the least of their liberties, unless they call it their liberty to bind other men's consciences, but are still seeking to live at peace with them, and brotherly accord. Let them beware of an old and perfect enemy, who, though he hopes, by sowing discord, to make them his instruments, yet cannot forbear a minute the open throwing of his open revenge upon them, where they have served his purposes. Let them fear, therefore, if they be wise, rather what they have done already, than what remains to do; and be warned in time, that they put no confidence in Princes, whom they have provoked; lest they be added to the examples of those who have miserably tasted of that event."

It is a pity that these Presbyterian magistrates and legislators had not felt, and listened to these cutting reproofs and significant warnings. It might have saved them, and the religious part of the nation, that bitter draught, that cup of trembling, which in less than twelve years, they had put into their hands, and which, with all its dregs they were compelled to drink.

This faithful Baptist thus proceeds:— "I have something also to the Divines, though brief to what were need. ful not to the disturbers of the civil affairs, being in hands better able, and to whom it more belongs to manage them; but to study harder, and to attend the office of good pastors; not performed by mounting twice into the chair, with a formal preachment, huddled up at the odd hours of a whole lazy week, but by incessant pains and watching; which if they well considered, how little leisure would they find, to be the most pragmatical sidesmen of every popular tumult and sedition! And all this while they are to learn what the true end and reason is, of the gospel which they teach, and what a world it differs from the censorious lording over conscience. It would

be good also, they lived so as might persuade the people they hated covetousness, which, worse than heresy, is idolatry; hated pluralities and all kind of simony; left rambling from benefice to benefice, like ravening wolves, seeking where they may devour the biggest. Let them be sorry, that, being called to assemble about reforming the church, they fell to praying and soliciting the Parliament, (though they had renounced the name of Priests,) for a new settlement of their tithes and oblations, and double-lined themselves with spiritual places of commodity beyond the possible charge of their duty. Let them assemble a Consistory, with their Elders and Deacons, to the preserving of church discipline, each in his several charge; and not a pack of clergymen, by them. selves, to belly-cheer in their presumptuous Sion,* or to promote designs to abuse and gull the simple laity; to stir up tumults, as the Prelates did before them, for the maintenance of their pride and avarice. On this occasion I must remark, that, by reason of the Presbyterians warmly uniting with others in the last Parliament, to promote penal laws against the Socinians, I find few people will believe that those in England differ from their brethren in Scotland about persecutions, not that their own suffer. ings of late have made 'em more tender of the consciences of others.

"This naturally leads men to think that they have not repented of their rigour in the civil wars; and that, should the Dissenters once more get the secular sword into their hands, they would press uniformity of senti

*The fifth Provincial Assembly of London met at Sion College, the beginning of May, 1649, the Reverend Mr. Jackson, of St. Michael, Wood Street, Moderator. A Committee was appointed to prepare materials for proof of Divine Right of Presbyterian Church government.— Neale, vol. ii. 13.

ments in religion, as far as any other Protestants and Papists ever yet have done. But what makes them most suspected of affecting dominion, is the prospect of a comprehension, now on foot, whereof some men of figure among 'em seem to be so fond; whereby the rest are easily deceived, and like to be left in the lurch, by entertaining persons, who for several years past, made the Hierarchy and Liturgy such strange bugbears; though if the church will please to become a blind mother to themselves, and show a little complaisance for their old friends, they are ready to pronounce her orders, her prayers, her ceremonies, to be very innocent and harmless things; but mistaken formerly for pillars of Antichrist, the symbols of idolatry, the dress of popery, the rags of superstition and protestant paint, to hide the deformities of the old Babylonish whore. And after all, whatever ours may be, comprehension in all other places of the world has never been any thing else, but the com. bination of a few parties, to fortify themselves, and to oppress all others by their united force, or by an absolute exclusion from preferment and other advantages, to which, by nature and personal merit, they had an equal claim with the rest of their fellow-citizens. Tho' to be persecuted in their turn is the just judgment of God upon persecutors, yet vengeance must be left to heaven; and the wishes of all good men are, that the national church, being secured in her worship and emoluments, may not be allowed to force others to her communion; and that all dissenters from it, being secured in their liberty of conscience, may not be permitted to meddle with the riches or power of the national church."

The first edition thus concludes :-"These things, if they observe and wait with patience, no doubt but all things will go well, without their importunities or excla.

mations; and the printed letters which they send, subscribed with the ostentation of great characters, and little moment, would be more considerable than now they

are.

But if they be the ministers of mammon instead of Christ, and scandalize his church with the filthy love of gain; aspiring also to sit, the closest and heaviest of all tyrants, upon the conscience: and fall notoriously into the same sins, whereof so lately and so loud they accused the prelates; as God rooted out those immediately before, so will he root out them, their imitators; and to vindicate his own glory and religion, will uncover their hypocrisy to the open world, and visit upon their own heads, that curse the mercy, but more like atheists, they have mocked the vengeance of God, and the zeal of his people."

These extracts will show the principles on which our noble patriot exposed the jure divino selfish, bigoted, sychophantic Presbyterians, who cared not, it should seem, so that the system, whatever it was, "worked well" for them, if all the other sects had perished by the sword of the magistrate, upon the ground of there "being no power but of God," and "those who resisted the power procured to themselves damnation." By putting the ar gument on the right footing, "the sovereignty of the people," he proved, that it was the duty of the subject to obey, when the monarch governed by law, protecting his subjects; and their duty to resist, when the king, regard. ing neither the law nor the common good, reigned for himself alone! To bring the matter home to their breasts and to their bosoms, he gives the Sion College passiveobedience and non-resistance reverends this home thrust :

"But this, I doubt not to affirm, that the Presbyterians, who now so much condemn deposing, were the men themselves who deposed the king, and cannot, with all their shifting and relapsing, wash off the guiltiness from their

own hands. For they themselves, by these their late doings, have made it guiltiness, and turned their own unwarrantable actions into rebellion."

"He, who but erewhile in the pulpit was a cursed tyrant, an enemy to God and saints, laden with all the innocent blood in these kingdoms, and so to be fought against; is now, though nothing penitent or altered from his first principles, a lawful magistrate, a Sovran Lord, the Lord's anointed, not to be touched, though by themselves imprisoned, as if this only were obedience to preserve the meer useless bulk of his person, and that only in prison, not in the field, and to disobey his commands, deny him his dignity and office, every where to resist his power, but when they think it only surviving in their own fact."

I copy the concluding paragraph of the second edition, addressed chiefly to the Presbyterians :-" And indeed I find it generally the eleere and positive determination of them all, (not prelatical, or of this late faction subprelatical,) who have written on this argument, that to do justice on a lawless king, is to a private man unlawful, to an inferior magistrate lawful: or if they were divided in opinion, yet greater than these have alleged, or of more certainty in the church, there can be more produced. If any man shall goe about by producing other testimonies to disable these, or by bringing these against themselves in other cited passages of their books, he will not only fail to make good that false and impudent assertion of those mutinous ministers, that deposing or punishing of a king or tyrant, is against the constant judgment of all Protestant Divines, its being quite the contrary; but will prove rather that he intended not, that the judgment of Divines, if it be so various and inconstant to itself, is not considerable, or to be esteemed at all. Ere which be