The Levites Scourge, Section 16
SECT. XVI. Mercurius Civicus taken to task.
Occurrents Numb. 2. Ian. 12.
THere is a crosse to be erected at Oxford, Ian. 22. to crucifie the Parliament now at Westminster, and D. F. hath prepared a lash▪ and a vinegar spunge, hoping to get an executioners place: he wrote his own motto, the gentle lash, yet he would fain see the white flag died in blood. But the Parliament have done well to clip the wings of the Clergie, that they may flye into no temporall places▪ whose tongues, and p…ns have uttered such poyson against the Parliament and in their pride would willingly adhere to Rome, as by many superstitions by them doted on, doth plainly appear; who, by their Babylonian ceremonies, have long endeavoured to make a bridge into the Church by Arminianisme to passe over into Poperie.
Sic perusse frontem de rebus? Ans.What a brow of brasse and conscience seated with a hot iron, hast thou Civicus? that thou darest stain paper with such notorious untruths and shamelesse …landers? The…e can hardly be named any divine in this Kingdom now living, who hath disputed preached, written, and printed, more against Poperie and Arminianisme, then D. F. witnesse Vertumnus Romanus, printed by the command of the house of Commons; the Supplement to the book of Martyrs; the Fisher caught, and held in his own net; the Gra…d Sacriledge, the case for the Spectacles, Cygnea Cant. Transubstantiation exploded; and Pelagius redivivus; Ancilla pietati; and Clavis Mystica: citius crimen honestum quam turpem Ca…onem feceris: thou shalt sooner be able to prove the Protestant Religion to be Poperie, and Arminianisme true christianitie, then the Doctor guiltie of either. What crime then canst thou charge him withall? a …aynous sin, and that of commission: for he was many years in the commission of the peace: thou shou…dst have added, that all that while he neither preached sermon, nor printed book les… than before. Let the Borough of Southwark, with the adjacent parts, inform thee, whether the Common-wealth gained not more by that his impolyment then the Church lost. If the Docto…, to …onfer with schismaticks, and refractorie persons to the Kings ecclesiasticall laws, and canons of the Church referred to him by the Judge; if to compose differences between neighbours, and stifle a world of litigious suits in the bi…th: if to take order for the relief of hundreds of poor and diseased persons in a dangerous time of infection, when other commissioners rather provided for their own safetie by flight, then the safetie of others, by the executing of their office, he defalked some time from his sacred studies: peradventure, this present age, rather jealous of, then zealous for the Church, will blame him for it; but the former would have thanked him for it, as they did Nissene, and Ambrose, and Augustine ▪ and Iewell, whose temporall dignitie and power no way eclipsed their spirituall eminencie, no more then it did the Priests, 2 Chron. 19, 8. set by Iehosaphat for the judgement and cause of the Lord.
Yet thou wilt say, that to discharge the function of a Pastor, and execute the office of a Justice of peace, are incompatible. No more then to teach and to make peace, to preach down and to beat down vice, to wound the hairie scalp of every one that goeth on in his prophanenesse, and drunkennesse, and uncleanesse, and routs, and riots, both with the spirituall and temporall sword, which in former ages were aiding and assisting one to the other, according to Bracton his observation; gladius gladium juvat: but now hack and h…w one the other. If all peace-makers are blessed, surely as well the religious Iustice of peace as the preacher of peace;Mat. 5.…. and if both concur in one person, he must needs have a double share in that blessing: but thou art of another mind, thine eye is evill, because the Prince or state are good to the Church, arming her with some temporall power, the more effectually to compasse her spirituall ends, and defend her children from violence and wrong. Thou say'st the Parliament hath done well to clip the wings of the Clergie, that they may flye into …o temporall place. I will not answer thee, that many former Parliaments have imped them:See the statu…. 16. Rich. 2. and the 25 of Edw. 3. but for Acts of Parliament, they are not for us to censure, but to obey; what the Parliament hath done, their Act speaketh: and therefore I will be silent.
Yet since that Act, divers of the Clergie great in your books, (but none other) have flown into temporall places: one hath flown into an examiners place in Haberdashers-hall; another into a commissioners place for Scotland, a third into a Gaolers place at Lambeth; arrige aures Pamphile. So, it seemeth, it matters not much, quid, but quis; not what the imployment is▪ but who it is that is imployed: for if he be a malignant, all is trash that he takes; but if a confiding man, all is fish that comes to his net:See Sphyni… Philosophica. yea, that golden table which the Miletian fishers caught, and Apollo adjudged to the wisest man then living. Howsoever, to be in the commission of the peace, without seeking it▪ and to discharge that trust faithfully, without any abatement or diminution of diligence in his pastorall function was no blemish, but an ornament; no disgrace, but a dignitie to the Doctor: It gave him more power, it took nothing from his reputation; it blurred not but blazon'd his armes. Yet thou pickest a quarrell with him for executing justice upon unlicensed scriblers, as before upon unlicensed tiplers: thou feelest the smart of his gentle lash, and put'st finger in the eye, crying and complaining there is a crosse to be erected at Oxford, Ian. 22. to crucifie the Parliament now at Westminster.
