiis fraternam inter se charita-
tem optamus: sed quam sit hoc arduum conciliamdæ
pacis negotium inter ipsos pacis, ut præ se ferunt,
filios, summo cum dolore satis superque intelligimus.
Nam, ut utrique Reformati mempe et Augustani in unius
ecclesiæ communionem aliquando coalescant, speran-
dum vix est ; suam utrique sententiam me possint vel
voce vel scriptis defendere, prohiberi sine vi non pote-
irunt ; vis autem cum pace ecclesiastica consistere non
potest: hoc tantùm se sinant exorari qui dissentiumit,
ut humanius saltem et moderatius velint dissentire, ni-
hiloque minus inter se diligere ; utpote non hostes, sed
fratres in levioribus licet dissentientes, in summa tamen
fidei conjunctissimos. Hæc nos inculcando, hæc sua-
dendo nunquam defatigabimur ; quod ultrà est, humanis
neque viribus neque consiliis datur: Deus quod suum
solius est suo tempore perficiet. Tu interim, serenis-
sime princeps, præclaram in ecclesias declarationem
amimi tui, sempiternum sanè monumentum et majori-
bus tuis dignum et omnibus posthac principibus imi-
tandum reliquisti. Nos celsitudini vestræ, pro eo ac
merita est, felicitatem cæteris in rebus quantum ipsa
cupit, mentem, ea quam nunc habcs, haud meliorem
(quid enim potest esse melius ?) à Deo optimo maximo
precamur.
Westmomasterio, die Martii, am. 1656.
OLIVERIUS Protector Revp. Angliae, &c. Serenissimo
Principi Duci Curlandiæ.
Seremissime Princeps;
DE benevolentia celsitudinis erga nos vestræ et aliàs,
et tum quidem aliunde nobis constitit cùm orationem
nostram ad Moscoviæ Ducem iter facicmtem, et in
ditione vestra per aliquot dies commorantem hospitio
JLITERAE OLIVERII PROTECTORIS.
809
benigné accepisti : nunc justitiae et aequitatis sute haud
leviora indicia daturam esse celsitudinema vestram et
suopte ingenio et nostro rogatu confidimus. Cum
emim Joannes Jamesonus, Scotus, navis cujusdam ves-
tra magister, fidelem naucleri operam septennioque
cognitam vobis navaverit, seque illam navem Balenam
sibi commissam, in ostio fluminis, ut mos est, guber-
natori vestro appellendam in portum tradidisset, eumgue
imperité suo munere fungentem quod solum potuit
sacpius monuisse multis testibus probaverit, non ejus
proſecto culpa, sed gubernatoris vel imperitia vel per-
vicacia fractam esse navem nemini non liquet. Quod
cum ita sit, à celsitudine vestra majorem in modum
petimus, ut supradicto Joanni magistro neque illud
naufragium imputare, neque eam idcirco stipendio de-
bito Velit privare; cujus spe sola jam altero naufragio
bonis omnibus amissis, se utcunque in extrema inopia
sustinet et solatur.
Ea: Aula nostra Westmonasterio
die Martii, Am. 1657.
Oliverius Protector Reipub. Angliae, &c., Amplis-
simis Consulibus ac Senatoribus Reip. Gedamensis,
S. P. D.
Amplissimi, magnifici viri, amici charissimi;
URBEM vestram industria, opibus et optimarum ar-
tium studiis florentem cum nobilissimis quibusque
urbibus semper esse duximus conferendam : nunc pos-
teaguam in hoc bello, quod vestris jamdiu in finibus
geritur, Polonorum sequi partes quam Suecorum malu-
istis, sané et religionis causa quam colitis, et commercii
quod cum Anglis vetustum jam habetis, optavimus ut
ea volis maxime consilia placerent, quae cum Dei glo-
ria urbisque vestræ dignitate ac splendore viderentur
esse conjunctissima. Quocirca petimus pro amicitia,
quae vobis cum Anglorum gente multo usu firmata
jamdiu constat, et siqua in gratia apud vos nostrum
quoque nomen est, ut insignem inter primos Suecorum
duces Conismarcum, egregium praesertim bello virum,
casu et suorum proditione mari interceptum belli lege,
non acerbissimè adhuc gesti, dimittere velitis, sin id
minus vestris rationibus convenire arbitramini, ut leni-
ore saltem ac liberiore custodia habendum censeatis.
Utrum horum vobis faciendum decreveritis, id profecto
imprimis quod existimatione urbis vestrae dignum est
decernetis ; deinde ab omnibus praeclaris belli ducibus
magnam gratiam inibitis; mos denique, quicquid id
vestra interesse putatis, haud mediocri sané beneficio
devincietis.
Ea: Aula nostra Westmonasterio,
Aprilis, am. 1657.
Vestrarum amplitudinum studiosissimus,
OLIVERIUs, Protector Reipub. Anglice, &c.
OLIVERIUS Protector Reipub. Anglia, Scotia, Hiber-
niae, &c. Seremissimo ac Potentissimo Principi ae
Domino Imperatori Ducique magno universa. Russia,
Soli Domino Vol.ADoMERI, Moschoa, Novogrodi,
Regi Cazani, et Astracani, Syberia, Domino Wobs-
coa, Magno Duci Smolenchi, Tuerscoia et aliarum,
Domino ac Magmo Duci Novogroda, Inferiorumque
Regionum Chernigoi, Rezanscode et aliarum, Domino
omnis plaga, Septentrionalis, item Domino Everscode,
Cartalinsca aliarumque permultarum; S. P. D.
ANGLoRUM genti cum imperii vestri populis vetus
amicitia magnusque usus, id quod memo nescit, amplis-
simumque commercium jamdiu ſuit; illa verö virtus
singularis, Imperator Augustissime, qua majoribus suis
majestas vestra longé prelucet, et quae de ea est vici-
norum omnium principum opinio, potissimum nos
movet, ut majestatem vestram et eximio studio cola-
mus, etaue communicata cupiamus, quae et rei christi-
anae et rationibus vestris haud parum conducere, nec
minus nominis vestri gloriae serviare posse existime-
mus. Quapropter ornatissimum virum Dominum
Richardum Bradshaw, summa fide, integritate, pru-
dentia, usugue rerum, ex aliis etiam legationibus, nobis
cognitum, ad majestatem vestram misimus oratorem ;
quiet singulare erga vos nostrum studium, summam
que observantiam vobis exponat, et supradictis de rebus
agere cum majestate vestra possit. Eum itaque ut
benignè nostro nomine accipiatis, eigue ut, quoties
commodum erit, liberum aditum, auresque benigmas,
fidem denique in is omnibus quae proposuerit aut
transegerit, eandem atque nobismetipsis, si corām ad-
fuissemus, praebere velitis rogamus ; adeoque majes-
tativestrae atque imperio Russico fausta omnia a Deo
opt. max. precamur.
Ea: Aula nostra Westmonasterii, die
April. an. Dom. 1657.
Majestatis vestrae studiosissimus,
Olive Rius, Protector Reip. Angl. &c.
Olive RI Us, Protector Reipub. Anglia, &c. Seremissimo
ac Potentissimo Principi CARolo Gust Avo, Sueco-
rum, Gothorum, Vandalorumque Regi, Magno Prin-
cipi Finlandia, Duci Esthomiae, Careliac, Bremar,
Verda, Stetini, Pomeramide, Cassubia et Vandalia,
&c.
Seremissime potentissimeque Rex,
amice ac foederate charissime,
VIR nobilissimus Gulielmus Jepsonus, militum tri-
bunus, et parlamenti mostri senator, cui hoc munus ho-
mori erit, quod majestativestrae hasce literas dabit, cer-
tiorem eam faciet, quanta cum perturbatione ac dolore
nuntium accepimus belli illius funesti inter majestatem
vestram Damiaeque regem coorti; quamgue nobis cordi
ac studio sit, nullam nostram operam aut officium prie-
termittere, quoad Deus facultatem dederit; ut huic
ingruenti malo remedium aliquod mature afferatur,
eaeque simul calamitates avertantur, quas inferriex hoc
bello religionis causte communi necesse erit; hoc pre-
sertim tempore, quo adversarii nostri contra orthodoxæ
fidei professionem et professores cum consilia permi-
ciosissima tum vires arctissimè conjungunt. Haec
atgue alia nonnulla permagna ad utriusque gentis
commoda rationesque publicas momenti adduxere nos,
ut hunc virum ornatissimum internuntii extraordinarii
praedictum munere ad majestatem vestram mitteremus:
810
LITERÆ OLIVERII PROTECTORIS
Quem uti amicè recipiatis, eique, iis in rebus quas cum
majestate vestra nostro nomine communicaverit, sum-
mam fidem adhibeatis rogamus ; cum is sit cujus fidei
atque prudentiæ nos quoque plurimum tribuamus.
Simul et illud petimus, ut majestas vestra mostram erga
se resque suas benevolentiam singularem, atque studium
persuasissimum sibi habeat; cujus nos argumenta cer-
tissimam per omnem occasionem et propenso animo et
officiis paratissimis præbebimus.
Eæ Aula mostra Westmomasterii,
Aug. am. Dom. 1657.
Majestatis vestræ amicus et foederatus conjunctissimus,
OlivERius Protector Reip. Angl. &c.
Eæcellentissimo Domino, DoMINO de BoUR DE AUx, Se-
remissimi Regis Galliarum Legato eætraordinario.
Excellentissime Domine,
MERCAToREs quidem Londino-derrienses Samuel
Dausonus, Joannes Campsejus, et Joannes Nevinus,
per libellum supplicem, Serenissimo Domino protectori
ediderunt, se, posteaquam foedus inter hanc rempub.
regnumque Galliæ redintegratum intellexerant, am.
Dom. 1655 navem quandam, cui momen Anglicè The
Speedwell, melioris ominis causa, quam eventus ferebat,
impositum, cujus Joannes Ker magister erat, mercibus
quibusdam ex portu Derriensi Burdegalam convehem-
dis onerasse ; eam navem illic onere exposito, vinoque
aliisque mercibus inde impositis, captam in reditu die
24 Novembris anni supra dicti à duabis Brestensum
navibus armatis, quarum alteri Adrianus Windmiam
Swart, alteri Jacobus Jonsonus, præfuit, ab iisdem etiam
im portum Brivatem, vulgo Brestensem, fuisse abductam;
ibique et jure captam judicatam esse, et auctione ven-
ditam, cum mille centumque libras nostras æstimatione
justa valuisset, extra damnum mille librarum præterea
datum : dc quibus recuperandis omni se honesta ratione
cum illius loci præfectis egisse: id sibi hactenus frus-
tra fuisse: se etiam moribus edictum curiæ maritimæ
consecutos esse, quo citarentur in judicium qui navem
illam cepissent, autem jure esse captam defendere sta-
tuissent. Edictum hoc et recte atque ordine promul-
gatum et redditum : idque ab cjusdem curiæ ministris
publicis maturè Domino legato Galliæ significatum
esse : cum nemo contra comparuisset, testes aliquot
juratos de re judicanda interrogatos esse. Quæ res
cum à petitoribus ad celsitudinem Domini protectoris
delata sit, ab eaque cognitioni atque sententiæ concilii
mandata, cumque de facto et testimoniis juratis libello
supplici adjumctis abunde constet, petitoribusque libe-
rum commercium Burdegalæ sit datum, mercesque
illic emptæ atque impositæ vi sint in reditu ereptæ et
occupatae contra fœderis fidem, ut supra demonstratum
est, quis non videt hoc esse aequissimum, aut mavem
cum onere petitoribus restitui, aut de damno cùm cap-
tae navis tum juris persequendi plene satisfieri ? Peto
igitur ab excellentia vestra, atque etiam seremissimi
domini protectoris nomine peto, omnem velit operam
dare, omnique operæ authoritatem etiam sui muneris
adjungere, ut primo quoque tempore horum alterutrum
fiat. Cum neque in causa æquiore laborare possit, ne-
que mihi gratiore ; qui eo diligentius curasse quod
mandatum mihi est videbor, quo excellentia vestra
maturius quod suum est præstiterit.
Eæ Alba Aula, Augusti am. Dom. 1657.
OLIVERI Us Protector Rcip. Anglia, &c. Serenissimo
Principi D. FREDERico WILHELMO Marchiomi
Brandeouburgensis, Sacri Romani Impcrii Archi-
Camerario, ac Principi Elcctori Magdeburgi, Prus-
side, Juliæ, Clivia, Momtium, Stetini, Pomeramide,
Cassubiorum Vandalorumque, necnon in Silesia Cros-
mae et Carnoviae Duci, Burggravio Norimbergensi,
Principi Halberstadii et Mindae, Comiti Marcæ et
IRavensbergi, Domino in I{avenstein : S. P. D.
Serenissime Princeps, amice ac fœderate charissime,
CUM ea sit celsitudinis vestræ singularis virtus et
pace et bello terrarum orbe toto jam clara, ea magni-
tudo animi atque constantia, ut amicitiam vestram
omnes fere principes vicini ambiant, amicum et socium
nemo fideliorem sibi aut constantiorem cupiat, ut nos
quoque im eorum numero esse intelligatis, qui de vobis
vestrisque egregiis de rep. christiamæ meritis quam
optimè quamque præclarè sentiunt, nobilissimum virum
Gulielmum Jepsonum, tribunum militum et Parlamenti
nostri senatorem, ad vos misimus, qui vobis nostro no-
mine et plurimam salutem dicat, et rebus vestris feli-
citatem omnem ominetur atque exoptet; nostram deni-
que benevolentiam summumque studium erga vestram
serenitatem verbis amplissimis exponat; eique proinde
fidem, iis in rebus de quibus vobiscum egerit, eamdem
habeatis rogamus, ac si a nobismetipsis testata omnia
atque confirmata coràm esscnt.
Ea: Aula nostra Westmonasterio Augusti
am. Dom. 1657.
OLIVERIUs Protector Peip. Angliæ, &c. Amplissimis
civitatis Hamburgensis Consulibus ac Senatoribus :
„S. P. D.
Amplissimi, magnifici, et spectabiles viri,
Amici charissimi ;
CUM vir ornatissimus Gulieimus Jepsonus, tribunus
mi]itum, et parlamenti nostri senator, ad Suecorum
regem serenissimum à nobis missus vestram per urbem
iter faciat, in mandatis dedimus, uti vòs quoque ne
praeteriret nostro nomine insalutatos ; neque non roga-
tos, ut si qua in re vestra authoritate, consilio aut præ-
sidio opus sibi esse judicaverit, ei quibus rebus potestis
praestò esse velitis. Id quo libentius feceritis eo ma-
jorem a nobis iniise vos gratiam intelligitis.
Eae Aula nostra Westmonasterio, die Aug.
am. Dom. 1657.
Amplissimis Civitatis Bremensis Consulibus ac Sema-
S. P. D.
toribus.
Amplissimi, magnifici, et spectabiles Viri,
Amici charissimi ;
QUI noster animus erga vestram civitatem, quaeque
benevolentia, cùm propter puriorem apud vos religio-
LITERÆ OLIVERII PROTECTORIS.
8 1 1
nis cultum, etiam propter urbis celebritatem, sit, et
sensistis aliàs, et quoties facultas dabitur sentietis.
Nunc, cum ornatissimus vir Gulielmus Jepsonus, tri-
búnus militum, ct parlamenti nostri senator, ad serenis-
simum regem Sueciæ per urbem vestram oratoris mu-
mere instructus iter faciat, hoc tantum in præsentia
voluimus, ut et vos ille peramanter pcrque amicè nostro
nomine salutet, et siquid acciderit in quo vestra ope
atque amicitia usus sibi esse possit, id uti à vobis pro
nostra necessitudine peteret. Qua in re non magis de-
futuros vos esse confido, quam de nostro erga vos amore
singulari ac studio dubitare debetis.
VVestmonasterio, ex Aula mostra die
atn. Dom. 1657.
Aug.
OliVERIUS Protector Reipub. Angliae, &c. Amplissimis
Civitatis Lubecensis Comsulibus ac Senatoribus,
AS. P. D.
Amplissimi, magnifici, et spectabilcs viri,
amici charissimi,
GULIELMUs Jepsomus, vir mobilissimus, militum tribu-
mus, et parlamenti nostri senator, ad serenissimum
Suecorum regem ab urbe vestra haud longe castra
habentem publico munere ornatus proficiscitur, qua-
propter ei per urbem vestram aut ditionem iter facenti
ut omni adjumento, si opus erit, atque praesidio, pro
nostra amicitia atque commercio, adesse velitis roga-
mus. De cætero et salutatos vos esse nostro nomine
peramicè volumus, deque nostro erga vos propenso
animo ac voluntate esse persuasissimos.
Westmonasterio, eae Aula nostra, die
an. Dom. 1657.
Aug.
�
OLIVERI Us Protect. Reipubl. Angliæ, &c. Amplissimis
Civitatis Hamburgemsis Consulibus ac Sematoribus,
S. P. D.
Amplissimi, magnifici, et spectabiles viri,
amici charissimi,
QUI hasce ad vos literas perfert, Philippus Meadowes,
oratoris munere a nobis instructus ad serenissimum
Daniæ regem per urbem vestram proficiscitur. Eum,
siquid erit, im quo vestram authoritatem adjumento sibi
fore aut præsidio existimaverit, commendatum vobis
magnopere volumus. Nostraque commendatio, quo
solet esse apud vos pondere, eodem uti nunc sit roga-
mus: vobis vicissim. siquid ejusmodi occurrit non de-
futuri.
Ex Aula nostra Westmonasterio, die Aug. an. 1657.
OLIVERIUS Protector Reipub. Angliæ, &c. Serenissimo
Principi FREDERico Hæredi Norwegiæ, Duci Sles-
vici, Holsatiæ, Stormariæ, Ditmarsiae, Comiti in
Oldemburgh et Delmenhorst.
Serenissime princeps, amice charissime,
Missus à nobis vir domi mobilis Gulielmus Jepsonus,
militum tribunus, et parlamenti nostri senator, ad sere-
nissimum Suecorum regem, quod paci communi reique
Christianæ felix faustumque sit, legationem obit. Ei
inter alia negotium dedimus, ut cum in itinere salutem
plurimam seremitati vestræ nostro nomine, dixisset,
pristinamque nostram benevolentiam et constantissima
studia significasset, ab eo quoque peteret, ut authoritate
vestra munitus iter tutum atque commodum habere per
vestram ditionem possit. Quo beneficio celsitudo ves-
tra nos nostraque vicissim officia majorem in modum
demerebitur.
Westmonasterio, eae Aula mostra, die Aug. am. 1657
Olive RI Us Protector Rcip. Angliæ, Scrcmissimo Prin-
cipi FERDINANDo Magno Duci Hetruriæ.
Serenissime Dux magne, amice charissime,
OsTENDIT nobis per libellum supplicem societas
mercatorum nostrorum, qui ad oras Mediterranei maris
orientalis negociantur, præfectum quendam navis Lo-
doviculi, sive Anglicè The Little Lewis, nomine Guli-
elmum Ellum, cum Alexandræ in Egypto esset, con-
ductum à Satrapa Memphitico ut oryzam, saccharum
et caphiam, ipsius Turcarum principis in usum, Con-
stantinopolim aut Smyrnam comportaret, classi se Otto-
manicæ in itinere subduxisse, et, contra datam fidem,
navis totum onus Liburnum avertisse : ibi praeda poti-
tum nunc agere. Quod facimus, pessimi sanè exempli,
cùm Christianum nomen probro, mercatorum fortunas
degentium sub Turca direptionis periculo objiciat,
petimus à celsitudine vestra, ut illum hominem com-
prehendi et in custodiam tradi, navemque et bona re-
tineri, jubeat, quoad significatum à nobis erit curasse
nos res illas Turcarum principi reddendas. Vestræ
celsitudini sicubi nostris officiis usus vicissim erit, para-
tissima omni tempore fore profitemur.
Westmnomasterio, ex Aula nostra,
die Scptemb, an. 1657.
Celsitudinis vestræ studiosissimus,
OLIVERIUS Protector reip. Angliæ, &c.
OlivERIUS Protector Reip. Angliae, &c. Serenissimo
Principi ac Domino D. FREDERico WiLHELMO,
Marchioni Brandenburgensi, Sacri Romani Imperii
Archi-Camerario, ac Principi Electori Magdeburgi,
Prussiae, Juliæ, Cliviae, Montium, Stctimi, Pomera-
miae, Cassubiorum Vamdalorumque, mecmom in Silc-
sia, Crosnæ et Carnoviæ Duci, Burggravio Norin-
bergensi, Principi Halberstadii et Mindae, Comiti
Marcae et Ravensbergi, Domino in Ravenstein.
Serenissime Princeps, amice ac fœderate charissime,
ALTERIS ad celsitudinem vestram literis per oratorem
nostrum, Gulielmum Jepsonum, aut redditis aut brevi
redditis legationis ipsi à nobis mandatæ fidem fecimus;
idque sine vestrarum virtutum aliqua mentione, nos-
træque erga vos benevolentiæ, significatione facere non
potuimus. Verum nequis vestra de rebus Protestan-
tium egregiè merita, quæ summa omnium prædicatione
celebrantur, nos obitu tetigisse tantùm videamur, re-
sumendum nobis nunc idem argumentum, nostraque
officia non libentiùs quidem aut animo propensiore,
aliquanto tamen prolixius deferenda seremitati vestræ
censuimus. Et meritò sanè, cum ad aures nostras
812
LITERÆ OLIVERII PROTECTORIS.
quotidie perferatur, fidem vestram atque constantiam
omnibus tentatam machimis, solicitatam technis, labe-
factari tamen, et ab amicitia fortissimi regis ac socii,
mullo modo posse dimoveri ; idque cum eo loco Sueco-
rum res nunc sint, ut in retinenda eorum societate cel-
situdinem vestram reformatæ potius religionis causa
communi, quàm suis commodis duci manifestum sit ;
cumque hostibus vel occultis vel jam prope imminen-
tibus cincta undique et penè obsessa sit, copiæ ut sint
validæ non tamen sint maximæ, ea tamen firmitate
animi ac robore esse, eo consilio ac virtute imperatoria,
et unâ vestra voluntate niti totius rei summa ac moles,
bellique hujus maximi exitus pendere videatur. Qua-
propter nihil est quod dubitet celsitudo vestra, quin de
amicitia nostra summoque studio polliceri omnia sibi
possit: qui vel ipsi ab omni laude derelicti nobis vide-
remur, si præclara ista fide atque constantia cæterisque
vestris laudibus minùs delectaremur, aut vobis ipsis
communi religionis nomine mimus deberemus. Quòd si
rebus ab ornatissimo viro Joanne Frederico Schlezer
consiliario et oratore apud nos vestro propositis respon-
dere, pro eo ac studemus, hactenus non potuimus
(quamquam is omni assiduitate ac diligentia id agit
atque contendit) conditioni rerum nostrarum hoc velit
imputare celsitudo vestra rogamus ; sibique imprimis
persuadere nihil nobis esse antiquius aut optatius,
quam ut vestris rationibus cum religionis causa tam
conjunctis usui quam plurimùm atque subsidio esse
possimus. Interim tam clara virtus ac fortitudo ne
ullo tempore deficiat aut opprimatur, dignave laude
aut fructu careat Deum opt. max. precamur.
Eæ aula nostra, Westmonasterio, die Sept. an. 1657.
Celsitudinis vestræ studiosissimus,
OLIVE RI Us, Protector Reip. Angliæ, &c.
Eaecellentissimo Domino, DoMINO de BouRDEAUx, Se-
nemissimi Galliarum Regis Legato eætraordinario.
Excellentissime Domine,
PosTULAviT a serenissimo Domino protectore, Lucas
Lucius mercator Londinensis de sua quadam navi, cui
nomen Maria, qute cum ab Hibernia Bajonam peteret,
vi tempestatis ad fanum Divi Joannis de I.uz, appulsa,
ibi retenta et occupata est actione Martini cujusdam de
Lazon ; nec restituta donec à procuratoribus mercatoris
illius satisdaretur, se de illa navi atque onere cum
Martino lege experturos. Tulit enim præ se Martinus
deberi sibi grandem à parlamento Angliæ pecuniam,
mercium quarundam suarum nomine, quæ in navi qua-
dam Sancta Clara anno 1642 parlamenti auctoritate
sunt retentæ. Verum cum satis constaret, Martinum
illum earum mercium verum dominum non esse, sed
cum Antonio quodam Fernandez verorum dominorum
Richaldi et Iriati jus persequi, dissidentibusque inter
se Martino et Antonio, decreverit parlamentum uti
merces illæ retinerentur quoad lege esset decisum utri
eorum reddendæ essent, paratusque fuerit semper An-
tonius lege agere ; contrà, neque Martimus neque pro
eo quisque in judicio hactenus comparuerit, quæ omnia
ex Lucæ petitoris libellis libello supplici annexis li-
quent ; iniquissimum sanè est, ut is, qui jus suum sup-
posititium cum Antonio collega suo de alienis bonis
experiri apud nos recusat, cogeret nostros homines ve-
rosque dominos de suis bonis in aliena ditione conten-
dere : Quin idem æquitati vestræ atque prudentiæ
videatur, non dubitat serenissimus dominus protector;
à quo sum jussus, hanc Lucæ Lucii causam æquissi-
mam excellentiæ vestræ singularem in modum com-
mendare: ne Martino, qui jus alienum apud nos per-
sequi negligit, eo obtentu aliis eripiendi jus suum apud
vos potestas detur.
Westmomasterio, die Octob. am. 1657.
Excellentiæ vestræ studiosissimus.
OLIVERIUs, Protector Reip. Angliae, &c. Seremissimo
Duci ac Senatui Reip. Venetae.
Serenissime Dux atque Senatus, Amici charissimi;
NUNCII rerum vestrarum contra Turcas felicissimè
gestarum tam crebri ad nos perferuntur, ut nobis mon
sæpius ulla de re ad vos scribendum, quam de insigni
aliqua victoria gratulandum sit. Hanc recentissimam,
et reipublicæ vestræ quam maxime lætam atque oppor-
tunam cupimus, et quod gloriosissimum est, christia-
norum omnium sub Turca servientium quam maxime
liberatricem. Nominatim Thomam Galileum navis, cui
nomen The Relief, olim præfectum, serenitati vestræ
ac senatui, tametsi non nunc primum, nunc tamen eo
libentiùs quo latiori tempore, quinquennalem captivam
commendamus. Ei cùm à vobis imperatum esset, ut
cum navi sua reipublicæ vestræ operam navaret, solus
cum multis hostium triremibus congressus, nonnullas
depressit, magnamque stragem edidit ; tandem com-
busta navi captus vir fortis, deque Veneta rep. tam
benè meritus, quintum jam annum in misera servitute
barbarorum degit. Unde se redimat facultatum nihil
est ; mam quicquid erat, id à celsitudini vestra et
sematu, vel navis vel bonorum vel stipendii nomine de-
bere sibi ostendit. Verùm ut facultates non deessent;
hostes tamen non alia lege dimissuros se eum profiten-
tur, quam si suorum aliquis, qui illis in pretio æquè sit,
permutetur. Petimus itaque magnopere à vestra atque
senatus celsitudine serenissima, petit per nos senex mi-
serrimus, captivi pater, mœroris et lachrymarum plenus,
quæ nos quidem permoverunt, ut primùm quoniam ex tot
prosperis præliis Turcarum tanta copia captorum vobis
est, unam aliquem ex eo numero, quem illi recipiant,hos-
tem vestro milite fortissimo, nostro cive, senis moestissi-
mi filio unico commutare velitis. Deinde, ut quod
stipendii, vel aliis nominibus ipsi à repub. debetur, id
quam primùm velitis patri aut procuratori ipsius anmu-
merandum curare. Priori quidem rogatu nostro, vel
potius æquitate vestra effectum est, ut statim re cognita,
putatisque rationibus constitutum esset quid debeatur:
verum illum supputationem ingentibus fortasse aliis
negotiis, nulla solutio secuta est. Nunc miseri conditio
dilationem salutis diutiùs non fert: eum, si omnino
salvum vultis, danda opera est, ut squalore illo carceris
teterrimo quam primùm liberetur. Id sine mora, sine
hortatu etiam nostro humanissima voluntate vestra
facturos vos esse confidimus: quandoquidem justitia,
moderatione, atque prudentia non minus quam belli
ILITERAE OLIVERII PROTECTORIS.
813
gloria victoriisque floretis : atque ut diutissimè florea-
tis, devicto hoste potentissimo, Deum opt. max. pre-
C8] In U r*,
Westmonasterio, ea: Aula mostra,
die Octob. an. 1657.
Celsitudinum vestrarum studiosissimus,
OLIVERI Us, Prot. Reip. Angliæ, &c.
OlivERIUS Protector Reip. Angliae, &c. Eaecelsis et
praepotentibus Dominis Faederati Belgii Ordinibus,
AS. P. D.
Excelsi et praepotentes Domini, amici ac
foederati charissimi ;
REDIT ad vos vir illustrissimus Gulielmus Nuport
legatus vester annis jam aliquot apud mos extraordina-
rius : sed ita redit, petito ad tempus dumtaxat à vobis
commeatu, ut eum brevi reversurum speremus. Ea
enim est fide, vigilantia, prudentia, aequitate apud mos
in suo munere versatus, ut majorem in unoquoque
genere virtutem ac probitatem neque mos desiderare in
legato, viroque optimo, neque vos possitis; eo auimo ac
studio ad pacem inter nos et amicitiam sine fuco et
fraude conservandam, ut, illo hanc legationem obeunte,
quid inter nos offensionis aut scrupuli suboriri queat
aut pullulare, non videamus. Et discessum sanè ejus
molestiore animo ferremus, hac præsertim rerum ac
temporum inclinatione, misi persuasissimum nobis hoc
esset, neminem melius posse aut fidelius vel rerum
utrobique statum, vel nostram erga celsitudines vestras
benevolentiam studiumque integrum coràm exponere.
Quapropter hunc ut virum undiquaque præstantissi-
mum, deque rep. et sua et nostra optime meritum, ac-
cipere redeuntem velitis rogamus: sicuti et nos veris-
simo nostrarum laudum testimonio ornatum abeuntem
dimisimus prope inviti. Deus ad ipsius gloriam eccle-
siaeque præsidium orthodoxæ vestris rebus felicitatem,
nostræ amicitiæ perpetuitatem concedat.
Westmonasterio, eae Aula nostra,
die Nov. am. 1657.
Celsitudinem vestrarum studiosissimus.
OLIVERIUS Protector Reip. Amgliae, &c. Eaccelsis et
præpotentibus Dominis Facderati Belgii Ordinibus,
„S. P. D.
Excelsi et præpotentes Domini, amici nostri ac
foederati charissimi ;
GEoRGIUS Dumimgus vir mobilis nobis est multis ac
variis megotiis, summa fide, probitate ac solertia, per-
spectus jamdiu et cognitus. Eum ut apud vos oratoris
munere fungatur, mittendum censuimus, mandatisque
nostris amplissimè instruximus. Eum itaque amico,
ut consuevistis, animo recipiatis rogamus: et quoties
habere se significaverit, quod nostro nomine vestrum
cum excelsis ordinibus agat, amicè audire, fidemque
adhibere ; et quæ vos vicissim communicanda nobis
censebitis, ea omnia, sicuti rectè potestis, perinde ac si
mos ipsi coram essemus, ei committere velitis. De
cætero vobis vestræque reip. ad Dei gloriam eccle-
siaeque præsidium secundas res omnes ex animo pre-
Calm} U1I°.
VVestmonasterio, eae Aula nostra, die
Decemb. am. Dom. 1657.
Celsitudinum Vestrarum studiossissimus,
OLI v E R I Us, &c.
Ordinibus Hollandiæ.
CUM ea nostræ reip. cum vestra intercedat necessi-
tudo, ea sint utrinque negotia, ut sine oratore atque in-
terprete vel hinc vel inde misso res tantæ ad utilitatem
utriusque gentis constitui commodè vix possint, ex usu
communi fore arbitrati sumus, ut Georgium Duningum
virum nobilem, multis ac variis negotiis summa fide,
probitate ac solertia spectatum, jam diu nobis et cog-
nitum, eo munere instructum mitteremus : qui nostro
nomine apud vos maneat, iis maxime officiis intentus,
quibus nostra amicitia sarta tecta conservari posse
quam diutissimè videatur. Hac de re cum ad excelsos
et præpotentes ordines scripsimus, tum vos quoque qui
in Provincia vestra summæ rei præsidetis, et Foederati
Belgii tanta pars estis, certiores faciendos per literas
duximus ; ut et nostrum oratorem ea ratione qua con-
venit accipiatis, et quæ ille cum excelsis Dominis ordi-
nibus transegerit, ea vobis persuadeatis peræque firma
ac rata nos esse habituros, ac si ipsi rebus transactis
coràm interfuissemus. Deus consilia vestra et facta
omnia ad gloriam suam et ecclesiæ pacem dirigat.
Westmomasterio, $;c. Decemb. 1657.
OLIvE RI Us Protector Reip. Aagliae, &c. Serenissimo
Principi FERDINAN Do Magno Duci Hetruriæ.
Serenissime Dux Magne, amice noster
plurimum colende,
PERMAGNAM nobis attulere voluptatem literæ celsi-
tudinis vestræ decimo Nov. Florentia datæ ; in quibus
benevolentiam erga nos vestram eo vidimus perspecti-
orem, quanto res ipsæ verbis, facta promissis certiora
benevolentis animi indicia sunt : quæ nempe rogavi-
mus celsitudinem vestram, juberet illum navis Lodovici
parvi præfectum Gulielmum Ellum, qui fidem Turcis
datam turpissimè fregerat, et ipsum comprehendi, et
navem cum mercibus in portu retineri, quoad Turca-
rum quæ essent redderentur, ne nomen Christianum
per istiusmodi furta labem aliquam susciperet, ea om-
nia, et summo quidem studio, quod satis intelligimus,
scripsit celsitudo vestra se præstitisse. Nos itaque cum
pro accepto beneficio gratias agimus, tum hoc porrò
nunc petimus, quandoquidem satisfactum iri Turcis
mercatores in se receperunt, ut et præfectus ille custodia
liberetur, et navis cum mercibus quamprimum dimit-
tatur ; ne Turcarum forte rationem potiorem, quam
nostrorum civium habuisse videamur. Interim celsi-
tudinis vestræ spectata voluntate erga nos singulari, et
sanè gratissima sic libenter fruimur, ut ingratitudinis
notam non recusemus, nisi pari promptitudine vobis
vicissim gratificandi occasionem quam primum dari
nobis exoptamus, ex qua nostram quoque im reddendis
8 14
LITERÆ OLIVERII PROTECTORIS.
officiis promptitudinem amimi rebus ipsis erga vos de-
monstrare possimus.
Westmonasterio, eae Aula mostra,
LOecemb. am. 1657.
Celsitudinis vestræ studiosissimus,
OLIVE RI Us, &c.
OLIVERIUS Protector Reip. Angliæ, &c. Seremissimo
ac potentissimo Principi CARolo GUsTAvo Sueco-
rum, Gothorum, Vandalorumque I?egi.
Seremissime potentissimeque Rex, amice ac
foederate invictissime ;
MULTA simul attulere nobis literæ majestatis vestræ
21 Feb. in castris Selandicis datæ, cur, et privatim nos-
tra, et totius reipub. Christianæ causa, lætitia haud
mediocri afficeremur : primum quod rex Daniæ, non
sua credo voluntate aut rationibus, sed hostium commu-
mium artibus factus hostis, repentino vestro in intimum
ejus regnum adventu, sine multo sanguine, eò sit re-
dactus, ut, quod res erat, utiliorem sibi pacem bello
contra vos suscepto tandem judicaverit: deinde cum is
eam nulla se ratione citius posse consequi existimaret,
quam si delata sibi jamdiu ad conciliandam pacem
mostra opera uteretur, quod majestas vestra solis inter-
nuntii nostri literis exorata, tam facili pacis concessione
ostemderit, quantum nostra amicitia atque gratia inter-
posita apud se valeret: meumque imprimis in hoc tum
pio ncgotio officium esse voluerit, ut pacis tam saluta-
ris protestantium rebus, uti spero, mox futuræ ipse po-
tissimum unus conciliator atque auctor propemodum
essem. Cum enim religionis hostes conjunctas opes
vestras alio pacto frangere se posse desperarent, quàm
si vos inter vos commisissent, habebunt nunc, profectò
quod pertimescant, ne armorum animorumque, ut spero,
vestrorum hæc inopinata conjunctio ipsis belli hujus
conflatoribus in perniciem vertat. Tu interim, rex
fortissime, macte tua egregia virtute ; et quam felici-
tatem in rebus tuis gestis victoriarumque cursu contra
regem nunc socium hostes ecclesiæ nuper admirati sunt,
eandem in sua rursus clade, Deo benè juvante, fac sen-
tiant.
Westmonasterio, ea: Palatio mostro,
30 die Martii, 1658.
Ol1venius Protector Reip. Angliæ, &c. Serenissimo
Principi FERDINAN Do Magno Duci Hetruriæ.
Serenissime Princeps,
QUoD satisfacturum arbitramur celsitudini vestræ de
nostro classis præfecto qui ad portus vestros nuper est
delatus, vestro apud nos oratori respondimus: interim
per libellum supplicem nobis ostendit Joannes Hosie-
rus Londimensis, cujusdam navis, cui Dominæ nomem,
magister, se, cùm anno 1656, mense Aprili, navem
suam ex syngrapha (chartam partitam jus nostrum vo-
cat) Josepho Armano Italo cuidam locasset, isque fac-
tas in syngrapha pactiones ter apertè fregisset, coactum
esse demùm, ne navem suam, totumque onus ejus, sor-
tem denique totam amitteret, more mercatorio, declarata
publicè ejus fraude, et in tabulas publicas relata, Ii-
burni in jus eum vocare: cum autem, ut fraudem fraude
tueretur, adhibitis in societatem duobus aliis negotiato-
ribus litigiosis, de pecunia Thomæ cujusdam Clutter-
buxi sex mille octonos, conficto quodam obtentu, peti-
toris hujus momine occupasse: se, post multas impensas
consumtumque tempus, jus suum Liburni obtinere
non posse ; ne audere quidem, propter adversariorum
minas atque insidias, in judicio illic comparere. Peti-
mus itaque à celsitudine vestra, ut cùm huic homimi
oppresso subvenire, tum hujus adversarii insolentiam
pro consueta sua justitia velit coercere : frustra enim
authoritate principum leges essent civitatibus latæ, si
vis atque injuria, cùm, ne omnino sint leges, efficere
non possint, possint efficere terrore ac minis, me quis
ad eas audeat confugere. Verum in hujusmodi auda-
ciam quin maturè animadversura sit celsitudo vestra,
non dubitamus ; cui pacem prosperaque omnia à Deo
opt. max. precamur.
Westmomasterio ea: Aula mostra,
die 7 April. am. 1658.
Serenissimo Potentissimoque Principi LUDovico Gal-
liarum Regi.
Serenissime potentissimeque Rex, amice ac
foederate augustissime ;
MEMINIssE potest majestas vestra quo tempore inter
nos de renovando fœdere agebatur; quod optimis aus-
piciis initum multa utriusque populi commoda, multa
hostium communium exinde mala testantur, accidisse
miseram illam Convallensium occisionem, quorum
causam undique desertam atque afflictam vestræ mise-
ricordiæ atque tutelæ summo cum ardore animi ac
miseratione commendavimus. Nec defuisse per se arbi-
tramur majestatem vestram officio tam pio, immo verò
tam humano, pro ea qua apud ducem Sabaudiæ valere
debuit vel auctoritate vel gratia : nos certè aliique
multi principes ac civitates, legationibus, literis, pre-
cibus interpositis, non defuimus. Post eruentissimam
utriusque sexus omnis ætatis trucidationem, pax tan-
dem data est, vel potius inducti pacis nomine hostilitas
quædam tectior : conditiones pacis vestro in oppido
Pinarolii sunt latae ; duræ quidem illæ, sed quibus
miseri atque inopes dira omnia atque immamia perpessi
facilè acquiescerent, moda iis, duræ et imiiquæ ut sint,
staretur ; non statur; sed enim earum quoque singula-
rum falsa interpretatione variisque diverticulis fides
eluditur ac violatur ; antiquis scdibus multi dejiciuntur,
religio patria multis interdicitur, tributa nova exigun-
tur, arx nova cervicibus imponitur, unde milites crebro
erumpentes obvios quosque vel diripiunt vel trucidant :
ad hæc nuper novæ copiæ clanculum contra eos paran-
tur ; quique inter eos Romanam religionem colunt, mi-
grare ad tempus jubentur ; ut omnia nunc rursus vide-
antur ad illorum internecionem miserrimorum spectare,
quos illa prior laniena reliquos fecit. Quod ergo per
dextram tuam, rex christianissime, quæ fœdus nobis-
cum et amicitiam percussit, obsecro atque obtestor, per
illud christianismi tituli decus sanctissimum, fieri me
siveris: nec tantam sæviendi licentiam non dico prin-
cipi cuiquam (neque enim in ullum principem, multo
LITERÆ OLIVERII PROTECTORIS.
81 5
minus in ætatem illius principis temeram, aut in mu-
liebrem matris animum tanta sævitia cadere potest) sed
sacerrimis illis sicariis ne permiseris ; qui cum Christi
servatoris nostri servos atque imitatores sese profitean-
tur, qui venit in hunc mundum ut peccatores servaret,
ejus mitissimo nomine atque institutis ad innocentium
crudelissimas cædes abutuntur: eripe qui potes, quique
in tanto fastigio dignus es posse, tot supplices tuos
homicidarum ex manibus, qui cruore nuper ebrii, san-
guinem rursus sitiunt ; suæque invidiam crudelitatis
in principes derivare consultissimum sibi ducunt. Tu
verò nec titulos tuos aut regni fines ista invidia, nec
evangelium Christi pacatissimum ista crudelitate fœ-
dari te regnante patiaris. Memineris hos ipsos avi tui
Henrici protestantibus amicissimi dedititios fuisse ;
cum Diguierius per ea loca, qua etiam commodissimus
in Italiam transitus est, Sabaudum trans Alpes ceden-
tem victor est insecutus : deditionis illius instrumentum
in actis regni vestri publicis etiamnum extat ; in quo
exceptum atque cautum inter alia est, me cui postea
Convallenses traderentur, nisi iisdem conditionibus qui-
bus eo avus tuus invictissimus in fidem recepit. Hanc
fidem nunc implorant, avitam abs te nepote supplices
requirunt : tui esse, quàm cujus nunc sunt, vel permu-
tatione aliqua, si fieri possit, malint atque optarint: id
si non licet, patrocinio saltem, miseratione atque per-
fugio. Sunt et rationes regni quæ hortari possint ut
Convallenses ad te confugientes ne rejicias: sed molim
te, rex tantus cum sis, aliis rationibus ad defensionem
calamitosorum quàm fide a majoribus data, pietate,
regiaque animi benignitate ac magnitudine permoveri.
' Ita pulcherrimi facti laus atque gloria illibata atque
integra tua erit, et ipse patrem misericordiæ ejusque
filium Christum regem, cujus momen atque doctrinam
ab immanitate nefaria vindicaveris, eo magis faventem
tibi atque propitium per omnem vitam experieris.
Deus opt. max. ad gloriam suam, tot innocentissimorum
hominum christianorum tutandam salutem, vestrumque
verum deeus majestati vestræ hanc mentem injiciat.
VVestmonasterio, Maú, an. 1658.
Civitatibus Helvetiorum Evangelicis.
Illustres atque amplissimi Domimi,
amici charissimi ;
DE Convallensibus vicinis vestris afflictissimis, quàm
sint à principe suo gravia et intoleranda religionis
causa passi, cùm propter ipsam rerum atrocitatem hor-
ret prope animus recordari, tum ad vos ea scribere qui-
bus notiora multo sunt, supervacuum duximus. Ex-
empla etiam literarum vidimus quas legati vestri pacis
jamdudum Pinarolianæ hortatores atque testes ad
Allobrogum ducem illiusque Taurinensis consilii præ-
sidem scripserunt; in quibus ruptas esse omnes pacis
conditiones, illisque miseris fraudi potiùs quàm securi-
tati fuisse singulatim, ostendunt atque evincunt. Qua-
rum violationem ab ipsa statim pace data in hunc usque
diem continuatam, et indies graviorem nisi aequo
animo patiumtur, nisi se conculcandos planè et pessum-
dandos prosternunt atque abjiciunt, religione etiam
ejurata, impendet cadem calamitas, eadem strages, quæ
ipsos cum conjugibus ac liberis tertio abhinc auno sic
miserabilem in modum attrivit atque afflixit, et sub-
eunda iterum si est, funditus eradicabit. Quid agant
miseri ? quibus nulla deprecatio, mulla respiratio, mul- '
lum adhuc certum perfugium patuit; res est cum feris
aut cum furiis, quibus priorum cædium recordatio mul-
lam pœnitentiam, aut suorum civium miserationem,
mullum sensum humanitatis aut fumdemdi sanguinis sa-
tietatem attulit. Haec ferenda planè non sunt, sive
fratres nostros Convallenses orthodoxæ religionis cul-
tores antiquissimos, sive ipsam religionem salvam vo-
lumus. Et nos quidem locorum intervallo plus mimio
disjuncti, quod opis aut facultatis nostræ fuit, et præ-
stitimus ex animo, et præstare non desinemus. Vos
qui non modo fratrum cruciatibus ac penè clamoribus,
verum etiam eorumdem furori hostium proximi estis,
prospicite per Deum immortalem, idque maturè, quid
vestrarum munc partium sit; quid auxilii, quid præsidii
vicinis ac fratribus, alioqui mox perituris, ferre possitis
ac debeatis, prudentiam vestram ac pietatem, fortitu-
dinem etiam vestram consulite. Causa certè eadem
est religio, cur iidem hostes vos quoque perditos velint,
immo cur eodem tempore, eodem superiore anno, foede.
ratorum vestrorum intestimo marte perditos voluerint.
Vestra duntaxat in manu post opem divinam videtur
esse, ne purioris ipsa stirps religionis vetustissima in
illis priscorum fidelium reliquiis excindatur : quorum
salutem in extremum jam discrimen adductam si neg-
ligitis, videte ne vosmetipsos paulò post proximæ vices
urgeant. Hæc dum fraternè ac liberè hortamur, ipsi
interea non languescimus : quod solum nobis concedi-
tur tam longinquis, cùm ad procurandam periclitantium
incolumitatem tùm ad sublevandam egentium imopiam,
omnem operam nostram et contulimus et conferemus.
Deus det utrisque nobis eam domi tranquillitatem ac
pacem, eum rerum ac temporum statum, ut omnes nos-
tras opes atque vires, omne studium ad defendendam
ecclesiam suam contra hostium suorum furorem ac ra-
biem, convertere possimus.
Westmonasterio, ex Aula mostra,
Maii die, am. l6ö8.
Eminemtissimo Domino Cardinali MAZARINo, Salutem.
Eminentissime Domine,
ILLATÆ nuper protestantibus, qui valles quasdam Al-
pimas in ditione ducis Sabaudiæ incolunt, gravissimæ
calamitates cædesque cruentissimæ fecêre, ut inclusas
has literas ad majestatem regiam, hasque alteras ad
eminentiam vestram scripserim. Et quemadmodum
de rege seremissimo dubitare non possum, quim hæc
tanta crudelitas, qua in homines immoxios atque inopes
tam barbarè sævitum est, vehementer ei displiceat atque
offensa sit; ita mihi facilè persuadeo, quæ ego à majes-
tate regia illorum causa miserorum peto, ad ea impe-
tranda vestram quoque operam atque gratiam, velut
cumulum, accessuram. Cum nihil planè sit, quod
Francorum genti benevolentiam apud suos onmes vici-
nos reformatæ religionis cultores majorem conciliaverit,
quam libertas illa ac privilegia, quæ ex edictis suis
atque actis publicis permissa protestantibus atque com-
816
LITERÆ OLIVERII PROTECTORIS.
cessa sunt. Et hæc quidem respublica cùm propter
alias tum hanc potissimum ob causam Gallorum ami-
citiam ac necessitudinem majorem in modum expetivit.
De qua constituenda jamdiu cum legato regio apud
nos agitur, ejusque tractatio jam penè ad exitum per-
ducta est. Quid ! quod etiam singularis benignitas
eminentiæ vestræ, ac moderatio, quam in summis regni
rebus gerendis erga protestantes Galliæ semper testata
est, à prudentia vestra et magnitudine animi ut hoc
sperem atque expectem, facit; qua ex re et fundamenta
arctioris etiam necessitudinis inter hanc rempublicam,
regnumque Gallicum eminentia vestra jecerit, meque
sibi privatim ad officia omnia humanitatis ac benevo-
lentiæ vicissim reddenda obligaverit: adeoque hoc
velim eminentia vestra sibi persuasissimum habeat.
Eminentiæ vestræ Studiosissimus.
OLIVERI Us Protector Reip. Angliæ, Serenissimo ac
Potentissimoque Principi LUDovico Galliarum Regi.
Serenissime potentissimeque Rex, amice ac foederate
augustissime,
THOMAM Vicecomitem Falconbrigium generum
meum in Galliam proficiscentem, et ad testificandum
obsequium suum et observantiam, qua majestatem ves-
tram colit, venire in conspectum vestrum, regiam ma-
num osculari cupientem, tametsi propter consuetudinem
ejus jucundissimam invitus dimitto, tamen cùm mom
dubitem quin ab aula tanti regis, in qua tot viri pru-
dentissimi fortissimique versantur, multo instructior ad
res quasque laudatissimas, et quasi consummatus ad
nos brevi sit reversurus, obsistendum esse ejus amimo
ac voluntati non sum arbitratus. Et quanquam is est,
nisi ego fallor, qui per se satis commendatus, quocunque
accesserit, videri possit, tamen si se mea gratia majes-
tati vestræ aliquanto commendatiorem fuisse senserit,
eodem me quoque beneficio affectum atque devinctum
arbitrabor. Deus majestatem vestram incolumem,
nostramque amicitiam firmissimam communi orbis
christiani bono quam diutissimè conservet.
Westmonasterio, ex Aula nostra, Maii die, an. 1658.
Olive RI Us Protector Reip. Angliæ, &c. Eminentissimo
Domino Cardinali MAZARI No.
Eminentissime Domine,
CUM Thomam Vicecomitem Falconbrigium generum
meum proficiscentem in Galliam serenissimo regi com-
mendaverim, non potui quin ea de re eminentiam ves-
tram certiorem facerem, nec non vobis etiam eundem
commendarem : id quantum ponderis atque momenti
ad superiorem quoque commendationem allaturum sit
non nescius. Quem certè fructum commorationis apud
vos suae, sperat autem non mediocrem hunc fore, per-
cepturus est, ejus maximam partem favori vestro ac
benevolentiæ non poterit non debere ; cujus prope sola
mens ac vigilantia res tantas eo in regno sustinet ac
tuetur. Quicquid ei gratum eminentia vestra fecerit,
id mihi fecisse se existimet; id ego in multis vestris
erga me humanitèr et amicè factis numerabo.
Westmomasterio, Maii, an. 1658.
OlivERius Protect. I{eipub. Angliæ, &c. Eminentis-
simo Domino Cardinali MAZARI No.
Eminentissime Domine,
CUM illustrissimum virum Thomam Bellassisum
Vicecomitem Falconbrigium generum meum serenis-
simi regis adventum in castra ad Dunkirkam gratula-
tum mitterem, eidem præcepi, ut vestram quoque emi-
nentiam adiret, meoque nomine et plurimam salutem
dicat, et gratias vobis agat, cujus potissimum fide, pru-
dentia, vigilantia perfectum est, ut res Gallica tam di-
versis in partibus, et præsertim in vicina Flandria con-
tra Hispanum hostem communem tam prosperè geratur:
à quo nunc celeriter, uti spero, fraudum et insidiarum,
quibus se maxime tuetur, aperta atque armata virtus
poenas reposcet: quod uti fiat quàm eitissimè, nos certe
neque copiis, quantum possumus, neque votis deerimus.
Westmonasterio, eae Aula nostra, Maii, am. 1658.
OLIvERIUS Protector Reip. Angliæ, &c. Seremissimo
ac Potentissimo Principi LUDovico Galliæ Regi.
Serenissime potentissimeque Rex, amice ac foederate
augustissime,
UT nuntiatum est venisse in castra majestatem ves-
tram, tantisque copiis infame illud opidum piratarum
atque asylum Dunkirkam obsedisse, et magnam cepi
voluptatem, et spem certam, fore munc brevi, Deo bene
juvante, ut infestum minùs posthac latrociniis mare
tutiùs navigetur ; fore ut Hispanicas fraudes, ducem
alterum ad Hesdemæ proditionem auro corruptum,
alterum ad Ostendam dolo captum, virtute bellica ma-
jestas vestra nunc brevi vindicet. Mitto itaque mobi-
lissimum virum Thomam Vicecomitem Falconbrigium
generum meum, qui et adventum vestrum in tam pro-
pinqua nobis castra gratularetur, et coràm exponat
quanto mos studio majestatis vestræ res gestas non
junctis solum viribus nostris, sed votis etiam omnibus
prosequamur, uti Deus opt. max. et ipsam incolumem,
et nostram amicitiam firmissimam communi orbis
Christiani bomo quam diutissimè conservet.
Westmomasterio, eae Aula mostra, Maii, an. 1658.
Serentissimo Principi FERDINANDo, Duc Magno He-
truriae.
Seremissime Dux Magne,
CUM celsitudo vestra in omnibus quidem literis suis
summam erga nos benevolentiam suam nobis semper
significaverit, dolemus id præfectis vestris ac ministris
aut tam obscurè significatum, aut tam male esse intel-
lectum, ut in portu Libernensi, ubi maximè quæ ves-
tra sit erga nos benevolentia intelligi oporteret, nos
mullum ejus fruetum aut indicium percipere queamus ;
immo alienum potius et hostilem vestrorum in mos
animum indies experiamur. Quàm enim non amicis
nostra classis Liburnensibus usa nuperrime sit, quàm
mullis adjuta rebüs, quàm hostiliter denique accepta
bis ab illo oppido discedere coacta sit, cum ex eo ipso
loco multis testibus fide dignis, tum ex ipso navarcho
LITERÆ OLIVERII PROTECTORIS.
817
nostro, cui cùm classem credamus, marrandi fidem de-
rogare non possumus, satis videmur mobis nimisque
certò cognovisse. Priore ejus adventu cal. Jam, post
redditas celsitudini vestræ literas nostras, vestraque
omnia humanitatis officia nostris hominibus ultro de-
lata, petentibus ut portus Ferrarii commoditate uti lice-
ret, responsum est, id concedi non posse, ne rex His-
paniæ scilicet noster hostis offenderetur. Et tamen
quid est quod princeps amicus amico praebere commu-
nius possit, quàm littoris ac portus aditum ? quid est
quod nos expectare ab hujusmodi amicitia possimus,
quæ hostium nostrorum animum ne offendat, incom-
modare nobis quàm commodare, aut vel minimis re-
bus subvenire paratior sit ? Et primo quidem ex sin-
gulis navibus duobus vel tribus nautis duntaxat excen-
sus in terram, sive commercium (quam vos practicam
vocatis) est datum : mox ut auditum est in oppido, na-
vem quandam Belgicam, quæ frumentum in Hispaniam
portabat, à nostris esse interceptam, quod erat antea
commercii statim adimitur ; Longlandius, qui nostris
illis mercatoribus præsidet, classem adire non permit-
titur ; aquatio, quæ omnibus non planè hostibus libera
est, non sibi nisi sub armatis custodibus iniquo pretio,
et quidem egerrimè præbetur: tot nostris mercatoribus,
qui non sine maximo vestrorum emolumento illic ver-
santur, suos ne invisant populares aut ulla re adjuvent
interdicitur. Posteriore ejus adventu, sub exitum men-
sis Martii, egressus ex navibus memini datur: quinto
post die cùm naviculam quandam Neapolitanam præ-
toria navis nostra incidentem in mos fortè excepisset,
ducenta plus minus tormenta ab oppido classem versus
disploduntur, quorum nullum ictu nos læsit ne attigit
quidem : quod argumento esse potest quàm longe hæc
à portu atque castelli ditione in alto gererentur, quæ
vestros quasi portu violato sic sine causa irritarunt :
confestim aquatorum nostrorum scaphæ intra portum
oppugnantur ; una capitur, detinetur ; reposcentibus
neque scapham neque homines redditum iri responde-
tur, nisi capta illa navis Neapolitana reddatur, quam
constat libero mari captam, ubi capi licuit. Ita nostri
multis modis incommodati sine illo commeatu, quem
numerata pecunia coëmerant, abire denuo coguntur.
Hæc si celsitudinis vestræ voluntate ac jussu quod spe-
ramus non fiunt, petimus id ostendat præfecti illius sup-
plicio, qui amicitias domini sui violare tam facile in
animum induxit : sin est ut sciente ac volente vestra
celsitudine commissa hæc sint, cogitet nos, ut benevo-
lentiam vestram plurimi semper fecimus, ita apertas
injurias à benevolentia dignoscere didicisse.
die am. 1658.
Vester quoad licet bonus amicus
OLIVERIUs Protector Reip. Angliæ, &c.
}Westmonasterio, ex Aula nostra, Maii
OLIvERIUS Protector Reip. Angliæ, &c. Serenissimo
Potentissimoque Principi LUDovico Galliæ Regi.
Serenissime potentissimeque rex, amice ac fœderate
augustissime,
Quod tam celeriter illustri missa legatione majestas
vestra meum officium cumulo rependit, cùm singularem
benignitatem, animique magnitudinem testata est suam,
tum meo etiam honori ac dignitati quantopere faveat,
non mihi solùm declaravit, verum etiam universo po-
pulo Anglicamo: quo momine majestati vestræ, pro eo
ac de me merita est, gratias et ago et habeo maximas.
De victoria quam conjunctis nostris copiis Deus contra
hostes felicissimam dedit, vobiscum unâ laetor; nostros-
que in eo prælio neque subsidiis vestris, neque majorum
suorum bellicæ gloriæ, neque suæ demique virtuti pris-
tinæ defuisse, perquàm etiam gratum est. De Dunkirka,
quam deditioni proximam majestas vestra sperare se
scribit, eam nunc deditam tam citò posse me rescribere
insuper gaudeo: neque unius urbis jactura duplicem
perfidiam Hispanum propediem esse luiturum spero;
quod capta urbe altera effectum esse, velim majestas
etiam vestra tam citò possit rescribere. Quod reliquum
pollicetur meas rationes curæ sibi fore, de eo regi op-
timo atque amicissimo pollicenti, ejusque legato ex-
cellentissimo atque ornatissimo viro duci Crequiensi
idem confirmanti, non diffido ; Deumque opt. max.
majestati vestræ reique Gallicæ domi bellique propi-
tium exopto.
Westmonasterio, die Junii, an. 1658.
OlivERI Us Protector Reip. Anglia, &c. Eminemtussamo
Domino Cardinali MAZARiNo.
Eminentissime Domine,
CUM regi serenissimo per literas gratias agam, qui ho-
noris et gratulationis reddendæ causa, suæque lætitiæ de
nobilissima recenti victoria mecum communicandæ le-
gationem splendidissimam misit, ingratus tamen sim,
nisi eminentiæ quoque vestrte debitas simul gratias per
literas persolvam ; quæ ad testandam suam erga me
benevolentiam, meique rebus omnibus quibus potest
ornandi studium, nepotem suum præstantissimum atque
ornatissimum adolescentem unâ misit, et siquem ha-
beret apud se propinquiorem aut quem pluris faceret,
eum potissimum fuisse missurum scribit: addita etiam
ratione, quæ ab judicio tanti viri profecta ad meam
haud mediocrem laudem atque ornamentum pertinere
existimo ; nempe ut qui sanguine conjunctissimi sibi
sunt in me honorando atque colendo eminentiam suam
imitarentur. Et humanitatis quidem, candoris, ami-
citiæ vestrum in me diligendo exemplum haud postre-
mum fortasse habuerint ; summæ virtutis summæque
prudentiæ alia in vobis longe clariora ; quibus regna
resque maximas summa cum gloria administrare dis-
cant. Qua res uti possit eminentia vestra quam diutis-
simè quamque felicissimè gerere ad totius regni Gallici,
immo totius reip. Christianæ commune bonum, ves-
trumque proprium decus, non defutura mea vota polli-
C€0I*.
Westmonasterio, eae Aula nostra,
die Junii, am. 1658.
Eminentiæ vestræ studiosissimus.
OLIVERIUs Protector Reip. Angliæ, &c. Serenissimo
Potentissimoque Principi CARolo GUsTAvo, Sueco-
rum, Gothorum, Vandalorumque Regi, &c.
818
LITERÆ OLIVERII PROTECTORIS.
Serenissime potentissimeque Rex, amice ac fœderate
charissime,
QuoTiEs communium religionis hostium importuna
consilia variasque artes intuemur, toties nobiscum repu-
tamus, quàm mecessarium orbi Christiano, quàmque sa-
lutare sit futurum, quò faciliùs adversariorum conati-
bus iri obviam possit, protestantium principes inter se,
et potissimùm majestatem vestram cum repub. nostra
arctissimo foedere conjungi. Id à nobis quantopere fit,
quantoque studio expetitum, quàm denique gratum no-
bis accidisset, si Suecorum nostræque res ea conditione
ac loco fuissent, ut foedus illud ex utriusque animi sem-
tentia sanciri, alterque alteri opportunissimo auxilio
esse potuisset, oratoribus vestris, ex quo primùm illi
hoc apud nos egerunt, testatum reddidimus. Neque
vero illi suo muneri defuerunt; sed quam cæteris in
rebus consueverunt, eandem hac quoque in parte pru-
dentiam ac diligentiam adhibuerunt. Verùm ea nos
domi improborum civium perfidia exercuit qui in fidem
sæpius recepti, res novas tamen moliri, et cum exulibus,
etiam cum hostibus Hispanis discussa jam saepe et pro-
fligata consilia repetere mon desinunt, ut in propulsan-
dis periculis propriis occupati, neque curam omnem,
neque integras opes quod in votis erat, ad communem
religionis causam tuendam convertere hactenus potue-
rimus. Quod licuit tamen, quantumque in nobis situm
erat, et anteà studiosè præstitimus, et siquid in poste-
rum majestatis vestræ rationibus conducere videbitur,
id non velle solùm, verùm etiam summa ope vobiscum
unâ agere per occasiones mon desistemus. Interea
majestatis vestræ rebus prudentissimè fortissimèque
gestis gratulamur atque ex animo lætamur : eundem-
que uti velit Deus felicitatis atque victoriæ cursum esse
quam diuturnum ad sui muminis gloriam assiduis pre-
cibus exoptamus.
Vestmonasterio, ea: Aula nostra, Jumii die, am. 1658.
OlIvE RI Us Protector Reip. Angliæ, &c. Seremissimo
Principi Lusitaniæ Regi. S. P. D.
Serenissime Rex, amice ac fœderate,
OsTENDIT mobis per libellum supplicem Joannes
Buffield, mercator Londimensis, se anno 1649, merces
quasdam Antonio Joanni et Manueli Ferdinando Cas-
taneo Tamirensibus tradidisse, ut iis divenditis earum
rationem mercatorum more sibi redderent: tum in
Angliam dum navigaret, in piratas incidisse, spolia-
tumque ab iis damnum haud mediocre accepisse: hoc
audito, Antonium et Manuelem eò quod hunc interfec-
tum credebant, traditas sibi merces statim pro suis ha-
buisse, adhuc etiam retinere, rationemque omnem de
iis recusare ; atque huic fraudi subsecutam paulo post
Anglicarum mercium proscriptionem obtendere; co-
actum se demum superiore anno, hyeme media in Lu-
sitaniam redire, sua repetere ; sed frustra ; hos enim
neque boma neque rationem ut reddant adduci posse ;
et quod mirum sanè videatur, privatam illarum mer-
cium possessionem proscriptione publica defendere :
cùm videret se hominem longinquum deteriore condi-
tione cum Tamirensibus in sua patria contendere, ad
majestatem vestram se confugisse; conservatoris judi-
cium, qui judicandis Anglorum causis constitutus est,
supplicem poposcisse ; à majestate vestra rursus ad
forensem illam cognitionem, unde comfugerat, rejectum
esse. Quod etsi per se iniquum non est, tamem cùm
perspicuum sit Tamirenses istos vestro edicto publico
ad suam privatam fraudem abuti, à majestate vestra
majorem in modum petimus, ut causam hujus multis
casibus afflicti, ad inopiamque redacti, ad conservato-
rem potius judicem proprium velit pro sua clementia
integram remittere : quo possit inops fortunarum sua-
rum quod superest ab illorum hominum infida societate
recuperare: id, re cognita, quin majestati vestræ no-
biscum unà maximè placeat mon dubitamus.
Vestmomasterio, eae Aula mostra, die Aug. an. 1658.
Seremissimo Principi LEopoLDo Austriae Archiduci,
Provinciarum in Belgio sub PHILIPPo Hispaniarum
Regi Præsidi. •
Serenissime Domine,
CARoLUs Harbordus, vir equestris apud nos ordinis,
per libellum supplicem ad nos detulit, se boma quædam
et suppellectilem cum ex Hollandia Brugas in ditionem
vestram asportasset, de iis, ne sibi per vim atque inju-
riam eripiantur, inopinatò periclitari. Ea nempe, cum
à Comite Suffolchiensi pro quo se grandi ære alieno
obstrinxerat, ex Anglia an. 1643. missa ad se idcirco
fuissent, ut haberet, quo sibi satisfaceret, siquid pro illo
dissolvere cogeretur, a Richardo Grenvillo, qui et ipse
equestris ordinis esse fertur, occupari, et quo in loco
custodiebamtur, effractis foribus atque articulis possi-
deri : hoc solo titulo, deberi sibi nescio quid à Theo-
philo Suffolchiensi comite defuncto, ex quodam nostræ
curiæ Cancellariæ decreto, eaque proinde bona quasi
Theophili Comitis essent, eique decreto obnoxia, sc re-
ferenda in tabulas eurasse: cùm ex mostris legibus ne-
que ipse comes, qui nunc est, et cujus hæc bona sunt,
eo decreto teneatur, meque bona ejus occupari aut re-
tineri debeant : id quod ex sententia ejusdem curiæ
unà cum hisce literis ad vos missa, declaratur, quas
quidem literas supradictus Carolus Harbordus à nobis
petiit, uti per eas celsitudinem vestram rogatam velle-
mus, ut bona illa et recensione omni, ct iniqua ista
Richardi Grenvilli actione, primo quoque tempore libc-
rentur: cùm hoc contra morem jusque gentium planè
sit, at cuiquam in aliema ditione ea de re actio detur,
quæ in ea regione, ubi causa actionis orta est, legitimè
dari non possit. Hanc causam ut celsitudini vestræ
commendaremus, et ipsa justitiæ ratio, et prædicata
passim vestra æquanimitas permovit. Quod siquo
tempore usus venerit, ut de jure aut commodis vestro-
rum apud nos agatur, haud remissa profecto nostra
studia, immo omni tempore propensissima experturos
vos esse polliceor.
Westmonasterio.
Celsitudinis Vestræ Studiosissimus,
OLIVERI Us, Protector Reip. Angliæ, &c.
LITERÆ OLIVERII PROTECTORIS.
819
Supremæ Curiæ Parlamenti Parisiensis.
Nos commissarii magni sigilli Angliae, &c. supre-
mam curiam parlamenti Parisiensis rogatam volumus
curare velit uti Miles, Gulielmus, et Maria Sandys, de-
functi nuper Gulielmi Sandys et Elizabethae Soamae
uxoris ejus liberi, matione Angli, aetate nondum adulta,
Parisiis, ubi nunc in supradictæ curiae tutela sunt, ad
nos quamprimum redire possint ; eosque liberos Jacobo
Mowato Scoto, viro probo atque honesto velit commit-
tere, cui nos hanc curam delegavimus, ut eos et inde
acciperet, et ad nos huc adduceret: recipimusque, oc-
casione hujusmodi oblata, jus idem atque æquum sub-
ditis Galliæ quibuscumque ab hac curia redditum iri.
LITERÆ RICHARDI PROTECTORIS
INOMINE
RicHARDUs Protector Reip. Angliæ, &c. Seremissimo
ac Potentissimo Principi LUDovico Galliarum Regi.
Serenissime ac potentissime Rex, amice ac fœderate,
CUM serenissimus pater meus gloriosæ memoriæ
Oliverius reip. Angliæ protector, omnipotente Deo sic
volente, supremum jam diem tertio Septembris obierit,
ego successor ejus in hoc magistratu legitimè declara-
tus, tametsi in summo moerore ac luctu, non potui tamen
quim de re tanta primo quoque tempore majestatem
vestram per literas certiorem facerem, quam et mei
patris et hujus reip. amicissimam hoc nuntio repentimo
haud lætaturam esse comfido. Meum numc est à vestra
majestate petere, de me sic velit existimare, ut qui mihil
deliberatius in animo habeam, quàm societatem et ami-
citiam quæ gloriosissimo meo parenti vestra cum ma-
jestate fuit, summa fide atque constantia colere; ejusque
foedera, consilia, rationes vobiscum institutas eodem
studio ac benevolentia observare ratasque habere : le-
gatum proinde apud vos nostrum eadem qua prius
potestate præditum volo : quicquid id nostro momime
vobiscum egerit, ita accipere velitis rogo quasi à me
ipso actum id esset. Vestræ denique majestati compre-
cor fausta omnia.
Vestmonasterio, ex Aula nostra, 5 Septemb. 1658.
Eminentissimo Domino Cardinali MAZARINo.
Eminentissime Domine,
QUANQUAM nihil mihi acerbius accidere potuit, quàm
de serenissimi et præclarissimi patris mei obitu scribere,
tamen cum sciam quanti ille fecerit eminentiam vestram,
quanti vos illum, neque dubitem quin eminentia vestra,
cui summa rei Gallicæ commissa est, amici ac foederati
tam constantis tamque conjumcti mortem molestissime
latura sit, permagni referre arbitratus sum, ut eam
quoque, simul cum rege, de hoc casu gravissimo per
literas momerem ; vobisque etiam, quoniam id æquum
est, confirmarem, me ea omnia sanctissimè præstiturum
ad quæ præstanda vobis, rataque habenda serenissimae
memoriæ pater meus fœdere tenebatur: perficiamque
ut illum, utpote vobis amicissimum omnique laude áo.
rentem, cùm amissum me; doletis, quàm minimè
3 G
SCRIPTÆ.
tamen quod ad servandam societatis fidem attinet, de-
sideretis: cui etiam ad utriusque gentis commune bonum
vestra quoque ex parte servandæ Deus eminentiam
vestram quàm diutissimè conservet.
Westmonasterio, Septemb. 1658.
RicHARDUs Protector Reip. Angliæ, &c. Serenissimo
ac Potentissimo Principi CARolo Gustavo, Sue-
corum, Gothorum, Vandalorumque Regi, &c.
Serenissime potentissimeque rex, amice ac fœderate,
CUM videar mihi paternam virtutem vix satis posse
imitari, nisi easdem quoque amicitias colam et retinere
cupiam, quas ipse et virtute sibi quæsivit, et sibi esse
maxime colendas ac retinendas judicio singulari duxit,
non est quod dubitet majestas vestra, quin eodem se
prosequi studio ac benevolentia debeam, qua pater
meus memoriæ serenissimæ est prosecutus. Tametsi
igitur in hoc magistratus ac digmitatis initio non eo
loco res nostras reperiam, ut in præsentia possim ad quae-
dam capita respondere, quæ oratores vestri in medium
protulerunt, tamen et institutum à patre fœdus cum
majestate vestra continuare, et arctius etiam conjungere,
mihi quidem magnopere placet; rerumque utrinque
statum simul ac pleniùs intellixero, ad ea transigenda
quæ cum utriusque reip. commodis potissimum conjunc-
ta esse videbuntur, ero equidem semper, ad me quod
attinet, promptissimus. Deus interim majestatem ves-
tram, ad gloriam suam et orthodoxæ ecclesiæ tutelam
<atque præsidium, quam diutissimè conservet.
Vestmonasterio, ex Aula nostra, Octob. 1658.
RicHARDUs Protector Reip. Angliæ, &c. Serenissimo
ac Potentissimo Principi CARolo GustAvo, Sae-
corum, Gothorum, Vandalorumque Regi, Magno
Principi Finlandiæ, Duci Scaniae, Esthonia, Ca-
reliae, Bremæ, Verdae, Stetini, Pomeraniae, Cassubiæ,
et Vandaliæ, Principi Rugiæ, Domino Ingriæ et
Vismariæ, necnon Comiti Palatino Rheni, Bavariæ,
Juliaci, Cliviæ, et Montium Duci.
Serenissime, potentissime rex, amice ac fœderate,
BiNAs accepi à majestate vestra literas ; alteras per
nuncium suum, alteras legato nostro D. Philippo Mea-
820
LITERÆ RICHAR.DI PROTECTORIS.
dows, ad me transmissas. Ex quibus non solum do-
lorem suum de obitu patris mei serenissimi veris animi
sensibus expressum, deque ipso majestas vestra quàm
preclarè senserit, verum etiam de me quoque ejus in
locum suspecto quantam spem ceperit cognovi. Et ad
paternæ quidem laudis cumulum nihil posthac amplius
aut illustrius tanto authore accedere potest, meis certe
in capessenda repub. auspiciis mihil felicius tanto gratu-
latore, ad virtutes demique patrias tamquam hæreditatem
optimam adeundas mihil quod accendat vehementius
tanto hortatore potuit accidere. Ad rationes majes-
tatis vestræ de communi Protestantium causa mo-
biscum imitas quod spectat, sic velim existimet, me
quidem ex quo ad hæc gubernacula accessi, quam-
quàm eo loco res mostræ sunt, ut summam diligenti-
am, curam, vigilantiam domi potissimum requirant,
nihil tamen antiquius aut deliberatius habuisse aut
habere, quam paterno fœderi cum majestate vestra per-
cusso quantum in me erit mon deesse. Classem itaque
in mare Balticum mittendam cum iis mandatis curavi,
quæ intermuncius moster, quem ad hoc totum negotium
amplissimè instruximus, majestati vestræ communica-
bit. Quam Deus opt. max. incolumem, prosperisque
rerum successibus fortunatissimam, ad orthodoxam fidem
tutandam diutissime conservet.
Vestmonasterio, ex Aula mostra,
die 13 Octob. 1658.
F.icHARDUs Protector Seremissimo ac Potemtissimo
Principi CARoLO GUsTAvo, Suecorum, Gothorum,
Vandalorumque Regi, &c.
Serenissime, potentissimeque rex, amice ac foederate,
MITTo ad majestatem vestram, quo nihil dignius aut
præstantius possum mittere, virum verè egregium, vere-
que mobilem Georgium Aiscoum, equitem auratum, non
solùm belli, et mavalis præsertim scientia multis ex re-
bus fortiter gestis cognitum jam sæpe atque spectatum,
verum etiam probitate, modestia, ingemio, doctrina
præditum, moribus suavissimis memini non charum, et,
quod nunc caput rei est, sub signis majestatis vestræ
virtute bellica toto orbe terrarum florentissimæ jam diu
mereri cupientem. Velimque sic habeat majestas ves-
tra, quicquid huic viro muneris commiserit, in quo
fides, fortitudo, experientia constare vel etiam prælucere
possit, neque fideliori neque fortiori, nec facile peritiori
posse se quicquam committere. Quæ autem ego illi
negotia dedero communicanda vestræ majestati, in iis
expeditum aditum, aurem benignam velit rogo præ-
bere, eamque fidem, quam nobismetipsis coràm fuisset
habitura; eum denique honorem, quem tali viro et suis
meritis et mostra commendatione ornatissimo convenire
judicaverit. Deus res vestras ad gloriam suam et or-
thodoxæ ecclesiæ præsidium felici exitu fortunet.
Westmonasterio eae Aula nostra,
die Octob. 1658.
IRICIIARDUs Protector Reip. Angliae, &c. Seremissimo
Potentissimoque Principi CARoLo GUsTAvo, Sueco-
rum, Gothorum, Vandalorumque I'egi, $c.
Serenissime potentissimeque rex, amice ac fœderate
charissime, -
DETULIT ad nos per libellum supplicem Samuel Pig-
gottus, Londimensis mercator, se nuper naves duas
(quarum alteri nomem Postæ, magister Tiddeus Jaco-
bus ; alteri The Water-Dog, magister Garbrand Peters)
Londino im Galliam negotiandi causa misisse ; eas imde
sale onustas Amsterodamum petisse ; Amsterodamo
alteram saburra tantùm, alteram halece impositas cu-
jus cum Petro quodam Heinsbergo societas erat in
mare Balticum Stetinum usque Pomeraniæ, quæ in
vestra ditione est, ad exponendam illic halecem navi-
gasse ; verùm utrasque hasce naves accepisse se alicubi
maris Baltici à copiis quibusdam vestris detineri ;
tametsi ut huic malo occurreret cum utraque nave sym-
grapham sigillo curiæ maritimæ obsignatam unà cura-
verit mittendam, qua et navium harum et mercium,
excepta halecis parte supradicta, unum se esse ac legi-
timum dominum demonstraret. Cujus rei cùm fidem
apud nos plenam fecerit, peto magnopere à majestate
vestra (quandoquidem duarum navium jactura sine
summo hominis detrimento fortunarumque forte omnium
naufragio vix posse accidere videtur) uti mandet suis
atque imperet illarum mavium liberam primo quoque
tempore dimissionem. Deus majestatem vestram, ad
gloriam suam ecclesiæque orthodoxæ præsidium, quàm
diutissimè servet incolumem.
Westmonasterio, eae Aula mostra, Jam. 27. am. 1658.
RICHARDUs Protector Reip. Angliæ, &c. Celsis et
Potentabus Domimis Occidemtalis Frisiae Potestati-
bus, S. D.
Celsi et potentes domini, amici ac foederati charissimi,
GRAVEM ad me detulit querelam per libellum sup-
plicem Maria Grinderia vidua, cùm sibi à Thoma Kil-
legvæo vestro milite pecunia bene magna ante annos
octodecim debeatur, se eum me nullo modo adducere
per procuratorem posse, neque ut debitum solvat, neque
ut de jure suo, si quid sit, velit lege experiri ; id ne à
procuratore viduæ cogi possit, petisse eum à celsitudi-
mibus vestris per libellum supplicem, me cui liceat eum
lege persequi ullius pecuniæ ab se in Angliæ debitæ.
Ego verò si celsitudinibus vestris hoc tantum signifi-
cavero, viduam esse, egenam esse, multorum matrem
parvulorum, cujus iste omnes prope fortunas avertere
comatur, mon committam ut apud vos, quibus divina
præcepta atque adeo de viduis pupillisque non oppri-
mendis notissima esse comfido, graviore ulla utendum
cohortatione putem, ne hoc fraudandi privilegium pe-
titioni istius concedere velitis: id quod nunquam com-
cessuros vos esse mihi persuadeo.
VVestmonast. ea: Aula mostra, Jam. 27. 1658.
RicHARDUs Protector Reip. Angliæ, &c. Seremissimo
Potentissimoque Principi LUDovico Galliac Regi.
Serenissime potentissimeque rex, amice ac foederate
augustissime,
AccEPiMus, idque non sine dolore, quasdam in pro-
vincia protcstantes ecclesias ab homine quodam male
LITERÆ RICHARDII PROTECTORIS.
821
feriato ita iudigne fuisse in sacris concionibus interpel-
latas, ut ca res magistratibus, ad quos hujus causae
cognitio Gratianopoli ex lege pertinebat, gravi animad-
versione digna censeretur : sed conventum Cleri, qui
iis in locis proximè habebatur, à majestate vestra im-
petrasse, ut res integra Parisios ad concilium regium
revocaretur: à quo dum nihil hactenus decernitur, ec-
clesias illas et praesertim Aquariensem, convenire ad
colendum Deum prohiberi. Vehementer itaque à
majestate vestra etiam atque etiam peto, primùm, ut
quorum preces ad Deum pro salute sua rebusque regni
prosperis non interdicit, eorum coitus publicos ad pre-
candum interdicere me velit : deinde ut in illum homi-
nem rei divinæ interpellatorem ex sententia illorum
judicum, quibus hujusmodi causarum legitima atque
consueta cognitio Gratianopoli data est, animadvertatur.
Deus majestatem vestram quàm diuturnam atque inco-
lumem conservet ; ut si hæc nostra vota vobis accepta
sunt, Deoque grata esse existimatis, eadem ab illis
etiam protestantibus ecclesiis quibus nunc interdicitur,
pro vobis publice fieri, sublato illo interdicto, quàm
primum velitis.
Westmonasterio, 18 Feb. am. 1658.
Eminentissimo Domino Cardinali MAZARINO.
Eminenfissime domine cardinalis,
PRoficisciTUR in Galliam, ibique ad tempus com-
morari cogitat illustrissima domina defuncti nuper du-
cis Richmondiae uxor cum duce filio adolescentulo.
Eminentiam itaque vestram magnopere rogo, ut siquid
acciderit im quo iis vestra authoritate, favore, patrocinio,
utpote peregrimis, usus esse possit, ita eorum digni-
tatem tueri, vobisque haud vulgariter commendatam
vel)us omnibus habere velitis, ut ad vestram humanita-
tem erga omnes, præsertim tam illustri genere oriumdos,
eximiam, sentiamt nostris literis quod accederc potuit
cumuli accessisse : simul et hoc sibi persuadeat emi-
mentia vestra commendationem suam, si quid à me
hujusmodi postulabit, apud me non minus valituram.
Westmonasterio, 29 Feb. 1658.
RicHARDUS Protec;or I3eip. Angliæ, &c. Seremissimo
ac Potentissimo Principi JoANN I Portugalliae Regi.
Serenissime potentissimeque rex, amice ac foederate,
TAMETSI multa sunt quæ ad regem amicum et reip.
nostræ conjunctissimum necessariò scribam, nihil est
tamen quod faciam libemtius quàm quod nunc facio, ut
majestati vestræ, regnoque Portugalliæ insignem hanc
proximam de communi hoste Hispano victoriam gra-
tuler: qua non ad vestram tantummodo, verum etiam
ad Europæ totius pacem ac respirationem, permagnum,
atque in multos fortasse annos, allatum esse momentum
nemo est quin intelligat, Alterum est in quo victori-
arum certissimum pignus justitiam majestatis vestræ
agnoscam, qua ex articulo fœderis 24, per arbitros Lon-
dimi datos, mercatoribus nostris est satisfactum, quorum
naves onerarias Brasiliensis societas comduxit. Unus
est Alexander Bencius, mercator Londimensis, cui, cùm
navis ejus, quæ Tres Fratres vulgo nominatur, magistro
Joanne Wilkio, duas navigationes conducta onerata-
que navaverit, pactum stipendium persolvere societas
recusat : cùm cæteris qui scmel tantum navigarunt,
jampridem persolutum sit. Quod cur sit factum non
intelligo, nisi si eorum judicio mercede dignior est, qui
semel quàm qui bis meruerit. Vehementer itaque peto
à majestate vestra, ut huic uni Alexandro, cui duplum
debetur, debita navatæ operæ satisfactio ne defiat; velit-
que pro authoritate sua quàm brevissimum solutionis
diem dammique simul sarciendi sociis Brasiliensibus
constituere : quorum dilationibus effectum est, ut datum
inde mercatori damnum mercedem ipsam jam pene
superat. Deus majestatem vestram lætis rerum succes-
sibus contra hostem augere indies et fortunare pergat.
JWestmonasterio, eae Aula uostra, 23 Feb. am. 1658.
RicHARDUs Protect. Reip. Angliae, &c. Eminentvssimno
Domino Cardinali MAZARINO.
Eminentissime domine,
PER literas ad eminentiam vestram octo circiter ab-
hinc mensibus Jun. 13 datas, causam Petri Petti, viri et
singulari probitate præditi et egregiis artibus in re ma-
vali nobis reique publicæ utilissimi, commendavimus.
Ejus nave Edwardo anno 1646 à quodam Gallo, cui
nomen Basconi, Thamesis in ostio, ut scripsimus, cap-
ta, et iu portu Bonouiensi vendita, quanquam rex in
concilio regio 4 Novemb. anno 1647 decreverat, ut
quam censuisset consilium pecuniæ summam damni
accepti loco dandam, satisfactioni daretur, is tamen ex
eo decreto nihildum se fructus percepisse ostendit. Cùm
autem dubium mihi non sit, quin eminentia vestra meo
rogatu id omne mandaverit quod ad decretum illud
primo quoque tempore exequendum pertimeret, denuo
nunc majoremque in modum peto, ut videre velit quid
impedimento sit, cujusve negligentia aut contumacia
factum, ut decreto regio post amnos jam decem non ob-
temperetur ; velitque pro sua authoritate instare, ut
decreta illa pecuuia, quam irrogatam jamdiu existima-
mus, et exigatur quamprimum, et petitori nostro solva-
tur. Ita rem justitiæ imprimis gratam eminentia vestra
fecerit, et à me singularem prætereà gratiam inierit.
Vestmonasterio, eae Aula nostra, 22 Feb. 1658.
Duæ sequentes Literæ, RICHARDo abdicato, Restituti
Parlamenti nomine scripti sunt.
Parlamentum Reipub. Angliæ serenissimo potentissi-
moque Principi CARoLO GUsTAvo, Suecorum, Go-
thorum, Vandalorumque Regi, &c.
Serenissime potentissimeque rex, amice charissime,
CUM visum sit Deo optimo atque omnipotenti, penes
quem solum conversiones omnes regnorum, rerumque
publicarum sunt, nos pristinæ auctoritati summæque
rerum Anglicarum administrandæ restituere, et majes-
tatem vestram ea de re certiorem esse faciendam im-
primis duximus, et vobis porro significandum, nos cùm
822
LITERÆ RICHARDI PROTECTORIS.
majestatis vestræ utpote Protestantium principis potem-
tissimi tum pacis inter vos Damiaeque regem, et ipsum
quoque Protestantium principem præpotentem, mon
sine nostra opera atque officio benevolentissimo recon-
ciliandæ, quantum in nobis situm est, esse studiosissi-
mos. Volumus itaque ut internuntio nostro extraor-
dinario, Philippo Meadowes, quo munere ab hac repub.
apud majestatem vestram hactenus fungitur, idem om-
mino munus mostro nunc nomine prorogetur : eique
adeo his nostris literis potestatem proponendi, agendi,
transigendi cum majestate vestra facimus planè ean-
dem quæ ei proximis literis commendatitiis facta est:
quicquid ab eo transactum nostro nomine atque con-
clusum erit, id omne ratum nos esse habituros, Deo
bene juvante, nostra fide spondemus. Deus ille majes-
tatem vestram quam diutissime conservet, rebus Pro-
testantium columem atque præsidium.
Guil. Lenthall, Prolocutor Parlamenti
Reipub. Angliæ.
Westmonasterio, Maii 15, am. 1659.
Parlamentum Reipub. Angliæ Serenissimo Principi
FREDERIco Damiae Regi.
Serenissime rex, amice charissime,
CUM voluntate ac nutu summi rerum omnium mode-
ratoris Dei opt. max. factum sit ut nos demùm restituti,
pristimum locum atqüe munus in republica gerenda ob-
tineamus, placuit imprimis ea de re nec majestatem
vestram, utpote vicinum nobis et amicum regem, esse
celandam, et quem ex adversis rebus vestris capiamus
dolorem simul esse significandum : id quod ex eo studio
eaque diligentia nostra facile perspicietis quam ad pa-
cem inter majestatem vestram regemque Sueciæ recon-
ciliandam et adhibemus nunc, et, quoad opus erit, adhi-
bebimus. Quapropter internuntio nostro ad serenissimum
Suecorum regem extraordinario Philippo Meadowes
negotium dedimus, ut majestatem vestram his de rebus
nostro deinceps momime adeat, ea communicet, pro-
ponat, agat atque transigat, quæ commissa sibi à nobis
et mandata esse ostendet. Quam ei fidem majestas
vestra hoc in munere habuerit, eam nobismetipsis ha-
bere se credat, rogamus. Deus majestati vestræ ex
istis ommibus rerum suarum difficultatibus, in quibus
tamen forti et magno animo versatur, felicem lætumque
exitum primo quoque tempore concedat.
Guil. Lenthall, prolocutor Parlamenti
Reipub. Angliæ.
Westmonasterio, Maii 15, an. 1659.
S C R I P T U M
DOM. PROTECTORIS REIPUBLICÆ ANGLIÆ, SCOTIÆ, HIBERNIÆ, &c.
EX CONSENSU ATQUE SENTENTIA CONCILII SUI EDITUM :
IN QUO HUJUS REIPUBLICÆ CAUSA CONTRA HISPANOS JUSTA ESSE DEMONSTRATUR.
1655.
QUIBUs causis adducti, quasdam insulas in Occiden-
tali India, ab Hispanis jam antea occupatos, adorti
nuper simus, eas et justas esse et rationi quam maximè
consentameas nemo est quim facile intelligat, qui modò
secum reputaverit, quemadmodum rex ille, ejusque
subditi erga gentem Anglicanam in illo tractu Ameri-
cano semper se gesserint ; non alium mempe ad modum
nisi perpetuò planè hostilem ; qui modus sese gerendi
ab ipsis et initium habuit injustissimum, et ab eo tem-
pore contra gentium commune jus, contra foederum
peculiares inter Anglos atque Hispanos leges eadem
est prorsùs ratione continuatus.
Fatendum quidem est Anglos, his annis proximis,
vel iniqua æquo animo ferè pertulisse, vel se dumtaxât
defendisse ; unde forsitan potest fieri, ut nonnulli de illa
nuper in Occidentalem Indiam nostræ classis profecti-
one ita sentiant, quasi de bello à nobis ultrò incœpto
atque illato, non quasi de eo, quod re quidem vera ab
Hispanis ipsis et primò ortum atque conflatum, et (quan-
quam hæc respublica, quod in se erat, confirmandæ
pacis, et commcrcii iis in locis habendi causa nihil
prætermisit) ab iisdem hactenus continuatum summoque
studio gestum reperietur: qui quoties oblata sibi oc-
casio est, nullam omnino justam ob causam, nulla in-
juria lacessiti, occidere, trucidare, imo sedatis nonnun-
quam animis obtruncare nostros illic homines, quos
visum est, bonis etiam atque fortunis direptis, co-
loniis habitationibusque deletis, navibus, si quas per
illa maria offendunt, captis, hostium imò prædomum in
numero habere non desimunt. Illius enim nominis op-
probrio omnes cujuscunque gentis, præter se solos, affi-
ciunt, qui illa maria navigare audeant. Neque hoc
alio jure aut meliore se facere intelligunt, quam Papæ
nescio qua donatione nixi, et quod partes quasdam
illius occidentalis plagæ ipsi primi omnium scrutati
sunt: quo nomine ac titulo novi illius orbis jus omne,
ac ditionem universam ad se solos pertinere conten-
dunt: de quo titulo sane quàm absurdo copiosiùs di-
cendi locus erit, cùm ad expendendas eas causas venie-
mus, cur Hispani exercere omne genus hostilitatis in
nostros illic homines usque eo licere sibi arbitrentur, ut
qui illas in oras aut tempestate appulsi, aut naufragio
cjecti, aliove simili casu delati sunt, eos non ut captivos
ad vincula solùm, sed in servitutem etiam redigant,
ipsi tamen ruptam sibi pacem etiam in Europa, et gra-
vissimè violatam existiment, si Angli vicissim, paria
reddendi, resque suas repetendi causa, quicquam iis in
locis contra eos moliuntur.
Verum, etiamsi Hispaniæ regis apud nos legati,
Hispanica factione, quæ semper in consilio regis
proximi, patrisque ejus plurimum potuit, confisi, siquid
Angli hoc in genere fecissent, levissimis de causis que-
rimonias et postulationes iniquas et ridiculas afferre
non dubitarint; illi tamen reges, Hispanis licet nimium
addicti, suorum subditorum constringi noluerunt manus,
ubi Hispani suas esse solvendas existimarunt : imò.
vim vi propulsare, et Hispanos, qui ad pacem iis in
locis servandam perduci nullo modo potuerunt, in hos-
tium numero habere suis permiserunt. Adeò ut anno
circiter millesimo sexcentesimo et quadragesimo cum
hæc res in concilio regis proximi agitata esset, postu-
laretque Hispanorum legatus ut naves quædam in
Americam profecturæ, et in ostio fluminis vela jam fa-
cere paratæ prohiberentur, propterea quòd hostilitatis
in Hispanos illic exercendæ potestate essent instructæ,
simulque ipse jus commercii in Occidentali India ha-
bendi postulantibus per consiliarios quosdam regis, ad
eam rem constitutos, Anglis denegaret, placuit ut illæ
naves institutum iter suum persequerentur, quod et
factum est.
Hactenus prædicti reges subditis suis, bellum iis in
locis ob rationes suas privatim suscipiemtibus, non de-
fuerunt: tametsi, propter potentiam Hispanicæ fac-
tionis supradictæ, publicè, pro eo ac debuerant, et ex-
istimatione gentis pristima dignum erat, causam eorum
suscipere noluerunt. Et nobis certè contumeliosum
æquè et indignum fuisset, quibus largiente Deo, tot
naves ad omnem maritimi belli asum ornatæ atque in-
824
SCRIPTUM DOM. PROTECTORIS.
structæ in promptu erant, si eas carie potius corrumpi
otiosas domi voluissemus, quam ad ulciscendum Ang-
lorum, quidni etiam dicam, Indorum sanguinem, ab
Hispanis tam imjustè tam inhumanè totiesque fusum,
illis in locis usui esse : quandoquidem “ Deus fecit ex
umo sanguine totam gentem hominum ut habitaret
super universa superficie terræ, definitis præstitutis
temporibus, et positis terminis habitationis eorum.”
Et certè Deus, quocumque id tempore, cujuscumque id
manu administrandum sit, tanti sanguinis immocemtis-
simi, tantarum cædium, quibus tot mi]lia Indorum ab
Hispanis tam barbarè occisa sunt, tamtarum denique
injuriarum, quibus illæ gentes miserè sunt ab iisdem
vexatæ atque oppressæ, certissimas aliquando poenas
repetiturus est.
Verum ad communem hominum inter se necessitu-
dinem, quæ fraterna sanè est, quæque facit ut gravis-
simte et atrocissimæ quorumvis mortalium injuriæ ad
reliquos omnes pertinere quodammodò videantur, nc-
cesse mon est ut recurramus: cum ipsorum hominum
nostrorum factæ cædes ac spoliationes satis causæ quam-
obrem à nobis illa nuper expeditio suscepta sit, satis-
que justam vindicandi materiam dederint : ut nequid
præterea nostrarum in præsentia ratiomum, ut ne in
futurum etiam nostram ipsam sociorumque incolumi-
tatem, eorum præsertim qui orthodoxam religionem
colunt, consideremus; ut alias denique causas, quæ
illam nobis expeditionem suaserunt, quasque nunc
sigillatim enumerare consilium mom est, omittamus :
cum non causæ singulæ, sed ipsius rei jus atque
æquitas declaranda nobis proponatur. Quod ut clarius
faciamus, et generatim dicta particulatim explicemus,
ad præterita referre oculos paulisper oportebit : quæ-
que inter Anglos atque Hispanos transacta sint, quo
statu res eorum utrinque, ad se mutuò quod attinet,
fuerint, ex quo et perlustrata primò Occidentalis Indiæ
ora, et reformata religio est, strictim percurrere. Quæ
duæ res maximæ, cùm eodem ferè tempore accidis-
sent, permagnas ubique conversiones orbis terrarum
rebus attulere ; ad Anglos præsertim et Hispanos
quod spectat, qui diversam ab eo tempore et penè
contrariam res suas agendi rationem sccuti sunt.
Tametsi enim rex proximus, ejusque pater, adversis
fermè totius populi Anglicani studiis atque sententiis,
duo foedera cum Hispanis quoquo modo sarserunt, di-
versi tamen illi utrorumque sensus ac studia ex diversa
religione nata, perpetriæque in Occidentali India con-
troversiæ, et Hispanorum simul, dum suis illic thesau-
ris metuunt, suspiciones de Anglis ab initio conceptæ,
cum hujus reipublicæ conatus in assequenda æquis
atque honestis conditionibus pace inutiles nuper reddi-
dere, tum præcipuas re vera causas Philippo secundo
præbuere, ut, regnante Elizabetha, antiquum illud
diuque inviolatum fœdus, quod huic genti cum major-
ibus ejus, tam Burgundici quam Castellani generis
intercesserat, rumperet, et illato illi reginæ bello, na-
tionem hanc totam subigendam sibi proponeret, idque
ipsum ammo supra millesimum quingentesimo octua-
gesimoque octavo (dum interea de pace stabilienda
agebatur) omni impetu aggrederetur: quod quidem in
Anglorum animis necesse est adhuc altè residere, meque
inde posse facilè evelli. Et quamquam postea pax
quædam et commercium in Europa fuit (quamvis ejus-
modi nunquam ut Anglorum quisquam suam profiteri
religionem in Hispanica ditiome, aut sacra Biblia ha-
bere domi, ne in navi quidem ausus fuerit) in Occiden-
tali tamen India Hispanus mumquam ex eo tempore,
aut pacem esse aut commercium est passus; etiamsi im
illo fœdere Henrici octavi regis Angliæ, cum Carolo
quinto impcratore anno millesimo quingentesimo qua-
dragesimo secundo de utraque illa re disertis verbis
convenisset ; in quo fœdere nominatim pax atque libe-
rum commercium inter utrosque et utrorumque populos
per omnem alterutrius ditioncm, portus, et territoria
quæcumque sancitum est, sime ulla Occidentalis Indiæ
exceptione, quamvis illam tunc temporis imperator ille
obtineret.
Quod autem ad articulum pacis per umiversum ter-
rarum orbem colendæ, is quidem articulus in omnibus
pacis foederibus, quæ inter utramque gentem unquam
extitere, dilucidè continetur, meque ulla de commercio
ullo in fœdere exceptio habetur ante illud anni mil-
lesimi sexcentesimi quarti, cum quo foedus illud postre-
mum anni millesimi sexcentesimi trigesimi hac de re
per omnia consentit. In quibus duobus proximis fœde-
ribus, per omnes atque singulos utriusque imperii fines
commercium convemit, “ Quibus in locis ante bellum”
inter Philippum secundum Hispaniæ regem, et Eliza-
betham Angliæ reginam “ fuit commercium juxta et
secundum usum et observantiam antiquorum foederum
et tractatuum ante” id tempus initorum.
Hæc ipsa foederum verba sunt ; quæ rem dubiam
velinquunt, atque ita rex Jacobus pacem cum Hispamis
quoquo modo conficere satis habuit, cùm eandem de
pace tractationem resumeret, quæ paulò antè mortem
Elizabethæ inchoata fuerat, in qua etiam tractatione
suis illa deputatis inter cætera mandaverat, ut de com-
mercio libero in Occidentali India habendo instantèr
agerent.
Verum rex Jacobus (qui pacis cum Hispanis facien-
dæ admodùm erat cupidus) ita istam clausulam relin-
quere contcmtus erat, ut utrique parti eam suo modo
interpretandi facultas esset ; quamquam si illa verba,
“ usus et observantia antiquorum foederum et tracta-
tuum,” sic intelligenda sunt (ut par est) juxta et secun-
dum id quod jure fieri debuit, non juxta et secundum
quod ex parte Hispanorum ad manifestissimam eorum
violationem factum est, quæ Anglis querimoniarum,
utrisque dissidiorum materia perpetua erat, ex ipsis
antiquorum foederum disertis verbis clarissimum est,
per omnem Hispanorum ditionem, quæcunque illa
esset, tam commercii quam pacis jus Anglis fuisse.
Cæterùm si antiqua foedera et pactiones servandi
ratio ab eorum manifesta violatione petenda est, ha-
bent Hispani obtentum aliquem sic interpretandi illam
in postremis foederibus clausulam, quasi commercium
illis in locis exciperet. Et tamen ad dimidiam usque
illius temporis partem quod inter supradictum fœdus
1542, et initium belli à Philippo secundo contra
Elizabetham suscepti intercessit, quantum ipsis ex
rebus gestis intelligi potest, haud minus permitti illis
in locis quam prohiberi commercium apparet. At
SCRIPTUM DOM. PROTECTORIS.
825
posteaquam Hispani commercium omnino recusarunt, à
permutandis mercibus ad alternandos ictus ac vulnera
deventum est, tam ante bellum inter Philippum et Eli-
zabetham ortum, quam post pacem ab Jacobo rege
anno 1604 factam ; alteramque ab ejus filio anno 1630,
ita tamen ut hinc commercium per Europam non inter-
pellaretur ; tametsi nunc primum Hispaniae rex, post
hanc nuper nostrarum rerum retentionem, eorum loco-
rum controversias ad hæc etiam Europæ loca propa-
gandas interpretatus est.
Verùm neque in foederum interpretatione, neque in
jure commercii ex illis foederibus, aliave ratione ha-
bendi insistimus ; quasi in iis fundamenta hujus dis-
sidii jacienda necessariò sint, cum id clarissimis atque
evidentissimis rationibus nitatur, quod statim planum
faciemus. Sunt tamen ejusmodi monnulla, quæ, etsi
bellum iis fundari non ita necesse est, possunt, neque
injuria, impedimenta esse sanciendæ pacis, aut instau-
randi saltem foederis, in quo ea non conceduntur, vel
quæ in prioribus pactis concessa sunt, vel non imme-
ritò expectari queunt. Quod etiam pro responso esse
potest ad id quod quæritur, quare, quandoquidem an-
tiqua foedera cum aliis omnibus populis redintegravi-
mus, idem cum Hispaniæ rege non fecimus ; neque
continuò nos im conditionibus fœderis dextrum ejus
oculum, multoque minùs ambos (quod objicitur) ejus
oculos postulasse, si crudelissimæ inquisitioni obnoxii
esse, ubi commercium permissum est, noluimus, dan-
dum que nobis commercium institimus, unde, neque per
antiqua fœdera, neque communi jure, excludendi sumus.
Tametsi enim rex Hispaniæ id sumpsit sibi ut nobis
commercii leges finesque praescriberet, Romani p6nti-
ficis lege quadam fretus, qua is omne commercium
cum Turcis, Judæis, aliisque infidelibus vetat,* eoque
nomine etiam pacis tempore maves ejus bellicre aliis
etiam in locis præterquam in India Occidentali nostras
naves ceperunt et expilarunt, et quanquam simili papæ
authoritate ejusque donationis titulo jus in Indos sibi
vendicat, perinde quasi sibi jure essent subjecti, etiam
illi, qui meque im potestate neque in fide ejus sunt, nos
tamen authoritatem ejusmodi nullam neque in papa,
neque in Hispaniæ rege agnoscimus, ut possit vel
Indis jus libertatis suæ, vel nobis concessum maturæ
gentiumque legibus jus versandi cum illis, et commer-
cium habendi adimere, cum iis præsertim, ut supra
diximus, qui in potestate ac ditione regis Hispaniæ
non sunt.
Alterum impedimentum renovandi foederis cum His-
panis manifestum est atque insigne, nec mom ejus-
modi, ut legatis ac ministris publicis in Hispanicam
ditionem vel de amicitia vel de alio quovis inter utram-
que rempublicam negotio missis, fiduciam omnem in-
columitatis præcidat, ubi rex opinionibus cjusmodi
obstrictus est, ut per eas legatis et ministris publicis,
me in summo vitae periculo versentur, incolumitatcm à
sicariis præstare non possit: quorum jus, ut principum
rerumque publicarum usus inter se, et amicitia conser-
vetur, gentium jure semper inviolabile est existimatum,
iisque asylis multo sanctius, quorum privilegia (autho-
ritate pontificis et Romanæ ecclesiæ fundata) adhibita
hactenus fuere ad eludendam vim legum atque justitiæ,
quam exequendam subinde poposcimus in interfectorcs
Dom. Antonii Aschami, qui idcircò missus ab hac re-
publica in Hispaniam fuit, ut usum et amicitiam inter
utramque gentem procuraret ac stabiliret. Cujus
barbaræ cædis nulla satisfactio, nullum supplicium
neque sumptum est, neque impetrari unquam potuit,
quamvis à f parlamento postularetur, ejusque no-
mine a concilio status vehementer ac saepius esset
flagitatum. Quod quidem fœderis inter utramque
gentem renovandi continuatum hactenus impedimen-
tum atque justissimum fuit, immò verò (pro eo quod
ab aliis mationibus factitatum est) justa belli causa
censeri potuit.
Quod autem ad controversias in Occidentali India
exortas, cum tam in ipsa continente quam in insulis
coloniae nobis quoque sint Americanæ, easque jure nom
deteriore, immo meliore possideamus quam Hispani
suarum ullas obtineant, parique jure ea maria navigare
nobis liberum sit, sine ulla tamen causa, nulla prorsus
injuria læsi (idque ubi de commercio controversia nulla
versata est) tamen perpetuò colonias nostras hostiliter
invaserant, nostros homines interfecerunt, naves cepe-
runt, bona diripuerunt, ædificia stationesque vastarunt,
nostros populares captivos in servitutem abduxerunt;
atque hæc facere non destiterunt ad illud usque tempus
in quo hanc nuper ex peditionem contra eos suscepimus.
Ob quam causam, contra quàm antehac in hujusmodi
occasione fieri consuevit, ubique ferè ditionis Hispa-
nicæ naves nostras negotiatoresque omnes retinuerunt,
eorumque bona proscripserunt ; adeo ut, sive ad Ame-
ricam, sive ad Europam oculos convertamus, belli au-
thores ipsi soli existimandi sunt, quæque ex eo cædes
atque incommoda sequi poterunt iis omnibus causam
ipsi præbuisse.
Exempla perpetuæ crudelissimæque hostilitatis in
Occidentali India, etiam pacis tempore ab Hispanis in
Anglos edita, et ab anno 1604, cum ab Jacobo rege
coagmentata pax est, usque dum rursus bellum erupit,
et ab ea pace quæ anno 1630, proximè facta est, ad
hanc usque diem permulta sunt perque inhumana et
cruenta :j pauca attulisse satis habebimus.
* Gulielmus Stephanus Bristolensis, aliique mercatores aliquot I.ondi-
nenses anno 1606 et 1607, cùm per oram Ę tribus cum navibus
£Qintmercium cum illis populis haberent, Hispaniæ regis navcs, quæ per
illa litora prædabantur, eas mactæ in Saphid et Sanctæ Crucis statioìme,
£!um , in anchoris ibi stabant, diripuerunt ; hac sola ratione reddita,
“ Nolle regen dominum suum cuum ìnfìdelibus commercium permittere:**
quorum damna amplius duobus mllibus librarum æstimata sunt.
f Hoc constat ex literis parlamenti, prolocutoris manu obsignatis, ad
Hispaniæ regem mense Januario 1650, his verbis ; “ Majestatem taúmen
yestram rogatam, volumus insistimusque, uti justitiæ, publicæ tandem sa-
tisfiat super cæde Antonii Ascham residentis nostri flagitiosa, eo magis
quod pòst istius modi facinoris auctores merito supplicio affectos, in aulám
vestram regiam 9ratorem nostrum non dubitabimus delegare, ea expositu-
rum, quæ mgm mimus majestati vestræ poterunt inservire, quam rei ìnostrae
publiéæ. Ex adverso, si nos sanguiném illum tot circuinistamtiis insigni.
tum, inultum pateremur, coram ïîëôÝíôïöïíôéêáôïé perennique miseri-
cordiarum nostrarum fonte, et . coram natione Anglicánæ participes nos
fore criminis necesse est ; Præcipue si alium adhuc Anglum in illùd veli-
mus regnum mittere, ubi fas est impune trucidari. Nos vero tanti æsti.
£mamus m;ij*'§tateti) vestram, ut non facile simus credituri potentiam ves-
tram regiaum in ditionibus ipsi subjectis aliente cuipiam potentiæ subjectam
€SSe.
f Navis quædam Ulyssis nomine insignita, cum per oram Guianæ mer-
caturam faceret, et mercatores ac mautæ adducti fidie ac jurejurando her.
£ei illius, loci præfecti, in terram exissent, eorum tamen `trigintà capti èt
ij) cust9diam traditi sunt : scribit deinde ad mercatorem prœfectus se qui-
dem triginta ex suis, nautis cepisse, ideo quod nonnulli exteri, qui mercan-
¢li causa illuc appulerant, viginti millibùs ducátis ipsùnî fîùiavöräìïí;
quos nummos si silyi misisset, remissurum se ei omnes suos juvavit, et com-
Jmercii potestatem facturum. Mlercator partim nnmerarò, partim mercium
8estimatione Qptatam ei summaum inittit: quam cum prætectus lAerveus
accepisset, alligatos ad arbores illos homiiies triginta 'strangulari jussit,
£Xcepto solo chirurgo qui ad sanandum prœfecti morbum asservatüs est.
íí, $em ptio aliis cùm damnis ibi datis septem millibus ìibrarum æsti-
matà eSt,
826
SCRIPTUM DOM. PROTECTORIS.
Post factam pacem anno 1605, navis Maria dicta,
Ambrosio Birch magistro, ad septemtrionalem Hispa-
niolæ oram in Occidentali India m:ercaturas faciebat;
magister, cum à sacerdote quodam patre Joanne, sic
enim nominabatur, cum sex sociis, tuti et liberi com-
mercii promissis allectus esset ut in terram videndarum
mercium quarumdam causa egrederetur, et Hispani
duodecim ad Anglicanas merces inspiciendas in navem
ascenderent, dum Angli suas merces ostendunt mihil
doli metuentes, dante signum ab littore sacerdote, His-
pani, educta quisque sica, omnes in mavi Anglos jugu-
larunt, præter duos dumtaxat qui in mare desiluerunt;
cæteri in terra exquisitis cruciatibus necati sunt ; ma-
gister ipse exutus vcstibus et ad arborem alligatus,
nudus muscarum morsibus expositus est ; ubi post horas
viginti Nigrita quidam, audito hominis ejulatu, acce-
dens, jam antè moribundum lancea transfixit : navis
hæc cum mercibus quinque milibus et quadringentis
libris æstimata est.
Alia navis, cui nomen Arcuariæ, eodem anno ad Sanc-
tum Dominicum capta est, nautæque omnes interfecti :
hæc navis mille trecentis libris æstimata est.
Alia navis dicta Amicitia Londimensis, cum navigio
suo, à Lodovico Fajardo, classis regiæ Hispaniensis
navarcho, capta est, navis cum bonis omnibus publi-
cata, mercatores ac nautici in mare demersi, præter
unum puerum, qui ad serviendum est servatus : hæc
navis cum navigio quinquies mille et quingentis libris
æstimata est.
Ex alia navi, cui nomen The Scorn, cum omnes
mautae, Hispanorum dejerationibus confisi, in terram
egressi essent, omnes tamen alligati ad arbores et stran-
gulati sunt. Ubi mercatores et navem et bona omnia
amiscrunt, mille quingentis libris æstimata.
* Anno 1606 mavis, cui nomen Neptunus, ad Tortu-
gam ab Hispanorum navibus prædatoriis capta est,
quatuor millibus et trecentis libris æstimata.
Eodem anno navis alia, quæ Alauda nominata est, a
Lodovico Fajardo capta, et cum toto onere publicata
est; quæ quatuor millibus quingentis et septuaginta
libris est æstimata.
f Navis alia, cui nomen Castor et Pollux, ab His-
panis ad Floridam capta est, qui et eam publicarunt,
nautasque omnes vel necaverunt, vel im servitute re-
timuerunt, nihil enim de iis postea est auditum : hæc
navis cum suo omere quindecim mille libris æstimata
est.
Anno 1608, navis Plimouthensis Richarda nomina-
ta, cujus præfectus erat Henricus Challins, domimi
Pophami, summi Angliæ justiciarii, Ferdinandi Gorges,
ordinis equestris, aliorumque sumptibus instructa, ut
Virginiam peteret, ad australem Canariarum insularum
partem vi tempestatum delata, cum indè cursum ad
destimatam oram tenuisset, sub latitudine 27 graduum
in undecim naves Hispanicas ab Sancto Dominico re-
deuntes fortè incidit; quæ ipsam ceperunt, et quan-
quam præfectus navis diploma regium protulit, quo se
expediret, tamen navis cum bonis publica facta est,
* Joannes Davis duo navigia cum omnibus bonis amisit, interfectis
eorum omnibus nautis, ad illius navigationis interitum, unde trium mil-
Iium et quingentarum librarum jacturam fecit.
# Alia^ navis mercatorum quorundam
Londimensium, (cujus magister,
ipse crudeliter habitus, et ad triremes missus. Unde
amplius duo mille et quingentæ libræ sunt amissae.
Simile quiddam navi alteri, cui nomen The Ayde,
factum est a Lodovico Fajardo captæ, obtemtu amicitiæ ;
hæc item cum bonis publicata est, omnesque nautæ
ad triremes abducti ; ubi nonnulli fustibus ad mecem
pulsati sunt, quòd remigium recusassent. Quæ navis
et bona, Hispauis ipsis æstimantibus, septem millibus
librarum æstimata sunt. -
Eodem anno navis alia, Amma Gallant appellata,
magistro Gulielmo Curry, cum ad Hispaniolam merca-
turas faceret, similiter et navis et boma publica facta
sunt, omnesque nautæ suspendio necati, assutis unicui-
que ad ludibrium chartulis, in quibus erat scriptum,
“ Cur huc venistis?” Haec mavis cum onere octo milli-
bus librarum æstimata est.
Hæc exempla satis ostendunt, cujusmodi nobis pa-
cem Hispani in Occidentali India temporibus Jacobi
servarunt ; qui rex diligentissimè curavit vel potius
pertimuit ne pax cum iis dirimeretur. Ejusmodi hos-
tilia plenè et cruenta vestigia, ab illa etiam proxima
pace, quæ anno 1630 confecta est, ad hanc usque diem,
persequi licet.
De iis coloniis, quæ, ab hujus nationis mobilibus qui-
busdam viris, in insulam Catelinam (ab his Providen-
tiæ dictam) et in insulam Tortugam (ab iisdem Asso-
ciationis dictam) deductæ sunt, primum dicemus. Hæ
autem anno circiter 1629, cum essent incolarum et pe-
corum omnino vacuæ, indicto inter Anglos et Hispanos
tunc temporis bello, ab Anglis occupatæ sunt atque
possessæ. Sequente anno pace inter utramque gentem
facta, cum de iis insulis haudquaquam ab Hispanis in
foedere exciperetur, Carolus rex, non impediri se hac
pace arbitratus, suo diplomate, quod et magno sigilio
Angliæ signatum erat, supradictam insulam Providen-
tiæ, simul et alias vicinas ditionis esse suæ declaravit ;
easque nobilibus quibusdam viris eorumque hæredibus
possidendas concessit; et sequente ammo ad Tortugam
usque insulam concessionem illam extendit.
Et quanquam supradicti coloni, ejusdem regis con-
cessione in earum insularum possessionem vemerant,
eaque concessio jure optimo fundata erat, primum na-
turæ, eò quòd neque Hispani, neque alii quicunque in
eorum locorum possessione essent, deinde belli, quan-
doquidem belli tempore occupatæ sunt, et in pacis arti-
culis nequaquam exceptæ, unde extingui jus Hispano-
rum (si quod illic juris habuissent) ipsorum assensu, ex
secundo proximi fœderis articulo, sequitur ; quamquam
etiam neque supradicta colonorum societas, mec suorum
quisquam ullo suo facto justam offensionis causam vel
Hispaniæ regi, vel Hispanorum cuiquam præbuerat,
donec priores ipsi maves mostras atque colonias vi in-
vasissent, et Anglorum haud paucos, incensis etiam
eorum ædificiis ac sedibus, interfecissent ; Hispani
tamem, cum nullam iis in locis pacem servare statuis-
sent, circa 22 Januarii 1632, nulla injuria lacessiti,
navem quandam societatis, cui momen Flos Marinus,
ab insula Providentiæ redeuntem, inter Tortugam et
erat Joannes ILock,) a classe Ilispanorum ad insulam Tortugam capta est,
propterea quod inercaturam fecisset, et arbores cecidisset; ob id navis est
publicata, ét nauticorum plerique morte multati, reliqui ad triremes dam-
ihati: h\c quinque millium et trecentarum librarum jactura facta est.
SCRIPTUM DOM. PROTECTORIS.
827
Floridæ caput hostilitèr aggressi sunt, in qua pugna
mo1;nullos in ea navi occiderunt, alios vulnerarumrt.
Post hæc anno circiter 1634, Tortuga insula ab His-
panis cum quatuor navibus oppugnata est, cum ab
Anglis nulla injuria exorta esset: in qua oppugna-
tione sexaginta vel amplius occisi sunt, multi sauciati
ac capti, sedes deletæ, domus incensae, boma haud parvi
pretii ab Hispanis asportata, Angli penitus ex ea in-
sula dejecti, quorum alii suspendio sublati, alii Hava-
nam abducti in servitute miserrima retenti sunt ; unus
præ cæteris, cui nomen Grymes, qui in Tortuga bom-
bardarius fuerat, crudeliter est trucidatus ; pars ad de-
sertam quamdam insulam confugiens, cui Sanctæ Crucis
nomen est, ab Hispanis, qui eo etiam cum tribus ma-
vibus longis fugientes persequebantur, oppugnata
mense Martio 1636, quadraginta occisi, reliqui capti et
crudelissimè accepti.
Anno 1635 Julii 24, Hispani duabus navibus magnis
unaque longa advecti in Providentiæ quoque insulam
impetum fecerunt, compluriumque horarum spatio
prælium ibi commiserunt; et tum quidem rejecti sunt,
et ab incœpto desistere coacti ; donec idem rursus ten-
tantes circa ammum 1640, cum duodecim mavibus mag-
nis et minoribus, quarum prætoriae Armadillo Cartha-
gimensi momen erat, ex majoribus regiæ classis argen-
tariæ triremibus, cum magnum militum numerum in
terram exposuissent, totius insulæ expugmationem
polliciti sibi sunt, verùm, haud parvo accepto imcom-
modo, repulsi denuò recesserunt. Altera tamen classe
instructa paulò post cùm revertissent, coloni dissidiis
laborantes, nom tam qua se ratione defenderent, quam
quibus conditionibus commodissimè se dederent, cogi-
tarunt, quas, tradita demum insula, facilè impetrave-
runt. Sed insula hoc modo et colonis erepta est, et
reipublicæ, illis octoginta amplius millium librarum
dammo dato, huic detrimento et ignominia publica
simul accepta. Ita im Hispanorum potestatem cum
esset redacta, navis quædam, quæ vectores aliquot ab
Nova Auglia in eam insulam transmigrantes advexerat,
intra ictum bombardarum callidè perducta est (ignora-
bat enim eam insulam in Hispanorum potestate jam
esse) nec sine permagno discrimine ac difficultate se
extricavit, amisso etiam mavis magistro, viro probissi-
mo, quem ictus tormenti ab imsula displosi transverbe-
ravit.
Nec contenti intra fines Americamos hostilitati suæ in
illius coloniæ socios modum statuere Hispani, in liis
etiam partibus Europæ eandem in eos exercuerunt :
anno enim 1638 Decembris 25, navis quædam ejusdem
societatis, Providentiæ nomine insignita, cui Thomas
Newmam præfectus erat à promontorio Dengioleucis
duabus in ipsa Angliæ ora à Sprengfeldio Dunkirkamæ
navis prædatoriæ præfecto oppugnata atque capta est ;
Dunkirkam deinde adducta ; ubi mavis onera retenta
sunt; (qute multorum etiam illic æstimatione triginta
millium librarum summam conficere existimabantur ;)
Anglorum autem partim occisi, partim vulnerati, cæteri
postquam in ipsa navi sua barbare atque inhumamè
essent habiti, Dunkirkam abrepti haud melius accepti
* Similitèr etiam factum fuerat eodem in portu navi cuidam Joamnis
!
sunt, donec ratiomem aliquam profugiendi invenissent.
Et quamvis supradicti socii satisfactionem omnibus
modis postulassent, rexque proximus per residentem
suum Dom. Balthasarum Gerberium, pcrque literas tam
sua manu, quam à secretario Coco scriptas, e()1'Ul m ■] ()-
mine reparationem poposcisset, nullam tamen neque
bonorum restitutionem, neque ob ea ut compensatio ulla
fieret, impetrare potuerunt.
Sunt et alia recentioris et acerbioris etiam memoriae
exempla, illud nempe Sanctæ Crucis ab Hispanis à
Portorico provectis oppugnatæ ammo circiter 1651, in-
sulæ quidem antea non habitatae ; illo autem tempore
colonia Anglorum, duce Nicolao Philips, eam tenuit ;
qui cum centum circiter colonis ab Hispanis crudelitèr
occisus est; qui etiam naves in portu occuparumt, sedes
diripuerunt, vastarunt, et funditùs exciderunt. Cùmque
plures quos occiderent invenire non possent (cùm inco-
larum pars alia in silvas profugisset) Hispani Portori-
cum reversi iis miseris et fame propemodum confectis
reliquiis ad alias vicinas insulas recipiendi sese, illam-
que Sanctæ Crucis penitus deserendi, spatium dedere.
Sed brevi post tempore Hispani ad pervestigandum et
quasi vemandum eos qui im silvas sese abdiderant, re-
verterumt: verum illi ex manibus eorum effugiendi, et
in alias insulas dilabendi, rationem aliquam invene-
runt.
Eodem anno 1651, mavis quædam Joamnis Turneri,
cum esset in portum Cumanagotæ vehementioribus
ventis appulsa, ab illius loci præfecto occupata, et cum
omni omere in fiscum redacta est.
* Similitèr factum est navi et bonis capitanei Cramlei.
Et amno 1650 navis quædam Samuelis Wilsom, quæ
Barbados insulas petebat, equis onusta, in alto capta et
Havanam abducta est; navis et bona publicata, nauta-
rum plerique im custodiam traditi, et mamcipiorum
more in munimentis operas dare coacti.
Similia experti sunt nautæ cujusdam navis Barnsta-
pulensis, amnis abhinc circiter duobus, quæ navis cum
propè Hispaniolam, dum à coloniis quibusdam nostris
im insulis Caribiis reverteret, rimas agere cœpisset un-
damque accipere, nautæ ejus in scapha sibi consulere
coacti ad littus evaserunt, ubi omnes captivi facti, man-
cipiorum ritu, in munimentis operas dare cogebantur.
His, aliisque permultis hujusmodi exemplis, quæ
omnia recitare nimis longum esset, manifestissimum
est Hispaniæ regem eique subjectos arbitrari, se nulla
pacis conditione nobis præstanda illis in regionibus ob-
ligari: cum et omme genus hostilitatis in nos exercere,
immò graviora hostilitate, consueverint, eaque inhuma-
mitas, qua illic Anglos tractare solent, usque eò à pacis
legibus aliena sit, ut me belli quidem legibus non im-
ternecimi convenire videatur. Im illo tamen Hispani;e
regis embargo, quo mercatorum nostrorum naves ac
boma proscribi ac retineri imperat, in Anglos culpa
omnis confertur ; quasi “ foedifragos” mimirum “et
sacrosanctæ pacis atque commercii liberi violatores,
tam religiose,” ut ipse ait, ** ab se servati ; idque tam
inopinata atque professa hostilitate fecisse mos, ut urbem
Sancti Domimici in Hispaniola insula oppugnare ado-
Blandi, cui prœfectus erat Nicolaus Philippus
828
SCRIPTUM DOM. PROTECTORIS.
riremur.” Quod solùm causæ affertur, quamobrem
Anglorum bona in Hispania proscribantur, negotiato-
resque retineantur: quamquam et hoc praedicata ejus
humanitate exaggeratum est, “ Se nostras classes in
* portus suos, quoscumque ingredi aut attingere com-
modum nobis fuisset, amicè recepisse; neque ministros
suos exegisse rigidè a nobis illos pacis articulos inter
utramque coronam sancitos, qui cum amplius sex vel
octo navibus bellicis intrare portus utrinque vetant.”
Verùm quemadmodùm ipse, dum hæc dicit, classes
nostras omni commisso ac foederis violatione illis in
portubus absolvit, cùm, siquid ejusmodi, quod objici-
tur, factum et condonatum sit, id ipsius et ministrorum
suorum permissu ac bona venia sit factum, et quemad-
modùm luce clarius est non eum gratuitò tam facilem
fuisse, si, quanta à classibus nostris momenta suis ra-
tionibus accesserint, secum cogitet, ita è contrario rex
ille ejusque ministri, quas ipse commemorat, pactiones
minimè sanè observarunt ; quarum articulo vigesimo
tertio tam disertè cautum est, ** Si contingat ut displi-
centiæ” inter utramque rempublicam “ oriantur, ut
subditi hinc inde ita ea de re admoneantur ; ut sex
menses à tempore monitionis habeant ad transportandas
merces suas, nulla interea arrestatione, interruptione,
aut damno personarum aut mercium suarum faciendis
vel dandis.” Qua in re rex ille exiguam sanè pactio-
num illarum, quas contra nos profert, in illa nuper
nostrarum rerum proscriptione rationem habuit. Quod
autem in eo edicto declarat, hostilitatem in Occiden-
tali India exortam, his in partibus violationem pacis
liberique commercii habendam esse, nova, adeòque alia
plane interpretatio est, atque hactenùs ab utravis re-
publica in medium unquam allata est: tametsi hoc de-
clarandi occasiones utrinque non defuere.
Verùm cùm Hispaniæ rex ipse et verbis et re ipsa
declaraverit pacis articulos intelligi sic debere, efficitur
hinc ut tot contra Anglos iis in regionibus hostilitèr
factis et ab ipso primum exortis, et ab ipso tempore
proximè percussi fœderis, ut supradictum est, huc usque
continuatis, ab se primo soluta sacra amicitiæ vincula
ipse se coarguisse videatur. Quæ res tam clara per se
et manifesta est, ut adversarios nostros certè ipsos pu-
duerit in hac controversia factum negare, de jure potius
nobiscum disceptaturos ; quemadmodùm scilicet His-
paniæ rex, inter titulos suos, regis Indiarum titulum
sibi sumpsit, ita universam Indiam, mareque Indicum
tam Boreale quam Australe suam esse propriam di-
tionem, hostesque omnes et piratas esse, qui ejus injussu
illuc accesserint. Quod si ita esset, et nos et omnes
cæteræ nationes, quicquid iis in locis possidemus, ei
relinquere ac reddere, et, reductis coloniis nostris, in-
juriæ sibi factæ veniam petere deberemus. Verum si
rationem ac veritatem illius tituli altiùs inspiciamus,
tenui admodum atque infirmo eum niti fundamento
comperiemus, quo tanta contentionum ac belli moles
superstruenda sit, quantam hanc verisimile est futuram.
Duplex titulus præfertur, papam videlicet ea loca do-
nasse, seque primos omnium perlustrasse : ad primum
* At vero navarchus noster Swanleius in Sicilia non ita est annicè in
portu Drepani acc eptus, ubi anno 1653, circa mensem Junium navis ejus,
quod attinet, scimus papam in donandis regnis ac regi-
onibus liberalissimum semper fuisse, illi intereà dissi-
millimum cujus vicarium se esse profitetur, qui me hoc
quidem tantulum sibi sumere volebat, ut in dividendis
hæreditatibus comstitui se judicem pateretur, nedum ut
suo arbitrio cuiquam donaret, quemadmodum Angliam,
Hiberniam, aliaque regna papa largitus est. Verùm
nos authoritatem im eo istiusmodi nullam agnoscimus,
neque gentem ullam usque adeo mentis inopem existi-
mamus, ut in eo tantam authoritatem inesse credat ;
vel Hispani ipsi ut credant, aut essent assensuri, si ab
iis papa tantum abjudicasset quantum largitus est.
Quod si Galli atque alii, qui authoritatem papalem in
ecclesiasticis rebus agnoscunt, hunc Hispanorum titu-
lum pro nihilo habent, nos ut de eo alitèr sentiamus non
est expectandum, adeoque hoc relinquimus, responso
ampliore prorsus indignum.
Sed neque alter titulus majoris est ponderis; quasi
verò, si Hispani paucas quasdam Americæ partes primi
perscrutati sunt, insulisque aliquot, fluminibus, ac pro-
montoriis nomina imposuere, idcircò novi illius orbis
dominium jure sibi acquisivissent. Verùm imaginarius
ejusmodi titulus tali præscriptione nixus sine possessione
jus aliquod verum aut legitimum creare non potest.
Jus optimum tenendi Americanis in locis quod quisque
habet, est coloniarum deductio, et possessio vel ubi
nulli omnino incolæ fuere, vel, sicubi fuere, eorum as-
sensu, vel saltem in desertis quibusdam suarum regio-
mum et incultis locis, quibus vel colendis vel habitandis
ipsi non sufficiant ; quandoquidem Deus terram homi-
num usibus creavit, præcepitque iis ut universam im-
plerent.
Hoc si verum est, quemadmodum Hispani iniquis-
simo jure parta illic obtinere invenientur ; cum omnia
invitis incolis, et quasi ex ipsis eorum visceribus sibi
acquisiverint, quorum sanguine suum imperium illic
fundarunt, magnasque insulas et regiones totas non
reperere quidem desertas sed reddidere, indigenis om-
nibus eradicatis, ita Angli, quæ illic habent, jure op-
timo possederint; easque momimatim insulas in quibus
Hispani colonias eorum oppugnarunt atque delerunt ;
quæ aut incolas omnino non habuere, aut si ab Hispanis
interfectos, desertæ etiam ab iisdem et sine cultoribus
relictæ sunt : adeo ut naturæ gentiumque jure occu-
pantibus quibusvis eas et possidentibus cedant; juxta
illud in legibus notissimum, “ Quæ nullius sunt et pro
derelictis habentur, cedunt occupanti.” Quamquam si
Hispanos expulissemus iis locis in quæ nostras colo-
mias deduximus, unde ipsi priùs incolas radicitùs ex-
turbaverunt, nos tanquam occisionum et injuriarum
illius populi ultores meliore jure regiones illas obtinu-
issemus, quam oppressores ejusdem et interfectores.
Cum autem nostræ coloniæ iis in locis fuerint, ubi
neque indigenæ meque Hispani possessionem ullam
tenuerunt, neque habitationes ullas aut pecora post se
reliquerant, aliamve rem, quæ possit ullo modo jus pos-
sessionis retinere, tanto evidentius jus nostrum iis in
locis fuit, et Hispanorum injuriæ nobis illatæ tantè
fecti, qui ei loco præerat, a segtem navibus Hollandicis junioris Trumpii
ductu,`in ipso portu, non longiùs a munimentis quam sclopi mimoris icfus
cui nomen Henricuis Bonaventura, unà cum l Iollandica navi magnâ et
opulentissiina, cui nomen Petro, quam ceperat, proclitione IIispanici præ-
ferri potuit, oppressa est ; unde mercatores, quorum illa mavis fuit, plus
sexaginta tribuis inilljbus librarum aumiserunt.
SCRIPTUM DOM. PROTECTORIS.
829
apertiores ; iis præsertim in locis quae indicti utrimque
belli tempore occupata sunt (quo in genere Providentiæ
insula ätque Tortugæ fuit) quas si Hispani suas esse
ullo priore tituio necdum prolato ostendere potuissent,
tamem cum im pacis proximæ tractatione id non fecerint,
per secundum ejus articulum talem omnem prætextum
ipsi sibi in posterum amputarunt, jusque ipsi suum, si
quod erat, extinxerunt.
Hoc argumentum copiosiùs tractare mihil attinet ;
neque est quisquam rerum peritus quin facilè perspiciat,
quàm imames atque infirmæ sint istæ rationes, quibus
innixus Hispanus tam immensi tractus imperium arro-
gare sibi soli non dubitat. Verùm id egimus, ut ob-
tentuum istorum debilitatem paucis aperiremus, quibus
Hispani, quicquid in mos imdignè atque atrociter in
Occidentali India commiserunt, defendere conantur ;
mancipationes, suspendia, demersiones, cruciatusque
nostrorum hominum ac neces, navium ac bonorum
spoliationes, coloniarum summa in pace depopulationes,
idque nulla prorsus injuria affecti, ut Anglicana gens,
quoties hæc tam acerba atque atrocia in suum sangui-
mem, et ejusdem orthodoxæ fidei cultores, perpetrata
meminerit, non naves bellicas sed decus suum omne
obsolescere et interire cogitet, si his indignissimis
modis tractari sese diutiùs æquo animo patiatur ; meque
solùm tanta ac tam opuleuta orbis terrarum parte contra
jus legesque gentium communes ab omni libero com-
mercio excludi, verùm etiam pro piratis atque prædoni-
bus haberi, eodemque supplicio plecti, si illa maria
mavigare, si vel aspicere vel aspirare, si demique vel
cum nostris ibi coloniis usum aliquem aut commercium
habere ausa fuerit.
De inquisitione Hispanica sanguimaria nihil dicimus,
inimicitiarum causa universis protestantibus communi ;
neque de tot seminariis sacerdotum ac jesuitarum Am-
glicorum sub Hispanico patrocinio nidulantium, offen-
sionis causa et periculi gravissimi huic reipublicæ
propria; cum propositum nobis potissimum sit contro-
versiarum in Occidentali India nostrarum causas et
rationes exponere. Hoc verò æquioribus cumctis et
incorruptis rerum æstimatoribus planum fecisse confi-
dimus, mecessitatem, existimationem, justitiam ad hanc
nuper susceptam expeditionem mos evocasse ; necessita-
tem, bellandum enim mecessariò est, si per Hispanos
pacem colere non licet; existimationem atque justitiam,
meutra enim harum nobis constare poterit, si injurias
tam inhumanas atque intolerandas impunè civibus
nostris ac popularibus inferri desides patiemur, quales
in Occidentali India illatas iis esse demonstravimus.
Et certè parum vident, qui.de comsiliis ac rationibus
Hispanicis conjecturam capiunt ex ea persona ac specie
quam in præsentia suarum rerum inclinatio induere
versùs nos in his orbis terræ partibus coegit; quasi
non nunc mens eadem, iidem sensus animorum ac ratio-
mum suarum sint, qui tum fuere, cùm anno 1588 subju-
gare hanc totam insulam suumque sub imperium ac
ditionem subjungere affectabant, immò quasi ex hoc
immutato apud nos rerum statu formaque reipublicae
non accensa potius eorum in nos odia auctæque sus-
piciones sint. Quòd si hæc opportunitas, quæ, propter
nunnulla quædam quæ nuper acciderunt, ineundi rati-
onem aliquam, qua ab hoc tam vetere et implacato
rcligionis nostræ ac patriæ hoste nobismetipsis (Deo
bene juvante) consulere possimus, occasionem fortè
suppeditaverit, prætermissa fuerit, fieri poterit ut eas
vires facilè sit recuperaturus (animus enim certè illi
neque unquam deerit neque decsse poterit) ex quibus
intolerandus æquè et formidabilis reddi possit atque
antea fuerit. Nos interea si injurias tam immanes in
Occidentali India sine satisfactione ulla aut vindicta
nostris fieri, si excludi nos omnes ab illa tam insigni
orbis terrarum parte, si infestum atque inveteratum
hostem nostrum (pace præsertim cum Batavis jam
facta) ingentes illos ab Occidentali India thesauros,
quibus praesentia incommoda sarcire possit, nostra pace
domum deportare, resque suas in eurm rursus locum
restituere patiemur, quò eandem iterum possit delibera-
tionem suscipere, quam anno 1588 habuit, “ Utrum
fuisset consultius ad recuperandas Belgii fœderatas
provincias initium facere ab Anglia, am ab illis ad sub-
igendam Angliam,” proculdubiò non minus multas
immò plures causas excogitabit, cur potius ab Anglia
initium sit faciendum : Quem finem ut assequantur
ullo tempore ea consilia, si Deus permitteret, expectare
meritò possemus, ut in mos primos, im omnes denique
ubicunque protestantes, exerceatur quod restat occidio-
nis illius immanissimæ, quam fratres nostri in Alpinis
vallibus passi nuper sunt : quæ, si illorum miserorum
editis querimoniis orthodoxorum credendum sit, per
illos fraterculos, missiomarios quos vocant, Hispanicæ
aulæ consiliis informata primitùs ac designata erat.
His omnibus animadversis, speramus quidem fore,
ut omnes Angli, præsertim sinceri, privatas adversùs
se mutuò inimicitias deposituri sint, suisque propriis
commodis potius renumciaturi quàm propter cupiditatem
lucri, haud ita multi, ex mercaturis illis faciendi (quod
non nisi inhonestis conditionibus et quodammodo im-
probis parari, et aliundè etiam suppeditari poterit)
multorum adolescentiam negotiatorum animas, ex iis
conditionibus quibus mumc in Hispania negotiantur et
degunt, summo periculo, sicuti faciunt, objecturi, vi-
tamque et fortunas multorum in America fratrum Chris-
tianorum, hujus denique mationis totius agi existimati-
onem passuri ; quodque gravissimum est, oblatis sibi
à Deo ad gloriam ipsius, regnumque Christi amplifi-
candum opportunitates præclarissimas ex manibus di-
missuri. Quæ quidem non dubitamus quim, remotis
quæ veritati penitus inspiciendæ officiunt, expeditionis
nuper nostræ in Occidentalem Indiam contra Hispanos
susceptæ potissimum fuisse finem appareat.
AUTORIS EPISTOLARUM FAMILIARIUM
IL I B E R.
LJ N U S ;
QUIBUS ACCESSRRUNT
EJUSDEM, JAM OLIM IN COLLEGIO ADOLESCENTIS, PROLUSIONES QUÆDAM ORATORIAE.
[f i RsT Publish RD 1674.]
THoMÆ JUNIO Præceptori suo.
1. QUANQUAM statueram apud me (præceptor optime)
epistolium quoddam numeris metricis elucubratum ad
te dare, non satis tamen habuisse me existimavi, nisi
aliud insuper soluto stylo exarassem ; incredibilis enim
illa et singularis animi mei gratitudo, quam tua ex
debito vendicant in me merita, non constricto illo, et
certis pedibus ac syllabis augustato dicendi genere ex-
primenda fuit, sed oratione libera, immò potius, si fieri
possct, Asiatica verborum exuberantia. Quamvis qui-
dem satis exprimere quantum tibi debeam, opus sit
meis viribus longè majus, etiamsi omnes quoscunque
Aristoteles, quoscunque Parisiensis ille dialecticus com-
gessit argumentorum r6trec exinanirem, etiamsi omnes
elocutionis fonticulos exhaurirem. Quereris tu vero
(quòd merito potes) literas meas raras admodum et
perbreves ad te delatas esse ; ego vero non tam doleo
me adeo jucundo, adeoque expetendo defuisse officio,
quam gaudeo et pene exulto eum me in amicitia tua
temere locum, qui possit crebras à me epistolas efflagi-
tare. Quod autem hoc plusquam triennio munquam
ad te scripserim, quæso ut me in pejus trahas, sed pro
mirifica ista tua facilitate et candore, in mitiorem par-
tem interpretari digneris. Deum enim testor quam te
instar patris colam, quam singulari etiam observantia
te semper prosecutus sim, quamque veritus chartis meis
tibi obstrepere. Curo nempe cum primis, cùm tabel-
las meas nihil aliud commendit, ut commendet rari-
tas. Deinde, cùm ex vehementissimo, quo tui afficior
desiderio, adesse te semper cogitem, teque tanquam
præsentem alloquar et intuear, dolorique meo (quod in
amore fere fit) vana quadam præsentiæ tuæ imagina-
tione adblandiar ; vereor profecto, simulac literas ad te
mittendas meditarer, ne in mentem mihi subito veniret,
quam longinquo à me distes terrarum intervallo ; at-
que ita recrudesceret dolor absentiæ tuæ jam prope
consopitus, somniumque dulce discuteret. Biblia
Hebræa, pergratum sane munus tuum, jampridem
accepi. Haec scripsi Londini inter urbana diverticula,
non libris, ut soleo, circumseptus : si quid igitur in hac
epistola minus arriserit, tuamque frustrabitur expecta-
tionem, pensabitur alia magis elaborata, ubi primum
ad musarum spatia rediero.
Londino, Martii 26, 1625.
ALEXANDRO GILLIo.
2. AcCEPI literas tuas, et quæ me mirifice oblecta-
vere, carmina sane grandia, et majestatem vere poeti-
cam, Virgilianumque ubique ingenium redolentia.
Sciebam equidem quam tibi tuoque genio impossibile
futurum esset, à rebus poeticis avocare animum, et
furores illos coelitus instinctos, sacrumque et æthereum
ignem intimo pectore eluere, cum tua (quod de seipso
Claudianus) ** totum spirent præcordia
Phoebum.” Itaque si tua tibi ipse promissa fefelleris,
Haudo hic tuam (quod ais) inconstantiam, laudo, siqua
est, improbitatem ; me autem tam præclari poe-
matis arbitrum à te factum esse, non minus glorior,
et honori mihi duco, quam si certantes ipsi dii
musici ad meum venissent judicium ; quod Tmolo
Lydii montis Deo populari olim contigisse fabu-
lantur. Nescio sane an Henrico Nassovio plus gra-
tuler de urbe capta, am de tuis carminibus : nihil
enim existimo victoriam hanc peperisse poematio hoc
tuo illustrius, aut celebrius. Te vero, cum prosperos
sociorum successus tam sonora triumphalique tuba ca-
mere audiamus, quantum vatem sperabimus, si forte res
nostræ demum feliciores tuas musas poscant gratula-
trices. Vale, vir erudite, summasque à me tibi gratias
carminum tuorum nomine haberi scias.
Londimo, Maii 20, 1628.
Eidem,
3. PRioRi illa epistola mea non tam rescripsi tibi,
quam rescribendi vices deprecatus sum, alteram itaque
EP] STOI,AE FAMILIARES.
831
brevi secuturam tacite promisi, in qua tibi me amicis-
sime provocanti latius aliquanto responderem ; verum
ut id non essem pollicitus, hanc utcunque summo jure
deberi tibi fatendum est, quandoquidem singulas ego
literas tuas non uisi meis binis pensari posse existimem,
aut si exactius agatur, ne centenis quidem meis. Ne-
gotium illud de quo scripsi subobscurius, ecce tabellis
hisce in volutum, in quo ego, cum tua ad me pervenit
epistola, districtus temporis angustia magno tum pri-
mum opere desudabam: quidem enim ædium nostrarum
socius, qui comitiis his academicis in disputatione
philosophica responsurus erat, carmina super quæstio-
nibus pro more annuo componenda, praetervectus ipse
jamdiu leviculas illiusmodi nugas, et rebus seriis in-
tentior, forte meæ puerilitati commisit. Hæc quidem
typis donata ad te misi, utpote quem morim rerum poeti-
carum judicem acervimum, et mearum candidissimum.
Quod si tua mihi vicissim communicare dignaberis,
certè non erit qui magis iis delectetur, erit, fateor, qui
rectius pro eorum dignitate judicet. Equidem quoties
recolo apud me tua mecum assidua pene colloquia (quæ
vel ipsis Athenis, ipsa in academia, quæro, desideroque)
cogito statim nec sine dolore, quanto fructu me mea
fraudarit absentia, qui nunquam à te discessi sine
manifesta literarum accessione, et ἐπιδοσει, planè quasi
ad emporium quoddam eruditionis profectus. Sane
apud nos, quod sciam, vix umus atque alter est, qui
non pbilologiæ, pariter et philosophiæ, prope rudis et
profanus, ad theologiam devolet implumis ; eam quo-
que leviter admodum attingere contemtus, quamtum
forte sufficiat conciunculæ quoquo modo conglutinandæ,
et tanquam tritis aliunde pannis consuendæ : adeo ut
verendum sit nè sensim ingruat in clerum nostrum
sacerdotalis illa superioris sæculi igmorantia. Atque
ego profecto cum nullos fere studiorum consortes hic
reperiam, Londinum recta respicerem, nisi per justitium
hoc æstivum in otium alte literarium recedere cogitarem,
et quasi claustris musarum delitescere. Quod cum jam
tu indies facias, nefas esse propemodum existimo diu-
tius in præsentia tibi interstrepere. Vale.
Cantabrigia, Julii 2, 1628.
THoMÆ J UN I o.
4. INSPECTis literis tuis (preceptor optime) unicum
hoc mihi supervacaneum occurrebat, quòd tardæ scrip-
tionis excusationem attuleris ; tametsi enim literis tuis
nihil mihi queat optabilius accedere, qui possim tamcn,
aut debeam sperare, otii tibi tantum à rebus seriis, et
sanctioribus esse, ut mihi semper respondere vacet ;
: præsertim cum illud humanitatis omnino sit, officii
minime. Te vero oblitum esse mei ut suspicer, tam
multa tua de me recens merita nequaquam simunt.
Neque enim video quorsum tantis onustum beneficiis
ad oblivionem dimitteres. Rus tuum accersitus, simul
ac ver adoleverit, libenter adveniam, ad capessendas
anni, tuique non minus colloquii, delicias; et ab ur-
bano strepitu subducam me paulisper. Stoam tuam
Icenorum, tanquam ad celeberrimam illam Zenonis
porticum, aut Ciceromis Tusculanum, ubi tu in re
modica regio sane animo veluti Sorramus aliquis aut
Curius in agello tuo placide regnas, deque ipsis divitiis,
ambitione, pompa, luxuria, et quicquid vulgus homi-
num miratur et stupet, quasi triumphum agis fortunæ
contemptor. Cæterum qui tarditatis cuJpam depreca-
tus es, hanc mihi vicissim, ut spero, præcipitantiam
indulgebis ; cum enim epistolam hanc in extremum
distulissem, malui pauca, eaque rudiuscule scribere,
quam nihil. VaJe vir observande.
Camutabrigia, Julii 21, 1628.
ALEXANDRO G I LLio.
5. Si mihi aurum, aut caelata pretiose vasa, aut
quicquid istiusmodi mirantur mortales, dono dedisses,
puderet certe non vicissim, quantum ex meis faculta-
tibus suppeteret, te aliquando remunerasse. Cum vero
tam lepidum nobis, et venustum Hendecasyllabon
nudiustertius donaveris, quanto charius quidem auro
illud cst merito, tanto nos reddidisti magis solicitos,
qua re conquisita tam jucundi beneficii gratiam repen-
deremus ; erant quidem ad manum nostra hoc in genere
nonnulla, sed quæ tuis in certamen muneris æquale
nullo modo mittenda censerem. Mitto itaque quod
non plane meum est, sed et vatis etiam illius vere di-
vini, cujus hanc oden altera ætatis septimana, nullo
certe animi proposito, sed subito nescio quo impetu
ante lucis exortum, ad Græci carminis heroici legem in
lectulo fere concinnabam : ut hoc scilicet innixus adju-
tore qui te non minus argumento superat, quam tu me
artificio vincis, haberem aliquid, quod ad æquilibrium
compensationis accedere videatur ; si quid occurrit,
quòd tuæ de nostris, ut soles, opinioni minus satisfe-
cerit, scias, ex quo ludum vestrum reliquerim hoc me
unicum atque primum græce composuisse, in Latinis,
ut nosti, Anglicisque libentius versatum. Quandoqui-
dem qui Græcis componendis hoc sæculo studium
atque operam impendit, periculum est, ne plerumque
surdo canat. Vale, meque die lunæ Londini (si Deus
voluerit) inter bibliopolas expecta. Interim si quid
apud illum doctorem, annuum collegii præsidem, qua
vales amicitia, mostrum poteris negotium promovere ;
cura quæso, ut mea causa quam cito adeas ; iterum
vale.
E nostro Suburbano, Decemb. 4. 1634.
CARoLo DIoDATo.
6. JAM isthuc demum plame video te agere, ut ob-
stinato silentio mos aliquamdo pervincas ; quod si ita
est, euge habe tibi istam gloriolam, em scribimus
priores : quamquam certe si unquam hæc res in conten-
tionem veniret, cur meuter alteri ovro öia xgöve scripse-
rit, cave putes quin sim ego multis partibus excusatior
futurus: δnλον ότι ός 3paòc kai öcvnp6c rtc άν φύσει
τρὸς τὸ γράφειν, ut probe nosti, cum tu contra sive
natura, sive consuetudine, ad hujusmodi literarias
τροσφωνήσεις haud ægre perduci soleas. Simul et illud
pro me facit, quod tuam studendi rationem ita institu-
tam cognovi, ut crebro interspires, ad amicos visas,
multa scribas, nonnunquam iter facias ; meum sic est
ingenium, nulla ut mora, nulla quies, nulla ferme illius
832
EPISTOLE FAMILIARES.
rei cura, aut cogitatio distineat, quoad pervadam quo
feror, et grandem aliquam studiorum meorum quasi
periodum conficiam. Atque hinc omnino, nec aliunde,
sodes, est factum, uti ad officia quidem ultro deferenda
spissius accedam, ad respondendum tamen, O noster
Theodote, non sum adeo cessator; neque enim commisi
ut tuam epistolam umquam ullam debita vice nostra
alia ne clauserit. Quid ! quod tu, ut audio, literas ad
bibliopolam, ad fratrem etiam sæpiuscule ; quorum
utervis propter vicinitatem satis commode præstitisset,
mihi, si quæ essent, reddendas. Illud vero queror, te,
cum esses pollicitus ad nos fore ut diverteres cum ex
urbe discederes, promissis mon stetisse : quæ promissa
abs te praeterita si vel semel cogitasses, non defuisset
prope necessarium scribendi argumentum. Atque htec
habui quæ in te merito, ut mihi videor, declamitarem.
Tu quæ ad hæc contra parabis ipse videris. Verum
interim quid est quæso ? recteme vales ? ecquimam iis
in locis erudituli sunt quibuscum libenter esse, et gar-
rire possis, ut mos consuevimus ? quando redis ? quam-
diu tibi in animo est apud istos ùtrepßopstec commorari ?
tu velim ad hæc mihi singula respondeas: sed enim
me nescias non nunc demum res tuæ cordi mihi sunt,
mam sic habeto me ineunte autumno ex itinere ad fra-
trem tuum eo consilio deflexisse, ut quid ageres, scirem.
Nuper etiam cum mihi temere Londini perlatum esset
à nescio quo te in urbe esse, confestim et quasi aùroßosv
proripui me ad cellam tuam, at illud σκtac övap, nus-
quam enim compares. Quare quod sine tuo incom-
modo fiat, advola ocyus et aliquo in loco te siste, qui
locus mitiorem spem præbeat, posse quoquo modo fieri
ut aliquoties inter nos saltem visamus, quod utinam mo-
bis mon aliter esses vicinus, rusticanus atque es urbicus,
&λλὰ τοῦτο άστερ θεὰ φίλον. Plura vellem et de mobis, et
de studiis mostris, sed mallem coram ; et jam cras sumus
rus illud mostrum redituri, urgetque iter, ut vix hæc
propere in chartam conjecerim. Vale.
Londino, Septemb. 2. 1637.
lEidem.
7. QUod cæteri in literis suis plerumque faciunt
amici, ut unicam tantum salutem dicere sat habeant,
tu illud jam video quid sit quod toties impertias ; ad
ea enim quæ tute prius, et alii adhuc sola afferre pos-
sunt vota, jam nunc artem insuper tuam, vimque omnem
medicam quasi cumulum accedere vis me scilicet intel-
ligere. Jubes enim salvere sexcenties, quantum volo,
quantum possum, vel etiam amplius. Næ ipsum te
nuper salutis condum promum esse factum oportet, ita
totum salubritatis penum dilapidas, aut ipsa proculdubio,
sanitas jam tua parasita esse debet, sic pro rege te geris
atque imperas ut dicto sit audiens ; itaque gratulor
tibi, et duplici proinde nomine gratias tibi agam me-
cesse est, cum amicitiæ tum artis eximiæ. Literas
quidem tuas, quoniam ita convenerat, diu expectabam ;
verum acceptis neque dum ullis, si quid mihi credis,
non idcirco veterem meam ergo te benevolentiam tan-
tillum refrigescere sum passus ; immo vero qua tar-
ditatis excusatione usus literarum initio es, ipsam illam
te allaturum esse jam animo præsenseram, idque recte,
nostræque necessitudini conveniemter. Non enim in
epistolarum ac salutationum momentis veram verti
amicitiam volo, quæ omnia ficta esse possunt; sed altis
amimi radicibus niti utrimque et sustinere se ; coeptam-
que sinceris, et sanctis rationibus, etiamsi mutua cessa-
rent officia, per omnem tamen vitam suspicione et culpa
vacare: ad quam fovendam non tam scripto sit opus,
quam viva invicem virtutum recordatione. Nec com-
tinuò, ut tu nom scripseris, mon erit quo illud suppleri
officium possit, scribit vicem tuam apud me tua probi-
tas, verasque literas intimis semsibus meis exarat,
scribit morum simplicitas, et recti amor ; scribit inge-
mium etiam tuum, haudquaquam quotidianum, et ma-
jorem in modum te mihi commendat. Quare moli
mihi, arcem illam medicimæ tyrannicam mactus, terrores
istos ostentare, ac si salutes tuas sexcentas velles, sub-
ducta minutim ratiuncula, ad unum omnes a me repos-
cere, si forte ego, quod me siverit unquam Deus, ami-
citiæ desertor fierem ; atque amove terribile illud ετι-
τειχισμα quod cervicibus nostris videris imposuisse, ut
sine tua bona venia me liceat aegrotare. Ego enim me
nimis minitere, tui similes impossibile est quin amem,
nam de cætero quidem quid de me statuerit Deus nescio,
illud certe ; δεινόν μοι ἐρωτα, εἰπὲρ τω a\λω, τοῦ κa\οῦ
£v£ora£s. Nec tanto Ceres labore, ut in fabulis est,
Liberam fertur quæsivisse filiam, quanto ego hanc τοῦ
ka\οῦ ἰδ£av, veluti pulcherrimam quamdam imaginem,
pcr omnes rerum formas et facies : (τολλav yàp μορόai
των Aapoviwv :) dies noctesque indagare soleo, et quasi
certis quibusdam vestigiis ducentem sector. Unde fit,
ut qui, spretis quæ vulgus prava rerum æstimatione
opinatur, id sentire et loqui et esse audet; quod summa
per omne ævum sapientia optimum esse docuit, illi me
protimus, sicubi reperiam, necessitate quadam adjum-
gam. Quod si ego sive matura, sive meo fato ita sum
comparatus, ut nulla contentione, et laboribus meis ad
tale decus et fastigium laudis ipse valeam emergere ;
tamen quo minus qui eam gloriam assecuti sunt, aut eo
feliciter aspirant, illos semper colam, et suspiciam, nec
dii puto, nec homines prohibuerint. Cæterum jam
curiositati tuæ vis esse satisfactum scio. Multa solicite
quæris, etiam quid cogitem. Audi, Theodote, verum
in aurem ut ne rubeam, et sinito paulisper apud te
grandia loquar ; quid cogitem quaeris ? ita me bomus
Deus, immortalitatem. Quid agam vero ? Trspo@vô, et
volare meditor : sed tenellis admodum adhuc pemnis
evehit se noster Pegasus, humile sapiamus. Dicam
jam numc serio quid cogitem, in hospitium juridicorum
aliquod immigrare, sicubi amoena et umbrosa ambulatio
est, quod et inter aliquot sodales, commodior illic habi-
tatio, si domi manere, et δρμητήριον εντρετάστερον quo-
cumque libitum erit excurrere ; ubi nunc sum, ut nosti,
obscure, et anguste sum ; de studiis etiam nostris
fies certior. Græcorum res continuata lectione de-
duximus usquequo illi Græci esse sunt desiti : Italo-
rum in obscura re diu versati sumus sub Longobardis,
et Francis, et Germanis, ad illud tempus quo illis ab
Rodolpho Germaniæ rege concessa libertas est; exinde
quid quæque civitas suo marte gesserit, separatim le-
gere præstabit. Tu vero quid ? quousque rebus domes-
ticis filius familias imminebis urbanarum sodalitatum
EPISTOLAE FAMILIAIRES.
833
oblitus ? quod, nisi bellum hoc movercale, vel Dacico,
vel Sarmatico infestius sit, debebis profecto maturare,
ut ad nos saltem in hyberna concedas. Interim, quod
sine tua molestia fiat, Justinianum mihi Venetorum
historicum rogo mittas ; ego mea fide aut im adventum
tuum probe asservatum curabo ; aut, si mavis, haud
ita multo post ad te remissum. Vale.
Londimo, Septemb. 23. 1637.
BENEDICTO BoNMATTHÆo Floremtimo.
8. QUod novas patriae linguæ institutiones adornas
(Benedicte Bonmatthæe) jam operi fastigium imposi-
turus, et commune tu quidem cum summis quibusdam
ingeniis iter ad laudem ingrederis, et eam spem, quod
video, eamque de te opinionem apud cives tuos conci-
tasti, ut qui ab aliis quæ tradita jam sunt, iis aut lu-
cem, aut copiam, aut certe limam, atque ordinem tuo
marte facile sis allaturus. Quo nomine profecto popu-
lares tuos quam non vulgarem in modum tibi devinx-
eris, ingrati nempe sint ipsi, si non perspexerint.
Nam qui in civitate mores hominum sapienter morit
formare, domique et belli præclaris institutis regere,
illum ego præ cæteris omni honore apprime dignum
esse existimem. Proximum huic tamen, qui loquendi
scribendique rationem et normam probo gentis saecu]o
|receptam, præceptis regulisque sancire adnititur, et
veluti quodam vallo circummunire ; quod quidem ne
quis transire ausit, tantum non Romulea lege sit cau-
tum. Utriusque enim horum utilitatem conferre si
libet, justum utrique et sanctum civium convictum alter
ille solus efficere potest ; hic vero solus liberalum, et
splendidum, et luculentum, quod proxime in votis est.
Ille in hostem fines invadentem, ardorem credo excel-
sum, et intrepida consilia suppeditat ; hic barbariem
animos hominum late incursantem, fœdam et intesti-
mam ingeniorum perduellem, docta aurium censura,
authorumque bonorum expedita manu, explodendam
sibi, et debellandam suscipit. Neque enim qui sermo,
purusne an corruptus, quæve loquendi proprietas quo-
tidiana populo sit, parvi interesse arbitrandum est, quæ
res Athenis non semel saluti fuit : immo vero, quod
'Platonis sententia est, immutato vestiendi more habi-
tuque graves in republica motus, mutationesque por-
tendi, equidem potius collabente in vitium atque erro-
rem loquendi usu, occasum ejus urbis, remque humilem
et obscuram subsequi crediderim : verba enim partim
inscita et pudita, partim mendosa, perperam prolata ;
quid nisi ignavos et oscitantes, et ad servile quidvis
jam olim paratos incolarum animos haud levi indicio
declarant? Contra, nullum unquam audivimus impe-
rium, nullam civitatem non mediocriter saltem foru-
isse, quamdiu linguæ sua gratia, suusque cultus com-
stitit. Tu itaque, Benedicte, hanc operam reipublicæ
tuæ navare modo, ut pergas, quam pulchram, quamque
solidam à civibus tuis necessario gratiam initurus sis,
vel hinc liquido specta. Quæ à me eo dicta sunt, non
quod ego te quidquam horum ignorare censeam, sed
quod mihi persuadeam, in hoc te magis multo intentum
esse, quid tute patriæ tuæ possis persolvere, quam quid
illa tibi jure optimo sit debitura. De exteris jam nunc
dicam, quorum demerendi, si tibi id cordi est, persame
ampla in præsens oblata est occasio ; ut enim est apud
eos ingenio quis forte floridior, aut moribus amœnis et
elegantibus, linguam Hetruscam in deliciis habet prae-
cipuis, quin et in solida etiam parte eruditionis esse
sibi ponendam ducit, præsertim si Graeca aut Latina,
vel nullo, vel modico tinctu imbiberit. Ego certe istis
utrisque linguis non extremis tantummodo labris ma-
didus ; sed siquis alius, quantum per annos licuit,
poculis majoribus pro]utus, possum tamem nonnunquam
ad illum Dantem, et Petrarcham, aliosque vestros com-
plusculos, libenter et cupide commessatum ire : nec
me tam ipsae Athenæ Atticæ cum illo suo pellucido
Ilisso, nec illa vetus Roma sua Tiberis ripa retinere
valuerunt ; quin sæpe Arnum vestrum, et Fæsulanos
illos colles invisere amem. Jam vide, obsecro, num-
quid satis causæ fuerit, quae me vobis ultimum ab
oceano hospitem per hosce aliquot dies dederit, ves-
træque nationis ita amantem, ut non ullius, opinor,
magis. Quo magis merito potes meminisse, quid ego
tanto opere abs te contendere soleam; uti jam inchoatis,
majori etiam ex parte absolutis, velles, quanta maxima
facilitate res ipsa tulerit, in nostram exterorum gratiam,
de recta linguæ pronuntiatione adhuc paululum quid-
dam adjicere. Caeteris enim sermonis vcstri consultis
in hanc usque diem id animi videtur fuisse, suis tantum
ut satisfacerent, de mobis nihil soliciti. Quamquam ille
meo quidem judicio, et famæ suæ, et Italici sermonis
gloriæ, haud paulo certius consuluissent, si præcepta
ita tradidissent, ac si omnium mortalium referret ejus
linguæ scientiam appetere : verum per illos non stetit
quo minus nobis videremini vos Itali, intra Alpium;
dumtaxat pomoeria sapere voluisse. Hæc igitur laus
prælibata nemini, tota erit tua, tibi intactam et inte-
gram hucusque se servat ; nec illa mimus, si in tanta
scriptorum turba commonstrare separatim non grava-
bere, quis post illos decantatos Florentinæ linguæ auc-
tores poterit secundas haud injuria sibi asserere : quis
tragoedia insignis, quis in comoedia festivus et lepidus;
quis scriptis epistolis aut dialogis, argutus aut gravis;
quis in historia nobilis : ita et studioso potiorem quem-
que eligere volenti non erit difficile, et erit, quoties va-
gari latius libebit, ubi pedem intrepide possit figere.
Qua quidem in re, inter antiquos Ciceronem et Fabium
habebis, quos imiteris; vestrorum autem hominum
haud scio an ullum. Atque hæc ego tametsi videor
mihi abs te (nisi me animus fallit) jam primo impe-
trasse, quoties in istius rei memtionem incidimus, quæ
tua comitas est, et benignum ingenium ; nolo tamen id
tibi fraudi sit, quo minus exquisite, ut ita dicam, atque
elaborate exorandum te mihi esse putem. Nam quod
tua virtus, tuusque candor, minimum rebus tuis pre-
tium, minimamque æstimationem addicit; iis ego,
justam volo, et exactam, cum rei dignitas, tum adeo
mea observantia imponat; et certe hoc æquum est ubi-
que, quanto quis petenti faciliorem se præbet, tanto
minus concedentis honori deesse oportebit. De cætero,
si forte cur in hoc argumento, Latina potius quam
vestra lingua utar, miraris ; id factum ea gratia est ut
intelligas quam ego linguam abs te mihi præceptis ex-
ornamdam cupio, ejus me plane meam imperitiam, et
834
EPISTOLÀE FAMILIARES.
imopiam Latine confiteri; et hac ipsa ratione plus me
valiturum apud te speravi simul et illud, si canam ; et
venerandam è Latio matrem, in filiæ causa suæ mecum
adjutricem adduxissem, credidi fore ejus authoritati, et
reverentiæ, augustæque per tot sæcula majestati, nihil
ut denegares. Vale.
Florentiæ, Septemb. 10. 1638.
LUCÆ HoLSTENIO Romae in Vaticamo.
9. TAM ETsi multa in hoc meo Italiæ transcursu mul-
torum in me humaniter et peramice facta, et possum, et
sæpe soleo recordari ; tamen pro tam brevi notitia,
haud scio am jure dicam ullius majora extitisse in me
benevolentiæ indicia quam ea quæ mihi abs te profecta
sunt.
ascenderem, ignotum prorsus, nisi si quid forte ab
Alexandro Cherubimo dictum de me prius fuerat, sum-
ma cum humanitate recepisti ; mox im musæum comi-
ter admisso, et conquisitissimam librorum supellectilem,
et permultos insuper manuscriptos authores Græcos,
tuis lucubrationibus exormatos, adspicere licuit: quo-
rum partim nostro sæculo nondum visi, quasi in pro-
' cimctu, velut illæ apud Maronem,
penitus convalle virenti
Inclusæ animæ superumque ad limen ituræ.
expeditas modo typographi manus, et μαιευτικ)ν poscere
videbantur; partim tua opera etiamnum editi, passim
ab eruditis avide accipiuntur ; quorum et unius etiam
duplici domo abs te auctus dimittor. Tum nec aliter
crediderim, quam quae tu de me verba feceris ad præ-
stantissimum Cardim. Franc. Barberimum, iis factum
esse, ut cum ille paucis post diebus ákpδαμα illud musi-
cum magnificentia vere Romama publice exhiberet, ipse
me tanta im turba quæsitum ad fores expectans, et pene
manu prehensum persane honorifice intro admiserit.
Qua ego gratia cum illum postridie salutatum ac-
cessissem, tute idem rursus is eras, qui et aditum mihi
fecisti, et colloquendi copiam ; quæ quidem cum tanto
viro, quo etiam in summo dignitatis fastigio nihil be-
mignius, nihil humanius, pro loci et temporis ratione
largiuscula profecto potius erat, quam mimis parca.
Atque ego (doctissime Holsteni) utrum ipse sim solus
tam me amicum, et hospitem expertus, an omnes An-
glos, id spectans scilicet quod triemmium Oxoniæ literis
operam dederis, istiusmodi officiis etiam quoscumque
prosequi studium sit, certe nescio. - Si hoc est, pul-
chre tu quidem Angliæ mostræ, ex parte etiam tuæ,
διδασκάλιa persolvis ; privatoque nostrum cujusque
nomine, et patriæ publico, parem utrobique gratiam
promereris. Sin est illud, eximium me tibi præ cæte-
ris habitum, dignumque adeo visum quicum velis
£eviav rousio $at, et mihi gratulor de tuo judicio, et
tuum simul camdorem præ meo merito pono. Jam
illud vero quod mihi negotium dedisse videbare, de in-
spiciendo codice Mediceo, sedulo ad amicos retuli, qui
quidem ejus rei efficiendæ spem perexiguam in presens
ostendunt. In illa bibliotheca, misi impetrata prius
venia, nihil posse exscribi, ne stylum quidem scripto-
rium admovisse tabulis permissum ; esse tamen aiunt
Cum enim tui conveniendi causa in Vaticamum
lectatio concessa est, id aliquamtum intelligas.
Romæ Joannem Baptistam Domium, is ad legendas
publice Græcas literas Florentiam vocatus indies ex-
pectatur, per eum ut consequi possis quæ velis facile
esse; quamquam id same mihi pergratum accidisset,
si res tam præsertim optanda quæ sit, mea potius
opella saltem aliquando plus promovisset, cum sit
indignum tam tibi honesta et preclara suscipienti, non
omnes undecumque homines, et rationes, et res favere.
De cætero, movo beneficio devinxeris, si eminentissi-
mum cardinalem quanta potest observantia meo no-
mine salutes, cujus magnæ virtutes, rectique studium,
ad provehendas item omnes artes liberales egregie com-
paratum, semper mihi ob oculos versantur; tum illa
mitis, et, ut ita dicam, summissa animi celsitudo, quæ
sola se deprimendo attollere didicit ; de qua vere dici
potest, quod de Cerere apud Callimachum est, diversa
tamen sententia, i0μαra μεν χάρσω κεφa\à ôè δι άττετ'
όλάμπω. Quod cæteris fere principibus documento esse
potest, triste illud supercilium, et aulici fastus, quam
longe à vera magnaminitate discrepantes et alieni simt.
Nec puto fore, dum ille vivit, Estenses, Farnesios, aut
Mediceos, olim doctorum hominum fautores, ut quis
amplius desideret. Vale, doctissime Holsteni, et si quis
tui, tuorumque studiorum amantior est, illi me quoque,
si id esse tanti existimas, ubicumque sim gentium fu-
turus, velim annumeres.
Florentiæ, Marlii 30. 1639.
CARolo DATo Patricio Floremtimo.
10. PER LATIs inopinatò literis ad me tuis, mi Carole,
quanta, et quam nova sim voluptate perfusus, quamdo-
quidem non est ut pro re satis queam dicere, volo ex
dolore saltem, sine quo vix ulla magna hominibus de-
Dum
enim illa tua prima percurro, in quibus elegantia cum
amicitia pulchre sane contendit, merum illud quidem
gaudium esse dixerim, præsertim cum uti vincat ami-
citia, operam te dare videam. Statim vero cum incido
in illud quod scribis, ternas te jam olim ad me dedisse,
quas ego periisse scio, tum primum sincera illa infici,
tristique desiderio conturbari, cœpta est lætitia ; mox
etiam gravius quiddam subit, in quo vicem meam do-
lere persæpe soleo, quos forte viciniæ, aut aliqua mullius
usus necessitudo mecum, sive casu, sive lege conglu-
timavit, illos nulla re alia commendabiles assidere quo-
tidie, obtundere, etiam enecare mehercule quoties colli-
bitum erit ; quos, mores, ingenium, studia, tam belle
conciliaverant, illos jam pame omnes, aut morte, aut
iniquissima locorum distantia invideri mihi, et ita con-
conspectu plerumque abripi, ut in perpetua
Te, quod ais,
*\
festim è
fere solitudine versari mihi necesse sit.
' ex quo Florentia discessi, mea de salute solicitum, sem-
perque mei memorem fuisse, gratulor mihi sane, par
illud utrique et mutuum accidisse, quod ego me solum
sensisse meo fortasse merito arbitrabar. Gravis admo-
duni, ne te celem, discessus ille et mihi quoque fuit,
eosque meo animo aculeos infixit, qui etiam numc al-
tius inhærent, quoties mecum cogito tot simul sodales
atque amicos tam bonos, tamque commodos una in
urbe, longinqua illa quidem, sed tamen charissima, im-
EPISTOLÆ FAMILIARES.
835
vitum me, ct plane divulsum reliquisse. Testor illum
mihi semper sacrum et solenne futurum Damonis tu-
mulum ; im cujus funere ornando cum luctu et mœrore
oppressus, ad ea quæ potui solatia confugere, et respi-
rare paulisper cupiebam, non aliud mihi quicquam .
jucundius occurrit, quam vestrum omnium gratissimam
mihi memoriam, tuique nominatim in mentem revo-
casse. Id quod ipse jamdiu legisse debes, siquidem
ad vos carmen illud pervenit, quod ex te numc primum
audio. Mittendum ego same sedulo curaveram, ut
esset ingenii quantulumcumque, amoris autem adver-
sum vos mei, vel illis paucis versiculis, emblematis
ad morem inclusis, testimonium haudquaquam obscu-
rum. Existimabam etiam fore hoc modo, ut vel te
vel alium ad scribendum allicerem ; mihi enim si
prior scriberem, necesse erat, ut vel ad omnes, vel si
qnem aliis prætulissem, verebar ne in caeterorum,
qui id rescissent, offensionem incurrerem ; cum per-
multos adhuc superesse istic sperem, qui hoc à me
officium vendicare certe potuerint. Nunc tu omnium
primus, et hac amicissima literarum provocatione, et
scribendi officio ter jam repetito dubitas tibi à me jam-
pridem respondendi vices reliquorum expostulatione
liberasti. Quamquam fateor accessisse ad illam silentii
causam, turbulentissimus iste, ex quo domum reversus
sum, Britanniæ nostræ status, qui animum meum
paulo post ab studiis excolendis, ad vitam et fortunas
quoquo modo tuendas necessario convertit. Ecquem
tu inter tot civium commissa prælia, cædes, fugas,
bonorum direptiones, recessum otio literario tutum dari
putes posse ? Nos tamen etiam inter hæc mala, quo-
miam de studiis meis certior fieri postulas, sermone
patrio haud pauca in lucem dedimus ; quæ nisi essent
Anglice scripta, libens ad vos mitterem, quorum judi-
ciis plurimum tribuo. Poematum quidem quæ pars
Latina est, quoniam expetis, brevi mittam ; atque id
sponte jamdudum fecissem, nisi quod, propter ea quæ
im pontificem Romanum aliquot paginis asperius dicta
sunt, suspicabar vestris auribus fore minus grata.
Nunc abs te peto, ut quam veniam, non dico Aligerio,
et Petrarchæ vestro eadem in causa, sed meæ, ut scis,
olim apud vos loquendi libertati, singulari cum huma-
mitate, dare consuevistis, eandem impetres (nam de te
mihi persuasum est) ab cæteris amicis, quoties de ves-
tris ritibus nostro more loquendum erit. Exequias
Ludovici regis à te descriptas libenter lego, in quibus
Mercurium tuum, non compitalem illum et mercimo-
miis addictum, quem te nuper colere jocaris, sed facun-
dum illum, Musis acceptum, et Mercurialium virorum
præsidem, agnosco. Restat ut de ratione aliqua et
modo inter nos constet, quo literæ deinceps nostræ
certo itinere utrimque commeare possint. Quod non
admodum difficile videtur, cum tot nostri mercatores
negotia apud vos, et multa, et ampla habeant, quorum
tabellarii singulis hebdomadis ultro citroque cursitant;
quorum et navigia haud multo rarius hinc illinc sol-
vunt. Hanc ego curam Jacobo Bibliopolæ, vel ejus
hero mihi familiarissimo, recte, ut spero, committam.
Tu interim, mi Carole, valebis, et Cultellimo, Francino,
Frescobaldo, Malatestæ, Clementillo minori, et si quem
alium nostri amantíorem novisti ; toti denique Gad-
diamæ academiæ, salutem meo nomine plurimam dices.
Interim vale.
Londino, Aprilis 21. 1647.
HERMANN o MI llio, Comitis Oldemburgici Oratori.
11. AD literas tuas, mobilissime Hermanne, 17 De-
cemb. ad me datas, antequam respondeam ; ne me
silentii tam diutini reum fortassis apud te peragas,
primum omnium oportet exponam, cur non responderem
prius. Primum igitur ne nescias, moram attulit, quæ
perpetua jam fere adversatrix mihi est, adversa vale-
tudo ; deinde valetudinis causa, necessaria quædam et
subita in ædes alias migratio, quam eo die forte ince-
peram, quo tuae ad me literæ perferebantur; postremo
certe pudor, non habuisse me quicquam de tuo negotio
quod gratum fore tibi judicabam. Nam cum postridie
in dominum Frostium casu incidissem, exque eo dili-
genter quærerem, ecquod tibi responsum etiamnum
decerneretur ? (ipse enim à concilio valetudinarius
sæpe aberam) respondit, et commotior quidem, nihil
dum decerni, seqne in expedienda re ista nihil profi-
cere. Satius itaque duxi ad tempus silere, quam id
quod molestum tibi sciebam fore, extemplo scribere,
donec, quod ipse vellem, tuque tantopere expetebas,
libentissime possem scribere ; quod et hodie, uti spero,
perfeci ; nam cum in concilio præsidem de tuo negotio
semel atque iterum commonefecissem, statim ille retu-
lit, adeoque in crastinum diem de responso quampri-
mum tibi dando constituta deliberatio est. Hac de re
si primus ipse, quod conabar, certiorem te facerem, et
tibi jucundissimum, et mei in te studii indicium ali-
quod fore existimabam.
Westmomasterio.
Clarissimo Viro LeoNA Rdo PH i LA R£ Atheniemsa,
Ducis Parmensis ad I'egem Galliæ Iegato.
12. BENEvoLENTIAM erga me tuam, ornatissime
Leonarde Philara, nec non etiam præclarum de nostra
pro P. A. Defensione* judicium, ex literis tuis ad do-
minum Augerium, virum apud nos, in obeundis ab hac
republica legationibus, fide eximia illustrem, partim ea
de re scriptis cognovi: missam deinde salutem cum
effigie, atque elogio tuis sane virtutibus dignissimo:
literas denique abs te humanissimas per eundem accepi.
Atque ego quidem cum mec Germanorum ingenia, ne
Cymbrorum quidem, aut Suecorum aspernari soleo, tum
certe tuum, qui et Athenis Atticis natus, et, literarum
studiis apud Italos fœliciter peractis, magno rerum usu
honores amplissimos es consecutus.judicium de me non
possum quin plurimi faciam. Cum enim Alexander
ille magnus in terris ultimis bellum gerens, tantos se
militiæ labores pertulisse testatus sit, rnc Trap' A0nvaiwv
êvêoëtac £vska ; quidni ego mihi gratuler, meque ornari
quam maxime putem, ejus viri laudibus, in quo jam
uno priscorum Atheniensium artes, atque virtutes illæ
celebratissimæ, remasci tam longo intervallo, et reflo-
rescere videntur. Qua ex urbe cum tot viri disertissimi
* Pro Populo A:iglicano Defensio.
3 H
836
EPISTOLAE FAMILIARES.
prodierint, eorum potissimùm scriptis ab adolescentia
pervolvendis, didicisse me libens fateor quicquid ego
in literis profeci. Quod si mihi tanta vis dicendi ac-
cepta ab illis et quasi transfusa inesset, ut exercitus
nostros et classes ad liberandam ab Ottomannico ty-
ranno Greciam, eloquentiæ patriam, excitare possem,
ad quod facimus egregium nostras opes pene implorare
videris, facerem profecto id quo mihil mihi antiquius
aut in votis prius esset. Quid enim vel fortissimi olim
viri, vel eloquentissimi gloriosius aut se dignius esse
duxerunt, quam vel suadendo vel fortiter faciendo ἐλευ-
Sspec kai àvrovδμες τοιείσθαι τοὺς "E\\ηvag ? Verùm et
aliud quiddam præterea tentandum est, mea quidem
sententia longe maximum, ut quis antiquam in animis
Græcorum virtutem, industriam, laborum tolerantiam,
antiqua illa studia dicendo, suscitare atque accendere
possit. Hoc si quis effecerit, quod à memine potius
quam abs te, pro tua illa insigni crga patriam pietate,
cum summa prudentia, reique militaris peritia, summo
denique recuperandæ libertatis pristinæ studio com-
juncta, expectare debemus ; neque ipsos sibi Graecos
meque ullam gentem Græcis defuturama esse confido.
Vale. -
Lomdimo, Jum. 1652.
R.1cIIARDo H ET IIo.
13. Si quam ego operam, amice spectatissime, vel
in studiis tuis promovendis, vel in eorum subsidio com-
parando, umquam potui conferre, quae sane aut mulla
plane, aut perexigua fuit; tamen eam in bona indole,
quamvis serius cognita, tam bene tamque fœliciter col-
locatam, haud umo profecto nomine gaudeo; eam etiam
adeo frugiferam fuisse, ut et ecclesite pastorem probum,
patriæ bonum civem, mihi denique amicum gratissi-
mum pepererit. Quod equidem, cum ex cætera vita
tua atque ex eo, quod de religione et simul de repub-
lica præclare sentis, tum præcipue ex singulari animi
tui gratitudine, quæ nulla absentia, nullo tetatis de-
cursu, extingui aut minui potest, facile intelligo. Ne-
que enim potest fieri, misi in virtute ac pietate, rerum-
que optimarum studiis, progressus plusquam mediocres
fecisses, ut in eos, qui tibi ad ea acquirenda vel miui-
mum adjumentum attulere, tam grato animo esses.
Quapropter, mi alumne, hoc enim nomine in te utor li-
benter, si sinis ; sic velim existimes, te cum primis à
me diligi, nec mihi quicquam optatius fore, quam, si
tua commoda rationesque ferrent, quod et tibi etiam in
votis esse video, ut possis prope me alicubi degere, quo
frequentior inter nos atque jucundior, et vitæ usus et
studiorum esset. Verum de eo, prout numini visum
evit, tibique expediverit. Quod scripseris deinceps,
poteris, si placet, nostro sermone scribere (quamquam tu
quidem Latinis haud parum profecisti) nequando
scriptionis labor alterutrum nostrum segniorem forte ad
scribendum reddiderit, utque sensus animi noster inter
nos, nullis exteri sermonis vinculis constrictus, eo libe-
rius expromere se possit. Literas autem tuas cuivis,
credo, ex ejus famulitio, cujus mentionem fecisti, rec-
tissime committes. Vale.
Vestmonasterio, Decemb. 13. 1652.
HENRico OLDEN BUngo Bremensium ad Sem. A.
Oratori.
14. PRioREs literæ tuæ, vir ornatissime, tum mihi
sunt datæ, cum tabellarius vester diceretur jamjam re-
diturus : quo factum est, ut rescribendi eo tempore
facultas nulla esset : id vero quamprimum facere cogi-
tantem inopinatæ quædam occüpationes excepere ;
quæ misi accidissent, librum profecto, defensionis licet
titulo munitum, non ita nudum ad te sine excusatione
misissem ; cum ecce tuæ ad me alteræ, in quibus pro
muneris tenuitate satis superque gratiarum sunt actæ.
Et erat quidem haud semel in animo, Latimis tuis mos-
tra reponere ; ut qui sermonem nostrum exteris omni-
bus, quos ego quidem novi accuratius ac fœlicius addi-
diceris, ne quam occasionem eundem quoque scribendi,
quod æque te arbitror accurate posse, amitteres. Verum
id prout dehinc impetus tulerit, tua perinde optio sit.
De argumento quod scribis, plane mecum sentis, cla-
morem istiusmodi ad coelum sensus omnes humanos
fugere : quo impudentior sit is, necesse est, qui audisse
se eum tam audacter affirmaverit. Is autem quis sit,
scrupulum injecisti : atqui dudum, cum aliquoties hac
de re essemus inter nos locuti, tuque recens ex Hol-
landia huc venisses, nulla tibi de authore dubitatio
subesse videbatur; quin is Morus fuisset: eam mimi-
rum iis in locis famam obtinuisse, neminem præterea
momimari. Si quid igitur hac de re certius nunc de-
mum habes, me rogo certiorem facias. De argumenti
tractatione vellem equidem (quid enim dissimulem) abs
te non dissentire ; id pene ut audeam quid est quod
persuadere facilius possit, quam virorum, qualis tu es,
cordatorum sincerum judicium, omnisque expers adu-
lationis laudatio ? Ad alia ut me parem, mescio sane
am nobiliora aut utiliora (quid enim in rebus humanis
asserenda libertate nobilius aut utilius esse possit ?)
siquidem per valetudinem et hanc luminum orbitatem,
omni senectute graviorem, si denique per hujusmodi
rabularum clamores licuerit, facile induci potero : me-
que enim iners otium unquam mihi placuit, et hoc cum
libertatis adversariis inopinatum certamen, diversis
longe, et amoenioribus omnino me studiis intentum,
ad se rapuit invitum ; ita tamen ut rei gestæ, quando
id mecesse erat, nequaquam pœniteat : nam in vanis
operam consumpsisse me, quod immuere videris, longè
abest, ut putem. Verum de his alias ; tu tandem, vir
doctissime, ne te prolixius detineam, vale ; meque in
tuis numera. «
Westmonasterio, Julii 6, 1654.
LeoNARDO PHILARÆ Atheniemsa.
15. CUM sim à pueritia totius Græci nominis, tua-
rumque in primis Athemarum cultor, si quis alius, tum
una hoc semper mihi persuasissimum habebam, fore ut
illa urbs præclaram aliquando redditura vicem esset
benevolentiæ erga se meæ. Neque defuit sane tuæ
patriæ mobilissimæ antiquus ille genius augurio meo ;
deditque te nobis et germanum Atticum et nostri aman-
tissimum : qui me, scriptis duntaxat motum, et locis
EPISTOLÆ FAMILIAIRES.
837
ipse disjunctus, humanissime per literas compellaveris,
et Londinum postea inopinatus adveniens, visensque
non videntem, etiam in ea calamitate, propter quam
conspectior nemini, despectior multis fortasse simi,
eadem benevolentia prosequaris. Cum itaque author
mihi sis, ut visus recuperandi spem omnem ne ahjiciam,
habere te amicum ac necessarium tuum Parisiis Teve-
motum medicum, in curamdis præsertim oculis præ-
stantissimum, quem sis de meis luminibus consulturus,
si modo acceperis à me unde is causas morbi et symp-
tomata possit intelligere ; faciam equidem quod horta-
ris, ne oblatam undecumque divinitus fortassis opem
repudiare videar. Decennium, opinor, plus mimus est,
ex quo debilitari atque hebescere visum sensi, eodem-
que tempore lienem, visceraque omnia gravari, fati-
busque vexari : et mane quidem, siquid pro more legere
cœpissem, oculi statem penitus dolere, lectionemque
refugere, post mediocrem deinde corporis exercitatio-
nem recreari ; quam aspexissem lucernam, iris quædam
visa est redimere : haud ita multò post sinistra in parte
oculi sinistri (is enim oculus aliquot annis prius altera
nubilavit) caligo oborta, quæ ad latus illud sita erant,
omnia eripiebat. Anteriora quoque, si dexterum forte
oculum clausissem, minora visa sunt. Deficiente per
hoc fere triennium sensim atque paulatim altero quoque
lumine, aliquot ante mensibus quam visus omnis abole-
retur, quæ immotus ipse cernerem, visa sunt omnia nunc
dextrorsum, nunc sinistrorsum natare ; frontem totam
atque tempora inveterati quidem vapores videntur in-
sedisse ; qui somnolenta quadam gravitate oculos, à
cibo præsertim usque ad vesperam, plerumque urgent
atque deprimunt; ut mihi haud raro veniat in mentem
Salmydessii vatis Phinei im Argonauticis,
rápoc ôë μιν άμφεκά\ι^μεν
7τορφύρεος' yaiav δε πάριά ἐδόκησε φερεσSav
vswö3&v, äß\mXpύ δ' ἐτι κόμaτι κάκλιτ' ävavδος.
Sed meque illud omiserim, dum adhuc visus aliquan-
tum supererat, ut primum in lecto decubuissem, meque
in alterutrum latus reclinassem, consuevisse copiosum
lumem clausis oculis emicare; deinde, imminuto indies
visu, colores perinde obscuriores cum impetu et fragore
quodam intimo exilire ; nunc antem, quasi extincto
lucido, merus nigror, aut cineraceo distinctus, et quasi
intextus solet se affundere : caligo tamen quæ perpetuo
obversatur, tam noctu, quam interdiu, albenti semper
quam nigricamti propior videtur ; et volvente se oculo
aliquamtillum lucis quasi per rimulam admittit. Ex
quo tametsi medico tantundem quoque spei possit elu-
cere, tamen ut in re plane insanabili, ita me paro atque
compono ; illudque sæpe cogito, cum destinati cuique
dies tenebrarum, quod momet sapiens multi sint, meas
adhuc tenebras, singulari Numinis benignitate, inter
otium et studia, vocesque amicorum, et salutationes,
illis lethalibus multo esse mitiores. Quod si, ut scrip-
tum est, non solo pane vivet homo, sed omni verbo pro-
deunte per os Dei, quid est, cur quis in hoc itidem non
acquiescat, non solis se oculis, sed Dei ductu am pro-
videntia satis oculatum esse. Sane dummodo ipse mihi
prospicit, ipse mihi providet, quod facit, meque per
omnem vitam quasi manu ducit atque deducit, me ego
meos oculos, qu udoquidem ipsi sic visum est, libens
feriari jussero. Teque, mi Philara, quocumque res ceci-
derit, non minus forti et confirmato animo, qnam si I.yn-
ceus essem, valere jubeo.
Vestmonasterio, Septemb. 28, 1654.
LEoN I ab A izema.
16. PE RG RATUM est eandem adhuc memoriam reti-
nere te mei, quam antea benevolentiam, dum apud nos
eras, me scmel atque iterum invisendo, perhumaniter
significasti. Ad librum quod attinet de divortiis, quem
dedisse te cuidam Hollandice vertendum scribis, mal-
lem equidem Latine vertendum dedisses : nam vulgus
opiniones nondum vulgares, quemadmodum excipere
soleat, in iis libris expertus jam sum. Tres enim ea de
re tractatus olim scripsi : primum duobus libris, quibus
doctrina et disciplina divortii, is enim libro titulus est,
diffuse continetur : alterum qui Tetrachordon inscribi-
tur, et in quo quatuor præcipua loca scripturæ supra
ea doctrina quæ sunt, explicantur : tertium, Colaste-
rion, in quo cuidam sciolo respondetur. Quem horum
tractatum vertendum dederis, quamve editionem, nescio;
nam eorum primus bis editus est, et posteriori editione
multo auctius. Qua de re nisi certior jam factus sis,
aut si quid à me aliud velle te intellexero, ut vel edi-
tionem correctiorem, vel reliquos tractatus tibi mittam,
faciam sedulo et libenter. Nam mutatum in iis quic-
quam aut additum non est in præsentia quod velim.
Itaque si in tua sententia praestiteris, fidum ego mihi
interpretem, tibi fausta omnia exopto.
Westmonasterio, Feb. 5, 1654.
EZECHIELI SPANHEMIO Genevensi.
17. NEscio quo casu acciderit, ut literæ tuæ post
paulo minus tres menses mihi sint redditæ, quam abs te
datæ : meis profecto expeditiore prorsus ad te com-
meatu plane est opus ; quas dum de die in diem scri-
bere constituebam, occupationibus quibusdam continuis
impeditus, in alterum fere trimestre spatium procras-
tinasse me sentio. Tu vero ex hac mea tarditate re-
scribendi velim intelligas, benevolentiæ erga me tuae
mon refrixisse gratiam, sed eo altius insedisse memo-
riam, quo sæpius atque diutius de officio meo vicissim
tibi reddendo indies cogitabam. Habet hoe saltem
officii tarda solutio quo se excuset, dum clarius confi-
tetur deberi, quod tanto post tempore, quam quod
statim persolvitur. Illa te imprimis literarum imitio
non fefellit de me opimio ; mon mirari si à peregrimo
homine salutor: meque emim rectius de me senseris,
quam si sic existimes, neminem me verum bonum in
peregrimi aut ignoti mumero habere. Talem te esse
facile mihi persuadetur, cum quòd patris doctissimi
atque sanctissimi es filius, tum quod à viris bonis
bonus existimaris, tum denique quod odisti malos.
Cum quibus, quamdoquidem mihi quoque bellum esse
contigit, fecit pro humanitate sua Calamdrimus, deque
mea sententia, ut significaret tibi, pergratum mihi fore,
si contra communem adversarium tua subsidia mecum
838
EPISTOI,AE FAMILIARES.
communicasses. Id quod his ipsis literis perhumaniter
fecisti, quarum partem, tacito authoris nomine, tuo erga
me studio confisus, in defensionem meam pro testimo-
mio inserere non dubitavi. Quem ego librum, ut pri-
mum in lucem prodierit, si quis erit cui recte possim
committere, mittendum ad te curabo. Tu interim quas
ad me literas destimaveris, Turrettino Genevensi Ion-
dimi commoranti, cujus illic fratrem mosti, haud frustra,
puto, inscripseris : per quem ut ad vos hæ nostræ, ita ad
De cætero
scias velim, et te plurimi tuo merito a me fieri, meque
uti porro abs te diligar, inprimis velle.
Vestmomasterìo, Martii 24, 1654.
nos vestræ, commodissime pervenerint.
HEN Rico OLDENBU RG o Bremensium ad Sen. A.
Oratori.
18. OccuPATionEM repcrerunt me tuæ literæ quas
adolescens Ranaleius attulit, unde cogor esse brevior
quam vellem : tu vero quas abiens promiseras, eas ita
probe reddidisti, ut æs alienum nemo sanctius ad ca-
lendas, credo, persolvisset. Secessum istum tibi,
quamvis mihi fraudi sit, tamen quoniam tibi esse
voluptati, gratulor ; tum illam quoque fœlicitatem
animi tui, quem ab urbano vel ambitione vel otio ad
sublimium rerum contemplationem tam facile potes at-
tollere. Quid autem secessus ille conferat, præter li-
brorum copiam, nescio : et quos illic nactus es studiorum
socios, eos suopte ingemio potius quam disciplina loci
tales esse existimem ; nisi forte ob desiderium tui ini-
quior sum isti loco quia te detinet. Ipse interim recte
animadvertis, mimis illic multos esse qui suis inanissi-
mis argutiis tam divina quam humana contaminent,
me plane nihil agere videantur dignum tot stipendiis,
quibus pessimo publico aluntur. Sed tu ista melius
per te sapis. Tam vetusti à diluvio usque Sinensium
fasti, quos ab jesuita Martinio promissos esse scribis,
propter rerum movitatem avidissime proculdubio expec-
tantur: verum auctoritatis, aut firmamenti, ad Mosaicos
libros adjungere quid possint non video. Salutem tibi
reddit Cyriacus noster, quem salutatum volebas. Vale.
Westmomasterio, Jumii 25, 1656.
Nobilissimo Adolescenti RicHARDo JoNEsIo.
19. PARANTEM me semel atque iterum ad proximas
tuas literas rescribere, subita quædam negotia, cujus-
modi mea sunt, ut mosti, præverterunt: postea excucur-
risse te in vicina quaedam loca audiveram ; nunc dis-
cedens in Hyberniam mater tua præstantissima, cujus
discessu uterque nostrum dolere haud mediocriter de-
bemus, nam et mihi omnium necessitudinum loco fuit,
has ad te literas ipsa perfert. Tu vero quod de meo
erga te studio persuasus es, recte facis; tibique tanto
plus indies persuadeas velim, quanto plus bonæ indo-
lis, bonaeque frugis in te esse, facis ut intelligam. Id
quod Deo dante, non solum in te recipis, sed quasi ego
te sponsione lacessissem, facturum te satisdas atque
vadaris ; et velut judicium pati et judicatum solvere ni
facias, non recusas : delector sane hac tua (le temetipso
tam bona spe ; cui nunc deesse non potes ; quin simul
non promissis modo tuis non stetisse, verum etiam va-
dimonium ipse tuum deseruisse videare. Quod scribis
non displicere tibi Oxonium, ex eo profecisse te quic-
quam aut sapientiorem esse factum, non adducis ut
credam : id mihi longe aliis rebus ostendere debebis.
Victorias principum quas laudibus tollis, et res ejus-
modi in quibus vis plurimum potest, nolim te philoso-
phos jam audientem nimis admirari. Quid enim mag-
mopere miram dum est, si vervecum in patria valida nas-
cantur cornua, quae urbes et oppida arietare valentissime
possint ? Tu magna exempla non ex vi et robore, sed ex
justitia et temperantia ab ineunte ætate ponderare jam
disce atque cognoscere : vale ; meoque fac nomine, sa-
lutem ormatissimo viro Henrico Oldenburgo tuo con-
tubernali plurimam dicas.
Westm. Sept. 21, 1656.
Ornatissimo Adolescenti PETRO HEIMBACH 1 o.
20. PRoMissA tua, mi Heimbachi, cæteraque omnia,
quæ tua virtus præ se fert, cumulate implevisti, præter-
quam desiderium meum reditus tui quem intra duos ad
summum menses fore pollicebaris ; nunc, nisi me tem-
poris ratio tui cupidum fallit, trimestris pene abes.
De Atlante, quod abs te petebam, abunde præstitisti ;
mom ut mihi comparares, sed tantummodo ut pretium
libri minimum indagares : centum et triginta Florenos
postulari scribis; montem illum opinor Mauritanum,
nom librum Atlantem, dicis tam immani pretio coemen-
dum. Ea nunc etiam typographorum in excudemdis
libris luxuries est, ut bibliothecæ mon mimus quàm villæ
sumptuosa supellex jam facta videatur. Mihi certe
cum pictæ tabulæ ob cæcitatem usui esse vix possint,
dum orbem terræ frustra cæcis oculis perlustro, quanti
illum librum emissem, vereor me tanti videar lugere
potius orbitatem meam. Tu hanc insuper impendas
mihi operam, rogo, ut cum reversus eris, certiorem me
facere queas, quot sint integri operis illius volumina,
et duarum editionum, Blavianæ videlicet et Jansenianæ,
utra sit auctior et accuratior: id quod ex teipso jam
l)revi redituro potius quam ex alteris literis, coram au-
diturum me esse spero. Interim vale, teque mobis
quamprimum redde.
Vestm. Novemb. 8, 1656.
Ornatissimo Viro EMERI co BigoTio.
21. QUod in Angliam trajicienti tibi dignus sum
visus, quem præter caeteros visendum duceres et salu-
tandum, fuit sane mihi et meritò quidem gratum ; quod
per literas tanto etiam intervallo munc denuo salutas,
id aliquanto fuit gratius. Poteras enim primò aliorum
fortassis opinione ductus ad me venisse, per literas nunc
redire, nisi proprio judicio vel saltem benevolentia re-
ductus, vix poteras. Unde est sane, ut posse videar jure
mihi gratulari : multi enim scriptis editis floruere,
quorum viva vox et consuetudo quotidiana nihil fere
prtetulit nom demissum atque vulgare: ego si id assequi
possum, ut si qua commode scripsi, iis par amimo ac
moribus esse videar ; et pondus ipse scriptis addidero,
et laudem vicissim, quantulacunque ea est, eo tamen
EPISTOLÆ FAMILIARES.
839
majorem ab ipsis retulero: cum rectum et laudabile
quod est, id non magis ab authoribus praestantissimis
accepisse, quam ab intimo sensu mentis atque animi
depromisisse purum atque sincerum videbor. De mea
igitur animi tranquillitate in hoc tanto luminis detri-
mento, deque mea in excipiendis exteris hominibus
comitate ac studio, persuasum tibi esse gaudeo. Orbi-
tatem certe luminis quidni leniter feram, quod non tam
amissum quam revocatum intus atque retractum, ad
acuendam potius mentis aciem quam ad hebetandam,
sperem. Quo fit, ut neque literis irascar, nec earum
studio penitus intermittam, etiamsi me tam male mul-
taverint : tam emim morosus me sim, Mysorum regis
Telephi saltem exemplum erudiit; qui eo telo, quo vul-
neratus est, samari postea mon recusavit. Quod ad
illum librum de modo tenendi parlamenta quem apud
te habes, ejus designata loca ex codice clarissimi viri
Domini Bradsciavi, nec mon ex codice Cottoniano, vel
ememdanda, vel dubia si erant, confirmanda curavi ; ut
ex reddita hic tibi tua chartula perspicies. Quod autem
scire cupis, mum etiam in arce Lomdinensi autographum
hujus libri extet, misi qui id quæreret ex feciali, cui ac-
torum custodia mandata est, et quo ipse utor familiari-
ter : respondit is, nullum exemplar illius libri iis in
monumentis extare. Tu vicissim quam mihi operam
defers in re libraria procuranda, pergratum habeo ;
desunt mihi ex Bysantinis historiis, Theophanis Chro-
nographia Græc. Lat. fol. Constant. Manassis Breviari-
um Historicum, et Codini Excerpta de Antiquit. C. P.
Græc.-Lat. fol. Anastasii Bibliothecarii Hist. et Vitæ
Rom. Pontific. fol. quibus Michaelem Glycam, et Joan-
mem Sinnamum, Annæ Commemæ Continuatorem, ex ea-
dem typographia, si modo prodierunt, rogo adjicias :
quàm queas minimo non addo ; cum quòd, id ut te mo-
meam hominem frugalissimum, non est opus, tum quòd
pretium eorum librorum certum esse aiunt, et om-
nibus notum : nummos D. Stuppius numeratò se tibi
curaturum recepit, nec non etiam de vectura, quæ sit
commodissima, provisurum. Ego vero quæ tu vis,
quæque optas, cupio tibi omnia. Vale.
Westmonasterio, Martii 24. 1656.
Nobili Adolescenti RicHARDo JoNEsio.
22. TARDIUs multo accepi literas tuas quam abs te
datæ sunt, post quindecim puto dies quam sepositæ
alicubi apud matrem delituissent. Ex quibus tandem
studium erga me tuum gratique animi sensum liben-
tissime cognovi : mea certe erga te benevolentia moni-
taque fidissima, neque optimæ matris tuæ de me
opinioni atque fiduciæ, neque indoli tuæ unquam
defuere. Est quidem, ut scribis, amoenitatis atque
salubritatis eo in loco, quo nunc recessisti, est et libro-
rum quod academiæ satis esse possit ; si ad ingenium
incolarum tantum conferret ista soli amoenitas quan-
tum ad delicias confert, ad fœlicitatem illius loci mihil
deesse videretur. Et bibliotheca etiam illic instructis-
sima est; verum nisi studiosorum mentes disciplinis
optimis instructiores inde reddantur, apothecam libro-
rum illam quam bibliothecam rectius dixeris. Opor-
tere itaque ad hæc omnia discemdi animum atque im-
dustriam accedere percommode sane agnoscis. Tu ex
ista sententia, nequando tecum agere necesse habeam,
etiam atque etiam vide ; id facillimo megotio evitabis,
si ornatissimi viri Henrici Oldenburgi qui tibi præsto
est, gravissimis atque amicissimis præceptis diligenter
parueris. Vale mi Richarde dilectissime, et ad virtu :
tem ac pietatem, matris praestautissimae foeminæ ex-
emplo, veluti Timotheum alterum, siuito te adhortem
atque accendam.
Westmonasterio.
Illustrissimo Domino HEN Rico DE BRAss.
23. VI DEo te, domine, id quod perpauci ex hodierna
juventute faciunt, qui oras exteras perlustrant, non
juvenilium studiorum sed amplioris undique compa-
randæ cruditionis causa, veterum exemplo philosopho-
rum, recte et sapienter peregrinari. Quamquam ea
quæ scribis quoties intueor, ad eruditionem non tam
aliunde capiendam, quam aliis impertiendam, ad com-
mutandas potius, quam ad coemendas bomas merces,
accessisse ad exteros videris. Atque utinam mihi tam
facile esset, ista tua præclara studia rebus omnibus
adjuvare ac promovere, quam est jucundum sane et
pergratum tuam egre£iam indolem id à me petere.
Quod scribis tamen statuisse te ut ad me scriberes,
meaque responsa peteres ad eas difficultates enucleam-
das, circa quas à multis sæculis historiarum scriptores
videntur caligasse, nihil equidem hujusmodi neque
De Sal-
lustio quod scribis, dicam libere, quoniam ita vis plane
unquam mihi sumpsi, meque ausim sumere.
ut dicam quod sentio, Sallustium cuivis Latino histo-
rico me quidem anteferre ; quæ etiam constans fere
Habet suas laudes tuus
Tacitus ; sed eas meo quidem judicio maximas, quod
Sallustium nervis omnibus sit imitatus. Cum hæc te-
antiquorum sententia fuit.
cum coram dissererem, perfecisse videor, quantum ex
eo quod scribis conjicio, ut de illo cordatissimo scrip-
tore ipse jam idem prope sentias : adeoque ex me
quæris, cum is in exordio belli Catilinarii perdifficile
esse dixerit historiam scribere, propterea quod facta
dictis exæquanda sunt, qua potissimum ratione id
assequi historiarum scriptorem posse existimem. Ego
vero sic existimo ; qui gestas res dignas digne scrip-
serit, eum animo mon minus magno rerumque usu præ-
ditum scribere oportere, quam is qui eas gesserit: ut
vel maximas pari animo comprehendere atque metiri
possit, et comprehensas sermone puro atque casto dis-
tincte graviterque marrare : nam ut ornate, non admo-
dum laboro; historicum enim, non oratorem requiro.
Crebras etiam sententias, et judicia de rebus gestis in-
terjecta prolixe nollem, me, interrupta rerum serie,
quod politici scriptoris munus est historicus invadat ;
qui si in consiliis explicandis, factisque enarrandis, non
suum ingenium aut conjecturam, sed veritatem potissi-
mum sequitur, suarum profecto partium satagit. Ad-
diderim et illud Sallustianum, qua in re ipse Cato-
nem maxime laudavit, posse multa paucis absolvere ;
id quod sine acerrimo judicio, atque etiam tempe-
'antia quadam neminem posse arbitror. Sunt multi
in quìbus vel sermonis elegantiam, vel congestarum
840 EPISTOLÆ FAMILIARES.
rerum copiam non desideres ; qui brevitatem cum
copia conjunxerit, id est, qui multa paucis absolverit,
princeps meo judicio Latinorum est Sallustius. Has
ego virtutes historico inesse putem oportere, qui facta
dictis exæquaturum se speret. Verum quid ego tibi
ista? ad quæ tu ipse, quo es ingenio, per te sufficis;
quique eam ingressus es viam, in qua si pergis, nemi-
nem te ipso doctiorem poteris brevi consulere: et uti
pergas, quamquam tibi hortatu non opus est cujusquam,
me omnino tamen mihil pro expectatione tua respon-
disse videar, quantum valere me auctoritate apud te
sinis, hortor magnopere atque auctor sum. Vale,
tuaque virtute et sapientiæ acquirendæ studio macte
est ().
Westmonasterio, Idibus Quintil. 1657.
HENRico OLDENBU RG o.
24. QUoD Salmurium peregrinationis vestræ, ut puto,
sedem incolumes pervemistis, gaudeo: hoc enim te non
fefellit, id mihi imprimis gratissimum fore ; utqui et te
merito tuo diligam, et suscepti itineris causam tam esse
homestam atque laudabilem sciam. Quod autem audisti
accersitum ecclesiæ tam illustri erudiendæ Antistitem
tam infamem, id mallem quivis alius in Charontis,
quam tu in Charentonis cymba audisses : verendum
enim est valde, ne toto coelo devius frustretur, quisquis
tam fœdo auspice perventurum se unquam ad superos
putat. Væ illi ecclesiæ (Deus modo avertat omen) ubi
tales ministri aurium causa potissimum placent, quos
ecclesia, si reformata vere vult dici, ejiceret rectius
quam cooptaret. Quod scripta nostra nemini nisi pos-
centi impertisti, recte tu quidem et eleganter, neque ex
mea solum, sed etiam ex Horatiana sententia fecisti;
Ne studio nostri pecces, odiumque libellis
Sednlus importes opera vehemente.
Commorabatur vir doctus quidam, familiaris meus,
superiore æstate Salmurii; is ad me scripsit, librum
illum iis in locis expeti : unum exemplar dumtaxat
misi; rescripsit, placitum esse aliquod doctis, quibus-
cum communicaverat, ut nihil supra. Nisi iis rem gra-
tam facturum me fuisse existimassem, parsissem utique
et tuo oneri et sumptui meo. Verum,
Si te forte meæ gravis uret sarcina chartæ,
Abjicito potius, quam, quo perferre juberis,
Clitellas ferus impingas,
Laurentio nostro, ut jussisti, salutem nomine tuo dixi:
de cætero, nihil est quod abs te prius agi, priusve
curare velim, quam ut tu atque alumnus tuus recte
valeatis, votorumque compotes ad nos quamprimum
redeatis.
Vestmomasterio, Calend. Seactil. 1657.
Nobili Adolescenti RicHARDo JoNEsio.
25. CoNFEcissE te sine incommodo tam longum iter;. |
et spretis Lutetiarum illecebris, tanta celeritate eò con-
tendisse, ubi literato otio, doctorumq. consuetudine frui
possis, et maguopere lætor, et te tuæ indolis laudo.
Illic quoad te continebis in portu eris; Syrtes et Sco-
pulos, et Siremum cantus alias tibi cavendum. Quin et
vindemiam, qua oblectare te cogitas, Salmuriensem
nimium satire te nolim, misi in animo quoque sit, mus-
tum illud Liberi liberiore Musarum latice quinta plus
parte diluere. Verum ad haec, me etiam tacente, hor-
tatorem habes eximium, quem si audis, tibimet profecto
optime consulueris, et præstantissimam parentem tuam
summo gaudio, et crescente imdies amore tui affeccris.
Quod uti facere possis, à Deo Opt. Max. petere quoti-
die debes. Vale, et ad nos quam optimus, bomisque
artibus quam cultissimus, fac redeas : id mihi præter
cæteros jucundissimum erit.
Westm. Calend. Seactil. 1657.
Illustrissimo Domino HENRico de BRAss.
26. IMPEDITUs per hosce dies occupationibus qui-
busdam, illustrissime Domine, serius rescribo quam
volebam. Volebam enim eo citius, quod literas tuas
multa jam numc eruditione plenas, non tam præcipiemdi
tibi quicquam (id quod à me honoris credo mei, non
usus tui causa postulas) quam gratulandi dumtaxat,
reliquisse mihi locum videbam. Gratulor auemt et
mihi imprimis fœlicitatem meam, qui Sallustii senten-
tiam ita commode explicasse videar, et tibi tam assi-
duam illius auctoris sapientissimi tanto cum fructu
lectionem. De quo idem tibi ausim confirmare quod
de Cicerone Quintiliamus, sciat se haud parum in re
historica profecisse cui placeat Sallustius. Illud autem
Aristotelis præceptum ex rhetoricorum tertio quod
explicatum cupis, sententiis utendum est in narratione
et in fide, moratum enim est ; mom video quid habeat
magnopere explicandum, modo ut narratio et fides,
quæ et probatio dici solet, ea hic intelligatur, qua
rhetor, non qua historicus utitur: diversæ enim sunt
partes rhetoris et historici, sive narrant, sive probant ;
quemadmodum et artes ipsæ inter se diversæ sunt.
Quid autem conveniat historico, ex auctoribus antiquis
Polybio, Halicarnassæo, Diodoro, Cicerone, Luciano,
aliisque multis, qui ea de re præcepta quaedam sparsim
tradidere, rectius didiceris. Ego vero et studiis tuis
et itineribus secumda omnia atque tuta exopto, dignos-
que successus eo animo ac diligentia, quam rebus
quibusque optimis adhibere te video. Vale.
}Westm. Decemb. 16, 1657.
Ormatissimo Viro PETRo HEIMBACH I o.
27. LITERAs tuas Haga conitis dat. 18 Dec. accepi :
ad quas, quoniam id tuis rationibus expedire video,
.eodem die, quo mihi sunt redditæ, rescribendum putavi.
In iis post gratias actas ob beneficia nescio quæ mea,
quæ vellem sane non essent nulla, ut qui tua causa
quidvis cupiam, petis ut te per D. Laurentium oratori
nostro in Hollandiam designato commemdarem : quod
quidem doleo in me situm non esse ; cum propter pau-
cissimas familiaritates meas cum gratiosis, qui domi
fere, idque libenter me contineo ; tum quod is credo,
è portu jam solvit, jamque adventat, secumque habet
in, comitatü quem sibi ab epistolis vult esse, quod tu
JEPISTOLÆ
I`AMILIARES. 841
munus apud eum petis. Verum in ipso discessu jam
tabellarius cst. Vale.
}Westmonasterio, Decemb. 18, 1657.
JoANNI BADIÆo Pastori ARAUSIONENSI.
28. QuoD tardius ad te rescribo, vir clarissime et
reverende, non recusabit, credo, noster Duræus, quo
minus tardioris culpam rescriptionis à me in ipsum
transferam. Postea enim quam schedulæ illius, quam
mihi recitatam volebas, de iis quæ Evangelii causa
egisses atque perpessus esses, copiam mihi fecit, non
distuli parare has ad te literas ut ei darem tabellario,
qui primus discessisset, sollicitus quam in partem silen-
tium meum tam diuturnum interpretarere. Maximam
interim habeo gratiam Molinæo vestro Nemausensi,
qui suis de me sermonibus et amicissima prædicatione,
tot per ea loca bonorum virorum me im gratiam immisit.
Et sane quamquam non sum nescius, me vel eo quod
cum adversario tanti nominis publice jussus certamen
non detrectaverim, vel propter argumenti celebritatem,
vel denique scribendi genus longe lateque satis inno-
tuisse ; sic tamen existimo, me tantundem dumtaxat
habere famæ, quantum habeo bonæ existimationis apud
bonos. Atque in eadem te quoque esse sententia,
plaue video ; qui veritatis Christianæ studio atque
amore accensus, tot labores pertuleris, tot hostes susti-
mueris; eaque quotidie fortiter facias, quibus tantum
abest, ut ullam ab improbis famam tibi quæras, ut
eorum èertissima odia et maledicta in te concitare non
verearis. O te beatum ! quem Deus unum ex tot mil-
libus virorum, alioqui sapientum atque doctorum, ex
ipsis inferorum portis ac faucibus ereptum, ad tam
insignem atque intrepidam Evangelii sui professio-
nem evocavit. Et habeo munc quidem cur putem Dei
voluntate singulari factum, ut ad te citius non rescri-
berim : cum enim intelligerem ex literis tuis, te ab
infestis undique hostibus petitum atque obsessum,
circumspicere, et meritò quidem, quo te posses in ex-
tremo discrimine, si ita res tulisset, recipere, et Angliam
tibi in primis placuisse, gaudebam equidem mom uno
nomine, te id consilii cepisse ; cum tui potiundi spe,
tum te de mea patria tam præclare sentire : illud dole-
bam, non tum vidisse me unde tibi hic apud mos præ-
sertim Anglice nescienti, pro eo ac deceret prospectum
esset posset. Nunc vero peropportune accidit ut mi-
mister quidam Gallicus ætate confectus, ante paucos
dies è vita migraverit. Im ista ecclesia qui plurimum
possunt, teque illis in locis non satis tutò versari intel-
ligunt (non hoc incertis rumoribus collectum, sed ex
ipsis auditum refero) cooptatum te illius ministri in lo-
cum summopere cupiunt, immo invitant; sumptusque
itineris suppeditandos tibi decreverunt; atque ita tibi
de re familiari provisum iri pollicentur, ut ministrorum
apud nos Gallicorum nemini melius ; nec tibi quic-
quam defore, quod ad munus evangelicum apud se li-
benter obeundum possit conducere. Quare advola
quamprimum, si me audis, vir reverende, ad cupidissi-
mos tui, messem hic messurus, etsi commodorum hujus
mundi fortasse non ita uberem, tamen, quam tui similis
potissimum exoptant, animarum, ut spero, numerosam :
tibique persuadeas, te viris bonis omnibus expectatis-
simum esse venturum ; et quanto citius, tanto gra-
tiorem. Vale.
Vestmonasterio, April. 21, 1659.
HEN Rico OlDENBURGO.
29. Si lENTII, quam petis veniam tni, dabis potius
mei ; cujus erant, si memini, respondendi vices. Me
certe non imminuta erga te voluntas, hoc enim persua-
sissimum tibi esse velim, sed vel studia, vel curæ do-
mesticae impediverant, vel ipsa fortasse ad scribendum
pigritia, intermissi officii reum facit. Quod scire cupis.
valeo equidem, Deo juvante, ut soleo : ab historia nos-
trorum motuum concinnanda, quod hortari videris, longe
absum ; sunt enim silentio digniores quam præconio :
nec nobis qui motuum historiam concinnare, sed qui
motus ipsos componere feliciter possit, est opus: tecum
enim vereor ne Jibertatis ac religionis hostibus nunc
nuper sociatis, nimis opportuni inter has nostras civiles
discordias vel potius insanias, videamur; verum non
illi gravius, quam nosmetipsi jamdiu flagitiis nostris,
religioni vulnus intulerint. Sed Deus, uti spero, prop-
ter se gloriamque suam, quæ nunc agitur, consilia im-
petusque hostium ex ipsorum sententia succedere mom
sinet, quicquid reges et cardinales turbarum meditem-
tur aut struant. Synodo interea protestantium Lao-
dunensi, propediem, ut scribis, convocandæ, precor id,
quod nulli adhuc symodo contigit, fœlicem exitum, non
Nazianzenicum ; foelicem autem huic nunc satis futu-
rum, si mihil aliud decreverit, quam ejiciendum esse
Morum. De adversario posthumo simul ac prodierit,
fac me, rogo, primo quoque tempore certiorem. Vale.
Vestmom. Decemb. 20, 1659.
Nobili Adolescenti RicHARDo JoNEsio.
30. QUoD longo intervallo ad me scribis, modestis-
sime tu quidem te excusas, qui possis ejusdem delicti
me rectius accusare : ut haud sciam profecto utrum non
deliquisse te, an sic excusasse, maluerim. Illud tibi im
mentem cave veniat ; me gratitudinem tuam, si qua
mihi abs te debetur, literarum assiduitate metiri : tum
te gratissimum adversus me esse semsero, cum mea erga
te quæ prædicas merita, non tam in literis crebris, quam
in optimis perpetuo studiis tuis ac laudibus apparebunt.
Viam virtutis quidem, in illo orbis terrarum gymnasio
quod es ingressus, recte fecisti ; sed viam scito illam
virtutis ac vitii communem ; illuc progrediendum, ubi
via in bivium se scimdit. Teque sic comparare jam
nunc mature debes, ut relicta hac communi, amoena ac
florida, illam arduam ac difficilem, qui solius virtutis
clivus est, tua sponte libentius, etiam cum labore ac
periculo, possis ascendere. Id tu præ aliis multo faci-
lius, mihi crede, poteris, qui tam fidum ac peritum mac-
tus es itineris ducem. Vale.
' West. Decemb. 20, 1659.
842
EPISTOLÄE E'AMILIARES
Ormatassimo Viro PETRo HEIMBAcHIo, Electoris
JBrandenburgici Consiliario.
31. Si inter tot funera popularium meorum, ammo tam
gravi ac pestilenti, abreptum me quoque, ut scribis, ex
rumore præsertim aliquo credidisti, mirum non est; atque
ille rumor apud vestros, ut videtur, homines, si ex eo
quod de salute mea soliciti essent, increbuit, non dis-
plicet; indicium enim suæ erga me benevolentiæ fuisse
existimo. Sed Dei benignitate, qui tutum mihi recep-
tum in agris paraverat, et vivo adhuc et valeo; utinam
me inutilis, quicquid muneris in hac vita restat mihi
peragendum. Tibi vero tam longo intervallo venisse
in mentem mei, pergratum est; quanquam, prout rem
verbis exornas, præbere aliquem suspicionem videris,
oblitum mei te potius esse, qui tot virtutum diversarum
conjugium in me, ut scribis, admirere. Ego certe ex
tot conjugiis numerosam nimis prolcm expavescerem,
nisi constaret in re arcta, rebusque duris, virtutes ali
maxime et vigere : tametsi earum una non ita belle
charitatem hospitii mihi reddidit: quam enim politicam
tu vocas, ego pietatem in patriam dictam abs te mal-
lem, ea me pulchro nomine delinitum prope, ut ita di-
cam, expatriavit. Reliquarum tamen chorus clare con-
cinit. Patria est, ubicunque est bene. Finem faciam,
si hoc prius abs te impetravero, ut, si quid mendose de-
scriptum aut non interpunctum repereris, id puero, qui
hæc excepit, Latine prorsus nescienti velis imputare ;
cui singulas plane literulas annumerare non sine mise-
ria dictans cogebar. Tua interim viri merita, quem
ego adolescentem spei eximiæ cognovi, ad tam hones-
tum in principis gratia provexisse te locum, gaudeo,
cæteraque fausta omnia et cupio tibi, et spero. Vale.
Londini, Aug. 15. 1666.
J O A N N I S
M IIL T O N II
PROLUSIONES QUÆDAM ORATORIÆ.
IN COLLEGIO, &c.
[F1Rst PUBI.is hED 1674.]
Utrum Dies am Noæ præstantior sit ?
ScRiPTUM post se reliquere passim nobilissimi qui-
que rhetoricæ magistri, quod nec vos præteriit, Acade-
mici, in unoquoque dicendi genere, sive demonstrativo,
sive deliberativo, sive judiciali, ab aucupanda audito-
rum gratia exordium duci oportere; alioqui nec per-
moveri posse auditorum animos, nec causam ex sen-
tentia succedere. Quod si res ita est, quam sane, ne
vera dissimulem, eruditorum omnium consensu fixum
ratumque movi, miserum me ! ad quantas ego hodie
redactus sum angustias ! qui in ipso orationis limine
vereor me aliquid prolaturus sim minime oratorium, et
ab officio oratoris primo et præcipuo necesse habeam
abscedere. Etenim qui possim ego vestram sperare be-
nevolentiam, cum in hoc tanto concursu, quot oculis
intueor tot ferme aspiciam infesta in me capita; adeo
ut orator venisse videar ad non exorabiles. Tantum
potest ad simultates etiam in scholis æmulatio, vel di-
versa studia, vel in eisdem studiis diversa judicia se-
quentium ; ego vero solicitus non sum,
Ne mihi Polydamas et Troïades Labeonem prætulerint; nugæ.
Veruntamen me penitus despondeam animum, sparsim
video, ni fallor, qui mihi ipso aspectu tacito, quam
bene velint, haud obscure significant ; à quibus etiam
quantumvis paucis, equidem probari malo quam ab
innumeris imperitorum centuriis, in quibus nihil men-
tis, nihil rectæ rationis, nihil sani judicii inest, ebul-
lienti quadam et plane ridemda verborum spuma sese
venditantibus ; à quibus si emendicatos ab novitiis
authoribus centones dempseris, Deum immortalem !
quanto nudiores Leberide conspexeris, et exhausta inani
vocabulorum et sententiuncularum supellectile, μηδ£
ypò ©0Éyyεσ$at, perinde mutos ac ranuncula Seriphia.
At ô quam ægre temperaret à risu vel ipse, si in vivis
esset, Heraclitus, si forte hosce cerneret, si Diis placet,
oratorculos, quos paulo ante audiverit cothurnato Euri-
pidis Oreste, aut furibundo sub mortem Hercule gran-
diora eructantes, exhausto tandem vocularum quarun-
dam tenuissimo penu, posito incedere supercilio, aut
retractis introrsum cornibus, velut animalcula quædam
abrepere. Sed recipio me paululum digressus. Si
quis igitur est qui, spreta pacis conditione, doTovöov
7roX£μον mihi indixerit, eum ego quidem in præsentia
non dedignabor orare et rogare, ut semota paulisper
simultate, æquabilis adsit certaminis hujus arbiter ;
neve oratoris culpa, si qua est, causam quam optimam
et præclarissimam in invidiam vocet. Quod si mor-
daciora paulo hæc et aceto perfusa nimio putaveritis,
id ipsum de industria fecisse me profiteor : volo enim
ut initium orationis neæ primulum imitetur dilucu-
lum ; ex quo subnubilo serenissima fere nascitur dies.
Quæ am nocte præstamtior sit, haud vulgaris utique
agitatur controversia, quam quidem mearum nunc est
partium, auditores, pensique hujus matutini, accurate
et radicitus excutere ; quamvis et hæc prolusioni po-
eticæ, quam decertationi oratoriæ, magis videatur ido-
nea : at at noctemne dixi cum die struxisse lites ?
Quid hoc rei est ? quænam hæc molitio ? nummam
antiquum Titanes redintegrant bellum, Phlegræi prælii
instaurantes reliquias ? an terra novam in superos deos
enixa est portentosæ magnitudinis prolem ? an vero
Typhoeus injectam Ætnæ montis electatus est molem?
an denique, decepto Cerbero, catenis adamantinis sub-
duxit se Briareus ? quid est aliquando tandem, quod
deos manes ad coelestis imperii spem jam tertiò erexe-
rit ? adeone contemnendum Jovis fulmem ? adeon' pro
nihilo putanda Palladis invicta virtus, qua tantam olim
inter terrigenas fratres edidit stragem ? exciditme animo
insignis ille per coeli templa Liberi patris ex profliga-
tis gigantibus triumphus ? neutiquam sanè : meminit
illa probe, nec sine lachrymis, consternatos plerosque à
Jove fratres superstitesque cæteros usque ad penitissi-
mos inferorum recessus in fugam actos ; et certe jam
nihil minus quam bellum adornat trepida, querelam
potius et lites instruit, atque pro more mulierum post
844
PROLUSIONES ORATORIAE.
rem unguibus et pugnis fortiter gestam ad colloquium
seu verius ad rixam venit, periclitura, opinor, linguane
plus an armis valeat. At vero quam inconsultö, quam
arroganter, quamgue debili causae titulo prae die sum-
mam rerum ambiat, expedire festino. Video siquidem
et ipsam diem galli cantu expergefactam, cursu solito
citatiori adproperasse ad suas laudes exaudiendas. Et
quoniam unusquisque hoc imprimis ad honores et de-
cus conferre arbitratur, si ab generosis natalibus et
prisco regum vel deorum sanguine oriundum se com-
pererit. Videndum primo utra genere sit clarior, mox
quaenam antiquitate honoratior; dein haec an illa
humanis usibus accommodatius inserviat. Apud ve-
tustissimos itaque mythologiae scriptores memoriae
datum reperio, Demogorgonem deorum omnium ata-
vum (quem eundem et Chaos ab antiquis nuncupatum
hariolor) inter alios liberos, quos sustulerat plurimos,
Terram genuisse; hac, incerto patre, noctem fuisse
prognatam ; quamvis paulo aliter Hesiodus eam chao-
genitam velit hoc monasticho,
'Eé xásog 3’’Eps/36ss ué\atvá rs vöé #yèvovro.
Hanc, quocundue natam, cum adoleverat ad astatem
nuptiis maturam, poscit sibi uxorem Phanes pastor;
annuente matre, refragatur illa, negatdue se ignoti
viri et musquam visi, moribusque insuper tam longe
diversis concubitum inituram. Repulsam Phanes
aegre ferens, verso in odium amore, nigellam hanc
Telluris filiam per omnes orbis terrarum tractus ad
necem sequitur indignabundus. Illa vero quem aman-
tem sprevit, eum hostem non minus tremit; propterea
me apud ultimas quidem nationes, et disjuncta quam
maxime loca, immone in ipso sinu parentis satis se
tutam rata, ad incestos Erebi fratris amplexus furtim
et clanculum se corripit; timore simul gravi soluta,
maritumgue nacta proculdubio sui similem. Hoc ita-
que tam venusto conjugum pari Mºther et Dies perhi-
bentur editi, ut authorest idem, cujus supra mentionem
fecimus, Hesiodus.
Nvkrôg 3’ &vr' aibhors kat ºpépa ščeyévovro,
p y *
Ośg re kekvaga uévn 'ſpéðel pixórmrt puysica.
At enim vetant humaniores musae, ipsa etiam prohibet
philosophia diis proxima, ne minus poetis deorum figulis,
praesertim Graecanicis, omni ex parte habeamus ſidem;
nec quisquam iis hoc probro datum putet, quod in re
tanti momenti authores videantur vix satis locupletes.
Si quis enim eorum aliquantillum deflexerit ā vero, id
mon tam ingeniis eorum assignandum, quibus nihil
divinius, quam pravae et capcutientiejus aetatis ignoran-
tiae, quae tunc tempestatis pervadebat omnia. Abunde
sane laudis hinc sibi adepti sunt, affatim gloriae, quod
homines in sylvis atque montibus dispalatos belluarum
ad instar, in unum compulerint locum, et civitates con-
stituerint, quoddue omnes disciplinas quotguot hodie
traduntur, lepidis ſabellarum involucris obvestitas pleni
Deo primi docuerint; eritaue hoc solum iisdem ad as-
sequendam nominis immortalitatem non ignobile same
subsidium, quod artium scientiam feliciter inchoatam
posteris absolvendam reliquerint.
Noli igitur, quisquis es, arrogantiae me temere dam-
nare, quasiego jam veterum omnium poetarum decreta,
nulla mixus authoritate, perfregerim aut immutaverin;
neque enim id mihi sumo, sed ea tantummodo ad nor-
mam rationis revocare conor, exploraturus hoc pacto
num rigidae possint veritatis examen pati. Quocirca
primô noctem Tellure ortam erudite quidem et eleganter
fabulata est antiquitas; quid enim aliud mundo noctem
obducit quam densa et impervia terra, solis lumini
nostroque horizonti interposita ? quðd eam deinde nunc
patrimam, ſuisse negant mythologi, nunc matrimam,
id quoque festiviter fictum ; inde siquidem recte colli-
gitur spuriam ſuisse aut subdititiam, aut demum pa-
rentes prolem tam famosam et illiberalem prae pudore
non agnovisse. At vero cur existimarent Phanetem
illum mirifica supra modum humanum facie, noctem
AEthiopissam et monogrammam etiam in matrimonium
adamasse, arduum impense negotium videtur è vestigio
divinare, nisi quod foeminarum insignis admodum id
temporis paucitas delectum suppeditaret nullum. Atqui
presse agamus et cominus. Phanetem interpretantur
veteres solem sive diem; quem dum commemorant
noctis conjugium primo petiisse, deinde in ultionem
spreti connubii insecutum, nihil aliud quam dierüm et
noctium vices ostendere volunt. Ad hoc autem quid
opus erat introduxisse Phanetem noctis nuptias ambi-
entem, cum perpetua illa eorum successio et mutuus
quasi impulsus innato et aeterno odio melius adsignifi-
cetur; quippe constat sudum et tenebras ab ipso rerum
principio acerrimis inter se dissedisse inimicitiis. At-
que ego sane noctem credo, stºpóvng cognomen hinc
solum accepisse, quod Phanetis connubio permiscere se
caute recusarit, nec non cogitate; etenim si illum
semel in suos admisisset thalamos, extra dubium radiis
ejus et impatibili fulgore absumpta vel in nihilum in-
teriisset, vel penitus conflagrasset, sicuti olim invito
Jove Amasio arsisse ferunt Semelem. Quapropter
huic, non improvida salutis suae, Erebum praetulit.
Unde scitum illud Martialis et perurbanum.
Uxor pessima, pessimus maritus,
Non miror bene convenire vobis.
Nec tacendum existimo, quam formosa et se digna
virum auxerit prole, nimirum aerumna, invidia, timore,
dolo, fraude, pertinacia, paupertate, miseria, fame,
querela, morbo, senectute, pallore, caligine, somno,
morte, Charonte, qui ultimo natus est partu ; adeo ut
hic apprime quadret quod in proverbii consuetudinem
venit, kakoú kópakoç kaköv dov. Caeterum nec desunt qui
etiam aetherem et diem itidem Erebo suo Noctem pepe-
risse tradunt. At enim quotusquisque est, non impos
mentis, qui sic philosophantem non explodat ac rejiciat
tanquam democritica commenta aut nutricularum
fabulas proferentem P Ecquam enim veri speciem prae
se fert, posse obscuram et fuscam noctem tam venus-
tulum, tam amabilem, tam omnibus gratum acceptum-
que reddere partum ? Qui etiam ut primum conceptus
esset, praematuro impetu erumpens utro matrem ene-
casset, ipsumque Erebum patrem abegisset protinus,
vetulumque coegisset Charontem, ut sub imo Styge
nocturnos abderet oculos, et si qua sub inferis lati-
PROLUSIONES ORATORIAE.
845
bula sunt, ut eo se remigio et velis reciperet. Nec
solum apud Orcum non est natus dics, sed me unquam
quidem ibi comparuit; neque potest illuc nisi ſatorum
ingratiis vel per minimam intromitti rimulam ; quid
quod etiam diem nocte antiquiorem audeo dicere, eam-
que mundum recens emersum é Chao diffuso lumine
collustrasse, priusquam nox suas egisset vices; nisi
crassam illam et immundam caliginem noctem velipsi
Demogorgoni equaevam velimus perperam nominare.
Ideoque diem Urani filiam natu maximam arbitror, vel
filii potius dixeris, quem ille in solatium humante gen-
tis et terrorem infernalium deorum procreasse dicitur;
me scilicet, occupante tyrannidem nocte, nulloque inter
terras et Tartara discrimine posito, manes et furice at-
que omne illud infame monstrorum genus ad terras
usque, deserta Barathri sede, se proreperent, misellique
homines densis obvoluti umbris, et quaquaversum oc-
clusi, defunctarum animarum poenas etiam vivi experi-
rentur. Hactenus, academici, obscuram noctis propa-
ginem atris et profundissimis eruimus tenebris; habe-
bitis ilicet ut se dignam praebuerit matalibus suis, sed si
prius diei laudibus impensam dederim opellam mean,
quamvis et illa same omnium laudatorum eloquentiam
anteeat. Et certe primo quam omnium animantium
stirpigrata sit et desiderabilis, quid opere est vobis ex-
pomere; cum vel ipsae volucres nequeant suum celare
gaudium, quin egressee nidulis, ubi primum dilucula-
vit, aut in verticibus arborum concentu suavissimo de-
liniant omnia, aut sursum librantes se, et quam possunt
prope Solem volitent, redeumti gratulaturae luci. At
primus omnium adventantem Solem triumphat insom-
mis gallus, et quasi praeco quivis, monere videtur ho-
mines, ut excusso somno prodeant, atque obviam
effundant se novam salutatum Auroram : tripudiant in
agris capellae, totumque genus quadrupedum gestit et
exultat laetitia. Quinetiam et moesta Clysie totam
ſere noctem, converso in Orientem vultu, Phoebum
praestolata suum, jam arridet et adblanditur appropin-
quanti amatori. Caltha quoque et Rosa, ne nihil ad-
dant communi gaudio, aperientes sinum, odores suos
Soli tantum servatos profuse spirant, quibus noctem
dedignantur impertiri, claudentes se folliculis suis si-
mulatøue vesper appetat ; caeterique flores inclinata
paulum, et rore languidula erigentes capita quasi prae-
bent se Soli, et tacite rogant ut suis osculis abstergat
lacrymulas, quas ejus absentite dederant. Ipsa quoque
Tellus in adventum Solis cultiori se induit vestitu, nu-
besque juxta variis chlamydatae coloribus, pompa so-
lenni, longoque ordine videntur ancillari surgenti deo.
Ad summam, nequid deesset ad ejus dilatandas laudes,
huic Persae, huic Libyes, divinos honores decrevere;
Rhodienses pariter celeberrimum illum stupendae mag-
nitudinis colossum, Charetis Lyndiimiro extructum ar-
tificio, huic sacrarunt; huic itidem hodie Occidentalis
Indiae populi thure caeteroque apparatu sacrificare ac-
cepimus. Vos testor, academici, quam jucundum,
quam optatum diuque expectatum vobis illucescat
mane, utpote quod vos ad mansuetiores musas revocet,
a quibus insaturabiles et sitibundos dimiserat ingrata
Nox. Testor ultimo Saturnum coelo deturbatum in
Tartara, quam lubens wellet, simodo per Jovem licerct,
ab exosis tenebris ad auras reverti; quod demum lux
vel ipsi Plutoni sua caligine longe sit potior, id quidem
in confesso est, quando coeleste regnum toties affecta-
vit, unde scite et verissime Orpheus in hymno ad Au-
I”()]^{11]] .
"H xaipei 9pm rāv uépôtrov Yévoc où'ěé rig siv,
'Oc pečyet tijv gºv čºw kaðvréprepov, ovoav
'Hvika, row y\{xvy Wrvov &mé 3Aépápov &Togetang.
ſIác Šá 6poróg Yi)3st, Täv pretóv, d\\áre piña
Tºrpatóówy, Trnvävre, kai évva»tww troXv66vău.
Nec mirum utique cum Dies non minus utilitatis ad-
ſerat quam delectationis, et sola negotiis obeundis ac-
commodata sit; quis enim mortalium lata et immensa
maria trajicere sustineret, sidesperaret affuturum diem;
immo non aliter oceanum navigarent quam Lethen et
Acherontem manes, horrendis nimirum undiquaque
tenebris obsiti. Unusquisque etiam in suo se contineret
gurgustio, haud unquam ausus foras prorepere; adeo
ut necesse esset dissui statim humanam societatem.
Frustra Venerem exeuntem é mari inchoasset Apelles;
frustra Zeuxis Halenam pinxisset, si Nox caeca et ob-
mubila restam visendas oculis nostris adimeret; tum quo-
que frustra tellus serpentes multiplici et erratico lapsu
vites, frustra decentissimae proceritatis arbores profun-
deret, incassum denique gemmis et floribus tanquam
stellulis interpoliret se, coelum exprimere conata; tum
demum nobilissimus ille videndi sensus mullis animali-
bus usui foret; ita prorsus, extincto mundi oculo, de-
florescerent omnia et penitus emorerentur; nec sane
huic cladi diu superessent ipsi homines, quitenebrico-
sam incolerent terram, cum nihil suppeteret unde vic-
titarent, nihil denique obstaret, quominus in antiquum
chaos ruerent omnia. Hisce quidem possit quispiam
inexhausto stylo plura adjicere; verum non permitteret
ipsa verecunda Dies ut singula persequatur, et proclivi
cursuad occasum praecipitans, nullo modo pateretur im-
modice laudantem. Jam igitur declinat in vesperam
dies, et nocti statim cedet, ne adulta hieme solstitialem
contigisse diem facete dicatis. Tantum pace vestra
liceat adjungere pauca quae non possum commode prae-
terire. Meritó igitur poetae Noctem inferis exsurgere
scriptitarunt; cum impossibile plane sit aliunde tot
tantaque mala misi ex eo loco mortalibus invehi. Obor-
ta enim nocte sordescunt et obfuscantur omnia, nec
quicquam tunc profecto interest inter Helenam et Ca-
nidiam, nihil inter pretiosissimos et viles lapillos, nisi
quod gemmarum nonnullae etiam noctis obscuritatem
vincant: huc accedit, quod anoenissima quaºque loca
tumc quidem horrorem incutiant, qui etiam alto et tristi
quodam augetur silentio; siquidem quicquid uspiam est
in agris, aut hominum aut ferarum, vel domum, vel ad
antra raptim se conferunt; ubi stratis immersi ad as-
pectus noctis terribiles claudunt oculos. Nullum foris
conspicies praeterquam fures et laverniones lucifugos,
qui cadem anhelantes et rapinas, insidiantur bonis ci-
vium, et noctu solum vagantur, ne detegantur interdin;
quippe dies nullum non indagare solet nefas, haud
passura lucem suam istiusmodi flagitiis inquinari; mul-
lum habebis obvium nisi lemures et larvas, et empusas
846
PROLUSIONES ORATORIAE.
quas secum Nox comites é locis asportat subterraneis,
quaeque tota nocte terras in sua ditione esse, sibique
cum hominibus communes vendicant. Ideoque opinor
noctem auditum nostrum reddidisse solertiorem, ut um-
brarum gemitus, bubonum et stygum ululatus, ac ru-
gitus leonum, quos fames evocat; ed citius perstringe-
rent aures, animosque ; graviori metu percellerent.
Hinc liquidô constat, quam sit ille falsus animi qui
noctu homines à timore otiosos esse, Noctemdue curas
sopire omnes autumat; namdue hanc vanam esse et
nugatoriam opinionem infoelici norunt experientia, qui-
cunque sceleris cujuspiam conscii sibi fuere; quos tunc
sphinges et harpyite, quos tune gorgones et chimaerae
intentatis facibus insequuntur; norunt miseri, quicum
nullus adsit qui subveniat iis et opituletur, nullus qui
dulcibus alloquiis dolores leniat, ad bruta saxa irritas
jaciunt querelas, subinde exoptantes oriturum dilucu-
lum. Idcirco Ovidius poetarum elegantissimus Noc-
tem jure optimo curarum maximam nutricem appella-
vit. Quod autem eo potissimum tempore fracta et de-
fatigata laboribus diurnis corpora recreemus somno et
refocillemus, id numinis beneficium est non noctis mu-
nus; sed esto, non est tanti somnus ut ejus ergo noc-
tem in honore habeamus, enim vero cum proficiscimur
dormitum, revera tacite fatemur nos imbelles et miseros
homines, qui minuta haec corpuscula ne ad exiguum
tempus sine requie sustentare valeamus. Et certe quid
aliud est somnus quam mortis imago et simulachrum ?
hinc Homero mors et somnus gemelli sunt, uno gene-
rati conceptu, uno partu editi. Postremo, quod luna
caeterague sidera nocti suas preferant faces, id quoque
soli debetur; neque enim habent illa quod transfundant
lumen nisi quod ab illo accipiant mutuum. Quis igitur,
si non tenebrio, si mon effractor, si non aleator, si non
inter scortorum greges noctem pernoctare perpetem
integrosque dies ronchos efflare solitus, quisinquam misi
talis tam inhonestam, tamgue invidiosam causam in se
susceperit defendendam? Atque demiror ego ut aspicere
audeat solem hunc, et etiam cum communi luce impune
frui, quam ingratus vituperat, dignus profecto quem
adversis radiorum ictibus veluti Pythonem novum in-
terimat sol; dignus qui Cimmeriis occlusus tenebris
longam et perosam vitam transigat; dignus denique
cujus oratio somnum moveat auditoribus, ita ut quic-
quid dixerit non majorem somnio quovis fidem faciat;
quique ipse etiam somnolentus, nutantes atque sterten-
tes auditores annuere sibi et plaudere peroranti decep-
tus putet. Sed migra video noctis supercilia, et sentio
atras insurgere tenebras; recedendum est, ne me noxim-
provisum opprimat. Vos igitur, auditores, posteaguam
nox nihil aliud sit quam obitus, et quasi mors diei, nolite
committere ut mors vitae praepomatur; sed causam dig-
nemini mean vestris ornare suffragiis, ita studia vestra
fortunent musae ; exaudiatoue Aurora musis amica,
exaudiat et Phoebus qui cuncta videt auditºlue, quos
habeat in hoc coetu laudis ejus fautores. Dixi.
IN SC HOLIS PUBLIC IS.
De Sphaerarum Concentu.
Si quis mea tenuitati locus Academici, post tot hodie,
tantosque exauditos oratores, conabor etiam ego jam
pro meo modulo exprimere, quam bene velim solemni
hujus lucis celebritati, et tanquam procul sequar hodi-
ernum hunc eloquentiae triumphum. Dum itaque trita
illa, et pervulgata dicendi argumenta refugio penitus,
et reformido, ad novam aliquam materiem ardue ten-
tandam accendit animum, et statim erigit hujus diei
cogitatio, horumque simul quos digna die loquuturos
haud injuria suspicabar; quae duo vel tardo cuivis, et
obtuso casteroquin ingenio stimulos, aut acumen addi-
disse poterant. Hinc idcirco subiit pauca saltem super
illo coelesti concentu, dilatata (quod aiunt) manu, et
ubertate oratoria praefari, de quo mox quasi contracto
pugno disceptandum est; habita tamen ratione tempo-
ris, quod me jam urget et coarctat. Haec tamen per-
inde accipiatis velim auditores, quasi per lusum dicta.
Quis enim sanus existimaverit Pythagoram deum illum
philosophorum, cujus ad nomen omnes ejus saeculi
mortales non sine persancta veneratione assurgebant,
quis, inquam, eum existimaverit tam lubricë fundatam
opinionem unquam protulisse in medium. Sané si
quam ille sphaerarum docuit harmoniam, et circumac-
tos ad modulaminis dulcedinem coelos, per id sapienter
innuere voluit, amicissimos orbium complexus, aequa-
bilesque in etermum ad fixam fati legem conversiones;
in hoc certe vel poetas, vel quod idem pene est, divina
imitatus oracula, à quibus nihil sacri reconditique
mysterii exhibetur in vulgus, nisi aliquo involutum
tegumento et vestitu. Hunc secutus est ille Naturae
Matris optimus interpres Plato, dum singulis coelis
orbibus Sirenas quasdam insidere tradidit, quae melli-
tissimo cantu deos hominesque mirabundos capiant.
Atque hanc deingue conspirationem rerum universam,
et consensum amabilem, quem Pythagoras per harmo-
niam poetico ritu subinduxit, Homerus etiam per
auream illam Jovis catenan de coelo suspensam insig-
niter appositeque adumbravit. Hinc autem Aristo-
teles, Pythagorae, et Platonis aenulus et perpetuus
calumniator, ex labefactatistantorum virorum senten-
tiis viam sternere ad gloriam cupiens, inauditam hanc
coelorum symphoniam, sphaerarumque modulos affinxit
Pythagorae. Quod si sic tulisset sive fatum, sive sors,
ut tua in me, Pythagora pater, transvolasset anima,
haud utique deesset quite facile assereret, quantumvis
gravi jamdiu laborantem infamia. At vero quidni
corpora coelestia, inter perennes illos circuitus, musicos
efficiant sonos ? Annon aequum tibi videtur Aristoteles?
nae ego vix credam intelligentias tuas sedentarium
illum rotandi coeli laborem potuisse tot saeculis perpeti,
nisi ineffabile illud astrorum melos detinuisset abituras,
et modulationes delimimento suasisset moram. Quam
si tu coelo adimas same mentes illas pulchellas, et mi-
nistros deos plane in pistrinum dedis, et ad molas tru-
PROLUSIONES ORATORIAE.
847
satiles damnas. Quinetiam ipse Atlas ruituro statim
coelo jampridem subduxisset humeros, nisi dulcis illa
concentus anhclantem, et tanto sub onere sudabundum
lactissima voluptate permulsisset. Ad haec, pertaesus
astra Delphinus jamdiu coelo sua praeoptasset maria,
nisi probe calluisset, vocales coeli orbes lyram Arioniam
suavitate longe superare. Quid quod credibile est
ipsam alaudam prima luce recta in nubes evolare, et
Lusciniam totam noctis solitudinem cantu transigere,
ut ad harmonicam coeli rationem, quam attente auscul-
tant, suos corrigant modulos. Hinc quoque musarum
circa Jovis altaria dies noctesque saltantium ab ultima
rerum origine increbuit fabula ; hinc Phaebo lyrae
peritia ab longinqua vetustate attributa est. Hinc
Harmoniam Jovis et Electrae fuisse filiam reverenda
credidit antiquitas, quae cum Cadmo nuptui data
esset, totus coeli chorus concinuisse dicitur. Quid si
nullus unquam in terris audiverit hanc astrorum sym-
phoniam P. Ergone omnia supra lunae sphaeram muta
prorsus erunt, torpidoque silentio consopita ? Quinimo
aures nostras incusemus debiles, quae cantus et tam
dulces sonos excipere aut non possunt, aut non dignae
sunt. Sed nec plane inaudita est haec coeli melodia;
quis enim tuas Aristoteles in media aeris plaga tri-
pudiantes capras putaverit, nisi quod praecimentes
coelos ob vicinitatem clare cum audiant, non possint
sibi temperare quo minus agant choreas. At solus in-
ter mortales concentum hunc audisse fertur Pythago-
ras; nisi et ille bonus quispiam genius, et coeli indi-
gena fuerit, qui forte superum jussu delapsus est ad
animos hominum sacra eruditione imbuendos, et ad
bonam frugem revocandos: ad minimum certe vir erat,
qui omnes virtutum numeros in se continebat, quique
dignus erat cum diis ipsis sui similibus sermones mis-
cere, et coelestium perfrui cousortio: ideoque nihil
miror, si dii ejus amantissimi abditissimis eum naturae
secretis interesse permiserint. Quod autem nos hanc
minime audiamus harmoniam same in causa videfur
esse furacis Promethei audacia, quae tot mala homini-
bus invexit, et simul hanc foelicitatem nobis abstulit
qua nec unquam frui licebit, dum sceleribus cooperti
belluinis cupiditatibus obrutescimus; qui enim possu-
mus coelestis illius soni capaces fieri, quorum anima:
(quod ait Persius) in terras curvae sunt, et coelestium
prorsus inanes. At si pura, si casta, si nivea gestare-
mus pectora, ut olim Pythagoras, tum quidem suavis-
sima illa stellarum circumeuntium musica personarent
aures nostrae, et opplerentur; atque dein cuncta illico
tanquam in aureum illud sacculum redirent; nosque
tum demum miseriarum immunes, beatum et vel diis
invidendum degeremus otium. Hic autem me veluti
medio in itinere tempus intersecat, iddue persane op-
portune wereor enim me incondito minimeque numeroso
stylo, huic quam praedico harmoniae, toto hoc tempore
obstrepuerim; fuerimgue ipse impedimento, quo minus
illam audiveritis: Itaque Dixi.
IN SC HOL IS PUBLIC I S.
Contra Philosophiam Scholasticam.
QUERE BAM nuper obnixe, academici, nec in postre-
mis hoc mihi curae erat quo potissimum verborum ap-
paratu vos auditores meos exciperem, cum subito mihi
in mentem venit id quod Marcus Tullius (a quo, non
sine fausto omine exorditur oratio mea) toties commisit
literis; in hoc scilicet partes rhetoris sitas esse, ac po-
sitas, ut doceat, delectet, et denique permoveat. Pro-
inde istuc mihi tantummodo proposui negotium, ut ab
hoc triplici oratoris munere quam minime discedam.
At quoniam docere vos consummatos undique homines
non est quod ego mibi sumam, nec quod vos sustineatis,
liceat saltem (quod proximum est) monere aliquid for-
tasse non omnino abs re futurum ; delectare interim,
quod same perquam vereor, ut sit exilitatis meae, erit
tamen desiderii summa, quam si attigero, certe parum
erit, quin et permoveam. Permovebo autem in praesens
abunde, ex animi sententia, si vos auditores inducere
potero, ut immania illa, et prope monstrosa subtilium,
quod aiunt, doctorum volumina rariori manu evolvatis,
utdue verrucosis sophistarum controversiis paulo re-
missius indulgeatis. At vero ut palam fiat omnibus
quam sit tequum atque honestum quod suadeo, strictim
ostendam, et pro mea semihorula hisce studiis nec ob-
lectari animum, nec erudiri, nec denique commune
bonum quicquam promoveri. Et certe in primis ad
vos provoco, academici, si qua fieri potest ex mea vestri
ingenii conjectura, quid, quaeso, voluptatisinesse potest
in festivis hisce tetricorum senum altercationibus, quae
si non in Trophonii antro, certe in Monachorum spe-
cubus nate olent, atque spirant scriptorum suorum
torvam severitatem, et paternas rugas prae se ferunt,
quaeque inter succinctam brevitatem plus nimio prolixae
taedium creant, et nauseam ; at si quando productiones
leguntur, tum quidem aversationem peme naturalem, et
siquid ultra est innati odii pariunt lectoribus. Saepius
ego, auditores, cum mihi forte aliquoties imponeretur
necessitas investigandi paulisper has argutiolas post
retusam diutina lectione et animi et oculorum aciem,
saºpius inquam ad interspirandum restiti, et subinde
pensum oculis emensus quaesivi mis rum taedii solati-
um ; cum vero plus semper viderem superesse, quâm
quod legendo absolveram, equidem inculcatis hisce
ineptis quoties praeoptavi mibi repurgandum Augete
bubile, foelicemgue praedicavi Herculem, cui facilis
Julio hujusmodi terumnam nunquam imperaveratexan-
tlandam. Nec materiam hanc enervem, languidam, et
humi serpentem erigit, aut attollit floridior stylus, sed
jejunus et exsuccus rei tenuitatem adeo conjunctissime
comitatur, ut ego utique facile crediderim sub tristi
Saturno scriptam fuisse, nisi quod innocua tunc tem
poris simplicitas ignoraret prorsus offucias istas, et de-
verticula, quorum hi libri scatent ubique. Mihi credite,
juvenes ornatissimi, dum ego inanes hasce quaestiun-
culas nonnunquam invitus percurro, videor milli per
848
PROLUSIONES ORATORIAE.
confragosa tesqua, et salebras, perque vastas solitudines,
et prieruptas montium angustias iter conficere; prop-
terea nec verisimile est venustulas, et elegantes musas
pannosis hisce et squalidis praeesse studiis, aut deliros
horum sectatores in suum vendicare patrocinium ; im-
mo existimo nullum unquam fuisse iis in Parnasso
locum, nisi aliquem forte in imo colle angulum incul-
tum, inamoenum, dumis et spinis asperum, atque horri-
dum, carduis, et densa urtica coopertum, à choro et
frequentia dearum remotissimum, quinec emittat lauros
nec fundat flores, quð denique Phoebeas citharae nun-
quam pervenerit sonus. Divina certe poesis ea, qua
coelitus impertita est, virtute obrutam terrena fæce
animam in sublime exuscitans, inter coeli templa locat,
et quasi nectareo halitu afflans, totamgue perfundens
ambrosia, coelestem quodammodo instillat beatitudinem,
et quoddam immortale gaudium insusurrat. Rhetorica
sic animos capit hominum, adeoque suaviter in vincula
pellectos post se trahit, ut nunc ad misericordiam per-
movere valeat, nunc in odium rapere, nunc ad virtutem
bellicam accendere, nunc ad contemptum mortis eve-
here. Historia pulchre concinnata nunc inquietos
animi tumultus sedat et componit, nunc delibatum
gaudio reddit, mox evocat lachrymas, sed mites eas et
pacatas, et quie moesta, nescio quid voluptatis secum
afferant. At vero futiles has, nec non strigosae contro-
versiae, verborumque velitationes, in commovemdis ani-
mi affectibus, certe nullum habent imperium; stuporem
duntaxat et torpedinem accersunt ingenio; proinde
neminem oblectant, nisi qui agrestis, et hirsuti plane
pectoris est, quique ex arcano quodam impetu ad lites
et dissidia proclivis, et insuper impendioloquax a recta
et sana sapientia abhorret semper atque avertitur.
Amandetur itaque cum suis captiunculis sane, vel in
montem Caucasurn, aut sicubi terrarum caeca domina-
tur barbaries, ibique subtilitatum suarum et praestigia-
rium ponat officinam, et pro libitu de rebus nihili tor-
queat et angat se, usque dum mimia solicitudo, veluti
Prometheus ille vultur cor exederit, penitusque ab-
sumpserit. Sed nec minus infrugifera sunt, quam in-
ucunda haec studia, et quae ad rerum cognitionem
nihil prorsus adjutant. Ponamus enim ob oculos
omnes illos turmatim cucullatos vetulos, harum prae-
cipue captionum figulos, quotusquisque est qui ullo
beneficio locupletaverit rem literariam P. Citra dubium
profecto cultam et mitidam, et mansuetiorem philoso-
phiam asperitate impexa deformem pene reddidit, et
veluti malus genius, humana pectora spinis et sentibus
implevit, et perpetuam in scholas intulit discordiam,
quae quidem foelices discentium progressus mirum in
modum remorata est. Quid enim 2 ultró citroque ar-
gutantur versipelles philosophastri P hic suam undi-
que sententiam graviter firmat, ille contra magna
mole labcfactare admititur, et quod inexpugnabili ar-
gumento munitum existimes, id statim adversarius haud
multo negotio amolitur. Haeret interea lector, tanquam
in bivio, quo divertat, qué inclinet anceps, et incertus
consilii, dum tot utrinque confertim vibrantur tela, ut
ipsam lucem adimant, rebusque profundam afferant
caliginem, adeo ut jam lectori tandem opus sit, ut diutur-
nos Cereris imitatus labores, per universum terrarum or-
bem accensa face quaerat veritatem, ct musquam invent-
at : eo usque demum insanite redactus est, ut se misere
caecutire putet, ubi nihil est, quod vidcat. Ad haec mon
rarenter usu venit, ut, qui harum disputationum fuligini
addicunt se totos et devovent, si ſorte aliud quidvis ag-
gredianturâ suis deliramentis alienum, mire prodant in-
scitiam suam, et deridiculam infantiam. Novissine,
summus hic tam serio navatae operte fructus erit, ut stul-
tus evadas accuratior, et nugarum artifex, utgue tibi ac-
cedat quasi peritior ignorantia, nec mirum; quandoqui-
dem haec oninia, de quibus adoo afflictim et anxie labo-
ratum est, in natura rerum nullibi existunt, sed leves
quaedam imagines, et simulachra tenuia turbidas ober-
rant mentes, et rectioris sapientae vacuas. Caeterüm ad
integritatem vitae, et mores excolendos (quod multo
maximum est) quam minime conducant hae nugae,
etiamsi ego taceam, abunde vobis perspicuum est. At-
que vel hinc liquido evincitur quod mihi postremo di-
cendum proposui, scilicet importunam hanc Aoyopaxiav
nec in publicum cedere commodum, nec ullo modo pa-
triae vel honori esse, vel utilitati, quod tamen in sci-
entiis omines antiquissimum esse ducunt. Siquidem
his maxime duobus auctam atque exornatam prae-
cipue patriam animadverti; vel praeclare dicendo, vel
fortiter agendo ; atque litigiosa haec discrepantium
opinionum digladiatio, nec ad eloquentiam instruere,
nec ad prudentiam instituere, mec ad fortia facinora in-
citare posse videtur. Abeant igitur cum suis formali-
tatibus argutatores versuti; quibus post obitum hanc
par erit irrogari poenam, ut cum Ocno illo apud inferos
torqueant funiculos. At quanto satius esset, academici,
quantoque dignius vestro nomine nunc descriptas char-
tula terras universas quasi oculis perambulare, et calcata
vetustis heroibus inspectare loca, bellis, triumphis, ct
etiam illustrium poetarum fabulis mobilitatas regiones
percurrere, nunc aestuantem transmittere Adriam, nunc
ad AEtnam flammigerantem impune accedere, dein
mores hominum speculari, et ordinatas pulchre gentium
respublicas; hinc omnium animantium naturas perse-
qui, et explorare, ab his in arcanas lapidum et herba-
rum vires animum demittere. Nec dubitetis, auditores,
etiam in coelos evolare, ibique illa multiformia nubium
spectra, nivisque coacervatam vim, et unde illae matu-
tinae lachrymae contemplemini, grandinisque exinde
loculos introspicite, et armamenta fulminum perscrute-
mini; nec vos clam sit quid sibi velit aut Jupiter aut
Natura, cum dirus atque ingens cometa coelo saepe mi-
nitatur incendium, nec vos wel minutissimae lateaut
stellulte, quotguot inter polos utrosque sparsae sunt, et
dispalatae; immo solem peregrinantem sequamini co-
mites, et ipsum tempus ad calculos vocate, aetermique
ejus itineris exigite rationem. Sed nec iisdem, quibus
orbis, limitibus contineri et circumscribi se patiatur
vestra mens, sed etiam extra mundi pomoeria divage-
tur; perdiscatgue ultimó (quod adhuc altissimum est)
seipsam cognoscere, simulque sanctas illas mentes, et
intelligentias quibuscum post haec sempiternum initura
est sodalitium. Quid multa nimis? vobis ad hac omnia
disciplinae sit ille, qui tantopere in deliciis est, Aristo-
teles, qui quidem haec prope cuncta scienter et conqui-
site scripta nobis reliquit addiscenda. Cujus ego ad
PROLUSIONES ORATORIÆ.
849
momen jam subito permoveri sentio vos, academici, at-
que in hanc sententiam duci pedetentim, et quasi eo
invitante proclivius ferri. Quod si ita sit, sane ejus
rei laudem, cujusquemodi est, illi debebitis et gratiam :
quod interim ad me attinet, ego certe satis habeo, si
veniam prolixitatis meæ pro vestra humanitate impe-
travero. Dixi.
IN COLLE G I O, &c.
THESIS.
Im rei cujuslibet interitu mom datur resolutio ad
materiam primam.
ERROR an è Pandoræ pixide, an ex penitissimo eru-
perit Styge, an denique unus ex Terræ filiis in cœlites
conjuraverit, non est hujus loci accuratius disquirere.
Hoc autem vel non scrutanti facile innotescat, eum ex
infimis incrementis, veluti olim Typhon, aut Neptuno
genitus Ephialtes in tam portentosam crevisse magni-
tudinem, ut ipsi quidem veritati ab illo metuam. Vi-
deo enim cum ipsa diva á\nSsia haud rarò æquo marte
pugnantem, video post damna factum ditiorem, post
vulnera virescentem, victumque victoribus exultantem.
Quod de Antæo Lybico fabulata est antiquitas. Adeo
ut hinc sane non levi de causa carmem istud Ovidianum
possit quispiam in dubium vocare, an scilicet ultima
coelestum terras reliquerit Astræa ; vereor etenim ne
pax et veritas multis post eam sæculis invisos etiam
mortales deseruerint. Nam certe si illa adhuc in terris
diversaretur, quis inducatur ut credat, luscum et cæcu-
tientem errorem veritatem solis æmulam posse intueri,
quin plane vincatur oculorum acies, quin et ipse rursus
abigatur ad inferos, unde primum emersus est? At vero
citra dubium aufugit in cælum, patriam suam misellis
hominibus nunquam reditura ; et jam totis in scholis
dominatur immundus error, et quasi rerum potitus est,
non in strenuos utique et non paucos nactus assertores.
Quarum accessione virium, ultra quam ferri potest in-
flatus, quænam est ulla physiologiæ particula vel .
minutula, in quam non impetiverit, quam non profanis
violaverit unguibus, quemadmodum harpias Phinei
regis Arcadum mensas conspurcasse accepimus ? unde
sane eò res deducta est, ut lautissima philosophiæ cu-
pedia, ipsis quibus superi vescuntur dapibus non minus .
Com-
opipara, nunc suis conviviis nauseam faciant.
tingit enim sæpenumero ingentia philosophorum volu-
mina evolventi, et diurnis nocturnisque manibus obte-
renti, ut dimittatur incertior quam fuerit pridem.
Quicquid enim affirmat hic, et satis valido se putat
statuminare argumento, refellit alter nullo negotio aut
saltem refellere videtur, atque ita pene in infinitum
semper habet hic quod opponat, semper ille quod
respondeat; dum miser interim lector hinc atque inde
tanquam inter duas belluas diu divulsus ac discerptus,
tedioque prope enectus, tandem veluti in bivio relin-
quitur, huc am illuc inclinet plane anceps animi: ab
utro autem stet veritas, fortasse (ne vera dissimulem)
non est operæ pretium ea, qua expedit, industria ex-
plorare : quippe saepius de re perquam minimi mo-
menti maxima inter centurias philosophantium agit -
tur controversia. Cæterùm videor mihi inaudire sub-
mussitantes quosdam, quo nunc se proripit ille ? dum
in errorem invehitur, ipse toto errat cœlo : equidem
agnosco erratum ; neque hoc fecissem, nisi de vestro
candore magna mihi pollicitus. Jam igitur tandem
accingamur ad institutum opus : et his tantis difficul-
tatibus dea Lua (quod ait Lipsius) me fœliciter expe-
diat. Quaestio quæ nobis hodie proponitur enucleanda
hæc est, an interitu cujuslibet rei detur resolutio usque
ad materiam primam ? Quod aliis verbis sic proferre
solent, an ulla accidentia quæ fuere in corrupto mane-
ant etiam in genito ? hoc est, an intereunte forma
omnia intereant accidentia quæ in composito præex-
titerant ? Magna quidem est inter multos haudqua-
quam obscuri nominis philosophos hac de re senten-
tiarum discrepantia ; hi dari ejusmodi resolutionem
contendunt acerrimè, illi neutiquam dare posse mordi-
cus defendunt ; hos ut sequar inclinat animus, ab illis
ut longe lateque dissentiam tum ratione adductus, uti
opinor, tum etiam tantorum virorum authoritate : hoc
autem quo pacto probari queat, reliquum est ut pau-
lisper experiamur ; idque succincte quoad poterimus,
atque primo hunc in modum. Si fiat resolutio ad
materiam primam subinfertur inde essentiale istud
effatum, nempe eam nunquam reperiri nudam, ma-
teriæ primæ perperam attribui ; occurrent advcrsarii,
hoc dicitur respectu formæ, verum sic habento scioli
isti formas substantiales nullibi gentium reperiri
citra formas accidentarias : sed l:oc leve, nec caus;e
admodum jugulum petit ; firmiora liis adhibenda
sunt. Atque imprimis videamus ecquos habeamus
veterum philosophorum nostrarum partium fautores;
inquirentibus ecce ultro se nobis offert Aristoteles,
cumque lectissima manu suorum interpretum se no-
bis agglomerat; quippe velim intelligatis auditores,
ipso duce et hortatore Aristotele initum hoc prælium,
et bonis avibus, uti spero, auspicatum. Qui quidem id
ipsum quod mos arbitramur, innuere videtur, Metaph.
7, Text. 8, ubi ait quantitatem primò inesse materiæ ;
huic perinde sententire quicumque refragabitur, possum
illi dicam hæreseως ex lege omnium sapientium au-
dacter scribere. Quinimo alibi plane vult quantitatem
materiæ primæ proprietatem, quod idem asserunt ple-
rique ejus sectatores ; proprium autem à suo subjecto
avellentem quis ferat ipsa vel edititii judicis sententia :
verum age, cominus agamus, et quod suadeat ratio per-
pendamus. Assertio itaque probatur primo hinc, quod
materia habet propriam entitatem actualem ex sua pro-
pria existentia, ergo potest sustentare quantitatem, eam
saltem quæ dicitur interminata. Quid ? quod nonnulli
confidenter affirment formam non nisi mediante quan-
titate in materiam recipi, secundo, si accidens corrum-
pitur, necesse habet ut his tantum modis corrumpatur,
vel per introductionem contrarii, vel per disitionem ter-
mini, vel per absentiam alterius causæ conservantis,
vel denique ex defectu proprii subjecti cui inhæreat:
priori modo nequit corrumpi quantitas, posteaquam con
850
PROLUSIONES ORATORIÆ.
trarium non habeat; et quantumvis habeat qualitas
hic tamen introduci non est supponendum : secundus
modus huc mom spectat, utpote qui sit relatorum pro-
prius; nec per absentiam causæ conservantis, ea enim,
quam assigmant adversarii, est forma ; accidentia au-
tem à forma pendere concipiuntur bifariam, vel in ge-
mere causæ formalis, aut efficientis ; prior dependentia
mom est immediata, forma enim substantialis non in-
format accidentia, meque intelligi potest quod aliud
munus exerceat circa ea in hoc genere causa, ideoque
tantummodo mediata est, nimirum im quamtum materia
dependet à forma, et hæc deinceps à materia ; modus
dependentiæ posterior est in genere causæ efficientis, à
forma tamen am accidentia pendeant in hoc genere
necne, in ambiguo res est: sed ut domemus ita esse,
non sequitur tamen, depereunte forma juxta etiam pe-
rire accidentia, propterea quod causæ illi recedenti,
succedit è vestigio alia similis omnino sufficiens ad con-
servandum eumdem numero effectum absque interrup-
tione : postremo, quod non ex defectu proprii subjecti
im mihilum recidit quantitas aliaque id genus acci-
dentia, probatur qnia subjectum quantitatis est aut
compositum, aut forma, aut materia ; quod compositum
mon sit, ex eo liquet, quod accidens quod est in compo-
sito attingit simul sua umiome et materiam et formam
per modum umius, at vero quantitas non potest ullo
modo attingere animam rationalem, dum hæc spiritua-
lis sit, et effectus formalis quamtitatis, hoc est exten-
sionis quantitativæ minime capax ; porro quod forma
mom sit subjectum ejus, ex supradictis satis est perspi-
cuum : restat igitur ut materia sola sit subjectum quan-
titatis, atque ita præciditur omnis interitus illatio im
quantitate. Quod pertinet ab id quod vulgo affertur
de cicatrice, argumentum efficacissimum esse censeo:
quis enim mihi fidem adeo extorqueat, ut credam eam
in cadavere plane diversam esse ab ea quæ fuit nuper-
rime in vivo, cum nulla subsit ratio, nulla necessitas
corrigendi sensus nostri, qui raro quidem hallucinatur
circa proprium objectum ; citiusque ego et facilius au-
direm de larvis, deque empusis miri commemorantem,
quam cerebrosos hosce philosophrastos de accidentibus
suis de novo procreatis stulte et insubide obgammientes.
Etenim calorem, cæterasque animalis qualitates inten-
sibiles et remissibiles easdem prorsus pernovimus in
ipso mortis articulo, et post mortem itidem ; quorsum
enim destruerentur hæ, cum aliæ similes sunt produ-
cendæ ? huc accedit, quod si de novo procrearentur, ad
tempus non adeo exiguum durarent, neque etiam re-
pente ad summum pervenirent intensionis gradum, sed
paulatim et quasi pedetemtim. Adde quod vetustissi-
mum sit axioma, quantitatem sequi materiam, et qua-
litatem formam. Potui quidem, immo ac debui huic
rei diutius immorari, ac profecto nescio am vobis, mi-
himet certe ipse maximopere sum taedio. Superest
ut jam ad adversariorum argumenta descendamus,
quæ faxint musæ, ut ego in materiam primam si fieri
potest, vel potius in nihilum redigam. Quod ad pri-
mum attinet, Aristotelis testimonium, quod dixerit in
generatione non manere subjectum sensibile, occur-
rimus illud intelligi debere d: subjecto completo
et integro (i. e.) de substantiali composito, quod
testatur Philoponus antiquus et eruditus scriptor. 2.
Quod inquit Arist. materia est mec quid, mec quantum,
nec quale ; hoc non dicitur quod nulla quantitate aut
qualitate efficiatur, sed quia ex se, et in entitate sua
nullam aut quantitatem aut qualitatem includat. Ter-
tio, ait Arist. destructis primis substantiis destrui omnia
accidentia, quod sane futurum non infici , mur si ipsi
corruptæ subinde succederet alia. Postremo, formam
inquit recipi in materiam nudam ; hoc est, muditate
formæ substantialis. Adhuc incrudescit pugna, et nu-
tat vietoria, sic enim instaurato prælio imcursant, mate-
ria quandoquidem sit pura potentia, nullam habet esse
præterquam illud quod emendicata forma, umde mom
satis ex se valet ad sustentanda accidentia, nisi prius
ad minimum natura conjungatur formæ à qua rò είναι
acceptum ferat; huic errori sic mederi solent, materiam
primam suum habere proprium esse, quod licet in genere
substantiæ sit incompletum, cum accidente tamen si -
conferatur esse simpliciter haud incommode dici potest.
Quinetiam objiciunt materiam respicere formam sub-
stantialem ut actum primum, at accidentia ut actus se-
cumdarios. Respondeo, materiam respicere formam
prius ordine intentionis, non generationis aut executio-
mis. Gliscitjam atque effervescit contentio, et tanquam
ad internecionem dimicaturi urgent mos acrius hunc ad
modum : omnis proprietas manat active ab essentia ejus
cujus est proprietas ; quantitas autem hoc nequit, quia
hæc dimanatio est aliqua efficicntia, materia autem se-
cundum se mullam habet efficientiam, cum sit mere
passiva ; ergo, &c. Respondeo, duobus modis posse
intelligi naturalem conjunctionem materiæ cum quan-
titate, ratione solum potentiæ passivæ intrinsecus
natura sua postulantis talem affectionem ; neque enim
ulla impellit necessitas, ut omnis innata proprietas sit
debita subjecto ratione principii activi ; namque inter-
dum sufficit passivum, quo modo multi opimantur mo
tum esse naturalem cœlo. Secundo potest et intelligi
per intrinsecam dimanationem activam, cum in se
habeat veram et actualem essentiam. Sed nec adhuc
omnis amissa spes victoriæ ; iterum enim facto impetu
adoriuntur, inferentes deo formam media quantitate in
materiam recipi, quoniam imest materiæ prius : mos è
contra aperte reclamamus huic sequelæ, et nihilominus
quo omnia possimus salva reddere, hac utimur distincti-
ome, recipi formam in materiam media quantitate ut.
dispositione, seu conditione necessaria, verum mullo
modo tamquam potentia proxime receptiva formæ.
Ultimò, sic arguunt, si quantitas insit materiæ soli se-
quitur esse ingenerabilem et incorruptibilem ; quod
videtur repugnare, quia motus per se fit ad quantitatem.
At mos utique largimur consequentiam, quippe revera
quantitas est incorruptibilis quoad suam entitatem,
licet quoad varios terminos possit incipere et desinere
esse per conjunctionem et divisionem quantitatis, meque
emim est pcr se motus ad quantitatis productionem, sed
ad aceretionem ; et nec eo fit quasi mova quantitas in-
cipiat esse in rerum matura, sed eo quod una quantitas
adjungatur alteri, et quæ erat aliena fit propria. Pos-
sem equidem plura argumenta ultra citroque proferre,
quæ tamen tædii levandi gratia prætermitto; hic igitur
satius eruit receptui canere.
PROLUSIONES ORATORIÆ.
851
IN SC H OLIS PU BL IC IS.
Nom dantur formæ partiales in animali præter totalem.
RoMAN 1 rerum olim domini altissimum imperii fasti-
gium adepti sunt, quale nec Assyria magnitudo, nec
virtus Macedonica, unquam potuit attingere, quò nec
futura regum majestas efferre se olim valebit : sive ipse
Jupiter annis jam gravior, cœloque comtemtus suo in
otium se tradere voluerit, commissis populo Romano
tamquam diis terrestribus rerum humanarum habenis;
sive hoc Saturno patri in Italiam detruso ad amissi
cœli solatium concesserit, ut Quirites, ejus nepotes,
quicquid uspiam est, terrae, marisqtie potirentur. Ut-
cunque certe non ultro largitus est hoc illis beneficium,
sed per assidua bella, perque longos labores ægre dedit,
exploraturus opinor, an Romani soli digni viderentur,
qui summi vices Jovis inter mortalcs gererent ; itaque
parce duriterque vitam degere coacti sunt, quippe in-
choatas pacis blanditias abrupit semper belli clamor, et
circumcirca strepitus armorum. Ad hæc, divictis qui-
busque urbibus et provinciis præsidia imponere et sæ-
pius renovare necesse habuere, omnemque pene juven-
tutem nunc in longinquam militiam, nunc in colonias
mittere. Cæterùm non incruentam semper victoriam
domum reportarunt, immo sæpe funestis cladibus af-
fecti sunt. Siquidem Brennus Gallorum dux virescen-
tem modo Romanam gloriam pene delevit; et parum
abfuit, quo minus divinitus creditum orbis moderamen
abripuerit Romæ Carthago urbs mobilissima. Denique
Gothi et Vandalici sub Arico rege, Hummique et Pano-
nii Attyla et Bleda ducibus totam inundantes Italiam,
florentissimas imperii opes, cx tot bellorum spoliis ag-
gestas, miserè diripuere, Romanos paulo ante reges
hominum turpi fuga stravere, ipsamque urbem, ipsam
inquam Romam, solo nominis terrore ceperunt; quo
facto nihil dici aut fingi potuit gloriosius, plane quasi
ipsam victoriam aut amore captant, aut vi et armis ex-
terrefactum in suas traxissent partes. Satis admirati
estis auditores, quorsum hæc omnia protulerim, jam
accipite. Hæc ego quoties apud me recolo animoque
colligo, toties cogito quamtis viribus de tuenda veritate
certatum sit, quantis omnium studiis, quantis vigiliis
contenditur labantem ubique, et profligatam veritatem
ab injuriis hostium asserere. Nec tamen probiberi po-
test, quin fœdissima colluvies errorum invadat indies
omnes disciplinas, quæ quidem tanta vi aut veneno
pollet, ut vel niveæ veritati suam imaginem inducere
valeat, aut sideream veritatis speciem nescio quo fuco
sibi adsciscere, qua, ut videtur, arte et magnis philoso-
phis frequenter imposuit, et honores, venerationemque
uni veritati debitam sibi arrogavit. Quod im hodierna
quæstione videre poteritis, quæ quidem non instrenuos
nacta est pugiles, eosque clari nominis, si relictis hisce
partibus veritatem demereri mallent: itaque nostræ nunc
erit operæ, ut nudatum, plumisque emendicatis exutum
errorem deformitati nativæ reddamus; quod ut expedi-
tius fiat gravissimorum vestigiis authorum insistendum
3 I
esse mihi existimo, neque enim expectandum est, ut
ego quicquam de meo adjiciam, quod utique tot viros
ingenio præstabiles fugit et præteriit ; idcirco quod
sufficit ad rem dilucidandam expromam brevi, argu-
mentoque uno atque altero tamquam aggere vallabo ;
tum si quid reclamat, atque obstat nostræ sententiæ
diluam, ut potero; quae tamen omnia paucis perstrin-
gam, et quasi extremis alis radam. Contra unitatem
formæ, quam in una eademque materia statuere semper
emunctiores philosophi solent, varias opiniones subor-
tas esse legimus ; quidam enim plures in animali for-
mas totales dari pertinaciter contendunt, idque pro suo
quisque captu varie defendunt ; alii totalem umicam,
partiales vero multipliccs ejusdem materiæ hospitio ex-
cipi importunius asseverant. Cum illis ad tempus more
bellico paciscemur inducias, dum in hos omnem prælii
vim atque impetum transferimus. Ponatur prima in
acie Aristoteles, qui noster plane est, quique sub finem
primi libri de anima, non occulte favet nostræ asser
tioni. Huic authoritati aliquot attexere argumenta
primis Chrysostomus Javellus, cujus è stercorario,
nimirum horridulo et incompto stylo, aurum et mar-
garitas effodere possimus, quæ si quis delicatus asper-
metur, in illum sane aliquatenus belle quadrabit ille
Æsopici Galli apologus. In hunc ferme modum argu-
mentatur ; distinctio illa et organizatio partium dissi-
milarium præcedere debet introductionem animæ, ut-
pote quæ sit actus corporis non cujuslibet, sed physici
organici ; quapropter immediate ante productionem
totalis formæ necesse est corrumpi partiales illas misi
corruat penitus receptissimum illud axioma, generatio
unus est alterius corruptio ; quarum productionem non
sequitur similium præsentamea productio; id enim
frustra foret, et ad naturæ matris sapientiam parum,
conveniens. Deinde posteaquam omnis forma, sive
perfecta sit, sive imperfecta, tribuat esse specificum,
necesse est, ut quamdiu manet ista forma, tamdiu res
illa maneat eadem, non variata secundum substantiam
suam, proindeque superveniet forma totalis tanquam
accidens, non per generationem sed per alterationem.
Sequitur porro animam totalem sive divisibilem, sive
indivisibilem, non sufficere ad omnes partes animantis
plene perfecteque informandas, quod ut largiamur
nulla suadet ratio. Sequitur itidem unam formam
substantialem esse quasi dispositionem proximam et
permanentem ad aliam, quod veritatis absUnum est,
quandoquidem unaquæque forma constituit essentiam
completam in genere substantiæ. Postremo, si in om-
nibus partibus puta hominis plurificientur formæ par-
tiales, ex illis certe consurget una integra distincta ab
anima rationali, unde illa erit, aut forma inanimati seu
corporeitatis, aut mistionis (quam præter animam in
homine dari sane ultra quam credibile est) vel erit
anima sensitiva, aut vegetativa, hoc autem affirmantem
nullo modo audiat eruditior chorus philosophantium ;
cujus rei ampliori probatione supersedeo, quoniam in
confesso est, nec admodum accedit ad apicem causæ.
Verum, quod caput est controversiæ, objiciunt adver-
sarii, partem ab animali amputatam remanere actu
post separationem, mon per formam totius cum sit ex-
852
PROLUSIONES ORATORIAE.
tra totum, mec per formam recens acquisitam, cum nul-
lum adsit agens, nulla perceptibilis actio, nulla praevia
alteratio; ergo, actu existit per formam propriam quam
prius habebat, dum erat una in toto. Atque hoc argu-
mento arietare se putant causam nostram et funditus
evertere : caeterum non minus were quam vulgariter
solet responderi, formam de novo genitam, cum vilis-
sima sit utpote cadaveris, et quasi via ad resolutionem,
certe nec multum temporis, nec dispositiones multas,
nec ordinatam alterationem efflagitare. Quid si etiam
causa aliqua universalis concurrat cum proximo tem-
peramento ad inducendam qualemcumque formam me
materia reperiatur vacua Quod autem multiplices
visantur in animali operationes, id non à formis dis-
tinctis partialibus petendum est, sed ab animae totalis
eminentia, quae quidem aequipollet formis specie dis-
tinctis. Caeteras quae occurrunt, levioris momenti
objectiones ex composito praeterire libet, neque enim
jugulant; faciliusque amoveri, et luculentius redargui
poterunt, si forte inter disputandum prolatae fuerint in
medium. Quocumque res redeat tametsi ego causa
cadam, causa non cadet; satis enim superque suo
marte valet ad se defendendam invicta semper veritas;
mec ad id alienis indiget adminiculis; et licet nobis
aliquando superari, et pessum premi videatur, invio-
latam tamen perpetué servat se, et intactam ab erroris
unguibus; in hoc soli non absinnilis, qui saepe invo-
lutum se, et quasi inquinatum nubibus ostendit huma-
nis oculis, cum tamen collectis in se radiis, totoque
ad se revocato splendore purissimus ab omni labe
colluceat.
IN FERIIS MESTIVIS COLLEGII, SED CON-
CURRENTE, UT SOLET, TOTA FERE
ACADEMIAE JUVENTUTE.
ORATIO.
Exercitationes monolunquam ludicras Philosophia,
Studiis nom obesse.
CUM ex ea urbe quae caput urbium est, huc nuper
me reciperem, academici, deliciarum omnium, quibus is
1ocus supra modum affluit, usque ad saginam, prope
dixerim, satur, sperabam mihi iterum aliquando otium
illud literarium, quo ego vitae genere etiam coelestes
animas gaudere opinor; eratºſue penitus in animo jam
tandem abdere me in literas, et jucundissimae philoso-
phiae perdius et pernox assidere; ita semper assolet
laboris et voluptatis vicissitudo amovere satietatis tae-
dium, et efficere, ut intermissa repetantur alacrius.
Cum his me incalentem studiis repente avocavit, atque
abstraxit pervetusti moris fere annua celebritas, jus-
susque ego sum eam operam quam acquirendae sapien-
tiae primo destinaram, ad nugas transferre, et novas
ineptias excogitandas: quasi jam nunc non essent
onnia stultorum plena, quasi egregia illa, et non minus
Argo decantata navis stultifera fecisset maufragium,
plane denique ac si ipsi Democrito materia jam ridendi
deesset. Verum date quaeso veniam, auditores; hic
enim hodiernus mos, utut ego liberius paulo sum locu-
tus, same quidem mon est ineptus, sed impense potius
laudabilis, quod quidem ego jam mihi proposui statim
luculentius patefacere. Quod si Junius Brutus secun-
dus ille rei Romanae conditor, magnus ille ultor regiae
libidinis, animum prope diis immortalibus paren, et
mirificam indolem simulatione vecordiae supprimere
sustinuit; certe nihil est, cur me pudeat aliquantisper
Awpooopic mugari, ejus presertim jussu, cujus interest,
tanquam acdilis hos quasi solennes ludos curare. Tum
nec mediocriter me pellexit, et invitavit ad has partes
subeundas vestra, vos quiejusdem estis mecum collegii,
in me nuperrime comperta facilitas, cum enim ante
praeteritos menses aliquam multos oratorio apud vos
munere perfuncturus essem, putaremoſue lucubrationes
meas qualescunque etiam ingratas propemodum futuras,
et mitiores habituras judices AEacum et Minoa, quam é
vobis ſere quemlibet, sane praeter opinionem mean,
praeter mean si quid erat speculae, non vulgari secuti
ego accepi, imo ipse sensi, omnium plausu exceptae
sunt, immo eorum, qui in me alias propter studiorum
dissidia essent prorsus infenso et inimico animo : gene-
rosum utique simultatis exercendae genus, et regio
pectore non indigmum ; siquidem cum ipsa amicitia
plerumque multa inculpate facta detorquere soleat,
tunc profecto acris et infesta inimicitia errata forsitan
multa, et haud pauca sine dubio indiserte dicta, leniter
et clementius quam meum erat meritum interpretari
non gravabatur. Jam semel unico hoc exemplo vel
ipsa demens ira mentis compos fuisse videbatur, et hoc
facto furoris infamiam abluisse. At vero summopere
oblector, et mirum in modum voluptate perfundor, cum
videam tanta doctissimorum hominum frequentia cir-
cumfusum me, et undique stipatum ; et rursus tamen
cum in me descendo, et quasi flexis introrsum oculis
mean tenuitatem secretus intueor, equidem saepius
mihimet soli conscius erubesco et repentina quaedam
ingruens moestitia subsilientem deprimit et jugulat
laetitiam. Sed nolite, academici, sic me jacentem et
consternatum, et acie oculorum vestrorum tanquam de
coelo tactum, nolite quaeso sic deserere; erigat me
semianimum, quod potest, et refocillet vestri favoris
aura, ita fiet, ut, vobis authoribus, non admodum
grave sit hoc malum; at remedium mali vobis ex-
hibentibus, eo jucundius et acceptius; adeo ut mibi
fuerit perquam gratum sic stepius examinari, modo
liceat à vobis recreari me toties et refici. At Ö
interim singularem in vobis vim, atque eximiam vir-
tutem, quae tanquam hasta illa Achillea, Vulcani mu-
nus, vulnerat et medicatur! Caeterum nec miretur
quispiam, si ego tot eruditione insignes viros, totum-
que pene academiae florem huc confluxisse, tanquam
inter astra positus triumphem ; vix etenim opinor
plures olim Athenas adventasse ad audiendum duos
oratores summos Demosthenem et AEschinem de prin-
cipatu eloquentiae certantes, nec eam unquam foeli-
citatem contigisse peroranti Hortensio, mec tot tam
egregie literatos viros condecorasse orantem Cicero-
PROLUSIONES ORATORIAE.
853
nem; adeo ut quamvis ego hoc opus minus foeliciter
absolvero, erit tamen mihi honori non aspernando in
tanto concursu conventuque praestantissimorum homi-
num vel verba fecisse. Atque hercle non possum ego
nunc, quin mihi blandiuscule plaudam, qui vel Orpheo,
vel Amphione multo sim meo judicio fortunatior: hi
enim chordulis suavi concentu adsonantibus digitos
tantum docte et perite admovebant ; eratgue in ipsis
fidibus, et in apto dextroque manuum motu aequalis
utrinque pars dulcedinis: atqui ego si quid hodie laudis
hinc reportavero, ea sane et tota erit et were mea, tan-
toque nobilior, quanto ingenii opus vincit ac praestat
manuum artificium. Deinde hi saxa, et feras, sylvas-
que ad sc trahebant, et si quos homines, rudes illos et
agrestes: at ego doctissimas mihi deditas aures, et ab
ore med pendentes video. Novissime agrestes illi, et
ferte jam satis notam ct complures exauditam seque-
bantur nervorum harmoniam ; vos vero huc rapuit, et
jam detinet sola expectatio. Scd tamen academici, hic
vos imprimis commonefactos volo, me non haec glo-
riosus crepuisse; utinam enim mihi vel in praesentia
concederctur melleum illud, scu verius nectareum elo-
quentite flumen quicquid unquam Attica wel Romana
ingenia imbuebat olim, et quasi coclitus irrorabat, uti-
nam mihi liceret omnem penitus Suadac medullam
exugere, et insius etiam Mercurii scrimia fuffurari, om-
mesque elegantiarum loculos funditus eximamire, quo
possim aliquid tanta expectatione, tam praeclaro coetu,
tam denique tersis et delicatis auribus dignum ad ferre.
Ecce, auditores, quo me raptat et impellit vehementis-
simus ardor et prolubium placendi volis, quippe deim-
proviso me provectum sentio in ambitionem quandam,
sed eam sane piam, et honestum, si hoc fieri potest,
sacrilegium. Et certe existimo haudduaquam mihi
opus esse Musarum auxilium implorare et exposcere,
iis enim me circumseptum puto, qui Musas omnes spi-
rant et Gratias, totumque reor Helicona, et quaecundue
sunt alia Musarum delubra ad hunc diem celebrandum
omnes suos effudisse alumnos; adeo ut credibile sit jam
nunc propter eorum absentiam lugere et deflorescere
Parnassi lauros; unde profecto frustra erit Musas, et
Charites, et Libentias usquam terrarum quaeritare,
quam in hoc loco ; quod si ita sit, necesse est protinus
ipsam barbariem, errorem, ignorantiam, et omne illud
musis invisum genus quam celerrimè aufugere ad as-
pectum vestrum, et sub diverso longe coelo abscondere
sese; atque deinde quidem quid obstat, quo minus
quicquid est barbarae, incultae, et obsoletae locutionis
abigatur exemplè ab oratione mea, atque ego afflatu
vestro, et arcano distinctu disertus et politus subito
evadam. Utcunque tamen vos, auditores, obtestor, ne
quem vestrum poemiteat meis paulisper vacasse mugis;
ipsi enim dii onnes, coelestis politice cura ad tempus
deposita, depugnantium homunculorum spectaculo
saºpius interfuisse perhibentur; aliquoties etiam hu-
miles non dedignati casus, et paupere hospitio excepti,
fabas et olera narranturesitasse. Obsecro itidem ego
vos, atque oro, auditores optimi, ut hoc meum quale
conviviolum ad subtile vestrum et sagax palatum
faciat. Verum etiams, ego permultos noverim sciolos
quibus usitatissimum est, si quid ignorarunt, id superbe
et inscite apud alios contemmere, tanquam indignum
cui operam impendant suam : quemadmodum hic dia-
lecticam insulse vellicat, quam nunquam assequipottie-
rit; ille philosophiam nihili facit, quia scilicet formo-
sissima dearum natura nunquam illum tali dignata est
honore, ut se nudam illi praebucrit intuendam: ego
tamen festivitates et sales, in quibus quoque perexi-
guam agnosco facultatem mean, non gravabor, ut po-
tero, laudare; si prius hoc unum addidero, quod sane
arduum videtur, et minime proclive, me jocos hodie
seriö laudaturum. Atque id non immeritó quidem,
quid enim est quod citius concilict, diutiusque retineat
amicitias, quam amoenum et festivum ingenium ? et
profecto cui desunt sales, et lepores, et politulae facetite,
haud temere invenietis cuisit gratus et acceptus. No-
bis autem, academici, si quotidiani moris esset indor-
mire et quasi immori philosophiae, et inter dumos et
spinas logicae consenescere citra ullam enim relaxa-
tionem, et nunquam concesso respirandi loco, quid,
quaeso, aliud esset philosophari, quam in Trophonii
antro vaticinari, et Catonis plus mimio rigidi sectam
sectari; immo dicerent vel ipsi rusticani, sinapi nos
victitare. Adde quod, quemadmodum qui luctae et
campestri Judo assuescunt se, multo casteris valentiores
redduntur, et ad omne opus paratiores; ita pariter
usu venit, ut per hanc ingenii palaestram corroboretur
nervus animi, et quasi melior sanguis et succus com-
paretur, utgue ipsa indoles limatior fiat acutiorque, et
ad omnia sequax et versatilis. Quod si quis urbanus
et lepidus haberi nolit, ne sis hoc illi stomacho si pa-
ganus et subrusticus appelletur; et probe movimus
illiberale quoddam genus hominum, qui cum ipsi pror-
sus insulsi sint et infestivi, suam tacite secum aesti-
mantes vilitatem ct inscitiam, quicquid forte urbanius
dictitatum audiunt, id statim in se dici putant; digni
same quibus id were eveniat, quod injuria suspicantur,
ut scilicet omnium dicteriis everberantur, pene usque-
dum suspendium cogitent. Sed non valent istie homi-
mum quisquiliae urbanitatis elegantulae licentiam in-
hibere. Vultis itaque me auditores, rationis funda-
mento fidem exemplorum superstruere 2 ea utique mihi
abunde suppetunt, primus omnium occurrit Homerus
ille oriens, et Lucifer cultioris literaturae, cum quo
omnis eruditio tanquam gemella nata est; ille enim
interdam a deorum consiliis et rebus in coelo gestis
divinum revocans animum, et ad facetias divertens,
murium et ranarum pugnam lepidissime descripsit.
Quinetiam Socrates, teste Pythio, sapientissimus ille
mortalium, jurgiosam uxoris morositatem saepenumero
quam urbane perstrinxisse fertur. Omnia deinde ve-
terum philosophorum diverbia sale sparsa, et lepore
venusto passim legimus referta; et certe hoc unum
erat quod antiquos omnes comoediarum et epigramma-
tum scriptores, et Graecanicos et Latinos, aeternitate
nominis donavit. Quinimo accepimus, Ciceronis jocos
et facetias tres libros à Tyrone conscriptos implevisse.
Et cuique jam in manibus est ingeniosissimum illud
Moriae encomium non infimi scriptoris opus, multie-
que aliae clarissimorum hujus memoriae oratorum de
rebus ridiculis extant haud infacetae prolusiones. Vul-
tis summos imperatores, et reges, et ſortes viros ? Ac-
854
PROLUSIONES ORATORIAE.
cipite Periclem, Epaminondam, Agesilaum, et Philip-
pum Macedonem, quos (ut Gelliano more loquar)
festivitatum et salse dictorum scatuisse memorant his-
torici : ad hos Caium Laelium, Pub. Cor. Scipionem,
Cheium Pompeium, C. Julium et Octavium Caesares,
quos in hoc genere omnibus praestitisse coactaneis
author est M. Tullius. Vultis adhuc majora nomina P
ipsum etiam Jovem reliquosque Coelites inter epulas.
et pocula jucunditatise dantes inducunt poetae sagacis-
simi veritates adumbratores. Vestra demum, acade-
mici, utar tutela et patrocinio, quod mihi erit omnium
ad instar; quippe quam non displiceant vol is sales et
joculi; indicat satis tantus hodie vestrum factus con-
cursus, et hoc sane unumquoddue caput mihi annuere
vide tur; nec mirum est mehercle festam hanc ut mun, -
dulani urbanitatem onnes probos, simulque claros viros
sic oblectare, cum et insa inter splendidos virtutum
Aristotelicarum ordines sublimis sedeat, et velut in
Panthaeo quodam diva cum divis sororibus colluceat.
Sed forte non desunt quidem barbati magistri tetrici
oppido et difficiles, qui se magnos Catones, nedum
Catunculos putantes, vultu ad severitatem stoicam
composito, obstipo mutantes capite anxie querantur
omnia nunc dierum commisceri, et in deterius perverti
et loco priorum Aristotelis ab initiatis recens bacca-
laureis exponendorum, scommata et inanes mugas in-
verecunde et intempestive jactari; hodiernum quoque
exercitium a majoribus nostris sine dubio recte et fide-
liter institutum ob insignem aliquem, sive in rhetorica,
sive in philosophia fructum inde percipiendum, nunc
nuper in insipidos sales perperam immutari. At vero
his quod respondeatur ad manum mihi est, et in pro-
cinctu ; sciant enim illi, si nesciant, literas, cum leges
reipub. nostrae literariae primum essent late, ab exteris
regionibus vix has in oras fuisse advectas: idcirco cum
Graecae et Latinae linguae peritia impendio rara esset
et insolems, expediebat ed acriori studio, et magis
assiduis exercitationibus ad eas emiti et aspirare : nos
autem quandoquidem superioribus nostris peus sumus
morati, melius eruditi, oportebit relictis quae haud
multam habent difficultatem ad ea studia accedere, ad
quae et illi contulissent se, si per otium licuisset; nec
vos praeteriit primos quosque legumlatores duriora
paulo scita, et severiora quam ut ferri possint semper
edere solere, ut deflectentes et paululum relapsi homines
in ipsum rectum incidant. Denique mutata nunc om-
mino rerum facie, necesse est multas leges, multasque
consuetudines si non antiquari et obsolescere coangus-
tari saltem mec per omnia servari. Verum si levesistius-
modi nugae palam defensitatae fuerint et approbatae,
publicamgue demeruerint laudem, (sic enim arduis su-
perciliis solent dicere,) nemomon averso ab sana et solida.
eruditione animo eum ad ludicra statim et histrionalem
prope levitatem adjunget, adeo utipsa philosophorum
spatia pro doctis et cordatis nugatores emissura sint vel
mimis et scurris proterviores. At vero ego existimo eum
qui jocis insubidis sic solet capi, ut prae is seria et ma-
gis utilia plane negligat, eum inquam, nec in hac parte,
nec in illa posse admodum proficere: non quidem in
seriis, quia si fuisset ad res serias tractandas natura
comparatus, factusque, credo non tam facile pateretur
se ab iis abduci; mec in nugatoriis, quia vix queat ullus
belle et lepide jocari, nisi et serio agere prius addidi-
cerit. Sed vereor, academici, ne longius aequo deduxe-
rim orationis filum ; nolo excusare quod potui, ne inter
excusandum ingravescat culpa. Jam oratoriis soluti
legibus prosiliemus in comicam licentiam. In qua si
forte morem meum, si rigidas verecundiae leges trans-
versum, quod aiunt, digitum egressus fuero, sciatis
academici, me in vestram gratiam exuisse antiquum
meum, et parumper deposuisse: aut si quid solute, si
quid luxurianter dictum erit, id quidem mon mentem et
indolem mean, sed temporis rationem et loci genium
milli suggessisse putetis. Itaque, quod simile solent
exeuntes implorare comoedi, id ego inceptans flagito.
Plaudite, et ridete.
PROLUSIO.
LABORANTI, ut videtur, et pene corruenti stultorum
rei summac, equidem nescio quo merito meo dictator
sum creatus. At quorsum ego P cum dux ille, et ante-
signatus omnium sophistarum et seduló ambiverit hoc
munus, et fortissime potuerit administrare; ille enim
induratus miles ad quinquaginta pridem sophistas su-
dibus breviculis armatos per agros Barwellianos strenue
duxit, et obsessurus oppidum satis militariter aquae-
ducturm disjecit, ut per sitim posset oppidanos ad de-
ditionem cogere; at vero abiisse nuper hominem Valde
doleo, siquidem ejus discessu nos omnes sophistas non
solum drépá\sc reliquit, sed et decollatos. Et jam fin-
gite, auditores, quamvis non sint Aprilis calendae, festa
adesse hilaria, matri deum dicata, vel deo risui rem di-
vinam fieri. Ridete itaque et petulanti plene sustollite
cachinnum, exporrigite frontem, et uncis indulgete na-
ribus, sed naso adunco ne suspendite; profusissimo risu
circumsonent omnia, et solutior cachinnus hilares ex-
cutiat lachrymas, ut iis risu exhaustis ne guttulam
quidem habeat dolor qua triumphum exornet suum.
Ego profecto si quem nimis parce diductoricturiden-
tem conspexero, dicam eum scabros et cariosos demtes
rubigine obductos, aut indecoro ordine prominentes ab-
scondere, aut inter prandendum hodie sic opplevisse
abdomen, ut non audeat ilia ulterius distendere ad
risum, ne praecimenti ori succinat, et aenigmata quaedam
molens affutiat sua non sphinx sed sphincter anus, quae
medicis interpretanda non Oedipo relinquo; nolim
enim hilari vocis sono obstrepat in hoc coetu posticus
gemitus: solvant ista medici qui alvum solvunt. Si
quis strenuum et clarum non ediderit murmur, eum ego
asseverabo tam gravem et mortiferum faucibus exha-
lare spiritum, ut vel AEtna, vel Avernus nihil spiret
tetrius; aut certe allium aut porrum comedisse dudum,
adeo utmon audeat aperire os, ne vicinos quosque foe-
tido halitu enecet. At vero absit porro ab hoc coetu
horrendus et tartareus ille sibili sonus, nam si hic au-
diatur hodie, credam ego Furias et Eumenides inter
vos occulte latitare, et angues suos colubrosque pectori-
bus vestris immisisse, et proinde Athamanteos furores
vobis inspiravisse. At emimvero, academici, vestram
ego in me benevolentiam demiror atque exosculor, qui
me audituri per flammas et ignes irrupistis in hunc
PROLUSIONES ORATORIAE. 85.5
locum. Hinc enim in ipso limine scintillans ille noster
Cerberus astat, et fumido latratu horribilis, flammeo-
que coruscans baculo favillas pleno ore egerit; illinc
ardens et voracissimus formax noster luridos eructat
ignes, et tortuosos fumi globos evolvit, adeo ut non sit
difficilius iter ad inferos wel invito Plutone; et certe
nec ipse Jason minori cum periculo bowes illos Martis
Truptirvéovrac aggressus est. Jamgue auditores, credite
vos in coelum receptos, posteaguam evasistis Purgato-
rium, et nescio quo novo miraculo ex formace calida
salvi prodiistis, neque same mihi in mentem venit ullius
herois cujus fortitudinem commode possim vestrae
aequiparare, neque enim Bellerophontes ille ignivomam
chimaeram animosius debellavit, nec validissimi illi
regis Arthuri pugiles, igniti et flammigerantis castelli
incantamenta vicerunt facilius et dissiparunt ; atque
hinc subit, ut puros mihi auditores et lectissimos polli-
cear, si quid enim faecis huc advenerit post explora-
tionem camini, ego statim dixero ignes nostros jani-
tores esse fatuos. At foelices nos et incolumes perpetuo
futuros' Romae enim ad diuturnitatem imperii sempi-
ternos ignes sollicite et religiose servabant, nos vigili-
bus et vivis ignibus custodimur: quid dixi vivis et
vigilibus * id same improviso lapsu praetervolavit,
quippe nunc melius commemini, eos primo crepusculo
extinguere sese, et non nisi claro sudo sese resuscitare.
Attamen spes est, tandem iterum domum nostram posse
inclarescere, cum memo inficias iverit duo maxima aca-
demiae luminaria nostro collegio praesidere; quamvis
illinusquam majori forent in honore quam Roma: ; ibi
enim vel virgines Vestales inextinctos eos, etinsomnes
totas noctes servarent, vel forte ordini seraphico initia-
rentur flammei fratres. In hos denique optime quadrat
hemistichon illud Virgilianum, igneus est ollis vigor:
immo pene inductus sum ut credam Horatium horum
nostrorum ignium mentionem fecisse, major enim ho-
rum, dum stat inter conjugem et liberos, micat inter
omnes velut inter ignes luna minores. Non possum
autem praeterire faedum Ovidii errorem, qui sic cecinit,
“Nataque de flamma corpora nulla vides.” Videmus
enim passim oberrantes igniculos hoc nostro igne ge-
nitos, hoc si negaverit Ovidius, necessum habebit uxoris
pudicitiam vocare in dubium. Ad vos redeo, auditores;
me vos poemiteat tam molesti et formidolosi itineris, ecce
convivium vobis apparatum ! eccas mensas ad luxum
Persicum extructas, et cibis conquisitissimis onustas,
qui vel Apicianam gulam oblectent et deliniant!
Ferunt enim Antonio et Cleopatrae octo integros apros
in epulis appositos, vobis autem primo forculo hem
quinquaginta saginatos apros cervisia conditanea per
triennium maceratos, et tamen adhuc adeo callosos, ut
vel caninos dentes delassare valeant. Dein totidem
optimos boves insigniter caudatos famulari nostro igni
prae foribus recens assos; sed wereor neonnem succum
in patinam exudaverint. Ab his tot etiam en vitulina
capita, sane crassa et carnosa, sed adeo pertenui cere-
bro, ut non sufficiat ad condimentum. Tum quidem
et hoedos plus minus centum, sed puto crebriori Veneris
usu nimium macros: arietes aliquot expectavimus
speciosis et patulis cornubus, sed eos coqui nostri non-
dum secum attulerunt ex oppido. Si quis aves ma-
vult, habemus innumeras, turundis, et offis, et Scobi-
nato caseo diu altiles: inprimis, nescio quod genus
avium tam ingenio quam pluma viride, unde eas e re-
gione psittacorum suspicor asportatas; quae quia gre-
gatim semper volitant, et eodem fere loco nidulantur,
codem etiam disco apponentur; iis vero parce velim
vescamini, quia practerquam quod admodum crudisint,
et nihil in se habeant solidi nutrimenti, scabiem etiam
comedentibus protrudunt (modo vera tradit comestor.)
Jam vero libere et genialiter epulamini; hic enim
praesto est missus quem vollis prae omnibus commendo,
praegrandis scilicet gallinago, pertriennalem saginam
adeo unguinosae pinguedinis, ut illi vix satis largum
sit unum ferculum amplissimum, rostro eosque prae-
longo et eduro, ut impune possit cum elephante aut
rhinocerote certamen ingredi; eam autem in hunc diem
commode obtruncavimus, propterea quod praegrandium
simiorum more incepit puellis insidiari, et vim inferre
mulieribus. Hunc subsequuntur aves quaedam Hiber-
nicae, nescio quo nomine; sed incessu et corporis filo
gruibus persimiles, quamvis utplurimum soleant in
postremam mensam asseryari; hic quidem est novus et
rarus magis quam salutaris cibus: his itaque abstineatis
moneo, sunt enim efficacissini (modo vera tradit comes-
tor) ad generandos pediculos inguinales; has igitur
arbitror ego agasonibus utiliores futuras; nam cum
sint naturae vividae, vegetae, et saltaturientes, si equis
strigosis per podicem ingerantur, reddent eos protinus
vivaciores et velociores quam si decem vivas anguillas
in ventre haberent. Anseres etiam complures aspicite,
et hujus anni et superiorum argutos Valde, et ranis
Aristophanicis vocaliores; quos quidem facile dignos-
cetis; mirum enim est mise jam prodiderint sibilando,
statim fortasse audietis. Ova insuper aliquot habemus,
sed ea kakoú kópakoç; frugum vero nihil praeterquam
mala et mespila, eague infoelicis arboris, nec satis ma-
tura, praestabit itaque iterum ad solem suspendi. Wi-
detis apparatus nostros, quaeso vos, quibus palato sunt,
commessamini. Verum hariolor dicturos vos, epulas
hasce, veluti nocturnte illie dapes quae à daemone vene-
ficis apparantur, mullo condiri sale, wereorque ne disce-
datis jejuniores quam venistis. Verum ad ea pergo
quae ad me propius attinent. Romani sua habuere flo-
ralia, rustici sua patilia, pistores sua formacalia, mos
quoque potissimum hoc tempore rerum et negotiorum
vacui, Socratico more ludere solemus. Itaque hos-
pitia leguleiorum suos habent, quos vocant dominos,
vel hinc indicantes quam sint honoris ambitiosi. Nos
autem, academici, ad patermitatem quamproxime ac-
cedere cupientes id ficto nomine usurpare gestimus,
quod vero non audemus saltem nonnisi in occulto ;
quemadmodum puellae nuptias lusorias et puerperia
solemniter fingunt, earum rerum quas anhelant et cupi-
unt, umbras captantes et amplectentes. Quorsum
autem eo, qui proxime se circumegit, anno intermissa
fuerit haec solemnitas, ego sane haud possum divinare ;
nisi quod ii qui patres futurierant, adeo strenue se ges-
serint in oppido, ut is cui id negotii dabatur, tantorum
misertus laborum ultro jusserit eos ab hac cura otiosos
esse. At vero unde est quod ego tam subito factus sum
pater P Dii vestram fidem Quid hoc est prodigii
856
PROLUSIONES ORATORIÆ.
Pliniana exuperantis portenta ? nummam ego percusso
angue Tyresiæ fatum expertus sum ? ecqua me Thes-
sala saga magico perfudit unguento ? an denique ego
à deo aliquo vitiatus, ut olim Cnoeeus, virilitatem pac-
tus sum stupri pretium, ut sic repente èk 9m\siac sic
dρρενά άλλα x0sinv άν? A quibusdam, audivi nuper
domina. At cur videor illis parum masculus ? Ecquis
Prisciani pudor ? itane propria quæ maribus foemimeo
generi tribuunt insulsi grammaticastri! scilicet quia
scyphos capacissimos nunquam valui pancratice hau-
rire ; aut quia manus tenenda stiva non occaluit, aut
quia nunquam ad meridianum solem supimus jacui sep-
tennis bubulcus ; fortasse demum quod munquam me
virum præstiti, eo modo quo ille ganeones ; verum
utinam illi possint tam facile exuere asinos, quam ego
quicquid est fœminæ ; at videte quam insubide, quam
incogitate mihi objecerint id, quod ego jure optimo
mihi vertam gloriæ. Namque et ipse Demosthenes
ab æmulis adversariisque parum vir dictus est. Q.
itidem Hortensius, omnium oratorum post M. Tullium
clarissimus, Dionysia Psaltria appellatus est à L. Tor-
quato. Cui ille, Dionysia, inquit, malo equidem esse,
quam quod tu Torquate, dμεσος, άγροδίavroc, d7rpó-
Ego vero quicquid hoc domini aut dominæ
est à me longe amolior atque rejicio, nisi in rostris at-
que subselliis vestris, academici, dominari non cupio.
Quis jam prohibebit me quin lætar tam auspicato et
fœlici omine, exultemque gaudio me tantis viris ejus-
dem opprobrii societate conjunctum ! Interea ut bonos
ovTog.
omnes et præstamtes supra invidiam positos arbitror,
ita hos lividos adeo omnium infimos puto, ut me digni
sint qui maledicant. Ad filios itaque pater me converto,
quorum cerno speciosum numerum, et video etiam le-
pidulos ncbulones occulto nutu me patrem fateri. De
nominibus quæritis ? Nolo sub nominibus ferculorum
filios meos epulandos vobis tradere, id enim Tantali et
Lycaonis feritati nimium esset affine ; nec membrorum
insignibo nominibus, ne putetis me pro integris homi-
mibus tot frusta hominum genuisse ; nec ad vinorum
genera eos nuncupare volupe est, ne quicquid dixero,
sit átrpogôtovvoov, et nihil ad Bacchum ; volo ad prædi-
camentorum numerum nominatos, ut sic et ingenuos
natales et liberalem vitæ rationem exprimam ; et eadem
opera curabo, uti omnes ad aliquem gradum ante meum
obitum provecti sint. Quod ad sales meos nolo ego
edentulos, sic enim tritos, et veteres dicatis, et amiculam
aliquam tussientem eos expuisse : proinde credo ne-
minem sales meos dentatos inculpaturum, nisi qui ipse
nullos habet dentes, ideoque reprehensurum, quia non
sunt ipsius similes. Et certe in præsens ego exoptarem
obtigisse mihi Horatii sortem, nempe ut essem salsa-
mentarii filius, tunc enim sales mihi essent ad unguem,
vos etiam sale ita pulchre defricatos dimitterem, ut
nostros milites, qui nuper ab insula Reana capessere
fugam, non magis pœniteret salis petiti.
mihi in consilio vobis exhibendo, mei gnati, gnavi-
ter esse operoso, ne plus operae vobis erudiendis quam
gignendis insumpsisse videar, tantum caveat quisque
ne ex filio fiat nepos: liberique mei ne colant libe-
rum, si me velint patrem. Si qua ego alia præcepta
dedero, ea lingua vernacula proferenda sentio : co-
INon libet
maborque pro viribus ut omnia intelligatis. Cæterum
exorandi sunt mihi Neptunus, Apollo, Vulcamus, ut
omnes dii fabri, uti latera mea vel tabulatis corrobo-
rare, vel ferreis laminis circumligare velint. Quin-
etiam et supplicanda mihi est dea Ceres, ut quæ hume-
rum eburneum Pelopi dederit, mihi pariter latera pene
absumpta reparare dignetur. Neque enim est cur mire-
tur quibuslibet, si post tantum clamorem et tot filiorum
genituram paulo infirmiora sint. Im his itaque sensu
Neroniano ultra quam satis est moratus sum : munc
leges academicas veluti Romuli muros transiliens à
Latinis ad Anglicana transcurro. Vos quibus istæc
arrident, aures atque animos nunc mihi attentos date.
IN SACRARIO HABITA PRO ARTE.
O RATIO.
Beatiores reddit Homines Ars quam Ignorantia.
TAMETsi mihi, auditores, nihil magis jucundum sit
atque optabile aspectu vestro assiduaque togatorum
hominum frequentia, hoc etiam honorifico dicendi
munere, quo ego vice una atque altera apud vos mom
ingrata opera perfunctus sum ; tamem, si quod res est
fateri liceat, semper ita fit, ut, cum neque meum inge-
mium, nec studiorum ratio ab hoc oratorio genere mul-
tum abhorreat, ego vix umquam mea voluntate, aut
sponte ad diccndam accidam ; mihi si fuisset integrum,
vel huic vespertino labori haud illibenter equidem par-
sissem : nam quoniam ex libris et sententiis doctissi-
morum hominum sic accepi, nihil vulgare, aut mediocre
im oratore, ut nec in poeta posse concedi, eumque
oportere, qui orator esse meritò et haberi velit, omnium
artium, omnesque scientiæ circulari quodam subsidio
instructum et consummatum esse ; id quando mea ætas
non fert, malui jam prius ea mihi subsidia comparando,
longo et acri studio illam laudem veram contendere,
quam properato et præcoci stylo falsam præripere.
Qua animi cogitatione et consilio dum æstuo totus
indies, et accendor, nullam umquam sensi gravius im-
pedimentum et moram, hoc frequenti interpellationis
damno ; nihil vero magis aluisse ingenium, et, contra
quam in corpore fit, bonam ei valetudinem conservasse
erudito et liberali otio. Hunc ego divinum Hesiodi
sommum, hos nocturnos Endymionis cum Luna con-
gressus esse crediderim ; hunc illum duce Mercurio
Promethei secessum in altissimas montis Caucasi soli-
tudines, ubi sapientissimus deùm atque hominum eva-
sit, utpote quem ipse Jupiter de nuptiis Thetidis con-
sultum isse dicatur. Testor ipse lucos, et flumina, et
dilectas villarum ulmos, sub quibus æstate proxime
præterita (si dearum arcana eloqui liceat) summam
cum musis gratiam habuisse me jucunda memoria re-
colo; ubi et ego inter rura et semotos saltus velut
occulto ævo crescere mihi potuisse visus sum. Hic
quoque eandem mihi delitescendi copiam utique spe-
rassem, nisi intempestive prorsus interposuisset se im-
PROI,USIONES ORATORIÆ.
857
portuma hæc dicendi molestia, quæ sic ingrate arcebat
sacros somnos, sic torsit animum in aliis defixum, et
inter præruptas artium difficultates sic impedivit et
oneri fuit, ut ego amissa omni spe persequendae quietis
moestus cogitare coeperim, quam procul abessem ab ea
tranquillitate quam mihi primò literæ pollicebantur,
acerbam fore inter hos æstus et jactationes vitam, satius
esse vel omnes artes didicisse. Itaque vix compos
mei, temerarium cœpi consilium laudandæ ignorantiæ,
quæ nihil prorsus haberat harum turbarum ; proposui-
que in certamen utra suos cultores beatiores redderet
Ars an Ignorantia ? Nescio quid est, noluit me meum
sive fatum, sive genius ab incepto Musarum amore
discedere ; imo et ipsa cæca sors tanquam derepente
prudens providensque facta hoc idem noluisse visa est;
citius opinione mea Ignorantia suum macta est patro-
mum, mihi Ars relinquitur defendenda. Gaudeo sane
sic illusum me, nec me pudet vel cæcam Fortunam
mihi restituisse oculos ; hoc illi nomine gratias habeo.
Jam saltem illam laudere licet, cujus ab amplexu di-
vulsus eram, et quasi absentis desiderium sermone
consolari : jam hæc non plane interruptio est, quis
enim interpellari se dicat, id laudando et tuendo quod
amat, quod approbat, quod magnopere assequi velit.
Verum, auditores, sic ego existimo in re mediocriter
laudabili maxime elucere vim eloquentiæ ; quæ sum-
mum laudem habent, vix ullo modo, ullis limitibus
orationis contineri posse, in his ipsa sibi officit copia,
et rerum multitudine comprimit et coangustat expan-
dentem se elocutionis pompam ; hac ego argumenti
foecunditate nimia laboro, ipsæ me vires imbecillum,
arma inermem reddunt ; delectus itaque faciendus,
aut certe enumeranda verius quam tractanda quæ tot
nostram causam validis præsidiis firmam ac munitam
statuunt; numc illud mihi unice elaborandum video,
ut ostendam quid in utraque re, et quantum ha-
beat momentum ad illam in quam omnes ferimur,
beatitudinem ; in qua contentione facili certe nego-
tio versabitur oratio nostra, nec admodum esse puto
metuendum quid possit scientiæ inscitia, arti ignorantia
objicere ; quamvis hoc ipsum quod objiciat, quod verba
faciat, quod in hac celebritate literatissimæ concionis
vel hiscere audeat, id totum ab arte precariò vel potius
emendicato habet. Notum hoc esse reor, auditores, et
receptum omnibus, magnum mundi opificem, cætera
omnia cum fluxu et caduca posuisset, homini præter id
quod mortale esset, divinam quandam auram, et quasi
partem sui immiscuisse, immortalem, indelebilem, lethi
et interitus immunem ; quæ postquam in terris ali-
quamdiu tanquam coelestis hospes, caste, sancteque pe-
regrinata esset, ad nativum coelum sursum evibraret se,
debitamque ad sedem et patriam reverteretur: proinde
nihil merito recenseri posse in causis nostræ beatitudi-
mis, nisi id et illam sempiternam, et hanc civilem vitam
aliqua ratione respiciat. Ea propemodum suffragiis
omnium sola est contemplatio, qua sine administro
corpore seducta et quasi conglobata in se mens nostra
incredibili voluptate immortalium deorum ævum imita-
tur, quæ tamen sine arte tota infrugifera est et inju-
cunda, imo nulla. Quis enim rerum humanarum divi-
narumque iόάac intueri digne possit aut considerare,
quarum ferme nihil nosse queat, nisi animum per
artem et disciplinam imbutum et excultum habuerit;
ita prorsus ei cui artes desunt, interclusus esse videtur
omnis aditus ad vitam beatam : ipsam hanc amimam
altae sapientiae capacem et prope inexplebilem, aut
frustra nobis Deus, aut in poenam dedisse videtur, nisi
maxime voluisset nos ad excelsam earum rerum cogni-
tionem sublimes emiti, quarum tantum ardorem natura
humanæ menti injecerat. Circumspicite quaqua po-
testis universam hanc rerum faciem, illam sibi in glo-
riam tanti operis summus artifex ædificavit; quanto
altius ejus rationem insignem, ingentem fabricam, va-
rietatem admirabilem investigamus, quod sine arte non
possumus, tanto plus authorem ejus admiratione nostra
celebramus, et veluti quodam plausu persequimur, quod
illi pergratum esse, certum ac persuasissimum habea-
mus. Ecquid, auditores, putabimus tanta immensi
aetheris spatia æternis accensa atque distincta ignibus,
tot sustinere concitatissimos motus, tanta obire conver-
sionum itinera ob hoc unum ut lucernam praebeant ig-
navis et pronis hominibus ? et quasi facem præferant
nobis infra torpentibus et desidiosis ? nihil inesse tam
multiplici fructuum herbarumque proventui, præter-
quam fragilem viriditatis ornatum ? Profecto si tam in-
justi rerum æstimatores erimus, ut nihil ultra crassum
sensus intuitum persequamur, non modo serviliter et
abjecte, sed inique et malitiose cum benigno numine
egisse videbimur; cui per imertiam nostram, et quasi
per invidiam titulorum magna pars, et tantæ potentiæ
veneratio penitus intercidet. Si igitur dux et incho-
atrix nobis ad beatitudinem sit eruditio, si potentissimo
numini jussa et complacita, et ejus cum laude maxime
conjuncta, certe mom potest sui cultores non efficere vel
summe beatos. Neque enim nescius sum, auditores,
contemplationem hanc qua tendimus ad id quod summe
expetendum est, nullum habere posse veræ beatitudinis
gustum sime integritate vitæ, et morum innocentia ;
multos autem vel insigniter eruditos homines nefarios
extitisse, præterea iræ, odio, et pravis cupiditatibus
obedientes ; multos è contra literarum rudes viros pro-
bos atque optimos se præstitisse ; quid ergo ? Num
beatior ignorantia ? mimime vero. Sic itaque est, au-
ditores, paucos fortasse doctrina præstabiles suæ civi-
tatis corruptissimi mores et illiteratorum hominum col-
luvies in nequitiam pertraxere, unius perdocti et pru-
demtis viri industria multos mortales ab arte impolitos
in officio continuit: nimirum una domus, vir unus arte
et sapientia præditus, velut magnum dei munus toti
reipub. satis esse possit ad bonam frugem. Cæterum
ubi mullæ vigent artes, ubi omnis exterminatur eruditio,
ne ullum quidem ibi viri boni vestigium est, grassatur
immanitas atque horrida barbaries; hujus rei testem
appello non civitatem unam, aut provinciam, non gen-
tem, sed quartam orbis terrarum partem Europam, qua
tota superioribus aliquot sæculis omnes bonæ artes in-
terierant, omnes tunc temporis academias præsides diu
Musæ reliquerant; pervaserat omnia, et occuparat cæca
inertia, nihil audiebatur in scholis præter insulsa stu-
pidissimorum monachorum dogmata, togam scilicet
nacta, per vacua rostra et pulpita, per sq ualentes ca-
thedras jactitavit se prophanum et informe monstrum,
85S
PROLUSIONES ORATORIÆ.
Ignorantia. Tum primum lugere pietas, et extingui
religio et pessum ire, adeo ut ex gravi vulnere, sero
atque ægre vix in hunc usque diem convaluerit.
At vero, auditores, hoc in philosophia ratum, et an-
tiquum esse satis constat, omnis artis, ommisque sci-
entiæ perceptionem solius intellectus esse, virtutum
ac probitatis domum atque delubrum esse voluntatem.
Cum autem omnium judicio intellectus humanus cæ-
teris animi facultatibus princeps et moderator prælu-
ceat, tum et ipsam voluntatem cæcam alioqui et ob-
scuram suo splendore temperat et collustrat, illa veluti
luna, luce lucet aliena. Quare demus hoc sane, et
largiamur ultro, potiorem esse ad beatam vitam virtu-
tem sine arte, quam artem sine virtute ; at ubi semel
fœlici nexu invicem consociatæ fuerint, ut maxim:e
debent, et sæpissime contingit, tum vero statim vultu
erecto atque arduo superior longe apparet, atque emi-
cat scientia, cum rege et imperatore intellectu im
excelso locat se, inde quasi humile et sub pedibus
spectat inferius quicquid agitur apud voluntatem ; et
deinceps in æternum excellentiam et claritudinem,
majestatemque divinæ proximam facile sibi asserit.
Age descendamus ad civilem vitam, quid in privata,
quid in publica proficiat utraque videamus ; taceo de
arte quod sit pulcherrimum juventutis honestamentum,
aetatis virilis firmum præsidium, senectutis ornamen-
tum atque solatium. Praetereo et illud multos apud
suos mobiles, etiam P. R. primcipes post egregia faci-
mora, et rerum gestarum gloriam ex comtentione et
strepitu ambitionis ad literarum studium tanquam in
portum ac dulce perfugium se recepisse ; intellexere
nimirum senes præstantissimi jam reliquam vitæ par-
tem optimam optime oportere collocari; erant summi
inter homines, volebant his artibus non postremi esse
inter deos; petierant honores, nunc immortalitatem ;
in debellandis imperii hostibus longe alia militia usi
sunt, cum morte maximo generis humani malo com-
flictaturi, ecce quæ tela sumpserint, quas legiones
conscripserint, quo commeatu instructi fuerint. Atqui
maxima pars civilis beatitudinis in humana societate
et contrahendis amicitiis fere constituta est ; doctiores
plerosque difficiles, inurbanos, moribus incompositis,
nulla fandi gratia ad conciliandos hominum amimos
multi queruntur: fateor equidem, qui in studiis fere
seclusus atque abditus est, multo promptius esse Deos
alloqui quam homines, sive quod perpetuo fere domi
est apud superos infrequens rerum humanarum et vere
peregrinus, sive quod assidua rerum divinarum cogita-
tione mens quasi grandior facta in tantis corporis
angustiis difficulter agitans se minus habilis sit ad
exquisitiores salutationum gesticulationes; at si dignæ
atque idoneæ contigerint amicitiæ nemo sanctius colit; .
quid enim jucundius, quid cogitari potest beatius illis
doctorum et gravissimorum hominum colloquiis, qualia
sub illa platano plurima saepe fertur habuisse divimus
Plato, digna certe quæ totius confluentis generis hu-
mani arrecto excipiantur silentio ; at stolide confabu-
lari, alios aliis ad luxum et libidines morem gerere ea
demum ignorantiae est amicitia, aut certe amicitiæ
ignorantia. Quinetiam si hæc civilis beatitudo in
honesta liberaque oblectatione animi consistit, ea pro-
fecto doctrinæ et arti reposita est voluptas, quæ cæ-
teras omnes facile superet ; quid omnem coeli siderum-
que morem temuisse ? ommis aeris motus et vicissitu-
dines, sive augusto fulminum sonitu, aut crimitis ardo-
ribus inertes animos perterrefaciat, sive in nivem et
grandinem obrigescat, sive denique in pluvia et rore
mollis et placidus descendat ; tum alternantes ventos
perdidicisse, omnesque halitus aut vapores quos terra
aut mare eructat ; stirpium deinde vires occultas, me-
tallorumque caluisse, singulorum etiam animantium
naturam, et si fieri potest, sensus intellexisse ; hinc
accuratissimam corporis humani fabricam et medici-
nam ; postremo divinam animi vim et vigorem, et si
qua de illis qui lares, et genii, et dæmonia vocantur
ad mos pervenit cognitio ? Infinita ad hæc alia, quo-
rum bonam partem didicisse licuerit, antequam ego
cuncta enumeraverim. Sic tandem, auditores, cum
omnimoda semel eruditio suos orbes com fecerit, non
contentus iste spiritus temebricoso hoè ergastulo eous-
que late aget se, donec et ipsum mundum, et ultra
longe divina quadam magnitudiue expatiata comple-
verit. Tum demum plerique casus atque eventus
rerum ita subito emergent, ut ei, qui hanc arcem sa-
pientiæ adeptus est, nihil pene incautum, nihil for-
tuitum in vita possit accidere ; videbitur sane is esse,
cujus imperio et dominationi astra obtemperent, terra
et mare obsecumdent, venti tempestatesque morigerae
sint ; cui denique ipsa parens natura in deditionem
se tradiderit, plane ac si qnis deus abdicato mundi
imperio, huic jus ejus, et leges, administrationem-
que tamquam præfectori cuidam commisisset. Huc
quanta accedit animi voluptas, per omnes gentium his-
torias et loca pervolare regnorum, nationum, urbium,
populorum status mutationesque ad prudentiam, et
mores animadvertere : hoc est, auditores, omni ætati
quasi vivus interesse, et velut ipsius temporis nasci
contemporaneus; profecto cum nominis nostri gloriæ
in futurum prospeximus, hoc erit ab utero vitam retro
extendere et porrigere, et nolenti fato anteactam quam-
dam immortalitatem extorquere. Mitto illud cui quid
potest æquiparari ? Multarum gentium oraculum esse,
domum quasi templum habere, esse quos reges et res-
publicæ ad se invitent, cujus visendi gratia finitimique
exterique concurrant, quem alii vel semel vidisse quasi
quoddam bene meritum glorientur ; hæc studiorum
præmia, hos fructus eruditio suis cultoribus in privata
vita præstare, et potest, et saepe solet. At quid in pub-
lica ? Sane ad majestatis fastigium paucos evexit laus
doctrinæ, nec probitatis multò plures. Nimirum, illi
apud se regno fruuntur, omni terrarum ditione longe
gloriosiori: et quis sine anbitionis infamia geminum
affectat regnum ? addam hoc tamen amplius, duos tam-
tum adhuc fuisse qui quasi cœlitus datum universum
terrarum orbem habuere, et supra omnes reges et dy-
nastas æquale diis ipsis partiti sunt imperium, Alex-
andrum nempe Magnum et Octavium Cæsarem, eosque
ambos philosophiæ alumnos. Perimde ac si quoddam
electionis exemplar divinitus exhibitum esset homimi-
bus, quali potissimum viro clavum et habenas rerum
credi oporteret. At multæ resp. sine literis, rebus ges-
tis et opulentia claruere. Spartamorum quidem, qui
PROLUSIONES ORATORI/E.
859
ad literarum studium contulerint se, pauci memoran-
tur; Romaui intra urbis moenia philosophiam sero re-
ceperunt; at illi legislatore usi sunt Lycurgo, qui et
philosopbus fuit et poetarum adeo studiosus, ut Homeri
scripta per Ioniam sparsa summa cura primus college-
rit. Hi post varios in urbe motus et perturbationes
aegre se sustentare valentes, ab Athenis ea tempestate
artium studio florentissimis, leges decemvirales, quae
et duodecim tabuiæ dictæ sunt, missis legatis emendi-
carunt. Quid si hodiernos Turcas per opima Asiæ
regna rerum late potitos omnis literaturæ ignaros nobis
objiciant ? Equidem in ea repub. (si tamen crudelissi-
morum hominum per vim et cædem arrepta potentia,
quos unum in locum sceleris consensus convocavit, con-
tinuo respub. dicenda sit) quod in ea ad exemplum in-
sigue sit nil audivi, parere vitæ commoda, tueri parta,
id naturæ debemus, non arti; aliena libidinose invadere,
sibi mutuo ad rapinam auxilio esse, in scelus conjurare,
id maturæ pravitati. Jus quoddam apud eos exercetur ;
nec mirum : cæteræ virtutes facile fugantur, justitia
vere regia, ad sui cultum impellit, sine qua vel injus-
tissimæ societates cito dissolverentur. Nec omiserim
tamen, Saracenos Turcarum propemodum conditores
nom armis magis quam bonarum literarum studiis im-
perium suum propagasse. Sed si antiquitatem repeta-
mus, inveniemus mom institutas modo ab arte, sed fun-
datas olim fuisse respublicas. Antiquissimi quique
gentium indigenæ in sylvis et montibus errasse dicun-
tur, ferarum ritu pabuli commoditatem sequuti, vultu
erecti, cætera promi, putasses præter formæ dignitatem
nihil non commune cum bestiis habuisse ; eadem antra,
iidem specus coelum et frigora defendebant ; nulla tunc
urbs, mon ædes marmoreæ, non aræ deorum, aut fana
collucebant, non illic fas sanctum, nondum jura in foro
dicebantur, nulla in nuptiis tæda, non chorus, nullum
in mensa geniali carmem, nullum solemne funeris, non
luctus, vix tumulus defunctos honestabat; nulla con-
vivia, nulli ludi, inauditus citharæ sonus, ipsa tunc
omnia aberant, quibus jam inertia ad luxum abutitur.
Cum repente artes et scientiæ agrestia hominum pectora
coelitus afflabant, et imbutos notitia sui in una moenia
pellexere. Quamobrem certe quibus authoribus urbes
ipsæ primum conditæ sunt, dein stabilitæ legibus,
post consiliis munitæ, poterunt iisdem etiam guber-
matoribus quam diutissime fœlicissimeque consistere.
Quid autem ignorantia ? sentio, auditores, caligat,
stupet, procul est, effugia eircumspicit, vitam brevem
queritur, artem longam ; immo vero tollamus duo
magna studiorum nostrorum impedimenta, alterum
artis male traditæ, alterum nostræ ignaviæ, pace Ga-
leni, seu quis alius ille fuit ; totum contra erit, vita
longa ars brevis ; nihil arte præstabilius, adeoque
laboriosius, nihil nobis segmius, nihil remissius ; ob
operariis et agricolis nocturna et antelucana industria
vinci nos patimur ; illi in re sordida ad vilem victum
magis impigri sunt, quam nos in nobilissima ad vitam
beatam ; nos cum ad altissimum atque optimum im
humanis rebus aspiremus, nec studium ferre possumus,
nec inertiæ dedecus; immo pudet esse id, quod nom
haberi nos indignamur. At valetudini cavemus à
vigiliis et acri studio : turpe dictu, animum incultum
negligimus, dum corpori metuimus, cujus vires quis
non imminuat, quo majores acquirantur animo ? quan-
quam certe qui hæc causantur perditissimi plerique,
abjecta omni temporis, ingenii, valetudinis cura, comes-
sando, belluæ marinæ ad morem potando, inter scorta
et aleam pernoctando, nihilo se infirmiores factos que-
rumtur. Cum itaque sic se afficiant atque assuescant,
ut ad omnem turpitudinem strenui atque alacres; ad
omnes virtutis actiones et ingenii hebetes et languidi
sint, culpam in naturam aut vitae brevitatem falso et
inique transferunt. Quod si modeste ac temperanter
vitam degendo, primos ferocientis aetatis impetus ra-
tione et pertinaci studiorum assiduitate mallemus edo-
mare, coelestem animi vigorem ab omni contagione et
inquinamento purum et intactum servantes; incredi-
bile esset, auditores, nobis post annos aliquot respici-
entibus quantum spatium confecisse, quam ingens
aequor eruditionis cursu placido navigasse videremur.
Cui et hoc egregium afferet compendium, si quis morit
et artes utiles, et utilia in artibus recte seligere. Quot
sunt inprimis grammaticorum et rhetorum nugæ
aspernabiles ? audias in tradenda arte sua illos bar-
bare loquentes, hos infantissimos. Quid logica ? Re-
gina quidem illa artium si pro dignitate tractetur: at
heu quanta est in ratione insania! non hic homines,
sed plane acanthides carduis et spinis vescuntur. O
dura messorum ilia ! quid repetam illam, quam meta-
physicam vocant peripatetici, non artem, locupletissi-
mam quippe me ducit magnorum virorum authoritas,
non artem inquam plerumque, sed infames scopulos,
sed Lernam quamdam sophismatum ad naufragium et
pestem excogitatam : hæc illa quæ supra memimi
togatæ ignorantiæ vulnera sunt ; hæc eadem cucullo-
rum scabies etiam ad naturalem philosophiam late per-
manavit: vexat mathematicos demonstrationum inanis
gloriola ; his omnibus quæ nihil profutura sunt meritò
contemptis et amputatis, admirationi erit quot annos
integros lucrabimur. Quid ! quod jurisprudentiam
præsertim nostram turbata methodus obscurat, et quod
pejus est, sermo nescio quis, Americanus credo, aut me
humanus quidem, quo cum sæpe leguleios mostros
clamitantes audiverim, dubitare, subiit quibus non esset
humanum os et loquela, an et his ulli affectus humani
adessent ; vereor certe ut possit nos samcta justitia
respicere, vereor ut querelas ullo tempore mostras aut
injurias intelligat, quorum lingua loqui mesciat. Qua-
propter, auditores, si nullum à pueritia diem sime præ-
ceptis et diligenti studio vacuum ire sinamus, si in
arte, aliena supervacanea otiosa sapienter omittamus,
certe intra ætatem Alexandri Magni majus quiddam et
gloriosius illo terrarum orbe subegerimus : tantumque
aberit quo mimus brevitatem vitæ, aut artis tædium in-
cusemus, ut flere et lachrymari promptius nobis futu-
rum credam, ut illi olim, non plures superesse mundos
de quibus triumphemus. Expirat ignorantia, jam
ultimos videte comatus et morientem luctam ; mortales
præcipue gloria tangi, antiquos illos illustres longa
annorum series atque decursus eum celebrârit, nos
decrepito mundi senio, mos properante rerum omnium
occasu premi, si quid prædicandum æterna laude reli-
querimus, nostrum momen. in angusto versari, cujus ad
860
ÌPROLUSIONES ORATORIÆ.
memoriam vix ulla posteritas succedat, frustra jam tot
libros et preclara ingenii monumenta edi quæ vicinus
mundi rogus cremarit. Non inficior illud esse posse
verisimile ; at vero non morari gloriam cum bene fece-
ris, id supra omnem gloriam est. Quam nihil beavit
istos imanis hominum sermo cujus ad absentes et mor-
tuos mulla voluptas, nullus sensus pervenire potuit?
nos sempiternum ævum expectemus quod nostrorum
in terris saltem benefactorum memoriam nunquam
delebit; in quo, si quid hic pulchre meruimus, præ-
sentes ipsi audiemus, in quo qui prius in hac vita con-
tinentissime acta omne tempus bonis artibus dederint,
iisque homines adjuverint, eos singulari et summa
supra omnes scientia auctos esse futuros multi gra-
viter philosophati sunt. Jam cavillari desinant ig-
navi quæcunque adhuc nobis in scientiis incerta atque
perplexa sint, quæ tamen non tam scientiæ, quam
homini attribuenda sunt ; hoc est, auditores, quod et
illud nescire Socraticum et timidam scepticorum hæsi-
tationem aut refellit, aut consolatur, aut compensat.
Jam vero tandem aliquando quænam ignorantiæ bea-
titudo ? sua sibi habere, à nemine lædi, omni cura et
molestia supersedere, vitam secure et quiete, quoad po-
test, traducere ; verum hæe feræ aut volucris cujuspiam
vita est, quæ in altis et penitissimis sylvis in tuto nidu-
lum coelo quamproximum habet, pullos educit, sine
aucupii metu in pastum volat, diluculo, vesperique
suaves modulos emodulatur. Quid ad hæc desideratur
aethereus ille animi vigor ? Exuat ergo hominem, dabi-
tur sane Circæum poculum, ad bestias prona emigret:
ad bestias vero ? at illæ tam turpem hospitem excipere
molunt, si quidem illæ sive inferioris cujusdam rationis
participes, quod plurimi disputarunt, sive pollenti quo-
dam instinctu sagaces, aut artes, aut artium simile quod-
dam apud se exercent. Namque et canes in persequenda
fera dialecticæ non ignaros esse narratur apud Plutar-
chum, et si ad trivia forte ventum sit, plane disjuncto uti
syllogismo. Lusciniam veluti præcepta quædam musices
pullis suis tradere solere refert Aristoteles; unaquæque
fere bestia sibi medica est, multæ etiam insignia medi-
cinæ documenta hominibus dedere. Ibis Ægyptia alvi
purgandæ utilitatem, hippopotamus detrahendi san-
guinis ostendit. Quis dicat astronomiæ expertes à qui-
bus tot ventorum, imbrium, imundationem, serenitatis
præsagia petantur ? Quam prudenti et severa ethica
supervolantes montem Taurum anseres obturato lapillis
ore periculosæ loquacitati moderantur; multa formicis
res domestica, civitas apibus debet ; excubias habendi,
triquetram aciem ordinandi rationem ars militaris gruum
esse agnoscit. Sapiunt altius bestiæ, quam ut suo cœtu
et consortio ignorantiam dignentur; inferius detrudunt.
Quid ergo ? ad truncos et saxa. At ipsi trunci, ipsa
arbusta, totumque nemus ad doctissima Orphei carmina
solutis quondam radicibus festinavere. Sæpe etiam
mysteriorum capaces, ut quercus olim Dodoneæ, di-
vina oracula reddidere. Saxa etiam sacræ poetarum
voci docilitate quadam respondent: an et hæc asper-
nantur à se ignorantiam ? Num igitur infra omne bru-
torum genus, infra stipites et saxa, infra omnem naturæ
ordinem licebit in illo Epicureorum non esse requies-
cere ? Ne id quidem : quandoquidem necesse est, quod
pejus, quod vilius, quod magis miserum, quod infimum
est, esse ignorantiam ? Ad vos venio, auditores intelli-
gentissimi, nam et ipse si mihil dixissem, vos mihi tot non
tam argumenta, quam tela video, quæ ego in ignoran-
tiam usque ad perniciem contorquebo. Ego jam clas-
sicum cecini, vos ruite in prælium ; summovete à vobis
hostem hanc, prohibete vestris porticibus et ambulacris;
hanc si aliquid esse patiamini, vos ipsi illud eritis, quod
nostis omnium esse miserrimum. Vestra itaque hæc
omnium causa est. Quare si ego jam multo fortasse pro-
lixior fuerim, quam pro consuetudine hujus loci liceret,
præterquam quod ipsa rei dignitas hoc postulabat, da-
bitis et vos mihi veniam, opinor, judices, quandoqui-
dem, tanto magis intelligitis in vos quo sim animo,
quam vestri studiosus, quos labores, quas vigilias ves-
tra causa non recusarim. Dixi.
A RTIS LOG ICÆ PL E NIOR INSTITUTIO,
AD PETRI RAMI METHODUM CONCINNATA.
ADJECTA EST PRAXIS ANALYTICA, ET PETRI RAMI VITA.
LIBRIS DUOBUS.
[FI Rst Pv Ifi.isii ED 1672.]
PRÆFATIO.
QuANQuAM philosophorum multi, suopte ingenio freti, contempsisse artem logicam dicuntur, eorum tamen qui vel
sibi, vel aliis propter ingenium aut judicium natura minus acre ac perspicax utilissimam esse sibique diligenter ex-
colendam judicarunt, optime est de ea meritus, ut ego quidem cum Sidneio nostro sentio, Petrus Ramus. Cæteri
fere physica, ethica, theologicalogicis, effrænata quadam licentia, confundunt. Sed noster dum brevitatem sectatus
est nimis religiose, non plane luci, sed ubertati tamen lucis, quæ in tradenda arte, non parca, sed plena et copiosa esse
debet, videtur defuisse: id quod totim eum scripta commentaria testantur. Satius itaque sum arbitratus, quæ ad præ-
cepta artis plenius intelligenda, ex ipsius Rami scholiis dialecticis aliorumque commentariis necessario petenda sunt,
ea in ipsum corpus artis, nisi sicubi dissentio, transferre atque intexere. Quid enim brevitate consequimur, si lux
aliunde est petenda ? Præstat una opera, uno simul in loco artem longiusculam cum luce conjungere, quam
minore cum luce brevissimam aliunde illustrare ; cum hoc non minore negotio multoque minus commode hac-
tenus fiat, quam si ars ipsa ut nunc suapte copia se fuse explicaverit. Quam artis tradendæ rationem uberiorem
ipse etiam Ramus in arithmetica et geometria aliquanto post à se editis, edoctus jam longiore usu, secutus est ;
suasque ipse regulas interjecto commentariolo explanavit, non aliis explanandas reliquit. Quorum cum pleri-
que nescio an nimio commentandi studio elati, certe omnis methodi quod in iis mirum sit, obliti, omnia permis-
ceant, postrema primis, axiomata syllogysmos eorumque regulas primis quibusque simplicium argumentorum
capitibus ingerere soleant, unde caliginem potius discentibus offundi quam lucem ullam præferri necesse est, id
mihi cavendum imprimis duxi, ut nequid præriperem, nequid præpostere quasi traditum jam et intellectum, ne-
quid nisi suo loco attingerem ; nihil veritus ne cui forte strictior in explicandis præceptis existimer, dum perpen-
denda magis quam percurrenda proponere studebam. Nec tamen iis facile assenserim, qui paucitatem regularum
objiciunt Ramo, quarum permultæ etiam ex Aristotele ab aliis collectæ, nedum quæ ab ipsis cumulo sunt ad-
jectæ, vel incertæ vel futiles, discentem impediunt atque onerant potius quam adjuvant : ac siquid habent utili-
tatis aut salis, id ejusmodi est, ut suopte ingenio quivis facilius percipiat, quam tot canonibus memoriæ man-
datis, addiscat. Multoque mimus constitui, canones quidvis potius quam logicos, à theologis infercire ; quos
illi, quasi subornatos in suum usum, tamquam è media logica petitos, depromant de Deo, divinisque hypostasibus
et sacramentis; quorum ratione, quo modo est ab ipsis informata, nihil est à logica, adeoque ab ipsa ratione,
alienius. •
Prius autem quam opus ipsum aggredior, quoniam ars logica omnium prima est suisque finibus latissime patet,
præmittam quædam de arte generalia, deque artium distributione ; artem deinde ipsam persequar: ad extremum,
analytica quædam exempla, sive usum artis, exercitationis causa, iis quibus opus est, et in eo genere exercere se
libet, exhibebo : quibus opus est inquam ; quibus enim ingenium per se viget atque pollet, iis ut in boc genere
analytico cum labore nimio ac miseria se torqueant, non sum author. Ad id enim ars adhibetur, ut naturam
juvet, non ut impediat: adhibita nimis anxie nimisque subtiliter, et præsertim ubi opus non est, ingenium per
se jam satis acutum, obtundit potius quam acuit; ita plane ut in medicina remediorum usus vel nimius vel
non necessarius, valetudinem debilitat potius quam roborat. Quod autem Aristotelis aliorumque veterum
auctoritatem ad singulas fere logicœ regulas adjungimus, id quidem in tradenda arte supervacuum fuisset, nisi
862 ARTIS LOGICÆ PLENIOR INSTITUTIO,
novitatis suspicio, quæ Petro Ramo hactenus potissimum obfuit, adductis ipsis veterum authorum testimoniis,
esset amolienda. -
Art'um omnium quasi corpus et comprehensio §ykvk\oratòsia Græce, i. e. eruditionis circuitus quidam in se re-
deumtis, adeoque in se absolutæ atque perfectæ, vel philosophia dicitur. Hæc cum sapientiæ studium proprie
significat, tum vulgo artium omnium vel doctrinam, vel scientiam : doctrinam, cum præcepta artium tradit ;
scientiam, cum ars, quæ habitus est quidam mentis, præceptis illis percipitur, quasique possidetur. Eodem
modo et artis significatio distinguitur: cum doctrinam significat, de qua nobis potissimum hic est agendum, est
ordinata præceptorum exemplorumque comprehensio sive methodus, qua quidvis utile docetur.
Artis materia præcepta sunt: quæ qualia esse debeant, artis logicæ, quam nunc tradimus, proprium est suo
loco præscribere.
Forma sive ipsa ratio artis, non tam est præceptorum illorum methodica dispositio, quam utilis alicujus rei
præceptio: per id enim quod docet potius, quam per ordinem docendi, ars est id quod est: quod ex cujusque
artis definitione perspicitur, ut infra ostendetur. -
Praeceptorum artis tria genera sunt : duo præcipua * definitiones et distributiones;” quarum doctrinam ge-
neralem logica etiam loco idoneo sibi vendicat; tertium, minus principale, “ consectarium ” nominatur; estque
proprietatis alicujus explicatio, ex definitione fere deducta.
Exempla sunt quibus præceptionum veritas demonstratur, ususque ostenditur: suntque, ut scite Plato, quasi
obsides sermonum : quod enim præcepto in genere docetur, id exemplo in specie confirmatur.
Efficiens artis primarius neminem reor dubitare quin sit Deus, author omnis sapientiæ : id olim philosophos
etiam non fugit.
Causae ministræ fuerunt homines divinitus edocti, ingenioque præstantes; qui olim singulas artes invenerunt.
Inveniendi autem ratio eadem prope fuit quæ pingendi; ut enim in pictura duo sunt, exemplum sive archetypus,
et ars pingendi, sic in arte invenienda, archetypo respondet matura sive usus, et exemplum hominum peritorum,
arti pictoris respondet logica; saltem maturalis, quæ facultas ipsa rationis in mente hominis est; juxta illud
vulgo dictum, ars imitatur naturam.
Ratio autem sive logica, primum illa naturalis, deinde artificiosa, quatuor adhibuit sibi quasi adjutores, teste
Aristot. Metaphys. 1, c. 1, sensum, observationem, inductionem, et experientiam. Cum enim præcepta artium
generalia sint, ea nisi ex singularibus, singularia nisi sensu percipi non possunt: sensus sine observatione, quæ
exempla singula memoriæ committat, observatio sine inductione, quae singularia quam plurima inducendo gene-
ralem aliquam regulam constituat, inductio sime experientia, quæ singulorum omnium convenientiam in commune
et quasi consensum judicet, nihil juvat. Hinc recte Polus apud Platonem in Gorgia, “ experientia artem peperit,
imperitia fortunam,” i. e. præcepta fortuita, adeoque incerta. Et Aristot. Prior. 1, c. 30, “ cujusque rei principia
tradere, experientiæ est: sic astrologica experientia illius scientiæ principia suppeditavit.” Et Manilius;
** Per varios usus artem experientia fecit,
Exemplo monstrante viam ————”
Et Cicero; ** omnia quæ sunt conclusa nunc artibus, dispersa quondam et dissipata fuerunt, donec adhibita
haec ars est, quæ res dissolutas divulsasque conglutinaret et ratione quadam constringeret.” Ea ars logica est,
vel haec saltem naturalis, quam ingenitam habemus, vel illa artificiosa, quam mox tradimus : hæc enim præcepta
artis invenit ac docet. Hactenus de efficientibus causis artium.
Porma artis, ut supra dixi, non tam præceptorum dispositio est, quam præceptio ipsa rei alicujus utilis, eadem-
que est finis. Quemadmodum, enim, non tam præceptorum logicorum methodica dispositio quam ipsum bene
disserere, et forma logicæ et fimis est, ut infra docebitur, ita in genere non solum præceptorum dispositio, sed
ipsa rei utilis præceptio, forma artis et simul finis est; quod autem praecipitur, id esse utile in hominum vita
debere, quod Græci βιωφελὲς vocant, omnes consentiunt ; indignamque esse artis nomine, quæ non bonum ali-
quod sive utile ad vitam hominum, quod idem quoque honestum sit, sibi proponat, ad quod omnia præcepta
artis referantur ; adeoque formam artis esse rei alicujus utilis præceptionem, per quam scilicet ars est id quod
est, necessario sequitur. Verum ad hunc finem perveniri non potest, nisi doctrinam natura commode percipiat,
exercitatio confirmet, utræque simul doctrina et exercitatio artem quasi alteram naturam reddant. Sed ingenium
sine arte, quam ars sine ingenio plus proficere censetur : proficere autem non admodum utrumque nisi accesserit
exercitatio : unde illud Ovidii:
Solus, et artificem qui facit, usus erit.
Exercitatio duplex est ; analysis et genesis. Illa est, cum exempla artis in sua principia quasi resolvuntur:
dum singulis partibus ad normam, i. e. ad præcepta artis examinantur: hæc, cum ex artis præscripto efficimus
aliquid aut componimus. •
Hactenus causæ artium : sequuntur species. Artes sunt generales vel speciales: generales, quarum materia
subjecta est generalis. Materia autem illa vel artificis est, vel artis. Artificis materia generalis generalibus
cunctis artibus est communis; artis autem, singularum est propria : estque artificis quidem generalis materia,
omne id quod revera est, aut esse fingitur; artis, quod in eo omni efficiunt singulæ. Id omne vel ratio complec-
titur, vel oratio: generalium itaque artium materia generalis, vel ratio est, vel oratio: versantur enim in exco-
AD PETRI RAMI METHODUM CONCINNATA. 863
lenda vel ratione ad bene ratiocinandum, ut logica; vel oratione, eaque vel ad bene loquendum, ut grammatica,
vel ad dicendum bene, ut rhetorica. Omnium autem prima ac generalissima, logica est; dein grammatica, tum
demum rhetorica ; quatenus rationis usus sine oratione etiam magnus, hujus sine illa potest esse nullus. Gram-
maticae autem secundum tribuimus locum, eo quod oratio pura esse etiam inormata ; ornata esse nisi pura sit
prius, facile non queat.
Artes speciales sunt, quæ materiam habent specialem ; nempe maturam fere vel mores: earum enim accura-
tior distributio non est hujus loci.
ARTIS LOG ICÆ PLENIOR INSTITUTIO, &c.
LIBER PRIMUS.
CAPUT I.
Quid sit Logica ?
LoGICA est ars bene ratiocinandi.
dialectica sæpe dicta est.
Logica autem, i. e. ars rationalis, à \6yo) dicitur:
quæ vox Græcè rationem significat ; quam excolen-
dam logica sibi sumit.
Ratiocinari autem est rationis uti facultate. Addi-
tur bene, i. e. rectè, scienter, expeditè ; ad perfectio-
nem artis ab imperfectione facultatis naturalis distin-
guendam.
Logicam potius, quàm cum P. Ramo dialecticam,
dicendam duxi, quòd eo nomine tota ars rationis aptis-
simè significetur ; cùm dialectica à verbo Græco διa\&-
vso&av, artem potius interrogandi et respondendi, i. e.
disputandi significet ; ut ex Platonis Cratylo, ex doc-
trina peripateticorum et stoicorum, Fabio, Suida, aliis-
que docetur. Et tamen Plato in Alcibiade primo idem
vult esse rô διαλ£ysoSai, quod ratione uti. Prior signi-
ficatio ad rationis usum nimis angusta est; posterior,
si inter authores de ea com convenit, nimis incerta.
Ratiocinandi autem potius dico quàm disserendi,
propterea quòd ratiocinari, non minus late quàm ipsa
ratio, idem valet propriè quod ratione uti ; cùm dis-
serere, præterquam quod vox non planè propria, sed
translata sit, non latius plerumque pateat, quam dis-
putare.
Addunt nonnulli in definitione subjectum dialecticæ,
i. e. de re qualibet: sed hoc cum grammatica et rheto-
rica commune dialecticæ fuit, ut in prooemio vidimus ;
non ergo hic repetendum.
Eodemque sensu
CAP. II.
De partibus Logicæ, deque Argumenti Gemeribus.
HATIocINATIo autem fit omnis, rationibus vel solis
et per se consideratis, vel inter se dispositis ; quæ ar-
gumenta etiam sæpius dicta sunt.
dum, probandum aliquid.
Logicae itaque partes duæ sunt ; rationum sive ar-
gumentorum inventio, eorumque dispositio.
Secutus veteres Ramus, Aristotelem, Ciceronem,
Fabium, dialecticam partitur in inventionem et judi-
cium. Verùm non inventio, quæ nimis lata est quo-
cunque modo sumatur, sed argumentorum inventio,
pars prima logicæ dicenda est; dispositio autem eorum,
cur sit secunda, non judicium, secundi libri initio
respomdebimus. Sed neque hæc partitio suis auctori-
bus vel iisdem vel aliis caret : Plato, in Phædo, dispo-
sitionem inventioni addidit ; Aristoteles rá£tv ; Top. 8.
1. quod idem est. Et Cicero, de Orat., fatetur, inven-
tionem et dispositionem, non orationis esse, sed ra-
tionis.
Inventionem autem et dispositionem quarum tan-
dem rerum nisi argumentorum.
Argumentorum itaque inventio topica Græcè nomi-
natur, quia τότες continet, i. e. locos unde argumenta
sumuntur, viamque docet et rationem argumenta bene
inveniendi, suo nimirum ordine collocata ; unde vel ad
genesin expromantur, vel* in analysi explorentur, in-
ventorumque simul vim atque usum exponit.
“ Argumentum est quod ad aliquid arguemdum affec-
tum est.” Id est, quod habet affectionem ad arguen-
dum ; vel ut Cic. in Top. quod affectum est ad id de
quo quæritur: id interpretatur Boethius refertur, vel
aliqua relatione respicit id de quo quæritur.
Ista affectione sublata, argumentum non est; mu-
tata, non est idem ; sed ipsum quoque mutatur.
Ad arguendum autem, i. e. ostendendum, explican-
Sic juxta illud tritum,
“ degeneres animos timor arguit,” Æneid 4: et illud
Ovidii ; ** Apparet virtus, arguiturque malis.” Ex-
plicare autem et probare etiam simplicis argumenti
propria atque primaria vis est, unde aliud ex alio se-
qui, vel non sequi, i. e. umo posito, alterum poni vel
non pomi primitus judicatur: quod de inductione qui-
dem recte monuit Baconus noster, de Augment. Scient.
l. 5, c. 4, “ uno eodemque mentis opere, illud quod
quæritur, et inveniri et judicari;” sed hoc de singulis
argumentis simplicibus non minus verum est.
Ex quo etiam sequitur, judicium mon esse alteram
logicæ partem, sed quasi effectum utriusque partis
864
ARTIS LOGICÆ PLENIOR INSTITUTIO,
communem et ex utraque oriundum ; ex syllogismo in
re præsertim dubia clarius quidem at secundario tamen
contra ac plerique docent.
Aliquid autem, est id quodcunque arguitur: quic-
quid enim est, aut esse fingitur, subjectum est logicæ,
ut supra demonstravimus. Argumentum autem pro-
priè neque vox est neque res ; sed affectio quædam rei
ad arguendum ; quæ ratio dici potest ut supra.
Tractat igitur logica neque voces, neque res. Voces
quidem, quamquam et sine vocibus potest ratiocinari,
tamen, quoties opus est, distimctas et tantùm mom am-
biguas, non improprias, ab ipso usu loquendi videtur
jure sanè postulare : res ipsas artib. quasque suis relin-
quit ; arguendi duntaxat inter se quam habeant affec-
tionem sive rationem considerat.
Ratio autem dicitur, voce à mathematicis petita,
qna terminorum proportionalium inter se certa habitudo
significatur.
“ Argumentum est artificiale aut inartificiale. Sic
Aristot. Rhet. l, 12,” quem Fabius sequitur, l. 5, c. l.
Cicero in ** insitum ” et * assumptum ” dividit. Arti-
ficiale autem dicitur, mon quo inveniatur arte magis
quam inartificiale, sed quòd ex sese arguit, i. e. vi
insita ac propria.
“ Artificiale est primum, vel à primo ortum. Pri-
mum, quod est suæ originis.” Id est, affectionem
arguendi non modò in se habet, sed etiam à se ; quod
infrà clarius patebit, cùm quid sit à “ primo ortum ”
docebitur.
“ Primum est simplex aut comparatum.
“ Simplex, quod simpliciter et absolutè considera-
tur.” Id est, simplicem habet affectionem arguendi id
quod arguitur, sine quantitatis aut qualitatis cum eo
comparatione.
“ Simplex est consentaneum aut dissentaneum.”
Nam quæ sine comparatione considerantur, necesse
est vel consentiant inter se, vel dissentiant.
** Comsentaneum est quod consentit cum re quam
arguit.” Id est, ponit, sive affirmat esse rem quam
arguit.
** Estque consentaneum absolutè aut modo quodam.'
Absolutè, i. e. perfectè ; absolvere enim est perficere.
Aristotelis quoque hæc distributio est. Quæ autem
absolutè consentiunt, eorum alterum alterius vi exis-
tere intelligitur ; et sic consentiunt causa et effectus.
Atque hæ sunt argumentorum distributiones gene-
rales ex affectionum differentiis desumptæ ; suoque
nunc ordine singulatim tractandæ : argumentorum
autem omnium primum causa est; id quòd per se qui-
vis intelligere potest.
»
CAP. III.
De Efficiente, procreante, et comservante.
** CAusA est, cujus vi res est.” Vel, si ex capite
supcriore, quod intelligi memoriaque temeri potest,
repetito est opus, causa est argumentum artificiale,
primum, simplex, absolutè consentaneum, cujus vi,
vel facultate, res, i. e. effectum, arguitur esse vel ex-
istere. Nec male definiatur causa “ quæ dat esse
rei.??
Cujus autem vi vel facultate, i. e. à quo, ex quo, per
quod, vel propter quod res est, id causa esse dicitur.
“ Res” etiam, idem quod “ aliquid ” in definitione
argumenti, vox generalis adhibetur, quæ significaret
causam, sicut et reliqua argumenta, esse rerum omnium
quæ vel sunt, vel finguntur: nam quæ revera sunt,
veras ; quæ finguntur, fictas causas habent.
Hinc intelligitur ** causam sine qua mom,” quæ vulgò
dicitur, impropriè causam, et quasi fortuito, dici: ut cum
amissio rei alicujus dicitur causa recuperationis ; quam-
vis amissio recuperationem necessariò præcedat. Neque
enim causa sic intelligi debet, id quod et Cicero docuit,
1. de Fato, ut quod cuique antecedat, id ei causa sit, sed
quod cuique efficienter antecedat ; i. e. ita ut res vi ejus
existat. Hinc causa propriè dicta, “principium” quoque
nominatur à Cic. 1 de Nat. Deor., sed frequentiùs apud
Græcos.
Causa autem est cujus vi res non solùm est, verùm
etiam fuit, vel erit. Ut enim praecepta logica de omni
re, sic omnium præcepta artium de omni tempore intel-
ligenda sunt; unde et æterna esse, veritatesque aeternae
dicuntur.
Ex definitione autem causæ tertium illud artis præ-
ceptum, de quo in præfatione diximus, consectarium
hoc oritur : “ primus hic locus inventionis, fons est om-
nis scientiæ; scirique demum creditur cujus causa
teneatur.”
Neque aliud est Aristotelis decantata illa demonstra-
tio, quàm qua effectum arguitur, probatur, cognoscitur,
ponitur, ex causa posita; quodcumque illud demum
causæ genus sit: ut cùm risibile probatur ex rationali,
quippe, omnis homo est risibilis, quia rationalis: eoque
erit clarior demonstratio, quo causa certior, propior,
præstantior.
“ Causa est efficiens et materia, aut forma et finis.”
Cur sic causa dividatur quasi in duo genera anonyma,
infrà in doctrina distributionis facilius intelligetur.
Quot autem modis alicujus vi res est, tot esse species
causæ statuendum est. Modis autem quatuor alicujus
vi res est ; ut rectè Aristot. Phys. 2, 7, et nos suprà
diximus ; vel enim à quo, vel ex quo, vel per quod, vel
propter quod res unaquæque est, ejus vi esse rectè
dicitur. His modis mec plures inveniuntur, nec pau-
ciores esse possunt: rectè igitur causa distribuitur in
causam à qua, ex qua, per quam, et propter quam, i. e.
efficientem et materiam, aut formam, et finem.
“ Efficiens est causa, à qua res est, vel efficitur.” Ab
efficiente enim principium movendi est ; ipsa tamen
effecto non inest.
Ciceroni omnis causa “ efficiens” nominatur : sic
enim in Topicis; * primus est locus rerum efficientium,
quæ causæ appellantur:” et de Fato ; ** causa est quæ
id efficit, cujus est causa.” Hinc fit ut “ causatum,” à
causis licet omnib. ortum habens, “ effectum” tantum-
modo vocitetur: unde hoc solum intelligitur, efficientem
esse causam præcipuam atque primariam ; omnem au-
tem causam aliquo modo efficere. -
AD PETRI RAMI METHODUM CONCINNATA.
865
“ Efficientis etsi, vera genera nulla sive species nobis
apparent, ubertas tamen permagna modis quibusdam
distinguitur.”
“ Primò, quòd procreet, aut tueatur.”
Sic pater et mater procreant; nutrix tuetur. Huc
quoque omnium rerum inventores, auctores, comditores,
conservatores referendi sunt. Procreare igitur et tueri
duo sunt modi quibus idem sæpe efficiens efficere solet:
procreando quidem id quod nondum est, ut sit; con-
servando autem id quod jam est, ut porro sit.
CAP. IV
De Efficiente sola, et cum aliis.
“ SEcuNDò, causa efficiens sola efficit, aut cum
aliis. Earumque omnium sæpe alia principalis, alia
minus primcipalis, sive adjuvans et ministra.” Quam
Cicero, in Partit. ** causam conficientem ” vocat :
et cujus, inquit, generis vis varia est, et saepe aut
major aut minor ; ut et illa quæ maximam vim
habet, sola sæpe causa dicatur. Himc, Æneid. 2, Nysus
ab Euryalo socio transfert in se factæ cædis et culpam
et pœnam : quasi solus auctor fuerit, quia fuit praeci-
puus. Et solitaria causa cum plerisque et principalibus
et sociis, pro “ Marcello,” variè adhibetur. Sed hæc
duo exempla vide post finem in praxi analytica.
Causa minus principalis (ut quidam volunt) vel est
impulsiva, quæ principalem quoquo modo impellit ac
movet, vel est instrumentalis.
Impulsiva duplex est Græcisque vocibus receptis,
“proegumena” dicitur, vel “procatarctica.” Illa in-
tus, hæc extrinsecus movet principalem : et vera si est,
“ occasio;” si ficta, * prætextus” dicitur.
Sic causa proeg. quæ intus movebat infideles ad per-
sequendum Christianos (exemplis enim receptis hic
utemur) erat eorum ignorantia aut impietas, causa
procat. erant nocturni conventus, vel potius quævis con-
venticula Christianorum. Olim interficiendi Christi
causa proeg. erat Judæorum zelus ignarus : procat.
objecta sabbathi violatio concionesque seditiosae. No-
tandum autem est ubi causa proegumena, sive interna,
non est, ibi causæ procatarcticæ, sive externæ, vim uul-
lam esse.
Ad causam autem procatarcticam, ea sæpe referenda
videtur, si omnino est in causis numeranda, quæ suprà
dicta est “ causa sine qua non ;" siquidem quovis modo
causam extrinsecus movere principalem dici potest.
“Instrumenta etiam in causis adjuvantibus connume-
rantur.” Quo argumento Epicureus, apud Cic. 1, de
Nat. Deor. disputat mundum nunquam esse factum :
hoc etiam exemplum ad praxin retulimus. Instrumenta
autem propriè non agunt, sed aguntur aut adjuvant.
Et qui causam adjuvantem nullam nisi instrumenta
habent, potest rectè “ solitaria causa” dici: quanquam
lata admodum instrumenti significatio admittitur; ut
apud Aristot. Polit. 1, 3, “ instrumenta sunt animata,
vel inanimata.” Quo sensu omnes ferè causæ adju-
vantes et ministrae possunt “ instrumentales” nomi-
nari.
Ad hunc locum referendus commodissimè videtur
causarum ordo, quo alia dicitur “ prima,” idque vel ab-
solutè, ut Deus, vel in suo genere, ut sol, et ejusmodi
quippiam ; alia “ secunda ; " et sic deinceps, quæ à
prima vel à prioribus pendet, et quasi effectum est.
Alia deinde ** remota” dicitur, alia “ proxima: ”
spectat illud vulgo dictum, “ quicquid est causa causæ,
est etiam causa causati.” Quae regula in causis duntaxat
necessariò inter se ordinatis valet. Sed hæ causarum
divisiones in logica non magnopere sectandæ sunt;
quandoquidem tota vis arguendi in causa proxima con-
tinetur ; deque ea sola generalis definitio causae intel-
ligitur.
quò
CAP. V.
De Efficiente per se, et per Accidens.
“ TERTIò, causa efficiens per se efficit, aut per ac-
cidens.” Tertium hoc par modorum efficiendi est, ab
Aristotele etiam et veteribus notatum.
“ Per se efficit causa, quæ sua facultate efficit.” Id
est, quæ ab interno principio effectum producit.
“ Ut quæ matura vel consilio faciunt.” Naturalis
efficientia est elementorum, fossilium, plantarum, ami-
malium. Consilii exemplum est illa Ciceronis de se ad
Cæsarem confessio: “ nulla vi coactus, judicio meo ac
voluntate, ad ea arma profectus sum, quæ erant sumpta
contra te.”
Naturæ, appetitum ; consilio, artem nonnulli adjun-
gunt. Sed appetitus aut ad naturam, aut ad naturæ
vitium ; ars ad consilium sine incommodo referetur :
ars n. et consilium quatenus aliud efficiunt, non illa ab
intellectu, hoc à voluntate; sed ut utrumque ab utroque
proficisci videtur: etenim ars ferè non invita, mon prox-
imæ saltem invita ; et consilium prudens sciensque
agit. Hi quatuor modi efficiendi per se, ad eundem
nonnunquam effectum concurrunt: ut cùm quis loqui-
tur, naturâ; hoc vel illud, consilio simul et appetitu ;
eleganter, arte.
Videtur itaque huc propriè referenda etiam causa im-
pulsiva, sive ea proegumena, sive procatarctica sit, de
quibus capite superiore diximus ; quæ non tam causte
sunt principali sociæ aut ministræ quam modi efficien-
tis, quibus vel affectu aliquo impulsus, vel ex occasione
aliqua oblata, consilio abductus hoc vel illud agit, ut
ex allatis ibi exemplis intelligi potest.
Quæ autem natura necessariò, quæ consilio, libere
agunt; necessariò agit quæ aliter agere non potest, sed
ad unum quidpiam agendum determinatur, idque so-
lum sua propensione agit quae necessitas naturæ dici-
tur; ex hypothesi nimirum. Nisi Deus aliud voluerit,
aut externa vis aliorsum impulerit, ut lapidem sursum.
Libere agit efficiens non hoc duntaxat ut naturale agens,
sed hoc vel illud pro arbitrio, idque absolute vel ex
hypothesi. Absolute solus Deus libere agit omnia;
id est quicquid vult ; et agere potest vel non agere;
866
ARTIS LOGICÆ PLENIOR INSTITUTIO,
testantur hoc passim sacræ literæ : libere ex hypothesi,
illæ dumtaxat causæ quæ ratione et consilio faciunt, ut
angeli et homines; ex hypothesi nimirum divinæ volun-
tatis, quæ iis libere agendi potestatem in primcipio
fecit. Libertas enim potestas est agendi vel non agendi
hoc vel illud. Nempe nisi Deus aliud voluerit, aut vis
aliunde ingruat.
“ Per accidens efficit causa, quæ externa facultate
efficit.” Id est, non sua ; cùm principium effecti est
extra efficientem, externumque principium intermo op-
positum : sic n. efficiens mon efficit per se, sed per
aliud. Hinc vere dicitur, “ omne effectum causae per
accidens potest reduci ad causam per se.”
“ Ut in his quæ fiunt coactione, vel fortuna.” Duo
m. hæc sunt externa principia internis, maturæ nempe
et volumtati sive consilio, opposita. Sic Aristot. Rhet.
2, 20, cùm dixisset, homines facere quaedam non per
se, quaedam per se ; subjungit, “ eorum quæ mom per
se, alia per fortunam, alia ex mecessitate.” Sed ** neces-
sitas” vox nimis lata est, ut ex supra dictis de efficiente
naturali patebit.
Coactione fit aliquid, cum efficiens vi cogitur ad ef-
fectum. Ut cum lapis sursum vel recta projicitur qui
suapte matura deorsum fertur. Haec necessitas coacti-
omis dicitur et causis etiam liberis nonnunquam acci-
dere potest. Sic necesse est mercatori in tempestate
merces ejicere, siquidem salvus esse vult. Hæc itaque
necessitas mixtas quasdam actiones produxit, quas facit
quis volens nolente animo, quod aiunt.
“ Fortuna sive fortuitò fit aliquid, cùm præter scopum
efficientis accidit.” Non enim fortuma, sed efficiens,
quæ per fortumam sive fortuitò agit, est propriè causa
per accidens rerum fortuitarum : eò quòd earum prin-
cipium, occulta nimirum illa causa quam “ fortumam”
dicimus, extra illum efficientem est: fortuna' autem est
eventuum eorum principium, etsi occultum, mom per ac-
cidens tamen, sed per se. Fortuna itaque apud veteres
aut nomem sime re esse existimabatur, quo usi sunt
homines, teste alicubi Hippocrate, cùm secundarias
contingentium causas ignorarent, aut est ipsa latens
causa: ut Cicero in Top. ** cùm enim nihil sine causa
fiat, hoc ipsum est fortuna, eventus obscura causa, quæ
latenter efficit.” Inter fortunam et casum hæc volunt
interesse Aristot. Phys. 2, 6, et Plutarch. de Placit, et
de Fato, ut casus quàm fortuna latius pateat : fortuma
in iis dumtaxat qui ratione utuntur ; casus in omnibus
tam animantibus quàm inanimatis dominetur: sed lo-
quendi ferè usus fortunae sub nomime casum etiam
complectitur, quotiescumque præter scopum sive finem
efficientis aliquid accidit. “ Sic casu fortuito,” ait
Tullius, 3, De Nat. Deor. * Pheræo Jasoni profuit hos-
tis, qui gladio vomicam ejus aperuit, quam medici
sanare non poterant.”
“ In hoc genere causarum imprudentia connumerari
solet.” Sic etiam Aristot. Ethic. 3, 1, “ videntur non
voluntaria esse, quæ per vim aut ignorantiam fiunt.”
Et Ovid. 2 Trist.
Cur aliquid vidi? cur noxia lumina feci?
Cur imprudenti cognita culpa mihi est?
Inscius Actæom vidit sine veste Dianam :
Præda suis canibus mec minus ille fuit.
Scilicet im superis etiam fortuma luemda est :
Nec veniam, læso mumime, casus habet.
Durum id esse queritur poeta : nam cæteroqui hinc
sumitur plerumque deprecatio ; et excusationi etiam
monnunquam locus hic est.” Deprecationis exemplum
est apud Cic. pro Ligario : “ignosce pater : erravit ;
lapsus est : non putavit: et ° paulò pòst ; ** erravi :
temerè feci : pœnitet ; ad clementiam tuam confugio.”
Fortunæ autem nomen, ut suprà dictum est, ignoratio
causarum comfixit: cùm enim aliquid præter consilium
spemque contigerit, fortuna vulgò dicitur. Unde Cice-
ro, apud Lactantium, Instit. 3, 29, “ignoratio rerum
atque causarum fortunæ momen induxit.” Nec inscite
Juvenalis :
Nullum numem abest, si sit prudentia: sed te
Nos facimus, fortuna, deam: coeloque locamus.
Certè enim et coelo locanda est ; sed, mutato nomine,
“ divina providentia” dicenda. Unde Arist. Phys. 2, 4,
“ sunt nonnulli quibus fortuna quidem videtur esse
causa, sed ignota humanæ intelligentiæ, tanquam divi-
num quiddam.” Et Cic. Acad. l, ** providentiam Dei
quæ ad homines pertinet, nonnunquam quidem fortu-
nam appellant, quod efficiat multa improvisa nec
opinata nobis propter obscuritatem ignorationemque
causarum.” Sed providentia rerum omnium prima
causa est, sive notæ sive ignotæ simt earum causæ
secundariæ : et providentiæ si necessitatem adjungas,
“ fatum ” dici solet. Verùm de providentia meliùs
theologia quàm logica disceptabit. Hoc tamtùm obi-
ter ; fatum sive decretum Dei cogere neminem male-
facere ; et ex hypothesi divinæ præscientiæ certa
quidem esse omnia, mom necessaria. Non excusandus
itaque Cicero pro Ligario, cùm ait, “ fatalis quædam
calamitas incidisse videtur, et improvidas hominum
mentes occupavisse ; ut nemo mirari debeat humana
consilia divina necessitate esse superata.” Multo rec-
tius alibi, “ datur quidem venia necessitati ;'° sed me-
cessitati, quæ instituto efficientis repugnat, et vo-
luntati. -
CAP. VI.
De Materia.
“ MATERIA est causa ex qua res est.” Efficientem
ordine naturæ sequitur materia ; et efficientis effectum
quoddam est ; præparat enim efficiens materiam, ut sit
apta ad recipiendam formam. Ut autem efficiens est
id quod primum movet, ita id materia quod primum
movetur, hinc efficiens, agendi ; materia, patiendi
principium appellatur. Hæc autem definitio materiæ
apud omnes eadem ferè occurrit, “ Est causa :* ma-
teriæ enim vi effectum est. Illa autem vis particula
“ ex qua ” significatur: quanquam hæc vulgò non
materiæ solùm nota est, sed nunc efficientis, ut, “ ex
ictu vulnus :* nunc partium, ut, “ homo constat ex
anima et corpore;” nunc mutationis cujusvis, ut, * ex
AD PETRI RAMI METHODUM CONCINNATA.
867
candido fit niger. Res :” nempe quam arguit: effec-
tum scilicet materiatum ; ut intelligamus materiam
etiam esse omnium entium et non entium communem ;
non rerum sensibilium et corporearum propriam. Qua-
les autem res ipsæ sunt, talis materia earum esse debet;
sensibilium sensibilis, æternarum æternæ; et ita in
reliquis. Sic artium materia sunt praecepta. “ Est,”
i. e. efficitur et constat: unde Cic. l, Acad. “ materia
ea causa est, quæ se efficienti præbet, ut ex sese non
modò effectum fiat, sed etiam postquam effectum est,
constet.” Hoc argumento ficto, apud Ovid. 2 Metam.
solis domus auro, pyropo, ebore, argento componitur.
“ Regia solis erat,” &c. Sic Cæsar. l Bel. Civil. na-
vium materiäm describit: “ carinæ primum ac statu-
mina ex levi materia fiebant,” &c.
Dividitur vulgo materia in primam et secundam ;
secunda in proximam et remotam. Verùm hæc dis-
tributio physica potius est. Id enim solum logicus in
materia spectat, ut res ex ea sit; et potissimum qui-
dem ut proximè ex ea sit ; proxima enim potissimum
arguit.
CAP. VII.
De Forma.
“ CAUSAE primum genus ejusmodi est in efficiente et
materia : secundum sequitur in forma et fine.” Quia
scilicet ordine temporis est posterius. Efficiens enim
et materia sub genere priore continentur, quòd in
effecto producendo praecedunt ; forma et finis sub
posteriore, quòd efficientem et materiam sequuntur
effectumque ipsum comitantur : positis enim effici-
emte, et materia, non continuò sequuntur forma et
fimis : efficiens enim etsi materia suppetit, forma
tamen et fine suo nonnunquam frustratur; forma et
finis si adsit, necesse est efficientem et materiam fu-
isse. Qui autem in usu observatur ordo causarum,
idem debet in doctrina quoque observari. Nec ta-
men ordo iste ad constituenda causarum genera satis
valet, sed aliud quiddam quod momime caret. Unde
mcritò nom satis accurata videtur illa causarum dis-
tributio, quæ affertur Aristotelis, in causas vel effec-
tum praecedentes, ut efficientem et materiam ; vel
cum effecto simul existentes, ut formam et finem :
tametsi enim hæc distributio ordinem causarum
servat, naturam tamen earum non distinguit; immo
causæ neque convenit, neque propria est: mon con-
venit, quia causa quælibet, ut causa, non præcedit, sed
cum effecto simul est. Præcedunt autem utcunque
efficiens et materia effectum vel maturæ ordine, vel tem-
poris: si naturæ, id et cum reliquis causis et cum sub-
jectis omnibus commune habent ; si temporis, hoc effi-
ciente et materiæ neque omni commune est (quædam
enim cum effecto non nisi simul sunt) neque solis iis
proprium ; nam et subjecta pleraque adjunctis suis
tempore priora sunt. Nec fœliciùs ab eodem Aristotele
dividuntur causæ in externas, efficientem et finem ; et
»Yo
ô K
internas, materiam et formam : haec enim distributio
etsi usus ejus aliquis esse potest, ad leges tamen artis
minus accommodata est : esse enim externum vel in-
ternum, non est causis proprium, sed effecto etiam et
adjuncto commune. Deinde materia et forma cùm in-
tra effectum sunt, non tam causæ quàm partes cffecti
sunt : quid ? quòd fimis, quæ perfectio rei est aptitudo-
que ad usum, interma potius causa diceretur. Postremò,
hæc distributio turbat ordinem causarum, methodi pro-
inde legem : efficiens enim est principium motus et
causarum prima ; finis, ultima est : si igitur internum
externo praemittitur, materia et forma, quæ efficientis
quodammodo effecta sunt, efficienti præponentur ;
si externum interno, fimis efficienti, i. e. ultima
primæ, adjungetur ; mediis, materiæ nempe et forma,
praemittetur. Cautius itaque Ramus atque arti com-
venientiùs, causarum genera anonyma reliquit: quod
ut ostenderemus, longiuscule cum venia digressi,
nunc ad alterum genus causarum, formam et finem,
redeamus. Formæ autem est prior locus concedendus,
cùm finis nihil aliud sit quàm fructus quidam formae.
“ Forma est causa per quam res est id quod est.”
Hæc definitio Platomicam et Aristotelicam conjunxit :
ille enim definit formam esse causam per quam, hic,
quod quid est esse. Ut autem materia, si etiarn forma
effectum quoddam efficientis quidem est. Formam
enim efficiens et producit nondum existentem, et indu-
cit in materiam : forma autem effecti et causa est, et
præcipua quidem, solaque effectum arguit, quòd vi
formæ potissimum existit. Efficiens enim frustrari
forma, forma effecto mon potest. Per quam itaque par-
ticula eam causam significat eamque vim, quæ renm sive
effectum informat atque constituit. Res enim nulla est
quæ suam mon habeat formam, iiobis licet incognitam.
Res etiam singulæ, sive individua, qu£e vulgò vo-
cant, singulas sibique proprias formas habent; differunt
quippe numero inter se, quod nemo non fatetur. Quid
autem est aliud numero inter se, nisi singulis formis
differre ? Numerus enim, ut rectè Scaliger, est affectio
essentiam consequens. Quæ igitur numero, essentia
quoque differunt ; et nequaquam numero, misi essentia,
differrent. Evigilent hic theologi. Quòd si quæcumque
numero, essentia quoque differunt, nec tamen materia,
necesse est formis inter se differant ; non autem com-
munibus, ergo propriis. Sic anima rationalis, forma
hominis im genere est ; anima Socratis, forma Socratis
propria. “ Per quam res est id quod est,” i. e. quæ
dat proprium esse rei. Cùm enim cujusque ferè rei
essentia partim sit communis, partim propria ; cum-
munem materia constituit, forma propriam. Et per
alias quidem causas esse res potest dici ; per solam for-
mam “ esse id quod est.”
“ Ideoque binc à cæteris rebus omnib. res distingui-
tur.” Id est, distinctione, quam vocant essentiali : ex
sola enim forma est differentia essentialis. Immo quæ-
cumque inter se quovis modo, eadem etiam formis dif-
ferunt ; fomsque omnis differentiæ forma est; nec aliis
argumentis inter se res, nisi formis primariò discrepa-
rent. Et boc quidem consectarium ex definitione est
primum, sequitur alterum. »
“ Forma simul cum re ipsa ingeneratur.” Hinc
868
ARTIS LOGICÆ PLENIOR INSTITUTIO,
illud verissimum : “ posita forma, resipsa pomitur ; sub-
lata, tollitur.” Ad exempla nunc veniamus. Anima
rationalis est forma hominis, quia per eam homo est
homo, et distinguitur à cæteris omnibus naturis : geo-
metricarum figurarum in triangulis, quadrangulis sua
forma est: physicarum, cœli, terræ, arborum, piscium
SUlà.
“ Unde præcipua rerum ut natura est, sic erit explica-
tio, si possit inveniri.” Tertium hoc consectarium est ex
definitione formæ. Unde illud quod de causa in com-
muni supradictum est, nempe fontem esse omnis scientiæ,
formæ potissimum convenire intelligitur. Quæ enim
causa essentiam præcipuè constituit, eadem si nota sit,
scientiam quoque potissimum facit. Sed formam inter-
nam cujusque rei nosse, à sensibus, ut ferè fit, remotissi-
mam, difficile admodum est. Im artificiosis autem rebus
forma, utpote externa, sensibusque exposita, facilius
occurrit ; ut apud Cæsarem de Bell. Gall. l. 7, “ muri
autem omnes Gallici hæc ferè forma sunt,” &c. Sic
forma Virgiliani portus explicatur, /Eneid. 1, “ est in
secessu longo locus,” &c.
Distributio autem formæ nulla vera est. Nam quod
monnulli internam vel externam esse volunt, ea distri-
butio neque ad res omnes, sed tantum ad corporeas per-
tinebit ; et externa non minus essentialis cuique rei est
artificiosæ, quàm interna naturali.
CAP. VIII.
De Fime.
“ FiNis est causa cujus gratia res est.” Sic ctiam
** Aristoteles, Phil. 1, 3, quarta causa est cujus et bo-
mum : hoc enim generationis omnis finis est.” Cùm
enim efficiens assecutus est finem, in eo acquies-
cit, actionique suæ finem imponit. Finis itaque est
causarum ultima. Verùm ut rectè “ Aristot. lPhys. 2,
2, mom omne ultimum fimalis causa est, sed quod est op-
timum :” Finis enim vel terminum rei significat, vel
bonum rei ; sicut et terminus est vel durationis, vel
magnitudinis aut figuræ. Finalis autem causa non est
misi bonum quid ; eodemque sensu finis et bonum dici-
tur ; verumne am apparens, ad vim causæ nihil interest.
Sic etiam Aristot. Phys. 2, 3, idemque in Eth. passim :
mali etiam evitatio habet rationem boni. Nonnulli
tamen inter finem et finalem causam ita distinguunt,
ut finis sit usus rei, finalis autem causa de usu cogita-
tio. Atqui non cogitatio, sed res, i. e finis ipse effecti
causa finalis vera est: nam de materia quoque et de for-
ma prius cogitatur, sine hac tamen distinctione : cogi-
tatur etiam de causa impulsiva, eaque movet efficiem-
tem, nec tamen finalis causa dici potest; cùm eam
efficiens non appetat, sed sæpius aversetur, quoties
affectus aut habitus aliquis pravus ad bonum aliquod
apparens consequendum impellit. Idemque finis in
animo efficientis primus, in opere atque effecto est pos-
tremus. Dum autem in animo tantum efficientis est,
et nondum obtinetur, nondum sanè existit ; cùm non-
dum existit, causa esse qui potest ? Cum itaque vulgò
dicitur, fimis quatenus efficientem quasi suadendo movet
ut materiam paret, eique formam inducat, mom modò
effecti, verùm etiam causarum causa earumque optima
est, id improprie et per anticipationcm quandam dici-
tur. In opere autem et usu licet sæpe sit ultimus, ap-
titudine tamen ad usum misi simul cum forma et tem-
pore et natura esse intelligatur, erit posterior effecto
per formam jam constituto, et adjunctum potius effecti
quàm causa. Sic non habitatio, sed ad habitandum
aptitudo, quæ cum imducta forma simul et tempore et
natura est, proprius finis domus est statuendus, reique
perfectio et formæ quasi fructus est. Hinc Græci non
modò reXéw perficio, à r£λος, i. e. finis deducunt, sed
etiam perfectum τελειον, à fine, vocant, teste Aristotele,
Phil. 8, 24.
Vis autem propria qua finalis causa aliis ab causis
distinguitur, his verbis, “ cujus gratia,” exprimitur ;
ut et aliis etiam particulis, nempe “ cujus causa, ad, ob,
pro, propter, quo, quorsum,” et similibus. Ne autem
est mota illius finis, qui in mali alicujus vitatione ver-
satur. Finis autem dicitur non eorum solùm qui finem
sibi proponunt, i. e. efficientium rationalium, sed eorum
quæcumque ad finem referuntur, i. e. quorumvis effec-
torum. Sic physicis rebus finis homo propositus est,
homini Deus. Quod nec ignoravit Aristoteles, Phys.
2, 2, “ rebus,” inquit, “ utimur, quasi mostra causa
essent omnia : nam et nos quodammodo finis sumus.”
Deum esse omnium finem docet sapiens Hebræus,
Proverb. 16, 4, “ Deus propter se fecit omnia.” Om-
nium artium est aliquod summum bonum et finis ex-
tremus; quæ et earum forma est: ut grammaticæ, bene
loqui ; rhetoricæ, bene dicere ; logicæ, bene ratioci-
nari.
Quod autem forma finis quoque esse potest, testatur
haud semel Aristoteles, Phil. 8, 24, et Phys. 2, 7, 8.
Et Plato in Philebo, essentiam sive formam rei, gene-
rationis finem statuit: unde Arist. de Part. 1, 1, idem.
Ut formæ, ita et finis distributio vera nulla est; quæ
vulgò efferuntur, non sunt logici finis distributiones, sed
specialium finium pro varietate effectorum distinc-
tiones. Distinguitur ab Aristotele, de Anima, l. 2, 4,
** finis cujus, et fimis cui:” fimis cujus, est finis operæ,
sive operandi ; finis cui, est fimis ipsius operis, e. g. in
domo ædificanda ; fimis cujus, sive operæ, est domus ;
finis cui, sive ipsius operis, i. e. domus ædificatæ, est
aptitudo ad habitationem.
Afferuntur et aliæ distributionis fines, quæ ad finem
cui pertinent, ut ex Aristot. Mag. Mor. 1, 2, “ fimis
alius est perfectus, alius imperfectus ;'' vel, quod idem
est, ex aliis, “ finis est summus, aut subordinatus.”
Summus autem est, qui propter se expetitur: estque
vel universalis, omnib. scilicet rebus communis, vel
specialis, cuique speciei peculiaris et proprius. Sub-
ordinatius autem non tam fimis est, quàm destimatum
quiddam ad finem : et esse summum vel subordina-
tum, esse universale vel speciale, ad alia æque argu-
menta pertinet, atque ad finem. Postremò, lex distri-
butionis jubet partes distributionis esse oppositas: at
inter summum et subordinatum oppositio nulla est.
Ad omîmes igitur omnium rerum fines imtelligendos,
AD PETRI RAMI METHODUM CONCINNATA.
869
unica finis definitio satis est ; ut id sit cujus gratia res
est : utrum autem sit summus an subordinatus, univer-
salis an specialis, id logica non spectat, sed inferioribus
quibusvis disciplinis relinquit.
CAP. IX.
De Ec/ecto.
“ EFFECTUM est, quod è causis existit.” Effectum cùm
sit vi omnium causarum, à causa tamen principe, scili-
cet efficiente, effectum denominatur. Sed quoniam, si
propriè loquimur, effectum ab efficiente solo efficitur,
omnium autem causarum vi est, idcirco non definitur ex
denominatione quòd à causis efficitur, sed ex re potius,
i. e. ex communi causarum vi, quod è causis est vel
existit. Jam illud hîc monendum est, ex cap. 2,
quod in causa explicanda monuimus, effectum esse
argumentum absolute cum causa sive causæ consen-
taneum, i. e. causam absolutè arguere ; ita ut quemad-
modum posita causa, ponitur effectum ; sic posito
effecto, ponatur causa : ut enim causæ dant esse ef-
fecto, ita effectum esse suum habet à causis, i. e. ab
efficiente, ex materia, per formam, propter finem ex-
istit. Effectum igitur causas arguit, et ab iis vicissim
arguitur ; sed non pari ratione : effectum enim arguit
causam esse aut fuisse, Græcis örv; causa autem, quare
sit effectum demonstrat, Græcis διδrv. Causœ sunt
priores et motiores, effectum, ut posterius, ita minus
arguit. Sic argentum materia poculi, magis arguit
et manifestum reddit naturam poculi, quàm poculum
argenti. Interdum autem effecta, non per se quidem,
sed nobis notiora, clarius causas arguunt, quàm argu-
untur à causis. Sic etiam Aristoteles, Post. 1, 10,
“ nihil prohibet eorum quæ se reciprocè arguunt,” ut
causa et effectum, “ id notius nonnunquam esse quod
non est causa.”
“ Sive igitur gignatur, sive corrumpatur, sive modo
quolibet moveatur quidlibet, hic motus et res motu
facta effectum dicitur.” Ut causarum modi quidem
fuere, ita nunc effectorum quidam his verbis ostendum-
tur. Modi effectorum generales sunt, vel speciales.
Generales sunt vel motus quilibet, quæ “ operatio et
actio” dicitur; vel res motu factæ, quæ sunt opera.
Modi speciales, sive exempla specialia, sunt “ gemera-
tio, corruptio, et similia,” â physicis petita. Causa
enim corrumpens est causa procreans corruptionis.
Notandum autem est hic rem quamlibet, non motam,
sed ** motu factam, effectum ” dici ; nulla enim res
corrupta corrumpenti contraria est. *
Hujus loci sunt laudes et vituperationes, quarum
pleni sunt libri sacri et prophani. A factis enim quis-
que potissimum laudatur et vituperatur.
Huc etiam dicta scriptaque referenda sumt ; consilia
item et deliberationes, etiamsi ad exitum perductæ
non fuerint. Neque enim facta solùm, sed etiam con-
sulta et cogitata pro effectis habenda sunt.
** Sunt etiam effecta virtutum et vitiorum.”
tius hoc modò ebrietatis effecta describit:
Hora-
ç¢ Quid non ebrietas designat? operta recludit,” &c.
Volunt hic plerique Rami interpretes motus doc-
trinam, utpote rei generalis, ad logicam pertinere ; sed
mon rectè. Quid enim potest logica docere de motu,
quod naturale et physicum non sit ? “ Scicntias,” in-
quiunt, ex Aristot. Phys. 8, 3, “ et opiniones, motu
uti omnes.” Utuntur quidem, sed ex natura, quam
physica docet, petito. Sic logica ratione utitur, nec
tamen rationis naturam, sed ratiocinandi artem docet.
Omnis quidem causa movet, effectum movetur ; nec ta-
men quid moveat aut moveatur, sed quid arguat aut
arguatur logicus considerat. Ipsum etiam “ arguere et
argui” non quatenus motus est, aut res motu facta, sed
quatenus relatione quadam arguendi vel facultatem
ratiocinandi juvat vel artem tradit, ad Iogicam perti-
net.
Duos hic canones causæ et effecti communes, quam-
vis in physica potiùs quàm in logica tractandos, ut
multa alia quæ Aristotelici congerere huc solcnt, tamen
quia sæpe occurrunt et fallaces sunt, appendiculæ in
modum libet cum suis cautionibus hic attingere. Pri-
mus est, “ qualis causa, tale causatum :'' ex Aristot.
2 Top. c. 9.. Quod verum non est primò in causis per
accidens: ut, “ hic sutor est vir bonus;” at non ergo
“ bonos consuit calceos;” potest enim esse sutor non
bonus. Secundò, non in causis universalibus: ut, “ sol
omnia calefacit;” at non “ idcirco ipse est calidus.”
Tertiò, non in causis voluntariis, nisi velint. Quartò,
si res in qua effectum est producendum, id per naturam
suam recipere non potest.
Canon secundus est, “ propter quod unumquodque
est tale, illud est magis tale;” Arist. 1 Post. c. 2. Sci-
licet primò rursus in causis per se : ut, “ hic est ebrius;”
non ergo “ vinum magis ebrium.” Secundò, si id à
quo tales denominantur utrique insit : ut, “ cera sit
mollis à sole;” non ** ergo sol est mollior.” Tertiò, si
causa illa recipiat magis et minus: mom ** ergo si filius
est homo propter patrem, pater propterea magis homo.”
Sed canon hic valet præcipuè in causis finalibus : ut,
“ hic studiis dat operam propter quaestum ; quæstui
igitur studet magis.”
CAP. X.
De Subjecto,
“ ARGUMENTUM modo quodam consentaneum suc-
cedit, ut subjectum et adjunctum.” Absoluta enim com-
sensio causæ et effecti hanc modo quodam consensionem
subjecti et adjuncti meritò præcessit. Modo quodam
consentire cum re quam arguunt dicuntur, quae leviter
et extrinsecus tantum consentiunt, i. e. citra rationem
essentiæ ; cùm mom ut causa effecto, ita subjectum det
esse adjuncto ; neque hoc ab illo essentiam accipiat.
De subjecto prius est agendum : etenim subjectum
omne suis adjunctis natura prius est, et quodammodo
se habet ad adjunctum, ut causa ad effectum.
87()
ARTIS LOGICÆ PLENIOR INSTITUTIO,
“ Subjectum est, cui aliquid adjungitur.” Hoc ar-
gumentum Cicero “ rem subjectam ° appellat, quia
mimirum alicui subjicitur ; subjici autem id dicitur,
cui, cùm ex causis constitutum jam est, aliquid tan-
quam additamentum quoddam præter causas adjungi-
tur : adjungitur itaque aliquid, quod alteri, nempe
subjecto, perfecto jam suisque causis constituto, extrin-
secus sive præter essentiam accedit. Subjectum ergo
est quod ad aliquid arguendum est affectum, quod sibi
præter illam essentiam, quam è causis habet, insuper
accedit.
Ut causa, ita et subjectum suos quosdam habet
modos : subjici enim aliquid dicitur vel recipiendo
adjuncta vel occupando. Unde subjectum distingui
potest in recipiens, quod Græce δεκτικόν appellant, et
occupans, quod objectum dici solet, quia in eo adjuncta
occupantur. Recipiens vel in se recipit adjuncta, vel
ad se : recipiens in se adjuncta, vel sustinet ea et quasi
sustentat, quæ idcirco insita et inhærentia appellantur,
vel comtimet, ut locus locatum.
Primus ergo modus est cùm subjectum recipit ad-
juncta insita sive inhærentia. Sic anima est subjectum
scientiæ, ignorantiæ, virtutis, vitii ; quia hæc animæ
adjunguntur, i. e. præter essentiam accedunt : corpus
sanitatis, morbi, roboris, infirmitatis, pulchritudinis,
deformitatis; quia corpori quidem insunt, sed præter
eSSCntlam.
Secundus modus est subjecta adjuncta in se conti-
mentis, i. e. loci. Sic locus est subjectum rei locatæ,
sive in quo res locata continetur. Sic philosophi di-
vimis entibus, licet parte et magnitudine carentibus,
attribuunt locum. Sic geometræ locum locique diffe-
rentias in rebus geometricis. Physici multo etiam
diligentius in rebus physicis considerant, in mundo,
in elementis simplicibus, in rebus compositis. Hinc
nommulli dialectici suæ artis amplificandæ studio, ut
motus, ita loci doctrinam in logiea tractandam esse con-
tendunt. Verùm cùm loeus externa sit affectio cujus-
vis naturæ sive corporeæ sive incorporeæ, miror quid
illis, Rami præsertim discipulis, in mentem venerit, ut
cùm argumenta, i. e. non res, sed rationes subjectum
esse logicæ doceant; res tamen aut rerum naturalium
affectiones, motum, locum, tempus in logica tractandas
esse statuerent. Locus inquiunt omnium omninò rerum
communis est: ergo, inquam, ad artem aliquam non
corporum duntaxat, sed rerum naturalium omnium sive
physicam, universalem, non ad logicam pertinet: quæ
non quid sit locus, spatiumme an superficies corporis
ambientis, sed quomodo arguat rem locatam, id solùm
considerat ; nempe ut subjectum arguit adjunctum.
Tertius modus est subjecti ad vel circa se recipientis
adjuncta ; quæ idcirco “ adjacentia et circumstantiæ?
appellantur. Sic homo est subjectum divitiarum, pau-
pertatis, honoris, infamiæ, vestitus, comitatus, et eorum
ferè quæ dicuntur “ antecedentia, concomitantia, com-
sequentia,” si quam omninò affectionem inter se habent
non necessariam ; quæ causarum et effectorum quæque
ab his orta sunt argumentorum affectio dumtaxat esse
solet. Hactenus de subjecto recipiente.
Quartus modus est subjecti occupantis, in quo mimi-
rum adjunctum occupatur et exercetur : atque hoc
propriè objectum dicitur. Sic sensilia sensuum, et res
virtutibus ac vitiis propositæ, subjecta vitiorum et vir-
tutum hoc modo nonminantur. Color est subjectum
visus, sonus subjectum auditus; quia hi sensus in his
sensilibus occupantur et exercentur. Virtutes et vitia
declarantur in ethicis hoc argumento : temperantia et
intemperantia, voluptate; fortitudo et ignavia, pericu-
lis ; liberalitas et avaritia, divitiis. Sic res numerabilis
arithmeticæ ; mensurabilis, ut ita dicam, geometriæ
subjicitur. Ejusmodi subjecto Cicero 2 Agrar. dispu-
tat, inter Campanos nullam contentionem esse, quia
nullus sit honor: “ Non gloriæ cupiditate,” ait, “ effere-
bantur, propterea quòd ubi honos publicè non est, ibi
cupiditas gloriæ esse non potest,” &c.
CAP. XI.
De Adjuncto.
“ ADJUNCTUM est cui aliquid subjicitur,” vel quod
affectum est ad arguendum subjectum. Doctrina ad-
juncti doctrinæ subjecti per omnia respondet. Cicero
hoc argumentum “ adjunctum ” et “ conjunctum ” vocat.
Ab Aristotele, accidens vocatur, nec male. Quicquid
enim ulli subjecto extrinsecus accidit, sive fortuito sive
non, adjunctum ejus est. Animi, corporisque, et totius
hominis bona et mala, quæ dicuntur, adjuncta sunt
animi, corporis, hominis.
Cùm igitur adjunctum subjecto præter essentiam
accedat, non mutatur ejus accessione vel decessione es-
sentia subjecti, neque aliud inde fit subjectum, sed
alio duntaxat modo se habet. Unde et modi, qui di-
cuntur, in adjunctis numerandi sunt. Sic in causis
“ procreare” et “ tueri,” modi, ut suprà dictum est, sive
adjumcta quædam vel efficientis vel efficiendi sunt.
“ Hoc argumentum etsi subjecto est levius, attamen
est copiosius et frequentius.” Subjecto suo levius est,
quia subjectum prius est, et adjuncti sui quodammodo
causa. Id quod de adjunctis non quibusvis verum esse
docebitur. Hinc Aristot. Phil. S. 1, “ adjunctum sub-
jecto est posterius ratione, tempore, cognitione et ma-
tura :” quod etiam de omni adjuncto ita dumtaxat
verum est, si de tempore excipias, existentiam enim
adjuncti non spectat logica, sed mutuam quam cum
subjecto habet affectionem quæ utrobique simul est ;
ita ut subjectum adjuncto mom magis sit tempore prius
quam adjunctum subjecto ; sublato igitur subjecto,
tollitur adjunctum, ut “ mortuus nom est ; ergo nec
miser est.” Hinc strepitur in scholis, “ ab est secundi
adjecti, ad est tertii adjecti, valet consequentia negan-
do.” Et posito adjuncto, ponitur necessario subjectum ;
ut, ** si mortuus est miser, certè necessario mortuus
est.” Quod et scholæ sic balbutiunt ; ** ab est ter-
tii adjecti, ad est secundi, valet consequentia affirman
do.” Est autem adjunctum subjecto eopiosius et
frequentius, quia unius ejusdemque subjecti plurima
adjuncta esse possunt. Itaque quod de ejusmodi signis
ait Ovid. 2, de Remed. -
AD PETRI RAMI METHODUM CONCINNATA.
87]
Forsitan hæc aliquis (nam sunt quoque) parva vocabit ;
Sed quæ non prosunt singula, multa juvant.
Huc itaque referuntur signa, quæ ad effecta potius
referenda sunt; vimque arguendi perinde habent ut
eorum causæ certæ sunt et cognitæ. Sic tumor uteri
signum est gravidæ; incertum tamen, quia causæ tu-
moris illius aliæ esse possunt ; lac mammarum multo
certius, quia causa certior et motior. Ejusdem generis
sunt signa physiognomonica, prognostica astrologorum
et medicorum. Itaque ut causæ et effecta scientiam,
sic subjecta et adjuncta conjecturam ferè pariunt. Hoc
genere argumenti Fannium Chæream Cicero pro Ros-
cio comoedo cavillatur: et ab adjuncta corporis ha-
bitudine, signa malitiæ colligit: “ nonne ipsum caput
et supercilia illa penitus abrasa olere malitiam, et cla-
mitare calliditatem videntur ? nonne ab imis unguibus
usque ad verticem summum (si quam conjecturam affert
homini tacita corporis figura) ex fraude, fallaciis, men-
daciis constare totus videtur ?” Sic Martial. l. 2, Zoilum
ludit :
“ Crime ruber, miger ore, brevis pede, lumine luscus,
Rem magnam præstas, Zoile, si bonus es.”
Subjectorum porro modis, adjunctorum respondent
modi. Quemadmodum igitur subjectum erat reci-
piens vel occupans, ita adjunctum est receptum vel oc-
cupatum. Receptum vel in subjectum recipitur, vel
ad subjectum : quod in subjectum recipitur, vel sus-
tinetur ab eo, vel in eo continetur aut collocatur:
quod sustinetur, est adjunctum insitum, sive inhærens.
Primus ergo modus est adjunctorum inhærentium
sive insitorum. Ornminòque qualitates (qualitas autem
est qua res qualis dicitur) subjectis præter causas, i. e.
formas extermas (quæ etiam qualitatibus numerantur)
adjunctæ ; sive propriæ sint, quæ omni solique subjecto
semper conveniunt, ut homini risus, equo hinnitus, cani
latratus ; sive communes, quæcumque non sunt eo modo
propriæ. Propria autem quatuor modis vulgò dicuntur:
soli, sed non omni; ut homini proprium est mathema-
ticum esse, sed non omni: omni, sed non soli ; ut
bipedem esse homini: omni et soli, sed non semper ; ut
nomini canescere in senectute : omni, soli, et semper; ut
risibilem esse homini: hoc demum verè proprium est et
reciprocum ; ita ut omnis homo sit risibilis, et omne risi-
bile, proprie dictum, sit homo. Adjunctum itaque propri-
um etsi natura est posterius subjecto, adeoque levius,
tempore tamen simul est, nobisque ferè notius; positoque
adjuncto proprio, ponitur subjectum, et contrà : subjec-
tum enim adjuncto proprie est modo quodam essentiale,
adjunctumque à forma subjecti fluit: habet igitur à
forma subjecti, non ab natura sua, quòd subjectum ponit
et tollit.
Communis etiam qualitas est separabilis vel insepa-
rabilis : ut aquæ frigus, qualitas est separabilis ; hu-
miditas verò inseparabilis ; utraque autem communis.
Atque istæ qualitatum distinctiones, communium et
propriarum, separabilium et inseparabilium, ad judi-
cium faciendum valde sunt utiles, ut secundo libro fa-
cile perspiciemus. Ad hunc modum refertur etiam
quantitas, qua res magnæ vel parvæ, multæ vel paucæ
dicuntur ; et passio, qua res aliquid pati dicitur ; adeo
que motus, ad rem motam si referatur, hujus loci est.
Hactenus de adjuncto quod in subjecto sustinetur.
Secundus modus est adjunctorum quæ continetur in
subjecto, ut locatum in loco : atque huc etiam situs
locorum refertur ; nisi si cui ad primum potius modum
referendus videatur : cùm situs passio sit quædam rei
locatæ, et ad priorem modum sic pertineat. Atque hæc
de adjunctis quæ in subjectum recipiuntur.
Tertius modus est adjunctorum quæ recipiuntur ad
subjectum ; quæ vulgò circumstantiæ nuncupantur,
quia extra subjectum sunt. Huc “ tempus” refertur,
duratio nempe rerum præterita, præsens, futura. Sic
etiam Deus dicitur qui est, qui erat, et qui futurus cst,
Apocal. 1, 8, et 4, 8. Deo tamen ævum sive æternitas,
non tempus attribui solet: quid antem est ævum
proprie, nisi duratio perpetua, Græcè àvov, quasi
deì òv semper existens. Sed quod superioribus capi-
tibus de motu et loco, idem nunc de tempore monendum
est ; non pertinere ad logicam quid sit tempus philo-
sophari, sed quo in genere argumenti ponendum sit,
hic nempe im adjunctis. Huc etiam referuntur divitiæ,
paupertas, honor, infamia, vestitus, comitatus, et
ejusmodi quicquid adesse, adjacere, circumstare, aut
citra vim causæ antecedere, concomitari, sequi, ut su-
prà in subjecto diximus, dici potest ; vel, ut Cic. in
Top. Quicquid ante rem, cum re, post rem, dummodo
non necessariò, evenit.
Quo circumstantiæ genere, “ Dido venetum proficis-
cens, magnifice 4 AEneid. depingitur :
** Oceanum interea surgens Aurora reliquit.
It portis, jubare exorto, delecta juventus:
Retia rara, plagæ, lato venabula ferro,” &c.
In hoc exemplo Dido est subjectum: cujus adjuncta
adjacentia sive circumstantiæ variæ hic enumerantur:
1. “ Tempus, oceanum interea,” &c. 2. “ Comit.,tus,”
nimirum “ delecta juvemtus, equites,” principes “ Pœ-
norum.” 3. Instrumenta (quæ quatenus ad habentem
referuntur) adjuncta ; et hujus quidem modi sunt,
“ retia, plagæ, venabula, canes, sonipes.” 4. Habitus
sive vestitus, “ Sidonia chlamys, purpurea vestis," &c.
Atque hæc de adjuncto recepto.
Quartus modus est adjuncti occupati. “ Et° enim
“ adjunctorum ad subjecta, quibus occupantur, usus
item magnus.”
Hoc argumento “ Plato miseras civitates auguratur,
quæ medicorum et judicium multitudine indigeant,
quia multam quoque et intemperantiam et injustitiam
in ea civitate versari necesse sit.” Quia nempe in
effectis intemperantiæ samandis, medici; in effectis
injustitiæ vindicandis, judices tanquam adjuncti occu-
pati in subjecto suo occupante versantur.
“ Sed categoria” sive locus argumentorum “ con-
sentaneorum sic est, umde quidvis alteri consentaneum,
vel idem vel unum dici possit: omnesque modi uni-
tatis et (ut ita dicam) identitatis huc sunt tanquam ad
primas et simplices fontes referendi.”
Ad explicandum consentaneorum in comparationi-
bus usum hæc clausula adjecta est. Namque ut com-
sensionis omnis duorum in uno tertio, ita et unitatis
872
ARTIS LOGICÆ PLENIOR INSTITUTIO,
modo hinc sunt petendi. Quot autem modis plura
dicuntur inter se consentire, tot etiam modis dicum-
tur unum et idem : absolute scilicet aut modo quo-
dam : absolute unum vel idem causa et effecto ; modo
quodam unum et idem subjecto et adjuncto. Causa
vel efficiente vel materia vel forma vel fine. Sic plu-
res statuæ efficiente sunt eædem, si ejusdem artificis ;
materia, si ex eadem, auro scilicet aut ebore ; forma, si
effigies ejusdem, Alexandri puta vel Cæsaris ; fine, si
ad eundem ornandum. Sic subjecto idem sunt ad-
juncta duo vel plura in eodem subjecto ; adjuncto idem
sunt plura subjecta quibus idem adjungitur : ut duæ
vel plures res albæ vel nigræ, albedine vel migredine
idem sunt.
CAP. XII.
De Diversis.
“ ARGUMENTUM consentaneum expositum est ” in
causa et effecto, subjecto et adjuncto.
Altera species argumenti artificialis, primi, simplicis,
dissentaneum, sequitur. Et sequi debet : ut enim
affirmatio negatione, sic consensio prior est dissen-
sione ; prior autem non natura solum, verùm etiam usu
et dignitate. Ab affirmatione enim et consensione, ut
scientia omnis, ita ars omnis atque doctrina deducitur.
“ Dissentaneum est quod dissentit à re ” quam ar-
guit. Ab altero nempe sui generis ac nominis dissen-
tameo. Nam in hoc genere argumentorum, argumenta
inter se affecta eodem nomine, ideoque plurali numero
emunciantur, eademque definitione et doctrina expli-
Cantur.
“ Sunt autem dissentanea inter se æquè manifesta:
alterumque ab altero æqualiter arguitur ; tametsi sua
dissensione clarius elucescant.”
Hæ duæ sunt proprietates dissentaneorum commu-
nes. Primum n. in consentaneis causæ effectis, sub-
jecta adjunctis, priora, notiora, firmiora, præstantiora
fuerunt: in dissentaneis alterum altero neque prius
meque notius; sed natura simul, in illa nempe dissen-
sione, et æquè nota, æquè firma inter se sunt: id quod
necesse est cùm eodem nomine ac definitione trac-
tentur.
Secunda quoque proprietas, quam Aristoteles con-
trariis alligat, dissentaneorum est omnium communis;
nempe “ sua dissensione clarius elucescere.” Quod
nisi fieret, argumentum dissentaneorum nullius usus
esset. Debet enim omne argumentum affectum esse
ad aliquid arguendum et illustrandum. Quorum autem
hæc est proprietas ut æquè nota et ignota sint, eorum
alterum ab altero argui aut illustrari non potest. Priori
igitur proprietati secunda hæc subvenit: quamvis enim
dissentanea sint inter se æquè manifesta, ita ut unum
ab altero tanquam notiori argui non queat, ex dissen-
sione tamen sua, sive, ut alii loquuntur, juxta se posita,
clarius elucescunt. Sic bonæ valetudinis commoda ad-
versæ valetudinis incommodis manifestiora fiunt ; vir-
tutum laudes contrariorum vituperatione vitiorum illus-
trantur.
Utiles itaque sunt hi loci dissentaneorum, teste etiam
Aristotele, Top. 3, 4, non solùm ad arguendum et illus-
trandum, verum etiam ad impellendum ac refutandum:
ut enim consentaneorum loci valent maximè ad arguen-
dum, probandum, et confirmandum, sic loci dissentaneo-
rum ad redarguendum, impellendum, et refutandum: ut
qui consentaneo argumento doceri non vult, dissentanei
absurda consecutione eò redigatur, ut nolens etiam non
possit veritati non assentiri. Hinc Aristot. Rhet. 3,
17, “ refutantia demonstrativis” anteponit.
“ Dissentanea sunt diversa vel opposita.
“ Diversa sunt dissentanea, quæ sola ratione dissen-
tiunt.” Nomen hoc videtur aptissimum ad hanc levis-
simam dissensionem significandam : hac enim voce ea
significantur, quæ cùm consensionem quandam inter
se habere videantur, possintque per se suaque natura
eidem subjecto simul convenire, tamen nec idem sunt,
nec ei subjecto competunt cujus ratione dissentire
dicuntur: quæ autem dissentiunt in eodem tertio, dis-
sentiunt etiam inter se.
Sola igitur ratione dissentiunt, quia non per se sua-
que matura dissentiunt, sed solummodo ratione attribu-
tionis, i. e. ratione ac respectu alicujus subjecti, cui
simul non attribuuntur. Distributio itaque dissenta-
neorum pro ratione dissensionis rectè instituta est: nam
ut consensio alia arctior est et absoluta, alia remissior
et imperfecta (unde consentanea divisa sunt in ea quæ
absolutè vel modo quodam consentiunt) ita dissensio
omnis vel remissior est, ut in distinctione sive discretione
diversorum, vel acrior, ut in disjunctione oppositorum:
ergo dissentanea aut ratione et modo quodam dissen-
tiunt, ut diversa, aut re et absolute, ut opposita. Verùm
quod de consentaneis etiam objici potuit, speciebus
æque communicandum est genus (has enim voces etiam
communi usu citra artem vulgò intellectus, pace me-
thodi nonnunquam anticipare fas sit) respondetur,
quemadmodum consentanea absolute et modo quodam
erant æque consentanea, sed non æque consentiebant ;
sic diversa et opposita æque dissentanea sunt, sed
non æque dissentiunt ; in diversis tam est dissensio
quam in oppositis, sed mon tanta : ut in re simili Cic.
de Fin. 4, ** æquè contingit omnib. fidibus, ut imcom-
tentæ sint ; illud non continuò, ut æquè incontentæ.”
Diversa autem idcirco priore loco tractantur, quòd
propter levissimam dissensionem videntur affinitatem
quamdam cum consentaneis præ se ferre. Quanquam
autem diversorum doctrina ab omnibus præter Ramum
logicis omissa est, constat tamen locum in argumento-
rum doctrina diversis etiam assignandum, cùm ex ar-
' guendi varia affectione argumenta distinguenda sint,
affectio autem dissensionis in diversis, ut diximus, levior
sit, in oppositis acrior. Cur diversa logici hactenus
omiserint, videtur hoc esse; quod ad unum syllogis-
mum omnia referunt, in quo diversa locum non habent,
ut l. 2, ostendetur.
Diversorum autem notæ sunt frequentissimè “ non
hoc, sed illud, quanquam, tamen :” ut pro Pompeio ;
“ non victoriam, sed insignia victoriæ reportarunt.”
AD PETRI RAMI METHODUM CONCINNATA.
873
Victoria et victoriæ insignia res admodum affines sunt;
possuntque ac debent eidem duci competere : ad Syllam
autem et Murænam si spectas, qui non reportata vic-
toria triumpharunt, dissentanea sunt, et distinguuntur,
alteroque affirmato alterum negatur. Sic Ovid. 2, de
Arte :
“ Non formosus erat, sed erat facundus Ulysses.”
Et Virg. Æneid. 2.
** Hic Priamus quamquam im media jam morte tenetur,
Non tamen abstinuit.”
Ut victoria et victoriæ insignia respectu Syllæ et
Murænæ, sic formosum et facundum respectu Ulyssis,
in media morte teneri et non abstinere à convitiis rati-
one Priami, diversa adeoque dissentanea sunt. Paulo
secus in Eunucho :
** Nam si ego digna hac contumelia
Sum maxime: at tu indignus qui faceres tamen.**
Sed idem est ac si dictum esset, quanquam ego dig-
na ; tamen tu indignus qui mihi hanc contumeliam
faceres. Dignam se quidem esse contumelia Thais af-
firmat; à Chærea tamen negat. Cic. 5 Tusc. ** Quan-
quam sensu corporis judicantur, ad animum tamen
referuntur.” Hoc affirmato, negatum intelligitur non
ad corpus.
Item illa aliusmodi. Pro Ligario : ** scelus tu illud
vocas, Tubero ? cur ? isto n. nomine illa adhuc causa
caruit : alii enim errorem appellant, alii timorem ; qui
durius, spem, cupiditatem, odium, pertinaciam ; qui
gravissimè, temeritatem : scelus præter te adhuc nemo.”
In hoc genere exemplorum aliquid conceditur, ut aliud
vicinum possit negari: cujusmodi et illud est; veritas
premi potest, opprimi non potest ; et similia.
Atque hi modi quidam diversorum sunt : in quibus
plerumque accidit, ut quæ sua natura sunt opposita,
ratione tamen certi alicujus subjecti sint tantùm diver-
sa; ut in exemplo superiore error, timor, spes, cupiditas,
pertinacia, scelus. Sic aurum, argentum, æs opposita
sunt, ut infrà liquebit: ratione tamen attributionis huic
vel illi subjecto, qui unum vel aliqua horum habet,
alterum vel reliqua non habet, cùm habere simul possit,
diversa sunt.
CAP. XIII.
De Disparatis.
“ OPPosiTA ” sunt “ dissentanea, quæ ratione et re
dissentiunt.” Opposita respondent nomine quidem iis,
quæ ab Aristotele ávruksiusva dicuntur; sed re et signifi-
catione latius patent ; nam dvriksiusva Aristoteli (qui
disparata non attigit) nihil aliud quàm ** contraria”
sunt. Possunt etiam “ repugnantia” dici ; siquidem
repugnare ea dicuntur, quæ ejusmodi sunt, ut cohæ-
rere nunquam possint; quod Cic. ait in Top. ejusmodi
enim sunt opposita. “ Re” autem “ et ratione,” est non
solùm ratione certi alicujus subjecti, cui cüm tribuun-
tur, simul non conveniunt, verum etiam reipsa, i. e. per
se et intcr se, sua ipsorum matura dissentire, etiam sub-
jecto cuivis non attributa ; cui si tribuuntur, mon solùm
non conveniunt, sed, servata, quæ sequitur, oppositorum
lcge, convenire non possunt. Ea lex quæ ex ipsa defi-
nitione oritur, et est oppositorum omnium communis,
non, ut docuit Aristoteles, contrariorum propria, hæc est,
« Opposita eidem attribui, secundum idem, ad idem, et
eodem tempore non possunt.” “ Eidem,” i. e. eidem
numero, rei, sive subjecto. “ Secundum idem," i. e.
eadem parte. “ Ad idem,” i. e. eodem respectu ; ut,
« sol et major est terra et minor;” sed non eodem re-
spectu ; in se quidem, major ; ut nobis videtur, minor.
Extra has tres conditiones possunt eidem subjecto at-
tribui opposita. * Sic Socrates, albus et ater non potest
secundum idem, i. e. eadem parte esse ; pater et filius
ejusdem,” sive ad eundem relatus ; “ sanus et æger
eodem tempore : at albus esse potest alia parte, ater
alia ; pater hujus, filius illius; sanus hodie, cras aeger.”
“ Itaque ex altero affirmato alterum negatur.”
“ Ex quo facile apparet quid intersit inter diversa et
opposita: in illis enim “ altero affirmato;” in his, “ ex
altero affirmato” alterum negatur: i. e. ex affirmatione
unius, necessario sequitur negatio alterius. Ut, sumpto
ex diversis exemplo, “ non victoriam, sed insignia
victoriæ reportarunt:” hic insignia victoriæ affirman-
tur, victoria negatur ; non ex his affirmatis negatur
illa : at in oppositis, dicta lege servata, Socrates est
homo, ergo non est equus: juxta illud ; “ opposita se
invicem tollunt.
“ Opposita autem sunt disparata aut contraria.
“ Disparata sunt opposita quorum unum multis pari-
ter opponitur.”
Disparatorum ergo remissior videtur esse oppositio,
contrariorum acrior. Disparata etiam à Boethio nomi-
mantur, “ quæ tamtum à se diversa sunt, nulla contra-
rietate pugnantia,” ut vestis, ignis. Apud Ciceronem
tamem, Invent. 1, et Fabium, l. 5, c. 10, contradicentia
significant. Nos verborum inopia coacti, Boethium
sequimur. Multis, nempe sine ulla certa oppositionis
lege aut numero : nam et infinitæ ferè res hoc modo op-
poni inter se possunt: et sic intelligendum est verbum
opponitur, juxta illud ; “ Vocabula in artibus faculta-
tem significant:” ut vestis et ignis etsi res duæ, inter
se tamen disparata sunt, eò quòd multis pariter opponi
possunt. Pariter: i. e. æquè pari ratione, eodem dis-
sensionis modo : ut enim disparata sint, non multis
tantum, sed pariter opponi debent. Albedo opponitur
nigredini, flavedini, rubedini, ut unum pluribus; non
autem singulis ut disparatum, quia non pariter: nigre-
dini enim opponitur ut contrarium, cæteris rebus om-
nibus ut disparatum. Viride, cineraceum, rubrum, me-
dia sunt inter album et nigrum, quæ singula extremis,
et inter se disparata sunt. Sic liberalitas et avaritia
inter se disparantur. Sic homo, arbor, lapis, et ejus-
modi res infinitæ disparantur ; nec eadem res potest
esse homo, arbor, lapis. Virgil. l AEneid. hoc argu-
mento disputat :
“ O quam te memorem, virgo ! namque haud tibi vultus
Mortalis ; nec vox hominem sonat : o dea certè.**
874
ARTIS LOGICÆ PLENIOR INSTITUTIO,
CAP. XIV.
De Relatis.
“ CoNTRARIA sunt opposita, quorum unum uni tan-
tum opponitur.”
Intelligitur autem unum uni in eodem genere opponi
contrariorum, ut rclatorum unum uni tantum, et sic in
reliquis : nam in diversis speciebus contrariorum, plura
possunt ut contraria, uni eidemque rei opponi ; ut “ vi-
dei:ti, non videns, et cæcus ; motui, motus contrarius,
et quies ; servo, dominus, et liber.”
Quæ Aristoteles ávrw$$μeva et ávrukείμενα, ea Cicero
in Topicis (quem Ramus sequitur) contraria appellat :
quas etiam in species quatuor Aristoteles ávrwksiusva,
in easdem Cicero contraria distribuit.
Priùs autem quàm ad contrariorum distributionem
in species accedimus, inserenda est distinctio quædam
non inutilis, et ad ea quæ diximus capite superiore
clariùs intelligenda, et ad eas, quæ secundo libro di-
centur, disjunctiomes necessarias à contigentibus diju-
dicandas. Dictum est superiore capite, viride, cimera-
ceum, rubrum, media esse inter album et nigrum, quæ
singula extremis et inter se disparata sunt. Sciendum
itaque est contraria, quasi extrema quædam, habere
alia medium, alia medio carere : medium vel est nega-
tionis vel participationis ; ex Aristotele, Top. 4, 3, et
Phil. V, 7. Medium negationis est quicquid inter duo
contraria dici potest, quod sit neutrum eorum : ut inter
præceptorem et discipulum, is qui neque est præceptor
meque discipulus. Medium participationis est, quod
utriusque extremi naturam participat; ut viride inter
album et nigrum, tepidum inter calidum et frigidum.
Contrariorum igitur quae medium habcnt, non est
necesse alterutrum affirmari ; potest enim affirmari
medium : quæ autem medio carent, eorum alterum
necesse est affirmari. Quænam autem contraria me-
dium habeant aut non habeant, ex eo dignoscitur quod
et Gellius tradit, l. 16, Noct. Att. c. 8. Contraria
quorum contradicentia, cùm attribuuntur ei subjecto
cui propriè possunt attribui, sunt etiam inter se contra-
ria, ea medium mom habent. Samum et aegrum contra-
via sunt: eorum contradicentia, non sanum non aegrum,
si animali attribuas cui soli possunt attribui, contraria
etiam reperies : mom samum enim, est ægrum : non
aegrum, sanum ; sanum ergo et aegrum medio carent :
sic mox et dies, non mox et non dies, æquè sunt inter se
contraria ; non mox enim, est dies ; non dies, nox ;
medio igitur carent: sic visu præditum, et cæcum esse,
si homini tribuis. Quorum verò contradicentia nom
sunt contraria, ea medium habent : ut præceptor et
discipulus ; non præceptor enim, non est discipulus ;
neque non discipulus, est præceptor ; etenim potest
alteruter aliquid esse tertium sive medium. Sic album
et nigrum : namque non album et non nigrum de quo-
vis colore medio dici possunt. Nunc ad distributionem
contrariorum veniamus. -
“ Contraria sunt affirmantia aut negantia.
“ Affirmantia, quorum utrumque affirmat.” Scilicet
rem, sive veram sive fictam ; vel quorum vox utraque
rem certam ponit atque significat ; quorumque unum
alteri ut res rei opponitur ; ut pater filio, calor frigori.
Contraria itaque affirmantia, qnod hic notandum est
distinguendum, sunt quorum utrumque affirmat rem,
non affirmatur de re sive subjecto eodem, id enim
supradictæ oppositorum regulæ, qua ex altero affirmato
alterum negatur, planè repugnaret. Quæ igitur affir-
mat rem aut negat, topica affirmatio aut negatio di-
citur ; quæ res de alio aflirmatur aut megatur axioma-
tica, de qua lib. 2.
“ Contraria affirmantia sunt relata aut adversa.
“ Relata sunt, quorum alterum constat ex mutua
alterius affectione.”
Atque ita quidem ut ex eorum illa mutua affectione,
contrarietas ipsa nascatur, ut infra demonstrabitur.
Qnid ergo ; num idcirco relata nunc consentanea nunc
dissentamea sunt ? Nequaquam, ut relata quidem : sed
ea tamen quæ relata sunt, aliis atque aliis argumento-
rum generibus possunt subjici ; ipsa interim argumen-
torum genem a inconfusa et distincta manent. Sic causa
et effectum, quæ arguendo inter se relata sunt, adeo-
que dissentanea et æque manifesta, suam tamen vim
propriam arguendi retinent, qua et consentamea sunt,
et causa prior notiorque effecto. Relata esse contraria
ex definitione et consectariis contrariorum liquet; sunt
enim opposita, quorum unum uni tantum opponitur, ut
pater et filius. At, inquis, unus multis, pater filiis,
frater fratribus, præceptor discipulis, herus famulis,
opponi potest. Respondetur, opponi patrem filio ut
relatum ; neque aliud quicquam patri quàm filium,
neque filio quàm patrem ; et sic de cæteris: sed hunc
patrem et hunc filium, hunc præceptorem et hunc dis-
cipulum, &c. non esse relata, sed disparata: neque
enim horum alter ex mutua alterius affectione constat;
neque natura simul sunt, et alter sine altero existere
potest. Itaque primæ substantiæ, sive individua et
singularia, ut ait Aristoteles, Categor. 5, non sunt re-
lata. Et Categor. 6, ait multa genera “ relata esse,
singularia verò nulla:” sed non video cur relata, quem-
admodum et alia argumenta, etiam in singularibus
considerari non possunt ; singularia enim exempla
sunt ferè omnia. Nec magis video cur in uno relato
singulari non possit ad correlata multa esse multiplex
relatio ; dummodo relatio una numero inter bina tam-
tummodo sit, totiesque consideretur quot sint correlata ;
patris nimirum toties quot sunt filii ; filii quot sunt
parentes, pater nempe et mater; fratris, quot sunt fra-
tres et sorores: nam misi quicquid de relatis in genere
dici solet, de singulis quoque relatis verè dicatur. Id
ne toto quidem de genere verè dici posset. Si reponas
ex Aristot. Philos. ô, Relata non significare existen-
tiam, ne cætera quidem argumenta id significant sed
mutuam tantummodo affectionem. Sunt affirmantia,
i. e. ut duæ voces sunt, ita etiam duæ sunt res inter
se oppositœ ; ut pater, filius. Constare autem alterum
ex mutua alterius affectione, est nullam aliam habere
essentiam, quatenus relata sunt, præter mutuam illam
unius affectionem ad alterum et alterius ad illud.
“ Atque inde nominata sunt relata,” quòd ad se invi-
ccm referuntur, totaque illorum natura in relatione
consistit. Sic patrem esse, est habere filium ; filium
AD PETRI RAMI METHODUM CONCINNATA.
875
esse, est habere patrem. Hinc illud, Omnia relata
convertuntur: ut pater est filii pater ; filius est patris
filius. Hujus mutua affectionis ratione relata sunt
mutuæ sibi causæ et mutui effectus, nam quòd quis
pater est, id habet à filio ; quòd filius, à patre : et ta-
men hujus mutuæ affectionis vi ita sibi invicem oppo-
mumtur, ut neque unum de altero nec ambo de tertio
dici possint ; ut /Eneas est pater Ascanii, ergo non est
Ascamii filius; Ascanius est filius Æneæ, ergo non est
Æneæ pater. Sed quoniam relatorum unum constat
ex mutua alterius affectione, mutuæque sibi, ut dixi-
mus, causæ atque effecta sunt, consectarium hoc inde
est quod sequitur.
“ Relata simul sunt natura : ut qui alterum perfectè
norit, morit et reliquum.”
Relata autem simul esse natura docuerunt et veteres
logici, Aristoteles, Damascenus, et alii; relataque se
mutuò inferre mutuoque tollere ; ut posito patre, po-
natur filius; sublato, itidem tollatur: etiamsi enim ille
manet qui filius fuit, non tamen filius manet. Neque
solùm unum existere nequit sine altero, sed ne intelligi
quidem. Necesse est igitur, quod et meminit Aristot.
Top. 3, “ Ut alterum in alterius definitione compre-
hendatur;” utque alterum perfecte, i. e. definite, qui
norit, norit continuò alterius definitionem ; quæ sicuti
et essentia eorum, reciproca est. Supra itaque Ramus
definivit subjectum, “ cui aliud adjungitur ;'° non,
“ quod alteri subjicitur,” ut alii malebant ; etiamsi his
verbis non modò essentia subjecti, sed etiam notatio
contineri videatur : deinde adjunctum definivit, “ cui
aliquid subjicitur,” non quod alteri adjungitur, quia
subjectum et adjunctum relata sunt ; et subjectum ad-
juncti, adjunctum subjecti, ex qua alterum alterius
mutua affectione constat, ea erat definiendum, quæ
ipsorum essentia est. Ad exempla nunc veniamus.
Pro Marcello: “ Ex quo profcctò intelligis quanta
in dato beneficio sit laus, cùm in accepto tanta sit glo-
ria.” Hic dare et accipere relata sunt, quorum unius
consequens ex consequente alterius intelligi ait Cicero.
Martialis in Sosibianum, l. l.
** Tum servum scis de gemitum, blamdeque fateris;
Cùm dicis dominum, Sosibiame, patrem.”
Arguebat se servum esse genitum Sosibiamus, dum
negare videbatur, quia dominum vocabat patrem. Sic
apud Quintilianum, l. ô, c. 10. “ Si portorium Rho-
diis locare honestum est, et Hermacreonti conducere.”
Quomodo et in Oratore Perfecto Tullius: “ Num igitur
est periculum, ait, nequis putet im magna arte et glo-
riosa turpe esse docere alios id quod ipsi fuerit ho-
nestum discere?” Apud Ovidium in ætatis ferreae
descriptione, Metam. l, varia relatorum exempla affe-
runtur :
ζς Nom hospes ab hospite tutus,
Non socer à gemero: fratrum quoque gratia rara est.
Immimet exitio vir conjugis, illa mariti:
Lurida terribiles miscent acomita movercæ:
Filius ante diem patrios inquirit im amnos.”
“ Atqui argumentum talis relationis contrarium nihil
habet, immo arguit mutuas causas :" ut sum tuus pa-
ter; tu es igitur meus filius. At quum dico, sum tuus
pater ; non igitur sum tuus filius, tum contraria verè
sumt ; atque ex ipsa quidem hac mutua relatione.
CAP. XV.
De Adversis.
“ AdvERsA sunt contraria affirmantia, quæ inter se
velut è regione absolutè adversantur.”
Sic etiam à Cicerone appellantur in Topicis. Sunt
contraria, quia eorum unum uni tantum opponitur; ut
honestum turpi: duo n. duntaxat possunt sibi invicem
è regione adversari. Sunt affirmantia ; quia unum
uni opponitur, ut res rei; quod supra demonstratum
est, et infra clarius patebit. His autem verbis “ è re-
gione absolutè adversantur,” nihil aliud quàm directa
oppositio, adeoque maxima, intelligitur; qualis est
inter duo puncta diametri in eodem circulo. His etiam
verbis distinguuntur adversa à suis mediis, quæ inter
se et cum extremis disparantur. Absolutè ; i. e. om-
ninò, perfectè ; ut in consentaneis, quæ absolutè con-
sentiebant. Ramus perpetuò dixerat: sed assentior
aliis, qui absolutè malunt ; nam perpetuò opponi, om-
nib. oppositis etiam relatis, commune est, quatenus
opposita sunt, i. e. ratione et re dissentiunt. Absolutè
autem additur, ut hac particula distingui adversa pos-
sint à relatis, in quibus consensio quædam est, quate-
nus alterum ex mutua constat alterius affectione, cujus-
modi hic omninò nulla est. Sic albor et nigror, calor et
frigus opponuntur.
Aristoteles, contraria (sic enim adversa vocat Categ.
6) definit, “ quæ plurimum inter se distant in eodem
genere:” et rursus Categ. 8, “ Contraria sunt vel in
eadem specie, vel iu eodem genere.” Quem Cic. cst
secutus in Top. et Galen de Opt. secta. Verùm adversa,
ut docct idem Arist. cap. de Contrariis, non in eodem
solùm genere plurimum differunt, ut album et nigrum,
verum etiam in contrariis, ut justitia et injustitia ; vel
ipsa genera, ut bonum et malum, virtus et vitium. Quid
quod in eodem genere differre, commune videtur adver-
sis cum relatis: pro eodem igitur genere, rectius in defi-
nitione ponitur è regione, prout Cicero interpretatur.
Æneid. 1 1.
»
** Nulla salus bello ; pacem te poscimus omnes.”
Libertas et servitus apud Tibullum, l, 2.
“ Sic mihi servitium video, dominamque paratam ;'*
Tu mihi libertas illa paterna vale.**
Sic consilium et casus ; pro Marcello : ** nunquam
enim temeritas cum sapientia commiscetur, nec ad con-
silium casus admittitur.” Et Parad. 1, contra Epicu-
reos: “ illud tamen arctè tenent accurateque defendunt,
voluptatem esse summum bonum : quæ quidem mihi
vox pecudum videtur, non hominum,” &c. Pecudem
et hominem adversa Cicero opposuit: voluptas pecudis
bonum est, non igitur hominis, Usus enim hujus argu-
S76
ARTIS LOGICÆ PLENIOR INSTITUTIO,
menti non in qualitatibus duntaxat, ut vulgò putant,
verùm in substantiis etiam et quantitatibus, immo om-
mibus in rebus versatur: id quod Aristot. mom diffitetur,
cùm ait Phil. x. 3, “ Contraria etiam ad primas entis
differentias referri:” et rursus; ** im omni genere con-
trarietatem esse.” Contrarietas deinde argumentum
esse logicum ab omuibus agnoscitur: nihil ergo obstat
quominus ad quævis rerum genera pertineat. Quæ-
dam denique formæ vel maximè substantiæ sunt : for-
mas autem specificas omnes sibi invicem adversas esse,
apud omnes receptissimum est : immo verò major vide-
tur esse formarum contrarietas quàm qualitatum ; qua-
litates enim commisceri facile possunt, formæ vix un-
quam. Quod ergo idem Aristot. alibi docet, substantiæ
et quantitati nihil esse contrarium, id non ratione tan-
tùm, sed ipsius etiam testimonio suprà citato refellitur ;
non substantiarum autem pugna etsi non physica, lo-
gica tamen est, dum ex altera substantia singulari
affirmata, negatur altera.
CAP. XVI.
De Comtradicentibus.
“ CoNTRARIA negantia sunt, quorum alterum ait,
alterum negat idem.” Ab altero negante sic mominan-
tur : in puris enim negantibus, ut loquuntur, nullus
est rationis usus. Atque hinc demum nunc clarius pa-
tet, quænam essent contraria affirmantia : de quibus
cùm dictum est, de negantibus quoque est dictum quod
satis sit.
“ Ea sunt contradicentia aut privantia.
“ Contradicentia sunt contraria negantia, quorum
alterum negat ubique:” ut justus, non justus ; animal,
non animal ; est, non est.
“ Contradicentia sunt contraria,” quia una negatio
uni affirmationi opponitur, et contrà ; immo sine me-
dio. Sic etiam Aristot. Post. 1, 2, ** Contradictio est
oppositio cujus nullum est medium per se.” Quorum
alterum negat ubique ; i. e. in re qualibet : negare
enim ubique est de re qualibet dici, de qua affirmatum
non dicitur ; ut de quo videt non dicitur, de eo non
videt dicitur. Unde illud vulgò dictum, “ contradicen-
tia sunt omnia: ” et illud Aristot. 1, Post. 1, 2, “ quod-
vis verè est vel affirmare vel negare: verè affirmare et
negare simul, impossibile est,” et Top. 6, 3, de quali-
bet re vel affirmatio vel negatio verè dicitur.” Alte-
rum autem negare ubique dicitur, vel expressè vel im-
plicitè. Expressè ut suprà, cum negandi particula :
implicitè, cùm reipsa non minus contradicit et repug-
nat alteri, quàm si verbo negaret; ut corpus infinitum,
proprietas communis. Vulgò vocatur contradictio in
adjecto ; quia id subjecto adjungit quod subjectum
planè tollit ; atque ita contradictionem implicat. At-
que hinc etiam est quòd contradicentia medio carent
non solùm participationis, verum etiam negationis, quia
necesse est affirmare vel negare unum quodvis de al-
tero. Sic etiam Boethius in Topicis: “ inter affirma-
tionem et megationem mulla est medietas.” Contra-
dicentium porrò exempla hæc sunt. In defensione
Murænæ contradicitur sentemtiis Catonis et Ciceronis;
illius Stoici, hujus Academici. Dialogus est his verbis:
“ nihil ignoveris : immo aliquid, mon omnia. Nihil
gratiæ causa feceris: immo ne resistito gratiæ, cum
officium et fides postulabit. Misericordia commotus me
sis ; etiam in dissolvenda severitate : sed tamen est
aliqua laus humanitatis. In sententia pcrmaneto :
enimverò nisi sententia alia vicerit melior.” In hoc
exemplo quadruplex contradictio est; nihil ignoveris;
nonnihil ignoveris : nihil gratiæ causa feceris ; nom-
nihil gratiæ causa feceris, &c. Martial. l. l.
** Be!!a es; novimus: et puella; verum est:
Et dives; quis enim potest negare ?
Sed dum te nimium, Fabulla, laudas,
Nec dives, neque bella, nec puella es.”
Cicero in Tusc. cogit hoc argumento Atticum Epi
cureum fateri mortuos miseros non esse, si omnino non
sint, ut Epicurei credebant. “ Quem esse negas;
eundem esse dicis: cùm enim miserum esse dicis, tum
eum qui non sit, esse dicis.” Sic Terentianus Phædria
Dori eunuchi dictum elevat, quòd affirmasset prius,
quæ pòst inficiaretur: modò ait, modò negat.
Sunt qui contradictionem nullam esse statuunt, nisi
axiomaticam ; de qua lib. 2. Verùm si affirmatio et
negatio topica datur, ut suprà demonstravimus, necesse
est dari quoque topicam contradictionem : qualis est
illa Rom. 9, “Vocabo non populum meum, populum
meum ; et non dilectam, dilectam.” In distinctionibus
etiam frequentissimus est hujus contradictionis usus;
præsertim ubi alterum distinctionis membrum apta voce
exprimi non potest: ut dialecticæ materia est ens, et
non ens; lex est scripta, vel non scripta. Sic ad Cri-
tonem Socrates; “ videris opportunè quidem non exci-
tasse me.” In his exemplis axiomatica contradictio
nulla est; uti neque in illo quod suprà in hoc capite
ex Martiale allatum est: “bella es ; novimus : et
puella,” &c. Non enim verbum est sive copulatio
negatur, sed partes. Fabulla est bella, et puella, et
dives; Fabulla est et non bella, et non puella, et
non dives. Axiomatica enim contradictio hujusmodi
fuisset : Fabulla non est et bella et puella et dives:
quod lib. 2 clarius intelligetur.
CAP. XVII.
De Privantibus.
“PRIVANTIA sunt contraria negantia, quorum alterum
megat in eo tantum subjecto, in quo affirmatum suapte
natura inest.” Atque hic affirmatum dicitur habitus,
quo quis quid habet, negatum autem privatio, qua quis
ea re privatur aut caret: ut visus et cæcitas, motus et
quies in iis rebus quæ motu conservantur. Sunt con-
traria, quòd unum umi opponitur, habitus privationi ;
AD PETRI RAMI METHODUM CONCINNATA.
877
qua ex parte negantia quoque dicuntur: nam et hic rei
alicujus affirmationi ejusdem negatio, i. e. enti non ens
opponitur : privatio enim, ut inquit Aristot. Phys. 2,
8, “ per se est non ens :” et Plut. de primo frigido ;
privatio est essentiae negatio;” habituique opponitur,
non ut natura quædam aut essentia per se existens, sed
ut ejus corruptio et ademtio. Quorum alterum negat
in eo tantum subjecto, in quo, &c. His verbis forma
privantium qua distinguuntur à contradicentibus, ex-
primitnr. In contradicentibus enim negatio infinita
est, affirmatum suum ubique, i. e. qualibet in re ne-
gans; ut quicquid non est justum, est non justum, in
privantibus verò finita est negatio, atque in eo tan-
tum subjecto affirmatum sive habitum negans, in quo
affirmatum suapte natura inest: aut inesse potest; ut
etiam Aristot. in Categor. Sic cæcitas est negatio visus,
non ubique et in re qualibet, sed in qua solùm visus
inesse natura debuit: nam privari aliquid tum demum
dicitur, cùm eo caret quod natum est habere: non ergo
quicquid non videt, propriè cæcum dicitur. Deinde
in contradicentibus negatum contradicendo negat, et
est pura negatio ; ut videns, non videns; in privan-
tibus negat privando ; nec solum negatio est, sed pri-
vans negatio et extinctio habitus alicujus qui inesse
natura subjecto debuit aut potuit ; ut videns, cæcus.
Hinc illæ privationis proprietates ex Plut. de primo
frigido, non inutiles: “ privatio iners et agendi impos
est: non suscipit magis aut minus ;'° neque enim quis
dixerit hunc illo cæciorem; aut tacentem, magis minus-
ve tacere ; aut defunctum, magis minusve esse mor-
tuum : habitus enim gradus esse possumt, non entis non
item : illa autem Aristot. “ à privatione ad habitum non
datur regressus,” incertior est: cùm enim habitus quo
quis habere quid dicitur duo modi sint, potentia et ac-
tus, à privatione potentiæ vel facultatis, idque natura
duntaxat, regressus negatur. Contradicentia denique
medio carent non solùm participationis, verùm etiam
negationis : privantia verò carent quidem medio par-
ticipationis, nulla enim est habitus cum privatione per-
mixtio ; non carent autem medio negationis ; multa
enim sunt, quæ neque vident, neque caeca sunt ; ut
lapis, arbor, &c., nisi cùm ei subjecto attribuuntur, cui
matura inesse debuerunt : tum enim negationis etiam
medio carent ; quippe omnis homo aut videns est aut
cæcus, gnarus aut ignarus. Exempla porrò privantium
sunt dives et pauper: Martial. l. 5.
** Semper eris pauper, si pauper es, Æmiliame.
Dantur opes nullis munc, nisi divitibus.”
Vita et mors, ut in Miloniana: ** bujus mortis sedetis
ultores, cujus vitam, si putetis per vos restitui posse,
nolitis.” Item loqui et tacere: 1 Catil. ** quid expectas
auctoritatem loquentium, quorum voluntatem tacitorum
perspicis.” Caetera exempla quæ Ramus attulit, minus
quadrant: ut ebrius et sobrius, mortalis et immortalis,
quæ potius adversa sunt. Neque enim “in” præpositio
in compositis privationem semper, sed adversum habi-
tum sæpe significat; unde nec peccatum privationem
esse dixerim ; siquidem hoc vel illud peccatum sive
vitium, privatio non est. Atque hæ quidem species
contrariorum sunt. Sed quæri hic solet, quænam
earum sint maximè inter se contrariæ. Aristoteles
maximam contrarietatem nunc adversis tribuit, nunc
contradicentibus. Sed videtur maximam esse dissen-
sionem inter privantia: deinde inter adversa ; minorem
adhuc inter contradicentia ; minimam inter relata :
nam relata propter illam mutuam affectionem, partim
consentanea sunt: contradicentia purè quidem contra-
ria negantia sunt, sed tamen propter infinitam illam
negationem, pro mediis et disparatis crebro accipiuntur,
ut non calidum non tam opponitur calido quàm frigi-
dum ; quoniam non calidum potest tepidum esse ; sic
non bonum, medium quiddam esse potest et adiapho-
rum : non album de rubro dici aut intelligi potest:
adversa è regione quidem adversantur; non ita tamen,
quin commisceri queant: privantia verò mixtionem non
admittunt ; et privatio ferè est habitus extinctio atque
ereptio aut saltem deficientia ; habitusque est ens, pri-
vatio non ens ; enti autem nihil, æquè ac non ens, con-
trarium est.
“ Sed dissentaneorum categoria sic est, unde quidvis
ab altero differre quolibet modo possit.”
Quanquam enim causa omnis essentialis differentiae,
formæ primitus est reliquarum, argumenta reliqua con-
sentanea, ut quot modis consentire totidem dissentire
res dicantur, causa nempe vel effecto, subjecto vel ad-
juncto, modi tamen omnes, quib. res inter se differunt
vel ratione scilicet vel re, non tractantur nisi in dissen-
taneis, vel si comparantur, in comparatis. Unde illud
genere vel specie differre, nihil aliud est quàm communi
vel propria forma, quarum illa symbola sunt, ut infra
dicetur.
CAP. XVIII.
De Paribus.
“ARGUMENTA simplicia ita fuerunt in consentaneis
et dissentaneis.
“ Comparata snnt argumenta prima, quæ inter se
comparantur.”
Simplex rerum affectio comparatione prius tractanda
fuit; hanc enim si removes, comparata omnia aut consen-
tanea erunt aut dissentanea. Platonis doctrina et
Xenophontis ante adjuncta utrique erat, quàm compa-
rata. Sunt argumenta prima non orta, eo quòd orta,
ut patebit infra, eandem habent affectionem cum primis
unde orta sunt; comparata etsi simplicia prius fuere,
simplicium tamen affectionem non habent. Inter se
comparantur ; nimirum quæ sunt ejusdem generis :
genera autem distributio mox docebit. Nunc proprie-
tates comparatorum sunt dicendæ.
“ Comparata etsi ipsa comparationis matura æquè
mota sunt ; attamen alterum altero alicui notius et
illustrius esse debet.”
Ubi hoc advertendum, non sua sed comparationis na-
tura dici æquè nota esse comparata. Ita sunt, inquis,
et relata vi relationis; immo argumenta omnia quæ
878
ARTIS LOGICAE PLENIOR INSTITUTIO,
etiam relata sunt. At, imquam, relatio et comparatio
non sunt idem ; et reliqua argumenta, et si quatemus
relata sunt notione logica, æquè nota sunt, sua tamen
natura, prout quæque est, vel æquè vel non æquè sunt
manifesta ; dissentanea quidem æquè, consentanea non
tequè, ut jam supra est dictum. Debet autem ei qui-
cum disputamus comparatorum id quod arguit sua ma-
tura et priusquam comparatio instituitur, notius esse
atque illustrius eo quod arguitur ; æquè enim obscu-
rum nihil argueret. Unde in signis comparatorum
usus elucet; quo fit ut inæqualis rerum notitia compa-
rationis vi æqualis reddatur. Sic consentanea ad pro-
bandum, dissentanea ad refellendum, comparata ad il-
lustrandum aptissima sunt. -»
“ Comparata autem saepe notis brevius indicantur ;
aliquando partibus distinguuntur, quæ propositio red-
ditioque nominantur.”
Duplex ergo est comparationis forma: altera com-
tracta, altera explicata. Contracta est quæ umo verbo
concluditur, ut infra cap. 21. Explicata, quæ partibus
distinguitur ; partesque istæ propositio et redditio no-
minantur. Propositio præcedit sæpe, et argumentum
est : redditio sæpe sequitur, estque id quod arguitur :
si secus occurrit, imversio est. Omnis autem forma
comparationis contracta, suis partibus explicari potest.
“ Atque omnino comparata etiam ficta arguunt
fidemque faciunt.”
Arguunt scilicet rem veram ; in quo cæteris argu-
mentis præcellunt ; quae ficta si sunt, rem fictam dum-
taxat arguunt; ut materia ficta, fictam solis domum.
At comparata etiam ficta, non sua quidem natura, sed
comparationis vi, res veras arguunt fidemque faciunt.
“ Comparatio est in quantitate vel qualitate.
“ Quantitas est qua res comparatæ quantæ dicuntur.
“ Estque parium vel imparium.” Non hic loquimur
de quantitate solùm mathematica, quæ magnitudinis
est aut numeri, sed de quantitate logica, quæ ratio
quælibet sive affectio est, qua res quæcunque inter se
comparatæ quantæ, i. e. æquales vel inæquales, pares
vel impares dici possint.
** Paria sunt, quorum est una quantitas.”
Sic enim definit Aristoteles, Phil. 8, 15. Quod idem
valet acsi diceretur, quorum par ratio est. “ Una,” i. e.
eadem, æqualis : unde in plurali numero eodem nomine
ac definitione explicantur.
** Argumentum igitur paris est, cùm par illustratur à
pari.”
Ad exempla veniamus ; atque ad ea primùm quæ in
forma, ut diximus, contracta notis brevius indicantur.
Hæ autem notæ præcipuæ sunt “ par, æquale, æquare;”
ut in his:
** ——— Par levibus ventis.” Æneid. 2.
Ubi levitas Creusæ umbræ comparatur levitati ven-
tOrum.
* Et nunc æquali tecum pubesceret ævo.” AEneid. 3.
** En hujus mate auspiciis, illa inclyta Roma
Imperium terris, amimos æquabit Olympo.” AEneid. 6.
His notis aliæ sunt affines, “ pariter, æquè, æqua-
ìitas, æqualiter, perinde, acsi,” et id genus alia.
Sequitur forma explicata: in qua propositio et red
ditio distinguuntur, quœ in contracta forma erant impli-
citæ. In hac autem forma explicata par quantitas vel
notis apertè indicatur, vel sime notis memte et ratione
concipitur: notæ istæ sunt vel propriue parium : vel
negationes imparium: parium propriæ, “ idem quod ;
tam, quàm ; tanto, quanto ; tot, quot.” In quibus sin-
gulis notarum paribus prior quæque redditiomi inservit,
posterior verò propositioni. Catil. 4, “ Cujus res gestæ
atque virtutes iisdem, quibus solis cursus, regionibus
ac terminis cominentur.”
** Tam ficti pravique temax quàm muntia veri.” AEneid 4.
** Tantò pessimus omnium poëta,
Quantò tu optimus omnium patronus.”
Catullus 4.
“ Littora quot comchas, quot amoena rosarea flores,
Quotque soporiferum grama papaver habet, &c.
Tot premor adversis ” Ovid. 4. Trist.
Negationes imparium sunt ; vel majoris et minoris
seorsim vel utriusque simul “ non magis, non minus.”
Philippic. 9, “ Neque enim ille magis jurisconsultus
quàm justitiæ fuit,” &c. “ Neque constituere litium
actiones malebat, quàm controversias tollere.” Ovid.
2, de Arte.
** Non minor est virtus, quàm quærere, parta tueri.”
“ Utriusque simul” pro Muræna: “ paria cognosco
esse ista in L. Muræna, atque ita paria, ut neque ipse
dignitate vinci potuerit, neque te dignitate superarit.”
Observandum est autem negationem majoris vel mi-
moris seorsim non semper esse motam parium : neque
enim si “ servus non est major domino, ergo est æqua-
lis;” nec si “ dominus món est minor servo, ergo par.”
Hactenus cum notis; nunc sine notis hæc quæ se-
quuntur. Atque in hoc potissimum genere exemplo-
rum sine notis, apparet vis eadem arguendi in utram-
que partem ; adeo ut si unum, alterum quoque sit ; si
non sit unum, neque alterum. Itaque ex uno eorum
affirmato, alterum affirmatur ; ex megato, negatur : 2
Philip. “ Quorum facinus commune, cur non eorum
præda communis ?” Ter. in Adel.
** Quando ego non curo tuum, me cura meum.”
** Hujus loci,” parium nempe sine notis, “ sunt con-
sectaria illa è contrariis quidem orta, sed parium col-
latione tractata.” Ut ex adversis ista ; Cicero pro
Sylla “ neque verò quid mihi irascare intelligere pos-
sum ; si, quòd eum defendo quem tu accusas, cur tibi
quoque ipse non succenseo, qui accuses eum quem ego
defendo ? Inimicum, inquis, accuso meum: et amicum,
inquam, ego defendo meum.” Sic 5 Tusc. “ quod cùm
fateantur, satis magnam vim esse in vitiis ad miseram
vitam ; nonne fatendum est eamdem vim in virtute esse
ad beatam vitam ? Contraria enim contrariorum sunt
consequentia.”
Quæ tamen regula non est perpetuo vera : primò
nisi collatio sit verè parium: non ergo sequitur, “ mala
opera damnant ; ergo bona justificant.” Mala m.
opera omnino mala, boma imperfectè bona sunt ; illa
AD PETRI RAMI METHODUM CONCINNATA.
879
nostra, hæc non plane nostra. Secundo, sed in iis
duntaxat paribus, contrariorum ex loco petitis, quorum
parium propositio reciprocatur. Quod in relatis qui-
dem fit frequentissimè : ut apud Martialem.
** Tum servum scis de genitum, blandeque fateris,
Cùm dicis dominum, Sosibiane, patrem.”
Fater est filii dominus, et filii dominus est pater:
pariter ergo filius est patris servus. Sic ex adversis:
** bonum est appetendum ; pariter ergo malum est fu-
giendum.” Nempe quia propriè adeoque reciprocè,
omne appetendum est bonum. Et ex privantibus:
Ovid. ] Fast.
** In pretio pretium munc est, dat census honores,
Census amicitias : pauper ubique jacet.”
Dives est in pretio, et quisquis est in pretio, est
dives ; ergo omnis pauper jacet.
“ Quoties autem collationis propositio non reciproca-
tur, vel quoties uni parium id quasi proprium tribuitur
quod utrisque commune est, eorum consequentia con-
traria non sunt, sed saepe eadem.” Fallit ergo hoc ex
relatis: “ pater est dives; ergo filius est pauper:” quia
propositio non est reciproca ; omnis enim dives non
est pater. Et hoc etiam ex adversis: “ homo est sensu
præditus; bestia igitur sensu caret. Homo mortalis;
bestia igitur immortalis:” quippe nec sensu præditum,
nec mortale est homini proprium ; sed utrique contra-
rio commune, et homini et bestiae. Hoc etiam ex con-
tradicentibus: “ homo est animal ; ergo non homo est
non animal.” Hoc denique ex privantibus: “ videns
vivit ; ergo cæcus est mortuus:” vivere enim et videnti
et cæco commune est. “ Non enim idem mom dici de
contrariis, scd contraria de eodem dici non possunt ;
immo quod suscipit unum centrariorum, suscipit alte-
rum ; et quod unum non suscipit, neque alterum ;*' ut,
“ in quo est an:or, in eo potest esse odium. Quibus
nullum est jus, iis nulla fit injuria.”
Est et alius parium sine motis modus, “ quo interdum
lacessiti, par pari reponimus.” Qualis est Virgil. Ecl. 3,
in illa pastorum alterna contentione repetitum illud;
“ Dic quib. in terris,” &c. Cujusmodi est et illud Mat.
21, 23, &c. ** Qua authoritate facis ista ? &c. Inter-
rogabo vos ego etiam quiddam : Baptisma Joannis
unde erat?” Affine est illud Cic. Off. 2, ** Cato, cùm
ab eo quæreretur, quid esset fœnerari ? respondit, quid
hominem occidere.”
Paria verò ficta quorum esse proprium si.prà dixi-
mus rem veram arguere, sunt illa' apud Ciceronem,
Inveut. 1, ex Æschine Socratico ; ubi Aspasia cum
Xenophontis uxore et Xenophonte ipso sic inducitur
locuta: “ dic mihi, quæso, Xenophontis uxor, si vicina
tua melius habeat aurum quàm tu habes, utrum illius an
tuum malis? Illius, inquit. Et si vestem ? Illius verò
respondit. Age verò, si virum illa meliorem, an illius
malis.” Hic mulier erubuit. Comparatio sic se habet:
si aurum, si vestem vicimæ meliorem habere malles
quàm tuam, malle etiam meliorem vicinæ virum argue-
ris. Non dicit vicinam habere aurum aut vestem me-
liorem, sed fingit aut ponit, eamque si mallet Xeno-
phontis uxor, arguitur malle virum quoque vicinæ si
melior sit.
CAP. XIX.
De Majoribus.
** IM PARIA sunt, quorum quantitas non est una.”
** Non una,” i. e. non eadem ; quorum par ratio non
est: contrariorum enim contraria ratio est.
** Impar est majus vel minus.
“ Majus est cujus quantitas excedit.”
Major autem vel mimor quantitas æstimanda est ex
rerum quæ comparantur, elatione vel summissione, ut
inquit Cic. in Top. i. e. excessu vel defectu ; quae vel
notis indicantur, vel, si desunt notæ, aliis vocibus, quæ
excessum vel defectum significant, intelliguntur. Ex
eo autem quod suprà de logica quantitate diximus, in-
telligendum est id logicè majus quoque esse, cujus non
solùm magnitudo, mensura, aut numerus, sed etiam
auctoritas, potentia, praestantia, probabilitas, difficultas,
aut quid hujusmodi majus est ; vel brevius, quod qua-
vis ratione excessum habet, id majus est; idque non
solùm rei ipsius matura, sed vel opinione disserentis.
Majus igitur est cujus quantitas excedit id quod minus
est : majus enim hic adhibetur ad arguendum minus.
Quemadmodum autem parium, ita argumenti à ma-
jore, forma alia contracta est, quæ notis brevius indi-
catur; alia explicata, quæ partibus plenius distingui-
tur.
Contractioris formæ notæ sunt vcl nomina compara-
tiva et superlativa suos casus regentia, vel verba quæ-
dam ; et ea quidem utraque non solùm quæ excessum
significant, ut “ major, melior, pejor; præstare, supe-
rare, vincere, excedere, praeferri,” cum referuntur ad
id quod arguit, verùm etiam ea cùm nomina tum verba
quæ defectum significant, ut “ minor, inferior, postha-
beo, cedo, vincor, superor,” si referuntur ad id quod
arguitur.
Explicata autem forma nunc est cum motis, nunc sime
notis. Notæ sunt “ mon solùm, sed etiam ;” non, tam,
quam, et conparationes, verbaque, ut suprà, non modò
elationem significantia cum particula “ quàm,'' si ea
particula tribuatur ei semper quod arguitur, sed etiam
ea quæ summissionem significant, si modò particula
** quàm” referatur ad id quod arguit: ut, “ minus est
amicum pulsare, quàm patrem.” Sed hoc exemplum
arguit potius à minori quàm grave scelus sit pulsare
patrem, quàm a majori non admodum grave esse
pulsare amicum. Idem de cæteris hujusmodi est di-
cendum.
Exemplum primæ notæ : Cic. pro Muræna : “ Tol-
litur è medio non solùm ista verbosa simulatio pruden-
tiæ, sed etiam illa domina rerum sapientia. Spernitur
orator non solùm odiosus in dicendo aut loquax, ve-
rùm etiam bonus.” In hujusmodi exemplis “ sed
etiam” est propositio, et, ut majus, arguit redditionem
** non solum,” ut minus.
Huic nota affinis est ** immo,” vel ** immo verò.”
Cujusmodi est illud apud Terent. “ Thr. Magnas
verò agere gratias Thais mihi? Gn. Ingentes. Thr.
Ain tu? læta est. Gn. Non tam ipso quidem domo,
880
ARTIS LOGICÆ PLENIOR INSTITUTIO,
quàm abs te datum esse : id verò seriò triumphat.”
Hic facile intelligitur “ immo ingentes” et ** immo id
seriò triumphat.” Ingentes gratiæ arguunt magnas;
et triumphare, lætam esse. Sic Catil. 1 : “ Hic tamen
vivit, vivit ? immo verò in senatum venit.” Et illud
Ver. 3: “ Non furem, sed raptorem ; non adulterum,
sed expugnatorem pudicitiæ,” &c.
Exemplum secumdæ notæ, conparativorum scilicet
et verborum cum particula “ quàm,” est ex Cic. pro
Marcello: “ Plus admirationis habitura, quam gloriæ.”
Sed ambiguum : aut enim plus admirationis arguit
minus gloriæ, et sic argumentum est à majori, aut
minor gloria si magna sit, arguit maximam admira-
tionem.
Verborum elationem significantium cum particula
“ quàm” exemplum hoc erit ; * mendicare præstat,
quàm furari.” Hic mendicare, quamquam inhonestum,
ut magis tamen et potius faciendum, arguit multo
minus esse furandum.
“ Sic malo illud,” scilicet quod arguit, « quàm hoc,”
scilicet quod arguitur: ut Juvenal Satyra 8, adversus
gloriosum nobilem :
** Malo pater tibi sit Thersites, dummodo tu sis
Æacidæ similis, Vulcaniaque arma capessas,
Quam te Thersitæ similem producat Achilles.”
Quod malit ignobilem fortem, quod tamen mon est
ita optandum, ex eo arguit atque ostendit à majori sive
à potiori quàm minime velit nobilem ignavum, Cæsar :
“ Malo modestiam in milite, quam virtutem.” Mo-
destia, judicio Cæsaris, præstantior et major, arguit
virtutem sive fortitudinem in milite minus esse quàm
modestia requirendam : vel potius à minori exaggerat
modestiæ laudem in milite præ virtutis laude.
“ Sequitur majorum tractatio sime notis.”
Atque in hoc solùm genere id majus est cujus pro-
babilitas aut difficultas est major. Hic etiam logici
regulas consequentiæ tradere solent non solùm ne-
gando, ut vult Aristot. Rhet. 2, 23, verùm etiami affir-
mando, pro quantitatis diversa vi et consideratione, in
exemplis diversis: ejusdem enim exempli una tantum
ratio est. Si majus est probabilius, duntaxat negando,
in hunc modum : “ quod non valet in majore, non
valebit in minore.” Si majus est difficilius aut incre-
dibilius, duntaxat affirmando : “ quod in re majore
valet, valet in minore," ut inquit Cic. in Top. Hujus
exemplum est Æneid. 1 :
“ O socii (neque enim ignari sumus ante malorum)
O passi graviora! dabit deus his quoque finem.**
Si gravioribus malis dedit deus finem, dabit his
certè. Sic Cic. pro Muræna : “ Noli tam esse injus-
tus, ut cùm tui fontes vel inimicis tuis pateant, nostros
rivulos etiam amicis putes clausos esse oportere.”
“ Ficta etiam majora idem valent in suis consequen-
tiis vel refutandis vel probamdis.”
Refutandi exemplum est Terent. Heaut.
¢¢
*-*-*-*-*
Satrapas si fiet
Amator, numquam sufferre ejus sumtus queat:
Nedum tu possis:” —quasi diceret, finge satrapam esse.
Et ÅEneid. 5:
** Magnamime Aenea, mom si mihi Jupiter auctor
Spondeat, hoc sperem Italiam comtingere coelo:
Mutati transversa fremunt, &c.
Nec nos obniti contrà, mec tendere tantùm
Sufficimus:''—i. e. multo munc minus Jove non spondente.
CAP. XX.
De Minoribus.
MAJUs et minus inter se affecta et relata sunt : adeo-
que unius definitionem qui norit, morit alterius.
Ut igitur majus est cujus quantitas excedit, “ ita
minus est cujus quantitas exceditur.” Quantitas au-
tem ut majoris erat in qualibet rerum elatione sive ex-
cessu, ita nunc minoris est in qualibet rerum summis-
sione sive defectu. Sententiarum enim minor probabi-
litas aut difficultas locum non habet, nisi in minorum
forma explicata; quod ex majorum quoque explicata
forma intelligi potest. Minus igitur est cujus quan-
titas exceditur à majore : argumentum itaque à minore
est, cùm id quod mimus est, adhibetur ad arguendum
id quod est majus.
Minora etiam vel brevius indicantur notis, vel ple-
nius distinguuntur partibus. Hujus utriusque formæ
vel propriæ sunt minorum motæ, vel negationes parium.
Propriæ notæ contractioris formæ sunt primùm, vo-
ces comparativae grammaticæ, cùm nomina tum verba,
elationem utraque significantia, si modò attribuantur
ei quod arguitur. Ovid.*2 de Trist. “ Sævior es tristi
Busiride.” Hic minor sævitia Busiridis arguit majo-
rem illius in quem poeta invehitur. “ Præstat sapientia
divitiis.” “ Sævior” et “ præstat” elationem signifi-
cant, et motæ sunt majoris; sed quia tribuuntur ei quod
arguitur, argumentum utrobique est à minori. Atque
hoc sedulò advertendum est, ut argumentum majoris à
minori dijudicare possis : majora enim et minora, con-
tractæ præsertim formæ, easdem plerumque motas præ
se ferunt; idemque exemplum utramvis in partem vel
à majori vel à minori arguere potest: ut, “ sævior es
tristi Busiride.” Hoc si ad sævitiam cujusvis exagge-
randam dicatur, ut hoc loco, à minori est : si ad Busi-
ridis extenuandam, à majori. Si igitur illa quæ elati-
onem significant, referantur ad id quod arguitur, sunt
illa quidem motæ majoris, argumentum autem est à mi-
mori; quoniam majus, cujus illa notæ sunt, est id quod
arguitur : sin illa quæ summissionem significant, re-
feruntur ad id quod arguitur, sunt illa quidem notæ
minoris, sed argumentum est à majori ; quoniam id
quod arguitur, minus est.
Secundò, comparationes grammaticæ verbaque sum-
missionem significantia, ut minor, inferior, &c. Post-
habeo, postpono, cedo, vincor, superor, &c. Si modò
ad id quod arguit, referatur : ut “ cedant arma togæ.”
Hic togæ dignitas arguitur à minori armorum digni.
tate, quae cedit.
Atque hæ sunt notæ affirmantes contractæ formæ:
AD PETRI RAMI METHODUM CONCINNATA.
881
quibus annumerandæ sunt etiam istæ formulæ, quæ
fiunt negatione parium. Philip. 9, “ Omnes ex omni
aetate, qui in hac civitate intelligentiam juris habue-
runt, si unum in locum conferantur, cum S. Sulpitio
non sunt conferendi,” i. e. non æquandi, quæ nota pa-
rium fuit. Hactenus contracta forma.
Explicata forma vel cum motis est, vel sine notis.
Propriæ notæ sunt primò, “ non modò non, sed me.”
Cic. 2, Catil. ** Nemo nom modò Romae, sed ne ullo
in angulo totius Italiæ oppressus ære alieno fuit, quem
non ad hoc incredibile sceleris foedus asciverit.” Hic
posterior nota “ sed me," est propositionis, et nota mi-
moris ; arguitque “ non modo non,” quæ redditionis est,
et nota majoris, quod arguitur. Ne ullo in angulo Ita-
Jiæ non fecit, quod minus utile sibi erat, non modò non
igitur vel multo magis Romæ fecit, quod majus erat,
vel sibi magis utile. Pro Fonteio: “ Non modo nul-
lum facinus hujus protulerunt, sed me dictum quidem
aliquod reprehenderent.” Ne mimus quidem fece-
runt ut dictum aliquod reprehenderunt, quae propo-
sitio est et arguit non modo non majus, i. e. ergo
mon majus, ut facimus aliquod proferrent, quæ redditio
est, et arguitur.
Verùm in hujus notæ exemplis propositionis nota
“ sed ne,” aliquando omittitur. Ad Lent. * Nullum
meum minimum dictum, non modò factum pro Cæsare
intercessit,' i. e. nullum non modò factum, sed ne dic-
tum quidem. Huic motæ affinis est illa formula, “ tan-
tum abest ab hoc, ut ne illud quidem.” Pro Marcello :
“ Tantum abes à perfectione maximorum operum, ut
fundamenta, quæ cogitas, nondum jeceris.” Ne hoc
quidem fecisti quod minus est, abes ergo longe ab illo
quod est majus.
Secundæ notæ sunt comparationes grammaticæ et
verba quædam cum particula “ quàm,” quæ vel elatio-
nem significant, ut “ potius hoc quàm illud, malo hoc
quàm illud,” vel summissionem, ut “ minor, inferior,”
ita ut “ quàm” utrobique referatur ad id quod arguitur.
Catil. 1, “ Ut exul potius tentare, quàm consul vexare
remp. possis.” Quod potius erat Ciceroni ut exul ten-
taret remp. quàm consul vexaret, illud ut minus malum
arguit hoc esse majus. Hic comparatio grammatica
“ potius,” ad id quod arguit, refertur, nempe ad minus
malum ; partieula “ quàm” ad id refertur quod arguitur,
nempe ad majus malum ; “ Sic maluit Metellus de re-
pub. quàm de sententia sua dimoveri.” Hic ** maluit,”
verbum elationis, refertur ad id quod arguit, nempe ad
minus malum, judicio Metelli, de rep. dimoveri ; par-
ticula “ quàm” ad id refertur quod majus malum argu-
itur, dimoveri de sententia. Sic in iis notis quæ sum-
missionem significant, particula “ quàm ° refertur
semper ad majus quod arguitur, non secus atque in iis
quæ, significant elationem : ut, “ minus est accipere,
quàm dare ; inferior est Cæsar quàm Scipio.”
His notis affinis est, “ anteqnam,” i. e. potius quam.
Pro Milone : “ Utinam Clodius dictator esset, ante-
quam hoc spectaculum viderem.”
Tertia mota est “ cùm tum :” 1 Agr. ** quæ cùm om-
nib. est difficilis et magna ratio, tum vero mihi præter
cæteros.”
Sequuntur negationes parium in hac forma explicata.
“ Non tam, quàm.” Catil. 2, “ Quanquam illi qui
Catilinam Massiliam ire dictitauit, non tam hæc que-
runtur, quàm verentur.” Sic “ non tot, quot :” pro
Muræna ; “ Quod euim fretum, quem Euripum tot
motus, tantas, tam varias habere putatis agitationes
fluctuum ; quantas perturbationes et quantos æstus
habet ratio comitiorum ?” In hoc exemplo interrogatio
fortius negat paria. •
Nunc ad exempla formæ sine notis explicatæ venia-
Cic. Off. 1, ** Ergo histrio hoc videbit in scema,
Atque hinc etiam conse-
MÎ1 UlS.
non videbit sapiens in vita.”
quentiæ ducuntur non solùm affirmando et probando, ut
vult Arist. Rhet. 2, 23, et Cic. in Top. sed etiam negan-
do et refutando: si quidem hoc de exemplo non eodem
intelligitur: sin de eodem, tum quidem vel solùm affir-
mando, vel solùm negando rectè proceditur. Affirmandi
exemplum est Ovid. 1 de Remed.
** Ut corpus redimas ferrum patieris et ignes, &c.
Ut valeas animo quicquam tolerare negabis!”
Si corporis causa, multo magis animi quidvis tolera-
bis ; animus enim dignior. Item pro Archia: “ Bestiae
saepe immanes cantu flectuntur : nos non poetarum
voce moveamur?” Sic illud Mat. 6, 26, ** Passeres curat
Deus ; multo magis ergo homines.” At negando, nulla
ex his consequentia deducitur : non ergo sequitur, “ si
corporis causa quicquam non tolerabis, ergo nunc
animi;” et sic de cæteris. Rectè igitur, si hoc modo
intelligitur Aristoteles, à minore ad majus affirmando
solùm proceditur. Verùm exempla non desunt, in
quib. à minore arguitur etiam solùm negando : cujus-
modi est illud supra citatum, pro Marcello ; ** funda-
menta nondum jecisti, certè ergo non perfecisti.” Nec
tamen idem affirmando ; ** fundamenta jecisti, ergo
perfecisti.” Hic modò cavendum est, ne ponatur nega-
tio quæ affirmationi æquipolleat: ut, “ Deus non meg
ligit passeres,” idem est quod “ curat.” Sic enim
utriusque consequentiæ idem exemplum prout sententia
eadem vel affirmando vel negando variatur, dari posset:
ut, “ si fures plectendi, multo magis sacrilegi. Si
furib. non parcendum, multo minus sacrilegis.” Hic
“ plectere” et “ non parcere” idem est; et minus sit nota
majoris: non igitur notæ, sed rerum elatio vel summis-
sio majus vel minus efficit. Atque hæc de consequen-
tiis minorum sine notis.
Verùm eædem consequentiæ ducuntur ab explicata
forma, quæ etiam cum notis est, ut ex iis exemplis quæ
suprà ponuntur, intelligas licet. In hac forma expli-
cata sine notis est ubi occurrit minorum quædam gra-
datio: ut Ver. 7, “ Facinus est vincere civem Roma-
num ; scelus verberare ; propè parricidium mecare :
quid dicam in crucem tollere ?”
Finguntur etiam minora : Virgil. Ecl. I.
** Ante leves ergo pascentur in æthere cervi, &c.
Quàm nostro illius labatur pectore vultus.”
Philip. 2, “ Si inter coenam in tuis immanibus illis
poculis hoc tibi accidisset, quis non turpe duceret? In
cœtu verò populi R. negotium publicum gerens, ma-
gister equitum,” &c.
882
ARTIS LOGICÆ PLENIOR INSTITUTIO,
CAP. XXI.
De Similibus.
HAcTENUs comparatio in quantitate fuit. Sequitur
“ comparatio in qualitate, qua res comparatue quales
dicuntur.”
Qualitas enim logica non solùm est habitus, aut dis-
positio, aut potentia, vel impotentia naturalis, aut de-
mique figura aut forma exterior, quœ Aristot. species
qualitatis sunt, et in aliis artibus tractandæ, sed est
affectio quælibet sive ratio, qua res inter se comparatæ
quales, nempe similes aut dissimiles dicuntur. Nulla
autem res est, quæ si alteri qualitate conferatur, non
sit ei similis vel dissimilis.
“ Similia sunt quorum eadem est qualitas.”
Sic enim definit Aristoteles, Phil. 8, 15, et Boethius,
l. 2, in Cic. Top. ** similitudo,” inquit, “ est unitas qua-
litatis.” Argumentum igitur similitudinis est, quando
simile explicatur à simili. Magna quidem est affinitas
parium cum similibus ; verùm ut ex definitionibus
eorum perspicere licet, in hoc maximè differunt, quòd
paria non admittunt elationem aut summissionem, si-
milia admittunt: possunt enim etiam simillima majora
esse vel minora ; quod paria non possunt.
Similitudo proportio dicitur, Græcè ferè * analogia;”
et similia proportionalia, Graecè “ analoga.” Proportio
autem nihil aliud est quàm duarum rationum similitudo;
ratio autem est duorum inter se terminorum sive rerum
collatio. * Monendum autem est similia sive contractæ
formae sive explicatæ urgenda mon esse ultra eam qua-
litatem quam in utrisque eamdem esse propositum assi-
milanti erat ostendere : sic magistratus assimilatur cani,
sola nimirum fidelitate custodiæ : unde illa in scholis,
“ nullum simile est idem, simile non currit quatuor
pedibus, omne simile claudicat.”
Similia nunc notis brevius indicantur, nunc partibus
plenius distinguuntur; hoc enim comparatis omnibus
commune est. Notae similitudinis contractæ * quæ uno
verbo concluditur,” sunt vel similium propriæ vel dis-
similium negationes. Propriæ similium sunt vel no-
mina, ut “ similis, effigies, imago, more, ritu, instar, in
modum ;” vel adverbia, “ tanquam, veluti, quasi, sicu-
ti;” vel verba, “ imitari, referre,” &c. 1 AEneid. ** Os
humerosque deo similis.” Philip. 9, “ Quanquam mul-
]um monumentum clarius Servius Sulpitius relinquere
potuit, quàm effigiem morum suorum, virtutis, constan-
tiæ, pietatis, ingenii, filium.” 1 Trist.
** Namque ea vel nemo, vel qui mihi vulnera fecit,
Solus Achilleo tollere more potest.”
In Pis. ** Unus ille dies mihi quidem instar immor-
talitatis fuit, quo in patriam redii.” Verr. 1, ** Sed re-
pente è vestigio ex homine, tanquam aliquo poculo
Circæo, factus est Verres.” Pro lege Manil. “ Itaque
omnes quidem nunc in his locis Em. Pompeium, sicut
aliquem, non ex hac urbe missum, sed de coelo delap-
sum intuentur.” Negationes dissimilium sunt, “ haud
secus, non aliter, non absimilis,” &c. Æneid. 3, “ Haud
secus ac jussi faciunt.” Terent. in Phor. “ Ego isti
nihilo sum aliter, ac sui.”
Ad contractam similitudinis formam pertinet etiam
metaphora: metaphora enim, ut docent rhetores, est ad
unum verbum contracta similitudo sine notis quidem,
quæ tamen intelliguntur. Pro Sest. “ Cujus ego pa-
trem deum atque parentem statuo fortunæ nominisque
mei,” i. e. ** tanquam deum.”
“ Similitudinis partes deinceps explicantur, et qui-
dem disjuncte vel continuè.
“ Similitudo disjuncta est, quando termini” sive res
* quatuor reipsa distinguuntur,” i. e. quando duo ter-
mini sive res distinctæ in propositione comparantur
duobus terminis sive rebus distinctis in redditione.
Occurrit autem hæc forma et cum notis et sine notis.
Notæ sunt, * qualis, talis ;'' illa propositionis, hæc
redditionis nota est. Ita “ quemadmodum, ut, sicut,''
propositionis ; quibus respondent, “ sic, eodem modo,
similiter,” redditionis. Ecl. ö,
** Tale tuum carmen mobis, divine poeta,
Quale sopor fessis in gramine.”
Carmem ad auditorem, ut sopor ad fessum, termini
quatuor distincta sunt. Ad Frat. 1, “ Quemadmodum
gubernatores optimi vim tempestatis, sic sapientissimi
viri fortunæ impetum persæpe superare non possunt.”
Hic quatuor sunt item termini, ut gubernator ad tem-
pestatem, sic sapiens ad fortunam. 1 Trist.
** Scilicet ut fulvum spectatur in ignibus aurum,
Tempore sic duro est inspicienda fides.”
Cicero 2 Phil. * Sed nimirum ut quidam morbo et
sensus stupore suavitatem cibi non sentiunt ; sic libi-
dinosi, avari, facinorosi, veræ laudis gustum non ha-
bent.” In vita Virgil.
** Hos ergo versiculos, feci, tulit alter honores:
Sic vos non vobis nidificatis aves:
Sic vos mom vobis mellificatis apes:” &c.
In hoc exemplo redditio sine nota praecedit. Par-
ticula autem “ sic,” quæ nota solet esse redditionis, hic
propositioni attribuitur.
“ Aliquando nulla prorsus est nota.” Virg. Ecloga 2,
“ O formose puer, nimium me crede colori.
Alba ligustra cadunt, vaccinia nigra leguntur.”
“ Continua similitudo est, quando est ut primus ter-
minus ad secundum, ita secundus ad tertium.” Leg. 3.
“ Ut magistratibus leges, ita populo præsunt magis-.
tratus.” Hic termini sunt tres; lex, magistratus, po-
pulus. Sed medius bis adhibetur, et in omni propor-
tione continua continuatur; estque posterior terminus
propositionis, prior redditionis. In omni enim pro-
portione termini esse debent ad minimum quatuor.
Ordo hujus sic est : ut leges magistratibus, ita magis-
tratus populo præsunt. &
Quamquam autem similia magis ad illustrandum
quàm ad probandum accommodata sunt, et Plato in
Phædone, “ Ego,” inquit, “ sermones qui ex similibus
demonstrationes sumunt, probè novi ad ostentationem
comparatos esse ; et nisi quis caveat ab iis, facile im-
AD PETRI RAMI METHODUM CONCINNATA.
883
ponunt,” quod ad regulas tamen consequentiarum atti-
met, ex definitione similium perspicitur, similium
similem esse rationem ; valere igitur similia in utram-
que partem. Unde Aristot. Top. 24, “ Quod in aliquo
simili valet, in aliis quoque similibus valebit ; et quod
non in aliquo, nec in cæteris.”
Quoniam autem similitudo non solùm est proposi-
tionis et redditionis, sed terminorum etiam inter se.
Idcirco si quædam similia sunt, inversè quoque similia
erunt, et alternè. Et inversè quidem duobus modis ;
inversione scilicet vel propositionis et redditionis quæ
aliorum comparatorum communis est; vel terminorum,
quæ videtur similium propria. Exempli gratia ; ut
gubernator ad tempestatem, sic sapiens ad fortunam :
inversè ergo ; ut sapiens ad fortunam, sic gubernator
ad tempestatem. Hæc propositionis et redditionis
inversio est. Rursus, ut tempestas ad gubernatorem,
sic fortuna ad sapientem : hæc inversio est terminorum.
Alternatio est quando antecedens propositionis antece-
denti redditionis et consequens consequenti compara-
tur, Regula ergo hic est; si quædam similia fuerint,
alternè similia erunt. Ut gubernator ad tempestatem,
sic sapiens ad fortunam : ergo, alternè ; ut gubernator
ad sapientem, sic tempestas ad fortunam. Inversio-
mum hujusmodi et alternationum in mathematicis pro-
portionibus usus maximus est : sed proportio mon ma-
thematica solùm, verùm etiam logica est, ut supradixi-
mus, rerum omnium communis ; ejus ergo regulæ non
erant hic omittendæ.
Ficta similitudo parem vim habet superioribus illis,
sed prtecipuè in hac explicata similitudine Æsopici
apologi excellunt.
Horat. 1 Epist.
“ Quod si me populus Romanus fortè roget, cur
Non ut porticibus, sic judiciis fruar iisdem?
Nec sequar aut fugiam quæ deligit ipse vel odit?
Olim quod vulpes ægroto cauta leoni
Respondit, referam ; quia me vestigia terrent
Omnia te adversum spectantia, nulla retrorsum.”
Huc etiam refertur parabola Socratica vulga dicta :
quæ est inductio similium interrogationib. ferè com-
stans. “Illa autem,” inquit Fabius, ** hanc habuit
vim ; ut cùm plura interrogasset Socrates, quæ fateri
adversario necesse esset, novissime id, de quo quaere-
batur, inferret, cui simile adversarius concessisset.”
Vide pag. 882, ad *.
CAP. XXII.
De Similibus.
HAcTENUs similia, quorum qualitas est eadem. « Dis-
similia sunt comparata, quorum qualitas est diversa.”
Contrariorum enim eadem scientia est. Et Cic. in
Top. “ ejusdem est,” inquit, “ dissimile et simile inve-
mire.” In hoc differunt dissimilia à diversis, quod dis-
similitudo sit differentia comparata, et non idem, eodem
saltem tempore, sed diversis plerumque subjectis attri-
buatur. Itaque diversorum uno negato, alterum affir-
matur ; dissimilia, sive diversa sive opposita, simul
affirmari aut negari possunt. Diversa autem qualitas
est non eadem ; sive diversa sit sive opposita: quasi
dicas dissimilium dissimilis est ratio. Argumentum
igitur dissimilitudinis est quando dissimile arguitur à
dissimili.
Contractæ dissimilitudinis motæ sunt “ dissimile,
dispar, differens, aliud, secus : ” Pro Planc. “ Dissi-
milis est debitio pecuniæ et gratiæ.” Ennius : “ O
domus antiqua, heu quàm dispari dominare domino.”
Dispar autem est non impar, sed dissimilis. Cæsar
1 Bell. Gal. “ Hi omnes lingua, institutis, legibus inter
se differunt.” 2 Agrar. * Alio vultu, alio vocis sono,
alio incessu esse meditabatur.” Cic. 2 Nat. “ Quoniam
coepi secus agere, atque initio dixeram.”
Dissimilitudinis notæ etiam sunt per negationem si-
milium, “ ut non similis, non talis, non idem, non tan-
quam,” &c. 3 de Orat. ** Non est philosophia similis
artium reliquarum.” 2 Emeid. .
“ At non ille, satum quo te mentiris, Achilles,
Talis in hoste fuit Priamo.”———
Horat. l Epist. “ Non eadem est ætas, non mens.”
1 ad Frat. “ Sit annulus tuus, non tanquam vas ali-
quod, sed tanquam ipse tu.” Hoc argumento pastor
ille errorem suum confitetur. Eclog. 1,
“ Urbem (quam dicunt Romam) Meliboee, putavi,
Stultus ego huic nostræ similem.” ————
Et mox,
** Sic canibus catulos similes, sic matribus hoedos
Noram, sic parvis componere magna solebam.”
Ut nec canibus catuli, nec matribus hoedi, sic nec
Mantua Romæ similis est. In hoc exemplo erroris
confessio pro negatione similium est.
Explicata dissimilitudo itidem cum motis est vel sine
notis. Notæ sunt hic etiam negationes similium. 3
Philip. “ Certus dies non ut sacrificii sic consilii ex-
pectari solet.”
“ Nota plerumque nulla est, cum dissimilitudo plenius
explicatur.”
Quintil. l. 5, c. 1 1, “ Brutus occidit liberos prodi-
tionem molientes. Manlius virtutem filii morte mulc-
tavit.”
Catullus.
“ Soles occidere et redire possunt:
Nobis cùm semel occidit brevis lux,
Nox est perpetua una dormienda.”
Dissimilitudo est diei et vitæ nostræ. Redditio est
vitam semel amissam non restitui. Illustratur à dissi-
mili, quæ propositio est, soles occidere et redire possunt.
CAP. XXIII.
De Conjugatis.
HAcTENUs prima argumenta sunt exposita: quorum
tria genera fuere; consentanea, dissentanea, et com-
parata.
3 L -
884
ARTIS LOGICAE PILENIOR INSTITUTIO,
Sequuntur “orta de primis; quæ ad id quod arguunt
perinde sunt ut prima unde oriuntur: ut conjugata et
notatio, distributio et definitio.”
In se itaque habent vim arguendi ut argumenta arti-
ficialia, et eamdem quidem cum iis unde oriuntur: mom
autem à se, quia non prima, ut in capite secumdo jam
dictum est. Definitionem autem vix aliam requirunt
præter ipsum nomen, quod naturam eorum satis per se
explicat: unde illud consectarium, “ Orta argumenta
perinde esse ad id quod arguunt, ut sunt prima unde
oriuntur.”
Quatuor hæ species ortorum, in duo genera, anomyma
licet, distinguuntur, cùm propter dichotomiæ studium,
tum quia conjugata et notatio sub eodem gemere con-
timentur, propter illam quæ inter ea intercedit commu-
mionem. Cicero itaque in Top. locum ex conjugatis
notationi finitimum esse dixit. Et in multis exemplis
conjugata à notatione et momine nihil aut parum diffe-
runt. Communio autem illa duplex est : primò quòd
sunt argumenta nominalia sive à nomine petita. Sed
in hoc differunt, ut etiam tradit Boet. l. 4, in Top. Cic.,
quod notatio expositione nominis, conjugatio similitu-
dine vocabuli ac derivatione perficitur. Neque idcirco
ad grammaticam pertinent: ex vi enim nominum argu-
menta petere, logici est, non grammatici. Secunda
communio est, quòd sunt orta simplicia: neque enim
ex pluribus primis simul conjunctis, sed ex uno aliquo
argumento primo singula eorum exempla oriuntur, nisi
in uominibus compositis: compositorum enim nominum
composita interdum ex pluribus argumentis notatio est.
Distributio autem et definitio sunt argumenta realia,
i. e. in rerum explicatione versari solent, et composita,
i. e. ex pluribus argumentis primis simul conjunctis
originem suam trahunt. Si ergo ortorum genera,
quae anonyma esse diximus, nominibus distinguere
lubet, orta erunt vel nomimalia et simplicia, ut conju-
gata et notatio, vel realia et composita, ut distributio
et definitio: nisi hoc fortè excipiamus, quod definitio
ex uno primo, i. e. ex sola forma nonnunquam constare
potest. Ex his autem duobus generibus prius tractan-
dum est illud cui conjugata et notatio subjiciuntur,
quia ferè simplicius est. Atque in hoc genere conju-
gata priorem sibi locum vendicant, quod ex solis con-
sentaneis oriantur, cùm notatio ex quovis argumento
primo petatur. Fabius l. 5, c. 10, conjugata nibili fa-
cit: Aristoteles autem et Cicero in Topicis suis aliter
sentiunt ; quorum ille l. 3, c. 4, et I. 7, c. 2, locos ex
dissentameis, conjugatis et casibus plurimum ait valere;
et ad plurima esse utiles.
“Conjugata sunt nomina ab eodem principio variè de-
ducta. Ut justitia, justus, justè.” Aristoteles et Cicero
conjtigata, ille, nomina ejusdem conjugationis ; hic,
ejusdem generis esse definiunt: sed neque ille quasi ju-
gum ipsum conjugatorum, neque hic genus, meque nos-
ter principium ipsum sive originem et thema comjuga-
torum numero excludit. Conjugata autem sunt omnia
mon solùm nomina tam substantiva quàm adjectiva, sed
etiam verba, et, quæ Aristoteles casus vocat, adverbia,
cùm paronuma, i. e. derivata, tum ipsa themata, serva-
tis tamem istis conditionibus. 1. Si ut idem sonant, sic
idem etiam significant. 2. Si in eadem significationis
ratione sumantur. Nam si unum significat potentiam
sive facultatem aut habitum, alterum verò actum, et ex
potentia sive habitu arguatur actus, aut contra, captio est.
3. Si in iis symbolum sit consentaneorum argumen-
torum, i. e. si à consentaneis orta sunt: quorum vim et
affectionem in arguendo aliis nominibus iisque conju-
gatis referant : quorum etiam ad inventionem nomina-
lis hujusque conjugationis indicio ducamur : unde
elucet mom contemnemdus hujus ioci usus, præsertim in
definitionibus.
Sequuntur exempla ; ut justitia, justus, justè. Cu-
jusmodi im exemplis observandum est, abstractum quod
vocant, causam esse concreti, et concretum adverbii.
Ut justitia est causa, cur aliquis sit justus: et quia
justus est, idcirco justè agit. Quod tamen non est
ubique verum : sanum enim, i. e. quod efficit aut com-
servat samitatem, causa est sanitatis, concretum scilicet
abstracti, ut notat Aristot. top. 2, 3, Propert. lib. 2,
** Libertas quoniam nulli jam restat amanti,
Nullus liber erit, siquis amare velit.”
Hic libertas, quæ causa est cur sis liber, quia non
vestat, ergo nullus, &c. Cicero 3, de Nat. Deor. cùm
de Dionysio tyranno loquitur: “Jam mensas argenteas
de omnibus delubris jussit auferri, in quibus quòd more
veteris Græciæ inscriptum esset bonorum deorum, uti
eorum bonitate velle se dicebat : dii boni sunt: eorum
igitur bonitate est utendum.” Hic ex effectis ad causas
est disputatum ; ut vult Ramus: ut mihi quidem vide-
tur à causis ad effecta. Terent. “ Homo sum, humani
à me nihil alienum puto.” Ex subjecto est ad adjunc-
tum. In Pison. “ Cum esset omnis illa causa consula-
ris et senatoria, auxilio mihi opus fuerat et consulis et
senatus.” Ex adjunctis est ad subjectum. Phil. 2, “ Non
tractabo ut consulem, ne ille quidem me ut consularem.”
Ex effecto est ad causam : mam esse consulem causa est
ut quis postea sit consnlaris: unde sic arguitur; mom
agnoscit is im me effectum, non agnoscam ergo in eo
causam. Notandum est nonnulla sensu dumtaxat, mom
sono esse conjugata : ut “ somnus, dormiens ; morbus,
æger.”
CAP. XXIV.
De Notatiome.
“ NoTATio est nominis interpretatio,” i. e. reddita
ratio cur quidvis ita nominatum sit. Definitio autem
hæc est “ Boëthii, 1. 1, in Cic. Top. Notatio inquit Cic.
in Top. Graecis etymologia dicitur,” i. e, verbum ex
verbo veroloquium : “ nos autem movitatem verbi mom
satis apti fugientes, genus hoc notationem appellamus,
quia sumt verba rerum motæ.” Hæc ille. Ex iis igitur
quæ supradicta sunt, intelligi potest, notationem esse
argumentum ortum adeòque symbolum alicujus prim;i;
esse nominale, i. e. ut Cicero loquitur, argumentum ex
vi momimis elicitum. -
“ Quippe nomina sunt motæ rerum et cujuslibet
nomiuis vel derivati vel compositi, siquidem motatione
AD PETRI RAMI METHODUM CONCINNATA.
885
vera nomen inditum fuit, ratio reddi potest ex aliquo
argumento primo.” -
“ Ut homo ab humo.” Hæc à materia est notatio.
Sed linguæ, cùm prima illa quam Adamus in Edene,
tum illæ variæ atque à prima fortassis ortæ, quas con-
ditores turris Babelicæ subito acceperunt, divinitus
proculdubio datæ sunt; unde vocum primitivarum ratio
si ignoretur, mirum non est: quae autem voces derivatæ
sunt aut compositae, vel earum origines ex aliis linguis
antiquis jamque obsoletis petendæ sunt, vel ipsae vetus-
tate aut infimæ plebis inquinata fere pronuntiatione ita
immutatæ, mendose etiam scribendi consuetudine ita
quasi obliteratæ, ut vera vocum notatio raro admodum
teneatur. Unde argumentum à motatione, nisi ea fortè
manifestissima sit, fallax admodum et sæpe ludicrum
eSt.
Nunc reliqua exempla videamus. Ovid. 6 Fast.
“ Stat vi terra sua ; vi stando Vesta vocatur.”
Terra dicitur Vesta ab effecto suo naturali, propterea
quod vi sua stat.
** At locus à flammis et quod fovet omnia dictus.”
Ex effectis est notatio. Item Verr. 4, “ O verrea
præclara ! Quo enim accessisti, quo non attuleris tecum
istum diem ? Etenim quam tu domum, quam urbem
adiisti, quod famum denique, quod non eversum atque
extersum reliqueris ? Quare appellantur sanè ista Ver-
rea, quæ non ex momine, sed ex moribus naturaque
tua constituta esse videantur.” Ex effectis item est
notatio. Ovid. 1 IFast.
** Prima dies tibi, Carma, datur, dea cardinis hæc est.
Numine clausa aperit, claudit aperta suo.”
Notatio hæc è subjecto est, cardine scilicet, in quo
versando dea illa exercebatur. Hinc illa cavillatio in
Antonium gemerum : “ Tuæ conjugis, bonæ fœminæ,
locupletis quidem certè, Bambalio quidem pater, homo
mullo numero, nihil illo contemptius; qui propter hæsi-
tantiam linguæ stuporemque cordis, cognomem ex
contumelia traxerit.” Ex adjunctis est motatio hæc
Bambalionis, quia balbus et stupidus. F. dissentaneis
autem sunt illa apud Quintil. l. 1, c. 6. “ I,ucus, quia
umbra opacus parum luceat: et ludus, quia sit longis-
simè à lusu : et dis quia minimè dives.” Est etiam è
comparatis notatio pyropi, quòd ignis quondam speciem
præbeat.
Atque hactemus de motatione : nunc aliquid de no-
mine adjiciendum est. “ Est enim * ut notationi ad
suum nomem, sic nomini ad notationem sua affectio: ”
Hoc est, ut motatio arguit momen, sic nomen vicissim
arguit notationem. Ut animi plenus, ergo animosus;
et contrà, animosus, ergo amimi plenus. Nam et no-
men quoque ortum argumentum est; ex quo autem
fonte oriatur, notatio declarat. Hæc autem appendi-
cule de nomine ideirco est adjecta, quia cum alia argu-
memta inter se affecta, quot quidem eodem nomine ac
definitione non sunt comprehensa, sua seorsum capita
sibi habuerint, et tantillum esset quod de nomine di-
cendum erat, non videbatur caput novum ob id esse
instituendum. In hoc igitur capite duo loci inventi-
omis continentur, notationis et nominis : inter quos si
comparatio fiat, potior videtur nominis. Unde tota
haec categoria ab Aristotele ** locus à nomine” dicitur.
Sæpiusque et firmius à nomine quàm à notatione argu-
mentum ducitur ; ut homo est, ergo ex humo ; focus
est, ergo fovet. At non eadem vi argumentum à no-
tatione deducitur ; ex humo est, homo igitur; fovet
omnia, ergo focus est.
CAP. XXV.
De Distributione.
Reliqu UM est ex ortis aliunde argumentis argu
mentum distributionis et definitionis.
“ In qua utraque affectio reciprocationis est, illic
partium omnium cum toto, hic definitionis cum defi-
nito.”
Reciprocatio autem hoc loco est qua prorsus idem,
eademque, ut ita dicam, essentia utrinque significatur :
nam partes omnes simul sumptæ, i. e. rite compositæ,
idem sunt quod totum, et definitio idem, quod defini-
tum ; quod de nullo præterea genere argumentorum
dici potest. Unde nascitur hæc regula utrique huic
argumento communis, ut in distributione ac definitione
“ nequid desit, mequid redumdet :'' mam ubi reciproca-
tio, ibi quoque æqualitas requiritur. Hinc eximia illa
distributionis et definitionis laus effloruit; ex iis nempe
artium institutiones maxima ex parte constare. Cùm
n. omnia artium præcepta constare debeant ex argu-
mentis reciprocis, reciprocatio autem nusquam alibi
reperiatur nisi inter formam (quæ ipsa in definitioni-
bus comprehendi solet) et formatum, inter subjectum et
proprium adjunctum ; hinc factum est ut præcepta
omnia vel definitiones sint vel distributiones vel regu-
læ quædam sive consectaria, quæ proprietatum expli-
cationes dicuntur.
“ Distributio est, cum totum in partes distribuitur.
Totum est, quod continet partes.
Pars est, quæ continetur à toto.”
Totum logicè et generaliter dicitur, quicquid quo-
cumque modo distribuitur et partes continet: pars, quæ
quocunque modo continetur à toto.
“ Atque ut distinctio totius in partes, distributio;
sic collectio partium ad constituendum totum, inductio
dicitur.”
Inter hanc autem inductionem et distributionem mul-
lum aliud discrimen est, nisi quod distributio à toto ad
partes, hæc verò à partibus ad totum progreditur.
Quamobrem, ut supra momen ad notationem, ita hic
inductio ad distributionem referenda est ; mom ad syl-
logismos, ut plerique volunt; cùm non alio modo ab
inductione argumentemur atque à distributione: siqui-
dem eadem est via Thebis Athenas quæ Athenis Thebas.
Inductionis autem auctorem Aristoteles agnoscit So-
cratem ; ejusque necessitatem tantam esse testatur, ut
cùm scientia umiversalium sit, universalia cognoscere
nequeamus nisi per inductionem. Inductionis ergo ope
886
ARTIS LOGICÆ PLENIOR INSTITUTIO, •
praecepta artium inventa sumt ; ut in proæmio mo-
muimus.
“ Distributio sumitur ex argumentis toti quidem con-
sentaneis, inter se autem dissentaneis.”
Sed dissensio illa non est distributionis dissensio
(nunquam n. dissentaneum. in dissentaneum distribui-
tur) sed partium distributarum,
“ Itaque tanto accuratior erit distributio, quanto par-
tium et cum toto consensio et inter se dissensio major
fuerit.”
Hinc efficitur, eam distributionem accuratissimam
esse, quæ in duas partes fit; eaque “dichotomia” di-
citur : dissensio enim inter duo maxima est; contra-
riorum unum umi tantum oppomitur. Platomis itaque
regula est: “ oportet in quàm proximum fieri potest
mumcrum semper dividere.” Quod si dichotomiam im-
venire mon queamus, difficile m. est eam semper inve-
mire, species bisbimas ponere interdum prœstat, quasi
sub duobus generibus, licet anonymis, quàm quatuor
sub uno. Hæc m. distributionis forma, licet non sit
optima, est tamen optimæ proxima. Hac ratione su-
prà cap. 3, Ramus divisit causas in duo gemera amo-
myma, nempe “efficientem et materiam, aut formam et
finem.” Eff. Ubi autem dichotomia nullo modo com-
modè adhiberi potest, “ multis protinus differentiis res
dividenda est,” ut Aristoteles monet. Neque enim
propter dichotomiæ studium distributio vel mutilanda
vel implicanda aut confundenda est.
CAP. XXVI.
De Distributiome eae Causis.
“ DisTRIBUTIo prima est ex absolutè consentaneis,
causis nempe et effectis. Distributio ex causis est,
quando partes sunt causae totius.”
“ Hic distributio integri in sua membra præcipuè
laudatur.”
“ Integrum est totum, cui partes sunt essentiales,”
i. e. quod partibus totam suam essentiam complectem-
tibus constituitur ; ideòque symbolum est effecti ex
materia per formam existentis.
“ Membrum est pars integri.”
Nimirum integro suo essentialis. Sive ut Aristot.
Phil. 8, 15, “ Membra sunt ex quibus integrum com-
ponitur.” Et membra quidem symbola sunt causarum
essentialium, materiæ nimirum et formæ, in quibus tota
integri essentia consistit: singula m. membra materiam
continent ; cuncta simul, ipsam quoque formam.
grammatica in etymologiam et syntaxin ; rhetorica in
elocutionem et actionem ; logica in inventionem et dis-
positionem argumentorum dividitur.
artes illæ constituuntur;” non tanquam ex causis, sed
tamquam ex causarum symbolis. Cùm enim essemtia
dialecticæ partim communis sit materia scilicet, i. e.
præcepta, et forma etiam nempe methodica illorum
præceptorum dispositio ; partim propria, quæ in bene
disserendo posita est, tota hæc dialecticæ essentia in
* Sic
Ab his m. partib.
inventione et dispositione comprehenditur. Nec tamen
partes istæ sunt ipsa materia, i. e. præcepta, nec ipsa
forma communis, i. e. methodica præceptorum dispo-
sitio, nec propria, i. e. ipsa facultate disserendi ; sed ex
præceptis methodicè dispositis conflatæ sunt, et ipsa
facultas disserendi inventionis et dispositionis finibus
continetur.
Quæ sequuntur apnd authorem nostrum exempla duo,
alterum ex Virgilio, Georg. 1, alterum ex Cicerone pro
Muræna, objectis utraque distinguuntur, non causis ;
ideòque ad cap. 28, ad distributionem mempe è sub-
jectis, ad quam etiam præmissa illa annotatio de usu
pertimet. •.
“ Quinetiam aliter tractatur hoc argumenti genus,
vel à partibus ad totum, vel à toto ad partes.”
Hac de re Aristoteles Top. 6, 6, regulas quasdam
tradit. Primo à partibus: “ affirmatis partibus cunc-
tis, affirmatur totum :” et contrà ; ** sublatis partibus
cunctis, tolli totum.” Item ab una parte: “ una parte
sublata, totum tolli.” Secundo à toto ad partes: “ toto
affirmato, affirmamtur partes.” Verùm hæc omnia
ex illa reciprocationis regula superioris capitis initio
tradita satis imtelliguntur. Nam quæ reciprocantur,
eorum alterum ex altero vicissim et mecessariò affir-
matè et negatè concluditur. Hoc verò, ut Aristoteles
etiam notavit, non sequitur ; sublato integro, partes
tolluntur.
Utriusque generis (nempe affirmationis et negationis à
partibus ad totum) exemplum habemus apud Catullum.
** Quintia formosa est multis: mihi candida, longa,
Tecta est : hæc ego sic singula confiteor :
Totum illud, formosa, mego. Nam mulla venustas,
Nulla in tam magno est corpore mica salis.
Lesbia formosa est : quæ cùm pulcherrima tota est,
Tum omnibus uma omnes surripuit veneres.**
Est et alia distributio ex causis et meritò quidem im-
perfectior dicta, cùm non tam ipsius rei quàm ejus cau-
sarum distributio sit : ut ab efficiente, testimonium est
divinum vel humanum. Sic statuæ veteres aliæ factæ
erant à Phydia, aliæ à Polycleto, &c. Distributio hæc
quædam est totius in partes; ubi tamen non tam partes
ipsæ ponuntur quàm pro iis earum efficientis, quibus
inter se distinguuntur. Sic statuæ aliæ erant aureæ,
aliæ argenteæ, aliæ æneæ, aliæ eburneae, &c. distri-
butio est ex materia. Aliæ ad hominum, aliæ ad bru-
torum effigiem factæ ; est distributio à forma externa.
Aliæ factæ sunt ad usum religiosum, aliæ ad civilem ;
est distributio à fine.
CAP. XXVII.
De Distributione eae Effectis, ubi de Genere et Specie.
“ DISTRIBUTio ex effectis est, quando partes sunt
effecta.
Distributio generis in species hic excellit.”
Nonnulli ex Cicerome distributionem integri in mem-
bra “ partitionem” vocant; generis in species “ divi-
AD PETRI RAMI METHODUM CONCINNATA.
887
sionem.” Nec de nihilo sanè : membra enim copulari,
species disjungi solent.
“ Genus est totum partibus essentiale.”
In quo contrarium est integro : illic enim toti partes,
hic totum partibus est essentiale : unde constat, illam
ex causis, hanc ex effectis distributionem rectè dici.
Genus autem “ est totum partibus essentiale,” quia iI-
lam essentiam nempe materiam et formam, quæ specie-
bus omnibus æquè communis est, significatione sua
complectitur: vel brevius, quia symbolum est commu-
nis essentiæ. Neque enim genus propriè essentiam spe-
ciebus communicat (cùm in se extra species revera
nihil sit) sed earum duntaxat essentiam significet. Quod
enim essentiale est et speciebus omnibus commune, ejus
notio genus dicitur. Et idæa sæpe à Graecis, non se-
parata quidem à rebus illa, ut velunt Platomica, quæ
nugæ sunt, teste Aristot. Phil. l, 7, et v. 5. Sed quod
cogitatione et ratione unum et idem est specieb. multis
commune in quibus re et natura est singulatim, ut
Plato in Menone. Stoici etiam Idæas, ut refert Plut.
de Placit. 1, 10, nostras notiones esse dixerunt.
“ Species est pars generis.”
Sic etiam Aristoteles, Phil. 8, 25. Et Cicero Invent.
1, “ Pars quæ generi subest.” Ex definitione autem
generis intelligimus speciem cjusmodi partem esse cu-
Jus essentia communis in generis significatione conti-
meatur. Propriam autem essentiam species, per quam
est id quod est, à propria forma habet, quæ generis sig-
nificatione minime comtimetur.” Sic etiam Aristot. Phil.
&, 12, “ Genus non videtur particeps esse differentiarum :
simul n. contrariorum idem particeps esset; differentiæ
11. contrariæ sunt.” Unde illud ; plus est in specie
quam in genere : et illud Porphyrii ; “ differentia est
qua species superat genus.” Tota igitur generis es-
sentia singulis æqualiter inest speciebus ; at tota essen-
tia speciei non est in genere, nisi potentia, ut inquit
Porphyrius. Hinc ut species est pars generis, ita
genus pars esse speciei quodammodo videtur: quod et
Plato in Politico notavit. Sic animal genus hominis
et bestiæ dicimus. Animal enim est totum, cujus
essentia, nempe corporea, animata, sentiens, ad homi-
nem et bestiam communiter attinet. Sic dicimus
hominem et bestiam species animalis ; quia partes sunt
animali subjectæ, quæ animalis essentiam communem
habent.
“ Genus est generalissimum aut subalternum.
Species subalterna aut specialissima.
Genus generalissimum, cujus nullum est genus.”
Ut in logica inventione argumentum est genus ge-
neralissimum artificialium et inartificialium.
“ Subalternum genus, ut subalterna item species,
quod species hujus, illius autem genus est.”
Id est, quod nunc genus est, nunc species: genus,
si ad species sibi subjectas referatur; species, si ad
suum genus.
Sic causa, gemus est materiæ et formæ ; species,
argumeuti absolutè consentamei. Sic homo est genus
subaltermum, sive species subalterna : species quidem,
si ad animal referas ; genus, si ad singulos homines.
“ Species specialissima est, quâ individua est in spe-
cies alias.”
Ut materia et forma quæque singularis. Sic homi-
nes singuli sunt species specialissimæ hominis, et sin-
guli leones leonis.
Logicorum quidem pars maxima hominem speciem
specialissimam, singulos homines individua vocant.
non species. Verum ut amimal est totum cujus essen-
tia communis, nempe corporea, animata, seutiens, ad
hominem et bestiam communiter attinet ; sic homo est
totum, cujus communis essentia rationalis communiter
ad singulos attinet homines ; atque ut homo et bestia
species sunt animalis, quia partes sunt animali sub-
jectæ, quæ animalis essentiam communem habent; ita
singuli homines species sunt hominis, quia partes sunt
homini subjectæ, quæ hominis essentiam communem
habent : ergo homo non minus est singulorum homi-
mum genus quàm amimal hominis; homines singuli
non minus sunt hominis species quàm homo animalis.
Singuli enim homines propria forma differunt: quæ
autem forma differunt propria, differunt et specie ;
teste Aristot. Phys. I, 7. Deinde, quicquid differt, aut
genere differt aut specie ; teste eodem Aristot. Phil.
10, 3. Differre autem genere singulos homines memo
dixerit; differunt ergo specie. Nam quod aiunt ho-
minem esse speciem singuloruim hominum, id planè
absurdum est : species enim pars est ejus cujus est
species ; ut ex ejus definitione constat: genus porrò
et species cùm relata sint, genus utique erit speciei
gemus; species, generis erit species. Si igitur homo,
ut vulgò volunt, est species singulorum hominum ;
singuli homines erunt genus homimis ; quod nimis ab-
surdum est. At inquiunt singuli homines numero tam-
tum differunt, non forma. Verùm quæ numero dif-
ferunt, forma quoque differre, jam supra capite de
forma satis ostendimus; etsi formæ cujusque propriæ
differentia nobis nom nisi per externa quædam effecta,
et accidentia, quæ vocant, dignosci potest. Deinde,
singuli homines inter se disparantur, ergo opponuntur:
quæ autem inter se opponuntur, eorum eadem forma
esse non potest; forma ergo differunt non numero tan-
tum. Itaque apud Laertium, in Zenone, stoici docent,
Socratem esse speciem specialissimam. Immo Aristot.
de Part. 1, 4, Socratem et Coriscum species infimas
vocat. Sic jurisconsulti, hominem genus appellant ;
Stichum et Pamphilum species.
“ Genus verò et species notæ sunt causarum et effec-
torum.”
Im animali n. est essentia corporea, quæ materia est
ad species communiter attinens: tum facultas vitæ et
sensus, quæ forma item communiter ad species spectat.
Quare ** genus continet causas, quæ communiter ad
ipsius species attinent: contra itaque etiam species
effecta gemeris sui continent.”
“ Hinc universale est insigne ac præstabile: quia
causam declarat.”
Idem ait Aristot. Poster. 1, 24.
“ Distributio generis in species valdè quidem excel-
lit, sed difficilis est et rara inventu.”
Excellit quidem quia quicquid in artibus ex causis et
effectis sumitur, id totum ferè generis et speciei mo-
tionibus comprehenditur: difficilis est, cùm quia formæ,
unde species oriuntur, difficiles itidem inventu sunt;
888
ARTIS LOGICÆ PLENIOR INSTITUTIO,
tum etiam propter vocum penuriam, quibus gemera et
species apte nominentur.
Attamen illustrationis et exempli gratia afferemus
quod poterimus. Ovidius 1 Metam. dividit animal in
quinque species, stellas, aves, bestias, pisces, homines :
stellis animam tribuens, ut etiam quidam philosophi
tribuerunt.
** Neu regio foret ulla suis amimalibus orba,
Astra tenemt coeleste solum formeque deorum,” &c.
Sic Cic. Offic. l, virtutem dividit in species quatuor,
prudentiam, justitiam, fortitudinem, temperantiam ;
quæ tamen ipsæ non ponuntur in distributione, sed,
quod idem est, earum formæ. “ Sed omne quod ho-
nestum est, id quatuor partium oritur ex aliqua: aut
enim in perspicentia veri solertiaque versatur, aut in
societate hominum tuenda, tribuendoque suum unicui-
que, et rerum contractarum fide; aut in animi excelsi
atque invicti magnitudine ac robore ; aut in omnibus
quæ fiunt, quæque dicuntur, ordine et modo, in quo
inest modestia et temperantia.”
Hæc quidem, ut dixi, est “ distributio generis in spe-
cierum formas;” quæ perinde est ac si in ipsa species
esset; “ quia forma cum genere constituunt suas spe-
cies.”
“ Genus et species non solum tractantur hac simplici
divisionis formula, sed etiam separatim alterum ex al-
tero.”
Hoc est, quod de toto genere, id de omnibus etiam
speciebus rectè affirmatur. Sic Cicero, pro Archia,
poëticam cum eloquentia comparans, quæ sunt species
artis, cognatas esse ait inter se, quia idem de artibus in
genere, humanioribus præsertim, affirmatur. “ Etenim
omnes artes, quæ ad humanitatem pertinent, habent
quoddam commune vinculum, et quasi cognatione qua-
dam inter se contimentur.”
“ Contra genus tractatur per species.”
Hoc est, quod de omnibus speciebus, id de genere
quoque rectè affirmatur. Sic Ovidius probat, virtutem
in rebus adversis clariorem esse, per inductionem spe-
cierum : quoniam scilicet virtus militis, nautæ, medici,
rebus adversis spectatur, 4 Trist.
** Hectora quis nosset, felix si Troia fuisset ?
Publica virtutis per mala facta via est :
Ars tua, Tiphy, iacet, si non sit in æquore fluctus:
Si valeant homines, ars tua, Phoebe, jacet.
Quæ latet, inque bonis cessat mom cognita rebus,
Apparet virtus arguiturque malis.”
Cùm itaque genus tractetur etiam per species, ut
superiore regula docemur, et exempla specialia species
eorum sint, quorum exempla sunt ; hinc sequitur, “ ex-
empla speciali suo generi accommodata, hujus esse
loci ;'' sive unum solum, sive per inductionem plura ad-
hibeantur : specialia inquam, exempla enim vel similia
sunt, quæ similia arguunt; vel specialia, quae arguunt
suum genus ; qualia fuerunt in singulis argumentorum
capitibus ex poëtis et oratoribus desumpta. Exemplo-
rum autem specialium, non solum in artib. cùm inve-
niendis tum tradendis usus planè est necessarius (nam
inductione exemplorum præcepta colliguntur, et eorum
usu illustrantur) verùm etiam in omni sermone, quoties
res lucem desiderat. Cujusmodi est illud Cic. ad At-
ticum : ** Urbem tu relinquas ? Ergo idem si Galli
venirent. Non est, inquit, im parietibus respub. at in
aris et focis : fecit idem Themistocles: fluctum enim
totius barbariæ ferre urbs una non poterat. At idem
Pericles non fecit, annum ferè post quinquagesimum,
quum præter moenia nihil teneret: nostri olim, urbe
reliqua capta, arcem tamen retinuerunt.” Hic ab ex-
emplo speciali in utramque partem disseritur. The-
mistocles deseruit Athemas ; ergo urbem deserere licet.
Pericles mom deseruit Athemas ; mec Romani Gallis ve-
nientibus Romam ; ergo urbs mon est deserenda. Quod
si hoc modo argumentaretur, Themistocles urbem reli-
quit, ergo mihi licet ; argumentum esset à simili: nam
exempla, cùm ad alia specialia accommodantur, similia
sunt vel dissimilia. Hujus autem loci ea demum sunt,
quæ generi suo accommodantur.
Est et alia imperfectior distributio ex effectis, quando
partes nom sunt propriè effecta totius, sed ipsarum par-
tium. Ut Cic. de Senect. ** Nautarum alii malos scan-
dunt, alii per foros cursitant, alii sentinam exhauriumt ;
gubernator autem clavum tenet in puppi.” In hoc exem-
plo totum est nauta, quod est singulorum mautarum
genus ; partes, malum scandere, cursitare, &c. Quae
tamen nautæ ut totius sive generis partes sive species
non sunt, sed specierum, i. e. singulorum nautarum
effecta sive officia, quibus ipsæ species, i. e. singuli
mautæ inter se distinguuntur. Verùm quanto hæc dis-
tributio imperfectior est, tanto est frequentior. Usus
autem illius præcipuus est, ut perfectioris raritatem
suppleat ; cùm distributio generis in species, ut supra-
dictum est, tam difficilis inventu sit.
CAP. XXVIII.
De Distributione è Subjectis.
** RELIQUA distributio est modo quodam consentane-
orum, ut subjectorum et adjunctorum. Distributio e
subjectis est, cùm partes sunt subjecta.” Id est quando
veræ partes intellectæ subjectis distinguuntur vel adum-
brantur.
Ut apud Catullum :
“ Virginitas mon tota tua est : ex parte parentum est,
Tertia pars matri data, pars data tertia patri :
Tertia sola tua est: noli pugnare duobus,
Qui genero sua jura simul cum dote dederunt.”
Virginitas puellæ vel jus potius virginitatis in tres
partes dividitur subjectis distinctas, matre, patre, et ipsa
puella. Alterum exemplum ex cap. 26 huc transfertur,
Virgil. 1 Georg. ubi poëta exorditur opus suum à di-
visione in quatuor partes, subjectis suis occupantibus
distinctas, segetes, arbores, pecora, apes. {ùs
** Quid faciat lætas segetes, quo sidere terram
Vertere, Mæcenas, ulmisque adjumgere vites
Conveniat: quæ cura boum, qui cultus habendo
AD PETRI RAMI METHODUM CONCINNATA.
889
Sit pecori, atque apibus quanta experientia parcis,
Hinc canere incipiam.”
Tertium exemplum ex eodem etiam capite huc trans-
fertur. Cic. pro Muræna : “ Intelligo, judices, tres
totius accusationis partes fuisse : et earum unam in re-
prehensione vitæ, alteram in contentione dignitatis,
tertiam im criminibus ambitùs esse versatam.” Hic
tota accusatio in tria membra distribuitur, subjectis suis
occupantibus distincta : atque in his tribus exemplis
totum est integrum. Quartum exemplum est generis
in species ex Cic. 5 Tuscul. “ Sint sanè illa tria genera
bonorum, dum corporis et externa jaceant humi, et
tantummodo quia sumenda sunt, appellentur bona.
Alia autem, divina illa, longè latèque se pandant,
cœlumque contingant.” Hic Cicero bona in tres species,
quas ille genera vocat, dividit, subjectis suis distinctas;
nempe animi, corporis, et fortunæ.
CAP. XXIX.
De Distributione eae Adjunctis.
“ DisTRiBUTio ex adjunctis est, quando partes sunt
adjuncta.”
Ut hominum alii sani, alii ægri : alii divites, alii
pauperes.
Sic Virgil. l Georg. mundum dividit in quinque
partes ; mediam torridam, duas extremas frigidas, ct
reliquas duas temperatas :
“ Quinque tenent coelum zonæ, quarum una corusco
Semper sole rubens, et torrida semper ab igni, &c.”
Cæsar 1 Belli Gall. ** Gallia est omnis divisa in tres
partes : quarum unam incolunt Belgæ, aliam Aquitani,
tertiam, qui, ipsorum lingua Celtæ, nostra Galli, ap-
pellantur. -
In distributionibus hujusmodi imperfectis adverten-
dum est id quod videtur distribui. Nam si id totius
rationem habet, integri vel generis, distributio est; si
non habet rationem totius, sed simplex aliquod argu-
mentum est, ut causa, effectum, subjectum, adjunctum,
non est distributio sed enumeratio potius, vel causarum
plurium ejusdem effecti, vel effectorum plurium ejus-
dem causæ, vel subjectorum plurium ejusdem adjuncti,
vel denique adjumctorum plurium ejusdem subjecti.
Hoc genere distributionis imperfecto argumenta sæpe
quorum veræ species nullæ apparent, modis quibus-
dam distinguuntur, modos autem supra in adjunctis
posuimus. Sic in causis, “ procreans et conservans,
modi” efficientis, “ non species,” dicuntur: quia non
differunt inter se ut species per differentias oppositas,
sed ita ut uni et eidem efficienti convenire queant;
quandoquidem quæ causa procreat, eadem ferè conser-
vat; potestque efficere idem vel solus, vel cum aliis;
nonnulla vel per se, vel per accidens.
CAP. XXX.
De Definitione.
DEFINITio in tradendis artibus est usu quidem prior
distributione (prius enim definitur unaquæque res
quàm distribuitur) natura tamen et inveniendi ordine
est posterior: genus enim, quo non adhibito, si quod
sit, nulla definitio constitui potest, à distributione, qui
proprius generis est locus, mutuum accipit.
“ Definitio est, cum explicatur quid res sit.”
Definitio vocatur, eo quòd rei cujusque essentiam
definit, eamque suis quasi finibus circumscribit.
* Atque ut definitio arguit sive explicat definitum,
sic vicissim à definito argui potest.” Quæ quanquam
argumentorum omnium affectio communis est arguere
inter se vicissim et argui, hic tamen eandem ob causam
facta mentio est definiti, ob quam in capite notationis
facta est nominis; ne argumentorum numero excludi
videatur, cùm neque ejusdem sit nominis cum defini-
tione quam arguit, neque caput sibi peculiare obtineat;
sicut alia argumentorum paria, quæ nominis ejnsdem
non sunt. Ad reciprocationem autem quod attinet,
quæ definitioni cum distributione communis est, ea
definitionis et definiti manifestissima est : logica enim
est ars bene ratiocinandi ; et vicissim, ars bene ratio-
cinandi est logica. Atque ad hunc modum omnis de-
finitio, ut nonnulli rectè monuerunt, conversione exa-
minanda est: unde Boëthius, Top. 5, “ omnis definitio
rei, quam definit, adaequatur.”
* Definitio est perfecta aut imperfecta: illa propriè
definitio, hæc descriptio dicitur.”
“ Definitio perfecta est, quæ constat è solis causis
essentiam constituentibus.” Redundat ergo in defi-
nitione perfecta quicquid præterea ponitur.
“ Causæ autem illæ genere et forma comprehen-
duntur.”
Genus enim et forma (quæ sunt quasi corpus et
anima definitionis) totam rei essentiam constituunt.
Non ita tamen necessariò requiritur in definitione per-
fecta genus, ut perfecta non sit misi genus habeat :
primùm enim, summorum generum, ut argumenti in
logica inventione, genus nullum est ; sed tota eorum
essentia sub ipsa forma continetur ; quæ etiam mate-
riam iis convenientem complectitur ; deinde fieri potest
ut ipsæ causæ facilius occurrant quam earnm symbo-
lum genus. Itaque si ex ipsis causis definitio constat,
perfecta erit; si ex genere, succinctior tantum. Gemus
autem proximum, mon remotum, in definitione semper
est ponendum : qui enim proximum ponit, remotiora
etiam posuit : nisi proximum fortè anonymum sit ;
tum enim et quotiescumque generis, sive anonymum
sit sive non, paulo ante facta mentio est, abesse gemus
in definitione, et rectè subintelligi potest : ut in hac
ipsa definitionis definitione, genus remotum, nempe
ortum argumentum ; tum etiam proximum, nempe
reale et compositum, subintelligitur. Quam autem hi:
formam in definitione appellamus, plerique differen-
tiam vocant. Sed differentia formæ fructus est : et
nisi in rerum collatione, quæ in definitione nulla est,
890
ARTIS LOGICÆ PLENIOR INSTITUTIO,
non apparet; et forma ipsa est unde præcipua rerum
explicatio sumitur ; præcipuum ergo in definitione lo-
cum habet.
Atque hoc modo definitur homo, animal rationale :
nempe genere, “ animal,” intelligimus, ut dictum est,
essentiam corpoream plenam vitæ et sensus, quæ ma-
teries hominis est, et pars formæ : cui si addas “ ra-
tionale,” totam formam hominis comprehendes, vitæ,
sensus, rationis facultate.
Itaque “ perfecta definitio nihil aliud est, quàm uni-
versale symbolum causarum essentiam rei et naturam
constituentium.”
Tales definitiones sunt artium. Grammatica est ars
bene loquendi. Rhetorica bene dicendi. Logica bene
ratiocinandi. Arithmetica bene numerandi. Geome-
tria bene metiendi. Nam genere “ ars” intelligimus
praeceptorum ordine dispositorum comprehensionem,
quæ materies est cujusque artis et pars formæ, sive
forma commumis, cui si addas formam cujusque artis
propriam (quæ finem quoque sub se comprehendit, ut
dictum est cap. 8,) habes totam artis essentiam expli-
catam, quæ perfecta definitio est.
Ad regulas consequentiæ quod attinet, nempe à de-
fimitione ad definitum ; et contrà, affirmatè vel negatè;
hæc omnia reciprocatio, quæ distributionis quoque fuit,
satis clarè suo loco exposuit.
CAP. XXXI.
De Descriptione.
DEFIN ITIoNEs perfectæ propter causarum et præ-
sertim formarum obscuritatem, difficiles inventu sunt:
ad supplendam igitur earum raritatem, “ descriptio”
inventa est.
“ Descriptio est definitio imperfecta, ex aliis etiam ar-
gumentis rem definiens.” Id est, ex quibusvis aliis
rem quoquo modo explicans.
Ubi itaque forma haberi non potest (nam genera ferè
motiora sunt) proprietas loco formæ seu differentiæ ac-
cipienda est: ut, “ angelus est substantia incorporea;
equus est animal himibile,” &c. Adjuncta sive acci-
dentia, quæ vocantur (quia substantiæ solæ, ut inquit
Aristot. l. 6, Metaph. c. 5, primariò definiuntur, acci-
dentia secundariò tantum) propria quidem genere, sub-
jecto, causaque proxima vel efficiente, vel finali, vel
utraque definiuntur. Genere et subjecto solo ; ut, “ si-
imitas est curvitas nasi:” subjecto et efficiente ; ut,
** tonitru est sonus fractæ nubis, ob ignem oppressum ;
quantitas continua est adjunctum corporis, ab exten-
sione materiæ : ” finali ; ut, “ sensus est facultas natu-
ralis in animali, ad judicandum de singularibus :” vel
utraque ; ut, “ respiratio est attractio et expulsio aëris
reciproca à pulmonibus facta, ad cordis refrigeratio-
mem.'' Omittitur enim sæpe subjectum in definitione
propriorum, quippe quòd ex genere vel ex causa intel-
ligitur : ut, ** memoria est sensus internus conservans
imagines rerum cognitarum.” Non dicitur “ sensus in
ternus animalis,” addito nempe subjecto, quia id men-
tione “sensus '° intelligitur. Potentiæ maturales ac-
tione sua et causa efficiente definiuntur: ut, “ risibilitas
est facultas ridendi, orta ab anima rationali.” Habitus
vel fine vel objecto quæ sæpe coincidunt definiuntur :
fine ; ut, ** Logica est ars bene ratiocinandi:” objecto;
ut, ** Physica est scientia rerum maturalium.” Quali-
tates patibiles definiuntur subjecto et efficiente : ut,
“ color est qualitas corporis mixti, orta ex contempera-
tione lucidi et opaci.” Actiones ferè subjecto efficiente
et fine definiuntur. Relationes relatis inter se et fun-
damento sive causa : ut, ** paternitas est relatio patris
ad filium, ex procreatione orta.”
Adjuncta communia objecto, efficiente, finali, vel ex
his quot sunt ex usu, definiuntur : ut, ** albedo est
color, ortus ex lucido opacum superante.”
Illud modo generatim in descriptionibus cavendum,
ne causa pro genere habeatur: ut cùm dubitatio de-
scribitur, æqualitas rationum; sanitas, symmetria humo-
rum ; dolor, solutio continui ; eclipsis lunæ, interpositio
terrae : aut subjectum; ut, ventus est aër motus; jus-
titia est voluntas constans ; vulnus est pars carmis dila-
cerata ; peccatum originis est natura corrupta, et si-
milia. -
Cæterum in his certæ regulæ dari non possumt.
Aliquando enim ex remoto solùm contrario fit de-
scriptio: ut,
“ Virtus est vitium fugere, et sapientia prima
Stultitia caruisse.” Aliquamdo planè arbitraria est.
Hinc etsi unica rei definitio, plures tamen descripti-
ones esse possunt.
Ut autem definitio definito, quod suprà monuimus,
ita etiam descriptio descripto vicissim argui potest.
Verùm non affectio solùm hæc mutua inter descriptio-
nem et rem descriptam intercedit, sed etiam reciprocatio;
juxta communem illam distributionis ac definitionis
regulam, suprà, cap. 25, traditam ; qua descriptio
quoque propria rei descriptæ et reciproca esse debet.
Quamvis enim in descriptionibus multa sæpe conge-
runtur, quorum aliqua fortè latius patent, quàm id quod
describitur, juncta tamen æquantur descripto descripti-
onemque propriam reddunt ; sin minus, vitiosa atque
inutilis descriptio censenda est. Ut, “ homo est animal
mortale, capax disciplinæ.” Hic cum aliqua causa
(materia scilicet et communi forma, quæ sub genere
** animal” continetur) miscentur duæ circumstantiæ
sive adjuncta, alterum commune, scilicet “ mortale,”
alterum proprium, “ capax disciplinæ.” At quorsum,
inquis, illud * mortale,” cùm nullum animal non sit
mortale ? Quia nempe Aristot. cujus hæc descriptio est,
Top. 5, l, animalia quædam ait esse immortalia, Top.
4, 2, et in eodem capite, Deum ipsum %ωον άSávarov,
i. e. ** immortale animal,'' vocat.
** Sed hæc succincta brevitas non est in hac specie
perpetua; quæ sæpe illustriorem et copiosiorem expli-
cationem desiderat.”
Succinctæ descriptiones, quae perfectas æmulantur
definitiones, usum habent præcipuè in artibus tradendis
ac disputationibus. Prolixiores illæ, utpote ad aures
AD PETRI RAMI METHODUM CONCINNATA.
891
vulgi magis accommodatæ, apud oratores ac poëtas fre-
quentiùs occurrunt.
Sic gloria describitur in Miloniana: “Sed tamen ex
omnibus præmiis virtutis, si esset habenda ratio præ-
miorum, amplissimum esse præmium gloriam : hanc
unam, quæ brevitatem vitæ posteritatis memoria conso-
laretur ; quæ efficeret, ut absentes, adessemus; mortui,
viveremus: hanc denique esse, cujus gradibus etiam
homines in coelum videantur ascendere.” Descriptio
haec gloriæ constat ex genere, “ præmio” nempe “ vir-
tutis;” adjuncta amplitudine, eaque aucta à minore,
quod sit omnium amplissima ; quatuor deinde effecta
ejus adjiciuntur.
Sic 4 Æmeid. fama describitur :
“ Extemplò Lybiæ magnas it fama per urbes,
Fama, malum quo non aliud velocius ullum ;
Mobilitate viget, viresque acquirit eundo,” &c.
Describitur fama, 1. à genere, “ malum :” 2. ab ad-
juncta velocitate, quæ illustratur à majore negato,
“ quo non aliud velocius :” tum duplici effecto aliarum
rerum dissimili, quòd
** Mobilitate viget, viresque acquirit eundo.”
3. Ab adjuncta varietate, quæ ostenditur ex aliis ad-
junctis, quòd sit primò “ parva,” idque arguitur causa,
scilicet “ metu,” et circumstantia temporis, “ primò”
nempe ; tum subitò grandior facta incremento exigui
temporis iucredibili, idque ostenditur trib. effectis, quæ
singula subjectis suis illustrantur,
-—** Mox sese attollit in auras :
Ingrediturque solo, et caput inter nubila condit.”
4. A causa procreante, “ illam terra parens,”
mater scilicet gigantum ; et efficiemdi modo, consilio
nempe sive impetu naturali, “ira irritata deorum,” qui
gigantes occiderant; causa autem procreans communis
illustrata tempore adjuncto, et communi testimonio,
“ Extremam, ut perhibent, Cæo Enceladoque sororem
Progenuit.” Rursus illustratam ab adjunctis,
——** Pedibus celerem et permicibus alis,
Monstrum horrendum, ingens **——
Deinde à partibus corporis et membris, iisque paribus.
—“ Cui quot sunt corpore plumæ,
Tot vigiles oculi subter, mirabile dictu,
Tot linguæ, totidem ora sonamt, tot subrigit aures.”
Tum ab effectis nocturnis, iisque partim affirmatis
quæ subjectis locis illustrantur,
“ Nocte volat coeli medio, terræque per umbram
Stridens;” partim negatis,“ nec dulci declimat lumina somno.”
Tum diurnis, eaque illustrantur et subjectis locis, et
adjuncto situ sedendi,
“ Luce sedet custos, aut summi culmine tecti,
Turribus aut altis, et magnas territat urbes.”
Ab adjunctis denique paribus;
** Tam ficti pravique tenax quam nuntia veri.**
&
Tales sunt descriptiones plantarum, animalium in
physicis; item fluminum, montium, urbium apud Geo-
graphos et Historicos; personarum denique apud poë-
tas et OratOreS.
CAP. XXXII.
De Testimonio divino.
“ Exposito artificiali argumento, sequitur inartifi-
ciale.
“ Argumentum inartificiale est quod non sua natura,
sed assumpta artificialis alicujus argumenti vi arguit.
** Id uno nomine testimomium dicitur.” Nempe, ut
inquit Cic. in Top. “ quòd ab aliqua externa re sumi-
tur ad faciendam fidem.”
Inartificiale autem dicitur, non quòd artis ope et
auxilio non inveniatur (siquidem de eo inveniendo, ut
inquit Cicero, Partit. in arte præcipitur) sed quod ex se
suaque natura artis hujus et facultatis arguendi expers
sit. Potest etiam assumptum dici, quod assumpta vi
arguit, non sua. Argumentum enim inartificiale natu-
ram rei non attingit, medum arguit, ut artificiale solet,
neque rei affectio, sicut artificiale, est ; sed est nuda
cujuspiam aliqua de re attestatio, sive attestantis affir-
matio aut negatio. Res autem neque propter affirma-
tionem sunt, neque propter negationem non sunt: tes-
timonium igitur ex se suaque natura non arguit; ** sed
assumpta artificialis alicujus argumenti vi.° Vis autem
hæc est testantis auctoritas, à qua omnis testimonii
fides pendet. Auctoritas autem variis in argumentis
consistit, sed in effectis testantis et in adjunctis præci-
puè cernitur.
“ Itaque cum exquisita rerum veritas” sive matura
“ subtiliùs exquiritur, perexiguam probationis vim tes-
timonium habet.”
Himc Cic. l de Nat. “ Non tam auctores,” inquit,
“ in disputando, quàm rationum momenta quærenda
sunt.”
“ In civilibus autem et humamis rebus,'' ubi de facto
queritur, “ plerumque hoc argumentum præcipuam
fidem è moribus arguentis efficit, si prudentia, probitas,
et benevolentia affuerint.”
Horum unum aliquod si deest, vel per imprudentiam
testis, vel propter improbitatem, vel inimicitiarum de-
nique aut nimiæ gratiæ causa, falsum sæpe pro testi-
monio dicitur.
Testimonium est divinum vel humanum.
Et rectè quidem in species efficientibus suis causis
distinctas dividitur. Ab efficientibus enim maximè tes-
timonium suas vires assumit. Effectum itaque est, si
ad testem spectas; testimonium, si ad rem testatam.
Perexiguam autem vim probationis in exquisita veri-
tate et natura rerum pervestiganda communiter tribui
testimonio quod tam ad divinum quàm ad humanum
pertimere videatur, id cur quempiam offendat, non video:
testimonium enim sive divinum sit sive humamum, per-
æque vim omnem ab authore, nullam in se habet. Et
892
ARTIS LOGICÆ PLENIOR INSTITUTIO,
divinum quidetn testimonium affirmat vel negat rem ita
esse, facitque ut credam ; non probat, non docet, non
facit ut sciam aut intelligam cur ita sit, nisi rationes
quoque adhibeat.
Testimonium divinum est quod Deum habet autho-
)r€ ■ ■).
In divinis testimoniis numerantur mon solum deorum
oracula, sed etiam responsa vatum et fatidicorum.
Vera hæc sint an ficta, veri muminis am falsi, logicus
nom laborat, sed quam modò vim arguendi unumquod-
que habeat. Itaque in civilib. etiam et humanis rebus
testimonium divinum perinde vim probationis habet, ut
ejus author verus est aut falsus deus.
Hujusmodi sunt ista Catilin. 3, “ Nam ut illa omittam,
visas nocturno tempore ab occidente faces, ardoremque
coeli ; ut fulminum jactus, ut terræ motus, cæteraque,
quae ita multa, nobis consulibus, facta sunt, ut haec, quæ
nunc fiunt, canere dii immortales viderentur.”
CAP. XXXIII.
De Testimomio humamo.
TEsTIMONIUM humanum est, quod authorem habet
hominem.
“ Estque commune aut proprium.”
Distributio hæc proponitur, non ut accurata aliqua
divisio (neque enim testimonio propria est) sed ut dis-
tinctio qualiscunque subalternarum specierum, ad quas
inferiores species testimonii et exempla possint revocari.
Atque, ut superior illa distinctio in divinum et huma-
num, ab efficiente quoque sumitur, qui fit persona pub-
lica sive communis, aut propria sive privata.
“ Testimonium commune est, ut lex et il]ustris sen-
tentia.”
Hæc enim duo exempla sunt potius quàm species ;
quibus adjungi potest fama ; quam Cic. in Top. quod-
dam multitudinis testimonium appellat ; alii, consen-
sum civitatis et publicum testimonium vocant.
“ Legis autem et non scriptæ et scriptae testimonium
est pro Milone: Est enim, judices, non scripta, sed nata
lex ; quam non didicimus, accepimus, legimus ; verùm
ex matura ipsa arripuimus, hausimus, expressimus: ad
quam non docti, sed facti ; non instituti, sed imbuti
sumus: ut, si vita nostra in aliquas insidias, si in vim,
in tela, aut latronum aut inimicorum incidisset, omnis
honesta ratio esset expediendæ salutis.” Et ibidem,
** Quod si duodecim tabulæ nocturnum furem quoquo
modo, diurnum autem, si se telo defenderit, interfici
impunè voluerunt, quis est, qui," &c.
Restat illustris sententia ; cujus generis sunt pro-
Ut pares cum paribus facillime congregantur.
Spartam nactus es, hanc cxorna. Tum dicta sapien-
tum : ut, nosce teipsum. Ne quid nimis. Sponde,
præsto est detrimentum. Quamquam enim hæc dicta
singula à singnlis fortasse auctoribus orta sunt, tamen
quia omnium in ore versantur, quasi omnium fiunt, et
ad commune testimonium rectè referuntur.
verbia.
Proprium testimonium est: ut Platomis illud, 1 ad
Q. fratrem : “ Atque ille quidem princeps ingenii et
doctrinæ, Plato, tum denique fore beatas respub. puta-
vit, si aut docti et sapientes homines eas regere cœ-
pissent, aut qui regerent, omne suum studium in
doctrina ac sapientia collocassent.”
Talia sunt in poetis. Aeneid. 6.
“ Discite justitiam, moniti ; et non temmere divos.”
Sic Homericis illis versibus:
Atac δ' ἐκ Σαλαμίνος άysv òvokaiôska vnàc.
Στjαε δ' άγων ίν' A$nvaiwv tsavro φέλαγγες.
Ajax autem ex Salamine duxit duodecim maves.
Constituit verò ducens, ubi Atheniensium stabant phalanges.
Victi sunt in judicio Megarenses, quo contenderunt
cum Atheniensibus de Salamine insula, utrique fortè
civitati œquè vicina.
Atque hæc veterum fuere et absentium testimonia, et
ferè mortuorum ; quœ de jure potissimum afferuntur.
Viventium et præsentium, quæ de facto plerunque
testantur, non tantum sunt “ cùm quaeritur de fundo
aut cæde et ejusmodi negotio aliquo, sed etiam obliga-
tionis, confessionis, jurisjurandi testimonia sunt.”
Obligationis exemplum est Philipp. 5, “ Promitto,
recipio, spondeo, P. C. Cæsarem talem semper fore
civem, qualis hodie sit, qualemque eum maximè velle
et optare debemus.”
Pignus etiam obligatio quædam est.
Ut apud Virgil. Ecl. 3.
“ Vis ergo inter nos quid possit uterque vicissim
Experiamur ? Ego hanc vitulam (me forte recnses,
Bis venit ad mulctram, binos alit ubere foetus)
Depono: tu dic, mecum quo pignore certes.”
“ Confessio est vel libera, in qua cujusvis testimo-
mium pro se levissimum contra se gravissimum cense-
tur. Vel est expressa tormentis, quæ propriè quæstio
dicitur.”
Tale fuit argumentum contra Milonem, quòd à Cice-
rone deridetur: quia cruciatus non sæpius veritatem
quàm mendacium exprimit atque extorquet. “ Age
verò, quæ erat aut qualis quæstio: heus, ubi Ruscio ?
ubi Casca ? Clodius insidias fecit Miloni ? Fecit; certa
crux. Nullas fecit. Sperata libertas.”
Huc etiam referri potest argumentum, quo utimur
cùm affirmationis nostræ approbationem et experien-
tiam adversario proponimus.
Verr. 4. “ Ecquis Volcatio, si sua sponte venisset,
unam libellam dedisset ? veniat nunc, experiatur ; tecto
recipiet nemo.”
Terent, Eunuch.
** Fac periculum in literis,
Fac in palæstra, in musicis; quæ liberum
Scire æquum est adolescentem, solertem dabo.”
Ovid. 3 Trist.
** Quod magis ut liqueat, neve hoc ego fingere credar,
Ipse velim poenas experiare rneas.”
Jusjurandum etiam testimonium est.
AD PETRI RAMI METHODUM CONCINNATA.
893
Quale est Æneid. 9,
** Per superos, et siqua fides tellure sub ima est,
Invitus, regima, tuo de littore cessi.”
Quamvis autem in juramentis divinum quodammo-
do testimonium invocetur, juramenti tamen fides autho-
ritate et moribus jurantis nititur.
Reciprocatio hic obscurior est ad rem testatam, quod
est hic alterum argumentum affectum ; ut quia testa-
tum verum sit, testis sit etiam verax.
Ut autem non sua vi testimonium, sed auctoritas tes-
tis arguit rem testatam ; ita vicissim res testata non
arguit ipsum testimonium, sed authoritatem testis.
ARTIS LOGICÆ PLENIOR INSTITUTIO, &c.
LIBER SECUNDUS.
DE ARGUMENTORUM DISPOSITIONE.
CAP. I.
Quid sit argumentorum dispositio ?
ADHUc prima artis logicæ pars fuit in argumentorum
inventione : pars altera sequitur in eorum dispositione.
Quemadmodum grammaticæ pars prima est de- sin-
gulis vocibus, secunda de syntaxi earum ; sic logicæ
pars prima de argumentis inveniendis fuit, secunda est
de disponendis, i. e. quæ doceat argumenta rectè dispo-
nere: ita dispositio quasi syntaxis quædam argumen-
torum est ; non tamen ad bene judicandum dumtaxat,
ut vult Ramus, quod nimis angustum est, sed ad bene
ratiocinandum, qui finis est logicæ generalis, ad quem
umum finem omnia artis præcepta referenda sunt. Iis
itaque non assentior, qui judicium secundam esse par-
tem logicæ volunt: cùm ipsorum sententia judicium
sit secundæ hujus partis nempe dispositionis finis et
fructus: non potest autem res eadem esse finis et id cujus
est finis, fructus quod affectum est et ejus fructus causa,
quæ dispositio est. An inquiunt, judicium ut doctrina est
pars logicæ; finis est ut habitus bene judicandi. Immo
verò inquam, dispositionis doctrina suam operam con-
fert non solùm ad bene judicandum, sed ad bene ratio-
cinandum ; judicium autem et dispositionem pro codem
non dixerim cum Ramo: si enim certa, ut ipse Ramus
ait, dispositionis regula unumquodque judicatur, dispo-
sitio utique ac judicium si idem erunt, idem erit et
regula, et id cujus regula est : doctrina deinde judicii
docet nihil aliud quàm bene judicare ; doctrina dispo-
sitionis pro sua disponendi parte, etiam bene ratiocimari:
sive id sit intelligere, sive judicare, sive disputare, sive
meminisse. Certa enim dispositionis regula unum-
quodque munus ratiocinandi excolitur.
Cum itaque simplicem argumentorum inter se affec-
tionem aliquid per se conferre ad judicium rectumque
ratiocinium initio proposuerim, nunc eorum dispositio-
nem aliquanto plus, adeoque clarius ad idem conducere
propono.
Prius autem quàm ad partes dispositionis accedimus,
generalis quædam dispositionis affectio, quæ crypsis
dicitur, attingenda est; ut quæ ad omnes species dispo-
sitionis communiter pertineat. Crypsis autem, sive oc-
cultatio ista, est triplex ; dispositarum scilicet partium
vel defectus, vel redundantia, vel inversio. Quod
itaque semel hic monendum est, siqua propter has
crypses dubitatio contingit, explenda quæ desunt, am-
putanda quæ supersunt, et pars quæque in suum resti-
tuenda est locum.
CAP. II.
De Aariomatis affirmatione et megatione.
“ DisposiTio est axiomatica vel diamoetica.
“ Axioma est dispositio argumenti cum argumento,
qua esse aliquid aut non esse indicatur.”
Axioma saepe Aristoteli significat propositionem sive
sententiam ita claram, ut quasi digna sit cui propter se
fides habeatur. Aliàs axioma et propositionem sive
sententiam quamlibet pro eodem is habet: et rectè
quidem : ut enim sententia à sentio, i. e. existimo vel
arbitror, ita axioma à verbo Græco quod idem signifi-
cat, derivatur. Atque hujus vocis generalem hanc sig-
nificationem apud veteres dialecticos receptam fuisse,
ex Cicerone, Plutarcho, Laertio, Gellio, Galeno lib. 16,
c. 8, constat.
Latinè “ enuntiatum, enuntiatio ; pronuntiatum, pro-
muntiatio ; effatum” Varroni profatum, et proloquium,
apud Gellium lib. 16, id est sententia in qua nihil de-
sideratur. Ex Græco etiam “ oratio” et “ propositio”
dicitur.
Cur ergo, inquis, Græcanica, et hæc prae aliis, vox
placita est ? Quia, inquam, commodissima. Nam
“ oratio” et “ sententia” voces latiores sunt ; ideoque
Græci qui λόγον sive “ rationem” vocant, addunt ferè
894
ARTIS LOGICÆ PLENIOR INSTITUTIO,
“ primam, brevissimam” aut “ enuntiativam.” Deinde
“ propositio" ambigua vox est ; significat enim nunc
priorem partem plenæ comparationis, munc primam
partem syllogismi. Latina autem illa, “ enuntiatum,
enuntiatio,” &c., orationis exterioris videntur magis
quàm rationis interioris esse : cùm dispositio hæc logica
rationis omnino sit tam mente conceptæ quàm ore pro-
latæ ; utque voces symbola sunt et motæ simplicium
notionum, ita enuntiatum videtur esse symbolum axio-
matis mente concepti. Sic tamen retineri possunt voces
Latinæ “ enuntiatum, enuntiatio,” &c., si distinguimus
cum Aristotele sermonem in exteriorem, qui ore profer-
tur ; et interiorem qui mente solùm concipitur.
Genus autem axiomatis rectè statuitur dispositio, non
judicium, quod, ut supra retuli, dispositionis effectum
est, et hic quidem specialiter quo aliquid esse aut mom
esse judicantur.
Argumentum autem cum argumento est id quod
arguit cum eo quod arguitur.
Finis dispositionis est, ut per eam esse aliquid aut non
esse indicetur, sive ut aliquid de aliquo dicatur aut non
dicatur. Hinc illud Arist. Phil. $. 10, ** esse est com-
poni, et unum esse ; non esse autem est non componi,
sed plura esse.” Et simplicia quidem argumenta per
se considerata significant aliquid ; mon autem esse, aut
mon esse aliquid, misi disposita. Solo autem modo in-
dicativo esse aliquid aut non esse indicatur : nom reli-
quis, nisi ad indicativum reductis: ut “ abi,” i. e. jubeo
te abire. “ Fiat voluntas tua,” i. e. precamur ut fiat.
“ Utinam dissolverer,” i. e. cupio dissolvi. * Quid est
dialectica,” i. e. quæro quid sit.
Cùm autem in axiomate argumentum cum argumento
disponatur, horumque umum necesse sit antecedere, al-
terum sequi ; hinc partes axiomatis (Aristot. termimos
vocat) duæ sunt, antecedens et consequens: i}la vulgò
minor terminus, sive subjectum, hæc terminus major seu
prædicatum nominatur ; quia id continet, quod de sub-
jecto prædicatur sive dicitur. Verùm hæc nomina
angustiora sunt, quàm illa, ut infra patebit.
Axiomatis affectio communis est crypsis illa triplex,
de qua deque ejus triplici medela capite superiore dixi-
mus: defectus, cùm pars aliqua deest ; ut, “ excessit,
erupit, evasit;” Catilina scilicet vel quis alius: “ pluit,
tonat ;'' deus nempe vel coelum. IRedundantia, quæ
et anplificatio dicitur, est, cùm argumentum ejusque
synonymum ponitur ; aut ad id illustrandum quidvis
aliud : prioris exemplum est, logica sive dialectica est
** ars bene ratiocinandi: ” posterioris est hoc,
Livor iners vitium mores non exit in altos.
Inversio est, cùm anteccdentis loco ponitur conse-
quens : ut “ quaestus magnus est pietas cum animo sua
sorte contento,” i. e. pietas cum amimo sua sorte con-
tento est magnus quaestus.
Duæ sunt reliquæ axiomatis affectiones; quarum
altera ex dispositione oritur, altera ad judicium per-
tinet. Nam intellectus cùm disponit argumenta, vel
componit ea inter se, vel dividit : compositio autem
illa et divisio nihil aliud sunt quàm affirmatio et nega-
Cùm verò de dispositione illa judicium fert, ju-
Quemadmodum
tio.
dicat eam vel veram esse vel falsam.
autem dispositio est prior judicio, sic esse et non esse
prius quiddam est et simplicius quàm affirmare et ne-
gare, et utrumque hoc quàm verum aut falsum judi-
C8ll'€.
“ Axioma igitur est affirmatum aut negatum.”
Duplex est hic modus enuntiandi, non duæ sum
species enuntiati sive axiomatis : contradictione enim
idem axioma affirmatur et megatur: sed affirmatio et
negatio enuntiationis, i. e. enuntiamdi species sunt, non
enuntiati; nam et affirmatio et negatio dici potest
enuntiatio, enuntiatum verò nequaquam ; axiomatis
igitur utraque est affectio, non axioma.
“ Axioma affirmatum est quando vinculum ejus
affirmatur: negatum, quando negatur.” Vinculum m.
axiomatis forma est ; vinculi vi axiomatis materia dis-
pomitur et quasi animatur ; vinculo affirmato et negato,
axioma ipsum affirmatur aut megatur: affirmatio itaque
et negatio sunt vinculi affectiones, adeoque axiomatis
ejusque specierum. Vinculum autem est vel verbum
vel grammatica conjunctio, ut postmodum patebit, cùm
axioma in species dividetur.
Affirmatio autem hæc et negatio nihil aliud est, ut
suprà diximus, quàm compositio et divisio: affirmatur
enim axioma, cùm ejus consequens per affirmationem
vinculi cum antecedente componitur ; negatur, cùm,
negato vinculo, consequens ab antecedente dividitur.
Negatio igitur axiomatica non est, quemadmodum erat
topica non ens, sed entis tantummodo ab ente divisio.
“ Hinc nascitur axiomatum contradictio, quamdo
idem axioma affirmatur et negatur.”
CAP. III.
De vero et falso.
“ AXIOMA deinde est verum aut falsum.”
Hoc scilicet ex affirmatione et negatione fit judi-
cium : cùm enim affirmantur quæ affirmanda sunt, et
negantur quæ neganda, axiomata judicantur vera ; et
contrà. Unde Aristot. de Interpret. 1, ** in composi-
tione et divisione est verum aut falsum.” Falsum au-
tem non docetur hoc modo in arte, sed judicatur : nam
enuntiatio falsa non minus axioma est, quàm vera,
eadem enim utrobique dispositio est : non idem de syl-
logismo ac methodo dici poterit.
“ Axioma verum est, quandò pronuntiat uti res est :
falsum, contrâ.”
Sic enim Plato, in Cratylo. Ad judicium itaque
faciendum, non modò artis documenta, sed etiam re-
rum ipsarum cognitio requiritur; quia res ipsa veri-
tatis norma et mensura est.
“ Axioma verum est contingens aut necessarium.
Contingens, quando sic verum est, ut aliquando falsum
esse possit. Ut, * audentes fortuna juvat.'
“ Itaque veritatis hujus contingentis judicium, opinio
dicitur.” Quæ præteritorum et presentium homini certa
esse potest, futurorum per naturam non admodum po-
test. Deo autem etsi tempora omnia præsentia non
sunt, ut vulgò receptum est, præsentia enim mutare
AD PETRI RAMI METHODUM CONCINNATA.
895
potest, præterita non item ; opinio tamen in Deum nom
cadit, quia per causas aeque omnia cognoscit.
De contingentibus autem, praeteritis ctiam, et præ-
sentibus humanum judicium certa quidem opinio dici-
tur, non tamem scientia: ea enim ex argumentis, quo-
rum est inmutabilis affectio, oritur ; cujusmodi in con-
tingenti axiomate non disponuntur. Neque idcirco
mon est opinio præteritorum et praesentium, quòd mani-
festa sunt, immo tum maximè opinari contingentia di-
cimur; nam dubia si sunt, sive contingentia sive neces-
saria, ne opinamur quidem, sed dubitamus: et neces-
saria tametsi sunt atque certissima, si causam nescimus,
etiam ea dumtaxat opinamur.
At, inquies, præterita et præsentia non sunt contin-
gentia, sed nccessaria, quia sunt immutabilia ; nam
meque factum infectum fieri potest; et quicquid est,
quandiu est, necesse est esse. Respondendum, necesse
quidem esse, ut quod fuit, fuerit, et quod jam est, sit;
nec tamen scqui, ut quod fuit vel est, sit propriè neces-
sarium. In axiomate enim contingenti, præterito, vel
præsenti quæ videtur esse necessitas, absoluta non est,
ncque ex rerum dispositarum natura, sed ex conditione
dumtaxat et lege contradictionis pendet : dum enim
aliquid est, non esse non potest; neque dum verum est,
esse falsum : et tamen quod nunc verum est, fieri po-
test ut aliquando salsum fuerit, aut futurum sit. Idem
de futuris dicendum ; siquid futurum certò est, id ne-
cesse est fore quidem verum (omne n. axioma verum
est aut falsum) non tamen necessarium. Id nisi tenea-
tur, omne contingens futurum erit necessarium, quod
implicat contradictionem. Hoc etiam monendum, fu-
tura quidem ipsa neque vera esse neque falsa, neque
contingentia, meque mecessaria, momdum m. sunt, sed
affirmatio solùm de iis aut negatio in futurum, deque
præteritis eodem modo sentiendum.
“ Axioma est necessarium, quando semper verum est,
nec falsum potest esse.”
Nec supervacua posterior hæc clausula est: semper
m. esse verum etiam contingens potest, necessarium
autem non modò semper est verum, sed falsum esse non
potest. Sic etiam Aristot. Post. 1, 26.
“ Contrà, quod semper falsum est, nec verum potest
esse, axioma impossibile dicitur.” Sic etiam Aristot.
Phil. 8. 12.
Hæc autem immutabilitas veritatis in necessario, et
falsitatis in impossibili, ab argumentorum quæ in iis
disponuntur vel summa consensione, vel infesta semper
dissensione pendet. Pari ratione mutabilitas vcri aut
falsi in contingenti et possibili ex levi argumentorum
in iis dispositorum consensione aut dissidio perspicitur.
Ex quo doctrina illa quatuor formularum modalium,
“ necesse est, impossibile est, possibile est, contingens
est,” quàm inutiliter ab Aristot. introducta sit, facile
apparet: ut, “ necesse est hominem esse animal ; im-
possibile est hominem esse equum ; possibile est So-
cratem esse divitem ; contingens est Socratem esse
doctum.” Hæ quatuor modales dispositionem pura-
rum enuntiationum quodammodo afficiunt : pura est,
“ omnis homo est animal ; modalis, “ mecesse est om-
nem hominem esse animal:” hic “ omnem hominem
esse animal,” licet inverso ordine, subjectum est emun-
tiationis modalis, modus “ necesse” est praedicatum.
Verùm quid attinet quomodo partes axiomatis inter se
affectæ sint, signis aut modis exprimere, cùm id ex
argumentis ipsis in eo dispositis possit rectius judicari,
et ad hos modos alii complures, “ facile, difficile, ho-
ncstum, turpe," &c. non inutilitis possint adjungi?
Equidem secundarias, quas vocant modales, prima-
riis hisce potiores existimem : quibus vulgò dividuntur
enuntiationes in ** exclusivas,'' quarum notæ sunt “ so-
lus, tantum, dumtaxat,” &c., ut, “ sola fides justificat:
exceptivas,” quarum notæ sunt “ præter, præterquam,
nisi,” &c., ut, “ nemo praeter te sapit: et restrictivas,”
quarum notæ sunt “ qua, quatemus, quoad, secundum,
quid,” &c., ut, “ homo qua animal, sentit.” Et exclusiva
quidem est vel subjecti vel prædicati: subjecti, quæ,
nota exclusiva præposita, excludit omnia subjecta alia à
prædicato. Sed frustra hanc regulam ratio dictarit, si lo-
gicis quibusdam modernis, et nominatim Keckermanmo
licebit, eam statim, conflato ad id ipsum canone, fun-
ditus evertere. “ Exclusiva,” inquit, “ subjecti non
excludit concomitantia : ut, solus pater est verus Deus.
Hic,” inquit, “ non excluditur concomitans, filius, et
spiritus sanctus.” At quis mon videt subornatum hunc
canonem, ad locum illum luculeutissimum Joan. 17, 3,
ludificandum ? Haud paulò utilior est canon ille re-
strictivæ enuntiationis, quem tradit l. 2, c. 4, (restrictiva
autem est quæ ostendit quatenus subjectum prædicato
convenit) “ prædicatum,” inquit, “ contradictorium
mulla limitatione subjecto conciliatur ; '° ex Aristot. 2
Top. c. ult. sect. 4. Quid evidentius dici potuit ? et
tamen reperti sunt qui interpositis quibusdam distinc-
tiunculis, “ accidens posse existere sine subjecto”
(quod repugnat) “in cæua Domini” comtemdamt : de-
inde, qui similib. comfictis distinctiunculis, “ humamam
naturam Christi adeoque corpus infinitum esse” dispu-
tantes, parem contradictionem committant. Sed omis-
sis theologorum paradoxis, ad præcepta logica redea-
Ill Ul S. •
“ Axioma necessarium affirmatum appellatur xarà
ταντός, de omni.”
Id est, cum consequens siye prædicatum, ut vocant,
axiomatis, de omni et toto antecedente sive subjecto
semper verum est. Sic etiam Aristot. 1, prior. 1, et
post. 1, 4, et hoc etiam nonnumquam ka$6\s, i. e. de
toto, vocat, Post. 2, 13.
“ Axiomata artium sic κατά ταντός esse debent.”
Nempe de omni et de toto vera, non falsa ; necessa-
ria, non fortuita, alioqui non scientiam pariunt, sed
opinionem ; affirmata denique non negata : affirmatum
enim est firmum, certum, brevissimum ; negatum verò
est vagum, incertum, infinitum, nihilque docet : ut si
quis definiret logicam, non esse artem bene loquendi,
non doceret quid logica sit, sed quid mom sit ; eaque
definitio omnibus artibus præter grammaticam æque
ac logicæ conveniret. Nonnulli addunt ex hac lege,
axiomata artium debere etiam esse gemeralia. Verùm
hæc regula non tantum de omni est, sed de toto : et
multa in artibus præcepta specialibus de rebus occur-
runt, ut in theologia, de Christo ; in astronomia de
sole et luna reliquisque planetis: in aliis artibus hujus-
modi alia, in quibus, cùm sint specialia, etsi katà Tav-
8!)6
ARTIS LOGICÆ PLENIOR INSTITUTIO,
tòc dici nom possunt, ka96\e tamen possunt, quod satis
est. Quòd si quis objicit, me in generalibus quidem
praecepta artium karà ravròc esse posse, propter excep-
tionum multitudinem, ut in grammatica videre est ;
respondendum est, anomalium amalogiæ conjunctam,
katà Tavròς instar esse.
“ Sed præcepta artium homogenea etiam et reciproca
esse debent.
“ Axioma homogeneum est, quando partes sunt es-
sentiales inter se.”
i. e. Vel absolute, ut forma formato, genus speciei,
membra integro, definitio definito ; vel modo quodam,
ut subjectum proprio adjuncto.
“ Id appellatur kaS' aùrò, per se.”
Idcirco etiam partes axiomatis essentiales inter se
esse debent, ut præceptum artis esse scientificum possit:
accidentis enim, ut testatur Aristoteles, nulla est scien-
tia ; nulla misi per essentiam et causam : idem, rá ca9'
aύτδ, et rά σνμβεβηκόra, i. e. accidentia, opponit, Post.
I, 4. Itaque non satis est, partes esse inter se consen-
tameas, sed essentiales : quod cùm ex argumentorum
inter se summa consensione oriatur, ex qua necessarium
quoque axioma esse ortum supradiximus, non video
quid per hanc regulam ka9' aùrò ad superiorem illam
karά ταντὸς quod magni sit momenti, accedat ; cùm
mullum axioma necessarium esse queat, quin ejus
partes inter se sint etiam essentiales. Neque verò
putem hic praecipi, ne quid heterogeneum sive alienum
in arte doceatur ; neque enim huc pertinet dispositio
præcepti cum præcepto, sed argumenti solùm cum ar-
gumento, quæ axiomatis doctrina est, et ex homogenei
definitione ipsa ejusque exemplis perspicitur.
“ Axioma reciprocum est, quando consequens semper
verum est de antecedente, mom solùm omni et per se,
sed etiam reciprocè.”
Ut homo est animal ratiomale : numerus est par
vel impar. Lupus est natus ad ululandum. Id ap-
pellatur ca$6\e rpórov, de toto primurii. Nempe quia
de nullo prins dicitur : ideoque proximum est et
immediatum, proprium et æquale ; unoque verbo,
reciprocum : ut risibile de homine : omnis enim
homo est risibilis ; et reciprocè, omne risibile est
homo. Haec regula nisi observetur, vitari tautologia in
artibus non potest. Tum enim non reciprocatur axio-
ma, cùm antecedens consequenti mon est æquale, aut
contra ; sed vel speciale alicui generi, vel generale ali-
cui speciei attribuitur : generale autem de specie non
dicitur primò ; prius enim dicitur de genere. Cum
autem id quod generis est, speciei attribuitur, idem in
reliquis speciebus necessario est repetendum, quod in
gemere semel dictum oportuit. Ad hanc itaque regu-
Jam pertimct præceptum artis illud nobiJe y£vvká ysvvkóc,
** generalia generaliter” et semel docenda sunt. Hæc
Jex brevitati, brevitas autem intelligentiæ et memoriæ
consulit.
Atque hae tres sunt leges documentorum artium pro-
priorum. Prima cará tra vròc, lex veritatis; propterea
quòd necessariam affirmati axiomatis veritatem ex con-
sentanea partium affectione postulat. Secunda kaS'
aùrò, lex justitiae ; quia justitiam requirit in essentiali
partium cognatione. Peccant ergo in hanc legem, qui
rhetoricam in inventionem, dispositionem, memoriam.
&c., distribuunt, cùm rhetoricae partes attribuant, quæ
dialecticæ propriæ sunt. Tertia ka$6\ov 7rpórov lex sa-
pientiæ meritò dici possit ; cùm quia ejus judicium
verissima scientia est, ut postea dicetur, tum quia vitia
sapientiæ contraria prohibet, inæqualitatem sive incon-
venientiam anteccdentis cùm consequente et tautolo-
giam.
Dices, duas illas priores leges comprehendi sub hac
tertia : et hoc fatendum quidem est : veruntamen ut
trigonum tetragonus et tetragonum pentagonus com-
prehendit, neque idcirco tamen distinctæ figuræ mon
sunt; ita hæ leges etiamsi posterior quæquæ priorum
comprehendit, eramt tamem perspicuitatis causa distin-
guendae.
“ Atque hujusmodi axiomatum ita reciprocorum ju-
dicium verissima et prima scientia est.” Prima, quia
primcipiorum est, quæ per se indemonstrabilia, suaque
luce manifestissima sunt, neque syllogismi aut ullius
argumenti clarioris lucem ad scientiam faciendam desi-
derant: quæ inde verissima quoque sit mecesse est.
CAP. IV.
De Aaeiomate simplici.
“ ATQUE hæc de communibus axiomatis affectioni-
bus ; species sequuntur. -
“ Axioma est simplex aut compositum.”
Sic etiam Aristot. de Interpret. l, 5. Vulgò propo-
sitio dividitur in categoricam et hypotheticam, eodem
sensu. Sed categorica affirmatam dumtaxat proposi-
tionem simplicem comprehendit, quæ scilicet de sub-
jecto kaTmyopsirat, i. e. prædicatur.
“Axioma simplex est, quod verbi vinculo continetur.”
Cùm enim vinculum, ut supradiximus, axiomatis
forma et quasi anima sit, hinc efficitur, quemadmodum
duæ sunt species vinculorum, verbum et conjunctio,
illud simplicis axiomatis, hoc compositi, ut axioma quo-
que ex ista distributione vinculi, in oppositas formas
sive species dividatur. Vinculum autem simplicis axio-
matis, non solum est verbum substantivum, quod dici-
tur, sed quodvis verbum actionem aut passionem signi-
ficans, vinculi in se vim inclusam habet; et vel totum
consequens vel pars consequentis est ; ut, Socrates scri-
bit. Nam quod nonnulli putant, verbum omne in sub-
stantivum et participium resolvi oportere, ut ea ratione
verbum substantivum esse vinculum appareat, scilicet,
Socrates est scribens ; id sæpe ineptissimum esse repe-
rietur. Ut siquis hoc, Socrates docetur, sic solvat, So
crates est doctus : hoc enim aliud longe est. Quidquod
etiam verbum substantivum nonnunquam et vinculum
et totum consequens includit; ut, Socrates est; mortui
non sunt, i. e. non existunt. Quodsi in uno simplici
axiomate plura verba occurrunt, ut, imparia sunt com-
parata, quorum quantitas non est una, sciendum est
illud verbum axiomatis vinculum esse, quod gramma-
tici vocant principale.
AD PETRI RAMI METHODUM CONCINNATA.
897
* Id si affirmatur, axioma simplex est affirmatum ;
si negatur, negatum.”
Negatur autem, si negationis mota verbum illud præ-
cedit: nam si sequitur, negatum non est, sed affirma-
tum : ut Socrates est leo, mon necessario affirmatum
est, quia negationis nota sequitur verbum ; nec totum
consequens negatur, sed modus.
Negationis autem notæ mon solùm sunt adverbia
negandi, sed etiam particulæ exclusivae (cujusmodi
sunt “ unicus et solus *') et verba dissensionem vel
differentiam significantia ; ut, ** differre, opponi,” &c.
Exempla nunc videamus. Ignis urit ; ignis est ca-
lidus; ignis est non aqua. Hic “ ignis” est antece-
dens, “ urit” consequens.
“ Atque hic est prima inventarum rerum dispositio,
causæ cum affecto, ut im primo exemplo ; subjecti cum
adjuncto, ut in secundo ; dissentanei, cum dissentaneo,
ut in tertio.
“ Quo modo argumenta quælibet inter se affecta
enuntiari possunt, consentanea quidem affirmando,
dissentanea negando.” Exceptis plenis comparatio-
mibus, in quibus duo planè distincta axiomata sunt,
propositio, et redditio. Nam distributiones, quas etiam
excipit Ramus, ut, argumentum est artificiale aut in-
artificiale, axiomate simplici enuntiari possunt, ut in-
fra docebitur : possunt et diversa, quae excipiunt alii,
si sic enuntias, aliquis facundus mon est formosus: et
contraria : ut, virtus non est vitium, &c.
“ Axioma simplex est generale aut speciale.”
Hæc distributio est simplicis axiomatis ex adjuncta
quantitate, quæ modos, non species constituit. Im
axiomate autem composito, quantitatis nulla ratio ha-
betur, sed tantum vinculi, ut infra dicemus.
“ Axioma generale est, quando commune conse-
quens attribuitur generaliter communi antecedenti.”
Vulgò etiam vocatur * universale.” Generaliter
autem consequens antecedenti attribuitur, quando
omni totique sive universo antecedenti attribuitur,
omnibusque iis, quæ sub ejus significatione continen-
tur. Ad axioma igitur generale, tria hæc requiruntur;
consequens, et antecedens generale, et generalis attri-
butio. Neque enim ex mota sive signo universali
definiendum fuit axioma gemerale ; cùm et sæpissime
mon adsit nota, et cùm adest, mom causa sed signum
tantummodo sit axioma esse generale. Indefinita
igitur, quæ vulgò vocant, etsi notam non habent geme-
ralem, generalia tamen sunt ; ut definitiones et reliqua
artium præcepta, quæ nemo generalia esse imficiabi-
tur ; nec notam tamen generalem præfixam habent.
Notæ axiomatis generalis tam affirmati quàm negati
hæ sunt: “ omnis, nullus ; semper, nunquam : ubi-
que, nusquam,” &c. -
“ Atque hic contradictio mon semper dividit verum
et falsum ; sed contingentium utraque pars falsa potest
esse :'' ut,
Omnis im urbe locus bajis prælucet amoenis.
Nullus in urbe locus bajis prælucet amoenis.
** Itèm non contingentium.”
Ut, omne animal est rationale ; nullum animal est
rationale. Hæc enim non contingentia sunt, sed
potius absurda ; quia consequens speciale antecedenti
generali generaliter attribuitur. Falsa igitur pars
utraque generalis contradictionis esse potest, vera esse
non potest ; falsitas quippe multiplex, veritas uma est.
“ Axioma speciale est, quando consequens non omni
anteccdenti attribuitur.”
Speciale dicitur, quia de specie aliqua emuntiatur.
Atque ut in generali axiomate consequens generaliter,
sive omni et universo antecedenti ; ita in speciali spe-
cialiter, sive non omni attribuitur.
“ In hoc axiomate contradictio semper dividit verum
à falso.”
Id est specialis contradictionis pars una semper vera,
pars altera semper est falsa.
“ Axioma speciale est particulare aut proprium.
“ Particulare, quando consequens commune antece-
denti particulariter attribuitur.”
Est axioma speciale quia de specie aliqua, licet ea
quidem incerta et indefinita, enuntiatur ; particulariter
autem consequens attribuitnr, quando non universo
antecedenti, sed ejus alicui parti attribuitur. Attribu-
tionis autem particularis notæ sive signa sunt, “ qui-
dam, aliquis, aliquando, alicubi;” et negationes gene-
ralium, nonnulli, nonnunquam, non semper, non om-
nis, &c., quæ particulari æquipollent. Commune
autem consequens debet esse ; ex illa regula ; Conse-
quens numquam minus est antecedente, sed semper vel
majus eo vel saltem æquale. Unde Aristoteles, prior.
1, 28, negat “ singulare de alio praedicari.”
Sequitur munc contradictio particularium.
“ Huic autem axiomata generaliter contradicitur.
“ Aliquid ignoscendum est ; nihil ignoscendum est:
aliqua clementia non est laudanda ; omnis clementia
est laudanda.” Hic particulari affirmato, generale ne-
gatum ; et particulari negato, generale affirmatum op-
ponitur. Quodsi utraque pars particularis est, non
modo nulla est axiomatum contradictio, sed ne opposi-
Ut, Quidam homo est doctus, quidam
Non enim eidem subjecto attri-
tio quidem.
homo non est doctus.
buuntur, quæ lex est oppositorum. Pars igitur utraque
vera esse potest; sicuti etiam cùm utraque affirmata est
vel negata : ut, Omnis homo est rationalis, quidam
homo est rationalis: nullus homo est irratiomalis, qui-
dam homo non est irrationalis. In his non modo com-
tradictio nulla, sed consensio summa est, generis nempe
et speciei. <s*
“ Axioma proprium ” (quod alii singulare vocant)
“ est, quando consequens antecedenti proprio attribui-
tur.” Antecedens autem logicè proprium dicitur
quando rem vel personam singularem designat ; sive
proprio momine exprimatur, sive mon : qualia sunt etiam
demonstrativa ; ut, “ hic homo.” Secundò, quæ per
synecdochen generis dicuntur ; ut poëta pro Homero
aut Virgilio, philosophus pro Aristotele aut Platone, et
similia. Ad consequens autem hujus axiomatis quod
attinet, id vel commune esse potest vel proprium.
Proprii contradictio est quando utraque pars est pro-
pria : in quo discrepat à particulari, cujus pars altera
duntaxat particularis esse debet; consentit cum gene-
rali, cujus pars utraque generalis ; ut, “ Fabulla est
bella :” cujus negatio et contradictio est, “ Fabulla
non cst bella.” Atque hæc de axiomate simplici.
893
ARTIS LOGICÆ PLENIOR INSTITUTIO,
A P P E N D I X.
AD has axiomatis simplicis affectiones addunt Aris-
totelici æquipollentiam et conversionem.
Æquipollentia definitur, ** enumtiationum verbis dis-
crepantium convenientia re atque sensu : sic aliquis
homo est doctus, et, mom omnis homo est doctus,” idem
valent, et similia, ut suprà in notis est dictum. Æqui-
pollentia itaque cum in verbis duntaxat, non in rebus,
posita sit, ad grammaticam vel ad rhetoricam et ver-
borum copiam remittenda est.
Conversio est prædicati unius enuntiationis in locum
subjecti transpositio ad probandam alteram enuntia-
tionem, quæ ex ea transpositione sive conversione effi-
citur. Ea triplex affertur ; simplex, per accidens, et
per contrapositionem. Simplex, quæ fit manente eadem
emuntiationis et quantitate et qualitate: fitque etiam
tripliciter ; in universali negante; ut “ nullus homo est
lapis, ergo nullus lapis est homo : ” in particulari affir-
mante ; ut, “ aliquis homo est albus, ergo aliquod al-
bum est homo:" in affirmante denique universali et
necessaria ; ut “ omnis homo est risibilis, ergo omne
risibile est homo.” Et hæc est una omnium conver-
sionum verissima, quæ et “ reciprocatio” dicitur, pro-
prii scilicet cum suo subjecto, definiti cum sua defini-
tiome.
Conversio per accidens mutat enuntiationis quanti-
tatem ; universalem scilicet affirmantem in particula-
rem : ut, “ omnis homo est animal, ergo quoddam
animal est homo.” Per accidens hanc dici volunt, quia
aliud prius sequitur, nempe, “ quidam homo est animal,”
ex quo hoc deinde, simplici conversione, “ ergo quod-
dam animal est homo.”
Conversio per contrapositionem mutat enuntiationis
qualitatem : universalem scilicet affirmantem in negan-
tem : vel, in qua loco subjecti et prædicati, ponitur
utriusque conversi contradictio : ut, “ omnis homo est
rationalis ; ergo quodcumque non est rationale, non est
homo: omne mortale est genitum ; ergo quod non est
genitum, non est mortale ; vel, quod est non genitum,
est non mortale : admittendi ad sacramenta, habent
pœnitentiam et fidem ; ergo qui haec non habent, non
sunt admittendi.” Tres hosce modos convcrsionum cx
Aristot. petunt: duos priores ex 1 Prior. c. 2, tertium
ex 2 Top. c. 1, syllogisticæ reductionis gratia, cujus
inutiliter infra ostendetur, ab ipso inventos.
Conversione autem hac ne decipiamur fortè, neque
enim fidissima est, cautiones quædam adhiberi solent:
prima, ne termini sint figurati ; ut, ** panis est corpus
Christi.” Secunda, me quid mutiletur ; ut “ quidam cer-
nit caecum, ergo caecus cernit quendam :” totum enim
prædicatum non est “ cæcum,” sed “cernit cæcum;” ut
etiam in hac ; * omnis senex fuit puer, ergo quidam puer
fuit senex ;” non enim “puer,” sed “ fuit puer” totum
prædicatum est ; convertendum ergo, “quidam qui fuit
puer, est senex.” Tertia, ut casus obiiqui à conversione
facti, reddantur recti ; ut, “ aliqua arbor est in agro ;
ergo aliquod quod est in agro, est arbor,” non sic,
** ergo aliquis ager est in arbore.”
Sed, omissis istis cautionibus, expeditior via est, con-
versionem omnem si dubia sit, tanquam sophisma peti-
tionis principii rejicere ; ut quæ sine medio termino
probare rem dubiam conetur : de quo sophismate infra
monebimus.
CAP. V.
De Aarìomate copulato.
“ AxioMA compositum est quod vinculo conjunctionis
continetur.”
Hoc genus axiomatis Aristoteles totum prætermisit.
Vulgò “ propositio hypothetica” vocatur; i. e. conditio-
nalis; angustè nimis ; cum ea vox compositis non om-
nibus comveniat, ut suo loco patebit. Compositum
autem dicitur, quia sententia est multiplex, quæ in
plures resolvi simplices potest : nec tamen dicendum
est, ex simplicib. axiomatis componi, sed ex argumen-
tis, quæ conjunctionis vinculo composita, multiplicem
sententiam efficiunt: idcirco autem axioma componitur,
quia argumenta in eo conjuncta consentiunt et compo-
sitionem appetunt. Nulla autem hic ratio habetur
quantitatis, generale sit an speciale, sed tantum com-
positionis. Ut autem verbum fuit vinculum simplicis,
ita conjunctio est axiomatis compositi, ejusque proinde
forma et quasi anima est.
“ Itaque à conjunctione affirmata vel negata, affirma-
tur vel negatur.” Conjunctione non negata, negatum
axioma non erit, etiamsi partes omnes erunt negatæ.
“ Contradictionisque pars vera est, pars falsa.” De
qua vulgus logicorum silet.
“ Enuntiatum compositum est pro sua conjunctione
congregativum aut segregativum.
“ Congregativum est cujus partes tanquam simul
veræ, conjunctione sua congregantur.” Conjunctione
videlicet non solùm illa grammatica verùm etiam sen-
tentiarum quavis relatione. Cùm autem relatio ista,
sive grammatica sive logica, multiplex sit, essentiæ,
consequentiæ, sive causae, quantitatis, qualitatis, tem-
poris, loci, relatio quidem essentiæ (cujus motae sunt
“ is qui, id quod”) et loci (cujus notæ sunt “ ubi, ibi ?)
ad simplicia axiomata referenda est ; de reliquis suo
loco.
“ Congregativum enuntiat omnia consentamea affir-
mando, omni dissentanea megando.” Hoc est, si unum
consentaneorum subjecto attribuatur, alterum quoque
attribuitur ; et contrà, uno negato, alterum negatur :
si unum dissentaneorum de subjecto affirmatur, alte-
rum negatur ; et contrà. Ita semper consentamea
simul hic affirmanda vel neganda sunt, dissentanea non
simul.
“ Congregativum verò est copulatum aut connexum.
Copulatum, cujus conjunctio est copulativa.” Ut
Æneid. 1.
“ Unâ Eurusque Notusque ruunt, creberque procellis
Africus.”
Hic igitur negatio erit et contradictio, negatæ com-
junétione ; “ non unâ Eurusque Notusque ruunt,” &c.
AD PETRI RAMI METHODUM CONCINNATA.
899
“ Socrates et doctus erat et formosus : Socrates non et
doctus erat et formosus.” Quòdsi hoc modo negaretur,
“ Socrates nec doctus erat mec formosus,” (qui modus
contradictionis est adhibendus cùm omnes partes sunt
falsæ,) contradictio non esset axiomatica ; non enim
vinculum negaretur, sed partes ; copulatio enim sig-
mificat utrumque simul verum esse, ejus negatio
mon utrumque ; at hæc megatio neutrum : ac si dic-
tum esset, “ Socrates et non doctus et non formosus
erat : ” deinde, in axiomate composito contradictio-
mis pars una vera, altera est falsa ; hic autem utra-
que : hoc ergo axioma, “ Socrates nec doctus erat
nec formosus,” est potius axioma copulatum affirma-
tum, cujus partes negantur. Copulati autem negatio
per axioma etiam discretum fieri potest, cùm partes
non omnes falsæ sunt ; ut infra intelligitur. Com-
jumctio denique hic sæpe non adest, sed intelligitur.
“ Verum autem enuntiati copulati judicium pendet
ex omnium partium veritate ; falsum, ex una saltem
parte falsa.” Hoc est axioma copulatum judicatur
esse verum, si ommes partes simul veræ sunt; falsum,
si vel una pars erit falsa. Idem tradit Gellius, l. 16,
c. 8. In copulato enim axiomate, veritas omnium par-
tium spectatur, quia partes omnes absolute enuntian-
tur tanquam simul veræ.
“ Huic generi affime est enuntiatum relatæ qualita-
tis, cujus conjunctio” logica potius est quàm gramma-
tica, nempe “ ipsa relatio.”
Relata autem qualitas cst plena similitudo: ut notæ
ipsæ testantur; “ qualis, talis, quemadmodum, sic.”
Eclog. 3.
“ Tale tuum carmem nobis, divine poëta,
Quale sopor fessis in gramine. y •
Hic copulatum judicium est tanquam diceretur,
sopor est fessis gratus, et sic tuum carmen nobis gra-
tum est: cujus negatio, Non tale tuum carmem, quale
sopor, &c.
Ad hunc etiam locum pertinet relatio quantitatis in
plenis comparationibus: quarum notæ sunt, cùm à
pari, “idem quod, tam quam, tanto quanto, tot quot,
eò quò;” tum à majori, “ non solùm, sed etiam;” tum
à minori, “ non modò non, sed ne,” (quæ nota est
copulati axiomatis affirmati, cujus partes megantur)
“ cùm tum.” Relatio autem hæc et qualitatis et
quantitatis, si hypotheticè non absolutè enuntiatur, ad
connexum potius referenda est.
Relationes autem loci ad axioma simplex rectius
referuntur, ut supra est dictum. Neque enim in hujus-
modi exemplo, “ ubi amici ibi opes,” est copulatum
judicium, sed simplex et quidem generale; scilicet,
omnem aivitem amicos habere.
CAP. VI.
De Aaciomate commeaco.
“ AXIOMA connexum est congregativum, cujus con-
junctio est connexiva.
“ Ut, si, nisi” affirmativè. Idem enim valet ** nisi,”
quod ** si mon : ” quo non totum axioma, sed antece-
dens tantum negatur: ut AEneid. 2,
ς ς Si miserum fortuma Sinonem -
Finxit, vanum etiam mendacemque improba finget.”
Cujus negatio est, negata conjunctione, “ Non si
miserum fortuna Sinonem finxit, vanum etiam menda-
cemque improba finget.”
“ Conjunctio etiam hæc interdum negatur apertiùs,
negando consequentiam.” Ut non continuò, non il-
licò, non idcirco, non ideo : his emim formulis non
consequens axiomatis, id m. contradictionem non effi-
ceret, sed ipsa partium consequentia quæ logica con-
junctio est apertius negatur: ut pro Amer. “ Non con-
tinuò, si me in sicariorum gregem contuli, sicarius
sum.” De Fato : “ nec si omne enuntiatum verum
est aut falsum, sequitur illicò causas esse immuta-
biles.”
“ Affirmatio enim significat, si sit antecedens, etiam
consequens esse. Negatio itaque et contradictio sta-
tuit, si sit antecedens, non ideo consequens esse.
Potest et connexo pro axioma discretum contradici :
nt, “ quamvis omne enuntiatum sit verum aut falsum,
non tamen causæ sunt immutabiles;” quod sequente
capite liquebit.
“ Sed cùm judicabis connexum absolute,” i. e. per
se suaque natura ** verum esse, necessarium quoque
judicabis ; et intelliges hanc necessitatem ex necessa-
ria partium connexione oriri, quæ ipsa potest esse vel
in falsis partibus.”
“ Ut, si homo est leo, est etiam quadrupes,” necessa-
rium connexum est ; quia argumentorum, quæ hic con-
nectuntur, leonis scilicet et quadrupedis, connexio est
necessaria, speciei scilicet cum genere. Unde efficitur
axioma generaliter verum ac proinde necessarium ;
“ omnis leo est quadrupes:” quod in connexio indicium
est absolutæ veritatis. Sic, si “ Socrates est homo, est
etiam animal,” absolutè verum est et necessarium, quia
omnis homo est animal: hujusque connexi consequens
falsum esse non potest, misi antecedens quoque falsum
sit, quod aliud signum est absolutæ veritatis.
Quòd si consequens falsum fuerit, falsum item est
antecedens. “ Si illud, hoc : si non hoc, ne illud
quidem.” Atque ita, ut jam demonstravimus, si con-
nexio absolutè vera est, erit quoque necessaria: sin ex
conditione et pacto, sine quo commexum per se suaque
natura verum non esset, erit tantummodò contingens.
“ Quod si commexio sit contingens, et pro sua tantum
probabilitate ponatur, judicium ejus tantum opinio
fuerit.
Ut Terent. Andr.
“ Pamphile, si id facis, hodie postremum me vides.”
Hoc est, si Philumenam uxorem ducis, ego hodie
moriar: quod nemo sequi existimaverit, nisi hoc posito,
Charimum, qui hoc dicit, Philumemam perditissimè
amare. Per se enim nulla est connexionis necessitas
inter nuptias Pamphili et interitum Charini. Qui
autem ex amoris vehementia sic existimabit, ejus ju-
dicium non erit scientia, sed opinio.
3 M
900
ARTIS LOGICÆ PLENIOR INSTITUTIO,
Ut autem judicare possimus, quæ connexio sit abso-
lutè vera, quæ non, spectanda argumenta sunt, quæ in
axiomate commectuntur, consentiant inter se nec me, et
quo modo. Ut ** si dies est, lux est,” commexum est
necessarium, quia dies sive sol ortus est causa lucis.
“ Si dies est, Dio ambulat,'' connexum est falsum aut
contingens; quia nulla est affectio absolutè consentanea
inter diem et l)ionem.
“ Connexio axiomati affinis est ista consequentiæ
relatio:” quæ à mommullis, “ relatio causæ ” dicitur ;
et axioma efficit, quod “ Stoici causale” nominant;
Laert. in Zenone : quia nempe antecedens est causa
consequentis, adeoque vinculum ejus conjunctio causa-
lis “ cùm, quia, quoniam ;” quibus respondet “ ideo,”
vel “ etiam : ut, cùm Tullius sit orator, est etiam peri-
tus benè dicendi.” Quanquam autem relata ista con-
nexis affinia sunt, non nihil tamen discrepant: in ante-
cedente enim connexi quædam conditio est, in hoc
relato nulla : connexum potest ex falsis partibus verum
esse, relatum hoc sive causale non potest esse verum,
nisi antecedens verum fuerit : ut, “ quia dies est, sol
est supra horizontem.”
Affinis est et relatio temporis axiomati connexo, ut
ait ipse Ramus infra, c. 13.
Relatio autem temporis has habet motas, “ tum cùm,
donec dum, quamdiu tamdiu :” ut apud Ovid. in epist.
** Cùm Paris OEnone poterit spirare relicta
Ad fontem Xanthi versa recurret aqua.”
Sic—** Donec eris felix, m.ultos mumerabis amicos.”
Potest etiam connexum enuntiari sine ulla non modò
relationis, verùm etiam commexionis nota ; ut, “ posita
causa, ponitur effectum. Fac hoc, et vives.” Ovid. in
epist. “ sume fidem et pharetram, fies manifestus Apol-
lo.” Nomnunquam etiam duob. negativis : Cic. pro
Milone, “ non hoc fragile corpus humanum mente regi-
tur, et non regitur mente universum mumdi corpus.”
CAP. VII.
De Aaciomate discreto.
“ AXIOMA segregativum est, cujus conjunctio est
segregativa.
“ Ideoque argumenta dissentanea enuntiat.
“ Enuntiatum segregativum est discretum aut dis-
junctum.
“ Discretum, cujus conjunctio est discretiva.” Dis-
cretum dicitur, quòd conjunctione illa segregativa dis-
cernuntur et segregantur, ea potissimum quæ leviter et
ratione tantum dissentiumt.
* Itaque è dissentaneis præcipuè diversa enuntiat.”
Præcipuè, quia diversorum notæ, “ nom hoc, sed
illud,” ut superiore libro dictum est, in diversis mon-
munquam solent oppositis inservire. Ut autem diver-
sorum ita etiam discreti axiomatis doctrina distinc-
tionibus dumtaxat, non conclusionibus, idonea est: et à
reliquis propterea dialecticis, qui omnia ad syllogismum
referunt, omissa. Sed rationis usus quicunque in logica
prætermittendus non erat. Exempli gratia: Tuscul.
5, “ Quanquam sensu corporis judicentur, ad animum
referri tamen.” Cujus negatio et contradictio est,
“ non quamquam corporis sensu judicentur, tamen ad
amimum referri: vel, quanquam sensu corporis judi-
centur, non tamen ad animum referri.” Nam “ tamen ”
est hic conjunctio præcipua. Quemadmodum autem
copulati et commexi axiomatis negatio et contradictio
discretum esse potest, ita vicissim copulatum vel con-
nexum discreti: ut, “ quanquam culpa vacat, non tamen
suspicione caret : *' cujus per copulatum contradictio
est, “ et culpa vacat, et suspicione caret ;” vel per com-
nexum, “ si culpa vacat, etiam suspicione caret.”
“ Discretum enuntiatum judicatur esse verum et le-
gitimum, si partes nom solum veræ, sed etiam discretæ
sint ; falsum vel ridiculum contra.”
Ut, “ quamquam Ulysses formosus erat, tamen non
erat infacundus,” falsum est, quia antecedens est fal-
sum. Sed si consequens modò verum est, axioma
verum erit, etiamsi antecedens verum esse tantummodo
comcedatur. Hoc autem, “ quanquam Menelaus for-
mosus erat, tamen erat facundus,” non est discretum,
sed ne segregativum quidem : omnis enim segregativi
axiomatis partes tanquam non simul veræ segregantur,
hic verò tanquam simul veræ congregantur. “ Quan-
quam Ulysses facundus erat, non tamen erat in gliser-
tus,” est ridiculum, quia partes non sunt discretæ sed
oppositæ.
() AP. VIII.
De Aaciomate disjuncto.
“ AXIOMA disjunctum est axioma segregativum,
cujus conjunctio est disjunctiva.”
Ut, ** aut dies est, aut mox est. Aut vera est hæc
emunciatio, aut falsa.” Nam ut ex Cicerone citatur
hoc exemplum, “ omnis enuntiatio vera est aut falsa,”
videtur esse distributio potius quàm disjunctio. Dis-
tributio autem quatenus de toto diviso partes enuntiam-
tur, axioma simplex et generale est, adeoque mon com-
positum nedum disjunctum. Neque enim distributionis
partes, quamvis inter se oppositæ, oppositionem vel dis-
junctionem ullam faciunt, sed eidem toti subjiciuntur,
et in ejusdem simplicis axiomatis consequente verbi
vinculo cum toto, quod antecedens est, consentiunt ; at
extra distributionem, ubi non de toto, sed de aliqua
ejus parte vel specie enunciantur, tum demum axioma
disjunctum efficiunt: ut, quod supra posuimus, “ hæc
enuntiatio aut vera est aut falsa.”
** Hic significatur è disjunctis unicum verum esse.”
Nempe quia opposita hic sola disponi debent. At-
que id semper à differente significatur, tametsi ali-
quando accidit, ut disjunctorum vel plura uno, vel
nullum omninò verum sit. Negatio igitur et contra-
dictio erit, “ non aut dics aut nox est.”
“ Et contradictione sigmificatur, non necessario al-
terutrum verum esse.”
AD PETRI RAMI METHODUM CONCINNATA.
901
“ Nam si disjunctio absolutè vera est, est etiam ne-
cessaria; partesque disjunctæ sunt opposita sine ullo
medio.” De quibus vide superioris libri caput de con-
tradicentibus.
* Veruntamen quamvis absolutè vera disjunctio, ne-
cessaria quoque sit; tamen nihil necesse est partes
separatim necessarias esse.”
Ut, ** cras aut pluet aut non pluet,” disjunctio est ne-
cessaria, quia ex contradicentibus constat, quae sunt
contraria sine medio: et tamem, “ cras pluet et cras non
pluet,” utrumque contingens axioma est. Sic, “ homo
aut bonus est aut mon bonus,” &c.
“ Nam disjunctionis necessitas pendet è necessaria
partium oppositione et disjunctione, non ex earum
ncccssaria veritate.”
Hinc argumentum illud dissolvitur Chrysippi Stoici
aliorumque veterum, apud Ciceronem de Fato ; quo
probare sunt conati, futura omnia esse necessaria et
quasi fatalia, eò quòd necesse sit ea aut vera esse aut
falsa. Disjunctio quidem, ut diximus, necessaria est;
pars tamen disjunctionis alterutra talis erit, qualis causa
ejus est ; sive necessaria, sive contingens, i. e. vel libera
vel fortuita. -
Atque hæc de necessaria disjunctione, cujus judicium
SCIentIa eSt.
“ Disjunctio autem sæpe est ex comditione.”
“ Ut si quæratur utrum Cleon venerit an Socrates,
quia ita pactum si alterutrum tantum venturum esse.”
“ Itaque si disjunctio sit contingens (contingens
autem est, si partes medium habent) mon est absolutè
vera, sed tantum opimabilis.” -
Qualis est frequenter in hominum usu, Ut Caesar
ad matrem : “ hodie me aut pontificem videbis, aut
exulem.” Ovid. in epistola Leandri,
** Aut mihi continget felix audacia salvo,
Aut mors solliciti finis amoris erit.”
CAP. IX.
De Syllogismo et ejus Partibus.
ATQUE ejusmodi dispositio est axiomatica sive moë-
tica axiomatis per se manifesti : sequitur dianoëtica.
“ Dianoëtica est cùm aliud axioma ex alio deduci-
tur.”
Vox Græca διάνοια, mentis et rationis discursum sig-
nificat ; qui tum fit maximè cùm sententia alia ex alia
ratiocinando deducitur.
“ Dispositio diamoëtica est syllogismus aut metho-
dus.”
“ Syllogismnus est dispositio dianoëtica qua quæstio
cum argumento ita disponitur, ut posito antecedente,
necessariò concludatur.”
Est dianoia : est ergo discursus mentis ac rationis
quo aliud ex alio ratiocinando colligitur: eam ratio-
cinantis quasi collectionem vox ipsa syllogismi signifi-
cat: quæ quidem collectio sive deductio ab intellectus
humani imbecilitate profecta est: quæ cùm rerum ve-
ritatem et falsitatem primo intuitu perspicere in axio-
mate non potest, ad syllogismum se confert, in quo de
consequentia et inconsequentia earum judicare possit.
“ Cùm itaque axioma dubium est, quæstio efficitur,
et ad cjus fidem tertio argumento est opus cum quæs-
tione collocato.”
Quæstionis partes vulgò termini appellantur; et an-
tecedens quidem minor terminus, consequens major ter-
minus dicitur: quia antecedente latius ferè est conse-
quens. Tertium autem argumentum ab Aristot. medium
et medius terminus dicitur. Non quod semper medius
inter duos quæstionis terminos in syllogismo collocetur,
sed eò quòd quasi arbiter de consensu eorum inter se
aut dissensu, disceptat et judicat. Atque hæc sunt tria
ilJa argumenta, ex quibus solis omnis syllogismus con-
ficitur ; duo scilicct questionis, et tertium argumentum ;
quæ vulgò “ tres termini” dicuntur. Termini autem
isti non semper simplices sunt voces, sed orationes non-
nunquam longiusculæ ; nec semper casibus rectis, sed
obliquis interdum efferuntur.
“ Partes syllogismi duæ sunt ; antecedens et conse-
quens. Antecedens syllogismi pars est, in qua quæstio
cum argumento disponitur.”
“ Syllogismi antecedens partes duas habet, proposi-
tionem et assumptionem : quæ vulgò præmissæ nomi-
nantur.
“ Propositio est prior pars antecedentis, qua quæsti-
omis saltem consequens cum argumento disponitur.”
“ Saltem ; * quia nonnunquam tota quæstio cum
argumento in propositione disponitur, uf infra patebit.
Propositio vulgò “ major” dicitur ; vel quia majo-
rem vim habet (est enim argumentationis quasi basis
et fundamentum) vel quia major terminus, i. e. conse-
quens quæstionis in propositione collocatur.
“ Assumptio est secunda pars antecedentis, quæ as-
sumitur è propositione.”
Assumitur enim inde vel tertium argumentum vel
tota assumptio, ut infra perspicietur. Hinc itaque ar-
gumentum tertium, sive medius terminus, dignoscitur,
quòd bis ponitur ante conclusionem. Assumptio vulgo
“ minor propositio” dicitur, vel quia minorem vim ob-
timet, ex propositione videlicet deductam ; vel quia
minor terminus, i. e. antecedens quæstionis, in ea stepe
dispomi soleat, mon semper, ut infra intelligemus.
“ Syllogismi autem pars consequens est, quæ com-
plectitur partes quæstionis, eamque concludit. Unde
complectio et conclusio dicitur.”
Hinc sequitur, conclusionem et verbis et terminorum
ordine, eandem planè esse cum proposita quæstione
oportere ; alioqui syllogismi fidem claudicare, et quasi
depositum non reddere. Secundo hinc intelligitur illa
regula, “ tertium argumentum sive medius terminus
nunquam ingreditur conclusionem.” Ratio est, quia
medium non est id quòd concluditur, meque de quo
quicquam ; sed id, quo adhibito, quæstio concluditur,
vel duo ejus termini inter se consentire aut dissentire
judicantur. Medius itaque terminus aut ulla pars ejus
in comclusione si sit, syllogismum vitiosum facit; id
facillime deprehenditur, si mom solum quæstio propo-
sita, sed præterea aliquid quod bis erat in præmissis
rcpetitum, conclusionem intrat.
902
ARTIS LOGICAE PLENIOR INSTITUTIO,
Cùm autem in omni syllogismo, ut ex ejus defini-
tione constat, quæstio cum argumento ita disponatur,
ut posito antecedente, i. e. concessis præmissis, neces-
sariò concludatur : quæ necessitas mon consequentis,
sed consequentiæ, non materiæ, sed formæ est ; hinc
intelligitur, nullam in syllogismi forma differentiam
esse contingentis et mecessarii, sed syllogismum omnem
mecessario concludere, teste etiam Aristot. Prior. l, 33,
eamque necessitatem ex legitima dispositione quæs-
tionis cum tertio argumento, mom ex necessaria partium
in antecedente dispositarum veritate pendere. Unde
et illi redarguuntur, qui vulgò dividunt syllogismum in
dialecticum et apodicticum, probabilem scilicet et de-
monstrativum, sive necessarium, cùm et illa distinctio
axiomatum sit, et syllogismi consequentia tam in com-
tingenti, immo in falso necessaria sit, quàm in vero et
necessario ; immo ex falsis præmissis conclusio nunc
vera nunc falsa necessariò sequatur: ut, “ ommis leo
est quadrupes: Socrates est leo ; ergo Socrates est qua-
drupes.” In quo simile quiddam habet syllogismus
axiomati connexo, et fortasse originem ab eo ducit:
mam ut connexum necessarium esse potest ex falsis
partibus, modò ipsa commexio sit vera ; ut, “ si leo est
quadrupes, et Socrates leo, Socrates necessario est
quadrupes ; ” sic syllogismus necessariò concludit ex
veris quidem partibus nil misi verum, ex falsis et falsum
et verum, modò ipsa dispositio sit legitima.
Quòd autem Aristotelici syllogismum dividunt in
verum et falsum sive apparentem; verum, cujus ma-
teria vera est ; in dialecticum sive probabilem, cujus
materia contingens est, et apodicticum sive demonstra-
tivum ac mecessarium, eumque vel perfectum, quæ vo-
catur ôiori sive à priori, quo accidens de subjecto per
causam vel efficientem vel fimalem positam quidem
aflirmatur, remotam verò negatur; et im imperfectum
quæ vocatur του ότι sive à posteriori, quo accidens de
subjecto per effectum probatur ; hæc quidem divisio,
qualiscumque est, cùm axiomatis propria sit, et vel ad
formam syllogismi ut in dialectico et apodictico, vel
omninò ad artem, ut in falso sive sophistico, nihil per-
timeat, melius rejicitur.
A P P E N D I X.
De Paralogismis qui hac generali doctrina syllogismi
^'edarguuntur.
ATQUE hæc syllogismi doctrina generalis fuit. Et
rectum quidem index est sui et obliqui, et veritatis
doctrina rectè tradita, errorem omnem ipsa per se in-
dicat atque etiam redarguit. Verùm cùm non sit ea
cujusque hominis perspicacia aut ingenii felicitas, ut
vel omnes technas adversarii animadvertere ex ipsis
regulis, vel omnes artis regulas memoria tenere semper
queat, alienum non erit de præcipuis captionibus quæ
committere in hanc generalem syllogismi doctrinam
solent, seorsim hic aliquid monere.
Cùm itaque syllogismi doctrina generali doceamur,
tria dumtaxat argumenta sive tres terminos in syllo-
gismo dispomi oportere, hinc facilè perspicuum est,
peccare omnem syllogismum in hanc doctrinam gene-
ralem, in quo termini vel plures termis disponantur,
vel pauciores: termini autem non tam sunt verba,
quàm verborum sensus et significationes.
Peccatur autem terminis pluribus, vel apertius vel
tectius. Apertius (ut puerilia de accentu, figura dic-
tionis, plurium, quæ dicitur interrogationum, et similia
omittam) cùm tres termini distimctè numerantur in
propositione : ut, “ qui est bomus et dialecticus, is est
bomus dialecticus ; Cleanthes est bomus et dialecticus ;
ergo, est bonus dialecticus.” Hæc fallacia conposi-
tionis dicitur ; quia divisa male componit. Contra ;
“ qui est bonus dialecticus, is est bomus et dialecticus ;
Cleanthes,” &c. Hæc fallacia est divisionis; quia
composita male dividit; vel quia composita proponit,
divisa concludit. Idem committitur etiam sine con-
junctione : ut, “bonus citharædus est bonus ; Nero est
bonus citharædus ; ergo, bonus.” Bonus duplici sig-
nificatione cum “ citharædo ” disponitur in proposi-
tione ; quatuor ergo termini. Sic etiam cùm non
iisdem verbis aliud planè proponitur, aliud assumitur:
ut, ** dextera Dei est ubique ; humanitas Christi sedet
ad dextram Dei ; ergo, humanitas Christi est ubique.”
Tectius verò peccatur, vel “ homonymia,” vel “ am-
phibolia.”
Homonymia sive æquivocatio est, primò, cum sim-
plicis vocis seu termini unius, siguificatio duplex pomi-
tur: ut, “ leo est bestia ; leo est papa; ergo, papa est
bestia.” Secundò, cum argumentum in uma parte pro-
priè, in altera tropicè ponitur ; vel in una parte pro
reipsa, in altera pro artificiali aliqua notione rei.
Hujusmodi sunt artium vocabula : ut, “ potens est
participium ; rex est potens; ergo, rex est participium.”
“ Animal est genus ; homo est animal ; ergo, homo est
genus.”
Amphibolia sive ambiguitas vel in syntaxi est, vel
in ipsa re. In syntaxi; ut, “ pecunia quæ est Cæsa-
ris, possidetur à Cæsare ; hæc pecunia est Cæsaris;
ergo, possidetur à Cæsare.” Ambiguitas in ipsa re,
quæ et “ prava expositio” vocatur, fit, cùm affectio rei
non eadem assumitur quæ proponitur ; mutata autem
affectiome, mutatur argumentum ; ut, &£ quas carnes
emisti, comedisti ; crudas emisti ; ergo, crudas come-
disti.” Hic propositio et de carnibus et de substantia
carnium loquitur ; assumptio, de qualitate earum :
dicendum ergo erat, “ quales carmes emisti,” &c.
Eadem est fallacia cum id quod in “ abstracto,” quod
aiunt, proponitur, in “ concreto” assumitur : ut “ can-
didum est disgregativum visus ; paries est candidus;
ergo, paries est disgregativum visus.” Etiam cùm in
ipsa copula quartus terminus latet: ut “ fortitudo non
est clementia ; principis est fortitudo ; ergo, principis
non est clementia.” Hic verbum “ est” in majore'
** esse,” in minore ** habere ” significat ; casuumque
mutationem rectorum in obliquos inducit; qui quatuor
esse terminos declarant. “ Nullus puer diu vixit:
Nestor fuit puer; ergo, Nestor non diu vixit.” Hic
major de eo qui est, minor de eo qui fuit puer loqui-
tur ; qui duo termini sunt. Quatuor denique sunt
termini cùm plus est in conclusione quàm in præ-
missis. -
AD PETRI RAMI METHODUM CONCINNATA {J03
Pauciores autem termini sunt termis, cùm tertium
argumentum deest. Hoc fit quoties vel idem sensu
vel æque obscurum pro argumento sumitur ; (idem
enim non est tertium ; aeque obscurum non est argu-
mentum) quæ “ petitio principii,” vel, ejus quod erat
in principio nominatur; quia postulatur ipsa quæstio
ut gratis, i. e. sine argumento concedatur: ut, “ ensis
est acutus ; gladius est ensis; ergo, gladius est acutus.”
Vel, “ quod omnis homo est, id singuli homines sunt ;
omnis homo est justus; ergo, singuli homines sunt
justi.” Huc refer jactatum illud, “ quæ non amisisti
habes, cornua mon amisisti, ergo cornua habes.” Ha-
bere et amittere privantia sunt et quidem sine medio
quatenus talia, ergo non amittere et habere sunt idem,
nullus itaque hic est medius terminus, sed pcrinde ac
si diceres ; quæ habes, habes, cornua habes, ergo habcs.
Hujus generis est, cùm tertium argumentum non inte-
grum è propositione assumitur : ut, “ omnes apostoli
sunt duodecim ; Petrus et Joannes sunt apostoli ; ergo,
Petrus et Joannes sunt duodecim.” Hic ** omnes”
collectivè sumptum, pars est tertii argumenti, quod
totum erat im assumptione assumendum. Ad hoc so-
phisma referrendæ sunt denique omnes conversiones
enuntiationum ; quoties rem dubiam non argumento
sive medio termino, sed conversione sola probare con-
tendunt : de qua supra monuimus. Atque his ferè
modis im formam syllogismi generalem peccatur.
Materia syllogismi vitiosa est, quoties antecedentis
pars vel altera vel utraque est falsa : id fit tot modis,
quot sumt argumentorum genera. Quorum cùm veritas
tum falsitas quanquam in axiomate judicatur, propterea
tamen quòd argumenta ipsa in syllogismo disponuntur,
qui modi præcipuè momimantur à dialecticis vel materia
sola, vel partim materia, partim forma vitiosi, eos hic
breviter attingemus.
Primus est materiæ solius ; diciturque “ non causæ
ut causæ.” Causæ autem momen hic usurpatur pro
quovis argumento, etiam non effecti ut effecti, non sub-
jecti ut subjecti, et sic deinceps. Hanc captionem
singulorum argumentorum definitiones facile refellunt.
Secundus est quæ vocatur fallacia “ accidentis,” sive
quod idem est, à dicto secundum quid ad dictum sim-
pliciter : vel contrà, à dicto simpliciter ad dictum se-
cundum quid ; quoties id quod adjuncti est, subjecto
attribuitur ; aut contrà quod subjecti, adjuncto : ut,
“ quæ non restituenda sunt domino furioso, non restitu-
enda sunt domino ; ** arma non restituenda sunt domi-
no furioso ; ergo, non domino :” vel contra : quæ
“ restituenda sunt domino, etiam domimo furioso ;
arma domino; ergo, domino furioso.” In his propositio
semper falsa est.
Tertius est “ignoratio elenchi;” (“ elenchus” autem
est redargutio quælibet sive vera sive falsa) cùm leges
oppositionis non observantur eidem mumero, secundum
idem, ad idem, et eodem tempore : ut ** cæci vident;
qui carent visu, sunt cæci ; ergo, qui carent visu,
vident.” Propositio distinguenda est; nempe, qui fue-
runt cæci, nunc vident. Sic ; “is qui non videt cæcus
est; dormiens non videt ; est ergo cæcus.” Ad idem
non est: propositio enim de potentia, assumptio de actu
videndi loquitur; vel quatuor sunt termini, et prava ex-
positio dici potest. Aliis ignorantia elenchi est, eiim
vel planè mutatur et torquetur status controversiæ, vel
conclusio adversarii non directè opponitur nostræ thesi
secundum canones legitimæ oppositionis.
Quartus est fallacia ** consequeutis,” sive comparato-
rum, quæ è contrariis quidem suut orta, sed parium
collatione tractata, cùm disputatur contraria esse con-
trariorum consequentia : quam regulam esse fallacem,
l. 1, c. 18, copiose ostenditur: ut, “ quae cidem æqualia,
inter se æqualia ; ergo quæ eidem sunt inæqualia,
inter se su11t inæqualia.” Ut, 2, et 2, sunt inæquales
ad 5; ergo sunt inter se inæquales. Duo latera quad-
rati synmetra non sunt diagono; ergo nom sunt inter se.
CA P. X.
De Syllogismo simplici contracto.
“ SylloGisMUs est simplex aut compositus.
“ Simplex, ubi pars consequens quæstionis disponitur
in propositione, pars antecedens in assumptione.”
Ut syllogismi forma generalis erat dispositio quæsti-
onis cum argumento, ita specialis quæque dispositio
quaestionis cum argumento cujusque speciei forma est,
Ex. gr. ** homo est animal : Socrates est homo ; ergo
Socrates est animal.” Hinc facile perspicitur, si
quæstionis terminus major non disponatur in propo-
sitione majore, minor in minore, syllogismum non esse
legitimum. Quòd si aliquando usu venit, ut antece-
dens quæstionis in propositione et consequens in as-
sumptione disponi videatur, intelligere debemus syllo-
gismi partes inverti: ut, “ Socrates est homo : homo
est animal; ergo Socrates est animal.”
Sequitur jam syllogismi simplicis distimctio in ad-
.junctos modos, qui ex partium, i. e. axiomatum affec-
tione oriuntur.
“ Syllogismus simplex est affirmatus è partib. omnib.
affirmatis. Negatus ex negata antecedentis parte al-
tera cum complexione.” Non ex ommib. negatis, ut
affirmatus ex omnibus affirmatis ; misi enim argumen-
tum tertium cum altera parte quæstionis consentiat,
nihil probat.
Ut autem syllogismorum tota ratio intelligatur
(quod hoc loco fieri commodissimè posse arbitror)
sciendum est eam duab. præcipuè legibus fundari ;
altera parium, altera generis ex loco petita, Ex
parium loco ; ** quæ conveniunt in uno aliquo ter-
tio, conveniumt inter se ; et contrà, quæ non in
uno tertio, non inter se.” Ex loco generis ; “ quod
generi gemeraliter attribuitur, id omnibus etiam attri-
buitur speciebus quæ sub eo genere continentur.”
Hæc regula vocatur in scholiis, “ dictum de omni et
nnllo.” Illa à geometricis primum sensu præeunte fa-
cilius inventa est; et præcipitur Aristot. 1, Prior, c. 1.
Ut enim illic norma, “ si duab. lineis æque conveniat,
eas lineas demonstrat convenire inter se sive esse
aequales;” eodem planè modo medius terminus si duob.
conclusionis terminis conveniat, velut norma demom-
904
ARTIS LOGICÆ PLENIOR INSTITUTIO,
strat, convenire duos illos inter se, et contrà. Itaque
si quæstio affirmanda est, quærendum est per omnes
inventionis locos argumentum quod utrique parti quæs-
tionis conveniat: si meganda est, quærendum quod
uni parti conveniat, ab altera dissentiat ; mam si ab
utraque parte dissentit, tertium argumentum esse non
poterit, nihil m. probabit. Ex. gr. quæritur “am
Socrates sit animal?” Si aflirmanda est hæc quæstio,
ad illa duo argumenta quæ in quæstione sunt, “ So-
crates et animal,” quærendum aliquod tertium argu-
mentum est, quod cum utraque parte quæstionis com-
sentiat. Ejusmodi autem est homo: mam homo
convenit cum “ animali,” ut species cum suo gemere ;
cum Socrate, ut genus cum sua specie ; ergo “ Socrates
et animal” conveniunt inter se ; adeoque “ Socrates est
animal.” Sin neganda est quæstio, ut, “Socrates mom
est bestia,” quærendum est argumentum tertium, quod
ab altera tantùm parte dissentiat. Hujusmodi autem
est “ homo: homo m. non est bestia, at Socrates est
homo; ergo Socrates non est bestia.” Sin medius cum
meutro quæstionis termino conveniat, neutrius norma
esse potest ; neque ostendit, inter se conveniant, necne ;
meque ** de omni ” dicit neque “ de nullo ; ” adeoque
nec probat quicquam mec refellit. Unde illa regula ;
“ ex utraque præmissa negata mihil concluditur : Aris-
tot. 1, Prior. c. 24, ut “ nullus lapis est animal; nullus
homo est lapis, nullus igitur homo est animal.” Ex-
cipitur tamen ab hac regula, si medius terminus sit ne-
gatus, vel duplex negatio sit in majore : ut, “ quod non
sentit, mom est animal : planta non sentit ; ergo planta
non est animal.” Hic enim major, quæ videtur
esse negata, æquipollet affirmatae ; eademque est acsi
diceret, “ omne quod semtit est animal : ” negationes-
que istæ topicæ potius et infinitæ, quàm axiomaticæ
sunt, partiumque megationes non totius axiomatis, hoc
potius modo enuntiamdi, “ quod est mom sentiens, est
non animal : ” et hoc affirmatum planè axioma est.
Sed hac de re plura dicemus infra cap. 12, ad secun-
dam speciem explicati. Cur autem complexio, negata
antecedentis parte altera, megata quoque esse debet,
ratio est, trita illa regula, “ conclusio sequitur partem
debiliorem :” negatumque debilius est affirmato, parti-
culare generali, contingens necessario. Regulæ au-
tem ratio est, quia conclusio est præmissarum quasi
effectum : nullum autem effectum est toto genere dig-
mius aut fortius sua causa. Fallit ergo hic paralogis-
mus : ** qui non differt à bruto differt à Sophromisci
filio : Socrates mom differt à Sophronisci filio ; ergo non
à bruto.” Haec conclusio nom sequitur, uti debuit, as-
sumptionem negatam, sed propositionem affirmatam :
et enim ** mon differt à bruto” mon propositionis totius,
sed antecedentis duntaxat ejus est megatio: idemque
valet, acsi affirmatum sic esset; “qui idem est cum
bruto.” Sequitur autem conclusio sive consequens
partem antecedentis megatam non affirmatam, quia si
partes conclusionis non consentiunt in argumento tertio,
non consentiunt inter se: sequitur partem specialem,
non generalem, quia genus concludit speciem, non spe-
cies genus ; juxta illud superius dictum “ de omni et
nullo.” -
* Syllogismus simplex (nimirum qui ex simplicibus
axiomatis constat) est vel generalis, vel specialis, vel
proprius.”
“ Generalis è propositione et assumptione generali-
bus.”
Non ex generali etiam conclusione, ut patebit infra.
“ Specialis est ex altera tantum generali.”
Hæc enim regula firmissima quoque est, “ ex utraque
præmissa particulari nihil concluditur.” Exigit enim
dictum “ de omni et nullo ” partem antecedentis unam
saltem generalem : nec non in duabus particularibus
quatuor sunt termimi : cùm enim individua, quæ vo-
cant, “ vaga,” particulares propositiones faciunt, fit ut
de alio subjectò major, de alio mimor ferè loquatur: ut,
“ quoddam animal est homo: quoddam animal est
brutum ; ergo quoddam brutum est homo. Quidam
sunt divites: quidam sunt docti ; ergo quidam docti
sunt divites.”
“ Proprius est ex utraque propria.”
Cur autem ex utraque propria cùm non ex utraque
particulari, quia nempe hæc certa sunt et de eodem
dicta, illa vaga “ ut suprâ.”
Himc liquet, cur ut axioma, ita syllogismus specialis
in particularem et proprium divida non potuerit, cùm
syllogismus proprius non sit species syllogismi specia-
lis. Quare autem partes omnes mon sint propriæ, i. e.
axiomata propria, infra etiam apparebit. Et syllogis-
mus quidem proprius, etsi ab Aristotele neglectus, ab
aliis rejectus sit, usum tamen frequentissimum habet.
“ Simplex syllogismus est contractus partibus, vel
explicatus.”
Aristoteles in tres figuras dividit syllogismum ; pri-
mam, secundam, et tertiam. Verùm hanc Rami di-
chotomiam esse commodiorem et naturæ ordini aptius
respondere res ipsa demonstrabit.
“ Contractus syllogismus est, cùm exemplum pro
argumento ita subjicitur particulari quæstioni, ut utram-
que ejus partem antecedere et assumptione affirmatum
esse intelligatur.”
Exempli gratia: “ quædam confidentia est virtus, ut
constantia. Quædam confidentia non est virtus, ut au-
dacia.”
In his, ut cernimus, primò quæstio particularis dun-
taxat proponitur ; generale enim, ut inquit Aristot. pr.
I, 6, et 2, 7, in hac specie, quæ tertia nimirum Arist.
figura est, concludere non licet : addo etiam, neque
proprium ; quæ ratio est, cur syllogismus generalis nom
ex omnibus generalibus et proprium non ex omnibus
propriis definitur, cùm in hac specie consequens sive
conclusio debeat semper esse particularis, etiamsi utra-
que pars antecedentis generalis aut propria fuerit :
unde sequitur, particulares duntaxat quæstiones im hac
specie concludi. Deinde exemplum speciale pro argu-
mento subjicitur sive subjungitur, ut “ constantia.”
Hujus autem syllogismi dispositio specialis htec esse
intelligitur, si contractum explicamus (tametsi mum-
quam ferè nisi contractus in usu occurrit) ut exemplum
sive argumentum tertium, primò utramque partem
quæstionis in præmissis, quod aiunt, antecedat, sive
præmissæ utriusque subjectum sit.
“ Hic autem argumentum sive exemplum utramque
partem quæstionis antecedere intelligitur,” quia quæs-
AD PETRI RAMI METHODUM CONCINNATA.
905
tionis pars utraque argumento sive exemplo attribui-
tur, i. e. de eo vel affirmatur vel negatur ; perinde quasi
explicatè diceretur, “ constantiam esse virtutem, et esse
confidentiam ; ergo quandam confidentiam esse virtu-
tem.” Item, “ audaciam non esse virtutem, et tamen
esse confidentiam ; ideoque quandam confidentiam non
esse virtutem.” Exemplum ergo sive argumentum ter-
tium in contracto, etsi quæstioni subjicitur, tamen si
contractum explicas, et propositionis et assumptionis
antecedens sive subjectum esse reperitur. Est autem
contractus enthymematis quædam species, quæ, cùm
explicatur, in peculiarem quandam syllogismi formam
resolvitur, ideoque erat specialiter docenda. Secundò,
postulat hujus syllogismi dispositio, ut assumptio sem-
per affirmetur. Cùm enim tertium argumentum spe-
ciale exemplum sit, adeoque species antecedentis sive
minoris termini quæstionis qui in assumptione semper
disponitur, atque ita antecedens sit tertii argumenti
genus ; necesse est, genus de specie semper affirmari.
“ Atque ista expositio quæstionis per exemplum
quod subjicitur, principium syllogismi partibus expli-
cati ab Aristot. I, pr. 6, &c. efficitur, tamquam per se
pleno syllogismi judicio clarior et illustrior.”
Prior ergo est ordine syllogismus contractus explica-
to, cùm quia clarior, tum quia simplicior: est autem
ita clarus, ut mens eum, sicuti est contractus, antè per-
cipiat, quàm partibus explicari possit ; ideoque usus
disserendi contracta hac forma contentus, formam ex-
plicatam rarissime solet adhibere. Claritas autem ejus
eximia vel hinc perspicitur; quòd cùm duo duntaxat
hujus speciei sint sophismata, eorum inanitatem con-
tracta hujus syllogismi forma facilius detegit quàm ex-
plicata, ut infra ostendetur.
Ad tollendum itaque dubitationem, non hic supplen-
dæ syllogismi partes, ut in enthymemate, sed contra-
hendæ; contractum quippe explicatio hic est explica-
tius, et ab judicio syllogismi ad axiomatis clarius judi-
cium hic est quasi provocandum et regrediendum.
Quod ad modos attinet hujus speciei, si contractam
tantummodo formam spectamus, pluribus non est opus
quàm duobus, uno affirmato, altero negato : quia non
refert, utrum exemplum subalterna sit species an spe-
cialissima. Sin explicatam hanc speciem spectamus,
plures habet modos quàm species reliquæ : quatuor
autem sunt affirmati, totidem negati ; quorum duo
sunt generales, quatuor speciales, duo proprii: quatuor
autem sunt in hac specie speciales modi, cùm in reli-
quis bini tantum sint ; quia in hac specie propositio
potest esse vel generalis vel particularis, im reliquis
verò nunquam particularis est. Exempla hæc sunt.
Primus modus est affirmatus generalis : ut, “ con-
stantia est virtus: constantia est confidentia ; ergo
quædam confidentia est virtus.”
Secundus est negatus generalis: ut, “ audacia non
est virtus : audacia est confidentia ; ergo quædam con-
fidentia non est virtus.”
Affirmatis specialis duplex est ; tertius et quartus.
Tertius, cujus propositio est particularis: ut, “ quidam
sapiens est dives : omnis sapiens est laudabilis ; ergo
quidam laudabilis est dives.”
Quartus, cujus propositio est generalis : ut, “ omnis
sapiens est laudabilis, quidam sapiens est pauper ;
ergo quidam pauper est laudabilis.”
Negatus item specialis est duplex ; quintus et sex-
tus. Quintus, cujus propositio est particularis : ut,
•* quidam stultus non est fortunatus : omnis stultus et
contemptus ; ergo quidam contemptus non est fortu-
matus.”
Sextus, cujus propositio est generalis: ut, “ stultus
non est beatus : quidam stultus est fortunatus ; ergo.
quidam fortunatus non est beatus.”
Reliqui duo proprii sunt, cùm exemplum est species
specialissima sive individuum. Affirmatus est, “ So-
crates est philosophus: Socrates est homo : ergo qui-
dam homo est philosophus.” Negatus est, “ Thersites
non est philosophus: Thersites est homo ; ergo quidam
homo non est philosophus.”
Contracti syllogismi duo vitia sive sophismata sunt,
quæ definitione præcaventur. Unum, si quæstio sive
conclusio particularis non sit : ut “ omnis homo est
rationalis : omnis homo est animal ; ergo omne animal
est rationale,” ratio est, quia id quod non generaliter
attribuitur in assumptione (non enim omne animal est
homo) non potest esse generale subjectum conclusio-
nis. Alterum est cùm assumptio est megata : ut,
“ homo est animal : homo non est bestia ; ergo bestia
non est animal.” Quæ duo sophismata in contracta
hujus syllogismi forma, facilius, ut suprà dixi, dete-
guntur, et primo statim intuitu ridentur : ut, “ omne
animal est rationale, ut homo : quædam bestia non est
animal, ut homo.”
C AP. XI.
De Prima Specie Syllogismi simplicis e.rplicat.
SylloGisMUs explicatus præter ipsum nomen aliam
definitionem non desiderat. Dicitur “ explicatus,”
non quod semper omnibus occurrat partibus explicatus,
sic enim vix millesimus quisque syllogismus occurrit,
sed quod partes non modo in forma integra, verùm
etiam in enthymemate semper distinctas habet.
“ In syllogismo explicato propositio est generalis
aut propria; et conclusio similis antecedenti aut parti
debiliori.”
Similis, nempe et qualitate et quantitate : antece-
denti, utrique scilicet ejus parti, propositioni et assump-
tioni, si ipsi inter se similes sunt sive affirmatæ sive
generales sive propriæ, sin dissimiles, parti debiliori,
ut suprà.
“ Syllogismi explicati species duæ sunt. Prima ubi
argumentum semper sequitur, negatum in altera
parte.”
Hæc prima species explicati, “ figura secunda” ab
Aristotele dicitur. Prior autem hæc species efficitur,
quia dispositio ejus est simplicior, ut ex altera specie
collata comperiemus. Sequitur autem semper argu-
mentum partem utramque quæstionis, consequentem
im propositione, antecedentem in assumptione : unde
906
ARTIS LOGÎC'AE PLENIOR INSTITUTIO,
ab Aristot. p. 1, 5, “ prædicatum de ambabus” dicitur.
Negatum autem dicitur argumentum in altera parte
quia pars altera vel propositio nempe vel assumptio
semper est negata. Unde cùm megata etiam conclusio
semper necessariò sit, sequitur, hujus speciei modos
omnes megatos esse, et negatas duntaxat quæstiones
hac specie concludi, quæ omnis in refutatiomibus est
posita.
Modi hujus syllogismi sex sunt ; et omnes quidem,
ut diximus, negati ; duo generales, duo speciales, duo
proprii.
Generalis primus, cujus propositio negatur: “ Tur-
batus non benè utitur ratione : sapiens bene utitur ra-
tione; sapiens igitur non est turbatus.” Hoc exem-
plum in sua crypsi sic apud Ciceronem est, 3 Tuscul.
“ Quemadmodum oculus comturbatus non est probè
affectus ad suum munus fungendum, et reliquæ partes
totumque corpus à statu cùm est motum, deest officio
suo ac muneri ; sic conturbatus amimus non est probè
affectus ad exequendum munus suum. Munus autem
animi est ratione uti: et sapientis animus ita semper
affectus est, ut ratione optimè utatur; nunquam igitur
est perturbatus.” Crypsis hic unica redundantia est :
nam ordo partium rectus est, nec ulla pars deest : pro-
syllogismus unus est propositionis: illustratur enim
propositio similitudine plena, cujus redditio est ipsius
propositionis sentemtia.
Generalis secundus, cujus assumptio negatur : “ Res
mortalis est composita : animus mon est compositus ;
animus igitur non est mortalis.” Hic syllogismus
crypsi involutus est apud Cic. l Tuscul. quo is judicat
amimum immortalem esse. “ In animi autem cogni-
tioue,” inquit, “ dubitare non possumus, nisi fortè in
physicis plumbei sumus, quin nihil sit animis admix-
tum, nihil concretum, nihil coagmentatum, nihil du-
plex. Quod cùm ita sit, certè nec secerni, mec dividi,
nec discerpi, nec distrahi potest ; nec interire igitur :
est enim interitus quasi discessus et secretio ac diremp-
tus earum partium quæ ante interitum junctione aliqua
tenebantur.” In hoc exemplo partium ordo invertitur:
nam postremo in loco propositionis sententia ponitur,
interitum esse scilicet rerum compositarum, assumptio
occurrit prima, “ in animi autem cognitione,” &c. Et
ornatur synonymis : conclusio media est atque à causa
illustratur, “ ergo nec secerni, &c., nec interire igitur.”
Specialis primus est, cujus propositio negatur: * li-
vidus non est magnanimus, Maximus est: Maximus
igitur non est lividus.” Hoc judicio Ovidius 3 de Pont.
eleg. 3, concludit. -
** Livor, iners vitium, mores mon exit in altos;
Utque latens ima vipera serpit humo.
Mens tua sublimis supra genus eminet ipsum.
Grandius ingenio nec tibi nomen ine$t.
Ergo, alii noceant, miseris, optentque timeri,
Tinctaque mordaci spicula felle gerant.
At tua supplicibns domus est assueta juvandis;
In quorum numero me precor esse velis.”
Hujus etiam exempli crypsis redundantia sola est :
propositio suos habet prosyllogismos, et livor pro livido
ponitur, adjunctum pro subjecto ; et illustratur à com-
trario abjecto ; isque à simili, “ vipera : ” assumptio,
i. e. Maximi magnanimitas, illustratur partim à minori
totius generis magnanimitate, partim à notatione no-
minis ejus, i. e. Maximi ; cujus parem esse animi mag-
mitudinem demonstrat: conclusio negat Maximum esse
lividum, partim quia dissimilis sit lividorum, quos de-
scribit ab effectis, “ ergo alii noceant,” &c. ; partim,
quia ipse faciat quæ magnamimus consuevit, qui dis-
paratus à livido est; “ at tua supplicibus,” &c.
Specialis secumdus est, cujus assumptio negatur:
“ saltator est luxuriosus: Muræna mom est luxuriosus;
Muræna igitur non est saltator.” Cic. pro Muræn.
“ Nemo enim ferè saltat sobrius, misi fortè insanet: ne-
que in solitudine neque in convivio moderato atque
honesto. Intempestivi convivii, amoeni loci, multarum
deliciarum comes est extrema saltatio. Tu mihi arripis
id quod necesse est omnium vitiorum esse postremum :
relinquis illa quibus remotis, hoc vitium omnino esse
non potest: nullum turpe convivium, non amor, non
comessatio, non libido, non sumptus ostenditur: et cùm
ea non reperiantur quæ voluptatis momem habent,
quæque vitiosa sunt, in quo ipsam luxuriam reperire
non potes, in eo te umbram luxuriæ reperturum putas?”
Hujus etiam syllogismi partes prosyllogismis exornam-
tur. Propositionis sententia his verbis continetur, “ in-
tempestivi convivii,” &c., quam prosyllogismus præce-
dens illustrat à contrariis, “ nemo ferè saltat sobrius,”
&c ; assumptio per partes explicatur, “ mullum turpe
convivium,” &c., et à minoribus quibusdam illustratur:
cujus etiam prosyllogismus præcedit, reprehensio mempe
Catonis, quòd postularet consequens, non probato ante-
cedente : postremo loco ponitur conclusio, quæ negat
Murænam esse saltatorem repetendo quædam quæ in
assumptione præcesserant ; et interrogatione fortius
negando.
Hoc judicii modo Ovidius 1 Trist. eleg. I, tripliciter
concludit dum carminum suorum excusationem expo-
nlt :
“ Carmima proveniunt amimo deducta seremo ;
Nubila sunt subitis tempora nostra malis.
Carmina secessum scribentis et otia quærunt.
Me mare, me venti, me fera jactat hyems.
Carminibus metus omnis abest ; ego perditus ensem
Hæsurum jugulo jam puto jamque meo.
Hæc quoque quæ facio, judex mirabitur æquus ;
Scriptaque cum venia qualiacumque leget.”
Tres hic syllogismi sunt qui in unum sic reduci pos-
sunt: “ Ut quis possit carmina bona scribere, oportet is
lætus sit, otiosus, securus: ego nec lætus sum, nec
otiosus, nec securus ; ergo bona carmina non scribo.”
Pro assumptionibus prosyllogismi à dissentaneis et im-
pedientibus causis ponuntur. Deinde conclusio sequi-
tur, non ipsa quidem sed ejus consectarium ; mirum
esse si bona sunt ; sed potius cum venia esse legenda,
quia non sunt bona.
Proprius primus est, cujus propositio negatur ; ut,
“ Agesilaus mon est pictus ab Apelle : Alexander est
pictus ab Apelle ; Alexander igitur non est Agesilaus.”
Proprius secumdus est, cujus assumptio negatur : ut
“ Cæsar oppressit patriam : Tullius non oppressit pa-
triam ; ergo Tullius non est Cæsar.”
AD PETRI RAMI METHODUM CONCINNATA.
907
Sophismata hic duo sunt : quorum unum utrique
explicati speciei commune est, alterum primæ speciei
proprium. Commune est, cùm propositio est particu-
laris ; quæ ex communi explicatorum regula generalis
aut propria esse debuit.
Sophisma prima speciei proprium est, cùm argumen-
tum tertium in altera parte antecedentis non negatur,
ut definitio primæ speciei præcipit : unde illud vulgò
dictum, Ex duabus affirmatis in secunda figura, nihil
concluditur. Excipiendum tamen est, si propositio
fortè axioma reciprocum sit : ut, “ homo est animal
rationale: Socrates est animal rationale ; ergo Socrates
est homo.” Verùm hic potius inversio partium propo-
sitionis intelligenda est ; * animal rationale est homo:”
atque ita ad sequentem speciem syllogismi refere-
tur.
CAP. XII.
De Secunda Specie Syllogismi simplicis explicati.
“ SEcuNDA species explicati syllogismi est, quando
argumentum antecedit in propositione, sequitur affirma-
tum in assumptione.”
Hæc species ab Aristotele, “ prima figura” dicitur ;
sed naturæ ordine est postrema. Cùm enim in reli-
quis speciebus dispositio questionis cum argumento
tertio simplex et uniusmodi sit, in hac specie duplex
est; in propositione enim argumentum antecedit quæs-
tionis consequentem, utpote specialius; in assumptiome
sequitur quæstionis antecedentem, utpote generalius ;
unde fortè medius terminus in hac solùm figura pro-
priè dicitur. Quòd autem propositio nunquam particu-
laris, conclusio semper antecedenti similis aut parti
debiliori est, id habet commune cum explicata specie
priore ; hoc etiam cum contracta, affirmatum esse in
assumptione ; nisi in contracta, quæstionis antecedens
ut generalius de argumento ; in hac, argumentum de
antecedente quæstionis affirmatur.
Hæc maxime figura fundatur dicto illo ** de omni et
nullo :” antecedens enim sive subjectum propositionis
continet genus, adeoque est semper generalis, subjec-
tum assumptionis continet speciem quæ de illo gemere
affirmata. Assumptio itaque semper esse debet affirma-
ta. Ex quo sequitur, quicquid de genere in propositi-
ome dicitur, id de eo quod in assumptione species esse
illius generis affirmatur, in conclusione rectissimè con-
cludi. Quod si genus illud subjectum scil. propositio-
nis termino infinito negante, seu topicè contradictorio
exprimitur, non negata continuò censenda erit assump-
tio quamvis- esse videatur ; assumit n. tantummodo
genus ex propositione termino illo topicè duntaxat
contradictorio expressum, ipsa nihil axiomaticè negat:
ut, “ quisquis non credit, damnatur : aliquis Judæus
non credit ; ergo aliquis Judæus damnatur.” Hic pro-
positionis subjectum est genus “ quisquis non credit,”
i. e. omnis non credens sive infidelis : Judæus est ex
numero sive specie non credentium, id quod assumptio
non negat, sed affirmat æque acsi sic diceret, “ aliquis
Judæus est mon credens.”
Ex hac autem affirmatione sequitur, nullum argu-
mentum ab antecedente quæstionis dissentameum, in
hac secunda specie locum habere. De cætero, haec spe-
cies neque ad particulares quæstiones, ut contracta,
neque ad negatas, ut prior species explicati, restringi-
tur ; sed ad omnia quæstionum genera concludenda
rectè adhibetur.
Restant hujus speciei modi ; qui quanquam partim
affirmati sunt partim negati, plures tamen non sunt
quàm in altera specie, ubi omnes erant solùm negati.
Æqualitatis ratio est quòd assumptionis affirmatio, et
solius inde propositionis negatio negatorum numerum
minuit. Modi igitur hujus speciei sex itidem sunt ;
tres affirmati, tres item negati ; utrique rursum sunt
generales, speciales, et proprii.
Primus est affirmatus generalis : ut, “ omne justum
est utile ; omne honestum est justum, omne igitur ho-
nestum est utile.” Quod Cic. 2 Off. ita concludit:
“ quicquid justum sit, id etiam utile esse censent : item
quod honestum, idem justum : ex quo efficitur, ut quic-
quid honestum sit, idem sit utile.” Propositionis pro-
syllogismus à testimonio Stoicorum primo in loco poni-
tur, deinde omnes partes ordine sequuntur. Partes hujus
syllogismi sunt axiomata relatæ essentiæ, quæ simpli-
cium axiomatum vim habent.
Secundus modus est negatus generalis: “ Timidus
non est liber: avarus est timidus ; avarus itaque non
est liber.” Hoc ita concluditur et judicatur ab Horatio,
epist. l. 1, 16 :
** Quò melior servo, quò liberior sit avarus,
I m triviis fixum, cùm se demittit ob assem,
Non video. Nam qui cupiet, metuet quoque : porro
Qui metuens vivit, liber mihi mom erit unquam.”
In hoc exemplo duplex est crypsis, inversio partium
et prosyllogismus. Primo in loco ponitur conclusio,
eaque duabus prosyllogismis illustratur; primò à pari,
quod “ avarus” non ** sit liberior servo :” secundò ab
effectis, quod ** se demittit ob assem.” Tum ponitur
assumptio “ qui cupiet, metuet quoque.” Propositio
postremo in loco ponitur,
** Qui metuens vivit, liber mihi non erit unquam.”
Sic Terent. in Eunuch. concludit et judicat: “ con-
silii expers, consilio regi non potest: amor est consilii
expers; consilio itaque regi non potest.” Syllogismus
his verbis sequitur:
“ Here, quæ res in se meque consilium neque modum
Habet ullum, eam consilio regere non potes.
In amore hæc omnia insunt vitia; injuriæ,
Suspiciones, imimicitiæ, induciæ,
Bellum, pax rursum : incerta hæc si tu postules
Ratione certâ facere, nihilo plus agas,
Quàm si des operam, ut cum ratione insanias.”
In hoc exemplo propositio suo loco est “ quæ res in
se, &c? Pro assumptione ponitur ejus prosyllogismus
variorum amoris adjunctorum quæ consilium impediunt;
amor consilii expers est, “ quia in amore hæc insunt
vitia, &c? Conclusio sequitur “ incerta hæc, &c? Cu
908
ARTIS LOGICÆ PLENIOR INSTITUTIO,
jus sententia comparatione parium comprehenditur,
ergo si amorem consilio regere vis, “ nihilo plus,” &c.
Tertius modus est affirmatus specialis : “ Consules
propter virtutem facti, studiosè remp. tueri debent :
Cicero est propter virtutem factus consul ; Cicero igitur
studiosè remp. tueri debet.” Sic orator diligentiam
suam, Agr. 2, concludit et judicat: “ Nam cùm om-
nium consulum,” ait, “ gravis in repub. custodienda,
cura ac diligentia debet esse, tum eorum maximè, qui
non in incunabulis, sed in campo sunt consules facti.
Nulli populo Rom. pro me majores nostri sposponde-
runt mihi creditum est: à me petere quod debeo, me
ipsum appellare debetis. Quemadmodum cùm pete-
bam, nulli me auctores generis mci vobis commenda-
runt: sic siquid deliquero, mullæ sunt imagines, quæ
me à vobis deprecentur. Quare modò ut vita sup-
petat (quanquam ego sum is qui eam possim ab isto-
rum scelere insidiisque defendere) polliceor vobis, Qui-
rites, bona fide, remp. vigilanti homini, non timido,
diligenti, non ignavo, commisistis.” Partes hujus
syllogismi prosyllogismis ornantur. Propositio à mi-
nori illustratur: cujus sententia est comparationis red-
ditio, diversis illustrata: “ nam cùm omnium consulum
gravis, &c. tum eorum maximè :” diversa sunt, “ non
in incunabulis, sed in campo.” Assumptio sequitur,
“ nulli populi Rom. &c.,” quæ iisdem rursus diversis
illustratur, et à simili ; meis, non majorum meritis ; in
campo, non in incunabulis : similitudo his verbis con-
tinetur ; ** quemadmodum cùm petebam, &c.” Tan-
dem conclusionis sententia sequitur illustrata, primùm
testimonio promissi, obligatiomis vim habentis, “ polli-
ceor, &c. ;'' deinde diverso et disparato ; “ quare
modo, &c.” Ergo Cicero erit vigilans, non timidus;
diligens, mon ignavus.
Aliud exemplum : “ quod optatum redierit, gratum
est: Lesbia Catullo optata rediit ; grata igitur est.”
** Si quicquam cupidoque optantique obtigit umquam et
Insperanti, hoc gratum est animo propriè.
Quare hoc est gratum, nobis quoque charius auro,
Quod te restituis, Lesbia, mi cupido.
Restituis cupido atque insperamti ipsa refers te
Nobis; 6 lucem candidiore nota !
Quis me uno vivit felicior, aut magis hac quid
Optandum vita dicere quis poterit!”
In hoc exemplo propositio videtur esse composita,
simplex tamen est, et syllogismus simplex ; quia sim-
plex est dispositio argumenti cum partibus quæstionis.
Duplex hic crypsis est, reversio et redundantia. Primo
loco est propositio “si quicquam cupido, &c.” i. e. quic-
quid cupido; “ si ” enim non semper connexi mota est.
Assumptio est in quarto et quinto versu, Lesbia Catullo
optata rediit. Comclusio est versu tertio illustrata à
minori, * quare hoc est gratum et auro charius.” Tri-
bus postremis versibus iteratur sententia conclusionis,
primum ab adjuncto tempore, “ ò lucem :” deinde à
pari, * nemo me felicior, aut magis hac quid, &c.”
Quartus modus est negatus specialis : “ deceptor
amantis puellæ non est laudandus: Demophoon est
deceptor amantis puellæ ; Demophoon igitur non est
laudandus.” Phyllis apud Ovidium ita judicat Demo-
phoontem laudandum non esse.
** Fallere credemtem non est operosa puellam
Gloria: simplicitas digma favore fuit.
Sum decepta tuis et amans et foemina verbis;
Dii faciant laudis summa sit ista tuæ.”
Propositio suum obtinet locum cum prosyllogismo
adjunctæ simplicitatis, ut causæ cur deceptor non sit
laudandus. Assumptio sequitur, sum “ decepta tuis,”
&c. Conclusionis sententia imprecatione continetur,
** dii faciant, &c.”
Quintus modus est affirmatus proprius : ut, “ Octa-
vius est hæres Cæsaris: ego sum Octavius ; sum igitur
hæres Cæsaris.”
Sextus modus est negatus proprius: ut, “ Antonius
non est filius Cæsaris : tu es Antonius ; non es igitur
filius Cæsaris.”
Hujus itaque speciei laus est præ cæteris, quòd om-
nia quæstionum genera concludat ; nempe generales,
speciales, vel proprias, easque vel affirmatas vel negatas;
et præsertim generales affirmatas : ob quam potis-
simum causam Aristoteles speciem hanc et reliquis an-
teposuit, quod primus ejus modus nempe “ affirmatus
generalis” sit maximè scientificus, post. l. 1 1, cùm
praecepta artium solus demonstret, et reductionem
reliquarum ad hanc figuram sive speciem laboriosè
et subtiliter excogitavit, verum non sic præstat hæc
species cæteris duabus, ut earum idcirco ad hanc re-
ductio cum tanta ut sit, alphabeti vexatione elaboranda
fuerit, quandoquidem et reliquae species mom imperfectæ
sunt, nec minus necessariò concludunt, id enim syllo-
gismi speciebus commune cunctis est, quæstiones de-
nique illas, quæ ad ipsarum judicium rectè referum-
tur, interdum aptius concludunt, quàm in hac specie
concludi queunt. Meritò itaque Galenus, l. 2, de
placit. Hippoc. et Plat. reductionem hanc omnemque
ejus supellectilem abecedariam tanquam vanissimæ
subtilitatis doctrinam inanem ac futilem post Antipa-
trum et Chrysippum explodit. Et Keckermannus ipse,
in P. Ramum ferè iniquior, reductionem tamen illam
quam vocant “ per impossibile,” ad eos duntaxat refu-
tamdos inventam, homines sanè absurdos et rarò admo-
dum repertos, qui utraque præmissa concessa, conclu-
sionem megent, fatetur se potius propter consuetudinem
scholarum, quàm propter magnum ejus usum retinuisse.
At consuetudo certè gnaviter mugandi ejicienda è
scholis potius, quàm retinenda erat.
Tres hic paralogismi refellendi sunt ; quorum duo
sunt utrique speciei explicatae communes, propositio
nimirum particularis, et conclusio partis non debilioris:
utriusque exemplum hoc esse potest: “ quoddam
animal est rationale : bestia est animal; ergo bestia est
rationalis.” Et præterea totum medium, nempe
“ quoddam animal,” non assumitur.
Proprius in hac specie paralogismus est argumenti
negatio in assumptione : ut, “ omnis homo est animal:
equus non est homo ; ergo equus non est animal.”
Hic etiam “ solus et unicus” pro negandi particulis
habendi sunt ; pariterque reddunt assumptionem cap-
tiosam : ut, “ quicquid est in mea domo, est in oppido:
umicus fons est in mea domo; ergo unicus fons est in
oppido.” Sic, “ quicquid est risibile, est animal : solus
AD PETRI IRAMI METHODUM CONCINNATA.
909
homo est risibilis: ergo solus homo est animal.” Tam
enim hæ particulæ quàm negatio in minore, ostendunt
non reciprocum esse majorem ; adeòque conclusionem
ex majore per minorem, vel generale ex proprio non
sequi.
Expendenda porrò hic definitionis verba sunt ; quae
non tam assumptionem ipsam quàm argumentum in
assumptione affirmatum significant. Cum enim pro-
positionis antecedens (quod tertium argumentum est)
Inegatione infinita topica duntaxat exprimatur, assump-
tionis consequens (quod etiam tertium argumentum est)
eandem negationem retinere debet ; alioqui non se-
queretur argumentum affirmatum in assumptione, sed
contradictione sublatum. Negatio autem hæc non
dicenda est vel assumptionis vel argumenti megatio, sed
argumenti infiniti affirmatio: tum enim demum nega-
tur in assumptione argumentum, cùm illius negatio
propositionis affirmationi opponitur. Exempli gratia:
“ qui non est dives, contemnitur. Posthumus non est
dives ; ergo Posthumus contemnitur.” Assumptionem
hic non megari probat affirmatio conclusionis: sed
perinde est acsi hoc modo argumentaretur : “ omnis
homo qui non est dives, contemnitur : Posthumus est
homo qui non est dives; ergo Posthumus contemni-
tur.” Vel hoc modo: “ omnis mon dives contemnitur :
Posthumus est non dives; ergo contemnitur.” Sed hæc
ex iis etiam quæ suprà ad definitionem ipsam hujus
speciei diximus, puto non esse obscura.
Præterea in quibusdam exemplis, quorum propositio
est reciproca, videtur interdum syllogismus iste habere
assumptionem negatam ; cùm dicendum sit potius,
partes propositionis inverti, quæ si in ordinem revocem-
tur, syllogismus erit in prima specie explicati: ut,
** Joan. 8, 47. Qui ex Deo est, verba Dei audit: vos
ex Deo non estis ; ergo verba Dei nom auditis.” Pro-
positio invertenda est: “ qui verba Dei audit, is ex Deo
est: vos non estis ex Deo; ergo verba Dei non auditis.”
CAP. XIII.
De Syllogismo commearo primo.
Adhuc simpleæ Syllogismus fuit.
“ SYLLOGISMUs compositus est syllogismus ubi tota
quæstio est pars altera propositionis affirmatæ et com-
positæ ; argumentum est pars reliqua.”
Negat Aristoteles ullam esse syllogismi speciem præ-
ter tres figuras; et tamen ipse sæpe utitur composito,
qui ad mullam ex tribus figuris referri potest: Verùm
usus, optimus magister docet, sæpius in communi ho-
minum sermone ac disputationibus, compositos adhi-
beri syllogismos, quàm simplices : ut qui multas quæs-
tiones, multa argumenta commodè satis disponant, quæ
syllogismi simplices respuunt. Theophrastus etiam et
Eudemus, Aristotelis discipuli, quin etiam Stoici, et post
eos Cicero et Boëthius, usum præceptorem secuti, com-
positos non omiserunt. Syllogismus autem compositus
dicitur non tam quod ex compositis axiomatis, nam et
simplex potest ex compositis, nimirum relatis constare,
sed à composita dispositione quæstionis totius cum tertio
argumento in propositione ; unde assumptio tota etiam
assumitur ; et conclusio non partim ex propositione
partim ex assumptione, sed tota ex propositione dedu-
citur: propositio enim cùm sit composita, duas reliquas
syllogismi partes (quae axiomata simplicia sunt) con-
junctionis vinculo conjunctas complectitur: pars illa
efficit assumptionem quæ argumentum continet, altera
conclusionem. Propositio autem debet esse affirmata,
quia negata si esset, composita esse desineret, ipsa enim
compositio negatione dissolveretur. Propositionem
autem negatam efficit, ut de axiomate composito supra
dictum est, non partium sed conjunctionis negatio : ut,
“ si non est auimal, non est homo ;” hæc propositio
ex omnibus etiam partibus negatis affirmata est ; rectè
igitur imde assumitur atque concluditur, “ at mon est
animal, ergo neque homo.” Sim hoc modo dicerem,
“ non si non est animal, idcirco non est homo,” ex hac
negata propositione nihil omnimo deduci aut concludi
posset. In syllogismis itaque compositis ex ipsa con-
junctionis vi deducuntur assumptio et conclusio. Ex
duobus enim quæ propositione conjunguntur, aut unum
assumitur ut alterum concludatur, aut unum tollitur ut
alterum tollatur. -
“ Tollere autem in syllogismo composito, non est
negare, sed specialem contradictionem ponere.”
Specialis autem contradictio, ut in axiomate simplici
jam diximus, particularis est aut propria. Tollere
igitur propositionis partem aliquam in assumptione
aut conclusione, est ejus contradictionem particularem
aut propriam ponere. Particulari autem generaliter
contradici, generali particulariter, ibidem etiam do-
cemur. Exemplis rem planam suo quamque loco
faciemus.
Sequitur nunc compositi syllogismi*distributio: cu-
jus gemera ex propositionum compositione oriuntur:
propositiones axiomata composita semper sumt : ex
quatuor autem axiomatum compositorum generibus
copulatum si affirmatum sit, non habet locum in com-
posito syllogismo ; si negatum, æquipollet interdum
disjuncto : discretum syllogismi expers est, quia di-
versa ex quibus constat, nec planè consentiunt, et
tamen ita leviter dissentiunt, ut umo posito vel remoto,
non tamen sequatur alterum poni vel removeri ; aut
vim habet commexi.
“ Syllogismus itaque compositus est connexus aut
disjunctus.”
“ Syllogismus commexus est syllogismus compositus
propositionis commexæ.” Vel cujus propositio est ax-
] OlY) {\ C()l) ln eX Ul n).
Cùm autem axiomati connexo affine sit relatum
temporis, ut ibidem ostendimus, etiam syllogismi con-
nexi propositio poterit relata esse temporis: mam quan-
titatis, qualitatis, loci propositiones relatæ in simplici-
bus syllogismis locum habent ; qui in iis propositioni-
bus quæstionis dumtaxat consequens cum argumento
disponitur. Relatum demique consequentiæ, de quo
supra cap. 6, syllogismus idóneus mom est.
“ Syllogismus connexus est duorum modorum.
9 10
ARTIS EOGICAE PLENIOR INSTITUTIO,
“ Primus modus syllogismi connexi est, qui assumit
antecedens et consequens concludit.”
Quo modo Cicero judicat et concludit l. 2, de divi-
natione : “ si dii sunt, divinatio est : sunt autem dii;
divinatio est igitur.”
Aliud ex 3, Offic. * Atque si etiam hoc natura præ-
scribit, ut homo homimi, quicunque sit, ob eam ipsam
causam, quòd is homo sit, consultum velit, necesse est
secundum eamdem naturam, omnium utilitatem esse
communem. Quod si ita est, una continemur omnes
et eadem lege maturae. Idque ipsum si ita est, certè
violare alterum lege maturæ prohibemur. Verum
autem primum ; verum igitur et extremum.”
Propositio hujus syllogismi est sorites (de quo infrà)
trium graduum, “ si hoc natura præscribit, ut, &c.”
“ I'requenter hic non assumitur idem sed majus.”
Ut 1 Catil. “ Si te parentes odissent, discederes:
nunc patria te odit (quæ communis est omnium nos-
trum parens) multo magis ergo discedes.” Sed ** na-
jus illud '° facile contineri in propositione poterit hoc
modo ; si propter odium parentum discederes, multo
magis propter odium patriæ. “ At illud ; ergo hoc
multo magis.”
Simili ratione concluditur etiam majus vel minus :
ut Cic. pro Quint. “ Etsi vadimonium deseruisset, non
debuisses tamen ad extrema jura descendere :' at non
deseruit ; multò minus ergo debuisti, vel multò magis
non debuisti.
“ Concludendi modus," iit supradiximus, “ hic idem
est quando propositio est relata temporis.”
Ut, “ cùm Paris OEnonem deseret, Xanthus recurrit;
Paris OEnonem deseret ; Xanthus ergo recurrit.”
Sed tamen relata temporis ut et reliqua axiomata
composita, id quod supra monuimus, ad syllogismum
simplicem pertinebunt quoties non tota quæstio in pro-
positione disponitur: quod quidem semper fit, cùm de
certo et definito tempore quæstio est: ut si quaeratur
an hoc tempore sit aestas, hujusmodi erit syllogismus :
“ cùm sol est in Cancro, testas est: at hoc tempore sol
est in Cancro ; ergo hoc tempore æstas est.”
CAP. XIV.
De Syllogismo conneaeo secundo.
“ SEcuNDUs modus connexi tollit consequens, ut
tollat antecedens.”
Haec enim vis commexi axiomatis est, si consequens
non sit, nec esse antecedens. Sic Cicero 4 de Fin.,
** docent mos,” inquit, “ dialectici, &c. Si illud, hoc :
non autem hoc ; igitur me illud quidem.”
Sequuntur exempli: “ si ulli rei sapiens assentietur
umquam, aliquando etiam opinabitur: nunquam autem
opinabitur ; nulli igitur rei assentietur.” Hic conse-
quens contradictione speciali in assumptione tollitur,
“ aliquando, nunquam ;” conclusio etiam antecedenti
specialiter contradicit ; “ ulli rei, nulli rei.”
Eodem syllogismo Ovid. 2 de Trist. stultitiam suam
judicat:
** Si saperem doctas odissem jure sorores,
Numina cultori perniciosa suo.
At nunc (tanta meo comes est insania morbo)
Saxa memor refero rursus ad icta pedem.”
Propositio est, “ si saperem, Musas odissem :” cujus
prosyllogismus est ab adjuncta pernicie. Assumptio,
at non odi; quæ à simili exprimitur, “ at nunc saxa
memor, &c.,” ergo mom sapio : cujus conclusionis sen-
tentia in parenthesi est ; ** tanta meo, &c.” Atque in
hoc exemplo est contradictio propria.
“ Hæ duæ syllogismi species sunt omnium usitatis-
simæ.”
Non enim ea solùm argumenta quæ in simplicibus
et disjunctis syllogismis disponi non possunt, in con-
nexis facile disponuntur, sed etiam ex iis quæ possunt
aliis formis concludi, multa in his speciebus facilius et
promptius concluduntur: immo mullum omnimo argu-
mentum, quod in syllogismum usum habet, has con-
nexi species respuit.
Præter hos duos connexi syllogismi modos nonnulli
duos alios adjiciunt ; quorum prior tollit antecedens ut
tollat consequens, posterior assumit consequens ut con-
cludat antecedens. In quos modos etsi communis fortè
sermo, boni etiam authores nonnunquam incidunt, ta-
men cum in syllogismo non veritas partium sed neces-
sitas consequentiæ spectetur, temendum est, vitiosos esse
eos modos qui ex veris verum juxta et falsum possunt
concludere. Prior ergo hic modus qui tollit antecedens
est prioris legitimi modi paralogismus, affimis negatæ
assumptioni in secunda specie explicati : ut, “ si homo
est leo, sentit : non est leo ; ergo non sentit.” Et hoc :
“ si Dio est equus, est animal: at non est equus; ergo
non est animal. Si orator est, homo est: non est orator;
ergo nec homo.” Hoc si sic resolvas in secundam spe-
ciem explicati, “ omnis orator est homo,” fallacia pate-
bit. Immo sine ista reductione per se etiam patet:
tollit enim antecedens, quod minus est, ut tollat con-
sequens, quod majus est: à minore autem ad majus
nulla est hujusmodi consequentia.
Modus posterior, qui assumit consequens ut conclu-
dat antecedens, est captio posterioris legitimi modi,
affinis paralogismo ex omnibus affirmatis in prima
specie explicati: ut, “ si homo est leo, sentit : at sen-
tit ; ergo est leo.” Utrumque hunc paralogismum Aris-
toteles appellat fallaciam consequentis; quæ toties fit
quoties propositio non est reciproca.
Sed est etiam aliud sophisma secundi modi, cùm as-
sumptio non tollit contradictione speciali ; id est, quando
consequenti vel generali generaliter, vel particulari
particulariter contradicit. Generalis contradictionis
exemplum est, “ si omne animal est irrationale, omnis
etiam homo est irrationalis: at nullus homo est irra-
tionalis: nullum ergo animal est irrationale.” Parti-
cularis hoc : “ si homo est rationalis, aliquod animal est
rationale : sed aliquod animal non est rationale ; ergo
nec homo.”
AD PETRI IRAMI METHODUM CONCINNATA.
91 1
CAP. XV.
De Syllogismo disjuncto primo.
“ SyllogisMUs disjunctus est syllogismus composi-
tus propositionis disjunctæ.
“ Modi duo sunt.” Sic etiam Cic. in Top. et Stoici
apud Laërtium. -
“ Primus tollit unum, et reliquum concludit.
“ Ut, aut dies est, aut nox: at dies non est ; ergo mox
est. Vel, mox non est; dies ergo est.”
Ciceronis pro Cluentio judicium tale est: ** sed cùm
esset hæc illi proposita conditio, ut aut justè pièque ac-
cusaret, aut acerbè indignèque moreretur ; accusare
quoquo modo posset, quàm illo modo mori maluit.”
Disjunctio clarior sic erit: “ aut accusandum aut mo-
riendum : non moriendum ; accusandum igitur.” In
hoc exemplo, ut est apud Cic., est partium inversio, to-
tusque syllogismus in axiomate relato consequentiæ
involvitur. Propositio non est absolutè vera, sed ex
conditione. Assumptio et conclusio per comparationem
minoris ponuntur ; ita, ut conclusio præcedat.
Sic idem 2 Phil. ratiocinatur : “ nunquamne intel-
liges tibi statuendum esse, utrum illi qui istam rem
gesserunt, homicidæ sint an vindices libertatis ? At-
tende, &c. Nego quicquam esse medium. Confiteor
illos nisi liberatores populi Rom. conservatoresque reip.
sint, plus quàm sicarios, plus quàm homicidas, plus
quàm parricidas esse : siquidem est atrocius patriæ pa-
rentem, &c. Si parricidæ, cur honoris causa à te sunt
et in hoc ordine et apud populum Rom. semper appel-
lati ? Cur, &c. Atque hæc acta per te. Nom igitur
homicidæ, Sequitur ut liberatores tuo judicio sint;
quandoquidem tertium nihil potest esse.” Quæstio hic
proponitur initio de Cæsaris interfectoribus, ** utrum,”
&c. Propositio proponitur axiomate connexo, * confi-
teor illos nisi,” &c., quod æquipollet disjuncto ; ** aut
vindices sunt libertatis aut plusquam homicidae: * il-
lustratur enim ea pars disjunctionis à majori : et præ-
cedit prosyllogismus, quo ostenditur disjunctionem
hanc esse sine medio, et proinde necessariam. Assump-
tio sequitur, “ non sunt homicidæ ;* idque confirmatur
prosyllogismo à testimonio et factis ipsius Antonii.
Prosyllogismus concluditur in secundo connexo, si par-
ricidæ, cur, &c. ? “ at hæc acta per te; non igitur ho-
micidæ.” Conclusio denique sequitur, “ ut liberatores
fuerint; ” idque repetito propositionis prosyllogismo
confirmatur, “ quandoquidem tertium sive medium ni-
hil potest esse.”
“ Si partes disjunctæ propositionis sint duabus plures,
judicandi concludendique ars erit eadem.”
Quamvis autem disjunctionis partes esse possint
sæpenumerò plures quàm duæ, id quod in disparatis
accidit, ipsius tamen propositionis duæ tantummodo
partes sunt; quarum una est quæstio, altera est argu-
mentum. In hoc modo ubi quæstio semper concludi-
tur, tertium argumentum plura opposita comprehendit,
quæ omnia in assumptione tollenda sunt, ut quæstio
concludatur: nam oppositorum plura simul affirmari
nequeunt, negari plura simul queunt.
Sic Cic. judicat “ Rabirium cum consulibus esse
oportuisse. Aut enim cum consulibus, aut cum sedi-
tiosis, aut latuisse : at nec cum seditiosis fuisse, nec
latuisse ; fuisse ergo cum consulibus. Pro Rabir. At-
qui videmus ait hæc in rerum natura tria fuisse, ut aut
cum Saturnino esset, aut cum bonis, aut lateret. Latere
autem, mortis erat instar turpissimæ : cum Saturnino
esse, furoris et sceleris ; virtus et honestas et pudor cum
coss. esse cogebat.” Propositio per se clara est. As-
sumptionis partes prosyllogismis illustrantur, primo à
simili, deinde ab adjunctis. Conclusio prosyllogismo
ab efficiente illustratur.
Notandum est in hoc modo non ita exigi specialem
contradictionem, ut in reliquis ; neque enim ad conse-
quentiæ necessitatem pertinet in hoc modo, ut in reli-
quis, sed ad assumptionis solius veritatem. Si ergo
assumptio generalem contradictionem ferre potest, per
consequentiam licebit uti: ad consequentiæ enim ra-
tionem sufficit, alterum quovis modo tolli, ut reliquum
concludatur, eademque conclusio erit, sive specialis
sive generalis in assumptione contradictio fuerit, in
altero verò modo secus erit, ubi contradictio in ipsam
conclusionem cadit.
CAP. XVI.
De Syllogismo disjuncto secundo
“ DISJUNCTUs secundus è propositione partibus om-
nibus affirmata assumit unum et reliquum tollit.”
Secundus efficitur, quia minus generalis est primo,
utpote proprietatibus quibusdam astrictus, quibus prior
immunis erat. Proprietates autem hæ sumt, 1. partium
omnium propositionis affirmatio, non totius modò pro-
positionis, id enim syllogismis omnibus compositis
commune est; et affirmari quidem propositio vel omni-
bus negatis partibus potest. 2. Assumptio affirmatur,
quoniam in propositione affirmata fuerat. 3. In con-
clusione semper est negatio, eaque specialis contra-
dictio: in primo quidem conclusio nonnunquam nega-
tur ; sed hoc tum sit cùm pars propositionis quæ com-
c]uditur negata fuit. Exempli gratia: “ aut dies est,
aut mox : dies est ; ergo nox non est.”
** Ejusmodi syllogismus efficitur è propositione co-
pulata negata, quæ negata complexio,” vel, quod
Græcis idem est, negata copulatio dicitur, “ et disjunc-
tionis affirmatæ vim obtinet.”
“ Non et dies, et mox est: at dies est ; non igitur
nox est.” De hac negata copulatione sic Cic. in
Top. ** mom et hoc, et illud : hoc autem ; non igitur
illud.”
Pertinet autem ad humc secundum dumtaxat modum
megata copulatio; quod cum in hujusmodi propositione
quævis opposita disponi possint, ex uno eorum negato,
nisi in iis qui medio carent, non necessariò alterum
affirmatur et concluditur, quod fit in primo modo, sed
ex altero affirmato alterum negatur, quæ commumis est
regula omnium oppositorum, et fit dumtaxat in hoc
secundo.
912
ARTIS LOGICAE PLENIOR INSTITUTIO,
Ad sophismata quod attinet horum modorum, primi
quidem nullum occurrit. Secundi quæ sunt, ex defi-
mitione redarguuntur. Primum est, si aliqua pars pro-
positionis negata erit: ut, “ leo aut animal est, aut non
est homo ; at non est homo, ergo nec amimal.” Se-
cundum est, si assumptio sit negata ; ut in exem-
plo superiore. Tertium est, si specialis contradictio
non erit in conclusiome : ut hoc ; ** aut homo est ani-
mal, aut omne animal est irrationale ; sed homo est
animal, ergo nullum amimal est irrationale.”
A P P E N D I X.
De Enlhymemate, Dilemmate, et Sorite.
ExPosiTis omnibus cùm simplicis tum compositi
syllogismi speciebus, sequitur axiomatis et syllogismi
communis affectio, vel potius anomalia, de qua ante-
diximus, crypsis. Quæ in omni cùm , loquendi usu
tum scribendi gemere tam frequens est, idque brevita-
tis plerumque causa, ut nemo ferè syllogismos integros
sine crypsi aliqua vel loquatur vel scribat.
Sed quoniam crypsis ejusque triplex modus syllo-
gismorum omnes species afficiunt, ea re dicendi locus
de syllogismi crypsibus ante non erat, quàm de syllo-
gismi speciebus cunctis dictum esset.
“ Si qua pars syllogismi defuerit, enthymema dici-
tur.”
Ut ab exemplo : “ Themistocli licuit urbem relin-
quere ; ergo mihi.” Addatur propositio; “ quod The-
mistocli licuit, licet et mihi.” Ab imductione : ** in-
ventio et dispositio in argumentis versantur ; ergo
Logica tota.” Addatur assumptio ; ** logica tota est
eorum inventio et dispositio.”
Hoc etiam perpetuò observandum est, si conclu-
sionis prædicatum deest, deesse majorem ; si subjec-
tum, minorem : si utrumque, syllogismi compositi
majorem vel potius majoris antecedentem, quæ cum
tota quæstione ut cum consequente disponitur ; quod
indicat plenum syllogismum fore compositum, et
antecedens pars enthymematis erit antecedens majo-
ris ; totumque enthymema convertetur in majorem
propositionem syllogismi connexi : ut “ virtus reddit
beatos; vitium ergo miseros.” In antecedente hujus
enthymematis nec antecedens nec consequens quæstio-
nis apparet: totum igitur converte in axioma commexum
aut disjunctum, plenum syllogismum compositum esse
intelliges ; ut, “ si virtus reddit beatos, vitium reddit
miseros ; at illud ; hoc igitur. Non est nox ; ergo est
dies.” Totum converte in axioma disjunctum, majorem
supplebis, et syllogismum plenum disjunctum confici-
es: “ aut dies est, aut nox ; non nox, ergo dies.”
** Si quid ad tres illas syllogismi partes accesserit,
prosyllogismus dicitur.” Est enim ad partem aliquam
syllogismi addita probatio.
** Partium etiam ordo sæpe confunditur.”
utrumque accidit in dilemmate et sorite.
Dilemma est specialis quædam crypsis non syllogis-
mi, sed syllogismorum ; à duplici propositione dictum,
quam * lemma Stoici* vocant, vulgò “ disjunctivus bi-
formis et syllogismus cornutus," quasi cornibus feriens;
Quod
cujus vis in duobus axiomatis connexis citra syllogismi
formam satis manifesta est : ut illud Martialis;
* Hæc, si displicui, fuerint solatia nobis ;
Hæc fuerint mobis præmia, si placui.”
Et illud in evangelio: “ si bene locutus sum, cur me
cædis ? si male, testare de malo.” Et reciprocum illud
insigne Protagoræ magistri ad Euathlum discipulum,
apud Gellium, l. 5, c. 10, et 11 : ** si contra te lis data
erit, merces mihi ex sententia illa debebitur, quia ego
vicero ; sin vero secundum te judicatum erit, merces
mihi ex pacto debebitur, quia tu viceris.” Cui contrà
Euathlus; ** et ego, bome magister, utrovis modo vicero,”
&c. Hujusmodi est etiam illud apud Aristot. Rhet. 3,
2 ,, “ non agendum esse cum populo ; quia, si justa
dixeris, hominibus invisus eris ; si injusta, Deo.”
Immo agendum esse cum populo : “ nam, si injusta
dixeris, hominibus gratus eris ; si justa, Deo.”
Explicatur autem hæc crypsis axiomate disjuncto ;
tot deinde syllogismis commexis vel etiam categoricis,
quot erant disjuncti axiomatis membra: ut illud Biantis
consilium de uxore nom ducemda : ** aut formosam
duces, aut deformem ; si formosam, communem ; si de-
formem, pœnam : neutrum autem bonum ; mon est
igitur ducenda uxor.” Vel categoricè sic ; ** communis
mon est ducenda ; formosa erit communis ; ergo, &c. :
pœna non est ducenda ; deformis erit poema ; ergo, &c.”
Sed axioma illud disjunctum partes omnes disjunctas
nom enumerat: est enim media quæ nec formosa nec
deformis est ; et neutrius commexi consequens est vera ;
fieri enim potest, ut nec formosa communis, nec defor-
mis pœna sit futura.
Sorites et syllogismus crypticus multarum propositio-
num continua serie ita progredientium, ut prædicatum
præcedentis propositionis perpetuò sit subjectum se-
quentis, donec tandem consequens propositionis ultima
concludatur de antecedente primæ : ut, “ homo est ani-
mal ; animal cst corpus sentiens ; corpus sentiens est
vivens; vivens est substantia; ergo homo est substan-
tia.” Græcè autem sorites, ** acervalis Latinè à Cice-
rome” dicitur ; quia minutatim addit, et quasi acervum
efficit.
Adhibetur ferè vel ad summum genus de infima
specie, vel ad causam primariam, licet remotam, effecto
attribuendam ; et illud quidem per genera subalterna,
ut in exemplo superiore ; hoc per causas medias, ut im
exemplo scquente : “ quos Deus præmovit, eos praedes-
tinavit ; quos prædestimavit, eos vocavit ; quos vocavit,
eos justificavit ; quos justificavit, eos glorificavit ; ergo,
quos prænovit, eos glorificavit.”
Utitur autem sorites et subalternis generibus et sub-
ordinatis causis quasi tot mediis terminis ad probandum
conclusionem ; tot mempe quot sunt termini inter sub-
jectum primae propositionis et prædicatum conclusio-
nis : quot autem termini medii, tot sunt syllogismi.
Est itaque progressio enthymematica syllogismos
uno pauciores continens quàm propositiones. Syllo-
gismus principalis habet pro majore propositionem
conclusioni proximam ; pro minoris termino minore,
subjectum conclusionis pro termino majore ; subjectum
propositionis majoris: ex. gr. * quos justificavit, glori-
AD PETRI RAMI METHODUM CONCINNATA.
913
ficavit ; quos prænovit, justificavit ; quos ergo praeno-
vit, glorificavit.” Reliqui sunt minorum prosyllogis-
mi, et præcedens quisque probatio sequentis.
Unde intelligitur soritae crypsis triplex, et defectus, et
redundantia, et inversio. Si igitur partium, sive species
sive causæ sint, non erit recta subordinatio firmaque
connexio, sorites probus non erit : ut, “ ex malis mori-
bus existunt bonae leges; ex bonis legibus salus reip.;
ex reip. salute bona omnia ; ergo ex moribus malis
bona omnia.” Hic causæ per se male subordinantur
causæ per accidens.
Fallit hic etiam : “ Si nullum tempus esset, mox non
esset; si nox mon esset, dies esset ; si dies esset, ali-
quod tempus esset; ergo, si nullum tempus esset, ali-
quod tempus esset.” Nam si nullum tempus esset,
certè nec dies esset : fallit ergo. in propositione se-
cunda ; quæ non verè continuatur; sed ponit effectum,
sublata causa. Cætera sorites vitia habet cum aliis
syllogismi speciebus communia.
CAP. XVII.
De Methodo.
“ M EtHoDUs est dispositio dianoëtica variorum axi-
omatum homogeneorum pro naturæ suæ claritate præ-
positorum, unde omnium inter se convenientia judica-
tur, memoriaque comprehenditur.”
Methodi permagnus est im omni vita usus, magna
proinde laus. Hanc Plato, in Philebo, esse ait “ do-
num hominibus divinitus datum.” Aristoteles etiam
** ordinem in maximis bonis” numeravit. Fabius,
“ Nec mihi,” inquit, “ errare videntur, qui ipsam rerum
naturam stare ordine putant : quo confuso, peritura
sunt omnia.”
Est autem methodus dispositio variorum axiomatum
homogeneorum, i. e. eorum quæ ad eandem rem per-
tinent, eandemque ad finem referuntur. Homogenea
nisi fuerint, subordinata sibi invicem esse non poterunt,
adeoque ne ordinata quidem. Itaque arithmeticum in
geometria, geometricum in arithmetica veluti hetero-
genium et alienum methodus excludit. Pro naturæ
autem suæ claritate axiomata quæque præponenda
sunt, prout argumenta priora, notiora, illustriora com-
plectuntur. Prima autem præcedant an orta à primis
parum refert, cùm utrorumque eadem affectio sit.
“ Atque ut spectatur in axiomate veritas aut falsitas,
in syllogismo consequentia et inconsequentia ; sic in
methodo consideratur, ut per se clarius prtecedat, ob-
scurius sequatur ; omninòque ordo et confusio judica-
tur. Sic dispoiietur ex homogeneis axiomatis primo
loco absoluta notione primum, secundo secundum,
tertio tertium, et ita deinceps.”
Prius autem sicut et posterius quinque modis dici-
mus: tempore, ut semem juvene ; natura, ut causam
effecto, genus specie ; quicquid denique existendi com-
secutione est prius ; i. e. quod alio posito, ponitur ; et
quo posito, aliud non ponitur, ut unitas binario: non-
nunquam etiam ubi consecutio reciproca est, quod
simul est tempore, natura tamen est prius, ut sol suo
lumine. Bifariam etiam dicitur prius natura ; gene-
rante scilicet, ut partes toto, simplex composito, media
fine ; vel intendente, ut totum partibus, compositum
simplici, finis mediis. Prius dispositione sive loco
dicitur, quod initio est proprius ; ut in dicendo, narra-
tio confirmatione. Prius dignitate ; ut magistratus
cive, aurum argento, virtus auro. Prius denique cog-
nitione, quod cognitu facilius est : idque vel in se, vel
nobis : in se quod natura est prius; nobis, quod poste-
rius est, et sensibus objectum : illa perfectior est cog-
nitio, hæc imperfectior.
“ Ideòque methodus ab universalibus, ut quæ causas
contineant, ad singularia perpetuò progreditur.” Ad-
eoque ab antecedentibus omninò et absolutè notioribus
ad consequentia ignota declarandum.
Unde intelligitur agi hic de methodo tradendi sive
docemdi, quæ analytica rectè dicitur, non inveniendi.
Methodus n. inveniendi quæ à Platone dicitur “ syn-
thetica,” procedit à singularibus quæ tempore sunt
priora, sensibusque se prius offerunt; quorum induc-
tione generales notiones colliguntur: methodus autem
docendi sive inventa et judicata disponendi, de qua hic
agitur ; contraria via, ut etiam docet Arist. l Metaph.
c. 1, et 2, procedit ab universalibus, quæ natura sunt
priora et notiora ; non quo prius aut facilius cognos-
cantur, sed quòd posteaquam sunt cognita, præcedunt
notionis natura et claritate quanto sunt à sensibus re-
motiora. Sic generales rerum species (ut optici etiam
docent) citius in sensus incurrunt : et advenientem
aliquem, judico prius animal esse quàm hominem, et
hominem quàm Socratem. Atque hanc solam metho-
dum Aristot. passim docuit.
“ Sed methodi unitatem exempli doctrinarum et
artium præcipuè demonstrant, præcipuèque vindicant.
“ Quibus quamvis omnes regulæ generales sint et
universales, tamen earum gradus distinguuntur: quan-
toque unaquæque generalior erit, tanto magis præ-
cedet.
“ Generalissima loco et ordine prima erit, quia lumine
et notitia prima est.
“ Subalternæ consequentur, quia claritate sunt prox-
imæ : utque ex his naturæ motiores præponentur,
minus notæ substituentur.
“ Tandemque specialissima constituentur.
. » »
“ Definitio itaque generalissima prima erit;” causas
n. continet definitioni consectaria subjungentur, sive
proprietatum si quæ sunt et ex definitione per se non
patent, explicationis distributio sequetur.
“ Quæ si multiplex fuerit, præcedet in partes integras
partitio, sequetur divisio in species. Partesque ipsæ
et species eodem ordine sunt rursus tractandæ ac de-
finiendæ, quo distributæ fuerint.
“ Et transitionum vinculis si longior inter eas inter-
sit explicatio, colligandæ sunt : id n. auditorem reficit
ac recreat.”
Transitio autem vel perfecta est vel imperfecta.
Perfecta, quæ breyiter et quid dictum sit et quid se-
quatur, ostendit : qualis illa hujus libri secundi initio
9 14
ARTIS LOGICÆ PLENIOR INSTITUTIO,
“ adhuc prima artis logicæ pars fuit,” &c. Imperfecta
est quæ alterutrum duntaxat ostendit vel quid dictum
sit, vel quid sequatur : qualis illa l. 1, c. 18, “ argu-
menta simplicia ita fuerunt,” &c.
Exemplo sit grammatica. Hujus definitio, ut quæ
generalissima sit, ex lege methodi primo loco statuatur;
ars scilicet bene loquendi : secundo loco erit gramma-
ticæ partitio, im etymologiam et syntaxin ; tum etymo-
logia, quæ de vocibus agit, definiatur ; dein voces
partes in literis et syllabis, speciesque in vocibus numeri
et sine numero subsequantur, exituumque transitiones
suis locis collocentur : atque ita omnium etymologiæ
partium definitiones, distributiones, colligationes, ex-
empla denique specialissima in singulis disponentur :
idemque in syntaxi fiet. Hanc viam omnes artes sibi
proposuerunt.
Modermi quidem duplicem methodum instituunt;
“ syntheticam et analyticam : illam scientiis theoreticis
tradendis, physicæ puta vel mathematicæ magis ac-
commodatam ; qua partes scientiæ ita disponuntur, ut
à subjecto contemplationis universali ad particularia,
à simplicibus ad composita progressus fiat: sic physica
exorditur à corporis naturalis definitione ; ad ejus
deinde causas vel partes affectionesque generales ad
species denique progreditur. Methodum analyticam
definiunt, qua ita disponuntur partes scientiæ practicæ
ut à notione finis fiat progressus ad notitiam principi-
orum vel mediorum, ad illum finem assequendum : sic
in ethicis à fine, scilicet beatitudine, ad media, nempe
virtutes proceditur: Verùm cùm hac utraque methodus
una eademque via, à definitione scilicet generaiissima,
sive illa subjectum sive finem generalem contineat, ad
minus generalia, à motioribus ad minus mota, à simplici-
bus ad composita aeque utrobique dividendo progredia-
tur, non videtur ob diversam in definitione generali,
illic subjecti, hic finis mentionem, duplicem esse me-
thodum constituendam ; sed unam potius, artium qui-
dem tradendarum, eamque analyticam esse dicendam.
** Atqui methodus non solùm in materia artium et
doctrinarum adhibetur, sed in omnibus rebus quas
facilè et perspicuè docere volumus.
“ Ideoque poetae, oratores, omnesque omninò scrip-
tores, quoties docendum sibi auditorem proponunt, hanc
viam sequi volunt, quamvis non usquequaque ingredi-
amtur atque insistant.”
Sic Virgilius, in Georgicis, distribuit propositam
materiam in quatuor partes, ut antedictum est: primo-
que libro res communes persequitur, ut astrologiam,
meteorologiam, deque segetibus et earum cultu dis-
serit, quæ pars operis prima erat, tumque transitio ad-
hibetur imitio secundi libri.
** Hactenus arvorum cultus,' &c.
Dein scribit gencraliter de arboribus, tum specialiter
de vitibus. Sic toto opere, generalissimum, primo; sub-
alterna, medio; specialissima, extremo loco ponere stu-
duit.
Eandem Ovidius, in Fastis, dispositionis hujus gra-
tiam sequitur. Proponit initio summam operis.
** Tempora cum causis Latium digesta per amnum,'' &c.
Mox imploratione facta, partitionem anni statuit.
Tum communes differentias interpretatus diei fasti, ne-
fasti, &c. Tandem unumquemque mensem suo loco
persequitur, et ordinis hujus à generalibus ad specialia
studium suum præfatione indicat.
** Hæc mihi dicta semel, totis hærentia fastis,
Ne seriem rerum scimdere cogar, erunt.”
“ Oratores in proœmio ; narratione, confirmatione,
peroratione hume ordinem affectant, eumque artis et
maturæ et rei ordinem appellant, et interdum studiosis
assectantur.”
Ut in Verrem, Cicero primùm proponendo tum par-
tiendo. “ Quæstor,” inquit, “ Cn. Papyrio cos. fuisti
abhinc annos quatuordecim, et ex illa die ad hanc diem
quæ fecisti, in judicium voco,” &c. Propositio hic et
definitio summæ rei est, tamquam in hoc judicio gene-
ralissima. Partitio sequitur: “ hi sunt anni, &c., quare
hæc eadem erit quadripartita distributio totius accusa-
tionis meæ.” Quas partes quatuor earumque partium
particulas deinceps suo quamque ordine et loco tractat,
et transitionibus copulat ; tres prinas tertio libro ; et sic
deinceps.
* Hæc igitur in variis axiomatis homogeneis suo vel
syllogismi judicio notis methodus erit, quoties perspi-
cuè res docenda erit.”
At cùm delectatione motuve aJiquo majore ab oratore
quovis aut poeta, ut quibuscum vulgo potissimum res
est, ducendus erit auditor, crypsis methodi ferè adhibe-
bitur; homogenea quædam rejicientur, ut definitionum,
partitionum, transitionumque lumina. Quædam assu-
mentur heterogenea, velut digressiones à re, et in re
commorationes. Et præcipuè rerum ordo invertetur.
Sed oratoribus et poetis sua methodi ratio relin-
quenda est ; vel saltem iis, qui oratoriam et poeticam
docent. -
AD PETRI RAMI METHODUM CONCINNATA.
915
P R A x I s
IL O G I C Æ
ANALYTICA EX DOUNAMO.
AD CAPUT TERTIUM
RAMI/E DIALECTIC/E.
“ ExEM PLUM primum est causæ procreantis et com-
servantis ex Ovidii primo de Remed.
“ Ergo ubi visus eris nostra medicabilis arte,
Fac momitis fugias otia prima meis.
Hæc, ut ames, faciunt: hæc quæ fecere tuentur;
Hæc sunt jucundi causa, cibusque mali.
Otia si tollas, periere Cupidinis arcus,
Contemptæque jacent & sime luce faces.”
ln singulis, quæ ad efficientis doctrinam illustram-
dam afferumtur, exemplis, tria consideranda sunt, effi-
ciens, effectum, efficiendi modus. In hoc exemplo
effectum est amor, efficiens est otium, quod amorem
efficit duplici modo, tum procreamdo, tum conservando,
ut in secundo disticho poeta docet. Dispositio autem
hujus exempli (ut pleniorem ejus analysin instituam)
syllogistica est. Quæstio, quam poeta concludendam
proponit, hæc est; fugiendum esse otium ei, qui ab
amore immunis esse velit: eaque duobus syllogismis
concluditur: in priori argumentum tertium ducitur ab
effectis quidem otii, amoris verò causa procreante et
conservante, hoc modo: amoris procreans et conservans
causa vitanda est ei, qui ab amore ipso liber esse velit;
otium verò amoris procreans et conservans causa est ;
otium igitur fugiendum est ei, qui ab amore liber esse
velit. Propositio deest. Assumptio in secundo disti-
cho primò simpliciter proponitur, deinde altera ejus
pars de conservante per similitudinem cibi illustratur.
Conclusio præcedit in primo disticho. Secunda ratio
est consectarium ex assumptione prioris syllogismi de-
ductum. Otium est causa procreans et conservans
amoris ; ergo sublato otio, amor tollitur. Cujus propo-
sitio et fundamentum est logicum illud axioma; sub-
lata causa, tollitur effectum, quæ propositio si addatur,
plenus erit syllogismus.
Exemplum secundum ibid. ex Æneid. 4.
“ Non tibi diva parens, gemeris mec Dardamus auctor,
Perfide; sed duris genuit te cautibus horrens :
Caucasus, Hyrcamæque admorunt ubera tigres.**
Hic effectum est Æneas. Causæ efficientes, pater,
mater, nutrix ; modus autem efficiendi non unus: pa-
rentes enim liberos efficiunt procreando, nutrix verò
conservando. Disponitur autem hoc exemplum axio-
mate discreto. Anchises et Venus non sunt Æneæ pa-
rentes, ut Didoni placet, sed horrens Caucasus et duræ
cautes: Hyrcanæ autem tigres ut mutrices ubera ad-
moverunt.
Exemplum tertium est solitariæ causæ, cap.
Æneid. 9.
4, ex
** Me, me adsum, qui feci, in me convertite ferrum :
O Rutuli: mea fraus omnis: nihil iste nec ausus
Nec potuit.*'
In hoc exemplo effectum est cædes Rutulorum. Effi-
ciens hujus cædis Nysus. Quod autem ad modum at-
tinet efficiendi, effecit, ut ipse de se ait, solus.
sitio autem hujus exempli syllogistica est.
auctor est cædis, is solus est occidendus.
inquit, solus auctor cædis sum ; ergo, &c. Propositio
deest: assumptio continetur versu 2. Mea fraus, i. e.
cu]pa omnis, quam probat remotione sociæ causae, nihil
iste nec ausus est, &c. Conclusio versu 1. Me, me
scilicet occidite, im me convertite ferrum, &c.
Ejusdem causæ exemplum aliud, in oratione Cicero-
mis pro Marcello. ** Nam bellicas laudes solent quidam
extenuare verbis, easque detrahere ducibus et commu-
Dispo-
Qui solus
Ego verò,
nicare cum multis, ne propriæ sint imperatorum : et
certè in armis militum virtus, locorum opportunitas, so-
ciorum auxilia, classes, commeatus multum juvant :
maximam verò partem, quasi suo jure, fortuna sibi
vendicat, et quicquid est prosperè gestum, id penè
omne ducit suum. At verò hujus gloriæ, Cæsar, quàm
es paulò ante adeptus, socium habes neminem : totum
hoc quantumcumque est, quod certè maximum est, to-
tum inquam, est tuum. Nihil tibi ex ista laude cen-
turio, mihil præfectus, nihil cohors, mihil turma de-
cerpit: quin etiam illa ipsa rerum humanarum domina
fortuna in istius se societatem gloriæ non offert: tibi
cedit, tuam esse totam ac propriam fatetur.” Hoc ex-
emplum continet plenam comparationem à minore ad
majus, ad amplificandam Caesaris laudem clementiæ.
In proto exemplum est causarum, quæ cum aliis effi-
ciunt. Effectum est victoria ; efficiens imperator, non
quidem solus, sed cum aliis, quarum alia principalis est,
et imperatori quasi socia fortuna : aliæ adjuvantes et
ministræ, cujusmodi quinque recensentur, militum for-
titudo, locorum opportunitas, sociorum auxilia, classes,
commeatus. In apodosi exemplum habemus solitariae
causæ : effectum est clementia in Marcellum, praestita,
cujus causa et quidem sola est ipse Cæsar ; eaque
illustratur remotione causarum adjuvantium. Scopus
Ciceronis est, ut ostendat Cæsarem plus laudis ob cle-
mentiam mereri, quàm propter res gestas: idque osten-
dit ex collatis inter se efficiendi modis, quod nimirum
rerum gestarum Cæsar non solus auctor fuerit, clemen-
3 N
9 16 ARTIS LOGICÆ PLENIOR INSTITUTIO, &c.
tiæ verò præstitæ solus. Jam verò efficiens plus laudis
vel vituperationis meretur, quæ sola quid facit ; quæ
verò cum aliis, mimus. Sic igitur hæc ratio potest
concludi. Cujus Cæsar solus auctor est, id plus mere-
tur laudis, quam cujus solus non est auctor. Rerum in
bello gestarum solus auctor mon est; clementiæ verò in
Marcellum præstitæ solus ; proinde clementia Cæsaris
plus meretur laudis, quàm res in bello gestæ. Hujus
syllogismi assumptio tantum in hoc exemplo proponi-
tur ; ejusque prior pars enumeratione causarum adju-
vantium, posterior remotione earumdem illustratur. -
Ibidem exemplum causæ instrumentalis prino de
Nat. Deor. ** Quibus oculis animi intueri potuit vester
Plato fabricam illam tanti operis, qua construi à Deo
atque ædificari nondum facit ? Quæ molitio ? quæ
. ferramenta ? qui vectes ? quæ machinæ ? qui ministri
tanti operis fuerunt?” Syllogismus sic sese habet.
Qui instrumenta nom habuit, is mundum mom creavit:
Deus instrumenta mon habuit; ergo, &c. Hujus syl-
logismi propositio falsissima deest; conclusio præcedit;
assumptio sequitur: eaque per inductionem quandam
specierum illustratur. Utraque autem tum assumptio
tum conclusio per interrogationem ἐμφarikwTspov me-
gatur.
P E T R I R A M I V I T A,
EX
JOANNE THOMA FREIGIO,
RECISIS DIGRESSIONIBUS, DESCRIPTA.
PETRUs Ramus natus est ammo millesimo quingentes-
imo decimo quinto. Ejus avus, ut ipse in præfatione
suæ Regiæ Professionis memorat, in Eburonum gente,
familia imprimis illustri fuit: sed patria à Carolo, Bur-
gundionum duce, capta et incensa, in Veromanduorum
agrum profugus, ac spoliatus, carbonarium facere coac-
tus est: hinc Ramo ** carbonarius pater” probri loco
objectus : sed pater agricola fuit. Puer vix è cunis
egressus, ut ipse in Sheckiano epilogo de se narrat,
duplici peste laboravit. Juvenis invita modisque om-
mibus repugnante fortuna, Lutetiam ad capessendas
artes ingenuas venit. Erat statura corporis grandi ac
generosa, vultu mitissimo, moribus integerrimis, vale-
tudine firma ac robusta, quam perpetua abstinentia
continentiaque et continuo labore etiam firmiorem red-
didit. Lutetiæ magisterii titulum suscepturus, proble-
ma hoc sumpsit ; * quæcumque ab Aristotele dicta
essent, commentitia esse.” Attoniti novitate atque
insolentia problematis examinatores ac magistri, per
diem integrum, sed irrito conatu, magistrandum, ut
vocant, oppugnarunt. Ex hoc fortuito successu,
ansam deinceps seriò et liberè in Aristotelem animad-
vertendi et inquirendi arripuit. Logicamque impri-
mis, utpote instrumentum reliquarum artium expolire
instituit (ut ipse pluribus persequitur in epilogo, l. 5,
Scholarum Dialecticarum) sed annum agens ætatis
primum et vigesimum hæc moliri incoeperat. Septimo
pòst, primam, ut putatur, Dialecticam et Aristotelicas
A mimadversiones ad academiam Parisiensem edidit :
sequente anno Euclidem Latinè, quam et præfatione
commendavit. Ex eo tempore multos adversarios con-
tra se irritavit, et præsertim duos homines, quos Talæus
in academia sua dum contentionem totam enarrat, non
nominat tamen. Vix, inquit, Aristotelicæ Animadver-
siones lectæ erant, cùm P. Ramus repentè ad praetorii
tribunalis capitalem contentionem per certos homines
falso academiæ nomine rapitur, novique criminis accu-
satur, quòd scilicet, Aristotelem oppugnando, artes
enervaret : hac enim oratione Aristotelea actio instituta
est. Hinc Aristoteleorum clamoribus agitatus, ad
summum Parisiensis curiæ concilium traducitur. Id
cum ex adversariorum sententia non procederet, novis
artibus à senatu Parisiensi ad regiam cognitionem
res defertur : constituuntur judices quinque bini ab
- utraque parte, quintus à rege nominatur ; causam de
singulis animadversionum capitibus dicere jubetur
Ramus: qui tametsi de quinque judicibus tres infen-
sissimos habebat, tamen ut mandato regio obtempera-
ret, ad diem constitutam adfuit ; scriba unus aderat ;
qui rationes Rami et judicum sententias exciperet.
Biduo magna contentione de dialecticæ artis defini-
tione et partitione, quæ in logici organi libris nullæ
essent, concertatum est. Tres Aristotelei judices primo
die, contra omnes bene descriptæ artis leges, judica-
PETRI RAMI VITA.
917
runt ad dialecticæ, artis perfectionem definitione nihil
opus esse. Qui duo judices à Ramo lecti erant, con-
trà censuerunt. Postridie tres judices Aristotelei vehe-
menter conturbati, de partitione assentiuntur, causam-
que im aliam diem rejiciunt. Verùm me mom damna-
retur Ramus, novum concilium imitur, ut ab initio tota
disputatio retexatur, judicata pridie, pro nihilo habea-
tur. Ab ista judicum inconstantia provocat Ramus ;
sed frustrâ ; judicium m. sine provocatione tribus illus
judicibus datur ; condemnantur triumvirali illa sem-
tentia non solùm Amimadversiones Aristotelicae, sed
Institutiones etiam Dialecticæ : auctori interdicitur,
me in posterum vel docendo vel scribendo, ullam phi-
losophiæ partem attingeret : ludi etiam magno appa-
ratu celebrantur, in quibus Ramus et Ramea Dialec-
tica ludibrio habetur. Ab his difficultatibus unus
omnium Carolus Lotharingus Ramum liberavit: Hem-
rico enim regi persuaserat, philosophiam semper libe-
ram esse oportere. Hinc Ramus pristimae docendi ac
scribendi libertati restitutus, per annos quatuor summa
im pace studiis operam dedit. Anno ætatis trigesimo
primo orationem de studiis philosophiæ et eloquentiæ
conjungendis habuit: cum Talæo fratre (sic eum per-
petuo vocat) professionis partes ita divisit, ut Talæus
matutinis horis philosophiam, ipse pomeridianis elo-
quentiam doceret: in poetis, oratoribus, philosophis
omnisque generis authoribus explicandis, usum dialec-
ticæ demonstravit : id Ramo postea crimini datum est,
quòd in philosophico studio non philosophos, sed, con-
tra leges academiæ, pro philosophis poetas explicaret:
purgat se Ramus ; petitque ut gymnasium suum Præ-
leum per probos et doctos homines invisatur. Sed
judex quidam, nobilis adolescens, datus, discipulos
Rami indicta causa, condemnat ; publicis et scholis et
sigillis et tabulis prohibet ; omnibus demique academiæ
muneribus et præmiis excludit. Ab hac sententia tam
nova discipuli Rami ad Julianense philosophorum co-
mitium provocant, et absolvuntur, modò præceptor
eorum jurejurando comfirmet, libros, academiæ legibus
definitos, à se esse prælectos. Confirma Ramus :
paulò tamen pòst ab eodem judice adolescente, non
discipuli, ut antea, sed magistri eorum oppugnantur:
Ramo injungitur, ut in publicis scholis disciplinam
suam ipse detestaretur et ejuraret. Is ad superiores
academiæ ordines secundò provocat: sed cùm vitamdi
tumultus causa, scripto se absens, defenderet, ado-
lescens ille judex, etsi duabus appellationibus rejectus,
tertiò judicat ac damnat. Quartò provocat Ramus :
cùm provocationis diem accusator antevertisset, co-
actus est Ramus subito in senatum venire : hic ite-
rum Carolus Lotharingus unico præsidio fuit: ac-
cusationem cujusdam audiit gravissimam Ramum
Academicum nominantis, qui de humanis divinisque
legibus dubitaret, qui lubricos D. Augustini locos ad
effrænatam atque impiam libertatem suis auditoribus
proponeret, et quo facilius incautis animis abutere-
tur, omnes logicas disputationes tolleret. Contra has
calumnias facile se defendit Ramus. Decretum est
itaque in senatu, uti Ramus discipulique ejus in pristi-
num atque integrum statum restituerentur. Ipse anno
aetatis trigesimo sexto cùm Blessiis Carolus Lotha-
ringus ad Henricum regem de disciplina Ramea retu-
lisset, in numerum atque ordinem regiorum professorum
per literas regias honorificè ad se scriptas, est cooptatus.
Gratias itaque et regi Henrico et Carolo Lotharingo
publicè egit ; sibique persuasit, se à rege in praestan-
tissima reip. parte esse collocatum ; sibique adeo dies
ac noctes esse summo studio emitendum, ne tanto mu-
meri ac professioni eloquentiæ simul et philosophiae
deesset: unde animos adolescentium tanta audiendi et
proficiendi cupiditate inflammavit, ut schola regia, licet
ad audiendum amplissima, plerumque tamen auditorum
concursum frequentiamque capere minime potuerit.
Adversariorum petulantiam summa constantia tulit at-
que pervicit ; symbolumque ejus hoc fuit, ** ILabor
omnia vincit.” Anno 1552, cum in Cameracensi schola
frequentissimis auditoribus dialecticam suam auspica-
retur, inter strepitus, clamores, sibilos mihil commotus,
per intervalla clamorum, incredibili constantia perexit
et peroravit : qua ejus virtute consternati inimici, in
posterum minus ei molestiæ exhibuerunt. In Heidel-
bergensi etiam academia, principis authoritate ad pro-
fitendum adductus, consimiles æmulorum clamores in-
victo animo pertulit Adversus doctos aliquot homines
Goveanum, Gallandium, Perionium, Turnebum, Me-
lancthonum, pari silentio est usus. Viginti annis ab-
stemius fuit, donec sanitatis causa medici vino uti
suaserunt: vini enim fastidium ceperat ex quo infans
in cellam vinariam clam parentibus irrepens, se tam
immodicè ingurgitavit, ut mortuo similis humi reperi-
retur. Pro lectulo stramentis ad senectutem usque
usus est. Coelebs tota vita permansit. Prælei gym-
nasii labore (qui ipsi sine ullo publico stipendio erat
mandatus) contentus fuit. A discipulis suis oblata
munera, quamvis debita, tamen non accepit. Ammo
1556, Ciceronianum edidit de optima juventutis insti-
tuendæ ratione. Pronuntiationem Latinæ linguæ in
academia Parisiensi tumc temporis inquinatissimam,
corrigendi author cumprimis fuit, reclamantibus licet
Sorbonistis, pravarum omnium consuetudinum propug-
natoribus tam obstinatis, ut sacerdotem quendam no-
vatæ pronuntiationis coram senatu Parisiensi insimula-
tum, quasi ob hæresim, ut aiebant, grammaticam,
amplissimis proventibus ecclesiasticis privandum com-
tenderent: et lite quidem superiores videbantur dis-
cessuri, nisi P. Ramus cæterique professores regii ad
curiam convolantes, judicii tam alieni insolentiam dis-
suasissent. Verùm illius temporis tam crassa igno-
rantia fuit, ut libris editis, proditum sit, in ea academia
doctores extitisse, qui mordicus defenderent, ** ego
amat” tam commodam syntaxin esse, quàm ** ego
amo;” ad eamque pertinaciam comprimendam, autho-
ritate publica opus fuisse. In mathematicis quid effe-
cerit Ramus, Scholae Mathematicæ aliaque ejus opera
testantur. Ea meditantem, belli civilis calamitas in-
terpellavit ; acceptis igitur à rege literis, ad regiam
Fontisbelaquei bibliothecam profectus, mathematicas
prælectiones ad initio plenius et uberius retractavit.
Tum in Italiam cogitabat, quo ipsum Bononia honori-
ficè invitarat; vel saltem in Germaniam : sed viis om-
nibus terror mortis intentatus, rumor etiam Prælei sui
indignis modis direpti ac bibliothecæ spoliatæ, ad re-
9 18
PETRI RAMI VITA.
giam Vincennarum proprius urbem revocarunt. Sed et
alia vis etiam gravius urgebat, ut è Vincennis per invia
itinera profugiendum esset, et subinde variis in locis
delitescendum: in fuga tamen et latebris otium hospi-
tesque sui cupidissimos reperit ; in eoque otio Scholas
Physicas couscripsit, vel potius inchoavit. Erumpente
rursus bello civili, in optimatum castra profugit: eo
tumultu post sex menses sedato, reversus, mihil in
bibliotheca præter imania reperit scrinia ; mathematicas
tantùm commentationes Resnerus (qui Parisiis per-
mansit) direptoribus commodùm eripuit. Impendente
jam tertium civili bello, impetravit à rege Carolo ad
invisendas exteras academias annuam dimissionem,
quasi legationem liberam. In extremis regni finibus,
vix militum quorumdam manus, nisi prolato in medium
diplomate regio, effugisset. Ter dimissus, ter repeti-
tus, tandem velocitate summa eo pervenit, ubi sicariis
licentia nequaquam pareat. Adventus ejus im Germa-
niam bonorum ac doctorum omnium singulari humani-
tate et gratulatione exceptus est. Argentorati Joannes
Sturmius, ejus academiæ author simul et rector, pera-
manter eum accepit deinde academia toto adjunctis etiam
quibusdam ad ampliorem gratulationem comitibus et ba-
ronibus, liberalissimè tractavit: quo die, denique, nobi-
lissimæ nuptiæ in eo loco celebrabantur, in prytaneum
summus urbis magistratus, publicae gratulationis gratia
cum Sturmio eum adduxit. Bernam præteriens, tantùm
vidit, nec tamem sine consulis Stegeri honorifica libe-
ralitate, atque Halleri, Aretii, aliorumque doctissimo-
rum hominum amica gratulatione discessit. Tiguri,
Henricus Bullengerus simulatque in urbem ingressus
est Ramus, gratulator primus affuit, coenamque ei
apparavit, eruditissimis convivarum, Josiæ Simleri,
Rodolphi Gualteri, Lodovici Lavalteri sermonibus
longè gratissimam. Postridie cùm ab eodem Bullin-
gero in aulam publicam deduceretur, miratus quid sibi
vellet in eum locum frequentissimus civium cujusque
ordinis conventus, quæsivit ex eo, ecquæ illic etiam,
ut Argentinæ, nobiles nuptiæ celebrarentur. Cui
Bullingerus, tibi, inquit, nostra civitas nuptias illas
celebrat. Præbuit ci Heidelberga amicum Ursinum,
Olevitanum, hospitem etiam Immanuelem Tremellium,
fautorem denique ipsum Electorem Palatimum, qui
discedentem Ramum, aurea imagine sua donavit.
Inde Francofurtum pergens, à primariis aliquot civibus
honorificè est acceptus: deinde Noribergam ad præ-
stantissimos opifices et mechanicos aliosque viros doc-
tos et præsertim Joachimum Camerarium, profectus
est: hic jurisconsultorum collegio mandatum à senatu
est, ut P. Ramo convivium publico urbis nomine in-
struerent. Inde Augustam perexit ubi urbis consul
primarius eum liberalissimè tractavit, adhibitis in com-
vivium eruditis variæ doctrinæ convivis, sed imprimis
Hieronimo Wolfio, et Tichome Bracheo, cum quo post
prandium in suburbanum consulis deductus, varios
sermones de studiis mathematicis habuit. Rumore
tandem restitutæ pacis revocatus, Lausannam conten-
dit: hic a viris doctis exoratus, logicam àxpóaoiv dies
aliquot maximo concursu exhibuit. Geneva cum doc-
tissimis hominibus tum de cæteris liberalibus studiis,
tum de logicis collocutio illi assidua fuit, maximè cum
Francisco de Cretensi et Andrea Melvimo, Scoto.
Cum aliis multis eruditissimis viris, in Italia Com-
mandino et Papio, in Anglia Dio et Acontio, in Ger-
mania Chytreo, aliisque permultis amicitiam per literas
jaxantè coluerat. Nobiles et inclytæ civitates eum
magnis et honorificis muneribus, et sexcentorum coro-
natorum oblato stipendio appetiverunt. Joannes elec-
tus rex Pannoni amplissimo stipendio Albæ Juliæ
regendam academiam illi obtulit. Cracoviam libera-
lissimè, immo in Italiam mille ducatorum stipendio
Bononiam invitatus, patriam tamen deserere noluit :
itaque Carolus ix, petitum undique calumniis domi,
invidorùmque morsibus, non solùm præsenti ope sub-
levavit, sed honore auxit et amplificabit, eique vaca-
tionem à laboribus concessit. Tandem, ammo 1572, in
illa Parisiensi Christianorum ac civium internecione,
indignissime periit. Necis causam sunt qui in æmu-
los ejus conferant: plerique eandem quæ ceteris ea
nocte trucidatis fuisse existimant. I.egatum annuum
mathematico professori in Parisiensi academia lucu-
lentum testamento reliquit.
THE SECOND
DEFENCE OF THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND,
AGAINST AN ANONYMOUS LIBEL
EN'ſ ITI, EID
“THE ROYAL BLOOD CRYING TO HEAVEN FOR WENGEANCE ON THE ENGLISH PARRICIDES.”
TRANSI.ATED FROM THE LATIN,
BY ROBERT FELLOWES, A. M. OXON.
A GRATEFUL recollection of the divine goodness, is the
first of human obligations; and extraordinary favours
demand more solemn and devout acknowledgments;
with such acknowledgments I feel it my duty to begin
this work. First, because I was born at a time, when
the virtue of my fellow-citizens, far exceeding that of
their progenitors in greatness of soul and vigour of en-
terprize, having invoked heaven to witness the justice
of their cause, and been clearly governed by its direc-
tions, has succeeded in delivering the commonwealth
from the most grievous tyranny, and religion from the
most ignominious degradation. And next, because
when there suddenly arose many who, as is usual with
the vulgar, basely calumniated the most illustrious at-
chievements, and when one eminent above the rest,
inflated with literary pride, and the zealous applauses
of his partizans, had in a scandalous publication, which
was particularly levelled against me, nefariously un-
dertaken to plead the cause of despotism, I who was
neither deemed unequal to so renowned an adversary,
nor to so great a subject, was particularly selected by
the deliverers of our country, and by the general suf.
frage of the public, openly to vindicate the rights of
the English nation, and consequently of liberty itself.
Lastly, because in a matter of so much moment, and
which excited such ardent expectations, I did not dis-
appoint the hopes nor the opinions of my fellow-
citizens; while men of learning and eminence abroad
honoured me with unmingled approbation ; while I
obtained such a victory over my opponent, that not-
withstanding his unparalleled assurance, he was obliged
to quit the field with his courage broken and his repu-
tation lost; and for the three years which he lived af.
terwards, much as he menaced and furiously as he
raved, he gave me no further trouble, except that he pro-
cured the paltry aid of some despicable hirelings, and
suborned some of his silly and extravagant admirers, to
support him under the weight of the unexpected and
recent disgrace which he had experienced. This will
immediately appear. Such are the signal favours
which I ascribe to the divine beneficence, and which I
thought it right devoutly to commemorate, not only
that I might discharge a debt of gratitude, but par-
ticularly because they seem auspicious to the success
of my present undertaking. For who is there, who
does not identify the honour of his country with his
own f And what can conduce more to the beauty or
glory of one's country, than the recovery, not only
of its civil but its religious liberty P And what na-
tion or state ever obtained both, by more successful
or more valorous exertion ? For fortitude is seen re-
splendent, not only in the field of battle and amid the
clash of arms, but displays its energy under every diffi-
culty and against every assailant. Those Greeks and
Romans, who are the objects of our admiration, em-
ployed hardly any other virtue in the extirpation of
tyrants, than that love of liberty which made them
prompt in seizing the sword, and gave them strength
to use it. With facility they accomplished the un-
dertaking, amid the general shout of praise and
joy ; nor did they engage in the attempt so much,
as an enterprize of perilous and doubtful issue, as in a
contest the most glorious in which virtue could be sig-
nalized ; which infallibly led to present recompence;
which bound their brows with wreaths of laurel, and
consigned their memories to immortal ſame. For as
yet, tyrants were not beheld with a superstitious reve-
rence; as yet they were not regarded with tenderness
and complacency, as the vicegerents or deputies of
Christ, as they have suddenly professed to be; as yet
#:
920 THE SECOND DEFENCE OF
THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND.
the vulgar, stupified by the subtle casuistry of the
priest, had not degenerated into a state of barbarism,
more gross than that which disgraces the most senseless
natives of Hindostan. For these make mischievous
demons, whose malice they cannot resist, the objects of
their religious adoration ; while those elevate impo-
tent tyrants, in order to shield them from destruction,
into the rank of gods; and to their own cost, consecrate
the pests of the human race. But against this dark
array of long received opinions, superstitions, obloquy,
and fears, which some dread even more than the enemy
himself, the English had to contend ; and all this,
under the light of better information, and favoured by
an impulse from above, they overcame with such sin-
gular enthusiasm and bravery, that, great as were the
numbers engaged in the contest, the grandeur of con-
ception, and loftiness of spirit which were universally
displayed, merited for each individual more than a me-
diocrity of ſame ; and Britain, which was formerly
styled the hot-bed of tyranny, will hereafter deserve to
be celebrated for endless ages, as a soil most genial to
the growth of liberty. During the mighty struggle,
no anarchy, no licentiousness was seen ; no illusions
of glory, no extravagant emulation of the antients in-
flamed them with a thirst for ideal liberty; but the rec-
titude of their lives, and the sobriety of their habits,
taught them the only true and safe road to real liberty;
and they took up arms only to defend the sanctity of
the laws, and the rights of conscience. Relying on
the divine assistance, they used every honourable ex-
ertion to break the yoke of slavery; of the praise of
which, though I claim no share to myself, yet I can
easily repel any charge which may be adduced against
me, either of want of courage, or want of zeal. For
though I did not participate in the toils or dangers of
the war, yet I was at the same time engaged in a ser-
vice not less hazardous to myself, and more beneficial
to my fellow-citizens; nor, in the adverse turns of our
affairs, did I ever betray any symptoms of pusillanimity
and dejection; or shew myself more afraid than be-
came me, of malice or of death : For since from my
youth I was devoted to the pursuits of literature, and
my mind had always been stronger than my body, I
did not court the labours of a camp, in which any com-
mon person would have been of more service than my-
self, but resorted to that employment in which my ex-
ertions were likely to be of most avail. Thus, with the
better part of my frame, I contributed as much as
possible to the good of my country, and to the success
of the glorious cause in which we were engaged ; and
I thought, that if God willed the success of such glorious
atchievements, it was equally agreeable to his will,
that there should be others by whom those atchieve-
ments should be recorded with dignity and elegance;
and that the truth, which had been defended by arms,
should also be defended by reason; which is the best
and only legitimate means of defending it. Hence,
while I applaud those who were victorious in the field,
I will not complain of the province which was assigned
me; but rather congratulate myself upon it, and thank
the author of all good for having placed me in a sta-
tion, which may be an object of envy to others, rather
than of regret to myself. I am far from wishing to
make any vain or arrogant comparisons, or to speak
ostentatiously of myself, but, in a cause so great and
glorious, and particularly on an occasion when I
called by the general suffrage to defend the very
fenders of that cause ; I can hardly refrain from
&l Ill
de-
&l S-
the
simplicity of an exordium may seem to justify : and
suming a more lofty and swelling tone, than
much as I may be surpassed in the powers of eloquence,
and copiousness of diction, by the illustrious orators of
antiquity; yet the subject of which I treat, was never
It has
excited such general and such ardent expectation, that
I imagine myself not in the forum or on the rostra,
surrounded only by the people of Athens or of Rome;
but about to address in this as I did in my former de-
fence, the whole collective body of people, cities, states,
and councils of the wise and eminent, through the
wide expanse of anxious and listening Europe.
to survey as from a towering height, the far extended
tracts of sea and land, and innumerable crowds of spec-
tators, betraying in their looks the liveliest interest,
and sensations the most congenial with my own. Here
I behold the stout and manly prowess of the Germans,
disdaining servitude; there the generous and lively
impetuosity of the French ; on this side, the calm and
stately valour of the Spaniard ; on that, the composed
and wary magnanimity of the Italian. Of all the
lovers of liberty and virtue, the magnanimous and the
wise, in whatever quarter they may be found, some
secretly favour, others openly approve; some greet me
with congratulations and applause ; others, who had
long been proof against conviction, at last yield them-
selves captive to the force of truth. Surrounded by
congregated multitudes, I now imagine, that, from the
columns of Hercules to the Indian ocean, I behold the
nations of the earth recovering that liberty which they
so long had lost; and that the people of this island are
transporting to other countries a plant of more benefi-
cial qualities, and more noble growth, than that which
Triptolemus is reported to have carried from region
to region; that they are disseminating the blessings of
civilization and freedom among cities, kingdoms, and
nations. Nor shall I approach unknown, nor per-
haps unloved, if it be told that I am the same person
who engaged in single combat that fierce advocate of
despotism; till then reputed invincible in the opinion
of many, and in his own conceit ; who insolently
challenged us and our armies to the combat ; but
whom, while I repelled his virulence, I silenced with
his own weapons; and over whom, if I may trust to
the opinions of impartial judges, I gained a complete
and glorious victory. That this is the plain unvar-
nished fact appears from this; that, after the most noble
queen of Sweden, than whom there neither is nor ever
was a personage more attached to literature and to
learned men, had invited Salmasius or Salmasia (for
to which sex he belonged is a matter of uncertainty)
to her court, where he was received with great dis-
tinction, my defence suddenly surprized him in the
surpassed in any age, in dignity or in interest.
I seem
THE SECOND DEFENCE OF
THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND. 92.1
midst of his security. It was generally read, and by
the queen among the rest, who, attentive to the dig-
nity of her station, let the stranger experience no di-
minution of her former kindness and munificence.
But, with respect to the rest, if I may assert what has
been often told, and was matter of public notoriety, such
a change was instantly effected in the public senti-
ment, that he, who but yesterday flourished in the
highest degree of favour, seemed to day to wither in
neglect; and soon after receiving permission to depart,
he left it doubtful among many, whether he were more
honoured when he came, or more disgraced when he
went away; and even in, other places it is clear, that
it occasioned no small loss to his reputation; and all
this I have mentioned, not from any futile motives of
vanity or ostentation, but that I might clearly show, as
I proposed in the beginning, what momentous reasons
I had for commencing this work with an effusion of
gratitude to the Father of the universe. Such a preface
was most honourable and appropriate, in which I might
prove, by an enumeration of particulars, that I had not
been without my share of human misery; but that I
had, at the same time, experienced singular marks of
the divine regard; that in topics of the highest con-
cern, the most connected with the exigencies of my
country, and the most beneficial to civil and religious
liberty; the supreme wisdom and beneficence had in-
vigorated and enlarged my faculties, to defend the
dearest interests, not merely of one people, but of the
whole human race, against the enemies of human li-
berty; as it were in a full concourse of all the nations
on the earth: And I again invoke the same Almighty
Being, that I may still be able with the same integrity,
the same diligence, and the same success, to defend
those actions which have been so gloriously atchieved;
while I vindicate the authors as well as myself, whose
name has been associated with theirs, not so much for
the sake of honour as disgrace, from unmerited igno-
miny and reproach ; but if there are any, who think
that it would have been better to have passed over
these in silent contempt, I should agree with them, if
they had been dispersed only among those who were
thoroughly acquainted with our principles and our
conduct; but, how were strangers to discover the false
assertions of our adversaries? When proper pains have
been taken to make the vindication as extensive as the
calumny, I think that they will cease to think ill of us,
and that he will be ashamed of the falsehoods which
he has promulgated; but, if he be past the feeling of
shame, we may them well leave him to contempt. I
should sooner have prepared an answer to his invective,
if he had not entrenched himself in unfounded rumours
and frequent denunciations that Salmasius was labour-
ing at the anvil, and fabricating new libels against us,
which would soon make their appearance; by which
he obtained only a short delay of vengeance and of
punishment; for I thought it right to reserve my whole
strength unimpaired against the more potent adversary.
But the conflict between me and Salmasius is now
finally terminated by his death; and I will not write
against the dead; nor will I reproach him with the
loss of life as he did me with the loss of sight; though
there are some, who impute his death to the penetrating
severity of my strictures, which he rendered only the
more sharp by his endeavours to resist. When he saw
the work which he had in hand proceed slowly on, the
time of reply elapsed, the public curiosity subsided, his
fame marred, and his reputation lost; the favour of the
princes, whose cause be had so ill-defended, alienated,
he was destroyed after three years of grief rather by
the force of depression than disease. However this
may be, if I must wage even a posthumous war with
an enemy whose strength I so well know, whose most
vigorous and impetuous attacks I so easily sustained,
there seems no reason why I should dread the languid
exertions of his dying hour.
But now, at last, let us come to this thing, whatever
it may be, that provokes us to the combat; though I
hear, indeed, the cry not of the royal blood, as the title
pretends, but that of some skulking and drivelling mis-
creant. Well, I beseech, who are you ? a man, or no-
body at all P Certainly one of the dregs of men, for
even slaves are not without a name. Shall I always
have to contend with anonymous scribblers ? though
they would willingly indeed pass for kings' men, but I
much doubt whether they can make kings believe that
they are. The followers and friends of kings are not
ashamed of kings. How then are these the friends of
kings f They make no contributions; they more
willingly receive them; they will not even lend their
names to the support of the royal cause. What then f
they support it by their pen; but even this service they
have not sufficient liberality to render gratuitously to
their kings; nor have they the courage to affix their
names to their productions. But though, O anonymous
Sirs' I might plead the example of your Claudius,
who composed a plausible work concerning the rights
of kings, but without having respect enough either for
me or for the subject to put his name to the production,
I should think it scandalous to undertake the discussion
of so weighty a subject, while I concealed my name.
What I, in a republic, openly attempt against kings,
why do you in a monarchy, and under the patronage of
kings, not dare to do except clandestinely and by stealth?
Why do you, trembling with apprehension in the midst
of security, and seeking darkness in the midst of light,
depreciate the power and the majesty of sovereigns by a
cowardice, which must excite both hatred and distrust?
Do you suspect that you have no protection in the
power of kings? Lut surely, thus skulking in obscu-
rity and prowling in disguise, you seem to have come
not so much as advocates to maintain the right of
kings as thieves to rob the treasury, What I am, I
ingentiously profess to be. The prerogative which I
deny to kings, I would persist in denying in any legi-
timate monarchy; for no sovereign could injure me
without first condemning himself by a confession of
his despotism. If I inveigh against tyrauts, what is
this to kings P whom I am far from associating with
tyrants. As much as an honest man differs from a
rogue, so much I contend that a king differs from a
tyrant. Whence it is clear, that a tyrant is so far from
922 THE SECOND DEFENCE OF
THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND.
being a king, that he is always in direct opposition to
a king. And he who peruses the records of history,
will find that more kings have been subverted by
tyrants than by their subjects. He, therefore, who
would authorise the destruction of tyrants, does not
authorise the destruction of kings, but of the most in-
veterate enemies to kings. But that right, which you
concede to kings, the right of doing what they please,
is not justice, but injustice, ruin and despair. By that
envenomed present you yourselves destroy those, whom
you extol as if they were above the reach of danger
and oppression; and you quite obliterate the difference
between a king and a tyrant, if you invest both with
the same arbitrary power. For, if a king does not
exercise that power, (and no king will exercise it as
long as he is not a tyrant,) the power must be ascribed,
not to the king, but to the individual. For, what can
be imagined more absurd than that regal prerogative,
which, if any one uses, as often as he wishes to act
the king, so often he ceases to be an honest man; and
as often as he chooses to be an honest man, so often
he must evince that he is not a king f Can any more
bitter reproach be cast upon kings? He who main-
tains this prerogative, must himself be a monster of
injustice and iniquity; for how can there be a worse
person than him, who must himself first verify the
exaggerated picture of atrocity which he delineates?
But if every good man, as an ancient sect of philo-
sophers magnificently taught, is a king, it follows
that every bad one is, according to his capacity,
a tyrant; nor does the name of tyrant signify any
thing soaring or illustrious, but the meanest reptile
on the earth; for in proportion as he is great, he is
contemptible and abject. Others are vicious only for
themselves: but tyrants are vicious, not only for them-
selves, but are even involuntarily obliged to partici-
pate in the crimes of their importunate menials and
favourites, and to entrust certain portions of their
despotism to the vilest of their dependants. Tyrants
are thus the most abject of slaves, for they are the
servants of those who are themselves in servitude.
This name therefore may be rightly applied to the
most insignificant pugilist of tyranny, or even to this
brawler; who, why he should strenuously clamour
for the interests of despotism, will sufficiently appear
from what has been said already, and what will be
said in the sequel; as also why this hireling chooses
to conceal his name. Treading in the steps of Salma-
sius, he has prostituted his cry for the royal blood, and
either blushing for the disgrace of his erudition, or the
flagitiousness of his life, it is not strange that he should
wish to be concealed; or perhaps he is watching an
opportunity, wherever he may scent some richer odours
of emolument, to desert the cause of kings, and trans-
fer his services to some future republic. This was the
manner of Salmasius, who, captivated by the love of
gain, apostatised, even when sinking in years, from
the orthodox to the episcopalians, from the popular
party to the royalists. Thou brawler, then, from the
stews, who thou art thou in vain endeavourest to con-
ceal; believe me, you will be dragged to light, nor
will the helmet of Pluto any longer serve you for a
disguise. And you will swear downright, as long as
you live, either that I am not blind, or that I was
quicksighted enough to detect you in the labyrinth of
imposture. Attend then, while I relate who he is,
from whom descended, by what expectations he was
led, or by what blandishments soothed to advocate the
royal cause.
There is one More, part Frenchman and part Scot,
so that one country, or one people, cannot be quite
overwhelmed with the whole infamy of his extraction;
an unprincipled miscreant, and proved not only by the
general testimony of his enemies, but even by that of
his dearest friends, whom he has alienated by his in-
sincerity, to be a monster of perfidy, falsehood, ingra-
titude, and malevolence, the perpetual slanderer, not
only of men, but of women, whose chastity he is no
more accustomed to regard than their reputation. To
pass over the more obscure transactions of his youth,
he first made his appearance as a teacher of the Greek
language at Geneva; where he could not divest him-
self either of the knave or fool; but where, even while
secretly conscious, though perhaps not yet publicly
convicted of so many enormities, he had the audacity
to solicit the office of pastor in the church, and to pro-
fane the character by his crimes. But his debauch-
eries, his pride, and the general profligacies of his con-
duct, could not long escape the censure of the Presby-
ters; after being condemned for many heresies, which
he basely recanted, and to which he still as impiously
adhered, he was at last openly found guilty of adul-
tery. He had conceived a violent passion for the
maid-servant of his host, and even aſter she was mar-
ried to another, did not cease to solicit the gratification
of his lust. The neighbours often observed them
together in close converse under a shed in the garden.
But you will say this might have no reference to any
criminal amours; he might have conversed upon hor-
ticulture, and have read lectures on the art, to the
untutored and curious girl; he might one while have
praised the beauty of the parterres, or regretted the
absence of shade; he might have inserted a mulberry
in a fig, and thence have rapidly raised a progeny of
sycamores; a cooling bower; and might then have
taught the art of grafting to the fair. All this and
more he might, no doubt, have done. But all this
would not satisfy the Presbyters, who passed sentence
on him as an adulterer, and judged him unworthy of
the ecclesiastical functions. The heads of those, and
other accusations of the like kind, are still preserved
in the public library at Geneva. But, even after this
had become matter of public notoriety, he was invited,
at the instance of Salmasius, to officiate in the French
church at Middleburgh. This gave great offence to
Spanheim, a man of singular erudition and integrity;
who was well acquainted with his character at Gene-
va, though at last, but not without the most violent op-
position, he succeeded in obtaining letters testimonial
from the Genevese, but these only on the condition that
he should leave the place, and couched in expressions
rather bordering on censure than on praise. As soon
THE SECOND DIEFENCE OF
THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND. 923
as he arrived in Holland, he went to pay his respects
to Salmasius; where he immediately cast his libidinous
looks on his wife's maid, whose name was Pontia; for
the fellow's lust is always inflamed by cooks and wait-
ing-maids; hence he began to pay assiduous court to
Salmasius, and, as often as he had opportunity, to Pontia.
I know not whether Salmasius, taken by the busy at-
tentions and unintermitted adulation of More, or More
thinking that it would favour his purpose of meeting
Pontia, which first caused their conversation to turn on
the answer of Milton to Salmasius. But, however this
might be, More undertook to defend Salmasius, and
Salmasius promises to obtain for More the divinity-
chair in that city. Besides this, More promises him-
self other sweets in his clandestine amour with Pontia;
for, under pretext of consulting Salmasius in the pro-
secution of this work, he had free admission to the house
at all hours of the night or day. And, as formerly
Pyramus was changed into a mulberry tree, so More *
seems suddenly transformed into Pyramus; but in pro-
portion as he was more criminal, so he was more fortu-
nate than that youth. He had no occasion to seek for
a chink in the wall; he had every facility of carrying
on his intrigue with his Thisbe under the same roof.
He promises her marriage; aſid, under the lure of this
promise, violates her chastity. O shame! a minister
of the gospel abuses the confidence of friendship to
commit this atrocious crime. From this amour no com-
mon prodigy accrued; for both man and woman suffer-
cd the pains of parturition: Pontia conceived a morill,t
which long afforded employment to the natural disqui-
sitions of Salmasius; More, the barren and windy egg;
from which issued that flatulent cry of the royal blood.
The sight of this egg indeed, at first, caused our mo-
narchy-men, who were famishing in Belgium, to lick
their chops; but the shell was no sooner broken, than
they loathed the addle and putrid contents; for More,
not a little elated with his conception, and thinking
that he had obliged the whole Orange faction, had be-
gun to anticipate a new accession of professorships and
chairs, when he deserted his poor pregnant Pontia, as
beneath his notice, to indigence and misfortune. She
complained to the synod and the magistrates, of the
injuries and the treachery which she had experienced.
Thus the matter was brought to light, and afforded
subject for merriment and observation in almost all
places and companies.
wrote this distich,
Hence some ingenious person
Galli ex concubitu gravidam te, Pontia, Mori,
Quis bene moratam morigeramgue negat f
O Pontia, teeming with More's Gallic seed,
You have been Mor'd enough, and no more need.
Pontia alone was not seen to smile; but she gained
mothing by complaint; for the cry of the royal blood
soon overwhelmed the clamour about the rape, and the
cries of the ruined fair. Salmasius deeply resented the
injury and insult which were thus offered to himself
and his family; and the derision to which he was ex-
posed by his courteous and admiring friend; and per-
haps this misfortune, added to his other mishaps in the
royal cause, might have contributed to accelerate his
end. But on this hereafter. In the mean time, Salma-
sius, with the fate of Salmasia, (for the fable is as ap-
propriate as the name) little thinking that in More he
had got an hermaphrodite associate, as incapable of
parturition as of procreation, without knowing what he
had begot for him in the house, fondles the fruit of his
travail, the book in which he was styled Great; justly
perhaps in his own opinion, but very unfitly and ridi-
culously in that of other people. He hastens to the
printer; and, in vain endeavouring to keep possession
of the fame which was vanishing from his grasp, he
anxiously attends as a midwife the public delivery of
those praises, or rather vile flatteries, which he had so
rapaciously sought this fellow and others to bestow.
For this purpose Flaccus seemed the most proper per-
son that could be found ; him he readily persuades, not
only to print the book, which nobody would have
blamed, but also publicly to profess himself the author
of a letter to Charles, filled with the most calumnious
aspersions against me, whom he bad never known.
But when I shew, as I can from good authority, how
he has acted towards others, it will be the less astonish-
ing why he should so readily be prevailed on to com-
mence such a wanton and unprovoked attack upon me;
and with so little consideration, to father another's ex-
travagance of slander and in vective. Flaccus, whose
country is unknown, was an itinerant bookseller, a no-
torious prodigal and cheat; for a long time he carried
on a clandestine trade in London; from which city,
after practising innumerable frauds, he ran away in
debt. He afterwards lived at Paris, during the whole
reign of James, an object of distrust and a monster of
extortion. From this place he made his escape; and
now does not dare to approach within many miles; at
present he makes his appearance as a regenerated book-
seller at the Hague, ready to perform any nefarious
and dirty work to which he may be invited. And as a
proof how little he cares what he says or what he does,
there is nothing so sacred which a trifling bribe would
not tempt him to betray; and I shall bring forward his
own confession to shew that his virulence against me was
not prompted, as might be supposed, by any zeal for
the public good. When he found that what I had writ-
ten against Salmasius had a considerable sale, he writes
to some of my friends to persuade me to let any future
publication of mine issue from his press; and promises a
great degree of elegance in the typographical execution.
I replied, that I had, at that time, no work by me ready
for the press. But lo! he, who had lately made me
such an officious proffer of his services, soon appears,
not only as the printer, but the (suborned) author of a
most scandalous libel upon my character. My friends
express their indignation ; he replies with unabashed
effrontery, that he is quite astonished at their simplicity
and ignorance of the world, in supposing that he should
suffer any motions of right or wrong to disturb his cal-
* Morus, the Latin name for mulberry. .
f A little More, or inulberry.
t It is impossible to give a literally exact rendering of this ; I have
played upon the name as well as I could in English. -ſt, l'.
924
THE SECOND DEFENCE OF THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND.
culations of profit and his speculations of gain: that he
had received that letter from Salmasius together with the
book; that he begged him to publish it on his own ac-
count, in the way he had done; and that, if Milton or
any other person thought fit to write an answer, he
should have no hesitation in printing it, if they would
employ him in the business. This was nothing else
than to say that he would readily publish an invective
against Salmasius, or King Charles ; for the reply
could relate to no other persons. It is needless to say
more. I have unmasked the man; I proceed to others;
for he is not the only one who has served to embellish
this tragic cry of the royal blood. Here then are the
actors in the drama. The brawling prolocutor, the
profligate Flaccus, or, if you had rather, Salmasius,
habited in the mask and cloak of Flaccus, two poetas-
ters drunk with stale beer, and More famed for adultery
and rape. A marvellous company of tragedians! and
an honest set for me to engage ' But as such a cause
was not likely to procure adversaries of a different
stamp; let us now proceed to the attack of the individ-
uals, such as they are; only first premising that, if any
one think my refutation wanting in gravity, he should
recollect, that I have not to contend with a weighty foe,
but only a merry-andrew host; and that in such a
work, instead of labouring to give it throughout the
highest polish of elegance, it was right to consider
what diction might be most appropriate to such a crew.
The Royal Blood crying to heaven for vengeance on the
English parricides.
Your narrative, O More, would have had a greater
appearance of truth, if you had first shewn that his
blood was not justly shed. But as in the first dawn
of the reformation, the monks, from their dearth of ar-
gument, had recourse to spectres and other impositions,
so you, when nothing else will stand you in any stead,
call in the aid of voices which were never heard, and
superstitious tricks that have long been out of date.
You would not readily give any of us credit for having
heard a voice from heaven; but I could with little diſ-
ficulty believe that you did actually hear a voice from
hell. Yet, I beseech you, who heard this cry of the
royal blood P Yourself? Mere trash ; for first you
never hear any thing good.*
mounts to heaven, if any but God hear, it can only be
the upright and the pure ; who, themselves, unstained
with crimes, may well denounce the divine vengeance
against the guilty. But how could you possibly hear
it 2 or, as a catamite, would you write a satire against
lust? For you seem, at the same time, to have fabricated
this miraculous cry to heaven and to have consummated
your amour with Pontia. There are not only many
impediments in your sense, but many evil incrustations
about your heart, which would for ever prevent such
cries from reaching your ears; and if nothing else did,
the many cries which are continually ascending to
heaven against your own enormities would be sufficient
for the purpose. The voice of that harlot, whom you
* Latin, male audis. There is a play upon the words.
But that cry which
debauched in the garden, and who complains that you,
her religious teacher, was the author of her seduction
demands vengeance against you. Vengeance is de-
manded against you by the husband, whose nuptial
bed you defiled ; it is demanded by Pontia, to whom
you perjured your nuptial vow ; it is demanded by that
little innocent whom you caused to be born in shame,
and then left to perish without support.—All these
different cries for vengeance on your guilty head are
continually ascending to the throne of God; which if
you do not hear, it is certain that the cry of the royal
blood you could never have heard. Thus your book,
instead of the royal blood crying to heaven, might
more fitly be entitled “More's lascivious neighing for
his Pontia.” Of that tiresome and addle epistle, which
follows, part is devoted to Charles, part to Milton, to
exalt the one, and to vilify the other. Take a speci-
men from the beginning: “The dominions of Charles,”
he says, “were thrown into the sacrilegious hands of
parricides and Deicides.” I shall not stay to consider
whether this rant be the product of Salmasius, of
More, or of Flaccus. But this, which makes others
laugh, may well make Charles rave; for a little after
he says that “no one was more devoted to the interests
of Charles.” What truly 1 was there no one more de-
voted to his interests than you, who offered to publish
and to circulate the in vectives of his enemies P. How
wretched and forlorn must be the situation of Charles,
if a scoundrel of a printer dare to rank himself among
his most confidential friends P. Wretched indeed must
he be, if the perfidious Flaccus equal his dearest friends
in fidelity and affection . But could the fellow have
spoken any thing either more arrogantly of himself,
or more contemptuously of the king and the king's
friends 2 Nor is it less ridiculous that a low-lived me-
chanic should be brought upon the stage to philosophise
on the principles of government, and the virtues of
kings; and to speak in a tone as lofty as even Salma-
sius or More. But indeed on this as well as other oc-
casions I have discovered evident indications that Sal-
masius, notwithstanding the multiplicity of his reading,
was a man of puerile judgment, and without any know-
ledge of the world; for though he must have read
that the chief magistrates, in the well-arranged
government of Sparta, were always wont to ascribe to
some virtuous citizen the merit of every good saying
which the worthless and the profligate might occasion-
ally pronounce, he has shewn himself so utterly igno-
rant of all that is called propriety, as to ascribe to the
vilest of men, sentiments which could become only the
good and wise. Keep up your spirits, Charles; for the
old rogue Flaccus, whose faith in providence is so
great, tells you not to be depressed. Do not succumb
under so many sufferings. Flaccus, the most unprin-
cipled prodigal, who so soon lost all that he ever had,
tells you not to despond when all is lost. Make the
best of your ill-starred fortune. And can you help
making the best of it when he advises, who, for so
many years, by every species of peculation and iniquity,
has been wont to subsist on the fortunes of others?
THE SECOND DEFENCE OF THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND.
925
“Drink deep of wisdom, for you are plunged in wis-
dom's pool.” So counsels, so directs jolly Flaccus, the
unrivalled preceptor of kings, who, seizing the leathern
flaggon with his ink-smeared hands, drinks among his
fellow workmen a huge draught to the success of your
philosophy. This dares Flaccus, your incomparable
partizan, who signs his name to admonitions, which
Salmasius, which More, and your other advocates, have
too little courage, or too much pride, to own. For, as
often as you have any need of admonition or defence,
they are always anonymously wise or brave; and at
another's hazard rather than their own. Let this fel-
low therefore, whoever he may be, cease to make a
barren boast of his vigorous and animated eloquence;
for the author truly “ſears to divulge his name, which
has become so renowned by the exertions of his genius.”
But he had not the courage, even in that work which
was to avenge the royal blood, to prefix a dedication to
Charles without the vicarious aid of Flaccus, in whose
words he was contented to say that, “if it might be
permitted, he would dedicate the book to his majesty
without a name.” Thus having done with Charles, he
next puts himself in a menacing posture against me.
“After this proacmium” the wonderful “Salmasius
will make the trumpet blow a deadly blast.” You an-
nounce a new kind of harmony; for to the terrors of
that loud-sounding instrument no symphony bears so
close a resemblance as that which is produced by ac-
cumulated flatulency. But I advise Salmasius not to
raise the notes of this trumpet to too high a pitch; for,
the louder the tones, the more he will expose himself
to a slap on the chops; which, while both his cheeks
ring, will give a delightful flow to his well-propor-
tioned melodies. You chatter on, “who has not his
equal, nor near his equal, in the whole literary and
scientific world.” What assurance | Ye men of eru-
dition, scattered over the world, can you think it pos-
sible that a preference over you all should be given to
a grammatical louse, whose only treasure of merit, and
hope of ſame, consisted in a glossary ; and who would
at last be found to deserve nothing but contempt, if a
comparison were instituted between him and men
really learned. But this would not be affirmed by any
except the lowest driveller, more destitute of under-
standing than even Flaccus himself. “And who has
now employed in the service of your majesty, a stu-
pendous mass of erudition, illuminated by a genius
quite divine.” If you recollect what I said above, that
Salmasius took this letter, which was either written by
himself or one of his creatures, to the printer, and in-
treated the servile artificer to affix his own name to the
publication, you will discover the indisputable marks
of a mind truly grovelling and contemptible; basely
wooing a panegyrick on itself, and sedulously procur-
ing, even from a fool, an unbounded prodigality of
praise. “An incomparable and immortal work, which
it is fruitless to revile, and in which it must astonish
even the regular practitioners of the law, how a French-
man should so soon bring himself to understand and to
explain the English history, the laws, statutes, records,
&c.” Indeed how little he understood our laws, and
how much he spoke at random on the subject, we have
produced abundant evidence to shew. “But he will
soon, in another impression which he is preparing
against the rebels, stop the mouths of revilers, and
chastise Milton according to his deserts.” You, there-
fore, as that little avant courier of a fish, run before the
Salmasian whale, which threatens an attack upon our
coast; we sharpen our harpoons to elicit any oil or gall
which his impetuous vengeance may contain. In the
mean time we admire the more than Pythagorean ten-
derness of this prodigy of a man, who compassionating
animals, and particularly fish, to whose flesh even Lent
shews no indulgence, destined so many volumes to the
decent apparelling of myriads of poor sprats and her-
rings, and bequeathed by will a paper coat to each.
Rejoice, ye herrings, and ye ocean fry,
Who, in cold winter, shiver in the sea;
The knight, Salmasius, pitying your hard lot,
Bounteous intends your nakedness to clothe.
And, lavish of his paper, is preparing
Chartaceous jackets to invest you all.
Jackets resplendent with his arms and fame,
Exultingly parade the fishy mart,
And sing his praise with checquered livery,
That well might serve to grace the letter'd store
Of those, who pick their noses and ne'er read.
This I wrote on the long expected edition of his far-
famed work; in printing which he was strenuously en-
gaged, while you, sir, were polluting his house by your
scandalous amour with Pontia. And Salmasius appears
to have long and industriously applied himself to the
execution; for, only a few days before his death, when
a learned person, from whom I received the information,
sent to ask him when he would publish the second part
of his argument against the supremacy of the Pope ;
he replied, that he should not return to that work till
he had completed his labours against Milton. Thus
I was preferred before the Pope ; and that supremacy
which he denied to him in the church, he gratuitously
bestowed on me in his resentment. Thus I seem to
have furnished a timely succour against his subversion
of the papacy; and to have saved the Roman capital
from the irruption of a second Catiline, not indeed like
the Consul Tully, by the fasces of office, or the pre-
monitions of a dream, but by very different means.
Surely many cardinals' caps will be due to me on this
account; and I fear lest the Roman Pontiff, by the
transfer of a title, which lately belonged to our kings,
should salute me with the appellation of Defender of
the Faith, You see under what a cloud of disgrace
Salmasius laboured to depress me. But ought he to
have relinquished a post of honourable exertion to
mingle in foreign controversies, or to have deserted the
service of the church for political and external dis-
cussions, in which he had no knowledge and no con-
cern P Ought he to have made a truce with the Pope P
and, what was most base of all, after the utmost bitter-
'ness of hostility, to have sought a reconciliation with
the Bishops? Let us now come to the charges which
were brought against myself. Is there any thing re-
prehensible in my manners or my conduct? Surely
926
THE SECOND DEFENCE OF THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND.
nothing. What no one, not totally divested of all ge-
nerous sensibility, would have done, he reproaches me
with want of beauty and loss of sight.
A monster huge and hideous, void of sight.
I certainly never supposed that I should have been
obliged to enter into a competition for beauty with
the Cyclops; but he immediately corrects himself, and
says, “ though not indeed huge, for there cannot be a
more spare, shrivelled, and bloodless form.” It is of
no moment to say any thing of personal appearance,
yet lest (as the Spanish vulgar, implicitly confiding in
the relations of their priests, believe of heretics) any
one, from the representations of my enemies, should be
led to imagine that I have either the head of a dog, or
the horm of a rhinoceros, I will say something on the
subject, that I may have an opportunity of paying my
grateful acknowledgements to the Deity, and of refut-
ing the most shameless lies. I do not believe that I
was ever once noted for deformity, by any one who
ever saw me ; but the praise of beauty I am not
anxious to obtain. My stature certainly is not tall;
but it rather approaches the middle than the diminu-
tive. Yet what if it were diminutive, when so many
men, illustrious both in peace and war, have been the
same 2 And how can that be called diminutive, which
is great enough for every virtuous achievement 2 Nor,
though very thin, was I ever deficient in courage or
in strength; and I was wont constantly to exercise
myself in the use of the sword, as long as it comported
with my habits and my years. Armed with this
weapon, as I usually was, I should have thought my-
self quite a match for any one, though much stronger
than myself; and I felt perfectly secure against the
assault of any open enemy. At this moment I have
the same courage, the same strength, though not
the same eyes; yet so little do they betray any exter-
mal appearance of injury, that they are as unclouded
and bright as the eyes of those who most distinctly
see. In this instance alone I am a dissembler against
my will. My face, which is said to indicate a total
privation of blood, is of a complexion entirely opposite
to the pale and the cadaverous; so that, though I am
more than forty years old, there is scarcely any one to
whom I do not appear ten years younger than I am ;
and the smoothness of my skin is not, in the least,
affected by the wrinkles of age. If there be one par-
ticle of falsehood in this relation, I should deservedly
incur the ridicule of many thousands of my country-
men, and even many foreigners to whom I am per-
sonally known. But if he, in a matter so foreign to
his purpose, shall be found to have asserted so many
shameless and gratuitous falsehoods, you may the
more readily estimate the quantity of his veracity on
other topics. Thus much necessity compelled me to
assert concerning my personal appearance. Respect-
ing yours, though I have been informed that it is most
insignificant and contemptible, a perfect mirror of the
worthlessness of your character and the malevolence
of your heart, I say nothing, and no one will be
anxious that any thing should be said. I wish that I
could with equal facility refute what this barbarous
opponent has said of my blindness; but I cannot do
it; and I must submit to the affliction. It is not so
wretched to be blind, as it is not to be capable of en-
during blindness. But why should I not endure a
misfortune, which it behoves every one to be prepared
to endure if it should happen; which may, in the com-
mon course of things, happen to any man; and which
has been known to happen to the most distinguished
and virtuous persons in history. Shall I mention
those wise and ancient bards, whose misfortunes the
gods are said to have compensated by superior endow-
ments, and whom men so much revered, that they
chose rather to impute their want of sight to the in-
justice of heaven than to their own want of innocence
or virtue 2 What is reported of the Augur Tiregias is
well known; of whom Apollonius sung thus in his
Argonauts ;
To men he dar'd the will divine disclose,
Nor fear'd what Jove might in his wrath impose.
The gods assigned him age, without decay,
But snatch'd the blessing of his sight away.
But God himself is truth ; in propagating which, as
men display a greater integrity and zeal, they approach
nearer to the similitude of God, and possess a greater
portion of his love. We cannot suppose the Deity en-
vious of truth, or unwilling that it should be freely
communicated to mankind. The loss of sight, there-
fore, which this inspired sage, who was so eager in
promoting knowledge among men, sustained, cannot
be considered as a judicial punishment. Or shall I
mention those worthies who were as distinguished for
wisdom in the cabinet, as for valour in the field P And
first, Timoleon of Corinth, who delivered his city and
all Sicily from the yoke of slavery ; than whom there
never lived, in any age, a more virtuous man, or a more
incorrupt statesman : Next Appius Claudius, whose dis-
creet counsels in the senate, though they could not re-
store sight to his own eyes, saved Italy from the for-
midable inroads of Pyrrhus: then Caecilius Metellus
the high priest, who lost his sight, while he saved, not
only the city, but the palladium, the protection of the
city, and the most sacred relics, from the destruction of
the flames. On other occasions Providence has indeed
given conspicuous proofs of its regard for such singular
exertions of patriotism and virtue; what, therefore, hap-
pened to so great and so good a man, I can hardly
place in the catalogue of misfortunes. Why should I
mention others of later times, as Dandolo of Venice,
the incomparable Doge ; or Boemar Zisca, the bravest
of generals, and the champion of the cross; or Jerome
Zanchius, and some other theologians of the highest
reputation 2 For it is evident that the Patriarch Isaac,
than whom no man ever enjoyed more of the divine
regard, lived blind for many years; and perhaps also
his son Jacob, who was equally an object of the divine
benevolence. And in short, did not our Saviour him-
self clearly declare that that poor man whom he re-
stored to sight, had not been born blind, either on ac-
count of his own sins or those of his progenitors? And
THE SECOND DEFENCE OF THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND.
927
with respect to myself, though I have accurately ex-
amined my conduct, and scrutinized my soul, I call
thee, O God, the searcher of hearts, to witness, that I
am not conscious, either in the more early or in the
later periods of my life, of having committed any
enormity, which might deservedly have marked me out
as a fit object for such a calamitous visitation. But
since my enemies boast that this affliction is only a re-
tribution for the transgressions of my pen, I again in-
voke the Almighty to witness, that I never, at any time,
wrote any thing which I did not think agreeable to
truth, to justice, and to piety. This was my persua-
sion then, and I feel the same persuasion now. Nor
was I ever prompted to such exertions by the influence
of ambition, by the lust of lucre or of praise; it was
only by the conviction of duty and the feeling of pa-
triotism, a disinterested passion for the extension of
civil and religious liberty. Thus, therefore, when I
was publickly solicited to write a reply to the defence
of the royal cause, when I had to contend with the
pressure of sickness, and with the apprehension of soon
losing the sight of my remaining eye, and when my
medical attendants clearly announced, that if I did en-
gage in the work, it would be irreparably lost, their
premonitions caused no hesitation and inspired no dis-
may. I would not have listened to the voice even of
Esculapius himself from the shrine of Epidauris, in pre-
ference to the suggestions of the heavenly monitor
within my breast; my resolution was unshaken, though
the alternative was either the loss of my sight, or the
desertion of my duty; and I called to mind those two
destinies, which the oracle of Delphi announced to the
son of Thetis.
Two fates may lead me to the realms of night;
If staying here, around Troy's wall I fight,
To my dear home no more must I return;
But lasting glory will adorn my urn.
But, if I withdraw from the martial strife,
Short is my fame, but long will be my life. Il. ix.
I considered that many had purchased a less good by a
greater evil, the meed of glory by the loss of life; but
that I might procure great good by little suffering;
that though I am blind, I might still discharge the
most honourable duties, the performance of which, as it
is something more durable than glory, ought to be an
object of superior admiration and esteem; I resolved,
therefore, to make the short interval of sight, which
was left me to enjoy, as beneficial as possible to the
public interest. Thus it is clear, by what motives I
was governed in the measures which I took, and the
losses which I sustained. Let then the calumniators
of the divine goodness cease to revile, or to make me
the object of their superstitious imaginations. Let them
consider, that my situation, such as it is, is neither an
object of my shame or my regret, that my resolutions
are too firm to be shaken, that I am not depressed by
any sense of the divine displeasure; that, on the other
hand, in the most momentous periods, I have had full
experience of the divine favour and protection; and
that, in the solace and the strength which have been
infused into me from above, I have been enabled to do
the will of God; that I may oftener think on what he
has bestowed, than on what he has withheld; that, in
short, I am unwilling to exchange my consciousness of
rectitude with that of any other person; and that I feel
the recollection a treasured store of tranquillity and de-
light. But, if the choice were necessary, I would, Sir,
prefer my blindness to yours; yours is a cloud spread
over the mind, which darkens both the light of reason
and of conscience; mine keeps from my view only the
coloured surfaces of things, while it leaves me at liberty
to contemplate the beauty and stability of virtue and of
truth. How many things are there besides, which I
would not willingly see; how many which I must see
against my will; and how few which I feel any
anxiety to see! There is, as the apostle has remarked,
a way to strength through weakness. Let me then be
the most feeble creature alive, as long as that feeble-
ness serves to invigorate the energies of my rational
and immortal spirit; as long as in that obscurity, in
which I am enveloped, the light of the divine presence
more clearly shines; then, in the proportion as I am
weak, I shall be invincibly strong; and in proportion
as I am blind, I shall more clearly see. O ! that I
may thus be perfected by feebleness, and irradiated by
obscurity And indeed, in my blindness, I enjoy in no
inconsiderable degree the favour of the Deity; who
regards me with more tenderness and compassion in pro-
portion as I am able to behold nothing but himself. Alas!
for him who insults me, who maligns and merits public
execration | For the divine law not only shields me
from injury, but almost renders me too sacred to at-
tack; not indeed so much from the privation of my
sight, as from the overshadowing of those heavenly
wings, which seem to have occasioned this obscurity;
and which, when occasioned, he is wont to illuminate
with an interior light, more precious and more pure.
To this I ascribe the more tender assiduities of my
friends, their soothing attentions, their kind visits,
their reverential observances; among whom there are
some with whom I may interchange the Pyladean and
Thesian dialogue of inseparable friends.
Orest. Proceed, and be rudder of my feet, by shewing me
the most endearing love.
Eurip. in Orest.
And in another place,
Lend your hand to your devoted friend,
Throw your arm round my neck, and I will conduct you
on the way.
This extraordinary kindness which I experience, can-
not be any fortuitous combination; and friends, such
as mine, do not suppose that all the virtues of a man
are contained in his eyes. Nor do the persons of prin-
cipal distinction in the commonwealth suffer me to be
bereaved of comfort, when they see me bereaved of
sight, amid the exertions which I made, the zeal which
I shewed, and the dangers which I run for the liberty
which I love. But, soberly reflecting on the casualties
of human life, they shew me favour and indulgence as
to a soldier who has served his time; and kindly con-
928
THE SECOND DEFENCE OF THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND.
cede to me an exemption from care and toil. They do
not strip me of the badges of honour which I have once
worn ; they do not deprive me of the places of public
trust to which I have been appointed ; they do not
alºridge my salary or emoluments; which, though I
may not do so much to deserve as I did formerly, they
are too considerate and too kind to take away; and in
short they honour me as much, as the Athenians did
those whom they determined to support at the public
expence in the Prytaneum. Thus, while both God
and man unite in solacing me under the weight of my
affliction, let no one lament my loss of sight in so
honourable a cause. And let me not indulge in un-
availing grief; or want the courage either to despise
the revilers of my blindness, or the forbearance easily
to pardon the offence. I return to you, Sir, whoever
you may be, who, with a remarkable inconsistency,
seem to consider me at one time as a giant, and at an-
other as a dwarf. You end with expressing your wish,
that the United Provinces may with as much ease,
and as much success, put an end to this war, as Sal-
masius will put an end to Milton. To which wish, if
1 were cheerfully to assent, I think that I should not
omen ill, nor ill implore for our success, or for the
English interest.
But lo! again a dissonant and hissing cry ! It seems
as if a flock of geese were passing through the air. I
now perceive what it is ; the cry has no tragic tones;
the chorus makes its appearance; when lo! two poe-
tasters, if two there be, as diverse in colour as in form.
Shall I call it a Sphinx, or that poetical monster of
Horace, with a woman’s head and an ass’s neck, co-
vered with motley plumes, and made up of limbs taken
from every species of animals 2 Yes, that is the very
thing ! It is surely some rhapsodist or other, dressed
out in scraps of verses with poetic rags; though it is
uncertain whether there be one or two ; for there is not
the mention of a name. True poets are the objects
of my reverence and my love; and the constant sources
of my delight. I know that the most of them, from
the earliest times to those of Buchanan, have been the
strenuous enemies of despotism; but these pedlars and
milliners of verse, who can bear? They applaud and
they revile as it may happen, as gain, or passion, or
the bottle may incite, without choice, discrimination,
judgment, or moderation, princes and plebeians, the
literate and illiterate, honest men and knaves. They
heap together such a motley, indigested, and putrid
mass of adulation, that it would be better to be pro-
secuted with contempt, than loaded with such praise.
And he, whom they revile, should think it no small
honour, that he has incurred the displeasure of such
absurd and foolish miscreants. I doubt whether the
first, if there be two, be a poet or a mason; for he so
bedaubs the face of Salmasius, that he hardly leaves
the space of a hair without a coating of plaster. He
represents the giant-warring hero, riding in his tri-
umphal car, brandishing the spear, the cestus, and all
the foppery of war, attended by all the learned who
walk on foot, but at an awful distance behind his cha-
riot; since he is feigned to “ have been commissioned
by the Deity to heal the distractions of the world, and
with an impenetrable shield, to protect kings in the
possession of their rights, and in the splendour of their
sovereignty.” Salmasius must surely have been doating
in a state of second infancy, when he could be so much
taken by this encomium, as to cause it immediately to
be published to the world. The poet must have been
a miserable drudge, and without any feeling of pro-
priety, to lavish such a prodigality of praise on a gram-
marian ; a race of men who have been always thought
to act as a sort of subordinate and menial part to the
bard. The other does not make verses, but is stark
mad; himself more raving than all the enthusiasts, who
are the objects of his furious invective. As if he
were the hangman in the employ of Salmasius, like the
son of Dama, he invokes the Horatii and Cadmus ;
then, intoxicated with hellebore, he disgorges a whole
cistern of abuse, which an index to Plautus shows him
where to pilfer from the mouths of mountebanks and
slaves. You would suppose, that his language was
rather Oscan than Latin ; or that he was croaking like
the frog of a slimy pool. Then to shew you how much
he is a master of iambics, he makes two false quanti-
ties in a single word ; making one syllable long, where
it ought to be short, and another short, where it ought
to be long.
Hi trucidato rege per horrendum meſas.
Take away, O ass! those panniers of airy nothingness;
and speak, if you can, three words that have an affinity
to common sense; if it be possible for the tumid pump-
kin of your skull to discover for a moment any thing
like the reality of intellect. In the mean time, I aban-
don the pedagogue to the rods of his scholars. Do you
go on to revile me as worse than Cromwell, since you
cannot pay me a higher compliment. But shall I call
you a friend, a fool, or an insidious foe P Friend you
cannot be, for your language is that of an enemy. How
then could you be such an egregious fool, as, in the
orgasms of your virulence, to assign me the post of
pre-eminence above so great a personage P For do you
not perceive, or do you think me too dull to discern,
that the violence of your hostility only serves to aug-
ment the splendor of my patriotism; and that the to-
pics of my panegyric must be as numerous as your
subjects of reproach. If I am most the object of your
aversion, it is because you have most felt the force of
my blows; because I have been the greatest obstacle
in the way of your success. This proves that I have
deserved well of my country; for the testimony of an
enemy, however suspicious on other occasions, may be
safely trusted with respect to his own sensations of re-
sentment. Do you not remember that the poet, in the
context which ensued between Ajax and Ulysses, for
the arms of Achilles, leaves the matter according to
the opinion of Nestor, to the decision, not of their Gre-
ciam friends, but of their Trojan foes,
To the cool Trojans let us leave the cause.
And a little after,
What sober justice dictates they’ll decree,
From love and ev’ry partial bias free;
THE SECOND DEFENCE OF
929
THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND.
For all the Greeks alike incur their hate,
Alike the authors of their ruin’d state.
Thus says Q. Calaber. You must therefore be insidi-
ously studious to oppress me with the public indigna-
tion; and thus you corrupt and pervert the open and
manly vigour of an enemy, by the treacherous and in-
veterate indignity of your disposition ; and you shew
yourself, not only the worst of men, but the basest of
enemies. But, good Sir, I will by no means frustrate
your chdeavours : for, though I may wish to rival
Ulysses in the merits of his patriotism, I am yet no
competitor for the arms of Achilles. I am not solicit-
ous for an Elysium painted on a shield, which others
may see me brandish in the contest; but I desire to
bear upon my shoulders a real not a painted weight, of
which I may feel the pressure, but which may be im-
perceptible to others. For since I cherish no private
rancour, nor hostility against any man, nor any man
that I know of against me, I am well contented, for
the sake of the public interest, to be so much aspersed
and so much reviled. Nor, while I sustain the greatest
weight of the disgrace, do I complain because I have
the smallest share of the profit or the praise; for I am
content to do what is virtuous, for the sake of the ac-
tion itself, without any sinister expectations. Let others
look to that; but do you, Sir, know, that my hands
were never soiled with the guilt of peculation; and
that I never was even a shilling the richer by those ex-
ertions, which you most vehemently traduce. Here
More again begins, and in his second epistle assigns
the reasons for his writing; to whom P Why, truly,
More, the perpetrator of adultery and rape, addresses
“the lover of Christianity.” You promise, Sir, a most
pious epistle; but now for the reasons why you wrote.
“That the anxious and attentive nations of Europe,
and particularly the members of the reformed religion
in France, might be made acquainted with the parri-
cide and the parricides,” &c. The French, and even the
protestants themselves, were up in arms against the
established laws; what they would have done farther
if they had met with as much success as we have, can-
not be known; but certainly their kings, if we may
trust the accounts of those transactions, feared as much
from them as ours did from us; nor could they help
doing it, when they considered the tone of their mani-
festos, and the violence of their threats. Let them not
therefore, whatever you may pretend, boast too much
for themselves, nor judge too illiberally of us. He pro-
ceeds, “Indeed I have been in such habits of intimacy
with persons of the first character in England.” Those
who are the best in his eyes, will be found the worst
in those of other people. “That I do not hesitate to
assert, that I am intimately acquainted with the vices,
the principles, and the lives of those monsters in the
shape of men.” I thought that you had had acquaint-
ance with none but bawds and whores; but you also
thoroughly know what monsters are. “My English
friends readily prevailed upon me to suppress my name,”
and this was discreetly done; for they thus hoped to
derive more advantage from the effrontery of your as-
sertions, and less harm from the profligacy of your
character. They knew you well, they remembered your
honest custody of the fruit in the garden ; and that,
even when become a shorn and polished priest, you
could not keep your hands off Pontia. And surely not
without reason; for if the word carnifex be derived, a
conficiendà carne, why may not you, by doing for Pontia,
from a priest become a Pontifex. Though they could
not but know this, and you could not be ignorant of it,
yet, with an impiety that merits execration, and an as-
surance that surpasses belief, you openly assert, that
you were studious only to vindicate the glory of God;
and, at the same time, you inveigh against the hypo-
crisy of others, when there never was a more notorious
mercenary, or unprincipled hypocrite, than yourself.
In narrating the series of transactions, you say that you
have derived great assistance from other writers, and
particularly from the exposure of the late disturbances
in England. Surely, Sir, you must be very deficient
in discretion and capacity; when after so much parade
and noise, you bring forward nothing of your own, but
can deduce against us only some writers among the
royalists, who may justly be suspected ; but without
an implicit reliance in whose veracity you cannot pro-
cced a step. If there be occasion, we will refute those
writers, and set aside one confutation by another; we
will not answer them by you, but you by them. What
you have produced of your own, you will find it diffi-
cult to defend; which, while it indicates a mind utterly
void of all religious principles, every good man will
shudder while he reads. “The love of God, and a
lively sense of the insult that has been offered to his
holy name, compels me to lift up my suppliant hands
to heaven.” Hide, Ohide those hands, so foully stained
with lust and rapine; nor, with hands such as those,
attempt to touch the throne of God, with which you
have so often polluted the rites of his religion, and the
altars of his worship. The divine vengeance which
you so lavishly imprecate on others, you will find at
last that you have been invoking on yourself. Hither-
to we have had only the prelude to the cry, but (now
it is going to occupy the principal and almost sole part
in the drama) it swells the cheek and strains the jaws
in the act of mounting to heaven; whither, if it ascend,
it will resound most effectually against the brawling
More. “Since the majesty of kings has in all ages
been held sacred,” &c. You attack me, Sir, with
much common-place abuse, and many malicious obser-
vations which are quite irrelevant to the purpose; for
the murder of a king, and the punishment of a tyrant,
are not the same thing ; but do differ, and will for
ever differ, as long as sense and reason, justice and
equity, the knowledge of right and wrong, shall pre-
vail among men. But enough, and more than enough,
has been said on this subject; nor shall I suffer you,
who have in vain assaulted me with so many senseless
imprecations, at last to bring about my end with a
plethory of disgust 2 You then say some fine things on
patience and on virtue. But,
You talk on virtue, while on vice you pore,
And preach most chaste discourses while you whore.
930 THE SECOND DEFENCE OF
THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND.
You say that “all the protestants, particularly those in
the Low Countries and France, are struck with horror
at the crime which we have committed;” and immedi-
ately after, that “good men would every where think
and speak differently on the subject.” That you
should be at variance with yourself is a matter of little
moment; but what follows is of a more shocking and
atrocious cast. You say that “the wickedness of the
Jews, who crucified Christ, was nothing compared
with ours, whether you regard the intentions of the
parties, or the effects of the crime.” Maniac; do you,
a minister of Jesus, think so lightly of his crucifixion,
as to have the audacity to assert, that the destruction
of any king, whatever might be the intentions, or the ef-
fect, is equally atrocious? The Jews had the clearest and
most convincing proofs that Jesus was the Son of God;
but how could we possibly be led to believe, that
Charles was not a tyrant ' To diminish the enormity
of the guilt, you very absurdly make mention of the
effect; but I always observe, that the royalists, in pro-
portion to their bigotry, are ready to depreciate the
sufferings of Christ, in order to exalt those of their
king ; yet as they assert, that we ought principally to
obey him for Christ's sake, they shew that they cherish
no sincere regard either for Christ or for the king;
and that they make their irrational and superstitious
devotion to kings, only a pretext to conceal their am-
bitious, their sinister and interested, views. “Salmasius,
therefore, that great sovereign of literature, advanced
to the combat!” Cease, Sir, I beseech you, to disgust
us with the application of such an epithet as “great”
to Salmasius; which you may repeat a thousand times,
without ever persuading any one that Salmasius was
great; though you may, that More was little; a worth-
less scribbler, who, quite ignorant of propriety, lavished
the appellation of great without any ſitness or discrimi-
nation. To grammarians and critics, who are princi-
pally occupied in editing the works of others, or in
correcting the errors of copyists, we willingly concede
the palm of industry and erudition; but we never be-
stow on them the sirname of great. He alone is
worthy of the appellation, who either does great things,
or teaches how they may be done, or describes them
with a suitable majesty when they have been done; but
those only are great things, which tend to render life
more happy, which increase the innocent enjoyments
and comforts of existence, or which pave the way to
a state of future bliss more permanent and more pure.
But has Salmasius done any thing like this 2 Nothing
at all ; what, that is great, has he ever either taught
or related 2 unless perhaps you except his writings
against the bishops, and the supremacy of the pope;
the merit of which he entirely effaced by his subsequent
recantations; by the habits of his life, and his vindica-
tions of episcopacy. He, therefore, cannot fitly be
termed a great writer, who either never wrote any
thing great, or who basely recanted the best work that
he ever wrote. He is welcome for me, to be “the
sovereign of literature,” and of the A, B, C ; but you
are not content with having him the “sovereign of
literature,” but must exalt him to be “the patron of
’ and a patron well fitted to adorn such a station
of sublimity. You have certainly shewn yourself very
solicitous to promote the honour of kings, when in
addition to their other illustrious titles, you would sub-
join that of “the clients of Claud Salmasius.” On this
condition, O sovereigns of the world, you may be re-
leased from every restraint upon your power; if you
will but do homage to Salmasius the grammarian, and
make your sceptres bend beneath his rod. “To him
kings will be indebted, as long as the world lasts, for
the vindication of their honour, and the existence of
their power.” Attend, ye sovereigns! he who composes
for you his beggarly defence, and who defends what
no one attacked, has the arrogance to impute to
himself the continuance of your dignity and your
power. Such has been the effect of provoking this
insolent grammarian from his cabinet of worms and
moths, to support the cause of kings. “To whom
the altar will be as much indebted as the throne;”
not indeed for the protection, but for the scandalous
desertion of its interests.
kings;’
Now, you lavish your pane-
gyric in the defence of the royal cause; “ you admire
the genius, the erudition, the boundless diversity of
matter, the intimate acquaintance with sacred and
profane usages and laws, the impetuous volubility of
diction, the limpid eloquence, which characterise that
golden work.” . Though I contend that the work is
deficient in all these qualities; (for what has Salmasius
to do with eloquence 2) yet that it was a truly golden
composition, I am willing a hundred times to acknow-
ledge ; for it cost Charles as many guineas, without
mentioning the sums which the author received from
the Prince of Orange. “The great man never ap-
peared more mighty in his strength; Salmasius was
never more himself.” He was truly so great that he
burst; for we have seen how great he was in his for-
mer work; and shall perhaps see in what he may
have left behind him on the same subject. I do not
deny that Salmasius, on the first appearance of his
book, was the general topic of conversation, and that
he was in high favour with the royalists; that he was
invited by the most august queen of Sweden, and re-
ceived the most munificent presents; and, in short,
that in the whole dispute, every circumstance was
favourable to Salmasius and hostile to me. Men in
general entertained the highest opinion of his eru-
dition, the celebrity of which, he had been accumulat-
ing for many years, by many voluminous and massy
publications, not indeed of any practical utility, but
relating to the most abtruse discussions, and crammed
with quotations from the most illustrious authors.
Nothing is so apt as this to excite the astonishment of
the literary vulgar. Who I was, no one in that coun-
try had ever known; his work had excited an impa-
tient curiosity, which was increased by the magnitude
of the subject. I had no means of exciting a similar
interest, or a like ardour of expectation. Many indeed
endeavoured to dissuade me from engaging with such
a veteran; some from envy, lest I should, at any rate,
gather some glory from the conflict with so mighty an
others from fear, lest my defeat should
p e
adversary;
THE SECOND DEFENCE OF
THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND. 931
prove injurious to myself, and to the cause which I
had undertaken to defend. Salmasius was invigorated
and cheered by the specious plausibility of his subject,
by the inveterate prejudices, or rather rooted super-,
stitions, of the vulgar, in favour of kingly power. All
these were adverse to my undertaking, and impedi-
ments to my success; and it is the less surprising,
that my answer, on its first appearance, should be less
eagerly read, except by those who were anxious to
learn, who had the inconsiderate audacity to enter the
lists with Salmasius. But the work soon excited ge-
neral approbation and delight; the author was lost
sight of in the blaze of truth ; and Salmasius, who had
so lately been towering on the pinnacle of distinction,
stripped of the mask which he had worn, soon dwin-
dled into insignificance and contempt; from which, as
long as he lived, he could never afterwards emerge, or
recover his former consequence. But your penetrating
mind, O! Serene queen of Sweden, soon detected his
imposture ; and, with a magnanimity almost above
human, you taught sovereigns and the world to prefer
truth to the interested clamours of faction. For though
the splendor of his erudition, and the celebrity which
he had acquired in the defence of the royal cause, had
induced you to honour him with many marks of dis-
tinction, yet, when my answer appeared, which you
perused with singular cquanimity, you perceived that
he had been convicted of the most palpable effrontery
and misrepresentation; that he had betrayed the ut-
most indiscretion and intemperance, that he had uttered
many falsehoods, many inconsistencies and contradic-
tions. On this account, as it is said, you had him
called into your presence; but when he was unable to
vindicate himself, you were so visibly offended, that
from that time, you neither shewed him the same at-
tentions, nor held his talents nor his learning in the
same esteem ; and, what was entirely unexpected, you
manifested a disposition to favour his adversary. You
denied that what I had written against tyrants, could
have any reference to you; whence, in your own breast
you enjoyed the sweets, and among others the fame, of
a good conscience. For, since the whole tenor of your
conduct sufficiently proves, that you are no tyrant, this
unreserved expression of your sentiments makes it still
more clear, that you are not even conscious to your-
self of being one. How happy am I beyond my ut-
most expectations ! (for to the praise of eloquence,
except as far as eloquence consists in the force of truth,
I lay no claim,) that, when the critical exigences of my
country demanded that I should undertake the arduous
and invidious task of impugning the rights of kings, I
should meet with so illustrious, so truly a royal evi-
dence to my integrity, and to this truth, that I had
not written a word against kings, but only against
tyrants, the spots and the pests of royalty But you,
O Augusta, possessed not only so much magnanimity,
but were so irradiated by the glorious beams of wis-
dom and of virtue, that you not only read with pa-
tience, with incredible impartiality, with a serene
complacency of countenance, what might seem to be
levelled against your rights and dignity; but ex-
3 o
pressed such an opinion of the defender of those rights,
as may well be considered an adjudication of the palm
of victory to his opponent. You, O queen will for
ever be the object of my homage, my veneration, and
my love; for it was your greatness of soul, so honour-
able to yourself and so auspicious to me, which served
to efface the unfavourable impression against me at
other courts, and to rescue me from the evil surmises of
other sovereigns. What a high and favourable opinion
must foreigners conceive, and your own subjects for
ever entertain, of your impartiality and justice, when,
in a matter which so nearly interested the ſate of sove-
reigns and the rights of your crown, they saw you
sit down to the discussion, with as much equanimity
and composure, as you would to determine a dispute
between two private individuals. It was not in vain
that you made such large collections of books, and so
many monuments of learning ; not indeed, that they
could contribute much to your instruction, but because
they so well teach your subjects to appreciate the
merits of your reign, and the rare excellence of your
virtue and your wisdom. For the Divinity himself
seems to have inspired you with a love of wisdom, and
a thirst for improvement, beyond what any books ever
could have produced. It excites our astonishment to
see a force of intellect so truly divine, a particle of
celestial flame so resplendently pure, in a region so re-
mote ; of which an atmosphere, so darkened with
clouds, and so chilled with frosts, could not extinguish
the light, nor repress the operations. The rocky and
barren soil, which is often as unfavourable to the
growth of genius as of plants, has not impeded the ma-
turation of your faculties; and that country, so rich
in metallic ore, which appears like a cruel step-mother
to others, seems to have been a fostering parent to you;
and after the most strenuous attempts to have at last
produced a progeny of pure gold. I would invoke
you, Christina' as the only child of the renowned and
victorious Adolphus, if your merit did not as much
eclipse his, as wisdom excels strength, and the arts of
peace the havoc of war. Henceſorth, the queen of
the south will not be alone renowned in history; for
there is a queen of the north, who would not only be
worthy to appear in the court of the wise king of the
Jews, or any king of equal wisdom; but to whose
court others may from all parts repair, to behold so fair
a heroine, so bright a pattern of all the royal virtues;
and to the crown of whose praise this may well be add-
ed, that neither in her conduct nor her appearance, is
there any of the forbidding reserve, or the ostentatious
parade, of royalty. She herself seems the least conscious
of her own attributes of sovereignty; and her thoughts
are always fixed on something greater and more sub-
lime than the glitter of a crown. In this respect, her
example may well make innumerable kings hide their
diminished heads. She may, if such is the fatality of
the Swedish nation, abdicate the sovereignty, but she
can never lay aside the queen; for her reign has proved,
that she is fit to govern, not only Sweden, but the world.
This tribute of praise, to so, highly meritorious a
queen, there is, I trust, no one who will not applaud;
93.2
THE SECOND DEFENCE OF THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND.
and which if others did not pay, I could not have with-
held, without the imputation of the most heinous ingra-
titude. For, whether it be owing to the benign aspects
of the planets, or to the secret sympathies and affini- |
ties of things, I cannot too much extol my good for-
tune, in having found, in a region so remote, a patron
so impartial and so kind, whom of all I least expected,
but of all the most desired.
from this digression, to a quite different theme.
But now we will return,
You
say, that “we were thrown into the most furious com-
motion on hearing of the royal defence, and that we
looked around for some servile pedagogue, who might
employ his venal pen in the vindication of the parri-
cides.” This is the mere effusion of your spite; for you
must recollect, that, when the royalists were in search
of a hawker for their lies, and a retailer of their malice,
they applied to the grammarian Salmasius, who if he
were not a menial, could never resist a bribe; who not
only readily sold them his present work, but his good
intentions for the ſuture. And you must remember,
that when Salmasius was anxiously ruminating, how
he might re-establish his ruined character, and oblite-
rate his shame, he was, by a certain retributive fatality,
directed to you, who were then not officiating as a mi-
nister at Geneva, from which place you had been ex-
pelled, but as a worshipper of Priapus, of whose lasci-
Hence,
nauseating those praises, which you had bestowed
vious rites you made his house the shrine.
with so much extravagance, and which he had pur-
chased with so much disgrace, his friendship was con-
verted into the most inveterate hostility, and he cursed
his panegyrist even in his dying hour. “They fixed
upon one John Milton, a great hero truly, to oppose
Salmasius,” I did not know that I was a hero, though
you perchance may be the progeny of some frail heroine,
for you are nothing but a compound of iniquity. When
I consider the good of the commonwealth, I may in-
deed lament, that I alone was selected to defend the
people of England, though I could not readily have
endured an associate in the fame. You say, that it is
a matter of uncertainty who and whence I am. The
same uncertainty attached to Homer and Demosthenes.
Indeed, I had been early taught to hold my tongue
and to say nothing ; which Salmasius never could ;
and I accordingly buried those things within my breast,
which if I had pleased to disclose, I could then have
obtained as much celebrity as I now possess. But I
was not eager to hastem the tardy steps of fame; nor
willing to appear in public till a proper opportunity
off red. I'or I did not regard the ſame of any thing
so much, as the proper time for the execution. Hence
it happened, that I had not long been known to many,
before Salmasius begun to know himself. “Whether
he be a man or a worm ''' Truly, I would rather be a
worm in the way that David expresses it, (“I am a
worm and no man,”) than that my bosom, like yours,
should be the seat of a never-dying worm. You say,
that “the fellow, having been expelled from the uni-
versity of Cambridge, on account of his atrocities, had
fled his country in disgrace and travelled into Italy.”
Hence we may discern what little reliance can be
sure, without consulting me.
placed on the veracity of those, from whom you derived
your information; for all, who know me, know, that
in this place, both you and they have uttered the most
abominable falsehoods; as I shall soon make more
fully appear. But, when I was expelled from Cam-
bridge, why should I rather travel into Italy, than into
France or Holland * where you, though a minister of
the Gospel, and yet so vile a miscreant, not only enjoy
impunity, but, to the great scandal of the church,
pollute the pulpit and the altar by your presence. But
why, Sir, into Italy Was it that, like another Saturn,
I might find a hiding-place in Latium ? No, it was be-
cause I well knew, and have since experienced, that
Italy, instead of being, as you suppose, the general re-
ceptacle of vice, was the seat of civilization and the
hospitable domicile of every species of erudition."
“When he returned, he wrote his book on divorce.” I
wrote nothing more than what Bucer on the Kingdom
of Christ, Fagius on Deuteronomy, and Erasmus on
the First Epistle to the Corinthians, which was more
particularly designed for the instruction of the Eng-
lish, had written before me, for the most useful pur-
poses and with the most disinterested views. Why
what was not reprehensible in them, should constitute
a charge of criminality against me, I cannot under-
stand ; though I regret that I published this work in
English ; for then it would not have been exposed to
the view of those common readers, who are wont to be
as ignorant of their own blessings, as they are insensi-
ble to others’ sufferings. But shall you, base miscreant,
set up a cry about divorce, who, having debauched
Pontia, under the most solemn assurances of marriage,
aſterwards divorced her in a manner the most unprin-
cipled and inhuman f And yet this servant of Salma-
sius is said to have been an English woman, and a
staunch royalist; so that you scem to have wooed her
as a piece of royalty, and to have deserted her as the
image of a republic (res publica), though you were the
author of her degradation to that state of publicity,
and, after having allured her from the service of Sal-
masius, reduced her to the condition of a public prosti-
tute. In this manner, devotedly attached as you are
to royalty, you are said to have founded many repub-
lics (res publicas) in one city, or to have undertaken
the management of their concerns, after they have been
founded by others. Such have been your divorces, or
rather diversions, after which you proceed, as a ruſſian,
to attack my character. You now return to the invention
of fresh lies. “When the conspirators were debating on
the capital punishment of the king, he wrote to them,
and, while they were wavering and irresolute, brought
them over to determine on his death.” But I neither
wrote to them, nor could I have influenced the execu-
tion; for they had previously determined on the mea-
But I will say more on
this subject hereaſter, as also on the publication of the
Iconoclast. The fellow, (shall I call him a man, or
only the excrement of a man,) next proceeding from
his adulteries with servant maids and scullions,
to the adulteration of the truth, endeavoured, by
artfully fabricating a series of lies, to render me infa
THE SECOND DEFENCE OF THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND.
933
inous abroad. I must therofore crave the indulgence
of the reader, if I have said already, or sh ill say here-
aſter, more of myself than I wish to say ; that, if I can-
not prevent the blindness of my eyes, the oblivion or
the deſamation of my name, I may at least rescue my
life from that species of obscurity, which is the asso-
ciate of unprincipled depravity. This it will be neces-
sary for me to do on more accounts than one; first, that
so many good and learned men among the neighbour-
ing nations, who read my works, may not be induced
by this fellow’s calumnies, to alter the ſavourable
opinion which they have formed of me; but may be
persuaded that I am not one who ever disgraced beauty
of sentiment by deformity of conduct, or the maxims
of a free-man by the actions of a slave; and that the
whole tenour of my life has, by the grace of God, hi-
therto been unsullied by enormity or crime. Next that
those illustrious worthies, who are the objects of my
praise, may know that nothing could afflict me with
more shame than to have any vices of mine diminish
the ſorce or lessen the value of my panegyric upon
them; and lastly, that the people of England, whom
fate, or duty, or their own virtues, have incited me to
defend, may be convinced from the purity and integrity
of my life, that my defence, if it do not redound to
their honour, can never be considered as their disgrace.
I will now mention who and whence, I am. I was
born at London, of an honest family; my father was
distinguished by the undeviating integrity of his life;
my mother by the esteem in which she was held, and
the alms which she bestowed. My father destined me
from a child to the pursuits of literature; and my ap-
petite for knowledge was so voracious, that, from twelve
years of age, I hardly ever left my studies, or went to
bed before midnight. This primarily led to my loss of
sight. My eyes were naturally weak, and I was sub-
ject to frequent head-achs; which, however, could not
chill the ardour of my curiosity, or retard the progress
of my improvement. My father had me daily instruct-
ed in the grammar school, and by other masters at
home. He then, after I had acquired a proficiency in
various languages, and had made a considerable pro-
gress in philosophy, sent me to the University of Cam-
bridge. Here I passed seven years in the usual course
of instruction and study, with the approbation of the
good, and without any stain upon my character, till I
took the degree of Master of Arts. After this I did not,
as this miscreant feigns, run away into Italy, but of
my own accord retired to my father's house, whither I
was accompanied by the regrets of most of the fellows
of the college, who shewed me no common marks of
friendship and esteem. On my father's estate, where
he had determined to pass the remainder of his days, I
enjoyed an interval of uninterrupted leisure, which I
entirely devoted to the perusal of the Greek and Latin
classics; though I occasionally visited the metropolis,
either for the sake of purchasing books, or of learning
something new in mathematics or in music, in which
I, at that time, found a source of pleasure and amuse-
ment. In this manner I spent five years till my mo-
ther's death, I then became anxious to visit foreign
parts, and particularly Italy. My father gave me his
permission, and I left home with one servant. On my
departure the celebrated Henry Wootton, who had
been King James's ambassador at Venice, gave me a
signal proof of his regard, in an elegant letter which
he wrote, breathing not only the warmest friendship,
but containing some maxims of conduct which I found
very useful in my travels. The noble Thomas Scuda-
more, King Charles's ambassador, to whom I carried
letters of recommendation, received me most courte-
ously at Paris. His lordship gave me a card of intro-
duction to the learned Hugo Grotius, at that time am-
bassador from the queen of Sweden to the French
court; whose acquaintance I anxiously desired, and to
whose house I was accompanied by some of his lord-
ship's friends. A few days after, when I set out for
Italy, he gave me letters to the English merchants on
my route, that they might shew me any civilities in
their power. Taking ship at Nice, I arrived at Genoa,
and afterwards visited Leghorn, Pisa, and Florence.
In the latter city, which I have always more particu-
larly esteemed for the elegance of its dialect, its geni-
us, and its taste, I stopped about two months; when I
contracted an intimacy with many persons of rank and
learning ; and was a constant attendant at their lite-
rary parties; a practice which prevails there, and tends
so much to the diffusion of knowledge and the preser-
vation of friendship. No time will ever abolish the
agreeable recollections which I cherish of Jacob Gad-
di, Carolo Dati, Frescobaldo, Cultellero, Bonomatthai,
Clementillo, Francisco, and many others. From Flo-
rence I went to Siena, thence to Rome, where, after I
had spent about two months in viewing the antiquities
of that renowned city, where I experienced the most
friendly attentions from Lucas Holstein, and other
learned and ingenious men, I continued my route to Na-
ples. There I was introduced by a certain recluse, with
whom I had travelled from Rome, to John Baptista
Manso, Marquis of Villa, a nobleman of distinguished
rank and authority, to whom Torquato Tasso, the illus-
trious poet, inscribed his book on friendship. During
my stay, he gave me singular proofs of his regard; he
himself conducted me round the city and to the palace
of the viceroy; and more than once paid me a visit at
my lodgings. On my departure he gravely apologized
for not having shewn me more civility, which he said
he had been restrained from doing, because I had
spoken with so little reserve on matters of religion.
When I was preparing to pass over into Sicily and
Greece, the melancholy intelligence which I received,
of the civil commotions in England, made me alter my
purpose; for I thought it base to be travelling for
amusement abroad, while my fellow citizens were
fighting for liberty at home. While I was on my way
back to Rome, some merchants informed me that the
English jesuits had formed a plot against me if I re-
turned to Rome, because I had spoken too freely on
religion ; for it was a rule which I laid down to my-
self in those places, never to be the first to begin any
conversation on religion; but if any questions were
put to me concerning my faith, to declare it without.
934
TIIE SECOND DEFENCE OF THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND.
any reserve or fear. I nevertheless returned to Rome.
I took no steps to conceal either my person or my cha-
racter; and for about the space of two months, I again
openly defended, as I had done before, the reformed
religion in the very metropolis of popery. By the ſa-
vour of God, I got safe back to Florence, where I was
received with as much affection as if I had returned to
my native country. There I stopped as many months
as I had done before, except that I made an excursion
for a few days to Lucca; and crossing the Apennines,
passed through Bologna and Ferrara to Venice. After
I had spent a month in surveying the curiosities of this
city, and had put on board a ship the books which I
had collected in Italy, Uproceeded through Verona and
Milan, and along the Leman lake to Geneva. The
mention of this city brings to my recollection the
slandering More, and makes me again call the Deity
to witness, that in all those places, in which vice meets
with so little discouragement, and is practised with so
little shame, I never once deviated from the paths of
integrity and virtue, and perpetually reflected that,
though my conduct might escape the notice of men, it
could not elude the inspection of God. At Geneva I
held daily conferences with John Deodati, the learned
Professor of Theology. Then pursuing my former route
through France, I returned to my native country, after
an absence of one year and about three months; at the
time when Charles, having broken the peace, was re-
newing what is called the episcopal war with the Scots;
in which the royalists being routed in the first encoun-
ter, and the English being universally and justly dis-
affected, the necessity of his affairs at last obliged him
to convene a parliament. As soon as I was able, I
hired a spacious house in the city for myself and my
books; where I again with rapture renewed my literary
pursuits, and where I calmly awaited the issue of the
contest, which I trusted to the wise conduct of Provi-
dence, and to the courage of the people. The vigour
of the parliament had begun to humble the pride of the
bishops. As long as the liberty of speech was no
longer subject to controul, all mouths began to be
opened against the bishops; some complained of the
vices of the individuals, others of those of the order.
They said that it was unjust that they alone should
differ from the model of other reformed churches; that
the government of the church should be according to
the pattern of other churches, and particularly the word
of God. This awakened all my attention and my zeal
—I saw that a way was opening for the establishment
of real liberty; that the foundation was laying for the
deliverance of man from the yoke of slavery and super-
stition; that the principles of religion, which were the
first objects of our care, would exert a salutary influence
on the manners and constitution of the republic; and as
I had from my youth studied the distinctions between
religious and civil rights, I perceived that if I ever
wished to be of use, I ought at least not to be wanting
to my country, to the church, and to so many of my
fellow Christians, in a crisis of so much danger; I there-
fore determined to relinquish the other pursuits in which
I was engaged, and to transfer the whole force of my
talents and my industry to this one important object.
I accordingly wrote two books to a friend concerning
the reformation of the church of England. Aſterwards,
when two bishops of superior distinction vindicated
their privileges against some principal ministers, I
thought that on those topics, to the consideration of
which I was led solely by my love of truth, and my
reverence for Christianity, I should not probably write
worse than those, who were contending only for their
own emoluments and usurpations. I therefore answer-
ed the one in two books, of which the first is inscribed,
Concerning Prelatical Episcopacy, and the other Con-
cerning the Mode of Ecclesiastical Government; and
I replied to the other in some Animadversions, and soon
after in an Apology. On this occasion it was supposed
that I brought a timely succour to the ministers, who
were hardly a match for the eloquence of their oppo-
nents; and from that time I was actively employed in
refuting any answers that appeared. When the bishops
could no longer resist the multitude of their assailants,
I had leisure to turn my thoughts to other subjects; to
the promotion of real and substantial liberty; which is
rather to be sought from within than from without; and
whose existence depends, not so much on the terror of
the sword, as on sobriety of conduct and integrity of
life. When, therefore, I perceived that there were
three species of liberty which are essential to the hap-
piness of social life; religious, domestic, and civil ;
and as I had already written concerning the first, and
the magistrates were strenuously active in obtaining
the third, I determined to turn my attention to the se-
cond, or the domestic species. As this seemed to in-
volve three material questions, the conditions of the
conjugal tie, the education of the children, and the free
publication of the thoughts, I made them objects of dis-
tinct consideration. I explained my sentiments, not
only concerning the solemnization of the marriage, but
the dissolution, if circumstances rendered it necessary;
and I drew my arguments from the divine law, which
Christ did not abolish, or publish another more grievous
than that of Moses. I stated my own opinions, and
those of others, concerning the exclusive exception of
fornication, which our illustrious Selden has since, in
his Hebrew Wife, more copiously discussed: for he in
vain makes a vaunt of liberty in the senate or in the
forum, who languishes under the vilest servitude, to an
inferior at home. On this subject, therefore, I publish-
ea some books which were more particularly necessary
at that time, when man and wife were often the most
inveterate foes, when the man often staid to take care
of his children at home, while the mother of the fa-
mily was seen in the camp of the enemy, threaten-
ing death and destruction to her husband. I them
discussed the principles of education in a sum-
mary manner, but sufficiently copious for those
who attend seriously to the subject; than which no-
thing can be more necessary to principle the minds of
men in virtue, the only genuine source of political and
individual liberty, the only true safeguard of states,
the bulwark of their prosperity and renown. Lastly,
I wrote my Areopagitica, in order to deliver the press
THE SECOND DEFENCE OF THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND.
93.5
from the restraints with which it was encumbered ;
that the power of determining what was true and what
was false, what ought to be published and what to be
suppressed, might no longer be entrusted to a few
illiterate and illiberal individuals, who refused their
sanction to any work, which contained views or sen-
timents at all above the level of the vulgar superstition.
On the last species of civil liberty, I said nothing;
because I saw that sufficient attention was paid to it
by the magistrates; nor did I write any thing on the
prerogative of the crown, till the king, voted an enemy
by the parliament, and vanquished in the field, was
summoned before the tribunal which condemned him
to lose his head. But when, at length, some presby-
terian ministers, who had formerly been the most bitter
enemies to Charles, became jealous of the growth of
the Independents, and of their ascendancy in the par-
liament, most tumultuously clamoured against the sen-
tence, and did all in their power to prevent the execu-
tion, though they were not angry, so much on account
of the act itself, as because it was not the act of their
party; and when they dared to aſſirm, that the doc-
trine of the protestants, and of all the reformed
churches, was abhorrent to such an atrocious proceed-
ing against kings; I thought, that it became me to
oppose such a glaring falsehood ; and accordingly,
without any immediate or personal application to
Charles, I shewed, in an abstract consideration of the
question, what might lawfully be done against tyrants;
and in support of what I advanced, produced the
opinions of the most celebrated divines; while I vehe-
mently inveighed against the egregious ignorance or
effrontery of men, who professed better things, and
from whom better things might have been expected.
That book did not make its appearance till after the
death of Charles ; and was written rather to reconcile
the minds of the people to the event, than to discuss
the legitimacy of that particular sentence which con-
cerned the magistrates, and which was already exe-
cuted. Such were the fruits of my private studies,
which I gratuitously presented to the church and to
the state; and for which I was recompensed by no-
thing but impunity; though the actions themselves
procured me peace of conscience, and the approbation
of the good ; while I exercised that freedom of discus-
sion which I loved. Others, without labour or desert,
got possession of honours and emoluments; but no
one ever knew me, either soliciting any thing myself,
or through the medium of my friends; ever beheld me
in a supplicating posture at the doors of the senate, or
the levees of the great. I usually kept myself secluded
at home, where my own property, part of which had
been withheld during the civil commotions, and part
of which had been absorbed in the oppressive contri-
butions which I had to sustain, afforded me a scanty
subsistence. When I was released from these engage-
ments, and thought that I was about to enjoy an interval
of uninterrupted ease, I turned my thoughts to a con-
tinued history of my country, from the earliest times
to the present period. I had already finished four
books, when after the subversion of the monarchy, and
the establishment of a republic, I was surprised by an
invitation from the council of state, who desired my
A book ap-
peared soon after, which was ascribed to the king, and
contained the most invidious charges against the par-
I was ordered to answer it; and opposed the
Iconoclast to his Icon. I did not insult over fallen
majesty as is pretended ; I only preferred Queen
Truth to King Charles. The charge of insult, which
I saw that the malevolent would urge, I was at some
pains to remove in the beginning of the work; and
as often as possible in other places. Salmasius then
appeared, to whom they were not, as More says, long
in looking about for an opponent, but immediately
appointed me, who happened at the time to be present
in the council. I have thus, Sir, given some account
of myself, in order to stop your mouth, and to remove
any prejudices which your falsehoods and misrepre-
sentations might cause even good men to entertain
against me. I tell thee then, thou mass of corruption,
to hold thy peace; for the more you malign, the more
you will compel me to confute; which will only serve
to render your iniquity more glaring, and my inte-
grity more manifest. I had reproved Salmasius, be-
cause he was a foreigner, for meddling with our affairs;
but you exclaim “that the defence intimately concerns
those who are not English.” Why? you say, that
“the English may be supposed to be governed more
by the spirit of party; but that the French will natu-
rally pay more attention to the measures than the men.”
To which I retort, as before, that no remote foreigner,
services in the office for foreign affairs.
liament.
as you are, would have interfered in the distractions of
our country, if he were not influenced by the most
sinister considerations. I have already proved, that
Salmasius was bribed ; it is evident, that you obtained
the professional chair through the interest of Salmasius,
and the Orange faction ; and what is worse, you were
debauching Pontia, at the same moment that you were
defaming the parliament. But the reason which you
assign, why foreigners are the best judges in this
business, is quite ridiculous ; for if the Euglish are
carried away by party zeal, you, who make them
your only guides, must certainly be infected by their
antipathies. And if the English deserve no credit
in their own cause, you must deserve much less,
who have no knowledge whatever of our affairs, ex-
cept what you derive from them, who, according to
your own confession, ought not to be believed. Here
again you launch out into the praises of the great
Salmasius; great he certainly was, whom you em-
ployed as a sort of pimp, to procure his servant girl.
You praise him nevertheless; but he saw reason to
curse you before his death ; and a thousand times
blamed himself for not giving more credit to the ac-
count of your atrocities, which he had received from
Spanheim, a venerable divine. You are now worked
into a fury, and assert, that Salmasius had long lost
the use of his reason. You demand the first post in
clamour and in rage, and yet assign the precedence in
obloquy and abuse to Salmasius; “not because he is
violent in his language, but because he is Salmasius.”
936
THE SECOND DEFENCE OF THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND.
O trifler' you, I suppose, learned this casuistry when
you courted Pontia. Hence your clamour is taught to
quibble and to whine; hence, foaming with menace,
“you shall experience at last,” you say, “O base brutes,
what my pen can do.” Shall we dread you, O libidi-
nous adulterer, or your pen, which is an object of dread
only to cooks and chambermaids P For if any one
should hold up only his finger when he detects you in
your criminal amours, you would think it well if you
escaped without your back being broken, or your body
dismembered. “I am not so foolish,” you say, “as to
attempt the execution of a work, that was begun by
Salmasius,” but such a work, if he had not been void
of understanding, he would never have attempted; you
therefore seem jocosely to give the preference to Sal-
masius over yourself in want of brains. But you say,
that “it is your province to invoke the vengeance of
heaven on the murderers of the king;” which may be
done by persons without any great share of erudition.
Cry, shout, and brawl; continue to act the hypocrite,
mouth religion, and practise lust. This God of ven-
geance whom you implore, will, believe me, one day
arise in wrath, when he will begin with exterminating
you, who are the servant of the devil, and the disgrace
and pest of the reformed religion. To many, who
blame the bitter invectives of Salmasius, you reply,
that “this was the right way to deal with parricides,
and such monsters of deformity.” I am obliged to you
for thus teaching me in what manner yourself and your
associate friends ought to be treated; and for furnishing
me with so fair a pretext for severity, Now since you
have no argument to produce, and the rights of kings,
with whatever shew of argument, had been already
defended by Salmasius, your contumely and your rage
evaporate in some miserable tales, some of which you
have new-modelled from Salmasius, and interpolated
others from that most confutable “ confutation” of
some anonymous scribbler who deserted not only his
country but his name; and to the principal points of
which, as I have already replied in my Iconoclast and
my answers to Salmasius, no further reply can be ne-
cessary. Shall I always be compelled to go the same
round, and answer every tautology of slanderous abuse?
I will not do it; nor will I so misemploy my labour or
my time. If any one think that his prostituted cries,
his venal lamentations and frivolous declamation, de-
serve any credit, he is welcome for me to think so; for
I have nothing to fear from such precipitate credulity.
But I will just touch on a few of his points of attack,
which may serve as a specimen of the rest, and give
some insight into the character of the man and of the
work. After having babbled a good deal of his exotic
ignorance about the incorporation of the House of
Commons and the House of Peers in one assembly, (a
measure which no one in his senses would disapprove,)
he says, that “this equality, introduced into the state,
would naturally lead to the introduction of the same
into the church ; for episcopacy still remained, and if
this be not downright anabaptism, I don't know what
is.” Who would have expected this from a Gallic
minister and divine 2 I should hardly think that he
knew what baptism is, who did not know what ana-
baptism is, if this were not. But if we will call things
by their proper names, equality in the state is not ana-
baptism, but democracy, a far more ancient thing; and
equality in the church is the practice of the apostles.
But “ episcopacy still remained.” We confess that it
did ; and Geneva still remained, though that city had
consulted the interests of religion, in expelling both
her bishop and her lawful chief; and why should we
be condemned for what they are approved But you
wish, Sir, to take vengeance upon the Genevese, by
whom it is uncertain whether you were dismissed with
ignominy, or openly excommunicated on account of
your impieties. It is clear that you, with your friend
Salmasius, apostatised from this evangelical form of
church-government, and took refuge among the epis-
copalians. “Then,” you say, “the republic passed into
the hands of our levelling crew, so that it is evident that
the same spirit prevailed at that time, which in the
eighth year had perpetrated the impious murder of the
king. Therefore the same spirit, as it seems, constituted
your ministers, and perpetrated the parricide.” Go on, as
you have begun, to eructate the rage of your apostacy.
You say that “there were not more than three petitions
which demanded the punishment of the king.” This is
notoriously false. Those who have written an account
of these transactions, mention not only three petitions
of the kind, but many from different counties and from
the armies in the course of one month; and three were
presented in one day. You know how deliberately the
matter was discussed in the senate, and that the people,
suspecting them of too much lenity, resorted to petition-
ing, in order to put an end to their delays. How many
thousands were there of the same opinion, who consi-
dered it to be either officious or superfluous to instigate
the determination of the senate 2 I was one of these,
though I made no secret of my sentiments. But sup-
pose that the high rank of the accused had awed every
tongue into silence, ought the parliament to have ab-
stained from a decision, or have awaited the assent of
the people, on which depended the issue of such mo-
mentous deliberations P For the supreme council of
the nation was appointed by the people to curb the
despotism of the king : and if on his capture, after the
sayage war which he had made, they had referred the
question of his punishment to the decision of the
people, and if they had acquitted him, what would
those, who had so courageously restored our liberties,
seem to have done, but to have furnished the king
with the means of effecting their own destruction 2
Or if, after having been invested with full power to act
as they thought best on the most momentous points,
they should be compelled to refer to the multitude a
question which far exceeded their capacity, and which
they, conscious of their ignorance, had previously re-
ferred to the determination of the senate, where could
this alternation of references and appeals have stopped 2
Where could we have found a place of rest in this tur-
bulent eddy ? How could we have procured any sta-
bility amid so much inconstancy, any security amid so
much distraction ? What if they had demanded the res-
THE SECONID DEFENCE OF
toration of Charles to the crown P And such was the
riſt of some menaces, rather than petitions, which
were presented by a few seditious persons, whose hatred
one while, and whose compassion another, was wont
to be equally senseless and malicious. Were we to
make any account of these ? “Who,” as you say, “in
order to set on ſoot a conference with the king, flocked
from all parts of the country to the doors of the parlia-
ment-house, where many of them were put to death by
the soldiery, according to the order of the senators.
Some inhabitants of Surry, either incited by the malici-
ous suggestions of others, or by their own disorderly
inclinations, paraded the city with a petition, in a state
of tumult and intoxication. They proceeded in a body
to assail the doors of the house; they beat off the guard,
and, without the smallest provocation, killed one man
who was stationed at the door. Hence they were de-
servedly driven by violence; and two or three of their
number were slain, breathing the fumes of intempe-
rance more than the love of liberty.” You every where
concede, that “the Independents were superior, not in
numbers, but in discipline and in courage.” Hence I
contend that they well deserved the superiority which
they acquired; for nothing is more agreeable to the
order of nature, or more for the interest of mankind,
than that the less should yield to the greater, not in
numbers, but in wisdom and in virtue. Those who
excel in prudence, in experience, in industry and cou-
rage, however few they may be, will in my opinion
finally constitute the majority, and every where have
the ascendant. You intersperse many remarks on
Cromwell, which I shall examine below ; the rest I
have replied to in my answer to Salmasius. Nor do
you omit to mention the trial of the king, though your
great rhetorician had made that the theme of his mise-
rable declamation. You say that the peers, that is, in
a great measure the pageants and courtiers of the king,
were averse to the trial. I have shewn in the other
work the futility of this remark. “Then that the
judges were erased, because they had given it as
their opinion, that a king of England could not,
by the law of England, be put upon his trial.” I
know not what they then answered ; I only know
what they approve and vindicate. It is no uncom-
mon, though a disreputable thing, for judges to be
swayed by fear. “An obscure and insolent scoun-
drel was accordingly placed at the head of the base
and iniquitous commission.” It is not surprising that
you, who are contaminated by so many vices and
crimes, who are a compound of whatever is most
impure and vile, whose conscience has become a sort
of fungus utterly devoid of sensibility, who are so noto-
rious for atheism, for sacrilege and cruelty, should dare
to vent your calumnies on the most worthy and illus-
tious names. But, though your abuse is the highest
praise, yet I will never seem to abandon the excellent
personage, the friend whom I most revere, to the torrent
of your defamation. I will vindicate him from the
unprincipled and intemperate obloquy of the fugitives
and the Mores, which he would never have incurred, if
he had not shewn so much zeal for the good of the
THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND. 927
commonwealth. John Bradshaw (a name, which will
be repeated with applause wherever liberty is cherished
or is known) was sprung from a noble family. All
his early life he sedulously employed in making himself
acquainted with the laws of his country; he then
practised with singular success and reputation at the
bar; he shewed himself an intrepid and unwearied ad-
vocate for the liberties of the people: he took an active
part in the most momentous affairs of the state, and
occasionally discharged the functions of a judze with
the most inviolable integrity. At last when he was
intreated by the parliament to preside in the trial of the
king, he did not refuse the dangerous office. To a
profound knowledge of the law, he added the most
comprehensive views, the most generous sentiments,
manners the most obliging and the most pure. Hence
he discharged that office with a propriety almost with-
out a parallel; he inspired both respect and awe; and,
though menaced by the daggers of so many assassins,
he conducted himself with so much consistency and
gravity, with so much presence of mind and so much
dignity of demeanour, that he seems to have been pur-
posely destined by Providence for that part which he
so nobly acted on the theatre of the world. And his
glory is as much exalted above that of all other tyran-
nicides, as it is both more humane, more just, and more
strikingly grand, judicially to condemn a tyrant, than
to put him to death without a trial. In other respects,
there was no forbidding austerity, no moroseness in
his manner; he was courteous and benign ; but the
great character, which he then sustained, he with per-
fect consistency still sustains, so that you would suppose
that, not only then, but in every future period of his
life, he was sitting in judgment upon the king. In
the public business his activity is unwearied; and he
alone is equal to a host. At home his hospitality is
as splendid as his fortune will permit; in his friendships
there is the most inflexible fidelity; and no one more
readily discerns merit, or more liberally rewards it.
Men of piety and learning, ingenious persons in all
professions, those who have been distinguished by their
courage or their misfortunes, are free to participate his
bounty; and if they want not his bounty, they are sure
to share his friendship and esteem. He never ceases
to extol the merits of others, or to conceal his own ;
and no one was ever more ready to accept the ex-
cuses, or to pardon the hostility, of his political op-
ponents. If he undertake to plead the cause of the
oppressed, to solicit the favour or deprecate the
resentment of the powerful, to reprove the pub-
lic ingratitude towards any particular individual,
his address and his perseverance are beyond all praise.
On such occasions no one could desire a patron or a
friend more able, more zealous, or more eloquent. No
menace could divert him from his purpose; no intimi-
dation on the one hand, and no promise of emolument
or promotion on the other, could alter the serenity of
his countemance, or shake the firmness of his soul.
By these virtues, which endeared him to his friends
and commanded the respect even of his enemies, he,
Sir, has acquired a name, which, while you and such
938
THE SECOND DEFENCE OF THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND.
as you are mouldering in oblivion, will flourish in
every age and in every country in the world. But I
must proceed ; the king was condemned to lose his
head. “Against this atrocity almost all the pulpits in
London thundered out their censures.” We are not to
be so easily scared by that thunder upon wood. We
remember the fate of Salmoneus, and trust that these
persons will one day see cause to repent of their fulmi-
nating temerity. These were the very persons, who
so lately, and with such vehemence, fulminated their
censures against pluralists and non-residents. But
some of these persons having grasped three, and others
four, of the livings, from which they had fulminated the
episcopal clergy, they hence became non-residents
themselves, guilty of the very sin against which they
had inveighed, and the victims of their own fulminating
rage. Nor have they any longer a spark of shame;
they are now grown zealous abettors of the divine right
of tythes; and truly as their thirst for tythes is so insa-
tiable, they should be quite gorged with the commo-
dity, and ordered to have, not only a tenth part of the
fruits of the earth, but of the waves of the sea. They
were the first to counsel a war of extermination against
the king; but when the king was made prisoner, after
having been convicted, according to their own repeated
declarations, as the author of so much misery and
bloodshed, they affected to compassionate his situation.
Thus, in their pulpits, as in an auction room, they re-
tail what wares and trumpery they please to the people;
and what is worse, they reclaim what they have al-
ready sold. But “the Scots demanded that the king
should be restored to them, and mention the promises
of the parliament, when they delivered up the king to
the English.” But I can prove, from the confession of
the Scots themselves, that no such promise was given
when the king was delivered up ; and it would have
been disgraceful for the English to have entered into
any such stipulations with the Scotch troops, who were
mercenaries in their pay. Why? Because the answer
of the parliament to the representations of the Scotch,
which was published on the fifteenth of March, clearly
denies, that any assurances whatever were given re-
specting the treatment of the king; for they would
have disdained to have submitted to such limitations
of their right. But “they demanded that the king
should be restored to them.” These tender-hearted
persons, I suppose, were melted with compassion, and
could no longer endure the regrets of royalty; though
on several occasions, in which the subject had becn
discussed in parliament, they had unanimously agreed
that the king might be deprived of his crown for three
principal reasons; the despotism of his government, his
alienation of the royal domains, and the desertion of
his subjects. In the parliament, which was held at
Perth, it was asked, Is the king, who is evidently an
enemy to the saints, to be excommunicated from the
society of the faithful ? But before they could come to
any decision on this question, Montrose advanced with
his troops and dispersed the convention. The same
persons, in their answer to General Cromwell, 1650,
confess that he was justly punished, but that there was
an informality in the proceedings, because they had no
share in the commission which condemned him. This
transaction, therefore, which was so atrocious, without
their participation, would have been highly patriotic
with it; as if the distinctions of right and wrong, of
justice and injustice, depend on their arbitrary disposi-
tion, or their capricious inclinations. If the king had
been restored to them, would he have experienced
greater clemency and moderation ? But “the Scotch
Delegates had first brought this answer from the Eng-
lish Parliament, that they were unwilling to alter the
form of the English Government; though they after-
wards answered that they had changed their former
determination, and would adopt such measures as the
public interest seemed to require: ” and this answer
was discreet and wise. What do you inſer from hence 2
“This change of sentiment,” you say, “was contrary
to every engagement, to every stipulation, and to com-
mon sense.” To such common sense as yours it may
be adverse, who do not know the difference between a
gratuitous promise and a solemn and positive engage-
ment. The English freely state to the Scots, what
they were under no obligation to do, the sentiments
which they then entertained respecting the future form
of their government; but the safety of the state soon
persuaded them to embrace a different policy, if they
would not violate the solemn assurances which they
had given to the people. And which, do you think,
was most binding on their consciences; their gratuitous
reply to the Scotch Delegates, concerning the future
form of their constitution, or the necessary oath which
they had taken, the solemn engagement into which
they had entered with the people, to establish the li-
berties of their country But that a parliament or a
senate may alter their resolutions according to circum-
stances, as you deem whatever I assert to be mere ana-
baptistical extravagance, I shall endeavour to shew
you from the authority of Cicero in his oration for
Plancius. “We should all stand, as it were, in some
circular section of the commonwealth; in which since it
is liable to a rotatory motion, we should choose that
position to which the public interest seems to direct us:
and this immediately, for I do not think it a mark of
inconstancy to accommodate our measures, as we do
the course which we steer at sea, to the winds and
storms of the political horizon. It is a maxim, which
I have found justified by observation, by experience,
and by books, by the examples of the wisest and most
illustrious characters in this and in other countries,
“ that the same men are not always bound to de-
fend the same opinions, but only such as the cir-
cumstances of the country, the current of popular
opinion, and the preservation of peace, seem to render
necessary.” Such were the sentiments of Tully ;
though you, Sir, would rather prefer those of Horten-
sius; such were the sentiments of those ages in which
political wisdom flourished most ; and which I deem
it wise in the anabaptists to adopt. I could men-
tion many other practices which are condemned as
anabaptistical by these stripling teachers, and their
chief Salmasius, who must be regarded as an illiterate
THE SECOND DEFENCE OF THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND.
939
dunce, if we look to things rather than to words. But
you say that “the high and mighty chiefs of the
United States of Holland most strenuously laboured,
though to no purpose, both by supplications and by
the offer of a ransom, to save the sacred life of the
king.” Thus to wish to buy off justice was the same
as not to will the safety of the king ; but they soon
learned that we were not all merchants, and that the
parliament of England was not a venal crew. With
respect to the condemnation of the king, you say that
“in order that the sufferings of Charles might be more
nearly assimilated to those of Christ, he was exposed
to the redoubled mockery of the soldiery.” The suf-
ferings of Christ were indeed more like those of male-
factors, than the sufferings of Charles were like those
of Christ; though many comparisons of this kind were
hawked about by those who were zealous in forging
any lie, or devising any imposture that might tend to
excite the popular indignation. But suppose that
some of the common soldiers did behave with a little
too much insolence, that consideration does not con-
stitute the demerit of the execution. I never before
heard, nor did I ever meet with any person who had
heard, that “a person, who implored God to have
mercy on the king as he was passing to the scaffold,
was instantly put to death in the presence of the mon-
arch.” I caused inquiries on the subject to be made
of the officer who had the command of the guard dur-
ing the whole time of the execution, and who hardly
ever lost sight of the king's person for a moment; and
he positively declared that he had never heard this
before, and that he knew it to be utterly destitute of
foundation. Hence we may learn what credit is due
to your narrative in other particulars; for you will be
found not to discover much more veracity in your en-
deavours to procure affection and respect for Charles
after his death, than in your exertions to make us
objects of general and unmerited detestation. You
say that “on the fatal scaffold, the king was heard
twice to sigh out to the bishop of London, remember
remember 1’’ The judges were all in anxiety to know
what the words, so emphatically repeated, meant; the
bishop, according to your account, was sent for, and
with a menace ordered to declare to what the reiterated
admonition might allude. He, at first, with a precon-
certed dissimulation, pleaded his sense of delicacy, and
refused to divulge the secret. When they became more
impatient, he at last disclosed, as if by constraint, and
under the influence of fear, what he would not for the
world have had unknown. “The king,” said he,
“ordered me, if I could gain access to his son, to in-
form him that it was the last injunction of his dying
father, that, if he were ever restored to his power and
crown, he should pardon you, the authors of his death.
This was what his majesty again and again commanded
me to remember.” Which shall I say P that the king
discovered most piety, or the bishop most deceit? who
with so little difficulty consented to disclose a secret,
which on the very scaffold was so mysteriously en-
trusted to him, for the purpose of disclosure ? But O !
model of taciturnity : Charles had long since left this
injunction, among others, to his son, in his “Icon Ba-
silicon,” a book which was evidently written for this
express purpose, that this secret, which had been so os-
tentatiously enveloped in obscurity, might be divulged
with the utmost dispatch, and circulated with the utmost
diligence. But I clearly see that you are determined
to obtrude upon the ignorant some paragon of perfec-
tion, if not quite like Charles Stuart, at least some
hyperborean and fabled hero, decorated with all the
shewy varnish of imposture; and that you tricked out
this fiction, and embellished it with the effusions of
sensibility, in order to entrap the attention of the po-
pulace. But though I do not deny but that one or
two of the commissioners might perhaps have briefly
interrogated the bishop on this subject, I do not find
that he was either purposely called before them, or
deliberately and scrupulously interrogated, as if it were
a matter of their general solicitude and care. But let
us grant that Charles, on the scaffold, did deliver to
the bishop these dying injunctions to his son to pardon
the authors of his death ; what did he do more than
others have done in similar situations 2 How few per-
sons are there about to die upon a scaffold, and to close
for ever the tragedy of life, when they must forcibly
feel the vanity of every thing human, who would not
do the same; who would not, when on the point of
leaving the stage of life, cheerfully lay aside their
animosities, their resentments, their aversions, or, at
least, pretend to do it, in order to excite compassion,
or to leave behind them an opinion of their innocence 2
That Charles acted the hypocrite on this occasion, and
that he never did sincerely, and from his heart, deliver
any injunction to his son to pardon the authors of his
death, or that his private were at variance with his
public admonitions, may be proved by arguments of
no small weight. For otherwise the son, who, in other
respects was sufficiently obsequious to his father, would
doubtlessly have obeyed this his most momentous and
dying injunction, so religiously conveyed to him by
the bishop. But how did he obey it, when two of our
ambassadors, the one in Holland and the other in
Spain, neither of whom had any share in the destruc-
tion of the king, were put to death by his orders
or his influence P And has he not indeed more than
once openly declared in his public memorials, that
nothing should induce him to pardon the murderers
of his father ? Consider, therefore, whether this nar-
rative of yours be likely to be true, which, the more it
commends the father, reviles the son. Next, digress-
ing from your purpose, you not only make the royal
blood invoke the vengeance of heaven, but the people
clamour against the parliament. You forget your
own enormities at home, to engage in foreign con-
siderations, in which you have no concern. Wile wretch,
would the people ever employ you to plead their cause,
whose breath is steaming with the effluvia of venereal
putrescence P You ascribe to the people the clamours
of fugitives and profligates; and, like a juggler on a
stage, you imitate the shrieks and cries of the most
hideous brutes. Who denies that there may be times,
in which the vicious may constitute the majority of the
940
THE SECOND DEFENCE OF THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND.
citizens, who would rather follow Catiline or Antony,
than the more virtuous part of the senate P But are not
good citizens on this account to oppose the bad with
vigour and decision 2 Ought they not to be less de-
terred by the smallness of their numbers, than they are
animated by the goodness of their cause P Your beau-
tiful scrap of declamation for the people of England,
that it may not perish beyond recovery, I would advise
you to insert in the Annals of Volusius; we do not
want the savoury effusions of such a lecherous rheto-
Next we are called to account for our injuries
to the church. “The army is a Hydra-headed mon-
ster of accumulated heresies.” Those who speak the
truth, acknowledge that our army excels all others, not
Other
camps are the scenes of gambling, swearing, riot, aud
rician.
only in courage, but in virtue and in piety.
debauchery; in ours, the troops employ what leisure
they have in searching the Scriptures and hearing the
word; nor is there one, who thinks it more honourable
to vanquish the enemy than to propagate the truth;
and they not only carry on a military warfare against
their enemies, but an evangelical one against them-
selves. And indeed if we consider the proper objects
of war, what employment can be more becoming sol-
diers, who are raised to defend the laws, to be the sup-
port of our political and religious institutions 2 Ought
they not then to be less conspicuous for ferocity than
for the civil and the softer virtues, and to consider it as
their true and proper destination, not merely to sow the
seeds of strife, and reap the harvest of destruction, but
to procure peace and security for the whole human
race 2 If there be any, who either from the mistakes of
others, or the infirmities of their own minds, deviate
from these noble ends, we ought not to punish them
with the sword, but rather labour to reform them by
reason, by admonition, by pious supplications to God,
to whom alone it belongs to dispel all the errors of the
mind, and to impart to whom he will the celestial light
of truth. We approve no heresies which are truly such;
we do not even tolerate some; we wish them extirpated,
but by those means which are best suited to the pur-
pose; by reason and instruction, the only safe remedies
for disorders of the mind; and not by the knife or the
scourge, as if they were seated in the body. You say
that “we have done another and equal injury to the
temporal property of the church.” Ask the protestants
of Holland, and even of Upper Germany, whether they
ever spared the possessions of the church, against whom
the Austrian Prince, as often as he makes war, hardly
ever seeks for any other pretext than the restitution of
the ecclesiastical domains. But that property did not
belong to the church so much as the ecclesiastics, who,
in this sense, might most justly be denominated church-
men; indeed they might have been more fully termed
wolves than any thing else; but could there be any
impiety in applying to the necessary exigencies of a
war which they themselves had occasioned, and which
we had no other resource for carrying on, the property
of these wolves, or rather the accumulated ravages of
so many ages of ignorance and superstition P But it
was expected that the wealth which was ravished from
the bishops would be distributed among the parochial
clergy. They expected, I know, and they desired, that
the whole should be diffused among them; for there
is no abyss so deep which it is not more easy to fill,
than it is to satiate the rapacity of the clergy. In other
places there may be an incompetent provision for the
clergy; but ours have an abundant maintenance; they
ought to be called sheep rather than shepherds; they
themselves are fed more than they feed others; every
thing is ſat around them, so that even their heads seem
to swim in fat. They are stuffed with tythes in a
way disapproved by the rest of the reformed churches;
and they have so little trust in God, that they choose
to extort a maintenance, rather by judicial force, and
magisterial authority, than to owe it to divine pro-
vidence, or the gratitude and benevolence of their con-
gregations. And, besides all this, they are so frequently
entertained by their pious auditors of both sexes, that
they hardly know what it is to dine or sup at home.
Hence they luxuriate in superfluities, rather than lan-
guish in want; their wives and children vie with the
wives and children of the rich in luxury and refine-
ment; and to have increased this tendency to prodiga-
lity, by an addition to their revenue, would have been
the same as to infuse new poison into the church; a
sort of pestilential malady, the introduction of which a
voice from heaven lamented under Constantine. We
have next to give an account of our enormities towards
God, which principally concern our trust in the divine
assistance, our prayers and fasts. But, vile miscreamt
I will refute you out of your own mouth; and retort
upon you that text of the apostle, “Who art thou that
judgest another man's servant P’’ Before our own mas-
ter let us stand or ſall. I will add also that saying of
the prophet, “When I afflict my soul with fasting, this
is turned to my reproach.” The rest of your delirious
effusions on this subject, which no one will take the
trouble to read twice, I should do wrong to detail. Nor
are those things more to the purpose, which you brawl
out concerning our successes. Beware, Sir, beware,
lest, after your Pontian toils, you should swell into a
polypus of corpulency; and we need be under appre-
hensions, lest as the great Salmasius lately did, you
should chill the baths. On the nature of success I will
say a few words. Success neither proves a cause to
be good, nor indicates it to be bad; and we demand
that our cause should not be judged by the event, but
the event by the cause. You now enter on political
discussions, the injuries which we have done to all
kings, and to all people. What injuries? for we never
intended any ; the affairs of our own government
alone occupied our attention, we neglected those of
others; we do not envy the good that may have ac-
crued from our example, and we can ascribe the evil
only to the abuse or misapplication of our principles.
But, what kings or people ever appointed you to pro-
claim their injuries 2 Indeed others have heard their
orators and ambassadors in the senate, and I have often
heard them in the council, not only not complaining of
any grievances, but voluntarily suing for our friend-
ship and alliance. In the name of their kings and
THE SECOND DEFENCE OF THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND.
princes, they have often congratulated us on the state
of our affairs, praying for the stability of our govern-
ment and the continuance of our prosperity. This was
not the language of hostility or hatred, as you assert;
and you must either necessarily be convicted of false-
hood, at which you never stick, or kings themselves of
an insincerity and dissimulation, the most humiliating
and most base. But you object to our confession, that
we had set a salutary example to all people, and a ſor-
midable one to all tyrants. This is surely as heinous
a crime as if any one were to say, -
Advis'd, learn justice, and revere the gods.
Could any thing be uttered more permicious This
was the language of Cromwell to the Scots after the
battle of Dunbar. And worthy indeed was it of him
and of that noble victory. “The infamous pages of
Milton abound with the same noisome ingredients.”
You always associate me with some illustrious col-
league; and, on this occasion, you make me his equal,
if not his superior; so that I might on this account
think myself most honoured by you, if any thing hon-
ourable could proceed from you. “But those pages,”
rou say, “were burnt at Paris by the hands of the
common hangman, and by the orders of the parlia-
ment.” I find that this was by no means done by the
senate, but by one of the city officers, of what descrip-
tion I know not, but at the instigation of the clergy,
those indolent vermin, who saw at a distance the ſate
which menaced, and which, I pray, may one day over-
take their gluttony and extravagance. Do you im-
agine that we, in our turn, could not have burnt Sal-
masius's defence of the king? I could myself easily
have obtained this permission from the magistrates, if
I had thought that it merited any thing but contempt.
You, in your endeavours to extinguish one fire by an-
other, have only erected an Herculean pile, from which
I shall rise with more lustre and renown; we with
more discretion, did not think it right to communicate
any animating beat to the icy chilliness of the royal
windication. But I wonder that the Thoulousians
should have become so degenerate, that a defence of
religion and of liberty should be burnt in a city, in
which, under the Counts of Raymond, religion and li-
berty were formerly so nobly defended. “And I wish,”
you say, “that the writer had been burned as well.”
Is this your disposition, slave? But you have taken
good care that I should not indulge a similar wish to-
wards you ; for you have been long wasting in blacker
flames. Your conscience is scorched by the flames of
adultery and rape, and of those perjuries, by the help
of which you debauched an unsuspecting girl, to whom
you promised marriage, and then abandoned to de-
spair. You are writhing under the flames of that mer-
cenary passion, which impelled you, though covered
with crimes, to lust after the functions of the priest-
hood, and to pollute the consecrated elements with your
incestuous touch. While you are acting the hypocrite,
you utter the most horrid imprecations against hypo-
crisy; and every sentence of condemnation only serves
941
to condemn yourself. Such are the atrocities, such
the infamy, with which you are all on fire; these are
the infuriated flames, by which you are tormented
night and day; and you suffer a punishment, than
which even your bitterest foe could not invoke one
more severe. In the mean time, not one hair of my
head is singed by the conflagrations which you kindle;
but those aſſronts are balanced by much delight, and
many sweets. One tribunal perhaps, or a single Pari-
sian executioner, under some unlucky bias, burnt my
book; but nevertheless, how many good and wise men
through all France read it, cherished and admired it 2
How many, through the spacious tracts of Germany,
the domicile of freedom, and wherever any traces of
freedom yet remain? Moreover Greece itself, and
Athens, the eye of Greece, mingles its applause in the
voice of its noble Philyras. And this I can truly say,
that, as soon as my defence appeared, and had begun
to excite the public curiosity, there was no public func-
tionary of any prince or state then in the city, who did
not congratulate me when we accidentally met, who did
not desire my company at his house or visit me at mine.
But it would be wrong not to mention you, O Adrian
Paul, the honour and the ornament of Holland, who,
dispatched on a splendid embassy to us, though I had
never the pleasure of seeing you, sent me frequent as-
surances of your extraordinary predilection and regard.
This it often delights me to recollect, and which could
never have happened without the special appointment
of the Deity, that royalty itself courteously favoured
me, who had apparently written against kings; and
afforded to my integrity and veracity, a testimony next
to the divine. For, why should I fear to say this, when
I consider how zealously and how highly all persons
extol that illustrious queen? Nor do I think, that he
who was the wisest of the Athenians, and with whom I
by no means wish to compare myself, was more hon-
oured by the testimony of the Pythian oracle, than I
am by the approbation of such a queen. If this had
happened to me, when a young man, and orators might
have taken the same liberties as poets, I should not
have hesitated to prefer my fate to that of some of the
gods themselves; for, while they contended for the
prize of beauty or harmony before a human judge, I,
in the most glorious of all contests, had the palm of
victory adjudged to me by the voice of an immortal.
Thus honoured and caressed, no one but a common
hangman would dare to treat me with disrespect; and
such an one has both dome it and caused it to be done.
Here you take great pains, as Salmasius had done be-
fore, to prevent us from justifying our struggles for li-
berty by the example of the Dutch ; but the same
answer will serve for both. They are mistaken who
think that we want any example to direct us. We
often found it necessary to cherish and support, but
never to vival, the Dutch in their struggles for liberty.
If any extraordinary courage in the defence of liberty
be requisite, we are wont, not to follow others, but to
go before them and to lead the way. But you also
employ the most paltry oratory, and the most flimsy
arguments, to induce the French to go to war with us.
942 THE SECOND DEFENCE OF
THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND.
“The spirit of the French,” you say, “will never deign
to receive our ambassadors.” It has deigned, which
is much more, voluntarily to send ambassadors three
or four times to us. The French, therefore, are as
noble minded as usual; but you are degenerate and
spurious, and your politics betray as much ignorance
as falsehood. Hence you attempt to demonstrate that
“the negotiation of the United States was purposely
protracted, because they wished neither to treat with
us, nor to go to war with us.” But it certainly behovcs
their High Mightinesses not to suffer their counsels to
be thus exposed, and, I may say, traduced by a Gene-
vese fugitive; who, if they suffer him any longer to
remain among them, will not only debauch their women
but their counsels. For they profess the most unfeigned
amity; and have lately renewed a peace with us, of
which it is the wish of all good men that it may be
perpetual. “It was pleasant,” he says, “to see how
those ruffian ambassadors,” he means the English,
“ had to contend with the mockery and the menace of
the English royalists, but chiefly of the Dutch.” If
we had not thoroughly known to whom the murder of
our former ambassador, Dorislaus, and the affronts
which were offered to our two other ambassadors are
to be ascribed, we might well exclaim, lo! a slander-
ous informant, who falsely accuses the very persons
by whose bounty he is fed Will you any longer, O
Batavians ! cherish and support a man, who, not con-
tented with practising the most infamous debaucheries
in the church, wishes to introduce the most sanguinary
butchery into the state; who not only exposes you to
violate the laws of nations, but falsely imputes to you
the guilt of such violations f
The last head of his accusations is, “our injuries to
the reformed churches.” But how our injuries towards
them, rather than theirs towards us? For if you recur
to examples, and turn over the annals of history from
the Waldenses and the Thoulousians to the famine of
Rochelle, you will find that we, of all churches, have
been the last to take up arms against tyranny ; but the
first “to bring the tyrant to a scaffold.” Truly, be-
cause we were the first who had it in our power; and
I think that they hardly know what they would have
done if they had experienced similar opportunities.
Indeed I am of opinion, that he against whom we
wage war, must necessarily, and as long as we have
any use of reason, be judged an enemy; but it has
always been as lawful to put an enemy to death, as to
attack him with the sword. Since then a tyrant is not
only our enemy, but the public enemy of mankind;
he may certainly be put to death with as much justice
on the scaffold, as he is opposed with arms in the field.
Nor is this only my opinion, or one of recent date; for
common sense has long since dictated the same to
others. Hence Tully, in his oration for Rabirius, de-
clares, “If it were criminal to put Saturninus to death,
arms could not, without a crime, have been taken up
against Saturninus; but if you allow the justice of
taking up arms against him, you must allow the jus-
tice of putting him to death.” I have said a good deal
on this subject at other times and in other places, and
the thing is clear enough in itself; from which you
may conjecture what the French would have done if
they had the power. I add, moreover, that those who
oppose a tyrant in the field, do all in their power to
put him to death ; indeed, whatever sophistry they
may use, they have already morally put him to death.
But this doctrine is not to be imputed to us more than
to the French, whom you wish to exempt from the
imputation. For whence issued that work of “Franco
Gallia,” except from Gaul, or “the defence against
tyranny ?” A book which is commonly ascribed to
Beza. Whence others, which Thaunus mentions 2
But, as if I were the only author of the doctrine, you
say, “Milton makes a pother about that, whose raving
spirit I would have chastised as it deserves.” You
would have chastised, miscreant? You, whose atrocious
proceedings, if the church of Middleburgh, which was
disgraced by your impieties, had punished as they de-
served, it would long since have committed you to the
keeping of the devil; and if the civil power had re-
warded you according to your desert, you would long
ago have expiated your adulteries on a gibbet. And
the hour of expiation seems on the point of arriving ;
for, as I hear, the church of Middleburgh, awakening
to a right sense of your enormities and of its own dis-
grace, has expelled such a priest of lechery from her
communion, and devoted you to perdition. Hence,
the magistrates of Amsterdam have excluded you from
the pulpit, that pious ears may no longer be scanda-
lized, by hearing the sounds of your profligate effron-
tery in the bosom of the sanctuary. Your Greek pro-
fessorship is now all that is left you; and this you will
soon lose, except one single letter, of which you wil:
not be the professor, but the pupil, pensile from the
top || 5 |. Nor do I omen this in rage; I express
only the truth; for I am so far from being offended
with such revilers as you, that I would always wish for
such persons to revile me; and I esteem it a mark of
the divine benevolence, that those, who have most bit
terly inveighed against me, have usually been per-
sons whose abuse is praise, and whose praise is infamy
But what served to restrain the irruption of such im-
potence of rage P “ Unless,” you say, “I have been
fearful of encroaching on the province of the great
Salmasius, to whom I relinquish the undivided praise
of victory over his great antagonist.” Since indeed
you now profess to consider me great, as well as him,
you will find the difficulties of your undertaking in-
creased, particularly since his death; though I feel
very little solicitude about the victory, as long as truth
prevails. In the mean time you exclaim, that “we are
converting parricide into an article of faith, to which
they secretly desire, though they do not openly dare
to ascribe, the unanimous consent of the reformed
churches; and Milton says, that it was the doctrine
of the greatest theologians, who were the principal
authors of the reformation.” It was, I say; as I have
more fully shewn in the tenure of kings and magis-
trates, and in other places. But now we are become
scrupulous about doing what has been so often done.
In that work, I have cited passages from Luther, Zuin-
THE SECOND DEFENCE OF THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND.
943
glius, Calvin, Bucer, Martyr, Paraeus, and lastly, from
that Knox, who you say alone countenances the doc-
trine which all the reformed churches at that time, and
particularly those of France, condemned. And he
himself affirms, as I have there explained, that he de-
rived the doctrine from Calvin and other eminent theo-
logians of that time, with whom he was in habits of
ſamiliarity and friendship. And in the same work you
will find the same opinions supported by the authorities
of some of our more pure and disinterested divines, dur-
ing the reigns of Mary and Elizabeth. You conclude
your work with a prolix effusion of your devotional abo-
minations to the Deity. You dare to lift up your adulter-
ous eyes and your obdurate heart to heaven! I will throw
no impediments in your way, but leave you to yourself;
for your impiety is great beyond the possibility of in-
crease. I now return, as I promised, to produce the prin-
cipal accusations against Cromwell, that I may show
what little consideration particulars deserve, when the
whole taken together is so frivolous and absurd. “He
declared in the presence of many witnesses, that it was
his intention to subvert every monarchy, and extermi-
nate every king.” We have often seen before what
credit is due to your assertions; perhaps one of the
emigrants ascribed this saying to Cromwell. Of the
many witnesses, you do not mention the name of a
single one; but aspersions, so destitute of proof, must
be destitute of permanence. Cromwell was never found
to be boastful of his actual exploits: and much less is
he wont to employ any ostentatiousness of promise or
arrogance of menace respecting atchievements which
were never performed, and the performance of which
would be so difficult. Those, therefore, who furnished
you with this piece of information, must have been
liars rather from a spontaneous impulse or a constitu-
tional propensity, than from deliberate intentiom, or
they would never have invented a saying so contrary
to his character and disposition. But the kings, whose
trembling apprehensions and vigilant precautions you
labour to excite, instead of accommodating their policy
to the opinions which may be casually uttered in the
street, had better enter on the consideration of the sub-
ject in a manner more suitable to its dignity, and more
likely to throw light upon their interests. Another ac-
cusation is, that Cromwell had persuaded “the king
secretly to withdraw himself into the Isle of Wight.”
It is well known that the affairs of Charles were often
rendered desperate in other ways, and thrice by flight;
first, when he fled from London to York, next, when
he took refuge among the Scotch in the pay of Eng-
land, and lastly, when he retired to the Isle of Wight.
But “Cromwell persuaded this last measure.” This is
to be sure beyond all possibility of doubt; but I wonder
that the royalists should lavish such an abundance of
praise respecting the prudence of Charles, who seems
scarce ever to have had a will of his own. For whe-
ther he was among his friends or his enemies, in the
court or in the camp, he was generally the mere puppet
of others; at ome time of his wife, at another of his
bishops, now of his nobles, then of his troops, and last
of all, of the enemy. And he seems, for the most part,
to have followed the worst counsels, and those too of
the worst advisers. Charles is the victim of persuasion,
Charles the dupe of imposition, Charles the pageant of
delusion; he is intimidated by fear or dazzled by
hope; and carried about here and there, the common
prey of every faction, whether they be friends or foes.
Let them either erase these facts from their writings,
or cease to extol the sagacity of Charles. Though
therefore a superior degree of penetration is an honour-
able distinction, yet when a country is torn with fac-
tions, it is not without its inconveniencies; and the
most discrect and cautious are most exposed to the ca-
lumnies of opposite factions. This often proved an ob-
stacle in the way of Cromwell. Hence the presbyte-
rians, and hence the enemy, impute every harsh treat-
ment which they experience, not to the parliament but
to Cromwell alone. They do not even hesitate to ascribe
their own indiscretions and miscarriages to the fraud
and treachery of Cromwell; against him every invec-
tive is levelled, and every censure passed. Indeed the
flight of Charles to the Isle of Wight, which took
place while Cromwell was at a distance, and was so
sudden and unexpected, that he acquainted by letter
every member then in the metropolis with the extraor-
dinary occurrence. But this was the state of the case.
The king, alarmed by the clamours of the whole army,
which, neither softened by his intreaties nor his pro-
mises, had begun to demand his punishment, he deter-
mined to make his escape in the night with two trusty
followers. But more determined to fly, than rightly
knowing where to fly, he was induced, either by the
ignorance or the cowardice of his attendants, to surren-
der himself to Hammond, governor of the Isle of Wight,
whence he thought that he might easily be conveyed by
ship into France or Holland. This is what I have
learned concerning the king's flight to the Isle of
Wight, from those who possessed the readiest means
of obtaining information. This is also one of the cri-
minal charges; that “the English under Cromwell
procured a great victory over the Scots.” Not “pro-
cured,” Sir, but, without any solecism, gloriously at-
chieved. But consider how sanguinary that battle
must have been, the mere idea of which excited such
trembling apprehensions, that you could not mention
it without striking your head against Priscian's pate.
But let us see what was the great crime in Cromwell
in having gained such a complete victory over the
Scots, who were menacing England with invasion,
with the loss of her independence. “During this
confusion, while Cromwell is absent with his army:”
yes, while he was engaged in subduing an enemy,
who had marched into the very heart of the king-
dom, and menaced the safety of the parliament :
while he was employed in reducing the revolted Welsh
to their obedience, whom he vanquished wherever he
could overtake, and dispersed wherever he could find;
the presbyterians “began to conceive a disgust against
Cromwell.” Here you speak the truth. While he is
repelling the common enemy at the hazard of his life,
and bravely defending their interests abroad, they are
conspiring to ruin his reputation at home, and suborn
944
THE SECOND DEFENCE OF THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND.
one Huntington to take away his life. Does not this
atrocious instance of ingratitude excite our abborrence
By their instigation a mol, of worth-
less people, reeking from the taverns and the stews,
besieges the doors of the parliament, and (O indignity)
compels them by clamour and intimidation, to vote
such measures as they chose to dictate. And we
should now have seen our Camillus, on his return from
Scotland, after all his triumphs, and all his toils, either
driven into exile, or put to an ignominious death, if
General Fairfax had not openly remonstrated against
the disgrace of his invincible lieutenant; if the whole
army, which had itself experienced a good deal of ill-
treatment, had not interposed to prevent such atrocious
proceedings. Entering the metropolis, they quelled
the citizens without much difficulty; they deservedly
expelled from the senate those members who favoured
the hostile Scotch ; the rest, delivered from the inso-
lence of the rabble, broke off the conference which had
begun with the king in the Isle of Wight, contrary to
the express orders of the parliament. But Huntington
the accuser was left to himself; and at last, struck
with remorse, solicited the forgiveness of Cromwell,
and confessed by whom he had been suborned. These
are the principal charges, except those to which I have
replied above, which are brought forward against this
noble deliverer of his country. Of how little force they
are, is very apparent. But, in speaking of such a
man, who has merited so well of his country, I should
do nothing, if I only exculpated him from crimes; par-
ticularly since it not only so nearly concerns the coun-
try, but even myself, who am so closely implicated in
the same disgrace, to evince to all nations, and as far
as I can, to all ages, the excellence of his character,
and the splendour of his renown. Oliver Cromwell
was sprung from a line of illustrious ancestors, who
were distinguished for the civil functions which they
sustained under the monarchy, and still more for the
part which they took in restoring and establishing true
religion in this country. In the vigour and maturity
of his life, which he passed in retirement, he was con-
spicuous for nothing more than for the strictness of his
religious habits and the innocence of his life; and he
had tacitly cherished in his breast that flame of piety
which was afterwards to stand him in so much stead on
the greatest occasions, and in the most critical exigen-
cies. In the last parliament which was called by the
king, he was elected to represent his native town; when
he soon became distinguished by the justness of his
opinions, and the vigour and decision of his counsels.
and our rage 2
When the sword was drawn, he offered his services,
and was appointed to a troop of horse, whose numbers
were soon increased by the pious and the good, who
flocked from all quarters to his standard; and in a short
time he almost surpassed the greatest generals in the
magnitude and the rapidity of his atchievements. Nor
is this surprising; for he was a soldier disciplined to
perfection in the knowledge of himself. He had either
extinguished, or by habit had learned to subdue, the
whole host of vain hopes, fears, and passions, which in-
fest the soul. He first acquired the government of
himself, and over himself acquired the most signal vic-
tories; so that on the first day he took the field against
the external enemy, he was a veteran in arms, consum-
mately practised in the toils and exigencies of war. It
is not possible for me in the narrow limits in which I
circumscribe myself on this occasion, to enumerate the
many towns which he has taken, the many battles
which he has won. The whole surface of the British
empire has been the scene of his exploits, and the
theatre of his triumphs; which alone would furnish
ample materials for a history, and want a copiousness
of narration not inferior to the magnitude and diver-
sity of the transactions. This alone seems to be a
sufficient proof of his extraordinary and almost super-
natural virtue, that by the vigour of his genius, or the
excellence of his discipline, adapted, not more to the
necessities of war, than to the precepts of Christianity,
the good and the brave were from all quarters attracted
to his camp, not only as to the best school of military
talents, but of piety and virtue; and that during the
whole war, and the occasional intervals of peace, amid
so many vicissitudes of faction and of events, he re-
tained and still retains the obedience of his troops, not
by largesses or indulgence, but by his sole authority,
and the regularity of his pay. In this instance his
fame may rival that of Cyrus, of Epaminondas, or any
of the great generals of antiquity. Hence he collected
an army as numerous and as well equipped as any one
ever did in so short a time; which was uniformly obe-
dient to his orders, and dear to the affections of the
citizens; which was formidable to the enemy in the
field, but never cruel to those who laid down their
arms; which committed no lawless ravages on the per-
sons or the property of the inhabitants; who, when they
compared their conduct with the turbulence, the intem-
perance, the impiety, and the debauchery of the royal-
ists, were wont to salute them as friends, and to con-
sider them as guests. They were a stay to the good, a
terror to the evil, and the warmest advocates for every
exertion of piety and virtue. Nor would it be right to
pass over the name of Fairfax, who united the utmost
ſortitude with the utmost courage; and the spotless in-
nocence of whose life seemed to point him out as the
peculiar favourite of heaven. Justly indeed may you
be excited to receive this wreath of praise; though you
have retired as much as possible from the world, and
seek those shades of privacy which were the delight
of Scipio. Nor was it only the enemy whom you
subdued; but you have triumphed over that flame of
ambition and that lust of glory, which are wont to
make the best and the greatest of men their slaves.
The purity of your virtues and the splendour of your
actions consecrate those sweets of ease which you en-
joy; and which constitute the wished-for haven of
the toils of man. Such was the ease which, when
the heroes of antiquity possessed, after a life of ex-
ertion and glory, not greater than yours, the poets,
in despair of finding ideas or expressions better suited
to the subject, ſeigned that they were received into
heaven, and invited to recline at the tables of the gods.
But whether it were your health, which I principally
THE SECOND DEFENCE OF
THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND. 945
believe, or any other motive which caused you to re-
tire, of this I am convinced, that nothing could have
induced you to relinquish the service of your country,
if you had not known that in your successor liberty
would meet with a protector, and England with a stay
to its safety, and a pillar to its glory. For, while you,
O Cromwell, are left among us, he hardly shews a
proper confidence in the Supreme, who distrusts the
security of England ; when he sees that you are in so
special a manner the favoured object of the divine
regard. But there was another department of the war,
which was destined for your exclusive exertions.
Without entering into any length of detail, I will,
if possible, describe some of the most memorable
actions, with as much brevity as you performed them
with celerity. After the loss of all Ireland, with the
exception of one city, you in one battle immédiately
discomfited the forces of the rebels: and were busily
employed in settling the country, when you were
suddenly recalled to the war in Scotland. Hence you
proceeded with unwearied diligence against the Scots,
who were on the point of making an irruption into
England with the king in their train : and in about
the space of one year you entirely subdued, and added
to the English dominion, that kingdom which all our
monarchs, during a period of 800 years, had in vain
struggled to subject. In one battle you almost anni-
hilated the remainder of their forces, who, in a fit of
desperation, had made a sudden incursion into Eng-
land, then almost destitute of garrisons, and got as far
as Worcester; where you came up with them by
forced marches, and captured almost the whole of their
nobility. A profound peace ensued; when we found,
though indeed not then for the first time, that you was
as wise in the cabinet as valiant in the field. It was
your constant endeavour in the senate either to induce
them to adhere to those treaties which they had entered
into with the enemy, or speedily to adjust others which
promised to be beneficial to the country. But when
you saw that the business was artfully procrastinated,
that every one was more intent on his own selfish in-
terest than on the public good, that the people com-
plained of the disappointments which they had ex-
perienced, and the fallacious promises by which they
had been gulled, that they were the dupes of a few
overbearing individuals, you put an end to their domi-
nation. A new parliament is summoned : and the
right of election given to those to whom it was expe-
dient. They meet; but do nothing; and, after having
wearied themselves by their mutual dissensions, and
fully exposed their incapacity to the observation of the
country, they consent to a voluntary dissolution. In
this state of desolation, to which we were reduced,
you, O Cromwell ! alone remained to conduct the
government, and to save the country. We all will-
ingly yield the palm of sovereignty to your unrivalled
ability and virtue, except the few among us, who,
either ambitious of honours which they have not the
capacity to sustain, or who envy those which are con-
ferred on one more worthy than themselves, or else
who do not know that nothing in the world is more
pleasing to God, more agreeable to reason, more po-
litically just, or more generally useful, than that the
supreme power should be vested in the best and the
wisest of men. Such, O Cromwell, all acknowledge
you to be; such are the services which you have ren-
dered, as the leader of our councils, the general of our
armies, and the father of your country. For this is
the tender appellation by which all the good among
us salute you from the very soul. Other names you
neither have nor could endure; and you deservedly
reject that pomp of title which attracts the gaze and
admiration of the multitude. For what is a title but a
certain definite mode of dignity; but actions such as
yours surpass, not only the bounds of our admiration,
but our titles; and like the points of pyramids, which
are lost in the clouds, they soar above the possibilities
of titular commendation. But since, though it be not
fit, it may be expedient, that the highest pitch of virtue
should be circumscribed within the bounds of some
human appellation, you endured to receive, for the
public good, a title most like to that of the father of
your country; not to exalt, but rather to bring you
nearer to the level of ordinary men; the title of king
was unworthy the transcendent majesty of your cha-
racter. For if you had been captivated by a name
over which, as a private man, you had so completely
triumphed and crumbled into dust, you would have
been doing the same thing as if, after having subdued
some idolatrous nation by the help of the true God,
you should afterwards fall down and worship the gods
which you had vanquished. Do you then, Sir, con-
tinue your course with the same unrivalled magna-
nimity; it sits well upon you ;—to you our country
owes its liberties, nor can you sustain a character at
once more momentous and more august than that of
the author, the guardian, and the preserver of our
liberties; and hence you have not only eclipsed the
atchievements of all our kings, but even those which
have been fabled of our heroes. Often reflect what a
dear pledge the beloved land of your nativity has en-
trusted to your care ; and that liberty which she once
expected only from the chosen flower of her talents
and her virtues, she now expects from you only, and by
you only hopes to obtain. Revere the fond expecta-
tions which we cherish, the solicitudes of your anxious
country; revere the looks and the wounds of your
brave companions in arms, who, under your banners,
have so strenuously fought for liberty; revere the shades
of those who perished in the contest; revere also the
opinions and the hopes which foreign states entertain
concerning us, who promise to themselves so many
advantages from that liberty, which we have so bravely
acquired, from the establishment of that new govern-
ment, which has begun to shed its splendour on the
world, which, if it be suffered to vanish like a dream,
would involve us in the deepest abyss of shame ;
and lastly revere yourself; and, after having endured
so many sufferings and encountered so many perils for
the sake of liberty, do not suffer it, now it is obtained,
either to be violated by yourself, or in any one instance
impaired by others. You cannot be truly free unless
946
THE SECOND DEFENCE OF THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND.
we are free too; for such is the nature of things, that
he, who entrenches on the liberty of others, is the first
to lose his own and become a slave. But, if you, who
have hitherto been the patron and tutelary genius of
liberty, if you, who are exceeded by no one in justice,
in piety, and goodness, should hereafter invade that
liberty, which you have defended, your conduct must be
fatally operative, not only against the cause of liberty,
but the general interests of piety and virtue. Your
integrity and virtue will appear to have evaporated,
your faith in religion to have been small ; your cha-
racter with posterity will dwindle into insignificance,
by which a most destructive blow will be levelled
against the happiness of mankind. The work which
you have undertaken is of incalculable moment, which
will thoroughly sift and expose every principle and
sensation of your heart, which will fully display the
vigour and genius of your character, which will evince
whether you really possess those great qualities of
piety, fidelity, justice, and self-denial, which made us
believe that you were elevated by the special direction
of the Deity to the highest pinnacle of power. At once
wisely and discreetly to hold the sceptre over three
powerful nations, to persuade people to relinquish in-
veterate and corrupt for new and more beneficial
maxims and institutions, to penetrate into the remotest
parts of the country, to have the mind present and ope-
rative in every quarter, to watch against surprise, to
provide against danger, to reject the blandishments of
pleasure and the pomp of power;-these are exertions
compared with which the labour of war is mere pas-
time ; which will require every energy and employ
every faculty that you possess; which demand a man
supported from above, and almost instructed by imme-
diate inspiration. These and more than these are, no
doubt, the objects which occupy your attention and
engross your soul; as well as the means by which you
may accomplish these important ends, and render our
liberty at once more ample and more secure. And this
you can, in my opinion, in no other way so readily
effect, as by associating in your councils the compa-
nions of your dangers and your toils; men of exem-
plary modesty, integrity, and courage; whose hearts
have not been hardened in cruelty and rendered insen-
sible to pity by the sight of so much ravage and so
much death, but whom it has rather inspired with the
love of justice, with a respect for religion, and with the
feeling of compassion, and who are more zealously in-
terested in the preservation of liberty, in proportion as
they have encountered more perils in its defence. They
are iſot strangers or foreigners, a hireling rout scraped
together from the dregs of the people, but for the most
part, men of the better conditions in life, of families
not disgraced if not ennobled, of fortunes cither ample
or moderate ; and what if some among them are recom-
mended by their poverty P for it was not the lust of
ravage which brought them into the field; it was the
calamitous aspect of the times, which, in the most cri-
tical circumstances, and often amid the most disastrous
turns of fortune, roused them to attempt the deliver-
ance of their country from the ſangs of despotism. They
were men prepared, not only to debate, but to fight;
not only to argue in the senate, but to engage the
enemy in the field. But unless we will continually
cherish indefinite and illusory expectations, I see not
in whom we can place any confidence, if not in these
men and such as these. We have the surest and most
indubitable pledge of their fidelity in this, that they
have already exposed themselves to death in the ser-
vice of their country; of their picty in this, that they
have been always wont to ascribe the whole glory of
their successes to the favour of the Deity, whose help
they have so suppliantly implored, and so conspicu-
ously obtained; of their justice in this, that they even
brought the king to trial, and when his guilt was proved,
refused to save his life; of their moderation in our own
uniform experience of its effects, and because, if by
any outrage, they should disturb the peace which they
have procured, they themselves will be the first to feel
the miseries which it will occasion, the first to meet the
havoc of the sword, and the first again to risk their
lives for all those comforts and distinctions which they
have so happily acquired; and lastly, of their ſortitude
in this, that there is no instance of any people who ever
recovered their liberty with so much courage and suc-
cess; and therefore let us not suppose, that thcre can
be any persons who will be more zealous in preserving
it. I now feel myself irresistibly compelled to comme-
morate the names of some of those who have most con-
spicuously signalized themselves in these times: and
first thine, O Fleetwood whom I have known from a
boy, to the present blooming maturity of your military
fame, to have been inferior to none in humanity, in
gentleness, in benignity of disposition, whose intre-
pidity in the combat, and whose clemency in victory,
have been acknowledged even by the enemy : next
thine, O Lambert! who, with a mere handful of men,
checked the progress, and sustained the attack, of the
Duke of Hamilton, who was attended by the whole
flower and vigour of the Scottish youth : next thine, O
Desborough and thine, O Hawley ! who wast always
conspicuous in the heat of the combat, and the thickest
of the fight; thine, O Overton who hast been most
endeared to me now for so many years by the simili-
tude of our studies, the suavity of your manners, and
the more than fraternal sympathy of our hearts; you,
who, in the memorable battle of Marston Moor, when
our left wing was put to the rout, were beheld with
admiration, making head against the enemy with your
infantry and repelling his attack, amid the thickest of
the carnage; and lastly you, who in the Scotch war,
when under the auspices of Cromwell, occupied the
coast of Fife, opened a passage beyond Stirling, and
made the Scotch of the west, and of the north, and even
the remotest Orkneys, confess your humanity, and sub-
mit to your power. Besides these, I will mention some
as celebrated for their political wisdom and their civil
virtues, whom you, Sir, have admitted into your councils,
and who are known to me by friendship or by fame.
Whitlocke, Pickering, Strickland, Sydenham, Sydney,
(a name indissolubly attached to the interests of liberty,)
Montacute, Laurence, both of highly cultivated minds
THE SECOND DEFENCE OF
THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND. 947
and polished taste; besides many other citizens of sin-
gular merit, some of whom were distinguished by their
exertions in the senate, and others in the field. To these
men, whose talents are so splendid, and whose worth
has been so thoroughly tried, you would without doubt
do right to trust the protection of our liberties; nor
would it be easy to say to whom they might more
safely be entrusted. Then, if you leave the church to
its own government, and relieve yourself and the other
public functionaries from a charge so onerous, and so
incompatible with your functions; and will no longer
suffer two powers, so different as the civil and the
ecclesiastical, to commit fornication together, and by
their mutual and delusive aids in appearance to strength-
en, but in reality to weaken and finally to subvert, each
other; if you shall remove all power of persecution out
of the church, (but persecution will never cease, so long
as men are bribed to preach the gospel by a mercenary
salary, which is forcibly extorted, rather than gratuit-
ously bestowed, which serves only to poison religion
and to strangle truth,) you will then effectually have
cast those money-changers out of the temple, who do
not merely truckle with doves but with the dove itself,
with the Spirit of the Most High. Then, since there
are often in a republic men who have the same itch
for making a multiplicity of laws, as some poetasters
have for making many verses, and since laws are
usually worse in proportion as they are more numerous,
if you shall not enact so many new laws as you abolish
old, which do not operate so much as warnings against
evil, as impediments in the way of good ; and if you
shall retain only those which are necessary, which do
not confound the distinctions of good and evil, which,
while they prevent the frauds of the wicked, do not pro-
hibit the innocent freedoms of the good, which punish
crimes, without interdicting those things which are
lawful, only on account of the abuses to which they
may occasionally be exposed. For the intention of
laws is to check the commission of vice, but liberty is
the best school of virtue, and affords the strongest en-
couragements to the practice. Then if you make a
better provision for the education of our youth than has
hitherto been made, if you prevent the promiscuous in-
struction of the docile and the indocile, of the idle and
the diligent, at the public cost, but reserve the rewards
of learning for the learned, and of merit for the meri-
torious. If you permit the free discussion of truth
without any hazard to the author, or any subjection to
the caprice of an individual, which is the best way to
make truth flourish and knowledge abound, the cem-
sure of the half-learned, the envy, the pusillanimity, or
the prejudice which measures the discoveries of others,
and in short every degree of wisdom, by the measure of
its own capacity, will be prevented from doling out in-
formation to us according to their own arbitrary choice.
Lastly, if you shall not dread to hear any truth, or any
falsehood, whatever it may be, but if you shall least of
all listen to those, who think that they can never be
free, till the liberties of others depend on their caprice,
and who attempt nothing with so much zeal and ve-
hemence, as to ſetter, not only the bodies but the minds
of men, who labour to introduce into the state the worst
of all tyrannies, the tyranny of their own depraved
habits and pernicious opinions; you will always be
dear to those, who think not merely that their own sect
or faction, but that all citizens of all descriptions, should
enjoy equal rights and equal laws. If there be any
one who thinks that this is not liberty enough, he ap-
pears to me to be rather inflamed with the lust of am-
bition, or of anarchy, than with the love of a genuine
and well regulated liberty; and particularly since the
circumstances of the country, which has been so con-
vulsed by the storms of faction, which are yet hardly
still, do not permit us to adopt a more perfect or de-
sirable form of government.
For it is of no little consequence, O citizens, by what
principles you are governed, either in acquiring liberty,
or in retaining it when acquired. And unless that li-
berty, which is of such a kind as arms can neither pro-
cure nor take away, which alone is the fruit of piety,
of justice, of temperance and unadulterated virtue,
shall have taken deep root in your minds and hearts,
there will not long be wanting one who will snatch
from you by treachery what you have acquired by
arms. War has made many great whom peace makes
small. If after being released from the toils of war,
you neglect the arts of peace, if your peace and your
liberty be a state of warfare, if war be your only virtue,
the summit of your praise, you will, believe me, soon
find peace the most adverse to your interests. Your
peace will be only a more distressing war; and that
which you imagined liberty will prove the worst of
slavery. Unless by the means of piety, not frothy and
loquacious, but operative, unadulterated, and sincere,
you clear the horizon of the mind from those mists of
superstition, which arise from the ignorance of true re-
ligion, you will always have those who will bend your
necks to the yoke as if you were brutes, who notwith-
standing all your triumphs will put you up to the high-
est bidder, as if you were mere booty made in war;
and will find an exuberant source of wealth in your
ignorance and superstition. Unless you will subjugate
the propensity to avarice, to ambition, and sensuality,
and expel all luxury from yourselves and from your
families, you will find that you have cherished a more
stubborn and intractable despot at home, than you ever
encountered in the field; and even your very bowels
will be continually teeming with an intolerable pro-
geny of tyrants. Let these be the first enemies whom
you subdue; this constitutes the campaign of peace ;
these are triumphs, difficult indeed, but bloodless; and
far more honourable than those trophies, which are
purchased only by slaughter and by rapine. Unless
you are victors in this service, it is in vain that you have
been victorious over the despotic enemy in the field.
For if you think that it is a more grand, a more bene-
ficial, or a more wise policy, to invent subtle expedi-
ents for increasing the revenue, to multiply our naval
and military force, to rival in craft the ambassadors of
foreign states, to form skilful treaties and alliances,
than to administer unpolluted justice to the people, to
redress the injured, and to succour the distressed, and
3 P
94.8
THE SECOND DEFENCE OF 'I'HE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND.
speedily to restore to every one his own, you are in-
volved in a cloud of error; and too late will you per-
ceive, when the illusion of those mighty benefits has
vanished, that in neglecting these, which you now
think inferior considerations, you have only been pre-
cipitating your own ruin and despair. The fidelity of
enemies and allies is frail and perishing, unless it be
cemented by the principles of justice; that wealth and
those honours, which most covet, readily change mas-
ters; they forsake the idle, and repair where virtue,
where industry, where patience flourish most. Thus
nation precipitates the downfall of nation; thus the
more sound part of one people subverts the more cor-
rupt; thus you obtained the ascendant over the royal-
ists. If you plunge into the same depravity, if you
imitate their excesses, and hanker after the same vani-
ties, you will become royalists as well as they, and
liable to be subdued by the same enemies, or by others
in your turn ; who, placing their reliance on the same
religious principles, the same patience, the same inte-
grity and discretion which made you strong, will de-
servedly triumph over you, who are immersed in
debauchery, in the luxury and the sloth of kings.
Then, as if God was weary of protecting you, you will
be seen to have passed through the fire that you might
perish in the smoke; the contempt which you will
then experience will be great as the admiration which
you now enjoy; and, what may in future profit others,
but cannot benefit yourselves, you will leave a salutary
proof what great things the solid reality of virtue and
of piety might have effected, when the mere counter-
feit and varnished resemblance could attempt such
mighty atchievements, and make such considerable
advances towards the exccution. For, if either through
your want of knowledge, your want of constancy, or
your want of virtue, attempts so noble, and actions so
glorious, have had an issue so unfortunate, it does not
therefore follow, that better men should be either less
daring in their projects or less sanguine in their hopes.
But from such an abyss of corruption into which you
so readily fall, no one, not even Cromwell himself, nor
a whole nation of Brutuses, if they were alive, could
deliver you if they would, or would deliver you if
they could. For who would vindicate your right of
unrestrained suffrage, or of choosing what representa-
tives you liked best, merely that you might elect the
creatures of your own faction, whoever they might be,
or him, however small might be his worth, who would
give you the most lavish feasts, and enable you to
drink to the greatest excess 2 Thus not wisdom and
authority, but turbulence and gluttony, would soon
exalt the vilest miscreants from our taverns and our
brothels, from our towns and villages, to the rank and
dignity of senators. For, should the management
of the republic be entrusted to persons to whom no one
would willingly entrust the management of his private
concerns; and the treasury of the state be left to the
care of those who had lavished their own fortunes in an
infamous prodigality P Should they have the charge of
the public purse, which they would soon convert into
a private, by their unprincipled peculations 2 Are they
fit to be the legislators of a whole people who them-
selves know not what law, what reason, what right
and wrong, what crooked and straight, what licit and
illicit means ? who think that all power consists in
outrage, all dignity in the parade of insolence P who
neglect every other consideration for the corrupt gra-
tification of their friendships, or the prosecution of their
resentments P who disperse their own relations and
creatures through the provinces, for the sake of levy-
ing taxes and confiscating goods; men, for the greater
part, the most profligate and vile, who buy up for
themselves what they pretend to expose to sale, who
thence collect an exorbitant mass of wealth, which
they fraudulently divert from the public service; who
thus spread their pillage through the country, and in
a moment emerge from penury and rags, to a state of
splendour and of wealth 2 Who could endure such
thievish servants, such vicegerents of their lords P
Who could believe that the masters and the patrons of
a bahditti could be the proper guardians of liberty P or
who would suppose that he should ever be made one
hair more free by such a set of public functionaries,
(though they might amount to five hundred elected in
this manner from the counties and boroughs,) when
among them who are the very guardians of liberty,
and to whose custody it is committed, there must be
so many, who know not either how to use or to enjoy
liberty, who either understand the principles or merit
the possession ? But what is worthy of remark, those
who are the most unworthy of liberty, are wont to
behave most ungratefully towards their deliverers.
Among such persons, who would be willing either to
fight for liberty, or to encounter the least peril in its
defence P It is not agreeable to the nature of things,
that such persons ever should be free. However much
they may brawl about liberty, they are slaves, both at
home and abroad, but without perceiving it; and when
they do perceive it, like unruly horses, that are impatient
of the bit, they will endeavour to throw off the yoke, not
from the love of genuine liberty,(which a good man only
loves and knows how to obtain,) but from the impulses
of pride and little passions. But though they often at-
tempt it by arms, they will make no advances to the
cxecution; they may change their masters, but will
never be able to get rid of their servitude. This often
happened to the ancient Romans, wasted by excess, and
enervated by luxury: and it has still more so been the
fate of the moderns; when after a long interval of years
they aspired under the auspices of Crescentius, Nomen-
tanus, and afterwards of Nicolas Rentius, who had
assumed the title of Tribune of the People, to restore
the splendour and re-establish the government of an-
cient Rome. For, instead of fretting with vexation, or
thinking that you can lay the blame on any one but
yourselves, know that to be free is the same thing as
to be pious, to be wise, to be temperate and just, to be
frugal and abstinent, and lastly, to be magnanimous
and brave; so to be the opposite of all these is the
same as to be a slave; and it usually happens by the
appointment, and as it were retributive justice, of the
Deity, that that people which cannot govern them-
THE SECOND DEFENCE OF THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND.
949
selves, and moderate their passions, but crouch under
the slavery of their lusts, should be delivered up to the
sway of those whom they abhor, and made to submit
to an involuntary servitude. It is also sanctioned by
the dictates of justice and by the constitution of nature,
that he, who from the imbecility or derangement of his
intellect is incapable of governing himself, should, like
a minor, be committed to the government of another;
and least of all, should he be appointed to superintend
the affairs of others or the interest of the state. You
therefore, who wish to remain free, either instantly be
wise, or, as soon as possible, cease to be fools; if you
think slavery an intolerable evil, learn obedience to
reason and the government of yourselves; and finally
bid adieu to your dissensions, your jealousies, your
superstitions, your outrages, your rapine, and your
lusts. Unless you will spare no pains to effect this,
you must be judged unfit, both by God and mankind,
to be entrusted with the possession of liberty and the
administration of the government; but will rather, like
a nation in a state of pupillage, want some active and
courageous guardian to undertake the management of
your affairs. With respect to myself, whatever turn
things may take, I thought that my exertions on the
present occasion would be serviceable to my country,
and, as they have been cheerfully bestowed, I hope
that they have not been bestowed in vain. And I
have not circumscribed my defence of liberty within
any petty circle around me, but have made it so gene-
ral and comprehensive, that the justice and the reason-
ableness of such uncommon occurrences explained and
defended, both among my countrymen and among
foreigners, and which all good men cannot but ap-
prove, may serve to exalt the glory of my country, and
to excite the imitation of posterity. If the conclusion
do not answer to the beginning, that is their concern;
I have delivered my testimony, I would almost say,
have erected a monument, that will not readily be
destroyed, to the reality of those singular and mighty
atchievements, which were above all praise. As the
Epic Poet, who adheres at all to the rules of that spe-
cies of composition, does not profess to describe the
whole life of the hero whom he celebrates, but only
some particular action of his life, as the resentment of
Achilles at Troy, the return of Ulysses, or the coming
of Æneas into Italy; so it will be sufficient, either for
my justification or apology, that I have heroically cele-
brated at least one exploit of my countrymen; I pass
by the rest, for who could recite the atchievements of
a whole people P If after such a display of courage and
of vigour, you basely relinquish the path of virtue, if
you do any thing unworthy of yourselves, posterity
will sit in judgment on your conduct. They will see
that the foundations were well laid; that the beginning
(nay it was more than a beginning) was glorious; but,
with deep emotions of concern will they regret, that
those were wanting who might have completed the
structure. They will lament that perseverance was
not conjoined with such exertions and such virtues.
They will see that there was a rich harvest of glory,
and an opportunity afforded for the greatest atchieve-
ments, but that men only were wanting for the execu-
tion; while they were not wanting who could rightly
counsel, czhort, inspire, and bind an unfading wreath
of praise round the brows of the illustrious actors in so
glorious a scene.
F A M I L I A R
EP I S T L E S,
TRANSLATED FROM THE LATIN,
BY ROBERT FELLOWES, A. M. OXON.
I.
To his Tutor Thom As Ju RE.
THoug H I had determined, my excellent tutor, to
write you an epistle in verse, yet I could not satisfy
mysclf without sending also another in prose. For the
emotions of my gratitude, which your services so justly
inspire, are too expansive and too warm to be expressed
in the confined limits of poetical metre; they demand
the unconstrained freedom of prose, or rather the ex-
uberant richness of Asiatic phraseology. Though it
would far exceed my power accurately to describe how
much I am obliged to you, even if I could drain dry
all the sources of eloquence, or exhaust all the topics
of discourse which Aristotle or the famed Parisian Lo-
gician has collected. You complain with truth, that
my letters have been very few and very short; but I
do not grieve at the omission of so pleasurable a duty,
so much as I rejoice at having such a place in your
regard as makes you anxious often to hear from me.
I beseech you not to take it amiss, that I have not now
written to you for more than three years; but with
your usual benignity and candour to impute it rather
to circumstances than to inclination. For, heaven
knows, that I regard you as a parent, that I have
always treated you with the utmost respect, and that I
was unwilling to teaze you with my compositions.
And I was anxious that if my letters had nothing else
to recommend them, they might be recommended by
their rarity. And lastly, since the ardour of my regard
makes me imagine that you are always present, that I
hear your voice and contemplate your looks; and as
thus (which is usually the case with lovers) I charm
away my grief by the illusion of your presence, I was
afraid when I wrote to you the idea of your distant
separation should forcibly rush upon my mind; and
that the pain of your absence, which was almost soothed
into quiescence, should revive and disperse the plea-
surable dream. I long since received your desirable
present of the Hebrew Bible. I wrote this at my lodg-
mount.
ings in the city, not as usual, surrounded by my books.
If therefore there be any thing in this letter which
either fails to give pleasure, or which frustrates expec-
tation, it shall be compensated by a more elaborate
composition as soon as I return to the dwelling of the
Muses.
London, March 26, 1625.
II.
To ALEXANDER GILL.
I RECEIVED your letters and your poem, with which
I was highly delighted, and in which I discover the
majesty of a poet, and the style of Virgil. I knew how
impossible it would be for a person of your genius en-
tirely to divert his mind from the culture of the Muses,
and to extinguish those heavenly emotions, and that
sacred and ethereal fire which is kindled in your heart.
For what Claudian said of himself may be said of you,
your “whole soul is instinct with the fire of Apollo.”
If therefore, on this occasion, you have broken your
own promises, I here commend the want of constancy
which you mention ; I commend the want of virtue,
if any want of virtue there be. But, in referring the
merits of your poem to my judgment, you confer on
me as great an honour as the gods would if the con-
tending musical immortals had called me in to adjudge
the palm of victory; as poets babble that it formerly
fell to the lot of Imolus the guardian of the Lydian
I know not whether I ought to congratulate
Henry Nassau more on the capture of the city or the
composition of your poems. For I think that this vic-
tory produced nothing more entitled to distinction and
to fame than your poem. But since you celebrate the
successes of our allies in lays so harmonious and ener-
getic, what may we not expect when our own successes
call for the congratulations of your muse º Adieu,
learned Sir, and believe me greatly obliged by the fa-
vour of your verses. §
London, May 20, 1628.
FAMILIAR EPISTLES.
951
III.
To the same.
IN my former letter I did not so much answer yours
as deprecate the obligation of then answering it; and
therefore at the time I tacitly promised that you should
soon receive another, in which I would reply at length
to your friendly challenge. But, though I had not
promised this, it would most justly be your due, since
one of your letters is full worth two of mine, or rather,
on an accurate computation, worth a hundred. When
your letter arrived, I was strenuously engaged in that
work concerning which I had given you some obscure
hints, and the execution of which could not be delayed.
One of the fellows of our college, who was to be the
respondent in a philosophical disputation for his degree,
engaged me to furnish him with some verses, which
are annually required on this occasion; since he him-
self had long neglected such frivolous pursuits, and
was then intent on more serious studies. Of these
verses I sent you a printed copy, since I knew both
your discriminating taste in poetry, and your candid
allowances for poetry like mine. If you will in your
turn deign to communicate to me any of your produc-
tions, you will, I can assure you, find no one to whom
they will give more delight, or who will more impar-
tially endeavour to estimate their worth. For as often
as I recollect the topics of your conversation, (the loss
of which I regret even in this seminary of erudition)
I cannot help painfully reflecting on what advantages
I am deprived by your absence, since I never left your
company without an increase of knowledge, and always
had recourse to your mind as to an emporium of litera-
ture. Among us, as far as I know, there are only two
or three, who without any acquaintance with criticism
or philosophy, do not instantly engage with raw and
untutored judgments in the study of theology; and of
this they acquire only a slender smattering, not more
than sufficient to enable them to patch together a
sermon with scraps pilfered, with little discrimination,
from this author and from that. Hence I fear, lest our
clergy should relapse into the sacerdotal ignorance of
a former age. Since I find so few associates in study
here, I should instantly direct my steps to London, if
I had not determined to spend the summer vacation in
the depths of literary solitude, and, as it were, hide
myself in the chamber of the muses. As you do this
every day, it would be injustice in me any longer to
divert your attention or engross your time. Adieu.
Cambridge, July 2, 1628. º
IV.
To THoMAs JURE.
ON reading your letter, my excellent tutor, I
find only one superfluous passage, an apology for not
writing to me sooner; for though nothing gives me
more pleasure than to hear from you, how can I or
ought I to expect that you should always have leisure
enough from more serious and more sacred engagements
to write to me; particularly when it is kindness, and
not duty, which prompts you to write P Your many
recent services must prevent me from entertaining any
suspicion of your forgetfulness or neglect. Nor do I
see how you could possibly forget one on whom you
had conferred so many favours. Having an invitation
into your part of the country in the spring, I shall
readily accept it, that I may enjoy the deliciousness of
the season as well as that of your conversation ; and
that I may withdraw myself for a short time from the
tumult of the city to your rural mansion, as to the re-
nowned portico of Zeno, or Tusculan of Tully, where
you live on your little farm with a moderate fortune,
but a princely mind; and where you practise the con-
tempt, and triumph over the temptations of ambition,
pomp, luxury, and all that follows the chariot of for-
tune, or attracts the gaze and admiration of the thought-
less multitude. I hope that you who deprecated the
blame of delay, will pardon me for my precipitance;
for, after deferring this letter to the last, I chose rather
to write a few lines, however deficient in elegance, than
to say nothing at all.
Adieu, reverend sir.
Cambridge, July 21, 1628.
V.
To ALEXANDER Gill.
If you had made me a present of a piece of plate,
or any other valuable which excites the admiration of
mankind, I should not be ashamed in my turn to remu-
nerate you, as far as my circumstances would permit.
But since you, the day before yesterday, presented me
with an elegant and beautiful poem in Hendecasyllabic
verse, which far exceeds the worth of gold, you have
increased my solicitude to discover in what manner I
may requite the favour of so acceptable a gift. I had
by me at the time no compositions in a like style which
I thought at all fit to come in competition with the ex-
cellence of your performance. I send you therefore a
composition which is not entirely my own, but the pro-
duction of a truly inspired bard, from whom I last
week rendered this ode into Greek Heroic verse, as I
was lying in bed before the day dawned, without any
previous deliberation, but with a certain impelling
faculty, for which I know not how to account. By his
help who does not less surpass you in his subject than
you do me in the execution, I have sent something
which may serve to restore the equilibrium between us.
If you see reason to find fault with any particular pas-
sage, I must inform you that, from the time I left your
school, this is the first and the last piece I have ever com-
posed in Greek; since, as you know, I have attended
more to Latin and to English composition. He who
at this time employs his labour and his time in writing
Greek, is in danger of writing what will never be read
952
FAMILIAR EPISTLES.
Adieu, and expect to see me, God willing, at London
on Monday among the booksellers. In the mean time,
if you have interest enough with that Doctor who is
the master of the college to promote my business, I
beseech you to see him as soon as possible, and to act
as your friendship for me may prompt.
From my villa, Decemb. 4, 1634.
VI.
To CARolo Deo DAT1.
I CLEARLY see that you are determined not to be
overcome in silence ; if this be so, you shall have
the palm of victory, for I will write first. Though,
if the reasons which make each of us so long in writ-
ing to the other should ever be judicially examined,
it will appear that I have many more excuses for
not writing than you. For it is well known, and
you well know, that I am naturally slow in writing,
and averse to write ; while you, either from dis-
position or from habit, seem to have little reluctance
in engaging in these literary (Tpoopovmasic) allocutions.
It is also in my favour, that your method of study is
such as to admit of frequent interruptions, in which you
visit your friends, write letters, or go abroad; but it is
my way to suffer no impediment, no love of ease, no
avocation whatever, to chill the ardour, to break the
continuity, or divert the completion of my literary pur-
suits. From this and no other reasons it often happens
that I do not readily employ my pen in any gratuitous
exertions; but I am not, nevertheless, my dear Deo-
dati, a very sluggish correspondent; nor has it at any
time happened that I ever left any letter of yours un-
answered till another came. So I hear that you write
to the bookseller, and often to your brother, either of
whom, from their nearness, would readily have for-
warded any communication from you to me. But
what I blame you for is, for not keeping your promise
of paying me a visit when you left the city; a promise
which, if it had once occurred to your thoughts, would
certainly have forcibly suggested the necessity of
writing. These are my reasons for expostulation and
censure. You will look to your own defence. But
what can occasion your silence 2 Is it ill health P Are
there in those parts any literati with whom you may
play and prattle as we used to do 2 When do you re-
turn ? How long do you mean to stay among the Hy-
perboreans? I wish you would give me an answer to
each of these questions; and that you may not suppose
that I am quite unconcerned about what relates to you,
I must inform you that in the beginning of the autumn
I went out of my way to see your brother, in order to
learn how you did. And lately when I was accident-
ally informed in London that you were in town, I in-
stantly hastened to your lodgings; but it was only the
shadow of a dream, for you were no where to be found.
Wherefore, as soon as you can do it without any incon-
venience to yourself, I beseech you to take up your
quarters where we may at least be able occasionally to
visit one another; for I hope that you would not be a
different neighbour to us in the country than you are
in town. But this is as it pleases God. I have much
to say to you concerning myself and my studies, but I
would rather do it when we meet, and as to-morrow I
am about to return into the country, and am busy in
making preparations for my journey, I have but just
time to scribble this. Adieu.
London, Sept. 7, 1637.
VII.
To the same.
Most of my other friends think it enough to give
me one farewell in their letters, but I see why you do
it so often ; for you give me to understand that your
medical authority is now added to the potency, and
subservient to the completion, of those general expres–
sions of good-will which are nothing but words and
air. You wish me my health six hundred times, in as
great a quantity as I can wish, as I am able to bear, or
even more than this. Truly, you should be appointed
butler to the house of Health, whose stores you so la-
vishly bestow ; or at least Health should become your
parasite, since you so lord it over her, and command
her at your pleasure. I send you therefore my con-
gratulations and my thanks, both on account of your
friendship and your skill. I was long kept waiting in
expectation of a letter from you, which you had en-
gaged to write; but when no letter came my old re-
gard for you suffered not, I can assure you, the smallest
diminution, for I had supposed that the same apolog
for remissness, which you had employed in the begin-
ning of our correspondence, you would again employ.
This was a supposition agreeable to truth and to the
intimacy between us. For I do not think that true
friendship consists in the frequency of letters or in pro-
fessions of regard, which may be counterfeited ; but it
is so deeply rooted in the heart and affections, as to
support itself against the rudest blast; and when it
originates in sincerity and virtue, it may remain
through life without suspicion and without blame,
even when there is no longer any reciprocal interchange
of kindnesses. For the cherishing aliment of a friend-
ship such as this, there is not so much need of letters as
of a lively recollection of each other's virtues. And
though you have not written, you have something that
may supply the omission: your probity writes to me in
your stead; it is a letter ready written on the inner-
most membrane of the heart; the simplicity of your
manners, and the rectitude of your principles, serve as
correspondents in your place; your genius, which is
above the common level, writes, and serves in a still
greater degree to endear you to me. But now you
have got possession of this despotic citadel of medicine,
do not alarm me with the menace of being obliged to
repay those six hundred healths which you have be-
stowed, if I should, which God forbid, ever forfeit your
friendship. Remove that formidable battery which you
seem to have placed upon my breast to keep off all
FAMILIAR EPISTLES.
sickness but what comes by your permission. But that
you may not indulge any excess of menace I must in-
form you, that I cannot help loving you such as you
are ; for whatever the Deity may have bestowed upon
me in other respects, he has certainly inspired me, if
any ever were inspired, with a passion for the good
and fair. Nor did Ceres, according to the fable, ever
seek her daughter Proserpine with such unceasing so-
licitude as I have sought this toū kaxoi ióšav, this per-
ſect model of the beautiful in all the forms and appear-
ances of things (troX\at yap uoppa Tov Aapovtwv, many
are the forms of the divinities.) I am wont day and
night to continue my search; and I follow in the way
in which you go before. Hence, I feel an irresistible.
impulse to cultivate the friendship of him, who, des-
pising the prejudiced and false conceptions of the vul-
gar, dares to think, to speak, and to be that which the
highest wisdom has in every age taught to be the best.
But if my disposition or my destiny were such that I
could without any conflict or any toil emerge to the
highest pitch of distinction and of praise; there would
nevertheless be no prohibition, either human or divine,
against my constantly cherishing and revering those,
who have either obtained the same degree of glory, or
are successfully labouring to obtain it. But now I am
sure that you wish me to gratify your curiosity, and to
let you know what I have been doing or am meditat-
ing to do. Hear me, my Deodati, and suffer me for a
moment to speak without blushing in a more lofty
strain. Do you ask what I am meditating 2 by the
help of heaven, an immortality of fame. But what
am I doing * ºrrspoºvi, I am letting my wings grow
and preparing to fly; but my Pegasus has not yet
feathers enough to soar aloft in the fields of air. I
will now tell you seriously what I design; to take
chambers in one of the inns of court, where I may have
the benefit of a pleasant and shady walk; and where
with a few associates I may enjoy more comfort when
I choose to stay at home, and have a more elegant
society when I choose to go abroad. In my present
situation, you know in what obscurity I am buried,
and to what inconveniencies I am exposed. You shall
likewise have some information respecting my studies.
I went through the perusal of the Greek authors to
the time when they ceased to be Greeks; I was long
employed in unravelling the obscure history of the
Italians under the Lombards, the Franks, and Ger-
mans, to the time when they received their liberty from
Rodolphus king of Germany. From that time it will
be better to read separately the particular transactions
of each state. But how are you employed 2 How long
will you attend to your domestic ties and forget your
city connections 2 But unless this novercal hostility
be more inveterate than that of the Dacian or Sarma-
tian, you will feel it a duty to visit me in my winter
quarters. In the mean time, if you can do it without
inconvenience, I will thank you to send me Justinian
the historian of Venice. I will either keep it carefully
till your arrival, or, if you had rather, will soon send
it back again. Adieu. -
London, Sept. 23, 1637.
and have just brought the work to a conclusion.
VIII.
To BENEDITTo BonoMATTAI, a Florentine.
I AM glad to hear, my dear Bonomattai, that you
are preparing new institutes of your native language,
The
way to fame which you have chosen is the same as
that which some persons of the first genius have em-
braced; and your fellow-citizens seem ardently to ex-
pect that you will either illustrate or amplify, or at
least polish and methodize, the labours of your prede-
cessors. By such a work you will lay your country-
men under no common obligation, which they will be
ungrateful if they do not acknowledge. For I hold
him to deserve the highest praise who fixes the prin-
ciples and forms the manners of a state, and makes
the wisdom of his administration conspicuous both at
home and abroad. But I assign the second place to
him, who endeavours by precepts and by rules to per-
petuate that style and idiom of speech and composition
which have flourished in the purest periods of the lan-
guage, and who, as it were, throws up such a trench
around it, that people may be prevented from going
beyond the boundary almost by the terrors of a Romu-
lean prohibition. . If we compare the benefits which
each of these confer, we shall find that the former alone
can render the intercourse of the citizens just and con-
scientious, but that the last gives that gentility, that
elegance, that refinement, which are next to be desired.
The one inspires loſty courage and intrepid ardour
against the invasion of an enemy ; the other exerts
himself to annihilate that barbarism which commits
more extensive ravages on the minds of men, which is
the intestine enemy of genius and literature, by the
taste which he inspires, and the good authors which
he causes to be read. Nor do I think it a matter of
little moment whether the language of a people be
vitiated or refined, whether the popular idiom be erro-
neous or correct. This consideration was more than
once found salutary at Athens. It is the opinion of
Plato, that changes in the dress and habits of the citi-
zens portend great commotions and changes in the
state ; and I am inclined to believe, that when the
language in common use in any country becomes irre-
gular and depraved, it is followed by their ruin or their
degradation. For what do terms used without skill
or meaning, which are at once corrupt and misapplied,
denote, but a people listless, supine, and ripe for servi-
tude P On the contrary, we have never heard of any
people or state which has not flourished in some de-
gree of prosperity as long as their language has re-
tained its elegance and its purity. Hence, my Bene-
ditto, you may be induced to proceed in executing a
work so useful to your country, and may clearly see
what an honourable and permanent claim you will
have to the approbation and the gratitude of your
fellow-citizens. Thus much I have said, not to make
you acquainted with that of which you were igno-
rant, but because I was persuaded that you are more
954
FAMILIAR EPISTLES.
intent on serving your country than in considering
the just title which you have to its remuneration.
I will now mention the favourable opportunity which
you have, if you wish to embrace it, of obliging fo-
reigners, among whom there is no one at all con-
spicuous for genius or for elegance who does not make
the Tuscan language his delight, and indeed con-
sider it as an essential part of education, particularly
if he be only slightly tinctured with the literature of
Greece or of Rome. I, who certainly have not merely
wetted the tip of my lips in the stream of those lan-
guages, but, in proportion to my years, have swal-
lowed the most copious draughts, can yet sometimes
retire with avidity and delight to feast on Dante, Pe-
trarch, and many others; nor has Athens itself been
able to confine me to the transparent wave of its Ilis-
sus, nor ancient Rome to the banks of its Tiber, so as
to prevent my visiting with delight the stream of the
Arno, and the hills of Faesolae. A stranger from the
shores of the farthest ocean, I have now spent some
days among you, and am become quite enamoured of
your nation. Consider whether there were sufficient
reason for my preference, that you may more readily
remember what I so earnestly importune ; that you
would, for the sake of foreigners, add something to the
grammar which you have begun, and indeed almost
finished, concerning the right pronunciation of the lan-
guage, and made as easy as the nature of the subject
will admit. The other critics in your language seem
to this day to have had no other design than to satisfy
their own countrymen, without taking any concern
about any body else. Though I think that they would
have provided better for their own reputation and for
the glory of the Italian language, if they had delivered
their precepts in such a manner as if it was for the in-
terest of all men to learn their language. But, for all
them, we might think that you Italians wished to con-
fine your wisdom within the pomaerium of the Alps.
This praise therefore, which no one has anticipated,
will be entirely yours immaculate and pure; nor will
it be less so if you will be at the pains to point out who
may justly claim the second rank of ſame after the re-
nownca chicſs of the Florentine literature; who excels
in the dignity of tragedy, or the festivity and elegance
of comedy; who has shown acuteness of remark or
depth of reflection in his epistles or dialogues; to whom
belongs the grandeur of the historic style. Thus it
will be easy for the student to choose the best writers
in every department; and if he wishes to extend his
researches farther, he will know which way to take.
Among the antients you will in this respect find Cicero
and Fabius deserving of your imitation; but I know
not one of your own countrymen who does. But though
I think as often as I have mentioned this subject that
your courtesy and benignity have induced you to com-
ply with my request, I am unwilling that those quali-
ties should deprive you of the homage of a more polish-
ed and elaborate entreaty. For since your singular
modesty is so apt to depreciate your own performances;
the dignity of the subject, and my respect for you, will
not suffer me to rate them below their worth. And it
is certainly just that he who shows the greatest facility
in complying with a request should not receive the less
honour on account of his compliance. On this occasion
I have employed the Latin rather than your own lan-
guage, that I might in Latin confess my imperfect ac-
quaintance with that language which I wish you by
your precepts to embellish and adorn. And I hoped
that if I invoked the venerable Latian mother, hoary
with years, and crowned with the respect of ages, to
plead the cause of her daughter, I should give to my
request a force and authority which nothing could re-
sist. Adieu.
Florence, Sept. 10, 1638.
IX.
To Luke HolstEIN, in the Vatican at Rome.
THoug H in my passage through Italy, many per-
sons have honoured me with singular and memorable
proofs of their civility and friendship, yet on so short
an acquaintance I know not whether I can truly say
that any one ever gave me stronger marks of his regard
than yourself. For, when I went to visit you in the
Vatican, though I was not at all known to you, ex-
cept perhaps from the incidental mention of Alexander
Cherion, you received me with the utmost affability
and kindness. You afterwards obligingly admitted
me into the Museum, you permitted me to see the pre-
cious repository of literature, and many Greek MSS.
adorned with your own observations; some of which
have never yet seen the light, but seem, like the spirits
in Virgil,
In a green valley the pent spirits lay,
Impatient to behold the realms of day,
to demand the parturient labours of the press. Some
of them you have already published, which are gree-
dily received by the learned. You presented me with
copies of these on my departure. And I cannot but
impute it to your kind mention of me to the noble Car-
dinal Francisco Barberino, that at a grand musical en-
tertainment which he gave, he waited for me at the
door, sought me out among the crowd, took me by the
hand, and introduced me into the palace with every
mark of the most flattering distinction. When I went
the next day to render him my acknowledgments for
this his gracious condescension, it was you who ob-
tained me an interview, in which I experienced a de-
gree of civility and kindness greater than I had any
reason to expect from a person of his high dignity and
character. I know not, most learned Holstein, whe-
ther I am the only Englishman to whom you have
shown so much friendship and regard, or whether you
are led to show the same to all my countrymen, from a
recollection of the three years which you passed at the
university of Oxford. If this be the case, you gener-
ously pay to our dear England the fees of her edu-
cation; and you both descrve the grateful acknow-
ledgments of each individual in particular, and of our
FAMILIAR EPISTLES.
955
country in general. But if this distinction was shown
exclusively to me, if you selected me as worthy of your
friendship, I congratulate myself on your preference,
while I think your candour greater than my desert. I
strenuously urged my friends, according to your instruc-
tions, to inspect the Codex Mediceus; though they
have at present but little hope of being able to do it.
For in that library nothing can be transcribed, nor
even a pen put to paper, without permission being pre-
viously obtained; but they say that there is at Rome
one John Baptista Donio, who is daily expected at
Florence, where he has been invited to read lectures on
the Greek language, and by whom you may easily
obtain the object of your wishes. It would indeed
have been far more grateful to me if I could have
been at all instrumental in promoting those honour-
able and illustrious pursuits in which you are en-
gaged; and which it behoves all men, on all occa-
sions and in all circumstances, to promote. I add
that you will lay me under new obligations if you
will express my warmest acknowledgments, and my
most respectful compliments, to the most noble Car-
dinal, whose great virtues and whose honest zeal, so
favourable to the encouragement of all the liberal
arts, are the constant objects of my admiration. Nor
can I look without reverence on that mild, and if I
may so speak, that lowly, loftiness of mind, which is
exalted by its own humiliation, and to which we may
apply a verse in the Ceres of Callimachus,
I'9Mara Rav xépaw kepakaðs' ol ārrer' &Aögro.
On th’ earth he treads, but to the heavens he soars.
His conduct may serve to shew other princes that a
forbidding superciliousness and a dazzling parade of
power are quite incompatible with real magnanimity.
Nor do I think that while he lives any one will regret
the loss of the Esti, the Farnese, or the Medici, who
formerly espoused with so much zeal the patronage of
literature. Adieu, most learned Holstein, and if you
think me worthy of the honour, rank me, I beseech you,
for the future, wherever I may be, among those who
are most attached to you and to the studies in which
you are engaged.
Florence, March 30, 1639.
X.
To CAROLO DEoDAT1, a Florentine Noble.
I DERIVED, my dear Charles, from the unexpected
receipt of your letter, a pleasure greater than I can ex-
press; but of which you may have some notion from
the pain with which it was attended; and without a
mixture of which hardly any great pleasure is con-
ceded to mankind. While I was perusing the first
lines of yours, in which the elegance of expression
seems to contest the palm with the tenderness of friend-
ship, I felt nothing but an unmingled purity of joy,
particularly when I found you labouring to make
friendship win the prize. But as soon as I came to
that passage in which you tell me that you had previ-
ously sent me three letters which must have been lost,
then the simplicity of my joy began to be imbued with
grief and agitated with regret. But something more
disastrous soon appears. It is often a subject of sor-
rowful reflection to me, that those with whom I have
been either fortuitously or legally associated by conti-
guity of place, or some tie of little moment, are con-
tinually at hand to infest my home, to stun me with
their noise and waste me with vexation, while those
who are endeared to me by the closest sympathy of
manners, of tastes and pursuits, are almost all withheld
from my embrace either by death or an insuperable
distance of place; and have for the most part been so
rapidly hurried from my sight, that my prospects seem
continually solitary, and my heart perpetually desolate.
With a lively pleasure do I read your anxious enquiries
about my health since I left Florence, and your unin-
termitted recollections of our intimacy. Those recol-
lections have been reciprocal, though I thought that
they had been cherished by me alone. I would not
conceal from you that my departure excited in me the
most poignant sensations of uneasiness, which revive
with increased force as often as I recollect that I left so
many companions so engaging, and so many friends
so kind, collected in one city; which is, alas, so far re-
moved; which imperious circumstances compelled me
to quit against my inclination, but which was and is to
me most dear. I appeal to the tomb of Damon, which
I shall ever cherish and revere ; his death occasioned
the most bitter sorrow and regret, which I could find
no more easy way to mitigate than by recalling the
memory of those times, when, with those persons, and
particularly with you, I tasted bliss without alloy.
This you would have known long since, if you received
my poem on that occasion, I had it carefully sent,
that whatever poetical merit it might possess, the few
verses which are included in the manner of an emblem
might afford no doubtful proof of my love for you. I
thought that by this means I should entice you or some
other persons to write; for if I wrote first it seemed ne-
cessary that I should write to all, as if I wrote to one
exclusively I feared that I should give offence to the
rest; since I hope that many are still left who might
justly claim the performance of this duty. But you,
by first addressing me in a manner so truly friendly,
and by a triple repetition of epistolary kindness, have
laid me under an obligation to write to you, and have
exonerated me from the censure of those to whom I do
not write. Though I must confess that I found other
reasons for silence in these convulsions which my
country has experienced since my return home, which
necessarily diverted my attention from the prosecution
of my studies to the preservation of my property and
my life. For can you imagine that I could have lei-
sure to taste the sweets of literary ease while so many
battles were fought, so much blood shed, and while so
much ravage prevailed among my fellow-citizens f
But even in the midst of this tempestuous period, I
have published several works in my native language,
which if they had not been written in English, I should
956
FAMILIAR EPISTLES.
nave pleasure in sending to you, whose judgment I so
much revere. My Latin poems I will soon send as
you desire; and this I should have done long ago with-
out being desired, if I had not suspected that some
rather harsh expressions which they contained against
the Roman pontiff would have rendered them less
pleasing to your ears. Now I request whenever I
mention the rites of your religion in my own way, that
you will prevail on your friends (for I am under no ap-
prehensions from you) to shew me the same indulgence
not only which they did to Aligerius and to Petrarch on
a similar occasion, but which you did formerly with
such singular benevolence to the freedom of my con-
versation on topics of religion. With pleasure I perused
your description of the funeral of king Louis. I do
not acknowledge the inspiration of that vulgar and
mercenary Mercury whom you jocosely profess to wor-
ship, but of that Mercury who excels in eloquence, who
is dear to the Muses and the patron of men of genius.
It remains for us to hit upon some method by which
our correspondence may in future be carried on with
greater regularity and fewer interruptions. This does
not seem very difficult, when we have so many mer-
chants who trade so extensively with us; whose agents
pass to and fro every week, and whose ships are sailing
backward and forward almost as often. In the mean
time, my dear Charles, farewell, and present my kind
wishes to Cultellino, Francisco, Trescobaldo, Malta-
testo, the younger Clemantillo, and every other in-
quiring ſriend, and to all the members of the Gaddian
academy. Adieu.
London, April 21, 1647.
XI.
To HE RMANN Milles, Secretary to the Count of Ol-
denburgh.
Before I return any answer, most noble Hermann,
to your letter which I received on the 17th of Decem-
ber, I will first explain the reasons why I did not write
before, that you may not impute to me the blame
of a silence which has so long continued. First, the
delay was occasioned by ill-health, whose hostilities I
have now almost perpetually to combat; next, by a
cause of ill-health, a necessary and sudden removal to
another house, which had accidentally begun to take
place on the day that your letter arrived; and lastly,
by shame that I had no intelligence concerning your
business, which I thought that it would be agreeable to
communicate. For the day before yesterday when I ac-
cidentally met the Lord Frost, and anxiously enquired
of him whether any answer to you had been resolved
on 2 (for the state of my health often kept me from the
council;) be replied not without emotion, that nothing
had been resolved on, and that he could make no pro-
gress in expediting the business. I thought it therefore
better to be silent for a time, than immediately to write
what I knew that it would be irksome for you to hear,
but rather to wait till I should have the pleasure to
give.
communicate what I was sure it would give you so
much pleasure to know. This I hope that I have to-
day accomplished ; for when I had more than once
reminded the president of your business, he replied that
to-morrow they would discuss what answer they should
If I am the first, as I endeavoured, to give you
intelligence of this event, I think that it will contribute
greatly to your satisfaction, and will serve as a speci-
men of my zeal for the promotion of your interests.
Westminster.
XII.
To the renowned LEoNARD PHILARA, the Athenian.
I WAS in some measure made acquainted, most ae-
complished Philara, with your good will towards me,
and with your favourable opinion of my defence of the
people of England, by your letters to the Lord Auger,
a person so renowned for his singular integrity in ex-
ecuting the embassies of the republic. I then received
your compliments with your picture and an eulogy
worthy of your virtues; and, lastly, a letter full of ci-
vility and kindness. I who am not wont to despise
the genius of the German, the Dane, and Swede, could
not but set the highest value on your applause, who
were born at Athens itself, and who after having hap-
pily finished your studies in Italy, obtained the most
splendid distinctions and the highest honours. For if
Alexander the Great, when waging war in the distant
East, declared that he encountered so many dangers
and so many trials for the sake of having his praises
celebrated by the Athenians, ought not I to congratu-
late myself on receiving the praises of a man in whom
alone the talents and the virtues of the antient Atheni-
ans seem to recover their freshness and their strength
after so long an interval of corruption and decay. To
the writings of those illustrious men which your city
has produced, in the perusal of which I have been oc-
cupied from my youth, it is with pleasure I confess that
I am indebted for all my proficiency in literature. Did
I possess their command of language and their force of
persuasion, I should feel the highest satisfaction in em-
ploying them to excite our armies and out fleets to de-
liver Greece, the parent of eloquence, from the despotism
of the Ottomans. Such is the enterprise in which you
seem to wish to implore my aid. And what did for-
merly men of the greatest courage and eloquence deem
more noble or more glorious, than by their orations or
their valour to assert the liberty and independence of
the Greeks? But we ought besides to attempt, what is,
I think, of the greatest moment, to inflame the present
Greeks with an ardent desire to emulate the virtue, the
industry, the patience of their antient progenitors; and
this we cannot hope to see effected by any one but
yourself, and for which you seem adapted by the splen-
dour of your patriotism, combined with so much dis-
cretion, so much skill in war, and such an unquench-
able thirst for the recovery of your antient liberty. Nor
do I think that the Greeks would be wanting to them-
FAMILIAR
EPISTLES. $357
selves, nor that any other people would be wanting to
the Grceks. Adieu.
London, Jan. 1652.
XIII.
To Rich ARD HETH.
If I were able, my excellent friend, to render you
any service in the promotion of your studies, which at
best could have been but very small, I rejoice on more
accounts than one, that that service, though so long
unknown, was bestowed on so fruitful and so genial
a soil, which has produced an honest pastor to the
church, a good citizen to our country, and to me a
most acceptable friend. Of this I am well aware,
not only from the general habits of your life, but from
the justness of your religious and political opinions,
and particularly from the extraordinary ardour of
your gratitude, which no absence, no change of cir-
cumstances, or lapse of time, can either extinguish or
impair. Nor is it possible, till you have made a more
than ordinary progress in virtue, in piety, and the
improvement of the mind and heart, to feel so much
gratitude towards those who have in the least assisted
you in the acquisition. Wherefore, my pupil, a name
which with your leave I will employ, be assured that
you are among the first objects of my regard; nor
would any thing be more agreeable to me, if your cir-
cumstances permit as much as your inclination, than to
have you take up your abode somewhere in my neigh-
bourhood, where we may often see each other, and mu-
tually profit by the reciprocations of kindness and of
literature. But this must be as God pleases, and as
you think best. Your future communications may, if
you please, be in our own language, lest (though you
are no mean proficient in Latin composition) the labour
of writing should make each of us more averse to write;
and that we may freely disclose every sensation of our
hearts without being impeded by the shackles of a
foreign language. You may safely entrust the care of
your letters to any servant of that family which you
mention. Adieu.
Westminster, December 13, 1652.
XIV.
*
To HENRY OLDENBURGH, Aulic Counsellor to the
Senate of Bremem.
I RECEIVED your former letters, most accomplished
sir, at the moment when your clerk was at the point of
setting out on his return, so that I had no power of re-
turning you an answer at that time. This some un-
expected engagements concurred to delay, or I should
not have sent you my Defence without any compli-
ment or apology; and I have since received another
letter from you in which you return me more ample ac-
knowledgments than the present deserved. And I
had more than once an intention of substituting our
English for your Latin, that you, who have studied our
language with more accuracy and success than any
foreigner with whom I am acquainted, might lose no
opportunity of writing it, which I think that you would
do with equal elegance and correctness. But in this
respect you shall act as you feel inclined. With re-
spect to the subject of your letter you are clearly of my
opinion, that that cry to heaven could not have been
audible by any human being, which only serves the
more palpably to shew the effrontery of him who
affirms with so much audacity that he heard it. Who
he was you have caused a doubt, though long since in
some conversations which we had on the subject just
aſter your return from Holland, you seemed to have no
doubt but that More was the author to whom the com-
position was in those parts unanimously ascribed. If
you have received any more authentic information on
this subject, I wish that you would acquaint me with it.
With respect to the mode of handling the subject I
would willingly agree with you, and what could more
readily persuade me to do it than the unfeigned appro-
bation of persons so zealously attached to me as you
are ; if my health, and the deprivation of my sight,
which is more grievous than all the infirmities of age,
or of the cries of these impostors, will permit, I shall
readily be led to engage in other undertakings, though
I know not whether they can be more noble or more
useful; for what can be more noble or more useful than
to vindicate the liberty of man 2 An inactive indolence
was never my delight, but this unexpected contest with
the enemies of liberty has involuntarily withdrawn my
attention from very different and more pleasurable pur-
suits. What I have done, and which I was under an
obligation to do, I feel no reason to regret, and I am
far from thinking, as you seem to suppose, that I have
laboured in vain. But more on this at another oppor-
tunity. At present adieu, most learned sir, and num-
ber me among your friends.
Westminster, July 6, 1654.
XV.
To LEONARD PHILARA, the Athenian.
I HAVE always been devotedly attached to the lite-
rature of Greece, and particularly to that of your
Athens; and have never ceased to cherish the persua-
sion that that city would one day make me ample re-
compense for the warmth of my regard. The antient
genius of your renowned country has favoured the com-
pletion of my prophecy in presenting me with your
friendship and esteem. Though I was known to you
only by my writings, and we were removed to such a
distance from each other, you most courteously ad-
dressed me by letter; and when you unexpectedly
came to London, and saw me who could no longer see,
my affliction, which causes none to regard me with
greater admiration, and perhaps many even with feel-
ings of contempt, excited your tenderest sympathy and
958
FAMILIAR EPISTLES.
concern. You would not suffer me to abandon the hope
of recovering my sight, and informed me that you had
an intimate friend at Paris, Doctor Thevenot, who was
particularly celebrated in disorders of the eyes, whom
you would consult about mine, if I would enable you to
lay before him the causes and symptoms of the com-
plaint. I will do what you desire, lest I should seem
to reject that aid which perhaps may be offered me by
heaven. It is now, I think, about ten years since I
perceived my vision to grow weak and dull; and, at
the same time, I was troubled with pain in my kidneys
and bowels, accompanied with flatulency. In the morn-
ing, if I began to read, as was my custom, my eyes in-
stantly ached intensely, but were refreshed after a little
corporeal exercise. The candle which I looked at, seem-
ed as it were encircled with a rainbow. Not long after
the sight in the left part of the left eye (which I lost
some years before the other) became quite obscured;
and prevented me from discerning any object on that
side. The sight in my other eye has now been gradu-
ally and sensibly vanishing away for about three
years; some months before it had entirely perished,
though I stood motionless, every thing which I looked
at seemed in motion to and fro. A stiff cloudy vapour
seemed to have settled on my forehead and temples,
which usually occasions a sort of somnolent pressure
upon my eyes, and particularly from dinner till the
evening. So that I often recollect what is said of the
poet Phineas in the Argonautics;
A stupor deep his cloudy temples bound,
And when he walk’d he seem’d as whirling round,
Or in a feeble transe he speechless lay.
I ought not to omit that, while I had any sight left, as
soon as I lay down on my bed and turned on either
side, a flood of light used to gush from my closed eye-
lids. Then, as my sight became daily more impaired,
the colours became more faint, and were emitted with
a certain inward crackling sound; but at present every
species of illumination being, as it were, extinguished,
there is diffused around me nothing but darkness, or
darkness mingled and streaked with an ashy brown.
Yet the darkness in which I am perpetually immersed,
seems always, both by night and day, to approach
nearer to white than black, and when the eye is roll-
ing in its socket, it admits a little particle of light as
through a chink. And though your physician may
kindle a small ray of hope, yet I make up my mind to
the malady as quite incurable; and I often reflect,
that as the wise man admonishes, days of darkness
are destined to each of us, the darkness which I ex-
perience, less oppressive than that of the tomb, is,
owing to the singular goodness of the Deity, passed
amid the pursuits of literature and the cheering salu-
tations of friendship. But if, as is written, man shall
not live by bread alone, but by every word that pro-
ceedeth from the mouth of God, why may not any one
acquicsce in the privation of his sight, when God has
so amply furnished his mind and his conscience with
eyes. While he so tenderly provides for me, while he
so graciously leads me by the hand and conducts me on
the way, I will, since it is his pleasure, rather rejoice
than repine at being blind. And, my dear Philara,
whatever may be the event, I wish you adieu with no
less courage and composure than if I had the eyes
of a lynx.
Westminster, September 28, 1654.
XVI.
To LEo of Aizema.
It is with great pleasure I find that you still retain
the same regard for me which you indicated while
among us. With respect to the book concerning di-
vorce, which you say that you had engaged some one
to turn into Dutch, I would rather that you had en-
gaged him to turn it into Latin. For I have already
experienced how the vulgar are wont to receive opi-
nions which are not agreeable to vulgar prejudice.
I formerly wrote three treatises on this subject; one
in two books, in which the doctrine of divorce is dif-
fusely discussed ; another which is entitled Tetrachor-
don, in which the four principal passages in scripture
relative to the doctrine are explained; a third, Colas-
terion, which contains an answer to some vulgar scio-
list. I know not which of these treatises or which
edition you have engaged him to translate. The first
treatise has been twice published, and the second
edition is much enlarged. If you have not already
received this information, or wish me to send you the
more correct edition, or the other treatises, I shall do
it immediately, and with pleasure. For I do not wish
at present that they should receive any alterations or
additions. If you persist in your present purpose, I
wish you a faithful translator and every success.
Westminster, Feb. 5, 1654.
XVII.
To EzECHIEL SPANHEIM, of Geneva.
I KNow not how it happened that your letters were
not delivered to me for three months after they were
written. I hope that mine will have a more expe-
ditious conveyance: for, owing to various engage-
ments, I have put off writing from day to day till I
perceive that almost another three months have elapsed.
But I would not wish you to suppose that my regard
for you has experienced any diminution; but that it
has rather encreased in proportion as I have more fre-
quently thought of discharging this epistolary debt.
The tardy performance of this duty seems to admit of
this excuse, that when it is performed after so long a
lapse of time it is only a more clear confession that it
was due. You are quite right in the supposition that
I shall not be surprised at receiving the salutations
of a foreigner, and you may be assured that it is my
maxim, to consider and to treat no good man as a stran-
FAMILIAR.
EPISTLES. 959
ger; that you are such I am well persuaded, both be-
cause you are the son of a father highly celebrated for
his erudition and his piety; and because all good men
think you good; and lastly, because you hate the bad.
With such persons since it has also been my lot to be
at war, Calandrinus very obligingly signified to you,
that it would be highly grateful to me if you would
lend me your assistance against our common enemy.
That you have kindly done in your present letter, of
which I have taken the liberty, without mentioning
the author's name, to insert a part in my Defence. This
work I will send you as soon as possible after the pub-
lication; in the mean time do you direct your letters to
me under cover to Turrettin a Genoese, living at Lon-
don, and through whom we may conveniently carry
on our correspondence. Be assured that you rank high
in my esteem, and that I wish for nothing more than
your regard.
Westminster, March 24, 1654.
XVIII.
To HENRY OLDENBURGH, Aulic Counsellor to the Se-
mate of Bremen.
Your letters which young Ranley brought, found
me so much employed that I am compelled to be more
brief than I could wish. You have most faithfully ful-
filled those promises to write which you made me when
you went away. No honest man could discharge his
debts with more rigid punctuality. I congratulate you
on your retirement, because it gives pleasure to you
though it is a loss to me; and I admire that felicity of
genius, which can so readily leave the factions or the
diversions of the city for contemplations the most serious
and sublime. I see not what advantage you can have in
that retirement except in an access to a multitude of
books; the associates in study whom you have found
there, were I believe rather made students by their own
natural inclinations, than by the discipline of the place.
But perhaps I am less partial to the place because it de-
tains you, whose absence I regret. You rightly observe
that there are too many there who pollute all learning,
divine and human, by their frivolous subtleties and bar-
ren disputations; and who seem to do nothing to de-
serve the salary which they receive. But you are not
so unwise. Those ancient records of the Sinese from
the period of the deluge, which you say are promised
by the Jesuit Martinius, are no doubt on account of
their novelty expected with avidity; but I do not see
what authority or support they can add to the books of
Moses. Our friend to whom you begged to be remem-
bered sends his compliments. Adieu.
Westminster, June 25, 1656.
XIX.
To the noble Youth Rich ARD Jon Es.
As often as I have taken up the pen to answer your
last letter some sudden interruptions have occurred to
prevent the completion of my purpose. I afterwards
heard that you had made an excursion to the adjoining
country. As your excellent mother is on the eve of
departing for Ireland, whose loss we have both no small
occasion to regret, and who has to me supplied the
place of every relative, will herself be the bearer of
these letters to you. You may rest assured of my re-
gard, and be persuaded that it will increase in propor-
tion as I see an increasing improvement in your heart
and mind. This, by the blessing of God, you have
solemnly pledged yourself to accomplish. I am pleased
with this fair promise of yourself, which I trust you
will never violate. Though you write that you are
pleased with Oxford, you will not induce me to believe
that Oxford has made you wiser or better. Of that I
require very different proof. I would not have you
lavish your admiration on the triumphs of the chiefs
whom you extol, and things of that nature in which
force is of most avail. For why nced we wonder if
the wethers of our country are born with horns which
| may batter down cities and towns? Do you learn to
estimate great characters, not by the quantity of their
animal strength, but by the habitual justice and tem-
perance of their conduct. Adieu, and make my best
respects to the accomplished Henry Oldenburgh, your
college chum.
Westminster, Sept. 21, 1656.
XX.
To the accomplished Youth PETER HEIMBAcH.
You have abundantly discharged all the promises
which you made me, except that respecting your return,
which you promised should take place at farthest with-
in two months. But if my regard for you do not make
me err in my calculation, you have been absent almost
three months. You have done all that I desired respect-
ing the atlas, of which I wished to know the lowest
price. You say it is an hundred and thirty florins,
which I think is enough to purchase the mountain of
that name. But such is the present rage for typogra-
phical luxury, that the furniture of a library hardly
costs less than that of a villa. Paintings and engrav-
ings are of little use to me. While I roll my blind
eyes about the world, I fear lest I should secum to la-
ment the privation of sight in proportion to the exor-
bitance of the price for which I should have purchased
the book. Do you endeavour to learn in how many
volumes the entire work is contained ; and of the two
editions, whether that of Blaeu or Janson be the most
accurate and complete. This I hope rather to hear
verbally from yourself on your return, which will soon
take place, than to trouble you to give me the informa-
tion by another letter. In the mean time adieu, and
return as soon as possible.
Westminster, Nov. 8, 1656.
960
FAMILIAR EPISTLES.
XXI.
To the accomplished EME Ric Bigot.
I was highly gratified by the distinguished marks
of attention which you paid me on coming into Eng-
land, and this gratification is considerably increased
by your kind epistolary inquiries after so long an in-
terval. The favourable opinions of others might have
prompted your first visit, but you would hardly have
taken the trouble to write if you had not been prompt-
ed by your own judgment or benevolence. Hence I
think I may justly congratulate myself; many have
been celebrated for their compositions whose common
conversation and intercourse have betrayed no marks
of sublimity or genius. But, as far as possible, I will
endeavour to seem equal in thought and speech to what
I have well written, if I have written any thing well;
and while I add to the dignity of what I have written,
I will, at the same time, derive from my writings a
greater splendour of reputation. Thus I shall not
seem to have borrowed the excellence of my literary
compositions from others so much as to have drawn it
pure and unmingled from the resources of my own
mind and the force of my own conceptions. It gives
me pleasure that you are convinced of the tranquillity
which I possess under this afflicting privation of sight,
as well as of the civility and kindness with which I
receive those who visit me from other countries. And
indeed why should I not submit with complacency to
this loss of sight, which seems only withdrawn from
the body without, to increase the sight of the mind
within. Hence books have not incurred my resent-
ment, nor do I intermit the study of books, though
they have inflicted so heavy a penalty on me for
my attachment; the example of Telephus king of
Micia, who did not refuse to receive a cure from the
same weapon by which he had been wounded, admo-
nishes me not to be so morose. With respect to the
book which you have concerning the mode of holding
parliaments, I have taken care to have the passages
which were marked, either amended, or, if they were
doubtful, confirmed by a MS. of the illustrious Lord
Bradshaw ; and from one of the Cotton MSS. as you
will perceive from the paper which I have returned.
I sent some one to inquire of the keeper of the Re-
cords in the Tower, who is my intimate friend, whe-
ther the original of this work be extant in that collec-
tion, and he replied that there was no copy in the
repository. I am reciprocally obliged to you for your
assistance in procuring me books. My Byzantine
History wants Theophanis Chronographia Graec. Lat.
fol. Constant. Manassis Breviarium Historicum, and
Codini Excerpta de Antiquit. C. P. Graec. Lat. Anas-
tasii Bibliothecarii Hist, and Vitae Rom. Pontific. fol.
to which I beg you to add Michael Glycas and John
Sinnam, and the continuator of Anna Comnena, if
they have already issued from the same press. I need
not request you to purchase them as cheap as possible.
There is no occasion to do this to a man of your dis-
cretion, and the price of those books is fixed and
known to all. Dr. Stuppe has undertook to pay you
the money, and to get them conveyed in the most
commodious way. Accept my best wishes. Adieu.
Westminster, March 24, 1658.
XXII.
To the noble Youth RICHARD Jon Es.
I did not receive your letter till some time after it
was written ; it lay fifteen days at your mother's.
With pleasure I perceive the emotions of your attach-
ment and your gratitude. I have never ceased to
promote the culture of your genius, and to justify the
favourable opinion which your excellent mother enter-
tains of me, and the confidence she places in me, by
benevolence the most pure and counsels the most sin-
cere. In that agreeable and healthy spot, to which
you have retired, there are books enough for the pur-
poses of academical education. If beauty of situation
contributed as much to improve the wit of the inha-
bitants as it does to please the eye, the felicity of that
place would be complete. The library there is rich in
books, but unless the minds of the students be improv-
ed by a more rational mode of education, it may better
deserve the name of a book-repository than of a li-
brary. You justly acknowledge that all these helps
to learning should be associated with a taste for lite-
rature, and with diligence in the cultivation. Take
care that I may never have occasion to blame you for
deviating from that opinion. And this you will
readily avoid if you will diligently obey the weighty
and friendly precepts of the accomplished Henry
Oldenburgh, your associate and friend. Adieu, my
dearest Richard, and let me incite you like another
Timothy to the practice of virtue and of piety, by the
example of your mother who is the best of women.
Westminster.
XXIII.
To the illustrious Lord HENRY DE BRAs.
I see, my Lord, that you, unlike most of our modern
youth who pass through foreign countries, wisely
travel, like the ancient philosophers, for the sake of
compleating your juvenile studies, and of picking up
knowledge wherever it may be found. Though as
often as I consider the excellence of what you write
you appear to me to have gone among foreigners not
so much for the sake of procuring erudition yourself, as
of imparting it to others, and rather to exchange than
to purchase a stock of literature. I wish it were as
easy for me in every way to promote the increase of
your knowledge and the improvement of your intellect,
as it is pleasing and flattering to me to have that as-
sistance requested by talents and genius like yours. I
have never attempted, and I should never dare to at-
FAMILIAR EPISTLES.
tempt, to solve those difficulties as you request, which
seem to have cast a cloud over the writers of history for
so many ages. Of Sallust I will speak as you desire
without any hesitation or reserve. I preſer him to any
of the Latin historians; which was also the general
opinion of the ancients. Your favorite Tacitus deserves
his meed of praise; but his highest praise, in my opi-
nion, consists in his having imitated Sallust with all his
might. By my conversation with you on this subject
I seem, as far as I can guess from your letter, to have
inspired you with sentiments very similar to my own,
concerning that most energetic and animated writer.
As he in the beginning of his Catilinarian war asserted
that there was the greatest difficulty in historical com-
position, because the style should correspond with the
nature of the narrative, you ask me how a writer of his-
tory may best attain that excellence. My opinion is
that he who would describe actions and events in a
way suited to their dignity and importance, ought to
write with a mind endued with a spirit, and enlarged
by an experience, as extensive as the actors in the scene,
that he may have a capacity properly to comprehend
and to estimate the most momentous aſſairs, and to re-
late them, when comprehended, with energy and dis-
tinctness, with purity and perspicuity of diction. The
decorations of style I do not greatly heed; for I re-
quire an historian and not a rhetorician. I do not
want frequent interspersions of sentiment, or prolix
dissertations on transactions, which interrupt the series
of events, and cause the historian to entrench on the
office of the politician, who if in explaining counsels,
and explaining facts, he follows truth rather than his
own partialities and conjectures, excites the disgust or
the aversion of his party. I will add a remark of
Sallust, and which was one of the excellencies which
he himself commended in Cato, that he should be able
to say much in a few words; a perfection which I
think that no one can attain without the most discrimi-
nating judgment and a peculiar degree of moderation.
There are many in whom you have not to regret either
elegance of diction or copiousness of narrative, who have
yet united copiousness with brevity. And among these
Sallust is in my opinion the chief of the Latin writers.
Such are the virtues which I think that every historian
ought to possess who would proportion his style to the
facts which he records. But why do I mention this to
you ? When such is your genius that you need not my
advice, and when such is your proficiency that if it
goes on increasing you will soon not be able to consult
any one more learned than yourself.
cessary to stimulate your exertions, yet that I may not
seem entirely to frustrate your expectations, I will be-
seech you with all my affection, all my authority, and
all my zeal, to let nothing relax your diligence, or
chill the ardour of your pursuit. Adieu ! and may
you ever successfully labour in the path of wisdom
and of virtue.
Westminster, July 15, 1657.
To the increase
of that proficiency, though no exhortations can be ne-
XXIV.
To HEN RY OLDEN BURG.
I REJoice to hear of your safe arrival at Saumur,
which is, I believe, the place of your destination. You
cannot doubt of the pleasure which this intelligence
has given me, when you consider how much I love
your virtues and approve the object of your journey.
I had much rather that some other person had heard in
the boat of Charon than you on the waters of the Cha-
rent, that so infamous a priest was called in to instruct
so illustrious a church. For I much fear that he will
experience the most bitter disappointment who thinks
ever to get to heaven under the auspices of so pro-
fligate a guide. Alas! for that church where the mi-
nisters endeavour to please only the ear; ministers
whom the church, if it desires a real reformation, ought
rather to expel than to choose. You have done right,
and not only according to my opinion but that of
Horace, by not communicating my writings to any but
to those who expressed a desire to see them.
Do not my works, importunately rude,
Disgrace by pert endeavours to intrude.
A learned friend of mine who past the last summer at
Saumur, informed me that that book was in great re-
quest in those parts. I sent him only one copy; he
wrote back that the perusal of it had afforded the high-
est satisfaction to some of the learned there. If I had
not thought that I should oblige them I should have
spared this trouble to you and this expence to myself.
If my books chance to prove a weary load,
Rather than bear them further, leave them on the road.
I have, as you desired me, presented your kind wishes
to our friend Lawrence. There is nothing that I wish
more than that you and your pupil may have your
health and return to us soon as possible after having
effected the object of your wishes.
Westminster, Aug. 1, 1657.
XXV.
To the noble Youth Rich ARD Jones.
I REJoice to hear that you accomplished so long a
journey with so little inconvenience, and what redounds
so much to your credit that, despising the luxuries of
Paris, you hastened with so much celerity where you
might enjoy the pleasures of literature and the conver-
sation of the learned. As long as you please you will
there be in a haven of security; in other places you
will have to guard against the shoals of treachery and
the syrens' songs. I would not wish you to thirst too
much after the vintage of Saumur, but resolve to dilute
the Bacchamalian stream with more than a fifth part of
the chrystal liquor of the Parnassian fount. But in
this respect, without my injunctions, you have an ex-
962
FAMILIAR EPISTLES.
cellent preceptor whom you cannot do better than
obey; and by obeying whom you will give the highest
satisfaction to your excellent mother, and daily increase
in her regard and love. That you may have power to
do this you should daily ask help from above. Adieu,
and endeavour to return as much improved as possible,
both in virtue and erudition. This will give me more
than ordinary pleasure.
Westminster, Aug. 1, 1657.
XXVI.
To the illustrious Lord Hen RY DE BRAs.
SoME engagements, most noble Lord, have prevented
me from answering your letter so soon as I could wish.
I wished to have done it the sooner because I saw that
your letter, so full of erudition, left me less occasion
for sending you my advice (which I believe that you
desire more out of compliment to me than of any bene-
fit to yourself) than my congratulations. First, I con-
gratulate myself on having been so fortunate in cha-
racterising the merits of Sallust as to have excited you
to the assiduous perusal of that author, who is so full of
wisdom, and who may be read with so much advantage.
Of him I will venture to assert what Quintilian said of
Cicero, that he who loves Sallust is no mean proficient
in historical composition. That precept of Aristotle in
the third book of his rhetoric, which you wish me to
explain, relates to the morality of the reflections and
the ſidelity of the narrative. It appears to me to need
little comment, except that it should be appropriated
not to the compositions of rhetoric but of history. For
the offices of a rhetorician and an historian are as
different as the arts which they profess. Polybius,
Halicarnassus, Diodorus, Cicero, Lucian, and many
others, whose works are interspersed with precepts on
the subject, will better teach you what are the duties
of an historian. I wish you every success in your tra-
vels and pursuits. Adieu.
Westminster, Dec. 16, 1657.
XXVII.
To the accomplished Peter HEINBAcH.
I Received your letter from the Hague the 18th
December, which, as your convenience seems to require,
I answer the same day on which it was received. In
this letter, after returning me thanks for some favours
which I am not conscious of having done, but which
my regard for you makes me wish to have been real,
you ask me to recommend you, through the medium of
D. Lawrence, to him who is appointed our agent in
Holland. This I grieve that I am not able to do, both
on account of my little familiarity with those who have
favours to bestow, since I have more pleasure in keep-
ing myself at home, and because I believe that he is
already on his voyage, and has in his company a per-
son in the office of secretary, which you are anxious to
obtain. But the bearer of this is on the eve of his de-
parture. Adieu.
Westminster, Dec. 18, 1657.
XXVIII.
To John BADIAUs, Minister of the Church of Orange.
Most excellent and reverend sir, I believe that our
friend Durius will take upon himself the blame of my
not writing to you sooner. After he had shewed me
that paper which you wished me to read concerning
what I had done and suffered for the sake of the
gospel, I wrote this letter as soon as possible, intending
to send it by the first conveyance, since I was fearful
that you might consider a longer silence as neglect.
In the mean time I am under the greatest obligations
to your friend Molin, for procuring me the esteem of
the virtuous in those parts by the zeal of his friendship
and the warmth of his praise; and though I am not
ignorant that the contest in which I was engaged with
so great an adversary, that the celebrity of the subject
and the style of the composition had far and wide
diffused my fame, yet I think that I can be famous only
in proportion as I enjoy the approbation of the good.
I clearly see that you are of the same opinion; so
many are the toils you have endured, so many are the
enemies whom you have provoked by your disinter-
ested zeal in defence of the christian doctrine; and
you act with so much intrepidity as to shew, that
instead of courting the applause of bad men, you do
not fear to excite their most inveterate hate and their
most bitter maledictions. Oh happy are you whom,
out of so many thousands of the wise and learned, pro-
vidence has rescued from the very brink of destruction,
and selected to bear a distinguished and intrepid tes-
timony to the truth of the gospel. I have now rea-
sons for thinking that it was a singular mercy that I
did not write to you sooner; for when I understood by
your letters that, threatened on all sides by the malice
of your enemies, you were looking round for a place of
refuge, to which you might fly in the last extremity
of danger, and that you had fixed on England as the
object of your wishes, I was considerably gratified,
because it gave me the hope of enjoying your com-
pany, and because I was happy to find you think so
favourably of my country; but I lamented that, parti-
cularly owing to your ignorance of our language, I
did not see any chance of a decent provision being
made for you among us. The death of an old French
minister has since very opportunely occurred. The
principal persons of his congregation (from whom I
have received this communication) anxiously wish, or
rather invite you to be chosen in his place; they have
determined to pay the expences of your journey, to
provide for you as large a salary as any of the French
ministers receive, and to let you want nothing which
can contribute to the cheerful discharge of your eccle-
siastical function. Fly, I beseech you, as soon as
FAMILIAR
EPISTLES. 96.3
possible, reverend sir, to those who are so desirous of
seeing you, and where you will reap a harvest, not
rich indeed in temporal delights, but in numerous
opportunities to improve the hearts and to save the
souls of men; and be assured that your arrival is
warmly desired by all good men. Adieu.
Westminster, April 1, 1659.
XXIX.
To HENRY OLDEN BURG.
THE indulgence which you beg for yourself,
will rather have to bestow on me, whose turn,
remember, it was to write. My regard for you has,
believe me, suffered no diminution ; but either my
studies or my domestic cares, or perhaps my indolence
in writing, have made me guilty of this omission of
you
If I
duty. I am, by God's help, as well as usual. I am
not willing, as you wish me, to compile a history of
our troubles; for they seem rather to require oblivion
than commemoration ; nor have we so much need of a
person to compose a history of our troubles as happily
to settle them. I fear with you lest our civil dissen-
sions, or rather maniacal agitation, should expose us
to the attack of the lately confederated enemies of
religion and of liberty; but those enemies could not
inflict a deeper wound upon religion than we ourselves
have long since done by our follies and our crimes.
But whatever disturbances kings and cardinals may
meditate and contrive, I trust that God will not suffer
the machinations and the violence of our enemies to
succeed according to their expectations. I pray that
the Protestant synod, which you say is soon to meet
at Leyden, may have a happy termination, which has
never yet happened to any synod that has ever met
before. But the termination of this might be called
happy, if it decreed nothing else but the expulsion of
More. As soon as my posthumous adversary shall
make his appearance I request you to give me the
earliest information. Adieu.
Westminster, Dec. 20, 1659.
XXX.
To the noble Youth Rich ARD Jo NFs.
You send me a most modest apology for not writing
sooner, when you might more justly have accused me
of the same offence; so that I hardly know whether I
should choose that you had not committed the offence or
not written the apology. Never for a moment believe
that I measure your gratitude, if any gratitude be due
to me, by the assiduity of your epistolary communi-
cations. I shall perceive all the ardour of your grati-
tude, since you will extol the merit of my services, not
so much in the frequency of your letters as in the
excellence of your habits, and the degree of your
moral and intellectual proficiency. On the theatre of
the world on which you have entered, you have rightly
chosen the path of virtue; but know there is a path
common to virtue and to vice ; and that it behoves
you to advance where the way divides. Leaving the
common track of pleasure and amusement, you should
cheerfully encounter the toils and the dangers of that
steep and rugged way which leads to the pinnacle of
virtue. This, believe me, you will accomplish with
more facility since you have got a guide of so much
integrity and skill. Adieu.
Westminster, Dec. 20, 1659.
XXXI.
To the accomplished PETER HEINBAcH, Counsellor to
the Elector of Brandenburgh.
It is not strange as you write that report should
have induced you to believe, that I had perished among
the numbers of my countrymen who fell in a year so
fatally visited by the ravages of the plague. If that
rumour sprung as it seems out of a solicitude for my
safety, I consider it as no unpleasing indication of the
esteem in which I am held among you. But by the
goodness of God, who provided for me a place of re-
fuge in the country, I yet enjoy both life and health ;
which, as long as they continue, I shall be happy to
employ in any useful undertaking. It gives me plea-
sure to think, that after so long an interval I have
again occurred to your remembrance; though, owing
to the luxuriance of your praise, you seem almost to
lead me to suspect that you had quite forgotten one in
whom you say that you admire the union of so many
virtues; from such an union I might dread too numer-
ous a progeny, if it were not evident that the virtues
flourish most in penury and distress. But one of those
virtues has made me but an ill return for her hospita-
ble reception in my breast; for what you term policy,
and which I wish that you had rather called patriotic
piety, has, if I may so say, almost leſt me, who was
charmed with so sweet a sound, without a country.
The other virtues harmoniously agree. Our country is
wherever we are well off. I will conclude after first
begging you if there be any errors in the diction or the
punctuation to impute it to the boy who wrote this,
who is quite ignorant of Latin, and to whom I was,
with no little vexation, obliged to dictate not the words,
but, one by one, the letters of which they were com-
posed. I rejoice to find that your virtues and talents,
of which I saw the fair promise in your youth, have
raised you to so honourable a situation under the prince;
and I wish you every good which you can enjoy.
Adieu.
London, Aug. 15, 1666.
AN
A. L. P. H. A B E T I C A L I N D E X
PRINCIPAL
MATTERS.
AAR ON, his priesthood no pattern to
ground episcopacy on, 33.
Abimelech, remarks on the manner of his
death, 357.
Abraham, commanded by God to send
away his irreligious wife, 131. His pay-
ing tithes to Melchisedec, no authority
for our paying them mow, 426, 430, 435.
Abramites, allege the example of the an-
cient fathers for image-worship, 27.
Accidence, reasons for joining it and gram-
mar together, 457.
Acworth, University-Orator, the memory of
Bucer and Fagius celebrated by him, 160.
Adam, left free to choose, l 10. (Xreated in
the image of God, 178. His alliance with
º nearer than that of any couple since,
Adda, succeeds his father Ida in the king-
dom of Bernicia, 512.
Adminius, son of Cunobeline, banished his
country, flees to the emperor Caligula,
and stirs him up against it, 488.
Adultery, not the only reason for divorce,
according to the law of Moses, 125. Not
the greatest breach of matrimony, 133.
Punished with death by the law, 206. Our
Saviour's sentence relating to it, explain-
ed, 207.
Aºduans, in Burgundy, employ the Britons
ºuld their temples and public edifices,
{
Aga nippus, a Gaulish king, marries Cor-
deilla, daughter of King Leir, 480 Re-
stores her father to his throne, ib.
Agatha, decree of the council there, con-
cerning divorce, 214.
Agricola, son of Severianus, spreads the Pe-
agian doctrine in Britain, 505.
Aidan, a Scotch bishop, sent for by Oswald,
to settle religion, 519. Has his episcopal
seat at Lindisſarne, ib., Dies for grief of
the murder of Oswin, 520.
Alaric, takes Rome from the emperor Ho-
norius, 50l.
Alban, of Verulam, with others, suffers mar-
tyrdom under Dioclesian, 409.
Alba mact, one of the three sons of Brutus,
that has Albania, now Scotland, for his
share in the kingdom, 478.
Albert, said to have shared the kingdom of
the East-Angles with Humbeanna after
Elfwald, 528.
Albina, said to be the eldest of Dioclesian's
50 daughters, 476. From her the name
Albion derived, ib.
Albion, the ancient name of this island, 476.
Whence derived, ib.
Alciat, his opinion concerning divorce, 218.
Alcred slaying Ethelwald, usurps the king-
dom of the Northumbrians, 525.
Aldfrid, recalled from Ireland, succeeds his
brother Ecfrid in the Northumbrian king-
dom, 523, Leaves Osred, a child, to suc-
ceed him, ib.
Alilulf, nephew of Etheldwald, succeeds
king of the East-Angles, 528.
Alectus, treacherously slays his friend Ca-
rausius, 498. Is overthrown by Asclepio-
dotus, and slain, 499.
Aleman mus, reported one of the four sons of
Histion, descended from Japhet; of whom
the Alemanni or Germans, 476.
Alfage, archbishop of Canterbury, inhu-
manly used by the Danes, 547. Killed by
Thrum, a Dame, in commiseration of his
misery, ib. -
Alfred, the fourth son of Ethelwolf, and
successor of his brother Ethelred, encoun-
ters the l)anes at Wilton, 533. Routs the
whole Danish power at Edinton, and
brings them to terms, 534. He is said to
have bestowed the East-Angles upon Gy-
tro, a Danish king, who had been lately
baptized, ib. A long war afterwards
maintained between him and the Danes,
ib. 535. He dies in the 30th year of his
reign, and is buried at Winchester, 535.
His noble character, ib. 536.
Alfwold, driving out Eardul'ſ, usurps the
kingdom of Northumberland, 52S.
Algar, earl of Howland, now Holland, Mor-
car, lord of Brunne, and Osgot, governor
of Lincoln, kill a great multitude of Danes
in battle, with three of their kings, 532.
Overpowered by numbers, and drawn into
a snare, Algar dies valiantly fighting, ib,
Algar, the son of Leofric, banished by King
lºdward, joins Griffin prince of South-
Wales, 557. Unable to withstand Harold
earl of Kent, submits to the king, and is
restored, ib, Banished again, he recovers
his earldom by force, ib.
Alipius, made deputy of the British pro-
Vince, in the room of Martimus, 499.
Alla, begins the kingdom of Deira, in the
South part of Northumberland, 512, 513.
Alric, king of Kent, after Ethelbert the 20,
526. With him dying, ends the race of
Hengist, 527.
Ambassador. See French, Spanish, &c.
Ambassadors of Christ, who style them-
Selves So, 435. Not to ask maintenance
of those to whom they are sent, ib,
Ambrose, his notion of wedlock, 214 Ex-
Communicated Theodosius, 3.34. His con-
duct to that emperor remarked, 365. Re-
sists the higher powers, contrary to his
Own doctrine, 373.
Ambrosius Aurelianus, dreaded by Vorti-
gern, 500. Defeats the Saxons, ib. Un-
Certain whether the son of Constantine
the usurper, or the same with Merlin, and
Son of a Roman consul, ib. Succeeds
Vortigern as chief monarch of the isle, ib.
Ames, Dr. his definition of marriage, 186.
Anabaptists, accused of denying infants
their right to baptism, 563.
Anacletus, the friend of King Pandrasus,
taken in fight by Brutus, 477. Forced by
Brutus to betray his countrymen, ib,
Andragius, one in the catalogue of ancient
British kings, 482.
Andrews, bishop, and the primate of Ar-
magh, maintain that church-government
is to be patterned from the law, 32. Their
Aguments for episcopacy examined, 34,
&C.
Androgeus, one of Lud's sons, has London
assigned him, and Kent, 482. Forsakes his
claim to the kingdom, and follows Caesar's
fortune, 488.
Angels, of the seven Asian churches, whe-
ther to be taken collectively, or individu-
ally, 67.
Angér, and laughter, why first seated in
the breast of men, 55.
A nimadversions on the Remonstrant's De-
fence against Smectymnuus, 55.
Anlaf the Dane, with his army of Irish, and
Constantine king of Scotland. utterly dis-
comfited by King Athelstan, 539.
Anna succeeds Sigebert in the kingdom of
the East-Angles, 520. Is slain in war by
Penda the Mercian, ib.
Antigonus, the brother of King Pandrasus,
taken in fight by Brutus, 477.
Anti nomianism and Familism, considered,
136.
Antioch, had not the name of Theopolis, till
Justinian's time, 24.
Antiquity, custom, canons, and councils, no
warrant for superstitious practices, 65.
Antoninus, sent against the Caledonians,
by his father Severus, 49S. After whose
death he takes hostages, and departs to
Rome, ib.
Antony, J/ark, quoted by Salmasius for
the prerogative royal, 353
Apocalypse, of St. John, the majestic image
of a stately tragedy, 43.
Apology for Smectymnuus, 75.
Apostles, instituted presbyters to govern
the church, 38 . Appointed a number of
grave and faithful brethren to assist the
minister of each congregation, 49. Not
properly bishops, 3.16.
Arcadia, Sir Philip Sidney's; K. C.’s prayer
stolen thence, 279.
Archigallo, deposed for his tyranny, 482.
Being restored by his brother, he then
reigns worthily, ib.
Archima ilus, one in the number of ancient
British kings, 4S2.
Areopagitica, speech for unlicensed print-
ing under that title, 103.
Areopagus, judges of, condemn the books
of Protagoras to be burned, 10.5.
A retius, his opiniou concerning divorce,
218.
Argentocorus, a Caledonian, his wife's bold
reply to the empress Julia, 497.
Arians and Socinians, their notions of the
Triuity, 563.
Ariminum, synod of more than 400 bishops
appointed to assemble there, by Con-
Stantius, 499, - -
Aristotle, his definition of a king, 234.
Reckons up five sorts of monarchies, 350,
Salmasius's extract from his third book of
politics, 375. Commends the kingdom of
l
INDEX.

