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THE ARTICLES OF PEACE 191

and sublime power conferred upon him, and come a-begging to the weak hand of magistracy for that kind of aid which the magistrate hath no commission to afford him, and in the way he seeks it hath been always found helpless and unprofitable. Neither is it unknown, or by wisest men unobserved, that the Church began then most apparently, to degenerate, and go to ruin, when she borrowed of the civil power more than fair encouragement and protection, more than which Christ himself and his apostles never required. To say, therefore, that we protect and invite all false religions, with irreligion also and atheism, because we lend not, or rather misapply not, the temporal power to help out, though in vain, the sloth, the spleen, the insufficiency of churchmen, in the execution of spiritual discipline over those within their charge, or those without, is an imputation that may be laid as well upon the best regulated states and governments through the world; who have been so prudent as never to employ the civil sword further than the edge of it could reach, that is, to civil offences only; proving always against objects that were spiritual a ridiculous weapon. Our protection therefore to men in civil matters unoffensive we cannot deny; their consciences we leave, as not within our cognizance, to the proper cure of instruction, praying for them. Nevertheless, if any be found among us declared atheists, malicious enemies of God, and of Christ; the Parliament, I

think, professes not to tolerate such, but with all befitting endeavors to suppress them. Otherways to protect none that in a larger sense may be taxed of irreligion and atheism, may perhaps be the ready way to exclude none sooner out of protection, than those themselves that most accuse it to be so general to others. Lastly, that we invite such as these, or encourage them, is a mere slander without proof.

FROM

EIKONOKLASTES.

B

UT the people, exorbitant and excessive in all their motions, are prone ofttimes not to a religious only, but

to a civil kind of idolatry, in idolizing their kings: though never more mistaken in the object of their worship; heretofore being wont to repute for saints those faithful and courageous barons, who lost their lives in the field, making glorious war against tyrants for the common liberty; as Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, against Henry III.; Thomas Plantagenet, Earl of Lancaster, against Edward II. But now, with a besotted and degenerate baseness of spirit, except some few who yet retain in them the old English fortitude and love of freedom, and have testified it by their matchless deeds, the rest, imbastardized from the ancient nobleness of their ancestors, are ready to fall flat, and give adoration to the image and memory of this man, who hath offered at more cunning fetches to undermine our liberties, and put tyranny into an art, than any British king before

him. Which low dejection and debasement of mind in the people, I must confess, I cannot willingly ascribe to the natural disposition of an Englishman, but rather to two other causes; first, to the prelates and their fellow-teachers, though of another name and sect, whose pulpit-stuff, both first and last, hath been the doctrine and perpetual infusion of servility and wretchedness to all their hearers, and whose lives, the type of worldliness and hypocrisy, without the least true pattern of virtue, righteousness, or self-denial in their whole practice. I attribute it, next, to the factious inclination of most men, divided from the public by several ends and humors of their own.

I NEVER knew that time in England, when men of truest religion were not counted sectaries: but wisdom now, valor, justice, constancy, prudence united and embodied to defend religion and our liberties, both by word and deed, against tyranny, is counted schism and faction.

Thus in a graceless age things of highest praise and imitation under a right name, to make them infamous and hateful to the people, are miscalled. Certainly, if ignorance and perverseness will needs be national and universal, then they who adhere to wisdom and to truth, are not therefore to be blamed, for being so few as to seem a sect or faction. But in my opinion it goes not ill with that people where these virtues grow so nu

merous and well joined together, as to resist and make head against the rage and torrent of that boisterous folly and superstition, that possesses and hurries on the vulgar sort. This therefore we may conclude to be a high honor done us from God, and a special mark of his favor, whom he hath selected as the sole remainder, after all these changes and commotions, to stand upright and steadfast in his cause; dignified with the defence of truth and public liberty; while others, who aspired to be the top of zealots, and had almost brought religion to a kind of trading monopoly, have not only by their late silence and neutrality belied their profession, but foundered themselves and their consciences, to comply with enemies in that wicked cause and interest, which they have too often cursed in others, to prosper now in the same themselves.

"He hoped by his freedom and their moderation to prevent misunderstandings.' And wherefore not by their freedom and his moderation? But freedom he thought too high a word for them, and moderation too mean a word for himself: this was not the way to prevent misunderstandings. He still"feared passion and prejudice in other men"; not in himself: "and doubted not by the weight of his " own "reason, to counterpoise any faction";

* This and quotations following are from the Eikon Basilikè, which claimed to have been written by Charles I.