Answer to a Book, Part 19
XIX. VponUpon the various events of the Warr.
IT is no new, or unwonted thing for bad men to claim as much part in God as his best servants; to usurp and imitate thir words, and appropriate to themselves those properties which belong onelyonly to the good and righteous. This not onelyonly in Scripis familiarly to be found, but heer also in this Chapter of Apocrypha. He tells us much, why it pleas'd God to send him Victory or Loss (although what in so doing was the intent of God, he might be much mistak'n as to his own particular) but we are yet to learn what real good use he made therof in his practice.
Those numbers which he grew to from small beginnings, were not such as out of love came to protect him, for none approv'd his actions as a King, except Courtiers and Prelats, but were such as fled to be protected by him from the fear of that Reformation which the pravity of thir lives would not bear. Such a Snowball he might easily gather by rowling through those cold and dark provinces of ignorance and leudness, where on a sudden he became so numerous. He imputes that to Gods protection, which, to them who persist in a bad cause, is either his longsuffering, or his hard'ning; and that to wholesom chastisement, which were the gradual beginnings of a severe punishment. For if neither God nor nature put civil power in the hands of any whomsoever, but to a lawfull end, and commands our obedience to the autority of Law onelyonly, not to the Tyrannical force of any person, and if the Laws of our Land have plac'd the Sword in no mans single hand, so much as to unsheath against a forren enemie, much less upon the native people, but have plac'd it in that elective body of the Parlament, to whom the making, repealing, judging, and interpreting of Law it self was also committed; as was fittest, so long as wee intended to bee a free Nation, and not the Slaves of one mans will, then was the King himself disobedient and rebellious to that Law by which he raign'd; and by autority of Parlament to raise armes against him in defence of Law and Libertie, we doe not onelyonly think, but beleeve and know was justifiable both by the Word of God, the Laws of the Land, and all lawfull Oaths; and they who sided with him fought against all these.
The same Allegations, which he uses for himself and his Party, may as well fitt any Tyrant in the world: for let the Parlament bee call'd a Faction when the King pleases, and that no Law must bee made or chang'd either civil or religious, because no Law will content all sides, then must be made or chang'd no Law at all; but what a Tyrant, be he Protestant or Papist, thinks fitt. Which tyrannous assertion forc'd upon us by the Sword, he who fights against, and dyes fighting, if his other sins overweigh not, dyes a Martyr undoubtedly both of the Faith and of the Common-wealth: and I hold it not as the opinion, but as the full beleef and persuasion of farr holier and wiser men then Parasitie Preachers. Who, without their dinner-Doctrin, know that neither King, Law, civil Oaths, or Religion, was ever establish'd without the Parlament: and thir power is the same to abrogate as to establish: neither is any thing to bee thought establish'd which that House declares to be abolisht. Where the Parlament sitts, there inseparably sitts the King, there the Laws, there our Oaths, and whatsoever can be civil in Religion. They who fought for the Parlament, in the truest sense fought for all these; who fought for the King divided from his Parlament, fought for the shadow of a King against all these; and for things that were not, as if they were establisht. It were a thing monstrously absurd and contradictory to give the Parlament a Legislative power, and then to upbraid them for transgressing old Establishments.
But the King and his Party having lost in this Quarrel thir Heav'n upon Earth, beginn to make great reckning of Eternal Life, and at an easie rate in forma Pauperis Canonize one another into Heav'n; he them in his Book, they him in the Portrature before his Book: but as was said before, Stagework will not doe it; much less the justness of thir Cause: wherin most frequently they dy'd in a brutish fierceness, with Oaths and other damning words in thir mouths; as if such had bin all the Oaths they fought for: which undoubtedly sent them full Sail on another Voyage then to Heav'n. In the mean while they to whom God gave Victory, never brought to the King at Oxford the state of thir consciences, that he should presume without confession, more then a Pope presumes, to tell abroad what conflicts and accusations, men whom he never spoke with, have in thir own thoughts. We never read of any English King but one that was a Confessor; and his name was Edward: yet sure it pass'd his skill to know thoughts, as this King takes upon him. But they who will not stick to slander mens 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.
To judge of his conditions conquerd, 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 oftner drunk, then by thir good will sober, and very many of them so fought and so dy'd.
And that the conscience of any man should grow suspicious, or be now convicted by any pretentions in the Parlament, which are now prov'd fals, 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 thir being establisht, but to establish them by thir being good and necessary.
He tells the World He oft'n prayd that all on his side might be as faithfull to God and thir own souls, as to him. But Kings, above all other men, have in thir hands not to pray onelyonly but to doe. To make that prayer effectual, he should have govern'd as well as pray'd. To pray and not to govern is For a Monk and not a King. Till then he might be well assur'd they were more faithfull to thir lust and rapine then to him.
In the wonted predication of his own vertues he goes on to tell us, that to Conquer he never desir'd, but onelyonly to restore the Laws and Liberties of his people. It had bin happy then he had known at last, that by force to restore Laws abrogated by the Legislative Parlament; is to conquer absolutely both them, and Law it self. And for our Liberties, none ever oppress'd them more, both in Peace and Warr; first like a maister by his arbitrary power; next as an enemy by hostile invasion.
And if his best freinds fear'd him, and he himself, in the temptation of an absolute Conquest, it was not only pious, but freindly in the Parlament, both to fear him and resist him; since their not yeelding, was the onelyonly meanes to keep him out of that temptation wherin he doubted his own strength.
He takes himself to be guilty in this Warr of nothing els, but of confirming the power of some Men: Thus all along he signifies the Parlament, whom to have settl'd by an Act he counts to be his onelyonly guiltiness. So well he knew that to continue a Parlament, 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 Parlaments made Warr on thir Kings, but on thir Tyrants; whose modesty and gratitude was more wanting to the Parlament, then theirs to any of such Kings.
What he yeelded was his feare; what he deny'd was his obstinacy; had he yeelded more, fear might perchance have sav'd him; had he granted less, his obstinacy had perhaps the sooner deliverd us.
To review the occasions of this Warr will be to them never too late, who would be warn'd by his example from the like evils: but to wish onelyonly a happy conclusion, will never expiate the fault of his unhappy beginnings. Tis true on our side the sins of our lives not seldom fought against us: but on their side, besides those, the grand sin of thir Cause.
How can it be otherwise when he desires heer most unreasonably, and indeed sacrilegiously, that we should be subject to him, though not furder, yet as farr as all of us may be subject to God; to whom this expression leaves no precedency. Hee who desires from men as much obedience and subjection, as we may all pay to God, desires not less then to be a God; a sacrilege farr wors then medling with the Bishops Lands, as he esteems it.
His Praier is a good Praier and a glorious; but glorying is not good, if it know not that a little leven levens the whole lump. It should have purg'd out the leven of untruth in telling God that the blood of his Subjects by him shedd was in his just and necessary defence. Yet this is remarkable; God hath heer so orderd his Prayer, that as his own lipps acquitted the Parlament, not long before his death, of all the blood spilt in this Warr, so now his prayer unwittingly drawes it upon himself. For God imputes not to any man the blood he spills in a just cause: and no man ever begg'd his not imputing of that which he in his justice could not impute. So that now whether purposely, or unaware he hath confess'd both to God and Man the bloodguiltiness of all this Warr to lie upon his own head.