Basil, his opinion as to divorce, 214 Calls
the bishops slaves of slaves
Bath, by whom built, .
waters dedicated to Millerva,
es, the government among them
- ope's Supremacy, 3
Belfast, representation and exhortation of
the presbytery there, 260, &c. emarks
on them, 266, &c.
, Helvetia, and Geneva, their church-
men remarkable for learning, 71.
- eeds his father Dunyvallo, 4Sl
s contentions with his brother Bren-
nus, ib. Their reconciliation, ib. Built
the Tower of London, ub.
corn, precedes Ethelred in the kingdom
of the East-Angles, 5
A3ericus, ſleeing to Rome, persuades the em-
* Claudius to invade this island, 488.
rimus, a bishop sent by pope Honorius,
verts the West-Saxons and their kings
its medicinal
i quoted
3,50
h;
l , 51J.
Bernicia, kingdom of, in Northumberland,
begun by Ida the Saxon, 511
Bernulf, usurping the kingdom ºf Mercia
from Keolwulf, is overthrown by Ecbert
at Ellandune, 52. eeing to the East-
gles, is by them slain, i
gº. his interpretation of the word trpcargo-
Teptov, 66. His opinion, of regulating sil
by apostolic laws, not sound, 148 His
téstlinomy concerning Martin Bucer, 159
His motion concerning divorce,
ible, put by the papists in the first rank
of prohibited books, I
Bigot, Emeric, letter to, 960.
Birthric, king of the West Saxons after Kin-
fulf, 526. Secretly seeks the life of Ec-
27. Is poisoned by up which
his wife had prepaled for another, 528.
Bishop and deacon, the only ecclesiastical
rs mentioned in the gospel, 2 -
Bishop and presbyter, two names to signif.
the same order, 27 Equally tyrants over
learning, if licensing be brought in, 113.
Bishopric, the author's opinion of it, 91
ishops, have been as the Canaanites and
Philistumes to this kingdom, 13. eir
opposition to King John, Normandy lost,
he deposed, and ūčkingdom mage ov
to the pope, ib. No bishop, no king, an
absurd position, ib. Sometimes we read
of two in one place, Wo
above erS, ab Elected with con-
St. Paul's de-
l,
e
r
happen to be most weak, 316.
Bladrid, the son of Rudlauddibras, builds
Caerbadus, or Bath, 479
leduno, one in the number of the ancient
British kings, -
Blºubrams, his excellency in music, 482.
Blindness, instances of men of worth af.
flicted with, 926.
Boadicea, the wife of Prasutagus, together
with her daughters, abused by the Roman
Soldiers, . Commands in chief in the
ritish army against the Romans, 492
Wanquished by Suetonius, supposed to
have poisoner herselſ, 493
Boſlin, though, a papist, affirms presbyte-
rian church-discipline to be best, 48
Bonomattai, Benedict, letters to, 953.
onosus, endeavouring to make himself
emperor, but vanquished by Probus,
hangs himself. 498. A sarcasm on his
- neSS, a
Books, the heinous crime of killing good
3. - me good, some bad; left to
ach man's discretion,
pists suffered to be sold and read, 565.
Bordelloes, author's defence from the ac-
cusation of frequenting them, 80
Boris procures the death of the emperor of
Russia, and then ascends the throne, ,
575 His method to procure the people's
§
of a tyrant,40
Arminians, their tenets, 563
Armorica in France, peopled by Britons
r
- nC Saxons, 5
Army, English, offered the spoil of London,
if they would destroy the parliament, 2si
- £uld ilſle1) he supreme
magistrates recommended to them, 439
Aron, a British martyr under Dioclesian,
the Lacedenomans, 385 His definition
ht, 406.
Arthur, the victory at Badon-hill, by some
cribed to him, which by others is attri-
mbrose, 510. Wilo he was,
and whether, the author of such famous
acts as are related of htm, tº. J
Artis Logica plenior Institutio, 861.
Arviragus, engaging against Claudius,
keeps up the §ºttiè to victor , by per-
souáting his slain brother §§
Ascham, Anthomy, sent as agent to Spain,
from the English commonwealth, 588.
the king of Spain
against his murdercrs, 591.
As Saracus, a Trojan prince, joins with
13rutus against Påndrásus, 477.
Assembly of divines, Tract of divorce ad-
resse lém, I?
Allºnasius, his notion concerning kings,
J.
Athelstan, the son of King Edward the
elder, by a concubine, solemnly crowned
at Kingston upon Thames, 538. The con-
spiracy of one Alfred and his accompluges
gainst him discovered, il. He gives his
th. The Story of his
brother Edwin, questio
ble, ib. 539. H
i is buried at
Malmsbury, 540. His character, ib.
Athens, their magistrates took notice only
of two sorts of writings, 105.
Atticots invade the south coast of Britain,
º)\JU,
Augustus, libels burnt, and the authors
punished by him, 105 -
illus Piauí its sent against Britain by the
- He overtly rows
Caractacus & us, .4S9.
very much put to it by the Britons, ib
Sends to Cl nus me over, and
joins with him, ib., Leaves the country
ºte, and returns triumphant to Romé,
i
Aurelius Conanus, a British king, one of
the five that is said to have reigned to-
ward the beginning of the Saxon hep-
tarchy, 513.
Austin, what he accounted a becoming
olace for Adam, 181, Allows fornication
a suſpicient cause for divorce, 214 is
opinion why Go a wife for
Adam, 225. A maintainer of the clergy's
right to tithes, 429, . Sent with others
from Rome, to preach the gospel to th
ered, 516
refusal, he sturs up Ethelfrid
against them, to the slaughter of 1200
Austria, archduke of see Leopold.
4 ºned by Marcus Aurelius,
Wint ar
Authorities, for the diſſerence of bishops
and presbyters, not to be depended on, 23.
R
Bacon, Sir Francis, his complaint of the
bishops' partiality in licensing pamph-
a;
CIS, 57.
Balliaus, John, letter to, 962.
APadon-hill, the ill improvement the British
made of their success there, 5
Bangor, monks of, live by their own labour
516. Go to a conſerence with Austin, ih
tism, sacrament oſ, seems cancelled by
the sign added thereto,46. -
Barclay, traduces the English as to their
religious tene
to have reigned in this is] De-
Birº, one of the first race of kings, ſabled
- and, 476.
scend; from Samothes, ib,
love, ºb.
Bowes, Sir Jerom, ambassador from Queen
Elizabeth to Russia, his reception and
megociations at that court,579–581.
Braclom, the power of kings limited, ac-
cording to him
Bradshaw, John, character of 937.
Bradshaw, Richard, sent as agent from the
English commonwealth, to Hamborough,
590,
Brandenburgh, Frederic William, marquis
oſ, Oliver's letters to him, 624, 625
Bras, Lord Henry de, letters to, 960,962
Breme, the Protector's letters to the consuls
and senators of that city, 605, 624.
Brennus and Belinus, the sons of Duri-
wallo Multnutius, contend about the
kingdom, 48l. er various conſlicts,
reconciled by their ofluvenila,
{!). They turn, their united forces into
foreign parts, but Belinus returns and
reigns long in peace, ib.
Britain, history of the aſſairs thereof alto-
r obscure and uncertain, until the
commg of Julius Cæsar, 475
before the flood probably, ib., By who
first peopled, 476. Named first Sāmothea
Tom Samothes, ib. Next Albion, an
Fruitſul of courageous men,
but not of able governors, 503,
Britomarus, mentioned by Florus, a
7.
l,
f
Briton, 481. - -
Britons, about forty years without a king,
after the Romans quitted the island,396.
Stoutly oppose Cæsar, at his landing,
484. Oſſer him terms of peace, it, Their
manner of fighting, 485, 486
f
terms O
customs, ib. 488
a
r
e
the Roman jurisdiction by
the emperor Honorius, not able to defend
them against their enemies, 501. Agai
supplicate Honorius for aid, who spares
, them a Roman legi - md again
uthulſ, 513
tally vanquish Keaulin, ib. Āre put to
ſlight by Kenwalk, 521.
Briſtenburyn, near Leyden, built or seized
on by the Britons in their escape from
Hengist, 508
Britto, named among the four sons of His-
non, sprung of Japllet, and from him the
Britons said to be derived, 476.
Brook, Lord, for toleration, 117. .
Brownists, who are so, according to Sal-
S. 385.
Brutus, said to be descended from Edeas
a Trojan prince, etirim
Greece after having unfortunately killed
1.
his father, he deluvers his countrymen
from the bondage of Pandrasus, 477.
Marries º eldest daughter of
Pandrasus, ºb, Lands upon a desert
- S vio
rius Pictus, ib Arrives in this island,
Builds Troia Nova, now London, ib. Dies
and is buricq there, ib.
Brutus surnamed Greenshield, succeeds
Ebranc, and gives battle to Brunchildis,
{R}.
Bucer, Martin, testimonies of learned men
concerning him, 159, . His opinion
- iy embraced by the
61. His treatise
of divorce dedicated to Edward VI., 164.
Remarkable conclusion of his treatise of
divorce, 173.
*śg. censured as an historian, 501,
515, 5
with Corineus, 4 G º:
lº.
i
2, -
Buckingham, duke of accused of poisoning
Kung James the first, 277
Bºhed, reduces the north Welsh to obe-
ence, ar Ethelswida the
daughter of King ºthelwolf, ib. Driven
out of his kingdom by the Dames, he ſlees
ome, where dying, he is buried in
t
O
C
Cadwallom, see Iſedivalla.
Caesar, the killing, him commended as a
glorious action . Tullius, 382, 390,
ee ºf tº Ettºs Cºsgrº.
Caius Sidius Geta, behaves limself valiant-
ly against the Britons, 489.
Caius Polusenus, sent into Britain by Cæ-
sar, to make discovery of the country and
INDEX.
Charity, the fulfilling of the law, 122--and
nutual jorbearance, means to abate
popery, 565. - - - -
chºiás iſ censured for dissolving parlia-
tºūtS, ; #terſ, Éevotion,
7
er, 3S4. With
#####"; 400. His flight to the
sle of Wight, 943.
Clift?'lés II. §§ he would never pardon
those who put his father to death, though
this was sáith to be his father's dying in-
junction, 939.
harles V, how he deceived many German
cities, 305.
Charles Gustavus, king of Sweden, letters
from Oliver to, 604,605,007, 61J,
618, 619, 624, 628, 633, Fr -
ctor, 634, 635. From the parliament
ed, 637,
Chastily, the defence of it recommended,
Chaucer, his character of the priests of his
time, I
3 x ~ y A. &.
Cheek, Sir John, his testimony concerning
artin Bucer, 159. --
herin, an ancient British king, 4S
Christ, llis method of instructing
. His manner of teaching, 223.
ercised force but once, 421.
Christenings, reasons against taking fees
for them, -
Christiern, king of Denmark, his bloody
revenge, 2:32, • * *
Christian faith, received in Britain by King
Lucius, 496. Said to have been preachéâ
by Faganus and Deruvianus, ib. Oth
say long before by Simon Zelotes,
Joseph of Arimathea, ië. Upon what oc-
ion preached to the Saxons, 514,
Christians, primitive, all things in common
among them, 203. Their behaviour to
tyrants, 373.
Christina, queen of Sweden, letter to her
from the English commonwealth, 593.
2.
men, $3.
Never ex-
erS
Chrysanthus, the son of Marcianus a bishop,
eputy of Britain by Theodosius,
Chrysostom, St. was an admirer of Aris-
tophanes, 105. is explanation of S
Paul's epistle relating to obedience to the
igher powers, 362,396.
Church, Öf the Reformation of the Disci-
- , in England, and the causes that
uted it, l. The likeliest means
to remove hirelings out of the, 423
Church, not to be reformed while governed
y prelates, S constitution and
fabric set out in the prophecy of Ezekiel,
- lèn able o her great work
upon the unforced obedience of men, it
argues a divinity about her, 47. Her
humility procures her the greatest re-
spect, ib, Design of the prelates in call-
ing the church Our mother, 72, Demands
our obedience when she holds to the rules
cripture, 329. Excommunicates not
to destruction, 422. r; ot. Ce3SQ to
persecute till it ceases to be mercenary,
t
Church of England, honours and prefer.
ments should not be the incitements to
ice, 70, 71. Difference between
the church of Rome and her, 330. ain-
tatus that the word of God is the rule of
º religion, and rejects implicit faith,
*Jüº.
Church-discipline,
naan's invention, 31.
Church-government, its form prescribed in
the gospel, . Not to be pattermed
Its government by pre-
lates fosters, papists and idolaters, q0,
orrupted, estate both the cause
tūmūlt and civil wars, 41. Its functions
to be free and open to any christian man,
ſ
ºngerous to be left to
Churchmen, sometimes preach their own
follies, not the gos Mime-servers,
Cove leir deficien -
* ebrew learning,
º, 93. Their weakness, in calling on the
civil magistrate to assist them, śs. B
whom to be maintained, 430, Lived at
first upon the benevolenče of their hear-
erS, 434.
|
n
Cicero, an enemy to tyranny, 350. Ap,
roves the killing of Caesar, 3S2, 390. Af.
irms that all power proceeds from the
people, 395,

