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

289. And if his best friends feared him, (°) 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 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.

293. He grants reformation to be "a good work," and confesses "what the indulgence of times and corruption of manners might have depraved." So did the forementioned pope, and our grandsire papists in this realm. Yet all of them agree in one song with this here, that "they are sorry to see so little regard had to laws established, and the religion settled." "Popular compliance, dissolution of all order and government in the church, schisms, opinions, undecencies, confusions, sacrilegious invasions, contempt of the clergy and their liturgy, diminution of princes;" all these complaints are to be read in the messages and speeches almost of every legate from the pope to those states and cities which began reformation. From whence he either learned the same pretences, or had them naturally in him from the same spirit. Neither was there ever so sincere a reformation that hath escaped these clamours.

294. He offered a "synod or convocation rightly chosen." So offered all those popish kings heretofore; a course the most unsatisfactory, as matters have been long carried, and found by experience in the church liable to the greatest fraud and packing; no solution, or redress of evil, but an increase rather; detested therefore by Nazianzen, and some other of the fathers. And let it be produced, what good hath been done by synods from the first times of reformation. Not to justify what enormities the vulgar may commit in the rudeness of their zeal we need but only instance how he bemoans "the pulling down of

crosses" and other superstitious monuments, as

the effect tion."

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of a popular and deceitful reformaHow little this savours of a Protestant is too easily perceived.

295. What he charges in defect of "piety, charity, and morality," hath been also charged by papists upon the best reformed churches; not as if they the accusers were not tenfold more to be accused, but out of their malignity to all endeavour of amendment; as we know who accused to God the sincerity of Job; an accusation of all others the most easy, when as there lives not any mortal man so excellent, who in these things is not always deficient. But the infirmities of the best men, and the scandals of mixed hypocrites in all times of reforming, whose bold intrusion covets to be ever seen in things most sacred, as they are most specious, can lay no just blemish upon the integrity of others, much less upon the purpose of reformation itself. Neither can the evil doings of some be the excuse of our delaying or deserting that duty to the church, which for no respect of times or carnal policies can be at any time unseasonable.

296. He tells with great show of piety what kind of persons public reformers ought to be, and what they ought to do. It is strange that in above twenty years, the church growing still worse and worse under him, he could neither be as he bids others be, nor do as he pretends here so well to know; nay, which is worst of all, after the greatest part of his reign spent in neither knowing nor