these; and for things that were not, as if they were established. It were a thing monstrously absurd and contradictory, to give the parliament a legislative power, and then to upbraid them for transgressing old establishments.

286. But the king and his party having lost in this quarrel their heaven upon earth, begin to make great reckoning of eternal life, and at an easy rate in forma pauperis canonize one another into heaven; he them in his book, they him in the portraiture before his book. But, as was said before, stage-work will not do it, much less the "justness of their cause," wherein most frequently they died in a brutish fierceness, with oaths and other damning words in their mouths; as if such had been all the only oaths" they fought for; which undoubtedly sent them full sail on another voyage than to heaven. In the meanwhile they to whom God gave victory, never brought to the king at Oxford the state of their consciences, that he should presume without confession, more than a pope presumes, to tell abroad what "conflicts and accusations," men whom he never spoke with, have “in their own thoughts." We never read of any English king but one that was a confessor, and his name was Edward; yet sure it passed his skill to know thoughts, as this king takes upon him. But they who will not stick to slander men's inward consciences, which they can neither see nor know, much less will care to slander outward actions, which they pretend to see, though with senses never so vitiated.

287. To judge of " his condition conquered," and

the manner of "dying" on that side, by the sober men that chose it, would be his small advantage: it being most notorious, that they who were hottest in his cause, the most of them were men oftener drunk, than by their good-will sober, and very many of them so fought and so died. And that the conscience of any man should grow suspicious, or be now convicted by any pretensions in the parliament, which are now proved false and unintended, there can be no just cause. For neither did they ever pretend to establish his throne without our liberty and religion, nor religion without the word of God, nor to judge of laws by their being established, but to establish them by their being good and necessary.

288. He tells the world "he often prayed, that all on his side might be as faithful to God and their own souls, as to him." But kings, above all other men, have in their hands not to pray only, but to do. To make that prayer effectual, he should have governed as well as prayed. To pray and not to govern, is for a monk, and not a king. Till then he might be well assured, they were more faithful to their lust and rapine than to him. In the wonted predication of his own virtues he goes on to tell us, that to" conquer he never desired, but only to restore the laws and liberties of his people." It had been happy then he had known at last, that by force to restore laws abrogated by the legislative parliament, is to conquer absolutely both them and law itself. And for our liberties none ever oppressed them more, both in peace and war; first

VOL. II.

R

like a master by his arbitrary power, next as an enemy by hostile invasion.

289. And if his best friends feared him, (80) and "he himself, in the temptation of an absolute conquest," it was not only pious but friendly in the parliament, both to fear him and resist him; since their not yielding was the only means to keep him out of that temptation, wherein he doubted his own strength. He takes himself to be "guilty in this war of nothing else, but of confirming the power of some men." Thus all along he signifies the parliament, whom to have settled by an act he counts to be his only guiltiness. So well he knew, that to continue a parliament, was to raise a war against himself; what were his actions then, and his government the while? For never was it heard in all our story, that parliaments made war on their kings, but on their tyrants; whose modesty and gratitude was more wanting to the parliament than theirs to any of such kings.

290. What he yielded was his fear; what he denied was his obstinacy. Had he yielded more, fear might perchance have saved him; had he granted less, his obstinacy had perhaps the sooner delivered us. "To review the occasions of this war," will be to them never too late, who would be warned by his example from the like evils : but to wish only a happy conclusion, will never

(80)❝ The king's best friends," says Bishop Warburton, "dreaded his ending the war by conquest, as knowing his despotic disposition." (Notes to Clarendon, vii. 563.)

expiate the fault of his unhappy beginnings. It is true, on our side the sins of our lives not seldom fought against us: but on their side, besides those, the grand sin of their cause. How can it L be otherwise, when he desires here most unreasonably, and indeed sacrilegiously, that we should be subject to him, though not further, yet as far as all of us may be subject to God; to whom this expression leaves no precedency? He who desires from men as much obedience and subjection as we may all pay to God, desires not less than to be a God: a sacrilege far worse than meddling with the bishop's lands, as he esteems it.

291. His prayer is a good prayer and a glorious; but glorying is not good, if it know not that a little leaven leavens the whole lump. It should have purged out the leaven of untruth, in telling God that the blood of his subjects by him shed, was in his just and necessary defence. Yet this is remarkable; God hath here so ordered his prayer, that as his own lips acquitted the parliament, not long before his death, of all the blood spilt in this war, so now his prayer unwittingly draws it upon himself. For God imputes not to any man the blood he spills in a just cause; and no man ever begged his not imputing of that, which he in his justice could not impute: so that now, whether purposely or unaware, he hath confessed both to God and man the blood-guiltiness of all this war to lie upon his own head.

CHAPTER XX.

Upon the Reformation of the Times.

292. THIS chapter cannot punctually be answered without more repetitions than now can be excusable: which perhaps have already been more humoured than was needful. As it presents us with nothing new, so with his exceptions against reformation pitifully old, and tattered with continual using; not only in his book, but in the words and writings of every papist and popish king. On the scene he thrusts out first an antimasque of bugbears, novelty and perturbation; that the ill looks and noise of those two may as long as possible drive off all endeavours of a reformation. Thus sought Pope Adrian, by representing the like vain terrors, to divert and dissipate the zeal of those reforming princes of the age before in Germany. And if we credit Latimer's sermons, our papists here in England pleaded the same dangers and inconveniences against that which was reformed by Edward VI. Whereas if those fears had been available, Christianity itself had never been received: which Christ foretold us would not be admitted, without the censure of novelty, and many great commotions. These grants therefore are not to deter us.