Caligula, a Roman emperor, his expedi-
tion against Britain, 488.
Calvin, and Beza, the dissolvers of episco-
Yacy at Geneva, 25. -
Călvinists, taxed with making God the
author of sin, 563.
Camalodunum, or Maldon, the chief seaf
eline, 488. Made a Roman co-
}ony, 490, 491
Camber, one of the sons of Brutus, has
d to him Cambria or Wales, 478.
niversity,
hded by Sigebert
lèS, 5
- be
king of the East.
explanation of St. Paul's
manner of speaking, 210. .
Canterbury, by whom built, 479. Partly
aken and burnt by the Danes, 547. -
Canute, son of Swamé, chosen king aſter his
ather's death by the Danish army and
eet, 548. Driven back to his ships by
Ethelred, ib. Returns with a great army
+. nmark, accompanied with Jº
20
$
Cameron,
man king of Sweden, and Olav of Nor
way, ib. ttacks London, but is re-
ulsed, 549. Divides the kingdom with
Edmund, by agreement, ib., Aſter Ed-
1S cen-
is remarkable instance of the
weakness of kings, 552,
cº one in the Čatalogue of the ancient
British kings, 482.
Capoirus, another of the same number,
Caractacus, the youngest, son of Cunobe-
ine, succeeds in the º 4SS, IS
eil fºr 1
b. His spe t; Oſ,
it. By the bravelless of his carriage, he
obtains pardon ſor himself and aï'his
Carantsius, grown rich with piracy, pos-
sesses himself of this island, 498. He
fortifies the wall of Severus, ib. In the
midst of the great preparations of Con-
stantius Chlorus against him, he is slain
by his friend Alectus, ib.
Carinus, sent by his father Carus the em-
peror, to §§ Britain, is overcome and
slain by Dioclesian, 498.
whom and when built, 479.
een of the Brigantes, de-
actacus bound to the Romans,
30. Deserts her husband Venutius, and
gives both herself and kingdom to Vello-
cătuş, one of his squires,
Carvilius, the first Roman
vorce, and why, 180,
Carvilius, a petty king in Britain, with
three others, assaults the Roman camp,
who sought di-
Carji, Mr. ( author of the comment on Job,)
remarks on his conduct as a licenser, 221,
Cassibelam, one of the sons of Heli, gains
the kingdom by common consent, 482.
- is brother's son, ib,
Caesar
e is deserted by
rinobantes, and why, 4S7. Yields
* - ies, and is buried at
: Ork, tú.
Cassius, how treated for killing Caligula,
Cataracta, an ancient city in Yorkshire,
burnt by Arnred a tyrant, 526.
Catellits, an ancient British king, 4S2,
Cathay, description of that country and in-
habitants, 572.
Cerdic, a Saxon prince, lands at Cerdic-
shore, and overthrows the Britons, 509,
Defeats their king Natanleod in a memo-
rable battle, 510, Founds the kingdom
of tº st Saxons, ib. See Rerdic.
Ceremonies, oppose the reason and end of
the gospel, .45. . Frustrate the end of
Christ's coming in the flesh
Chancelor, Ri
re, 578.
$3t. plmo
Chaplains, what they are, 324.
- **** -
Richard, his arrival at Moscow,
Cingetoria, a petty king in Britain, assaults
the Roman camp, 487. Is taken prisoner
y Cæsar, it',
Claudius, the emperor, is persuaded by
Bericus, though a Briton, to invade this
island, * ulus Plautius hither
with an army, ib. e comes over him-
self and joins with Plautius,
ſeats the Britons in a set battle, and takes
Camalodunum, ib. eturns hć,
leaving Plautius behind, ib. He has ex-
cessive honours decreed him by the se-
Clemgns Alearandrinus, no authority ſor
- - e presbyters, to be
is counsel to
y 1, 39.
Clergy, should tterns of temperance,
and teach us to contemn the world, 53.
ot to gap preferments,
69. Their condition in England, 930.
Clergy, British, their bad character by
ğs 512.
cliguellius, an ancient British king, 482.
lotius Albinus succeeds Pertinax in the
government of Britain for the Romans,
497. Is vanquished and slain in a battle
against Septimus Severus, i
Cloten, reigned king of Čornwall, 4Sſ).
Clotemus, an ancient British king, 482.
Choud, sometimes fiery, metimes
Ö $0.
bloody, seen over all England, 544,
Coillus, an ancient British king, 482. . .
Coilus, the son of Marius, leaves the king-
Om to Lucius, 496. -
Colasterion, a defence of the doctrine and
discipline of divorce, so called, 220.
other British kings, slain
Keaulin, and his son Cuthwin, 513.
tate of the whole realm, 543.
Or blazing star, seen to stream terribly
over England, and other parts of the
world, 559,
Contius of Arras, sent by Cæsar to make a
arty among the Britons, 484.
on modus, slain his own officers, de-
clared an enemy to his country, 383.
Commons, with the king, make a good par-
iament, 395, 39S. Their grant to K.
Richard II., and K. Henry IV., 400.
Commonwealth, of England, more equally
than any other civil govern-
, I7. Means proposed to heal the
ruptures in it,439. A free commonwealth
delineated, 441. Rea restablishing
{}{2, 442, &C. mes nearest to the go-
vernment recommended by Christ, 4.44.
Preferable to monarchy,455. . . ... -
Conanus, Aurelius, an ancient British king,
*
*} -
Condidan, a British king, vanquished and
slain, 513. - - -
Conscience, not to be forced in religious
Yūatters, 413, &c.
Constans, the emperor, put to death by the
christian soldiers, 373. Of a monk made
emperor, - educes Spain, ib.
placing Gerontius, is opposed by
and slaim, ib. -
Constantine, makes war upon Licinius, and
why, 37
rºſe th *
saluted emperor after his father's death,
499. His mother said to be Helena the
daughter of Coilus a British prince, ib,
is eldest son enjoys this island, ib,
common soldier of the same name saluted
emperor, 50l. By the valour of Erlebe-
cus and Gerontius, he gains in France as
far as Arles, ib., By the conduct of his
son Constans, and of Gerontius, he re-
duces all Spain, ib
by him, calls in the Vandals against him,
ib. Besieg y Constantius Comes, he
turns priest, is afterwards carried into
Italy, and put to death, ib,
Constantine, the son of Cador, sharply
weighed against by Gildas, 513. He
said to have murdered two young princes
of the blood royal, ib,
Constantine, king of Scotland, joining with
the panes and irish under Anlaf, is over-
thrown by Athelstam, 539
Constantius Chlorus sent against Carausius,
. Defea s, who is slain in the
battle, ib. Isacknowledged by the Britons
as their deliverer, 499. Divides the em-
ire with Galerius, ib. Dies at York, ib.
Constantius, the son of Constantine, over-
comes Magmentius, who contended with
him for the sole empire,499. .
3
t&-
him,
rº * - - - ºt. *
in-
tS
INDEX.
Consubstantiation, not a mortal error, 563.
Xontention, in ministers of the gospel,
Scarce allowable even for their own
rights, 423.
Copulation, no longer to be esteemed matri-
monial, than it is an effect of love, 185.
Cordeilla's sincere answer to her father,
begets his displeasure, 479. She is mar-
Tied to Agamippus, a king in Gaul, 480.
Slye receives §. father, rejected by his
other daughters, with most dutiful aſ-
ſection, ib. Restores him to his crown,
and reigns after him, ib., Vanquished,
deposed, and imprisoned by her two sis-
ters' Sons, ib.
Corineus, a Trojan commander, joins forces
with Brutus, 478. Slays Iulbertus, ib.
Arrives with Brutus in this island, ib.
Cornwall from him denominated falls to
lais lot, ib. Overcomes the giant Goema-
gog, ib.
Corinthians, governed by presbyters, 36.
Schism annong them not remedied by
episcopacy, ib,
Coronation- Oath, some words said to be
struck out of it, 409,
Covenant, what it enjoined, 268.
Council, General, what their power and
employment, 446. Should be perpetual,
ib, Instances of the perpetuity of such a
council amoug other states, ib.
Council, Saxon, of little authority, 224
Council of nobles and prelates at Calu in
Wiltshire, killed and maimed by the fall-
ing in of the room, where they sate, 543.
Council of State, their reply to the Danish
ambassadors, &c. 597.
Councils and Fathers, an entangled wood,
which papists love to fight in, 562.
Courland, duke of, Oliver's letter to him,
623,
Craig, John, his opinion of kings, 238.
Cranmer, and the other bishops, concur in
setting aside the princesses Mary and
lilizabeth, 3.
cº the first of the Mercian kingdom,
513.
Criminal, more just to try one by a court
of justice, than to butcher hinn without
trial, 344.
Crowns, a clerical debate about the right
shaving them, 521.
Cromwell, his actions compared with those
Of the earl of Ormond, 265. His State
letters, 603, 792. His character, 94-1.
Cuichelm, the West-Saxon, sen is Eumerus
to assassinate King Edwin, 517. Is bap-
tized in l)orchester, but dies the same
year, 519.
Cullen, council there, voted tithes to be
God's rent, 429,
ſupedagius, the son of Regan, deposeth
his aunt Cordeilla, 480. Shares the king-
dom with his cousin Marganus, is in-
vaded by him, meets him and overcomes
him, ib.
Cuneglas, a British king, reigns one of five
a little before the Saxons were settled,
513.
Cunobeline, see Kymbeline.
Cutha, helps his father Keaulin against
lºthelbert, 512.
Cuth red, king of the West-Saxons, joins
with lithelbald the Mercian, and gains
a victory over the Welsh, 525. He has a
fierce battle with lithelbald the Mercian,
which he not long survives, ib. A king
of Kent of the same name, 528
Cuthulſ, the brother of Keaulin, vanquishes
the Britons at Bedlanſord, and takes seve-
ral towns, 513.
Cuthwin, see Heau lin.
Cyprian, unwilling to act without the as-
sent of his assistant laics, 49. Episco-
|...} in his time, diſſerent from what it
has been since, 58.
D
Danaus, the story of him and his fifty
daughters, 380.
Danes, first appear in the west, 526. They
slay the king's gatherer of customs, ib.
Landing at Lindisfarne in Yorkshire,
they pillage that monastery, 527. At-
tempting to spoil another monastery, they
are cut off by the English, ib. , Waste and
destroy Northumberland, 529. They
waste Shepey in Kent, and engage with
Ecbert, near the river Carr, ib. Are put
to ſlight by Ecbert, 530. Their various
success in the reign of lºthelwolf, ib. &c.
Many great battles between them allº!
4
the English in the reign of Ethelred,
532. Their whole army being defeated,
they are brought to terms by King Alfred,
534. In the same king's reign, several
vast fleets of Dames arrive with fresh sup-
plies, ib. 535. Many thousands destroyed
at Colchester, and in their retreat from
Maldon, 537. A vast army of them over-
thrown by King Athelstan, 539, Massa-
cred by the Euglish in all parts of the
land in the reign of King Ethelred, 545.
I) a mish ambassadors, answers to them
from the council of state, 597.
J)anius, reckoned among the ancient Bri-
tish kings, 4S1.
Dantzick, complained of, for imposing a
tribute on the lºnglish merchants, for re-
lief of the king of Scots, 592. Oliver's
letter to the consuls and Senators of that
republic, 623.
David, his exclamation in the 51st Psalm
explained, 234. Absolved by God him-
self from the guilt of his sin, 355. His
conduct towards Saul accounted for,
368. Compared with King Charles, 371.
officatio n, tennarks on one to our Saviour,
7
Dee, John, the mathematician, invited to
Moscow, 581.
J)efence of the people of Fngland against
Salmasius, 338. In the original Latin,
649, Second, against an anonymous
writer, 910. In the original Latin, 707.
Of the author against Alexander More,
in Latin, 733.
Deira, kingdom of, in Northumberland,
set up by Alla, the West-Saxon, 512, 513.
Demetrius Evanovich, emperor of Russia,
an impostor, dragged out of his bed, and
pulled to pieces, 57.5.
Denmark, king of, see Frederick III.
Deodate, Charles, letters to, 9.52, 954.
J)eruvianus, see ſºaga mus.
Digression, concerning the affairs of church
and state, in 1631, 502, &c.
Dimothus, abbot of Bangor, his speech to
bishop Austin, 516.
Dioclesian, a king of Syria, and his fifty
daughters, said to have been driven upon
this island, 476.
Dioclesian, the emperor, persecuted his
christian subjects, 499.
Diodorus, his account how the Ethiopians
punish criminals, 379.--of the succession
to kingdoms, 391,
Diogenes, his delineation of a king, 380.
Dionysius Alexandrinus, commanded in
a vision to read any books whatever,
K07
Dis, the first peopler of this island, as some
fabulously affirm, the same with Samo-
thes, 476.
Disciples of Christ, their saying relating to
marriage, explained, 207.
Discipline, in the church, necessary to re-
move disorder, 29. Its definitive decrees
to be speedy, but the execution of rigour
slow, 47.
Dispensation, what it is, 141.
Divines, advice to them not to be disturb-
ers of civil affairs, 242.
Divorce, arguments for it, addressed to the
parliament and assembly, 120, &c. Jn-
disposition, unfitness, or contrariety of
mind, a better reason for it than natural
frigidity, 125. Reasons for it, 126–130,
133–135. An idolatrous heretic to be di-
vorced, when no hope of conversion, 130.
To prohibit divorce sought for natural
causes, is against nature, 133. Christ
neither did nor could abrogate the law
of divorce, 136, Permitted for hardness
of heart, not to be understood by the
common exposition, 137. How Moses
allowed of it, 143. The law of divorce
not the premises of a succeeding law,
145. A law of moral equity, 146 Not
permitted, from the custom of lºgypt,
147. Moses gave not this law unwill-
ingly, ib. Not given for wives only,
149 Christ's sentence concerning it, how
to be expounded, 150. To be tried by
conscience, 155. Not to be restrained by
law, 157. Will occasion few inconveni-
ences, ib. No inlet to licence and con-
fusion, 189. The prohibition of it avails
to no good end, 192. Either never esta-
blished or never abolished, 196. Lawful
to Christians for many causes equal to
adultery, 216. Maintained by Wickliff,
Luther, and Melancthom, 217. By lºras-
mus, Bucer, and Fagius, ib. By Peter
Martyr, Beza, and others, 217-219. What
the ancient churches thought of divorce,
166. St. Paul's words concerning it, ex-
plained, 168. Commanded to certain
men, ib. Being permitted to God's an-
cient people, it belongs also to Christians,
ib. Allowed by Christ for other causes
beside adultery, 170. For what cause
permitted by the civil law, ib. Allowed
§ christian emperors, in case of mutual
consent, 172. W. permitted to the Jews,
224. Why Milton wrote on the subject,
934.
Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, 120.
Judgment of Martin Bucer, concerning,
159. l)efence of that tract, 2:20, &c. Ar
gunnents against it refuted, 222, &c.
I) omitiam, the killing of him commended
by Pliny, 382.
Donaldus, said to have headed the Caledo-
nians against Septimius Severus, 498.
Donaldus, king of Scotland, brought to
hard conditions by Osbert and Ella, kings
of Northumberland, 531.
Dou, nam, bishop, his opinion of the oppo-
sers of the episcopal government, 63.
Druids, falsely .# Out of Caesar to
have forbidden the Britons to write their
memorable deeds, 475. Uttering direful
prayers, astonish the Romans, 491. Their
destruction in the isle of Anglesey, an-
ciently Mona, ib.
Druis, the third from Samothes, fabulously
written the most ancient king in this
island, 476
Drunkenness, how to be prevented, 103.
Duina, river, account of its fall into the Sea
at Archangel, 568.
Dunstan, sent by the nobles to reprove
King lºdwy, for his luxury, 541. Banished
by the king, and his monastery rifled, ib.
Recalled by King Edgar, ib. His mira-
culous escape when the rest of the comm-
pany were killed by the fall of a house,
543. His saying of Ethelred, at the time
of his being baptized, 544. His death and
character, ib.
Dumu-allo Molmutius, son of Clotem, king
of Cornwall, reduces the whole island
into a monarchy, 480. Said to be the first
British king that wore a crown of gold,
ib. Establishes the Molmutine laws, ib.
Durstus, king of the Picts, said to be slain
by the joint forces of the Britons and
Romans, 504.
Dutch, summary of the damages received
from them by the East-ludia company,
602, 603.
E
Eadwald falls back to heathemism, 516.
Runs distracted, but afterwards returns
to his right mind and faith, 517. By what
means it happened, ib. . He gives his
sister Edelburga in marriage to lºdwin,
ib. I.eaves his son Ercombert to suc-
ceed, 519.
Eadbert, shares with his two brothers in
the kingdom of Kent, 524. His death,
525. Eadbert, king of Northumberland,
after Kelwolf, wars against the Picts, ib.
Joins with Umust, king of the Picts,
against the Britons in Cumberland, ib.
Forsakes his crown for a monk's hood, ib.
Eadbright, usurpiug the kingdom of Kent,
and contending with Kenulph the Mer-
cian, is taking prisoner, 527.
Eadburga, by chance poisons her husband
Birthric, with a cup which she had pre-
pared for another, 528, . The choice pro-
posed to her by Charles the great, to
whom she ſled, ib. He assigns her a rich
monastery to dwell in as abbess, ib., De-
tected of unchastity, she is expelled, ib.
And dies in beggary at Pavia, ib.
Eandred, son of Earldulf, reigns 30 years
king of Northumberland, after Alfwold,
the usurper, 528. Becomes tributary to
Ecbert, 529.
Eanfrid, the son of Edwin, converted and
baptized, 518.
Eanfrid, the son of Ethelſrid, succeeds in
the kingdom of Bernicia, 519. Slain, ih.
Eardulf, supposed to have been slain by
Ethelred, 527. Is made king of the Nor-
thumbrians, in York, aſter Osbald, ib.
In a war raised against him by his peo-
ple, he gets the victory, ib. 1)riven out
of his kingdom by Alfwold, 528.
Earth, whºle, inhabited before the ſlood,
475,
East-Angles, kingdom of by whom erect-
ed, 510. Reclaimed to Christianity, 519.
East-India Company, English, summary of
their damages from the Dutch, 602, 603.
INDEX.
East-Saron, kingdom, by whom began,
510. The people converted by Melitus,
515. They º their bishop, and re-
nounce their faith, 516, 517. Are recon-
verted by means of Oswi, 520.
Ebranc, succeeds his ſather Mempricius, in
the kingdom of Britain, 479. Builds Caer-
Ebranc, now York, and other places, ib.
Ecbert, succeeds his father Ercornbert, in
the kingdom of Kent, 521. Dying, leaves
a suspicion of having slain his uncle's
Sons, Ecbert and Egelbright, ib.
Ecbert, of the West-Saxon lineage, flees
from Birthric's suspicion to Offa, and
thence into France, 527. After Birthric's
decease is recalled, and with general ap-
blause made king, ib. He subdues the
3ritons of Cornwall and beyond Severn,
528. Overthrows Bernulf at Ellandune
or Wilton, ib. The East-Angles yield to
his sovereignty, ib., Drives Baldred,
king of Kent, out of his kingdom, and
causes Kent and other provinces to sub-
mit, ib. Withlaf, of Mercia, becomes
tributary to him, 529. Gives the Danes
battle by the river Carr, ib. In another
battle he puts to flight a great army of
thern, together with the Cornish men,
; ºie dies, and is buried at Winches-
ſer, a b.
Ecclesiastical Causes, Treatise of Civil
Power in, 412.
JEcclesiastical Jurisdiction, a pure tyranni-
cal forgery of the prelates, 47.
Ecferth, the son of Oſſa, the Mercian, with-
in four months ends his reign, 527.
Ecfrid, Oswi's eldest son, succeeds him in
the kingdom of Northumberland, 521.
Wins Lindsey from Wulfer the Mercian,
522. He wars against Ethelred, the bro-
ther of Wulfer, ib. He sends Bertus with
an army to subdue Ireland, 523. March-
ing against the Picts, is cut off with most
of his army, ib. His death revenged by
Bertfrid a Northumbrian captain, ib.
Eclipse of the sun, followed by a pestilence,
521. Another, obscuring almost his
whole orb, as with a black shield, 524.
Edan, a king of the Scots in Britain, put to
flight by Ethelfrid, 515.
Eielard, king of the West-Saxons, after
Ina, molested with the rebellion of his
kinsman Oswald, 525. Overcoming those
troubles, dies in peace, ib.
Edgar, the brother and successor of Edwy,
in the English monarchy, calls home
Dunstan from banishment, 541. His
prosperous reign, and favour towards the
monks, ib. His strict observance of
justice, and care to secure the nation
with a strong fleet, ib. He is homaged and
rowed down the river Dee, by eight
kings, 542, . His expostulation with Ke-
ned, king of Scotland, ib. He is cheated
by the treacherous duke Athelwold of
Elfrida, ib. Whom, avenging himself
upon the said duke, he marries, 542.
Attempting the chastity of a young lady
at Andover, is pleasantly deceived by
the mother, 543. Buried at Glaston ab-
bey, 542.
Edgar, surnamed Atheling, his right and
title to the crown of England, from his
grandfather Edmund Ironside, 557, 559.
Excluded by Harold, son of Earl God-
wim, 559.
Edilhere, the brother and successor of Anna,
in the kingdom of the East-Angles, slain
in a battle against Oswi, 521.
Ediſwalk, the South-Saxon, persuaded to
Christianity by Wulfer, 522.
Edith, Earl Godwin's daughter, eminent
for learning, 554. Is married to Edward
the Confessor, ib. Is harshly divorced
by him, 555.
Edmund, crowned king of the East-Angles,
at Bury, 531. His whole army put to
flight by the Danes, he is taken, bound to
a stake, and shot with arrows, 532.
Elm und, the brother and successor of Athel-
stam, in the English monarchy, frees
Mercia, and takes several towns from the
l)anes, 540. He drives Anlaf and Suth-
frid out of Northumberland, and Dum-
mail out of Cumberland, ib. The strange
manner of his death, ib.
Filmund, surnamed Ironside, the son of
Ethelred, set up by divers of the nobles
against Camute, 549. In several battles
against the Danes, he comes off for the
most part victorious, ib. At length con-
sents to divide the kingdom with Canute,
ib. His death thought to have been vio-
lent, 550.
Edred, third brother, and successor of
Athelstan, reduces the Northumbrians,
and puts an end to that kingdom, 541,
Dies in the flower of his age, and buried
at Winchester, ib.
Edric, the son of Edilwalk, king of South-
Saxons, slain by Kedwalla, the West-
Saxon, 522. -
Edric, a descendant of Ermenred, king of
the South-Saxons, 522. Died a violent
death and left his kingdom in disorder,
ib. 523. &
Edric, surnamed Streon, advanced by King
Ethelred, marries his daughter Edgitha,
546. He secretly murders two noblemen
whom he had invited to his lodging, 548.
He practises against the life of prince
Edmund, and revolts to the Danes, ib.
His cunning devices to hinder Edmund
in the prosecution of his victories against
Canute, 549. Is thought by some to have
been the contriver of King Edmund's
murder, 550. The government of the
Mercians conferred upon him, ib. Put to
death by Canute, and his head stuck upon
a pole, and set upon the highest tower in
London, ib.
Education, of youth, rules for the method
and progress of it, 98, &c., That of the
clergy generally at the public cost, 436.
E/ward the Confessor, his law relating to
the king's office, 397. Said to be the first
that cured the king's evil, 558. To have
cured blindness with the water wherein
he washed his hands, ib.
Edward VI. a committee appointed by him
to frame ecclesiastical laws, 219 Di-
vorce allowed by those laws for other
causes beside adultery, ib., Acknow-
ledges the common-prayer book to be
chiefly a translation of the mass book,
3.14.
Edward, the elder, son and successor of
King Alfred, 536. Has war with Ethel-
wald his kinsman, who stirs up the Danes
against him, ib. Builds Witham in ES-
sex, 537. He proves successful and po-
tent, divers princes and great command-
ers of the Danes submitting to him, ib.
538. The king and whole nation of Scot-
land, with divers other princes and peo-
ple, do him homage as their sovereign,
538, Dies at Farendon, ib. And buried
at Winchester, ib.
Edward, surnamed the younger, Edgar's
son, by his first wife Egelſleda, advanced
to the throne, 543. The contest in his
reign between the monks and secular
priests, ib. Great mischief done by the
alling of a house where the general
council for deciding the controversy was
held, ib. Inhumanly murdered by the
treachery of his step-mother Elfrida, ib,
Edward, son of Edmund Ironside, heir ap-
parent to the crown, dies at London, 557.
Edward, surnamed the Confessor, the son
of King Ethelred, by Emma, after Hardic-
nute's death is crowned at Winchester,
554. Seizes on the treasures of his mother
Queen Emma, ib. Marries Edith, Earl
Godwin's daughter, ib. Makes prepara-
tion against Magnus, king of Norway, ib.
But next year makes peace with Harold
Harvager, ib. He advances the Normans
in England, which proves of ill conse-
quence, ib. He is opposed by Earl God-
win, in the cause of Eustace of Boloign,
banishes the earl, and divorces his
daughter whom he had married, 555.
Entertains Duke William of Normandy,
ib. He sends Odo and Radulph, with a
fleet, against Godwin and his sons exer-
cising piracy, 556. Reconciliation at
length made, he restores the earl, his sons
and daughter, all to their former digmi-
ties, ib. He is said to have designed
Duke William of Normandy his suc-
cessor to the crown, 55S. Buried at West-
minster, ib. His character, ib.
Edwi, the son and successor of Edmund, is
Crowned at Kingston, 541. He banishes
bishop Dunstan, for reproving his wan-
tonness with Algiva, ib. The Mercians
and Northumbrians set up his brother
Edgar, ib. With grieſ whereof he ends
his days, and is buried at Winchester, ib.
Edwin, thrown out of the kingdom of Deira,
by Ethelfrid, 513, 517. Fleeing to Red-
wal, the East-Angle, for refuge, is defend-
ed against Ethelfrid, 517. He exceeds in
ower, and extent of dominion all before
im, ib., Marries Edelburga, the sister of
Eadbald, ib. He is wounded by an as-
Sassin from Cuichelm, ib. The strange
relation of his conversion to Christianity,
518. He persuades Eorpwald, the son of
Redwald, to embrace the christian faith,
ib. ... He is slain in a battle against Ked-
wallay, 519.
Edu'in, duke of the Mercians. See Morcar.
E//ptians, their conduct toward kings,
378.
Ei/ºon Basilike, whether written by King
Charles, 276. Answers to the several
heads of that tract : On the king's call-
ing his last parliament, ib. Upon the
earl of Straſſord's death, 280. Upon his
going to the house of , commons, 282.
Upon the insolency of the tumults, 284.
Upon the bill for triennial parliaments
287. Upon his retirement from West;
minster, 289. Upon the queen's depar
ture, 293. Upon his repulse at Hull, and
the fate of the Hothams, ib. Upon the
listing and raising of armies, 296. Upon
seizing the magazines, 299. Upon the
nineteen propositions, 302. On the re-
bellion in Ireland, 306. Upon the calling
in of the Scots, 309. Upon the covenant,
311. Upon the many jealousies, &c. 312.
Upon the ordinance against the com-
mon-prayer book, 314. Upon the diſſer-
ences in point of church government,
3.15. Upon the Uxbridge treaty, &c. 318.
Upon the various events of the war, 319.
Upon the reſormation of the times, 321.
Upon his letters taken and divulged, 322.
Upon his going to the Scots, 323. Upon
the Scots delivering the king to the Eng-
lish, 324. Upon denying him the attend-
ance of his chaplains, ib. Upon his pe-
nitential vows and meditations at Holm-
by, 325. Upon the army's surprisal of the
king at Holmby, 327. To the prince of
Wales, 328. Meditations on death, 332.
Eikonoclastes, Baron's preface to that tract,
271. The author's preface, 273. Reason
of calling it so, 275.
Ela nius, reckoned in the number of ancient
British kings, 481.
Eldadus, 4S2.
Eldol, 4S2.
Jºledawcus, 4S2.
Elfled, the sister of King Edward the elder,
her army of Mercians victorious against
the Welsh, 537. Takes Derby from the
Danes, ib. She dies at Tamworth, 538.
Elfred, the son of King Ethelred, by Emma,
betrayed by Earl Godwin, and cruelly
made away by Harold, 552.
Elfwald, succeeding Ethelred in Northum-
berland, is rebelled against by two of his
noblemen, Osbald and Athelheard, 526.
He is slain by the conspiracy of Siggan,
one of his nobles, ib.
Elf win, slain in a battle between his bro-
ther Ecfrid and Ethelred, 523.
Elid ure, his noble demeanour towards his
deposed brother, 482. After Archigallo's
death, he resumes the government, ib.
Eliud, reckoned in the number of ancient
British kings, 4S2.
Elizabeth, Queen,
reformation, 450.
Ella, the Saxon, lands with his three sons,
and beats the Britons in two battles, 509.
He and his son Cissa take Andredchester,
in Kent, by force, ib. Begins his king-
dom of the South-Saxons, ib,
Ella, a king in Northumberland, 531.
Elmer, a monk of Malmsbury, fitted wings
to his hands and feet, with which he flew
more than a furlong, 559.
Elwold, nephew of Ethelwald, reigns king
of the East-Angles, after Aldulf, 528.
Embassador. See Ambassador, also French,
Spanish, &c.
Emeric, succeeds Otho in the kingdom of
Kent, 512.
Emma, the daughter of Richard, duke of
Normandy, married first to King Ethel-
red, 545. Afterwards to Canute, 5:50, Ba-
nished by her son-in-law Harold, she re-
tires to Flanders, and is entertained by
Earl Baldwin, 552. Her treasures seized
on by her son King Edward, 554. She
dies, and is buried at Winchester, 55.5.
A tradition concerning her questioned, ib.
Emperors, of Rome, their custom to wor-
ship the people, 363
England, history of 475. * * *
English nation, their pronunciation of the
vowels censured, 99. Its character, ll:5.
The wits of Britain preferred before the
French by Julius Agricola, ib. , Had been
foremost in the Reformation, but for the
erverseness of the prelates, ib. Have
earnt their vices under kingly govern-
*
against presbyterian
INDEX.
ment, 362. When they began to imitate
the French in their Inanners, 555. Their
effeminacy and dissoluteness made them
an easy prey to William the Conqueror,
56). Their putting Charles the First to
death defended, 338, 919.
Englishmen, to be trusted in the election
of pastors, as well as in that of knights
and burgesses, 17. Their noble achieve-
ºuts lessened by monks and mechanics,
Ennia unus, an ancient British king, de-
posed, 482.
Eorpwald, the son of Redwald, king of the
East-Angles, persuaded to Christianity
by Edwin, 518. He is slain in fight by
Ricbert, a pagan, 519.
Epiphanius, º opinion of divorce, 214,
Episcopacy, answers to several objections
Telating to the inconveniences of abolish-
ing it, 18, 19. Insuſliciency of testimonies
for it from antiquity, and the fathers, 22.
Not to be deduced from the apostolical
times, 28. A mere child of ceremony,
33. Not recommended to the Corinthians
by St. Paul, as a remedy against schism,
36. See Prelacy, and Prelatical Episco-
pacy.
Erasmus, writes his treatise of divorce, for
the benefit of England, 174.
Erchen win, said to be the erector of the
kingdom of the East-Saxons, 510.
Ercombert, succeeds Iºadbald in the king-
dom of Kent, 519. Orders the destroying
of idols, ib. The first establisher of Lent
hºre, ib. Is succeeded by his son Ecbert,
52ſ.
Jºric, see Iric.
Ermenred, thought to have had more right
to the kingdom than Ercombert, 519.
Errours, of service to the attainment of
truth, 107.
Esculin, and Kentwin, the nephew and son
of Kinegil, said to have succeeded Ken-
walk in the government of the West-
Saxons, 522. Escwin joins battle with
Wulſer at Bedan haſde, ib.
Estrildis, beloved by Locrine, 478. With
º daughter Sabra thrown into a river,
79.
Ethelbald, king of Mercia, aſter Ina, com-
mands all the provinces on this side
Humber, 524. He takes the town of
Somerton, ib. Fraudulently assaults
part of Northumberland in Eadbert's ab-
Sence, 525. His encounter at BeOrford
with Cuthred the West-Saxon, ib. In a
fight at Secandune is slain, ib.
Ethelbald, and Ethelbert, share the English
Saxon kingdom between them after their
father lºthelwolf, 531. Ethelbald marries
Judith his father's widow, ib. Is buried
at Sherburn, ib.
Ethelbert, succeeds Emeric in the kingdom
of Kent, 512. He is defeated at Wibban-
dun by Keaulin and his son Cutha, ib.
Eularges his dominions from Kent to
Humber, 514. Civilly receives Austin
and his fellow preachers of the gospel, ib.
Is himself baptized, 515. Moved by Aus-
tin, he builds St. Peter's church in Can-
terbury, and endows it, ib. He builds
and endows St. Paul's church in London,
and the cathedral at Rochester, ib. His
death, 516.
Ethelbert, Eadbert, and Alric, succeed their
father Victred, in the kingdom of Kent,
524.
Ethelbert, or Prem. See Eadbright.
Ethelbert, the son of Ethelwolſ, enjoys the
whole kingdom to himself, 531. During
his reign, the Danes waste Kent, il). Is
buried with his brother at Sherburn,
532
* Jr j < *
Ethelfrid, succeeds Ethelric in the kingdom
of Northumberland, 514. He wastes the
Britons, 515. Overthrows Edan, king of
Scots, ib. In a battle at Westchester,
slays above 1200 monks, 516.
Ethelmund, and Weolstan, in a fight be-
tween the Worcestershire men and Wilt-
shire men, slain, 527.
Ethelred, succeeding his brother Wolſer in
the kingdom of Mercia, recovers Lindsey,
and other parts, 522. Invades the king-
dom of Kent, ib. A sore battle between
him and Ecfrid the Northumbrian, 523,
After the violent death of his queen, he
exchanges his crown for a monk's cowl,
ih.
Ethelred, the son of Mollo, the usurper Al-
cred being forsaken by the Northum-
brians and deposed, crowned in his stead,
52G. Having caused three of his noblemen
6
to be treacherously slain, is driven into
banishment, ib. After ten years' banish-
ment restored again, ib. He cruelly and
treacherously puts to death Oelf and
Oelſwin, the sons of Elfwald, formerly
king, ib. And afterwards Osred, who,
though shaven a monk, attempted again
upon the kingdom, ib. He marries Elfled
the daughter of Oſla, 527. And is mise-
rably slain by his people, ib.
Ethelred, the son of Eandred, driven out in
his 4th year, 530. Is reinstated, but
slain the 4th year after, ib.
Ethelred, the third son of Ethelwolf, the
third monarch of the English-Saxons, in-
fested with fresh invasions of the Danes,
532. He fights several great battles with
them, ib. 533. He dies in the 5th year of
his reign, and is buried at Winburn, 533.
Ethelred, the son of Edgar by Elfrida,
crowned at Kingston, 543. Dunstan at
his baptism presages ill of his future
Teign, 544, New invasions of the Danes,
and great spoils committed by them in
his reign, ib, &c. Being reduced to straits
by the Danes, he retires into Normandy,
§4. Is recalled by his people, and joy-
fully received, 548. Drives Canute the
Dane back to his ships, ib. He dies at
London, 549.
Ethelric, expels Edwin the son of Alla out
of the kingdom of Deira, 513.
Ethelwald, the son of Oswald, taking part
with the Mercians, withdraws his forces
from the field, 521.
Ethelwald, succeeds Edelhere in the king.
dom of the East-Angles, 521.
Ethelwald, surnamed Mollo, set up king of
the Northumbrians in the room of OS-
wulf, 525. He slays in battle Oswin, but
is set upon by Alcred, who assumes his
place, ib.
Ethelwolf, the second monarch of the Eng-
lish Saxons, of a mild nature, not war-
like, or ambitious, 530. He with his son
Ethelbald gives the Danes a total defeat
at Ak-Lea, or Oat-Lea, ib, l\edicates the
tenth of his whole kingdom towards the
maintenance of masses and psalms for his
Success against the Dames, ib, Goes to
Rome with his son Alfred, ib. Marries
Judith the daughter of Charles the Bald
of France, 531. He is driven by a con-
spiracy to consign half his kingdom to
his son Ethelbald, ib. Dies and is buried
at Winchester, ib.
Ethelwolf, earl of Berkshire, obtains a vic-
tory against the Danes at Englefield, 532,
In another battle is slain himself, ib.
Ethildrith, wife of Ecfrid, turns nun, and
made abbess of Ely, 523.
Ethiopians, their manner of punishing
criminals, 379.
Eumerus attempts to assassinate King Ed-
win, 517. Is put to death, ib.
Euripides, introduces Theseus king of
Athens speaking for the liberty of the
people, 385.
Eusebius, thought it difficult to tell who
were appointed bishops by the apostles,
23. His account of Papias, and his in-
fecting Gunaeus and other ecclesiastical
writers with his errors, 25.
Eustace, count of Boloign, revenging the
death of one of his servants, is set upon
by the citizens of Canterbury, 555. He
complains to King Edward, who takes
his part against the Canterburians, and
commands Earl Godwin against them,
but in vain, ib.
Eaccommunication, the proper use and de-
sign of it, 19. Leſt to the church as a
rough and cleansing medicine, 51.
Erhortation, to settle the pure worship of
God in his church, and justice in the
state, 17.
F
Factor for religion, his business, 113.
Faganus and J)eruvianus said to have
preached the gospel here, and to have
converted almost the whole island, 496.
Fagius Paulus, his opinion concerning
divorce, 155. Testimonies of ièarned
men concerning him, 160. In the same
sentiments with the author as to divorce,
162. Agrees with Martin Bucer, 217.
Famine, discord, and civil commotions
among the Britons, 505, Swane driven
by famine out of the land, 546.
Fashions, of the Romans imitated by the
Britons, a secret art to prepare them for
bondage, 494.
Fathers, prinitive, in what manner they
interpreted the words of Christ concern-
ing divorce, 212, &c.
Faustus, incestuously born of Vortimer
and his º lives a devout life in
Glamorganshire, 508.
Fencing and wrestling recommended to
youth, 101.
Ferdinand I1., grand duke of Tuscany, let-
ters from the English republic to him,
; 596, 598, 599. From Oliver, 625, 628,
31.
Fergus, king of Scots, said to be slain by
the joint forces of the Britons and the
Romans, 504.
Ferrea, the son of Gorbogudo, slain in fight
by his brother Porrex, 480.
Flaccus, the printer, account of him, 923.
Flattery, odious and contemptible to a gene-
Tous spirit, 552.
Fletcher, Dr. Giles, ambassador from Queen
Elizabeth to Russia, 581.
Forms of Prayer, not to be imposed, 93.
Fornication, what it is, 152, 153. A lawful
cause of divorce, 152. Why our Saviour
uses this word, 153. The Greek deficient
in explaining it, 205. To understand
rightly what it means, we should have
recourse to the Hebrew, ib.
Fortescue, his saying of a king of England,
% Quotation from his Laud, Leg. Ang.
2
France, see Lewis, king of
Francus, named among the four sons of
Histion, sprung of Japhet, and from him
the Francs said to be º 476.
Frederic III., king of Denmark, letters to
him from the council of state, 595, 599
From Oliver, 609, 612, 621. From the
parliament restored, 637,
Frederic, prince, heir of Norway, &c, letter
from the council of state to him, 600.
From Oliver, 625.
Freedom of writing, the good consequences
of it, 57. Not allowed while the prelates
had power to prevent it, 85. See Li-
censing.
French, according to Hottoman, at the first
institution of kingship, reserved a power
of choosing and deposing their princes,
374. Their manners and language when
introduced into ſºngland, 555.
French ambassador, Oliver's letter to the,
626
Friars, dying men persuaded by them to
leave their effects to the church, 65.
Fulgenius, reckoned among the ancient
British kings, 4S2. The commander in
chief of the Caledonians against Septi-
mius Severus, so called by Geoffrey of
Monumouth, 498.
G
Galgacus, heads the Britons against Julius
Agricola, 495.
Galileo, imprisoned by the inquisition, for
his notions in astronomy, 112, 113.
Garden and Gardener, an allegorical story
applied to the prelates, 69.
Genesis ii. 24. explained, 183,
Geneva, Oliver's letter to the consuls and
senators of that city, 610. .
Gentry, reason of their espousing prelates,
53
Geography, its study both profitable and
delightful, 567.
Germanus, in a public disputation at Veru-
lam, silences the chief of the Pelagians,
505. He is entreated by the Britons to
head them against the Picts and Saxons,
ib. He gains the victory by a religious
stratagem, ib. His death, 506,
Gerontius, a Briton, by his valour advances
the success of Constantine the usurper in
France and Spain, 501. Displaced by
him, he calls in the Pandals against
him, ib. Deserted by his soldiers, de
ſends himself valiantly with the slaugh-
ter of 300 of his enemies, ib. He kills his
wife Nonnichia, refusing to outlive him,
ib. Kills himself, ib.
Geruntius, the son of Elidure, not his im-
mediate successor, 482.
Gildas, his account of the Britons electing
and deposing their kings, 237. His bad
character of the Britons, 499, 506. Aſter
two eminent successes, 512.
Gill, Alexander, letters to, 950, 951.
Godu:im, earl of Kent, and the West-Saxons,
stand for Hardic nute, 552. He betrays
prince Elfred to Harold, ib, Being called
to account by Hardicnute, appeases him
with a very rich present, 553. Earnestly
INDEX.
exhorts Edward to take upon him the
crown of England, ib. Marries his daugh-
ter to King Edward, 554. Raises forces
in opposition to the French whom the
king favoured, 555. Is banished, ib. He
and his sons grow formidable, 556.
Coming up to London with his ships, a
reconciliation is suddenly made between
him and the king, ib. Sitting with the
king at table, he suddenly sinks down
dead, ib,
Gomer, the eldest son of Japhet, believed
the first that peopled these west and
northern climes, 476.
Gonorill, gains upon her father King Leir,
by dissimulation, 479. Is married to
Maglaunus duke of Albania, 480. Her
ingratitude to her father, ib.
Gorbogudo, or Gorbodego, succeeds Kin-
marcus in the kingdom, 480.
Gorbonian, succeeds Morindus in the king-
dom, 481. His justice and piety, ib.
Gospel, more favourable than the law, 139.
Imposes no subjection to tyranny, 358,
&c. Not contrary to reason and the law
of nations, 361.
Government, the reasons of its first esta-
blishment, 233. Kingly, the consequences
of readmitting it, 279.
Grammar, Latin, what it is, 457.
Gratianus Funarius, the father of Valen-
tinian, commander in chief of the Roman
armies in Britain, 499.
Gregory, archdeacon of Rome, and aſter-
ward pope, procures the sending over of
abbot Austin and others to preach the
gospel to the Saxons in this island, 514.
Griffin, prince of South Wales, committing
great spoil in Hereford, is pursued by
arold earl of Kent, 557. After a peace
concluded he breaks his faith, and re-
turns to hostility, ib., Is again reduced,
ib. Harold brings the Welsh to sub-
mission, ib. Lurking about the country,
he is taken and slain by Griffin, prince of
North Wales, ib.
Griffith, Dr. brief notes on his sermon, 453,
&c. Moves to be admitted physician to
church and state, 453. His address to
the general, ib., compared to Dr. Man-
waring, 454. . His geographical and his-
torical mistakes, 455.
Grotius, his observations concerning di-
*; 150, 152. His opinion concerning
it, 219.
Gwendolen, the daughter of Corineus, is
married to Locrine the son of Brutus,
478. Being divorced by him, gives him
battle, wherein he is slain, 479. Causes
Estrildis, whom Locrine had married, to
be thrown into a river with her daughter
Sabra, ib. Governs 15 years for her son
Madan, ib.
Guéniver, the wife of Arthur, kept from
him, in the town of Glaston, by Melvas
a British king, 511.
Guiderius, said to have been the son of
Cunobeline, and slain in a battle against
Claudius, 489.
Guitheline, succeeds his father Gurguntius
Barbirus in the kingdom, 481,
Gunhildis, the sister of Swane, with her
husband Earl Palingus, and her young
son, cruelly murdered, 545.
Guorangonus, a king of Kent, before it was
given to the Saxons, 507.
Guortimer, theson of Vortigern, endeavours
to drive out the Saxons, 508. His suc-
cess against them, ib. Dying he com-
mands his bones to be buried in the port
of Stonar, ib.
Gurguntius Barbirus, succeeds Relinus in
the kingdom, overcomes the Dame, and
§. encouragement to Bartholinus a
Spaniard to settle a plantation in Ireland,
481. Another ancient British king named
Gurguntius, 482.
Gurgustius, succeeds Rivallo in the king-
dom, 480.
Gyrtha, son of Earl Godwin, accompanies
his father into Flanders, together with
his brothers Tosti and Swane, 555. His
noble advice to his brother Harold as he
was ready to give battle to Duke William
of Normandy, 560. Is slain in the battle,
with his brother Harold and Leofwin,
ib.
Gytro, or Goth run, a Danish king, baptized
y the name of Athelstan, and received
out of the font by King Alfred, 534. The
kingdom of the East-Angles said to be
bestowed on him to hold of Alfred, ib.
H
Hamborough, letters to the senate of that
city, 587, 588, 590, 592, 59.5, 620, 624, 625.
Hanse Towns, letter to them from the
English commonwealth, 595.
Hardic mute, the son of Canute by Emma,
called over from Bruges, and receive as
king, 553. He calls Godwin and others
to account about the death of Elfred, ib.
Enraged at the citizens of Worcester for
killing his tax-gatherers, he sends an
army against them, and burns the city,
ib. Kindly receives and entertains his
half-brother Edward, ib. Eating and
drinking hard at a feast, he dies, and is
buried at Winchester, ib. Was a great
epicure, ib. ->
Hardness of heart, permitted to wicked
men, 202
Harold, surnamed Harefoot, the son of
Canute, elected king by Duke Leofric
and the Mercians, 552. He banishes his
mother-in-law Emma, ib. His perfidious-
ness and cruelty towards Elfred the son
of Ethelſred, ib. He dies, and is buried
at Winchester, 553.
Harold, son of Godwin, made earl of Kent,
and sent against prince Griffin of Wales,
557. He reduces him at last to the ut-
most extremity, ib. Being cast upon the
coast of Normandy, and brought to Duke
William, he promises his endeavours to
make him king of England, 558. He takes
the crown himself, 559. Puts off Duke
William, demanding it, with a slighting
answer, ib. Is invaded by his brother
Tosti, ib. By Harold Harfager, king of
Norway, whom he utterly overthrows
and slays, together with Tosti, ib. Is
invaded by Duke William of Normandy,
560. Is Overthrown at the battle of Hast-
ings, and slain together with his two
brothers Leofwin and Gyrtha, ib.
Hartlib, Mr. tract of education addressed
to him, 98.
Hayward, his account of the liturgy in
Edward VI.'s time, 59.
Heimbach, Peter, letters to, 959, 963.
Heli, an ancient British king, 4S2.
Help-meet, the meaning of that word, IS2.
Helvius, Pertina.r, succeeds Ulpius Mar-
cellus in the government of Britain, 497.
Hemingius, his definition of marriage, IS6.
His opinion concerning divorce, 218.
Hengist and Horsa, with an army, land in
the Isle of Thanet, 507. Hengist gains
advantages of Vortigern, by marrying
his daughter to him, ib. Takes on him
the kingly title, 50S. His several battles
against the Britons, ib, 509. His treache-
rous slaughter of three hundred British
grandees under pretence of treaty, 509.
His death, ib. His race ends with Alric,
527.
Hen minus, duke of Cornwal, marries Re-
gan, daughter of King Leir, 4S0.
Hºgy II., reigned together with his son,
Henry VIII., on what account he began
the reformation in this kingdom, 156.
He rebert, a Saxon earl, slain with most
part of his army, by the Danes, at Mere-
Swar, 530.
Heresy, according to the Greek, not a word
of evil note, 415. The word explained, ib.
Heresy, or false religion, defined, 562.
Popery the greatest heresy, ib.
Heretic, an idolatrous one ought to be di-
vorced, after a convenient space allowed
for conversion, 130. He who follows the
Scripture, to the best of his knowledge,
no heretic, 415. Who properly one, ib.
Herod, a great zealot for the Mosaic law,
; Taxed of injustice by our Saviour,
j, )*5.
Herod and Herodias, the story of them
from Josephus, 196.
Herodotus, his account of the behaviour of
the Egyptians to their kings, 378.
Hertford, built or repaired by King Ed-
ward, the son of Alfred, 537.
Hesse, William, Landgrave of, Oliver's
letter to him, 622.
Heth, Richard, 957.
Hewald, two priests of that name, cruelly
butchered by the Saxons, whom they
went to convert, 523.
Hierarchy, as dangerous to the crown as a
tetrarchy, or heptarchy, 16.
Hingwar and Hubba, two Danish brethren,
how they got footing by degrees in Eng.
land, 532.
IIirelings, the likeliest means to remove
them out of the church, 424, &c. Judas
the first, Simon Magus the next hireling,
425. How to be discovered, 436. Soon
frame themselves to the opinions of their
paymasters, 437. Are the cause of athe-
iSIn, ib.
Histion, said to be descended of Japhet,
and to have had four sons who peopled
the greatest part of Europe, 476.
Historians, English, defective, obscure,
and ſabulous, 524.
History, remarks on writing, 961,
Holland, states of, abjured obedience to
King Philip of Spain, 238. Letters from
Oliver to, 619, 627.
Holstein, Luke, letter to, 954.
Honorius, the emperor, sends aid twice to
the Britons, against their northern in-
Vaders, 504.
Horsa, the brother of Hengist, slain in the
Saxons' war against the Britons, 508. His
burial-place gave name to Horsted, a
town in Kent, ib.
Horsey, Jerom, agent in Russia, 580.
Hotham, Sir John, proclaimed a traitor by
King Charles, 294, Vindicated by the
arliament, ib. The king's remarks on
his fatal end, 295.
Hull, reasons for the parliament's securing
that place, 294. Petition to remove that
magazine to London, ib.
Humbean na and Albert, said by some to
have shared the kingdom of the East-
Angles, after one Elfwald, 528.
Humber river, whence namfed, 478.
Hus and Luther, the reformers before them
called the Poor Men of Lyons, 431.
Husband, or wife, whether at liberty to
marry again, 172.
I
Jago, or Lago, succeeds his uncle Gurgus-
tius in the kingdom, 480.
James I., his behaviour after the powder-
plot, 307. Compared with Solomon, 3.57.
Icenians, and Trinobantes, rise up in arms
against the Romans, 492.
Ida, the Saxon, begins the kingdom of
Bernicia in Northumberland, 511.
Idwallo, learns by his brother's ill success
to rule well, 4S2.
Idolatry, brought the heathen to heinous
transgressions, 566.
Idols, according to the papists, great means
to stir up pious thoughts and devotion,
564.
Jeroboam's episcopacy, a particoloured and
party-membered one, 35.
Jerome, St. his opinion, that custom only
was the Imaker of prelaty, 36. Anselm of
Canterbury, of the same opinion, ib.
Said to be whipped by the devil for read-
ing Cicero, 107. His behaviour in rela-
tion to Fabiola, 166. His explanation of
Matth. xix. 214.
Jews, had no more right than Christians to
a dispensation of the law relating to di-
vorce, 142. Did not learn the custom of
divorce in Egypt, 199. Their behaviour
to their kings, 368, &c.
Ignatius, epistles attributed to him, full of
corruptions, 24. Directs honouring the
bishop before the king, ib., His opinion
no warrant for the superiority of bishops
over presbyters, 28.
Ignorance and ecclesiastical thraldom, cau-
tion against them, 174.
Immanuel, duke of Savoy, Oliver's letter to
him in favour of his protestant subjects,
606
Immanuentius, slain by Cassibelan, 487
Immin, Eaba, and Eadbert, noblemen of
Mercia, throw off Oswi, and set up Wol-
fer, 521.
Imprimaturs, the number of them neces-
sary for the publication of a book where
the inquisition is established, 106.
Ina, succeeds Kedwalla in the kingdom of
the West-Saxons, 523. Marches into Kent
to demand satisfaction for the burning of
Mollo, ib. Is pacified by Victred with a
sum of money, and the delivering up of
the accessories, ib. Vanquishes Gerent,
king of Wales, ib. , Slays Kenwulf and
Albright, and vanquishes the East-Angles,
524. Dies at Rome, ib.
Independents, their tenets, 342. Commend-
ed for their firmness, 404 Reflected on
by Salmasius, ib. Their superiority over
the other parties, 9:37.
Innia unus, deposed for his ill courses, 482,
7
INDEX.
Job, the book of, a brief model of the epic
poem, 43.
John, the Baptist, in what sense called an
angel, 68.
''' King, Why deposed by his barons,
John III, elected king of Portugal, his en-
Connium, 583.
John IV., king of Portugal, letters to him,
Complaining of the taking and plundering
English vessels, 589. Complimented by
the council of state for favours received
from him, 590, I,etters to him from Oli-
Ver, 612, 614, 617, 619, 620, 633. From
Richard the protector, 636.
John Phillips; his answer to the amony-
lmous apology for the king and people,
Latin, 763.
Jones, Colonel Michael, his letter to the
earl of Ormond, 259.
Jones, Richard, letters to,950, 960, 961, 963.
Joseph of Arimathea, said to We first
ºached the christian faith in this island,
96.
Josephus, his opinion that aristocracy is
the best form of government, 348.
Jovinus sent deputy into this island by the
emperor Valentinian, 500.
Ireland inhabited and named Scotia by the
Scots, before the north of Britain had that
name, 500.
Irenaeus, cited to prove that Polycarp was
made bishop of Smyrna by the apóstles,
25. His testimony, when a boy, concern-
ing bishops, as a superior order to pres-
byters, not tº be regarded, ib. His ab-
surd notions of Eve and the Virgin Mary,
ib. If the patron of episcopacy to us, he
is the patron of idolatry to the papists, ib.
Iric, a Dame, made earl of Northumber-
land, 550. He is said by some to have
made war against Malcolm, king of Scots,
ib., His greatness suspected by Canute,
he is banished the realm, 551.
Judgments, for what cause sent, unknown
to man, 327.
Julian, the apostate, forbad Christians the
study of heathen learning, 107.
Julius Agricola, the emperor's lieutenant
in Britain, almost extirpates the Ordo-
vices, 493. Finishes the conquest of the
Isle of Mona, ib. His justice and pru-
dence in government, ib. He brings the
Britons to civility, arts, and an imitation
of the Roman ſashions, 494. He receives
triumphal honours from Titus, il). He
extends his conquests to Scotland, sub-
dues the Orcades and other Scotch
islands, ib. In several conflicts, comes
off victorious, 495. He is commanded
home by Domitian, 496.
Julius Cæsar, has intelligence that the
Britons are aiding to his enemies the
Gauls, 483. He sends Caius Volusenus
to discover the nature of the people, and
strength of the country, 484. Aſter him
Comius of Arras, to make a party among
the Britons, ib. The stout resistance he
meets with from them at his landing, ib,
He receives terms of peace from them,
ib. Loses a great part of his fleet, 4S5.
Defeats the Britons, brings them anew to
terms of peace, and sets sail for Belgia,
ib. The year following he lands his
army again, ib. He has a very sharp
dispute with the Britons near the Stowré,
in Kent, 486. Passes the Thames at
Coway stakes, near Oatlands, ib. He
receives terms of peace from the Trino-
bantes, 487. He brings Cassibelan to
terms, ib. He leaves the island, ib. Oſſers
to Venus, the patroness of his family, a
corslet of British pearls, ib. The killing
him approved of by the best men of that
age, 382.
Julius Frontinus, the emperor's lieutenant
in Britain, 493. Tames the Silures, a
warlike people, ib.
Julius Sererus, governs Britain under Ha-
drian the emperor, 496, Divides his
conquests here by a wall eighty miles
łong, as his usual manner was in other
frontiers, ib
Julius of Caerleon, a British martyr under
Dioclesian, 499. -
Junius, his wrong interpretation of a text,
87.
Jure, Thomas, Milton's tutor, letters to,
9.50, 9.) I.
Jurisdiction, in the church, most truly
named ecclesiastical censure, 47. The
nature and design of it, 68. -
Justice, how perverted by a train of cor-
ruptions, 296. Above all other things the
8
strongest, 333. Not in the king's power
to demy it to any man, 398.
Justin Martyr, his story of a Roman ma-
tron, 213.
Justin, the historian, his account of the
original of government, 391.
Justinian's law, the three general doctrines
Of it, 199.
K
Rearie, surrenders the kingdom of Mercia
to his kinsman Penda, 518.
Reawlin, succeeds his father Kenric, in the
kingdom of the West-Saxons, 512. He
and his son Cuthin slay three British
kings at leorham, 513. Gives the Britons
a very great rout at Fethamleage, ib.
Routed by the Britons at Wodensbeorth,
and chased out of his kingdoin, dies in
poverty, ib. 514.
Kedwallay, or Cadwallon, a British king,
joining with Penda the Mercian, slays
Edwin in battle, 519.
Redwalla, a West-Saxon prince, returned
from banishment, slays in fight Edelwalk,
the South-Saxon, and after that Edvic his
successor, 522. Going to the Isle of
Wight, he devotes the fourth part thereof
to holy uses, ib. The sons of Arwald,
king of that isle, slain by his order, ib.
He harasses the country of the South-
Saxons, ib. Is repelled by the Kentish
men, ib. Yet revenges the death of his
brother Mollo, ib. Going to Rome to be
baptized, he dies there about five weeks
after his baptism, 523.
Relred, the Son of Ethelred, succeeds Ken-
red in the Mercian kingdom, 523. Pos-
... ed with an evil spirit, dies in despair,
594.
Kelwulf, reigns king of the West-Saxons
aſter Keola, 515. Makes war upon the
South-Saxons, 516. Leaves the kingdom
to his brother's Sons, ib.
Kelwulf, adopted by Osric the Northum-
brian, to be his successor in the kingdom,
524. Becomes a monk in Lindisfarne, ib.
Kened, king of the Scots, does high honour
to King Edgar, 542. Receives great
favours from him, ib. Is challenged by
him upon some words let fall, but soon
pacifies him, ib.
I(emelm, succeeding in the kingdom of
Mercia, is murdered by order of his sister
Quendrid, 528.
Renred, the son of Wulſer, succeeds Ethel-
red in the Mercian kingdom, 523. He
goes to Rome, and is there shorn a monk,
ib. Anothet Kenred succeeds in the
kingdom of Northumberland, 524.
Kenric, the son of Kerdic, overthrows the
Britons that oppose him, 509. , Kills and
uts to flight many of the Britons at
Searesbirig, now Salisbury, 512. After-
ward at Beranvirig, now Banbury, ib.
Iſent win, a West-Saxon king, chases the
Welsh Britons to the Sea-shore, 522.
Renulf, has the kingdom of Mercia be-
queathed him by Ecſerth, 527. He leaves
behind him the praise of a virtuous reign,
528.
ICenwalk, succeeds his father Kineglls in
the kingdom of the West-Saxons, 520.
He is said to have discomfited the Britons
at Pen, in Somersetshire, 521. And giving
battle to Wulfer, to have taken him
prisoner, ib. Leaves the government to
Sexburga his wife, 522.
Renwulf, entitled Clito, slain by Ina the
West-Saxon, 524.
IKenwulf king of the West-Saxons.
J(in wºulf.
JGeola, the son of Cuthulſ, succeeds his uncle
Keaulin in the West-Saxon kingdom,
514.
Keolwulf, the brother of Kemulſ, the Mer-
cian, after one year's reign driven out by
Bernulf, a usurper, 528.
Keorle, overthrows the Danes at Wiggan-
beorch, 530.
ICerdic, a Saxon prince, lands at Kerdic-
shore, and overthrows the Britons, 509.
I)efeats their king Natanleod in a memo-
rable battle, 510. Founds the kingdom
of the West-Saxons, ib. He overthrows
the Britons twice at Kerdic's Ford, and
at Kerdic's Leage, ib.
Kim a rus, reckoned among the ancient
British kings, 48l.
Kinegils and Cuichelm, succeed Kelwulf
in the lºingdom of the West-Saxons, 516.
They make truce with Penda the Mer-
cian, 518. Are converted to the christian
See
faith, 519, Kineglls leaves his son Ken-
walk to succeed, 520.
I(ing, his state and person likened to Sam-
SOth, 54.
Jºing and a tyrant, the diſſerence between
them, 401, 921, 922.
I(ing of England, what actually makes one,
239. Has two superiors, the law and his
court of parliament, 292. As he can do
no wrong, so neither can he do right but
in his courts, 302.
Rings and Magistrates, tenure of 231.
Rings, to say they are accountable to none
but God, overturns all law and govern-
ment, 234. Their power originally con-
ferred on them, and chosen by the people,
ib. 235. Though strong in legions, yet
weak at arguments, 274. Their office to
See to the execution of the laws, 291.
First created by the parliament, 301.
Examples of kings deposed by the primi-
tive British church, 334. Christ no friend
to the absolute power of kings, 358.
Iſings, Hebrew ones, liable to be called in
Question for their actions, 352.
Rings, Scottish, no less than fifty, impri-
soned or put to death, 383.
I(ings, turning monks, applauded by monk-
ish Writers, 525.
J(ings-evil, by whom first cured, 558.
I(in marcus, succeeds Sisilius in the king-
dom, 480.
I(in wulf or Kenwulf, (Sigebert being
thrown out, and slain by a swineherd)
saluted king of the West-Saxons, 525.
Behaves himself valorously in several
battles against the Welsh, 526. Put to
the worst at Besington, by Oſſa the Mer-
cian, ib. Is routed and slain by Kineard,
whom he had commanded into banish-
ment, ib.
Knor, John, his deposing doctrine, 238, 268.
I(ymbeline, or Cunobeline, the successor of
Temuantius, said to be brought up in the
court of Augustus, 488. His chief seat
Camalodunum, or Maldon, ib.
L
Lacedemon, museless and unbookish, mind-
ed nothing but the feats of war, 105.
Lactantius, his opinion of divorce, 213.
Laity, by §ºf of many ancient prelates,
did participate in church offices, 49.
Language, its depravation portends the
ruin of a country, 953.
Laughter, the good properties of it, 84.
Lant of God, agreeable to the law of nature,
375.
Law, cannot permit, much less enact, per-
mission of sin, 137. That given by Moses,
just and pure, 199. Law designed to
prevent not restrain sin, 200. Superior
to governors, 361. Nothing to be ac-
counted law that is contrary to the law
of God, 397.
Lau's, common and civil, should be set free
from the vassalage and copyhold of the
clergy, 18. The ignorance and iniquity
Of the canon law, 127.
Lancyers, none in Russia, 570.
Laymen, the privilege of teaching anciently
permitted to them, 49.
Learning, what sort recommended to mi-
nisters, 436.
Learning and Arts, when began to flourish
among the Saxons, 521.
Leda, marquis of, letter from the council of
state to him, 602.
Leil, succeeds Brute Greenshield, and
builds Caerleil, 479.
Leir, King, his trial of his daughters' af.
fection, 479. Is restored to his crown by
his daughter Cordeilla, 480.
Lent, its first establishment in Britain, 519.
Leo, emperor, his law concerning divorce,
215. -
Leo of Aizema, letter to, 9.5S.
Leof a noted thief, kills king Edmund, 541.
Is hewed to pieces, ib.
Leofric, duke of Mercia, and Siward of
Northumberland, sent by Hardecnute
against the people of Worcester, 553. By
their counsel King Edward seizes on the
treasures of his mother, Queen lemma,
554. They raise forces for the king
against Earl Godwin, 555. Leofric's
death and character, 557.
Leofwin, son of Earl Godwin, after his
father's banishment, goes over with his
brother Harold into Ireland, 555. He and
Harold assist their father with a fleet
against King Edward, 556. He is slain
INDEX.
with his brothers Harold and Girtha in
the battle against William duke of Nor-
mandy, 560.
Leontius, bishop of Magnesia, his account
of bishops not to be depended on, 22, 23.
Léopold, archduke of Austria, letters to
him from the parliament, 589. From
Oliver, 633.
Letters, familiar, from the author to his
friends, 950–963. The same in Latin,
830–842,
Letters of State, in the name of the Parlia-
ment, 587, 637. The same in Latin, 777,
821. In the name of Oliver the Protector,
603. The same in Latin, 792. In the
name of Richard the Protector, 634. The
Same in Latin, 819.
Lewis, king of France, Oliver's letters to
him, 608, 610, 613, 615, 619, 621, 629, 630,
631,632. Letters to him from Richard the
Protector, 634, 636.
Liberty, fit only to be handled by just and
virtuous men, 30. True, what, 103. A
less number may counsel a greater to
retain their liberty, 450. Can be pre-
served only by virtue, 94.
Liberty, Christian, not to be meddled with
by civil magistrates, 413, 417,419.
Libraries, public, recommended, 437.
Licensers, the inconveniences attending
their office, I 10, 111,
Licensing, of books, crept out of the inqui-
sition, 104. Historical account of li-
censing, 105, 106. Not to be exempted
from the number of vain and impossible
attempts, 108. Conduces nothing to the
end for which it was framed, 109. Not
able to restrain a weekly libel against
parliament and city, 110. Italy and Spain
not bettered º the licensing of books,
ib. The manifest hurt it does, 111, &c.
The ill consequences of it, and discou-
ragement to learning, l 13. First put in
practice by antichristian malice and
mystery, 114.
Linceus, said to be the husband of one of
the feigned fifty daughters of Dioclesian,
king of Syria, 476, The only man saved
by his wife, when the rest of the fifty slew
their husbands, ib.
Litany, remarks on it, 94.
Liturgy, confesses the service of God to be
perfect freedom, 53. Reflections on the
use of it, 59. Remarks on the arguments
brought in deſence of it, 59–62. Detest-
ed as well as prelacy, 62. Reason of the
use of liturgies, ib. Arguments against
the use of then, 93. The inconveniences
of them, ib, Taken from the papal church,
94. Neither liturgy nor directory should
be imposed, 315.
I, ivy, praises the Romans for gaining their
liberty, 235. A good expósitor of the
rights of Roman kings, 381.
Locrine, the eldest son of Brutus, has the
middle part of this island called Loegria
for his share in the kingdom, 478.
Logica, Artis, plenior lnstitutio, 861.
Lollius Urbicus, draws a wall of turfs be-
tween the Frith of Dunbritton and Edin-
burgh, 496.
London, first called Troja Nova, afterward
Trinovantum, and said to be built by
Brutus, 478. Tower of, by whom built,
481. Enlarged, walled about, and named
from King Lud, 482. New named Au-
gusta, 500. With many of her inhabitants
by a sudden fire consumed, 527, 1)anes
winter there, 533. The city burnt, 544.
Loneliness, how indulgently God has pro-
vided against man's, 181, 182.
Lothair, succeeds his brother Ecbert in the
kingdom of Kent, 522. Dies of wounds
received in battle against Edric, ib,
Love, produces knowledge and virtue, 81.
The son of Penury, begot of Plenty, 128.
How parabled by the ancients, ib.
Lubec, Oliver's letter to the Senators and
consuls of that city, 625,
Lucius, a king in some part of Britain,
thought the first of any king in Europe
who received the christian faith, 496. Is
made the second by descent from Marius,
ib. After a long reign buried at Glou-
cester, ib.
Lucifer, the first prelate angel, 32.
Lucretius, his Epicurism, published the
second time by Cicero, 105.
Lud, walls about Trinovant, and calls it
Caer-Lud, Lud's town, 4S2.
Ludgate, whence named, 482.
Ludiken, the Mercian, going to avenge Ber-
nulf, is surprised by the East-Angles and
put to the sword, 529.
Lupicinus, sent over deputy into this island
by Julian the emperor, but soon recalled,
500.
Lupus, bishop of Troyes, assistant to Ger;
manus Of
the British church, 505.
Luther, a monk, one of the first reſormers,
74. His vehement writing against the
errors of the Roman church commended,
84.
Lutherams, an error charged upon them,
563.
Lycurgus, how he secured the crown of
Lacédemon to his family, 367. Makes
the power of the people superior to that
of the king, 385.
M
Madan, succeeds his father Locrine, 479.
Magistrates, civil, to be obeyed as God's
vicegerents, 34. Should take care of the
public sports and festival pastimes, 44.
Their particular and general end, 48.
Tenure of 231. Iºffeminate ones not fit
to govern, 293. Not to use force in re-
ligious matters, 414, 415, 421. Reasons
against their so doing, 419. Should See
that conscience be not inwardly violated,
421.
Maglaunus, duke of Albania, marries Go-
norill eldest daughter of King Leir, 480.
Maglocume, surnamed the Island Dragon,
one of the five that reigned toward the
beginning of the Saxon heptarchy, 513.
His wicked character, ib.
Magus, son and successor of Samothes,
whom some fable to have been the first
peopler of this island, 476.
Maimonides, his difference between the
kings of Israel and those of Judah, 352.
Malcolm, son of Kened king of Scots, falling
upon Northumberland, is utterly over-
thrown by Uthred, 549. Some say by
Iric, 550.
Malcolm, son of the Cumbrian king, made
king of Scotland in the room of Macbeth,
556.
Malcolm, king of Scotland, coming to visit
King Edward, swears brotherhood with
Tosti the Northumbrian, 557. Afterward
in his absence harasses Northumber-
land, ib.
Mandubratius, son of Immanuentius, fa-
voured by the Trinobantes against Cas-
Sibelan, 487.
Manifesto of the lord protector of England,
uxerre, in the reſormation of
liament from the encroachment of priests,
jl). See /) ivorce.
Martia, wiſe of King Guitheline, said to
have instituted the law called Marchen
Leage, 481.
Martin V., pope, the first that excommuni-
cated for reading heretical books, 105,
106.
Martinus, made deputy of the British pro-
vince, failing to kill Paulus, falls upon
his own sword, 499.
Martyr, Peter, his character of Martin
Bučer, 160. His opinion concerning di-
vorce, 217. *
Martyrdom, the nature of it explained, 330.
Martyrs, not to be relied on, 87.
Mary, queen of Scots, her death compared
with King Charles's, 402.
Massacre of Paris, owing to the peace
made by the protestants with Charles
IX., 242. Irish, more than 200,000 pro-
testants murdered in it, 264. ...
Matrimony, nothing more disturbs the
whole life of a Christian than an unfit
one, 127. See Marriage.
Matth. xix. 3, 4, &c. explained, 196.
Marimianus Herculeus, forced to conclude
a peace with Carausius, and yield him
Britain, 498.
Marimus, a Spaniard, usurping part of the
empire, is overcome at length and slain
by Theodosius, 500. Maximus, a friend
of Gerontius, is by him set up in Spain
against Constantine the usurper, 501: .
Mazarine, Cardinal, Oliver's letters to him,
609, 615, 630, 631, 632. Richard the Pro-
tector's, 634, 636, 637.
Medina Celi, duke of, letter of thanks to
him for his civil treatment of the Eng-
lish fleet, 591. -
Mellitus, Justus, and others, sent with Aus-
tin to the conversion of the Saxons, 515.
He converts the East-Saxons, ib. St.
Paul's church in London built for his
cathedral by Ethelred, as that of Roches-
ter for Justus, ib.
Mempricius, one of Brutus's council, per-
suádes him to hasten out of Greece,477.
Mempricius and Malim, succeed their father
Mādan in the kingdom, 479. , Mempricius
treacherously slays his brother, gets Sole
possession of the kingdom, reigns tyran-
nically, and is at last devoured by wolves,
ib.
Mercia, kingdom of, first ſounded by Crida,
513.
Mercian laws, by whom instituted, 48l.
Merianus, an ancient British king, 4S2.
&c. against the depredations of the Span-
iards, 638. In Latin, 823.
Marcus Aurelius, ready to lay down the
government, if the senate or people re-
quired it, 3SS.
Margamus, the son of Gonorill, deposes his
aunt Cordeilla, 480. Shares the kingdom
with his cousin Cunedagius, invades
him, but is met and overcome by him, ib.
Margamus, the son of Archigallo, a good
king, 4S2.
Marinaro, a learned Carmelite, why re-
proved by Cardinal Pool, 194.
Marius, the son of Arviragus, is said to
have overcome the Picts, and slain their
king Roderic, 496. -
Marriage, not properly so, where the most
honest end is wanting, 126. The fulfilling
of conjugal love and happiness, rather
than the remedy of lust, 127. Love and
peace in families broke by a forced con-
tinuance of matrimony, 129. May en-
danger the life of either party, 134. Not
a mere carnal coition, 13.5. Compared
with other covenants broken for the good
of men, ib. No more a command than
divorce, 140. The words of the institu-
tion, how to be understood, 144. The
miseries in marriage to be laid on unjust
laws, 154. Different definitions of it, 185
— IS7. The grievance of the mind more
to be regarded in it than that of the body,
ib. Called the covenant of God, 190.
'The ordering of it belongs to the civil
ower, 164, Popes by fraud and force
have got this power, ib. Means of pre-
serving it holy, and pure, 166. Allowed
by the ancient fathers, even after the vow
of single life, 167, Christ intended to
make no new laws relating to it, 168.
The properties of a true christian mar-
riage, 171. What crimes dissolve it, ib.
Expositions of the four chief places in
Scripture treating of 175. A civil ordi-
nance or household contract, 431. The
solemnizing of it recovered by the par-
Micah, his lamentation for the loss of his
gods, &c. 324, 325.
Military skill, its excellence consists in
readily submitting to commanders' or-
ders, 29. -
Militia, not to be disposed of without con-
sent of parliament, 301.
Milles, Hermann, letter to, 956.
Milton, the author, his account of himself,
SO, &c. 926, 933. Of his complaint in his
eyes, 95S.
Mimes, what they were, 77.
Minister, different from the magistrate, in
the excellence of his end, 50. Duties be-
longing to his office, ib. Whether the
people are judges of his ability, 92.
Ministers, have the power of binding and
loosing, 34. Their labours reflected on,
by licensing the press, 112. How distin-
guished in the primitive times from other
Christians, 437.
Ministers, Presbyterian, account of their
behaviour, when the bishops were preach-
ed down, 346.
Mimocan, an ancient British king, 4S2.
Mithridates, why he endeavoured to stir up
all princes against the Romans, 342.
Mollo, the brother of Kedwalla, pursued,
beset, and burnt in a house whither he
had fled for shelter, 522. His death re-
venged by his brother, ib.
Molmutine Lau's, what and by whom esta-
blished in England, 4S0.
Monarchy, said to have been first founded
by Nimrod, 336. The ill consequences of
readmitting it, 418, &c. *
Monk, General, letter to him concerning
the establishing of a free commonwealth,
41.
Monks, invented new ſetters to throw Qū
matrimony, 161. Dubious relaters in
civil matters, and very partial in ecclesi-
astic, 501. One thousand , one hundred
and fifty of them massacred, 516.
Morcar, the son of Algar, made earl of Nor-
thumberland in the room of Tosti, 558.
9
He and Edwin duke of the Mercians put
Tosti to flight, 559, They give battié to
Harold Harvager, king of Norway, but
are worsted, 560. They refuse to set up
Edgar, and at length swear fidelity to
Duke William of Normandy, 561.
Mordred, Arthua's nephew, said to have
gyen him in a battle his death wound,
*} lºº.
More, Alexander, Defence of the Author
against, 733. Account of him, 922.
Morindus, the sºn of Elanius by Tangues-
tela, a valiant man, but infinitely cruel,
. Is devoured by a sea monster, ib,
Mosco, fertility of the country between this
city and Yeraslave, 569, Said to be big-
ger than London, ib. Method of travel-
ling thence to the Caspian, ië, , Siege of
it raised, and peace made with the Poles,
by the mediation of King James, 576
Moscovitt, description of the empire, 56S.
Excessive cold in winter there, ºb. Suc-
§. of its dukes and emperors,
3, &C
Moses, instructed the Jews from the book
emesis, what sort of government they
were to be subject to, 29. Designed for
a lawgiver, but Christ came among us as
a teacher, 70. Offended with the pro-
fame speeches of Zimpora, sent her back
to her father, 131. Why he permitted a
bill of divorce, 151. An interpreter be-
tween God and the people, 356. Did not
exercise an arbitrary power, 360.
Moſt lin, Dr. remarks on his argument for
the continuance of bishops in the English
church, 74.
Aſolinittius. See Dunwallo.
Music, recommended to youth, 101.
N
Massaw, house of hinted at, as dangerous
o a commonwealth, 4:
Matanlead, or Ayagaleod, supposed the same
with Uther Pendragon, -
Nations, at liberty to erect what form of
overnment they like, 233, 348. Their
cginning why obscure, 475
Nazianzen, his wish that prelacy had never
317.
|
Nature, her zodiac and annual circuit over
, 208
Aſero, had no right to the succession, 362.
Yomparison between him and King
Charles, 384.
A'etherlands, saved from ruin by not trust-
ing the Spanish king, 242.
IVonnichia, wife of Gerontius, her resolu-
tion, and death, 50p. Is highly praised
Sozomen, ii).
Nimror!, j by ancient tradition the
first that founded monarchy,
Ninnius, an author reputed to have lived
ove 1000 years ago, 476,
Aſorway, prince Frederic heir of, the coun-
cil of state's letter to him, 606. Oliver's
letter to him, 625.
Newgate, when built, 482, note.
O
Obedience, defined 239.
cła and Whissa, Hengist the son and ne-
phew of, called over by him, 507 y
ossess themselves nſ Northumberland it.
offir", Conde de, Oliver's letter to him,
Oenº, one in the catalogue of ancient
British kings, 482.
Otºric or Qisc, succeeds his father Hengist
in the kingdom of Kent, and ſrom him
the Kentish kings called Oiscings, 509,
He is otherwise called Esca, 512
Offa, the son of Siger, quits his kingdom of
the East-Saxons to go to Rome and turn
monk, 523, 525, -
Offa, defeating and slaying Beornred, be-
comes king of Mercia after Ethelbald,
525. He subdues a neighbouring people
called Hastings, 526 Gets the victory of
ic king of Kent at Occanſord, ill. In-
viting Ethelbrite king of the East-Angles
to his palace, he , there, treacherously
causes him to be beheaded, and seizes
his kingdom, 527. Had at first enmity,
aſterwards league, with Charles the Great,
it. He grants a perpetual tribute to the
pope out of every houſe in his kingdom,
ib. He draws a trench of wondrous
length between Mercia and the British
confines. IIis death, ib.
10
INDEX.
Oldenburgh, count of, letter from the coun-
gll of state to him, 600. Letters from
iver to him, 603
Oldenburgh, Henry, letters to, 957, 959,
5I, 903.
}
Oliver, the Protector, letters written in his
name to several princes and potentates,
04. atim, 792, &c. His manifesto
against the depredations of the Spaniards,
639. In in, 823
- Th, Šºš,
Ordination, whether the order of bishops
- up to perform it, 68 Preach-
ing as holy, and far more excellent, ºb.
Oriſſen, while a layman, expounded the
Scriptures publicly, 49. Permitted wo-
men to marry after divorce, 167,213,
Orestes, condemned to death for killing his
er, 334.
Ormond, earl of articles between him and
he Irish, 247. His letter to Colonel
ones, 259. , His proclamation of King
Charles II, in Ireland, 260. Remarks on
the articles, &c. 262.
Osbald, a nobleman, exalted to the throne
of the Northumbrians after Ethelred, 527,
Osbert, Teigns in Northumberland after the
fast of ti 530. -
Somer, 531.
Osfrid, and Eanfrid, the sons of Edwin,
COI) y aptized, 518 Osirid
slain, together with his father, in a battle
against Kedwalla, 519.
Osiris, slain by his brother Typhon, 378.
slac and Cheban, two Saxon earls, slaun
by Keaulin at Wibbandum, 512
Qsmund, kng of the South-Saxons, 52
& red, a child, succeeds Alfrid in the Nor-
thumbrian kingdom, 523 3. n by
his kindred, ſor his vicious liſe, 524
Osred, son of Alcred, advanced to the king
dom of Northumberland, after Elfwald,
is Sogn driven out again, 5 is taken
and forcibly shaven a monk at York, ib.
Osric, the son of Elſric, baptized by Pau-
}inus, succeeds in the kingdom of Deira,
519 Turns apostate, and is slain by an
eruption of Kedwalla, out of a besieged
town, 25. Another Osric succeeds Ken-
Ted the second, 524
Osric, earl of Southampton, and Ethelwolf
of Berkshire, beat the Danes back to their
525.
1.
Ostorints, sent vicepraetor into Britain, in
the room of Plautius, the praetor, 4$9.
Routs the Britons, and improves his vic-
tory to the best advantage, ib. Gives
the government of several cities to Cogi-
dunis, a British king, his ally, 490. De-
feats the Silures under the leading of
Caractacus, ib, Has afterwards `bad
success, ib. -
Ostrid, the wife of Ethelred, killed by her
own nobles, 523 -
Ostrald, brother of Eamfrid, living exiled in
Scotland, is there baptized, 589. With a
small army utterly overthrows Kedwalla,
ib Settles religion, and very much en-
larges his dominions, i5. vercome and
slain in battle by Penda, at Maserfield,
now Oswestre, i -
Oswi, succeeds his brother Oswald in the
kinglom, 520 He persuades Sigebert to
receive the christian faith, ill. Routs
Penda's vast army, 52I He subdues all
Mercia, and the greatest part of the Pict-
ish nation, ib, Shaken off by the Mercian
nobles, and Wulfer set up in his stead, ië,
His death, ib. - -
Osſuin, the mepliew of Edwin, shares with
wn in the kingdom of Northumber-
land, 520 Coming to arms with him, he
is overmatched, and slam by his com-
mand, ill
Oswulf, has the crown of Northumberland
relinquished to him by Eadbert, 525.
Slain by his own servants, ib.
Gºha, succeeds Esca in the kingdom of
£nt, 512.
Othey" aná Roald, two Danish leaders Iand-
ing in Devonshire, their whole forces are
scattered, and Roald slain, 537.
Owitja, river, steep waterfalls in it, 569,
Gayford, burnt by the Danes, 546.
P
Pantlyasus, a Grecian king, keeps the Tro-
#. in servitude, 477, Is beaten by
Tult -
UlS, it'.
Paolo, Padre, his judgment concerning the
hierarchy of England, 13. Observes, that
books were left to each one's conscience,
; read or lay by, till after the year 800,
§
Pºpists, imitating the ceremonial law, ſell
into superstition, 33. Most severe against
divorce, yet most easy to all licenſilous-
*:
ness, 154, -
Parable, in Luke xiv. 16, &c. explained,
Parapus, his opinion that the gospel re-
quires perfecter obedience than the law,
refuted, 143 II is objection against di.
vorce answered, 157." His definition of
- 3, . Accuses the Jesuit Mal-
His note on the entertain-
ment of the young man in the gospel,
a family, very lame, 37
Parliament, the absurdity of calling it a
convocation, 89. Commendation of their
proceedings, ib Praised for their cou-
rage in punishmg tyrants, 241. Their
guard dismissed, and another appointed,
284. By our old laws, to be held twice a
year at London, 287. Not to be dissolved
till grievances are redressed, 288. bat
the name originally signified, 447. Above
- 56. Character of the
long parliament in 1641, 502, &c. Let-
ters of state wi itten in the name of the,
7. In tatin, 777–791, 821, S22.
Cautions on the choice of representatives
Pârâuel, between a king and a master of
Ö.
11), 9 S.
Pastor of Christ's church, his universal
. to adumonish, 50. For his greatest
Jabpurs, requires only common neces-
saries, 70.
Pºal Office, the nature and dignity of
li,
Patriarchate, independent of the crown,
affected by some prelates, 16
aul, St his Instruction to Timothy, for
church-discipline, 31 Meaning of that
text, Charity believeth all things, 154,
His writings touching divorce explained,
169 . His different manner of speaking
explaimed, ommands us to pray
for kings, yet calls Nero a lion,
Puillinus, with Edelburga, endeavours to
convert Northumberlaid to Christianity,
517. . The manner of his making King
Edwin a convert, il, 518. He converts
the province of Liudsey, and Blecca the
overnor of Ilincoln, and builds a church
in that city, 518,
Paul's, St. Cathedral at London, by whom
first built, 5.15
Paulus Jovius, his motives for describing
only Britain and Muscovy, 567.
Peace, proclamation relating to that be.
tween the earl of Ormond and the Irish,
7. Articles of it, &c ič. Remarks on
those articles, &c. 262.
Peſuda, prince of the Middle-Angles, is bap-
tized with all his followers, 520 Hath
South Mercia conferred on him by Oswi,
$21. Slain by the treachery of his wife,
P
ºù.
Pechora, a river in Siberia, abounding
with divers sorts of fowl, which serve for
winter provision, $6S,
Peers, twelve ancient ones of the kings of
France, 388.
elagius, a Britom, brings new opinions
into the church, 501. The Pelagian doc-
trime reſuted by Germanus, 505, Pela-
gians are judged to banishment by Ger-
manus, 5
Penda, the son of Wibba, king of Mercia,
has the kingdom surrendered to him by
Kearle, 518. e joins with Redwalla
against Edwin, 519. He slavs Oswald in
battle, it ſm another battle, Sigebert,
520 In another, Anna, king of the East-
Angles, ºb. He is slain in a battle against
*
Penissel, reckoned in the number of an-
cientest British kings, 482
People of England, Defence of against Sal-
masius, 338. In the original Latiu, 649,
Second Defence of 919. In the original
Latin, 707. -
Peredure and Pigenius, expel their brother
ſºlidure, and share the kingdom between
them, 482.
Perjury, an example of divine vengeance
in Alfred, who conspired against King
Athelstan, 538
Pern, º, º testimony concerning Martin
60,
Persians, their kings, not absolute, 379.
Frequently murdered their princes, it
INDEX.
Pestile mee, prevents the invasion of the
Scots and l’icts, 506.
Peter, St. commits to the presbyters only,
full authority to ſeed the flock, and to
episcopate, 32. His epistle concerning
submission explained. 360.
Petilius Cerealis, defeated by the Britons,
492. He commands the Roman army in
Britain, 493.
Petronius Turpilianus, commands in chief
in Britain, after Suetonius Paulinus, 493.
Pharaoh, the consequences of his fear of
the Israelites, 315.
Pharisees, their question concerning di-
vorce, 173. Afraid lest ('hrist should
abolish the judicial law, 19.5.
Pharisees and Sadducees, though different
sects, yet both met together in their com-
mon worship of God, 563.
Philip de Comines, his opinion of the Eng-
lish government, 402.
Philip IV., king of Spain, letters to him,
588. Letter to him complaining of the
murder of Ascham, 591. Another, de-
Siring i.e. punishment may be inflict-
ed on the murderers, ib. Another, com-
laining of the ill treatment of the Eng-
ish merchants, 593.
Philo Judarus, his definition of a king and a
tyrant, 348, 349.
Piety and Justice, our foundresses, not the
common or civil law, 19.
Pir, one of the ancientest race of British
kings, 482.
Picts and Scots, harass the south coasts of
Britain, 500, &c. See Scots.
Picts and Saxons, beaten by the Britons,
through the pious conduct of Germanus,
505
Plato, recommended the reading of Aris-
tophanes to his scholar Dionysius, 105.
In his book of laws, lays a restraint on
the freedom of writing, 109. His saying
of offspring, 180. How he would have
magistrates calleſl, 360.
Pliny, his º to Trajan, 382.
Commends the killing of Domitian, ib.
Plows, a privilege of sanctuary granted
then), 48l.
Poetasters, the corruption and bane of our
youth, by their libidinous writings, 44.
Poets, elegiac, Milton's fondness of them
in his youth, 80. True ones enemies to
despotism, 928.
Poland, declaration for the election of John
the Third, king of, 583.
Pool, Cardinal, his reproof of Marinaro, a
Carmelite, 194.
Pope, title of Most Holy Father given him
by a protestant prince, 344. As a tyrant,
may be lawfully rooted out of the church,
366. Why accounted Antichrist, 414.
Popery, as being idolatrous, not to be tole-
rated either in private or public, 564.
Means to hinder the growth of it, ib,
Amendment of life, the best means to
avoid it, 565. Reasons against tolerating
it, 417, 564.
Porre.", slays his orother Ferrex, 4S0.
Whose death is revenged by his mother
Videna, ib. Another of that name reck-
oned in the catalogue of kings, 482.
Portsmouth, denominated from the landing
of Porta, a Saxon prince, with his two
sons Bida and Megla, 509.
Portugal. See John IV.
Portugal agent, letter from the parliament
to the, 592.
Power, civil, not to use force in religious
matters, 413, 417.
Prasutagus, king of the Icenians, leaving
Caesar coheir with his daughters, causes
the Britons to revolt, 491,
Prayer, for the true church against her
prelatical enemies, 20, 21. Forms of
prayer, not to be imposed on ministers,
60. The Lord's Prayer no warrant for
liturgies, ib. 314. Extempore prayer
commended, 315.
Preacher, his lips should give knowledge,
not ceremonies, 46.
Prelates, their character since their coming
to the see of Canterbury, 18. Caution
against their designs, 19, 20. By their
leaden doctrine, bring an unactive blind-
ness of mind on the people, 37. Counsel
given them, 39. Their negligence in Ire-
land, notorious in Queen Elizabeth's
days, 40. Have disfigured true christian
religion with superstitious vestures, 46.
Have proclaimed mankind unpurified
and contagious, 50. Reason of łł. ſa-
vouring Magna Charta in the time of
popery, 52. Brand all with the name of
schismatics, who find fault with their
temporal dignities, and cruelty, 53. The
greatest underminers, and betrayers of
the monarch, 54. What fidelity kings
may expect from thein, ib. Glorious
actions of the peers and commons, op-
posed by them, ib. Motives for abolish-
ing the prelatical order, ib. More Sa-
voury knowledge in one layman than in
a dozen prelates, 62. Their wealth, how
acquired, 65. Their cruelty, 87. More
base and covetous than Simon Magus, 97.
Account of their conduct, ib.
Prelaty or Prelacy, weakens the regal
power, 12, 13, 14. Its fall cannot affect
the authority of princes, 14. Not the only
church-government, agreeable to mo-
narchy, 17. Objections against reform-
ation from prelaty, answered, 18. No
more venerable than papacy, ib. Hath
mo foundation in the law or gospel, 32, 33,
35. Prevents not schism, but rather pro-
motes it, 36. Wedded with faction, never
to be divorced, 37. Drew its original
from schism, ib. A subject of discord
and offence, 39. No free and splendid
wit can flourish under it, 44. Opposes
the reason and end of the gospel, first, in
her outward form, 45. Secondly, in her
ceremonious doctrine, ib. Thirdly, in
her jurisdiction, 46. More antichristian
than Antichrist himself, 52. The mischief
it does in the state, ib. A carnal doc-
trine, ib. Has the fatal gift, to turn every
thing it touches into the dross of slavery,
53. A grand imposture, 55.
Prelatical Episcopacy, whether to be de-
duced from the apostolical times, 22, &c.
——Jurisdiction, opposes the end of the
gospel, 46.
Presbyterian, the only true church-govern-
ment, 48. Aims at a compulsive power,
268
Presbyterians, rallied for their conduct
towards King Charles, 232, &c., Properly
the men who first deposed, and then kill-
ed him, 239, &c. Advice to their minis-
ters, 242. Their claim of tithes animad-
verted on, 429, 430.
Press, the liberty of it pleaded for, while
the bishops were to be run down, l 13.
Method for regulating it, IIS. See Li-
censing, -
Priests, their policy the way to deprive us
of our protéstant friends, 14. Imparity
among them annulled, 35.
Printing, unlicensed, speech for the liberty
of, 103. If to be licensed, all recreations
to be regulated also, 109. Reasons for
the free liberty thereoſ, 112, &c.
Priscus Licinius, lieutenant in this isle
under Hadrian, 496.
Probus, subdues the usurper Bonosus,
who falls in the battle, 49S. Prevents
new risings in Britain, ib,
Professors of true religion, brought to gross
idolatry by heinous transgressions, 566
Prolusiones Oratoria, Lat. S43.
Protagorus, his books commanded to be
burnt by the judges of Areopagus, 105,
Protestants, exhorted to be thankful for
reformation, 65. Some of them live and
die in implicit faith, 113. Assert it law-
ful to depose tyrants, 347. Not obliged
to believe as the state believes, 414.
More criminal than papists, if they force
tender consciences, 417. Reproved for
depending too much on the clergy, 438.
Cannot persecute those who dissent from
them, without renouncing their own
principles, 563. Disputes among them
should be charitably inquired into, ib.
Ought to allow a toleration, ib. Polonian
and French protestants tolerated among
papists, ib. Things indiſſerent not to be
imposed by them, ib.
Puckering, Jane, an heiress, carried into
Flanders, 589. Reclaimed of the arch-
duke, ib.
Punishment, of two sorts, in this world and
the other, 4S. Severe ones in the reigns
of King James and IXing Charles, com-
plained of 297.
Purgatory, why rejected by prelaty, 52.
Puritans, hated by King Charles I., 293.
Who termed so, by the favourers of epis-
copacy, 405,
R
Ramus, Peter, Life of, in Latin, 916.
Randolf, Thomas, sent ambassador from
Queen Elizabeth to Muscovy, 579. Ac-
count of his audience of the emperor, ib.
Irea durulf, cut off with most of his army by
the Danes at Alvet heli, 530.
Jèeason of Church-government
against Prelaty, 28.
Reason, the gift of God in one man as well
as in a thousand, 60. Trusted to man to
direct his choice, 107.
Rebellion, in Ireland, should hasten a re-
formation, 40.
Jºecreations, sometimes proper to relieve
labour and intense thought, 181.
Rederchius, reckoned among the ancient
British kings, 4S2.
Jºedion, another British king, 482.
Redwald, king of the East-Angles, wars
against Ethelfrid, and slays him, 517.
Erected an altar to Christ, and another to
his idols in the same tennple, ib.
Reformation (Of) in England, and the
causes that have prevented it, 1.
Reformation, the want of this the cause of
rebellion, 40. The ready way to quell
the barbarous Irish rebels, 41.
Reformations, of the good kings of Judah,
vehement and speedy, 18.
Reformed Churches abroad, ventured out
of popery into what is called precise pu-
ritanism, ib. Abolished episcopacy, not-
withstanding the testimonies brought to
Support it, 27.
Regin, son of Gorbonian, a good king, 482.
Religion, not wounded by disgrace thrown
on the prelates. 85. The corrupters of it
enemies to civil liberty, 90. Not promot-
ed by force, 417, &c. What is true reli-
gion, 562.
urged
Remonstrance, by a dutiful Son of the
Church, remarks on that author's con-
(luct, 77, &c.
Remonstrant's Defence against Smectym-
nuus, Animadversions on, 55.
Rhee, unfortunate expedition against that
Island, 297.
Richard II., commons requested to have
judgment declared against him, 237. How
the parliament treated him, and his evil
counsellors, 289.
Richard the protector, letters of state writ-
ten in his name, 634.
Ridley, Bishop, at his degradement, dis-
liked and condemned ceremonies, 18.
Rivallo, succeeds his father Cunedagius,
4S0
Rivetus, his opinion concerning dispensa-
tion, refuted, 141.
Roald, a Danish leader, Slain near the
Severn, 537. -
Rochellers, English shipping sent against
them, 297.
Rollo, the Dane or Norman, having fought
unsuccessfully here, turns his forces into
France, and conquers Normandy, 535.
Romans, their slaves allowed to speak their
minds freely once a year, 57. At what time
they came first to Britain, 483. Land
there under the conduct of Julius Caesar,
4S4. Their sharp conflict with the Britons
near the Stowre in l8ent, 4S6. The cruel
massacre of the Britons upon them, 492.
They leave the island, 500. They come
and aid the Britons against the Scots and
Picts, ib. They help them to build a new
wall, 504. Instruct them in war, and take
their last farewell, ib.
Romanus, named among the four Sons of
Histion, sprung of Japhet, and from him
the Romans fabled to be derived, 476.
Rome, christian, not so careful to prevent
tyranny, in her church, as pagan Rome
was in the State, 48.
Rossomakka, a beast So called, strange way
of bringing forth her young, 569.
Rowen, the daughter of Hengist, sent for
over by her father, 507. She presents
King Vortigern with a bowl of wine by
her father's command, ib. She is upon
the king's demand given him in mar-
riage, ib. -
Rudaucus, king of Cambria, subdued in
fight, and slain by Dunwallo Molmutius,
4S0.
Rudhuddibras, succeeds his father Leil,
and founds Canterbury, with several
other places, 479
Run mo, the son of Peredure, not immediate
Successor, 482.
Russia, ceremony and magnificence of the
emperor's coronation, 574. First dis-
covery of it by the north-east, 577. The
English embassies and entertainments at
that court, 578. One of Queen Elizabeth's
kinswomen demanded by the emperor
for a wife, 580. Oliver's letter to the em-
peror of 623. 11
INDEX.
Russians, account of their civil govern.
ment, 569. Their revenues, 570. Mili-
tary forces and discipline, ib. Their re-
ligion and marriages, ib. Their burials
and manners, ib. Their habit, and way
of travelling, 571.
S
Sabra, thrown into the river, (thence called
Sabrina,) with her mother Estrildis, by
Guendolen, 479.
slºt. the chief of the Latin historians,
Rºt) [.
Salmacis, caution against bathing in that
Stream, 340.
Salmasius, remarks on his defence of the
king, 338, &c. His opinion of episcopacy,
341. Was once a counsellor at law, 344.
His complaint that executioners in vi-
zards cut off the king's head, 345. His
definition of a king, 347. Diſlers from
himself in ecclesiastics and politics, 367.
Taxed with receiving a hundred Jaco-
buses as a bribe, 376, 395. An advocate
for tyranny, 387. Lord of St. Lou, the
meaning of that word, 392, note. His
Anglicisms remarked, 395. See Defence
of the People of England.
Samoedia, Siberia, and other countries,
subject to the Muscovites, described, 571.
Manners of the inhabitants, ib.
Samothes, the first king that history or fable
mentions to have peopled this island, 476
Sampson, kings compared to him, 54.
Counted it no act of impiety to kill the
enslavers of his country, 368.
Samuel, deposed for the misgovernment of
his sons, 234. His scheme of sovereignty
explained, 3.50.
Samulius, recorded among the ancient
British kings, 482.
Sarda mapalus, deprived of his crown by
Arbaces, assisted by the priests, 379.
Saron, the second king named among the
Successors of Samothes, 476.
Satires, toothless, the impropriety of the
epithet, 88. .
Saul, a good king or a tyrant, according as
it suits Salmasius, 369.
Savoy, duke of. See Immanuel.
Sarons, parliaments in their time had the
supreme power, 396. Harass the south
Coast of Britain, slay Nectaridius, and
Bulcobandes, 500. Their character, 507.
Their original, ib, Invited into Britain
by Vortigern, aid the Britons against
the Scots and Picts, ib. They arrive, led
by Hengist and Horsa, ib. They beat
the Scots and Picts near Stamford, ib.
Fresh forces sent them over, and their
bounds enlarged, ib. They waste the
land without resistance, 508. Beaten by
Guortimer in four battles, and driven
into Thanet, ib. Assassinate three hun-
dred Britons treacherously, and seize
Vortigern, 509. Most of them return into
their own country, ib. The rest defeated
by Ambrosius Aurelianus, and the Bri-
tons, ib.
Sa.rons and Picts. See Picts.
Schism, the apostles' way to prevent it, 38.
Mitres the badges of schism, ib. May
happen in a true church as well as in a
false one, 563.
Schismatics, those only such, according to
the prelates, who dislike their abomina-
tions and cruelties in the church, 37, 38.
Scava, a Roman soldier, his extraordinary
bravery in Britain, 484. Is advanced on
that account, ib.
Scots writers, their opinion of kings, 238.
Nation, by whom first mentioned, 498.
Scots, reasons for their ill-treatment of
Queen Mary, 238. King Charles a native
king to them, 286.
Scots, Picts, and Attacots, harass the south
coast of Britain, 500. Overcome by
Maximus, ib. Scots possessed Ireland
first, and named it Scotia, ib. Scots and
Picts beaten by the Romans, sent to the
aid of the Britons, 504. They make spoil
and havock with little or nô opposition,
505.
Scriptures, only, able to satisſy us of the
divine constitution of episcopacy, 22.
The only balance to weigh the fathers
in, 27. To be relied on against all an-
tiquity, ib. To be admited for their
clearness, 29. The just and adequate
measure of truth, 64. Several texts re-
lating to marriage and divorce explained,
I78, &c. Reading the Scriptures dili-
12
gently, a means to prevent the growth
of popery, 565.
Sea overwhelms several towns in England,
with many thousands of inhabitants, 548.
Sebbi, having reigned 30 years, takes the
habit of a monk, 522.
Sebert, the son of Sleda, reigns over the
East-Saxons by permission of Ethelbert,
515.
Sects and schisms, among us, should hasten
a reformation from prelacy, 39, &c. —
and errours, permitted by God to try our
faith, ib. Sent is an incitement to re-
formation, ib. May be in a true church,
as well as in a false one, 563. Authors
of them sometimes learned and religious
men, ib.
Segonaa, one of the four petty kings in
ritain that assaulted Caºsar's camp, 487,
Seius Saturninus, commands the Roman
navy in Britain, 496. º
Selden, Mr. according to him, errours are
of Service to the attainment of truth, 107,
Selred, the son of Sigebert the good, suc-
ceeds Offa in the East-Saxon kingdom,
and comes to a violent end, 525.
Senate, or council of state, proposed, 440,
441. Not to be successive, 446. Com-
plaint from the English senate to the city
of Hamborough, .# the ill usage of their
merchants, 587. * * *
Seneca, his opinion of punishing tyrants,
236, 382. Extortions the Britons, 492.
Septimius Severus, the Roman emperor,
arrives with an army in this island, 497.
His ill success against the Caledonians,
ib, Nevertheless goes on and brings
them to terms of peace, ib. Builds a wall
across the island, from Sea to sea, ib.
They taking arms again, he sends his son
Antoninus against them, 498. He dies at
York, ib.
Sermon, remarks on one preached before
the lords and commons, 176.
Sesell, Claudius, his saying of the French
parliament, 233.
Severn river, whence named, 479.
Severus, sent over deputy into this island
by the emperor Valentinian, 500.
Searburga, the wife of Kenwalk, driven out
by the nobles, 522.
Seated and Seward, reestablish heathemism
in East-Saxony, aſter the death of their
father Sebert, 516. In a fight against the
Britons they perish with their whole
army, 517.
Shaftesbury, by whom built, 479.
Shame, or the reverence of our elders,
brothers, and friends, the greatest incite-
lment to virtuous deeds, 49.
Ships, 3600 employed to guard the coasts of
England, 541.
Sichardus, his opinion of the power of
kings, 352.
Sigeard and Senfred, succeed their father
Sebbi in the East-Saxon kingdom, 525.
Sigebert, succeeds his brother Eorpwald in
the kingdom of the East-Angles, 519. He
founds a school or college, thought to be
Cambridge, and betakes himself to a mo-
nastical life, 520. Being forced into the
field against Penda, is slain with hiskins-
man Egric, ib.
Sigebert, surnamed the small, succeeds his
father Seward king of the East-Saxons,
520. His successor Sigebert the 2d is
bersuaded to embrace Christianity, ib.
urdered by the conspiracy of two bre-
thren, ib, His death denounced by the
bishop for eating with an excommuni-
cated person, ib. 521.
Sigebert, the kinsman of Cuthred, succeeds
him in the West-Saxon kingdom, 525.
Siger, the son of Sigebert the small, and
Sebbi the son of Seward, succeed in the
government of the East-Saxons aſter
Swithelm's decease, 521.
Silures, a people of Britain, choose Carac-
tacus for their leader against the Romans,
490. They continue the war against
Ostorius and others, ib. .
Simonist, who the first in England, 522.
Simon Zelotes, by some , said to have
preached the christian faith in this island,
496.
Sin, not to be allowed by law, 138. Such
an allowance makes God the author of it,
I4()
Sisilius, succeeds Jago, 480.
Sisilius, the son of Guitheline, succeeds his
mother Martia, 4S1. Another of that
name reckoned in the number of the an-
cient British kings, 482.
Siward, earl of Northumberland, sent by
Hardcc.nute, together with Leofric,
against the people of Worcester, 5.53. He
and Leofric raise forces for King lºdward
against Earl Godwin, 555. He makes an
expedition into Scotland, vanquishes
Macbeth, and placeth in his stead Mal-
Colm Son of the Cumbrian king, 556. He
dies at York in an armed posture, 557.
Sleda, erects the kingdom of the East-
Saxons, 510.
Smectymnuus, Animadversions upon the
Remonstrant's Defence against, 55 Au-
thor's reasons for undertaking its apo-
logy, 75.
Smith, Sir Thomas, in his commonwealth
of England, asserts the government to be
a mixed one, 392.
Smith, Sir Thomas, sent ambassador from
King James to the emperor of Russia,
581. His reception and entertainment at
Moscow, ib.
Sobietski, John, elected king of Poland,
583. Encomium On his virtues and those
of his ancestors, 584.
Socinians, their motions of the Trinity, 563.
Soldiers, their duties, 940.
Solomon, his song, a divine pastoral drama,
43. His counsel to keep the king's com-
mandment, explained, 349, Compared
with King Charles, 357.
Songs, throughout the law and prophets,
incomparable above all the kinds of lyric
poeSy, 44.
Sophocles, introduces Tiresias complaining
that he knew more than other mén, 42.
Sorbonists, devoted to the Roman religion,
quoted by Salmasius, 366.
South-Saron kingdom, by whom erected,
509. South-Saxons, on what occasion
converted to the christian faith, 522.
Sozomen, his account of the primitive bi-
shops, 316. Commends a christian soldier
for killing Julian the apostate, 373.
Spain, king of See Philip IV.
prime minister of, letter from Oliver
to, 60.4.
Spalatto, bishop of, wrote against the pope,
yet afterwards turned papist, 73.
Spanheim, remarks on º notions of di-
vorce, 206.
Spanheim, Ezechiel, letter to, 958.
Spaniards, Manifesto against their depre-
dations, 639. ln Latin, 823.
Spanish ambassador, letters from the par-
liament to the, 591, 594, 596, 598, 601, 602,
Sparta, kings of, sometimes put to death by
the laws of Lycurgus, 334.
Spelman, Sir Henry, condemns the taking
of fees at Sacraments, marriages, and
burials, 430, 431.
Spenser, in his eclogue of May, inveighs
against the prelates, 71. His description
of temperance, 108.
States of the United Provinces, treated by
us in an unfriendly manner, from princi-
|. instilled by the prelates, 14. , Oliver's
etter to them in favour of the Pied-
montois, 607. His other letters to them
on different subjects, 613, 614, 616, 619,
627.
Staterius, king of Albany, is defeated and
slain in fight by Dunwallo Molmutius,
Stilicho, represses the invading Scots and
Picts, 500.
Strafford, earl of, an account of his be-
haviour and conduct, 280. Who guilty of
his death, 282.
Studies, what sort proper for the education
of youth, 99, &c.
Stuff and Withgar, the nephews of Kerdic,
bring him new levies, 510. They inherit
what he won in the Isle of Wight, 511.
Sturmius, John, his testimony concerning
Martin Bucer, 159.
Subject of lºngland, what makes one, 239,
Suetonius Paulinus, lieutenant in 13ritain,
attacks the Isle of Anglesey, 491.
Suidhelm, succeeds Sigebert in the kingdom
of the East-Saxons, 521. He is baptized
by Kedda, ib.
Sulpitius Severus, what he says of a king,
378.
Superstition, the greatest of burdens, 122.
Swane, makes great devastations in the
west of England, 545. He carries all be-
fore him as far as London, but is there
repelled, 546. Styled, king of England,
547. He sickens and dies, ib.
Swame, the son of Earl Godwin, treache-
rously murders his kinsman, Beorn, 554.
His peace wrought with the king by
Aldred bishop of Worcester, ib. Touch-
ed in conscience for the slaughter ol
INDEX.
Beorn, lie goes barefoot to Rome, and re-
turning home dies in Lycia, 556.
Sweden, king of See Charles Gustavus.
Swith red, the last king of the East-Saxon
kingdom, driven out by Ecbert the West-
Saxon, 525, 528. * -
Switzerland, letter to their evangelical
cantons from the English commonwealth,
601. From Oliver, 608, 611, 629.
T
Tacitus, falsely quoted by Salmasius, 381.
One of the greatest enemies to tyrants, ib.
Tarentum, prince of, Oliver's letter to him,
605.
Tarquins, enemies to the liberty of Rome,
447
Taarimagulus, a petty British king, one of
the four that assaulted Caesar's camp, 487.
Tenua mtius, one of the Sons of Lud, has
Cornwall allotted him, 482. Made king
after the death of Cassibelan, 488.
Tenure of Kings and Magistrates, 231.
Tertullian, his opinion of divorce, 213.
Tetrachordon, on the four chief Places in
Scripture treating of Marriage, or Nulli-
ties in Marriage, 175.
Tewdric, a warlike king of Britain, said to
have exchanged his crown for a hermit-
age, 514. To have taken up arms again
in aid of his son Mouric, ib.
Theobald, the brother of King Ethelfrid,
slain at Degsastan, 515.
Theodore, a monk of Tarsus, ordained
bishop of Canterbury, 521. By his means
the liberal arts and the Greek and Latin
tongues flourished among the Saxons, ib.
Theodosius, the emperor, held under ex-
communication for eight months, by St.
Ambrose, bishop of Milan, 19. His law
concerning divorce, 215. Decreed the
law to be above the emperor, 334.
Theodosius, sent over by Valentinian, en-
ters London victoriously, 500. Sends for
Civilis and Dulcitius, ib. Punishes Wa-
lentinus a Pannonian conspiring against
him, ib. Returns with applause to Va-
lentinian, ib.
Theodosius, the son of the former, preferred
to the empire, 500. Overcomes and slays
Maximus, usurping the enmpire, ib.
Thurfert, and divers other §§ lords,
submit to King Edward the elder, 537.
Tiberius, his cruel wish, 34. Had no right
to the succession, 362.
Timothy, received ordination by the hands
of the presbytery, 34. Not bishop of any
particillar place, 67.
Tingoesia, discovered by the Russians,
572. Manners of the Tingoesi, ib.
Tithes, why to be abolished under the gos-
el, 425, &c. Disallowed by foreign pro-
estants, 425. Authorities brought by
the advocates for tithes, 426.
Titilus, succeeds his father Uffa in the
kingdom of the East-Angles, 510.
Togodumnus, the second son, of Cunobe-
line, succeeds in the kingdom, 488. Is
overthrown by Aulus Plautius, ib. Slain
in battle, 489.
Toledo, council of, allow of no cause of di-
vorce, except for fornication, 224.
Toleration of diſſerences not fundamental,
recommended, 117.
Tosti, the son of Godwin, made earl of
Northumberland, in the room of Siward,
557. He Swears brotherhood with Mal-
colm, king of Scotland, ib. Goes to Rome
with Aldred, bishop of York, ib. The
Northumbrians expel him, ib. A story
Of º outrage and cruelty committed
by him at Hereford, 558. Driven out of
the country, by Edwin, and Morcar, 559,
Joining with Harold Harvager, king of
Norway, against his brother, is slain to-
gether with Harvager in the battle, 560.
Tours city, whence mamed, 478.
Trade flourishes most in free common-
wealths, 450.
Traditions of the church, dissonant from
the doctrine of the apostles, in point of
episcopacy, 26. Counted nearly equal to
the written word in the ancient church,
# Strictly commanded to be rejected,
Trajan, his speech to the general of his
pretorian forces, 234, 388, Pliny’s com-
pliment to him, 382.
Transilvania, prince of, Oliver's letter to
him, 606.
Trebellius Maarimus, sent into T3ritain in
the room of Petronius Turpilianus, 493.
Trinity, Arian and Socinian notions of the,
56.
Trinoba ntes, fall off from Cassibelan, Sub-
mit to Caesar, and recommend Mandu-
bratius to his protection, 487. With the
Icenians rise up against the Romans, 492.
True Religion (Oſ,) Heresy, Schism, Tole-
ration, and the best Means against the
Growth of Popery, 562.
Truth, the daughter of Heaven, nursed up
between the doctrine and discipline of
the Gospel, 25. Love of truth, true elo-
quence,'96. Errours of service to the at-
tainment of 107, Of her coming into the
world, and her treatment there, 115.
Needs no stratagem to make her victo-
rious, 117. According to Zorobabel, the
strongest of all things, 333. Truth and
justice compared, ib.
Tullius Marcus, no friend to kings, 350.
Extols the killing of Caesar in the senate,
382, 390. Affirms that all power proceeds
from the people, 395.
Tumults, at Whitehall, not so dangerous as
those at Sechem, 284. Who the probable
cause of them, ib. The effects of an evil
reign, ib.
Turkil, a Danish earl, assaults Canterbury,
but is bought off, 546. He swears alle-
giance to King Ethelred, that under
that pretence he might stay and give in-
telligence to Swane, 547. e leaves the
English again, and joins with Canute,
548. His greatness suspected by Canute,
he is banished the realm, 551.
Turkitel, a Danish leader, submitting to
King Edward, obtains leave of him to go
and try his fortune in France, 537,
Turks, what privileges they enjoy, 330.
Tuscany, great duke of See Ferdinand.
Typographical luxury complained of by
Milton, 959.
Tyranny, the opposers of it described, 89.
Tyrants, reasons for punishing them, 231,
&c. What they are, 235. Held not only
lawful, but glorious and heroic, to kill
them, by the Greeks and Romans, ib.
236. Instances of several punished in the
Jewish times, 236. How they have been
treated in christian times, ib. Fear and
envy good men, 313. More commenda-
ble to depose than to set up one, 354.
Examples of several deposed and put to
death by Christians, 372, &c. Submitted
to by necessity only, 377. Divine honours
ascribed to such as killed them by the
Grecians, 380. Definition of a tyrant by
Aristotle, .406. Easily extirpated in
Greece and Rome, 919.
V
Palentinian, his law of divorce, 215. Sends
over, several deputies successively into
this island, 500.
Palerius Asiaticus, vindicates the killing
Caligula, 3S2.
Palerius Publicola, for what reason he de-
vised the Valerian law, 3S2.
Vane, Charles, sent as agent from the Eng-
lish commonwealth to Lisbon, 589.
Patablus, his opinion of divorce, 187.
Pectius Bolanus, sent into Britain in the
room of Trebellius Maximus, 493.
Pellocatus, married by Cartismandua, 491.
Penice, letters to the duke and Senate, from
the English council of state, 594, 599.
Others from Oliver, 610, 626.
Penutius, a king of the Brigantes, deserted
by his wife Cartismandua, 491. He rights
himself against her by arms, ib. Makes
war successfully against those taking
part with his wife, ib.
Peramnius, succeeds A. Didius in the Bri-
tish wars, 491.
Pespasian, fighting under Plautius against
the Britons, is rescued from danger by
his son Titus, 489. For his eminent ser-
vices here, he receives triumphal orna-
Thents at Rome, ib.
Uffa, erects the kingdom of the East-Angles,
510. From him his successors called
Uffings, ib.
Pictorinus, a Moor, appeases a commotion
in Britain, 498.
Victorinus, of Tolosa, made prefect of this
island, 50l.
Pictred, the son of Ecbert, obtaining the
kingdom of Kent, settles all things in
peace, 522, 523. After 34 years reign, he
deceaseth, 524.
Videma, slays her son Porrex in revenge of
her other son Ferrex, 480
Pigenius and Pered ure, expelling their
brother Elidure, share the kingdom be-
tween them, 482.
Pirgil, misquoted for the unlimited power
of kings, 349.
Virius Lupus, has the north part of the go-
vernment assigned him by Severus the
emperor, 497.
Pirtue, ever highly rewarded by the an-
cient Romans, 489. The only ſoundation
of true liberty, 947.
Ulfketel, duke of the East-Angles, sets º
the Danes with great valour, 546. His
army defeated through the subtlety of a
Danish servant, ib. He is slain with
several other dukes, at the fatal battle of
ASSandune, 549.
Ulpius Marcellus, sent lieutenant into
Britain by Commodus, ends the war by
his valour and prudence, 496.
Jnited Provinces. See States.
Vortigern, his character, 506. Advised by
his council to invite in the Saxons against
the Scots and Picts, ib. He bestows
upon Hengist and the Saxons, the Isle of
Thanet, 507. Then all Kent upon a mar-
riage with Rowen, Hengist's daughter,
ib. Condemned in a synod for incest
with his daughter, he retires to a castle
in Radnorshire, 508. His son (juortiner
dead, he resumes the government, ib.
Drawn into a snare by Hengist, 509. Re-
tiring again, is burnt in his tower, ib.
Portipor, reigns in Demetia, or South
Wales, 513.
P'outs, remarks on those of King Charles,
326.
Uriamus, teckoned in the number of an-
cient British kings, 482.
Uther Pendragon, thought to be the same
with Natanleod, 51().
{Wth red, submits himself with the Northum-
brians to Swane, 547. To Canute, 548.
He is slain by Turebrand a Danish lord,
5-19. His victory over Malcolm king of
Scots, ib.
Urbridge, attack at Brentford, during the
treaty there, 318.
Uzziah, thrust out of the temple for his
opinioned zeal, 310. Thrust out of the
temple as a leper by the priests, 352.
Ceased to be king, ib.
W
Waldenses, denied tithes to be given in the
primitive church, 428. Maintained their
ministers by alms only, 434, 435.
Wedlock, exposition of several texts of
Scripture relating to it, 170. When unfit,
ungodly, and discordant, to be dissolved
by divorce. 204. See Marriage, &c.
JWen, fable of the Wen, head and members
of the body, 13.
JPesembechius, his opinion concerning di-
vorce, 218.
JP'estfrieg land, letter from the Protector
Richard to the states of that province,
636.
Westminster-Abbey, rebuilt and endowed
by Edward the Confessor, 554.
West-Sadron kingdom, by whom erected,
510. West-Saxons and their kings con-
yºted to the christian faith by Berinus,
519.
Wibba, succeeds Crida in the Mercian
kingdom, 514.
JWickliffe, before the bishops in the reform-
ation, 74.
Wilbrod, a priest, goes over with 12 others
to preach the gospel in Germany, 523.
Countenanced by Pepin, chief regent of
the Franks, and made first bishop of that
nation, ib.
Wilfred, bishop of the Northumbrians, de-
prived by Ecfrid of his bishopric, wan-
ders as far as Rome, 522. Returning,
plants the gospel in the Isle of Wight, and
other places assigned him, ib. Has the
fourth part of that island given him by
Kedwalla, which he bestows on Bertwin,
a priest, his sister's son, ib,
Wilfrida, a nun, taken by force, and kept
as a concubine by King Edgar, 543.
William the Conqueror, swears to behave
as a good king ought to do, 393,561, Re-
markable law of Edward the Confessor,
confirmed by him, 400, Honourably en-
tertained by King Edward, and richly
dismissed, 555. He betroths his daugh-
ter to Harold, who swears to assist him
to the crown of England, 558. Sending
after King Edward's death, tºlemand
l
INDEX.
performance of his promise, is put off,
with a slight answer, 559. He lands with
an army at Hastings, 560. Overthrows
Harold, who, with his two brothers, is
slain in battle, ib. Crowned at West-
minster by Aldred, archbishop of York,
561.
William of Malmsbury, a better historian
than any of his predecessors, 524. His
account of the dissoluteness of manners,
both of the English clergy and laity, 561.
Willowby, Sir Hugh, made admiral of a
fleet, for the discovery of the northern
parts, 577. Puts into Arzina in Lapland,
where he and his company perish with
cold, ib.
Winchester, by whom built, 479.
Wine, if prohibited to be imported, might
prevent drunkenness, 193.
Wipped, a Saxon earl, slain at a place call-
&# Wippedsfleot, which thence took its
denomination, 508
Withgar. See Stuf.
With garburgh, in the Isle of Wight, the
burial place of Withgar, 511.
Withlaf, the successor of Ludiken, van-
quished by Ecbert, to whom all Mercia
becomes tributary, 529.
Wologda, in Russia, winter and summer
churches there, 569.
Wolves, when and by whom rooted out of
England, 542.
Woman, that she should give law to man,
said to be awry from the law of God and
nature, 481. * *
Writing, freedom of it to be allowed, 103,
113. The restraint of it a discourage-
ment to learned and religious men, II3,
114. See Licensing.
Wulfer, the son of Penda, set up by the
Mercian nobles, in the room of his bro-
ther Oswi, 521. Said to have been taken
º: by Kenwalk, the West-Saxon, ib.
e takes and wastes the Isle of Wight,
but causes the inhabitants to be bap-
tized, ib. Gives the island to Ethelwald,
king of South-Saxons, ib. Sends Jaru-
mannus to recover the East-Saxons, fallen
off the second time from Christianity, ib.
Lindsey taken from him by Ecfrid of
Northumberland, 522. His death accom-
panied with the stain of Simony, ib. . .
Wulfherd, King Ethelwolf's chief captain,
drives back the Danes at Southampton
with great slaughter, 530. He dies the
same year, as it is thought, of age, ib.
THE END.
Wulketul, earl of Ely, put to flight with his
whole army, by the Danes, 532.
X
Memophom, according to him, tyrannicides
were honoured by the people, 380.
Y
Pºmmer, king of Loegria, with others, slain
in battle by Dunwallo Molmutius, 480.
Youth, exercise and recreations proper for
them, 101.
Z
Zeal, poetical description of it, 83, 84. Re-
commended by the Scripture, in re-
roving notorious faults, 84.
Zipporah, sent away by Moses for her pro-
aneness, 131.
Zones, Salm,asius's account of them, 392.
Zorobabel, asserted truth to be the Strong
est of all things, 333.
THE
P o E T I C A L W O R K S
OF
J O H N M I L T O N.
LONDON :
H E N R Y G. B O HN, Y O R K S T R. E. ET,
- * C O W E N T G A R D EN.
MDCCCLXVI.
\ \, º G.
JOHN CHILDS AND SON, PRINTERs.
C O N T E N T S.

