Answer to a Book, Part 25
XXV. VponUpon His penitentiall Meditations and Vowes at Holmby
IT is not hard for any man, who hath a Bible in his hands, to borrow good words and holy sayings in abundance; but to make them his own, is a work of grace onelyonly from above. He borrows heer many penitential Verses out of Davids Psalmes. So did many among those Israelites, who had revolted from the true worship of God, invent to themselves instruments of music like David, and probably Psalmes also like his, and yet the Profet Amos complaines heavily against them. But to prove how short this is of true repentance, I will recite the penitence of others, who have repented in words not borrowd, but thir own and yet by the doom of Scripture it self are judg'd reprobates.
Cain said unto the Lord, My iniquity is greater then I can beare, behold thou hast driv'n me this day from the face of the earth, and from thy face shall I be bid.
And when Esau heard the words of his Father he cry'd with an exceeding bitter cry, and said, Bless me eev'n me also O my Father; yet found no place of repentance though he sought it carefully with teares, Heb. 12.
And Pharaoh said to Moses, The Lord is righteous, I and my people are wicked; I have sind against the Lord your God and against you.
And Balaam said, Let me die the death of the righteous and let my last end be like his.
And Saul said to Samuel, I have sin'd, for I have transgress'd the commandment of the Lord; yet honour me now I pray thee before the Elders of my People.
And when Ahab heard the words of Eliah, he rent his cloaths and put sackcloth upon his flesh, and fasted, and lay in sackcloth, and went softly.
Jehoram also rent his cloaths, and the people look'd, and behold he had Sackcloth upon his flesh, yet in the very act of his humiliation he could say, God doe so, and more also to me, if the head of Elishah shall stand on him this day.
Therfore saith the Lord, They have not cri'd unto me with thir heart, when they howl'd upon thir beds. They returne, but not to the most High. Hosea 7.
And Judas said, I have sind, in that I have betray'd innocent blood.
And Simon Magus sayd, Pray yee to the Lord for me that none of these things come upon me.
All these took the paines both to confess and to repent in thir own words, and many of them in thir own tears, not in Davids. But transported with the vain ostentation of imitating Davids language, not his life, observe how he brings a curse upon himself and his Fathers house (God so disposing it) by his usurp'd and ill imitated prayer: Let thy anger I beseech thee le against me and my Fathers house, as for these Sheep what have they don. For if David indeed sind in numbring the people, of which fault he in earnest made that confession, & acquitted the whole people from the guilt of that sin, then doth this King, using the same words, bear witness against himself to be the guilty person; and either in his soule and conscience heer acquitts the Parlament and the people, or els abuses the words of David, and dissembles grossly to the very face of God, which is apparent in the next line; wherein he accuses eev'n the Church it self to God, as if she were the Churches enemie, for having overcom his Tyranny by the powerfull and miraculous might of Gods manifest arme: For to other strength in the midst of our divisions and disorders, who can attribute our Victories? Thus had this miserable Man no worse enemies to sollicit and mature his own destruction from the hast'nd sentence of Divine Justice, then the obdurat curses which proceeded against himself out of his own mouth.
Hitherto his Meditations, now his Vowes; which as the Vowes of hypocrits use to be, are most commonly absurd, and som wicked. Jacob Vow'd that God should be his God, if he granted him but what was necessary to perform that Vow, life and subsistence: but the obedience profferd heer is nothing so cheap. He who took so hainously to be offer'd nineteen Propositions from the Parlament, capitulates heer with God almost in as many Articles.
If he will continue that light or rather that darkness of the Gospel, which is among his Prelats, settle thir luxuries, and make them gorgeous Bishops,
If he will restore the greevances and mische ifs of those obsolete and Popish Laws, which the Parlament without his consent hath abrogated, and will suffer Justice to be executed according to his sense,
If he will suppress the many Scisms in Church, to contradict himself in that which he hath foretold must and shall come to pass, and will remove Reformation as the greatest Scism of all, and Factions in State, by which he meanes in every leafe the Parlament,
If he will restore him to his negative voice and the Militia, as much to say as arbitrary power, which he wrongfully averrs to be the right of his Predecessors,
If he will turne the hearts of his people to thir old Cathedral and Parochial service in the Liturgie, and thir passive obedience to the King,
If he will quench the Army, and withdraw our Forces from withstanding the Piracy of Rupert, and the plotted Irish invasion,
If he will bless him with the freedom of Bishops again in the House of Peers, and of fugitive Delinquents in the House of Commons, and deliver the honour of Parlament into his hands, from the most natural and due protection of the people, that entrusted them with the dangerous enterprize of being faithfull to thir Country against the rage and malice of his tyran nous opposition,
If he will keep him from that great offence of following the counsel of his Parlament, and enacting what they advise him to, which in all reason, and by the known Law, and Oath of his Coronation he ought to doe, and not to call that Sacrilege which necessity through the continuance of his own civil Warr hath compelld them to, necessity, which made David eat the Shewbread, made Ezechiah take all the Silver which was found in Gods House, and cut off the Gold which overlayd those dores and Pillars, and give it to Sennacherib; necessity, which oft times made the Primitive Church to sell her sacred utensils, eev'n to the Communion Chalice,
If he will restore him to a capacity of glorifying him by doing that both in Church and State, which must needs dishonour and pollute his name,
If he will bring him again with peace, honour and safety to his cheife Citty, without repenting, without satisfying for the blood spilt, onelyonly for a few politic concessions which are as good as nothing,
If he will put again the Sword into his hand, to punish those that have deliverd us, and to protect Delinquents against the Justice of Parlament,
Then, if it be possible to reconcile contradictions, he will praise him by displeasing him, and serve him by disserving him.
His glory, in the gaudy Copes, and painted Windows, Miters, Rochets, Altars, and the chanted Service-Book shall be dearer to him then the establishing his Crowne in righteousness, and the spiritual power of Religion.
He will pardon those that have offended him in particular, but there shall want no suttle wayes to be eev'n with them upon another score of thir suppos'd offences against the Common-wealth; wherby he may at once affect the glory of a seeming justice, and destroy them pleasantly, while he faines to forgive them as to his own particular, and outwardly bewailes them.
These are the conditions of his treating with God, to whom he bates nothing of what he stood upon with the Parlament: as if Commissions of Array could deale with him also. But of all these conditions, as it is now evident in our eyes, God accepted none, but that final Petition which he so oft, no doubt but by the secret judgement of God, importunes against his own head; praying God That his mercies might be so toward him, as his resolutions of Truth and Peace were toward his People. It follows then, God having cutt him off without granting any of these mercies, that his resolutions were as fained as his Vows were frustrat.