Say it over again, a crosse erected at Oxford, to crucifie &c. then there are forty seven miles at least between the crosse and the persons to be fastened to it; a strange thing to erect a crosse at Oxford, to crucifie supposed delinquents at Westminster; and more strange that an act of pardon and grace, & the holding out of a golden scepter of mercy to all that will take hold of it, should be taken to be the erecting a crosse to crucifie, or a gibbet to execute any: but our late intelligencers, nae intelligendo faciant, ut nihil intelligant, forfeit their wits as well as they have made shipwrack of their consciences; else thou wouldst never tell us of a gentle lash at the crosse; for neither were any according to the Roman laws lashed at the crosse, nor was that a gentle lash with which our Redeemer was scourged, for it set him all in a gore blood, and made him such a ruefull spectacle, that Pilate himself, whose conscience was as red as his scarlet robe, yet cryed out in compassion, ecce hom…, behold the man: and as absur'd is thy application of the spunge, for the Doctors was a spunge full of fair water, to wash away some foul aspersions cast upon him by the Brownists; the other a spunge full of vinegar to suck out & drink, that the Prophesie might be fulfilled literally,Ps…l. 69.2…. when I was a thirst they gave me vinegar to drink: and if all who make use of a spunge in the former kind, are to be tearmed executioners, your noted noters of sermons, and elect Ladies, who cleanse their table-books, especially before your fast sermons; of which all men now begin to surfeit▪ must own that odious title. Yea, but though he wrote his own motto, the gentle lash, yet he would fain see the white flag dyed in blood. A lye dyed in grain, for which thy conscience will check thee one day, if thou hast any: for in the very narration of the Doctor, intituled the spunge, which thou here quotest and alludest unto, one of the a…ticles preferred by the s…paratists, to the committee for plundered Ministers against him, was, that he taxed the lecturers in London and the suburbs for being bou…efeus and incendiaries, by in…igating the people to these civill, or rather uncivill and unnaturall wars, crying out for the cause of God, and quarrell of the Gospell, fight, fight; kill, kill; battel, battel; blood, blood; nay, so far is the Doctor from wishing that the white fl…g should be dyed in blood, that he desireth from his heart, that there were never a flag or streamer to be seen in the field, nor drum or phife to be heard, nor sword to be drawn, nor pike to be advanced in these kingdoms; but that it would please the Prince of peace, our only peace-maker, upon the lifting up of millions of hands in publike and private, upon the prayers and tea…s o… Scotland, sighs and groans of England, and last ga…ping breath of Ireland, to turn all our drums into tab…e…s, and phifes into Recorders, and swords into syths, and pole-a…es into mattocks▪ and streamers into winding sheets, to wrap up all the differences between Prince and people, church and common wealth, together with all the direfull effects thereof, and to bury them all in perpetuall oblivion: dulce est nomen pacis, & res ipsa p…rqu…m salutaris, sweet is the name of peace, and the thing it self most healthfull; qua non solum homines, sed & agri, & tecta laetar… videntur.
The King-fishers, as Plutarch writeth, never breed but in a calm sea; and S. Iames teacheth us, that the fruits of righteousnesse are sown in peace of them that love peace. On the contrarie, we reade in Plinie's Nat. Hist. l. 9. c. 35. that in the generation of Margarites, or pearle, if it thunder, the work of nature is quite marred, and that which would have been an orient gem, becomes a crude moisture: and how many pearles have of late miscarried, since the thunder of warre, both the Universities will tell you with pearls in their eyes. For it is not only true▪ silent leges inter arma, but musae also, that the laws are suspended in the times of bloodie warres, but the Prophets too, and the Muses also. As Marius was wont to …ay, where there is cla…hing and clattering of Arms, neither laws of God nor man can be heard; and where the laws cannot be heard, all out-cryes are heard▪ and all out-rages are committed: no man hath proprieti… of or in any thing, save losses and wounds; nor can purchase ought but spoyls, nor build any where but upon ruines. O the thundering in the ayre, and plundering on the land; the suspending and interdicting, not so much of Preachers as Churches! O the carkasses as well of Cities as men, and Coffins rather of houses then corpses, and rooting up rather of families and countries then of gardens! These and other dismall effects of warre extort from all those, who have any thing yet to lose, and have not forfeited the libertie of their speech with the libertie of their persons, this unanimous and harmonious Vote, Come blessed peace.
Nulla salus bello, pacem te p…scimus omnes.
Of all the messengers of Gods vengeance, the sword is the swif…st; of all swords the civill is the keenest, especially when it is wh…t with a pretext of Religion. This is foreign, gladius anceps, a two-edged sword, cutting on both sides, English men, Protestants, brethren, branches of the same root, subjects to the same Prince, …ay, members of the same mysticall body. In all other warres the victorie is joyfull on the one side; but in this, like as in the Cadmean, neither good for the conquerour nor for the conquered: for,
foreign.
He that conquers, weepeth for the losse of his countrey-men, friends, kinsmen, and allies; and he that is conquered, is lost.
Which side soever gains, the King and the Countrey loseth … O dismall Ensignes! O banned Banners! O stained Colours! O bloodie Streamers! O inglorious Armes! O ignoble Victories! the monuments whereof are not pillars, or statues set up, or trophies erected, but downfalls and ruines.
…ella geri placuit nullos habitura triumphos?
Heu quantum terrae poterat pelagique parari.
Hoc quem civiles hauserunt sanguine dextrae?
A Corollarie.
BEcause the good parts of men, like pictures, are best seen at a distance, (picturae eminus videndae, non comminus) and our great Prophet telleth us, that a Prophet is not esteemed in his own countrey; I will here, by way of Corollarie set down the Eulogies of some eminent forraign Divines▪ concerning him who is sideratus among his own, but desideratus among them:Basil. …p. 62. foreign. the reason of which difference of judgements is evident to be this; they look upon him in his printed wor…s and in himself as he is: but these look on him through the foul spectacle of a false relation, and through the deception of their sight deem the dust and filth to be in him the object, whereas it is indeed in their furred glasse: let them rub and cleanse then spectacles, and he will appear such to them, as he doth to those forraigners, whose testimonies here follow in their own language.