PARADISE LOST, Book I.
Book II.
Book III.
Book IV.
Book W.
Book VI.
Book VII. .
Book VIII.
Book IX.
Book X.
Book XI.
Book XII. º
PARADISE REGAINED, Book I. . O
Book II. .
Book III.
Book IV.
Samson Agonistes
Lycidas
L'Allegro
Il Penseroso
Arcades
Comus
SONNETS.
To the Nightingale
On his being arrived at the Age of Twenty-three
When the assault was intended to the City
To a virtuous young Lady
To the Lady Margaret Ley . º •
On the Detraction which followed upon my
writing certain Treatises
On the same & o © * ſº e
To Mr. H. Lawes, on the publishing his Airs
On the religious memory of Mrs. Catherine
Thomson . º *
To the Lord General Fairfax
To the Lord General Cromwell
Page
5 To Sir Henry Vane, the Younger
12 || On the late Massacre in Piemont
21 | On his Blindness
27 | To Mr. Lawrence
36 || To Cyriack Skinner
44 || To the same
52 | On his deceased Wife
57
63 ODES.
73 || On the Morning of Christ's Nativity
83 | The Passion
90 | Upon the Circumcision
97 || On the Death of a fair Inſant
102 || On Time
106 || At a solemn Music - º º º e
1 10 | An Epitaph on the Marchioness of Winchester
| 17 Hsong on May Morning
133M
135 ſº MISCELLANIES.
136 |ſ A Vacation Exercise - tº
1384 An Epitaph on William Shakspeare
140 *on the University Carrier
Another on the same
t On the New Forcers of Conscience
150 ºr .
ibA-TRANSLATIONS º
ib. 4- The Fifth Ode of Horace, Iib. I.
ib. From Geoffrey of Monmouth.
ib. From Dante,
From Dante.
1516-- From Ariosto.
ib. From Horace.
* b. From Euripides.
From Horace.
ib. From Horace.
ib. From Sophocles.
ib. From Seneca.
Page
I 52
ib. 4-
ib.
ab.
ib.
153 /~
154 °
156
157
158
CONTENTS.
PSALMIS.
Psalm I.
II.
III.
IV.
V.
VI.
VII. .
VIII. .
LXXX.
LXXXI.
LXXXII. .
LXXXIII.
LXXXIV.
LXXXV.
JLXXXVI.
ILXXXVII. * ■ •
LXXXVIII. . ej e- • T.
CXIV.
CXXXVI.
ELEGIARUM LIBER.
Elegia I. Ad Carolum Deodatum *
II. In obitum Præconis Academici Cam-
tabrigiensis
III. In obitum Præsulis Wintoniensis
Page
164
ib.
ib.
165
ib.
ib.
166
ib.
167
ib.
168
169
170
ib.
171
ib.
172
ib.
174
175
IV. Ad Thomam Junium .
V. In adventum veris
ib.
176
177
Elegia VI. Ad Carolum Deodatum ruri com-
mOramtem
VII. Anno Ætatis 19 .
EPIGRAMMATUM LIBER.
In Proditionem Bombardicam.
In eandem.
In eandem.
In eandem.
In Inventorem Bombardæ.
Ad Leonoram Romæ caiìentem.
Ad eamdcm.
Ad eamdem.
Apologus de Rustico et Hero.
Ad Christimam Suecorum Reginam, nomine
Cromwelli.
SYLVARUM LIBER.
In obitum Procancellarii, medici
In Quintum Novembris
In obitum Præsulis Eliensis
Naturam non pati Senium ú ę
De Idea Platomica quemadmodum Aristoteles
intellexit
Ad Patrem
Psalm CXIV. Graece.
Ad Salsillum, Poetam Romanum ægrotantem
Mansus
Epitaphium Damonis
Ad Joannem Rousium .
ITALIAN SONNETS
Page
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
P A R A D IS E L O S T.
BOOK I.
THE ARGUMENT.
The First Book proposes, first in brief, the whole subject, Man's disobedience, and the loss thereupon of Paradise, wherein he was
Slaced: then touches the prime cause of his fall, the serpent, or rather Satan in the serpent; who, revolting from God, and draw-
ing to his side many legions of angels, was, by the command of God, driven out of heaven, with all his crew, into the great deep.
Which action passed over, the poem hastens into the midst of things, presenting Satan, with his angels, now fallen into hell,
described here, not in the center, (for heaven and earth may be supposed as yet not made, certainly not yet accursed,) but in a place
of utter darkness, fitliest called Chaos: here Satan, with his angels, lying on the burning lake, thunderstruck and astonished, after
a certain space recovers, as from confusion, calls up him who next in order and dignity lay by him; they confer of their miserable
fall: Satan awakens all his legions, who lay till then in the same manner confounded. They rise; their numbers; array of battle:
their chief leaders named according to the idols known afterwards in Canaan and the countries adjoining. To these Satan directs his
speech, comforts them with hope yet of regaining heaven, but tells them lastly of a new world, and a new kind of creature to be
Created, according to an ancient prophecy, or, report, in heaven; for, that angels were long before this visible creation, was the
Sºniº of many ancient fathers. To find out the truth of this prophecy, and what to determine thereon, he refers to a full council.
What his associates thence attempt. Pandemonium, the palace of Satan, rises, suddenly built out of the deep : the infernal peers
there sit in council.
Of man's first disobedience, and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste
Brought death into the world, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater Man
Restore us, and regain the blissful seat,
Sing, heavenly muse, that on the secret top
Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire
That shepherd who first taught the chosen seed,
In the beginning how the heavens and earth
Rose out of chaos: or, if Sion hill
Delight thee more, and Siloa's brook that flowed
Fast by the oracle of God; I thence
Invoke thy aid to my adventurous song,
That with no middle flight intends to soar
Above the Aonian mount, while it pursues
Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme.
And chiefly thou, O Spirit, that dost prefer
Before all temples the upright heart and pure,
Instruct me, for thou knowest; thou from the first
Wast present, and, with mighty wings outspread,
Dove-like sat'st brooding on the vast abyss,
And madest it pregnant: what in me is dark,
Illumine; what is low, raise and support;
That to the highth of this great argument
I may assert eternal Providence,
And justify the ways of God to men.
Say first, for heaven hides nothing from thy view
Nor the deep tract of hell; say first, what cause
Moved our grand parents, in that happy state,
Favoured of Heaven so highly, to fall off
2
From their Creator, and transgress his will
For one restraint, lords of the world besides P
Who first seduced them to that foul revolt P
The infernal Serpent; he it was, whose guile,
Stirred up with envy and revenge, deceived
The mother of mankind, what time his pride
Had cast him out from heaven, with all his host
Of rebel angels; by whose aid, aspiring
To set himself in glory above his peers,
He trusted to have equalled the Most High,
If he opposed; and, with ambitious aim
Against the throne and monarchy of God,
Raised impious war in heaven, and battle proud,
With vain attempt. Him the Almighty Power
Hurled headlong flaming from the ethereal sky, cº-
With hideous ruin and combustion, down
To bottomless perdition; there to dwell
In adamantine chains and penal fire,
Who durst defy the Omnipotent to arms.
Nine times the space that measures day and night
To mortal men, he with his horrid crew
Lay vanquished, rolling in the fiery gulf,
Confounded, though immortal: but his doom
Reserved him to more wrath; for now the thought
Both of lost happiness and lasting pain
Torments him : round he throws his baleful eyes,
That witnessed huge affliction and dismay,
Mixed with obdurate pride and stedfast hate:
At once, as far as angels ken, he views
The dismal situation waste and wild;
6 PARADISE LOST.
Book I.
A dungeon horrible on all sides round,
As one great furnace flamed; yet from those flames
\N, light; but rather darkness visible
Served only to discover sights of woe,
Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace
And rest can never dwell: hope never comes
That comes to all: but torture without end
Still urges, and a fiery deluge, fed
With ever-burning sulphur unconsumed :
| Such place eternal justice had prepared
For those rebellious; here their prison ordained
In utter darkness, and their portion set
As far removed from God and light of heaven,
As from the center thrice to the utmost pole.
O, how unlike the place from whence they fell !
There the companions of his ſall, o'erwhelmed
_*With floods and whirlwinds of tempestuous fire,
He soon discerns; and weltering by his side
One next himself in power, and next in crime,
Long after known in Palestine, and named
Beélzebub. To whom the arch-enemy,
And thence in heaven called Satan, with bold words
Breaking the horrid silence, thus began :
“If thou beest he ; but O, how fallen how changed
From him, who, in the happy realms of light,
Clothed with transcendent brightness, didst outshine
Myriads though bright! If he whom mutual league,
United thoughts and counsels, equal hope
And hazard in the glorious enterprise,
Joined with me once, now misery bath joined
In equal ruin : into what pit thou seest
From what highth ſallen, so much the stronger proved
He with his thunder ; and till then who knew
The force of those dire arms ? Yet not for those,
Nor what the potent Victor in his rage
Can else inflict, do I repent or change,
Though changed in outward lustre, that fixed mind,
And high disdain from sense of injured merit,
That with the Mightiest raised me to contend,
And to the fierce contention brought along
_Innumerable force of spirits armed,
That durst dislike his reign, and, me preferring,
His utmost power with adverse power opposed
In dubious battle on the plains of heaven,
_And shook his throne. What though the field be lost 2
All is not lost; the unconquerable will, sº
And study of revenge, immortal hate, f yº
And courage never to submit or yield, W º'
And what is else not to be overcome ;
That glory never shall his wrath or might
Extort from me. To bow and sue for grace
With suppliant knee, and deify his power
Who from the terror of this arm so late
Doubted his empire; that were low indeed,
That were an ignominy, and shame beneath
This downfall : since by fate the strength of gods
And this empyreal substance cannot fail;
Since through experience of this great event
In arms not worse, in foresight much advanced,
We may with more successful hope resolve
To wage by force or guile eternal war,
Irreconcilable to our grand foe,
Who now triumphs, and, in the excess of joy
Sole reigning, holds the tyranny of heaven.’
So spake the apostate angel, though in pain,
Waunting aloud, but racked with deep despair;
And him thus answered soon his bold compeer :
‘O prince, O chief of many throned powers,
That led the embattled seraphim to war
Under thy conduct, and in dreadful deeds
Fearless endangered heavens perpetual King,
And put to proof his high supremacy,
Whether upheld by strength, or chance, or ſate ;
Too well I see, and rue the dire event,
That with sad overthrow, and ſoul defeat,
Hath lost us heaven, and all this mighty host
In horrible destruction laid thus low,
As far as gods and heavenly essences
Can perish : for the mind and spirit remains
Invincible, and vigour soon returns,
Though all our glory extinct, and happy state
Here swallowed up in endless misery.
But what if he our Conqueror (whom I now
Of force believe almighty, since no less
Than such could have o’erpowered such force as ours)
Have left us this our spirit and strength entire
Strongly to suffer and support our pains,
That we may so suffice his vengeful ire,
Or do him mightier service as his thralls
By right of war, whate'er his business be,
Here in the heart of hell to work in fire
Or do his errands in the gloomy deep P
What can it then avail, though yet we feel
Strength undiminished, or eternal being
To undergo eternal punishment?”
Whereto with speedy words the arch-fiend replied.
Fallen cherub, to be weak is miserable
Doing or suffering; but of this be sure,
To do aught good never will be our task,
But ever to do ill our sole delight,
As being the contrary to his high will
Whom we resist. If then his providence
Out of our evil seek to bring forth good,
Our labour must be to pervert that end,
And out of good still to find means of evil;
Which oft-times may succeed, so as perhaps
Shall grieve him, if I fail not, and disturb
His in most counsels from their destined aim. *
_But see, the angry Victor hath recalled TWAT vs --
His ministers of vengeance and pursuit V eco-tº-
Back to the gates of heaven : the sulphurous hail,
Shot after us in storm, o'erblown, hath laid
The fiery surge, that from the precipice
Of heaven received us falling; and the thunder,
Winged with red lightning and impetuous rage,
Perhaps hath spent his shafts, and ceases now
To bellow through the vast and boundless deep.
Let us not slip the occasion, whether scorn
Or satiate fury yield it from our foe.
Seest thou’yon dreary plain, forlorn and wild,
The seat of desolation, void of light,
Save what the glimmering of these livid flames
Book I.
PARADISE LOST. 7.
Casts pale and dreadful ? Thither let us tend
From off the tossing of these fiery waves;
There rest, if any rest can harbour there;
And, reassembling our afflicted powers,
Consult how we may henceforth most offend
Our enemy; our own loss how repair;
How overcome this dire calamity;
What reinforcement we may gain from hope;
If not, what resolution from despair.’
Thus Satan, talking to his nearest mate,
With head up-liſt above the wave, and eyes
That sparkling blazed; his other parts besides
Prone on the flood, extended long and large,
Lay floating many a rood; in bulk as huge
As whom the fables name of monstrous size,
Titanian, or Earth-born, that warred on Jove;
Briarcos or Typhon, whom the den
By ancient Tarsus held; or that sea-beast, fº -
Leviathan, which God of all his works J. º.
Created hugest that swim the ocean stream :
Him, haply, slumbering on the Norway foam,
The pilot of some small night-foundered skiff
Deeming some island, oft, as seamen tell,
With fixed anchor in his scaly rind
Moors by his side under the lee, while night
Invests the sea, and wished morn delays :
So stretched out huge in length the arch-fiend lay
Chained on the burning lake: nor ever thence
Had risen, or heaved his head; but that the will
And high permission of all-ruling Heaven
Left him at large to his own dark designs;
That with reiterated crimes he might
Heap on himself damnation, while he sought
Evil to others; and, enraged, might see
How all his malice served but to bring forth
Infinite goodness, grace, and mercy, shown
On man by him seduced; but on himself
Treble confusion, wrath, and vengeance poured.
Forth with upright he rears from off the pool
His mighty stature; on each hand the flames,
Driven backward, slope their pointing spires, and, rolled
In billows, leave in the midst a horrid vale.
Then with expanded wings he steers his flight
Aloſt, incumbent on the dusky air,
That felt unusual weight; till on dry land
He lights, if it were land that ever burned
With solid, as the lake with liquid fire;
And such appeared in hue, as when the force
Of subterranean wind transports a hill
Torn from Pelorus, or the shattered side
Of thundering Ætna, whose combustible
And fuelled entrails thence conceiving fire,
Sublimed with mineral fury, aid the winds,
And leave a singed bottom all involved
With stench and smoke : such resting found the sole
Of unblest feet. Him followed his next mate:
Both glorying to have 'scaped the Stygian flood
As gods, and by their own recovered strength,
Not by the sufferance of supernal power.
‘Is this the region, this the soil, the clime,’
Said then the lost archangel, “this the seat
That we must change for heaven; this mournful gloom
For that celestial light? Be it so, since he,
Who now is Sovran, can dispose and bid
What shall be right; farthest from him is best,
Whom reason hath equalled, force hath made supreme , ,"
Above his equals. Farewell, happy fields, \ ſº
5 -- " - -" -
Where joy for ever dwells Hail horrors, hail (~
Infernal world, and thou profoundest hell,
Receive thy new possessor; one who brings
A mind not to be changed by place or time:
The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven,
What matter where, if I be still the same,
And what I should be; all but less than he
Whom thunder hath made greater? Here at least
We shall be free; the Almighty hath not built
Here for his envy, will not drive us hence :
Here we may reign secure, and, in my choice,
To reign is worth ambition, though in hell :
Better to reign in hell, than serve in heaven.
But wherefore let we then our faithful friends,
The associates and copartners of our loss,
Lie thus astonished on the oblivious pool,
And call them not to share with us their part
In this unhappy mansion; or once more
With rallied arms to try what may be yet
Regained in heaven, or what more lost in hell ?”
So Satan spake, and him Beelzebub
Thus answered: ‘Leader of those armies bright,
Which but the Omnipotent none could have foiled,
If once they hear that voice, their liveliest pledge
Of hope in fears and dangers, heard so oft
In worst extremes, and on the perilous edge
Of battle when it raged, in all assaults
Their surest signal, they will soon resume
New courage and revive; though now they lie
Grovelling and prostrate on yon lake of fire,
As we crewhile, astounded and amazed ;
No wonder, fallen such a pernicious highth.”
He scarce had ceased when the superior fiend
Was moving toward the shore: his ponderous shield,
Ethereal temper, massy, large, and round, a'
Behind him cast; the broad circumference
Hung on his shoulders like the moon, whose orb
Through optic glass the Tuscan artist views '4
At evening from the top of Fesolé,
Or in Valdarno, to descry new lands,
Rivers, or mountains, in her spotty globe. i tº
His spear, to equal which the tallest pine
Hewn on Norwegian hills, to be the mast
Of some great amiral, were but a wand,
He walked with, to support uneasy steps
Over the burning marle, not like those steps
On heaven's azure, and the torrid clime
Smote on him sore besides, vaulted with fire:
Nathless he so endured, till on the beach
Of that inflamed sea he stood, and called ** a *—
His legions, angel forms, who lay intranced | 2– T
Thick as autumnal leaves that strew the brooks S.
In Wallombrosa, where the Etrurian shades, i.e. At valºv.3.
High over-arched, imbower; or scattered sedge
8 PARADISE LOST.
Book I.
º -
t
º ºvº-
ow" & .
*
A x & Avv.
* º -
|.
º \\ & A
s - tºº
\; called so loud, that all the hollow deep
Cherub and seraph rolling in the flood
- Awake, arise, or be for ever fallen.’
Afloat, when with fierce winds Orion armed
Hath vexed the Red-sea coast, whose waves o'erthrew
Busiris and his Memphian chivalry,
While with perfidious hatred they pursued
The sojourners of Goshen, who beheld
From the safe shore their floating carcases
And broken chariot-wheels : so thick bestrewn,
Abject and lost lay these, covering the flood,
Under amazement of their hideous change.
Of hell resounded. ‘Princes, potentates, |r,
Warriors, the flower of heaven, once yours, now lost,
If such astonishment as this can seize
Eternal spirits; or have ye chosen this place
After the toil of battle to repose
Your wearied virtue, for the ease you find N-
Through God’s high sufferance for the trial of man,
By falsities and lies the greatest part
Of mankind they corrupted to forsake
God their Creator, and the invisible
Glory of him that made them to transform
Oft to the image of a brute, adorned
With gay religions, full of pomp and gold,
And devils to adore for deities:
Then were they known to men by various names,
And various idols through the heathen world.
|Zy( Say, muse, their names then known, who first, who
last,
Roused from the slumber on that fiery couch,
At their great emperor's call, as next in worth
Came singly where he stood on the bare strand,
While the promiscuous crowd stood yet aloof.
To slumber here, as in the vales of heaven P
Or in this abject posture have ye sworn
To adore the Conqueror f who now beholds
With scattered arms and ensigns, till anon
His swift pursuers from heaven-gates discern
The advantage, and descending, tread us down
Thus drooping, or with linked thunderbolts J.
Transfix us to the bottom of this gulf.
They heard, and were abashed, and up they sprungs
Upon the wing; as when men wont to watch
On duty, sleeping found by whom they dread,
Rouse and bestir themselves ere well awake.
Nor did they not perceive the evil plight
In which they were, or the fierce pains not feel;
Yet to their general's voice they soon obeyed,
Innumerable. As when the potent rod
Of Amram's son, in Egypt's evil day,
Waved round the coast, up called a pitchy cloud
Of locusts, warping on the eastern wind,
That o'er the realm of impious Pharaoh hung
Like night, and darkened all the land of Nile:
So numberless were those bad angels seen
Hovering on wing under the cope of hell,
'Twixt upper, nether, and surrounding fires;
Till at a signal given, the uplifted spear
Of their great sultan waving to direct
Their course, in even balance down they light
On the firm brimstone, and fill all the plain:
A multitude like which the populous north
Poured never from her frozen loins, to pass
Rhene or the Danaw, when her barbarous sons
Came like a deluge on the south, and spread
Beneath Gibraltar to the Libyan sands.
Forth with from every squadron and each band
The heads and leaders thither haste where stood
Their great commander; godlike shapes and forms
Excelling human, princely dignities;
And powers that erst in heaven sat on thrones,
Though of their names in heavenly records now
Be no memorial; blotted out and rased
By their rebellion from the books of life.
Nor had they yet among the sons of Eve
Got them new names; till wandering o'er the earth,
N
s
The chief were those, who, from the pit of hell,
Roaming to seek their prey on earth, durst fix
Their seats long after next the seat of God,
Their altars by his altar, gods adored
Among the nations round, and durst abide
RS Jehovah thundering out of Sion, throned
Between the cherubim ; yea, often placed
§ Within his sanctuary itself their shrines,
Abominations; and with cursed things
His holy rites and solemn feasts profaned,
& And with their darkness durst affront his light.
First, Moloch, horrid king, besmeared with blood
Of human sacrifice, and parents’ tears;
Though for the noise of drums and timbrels loud
Their children's cries unheard, that passed through
fire
To his grim idol. Him the Ammonite
Worshipped in Rabba and her watery plain,
In Argob and in Basan, to the stream
Of utmost Arnon. Nor content with such
Audacious neighbourhood, the wisest heart
Of Solomon he led by fraud to build
His temple right against the temple of God
On that opprobrious hill; and made his grove
The pleasant valley of Hinnom, Tophet thence
And black Gehenna called, the type of hell.
Next, Chemos, the obscene dread of Moab's sons,
From Aroer to Nebo, and the wild
Of southmost Abarim ; in Hesebon
And Horonaim, Seon's realm, beyond
The flowery dale of Sibma, clad with vines,
And Eleåle to the asphaltic pool.
Peor his other name, when he enticed
. Israel in Sittim, on their march from Nile,
To do him wanton rites, which cost them woe.
Yet thence his lustful orgies he enlarged
Even to that hill of scandal, by the grove
Of Moloch homicide; lust hard by hate;
Till good Josiah drove them thence to hell.
With these came they, who, from the bordering flood
Of old Euphrates to the brook that parts
Egypt from Syrian ground, had general names
Of Bañlim and Ashtaroth; those male,
These feminine: for spirits, when they please,
Can either sex assume, or both ; so soft

