Answer t o Doctor Fearne, Title page – Dedication
AN ANSVVER TO Mis-led Doctor Fearne.
According to his own method of his book
Sect. 1.2. The Divinity being by Scripture
Sect. 3.4.5. The Reason by Aristotle
Sect. 6.7. The sense or matter of fact by witnesse
examined.
Ruit & aedificat, mutat quadrata rotundis.
foreign
foreign
foreign
foreign. Plut. de Monar. & Demo.
—Stulta est clementia, cum tot ubique
Vatibus occurras periturae parcere chartae.
Printed The second VVeeke of Ianuary. 1642.
TO MY COVNTREY.
I Reade in(1)Plutarch, Brutus his life, that though Pompey had beene the cause of his fathers death, yet he judging Pompeyes cause to be better then Caesars, he adheres to Pompeys party, preferring the publicke good before his private ends. So although the King be deare unto me, yet the publicke good is more deare. Amicus Plato, sed magis amica veritas. Now this Truth, by reason of other occasions that calls me away, I have but only pointed at her, whereby a learned and industrious Author may (with some reserv'd jewels of History, which he shall finde here) so adorne her, that she may be more amiable hereafter; and then their adulterated and painted Rhetoricke will drop away in a chafing sweat; in the meane time I know I write against such as the Erasistrateans were, foreign, Who will rather betray their Country then their opinion; which maintains a foreign, though they would gild this bitter and tyrannicall word over by juggling, telling us that they doe not intend an(2)Doctor Fearn, p. 3 arbitrary government, when they forbid all just resistance. I have examined this Tenent by Scripture, and Aristotle the Atlas of humane learning: The objections that they would answer, urged upon them in the Old Testament they doe not answer, but something they must say, or else give up their cause. For Aristotle he speakes in terminis expressis against these new Maximes. And it is well knowne, that the Law of all Ʋniversities are, that Aristotle must not be denied for reason, neither doth hee speake onelyonly what was(3)Vide D. Fearne, 23. Spartae utile, but he was Tutor to the greatest(4)Alexander. Monarch the world ever had: and I must tell you the greatest(5)King James. Monarch England ever had,(*)Cambden wonders at his learning, he being Nec co…lo nec seculo, nec solo faelix. Annal. Eliz. Buchanan was his Tutor, who dedicated unto him a Treatise De jure Regni apud Scotos, the truth wherein is so perspicuous, that though some(6)H…re is th…s difference betw… a Crow and a P…rasite, the one pr…yes … on the dead, …he …ther …pon the livi …. Crow-like Parasites have attempted to oppugne it, yet they have showne nothing but their teeth, which they daily hang by, as appeares in the Booke of Doctor Fearne, published here in London about the second weeke of December last, For I conceive the Doctor to be so studious & able a man, that if there were better reasons they would have been produeed; which whilst I endeavour to answer, to take away this virulent blot of murder upon this resistance, I cannot be so tender of his Majesty as I would, and acquit his Parliament: onelyonly thus much (lest there bee misprision hereafter) I must acknowledge, (that saving his disaffection towards Parliaments) hee is in Morall virtues omni exceptione major: and that I may give the Doctor his due, I must confesse I have the advantage in the cause, for to speake the truth, if the cause would not have defended it selfe, I should not have attempted it against him. And to take away all prejudice, I doe not make the matter of fact of these last hundred yeares a just patterne, where the Kings still have encroached what with their frownes on one hand, and their countenances of the other upon their Subjects, (whereby I conceive Doctor Fearne is mis-led:) but I appeale to the right, ancient times, the Constitutions of Kingdomes, for whose good Kings were onelyonly ordained, and so he cannot define me a Kings prerogative, but the essentiall difference must be the common good, or else I perswade my selfe it will bee both against the Scripture, Fathers, and all humane Story. In the meane time doe not deny us both this old and common excuse, foreign, It is a difficult thing being a man not to commit many errours, those things he being wholy ignorant of, these things mis-judging, and other things negligently writing.
Farewell.