Book I.
PARADISE LOST.
And uncompounded is their essence pure;
Not tied or manacled with joint or limb,
Nor founded on the brittle strength of bones,
Like cumbrous flesh ; but, in what shape they choose,
Dilated or condensed, bright or obscure,
Can execute their aery purposes,
And works of love or enmity ſulfil.
For those the race of Israel oft forsook
Their living Strength, and unfrequented left
His righteous altar, bowing lowly down
To bestial gods; for which their heads as low
Bowed down in battle, sunk before the spear
Of despicable foes. With these in troop
Came Astoreth, whom the Phoenicians called
Astarte, queen of heaven, with crescent horns;
To whose bright image nightly by the moon
Sidonian virgins paid their vows and songs;
In Sion also not unsung, where stood
Her temple on the offensive mountain built
By that uxorious king, whose heart, though large,
Beguiled by fair idolatresses, fell
To idols foul. Thammuz came next behind,
Whose annual wound in Lebanon allured
The Syrian damsels to lament his fate
In amorous ditties all a summer's day;
While smooth Adonis from his native rock
Ran purple to the sea, supposed with blood
Of Thammuz yearly wounded: the love-tale
Infected Sion's daughters with like heat;
Whose wanton passions in the sacred porch
Ezekiel saw, when, by the vision led,
His eye surveyed the dark idolatries
Of alienated Judah. Next came one
Who mourned in earnest, when the captive ark
Maimed his brute image, head and hands lopped
In his own temple, on the grunsel edge,
Where he fell flat, and shamed his worshippers:
off
•
Likening his Maker to the grazed ox;
Jehovah, who in one night, when he passed
From Egypt marching, equalled with one stroke
Both her first-born and all her bleating gods.
Belial came last, than whom a spirit more lewd
Fell not from heaven, or more gross to love
Vice for itself: to him no temple stood,
Or altar smoked; yet who more oft than he
In temples and at altars, when the priest
Turns atheist, as did Eli's sons, who filled
With lust and violence the house of God P
In courts and palaces he also reigns,
And in luxurious cities, where the noise
Of riot ascends above their loftiest towers, .*
And injury and outrage: and when night
arkens the streets, then wander forth the sons
Of Belial, flown with insolence and wine.
Witness the streets of Sodom, and that night
In Gibeah, when the hospitable door
Exposed a matron, to avoid worse rape.
These were the prime in order and in might:
The rest were long to tell, though far renowned,
The Ionian gods, of Javan's issue; held
Gods, yet confessed later than heaven and earth,
Their boasted parents : Titan, heaven's first-born,
With his enormous brood, and birthright seized
By younger Saturn ; he from mightier Jove,
His own and Rhea's son, like measure found ;
So Jove usurping reigned : these first in Crete
And Ida known, thence on the snowy top
Of cold Olympus, ruled the middle air,
Their highest heaven; or on the Delphian cliff,
Or in Dodona, and through all the bounds
Of Doric land : or who with Saturn old
Fled over Adria to the Hesperian fields,
And o'er the Celtic roamed the utmost isles.
All these and more came flocking; but with looks
Dagon his name, sea-monster, upward man ) , a, ii. v . . . Downcast and damp; yet such wherein appeared
And downward fish: yet had his temple high
Reared in Azotus, dreaded through the coast
Of Palestine, in Gath and Ascalon,
And Accaron and Gazar's frontier bounds.
Him followed Rimmon, whose delightful seat
Was fair Damascus, on the fertile banks
Of Abbana and Pharphar, lucid streams.
He also against the house of God was bold:
A leper once he lost, and gained a king;
Ahaz his sottish conqueror, whom he drew
God's altar to disparage and displace
For one of Syrian mode, whereon to burn
His odious offerings, and adore the gods
Whom he had vanquished. After these appeared
A crew, who, under names of old renown,
Osiris, Isis, Orus, and their train,
With monstrous shapes and sorceries abused
Fanatic Egypt and her priests, to seek
Their wandering gods disguised in brutish forms
Rather than human. Nor did Israel 'scape
The infection, when their borrowed gold composed
The calf in Oreb ; and the rebel king
Doubled that sin in Bethel and in Dan,
Obscure some glimpse of joy, to have found their chief
Not in despair, to have found themselves not lost
In loss itself: which on his countenance cast
Like doubtful hue: but he, his wonted pride
Soon recollecting, with high words, that bore
Semblance of worth, not substance, gently raised
heir fainting courage, and dispelled their fears.
Then straight commands, that at the warlike sound
Of trumpets loud and clarions be upreared
º * § X. 2 * e
His mighty standard: that proud honour claim'd ºf
Azazel as his right, a cherub tall; ( t \cºſ
*
2- Wºr/ Ó Lt y
yº
... }} # --
ſ: !'
ºk, /.../
, )
Who forthwith from the glittering staff unfurled Čás, *. **-et ,
The imperial ensign; which, full high advanced,
Shone like a meteor streaming to the wind,
f - tº ºf i
With gems and golden lutre rich emblazed, , , J. . .” -->
Seraphic arms and trophies; all the while — a × nº *-a
Sonorous metal blowing martial sounds: ( ºn
At which the universal host up-sent
A shout, that tore hell’s concave, and beyond
Frighted the reign of Chaos and old Night.
All in a moment through the gloom were seen
Ten thousand banners rise into the air
With orient colours waving : with them rose
10
Book. I.
PARADISE LOST.
) w A º
A forest huge of spears; and thronging helms
Appeared, and serried shields in thick array
Of depth immeasurable: anon they move
In perfect phalanx to the Dorian mood
Of flutes and soft recorders; such as raised
To highth of noblest temper heroes old
Arming to battle; and instead of rage,
Deliberate valour breathed, firm and unmoved
With dread of death to flight or foul retreat:
Nor wanting power to mitigate and 'suage
With solemn touches troubled thoughts, and chase
Anguish, and doubt, and fear, and sorrow, and pain
From mortal or immortal minds. Thus they,
Breathing united force, with fixed thought,
Moved on in silence to soft pipes, that charmed
heir painful steps o'er the burnt soil : and now
Advanced in view they stand ; a horrid front
Of dreadful length and dazzling arms, in guise
Of warriors old with ordered spear and shield;
Awaiting what command their mighty chief
Had to impose: he through the armed files
Darts his experienced eye, and soon travérse
The whole battalion views, their order due,
Their visages and stature as of gods;
Their number last he sums. And now his heart
Distends with pride, and hardening in his strength
Glories: for never since created man
Met such embodied force, as named with these
Could merit more than that small infantry
Warred on by cranes: though all the giant brood
Of Phlegra with the heroic race were joined
That fought at Thebes and Ilium, on each side
Mixed with auxiliar gods; and what resounds
In fable or romance of Uther's son
Begirt with British and Armoric knights;
And all who since, baptized or infidel,
Jousted in Aspramont, or Montalban,
Damasco, or Marocco, or Trebisond,
Or whom Biserta sent from Afric shore,
When Charlemain with all his peerage fell
By Fontarabbia. Thus far these beyond
Compare of mortal prowess, yet observed
ºf Their dread commander: he above the rest
In shape and gesture proudly eminent,
Stood like a tower; his form had yet not lost
All her original brightness; nor appeared
Less than archangel ruined, and the excess
Of glory obscured: as when the sun, new risen,
Looks through the horizontal misty air
Shorn of his beams; or from behind the moon,
In dim eclipse, disastrous twilight sheds
'On half the nations, and with fear of change
Perplexes monarchs. Darkened so, yet shone
Above them all the archangel: but his face
| Deep scars of thunder had intrenched; and care
at on his faded cheek; but under brows
Of dauntless courage, and considerate pride
Waiting revenge; cruel his eye, but cast
Signs of remorse and passion, to behold
The fellows of his crime, the followers rather,
(Far other once beheld in bliss,) condemned
º Yux
º
¥2. - *
For ever now to have their lot in pain:
Millions of spirits for his fault amerced
Of heaven, and from eternal splendours ſlung
For his revolt, yet faithful how they stood,
Their glory withered : as when heaven's fire
Hath scathed the forest oaks, or mountain pines,
With singed top their stately growth, though bare
Stands on the blasted heath. He now prepared
To speak; whereat their doubled ranks they bend
From wing to wing, and half enclose him round
With all his peers: attention held them mute.
Thrice he assayed, and thrice, in spite of scorn,
Tears, such as angels weep, burst forth : at last
words, interwove with sighs, found out their way.
“O myriads of immortal spirits O powers
Matchless, but with the Almighty; and that strife
Was not inglorious, though the event was dire,
As this place testifies, and this dire change
Hateful to utter but what power of mind,
Foreseeing or presaging, from the depth
Of knowledge, past or present, could have feared,
How such united force of gods, how such
As stood like these, could ever know repulse P
For who can yet believe, though after loss,
That all these puissant legions, whose exile
Hath emptied heaven, shall fail to reascend
Self-raised, and repossess their native seat 2
For me, be witness all the host of heaven,
If counsels different, or dangers shunned
By me, have lost our hopes. But he who reign
Monarch in heaven, till then as one secure
Sat on his throne upheld by old repute,
Co. sent or custom ; and his regal state
Put forth at full, but still his strength concealed,
Which tempted our attempt, and wrought our ſall.
Henceſorth his might we know, and know our own
So as not either to provoke or dread
New war, provoked; our better part remains
To work in close design, by fraud or guile,
What force effected not : that he no less
At length from us may find, who overcomes
By force, hath overcome but half his foe. gº
Space may produce new worlds; whereof so riſe
“There went a fame in heaven that he ere long
: Intended to create, and therein plant
A generation, whom his choice regard
\º favour equal to the sons of heaven :
Thither, if but to pry, shall be perhaps
Our first eruption; thither or elsewhere;
For this inſernal pit shall never hold
Celestial spirits in bondage, nor the abyss
Long under darkness cover. But these thoughts
Pull counsel must mature: peace is despaired ;
I'or who can think submission P War, then, war,
Open or understood, must be resolved.”
^ He spake ; and, to confirm his words, out-flew
Millions of flaming swords, drawn from the thighs
Of mighty cherubim; the sudden blaze
Far round illumined hell; highly they raged
Against the Highest, and fierce with grasped arms
Gnied on their sounding shields the din of war,

Book I.
| l
PARADISE LOST.

Hurling defiance toward the vault of heaven.
There stood a hill not far, whose grisly top
Belched fire and rolling smoke; the rest entire
Shone with a glossy scurf; undoubted sign
That in his womb was hid metallic ore,
The work of sulphur. Thither, winged with speed,
A numerous brigade hastened : as when bands
Of pioneers, with spade and pickax armed,
Forerun the royal camp to trench a field,
Or cast a rampart. Mammon led them on :
Mammon, the least erected spirit that fell
From heaven; for e'en in heaven his looks and thoughts
Were always downward bent, admiring more
The riches of heaven's pavement, trodden gold,
Than aught, divine or holy, else enjoyed
In vision beatific : by him first
Men also, and by his suggestion taught,
Ransacked the center, and with impious hands
Rifled the bowels of their mother earth
For treasures, better hid. Soon had his crew
Opened into the hill a spacious wound,
And digged out ribs of gold. Let none admire \!
That riches grow in hell; that soil may best T
Deserve the precious bane. And here let those,
Who boast in mortal things, and wondering tell
Of Babel, and the works of Memphian kings,
Learn how their greatest monuments of fame,
And strength and art, are easily outdone
By spirits reprobate, and in an hour
What in an age they with incessant toil
And hands innumerable scarce perform.
Nigh on the plain, in many cells prepared,
That underneath had veins of liquid fire
Sluiced from the lake, a second multitude
With wondrous art founded the massy ore,
Severing each kind, and scummed the bullion dross:
A third as soon had formed within the ground
A various mould, and from the boiling cells,
By strange conveyance, filled each hollow nook;
_z. an organ, from one blast of wind,
To many a row of pipes the sound-board breathes.
Anon, out of the earth a fabric huge
Rose like an exhalation, with the sound
Of dulcet symphonies and voices sweet,
Built like a temple, where pilasters round
Were set, and Doric pillars overlaid
With golden architrave; nor did there want
Cormice or frieze, with bossy sculptures graven:
The roof was fretted gold. Not Babylon,
Nor great Alcairo, such magnificence
Equalled in all their glories, to enshrine
Belus or Serapis their gods, or seat
Their kings, when Egypt with Assyria strove
In wealth and luxury. The ascending pile
Stood fixed her stately highth : and straight "...º.
Opening their brazen folds, discover, wide \ \cº
Within, her ample spaces, o'er the smooth | (º:
And level pavement; from the arched roof º
Pendent by subtle magic, many a row -
Of starry lamps and blazing cressets, fed
w” \ .
A. **
º ...A
t/v º
{
With naphtha and asphaltus, yielded light
As ſcom a sky. The hasty multitude
Admiring entered; and the work some praise,
And some the architect: his hand was known
In heaven by many a towered structure high,
Where sceptered angels held their residence,
And sat as princes; whom the sūpreme King
Exalted to such power, and gave to rule,
Each in his hierarchy, the orders bright.
Nor was his name unheard or unadored
In ancient Greece; and in Ausonian land
Men called him Mulciber; and how he fell
From heaven, they ſabled, thrown by angry Jove
Sheer o’er the crystal battlements: from mornſ
To noon he fell, from noon to dewy eve, \ * -6 tº s 24 co- a--
A summer's day; and with the setting sun Y \
Dropt from the zenith like a falling star, ---
On Lemnos the AEgean isle: thus they relate,
Erring ; for he with this rebellious rout
Fell long before ; nor aught availed him now
To have built in heaven high towers; nor did he 'scape
By all his engines, but was headlong sent
- With his industrious crew to build in hell.
.*** AA-c
Meanwhile, the winged heralds, by command
Of sovran power, with awful ceremony
And trumpet’s sound, throughout the host proclaim
A solemn council, forth with to be held
At Pandemonium, the high capital
Of Satan and his peers: their summons called
From every band and squared regiment
By place or choice the worthiest; they anon,
With hundreds and with thousands, trooping came,
Attended : all access was thronged : the gates
And porches wide, but chief the spacious hall,
(Though like a covered field, where champions bold
Wont ride in armed, and at the soldan’s chair
Defied the best of panim chivalry
To mortal combat, or career with lance,)
Thick swarmed, both on the ground and in the air
Brushed with the hiss of rustling wings. As becs ~
In spring-time, when the sun with Taurus rides,
Pour forth their populous youth about the hive
- ºft’ In clusters; they among fresh dews and flowers
Fly to and fro, or on the smoothed plank,
The suburb of their straw-built citadel,
New rubbed with balm, expatiate and confer
Their state affairs: so thick the aery crowd
Swarmed and were straitened ; till, the signal given,
Behold a wonder | They but now who seemed
In bigness to surpass earth's giant sons,
Now less than smallest dwarfs, in narrow room
Throng numberless, like that pygmean race
Beyond the Indian mount; or faery elves,
Whose midnight revels, by a forest-side
r fountain, some belated peasant sees,
Or dreams he sees, while over head the moon
Sits arbitress, and nearer to the earth
Wheels her pale course; they, on their mirth and dance
Intent, with jocund music charm his ear;
t once with joy and fear his heart rebounds.
Thus incorporeal spirits to smallest forms
Reduced their shapes immense, and were at large,
*
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Č Čc--> v -- (~ * ... ?
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12 PARADISE LOST. Book II.
Though without number still, amidst the hall In close recess and secret conclave sat;
Of that infernal court. But far within, A thousand demigods on golden seats,
And in their own dimensions, like themselves, Frequent and full. After short silence then,
The great seraphic lords and cherubim And summons read, the great consult began.
BOOK II.
THE ARGUMENT.
The consultation begun, Satan debates whether another battle be to be hazarded for the recovery of heaven: some advise it, others
dissuade: a third proposal is preferred, mentioned before by Satan, to search the truth of that prophecy or tradition in heaven con-
Cerning another world, and another kind of creature, equal, or not much inferior, to themselves, about this time to be created.
Their doubt, who shall be sent on this difficult search: Satan their chief undertakes alone the voyage, is honoured and applauded.
The council thus ended, the rest betake them several ways, and to several employments, as their inclinations lead them, to entertain
the time till Satan return. He passes on his journey to hell-gates: finds them shut, and who sat there to guard them; by whom at
length º are opened, and discover to him the great gulf between hell and heaven; with what difficulty he passes through, di-
rected by Chaos, the Power of that place, to the sight of this new world which he sought.
HIGH on a throne of royal state, which far Surer to prosper than prosperity
Outshone the wealth of Ormus and of Ind, - Could have assured us; and, by what best way,
Or where the gorgeous East with richest hand Whether of open war, or covert guile,
Showers on her kings barbaric pearl and gold, We now debate: who can advise, may speak.”
Satan exalted sat, by merit raised He ceased; and next him Molach, sceptered king,
To that bad eminence : and, from despair Stood up, the strongest and the fiercest spirit
Thus high uplifted beyond hope, aspires That fought in heaven, now fiercer by despair:
Beyond thus high, insatiate to pursue His trust was with the Eternal to be deemed
Vain war with Heaven; and, by success untaught, Equal in strength; and rather than be less
His proud imaginations thus displayed : Cared not to be at all; with that care lost
“Powers and dominions, deities of heaven; Went all his fear: of God, or hell, or worse,
For since no deep within her gulf can hold Hexeskéſ not; and these words thereafter spake.
Immortal vigour, though oppressed and fallen, º º, sentence is for open war: of wiles,
I give not heaven for lost. From this descent \ || More unexpert, I boast not; them let those
Celestial virtues rising, will appear Contrive who need, or when they need, not now.
More glorious and more dread than from no fall, For, while they sit contriving, shall the rest,
And trust themselves to fear no second fate. Millions that stand in arms, and longing wait
Me though just right, and the fixed laws of heaven, The signal to ascend, sit lingering here
Did first create your leader; next, free choice, Heaven's fugitives, and for their dwelling-place
With what besides, in council or in fight, Accept this dark, opprobrious den of shame,
Hath been achieved of merit; yet this loss, The prison of his tyranny who reigns
Thus far at least recovered, hath much more By our delay P No, let us rather choose,
Established in a safe unenvied throne, Armed with hell flames and fury, all at once,
Yielded with full consent. The happier state O'er heaven's high towers to force resistless way,
In heaven, which follows dignity, might draw Turning our tortures into horrid arms
Envy from each inferior; but who here Against the torturer; when to meet the noise
Will envy whom the highest place exposes Of his almighty engine he shall hear
Foremost to stand against the Thunderer's aim, Infernal thunder; and, for lightning, see
Your bulwark, and condemns to greatest share Black fire and horror shot with equal rage
Of endless pain? Where there is then no good Among his angels; and his throne itself
For which to strive, no strife can grow up there Mixed with Tartarean sulphur, and strange fire,
From faction; for none sure will claim in hell His own invented torments. But perhaps
Precédence, none whose portion is so small The way seems difficult and steep to scale
Of present pain, that with ambitious mind With upright wing against a higher foe.
Will covet more. With this advantage then Let such bethink them, if the sleepy drench
To union, and firm faith, and firm accord, Of that forgetful lake benumb not still,
More than can be in heaven, we now return That in our proper motion we ascend
To claim our just inheritance of old, Up to our native seat: descent and fall

Book II. *- PARADISE LOST. r 13

To us is adverse. Who but felt of late, All incorruptible, would on his throne
When the fierce foe hung on our broken rear Sit unpolluted; and the ethercal mould,
Insulting, and pursued us through the deep, - Incapable of stain, would soon expel
With what compulsion and laborious flight Her mischief, and purge off the baser fire,
We sunk thus low P The ascent is easy then ; Victorious. Thus repulsed, our final hope
The event is feared ; should we again provoke Is flat despair: we must exasperate
Our stronger, some worse way his wrath may find The almighty Victor to spend all his rage,
To our destruction ; if there be in hell And that must end us; that must be our cure,
Fear to be worse destroyed : what can be worse To be no more. Sad cure for who would lose,
Than to dwell here, driven out from bliss, condemned Though full of pain, this intellectual being,
In this abhorred deep to utter woe: Those thoughts that wander through etermity,
Where pain of unextinguishable fire To perish rather, swallowed up and lost
Must exercise us without hope of end, In the wide womb of uncreated night,
The vassals of his anger, when the scourge Devoid of sense and motion ? And who knows,
Inexorable, and the torturing hour, Let this be good, whether our angry foe
Calls us to penance P More destroyed than thus, Can give it, or will ever ? how he can,
We should be quite abolished, and expire. Is doubtful; that he never will, is sure.
What fear, we then P what doubt we to incense Will he, so wise, let loose at once his ire,
His utmost ire P which, to the highth enraged, Belike through impotence, or unaware, t
Will either quite consume us, and reduce To give his enemies their wish, and end
To nothing this essential; happier far Them in his anger, whom his anger saves
Than miserable to have eternal being : * To punish endless P Wherefore cease we then P
Or, if our substance be indeed divine, Say they who counsel war, We are decreed,
And cannot cease to be, we are at worst Reserved, and destined, to eternal woe;
On this side nothing; and by proof we feel Whatever doing, what can we suffer more,
Our power sufficient to disturb his heaven, What can we suffer worse 2 Is this then worst,
And with perpetual inroads to alarm, Thus sitting, thus consulting, thus in arms ?
Though inaccessible, his fatal throne; What, when we fled amain, pursued, and struck
Which, if not victory, is yet revenge.” With heaven's afflicting thunder, and besought l *
He ended frowning, and his look denounced The decp to shelter us Athis hell then seemed dº sºft-tº-
Desperate revenge, and battle dangerous A refuge from those wounds : or when we lay .
\º t < * * & ~ * º
w
#
To less than gods. On the other side up rose Chained on the burning lake 2 that sure was worse.
Belial, in act more graceful and humane: 9.4% º What if the breath, that kindled those grim fires,
A fairer person lost not heaven; he seemed , . ſº - Awaked, should blow them into sevenfold rage,
For dignity composed, and high exploit: *****And plunge us in the flames 2 or, from above,
But all was false and hollow; though his tongue Should intermitted vengeance arm again
Dropt manna, and could make the worse appear His red right hand to plague us? What if all
The better reason, to perplex and dash Her stores were opened, and this firmament
Maturest counsels: for his thoughts were low : Of hell should spout her cataracts of fire,
To vice industrious, but to nobler deeds Impendent horrors, threatening hideous fall
Timorous and slothful; yet he pleased the ear, One day upon our heads; while we perhaps,
And with persuasive accent thus began : Designing or exhorting glorious war,
“I should be much for open war, O peers, Caught in a fiery tempest shall be hurled
As not behind in hate; if what was urged Each on his rock transfixed, the sport and prey
Main reason to persuade immediate war, Of wracking whirlwinds; or for ever sunk
Did not dissuade me most, and seem to cast Under yon boiling ocean, wrapt in chains ;
Ominous conjecture on the whole success; There to converse with everlasting groans,
When he, who most excels in fact of arms, Unrespited, unpitied, unreprieved,
In what he counsels, and in what excels, . Ages of hopeless end? This would be worse.
Mistrustful grounds his courage on despair ~~~~ - War therefore, open or concealed, alike
And utter dissolution, as the scope My voice dissuades; for what can force or guile
Of all his aim, after some dire revenge. With him, or who deceive his mind, whose eye
First, what revenge The towers of heaven are filled Views all things at one view P He from heaven's
With armed watch, that render all access highth
Impregnable: oft on the bordering deep All these our motions vain sees, and derides;
Encamp their legions; or, with obscure wing, Not more almighty to resist our might,
Scout far and wide into the realm of night, Than wise to frustrate all our plots and wiles.
Scorning surprise. Or could we break our way Shall we then live thus vile, the race of heaven
By force, and at our heels all hell should rise Thus trampled, thus expell'd to suffer here
With blackest insurrection, to confound Chaims and these torments? Better these than worse,
º 3. º º * o º s º º º tº
Heaven's purest light; yet our great enemy, By my advice; since fate inevitable
14 PARADIS
E LOST. Book II.
/Wł * -
J.A.A.!
tº k. Counselled ignoble ease, and peaceful sloth,
ty V -
Subdues us, and omnipotent decree,
The Victor’s will. To suffer, as to do,
Our strength is equal, nor the law unjust
That so ordains: this was at first resolved,
If we were wise, against so great a foe
Contending, and so doubtful what might fall.
I laugh, when those who at the spear are bold
And venturous, if that fail them, shrink and fear
What yet they know must follow, to endure
Exile, or ignominy, or bonds, or pain,
The sentence of their conqueror: this is now
Our doom; which if we can sustain and bear,
Our supreme foe in time may much remit
His anger; and perhaps, thus far removed,
Not mind us not offending, satisfied
With what is punished; whence these raging fires
Will slacken, if his breath stir not their flames.
Our purer essence then will overcome
Their noxious vapour; or, inured, not feel;
Or, changed at length, and to the place conformed
In temper and in nature, will receive
Familiar the fierce heat, and void of pain;
This horror will grow mild, this darkness light;
Besides what hope the never-ending flight
Of future days may bring, what chance, what change
Worth waiting ; since our present lot appears !.
For happy though but ill, for ill not worst,
If we procure not to ourselves more woe.”
Thus Belial, with words clothed in reason's garb,
Not peace; and after him thus Mammon spake:
“Either to disenthrone the King of heaven
We war, if war be best, or to regain
Our own right lost: him to unthrone we then
May hope, when everlasting fate shall yield
To fickle chance, and Chaos judge the strife:
The former, vain to hope, argues as vain
The latter: for what place can be for us
Within heaven's bound, unless heaven's Lord supreme
We overpower P Suppose he should relent,
And publish grace to all, on promise made [.
Of new subjection; with what eyes could we ºl
standin his presence humble, and receive ºf
{ presence numble, and receive ... wº" , , ,
Strict laws imposed, to celebrate his throne *
With warbled hymns, and to his Godhead sing"
Forced hallelujahs; while he lordly sits
Our envied sovran, and his altar breathes
Ambrosial odours and ambrosial flowers,
Our servile offerings 2 This must be our task
In heaven, this our delight; how wearisome
Eternity so spent, in worship paid
To whom we hate | Let us not then pursue
By force impossible, by leave obtained
Unácceptable, though in heaven, our state
Of splendid vassalage; but rather seek
Our own good from ourselves, and from our own
Live to ourselves, though in this vast recess,
Free, and to none accountable, preferring
Hard liberty before the easy yoke
Of servile pomp. Our greatness will appear
Then most conspicuous, when great things of small,
y \!
ſ
ºlºſ V. J.
- º, lik cº- tº
*** The assembly, as when hollow rocks retain
\
jºr
Useful of hurtful, prosperous of advérse,
We can create; and in what place soe'er
Thrive under evil, and work case out of pain,
Through labour and endurance. This deep world
Of darkness do we dread 2 How oft amidst
Thick clouds and dark doth heaven's all-ruling Sire
Choose to reside, his glory unobscured,
And with the majesty of darkness round
Covers his throne; from whence deep thunders roar
Mustering their rage, and heaven resembles hell!
As he our darkness, cannot we his light
Imitate when we please ? This desert soil
Wants not her hidden lustre, gems and gold;
Nor want we skill or art, from whence to raise
Magnificence; and what can heaven show more ?
Our torments also may in length of time
Become our elements; these piercing fires
As soft as now severe, our temper changed
Into their temper; which must needs remove
The sensible of pain. All things invite
To peaceful counsels, and the settled state
Of order, how in safety best we may
Compose our present evils, with regard
Of what we are, and where; dismissing quite
All thoughts of war. Ye have what I advise.”
He scarce had finished, when such murmur filled

The sound of blustering winds, which all night long
Had roused the sea, now with hoarse cadence lull
Seafaring men o'er-watched, whose bark by chance
Or pinnace anchors in a craggy bay
After the tempest: such applause was heard
As Mammon ended, and his sentence pleased,
Advising peace : for such another field
They dreaded worse than hell ; so much the fear
Of thunder and the sword of Michaël
Wrought still within them, and no less desire
To found this nether empire, which might rise
By policy, and long procéss of time,
In emulation opposite to heaven.
Which when Bećlzebub perceived, than whom,
Satan except, none higher sat, with grave
... Aspéct he rose, and in his rising seemed
A pillar of state; deep on his front engraven
Deliberation sat, and public care;
And princely counsel in his face yet shone,
Majestic, though in ruin: sage he stood
With Atlantean shoulders fit to bear
The weight of mightiest monarchies; his look
Drew audience and attention still as night
Or summer's noontide air, while thus he spake :
“Thrones and imperial powers, offspring of heaven,
Ethereal virtues; or these titles now
Must we renounce, and, changing style, be called
Princes of hell? for so the popular vote
Inclines here to continue, and build up here
A growing empire; doubtless, while we dream,
And know not that the King of heaven hath doomed
This place our dungeon; not our safe retreat
Beyond his potent arm, to live exempt
From heaven's high jurisdiction, in new league
Book II. PARADISE LOST. 15
Banded against his throne, but to remain But from the author of all ill, could spring
In strictest bondage, though thus far removed So deep a malice, to confound the race
Under the inevitable curb, reserved Of mankind in one root, and earth with hell
His captive multitude: for he, be sure, To mingle and involve, done all to spite
In highth or depth, still first and last will reign The great Creator? But their spite still serves
Sole king, and of his kingdom lose no part His glory to augment. The bold design
By our revolt; but over hell extend Pleased highly those infernal states, and joy
His empire, and with iron scepter rule Sparkled in all their eyes: with full assent
Us here, as with his golden those in heaven. They vote : whereat his speech he thus renews:
What sit we then projecting peace and warf ‘Well have ye judged, well ended long debate,
War hath determined us, and foiled with loss Synod of gods, and like to what ye are,
Irreparable; terms of peace yet none Great things resolved, which, from the lowest deep,
Vouchsafed or sought; for what peace will be given Will once more lift us up, in spite of fate,
To us enslaved, but custody severe Nearer our ancient seat; perhaps in view
And stripes, and arbitrary punishment Of those bright confines, whence, with neighbouring
Inflicted P and what peace can we return, a TIT) S
But to our power hostility and hate, And opportune excursion, we may chance
Untamed reluctance, and revenge, though slow, Re-enter heaven; or else in some mild zone
Yet ever plotting how the Conqueror least Dwell, not unvisited of heaven's fair light,
May reap his conquest, and may least rejoice Secure; and at the brightening orient beam ---
In doing what we most in suffering feel P Purge off this gloom/; the soft delicious air, Cºlº vz. z-vº
Nor will occasion want, nor shall we need To heal the scar of these corrosive fires, |-rº-'-- ~/ •
With dangerous expedition to invade Shall breathe her balm. But first, whom shall we send
Heaven, whose high walls fear no assault or siege, In search of this new world P whom shall we find gº
Or ambush from the deep. What if we find Sufficient P who shall tempt with wandering feet
Some easier enterprise 2 There is a place, The dark, unbottomed, infinite abyss,
(If ancient and prophetic fame in heaven And through the palpable obscure find out
Err not,) another world, the happy seat His uncouth way, or spread his aéry flight
Of some new race, called Man, about this time Upborne with indefatigable wings,
To be created like to us, though less Over the vast abrupt, ere he arrive
In power and excellence, but favoured more The happy isle? What strength, what art can then
Of him who rules above; so was his will Suffice, or what evasion bear him safe
Pronounced among the gods; and by an oath, Through the strict senteries and stations thick
That shook heaven's whole circumference, confirmed. Of angels watching round 2 Here he had need
Thither let us bend all our thoughts, to learn All circumspection, and we now no less
What creatures there inhabit, of what mould Choice in our suffrage; for, on whom we send,
Or substance, how endued, and what their power, The weight of all and our last hope relies.”
And where their weakness, how attempted best, This said, he sat ; and expectation held
By force or subtlety. Though heaven be shut, His look suspense, awaiting who appeared
And heaven's high Arbitrator sit secure To second, or oppose, or undertake
In his own strength, this place may lie exposed, The perilous attempt: but all sat mute,
The utmost border of his kingdom, left Pondering the danger with deep thoughts; and each
To their defence who hold it: here perhaps In other's countenance read his own dismay,
Some advantageous act may be achieved Astonished: none among the choice and prime
By sudden onset; either with hell fire Of those heaven-warring champions could be found
To waste his whole creation, or possess So hardy, as to proffer or accept,
All as our own, and drive, as we were driven, Alone, the dreadful voyage; till at last
The puny habitants, or, if not drive, Satan, whom now transcendent glory raised
Seduce them to our party, that their God Above his fellows, with monarchal pride,
May prove their foe, and with repenting hand Conscious of highest worth, unmoved thus spake.
Abolish his own works. This would surpass ‘O progeny of heaven, empyreal thrones,
Common revenge, and interrupt his joy With reason hath deep silence and demur - ~ 4. /*
In our confusion, and our joy upraise Seized us, though undismayed./ Long is the way " `
In his disturbance; when his darling sons, - And hard, that out of hell leads up to light;
Hurled headlong to partake with us, shall curse Our prison strong; this huge convex of fire,
Their frail original, and faded bliss, Outrageous to devour, immures us round
Faded so soon. Advise, if this be worth Ninefold; and gates of burning adamant,
Attempting, or to sit in darkness here Barred over us, prohibit all egress.
Hatching vain empires.’ Thus Beélzebub These passed, if any pass, the void profound
Pleaded his devilish counsel, first devised Of unessential might receives him next
By Satan, and in part proposed: for whence, Wide-gaping, and with utter loss of being
16
Book II.
PARADISE LOST.
Threatens him, plunged in that abortive gulf.
If thence he 'scape into whatever world,
Or unknown region, what remains him less
Than unknown dangers, and as hard escape?
But I should ill become this throne, O peers,
And this imperial sovranty, adorned
With splendour, armed with power, if aught proposed
And judged of public moment, in the shape
Of difficulty or danger, could deter
Me from attempting. Wherefore do I assume
These royalties, and not refuse to reign,
Refusing to accept as great a share
Of hazard as of honour, due alike
To him who reigns, and so much to him due
Of hazard more, as he above the rest
High honoured sits P Go, therefore, mighty powers,
Terror of heaven, though fallen; intend at home,
While here shall be our home, what best may ease
The present misery, and render hell
More tolerable; if there be cure or charm
To respite, or deceive, or slack the pain
Of this ill mansion: intermit no watch
Against a wakeful foe, while I abroad
Through all the coasts of dark destruction seek
Deliverance for us all: this enterprise
None shall partake with me.” Thus saying rose
The monarch, and prevented all reply;
Prudent, lest, from his resolution raised,
Others among the chief might offer now
(Certain to be refused) what erst they feared;
And, so refused, might in opinion stand
His rivals; winning cheap the high repute,
Which he through hazard huge must earn. But they
Dreaded not more the adventure, than his voice
Forbidding; and at once with him they rose:
Their rising all at once, was as the sound
Of thunder heard remote. Towards him they bend
With awful reverence prone; and as a god
Extol him equal to the Highest in heaven:
Nor ſailed they to express how much they praised,
That for the general safety he despised
His own : for neither do the spirits damned
Lose all their virtue; lest bad men should boast
Their specious deeds on earth which glory excites,
Or close ambition, warnished o'er with zeal.
Dº they their doubtful consultations dark
Ended, rejoicing in their matchless chief:
As when from mountain-tops the dusky clouds
Ascending, while the north wind sleeps, o'erspread
Heaven's cheerful face, the louring element
Scowls o'er the darkened landskip snow, or shower;
If chance the radiant sun with farewell sweet
Extend his evening beam, the fields revive,
The birds their notes renew, and bleating herds
Attest their joy, that hill and valley rings.
O shame to men devil with devil damned
Firm concord holds, men only disagree
Of creatures rational, though under hope
Of heavenly grace; and, God proclaiming peace,
Yet live in hatred, enmity, and strife,
Among themselves, and levy crucl wars,
Wasting the carth, each other to destroy:
As if (which might induce us to accord)
Man had not hellish foes enow besides,
That, day and night, for his destruction wait.
v. The Stygian council thus dissolved; and forth
In order came the grand infernal peers:
Midst came their mighty paramount, and seemed
Alone the antagonist of heaven, nor less
Than hell's dread emperor, with pomp supreme,
And god-like imitated state: him round
A globe of fiery seraphim enclosed
With bright imblazonry, and horrent arms.
Then of their session ended they bid cry
With trumpets' regal sound the great result:
Toward the four winds four speedy cherubim
Put to their mouths the sounding alchymy,
By herald's voice explained; the hollow abyss
Heard far and wide, and all the host of hell
With deafening shout returned them loud acclaim.
Thence more at ease their minds, and somewhat
raised
By false presumptuous hope, the ranged powers
Disband, and, wandering, each his several way
Pursues, as inclination or sad choice
Leads him, perplexed where he may likeliest find
Truce to his restless thoughts, and entertain
The irksome hours, till his great chief return.
Part on the plain, or in the air sublime,
Upon the wing, or in swift race contend,
As at the Olympian games or Pythian fields;
Part curb their fiery steeds, or shun the goal
With rapid wheels, or fronted brigades form.
As when, to warn proud cities, war appears
Waged in the troubled sky, and armies rush
To battle in the clouds, before each van
Prick forth the aery knights, and couch their spears
Till thickest legions close; with feats of arms
From either end of heaven the well;in burns.
Others, with vast Typhoean rage more fell,
Rend up both rocks and hills, and ride the air
In whirlwind; hell scarce holds the wild uproar.
As when Alcides, from OEchalia crowned
With conquest, felt the envenomed robe, and tore
Through pain up by the roots Thessalian pines,
And Lichas from the top of CEta threw
Into the Euboic sea. Others more mild,
Retreated in a silent valley, sing
With notes angelical to many a harp
Their own heroic deeds, and hapless fall
. By doom of battle; and complain that fate
Free virtue should enthrall to force or chance.
. Their song was partial; but the harmony
_(What could it less when spirits immortal sing ()
TSuspended hell, and took with ravishment
he thronging audience. In discourse more sweet
(For eloquence the soul, song charms the sense)
Others apart sat on a hill retired,
In thoughts more elevate, and reasoned high
Df providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate,
Fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute,
And found no end, in wandering mazes lost.
§ 24&

Book II. PARADISE LOST. 17
Of good and evil much they argued then,
Of happiness and final misery,
Passion and apathy, and glory and shame,
Vain wisdom all, and false philosophy:
Yet, with a pleasing sorcery, could charm
Pain for a while, or anguish, and excite
Fallacious hope, or arm the obdured breast
With stubborn patience, as with triple steel.
Another part, in squadrons and gross bands,
On bold adventure to discover wide
That dismal world, if any clime perhaps
Might yield them easier habitation, bend
Four ways their flying march, along the banks .
Of four infernal rivers, that disgorge
Into the burning lake their baleful streams:
Abhorred Styx, the flood of deadly hate;
Sad Acheron, of sorrow, black and deep ;
Cocytus, named of lamentation loud
Heard on the rueful stream; fierce Phlegethon,
Whose waves of torrent fire inflame with rage.
Far off from these, a slow and silent stream,
Lethe, the river of oblivion, rolls
Her watry labyrinth, whereof who drinks,
Forth with his former state and being forgets,
Forgets both joy and grief, pleasure and pain.
Beyond this flood a frozen continent
Lies dark and wild, beat with perpetual storms
Of whirlwind and dire hail, which on firm land
Thaws not, but gathers heap, and ruin seems
Of ancient pile : or else deep snow and ice,
A gulf profound as that Serbonian bog
Betwixt Damiata and mount Casius old,
Where armies whole have sunk: the parching air
Burns frote, and cold performs the effects of fire.
Thither by harpy-footed Furies haled,
At certain revolutions, all the damned
Are brought; and feel by turns the bitter change
Of fierce extremes, extremes by change more fierce:
From beds of raging fire, to starve in ice
Their soft ethereal warmth, and there to pine
Immovable, infixed, and frozen round,
Periods of time, thence hurried back to fire.
They ferry over this Lethean sound
Both to and fro, their sorrow to augment,
And wish and struggle, as they pass, to reach
The tempting stream, with one small drop to lose
In sweet forgetfulness all pain and woe,
All in one moment, and so near the brink;
But ſate withstands, and to oppose the attempt
Medusa with Gorgonian terror guards
The ford, and of itself the water flies
All taste of living wight, as once it fled
The lip of Tantalus. Thus roving on
In cónfused march forlorn, the adventurous bands
With shuddering horror pale, and eyes aghast,
Viewed first their lamentable lot, and found
No rest. Through many a dark and dreary vale
They passed, and many a region dolorous,
O'er many a frozen, many a fiery Alp, -
Rocks, caves, lakes, fens, bogs, dens, and shades of
death, -
* C
examut-em--" •ºrº "T"-
A universe of death; which God by curse
Created evil, for evil only good;
Where all life dics, death lives, and nature breeds,
Perverse, all monstrous, all prodigious things,
Abominable, in utterable, and worse
Than ſables yet have feigned, or fear conceived,
Gorgons, and hydras, and chimeras dire.
L-mºnwhile, the adversary of God and man,
Satan, with thoughts inflamed of highest design,
Puts on swift wings, and towards the gates of hell
Explores his solitary flight: sometimes
He scours the right hand coast, sometimes the left;
Now shaves with level wing the deep, then soars
Up to the fiery concave towering high.
As when far off at sea a fleet descried
Hangs in the clouds, by equinoctial winds
Close sailing from Bengala, or the isles
Of Ternate and Tidore, whence merchants bring
Their spicy drugs; they, on the trading flood,
Through the wide Ethiopian to the Cape,
Ply stemming nightly toward the pole : so seemed.
Far off the flying fiend. At last appear
Hell-bounds, high reaching to the horrid roof,
And thrice threefold the gates: three folds were brass,
Three iron, three of adamantine rock
Impenetrable, impaled with circling fire,
Yet unconsumed. Before the gates there sat
On either side a formidable shape;
The one seemed woman to the waist, and fair;
But ended foul in many a scaly fold
Voluminous and vast; a serpent armed
With mortal sting : about her middle round
A cry of hell-hounds never-ceasing barked
With wide Cerberean mouths full loud, and rung
A hideous peal; yet, when they list, would creep,
If aught disturbed their noise, into her womb,
And kennel there; yet there still barked and howled,
Within unseen. Far less abhorred than these
Vexed Scylla, bathing in the sea that parts
Calabria from the hoarse Trinacrian shore : , , , ”
Nor uglier follow the night-hag, when, called ºf gº
A
In secret, riding through the air she comes, t 2.
Lured with the smell of infant blood, to dance Rºtt *4.
With Lapland witches, while the labouring moon \!. C.C. --~~
Eclipses at their charms. The other shape, | V -
If shape it might be called that shape had none
Distinguishable in member, joint, or limb;
Or substance might be call'd that shadow seemed,
For each seemed either: black it stood as night,
Fierce as ten Furies, terrible as hell,
And shook a dreadful dart; what seemed his head,
The likeness of a kingly crown had on.
Satan was now at hand, and from his seat
The monster moving onward came as fast
With horrid strides; hell trembled as he strode.
The undaunted fiend what this might be admired,
Admired, not feared; God and his Son except,
Created thing nought valued he, nor shunned;
And with disdainful look thus first began:
“Whence, and what art thou, execrable shape,
That darest, though grim and terrible, advance
->'
.*
18 PARADISE LOST.
Book II.
Thy miscreated front athwart my way
To yonder gates? through them I mean to pass,
That be assured, without leave asked of thee:
Retire, or taste thy folly, and learn by proof,
Hell-born, not to contend with spirits of heaven.”
To whom the goblin full of wrath replied:
* Art thou that traitor-angel, art thou he,
Who first broke peace in heaven, and faith, till then
Unbroken; and in proud, rebellious arms,
Drew after him the third part of heaven's sons
Conjured against the Highest; for which both thou
And they, outcast from God, are here condemned
To waste eternal days in woe and pain 2
And reckonest thou thyself with spirits of heaven,
Hell-doomed, and breathest defiance here and scorn,
Where I reign king, and, to enrage thee more,
Thy king and lord P Back to thy punishment,
False fugitive, and to thy speed add wings,
Lest with a whip of scorpions I pursue
Thy lingering, or with one stroke of this dart
Strange horror seize thee, and pangs unfelt before.’
So spake the grisly terror, and in shape,
So speaking and so threatening, grew tenfold
More dreadful and deform. On the other side,
Incensed with indignation, Satan stood
Unterrified, and like a comet burned,
That fires the length of Ophiuchus huge
In the arctic sky, and from his horrid hair
Shakes pestilence and war. Each at the head
Levelled his deadly aim ; their fatal hands
No second stroke intend ; and such a frown
Each cast at the other, as when two black clouds,
With heaven's artillery fraught, come rattling on
Over the Caspian, then stand front to front,
Hovering a space, till winds the signal blow
To join their dark encounter in mid air :
So frown'd the mighty combatants, that hell
Grew darker at their frown; so matched they stood;
For never but once more was either like
To meet so great a foe: and now great deeds
Had been achieved, whereof all hell had rung,
IIad not the snaky sorceress, that sat
Fast by hell-gate, and kept the fatal key,
Risen, and with hideous outcry rushed between.
“O father, what intends thy hand, she cried,
‘Against thy only son 2 What fury, O son,
Possesses thce to bend that mortal dart
Against thy father's head 2 and knowest for whom ;
For him who sits above and laughs the while
At thee ordained his drudge, to execute
Whate'er his wrath, which he calls justice, bids;
His wrath, which one day will destroy ye both.”
She spake, and at her words the hellish pest
Forbore; then these to her Satan returned :
“So strange thy outcry, and thy words so strange
Thou interposest, that my sudden hand,
Prevented, spares to tell thee yet by deeds
What it intends; till first I know of thee,
What thing thou art thus double-formed ; and why,
In this infernal vale first met, thou callest
Me father, and that phantasm callest my son :
I know thee not, nor ever saw till now
Sight more detestable than him and thee.”
To whom thus the portress of hell-gate replicd:
* Hast thou forgot me then, and do I seem
Now in thine eye so foul ? once deemed so fair
In heaven, when at the assembly, and in sight
Of all the seraphim with thee combined
In bold conspiracy against heaven's King,
All on a sudden miserable pain
Surprised thee, dim thine eyes, and dizzy swum
In darkness, while thy head flames thick and fast
Threw forth; till, on the left side opening wide,
Likest to thee in shape and countenance bright,
Then shining heavenly fair, a goddess armed,
Out of thy head I sprung; amazement seized
All the host of heaven; back they recoiled afraid
At first, and call'd me Sin, and for a sign
Portentous held me ; but, familiar grown,
I pleased, and with attractive graces won
The most averse, thee chiefly, who full oft
Thyself in me thy perfect image viewing,
Becamest enamoured, and such joy thou tookest
With me in secret, that my womb conceived
A growing burden. Meanwhile war arose,
And fields were ſought in heaven; wherein remained
(For what could else 2) to our Almighty Foe
Clear victory; to our part loss and rout,
Through all the empyréan : down they fell
Driven headlong from the pitch of heaven, down
Into this deep; and in the general fall
I also ; at which time this powerful key
Into my hand was given, with charge to keep
These gates for ever shut, which none can pass
Without my opening. Pensive here I sat
Alone; but long I sat not, till my womb,
Pregnant by thee, and now excessive grown,
Prodigious motion felt, and rueful throes.
At last this odious offspring whom thou seest,
Thine own begotten, breaking violent way,
Tore through my entrails, that, with fear and pain
Distorted, all my mether shape thus grew
Transformed : but he my inbred enemy
Forth issued, brandishing his fatal dart
Made to destroy. I fled, and cried out Death !
Hell trembled at the hideous name, and sighed
From all her caves, and back resounded, Death !
I fled; but he pursued, (though more, it seems,
Inflamed with lust than rage,) and, swifter far,
Me overtook his mother all dismayed,
And in embraces forcible and foul
Ingendering with me, of that rape begot
These yelling monsters, that with ceaseless cry
Surround me, as thou sawest, hourly conceived
And hourly born, with sorrow infinite
To me; for, when they list, into the womb
That bred them they return and howl, and gnaw
My bowels, their repast; then bursting forth
Aſresh with conscious terrors vex me round,
That rest or intermission none I find.
Before mine eyes in opposition sits
Grim Death, my son and foe; who sets them on,
Book II. PARADISE LOST. 19
And me his parent would full soon devour My being gavest me; whom should I obey
For want of other prey, but that lic knows But thee P whom ſollow P thou wilt bring me soon
His end with mine involved; and knows that I To that new world of light and bliss, among
Should prove a bitter morsel, and his bane, . The gods who live at ease, where I shall reign
Whenever that shall be ; so fate pronounced. At thy right hand voluptuous, as beseems
But thou, O father, I forewarn thee, shun Thy daughter and thy darling, without end.”
His deadly arrow ; neither vainly hope Thus saying, from her side the fatal key,
To be invulnerable in those bright arms, Sad instrument of all our woe, she took ;
Though tempered heavenly; for that mortal dint, And, towards the gate rolling her bestial train,
Save he who reigns above, none can resist.’ Forth with the huge portcullis high up-drew,
She finished; and the subtle fiend his lore Which, but herself, not all the Stygian powers
Soon learned, now milder, and thus answered smooth : Could once have moved; then in the key-hole turns
‘Dear daughter, since thou claimest me for thy sire, The intricate wards, and every bolt and bar
And my fair son here showest me, the dear pledge Of massy iron or solid rock with ease
Of dalliance had with thee in heaven, and joys Unfastens. On a sudden open fly
Then sweet, now sad to mention, through dire change With impetuous recoil and jarring sound f A /
Beſallen us, unforeseen, unthought of; know, The inſernal doors, and on their hinges grate ºv : * ~
I come no enemy, but to set free Harsh thunder, that the lowest botton shook a 4/cts, ºtte, ,
From out this dark and dismal house of pain f Erebus. She opened, but to shut
Both him and thee, and all the heavenly host Excelled her power: the gates wide open stood,
Of spirits, that, in our just pretences armed, That with extended wings a bannered host,
Fell with us from on high : from them I go Under spread ensigns marching, might pass through
This uncouth errand sole; and one for all With horse and chariots ranked in loose array:
Myself expose, with lonely steps to tread So wide they stood, and like a furnace-mouth
The unfounded deep, and through the void immense Cast forth redounding smoke and ruddy flame.
To search with wandering quest a place foretold Before their eyes in sudden view appear
Should be, and, by concurring signs, ere now The secrets of the hoary deep; a dark
Created vast and round, a place of bliss Illimitable ocean, without bound,
In the purlieus of heaven, and therein placed Without dimension, where length, breadth, and
A race of upstart creatures, to supply highth,
Perhaps our vacant room; though more removed, And time, and place, are lost; where eldest Night
Lest beaven, surcharged with potent multitude, And Chaos, ancestors of Nature, hold
Might hap to move new broils. Be this or aught Eternal anarchy, amidst the noise
Than this more secret now designed, I haste Of endless wars, and by confusion stand.
To know ; and, this once known, shall soon return, For Hot, Cold, Moist, and Dry, four champions fierce,
And bring ye to the place where thou and Death Strive here for mastery, and to battle bring
Shall dwell at ease, and up and down unseen Their embryon atoms; they around the flag
Wing silently the buxom air, imbalmed Of each his faction, in their several clans,
With odours; there ye shall be fed and filled Light-armed or heavy, sharp, smooth, swiſt, or slow,
Immeasurably; all things shall be your prey.’ Swarm populous, unnumbered as the sands
He ceased, for both seemed highly pleased, and Of Barca or Cyrene's torrid soil,
Death Levied to side with warring winds, and poise
Grinned horrible a ghastly smile, to hear Their lighter wings. To whom these most adhere,
His famine should be filled; and blessed his maw He rules a moment: Chaos umpire sits,
Destined to that good hour: no less rejoiced And by decision more embroils the fray
His mother bad, and thus bespeak her sire : By which he reigns: next him high arbiter
“The key of this infernal pit by due, Chance governs all. Into this wild abyss,
And by command of heaven's all-powerful King, The womb of Nature, and perhaps her grave,
I keep, by him forbidden to unlock Of neither sea, nor shore, nor air, nor ſire,
These adamantine gates; against all force But all these in their pregnant causes mixed
Death ready stands to interpose his dart, Confusedly, and which thus must ever fight,
Fearless to be o'ermatched by living might. Unless the Almighty Maker them ordain
But what owe I to his commands above His dark materials to create more worlds;
Who hates me, and hath hither thrust me down Into this wild abyss the wary fiend
Into this gloom of Tartarus profound, Stood on the brink of hell, and looked a while,
To sit in hateful office here confined, Pondering his voyage; for no narrow frith
Inhabitant of heaven, and heavenly-born, He had to cross. Nor was his ear less pealed
Here, in perpetual agony and pain, With noises loud and ruinous, (to compare :
With terrors and with clamours compassed round Great things with small,) than when Bellona storms,
Of mime own brood that on my bowels feed P With all her battering engines bent to rase
Thou art my father, thou my author, thou Some capital city; or less than if this frame
C 2
20 - PARADISE LOST.
Book II.
Of heaven were falling, and these elements
In mutiny had from her axle torn
The stedfast earth. At last his sail-broad vans
He spreads for flight, and in the surging smoke
Uplifted spurns the ground; thence many a league,
As in a cloudy chair, ascending rides
Audacious; but, that seat soon failing, meets
A vast vacuity : all unawares
Fluttering his pennons vain, plumb down he drops
Ten thousand fathom deep ; and to this hour
Down had been falling, had not by ill chance
The strong rebuff of some tumultuous cloud,
Instinct with fire and nitre, hurried him
As many miles aloft: that fury staid,
Quenched in a boggy syrtis, neither sea,
Nor good dry land : nigh foundered on he ſares,
Treading the crude consistence, half on foot,
Half flying ; behoves him now both oar and sail.
As when a gryphon through the wilderness
With winged course, o'er hill or moory dale,
Pursues the Arimaspian, who by stealth
Had from his wakeful custody purloined
The guarded gold : so eagerly the fiend
O'er bog, or steep, through straight, rough, dense, or
rare,
With head, hands, wings, or feet, pursues his way,
And swims, or sinks, or wades, or creeps, or flies:
At length, a universal hubbub wild
Of stunning sounds, and voices all confused,
Borne through the hollow dark, assaults his ear
With loudest vehemence: thither he plies,
Undaunted, to meet there whatever power
Or spirit of the nethermost abyss
Might in that noise reside, of whom to ask
Which way the nearest coast of darkness lies
Bordering on light; when straight behold the throne
Of Chaos, and his dark pavilion spread
Wide on the wasteful deep; with him enthroned
Sat sable-vested Night, eldest of things,
The consort of his reign; and by them stood
Orcus and Ades, and the dreaded name
Of Demogorgon Rumour next and Chance,
And Tumult and Confusion all embroiled,
And Discord with a thousand various mouths.
To whom Satan turning boldly, thus: ‘Ye powers
And spirits of this methermost abyss,
Chaos and ancient Night, I come no spy,
With purpose to explore or to disturb
The secrets of your realm ; but, by constraint
Wandering this darksome desert, as my way
Lies through your spacious empire up to light,
Alone, and without guide, half lost, I seek
What readiest path leads where your gloomy bounds
Confine with heaven ; or if some other place,
From your dominion won, the ethereal King
Possesses lately, thither to arrive
I travel this profound ; direct my course;
Directed, no mean recompense it brings
To your behoof, if I that region lost,
All usurpation thence expelled, reduce
To her original darkness, and your sway,
f
(Which is my present journey,) and once more
Erect the standard there of ancient Night :
Yours be the advantage all, mine the revenge.”
Thus Satan; and him thus the Anarch old,
With faltering speech and visage incomposed,
Answered : ‘I know thee, stranger, who thou art,
That mighty leading angel, who of late
Made head against heaven's King, though overthrown.
I saw and heard; for such a numerous host
Fled not in silence through the frighted deep,
With ruin upon ruin, rout on rout,
Confusion worse confounded; and heaven-gate
Poured out by millions her victorious bands
Pursuing. I upon my frontiers here
Keep residence; if all I can will serve
That little which is left so to defend,
Encroached on still through your intestine broils
Weakening the scepter of old Night: first hell,
Your dungeon, stretching far and wide bencath;
Now lately heaven and earth, another world,
Hung o'er my realm, linked in a golden chain
To that side heaven from whence your legions ſell :
If that way be your walk, you have not far;
So much the nearer danger; go, and speed ;
Havoc, and spoil, and ruin, are my gain.”
He ceased ; and Satan staid not to reply,
But, glad that now his sea should find a shore,
With fresh alacrity, and force renewed,
Springs upward, like a pyramid of fire,
Into the wild expanse, and, through the shock
Of fighting elements, on all sides round
Environed, wins his way; harder beset
And more endangered, than when Argo passed
Through Bosporus, betwixt the justling rocks:
Or when Ulysses on the larboard shunned
Charybdis, and by the other whirlpool steered.
So he with difficulty and labour hard
Moved on, with difficulty and labour he ;
But, he once past, soon after, when man fell,
Strange alteration 1 Sin and Death amain
Following his track, such was the will of Heaven,
Paved after him a broad and beaten way
Over the dark abyss, whose boiling gulf
Tamely endured a bridge of wondrous length,
I’rom hell continued reaching the utmost orb
Of this frail world; by which the spirits perverse
With easy intercourse pass to and fro
To tempt or punish mortals, except whom
God and good angels guard by special grace.
But now at last the sacred influence
Of light appears, and from the walls of heaven
Shoots far into the bosom of dim Night,
A glimmering dawn : here Nature first begins
Her farthest verge, and Chaos to retire,
As from her outmost works a broken foe,
With tumult less, and with less hostile din,
That Satan with less toil, and now with ease
Wafts on the calmer wave by dubious light,
And, like a weather-beaten vessel, holds
Gladly the port, though shrouds and tackle torn;
Or in the emptier waste, resembling air,
Book III.
PARADISE LOST.
*
Weighs his spread wings, at leisure to behold
Far off the empyreal heaven, extended wide
In circuit, undetermined square or round,
With opal towers and battlements adorned
Of living sapphire, once his native seat;
And fast by, hanging in a golden chain,
This pendent world, in bigness as a star
Of smallest magnitude, close by the moon.
Thither, full fraught with mischievous revenge,
Accursed, and in a cursed hour, he hies.
BOOK III.
THE ARGUMENT.
God, sitting on his throne, sees Satan flying towards this world, then newly created; shows him to the Son, who sat at his right hand;
foretells the success of Satan in perverting mankind, clears his own justice and wisdom from all imputation, having created man
free and able enough to have Wilſº his tempter; yet declares his purpose of grace towards him, in regard he ſell not of his
own malice, as did Satan, but by him seduced. The Son of God renders praises to his Father for the manifestation of his gracious
purpose towards man: but God again. declares, that grace cannot be extended towards man without the satisfaction of divine
justice; man hath offended the majesty of God by aspiring to godhead, and therefore, with all his progeny, devoted to death, must
die, unless some one can be found sufficient to answer for his offence, and undergo his punishment. The Son of God freely offers
himself a ransom for man; the Father accepts him, ordains his incarnation, pronounces his exaltation above all names in heaven
and earth; commands all the angels to adore him. They obey, and hymning to their harps in full quire, celebrate the Father and
the Son. Meanwhile Satan alights upon the bare convex of this world's outermost orb; where wandering he first finds a place,
since called the Limbo of Vanity: what persons and things fly up thither: thence comes to the gate of heaven, described ascend-
ing by stairs, and the waters above the firmament that flow about it: his passage thence to the orb of the sun; he finds there
Uriel, the regent of that orb, but first changes himself into the shape of a meaner angel; and, pretending a zealous desire to be-
hold the new creation, and man whom God had placed here, inquires of him the place of his habitation, and is directed: alights
first on mount Niphates, / 244, 4-1-
, , , twº ev ! •
º vv/ 1. l. l. n. * f. {-1.- v * A f * : «
HAIL, holy Light! offspring of heaven first-born,
Or of the Eternal coeternal beam,
May I express thee unblamed 2 since God is light,
And never but in unapproached light
Dwelt from eternity, dwelt then in thee,
Bright effluence of bright essence increate.
Or hearest thou rather, pure ethereal stream,
Whose fountain who shall tell ? Before the sun,
Before the heavens thou wert, and at the voice
Of God, as with a mantle, didst invest
The rising world of waters dark and deep,
Won from the void and formless infinite.
Thee I revisit now with bolder wing,
Escaped the Stygian pool, though long detained
In that obscure sojourn, while in my flight
Through utter and through middle darkness borne,
With other notes than to the Orphéan lyre,
I sung of Chaos and eternal Night;
Taught by the heavenly muse to venture down
The dark descent, and up to re-ascend, Vº 2
Though hard and rare Vihee I revisit safe, \!…" ‘N
And feel thy sovran vital lamp; but thou ~3°
Revisitest not these eyes, that roll in vain
To find thy piercing ray, and find no dawn;
So thick a drop serene hath quenched their orbs,
Or dim suffusion veiled. Yet not the more
Cease I to wander where the muses haunt
Clear spring, or shady grove, or sunny hill,
Smit with the love of sacred song; but chief
Thee, Sion, and the flowery brooks beneath,
That wash thy hallowed feet, and warbling flow,
Nightly I visit: nor sometimes forget
Those other two equalled with me in fate,
V"-(vº-
U-
y
6.....!
ºl.
So were I equalled with them in renown,
Blind Thamyris, and blind Maeonides,
And Tiresias, and Phineas, prophets old :
Then feed on thoughts, that voluntary move
Harmonious numbers; as the wakeful bird
Sings darkling, and in shadiest covert hid,
Tunes her nocturnal note. Thus with the year
Seasons return ; but not to me returns
Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn,
Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer's rose,
Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine ;
But cloud instead, and ever-during dark
Surrounds me, from the cheerful ways of men
Cut off, and for the book of knowledge fair,
Presented with a universal blank
Of nature's works to me expunged and rased,
And wisdom at one entrance quite shut out.
So much the rather thou, celestial light,
Shine inward, and the mind through all her powers
Irradiate: there plant eyes, all mist from thence
Purge and disperse, that I may see and tell
Of things invisible to mortal sight.
Now had the Almighty Father from above,
From the pure empyréan where he sits
High throned above all highth, bent down his eye
His own works, and their works, at once to view .
About him all the sanctities of heaven
Stood thick as stars, and from his sight received
Beatitude past utterance; on his right
The radiant image of his glory sat,
His only Son; on earth he first beheld
Our two first parents, yet the only two
Of mankind, in the happy garden placed,
Reaping immortal fruits of joy and love,
Uninterrupted joy, unrivalled love,

22 PARADISE LOST.
Book III.
In blissful solitude; he then surveyed
Hell and the gulf between, and Satan there
Coasting the wall of heaven on this side night
In the dun air sublime, and ready now
To stoop with wearied wings, and willing feet,
On the bare outside of this world, that seemed
Firm land imbosomed without firmament,
Uncertain which, in ocean or in air.
Him God beholding from his prospect high,
Wherein past, present, future, he beholds,
Thus to his only Son foreseeing spake:
‘Only begotten Son, seest thou what rage
Transports our adversary 2 whom no bounds
Prescribed, no bars of hell, nor all the chains
Heaped on him there, nor yet the main abyss
Wide interrupt, can hold; so bent he seems
On desperate revenge, that shall redound
Upon his own rebellious head. And now,
Through all restraint broke loose, he wings his way
Not far off heaven, in the precincts of light,
Directly towards the new-created world
And man there placed, with purpose to essay
If him by force he can destroy, or worse,
By some false guile pervert; and shall pervert:
For man will hearken to his glozing lies,
And easily transgress the sole command,
Sole pledge of his obedience: so will ſall
He and his faithless progeny. Whose fault P
Whose but his own P Ingrate, he had of me
All be could have ; I made him just and right,
Sufficient to have stood, though free to fall.
Such I created all the ethereal powers
And spirits, both them who stood, and them who ſailed;
Freely they stood who stood, and fell who fell.
Not free, what proof could they have given sincere
Of true allegiance, constant faith or love,
Where only what they needs must do appeared,
Not what they would f what praise could they receive,
What pleasure I from such obedience paid,
When will and reason (reason also is choice)
Useless and vain, of freedom both despoiled,
Made passive both, had served necessity,
Not me 2 They therefore, as to right belonged,
So were created, nor can justly accuse
Their Maker, or their making, or their ſate,
As if predestination over-ruled
Their will, disposed by absolute decree
Or high foreknowledge; they themselves decreed
Their own revolt, not I ; if I foreknew,
Forcknowledge had no influence on their fault,
Which had no less proved certain unforeknown.
So without least impulse or shadow of ſate,
Oraught by me immutably forescen,
They trespass, authors to themselves in all
Both what they judge, and what they choose; for so
I formed them free : and free they must remain,
Till they enthral themselves; I else must change
Their nature, and revoke the high decree
Unchangeable, cternal, which ordained
Their freedom, they themselvcs ordained their ſall.
The ſirst sort by their own suggestion ſell,
Self-tempted, self-depraved: man falls, deceived
By the other first: man therefore shall find grace,
The other none: in mercy and justice both,
Through heaven and earth, so shall my glory excel:
But mercy, first and last, shall brightest shine.’
Thus while God spake, ambrosial fragrance filled
All heaven, and in the blessed spirits elect
Sense of new joy ineffable diffused.
Beyond compare the Son of God was secn
Most glorious: in him all his Father shone
Substantially expressed; and in his face
Divine compassion visibly appeared,
Love without end, and without measure grace,
Which uttering, thus he to his Father spake:
“O Father, gracious was that word which closed
Thy sovran sentence, that man should find grace;
For which both heaven and earth shall high extol
Thy praises, with the innumerable sound
Of hymns and sacred songs, wherewith thy throne
Encompassed shall resound thce ever blest.
For should man finally be lost, should man,
Thy creature late so loved, thy youngest son,
Fall circumvented thus by fraud, though joined
With his own folly 2 That be from thee far,
That far be from thee, Father, who art judge
Of all things made, and judgest only right.
Or shall the adversary thus obtain
His end, and frustrate thine * shall he ſulfil
His malice, and thy goodness bring to naught,
Or proud return, though to his heavier doom,
Yet with revenge accomplished, and to hell
Draw after him the whole race of mankind,
By him corrupted? or wilt thou thyself
Abolish thy creation, and unmake
For him, what for thy glory thou hast made 2
So should thy goodness and thy greatness both
Be questioned and blasphemed without defence.”
To whom the great Creator thus replied :
“O Son, in whom my soul hath chief delight,
Son of my bosom, Son who art alone
My word, my wisdom, and effectual might,
All hast thou spoken as my thoughts are, all
As my eternal purpose hath decreed :
Man shall not quite be lost, but saved who will;
Yet not of will in him, but grace in me
Freely vouchsafed ; once more I will renew
His lapsed powers, though forfeit, and cnthralled
By sin to foul exorbitant desires;
Upheld by me, yet once more he shall stand
On even ground against his mortal foe;
By me upheld, that he may know how frail
His fallen condition is, and to me owe
All his deliverance, and to nonc but me.
Some I have chosen of peculiar grace,
Elect above the rest; so is my will:
The rest shall hear me call, and oſt be warned
Their sinful state, and to appease betimes
The incensed Deity, while offered grace
Invites; for I will clear their senses dark,
What may suffice, and soften stony hearts
To pray, repent, and bring obedience due.
Book III.
PARADISE LOST. 23
To prayer, repentance, and obedience due,
Though but endeavoured with sincere intent,
Mine ear shall not be slow, mine eye not shut.
And I will place within them as a guide,
My umpire conscience; whom if they will hear,
Light after light, well used, they shall attain,
And to the end persisting, safe arrive.
This my long sufferance, and my day of grace,
They who neglect and scorn, shall never taste;
But hard be hardened, blind be blinded more,
That they may stumble on, and deeper ſall;
And none but such from mercy I exclude.
But yet all is not done ; man disobeying,
Disloyal, breaks his fealty, and sins
Against the high supremacy of Heaven,
Affecting godhead, and, so losing all,
To expiate his treason hath nought left,
But to destruction sacred and devote,
He, with his whole posterity, must die.
Die he or justice must ; unless for him
Some other able, and as willing, pay
The rigid satisfaction, death for death.
Say, heavenly Powers, where shall we find such love?
Which of ye will be mortal, to redeem
Man's mortal crime, and just the unjust to save 2
Dwells in all heaven charity so dear 2’
He asked, but all the heavenly quire stood mute,
And silence was in heaven : on man's behalf
Patron or intercessor none appeared,
Much less that durst upon his own head draw
The deadly forfeiture, and ransom set.
And now without redemption all mankind
Must have been lost, adjudged to death and hell
By doom severe, had not the Son of God,
In whom the fulness dwells of love divine,
His dearest mediation thus renewed:
“Father, thy word is past, man shall find grace;
And shall grace not find means, that finds her way,
The speediest of thy winged messengers,
To visit all thy creatures, and to all
Comes unprevented, unimplored, unsought?
Happy for man, so coming ; he her aid
Can never seek, once dead in sins, and lost;
Atonement for himself, or offering mect,
Indebted and undone, hath none to bring :
Behold me then ; me for him, life for life
I offer; on me let thine anger fall;
Account me man; I for his sake will leave
Thy bosom, and this glory next to thee
Freely put off, and for him lastly die
Well pleased ; on me let Death wreak all his rage :
Under his gloomy power I shall not long
Lie vanquished; thou hast given me to possess
Life in myself for ever; by thee I live,
Though now to death I yield, and am his due
All that of me can die: yet, that debt paid,
Thou wilt not leave me in the loathsome grave
His prey, nor suffer my unspotted soul
For ever with corruption there to dwell:
But I shall rise victorious, and subdue
My vanquisher, spoiled of his vaunted spoil;
Death his death's wound shall then receive, and stoop
Inglorious, of his mortal sting disarmed.
I through the ample air in triumph high
Shall lead hell captive maugre hell, and show
The powers of darkness bound. Thou, at the sight
Pleased, out of heaven shalt look down and smile,
While, by thee raised, I ruin all my foes,
Death last, and with his carcase glut the grave:
Then, with the multitude of my redeemed,
Shall enter heaven long absent, and return,
Father, to see thy face, wherein no cloud
Of anger shall remain, but peace assured
And reconcilement; wrath shall be no more
Thenceforth ; but in thy presence joy entire.”
His words here ended, but his meek aspéct
Silent yet spake, and breathed immortal love
To mortal men, above which only shone
Filial obedience : as a sacrifice
Glad to be offered, he attends the will
Of his great Father. Admiration seized
All heaven, what this might mean, and whither tend,
Wondering ; but soon the Almighty thus replied:
“O thou in heaven and earth the only peace
Found out for mankind under wrath ! O thou
My sole complacence well thou knowest how dear
To me are all my works, nor man the least,
Though last created; that for him I spare
Thee from my bosom and right hand, to save,
By losing thee a while, the whole race lost.
Thou, therefore, whom thou only canst redeem,
Their nature also to thy nature join ;
And be thyself man among men on earth,
Made flesh, when time shall be, of virgin seed,
By wondrous birth: be thou in Adam's room
The head of all mankind, though Adam's son.
As in him perish all men, so in thee,
As from a second root, shall be restored
As many as are restored, without thee none.
His crime makes guilty all his sons; thy merit,
Imputed, shall absolve them who renounce
Their own both righteous and unrighteous deeds,
And live in thee transplanted, and from thee
Receive new life. So man, as is most just,
Shall satisfy for man, be judged and die,
And dying rise, and rising with him raise
His brethren, ransomed with his own dear life.
So heavenly love shall outdo hellish hate,
Giving to death, and dying to redeem,
So dearly to redeem, what hellish hate
So easily destroyed, and still destroys
In those who, when they may, accept not grace.
Nor shalt thou, by descending to assume
Man's nature, lessen or degrade thine own.
Because thou hast, though throned in highest bliss
Equal to God, and equally enjoying
God-like fruition, quitted all, to save
A world from utter loss, and hast been found
By merit more than birthright Son of God,
Found worthiest to be so by being good,
Far more than great or high; because in thee
Love hath abounded more than glory abounds,
24
Book III.
.*
PARADISE LOST.
Therefore thy humiliation shall exalt
With thee thy manhood also to this throne;
Here shalt thou sit incarnate, here shalt reign
Both God and man, Son both of God and man,
Anointed universal King ; all power
I give thee; reign for ever, and assume
Thy merits; under thee, as head supreme,
Thrones, princedoms, powers, dominions, I reduce:
All knees to thee shall bow, of them that bide
In heaven, or earth, or under carth in hell.
When thou, attended gloriously from heaven,
Shalt in the sky appear, and from thce send
The summoning archangels to proclaim
Thy dread tribunal : forthwith from all winds
The living, and forthwith the cited dead
Of all past ages, to the general doom
Shall hasten; such a peal shall rouse their sleep.
Then, all thy saints assembled, thou shall judge
Bad men and angels; they arraigned, shall sink
Beneath thy sentence: hell, her numbers full,
Thenceſorth shall be for ever shut. Meanwhile
The world shall burn, and from her ashes spring
New heaven and earth, wherein the just shall dwell,
And, after all their tribulations long,
See golden days, fruitful of golden deeds,
With joy and love triumphing, and fair truth.
Then thou thy regal scepter shalt lay by,
For regal scepter then no more shall need,
God shall be all in all. But, all ye gods,
Adore him, who to compass all this dies;
Adore the Son, and honour him as me.”
No sooner had the Almighty ceased, but all
The multitude of angels, with a shout
Loud as from numbers without number, sweet
As from blest voices, uttering joy, heaven rung
With jubilee, and loud hosannas filled
The eternal regions: lowly reverent
Towards either throne they bow, and to the ground
With solemn adoration down they cast
Their crowns inwove with amarant and gold;
Immortal amarant, a flower which once
In Paradise, fast by the tree of life,
#. to bloom ; but soon for man's offence
yº o heaven removed where first it grew, there grows,
\
l
And flowers aloft shading the ſount of life,
And where the river of bliss through midst of heaven
Rolls o'er Elysian flowers her amber stream ;
With these that never fade the spirits elect
Bind their resplendent locks in wreathed with beams;
Now in loose garlands thick thrown off, the bright
Pavement, that like a sea of jasper shone,
Impurpled with celestial roses smiled.
Then, crowned again, their golden harps they took,
Harps ever tuned, that glittering by their side
Like quivers hung, and with preamble sweet
Of charming symphony they introduce
Their sacred song, and waken raptures high :
No voice exempt, no voice but well could join
Melodious part, such concord is in heaven.
“Thee, Father, first they sung Omnipotent,
Immutable, Immortal, Infinite,
Eternal King ; thee, Author of all being,
Fountain of light, thyself invisible
Amidst the glorious brightness where thou sittest
Throned inaccessible, but when thou shadest
The full blaze of thy beams, and through a cloud
Drawn round about thee like a radiant shrine,
Dark with excessive bright thy skirts appear,
Yet dazzle heaven, that brightest seraphim
Approach not, but with both wings veil their eyes.
Thee next they sang of all creation first,
Begotten Son, Divine Similitude,
In whose conspicuous countenance, without cloud
Made visible, the Almighty Father shines,
Whom else no creature can behold; on thee
Impressed the effulgence of his glory abides,
Transfused on thee his ample Spirit rests.
He heaven of heavens and all the powers therein
By thee created ; and by thee threw down
The aspiring dominations: thou that day
Thy Father's dreadful thunder didst not spare,
Nor stop thy flaming chariot wheels, that shook
Heaven's everlasting frame, while o'er the necks.
Thou drovest of warring angels disarrayed.
Back from pursuit thy powers with loud acclaim
Thee only extolled, Son of thy Father's might,
To execute fierce vengeance on his foes;
Not so on man : him, through their malice fallen,
Father of mercy and grace, thou didst not doom
So strictly, but much more to pity incline:
No sooner did thy dear and only Son
Perceive thee purposed not to doom frail man
So strictly, but much more to pity inclined ;
He, to appease thy wrath and end the strife
Of mercy and justice in thy face discerned,
Regardless of the bliss wherein he sat
Second to thee, offered himself to die
For man's offence. O unexampled love,
Love no where to be found less than divine !
Hail, Son of God, Saviour of men Thy name
Shall be the copious matter of my song
Henceforth, and never shall my harp thy praise
Forget, nor from thy Father's praise disjoin.”
Thus they in heaven, above the starry sphere,
Their happy hours in joy and hymning spent.
Meanwhile upon the firm opacous globe
Of this round world, whose first convex divides
The luminous inferior orbs, enclosed
From Chaos, and the inroad of darkness old,
Satan alighted walks: a globe far off
It seemed, now seems a boundless continent
Dark, waste, and wild, under the frown of night
Starless exposed, and ever-threatening storms
Of Chaos blustering round, inclement sky;
Save on that side which from the wall of heaven,
Though distant far, some small reflection gains
Of glimmering air, less vexed with tempest loud:
Here walked the ficud at large in spacious field.
As when a vulture on Imaüs bred,
Whose snowy ridge the roving Tartar bounds,
Dislodging from a region scarce of prey,
To gorge the flesh of lambs or yeapling kids,
Book III.
25
PARADISE LOST.

On hills where flocks are fed, flics towards the springs
Of Ganges or Hydaspes, Indian streams:
But in his way lights on the barren plains
Of Sericana, where Chineses drive
With sails and wind their cany waggons light:
So, on this windy sca of land, the ſiend
Walked up and down alone, bent on his prey;
Alone, for other creature in this place,
Living or lifeless, to be found was none,
None yet, but store hereafter from the earth
Up hither, like aéreal vapours, flew
Of all things transitory and vain, when sin
With vanity had filled the works of men ;
Both all things vain, and all who in vain things
Built their fond hopes of glory or lasting ſame,
Or happiness in this or the other life;
All who have their reward on earth, the fruits
Of painful superstition and blind zeal,
Nought seeking but the praise of men, here find
Fit retribution, empty as their deeds;
All the unaccomplished works of Nature's hand,
Abortive, monstrous, or unkindly mixed,
Dissolved on earth, fleet hither, and in vain,
Till final dissolution, wander here:
Not in the neighbouring moon, as some have dreamed;
Those argent fields more likely habitants,
Translated saints, or middle spirits hold
Betwixt the angelical and human kind.
Hither of ill-joined sons and daughters born
First from the ancient world those giants came
With many a vain exploit, though then renowned :
The builders next of Babel on the plain
Of Sennaar, and still with vain design
New Babels, had they wherewithal, would build :
Others came single; he, who to be deemed
A god, leaped fondly into AEtna flames,
Empedocles; and he, who, to enjoy
Plato's Elysium, leaped into the sea,
Cleombrotus; and many more too long, rº-
Embryos and idiots, eremites and friars . . . .
º - - (AAA-CA, UCov
White, black, and gray, with all their trumpery.
Here pilgrims roam, that strayed so far to seek
In Golgotha him dead, who lives in heaven;
And they, who, to be sure of Paradise,
Dying put on the weeds of Dominic,
Or in Franciscan think to pass disguised;
They pass the planets seven, and pass the fixed,
And that crystalline sphere whose balance weighs
The trepidation talked, and that first moved ;
And now Saint Peter at heaven's wicket seems
To wait them with his keys, and now at foot
Of heaven's ascent they lift their feet, when lo
A violent cross wind from either coast
Blows them transverse, ten thousand leagues awry
Into the devious air : then might ye see
Cowls, hoods, and habits, with their wearers, tost
And fluttered into rags; then reliques, beads,
Indulgences, dispenses, pardons, bulls,
The sport of winds: all these, upwhirled aloft,
Fly o'er the backside of the world far off,
Into a limbo large and broad, since called
All night, at last by break of cheerful dawn ...,
The Paradise of Fools, to few unknown
Long aſter, now unpeopled, and untrod.
All this dark globe the fiend found as he passed,
And long he wandered, till at last a gleam
Of dawning light turned thitherward in haste
His travelled steps: far distant he descries
Ascending by degrees magnificent
Up to the wall of heaven a structure high ;
At top whereof, but far more rich, appeared
The work as of a kingly palace-gate,
With frontispiece of diamond and gold
Embellished; thick with sparkling orient gems
The portal shone, inimitable on earth
By model, or by shading pencil, drawn.
The stairs were such as whereon Jacob saw
Angels ascending and descending, bands
Of guardians bright, when he from Esau fled
To Padan-Aram, in the field of Luz,
Dreaming by night under the open sky,
And waking cried, “This is the gate of heaven.’
Each stair mysteriously was meant, nor stood
There always, but drawn up to heaven sometimes
Viewless; and underneath a bright sea flowed
Of jasper, or of liquid pearl, whereon
Who after came from earth, sailing arrived,
Waſted by angels, or flew o'er the lake
Rapt in a chariot drawn by fiery steeds.
The stairs were then let down, whether to dare
The fiend by easy ascent, or aggravate
His sad exclusion from the doors of bliss:
Direct against which opened from beneath,
Just o'er the blissful seat of Paradise,
A passage down to the earth, a passage wide,
Wider by far than that of aſter-times
Over mount Sion, and, though that were large,
Over the Promised Land, to God so dear;
By which, to visit oſt those happy tribes,
On high behests his angels to and fro
Passed frequent, and his eye with choice regard
IFrom Paneas, the ſount of Jordan's flood,
To Beérsaba, where the Holy Land
Borders on Egypt and the Arabian shore;
So wide the opening seemed, where bounds were set
To darkness, such as bound the ocean wave.
Satan from hence, now on the lower stair,
That scaled by steps of gold to heaven-gate,
Looks down with wonder at the sudden view
Of all this world at once. As when a scout, L
Through dark and desert ways with peril gone /// *c. (
... -- “Gºet,
Obtains the brow of some high-climbing hill, ** twº,
Which to his eye discovers unaware *
The goodly prospect of some foreign land
First seen, or some renowned metropolis
With glistering spires and pinnacles adorned,
Which now the rising sun gilds with his beams:
Such wonder scized, though after heaven seen,
The spirit malign, but much more envy seized,
At sight of all this world beheld so fair.
Round he surveys, (and well might where he stood
So high above the circling canopy
26 PARADISE LOST. Book III.
Of night's extended shade,) from eastern point Culminate from the equator, as they now
Of Libra to the fleecy star that bears Shot upward still direct, whence no way round
Andromeda far off Atlantic seas, Shadow from body opaque can fall; and the air,
Beyond the horizon; then from pole to pole No where so clear, sharpened his visual ray
He views in breadth, and without longer pause To objects distant far, whereby he soon
Downright into the world’s first region throws Saw within ken a glorious angel stand,
His flight precipitant, and winds with ease The same whom John saw also in the sun :
Through the pure marble air his oblique way His back was turned, but not his brightness hid ;
_Amongst innumerable stars, that shone Of beaming sunny rays a golden tiar
tº Stars distant, but nigh hand seemed other worlds; Circled his head, nor less his locks behind
^0 | A& *\Or other worlds they seemed, or happy isles, Illustrious on his shoulders, fledge with wings,
" Like those Hesperian gardens famed of old, Lay waving round; on some great charge employed
Fortunate fields, and groves, and flowery vales, He seemed, or fixed in cogitation deep.
Thrice-happy isles; but who dwelt happy there Glad was the spirit impure, as now in hope
He staid not to inquire : above them all To find who might direct his wandering flight
The golden sun, in splendour likest heaven, To Paradise, the happy seat of man,
Allured his eye; thither his course he bends His journey’s end, and our beginning woe.
Through the calm firmament, (but up or down, But first he casts to change his proper shape,
By center or eccentric, hard to tell, Which else might work him danger or delay ;
Or longitude,) where the great luminary And now a stripling cherub he appears,
Aloof the vulgar constellations thick, Not of the prime, yet such as in his face
That from his lordly eye keep distance due, Youth smiled celestial, and to every limb
Dispenses light from far: they, as they move Suitable grace diffused, so well he ſeigned :
Their starry dance in numbers that compute Under a coronet his flowing hair
Days, months, and years, towards his all-cheering | In curls on either cheek played; wings he wore,
lamp Of many a coloured plume, sprinkled with gold ;
Turn swift their various motions, or are turned His habit fit for speed succinct, and held
By his magnetic beam, that gently warms Before his decent steps a silver wand.
The universe, and to each inward part He drew not nigh unheard; the angel bright,
With gentle penetration, though unseen, Ere he drew migh, his radiant visage turned,
Shoots invisible virtue cven to the deep ; Admonished by his ear, and straight was known
So wondrously was set his station bright. The archangel Uriel, one of the seven
There lands the fiend, a spot like which perhaps Who in God's presence, nearest to his throne,
Astronomer in the sun's lucent orb Stand ready at command, and are his eyes
Through his glazed optic tube yet never saw. That run through all the heavens, or down to the
The place he found beyond expression bright, earth
Compared with aught on earth, metal or stone; Bear his swift errands over moist and dry,
Not all parts like, but all alike informed O'er sea and land : him Satan thus accosts:
With radiant light, as glowing iron with fire; “Uriel, for thou of those seven spirits that stand
If metal, part seemed gold, part silver clear; In sight of God's high throne, gloriously bright,
. If stone, carbuncle most or chrysolite, The first art wont his great authentic will
Ruby or topaz, to the twelve that shone Interpreter through highest heaven to bring,
In Aaron's breast-plate, and a stone besides Where all his sons thy embassy attend;
Imagined rather oft than elsewhere seen, And here art likeliest by supreme decree
That stone, or like to that, which here below Like honour to obtain, and as his eye
Philosophers in vain so long have sought, To visit oft this new creation round;
In vain, though by their powerful art they bind Unspeakable desire to see, and know,
Volatile Hermes, and call up unbound All these his wondrous works, but chiefly man,
In various shapes old Proteus from the sca, His chief delight and favour, him for whom
Drained through a limbec to his native form. All these his works so wondrous he ordained,
What wonder then if fields and regions here Hath brought me from the quires of cherubim
Breathe forth elixir pure, and rivers run Alone thus wandering. Brightest seraph, tell
Potable gold, when with one virtuous touch In which of all these shining orbs hath man
The arch-chymic sun, so far from us remote, His fixed seat, or fixed seat hath none,
Produces, with terrestrial humour mixed, But all these shining orbs his choice to dwell;
Here in the dark so many precious things That I may find him, and with secret gaze,
Of colour glorious, and effect so rare 2 Or open admiration, him behold,
Here matter new to gaze the devil met On whom the great Creator hath bestowed
Undazzled ; far and wide his eye commands; Worlds, and on whom hath all these graces poured;
I'or sight no obstacle ſound here, nor shade, That both in him and all things, as is meet,
But all sun-shine, as when his beams at noon The universal Maker we may praise,
Book III.
27
PARADISE LOST.
Who justly hath driven out his rebel focs
To deepest hell, and, to repair that loss,
Created this new happy race of men
To serve him better: wise are all his ways.”
So spake the ſalse dissembler unperceived;
For neither man nor angcl can discern
Hypocrisy, the only evil that walks
Invisible, except to God alone,
By his permissive will, through heaven and earth:
And oft, though wisdom wake, suspicion sleeps
At wisdom's gate, and to simplicity
Resigns her charge, while goodness thinks no ill
Where no ill seems: which now for once beguiled
Uriel, though regent of the sun, and held
The sharpest sighted spirit of all in heaven;
Who to the fraudulent impostor foul,
In his uprightness, answer thus returned :
‘Fair angel, thy desire, which tends to know
The works of God, thereby to glorify
The great Work-master, leads to no excess
That reaches blame, but rather merits praise
The more it seems excess, that led thee hither
From thy empyreal mansion thus alone,
To witness with thine eyes what some perhaps,
Contented with report, hear only in heaven:
For wonderful indeed are all his works,
Pleasant to know, and worthiest to be all
Had in remembrance always with delight;
But what created mind can comprehend
The ºr number, or the wisdom infinite
T',at brought them forth, but hid their causes deep ’
I saw when at his word the formless mass,
The world's material mould, came to a heap :
Confusion heard his voice, and wild uproar
Stood ruled, stood vast infinitude confined;
Till at his second bidding darkness fled,
Light shone, and order from disorder sprung:
Swift to their several quarters hasted then
The cumbrous elements, earth, flood, air, fire;
And this ethereal quintessence of heaven
Flew upward, spirited with various forms,
That rolled orbicular, and turned to stars
Numberless, as thou seest, and how they move;
Each had his place appointed, each his course;
The rest in circuit walls this universe.
Look downward on that globe, whose hither side
With light from hence, though but reflected, shines;
That place is earth, the seat of man; that light
His day, which else, as the other hemisphere,
Night would invade; but there the neighbouring moon
(So call that opposite fair star) her aid
Timely interposes, and her monthly round
Still ending, still renewing, through mid heaven,
With borrowed light her countenance triform
Hence fills and empties to enlighten the earth,
And in her pale dominion checks the night.
That spot to which I point is Paradise,
Adam's abode; those lofty shades, his bower.
Thy way thou canst not miss, me mine requires.’
Thus said, he turned; and Satan, bowing low,
As to superior spirits is wont in heaven,
Where honour due and reverence none neglects,
Took leave, and toward the coast of earth beneath,
Down from the ecliptic, sped with hoped success;
Throws his steep flight in many an aery wheel,
Nor staid till on Niphates' top he lights.
slo- ( 4. *...*.*. 7. 3. 2 (e. TV.--& !
A
t \-4-(2-º-
BOOK
IV.
THE ARGUMENT.
Satan, now in prospect of Eden, and nigh the place where he must now attempt the bold enterprise which he undertook alone against
God and man, falls into many doubts with himself, and many passions, fear, envy, and despair; but at length confirms himself in
evil, journeys on to Paradise, whose outward prospect and situation is described; overleaps the bounds; sits in the shape of a
cormorant on the tree of life, as highest in the garden, to look about him. ... The garden described; Satan's first sight of Adam and
Eve; his wonder at their excellent form and happy state, but with resolution to work their fall; overhears their discourse, thence
gathers that the tree of knowledge was forbidden them to eat of under penalty of death; and thereon intends to found his tempta-
tion, by seducing them to transgress; then leaves them awhile to know further of their state by some other means. Meanwhile
Uriel descending on a sun-beam warns Gabriel, who had in charge the gate of Paradise, that some evil spirit had escaped the deep,
and passed at noon by his sphere in the shape of a good angel down to Paradise, discovered after by his furious gestures in the
mount. Gabriel promises to find him ere morning. Night coming on, Adam and Eve discourse of going to their rest: their power
described; their eyening worship, Gabriel, drawing fºrth his bands of night-watch to walk the round of Paradise, appoints two
strong angels to Adam spower, lest the evil spirit should be there doing some harm to Adam or Eve sleeping; there they find him
at the ear of Eve tempting her, in a dream, and bring him, though unwilling, to Gabriel; by whom questioned, he scornfully
answers; prepares resistance; but, hindered by a sign from heaven, flies out of Paradise.
O, FoR that warning voice, which he, who saw
The Apocalypse, heard cry in heaven aloud, ii-
Then when the Dragon, put to second rout,
Came furious down to be revenged on men,
* Woe to the inhabitants on earth !” that now,
While time was, our first parents had been warned
"()
re, lº
sº
f
The coming of their secret foe, and 'scaped,
Haply so 'scaped his mortal snare : for now
Satan, now first inflamed with rage, came down,
The tempter ere the accuser of mankind,
To wreak on innocent frail man his loss
Of that first battle, and his flight to hell ;
O
Book IV.
*
PARADISE LOST".
8

Yet, not rejoicing in his speed, though bold
Far off and fearless, nor with cause to boast,
Begins his dire attempt; which high the birth
Now rolling boils in his tumultuous breast,
And like a devilish engine back recoils
Upon himself; horror and doubt distract
His troubled thoughts, and from the bottom stir
The hell within him; for within him hell
He brings, and round about him, nor from hell
One step, no more than from himself, can fly,
By change of place : now conscience wakes despair,
That slumbered ; wakes the bitter memory
Of what he was, what is, and what must be
Worse; of worse deeds worse sufferings must ensue.
Sometimes towards Eden, which now in his view
Lay pleasant, his grieved look he fixed sad;
Sometimes towards heaven, and the full-blazing sun,
Which now sat high in his meridian tower:
Then, much revolving, thus in sighs began :
*O thou, that, with surpassing glory crowned,
Lookest from thy sole dominion like the god
Of this new world; at whose sight all the stars
Hide their diminished heads; to thce I call,
But with no friendly voice, and add thy name,
O sun' to tell thee how I hate thy beams,
That bring to my remembrance from what state
I fell, how glorious once above thy sphere;
Till pride and worse ambition threw me down,
Warring in heaven against heaven's matchless King:
Ah, wherefore ? he deserved no such return
From me, whom he created what I was
In that bright eminence, and with his good
Upbraided none; nor was his service hard.
What could be less than to afford him praise,
The easiest recompence, and pay him thanks,
How due ! yet all his good proved ill in me,
And wrought but malice; liſted up so high
I’sdained subjection, and thought one step higher
Would set me highest, and in a moment quit
The debt immense of endless gratitude,
So burdensome still paying, still to owe :
Forgetful what from him I still received,
And understood not that a grateful mind
By owing owes not, but still pays, at once
Indebted and discharged ; what burden then 2
O had his powerful destiny ordained
Me some inferior angel, I had stood
Then happy; no unbounded hope had raised
Ambition. Yet why not 2 some other power
As great might have aspired, and me, though mean,
Drawn to his part; but other powers as great
Fell not, but stand unshaken, from within
Or from without, to all temptations armed.
Hadst thou the same free will and power to stand P
Thou hadst: whom hast thou then or what to accuse,
But Heaven's free love dealt equally to all P
Be then his love accursed, since love or hate,
To me alike, it deals eternal woe.
Nay, cursed be thou; since against his thy will
Chose freely what it now so justly rues.
Me miserable ! which way shall I fly
ºf ºv
—
Infinite wrath, and infinite despair P
*Which way I fly is hell; myself am hell;
And, in the lowest deep, a lower deep
Still threatening to devour me opens wide,
To which the hell I suffer seems a heaven.
O, then, at last relent : is there no place
Left for repentance, none for pardon left?
None left but by submission; and that word
Disdain forbids me, and my dread of shame
Among the spirits beneath, whom I seduced
With other promises and other vaunts
Than to submit, boasting I could subdue
The Omnipotent. Ay me! they little know
How dearly I abide that boast so vain;
Under what torments inwardly I groan,
While they adore me on the throne of hell.
With diadem and scepter high advanced,
The lower still I fall, only supreme
In misery : such joy ambition finds.
But say I could repent, and could obtain,
By act of grace, my former state; how soon
Would highth recall high thoughts, how soon unsay
What feigned submission swore | Ease would recant
Vows made in pain, as violent and void.
For never can true reconcilement grow
Where wounds of deadly hate have pierced so deep :
Which would but lead me to a worse relapse
And heavier fall: so should I purchase dear
Short intermission bought with double smart.
This knows my punisher; therefore as far
From granting he, as I from begging peace :
All hope excluded thus, behold, instead
Of us out-cast, exiled, his new delight,
Mankind created, and for him this world.
So farewell hope, and with hope farewell fear,
Farewell remorse: all good to me is lost;
Evil, be thou my good: by thee at least
Divided empire with heaven's King I hold,
By thee, and more than half perhaps will reign;
As man ere long, and this new world shall know.’
Thus while he spake, each passion dimmed his face
Thrice changed with pale ire, envy, and despair;
Which marred his borrowed visage, and betraycd
Him counterfeit, if any eye beheld :
For heavenly minds from such distempers foul
Are ever clear. Whereof he soon aware,
Each perturbation smoothed with outward calm,
Artificer of fraud; and was the first
That practised falsehood under saintly show,
Deep malice to conceal, couched with revenge :
Yet not enough had practised to deceive
Uriel once warned : whose eye pursued him down
The way he went, and on the Assyrian mount
Saw him disfigured, more than could befall
Spirit of happy sort: his gestures fierce
He marked, and mad demeanour, then alone,
As he supposed, all unobserved, unseen.
So on he ſares, and to the border comes
Of Eden, where delicious Paradise,
Now nearer, crowns with her cnclosure green,
As with a rural mound, the champaign head
Book lW.
20
PARADISE LOST.
Of a steep wilderness, whose hairy sides
With thicket overgrown, grotesque and wild,
Access denied ; and over-head up-grew
Insuperable highth of loftiest shade,
Cedar, and pine, and fir, and branching palm,
A sylvan scene; and, as the ranks ascend
Shade above shade, a woody theatre
Of stateliest view. Yet higher than their tops
The verdurous wall of Paradise up-sprung :
Which to our general sire gave prospect large
Into his mether empire neighbouring round :
And higher than that wall a circling row
Of goodliest trees, loaden with fairest fruit,
Blossoms and fruits at once of golden hue,
Appeared, with gay enamelled colours mixed :
On which the sun more glad impressed his beams
Than in fair evening cloud, or humid bow,
When God hath showered the earth; so lovely seemed
That landscape ſland of pure, now purer air -
Meets his approach, and to the heart inspires
WernäTdelight and joy, able to drive
All sadness but despair : now gentle gales,
Fanning their odoriferous wings, dispense
Native perfumes, and whisper whence they stole
Those balmy spoils. As when to them who sail
Beyond the Cape of Hope, and now are past
Mozambic, off at sea north-east winds blow
Sabean odours from the spicy shore
Of Araby the Blest; with such delay
Well pleased they slack their course, and many a
league ºf 4.2.2cc .
Cheered with the grateful smell old Ocean smiles:
So entertained those odorous sweets the fiend,
Who came their bane: though with them better pleased
Than Asmodéus with the fishy fume
That drove him, though enamoured, from the spouse
Of Tobit's son, and with a vengeance sent
From Media post to Egypt, there fast bound.
Now to the ascent of that steep savage hill
Satan had journeyed on, pensive and slow;
But further way found none, so thick entwined
As one continued brake, the undergrowth
Of shrubs arid tangling bushes had perplexed
All path of man or beast that passed that way.
One gate there only was, and that looked east
On the other side: which when the arch-felon saw,
Due entrance he disdained; and, in contempt,
At one slight bound high over-leaped all bound
Of hill or highest wall, and sheer within
Ilights on his feet. As when a prowling wolf,
Whom hunger drives to seek new haunt for prey,
Watching where shepherds pen their flocks at eve
In hurdled cotes amid the field secure,
Ileaps o'er the fence with ease into the ſold :
Or as a thief bent to unhoard the cash
Of some rich burgher, whose substantial doors,
Cross-barred and bolted fast, fear no assault,
In at the window climbs, or o'er the tiles: ſ
So clomb the first grand thief into God’s fold;
So since into his church lewd hirelings climb.V.'
Aft
Thence up he flew, and on the tree of life, (C/)
The middle tree and highest there that grew,
Sat like a cormorant; yet not true life,
Thereby regained, but sat devising death
To them who lived; nor on the virtue thought
Of that life-giving plant, but only used
For prospect, what well used had been the pledge
Of immortality. So little knows
Any, but God alone, to value right
The good before him, but perverts best things
To worst abuse, or to their meanest use.
Beneath him with new wonder now he views,
To all delight of human sense exposed,
In narrow room, nature's whole wealth, yea more,
A heaven on earth : for blissful Paradise
Of God the garden was, by him in the east
Of Eden planted; Eden stretched her line
From Auran eastward to the royal towers
Of great Seleucia, built by Grecian kings,
Or where the sons of Eden long before
Dwelt in Telassar: in this pleasant soil
His far more pleasant garden God ordained:
Out of the fertile ground he caused to grow
All trees of noblest kind for sight, smell, taste;
And all amid them stood the tree of life,
High eminent, blooming ambrosial fruit
Of vegetable gold; and next to life,
Our death, the tree of knowledge, grew fast by,
Knowledge of good, bought dear by knowing ill.
Southward through Eden went a river large,
Nor changed his course, but through the shaggy hill
Passed underneath ingulfed ; for God had thrown
That mountain as his garden-mould high-raised
Upon the rapid current, which through veins
Of porous earth with kindly thirst up-drawn,
Rose a fresh fountain, and with many a rill
Watered the garden; thence united ſell
Down the steep glade, and met the nether flood,
Which from his darksome passage now appears,
And, now divided into four main streams,
Runs diverse, wandering many a famous realm
And country, whereof here needs no account;
But rather to tell how, if art could tell,
How from that sapphire fount the crisped brooks,
Rolling on orient pearl and sands of gold,
With mazy error under pendent shades
Ran nectar, visiting each plant, and fed
Flowers worthy of Paradise, which not mice art
In beds and curious knots, but nature boon
Poured forth profuse on hill, and dale, and plain,
Both where the morning sun first warmly smote
The open field, and where the unpierced shade
Imbrowned the noontide bowers: thus was this place
A happy rural seat of various view ; s
Groves whose rich trees wept odorous gums and balm;,
Others whose fruit, burnished with golden rind, *s
Hung amiable, Hesperian fables true, S.,
If true, here only, and of delicious taste:
Betwixt them lawns, or level downs, and flocks -
Grazing the tender herb, were interposed,
Or palmy hillock; or the flowery lap
Of some irriguous valley spread her store,


30 PARADISE LOST. Book IV
}
Flowers of all hue, and without thorn the rose:
Another side, umbrageous grots and caves
Of cool recess, o'er which the mantling vine
Lays forth her purple grape, and gently creeps
Luxuriant; meanwhile murmuring waters fall
Down the slope hills, dispersed, or in a lake,
That to the fringed bank with myrtle crowned
Her crystal mirror holds, unite their streams.
The birds their quire apply; airs, vernal airs,
Breathing the smell of field and grove, attune
The trembling leaves, while universal Pan,
Knit with the Graces and the Hours in dance,
Led on the eternal Spring. Not that fair field
Of Enna, where l’rosérpine gathering flowers,
Herself a fairer flower, by gloomy Dis
Was gathered, which cost Ceres all that pain
To seek her through the world; nor that sweet grove
Of Daphne by Orontes, and the inspired
Castalian spring, might with this Paradise
Of Eden strive; nor that Nyseian isle
Girt with the river Triton, where old Cham,
Whom Gentiles Ammon call and Libyan Jove,
Hid Amalthea, and her florid son
Young Bacchus, from his stepdame Rhea's eye;
Nor where Abassin kings their issue guard,
Mount Amara, though this by some supposed
True Paradise, under the Ethiop line
By Nilus' head, enclosed with shining rock,
A whole day's journey high, but wide remote
From this Assyrian garden, where the fiend
Saw, undelighted, all delight, all kind
Of living creatures, new to sight and strange.
Two of far nobler shape, erect and tall,
As Godlike erect, with native honour clad,
*
J\
\\
º,
SA
**
sº
º (A^^ .
In naked majesty seemed lords of all :
And worthy seemed; for in their looks divine
The image of their glorious Maker shone,
Truth, wisdom, sanctitude severe and pure,
(Severe, but in true filial freedom placed,)
Whence true authority in men; though both
Not equal, as their sex not equal seemed;
For contemplation he and valour formed;
For softness she, and sweet attractive grace;
He-for-God-only, she for God in him :
His fair large front and eye sublime declared
Absolute rule; and hyacinthine locks
Round from his parted forelock manly hung
Clustering, but not beneath his shoulders broad :
She, as a veil, down to the slender waist
Her unadorned golden tresses wore
Dishevelled, but in wanton ringlets waved,
As the vine curls her tendrils, which implied
Subjection, but required with gentle sway,
And by her yielded, by him best received,
Yielded with coy submission, modest pride,
And sw .."; delay g l
Nor those mysterious parts were then concealed;
Then was not guilty shame : dishonest shame
Of nature’s works, honour dishonourable,
Sin-bred, how have ye troubled all mankind
With shows instead, mere shows of seeming pure,
And banished from man's life his happiest life,
Simplicity and spotless innocence
So passed they naked on, nor shunned the sight
Of God or angel; for they thought no ill :
So hand in hand they passed, the loveliest pair
That ever since in love's embraces met;
Adam the goodliest man of men since born
His sons, the fairest of her daughters Eve.
Under a tuſt of shade that on a green
Stood whispering soft, by a fresh fountain-side
They sat them down; and, after no more toil
Of their sweet gardening labour then sufficed
To recommend cool zephyr, and made ease
More easy, wholesome thirst and appetite
More grateful, to their supper-fruits they fell,
Nectarine fruits, which the compliant boughs
Yielded them, sidelong as they sat recline
On the soft downy bank damasked with flowers:
The savoury pulp they chew, and in the rind,
Still as they thirsted, scoop the brimming stream;
Nor gentle purpose, nor endearing smiles,
Wanted, nor youthful dalliance, as beseems
Fair couple, linked in happy nuptial league,
Alone as they. About them frisking played
All beasts of the earth, since wild, and of all chase
In wood or wilderness, forest or den;
Sporting the lion ramped, and in his paw
Dandled the kid; bears, tigers, ounces, pards,
Gambolled before them ; the unwieldy elephant,
To make them mirth, used all his might, and wreathed
His lithe proboscis; close the serpent sly,
Insinuating, wove with Gordian twine
His braided train, and of his fatal guile
Gave proof unheeded ; others on the grass
Couched, and now filled with pasture gazing sat,
Or bedward ruminating; for the sun,
Declined, was hasting now with prone career
To the ocean isles, and in the ascending scale
Of heaven the stars that usher evening rose;
When Satan still in gaze, as first he stood,
Scarce thus at length failed speech recovered sad:
‘O hell ! what do mine eyes with grief behold P
Into our room of bliss thus high advanced
Creatures of other mould, earth-born perhaps,
Not spirits, yet to heavenly spirits bright
Little inferior; whom my thoughts pursue
With wonder, and could love, so lively shines
In them divine resemblance, and such grace
The hand that formed them on their shape hath poured.
Ah! gentle pair, ye little think how nigh
Your change approaches, when all these delights
Will vanish, and deliver ye to woe ;
More woe, the more your taste is now of joy;
Happy, but for so happy ill secured
Long to continue, and this high seat your heaven
Ill fenced for heaven to keep out such a foe
As now is entered; yet no purposed foe
To you, whom I could pity thus forlorn,
Though I unpitied : league with you I scek,
And mutual amity, so strait, so close,
That I with you must dwell, or you with me,
Book IV.
3 I
PARADISE LOST.
Henceforth : my dwelling haply may not please,
Like this fair Paradise, your sense : yet such
Accept your Maker's work; he gave it me, | / ſ.
Which I as freely give; hell shall unfold, *~xtſ.
To entertain you two, her widest gates,
And send forth all her kings; there will be room,
Not like these narrow limits, to receive
Your numerous offspring ;)if no better place,
Thank him who puts me loth to this revenge
On you, who wrong me not, for him who wronged.
And should I at your harmless innocence
Melt, as I do, yet public reason just,
Honour and empire with revenge enlarged,
By conquering this new world, compels me now
To do what else, though damned, I should ablior.”
So spake the fiend, and with necessity,
The tyrant's plea, excused his devilish deeds.
Then from his lofty stand on that high tree
Down he alights among the sportful herd
Of those four-footed kinds; himself now one,
Now other, as their shape served best his end
Nearer to view his prey, and unespied,
To mark what of their state he more might learn,
By word or action marked: about them round
A lion now he stalks with fiery glare;
Then as a tiger, who by chance has spied
In some purlieu two gentle fawns at play,
Straight couches close, then rising, changes oſt
His couchant watch, as one who chose his ground,
Whence rushing he might surest seize them both,
Griped in each paw : when Adam, first of men,
To first of women, Eve, thus moving speech,
Turned him, all ear to hear new utterance flow :
“Sole partner, and sole part of all these joys,
Dearer thyself than all; needs must the Power
That made us, and for us this ample world,
Be infinitely good, and of his good
As liberal and free as infinite ;
That raised us from the dust, and placed us here
In all this happiness, who at his hand
Have nothing merited, nor can perform
Aught whereof he hath need; he who requires
From us no other service than to keep
This one, this easy charge; of all the trees
In Paradise that bear delicious fruit
So various, not to taste that only tree
Of knowledge, planted by the tree of life;
So near grows death to life, whate'er death is,
Some dreadful thing no doubt; for well thou knowest
God has pronounced it death to taste that tree,
The only sign of our obedience left
Among so many signs of power and rule
Conferred upon us, and dominion given
Over all other creatures that possess
Earth, air, and sea. Then let us not think hard
One easy prohibition, who enjoy
Free leave so large to all things else, and choice
Unlimited of manifold delights:
But let us ever praise him, and extol
His bounty, following our delightſal task,
a...And without whom am to no end, my guide
To prune these growing plants, and tend these flowers,
Which were it toilsome, yet with thee were sweet.' y
To whom thus Eve replied: ‘O thou for whom 7%º,
And from whom I was formed, ſlesh of thy flesh, … . A ,
; ~ /
* - © tº . . /*-ºveſ,
And head ' what thou hast said is just and right' ~"f
For we to him indeed all praises owe,
And daily thanks; I chiefly, who enjoy
So far the happier lot, enjoying thee
Pre-eminent by so much odds, while thou
Like consort to thyself canst no where find.
That day I oft remember, when from sleep
I first awaked, and found myself reposed
Under a shade on flowers, much wondering where
nd what I was, whence thither brought, and how.
Not distant far from thence a murmuring sound f1 a-e-. •
Of waters issued from a cave, and spread
Into a liquid plain, then stood unmoved
tº ,
| Pure as the expanse of heaven; I thither went
With unexperienced thought, and laid me down
On the green bank, to look into the clear
Smooth lake, that to me seemed another sky.
As I bent down to look, just opposite
A shape within the watry gleam appeared,
Bending to look on me : I started back,
It started back; but pleased I soon returned,
Pleased it returned as soon with answering looks
Of sympathy and love : there I had fixed
Mine eyes till now, and pined with vain desire,
Had not a voice thus warned me: What thou seest,
What there thou seest, fair creature, is thyself;
With thee it came and goes; but follow me,
And I will bring thee where no shadow stays
Thy coming, and thy soft embraces, he
Whose image thou art; him thou shalt enjoy
Inseparably thine, to him shalt bear
Multitudes like thyself, and thence be called
Mother of human race. What could I do,
But follow straight, invisibly thus led ”
Till I espied thee, fair indeed and tall,
Under a plantane, yet methought less fair,
Less winning soft, less amiably mild,
Than that smooth watry image: back I turned;
Thou following cryedst aloud, Return, fair Eve;
Whom flyest thou? whom thou flyest, of him thou
art,
His flesh, his bone; to give thee being I lent
Out of my side to thee, nearest my heart,
Substantial life, to have thee by my side
Henceforth an individual solace dear;
Part of my soul, I seek thee, and thee claim
My other half. With that thy gentle hand
Seized mine: I yielded; and from that time see
How beauty is excelled by manly grace,
And wisdom, which alone is truly fair.’
So spake our general mother, and with eyes
Of conjugal attraction unreproved,
And meek surrender, half-embracing leaned
On our first father; half her swelling breast
Waked met his, under the flowing gold
Of her loose tresses hid: he in delight
Both of her beauty and submissive charms,




32
Book IV,
PARADISE LOST.
Smiled with superior love, as Jupiter
On Juno smiles, when he impregns the clouds
That shed May flowers; and pressed her matron lip
With kisses pure: aside the Devil turned
For envy ; yet with jealous leer malign
Eyed them askance, and to himself thus 'plained:
‘Sight hateful, sight tormenting ! thus these two,
Imparadised in one another's arms,
The happier Eden, shall enjoy their fill
Of bliss on bliss ; while I to hell am thrust,
Where neither joy nor love, but fierce desire,
Among our other torments not the least,
Still unfulfilled, with pain of longing pines.
Yet let me not forget what I have gained
From their own mouths; all is not theirs, it seems;
One fatal tree there stands, of knowledge called,
Forbidden them to taste: knowledge forbidden P
Suspicious, reasonless. Why should their Lord
Envy them that? Can it be sin to know P
Can it be death 2 And do they only stand
By ignorance 2 Is that their happy state,
The proof of their obedience and their faith P
O fair foundation laid whereon to build
Their ruin Hence I will excite their minds
With more desire to know, and to reject
Envious commands, invented with design
To keep them low, whom knowledge might exalt
Equal with gods: aspiring to be such,
They taste and die; what likelier can ensue 2
But first with narrow search I must walk round
This garden, and no corner leave unspied ;
A chance but chance may lead where I may meet
Some wandering spirit of heaven by fountain-side,
Or in thick shade retired, from him to draw *
What further would be learned. Live while ye may,
Yet happy pair; enjoy, till I return, -
Short pleasures, for long woes are to succeed.’
So saying, his proud step he scornful turned,
But with sly circumspection, and began
Through wood, through waste, o'er hill, o'er dale, his
I”()8 Ill , \ AQ.
Meanwhile, in utmost longitude, where heaven
With earth and ocean meets, the setting sun wº"
Slowly descended, and with right aspéct \,\}^
Against the eastern gate of Paradise \{ (9. A -
Levelled his evening rays: it was a rock V"' * ºv
Of alabaster, piled up to the clouds, A - *
Conspicuous far, winding with one ascent ſº
Accessible from earth, one entrance high;
The rest was craggy cliff, that overhung
Still as it rose, impossible to climb.
Betwixt these rocky pillars Gabriel sat,
Chief of the angelic guards, awaiting night;
About him exercised heroic games
The unarmed youth of heaven, but nigh at hand
Celestial armoury, shields, helms, and spears,
Hung high, with diamond flaming and with gold.
Thither came Uriel, gliding through the even
On a sunbeam, swift as a shooting star
In autumn thwarts the night, when vapours fired
Impress the air, and shows the mariner
'V-v.
(S/
J-1.
W
Trom what point of his compass to beware
Impetuous winds: he thus began in haste:
‘Gabriel, to thce thy course by lot hath given
Charge and strict watch, that to this happy place
No evil thing approach or enter in.
This day at highth of moon came to my sphere
A spirit, zealous, as he seemed, to know
More of the Almighty's works, and chiefly man,
God’s latest image: I described his way
Bent all on speed, and marked his aery gait;
But in the mount that lies from Eden north,
Where he first lighted, soon discerned his looks
Alien from heaven, with passions foul obscured
Mine eye pursued him still, but under shade
Iost sight of him : one of the banished crew,
I fear, hath ventured from the deep to raise
New troubles; him thy care must be to find.”
To whom the winged warrior thus returned :
“Uriel, no wonder if thy perfect sight,
Amid the sun's bright circle where thou sitt'st,
See far and wide: in at this gate none pass
The vigilance here placed, but such as come
Well known from heaven; and since meridian hour
No creature thence: if spirit of other sort,
So minded, have o'erleaped these earthy bounds
On purpose, hard thou knowest it to exclude
Spiritual substance with corporeal bar.
But if within the circuit of these walks,
In whatsoever shape he lurk, of whom
Thou tell'st, by morrow dawning I shall know.’
So promised he ; and Uriel to his charge
Returned on that bright beam, whose point now raised
Bore him slope downward to the sum, now fallen
Beneath the Azores; whether the prime orb,
Incredible how swift, had thither rolled
Diurnal, or this less volubil earth,
By shorter flight to the east, had left him there
Arraying with reflected purple and gold
The clouds that on his western throne attend.
Now came still evening on, and twilight grey
Had in her sober livery all things clad ;
Silence accompanied ; for beast and bird,
They to their grassy couch, these to their nests
L. Were slunk, all but the wakeful nightingale,
She all night long her amorous descant sung ;
Silence was pleased : now glowed the firmament
With living sapphires: Hesperus, that led
The starry host, rode brightest, till the moon,
Rising in clouded majesty, at length,
Apparent queen, unveiled her peerless light,
o'er the dark her silver mantle threw.
hen Adam thus to Eve: “Fair consort, the hour
Of night, and all things now retired to rest,
Mind us of like repose; since God hath set
Labour and rest, as day and night, to men
Successive; and the timely dew of sleep,
Now falling with soft slumbrous weight, inclines
Our eye-lids: other creatures all day long
Rove idle, unemployed, and less need rest;
Man hath his daily work of body or mind
Appointed, which declares his dignity,
Book IV.
And the regard of Heaven on all his ways;
While other animals unactive range,
And of their doings God takes no account.
To-morrow, ere fresh morning streak the east
With first approach of light, we must be risen,
And at our pleasant labour to reform
Yon flowery arbours, yonder alleys green,
Our walk at noon, with branches overgrown,
That mock our scant manuring, and require
More hands than ours to lop their wanton growth :
Those blossoms also, and those dropping gums,
That lie bestrewn, unsightly and unsmooth,
Ask riddance, if we mean to tread with ease;
Meanwhile, as nature wills, night bids us rest.’
To whom thus Eve, with perfect beauty adorned :
“My author and disposer, what thou biddest
Unargued I obey: so God ordains;
God is thy law, thou mine: to know no more
Is woman's happiest knowledge, and her praise.
With thee conversing I forget all time;
All seasons, and their change, all please alike.
Sweet is the breath of morn, her rising sweet,
With charm of earliest birds; pleasant the sun,
When first on this delightful land he spreads
His orient beams, on herb, tree, fruit, and flower,
Glistering with dew : fragrant the fertile earth
After soft showers; and sweet the coming on
Of grateful evening mild; then silent night,
With this her solemn bird, and this fair moon,
And these the gems of heaven, her starry train:
But neither breath of morn, when she ascends
With charm of earliest birds; nor rising sun
On this delightful land; nor herb, fruit, flower,
Glistering with dew ; nor fragrance after showers;
Nor grateful evening mild; nor silent night,
With this her solemn bird; nor walk by moon,
Orglittering star-light; without thee is sweet.
But wherefore all night long shine these ? for whom
This glorious sight, when sleep hath shut all eyes?”
To whom our general ancestor replied:
* Daughter of God and man, accomplished Eve,
These have their course to finish round the earth
By morrow evening, and from land to land
In order, though to nations yet unborn,
Ministering light prepared, they set and rise;
Lest total darkness should by night regain
Her old possession, and extinguish life
In nature and all things; which these soft fires
Not only enlighten, but with kindly heat
Of various influence foment and warm,
Temper or nourish, or in part shed down
Their stellar virtue on all kinds that grew
On earth, made hereby apter to receive
Perfection from the sun's more potent ray.
These then, though unbeheld in deep of night,
Shine not in vain. Northink, though men were none,
That heaven would want spectators, God want praise;
illions of spiritual creatures walk the earth
Unseen, both when we wake and when we sleep:
All these with ceaseless praise his works behold
Both day and night. How often from the steep
* D
PARADISE LOST. b.
l
(CA 1 tº a 1 C – tº -
Of echoing hill or thicket have we heard
Celestial voices to the midnight air,
Sole, or responsive each to other's note,
Singing their great Creator! oft in bands
While they keep watch, or nightly rounding walk,
With heavenly touch of instrumental sounds
In full harmonic number joined, their songs
Divide the night, and liſt our thoughts to heaven.’
--Thus talking, hand in hand alone they passed
33
On to their blissful bower: it was a place —Jº
Chosen by the sovran Planter, when he framed
All things to man's delightful use; the roof N.
f Nº º
! \ V
*N \,
* VN *
Of thickest covert was inwoven shade
Laurel and myrtle, and what higher grew
Offirm and fragrant leaf; on either side
Acanthus, and each odorous bushy shrub,
Fenced up the verdant wall; each beauteous flower,
Iris all hues, roses, and jessamin,
Reared high their flourished heads between, and
wrought
Mosaic; under foot the violet,
Crocus, and hyacinth, with rich inlay
Broidered the ground, more coloured than with stone
Or costliest emblem: other creature here,
Bird, beast, insect, or worm, durst enter none,
Such was their awe of man. In shadier bower
More sacred and sequestered, though but feigned,
Pan or Sylvanus never slept, nor nymph
Nor Faunus haunted. Here, in close recess,
With flowers, garlands, and sweet-smelling herbs,
Espoused Eve decked first her nuptial bed;
And heavenly quires the hymenean sung,
What day the genial angel to our sire
Brought her, in naked beauty more adorned,
More lovely, than Pandora, whom the gods
Endowed with all their gifts; and O too like
In sad event, when to the unwiser son
Of Japhet brought by Hermes, she ensnared
Mankind with her fair looks, to be avenged
On him who had stole Jove's authentic fire.
Thus, at their shady lodge arrived, both stood,
Both turned, and under open sky adored
The God that made both sky, air, earth, and heaven,
Which they beheld, the moon's resplendent globe,
And starry pole: ‘Thou also madest the night,
Maker Omnipotent, and thou the day
Which we, in our appointed work employed,
Have finished, happy in our mutual help
And mutual love, the crown of all our bliss
Ordained by thee; and this delicious place
For us too large, where thy abundance wants
Partakers, and uncropt falls to the ground.
But thou hast promised from us two a race
To fill the earth, who shall with us extol
Thy goodness infinite, both when we wake,
And when we seek, as now, thy giſt of sleep.”
This said unanimous, and other rites
Observing none, but adoration pure
Which God likes best, into their inmost bower
Handed they went; and, eased the putting off
These troublesome disguises which we wear,
34 PARADISE LOST.
Book IV.
Straight side by side were laid ; nor turned, I ween,
Adam from his fair spouse, nor Eve the rites
Mysterious of connubial love refused :
Whatever hypocrites austerely talk
Of purity, and place, and innocence,
Defaming as impure what God declares
Pure, and commands to some, leaves free to all.
Our Maker bids increase; who bids abstain
But our destroyer, foe to God and man P
Hail, wedded love, mysterious law, true source
Of human offspring, sole propriety
In Paradise, of all things common else.
By thee adulterous lust was driven from men
Among the bestial herds to range: by thee
Tounded in reason, loyal, just, and pure,
Relations dear, and all the charities
Of father, son, and brother, first were known.
Far be it, that I should write thee sin or blame,
Or think thee unbefitting holiest place,
Perpetual fountain of domestic sweets,
Whose bed is undefiled and chaste pronounced,
Present, or past, as saints and patriarchs ſuscd.
Here Love his golden shafts employs, here lights
His constant lamp, and waves his purple wings,
Reigns here and revels; not in the bought smile
Of harlots, loveless, joyless, unendeared,
Casual fruition ; nor in court-amours,
Mixed dance, or wanton mask, or midnight ball,
Or serenate, which the starved lover sings
To his proud fair, best quitted with disdain.
These, lulled by nightingales, embracing slept,
And on their naked limbs the flowery roof
Showered roses, which the morn repaired.
Blest pair; and O yet happiest, if ye seek
No happier state, and know to know no more.
Now had night measured with her shadowy cone
Half way up hill this vast sublunar vault,
And from their ivory port the cherubim,
Forth issuing at the accustomed hour, stood armed
To their night-watches in warlike parade;
When Gabriel to his next in power thus spake :
‘Uzziel, half these draw off, and coast the south
With strictest watch ; these other wheel the north :
Our circuit meets full west.” As flame they part,
Half wheeling to the shield, half to the spear.
From these, two strong and subtle spirits he called
That near him stood, and gave them thus in charge :
‘Ithuriel and Zephon, with winged speed
Search through this garden, leave unsearched no nook;
But chiefly where those two fair creatures lodge,
Now laid perhaps asleep, secure of harm.
This evening from the sun's decline arrived,
Who tells of some infernal spirit seen -
Hitherward bent (who could have thought 2) escape
The bars of hell, on errand bad no doubt:
Such, where ye find, seize fast, and hither bring.’
So saying, on he led his radiant files,
Dazzling the moon; these to the bower direct
In scarch of whom they sought: him there they found
Squat like a toad, close at the ear of Eve,
Assaying by his devilish art to reach
Sleep on,
The organs of her fancy, and with them forge
Illusions, as he list, phantasms and dreams;
Or if, inspiring venom, he might taint
The animal spirits, that from pure blood arise
Like gentle breaths from rivers pure, thence raise
At least distempered, discontented thoughts,
Vain hopes, vain aims, inordinate desires,
Blown up with high conceits engendering pride.
Him thus intent Ithuriel with his spear
Touched lightly; for no falsehood can endure
Touch of celestial temper, but returns
Of force to its own likeness: up he starts
Discovered and surprised. As when a spark
Lights on a heap of nitrous powder, laid
Fit for the tun, some magazine to store
Against a rumoured war, the smutty grain,
With sudden blaze diffused, inflames the air;
So started up in his own shape the fiend.
Back stept those two fair angels, half amazed
So sudden to behold the grisly king;
Yet thus, unmoved with fear, accost him soon:
“Which of those rebel spirits adjudged to hell
Comest thou, escaped thy prison? and transformed,
Why sattest thou like an enemy in wait,
Here watching at the head of these that sleep P’
* Know ye not them,” said Satan, filled with scorn,
* Know ye not me 2 ye knew me once no mate
For you, there sitting where ye durst not soar :
Not to know me, argues yourselves unknown,
The lowest of your throng : or, if ye know,
Why ask ye, and superfluous begin
Your message, like to end as much in vain P’
To whom thus Zephon, answering scorn with scorn
‘Think not, revolted spirit, thy shape the same,
Or undiminished brightness to be known,
As when thou stoodest in heaven upright and pure;
That glory then, when thou no more wast good,
Departed from thee; and thou resemblest now
Thy sin and place of doom obscure and foul.
But come, for thou, be sure, shalt give account
To him who sent us, whose charge is to keep
This place inviolable, and these from harm.’
So spake the cherub ; and his grave rebuke
Severe in youthful beauty, added grace - 6 Nºv
Invincible: abashed the devil stood,
Virtue in her shape how loyely; saw, and pined
His loss; but chiefly to find here observed
His lustre visibly impaired; yet seemed
Undaunted. ‘If I must contend,” said he,
* Best with the best, the sender not the sent,
Or all at once; more glory will be won,
Or iess be lost.’ ‘Thy fear,’ said Zephon bold,
‘Will save us trial what the least can do
Single against thee wicked, and thence weak.”
The fiend replied not, overcome with rage;
But, like a proud steed reined, went haughty on,
Champing his iron curb : to strive or fly
IHe held it vain; awe from above had quelled
His heart, not else dismayed. Now drew they migh
The western point, where those half-rounding guards
Book IV.
PARADISE LOST. 35
Just met, and closing stood in squadron joined,
Awaiting next command. To whom their chief,
Gabriel, from the front thus called aloud :
‘O friends! I hear the tread of nimble feet
Hasting this way, and now by glimpse discern
Ithuriel and Zephon through the shade;
And with them comes a third of regal port,
But faded splendour wan; who by his gait
And fierce demeanour seems the prince of hell,
Not likely to part hence without contést;
Stand firm, for in his look defiance lours.”
He scarce had ended, when those two approached,
And brief related whom they brought, where found,
How busied, in what form and posture couched.
To whom with stern regard thus Gabriel spake:
‘Why hast thou, Satan, broke the bounds prescribed
To thy transgressions, and disturbed the charge
Of others, who approve not to transgress
By thy example, but have power and right
To question thy bold entrance on this place;
Employed, it seems, to violate sleep, and those
Whose dwelling God hath planted here in bliss 2'
To whom thus Satan with contemptuous brow :
* Gabriel, thou hadst in heaven the esteem of wise,
And such I held thee; but this question asked
Puts me in doubt. Lives there who loves his pain P
Who would not, finding way, break loose from hell,
Though thither doomed 2 Thou wouldst thyself, no
doubt,
And boldly venture to whatever place
Farthest from pain, where thou mightsthope to change
Torment with ease, and soonest recompense
Dole with delight, which in this place I sought;
To thee no reason, who knowest only good,
But evil hast not tried : and wilt object
His will who bounds us? Let him surer bar
His iron gates, if he intends our stay
In that dark durance: thus much what was asked.
The rest is true, they found me where they say;
But that implies not violence or harm.’
Thus he in scorn. The warlike angel moved,
Disdainfully half smiling, thus replied:
“O loss of one in heaven to judge of wise,
Since Satan fell, whom folly overthrew,
And now returns him from his prison 'scaped,
Gravely in doubt whether to hold them wise
Or not, who ask what boldness brought him hither
Unlicensed from his bounds in hell prescribed;
So wise he judges it to fly from pain
However, and to 'scape his punishment
So judge thou still, presumptuous! till the wrath,
Which thou incurrest by flying, meet thy flight
Sevenfold, and scourge that wisdom back to hell,
Which taught thee yet no better, that no pain
Can equal anger infinite provoked.
But wherefore thou alone P wherefore with thee
Came not all hell broke loose P is pain to them
Less pain, less to be fled; or thou than they
Less hardy to endure? Courageous chief!
The first in flight from pain! hadst thou alleged
To thy deserted host this cause of flight,
Thou surely hadst not come sole fugitive.”
To which the fiend thus answered, frowning stern :
“Not that I less endure or shrink from pain,
Insulting angel ! well thou knowest I stood
Thy fiercest, when in battle to thy aid
The blasting volleyed thunder made all specd,
And seconded thy else not dreaded spear.
But still thy words at random, as before,
Argue thy inexperience what behoves
From hard assays and ill successes past
A faithful leader, not to hazard all
Through ways of danger by himself untried :
I therefore, I alone first undertook
To wing the desolate abyss, and spy
This new-created world, whereof in hell
Fame is not silent, here in hope to find
Better abode, and my afflicted powers
To settle here on earth, or in mid air;
Though for possession put to try once more
What thou and thy gay legions dare against;
Whose easier business were to serve their Lord
High up in heaven, with songs to hymn his throne,
And practised distances to cringe, not fight.”
To whom the warrior-angel soon replied : *
“To say and straight unsay, pretending first Jº
Wise to fly pain, professing next the spy,
Argues no leader, but a liar traced,
Satan : and couldst thou faithful add 2 O name,
O sacred name of faithfulness profaned
Faithful to whom 2 to thy rebellious crew 2
Army of fiends, fit body to fit head.
Was this your discipline and faith engaged,
Your military obedience, to dissolve
Allegiance to the acknowledged Power Supreme *
And thou, sly hypocrite, who now wouldst seem
Patron of liberty, who more than thou
Once fawned, and cringed, and servilely adored
Heaven's awful Monarch 2 wherefore, but in hope
To dispossess him, and thyself to reign P
But mark what I areed thee now, Avaunt ;
Fly thither whence thou fled'st. If from this hour
Within these hallowed limits thou appear,
Back to the infernal pit I drag thee chained,
And seal thee so, as henceforth not to scorn
The facile gates of hell too slightly barred.’
So threatened he ; but Satan to no threats
Gave heed, but waxing more in rage replied:
“Then when I am thy captive talk of chains,
Proud limitary cherub but ere then
Far heavier load thyself expect to feel
From my prevailing arm, though heaven's King
Ride on thy wings, and thou with thy compeers
Used to the yoke, drawest his triumphant wheels
In progress through the road of heaven star-paved.”
While thus he spake, the angelic squadron bright
Turned fiery red, sharpening in mooned horns
Their phalanx, and began to hem him round
With ported spears, as thick as when a field
Of Ceres ripe for harvest waving bends
Her bearded grove of ears, which way the wind
Sways them; the careful ploughman doubting stands,
D 2
36 PARADISE LOST.
Book V.
*Q, ^^ -- ºvº, \
- J
| * - º
Lest on the threshing floors his hopeful sheaves
Prove chaff. On the other side, Satan, alarmed,
Collecting all his might, dilated stood,
Like Teneriff or Atlas unremoved :
His stature reached the sky, and on his crest
Sat horror plumed ; nor wanted in his grasp
What seemed both spear and shield. Now dreadful
deeds
Might have ensued, not only Paradise,
In this commotion, but the starry cope
Of heaven perhaps, or all the elements
At least had gone to wrack, disturbed and torm
With violence of this conflict, had not soon
The Eternal, to prevent such horrid fray,
Hung forth in heaven his golden scales, yet seen
Betwixt Astrea and the Scorpion sign,
Wherein all things created first he weighed,
The pendulous round earth with balanced air
In counterpoise; now ponders all events,
Battles and realms: in these he put two weights,
The sequel each of parting and of fight:
The latter quick up-flew, and kicked the beam ;
Which Gabriel spying, thus bespake the fiend :
“Satan, I know thy strength, and thou knowest
mine;
Neither our own, but given : what folly then
To boast what arms can do P since thine no more
Than Heaven permits, nor mine, though doubled now
To trample thee as mire : for proof look up,
And read thy lot in yon celestial sign,
Where thou art weighed, and shown how light, how
weak,
If thou resist.’ The fiend looked up, and knew
His mounted scale aloft: nor more; but fled
Murmuring, and with him fled the shades of night.
BOOK V.
THE ARGUMENT.
Morning approached, Eve relates to Adam her troublesome dream, he likes it not, yet comforts her : they come forth to their
day-labours : their morning hymn at the door of their bower.
God, to render man inexcusable, sends Raphael to admonish
him of his obedience, of his free estate, of his enemy near at hand, who he is, and why his enemy, and whatever else may
avail Adam to know. Raphael comes down to paradise; his appearance described ; his coming discerned by Adam afar off,
sitting at the door of his bower; he goes out to meet him, brings him to his lodge, entertains him with the choicest fruits of
Paradise got together by Eve; their discourse at table: Raphael performs his message, minds Adam of his state and of his enemy;
relates, at Adam's request, who that enemy is, and how he came to be so, beginning from the first revolt in heaven, and thé
occasion thereof; how he drew his legions after him to the parts of the north, and there incited them to rebel with him, persuading
all but only Abdiel a seraph, who in argument dissuades and opposes him, then forsakes him.
Now morn, her rosy steps in the eastern clime
Advancing, sowed the earth with orient pearl,
When Adam waked, so customed; for his sleep
Was aery-light, from pure digestion bred,
And temperate vapours bland, which the only sound
Of leaves and fuming rills, Aurora's fan,
Lightly dispersed, and the shrill matin song
Of birds on every bough ; so much the more
His wonder was to find unwakened Eve
With tresses discomposed, and glowing cheek,
As through unquiet rest: he, on his side
Leaning half-raised, with looks of cordial love
Hung over her enamoured, and beheld
Beauty, which, whether waking or asleep,
Shot forth peculiar graces; then with voice
Mild as when Zephyrus on Flora breathes,
Her hand soft touching, whispered thus: “Awake,
My fairest, my espoused, my latest found,
Heaven's last best giſt, my ever-new delight!
Awake : the morning shines, and the fresh field
Calls us; we lose the prime to mark how spring
Our tender plants, how blows the citron grove,
What drops the myrrh, and what the balmy recd,
How nature paints her colours, how the bee
Sits on the bloom extracting liquid sweet.”
Such whispering waked her, but with startled eye
On Adam, whom embracing, thus she spake :
“O sole in whom my thoughts find all repose,
My glory, my perfection' glad I see
Thy face, and morn returned ; for I this night
(Such night till this I never passed) have dreamed,
If dreamed, not, as I oft am wont, of thee,
Works of day past, or morrow’s next design,
But of offence and trouble, which my mind
Knew never till this irksome night: Methought
Close at mine ear one called me forth to walk
With gentle voice; I thought it thine: it said,
Why sleepest thou, Eve P now is the pleasant time,
The cool, the silent, save where silence yields
To the night-warbling bird, that now awake
Tunes sweetest his love-laboured song ; now reigns
Full orbed the moon, and with more pleasing ligh!
Shadowy sets off the face of things; in vain,
If none regard; heaven wakes with all his eyes,
Whom to behold but thee, nature's desire 2
In whose sight all things joy, with ravishment
Attracted by thy beauty still to gaze.
I rose as at thy call, but found thee not;
Book V.
IPARADISE LOST. 37
To find thee I directed then my walk;
And on, methought, alone I passed through ways
That brought me on a sudden to the tree
Of interdicted knowledge; fair it seemed,
Much fairer to my fancy than by day:
And, as I wondering looked, beside it stood
One shaped and winged like one of those from heaven
By us oft seen : his dewy locks distilled
Ambrosia; on that tree he also gazed;
And, O fair plant, said he, with fruit surcharged,
Deigns none to ease thy load, and taste thy sweet,
Nor God, nor man 2 Is knowledge so despised 2
Or envy, or what reserve forbids to taste?
Forbid who will, none shall from me withhold
Longer thy offered good; why else set here 2
This said, he paused not, but with venturous arm
He plucked, he tasted; me damp horror chilled
At such bold words vouched with a deed so bold:
But he thus, overjoyed: O fruit divine,
Sweet of thyself, but much more sweet thus cropt,
Forbidden here, it seems, as only fit
For gods, yet able to make gods of men :
And why not gods of men; since good, the more
Communicated, more abundant grows,
The author not impaired, but honoured more ?
Here, happy creature, fair angelic Eve
Partake thou also : happy though thou art,
Happier thou mayst be, worthier canst not be :
Taste this, and be henceforth among the gods
Thyself a goddess, not to earth confined,
But sometimes in the air, as we; sometimes
Ascend to heaven, by merit thine, and see
What life the gods live there, and such live thou.
So saying, he drew nigh, and to me held,
Even to my mouth of that same fruit held part
Which he had plucked : the pleasant savoury smell
So quickened appetite, that I, methought,
Could not but taste. Forthwith up to the clouds
With him I flew, and underneath beheld
The earth outstretched immense, a prospect wide
And various: wondering at my flight and change
To this high exaltation; suddenly
My guide was gone, and I, methought, sunk down,
And fell asleep; but O, how glad I waked
To find this but a dream.” Thus Eve her night
Related, and thus Adam answered sad :
“Best image of myself, and dearer half,
The trouble of thy thoughts this night in sleep
Affects me equally; nor can I like
This uncouth dream, of evil sprung, I fear;
Yet evil whence P in thee can harbour none,
Created pure. But know, that in the soul
Are many lesser faculties, that serve
Reason as chief: among these, fancy next
Her office holds; of all external things,
Which the five watchful senses represent,
She forms imaginations, aery shapes,
Which reason joining, or disjoining, frames
All what we affirm or what deny, and call
Our knowledge or opinion ; then retires
Into her private cell. When Nature rests,
Oft in her absence mimic Fancy wakes
To imitate her; but misjoining shapes,
Wild work produces oft, and most in dreams;
Ill-matching words and deeds long past or late.
Some such resemblances, methinks, I find
Of our last evening's talk, in this thy dream,
But with addition strange; yet be not sad.
Evil into the mind of God or man
May come and go, so unapproved, and leave
No spot or blame behind ; which gives me hope
That what in sleep thou didst abhor to dream,
Waking thou never wilt consent to do.
Be not dishcartened then, nor cloud those looks,
That wont to be more cheerful and serene,
Than when fair morning first smiles on the world ;
And let us to our fresh employments rise
Among the groves, the fountains, and the flowers
That open now their choicest bosomed smells,
Reserved from night, and kept for thee in store.”
So cheered he his fair spouse, and she was cheered;
But silently a gentle tear let fall
From either eye, and wiped them with her hair;
Two other precious drops that ready stood,
Each in their crystal sluice, he ere they fell
Kissed, as the gracious signs of sweet remorse
And pious awe, that feared to have offended.
So all was cleared, and to the field they haste.
But first from under shady arborous roof
Soon as they forth were come to open sight
Of day-spring, and the sun, who, scarce up-risen,
With wheels yet hovering o'er the ocean-brim,
Shot parallel to the earth his dewy ray,
Discovering in wide landscape all the east
Of Paradise and Eden's happy plains,
Lowly they bowed adoring, and began
Their orisons, each morning duly paid
In various style; for neither various style
Nor holy rapture £anted they to praise
Their Maker, in fit strains pronounced, or sung
Unmeditated; such prompt eloquence
Flowed from their lips, in prose or numerous verse ;
More tuneable than needed lute or harp
To add more sweetness; and they thus began :
‘These are thy glorious works, Parent of good,
Almighty! Thine this universal frame,
Thus wondrous fair: Thyself how wondrous then,
Unspeakable! who sittest above these heavens
To us invisible, or dimly seen
In these thy lowest works; yet these declare
Thy goodness beyond thought, and power divine.
Speak, ye who best can tell, ye sons of light,
Angels; for ye behold him, and with songs
And choral symphonies, day without night,
Circle his throne rejoicing; ye in heaven,
On earth join all ye creatures to extol
Him first, him last, him midst, and without end.
Fairest of stars, last in the train of night,
If better thou belong not to the dawn,
Sure pledge of day, that crownest the smiling morn
With thy bright circlet, praise him in thy sphere,
While day arises, that sweet hour of prime.
38 PARADISE LOST.
Book W
Thou sun, of this great world both eye and soul,
Acknowledge him thy greater; sound his praise
In thy etcrual course, both when thou climbest,
And when high noon hast gained, and when thou fallest.
Moon, that now meetest the orient sun, now flyest,
With the fixed stars, fixed in their orb that flies;
And ye five other wandering fires, that move
In mystic dance not without song, resound
His praise, who out of darkness called up light.
Air, and ye elements, the eldest birth
Of Nature's womb, that in quaternion run
Perpetual circle, multiform ; and mix
And nourish all things; let your ceaseless change
Vary to our great Maker still new praise.
Ye mists and exhalations, that now rise
From hill or steaming lake, dusky or gray,
Till the sun paint your fleecy skirts with gold,
In honour to the world's great Author rise;
Whether to deck with clouds the uncoloured sky,
Or wet the thirsty earth with falling showers,
Rising or falling, still advance his praise.
His praise, ye winds that from four quarters blow,
Breathe soft or loud; and wave your tops, ye pines,
With every plant, in sign of worship wave.
I'ountains, and ye that warble, as ye flow,
Melodious murmurs, warbling tune his praise.
Join voices, all ye living souls; ye birds,
That singing up to heaven-gate ascend,
Bear on your wings and in your notes his praise.
Ye that in waters glide, and ye that walk
The earth, and stately tread, or lowly creep;
Witness if I be silent, morn or even,
To hill or valley, fountain or fresh shade,
Made vocal by my song, and taught his praise.
Hail, universal Lord, be bounteous still
To give us only good ; and if the night
Have gathered aught of evil or concealed,
Disperse it, as now light dispels the dark.”
So prayed they innocent, and to their thoughts
Firm peace recovered soon, and wonted calm.
On to their morning's rural work they haste,
Among sweet dews and flowers ; where any row
Of fruit-trees over-woody reached too far
Their pampered boughs, and needed hands to check
Fruitless embraces: or they led the vine
To wed her elm ; she, spoused, about him twines
Her marriageable arms, and with her brings
Her dower, the adopted clusters, to adorn
His barren leaves. Them thus employed beheld
With pity heaven's high King, and to him called
Raphael, the sociable spirit, that deigned
To travel with Tobias, and secured
His marriage with the seven-times-wedded maid.
• Raphael,” said he, “thou hearest what stir on earth
Satan, from hell 'scaped through the darksome gulf,
Hath raised in Paradise; and how disturbed
This night the human pair; how he designs
In them at once to ruin all mankind.
Go therefore, half this day as friend with friend
Converse with Adam, in what bower or shade
Thou findest him from the heat of noon retired,
To respite his day-labour with repast,
Or with repose; and such discourse bring on,
As may advise him of his happy state,
Happiness in his power left ſree to will,
Left to his own free will, his will though free
Yet mutable : whence warn him to beware
He swerve not, too secure : tell him withal
His danger, and from whom ; what enemy,
Late fallen himself from heaven, is plotting now
The fall of others from like state of bliss;
By violence P no, for that shall be withstood;
But by deceit and lies: this let him know,
Lest, wilfully transgressing, he pretend
Surprisal, unadmonished, unforewarned.’
So spake the Eternal Father, and fulfilled
All justice: nor delayed the winged saint
After his charge received ; but from among
Thousand celestial ardours, where he stood
Weiled with his gorgeous wings, up-springing light
Flew through the midst of heaven ; the angelic quires,
On each hand parting, to his speed gave way
Through all the empyreal road: till, at the gate
Of heaven arrived, the gate self-opened wide
On golden hinges turning, as by work
Divine the sovran Architect had framed.
From hence no cloud, or, to obstruct his sight,
Star interposed, however small, he sees,
Not unconform to other shining globes,
Earth, and the garden of God, with cedars crowned
Above all hills. As when by night the glass
Of Galileo, less assured, observes
Imagined lands and regions in the moon :
Or pilot, from amidst the Cyclades
Delos or Samos first appearing, kens
A cloudy spot. Down thither prone in flight
He speeds, and through the vast ethereal sky
Sails between worlds and worlds, with steady wing
Now on the polar winds, then with quick fan
Winnows the buxom air; till, within soar
Of towering eagles, to all the fowls he seems
A phoenix, gazed by all, as that sole bird,
When, to enshrine his reliques in the sun's
Bright temple, to Egyptian Thebes he flies.
At once on the eastern cliff of Paradise
He lights, and to his proper shape returns
A seraph winged: six wings he wore to shade
His lineaments divine; the pair that clad
Each shoulder broad, came mantling o'er his breast
With regal ornament; the middle pair
Girt like a starry zone his waist, and round
Skirted his loins and thighs with downy gold,
And colours dipt in heaven; the third his fect
Shadowed from either heel with feathered mail,
Sky-tinctured grain. Like Maia's son he stood,
And shook his plumes, that heavenly fragrance filled
The circuit wide. Straight knew him all the bands
Of angels under watch; and to his state,
And to his message high, in honour rise;
For on some message high they guessed him bound.
Their glittering tents he passed, and now is come
Into the blissful field, through groves of myrrh,
Book W.
39
PARADISE LOST.
And flowering odours, cassia, nard, and balm;
A wilderness of sweets; ſor Nature here
Wantoned as in her prime, and played at will
Her virgin ſancies, pouring forth more sweet,
Wild above rule or art, enormous bliss.
Him through the spicy forest onward come
Adam discerned, as in the door he sat
Of his cool bower, while now the mounted sun
Shot down direct his ſervid rays to warm
Earth's inmost womb, more warmth than Adam needs:
And Eve within, due at her hour prepared
For dinner savoury fruits, of taste to please
True appetite, and not disrelish thirst
Of nectarous draughts between, from milky stream,
Berry or grape: to whom thus Adam called:
‘Haste hither, Eve, and worth thy sight behold
Eastward among those trees, what glorious shape
Comes this way moving; seems another morn
Risen on mid-noon; some great behest from heaven
To us perhaps he brings, and will vouchsafe
This day to be our guest. But go with speed,
And, what thy stores contain, bring forth and pour
Abundance, fit to honour and receive
Our heavenly stranger; well we may afford
Our givers their own gifts, and large bestow
From large bestowed, where nature multiplies
Her fertile growth, and by disburdening grows
More fruitful, which instructs us not to spare.”
To whom thus Eve: “Adam, earth's hallowed mould,
Of God inspired small store will serve, where store,
All seasons, ripe for use hangs on the stalk;
Save what by frugal storing firmness gains
To nourish, and superfluous moist consumes:
But I will haste, and from each bough and brake,
Each plant and juiciest gourd, will pluck such choice
To entertain our angel-guest, as he
Beholding shall confess, that here on earth
God hath dispensed his bounties as in heaven.”
So saying, with dispatchful looks in haste
She turns, on hospitable thoughts intent
What choice to choose for delicacy best,
What order so contrived as not to mix
Tastes not well joined, inelegant, but bring
Taste after taste upheld with kindliest change:
Bestirs her then, and from each tender stalk
Whatever earth, all-bearing mother, yields
In India East or West, or middle shore
In Pontus or the Punic coast, or where
Alcinóus reigned, fruit of all kinds, in coat
Rough, or smooth rind, or bearded husk, or shell,
She gathers, tribute large, and on the board
Heaps with unsparing hand; for drink the grape
She crushes, inoffensive must, and meaths
From many a berry, and from sweet kernels pressed
She tempers dulcet creams; nor these to hold
Wants her fit vessels pure; then strows the ground
With rose and odours from the shrub unfumed.
Meanwhile our primitive great sire, to meet
His god-like guest, walks forth, without more train
Accompanied than with his own complete
Perfections; in himself was all his state,
More solemn than the tedious pomp that waits
On princes, when their rich retinue long
Of horses led, and grooms besmeared with gold,
Dazzles the crowd, and sets them all agape.
Nearer his presence Adam, though not awed,
Yet with submiss approach and reverence meek,
As to a superior nature, bowing low,
Thus said: ‘Native of heaven, for other place
None can than heaven such glorious shape contain ;
Since by descending from the thrones above,
Those happy places thou hast deigned a while
To want, and honour these, vouchsafe with us
Two only, who yet by sovran gift possess
This spacious ground, in yonder shady bower
To rest, and what the garden choicest bears
To sit and taste, till this meridian heat
Be over, and the sun more cool decline.’
Whom thus the angelic Virtue answered mild:
“Adam, I therefore came ; nor art thou such
Created, or such place hast here to dwell,
As may not oft invite, though spirits of heaven,
To visit thee: lead on then where thy bower
O'ershades; for these mid-hours, till evening rise,
I have at will.” So to the sylvan lodge
They came, that like Pomona's arbour smiled,
With flowerets decked, and fragrant smells; but Eve
Undecked save with herself, more lovely fair
Than wood-nymph, or the fairest goddess feigned
Of three that in mount Ida naked strove,
Stood to entertain her guest from heaven; no veil
She meeded, virtue proof; no thought infirm
Altered her cheek. On whom the angel “Hail!’
Bestowed, the holy salutation used
Long after to blest Mary, second Eve:
* Hail, mother of mankind, whose fruitſul womb
Shall fill the world more numerous with thy sons,
Than with these various fruits the trees of God
Have heaped this table.” Raised of grassy turf
Their table was, and mossy seats had round,
And on her ample square from side to side
All autumn piled, though spring and autumn here
Danced hand in hand. A while discourse they hold,
No fear lest dinner cool; when thus began
Our author: “Heavenly stranger, please to taste
These bounties, which our Nourisher, from whom
All perfect good, unmeasured out, descends,
To us for food and for delight hath caused
The earth to yield; unsavoury food perhaps
To spiritual natures; only this I know,
That one celestial Father gives to all.”
To whom the angel: “Therefore what he gives
(Whose praise be ever sung) to man in part
Spiritual, may of purest spirits be found
No ingrateful food : and food alike those pure
Intelligential substances require,
As doth your rational ; and both contain
Within them every lower faculty
Of sense, whereby they hear, see, smell, touch, taste,
Tasting concoct, digest, assimilate,
And corporeal to incorporeal turn.
I'or know, whatever was created necds
4() PARADISE LOST.
Book V.
To be sustained and ſed: of elements
The grosser feeds the purer, earth the sea,
Earth and the sea feed air, the air those fires
Ethereal, and as lowest first the moon;
Whence in her visage round those spots, unpurged
Vapours not yet into her substance turned.
Nor doth the moon no mourishment exhale
From her moist continent to higher orbs.
The sun, that light imparts to all, receives
From all his alimental recompense
In humid exhalations, and at even
Sups with the ocean. Though in heaven the trees
Of life ambrosial fruitage bear, and vines
Yield nectar; though from off the boughs each morn
We brush mellifluous dews, and find the ground
Covered with pearly grain : yet God hath here
Varied his bounty so with new delights,
As may compare with heaven; and to taste
Think not I shall be nice.’ So down they sat,
And to their viands fell; nor seemingly
The angel, nor in mist, the common gloss
Of theologians; but with keen dispatch
Of real hunger, and concoctive heat
To transubstantiate : what redounds, transpires
Through spirits with ease; nor wonder; if by fire
Of sooty coal the empiric alchymist
Can turn, or holds it possible to turn,
Metals of drossiest ore to perfect gold,
As from the mine. Meanwhile at table Eve
Ministered naked, and their flowing cups
With pleasant liquors crowned ; O innocence
Deserving Paradise 1 if ever, then,
Then had the sons of God excuse to have been
Fnamoured at that sight; but in those hearts
Love unlibidinous reigned, nor jealousy
Was understood, the injured lover's hell.
Thus when with meats and drinks they had sufficed,
Not burdened nature, sudden mind arose
In Adam, not to let the occasion pass
Given him by this great conference, to know
Of things above his world, and of their being
Who dwell in heaven, whose excellence he saw
Transcend his own so far: whose radiant forms,
Divine effulgence, whose high power, so far
Exceeded human : and his wary speech
Thus to the empyreal minister he framed :
“Inhabitant with God, now know I well
Thy favour, in this honour done to man;
Under whose lowly roof thou hast vouchsafed
To enter, and these earthly fruits to taste,
Food not of angels, yet accepted so,
As that more willingly thou couldst not seem
At heaven's high feasts to have ſed: yet what com-
pare P
To whom the winged hierarch replied:
“O Adam, one Almighty is, from whom
All things proceed, and up to him return,
If not depraved from good, created all
Such to perfection, one first matter all,
Endued with various forms, various degrees
Of substance, and, in things that live, of life;
But more refined, more spirituous, and pure,
As nearer to him placed, or nearer tending
Each in their several active spheres assigned,
Till body up to spirit work, in bounds
Proportioned to each kind. So from the root
Springs lighter the green stalk, from thence the leaves
More aery, last the bright consummate flower
Spirits odórous breathes: flowers and their fruit,
Man's mourishment, by gradual scale sublimed,
To vital spirits aspire, to animal,
To intellectual; give both life and sense,
Fancy and understanding; whence the soul
Reason receives, and reason is her being,
Discursive, or intuitive; discourse
Is oftest yours, the latter most is ours,
Differing but in degree, of kind the same.
Wonder not then, what God for you saw good
If I refuse not, but convert, as you,
To proper substance. Time may come, when men
With angels may participate, and find
No inconvenient diet, nor too light fare;
And from these corporal nutriments perhaps
Your bodies may at last turn all to spirit,
Improved by tract of time, and, winged, ascend
Ethereal, as we; or may, at choice,
Here or in heavenly Paradises dwell;
If ye be found obedient, and retain
Unalterably firm his love entire,
Whose progeny you are. Meanwhile enjoy
Your fill what happiness this happy state
Can comprehend, incapable of more.”
To whom the patriarch of mankind replied:
“O favourable spirit, propitious guest,
Well hast thou taught the way that might direct
Our knowledge, and the scale of nature set
From center to circumference ; whereon,
In contemplation of created things,
By steps we may ascend to God. But say,
What meant that caution joined, “If ye be found
Obedient?” Can we want obedience then
To him, or possibly his love desert,
Who formed us from the dust, and placed us here
Full to the utmost measure of what bliss
Human desires can seek or apprehend ?”
To whom the angel: “Son of heaven and earth,
Attend : that thou art happy, owe to God;
That thou continuest such, owe to thyself,
That is, to thy obedience; therein stand.
This was that caution given thee; be advised.
God made thee perfect, not immutable;
And good he made thee; but to persevere
He left it in thy power; ordained thy will
By nature free, not overruled by fate
Inextricable, or strict necessity:
Our voluntary service he requires,
Not our necessitated ; such with him
Finds no acceptance, nor can find; for how
Can hearts, not free, be tried whether they serve
Willing or no, who will but what they must
By destiny, and can no other choose P
Myself, and all the angelic host, that stand
Book W.
PARADISE LOST. 41
In sight of God, enthroned, our happy state
Hold, as you yours, while our obedience holds;
On other surety none : freely we serve,
Because we freely love, as in our will
To love or not ; in this we stand or fall:
And some are fallen, to disobedience fallen,
And so from heaven to deepest hell; O fall
From what high state of bliss, into what woe ſ”
To whom our great progenitor: “Thy words
Attentive, and with more delighted ear,
Divine instructor, I have heard, than when
Cherubic songs by night from neighbouring bills
Aerial music send : nor knew I not
To be both will and decd created free;
Yet that we never shall forget to love
Our Maker, and obey him whose command
Single is yet so just, my constant thoughts
Assured me, and still assure: though what thou tellest
Hath passed in heaven, some doubt within me move,
But more desire to hear, if thou consent,
The full relation, which must needs be strange,
Worthy of sacred silence to be heard;
And we have yet large day, for scarce the sun
Hath finished half his journey, and scarce begins
His other half in the great zone of heaven.”
Thus Adam made request: and Raphaël,
After short pause assenting, thus began :
“High matter thou enjoinest me, O prime of men,
Sad task and hard : for how shall I relate
To human sense the invisible exploits
Of warring spirits? how, without remorse,
The ruin of so many glorious once
And perfect while they stood? how last unfold
The secrets of another world, perhaps
Not lawful to reveal P yet for thy good
This is dispensed; and what surmounts the reach
Of human sense, I shall delineate so,
By likening spiritual to corporal forms,
As may express them best; though what if earth
Be but the shadow of heaven, and things therein
Each to other like, more than on earth is thought?
“As yet this world was not, and Chaos wild
Reigned where these heavens now roll, where earth
Inow rests
Upon her center poised; when on a day,
(For time, though in eternity, applied
To motion, measures all things durable
By present, past, and future,) on such day
As heaven's great year brings forth, the empyreal host
Of angels by imperial summons called,
Innumerable before the Almighty's throne
Forthwith, from all the ends of heaven, appeared
Under their hierarchs in orders bright:
Ten thousand thousand ensigns high advanced,
Standards and gonfalons 'twixt van and rear
Stream in the air, and for distinction serve
Of hierarchies, of orders, and degrees;
Or in their glittering tissues bear imblazed
Holy memorials, acts of zeal and love
Recorded eminent. Thus when in orbs
Of circuit inexpressible they stood,
Or') within orb, the Father infinite,
By whom in bliss imbosomed sat the Son,
Amidst as from a flaming mount whose top
Brightness had made invisible, thus spake :
“Hear, all ye angels, progeny of light,
Thrones, dominations, princedoms, virtues, powers.
Hear my decree, which unrevoked shall stand.
This day I have begot whom I declare
My only Son, and on this holy hill
Him have anointed, whom ye now behold
At my right hand; your head I him appoint;
And by myself have sworn, to him shall bow
All knees in heaven, and shall confess him Lord :
Under his great vicegerent reign abide
United, as one individual soul,
For ever happy: him who disobeys,
Me disobeys, breaks union, and that day,
Cast out from God and blessed vision, falls
Into utter darkness, deep ingulfed, his place
Ordained without redemption, without cmd.”
“So spake the Omnipotent, and with his words
All secmed well pleased ; all seemed, but were not all.
That day, as other solemn days, they spent
In song and dance about the sacred hill;
Mystical dance, which yonder starry sphere
Of planets, and of fixed, in all her wheels
Resembles nearest, mazes intricate,
Eccentric, intervolved, yet regular
Then most, when most irregular they seem ;
And in their motions harmony divine
So smooths her charming tones, that God's own car
Listens delighted. Evening now approached
(For we have also evening and our morn,
We ours for change delectable, not need);
Forthwith from dance to sweet repast they turn
Desirous; all in circles as they stood,
Tables are set, and on a sudden piled
With angel's food, and rubied nectar flows
In pearl, in diamond, and massy gold,
Fruit of delicious vines, the growth of heaven.
On flowers reposed, and with fresh flowerets crowned,
They eat, they drink; and in communion sweet
Quaff immortality and joy, secure
Of surfeit, where full measure only bounds
Excess, before the all-bounteous King, who showered
With copious hand, rejoicing in their joy.
Now when ambrosial might with clouds exhaled
From that high mount of God, whence light and shade
Spring both, the face of brightest heaven had changed
To grateful twilight, (for might comes not there
In darker veil,) and roseat dews disposed
All but the unsleeping eyes of God to rest;
Wide over all the plain, and wider far
Than all this globous earth in plain outspread,
(Such are the courts of God,) the angelic throng,
Dispersed in bands and files, their camp extend
By living streams among the trees of life,
Pavilions numberless, and sudden reared,
Celestial tabernacles, where they slept
Fanned with cool winds; save those, who, in their
course,
42 PARADISE LOST.
Book V.
Melodious hymns about the sovran throne
Alternate all night long : but not so waked
Satan; so call him now, his former name
Is heard no more in heaven; he of the first,
If not the first archangel, great in power,
In favour and pre-eminence, yet fraught
With envy against the Son of God, that day
Honoured by his great Father, and proclaimed
Messiah King anointed, could not bear
Through pride that sight, and thought himself im-
paired.
Deep malice thence conceiving and disdain,
Soon as midnight brought on the dusky hour
Friendliest to sleep and silence, he resolved
With all his legions to dislodge, and leave
Unworshipt, unobeyed, the throne supreme,
Contemptuous; and his next subordinate
Awakening, thus to him in secret spake:
“Sleepest thou, companion dear? What sleep can
close
Thy eye-lids 2 and rememberest what decree
Of yesterday, so late hath passed the lips
Of heaven's Almighty. Thou to me thy thoughts
Wast wont, I mine to thee was wont, to impart;
Both waking we were one ; how then can now
Thy sleep dissent P New laws thou seest imposed;
New laws from him who reigns, new minds may raise
In us who serve, new counsels, to debate
What doubtful may ensue: more in this place
To utter is not safe. Assemble thou,
Of all those myriads which we lead, the chief;
Tell them, that by command, cre yet dim might
Her shadowy cloud withdraws, I am to haste,
And all who under me their banner wave,
Homeward, with flying march, where we possess
The quarters of the north; there to prepare
Fit entertainment to receive our King,
The Great Messiah, and his new commands,
Who speedily through all the hierarchies
Intends to pass triumphant, and give laws.”
“So spake the false archangel, and infused
Bad influence into the unwary breast
Of his associate: he together calls,
Or several one by one, the regent powers,
Under him regent; tells, as he was taught,
That the Most High commanding, now ere night,
Now ere dim night had disencumbered heaven,
The great hierarchal standard was to move;
Tells the suggested cause, and casts between
Ambiguous words and jealousies, to sound
Or taint integrity : but all obeyed
The wonted signal, and superior voice
Of their great potentate; for great indeed
His name, and high was his degree in heaven;
His countenance, as the morning star that guides
The starry flock, allured them, and with lies
Drew after him the third part of heaven's host.
Meanwhile the Eternal eye, whose sight discerns
Abstrusest thoughts, from forth his holy mount,
And from within the golden lamps that burn
Nightly before him, saw without their light
Rebellion rising; saw in whom, how spread
Among the sons of morn, what multitudes
Were banded to oppose his high decree;
And, smiling, to his only Son thus said:
“Son, thou in whom my glory I belold
In full resplendence, heir of all my might,
Nearly it now concerns us to be sure
Of our omnipotence, and with what arms
We mean to hold what anciently we claim
Of deity or empire: such a foe
Is rising, who intends to erect his throne
Equal to ours throughout the spacious north ;
Nor so content, hath in his thought to try
In battle, what our power is, or our right.
Let us advise, and to this hazard draw
With speed what force is left, and all employ
In our defence; lest unawares we lose
This our high place, our sanctuary, our hill.”
“To whom the Son with calm aspéct and clear,
Lightning divine, ineffable, serene,
Made answer: “Mighty Father, thou thy foes
Justly hast in derision, and, secure,
Laughest at their vain designs and tumults vain,
Matter to me of glory, whom their hate
Illustrates, when they see all regal power
Given me to quell their pride, and in event
Know whether I be dextrous to subdue
Thy rebels, or be found the worst in heaven.”
“So spake the Son: but Satan with his powers
Far was advanced on winged speed; an host
Innumerable as the stars of night,
Or stars of morning, dew-drops, which the sun
Impearls on every leaf and every flower.
Regions they passed, the mighty regencies
Of seraphim, and potentates, and thrones,
In their triple degrees; regions to which
All thy dominion, Adam, is no more
Than what this garden is to all the earth,
And all the sea, from one entire globose
Stretched into longitude ; which having passed,
At length into the limits of the north
They came; and Satan to his royal seat
High on a hill, far blazing, as a mount
Raised on a mount, with pyramids and towers
From diamond quarries hewn, and rocks of gold;
The palace of great Lucifer, (so call
That structure in the dialect of men
Interpreted,) which not long after, he,
Affecting all equality with God,
In imitation of that mount whereon
Messiah was declared in sight of heaven,
The Mountain of the Congregation called ;
For thither he assembled all his train,
Pretending, so commanded, to consult
About the great reception of their King,
Thither to come; and with calumnious art
Of counterfeited truth thus held their cars:
“Thrones, dominations, princedoms, virtues, powers;
If these magnific titles yet remain
Not mercly titular, since by decree
Another now hath to himself engrossed
Book W.
PARADISE LOST. 43
All power, and us eclipsed under the name
Of King anointed, for whom all this haste
Of midnight-march, and hurried meeting here,
This only to consult; how we may best,
With what may be devised of honours new,
Receive him coming to receive from us
Knee-tribute yet unpaid, prostration vile !
Too much to one ! but double how endured,
To one, and to his image now proclaimed *
But what if better counsels might erect
Our minds, and teach us to cast off this yoke *
Will ye submit your necks, and choose to bend
The supple knee P Ye will not, if I trust
To know ye right, or if ye know yourselves
Natives and sons of heaven possessed before
By none; and if not equal all, yet free,
Equally free; for orders and degrees
Jar not with liberty, but well consist.
Who can in reason then, or right, assume
Monarchy over such as live by right
His equals; if in power and splendour less,
In freedom equal P or can introduce
Law and edict on us, who without law
Err not P much less for this to be our Lord,
And look for adoration, to the abuse
Of those imperial titles, which assert
Our being ordained to govern, not to serve.”
“Thus far his bold discourse without control
Had audience; when among the seraphim
Abdiel, than whom none with more zeal adored
The Deity, and divine commands obeyed,
Stood up, and in a flame of zeal severe
The current of his fury thus opposed:
“O argument blasphémous, false, and proud
Words which no ear ever to hear in heaven
Expected, least of all from thee, ingrate,
In place thyself so high above thy peers.
Canst thou with impious obloquy condemn
The just decree of God, pronounced and sworn,
That to his only Son, by right endued
With regal scepter every soul in heaven,
Shall bend the knee, and in that honour due
Confess him rightful king 2 Unjust, thou sayest,
Flatly unjust, to bind with laws the free,
And equal over equals to let reign,
One over all with unsucceeded power.
Shalt thou give law to God f shalt thou dispute
With him the points of liberty, who made
Thee what thou art, and formed the powers of heaven
Such as he pleased, and circumscribed their being 2
Yet, by experience taught, we know how good,
And of our good and of our dignity
How provident he is ; how far from thought
To make us less, bent rather to exalt
Our happy state, under one head more near
United. But to grant it thee unjust,
That equal over equals monarch reign :
Thyself, though great and glorious, dost thou count,
Or all angelic nature joined in one,
Equal to him, begotten Son P by whom,
As by his word, the Mighty Father made
All things, even thee; and all the spirits of heaven
By him created in their bright degrees,
Crowned them with glory, and to their glory named
Thrones, dominations, princedoms, virtues, powers,
Essential powers; nor by his reign obscured,
But more illustrious made; since he the head,
One of our number thus reduced becomes;
His laws our laws; all honour to him done
Returns our own. Cease then this impious rage,
And tempt not these : but hasten to appease
The incensed Father and the incensed Son,
While pardon may be found in time besought.”
“So spake the ſervent angel; but his zeal
None seconded, as out of season judged,
Or singular and rash: whereat rejoiced
The apostate, and, more haughty, thus replied :
“That we were formed then, sayest thou? and the
work
Of secondary hands, by task transferred
From Father to his Son P strange point and new '
Toctrine which we would know whence learned : who
SaW.
When this creation was P rememberest thou
Thy making, while the Maker gave thee being
We know no time when we were not as now ;
Know none before us, self-begot, self-raised
By our own quickening power, when fatal course
Had circled his full orb, the birth mature
Of this our native heaven, ethereal sons.
Our puissance is our own : our own right hand
Shall teach us highest deeds, by proof to try
Who is our equal: then thou shalt behold
Whether by supplication we intend
Address, and to begirt the almighty throne
Beseeching or besieging. This report,
These tidings carry to the anointed King;
And fly, ere evil intercept thy flight.”
“He said ; and, as the sound of waters deep,
Hoarse murmur echoed to his words applause
Through the infinite host: nor less for that
The flaming seraph ſearless, though alone
Encompassed round with foes, thus answered bold:
“O alienate from God, O spirit accursed,
Forsaken of all good ' I see thy fall
Determined, and thy hapless crew involved
In this perfidious fraud, contagion spread
Both of thy crime and punishment: henceforth
No more be troubled how to quit the yoke
Of God's Messiah; those indulgent laws
Will not be now vouchsafed ; other decrees
Against thee are gone forth without recall :
That golden scepter, which thou didst reject,
Is now an iron rod to bruise and break
Thy disobedience. Well thou didst advise:
Yet not for thy advice or threats I fly
These wicked tents devoted, lest the wrath
Impendent, raging into sudden flame,
Distinguish not: for soon expect to feel
His thunder on thy head, devouring fire.
Then who created thee lamenting learn,
When who can uncreate thee thou shalt know.”
44 PARADISE LOST.
Book VI.
“So spake the scraph Abdiel, faithful found
Among the faithless, faithful only he ;
Among innumerable false, unmoved,
Unshaken, unseduced, unterrified,
His loyalty he kept, his love, his zeal;
Nor number, nor example, with him wrought
To swerve from truth, or change his constant mind,
Though single. From amidst them forth he passed,
Long way through hostile scorn, which he sustained
Superior, nor of violence feared aught;
And, with retorted scorn, his back he turned
On those proud towers to swift destruction doomed.
BOOK WI.
THE ARGUMENT.
Raphael continues to relate how Michael and Gabriel were sent forth to battle against Satan and his angels. The first fight described:
Satan and his powers retire under night: he calls a council; invents devilish engines, which, in the second day's fight, put Michael
and his angels to some disorder; but they at length
ulling up mountains, overwhelm both the ſorce and machines of Satan : yet
the tumult not so ending, God, on the third day, sends Messiah his Son, for whom he had reserved the glory of that victory; he, in
the power of his Father, coming to the place, and causing all his legions to stand still on either side, with his chariot and thunder
driving into the midst of his enemies, pursues them, unable to resist, towards the wall of heaven; which opening they leap down with
horror and confusion into the place of punishment prepared for them in the deep : Messiah returns with triumph to his Father.
* ALL night the dreadless angel, unpursued,
Through heaven's wide champain held his way; till
Morn,
Waked by the circling Hours, with rosy hand
Unbarred the gates of light. There is a cave
Within the mount of God, fast by his throne,
Where light and darkness in perpetual round
Lodge and dislodge by turns, which makes through
heaven
Grateful vicissitude, like day and night;
Light issues forth, and at the other door
Obsequious darkness enters, till her hour
To veil the heaven, though darkness there might well
Seen twilight here : and now went forth the morn,
Such as in highest heaven, arrayed in gold
Empyreal; from before her vanished night,
Shot through with orient beams; when all the plain
Covered with thick embattled squadrons bright,
Chariots, and flaming arms, and fiery steeds,
Reflecting blaze on blaze, first met his view :
War he perceived, war in procinct; and ſound
Already known what he for news had thought
To have reported : gladly then he mixed
Among those friendly powers, who him received
With joy and acclamations loud, that one,
That of so many myriads fallen yet one
Returned not lost. On to the sacred hill
They led him high applauded, and present
Before the seat supreme ; from whence a voice,
From midst a golden cloud, thus mild was heard :
“Servant of God, well done; well hast thou fought
The better fight, who single hast maintained
Against revolted multitudes the cause
Of truth, in word mightier than they in arms;
And for the testimony of truth hast borne
Universal reproach, far worse to bear
Than violence; for this was all thy care,
To stand approved in sight of God, though worlds
Judged thee perverse: the easier conquest now
Remains thee: aided by this host of friends,
Back on thy foes more glorious to return,
Than scorned thou didst depart; and to subdue
By force, who reason for their law refuse ;
Right reason for their law, and for their king
Messiah, who by right of merit reigns.
Go, Michael, of celestial armics prince:
And thou in military prowess next,
Gabriel, lead forth to battle these my sons
Invincible; lead forth my armed saints,
By thousands and by millions, ranged for fight,
Equal in number to that godless crew
Rebellious: them with fire and hostile arms
Pearless assault; and to the brow of heaven
Pursuing, drive them out from God and bliss,
Into their place of punishment, the gulf
Of Tartarus, which ready opens wide
His fiery chaos to receive their fall.”
“So spake the Sovran Voice, and clouds began
To darken all the hill, and smoke to roll |
In dusky wreaths, reluctant flames, the sign
Of wrath awaked ; nor with less dread the loud
Ethereal trumpet from on high 'gan blow ;
At which command the powers militant
That stood for heaven, in mighty quadrate joincd
Of union irresistible, moved on
In silence their bright legions, to the sound
Of instrumental harmony, that breathed
Heroic ardour to adventurous deeds
Under their god-like leaders, in the cause
Of God and his Messiah. On they move
Indissolubly firm ; nor obvious hill,
Nor straitening vale, nor wood, nor stream, divides
Their perfect ranks; for high above the ground
Their march was, and the passive air upbore
Book VI.
PARADISE LOST. 46
Their nimble tread. As when the total kind
Of birds, in orderly array on wing,
Came summoned over Eden to receive
Their names of thee; so over many a tract
Of heaven they marched, and many a province wide,
Tenfold the length of this terrene: at last,
Far in the horizon to the north appeared
From skirt to skirt a fiery region, stretched
In battailous aspéct, and nearer view
Bristled with upright beams innumerable
Of rigid spears, and helmets thronged, and shields
Various, with boastful argument portrayed,
The banded powers of Satan hasting on
With furious expedition; for they weened
That self-same day, by fight, or by surprise,
To win the mount of God, and on his throne
To set the envier of his state, the proud
Aspirer; but their thoughts proved fond and vain
In the mid way: though strange to us it seemed
At first, that angel should with angel war,
And in fierce hosting meet, who wont to meet
So oft in festivals of joy and love
Unanimous, as sons of one great Sire,
Hymning the Eternal Father. But the shout
Of battle now began, and rushing sound
Of onset ended soon each milder thought.
High in the midst, exalted as a god,
The apostate in his sun-bright chariot sat,
Idol of majesty divine, enclosed
With flaming cherubim, and golden shields;
Then lighted from his gorgeous throne, for now
'Twixt host and host but narrow space was left,
A dreadful interval, and front to front
Presented stood in terrible array
Of hideous length : before the cloudy van,
On the rough edge of battle ere it joined,
Satan, with vast and haughty strides advanced,
Came towering, armed in adamant and gold;
Abdiel that sight endured not, where he stood
Among the mightiest, bent on highest deeds,
And thus his own undaunted heart explores:
“O heaven! that such resemblance of the Highest
Should yet remain, where faith and realty
Remain not wherefore should not strength and might
There fail where virtue fails, or weakest prove
Where boldest, though to sight unconquerable 8
His puissance, trusting in the Almighty's aid,
I mean to try, whose reason I have tried
Unsound and false; nor is it aught but just
That he, who in debate of truth hath won,
Should win in arms, in both disputes alike
Victor; though brutish that contést and foul,
When reason hath to deal with force, yet so
Most reason is that reason overcome.”
“So pondering, and from his armed peers
Forth stepping opposite, half-way he met
His daring foe, at this prevention more
Incensed, and thus securely him defied:
“Proud, art thou met P thy hope was to have reached
The highth of thy aspiring unopposed,
The throne of God unguarded, and his side
Abandoned, at the terror of thy power
Or potent tongue: fool! not to think how vain
Against the Omnipotent to rise in arms;
Who out of smallest things could, without end,
Have raised incessant armies to defeat
Thy folly; or with solitary hand
Reaching beyond all limit, at one blow,
Unaided, could have finished thee, and whelmed
Thy legions under darkness: but thou seest
All are not of thy train; there be, who faith
Prefer, and piety to God, though then
To thee not visible, when I alone
Scemed in thy world erroneous to dissent
From all : my sect thou seest; now learn too late
How few sometimes may know, when thousands err.”
‘Whom the grand ſoe, with scornful eye askance,
Thus answered : “Ill for thee, but in wished hour
Of my revenge, first sought for, thou returnest
From flight, seditious angel ! to receive
Thy merited reward, the first assay
Of this right hand provoked, since first that tongue,
Inspired with contradiction, durst oppose
A third part of the gods, in synod met
Their deities to assert; who, while they feel
Vigour divine within them, can allow
Omnipotence to none. But well thou comest
Before thy fellows, ambitious to win
From me some plume, that thy success may show
Destruction to the rest; this pause between,
(Unanswered lest thou boast,) to let thee know,
At first I thought that liberty and heaven
To heavenly souls had been all one ; but now
I see that most through sloth had rather serve,
Ministering spirits, trained up in feast and song !
Such hast thou armed, the minstrelsy of heaven,
Servility with freedom to contend,
As both their deeds compared this day shall prove.”
“To whom in brief thus Abdiel stern replied:
“Apostate still thou errest, nor end wilt find
Of erring, from the path of truth remote :
Unjustly thou depravest it with the name
Of servitude, to serve whom God ordains,
Or nature: God and nature bid the same,
When he who rules is worthiest, and excels
Them whom he governs. This is servitude :
To serve the unwise, or him who hath rebelled
Against his worthier, as thine now serve thee,
Thyself not free, but to thyself enthralled;
Yet lewdly darest our ministering upbraid.
Reign thou in hell, thy kingdom; let me serve
In heaven God ever-blest, and his divine
Behests obey, worthiest to be obeyed ;
Yet chains in hell, not realms, expect: meanwhile
From me returned, as erst thou saidst, from flight,
This greeting on thy impious crest receive.”
“So saying, a noble stroke he lifted high,
Which hung not, but so swift with tempest fell
On the proud crest of Satan, that no sight,
Nor motion of swift thought, less could his shield,
Such ruin intercept: ten paces huge
He back recoiled; the tenth on bended knee
46 PARADISE LOST.
Book VI.
His massy spear upstaid; as if on earth
Winds under ground, or waters, forcing way
Sidelong had pushed a mountain from his seat,
Half-sunk with all his pines. Amazement seized
The rebel thrones, but greater rage, to see
Thus foiled their mightiest; ours joy filled, and shout,
Presage of victory, and fierce desire
Of battle ; whereat Michaël bid sound -
The archangel trumpet; through the vast of heaven
It sounded, and the faithful armies rung
Hosanna to the Highest: nor stood at gaze
The adverse legions, nor less hideous joined
The horrid shock. Now storming fury rose,
And clamour, such as heard in heaven till now
Was never; arms on armour clashing brayed
Horrible discord, and the madding wheels
Of brazen chariots raged; dire was the noise
Of conflict; over head the dismal hiss
Of fiery darts in flaming volleys flew,
And flying vaulted either host with fire.
So under fiery cope together rushed
Both battles main, with ruinous assault
And inextinguishable rage. All heaven
Resounded ; and had earth been then, all earth
Had to her center shook. What wonder 2 when
Millions of fierce encountering angels fought
On either side, the least of whom could wield
These elements, and arm him with the force
Of all their regions: how much more of power
Army against army, numberless to raise
Dreadful combustion warring, and disturb,
Though not destroy, their happy native seat;
Had not the Eternal King Omnipotent,
From his strong hold of heaven, high overruled
And limited their might; though numbered such
As each divided legion might have seemed
A numerous host; in strength each armed hand
A legion; led in fight, yet leader, seemed
Each warrior single as in chief, expert
When to advance, or stand, or turn the sway
Of battle, open when, and when to close
The ridges of grim war: no thought of flight,
None of retreat, no unbecoming deed
That argued fear; each on himself relied,
As only in his arm the moment lay
Of victory. Deeds of eternal ſame
Were done, but infinite; for wide was spread
That war, and various : sometimes on firm ground
A standing fight, then, soaring on main wing,
Tormented all the air; all air seemed then
Conflicting fire. Long time in even scale
The battle hung ; till Satan, who that day
Prodigious power had shown, and met in arms
No equal, ranging through the dire attack
Of fighting seraphim confused, at length
Saw where the sword of Michael smote, and felled
Squadrons at once; with huge two-handed sway
Brandished aloft, the horrid edge came down
Wide-wasting; such destruction to withstand
He hasted, and opposed the rocky orb
Of tenfold adamant, his ample shield,
A vast circumference. At his approach,
The great archangel from his warlike toil
Surceased, and glad, as hoping here to end
Intestine war in heaven, the arch-foe subdued,
Or captive dragged in chains; with hostile frown
And visage all inflamed first thus began :
“Author of evil, unknown till thy revolt,
Unnamed in heaven, now plenteous, as thou seest,
These acts of hateful strife, hateful to all,
Though heaviest by just measure on thysclf
And thy adherents: how hast thou disturbed
Heaven's blessed peace, and into nature brought
Misery, uncreated till the crime
Of thy rebellion how hast thou instilled
Thy malice into thousands, once upright
And faithful, now proved false! But think not here
To trouble holy rest; heaven casts thee out
From all her confines. Heaven, the seat of bliss,
Brooks not the works of violence and war.
Hence then, and evil go with thee along,
Thy offspring, to the place of evil, hell;
Thou and thy wicked crew there mingle broils,
Ere this avenging sword begin thy doom ;
Or some more sudden vengeance, winged from God,
Precipitate thee with augmented pain.”
“So spake the prince of angels; to whom thus
The adversary: “Nor think thou with wind
Of aery threats to awe whom yet with deeds
Thou canst not. Hast thou turned the least of these
To flight, or if to fall, but that they rise
Unvanquished ; easier to transact with me
That thou shouldst hope, imperious, and with threats
To chase me hence Perr not, that so shall end
The strife which thou callest evil, but we style
The strife of glory ; which we mean to win,
Or turn this heaven itself into the hell
Thou fablest; here, however, to dwell free,
If not to reign : meanwhile thy utmost force,
And join him named Almighty to thy aid,
I fly not, but have sought thee far and nigh.”
“They ended parle, and both addressed for fight
Unspeakable; for who, though with the tongue
Of angels, can relate, or to what things
Liken on earth conspicuous, that may liſt
Human imagination to such highth
Of godlike power for likest gods they seemed,
Stood they or moved, in stature, motion, arms,
Fit to decide the empire of great heaven.
Now waved their fiery swords, and in the air
Made horrid circles; two broad suns their shields
Blazed opposite, while expectation stood
In horror: from each hand with speed retired,
Where erst was thickest ſight, the angelic throng,
And left large field, unsafe within the wind
Of such commotion; such as, to set forth
Great things by small, if, nature's concord broke,
Among the constellations war were sprung,
Two planets rushing from aspéct malign
Of fiercest opposition, in mid sky
Should combat, and their jarring spheres confound
Together both with next to almighty arm
Book VI.
PARADISE LOST. 47
Upliſted imminent, one stroke they aimed
That might determine, and not need repeat,
As not of power at once; nor odds appeared
In might or swift prevention: but the sword
Of Michael ſrom the armoury of God
Was given him tempered so, that neither keen
Nor solid might resist that edge: it met
The sword of Satan, with steep force to smite
Descending, and in half cut sheer; nor staid,
But with swift wheel reverse, deep entering, shared
All his right side: then Satan first knew pain,
And writhed him to and fro convolved; so sore
The griding sword with discontinuous wound
Passed through him: but the ethereal substance closed,
Not long divisible; and from the gash
A stream of nectarous humour issuing flowed
Sanguine, such as celestial spirits may bleed,
And all his armour stained, erewhile so bright.
Forthwith on all sides to his aid was run
By angels many and strong, who interposed
Defence, while others bore him on their shields
Back to his chariot, where it stood retired
From off the files of war: there they him laid
Gnashing for anguish, and despite, and shame,
To find himself not matchless, and his pride
Humbled by such rebuke, so far beneath
His confidence to equal God in power.
Yet soon he healed; for spirits that live throughout
Vital in every part, not as frail man
In entrails, heart or head, liver or reins,
Cannot but by annihilating die;
Nor in their liquid texture mortal wound
Receive, no more than can the fluid air:
All heart they live, all head, all eye, all ear,
All intellect, all sense; and, as they please,
They limb themselves, and colour, shape, or size,
Assume, as likes them best, condense or rare.
“Meanwhile in other parts like deeds deserved
Memorial, where the might of Gabriel fought,
And with fierce ensigns pierced the deep array
Of Moloch, furious king; who him defied,
And at his chariot-wheels to drag him bound,
Threatened, nor from the Holy One of heaven
Refrained his tongue blasphémous; but anon
Down cloven to the waist, with shattered arms
And uncouth pain fled bellowing. On each wing
Uriel and Raphaël, his vaunting foe,
Though huge, and in a rock of diamond armed,
Wanquished Adramelech and Asmadai,
Two potent thrones, that to be less than gods
Disdained, but meaner thoughts learned in their flight,
Mangled with ghastly wounds through plate and mail.
Nor stood unmindful Abdiel to annoy
The atheist crew, but with redoubled blow
Ariel, and Arioch, and the violence
Of Ramiel scorched and blasted, overthrew.
I might relate of thousands, and their names
Eternize here on earth; but those elect
Angels, contented with their fame in heaven,
Seek not the praise of men: the other sort,
In might though wondrous and in acts of war,
Nor of renown less eager, yet by doom
Cancelled from heaven and sacred memory,
Nameless in dark oblivion let them dwell.
For strength from truth divided, and from just,
Illaudable, nought merits but dispraise
And ignominy; yet to glory aspires
Vain-glorious, and through infamy seeks fame:
Therefore eternal silence be their doom. r
‘And now, their mightiest quelled, the battle
swerved,
With many an inroad gored; deformed rout
Entered, and foul disorder; all the ground
With shivered armour strown, and on a heap
Chariot and charioteer lay overturned,
And fiery-foaming steeds; what stood, recoiled
O'er-wearied, through the ſaint Satanic host
Defensive scarce, or with pale fear surprised,
Then first with fear surprised, and sense of pain,
Fled ignominious, to such evil brought
By sin of disobedience: till that hour
Not liable to fear, or flight, or pain.
Far otherwise the inviolable saints,
In cubic phalanx firm, advanced entire,
Invulnerable, impenetrably armed;
Such high advantages their innocence
Gave them above their foes; not to have sinned,
Not to have disobeyed; in fight they stood
Unwearied, unobnoxious to be pained
By wound, though from their place by violence moved.
‘Now night her course began, and over heaven
Inducing darkness, grateful truce imposed,
And silence on the odious din of war:
Under her cloudy covert both retired,
Victor and vanquished : on the foughten field
Michaël and his angels prevalent
Encamping, placed in guard their watches round,
Cherubic waving fires: on the other part,
Satan with his rebellious disappeared,
Far in the dark dislodged ; and, void of rest,
His potentates to council called by night;
And in the midst thus undismayed began :
“O now in danger tried, now known in arms
Not to be overpowered, companions dear,
Found worthy not of liberty alone,
Too mean pretence' but what we more affect,
Honour, dominion, glory, and renown :
Who have sustained one day in doubtful fight
(And if one day, why not eternal days?)
What heaven's Lord had powerfullest to send
Against us from about his throne, and judged
Sufficient to subdue us to his will,
But proves not so : then fallible, it seems,
Of future we may deem him, though till now
Omniscient thought. True is, less firmly armed,
Some disadvantage we endured and pain,
Till now not known, but, known, as soon contemned;
Since now we find this our empyreal form
Incapable of mortal injury,
Imperishable, and though pierced with wound,
Soon closing, and by native vigour healed.
Of evil then so small, as easy think
48 PARADISE LOST.
Book VI.
The remedy; perhaps more valid arms,
Weapons more violent, when next we meet,
May serve to better us, and worse our foes,
Or equal what between us made the odds,
In nature none: if other hidden cause
Left them superior, while we can preserve
Unhurt our minds, and understanding sound,
Due search and consultation will disclose.”
‘He sat; and in the assembly next upstood
Nisroch, of principalities the prime;
As one he stood escaped from cruel fight,
Sore toiled, his riven arms to havoc hewn,
And cloudy in aspéct thus answering spake:
“Deliverer from new lords, leader to free
Enjoyment of our right as gods; yet hard
For gods, and too unequal work we find,
Against unequal arms to fight in pain,
Against unpained, impassive ; from which evil
Ruin must needs ensue; for what avails
Valour or strength, though matchless, quelled with pain
Which all subdues, and makes remiss the hands
Of mightiest? Sense of pleasure we may well
Spare out of life perhaps, and not repine,
But live content, which is the calmest life :
But pain is perfect misery, the worst
Of evils, and, excessive, overturns
All patience. He who therefore can invent
With what more forcible we may offend
Our yet unwounded enemies, or arm
Ourselves with like defence, to me deserves
No less than for deliverance what we owe.’
‘Whereto with look composed Satan replied:
“Not uninvented that, which thou aright
Believest so main to our success, I bring.
Which of us who beholds the bright surfăce
Of this ethereous mould whereon we stand,
This continent of spacious heaven adorned
With plant, fruit, flower ambrosial, gems, and gold :
Whose eye so superficially surveys
These things, as not to mind from whence they grow
Deep under ground, materials dark and crude,
Of spiritous and fiery spume, till, touched
With heaven's ray, and tempered, they shoot forth
So beauteous, opening to the ambient light 2
These in their dark nativity the deep
Shall yield us, pregnant with inſernal flame;
Which, into hollow engines, long and round,
Thick-rammed, at the other bore with touch of ſire
Dilated and inſuriate, shall send forth
From far, with thundering noise, among our ſoes
Such implements of mischief, as shall dash
To pieces, and o'erwhelm, whatever stands
Adverse, that they shall fear we have disarmed
The Thunderer of his only dreaded bolt.
Nor long shall be our labour; yet ere dawn,
Effect shall end our wish. Meanwhile revive;
Abandon ſear; to strength and counsel joined
Think nothing hard, much less to be despaired.”
* He ended, and his words their drooping cheer
Enlightened, and their languished hope revived.
The invention all admired, and each, how he
To be the inventor missed ; so easy it seemed
Once found, which yet unfound most would have
thought
Impossible: yet, haply, of thy race
In future days, if malice should abound,
Some one intent on mischief, or inspired
With devilish machination, might devise
Like instrument to plague the sons of men
For sin, on war and mutual slaughter bent.
Forthwith from council to the work they flew ;
None arguing stood; innumerable hands
Were ready; in a moment up they turned
Wide the celestial soil, and saw beneath
The originals of nature in their crude
Conception : sulphurous and nitrous foam
They found, they mingled, and, with subtle art
Concocted and adusted they reduced
To blackest grain, and into store conveyed :
Part hidden veins digged up (nor hath this earth
Entrails unlike) of mineral and stone,
Whereof to found their engines and their balls
Of missive ruin; part incentive reed
Provide, pernicious with one touch to fire.
So all ere day-spring, under conscious night,
Secret they finished, and in order set,
With silent circumspection, unespied.
‘Now when fair morn orient in heaven appeared,
Up rose the victor-angels, and to arms º
The matin trumpet sung : in arms they stood
Of golden panoply, reſulgent host,
Soon banded ; others from the dawning hills
Ilooked round, and scouts each coast light-armed scour,
Each quarter, to descry the distant foe,
Where lodged, or whither fled, or if for fight,
In motion or in halt: him soon they met
Under spread ensigns moving nigh, in slow
But firm battalion : back with speediest sail
Zophiel, of cherubim the swiftest wing,
Came flying, and in mid air aloud thus cried :
“Arm, warriors, arm for fight; the foe at hand,
Whom fled we thought, will save us long pursuit
This day; fear not his flight; so thick a cloud
He comes, and settled in his face I see
Sad resolution, and secure: let each
His adamantine coat gird well, and each
Fit well his helm, gripe fast his orbed shield,
Porne even or high ; for this day will pour down,
If I conjecture aught, no drizzling shower,
But rattling storm of arrows barbed with fire.”
* So warned he them, aware themselves, and soon
In order, quit of all impediment;
Instant without disturb they took alarm,
And onward moved embattled : when, behold !
Not distant far with heavy pace the foe
Approaching gross and huge, in hollow cube
Training his devilish enginery, impaled
On every side with shadowing squadrons deep,
To hide the fraud. At interview both stood
A while ; but suddenly at head appeared
Satan, and thus was heard commanding loud:
“Vanguard, to right and left the front unfold;
Book VI.
PARADISE LOST. 49
That all may see who hate us, how we seek
Peace and composure, and with open breast
Stand ready to receive them, if they like
Our overture, and turn not back perverse :
But that I doubt; however, witness heaven,
Heaven witness thou anon, while we discharge
Freely our part: ye, who appointed stand,
Do as you have in charge, and briefly touch
What we propound, and loud that all may hear.”
“So scoffing in ambiguous words, he scarce
Had ended ; when to right and left the front
Divided and to either flank retired :
Which to our eyes discovered, new and strange,
A triple mounted row of pillars laid
On wheels, (for like to pillars most they seemed,
Of hollowed bodies made of oak or fir,
With branches lopt, in wood or mountain ſelled,)
Brass, iron, stony mould, had not their mouths
With hideous orifice gaped on us wide,
Portending hollow truce : at each behind
A seraph stood, and in his hand a reed
Stood waving tipt with fire; while we, suspense,
Collected stood within our thoughts amused,
Not long ; for sudden all at once their reeds
Put forth, and to a narrow vent applied
With nicest touch. Immediate in a flame,
But soon obscured with smoke, all heaven appeared,
From those deep-throated engines belched, whose roar
Embowelled with outrageous noise the air,
And all her entrails tore, disgorging foul
Their devilish glut, chained thunderbolts and hail
Of iron globes; which, on the victor host
Levelled, with such impetuous fury smote,
That, whom they hit, none on their feet might stand,
Though standing else as rocks, but down they fell
By thousands, angel or archangel rolled,
The sooner for their arms; unarmed, they might
Have easily, as spirits, evaded swift
By quick contraction on remove; but now
Poul dissipation followed, and forced rout;
Nor served it to relax their serried files.
What should they do? if on they rushed, repulse
Repeated, and indecent overthrow
Doubled, would render them yet more despised,
And to their foes a laughter; for in view
Stood ranked of seraphim another row,
In posture to displode their second tire
Of thunder: back defeated to return
They worse abhorred. Satan beheld their plight,
And to his mates thus in derision called :
“O friends! why come not on these victors proud P
Erewhile they fierce were coming ; and when we,
To entertain them fair with open front
And breast (what could we more?) propounded terms
Of composition, straight they changed their minds,
Flew off, and into strange vagaries fell,
As they would dance; yet for a dance they seemed
Somewhat extravagant and wild; perhaps
For joy of offered peace: but I suppose,
If our proposals once again were heard,
We should compel them to a quick result.”
“To whom thus Belial, in like gamesome mood :
“Leader the terms we sent were terms of weight,
Of hard contents, and full of force urged home;
Such as we might perceive amused them all,
And stumbled many: who receives them right,
Had need from head to foot well understand ;
Not understood, this gift they have besides,
They show us when our foes walk not upright.”
“So they amongst themselves in pleasant vein
Stood scoffing, heightened in their thoughts beyond
All doubt of victory: Eternal Might
To match with their inventions they presumed
So easy, and of his thunder made a scorn,
And all his host derided, while they stood
A while in trouble : but they stood not long;
Rage prompted them at length, and found them
&lP ITIS
Against such hellish mischief fit to oppose.
Forth with (behold the excellence, the power
Which God hath in his mighty angels placed )
Their arms away they threw, and to the hills
(For earth hath this variety from heaven,
Of pleasure situate in hill and dale,)
Light as the lightning glimpse they ran, they flew ;
From their foundations looseniug to and fro,
They plucked the seated hills, with all their load,
Rocks, waters, woods, and by the shaggy tops
Uplifting bore them in their hands: amaze,
Be sure, and terror, seized the rebel host,
When coming towards them so dread they saw
The bottom of the mountains upward turned ;
Till on those cursed engines' triple row
They saw them whelmed, and all their confidence
Under the weight of mountains buried deep ;
Themselves invaded next, and on their heads
Main promontories flung, which in the air
Came shadowing, and oppressed whole legions armed ;
Their armour helped their harm, crushed in and
bruised
Into their substance pent, which wrought them pain
Implacable, and many a dolorous groan ;
Long struggling underneath, cre they could wind
Out of such prison, though spirits of purest light,
Purest at first, now gross by sinning grown.
The rest, in imitation, to like arms
Betook them, and the neighbouring hills uptore :
So hills amid the air encountered hills,
Hurled to and fro with jaculation dire;
That underground they fought in dismal shade;
Infernal noise ! war seemed a civil game
To this uproar; horrid confusion heaped
Upon confusion rose. And now all heaven
Had gone to wrack, with ruin overspread;
Had not the Almighty Father, where he sits
Shrined in his sanctuary of heaven secure,
Consulting on the sum of things, foreseen
This tumult, and permitted all, advised ;
That his great purpose he might so fulfil,
To honour his anointed Son avenged
Upon his enemies, and to declare
All power on him transferred : whence to his Son.
50 PARADISE LOST.
Book VI.
The assessor of his throne, he thus began :
“Effulgence of my glory, Son beloved,
Son, in whose face invisible is beheld
Visibly, what by Deity I am,
And in whose hand what by decree I do,
Second omnipotence two days are past,
Two days, as we compute the days of heaven,
Since Michael and his powers went forth to tame
These disobedient: sore hath becn their fight,
As likeliest was, when two such foes met armed;
For to themselves I left them; and thou knowest,
Equal in their creation they were formed,
Save what sin hath impaired; which yet hath wrought
Insensibly, for I suspend their doom;
Whence in perpetual fight they needs must last
Endless, and no solution will be found:
War wearied hath performed what war can do,
And to disordered rage let loose the reins,
With mountains, as with weapons, armed; which makes
Wild work in heaven, and dangerous to the main.
Two days are therefore past, the third is thine;
For thee I have ordained it; and thus far
Have suffered, that the glory may be thine
Of ending this great war, since none but thou
Can end it. Into thee such virtue and grace
Immense I have transfused, that all may know
In heaven and hell thy power above compare;
And, this perverse commotion governed thus,
To manifest thee worthiest to be Heir
Of all things; to be Heir, and to be King
By sacred unction, thy deserved right.
Go then, thou Mightiest, in thy Father's might;
Ascend my chariot, guide the rapid wheels
That shake heaven's basis, bring forth all my war,
My bow and thunder, my almighty arms
Gird on, and sword upon thy puissant thigh;
Pursue these sons of darkness, drive them out
From all heaven's bounds into the utter deep :
There let them learn, as likes them, to despise
God, and Messiah, his anointed King.”
‘He said, and on his Son with rays direct
Shone full; he all his Father full expressed
Ineffably into his face received;
And thus the filial Godhead answering spake:
“O Father, O Supreme of heavenly throncs,
First, Highest, Holiest, Best; thou always seekest
To glorify thy Son; I always thee,
As is most just: this I my glory account,
My exaltation, and my whole delight,
That thou in me, well pleased, declarest thy will
Fulfilled, which to fulfil is all my bliss.
Scepter and power, thy giving, I assume,
And gladlier shall resign, when in the end
Thou shalt be all in all, and I in thee
I'or ever; and in me all whom thou lovest:
But whom thou hatest, I hate, and can put on
Thy terrors, as I put thy mildness on,
Image of thee in all things; and shall soon,
Armed with thy might, rid heaven of these rebelled;
To their prepared ill mansion driven down,
To chair of darkness, and the undying worm,
That from thy just obedience could revolt,
Whom to obey is happiness entire.
Then shall thy saints unmixed, and from the impure
Far separate, circling thy holy mount,
Unſeigned hallelujahs to thee sing,
Hymns of high praise, and I among them chief.”
“So said, he, o'er his scepter bowing, rose
From the right hand of glory where he sat;
And the third sacred morn began to shine,
Dawning through heaven. Forth rushed with whirl-
wind sound
The chariot of Paternal Deity,
Flashing thick flames, wheel within wheel undrawn,
Itself instinct with spirit, but convoyed
By four cherubic shapes; four faces each
Had wondrous; as with stars, their bodies all,
And wings, were set with eyes; with eyes the wheels
Of beryl, and careering fires between ;
Over their heads a crystal firmament,
Whereon a sapphire throne, inlaid with pure
Amber, and colours of the showery arch.
He, in celestial panoply all armed
Of radiant Urim, work divinely wrought,
Ascended; at his right hand Victory
Sat eagle-winged; beside him hung his bow
And quiver with three-bolted thunder stored;
And from about him fierce effusion rolled
Of smoke, and bickering flame, and sparkles dire:
Attended with ten thousand thousand saints,
He onward came ; far off his coming shone;
And twenty thousand (I their number heard)
Chariots of God, half on each hand, were seen :
He on the wings of cherub rode sublime
On the crystalline sky; in Sapphire throned,
Illustrious far and wide; but by his own
First seen : them unexpected joy surprised,
When the great ensign of Messiah blazed
Aloft by angels borne, his sign in heaven;
Under whose conduct Michael soon reduced
His army, circumfused on either wing,
Under their head imbodied all in one.
Before him Power Divine his way prepared;
At his command the uprooted hills retired
Each to his place; they heard his voice, and went
Obsequious; heaven his wonted face renewed,
And with fresh flowerets hill and valley smiled.
This saw his hapless foes, but stood obdured,
And to rebellious fight rallied their powers,
Insensate, hope conceiving from despair.
In heavenly spirits could such perverseness dwell ?
But to convince the proud what signs avail,
Or wonders move the obdurate to relent?
They, hardened more by what might most reclaim,
Grieving to see his glory, at the sight
Took envy; and aspiring to his highth,
Stood re-embattled fierce, by force or fraud
Weening to prosper, and at length prevail
Against God and Messiah, or to fall
In universal ruin last; and now
To final battle drew, disdaining flight,
Or faint retreat; when the great Son of God
Book VI.
PARADISE LOST. à l'
To all his host on either hand thus spake :
“Stand still in bright array, ye saints; here stand,
Ye angels armed; this day from battle rest:
I’aithful hath been your warfare, and of God
Accepted, fearless in his righteous cause:
And as ye have received, so have ye done,
Invincibly: but of this cursed crew
The punishment to other hand belongs;
Vengeance is his, or whose he sole appoints:
Number to this day's work is not ordained,
Nor multitude; stand only, and behold
God’s indignation on these godless poured
By me; not you, but me, they have despised,
Yet envied ; against me is all their rage,
Because the Father, to whom in heaven supreme
Kingdom, and power, and glory appertains,
Hath honoured me, according to his will.
Therefore to me their doom he hath assigned :
That they may have their wish, to try with me
In battle which the stronger proves; they all,
Or I alone against them ; since by strength
They measure all, of other excellence
Not emulous, nor care who them excels;
Nor other strife with them do I vouchsafe.”
“So spake the Son, and into terror changed
His countenance too severe to be beheld,
And full of wrath bent on his enemies.
At once the four spread out their starry wings
With dreadful shade contiguous, and the orbs
Of his fierce chariot rolled, as with the sound
Of torrent floods, or of a numerous host.
He on his impious foes right onward drove,
Gloomy as night: under his burning wheels
The stedfast empyréan shook throughout,
All but the throne itself of God. Full soon
Among them he arrived ; in his right hand
Grasping ten thousand thunders, which he sent
Before him, such as in their souls infixed
Plagues: they, astonished, all resistance lost,
All courage; down their idle weapons dropt;
O'er shields, and helms, and helmed heads he rode
Of thrones and mighty seraphim prostráte,
That wished the mountains now might be again
Thrown on them, as a shelter from his ire.
Nor less on either side tempestuous fell
His arrows, from the fourfold-visaged four
Distinct with eyes, and from the living wheels
Distinct alike with multitude of eyes;
One spirit in them ruled ; and every eye
Glared lightning, and shot forth pernicious fire
Among the accursed, that withered all their strength,
And of their wonted vigour left them drained,
Exhausted, spiritless, afflicted, fallen.
Yet half his strength he put not forth, but checked
His thunder in mid volley; for he meant
Not to destroy, but root them out of heaven :
The overthrown he raised, and as a herd
Of goats or timorous flock together thronged,
Drove them before him thunderstruck, pursued
With terrors and with furics, to the bounds
And crystal wall of heaven; which, opening wide,
Rolled inward, and a spacious gap disclosed
Into the wasteful deep : the monstrous sight
Struck them with horror backward, but far worse
Urged them behind: headlong themselves they threw
Down from the verge of heaven; eternal wrath
Burnt after them to the bottòmless pit.
* Hell heard the unsufferable noise, hell saw
Heaven ruining from heaven, and would have fled
Affrighted ; but strict ſate had cast too deep
Her dark foundations, and too fast had bound.
Nine days they fell: confounded Chaos roared,
And felt tenfold confusion in their fall
Through his wild anarchy, so huge a rout
Encumbered him with ruin : hell at last
Yawning received them whole, and on them closed;
Hell, their ſit habitation, fraught with fire
Unquenchable, the house of woe and pain.
Disburdened heaven rejoiced, and soon repaired
Her mural breach, returning whence it rolled.
Sole Victor, from the expulsion of his foes,
Messiah his triumphal chariot turned :
To meet him all his saints, who silent stood
Eye-witnesses of his almighty acts,
With jubilee advanced ; and, as they went,
Shaded with branching palm, each order bright
Sung triumph, and him sung victorious King,
Son, Heir, and Lord, to him dominion given,
Worthiest to reign : He, celebrated, rode
Triumphant through mid heaven, into the courts
And temple of his mighty Father throned
On high ; who into glory him received,
Where now he sits at the right hand of bliss.
‘Thus measuring things in heaven by things on
earth,
At thy request, and that thou mayest beware
By what is past, to thee I have revealed
What might have else to human race been hid ;
The discord which beſel, and war in heaven
Among the angelic powers, and the deep fall
Of those too high aspiring, who rebelled
With Satan ; he who envies now thy state,
Who now is plotting how he may seduce
Thee also from obedience, that with him
Bereaved of happiness, thou may est partake
His punishment, eternal misery :
Which would be all his solace and revenge,
As a despite done against the Most High,
Thee once to gain companion of his woe.
But listen not to his temptations, warn
The weaker; let it profit thee to have heard,
By terrible example, the reward
Of disobedience; firm they might have stood,
Yet fell; remember, and fear to transgress.’
5.
Book VII.
* O
PARADISE LOST.
BOOK WII.
THE ARG UMENT.
Raphael, at the request of Adam, relates how and wherefore this world was first created; that God, after the expelling of Satan and
his angels out of heaven, declared his pleasure to create another world, and other creatures to dwell therein; sends his Son with
glory, and attendance of angels, to perform the work of creation in six days; the angels celebrate with hymns the performance
thereof, and his reascension into heaven.
Descend from heaven, Urania, by that name
If rightly thou art called, whose voice divine
Following, above the Olympian hill I soar,
. Above the flight of Pegaséan wing.
The meaning, not the name, I call: for thou
Nor of the muses nine, nor on the top
Of old Olympus dwellest; but, heavenly-born,
Before the hills appeared, or fountain flowed,
Thou with Eternal Wisdom didst converse,
Wisdom thy sister, and with her didst play
In presence of the Almighty Father, pleased
With thy celestial song. Up led by thee,
Into the heaven of heavens I have presumed,
An earthly guest, and drawn empyreal air,
Thy tempering: with like safety guided down,
Return me to my native element:
Lest from this flying steed unreined, (as once
Bellerophon, though from a lower clime.)
Dismounted, on the Aleian field I fall,
Erroneous there to wander, and forlorn.
Half yet remains unsung, but narrower bound
Within the visible diurnal sphere:
Standing on earth, not rapt above the pole,
More safe I sing with mortal voice, unchanged
To hoarse or mute, though fallen on evil days,
On evil days though fallen, and evil tongues;
In darkness, and with dangers compassed round,
And solitude; yet not alone, while thou
Visitest my slumbers mightly, or when morn
Purples the east: still govern thou my song,
Urania, and fit audience find, though few.
But drive far off the barbarous dissonance
Of Bacchus and his revellers, the race
Of that vile rout that tore the Thracian bard
In Rhodope, where woods and rocks had ears
To rapture, till the savage clamour drowned
Both harp and voice; nor could the muse defend
Her son. So fail not thou, who thee implores:
For thou art heavenly, she an empty dream.
Say, goddess, what ensued when Raphaël,
The affable archangel, had forewarned
Adam, by dire example, to beware
Apostasy, by what befell in heaven
To those apostates; lest the like befall
In Paradise to Adam or his race,
Charged not to touch the interdicted tree,
If they transgress, and slight that sole command,
So easily obeyed amid the choice
Of all tastes else to please their appetite,
Though wandering. He, with his consorted Eve,
The story heard attentive, and was filled
With admiration and deep muse, to hear
Of things so high and strange; things, to their thought
So unimaginable, as hate in heaven,
And war so near the peace of God in bliss,
With such confusion : but the evil, soon
Driven back, redounded as a flood on those
From whom it sprung; impossible to mix
With blessedness. Whence Adam soon repealed
The doubts that in his heart arose: and now
Led on, yet sinless, with desire to know
What nearer might concern him, how this world
Of heaven and earth conspicuous first began;
When, and whereof created; for what cause;
What within Eden, or without, was done
Before his memory: as one whose drought
Yet scarce allayed still eyes the current stream,
Whose liquid murmur heard new thirst excites,
Proceeded thus to ask his heavenly guest:
“Great things and full of wonder in our ears,
Far differing from this world, thou hast revealed,
Divine interpreter' by favour sent
Down from the empyréan, to forewarn
Us timely of what might else have been our loss,
Unknown, which human knowledge could not reach ;
For which to the infinitely Good we owe
Immortal thanks, and his admonishment
Receive with solemn purpose to observe
Immutably his sovran will, the end
Of what we are. But since thou hast vouchsafed
Gently, for our instruction, to impart
Things above earthly thought, which yet concerned
Our knowing, as to highest Wisdom seemed,
-Deign to descend now lower, and relate
What may no less perhaps avail us known,
How first began this heaven which we behold
Distant so high, with moving fires adorned
Innumerable; and this which yields or fills
All space, the ambient air wide interfused
Embracing round this florid earth: what cause
Moved the Creator, in his holy rest
Through all eternity, so late to build
In Chaos; and the work begun, how soon
Absolved; if unforbid thou mayst unfold
What we, not to explore the secrets ask
Of his eternal empire, but the more
Book VII.
PARADISE LOST. 53
To magnify his works, the more we know.
And the great light of day yet wants to run
Much of his race though steep ; suspense in heaven,
Held by thy voice, thy potent voice, he hears,
And longer will delay to hear thee tell
His generation, and the rising birth
Of nature from the unapparent deep :
Or if the star of evening and the moon
Haste to thy audience, night with her will bring
Silence; and sleep, listening to thee will watch;
Or we can bid his absence, till thy song
End, and dismiss thee ere the morning shine.”
Thus Adam his illustrious guest besought;
And thus the godlike angel answered mild :
‘This also thy request, with caution asked,
Obtain: though to recount almighty works
What words or tongue of seraph can suffice,
Or heart of man suffice to comprehend ?
Yet what thou canst attain, which best may serve
To glorify the Maker, and infer
Thee also happier, shall not be withheld
Thy hearing ; such commission from above
I have received, to answer thy desire
Of knowledge within bounds; beyond, abstain
To ask; nor let thine own inventions hope
Things not revealed, which the invisible King,
Only Omniscient, hath suppressed in night,
To none communicable in earth or heaven:
Enough is left besides to search and know ;
But knowledge is as food, and needs no less
Her temperance over appetite, to know
In measure what the mind may well contain :
Oppresses else with surfeit, and soon turns
Wisdom to folly, as nourishment to wind.
‘Know then, that, after Lucifer from heaven
(So call him, brighter once amidst the host
Of angels, than that star the stars among.)
Fell with his flaming legions through the deep
Into his place, and the great Son returned
Victorious with his saints, the Omnipotent
Eternal Father from his throne beheld
Their multitude, and to his Son thus spake :
“At least our envious foe hath failed, who thought
All like himself rebellious, by whose aid
This inaccessible high strength, the seat
Of Deity supreme, us dispossessed,
He trusted to have seized, and into fraud
Drew many, whom their place knows here no more :
Yet far the greater part have kept, I see,
Their station; heaven, yet populous, retains
Number sufficient to possess her realms
Though wide, and this high temple to frequent
With ministeries due, and solemn rites:
But, lest his heart exalt him in the harm
Already done, to have dispeopled heaven,
My damage fondly deemed, I can repair
That detriment, if such it be to lose
Self-lost; and in a moment will create
Another world, out of one man a race
Of men innumerable, there to dwell,
Not here; till by degrees of merit raised,
They open to themselves at length the way
Up hither, under long obedience tried ;
And earth be changed to heaven, and heaven to earth,
One kingdom, joy and union without end.
Meanwhile inhabit lax, ye powers of heaven ;
And thou, my Word, begotten Son, by thee
This I perform ; speak thou, and be it done !
My overshadowing Spirit and might with thee
I send along ; ride forth, and bid the deep
Within appointed bounds be heaven and earth;
Boundless the deep, because I am who fill
Infinitude; nor vacuous the space,
Though I, uncircumscribed myself, retire,
And put not forth my goodness, which is free
To act or not ; necessity and chance
pproach not me, and what I will is fate.”
“So spake the Almighty, and to what he spake
His Word, the filial Godhead, gave effect.
Immediate are the acts of God, more swift
Than time or motion, but to human ears
Cannot without procéss of speech be told,
So told as earthly notion can receive.
Great triumph and rejoicing was in Theaven,
When such was heard declared the Almighty's will,
Glory they sung to the Most High, good will
To future men, and in their dwellings peace:
Glory to him, whose just avenging ire
Had driven out the ungodly from his sight
And the habitations of the just; to him
Glory and praise, whose wisdom had ordained
Good out of evil to create; instead
Of spirits malign, a better race to bring
Into their vacant room, and thence diffuse
His good to worlds and ages infinite.
“So sang the hierarchies: meanwhile the Son
On his great expedition now appeared,
Girt with omnipotence, with radiance crowned
Of majesty divine: sapience and love
Immense, and all his Father in him shone.
About his chariot numberless were poured
Cherub and seraph, potentates and thrones,
And virtues, winged spirits, and chariots winged
From the armoury of God; where stand of old
Myriads, between two brazen mountains lodged
Against a solemn day, harnessed at hand,
Celestial equipage; and now came forth
Spontaneous, for within them spirit lived,
Attendant on their Lord : heaven opened wide
Her ever-during gates, harmonious sound,
On golden hinges moving, to let forth
The King of Glory, in his powerful Word
And Spirit, coming to create new worlds.
On heavenly ground they stood; and from the shore
They viewed the vast immeasurable abyss
Outrageous as a sea, dark, wasteful, wild,
Up from the bottom turned by furious winds
And surging waves, as mountains, to assault
Heaven's highth, and with the center mix the pole.
“Silence, ye troubled waves, and thou, deep, peace,’
Said then the omnific word ; “ your discord end "
Nor staid ; but, on the wings of cherubim
54 IPARADISE LOST.
BOOK WII.
Uplifted, in paternal glory rode
Far into Chaos, and the world unborn ;
For Chaos heard his voice: him all his train
Followed in bright procession, to behold
Creation, and the wonders of his might.
Then staid the ſervid wheels, and in his hand
He took the golden compasses, prepared
In God's eternal store, to circumscribe
This universe, and all created things:
One foot he centered, and the other turned
Round through the vast profundity obscure ;
And said, “Thus far extend, thus far thy bounds,
This be thy just circumference, O world !”
Thus God the heaven created, thus the earth,
Matter unformed and void : darkness profound
Covered the abyss ; but on the watry calm
His brooding wings the Spirit of God outspread,
And vital virtue infused, and vital warmth,
Throughout the fluid mass ; but downward purged
The black, tartareous, cold, inſernal dregs,
Adverse to life : then founded, then conglobed
Like things to like ; the rest to several place
Disparted, and between spun out the air :
And earth, self-balanced, on her center hung.
“Let there be light,” said God; and forth with light
Ethereal, first of things, quintessence pure,
Sprung from the deep ; and from her native cast
To journey through the aery gloom began,
Sphered in a radiant cloud, for yet the sun
Was not;\she in a cloudy tabernacle
Sojourned the while,) God saw the light was good ;
And light from darkness by the hemisphere
Divided : light the day, and darkness might,
He named. Thus was the first day even and morn:
Nor past uncelebrated, nor unsung
By the celestial quires, when orient light
Exhaling first ſrom darkness they behcld ;
Birth-day of heaven and carth; with joy and shout
The hollow universal orb they filled,
And touched their golden harps, and hymning praised
God and his works; Creator him they sung,
Both when first evening was, and when first morn.
‘Again, God said, “Let there be firmament
Amid the waters, and let it divide
The waters from the waters;” and God made
The firmament, expanse of liquid pure,
Transparent, elemental air, diffused
In circuit to the uttermost convex
Of this great round; partition firm and sure,
The waters underneath from those above
Dividing : for as earth, so he the world
Built on circumfluous waters calm, in wide
Crystalline ocean, and the loud misrule
Of Chaos far removed; lest fierce extremes
Contiguous might distemper the whole frame :
And heaven he named the firmament: so even
And morning chorus sung the second day.
‘The earth was formed, but in the womb as yet
Of waters, embryon immature involved,
Appeared not : over all the face of earth
Main ocean flowed, not idle; but, with warm
Prolific humour softening all her globe,
Fermented the great mother to conceive,
Satiate with genial moisture ; when God said,
“Be gathered now, ye waters under heaven,
Into one place, and let dry land appear.”
Immediately the mountains huge appear
Emergent, and their broad bare backs upheave
Into the clouds; their tops ascend the sky:
So high as heaved the tumid hills, so low
Down sunk a hollow bottom broad and deep,
Capacious bed of waters: thither they
Hasted with glad precipitance, uprolled,
As drops on dust conglobing from the dry :
Part rise in crystal wall, or ridge direct,
For haste; such flight the great command impressed
On the swift floods; as armies at the call
Of trumpets (for of armies thou hast heard)
Troop to their standard ; so the watry throng,
Wave rolling aſter wave, where way they found,
If steep, with torrent rapture, if through plain,
Soft ebbing : nor withstood them rock or hill;
But they, or under ground, or circuit wide
With serpent error wandering, found their way,
And on the washy ooze deep channels wore ;
Easy, ere God had bid the ground be dry,
All but within those banks, where rivers now
Stream, and perpetual draw their humid train.
The dry land, earth; and the great receptacle
Of congregated waters, he called seas:
And saw that it was good; and said, “Let the earth
Put forth the verdant grass, herb yielding sced,
And fruit-tree yielding fruit after her kind,
Whose seed is in herself upon the earth.”
He scarce had said, when the bare earth, till then
Desert and bare, unsightly, unadorned,
Brought forth the tender grass, whose verdure clad
Her universal face with pleasant green ;
Then herbs of every leaf, that sudden flowered
Opening their various colours, and made gay
Her bosom, smelling sweet: and, these scarce blown,
Forth flourished thick the clustering vine, forth crept
The swelling gourd, up stood the corny reed
Embattled in her field, and the humble shrub,
And bush with frizzled hair implicit: last
Rose, as in dance, the stately trees, and spread
Their branches, hung with copious fruit, or gemmed
Their blossoms: with high woods the fields were
crowned,
With tufts the valleys, and each fountain-side;
With borders long the rivers: that earth now
Seemed like to heaven, a seat where gods might dwell,
Or wander with delight, and love to haunt
Her sacred shades: though God had yet not rained
Upon the earth, and man to till the ground
None was; but from the earth a dewy mist
Went up, and watered all the ground, and each
Plant of the field; which, ere it was in the earth,
God made, and every herb, before it grew
On the green stem : God saw that it was good :
So even and morn recorded the third day.
‘Again the Almighty spake, “Let there be lights
Book VII.
PARADISE LOST.
High in the expanse of heaven, to divide
The day from night; and let them be for signs,
For seasons, and for days, and circling years;
And let them be for lights, as I ordain
Their office in the firmament of heaven,
To give light on the earth ;” and it was so.
And God made two great lights, great for their use
To man, the greater to have rule by day,
The less by night, altern ; and made the stars,
And set them in the firmament of heaven
To illuminate the earth, and rule the day
In their vicissitude, and rule the night,
And light from darkness to divide. God saw,
Surveying his great work, that it was good :
For of celestial bodies first the sun
A mighty sphere he framed, unlightsome first,
Though of ethereal mould : then formed the moon
Globose, and every magnitude of stars,
And sowed with stars the heaven, thick as a field :
Of light by far the greater part he took,
Transplanted from her cloudy shrine, and placed
In the sun's orb, made porous to receive
And drink the liquid light; firm to retain
Her gathered beams, great palace now of light.
Hither, as to their fountain, other stars
Repairing, in their golden urns draw light,
And hence the morning planet gilds her horns;
By tincture or reflection they augment
Their small peculiar, though ſrom human sight
So far remote, with diminution seen.
First in his east the glorious lamp was seen,
Regent of day, and all the horizon round
Invested with bright rays, jocund to run
His longitude through heaven's high road; the gray
Dawn, and the Pleiades, before him danced,
Shedding sweet influence : less bright the moon,
But opposite in levelled west was set,
His mirror, with full face borrowing her light
From him; for other light she needed none
In that aspéct, and still that distance keeps
Till night; then in the east her turn she shines,
Revolved on heaven's great axle, and her reign
With thousand lesser lights dividual holds,
With thousand thousand stars, that then appeared
Spangling the hemisphere : then first adorned
With their bright luminaries that set and rose,
Glad evening and glad morn crowned the fourth day.
‘And God said, “Let the waters generate
Reptile with spawn abundant, living soul :
And let fowl fly above the earth, with wings
Displayed on the open firmament of heaven.”
And God created the great whales, and each
Soul living, each that crept, which plenteously
The waters generated by their kinds;
And every bird of wing after his kind;
And saw that it was good, and blessed them, saying,
“Be fruitful, multiply, and in the seas,
And lakes, and running streams, the waters fill :
And let the fowl be multiplied on the earth.”
Forthwith the sounds and seas, each creek and bay,
With fry innumerable swarm, and shoals
Of fish that with their ſins, and shining scales,
Glide under the green wave, in sculls that oſt
Bank the mid sea : part single, or with mate,
Graze the sea-weed their pasture, and through groves
Of coral stray; or sporting with quick glance,
Show to the sun their waved coats dropt with gold;
Or, in their pearly shells at ease, attend
Moist nutriment; or under rocks their food
In jointed armour watch : on smooth the seal
And bended dolphins play: part huge of bulk,
Wallowing unwieldy, enormous in their gait,
Tempest the ocean : there leviathan,
Hugest of living creatures, on the deep
Stretched like a promontory, sleeps or swims,
And seems a moving land; and at his gills
Draws in, and at his trunk spouts out, a sea.
Meanwhile the tepid caves, and fems, and shores,
Their brood as numerous hatch, from the egg that
SOOIN
Bursting with kindly rapture forth disclosed
Their callow young ; but feathered soon and fledge
They summed their pens; and, soaring the air sub-
lime,
With clang despised the ground, under a cloud
In prospect; there the eagle and the stork
On cliffs and cedar-tops their eyries build :
Part loosely wing the region, part more wise
In common, ranged in figure, wedge their way,
Intelligent of seasons, and set forth
Their aery caravan, high over seas
Flying, and over lands, with mutual wing
Easing their flight; so steers the prudent crane
Her annual voyage, borne on winds; the air
Floats as they pass, fanned with unnumbered plumes:
From branch to branch the smaller birds with songs
Solaced the woods, and spread their painted wings
Till even; nor them the solemn nightingale
Ceased warbling, but all night tuned her soft lays:
Others, on silver lakes and rivers, bathed
Their downy breast; the swan with arched neck,
Between her white wings mantling proudly, rows
Her state with oary feet; yet oft they quit
The dank, and, rising on stiff pennons, tower
The mid aereal sky: others on ground
Walked firm ; the crested cock whose clarion sounds
The silent hours, and the other whose gay train
Adorns him, coloured with the florid hue
Of rainbows and starry eyes. The waters thus
With fish replenished, and the air with fowl,
Evening and morn solemnized the fifth day.
“The sixth, and of creation last, arose
With evening harps and matin; when God said,
“Let the earth bring forth soul living in her kind,
Cattle, and creeping things, and beast of the earth,
Each in their kind.” The earth obeyed, and straight
Opening her fertile womb, teemed at a birth
Innumerous living creatures, perfect forms,
Limbed and full grown : out of the ground up rose,
As from his lair, the wild beast, where he wons
In forest wild, in thicket, brake, or den ;
Among the trees in pairs they rose, they walked:
56 PARADISE LOST.
Book VII
The cattle in the fields and meadows green:
Those rare and solitary, these in flocks
Pasturing at once, and in broad herds upsprung.
The grassy clods now calved; now half appeared
The tawny lion, pawing to get free.
His hinder parts, then springs, as broke from bonds,
And rampant shakes his brinded mane; the ounce,
The libbard, and the tiger, as the mole
Rising, the crumbled earth above them threw
In hillocks: the swift stag from under ground
Bore up his branching head : scarce from his mould
Behemoth, biggest born of earth, upheaved
His vastness: fleeced the flocks and bleating rose,
As plants: ambiguous between sea and land
The river-horse, and scaly crocodile.
At once came forth whatever creeps the ground,
Insect or worm : those waved their limber fans
For wings, and smallest lineaments exact
In all the liveries decked of summer's pride,
With spots of gold and purple, azure and green :
These as a line their long dimension drew,
Streaking the ground with sinuous trace; not all
Minims of nature; some of serpent-kind,
Wondrous in length and corpulence, involved
Their snaky folds, and added wings. First crept
The parsimonious emmet, provident
Of future; in small room large heart enclosed ;
Pattern of just equality perhaps
Hereafter, joined in her popular tribes
Of commonalty: swarming next appeared
The female bee, that feeds her husband drone
Deliciously, and builds her waxen cells
With honey stored : the rest are numberless,
And thou their natures knowest, and gavest them names,
Needless to thee repeated; nor unknown
The serpent, subtlest beast of all the field,
Of huge extent sometimes, with brazen eyes
And hairy mane terrific, though to thee
Not noxious, but obedient at thy call.
‘Now heaven in her glory shone, and rolled
Her motions, as the great first Mover's hand
First wheeled their course: earth in her rich attire
Consummate lovely smiled; air, water, earth,
By fowl, fish, beast, was flown, was swum, was walked,
Frequent; and of the sixth day yet remained:
There wanted yet the master-work, the end
Of all yet done; a creature, who, not prone
And brute as other creatures, but endued
With sanctity of reason, might erect
His stature, and upright with front serene
Govern the rest, self-knowing ; and from thence
Magnanimous to correspond with heaven,
But grateful to acknowledge whence his good
Descends; thither with heart, and voice, and eyes,
Directed in devotion, to adore -
And worship God Supreme, who made him chief
Of all his works: therefore the Omnipotent
Eternal Father (for where is not he
Present?) thus to his Son audibly spake :
“Let us make now man in our image, man
In our similitude, and let them rule
Over the fish and fowl of sea and air,
Beast of the field, and over all the earth,
And every creeping thing that creeps the ground.”
This said, he formed thee, Adam, thee, O man,
Dust of the ground, and in thy nostrils breathed
The breath of life; in his own image he
Created thee, in the image of God
Express; and thou becamest a living soul.
Male he created thee; but thy consort
Female, for race; then blessed mankind, and said,
“Be fruitful, multiply, and fill the earth,
Subdue it, and throughout dominion hold
Over fish of the sea, and fowl of the air,
And every living thing that moves on the earth.”
Wherever thus created, for no place
Is yet distinct by name, thence, as thou knowest,
He brought thee into this delicious grove,
This garden, planted with the trees of God,
Delectable both to behold and taste;
And freely all their pleasant fruit for food
Gave thee: all sorts are here that all the earth yields,
Variety without end; but of the tree,
Which, tasted, works knowledge of good and evil,
Thou mayest not; in the day thou eatest, thou diest:
Death is the penalty imposed ; beware,
And govern well thy appetite; lest sin
Surprise thee, and ber black attendant death.”
* Here finished he, and all that he had made
Viewed, and behold all was entirely good ;
So even and morn accomplished the sixth day:
Yet not till the Creator, from his work -
Desisting, though unwearied, up returned,
Up to the heaven of heavens, his high abode;
Thence to behold this new-created world,
The addition of his empire, how it showed
In prospect from his throne, how good, how fair,
Answering his great idea. Up he rode
Followed with acclamation, and the sound
Symphonious of ten thousand harps, that tuned
Angelic harmonies: the earth, the air
Resounded, (thou rememberest, for thou heardest,)
The heavens and all the constellations rung,
The planets in their station listening stood,
While the bright pomp ascended jubilant.
“Open, ye everlasting gates 1’’ they sung,
“Open, ye heavens ! your living doors; let in
The great Creator from his work returned
Magnificent, his six days’ work, a world;
Open, and henceforth oft; for God will deign
To visit oft the dwellings of just men,
Delighted; and with frequent intercourse
Thither will send his winged messengers
On errands of supernal grace.” So sung
The glorious train ascending: he through heaven,
That opened wide her blazing portals, led
To God’s eternal house direct the way;
A broad and ample road, whose dust is gold,
And pavement stars, as stars to thee appear
Seen in the galaxy, that milky way
Which nightly, as a circling zone, thou seest
Powdered with stars. And now on earth the seventh
Book VII.
57
PARADISE LOST.
Evening arose in Eden, for the sun
Was set, and twilight from the east came on,
Forerunning night; when at the holy mount
Of heaven's high-seated top, the imperial throne
Of Godhead fixed for ever firm and sure,
The Filial Power arrived, and sat him down
With his great Father : for he also went
Invisible, yet staid, (such privilege
Hath Omnipresence,) and the work ordained,
Author and End of all things; and, from work
Now resting, blessed and hallowed the seventh day,
As resting on that day from all his work.
But not in silence holy kept : the harp
Had work and rested not; the solemn pipe,
And dulcimer, all organs of sweet stop,
All sounds on fret by string or golden wire,
Tempered soft tunings, intermixed with voice
Choral or unison: of incense clouds,
Fuming from golden censers, hid the mount.
Creation and the six days’ acts they sung :
“Great are thy works, Jehovah' infinite
Thy power! what thought can measure thee, or tongue
Relate thee P Greater now in thy return
Than from the giant angels: thee that day
Thy thunders magnified; but to create
Is greater than created to destroy.
Who can impair thee, Mighty King, or bound
Thy empire P easily the proud attempt
Of spirits apostate, and their counsels vain,
Thou hast repelled ; while impiously they thought
Thee to diminish, and from thee withdraw
The number of thy worshippers.( Who seeks
To lessen thee, against his purpose serves
To manifest the more thy might: his evil
Thou usest, and from thence createst more gºl)
Witness this new-made world, another heaven
From heaven-gate not far, founded in view
On the clear hyaline, the glassy sea;
Of amplitude almost immense, with stars
Numerous, and every star perhaps a world
Of destined habitation; but thou knowest
Their seasons: among these the seat of men,
Earth with her nether ocean circumfused,
Their pleasant dwelling-place.
And sons of men, whom God hath thus advanced !
Created in his image there to dwell
And worship him; and in reward to rule
Over his works, on earth, in sea, or air,
And multiply a race of worshippers
Holy and just : thrice happy, if they know
Their happiness, and persevere upright!”
“So sung they, and the empyréan rung
With halleluiahs: thus was the sabbath kept.—
And thy request think now fulfilled, that asked
How first this world and face of things began,
And what before thy memory was done
From the beginning; that posterity,
Informed by thee, might know : if else thou seekes
Aught not surpassing human measure, say.” . . . /
.*
.* S.. "
Q. - , , º, .
.* . . " &’
<- **
3 *X-
BOOK VIII.
THE ARG UMENT.
*/º
Thrice happy men,
J
Adam inquires concerning celestial motions; is doubtfully answered, and exhorted to search rather things more worthy of know-
ledge ; Adam assents; and, still, desirous to detain Raphael, relates to him what he remembered since his own creation; his
placing in Paradise; his talk with God concerning solitude and fit Society; his first meeting and nuptials with Eve: his discourse
with the angel thereupon ; who, after admonitions repeated, departs. *
THE angel ended, and in Adam's ear
So charming left his voice, that he a while
Thought him still speaking, still stood fixed to hear;
Then, as new-waked, thus gratefully replied:
‘What thanks sufficient, or what recompence
Equal, have I to render thee, divine
Historian, who thus largely hastallayed
The thirst I had of knowledge, and vouchsaſed
This friendly condescension to relate
Things else by me unsearchable; now heard
With wonder, but delight, and as is due,
With glory attributed to the high
Creator? Something yet of doubt remains,
Which only thy solution can resolve.
When I behold this goodly frame, this world,
Of heaven and earth consisting: and compute
Their magnitudes; this earth a spot, a grain,
An atom, with the firmament compared
And all her numbered stars, that seem to roll
Spaces incomprehensible, (for such
Their distance argues, and their swift return
Diurnal,) merely to officiate light
Round this opacous earth, this punctual spot,
One day and night; in all their vast survey
Useless besides; reasoning I oft admire,
How nature wise and frugal could commit
Such disproportions, with superfluous hand
So many nobler bodies to create,
Greater so manifold, to this one use,
For aught appears, and on their orbs impose
58 PARADISE LOST, *
Book VIII.
Such restless revolution day by day
Repeated; while the sedentary earth,
That better might with far less compass move,
Served by more noble than herself, attains
Her end without least motion, and receives,
As tribute, such a sumless journey brought
Of incorporeal speed, her warmth and light;
Speed, to describe whose swiftness number fails.”
So spake our sire, and by his countenance seemed
Entering on studious thoughts abstruse; which Eve
Perceiving, where she sat retired in sight,
With lowliness majestic from her seat,
And grace that won who saw to wish her stay,
Rose, and went forth among her fruits and flowers,
To visit how they prospered, bud and bloom,
Her nursery; they at her coming sprung,
And, touched by her fair tendance, gladlier grew.
Yet went she not, as not with such discourse
Delighted, or not capable her car
Of what was high : such pleasure she reserved,
Adam relating, the sole auditress:
Her husband the relater she preferred
Before the angel, and of him to ask
Chose rather; he, she knew, would intermix
Grateful digressions, and solve high dispute
With conjugal caresses: from his lip
Not words alone pleased her. O ! when meet now
Such pairs in love and mutual honour joined P.
With goddess-like demeanour forth she went,
Not unattended; for on her, as queen,
A pomp of winning graces waited still,
And from about her shot darts of desire
Into all eyes, to wish her still in sight.
And Raphael now, to Adam's doubt proposed,
Benevolent and facile thus replied:
“To ask or search, I blame thee not; for heaven
Is as the book of God before thee set,
Wherein to read his wondrous works, and learn
His seasons, hours, or days, or months, or years:
This to attain, whether heaven move or earth,
Imports not, if thou reckon right; the rest
From man or angel the great Architect
Did wisely to conceal, and not divulge
His secrets to be scanned by them who ought
Rather admire; or, if they list to try
Conjecture, he his fabric of the heavens
Hath left to their disputes, perhaps to move
His laughter at their quaint opinions wide
Hercafter; when they come to model heaven
And calculate the stars, how they will wield
The mighty frame: how build, unbuild, contrive
To save appearances; how gird the sphere
With centric and eccentric scribbled o'er,
Cycle and epicycle, orb in orb :
Already by thy reasoning this I guess,
Who art to lead thy offspring, and supposest
That bodies bright and greater should not serve
The less not bright, nor heaven such journeys run,
Earth sitting still, when she alone receives
The benefit. Consider first, that great
Or bright infers not excellence: the earth
*
Though, in comparison of heaven, so small,
Nor glistering, may of solid good contain
More plenty than the sun that barren shines:
Whose virtue on itself works no effect,
But in the fruitful earth ; there first received,
His beams, unactive else, their vigour find.
Yet not to earth are those bright luminarics
Officious ; but to thee earth's habitant.
And for the heaven's wide circuit, iet it speak
The Maker's high magnificence, who built
So spacious, and his line stretched out so far,
That man may know he dwells not in his own;
An edifice too large for him to fill,
Lodged in a small partition, and the rest
Ordained for uses to his Lord best known.
The swiftness of those circles attribute,
Though numberless, to his omnipotence,
That to corporeal substances could add
Speed almost spiritual : me thou thinkest not slow,
Who since the morning-hour set out from heaven
Where God resides, and ere mid-day arrived
In Eden; distance inexpressible
By numbers that have name. But this I urge,
Admitting motion in the heavens, to show
Invalid that which thee to doubt it moved;
Not that I so affirm, though so it seem
To thee who hast thy dwelling here on earth.
God, to remove his ways from human sense,
Placed heaven from earth so far, that earthly sight,
If it presume, might err in things too high,
And no advantage gain. What if the sun
Be center to the world ; and other stars,
By his attractive virtue and their own
Incited, dance about him various rounds 2
Their wandering course now high, now low, then hid
Progressive, retrograde, or standing still,
In six thou seest; and what if seventh to these
The planet earth, so steadfast though she seem,
Insensibly three different motions move 2
Which else to several spheres thou must ascribe,
Moved contrary with thwart obliquities;
Or save the sun his labour, and that swift
Nocturnal and diurnal rhomb supposed,
Invisible else above all stars, the wheel
Of day and night; which needs not thy belief,
If earth, industrious of herself, fetch day .
Travelling east, and with her part averse
From the sun's beam meet night, her other part
Still huminous by his ray. What if that light,
Sent from her through the wide transpicuous air,
To the terrestrial moon be as a star,
Enlightening her by day as she by night
This carth P reciprocal if land be there,
Fields and inhabitants? her spots thou seest
As clouds, and clouds may rain, and rain produce
Fruits in her softened soil, for some to eat
Allotted there; and other suns perhaps,
With their attendant moons, thou wilt descry,
Communicating male and female light;
Which two great sexes animate the world,
Stored in each orb perhaps with some that live:
Book VIII.
PARADISE LOST. 59
For such vast room in nature unpossessed
By living soul, desert, and desolate,
Only to shine, yet scarce to contribute
Each orb a glimpse of light conveyed so far
Down to this habitable, which returns
Light back to them, is obvious to dispute.
But whether thus these things, or whether not;
Whether the sun, predominant in heaven,
Rise on the earth; or earth rise on the sun;
He from the east his flaming road begin ;
Or she from west her silent course advance,
With inoffensive pace that spinning sleeps
On her soft axle, while she paces even,
And bears thee soft with the smooth air along ;
Solicit not thy thoughts with matters hid ;
Leave them to God above; him serve and fear.
Of other creatures, as him pleases best,
Wherever placed, let him dispose; joy thou
In what he gives to thee, this Paradise
And thy fair Eve; heaven is for thee too high
To know what passes there ; be lowly wise:
Think only what concerns thee, and thy being;
Dream not of other worlds, what creatures there
Live, in what state, condition, or degree :
Contented that thus far hath been revealed
Not of earth only, but of highest heavem.”
To whom thus Adam, cleared of doubt, replied:
‘How fully hast thou satisfied me, pure
Intelligence of heaven, angel sereme !
And freed from intricacies, taught to live
The easiest way; nor with perplexing thoughts
To interrupt the sweet of life, from which
God hath bid dwell far off all anxious cares,
And not molest us; unless we ourselves
Seek them with wandering thoughts, and notions vain.
But apt the mind or fancy is to rove
Unchecked, and of her roving is no end;
Till warned, or by experience taught, she learn,
That not to know at large of things remote
From use, obscure and subtle, but to know
That which before us lies in daily life,
Is the prime wisdom : what is more, is fume,
Or emptiness, or fond impertinence:
And renders us, in things that most concern,
Unpractised, unprepared, and still to seek.
Therefore from this high pitch let us descend
A lower flight, and speak of things at hand
Useful; whence, haply, mention may arise
Of something not unseasonable to ask,
By sufferance, and thy wonted favour, deigned.
Thee I have heard relating what was done
Ere my remembrance: now, hear me relate
My story, which perhaps thou hast not heard;
And day is not yet spent ; till then thou seest
How subtly to detain thee I devise:
Inviting thee to hear while I relate ;
Fond, were it not in hope of thy reply:
For, while I sit with thee, I seem in heaven;
And sweeter thy discourse is to my ear
Than fruits of palm-tree pleasantest to thirst
And hunger both, from labour at the hour
Of sweet repast; they satiate, and soon fill,
Though pleasant; but thy words, with grace divine
Imbued, bring to their sweetness no satiety.’
To whom thus Raphael answered heavenly meek:
“Nor are thy lips ungraceful, sire of men,
Nor tongue ineloquent; for God on thee
Abundantly his gifts hath also poured
Inward and outward both, his image fair :
Speaking, or mute, all comeliness and grace
Attends thee; and each word, each motion, forms:
Nor less think we in heaven of thee on earth
Than of our fellow-servant, and inquire
Gladly into the ways of God with man :
For God, we see, hath honoured thee, and set
On man his equal love: say therefore on ;
For I that day was absent, as beſel,
Bound on a voyage àmcouth and obscure,
Far on excursion toward the gates of hell;
Squared in full legion (such command we had)
To see that none thence issued forth a spy,
Or cnemy, while God was in his work;
Lest he, incensed at such eruption bold,
Destruction with creation might have mixed.
Not that they durst without his leave attempt:
But us he sends upon his high behests
I'or state, as Sovran King; and to inure
Our prompt obedience. Fast we found, fast shut,
The dismal gates, and barricadoed strong ;
But long ere our approaching heard within
Noise, other than the sound of dance or song,
Torment, and loud lament, and furious rage.
Glad we returned up to the coasts of light
Ere sabbath-evening: so we had in charge.
But thy relation now ; for I attend,
Pleased with thy words no less than thou with mine.”
So spake the godlike power, and thus our sire:
‘For man to tell how human life began
Is hard ; for who himself beginning knew *
Desire with thee still longer to converse
Induced me. As new waked from soundest sleep,
Soft on the flowery herb I found me laid,
In balmy sweat; which with his beams the sun
Soon dried, and on the reeking moisture fed.
Straight toward heaven my wondering eyes I turned,
And gazed a while the ample sky; till raised
By quick instinctive motion, up I sprung,
As thitherward endeavouring, and upright
Stood on my feet: about me round I saw
Hill, dale, and shady woods, and sunny plains,
And liquid lapse of murmuring streams; by these
Creatures that lived and moved, and walked or flew ;
Birds on the branches warbling; all things smiled;
With fragrance and with joy my heart o'erflowed.
Myself I then perused, and limb by limb
Surveyed, and sometimes went, and sometimes ran
With supple joints, as lively vigour led :
But who I was, or where, or from what cause,
Knew not; to speak I tried, and forth with spake ;
My tongue obeyed, and readily could name
Whate’er I saw. “Thou sun,” said I, “fair light,
And thou enlightened earth, so fresh and gay,
60 PARADISE LOST.
Book VIII
*
Ye hills, and dales, ye rivers, woods, and plains,
And ye that live and move, fair creatures, tell,
Tcll, if ye saw, how I came thus, how here 2
Not of myself; by some great Maker then,
In goodness and in power pre-eminent:
Tell me, how I may know him, how adore,
Prom whom I have that thus I move and live,
And feel that I am happier than I know.”
While thus I called, and strayed I knew not whither,
From where I first drew air, and first beheld
This happy light; when answer none returned,
On a green shady bank, profuse of flowers,
Pensive I sat me down: there gentle sleep
First found me, and with soft oppression seized
My drowsed sense, untroubled, though I thought
I then was passing to my former state
Insensible, and forth with to dissolve:
When suddenly stood at my head a dream,
Whose inward apparition gently moved
My fancy to believe I yet had being,
And lived : one came, methought, of shape divine,
And said, “Thy mansion wants thce, Adam ; rise,
First man, of men innumerable ordained
First father called by thee, I come thy guide
To the garden of bliss, thy seat prepared.”
So saying, by the hand he took me raised,
And over fields and waters, as in air
Smooth sliding without step, last led me up
A woody mountain; whose high top was plain,
A circuit wide, enclosed with goodliest trees
Planted with walks and bowers; that what I saw
Of earth before scarce pleasant seemed. Each tree,
Loaden with fairest fruit that hung to the eye
Tempting, stirred in me sudden appetite
To pluck and eat; whereat I waked, and found
Before mine eyes all real, as the dream
Had lively shadowed : here had new begun
My wandering, had not He, who was my guide
Up hither, from among the trees appeared,
Presence Divine. Rejoicing, but with awe,
In adoration at his feet I fell
Submiss; he reared me, and, “Whom thou soughtest
I am,”
Said mildly, “Author of all this thou seest
Above, or round about thee, or beneath.
This Paradise I give thee, count it thine
To till and keep, and of the fruit to eat :
Of every tree that in the garden grows
Eat freely with glad heart; fear here no dearth :
But of the tree whose operation brings -
Knowledge of good and ill, which I have set
The pledge of thy obedience and thy faith,
Amid the garden by the tree of life,
Remember what I warn thee, shun to taste,
And shun the bitter consequence : for know,
The day thou catest thereof, my sole command
Transgressed, inevitably thou shalt die,
From that day mortal; and this happy state
Shalt lose, expelled from hence into a world
Of woe and sorrow.” Sternly he pronounced
The rigid interdiction, which resounds
Yet dreadful in mine ear, though in my choice
Not to incur; but soon his clear aspéct
Returned, and gracious purpose thus renewed:
“Not only these fair bounds, but all the earth
To thee and to thy race I give; as lords
Possess it, and all things that therein live,
Or live in sea, or air; beast, fish, and fowl.
In sign whereof, each bird and beast behold
After their kinds; I bring them to receive
From thee their names, and pay thee fealty
With low subjection; understand the same
Of fish within their watry residence,
Not hither summoned, since they cannot change
Their element, to draw the thinner air.”
As thus he spake, each bird and beast behold
Approaching two and two; these cowering low
With blandishment; each bird stooped on his wing.
I named them, as they passed, and understood
Their nature, with such knowledge God endued
My sudden apprehension: but in these
I found not what methought I wanted still:
And to the heavenly vision thus presumed :
“O, by what name, for thou above all these,
Above mankind, or aught than mankind higher,
Surpassest far my naming ; how may I
Adore thee, Author of this universe,
And all this good to man P for whose well-being
So amply, and with hands so liberal,
Thou hast provided all things: but with me
I see not who partakes. In solitude
What happiness P who can enjoy alone,
Or, all enjoying, what contentment find P
Thus I presumptuous; and the vision bright,
As with a smile more brightened, thus replied:
“What callest thou solitude 2 Is not the earth
With various living creatures, and the air
Replenished, and all these at thy command
To come and play before thee Knowest thou not
Their language and their ways * They also know,
And reason not contemptibly : with these
Find pastime, and bear rule; thy realm is large.”
So spake the Universal Lord, and seemed
So ordering : I, with leave of speech implored,
And humble deprecation, thus replied:
“Let not my words offend thee, heavenly power.
My Maker, be propitious while I speak.
Hast thou not made me here thy substitute,
And these inferior far beneath me set 2
Among unequals what society
Can sort, what harmony, or true delight?
Which must be mutual, in proportion due
Given and received; but, in disparity
The one intense, the other still remiss
Cannot well suit with either, but soon prove
Tedious alike: of fellowship I speak
Such as I seek, fit to participate
All rational delight; wherein the brute
Cannot be human consort: they rejoice
Each with their kind, lion with lioness;
So fitly them in pairs thou hast combined:
Much less can bird with beast, or fish with fowl
Book VIII.
PARADISE LOST. 6 I
So well converse, nor with the ox the ape;
Worse then can man with beast, and least of all.”
‘Whereto the Almighty answered, not displeased :
“A nice and subtle happiness, I see,
Thou to thyself proposest, in the choice
Óf thy associates, Adam and wilt taste
No pleasure, though in pleasure, solitary.
What thinkest thou then of me, and this my state *
Scen I to thee sufficiently possessed
Of happiness, or not? who an alone
From all eternity; for none I know
Second to me or like, equal much less.
How have I then with whom to hold convérse,
Save with the creatures which I made, and those
To me inferior, infinite descents
Beneath what other creatures are to thee *
* He ceased; I lowly answered : “To attain
The highth and depth of thy eternal ways
All human thoughts come short, Supreme of things!
Thou in thyself art perfect, and in thee
Is no deficience found: not so is man,
But in degree; the cause of his desire
By conversation with his like to help,
Or solace his defects. No need that thou
Shouldst propagate, already infinite ;
And through all numbers absolute, though one :
But man by number is to manifest
His single imperfection, and beget
Like of his like, his image multiplied,
In unity defective; which requires
Collateral love, and dearest amity.
Thou in thy secrecy although alone,
Best with thyself accompanied, seekest not
Social communication; yet so pleased
Canst raise thy creature to what highth thou wilt
Of union or communion, deified :
I, by conversing, cannot these erect
From prone; nor in their ways complacence find.”
Thus I emboldened spake, and freedom used
Permissive, and acceptance found ; which gained
This answer from the gracious voice divine :
“Thus far to try thee, Adam, I was pleased ;
And find thee knowing, not of beasts alone,
Which thou hast rightly named, but of thyself;
Expressing well the spirit within thee free,
My image, not imparted to the brute :
Whose fellowship therefore unmeet for thee
Good reason was thou freely shouldst dislike;
And be so minded still: I, ere thou spakest,
Knew it not good for man to be alone;
And no such company as then thou sawest
Intended thee; for trial only brought,
To see how thou couldst judge of fit and meet:
What next I bring shall please thee, be assured,
Thy likeness, thy fit help, thy other self,
Thy wish exactly to thy heart's desire.”
“He ended, or I heard no more ; for now
My earthly by his heavenly overpowered,
Which it had long stood under, strained to the highth
In that celestial colloquy sublime,
As with an object that excels the sense
Dazzled and spent, sunk down, and sought repair
Of sleep, which instantly fell on me, called
By nature as in aid, and closed mine eyes.
Mine eyes he closed, but open left the cell
Of fancy, my internal sight; by which,
Abstráct as in a trance, methought I saw,
Though sleeping, where I lay, and saw the shape
Still glorious before whom awake I stood :
Who stooping opened my left side, and took
From thence a rib, with cordial spirits warm,
And life-blood streaming fresh : wide was the wound,
But suddenly with flesh filled up and healed:
The rib he formed and fashioned with his hands;
Under his forming hands a creature grew,
Man-like, but different sex; so lovely fair,
That what seemed fair in all the world, seemed now
Mean, or in her summed up, in her contained
And in her looks; which from that time infused
Sweetness into my heart unfelt before,
And into all things from her air inspired
The spirit of love and amorous delight.
She disappeared, and left me dark; I waked
To find her, or for ever to deplore
Her loss, and other pleasures all abjure :
When out of hope, behold her, not far off,
Such as I saw her in my dream, adorned
With all that earth or heaven could bestow
To make her amiable ; on she came,
Led by her heavenly Maker, though unseen,
And guided by his voice; nor uninformed
Of nuptial sanctity, and marriage rites:
Grace was in all her steps, heaven in her eye,
In every gesture dignity and love.
I, overjoyed, could not forbear aloud :
“This turn hath made amends; thou hast fulfilled
Thy words, Creator bounteous and benign,
Giver of all things fair! but fairest this
Of all thy gifts nor enviest. I now see
Bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh, myself
Before me : Woman is her name ; of man
Extracted : for this cause he shall forego
Father and mother, and to his wife adhere;
And they shall be one flesh, one heart, one soul.”
“She heard me thus; and though divinely brought,
Yet innocence, and virgin modesty,
Her virtue, and the conscience of her worth,
That would be wooed, and not unsought be won,
Not obvious, not obtrusive, but, retired,
The more desirable; or, to say all,
Nature herself, though pure of sinful thought,
Wrought in her so, that, seeing me, she turned :
I followed her; she what was honour knew,
And with obsequious majesty approved
My pleaded reason. To the nuptial bower
I led her blushing like the morn: all heaven,
And happy constellations, on that hour
Shed their selectest influence; the earth
Gave sign of gratulation, and each hill;
Joyous the birds; fresh gales and gentle airs
Whispered it to the woods, and from their wings
Flung rose, flung odours from the spicy shrub,
62 PARADISE LOST.
Book VIII.
Disporting, till the amorous bird of night
Sung spousal, and bid haste the evening-star
On his hill top, to light the bridal lamp.
‘Thus have I told thee all my state, and brought
My story to the sum of earthly bliss,
Which I enjoy; and must confess to find
In all things else delight indeed, but such
As, used or not, works in the mind no change,
Nor vehement desire; these delicacies
I mean of taste, sight, smell, herbs, fruits, and flowers,
Walks, and the melody of birds : but here
Far otherwise, transported I behold,
Transported touch ; here passion first I felt,
Commotion strange in all enjoyments else
Superior and unmoved; here only weak
Against the charm of beauty's powerful glance.
Or nature failed in me, and left some part
Not proof enough such object to sustain ;
Or, from my side subducting, took perhaps
More than enough ; at least on her bestowed
Too much of ornament, in outward show
Elaborate, of inward less exact.
For well I understand in the prime end
Of nature her the inferior, in the mind
And inward faculties, which most excel;
In outward also her resembling less
His image who made both, and less expressing
The character of that dominion given
O'er other creatures: yet when I approach
Her loveliness, so absolute she seems
And in herself complete, so well to know
Her own, that what she wills to do or say
Seems wisest, virtuousest, discreetest, best :
All higher knowledge in her presence ſalls
Degraded ; wisdom in discourse with her
Loses discountenanced, and like folly shows;
Authority and reason on her wait,
As one intended first, not after made
Occasionally; and, to consummate all,
Greatness of mind, and nobleness, their seat
Build in her loveliest, and create an awe
About her, as a guard angelic placed.”
To whom the angel with contracted brow :
‘Accuse not nature, she hath done her part;
Do thou but thine; and be not diffident
Of wisdom ; she deserts thee not if thou
Dismiss not her, when most thou needest her nigh,
By attributing overmuch to things
Less excellent, as thou thyself perceivest,
For, what admirest thou, what transports thee so P
An outside P fair, no doubt, and worthy well
Thy cherishing, thy honouring, and thy love;
Not thy subjection: weigh with her thyself;
Then value: ofttimes nothing profits more
Than self-esteem, grounded on just and right
Well managed; of that skill the more thou knowest,
The more she will acknowledge thee her head,
And to realities yield all her shows:
Made so adorn for thy delight the more,
So awful, that with honour thou mayest love
Thy mate, who sees when thou art scen least wise.
But if the sense of toucn, whereby mankind
Is propagated, seem such dear delight
Beyond all other; think the same vouchsafed
To cattle and cach beast; which would not be
To them made common and divulged, iſ aught
Therein enjoyed were worthy to subdue
The soul of man, or passion in him move.
What higher in her society thou findest
A tractive, human, rational, love still ;
In loving thou dost well, in passion not,
Wherein true love consists mot: love refines
The thoughts, and heart enlarges; hath his seat
In reason ; and is judicious ; is the scale
By which to heavenly love thou mayest ascend,
Not sunk in carnal pleasure; for which cause
Among the beasts no mate for thee was found.”
To whom thus, half abashed, Adam replied:
“Neither her outside formed so fair, nor aught
In procreation common to all kinds,
(Though higher of the genial bed by far,
And with mysterious reverence I deem,)
So much delights me, as those graceful acts,
Those thousand decencies that daily ſlow
Trom all her words, and actions mixed with love
And sweet compliance, which declare unſeigned
Union of mind, or in us both one soul;
Harmony to behold in wedded pair
More grateſul than harmonious sound to the ear.
Yet these subject not: I to thee disclose
What inward thence I feel, not therefore foiled,
Who meet with various objects, from the sense
Variously representing ; yet, still free,
Approve the best, and follow what I approve.
To love, thou blamest me not; for love, thou sayest,
Leads up to heaven, is both the way and guide;
Bear with me then, if lawful what I ask :
Love not the heavenly spirits, and how their love
Express they P by looks only 2 or do they mix
Irradiance, virtual or immediate touch º'
To whom the angel, with a smile that glowed
Celestial rosy red, love's proper hue,
Answered : ‘Let it suffice thee that thou knowest
Us happy, and without love no happiness.
Whatever pure thou in the body enjoyest,
(And pure thou wert created,) we enjoy
In eminence; and obstacle find none
Of membrane, joint or limb, exclusive bars;
Easier than air with air, if spirits embrace,
Total they mix, union of pure with pure
Desiring ; nor restrained conveyance need,
As flesh to mix with flesh, or soul with soul.
But I can now no more ; the parting sun
Beyond the earth's green cape and verdant isles
Hesperian sets, my signal to depart.
Be strong, live happy, and love but, first of all
Him, whom to love is to obey, and keep
His great command : take heed lest passion sway
Thy judgment to do aught which else free will
Would not admit: thine, and of all thy sons,
The weal or woe in thee is placed ; beware
I in thy persevering shall rejoice,
Book IX.
PARADISE LOST. 63
And all the blest : stand fast; to stand or fall
Free in thine own arbitrement it lies.
Perfect within, no outward aid require ;
And all temptation to transgress repel.”
So saying, he arose; whom Adam thus
Followed with henediction. “Since to part,
Go, heavenly guest, ethereal messenger,
Sent from whose sovran goodness I adore
Gentle to me and aſſable hath becn
Thy condescension, and shall be honoured ever
With grateful memory: thou to mankind
Be good and friendly still, and oſt return º'
So parted they, the angel up to heaven
From the thick shade, and Adam to his bower.
BOOK
IX.
THE ARGUMENT.
Satan having encompassed the earth, with meditated guile returns, as a mist, by night into Paradise; enters into the serpent sleep-
ing. Adam and Eve in the morning go forth to their labours, which Eve proposes to divide in several places, each labouring apart:
Adam consents not, alleging the danger, lest that enemy, of whom they were forewarned, should attempt her found alone: Eve,
loth to be thought not circumspect or firm enough, urges her going apart, the rather desirous to make trial of her strength ; Adam
at last yields: the serpent finds her alone: his subtle approach, first gazing, then speaking; with much flattery extolling Eve above
all other creatures. i.ve, wondering to hear the serpent speak, asks how he attained to human speech, and such understanding,
not till now : the serpent answers, that by tasting of a certain free in the garden he had attained both to speech and reason, till then
void of both: Eve requires him to bring her to that tree, and finds it to be the tree of knowledge forbidden : the serpent, now grown
boider, with many wiles and arguments, induces her at length to eat; she, pleased with the taste, deliberates a while whether to
impart thereof to Adam or not; at last brings him of the fruit; relates what persuaded her to eat thereof: Adam, at first amazed, but
perceiving her lost, resolves, through vehemence of love, to perish with her; and extenuating the trespass, eats also of the fruit
the effects thereof in them both; they seek to cover their nakedness; then fall to variance and accusation of one another.
No more of talk where God or angel guest
With man, as with his friend, familiar used
To sit indulgent, and with him partake
Rural repast; permitting him the while
Venial discourse unblamed. I now must change
Those notes to tragic ; foul distrust, and breach
Disloyal on the part of man, revolt
And disobedience : on the part of heaven
Now alienated, distance and distaste,
Anger and just rebuke, and judgment given,
That brought into this world a world of woe,
Sin and her shadow death, and misery
Death's harbinger: sad task, yet argument
Not less but more heroic than the wrath
Of stern Achilles on his foe pursued
Thrice fugitive about Troy wall; or rage
Of Turnus for Lavinia disespoused;
Or Neptune's ire, or Juno's, that so long
Perplexed the Greek, and Cytherea's son;
If answerable style I can obtain
Of my celestial patroness, who deigns
Her nightly visitation unimplored,
And dictates to me slumbering; or inspires
Easy my unpremeditated verse:
Since first this subject for heroic song
Pleased me long choosing, and beginning late;
Not sedulous by nature to indite
Wars, hitherto the only argument
IHeroic deemed; chief mastery to dissect
With long and tedious havoc fabled knights,
In battles feigned ; the better fortitude
Of patience and heroic martyrdom
Unsung ; or to describe races and games,
*>
Or tilting furniture, imblazoned shields,
Impresses quaint, caparisons and steeds,
Bases and tinsel trappings, gorgeous knights
At joust and tournament; then marshalled feast
Served up in hall with sewers and seneshals;
The skill of artifice or office mean,
Not that which justly gives heroic name
To person or to poem. Me, of these
Nor skilled nor studious, higher argument
Remains; sufficient of itself to raise
That name, unless an age too late, or cold
Climate, or years, damp my intended wing
Depressed; and much they may, if all be mine,
Not hers who brings it nightly to my ear.
The sun was sunk, and after him the star
Of Hesperus, whose office is to bring
Twilight upon the earth, short arbiter
'Twixt day and night, and now from end to end
Night's hemisphere had veiled the horizon round;
When Satan, who late fled before the threats
Of Gabriel out of Eden, now improved
In meditated fraud and malice, bent
On man's destruction, maugre what might hap
Of heavier on himself, fearless returned.
By night he fled, and at midnight returned
From compassing the earth; cautious of day,
Since Uriel, regent of the sun, descried
His entrance, and forewarned the cherubim
That kept their watch; thence full of anguish driven,
The space of seven continued nights he rode
With darkness: thrice the equinoctial line
He circled : four times crossed the car of night
From pole to pole travérsing each colüre;
On the eighth returned; and on the coast averse
From entrance or cherubic watch, by stealth
64 PARADISE LOST.
Book IX.
Found unsuspected way. There was a place,
Now not, though sin, not time, first wrought the
change,
Where Tigris, at the foot of Paradise,
Into a gulf shot under ground, till part
Rose up a fountain by the tree of life:
In with the river sunk, and with it rose,
Satan, involved in rising mist; then sought
Where to lie hid ; sea he had searched, and land
From Eden over Pontus and the pool
Moeotis, up beyond the river Ob ;
Downward as far antarctic: and in length
West from Orontes to the ocean barred
At Darien ; thence to the land where flows
Ganges and Indus: thus the orb he roamed
With narrow search ; and with inspection deep
Considered every creature, which of all
Most opportune might serve his wiles; and ſound
The serpent subtlest beast of all the field.
Him after long debate, irresolute
Of thoughts revolved, his final sentence chose
Fit vessel, fittest imp of fraud, in whom
To enter, and his dark suggestions hide
From sharpest sight: for, in the wily snake
Whatever sleights, none would suspicious mark,
As from his wit and native subtlety
Proceeding ; which, in other beasts observed,
Doubt might beget of diabolic power
Active within, beyond the sense of brute.
Thus he resolved, but first from inward grief
His bursting passion into plaints thus poured :
“O earth, how like to heaven, if not preferred
More justly, seat worthier of gods, as built
With second thoughts, reforming what was old !
For what god, aſter better, worse would build P
Terrestrial heaven, danced round by other heavens
That shine, yet bear their bright officious lamps,
Light above light, for thee alone as seems,
In thee concentring all their precious beams
Of sacred influence As God in heaven
Is center, yet extends to all ; so thou,
Centering, receivest from all these orbs: in thee,
Not in themselves, all their known virtue appears
Productive in herb, plant, and nobler birth
Of creatures animate with gradual life
Of growth, sense, reason, all summed up in man.
With what delight could I have walked thee round,
If I could joy in aught, sweet interchange
Of hill, and valley, rivers, woods, and plains,
Now land, now sea, and shores with forest crowned,
Rocks, dens, and caves | But I in none of these
Find place or refuge; and the more I see
Pleasures about me, so much more I feel
Torment within me, as from the hateful siege
Of contraries: all good to me becomes
Banc, and in heaven much worse would be my state.
But neither here seek I, no, nor in heaven
To dwell, unless by mastering heaven's Supreme ;
Nor hope to be myself less miserable
By what I seek, but others to make such
As I, though thereby worse to me redound:
For only in destroying I find ease
To my relentless thoughts; and, him destroyed,
Or won to what may work his utter loss,
Tor whom all this was made, all this will soon
Follow, as to him linked in weal or woe;
In woe then, that destruction wide may range:
To me shall be the glory sole among
The infernal powers, in one day to have marred
What he, Almighty styled, six nights and days
Continued making; and who knows how long
Before had been contriving 2 though perhaps
Not longer than since I, in one night, freed
Trom servitude inglorious well nigh half
The angelic name, and thinner left the throng
Of his adorers: he, to be avenged,
And to repair his numbers thus impaired,
Whether such virtue spent of old now failed
More angels to create, if they at least
Are his created, or, to spite us more,
Determined to advance into our room
A creature formed of earth, and him endow,
Exalted from so base original,
With heavenly spoils, our spoils: what he decreed,
He effected ; man he made, and for him built
Magnificent this world, and earth his seat,
Him lord pronounced; and, O indignity
Subjected to his service angel-wings,
And flaming ministers to watch and tend
Their earthly charge : of these the vigilance
I dread; and, to elude, thus wrapt in mist
Of midnight vapour glide obscure, and pry
In every bush and brake, where hap may find
The serpent sleeping ; in whose mazy folds
To hide me, and the dark intent I bring.
O foul descent ' that I, who erst contended
With gods to sit the highest, am now constrained
Into a beast; and, mixed with bestial slime,
This essence to incarnate and imbrute,
That to the highth of deity aspired
But what will not ambition and revenge
Descend to 2 Who aspires, must down as low
As high he soared ; obnoxious, first or last,
To basest things. Revenge, at first though sweet,
Bitter ere long, back on itself recoils:
Let it; I reck not, so it light well aimed,
Since higher I fall short, on him who next
Provokes my envy, this new favourite
Of heaven, this man of clay, son of despite,
Whom, us the more to spite, his Maker raised
I'rom dust: spite then with spite is best repaid.’
So saying, through each thicket dank or dry,
Like a black mist low-creeping, he held on
His midnight search, where soonest he might find
The serpent: him fast sleeping soon he found
In labyrinth of many a round self-rolled,
His head the midst, well stored with subtle wiles :
Not yet in horrid shade or dismal den,
Nor nocent yet; but, on the grassy herb,
Tearless unfeared he slept: in at his mouth
The devil entered ; and his brutal sense,
In heart or head, possessing, soon inspired
Book IX.
PARADISE LOST.
With act intelligential; but his sleep
Disturbed not, waiting close the approach of morn.
Now, when as sacred light began to dawn
In Eden on the humid flowers, that breathed
Their morning incense, when all things, that breathe,
From the earth's great altar send up silent praise
To the Creator, and his nostrils fill
With grateful smell, forth came the human pair
And joined their vocal worship to the quire
Of creatures wanting voice; that done, partake
The season, prime for sweetest scents and airs:
Then commune, how that day they best may ply
Their growing work: for much their work outgrew
The bands’ dispatch of two gardening so wide.
And Eve first to her husband thus began :
“Adam, well may we labour still to dress
This garden, still to tend plant, herb, and flower,
Our pleasant task enjoined; but till more hands
Aid us, the work under our labour grows,
Luxurious by restraint; what we by day
Lop overgrown, or prune, or prop, or bind,
One night or two with wanton growth derides
Tending to wild. Thou therefore now advise,
Or hear what to my mind first thoughts present :
Let us divide our labours; thou, where choice
Leads thee, or where most needs, whether to wind
The woodbine round this arbour, or direct
The clasping ivy where to climb; while I,
In yonder spring of roses intermixed
With myrtle, find what to redress till noon :
For, while so near each other thus all day
Our task we choose, what wonder if so near
Looks intervene and smiles, or object new
Casual discourse draw on ; which intermits
Our day's work, brought to little, though begun
Early, and the hour of supper comes unearned P’
To whom mild answer Adam thus returned :
“Sole Eve, associate sole, to me beyond
Compare above all living creatures dear !
Well has thou motioned, well thy thoughts employed,
How we might best fulfil the work which here
God hath assigned us; nor of me shalt pass
Unpraised : for nothing lovelier can be found
In woman, than to study household good,
And good works in her husband to promote.
Yet not so strictly hath our Lord imposed
Labour, as to debar us when we need
Refreshment, whether food, or talk between,
Food of the mind, or this sweet intercourse
Of looks and smiles; for smiles from reason flow,
To brute denied, and are of love the food;
Love, not the lowest end of human life.
For not to irksome toil, but to delight,
He made us, and delight to reason joined.
These paths and bowers doubt not but our joint hands
Will keep from wilderness with ease, as wide
As we need walk, till younger hands ere long
Assist us : but if much converse perhaps
Thee satiate, to short absence I could yield:
For solitude sometimes is best society,
And short retirement urges sweet return.
k
F
But other doubt possesses me; lest harm
Befall thee severed from me; for thou knowest
What hath been warned us, what malicious foe
Envying our happiness, and of his own
Despairing, seeks to work us woe and shame
By sly assault; and somewhere nigh at hand
Watches, no doubt, with greedy hope to find
His wish and best advantage, us asunder;
Hopeless to circumvent us joined, where each
To other speedy aid might lend at need :
Whether his first design be to withdraw
Our fealty from God, or to disturb
Conjugal love, than which perhaps no bliss
Enjoyed by us excites his envy more :
Or this, or worse, leave not the faithful side
That gave thee being, still shades thee, and protects.
The wiſe, where danger or dishonour lurks,
Safest and seemliest by her husband stays,
Who guards her, or with her the worst endures.’
To whom the virgin majesty of Eve,
As one who loves and some unkindness meets,
With sweet austere composure thus replied:
“Offspring of heaven and earth, and all earth's
lord '
That such an enemy we have, who seeks
Our ruin, both by thee informed I learn,
And from the parting angel overheard
As in a shady nook I stood behind,
Just then returned at shut of evening flowers.
But that thou shouldst my firmness therefore doubt
To God or thee, because we have a foe
May tempt it, I expected not to hear.
His violence thou fearest not, being such
As we, not capable of death or pain,
Can either not receive, or can repel.
His fraud is then thy fear; which plain infers
Thy equal fear, that my firm faith and love
Can by his fraud be shaken or seduced :
Thoughts, which how found they harbour in thy
breast,
Adam, mis-thought of her to thee so dear?'
To whom with healing words Adam replied :
* Daughter of God and man, immortal Eve
For such thou art; from sin and blame entire :
Not diffident of thee do I dissuade
Thy absence from my sight, but to avoid
The attempt itself, intended by our foe.
For he who tempts, though in vain, at least asperses
The tempted with dishonour foul; supposed
Not incorruptible of faith, not proof
Against temptation: thou thyself with scorn
And anger wouldst resent the offered wrong,
Though ineffectual found : misdeem not then,
If such affront I labour to avert
From thee alone, which on us both at once
The enemy, though bold, will hardly dare;
Or daring, first on me the assault shall light.
Northon his malice and false guile contemn :
Subtle he needs must be, who could seduce
Angels; nor think superfluous others' aid.
I, from the influence of thy looks, receive
66 PARADISE LOST.
Book IX.
Access in every virtue; in thy sight
More wise, more watchful, stronger, iſ need were
Of outward strength; while shame, thou looking on,
Shame to be overcome or over-reached,
Would utmost vigour raise, and raised unite.
Why shouldst not thou like sense within thee feel
When I am present, and thy trial choose
With me, best witness of thy virtue tried ?”
So spake domestic Adam in his care
And matrimonial love; but Eve, who thought
Less attributed to her faith sincere,
Thus her reply with accent sweet renewed:
* If this be our condition, thus to dwell
In narrow circuit straitened by a foe,
Subtle or violent, we not endued
Single with like defence, wherever met;
How are we happy, still in fear of harm 2
But harm precedes not sin: only our ſoe,
Tempting, affronts us with his foul esteem
Of our integrity : his foul esteem
Sticks no dishonour on our front, but turns
Foul on himself; then wherefore shunned or feared
By us? who rather double honour gain
From his surmise proved false, find peace within,
Favour from heaven, our witness, from the event.
And what is faith, love, virtue, unassayed
Alone, without exterior help sustained 2
Let us not then suspect our happy state
Left so imperfect by the Maker wise,
As not secure to single or combined.
Frail is our happiness, if this be so;
And Eden were no Eden, thus exposed.’
To whom thus Adam ſervently replied:
‘O woman, best are all things as the will
Of God ordained them; his creating hand
Nothing imperfect or deficient left
Of all that he created, much less man,
Or aught that might his happy state secure,
Secure from outward force; within himself
The danger lies, yet lies within his power:
Against his will he can receive no harm.
But God ieft free the will ; for what obeys
Reason, is free ; and reason he made right,
But bid her well beware, and still erect;
Lest, by some fair-appearing good surprised,
She dictate false; and misinform the will
To do what God expressly hath forbid.
Not then mistrust, but tender love, enjoins,
That I should mind thee oft; and mind thou me.
Firm we subsist, yet possible to swerve ;
Since reason not impossibly may meet
Some specious object by the foe suborned,
And fall into deception unaware,
Not keeping strictest watch, as she was warned.
Seek not temptation then, which to avoid
Were better, and most likely if from me
Thou sever not: trial will come unsought.
Wouldst thou approve thy constancy, approve
First thy obedience; the other who can know,
Not seeing thee attempted, who attest?
But, if thou think, trial unsought may find
Us both securer than thus warned thou seemest,
Go; for thy stay, not free, absents thee more;
Go in thy native innocence, rely
On what thou hast of virtue; summon all !
For God towards thee hath done his part, do thine.”
So spake the patriarch of mankind; but Eve
Persisted; yet submiss, though last, replied:
“With thy permission then, and thus forewarmed
Chiefly by what thy own last reasoning words
Touch only ; that our trial, when least sought,
May find us both perhaps far less prepared;
The willinger I go, nor much expect
A foe so proud will first the weaker seek;
So bent, the more shall shame him his repulse.”
Thus saying, from her husband's hand her hand
Soft she withdrew, and, like a wood-nymph light,
Oread or Dryad, or of Delia's train,
Betook her to the groves; but Delia's self
In gait surpassed, and goddess-like deport,
Though not as she with bow and quiver armed,
But with such gardening-tools as art yet rude,
Guiltless of fire, had formed, or angels brought.
To Pales, or Pomona, thus adorned,
Likest she seemed, Pomona when she fled
Vertumnus, or to Ceres in her prime,
Yet virgin of Proserpina from Jove.
Her long with ardent look his eye pursued
Delighted, but desiring more her stay.
Oft he to her his charge of quick return
Repeated : she to him as oft engaged
To be returned by noon amid the bower,
And all things in best order to invite
Noontide repast, or afternoon’s repose.
O much deceived, much failing, hapless Eve,
Of thy presumed return event perverse !
Thou never from that hour in Paradise
Foundest either sweet repast, or sound repose;
Such ambush, hid among sweet flowers and shades,
Waited with hellish rancour imminent
To intercept thy way, or send thee back
Despoiled of innocence, of ſaith, of bliss!
For now, and since first break of dawn, the fiend,
Mere serpent in appearance, forth was come;
And on his quest, where likeliest he might find
The only two of mankind, but in them
The whole included race, his purposed prey.
In bower and field he sought where any tuft
Of grove or garden plot more pleasant lay,
Their tendance, or plantation for delight;
By fountain or by shady rivulet
He sought them both, but wished his hap might find
Eve separate; he wished, but not with hope
Of what so seldom chanced; when to his wish,
Beyond his hope, Eve separate he spies,
Veiled in a cloud of fragrance, where she stood,
Half spied, so thick the roses blushing round
About her glowed, oft stooping to support
Each flower of tender stalk, whose head, though gay
Carnation, purple, azure, or specked with gold,
Hung drooping unsustained ; them she upstays
Gently with myrtle band, mindless the while
Book IX.
PARADISE LOST. 67
Herself, though fairest unsupported flower,
From her best prop so far, and storm so migh.
Nearer he drew, and many a walk traversed
Of stateliest covert, cedar, pine, or palm ;
Then voluble and bold, now hid, now seen,
Among thick-woven arborets, and flowers
Imbordered on each bank, the hand of Eve:
Spot more delicious than those gardens feigned
Or of revived Adonis, or renowned
Alcinóus, host of old Laërtes' son;
Or that, not mystic, where the sapient king
Held dalliance with his fair Egyptian spouse.
Much he the place admired, the person more.
As one who long in populous city pent,
Where houses thick and sewers annoy the air,
Forth issuing on a summer's morn, to breathe
Among the pleasant villages and farms
Adjoined, from each thing met conceives delight,
The smell of grain, or tedded grass, or kine,
Or dairy, each rural sight, each rural sound;
If chance, with nymph-like step, fair virgin pass,
What pleasing seemed, for her now pleases more;
She most, and in her look sums all delight:
Such pleasure took the serpent to behold
This flowery plat, the sweet recess of Eve
Thus early, thus alone : her heavenly form
Angelic, but more soft, and feminime,
Her graceful innocence, her every air
Of gesture, or least action, overawed
His malice, and with rapine sweet bereaved
His fierceness of the fierce intent it brought:
That space the evil one abstracted stood
From his own evil, and for the time remained
Stupidly good; of enmity disarmed,
Of guile, of hate, of envy, of revenge.
But the hot hell that always in him burns
Though in mid heaven, soon ended his delight,
And tortures him now more, the more he sees
Of pleasure, not for him ordained : then soon
Fierce hate he recollects, and all his thoughts
Of mischief, gratulating, thus excites:
‘Thoughts, whither have ye led me? with what
SWeet .
Compulsion thus transported, to forget
What hither brought us? hate, not love; nor hope
Of Paradise for hell, hope here to taste
Of pleasure; but all pleasure to destroy,
Save what is in destroying; other joy
To me is lost. Then, let me not let pass
Occasion which now smiles; behold alone
The woman, opportune to all attempts,
Her husband, for I view far round, not nigh,
Whose higher intellectual more I shun,
And strength, of courage haughty, and of limb
Heroic built, though of terrestrial mould;
Foe not informidable ! exempt from wound,
I not; so much hath hell debased, and pain
Enfeebled me, to what I was in heaven.
She fair, divinely fair, fit love for gods !
Not terrible, though terror be in love
And beauty, not approached by stronger hate,
o
F 2,
Hate stronger, under show of love well feigned ;
The way which to her ruin now I tend.”
So spake the enemy of mankind enclosed
In serpent, inmate bad ' and toward Eve
Addressed his way: not with indented wave,
Prone on the ground, as since; but on his rear,
Circular base of rising folds, towered
Fold above fold, a surging maze his head
Crested aloft, and carbuncle his eyes;
With burnished neck of verdant gold, erect
Amidst his circling spires, that on the grass
Floated redundant: pleasing was his shape
And lovely: never since of serpent-kind
Lovelier, not those that in Illyria changed
Hermione and Cadmus, or the god
In Epidaurus; nor to which transformed
Ammonian Jove, or Capitoline was seen;
He with Olympias; this with her who bore
Scipio, the highth of Rome. With tract oblique
At first, as one who sought access, but feared
To interrupt, side-long he works his way.
As when a ship, by skilful steersman wrought
Nigh river's mouth or foreland, where the wind
Weers oft, as of so steers, and shifts her sail :
So varied he, and of his tortuous train
Curled many a wanton wreath in sight of Eve,
To lure her eye; she, busied, heard the sound
Of rustling leaves, but minded not, as used
To such disport before her through the field,
From every beast; more duteous at her call,
Than at Circean call the herd disguised.
He, bolder now, uncalled before her stood,
But as in gaze admiring ; oft he bowed
His turret crest, and sleek enamelled neck,
Fawning; and licked the ground whereon she trod.
His gentle dumb expression turned at length
The eye of Eve, to mark his play; he, glad
Of her attention gained, with serpent-tongue
Organic, or impulse of vocal air,
His fraudulent temptation thus began :
* Wonder not, sovran mistress, if perhaps
Thou canst, who art sole wonder! much less arm
Thy looks, the heaven of mildness, with disdain,
Displeased that I approach thee thus, and gaze
Insatiate; I thus single ; nor have feared
Thy awful brow, more awful thus retired.
Fairest resemblance of thy Maker fair,
Thee all things living gaze on, all things thine
By gift, and thy celestial beauty adore
With ravishment beheld ! there best beheld,
Where universally admired; but here
In this enclosure wild, these beasts among,
Beholders rude, and shallow to discern
Half what in thee is fair, one man except,
Who sees thee P (and what is one?) who should be seen
A goddess among gods, adored and served
By angels, numberless, thy daily train.”
So glozed the tempter, and his proem tuned:
Into the heart of Eve his words made way,
Though at the voice much marvelling ; at length,
Not unamazed, she thus in answer spake :
68 PARADISE LOST.
Book IX.
‘What may this mean? language of man pro-
nounced
By tongue of brute, and human sense expressed P
The first, at least, of these I thought denied
To beasts ; whom God, on their creation-day,
Created mute to all articulate sound :
The latter I demur ; for in their looks
Much reason, and in their actions, oft appears.
Thee, serpent, subtlest beast of all the field
I knew, but not with human voice endued ;
Redouble then this miracle, and say,
How camest thou speakable of mute, and how
To me so friendly grown above the rest
Of brutal kind, that daily are in sight 2
Say, for such wonder claims attention due.”
To whom the guileful tempter thus replied :
‘Empress of this fair world, resplendent Eve'
Easy to me it is to tell thee all
What thou commandest ; and right thou shouldst be
obeyed :
I was at first as other beasts that graze
The trodden herb, of abject thoughts and low,
As was my food; nor aught but food discerned
Or sex, and apprehended nothing high :
Till, on a day roving the field, I chanced
A goodly tree far distant to behold
Ioaden with fruit of fairest colours mixed,
Ruddy and gold : I nearer drew to gaze :
When from the boughs a savoury odour blown,
Grateful to appetite, more pleased my sense
Than smell of sweetest fennel, or the teats
Of eve or goat dropping with milk at even,
Unsucked of lamb or kid, that tend their play.
To satisfy the sharp desire I had
Of tasting those fair apples, I resolved
Not to defer ; hunger and thirst at once,
Powerful persuaders, quickened at the scent
Of that alluring fruit, urged me so keen.
About the mossy trunk I wound me soon ;
For, high from ground, the branches would require
Thy utmost reach or Adam's : round the tree
All other beasts that saw, with like desire
Longing and envying stood, but could not reach.
Amid the tree now got, where plenty hung
Tempting so nigh, to pluck and eat my fill
I spared not ; for, such pleasure till that hour,
At ſeed or fountain, never had I found.
Sated at length, ere long I might perceive
Strange alteration in me, to degree
Of reason in my inward powers; and speech
Wanted not long ; though to this shape retained.
Thenceforth to speculations high or deep
I turned my thoughts, and with capacious mind
Considered all things visible in heaven,
Or earth, or middle; all things fair and good :
But all that fair and good in thy divine
Semblance, and in thy beauty's heavenly ray
United I beheld ; no fair to thine
Equivalent or second which compelled
Me thus, though importune perhaps, to come
And gaze, and worship thee of right declared
Sovran of creatures, universal dame!’
So talked the spirited sly smake; and Eve,
Yet more amazed, unwary thus replied:
* Serpent, thy overpraising leaves in doubt
The virtue of that fruit, in thee first proved:
But say, where grows the tree ? from hence how ſar P
For many are the trees of God that grow
In Paradise, and various, yet unknown
To us; in such abundance lies our choice,
As leaves a greater store of fruit untouched,
Still hanging incorruptible, till men
Grow up to their provision, and more hands
Help to disburden nature of her birth.”
To whom the wily adder, blithe and glad:
‘Empress, the way is ready, and not long ;
Beyond a row of myrtles, on a flat,
Fast by a fountain, one small thicket past
Of blowing myrrh and balm; if thou accept
My conduct, I can bring thee thither soon.’
“Lead then,’ said Eve. He, leading, swiftly rolled
In tangles, and made intricate seem straight,
To mischief swift. Hope elevates, and joy
Brightens his crest. As when a wandering fire,
Compact of unctuous vapour, which the night
Condenses, and the cold environs round,
Kindled through agitation to a flame,
Which oft, they say, some evil spirit attends,
Hovering and blazing with delusive light,
Misleads the amazed night-wanderer from his way
To bogs and mires, and oft through pond or pool;
There swallowed up and lost, from succour far :
So glistered the dire snake, and into fraud
Led Eve, our credulous mother, to the tree
Of prohibition, root of all our woe;
Which when she saw, thus to her guide she spake:
“Serpent, we might have spared our coming hither,
Fruitless to me, though fruit be here to excess,
The credit of whose virtue rest with thee;
Wondrous indeed, if cause of such effects.
But of this tree we may not taste nor touch;
God so commanded, and left that command
Sole daughter of his voice: the rest, we live
Law to ourselves; our reason is our law.”
To whom the tempter guileſully replied:
* Indeed l hath God then said that of the fruit
Of all these garden-trees ye shall not eat,
Yet lords declared of all in earth or air P’
“To whom thus Eve, yet sinless: Of the fruit
Of each tree in the garden we may eat;
But of the fruit of this fair tree amidst
The garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat
Thereof, nor shall ye touch it, lest ye die.’
She scarcelladsaid, though brief, when now more bold
The tempter, but with show of zeal and love
To man, and indignation at his wrong,
New part puts on ; and as to passion moved,
Fluctuates disturbed, yet comely and in act
Raised, as of some great matter to begin.
As when of old some orator renowned,
In Athens or free Rome, where eloquence
Flourished, since mute to some great cause addressed,
Book IX.
PARADISE LOST 69
Stood in himself collected; while each part,
Motion, each act, won audience ere the tongue;
Sometimes in highth began, as no delay
Of preſace brooking, through his zeal of right:
So standing, moving, or to highth up-grown,
The tempter, all impassioned, thus began :
“O sacred, wise, and wisdom-giving plant,
Mother of science now I feel thy power
Within me clear; not only to discern
Things in their causes, but to trace the ways
Of highest agents, deemed however wise.
Queen of this universe ! do not believe
Those rigid threats of death : ye shall not die;
How should you ? by the fruit? it gives you life
To knowledge; by the threatener? look on me,
Me, who have touched and tasted; yet both live,
And life more perfect have attained than ſate
Meant me, by venturing higher than my lot.
Shall that be shut to man, which to the beast
Is open 2 or will God incense his ire
For such a petty trespass 8 and not praise
Rather your dauntless virtue, whom the pain
Of death denounced, whatever thing death be,
Deterred not from achieving what might lead
To happier life, knowledge of good and evil;
Of good, how just 2 of evil, if what is evil
Be real, why not known, since easier shunned P
God therefore cannot hurt ye, and be just;
Not just, not God; not feared then, nor obeyed:
Your fear itself of death removes the fear.
Why then was this forbid P Why, but to awe ?
Why, but to keep ye low and ignorant,
His worshippers He knows that in the day
Ye eat thereof, your eyes that seem so clear,
Yet are, but dim, shall presently be then
Opened and cleared, and ye shall be as gods,
Knowing both good and evil, as they know.
That ye shall be as gods, since I as man,
Internal man, is but proportion meet;
I, of brute, human; ye, of human, gods.
So ye shall die perhaps, by putting off
Human, to put on gods; death to be wished,
Though threatened, which no worse than this can bring.
And what are gods, that man may not become
As they, participating god-like food P
The gods are first, and that advantage use
On our belief, that all from them proceeds:
I question it; for this fair earth I see,
Warmed by the sun, producing every kind;
Them, nothing : if they all things, who enclosed
Knowledge of good and evil in this tree,
That whoso eats thereof, forth with attains
Wisdom without their leave P and wherein lies
The offence, that man should thus attain to know *
What can your knowledge hurt him, or this tree
Impart against his will, if all be his 2
Or is it envy £ and can envy dwell
In heavenly breasts? These, these, and many more
Causes import your need of this fair fruit.
Goddess humane, reach then, and freely taste.”
He ended; and his words, replete with guile,
Into her heart too easy entrance won :
Fixed on the fruit she gazed, which to behold
Might tempt alone; and in her ears the sound
Yet rung of his persuasive words, impregned
With reason, to her seeming, and with truth :
Meanwhile the hour of noon drew on, and waked
An eager appetite, raised by the smell
So savoury of that fruit, which with desire,
Inclinable now grown to touch or taste,
Solicited her longing eye; yet first
Pausing a while, thus to herself she mused :
“Great are thy virtues, doubtless, best of fruits,
Though kept from man, and worthy to be admired;
Whose taste, too long forborn, at first assay
Gave elocution to the mute, and taught
The tongue not made for speech to speak thy praise.
Thy praise he also, who forbids thy use,
Conceals not from us, naming thee the tree
Of knowledge, knowledge both of good and evil;
Forbids us then to taste! but his forbidding
Commends thee more, while it infers the good
By thee communicated, and our want:
For good unknown sure is not had ; or, had
And yet unknown, is as not had at all.
In plain then, what forbids he but to know,
Forbids us good, forbids us to be wise 2
Such prohibitions bind not. But, if death
Binds us with after-bands, what profits then
Our inward freedom In the day we eat
Of this fair fruit, our doom is, we shall die
How dies the serpent 2 he hath eaten and lives,
And knows, and speaks, and reasons, and discerns,
Irrational till then. For us alone
Was death invented 8 or to us denied
This intellectual food, for beasts reserved P
For beasts it seems : yet that one beast which first
Hath tasted envies not, but brings with joy
The good befallen him, author unsuspect,
Friendly to man, far from deceit or guile.
What fear I then P rather, what know to fear
Under this ignorance of good or evil,
Of God or death, of law or penalty P
Here grows the cure of all, this fruit divine,
Fair to the eye, inviting to the taste,
Of virtue to make wise: what hinders then
To reach, and feed at once both body and mind P’
So saying, her rash hand in evil hour
Forth reaching to the fruit, she plucked, she ate |
Earth felt the wound, and nature from her seat,
a---- *** * * *-* . . . . ... = ------ - - - - - -. . . . . -- * --- : - . -- - - - -- - -
Sighing through all her works, gave signs of woe,
That all was lost. Back to the thicket slunk
The guilty serpent; and well might; Tor Eve,
Intent now wholly on her taste, nought else
Regarded; such delight till then, as seemed,
In fruit she never tasted, whether true
Or fancied so, through expectation high
Of knowledge; nor was godhead from her thought.
Greedily she engorged without restraint,
And knew not eating death: satiate at length,
And heightened as with wine, jocund and boom,
Thus to herself she pleasingly began:
70 PARADISE LOST.
Book IX.
“O sovran, virtuous, precious of all trees
In Paradise ! of operation blest
To sapience, hitherto obscured, infamed,
And thy fair fruit let hang, as to no end
Created; but henceforth my early care,
Not without song, each morning, and due praise,
Shall tend theo, and the fertile burden ease
Of thy full branches offered free to all;
Till, dieted by thee, I grow mature
In knowledge, as the gods, who all things know;
Though others envy what they cannot give:
For, had the gift been theirs, it had not here
Thus grown. Experience, next, to thee I owe,
Best guide: not following thee, I had remained
In ignorance; thou openest wisdom's way,
And givest access, though secret she retire.
And I perhaps am secret: heaven is high,
High, and remote to see from thence distinct
Each thing on earth ; and other care perhaps
May have diverted from continual watch
Our great Forbidder, safe with all his spies
About him. But to Adam in what sort
Shall I appear f shall I to him make known
As yet my change, and give him to partake
Full happiness with me; or rather not,
But keep the odds of knowledge in my power
Without copartner? so to add what wants
In female sex, the more to draw his love,
And render me more equal ; and perhaps,
A thing not undesirable, sometime
Superior; for, inferior, who is frce 2
This may be well ; but what if God have seen,
And death ensue 2 then I shall be no more
And Adam, wedded to another Eve,
Shall live with her enjoying, I extinct;
A death to think | Confirmed then I resolve,
Adam shall share with me in bliss or woe:
So dear I love him, that with him all deaths
I could endure, without him live no life.”
So saying, from the tree her step she turned;
But first low reverence done, as to the Power
That dwelt within, whose presence had infused
Into the plant sciential sap, derived
From nectar, drink of gods. Adam the while
Waiting desirous her return, had wove
Of choicest flowers a garland, to adorn
Her tresses, and her rural labours crown ;
As reapers oft are wont their harvest queen.
Great joy he promised to his thoughts, and new
Solace in her return, so long delayed :
Yet oft his heart, divine of something ill,
Misgave him ; he the ſaltering measure felt;
And forth to meet her went, the way she took
That morn when first they parted : by the tree
Of knowledge he must pass; there he her met,
Scarce from the tree returning ; in her hand
A bough of fairest fruit, that downy smiled,
New gathered, and ambrosial smell diffused.
To him she hasted; in her face excuse
Came prologue, and apology too prompt;
Which, with bland words at will, she thus addressed :
‘IIast thou not wondered, Adam, at my stay P
Thee I have missed, and thought it long, deprived
Thy presence; agony of love till now
Not felt, nor shall be twice; for never more
Mean I to try, what rash untried I sought,
The pain of absence from thy sight. But strange
Hath been the cause, and wonderful to hear:
This tree is not, as we are told, a tree
Of danger tasted, nor to evil unknown
Opening the way, but of divine effect
To open eyes, and make them gods who taste;
And hath been tasted such : the serpent wise,
Or not restrained as we, or not obeying,
Hath eaten of the fruit; and is become,
Not dead, as we are threatened, but thenceforth
Endued with human voice and human sense
Reasoning to admiration ; and with me
Persuasively hath so prevailed, that I
Have also tasted, and have also found
The effects to correspond : opener mine eyes
Dim erst, dilated spirits, ampler heart,
And growing up to godhead; which for thee
Chiefly I sought, without thee can despise.
For bliss, as thou hast part, to me is bliss ;
Tedious, unshared with thee, and odious soon.
Thou therefore also taste, that equal lot
May join us, equal joy, as equal love;
Lest, thou not tasting, different degree
Disjoin us, and I then too late renounce
Deity for thee, when fate will not permit.”
Thus Eve with countenance blithe her story told;
But in her cheek distemper flushing glowed.
On the other side, Adam, soon as he heard
The fatal trespass done by Eve, amazed,
Astonied stood and blank, while horror chill
Ran through his veins, and all his joints relaxed ;
From his slack hand the garland wreathed for Eve
Down dropt, and all the faded roses shed;
Speechless he stood and pale, till thus at length
First to himself he inward silence broke:
“O fairest of creation, last and best
Of all God’s works, creature in whom excelled
Whatever can to sight or thought be formed,
Holy, divine, good, amiable, or sweet!
How art thou lost ! how on a sudden lost,
Defaced, deflowered, and now to death devote
Rather, how hast thou yielded to transgress
The strict forbiddance, how to violate
The sacred fruit forbidden P. Some cursed fraud
Of enemy hath beguiled thee, yet unknown,
And me with thee hath ruined; for with thee
Certain my resolution is to die :
How can I live without thee f how ſorego
Thy sweet convérse, and love so dearly joined,
To live again in these wild woods forlorn ?
Should God create another Eve, and I
Another rib afford, yet loss of thee
Would never from my heart; no, no! I feel
The link of nature draw me; flesh of flesh,
Bone of my bone thou art, and from thy state
Mine never shall be parted, bliss or woe.’
Book IX.
PARADISE LOST. 7]
So having said, as one from sad dismay
Recomforted, and after thoughts disturbed
Submitting to what seemed remediless,
Thus in calm mood his words to Eve he turned :
‘Bold deed thou hast presumed, adventurous Eve,
And peril great provoked, who thus hast dared,
Had it been only coveting to eye
That sacred fruit, sacred to abstinence,
Much more to taste it under ban to touch.
But past who can recall, or done undo P
Not God omnipotent, nor fate; yet so
Perhaps thou shalt not die, perhaps the fact
Is not so heinous now, foretasted fruit,
Profaned first by the serpent, by him first
Made common, and unhallowed, ere our taste :
Nor yet on him found deadly; he yet lives;
Lives, as thou saidst, and gains to live, as man,
Higher degree of life: inducement strong
To us, as likely tasting to attain
Proportional ascent; which cannot be
But to be gods, or angels, demi-gods.
Nor can I think that God, Creator wise,
Though threatening, will in earnest so destroy
Us his prime creatures, dignified so high,
Set over all his works; which in our fall,
For us created, needs with us must fail,
Dependent made ; so God shall uncreate,
Be frustrate, do, undo, and labour lose;
Not well conceived of God, who, though his power
Creation could repeat, yet would be loth
Us to abolish, lest the adversary
Triumph, and say: “Pickle their state whom God
Most favours; who can please him long P Me first
He ruined, now mankind; whom will he next?”
Matter of scorn, not to be given the foe.
However, I with thee have fixed my lot,
Certain to undergo like doom ; if death
Consort with thee, death is to me as life;
So forcible within my heart I feel
The bond of nature draw me to my own;
My own in thee, for what thou art is mine;
Our state cannot be severed; we are one,
One flesh; to lose thee were to lose myself.”
So Adam; and thus Eve to him replied:
“O glorious trial of exceeding love,
Illustrious evidence, example high
Engaging me to emulate; but, short
Of thy perfection, how shall I attain,
Adam P from whose dear side I boast me sprung,
And gladly of our union hear thee speak,
One heart, one soul in both ; whereof good proof
This day affords, declaring thee resolved,
Rather than death, or aught than death more dread,
Shall separate us, linked in love so dear,
To undergo with me one guilt, one crime,
If any be, of tasting this fair fruit;
Whose virtue (for of good still good proceeds,
Direct, or by occasion) hath presented
This happy trial of thy love, which else
So eminently never had been known.
Were it I thought death menaced would ensue
This my attempt, I would sustain alone
The worst, and not persuade thee, rather die
Deserted, than oblige thee with a fact
Pernicious to thy peace; chiefly, assured
Remarkably so late of thy so true,
So faithful, love unequalled: but I feel
Far otherwise the event; not death, but life
Augmented, opened eyes, new hopes, new joys,
Taste so divine, that what of sweet before
Hath touched my sense, flat seems to this, and harsh.
On my experience, Adam, freely taste,
And fear of death deliver to the winds.’
So saying, she embraced him, and for joy
Tenderly wept; much won, that he his love
Had so ennobled, as of choice to incur
Divine displeasure for her sake, or death.
In recompense, (for such compliance bad
Such recompense best merits,) from the bough
She gave him of that fair enticing fruit
With liberal hand : he scrupled not to eat,
Against his better knowledge; not deceived,
But fondly overcome with female charm.
Earth trembled from her entrails, as again
In pangs; and nature gave a second groan ;
**** ***
Sky loured; and, muttering thunder, some sad drops
Wept at completing of the mortal sin
Original: while Adam took no thought,
Eating his fill; nor Eve to iterate
Her former trespass feared, the more to sooth
Him with her loved society; that now,
As with new wine intoxicated both,
They swim in mirth, and fancy that they feel
Divinity within them breeding wings,
Wherewith to scorn the earth: but that false fruit
Far other operation first displayed,
Carnal desire inflaming ; he on Eve
Began to cast lascivious eyes; she him
As wantonly repaid ; in lust they burn:
Till Adam thus 'gan Eve to dalliance move :
* Eve, now I see thou art exact of taste,
And elegant, of sapience no small part;
Since to each meaning savour we apply,
And palate call judicious; I the praise
Yield thee, so well this day thou hast purveyed.
Much pleasure we have lost, while we abstained
From this delightful fruit, nor know till now
True relish, tasting; if such pleasure be
In things to us forbidden, it might be wished,
For this one tree had been forbidden ten.
But come, so well refreshed, now let us play,
As meet is, after such delicious fare;
For never did thy beauty, since the day .
I saw thee first and wedded thee, adorned
With all perfections, so inflame my sense
With ardour to enjoy thee, fairer now
Than ever; bounty of this virtuous tree l’
So said he, and forbore not glance or toy
Of amorous intent; well understood
Of Eve, whose eye darted contagious fire.
Her hand he seized; and to a shady bank,
Thick over-head with verdant roof imbowered,
72 PARADISE LOST.
Book IX.
He led her nothing loth; flowers were the couch,
Pansies, and violets, and asphodel,
And hyacinths; earth's freshest soſtest lap.
There they their fill of love and love's disport
Took largely, of their mutual guilt the seal,
The solace of their sin; till dewy sleep
Oppressed them, wearied with their amorous play.
Soon as the force of that fallacious fruit,
That with exhilarating vapour bland
About their spirits had played, and inmost powers
Made err, was now exhaled ; and grosser sleep,
Bred of unkindly fumes, with conscious dreams
Encumbered, now had left them; up they rose
As from unrest; and, each the other viewing,
Soon found their eyes how opened, and their minds
How darkened ; innocence, that as a veil
Had shadowed them from knowing ill, was gone;
Just confidence, and native righteousness,
And honour, from about them, naked left
To guilty shame; he covered, but his robe
Uncovered more. So rose the Danite strong,
Herculean Samson, from the harlot-lap
Of Philistéan Dalilah, and waked
Shorn of his strength; they destitute and bare
Of all their virtue: silent, and in face
Confounded, long they sat, as stricken mute:
Till Adam, though not less than Eve abashed,
At length gave utterance to these words constrained:
“O Eve, in evil hour thou didst give car
To that false worm, of whomsoever taught
To counterfeit man's voice; true in our fall,
False in our promised rising ; since our eyes
Opened we find indeed, and find we know
Both good and evil; good lost, and evil got;
Bad fruit of knowledge, if this be to know ;
Which leaves us naked thus, of honour void,
Of innocence, of faith, of purity,
Our wonted ornaments now soiled and stained,
And in our faces evident the signs
Of foul concúpiscence; whence evil store;
Even shame, the last of evils; of the first
Be sure then. How shall I behold the face
Henceforth of God or angel, erst with joy
And rapture so oft beheld 2 Those heavenly shapes
Will dazzle now this earthly with their blaze
Insufferably bright. O ! might I here
In solitude live savage; in some glade
Obscured where highest woods, impenetrable
To star or sun-light, spread their unbrage broad
And brown as evening : cover me, ye pines'
Ye cedars, with innumerable boughs
Hide me, where I may never see them more !
But let us now, as in bad plight, devise
What best may for the present serve to hide
The parts of each from other, that seem most
To shame obnoxious, and unseemliest seen;
Some tree, whose broad smooth leaves together sewed,
And girded on our loins, may cover round
Those middle parts; that this new-comer, shame,
There sit not, and reproach us as unclean.”
So counselled he, and both together went
Into the thickest wood ; there soon they chose
The fig-tree, not that kind for fruit renowned,
But such as at this day, to Indians known,
In Malabar or Decan spreads her arms
Branching so broad and long, that in the ground
The bended twigs take root, and daughters grow
About the mother-tree, a pillared shade
High over-arched, and echoing walks between :
There oft the Indian herdsman, shunning heat,
Shelters in cool, and tends his pasturing herds
At loop-holes cut through thickest shade: those leaves
They gathered, broad as Amazonian targe;
And, with what skill they had, together sewed,
To gird their waist; vain covering, if to hide
Their guilt and dreaded shame! O, how unlike
To that first naked glory ! Such of late
Columbus found the American, so girt
With feathered cincture; naked else, and wild
Among the trees on isles and woody shores.
Thus fenced, and, as they thought, their shame in
part -
Covered, but not at rest or ease of mind,
They sat them down to weep; nor only tears
Rained at their eyes, but high winds worse within

j Began to rise, high passions, anger, hate,
Mistrust, suspicion, discord; and shook sore
Their inward state of mind, calm region once -
And full of peace, now tost and turbulent: *w-a-...-
For understanding ruled not, and the will
Heard not her lore; both in subjection now
To sensual appetite, who from beneath
Usurping over sovran reason claimed
Superior sway : from thus distempered breast,
Adam, estranged in look and altered style,
Speech intermitted thus to Eve renewed:
‘Would thou hadst hearkened to my words, and
staid
With me, as I besought thee, when that strange
Desire of wandering, this unhappy morn,
I know not whence possessed thee; we had then
Remained still happy : not as now, despoiled
Of all our good; shamed, naked, miserable!
Let none henceforth seek needless cause to approve
The faith they owe ; when earnestly they seek
Such proof, conclude, they then begin to ſail.’
To whom, soon moved with touch of blame, thus
Eve : -
‘What words have passed thy lips, Adam severe !
Imputest thou that to my default, or will
Of wandering, as thou callest it, which who knows
But might as ill have happened, thou being by,
Or to thyself perhaps P Hadst thou been there,
Or here the attempt, thou couldst not have discerned
Fraud in the serpent, speaking as he spake;
No ground of enmity between us known,
Why he should mean me ill, or seek to harm.
Was I to have never parted from thy side P
As good have grown there still a lifeless rib.
Being as I am, why didst not thou, the head,
Command me absolutely not to go,
Going into such danger, as thou saidest?
Book IX.
PARADISE LOST. 73
Too facile then, thou didst not much gainsay;
Nay, didst permit, approve, and fair dismiss.
Hadst thou been firm and fixed in thy dissent,
Neither had I transgressed, nor thou with me.”
To whom then first incensed, Adam replied :
‘Is this the love, is this the recompense
Of mine to thee, ingrateful Eve 1 expressed
Immutable, when thou wert lost, not I;
Who might have lived, and 'joyed immortal bliss,
Yet willingly chose rather death with thee P
And am I now upbraided as the cause
Of thy transgressing * Not enough severe,
It seems, in thy restraint: what could I more ?
I warned thee, I admonished thee, foretold
The danger, and the lurking enemy
That lay in wait; beyond this, had been force;
And force upon free will hath here no place.
But confidence then bore thee on ; secure
Either to mect no danger, or to find
Matter of glorious trial; and perhaps
I also erred, in overmuch admiring
What seemed in thee so perfect, that I thought
No evil durst attempt thee; but I rue
That error now, which is become my crime,
And thou the accuser. Thus it shall befall
Him who, to worth in woman overtrusting,
Lets her will rule : restraint she will not brook;
And, left to herself, if evil thence ensue,
She first his weak indulgence will accuse.’
Thus they in mutual accusation spent
The fruitless hours, but neither self-condemning;
And of their vain contést appeared no end.
BOOK X.
THE ARGUMENT.
Man's transgression known, the guardian-angels forsake Paradise, and return up to heaven to approve their vigilance, and are ap-
proved; God declaring that the entrance of Satan could not be by them prevented.
He sends his Son to judge the transgressors;
who descends and gives sentence accordingly; then in pity clothes them both, and reascends. Sin and Death, sitting till then at the
gates of hell, by wondrous sympathy feeling the success of Satan in this new world, and the sim by man there committed, resolve to
sit no longer confined in hell, but to follow Satan their sire up to the place of man: to make the way easier from hell to this world to
and fro, they pave a broad highway or bridge over Chaos, according to the track that Satan first made; then preparing for earth, .
they meet him, proud of his success, returning to hell; their mutual gratulation. Satan arrives at Pandemonium, in full assembly
relates. With boasting his success against man; instead of applause is entertained with a general hiss by all his audience, transform-
ed with himself also suddenly into serpents according to his doom given in Paradise; then deluded with a show of the forbidden
tree º; # up before them, they, greedily reaching to take of the fruit, chew dust and bitter ashes. The proceedings of Sin and
jQ(1 iO
Death;
retells the final victory of his Son over them, and the renewing of all things; but for the present, commands his angels
to make several alterations in the heavens and elements. Adam, more and more perceiving his fallen condition, heavily bewails,
rejects the condolement of Eve; she persists, and at length appeases him : then to evade the curse likely to fall on their offspring, pro-
oses to Adam, violent ways, which he approves not; but, conceiving better hope, ". her in mind of the late promise made them
hat her seed should be revenged on the serpent; and exhorts her with him to see
supplication.
MEAN while the heinous and despiteful act
Of Satan done in Paradise, and how
He, in the serpent, had perverted Eve,
Her husband she, to taste the fatal fruit,
Was known in heaven; for what can 'scape the eye
Of God all-seeing, or deceive his heart
Omniscient? who, in all things wise and just,
Hindered not Satan to attempt the mind
Of man, with strength entire, and free-will armed
Complete to have discovered and repulsed
Whatever wiles of foe or seeming friend.
For still they knew, and ought to have still remem-
bered,
The high injunction, not to taste that fruit,
Whoever tempted; which they not obeying,
Incurred (what could they less the penalty;
And, manifold in sin, deserved to fall.
Up into heaven from Paradise in haste
The angelic guards ascended, mute and sad,
For man; for of his state by this they knew,
Much wondering how the subtle fiend had stolen
Entrance unseen. Soon as the unwelcome news
peace of the offended Deity, by repentance and
From earth arrived at heaven-gate, displeased
All were who heard ; dim sadness did not spare
That time celestial visages, yet, mixed
With pity, violated not their bliss.
About the new-arrived in multitudes
The ethereal people ran, to hear and know
How all befel: they towards the throne supreme,
Accountable, made haste, to make appear,
With righteous plea, their utmost vigilance,
And easily approved ; when the Most High
Eternal Father, from his secret cloud
Amidst, in thunder uttered thus his voice:
‘Assembled angels, and ye powers returned
From unsuccessful charge, be not dismayed,
Nor troubled at these tidings from the earth,
Which your sincerest care could not prevent;
Foretold so lately what would come to pass,
When first this tempter crossed the gulf from hell.
I told ye then he should prevail, and speed
On his bad errand; man should be seduced,
And flattered out of all, believing lies
Against his Maker; no decree of mine
74 PARADISE LOST.
Book X.
Concurring to necessitate his fall,
Or touch with lightest moment of impúlse
His free-will, to her own inclining left
In even scale. But fallen he is; and now
What rests, but that the mortal sentence pass
On his transgression, death denounced that day P
Which he presumes already vain and void,
Because not yet inflicted, as he feared,
By some immediate stroke; but soon shall find
Forbearance no acquittance, ere day end,
Justice shall not return as bounty scorned.
But whom send I to judge them P whom but thee
Vicegerent Son 2 To thee I have transferred
All judgment, whether in heaven, or earth, or bell.
Easy it may be seen that I intend
Mercy colleague with justice, sending thee
Man's friend, his Mediator, his designed
Both ransom and Redeemer voluntary,
And destined man himself to judge man fallen.’
So spake the Father; and unfolding bright
Toward the right hand his glory, on the Son
Blazed forth unclouded deity: he full
Resplendent all his Father manifest
Expressed, and thus divinely answered mild:
“Father Eternal, thine is to decree;
Mine, both in heaven and earth, to do thy will
Supreme; that thou in me, thy Son beloved,
Mayst ever rest well pleased. I go to judge
On earth these thy transgressors; but thou knowest,
Whoever judged, the worst on me must light,
When time shall be ; for so I undertook
Before thee; and, not repenting, this obtain
Of right, that I may mitigate their doom
On me derived; yet I shall temper so
Justice with mercy, as may illustrate most
Them fully satisfied, and thee appease.
Attendance none shall need, nor train, where none
Are to behold the judgment, but the judged,
Those two; the third best absent is condemned,
Convict by flight, and rebel to all law :
Conviction to the serpent none belongs.’
Thus saying, from his radiant seat he rose
Of high collateral glory. Him thrones, and powers,
Princedoms, and dominations ministrant,
Accompanied to heaven-gate; from whence
Eden, and all the coast, in prospect lay.
Down he descended straight; the speed of gods
Time counts not, though with swiftest minutes winged.
Now was the sun in western cadence low
From noon, and gentle airs, due at their hour,
To fan the earth now waked, and usher in
The evening cool; when he, from wrath more cool,
Came the mild judge, and intercessor both,
To sentence man : the voice of God they heard
Now walking in the garden, by soft winds
Brought to their ears, while day declined; they heard,
And from his presence hid themselves among
The thickest trees, both man and wife; till God
Approaching, thus to Adam called aloud :
‘Where art thou, Adam, wont with joy to meet
My coming seen far off? I miss thee here,
Not pleased, thus entertained with solitude,
Where obvious duty ere while appeared unsought:
Or come I less conspicuous, or what change
Absents thee, or what chance detains 2 Come forth !’
He came; and with him Eve, more loth, though first
To offend; discountenanced both, and discomposed;
Love was not in their looks, either to God,
Or to each other; but apparent guilt,
And shame, and perturbation, and despair;
Anger, and obstinacy, and hate, and guile.
Whence Adam faltering long, thus answered brief:
‘I heard thee in the garden, and of thy voice
Afraid, being naked, hid myself.” To whom
The gracious Judge without revile replied:
* My voice thou oft hast heard, and hast not feared,
But still rejoiced; how is it now become
So dreadſul to thee P That thou art naked, who
Hath told thee P Hast thou eaten of the tree,
Whereof I gave thee charge thou shouldst not eat P’
To whom thus Adam sore beset replied:
“O heaven' in evil strait this day I stand
Before my Judge; either to undergo
Myself the total crime, or to accuse
My other self, the partner of my life;
Whose failing, while her faith to me remains,
I should conceal, and not expose to blame
By my complaint: but strict necessity
Subdues me, and calamitous constraint;
Lest on my head both sin and punishment,
However insupportable, be all
Devolved; though, should I hold my peace, yet thou
Wouldst easily detect what I conceal.
This woman, whom thou madest to be my help,
And gavest me as thy perfect gift, so good,
So fit, so àcceptable, so divine,
That from her hand I could suspect no ill,
And what she did, whatever in itself,
Her doing seemed to justify the deed;
She gave me of the tree, and I did eat.’
To whom the sovran Presence thus replied :
* Was she thy God, that her thou didst obey
Before his voice P or was she made thy guide,
Superior, or but equal, that to her
Thou didst resign thy manhood, and the place
Wherein God set thee above her made of thee,
And for thee, whose perfection far excelled
Hers in all real dignity ? Adorned
She was indeed, and lovely, to attract
Thy love, not thy subjection; and her gifts
Were such, as under government well seemed;
Unseemly to bear rule; which was thy part
And person, hadst thou known thyself aright.”
So having said, he thus to Eve in few :
“Say, woman, what is this which thou hast done?’
To whom sad Eve, with shame nigh overwhelmed,
Confessing soon, yet not before her Judge
Bold or loguacious, thus abashed replied:
‘The serpent me beguiled, and I did eat.”
Which when the Lord God heard, without delay
To judgment he proceeded on the accused
Serpent, though brute; unable to transfer
Book X.
PARADISE LOST. 75
The guilt on him who made him instrument
Of mischief, and polluted from the end
Of his creation: justly then accursed
As vitiated in nature : more to know
Concerned not man, (since he no further knew,)
Nor altered his offence; yet God at last
To Satan first in sin his doom applied,
Though in mysterious terms, judged as then best:
And on the serpent thus his curse let fall :
* Because thou hast done this, thou art accursed
Above all cattle, each beast of the field ;
Upon thy belly grovelling thou shalt go,
And dust shalt eat all the days of thy life.
Between thee and the woman I will put
Enmity, and between thine and her seed;
Her seed shall bruise thy head, thou bruise his heel.”
So spake this oracle, then verified
When Jesus, Son of Mary, second Eve,
Saw Satan fall, like lightning, down from heaven,
Prince of the air; then, rising from his grave,
Spoiled principalities and powers, triumphed
In open show; and, with ascension bright,
Captivity led captive through the air,
The realm itself of Satan, long usurped;
Whom he shall tread at last under our feet;
Even he, who now foretold his fatal bruise :
And to the woman thus his sentence turned :
‘Thy sorrow I will greatly multiply
By thy conception ; children thou shalt bring
In sorrow forth; and to thy husband's will
Thine shall submit; he over thee shall rule.’
On Adam last thus judgment he pronounced
‘Because thou hast hearkened to the voice of thy wife,
And eaten of the tree concerning which
I charged thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat thereof:
Cursed is the ground for thy sake; thou in sorrow
Shalt eat thereof, all the days of thy life;
Thorns also and thistles it shall bring thee forth
Unbid; and thou shalt eat of the herb of the field;
In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread,
Till thou return unto the ground ; for thou
Out of the ground wast taken ; know thy birth,
For dust thou art, and shalt to dust return.”
So judged he man, both judge and saviour sent;
And the instant stroke of death, denounced that day,
Removed far off; then, pitying how they stood
Before him naked to the air, that now
Must suffer change, disdained not to begin
Thenceforth the form of servant to assume;
As when he washed his servants’ feet; so now
As father of his family, he clad
Their nakedness with skins of beasts, or slain,
Or as the snake with youthful coat repaid;
And thought not much to clothe his enemies;
Nor he their outward only with the skins
Of beasts, but inward nakedness, much more
Opprobrious, with his robe of righteousness,
Arraying, covered from his Father's sight.
*~ ** – ~ * ~ *
****** ******
2
To him with swift ascent he up returned
Into his blissful bosom reassumed,
In glory, as of old; to him appeased,
All, though all-knowing, what had passed with man
Recounted, mixing intercession sweet.
Meanwhile, ere thus was sinned and judged on
- earth,
Within the gates of hell sat Sin and Death,
In counterview within the gates, that now
Stood open wide, belching outrageous flame
I’ar into Chaos, since the fiend passed through,
Sin opening ; who thus now to Death began :
‘O son, why sit we here each other viewing
Idly, while Satan, our great author, thrives
In other worlds, and happier seat provides
For us, his offspring dear? It cannot be
But that success attends him; if mishap,
Ere this he had returned, with fury driven
By his avengers, since no place like this
Can fit his punishment, or their revenge.
Methinks I feel new strength within me rise,
Wings growing, and dominion given me large,
Beyond this deep; whatever draws me on,
Or sympathy, or some connatural force,
Powerful at greatest distance to unite
With secret amity things of like kind,
By secretest conveyance. Thou, my shade
Inseparable, must with me along :
For Death from Sin no power can separate. . . . .
But, lest the difficulty of passing back
Stay his return perhaps over this gulf
Impassable, impervious; let us try
Adventurous work, yet to thy power and mine
Not unagreeable, to found a path
Over this main from hell to that new world,
Where Satan now prevails; a monument
Of merit high to all the infernal host,
Easing their passage hence, for intercourse,
Or transmigration, as their lot shall lead.
Nor can I miss the way, so strongly drawn
By this new-felt attraction and instinct.”
Whom thus the meager shadow answered soon :
* Go, whither fate, and inclination strong,
Leads thee; I shall not lag behind, nor err
The way, thou leading; such a scent I draw
Of carnage, prey innumerable, and taste
The savour of death from alrthings there that live;
Nor shall I to the work thou enterprisest
Be wanting, but afford thee equal aid.’
So saying, with delight he snuffed the smell
Of mortal change on earth. As when a flock
Of ravenous fowl, though many a league remote,
Against the day of battle, to a field,
Where armies lie encamped, come flying lured
With scent of living carcasses designed
For death, the following day, in bloody fight:
So scented the grim feature, and upturned
His nostril wide into the murky air;
Sagacious of his quarry from so far.
Then both from out hell-gates, into the waste
Wide anarchy of chaos, damp and dark,
Flew diverse; and with power (their power was great)
Hovering upon the waters, what they met
Solid or slimy, as in raging sea
76 PARADISE LOST.
Book X.
Tost up and down, together crowded drove,
Prom each side shoaling towards the mouth of hell :
As when two polar winds, blowing adverse
Upon the Cronian sea, together drive
Mountains of ice, that stop the imagined way
Beyond Petsora eastward, to the rich
Cathaian coast. The aggregated soil
Death with his mace petrific, cold and dry,
As with a trident smote, and fixed as firm
As Delos, floating once; the rest his look
Bound with Gorgonian rigour not to move ;
And with asphaltic slime broad as the gate,
Deep to the roots of hell the gathered beach
They fastened, and the mole immense wrought on
Over the foaming deep, high-arched, a bridge
Of length prodigious, joining to the wall
Immoveable of this now fenceless world,
Forfeit to death ; from hence a passage broad,
Smooth, easy, inoffensive, down to hell.
So, if great things to small may be compared,
Xerxes, the liberty of Greece to yoke,
From Susa, his Memnonian palace high,
Came to the sea; and, over Hellespont
Bridging his way, Europe with Asia joined,
And scourged with many a stroke the indignant waves.
Now had they brought the work by wondrous art
Pontifical, a bridge of pendant rock,
Over the vexed abyss, following the track
Of Satan to the self-same place where he
I'irst lighted from his wing, and landed safe
From out of chaos, to the outside bare
Of this round world : with pins of adamant
And chains they made all fast, too fast they made
And durable ! And now in little space
The confines met of empyréan heaven,
And of this world ; and on the left hand, hell
With long reach interposed ; three several ways
In sight, to each of these three places led.
And now their way to earth they had descried,
To Paradise first tending; when, behold !
Satan, in likeness of an angel bright,
Betwixt the Centaur and the Scorpion steering
His zenith, while the sun in Aries rose :
Disguised he came; but those his children dear
Their parent soon discerned, though in disguise.
He, after Eve seduced, unminded slunk
Into the wood fast by ; and, changing shape,
To observe the sequel, saw his guileful act
By Eve, though all unweeting, seconded
Upon her husband ; saw their shame that sought
Vain covertures; but when he saw descend
The Son of God to judge them, terrified
He fled ; not hoping to escape, but shun
The present; fearing, guilty, what his wrath
Might suddenly inflict; that past, returned
By night, and listening where the hapless pair
Sat in their sad discourse, and various plaint,
Thence gathered his own doom ; which understood,
Not instant, but of future time, with joy
And tidings fraught, to hell he now returned ;
And at the brink of chaos, near the foot
Of this new wondrous pontifice, unhoped
Met, who to meet him came, his offspring dear.
Great joy was at their meeting, and at sight
Of that stupendous bridge his joy increased.
Long he admiring stood, till Sin, his fair
Enchanting daughter, thus the silence broke :
“O parent, these are thy magnific deeds,
Thy trophies which thou viewest as not thine own;
Thou art their author, and prime architect :
For I no sooner in my heart divined
(My heart, which by a secret harmony
Still moves with thine, joined in connexion sweet)
That thou on earth hadst prospered, which thy looks
Now also evidence, but straight I felt,
Though distant from thee worlds between, yet felt
That I must after thee, with this thy son:
Such fatal consequence unites us three.
Hell could no longer hold us in our bounds,
Nor this unvoyageable gulf obscure
Detain from following thy illustrious track:
Thou hast achieved our liberty, confined
Within hell-gates till now ; thou us impowered
To fortify thus far, and overlay,
With this portentous bridge, the dark abyss.
Thine now is all this world; thy virtue hath won
What thy hands builded not; thy wisdom gained
With odds what war hath lost, and fully avenged
Our foil in heaven ; here thou shalt monarch reign,
There didst not : there let him still victor sway,
As battle hath adjudged ; from this new world
Retiring, by his own doom alienated ;
And henceforth monarchy with thee divide
Of all things, parted by the empyreal bounds,
His quadrature, from thy orbicular world;
Or try thee now more dangerous to his throne.’
Whom thus the prince of darkness answered glad :
‘Fair daughter, and thou son and grandchild both ;
High proof ye now have given to the race
Of Satan, (for I glory in the name,
Antagonist of heaven's Almighty King,)
Amply have merited of me, of all
The infernal empire, that so near heaven's door
Triumphal with triumphal act have met,
Mine, with this glorious work; and made one realm,
Hell and this world, one realm, one continent
Of easy thoroughfare. Therefore, while I
Descend through darkness, on your road with ease,
To my associate powers, them to acquaint
With these successes, and with them rejoice;
You two this way, among these numerous orbs,
All yours, right down to Paradise descend;
There dwell, and reign in bliss ; thence on the earth
Dominion exercise and in the air,
Chiefly on man, sole lord of all declared;
Him first make sure your thrall, and lastly kill.
My substitutes I send ye, and create
Plenipotent on earth, of matchless might
Issuing from ime: on your joint vigour now
My hold of this new kingdom all depends,
Through Sin to Death exposed by my exploit.
If your joint power prevail, the affairs of hell
Book X.
PARADISE LOST. 77
No detriment need fear; go, and be strong.’
So saying, he dismissed them; they with speed
Their course through thickest constellations held,
Spreading their bane; the blasted stars looked wan,
And planets, planet-struck, real eclipse
Then suffered. The other way Satan went down
The causey to hell-gate: on either side
Disparted chaos overbuilt exclaimed,
And with rebounding surge the bars assailed,
That scorned his indignation : through the gate,
Wide open and unguarded, Satan passed,
And all about found desolate; for those,
Appointed to sit there, had left their charge,
Flown to the upper world; the rest were all
Far to the inland retired, about the walls
Of Pandemonium, city and proud seat
Of Lucifer; so by allusion called
Of that bright star to Satan paragoned:
There kept their watch the legions, while the grand
In council sat, solicitous what chance
Might intercept their emperor sent; so he
Departing gave command, and they observed.
As when the Tartar from his Russian foe,
By Astracan, over the snowy plains,
Retires; or Bactrian Sophi, from the horns
Of Turkish crescent, leaves all waste beyond
The realm of Aladule, in his retreat
To Taurus or Casbeen : so these, the late
Heaven-banished host, left desert utmost hell
Many a dark league, reduced in careful watch
Round their metropolis; and now expecting
Each hour their great adventurer, from the search
Of foreign worlds: he through the midst unmarked,
In show plebeian angel militant
Of lowest order, passed; and from the door
Of that Plutonian hall, invisible
Ascended his high throne; which, under state
Of richest texture spread, at the upper end
Was placed in regal lustre. Down a while
He sat, and round about him saw, unseen ;
At last, as from a cloud, his fulgent head
And shape star-bright appeared, or brighter; clad
With what permissive glory since his fall
Was left him, or false glitter: all amazed
At that so sudden blaze, the Stygian throng
Bent their aspéct, and whom they wished beheld,
Their mighty chief returned : loud was the acclaim:
Forth rushed in haste the great consulting peers,
Raised from their dark divan, and with like joy
Congratulant approached him; who with hand
Silence, and with these words attention, won :
“Thrones, dominations, princedoms, virtues, powers;
For in possession such, not only of right,
I call ye, and declare ye now ; returned
Successful beyond hope, to lead ye forth
Triumphant out of this infernal pit
Abominable, accursed, the house of woe,
And dungeon of our tyrant: now possess,
As lords, a spacious world, to our native heaven
Little inferior, by my adventure hard
With peril great achieved. Long were to tell
What I have done, what suffered ; with what pain
Voyaged the unreal, vast, unbounded deep
Of horrible confusion ; over which
By Sin and Death a broad way now is paved,
To expedite your glorious march; but I
Toiled out my uncouth passage, forced to ride
The untractable abyss, plunged in the womb
Of unoriginal night and chaos wild;
That, jealous of their secrets, fiercely opposed
My journey strange, with clamorous uproar
Protesting ſate supreme ; thence how I found
The new-created world, which fame in heaven
Long had foretold, a fabric wonderful
Of absolute perfection therein man
Placed in a Paradise, by our exile
Made happy: him by fraud I have seduced
From his Creator; and, the more to increase
Your wonder, with an apple; he, thereat
Offended, worth your laughter! hath given up
Both his beloved man and all his world,
To Sin and Death a prey, and so to us,
Without our hazard, labour, or alarm,
To range in, and to dwell, and over man
To rule, as over all he should have ruled.
True is, me also he hath judged, or rather
Me not, but the brute serpent in whose shape
Man I deceived : that which to me belongs
Is enmity, which he will put between
Me and mankind ; I am to bruise his heel ;
His seed, when is not set, shall bruise my head.
A world who would not purchase with a bruise,
Or much more grievous pain P Ye have the account
Of my performance: what remains, ye gods,
But up, and enter now into full bliss P’
So having said, a while he stood, expecting
Their universal shout, and high applause,
To fill his ear; when, contrary, he hears
On all sides, from innumerable tongues,
A dismal universal hiss, the sound
Of public scorn; he wondered, but not long
Had leisure, wondering at himself now more;
His visage drawn he felt to sharp and spare;
His arms clung to his ribs; his legs entwining
Each other, till supplanted down he fell
A monstrous serpent on his belly prone,
Reluctant, but in vain; a greater Power
Now ruled him, punished in the shape he sinned,
According to his doom. He would have spoke,
But hiss for hiss returned with forked tongue
To forked tongue; for now were all transformed
Alike, to serpents all, as accessories
To his bold riot: dreadful was the din
Of hissing through the hall, thick-swarming now
With complicated monsters head and tail,
Scorpion and asp, and amphisbaena dire,
Cerastes horned, hydrus, and elops drear,
And dipsas (not so thick swarmed once the soil
Bedropt with blood of Gorgon, or the isle
Ophiusa ;) but still greatest he the midst,
Now dragon grown, larger than whom the sun
Ingendered in the Pythian vale or slime,
78 PARADISE LOST.
Book X.
Huge Python, and his power no less he seemed
Above the rest still to retain. They all
Him followed, issuing forth to the open field,
Where all yet left of that revolted rout,
Heaven-fallen, in station stood or just array;
Sublime with expectation when to see
In triumph issuing forth their glorious chief.
They saw, but other sight instead a crowd
Of ugly serpents; horror on them fell,
And horrid sympathy; for, what they saw,
They felt themselves, now changing ; down their arms,
Down fell the spear and shield; down they as fast;
And the dire hiss renewed, and the dire form
Catched by contagion; like in punishment,
As in their crime. Thus was the applause they meant
Turned to exploding hiss, triumph to shame
Cast on themselves from their own mouths.
stood
A grove hard by, sprung up with this their change,
His will who reigns above, to aggravate
Their penance, laden with fair fruit, like that
Which grew in Paradise, the bait of Eve
Used by the tempter: on that prospect strange
Their earnest eyes they fixed, imagining
For one forbidden tree a multitude
Now risen, to work them further woe or shame;
Yet, parched with scalding thirst and hunger fierce,
Though to delude them sent, could not abstain;
But on they rolled in heaps, and, up the trees
Climbing, sat thicker than the snaky locks
That curled Megaera. Greedily they plucked
The fruitage fair to sight, like that which grew
Near that bituminous lake where Sodom flamed ;
This more delusive, not the touch, but taste
Deceived; they fondly thinking to allay
Their appetite with gust, instead of fruit
Chewed bitter ashes, which the offended taste
With spattering noise rejected : oſt they assayed,
Hunger and thirst constraining ; drugged as oſt,
With hatefullest disrelish writhed their jaws,
With soot and cinders filled; so oft they fell
Into the same allusion, not as man
Whom they triumphed once lapsed.
plagued
And worn with famine, long and ceaseless hiss,
Till their lost shape, permitted, they resumed ;
Yearly enjoined, some say, to undergo
This annual humbling certain numbered days,
To dash their pride, and joy, for man seduced.
However, some tradition they dispersed
Among the heathen of their purchase got;
And fabled how the serpent, whom they called
Ophion, with Eurynome, the wide-
Encroaching Eve perhaps, had first the rule
Of high Olympus; thence by Saturn driven
And Ops, ere yet Dictaean Jove was born.
Meanwhile in Paradise the hellish pair
Too soon arrived; Sin, there in power before,
Once actual ; now in body, and to dwell
Habitual habitant; behind her Death,
Close following, pace for pace, not mounted yet
There
Thus were they
On his pale horse: to whom Sin thus began: ,
* Second of Satan sprung, all-conquering Death !
What thinkest thou of our empire now, though earned
With travel difficult, not better far
Than still at hell's dark threshold to have sat watch,
Unnamed, undreaded, and thyself half-starved P’
Whom thus the sin-born monster answered soon :
“To me, who with eternal famine pine,
Alike is hell, or Paradise, or heaven ;
There best, where most with ravine I may meet:
******Arsº º
Which here, though plenteous, all too little See IſlS
To stuff his maw, this vast un-hidebound corpse.'
To whom the incestuous mother thus replied:
‘Thou therefore on these herbs, and fruits, and
flowers,
Feed first ; on each beast next, and fish, and fowl;
No homely morsels: and whatever thing
The scythe of Time mows down, devour unspared ;

Till I, in man residing, through the race,
This said, they both betook them several ways,
Both to destroy, or unimmortal make
| All kinds, and for destruction to mature
Sooner or later; which the Almighty seeing,
From his transcendent seat the saints among,
To those bright orders uttered thus his voice:
‘See, with what heat these dogs of hell advance
To waste and havoc yonder world, which I
So fair and good created ; and had still
Kept in that state, had not the folly of man
Let in these wasteful furies, who impute
Folly to me; so doth the prince of hell
And his adherents, that with so much ease
I suffer them to enter and possess
A place so heavenly; and, conniving, seem
To gratify my scornful enemies,
That laugh, as if, transported with some fit
Of passion, I to them had quitted all,
At random yielded up to their misrule;
And know not that I called, and drew them thither,
My hell-hounds, to lick up the draff and filth
Which man's polluting sin with taint hath shed
On what was pure ; till crammed and gorged, migh
burst,
With sucked and glutted offal, at one sling
Of thy victorious arm, well-pleasing Son,
Both Sin, and Death, and yawning grave, at last,
Through chaos hurled, obstruct the mouth of hell
For ever, and seal up his ravenous jaws.
Then heaven and earth renewed shall be made pure
To sanctity, that shall receive no stain:
Till then, the curse pronounced on both precedes.’
He ended, and the heavenly audience loud
Sung halleluiah, as the sound of seas,
Through multitude that sung : “Just are thy ways,
Righteous are thy decrees on all thy works;
Who can extenuate thee P Next, to the Son,
Destined Restorer of mankind, by whom
# New heaven and earth shall to the ages rise,
Or down from heaven descend.” Such was their song;
His thoughts, his looks, words, actions, all infect;
| And season him thy last and sweetest prey.’
Book X.
PARADISE LOST. 79
While the Creator calling forth by name
His mighty angels, gave them several charge,
As sorted best with present things. The sun
Had first his precept so to move, so shine,
As might affect the earth with cold and heat
Scarce tolerable, and from the north to call
Decrepit winter; from the south to bring
Solstitial summer’s heat. To the blank moon
Her office they prescribed; to the other five
Their planetary motions, and aspécts,
In sextile, square, and trine, and opposite,
Of noxious efficacy, and when to join
In synod unbenign ; and taught the fixed
Their influence malignant when to shower,
Which of them rising with the sun, or falling,
Should prove tempestuous: to the winds they set
Their corners, when with bluster to confound
Sea, air, and shore; the thunder when to roll
With terror through the dark ačreal hall.
Some say he bid his angels turn askance
The poles of earth, twice ten degrees and more,
From the sun's axle; they with labour pushed
Oblique the centric globe: some say, the sun
Was bid turn reins from the equinoctial road
Like-distant breadth to Taurus with the seven
Atlantic Sisters, and the Spartan Twins,
Up to the tropic Crab : thence down amain
By Leo, and the Virgin, and the Scales,
As deep as Capricorn; to bring in change
Of seasons to each clime; else had the spring
Perpetual smiled on earth with verdant flowers,
Equal in days and nights, except to those
Beyond the polar circles; to them day
Had unbenighted shone, while the low sun,
To recompense his distance, in their sight
Had rounded still the horizon, and not known
Or east or west; which had forbid the snow
From cold Estotiland, and south as far
Beneath Magellan. At that tasted fruit
The sun, as from Thyéstean banquet, turned
His course intended; else, how had the world
Inhabited, though sinless, more than now,
Avoided pinching cold and scorching heat P
These changes in the heavens, though slow, produced
Like change on sea and land; sideral blast,
Vapour, and mist, and exhalation hot,
Corrupt and pestilent: now, from the north
Of Norumbega, and the Samoed shore,
Bursting their brazen dungeon, armed with ice,
And snow, and hail, and stormy gust and flaw,
Boreas, and Caecias, and Argestes loud,
And Thrascias, rend the woods, and seas upturn;
With adverse blast upturns them from the south
Notus, and Afer black with thunderous clouds
From Serraliona; thwart of these, as fierce,
Forth rush the Lévant and the Ponent winds,
Eurus and Zephyr, with their lateral moise,
Sirocco and Libecchio. Thus began
Outrage from lifeless things; but Discord first,
Daughter of Sin, among the irrational
Death introduced, through fierce antipathy:
|
|
Beast now with beast 'gan war, and fowl with fowl,
And fish with fish : to graze the herb all leaving,
Devoured each other; nor stood much in awe
Of man, but fled him : or, with countenance grim,
Glared on him passing. These were from without
The growing miseries, which Adam saw
Already in part, though hid in gloomiest shade,
To sorrow abandoned, but worse felt within;
And, in a troubled sea of passion tost,
Thus to disburden sought with sad complaint:
“O miserable of happy Is this the end
Of this new glorious world, and me so late
The glory of that glory, who now become
Accursed, of blessed ? hide me from the face
Of God, whom to behold was then my highth
Of happiness! Yet well, if here would end
The misery; I deserved it, and would bear
My own deservings; but this will not serve:
All that I eat or drink, or shall beget,
Is propagated curse. O voice, once heard
Delightfully, Increase and multiply;
Now death to hear! for what can I increase,
Or multiply, but curses on my head 2
Who of all ages to succeed, but, feeling
The evil on him brought by me, will curse
My head “Ill fare our ancestor impure,
For this we may thank Adam ''' but his thanks
Shall be the execration: so, besides
Mine own that bide upon me, all from me
Shall with a fierce reflux on me rebound;
On me, as on their natural center, light
Heavy, though in their place. O fleeting joys
Of Paradise, dear-bought with lasting woes!
Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay
To mould me man P Did I solicit thee
From darkness to promote me, or here place
In this delicious garden P As my will
Concurred not to my being, it were but right
And equal to reduce me to my dust;
Desirous to resign and render back
All I received; unable to perform
Thy terms too hard, by which I was to hold
The good I sought not. To the loss of that,
Sufficient penalty, why hast thou added
The sense of endless woes 8 Inexplicable
Thy justice seems; yet, to say truth, too late
I thus contest; then should have been refused
Those terms, whatever, when they were proposed :
Thou didst accept them; wilt thou enjoy the good,
Then cavil the conditions? and, though God
Made thee without thy leave, what if thy son
Prove disobedient; and, reproved, retort,
“Wherefore didst thou beget me? I sought it not:”
*Wouldst thou admit for his contempt of thee
That proud excuse P yet him not thy election,
| But natural necessity, begot.
| God made thee of choice his own, and of his own
|To serve him; thy reward was of his grace;
| Thy punishment then justly is at his will.
| Be it so, for I submit; his doom is fair,
|
| That dust I am, and shall to dust return:
80 PARADISE LOST.
Book X.
O welcome hour whenever! Why delays
His hand to execute what his decree
Fixed on this day ' Why do I overlive 2
Why am I mocked with death, and lengthened out
To deathless pain f How gladly would I meet
Mortality my sentence, and be earth
Insensible ! How glad would lay me down
As in my mother's lap ! There I should rest
And sleep secure; his dreadful voice no more
Would thunder in my ears; no fear of worse
To me, and to my offspring, would torment me
With cruel expectation. Yet one doubt
Pursues me still, lest all I cannot die;
Lest that pure breath of life, the spirit of man
Which God inspired, cannot together perish
With this corporeal clod: then, in the grave,
Or in some other dismal place, who knows
But I shall die a living death º O thought
Horrid, if true! Yet why It was but breath
Of life that sinned ; what dies but what had life
And sin The body properly hath neither.
All of me then shall die : let this appease
The doubt, since human reach no further knows.
For though the Lord of all be infinite,
Is his wrath also P Be it, man is not so,
But mortal doomed. How can he exercise
Wrath without end on man, whom death must end ?
Can he make deathless death P. That were to make
Strange contradiction, which to God himself
Impossible is held ; as argument
Of weakness, not of power. Will he draw out,
For anger's sake, finite to infinite,
In punished man, to satisfy his rigour,
Satisfied never ? That were to extend
His sentence beyond dust and nature's law,
By which all causes else, according still
To the reception of their matter, act;
Not to the extent of their own sphere. But say
That death be not one stroke, as I supposed,
Bereaving sense, but endless misery
From this day onward : which I feel begun
Both in me, and without me; and so last
To perpetuity : ay me! that fear
Comes thundering back with dreadful revolution
On my defenceless head ; both death and I
Are found eternal, and incorporate both :
Nor I on my part single; in me all
Posterity stands cursed : fair patrimony
That I must leave ye, sons ! O, were I able
To waste it all myself, and leave ye none !
So disinherited, how would ye bless
Me, now your curse 2 Ah, why should all mankind,
I'or one man's fault, thus guiltless be condemned,
If guiltless P But from me what can proceed,
But all corrupt; both mind and will depraved
Not to do only, but to will the same
With me? How can they then acquitted stand
In sight of God P Him, after all disputes,
Forced I absolve: all my evasions vain,
And reasonings, though through mazes, lead me still
But to my own conviction : first and last
On me, me only, as the source and spring
Of ali corruption, all the blame lights due ; ſº
So might the wrath ! Fond wish ! couldst thou sup-
port
That burden, heavier than the earth to bear;
Than all the world much heavier, though divided
With that bad woman P. Thus, what thou desirest,
And what thou fearest, alike destroys all hope
Of refuge, and concludes thee miserable
Beyond all past example and futúre ;
To Satan only like both crime and doom.
O conscience' into what abyss of fears
And horrors hast thou driven me; out of which
I find no way, from deep to deeper plunged ''
Thus Adam to himself lamented loud,
Through the still night: not now, as ere man fell,
Wholesome, and cool, and mild, but with black air
Accompanied ; with damps and dreadful gloom;
Which to his evil conscience represented
All things with double terror: on the ground
Outstretched he lay, on the cold ground; and oſt
Cursed his creation; death as oft accused
Of tardy execution, since denounced
The day of his offence. ‘Why comes not death,’
Said he, “with one thrice acceptable stroke
To end me? Shall truth fail to keep her word,
Justice divine not hasten to be just 2
But death comes not at call; justice divine
Mends not her slowest pace for prayers or cries.
O woods, O fountains, hillocks, dales, and bowers!
With other echo late I taught your shades
To answer, and resound far other song.’
Whom thus afflicted when sad Eve beheld,
Desolate where she sat, approaching nigh,
Soft words to his fierce passion she assayed;
But her with stern regard he thus repelled :
‘Out of my sight, thou serpent ' That name best
Befits thee with him leagued, thyself as false
And hateful; nothing wants, but that thy shape,
Like his, and colour serpentine, may show
Thy inward fraud; to warn all creatures from thee
Henceforth ; lest that too heavenly form pretended
To hellish falsehood, snare them . But for thee
I had persisted happy: had not thy pride
And wandering vanity, when least was safe,
Rejected my forewarning, and disdained
Not to be trusted ; longing to be seen,
Though by the devil himself; him overweening
To over-reach ; but, with the serpent meeting,
Fooled and beguiled; by him thou, I by thee,
To trust thee from my side; imagined wise,
Constant, mature, proof against all assaults;
And understood not all was but a show,
Rather than solid virtue; all but a rib
Crooked by nature, bent, as now appears,
More to the part sinister, from me drawn;
Well if thrown out, as supernumerary
To my just number found. O ! why did God.
Creator wise, that peopled highest heaven
With spirits masculine, create at last
This novelty on earth, this fair defect
-*_-
*T*~
Book X.
PARADISE LOST 81
Qf nature, and not fill the world at once_
lºr--~~~~ ... … ------ * : * ' " . ," ----> … -
With men, as angels, without ſeminine;
Qr find some other way to generate
ankind? This mischief had not then befallen,
Ånd more that shall befall; innumerable
Disturbances on earth through female snares,
And strait conjunction with this sex : for either
He never shall find out fit mate, but such
As some misfortune brings him, or mistake;
Or whom he wishes most shall seldom gain,
Through her perverseness, but shall see her gained
By a far worse; or, if she love, withheld
By parents; or his happiest choice too late
Shall meet, already linked and wedlock-bound
To a fell adversary, his hate or shame :
Which infinite calamity shall cause
To human life, and household peace confound.”
He added not, and from her turned; but Eve,
Not so repulsed, with tears that ceased not flowing,
And tresses all disordered, at his feet
Fell humble; and, embracing them, besought
His peace, and thus proceeded in her plaint:
‘Forsake me not thus, Adam witness heaven
What love sincere, and reverence in my heart
I bear thee, and unweeting have offended,
Unhappily deceived ! Thy suppliant
I beg, and clasp thy knees; bereave me not,
Whereon I live, thy gentle looks, thy aid,
Thy counsel, in this uttermost distress,
My only strength and stay: forlorn of thee,
Whither shall I betake me, where subsist P
While yet we live, scarce one short hour perhaps,
Between us two let there be peace; both joining
As joined in injuries, one enmity
Against a foe by doom express assigned us,
That cruel serpent: on me exercise not
Thy hatred for this misery befallen;
On me already lost, me than thyself
More miserable ! both have sinned ; but thou
Against God only, I against God and thee;
And to the place of judgment will return,
There with my cries impôrtune Heaven; that all
The sentence, from thy head removed, may light
On me, sole cause to thee of all this woe ;
Me, me only, just object of his ire !’
She ended weeping; and her lowly plight,
Immoveable, till peace obtained from fault
Acknowledged and deplored, in Adam wrought
Commiseration: soon his heart relented
Towards her, his life so late, and sole delight,
Now at his feet submissive in distress;
Creature so fair his reconcilement seeking,
His counsel, whom she had displeased, his aid:
As one disarmed, his anger all he lost,
And thus with peaceful words upraised her soon :
“ Unwary, and too desirous, as before,
So now of what thou knowest not, who desirest
The punishment all on thyself; alas !
Bear thine own first, ill able to sustain
His full wrath, whose thou feelest as yet least part
And my displeasure bearest so ill. If prayers
* G
2
Could alter high decrees, I to that place
Would speed before thee and be louder heard,
That on my head all might be visited;
Thy frailty and infirmer sex forgiven,
To me committed, and by me exposed.
But rise; let us no more contend, nor blame
Each other, blamed enough elsewhere; but strive
In offices of love, how we may lighten
Each other's burden, in our share of woe;
Since this day’s death denounced, if aught I see,
Will prove no sudden, but a slow-paced evil;
A long day's dying to augment our pain,
And to our seed (O hapless seed ') derived.”
To whom thus Eve, recovering heart, replied :
“Adam, by sad experiment I know
How little weight my words with thee can find,
Found so erroneous; thence by just event
Found so unfortunate: nevertheless,
Restored by thee, vile as I am, to place
Of new acceptance, hopeful to regain
Thy love, the sole contentment of my heart
Living or dying, from thee I will not hide
What thoughts in my unquiet breast are risen,
Tending to some relief of our extremes,
Or end; though sharp and sad, yet tolerable,
As in our evils, and of easier choice.
If care of our descent perplex us most,
Which must be born to certain woe, devoured
By death at last; and miserable it is,
To be to others cause of misery, :
Our own begotten, and of our loins to bring
Into this cursed world a woeful race,
That after wretched life must be at last
Food for so foul a monster; in thy power
It lies, yet ere conception to prevent
The race unblest, to being yet unbegot.
Childless thou art, childless remain : so Death
Shall be deceived his glut, and with us two
Be forced to satisfy his ravenous maw.
But if thou judge it hard and difficult,
Conversing, looking, loving, to abstain
From love's due rites, nuptial embraces sweet;
And with desire to languish without hope,
Before the present object languishing
With like desire; which would be misery
And torment less than none of what we dread;
Then, both ourselves and seed at once to free
From what we fear for both, let us make short,
Let us seek Death ; or, he not found, supply
With our own hands his office on ourselves.
Why stand we longer shivering under fears
That show no end but death, and have the power,
Of many ways to die the shortest choosing,
Destruction with destruction to destroy P’
She ended here, or vehement despair
Broke off the rest; so much of death her thoughts
Had entertained, as dyed her cheeks with pale.
But Adam with such counsel nothing swayed,
To better hopes his more attentive mind
Labouring had raised ; and thus to Eve replied :
“Eve, thy contempt of life and pleasure seems
82 PARADISE LOST.
Book X.
To argue in thee something more sublime
And excellent, than what thy mind contemns;
But self-destruction therefore sought, refutes
That excellence thought in thee; and implies,
Not thy contempt, but anguish and regret
For loss of life and pleasure overloved.
Or if thou covet death, as utmost end
Of misery, so thinking to evade
The penalty pronounced; doubt not but God
Hath wiselier armed his vengeful ire, than so
To be forestalled ; much more I fear lest death,
So snatched, will not exempt us from the pain
We are by doom to pay; rather such acts
Of contumacy will provoke the Highest
To make death in us live : then let us seek
Some safer resolution, which methinks
I have in view, calling to mind with heed
Part of our sentence, that thy seed shall bruise
The serpent’s head ; piteous amends ! unless
Be meant, whom I conjecture, our grand foe,
Satan; who, in the serpent, hath contrived
Against us this deceit: to crush his head
Would be revenge indeed ' which will be lost
By death brought on ourselves, or childless days
Resolved, as thou proposest; so our foe
Shall 'scape his punishment ordained, and we
Instead shall double ours upon our heads.
No more be mentioned then of violence
Against ourselves; and wilful barrenness
That cuts us off from hope; and savours only
Rancour and pride, impatience and despite,
Reluctance against God and his just yoke
Laid on our necks. Remember with what mild
And gracious temper he both heard and judged,
Without wrath or reviling ; we expected
Immediate dissolution, which we thought
Was meant by death that day; when, lo! to thee
Pains only in childbearing were foretold,
And bringing forth ; soon recompensed with joy,
Fruit of thy womb : on me the curse aslope
Glanced on the ground ; with labour I must earn
My bread; what harm f Idleness had been worse;
My labour will sustain me; and, lest cold
Or heat should injure us, his timely care
Hath, unbcsought, provided ; and his hands
Clothed us unworthy, pitying while he judged ;
How much more, if we pray him, will his ear
Be open, and his heart to pity incline,
And teach us further by what means to shun
The inclement seasons, rain, ice, hail, and snow P
Which now the sky, with various face, begins
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To show us in this mountain; while the winds
Blow moist and keen, shattering the graceful locks
Of these fair-spreading trees; which bids us seek
Some better shroud, some better warmth to cherish
Our limbs benumbed, ere this diurnal star
Leave cold the night, how we his gathered beams
Reflected may with matter sere forment;
Or, by collision of two bodies, grind
The air attrite to fire; as late the clouds
Justling, or pushed with winds, rude in their shock,
Time the slant lightning; whose thwart flame driven
down,
Kindles the gummy bark of fir or pine,
And sends a comfortable heat from far
Which might supply the sun; such fire to use
And what may else be remedy or cure
To evils which our own misdeeds have wrought,
He will instruct us praying, and of grace
Beseeching him; so as we need not fear
To pass commodiously this life, sustained
By him with many comforts, till we end
In dust, our final rest and native home.
What better can we do, than, to the place
Repairing where he judged us, prostrate fall,
Before him reverent; and there confess
Humbly our faults, and pardon beg; with tears
Watering the ground, and with our sighs the air
Frequenting, sent from hearts contrite, in sign
Of sorrow unſeigned, and humiliation meekº
Undoubtedly he will relent, and turn
From his displeasure; in whose look serene,
When angry most he seemed and most severe,
What else but favour, grace, and mercy shone?’
So spake our father penitent; nor Eve
Felt less remorse; they, forthwith to the place
Repairing where he judged them, prostrate fell
Before him reverent; and both confessed
Humbly their faults, and pardon begged; with tears
Watering the ground, and with their sighs the air
Frequenting, sent from hearts contrite, in sign
Of sorrow unfeigned, and humiliation meek.
Book XI.
PARADISE LOST. 83
BOOK XI.
THE ARGUMENT.
The Son of God presents to his Father the prayers of our first parents now repenting, and intercedes for them : God accepts them,
but declares that they must no longer abide in Paradise; sends Michael with a band of cherubim to dispossess them; but first to
reveal to Adam future things: Michael's coming down. Adam shows to Eve certain ominous signs; he discerns Michael's ap:
roach; goes out to meet him: the angel denounces their departure. Eve's lamentation. Adam pleads, but submits: the angel
eads him up to a high hill; sets before him in vision what shall happen till the flood.
THUs they, in lowliest plight, repentant stood
Praying ; for from the mercy-seat above
Prevenient grace descending had removed
The stony from their hearts, and made new flesh
Regenerate grow instead ; that sighs now breathed
Unutterable; which the Spirit of prayer
Inspired, and winged for heaven with speedier flight
Than loudest oratory : yet their port - -
Not of mean suitors; nor important less
Seemed their petition, than when the ancient pair
In fables old, less ancient yet than these,
Deucalion and chaste Pyrrha, to restore
The race of mankind drowned, before the shrine
Of Themis stood devout. To heaven their prayers
Flew up, nor missed the way, by envious winds
Blown vagabond or frustrate : in they passed
Dimensionless through heavenly doors; then clad
With incense, where the golden altar fumed,
By their great Intercessor, came in sight
Before the Father's throne: them the glad Son
Presenting, thus to intercede began :
‘Sce, Father, what first-fruits on earth are sprung
From thy implanted grace in man ; these sighs
And prayers, which in this golden censer, mixed
With incense, I thy priest before thee bring;
Fruits of more pleasing savour, from thy seed
Sown with contrition in his heart, than those
Which, his own hand manuring, all the trees
Of Paradise could have produced ere fallen
From innocence. Now therefore bend thine ear
To supplication; hear his sighs, though mute;
Unskilful with what words to pray, let me
Interpret for him; me, his advocate
And propitiation; all his works on me,
Good, or not good, ingraft; my merit those
Shall perfect, and for these my death shall pay.
Accept me; and, in me, from these receive
The smell of peace toward mankind : let him live
Before thee reconciled, at least his days
Numbered though sad; till death, his doom, (which I
To mitigate thus plead, not to reverse,)
To better life shall yield him; where with me
All my redeemed may dwell in joy and bliss;
Made one with me, as I with thee am one.”
To whom the Father, without cloud, serene:
“All thy request for man, accepted Son,
Obtain; all thy request was my decree:
But, longer in that Paradise to dwell,
The law I gave to nature him forbids:
Those pure immortal elements that know
No gross, no unharmonious mixture foul,
Eject him, tainted now ; and purge him off,
As a distemper, gross, to air as gross,
And mortal food: as may dispose him best
For dissolution wrought by sin, that first
Distempered all things, and of incorrupt
Corrupted. I, at first, with two fair gifts
Created him endowed ; with happiness,
And immortality: that fondly lost,
This other served but to eternize woe ;
Till I provided death ; so death becomes
His final remedy; and, after life,
Tried in sharp tribulation, and refined,
By faith and faithful works, to second life,
Waked in the renovation of the just,
Resigns him up with heaven and earth renewed.
But let us call to synod all the blest,
Through heaven's wide bounds: from them I will not
hide
My judgments: how with mankind I proceed,
As how with peccant angels late they saw,
And in their state, though firm, stood more confirmed.”
He ended, and the Son gave signal high
To the bright minister that watched; he blew
His trumpet, heard in Oreb since perhaps
When God descended, and perhaps once more
To sound at general doom. The angelic blast
Filled all the regions: from their blissful bowers
Of amaranthine shade, fountain or spring,
By the waters of life, where'er they sat
In fellowships of joy, the sons of light
Hasted, resorting to the summons high ;
And took their seats: till from his throne supreme
The Almighty thus pronounced his sovran will:
“O sons, like one of us man is become
To know both good and evil, since his taste
Of that defended fruit; but let him boast
His knowledge of good lost, and evil got;
Happier, had it sufficed him to have known
Good by itself, and evil not at all.
He sorrows now, repents, and prays eontrite,
My motions in him; longer than they move,
His heart I know how variable and vain,
Self-left. Lest therefore his now bolder hand
Reach also of the tree of life, and eat,
And live for ever, dream at least to live
G 2
84 PARADISE LOST, º
Book XI.
For ever, to remove him I decree,
And send him from the garden forth to till
The ground whence he was taken, fitter soil.
Michael, this my behest have thou in charge;
Take to thee from among the cherubim
Thy choice of flaming warriors, lest the fiend,
Or in behalf of man, or to invade
Vacant possession, some new trouble raise:
Haste thee, and from the Paradise of God
Without remorse drive out the sinful pair;
From hallowed ground the unholy; and denounce
To them, and to their progeny, from thence
Perpetual banishment. Yet, lest they faint
At the sad sentence rigorously urged,
(For I behold them softened, and with tears
Bewailing their excess,) all terror hide.
If patiently thy bidding they obey,
Dismiss them not disconsolate ; reveal
To Adam what shall come in future days,
As I shall thee enlighten; intermix
My covenant in the woman’s seed renewed;
So send them forth, though sorrowing, yet in peace:
And on the east side of the garden place,
Where entrance up from Eden easiest climbs,
Cherubic watch ; and of a sword the flame
Wide-waving ; all approach far off to fright,
And guard all passage to the tree of life;
Lest Paradise a receptacle prove
To spirits foul, and all my trees their prey;
With whose stolen fruit man once more to delude.”
He ceased; and the archangelic power prepared
For swift descent; with him the cohort bright
Of watchful cherubim : four faces each
Had, like a double Janus; all their shape
Spangled with eyes more numerous than those
Of Argus, and more wakeful than to drowse,
Charmed with Arcadian pipe, the pastoral reed
Of Hermes, or his opiate rod. Meanwhile,
To re-salute the world with sacred light,
Leucothea waked, and with fresh dews embalmed
The earth ; when Adam and first matron Eve
Had ended now their orisons, and found
Strength added from above; new hope to spring
Out of despair; joy but with fear yet linked ;
Which thus to Eve his welcome words renewed:
* Eve, easily may faith admit, that all
The good which we enjoy from heaven descends;
But, that from us aught should ascend to heaven
So prevalent as to concern the mind
Of God high-blest, or to incline his will,
Hard to belief may seem ; yet this will prayer,
Or one short sigh of human breath, upborne
Even to the seat of God. For since I sought
By prayer the offended Deity to appease,
Kneeled, and before him humbled all my heart;
Methought I saw him placable and mild
Bending his ear; persuasion in me grew
That I was heard with favour; peace returned
Home to my breast, and to my memory
His promise, that thy seed shall bruise our foe;
Which, then not minded in dismay, yet now
Assures me that the bitterness of death
Is past, and we shall live. Whence hail to thee,
Eve rightly called, mother of all mankind,
Mother of all things living, since by thee
Man is to live; and all things live for man.”
To whom thus Eve with sad demeanour meek:
* Ill-worthy I, such title should belong
To me transgressor; who, for thee ordained
A help, became thy snare; to me reproach
Rather belongs, distrust, and all dispraise:
But infinite in pardon was my Judge,
That I, who first brought death on all, am graced
The source of life; next favourable thou,
Who highly thus to entitle me vouchsafest,
Far other name deserving. But the field
To labour calls us, now with sweat imposed,
Though after sleepless night; for see! the morn,
All unconcerned with our unrest, begins
Her rosy progress smiling : let us forth ;
I never from thy side henceforth to stray,
Where’er our day’s work lies, though now enjoined
Laborious till day droop; while here we dwell,
What can be toilsome in these pleasant walks P
Here let us live, though in fallen state, content.”
So spake, so wished much-humbled Eve; but fate
Subscribed not: nature first gave signs, impressed
On bird, beast, air; air suddenly eclipsed,
After short blush of morn: nigh in her sight
The bird of Jove, stooped from his aery tour,
Two birds of gayest plume before him drove;
Down from a hill the beast that reigns in woods,
First hunter then, pursued a gentle brace,
Goodliest of all the forest, hart and hind ;
Direct to the eastern gate was bent their flight.
Adam observed, and with his eye the chase
Pursuing, not unmoved, to Eve thus spake :
“O Eve, some further change awaits us nigh,
Which Heaven, by these mute signs in nature, shows
Forerunners of his purpose; or to warn
Us, haply too secure of our discharge
From penalty, because from death released
Some days: how long, and what till then our life,
Who knows? or more than this, that we are dust,
And thither must return, and be no more ?
Why else this double object in our sight
Of flight pursued in the air, and o'er the ground,
One way the self-same hour? why in the east
Darkness ere day’s mid-course, and morning-light
More orient in yon western cloud, that draws
O'er the blue firmament a radiant white,
And slow descends with something heavenly fraught?”
He erred not; for by this the heavenly bands
Down from a sky of jasper lighted now
In Paradise, and on a hill made halt;
A glorious apparition, had not doubt
And carnal fear that day dimmed Adam's eye.
Not that more glorious, when the angels met
Jacob in Mahanaim, where he saw
The field pavilioned with his guardians bright;
Nor that, which on the flaming mount appeared
In Dothan, covered with a camp of fire,
Book XI.
PARADISE LOST. 85
Against the Syrian king, who to surprise
One man, assassin like, had levied war,
War unproclaimed. The princely hierarch
In their bright stand there left his powers, to seize
Possession of the garden ; he alone,
To find where Adam sheltered, took his way,
Not unperceived of Adam ; who to Eve,
While the great visitant approached, thus spake:
* Eve, now expect great tidings, which perhaps
Of us will soon determine, or impose
New laws to be observed ; for I descry,
From yonder blazing cloud that veils the hill,
One of the heavenly host; and, by his gait,
None of the meanest; some great potentate,
Or of the thrones above; such majesty
Invests him coming : yet not terrible,
That I should fear; nor sociably mild,
As Raphaël, that I should much confide;
But solemn and sublime; whom not to offend,
With reverence I must meet, and thou retire.”
He ended; and the archangel soon drew migh,
Not in his shape celestial, but as man
Clad to meet man; over his lucid arms
A military vest of purple flowed,
Livelier than Meliboean, or the grain
Of Sarra, worn by kings and heroes old
In time of truce; Iris had dipt the woof;
His starry helm unbuckled showed him prime
In manhood where youth ended ; by his side,
As in a glistering zodiac, hung the sword,
Satan's dire dread; and in his hand the spear.
Adam bowed low ; he, kingly, from his state
Inclined not, but his coming thus declared :
“Adam, heaven's high behest no preface needs:
Sufficient that thy prayers are heard; and death,
Then due by sentence when thou didst transgress,
Defeated of his seizure many days
Given thee of grace; wherein thou mayst repent,
And one bad act with many deeds well dome
Mayst cover: well may then thy Lord, appeased,
Redeem thee quite from death's rapacious claim ;
But longer in this Paradise to dwell
Permits not : to remove thee I am come,
And send thee from the garden forth to till
The ground whence thou wast taken, fitter soil.’
He added not; for Adam at the news
Heart-struck with chilling gripe of sorrow stood,
That all his senses bound ; Eve, who unseen
Yet all had heard, with audible lament
Discovered soon the place of her retire.
“O unexpected stroke, worse than of death !
Must I thus leave thee, Paradise P thus leave
Thee, native soil P these happy walks and shades,
Fit haunt of gods P where I had hope to spend,
Quiet though sad, the respite of that day
That must be mortal to us both. O flowers,
That never will in other climate grow,
My early visitation, and my last
At even, which I bred up with tender hand
From the first opening bud, and gave ye names!
Who now shall rear ye to the sun, or rank
Your tribes, and water from the ambrosial fount
Thee lastly, nuptial bower by me adorned
With what to sight or smell was sweet ! from thee
How shall I part, and whither wander down
Into a lower world; to this obscure
And wild P how shall we breathe the other air
Less pure, accustomed to immortal fruits?'
Whom thus the angel interrupted mild :
* Lament not, Eve, but patiently resign
What justly thou hast lost, nor set thy heart,
Thus over-fond, on that which is not thine :
Thy going is not lonely ; with thee goes
Thy husband; him to follow thou art bound ;
Where he abides, think there thy native soil.’
Adam, by this from the cold sudden damp
Recovering, and his scattered spirits returned,
To Michael thus his humble words addressed :
“Celestial, whether among the thrones, or named
Of them the highest; for such of shape may seem
Prince above princes; gently hast thou told
Thy message, which might else in telling wound,
And in performing end us; what besides
Of sorrow, and dejection, and despair,
Our frailty can sustain, thy tidings bring,
Departure from this happy place, our sweet
Recess, and only consolation left
Familiar to our eyes! all places else
Inhospitable appear, and desolate;
Nor knowing us, nor known ; and, if by prayer
Incessant I could hope to change the will
Of him who all things can, I would not cease
To weary him with my assiduous cries:
But prayer against his absolute decree
No more avails than breath against the wind,
Blown stifling back on him that breathes it forth :
Therefore to his great bidding I submit.
This most afflicts me, that, departing hence,
As from his face I shall be hid, deprived
His blessed countenance: here I could frequent
With worship place by place where he vouchsafed
Presence Divine; and to my sons relate,
“On this mount he appeared ; under this tree
Stood visible; among these pines his voice
I heard; here with him at this fountain talked:”
So many grateful altars I would rear
Of grassy turf, and pile up every stone
Of lustre from the brook, in memory
Or monument to ages; and thereon
Offer sweet-smelling gums, and fruits, and flowers:
In yonder nether world where shall I seek
His bright appearances, or foot-step trace?
For though I fled him angry, yet, recalled
To life prolonged and promised race, I now
Gladly behold though but his utmost skirts
Of glory; and far off his steps adore.”
To whom thus Michael with regard benign :
“Adam, thou knowest heaven his, and all the earth
Not this rock only; his omnipresence fills
Land, sea, and air, and every kind that lives,
Fomented by his virtual power and warmed :
All the earth he gave thee to possess and rule,
86 PARADISE LOST.
Book XI.
No despicable gift; surmise not then
His presence to these narrow bounds confined
Of Paradise, or Eden: this had been
Perhaps thy capital seat, from whence had spread
All generations; and had hither come
From all the ends of the earth, to celebrate
And reverence thee, their great progenitor.
But this pre-eminence thou hast lost, brought down
To dwell on even ground now with thy sons:
Yet doubt not but in valley, and in plain,
God is, as here, and will be found alike
Present; and of his presence many a sign
Still following thee, still compassing thee round
With goodness and paternal love, his face
Express, and of his steps the track divine.
Which that thou mayest believe, and be confirmed
Ere thou from hence depart; know, I am sent
To show thee what shall come in future days
To thee, and to thy offspring ; good with bad
Expect to hear; supernal grace contendin
With sinfulness of men; thereby to learn
True patience, and to temper joy with fear
And pious sorrow ; equally inured
By moderation either state to bear,
Prosperous or advérse: so shalt thou lead
Safest thy life, and best prepared endure
Thy mortal passage when it comes. Ascend
This hill; let Eve (for I have drenched her eyes)
Here sleep below, while thou to foresight wakest;
As once thou slept'st, while she to life was formed.”
To whom thus Adam gratefully replied:
‘Ascend, I follow thee, safe guide, the path
Thou leadest me; and to the hand of Heaven subunit,
However chastening; to the evil turn
My obvious breast; arming to overcome
By suffering, and earn rest from labour won,
If so I may attain.” So both ascend
In the visions of God. It was a hill,
Of Paradise the highest; from whose top
The hemisphere of earth, in clearest ken,
Stretched out to the amplest reach of prospect lay.
Not higher that hill, nor wider looking round,
Whereon, for different cause, the tempter set
Our second Adam, in the wilderness;
To show him all earth's kingdoms, and their glory.
His eye might there command wherever stood
City of old or modern fame, the seat
Of mightiest empire, from the destined walls
Of Cambala, seat of Cathaian Can,
And Samarchand by Oxus, Temir's throne,
To Paquin of Sinaean kings; and thence
To Agra and Lahor of Great Mogul,
Down to the Golden Chersonese; or where
The Persian in Ecbatan sat, or since
In Hispahan; or where the Russian kzar
In Mosco; or the sultan in Bizance,
Turchestan-born; nor could his eye not ken
The empire of Negus to his utmost port
Ercoco, and the less maritime kings
Mombaza, and Quiloa, and Melind,
And Soſala, thought Ophir, to the realm
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Of Congo, and Angola farthest south ;
Or thence from Niger flood to Atlas mount
The kingdoms of Almansor, Fez and Sus,
Morocco, and Algiers, and Tremisen;
On Europe thence, and where Rome was to sway
The world: in spirit perhaps he also saw
Rich Mexico, the seat of Montezume,
And Cusco in Peru, the richer seat
Of Atabalipa ; and yet unspoiled
Guiana, whose great city Geryon's sons
Call El Dorado. But to nobler sights
Michael from Adam's eyes the film removed,
Which that false fruit that promised clearer sight
Had bred; then purged with euphrasy and rue
The visual nerve, for he had much to see;
And from the well of life three drops instilled.
So deep the power of these ingredients pierced,
Even to the inmost seat of mental sight,
That Adam, now enforced to close his eyes,
Sunk down, and all his spirits became entranced;
But him the gentle angel by the hand
Soon raised, and his attention thus recalled :
“Adam, now ope thine eyes; and first behold
The effects, which thy original crime hath wrought
In some to spring from thee; who never touched
The excepted tree; nor with the snake conspired;
Nor sinned thy sin; yet from that sin derive
Corruption, to bring forth more violent deeds.”
His eyes he opened, and beheld a field,
Part arable and tilth, whereon were sheaves
New-reaped; the other part sheep-walks and ſolds;
I' the midst an altar as the land-mark stood
Rustic, of grassy sward; thither anon
A sweaty reaper from his tillage brought
First-fruits, the green ear, and the yellow sheaf,
Unculled, as came to hand; a shepherd next,
More meek, came with the firstlings of his flock,
Choicest and best; then, sacrificing, laid
The inwards and their fat, with incense strewed
On the cleft wood, and all due rites performed:
His offering soon propitious fire from heaven
Consumed with nimble glance, and grateful steam:
The other's not, for his was not sincere;
Whereat he inly raged, and, as they talked,
Smote him into the midriff with a stone
That beat out life: he fell; and, deadly pale,
Groaned out his soul with gushing blood effused.
Much at that sight was Adam in his heart
Dismayed, and thus in haste to the angel cried:
“O teacher, some great mischief hath befallen
To that meek man, who well had sacrificed;
Is piety thus and pure devotion paid P’
To whom Michael thus, he also moved, replied:
“These two are brethren, Adam, and to come
Out of thy loins; the unjust the just hath slain,
For envy that his brother's offering found
From heaven acceptance; but the bloody fact
Will be avenged; and the other's faith, approved,
Lose no reward; though here thou see him die,
Rolling in dust and gore.’ To which our sire:
‘Alas! both for the deed, and for the cause !
Book XI.
PARADISE LOST. 87
But have I now seen death P Is this the way
I must return to native dust? O sight
Of terror, ſoul and ugly to behold,
Horrid to think, how horrible to feel !’
To whom thus Michaël : “Death thou hast seen
In his first shape on man ; but many shapes
Of death, and many are the ways that lead
To his grim cave, all dismal; yet to sense
More terrible at the entrance, than within.
Some, as thou sawest, by violent stroke shall die;
By fire, flood, famine, by intemperance more
In meats and drinks, which on the earth shall bring
Diseases dire, of which a monstrous crew
Before thee shall appear; that thou mayest know
What misery the inabstinence of Eve
Shall bring on men.’ Immediately a place
Before his eyes appeared, sad, noisome, dark ;
A lazar-house it seemed ; wherein were laid
Numbers of all diseased ; all maladies
Of ghastly spasm, or racking torture, qualms
Of heart-sick agony, all feverous kinds,
Convulsions, epilepsies, fierce catarrhs,
Intestine stone and ulcer, colic pangs,
Demoniac phrensy, moping melancholy,
And moon-struck madness, pining atrophy,
Marasmus, and wide-wasting pestilence,
Dropsies, and asthmas, and joint-racking rheums.
Dire was the tossing, deep the groans; Despair
Tended the sick, busiest from couch to couch;
And over them triumphant Death his dart
Shook, but delayed to strike, though oft invoked
With vows, as their chief good, and final hope.
Sight so deform what heart of rock could long
Dry-eyed behold P Adam could not, but wept,
Though not of woman born; compassion quelled
His best of man, and gave him up to tears
A space, till firmer thoughts restrained excess;
And scarce recovering words, his plaint renewed:
“O miserable mankind, to what fall
Degraded, to what wretched state reserved
Better end here unborn. Why is life given
To be thus wrested from us? rather, why
Obtruded on us thus P who, if we knew
What we receive, would either not accept
Life offered, or soon beg to lay it down ;
Glad to be so dismissed in peace. Can thus
The image of God in man, created once
So goodly and erect, though faulty since,
To such unsightly sufferings be debased
Under in human pains? Why should not man,
Retaining still divine similitude
In part, from such deformities be free,
And, for his Maker's image sake, exempt p’
‘Their Maker's image,’ answered Michael, then
Forsook them, when themselves they vilified
To serve ungoverned appetite; and took
His image whom they served, a brutish vice,
Inductive mainly to the sin of Eve.
Therefore so abject is their punishment,
Disfiguring not God's likeness, but their own;
Or if his likeness, by themselves defaced;
While they pervert pure nature's healthful rules
To loathsome sickness; worthily, since they
God's image did not reverence in themselves.”
‘I yield it just,” said Adam, “and submit.
But is there yet no other way, besides
These painful passages, how we may come
To death, and mix with our connatural dust 2'
“There is,” said Michael, “if thou well observe
The rule of “ Not too much ;” by temperance taught,
In what thou eatest and drinkest; seeking from
thence
Due nourishment, not gluttonous delight,
Till many years over thy head return :
So mayest thou live; till, like ripe fruit, thou drop
Into thy mother's lap; or be with ease
Gathered, not harshly plucked; for death mature:
This is old age; but then, thou must outlive
Thy youth, thy strength, thy beauty: which will
change
To withered, weak, and gray; thy senses then,
Obtuse, all taste of pleasure must forego,
To what thou hast; and for the air of youth,
Hopeful and cheerful, in thy blood will reign
A melancholy damp of cold and dry,
To weigh thy spirits down, and last consume
The balm of life.” To whom our ancestor:
“Henceforth I fly not death, nor would prolong
Life much ; bent rather, how I may be quit,
Fairest and easiest, of this cumbrous charge;
Which I must keep till my appointed day
Of rendering up, and patiently attend
My dissolution.” Michael replied:
“Nor love thy life, nor hate ; but what thou livest
Live well; how long, or short, permit to Heaven:
And now prepare thee for another sight.”
He looked, and saw a spacious plain, whereon
Were tents of various hues; by some, were herds
Of cattle grazing ; others, whence the sound
Of instruments, that made melodious chime,
Was heard, of harp and organ ; and who moved
Their stops and chords was seen; his volant touch
Instinct through all proportions, low and high,
Fled and pursued transverse the resonant fugue.
In other part stood one who, at the forge
Labouring, two massy clods of iron and brass
Had melted (whether found where casual fire
Had wasted woods on mountain or in vale,
Down to the veins of earth; thence gliding hot
To some cave's mouth; or whether washed by stream
From under ground); the liquid ore he drained
Into fit moulds prepared ; from which he formed
First his own tools; then, what might else be wrought
Fusil or graven in metal. After these,
But on the hither side, a different sort
From the high neighbouring hills, which was their
Seat,
Down to the plain descended ; by their guise
Just men they seemed, and all their study bent
To worship God aright, and know his works
Not hid ; nor those things last, which might preserve
Freedom and peace to men: they on the plain
88 PARADISE LOST. Book XI.
Long had not walked, when from the tents, behold !
A bevy of fair women, richly gay
In gems and wanton dress; to the harp they sung
Soft amorous ditties, and in dance came on :
The men, though grave, eyed them; and let their eyes
Rove without rein; till, in the amorous net
Fast caught, they liked; and each his liking chose.
And now of love they treat, till the evening star,
Love's harbinger, appeared; then, all in heat,
They light the nuptial torch, and bid invoke
Hymen, then first to marriage rites invoked:
With feast and music all the tents resound.
Such happy interview, and fair event
Of love and youth not lost, songs, garlands, flowers,
And charming symphonies, attached the heart
Of Adam, soon inclined to admit delight,
The bent of nature; which he thus expressed :
“True opener of mine eyes, prime angel blest;
Much better seems this vision, and more hope
Of peaceful days portends, than those two past;
Those were of hate and death, or pain much worse;
Here nature seems fulfilled in all her ends.’
To whom thus Michael : “Judge not what is best
By pleasure, though to nature seeming meet;
Created as thou art, to nobler end
Holy and pure, conformity divine. -
Those tents thou sawest so pleasant, were the tents
Of wickedness, wherein shall dwell his race
Who slew his brother; studious they appear
Of arts that polish life, inventors rare;
Unmindful of their Maker, though his Spirit
Taught them; but they his gifts acknowledged none.
Yet they a beauteous offspring shall beget;
For that fair female troop thou sawest, that seemed
Of goddesses, so blithe, so smooth, so gay,
Yet empty of all good, wherein consists
Woman's domestic honour and chief praise,
Bred only and completed to the taste
Of lustful appetence, to sing, to dance,
To dress, and troll the tongue, and roll the eye.
To these that sober race of men, whose lives
Religious titled them the sons of God,
Shall yield up all their virtue, all their fame
Ignobly, to the trains and to the smiles
Of these fair atheists; and now swim in joy,
Ere long to swim at large; and laugh, for which
The world ere long a world of tears must weep.’
To whom thus Adam, of short joy bereft:
“O pity and shame, that they, who to live well
Entered so fair, should turn aside to tread
Paths indirect, or in the midway faintſ
But still I see the tenour of man's woe
Holds on the same, from woman to begin.”
• From man's effeminate slackness it begins,’
Said the angel, “who should better hold his place
By wisdom, and superior gifts received.
But now prepare thee for another scene.’
He looked, and saw wide territory spread
Before him, towns, and rural works between ;
Cities of men with lofty gates and towers,
Concourse in arms, fierce faces threatening war,
Giants of mighty bone, and bold emprise;
Part wield their arms, part curb the foaming steed,
Single or in array of battle ranged
Both horse and foot, nor idly mustering stood;
One way a band select from forage drives
A herd of beeves, fair oxen and fair kine,
From a fat meadow-ground; or fleecy flock,
Ewes and their bleating lambs over the plain,
Their booty; scarce with life the shepherds fly,
But call in aid, which makes a bloody fray;
With cruel tournament the squadrons join;
Where cattle pastured late, now scattered lies
With carcasses and arms the ensanguined field,
Deserted : others to a city strong
Lay siege, encamped ; by battery, scale, and mine,
Assaulting : others from the wall defend
With dart and javelin, stones, and sulphurous fire;
On each hand slaughter, and gigantic deeds.
In other part the sceptered heralds call
To council, in the city-gates; anon
Gray-headed men and grave, with warriors mixed,
Assemble, and harangues are heard; but soon,
In factious opposition; till at last
Of middle age one rising, eminent
In wise deport, spake much of right and wrong,
Of justice, of religion, truth, and peace,
And judgment from above: him old and young
Exploded, and had seized with violent hands;
Had not a cloud descending snatched him thence,
Unseen amid the throng : so violence
Proceeded, and oppression, and sword-law,
Through all the plain, and refuge none was found.
Adam was all in tears, and to his guide
Lamenting turned full sad: ‘O what are these,
Death's ministers, not men P who thus deal death
Inhumanly to men, and multiply
Ten thousandfold the sin of him who slew
His brother: for of whom such massacre
Make they, but of their brethren; men of men P
But who was that just man, whom had not Heaven
Rescued, had in his righteousness been lost?’
To whom thus Michael : “ These are the product
Of those ill-mated marriages thou sawest;
Where good with bad were matched, who of them-
selves
Abhor to join; and, by imprudence mixed,
Produce prodigious births of body or mind.
Such were these giants, men of high renown;
For in those days might only shall be admired,
And valour and heroic virtue called.
To overcome in battle, and subdue
Nations, and bring home spoils with infinite
Man-slaughter, shall be held the highest pitch
Of human glory; and for glory done
Of triumph, to be styled great conquerors,
Patrons of mankind, gods, and sons of gods;
Destroyers rightlier called, and plagues of men.
Thus fame shall be achieved, renown on earth;
And what most merits ſame in silence hid.
Put he, the seventh from thee, whom thou beheldest
The only righteous in a world perverse,
Book XI.
PARADISE LOST. 89
And therefore hated, therefore so beset
With foes, for daring single to be just,
And utter odious truth, that God would come
To judge them with his saints: him the Most High
Rapt in a balmy cloud with winged steeds
Did, as thou sawest, receive, to walk with God
High in salvation and the climes of bliss,
Exempt from death; to show thee what reward
Awaits the good; the rest what punishment;
Which now direct thine eyes and soon behold.’
He looked, and saw the face of things quite changed;
The brazen throat of war had ceased to roar;
All now was turned to jollity and game,
To luxury and riot, feast and dance;
Marrying or prostituting, as befell,
Rape or adultery, where passing fair
Allured them; thence from cups to civil broils.
At length a reverend sire among them came,
And of their doings great dislike declared,
And testified against their ways; he oft
Frequented their assemblies, whereso met,
Triumphs or festivals; and to them preached
Conversion and repentance, as to souls
In prison, under judgment imminent:
But all in vain : which when he saw, he ceased
Contending, and removed his tents far off:
Then, from the mountain hewing timber tall,
Began to build a vessel of huge bulk;
Measured by cubit, length, and breadth, and highth;
Smeared round with pitch ; and in the side a door
Contrived; and of provisions laid in large,
For man and beast: when lo, a wonder strange
Of every beast, and bird, and insect small,
Came sevens and pairs; and entered in as taught
Their order: last the sire and his three sons,
With their four wives; and God made fast the door.
Meanwhile the south-wind rose, and, with black wings
Wide-hovering, all the clouds together drove
From under heaven; the hills to their supply
Vapour, and exhalation dusk and moist,
Sent up amain. And now the thickened sky
Like a dark ceiling stood; down rushed the rain
Impetuous; and continued, till the earth
No more was seen : the floating vessel swum
Uplifted, and secure with beaked prow
Rode tilting o'er the waves; all dwellings else
I'lood overwhelmed, and them with all their pomp
Deep under water rolled; sea covered sea,
Sea without shore; and in their palaces,
Where luxury late reigned, sea-monsters whelped
And stabled; of mankind, so numerous late,
All left, in one small bottom swum imbarked.
How didst thou grieve then, Adam, to behold
The end of all thy offspring, end so sad,
Depopulation Thee another flood,
Of tears and sorrow a flood, thee also drowned,
And sunk thee as thy sons; till, gently reared
By the angel, on thy feet thou stoodest at last,
Though comfortless; as when a father mourns
His children, all in view destroyed at once;
And scarce to the angel utteredest thus thy plaint:
“O visions ill foreseen better had I
Lived ignorant of future! so had borne
My part of evil only, each day's lot
Enough to bear; those now, that were dispensed
The burden of many ages, on me light
At once, by my foreknowledge gaining birth
Abortive, to torment me ere their being,
With thought that they must be. Let no man seek
Henceforth to be foretold, what shall befall
Him or his children; evil he may be sure,
Which neither his foreknowing can prevent;
And he the future evil shall no less
In apprehension than in substance feel,
Grievous to bear: but that care now is past,
Man is not whom to warn: those few escaped
Famine and anguish will at last consume,
Wandering that watry desert: I had hope,
When violence was ceased, and war on earth,
All would have then gone well; peace would have
crowned
With length of happy days the race of man;
But I was far deceived; for now I see
Peace to corrupt no less than war to waste.
How comes it thus * unfold, celestial guide,
And whether here the race of man will end.”
To whom thus Michael : “Those, whom last thou
Sawest
In triumph and luxurious wealth, are they
First seen in acts of prowess eminent
And great exploits, but of true virtue void;
Who, having spilt much blood and done much waste
Subduing nations, and achieved thereby
Fame in the world, high titles, and rich prey,
Shall change their course to pleasure, ease, and sloth,
Surfeit, and lust; till wantonness and pride
Raise out of friendship hostile deeds in peace.
The conquered also, and enslaved by war,
Shall, with their freedom lost, all virtue lose
And fear of God; from whom their piety feigned
In sharp contést of battle found no aid
Against invaders; therefore, cooled in zeal,
Thenceforth shall practise how to live secure,
Worldly or dissolute, on what their lords
Shall leave them to enjoy; for the earth shall bear
More than enough, that temperance may be tried :
So all shall turn degenerate, all depraved;
Justice and temperance, truth and faith, forgot;
One man except, the only son of light
In a dark age, against example good,
Against allurement, custom, and a world
Offended : fearless of reproach and scorn,
Or violence, he of their wicked ways
Shall them admonish ; and before them set
The paths of righteousness, how much more safe
And full of peace; denouncing wrath to come
On their impenitence; and shall return
Of them derided, but of God observed
The one just man alive; by his command
Shall build a wondrous ark, as thou beheldest,
To save himself, and household, from amidst
A world devote to universal wrack.
90 PARADISE LOST.
Book XI.
No sooner he, with them of man and beast
Select for life, shall in the ark be lodged,
And sheltered round; but all the cataracts
Of heaven set open on the earth shall pour
Rain, day and night; all fountains of the deep,
Broke up, shall heave the ocean to usurp
Beyond all bounds; till inundation rise
Above the highest hills; then shall this mount
Of Paradise by might of waves be moved
Out of his place, pushed by the horned flood,
With all his verdure spoiled, and trees adriſt,
Down the great river to the opening gulf,
And there take root an island salt and bare,
The haunt of seals, and orcs, and sea-mews’ clang;
To teach thee that God attributes to place
No sanctity, if none be thither brought
By men who there frequent, or therein dwell.
And now what further shall ensue, behold.”
He looked, and saw the ark hull on the flood,
Which now abated: for the clouds were fled,
Driven by a keen north-wind, that, blowing dry,
Wrinkled the face of deluge, as decayed;
And the clear sun on his wide watery glass
Gazed hot, and of the fresh wave largely drew,
As after thirst; which made their flowing shrink
From standing lake to tripping ebb, that stole
With soft foot towards the deep; who now had stopt
His sluices, as the heaven his windows shut.
The ark no more now floats, but seems on ground,
Fast on the top of some high mountain fixed.
And now the tops of hills, as rocks, appear;
With clamour thence the rapid currents drive,
Towards the retreating sea, their furious tide.
Forth with from out the ark a raven flies,
And after him, the surer messenger,
A dove sent forth once and again to spy
Green tree or ground, whereon his foot may light:
The second time returning, in his bill
An olive-leaf he brings, pacific sign:
Anon dry ground appears, and from his ark
The ancient sire descends, with all his train:
Then with uplifted hands, and eyes devout,
Grateful to Heaven, over his head beholds
A dewy cloud, and in the cloud a bow
Conspicuous with three listed colours gay,
Betokening peace from God, and covenant new.
Whereat the heart of Adam, erst so sad,
Greatly rejoiced; and thus his joy broke forth :
O thou, who future things canst represent
As present, heavenly instructor' I revive
At this last sight; assured that man shall live,
With all the creatures, and their seed preserve.
Far less I now lament for one whole world
Of wicked sons destroyed, than I rejoice
For one man found so perfect, and so just,
That God vouchsafes to raise another world
From him, and all his anger to forget.
But say, what mean those coloured streaks in heaven
Distended, as the brow of God appeased P
Or serve they, as a flowery verge, to bind
The fluid skirts of that same watry cloud,
Lest it again dissolve, and shower the earth P’
To whom the archangel: “Dextrously thou aimest;
So willingly doth God remit his ire,
Though late repenting him of man depraved;
Grieved at his heart, when looking down he saw
The whole earth filled with violence, and all flesh
Corrupting each their way; yet, those removed,
Such grace shall one just man find in his sight,
That he relents, not to blot out mankind;
And makes a covenant, never to destroy
The earth again by flood; nor let the sea
Surpass his bounds; nor rain to drown the world,
With man therein or beast; but when he brings
Over the earth a cloud, will therein set
His triple-coloured bow, whereon to look,
And call to mind his covenant: day and night,
Seed-time and harvest, heat and hoary frost,
Shall hold their course; till fire purge all things new,
Both heaven and earth, wherein the just shall dwell.
BOOK XII.
THE ARGUMENT.
The angel Michael continues, from the flood, to
plain, who that seed of the woman shall be, which was promise
and ascension; the state of the church till his second coming.
promises, descends the hill with Michael; wakens Eve, who all t
of mind and submission. Michael in either hand leads them Ou
bim taking their stations to guard the place.
As one who in his journey baits at noon,
Though bent on speed ; so here the archangel paused
Betwixt the world destroyed and world restored,
If Adam aught perhaps might interpose;
c c cceed: then, in the mention of Abraham, comes by degrees to ex-
relate what shall . Adam and Eve in the fall: his incarnation, death, resurrection;
Adam, greatly satisfied and recomforted by these relations and
his while had slept, but with gentle dreams composed to quietness
t of Paradise, the fiery sword waving behind them, and the cheru-
Then, with transition sweet, new speech resumes:
Thus thou hast seen one world begin and end;
And man, as from a second stock, proceed.
Much thou hast yet to see; but I perceive
Book XII.
PARADISE LOST. 91
Thy mortal sight to fail; objects divine
Must needs impair and weary human sense :
Henceforth what is to come I will relate ;
Thou therefore give due audience, and attend :
‘This second source of men, while yet but few,
And while the dread of judgment past remains
Fresh in their minds, fearing the Deity,
With some regard to what is just and right
Shall lead their lives, and multiply apace;
Labouring the soil, and reaping plenteous crop,
Corn, wine, and oil : and, from the herd or flock,
Oft sacrificing bullock, lamb, or kid,
With large wine-offerings poured, and sacred feast,
Shall spend their days in joy unblamed ; and dwell
Long time in peace, by families and tribes,
Under paternal rule: till one shall rise
Of proud ambitious heart; who, not content
With fair equality, fraternal state,
Will arrogate dominion undeserved
Over his brethren, and quite dispossess
Concord and law of nature from the earth ;
Hunting (and men, not beasts, shall be his game)
With war, and hostile snare, such as refuse
Subjection to his empire tyrannous:
A mighty hunter thence he shall be styled
Before the Lord ; as in despite of heaven,
Or from heaven claiming second sovranty ;
And from rebellion shall derive his name,
Though of rebellion others he accuse.
He with a crew, whom like ambition joins
With him or under him to tyrannize,
Marching from Eden towards the west, shall find
The plain, wherein a black bituminous gurge
Boils out from underground, the mouth of hell:
Of brick, and of that stuff, they cast to build
A city and tower, whose top may reach to heaven;
And get themselves a name; lest, far dispersed
In foreign lands, their memory be lost;
Regardless whether good or evil fame.
But God, who oft descends to visit men
Unseen, and through their habitations walks
To mark their doings, them beholding soon,
Comes down to see their city, ere the tower
Obstruct heaven-towers; and in derision sets
Upon their tongues a various spirit, to rase
Quite out their native language; and, instead,
To sow a jangling noise of words unknown.
Forthwith a hideous gabble rises loud,
Among the builders; each to other calls
Not understood ; till hoarse, and all in rage,
As mocked they storm : great laughter was in heaven,
And looking down, to see the hubbub Strange,
And hear the din : thus was the building left
Ridiculous, and the work Confusion named.’
Whereto thus Adam, fatherly displeased :
“O execrable son so to aspire
Above his brethren ; to himself assuming
Authority usurped, from God not given:
He gave us only over beast, fish, fowl,
Dominion absolute; that right we hold
By his donation; but man over men
He made not lord; such title to himself
Reserving, human left from human free.
But this usurper his encroachment proud
Stays not on man; to God his tower intends
Siege and defiance; wretched man what food
Will he convey up thither, to sustain i
Himself and his rash army; where thin air
Above the clouds will pine his entrails gross,
And famish him of breath, if not of bread P’
To whom thus Michael : “Justly thou abhorrest
That son, who on the quiet state of men
Such trouble brought, affecting to subdue
Rational liberty; yet know withal,
Since thy original lapse, true liberty
Is lost, which always with right reason dwells
Twinned, and from her hath no dividual being :
Reason in man obscured, or not obeyed,
Immediately inordinate desires,
And upstart passions, catch the government
From reason; and to servitude reduce
Man, till then free. Therefore, since he permits
Within himself unworthy powers to reign
Over free reason, God, in judgment just,
Subjects him from without to violent lords;
Who oft as undeservedly enthral
His outward freedom: tyranny must be;
Though to the tyrant thereby no excuse.
Yet sometimes nations will decline so low
From virtue, which is reason, that no wrong,
But justice, and some fatal curse annexed,
Deprives them of their outward liberty;
Their inward lost : witness the irreverent son
Of him who built the ark; who, for the shame
Done to his father, heard this heavy curse,
“Servant of servants,” on his vicious race.
Thus will this latter, as the former world,
Still tend from bad to worse; till God at last,
Wearied with their iniquities, withdraw
His presence from among them, and avert
His holy eyes; resolving from thenceforth
To leave them to their own polluted ways;
And one peculiar nation to select
From all the rest, of whom to be invoked,
A nation from one faithful man to spring.
Him on this side Euphrates yet residing,
Bred up in idol-worship (O, that men—
Canst thou believe? should be so stupid grown,
While yet the patriarch lived who escaped the flood,
As to forske the living God, and fall
To worship their own work in wood and stone
For gods!) yet him God the Most High vouchsafes
To call by vision, from his father's house,
His kindred, and false gods, into a land
Which he will show him; and from him will raise
A mighty nation; and upon him shower
His benediction so, that in his seed
All nations shall be blest: he straight obeys;
Not knowing to what land, yet firm believes.
I see him, but thou canst not, with what faith
He leaves his gods, his friends, and native soil,
Ur of Chalduea, passing now the ſord
92 PARADISE LOST.
Book XII.
To Haran; after him a cumbrous train
Of herds and flocks, and numerous servitude;
Not wandering poor, but trusting all his wealth
With God, who called him, in a land unknown.
Canaan he now attains; I see his tents
Pitched about Sechem, and the neighbouring plain
Of Moreh; there by promise he receives
Gift to his progeny of all that land,
From Hamath northward to the desert south ;
(Things by their names I call, though yet unnamed ;)
From Hermon east to the great western sea;
Mount Hermon, yonder sea; each place behold
In prospect, as I point them; on the shore
Mount Carmel ; here, the double-founted stream,
Jordan, true limit eastward; but his sons
Shall dwell to Senir, that long ridge of hills.
This ponder, that all nations of the earth
Shall in his seed be blessed : by that seed
Is meant thy great Deliverer, who shall bruise
The serpent's head; whereof to thee anon
Plainlier shall be revealed. This patriarch blest,
Whom faithful Abraham due time shall call,
A son, and of his son a grand-child, leaves;
Like him in faith, and wisdom, and renown ;
The grand-child, with twelve sons increased, departs
From Canaan, to a land hereafter called
Egypt, divided by the river Nile;
See where it flows, disgorging at seven mouths
Into the sea : to sojourn in that land
He comes, invited by a younger son
In time of dearth; a son, whose worthy deeds
Raise him to be the second in that realm
Of Pharaoh : there he dies, and leaves his race
Growing into a nation; and, now grown,
Suspected to a sequent king, who seeks
To stop their over-growth, as inmate guests
Too numerous; whence of guests he makes them
slaves
Inhospitably, and kills their infant males:
Till by two brethren (these two brethren call
Moses and Aaron) sent from God to claim
His people from enthralment, they return
With glory, and spoil, back to the promised land.
But first, the lawless tyrant, who denies
To know their God, or message to regard,
Must be compelled by signs and judgments dire;
To blood unshed the rivers must be turned;
Frogs, lice, and flies, must all his palace fill
With loathed intrusion, and fill all the land;
His cattle must of rot and murren die;
Botches and blains must all his flesh emboss,
And all his people; thunder mixed with hail,
Hail mixed with fire, must rend the Egyptian sky,
And wheel on the earth, devouring where it rolls;
What it devours not, herb, or fruit, or grain,
A darksome cloud of locusts swarming down
Must cat, and on the ground leave nothing green ;
Darkness must overshadow all his bounds,
Palpable darkness, and blot out three days;
Last, with one midnight-stroke, all the first-born
Of Egypt must lie dead. Thus with ten wounds
The river-dragon tamed at length submits
To let his sojourners depart, and oft
Humbles his stubborn heart; but still, as ice
More hardened after thaw ; till in his rage
Pursuing whom he late dismissed, the sea
Swallows him with his host; but them lets pass,
As on dry land, between two crystal walls;
Awed by the rod of Moses so to stand
Divided till his rescued gain their shore :
Such wondrous power God to his saint will lend,
Though present in his angel; who shall go
Before them in a cloud, and pillar of fire;
By day a cloud, by night a pillar of fire;
To guide them in their journey, and remove
Behind them, while the obdurate king pursues.
All night he will pursue; but his approach
Darkness defends between till morning watch ;
Then through the fiery pillar, and the cloud,
God looking forth will trouble all his host,
And craze their chariot-wheels: when by command
Moses once more his potent rod extends
Over the sea; the sea his rod obeys;
On their embattled ranks the waves return,
And overwhelm their war: the race elect
Safe towards Canaan from the shore advance
Through the wild desert, not the readiest way;
Lest, entering on the Canaanite alarmed,
War terrify them inexpert, and fear
Return them back to Egypt, choosing rather
Inglorious life with servitude; for life
To noble and ignoble is more sweet
Untrained in arms, where rashness leads not on.
This also shall they gain by their delay
In the wide wilderness; there they shall found
Their government, and their great senate choose
Through the twelve tribes, to rule by laws ordained :
God from the mount of Sinai, whose gray top
Shall tremble, he descending, will himself
In thunder, lightning, and loud trumpets' sound,
Ordain them laws; part, such as appertain
To civil justice; part, religious rites
Of sacrifice; informing them, by types
And shadows, of that destined Seed to bruise
The serpent, by what means he shall achieve
Mankind's deliverance. But the voice of God
To mortal ear is dreadful : they beseech
That Moses might report to them his will,
And terror cease; he grants what they besought,
Instructed that to God is no access
Without mediator, whose high office now
Moses in figure bears; to introduce
One greater, of whose day he shall foretel,
And all the prophets in their age the times
Of great Messiah shall sing. Thus, laws and rites
Established, such delight hath God in men
Obedient to his will, that he vouchsafes
Among them to set up his tabernacle ;
The Holy One with mortal men to dwell ;
By his prescript a sanctuary is framed
Of cedar, overlaid with gold ; therein
An ark, and in the ark his testimony,
Book XII.
PARADISE LOST. 93
The records of his covenant; over these
A mercy-seat of gold, between the wings
Of two bright cherubim : before him burn
Seven lamps as in a zodiac representing
The heavenly fires; over the tent a cloud
Shall rest by day, a fiery gleam by night;
Save when they journey, and at length they come,
Conducted by his angel, to the land
Promised to Abraham and his seed. The rest
Were long to tell; how many battles fought;
How many kings destroyed; and kingdoms won;
Or how the sun shall in mid heaven stand still
A day entire, and night's due course adjourn,
Man's voice commanding, “Sun, in Gibeon stand,
And thou, moon, in the vale of Aialon,
Till Israel overcome !” so call the third
From Abraham, son of Isaac ; and from him
His whole descent, who thus shall Canaan win.”
Here Adam interposed : ‘O sent from Heaven,
Enlightener of my darkness, gracious things
Thou hast revealed ; those chiefly, which concern
Just Abraham and his seed : now first I find
Mine eyes true-opening, and my heart much eased ;
Erewhile perplexed with thoughts, what would be-
COIſle
Of me and all mankind : but now I see
His day in whom all nations shall be blest;
Favour unmerited by me, who sought
Forbidden knowledge by forbidden means.
This yet I apprehend not, why to those
Among whom God will deign to dwell on earth
So many and so various laws are given;
So many laws argue so many sins
Among them ; how can God with such reside P’
To whom thus Michael : “Doubt not but that sin
Will reign among them, as of thee begot;
And therefore was law given them, to evince
Their natural pravity, by stirring up
Sin against law to fight: that when they see
Law can discover sin, but not remove,
Save by those shadowy expiations weak,
The blood of bulls and goats, they may conclude
Some blood more precious must be paid for man;
Just for unjust; that in such righteousness
To them by faith imputed, they may find
Justification towards God, and peace
Of conscience; which the law by ceremonies
Cannot appease: nor man the moral part
Perform ; and not performing, cannot live.
So law appears imperfect; and but given
With purpose to resign them, in full time,
Up to a better covenant; disciplined
From shadowy types to truth; from flesh to spirit;
From imposition of strict laws, to free
Acceptance of large grace; from servile fear
To filial ; works of law to works of faith.
And therefore shall not Moses, though of God
Highly beloved, being but the minister
Of law, his people into Canaan lead;
But Joshua, whom the Gentiles Jesus call,
His name and office bearing, who shall quell
The adversary-serpent, and bring back
Through the world's wilderness long-wandered man
Safe to eternal Paradise of rest.
Meanwhile they, in their earthly Canaan placed,
Long time shall dwell and prosper, but when sins
National interrupt their public peace,
Provoking God to raise them enemies;
From whom as oft he saves them penitent
By judges first, then under kings; of whom
The second, both for piety renowned
And puissant deeds, a promise shall receive
Irrevocable, that his regal throne
For ever shall endure; the like shall sing
All prophecy, that of the royal stock
Of David (so I name this king) shall rise
A son, the woman's seed to thee foretold,
Foretold to Abraham, as in whom shall trust
All nations; and to kings foretold, of kings
The last; for of his reign shall be no end.
But first, a long succession must ensue;
And his next son, for wealth and wisdom famed,
The clouded ark of God, till then in tents
Wandering, shall in a glorious temple enshrine.
Such follow him as shall be registered,
Part good, part bad ; of bad the longer scroll :
Whose foul idolatries, and other faults
Heaped to the popular sum, will so incense
God, as to leave them, and expose their land.
Their city, his temple, and his holy ark,
With all his sacred things, a scorn and prey
To that proud city, whose high walls thou sawest
Left in confusion ; Babylon thence called.
There in captivity he lets them dwell
The space of seventy years; then brings them back,
Remembering mercy, and his covenant sworn
To David, stablished as the days of heaven.
Returned from Babylon by leave of kings
Their lords, whom God disposed, the house of God
They first re-edify: and for a while
In mean estate live moderate; till grown
In wealth and multitude, factious they grow :
But first among the priests dissension springs,
Men who attend the altar, and should most
Endeavour peace: their strife pollution brings
Upon the temple itself: at last they seize
The scepter, and regard not David's sons;
Then lose it to a stranger, that the true
Anointed king Messiah might be born
Barred of his right; yet at his birth a star,
Unseen before in heaven, proclaims him come;
And guides the eastern sages, who inquire
His place, to offer incense, myrrh, and gold :
His place of birth a solemn angel tells
To simple shepherds, keeping watch by night;
They gladly thither haste, and by a quire
Of squadroned angels hear his carol sung.
A virgin is his mother, but his sire
The power of the Most High : he shall ascend
The throne hereditary, and bound his reign
With earth's wide bounds, his glory with the hea-
vens.”
9 | PARADISE LOST.
Book XII.
He ceased, discerning Adam with such joy
Surcharged, as had like grief been dewed in tears,
Without the vent of words; which these he breathed :
“O prophet of glad tidings, finisher
Of utmost hopeſ now clear I understand
What oft my steadiest thoughts have searched in vain;
Why our great Expectation should be called
The seed of woman; virgin mother, hail,
High in the love of heaven; yet from my loins
Thou shalt proceed, and from thy womb the Son
Of God Most High ; so God with man unites.
Needs must the serpent now his capital bruise
Expect with mortal pain: say where and when
Their fight, what stroke shall bruise the victor's heel P’
To whom thus Michael : ‘Dream not of their fight,
As of a duel, or the local wounds
Of head or heel : not therefore joins the Son
Manhood to godhead, with more strength to foil
Thy enemy; nor so is overcome
Satan, whose fall from heaven, a deadlier bruise,
Disabled not to give thee thy death's wound:
Which he, who comes thy Saviour, shall recure
Not by destroying Satan, but his works
In thee, and in thy seed : nor can this be
Dut by fulfilling that which thou didst want,
Obedience to the law of God, imposed
On penalty of death, and suffering death;
The penalty to thy transgression due,
And due to theirs which out of thine will grow :
So only can high justice rest appaid.
The law of God exact he shall fulfil
Both by obedience and by love, though love
Alone fulfil the law ; thy punishment
He shall endure, by coming in the flesh
To a reproachful life, and cursed death ;
Proclaiming life to all who shall believe
In his redemption; and that his obedience,
Imputed, becomes theirs by faith; his merits
To save them, not their own, though legal, works.
For this he shall live hated, be blasphemed,
Seized on by force, judged, and to death condemned
A shameful and accursed, nailed to the cross
By his own nation; slain for bringing life:
But to the cross he mails thy enemies,
The law that is against thee, and the sins
Of all mankind with him there crucified,
Never to hurt them more who rightly trust
In this his satisfaction; so he dies,
But soon revives; death over him no power
Shall long usurp ; ere the third dawning light
Return, the stars of morn shall see him rise
Out of his grave, fresh as the dawning light,
Thy ransom paid, which man from death redeems,
His death for man, as many as offered life
Neglect not, and the benefit embrace
By faith not void of works: this god-like act
Annuls thy doom, the death thou shouldst have died,
In sin for ever lost from life; this act
Shall bruise the head of Satan, crush his strength,
Defeating sin and death, his two main arms;
And fix far deeper in his head their stings
Than temporal death shall bruise the victor's heel,
Or theirs whom he redeems; a death like sleep,
A gentle waſting to immortal life.
Nor after resurrection shall he stay
Longer on earth, than certain times to appear
To his disciples, men who in his life
Still followed him; to them shall leave in charge
To teach all nations what of him they learned
And his salvation; them who shall believe
Baptizing in the profluent stream, the sign
Of washing them from guilt of sin to life
Pure, and in mind prepared, if so befall,
For death, like that which the Redeemer died.
All nations they shall teach; for, from that day,
Not only to the sons of Abraham's loins
Salvation shall be preached, but to the sons
Of Abraham's faith wherever through the world;
So in his seed all nations shall be blest. -
Then to the heaven of heavens he shall ascend
With victory triumphing through the air
Over his foes and thine ; there shall surprise
The serpent, prince of air, and drag in chains
Through all his realm, and there confounded leave;
Then enter into glory, and resume
His seat at God's right hand, exalted high
Above all names in heaven; and thence shall come,
When this world’s dissolution shall be ripe,
With glory and power to judge both quick and dead;
To judge the unfaithful dead, but to reward
His faithful, and receive them into bliss,
Whether in heaven or earth; for then the earth
Shall all be Paradise, far happier place
Than this of Eden, and far happier days.”
So spake the archangel Michaël ; then paused,
As at the world's great period; and our sire,
Replete with joy and wonder, thus replied:
“O Goodness infinite, Goodness immense !
That all this good of evil shall produce,
And evil turn to good; more wonderful
Than that which by creation first brought forth
Light out of darkness! Full of doubt I stand,
Whether I should repent me now of sin
By me done, and occasioned; or rejoice
Much more, that much more good thereofshall spring;
To God more glory, more good-will to men
From God, and over wrath grace shall abound.
But say, if our Deliverer up to heaven
Must reascend, what will betide the few
His faithful, left among the unfaithful herd,
The enemies of truth P Who then shall guide
His people, who defend ? Will they not deal
Worse with his followers than with him they dealt?’
“Be sure they will,’ said the angel; ‘ but from
heaven
He to his own a Comforter will send,
The promise of the Father, who shall dwell
His Spirit within them; and the law of faith,
Working through love, upon their hearts shall write,
To guide them in all truth; and also arm
With spiritual armour, able to resist
Satan's assaults, and quench his fiery darts;
Book XII.
PARADISE LOST. 95
What man can do against them, not afraid,
Though to the death; against such cruelties
With inward consolations recompensed,
And oft supported so as shall amaze
Their proudest persecutors; for the Spirit,
Poured first on his apostles, whom he sends
To evangelize the nations, then on all
Baptized, shall them with wondrcus gifts endue
To speak all tongues, and do all miracles,
As did their Lord before them. Thus they win
Great numbers of each nation to receive
With joy the tidings brought from heaven : at length
Their ministry performed, and race well run,
Their doctrine and their story written left,
They die; but in their room, as they forewarn,
Wolves shall succeed for teachers, grievous wolves,
Who all the sacred mysteries of heaven
To their own vile advantages shall turn
Of lucre and ambition ; and the truth
With superstitions and traditions taint,
Left only in those written records pure,
Though not but by the Spirit understood.
Then shall they seek to avail themselves of names,
Places, and titles, and with these to join
Secular power; though feigning still to act
By spiritual, to themselves appropriating
The Spirit of God, promised alike, and given
To all believers; and, from that pretence,
Spiritual laws by carnal power shall force
On every conscience; laws which nonc shall find
Left them inrolled, or what the Spirit within
Shall on the heart engrave. What will they then
But force the Spirit of grace itself, and bind
His consort liberty P what, but unbuild
His living temples, built by faith to stand,
Their own faith, not another's P for, on earth,
Who against faith and conscience can be heard
Infallible f yet many will presume:
Whence heavy persecution shall arise
On all, who in the worship persevere
Of spirit and truth; the rest, far greater part,
Will deem in outward rites and specious forms
Religion satisfied; truth shall retire
Bestruck with slanderous darts, and works of faith
Rarely be found : so shall the world go on,
To good malignant, to bad men benign ;
Under her own weight groaning; till the day
Appear of respiration to the just,
And vengeance to the wicked, at return
Of him so lately promised to thy aid,
The woman's Seed; obscurely then foretold,
Now amplier known thy Saviour and thy Lord;
Last, in the clouds, from heaven to be revealed
In glory of the Father, to dissolve
Satan with his perverted world; then raise
From the conflágrant mass, purged and refined,
New heavens, new earth, ages of endless date,
Founded in righteousness, and peace, and love;
To bring forth fruits, joy and eternal bliss.”
He ended; and thus Adam last replied:
‘How soon hath thy prediction, seer blest,
Measured this transient world, the race of time,
Till time stand fixed ! Beyond is all abyss,
Eternity, whose end no eye can reach.
Greatly instructed I shall hence depart;
Greatly in peace of thought; and have my fill
Of knowledge what this vessel can contain ;
Beyond which, was my folly to aspire.
Henceforth I learn, that to obey is best,
And love with fear the only God; to walk
As in his presence; ever to observe
His providence; and on him sole depend,
Merciful over all his works, with good
Still overcoming evil, and by small
Accomplishing great things, by things deemed weak
Subverting worldly strong, and worldly wise
By simply meek; that suffering for truth's sake
Is fortitude to highest victory,
And, to the faithful, death the gate of life;
Taught this by his example, whom I now
Acknowledge my Redeemer ever blest.’
To whom thus also the angel last replied :
‘This having learned, thou hast attained the sum
Of wisdom; hope no higher, though all the stars
Thou knewest by name, and all the ethereal Powers,
All secrets of the deep, all Nature's works,
Or works of God in heaven, air, earth, or sea,
And all the riches of this world enjoyedst,
And all the rule, one empire; only add
Deeds to thy knowledge answerable; add faith,
Add virtue, patience, temperance; add love,
By name to come called charity, the soul
Of all the rest : then wilt thou not be loth
To leave this Paradise, but shalt possess
A paradise within thee, happier far.
Let us descend now therefore from this top
Of speculation; for the hour precise
Exacts our parting hence; and see the guards,
By me encamped on yonder hill, expect
Their motion ; at whose front a flaming sword,
In signal of remove, waves fiercely round.
We may no longer stay: go, waken Eve;
Her also I with gentle dreams have calmed
Portending good, and all her spirits composed
To meek submission: thou, at season fit,
Let her with thee partake what thou hast heard;
Chiefly, what may concern her faith to know,
The great deliverance by her seed to come
(For by the woman's seed) on all mankind;
That ye may live, which will be many days,
Both in one faith unanimous, though sad
With cause for evils past; yet much more cheered
With meditation on the happy end.”
He ended, and they both descend the hill;
Descended, Adam to the bower, where Eve
Lay sleeping, ran before: but found her waked;
And thus with words not sad she him received:
“Whence thou returnest, and whither wentest, I
know ; -
For God is also in sleep; and dreams advise,
Which he hath sent propitious, some great good
Presaging, since with sorrow and heart's distress 4
---.
96 PARADISE. I.OST.
Book XII.
Wearied I fell asleep: but now lead on;
In me is no delay; with thee to go,
Is to stay here; without thee here to stay,
Is to go hence unwilling; thou to me
Art all things under heaven, all places thou,
Who for my wilful crime art banished hence.
This further consolation yet secure -
I carry hence; though all by me is lost,
Such favour I unworthy am vouchsafed,
By me the promised Seed shall all restore.’
So spake our mother Eve; and Adam heard
Well pleased, but answered not; for now, too nigh
The archangel stood; and from the other hill
To their fixed station, all in bright array,
The cherubim descended; on the ground
Gliding meteorous, as evening mist
Risen from a river o'er the marish glides,
And gathers ground fast at the labourer's heel
Homeward returning. High in front advanced, .
The brandished sword of God before them blazed,
Fierce as a comet; which with torrid heat,
And vapour as the Libyan air adust,
Began to parch that temperate clime; whereat
In either hand the hastening angel caught
Our lingering parents, and to the eastern gate
Led them direct, and down the cliff as fast
To the subjected plain; then disappeared.
They, looking back, all the eastern side beheld
Of Paradise, so late their happy seat,
Waved over by that flaming brand; the gate
With dreadful faces thronged, and fiery arms.
Some natural tears they dropt, but wiped them soon ;
The world was all before them, where to choose
Their place of rest, and Providence their guide:
They, hand in hand, with wandering steps and slow,
Through Eden took their solitary way.
P A R A D IS E R E G A T N E E).
BOOK I.
THE ARGUMENT.
The subject proposed. Invocation of the Holy Spirit. The poem opens with John baptizing at the river Jordan, Jesus commg
there is baptized ; and is attested by the descent of the Holy Ghost, and by a voice from heaven, to be the Son of God. Satan, who
is present, upon this immediately flies up into the regions of the air: where, summoning his inſernal council, he acquaints them
with his apprehensions that Jesus is that seed of the woman destined to destroy all their power, and points out to them the immediate
necessity of bringing the matter to proof, and of attempting, by snares and fraud, to counteract and defeat the person from whom
they have so much to dread. This office he offers himself to undertake; and, his offer being accepted, sets out on his enterprise.
In the mean time God, in the assembly of holy angels, declares that he has given up his Son to be tempted by Satan; but foretells
that the tempter shall be completely defeated by him: upon which the angels sing a hymn of triumph. Jesus is led up by the
Spirit into the wilderness, while he is meditating on the commencement of his great office of Saviour of mankind. Pursuing his
meditations he narrates, in a soliloquy, what divine and philanthropic impulses he had felt from his early youth, and how his
mother Mary, on perceiving these dispositions in him, had acquainted him with the circumstances of his birth, and informed him that
he was no less a person than the Son of God; to which he adds what his own inquiries and reflections had supplied in confirma-
tion of this great truth, and particularly dwells on the recent attestation of it at the river Jordan. Our Lord passes forty days, fast-
ing, in the wilderness; where the wild beasts become mild and harmless in his presence. Satan now appears under the form of an
old peasant; and enters into discourse with our Lord, wondering what could have brought him alone into so dangerous a place,
and at the same time professing to recognise him for the person lately acknowledged by John, at the river Jordan, to be the Son of
God. Jesus briefly replies. Satan, rejoins with a description of the difficulty of supporting life in the wilderness; and entreats
Jesus, if he be really the Son of God, to mamiſest his divine power by changing some of the stones into bread. Jesus reproves him,
and at the same time tells him that he knows who he is. Satan instantly avows himself, and offers an artful apology for himself
and his conduct. Our blessed Lord severely reprimands him, and refutes every part of his justification. Satan, with much sem-
blance of humility, still endeavours to justify himself; and, professing his admiration of Jesus and his regard for virtue, requests
to be permitted at a future time to hear more of his conversation; but is answered, that this must be as he shall find permission from
above. Satan then disappears, and the book closes with a short description of night coming on in the desert.
I, WHO erewhile the happy garden sung
By one man's disobedience lost, now sing
Recovered Paradise to all mankind,
By one man's firm obedience fully tried
Through all temptation, and the tempter foiled
In all his wiles, defeated and repulsed,
And Eden raised in the waste wilderness.
Thou Spirit, who leddest this glorious Eremite
Into the desert, his victorious field,
Against the spiritual foe, and broughtest him thence
By proof the undoubted Son of God, inspire,
As thou art wont, my prompted song, else mute,
And bear through highth or depth of nature's bounds,
With prosperous wing full summed, to tell of deeds
Above heroic, though in secret done,
And unrecorded left through many an age;
Worthy to have not remained so long unsung.
Now had the great Proclaimer, with a voice
More awful than the sound of trumpet, cried
Repentance, and heaven's kingdom nigh at hand
To all baptized: to his great baptism flocked
With awe the regions round, and with them came
From Nazareth the son of Joseph deemed
To the flood, Jordan; came as then obscure,
* II
Unmarked, unknown ; but him the Baptist soon
Descried, divinely warned, and witness bore
As to his worthier, and would have resi ºned
To him his heavenly office; nor was long
His witness unconfirmed: on him baptized
Heaven opened, and in likeness of a dove
The Spirit descended, while the Father's voice
From heaven pronounced him his beloved Son.
That heard the adversary, who, roving still
About the world, at that assembly famed
Would not be last, and, with the voice divine
Nigh thunder-struck, the exalted man, to whom
Such high attest was given, a while surveyed
With wonder; then, with envy fraught and rage,
Flies to his place, nor rests, but in mid air
To council summons all his mighty peers,
Within thick clouds, and dark, tenfold involved,
A gloomy consistory; and them amidst,
With looks aghast and sad, he thus bespake:
“O ancient powers of air, and this wide world,
(For much more willingly I mention air,
This our old conquest, than remember hell,
Our hated habitation,) well ye know
How many ages, as the years of men,
98 PARADISE REGAINED.
Book I.
This universe we have possessed, and ruled,
In manner at our will, the affairs of earth,
Since Adam and his facile consort Eve
Lost Paradise, deceived by me; though since
With dread attending when that fatal wound
Shall be inflicted by the seed of Eve
Upon my head. Long the decrees of Heaven
Delay, for longest time to him is short;
And now, too soon for us, the circling hours
This dreaded time have compassed, wherein we
Must bide the stroke of that long-threatened wound
(At least if so we can, and by the head
Broken be not intended all our power
To be infringed, our freedom and our being,
In this fair empire won of earth and air):
For this ill news I bring, the woman's seed
Destined to this, is late of woman born.
His birth to our just fear gave no small cause:
But his growth now to youth's full flower, displaying
All virtue, grace, and wisdom to achieve
Things highest, greatest, multiplies my fear.
Defore him a great prophet, to proclaim
His coming, is sent harbinger, who all
Invites, and in the consecrated stream
Pretends to wash off sin, and fit them, so
Purified, to receive him pure, or rather
To do him honour as their King : all come,
And he himself among them was baptized ;
Not thence to be more pure, but to receive
The testimony of Heaven, that who he is
Thenceforth the nations may not doubt. I saw
The prophet do him reverence ; on him, rising
Out of the water, heaven above the clouds
Unfold her crystal doors; thence on his head
A perfect dove descend, (whate'er it meant,)
And out of heaven the sovran voice I heard,
“This is my Son beloved, in him am pleased.”
His mother then is mortal, but his Sire
He who obtains the monarchy of heaven :
And what will he not do to advance his Son 2
His first-begot, we know, and sore have felt,
When his fierce thunder drove us to the deep :
Who this is we must learn, for man he scems
In all his lineaments, though in his face
The glimpses of his Father's glory shine.
Ye see our danger on the utmost edge
Of hazard, which admits no long debate,
But must with something sudden be opposed,
(Not force, but well-couched fraud, well-woven snares,)
Ere in the head of nations he appear,
Their king, their leader, and supreme on earth.
I, when no other durst, sole undertook
The dismal expedition to find out
And ruin Adam ; and the exploit performed
Successfully : a calmer voyage now
Will waft me; and the way, found prosperous once,
Induces best to hope of like success.”
He ended, and his words impression left
Of much amazement to the infernal crew
Distracted, and surprised with deep dismay
At these sad tidings; but no time was then
For long indulgence to their fears or grieſ:
Unanimous they all commit the care
And management of this main enterprise
To him, their great dictator, whose attempt
At first against mankind so well had thrived
In Adam's overthrow, and led their march
From hell's deep-vaulted den to dwell in light,
Regents, and potentates, and kings, yea gods,
Of many a pleasant realm and province wide.
So to the coast of Jordan he directs
His easy steps, girded with snaky wiles,
Where he might likeliest find this new-declared,
This man of men, attested Son of God,
Temptation and all guile on him to try;
So to subvert whom he suspected raised
To end his reign on earth, so long enjoyed:
But, contrary, unweeting he fulfilled
The purposed counsel, pre-ordained and fixed,
Of the Most High ; who, in full frequence bright
Of angels, thus to Gabriel smiling spake :
‘Gabriel, this day by proof thou shalt behold,
Thou and all angels conversant on earth
With man or men's affairs, how I begin
To verify that solemn message, late
On which I sent thee to the virgin pure
In Galilee, that she should bear a son
Great in renown, and called the Son of God;
Then toldest her, doubting how these things could be
To her a virgin, that on her should come
The Holy Ghost, and the power of the Highest
O'ershadow her. This man, born and now up-grown,
To show him worthy of his birth divine
And high prediction, henceforth I expose
To Satan; let him tempt, and now assay
His utmost subtlety, because he boasts
And vaunts of his great cunning to the throng
Of his apostasy; he might have learnt
Less overweening, since he failed in Job,
Whose constant perseverance overcame
Whate'er his cruel malice could invent.
He now shall know I can produce a man,
Of female seed, far abler to resist
All his solicitations, and at length,
All his vast force, and drive him back to hell;
Winning, by conquest, what the first man lost,
By fallacy surprised. But first I mean
To exercise him in the wilderness;
There he shall first lay down the rudiments
Of his great warfare, ere I send him forth
To conquer sin and death, the two grand foes,
By humiliation and strong sufferance : -
His weakness shall o'ercome Satanic strength,
And all the world, and mass of sinful flesh ;
That all the angels and ethereal powers,
They now, and men hereafter, may discern,
From what consummate virtue I have chose
This perfect man, by merit called my Son,
To earn salvation for the sons of men.’
So spake the Eternal Father, and all heaven
Admiring stood a space, then into hymns
Burst forth, and in celestial measures moved,
Book I.
PARADISE REGAINED.
Circling the throne and singing, while the hand
Sung with the voice, and this the argument:
‘Victory and triumph to the Son of God,
Now entering his great duel, not of arms,
But to vanquish by wisdom hellish wiles!
The Father knows the Son ; therefore secure
Ventures his filial virtue, though untried,
Against whate'er may tempt, whate'er seduce,
Allure, or terrify, or undermine.
Be frustrate, all ye stratagems of hell,
And, devilish machinations, come to nought!’
So they in heaven their odes and vigils tuned:
Meanwhile the Son of God, who yet some days
Lodged in Bethabara, where John baptized,
Musing, and much revolving in his breast,
How best the mighty work he might begin
Of Saviour to mankind, and which way first
Publish his god-like office now mature,
One day forth walked alone, the Spirit leading
And his deep thoughts, the better to converse
With solitude, till, far from track of men,
Thought following thought, and step by step led on,
He entered now the bordering desert wild,
And, with dark shades and rocks environcſi round,
His holy meditations thus pursued :
‘O, what a multitude of thoughts at once
Awakened in me swarm, while I consider
What from within I feel myself, and here
What from without comes often to my ears,
Ill sorting with my present state compared
When I was yet a child, no childish play
To me was pleasing; all my mind was set
Serious to learn and know, and thence to do
What might be public good; myself I thought
Born to that end, born to promote all truth,
JAll righteous things: therefore, above my years,
The law of God I read, and found it sweet,
Made it my whole delight, and in it grew
To such perfection, that, ere yet my age
Had measured twice six years, at our great ſeast
I went into the temple, there to hear
The teachers of our law, and to propose
What might improve my knowledge or their own;
And was admired by all : yet this not all
To which my spirit aspired; victorious deeds
Flamed in my heart, heroic acts; one while
& To rescue Israel from the Roman yoke;
Then to subdue and quell, o'er all the earth,
Brute violence and proud tyrannic power,
Till truth were freed, and equity restored :
ſyet held it more humane, more heavenly, first
By willing words to conquer willing hearts,
And make persuasion do the work of fear;
At least to try, and teach the erring soul,
Not wilfully misdoing, but unaware
Misled; the stubborn only to subdue.
These growing thoughts my mother soon perceiving,
By words at times cast forth, inly rejoiced,
And said to me apart, “High are thy thoughts,
O son, but nourish them, and let them soar
To what highth sacred virtue and true worth
H 2
Can raise them, though above example high 3
By matchless deeds express thy matchless Sire,
For know, thou art no son of mortal man ;
Though men esteem thee low of parentage,
Thy father is the Eternal King who rules
All heaven and earth, angels and sons of men ;
A messenger from God foretold thy birth
Conceived in me a virgin; he foretold
Thou shouldst be great, and sit on David's throne,
And of thy kingdom there should be no end.
At thy nativity, a glorious quire
Of angels, in the fields of Bethlehem, sung
To shepherds, watching at their ſolds by might,
And told them the Messiah now was born,
Where they might see him; and to thee they came,
Directed to the manger where thou layest,
For in the inn was left no better room :
A star, not seen before, in heaven appearing,
Guided the wise men thither from the East,
To honour thee with incense, myrrh, and gold ;
By whose bright course led on they found the place,
Affirming it thy star, new-graven in heaven,
By which they knew the King of Israel born.
Just Simeon and prophetic Anna, warned
By vision, found thee in the temple, and spake,
Before the altar and the vested priest,
Like things of thee to all that present stood.”
‘This having heard, straight I again revolved
The law and prophets, searching what was writ
Concerning the Messiah, to our scribes
Known partly, and soon found, of whom they spake
I am ; this chiefly, that my way must lie
Through many a hard assay, even to the death,
Ere I the promised kingdom can attain,
Or work redemption for mankind, whose sins
Full weight must be transferred upon my head.
Yet, neither thus disheartened, nor dismayed,
The time prefixed I waited ; when behold
The Baptist, (of whose birth I oft had heard,
Not knew by sight,) now come, who was to come
Before Messiah, and his way prepare :
I, as all others, to his baptism came,
Which I believed was from above; but he
Straight knew me, and with loudest voice proclaimed
Me him, (for it was shown him so from heaven,)
Me him, whose harbinger he was; and first
Refused on me his baptism to confer,
As much his greater, and was hardly won :
But, as I rose out of the laving stream,
Heaven opened her eternal doors, from whence
The Spirit descended on me like a dove;
And last, the sum of all, my Father's voice,
Audibly heard from heaven, pronounced me his,
Me his beloved Son, in whom alone
He was well pleased; by which I knew the time
Now full, that I no more should live obscure,
But openly begin, as best becomes
The authority which I derived from heaven.
And now by some strong motion I am led
Into this wilderness, to what intent
I learn not yet; perhaps I need not know,
100 PARADISE REGAINED.
I}ook I.
For what concerns my knowledge God reveals.’
So spake our Morning-star, then in his rise,
And, looking round, on every side beheld
A pathless desert, dusk with horrid shades;
The way he came not having marked, return
Was difficult, by human steps untrod;
And he still on was led, but with such thoughts
Accompanied of things past and to come
Lodged in his breast, as well might recommend
Such solitude before choicest society.
Full forty days he passed, whether on hill
Sometimes, anon on shady vale, each night
Under the covert of some ancient oak,
Or cedar, to defend him from the dew,
Or harboured in one cave, is not revealed;
Nor tasted human food, nor hunger felt
Till those days ended; hungered then at last
Among wild beasts: they at his sight grew mild,
Nor sleeping him nor waking harmed; his walk
The fiery serpent fled and noxious worm,
The lion and fierce tiger glared aloof.
But now an aged man in rural weeds,
Following, as seemed, the quest of some stray owe.
Or withered sticks to gather, which might serve
Against a winter's day, when winds blow keen,
To warm him wet returned from field at eve,
He saw approach, who first with curious eye
Perused him, then with words thus uttered spake:
‘Sir, what ill chance hath brought thee to this place,
So far from path or road of men, who pass
In troop or caravan P for single none
Durst cver, who returned, and dropt not here
His carcass, pincó with hunger and with drought.
I ask the rather, and the more admire,
For that to me thou seemest the man, whom late
Our new baptizing prophet at the ford
Of Jordan honoured so, and called thee Son
Of God: I saw and heard, for we sometimes
Who dwell this wild, constrained by want, come forth
To town or village nigh, (nighest is far,)
Where aught we hear, and curious are to hear,
What happens new ; fame also finds us out.”
To whom the Son of God : ‘Who brought me hither,
Will bring me hence; no other guide I seck.’
“By miracle he may,’ replied the swain;
‘What other way I see not; for we here
Live on tough roots and stubs, to thirst inured
More than the camel, and to drink go far,
Men to much miscry and hardship born :
But, if thou be the Son of God, command
That out of these hard stones be made thce bread,
So shalt thou save thyselſ, and us relieve
With food, whereof we wretched seldom tastc.”
He ended, and the Son of God replied:
‘Thinkest thou such force in bread 2 Is it not written,
(For I discern thee other than thou seemest,)
Man lives not by bread only, but each word
Proceeding from the mouth of God, who ſed
Our fathers here with manna † In the mount
Moscs was forty days, nor cat, nor drank;
And forty days Elijah, without food,
:
i
*}.
:
:
:
:
:
Wandered this barren waste; the same I now :
Why dost thou then suggest to me distrust,
Knowing who I am, as I know who thou art?”
Whom thus answered the arch-ſicnd, now undis-
guised :
‘'Tis true I am that spirit unfortunate,
Who, leagued with millions more in rash revolt,
Kept not my happy station, but was driven
With them from bliss to the bottomless deep ;
Yet to that hideous place not so conſincid
By rigour unconniving, but that oſt,
Leaving my dolorous prison, I enjoy
Large liberty to round this globe of earth,
Or range in the air; nor from the heaven of heavens
Hath he cxcluded my resort sometimes.
I came among the sons of God, when he
Gave up into my hands Uzzean Job
To prove him, and illustrate his high worth;
And, when to all his angels he proposed
To draw the proud king Ahab into fraud
That he might fall in Ramoth, they demurring,
I undertook that office, and the tongues
Of all his flattering prophets glibbed with lies
To his destruction, as I had in charge;
For what he bids I do. Though I have lost
Much lustre of my native brightness, lost
To be beloved of God, I have not lost
To love, at least contemplate and admire,
What I see excellent in good, or fair,
Or virtuous; I should so have lost all sense:
What can be then less in me than desire
To see thee, and approach thee, whom I know
Declared the Son of God, to hear attent
Thy wisdom, and behold thy god-like deeds 2
Men generally think me much a foe
To all mankind : why should I? they to nic
Never did wrong or violence; by them
I lost not what I lost, rather by them
I gained what I have gained, and with them dwell,
Copartner in these regions of the world,
If not disposer; lend them oſt my aid,
Oſt my advice by presages and signs,
And answers, oracles, portents, and dreams,
Whereby they may direct their future life.
Envy they say excites me, thus to gain
Companions of my misery and woe.
At first it may be ; but long since with woe
Nearer acquainted, now I feel, by proof,
That fellowship in pain divides not smart,
Nor lighteus aught each man's peculiar load.
Small consolation then, were man adjoined :
This wounds me most, (what can it less ') that man,
an fallen, shall be restored; I, never more.’
To whom our Saviour sternly thus replied:
‘Deservedly thou grievest, composed of lies
From the beginning, and in lies wilt end ;
Who boastest release from hell, and leave to come
Into the heaven of heavens: thou comest indeed
As a poor miserable captive thrall
Comes to the place where he before had sat
Among the prime in splendour, now deposed,
$
#
Book I.
IOI
PARADISE REGAIN ED.
Ejected, emptied, gazed, unpitied, shunned,
A spectacle of ruin or of scorn
To all the host of heaven; the happy place
Jnparts to thee no happiness, no joy,
Rather inflames thy torment: representing
Lost bliss, to thee no more communicable,
So never more in hell than when in heaven.
But thou art serviceable to heaven's King.
Wilt thou impute to obedience what thy fear
Extorts, or pleasure to do ill excites ?
What but thy malice moved thee to misdeem
Of righteous Job, then cruelly to afflict him
With all inflictions? but his patience won.
The other service was thy chosen task,
To be a liar in four hundred mouths;
For lying is thy sustenance, thy food.
Yet thou pretendest to truth; all oracles
By thee are given, and what confessed more true
Among the nations 2 that hath been thy craft,
By mixing somewhat true to vent more lies.
But what have been thy answers P what but dark,
Ambiguous, and with double sense deluding,
Which they who asked have seldom understood,
And, not well understood, as good not known 2
Who ever by consulting at thy shrine
Returned the wiser, or the more instruct,
To fly or follow what concerned him most,
And run not sooner to his fatal snare 2
For God hath justly given the nations up
To thy delusions; justly, since they fell
Idolatrous: but, when his purpose is
Among them to declare his providence
To thee not known, whence hast thou then thy truth,
But from him, or his angels president
In every province, who, themselves disdaining
To approach thy temples, give thee in command
What, to the smallest tittle, thou shalt say,
To thy adorers? Thou, with trembling fear,
Or like a fawning parasite, obeyest:
Then to thyself ascribest the truth foretold.
But this thy glory shall be soon retrenched;
No more shalt thou by oracling abuse
The Gentiles; henceforth oracles are ceased,
And thou no more with pomp and sacrifice
Shalt be inquired at Delphos, or elsewhere;
At least in vain, for they shall find thee mute.
God hath now sent his living oracle
Into the world to teach his final will,
And sends his Spirit of truth henceforth to dwell
In pious hearts, an inward oracle
To all truth requisite for men to know.’
So spake our Saviour, but the subtle fiend,
Though inly stung with anger and disdain,
Dissembled, and this answer smooth returned :
‘Sharply thou hast insisted on rebuke,
And urged me hard with doings, which not wil.
But misery hath wrested from me. Where
Easily canst thou find one miserable,
And not enforced oft-times to part from truth,
If it may stand him more in stead to lie,
Say and unsay, feign, flatter, or abjure ?
But thou art placed above me, thou art Lord;
From thee I can, and must, submiss endure -
Check or reproof, and glad to escape so quit. * •” 2. -
Hard are the ways of truth, and rough to walk, try ( \|
Smooth on the tongue discoursed, pleasing to the ear,
And tuneable as sylvan pipe or song ;

TWhat wonder then if I delight to hear
Her dictates from thy mouth P Most men admire
Virtue, who follow not her lore : permit me
To hear thee when I come, (since no man comes,)
And talk at least, though I despair to attain.
Thy Father, who is holy, wise, and pure,
Suffers the hypocrite or atheous priest
To tread his sacred courts, and minister
About his altar, handling holy things,
Praying or vowing ; and vouchsafed his voice
To Balaam reprobate, a prophet yet
Inspired : disdain not such access to me.”
To whom our Saviour, with unaltered brow :
‘Thy coming hither, though I know thy scope,
I bid not, or forbid; do as thou findest
Permission from above; thou canst not more.”
ſ He added not; and Satan, bowing low
| His gray dissimulation, disappeared
| Into thin air diffused : for now began
| Night with her sullen wings to double-shade
The desert; fowls in their clay nests were couched;
And now wild beasts came forth the woods to roam.
º - /
T. LCC | (AA) UAA ({_{ <!.
/
102 PARADISE REGAINED. Book II.
BOOK II.
THE ARGUMENT.
The disciples of Jesus, uneasy at his long absence, reason amongst themselves concerning it. Mary also gives vent to her maternal
anxiety; in the expression of which she recapitulates many circumstances respecting the birth and early life of her Som. Satan
again meets his infernal council, reports the bad success of his first temptation of ..". Lord, and calls upon them for coun-
sel and assistance. Belial proposes the tempting of Jesus with women. Satan rebukes Belial for his dissoluteness, charging on
him all, the profligacy of that kind ascribed by the poets to the heathen gods, and rejects his proposal as in no respect likely to
succeed. Satan then suggests other modes of temptation, particularly proposing to avail ñº of the circumstance of our Lord's
hungering ; , and, taking a band of chosen spirits with him, returns to resume his enterprise. Jesus hungers in the desert. Night
comes on ; the manner in which Qur Saviour passes the might is described. Morning advances. , Satan again appears to Jesus, and,
after expressing wonder that he should be so entirely neglected in the wilderness, where others had been miraculously ſed, tempts
him with a sumptuous banquet of the most luxurious kind. This he rejects, and the banquet vanishes. Satan, finding our Lórd
not to be assailed on the ground of appetite, tempts him again by offering him riches, as the means of acquiring power: this Jesus
also rejects, producing many instances of great actions performed by persons under virtuous poverty, and specifying the danger of
riches, and the cares and pains inseparable from power and greatness.
r
|Behold the kings of the earth, how they oppress
MEAN while the new-baptized, who yet remained
At Jordan with the Baptist, and had seen
Him whom they heard so late expressly called
Jesus Messiah, Son of God declared,
And on that high authority had believed,
And with him talked, and with him lodged ; I mean
Andrew and Simon, famous after known,
With others, though in holy writ not named ;
Now missing him, their joy so lately found,
(So lately found, and so abruptly gone,)
Began to doubt, and doubted many days,
And as the days increased, increased their doubt.
Sometimes they thought he might be only shown,
And for a time caught up to God, as once
Moses was in the mount and missing long,
And the great Thisbite, who on fiery wheels
Rode up to heaven, yet once again to come:
Therefore, as those young prophets then with care
Sought lost Elijah, so in each place these
Nigh to Bethabara; in Jericho
The city of palms, AEnon, and Salem old,
Machaerus, and each town or city walled
On this side the broad lake Genezaret,
©r in Peraea; but returned in vain.
Then on the bank of Jordan, by a creek,
Where winds with reeds and osiers whispering play,
Plain fishermen, (no greater men them call,)
Close in a cottage low together got,
Their uncxpected loss and plaints outbreathed :
‘Alas, from what high hope to what relapse
Unlooked for are we fallen our eyes beheld
Messiah certainly now come, so long
2xpected of our fathers; we have heard
His words, his wisdom full of grace and truth.
“Now, now, for sure, deliverance is at hand,
The kingdom shall to Israel be restored;”
Thus we rejoiced, but soon our joy is turned
Into perplexity and new amaze :
For whither is he gone, what accident
Hath rapt him from us P will he now retire
After appearance, and again prolong
Our expectation º God of Israel,
Send thy Messiah forth, the time is come :
d
ſ
;
*!
Thy chosen; to what highth their power unjust
They have exalted, and behind them cast
All fear of thee; arise, and vindicate
Thy glory; free thy people from their yoke.
But let us wait; thus far he hath performed,
iSent his Anointed, and to us revealed him
By his great prophet, pointed at and shown
In public, and with him we have conversed :
Let us be glad of this, and all our fears
Lay on his providence; he will not fail,
Nor will withdraw him now, nor will recall,
Mock us with his blest sight, then snatch him hence.
Soon shall we see our hope, our joy, return.'
Thus they, out of their plaints, new hope resume
To find whom at the first they found unsought:
But, to his mother Mary, when she saw
Others returned from baptism, not her son,
Nor left at Jordan, tidings of him none,
Within her breast though calm, her breast though
pure,
Motherly cares and fears got head, and raised
Some troubled thoughts, which she in sighs thus clad :
‘O, what avails me now that honour high,
To have conceived of God, or that salute,
“Hail, highly favoured, among women blest!”
While I to sorrows am no less advanced,
And fears as eminent, above the lot
Of other women, by the birth I bore;
In such a season born, when scarce a shed
Could be obtained to shelter him or me
From the bleak air; a stable was our warmth,
A manger his; yet soon enforced to fly
Thence into Egypt, till the murderous king
Were dead, who sought his life, and missing filled
With infant blood the streets of Bethlehem ;
From Egypt home returned in Nazareth
Hath been our dwelling many years; his life
Private, unactive, calm, contemplative,
Little suspicious to any king; but now,
Full grown to man, acknowledged, as I hear,
By John the Baptist, and in public shown,
Son owned from heaven by his Father's voice,


Book II.
PARADISE REGAINED. 103
I looked for some great change; to honour? no,
But trouble, as old Simeon plain foretold,
That to the fall and rising he should be
Of many in Israel, and to a sign
Spoken against, that through my very soul
A sword shall pierce : this is my favoured lot,
My exaltation to afflictions high !
Afflicted I may be, it seems, and blest;
I will not argue that, nor will repine.
But where delays he now 2 some great intent
Conceals him: when twelve years he scarce had seen,
I lost him, but so found, as well I saw
He could not lose himself, but went about
His Father's business; what he meant I mused,
Since understand ; much more his absence now
Thus long to some great purpose he obscures.
But I to wait with patience am inured;
My heart hath been a store-house long of things,
And sayings laid up, portending strange events.”
Thus Mary, pondering oſt, and oft to mind
Recalling what remarkably had passed
Since first her salutation heard, with thoughts
Meekly composed awaited the fulfilling:
The while her Son, tracing the desert wild,
Sole, but with holiest meditations fed,
Into himself descended, and at once
All his great work to come before him set;
How to begin, how to accomplish best
His end of being on earth, and mission high :
For Satan, with sly preface to return,
Had left him vacant, and with speed was gone
Up to the middle region of thick air,
Where all his potentates in council sat :
There, without sign of boast, or sign of joy,
Solicitous and blank, he thus began :
‘Princes, heaven's ancient sons, ethereal thrones;
Demonian spirits now, from the element
Each of his reign allotted, rightlier called
Powers of fire, air, water, and earth beneath,
(So may we hold our place and these mild seats
Without new trouble,) such an enemy
Is risen to invade us, who no less
Threatens than our expulsion down to hell;
I, as I undertook, and with the vote
Consenting in full frequence was impowered,
Have found him, viewed him, tasted him; but find
Far other labour to be undergone
Than when I dealt with Adam, first of men.
Though Adam by his wife's allurement fell,
However to this man inferior far;
If he be man by mother's side, at least
With more than human gifts from heaven adorned,
Perfections absolute, graces divine,
And amplitude of mind to greatest deeds.
Therefore I am returned, lest confidence
Of my success with Eve in Paradise
Deceive ye to persuasion over-sure
Of like succeeding here: I summon all
Rather to be in readiness, with hand
Or counsel to assist: lest I, who erst
Thought none my equal, now be over-matched.’
So spake the old serpent, doubting; and from all
With clamour was assured their utmost aid
At his command: when from amidst them rose
Belial, the dissolutest spirit that fell,
The sensualest, and, after Asmodai,
The fleshiest ineubus; and thus advised :
“Set women in his eye, and in his walk,
Among daughters of men the fairest found:
Many are in each region passing fair
As the noon sky; more like to goddesses
Than mortal creatures, graceful and discreet,
Expert in amorous arts, enchanting tongues
Persuasive, virgin majesty with mild
And sweet allayed, yet terrible to approach,
Skilled to retire, and, in retiring, draw
Hearts after them, tangled in amorous nets.
Such object hath the power to soften and tame
Severest temper, smooth the ruggedest brow,
Enerve, and with voluptuous hope dissolve,
Draw out with credulous desire, and lead
t will the manliest, resolutest breast,
As the magnetic hardest iron draws.
Women, when nothing else, beguiled the heart
Of wisest Solomon, and made him build,
And made him bow, to the gods of his wives.”
To whom quick answer Satan thus returned :
* Belial, in much uneven scale thou weighest
All others by thyself; because of old .
Thou thyself doatest on womankind, admiring
Their shape, their colour, and attractive grace,
None are, thou thinkest, but taken with such toys
Before the flood thou with thy lusty crew,
False-titled sons of God, roaming the earth,
Cast wanton eyes on the daughters of men,
And coupled with them, and begot a race.
Have we not seen, or by relation heard,
In courts and regal chambers how thou lurkest,
In wood or grove, by mossy fountain-side,
In valley or green meadow, to way-lay
Some beauty rare, Calisto, Clymene,
Daphne, or Semele, Antiopa,
Or Amymone, Syrinx, many more
Too long, then layest thy 'scapes on names adored,
Apollo, Neptune, Jupiter, or Pan,
Satyr, or Faun, or Sylvan P But these haunts
Delight not all ; among the sons of men,
How many have with a smile made small account
Of beauty and her lures, easily scorned
All her assaults, on worthier things intent
Remember that Pellean conqueror,
A youth, how all the beauties of the East
He slightly viewed, and slightly overpassed;
How he, surnamed of Africa, dismissed,
In his prime youth, the fair Iberian maid.
Tor Solomon, he lived at ease, and full
Of honour, wealth, high fare, aimed not beyond
Higher design than to enjoy his state;
Thence to the bait of women lay exposed ;
But he, whom we attempt, is wiser far
Than Solomon, of more exalted mind,
Made and set wholly on the accomplishment
104
Book II.
PARADISE REGAIN ED.
Of greatest things. What woman will you find,
Though of this age the wonder and the fame,
On whom his leisure will vouchsafe an eye
Of fond desire P Or should she, confident,
As sitting queen adored on beauty's throne,
Descend with all her winning charms begirt
To enamour, as the zone of Venus once
Wrought that effect on Jove, so fables tell;
How would one look from his majestic brow,
Seated as on the top of virtue's hill,
Discountenance her despised, and put to rout
All her array; her female pride deject,
Or turn to reverent awe for beauty stands
In the admiration only of weak minds
Led captive ; cease to admire, and all her plumes
Tall flat, and shrink into a trivial toy,
At every sudden slighting quite abashed.
Therefore with manlier objects we must try
His constancy; with such as have more show
Of worth, of honour, glory, and popular praise,
Rocks whereon greatest men have oftest wrecked;
Or that which only seems to satisfy
Lawful desires of nature, not beyond;
And now I know he hungers, where no food
Is to be found, in the wide wilderness:
The rest commit to me; I shall let pass
No advantage, and his strength as oft assay.”
He ceased, and heard their grant in loud acclaim ;
Then forth with to him takes a chosen band
Of spirits, likest to himself in guile,
To be at hand, and at his beck appear,
If cause were to unfold some active scene
Of various persons, each to know his part;
Then to the desert takes with these his flight;
Where, still from shade to shade, the Son of God
After forty days’ fasting had remained, *...*
Now hungering first, and to himself thus said:
‘Where will this end ? four times ten days I’ve
passed
Wandering this woody maze, and human food
Nor tasted, nor had appetite: that fast
To virtue I impute not, or count part
Of what I suffer here : if nature need not,
Or God support nature without repast
Though needing, what praise is it to endure ?
But now I feel I hunger, which declares
Nature hath need of what she asks; yet God
Can satisfy that need some other way,
Though hunger still remain : so it remain
Without this body's wasting, I content me,
And from the sting of famine fear no harm ;
Nor mind it, fed with better thoughts, that feed
Me hungering more to do my Father's will.’
It was the hour of night, when thus the Son
Communcq in silent walk, then laid him down
Under the hospitable covert migh
_Of trees thick interwoven; there he slept,
And dreamed, as appetite is wont to dream,
Of meats and drinks, nature's refreshment sweet :
Him thought, he by the brook of Cherith stood,
| And saw the ravens with their horny beaks
Food to Elijah bringing, cven and morn,
Though ravenous, taught to abstain from what they
brought:
He saw the prophet also, how he fled
Into the desert, and how there he slept
Under a juniper; then how awaked
He found his supper on the coals prepared,
And by the angel was bid rise and eat,
And eat the second time after repose,
The strength whereof sufficed him forty days:
Sometimes that with Elijah he partook,
Or as a guest with Daniel at his pulse.
| Thus wore out night; and now the herald lark
Left his ground-nest, high towering to descry
The morn's approach, and greet her with his song :
As lightly from his grassy couch up-rose
Our Saviour, and found all was but a dream ;
Fasting he went to sleep, and fasting waked.
Up to a hill anon his steps he reared,
From whose high top to ken the prospect round,
If cottage were in view, sheep-cote, or herd;
But cottage, herd, or sheep-cote, none he saw ;
Only in a bottom saw a pleasant grove,
With chat of tuneful birds resounding loud :
Thither he bent his way, determined there
To rest at noon, and entered soon the shade
High roofed, and walks beneath, and alleys brown,
That opened in the midst a woody scene;
Nature's own work it seemed, (nature taught art.)
And, to a superstitious eye, the haunt
Of wood-gods and wood-nymphs: he viewed it round,
When suddenly a man before him stood;
Not rustic as before, but seemlier clad,
As one in city, or court, or palace bred,
And with fair speech these words to him addressed:
“With granted leave officious I return,
But much more wonder that the Son of God
In this wild solitude so long should bide,
Of all things destitute; and well I know,
Not without hunger. Others of some note,
As story tells, have trod this wilderness;
The fugitive bond-woman, with her son,
Outcast Nebaioth, yet found here relief
By a providing angel; all the race
Of Israel here had famished, had not God
Rained from heaven manna; and that prophet bold,
Native of Thebez, wandering here was fed
Twice by a voice inviting him to eat :
Of thee these forty days none hath regard,
Forty and more deserted here indeed.’
To whom thus Jesus: “What concludest thou hence?
They all had need; I, as thou seest, have none.’
‘How hast thou hunger then P Satan replied.
“Tell me, if food were now before thee set,
Wouldst thou not eat P’ ‘Thereafter as I like
The giver,” answered Jesus. “Why should that
Cause thy refusal ’’ said the subtle fiend.
* Hast thou not right to all created things?
Owe not all creatures by just right to thce
Duty and service, nor to stay till bid,
But tender all their powerf Nor mention I
Rook II.
105
PARADISE REGAINED.
Meats by the law unclean, or offered first
To idols, those young Daniel could refuse;
Nor proffered by an enemy, though who
Would scruple that, with want oppressed P Behold,
Nature ashamed, or, better to express,
Troubled, that thou shouldst hunger, hath purveyed
From all the elements her choicest store,
To treat thee, as beseems, and as her Lord,
With honour: only deign to sit and eat.”
*
He spake no dream; for, as his words had end,
Our Saviour liſting up his eyes beheld,
In ample space under the broadest shade,
A table richly spread, in regal mode,
With dishes piled, and meats of noblest sort
And savour; beasts of chase, or fowl of game,
In pastry built, or from the spit, or boiled,
Gris-amber-steamed ; all fish, from sea or shore,
Freshet or purling brook, or shell or fin,
And exquisitest name, for which was drained
Pontus, and Lucrine bay, and Afric coast.
(Alas! how simple, to these cates compared,
Was that crude apple that diverted Eve 1)
And at a stately sideboard, by the wine
That fragrant smell diffused, in order stood
Tall stripling youths rich clad, of fairer hue
- J-Than Ganymed or Hylas; distant more
§
§
yº
")
Under the trees now tripped, now solemn stood,
N Nymphs of Diana's train, and Naiades,
With fruits and flowers from Amalthea's horn,
And ladies of the Hesperides, that seemed
Fairer than feigned of old, or fabled since
Of faery damsels, met in forest wide
By knights of Logres, or of Lyones,
Lancelot, or Pelleas, or Pellenore.
3 y And all the while harmonious airs were heard
Of chiming strings, or charming pipes; and winds
Of gentlest gale Arabian odours fanned
From their soft wings, and Flora's earliest smells.
Such was the splendour; and the tempter now
His invitation earnestly renewed.
‘What doubts the Son of God to sit and eat?
These are not fruits forbidden; no interdict
Defends the touching of these viands pure;
Their taste no knowledge works, at least of evil,
But life preserves, destroys life's enemy,
Hunger, with sweet restorative delight.
All these are spirits of air, and woods, and springs,
Thy gentle ministers, who come to pay
Thee homage, and acknowledge thee their Lord;
What doubtest thou, Son of God P Sit down and eat.”
To whom thus Jesus temperately replied:
‘Saidest thou not that to all things I had right?
And who withholds my power that right to use P
Shall I receive by gift what of my own,
When and where likes me best, I can command P
I can at will, doubt not, as soon as thou,
Command a table in this wilderness,
And call swift flights of angels ministrant
Arrayed in glory on my cup to attend :
Why shouldst thou then obtrude this diligence,
In vain, where no acceptance it can find 2
And with my hunger what hast thou to do?
Thy pompous delicacies I contemn,
And count thy specious gifts no gifts, but guiles.’
To whom thus answered Satan malcontent:
‘That I have also power to give, thou seest:
If of that power I bring thee voluntary
What I might have bestowed on whom I pleased,
And rather opportunely in this place
Chose to impart to thy apparent need,
Why shouldst thou not accept it? but I see
What I can do or offer is suspect;
Of these things others quickly will dispose,
Whose pains have earned the far-fet spoil.” With that
Both table and provision vanished quite
With sound of harpies’ wings and talons heard :
Only the impôrtune tempter still remained,
And with these words his temptation pursued :
“By hunger, that each other creature tames,
Thou art not to be harmed, therefore not moved;
Thy temperance invincible besides,
For no allurement yields to appetite;
And all thy heart is set on high designs,
High actions: but where with to be achieved P
Great acts require great means of enterprise;
Thou art unknown, unfriended, low of birth,
A carpenter thy father known, thyself
Bred up in poverty and straits at home,
Lost in a desert here and hunger-bit:
Which way, or from what hope, dost thou aspire
To greatness? whence authority derivest 2
What followers, what retinue, canst thou gain,
Or at thy heels the dizzy multitude,
onger than thou canst feed them on thy cost?
| Money brings honour, friends, conquest, and realms:
What raised Antipater the Edomite,
And his son Herod placed on Judah's throne,
Thy throne, but gold that got him puissant friends?
Therefore, if at great things thou wouldst arrive,
Get riches first, get wealth, and treasure heap,
Not difficult, if thou hearken to me:
Riches are mine, fortune is in my hand;
They whom I favour thrive in wealth amain,
While virtue, valour, wisdom, sit in want.”
To whom thus Jesus patiently replied:
‘Yet wealth, without these three, is impotent
To gain dominion, or to keep it gained.
Witness those ancient empires of the earth,
In highth of all their flowing wealth dissolved :
But men endued with these have oft attained
In lowest poverty to highest deeds;
Gideon, and Jephtha, and the shepherd lad
Whose offspring on the throne of Judah sat
So many ages, and shall yet regain
That seat, and reign in Israel without end.
Among the heathen (for throughout the world
To me is not unknown what hath been done
Worthy of memorial) canst thou not remenber
Quintius, Fabricius, Curius, Regulus 2
For I esteem those names of men so poor,
Who could do mighty things, and could contemn
Riches, though offered from the hand of kings.
*.
106 PARADISE REGAINED.
Book III,
And what in me seems wanting, but that I
May also in this poverty as soon
Accomplish what they did, perhaps and more ?
Extol not riches then, the toil of fools,
The wise man's cumbrance, if not snare; more apt
To slacken virtue, and abate her edge,
| Than prompt her to do aught may merit praise.
What if with like aversion I reject
Riches and realms 2 yet not for that a crown,
Golden in show, is but a wreath of thorns,
Brings dangers, troubles, cares, and sleepless nights,
To him who wears the regal diadem, -
When on his shoulders each man’s burden lies;
For therein stands the office of a king,
His honour, virtue, merit, and chief praise,
That for the public all this weight he bears:
Yet he, who reigns within himself, and rules
Passions, desires, and fears, is more a king;
Which every wise and virtuous man attains;
And who attains not, ill aspires to rule
Cities of men, or headstrong multitudes,
Subject himself to anarchy within,
Or lawless passions in him, which he serves.
| But to guide nations in the way of truth
i By saving doctrine, and from error lead
#To know, and knowing worship God aright,
\Is yet more kingly; this attracts the soul,
Governs the inner man, the nobler part;
That other o'er the body only reigns,
And oft by force, which to a generous mind,
So reigning, can be no sincere delight.
Besides, to give a kingdom hath been thought
Greater and nobler done, and to lay down
Far more magnanimous than to assume.
Riches are needless then, both for themselves,
And for thy reason why they should be sought,
To gain a scepter, oftest better missed.’
BOOK III.
THE ARGUMENT.
Satan, in a speech of much flattering commendation, endeavours to awaken in Jesus, a passion for glory by particularising various
instances of conquests achieved
and great actions performed, by persons at an early period of life.
Our Lord replies, by showing
the vanity of worldly ſame, and the improper means by which it is generally attained; and contrasts with it the true glory of reli.
ious patience and virtuous wisdom, as exemplified in the character of Job. Satan justifies the love of glory from the example of
É. himself, who requires it from all his creatures. Jesus detects the fallacy of this argument, by showing that, as goodness is the
true ground on which glory is due to the great Creator of all things, sinful man can have no right whatever to it. Sátan then urges our
Lord respecting his claim to the throne of David; he tells him that the kingdom of Judea, being at that time a province of Rome,
cannot be got possession of without much personal exertion on his part, and presses him to iose no time in beginning to reign.
Jesus refers him to the time allotted for this, as for all other things; and, after intimating somewhat respecting his own previous suf.
§ asks Satan why he should be so solicitous for the exaltation of one, whose rising was destined to be his fall. Satan replies,
l
that
is own desperate state, by excluding all hope, leaves little room for fear; and that, as his own punishment was equally doom.
ed, he is not interested in preventing the reign of one, from whose apparent benevolence he might rather hope for some interference
in his favour. Satan still pursues his former incitements; and, supposing that the seeming reluctance of Jesus to be thus advanced
might arise from his being unacquainted with the world and its glories, conveys him to the summit of a high mountain, and from
thence shows him most of the kingdoms of Asia, particularly pointing Qut to his notice some extraordinary military preparations
of the Parthians to resist the incursions of the Scythians. e then informs, our Lord, that he showed him this purposely that he
mightsee how necessary military exertions are to rétain the possession of kingdoms, as well as to subdue them at first, and advises him
to consider how impossible it was to maintain Judea against two such powerful neighbours as the Romans and Parthians, and how
necessary it would be to form an alliance with one or other of them. At the same time, he recommends, and engages to secure to
him, that of the Parthians; and tells him that by this means his power will be defended from anything that Rome or Caesar might
attempt against it, and that he will be able to extend his glory wide, and especially to accomplish what was particularly necessary
to make the throne of Judea really the throne of David, the deliverance and restoration of the ten tribes, still in a state of
captivity. Jesus, having briefly noticed the vanity of military efforts, and the weakness of the arm of flesh, says, that when the
time comes for his ascending his allotted throne, he shall not be slack : he remarks on Satan's extraordinary zeal for the deliver-
ance of the Israelites, to whom he had always showed himself an enemy, and declares their servitude to be the consequence of
their idolatry; but adds, that at a future time it may perhaps please God to recall them, and restore them to their liberty and native
land.
So spake the Son of God; and Satan stood
A while as mute, confounded what to say,
What to reply, confuted and convinced
Of his weak arguing and fallacious drift;
At length, collecting all his serpent wiles,
With soothing words renewed, him thus accosts:
“I see thou knowest what is of use to know,
What best to say canst say, to do canst do ;
Thy actions to thy words accord, thy words
To thy large heart give utterance due, thy heart
Contains of good, wise, just, the perfect shape.
Should kings and nations from thy mouth consult,
Thy counsel would be as the oracle
Urim and Thummim, those oraculous gems
On Aaron's breast; or tongue of seers old,
Infallible: or wert thou sought to deeds
That might require the array of war, thy skill
Of conduct would be such, that all the world
Could not sustain thy prowess, or subsist
In battle, though against thy few in arms.
These god-like virtues wherefore dost thou hide,
Affecting private life, or more obscure
In savage wilderness P wherefore deprive
All earth her wonder at thy acts, thyself
The ſame and glory, glory the reward
That sole excites to high attempts, the flame
Of most erected spirits, most tempered pure
Ethereal, who all pleasures else despise,
All treasures and all gain esteem as dross,
And dignities and powers all but the highest P
Book III.
107
PARADISE REGAINED.
Thy years are ripe, and over-ripe ; the son
Of Macedonian Philip had ere these
Won Asia, and the throne of Cyrus held
At his dispose; young Scipio had brought down
The Carthaginian pride; young Pompey quelled
The Pontic king, and in triumph had rode.
Yet years, and to ripe years judgment mature,
Quench not the thirst of glory, but augment.
Great Julius, whom now all the world admires,
The more he grew in years, the more inflamed
With glory, wept that he had lived so long
Inglorious : but thou yet art not too late.’
To whom our Saviour calmly thus replied :
‘Thou neither dost persuade me to seek wealth
For empire's sake, nor empire to affect
For glory's sake, by all thy argument.
|TF, what is glory but the blaze of fame,
The people's praise, if always praise unmixed P
And what the people but a herd confused,
A miscellaneous rabble, who extol
Things vulgar, and, well weighed, scarce worth the
praise 2
They praise, and they admire, they know not what,
And know not whom, but as one leads the other;
And what delight to be by such extolled,
To live upon their tongues, and be their talk,
Of whom to be dispraised were no small praise,
His lot who dares be singularly good P
The intelligent among them and the wise
Are few, and glory scarce of few is raised.
This is true glory and renown; when God,
Looking on the earth, with approbation marks
The just man, and divulges him through heaven
To all his angels, who with true applause
Recount his praises; thus he did to Job,
When to extend his fame through heaven and earth,
As thou to thy reproach mayest well remember,
He asked thee, “Hast thou seen my servant Job P”
Famous he was in heaven, on earth less known;
Where glory is false glory, attributed
To things not glorious, men not worthy of fame.
They err, who count it glorious to subdue
By conquest far and wide, to over-run
Large countries, and in fields great battles win,
Great cities by assault: what do these worthies,
But rob and spoil, burn, slaughter, and enslave
Peaceable nations, neighbouring or remote,
Made captive, yet deserving freedom more
Than those their conquerors, who leave behind
Nothing but ruin wheresoe'er they rove,
And all the flourishing works of peace destroy;
Then swell with pride, and must be titled gods,
Great benefactors of mankind, deliverers,
Worshipt with temple, priest, and sacrifice P
One is the son of Jove, of Mars the other;
Till conqueror Death discover them scarce men,
Rolling in brutish vices and deformed,
Violent or shameful death their due reward.
But if there be in glory aught of good,
It may by means far different be attained,
Without ambition, war, or violence;
-**
By deeds of peace, by wisdom eminent,
By patience, temperance: I mention still
Him, whom thy wrongs, with saintly patience borne,
Made famous in a land and times obscure ;
Who names not now with honour patient Job 2
Poor Socrates, (who next more memorable 2)
By what he taught, and suffered for so doing,
For truth's sake suffering death, unjust, lives now
Equal in fame to proudest conquerors.
Yet if for fame and glory aught be done,
Aught suffered; if young African for fame
His wasted country freed from Punic rage;
The deed becomes unpraised, the man at least,
And loses, though but verbal, his reward :
Shall I seek glory then, as vain men seek,
Oft not deserved 2 I seek not mine, but his
Who sent me; and thereby witness whence I am.”
To whom the tempter murmuring thus replied:
‘Think not so slight of glory; therein least
Resembling thy great Father: he seeks glory,
And for his glory all things made, all things
Orders and governs; nor content in heaven
By all his angels glorified, requires
Glory from men, from all men, good or bad,
Wise or unwise, no difference, no exemption;
Above all sacrifice, or hallowed gift,
Glory he requires, and glory he receives,
Promiscuous from all nations, Jew or Greek,
Or barbarous, nor exception hath declared;
From us, his foes pronounced, glory he exacts.”
To whom our Saviour fervently replied:
‘And reason; since his word all things produced,
Though chiefly not for glory as prime end,
But to show forth his goodness, and impart
His good communicable to every soul
Freely; of whom what could he less expect
Than glory and benediction, that is, thanks,
The slightest, easiest, readiest recompense
From them who could return him nothing else,
And, not returning that, would likeliest render
Content instead, dishonour, obloquy 2
Hard recompense, unsuitable return
For so much good, so much beneficenceſ
But why should man seek glory, who of his own
Hath nothing, and to whom nothing belongs
But condemnation, ignominy, and shame 2
Who for so many benefits received
Turned recreamt to God, ingrate and false,
And so of all true good himself despoiled ;
Yet, sacrilegious, to himself would take
That which to God alone of right belongs:
Yet so much bounty is in God, such grace,
That who advance his glory, not their own,
Them he himself to glory will advance.”
So spake the Son of God; and here again
Satan had not to answer, but stood struck
With guilt of his own sin; for he himself,
Insatiable of glory, had lost all; .
Yet of another plea bethought him soon :
“Of glory, as thou wilt,” said he, “so deem ;
Worth or not worth the seeking, let it pass.
108
Book III.
PARADISE REGAINED.

But to a kingdom thou art born, ordained
To sit upon thy father David's throne,
By mother's side thy father; though thy right
Be now in powerful hands, that will not part
Easily from possession won with arms:
Judea now and all the promised land,
Reduced a province under Roman yoke,
Obeys Tiberius; nor is always ruled
With temperate sway; oft have they violated
The temple, oft the law, with foul affronts,
Abominations rather, as did once
Antiochus : and thinkest thou to regain
Thy right by sitting still, or thus retiring 2
So did not Maccabeus: he indeed
Retired unto the desert, but with arms;
And o'er a mighty king so oſt prevailed,
That by strong hand his family obtained,
Though priests, the crown, and David's throne usurped,
With Modin and her suburbs once content.
If kingdom move thee not, let move thee zeal
And duty; and zeal and duty are not slow,
But on occasion's forelock watchful wait:
They themselves rather are occasion best;
Zeal of thy father's house, duty to free
Thy country from her heathen servitude.
So shalt thou best fulfil, best veriſy
The prophets old, who sung thy endless reign;
The happier reign, the sooner it begins:
Reign then; what canst thou better do the while P’
To whom our Saviour answer thus returned :
“All things are best fulfilled in their due time;
And time there is for all things, Truth hath said:
If of my reign prophetic writ hath told,
That it shall never end, so, when begin,
The Father in his purpose hath decreed ;
He in whose hand all times and seasons roll.
What if he hath decreed that I shall first
Be tried in humble state, and things adverse,
By tribulations, injuries, insults,
Contempts, and scorns, and snares, and violence,
Suffering, abstaining, quietly expecting,
Without distrust or doubt, that he may know
What I can suffer, how obey P Who best
Can suffer, best can do ; best reign, who first
Well hath obeyed; just trial, ere I merit
My exaltation without change or end.
But what concerns it thee, when I begin
My everlasting kingdom * Why art thou
Solicitous P What moves thy inquisition 2
Knowest thou not that my rising is thy fall,
And my promotion will be thy destruction P’
To whom the tempter, inly racked, replied:
‘Let that come when it comes; all hope is lost
Of my reception into grace : what worse 2
I'or where no hope is left, is left no fear:
If there be worse, the expectation more
Of worse torments me than the feeling can.
I would be at the worst : worst is my port,
My harbour, and my ultimate repose;
The end I would attain, my final good.
My error was my cryor, and my crime
•T-
My crime; whatever, for itself condemned;
And will alike be punished, whether thou
Reign, or reign not; though to that gentle brow
Willingly could I fly, and hope thy reign,
From that placid aspéct and meek regard,
Rather than aggravate my evil state,
Would stand between me and thy Father's ire,
(Whose ire I dread more than the fire of hell,)
A shelter, and a kind of shading cool
Interposition, as a summer's cloud.
If I then to the worst that can be haste,
Why move thy feet so slow to what is best,
Happiest, both to thyself and all the world,
That thou, who worthiest art, shouldst be their king 2
Perhaps thou lingerest, in deep thoughts detained
Of the enterprise so hazardous and high !
No wonder; for though in thee be united
What of perſection can in man be found,
Or human nature can receive, consider,
Thy life hath yet been private, most part spent
At home, scarce viewed the Galilean towns,
And once a year Jerusalem, few days’
Short sojourn; and what thence couldst thou observe P
The world thou hast not scen, much less her glory,
Empires, and monarchs, and their radiant courts,
Best school of best experience, quickest insight
In all things that to greatest actions lead.
The wisest, unexperienced, will be ever
Timorous and loth ; with novice modesty
(As he who, seeking asses, found a kingdom)
Irresolute, unhardy, unadventurous:
But I will bring thee where thou soon shalt quit
Those rudiments, and see before thine eyes
The monarchies of the earth, their pomp and state;
Sufficient introduction to inform
Thee, of thyself so apt, in regal arts,
And regal mysteries; that thou mayest know
How best their opposition to withstand.’
With that (such power was given him then) he took
The Son of God up to a mountain high.
It was a mountain at whose verdant feet
A spacious plain, outstretched in circuit wide,
Lay pleasant; from his side two rivers flowed,
The one winding, the other straight, and left between
Fair champaign with less rivers intervened,
Then meeting joined their tribute to the sea;
Fertile of corn the glebe, of oil, and wine;
With herds the pastures thronged, with flocks the
hills;
Huge citics and high towered, that well might seem
The seats of mightiest monarchs; and so large
The prospect was, that here and there was room
For barren desert, fountainless and dry.
To this high mountain too the tempter brought
Our Saviour, and new train of words began :
‘Well have we speeded, and o'er hill and dale,
Forest and field and flood, temples and towers,
Cut shorter many a league; here thou beholdest
Assyria, and her empire's ancient bounds,
Araxes and the Caspian lake; thence on
As far as Indus east, Euphrates west,
Book III.
PARADISE REGAINED. 1 ()0
And oft beyond : to south the Persian bay,
And, inaccessible, the Arabian drought :
II cre Nineveh, of length within her wall
Several days journey, built by Ninus old,
Of that first golden monarchy the seat,
And seat of Salmanassar, whose success
Israel in long captivity still mourns;
There Babylon, the wonder of all tongues,
As ancient, but rebuilt by him who twice
Judah and all thy father David's house
Led captive, and Jerusalem laid waste,
Till Cyrus set them free; Persepolis,
His city, there thou seest, and Bactra there;
Ecbatana her structure vast there shows,
And Hecatompylos her hundred gates;
There Susa by Choaspes, amber stream,
The drink of none but kings: of later ſame,
Built by Emathian or by Parthian hands,
The great Seleucia, Nisibis, and there
Artaxata, Tcredon, Ctesiphon,
Turning with easy eye, thou mayest behold.
All these the Parthian (now some ages past,
By great Arsaces led, who founded first
That empire) under his dominion holds,
From the luxurious kings of Antioch won.
And just in time thou comest to have a view
Of his great power; for now the Parthian king
In Ctesiphon hath gathered all his host
Against the Scythian, whose incursions wild
Have wasted Sogdiana; to her aid
He marches now in haste; see, though ſrom far,
His thousands, in what martial equipage
They issue forth, steel bows and shafts their arms,
Of equal dread in flight or in pursuit;
All horsemen, in which fight they most excel;
See how in warlike muster they appear,
In rhombs, and wedges, and half-moons, and wings.”
He looked, and saw what numbers numberless
The city-gates out-poured, light-armed troops,
In coats of mail and military pride;
In mail their horses clad, yet fleet and strong,
Prancing their riders bore, the fiower and choice
Of many provinces from bound to bound;
From Arachosia, from Candaor east,
And Margiana, to the Hyrcanian cliffs
Of Caucasus, and dark Iberian dales;
From Atropatia, and the neighbouring plains
Of Adiabene, Media, and the south
Of Susiana, to Balsara's haven.
He saw them in their forms of battle ranged,
How quick they wheeled, and flying behind them
shot
Sharp sleet of arrowy showers against the face
Of their pursuers, and overcame by flight;
The field all iron cast a gleaming brown :
Nor wanted clouds of foot, nor on each horn
Cuirassiers all in steel for standing fight,
Chariots, or elephants indorsed with towers
Of archers; nor of labouring pioneers
A multitude, with spades and axes armed
To lay hills plane, fell woods, or valleys fill,
Or where plane was raise hill, or overlay
With bridges rivers proud, as with a yºkº
Mules after thcse, camels and dromedaries,
And waggons, fraught with utensils of war.
Such forces met not, nor so wide a camp,
When Agrican with all his northern powers
Besieged Albracca, as romances tell,
The city of Gallaphrone, from whence to win
The ſairest of her sex Angelica,
His daughter, sought by many prowest knights,
Both Paynim, and the peers of Charlemain.
Such and so numerous was their chivalry :
At sight whereof the fiend yet more presumed,
And to our Saviour thus his words renewed:
‘That thou mayest know I seek not to engage
Thy virtue, and not every way secure
On no slight grounds thy safety; hear and mark,
To what end I have brought thee hither, and shown
All this fair sight: thy kingdom though foretold
By prophet or by angel, unless thou
Endeavour as thy father David did,
Thou never shalt obtain ; prediction still
In all things, and all men, supposes means ;
Without means used, what it predicts revokes.
But, say thou wert possessed of David's throne,
By free consent of all, none opposite,
Samaritan or Jew; how couldst thou hope
Long to enjoy it, quiet and secure, *
Between two such enclosing enemics,
Roman and Parthian P. Therefore one of these
Thou must make sure thy own ; the Parthian first
By my advice, as nearer, and of late
Found able by invasion to annoy
Thy country, an captive lead away her kings,
Antigonus and old Hyrcanus, bound,
Maugre the Roman : it shall be my task
To render thee the Parthian at dispose,
Choose which thou wilt, by conquest or by league:
By him thou shalt regain, without him not,
That which alone can truly re-install thee
In David's royal seat, his true successor,
Deliverance of thy brethren, those ten tribes
Whose offspring in his territory yet serve,
In Habor, and among the Medes dispersed :
Ten sons of Jacob, two of Joseph, lost
Thus long from Israel, serving, as of old
Their fathers in the land of Egypt served,
This offer sets before thee to deliver.
These if from servitude thou shalt restore
To their inheritance, them, nor till then,
Thou on the throne of David in full glory,
From Egypt to Euphrates, and beyond,
Shalt reign, and Rome or Caesar need not fear.”
To whom our Saviour answered thus, unmoved :
“Much ostentation vain of fleshly arm
And fragile arms, much instrument of war,
Long in preparing, soon to nothing brought,
Before mine eyes thou hast set; and in my ear
Vented much policy, and projects deep
Of cnemies, of aids, battles and leagues,
Plausible to the world, to me worth nought,

110 PARADISE REGAINED.
Book IV.
Means I must use, thou sayest, prediction else
Will unpredict, and ſail me of the throne:
My time, I told thee, (and that time for thee
Were better farthest off) is not yet come :
When that comes, think not thou to find me slack
On my part aught endeavouring, or to need
# Thy politic maxims, or that cumbersome
; Luggage of war there shown me, argument
| Of human weakness rather than of strength.
My brethren, as thou callest them, those ten tribes,
I must deliver, if I mean to reign
David's true heir, and his full scepter sway
To just extent over all Israel’s sons.
But whence to thee this zeal Where was it then
For Israel, or for David, or his throne,
When thou stoodest up his tempter to the pride
Of numbering Israel, which cost the lives
Of threescore and ten thousand Israelites
By three days’ pestilence P Such was thy zeal
To Israel then ; the same that now to me !
As for those captive tribes, themselves were they
Who wrought their own captivity, fell off
From God to worship calves, the deities
Of Egypt, Baal next and Ashtaroth,
And all the idolatries of heathen round,
Besides their other worse than heathenish crimes;
Nor in the land of their captivity
Humbled themselves, or penitent besought
The God of their forefathers; but so died
Impenitent, and left a race behind
Like to themselves, distinguishable scarce
From Gentiles, but by circumcision vain;
And God with idols in their worship joined.
Should I of these the liberty regard,
Who, freed, as to their ancient patrimony,
Unhumbled, unrepentant, unreformed,
*Headlong would follow; and to their gods perhaps
Of Bethel and of Dan P No.; let them serve
Their enemies, who serve idols with God.
Yet he at length (time to himself best known)
Remembering Abraham, by some wondrous call
May bring them back repentant and sincere,
And at their passing cleave the Assyrian flood,
While to their native land with joy they haste;
As the Red sea and Jordan once he cleft,
When to the promised land their fathers passed :
To his due time and providence I leave them.”
So spake Israel's true King, and to the fiend
Made answer meet, that made void all his wiles.
So fares it, when with truth falsehood contends.
BOOK IV.
THE ARGUMENT.
Satan, persisting in the temptation of our Lord, shows him imperial Rome in its greatest pomp and Splendour, as a power which he
probably would prefer before that of the Parthians; and tells him that he might with the greatest ease expel Tiberius, restore the
Romans to their liberty, and make himself master not only of the Roman empire, but, by so doing, of the whole World, and inclu-
sively of the throne of David. Our Lord, in reply, expresses his contempt of grandeur and Worldly power, notices, the luxury,
vanity, and profligacy of the Romans, declaring hòw little they merited to be restored to that liberty which they had lost by their
misconduct, and briefly refers to the greatness of his own future kingdom. Satan, now desperate, to enhance the Value of his
proffered gifts, professés that the only terms on which he will bestow them, are our Saviour's falling down and worshipping him.
Öur Lord expresses a firm but temperate indignation at such a proposition, and rebukes the tempter by the title of ‘Satan, for eyer
damned." Satan, abashed, attempts to justify himself: he then assumes a new ground of temptation, and proposing to Jesus the
intellectual gratifications of wisdom and knowledge, points out to him the celebrated seat of ancient learning, Athens, its Schools,
and other various resorts of learned teachers and their disciples; accompanying the view with a highly finished panegyrig on the
Grecian musicians, poets, orators, and philosophers of the different sects. Jésus replies, by showing the Vanity and insufficiency of
the boasted heathen philosophy; and prefers to the music, poetry, eloquence, and didactic policy of the Greeks, those of the in-
spired Hebrew writers. Satan, irritated at the failure of all his attempts, upbraids the indiscretion of our Saviour in rejecting his
offers; and having, in ridicule of his expected kingdom, foretold the sufferings that our Lord was to undergo, Carries him back into
the wilderness, and leaves him there. Night comes on: Satan raises a tremendous storm, and attempts further to, alarm Jesus
with frightful dreams, and terrific threatening spectres; which however have no effect upon him. A calm, bright, beautiful morning
succeeds to the horrors of the night. Satan again presents himself to our blessed Lord, and, from noticing the Storm of the pre-
ceding night as pointed chiefly at him, takes occasion once more to insult him with an account of the sufferings which he wºs cer.
tainly to undergo. This only draws from our Lord a brief rebuke. Satan, now at the highth of his desperation, confesses that, he
had frequently watched Jesus from his birth, purposely to discover if he was the true Messiah ; and, collecting from what passed at
the river Jordan that he most probably was so, he had from that time more assiduously followed him, in hopes of gaining some ad;
vantage over him, which º most effectually prove that he was not really that Divine Person destined to be his ‘fatal jº.
In this he acknowledges that he has hitherto completely failed; but still determines to make one more trial of him. Accordingly he
conveys him to the temple at Jerusalem, and, placing him on a pointed eminence, requires him to prove his divinity, either by stand-
ing there, or casting himself down with safety. Our Lord reproves the tempter, and at the same time manifests his own divinity
by standing on this dangerous point. Satan amazed and terrified, instantly falls; and repairs, to his infernal compeers to relate
the bad success of his enterprise. Angels in the mean time convey our blessed Lord to a beautiful valley, and, while they minister
to him a repast of celestial food, celebrate his victory in a triumphant hymn.
So little here, may lost; but Eve was Eve :
This far his over-match, who, self-deceived sº
And rash, beforehand had no better weighed
The strength he was to cope with, or his own :
But as a man, who had been matchless held
PERPLExED and troubled at his bad success
The tempter stood, nor had what to reply,
Discovered in his fraud, thrown from his hope
So oft, and the persuasive rhetoric
That slecked his tongue, and won so much on Eve,
Book IV. PARADISE REGAINED. I 11

In cunning, over-reached where least he thought, The realm of Bocchus to the Black-moor sea ;
To salve his credit, and for every spite, From the Asian kings, and Parthian among these;
Still will be tempting him who foils him still, From India and the Golden Chersonese,
And never cease, though to his shame the more; And utmost Indian isle Taprobane,
Or as a swarm of flies in vintage time, Dusk faces with white silken turbans wreathed ;
About the wine-press where sweet must is poured, From Gallia, Gades, and the British west;
Beat off, returns as oft with humming sound; . Germans, and Scythians, and Sarmatians, north
Or surging waves against a solid rock, Beyond Danubius to the Tauric pool.
Though all to shivers dashed, the assault renew, All nations now to Rome obedience pay;
(Vain battery !) and in froth or bubbles end; To Rome's great emperor, whose wide domain,
So Satan, whom repulse upon repulse In ample territory, wealth, and power,
Met ever, and to shameful silence brought, Civility of manners, arts and arms,
Yet gives not o'er, though desperate of success, And long renown, thou justly mayest prefer
And his vain importunity pursues. Before the Parthian. These two thrones except,
He brought our Saviour to the western side The rest are barbarous, and scarce worth the sight,
Of that high mountain, whence he might behold Shared among petty kings too far removed ;
Another plain, long, but in breadth not wide, These having shown thee, I have shown thee all
Washed by the southern sea, and, on the north, The kingdoms of the world, and all their glory.
To equal length backed with a ridge of hills The emperor hath no son, and now is old,
That screened the fruits of the earth, and seats of men, Old and lascivious, and from Rome retired
From cold septentrion blast; thence in the midst To Capreae, an island small, but strong,
Divided by a river, of whose banks On the Campanian shore, with purpose there
On each side an imperial city stood, His horrid lusts in private to enjoy;
With towers and temples proudly elevate Committing to a wicked favourite
On seven small hills, with palaces adorned, All public cares, and yet of him suspicious,
Porches, and theatres, baths, aqueducts, - Hated of all, and hating. With what ease,
Statues, and trophies, and triumphal arcs, Endued with regal virtues, as thou art,
Gardens and groves, presented to his eyes, Appearing, and beginning noble deeds,
Above the highth of mountains interposed Mightst thou expel this monster from his throne,
(By what strange parallax, or optic skill Now made a sty, and, in his place ascending,
Of vision, multiplied through air, or glass A victor-people free from servile yoke
Of telescope, were curious to inquire :) And with my help thou mayest; to me the power
And now the tempter thus his silence broke: Is given, and by that right I give it thee.
- “The city which thou seest no other deem Aim therefore at no less than all the world ;
Than great and glorious Rome, queen of the earth, Aim at the highest : without the highest attained,
So far renowned, and with the spoils enriched Will be for thee no sitting, or not long,
Of nations; there the capitol thou seest, On David's throne, be prophesied what will.”
Above the rest lifting his stately head To whom the Son of God, unmoved, replied:
On the Tarpeian rock, her citadel “Nor doth this grandeur and majestic show
Impregnable ; and there mount Palatine, Of luxury, though called magnificence,
The imperial palace, compass huge, and high More than of arms before, allure mine eye,
The structure, skill of noblest architects, Much less my mind ; though thou shouldst add to tell
With gilded battlements conspicuous far, Their sumptuous gluttonies, and gorgeous feasts
Turrets, and terraces, and glittering spires; On citron tables or Atlantic stone, | | | \A 8-6 (
Many a fair edifice besides, more like (For I have also heard, perhaps have read) r
Houses of gods, so well I have disposed Their wines of Setia, Cales, and Falerne, . US / tº " .
My aery microscope, thou mayest behold, Chios and Crete, and how they quaff in gold, -
Outside and inside both, pillars and roofs, Crystal, and myrrhine cups, embossed with gems
Carved work, the hand of famed artificers, And studs of pearl; to me shouldst tell, who thirst
In cedar, marble, ivory, or gold. And hunger still. Then embassies thou showest
Thence to the gates cast round thine eye, and see From nations far and nigh: what honour that,
What conflux issuing forth, or entering in ; But tedious waste of time, to sit and hear
Pretors, proconsuls to their provinces tº So many hollow compliments and lies,
Hasting, or on return, in robes of state, Outlandish flatteries? Then proceedest to talk
Lictors and rods, the ensigns of their power, Of the emperor, how easily subdued,
legions and cohorts, turms of horse and wings How gloriously : I shall, thou sayest, expel
Or embassies from regions far remote, A brutal monster; what if I withal
In various habits, on the Appian road, Expel a devil who first made him such P
Or on the Emilian; some from farthest south, Let his tormentor conscience find him out:
Syene, and where the shadow both way falls, For him I was not sent; not yet to free
Meroe, Nilotic isle; and, more to west, That people, victor once, now vile and base;
| 12
Book IV.
PARADISE REGAINED.

Deservedly made vassal; who, once just,
Frugal, and mild, and temperate, conquered well,
But govern ill the nations under yoke,
Pilling their provinces, exhausted all
By lust and rapine : first ambitious grown
Of triumph, that insulting vanity;
Then cruel, by their sports to blood inured
Of fighting beasts, and men to beasts exposed;
Luxurious by their wealth, and greedier still,
And from the daily scene effeminate.
What wise and valiant man would seek to free
These, thus degenerate, by themselves enslaved;
Or could of inward slaves make outward free ?
Know therefore, when my season comes to sit
On David’s throne, it shall be like a tree
Spreading and overshadowing all the earth ;
Or as a stone, that shall to pieces dash
All monarchies besides throughout the world;
And of my kingdom there shall be no end :
Means there shall be to this; but what the means,
Is not for thee to know, nor me to tell.”
To whom the tempter, impudent, replied :
“I see all offers made by me how slight
Thou valuest, because offered, and rejectest;
Nothing will please thee, difficult and mice,
Or nothing more than still to contradict :
On the other side know also thou, that I
On what I offer set as high esteem,
Nor what I part with mean to give for nought;
All these, which in a moment thou beholdest,
The kingdoms of the world, to thee I give,
(For given to me, I give to whom I please,)
No trifle; yet with this reserve, not else,
On this condition ; if thou wilt fall down,
And worship me as thy superior lord,
(Easily done,) and hold them all of me;
For what can less so great a gift deserve P’
Whom thus our Saviour answered with disdain :
‘I never liked thy talk, thy offers less;
Now both abhor, since thou hast dared to utter
The abominable terms, impious condition ;
But I endure the time, till which expired
Thou hast permission on me. It is written,
The first of all commandments, Thou shalt worship
The Lord thy God, and only him shalt serve;
And darest thou to the Son of God propound
To worship thee accursed 2 now more accursed 9. º
For this attempt, bolder than that on Eve, ºy.
And more blasphémous; which expect to rue.
The kingdoms of the world to thee were given P
Permitted rather, and by thee usurped;
Other donation none thou canst produce.
If given, by whom but by the King of kings,
God over all supreme 2 If given to thee,
By thee how fairly is the giver now
Repaid But gratitude in thee is lost
Long since. Wert thou so void of fear or shame,
As offer them to me the Son of God P
To me my own, on such abliorred pact,
That I fall down and worship thce as God P
Get thee behind me; plain thou now appearest
That evil one, Satan for ever damned.”
To whom the fiend, with fear abashed, replied:
“Be not so sore offended, Son of God,
Though sons of God both angels are and men,
If I, to try whether in higher sort
Than these thou bearest that title, have proposed
What both from men and angels I receive,
Tetrarchs of fire, air, flood, and on the earth,
Nations beside from all the quartered winds,
God of this world invoked, and world beneath :
Who then thou art, whose coming is foretold
To me most fatal, me it most concerns;
The trial hath indamaged thee no way,
Rather more honour left and more esteem;
Menought advantaged, missing what I aimed.
Therefore let pass, as they are transitory,
The kingdoms of this world ; I shall no more
Advise thee; gain them as thou canst, or not.
And thou thyself seemest otherwise inclined
Than to a worldly crown; addicted more
To contemplation and profound dispute,
As by that early action may be judged,
When, slipping from thy mother’s eye, thou wentest
Alone into the temple, there wast found
Among the gravest rabbies, disputant
On points and questions fitting Moses' chair,
Teaching, not taught. [The childhood shows the man,
As morning shows the day A be famous then
By wisdom; as thy empire must extend,
So let extend thy mind o'er all the world
In knowledge, all things in it comprehend.
All knowledge is not couched in Moses’ law,
The Pentateuch, or what the prophets wrote ;
The Gentiles also know, and write, and teach
To admiration, led by nature's light,
And with the Gentiles much thou must converse,
Ruling them by persuasion, as thou meanest;
Without their learning, how wilt thou with them,
Or they with thee, hold conversation meet 2
How wilt thou reason with them, how refute
Their idolisms, traditions, paradoxes 2
Error by his own arms is best evinced.
Look once more, ere we leave this specular mount,
Westward, much nearer by south-west behold;
Where on the AEgean shore a city stands,
Built nobly, pure the air, and light the soil;
Athens, the eye of Greece, mother of arts
And eloquence, native to famous wits
Or hospitable, in her sweet recess,
City or suburban, studious walks and shades.
See there the olive grove of Academe,
Plato's retirement, where the Attic bird
Trills her thick-warbled notes the summer long;
There flowery hill Hymettus, with the sound
Of bees’ industrious murmur, oft invites
To studious musing; there Ilissus rolls
His whispering stream : within the walls then view
The schools of ancient sages; his who bred
Great Alexander to subdue the world,
Lyceum there, and painted Stoa next :
There shalt thou hear and learn the secret power
Book IV. PARADISE
REGAIN ED. 113
Of harmony, in tones and numbers hit
By voice or hand; and various-measured verse,
AEolian charms and Dorian lyric odes,
And his who gave them breath, but higher sung,
Blind Melesigencs, thence Homer called,
Whose poem Phoebus challenged for his own :
Thence what the lofty grave tragedians taught
In chorus or iambic, teachers best
Of moral prudence, with delight received
In brief sententious precepts, while they treat
Of ſate, and chance, and change in human life,
High actions, and high passions best describing :
Thence to the famous orators repair,
Those ancient, whose resistless eloquence
Wielded at will that fierce democratic,
Shook the arsenal, and fulmined over Greece
To Macedon and Artaxerxes' throne :
To sage philosophy next lend thine ear,
From heaven descended to the low-roofed house
Of Socrates; see there his tenement,
Whom well inspired the oracle pronounced
Wisest of men ; from whose mouth issued forth
Mellifluous streams, that watered all the schools
Of Academics old and new, with those
Surnamed Peripatetics, and the sect
Epicuréan, and the Stoic severe;
These here revolve, or, as thou likest, at home,
Till time mature thee to a kingdom's weight;
These rules will render thee a king complete
Within thyself, much more with empire joined.”
To whom our Saviour sagely thus replied :
‘Think not but that I know these things; or think
I know them not, not therefore am I short
Of knowing what I ought: he, who receives
Light from above, from the fountain of light,
No other doctrine needs, though granted true;
But these are false, or little else but dreams,
Conjectures, fancies, built on nothing firm-- ", , 6.
The first and wisest of them all professed tº
To know this only, that he nothing knew; A.A.
The next to fabling fell, and smooth conceits; {2 Cºt
A third sort doubted all things, th9ugh plain sense;
Others in virtue placed º, %.
But virtue joined with riches and long life }\ *a.
In corporal pleasure he, and careless ease; )
The Stoic last, in philosophic pride, M- -
By him called virtue; and his virtuous man,
Wise, perfect in himself, and all possessing
Equal to God, oft shames not to prefer,
As fearing God nor man, contemning all
Wealth, pleasure, pain or torment, death and life,
Which, when he lists, he leaves, or boasts he can ;
For all his tedious talk is but vain boast,
Or subtle shifts conviction to evade.
Alas! what can they teach and not mislead,
Ignorant of themselves, of God much more,
And how the world began, and how man fell
Degraded by himself, on grace depending 2
Much of the soul they talk, but ali awry,
And in themselves seek virtue ; and to themselves
Rather accuse him under usual names,
Fortune and fate, as one regardless quite
Of mortal things. Who therefore seeks in these
True wisdom, finds her not ; or by delusion,
Far worse, her false resemblance only meets, •
An empty cloud. However, many books, —s {*
Wise men have said, are wearisome ; who reads vy . . . . . .
ncessantly, and to his reading brings not 3 * ---
Aspirit āITJudgment equal or superior, r2, a tºº,
(And what he brings, what needs he elsewhere seek 2) - f
Uncertain and unsettled still remains, *— a 2–~~ .
Deep-versed in books, and shallow in himself, ~
Crude or intoxicate, conſecting toys
And trifles for choice matters, worth a sponge;
As children gathering pebbles on the shore.
Or, if I would delight my private hours
With music or with poem, where so soon
As in our native language, can I find
That solace P All our law and story strewed
With hymns, our psalms with artſul terms inscribed,
Our Hebrew songs and harps, in Babylon
That pleased so well our victor's ear, declare
That rather Greece from us these arts derived;
Ill imitated, while they loudest sing
The vices of their deities, and their own,
In fable, hymn, or song, so personating
Their gods ridiculous, and themselves past shame.
Remove their swelling epithets, thick laid
As varnish on a harlot's cheek, the rest, * .
Thin sown with aught of profit or delight, Vo 4
Will far be found unworthy to compare
With Sion's songs, to all true tastes excelling,
Where God is praised aright, and god-like men,
The holiest of holies, and his saints,
N (Such are from God inspired, not such from thee,)
\) Unless where moral virtue is expressed
..]" By light of nature, not in all quite lost.
Their orators thou then extollest, as those
The top of eloquence; statists indeed,
…And lovers of their country, as may seem;
& But herein to our prophets far beneath,
As men divinely taught, and better teaching
The solid rules of civil government,
... In their majestic unaffected style,
Than all the oratory of Greece and Rome.
In them is plainest taught, and easiest learnt,
What makes a nation happy, and keeps it so,
What ruins kingdoms, and lays cities flat;
These only with our law best form a king.’
So spake the Son of God; but Satan, now
Quite at a loss, (for all his darts were spent,)
Thus to our Saviour with stern brow replied:
‘Since neither wealth nor honour, arms nor arts,
Kingdom nor empire pleases thee, nor aught
By me proposed in life contemplative
Or active, tended on by glory or fame,
What dost thou in this world 2 The wilderness
For thee is fittest place; I found thee there,
And thither will return thee; yet remember
What I foretell thee, soon thou shalt have cause
All glory arrogate, to God give none;
To wish thou never hadst rejected, thus



*
I
114 PARADISE REGAINED.
Book IV.
Nicely or cautiously, my offered aid,
Which would have set thee in short time with ease
On David's throne, or throne of all the world,
Now at full age, fulness of time, thy season
When prophecies of thee are best fulfilled.
Now contrary, if I read aught in heaven,
Or heaven write aught of fate, by what the stars
Voluminous, or single characters,
In their conjunction met, give me to spell,
Sorrows and labours, opposition, hate
Attend thee, scorms, reproaches, injuries,
Violence and stripes, and lastly cruel death;
A kingdom they portend thee, but what kingdom,
Real or allegoric, I discern-mot;
Nor when ; eternal sure, as without end,
Without beginning; for no date prefixed
Directs me in the starry rubric set.”
So saying, he took, (for still he knew his power
Not yet expired,) and to the wilderness
Brought back the Son of God, and left him there,
Feigning to disappear. Darkness now rose,
As day-light sunk, and brought in louring night,
Her shadowy offspring, unsubstantial both,
Privation mere of light, and absent day.
Our Saviour meek, and with untroubled mind
After his aery jaunt, though hurried sore,
Hungry and cold, betook him to his rest,
Wherever, under some concóurse of shades,
Whose branching arms thick intertwined might
shield
From dews and damps of night his sheltered head;
But, sheltered, slept in vain; for at his head
The tempter watched, and soon with ugly dreams
Disturbed his sleep. And either tropic now
'Gan thunder, and both ends of heaven; the clouds,
From many a horrid rift, abortive poured
Fierce rain with lightning mixed, water with fire
In ruin reconciled : nor slept the winds
Within their stony caves, but rushed abroad
From the four hinges of the world, and fell
On the vexed wilderness, whose tallest pines,
Though rooted deep as high, and sturdiest oaks,
Bowed their stiff necks, loaden with stormy blasts
Or torn up sheer. Ill wast thou shrouded then,
O patient Son of God, yet only stoodest
Unshaken | Nor yet staid the terror there;
Infernal ghosts and hellish furies round
Environed thee, some howled, some yelled, some
shrieked,
Some bent at thee their fiery darts, while thou
Satest unappalled in calm and sinless peace!
Thus passed the night so foul, till morning fair
Came forth with pilgrim steps, in amice gray;
Who with her radiant finger stilled the roar
Of thunder, chased the clouds, and laid the winds,
And grisly spectres, which the fiend had raised
To tempt the Son of God with terrors dire.
And now the sun with more effectual beams
Had cheered the face of earth, and dried the wet
From drooping plant, or dropping tree; the birds,
Who all things now behold more fresh and green,
After a night of storms so ruinous,
Cleared up their choicest notes in bush and spray,
To gratulate the sweet return of morn.
Nor yet, amidst this joy and brightest morn,
Was absent, after all his mischief done,
The prince of darkness: glad would also seem
Of this fair change, and to our Saviour came;
Yet with no new device, (they all were spent,)
Rather by this his last affront resolved,
Desperate of better course, to vent his rage
And mad despite to be so oft repelled.
Him walking on a sunny hill he found,
Backed on the north and west by a thick wood :
Out of the wood he starts in wonted shape,
And in a careless mood thus to him said:
‘Fair morning yet betides thee, Son of God,
After a dismal night: I heard the wrack,
As earth and sky would mingle; but myself
Was distant; and these flaws, though mortals fear them
As dangerous to the pillared frame of heaven,
Or to the earth's dark basis underneath,
Are to the main as inconsiderable
And harmless, if not wholesome, as a sneeze
To man's less universe, and soon are gone;
Yet, as being oſt-times noxious where they light
On man, beast, plant, wasteful and turbulent,
Like turbulencies in the affairs of men,
Over whose heads they roar, and seem to point,
They oft fore-signify and threaten ill:
This tempest at this desert most was bent;
Of men at thee, for only thou here dwellest.
Did I not tell thee, if thou didst reject
The perfect season offered with my aid
To win thy destined seat, but wilt prolong
All to the push of fate, pursue thy way
Of gaining David's throne, no man knows when,
For both the when and how is no where told 2
Thou shalt be what thou art ordained, no doubt;
For angels have proclaimed it, but concealing
The time and means. Each act is rightliest done
Not when it must, but when it may be best;
If thou observe not this, be sure to find,
What I foretold thee, many a hard assay
Of dangers, and adversities, and pains,
Ere thou of Israel's scepter get fast hold;
Whereof this ominous night, that closed thee round,
So many terrors, voices, prodigies,
May warn thee, as a sure foregoing sign.’
So talked he, while the Son of God went on
And staid not, but in brief him answered thus:
“Me worse than wet thou findest not; other harm
Those terrors, which thou speakest of, did me none;
I never feared they could, though noising loud
And threatening nigh: what they can do as signs
Betokening, or ill-boding, I contemn
As false portents, not sent from God, but thee;
Who, knowing I shall reign past thy preventing,
Obtrudest thy offered aid, that I, accepting,
At least might seem to hold all power of thee,
Ambitious spirit! and wouldst be thought my god;
And stormest refused, thinking to terrify
Book IV
1 I 3
PARADISE REGAINED.
Me to thy will ! Desist, (thou art discerned,
And toilest in vain,) nor me in vain molest.’
To whom the fiend, now swoln with rage, replied :
“Then hear, O son of David, virgin-born,
I'or Son of God to me is yet in doubt;
Of the Messiah I had heard foretold
By all the prophets; of thy birth at length,
Announced by Gabriel, with the first I knew,
And of the angelic song in Bethlehem field,
On thy birth-night that sung thee Saviour-born.
From that time seldom have I ceased to eye
Thy infancy, thy childhood, and thy youth,
Thy manhood last, though yet in private bred;
Till at the ford of Jordan, whither all
Flock to the Baptist, I, among the rest,
(Though not to be baptized,) by voice from heaven
Heard thee pronounced the Son of God beloved.
Thenceſorth I thought thee worth my nearer view
And narrower scrutiny, that I might learn
In what degree or meaning thou art called
The Son of God, which bears no single sense.
The son of God I also am, or was ;
And if I was, I am ; relation stands;
All men are sons of God; yet thee I thought
In some respect far higher so declared :
Therefore I watched thy footsteps from that hour,
And followed thee still on to this waste wild;
Where, by all best conjectures, I collect
Thou art to be my fatal encumy:
Good reason then, if I beforehand seek
To understand my adversary, who
And what he is; his wisdom, power, intent:
By parle or composition, truce or league,
To win him, or win from him what I can :
And opportunity I here have had
To try thee, siſt thee, and confess have found thee
Proof against all temptation, as a rock
Of adamant, and, as a center, firm ;
To the utmost of mere man both wise and good,
Not more ; for honours, riches, kingdoms, glory,
Have been before contemned, and may again.
Therefore to know what more thou art than man,
Worth naming Son of God by voice from heaven,
Another method I must now begin.”
So saying, he caught him up, and, without wing
Of hippogrif, bore through the air sublime,
Over the wilderness and o'er the plain,
Till underneath them fair Jerusalem,
The holy city, lifted high her towers,
And higher yet the glorious temple reared
Her pile, far off appearing like a mount
Of alabaster, topt with golden spires:
There, on the highest pinnacle, he set
The Son of God ; and added thus in scorn :
“There stand, if thou wilt stand; to stand upright
Will ask thee skill; I to thy Father's house
Have brought thee, and highest placed: highest is best:
Now show thy progeny; if not to stand,
Cast thyself down; safely, if Son of God :
For it is written, He will give command
Concerning thee to his angels; in their hands
They shall uplift thee, lest at any time
Thou chance to dash thy foot against a stone.’
To whom thus Jesus : * Also it is written,
Tempt not the Lord thy God.” He said, and stood
But Satan, smitten with amazement, fell.
As when earth's son, Antaeus, (to compare
Small things with greatest,) in Irassa strove
With Jove's Alcides, and, oft foiled, still rose,
Receiving from his mother Earth new strength,
Fresh from his fall, and fiercer grapple joined,
Throttled at length in the air, expired and fell;
So, after many a foil, the tempter proud,
Renewing fresh assaults, amidst his pride,
Fell whence he stood to see his victor fall:
And as that Theban monster, that proposed
Her riddle, and him who solved it not devoured,
That once found out and solved, for grief and spite
Cast herself headlong from the Ismenian steep;
So, struck with drcal and anguish, fell the fiend,
And to his crew, that sat consulting, brought
(Joyless triumphals of his hoped success)
Ruin, and desperation, and dismay,
Who durst so proudly tempt the Son of God.
So Satan fell; and straight a fiery globe
Of angels on full sail of wing flew nigh,
Who on their plumy vans received him soft
From his uneasy station, and upbore,
As on a floating couch, through the blithe air;
Then, in a ſlowery valley, set him down
On a green bank, and set before him spread
A table of celestial food, divine
Ambrosial fruits, fetched from the tree of life,
And, from the fount of life, ambrosial drink,
That soon refreshed him wearied, and repaired
What hunger, if aught hunger, had impaired,
Or thirst ; and, as he fed, angelic quires
Sung heavenly anthems of his victory
Over temptation and the tempter proud :
“True image of the Father; whether throned
In the bosom of bliss, and light of light
Conceiving, or, remote from heaven, enshrined
In fleshly tabernacle, and human form,
Wandering the wilderness; whatever place,
Habit, or state, or motion, still expressing
The Son of God, with godlike force endued
Against the attempter of thy Father's throne,
And thief of Paradise ! Him long of old
Thou didst debel, and down from heaven cast
With all his army; now thou hast avenged
Supplanted Adam, and, by vanquishing
Temptation, hast regained lost Paradise,
And frustrated the conquest fraudulent.
He never more henceforth will dare set foot
In Paradise to tempt; his snares are broke:
For, though that seat of earthly bliss be ſailed,
A fairer Paradise is founded now
For Adam and his chosen sons, whom thou,
A Saviour, art come down to reinstall,
Where they shall dwell secure, when time shall be,
Of tempter and temptation without fear.
But thou, infernal serpent' shalt not long
|
*
I 2
1 16 PARADISE REGAINED.
Book IV.
Rule ; in the cloud, like an autumnal star
Or lightning, thou shalt fall from heaven, trod down
Under his feet; for proof, ere this thou feelest
Thy wound, (yet not thy last and deadliest wound,)
By this repulse received, and holdest in hell
No triumph : in all her gates Abaddon rues
Thy bold attempt. Hereafter learn with awe
To dread the Son of God ; he, all unarmed,
Shall chase thee, with the terror of his voice,
From thy demoniac holds, possession foul,
Thee and thy legions: yelling they shall fly,
And beg to hide them in a herd of swine,
Lest he command them down into the deep,
Bound, and to torment sent before their time.
Hail, Son of the Most High, heir of both worlds,
Queller of Satan on thy glorious work
Now enter; and begin to save mankind.”
Thus they the Son of God, our Saviour meek,
Sung victor, and, from heavenly feast refreshed,
Brought on his way with joy; he, unobserved,
Home to his mother's house private returned .
2, n °
\*
94%
S A M S O N A G O N T S T E S.
A DRAMATIC POEM.
THE ARGUMENT.
Samson, made captive, blind, and now in the prison at Gaza, there to labour as in a common workhouse, on a festival day, in a
eneral cessation from labour, comes forth into the open air, to a place nigh, somewhat retired, there to sit a while and bemoan
is condition: where he happens at length to be visited by certain friends and equals of his tribe, which makes the Chorus, who
seek to comfort him what they can; then by his old father Manoah, who endeavours the like, and withal tells him his purpose to
procure his liberty by ransom; lastly, that this feast was proclaimed by the Philistines as a day of thanksgiving for their deliver-
ance from the hands of Samson, which yet more troubles him. . Manoah then departs to prosecute his endeavour with the Philis-
time lords for Samson's redemption; who in the mean while is visited by other persons; and lastly by a public officer to require his
coming to the feast before the lords and people, to play or show, his strength in their presence: he at first refuses, dismissing the
public officer with absolute denial to come ; at length, persuaded inwardly that this was from God, he yields to go along with him,
who came now the second time with great threatenings to fetch him; the Chorus yet remaining on the place, Manoah returns full
of joyful hope, to procure ere long his son's deliverance: in the midst of which discourse an Hebrew comes in haste, confusedly at
first, and afterward more diº relating the catastrophe, what Samson had done to the Philistines, and by accident to himself;
wherewith the tragedy ends.
THE PERSONS.
Samson.
Manoah, the father of Samson.
Dalila, his wife.
Harapha of Gath.
Public Officer.
Messenger.
Chorus of Danites.
The scene, before the Prison in Gaza.
Samson. Attendant leading him.
A LITTLE onward lend thy guiding hand
To these dark steps, a little further on ;
For yonder bank hath choice of sun or shade;
There I am wont to sit, when any chance
Relieves me from my task of servile toil,
Daily in the common prison else enjoined me,
Where I, a prisoner chained, scarce freely draw
The air imprisoned also, close and damp,
Unwholesome draught: but here I feel amends,
The breath of heaven fresh blowing, pure and sweet
With day-spring born; here leave me to respire.
This day a solemn feast the people hold
To Dagon their sea-idol, and forbid
Laborious works; unwillingly this rest
Their superstition yields me; hence with leave
Retiring from the popular noise, I seek
This unfrequented place to find some ease,
Base to the body some, none to the mind
From restless thoughts, that, like a dead] y Swarm
9
Of hornets armed, no sooner found alone,
But rush upon me thronging, and present
Times past, what once I was, and what am now.
O, wherefore was my birth from heaven foretold
Twice by an angel, who at last in sight
Of both my parents all in flames ascended
From off the altar, where an offering burned,
As in a fiery column charioting
His god-like presence, and from some great act
Or benefit revealed to Abraham's race 2
Why was my breeding ordered and prescribed
As of a person separate to God,
Designed for great exploits; if I must die
Betrayed, captived, and both my eyes put out,
Made of my enemies the scorn and gaze;
To grind in brazen fetters under task
With this heaven-gifted strength? O glorious strength,
Put to the labour of a beast, debased
Lower than bond-slave! Promise was, that I
Should Israel from Philistian yoke deliver;
Ask for this great deliverer now, and find him
| | 8 SAMSON AGONISTES.

º
Eyeless in Gaza at the mill with slaves,
Himself in bonds under Philistian yoke.
Yet stay, let me not rashly call in doubt
Divine prediction; what if all foretold
Had been fulfilled but through mine own default 2
Whom have I to complain of but myself?
Who this high gift of strength committed to me,
In what part lodged, how easily bereſt me,
Under the seal of silence could not keep,
But weakly to a woman must reveal it,
O'ercome with importunity and tears.
O impotence of mind, in body strong !
But what is strength without a double share
Of wisdom 2 vast, unwieldy, burdensome,
; Proudly secure, yet liable to fall
| By weakest subtleties, not made to rule,
But to subserve where wisdom bears commund.
God, when he gave me strength, to show withal
| How slight the gift was, hung it in my hair.
| But peace I must not quarrel with the will
! Of highest dispensation, which herein
Haply had ends above my reach to know :
Suffices that to me strength is my bane,
And proves the source of all my miseries;
So many, and so huge, that each apart
Would ask a life to wail; but chief of all,
O loss of sight, of thee I most complain
Blind among enemies, O worse than chains,
Dungeon, or beggary, or decrepit age
Light, the prime work of God, to me is extinct,
And all her various objects of delight
Annulled, which might in part my grief have eased,
Inferior to the vilest now become
Of man or worm ; the vilest here excel me:
They creep, yet see; I, dark in light, exposed
To daily fraud, contempt, abuse, and wrong,
Within doors, or without, still as a fool,
In power of others, never in my own ;
Scarce half I seem to live, dead more than half.
O dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon,
Irrecoverably dark, total eclipse
Without all hope of day !
O first-created beam, and thou great Word,
‘Let there be light, and light was over all ;’
Why am I thus bereaved thy prime decree ?
The sun to me is dark
And silent as the moon,
When she deserts the night,
Hid in her vacant interlunar cave.
Since light so necessary is to life,
And almost life itself, if it be true
That light is in the soul,
She all in every part; why was this sight
To such a tender ball as the eye confined,
So obvious and so easy to be quenched P
And not, as feeling, through all parts diffused,
That she might look at will through every pore ?
Then had I not been thus exiled from light,
As in the land of darkness, yet in light,
To live a life half dead, a living death,
And buried; but, O yet more miserable !
Myself my sepulchre, a moving grave :
Buried, yet not exempt,
By privilege of death and burial,
From worst of other evils, pains, and wrongs :
But made hereby obnoxious more
To all the miseries of life,
Life in captivity
Among inhuman foes.
But who are these ? for with joint pace I hear
The tread of many feet steering this way;
Perhaps my enemies, who come to stare
At my affliction, and perhaps to insult,
Their daily practice to afflict me more.
Enter Chorus.
Chor. This, this is he ; softly a while,
Let us not break in upon him :
O change beyond report, thought, or belief!
See how he lies at random, carelessly diffused,
With languished head unpropt,
As one past hope abandoned,
And by himself given over ;
In slavish habit, ill-fitted weeds
O'erworn and soiled ;
Or do my eyes misrepresent? Can this be he,
That heroic, that renowned,
Irresistible Samson P whom unarmed
No strength of man, or fiercest wild beast, could with-
stand ;
Who tore the lion, as the lion tears the kid;
Ran on embattled armies clad in iron;
And, weaponless himself,
Made arms ridiculous, useless the forgery
Of brazen shield and spear, the hammered cuirass,
Chalibean-tempered steel, and frock of mail
Adamantéan proof?
But safest he who stood aloof, º
When insupportably his foot advanced,
In scorn of their proud arms and warlike tools,
Spurned them to death by troops. The bold Ascalonite
Fled from his lion ramp; old warriors turned
Their plated backs under his heel;
Or, grovelling, soiled their crested helmets in the dust.
Then with what trivial weapon came to hand,
The jaw of a dead ass, his sword of bone,
A thousand fore-skins fell, the flower of Palestine,
In Ramath-lechi, famous to this day.
Then by main force pulled up, and on his shoulders
bore
The gates of Azza, post, and massy bar,
Up to the hill by Hebron, seat of giants old,
No Journey of a sabbath-day ; and loaded so,
Like whom the Gentiles feign to bear up heaven.
Which shall I first bewail,
Thy bondage or lost sight,
Prison within prison
Inseparably dark P
Thou art become (O worst imprisonment!)
The dungeon of thyself; thy soul
(Which men enjoying sight oſt without cause com-
plain)
SAMSON AGONISTES. 1 19
Imprisoned now indeed,
In real darkness of the body dwells,
Shut up from outward light
To incorporate with gloomy night;
For inward light, alas !
Puts forth no visual beam,
O mirror of our fickle state,
Since man on earth unparalleled !
The rarer thy example stands,
By how much from the top of wondrous glory,
Strongest of mortal men,
To lowest pitch of abject fortune thou art fallen.
For him I reckon not in high estate
Whom long descent of birth,
Or the sphere of fortune, raises;
But thee whose strength, while virtue was her mate,
Might have subdued the earth,
Universally crowned with highest praises.
Sams. I hear the sound of words; their sense the
all"
Dissolves unjointed ere it reach my ear.
Chor. He speaks, let us draw migh.
might, Q.
The glory late of Israel, now the grief;
We come, thy friends and neighbours not unknown,
From Eshtaol and Zora's fruitful vale,
To visit or bewail thee; or, if better,
Counsel or consolation we may bring,
Salve to thy sores § words have power to swage
The tumours of a troubled mind,
And are as balm to festered wounds.,
Sams. Your coming, friends, revives me; for I learn
Now of my own experience, not by talk,
How counterfeit a coin they are who friends
Bear in their superscription; (of the most
I would be understood ;) in prosperous days
They swarm, but in advérse withdraw their head,
Not to be found, though sought. Yet see, O friends,
How many evils have enclosed me round;
Yet that which was the worst now least afflicts me,
Blindness; for had I sight, confused with shame,
How could I once look up or heave the head,
Who, like a foolish pilot, have shipwrecked
My vessel trusted to me from above,
Gloriously rigged; and for a word, a tear,
Foolſ have divulged the secret gift of God
o a deceitful woman P Tell me, friends,
Am I not sung and proverbed for a fool
In every street P do they not say, How well
Are come upon him his deserts Yet why?
Immeasurable strength they might behold
In me, of wisdom nothing more than mean:
This with the other should at least have paired;
These two, proportioned ill, drove me transverse.
Chor, Tax not divine disposal; wisest men
Have erred, and by bad women been deceived ;
And shall again, pretend they ne'er so wise.
Deject not then so overmuch thyself,
Who hast of sorrow thy full load besides:
Yet, truth to say, I of have heard men wonder
Why thou shouldst wed Philistian women rather
Matchless in
Than of thine own tribe fairer, or as fair,
At least of thy own nation, and as noble.
Sams. The first I saw at Timna, and she pleased
Me, not my parents, that I sought to wed
The daughter of an infidel: they knew not
That what I motioned was of God; I knew
From intimate impülse, and therefore urged
The marriage on ; that by occasion hence
I might begin Israel's deliverance,
The work to which I was divinely called.
She proving false, the next I took to wife
(O that I never had 1 fond wish too late)
Was in the vale of Sorec, Dalila,
That specious monster, my accomplished snare.
I thought it lawful from my former act,
And the same end; still watching to oppress
Israel's oppressors: of what now I suffer
She was not the prime cause, but I myself,
Who, vanquished with a peal of words, (O weak-
ness!) -
Gave up my fort of silence to a woman.
Chor. In seeking just occasion to provoke
The Philistine, thy country’s enemy,
Thou never wast amiss, I bear thee witness:
Yet Israél still serves with all his sons.
Sams. That fault I take not on me, but transfer
On Israel's governors and heads of tribes,
Who, seeing those great acts which God had done
Singly by me against their conquerors,
Acknowledged not, or not at all considered,
Deliverance offered : I on the other side
Used no ambition to commend my deeds;
The deeds themselves, though mute, spoke loud the
doer:
But they persisted deaf, and would not seem
To count them things worth notice, till at length
Their lords the Philistines with gathered powers
Entered Judea seeking me, who then
Safe to the rock of Etham was retired ;
Not flying, but forecasting in what place
To set upon them, what advantaged best.
Meanwhile the men of Judah, to prevent
The harass of their land, beset me round;
I willingly on some conditions came
Into their hands, and they as gladly yield me
To the uncircumcised a welcome prey,
Bound with two cords; but cords to me were threads
Touched with the flame: on their whole host I flew
Unarmed, and with a trivial weapon felled
Their choicest sº only lived who fled.)
Had Judah that day joined, or one whole tribe.
They had by this possessed the towers of Gath,
And lorded over them whom they now serve;
But what more oft, in nations grown corrupt,
And by their vices brought to servitude,
Than to love bondage more than liberty;
Bondage with ease than strenuous liberty;
And to despise, or envy, or suspect,
Whom God hath of his special favour raised
As their deliverer P if he aught begin,
How frequent to desert him, and at last
120 SAMSON AGON ISTES.
{
;
To heap ingratitude on worthiest deeds!
Chor, Thy words to my remembrance bring
How Succoth and the fort of Penuel
Their great deliverer contemned,
The matchless Gideon, in pursuit
Of Madian, and her vanquished kings:
And how ingrateful Ephraim
Had dealt with Jephtha, who by argument,
Not worse than by his shield and spear,
Defended Israel from the Ammonite,
Had not his prowess quelled their pride
In that sore battle, when so many died
Without reprieve, adjudged to death,
For want of well pronouncing Shibboleth.
Sams. Of such examples add me to the roll;
Me easily indeed mine may neglect,
But God’s proposed deliverance not so.
Chor. Just are the ways of God,
And justifiable to men;
Unless there be, who think not God at all :
If any be, they walk obscure;
For of such doctrine never was there school,
But the heart of the fool,
And no man therein doctor but himself.
Yet more there be, who doubt his ways not just,
As to his own edicts found contradicting,
Then give the reins to wandering thought,
Regardless of his glory's diminution;
Till by their own perplexities involved,
They ravel more, still less resolved,
But never find self-satisfying solution.
As if they would confine the Interminable,
And tie him to his own prescript,
Who made our laws to bind us, not himself,
And hath full right to exempt
Whom so it pleases him by choice
From national obstriction, without taint
Of sin, or legal debt;
For with his own laws he can best dispense.
He would not else, who never wanted means,
Nor in respect of the enemy just cause,
To set his people free,
Have prompted this heroic Nazarite,
Against his vow of strictest purity,
To seek in marriage that fallacious bride,
Unclean, unchaste.
Down, reason, then ; at least, vain reasonings,
down ;
Though reason here aver,
That moral verdict quits her of unclean :
Unchaste was subsequent ; her stain, not his.
But see, here comes thy reverend sire
With careful step, locks white as down,
Old Manoah : advise
Forth with how thou oughtest to receive him.
Sams. Ay me! another inward grief, awaked
With mention of that name, renews the assault.
Enter Manoah.
Man. Brethren, and men of Dan, for such ye seem,
Though in this uncouth place; if old respect,
As I suppose, towards your once gloried friend,
My son now captive, hither hath informed
Your younger feet, while mine cast back with age
Came lagging after; say if he be here.
Chor. As signal now in low dejected state,
As erst in highest, behold him where he lies.
Mam. O miserable change ' is this the man,
That invincible Samson, far renowned,
The dread of Israel's foes, who with a strength
Equivalent to angels walked their streets,
None offering fight; who single combatant
Duelled their armies ranked in proud array,
Himself an army, now unequal match
To save himself against a coward armed
At one spear's length º O ever-failing trust
In mortal strength ! and oh! what not in man
Deceivable and vain P Nay, what thing good
Prayed for, but often proves our bane P
I prayed for children, and thought barrenness
In wedlock a reproach; I gained a son,
And such a son as all men hailed me happy;
Who would be now a father in my stead P
O wherefore did God grant me my request,
And as a blessing with such pomp adorned 2
Why are his gifts desirable, to tempt
Our earnest prayers, them, given with solemn hand
As graces, draw a scorpion's tail behind P
For this did the angel twice descend ? for this
Ordained thy nurture holy, as of a plant
Select, and sacred, glorious for a while,
The miracle of men ; then in an hour
Ensnared, assaulted, overcome, led bound,
Thy foe's derision, captive, poor, and blind,
Into a dungeon thrust, to work with slaves 2
Alas! methinks whom God hath chosen once
To worthiest deeds, if he through frailty º 7.
He should not so o’erwhelm, and as a thrall |
Subject him to so foul indignities,
Be it but for honour's sake of former deeds.
Sams. Appoint not heavenly disposition, father;
Nothing of all these evils hath befallen me
But justly; I myself have brought them * \
Sole author I, sole cause; if aught seem vile,
As vile hath been my folly, who have profaned
The mystery of God given me under pledge
Of vow, and have betrayed it to a woman,
A Canaanite, my faithless enemy.
This well I knew, nor was at all surprised,
But warned by oft experience: did not she
Of Timma first betray me, and reveal
The secret wrested from me in her highth
Of nuptial love professed, carrying it straight
To them who had corrupted her, my spies,
And rivals In this other was there found
More faith, who also in her prime of love,
Spousal embraces, vitiated with gold,
Though offered only, by the scent conceived
Her spurious first-born, treason against me 2
Thrice she assayed with flattering prayers and sighs,
And amorous reproaches, to win from me
My capital secret; in what part my strength
SAMSON AGONISTES. 121
Lay stored, in what part summed, that she might know
Thrice I deluded her, and turned to sport
Her importunity, each time perceiving
How openly, and with what impudence
She purposed to betray me, (which was worse
Than undissembled hate,) with what contempt
She sought to make me traitor to myself;
Yet the fourth time, when, mustering all her wiles,
With blandished parleys, feminine assaults,
Tongue-batteries, she surceased not day nor night
To storm me over-watched, and wearied out,
At times when men seek most repose and rest,
I yielded, and unlocked her all my heart,
^Who, with a grain of manhood well resolved,
iii. easily have shook-off aſſher snares:
But foul effeminacy held me yoked
Her bond-slave; O indignity, O blot
To honour and religion servile mind
Rewarded well with servile punishment'
The base degree to which I now am fallen,
These rags, this grinding, is not yet so base
As was my former servitude ignoble,
Unmanly, ignominious, infamous,
True slavery ; and that blindness worse than this,
That saw not how degenerately I served.
Man. I cannot praise thy marriage-choices, son,
Rather approved them not; but thou didst plead
Divine impulsion prompting how thou mightst
Find some occasion to infest our foes.
I state not that; this I am sure, our foes
Found soon occasion thereby to make thee
Their captive, and their triumph; thou the sooner
Temptation foundest, or over-potent charms,
To violate the sacred trust of silence
Deposited within thee; which to have kept
Tacit was in thy power: true; and thou bearest
Enough, and more, the burthen of that fault;
Bitterly hast thou paid, and still art paying,
That rigid score. A worse thing yet remains:
This day the Philistines a popular feast
Here celebrate in Gaza; and proclaim
Great pomp, and sacrifice, and praises loud,
To Dagon, as their god who hath delivered
Thee, Samson, bound and blind into their hands;
Them out of thine, who slewest them many a slain.
So Dagon shall be magnified, and God,
Besides whom is no god, compared with idols,
Disglorified, blasphemed, and had in scorn
By the idolatrous rout amidst their wine ;
Which to have come to pass by means of thee,
Samson, of all thy sufferings think the heaviest,
Of all reproach, the most with shame that ever
Could have befallen thee and thy father's house.
Sams. Father, I do acknowledge and confess
That I this honour, I this pomp, have brought
To Dagon, and advanced his praises high
Among the heathen round : to God have brought
Dishonour, obloquy, and oped the mouths
Ofidolists and atheists; have brought scandal
To Israel, diffidence of God, and doubt
In feeble hearts, propense enough before
To waver, or fall off and join with idols;
Which is my chief affliction, shame, and sorrow,
The anguish of my soul, that suffers not
Mine eye to harbour sleep, on thoughts to rest.
This only hope relieves me, that the strife
With me hath end ; all the contést is now
'Twixt God and Dagon ; Dagon hath presumed,
Me overthrown, to enter lists with God,
His deity comparing and preferring
Before the God of Abraham. He, be sure,
Will not connive, or linger, thus provoked ;
But will arise, and his great name assert:
Dagon must stoop, and shall ere long receive
Such a discomfit, as shall quite despoil him
Of all these boasted trophies won on me,
And with confusion blank his worshippers.
Man. With cause this hope relieves thee, and these
words
I as a prophecy receive; for God,
Nothing more certain, will not long defer
To vindicate the glory of his name
Against all competition, nor will long
Endure it doubtful whether God be Lord,
Or Dagon. But for thee what shall be doue F
Thou must not, in the mean while here forgot,
Lie in this miserable loathsome plight,
Neglected. I already have made way
To some Philistian lords, with whom to treat
About thy ransom : well they may by this
Have satisfied their utmost of revenge
By pains and slaveries, worse than death, inflicted
On thee who now no more canst do them harm.
Sams. Spare that proposal, father; spare the trouble
Of that solicitation ; let me here,
As I deserve, pay on my punishment; —º
And expiate, if possible, my crime,
Shameful garrulity. To have revealed |
Secrets of men, the secrets of a friend,
How heinous had the fact been, how deserving :
Contempt and scorn of all, to be excluded
All friendship, and avoided as a blab, l
The mark of fool set on his front! But I |
God's counsel have not kept, his holy secret }
Presumptuously have published, impiously, t
Weakly at least, and shamefully; a sin |
That Gentiles in their parables condemn |
To their abyss and horrid pains confined. \
Man. Be penitent, and for thy fault contrite;
But act not in thy own affliction, son :
Repent the sin; but, if the punishment
Thou canst avoid, self-preservation bids;
Or the execution leave to high disposal,
And let another hand, not thine, exact
Thy penal forfeit from thyself: perhaps
God will relent, and quit thee all his debt;
Who ever more approves, and more accepts
(Best pleased with humble and filial submission)
Him who, imploring mercy, sues for life,
Than who, self-rigorous, chooses death as due ;
Which argues over-just, and self-displeased
For self-offence, more than for God offended.
122
SAMSON AGONISTES.
t
Reject not then what offered means; who knows
But God hath sent before us, to return thee
Home to thy country and his sacred house,
Where thou mayest bring thy offerings, to avert
His further ire, with prayers and vows renewed 2
Sams. His pardon I implore; but as for life,
To what end should I seek it? When in strength
All mortals I excelled, and great in hopes
With youthful courage and magnanimous thoughts
Of birth from heaven foretold, and high exploits,
Full of divine instinct, after some proof
Of acts indeed heroic, far beyond
The sons of Anak, famous now and blazed,
Fearless of danger, like a petty god
I walked about admired of all, and dreaded
On hostile ground, none daring my affront.
Then, swollen with pride, into the snare I fell
Of fair fallacious looks, venereal trains,
Softened with pleasure and voluptuous life,
At length to lay my head and hallowed pledge
Of all my strength in the lascivious lap
Of a deceitful concubine, who shore me
Like a tame wether, all my precious fleece,
Then turned me out ridiculous, despoiled,
Shaven, and disarmed among my enemies.
Chor. Desire of wine and all delicious drinks,
Which many a famous warrior overturns,
Thou couldst repress; nor did the dancing ruby
Sparkling, out-poured, the flavour, or the smell,
Or taste that cheers the heart of gods and men,
Allure thee from the cool crystalline stream.
Sams. Wherever fountain or fresh current flowed
Against the eastern ray, translucent, pure
With touch ethereal of heaven's fiery rod,
I drank, from the clear milky juice allaying
Thirst, and refreshed : nor envied them the grape
Whose heads that turbulent liquor fills with fumes.
Chor. O madness, to think use of strongest wines,
And strongest drinks, our chief support of health,
When God with these forbidden made choice to rear
His mighty champion, strong above compare,
Whose drink was only from the liquid brook
Sams. But what availed this temperance, not com-
plete
Against another object more enticing 2
What boots it at one gate to make defence,
And at another to let in the foe,
Effeminately vanquished P by which means,
Now blind, disheartened, shamed, dishonoured, quelled,
To what can I be useful, wherein serve
My nation, and the work from Heaven imposed,
But to sit idle on the household hearth,
A burdenous drone; to visitants a gaze,
Or pitied object, these redundant locks
Robustious to no purpose clustering down,
Vain monument of strength; till length of years
And sedentary numbness craze my limbs
To a contemptible old age obscure ?
Here rather let me drudge, and earn my bread;
Till vermin, or the draff of servile food,
Consume me, and oft-in vocated death
Hasten the welcome end of all my pains.
Man. Wilt thou then serve the Philistines with that
gift
Which was expressly given thee to annoy them P
Better at home lie bed-rid, not only idle,
Inglorious, unemployed, with age outworn.
But God, who caused a fountain at thy prayer
From the dry ground to spring, thy thirst to allay
After the brunt of the battle, can as easy
ſº light again within thy eyes to spring,
Wherewith to serve him better than thou hast:
And I persuade me so; why else this strength
| Miraculous yet remaining in those locks?
; His might continues in thee not for nought,
Nor shall his wondrous gifts be frustrate thus.
Sams. All otherwise to me my thoughts portend,
That these dark orbs no more shall treat with light,
Nor the other light of life continue long,
But yield to double darkness nigh at hand:
So much I feel my genial spirits droop,
My hopes all flat, nature within me seems
In all her functions weary of herself;
My race of glory run, and race of shame,
And I shall shortly be with them that rest.
Man. Believe not these suggestions, which proceed
From anguish of the mind and humours black,
That mingle with thy fancy. I however
Must not omit a father's timely care
To prosecute the means of thy deliverance
By ransom, or how else : meanwhile be calm,
And healing words from these thy friends admit.
& ~. [Exit.
; Sams. O that torment should not be confined
| To the body's wounds and sores,
i With maladies innumerable
; In heart, head, breast, and reins;
| But must secret passage find
To the inmost mind,
| There exercise all his fierce accidents,
And on her purest spirits prey,
| As on entrails, joints, and limbs
With answerable pains, but more intense,
| Though void of corporal sense !
My griefs not only pain me,
As a lingering disease,
But finding no redress, ferment and rage;
Nor less than wounds immedicable
Rankle, and fester, and gangrene,
To black mortification.
Thoughts, my tormentors, armed with deadly stings,
Mangle my apprehensive tenderest parts,
Exasperate, exulcerate, and raise
Dire inflammation, which no cooling herb
Or medicinal liquor can assuage,
Nor breath of vernal air from snowy Alp. —
Sleep hath forsook and given me o'er
To death's benumbing opium as my only cure:
Thence faintings, swoonings of despair,
And sense of Heaven's desertion.
I was his nursling once, and choice delight,
His destined from the womb,
i!
!
f
}
SAMSON AGONISTES.
123
Promised by heavenly message twice descending.
Under his special eye
Abstemious I grew up, and thrived amain;
He led me on to mightiest deeds,
Above the nerve of mortal arm, *
Against the uncircumcised, our enemies:
But now hath cast me off as never known,
And to those cruel enemies,
Whom I by his appointment had provoked,
Left me all helpless, with the irreparable loss
Of sight, reserved alive to be repeated
The subject of their cruelty or scorn.
Nor am I in the list of them that hope;
Hopeless are all my evils, all remediless:
This one prayer yet remains, might I be heard,
No long petition ; speedy death,
The close of all my miseries, and the balm.
Chor. Many are the sayings of the wise,
In ancient and in modern books enrolled,
Extolling patience as the truest fortitude;
And to the bearing well of all calamities,
All chances incident to man's frail life,
Consolatories writ
With studied argument, and much persuasion sought,
Lenient of grief and anxious thought:
But with the afflicted in his pangs their sound
Little prevails, or rather seems a tune
Harsh, and of dissonant mood from his complaint:
Unless he feel within
Some source of consolation from above,
Secret refreshings, that repair his strength,
And fainting spirits uphold.
God of our fathers' what is man,
That thou towards him with hand so various,
Or might I say contrarious,
Temperest thy providence through his short course,
Not evenly, as thou rulest
The angelic orders, and inferior creatures mute,
Irrational and brute?
Nor do I name of men the common rout,
That, wandering loose about,
Grow up and perish, as the summer-fly,
Heads without name, no more remembered;
But such as thou hast solemnly elected,
With gifts and graces eminently adorned,
To some great work, thy glory,
And people's safety, which in part they effect:
Yet toward these thus dignified, thou oft
. Amidst their highth of moon,
Changestthy countenance, and thy hand, with no regard
Of highest favours past
From thee on them, or them to thee of service.
Nor only dost degrade them, or remit
To life obscured, which were a fair dismission,
But throwest them lower than thou didst exalt them
high,
Unseemly falls in human eye,
Too grievous for the trespass or omission;
Oft leavest them to the hostile sword
Of heathen and profane, their carcasses
To dogs and fowls a prey, or else captived;
Or to the unjust tribunals, under change of times,
And condemnation of the ingrateful multitude.
If these they escape, perhaps in poverty
With sickness and disease thou bowest them down,
Painful diseases and deformed,
In crude old age;
Though not disordinate, yet causeless suffering
The punishment of dissolute days : in fine,
Just or unjust, alike seem miserable,
For oft alike both come to evil end.
So deal not with this once thy glorious champion,
The image of thy strength, and mighty minister.
What do I beg f how hast thou dealt already ?
Behold him in this state calamitous, and turn
His labours, for thou canst, to peaceful end.
But who is this, what thing of sea or land 2
Female of sex it seems,
}That so bedecked, ornate, and gay,
Comes this way sailing,
! Like a stately ship
Of Tarsus, bound for the isles
Of Javan or Gadire,
With all her bravery on, and tackle trim,
|Sails filled, and streamers waving,
Courted by all the winds, that hold them play,
An amber scent of odorous perfume
Her harbinger, a damsel train behind P
Some rich Philistian matron she may seem ;
| And now at nearer view, no other certain
Than Dalila thy wife.
As Sams. My wife my traitress; let her not come
I] ear II] G.
Chor. Yet on she moves, now stands and eyes thee
fixed, wºr-º-;
About to have spoke ; but now, with head declined,
Like a fair flower surcharged with dew, she weeps,
And words addressed seem into tears dissolved,
Wetting the borders of her silken veil:
But now again she makes address to speak.
-:
Enter Dalila.
Dal. With doubtful feet and wavering resolution
I came, still dreading thy displeasure, Samson,
Which to have merited, without excuse,
I cannot but acknowledge; yet, if tears
May expiate, (though the fact more evil drew
In the perverse event than I foresaw,)
My penance hath not slackened, though my pardon
No way assured. But conjugal affection,
Prevailing over fear and timorous doubt,
Hath led me on, desirous to behold
Once more thy face, and know of thy estate,
If aught in my ability may serve
To lighten what thou sufferest, and appease
Thy mind with what amends is in my power,
Though late, yet in some part to recompense
My rash, but more unfortunate misdeed.
Sams. Out, out, hyaena these are thy wonted arts,
And arts of every woman false like thee,
To break all faith, all vows, deceive, betray,
Then as repentant to submit, beseech,
124
SAMSON AG ONISTES.

|
And reconcilement move with feigned remorse,
Confess, and promise wonders in her change;
Not truly penitent, but chief to try
Her husband, how far urged his patience bears,
His virtue or weakness which way to assail :
Then with more cautious and instructed skill
Again transgresses, and again submits;
That wisest and best men, full oft beguiled,
With goodness principled not to reject
The penitent, but ever to forgive,
Are drawn to wear out miserable days,
Entangled with a poisonous bosom-snake,
If not by quick destruction soon cut off,
As I by thee, to ages an example.
Dal. Yet hear me, Samson; not that I endeavour
To lessen or extenuate my offence,
But that on the other side, if it be weighed
By itself, with aggravations not surcharged,
Or else with just allowance counterpoised,
I may, if possible, thy pardon find
The casier towards me, or thy hatred less.
First granting, as I do, it was a weakness
In me, but incident to all our sex,
Curiosity, inquisitive, impórtune,
# Of secrets, then with like infirmity
§
|
To publish them, both common female faults:
Was it not weakness also to make known
For importunity, that is, for nought,
Wherein consisted all thy strength and safety P
To what I did thou showedst me first the way.
But I to enemies revealed, and should not:
Nor shouldst thou have trusted that to woman's frailty:
Ere I to thee, thou to thyself wast cruel.
Let weakness then with weakness come to parle,
So near related, or the same of kind,
Thine forgive mine; that men may censure thine
The gentler, if severely thou exact not
More strength from me than in thyself was found.
And what if love, which thou interpretest hate,
The jealousy of love, powerful of sway
In human hearts, nor less in mine towards thee,
Caused what I did P I saw thee mutable
Of fancy, feared lest one day thou wouldst leave me
As her at Timna, sought by all means therefore
How to endure, and hold thee to me firmest:
No better way I saw than by impôrtuning
To learn thy scorets, get into my power
Thy key of strength and safety. Thou wilt say,
Why then revealed 2 I was assured by those
Who tempted me, that nothing was designed
Against thee but safe custody, and hold:
That made for me; I knew that liberty
Would draw thee forth to perilous enterprises,
While I at home sat full of cares and fears,
Wailing thy absence in my widowed bed;
Here I should still enjoy thee, day and night,
Mine and love's prisoner, not the Philistines',
Whole to myself, unhazarded abroad,
Fearless at home of partners in my love.
These reasons in love's law have past for good,
Though fond and reasonless to some perhaps :
And love hath oft, well meaning, wrought much woe,
Yet always pity or pardon hath obtained.
Be not unlike all others, not austere
As thou art strong, inflexible as steel.
If thou in strength all mortals dost exceed,
In uncompassionate anger do not so.
Sams. How cunningly the sorceress displays
Her own transgressions, to upbraid me mine!
That malice, not repentance, brought thee hither,
By this appears: I gave, thou sayest, the example,
I led the way; bitter reproach, but true;
I to myself was false, ere thou to me:
Such pardon therefore as I give my folly,
Take to thy wicked deed; which when thou seest
Impartial, self-severe, inexorable, *
Thou wilt renounce thy seeking, and much rather
Confess it feigned. Weakness is thy excuse,
And I believe it; weakness to resist
Philistian gold : if weakness may excuse,
What murderer, what traitor, parricide,
Incestuous, sacrilegious, but may plead it 2
All wickedness is weakness: that plea therefore
With God or man will gain thee no remission...”
But love constrained thee; call it furious rage
To satisfy thy lust: love seeks to have love;
My love how couldst thou hope, who tookest the way
To raise in me inexpiable hate,
Knowing, as needs I must, by thee betrayed 2
In vain thou strivest to cover shame with shame,
Or by evasions thy crime uncoverest more.
Dal. Since thou determinest weakness for no plea
In man or woman, though to thy own condemning,
Hear what assaults I had, what snares besides,
What sieges girt me round, ere I consented;
Which might have awed the best-resolved of men,
The constantest, to have yielded without blame.
It was not gold, as to my charge thou layest,
That wrought with me : thou knowest the magistrates
And princes of my country came in person,
Solicited, commanded, threatened, urged,
Adjured by all the bonds of civil duty
And of religion, pressed how just it was,
How honourable, how glorious, to entrap
A common enemy, who had destroyed
Such numbers of our nation : and the priest
Was not behind, but ever at my ear,
Preaching how meritorious with the gods
It would be to ensnare an irreligious
Dishonourer of Dagon : what had I
To oppose against such powerful arguments?
Only my love of thee held long debate,
And combated in silence all these reasons
With hard contést: at length that grounded maxim
So rife and celebrated in the mouths
Of wisest men, that to the public good
\º respects must yield, with grave authority,
Took full possession of me, and prevailed;
Virtue, as I thought, truth, duty, so enjoining.
Sams. I thought where all thy circling wiles would
end;
In feigned religion, smooth hypocrisy
SAMSON AGONISTES.
But had thy love, still odiously pretended,
Been, as it ought, sincere, it would have taught thee
Far other reasonings, brought forth other decds.
I, before all the daughters of my tribe
And of my nation, chose thee from among
My enemies, loved thee, as too well thou knewest;
Too well; unbosomed all my secrets to thee,
Not out of levity, but overpowered
By thy request, who could deny thee nothing ;
Yet now am judged an enemy. Why then
Didst thou at first receive me for thy husband,
Then, as since then, thy country's foe professed ?
Being once a wife, for me thou wast to leave
Parents and country; nor was I their subject,
Nor under their protection, but my own,
Thou mine, not theirs: if aught against my life
Thy country sought of thee, it sought unjustly,
Against the law of nature, law of nations;
No more thy country, but an impious crew
Of men conspiring to uphold their state
By worse than hostile deeds, violating the ends
For which our country is a name so dear;
Not therefore to be obeyed. But zeal moved thee;
To please thy gods thou didst it; gods, unable
To acquit themselves and prosecute their foes
But by ungodly deeds, the contradiction
Of their own deity, gods cannot be ;
Less therefore to be pleased, obeyed, or feared.
These false pretexts, and warnished colours, failing,
Bare in thy guilt, how foul must thou appear *
Dal. In argument with men a woman ever
Goes by the worse whatever be her cause.
Sams. For want of words no doubt, or lack of
breath;
Witness when I was worried with thy peals.
Dal. I was a fool, too rash, and quite mistaken
In what I thought would have succeeded best.
Let me obtain forgiveness of thee, Samson;
Afford me place to show what recompense
Towards thee I intend for what I have misdone,
Misguided; only what remains past cure
Bear not too sensibly, nor still insist
To afflict thyself in vain : though sight be lost,
Life yet hath many solaces, enjoyed
Where other senses want not their delights
At home in leisure and domestic ease,
Exempt from many a care and chance, to which
Eye-sight exposes daily men abroad.
I to the lords will intercede, not doubting
Their favourable ear, that I may fetch thee
From forth this loathsome prison-house to abide
With me, where my redoubled love and care
With nursing diligence, to me glad office,
May ever tend about thee to old age,
With all things grateful cheered, and so supplied,
That, what by me thou hast lost, thou least shalt miss.
Sams. No, no; of my condition take no care;
It fits not; thou and I long since are twain:
Nor think me so unwary or accursed, -
To bring my feet again into the snare
Where once I have been caught: I know thy trains,
Though dearly to my cost, thy gins, and toils;
Thy fair enchanted cup, and warbling charms,
No more on me have power; their force is nulled;
So much of adder's wisdom I have learned,
To fence my ear against thy sorceries.
If in my flower of youth and strength, when all men
Loved, honoured, feared me, thou alone couldst hate me
Thy husband, slight me, sell me, and forego me;
How wouldst thou use me now, blind and thereby
Deceivable, in most things as a child
Helpless, thence easily contemned and scorned,
And last neglected how wouldst thou insult
When I must live uxorious to thy will
In perfect thraldom how again betray me,
Bearing my words and doings to the lords
To gloss upon, and, censuring, frown or smile !
This jail I count the house of liberty
o thine, whose doors my feet shall never enter.
Dal. Let me approach at least, and touch thy hand.
Sams. Not for thy life, lest fierce remembrance
wake
|My sudden rage to tear thee joint by joint.
º distance I forgive thee;)go with that;
* Bewail thy falsehood, and the pious works
It hath brought forth to make thee memorable
Among illustrious women, faithful wives!
Cherish thy hastened widowhood with the gold
Of matrimonial treason so farewell.
Dal. I see thou art implacable, more deaf
To prayers than winds and seas; yet winds to seas
Are reconciled at length, and sea to shore:
Thy anger, unappeasable, still rages,
Eternal tempest, never to be calmed.
Why do I humble thus myself, and, suing
For peace, reap nothing but repulse and hate;
Bid go with evil omen, and the brand
Of infamy upon my name denounced 2
To mix with thy concernments I desist
Henceforth, nor to much disapprove my own.
Fame, if not double-faced, is double-mouthed,
And with contráry blast proclaims most deeds;
On both his wings, one black, the other white,
Bears greatest names in his wild aery flight.
My name perhaps among the circumcised
In Dan, in Judah, and the bordering tribes,
To all posterity may stand defamed,
With malediction mentioned, and the blot
Of falsehood most unconjugal traduced.
But in my country, where I most desire,
In Ecron, Gaza, Asdod, and in Gath,
I shall be named among the famousest
Of women, sung at solemn festivals,
Living and dead recorded, who, to save
Her country from a fierce destroyer, chose
Above the faith of wedlock-bands; my tomb
With odours visited and annual flowers;
Not less renowned than in mount Ephraim
Jael, who with inhospitable guile
Smote Sisera sleeping, through the temples nailed.
Nor shall I count it heinous to enjoy
The public marks of honour and reward,
126
SAMSON AGONISTES.
Conferred upon me, for the piety
Which to my country I was judged to have shown.
At this whoever envies or repines;
I leave him to his lot, and like my own. [Exit.
Chor. She's gone, a manifest serpent by her sting
Discovered in the end, till now concealed.
Sams. So let her go; God sent her to debase me,
And aggravate my folly, who committed
To such a viper his most sacred trust
Of secrecy, my safety, and my life.
Chor. Yet beauty, though injurious, hath strange
power,
After offence returning, to regain
Love once possessed, nor can be easily
Repulsed without much inward passion felt,
And secret sting of amorous remorse.
Sams. Love-quarrels oft in pleasing concord end,
Not wedlock treachery endangering life.
Chor. It is not virtue, wisdom, valour, wit,
Strength, comeliness of shape, or amplest merit
That woman's love can win, or long inherit;
But what it is, hard is to say,
Harder to hit,
(Which way soever men refer it,)
Much like thy riddle, Samson, in one day
Or seven, though one should musing sit.
If any of these, or all, the Timnian bride
Had not so soon preferred
Thy paranymph, worthless to thee compared,
Successor in thy bed,
Nor both so loosely disallied
Their nuptials, nor this last so treacherously
Had shorn the fatal harvest of thy head.
Is it for that such outward ornament
Was lavished on their sex, that inward gifts
Were left for haste unfinished, judgment scant,
Capacity not raised to apprehend
Or value what is best
In choice, but oftenest to affect the wrong 2
Or was too much of self-love mixed,
Of constancy no root infixed,
That either they love nothing or not long 2
Whate'er it be, to wisest men and best
Seeming at first all heavenly under virgin veil,
Soft, modest, meek, demure,
Once joined, the contrary she proves, a thorn
Intestine, far within defensive arms
A cleaving mischief, in his way to virtue
Adverse and turbulent; or by her charms
Draws him awry enslaved
With dotage, and his sense depraved
To folly and shameful deeds which ruin ends.
What pilot so expert but needs must wreck
Imbarked with such a steers-mate at the helm ?
Favoured of Heaven, who finds
One virtuous, rarely found,
That in domestic good combines;
Happy that house ! his way to peace is smooth :
But virtue, which breaks through all opposition,
And all temptation can remove,
Most shines, and most is acceptable above.
*
**
*-i-
****
Therefore God's universal law
Gave to the man despotic power
Over his female in due awe,
Nor from that right to part an hour,
Smile she or lour:
So shall he least confusion draw
On his whole life, not swayed
By female usurpation, or dismayed.
But had we best retire P I see a storm.
Sams. Fair days have oft contracted wind and rain.
Chor. But this another kind of tempest brings.
Sams. Be less abstruse; my riddling days are past.
Chor. Look now for no enchanting voice, nor fear
The bait of honeyed words; a rougher tongue
Draws hitherward; I know him by his stride,
The giant Harapha of Gath, his look
Haughty, as is his pile high-built and proud.
Comes he in peace P what wind hath blown him
hither
I less conjecture, than when first I saw
The sumptuous Dalila floating this way:
His habit carries peace, his brow defiance.
Sams. Or peace, or not, alike to me he comes.
Chor. His fraught we soon shall know, he now
arrives.
Enter Harapha.
Har. I come not, Samson, to condole thy chance,
As these perhaps, yet wish it had not been,
Though for no friendly intent. I am of Gath;
Men call me Harapha, of stock renowned
As Og, or Anak, and the Emims old º
That Kiriathaim held ; thou knowest me now
If thou at all art known. Much I have heard
Of thy prodigious might and feats performed,
Incredible to me, in this displeased,
That I was never present on the place
Of those encounters, where we might have tried
Each other's force in camp or listed field;
And now am come to see of whom such noise
Hath walked about, and each limb to survey,
If thy appearance answer loud report.
Sams. The way to know were not to see but taste
Har. Dost thou already single me? I thought
Gyves and the mill had tamed thee. O that fortune
Had brought me to the field, where thou art famed
To have wrought such wonders with an ass's jaw
I should have forced thee soon with other arms,
Or left thy carcass where the ass lay thrown:
So had the glory of prowess been recovered
To Palestine, won by a Philistine,
From the unforeskinned race, of whom thou bearest
The highest name for valiant acts; that honour,
Certain to have won by mortal duel from thee,
I lose, prevented by thy eyes put out.
ſ Sams. Boast not of what thou wouldst have done
but do -
Lwhat then thou wouldst; thou seest it in thy hand.
Har. To combat with a blind man I disdain,
And thou hast need much washing to be touched.
Sams. Such usage as your honourable lords
SAMSON AGONISTES. 127
Afford me, assassinated and betrayed,
Who durst not with their whole united powers
In fight withstand me single and unarmed,
Nor in the house with chamber-ambushes
Close-banded durst attack me, no, not sleeping,
Till they had hired a woman with their gold,
Breaking her marriage faith, to circumvent me.
Therefore, without feigned shifts, let be assigned
Some narrow place enclosed, where sight may give thee,
Or rather flight, no great advantage on me;
And put on all thy gorgeous arms, thy helmet
And brigandine of brass, thy broad habergeon,
Want-brace and greaves, and gauntlet, add thy spear,
A weaver's beam, and seven-times-folded shield;
I only with an oaken staff will meet thee,
And raise such outcries on thy clattered iron,
Which long shall not withhold me from thy head,
That in a little time, while breath remains thee,
Thou oft shalt wish thyself at Gath to boast
Again in safety what thou wouldst have done
To Samson, but shalt never see Gath more.
Har. Thou durst not thus disparage glorious arms,
Which greatest heroes have in battle worn,
Their ornament and safety, had not spells
And black enchantments, some magician's art,
Armed thee or charmed thee strong, which thou from
heaven
Feignedst at thy birth was given thee in thy hair,
Where strength can least abide, though all thy hairs
Were bristles ranged like those that ridge the back
Of chaſed wild boars, or ruffled porcupines.
Sams. I know no spells, use no forbidden arts;
My trust is in the living God, who gave me
At my nativity this strength, diffused
No less through all my sinews, joints, and bones,
Than thine, while I preserved these locks unshorn,
The pledge of my unviolated vow.
For proof hereof, if Dagon be thy god,
Go to his temple, invocate his aid
With solemnest devotion, spread before him
How highly it concerns his glory now
To frustrate and dissolve these magic spells,
Which I to be the power of Israel's God
Avow, and challenge Dagon to the test,
Offering to combat thee his champion bold,
With the utmost of his godhead seconded:
Then thou shalt see, or rather, to thy sorrow,
Soon feel, whose God is strongest, thine or mine.
Har. Presume not on thy God, whate'er he be
Thee he regards not, owns not, hath cut off
Quite from his people, and delivered up
Into thy enemies' hand, permitted them
To put out both thine eyes, and, ſettered, send thee
Into the common prison, there to grind
Among the slaves and asses thy cområdes,
As good for nothing else; no better service
With those thy boisterous locks, no worthy match
For valour to assail, nor by the sword
Of noble warrior, so to stain his honour,
But by the barber's razor best subdued.
Sams. All these indignities, for such they are
From thinc, these evils I deserve, and more,
Acknowledge them from God inflicted on nie
Justly, yet despair not of his final pardon,
Whose ear is ever open, and his eye
Gracious to re-admit the suppliant:
In confidence whereof I once again
Defy thee to the trial of mortal fight,
By combat to decide whose God is God,
Thine, or whom I with Israel's sons adore.
Har. Fair honour that thou dost thy God, in trusting
He will accept thee to defend his cause,
A murderer, a revolter, and a robber 1
Sams. Tongue-doughty giant, how dost thou prove
me these ?
Har. Is not thy nation subject to our lords 2
Their magistrates confessed it when they took thee
As a league-breaker, and delivered bound
Into our hands: for hadst thou not committed
Notorious murder on those thirty men
At Ascalon, who never did thee harm,
Then like a robber strippedst them of their robes P
The Philistines, when thou hadst broke the league,
Went up with armed powers thee only seeking,
To others did no violence nor spoil.
Sams. Among the daughters of the Philistines
I chose a wife, which argued me no foe;
And in your city held my nuptial feast:
But your ill-meaning politician lords,
Under pretence of bridal friends and guests,
Appointed to await me thirty spies,
Who, threatening cruel death, constrained the bride
To wring from me, and tell to them, my secret,
That solved the riddle which I had proposed.
When I perceived all set on enmity,
As on my enemies, wherever chanced,
I used hostility, and took their spoil,
To pay my underminers in their coin.
My nation was subjected to your lords;
It was the force of conquest; force with force
Is well ciected when the conquered can.
But I a private person, whom my country
As a league-breaker gave up bound, presumed
Single rebellion, and did hostile acts.
I was no private, but a person raised
With strength sufficient, and command from Heaven,
To free my country, if their servile minds
Me, their deliverer sent, would not receive,
But to their masters gave me up for nought,
The unworthier they ; whence to this day they serve.
I was to do my part from Heaven assigned,
And had performed it, if my known offence
Had not disabled me, not all your force :
These shifts refuted, answer thy appellant,
Though by his blindness maimed for high attempts,
Who now defies thee thrice to single fight,
As a petty enterprise of small enforce.
Har. With thee, a man condemned, a slave enrolled,
Due by the law to capital punishment'
To fight with thee no man of arms will deign.
Sams. Camest thou for this, vain boaster, to sur-
vey me,
(y"
S->
128 - SAMISON AGONISTES.
To descant on my strength, and give thy verdict 2
Come nearer; part not hence so slight informed;
But take good heed my hand survey not thee.
Har. O Baal-zebub" can my ears unused
Hear these dishonours, and not render death P
Sams. No man withholds thee, nothing from thy
hand
Fear I incurable; bring up thy van,
My heels are fettered, but my fist is free.
Har. This insolence other kind of answer fits.
Sams. Go, baffled coward lest I run upon thee,
Though in these º without spirit vast
And with one buffet lay thy structure low,
Or swing thee in the air, then dash thee down,
To the hazard of thy brains and shattered sides.
Har. By Astaroth, ere long thou shalt lament
These braveries, in irons loaden on thee. [Exit.
Chor. His giantship is gone somewhat crest-fallen,
Stalking with less unconscionable strides,
And lower looks, but in a sultry chaſe.
Sams. I dread him not, nor all his giant-brood,
Though fame divulge him father of five sons,
All of gigantic size, Goliah chief.
Chor. He will directly to the lords, I fear,
And with malicious counsel stir them up
Some way or other yet further to afflict thee.
Sams. He must allege some cause, and offered fight
Will not dare mention, lest a question rise
Whether he durst accept the offer or not;
And, that he durst not, plain enough appeared.
Much more affliction than already felt
They cannot well impose, nor I sustain ;
If they intend advantage of my labours,
The work of many hands, which earns my keeping
With no small profit daily to my owners.
But come what will, my deadliest foe will prove
My speediest friend, by death to rid me hence;
The worst that he can give, to me the best,
Yet so it may fall out, because their end
Is hate, not help to me, it may with mine
Draw their own ruin who attempt the deed.
Chor. O how comely it is, and how reviving
To the spirits of just men long oppressed,
When God into the hands of their deliverer
Puts invincible might
To quell the mighty of the earth, the oppressor,
The brute and boisterous force of violent men,
Hardy and industrious to support
Tyrannic power, but raging to pursue
The righteous and all such as honour truth !
He all their ammunition
And feats of war defeats,
With plain heroic magnitude of mind
And celestial vigour armed ;
Their armouries and magazines contems,
Renders them useless; while
With winged expedition,
Swift as the lightning glance, he executes
His errand on the wicked, who, surprised,
Lose their deſcrice, distracted and amazed.
But patience is more oft the exercise
Of saints, the trial of their ſortitude,
Making them each his own deliverer,
And victor over all
That tyranny or fortune can inflict.
Either of these is in thy lot,
Samson, with might endued
Above the sons of men; but sight bereaved
May chance to number thce with those
Whom patience finally must crown.
This idol’s day hath been to thee no day of rest,
Labouring thy mind
More than the working day thy hands.
And yet perhaps more trouble is behind,
For I descry this way
Some other tending : in his hand
A scepter or quaint staff he bears,
Comes on amain, speed in his look.
By his habit I discern him now
A public officer, and now at hand;
His message will be short and voluble.
Enter Officer.
Off Hebrews, the prisoner Samson here I seek.
Chor. His manacles remark him, there he sits.
Off. Samson, to thee our lords thus bid me say:
This day to Dagon is a solemn feast,
With sacrifices, triumph, pomp, and games:
Thy strength they know surpassing human rate,
And now some public proof thereof require
To honour this great feast, and great assembly :
Rise therefore with all speed, and come along,
Where I will see thee heartened and fresh clad,
To appear as fits before the illustrious lords.
Sams. Thou knowest I am an Hebrew, therefore
tell them,
Our law forbids at their religious rites
My presence; for that cause I cannot come.
Off. This answer, be assured, will not content
them.
Sams. Have they not sword-players, and every sort
Of gymnic artists, wrestlers, riders, runners,
Jugglers and dancers, antics, mummers, mimics,
But they must pick me out, with shackles tired,
And over-laboured at their public mill,
To make them sport with blind activity P
Do they not seek occasion for new quarrels,
On my refusal to distress me more,
Or make a game of my calamities 2
Return the way thou camest, I will not come.
Off. Regard thyself; this will offend them highly.
Sams. Myself? my conscience, and internal peace.
Can they think me so broken, so debased
With corporal servitude, that my mind ever
Will condescend to such absurd commands;
Although their drudge, to be their fool or jester,
And in my midst of sorrow and heart-grief
To show them feats, and play before their god,
The worst of all indignities, yet on me
Joined with extreme contempt I will not come.
Off. My message was imposed on me with speed,
Brooks no delay : is this thy resolution ?
SAMSON AGONISTES. 129
Sams. So take it with what speed thy message
needs.
Off. I am sorry what this stoutness will produce.
[Exit.
Sams. Perhaps thou shalt have cause to sorrow in-
deed.
Chor. Consider, Samson; matters now are strained
Up to the highth, whether to hold or break:
He's gone, and who knows how he may report
Thy words by adding fuel to the flame 2
Expect another message more imperious,
More lordly thundering than thou well wilt bear.
Sams. Shall I abuse this consecrated gift
Of strength, again returning with my hair
After my great transgression, so requite
Favour renewed, and add a greater sin
By prostituting holy things to idols 2
A Nazarite in place abominable
Vaunting my strength in honour to their Dagon
Besides, how vile, contemptible, ridiculous!
What act more execrably unclean, profane P
Chor. Yet with this strength thou servest the Phi-
listines,
Idolatrous, uncircumcised, unclean.
Sams. Not in their idol-worship, but by labour
'Honest and lawful to deserve my food
Of those who have me in their civil power.
Chor. Where the heart joins not, outward acts defile
In Ot.
Sams. Where outward force constrains, the sentence
holds;
But who constrains me to the temple of Dagon,
Not dragging The Philistian lords command.
Commands are no constraints. If I obey them,
I do it freely, venturing to displease
God for the fear of man, and man preſer,
Set God behind ; which in his jealousy
Shall never, unrepented, find forgiveness.
Yet that he may dispense with me, or thee,
Present in temples at idolatrous rites
For some important cause, thou needest not doubt.
Chor. How thou wilt here come off surmounts my
reach.
Sams. Be of good courage; I begin to ſecl
Some rousing motions in me, which dispose
To something extraordinary my thoughts.
I with this messenger will go along,
Nothing to do, be sure, that may dishonour
Our law, or stain my vow of Nazarite.
If there be aught of presage in the mind,
This day will be remarkable in my life
By some great act, or of my days the last.
Chor. In time thou hast resolved, the man returns.
Off Samson, this second message from our lords
To thee I am bid say: Art thou our slave,
Our captive at the public mill, our drudge,
And darest thou at our sending and command
Dispute thy coming 2 come without delay;
Or we shall find such engines to assail
And hamper thee, as thou shalt come of force,
Though thou wert firmlier fastened than a rock.
*
K
Sams. I could be well content to try their art,
Which to no few of them would prove pernicious.
Yet, knowing their advantages too many,
Because they shall not trail me through their streets
Like a wild beast, I am content to go.
Masters' commands come with a power resistless
To such as owe them absolute subjection,
And for a life who will not change his purpose
(So mutable are all the ways of men,)
Yet this be sure, in nothing to comply
Scandalous or forbidden in our law.
Off. I praise thy resolution: doff these links;
By this compliance thou wilt win the lords
To ſavour, and perhaps to set thee free.
Sams. Brethren, farewell ; your company along
I will not wish, lest it perhaps offend them
To see me girt with friends; and how the sight
Of me, as of a common enemy,
So dreaded once, may now exasperate them,
I know not: lords are lordliest in their wine;
And the well-feasted priest then soonest fired
With zeal, if aught religion seem concerned;
No less the people, on their holy-days,
Impetuous, insolent, unqueuchable:
Happen what may, of me expect to hear
Nothing dishonourable, impure, unworthy
Our God, our law, my nation, or myself;
The last of me or no, I cannot warrant.
Chor. Go, and the Holy One
Of Israel be thy guide
To what may serve his glory best, and spread his name
Great among the heathen round;
Send thee the angel of thy birth, to stand
Fast by thy side, who from thy father's field
Rode up in flames after his message told
Of thy conception, and be now a shield
Of fire; that spirit, that first rushed on thee
In the camp of Dan,
Be eſſicacious in thee now at need.
For never was from Heaven imparted
Measure of strength so great to mortal seed,
As in thy wondrous actions hath been seen.
But wherefore comes old Manoah in such haste
With youthful steps ? much livelier than erewhile
He seems; supposing here to find his son,
Or of him bringing to us some glad news.
[E.cit.
Enter Manoah.
Man. Peace with you, brethren; my inducement
hither
Was not at present here to find my son,
By order of the lords now parted hence
To come and play before them at their feast.
I heard all as I came, the city rings,
And numbers thither flock: I had no will,
Lest I should see him forced to things unseemly.
But that, which moved my coming now, was chiefly
To give ye part with me what hope I have
With good success to work his liberty.
Chor. That hope would much rejoice us to partake
With thee; say reverend sire, we thirst to hear
130
SAMSON AG ONISTES.
I
Man. I have attempted one by one the lords
Either at home, or through the high-street passing,
With supplication prone and father's tears,
To accept of ransom for my son their prisoner.
Some much averse I found, and wondrous harsh,
Contemptuous, proud, set on revenge and spite;
That part most reverenced Dagon and his priests:
Others more moderate seeming, but their aim
Private reward, for which both god and state
They easily would set to sale: a third
More generous far and civil, who confessed
They had enough revenged; having reduced
Their foe to misery beneath their fears,
The rest was magnanimity to remit,
If some convenient ransom were proposed.
What noise or shout was that? it tore the sky.
Chor. Doubtless the people shouting to behold
Their once great dread, captive, and blind before them,
Or at some proof of strength before them shown.
Man. His ransom, if my whole inheritance
May compass it, shall willingly be paid
And numbered down : much rather I shall choose
To live the poorest in my tribe, than richest,
And he in that calamitous prison left.
No, I am fixed not to part hence without him.
For his redemption all my patrimony,
If need be, I am ready to forego
And quit §: wanting him, I shall want ºne)
Chor. Fathers are wont to lay up for their sons,
Thou for thy son art bent to lay out all ;
Sons wont to nurse their parents in old age,
Thou in old age carest how to nurse thy son,
Made older than thy age through eye-sight lost.
Man. It shall be my delight to tend his eyes,
And view him sitting in the house, ennobled
With all those high exploits by him achieved,
And on his shoulders waving down those locks
That of a nation armed the strength contained;
And I persuade me, God hath not permitted
His strength again to grow up with his hair,
Garrisoned round about him like a camp
Of faithful soldiery, were not his purpose
To use him further yet in some great service ;
Not to sit idle with so great a gift
Useless, and thence ridiculous, about him.
And since his strength with eye-sight was not lost,
God will restore him eye-sight to his strength.
Chor. Thy hopes are not ill-founded, nor seem vain,
Of his delivery, and thy joy thercon
Conceived, agreeable to a father's love,
In both which we, as next, participate.
Man. I know your friendly minds and,-O what
noise !—
Mercy of Heaven, what hideous noise was that
Horribly loud, unlike the former shout 2
Chor. Noise call you it, or universal groan,
As if the whole inhabitation perished ”
Blood, death, and deathful deeds, are in that noise,
Ruin, destruction of the utmost point.
Man. Of ruin, indeed, methought I heard the noise:
Oh! it continues, they have slain my som.
Chor. Thy son is rather slaying them : that outcry
From slaughter of one foe could not ascend.
Man. Some dismal accident it needs must be ;
What shall we do, stay here or run and see P
Chor. Best keep together here, lest, running thither,
We unawares run into danger's mouth.
This evil on the Philistines is fallen:
From whom could else a general cry be heard?
The sufferers then will scarce molest us here;
From other hands we need not much to fear.
What if his eye-sight (for to Israel's God
Nothing is hard) by miracle restored,
He now be dealing dole among his foes,
And over heaps of slaughtered walk his way 2
Man. That were a joy presumptuous to be thought.
Chor. Yet God hath wrought things as incredible
For his people of old ; what hinders now 2
Man. He can, I know, but doubt to think he will ;
Yet hope would fain subscribe, and tempts belief.
A little stay will bring some notice hither.
Chor. Of good or bad so great, of bad the sooner;
For evil news rides post, while good news bates.)
And to our wish I see one hither speeding,
An Hebrew, as I guess, and of our tribe.
Enter Messenger.
Mess. O whither shall I run, or which way fly
The sight of this so horrid spectacle,
Which erst my eyes beheld, and yet behold P
For dire imagination still pursues me.
But Providence or instinct of nature seems,
Or reason though disturbed, and scarce consulted,
To have guided me aright, I know not how,
To thee first, reverend Manoah, and to these
My countrymen, whom here I knew remaining,
As at some distance from the place of horror,
Though in the sad event too much concerned.
Man. The accident was loud, and here before thee
With rueful cry, yet what it was we hear not;
No preface needs, thou seest we long to know.
Mess. It would burst forth, but I recover breath
And sense distract, to know well what I utter.
Man. Tell us the sum, the circumstance defer.
Mess. Gaza yet stands, but all her sons are fallen,
All in a moment overwhelmed and fallen.
Man. Sad, but thou knowest to Israelites not
saddest,
The desolation of a hostile city.
Mess. Feed on that first; there may in grief be
surfeit.
Man. Relate by whom.
Mess. By Samson.
Man. That still lessens
The sorrow, and converts it nigh to joy.
Mess. Ah! Manoah, I refrain too suddenly
To utter what will come at last too soon ;
Lest evil tidings with too rude irruption
Hitting thy aged ear should pierce too deep.
Man. Suspense in news is torture, speak them out.
Mess. Take then the worst in brief: Samson is
dead.





SAMSON AG ONISTES.
13|

Man. The worst indeed : O all my hopes defeated
To free him hence but death, who sets all free,
Hath paid his ransom now and full discharge.
What windy joy this day had I conceived
Hopeful of his delivery, which now proves
[...". as the first-born bloom of spring
Nipt with the lagging rear of winter's frost!
Yet ere I give the reins to grief, say first,
How died he ; death to life is crown or shame.
All by him fell, thou sayest; by whom fell he
What glorious hand gave Samson his death's wound?
Mess. Unwounded of his enemies he fell.
Man. Wearied with slaughter then, or how 2 ex-
plain.
Mess. By his own hands.
Man. Self-violence' what cause
Brought him so soon at variance with himself
Among his foes
Mess. Inevitable cause
At once both to destroy, and be destroyed ;
The edifice where all were met to see him,
Upon their heads and on his own he pulled.
Man. O lastly over-strong against thyself
A dreadful way thou tookest to thy revenge.
More than enough we know ; but while things yet
Are in confusion, give us, if thou canst,
Eye-witness of what first or last was done,
Relation more particular and distinct.
Mess. Occasions drew me early to this city;
And, as the gates I entered with sun-rise,
The morning trumpets festival proclaimed
Through each high street: little I had despatched,
When all abroad was rumoured that this day
Samson should be brought forth, to show the people
Proof of his mighty strength in feats and games;
I sorrowed at his captive state, but minded
Not to be absent at that spectacle.
The building was a spacious theatre
Half round, on two main pillars vaulted high,
With seats where all the lords, and each degree
Of sort, might sit in order to behold ;
The other side was open, where the throng
On banks and scaffolds under sky might stand ;
I among these aloof obscurely stood.
The feast and noon grew high, and sacrifice
Had filled their hearts with mirth, high cheer, and
wine,
When to their sports they turned. Immediately
Was Samson as a public servant brought,
In their state livery clad ; before him pipes,
And timbrels, on each side went armed guards,
Both horse and foot, before him and behind
Archers and slingers, cataphracts and spears.
At sight of him the people with a shout
Riſted the air, clamouring their god with praise,
Who had made their dreadful enemy their thrall.
He, patient, but undaunted, where they led him,
Came to the place; and what was set before him,
Which without help of eye might be assayed,
To heave, pull, draw, or break, he still performed
All with incredible, stupendous force;
None daring to appear antagonist.
At length for intermission's sake they led him
Between the pillars; he his guide requested
(For so from such as nearer-stood we heard)
As over-tired to let him lean a while •
With both his arms on those two massy pillars,
That to the arched roof gave main support.
He, unsuspicious, led him ; which when Samson
Felt in his arms, with head a while inclined,
And eyes fast fixed he stood as one, who prayed,
Or some great matter in his mind revolved :
At last with head erect thus cried aloud,
‘ Hitherto, lords, what your commands imposed
I have performed, as reason was, obeying,
Not without wonder or delight beheld :
Now of my own accord such other trial
I mean to show you of my strength, yet greater,
As with amaze shall strike all who behold.’
This uttered, straining all his nerves, he bowed,
As, with the force of winds and waters pent,
When mountains tremble: those two massy pillars
With horrible convulsion to and fro
He tugged, he shook, till down they came, and drew
The whole roof after them, with burst of thunder
Upon the heads of all who sat beneath,
Lords, ladies, captains, counsellors, or priests,
Their choice nobility and flower, not only
Of this, but each Philistian city round,
|Met from all parts to solemnize this feast.
amson, with these immixed, inevitably
Pulled down the same destruction on himself;
The vulgar only 'scaped, who stood without.
Chor. O dearly bought revenge, yet glorious!
Living or dying thou hast fulfilled
The work for which thou wast foretold
To Israel, and now liest victorious
Among thy slain self-killed,
Not willingly, but tangled in the ſold
Of dire necessity, whose law in death conjoined
Thee with thy slaughtered foes, in number more
Than all thy life hath slain before.
1 Semichor. While their hearts were jocund
sublime, -
Drunk with idolatry, drunk with wine,
And fat regorged of bulls and goats,
Chanting their idol, and preferring
Before our living Dread who dwells
In Silo, his bright sanctuary;
Among them he a spirit of phrensy sent,
Who hurt their minds,
And urged them on with mad desire
To call in haste for their destroyer;
They, only set on sport and play,
Unweetingly impôrtuned
Their own destruction to come speedy upon them.
So fond are mortal men,
Fallen into wrath divine,
As their own ruin on themselves to invite,
Insensate left, or to sense reprobate,
And with blindness internal struck.
2 Semichor. But he, though blind of sight,
K 2
132
SAMSON AGONISTES.
Despised, and thought extinguished quite,
With inward eyes illuminated,
His fiery virtue roused
From under ashes into sudden flame ;
And as an evening dragon came,
Assailant on the perched roosts
And nests in order ranged
Of tame villatic fowl; but as an eagle
His cloudless thunder bolted on their heads.
So virtue, given for lost,
Depressed, and overthrown, as seemed,
Like that self-begotten bird
In the Arabian woods embost,
That no second knows, nor third,
And lay erewhile a holocaust,
From out her ashy womb now teemed,
Revives, reflourishes, then vigorous most
When most unactive deemed ;
And though her body die, her ſame survives,
A secular bird, ages of lives.
Man. Come, come ; no time for lamentation mow,
Nor much more cause; Samson hath quit himself
Like Samson, and heroically hath finished
A life heroic, on his enemies
Fully revenged; hath left º of mourning,
And lamentation to the sons of Caphtor
Through all Philistian bounds, to Israël
Honour hath left, and freedom, let but them
Find courage to lay hold on this occasion ;
To himself and father's house cternal fame;
And, which is best and happiest yet, all this
With God not parted from him, as was feared,
I}ut favouring and assisting to the end.
Nothing is here for tears, nothing to wail
Or knock the breast; no weakness, no contempt,
Dispraise, or blame; nothing but well and fair,
And what may quiet us in a death so noble.
Let us go find the body where it lies
Soaked in his enemies’ blood; and from the stream,
With lavers pure, and cleansing herbs, wash off
The clotted gore. I, with what speed the while,
(Gaza is not in plight to say us nay,)
Will send for all my kindred, all my friends,
To fetch him hence, and solemnly attend
With silent obsequy, and funeral train,
Home to his father's house: there will I build him
A monument, and plant it round with shade
Of laurel ever green, and branching palm,
With all his trophies hung, and acts inrolled
In copious legend, or sweet lyric song.
Thither shall all the valiant youth resort,
And from his memory inflame their breasts
To matchless valour, and adventures high :
The virgins also shall, on feastful days,
Visit his tomb with flowers; only bewailing
His lot unfortunate in nuptial choice,
From whence captivity and loss of eyes.
| Chor. All is best, though we oft doubt
What the unsearchable dispose
Of highest Wisdom brings about,
} And ever best found in the close.
Oft he seems to hide his face,
But unexpectedly returns,
And to his faithful champion hath in place
i Bore witness gloriously; whence Gaza mourns,
| And all that band them to resist
+
; His uncontrollable intent;
| His servants he, with new acquist
; Of true experience, from this great event,
; With peace and consolation hath dismist,
And calm of mind, all passion spent .
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YET once more, O ye laurels, and once more,
Ye myrtles brown, with ivy never sere,
I come to pluck your berries harsh and crude;
And, with forced fingers rude,
Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year.
Bitter constraint, and sad occasion dear,
Compels me to disturb your season due :
For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime,
Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer:
Who would not sing for Lycidas 2 he knew
Himself to sing, and build the loſty rhyme.
He must not float upon his watry bier
Unwept, and welter to the parching wind,
Without the meed of some melodious tear.
Begin, then, sisters of the sacred well,
That from beneath the seat of Jove doth spring;
Begin, and somewhat loudly sweep the string ;
Hence with denial vain, and coy excuse :
So may some gentle muse
With lucky words favour my destined urn;
And, as he passes, turn,
And bid fair peace be to my sable shroud.
For we were nursed upon the self-same hill,
Fed the same flock by fountain, shade, and rill.
Together both, ere the high lawns appeared
Under the opening eye-lids of the morn,
We drove a-field, and both together heard
What time the gray fly winds her sultry horn,
Battening our flocks with the fresh dews of night,
Oft till the star, that rose at evening bright,
Toward heaven's descent had sloped his westering
wheel.
Meanwhile the rural ditties were not mute,
Tempered to the oaten flute;
Rough Satyrs danced, and Fauns with cloven heel
Trom the glad sound would not be absent long;
And old Damoetas loved to hear our song.
But, O the heavy change now thou art gone,
Now thou art gone, and never must return
Thee, shepherd, thee the woods, and desert caves,
With wild thyms and the gadding vine o'ergrown,
And all their echoes, mourn:
The willows, and the hazel copses green,
*
L Y C I D A S.
Shall now no more be seen Kí *,
Fanning their joyous leaves to thy soft lays.
As killing as the canker to the rose, -
Or taint-worm to the weanling herds that graze,
Or frost to flowers, that their gay wardrobe wear,
When first the white-thorn blows; |
Such, Lycidas, thy loss to shepherds' ear.
Where were ye, nymphs, when the remorseless
deep
Closed o'er the head of your loved Lycidas P
For neither were ye playing on the steep,
Where your old bards, the famous Druids, lie,
Nor on the shaggy top of Mona high,
Nor yet where Deva spreads her wizard stream:
Ay me ! I fondly dream,
Had ye been there : for what could that have done?
What could the Muse herself that Orpheus bore,
The Muse herself, for her enchanting son,
Whom universal nature did lament,
When, by the rout that made the hideous roar,
His gory visage down the stream was sent,
Down the swift Hebrus to the Lesbian shore ?
Alas! what boots it with incessant care
To tend the homely, slighted shepherd's trade,
And strictly meditate the thankless Muse 2
Were it not better done, as others use,
To sport with Amaryllis in the shade,
Or with the tangles of Neaera's hair P
Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise
(That last infirmity of noble minds)
To scorn delights and live laborious days;
But the fair guerdon when we hope to find,
And think to burst out into sudden blaze,
Comes the blind Fury with the abhorred shears,
And slits the thin-spun life. “But not the praise,’
Phoebus replied, and touched my trembling ears;
‘Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil,
Nor in the glistering foil
Set off to the world, nor in broad rumour lies:
But lives and spreads aloft by those pure eyes,
And perfect witness of all judging Jove;
As he pronounces lastly on each deed,
Of so much fame in heaven expect thy meed.’

134
LYCIDAS
|
-eº."
O fountain Arethuse, and thou honoured flood,
Smooth-sliding Mincius, crowned with vocal reeds !
That strain I heard was of a higher mood:
But now my oat proceeds,
And listens to the herald of the sea
That came in Neptune's plea ;
He asked the waves, and asked the felon winds,
What hard mishap hath doomed this gentle swain P
And questioned every gust of rugged wings,
That blows from off each beaked promontory:
They knew not of his story;
And sage Hippotades their answer brings,
That not a blast was from his dungeon strayed :
The air was calm, and on the level brine
Sleek Panope with all her sisters played.
It was that fatal and perfidious bark,
- Built in the eclipse, and rigged with curses dark,
That sunk so low that sacred head of thine.
Next Camus, reverend sire, went footing slow,
His mantle hairy, and his bonnet sedge,
In wrought with figures dim, and on the edge
Like to that sanguine flower inscribed with woe.
“Ah! who hath reſt,’ quoth he, “my dearest pledge?
Last came, and last did go.”
The pilot of the Galilean lake:
Two massy keys he bore of metals twain,
CThe golden opes, the iron shuts amain,)
He shook his mitred locks, and stern bespake:
‘How well could I have spared for thee, young
swain,
Enow of such, as for their bellies' sake
Creep, and intrude, and climb into the fold
Of other care they little reckoning make,
Than how to scramble at the shearers’ ſeast,
. And shove away the worthy bidden guest;
-**
2-pin" mouths' that scarce themselves know how to
hold
A sheep-hook, or have learned aught else the least
That to the faithful herdsman's art belongs
What recks it them 2 What need they They are sped;
And, when they list, their lean and flashy songs
Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw;
The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed,
But, swoln with wind and the rank mist they draw,
Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread :
Besides what the grim wolf with privy paw
Daily devours apace, and nothing fed :
But that two-handed engine at the door
Stands ready to smite once, and smite no more.”
Return, Alpheus, the dread voice is past,
That shrunk thy streams; return, Sicilian Muse,
And call the vales, and bid them hither cast
Their bells and flowerets of a thousand hues.
Ye valleys low, where the mild whispers use
Of shades, and wanton winds, and gushing brooks,
On whose fresh lap the swart star sparely looks;
Throw hither all your quaint enamelled eyes,
That on the green turf suck the honeyed showers,
And purple all the ground with vernal flowers.
Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken dies,
The tufted crow-toe, and pale jessamine,
The white pink, and the pansy freaked with jet,
The glowing violet,
The musk-rose, and the well-attired woodbine,
With cowslips wan that hang the pensive head,
And every flower that sad embroidery wears:
Bid amaranthus all his beauty shed,
And daffodillies fill their cups with tears,
To strew the laureat hearse where Lycid lies.
For, so to interpose a little ease,
Let our frail thoughts dally with false surmise;
Ay me! whilst thee the shores and sounding seas
Wash far away, where'er thy bones are hurled,
Whether beyond the stormy Hebrides,
Where thou perhaps, under the whelming tide,
Visitest the bottom of the monstrous world;
Or whether thou, to our moist vows denied,
Sleepest by the fable of Bellerus old,
Where the great vision of the guarded mount
Looks toward Namancos and Bayona's hold;
Look homeward, angel, now, and melt with ruth :
And, O ye dolphins, waft the hapless youth.
Weep no more, woful shepherds, weep no more,
For Lycidas your sorrow is not dead,
Sunk though he be beneath the watry floor;
So sinks the day-star in the ocean bed,
And yet anon repairs his drooping head,
And tricks his beams, and with new-spangled ore
Flames in the forehead of the morning sky:
So Lycidas sunk low, but mounted high,
Through the dear might of Him that walked the
waves;
Where, other groves and other streams along,
With nectar pure his oozy locks he laves,
And hears the unexpressive nuptial song,
In the blest kingdoms meek of joy and love.
There entertain him all the saints above,
In solemn troops, and sweet societies,
That sing, and, singing, in their glory move,
And wipe the tears for ever from his eyes.
Now, Lycidas, the shepherds weep no more;
Henceforth thou art the genius of the shore,
In thy large recompense, and shalt be good
To all that wander in that perilous flood.
Thus sang the uncouth swain to the oaks and rills,
While the still morn went out with sandals gray;
He touched the tender stops of various quills,
With eager thought warbling his Doric lay:
^,
And now the sun had stretched out all the hills,
And now was dropt into the western bay:
At last he rose, and twitched his mantle blue :
To-morrow to fresh woods, and pastures new.
L’ALLEGRO. 135
HENce, loathed Melancholy,
Of Cerberus and blackest midnight born,
In Stygian cave forlorn,
'Mongst horrid shapes, and shrieks, and sights
unholy!
Find out some uncouth cell,
Where brooding Darkness spreads his jealous
- wings,
And the night-raven sings;
There under ebon shades, and low-browed rocks,
As ragged as thy locks,
In dark Cimmerian desert ever dwell.
But come, thou goddess fair and free,
In heaven yeleped Euphrosyne,
And by men, heart-easing Mirth;
Whom lovely Venus, at a birth,
With two sister Graces more,
To ivy-crowned Bacchus bore :
Or whether (as some sager sing)
The frolic wind that breathes the spring,
Zephyr, with Aurora playing,
As he met her once a-Maying;
There on beds of violets blue,
And fresh-blown roses washed in dew,
Filled her with thee a daughter fair,
So buxom, blithe, and debonair.
Haste thee, nymph, and bring with thee
Jest, and youthful jollity,
Quips, and cranks, and wanton wiles,
Nods, and becks, and wreathed smiles,
Such as hang on Hebe's cheek,
And love to live in dimple sleek;
Sport that wrinkled Care derides,
And Laughter holding both his sides.
Come, and trip it, as you go,
On the light fantastic toe ;
TAnd in thy right hand lead with thee
The mountain nymph, sweet Liberty;
And, if I give thee honour due,
Mirth, admit me of thy crew,
To live with her, and kive with thee,
In unreproved pleasures free;
To hear the lark begin his flight,
'And singing startle the dull night,
From his watch-tower in the skies,
Till the dappled dawn doth rise;
Then to come, in spite of sorrow,
And at my window bid good-morrow,
Through the sweet-briar, or the vine,
Or the twisted eglantine:
While the cock, with lively din,
Scatters the rear of darkness thin,
And to the stack, ºr the barn-door,
("A" L' A L L E G R O.
Stoutly struts his dames before :
Oſt listening how the hounds and horn
Cheerly rouse the slumbering morn,
From the side of some hoar hill,
Through the high wood echoing shrill.
Sometimes walking, not unseen,
By hedge-row elms, on hillocks green,
Right against the eastern gate
Where the great sun begins his state,
Robed in flames, and amber light,
The clouds in thousand liveries dight;
While the ploughman, near at hand,
Whistles o'er the furrowed land,
And the milkmaid singeth blithe,
And the mower whets his scythe,
And every shepherd tells his tale,
Under the hawthorn in the dale.
Straight mine eye hath caught new pleasures,
While the landscape round it measures;
Russet lawns, and fallows gray,
Where the nibbling flocks do stray;
Mountains, on whose barren breast
The labouring clouds do often rest;
Meadows trim with daisies pied,
Shallow brooks, and rivers wide;
Towers and battlements it sees
Bosomed high in tufted trees,
Where perhaps some beauty lies,
The cynosure of neighbouring eyes.
[." Hard by, a cottage chimney smokes
From betwixt two aged oaks,
Where Corydon and Thyrsis, met
Are at their savoury dinner set
Of herbs, and other country messes,
Which the meat-handed Phillis dresses;
And then in haste her bower she leaves,
With Thestylis to bind the sheaves;
Or, if the earlier season lead,
To the tanned haycock in the mead.
Sometimes with secure delight
The upland hamlets will invite,
When the merry bells ring round,
And the jocund rebecks sound
To many, a youth and many a maid,
Dancing in the checkered shade ;
And young and old come forth to play
On a sun-shine holy-day,
Till the live-long day-light fail :
Then to the spicy nut-brown ale,
With stories told of many a feat,
How faery Mab the junkets eat;
She was pinched, and pulled, she said;
And he, by friar's lantern led,



136
IL PENSEROSO.
Tells how the drudging goblin sweat
To earn his cream-bowl duly set,
When in one night, ere glimpse of morm,
His shadowy flail hath threshed the corn,
That ten day-labourers could not end ;
Then lies him down the lubber fiend,
And, stretched out all the chimney's length,
Basks at the fire his hairy strength ;
And crop-full out of door he flings,
Ere the first cock his matin rings.
Thus done the tales, to bed they creep,
By whispering winds soon lulled asleep.
Towered cities please us then,
And the busy hum of men,
Where throngs of knights and barons bold,
In weeds of peace high triumphs hold,
With store of ladies, whose bright eyes
Rain influence, and judge the prize
Of wit or arms, while both contend
To win her grace, whom all commend.
There let Hymen oft appear
In saffron robe, with taper clear,
And pomp, and feast, and revelry,
With masque and antique pageantry;
Such sights as youthful poets dream
On summer eves by haunted stream.
Then to the well-trod stage anon,
If Jonson's learned sock be on,
Or sweetest Shakspeare, Fancy's child,
Warble his native wood-notes wild.
And ever, against eating cares,
Lap me in soft Lydian airs,
Married to immortal verse ;
Such as the meeting soul may pierce,
In notes, with many a winding bout
Of linked sweetness long drawn out,
With wanton heed and giddy cunning ;
The melting voice through mazes running,
Untwisting all the chains that tie
The hidden soul of harmony;
That Orpheus' self may heave his head
Trom golden slumber on a bed
Of heaped Elysian flowers, and hear
Such strains as would have won the ear
Of Pluto, to have quite set free
His half regained Eurydice.
These delights if thou canst give,
Mirth, with thee I mean to live.
IL P E N S E R O S O.
HENCE, vain deluding joys,
The brood of Folly without father bred
How little you bested,
Or fill the fixed mind with all your toys!
Dwell in some idle brain,
And fancies fond with gaudy shapes possess,
As thick and numberless
As the gay motes that people the sunbeams;
Or likest hovering dreams,
The fickle pensioners of Morpheus' train.
But hail, thou goddess sage and holy,
Hail divinest Melancholy 1.
Whose saintly visage is too bright
To hit the sense of human sight,
And therefore to our weaker view
O'erlaid with black, staid Wisdom's hue ;
Black, but such as in esteem
Prince Memnon's sister might beseem,
Or that starred Ethiop queen that strove
To set her beauty's praise above
The sea-nymphs, and their powers offended :
Yet thou art higher far descended :
Thee bright-haired Vesta, long of yore,
To solitary Saturn bore;
His daughter she ; in Saturn's reign
Such mixture was not held a stain :
Oft in glimmering bowers and glades
He met her, and in secret shades
Of woody Ida's in most grove,
Whilst yet there was no fear of Jove.
Come, pensive nun, devout and pure,
Sober, steadfast, and demure,
All in a robe of darkest grain,
Flowing with majestic train,
And sable stole of cypress lawn,
Over thy decent shoulder drawn.
Come, but keep thy wonted state
With even step, and musing gait;
And looks commércing with the skies,
Thy rapt soul sitting in thine eyes:
There, held in holy passion still,
Forget thyself to marble, till
With a sad leaden downward cast
Thou fix them on the earth as fast :
And join with thee calm Peace, and Quiet,
Spare Fast, that oft with gods doth diet,
And hears the Muses in a ring
Aye round about Jove's altar sing:
And add to these retired Leisure,
That in trim gardens takes his pleasure.
But first, and chiefest, with thee bring,
Him that yon soars on golden wing,
Guiding the fiery-wheeled throne,
The cherub Contemplation;
IL PENSEROSO. I 37
And the mute Silence hist along,
'Less Philomel will deign a song,
In her sweetest saddest plight,
Smoothing the rugged brow of Night,
While Cynthia checks her dragon yoke,
Gently o'er the accustomed oak :
Sweet bird, that shunnest the noise of folly,
Most musical, most melancholy
Thee, chantress, oft the woods among,
I woo, to hear thy even-song;
And, missing thee, I walk unseen
On the dry smooth-shaven green,
To behold the wandering moon,
Riding near her highest noon,
Like one that had been led astray
Through the heaven's wide pathless way;
And oft, as if her head she bowed,
Stooping through a fleecy cloud.
Oft, on a plat of rising ground,
I hear the far-off curfeu sound,
Over some wide watered shore,
Swinging slow with sullen roar:
Or, if the air will not permit,
Some still removed place will fit,
Where glowing embers through the room
Teach light to counterfeit a gloom ;
Far from all resort of mirth,
Save the cricket on the hearth,
Or the belman's drowsy charm,
To bless the doors from nightly harm.
Or let my lamp, at midnight hour,
Be seen in some high lonely tower,
Where I may oft out-watch the Bear,
With thrice-great Hermes, or unsphere
The spirit of Plato, to unfold
What worlds or what vast regions hold
The immortal mind that hath forsook
Her mansion in this fleshly nook:
And of those demons that are found
In fire, air, flood, or under ground,
Whose power hath a true consent
With planet or with element.
Sometime let gorgeous Tragedy
In sceptered pall come sweeping by,
Presenting Thebes, or Pelops’ line,
Or the tale of Troy divine;
Or what (though rare) of later age
Ennobled hath the buskined stage.
But, O sad virgin, that thy power
Might raise Musaeus from his bower
Or bid the soul of Orpheus sing
Such notes as, warbled to the string,
Drew iron tears down Pluto's cheek,
And made hell grant what love did seek ;
Or call up him that left half-told
The story of Cambuscan bold,
Of Camball, and of Algarsife,
And who had Canace to wife,
That owned the virtuous ring and glass;
And of the wondrous horse of brass,
On which the Tartar king did ride:
And if aught else great bards beside ;
In sage and solemn tunes have sung,
Of turneys, and of trophies hung,
Of forests, and enchantments drear,
Where more is meant than meets the ear.
Thus, Night, oſt see me in thy pale career,
Till civil-suited morn appear,
Not tricked and frounced as she was wont
With the Attic boy to hunt,
But kercheſt in a comely cloud,
While rocking winds are piping loud,
Or ushered with a shower still,
When the gust hath blown his fill,
Ending on the rustling leaves,
With minute drops from off the eaves.
And, when the sun begins to fling
His flaring beams, me, goddess, bring
To arched walks of twilight groves,
And shadows brown, that Sylvan loves,
Of pine, or monumental oak,
Where the rude axe, with heaved stroke,
Was never heard the nymphs to daunt,
Or fright them from their hallowed haunt.
There in close covert by some brook,
Where no profaner eye may look,
Hide me from day's garish eye,
While the bee with honeyed thigh,
That at her flowery work doth sing,
And the waters murmuring,
With such concert as they keep,
Entice the dewy-feathered sleep;
And let some strange mysterious dream
Wave at his wings in aery stream
Of lively portraiture displayed,
Softly on my eyelids laid.
And, as I wake, sweet music breathe
Above, about, or underneath,
Sent by some spirit to mortals good,
Or the unseen genius of the wood.
But let my due feet never fail
To walk the studious cloister's pale,
And love the high-embowed roof,
With antique pillars massy proof,
And storied windows richly dight,
Casting a dim religious light:
There let the pealing organ blow,
To the full-voiced quire below,
In service high and anthems clear,
As may with sweetness, through mine ear,
Dissolve me into ecstasies,
And bring all heaven before mine eyes.
And may at last my weary age
Find out the peaceful hermitage,
The hairy gown and mossy cell,
Where I may sit and rightly spell
Of every star that heaven doth shew,
And every herb that sips the dew ;
Till old experience do attain
To something like prophetic strain.
These pleasures, Melancholy, give,
And I with thee will choose to live.
138 ARCADES.
ARCADES,
PART OF A MASK,
Or Entertainment presented to the Countess Dowager of Derby, at Harefield, by some noble persons of her
family; who appear on the scene in pastoral habit, moving toward the seat of state with this song :
I. SONG.
Look, nymphs, and shepherds, look,
What sudden blaze of majesty
Is that which we from hence descry,
Too divine to be mistook :
This, this is she
To whom our vows and wishes bend :
Here our solemn search hath end.
Fame, that, her high worth to raise,
Seemed erst so lavish and profuse,
We may justly now accuse
Of detraction from her praise;
Less than half we find exprest,
Envy bid conceal the rest.
Mark, what radiant state she spreads,
In circle round her shining throne,
Shooting her beams like silver threads;
This, this is she alone,
Sitting like a goddess bright,
In the center of her light.
Might she the wise Latona be,
Or the towered Cybele,
Mother of a hundred gods?
Juno dares not give her odds :
Who had thought this clime had held
A deity so unparalleled P
As they come forward, the Genius of the wood appears,
and turning towards them speaks :
Genius.
Stay, gentle swains; for though in this disguise,
I see bright honour sparkle through your eyes;
Of famous Arcady ye are, and sprung
Of that renowned flood, so often sung,
Divine Alpheus, who by secret sluice
Stole under seas to meet his Arethuse;
And ye, the breathing roses of the wood,
I’air silver-buskined nymphs, as great and good;
I know, this quest of yours, and free intent,
Was all in honour and devotion meant
To the great mistress of yon princely shrine,
Whom with low reverence I adore as mine;
And, with all helpful service, will comply
To further this night's glad solemnity;
And lead ye, where ye may more near behold
What shallow-searching Fame hath left untold;
Which I full oft, amidst these shades alone,
Have sat to wonder at, and gaze upon :
For know, by lot from Jove I am the power
Of this fair wood, and live in oaken bower,
To nurse the saplings tall, and curl the grove
With ringlets quaint, and wanton windings wove.
And all my plants I save from nightly ill
Of noisome winds, and blasting vapours chill:
And from the boughs brush off the evil dew,
And heal the harms of thwarting thunder blue,
Or what the cross dire-looking planet smites,
Or hurtful worm with cankered venom bites.
When evening gray doth rise, I fetch my round
Over the mount, and all this hallowed ground;
And early, ere the odorous breath of morn
Awakes the slumbering leaves, or tasseled horn
Shakes the high thicket, haste I all about,
Number my ranks, and visit every sprout
With puissant words, and murmurs made to bless,
But else in deep of night, when drowsiness
Hath locked up mortal sense, then listen I
To the celestial Syrens' harmony,
That sit upon the nine infolded spheres,
And sing to those that hold the vital shears,
And turn the adamantine spindle round,
On which the fate of gods and men is wound.
Such sweet compulsion doth in music lie,
To lull the daughters of necessity,
And keep unsteady nature to her law,
And the low world in measured motion draw
After the heavenly tune, which none can hear,
Of human mould, with gross unpurged ear;
And yet such music worthiest were to blaze
The peerless highth of her immortal praise,
Whose lustre leads us, and for her most fit,
If my inferior hand or voice could hit
Inimitable sounds: yet, as we go,
Whate'er the skill of lesser gods can show,
ARCADES. 139
I will assay, her worth to celebrate,
And so attend ye toward her glittering state;
Where ye may all, that are of noble stem,
Approach, and kiss her sacred vesture's hem.
II. SONG.
O'er the smooth enamelled green
Where no print of step hath been
Follow me, as I sing
And touch the warbled string,
Under the shady roof
Of branching elm star-proof.
Follow me ;
I will bring you where she sits,
Clad in splendour as befits
Her deity.
Such a rural queen
All Arcadia hath not scen.
III. SONG.
Nymphs and shepherds, dance no more
By sandy Ladon’s lilied banks ;
On old Lycaeus, or Cyllene hoar
Trip no more in twilight ranks;
Though Erymanth your loss deplore,
A better soil shall give ye thanks.
From the stony Maenalus
Bring your flocks, and live with us;
Here ye shall have greater grace,
To serve the lady of this place.
Though Syrinx your Pan's mistress were,
Yet Syrinx well might wait on her.
Such a rural queen
All Arcadia hath not seen.
C O M U S ,
A MASK,
PRESENTED A T L U D : OW CASTLE, 1634,
BEFORE
JOHN, EARL OF BRIDGEWATER,
THEN PRESIDENT OF WALES.
THE PERSONs.
The Attendant Spirit, afterwards in the
habit of Thyrsis.
Comus, with his crew.
The Lady.
First Brother.
Second Brother.
Sabrina, the Nymph.
Nº. The chief persons who presented, were
The Lord Brackley.
Mr. Thomas Egerton, his brother.
The Lady Alice Egerton.
The first Scene discovers a wild wood.
The Attendant Spirit descends or enters.
Before the starry threshold of Jove's court
My mansion is, where those immortal shapes
Of bright ačreal spirits live insphered
In regions mild of calm and serene air,
Above the smoke and stir of this dim spot,
Which men call earth; and, with low-thoughted care
Confined and pestered in this pin ſold here,
Strive to keep up a frail and feverish being,
Unmindful of the crown that virtue gives,
After this mortal change, to her true servants,
Amongst the enthroned gods on sainted seats.
Yet some there be, that by due steps aspire
To lay their just hands on that golden key,
That opes the palace of etermity:
To such my errand is; and, but for such,
I would not soil these pure ambrosial weeds
With the rank vapours of this sin-worn mould.
But to my task. Neptune, besides the sway
Of every salt flood, and each ebbing stream,
Took in by lot 'twixt high and nether Jove
Imperial rule of all the sea-girt isles,
That, like to rich and various gems, inlay
The unadorned bosom of the deep :
Which he, to grace his tributary gods,
By course commits to several government,
And gives them leave to wear their sapphire crowns,
And wield their little tridents: but this isle,
The greatest and the best of all the main,
He quarters to his blue-haired deities;
And all this tract that fronts the falling sun
A noble peer of mickle trust and power
Has in his charge, with tempered awe to guide
An old and haughty nation, proud in arms:
Where his fair offspring, nursed in princely lore,
Are coming to attend their father's state,
And new-instructed scepter: but their way
Lies through the perplexed paths of this drear wood,
The nodding horror of whose shady brows
Threats the forlorn and wandering passenger:
And here their tender age might suffer peril,
But that by quick command from sovran Jove
I was dispatched for their defence and guard :
And listen why; for I will tell you now
What never yet was heard in tale or song,
From old or modern bard, in hall or bower.
COMUS. - 141
Bacchus, that first from out the purple grape
Crushed the sweet poison of misused wine,
After the Tuscan mariners transformed,
Coasting the Tyrrhene shore, as the winds listed,
On Circe's island fell (who knows not Circe,
The daughter of the Sun ? whose charmed cup
Whoever tasted, lost his upright shape,
And downward fell into a grovelling swine):
This nymph, that gazed upon his clustering locks
With ivy berries wreathed, and his blithe youth,
Had by him, ere he parted thence, a son
Much like his father, but his mother more,
Whom therefore she brought up, and Comus named :
Who, ripe and frolic of his full-grown age,
Roving the Celtic and Iberian fields,
At last betakes him to this ominous wood;
And, in thick shelter of black shades imbowered,
Excels his mother at her mighty art,
Offering to every weary traveller
His orient liquor in a crystal glass,
To quench the drought of Phoebus; which as they
taste,
(For most do taste through fond intemperate thirst.)
Soon as the potion works, their human countenance,
The express resemblance of the gods, is changed
Into some brutish form of wolf or bear,
Or ounce, or tiger, hog, or bearded goat,
All other parts remaining as they were ;
And they, so perfect is their misery,
Not once perceive their foul disfigurement,
But boast themselves more comely than before,
And all their friends and native home forget,
To roll with pleasure in a sensual sty.
Therefore when any, favoured of high Jove,
Chances to pass through this adventurous glade,
Swift as the sparkle of a glancing star
I shoot from heaven to give him safe convoy,
As now I do : but first I must put off
These my sky-robes spun out of Iris’ woof,
And take the woods and likeness of a swain
That to the service of this house belongs,
Who with his soft pipe, and smooth-dittied song,
Well knows to still the wild winds when they roar,
And hush the waving weeds; nor of less faith,
And in this office of his mountain watch
Likeliest, and nearest to the present aid
Of this occasion. But I hear the tread
Of hateful steps; I must be viewless now.
Comus enters with a charming-rod ºn one hand, his
glass in the other; with him a rout of monsters,
headed like sundry sorts of wild beasts, but otherwise
like men and women, their apparel glistering ; they
come in making a riotous and unruly moise, with
torches in their hands.
Comus.
The star that bids the shepherd ſold
Now the top of heaven doth hold;
And the gilded car of day
His glowing axle doth allay
In the steep Atlantic stream;
And the slope sun his upward beam
Shoots against the dusky pole,
Pacing towards the other goal
Of his chamber in the east.
Meanwhile, welcome joy, and feast,
Midnight shout and revelry,
Tipsy dance, and jollity.
Braid your locks with rosy twine
Dropping odours, dropping wine.
Rigour now is gone to bed,
And advice with scrupulous head,
Strict age and sour severity,
With their grave saws, in slumber lie.
We, that are of purer fire,
Imitate the starry quire,
Who in their nightly watchful spheres,
Lead in swift round the months and years.
The sounds and seas, with all their finny drove,
Now to the moon in wavering morrice move ;
And on the tawny sands and shelves,
Trip the pert faeries and the dapper elves;
By dimpled brook and fountain-brim,
The wood-nymphs, decked with daisies trim,
Their merry wakes and pastimes keep ;
What hath night to do with sleep P
Night hath better sweets to prove,
Venus now wakes, and wakens Love.
Come, let us our rites begin ;
'Tis only day-light that makes sin,
Which these dun shades will ne'er report.
Hail, goddess of nocturnal sport,
Dark-veiled Cotytto ! to whom the secret flame
Of midnight torches burns; mysterious dame,
That ne'er art called, but when the dragon womb
Of Stygian darkness spits her thickest gloom,
And makes one blot of all the air;
Stay thy cloudy ebon chair,
Wherein thou ridest with Hecat’, and befriend
Us thy vowed priests, till utmost end
Of all thy dues be done, and none left out;
Ere the blabbing eastern scout,
The nice morn, on the Indian steep
From her cabined loop-hole peep,
And to the tell-tale sun descry
Our concealed solemnity.
Come, knit hands, and beat the ground
In a light fantastic round.
The Measure.
Break off, break off, I feel the different pace
Of some chaste footing near about this ground.
Run to your shrouds, within these brakes and trees;
Our number may affright: some virgin sure
(For so I can distinguish by mine art)
Benighted in these woods. Now to my charms,
And to my wily trains: I shall ere long
Be well stocked with as fair a herd as grazed
About my mother Circe. Thus I hurl
My dazzling spells into the spungy air,
Of power to cheat the eye with blear illusion,
142 COMUS.
And give it false presentments, lest the place
And my quaint habits breed astonishment,
And put the damsel to suspicious flight;
Which must not be, for that's against my course:
I, under fair pretence of friendly ends,
And well-placed words of glozing courtesy
Baited with reasons not unplausible,
Wind me into the easy-hearted man,
And hug him into snares. When once her eye
Hath met the virtue of this magic dust,
I shall appear some harmless villager,
Whom thrift keeps up about his country gear.
But here she comes; I fairly step aside,
And hearken, if I may, her business here.
The Lady enters.
Lady. This way the noise was, if mine ear be true,
My best guide now : methought it was the sound
Of riot and ill-managed merriment,
Such as the jocund flute, or gamesome pipe,
Stirs up among the loose unlettered hinds,
When for their teeming flocks, and granges full,
In wanton dance they praise the bounteous Pan,
And thank the gods amiss. I should be loth
To meet the rudeness, and swilled insolence,
Of such late wassailers; yet O ! where else
Shall I inform my unacquainted feet
In the blind mazes of this tangled wood P
My brothers, when they saw me wearied out
With this long way, resolving here to lodge
Under the spreading favour of these pines,
Stept, as they said, to the next thicket-side,
To bring me berries, or such cooling fruit
As the kind hospitable woods provide.
They left me then, when the gray-hooded even,
Like a sad votarist in palmer's weed,
Rose from the hindmost wheels of Phoebus' wain.
But where they are, and why they came not back,
Is now the labour of my thoughts; ’tis likeliest
They had engaged their wandering steps too far;
And envious darkness, ere they could return,
Had stole them from me: else, O thievish night,
Why shouldst thou, but for some felonious end,
In thy dark lantern thus close up the stars,
That nature hung in heaven, and filled their lamps
With everlasting oil, to give due light
To the misled and lonely traveller P
This is the place, as well as I may guess,
Whence even now the tumult of loud mirth
Was rife, and perfect in my listening ear;
Yet nought but single darkness do I find.
What might this be P A thousand fantasies
Begin to throng into my memory,
Of calling shapes, and beckoning shadows dire,
And aery tongues that syllable men's names
On sands, and shores, and desert wildernesses.
These thoughts may startle well, but not astound,
The virtuous mind, that ever walks attended
By a strong siding champion, conscience.
O welcome, pure-eyed faith, white-handed hope,
Thou hovering angel, girt with golden wings,
And thou, unblemished form of chastity
I see ye visibly, and now believe
That he, the Supreme Good, to whom all things ill
Are but as slavish officers of vengeance,
Would send a glistering guardian, if need were,
To keep my life and honour unassailed.
Was I deceived, or did a sable cloud
Turn forth her silver lining on the night?
I did not err, there does a sable cloud
Turn forth her silver lining on the night,
And casts a gleam over this tufted grove:
I cannot halloo to my brothers, but
Such noise as I can make to be heard farthest
I’ll venture; for my new-enlivened spirits
Prompt me; and they perhaps are not far off.
SONG.
Sweet Echo, sweetest nymph, that livest unscen
Within thy aery shell,
By slow Mcander's margent green,
And in the violet-embroidered vale,
Where the love-lorn nightingale
Nightly to thee her sad song mourneth well :
Canst thou not tell me of a gentle pair
That likest thy Narcissus are 2
O, if thou have
Hid them in some flowery cave,
Tell me but where,
Sweet queen of parley, daughter of the sphere.
So mayest thou be translated to the skies,
And give resounding grace to all heaven's harmonies
Enger Comus.
Comus. Can any mortal mixture of earth's mould
Breathe such divine enchanting ravishment P
Sure something holy lodges in that breast,
And with these raptures moves the vocal air
To testify his hidden residence.
How sweetly did they float upon the wings
Of silence through the empty-vaulted night,
At every fall smoothing the raven-down
Of darkness, till it smiled ! I have of heard
My mother Circe with the Syrens three,
Amidst the flowery-kirtled Naiades,
Culling their potent herbs and baleful drugs;
Who, as they sung, would take the prisoned soul,
And lap it in Elysium : Scylla wept,
And chid her barking waves into attention,
And fell Charybdis murmured soft applause:
Yet they in pleasing slumber lulled the sense,
And in sweet madness robbed it of itself;
But such a sacred and home-felt delight,
Such sober certainty of waking bliss,
I never heard till now. I’ll speak to her,
And she shall be my queen. Hail, foreign wonder!
Whom certain these rough shades did never breed,
Unless the goddess that in rural shrine
Dwellest here with Pan, or Sylvan, by blest song
Forbidding every bleak unkindly fog
To touch the prosperous growth of this tall wood.
COMUS. 143
Lady. Nay, gentle shepherd, ill is lost that praise
That is addressed to unattending ears;
Not any boast of skill, but extreme shift
How to regain my severed company,
Compelled me to awake the courteous Echo
To give me answer from her mossy couch.
Comus. What chance, good lady, hath bereſt you
thus P
Lady. Dim darkness, and this leafy labyrinth.
Comus. Could that divide you from near-ushering
guides 2
Lady. They left me weary on a grassy turf.
Comus. By falsehood, or discourtesy, or why P
Lady. To seek i' the valley some cool friendly
spring.
Comus. And leſt your fair side all unguarded, lady?
Lady. They were but twain, and purposed quick
return.
Comus. Perhaps forestalling night prevented them.
Lady. How easy my misfortune is to hit !
Comus. Imports their loss, beside the present need 2
Lady. No less than if I should my brothers lose.
Comus. Were they of manly prime, or youthful
bloom 2
Lady. As smooth as Hebe's their unrazored lips.
Comus. Two such I saw, what time the laboured ox
In his loose traces from the furrow came,
And the swinked hedger at his supper sat ;
I saw them under a green mantling vine,
That crawls along the side of yon small hill,
Plucking ripe clusters from the tender shoots.
Their port was more than human as they stood :
I took it for a faery vision
Of some gay creatures of the element
That in the colours of the rainbow live,
And play i' the plighted clouds. I was awe-struck,
And, as I past, I worshipt; if those you seck,
It were a journey like the path to heaven,
To help you find them.
Lady. Gentle villager,
What readiest way would bring me to that place 2
Comus. Due west it rises from this shrubby point.
Lady. To find out that, good shepherd, I suppose,
In such a scant allowance of star-light,
Would overtask the best land-pilot's art,
Without the sure guess of well-practised feet.
Comus. I know each lane, and every alley green,
Dingle, or bushy dell, of this wild wood,
And every bosky bourn from side to side,
My daily walks and ancient neighbourhood;
And if your stray attendants be yet lodged,
Or shroud within these limits, I shall know
Ere morrow wake, or the low roosted lark
From her thatched pallet rouse; if otherwise,
I can conduct you, lady, to a low,
But loyal cottage, where you may be safe
Till further quest.
Lady. Shepherd, I take thy word,
And trust thy homest-offered courtesy,
Which oft is sooner found in lowly sheds,
With smoky raſters, than in tapestry halls
In courts of princes, where it first was named,
And yet is most pretended ; in a place
Less warranted than this, or less secure,
I cannot be, that I should fear to change it.
Eye me, blest Providence, and square my trial
Shepherd, lead on.
[Eaceunt.
To my proportioned strength.
Enter the Two Brothers.
El. Br. Unmuffle, ye ſaint stars; and thou, fair
moon,
That wontest to love the traveller's benison,
Stoop thy pale visage through an amber cloud,
And disinherit chaos, that reigns here
In double night of darkness and of shades;
Or, if your influence be quite dammed up
With black usurping mists, some gentle taper,
Though a rush candle from the wicker hole
Of some clay habitation, visit us
With thy long-levelled rule of streaming light;
And thou shalt be our star of Arcady,
Or Tyrian Cynosure.
Sec. Br. Or, if our eyes
Be barred that happiness, might we but hear
The folded flocks penned in their wattled cotes,
Or sound of pastoral reed with oaten stops,
Or whistle from the lodge, or village cock
Count the night watches to his feathery dames,
'Twould be some solace yet, some little cheering,
In this close dungeon of innumerous boughs.
But, O that hapless virgin, our lost sister!
Where may she wander now, whither betake her
From the chill dew, among rude burs and thistles 2
Perhaps some cold bank is her bolster now,
Or 'gainst the rugged bark of some broad elm
Leans her unpillowed head, fraught with sad fears.
What if in wild amazement and affright?
Or, while we speak, within the direful grasp
Of savage hunger, or of savage heat?
El. Br. Peace, brother: be not over exquisite
To cast the fashion of uncertain evils:
For grant they be so; while they rest unknown,
What nced a man forestall his date of grief,
And run to meet what he would most avoid 2
Or, if they be but false alarms of fear,
How bitter is such self-delusion
I do not think my sister so to seek,
Or so unprincipled in virtue's book,
And the sweet peace that goodness bosoms ever,
As that the single want of light and noise
(Not being in danger, as I trust she is not)
Could stir the constant mood of her calm thoughts,
And put them into misbecoming plight.
Virtue could see to do what virtue would
By her own radiant light, though sun and moon
Were in the flat sea sunk. And wisdom's self
Oft seeks to sweet retired solitude ;
Where, with her best nurse, contemplation,
She plumes her feathers, and lets grow her wings,
That in the various bustle of resort
Were all-to ruffled, and sometimes impaired.
144
COMUS.

He that has light within his own clear breast,
May sit i' the center, and enjoy bright day:
But he that hides a dark soul, and ſoul thoughts,
Benighted walks under the mid-day sun ;
Himself is his own dungeon.
Sec. Br. 'Tis most true,
That musing meditation most affects
The pensive secrecy of desert cell,
Far from the cheerful haunt of men and herds,
And sits as safe as in a senate-house;
For who would rob a hermit of his weeds,
His few books, or his beads, or maple dish,
Or do his gray hairs any violence #
But beauty, like the fair Hesperian tree
Laden with blooming gold, had need the guard
Of dragon watch, with unenchanted eye,
To save her blossoms and defend her fruit
From the rash hand of bold incontinence.
You may as well spread out the unsunned heaps
Of misers' treasure by an outlaw's den,
And tell me it is safe, as bid me hope
Danger will wink on opportunity,
And let a single helpless maiden pass
Uninjured in this wild surrounding waste.
Of night, or loneliness, it recks me not ;
I fear the dread events that dog them both,
Lest some ill-greeting touch attempt the person
Of our unowned sister.
El. Br. I do not, brother,
Infer, as if I thought my sister's state
Secure, without all doubt or controversy ;
Yet, where an equal poise of hope and fear
Does arbitrate the event, my nature is
That I incline to hope, rather than fear,
And gladly banish squint suspicion.
My sister is not so defenceless left
As you imagine; she has a hidden strength,
Which you remember not.
Sec. Br. What hidden strength,
Unless the strength of Heaven, if you mean that? “
El. Br. I mean that too, but yet a hidden strength,
Which, if Heaven gave it, may be termed her own :
'Tis chastity, my brother, chastity:
She, that has that, is clad in cómplete steel;
And, like a quivered nymph with arrows keen,
May trace huge forests, and unharboured heaths,
Infamous hills, and sandy perilous wilds ;
Where, through the sacred rays of chastity,
No savage fierce, bandit, or mountaineer,
Will dare to soil her virgin purity :
Yea, there where very desolation dwells,
By grots and caverns shagg’d with horrid shades,
She may pass on with unblenched majesty,
Be it not done in pride, or in presumption.
Some say, no evil thing that walks by night,
In fog or fire, by lake or moorish fen,
Blue meager hag, or stubborn unlaid ghost
That breaks his magic chains at curfeu time,
No goblin, or swart faery of the mine,
Hath hurtful power o'er true virginity
Do ye believe me yet, or shall I call
4.
Antiquity from the old schools of Greece
To testify the arms of chastity ?
Hence had the huntress Dian her dread bow,
Fair silver-shaſted queen, for ever chaste,
Where with she tamed the brinded lioness
And spotted mountain-pard, but set at nought
The frivolous bolts of Cupid ; gods and men
Feared her stern frown, and she was queen o' the woods.
What was that snaky-headed Gorgon shield,
That wise Minerva wore, unconquered virgin,
Wherewith she freezed her foes to cóngealed stone,
But rigid looks of chaste austerity,
And noble grace, that dashed brute violence
With sudden adoration and blank awe ?
So dear to Heaven is saintly chastity,
That when a soul is found sincerely so,
A thousand liveried angels lackey her,
Driving far off each thing of sin and guilt;
And, in clear dream and solemn vision,
Tell her of things that no gross ear can hear;
Till oſt convérse with heavenly habitants
Begin to cast a beam on the outward shape,
The unpolluted temple of the mind,
And turns it by degrees to the soul's essence,
Till all be made immortal: but when lust,
By unchaste looks, loose gestures, and foul talk,
But most by lewd and lavish act of sin,
Lets in defilement to the inward parts,
The soul grows clotted by contagion,
Imbodies, and imbrutes, till she quite lose
The divine property of her first being.
Such are those thick and gloomy shadows damp
Oft seen in charnel vaults and sepulchres
Lingering, and sitting by a new-made grave,
As loth to leave the body that it loved,
And linked itself by carnal sensuality
To a degenerate and degraded state.
Sec. Br. How charming is divine philosophy
yº, harsh, and crabbed, as dull fools suppose,
But musical as is Apollo's lute,
And a perpetual feast of nectared sweets,
Where no crude surfeit reigns.
El, Bº'. List, list; I hear
Some far off halloo break the silent air.
Sec. Br. Methought so too; what should it be *
El. Br. For certain,
Either some one like us night-foundered here,
Or else some neighbour woodman, or, at worst,
Some rowing robber, calling to his fellows,
Sec. Br. Heaven keep my sister. Again, again,
and near !
Best draw, and stand upon our guard.
El." By".
If he be friendly, he comes well; if not,
Defence is a good cause, and Heaven be for us.
t
I’ll halloo :
Enter the Attendant Spirit, habited like a shepherd.
That halloo I should know P what are you ? speak;
Come not too near, you fall on iron stakes else.
Spir. What voice is that f my young lord? speak
again.
(XOMUS. 145
Sec. Br. O brother, 'tis my father's shepherd, sure.
El. Br. Thyrsis, whose artful strains have oſt de-
layed
The huddling brook to hear his madrigal,
And sweetened every musk-rose of the dale 2
How camest thou here, good swain f hath any ram
Slipt from the fold, or young kid lost his dam,
Or straggling wether the pent flock forsook 2
How couldst thou find this dark sequestered nook 2
Spir. O my loved master's heir, and his next joy, ,
I came not here on such a trivial toy t
As a strayed ewe, or to pursue the stealth
Of pilfering wolf; not all the fleecy wealth,
That doth enrich these downs, is worth a thought
To this my errand, and the care it brought.
But, O my virgin lady, where is she f
How chance she is not in your company ”
El. Br. To tell thee sadly, shepherd, without blame,
Or our neglect, we lost her as we came.
Spir. Ay me unhappy then my fears are true.
El. Br. What fears, good Thyrsis 2 Pr’ythee briefly
show.
Spir. I’ll tell ye;’ tis not vain or fabulous,
(Though so esteemed by shallow ignorance,)
What the sage poets, taught by the heavenly muse,
Storied of old in high immortal verse,
Of dire chimeras, and enchanted isles,
And riſted rocks whose entrance leads to hell;
For such there be, but unbelief is blind.
Within the navel of this hideous wood,
Immured in cypress shades a sorcerer dwells,
Of Bacchus and of Circe born, great Comus,
Deep skilled in all his mother's witcheries;
And here to every thirsty wanderer
By sly enticement gives his baneful cup,
With many murmurs mixed, whose pleasing poison
The visage quite transforms of him that drinks,
And the inglorious likeness of a beast
Fixes instead, unmoulding reason's mintage
Charactered in the face : this have I learnt
Tending my flocks hard by i' the hilly crofts,
That brow this bottom-glade; whence night by night
He and his monstrous rout are heard to howl,
Like stabled wolves, or tigers at their prey,
Doing abhorred rites to Hecate
In their obscured haunts of inmost bowers.
Yet have they many baits and guileful spells,
To inveigle and invite the unwary sense
Of them that pass unweeting by the way.
This evening late, by them the chewing flocks
Had ta'en their supper on the savoury herb
Of knot-grass dew-besprent, and were in ſold,
I sat me down to watch upon a bank
With ivy canopied, and interwove
With flaunting honeysuckle, and began,
Rapt in a pleasing fit of melancholy,
To meditate my rural minstrelsy,
Till fancy had her fill; but, ere a close,
The wonted roar was up amidst the woods,
And filled the air with barbarous dissonance;
At which I ceased, and listened them a while,
* L
Till an unusual stop of sudden silence
Gave respite to the drowsy-flighted steeds,
That draw the litter of close-curtained sleep;
At last a soft and solemn-breathing sound
Rose like a steam of rich distilled perfumes,
And stole upon the air, that even silence
Was took ere she was ware, and wished she might
Deny her nature, and be never more
Still to be so displaced. I was all ear,
And took in strains that might create a soul
Under the ribs of death : but, O ! ere long,
Too well I did perceive it was the voice
Of my most honoured lady, your dear sister.
Amazed I stood, harrowed with grief and fear,
And, O poor hapless nightingale, thought I,
How sweet thou singest, how near the deadly snare'
Then down the lawns I ran with headlong haste,
Through paths and turnings often trod by day,
Till, guided by mine ear, I found the place,
Where that damned wizard, hid in sly disguise,
(For so by certain signs I knew,) had met
Already, ere my best speed could prevent,
The aidless innocent lady, his wished prey,
Who gently asked if he had seen such two,
Supposing him some neighbour villager.
Longer I durst not stay, but soon I guessed
Ye were the two she meant; with that I sprung
Into swift flight, till I had found you here ;
But further know I not.
Sec. Br. O night and shades!
How are ye joined with hell in triple knot
Against the unarmed weakness of one virgin,
Alone and helpless Is this the confidence
You gave me, brother P
El. Dº)". Yes, and keep it still ;
Lean on it safely ; not a period
Shall be unsaid for me: against the threats
Of malice, or of sorcery, or that power
Which erring men call chance, this I hold firm :
Virtue may be assailed, but never hurt,
Surprised by unjust force, but not enthralled;
Yea, even that, which mischief meant most harm,
Shall in the happy trial prove most glory:
But evil on itself shall back recoil,
And mix no more with goodness; when at last
Gathered like scum, and settled to itself,
It shall be in eternal restless change
Self-fed, and self-consumed : if this fail,
The pillared firmament is rottenness,
And earth's base built on stubble. But come, let's on.
Against the opposing will and arm of Heaven
May never this just sword be liſted up ;
But for that damned magician, let him be girt
With all the grisly legions that troop
Under the sooty flag of Acheron,
Harpies and Hydras, or all the monstrous forms
'Twixt Africa and Ind, I’ll find him out,
And force him to return his purchase back,
Or drag him by the curls to a foul death,
Cursed as his life. *
Spir. Alas! good venturous youth,
146 COMIUS.
I love thy courage yet, and bold emprise;
But here thy sword can do thee little stead;
l'ar other arms and other weapons must
Be those that quell the might of hellish charms:
He with his bare wand can unthread thy joints,
And crumble all thy sinews.
El. By". Why pr’y thee, shepherd,
How durst thou then thyself approach so near,
As to make this relation P
Spir. Care, and utmost shifts,
How to secure the lady ſrom surprisal,
Brought to my mind a certain shepherd lad,
Of small regard to see to, yet well skilled
In every virtuous plant, and healing herb,
That spreads her verdant leaf to the morning ray :
He loved me well, and oft would beg me sing;
Which when I did, he on the tender grass
Would sit and hearken even to ecstasy,
And in requital ope his leathern scrip,
And show me simples of a thousand names,
Telling their strange and vigorous facultics.
Amongst the rest a small unsightly root,
I}ut of divine effect, he culled me out;
The leaf was darkish, and had prickles on it,
But in another country, as he said,
Bore a bright golden flower, but not in this soil:
Unknown, and like esteemed, and the dull swain
Treads on it daily with his clouted shoon :
And yet more medicinal is it than that moly,
That IHermes once to wise Ulysses gave.
He called it haemony, and gave it me,
And bade me keep it as of sovran use,
'Gainst all enchantments, mildew, blast, or damp,
Or ghastly furies' apparition.
I pursed it up, but little reckoning made,
Till now that this extremity compelled :
But now I find it true; for by this means
I knew the foul enchanter though disguised,
Entered the very lime-twigs of his spells,
And yet came off: if you have this about you,
(As I will give you when we go,) you may
Boldly assault the necromancer's hall;
Where if he be, with dauntless hardihood,
And brandished blade, rush on him ; break his glass,
And shed the luscious liquor on the ground.
But seize his wand; though he and his cursed crew
Fierce sign of battle make, and menace high,
Or like the sons of Vulcan vomit smoke,
Yet will they soon retire, if he but shrink.
El. Br. Thyrsis, lead on apace, I’ll follow thee;
And some good angel bear a shield before us.
The scene changes to a stately palace, set out with all
manner of deliciousness ; soft music, tables spread
with all dainties. Comus appears with his rabble,
and the Lady set in an emchanted chair, to whom he
offers his glass, which she puts by, and goes about to
7" RS6.
Comus.
Nay, lady, sit; if I but wave this wand,
Your nerves are all chained up in alabaster,
And you a statue, or, as Daphne was,
Root-bound, that fled Apollo.
Lady. Fool, do not boast;
Thou canst not touch the freedom of my mind
With all thy charms, although this corporal rind
Thou hast immanacled, while Heaven sees good.
Comus, Why are you vexed, lady ? Why do you
frown P - -
Here dwell no frowns, nor anger; from these gates
Sorrow flies far: see, here be all the pleasures
That ſancy can beget on youthful thoughts,
When the fresh blood grows lively, and returns
Brisk as the April buds in primrose-season.
And first, behold this cordial julep here,
That flames and dances in his crystal bounds,
With spirits of balm and fragrant syrups mixed;
Not that nepenthes, which the wife of Thone
In Egypt gave to Jove-born Helena,
Is of such power to stir up joy as this,
To life so friendly, or so cool to thirst.
Why should you be so cruel to yourself,
And to those dainty limbs, which nature lent
For gentle usage and soft delicacy P
But you invert the covenants of her trust,
And harshly deal like an ill borrower,
With that which you received on other terms;
Scorning the unexempt condition -
By which all mortal frailty must subsist,
Refreshment after toil, ease after pain,
That have been tired all day without repast,
And timely rest have wanted ; but, fair virgin,
This will restore all soon.
Lady. 'Twill not, false traitor :
'Twill not restore the truth and honesty
That thou hast banished from thy tongue with lies.
Was this the cottage, and the safe abode,
Thou toldest me off What grim aspects are these,
These ugly-headed monsters ? Mercy guard me !
Hence with thy brewed enchantments, ſoul deceiver!
Hast thou betrayed my credulous innocence
With visored falsehood and base forgery P
And wouldst thou seek again to trap me here
With lickerish baits, fit to ensnare a brute?
Were it a draught for Juno when she banquets,
I would not taste thy treasonous offer; none
But such as are good men can give good things;
And that which is not good is not delicious
To a well-governed and wise appetite.
Comus. O foolishness of men that lend their cars
To those budge doctors of the Stoic fur,
And fetch their precepts from the Cynic tub,
Praising the lean and sallow abstinence.
Wherefore did nature pour her bounties forth
With such a full and unwithdrawing hand,
Covering the earth with odours, fruits, and flocks,
Thronging the seas with spawn innumerable,
But all to please and sate the curious taste P
And set to work millions of spinning worms,
That in their green shops weave the smooth-haired
silk,
To deck her sons; and that no corner might
COMUS.
147
Be vacant of her plenty, in her own loins
She hutched the all-worshipt ore and precious gems,
To store her children with : if all the world
Should in a pet of temperance feed on pulse,
Drink the clear stream, and nothing wear but frieze,
The All-giver would be unthanked, would be un-
praised, *
Not half his riches known, and yet despised;
And we should serve him as a grudging master,
As a penurious niggard of his wealth ;
And live like nature's bastards, not her sons,
Who would be quite surcharged with her own weight,
And strangled with her waste fertility;
The earth cumbered, and the winged air darked with
plumes,
The herds would over-multitude their lords,
The sea o'er-fraught would swell, and the unsought
diamonds
Would so imblaze the forehead of the deep,
And so bestud with stars, that they below
Would grow inured to light, and come at last
To gaze upon the sun with shameless brows.
List, lady: be not coy, and be not cozened
With that same vaunted name, virginity.
Beauty is nature's coin, must not be hoarded,
But must be current; and the good thereof
Consists in mutual and partaken bliss,
Unsavoury in the enjoyment of itself;
If you let slip time, like a neglected rose
It withers on the stalk with languished head.
Beauty is nature's brag, and must be shown
In courts, at feasts, and high solemnities,
Where most may wonder at the workmanship;
It is for homely features to keep home,
They had their name thence; coarse complexions,
And cheeks of sorry grain, will serve to ply
The sampler, and to tease the huswife's wool.
What need a vermeil-tinctured lip for that,
Love-darting eyes, or tresses like the morn?
There was another meaning in these gifts;
Think what, and be advised; you are but young yet.
Lady. I had not thought to have unlocked my lips
In this unhallowed air, but that this juggler
Would think to charm my judgment, as mine eyes,
Obtruding false rules pranked in reason's garb.
I hate when vice can bolt her arguments,
And virtue has no tongue to check her pride.
Impostor do not charge most innocent nature,
As if she would her children should be riotous
With her abundance; she, good cateress,
Means her provision only to the good,
That live according to her sober laws,
And holy dictate of spare temperance :
If every just man, that now pines with want,
Had but a moderate and beseeming share
Of that which lewdly-pampered luxury
Now heaps upon some few with vast excess,
Nature's full blessings would be well dispensed
In unsuperfluous even proportion, ** *
And she no whit encumbered with her store;
And then the Giver would be better thanked,
His praise due paid : for swinish gluttony
Ne'er looks to Heaven amidst his gorgeous ſeast,
But with besotted base ingratitude
Crams, and blasphemes his Feeder.
Or have I said enough P To him that dares
Arm his profane tongue with contemptuous words
Against the sun-clad power of chastity,
Fain would I something say, yet to what end ?
Thou hast nor ear, nor soul, to apprehend
The sublime notion, and high mystery,
That must be uttered to unfold the sage
And serious doctrine of virginity;
And thou art worthy that thou shouldst not know
More happiness than this thy present lot.
Enjoy your dear wit, and gay rhetoric,
That hath so well been taught her dazzling fence;
Thou art not fit to hear thyself convinced :
Yet, should I try, the uncontrolled worth
Of this pure cause would kindle my rapt spirits
To such a flame of sacred vehemence,
That dumb things would be moved to sympathize,
And the brute earth would lend her nerves, and shake,
Till all thy magic structures, reared so high,
Were shattered into heaps o'er thy false head.
Comus. She fables not; I feel that I do fear
Her words set off by some superior power;
And though not mortal, yet a cold shuddering dew
Dips me all o'er, as whem the wrath of Jove
Speaks thunder, and the chains of Erebus,
To some of Saturn's crew. I must dissemble,
And try her yet more strongly. Come, no more;
This is mere moral babble, and direct
Against the canon-laws of our foundation ;
I must not suffer this : yet ’tis but the lees
And settlings of a melancholy blood:
But this will cure all straight; one sip of this
Will bathe the drooping spirits in delight,
Beyond the bliss of dreams. Be wise, and taste.
Shall I go on 2
The Brothers rush in with swords drawn, wrest his
glass out of his hand, and break it against the
ground ; his rout make sign of resistance; but are
all driven in. The Attendant Spirit comes in.
Spirit.
What, have you let the false enchanter 'scape 2
O ye mistook, ye should have snatched his wand,
And bound him fast; without his rod reversed,
And backward mutters of dissevering power,
We cannot free the lady that sits here
In stony ſetters fixed, and motionless:
Yet stay, be not disturbed ; now I bethink me,
Some other means I have which may be used,
Which once of Meliboeus old I learnt,
The soothest shepherd that ere piped on plains.
There is a gentle nymph not far from hence,
That with moist curb sways the smooth Severn
stream,
Sabrina is her name, a virgin pure ;
Whilom she was the daughter of Locrine,
That had the scepter from his father Brute
*
L 2
148
COMUS,
She, guiltless damsel, flying the mad pursuit
Of her enraged stepdame Guendolen,
Commended her fair innocence to the flood,
That staid her flight with his cross-flowing course.
The water-nymphs, that in the bottom played,
Held up their pearled wrists, and took her in,
Bearing her straight to aged Nereus' hall ;
Who, piteous of her woes, reared her lank head,
And gave her to his daughters to imbathe
In nectared lavers, strewed with asphodel;
And through the porch and inlet of each sense
Dropt in ambrosial oils, till she revived,
And underwent a quick immortal change,
Made goddess of the river: still she retains
Her maiden gentleness, and oft at eve
Visits the herds along the twilight meadows,
Helping all urchin blasts, and ill-luck signs
That the shrewd meddling elfe delights to make,
Which she with precious vialled liquors heals;
For which the shepherds at their festivals
Carol her goodness loud in rustic lays,
And throw sweet garland wreaths into her stream
Of pansies, pinks, and gaudy daffodils.
And, as the old swain said, she can unlock
The clasping charm, and thaw the numming spell,
If she be right invoked in warbled song ;
For maidenhood she loves, and will be swift
To aid a virgin, such as was herself,
In hard-besetting need; this will I try,
And add the power of some adjuring verse.
SONG.
Sabrina fair,
Listen where thou art sitting
Under the glassy, cool, translucent wave,
In twisted braids of lilies knitting
The loose train of thy amber-dropping hair;
Listen for dear honour's sake,
Goddess of the silver lake,
Listen and save.
Iisten and appear to us,
In name of great Oceanus;
By the earth-shaking Neptune's mace,
And Tethys’ grave majestic pace,
By hoary Nereus' wrinkled look,
And the Carpathian wizard's hook,
By scaly Triton's winding shell,
And old sooth-saying Glaucus' spell,
By Leucothea's lovely hands,
And her son that rules the strands,
By Thetis' tinsel-slippered feet,
And the songs of Syrens sweet,
By dead Parthenope's dear tomb,
And fair Ligea's golden comb,
Wherewith she sits on diamond rocks,
Sleeking her soft alluring locks;
By all the nymphs that nightly dance
Upon thy streams with wily glance,
Rise, rise, and heave thy rosy head
From thy coral-paven bed,
And bridle in thy headlong wave,
Till thou our summons answered have.
Listen, and save.
Sabrina rises, attended by water-nymphs, and sings.
By the rushy-fringed bank,
Where grows the willow and the ozier dank,
My sliding chariot stays,
Thick set with agate, and the azure sheen
Of turkis blue, and emerald green,
That in the channel strays;
Whilst from off the waters fleet
Thus I set my printless feet
O'er the cowslip's velvet head,
That bends not as I tread ;
Gentle swain, at thy request,
I am here.
Spir. Goddess dear,
We implore thy powerful hand
To undo the charmed band
Of true virgin here distrest,
Through the force and through the wile
Of unblest enchanter wile.
Sabr. Shepherd, 'tis my office best
To help ensnared chastity;
Brightest lady, look on me;
Thus I sprinkle on thy breast
Drops, that from my fountain pure
I have kept, of precious cure;
Thrice upon thy finger's tip,
Thrice upon thy rubied lip;
Next this marble venomed seat,
Smeared with gums of glutinous heat,
I touch with chaste palms moist and cold :
Now the spell hath lost his hold;
And I must haste, ere morning hour,
To wait in Amphitrite's bower.
Sabrina descends, and the Lady rises out of her seat.
Spir. Virgin, daughter of Locrine
Sprung of old Anchises’ line,
May thy brimmed waves for this
Their full tribute never miss
From a thousand petty rills,
That tumble down the snowy hills:
Summer drought, or singed air,
Never scorch thy tresses fair,
Nor wet October’s torrent flood
Thy molten crystal fill with mud;
May thy billows roll ashore
The beryl and the golden ore;
May thy lofty head be crowned
With many a tower and terrace round,
And here and there thy banks upon
With groves of myrrh and cinnamon.
Come, lady, while Heaven lends us grace,
Let is fly this cursed place,
Lest the sorcerer us entice
With some other new device.
COMUS | 49
Not a waste or needless sound,
Till we come to holier ground ;
I shall be your faithful guide
Through this gloomy covert wide,
And not many furlongs thence
Is your father's residence,
Where this night are met in state
Many a friend to gratulate
His wished presence; and beside
All the swains, that there abide,
With jigs and rural dance resort;
We shall catch them at their sport,
And our sudden coming there
Will double all their mirth and cheer :
Come, let us haste, the stars grow high,
But night sits monarch yet in the mid sky.
The scene changes, presenting Ludlow town and
the president’s castle ; then come in country
dancers, after them the Attendant Spirit, with
the Two Brothers and the Lady.
SONG.
Spir. Back, shepherds, back; enough your play,
Till next sun-shine holiday: .
Here be, without duck or nod,
Other trippings to be trod
Of lighter toes, and such court guise
As Mercury did first devise,
With the mincing Dryades,
On the lawns, and on the leas.
This second Song presents them to their Father
and Mother.
Noble lord and lady bright,
I have brought ye new delight;
Here behold so goodly grown
Three fair branches of your own ;
Heaven hath timely tried their youth,
Their faith, their patience, and their truth,
And sent them here through hard assays
With a crown of deathless praise,
To triumph in victorious dance
O'er sensual folly and intemperance.
The dances being ended, the Spirit epiloguizes.
Spir. To the ocean now I fly,
And those happy climes that lic
Where day never shuts his eye,
Up in the broad fields of the sky :
There I suck the liquid air
All amidst the gardens fair
Of Hesperus, and his daughters three
That sing about the golden tree :
Along the crisped shades and bowers
Revels the spruce and jocund Spring ;
The Graces, and the rosy-bosomed Hours,
Thither all their bounties bring ;
There eternal Summer dwells,
And west winds, with musky wing,
About the cedared alleys fling
Nard and cassia's balmy smells.
Iris there with humid bow
Waters the odorous banks, that blow
Flowers of more mingled hue
Than her purſled scarf can shew ;
And drenches with Elysian dew,
(List, mortals, if your ears be true,)
Beds of hyacinth and roses,
Where young Adonis oft reposes,
Waxing well of his deep wound
In slumber soft, and on the ground
Sadly sits the Assyrian queen:
But far above in spangled sheen
Celestial Cupid, her famed son, advanced,
Holds his dear Psyche sweet, entranced
After her wandering labours long,
Till free consent the gods among
Make her his eternal bride,
And from her fair unspotted side
Two blissful twins are to be born,
Youth and Joy : so Jove hath sworn.
But now my task is smoothly done,
I can fly, or I can run,
Quickly to the green earth's end,
Where the bowed welkin low doth bend ;
And from thence can soar as soon
To the corners of the moon.
Mortals that would follow me,
Love virtue; she alone is free :
She can teach ye how to climb
Higher than the sphery chime;
Or if virtue feeble were,
Heaven itself would stoop to her.
S O N N E T S.
To the Nightinga'o.
O NIGHTING ALE, that on yon bloomy spray
Warblest at eve, when all the woods are still;
Thou with fresh hopes the lover's heart dost fill,
While the jolly hours lead on propitious May.
The liquid notes that close the eye of day,
First heard before the shallow cuckoo's bill,
Portend success in love; O, if Jove's will
Have linked that amorous power to thy soft lay,
Now timely sing, ere the rude bird of hate
Foretell my hopeless doom in some grove nigh:
As thou from year to year hast sung too late
For my relief, yet hadst no reason why:
Whether the Muse, or Love, call thce his mate,
Both them I serve, and of their train am I.
II.
On his being arrived to the age of Twenty-three,
How soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youth,
Stolen on his wing my three and twentieth year !
My hasting days fly on with full career,
But my late spring no bud of blossom sheweth.
Perhaps my semblance might deceive the truth,
That I to manhood am arrived so near;
And inward ripeness doth much less appear,
That some more timely-happy spirits endueth.
Yet be it less or more, or soon or slow,
It shall be still in strictest measure even
To that same lot, however mean or high,
Toward which Time leads me, and the will of Heaven:
All is, if I have grace to use it so,
As ever in my great Task-master's eye.
III.
When the Assault was intended to the City.
CAPTAIN, or colonel, or knight in arms,
Whose chance on these defenceless doors may seize,
If deed of honour did thee ever please,
Guard them, and him within protect from harms.
He can requite thee; for he knows the charms
That call fame on such gentle acts as these,
And he can spread thy name o'er lands and seas,
Whatever clime the sun's bright circle warms.
Lift not thy spear against the Muses’ bower:
The great Emathian conqueror bid spare
The house of Pindarus, when temple and tower
Went to the ground ; and the repeated air
Of sad Electra's poet had the power
To save the Athenian walls from ruin bare.
IV,
To a virtuous Young Lady.
LADY, that in the prime of earliest youth
Wisely hast shunned the broad way and the green,
And with those few art eminently seen,
That labour up the hill with heavenly truth,
The better part with Mary and with Ruth
Chosen thou hast; and they that overwee”,
And at thy growing virtues fret their spleen,
No anger find in thee, but pity and ruth.
Thy care is fixed, and zealously attends
To fill thy odorous lamp with deeds of light,
And hope that reaps not shame. Therefore be sure
Thou, when the bridegroom with his feastful friends
Passes to bliss at the mid hour of might,
Hast gained thy entrance, virgin wise and pure.
V.
To the Lady Margaret Ley.
DAUGHTER to that good earl, once president
Of England's council and her treasury,
Who lived in both, unstained with gold or ſee,
And left them both, more in himself content,
Till sad the breaking of that parliament
Broke him, as that dishonest victory
At Chaeronea, fatal to liberty,
Killed with report that old man eloquent.
Though later born than to have known the days
Wherein your father flourished, yet by you,
Madam, methinks, I see him living yet;
So well your words his noble virtues praise,
That all both judge you to relate them true,
And to possess them, honoured Margaret.
SONNETS. | 5 |
VI.
On the Det, action which followed upon my writing
certain Treatises.
A book was writ of late, called Tetrachordon,
And woven close, both matter, form, and style;
The subject new ; it walked the town a while,
Numbering good intellects; now seldom pored on.
Cries the stall-reader, “Bless us ! what a word on
A title-page is this ' ' And some in file
Stand spelling false, while one might walk to Mile-
End Green. Why is it harder, sirs, than Gordon,
Colkitto, or Macdonnel, or Galasp 2
Those rugged names to our like mouths grow sleek,
That would have made Quintilian stare and gasp.
Thy age, like ours, O soul of Sir John Cheek,
Hated not learning worse than toad or asp,
When thou taughtest Cambridge, and King Ed-
ward, Greek.
VII.
On the same.
I DID but prompt the age to quit their clogs
By the known rules of ancient liberty,
When straight a barbarous noise environs me
Of owls and cuckoos, asses, apes, and dogs:
As when those hinds that were transformed to frogs
Railed at Latona's twin-born progeny,
Which after held the sun and moon in fee.
But this is got by casting pearl to hogs;
That bawl for freedom in their senseless mood,
And still revolt when truth would set them free.
Licence they mean when they cry liberty;
For who loves that, must first be wise and good;
But from that mark how far they rove we see,
For all this waste of wealth, and loss of blood.
VIII.
To Mr. H. Lawes, on the publishing his Airs
HARRY, whose tuneful and well-measured song
First taught our English music how to span
Words with just note and accent, not to scan
With Midas' ears, committing short and long;
Thy worth and skill exempts thee from the throng,
With praise enough for Envy to look wan;
To after-age thou shalt be writ the man,
That with smooth air couldsthumour best our tongue.
Thou honourest verse, and verse must lend her wing
To honour thee, the priest of Phoebus' quire,
That tunest their happiest lines in hymn or story.
Dante shall give Fame leave to set thee higher
Than his Casella, whom he wooed to sing
Met in the milder shades of purgatory.
IX.
On the religious Memory of Mrs. Catherine Thom-
son, my Christian Friend, deceased December 16,
1646.
WHEN faith and love, which parted from thce never,
Had ripened thy just soul to dwell with God,
Meekly thou didst resign this earthly load
Of death, called life; which us from life doth sever.
Thy works, and alms, and all thy good endeavour,
Staid not behind, nor in the grave were trod;
But, as faith pointed with her golden rod,
Followed thee up to joy and bliss for ever.
Love led them on, and faith, who knew them best
Thy hand-maids, clad them o'er with purple beams
And azure wings, that up they flew so drest,
And spake the truth of thee on glorious themes
Before the Judge; who thenceforth bid thee rest,
And drink thy fill of pure immortal streams.
X.
To the Lord General Fairfax.
FAIRFAx, whose name in arms through Europe rings,
Filling each mouth with envy or with praise,
And all her jealous monarchs with amaze,
And rumours loud that daunt remotest kings;
Thy firm unshaken virtue ever brings
Victory home, though new rebellions raise
Their Hydra heads, and the false North displays
Her broken league to imp their serpent wings,
O yet a nobler task awaits thy hand
(For what can war, but endless war still breed £)
Till truth and right from violence be freed,
And public faith cleared from the shameful brand
Of public fraud. In vain doth valour bleed,
While avarice and rapine share the land,
XI.
To the Lord General Cromwell.
CRoMwell, our chief of men, who through a cloud
Not of war only, but detractions rude,
Guided by faith and matchless fortitude,
To peace and truth thy glorious way hast ploughed,
And on the neck of crowned fortune proud
Hast reared God's trophies, and his work pursued,
While Darwen stream, with blood of Scots imbued,
And Dunbar field resounds thy praises loud,
And Worcester's laureat wreath. Yet much remains
To conquer still ; peace with her victories
No less renowned than war; new foes arise
Threatening to bind our souls with secular chains:
Help us to save free conscience from the paw
Of hireling wolves, whose Gospel is their maw.
152 SONNETS.
XII.
To Sir Henry Vane, the Younger.
VANE, young in years, but in sage counsel old,
Than whom a better senator ne'er held
The helm of Rome, when gowns, not arms, repelled
The fierce Epirot and the African bold;
Whether to settle peace, or to unfold
The drift of hollow states hard to be spelled;
Then to advise how war may, best upheld,
Move by her two main nerves, iron and gold,
In all her equipage; besides to know
Both spiritual power and civil, what each means,
What severs each, thou hast learned, which few
have done :
The bounds of either sword to thee we owe :
Therefore on thy firm hand religion leans
In peace, and reckons thee her eldest son.
XIII.
On the late Massacre in Piemont.
Ave NGE, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones
Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold ;
Even them who kept thy truth so pure of old,
When all our fathers worshipt stocks and stones,
Forget not : in thy book record their groans
Who were thy sheep, and in their ancient ſold
Slain by the bloody Piemontese that rolled
Mother with infant down the rocks. The moans
The vales redoubled to the hills, and they
To heaven. Their martyred blood and ashes sow
O'er all the Italian fields, where still doth sway
The triple tyrant; that from these may grow
A hundred-fold, who, having learned thy way,
Early may fly the Babylonian woe.
XIV.
On his Blindness.
WHEN I consider how my light is spent
Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,
And that one talent which is death to hide,
Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest he, returning, chide;
* Doth God exact day-labour, light denied ?”
I fondly ask: but Patience, to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, ‘God doth not need
Either man's work, or his own gifts; who best
Bear his mild yoke, they scrve him best: his state
Is kingly; thousands at his bidding speed,
And post o'er land and ocean without rest;
They also serve who only stand and wait.’
XV.
To Mr. Lawrence.
LAwrf. NCE, of virtuous father virtuous son,
Now that the fields are dank, and ways are mire,
Where shall we sometimes meet, and by the fire
Help waste a sullen day, what may be won
From the hard season gaining 3 Time will run
On smoother, till Favonius re-inspire
The frozen earth, and clothe in fresh attire
The lily and rose, that neither sewed nor spun.
What meat repast shall feast us, light and choice,
Of Attic taste, with wine, whence we may rise
To hear the lute well touched, or artful voice
Warble immortal notes and Tuscan air 3
He who of those delights (an judge, and spare
To interpose them off, is not unwise.
XVI.
To Cyriack Skinner.
CYRIACK, whose grandsire, on the royal bench
Of British Themis, with no mean applause,
Pronounced, and in his volumes taught, our laws,
Which others at their bar so often wrench ;
To-day deep thoughts resolve with me to drench
In mirth that, after, no repenting draws;
Let Euclid rest, and Archimedes pause,
And what the Swede intends, and what the French.
To measure life learn thou betimes, and know
Towards solid good what leads the nearest way;
For other things mild Heaven a time ordains,
And disapproves that care, though wise in show,
That with superfluous burden loads the day,
And, when God sends a cheerful hour, refrains.
XVII.
To the same.
CYRIACK, this three years' day these eyes, though clear,
To outward view, of blemish or of spot,
Bereſt of light, their seeing have forgot;
Nor to their idle orbs doth sight appear
Of sun, or moon, or star, throughout the year,
Or man, or woman. Yet I argue not
Against Heaven's hand or will, nor bate a jot
Of heart or hope ; but still bear up and steer
Right onward. What supports me, dost thou ask *
The conscience, friend, to have lost them overplied
In liberty’s defence, my noble task,
Of which all Europe rings from side to side.
This thought might lead me through the world's
vain mask,
Content though blind, had I no better guide.
SONNETS. I 53
XVIII., A.
2°-
On his deceased Wife.
METHought I saw my late espoused saint
Brought to me, like Alcestis, from the grave,
Whom Jove's great son to her glad husband gave,
Rescued from death by force, though pale and
faint.
Mine, as whom washed from spot of child-bed taint
Purification in the old law did save,
And such, as yet once more I trust to have
Full sight of her in heaven without restraint,
Came vested all in white, pure as her mind:
Her face was veiled; yet to my fancied sight
Love, sweetness, goodness, in her person shined
So clear, as in no face with more delight.
But, O! as to embrace me she inclined,
I waked; she fled; and day brought back my night.
{
THIS is the month, and this the happy morn,
Wherein the Son of heaven's Eternal King,
Of wedded maid and virgin mother born,
Our great redemption from above did bring;
For so the holy sages once did sing,
That he our deadly forfeit should release,
And with his Father work us a perpetual peac
That glorious form, that light unsufferable,
And that far-beaming blaze of majesty,
ON THE MORNING OF CHRIST’S NATIVITY.
C.
Wherewith he wont at heaven's high council-table
To sit the midst of Trinal Unity,
He laid aside; and here with us to be,
Forsook the courts of everlasting day,
And chose with us a darksome house of mortal
Say, heavenly Muse, shall not thy sacred vein
Afford a present to the Infant-God?
clay.
Hast thou no verse, no hymn, or solemn strain,
To welcome him to this his new abode,
Now while the heaven, by the sun's team untrod,
Hath took no print of the approaching light,
And all the spangled host keep watch in squadrons
bright 2
See, how from far, upon the eastern road,
The star-led wizards haste with odours sweet:
O run, prevent them with thy humble ode,
And lay it lowly at his blessed feet:
Have thou the honour first thy Lord to greet,
And join thy voice unto the angel-quire,
THE HYMN.
º
§
es
It was the winter wild,
While the heaven-born child KT
All meanly wrapt in the rude manger lies;
Nature in awe to him
Had doffed her gaudy trim,
With her great Master so to sympathize:
It was no season then for her
To wanton with the sun, her lusty paramour.
º 9%
/* ſ º W yJJ’
º
From out his secret altar touched with hallowed irº
->
Only with speeches fair
She woos the gentle air
To hide her guilty front with innocent snow ;
And on her naked shame,
Pollute with sinful blame,
The saintly veil of maiden white to throw ;
Confounded, that her Maker's eyes
Should look so near upon her foul deformities.
But he, her fears to cease,
Sent-down the meek-eyed Peace;
She crowned with olive green, came softly sliding
Down through the turning sphere,
His ready harbinger,
With turtle wing the amorous clouds dividing;
And, waving wide her myrtle wand,
She strikes an universal peace through sea and land.
No war, or battle's sound,
Was heard the world around :
The idle spear and shield were high up hung;
The hooked chariot stood
Unstained with hostile blood;
The trumpet spake not to the armed throng;
And kings sat still with awful eye,
As if they surely knew their sovran Lord was by.
But peaceful was the night,
Wherein the Prince of Light
His reign of peace upon the earth began :
Smoothly the waters kist,
Whispering new joys to the mild ocean,
Who now hath quite forgot to rave,
While birds of calm sit brooding on the charmed
*-*- Wà Ve.
The stars, with deep amaze,
Stand fixed in steadfast gaze,
Bending one way their precious influence;
And will not take their flight,
For all the morning light,
Or Lucifer that often warned them thence;
But in their glimmering orbs did glow,
Until the Lord himself bespake, and bid them go.





ODES.
| 55
And, though the shady gloom
Had given day her room,
The sun himself withheld his wonted specd,
And hid his head for shame,
As his inferior flame
The new enlightened world no more should need :
tº: saw a greater Sun appear
ſº
ºv)
2” } º bright throne or burning axletree could bear.
,-- \\ & {
The shepherds on the lawn,
Or ere the point of dawn,
Sat simply chatting in a rustic row ;
Full little thought they then,
That the mighty Pan
Was kindly come to live with them below ;
Perhaps their loves, or else their sheep,
Was all that did their silly thoughts so busy keep.
º such music sweet
Their hearts and cars did greet,
As never was by mortal finger strook;
Divinely warbled voice
Answering the stringed noise,
As all their souls in blissful rapture took :
The air, such pleasure loth to lose,
With thousand echoes still prolongs each heavenly
close.
Nature that heard such sound,
Beneath the hollow round
Of Cynthia's seat, the aery region thrilling,
Now was almost won
To think her part was done,
And that her reign had here its last ſulfilling;
She knew such harmony alone
Could hold all heaven and earth in happier union.
At last surrounds their sight
A globe of circular light,
That with long beams the shamefaced night arraycd;
The helmed Cherubim,
And sworded Seraphim,
Are seen in glittering ranks with wings displayed,
Harping in loud and solemn quire,
With unexpressive notes, to Heaven's new-born Heir.
Such music (as 'tis said)
Before was never made,
But when of old the sons of morning sung,
While the Creator great
His constellations set,
And the well-balanced world on hinges hung;
And cast the dark foundations deep,
And bid the weltering waves their oozy channel keep.
Ç
Ring out, ye crystal spheres, º ſº º *
Once bless our human ears, | *A JC’
If ye have power to touch our senses so;
And let your silver chime
Move in melodious time;
An g base of heaven's deep organ blow ;
9._(Vvv^ Mºſt V\
And, with your minefold harmony,
Make up full concert to the angelic symphony.
For, if such holy song
Enwrap our fancy long,
Time will run back, and fetch the age of gold;
And speckled vanity
Will sicken soon and die,
And leprous sin will melt from earthly mould ;
And hell itself will pass away,
And leave her dolorous mansions to the peering day.
Yea, truth and justice then
Will down return to men,
Orbed in a rainbow ; and, like glories wearing,
Mercy will sit between,
Throned in celestial sheen,
With radiant feet the tissued clouds down steering ;
And heaven, as at some festival,
Will open wide the gates of her high palace hall.
But wisest Fate says No,
This must not yet be so,
The Babe yet lies in smiling infancy,
That on the bitter cross
Must redeem our loss :
So both himself and us to glorify:
Yet first, to those yehained in sleep,
The wakeful trump of doom must thunder brough
the deep ;
With such a horrid clang
As on mount Sinai rang,
While the red fire and smouldering clouds out-
brake :
The aged Earth aghast,
With terror of that blast,
Shall from the surface to the centre shake;
When at the world’s last session,
The dreadful Judge in middle air shall spread his
throne.
And then at last our bliss
Full and perfect is,
But now begins; for, from this happy day,
The old Dragon, under ground
In straiter limits bound,
Not half so far casts his usurped sway:
And, wroth to see his kingdom fail,
Swinges the scaly horror of his folded tail.
The oracles are dumb,
No voice or hideous hum
Runs through the arched roof in words deceiving.
Apollo from his shrine
Can no more divine \
With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving.
No nightly trance, or breathed spell,
Inspires the pale-eyed priest from the prophetic
cell.

156
ODES.
S. Can in his swaddling bands control the damned crew.
The lonely mountains o'er,
And the resounding shore,
A voice of weeping heard and loud lament;
From haunted spring and dale,
Edged with poplar pale,
The parting genius is with sighing sent;
With flower-inwoven tresses torn,
The nymphs in twilight shade of tangled thickets mourn.
In consecrated earth,
And on the holy hearth,
The Lars, and Lemures, moan with midnight plaint;
In urns and altars round,
A drear and dying sound
Affrights the Flamens at their service quaint;
And the chill marble seems to sweat,
While each peculiar power forgoes his wonted scat.
Peor and Baúlim .
Forsake their temples dim,
With that twice-battered god of Palestine;
And mooned Ashtaroth,
Heaven's queen and mother both,
Now sits not girt with tapers’ holy shine ;
The Libyc Hammon shrinks his horn,
In vain the Tyrian maids their wounded Thammuz
II].OUl II).
And sullen Moloch, fled,
Hath left in shadows dread
His burning idol all of blackest hue;
In vain with cymbals' ring
They call the grisly king,
In dismal dance about the furnace blue ;
The brutish gods of Nile as fast,
Isis, and Orus, and the dog Anubis, haste.
Nor is Osiris seen
In Memphian grove or green,
Trampling the unshowered grass with lowings loud:
Nor can he be at rest
Within his sacred chest ;
Nought but profoundest hell can be his shroud ;
In vain with timbrelled anthems dark
The sable-stoled sorcerers bear his worshipt ark.
He feels from Juda's land
The dreaded Infant’s hand,
The rays of Bethlehem blind his dusky eyn;
Nor all the gods beside
Longer dare abide,
Nor Typhon huge ending in snaky twine:
Our Babe, to show his Godhead true,
sº. when the sun in bed,
wº
SJ **
Curtained with cloudy red,
Pillows his chin upon an orient wave,
The flocking shadows pale
Troop to the inſermal jail,
Each ſettered ghost slips to his several grave ;
And the yellow-skirted ſays
Fly after the night-steeds, leaving their moon-loved
II] a Z62.
But see, the Virgin blest
Hath laid her Babe to rest;
Time is, our tedious song should here have ending:
Heaven's youngest-teemed star
Hath *: herºined Car,
Her sleeping Lord, with hand-maid lamp, attend-
Ing:
And all about the courtly stable
Bright-harnessed angels sit in order serviceable.
~~~~
THE PASSION.
EREw HILE of music, and ethereal mirth,
Wherewith the stage of air and earth did ring,
And joyous news of Heavenly Infant's birth,
My muse with angels did invite to sing;
But headlong joy is ever on the wing.
In wintry solstice like the shortened light,
Soon swallowed up in dark and long out-living night.
For now to sorrow must I tune my song,
And set my harp to notes of saddest woe,
Which on our dearest Lord did seize ere long,
Dangers, and snares, and wrongs, and worse than so,
Which he for us did freely undergo:
Most perfect Hero, tried in heaviest plight
Of labours huge and hard, too hard for human wight !
He, sovran priest, stooping his regal head,
That dropt with odorous oil down his fair eyes,
Poor fleshy tabernacle entered,
His starry front low-rooft beneath the skies:
O, what a mask was there, what a disguise !
Yet more ; the stroke of death he must abide,
Then lies him meekly down fast by his brethren's
side.
These latest scenes confine my roving verse ;
To this horizon is my Phoebus bound:
His god-like acts, and his temptations fierce,
And former sufferings, other-where are found;
Loud o'er the rest Cremona's trump doth sound;
Mc softer airs befit, and softer strings,
Of lute, or viol still, more apt for mournful things.
Befriend me, night, best patroness of grief:
Over the pole thy thickest mantle throw,
And work my flattered fancy to belief,
That heaven and earth are coloured with my woe:
My sorrows are too dark for day to know ;
The leaves should all be black whercon I write,
And letters, where my tears have washed, a wannish
white.
ODES. 157
See, see the chariot, and those rushing wheels,
That whirled the prophet up at Chebar flood;
My spirit some transporting cherub feels,
To bear me where the towers of Salem stood,
Once glorious towers, now sunk in guiltless blood;
There doth my soul in holy vision sit,
In pensive trance, and anguish, and ecstatic fit.
Mine eye hath found that sad sepulchral rock
That was the casket of Heaven's richest store,
And here though grief my feeble hands up-lock,
Yet on the softened quarry would I score
My plaining verse as lively as before ;
For sure so well instructed are my tears,
That they would fitly fall in ordered characters.
Or should I thence hurried on viewless wing
Take up a weeping on the mountains wild,
The gentle neighbourhood of grove and spring
Would soon unbosom all their echoes mild ;
And I (for grief is easily beguiled)
Might think the infection of my sorrows loud
Had got a race of mourners on some pregnant cloud.
This subject the author finding to be above the years
he had, when he wrote it, and nothing satisfied with
what was begun, left it winfinished.
UPON THE CIRCUMCISION.
YE flaming powers, and winged warriors bright,
That erst with music, and triumphant song,
First heard by happy watchful shepherd's ear,
So sweetly sung your joy the clouds along
Through the soft silence of the listening night;
Now mourn; and, if sad share with us to bear
Your fiery essence can distil no tear,
Burn in your sighs, and borrow
Seas wept from our deep sorrow :
He, who with all heaven's heraldry whilere
Entered the world, now bleeds to give us ease.
Alas, how soon our sin
Sore doth begin
His infancy to seize
O more exceeding love, or law more just?
Just law indeed, but more exceeding love
For we, by rightful doom remediless,
Were lost in death, till he, that dwelt above,
High-throned in secret bliss, for us frail dust
Emptied his glory, even to nakedness;
And that great covenant which we still transgress
Entirely satisfied ;
And the full wrath beside
Of vengeful justice bore for our excess;
And seals obedience first, with wounding smart,
This day; but, O! ere long,
Huge pangs and strong
Will pierce more near his heart.
ON THE DEATH OF A FAIR INFANT,
Dying of a Cough.
O FAIREST flower, no sooner blown but blasted,
Soft silken primrose fading timelessly,
Summer's chief honour, if thou hadst out-lasted
Bleak winter's force that made thy blossom dry;
For he, being amorous on that lovely dye
That did thy cheek envermeil, thought to kiss,
But killed, alas ! and then bewailed his fatal bliss.
For since grim Aquilo, his charioteer,
By boisterous rape the Athenian damsel got,
He thought it touched his deity full near,
If likewise he some fair one wedded not,
Thereby to wipe away the infamous blot
Of long-uncoupled bed and childless eld,
Which, 'mongst the wanton gods, a foul reproach was
held.
So, mounting up in icy-pearled car,
Through middle empire of the freezing air
He wandered long, till thee he spied from far;
There ended was his quest, there ceased his care :
Down he descended from his snow-soſt chair,
But, all unwares, with his cold kind embrace
Unhoused thy virgin soul from her fair biding-place.
Yet thou art not inglorious in thy fate;
For so Apollo, with unweeting hand,
Whilom did slay his dearly-loved mate,
Young Hyacinth, born on Eurotas’ strand,
Young Hyacinth, the pride of Spartan land;
But then transformed him to a purple flower:
Alack, that so to change thee Winter had no power'
Yet can I not persuade me thou art dead,
Or that thy corse corrupts in earth's dark womb,
Or that thy beauties lie in wormy bed,
Hid from the world in a low-delved tomb ;
Could Heaven for pity thee so strictly doom 2
Oh no for something in thy face did shine
Above mortality, that showed thou wast divine.
Resolve me, then, oh soul most surely blest
(If so it be that thou these plaints dost hear :)
Tell me, bright spirit, where'er thou hoverest,
Whether above that high first-moving sphere,
Or in the Elysian fields (if such were there);
Oh say me true, if thou wert mortal wight,
And why from us so quickly thou didst take thy
flight 2
Wert thou some star which from the ruinca roof
Of shaked Olympus by mischance didst fall;
Which careful Jove in nature's true behoof
Took up, and in fit place did reinstall P
Or did of late Earth's sons besiege the wall
158
ODES.
Of sheeny heaven, and thou, some goddess fled,
Amongst us here below to hide thy nectared head P
Or wert thou that just maid, who once before
Forsook the hated earth, O tell me sooth,
And camest again to visit us once more ?
Or wert thou that sweet-smiling youth P
Or that crowned matron sage, white-robed Truth?
Or any other of that heavenly brood
Let down in cloudy throne to do the world some
good P *
Or wert thou of the golden-winged host,
Who, having clad thyself in human weed,
To earth from thy prefixed seat didst post,
And after short abode fly back with speed,
As if to show what creatures heaven doth breed ;
Thereby to set the hearts of men on fire
To scorn the sordid world, and unto heaven aspire 2
But oh! why didst thou not stay here below
To bless us with thy heaven-loved innocence,
To slake his wrath whom sin hath made our foe,
To turn swift-rushing black perdition hence,
Or drive away the slaughtering pestilence,
To stand 'twixt us and our deserved smart?
But thou canst best perform that office where thou art.
Then thou, the mother of so sweet a child,
Her false-imagined loss cease to lament,
And wisely learn to curb thy sorrows wild ;
Think what a present thou to God hast sent,
And render him with patience what he lent;
This if thou do, he will an offspring give,
That till the world's last end shall make thy name to
live.
ON TIME.
Fly, envious Time, till thou run out thy race;
Call on the lazy leaden-stepping Hours,
Whose speed is but the heavy plummet's pace;
And glut thyself with what thy womb devours,
Which is no more than what is false and vain,
And merely mortal dross;
So little is our loss,
So little is thy gain
For when as each thing bad thou hast entombed,
And last of all thy greedy self consumed,
Then long eternity shall greet our bliss
With an individual kiss :
And joy shall overtake us as a flood,
When every thing that is sincerely good
And perfectly divine,
With truth, and peace, and love, shall ever shine
About the supreme throne
Of Him, to whose happy-making sight alone
When Önce our heavenly-guided soul shall clinib,
*
Then, all this earthly grossness quit,
Attired with stars, we shall for ever sit,
Triumphing over death, and chance, and thee,
O Time !

AT A SOLEMN MUSIC.
BLEST pair of Sirens, pledges of heaven's joy,
Sphere born, harmonious sisters, Voice and Verse,
Wed your divine sounds, and mixed power employ,
Dead things with inbreathed sense able to pierce;
And to our high-raised phantasy present
That undisturbed song of pure concent,
Aye sung before the sapphire-coloured throne
To Him that sits thereon,
With saintly shout, and solemn jubilee;
Where the bright seraphim, in burning row,
Their loud up-lifted angel-trumpets blow;
And the cherubic host, in thousand quires,
Touch their immortal harps of golden wires,
With those just spirits that wear victorious palms,
Hymns devout and holy psalms
Singing everlastingly:
That we on earth, with undiscording voice,
May rightly answer that melodious noise;
As once we did, till disproportioned sin
Jarred against nature's chime, and with harsh din
Broke the fair music that all creatures made
_To their great Lord, whose love their motion swayed
In perfect diapason, whilst they stood
In first obedience, and their state of good.
O, may we soon again renew that song,
And keep in tune with heaven, till God ere long
To his celestial concert us unite,
To live with him, and sing in endless morn of light!
AN EPITAPH ON THE MARCHION ESS OF
WINCHESTER,
TH is rich marble doth inter
The honoured wife of Winchester,
A viscount's daughter, an earl's heir,
Besides what other virtues fair
Added to her noble birth,
More than she could own from earth.
Summers three times eight save one
She has told ; alas ! too soon,
After so short time of breath,
To house with darkness, and with death.
Yet had the number of her days
Been as complete as was her praise,
Nature and fate had had no striſe
In giving limit to her life.
Her high birth and her graces sweet
Quickly found a lover meet ;
AN EPITAPH. 169
The virgin quire for her request
The god that sits at marriage ſcast;
He at their invoking came,
But with a scarce well-lighted flame;
And in his garland, as he stood,
Ye might discern a cypress-bud.
Once had the early matrons run
To greet her of a lovely son,
And now with second hope she goes,
And calls Lucina to her throes;
But, whether by mischance or blame,
Atropos for Lucina came;
And with remorseless cruelty
Spoiled at once both fruit and tree:
The hapless babe, before his birth,
Had burial, yet not laid in carth :
And the languished mother's womb
Was not long a living tomb.
So have I seen some tender slip,
Saved with care from Winter's nip,
The pride of her carnation train,
Plucked up by some unheedy swain,
Who only thought to crop the flower
New shot up from vernal shower;
But the fair blossom hangs the head
Side-ways, as on a dying bed,
Herc be tears of perfect moan
Wept for thee in Helicon;
And some flowers, and some bays,
I'or thy hearse, to strew the ways,
Sent thee from the banks of Came,
Devoted to thy virtuous name;
Whilst thou, bright saint, high sittest in glory,
Next her, much like to thee in story,
That fair Syrian shepherdess
Who, after years of barrenness,
The highly favoured Joseph bore,
To him that served for her before,
And at her next birth, much like thce,
Through pangs fled to felicity,
Far within the bosom bright
Of blazing Majesty and Light:
There with thee, new-welcome saint,
Like fortunes may her soul acquaint
With thee there clad in radiant sheen,
No marchioness, but now a queen.
SONG ON MAY MORNING.
And those pearls of dew she wears,
Prove to be presaging tears,
Which the sad morn had let ſall
On her hastening funcral.
Gentle lady, may thy grave
Peace and quiet ever have ;
After this thy travail sore,
Sweet rest seize thee evermore,
That, to give the world increase,
Shortened hast thy own life's lease
Here, besides the sorrowing
That thy noble house doth bring,
Now the bright morning-star, day's harbinger,
Comes dancing from the east, and leads with her
The flowery May, who ſtom her green lap throws
The yellow cowslip and the pale primrose.
Hail, bounteous May, that dost inspire
Mirth, and youth, and warm desire;
Woods and groves are of thy dressing,
Hill and dale doth boast thy blessing.
Thus we salute thee with our early song,
And welcome thee, and wish thee long.
M I S C E L L A N I E S.
ANNO ETATIs xix.
At a Vacation Eatercise in the College, part Latin,
part English. The Latin speeches ended, the Eng-
lish thus began :
HAIL, native language, that by sinews weak
Didst move my first endeavouring tongue to speak,
And mades imperſect words with childish trips,
Half-unpronounced, slide through my inſant lips,
Driving dumb silence from the portal door,
Where he had mutely sat two years before:
Here I salute thee, and thy pardon ask,
That now I use thee in my latter task:
Small loss it is that hence can come unto thee,
I know my tongue but little grace can do thee:
Thou needest not be ambitious to be first,
Believe me, I have thither packed the worst:
And, if it happen as I did forecast,
The daintiest dishes shall be served up last.
I pray thee then deny me not thy aid,
For this same small neglect that I have made:
But haste thee straight to do me once a pleasure;
And from thy wardrobe bring thy chiefest treasure.
Not those new-fangled toys, and trimming slight
Which takes our late fantastics with delight;
But cull those richest robes, and gayest attire,
Which deepest spirits and choicest wits desire:
I have some naked thoughts which rove about,
And loudly knock to have their passage out;
And, weary of their place, do only stay
Till thou hast decked them in thy best array;
That so they may, without suspect or fears,
Fly swiftly to this fair assembly’s ears;
Yet I had rather, if I were to choose,
Thy service in some graver subject use,
Such as may make thee search thy coffers round,
Before thou clothe my fancy in fit sound:
Such where the deep-transported mind may soar
Above the wheeling poles, and at heaven's door
Look in, and see each blissful deity,
IIow he before the thundrous throne doth lie,
Listening to what unshorn Apollo sings
To the touch of golden wires, while Hebe brings
Immortal nectar to her kingly sire:
Then passing through the spheres of watchful fire,
And misty regions of wide air next under,
And hills of snow, and loſts of piled thunder,
May tell at length how green-eyed Neptune raves,
In heaven's defiance mustering all his waves;
Then sing of secret things that came to pass
When beldame Nature in her cradle was ;
And last of kings, and queens, and heroes old,
Such as the wise Demodocus once told
In solemn songs at king Alcinous’ feast,
While sad Ulysses' soul, and all the rest,
Are held, with his melodious harmony,
In willing chains and sweet captivity.
But fie, my wandering muse, how thou dost stray !
Expectance calls thee now another way;
Thou knowest it must be now thy only bent
To keep in compass of thy predicament:
Then quick about thy purposed business come,
That to the next I may resign my room.
Then Ems is represented as father of the Predicaments
his two sons, whereof the eldest stood for Substance
with his canons, which Ems, thus speaking, explains :
Good luck befriend thee, son; for, at thy birth,
The faery ladies danced upon the hearth;
Thy drowsy nurse hath sworn she did them spy
Come tripping to the room where thou didst lie,
And, sweetly singing round about thy bed,
Strew all their blessings on thy sleeping head.
She heard them give thee this, that thou shouldst still
From eyes of mortals walk invisible :
Yet there is something which doth force my fear;
For once it was my dismal hap to hear
A Sibyl old, bow-bent with crooked age,
That far events full wisely could presage,
And in time's long and dark prospective glass,
Foresaw what future days should bring to pass;
(“Your son,’ said she, nor can you it prevent)
Shall subject be to many an accident.
MISCELLANIES. 161
O'er all his brethren he shall reign as king,
Yet every one shall make him underling ;
And those, that cannot live from him asunder,
Ungratefully shall strive to keep him under;
In worth and excellence he shall outgo them ;
Yet, being above them, he shall be below them ;
From others he shall stand in need of nothing,
Yet on his brothers shall depend for clothing.
To find a foe it shall not be his hap,
And peace shall lull him in her flowery lap ;.
Yet shall he live in strife, and at his door
Devouring war shall never cease to roar;
Yea, it shall be nis natural property
To harbour those that are at enmity.
What power, what force, what mighty spell, if not
Your learned hands, can loose this Gordian knot *
The next Quantity and Quality spake in prose ; then
Relation was called by his name.
Rivers, arise ; whether thou be the son
Of utmost Tweed, or Oose, or gulfy Dun,
Or Trent, who, like some earth-born giant, spreads
His thirsty arms along the indented meads;
Or sullen Mole, that runneth underneath ;
Or Severn swift, guilty of maiden's death ;
Or rocky Avon, or of sedgy Lee,
Or coaly Time, or ancient hallowed Dee ;
Or Humber loud, that keeps the Scythiam's name;
Or Medway smooth, or royal-towered Thame.
[The rest was prose.]
AN EPITAPH
On the admirable Dramatic Poet, William
Shakspeare.
WHAT needs my Shakspeare for his honoured bones,
The labour of an age in piled stones f
Or that his hallowed reliques should be hid
Under a star-ypointing pyramid 2
Dear son of memory, great heir of ſame,
What needst thou such weak witness of thy name P
Thou, in our wonder and astonishment,
Hast built thyself a livelong monument.
For whilst, to the shame of slow-endeavouring art,
Thy easy numbers flow ; and that each heart
Hath, from the leaves of thy unvalued book,
Those Delphic lines with deep impression took ;
Then thou, our fancy of itself bereaving,
Dost make us marble with too much conceiving ;
And, so sepúlchered, in such pomp dost lie,
That kings, for such a tomb, would wish to die.
ON THE UNIVERSITY CARRIER,
Who sickened in the Time of his Vacancy; being
forbid to go to London, by reason of the Plague.
HERE lies old Hobson; Death hath broke his girt,
And here, alas ! hath laid him in the dirt ;
Or else the ways being foul, twenty to one,
He's here stuck in a slough, and overthrown.
'Twas such a shifter, that, if truth were known,
Death was half-glad when he had got him down ;
For he had, any time this ten years full,
Dodged with him betwixt Cambridge and The Bull.
And surely Death could never have prevailed,
Had not his weekly course of carriage failed ;
But lately finding him so long at home,
And thinking now his journey's end was come,
And that he had ta'en up his latest inn,
In the kind office of a chamberlin
Showed him his room where he must lodge that night,
Pulled off his boots, and took away the light:
If any ask for him it shall be said,
“Hobson has supt, and 's newly gone to bed.’
Another on the Same.
Here lieth one, who did most truly prove
That he could never die while he could move ;
So hung his destiny, never to rot
While he might still jog on and keep his trot;
Made of sphere metal, never to decay
Until his revolution was at stay.
Time numbers motion, yet (without a crime
'Gainst old truth) motion numbered out his time :
And, like an engine moved with wheel and weight,
His principles being ceased, he ended straight.
Rest, that gives all men life, gave him his death,
And too much breathing put him out of breath;
Nor were it contradiction to affirm,
Too long vacation hasted on his term.
Merely to drive the time away he sickened,
Fainted, and died, nor would with ale be quickened;
‘Nay,’ quoth he, on his swooning bed outstretched,
‘If I mayn't carry, sure I’ll ne'er be fetched,
But vow, though the cross doctors all stood hearers,
For one carrier put down to make six bearers.”
Ease was his chief disease; and, to judge right,
He died for heaviness that his cart went light:
His leisure told him that his time was come,
And lack of load made his life burdensome,
That even to his last breath, (there be that say't.)
As he were pressed to death, he cried, “More weight;"
But, had his doings lasted as they were,
He had been an immortal carrier.
Obedient to the moon he spent his date
In course reciprocal, and had his ſate
Linked to the mutual flowing of the seas,
Yet (strange to think) his wain was his increase:
His letters are delivered all and gone,
Only remains this superscription.
3% Ml
162 MISCELLANIES.
ON THE NEW FORCERS OF CONSCIENCE,
Under the Long Parliament.
BECAUSE you have thrown off your prelate lord,
And with stiff vows renounced his Liturgy,
To seize the widowed whore Plurality
From them whose sin ye envied, not abhorred ;
Dare ye for this adjure the civil sword
To force our consciences that Christ set free,
And ride us with a classic hierarchy
Taught ye by mere A. S. and Rotherford P
Men, whose life, learning, faith, and pure intent,
Would have been held in high esteem with Paul,
Must now be named and printed heretics
By shallow Edwards and Scotch what d'ye call:
But we do hope to find out all your tricks,
Your plots and packing worse than those of Trent:
That so the Parliament
May, with their wholesome and preventive shears,
Clip your phylacteries, though balk your ears,
And succour our just fears,
When they shall read this clearly in your charge,
New Presbyter is but Old Priest writ large.
T R A N S L A T I O N S.
THE FIFTH ODE OF HORACE, Lib. I.
WHAT slender youth, bedeved with liquid odours,
Courts thee on roses in some pleasant cave,
Pyrrha P For whom bindest thou
In wreaths thy golden hair,
Plain in thy neatness 2 O, how oft shall he
On faith, and changed gods, complain ; and seas
Rough with black winds, and storms
Unwonted shall admire'
Who now enjoys thee credulous, all gold,
Who always vacant, always amiable,
Hopes thee, of flattering gales
Unmindful. Hapless they,
To whom thou untried seemest fair Me, in my vowed
Picture, the sacred wall declares to have hung
My dank and dropping weeds
To the stern god of sea.
FROM GEORFREY OF MONMOUTH.
Brutus thus addresses Diana in the Country of
Leogecia.
GoDDEss of shades, and huntress, who at will
Walkest on the rolling spheres, and through the deep;
On thy third reign, the earth, look now, and tell
What land, what seat of rest, thou biddest me seek,
What certain seat, where I may worship thee
For aye, with temples vowed and virgin quires.
To whom, sleeping before the Altar, Diana answers
in a Vision the same Night.
BRUTUs, far to the west, in the ocean wide,
Beyond the realm of Gaul, a land there lies,
Sea-girt it lies, where giants dwelt of old;
Now void, it fits thy people: thither bend
Thy course; there shalt thou find a lasting seat;
There to thy sons another Troy shall rise,
And kings be born of thee, whose dreadful might
Shall awe the world, and conquer nations bold.
FROM DANTE.
AH Constantine, of how much ill was cause,
Not thy conversion, but those rich domains
That the first wealthy pope received of thee
M Q
FROM DANTE.
Founded in chaste and humble poverty,
'Gainst them that raised thee dost thou lift thy horn ?
Impudent whore, where hast thou placed thy hope P
In thy adulterers, or thy ill-got wealth *
Another Constantine comes liot in haste.
FROM ARIOSTO.
THEN passed he to a flowery mountain green,
Which once smelt sweet, now stinks as odiously:
This was the gift, if you the truth will have,
That Constantine to good Sylvester gave.
FROM HORACE.
WHoM do we count a good man 2 Whom but he
Who keeps the laws and statutes of the senate,
Who judges in great suits and controversies,
Whose witness and opinion wins the cause 2
But his own house, and the whole neighbourhood,
Sees his foul inside through his whited skin.
FROM EURIPIDES.
This is true liberty, when freeborn men,
Having to advise the public, may speak free;
Which he who can, and will, deserves high praise;
Who neither can, nor will, may hold his peace;
What can be juster in a state than this?
FROM HORACE,
LAUGHING, to teach the truth,
What hinders 8 As some teachers give to boys
Junkets and knacks, that they may learn apace.
FROM HORACE.
JokING decides great things,
Stronger and better oſt than earnest can.
FROM SOPHOCLES.
'Tis you that say it, not I. You do the deeds,
And your ungodly deeds find me the words.
FROM SENECA.
THERE can be slain
No sacrifice to God more acceptable,
Than an unjust and wicked king.
P S A. L. M. S.
PSALM I.
(Done into verse 1653.)
BLESSED is the man who hath not walked astray
In counsel of the wicked, and i' the way
Of sinners hath not stood, and in the seat
Of scorners hath not sat. But in the great
Jehovah's law is ever his delight,
And in his law he studies day and might.
He shall be as a tree which planted grows
By watery streams, and in his season knows
To yield his fruit, and his leaf shall not fall,
And what he takes in hand shall prosper all.
Not so the wicked, but as chaff which fanned
The wind drives, so the wicked shall not stand
In judgment, or abide their trial then,
Nor sinners in the assembly of just men;
For the Lord knows the upright way of the just,
And the way of bad men to ruin must.
PSALM II.
' (Done August 8, 1653.)
Terzetti.
WHY do the Gentiles tumult, and the nations
Muse a vain thing, the kings of the earth upstand
With power, and princes in their congregations
Lay deep their plots together through each land
Against the Lord and his Messiah dear 2
Let us break off, say they, by strength of hand
Their bonds, and cast from us, no more to wear,
Their twisted cords. He, who in heaven doth dwell,
Shall laugh ; the Lord shall scoff them; then severe,
Speak to them in his wrath, and in his fell
And fierce ire trouble them. But I, saith he,
Anointed have my King (though ye rebel)
On Sion my holy hill. A firm decree
I will declare : the Lord to me hath said,
Thou art my Son, I have begotten the
This day; ask of me, and the grant is made :
As thy possession I on thee bestow
The Heathen ; and, as thy conquest to be swayed,
Earth's utmost bounds: them shalt thou bring full
low
With iron scepter bruised, and them disperse
Like to a potter's vessel shivered so.
And now be wise at length, ye kings averse,
Be taught, ye judges of the earth ; with fear
Jehovah serve, and let your joy converse
With trembling ; kiss the Son, lest he appear
In anger, and ye perish in the way,
If once his wrath take fire, like fuel sere.
Happy all those who have in him their stay.
PSALM III.
(August 9, 1653.)
When he fled from Absalom.
LoRD, how many are my foes!
How many those
That in arms against me rise!
Many are they,
That of my life distrustfully thus say:
No help for him in God there lies.
But thou, Lord, art my shield, my glory,
Thee through my story,
The exalter of my head I count :
Aloud I cried
Unto Jehovah, he full soon replied,
And heard me from his holy mount.
I lay and slept; I waked again;
For my sustain
Was the Lord. Of many millions
The populous rout
I fear not, though, encamping round about,
They pitch against me their pavilions.
Rise, Lord ; save me, my God; for thou
- Hast smote ere now
On the cheek-bone all my foes,
Of men abhorred
PSALMS. 165
Hast broke the teeth.
Lord ;
Thy blessing on thy people flows.
This help was from the
PSALM IV.
(August 10, 1653.)
ANswer me when I call,
God of my righteousness;
In straits and in distress,
Thou didst me disenthrall
And set at large; now spare,
Now pity me, and hear my carnest prayer.
Great ones, how long will ye
My glory have in scorn ?
How long be thus forborn
Still to love vanity P
To love, to seek, to prize,
Things false and vain, and nothing else but lies?
Yet know, the Lord hath chose,
Chose to himself a part,
The good and meek of heart
(For whom to choose he knows);
Jehovah from on high
Will hear my voice, what time to him I cry.
Be awed, and do not sin;
Speak to your hearts alone,
Upon your beds, each one,
And be at peace within.
Offer the offerings just
Of righteousness, and in Jehovah trust.
Many there be that say,
Who yet will show us good P
Talking like this world's brood;
But, Lord, thus let me pray:
On us lift up the light,
Liſt up the favour of thy countenance bright.
Into my heart more joy
And gladness thou hast put,
Than when a year of glut
Their stores doth over-cloy,
And from their plenteous grounds
With vast increase their corn and wine abounds.
In peace at once will I
Both lay me down and sleep;
For thou alone dost keep
Me safe where’er I lie;
As in a rocky cell
Thou, Lord, alone, in safety makest me dwell.
PSALM V.
(August 12, 1653.)
JEHowAH, to my words give ear,
My meditation weigh ;
The voice of my complaining hear,
My King and God; for unto thee I pray.
Jehovah, thou my early voice
Shalt in the morning hear:
I” the morning I to thce with choice
Will rank my prayers, and watch till thou appear.
For thou art not a God that takes
In wickedness delight ;
Evil with thee no biding makes;
Fools or mad men stand not within thy sight,
All workers of iniquity
Thou hatest; and them unblest
Thou wilt destroy that speak a lie;
The bloody and guileful man God doth detest.
But I will, in thy mercies dear,
Thy numerous mercies, go
Into thy house; I, in thy fear,
Will towards thy holy temple worship low.
Lord, lead me in thy righteousness,
Lead me, because of those
That do observe if I transgress;
Set thy ways right before, where my step goes.
For, in his faltering mouth unstable,
No word is firm or sooth ;
Their inside, troubles miserable ;
An open grave their throat, their tongue they smooth.
God, find them guilty, let them fall
By their own counsels quelled ;
Push them to their rebellions all
Still on; for against thee they have rebelled.
Then all who trust in thee, shall bring
Their joy; while thou from blame
Defendest them : they shall ever sing
And shall triumph in thee, who love thy name.
For thou, Jehovah, wilt be found
To bless the just man still ;
As with a shield, thou wilt surround
Him with thy lasting favour and good will.
PSALM WI.
(August 13, 1653.)
LoRD, in thine anger do not reprehend me,
Nor in thy hot displeasure me correct;
Pity me, Lord, for I am much deject,
And very weak and faint; heal and amend me:
For all my bones, that even with anguish ake,
Are troubled, yea, my soul is troubled sore,
And thou, O Lord, how long P Turn, Lord; restore
My soul; O save me for thy goodness' sake:
For in death no remembrance is of thee;
Who in the grave can celebrate thy praise 2
Wearied I am with sighing out my days;
Nightly my couch I make a kind of sea;
My bed I water with my tears; mine eye
Through grief consumes, is waxen old and dark
I” the midst of all mine enemies that mark.
Depart, all ye that work iniquity,
Depart from me; for the voice of my weeping
The Lord hath heard; the Lord hath heard my
prayer;
My supplication with acceptance fair
The Lord will own, and have me in his keeping.
166 PSALMS.
Mine enemies shall all be blank and dashed
With much confusion : then, grown red with shame,
They shall return in haste the way they came,
And in a moment shall be quite abashed.
PSALM VII.
(August 14, 1653.)
Upon the words of Cush the Benjamite against him.
Lord, my God, to thee I fly;
Save me and secure me under
Thy protection while I cry;
Lest, as a lion (and no wonder)
He haste to tear my soul asunder,
Tearing, and no rescue migh.
Lord, my God, if I have thought
Or done this; if wickedness
Be in my hands; if I have wrought
Ill to him that meant me peace;
Or to him have rendered less,
And not freed my foe for nought;
Ict the enemy pursue my soul,
And overtake it; let him tread
My life down to the earth, and roll
In the dust my glory dead,
In the dust; and, there out-spread,
Lodge it with dishonour foul.
Rise, Jehovah, in thine ire,
Rouse thyself amidst the rage
Of my foes that urge like fire;
And wake for me, their fury assuage;
Judgment here thou didst engage
And command, which I desire.
So the assemblies of each nation
Will surround thee, seeking right;
Thence to thy glorious habitation
Return on high, and in their sight.
Jehovah judgeth most upright
All people from the world's foundation.
Judge me, Lord; be judge in this
According to my righteousness,
And the innocence which is
Upon me: cause at length to cease
Of evil men the wickedness
And their power that do amiss.
But the just establish fast,
Since thou art the just God that tries
Hearts and reins. On God is cast
My defence, and in him lies;
In him who, both just and wise,
Saves the upright of heart at last.
God is a just judge and severe,
And God is every day offended;
If the unjust will not forbear,
His sword he whets, his bow hath bended
Already, and for him intended
The tools of death, that waits him near.
(His arrows purposely made he
For them that persecute.) Behold
He travails big with vanity;
Trouble he hath conceived of old,
As in a womb ; and from that mould
Hath at length brought forth a lie.
He digged a pit, and delved it deep,
And fell into the pit he made;
His mischief, that due course doth keep,
Turns on his head; and his ill trade
Of violence will, undelayed,
Fall on his crown with ruin steep.
Then will I Jehovah's praise
According to his justice raise,
And sing the name and deity
Of Jehovah the Most High.
PSALM VIII.
(August 14, 1653.)
O JEHow AH our Lord, how wondrous great
And glorious is thy name through all the earth !
So as above the heavens thy praise to set
Out of the tender mouths of latest birth.
Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings thou
Hast founded strength, because of all thy foes,
To stint the enemy, and slack the avenger's brow,
That bends his rage thy Providence to oppose.
When I behold thy heavens, thy fingers' art,
The moon and stars, which thou so bright hast set
In the pure firmament; then saith my heart,
O, what is man that thou rememberest yet,
And thinkest upon him; or of man begot,
That him thou visitest, and of him art found !
Scarce to be less than gods, thou madest his lot,
With honour and with state thou hast him crowned.
O'er the works of thy hand thou madest him lord,
Thou hast put all under his lordly feet;
All flocks and herds, by thy commanding word,
All beasts that in the field or forest meet,
Fowl of the heavens, and fish that through the wet
Sea-paths in shoals do slide, and know no dearth.
O Jehovah our Lord, how wondrous great
And glorious is thy name through all the earth !
PSALMS. I67
(April, 1648. J. M.)
Nine of the Psalms done into metre, wherein all but
what is in a different character are the very words
of the text, translated from the original.
PSALM LXXX.
1 THou, Shepherd, that dost Israel keep,
Give ear in time of need;
Who leadest like a flock of sheep
Thy loved Joseph's seed;
That sittest between the cherubs bright,
Between their wings outspread ;
Shine forth, and from thy cloud give light,
And on our foes thy dread.
2 In Ephraim's view and Benjamin's,
And in Menasse's sight,
Awake thy strength, come, and be seen
To save us by thy might.
3 Turn us again, thy grace divine
To us, O God, vouchsafe;
Cause thou thy face on us to shine,
And then we shall be safe.
4 Lord God of hosts, how long wilt thou,
How long wilt thou declare
Thy smoking wrath, and angry brow
Against thy people's prayer'
5 Thou feedest them with the bread of tears;
Their bread with tears they eat;
And makest them largely drink the tears
Wherewith their cheeks are wet.
6 A strife thou makest us and a prey
To every neighbour foe;
Among themselves they laugh, they play,
And flouts at us they throw.
7 Return us, and thy grace divine,
O God of hosts, vouchsafe ;
Cause thou thy face on us to shine,
And then we shall be safe.
8 A vine from Egypt thou hast brought,
Thy free love made it thine,
And drovest out nations proud and haut,
To plant this lovely vine.
9 Thou didst prepare for it a place,
And root it deep and fast,
That it began to grow apace,
And filled the land at last.
10 With her green shade that covered all,
The hills were overspread;
Her boughs as high as cedars tall
Advanced their lofty head.
11 Her branches on the western side
Down to the sea she sent,
And upward to that river wide
Her other branches went.
12 Why hast thou laid her hedges low
And broken down her fence,
That all may pluck her as they go,
With rudest violence P
13 The tusked boar out of the wood
Up turns it by the roots;
Wild beasts there browze, and make their food
Her grapes and tender shoots.
14 Return now, God of hosts, look down
From heaven, thy seat divine;
Behold us, but without a frown,
And visit this thy vine.
15 Visit this vine, which thy right hand
Hath set, and planted long,
And the young branch, that for thyself
Thou hast made firm and strong.
16 But now it is consumed with fire,
And cut with aces down;
They perish at thy dreadful ire,
At thy rebuke and frown.
17 Upon the man of thy right hand
Let thy good hand be laid ;
Upon the son of man whom thou
Strong for thyself hast made.
18 So shall we not go back from thee
To ways of sin and shame;
Quicken us thou; then gladly we
Shall call upon thy name.
19 Return us, and thy grace divine,
Lord God of hosts, vowchsafe;
Cause thou thy face on us to shine,
And then we shall be safe.
PSALM LXXXI.
1 To God our strength sing loud, and clear,
Sing loud to God our King;
To Jacob's God, that all may hear,
Loud acclamations ring.
2 Prepare a hymn, prepare a song,
The timbrel hither bring;
The cheerful psaltery bring along,
And harp, with pleasant string.
168
PSALMS.
3 Blow, as is wont, in the new moon
With trumpets' lofty sound,
The appointed time, the day whereon
Our solemn feast comes round.
4 This was a statute given of old
For Israel to observe; t
A law of Jacob’s God, to hold,
From whence they might not swerve.
5 This he a testimony ordained
In Joseph, not to change,
When, as he passed through Egypt land,
The tongue I heard was strange.
6 From burden, and from slavish toil,
I set his shoulder free :
His hands from pots, and miry soil,
Delivered were by me.
7 When trouble did thee sore assail,
On me them didst thou call;
And I to free thee did not fail,
And led thee out of thrall.
I answered thee in thunder deep,
With clouds encompassed round;
I tried thee at the water steep
Of Meriba renowned.
8 Hear, O my people, hearken well;
I testify to thee,
Thou ancient stock of Israel,
If thou wilt list to me:
9 Throughout the land of thy abode
No alien god shall be,
Nor shalt thou to a foreign god
In honour bend thy knee.
10 I am the Lord thy God, which brought
Thee out of Egypt land;
Ask large enough, and I, besought,
Will grant thy full demand.
11 And yet my people would not hear,
Nor hearken to my voice;
And Israel, whom I loved so dear,
Misliked me for his choice.
12 Then did I leave them to their will,
And to their wandering mind;
Their own conceits they followed still,
Their own devices blind.
13 O, that my people would be wise,
To serve me all their days '
And O, that Israel would advise
To walk my righteous ways'
14 Then would I soon bring down their foes,
That now so proudly rise;
And turn my hand against all those
That are their enemies.
15 Who hate the Lord should then be fann
To bow to him and bend;
But they, his people, should remain,
Their time should have no end.
16 And he would ſeed them from the shock
With flower of finest wheat,
And satisfy them from the rock
With honey for their meat.
PSALM LXXXII.
l
God in the great assembly stands
Of kings and lordly states ;
Among the gods on both his hands,
He judges and debates. -
2 How long will ye pervert the right
With judgment false and wrong,
Favouring the wicked by your might,
Who thence grow bold and strong P
3 Regard the weak and fatherless,
Despatch the poor man's cause ;
And raise the man in deep distress
By just and equal laws.
4 Defend the poor and desolate,
And rescue from the hands
Of wicked men the low estate
Of him that help demands.
5 They know not, nor will understand,
In darkness they walk on ;
The earth's foundations all are moved,
And out of order gone.
6 I said that ye were gods, yea all
The sons of God Most High ;
7 But ye shall die like men, and fall
As other princes die,
8 Rise, God; judge thou the earth in might,
This wicked earth redress;
For thou art he who shall by right
The nations all possess.
PSALM LXXXIII.
1 Be not thou silent now at length,
O God, hold not thy peace;
Sit thou not still, O God of strength,
We cry, and do not cease.
2 For lo, thy furious foes now swell,
And storm outrageously;
And they that hate thee, proud and fell,
Exalt their heads full high.
PSALMS. I (39
3 Against thy people they contrive
Their plots and counsels deep ;
Them to ensnare they chiefly strive,
Whom thou dost hide and keep.
4 Come, let us cut them off, say they,
Till they no nation be:
That Israel's name for ever may
Be lost in memory.
5 For they consult with all their might,
And all, as one in mind,
Themselves against thee they unite,
And in firm union bind.
6 The tents of Edom, and the brood
Of scornful Ishmael,
Moab, with them of Hagar's blood
That in the desert dwell,
7 Gebal and Ammon, there conspire,
And hateful Amalec,
The Philistines, and they of Tyre,
Whose bounds the sea doth check.
8 With them great Ashur also bands,
And doth confirm the knot :
All these have lent their armed hands
To aid the sons of Lot.
9 Do to them as to Midian bold,
That wasted all the coast :
To Sisera ; and, as is told,
Thou didst to Jabin's host,
When, at the brook of Kishon old,
They were repulsed and slain,
10 At Endor quite cut off, and rolled
As dung upon the plain.
11 As Zeb and Oreb evil sped,
So let their princes speed;
As Zeba and Zalmunna bled,
So let their princes bleed.
12 For they amidst their pride have said,
By right now shall we seize
God’s houses, and will now invade
Their stately palaces.
13 My God, oh make them as a wheel,
No quiet let them find ;
Giddy and restless let them reel
Like stubble from the wind.
14 As when an aged wood takes fire
Which on a sudden strays,
The greedy flame runs higher and higher
Till all the mountains blaze;
15 So with thy whirlwind them pursue,
And with thy tempest chase;
16 And, till they yield thee honour due,
Lord, fill with shame their face.
17 Ashamed, and troubled, let them be,
Troubled, and shamed for ever;
Ever confounded, and so die
With shame, and scape it never.
18 Then shall they know, that thou, whose name
Jehovah is alone,
Art the Most High, and thou the same,
O'er all the earth art One.
PSALM LXXXIV.
1 How lovely are thy dwellings fair
O Lord of hosts, how dear
The pleasant tabernacles are,
Where thou dost dwell so near !
2 My soul doth long and almost die
Thy courts, O Lord, to see ;
My heart and flesh aloud do cry,
O living God, for thee.
3 There even the sparrow, freed from wrong,
Hath found a house of rest ;
The swallow there to lay her young
Hath built her brooding nest;
Even by thy altars, Lord of hosts,
They find their safe abode ;
And home they fly from round the coasts
Toward thee, my King, my God.
4 Happy, who in thy house reside,
Where thee they ever praise !
5 Happy, whose strength in thee doth bide,
And in their hearts thy ways
6 They pass through Baca's thirsty vale,
That dry and barren ground;
As through a fruitful watery dale,
Where springs and showers abound.
7 They journey on from strength to strength
With joy and gladsome cheer,
Till all before our God at length
In Sion do appear.
8 Lord God of hosts, hear now my prayer,
O Jacob's God, give ear;
9 Thou, God, our shield, look on the face
Of thy anointed dear.
10 For one day in thy courts to be,
Is better, and more blest,
Than in the joys of vamity
A thousand days at best.
I, in the temple of my God,
Had rather keep a door,
Than dwell in tents, and rich abode
With sin for evermore,
170
PSALMS.
11 For God the Lord, both sun and shield,
Gives grace and glory bright;
No good from them shall be withheld
Whose ways are just and right.
12 Lord God of hosts, that reignest on high,
That man is truly blest,
Who only on thee doth rely,
And in thee only rest.
PSALM LXXXV.
1 THY land to favour graciously
Thou hast not, Lord, been slack ;
Thou hast from hard captivity
Returned Jacob back.
2 The iniquity thou didst forgive
That wrought thy people woe;
And all their sin, that did thee grieve,
Hast hid where mone shall know.
3 Thine anger all thou hadst removed,
And calmly didst return
From thy fierce wrath, which we had proved
Far worse than fire to burn.
4 God of our saving health and peace,
Turn us, and us restore;
Thine indignation cause to cease
Towards us, and chide no more.
5 Wilt thou be angry without end,
For ever angry thus P
Wilt thou thy frowning ire extend
From age to age on us?
6 Wilt thou not turn and hear our voice,
And us again revive.
That so thy people may rejoice
By thee preserved alive 2
7 Cause us to see thy goodness, Lord,
To us thy mercy shew ;
Thy saving health to us afford,
And life in us renew.
8 And now, what God the Lord will speak,
I will go straight and hear,
For to his people he speaks peace,
And to his saints full dear,
To his dear saints he will speak peace;
But let them never more
Return to folly, but surcease
To trespass as before.
9 Surely, to such as do him fear
Salvation is at hand;
And glory shall ere long appear
To dwell within our land.
10 Mercy and truth, that long were missed,
Now joyfully are met;
Sweet peace and righteousness have kissed,
And hand in hand are set.
11 Truth from the earth, like to a flower,
Shall bud and blossom them;
And justice from her heavenly bower
Look down on mortal men.
12 The Lord will also then bestow
Whatever thing is good;
Our land shall forth in plenty throw
Her fruits to be our food.
13 Before him righteousness shall go,
His royal harbinger :
Then will he come, and not be slow ;
His footsteps cannot err.
PSALM LXXXVI.
1 THY gracious ear, O Lord, incline,
O hear me, I thee pray ;
For I am poor, and almost pine
With need, and sad decay.
2 Preserve my soul; for I have trod
Thy ways, and love the just ;
Save thou thy servant, O my God,
Who still in thee doth trust.
3 Pity me, Lord, for daily thee
I call; [4] O. make rejoice
Thy servant's soul; for, Lord, to thee
I liſt my soul and voice.
5 For thou art good, thou, Lord, art prone
To pardon, thou to all
Art full of mercy, thou alone,
To them that on thee call.
6 Unto my supplication, Lord,
Give ear, and to the cry
Of my incessant prayers afford
Thy hearing graciously.
7 I, in the day of my distress,
Will call on thee for aid;
For thou wilt grant me free access,
And answer what I prayed.
8 Like thee among the gods is none,
O Lord; nor any works
Of all that other gods have done
Jike to thy glorious works.
9 The nations all whom thou hast made
Shall come, and all shall frame
To bow them low before thee, Lord,
And glorify thy name.
PSALMS. 171
10 For great thou art, and wonders great
By thy strong hand are done;
Thou, in thy everlasting seat,
Remainest God alone.
11 Teach me, O Lord, thy way most right,
I in thy truth will bide;
To fear thy name my heart unite,
So shall it never slide.
12 Thee will I praise, O Lord, my God,
Thee honour and adore
With my whole heart, and blaze abroad
Thy name for evermore.
13 For great thy mercy is toward me,
And thou hast freed my soul,
Even from the lowest hell set free,
From deepest darkness foul.
14 O God, the proud against me rise,
And violent men are met
To seek my life, and in their eyes
No fear of thee have set.
15 But thou, Lord, art the God most mild,
Readiest thy grace to shew,
Slow to be angry, and art styled
Most merciful, most true.
16 O turn to me thy face at length,
And me have mercy on;
Unto thy servant give thy strength,
And save thy handmaid's son,
17 Some sign of good to me afford,
And let my foes then see,
And be ashamed ; because thou, Lord,
Dost help and comfort me.
PSALM LXXXVII.
I AMONG the holy mountains high
Is his foundation fast;
There seated is his sanctuary,
His temple there is placed.
2 Sion's fair gates the Lord loves more
Than all the dwellings fair
Of Jacob's land, though there be store,
And all within his care.
3 City of God, most glorious things
Of thee abroad are spoke;
4 I mention Egypt, where proud kings
Did our forefathers yoke.
I mention Babel to my friends,
Philistia full of scorn;
And Tyre with Ethiop's utmost ends,
Lo this man there was born:
5 But twice that praise shall in our ear
Be said of Sion last ;
This and this man was born in her;
High God shall fix her fast.
6 The Lord shall write it in a scroll,
That ne'er shall be out-worn,
When he the nations doth enroll,
That this man there was born.
7 Both they who sing, and they who dance,
With sacred songs are there ;
In thee fresh brooks and soft streams glance,
And all my ſountains clear.
PSALM LXXXVIII.
1 Lord God, that dost me save and keep,
All day to thee I cry;
And all night long before thee weep,
Before thee prostrate lie.
2 Into thy presence let my prayer
With sighs devout ascend,
And to my cries, that ceaseless are,
Thine ear with favour bend.
3 For, cloyed with woes and trouble store,
Surcharged my soul doth lie;
My life, at death's uncheerful door,
Unto the grave draws migh.
4 Reckoned I am with them that pass
Down to the dismal pit;
I am a man, but weak, alas !
And for that name unfit.
5 From life discharged and parted quite
Among the dead to sleep ;
And like the slain in bloody fight,
That in the grave lie deep :
Whom thou rememberest no more,
Dost never more regard,
Them from thy hand delivered o'er,
Death’s hideous house hath barred.
6 Thou in the lowest pit profound
Hast set me all forlorn,
Where thickest darkness hovers round,
In horrid deeps to mourn.
7 Thy wrath, from which no shelter saves,
Full sore doth press on me;
Thou breakest upon me all thy waves,
And all thy waves break me.
8 Thou dost my friends from me estrange,
And makest me odious,
Me to them odious, for they change,
And I here pent up thus.
172 PSALMS.
9 Through sorrow, and affliction great,
Mine eye grows dim and dead;
Lord, all the day I thee entreat,
My hands to thee I spread.
10 Wilt thou do wonders on the dead P
Shall the deceased arise,
And praise thee from their loathsome bed
With pale and hollow eyes P
11 Shall they thy loving-kindness tell,
On whom the grave hath hold P
Or they, who in perdition dwell,
Thy faithfulness unfold 2
12 In darkness can thy mighty hand
Or wondrous acts be known f
Thy justice in the gloomy land
Of dark oblivion 2
13 But I to thee, O Lord, do cry,
Ere yet my life be spent ;
And up to thee my prayer doth hie
Each morn, and thee prevent.
14 Why wilt thou, Lord, my soul forsake,
And hide thy face from me,
15 That am already bruised, and shake
With terror sent from thee P
Bruised and afflicted, and so low
As ready to expire;
While I thy terrors undergo,
Astonished with thine ire.
16 Thy fierce wrath over me doth flow ;
Thy threatenings cut me through :
17 All day they round about me go,
Like waves they me pursue.
18 Lover and friend thou hast removed,
And severed from me far:
They fly me now whom I have loved,
And as in darkness are.
A PARAPHRASE ON PSALM CXIV.
This and the following Psalm were done by the
Author at fifteen years old.
WHEN the blest seed of Terah's faithful son,
After long toil, their liberty had won;
And past from Pharian fields to Canaan land,
Led by the strength of the Almighty's hand;
Jehovah's wonders were in Israel shown,
His praise and glory was in Israel known.
That saw the troubled sea, and shivering fled,
And sought to hide his froth-becurled head
Low in the earth ; Jordan's clear streams recoil,
As a ſaint host that hath received the ſoil.
The high huge-bellied mountains skip, like rams
Amongst their ewes ; the little hills, like lambs.
Why fled the ocean P And why skipt the mountains P
Why turned Jordan toward his crystal fountains 2
Shake, earth; and at the presence be aghast
Of him that ever was, and aye shall last;
That glassy floods from rugged rocks can crush,
And make soft rills from fiery flint-stones gush.
PSALM CXXXVI.
LET us, with a gladsome mind,
Praise the Lord, for he is kind;
For his mercies aye endure,
Ever faithful, ever sure.
Let us blaze his name abroad,
For of gods he is the God;
For his, &c.
O, let us his praises tell,
Who doth the wrathful tyrants quell;
For his, &c.
Who, with his miracles, doth make
Amazed heaven and earth to shake :
For his, &c.
Who, by his wisdom, did create
The painted heavens so full of state;
For his, &c.
Who did the solid earth ordain
To rise above the watery plain;
For his, &c.
Who, by his all-commanding might,
Did fill the new-made world with light;
For his, &c.
And caused the golden-tressed sun
All the day long his course to run ;
For his, &c.
The horned moon to shine by night,
Amongst her spangled sisters bright;
For his, &c.
He, with his thunder-clasping hand,
Smote the first-born of Egypt land;
For his, &c.
And, in despite of Pharaoh fell,
He brought from thence his Israel;
For his, &c.
The ruddy waves he cleft in twain
Of the Erythraean main;
For his, &c.
The floods stood still, like walls of glass,
While the Hebrew bands did pass;
For his, &c.
But full soon they did devour
The tawny king with all his power;
For his, &c."
His chosen people he did bless
In the wasteful wilderness;
For his, &c.
In bloody battle he brought down
Kings of prowess and renown;
For his, &c.
He foiled bold Seon and his host,
That ruled the Amorrêan coast;
For his, &c.
And large-limbed Og he did subdue,
With all his over-hardy crew;
For his, &c.
173
And to his servant Israel
He gave their land, therein to dwell;
For his, &c.
He hath, with a piteous eye,
Beheld us in our misery;
For his, &c.
And freed us from the slavery
Of the invading enemy;
For his, &c.
All living creatures he doth feed,
And with full hand supplies their need;
For his, &c.
Let us therefore warble forth
His mighty majesty and worth ;
For his, &c.
That his mansion hath on high
Above the reach of mortal eye;
For his mercies aye endure,
Ever faithful, ever sure.
Tº L E G : A R U M L T B E R.
ELEGIA PRIMA.
Ad Carolum Deodatum.
TANDEM, chare, tuae mihi pervenere tabellae,
Pertulit et voces nuncia charta tuas;
Pertulit occiduá Dewae Cestrensis ab orã.
Virgivium prono quâ, petit amne salum.
Multúm, crede, juvat terras aluisse remotas
Pectus amans nostri, tamgue ſidele caput,
Quodgue mihi lepidum tellus longinqua sodalem
Debet, at unde brevi reddere jussa velit.
Me tenet urbs refluâ, quam Thamesis alluit undă,
Meque mec invitum patria dulcis habet.
Jam nec arundiferum mihi cura revisere Camum,
Nec dudum vetiti me laris angit amor.
Nuda nec arva placent, umbrasque negantia molles,
Quâm male Phoebicolis convenit ille locus !
Nec duri libet usque minas perferre magistri
Caeteraque ingenio non subeunda meo.
Si sit hoc exilium patrios adiisse penates,
Et vacuum curis otia grata sequi,
Non ego vel profugi nomen, sortemve recuso,
Laetus et exilii conditione fruor.
O utinam vates nunquam graviora tulisset
Ille Tomitano flebilis exul agro ;
Non tunc Ionio quicquam cecisset Homero,
Neve foret victo laus tibi prima Maro,
Tempora nam licet hic placidis dare libera Musis,
Et totum rapiunt me mea vita libri.
Excipit hinc fessum sinuosi pompa theatri,
Et vocat ad plausus garrula scena suos.
Seu catus auditur senior, seu prodigus hæres,
Scu procus, aut posità casside miles adest,
Sive decennali foecundus lite patronus
Detonat inculto barbara verba foro ;
Saepe vafer gnato succurrit servus amanti,
Et masum rigidi fallit ubique patris;
Saepe novos illic virgo mirata calores
Quid sit amor nescit, dum quoque nescit, amat.
Sive cruentatum furiosa Tragoedia sceptrum
Quassat, et effusis crinibus ora rotat,
Et dolet, et specto, juvat ct spectasse dolendo,
Interdum et lacrymis dulcis amator inest:
Seu puer infelix indelibata reliquit
Gaudia, ct abrupto flendus amore cadit:
Seu ferus é tenebris iterat Styga criminis ultor
Conscia funereo pectora torre movems:
Seu moeret Pelopeia domus, seu nobilis Ili,
Aut luit incestos aula Creontis avos.
Sed neque sub tecto semper nec in urbe latemus,
Irrita nec nobis tempora veris cunt.
Nos quoque lucus habet vicină consitus ulmo,
Atque suburbani nobilis umbra loci.
Saepius hic blandas spirantia sidera flammas
Virgineos videas praeteriisse choros.
Ah quoties dignac stupui miracula formae,
Quae possit senium vel reparare Jovis'
Ah quotics widi superantia lumina gemmas,
Atque faces, quotguot volvit uterque polus;
Collaque bis vivi Pelopis quae brachia vincant,
Quaeque fluit puro nectare tincta via,
Et decus eximium frontis, tremulosque capillos,
Aurea quae fallax retia tendit Amor ;
Pellacesque genas, ad quos Hyacinthina sordet
Purpura, et inse tui floris, Adoni, rubor!
Cedite laudatte toties Heroides olim,
Et quaecumque vagum cepit amica Jovem.
Cedite Achaemeniae turrità fronte puellae
Et quot Susa colunt, Memnoniam(ſue Ninon.
Vos etiam Danaae fasces submittite Nymphae,
Et vos Iliacae, Romuleacque nurus.
Nec Pompeianas Tarpeia Musa columnas
Jactet, et Ausoniis plena theatra stolis.
Gloria Virginibus debetur prima Britannis,
Extera sat tibi sit foemina, posse sequi.
Tuque urbs Dardaniis, Londinum, structa colonis,
Turrigerum laté conspicienda caput,
Tu mimium felix intra tua moemia claudis
Quicquid formosi pendulus orbis habet.
Non tibi tot coelo scintillant astra sereno
Endymioneae turba ministra deae,
Quot tibi, conspicuao formáque auróque, puellae
Per medias radiant turba videnda vias.
POEMATA. 175
Creditur huc geminis venisse invecta columbis
Alma phare trigero milite cincta Venus,
Huic Cnidon, et riguas Simoentis flumine valles,
Huic Paphon, et roseam posthabitura Cypron.
Ast ego, dum pueri sinit indulgentia caeci,
Moenia quâm subitó linquere fausta paro;
Et vitare procul malefide infamia Circes
Atria, divini Molyos usus ope.
Stat quoque juncosas Cami remeare paludes,
Atque iterum raucae murmur adire Scholae.
Interea fidi parvum cape munus amici,
Paucaque in alternos verba coacta modos.
ELEGIA SECUNDA.
(Anno AEtatis 17.)
In obitum Praconis Academici Cantabrigiensis.
TE, qui conspicuus baculo fulgente solebas
Palladium toties ore ciere gregem,
Ultima praeconum preconem te quoque sava
Mors rapit, officio nec favet ipsa suo,
Candidiora licet fuerint tibi tempora plumis
Sub quibus accipimus delituisse Jovem;
O dignus tamen Haemonio juvenescere succo,
Dignus in AEsomios wivere posse dies,
Dignus quem Stygiis medica revocaret ab undis
Arte Coronides, saepe rogante dea.
Tu si jussus eras acies accire togatas,
Et celer a Phoebo nuncius ire tuo,
Talis in Iliacá stabat Cyllenius aula
Alipes, aethereà missus ab arce Patris.
Talis et Eurybates ante ora furentis Achillei
Retulit Atridae jussa severa ducis.
Magna sepulchrorum regina, satelles Averni,
Saeva nimis Musis, Palladi saeva mimis,
Quin illos rapias qui pondus inutile terrae,
Turba quidem est telis ista petenda tuis.
Testibus hunc igitur pullis, Academia, luge,
Et madeant lachrymis migra feretra tuis.
Fundat et insa modos querebunda Elegéia tristes,
Personet et totis moenia maesta scholis.
ELEGIA TERTIA.
(Anno AEtatis 17.)
In obitum Prasulis Wintomiensis.
MoESTUS eram, et tacitus nullo comitante sedebam,
Haerebantgue animo tristia plura meo,
Protimus en subiit funestae cladis imago
Fecit in Angliaco quam Libitina solo;
Tum procerum ingressa est splendentes marmore
turres,
Dira sepulchrali mors metuenda face;
Pulsavitaue auro gravidos et jaspide muros,
Nec metuit satrapum sternere falce greges.
Tunc memini clarique ducis, fratrisque verendi
Intempestivis ossa cremata rogis;
Et memini Heroum quos widit ad acthera raptos,
Flevit et amissos Belgia tota duces.
At te praecipué luxi, dignissime Praesul,
Wintoniaeque olim gloria magna tua ;
Delicui fletu, et tristi sic ore querebar,
Mors fera, Tartareo diva secunda Jovi,
Nonne satis quod sylva tuas persentiat iras,
Et quod in herbosos jus tibi detur agros,
Quodque afflata tuo marcescant lilia tabo,
Et crocus, et pulchrae Cypridi sacra rosa,
Nec sinis ut semper fluvio contermina quercus
Miretur lapsus praetereuntis aquae P
Et tibi succumbit, liquido quae plurima coelo
Evehitur pennis, quamlibet augur avis,
Et quae mille nigris errant animalia Sylvis,
Et quod alunt mutum Proteos antra pecus.
Invida, tanti tibi cum sit concessa potestas ;
Quid juvat humana tingere cºede manus 2
Nobileque in pectus certas acuisse Sagittas,
Semideamque animam sede fugasse suá P
Talia dum lacrymans alto sub pectore volvo,
Roscidus occiduis Hesperus exit aquis,
Et Tartessiaco submercerat acquore currum
Phoebus, ab Eóo littore mensus iter.
Nec mora, membra cavo posui refovenda cubili,
Condiderant oculos noxque soporque meos:
Cum mihi visus eram lato spatiarier agro,
Heu nequit ingenium visa referre meum.
Illic pumiceå radiabant omnia luce,
Ut matutino cum juga sole rubent.
Ac veluti cum pandit opes Thaumantia proles,
Vestitu nituit multicolore solum.
Non dea tam variis ornavit floribus hortos
Alcinoi, Zephyro Chloris amata levi.
Flumina vermantes lambunt argentea campos,
Ditior Hesperio flavet arena Tago.
Serpit odoriferas per opes levis aura Favoni,
Aura sub innumeris humida nata rosis,
Talis in extremis terrae Gangetidis oris
Luciferi regis fingitur esse domus.
Ipse racimeferis dum densas vitibus umbras
Et pellucentes miror ubique locos,
Ecce mihi subito Praesul Wintonius astat,
Sidereum nitido fulsit in ore jubar;
Vestis ad auratos defluxit candida talos,
Insula divinum cinxerat alba caput.
Dumque semex tali incedit venerandus amictu,
Intremuit laeto florea terra sono.
Agmina gemmatis plaudunt coelestia pennis,
Pura triumphali personat tethra tubă.
Quisque novum amplexu comitem cantugue salutat,
Hosque aliquis placido micit ab ore sonos;
“Nate veni, et patrii felix cape gaudia regni,
Semper ab hinc duro, nate, labore vaca.”
Dixit, et aligerie tetigerunt nablia turmae,
At mihi cum tenebris aurea pulsa quies.
Flebam turbatos Cephaleià, pellice somnos,
Talia contingant somnia saepe mihi.
176 POEMATA.
ELEGIA QUARTA.
(Anno MEtatis 18.)
Ad Thomam Junium pracceptorem suum, apud mer-
catores Anglicos Hamburga agentes, pastoris mumere
fungentem.
CURRE per immensum subitó, mea litera, pontum,
I, pete Teutonicos laeve per aequor agros;
Segnes rumpe moras, et nil, precor, obstet eunti,
Et festinantis nil remoretur iter.
Ipse ego Sicanio fraenantem carcere ventos
AEolon, et virides sollicitabo Deos,
Caeruleamque suis comitatam Dorida Nymphis, .
Ut tibi dent placidam per sua regna viam.
At tu, si poteris, celcres tibi sume jugales,
Vecta quibus Colchis fugitab ore viri;
Aut queis Triptolemus Scythicas devenit in oras
Gratus Eleusină missus ab urbe puer.
Atque ubi Germanas flavere videbis arenas
Ditis ad Hamburgae moenia flecte gradum,
Dicitur occiso quae ducere nomen ab Hamă,
Cimbrica quem fertur clava dedisse meci.
Vivit ibi antiquae clarus pietatis honore
Praesul Christicolas pascere doctus oves;
Ille quidem est animae plusquam pars altera nostrae,
Dimidio vitae wivere cogor ego.
Hei milli quot pelagi, quot montes interjecti
Me faciunt alià parte carere mei !
Charior ille mihi quâm tu doctissime Graium
Cliniadi, pronepos qui Telamoniserat;
Quâmque Stagirites generoso magnus alumno,
Quem peperit Libyco Chaonis alma Jovi.
Qualis Amyntorides, qualis Philyréius Heros
Myrmidonum regi, talis et ille milli.
Primus ego Aonios illo praeunte recessus
Lustrabam, et bifidi sacra wireta jugi,
Pierosque hausi latices, Clioque favente,
Castalio sparsi laeta ter ora mero.
Flammeus at signum ter viderat arietis /Ethon,
Induxitoue auro lamea terga novo,
Bisque novo terram sparsisti, Chlori, senilem
Gramine, bisque tuas abstulit Auster opes:
Necdum ejus licuit mihi lumina pascere vultu,
Aut linguae dulces aure bibisse sonos.
Wade igitur, cursuque Eurum praeverte sonorum,
Quàm sit opus monitis res docet, ipsa vides.
Invenics dulci cum conjuge forté sedentem,
Mulccntem gremio pignora chara suo,
Forsitan aut veterum praelarga volumina patrum.
Versantem, aut veri biblia sacra Dei,
Coelestive animas saturantem rore tenellas,
Grande salutiferae religionis opus.
Utdue solet, multam sit dicere cura salutem,
Dicere quam decuit, si modo adesset, herum.
Haec quoque, paulum oculos in humum deſixa modestos
Verba verecundosis memor ore loqui :
Haec tibi, si teneris vacat inter praeli Musis,
Mittit ab Angliaco littore fida manus,
Accipe sinceram, quamvis sit sera, salutem;
Fiat et hoc ipso gratior illa tibi.
Sera quidem, sed vera fuit, quam casta recepit
Icaris à lento Penelopeia viro.
Ast ego quid volui manifestum tollere crimen,
Ipse quod ex omni parte levare nequit?
Arguitur tardus meritó, noxamdue fatetur,
Et pudet officium deseruisse suum.
Tu modó da veniam fasso, veniamdue roganti,
Crimina diminui, quae patuere, solent
Non ferus in pavidos rictus diducit hiantes
Vulnifico pronos nec rapit ungue leo.
Stepe sarissiſeri crudelia pectora Thracis
Supplicis ad moestas delicuere preces.
Extensæque manus avertunt fulminis ictus,
Placat et iratos hostia parva Deos.
Jamgue diu scripsisse tibi ſuit impetus illi,
Neve moras ultra ducere passus Amor ;
Nam vaga Fama refert, heu nuntia vera malorum !
In tibi finitimis bella tumere locis,
Teque tuamgue urbem truculento milite cingi,
Et jam Saxonicos arma parâsse duces,
Te circum late campos populatur Enyo,
Et sata carne virãm jam cruor arva rigat;
Germanisque suum concessit Thracia Martem,
Illuc Odrysios Mars pater egit cquos;
Perpetuoque comans jam deflorescit oliva,
Fugit et aerisonam Diva perosa tubam,
Fugit, io! terris, et jam non ultima virgo
Creditur ad superas justa volasse domos.
Te tamen interea belli circumsonat horror,
Vivis et ignoto solus inopsgue solo;
Et, tibi quam patrii non exhibuere penates,
Sede peregrină quaeris egenus open.
Patria dura parens, et saxis saevior albis
Spumea quae pulsat littoris unda tui,
Siccine te decet innocuos exponere foetus,
Siccine in externam ferrea cogis humum,
Et sinis ut terris quaerant alimenta remotis
Quos tibi prospiciens miseratipse Deus,
Et qui laeta ſerunt de coelo nuntia, quique
Quae via post cineres ducat ad astra, docent?
Digna quidem Stygiis qua vivas clausa tenebris,
AEternâque animae digna perire ſame !
Haud aliter wates terrae Thesbitidis olim
Pressit inassueto devia tesqua pede,
Desertasque Arabum salebras, dum regis Achabi
Effugit atque tuas, Sidoni dira, manus.
Talis et horrisono laceratus membra flagello,
Paulus ab AEmathià, pellitur urbe Cilix.
Piscosaeque ipsum Gergessae civis Iésum
Tinibus ingratus jussit abire suis.
At tu sume animos, nec spes cadat anxia curis,
Nec tua concutiat decolor ossa metus.
Sis etenin quamvis fulgentibus obsitus armis,
Intententgue tibi millia tela necem,
At nullis vel inerme latus violabitur armis,
Deque tuo cuspis nulla cruore bibet.
Namgue eris ipse Dei radiante sub agide tutus,
Ille tibi custos, et pugil ille tibi;
Ille Sionabae quitot sub moenibus arcis
Assyrios fudit nocte silente viros;
POEMATA. 177
Inque ſugam vertit quos in Samaritidas oras
Misit ab antiquis prisca Damascus agris,
Terruit et densas pavido cum rege cohortes,
Aere dum vacuo buccina clara sonat,
Cornea pulvereum dum verberat ungula campum,
Currus arenosam dum quatit actus humum,
Auditurque hinnitus equorum ad bella ruentum,
Et strepitus ferri, murmuraque alta virim.
Et tu (quod superest miseris) sperare memento,
Et tua magnanimo pectore vince mala;
Nec dubites quandoque frui melioribus annis,
Atque iterum patrios posse videre larcs.
E L E G IA QUINT A.
(Anmo AEtatis 20.)
In adventum veris.
IN se perpetuo Tempus revolubile gyro
Jam revocat Zephyros were tepente novos;
Induiturque brevem Tellus reparata juventam,
Jamgue soluto gelu dulce virescit humus.
Fallor P an et nobis redeunt in carmina vires,
Ingeniumque mihi mumere veris adest?
Munere veris adest, iterumque vigescit ab illo
(Quisputet) atque aliquod jam sibi poscit opus.
Castalis ante oculos, bifidumque cacumen oberrat,
Et mihi Pyrenen somnia nocte ferunt;
Concitaque arcano fervent mihi pectora motu,
Etſuro, et somitus me sacer intus agit.
Delius ipse venit, video Penéide lauro
Implicitos crines, Delius ipse venit.
Jam mihi mens liquidi raptatur in ardua coeli,
Perque vagas nubes corpore liber eo;
Perque umbras, perque antra feror penetralia vatum
Et mihi fana patent interiora Deûm;
Intuiturque animus toto quid agatur Olympo,
Nec fugiunt oculos Tartara caeca meos.
Quid tam grande sonat distento spiritus ore ?
Quid parit haec rabies, quid sacer iste furor 2
Ver mihi, quod dedit ingenium, cantabitur illo;
Profuerint isto reddita dona modo.
Jam Philomela tuos foliis adoperta novellis,
Instituis modulos, dum silet omne nemus:
Urbe ego, tu sylvã, simul incipianus utrique,
Et simul adventum veris uterque canat.
Veris, io ! rediere vices, celebremus honores
Veris, et hoc subeat Musa perennis opus.
Jam sol AEthiopas fugiens Tithoniaque arva,
Flectit ad Arctoas aurea lora plagas.
Est breve noctis iter, brevis est mora noctis opacae,
Horrida cum tenebris exulatilla suis.
Jamgue Lycaonius plaustrum coeleste Bootes
Non longā sequitur fessus ut ante via ;
Nunc etiam solitas circum Jovis atria toto
Excubias agitant sidera rara polo :
Nam dolus, et caedes, et vis cum nocte recessit,
Neve Giganteum Dii timuere scelus.
Forte aliquis scopuli recubans in vertice pastor,
Roscida cum primo sole rubescit humus,
* N
3.
Haec, ait, hac certè caruisti nocte puellá,
Phoebe, tuá, celeres quae retineret equos.
Laeta suas repetit sylvas, pharetramgue resumit
Cynthia, Luciferas ut videt alta rotas;
Et tenues ponens radios gaudere videtur
Officium fieri tam breve fratris ope.
* Desere,’ Phoebus ait, ‘ thalamos Aurora seniles,
Quid juvat effoeto procubuisse toro 2
Te manet AEolides viridi venator in herba,
Surge, tuos ignes altus Hymettus habet.’
Flava werecundo dea crimen in ore ſatetur,
Et matutinos ocius urget equos.
Exuit in visum Tellus rediviva senectam,
Et cupit amplexus, Phoebe, subire tuos;
Et cupit, et digna est, quid enim formosius illā,
Pandit ut omniſeros luxuriosa sinus,
Atque Arabum spirat messes, et ab ore venusto
Mitia cum Paphiis fundit amoma rosis'
Ecce coronatur sacro frons ardua luco,
Cingitut Idaeam pinea turris Opim ;
Et vario madidos intexit flore capillos,
Floribus et visa est posse placere suis.
Floribus effusos uterat redimita capillos
Tenario placuit diva Sicana Deo.
Aspice, Phoebe, tibi faciles hortantur amores,
Mellitasque movent flamina verna preces.
Cinnameå Zephyrus leve plaudit odorifer ală,
Blanditiasque tibi ferre videnter aves.
Nec sine dote tuos temeraria quaerit amores
Terra, nec optatos poscit egena toros;
Alma salutiferum medicos tibi gramen in usus
Praebet, et hinc titulos adjuvat ipsa tuos.
Quðd site pretium, site fulgentia tangunt
Munera, (muneribus saepe coemptus Amor,)
Illa tibi ostentat quascunque sub acquore vasto,
Et super injectis montibus abdit opes.
Ah quoties cum tu clivoso ſessus Olympo
In verspertinas praecipitaris aquas,
“Curte,' inquit, ‘cursu languentem, Phoebe, diurno
Hesperiis recipit caerula Mater aquis 2
Quid tibi cum Tethy P Quid cum Tartesside lymphā,
Dia quid imundo perluis ora salo P
Frigora, Phoebe, meä melius captabis in umbră,
Huc ades, ardentes imbue rore comas.
Mollioregelida veniet tibi somnus in herbă,
Huc ades, et gremio lumina pone meo.
Quaque jaces circum mulcebit lene susurrans
Aura, per humentes corpora fusa rosas.
Necme (crede mihi) terrent Semeléia fata,
Nec Phaetonteo fumidus axis equo;
Cum tu, Phoebe, tuo sapientius uteris igni,
Huc ades, et gremio lumina pone meo.”
Sic Tellus lasciva suos suspirat amores;
Matris in exemplum caetera turba ruunt.
Nunc etenim toto currit vagus orbe Cupido,
Languentesque fovet solis ab igne faces.
Insomuere novis lethalia cornua nervis,
Triste micant ferro tela corusca novo.
Jamgue vel invictam tentat superasse Dianam,
Quaeque sedet sacro Vesta pudica foco.
Ipsa Senescenten reparat Venus annua formam,
178 POEMATA.
Atque iterum tepido creditur orta mari.
Marmoreas juvenes clamant Hymenace per urbes,
Iittus, io Hymen, et cava saxa sonant.
Cultior ille venit tunicàque decentior' aptă,
Puniceum redolet vestis odora crocum.
Egrediturque frequens ad amoenigaudia veris
Virgineos auro cincta puella sinus :
Votum est cuique suum, votum est tamen omnibus
unum,
Ut sibi quem cupiat, det Cytherea virum.
Nunc quoque septemä modulatur arundine pastor,
Etsua quae jungat carmina Phyllis habet.
Navita nocturno placat sua sidera cantu,
Delphinasque leves ad vada summa vocat.
Jupiter ipse alto cum conjuge ludit Olympo,
Convocat et famulos ad sua festa Deos.
Nunc etiam Satyri cum sera crepuscula surgunt,
Pervolitant celeri florea rura choro,
Sylvanusque suá cyparissi fronde revinctus,
Semicaperque Deus, semideusque caper.
Quaeque sub arboribus Dryades latuere vetustis,
Perjuga, per solos expatiantur agros.
Per sata luxuriant fruticetaque Maenalius Pan,
Vix Cybele mater, vix sibi tuta Ceres;
Atque aliquam cupidus praedatur Oreada Faunus,
Consulit in trepidos dum sibi nympha pedes,
Jamgue latet, latitansque cupit male tecta videri,
Et fugit, et fugiens pervelit ipsa capi.
Dii quoque non dubitant coelo praepomere sylvas,
Et sua quisque sibi numina lucus habet.
Et sua quisque diu sibi numina lucus habeto,
Nec vos arborea dii precorite domo.
Te referant miseris te, Jupiter, aurea terris
Saecla, quid ad nimbos aspera tela redis 2
Tu saltem lenté rapidos age, Phoebe, jugales
Quà potes, et sensin tempora veris eant ;
Brumaque productas tardè ferat hispida noctes,
Ingruat et nostro serior umbra polo.
ELEGIA SEXTA.
Ad Carolum Deodatum ruri commorantem,
Qui cum Idibus Decemb. scripsisset, et swa carmina
excusari postulasset si solito minus essent boma, quod
inter lautitias quibus erat ab amicis acceptus, haud
satis felicem operam Musis dare se posse affirmabat,
hoc habuit responsum.
MITTo tibi sanam non pleno ventre salutem,
Qua tu distento fortè carere potes.
At tua quid nostram prolectat Musa camoenam,
Nec sinit optatas posse sequitenebras P
Carmine scire velis quâm te redamemºue colamgue,
Crede mihi vix hoc carmine scire queas.
Nam neque noster amor modulis includitur arctis,
Nec venit ad claudos integer ipse pedes.
Quâm bene solennes epulas, hilaremdue Decembrim.
Festaque coelifugam quae coluere Deum,
Deliciasque refers, hyberni guadia ruris,
Haustaque per lepidos Gallica musta focos'
Quid quereris refugam vino dapibusque poesin P
Carmen amat Bacchum, carmina Bacchus amat.
Nec puduit Phoebum virides gestasse corymbos,
Atque hederam lauro praeposuisse sute.
Saepius Aoniis calamavit collibus Euoe
Mysta Thyoneo turba novena choro.
Naso Corallaeis mala carmina misit ab agris:
Non illic epula, non sata vitis erat.
Quid nisi vina, rosasque racemiferumque Lyaeum,
Cantavit brevibus Têia Musa modis P
Pindaricosque inflat mumeros Teumesius Euan,
Et redolet sumptum pagina quaeque merum ;
Dum gravis everso currus crepat axe supinus,
Et volat Eleo pulvere fuscus eques.
Quadrimoque madens Lyricen Romanus Iaccho
Dulce canit Glyceran, flavicomamque Chloen.
Jam quoque lauta.tibi generoso mensa paratu
Mentis alit vires, ingeniumque ſovet.
Massica foecundam despumant pocula venam,
Fundis et ex ipso condita metra cado.
Addimus his artes, fusumque per intima Phoebum
Corda, favent uni Bacchus, Apollo, Ceres,
Scilicet haud mirum tam dulcia carmina per te
Numine composito, tres perperisse Deos.
Nunc quoque Thressa tibi caelato barbitos auro
Insonat argutà molliter icta manu;
Auditurque chelys suspensa tapetia circum,
Virgineos tremula quae regat arte pedes.
Illa tuas saltem temeant spectacula Musas,
Et revocent, quantum carpula pellit iners.
Crede mihi dum psallit ebur, comitataque plectrum
Implet odoratos festa chorea tholos,
Percipies tacitum per pectora serpere Phoebum,
Quale repentinus permeat ossa calor,
Perque puellares oculos digitumque sonantem
Irruet in totos lapsa Thalia sinus.
Namgue Elegia levis multorum cura Deorum est,
Et vocat ad numeros quemlibet illa suos ;
Liber adest elegis, Eratoque, Ceresque, Venusque,
Et cum purpureå matre tenellus Amor.
Talibus inde licent convivia larga poetis,
Saepius et veteri commaduisse mero.
At qui bella reſert, et adulto sub Jove coelum,
Heroasque pios, semideosque duces,
Et nunc sancta canit superum consulta deorum,
Nunc latrata fero regna profunda cane,
Ille quidem parcé Samii pro more magistri
Vivat, et innocuos praebeat herba cibos;
Stet prope fagineo pellucida lympha catillo,
Sobriaque é puro pocula fonte bibat.
Additur huic scelerisque vacans, et casta juventus,
Et rigidi mores, et sine labe manus.
Qualis veste nitens sacrā, et lustralibus undis
Surgis ad infensos augur iture Deos.
Hoc ritu vixisse ferunt post rapta sagacem
Lumina Tiresian, Ogygiumque Limon,
Et lare devoto profugum Calchanta, senemdue
Orpheon, edomitis sola per antra feris;
Sic dapis exiguus, sic rivi potor Homerus
Dulichium vexit per freta longa virum,
Et per monstrificam Persicae Phoebados aulam,
POEMATA. I 79
Et vada focmincis insidiosa sonis,
Perque tuas, rex imc, domos, ubi sanguine nigro
Dicitur umbrarum detinuisse greges.
Diis etenim sacer est vates, divām Que Sacerdos,
Spirat et occultum pectus, et ore Jovem.
At tu siquid agam scitabere (si modó saltem
Esse putas tanti noscere siquid agam)
Paciferum canimus coelesti semine regem,
Faustaque sacratis saecula pacta libris,
Vagitumque Dei, et stabulentem paupere tecto
Qui suprema suo cum patre regna colit,
Stelliparumque polum, modulantesque aethere turmas,
Etsubitó elisos ad sua fana Deos.
Dona quidem dedimus Christi natalibus illa,
Illa sub auroram lux mihi prima tulit.
Te quoque pressa manent patriis meditata cicutis,
Tu mihi, cui recitem, judicis instar eris.
ELEGIA SEPTIMA.
(Anno AEtatis 19.)
NoNDUM blanda tuas leges, Amathusia, néram,
Et Paphio vacuum pectus ab igne fuit.
Stepe cupidineas, puerilia tela, sagittas,
Atque tuum sprevi maxime numen Amor.
Tu puer imbelles, dixi, transfige columbas,
Conveniunt tenero mollia bella duci.
Aut de passeribus tumidos age, parve, triumphos,
Haec sunt militia digna trophaea tuas.
In genus humanum quid inania dirigis arma º
Non valet in fortes ista pharetra viros.
Non tulit hoc Cyprius, (neque enim Deus ullus ad iras
Promptior) et duplici jam ferus igne calet.
Wer erat, et summae radians per culmina villae
Attulerat primam lux tibi, Maie, diem :
At mihi adhuc refugam quaerebant lumina noctem,
Nec matutinum sustinuere jubar.
Astat Amor lecto, pictis Amor impiger alis,
Prodidit astantem moto pharetra Deum;
Prodidit et facies, et dulce minantis ocelli,
Et quicquid puero dignum et Amore fuit.
Talis in eterno juvenis Sigeius Olympo
Miscet amatori pocula plena Jovi;
Aut qui formosas pellexit ad oscula nymphas
Thiodamantaeus Naiade raptus Hylas.
Addideratgue iras, sed et has decuisse putares,
Addideratºſue truces, nec sine felle, minas.
Et miser exemplo sapuisses tutius, inquit,
Nunc mea quid possit dextera testis eris.
Inter et expertos vires numerabere nostras,
Et faciam vero per tua damna fidem.
Ipse ego, sinescis, strato Pythone superbum
Edomui Phoebum, cessit et illi mihi;
Et quoties meminit Peneidos, ipse ſatetur
Certius et gravius tela nocere mea.
Me nequit adductum curvare peritius arcum,
Qui post terga solet vincere Parthus eques:
Cydoniusque mihi cedit venator, et ille
Inscius uxori qui necis author erat.
Est etiam nobis ingens quoque victus Orion,
N
Herculeacque manus, Herculeusque comes.
Jupiter ipse licet sua fulmina torqueat in me,
Haerebunt lateri spicula nostra Jovis.
Caetera quae dubitas melius mea tela docebunt *
Et tua non leviter corda patenda mihi.
Nec te, stulte, tuæ poterunt defendere Musae
Nec tibi Phoebaeus porriget anguis opem.
Dixit, et aurato quatiens mucrone sagittam,
Evolat in tepidos Cypridos ille sinus.
At mihi risuro tonuit ſerus ore minaci,
Et mihi de puero non metus ullus erat.
Et modó quâ nostri spatiantur in urbe Quirites,
Et modó villarum proxima rura placent.
Turba frequens, faciéque simillima turba dearum
Splendida per medias itaue reditaue vias.
Auctaque luce dies gemino fulgore coruscat,
Fallor 2 an et radios hinc quoque Phoebus habet 2
Haec ego non fugi spectacula grata severus,
Impetus et quð me fert juvenilis, agor.
Lumina luminibus malê providus obvia misi,
Neve oculos potuit continuisse meos.
Unam fortè aliis supereminuisse notabam,
Principium nostri lux erat illa mali.
Sic Venus optaret mortalibus ipsa videri,
Sic regina Deûm conspicienda fuit.
Hanc memor objecit nobis malus ille Cupido,
Solus et hos nobis texuit antè dolos,
Nec proculipse vafer latuit, multaeque sagittae,
Et facis à tergo grande pependit onus.
Nec mora, nunc ciliis haesit, nunc virginis ori,
Insilit hinc labiis, insidet inde genis:
Et quascumque agilis partes jaculator oberrat,
Hei mihi, mille locis pectus inerme ſerit.
Protinus insoliti subierunt corda furores,
Uror amans intus flammaque totus eram.
Interea misero quae jam mihi sola placebat,
Ablata est oculis non reditura meis.
Ast ego progredior tacitè querebundus, et excors,
Et dubius volui saepe referre pedem.
Findor, et haec remanent: sequitur pars altera votum,
Raptaque tam subitó gaudia flere juvat.
Sic dolet amissum proles Junonia coelum,
Inter Lemniacos praecipitata focos.
Talis et abreptum solem respexit, ad Orcum
Vectus ab attonitis Amphiaraus equis.
Quid faciam infelix, et luctu victus P amores
Nec licet inceptos ponere, neve sequi.
O utinam spectare semel mihi detur amatos
Vultus, et coram tristia verba loqui;
Forsitan et duro non est adamante creata,
Forte nec ad nostras surdeat illa preces.
Crede mihi, mullus sic infeliciter arsit,
Ponar in exemplo primus et unus ego.
Parce precor, teneri cum sis Deus ales amoris,
Pugment officio nec tua facta tuo.
Jam tuus O certè est mihi formidabilis arcus
Nate dea, jaculis nec minus igne potens;
Et tua fumabunt nostris altaria domis,
Solus et in superis tu mihi summis eris.
Deme meos tandem, verúm nec deme, furores,
Nescio cur, miser est suaviter omnis amans:
180 POEMATA
Tu modo da facilis, posthaec mea siqua futura est,
Cuspis amaturos figat ut una duos.
HEC ego, mente olim laevå, studioque supino,
Nequitiae posui vana trophaea mea’.
Scilicet abreptum sic me malus impulit error,
Indocilisque aetas prava magistra fuit,
Donec Socraticos umbrosa Academia rivos
Praebuit, admissum dedocuitoue jugum.
Protinus extinctis exillo tempore flammis,
Cincta rigent multo pectora nostra gelu.
Unde suis frigus metuit puer ipse sagittis,
Et Diomedéam vim timet ibsa Venus.
EPIGRAMMATUM LIBER.
IN PRODITIONEM BOMBARDIC AM.
CUM simul in regem muper satrapasque Britannos
Ausus es infandum, perfide Fauxe, meſas,
Fallorf an et mitis voluisti ex parte videri,
Et pensare malā cum pietate scelus *
Scilicit hos alti missurus ad atria coeli,
Sulphureo curru flammivolisque rotis.
Qualiter ille feris caput inviolabile Parcis,
Liquit Iördanios turbine raptus agros.
IN EANDEM.
Sicci NE tentasti coelo donasse Iäcobum
Quae septemgemino Bellua monte lates?
Nimeliora tuum poterit dare munera numen,
Parce, precor, donis insidiosa tuis.
Ille quidam sine te consortia serus adivit
Astra, mec inferni pulveris usus ope.
Sic potius foedus in coelum pelle cucullos,
Et quot habet brutos Roma profana Deos,
Namgue hac aut alià nisi quemgue adjuveris arte,
Crede mihi, coeli wix bene scandet iter.
IN EANDEM.
PURGATOREM animae derisit Iäcobus ignem,
Et sine quo superúm non adeunda domus.
frenduit hoc trină monstrum Latiale coroná,
Movit et horrificum cornua dena minax.
“Et mec insultus' ait “temnes mea sacra, Britanne,
Supplicium spreta religione dabis.
Et si stelligeras unquam penetraveris arces,
Non nisi per flammas triste patebit iter.”
O quâm funesto cecinisti proxima vero,
Verbague ponderibus vix caritura suis'
Nam prope Tartareo sublime rotatus ab igni
Ibat ad acthereas, umbra perusta, plagas.
IN EANDEM.
QUEM modó Roma suis devoverat impia diris,
Et Styge damnarat Taenarioque sinu,
Hunc, vice mutata, jam tollere gestit ad astra,
Et cupit ad superos evehere usque Deos.
IN INVENTOREM BOMBARDAE.
IAPETIONIDEM laudavit caeca vetustas,
Qui tulit aetheream solis ab axe facem;
At mihi major erit, qui lurida creditur arma,
Et trifidum fulmen surripuisse Jovi.
AD LEONORAM ROMAE CANENTEM.
Angelus unicuique suus (sic credite gentes)
Obtigit aethereis ales ab ordinibus.
Quid mirum P Leonora, tibi si gloria major P
Nam tua presentem vox sonat ipsa Deum.
Aut Deus, aut vacui certé mens tertia coeli
Per tua secretó guttura serpit agens;
Serpit agens, facilisque docet mortalia corda
Sensin immortali assuescere posse sono.
Quðd sicuncta quidem Deus est, per cunctaque fusus,
In te ună, loquitur, caetera mutus habet.
AI) EANDEM.
ALTERA Torquatum cepit Leonora poetam,
Cujus ab insano cessit amore furens.
Ah miser ille tuo quantô felicius aevo
Perditus, et propter te, Leonora, foret!
Et te Pierià sensisset voce canentem
Aurea maternae fila movere lyrae:
Quamvis Dirceo torsisset lumina Pentheo
. Saevior. aut totus desipuisset iners,
POEMATA. 181
Tu tamen errantes caecă vertigine sensus
Voce eadem poteras composuisse tuà ;
Et poteras, ſegro spirans sub corde, quietem
I'lexanimo cantu restituisse sibi.
AD EANDEM.
CREDULA quid liquidam Sirena Neapoli jactas,
Claraque Parthenopes fana Achelóiados,
Littoreamque tua defunctam Naiada ripa
Corpora Chalcidico sacra dedisse rogof
Illa quidem vivitgue, et amoená Tibridis undā.
Mutavit rauci murmura Pausilipi.
Illic Romulidium studiis ornata secundis,
Atque homines cantu detinet atque Deos.
APOLOGUS DE RUSTICO ET HERO.
RUSTICUs ex malo sapidissima poma quotannis
Legit, et urbano lecta dedit Domino;
Hinc incredibili fructiis dulcedine captus
Malum ipsam in proprias transtulit areolas.
Hactenus illa ferax, sed longo debilis aevo,
Mota solo assueto, protenus aret iners.
Quod tandem ut patuit Domino, spe lusus inani,
Damnavit celeres in sua damna manus;
Atque ait, heu quantò satius fuit illa Coloni
(Parvi licet) grato dona tulisse animo !
Possem ego awaritiam fracnare, gulamgue voracem:
Nunc periere mihi et foetus et ipse parens.
AD CHRISTINAM SUECORUM REGINAM,
NOMINE CROMWELLI.
BELLIPOTENS Virgo, septem Regina Trionum,
Christina, Arctoi lucida stella poli !
Cernis, quas merui dura sub casside rugas,
Utgue senex armis impiger ora tero;
Invia fatorum dum per vestigia nitor,
Exeguor et populi fortia jussa manu.
Ast tibi submittit frontem reverentior umbra;
Nec sunt hi vultus Regibus usque truces.
S Y L V A R U M L I B E R.
IN OBITUM PROCANCELLARII, MEDICI.
(Anno AEtatis 17.)
PARERE fati discite legibus,
Manuscue Parcae jam date supplices,
Qui pendulum telluris orbem
Iäpete collitis nepotes.
Vossi relicto mors vaga Taenaro
Semel vocarit flebilis, heu morae
Tentantur incassum, dolique;
Per tenebras Stygis ire certum est.
Si destinatam pellere dextera
Mortem valeret, non ferus Hercules,
Nessi venematus cruore,
AEmathià jacuisset Oetà.
Nec fraude turpi Pallidis invidae
Vidisset occisum Ilion Hectora, aut
Quem larva Pelidis peremit
Ense Locro, Jove lacrymante.
Sic triste fatum verba Hecatéia
Fugare possint, Telegoni parens
Wixisset infamis, potentigue
AEgiali soror usa virgå.
Numenque trinum fallere si queant
Artes medentiim, ignotaque gramina,
Non gnarus herbarum Machaon
Eurypyli cecidisset hastā.
Læsisset et nec te Philyreie,
Sagitta Echidnae perlita sanguine,
Nec tela te fulmengue avitum
Caese puer genitricis alvo.
Tuque O alumno major Apolline,
Gentis togatae cui regimen datum,
Frondosa quem nunc Cirrha luget,
Et mediis Helicon in undis,
Jam praefuisses Palladio gregi
Lietus, superstes, nec sine gloria:
Nec puppe lustrasses Charontis
Horribiles barathri recessus.
At fila rupit Persephone tua
Irata, cum te viderit, artibus
Succoque pollenti, tot atris
Faucibus eripuisse mortis.
Colende Praeses, membra precor tua
Molli quiescant cespite, et ex tuo
Crescant rosae, calthaeque busto,
Purpureoque hyacinthus ore.
Sit mite de te Judicium AEaci,
Subrideatque AEtnaea Proserpina,
Interque felices perennis
Elysio spatiere campo.
182 - POEMATA.
IN QUINTUM NOVEMBRIS.
(Anno AEtatis 17.)
JAM pius extrema veniens Iácobus ab arcto,
Teucrigenas populos, latéque patentia regna
Albionum tenuit, jamgue inviolabile foedus
Sceptra Caledoniis conjunxerat Anglica Scotis:
Pacificusque novo felix divesque, sedebat
In solio, occultique doli securus et hostis:
Cum ferus ignifluo regnans Acheronte tyrannus,
Eumenidum pater, aethereo vagus exul Olympo,
Forte per immensum terrarum erraverat orben,
Dinumerans sceleris socios, vernasque fideles,
Participes regni post funera moesta futuros;
Hic tempestates medio ciet ačre diras,
Illac unanimes odium struit inter amicos,
Armat et invictas in mutua viscera gentes;
Regnaque olivifera vertit florentia pace,
Et quoscumque videt purae virtutis amantes,
Hos cupit adjicere imperio, fraudumque magister
Tentat inaccessum sceleri corrumpere pectus;
Insidiasque locat tacitas, cassesque latentes
Tendit, ut incautos rapiat, seu Caspia Tigris
Insequitur trepidam deserta per avia praedam
Nocte sub illuni, et somno nictantibus astris.
Talibus infestat populos Summanus et urbes
Cinctus caerulea fumanti turbine flammae.
Jamgue fluentisonis albentia rupibus arva
Apparent, et terra Deo dilecta marino,
Cui nomen dederat quondam Neptunia proles,
Amphitryoniaden quinon dubitavit atrocem,
AEquore tranato, furiali poscere bello,
Ante expugnatoe crudelia sæcula Trojae.
At simul hanc opibusque et festà pace beatam
Aspicit, et pingues donis Cerealibus agros,
Quodgue magis doluit, venerantem numina veri
Sancta Dei populum, tandem suspiria rupit
Tartareos ignes et luridum olentia sulphur;
Qualia Trinacria truxa ab Jove clausus in AEtna
Efflat tabifico monstrosus ab ore Tiphoeus.
Ignescunt oculi, stridetºue adamantinus ordo
Dentis, ut armorum fragor, ictaque cuspide cuspis
Atque pererrato solum hoc lacrymabile mundo
Inveni, dixit, gens haec mihi sola rebellis,
Contemtrixque jugi, nostraque potentior arte.
Illa tamen, mea si quicquam tentamina possunt,
Non feret hoc impune diu, non ibit inulta.
Hactenus ; et piceis liquido natat ačre pennis ;
Quà volat, adversi praecursant agnine venti,
Densantur nubes, et crebra tonitrua fulgent.
Jamgue pruinosas velox superaverat Alpes,
Et tenet Ausoniae fines: a parte sinistra
Nimbifer Apenninus erat, priscique Sabini,
Dextra veneficiis infamis Hetruria, nec non
Te furtiva, Tibris, Thetidi videt oscula dantem;
Hinc Mavortigenae consistit in arce Quirini.
Reddiderant dubiam jam sera crepuscula lucem,
Cum circumgreditur totam Tricoronifer urbcm,
Panificosque Deos portat, scapulisque virorum
Evehitur, praeeunt submisso poplite reges,
Et mendicantum series longissima fratrum ;
Cereaque in manibus gestant funalia caeci,
Cimmeriis nati in tenebris, vitamgue trahentes.
Templa dein multis subeunt lucentia taedis
(Vesper erat sacer iste Petro) fremitusque canentum
Saepe tholos implet vacuos, et inane locorum.
Qualiter exululat Bromius, Bromiique caterva,
Orgia cantantes in Echionio Aracyntho,
Dum tremit attonitus vitreis Asopus in undis,
Et proculipse cava respons at rupe Cithaeron.
His igitur tandem solemni more peractis,
Nox senis amplexus Erebi taciturna reliquit,
Praecipitesque impellit equos stimulante flagello,
Captum oculis Typhlonta, Melanchaetemque ferocem,
Atque Acherontaeo prognatam patre Siopen
Torpidam, et hirsutis horrenteum Phrica capillis.
Interea regum domitor, Phlegetontius haeres
Ingreditur thalamos (neque enim secretus adulter
Producit steriles mollisine pellice noctes)
At vix compositos somnus claudebat ocellos,
Cum niger umbrarum domimus, rectorque silentum,
Praedatorque hominum falsā sub imagine tectus
Astitit; assumptis micuerunt tempora canis,
Barba sinus promissa tegit, cineracea longo
Syrmate verrit humum vestis, pendetdue cucullus
Vertice de raso, et me quicquam desit ad artes,
Cannabeo lumbos constrixit fune salaces,
Tarda fenestratis figens vestigia calceis.
Talis, uti fama est, vasta Franciscus eremo
Tetra vagabatur solus per lustra ferarum,
Sylvestrigue tulit genti pia verba salutis
Impius, atque lupos domuit, Libycosque leones.
Subdolus at tali Serpens velatus amictu
Solvit in has fallax ora execratia voces;
Dormis nate P Etiamne tuos sopor opprimit artus 2
Immemor, O fidei, pecorumque oblite tuorum !
Dum cathedram, venerande, tuam, diademaque triplex
Ridet Hyperboreogens barbara nata sub axe,
Dumque pharetrati spernunt tua jura Britanni :
Surge, age, surge piger, Latius quem Caesar adorat,
Cui reserata patet convexi janua coeli,
Turgentes animos, et fastus frange procaces,
Sacrilegique sciant, tua quid maledictio possit.
Et quid Apostolicae possit custodia clavis;
Et memor Hesperiae disjectam ulciscere classem,
Mersaque Iberorum lato vexilla profundo,
Sanctorumque cruci tot corpora fixa probosae,
Thermodoontea muper regnante puella.
At tu si tenero mavis torpescere lecto,
Crescentesque negas hosti contundere vires;
Tyrrhenum implebit numeroso milite pontum,
Sigmaque Aventino ponet fulgentia colle:
Reliquias veterum franget, flammisque cremabit,
Sacraque calcabit pedibus tua colla profanis,
Cujus gaudebant soleis dare basia reges.
Nectamen hunc bellis et aperto Marte lacesses,
Irritus ille labor; tu callidus utere fraude :
Quaelibet haereticis disponere retia fas est;
Jamgue ad consilium extremis rex magnus ab oris
Patricios vocat, et procerum de stirpe creatos,
POEMATA. 183
Grandaevosque patres trabea, canisque verendos;
... Hos tu membratim poteris conspergere in auras,
Atque dare in cineres, nitrati pulveris igne
Ædibus injecto, quâ, convenere, sub imis.
Protinus ipse igitur quoscunque habet Anglia fidos
Propositi, factique, mone: quisquémne tuorum
Audebit summi non jussa facessere Papae
Perculsosque metu subito, castique stupentes
Invadat vel Gallus atrox, vel savus Iberus.
Saecula sic illic tandem Mariana redibunt,
Tuque in belligeros iterum dominaberis Anglos.
Et nequid timeas, divos divasque secundas
Accipe, quotaue tuis celebrantur numina fastis.
Dixit, et adscitos ponens malefidus amictus
Fugit ad infandam, regnum illaetabile, Lethen.
Jam rosea Eoas pandens Tithonia portas
Westi inauratas redeunti lumine terras;
Moestaque adhuc nigri deplorans funera nati
Irrigat ambrosiis montana cacumina guttis:
Cum somnos pepulit stellatae janitor aulae,
Nocturnos visus, et somnia grata revolvens.
Est locus aeternå septus caligine noctis,
Vasta ruinosi quondam fundamina tecti,
Nunc torvi spelunca Phoni, Prodotaeque bilinguis,
Effera quos unopeperit Discordia partu.
Hic inter caementa jacet praeruptaque saxa,
Ossa inhumata virum, et trajecta cadavera ſerro;
Hic dolus intortis semper sedet ater ocellis,
Jurgiaque, et stimulis armata Calumnia ſauces,
Et Furor, atque vite moriendi mille videntur,
Et Timor, exsanguisque locum circumvolat Horror;
Perpetuoque leves per muta silentia Manes
Exululant, tellus et sanguine conscia stagnat.
Ipsi etiam pavidi latitant penetralibus antri
Et Phonos, et Prodotes, mulloque sequente per antrum,
Amtrum horrens, scopulosum, atrum feralibus umbris,
Diffugiunt sontes, et retró lumina vortunt;
Hos pugiles Romae per saecula longa fideles
Evocat antistes Babylonius, atque ita fatur.
Finibus occiduis circumfusum incolit aequor
Gens exosa mihi; prudens matura negavit
Indignam penitus nostro conjungere mundo:
Illuc, sic jubeo, celeri contendite gressu,
Tartareoque leves difflentur pulvere in auras
Et rex et pariter satrapae, scelerata propago:
Et quotguot fidei caluere cupidine veræ,
Consilii socios adhibete, operisque ministros.
Finierat, rigidi cupidè paruere gemelli.
Interea longo flectens curvamine coelos
Despicit tethereà dominus qui fulgurat arce,
Wanaque perversae ridet comamina turbae,
Atque sui causam populi volet ipse tueri.
Esse ferunt spatium, quâ distat ab Aside terra
Fertilis Europe, et spectat Mareotidas undas;
Hic turris posita est Titanidos ardua Famae
ABrea, lata, sonans, rutilis vicinior astris
Quàm superimpositum vel Athos vel Pelion Ossae.
Mille fores aditusque patent, totidemgue fenestrae,
Amplaque per tenues translucent atria muros:
Excitat hic varios plebs agglomerata susurros ;
Qualiter instrepitant circum mulctralia bombis
Agmina muscarum, aut texto per ovilia junco,
Dum canis aestivum coeli petit ardua culmen.
Ipsa quidem summâ sedet ultrix matris in a Ce,
Auribus innumeris cinctum caput eminet olli,
Queis sonitum exiguum trahit, atque levissima captat
Murmura, ab extremis patuli confinibus orbis.
Nectot, Aristoride servator inique juvencae
Isidos, immiti volvebas lumina vultu,
Lumina non unquam tacito nuntantia somno,
Lumina subjectas late spectantia terras.
Istis illa solet loca luce carentia sæpe
Perlustrare, etiam radianti impervia soli:
Millenisque loquax auditaque visaque linguis
Cuilibet effundit temeraria; verague mendax
Nunc minuit, modo confictis sermonibus auget.
Sed tamen à nostro meruisti carmine laudes
Fama, bonum quo non aliud veracius ullum,
Nobis digna cani, nec te memorasse pigebit
Carmine tam longo; servatiscilicet Angli
Officiis, vaga diva, tuis, tibi reddimus aequa.
Te Deus, aeternos motu qui temperat ignes,
Fulmine praemisso alloquitur, terrāque tremente :
Fama siles f an te latet impia Papistarum
Conjurata cohors in megue meosque Britannos,
Et nova sceptigero caedes meditata Iācobo 8
Nec plura, illa statim sensit mandata Tonantis,
Et satis ante fugax stridentis induit alas,
Induit et variis exilia corpora plumis;
Dextra tubam gestat Temesaeo ex aere sonoram.
Nec mora, jam pennis cedentes remigat auras,
Atque parum est cursu celeres praevertere nubes,
Jam ventos, jam solis equos post terga reliquit:
Et primo Angliacas, solito de more, per urbes
Ambiguas voces, incertaque murmura spargit,
Mox arguta dolos, et detestabile vulgat
Proditionis opus, nec non facta horrida dictu,
Authoresque addit sceleris, nec garrula caecis
Insidiis loca structa silet 2 stupuere relatis,
Et pariter juvenes, pariter tremuere puellae,
Effoetique senes pariter, tantaeque ruinae
Sensus ad actatem subito penetraverit omnem.
Attamen interea populi miserescit ab alto
AEthereus pater, et crudelibus obstitit ausis
Papicolūm ; capit poenas raptantur ad acres;
At pia thura Deo, et grati solvuntur honores;
Compita laeta focis genialibus omnia fumant;
Turba choros juvenilis agit: Quintoque Novembris
Nulla Dies toto occurrit celebratior anno.
IN OBITUM PRAESULIS ELIENSIS,
(Anno Etatis 17.)
ADHUC madentes rore squalebant genae,
Et sicca nondum lumina
Adhuc liquentis imbre turgebant salis,
Quem nuper effudi pius,
Dum moesta charo justa persolvi rogo
Wintoniensis Praesulis.
Cum centilinguis Fama (proh semper mali
Cladisque vera nuntia)
184
POEMATA
Spargit per urbes divitis Britanniæ,
Populosque Neptuno satos,
Cessisse morti, et ferreis sororibus
Te generis humani decus,
Qui rex sacrorum illä fuisti in insula
Quae nomen Anguillae tenet.
Tunc inquietum pectus irá protinus
Ebulliebat fervida,
Tumulis potentem stepe devovens deam:
Nec vota Naso in Ibida
Concepit alto diriora pectore;
Graiusque vates parcius
Turpem Lycambis execratus est dolum,
Sponsamgue Neobolen suam.
At ecce diras ipse dum fundo graves,
Et imprecor neci necem,
Audisse tales videor attonitus sonos
Leni, sub aurá, flamine:
Caecos furores pone, pone vitream
Bilemdue, et irritas minas,
Quid temeré violas non nocenda numina,
Subitoque ad iras percita ?
Non est, ut arbitraris elusus miser,
Mors atra Noctis filia,
Erebóve patre creta, sive Erinnye,
Vastove mata sub Chao :
Ast illa coelo missa stellato, Dei
Messes ubique colligit;
Animasque mole carneå reconditas
In lucem et auras evocat;
Ut cum fugaces excitant Horae diem
Themidos Jovisque filiae;
Et sempiterni ducit ad vultus patris :
At justa raptat impios
Sub regna furvi luctuosa Tartari,
Sedesque subterraneas,
Hanc ut vocantem laetus audiwi, cito
Foedum reliqui carcerem,
Volatilesque faustus inter milites
Ad astra sublimis feror:
Vates ut olim raptus ad coelum senex
Auriga currus igmei.
Non me Bootis terruere lucidi
Sarraca tarda frigore, aut
Formidolosi Scorpionis brachia,
Non ensis Orion tuus.
Praetervolavi fulgidi solis globum,
Longéque sub pedibus deam
Vidi triformem, dum coèrcebat suos
Fraenis dracones aureis.
Erraticorum, syderum per ordines,
Per lacteas vehor plagas,
Velocitatem stepe miratus novam ;
Donec nitentes ad fores
Ventum est Olympi, et regiam crystallinam, et
Stratum smaragdis atrium.
Sed hic tacebo, nam quis effari queat
Oriundus humano patre,
Amoenitates illius loci º mihi
Sat est in eternum frui.
NATURAM NON PATI SENIUM.
HEU quam perpetuis erroribus acta ſatiscit
Avia mens hominum, tenebrisque immersa profundis
CEdipodioniam volvit sub pectore noctem
Quae vesana suis metiri facta deorum
Audet, et incisas leges adamante perenni
Assimilare suis, nulloque solubile saeclo
Consilium fati perituris alligat horis.
Ergöne marcescet sulcantibus obsita rugis
Naturae facies, et rerum publica mater
Omniparum contracta uterum sterilescet ab avof
Et se fassa senem malê ertis passibus ibit
Sidereum tremebunda caput? mum tetra vetustas
Annorumque aeterna ſames, squallorque situsque
Sidera vexabunt? an et insatiabile Tempus
Esuriet Coelum, rapietaue in viscera patrem P
Heu, potuitne suas imprudens Jupiter arces
Hoc contra munisse nefas, et Temporis isto
Exemisse malo, gyrosque dedisse perennes 2
Ergo erit ut quandoque sono dilapsa tremendo
Convexi tabulata ruant, atque obvius ictu
Stridat uterque polus, superāque ut Olympius aulā
Decidat, horribilisque retectà Gorgone Pallas;
Qualis in AEgean proles Junonia Lemnon
Deturbata sacro cecidit de limine coeli P
Tu quoque Phoebe, tui casus imitabere nati
Praecipiti curru, subitāque ferere ruina
Pronus, et extincta fumabit lampade Nereus,
Et dabit attonito feralia sibila ponto.
Tunc etiam ačrei divulsis sedibus Haemi
Dissultabit apex, imoque allisa barathro
Terrebunt Stygium dejecta Ceraunia Ditem,
In superos quibus usus erat, fraternaque bella.
At Pater omnipotens, fundatis fortius astris,
Consuluit rerum summae, certoque peregit
Pondere fatorum lances, atque ordine summo
Singula perpetuum jussit servare tenorem.
Wolvitur hinc lapsu mundi rota prima diurno;
Raptat et ambitos sociá vertigine coelos.
Tardior haud solito Saturnus, et acer ut olim
Fulmineum rutilat cristatā casside Mavors.
Floridus aeternüm Phoebus juvenile coruscat,
Nec ſovet effoetas loca per declivia terras
Devexo temone Deus; sed semper amică
Luce potens, eadem currit per sigma rotarum.
Surgit odoratis pariter formosis ab Indis,
AEthereum pecus albenti qui cogit Olympo
Mane vocans, et serus agens in pascua coeli ;
Temporis et gemino dispertit regna colore.
Fulget, obitºlue vices alterno Delia cornu,
Caeruleumque ignem paribus complectitur ulmis.
Nec variant elementa fidem, solitoque fragore
Lurida perculsas jaculantur fulmina rupes.
Nec per inane furit leviori murmure Corus,
Stringit et armiferos aequali horrore Gelonos
Trux Aquilo, spiratoue hyemem, nimbosque volutat,
Utgue solet, Siculi diverberatima Pelori
Rex maris, et raucá circumstrepit aequora conchá
Oceani Tubicen, nec vastā mole minorem
POEMATA. 183
MEgeona ſerunt dorso Balearica cete.
Sed neque, Terra, tibi saecli vigor ille vetusti
Priscus abest, servatdue suum Narcissus odorem,
Et puer ille suum tenet, et puer ille, decorem,
Phoebe tuusque et Cypri tuus, nec ditior olim
Terra datum sceleri celavit montibus aurum
Conscia, vel sub aquis gemmas. Sic denique in acvum
Ibit cunctarum series justissima rerum;
Donec flamma orbem populabitur ultima, laté
Circumplexa polos, et vasti culmina coeli;
Ingentique rogo flagrabit machina mundi.
DE IDEA PLATONICA QUEMADMODUM
ARISTOTELES INTELLEXIT.
Dicite, sacrorum praesides memorum deae
Tuque O noveni perbeata numinis
Memoria mater, quaeque in immenso procul
Antro recumbis otiosa Hºternitas,
Monumenta servans, et ratas leges Jovis,
Coelique fastos atque ephemeridas Deûm,
Quis ille primus cujus ex imagine
Natura solers finxit humanum genus,
Æternus, incorruptus, aequaevus polo,
Unusque et universus, exemplar Dei?
Haud ille Palladis gemellus innubae
Interna proles insidet menti Jovis;
Sed quamlibet natura sit communior,
Tamen Seorsus extat ad morem unius,
Et, mira, certo stringitur spatio loci;
Seu Sempiturnus ille siderum comes
Coeli pererrat ordines decemplicis,
Citimumve terris incolit Lunae globum :
Sive inter animas corpus adituras sedens,
Obliviosas torpet ad Lethes aquas:
Sive in remotă forte terrarum plaga
Incedit ingens hominis archetypus gigas,
Et diis tremendus erigit celsum caput,
Atlante major portitore syderum.
Non, cui profundum caecitas lumen dedit,
Dircaeus augur widit hunc alto sinu;
Non hunc silenti nocte Pléiones nepos
Vatum sagaci praepes ostendit choro;
Non hunc sacerdos novit Assyrius, licet
Longos vetusti commemoret atavos Nini,
Priscumque Belon, inclytumque Osiridem.
Non ille trino gloriosus nomine
Ter magnus Hermes (ut sit arcani sciens)
Talem reliquit Isidis cultoribus.
At tu perenne ruris Academi decus
(Haec monstra si tu primus induxti scholis)
Jam jam, poetas urbis exules tuæ
Revocabis, ipse fabulator maximus;
Aut institutor ipse migrabis foras.
AD PATREM.
NUNc mea Pierios cupiam per pectora sontes
Irriguas torquere vias, totumque per ora
Wolvere laxatum gemino de vertice rivum;
Ut tenues oblita sonos audacibus alis
Surgat in officium vencrandi Musa parentis.
Hoc utcunque tibi gratum, pater optime, carmen
Exiguum meditatur opus : nec novimus ipsi
Aptius à nobis quae possint munera domis
Respondere tuis, quamvis nec maxima possint
Respondere tuis, nedum ut par gratia donis
Esse queat, vacuis quae redditur arida verbis.
Sed tamen haec nostros ostendit pagina census,
Et quod habemus opum chartà numeravimus istã,
Quae mihi sunt nullae, nisi quas dedit aurea Clio,
Quas mihi semoto somni perperere sub antro,
Et nemoris laureta sacri Parnassides unbrae.
Nec tu vatis opus divinum despice carmen,
Quo nihil aethereos ortus, et semina coeli,
Nil magis humanam commendat origine mentem,
Sancta Prometheae retinens vestigia flamma2.
Carmen amant superi, tremebundaque Tartara carmen
Ima ciere valet, divosque ligare profundos,
Et triplici duros Manes adamante coercet.
Carmini sepositi retegunt arcana futuri
Phoebades, et tremulae pallantes ora Sibyllae ;
Carmina sacrificus sollennes pangit ad aras,
Aurea seu sternit motantem cornua taurum ;
Seu clim fata sagax fumantibus abdita fibris
Consulit, et tepidis Parcam scrutalur in extis.
Nos etiam patrium tunc eum repetemus Olympum,
AEternaeque morae stabunt immobilis aevi;
Ibimus auratis per coeli templa coronis,
Dulcia suaviloque sociantes carmina plectro,
Astra quibus, geminique poli convexa sonabunt.
Spiritus et rapidos qui circinat igneus orbes,
Nunc quoque sidereis intercinitipse choreis
Immortale melos, et inemarrabile carmen ;
Torrida dum rutilus compescit sibila serpens,
Demissoque ferox gladio mansuescit Orion;
Stellarum nec sentit onus Maurusius Atlas.
Carmina regales epulas ornare solebant,
Cum nondum luxus, vastaeque immensa vorago
Nota gulae, et modico spumabat coena Lyaeo.
Tum de more sedens festa ad convivia vates,
AEsculeå intonsos redimitus ab arbore crimes,
Heroumgue actus, imitandaque gesta canebat,
Et chaos, et positi laté fundamina mundi,
Reptantesque deos, et alentes numina glandes,
Et nondum AEtneo quaesitum fulmen ab antro.
Denique quid vocis modulamen inane juvabit
Verborum sensusque vacans, numerique loquacis?
Silvestres decet iste choros, non Orphea cantus,
Qui tenuit fluvios, et quercubus addidit aures,
Carmine, non citharā; simulachraque functa camendo
Compulit in lachrymas; habet has a carmine laudes.
Nec tu perge precor, sacras contemnere Musas,
Nec vanas inopesque puta, quarum ipse peritus
Munere, mille sonos numeros componis adaptos,
Millibus et vocem modulis variare canoram
Doctus, Arionii meritó sis nominis haeres.
Nunc tibi quid mirum, si me genuisse poétam
Contigerit, charo si tam propè sanguine juncti,
Cognatas artes, studiumque affine sequamur P
Ipse volens Phoebus se dispertire duobus,
186 POEMATA.
Altera dona mihi, dedit altera dona parenti,
Dividuumque Deum, genitorque puerque, tenemus.
Tu tamen ut simules teneras odisse Camoenas,
Non odisse reor; neque enim, pater, ire jubebas
Quà via lata patet, quâ pronior area lucri,
Certaque contendi fulget spes aurea mummi:
Nec rapis ad leges, malê custoditaque gentis
Jura, nec insulsis damnas clamoribus aures;
Sed magis excultam cupiens ditescere mentem,
Me procul urbano strepitu, secessibus altis
Abductum Aoniae jucunda per otia ripae,
Phoebaeo lateri comitem sinis ire beatum.
Officium chara taceo commune parentis,
Me poscunt majora: tuo, pater optime, sumptu
Cum mihi Romulea patuit facundia lingua',
Et Latii veneres, et quae Jovis ora decebant
Grandia magniloquis elata vocabula Graiis,
Addere suasisti quos jactat Gallia flores;
Et quam degeneri novus Italus ore loquelam
Fundit, Barbaricos testatus voce tumultus,
Quaeque Palaestinus loguitur mysteria vates.
Denique quicquid habet coelum, sublectaque coelo
Terra parens, terraeque et coelo interfluus aer,
Quicquid et unda tegit, pontique agitabile marmor,
Per te nosse licet, per te, si nosse libebit :
Dimotäque venit spectanda scientia nube,
Nudaque conspicuos inclinat ad oscula vultus,
Ni fugisse velim, ni sit libâsse molestum.
I nunc, conſer opes, quisquis malesanus avitas
Austriaci gazas, Perúanaque regna praeoptas.
Quae potuit majora pater tribuisse, vel ipse
Jupiter, excepto, donàsset ut omnia, coelof
Non potiora dedit, quamvis et tuta fuissent,
Publica qui juveni commisit lumina nato
Atque Hyperionis currus, et fracna diei,
Et circum undantem radiatà luce tiaram.
Ergo ego jam doctae pars quamlibet ima catervae
Victrices hederas inter, laurosque sedebo;
Jamgue nec obscurus populo miscebor inerti,
Vitabuntºlue oculos vestigia nostra profanos.
Este procul vigiles curae, procul este querelaº,
Invidiaeque acies transverso tortilis hirquo,
Saeva nec anguiferos extende calumnia rictus;
In me triste nihil foedissima turba potestis,
Nec vestri sum juris ego; securaque tutus
Pectora, vipereo gradiar sublimis ab ictu.
At tibi, chare pater, postguam non aequa merenti
Posse referre datur, nec dona rependere factis,
Sic memoråsse satis, repetitaque mumera grato
Percensere animo, fidaeque reponere menti.
Et vos, O nostri, juvenilia carmina, lusus,
Simodo perpetuos sperare audebitis annos,
Et domini superesse rogo, lucemdue tueri,
Nec spisso rapient oblivia nigra sub Orco,
Forsitan has laudes, decantatumque parentis
Nomen, ad exemplum, sero servabitis aevo.
PSALM CXIV.
Irpa)\ }re trauðg, Ör' ày)\ad ſpüA’’Iakó88
Aiyê Triov Aire éâuov, direx0éa, 3apſ3apópwvov,
A.) rôrs uoivov ºnv Šatov yśvoc visc 'Iow8a.
'Ev 68 0søg Maoiot puéya kpstwy 8agiNevsv.
Elós, kai évrporáðmy pi yaä' éðwma's 0d Aaoga
Kūpart sixvpévn 600ip, 60' dip’ $3 vºty0m
'Ipêc 'Iopôāvng Tori äpyvpostěša army,) w.
'Ek 3’ &psa okap0uoiaw direpéqua k\ovšovro,
'Qc kptoi opplyóww.reg örpapeptă șu &Awj.
Batórepat 6' àua trágat àvaakiprugav Špirvau,
Ola trapai oilpty yi pi\p titró pumtépt åpvsc'
Tirre oty', aivá 0d8aaga, TréAwp påyaô’ #6&ndaç
Kūpart sixvuévm 600iq, ; Ti 3’ dip' is vºix0mg
‘Ipêc 'Iopôávn Tori dipyvpostěša Trnyńv;
Titt öpsa okap6poiouv dºrsupéoua k\ovéégés.
'Qg kptoi applyówvrécèirpapeptſ; $v d\wij;
Batorêpat ri Ö’ &p' tupićg &vaokuprijaar' pirwai,
Ola trapai oºpuyyi (pi\g viró puntépt åpweg ;
Xeiso Yaia rpéega Seóv psydº' ékrvirčovra
Baia Ssov rpetso' titrarov gé9ag 'Iogakiðao,
'Og ré kai čk oriMáöwy trorapot.c Xès uopuūpovraç,
Końvnvr' disvačv trérong &trö jakpwoéganç.
Philosophus ad regem quendam, qui eum ignotum et
insontem inter reos forte captum inscius damnaverat,
rmv štri Savárp tropévépévoc, haec subito misit.
'Q diva, si èNéong us rôv Évvopov, oběš ruv' àvöpújv
Astvöv ŠAwg 6pdaavra, ooſpºrarov to 0, kapnvov
'Pniówg &pé\oto, rô 3’ is spov at 6, voijo sig,
Mailwêiwg 6' dip' Étretra reëv trpóg Supiðv Óðvpij,
Totöv 3’ is TóAtoc repujvvuov ćArap 3Xiaoac.
In effigiei ejus Sculptorem.
'Aua'6ei yeypdºpôat Xelpi trivöè uèv sikóva
qatyc tax' àv, Trpèg slöog abropvèg {3\étrov.
Töv 6’ #krvirwröv oëk Štruyvörsg pi\ot º
TeXārs paixe ôvoutpumpia ºwypd?8.
AD SALSILLUM, POETAM ROMANUM
AEGROTANTEM.
ScAzoNTEs.
Q MusA gressum quae volens trahis claudum,
Vulcanioque tarda gaudes incessu,
Nec sentis illud in loco minus gratum,
Quâm cum decentes flava Déiope suras
Alternat aureum ante Junonis lectum;
Adesdum et haec s'is verba pauca Salsillo
Refer, Camoena nostra cui tantum est cordi,
Quamgue ille magnis praetulit immerità divis.
Haec ergo alumnus ille Londini Milto,
Diebus hisce qui suum linquens nidum
Polique tractum, pessimus ubi ventorum,
Insanientis impotensque pulmonis,
Pernix anhela sub Jove exercet flabra,
Venit feraces Itali soli ad glebas,
Visum superbă cognitas urbes famá
Virosque, doctaeque indolem juventutis.
POEMATA. 187
Tibi optat idem hic fausta multa, Salsille,
Habitumgue fesso corpori penitus sanum ;
Cui nunc profunda bilis infestat renes,
Praecordiisque fixa damnosum spirat;
Nec id pepercit impia quod tu Romano
Tam cultus ore Lesbium condis melos.
O dulce divām munus, O salus Hebes
Germana | Tuque Phoebe morborum terror,
Pythone caeso, sive tu magis Paean
Libenter audis, hic tuus sacerdos est.
Querceta Fauni, vosque rore vinoso
Colles benigni, mitis Evandri sedes,
Siquid salubre vallibus frondet vestris,
Lavemen aegro ferte certatin vati.
Sic ille, charis redditus rursum Musis,
Vicina dulci prata mulcebit cantu.
Ipse inter atros emirabitur lucos
Numa, ubi beatum degit otium aeternum,
Suam reclivis semper AEgeriam spectans.
Tumidusque et inse Tibris, hinc delinitus
Spei ſavebit annua colonorum :
Nec in sepulchris ibit obsessum reges
Nimium sinistro laxus irruens loro :
Scd fraena melius temperabit undarum,
Adusque curvi falsa regna Portumni.
MANSUS.
Joannes Baptista Mansus Marchio Vilensis, vir ingenii laude, tum
literarum studio, nec non et bellica virtute apud Italos clarus
in primis est. Ad quem Torquati'Tassi dialogus extat de Ami-
citia scriptus; erat enim Tassi amicissimus; ab quo etian inter
Campaniae principes celebratur, in illo poemate cui titulus Ge-
rusalemme Conquistata, lib. 20.
Fra cavalier magmanimi, e Corteci
Risplende il Manso——
ls authorem Neapoli commorantem summa benevolentia prose-
cutus est, multaque ei detulit humanitatis officia. Ad hunc
ſºlº hospes ille antequam ab ea urbe discederet, ut me in-
gratum Se Ostenderat, hoc carmen misit.
HIEC quoque, Manse, tuae meditantur carmina laudi
Pierides, tibi, Manse, choro notissime Phoebi,
Quandoquidem ille alium haud aequo est dignatus
honore,
Post Galli cineres, et Mecaenatis Hetrusci.
Tu quoque, si nostrae tantum valet aura Camoenae,
Victrices hederas inter, laurosque sedebis.
Te pridem magno felix concordia Tasso
Junxit, et aeternis inscripsit nomina chartis;
Mox tibi dulciloquum non inscia Musa Marinum
Tradidit; ille tuum dici se gaudet alumnum
Dum canit Assyrios divām prolixus amores;
Mollis et Ausonias stupefecit carmine nymphas,
Ille itidem moriens tibi soli debita vates
Ossa, tibi soli, supremaque vota reliquit:
Nec manes pietas tua chara fefellit amici;
Vidimus arridentem operoso extere poetam.
Nec satis hoc visum est in utrumque, et nec pia cessant
Officia in tumulo; cupis integros rapere Orco,
Quà potes, atque avidas Parcarum eludere le
Amborum genus, et varia sub sorte peractam
Pescribis vitam, moresque, et dona Minerve;
O’ (AS
ges:
AEmulus illius, Mycalen qui natus ad altam,
Retulit AEolii vitam facundus Homeri.
Ergo ego te, Clius et magni nomine Phoebi,
Manse pater, jubeo longum salvere per aevum,
Missus Hyperborco juvenis peregrinus ab axe.
Nec tu longinquam bonus aspernabare Musam,
Quae nuper gelida vix enutrita sub Arcto
Imprudens Italas ausa est volitare per urbes.
Nos etiam in nostro modulantes flumine cygnos
Credimus obscuras noctes sensisse per umbras,
Quà Thamesis late puris argenteus urnis
Oceani Glaucos perfundit gurgite crines:
Quin et in has quondam pervenit Tityrus oras.
Sed neque nos genus incultum, nec inutile Phoebo
Quà plaga septeno mundi sulcata Trione
Brumalem patitur longa sub nocte Boöten.
Nos etiam colimus Phoebum, nos munera Phoebo
Flaventes spicas, et lutea mala canistris,
Halantemque crocum (perhibet nisi vana vetustas)
Misimus, et lectas Druidum de gente choreas.
(Gens Druides antiqua sacris operata deorum
Heroum laudes imitandaque gesta canebant)
Hinc quoties festo cing unt altaria cantu
Delo in herbosa Graiae de more puellae,
Carminibus laetis memorant Corinóida Loxo,
Fatidicamgue Upin, cum flavicomä Hecaerge,
Nuda Caledonio variatas pectora fuco.
Fortunate senex, ergo quacumque per orbem
Torquati decus, et nomen celebrabitur ingens,
Claraque perpetui succrescet ſama Marini;
Tu quoque inora frequens venies, plausumque virorum,
Et parili carpes iter immortale volatu.
Dicetur tum sponte tuos habitasse penates
Cynthius, et famulas venisse ad limina Musas:
At non sponte domum tamen idem, et regis adivit
Rura Pheretiadae, coelo fugitivus Apollo;
Ille licet magnum Alciden susceperat hospes;
Tantum ubi clamosos placuit vitare bubulcos,
Nobile mansueti cessit Chironis in antrum,
Irriguos inter saltus, frondosaque tecta,
Peneium prope rivum : ibi saepe sub ilice nigrä,
Ad citharte strepitum, blanda prece victus amici,
Exilii duros lenibat voce labores.
Tum neque ripa suo, barathro nec fixa sub imo
Saxa stetere loco; nutat Trachinia rupes,
Nec sentit solitas, inmania pondera, silvas;
Emotaeque suis properant de collibus orni,
Mulcenturque novo maculosi carmine lynces.
Diis dilecte senex, te Jupiter aequus oportet
Nascentem, et miti lustrarat lumine Phoebus,
Atlantisque nepos; neque enim, nisi charus ab ortu
Diis superis, poterit magno ſavisse poette.
Hinc longaeva tibi lento sub flore senectus
Vernat, et AEsonios lucratur vivida fusos;
Nondum deciduos servans tibi frontis honores,
Ingeniumque vigens, et adultum mentis acumen.
O mihi si mea sors talem concedat amicum,
Thoebaeos decorasse viros qui tam bene nôrit,
Si quando indigenas revocabo in carmina reges,
Arturumque etiam sub terris bella movemtem
Aut dicam invictae sociali foedere menste
188 POEMATA.
Magnanimos Heroas, et (O modo spiritus adsit)
Frangam Saxonicas Britonem sub Marte phalanges.
Tandem ubi non tacitte permensus tempora vitae,
Annorumque satur, cineri sua jura relinquam,
Ille mihi lecto madidis astaret ocellis,
Astanti sat erit si dicam, sim tibi curae ;
Ille meos artus, liventi morte solutos,
Curaret parvet componi molliter urma:
Forsitan et nostros ducat de marmore vultus,
Nectens aut Paphia myrti aut Parnasside lauri
Fromde cemas, at ego secura pace quiescam.
Tum quoque, si qua fides, si premia certa bonorum,
Ipse ego cºelicolūm semotus in aethera divām,
Quð labor et mens pura vehunt, atque ignea virtus,
Secreti haec aliqua mundi de parte widebo,
Quantum ſata sinunt: et tota mente serenum
Ridens, purpureo suffundar lumine vultus,
Et simul aethereo plaudam milli laetus Olympo.
EPITAPHIUM DAMONIS.
ARGUMENTUM.
Thyrsis et Damon ejusdem viciniae pastores, eaclem studia
sequuti, a pueritia amici erant, ut qui plurimum. Thyrsis
animi causa profectus peregre de Obitu Dâmonis nuncium ac-
cepit. Donlum postea reversus, et rem ita esse comperto, se,
suamgue Solitudinem hoc carmine deplorat. Damonis autem
sub persona hic intelligitur Carolus Deodatus ex urbe Hetruriae
Luca paterno genere Ortundus, caetera Anglus; ingenio, doc-
trina, clarissimisque caeteris virtutibus, dum viveret, juvenis
egreglus.
HIMERIDEs nymphae (nam vos et Daphnin et Hylan,
Et plorata diu meministis fata Bionis)
Dicite Sicelicum Thamesina per oppida carmen :
Quas miser effudit voces, quae murmura Thyrsis,
Et quibus assiduis exercuit antra querelis,
Fluminaque, fontesque wagos, memorumque recessus;
Dum sibi paeruptum queritur Damona, neque altam
Luctibus exemit noctem loca sola pererrans.
Et jam bis viridi surgebat culmus arista,
Et totidem flavas numerabant horrea messes,
Ex quo summa dies tulerat Damona sub umbras,
Nec dum aderat Thyrsis; pastorem scilicet illum
Dulcis amor Muste Thusca retinebat in urbe.
Ast ubi mens expleta domum, pecorisque relicti
Cura vocat, simul assuetá, seditºlue sub ulmo,
Tum veró amissum tum denique sentit amicum,
Coepit et immensum sic exonerare dolorem.
Ite domum impasti, domino jam non vacat, agni.
Hei milli' quae terris, quae dicam numina coelo,
Postguam te immiti rapuerunt funere, Damon
Siccine nos linquis, tua sic sine nomine virtus.
Ibit, et obscuris numero sociabitur umbris?
At non ille, animas virgă qui dividit aureå,
Ista velit, dignumque tui te ducat in agnmen,
Ignavumque procul pecus arceat omne silentum.
Ite domum impasti, domino jam non vacat, agni.
Quicquid erit, certé nisi me lupus anté videbit,
Indeplorato non comminuere sepulchro,
Constabitdue tuus tibi honos, longumque vigebit
Inter pastores: Illi tibi vota secundo
Solvere post Daphnin, post Daphnin dicere laudes
Gaudebunt, dum rura Pales, dum Taunus amabit:
Si quid id est, priscamgue ſidem coluisse, piùmque,
Palladiásque artes, sociumque habuisse canorum.
Ite domum impasti, domino jam non vacat, agni.
Haec tibi certa manent, tibi erumthacc praemia, Damon,
At mihi quid tandem fiet modó P quis mihi fidus
Haerebit lateri comes, ut tu saspe solebas
Frigoribus duris, et per loca focta pruinis,
Aut rapido sub sole, siti morientibus herbis P
Sive opus in magnos fuit eminus ire leones,
Aut avidos terrere lupos praesepibus altis
Quis fando sopire diem, cantuque solebit?
Ite domum impasti, domino jam non vacat, agni.
Pectora cui credam P quis me lenire docebit
Mordaces curas, quis longam fallere noctem
Dulcibus alloquiis, grato cum sibilat igni
Molle pyrum, et nucibus strepitat focus, et malus auster
Miscet cuncta foris, et desuper intonat ulmo
Ite domum impasti, domino jam non vacat, agni.
Aut aestate, dies medio dum vertitur axe,
Cum Pan aesculeå somnum capit abditus umbră,
Et repetunt sub aquis sibi nota sedilia nymphae,
Pastoresque latent, stertit sub sepe colonus;
Quis mihi blanditiasque tuas, quis tum mihirisus,
Cecropiosque sales reſeret, cultosque lepores?
Ite domum impasti, domino jam non vacat, agni.
Atjam solus agros, jam pascua solus oberro,
Sicubiramosae densantur vallibus umbrae;
Hic serum expecto ; supra caput imber et Eurus
Triste sonant, fractaeque agitata crepuscula sylvae.
Ite domum impasti, domino jam non vacat, agni.
Heu, quam culta mihi prius arva procacibus herbis
Involvuntur, et insa situ seges alta fatiscit !
Innuba neglecto marcescit et uva racemo,
Nec myrteta juvant; ovium quoque taedet, at illae
Moerent, inque suum convetunt ora magistrum.
Ite domum impasti, domino jam non vacat, agni.
Tityrus ad corylos vocat, Alphesiboeus ad ornos,
Ad salices Aegon, ad flumina pulcher Amyntas,
‘Hic gelidi fontes, hic illita gramina musco,
Hic Zephiri, hic placidas interstrepit arbutus undas;’
Ista canunt surdo, frutices ego nactus abibam.
Ite domum impasti, domino jam non vacat, agni.
Mopsus ad haec, nam me redeuntem forte notărat,
(Et callebat avium linguas, et sidera Mopsus)
Thyrsi quid hoc dixit, quae te coquit improbabilis”
Autte perdit amor, aut te malê fascinat astrum,
Saturni grave saepe fuit pastoribus astrum,
Intimaque obliquo figit praecordia plumbo.
Ite domum impasti, domino jam non vacat, agni.
Mirantur nymphae, et quid te, Thyrsi, futurum est?
Quid tibi vis Paiunt, non haec solet esse juventaè
Nubila frons, oculique truces, vultusque severi,
Illa choros, lususque leves, et semper amorem
Jure petit, bis ille miser qui serus amavit.
Ite domum impasti, domino jam non vacat, agni.
Venit Hyas, Dryopéque, et filia Baucidis Aegle
Docta modos, citharacque sciens, sed perdita ſastu,
POEMATA. 189
Venit Idumanii Chlorus vićina flucinti;
Nil me blanditiae, nil me solantia verba,
Nil me, si quid adest, movet, aut spes ulla futuri.
Ite domum impasti, domino jam non vacat, agni.
Hei milli, quam similes ludunt per prata juvenci,
Omnes unanimi secum sibi lege sodales' -
Nec magis hunc alio quisquam secermit amicum
De grege, si densi veniunt ad pabula thoes,
Inque vicem hirsuti paribus junguntur onagri;
Lex eaden pelagi, deserto in littore Proteus
Agmina Phocarum numerat, vilisque volucrum
Passer habet semper quicum sit, et omnia circum
Farra libens volitet, serö sua tecta revisens,
Quem si sors letho objecit, sua milvus adunco
Fata tulit rostro, seu stravit arundine fossor,
Protinus ille alium socio petit inde volatu.
Nos durum genus, et diris exercita fatis
Gens homines, aliena animis, et pectore discors;
Vix sibi quisque parem de millibus invenit unum ;
Aut si sors dederit tandem non aspera votis,
Illum inopina dies quâ, non speraveris horá
Surripit, aeternum linquens in saecula damnum.
Ite domum impasti, domino jam nom vacat, agni.
Heu quis me ignotas traxit vagus error in oras
Ire per ačreas rupes, Alpemgue nivosam |
Ecquid erat tanti Roman widisse sepultam,
(Quamvis illa foret, qualem dum viseret olim,
Tityrus ipse suas et oves et rura reliquit;)
Utte tam dulci possem caruisse sodale,
Possem tot maria alta, tot interponere montes
Totsylvas, tot saxa tibi, fluviosque sonantes'
Ah certé extremüm licuisset tangere dextram,
Et bene compositos placidè morientis ocellos,
Et dixisse “Vale, nostri memor ibis ad astra.”
Ite domum impasti, domino jam non vacat, agni.
Quamguam etiam vestri numquam meminisse pigebit,
Pastores Thusci, Musis operata juventus,
Hic Charis, atque Lepos; et Thuscus tu quoque Damon
Antiquà genus unde petis Lucumonis ab urbe.
O ego quantus eram, gelidi cum stratus ad Arni
Murmura, populeumque nemus, quâ, mollior herba,
Carpere nunc violas, nunc summas carpere myrtos,
Et potui Lycidae certantem audire Menalcam,
Ipse etiam tentare ausus sum, nec puto multúm
Displicui, nam sunt et apud me munera vestra
Fiscellae, calathique, et cerea vincla cicutae:
Quin et nostra suas docuerunt nomina fagos
Et Datis, et Francinus, erant et vocibus ambo
Et studiis noti, Lydorum sanguinis ambo.
Ite domum impasti, domino jam non vacat, agni.
Haec mihi tum laeto dictabat roscida luna,
Dum solus teneros claudebam cratibus hoedos.
Ah quoties dixi, cum te cinis ater habebat,
Nunc canit, aut lepori nunc tendit retia Damon,
Vimina nunc texit, varios sibi quod sit in usus !
Et quae tum facili sperabam mente futura
Arrigui voto levis, et praesenta finxi,
Heus bone numquid agis P. nisi te quid fortere tardat,
Imus P. et argutà paulum recubamus in umbra,
Aut ad aquas Colni, aut ubi jugera Caseibelauni P
Tu mihi percurres medicos, tua gramina Succos,
Helleborūnque, humilésque crocos, foliumque hya-
cinthi.
Quasque habet ista palus herbas, artesque medentiim,
Ah pereant herbac, pereant artesque medentiim,
Gramina, postguam ipsi mil profecere magistro.
Ipse etiam, nam nescio quid mihi grande sonabat
Fistula, ab undecima Jam lux est altera nocte,
Et tum forte novis admóram labra cicutis,
Dissiluere tamen rupta compage, nec ultra
Ferre graves potuere sonos, dubito quoque ne sim
Turgidulus, tamen et reſeram, vos cedite silvae.
Ite domum impasti, domino jam non vacat, agni.
Ipse ego Dardanias Rutupina per aequora puppes
Dicam, et Pandrasidos regnum vetus Inogenite,
Brenniumque Arvigarumque duces, priscumque Be-
linum,
Et tandem Armoricos Britonum sub lege colonos;
Tum gravidam Arturo fatali fraude Iogernen,
Mendaces vultus, assumptaque Gorlöis arma,
Merlini dolus. O mihi tum si vita supersit,
Tu procul annosa pendebis fistula pinu
Multum oblita milli; aut patriis mutata Camoenis
Brittonicum strides, quid enim f omnia non licet uni,
Non speråsse uni licet omnia, misatis ampla
Merces, et mihi grande decus (sim ignotus in aevum
Tum licet, externo penitusque inglorius orbi)
Si me flava comas legat Usa, et potor Alauni,
Vorticibusque frequens Abra, et nemus omne Treantae,
Et Thamesis meus ante omnes, et fusca metallis
Tamara, et extremis me discant Orcades undis.
Ite domum impasti, domino jam non vacat, agni.
Haec tibi servabam lentā sub cortice lauri,
Haec, et plura simul; tum quae mihi pocula Mansus,
Mansus Chalcidicae non ultima gloria ripaº,
Bina dedit, mirum artis opus, mirandus et inse,
Et circum gemino caelaverat argumento:
In medio rubri maris unda, et odoriferum ver,
Littora longa Arabum, et sudantes balsama sylvae,
Has inter Phoenix divina avis, unica terris,
Caeruleum fulgens diversicoloribus alis,
Auroram vitreis surgentem respicit undis;
Parte alia polus onnipatens, et magnus Olympus :
Quisputet 'hic quoque Amor, pictæque in nube pha-
retrae, -
Arma corusca faces, et spicula tincta pyropo;
Nec tenues animas, pectusque ignobili vulgi
Hinc ſerit, at circum flammantia lumina torquems
Semper in erectum spargit sua tella per orbes
Impiger, et pronos nunquam collimat ad ictus.
Hinc mentes ardere sacrae, formaeque deorum.
Tu quoque in his, nec me fallit spes lubrica, Damon,
Tu quoque in his certé es, nam quð tua dulcis abiret
Sanctaque simplicitas, nam quð tua candida virtus P
Nec te Lethaeo fas quaesivisse sub orco,
Nec tibi conveniunt lacrymae, nec flebimus ultrà,
Ite procul lacrymae, purum colit aethera Damon,
AEthera purus habet, pluvium pede repulit arcum;
Heroumque animas inter, divösque perennes,
AEthereos haurit latices et gaudia potat
Ore sacro. Quintu, coeli post jura recepta,
Dexter ades, placidusque ſave quicumque vocaris,
190 POEMATA.
Seu tu noster cris Damon, sive tequior audis
Diodotus, quo te divino nomine cuncti
Coelicolae nôrint, sylvisque vocabere Damon :
Quðd tibi purpureus pudor, et sine labe juventus
Grata fuit, quod nulla tori libata voluptas,
En etiam tibi virginei servantur honores;
Ipse caput mitidum cinctus rutilante corona,
Lietàque frondentis gestans umbracula palmae,
AEternum perages immortales hymenteos;
Cantus ubi, choreisque furit lyra mista beatis,
Festa Sionaro bacchantur et Orgia Thyrso.
AD JOANNEM ROUSIUM OXONIENSIS
ACADEMIME BIBLIOTHECARIUM.
(Jan. 23. 1646.)
De libro Poematum amisso, quem ille sibi denuo mitti postula-
bat, ut cum aliis nostris in Bibliotheca publica reponeret, Ode.
Strophe 1. -
GEMELLE cultu simplici gaudens liber,
Fronde licet geminá,
Munditiéque mitems non operosa,
Quam manus attulit
Juvenilis olim,
Sedula tamen haud mimii poetºe;
Dum vagus Ausonias nunc per umbras,
Nunc Britannica per wireta lusit
Insons populi, barbitóque devius
Indulsit patrio, mox itidem pectine Daunio
Longinquum intonuit melos
Vicinis, et humum vix tetigit pede :
Antistrophe.
Quis te, parve liber, quis te fratribus
Subduxit reliquis dolo?
Cum tu missus ab urbe,
Docto jugiter obsecrante amico
Illustre tendebas iter
Thamesis ad incunabula
Caerulei patris,
Fontes ubi limpidi
Aonidum, thyasusque sacer,
Orbi notus per immensos
Temporum lapsus redeunte coelo,
Celeberque futurus in aevum ?
Strophe 2.
Modo quis deus, aut editus deo,
Pristinam gentis miseratus indolem,
(Si satis moxas luimus priores,
Mollique luxu degener otium)
Tollat nefandos civium tumultus,
Almaque revocet studia sanctus,
Et relegatas sine sede Musas
Jam penè totis ſinibus Angligenium ;
Immundasque volucres
Unguibus imminentes
Tigat Apollinea pharetrà,
Phinéamgue abigat pestem procul amne Pegaséo,
Antistrophe.
Quin tu, libelle, nuncii licet malā.
Fide, wel oscitantiã,
Semel erraveris agnmine fratrum,
Seu quis te teneat specus,
Seu quate latebra, forsan unde vili
Callo teréris institoris insulsi,
Laetare felix, en iterum tibi
Spes nova fulget posse profundam
Fugere Lethen, vehigue superam
In Jovis aulam remige penná :
-* Strophe 3.
Nam te Rotisius sui
Optat peculi, numeróque justo
Sibi pollicitum queritur abesse,
Rogataque venias ille, cujus inclyta
Sunt data virum monumenta curae :
Teque adytis etiam sacris
Voluit reponi, quibus et ipse praesidet
AEternorum operum custos fidelis,
Quaestorque gazae mobilioris,
Quâm cui praefuit Ión
Clarus Erechtheides
Opulenta dei per templa parentis
Fulvosque tripodas, donaque Delphica.
Ion Actaea genitus Creusã.
Antistrophe.
Ergo tu visere lucos
Musarum ibis amoenos,
Diamdue Phoebi rursus ibis in domum,
Oxonià quam valle colit,
Delo posthabità,
Bifidóque Parnassi jugo :
Ibis honestus,
Postguam egregiam tu quoque sortem
Nactus abis, dextri prece sollicitatus amici.
Illic legeris inter alta nomina
Authorum, Graiae simul et Latinae
Antiqua gentis lumina, et verum decus.
Epodos.
Vos tandem haud vacui mei labores,
Quicquid hoc sterile fudit ingenium,
Jam seró placidam sperare jubeo
Perfunctam invidiá requiem, sedesque beatas,
Quas bonus Hermes
Et tutela dabit solers Roisi,
Quo neque lingua procax vulgi penetrabit, atque
longè
POEMATA. 191
Ode tribus constat Strophis, totidemque Antistro-
phis, ună demum Epodo clausis, quas, tametsi omnes
nec versuum numero, nec certis ubique colis exactè
Judicia rebus aequiora forsitan respondeant, ita tamen secuimus, commodè legendi
Adhibebit, integro sinu. potius, quâm ad antiquos concinendi modos rationem
Tum, livore sepulto, - spectantes. Alioquin hoc genus rectius fortasse dici
Si quid meremur sana posteritas sciet, monstrophicum debuerat. Metra partim sunt kará
oxéow, partim &mo)\{\vuÉva. Phaleucia quae sunt Spon-
daeum tertio loco bis admittunt, quod idem in secun-
do loco Catullus ad libitum fecit.
Turba legentum parva facesset;
At ultimi nepotes,
Et cordation aetas
Roisio favente.
ITALIAN S O N N ETS.
I.
DoNNA leggiadra il cui bel nome honora
L'herbosa val di Rheno, e il mobil varco,
Bene è colui d' ogni valore scarco
Qual tuo spirto gentil non innamora,
Che dolcemente mostra si di fuora
De sui atti soavi giamai parco,
E i don', che son d'amor saette ed arco,
La onde l'alta tua virtu s'infiora.
Quando tu vaga parli, o lieta canti
Che mover possa duro alpestre legno,
Guardi ciascun a gli occhi, ed a gli orecchi
L'entranta, chi dite si truova indegno;
Gratia sola di su gli vaglia, inanti
Che 'l disio amoroso al cuor s'invecchi.
II.
QUAL in colle aspro, al imbrunir di sera
L'avezza giovinetta pastorella
Va bagnando l'herbetta strana e bella
Che mal si spande a disusata spera
Fuor di sua natia alma primavera,
Cosi Amor meco insù la lingua snella
TDesta il fior novo di strania favella,
Mentre io di te, vezzosamente altera,
Canto, dal mio buon popol non inteso
E 'l bel Tamigi cangio col bel Arno.
Amor lo volse, ed io a l'altrui peso
Seppi ch Amor cosa mai volse indarno.
Deh ! foss' il mio cuor lento e 'l duro seno
A chi pianta dal ciel si buon terreno,
CANZONE.
RI DoNsI donne e giovani amorosi
M'accostandosi attorno, e perche scrivi,
IPerche tu scrivi in lingua ignota e strana
Verseggiando d'amor, e come t' osi ?
Dinne, se la tua speme sia mai vana,
E de pensieri lo miglior t'arrivi;
Cosi mi van burlando, altri rivi
Altri lidi t'aspettan, et altre onde
Nelle cui verdi sponde
Spuntati ad hor, ad hora la tua chioma
L'immortal guiderdon d'eterne frondi
Perche alle spalle tue soverchia soma ?
Canzon dirotti, e tu per me rispondi
Dice mia Donna, e 'l suo dir, é il mio cuore
Questa e lingua di cui si vanta Amore.
III,
DiodATI, e te'l dirò con maraviglia,
Quel ritroso io ch'amor spreggiar soléa
E de suoi lacci spesso mi ridea
Gia caddi, ov'huom dabben talhor s'impiglia.
Ne treccie d'oro, ne guancia vermiglia
M'abbaglian sì, ma sotto nova idea
Pellegrina bellezza che 'l cuor bea,
Portamenti alti honesti, e nelle ciglia
Quel sereno fulgor d'amabil nero,
Parole adorne di lingua piu d'una,
E 'l cantar che di mezzo l' hemispero
Traviar ben puo la faticosa Luna,
E degli occhi suoi auventa si gran fuoco
Che l'incerar gli orecchi mi fia poco.
IV.
PER certo i bei vostrº occhi, Donna mia
Esser non puo che non sian lo mio sole
Si mi percuoton forte, come ei suole
Per l' arene di Libia chi s'invia,
Mentre un caldo vapor (ne sentì pria)
Da quel lato si spinge ove mi duole,
Che forse amanti nelle lor parole
Chiaman sospir, io non so che si sia:
Parte rinchiusa, e turbida si cela
Scosso mi il petto, e poi n' uscendo poco
Quivi d'attorno o s'agghiaccia, o s'ingiela:
Ma quanto a gli occhi giunge a trovar loco
Tutte le notti a me suol far piovose
Finche mia Alba rivien colma di rose.
V.
GIovANE piano, e semplicetto amante
Poi che fuggir me stesso in dubbio sono,
Madonna a voi del mio cuor l' humil dono
Faro divoto; io certo a prove tante
L'hebbi fedele, intrepido, costante,
De pensieri leggiadro, accorto, e buono;
Quanto rugge il gran mondo, e scocca il tuono,
S'arma di se, e d'intero diamante,
Tanto del forse, e d'invidia sicuro,
Di timori, e speranze al popol use
Quanto d'ingegno, e d'alto valor vago,
E di cetta sonora, e delle muse :
Sol troverete in tal parte men duro
Ove amor mise l'insanabil ago.
THE END.
soHN CHILDs AND soN, PRINTERS.
EOUND
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